The Flick Chick

Friday's Top 5... Worst Snubs of 2012

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

#5: Tilda Swinton - Best Actress, We Need To Talk About Kevin

On the one hand, it's difficult to feel too bad about Swinton not getting nominated since she does already have an Oscar. On the other hand, it's kind of a shame that someone who makes so many interesting choices and has played so many challenging characters can credit her only nomination to date to a solid, but not particularly revelatory, performance in Michael Clayton.

#4: Steven Spielberg - Best Director, War Horse

What a difference a few years can make. Back in 2005 Spielberg nabbed a nomination for Munich, a decent but also deeply flawed film, but come 2011 he couldn't manage a nomination for War Horse, a film which contains some of his best work. It's a shame but, at the same time, it's fairly difficult to argue with the five directors who actually did get nominated.

#3: Michael Fassbender - Best Actor, Shame

Despite AMPAS' historical discomfort with films like Shame, it really looked for a while like Michael Fassbender might make it on the force of the critical acclaim for his performance. But, once again, AMPAS shows its prudish nature and opts to play safe, even if it means dismissing one of the most celebrated performances of the year. On the bright side: it's only a matter of time before Fassbender lands an Oscar nomination.

#2: The Best Original Song Category

Oscar has always seemed to have a love/hate relationship with its Best Original Song category and this year they made it clear how little regard they have for it by only nominating two songs. 39 songs were eligible to be nominated - songs by people like Elton John and Mary J. Blige - and yet they could only find two deemed worthy to recognize? Their ambivalence for the category could not be more clear.

#1: Albert Brooks - Best Supporting Actor, Drive

My personal favourite performance of the year, and the critical favourite of the supporting actors, collecting more accolades than even Christopher Plummer, the now undoubted front runner for the win. Reading the nominations on Tuesday morning and noting his absence, my heart actually sank. Horrible, horrible omission.

Guide to Oscar: Best Animated Feature

2012-01-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Animated Feature category was created in 2001 and the award is given only if there are 6 or more animated features which receive theatrical release in Los Angeles during the course of the year. If there are fewer than 16 films eligible to be nominated, 3 will compete for the award. If there are 16 or more eligible, 5 will compete.

This year's nominees are:

A Cat In Paris

"A thrilling mystery that unfurls in the alleys and on the rooftops of the French capital, Paris, over the course of one adventurous evening."

Watch Trailer

Chico and Rita

"Chico is a young piano player with big dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. Music and romantic desire unites them, but their journey - in the tradition of the Latin ballad, the bolero - brings heartache and torment."

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Kung Fu Panda 2

"Po and his friends fight to stop an peacock villain from conquering China with a deadly new weapon, but the Dragon Warrior must come to terms with his past."

Watch Trailer

Puss In Boots

"A story about the events leading up to the sword fighting cat's meeting with Shrek and his friends."

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Rango

"Rango is an ordinary chameleon who accidentally winds up in the town of Dirt, a lawless outpost in the Wild West in desperate need of a new sheriff."

Watch Trailer

Review: The Iron Lady (2011)

2012-01-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

* 1/2
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Starring: Meryl Streep

I'll get it out of the way right off the top: Meryl Streep is fantastic playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Unfortunately, revelatory as the performance may be, it is the only reason the film exists. Written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, The Iron Lady is a frustratingly shapeless film that tries to disguise the fact that it has nothing to say by telling its story in an elliptical way and leaving it to Streep to do all the heavy lifting - well, her and the makeup crew. At least they received Oscar nominations for their trouble.

The Iron Lady is essentially three stories, none of which is told in a satisfactory way. One is the story of Thatcher's unexpected and, regardless of what you think of her politics, impressive rise to power and subsequent run as Prime Minister. One is the story of Thatcher's relationship with her husband, Denis (played by Harry Lloyd as a young man and Jim Broadbent later), and how he supported her as she subverted the traditional role women played on the public stage. The third, and the only one that is even marginally successful, involves the present-day Thatcher slipping away into dementia, carrying on conversations with the husband who is now dead, and feeling like a prisoner in her own home.

The film moves back and forth between time periods both as a means of telling the story of Thatcher's life and as a way of demonstrating her increasing inability to tell present from past. While fragmented storytelling can work well when it's done right (a great example is 2007's La Vie En Rose), here it ends up feeling reductive because it means that the film glosses over every significant event of Thatcher's time in office. It drifts from one big moment to another without really providing much in terms of context and without building any themetic momentum. One moment she's declaring her intention of running for her party's leadership and the next she's firmly established as Prime Minister. One moment the Falklands War seems lost, the next it's victory parades and rebounding approval ratings. It provides the beginnings and the endings for several smaller stories while skipping over what came between.

That Streep's performance can have any impact at all is remarkable, given how thoroughly the film is working against her and limiting her ability to create a character. Thatcher is not a sympathetic person and Streep makes sure to keep her edges sharp, but she also finds away to connect with her humanity. In the film's most affecting scenes, the present day Thatcher struggles to remain mentally present and capable, betrayed by the realities of her own mind and body. Streep's performance in these scenes strikes a delicate balance between frustration and fear and, regardless of her politics, it's difficult not to feel for the character, a once vital and commanding woman so thoroughly reduced by something completely beyond her control. Her sense of having lost power (by which I mean the power to take care of one's self rather than her political power) and her complex feelings about the husband whose spectre haunts her are sensitively and effectively played by Streep, who never lapses into caricature, even at those moments when the film seems to be demanding it.

The problems plaguing The Iron Lady are numerous but the biggest two are the story's construction and the fact that it has no real sense of purpose. I'm not sure why anyone would make a film about someone as controversial as Margaret Thatcher if they had no intention of taking any kind of position about her, but that's exactly what The Iron Lady does. There are times when it seems to be positioning itself as a feminist tale about a woman making it in a milieu dominated by men, but that only holds up in the shallowst of ways. Yes, it's impressive that Thatcher managed to become Prime Minister but feminism isn't simply about getting women into positions of power, it's about what politicians of either gender do once they're in power. As nifty as that overhead shot of a pastel clad Thatcher surrounded by a sea of black suit clad collegues may be, a more telling visual is the complete absence of other women in any of her cabinet meetings. I'm not saying that an argument can't be made that Thatcher is a feminist figure, but you have to base the idea on something more than the mere fact that she's a woman and the film failure to do so is indicative of its general laziness as a story. It's unfortunate that a performance as good as Streep's is left with nothing to support it and that a woman as ambitious as Thatcher inspired such an unambitious and empty movie.

