In the movie “Birdman” directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu’s, washed up former iconic super hero movie star Riggan Thomas (Micheal Keaton) recently turned down the opportunity to star in the fourth movie in the series, “The Birdman”. In an attempt to become relevant again, he becomes a director on Broadway for a new adaption of the short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver.

Leading up to the debut of the play, one of the lead actors is injured, in which Riggan needs to find a replacement. Jake (Zach Galifianakis), who is Riggan’s best friend and lawyer, finds Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), a method actor who is the truth on stage, but is fake everywhere else. Along the way, Riggan has to deal with an assortment of family problems and other events leading up to the debut of the play.

The cinematography was done by Emmanuel Lubezkil, and I have to say he did a spectacular job. He brought to the table some tight angles, and opened the audience’s eye to see what the “behind the scenes” of Broadway looks like. Throughout the movie, special effects were used to represent Riggan’s imagining he had Birdman’s powers in real life. The effects never looked corny in any sense, very realistic, and seamlessly transitioned back into the real life part of the film. Most of all, of the film was shot in the same area on Broadway, though there were a limited number of scenes that weren’t shot in the theater.

Sound designer Martìn Herdàndez, interestingly enough, used a very percussion heavy soundtrack, creating a lot more tension, but also having the flexibility to pull back to take away the intensity. He chose Grammy winning jazz drummer Antonio Sanchez to play the parts.

Throughout the movie, there were short moments where they chose to film a drummer playing as a short interlude between scenes; however, the drummer was not played by the same man who was making the sounds.

In attention to detail, a lot of cool tones and some anamorphic flares were used to achieve that “play/movie set” vibe. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the Lubezkil’s interpretation, as he captured each moment with so much more than holding a camera and pressing record.