Unexpected is Right

Rating: 9/10 (20 May 2016)

*SOME SPOILERS*
I sat through Birdman from start to finish; a rarity for a movie and me these days. The recurring drum theme made it hard to break away. The scenes kept rolling into each other...in a good way. There was very little flab in this movie, and a whole lot to ponder, not the least of which being: was Riggan truly magical? There were a couple of clues suggesting he wasn't, but the ending suggested that he was. The fat that was there (a pregnancy scare that seemed to mean nothing to nobody; a classically cliché one-punch fight) caused one star to be taken away.
Strange that Edward Norton's character went from being prominent in the first half to almost ignored later on. Guess that's what happens when you mess with the director's daughter.
Inarritu is a force. I loved Babel as well. His use of slight time shifts is great. In Babel, he would move slightly forward in time and then back; in Birdman he's always moving forward, but occasionally a future scene will have already begun off-screen while the present scene is ending. Subtle but very cool...and propulsive.