Oscar Nominees

2012-01-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

Note: When this post first went up I accidentally wrote that Kristin Wiig and Annie Mumolo had been nominated for writing The Artist which is of course very, very incorrect

And the nominees are:

Best Picture
The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight In Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Best Director
Woody Allen, Midnight In Paris
David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Best Actor
Damien Bichir, A Better Life
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Actress
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Best Supporting Actress
Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help

Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warriro
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Best Original Screenplay
Woody Allen, Midnight In Paris
J.C. Chandor, Margin Call
Asgar Farhadi, A Separation
Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids

Best Adapted Screenplay
George Clooney, Grand Heslov, Beau Willimon, The Ides of March
Nat Faxon, Alexander Payne & Jim Rash, The Descendants
John Logan, Hugo
Bridget O'Connor & Peter Straughan, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Aaron Sorkin & Steve Zaillian, Moneyball

Best Film Editing
Kirk Baxter & Angus Wall, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Anne-Sophie Bion, The Artist
Thelma Schoonmaker, Hugo
Kevin Tent, The Descendants
Christopher Tellfeson, Moneyball

Best Cinematography
Jeff Cronenweth, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Janusz Kaminski, War Horse
Emmanuel Lubezki, The Tree of Life
Robert Richardson, Hugo
Guillame Schiffman, The Artist

Best Art Direction
Laurence Bennett, The Artist
Rick Carter, War Horse
Stuart Craig, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Dante Ferretti, Hugo
Anne Seibel, Midnight In Paris

Best Costume Design
Mark Bridges, The Artist
Lisy Christl, Anonymous
Michael O'Connor, Jane Eyre
Arianne Phillips, W.E.
Sandy Powell, Hugo

Best Makeup
Albert Nobbs
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
The Iron Lady

Best Visual Effects
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Hugo
Real Steel
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Best Sound Mixing
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
Moneyball
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
War Horse

Best Sound Editing
Drive
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
War Horse

Best Original Score
Ludovic Bource, The Artist
Alberto Iglasias, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Howard Shore, Hugo
John Williams, The Adventures of Tintin
John Williams, War Horse

Best Original Song
"Man or Muppet," The Muppets
"Real in Rio," Rio

Best Animated Feature
A Cat in Paris
Chico & Rita
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss In Boots
Rango

Best Documentary Feature
Hell and Back Again
If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Pina
Undefeated

Best Foreign Language Feature
Bullhead, Belgium
Footnote, Isreal
In Darkness, Poland
Monsieur Lazhar, Canada
A Separation, Iran

Oscar Predictions

2012-01-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

The nominations will be announced tomorrow morning so it's time for predictions. I'm betting that The Artist and Hugo will lead the way, both being films that have been widely embraced amongst the various guilds, with The Help, The Descendants, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo not far behind (and, sadly, merely one nomination for Drive). Although I don't think War Horse has enough support to get into the Picture race, I think it'll make a decent showing in the technical categories.

I'm also going out on a limb and predicting nominations for Brad Pitt as both Best Actor and Supporting Actor, and that the Academy's British members will sweep Gary Oldman into the Best Actor race (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy hasn't received much love on this side of the Atlantic, but it's nominated for a ton of BAFTAs). Although I'm not predicting it, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see Melissa McCarthy get a nod for Supporting Actress (most likely knocking out Janet McTeer) or Rooney Mara slipping into a Best Actress slot (knocking out either Glenn Close or Tilda Swinton).

Here are my predictions:

Best Picture
The Artist
The Descendants
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
Midnight In Paris
Moneyball

Best Director
Woody Allen, Midnight In Paris
David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Best Actor
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Michael Fassbender, Shame
Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Actress
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin
Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Best Supporting Actress
Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help
Shaileen Woodley, The Descendants

Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Albert Brooks, Drive
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life
Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Best Original Screenplay
Woody Allen, Midnight In Paris
Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Mike Mills, Beginners
Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids
Will Reiser, 50/50

Best Adapted Screenplay
Nat Faxon, Alexander Payne & Jim Rash, The Descendants
John Logan, Hugo
Aaron Sorkin & Steve Zaillian, Moneyball
Tate Taylor, The Help
Steve Zaillian, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Film Editing
Kirk Baxter & Angus Wall, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Anne-Sophie Bion, The Artist
Michael Kahn, War Horse
Thelma Schoonmaker, Hugo
Kevin Tent, The Descendants

Best Cinematography
Jeff Cronenweth, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Janusz Kaminski, War Horse
Emmanuel Lubezki, The Tree of Life
Robert Richardson, Hugo
Guillame Schiffman, The Artist

Best Art Direction
Laurence Bennett, The Artist
Stuart Craig, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Dante Ferretti, Hugo
Sebastian T. Krawinkel, Anonymous
Mark Ricker, The Help

Best Costume Design
Mark Bridges, The Artist
Sharen Davis, The Help
Joanna Johnston, War Horse
Michael O'Connor, Jane Eyre
Sandy Powell, Hugo

Best Makeup
Gainsbourgh: A Heroic Life
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
The Iron Lady

Best Visual Effects
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Hugo
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
The Tree of Life
Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Best Sound Mixing
Hugo
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Super 8
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
War Horse

Best Sound Editing
Hugo
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Super 8
War Horse

Best Original Score
Ludovic Bource, The Artist
Thomas Newman, The Help
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Howard Shore, Hugo
John Williams, War Horse

Best Original Song
"Hello Hello," Gnomeo & Juliet
"Lay Your Head Down," Albert Nobbs
"The Living Proof," The Help
"Man or Muppet," The Muppets
"Picture In My Head," The Muppets

Best Animated Feature
The Adventures of Tin Tin
Puss In Boots
Rango
Rio
Winnie the Pooh

Best Documentary Feature
Bill Cunningham New York
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Pina
Project Nim
Undefeated

Best Foreign Language Feature
In Darkness, Poland
Monsieur Lazhar, Canada
Omar Killed Me, Morocco
Pina, Germany
A Separation, Iran

Top 10 Week... Films of 2011

2012-01-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

#10: Midnight In Paris

For me, there's no harder film to pick than the one that ends up #10 - it's the last one, after all, and no matter which one you choose, it means that one or two other films are being left out. I did a lot of debating about which film would take the final slot, deciding finally on Midnight In Paris, Woody Allen's charming literary fantasy. With a wonderful cast led by Owen Wilson, this funny time travel fable ensconces itself in the Paris ex-pat scene of the 1920s, celebrating nostalgia and the desire to return to times of the past, but also arguing that no time and place is so perfect that another doesn't seem better in comparison. Though not as deep as Allen's best work, it is a minor gem and a return to form after a couple of recent disappointments.

