One For The Birds (Movie Review: Birdman)

I will be Connie Contrarian for a second. I knwo a lot of people have been enamoured with Alejandro Inarritu's "Birdman" and it may even give Michael Keaton an Academy Award, but I thought the movie was one of the worst I have seen from last year. Why do I think that, you ask? I thought it was pretentious, self-indulgent, and quite frankly, boring. It stars Keaton as an actor who got famous for playing a super hero and is now trying his hand starring on Broadway, adapting Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love But he has some problems: his newly cast co-star(Edward Norton)  is a handful, his daughter (Emma Stone) just got out of rehab, and his girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) may be pregnant.  Fine and well, but there really isn't anythign abotu teh main character that makes us feel for him. There are great technical touches in the film, the cinematography, bu Emmanue Lubezki, is a wonder: the whole film was shot like one single take, but you get caught more by that fact (ooooh, how will he transition next) instead of getting engaged by the story. And the overacting here is excessive. yes, I get it, they are all "theatrical" but after a while it just got tiresome. Keaton does give a fine performance, but for me, it is lacking the things that the film fails to deliver: heart and soul.