Short Take: "War Horse" and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"

We get it, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is trying to show us how spying was done in the pre-internet, pre-GPS days, but few espionage thrillers have ever felt as downtrodden and well, lacking in thrills as Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John LeCarré's novel. Gary Oldman stars as the iconic George Smiley, a British intelligence agent whose methods are as laconic as the underrated actor's ability to insert himself so effortlessly into all his characters.
With extreme attention to detail and an earthy color palette - as well as stylized 70s camera moves - by DP Hoyte Van Hoytema, the film concentrates enough on the surroundings and period details, that it forgets that there's a story to be told, and more importantly as it should be in most spy films, there is a mystery to be solved.
In this case the British suspect there is a Communist mole in their organization, but ask anyone how they solve this and most will come to realize that at some point the movie lost their attention. Its execution is admirable but unless Alfredson was trying to make a point about the dullness of bureaucracy, or deglam crime as David Fincher expertly did in his masterful Zodiac, which he certainly doesn't seem to be doing, the film turns out to be an exercise in dullness in which elegant British actors are killed or double crossed while dressed in uninteresting khaki tones.

Out of all the popular directors from his generation, all of whom claim to be devoted cinephiles, Steven Spielberg seems to be the one who cultivated the most middlebrow taste. If not, ask yourself why of all John Ford's films, he had to choose the tepid How Green Was My Valley as his point of reference for War Horse?
There is nothing wrong with him liking Valley per se but to choose one of Ford's most inferior, albeit award winning, works is the equivalent of being an opera singer and doing Christina Aguilera covers. With that said, War Horse desperately tries to recreate what once was Hollywood's way of filmmaking: interior sets, excessive melodrama and strong family values. Spielberg is either paying tribute to the least challenging productions of an era or writing a guidebook on how to win Academy Awards.
Everything in War Horse feels like it belongs in a different era, and more often than not, it should've stayed there. What once was sweeping, now is obscenely manipulative and as a postmodernist exercise the film doesn't have much to say about the current world.
Human characters are perhaps unnecessary as the movie follows the title horse, named Joey, as he goes from owner to owner, surviving WWI in the process. Because we are asked to devote our attention to an animal, the film gets away with complex character development and tends to rely too much on just how adorable we find Joey. The horse, like some sort of Jesus or Forrest Gump, changes the lives of everyone he touches, which more often than not results in unintentional comedy.
It's truly sad to see actors like Mullan and Arestrup at the service of an equine but by the time when Watson is forced to do her frumpiest Jane Darwell impression, the film reaches new lows in how it so cynically tries to squeeze tears out of its audience.
War Horse should've inspired the old fashioned adjective "jolly", instead it goes all out on the preposterous "mush".

Grades
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy **
War Horse *

Creation **

Director: Jon Amiel
Cast: Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly
Jeremy Northam, Toby Jones, Martha West, Benedict Cumberbatch

"Creation" opens with the promise of telling us how "the biggest single idea in the history of thought" came to occur.
Said idea is none other than Charles Darwin's publication of "On the Origin of Species" but the film is very far from fulfilling its intellectual promise. What we get instead is a by-the-numbers production that tries to put historical figures in cinematic forms to make us empathize with them.
Here Darwin's (Bettany) genius is reduced to a simplistic battle between religion and science filtered through his feelings for two people. On the science side he has to make justice to his deceased, daughter Anne's (West) memory. Her ghost appears to him constantly and reminds him of all that he taught her about dinosaurs and natural selection.
On the other side he has his wife Emma (Connelly) a devout Christian who questions his need to quarrel with God and separate his family from society.
Where Anne's death (which is told in strange uneven fractured narration) could've been a smart propeller towards intellectual debate (Emma clings to faith while Charles sees science fail) it's turned into a cheap plot device to create tear inducing scenes and melodramatic moments.
Bettany gives a marvelous performance and convinces us of his aging by a mere change in his facial expressions. His inner struggles are much more effective than his loud conversations with Annie's ghost.
The actor is able to tap into a source of creativity that creates brilliance along with frustration. He's immensely watchable even when the screenplay forces him to concentrate more on forced ideas than authentic actions.
Connelly is equally good, perhaps because she's already played this part before (and won a heap of awards for it as well) when we see her dealing with a genius husband who talks to imaginary figures we realize this might just be an 1800's version of "A Beautiful Mind".
When Amiel should've trusted Darwin's ideas to be sufficiently original to catch our interest, he prefers to recur to visually pleasing allegories that try to digest the theories for us.
Therefore when Darwin narrates about his thoughts on sea creatures we see the actual Darwin undergoing hydrotherapy...this unimaginative angle goes as far to make us believe that he actually wrote the book out of a Graham Green-esque vendetta with God.
For a movie about someone who was so fascinated by nature, "Creation" ironically lacks a spark of life.