#9: Beginners

A gentle and very moving film with a message that is all the more important in 2012, as gay rights always become a more hot button issue than usual in election years. The story of a son dealing with the revelation that his father is gay (and, later, that his father is dying), the film presents an emotionally complex picture of familial and romantic relationships. Without ever passing judgment on its characters, Beginners allows them to stumble and learn, make mistakes and make things right; they aren't perfect, but they are deeply human. Written and directed by Mike Mills based on his own experiences with his father, Beginners is a film that shows that love, in whatever form it takes, is the most essential human experience.

#8: War Horse

Sentimental? Yes. Sappy? No. Steven Spielberg's WWI epic War Horse unfolds as a series of episode in the life of an extraordinary horse and the various people who from time to time call themselves his owner. It is designed to tug at your heartstrings, but it does so in a way that is not cloying but, instead, is reminiscent of films of eras past. The battle scenes, particularly the sequence at the Somme and the cavalry charge closer to the beginning, are amongst the best scenes Spielberg has ever filmed, on par with the D-Day landing sequence from Saving Private Ryan. It isn't a perfect film, but it is so gloriously and unapologetically cinematic that I just couldn't resist it.

#7: Jane Eyre

How do you adapt one of the best known English language novels ever written, which has already been adapted numerous times in film, television, radio and for the stage (not to mention the various literary retellings), and make it seem in any way fresh? If you're director Cary Fukunaga you find the perfect middle ground between radical reinvention and period stiffness and cast two dynamic performers as the protagonist and her beloved. Visually striking, wonderfully acted, gracefully directed, and boasting a screenplay that captures the strengths of the themes and characterizations that made the source so well-known to begin with, this version of Jane Eyre is everything that a literary adaptation ought to be and more.

#6: Cave of Forgotten Dreams

An amazing documentary from one of the greatest living directors, Werner Herzog. Taking us inside the Chauvet Cave, located in southern France, Herzog provides us with images that are haunting, beautiful, and positively astonishing. Closed over for thousands of years, the cave contains the earliest known cave paintings, all perfectly preserved, as well as numerous bones (some arranged in such a way as to suggest that they were used in some kind of social or religious ritual) and footprints from both animals and humans. I don't know that any cinematic image from the last year is more awe-inspiring than the image of two handprints side by side, one made 5,000 years after the other. Though Cave of Forgotten Dreams is told in a simple, unobtrusive way, it is the kind of film that will take root deep inside you and continue to stimulate your imagination ever after.

#5: The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick's deeply personal meditation on the meaning of life is a film that requires patience but that is deeply rewarding if you can stick with it. This massively ambitious film is visually stunning and features great performances from Hunter McCracken as an adolescent just starting to come into his own, and Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as the parents who represent the poles of "nature" and "grace" which he must ultimately choose between. The film, which mixes the personal (the family's grief over the death of one of their own) with the universal (the amazing fact of life itself), is one of wonder and deep feeling, spiritual without being preachy. It's a beautiful film from a masterful filmmaker.

#4: Drive

The title of Nicholas Wending Refn's destined to be cult classic refers to the occupation of its cold as ice protagonist, but it also refers to his unspoken preoccupation. Ryan Gosling's character is driven by dark desires, namely an instinct towards violence that adopts the guise of chivalry. In his own mind, this is a fairytale and he is the white knight out to rescue the damsel in distress. In reality, he is merely someone who has finally found an outlet for the violence that resides at his core - and it must reside there because it comes so readily to him. Propelled forward by the performances of Gosling and Albert Brooks, not to mention the stylish direction of Refn, Drive is a film not to be missed.

#3: The Artist

Innovation is a good thing, but there's value in old school methods as well, as Michel Hazanvicius' loving homage to silent cinema proves. Not only is the film silent, but Hazanvicius also shot it in 1.33:1 ratio to help further the look and feel of silent cinema. One of the film's most visually striking scenes involves a conversation between its two leads on a staircase which, viewed in long shot, not only shows them in relation to each other, but also shows the people moving along the landings above and below them. It may sound odd to single this out but if you see the film, you'll see what I mean: the way the scene is framed feels vaguely familiar but it's definitely not something you see very often in contemporary films. The Artist has a lot of little touches like this, all of which help add up to a pretty great (and terrifically entertaining) film.

#2: Certified Copy

Certified Copy has its roots in a gimmick but with masterful storytelling and two great leading performances, it quickly transcends this device to become something meaningful and intriguing. The premise offers few frills: two people spend the day together exploring the Tuscan countryside. At first they appear to be strangers but later it appears that they are a married couple. Were they married all along, and merely pretending to be strangers? Are they strangers who are using each other to work out the issues in their actual relationships? In putting it to us to question which relationship is real and which is fraud, writer/director Abbas Kiarostami explores the very nature of art itself.

#1: Melancholia

From its operatic beginning straight through to its exhilarating end, Lars von Trier's Melancholia is absolutely entrancing. The story of two sisters and their very different reactions to the fact that the world is on the verge of ending, the film is darkly funny, deeply moving, and, for a story about the destruction of the planet, surprisingly uplifting. Justine and Claire, the sisters played so wonderfully by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourgh, are opposites who gradually shift places in their dynamic as the fate of the world becomes inescapably clear. As the film opens, Claire is the grounded one who has control over herself while Justine succumbs to what seems like a fit of madness. As the film enters its second stage, however, it's Justine who is the grounded force who sees things for how they are and tries to bring Claire back down to Earth to face it. Plenty of films are "of the moment," but I think that Melancholia touches such deep and resonant chords that it will prove to be timeless.

Top 10 Week... Performances By Women in 2011

2012-01-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

#10: Berenice Bejo, The Artist

The term "It Girl" was created for silent star Clara Bow but had The Artist been released in 1927, rather than simply being set in that year, the term could have just as easily been created for Berenice Bejo. As rising starlet Peppy Miller, she lights up the screen, showing an aptitude for physical comedy but also for quiet (no pun intended) drama. The scene in which playacts using George Valentin's jacket is one of the film's most charming moments and her chemistry with the equally fantastic Jean Dujardin is off the charts.

#9: Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene

In her breakthrough performance as the survivor of a cult, Elizabeth Olsen pretty much ensures that she can never be thought of as "the other" Olsen sister. Her absolutely captivating performance never takes the easy way out, allowing Martha to be a victim but also allowing her to be kind of nasty on occasion, testing your patience with her. The performance is nuanced, making Martha a character who at once knows how destructive her experience in the cult was while also continuing to hold on to some of the values she adopted there. It's marvellous work from an actress I suspect will give many great performances in the future.

#8: Mia Wasikowska, Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is one of those ubiquitous characters who pops up every few years because the source material has no copywrite and, therefore, anyone can make a film version of it. This should of course lessen the impact of the story and the character - I mean, how much is really left to be said about either? - and yet Mia Wasikowska manages to find new dimensions to explore. She captures Jane's passion and fierce independence while also allowing her to be vulnerable and her scenes with co-star Michael Fassbender are electrifying.

#7: Charlize Theron, Young Adult

Charlize Theron's Oscar winning performance in Monster was often referred to as "brave" for the physical transformation she underwent. To my mind, however, her performance in Young Adult is much braver because it gives her nothing to hide behind. Her character, YA author Mavis Gary, is pure acid, a magnificently unlikeable woman perhaps best described as mentally unstable, but Theron's performance never goes over the top. As a matter of fact, I think hers is one of the best portrayals of addiction ever played out on screen precisely because she allows it to underline many scenes rather than making it the point of every scene. As far as I'm concerned, this is her best work to date.

#6: Octavia Spencer, The Help

Minny Jackson is a character who might easily be reduced to the comic relief sidekick. The script provides all the elements for her to be that kind of character, but instead Octavia Spencer creates an actual human being out of her. She gets some of the film's best lines, and enjoys some of the film's greatest moments of triumph, but her struggles remain very real, particularly the conflict within herself between saying what's on her mind and the knowledge that to make ends meet, she may need to bite her tongue. The character is sometimes her own worst enemy, but the performance is pitch perfect.

#5: Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Could there be a more daunting task than playing Marilyn Monroe? Whatever that indescribable "it" is that the greatest movie stars possess, she had more of it than just about anyone before or since. Michelle Williams doesn't opt for doing a mere imitation of Marilyn; she gets the mannerisms down, but she also digs deeper, bringing the icon down to earth just enough to make her compelling as a person. Does she have that certain magic that Marilyn possessed? Not entirely, but then again, who does? The performance is great nevertheless.

#4: Kirsten Dunst & Charlotte Gainsbourgh, Melancholia

Okay, maybe this is cheating, but when it comes to the two lead performances of Melancholia, it's nearly impossible to think of one without the other. The story is structured so that its two parts - one named for (and defined by) Dunst's character, the other for Gainsbourgh's - are symmetrical and as a result, the performances themselves feel symmetrical as well. The two actresses build off of each other, slowing switching places in the dynamic that exists between their characters. None of this is to say that either performance couldn't stand alone - both women are fantastic in this movie - I just can't pick one over the other.

#3: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

You expect nothing less than greatness from Meryl Streep and you get nothing less in The Iron Lady (despite the fact that the film tends to careen across the screen - review pending). It's difficult to make a figure as controversial as Margaret Thatcher seem even remotely sympathetic, but Streep does it and she does it without sacrificing some of Thatcher's harder edges. It's a performance that is sometimes terrifying, sometimes funny, and sometimes moving, and certainly well worth seeing.

#2: Viola Davis, The Help

Let's lay aside the unfortunate fact that the best role in 2011 for an actress of color was playing a maid. When an actor brings as much dignity and power to a role as Viola Davis brings to playing Aibileen Clark, it's slightly easier to overlook that rather troubling issue. In her performance, Davis never allows Aibileen to become a disenfranchised victim, instead making her the most extraordinary kind of hero: the one whose greatest weapons are their own integrity and strength of character.

#1: Juliet Binoche, Certified Copy

Binoche. Binoche. Has she ever been less than great in anything? Here she plays a woman unfulfilled and taken for granted by the man in her life and, in a twist that makes it more intriguing than your typical domestic drama, Certified Copy leaves it open to interpretation whether the man that she spends the film with is the same man with whom she's in a relationship. Binoche must turn on a dime, selling us on the idea that they're strangers for the first part of the film and then making it believable that they've long been married by the end. But it's not just her ability to shift so suddenly that makes the performance great; it's her ability to make you invest so thoroughly in a character who, by the very nature of the story, you can't ever truly know.

Top 10 Week... Performances By Men in 2011

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

#10: John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene

In Martha Marcy May Marlene John Hawkes delivers a performance that shifts back and forth between darkly charismatic and downright scary. He's effective in both modes, making the character someone you can believe others would follow and someone you know they need to get away from. It's a performance of tightly coiled intensity unleashed at exactly the right moments.

#9: Giovanni Ribisi, The Rum Diary

There are plenty of characters in The Rum Diary who could properly be described as "a character" and Giovanni Ribisi's drunken, Nazi memorabilia collecting reporter Moberg is the most colorful. This is a character so deeply in decay that you can practically smell him through the screen. Ribisi's performance is one of those full body performances where the body language ends up being just as important as the dialogue and he totally knocks it out of the park.

#8: Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar

J. Edgar sort of came and sank as a film, but that's certainly not because it's lacking in fine performances. DiCaprio is tasked with playing two versions of J. Edgar Hoover - the ambitious young man and the old man battling to assure and preserve his legacy - and he does a marvellous job at both. Hoover can't exactly be said to be a likeable character, but DiCaprio brings enough shading and complexity to him that he becomes more than the sum of the controversies that define his popular image.

#7: Ryan Gosling, Drive

Don't let his laconic demeanor fool you, the Driver contains a hidden wellspring of violence. Although we never delve particularly deeply into the Driver's inner life, Ryan Gosling is able to suggest his motivations and the skewed way that he views the world - such as seeing himself as the white knight rescuing the damsel in distress, even when that means kicking a guy to death right in front of her - and delivers a performance that is as fascinating as it is cool.

#6: George Clooney, The Descendants

Playing a role that is about as unlike his public persona as it gets, George Clooney shines in The Descendants. In his role as a soon-to-be-widower and single father he has to balance grief and anger throughout, balancing the betrayal he feels having learned of his wife's infidelity with a genuine sorrow for himself and his daughters. Clooney is the steady centre of the film, delivering a performance that is restrained and nuanced.

#5: Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life

Brad Pitt delivered a great performance in Moneyball but to my mind, his performance in The Tree of Life was his best of the year - perhaps even of his career. As the dominating but emotionally remote father, whose desire to prepare his sons for the harsh reality of the world creates problems in his relationships with them, he reaches depths that he's never before displayed as an actor. He is a man of ambition who suffers the disappointment of not living up to his expectations of himself and despite how hard he is on those around him, Pitt makes it impossible not to feel for him, at least to some degree.

#4: Jean Dujarin, The Artist

Perhaps the year's most effortlessly charming performance, Jean Dujardin's portrayal of a silent era movie star brilliantly evokes Hollywood's former King, Douglas Fairbanks. Dujardin takes his character from epic heights to incredible lows, and does it without saying a word for nearly 100 minutes. As a performer, Dujardin can stand alongside the best silent movie actors, as he shows that he can let a single expression say what might take another actor 1,000 words to express.

#3: Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Beginners is a movie in which the characters realize that it's never too late to live an authentic life. Late in life Christopher Plummer's character reveals that he's gay and makes the most of the time that he has left, throwing himself into the gay community, making friends, adopting causes, and finding love. From his joy at discovering things like house music to his obvious sorrow at having had to hide his true self for so long, Plummer's performance is funny, moving, and note-perfect from beginning to end.

#2: Hunter McCracken, The Tree of Life

Hunter McCracken is the unsung hero of The Tree of Life. As the young Jack, he finds himself responsible for much of the film's emotional resonance, guiding his character through a difficult growing period in which he takes the first steps towards defining himself as a young adult. The role requires a delicate mixture of maturity and immaturity and though the character cannot always articulate the anger and confusion he experiences as he deals with the complex feelings his family inspires in him, the feelings always come through in the performance. Making his film debut here, McCracken more than holds his own with his more seasoned co-stars.

#1: Albert Brooks, Drive

Bernie Rose, the mobster played by Albert Brooks in Drive, is one of the most terrifying characters to hit the big screen in a long time. It's because Brooks makes him such a calm, steady force - even when he's stabbing the hell out of someone - that he becomes so frightening. He's a character who literally seems capable of anything, and who proves himself to be time and time again. It's a performance that is marvellously against type and once seen it makes a major impact.

Top 10 Week... Scenes of 2011

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

#10: Hotel Room Ambush, Drive

The hotel room scene represents a turning point in the film, sending it into a violent hyper drive. But even laying the sudden shift in intensity aside, the scene is a marvel of beautifully choreographed action. Brutal (but not quite as brutal as a few other scenes in the film) and breathtaking, it's the best scene is a film that certainly has no shortage of fantastic scenes.

#9: The Grand Finale, The Artist

The Artist is full of delightful scenes but perhaps none is more delightful than the dance number with which the film ends. In keeping with the old school style, the dance number is filmed in one long shot - a refreshing change from most modern movies, which tend to show dance numbers as a series of quick cuts where you never seen the dancer in full, but rather as a series of disembodied parts.

#8: The Morning After, Young Adult

Young Adult builds towards a moment of revelation, the moment when its alcholic, misanthropic protagonist is forced to take an honest look at the person that she is and admit how unhappy and unfilfilled she is. The morning after, however, she sits at a kitchen table with someone who has idolized her since high school and tells her everything she been longing to hear, effectively undoing all the progress she made the previous night. It is a scene beautifully played by Charlize Theron, who is able to subtly show how the conversation has allowed the character to rebuild her idealized image of herself.

#7: Marcy May's Song, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a film full of darkness and ambiguity. In order for it to be even marginally effective as a story, it has to be able to convey how its protagonist, who has the presence of mind to escape a cult, got entangled in it in the first place. In this scene the cult's leader seduces Martha, who had previously been on the fence about whether or not to join, into the life with a song and his very direct and intense attention. It's a key scene in the film and wonderfully executed by everyone involved.

#6: Showdown at Grimm's House, Hanna

Hanna was one of the most surprisingly awesome movies of 2011 and the climactic showdown between Hanna and her "creator" Marissa is the highlight. This scene is perfectly executed on every level, from the way that it brings the story back full circle, to the absolutely captivating art direction. If I was going to pick my favourite sets from 2011, the Brothers Grimm amusement park would definitely come in at #1.

#5: Prologue, The Help

The Help begins in medias res with Skeeter interviewing Aibileen. It's a simple, short scene, but it says so much and gets straight to the heart of the matter. Aibileen is a maid. She grew up knowing that she would become one. She is of the second generation removed from slavery. She dreamed (and perhaps still dreams) of being something else. Although the film sometimes plays out as a story of "white people learning things," this scene establishes Aibileen as the story's hero and foregrounds the issues that ultimately drive the narrative.

#4: Final Scene, The Ides of March

A good ending is a beautiful thing and The Ides of March had one of the best endings of 2011. The film, which is the story of idealism forever shattered, ends with a long, unsettling close-up on its protagonist. As the screen fades to black, we're left to wonder whether he'll remain silent about what he's learned and continue to consolidate his role as the power behind the power, or whether within his new, Machiavellian persona he still harbours pure intentions and beliefs and will expose the secrets he's learned. The film's title certainly hints at what he'll do, but the expression on Ryan Gosling's face leaves it open to interpretation.

#3: "The Earth is Evil," Melancholia

Melancholia is full of great scenes, some darkly funny, some thought provoking, some brutal. This scene, in which sisters Claire and Justine discuss the inevitable end of the world, is pitch perfect. For Claire, the world is nothing to be mourned and she has come to accept the end. For Justine, however, acceptance is much harder and she fights the end tooth and nail. In what is perhaps the film's best line reading she asks, heartbroken, "But where will Leo grow up?" The interplay between the two characters, and the scene itself, could not possibly be any better.

#2: The Creation of the Universe, The Tree of Life

Hands down, the most breathtakingly beautiful cinematic sequence of 2011. Though it may prove to be a dealbreaker for some viewers seeing as it brings the narrative to a halt, it's arguably the most important part of the film. The Tree of Life is largely a meditation on loss and this operatic sequence reaches all the way back to the very origin of the universe to show that no matter how defining a personal loss may be, it is dwarfed by everything that came before and everything that will come after. Death is sad, but life itself is an utter miracle.

#1: Cafe Scene, Certified Copy

Up until this scene Abbas Kiarostami's film is a relatively straight-forward story about two strangers. In this scene, however, everything gets turned on its head and the nature of the relationship between the two characters becomes increasingly ambiguous, shifting back and forth between possibilities. The sudden turnaround might be jarring were it not for how masterfully and gracefully Kiarostami guides the transition.

Top 10 Week... Posters of 2011

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

#10: The Artist

Classic, classy, and simple. A beautiful poster for a beautiful film.

#9: The Skin I Live In

The version of the poster featuring Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya seems to have been preferred by theatres (at least around here), but I much prefer this one, which sort of looks like a drawing from an old school medical text.

#8: Melancholia

Beautiful but also a little bit creepy and unsettling, just like the film's operatic prologue (which also includes this image of Kirsten Dundst).

#7: We Need To Talk About Kevin

There's something incredibly sinister about this poster, which manages to suggest both the violent act at the centre of the story as well as the distant nature of the relationship between the protagonist mother and her teenage son.

#6: Drive

The film itself is dark, serious and fairly macho, but the font is all camp and fairly girly, evocative of an '80s teen movie. It's an odd, but also oddly compelling combination.

#5: Young Adult

This poster is just about perfect, highlighting as it does the way that the protagonist is stuck in a teenage mindset (through the imitation teen book series cover) despite her increasingly adult problems (the whole being passed out drunk thing). Plus, that dog is adorable.

#4: Bridesmaids

The undertone of aggression in this poster is all the more meaningful after the film came to be one of the most celebrated and financially successful comedies of the year. Awesome, pure and simple.

#3: Meek's Cutoff

The film is an extremely low key, homespun western so the very stripped down aesthetic of this poster is perfect.

#2: The Ides of March

A great poster all on its own, but one that takes on even greater depths once you've seen the film. It's fantastic both in concept and in execution.

#1: Midnight in Paris

Beautiful, dreamy, and completely in keeping with the style and tone of the film. It's everything a great poster should be.

Friday's Top 5... Tilda Swinton Performances

2012-01-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

#5: Young Adam

David Mackenzie's crime drama Young Adam is primarily Ewan McGregor's show, but Swinton is great as his lover (well, one of his lovers), who doesn't quite suspect his darker impulses.

#4: Orlando

If ever an actor seemed tailor made for a part, it's Swinton and Orlando, the gender-bending protagonist of this adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel of the same name. Swinton is exquisite as both the male-born Orlando, and the female transformed Lady Orlando.

#3: The Deep End

In The Deep End Swinton is an ordinary wife and mother until she finds herself covering up for a crime she believes her son committed and subsequently blackmailed for doing so. Swinton is fantastic as a woman pushed almost to the edge, who finds herself capable of more than she ever would have thought.

#2: I Am Love

I've written before about my love for Swinton's performance in I Am Love, but I'll happily reiterate it: she is amazing in this movie. Seriously, just go watch it.

#1: Julia

Julia, the violent, alcoholic protagonist of Julia, is easily one of the most unlikeable characters ever to grace the screen, but Swinton's performance is absolutely stunning, bringing shading and complexity to a character who is unquestionably a monster. Once again, I urge you, just go watch it.

Canadian Film Review: The Bay Boy (1984)

2012-01-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * 1/2
Director: Daniel Petrie
Starring: Keifer Sutherland, Liv Ullmann

An unremarkable film save for the fact that it won the Genie for Best Picture in 1984 and features a young Kiefer Sutherland in his first big screen role, The Bay Boy is the sort of gentle coming-of-age period drama that seems to be a feature of just about every era of filmmaking. There's nothing truly bad about it but, at the same time, there's nothing all that compelling about either, at least not so far removed from the cultural context of its release. It's a decent enough picture, it just hasn't aged as well as it might have.

Set during the Depression in the mining town of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Daniel Petrie's semi-autobiographical The Bay Boy is a film with a lot on its mind. It's a coming of age story and a low-key family saga, a small town drama, and, briefly, it flirts with being a thriller. It centres on Donald Campbell (Kiefer Sutherland), a teenage boy struggling to balance his growing interest in the opposite sex - which includes Dianna and Saxon (Jane McKinnon and Leah Pinsent), the sisters who live across the road, and Mary McNeil (Isabelle Mejias), who is in near constant pursuit of him - with both his mother's expectation that he will become a priest and the fact of his family's money troubles. The Coca-Cola factory which once employed his father (Peter Donat) has shut down and his father has resorted to digging a bootleg pit in the basement; his mother (Liv Ullmann) runs herself ragged trying to care for the boarders they've had to take in to make ends meet; and Donald is often left to care for his sickly brother, Joe.

The story ultimately splits into several different threads. One concerns Donald's budding romantic life, including the fact that while he has a crush on Saxon, it's Dianna who has a crush on him, not to mention Mary's existence on the periphery of his social life. Another concerns Joe, who requires so much care that Mr. and Mrs. Campbell consider sending him away and whose illness reminds them of the child they've already lost. Yet another plot involves the arrival of a new priest, Father Chaisson (Mathieu Carriere), whose attempt to molest Donald leads to Donald losing faith in the church and deciding not to become a priest. Finally, there is also a murder plot, in which Donald witnesses the killing of an elderly Jewish couple and then finds himself terrorized by the perpetrator, who attempts to intimidate him into keeping his mouth shut.

The various threads of the plot don't come together so much as they all sort of fade out at more or less the same time. Donald decides that he no longer wants to be a priest and though his mother has been pushing it for years, she accepts his decision easily and without asking for an explanation. The family suffers a tragedy mid-way through the film but it hardly causes a ripple through the rest of the story. The murder subplot has promise as something that might give shape to the narrative but that, too, gets resolved rather easily. As a result, The Bay Boy feels just a little too loose to really have much of a lasting impact.

That being said, while the film is somewhat lacking in cohesion, it isn't without its strengths, primarily with respect to the performances. Sutherland, making his film debut, is already an assured presence on screen, shifting Donald easily through a host of emotions and conflicts, and making the struggle of his often competing desires feel very real. As his mother, Ullmann also turns in a stellar performance, bringing more complexity and shading to the character than might seem immediately apparent. The performances and the way that Petrie captures and explores the small town make the film worth a look, but aren't quite enough to disguise the story's weaknesses.

Awards Roundup

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

* Golden Globe nomination
+ Guild nomination
* Critics Choice nomination

The winners so far:

Best Picture

(11) The Artist**+:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle
Washington D.C. Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Boston Film Critics

(5) The Descendants**+:
Southeastern Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics

(5) The Tree of Life*:
Online Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
African-American Film Critics Association
San Fransisco Film Critics

(2) Drive:
Central Ohio Film Critics
Utah Film Critics

(2) Hugo**+:
Austin Film Critics
National Board of Review

(1) The Help+:
Black Film Critics Circle

(1) Melancholia:
National Society of Film Critics

Best Director

(8) Michael Hazanavicis, The Artist**+:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics
Utah Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle

(6) Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life:
National Society of Film Critics
Online Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics

(5) Martin Scorsese, Hugo**+:
Southeastern Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(5) Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive*:
Central Ohio Film Critics
Austin Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics

(1) Steve McQueen, Shame:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Alexander Payne, The Descendants**+:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics

(1) Dee Rees, Pariah:
Black Film Critics Circle

Best Actor

(6) George Clooney, The Descendants*+*:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Southeastern Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(6) Michael Shannon, Take Shelter:
Central Ohio Film Critics
Austin Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online

(5) Michael Fassbender, Shame**:
Online Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics (also for A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class)
Houston Film Critics

(3) Brad Pitt, Moneyball*+*:
National Society of Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle (also for The Tree of Life)

(2) Jean Dujardin, The Artist*+*:
Phoenix Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics

(1) Paul Giamati, Win Win:
Indiana Film Critics

(1) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 50/50*:
Utah Film Critics

(1) Woody Harrelson, Rampart:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Olivier Litondo, The First Grader:
Black Film Critics Circle

(1) Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:
San Fransisco Film Critics

Best Actress

(10) Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn*+*:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Utah Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(5) Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin*+*:
Online Film Critics
Austin Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
National Board of Review

(3) Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene*:
Central Ohio Film Critics
Phoenix Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics

(3) Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady*+*:
Southeastern Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle

(2) Viola Davis, The Help*+*:
Black Film Critics Circle
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia:
National Society of Film Critics

(1) Yun Jung-hee, Poetry:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo*
St. Louis Film Critics

(1) Brit Marling, Another Earth:
San Diego Film Critics

Best Supporting Actress

(6) Shailene Woodley, The Descendants**:
Central Ohio Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
National Board of Review

(4) Octavia Spencer, The Help*+*:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Black Film Critics Circle
African-American Film Critics Association
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(3) Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids+*:
Las Vegas Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online

(3) Jessica Chastain, The Help*+*:
National Society of Film Critics (also for Take Shelter and Tree of Life)
Los Angeles Film Critics (also for Corolianus, The Debt, Take Shelter, Texas Killing Fields, The Tree of Life)
New York Film Critics Circle (also for Take Shelter, The Tree of Life)

(2) Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter:
Austin Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics

(2) Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life:
Online Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics

(2) Berenice Bejo, The Artist*+*:
Phoenix Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics

(1) Viola Davis, The Help:
Indiana Film Critics

(1) Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs*+:
Southeastern Film Critics

(1) Carey Mulligan, Shame*:
Detroit Film Critics

(1) Vanessa Redgrave, Corolianus:
San Fransisco Film Critics

(1) Amy Ryan, Win Win:
Utah Film Critics

Best Supporting Actor

(17) Albert Brooks, Drive**:
National Society of Film Critics
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics
Austin Film Critics
Utah Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Black Film Critics Circle
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
African-American Film Critics Association
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle

(9) Christopher Plummer, Beginners*+*:
Central Ohio Film Critics
Online Film Critics
Southeastern Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
National Board of Review

(1) Nick Nolte, Warrior+*:
San Diego Film Critics

Best Screenplay

(10) The Descendants**+:
Utah Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Southeastern Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
St. Louis Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Florida Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
National Board of Review (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(8) Moneyball**+:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Chicago Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Detroit Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics (as Adapted Screenplay)
Toronto Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle

(5) The Artist:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle (for Best Original Screenplay)
Phoenix Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
Chicago Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
St. Louis Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
Florida Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)

(4) Midnight In Paris**+:
Online Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
Austin Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
Southeastern Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
San Diego Film Critics (as Original Screenplay)

(3) 50/50*+:
Utah Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
Washington D.C. Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
National Board of Review (for Best Original Screenplay)

(2) The Help+:
Phoenix Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Black Film Critics Circle (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(2) A Separation:
National Society of Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics

(2) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:
Online Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
San Fransisco Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(1) Drive
Austin Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(1) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo+:
Central Ohio Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(1) I Will Follow:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Margin Call:
San Fransisco Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)

(1) Pariah
Black Film Critics Circle (Best Adapted Screenplay)

(1) Source Code:
Central Ohio Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)

(1) Win Win*+:
Indiana Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)

Best Documentary

(7) Cave of Forgotten Dreams:
National Society of Film Critics
Central Ohio Film Critics
Online Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(7) Project Nim:
Southeastern Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Boston Film Critics

(2) Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey:
St. Louis Film Critics
Black Film Critics Circle

(2) Page One: Inside the New York Times:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics

(2) Senna:
Austin Film Critics
Utah Film Critics

(2) Tabloid:
Detroit Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics

(1) The Black Power Mixtape:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Nostalgia for the Light:
Toronto Film Critics

(1) Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory:
National Board of Review

(1) The Interrupters:
Chicago Film Critics

Best Animated Feature

(15) Rango:
Online Film Critics
Phoenix Film Critics
Utah Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
Southeastern Film Critics
Black Film Critics Circle
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(5) The Adventures of Tintin:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
St. Louis Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Toronto Film Critics

(2) Arthur Christmas:
Central Ohio Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics

Best Foreign Film

(9) A Separation:
National Society of Film Critics
Online Film Critics
Utah Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
Southeastern Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle
National Board of Review

(5) The Skin I Live In:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(2) 13 Assassins:
St. Louis Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics

(2) I saw the Devil:
Austin Film Critics
Houston Film Critics

(1) Certified Copy:
San Fransisco Film Critics

(1) The City of Life and Death:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Incendies:
Boston Film Critics

(1) Kinyarwanda:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Mysteries of Lisbon:
Toronto Film Critics

(1) Of Gods and Men:
Central Ohio Film Critics

(1) Le Quattro Volte:
San Diego Film Critics

Review: Adventureland (2009)

2012-01-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * *
Director: Greg Mottola
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds

Greg Mottola's Adventureland is, in many ways, your typical teen comedy/drama, except that its characters aren't teenagers but are instead in that strange, extended adolescence period of your early 20s where you're technically an adult but you haven't yet become financially independent and your responsibilities are still extremely limited. It isn't necessarily an instant classic of its genre, but I suspect that it's the kind of film you can pick up over and again as the years pass and still enjoy.

Adventureland opens in the summer of 1987, with recent college grad James (Jesse Eisenberg) learning that his planned graduation trip to Europe will have to be cancelled because his parents are no longer in a financial position to pay for it. Now tasked with supporting himself, James begins looking for work but discovers that four years of college have only qualified him to work at the eponymous theme park. The park's managers (Bill Hader and Kristin Wiig) hire him to work in games, though he keeps insisting that he'd rather work in rides, and he quickly establishes friendships with his co-workers, Joel (Martin Starr), Em (Kristin Stewart), and Connell (Ryan Reynolds), a musician who makes ends meet by doing maintenance at the park.

As the summer progresses James' relationship with Em begins to transition from friendship to romance, but there are complications. First, and unbeknownst to James, Em has been having an affair with Connell who, incidentally, has also been acting as a confidante to James. Second, when James gets the chance to go out with Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva), the girl that everyone wants, he takes it and tries to keep it secret from Em. The two clandestine relationships come out eventually, of course, and just in time for the summer to come to a close and for James and Em to go their separate ways - but, then again, perhaps not.

Like Mottola's previous film, Superbad, Adventureland has plot that is superficially very conventional. Like that previous film, however, it takes the bare bones of an archetypal coming of age story and fleshes it out with well-drawn characters whose relationships are developed enough that they feel authentic. Although it is ultimately a bit slight thematically, it's a film populated by characters that are worth spending time with, whose conflicts are rooted in reality and who generally seem like actual "people" - which is not something you can say about every film and certainly not something you can say about many teen oriented films.

Anchoring the piece with his typical understated slow burn style is Eisenberg who, despite his character's tendency towards, well, whining, never becomes unbearably annoying. This is due in equal parts to Eisenberg's skill as an actor (to see him as his "whiny" best, I highly recommend The Squid and the Whale) and to the fact that the film doesn't really indulge the perception that James has of himself at the beginning. What the film knows is that James is a somewhat spoiled kid who needs to encounter an actual problem to push himself into that next phase of adulthood - and it allows James to learn that lesson and grow as a person from it. Adventureland is a film about people who aren't quite grown up, but it offers a mature and often thoughtful look at them and comes packaged in a soundly made and entertaining film.

Review: War Horse (2011)

2012-01-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * * *
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Peter Mullan

Steven Spielberg gets criticized a lot for being overly sentimental, for taking films that are great and then adding that extra brush stroke that makes it one too many, marring what might otherwise be an unqualified masterpiece. Much of the time I agree with that criticism - he has several movies that would be perfect if only he trusted the audience enough and didn't feel the need to so overtly manipulate emotions - however, sentiment, when done properly, does have a place in cinema and War Horse, while not necessarily perfect, stays on the right side of the line between feeling and treacle.

War Horse begins with the birth of Joey, a thoroughbred who is later bought at auction by Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan). Driven to make a point with his landlord (David Thewlis), Ted bids more than he can afford and when he brings Joey home his wife, Rose (Emily Watson), is aghast, not just because he spent so much, but also because what they really need is a plough horse. Rose wants Ted to return Joey, but their son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine) is already attached to him and asks for a chance to try to train Joey to be the horse they need. He succeeds but the triumph is short lived - not long after the field is ploughed and seeds planted, flooding destroys the crop of turnips, and then World War I breaks out and Ted sells Joey to Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston), a cavalry officer.

From here, Joey passes through the hands of several owners and the film becomes more episodic. He spends a brief time on the German side, used to transport wounded soldiers. He enjoys a brief idyll on a French farm, tended to by Emilie (Celine Buckens), a young girl suffering from an unnamed illness, and her grandfather (Niels Arestrup). He returns to the front on the German side, forced to pull heavy artillery, and later ends up trapped in the middle of No Man's Land, entangled in a mess of barbed wire. Albert, meanwhile, has now entered the war and continues to hold out hope that he will one day be reunited with his beloved horse.

War Horse is the kind of story that it would probably be impossible to tell in a completely unsentimental way. I think you would probably have to have a heart of stone to be entirely unmoved by the sight of horses forced into battle and worked until they die of exhaustion (as happens to some of the horses who haul the heavy artillery alongside Joey). The film really can't be said to dig too deep - the message never goes far beyond pointing out that humans start wars, animals get caught in the middle and suffer for it, and that's sad - and it does have to be admitted that Spielberg sometimes lays the sentiment on a little thick in that it goes so far out of its way to make Joey seem like an overly noble and extraordinary animal. However, because the film itself unfolds on such a grand scale, the emotion ultimately doesn't feel outsized and it doesn't become something that detracts from War Horse's many strengths.

"Grand" truly is the only way to describe War Horse, which has echoes of such epics as Gone with the Wind, How Green Was My Valley, Lawrence of Arabia and Paths of Glory. "Restraint" is a highly prized currency in films lately (and that's not a bad thing) and it's kind of refreshing to see a film that is so unabashedly big and nakedly ambitious. Spielberg does big well; he's a director who is very capable to handling sequences that unfold on a huge scale and keeping the wheels from falling off the vehicle in the process. The sequence involving the Second Battle of the Somme, which occurs late in the film, is an intense, visceral and meticulously constructed set-piece that is in every way the equal to the D-Day landing sequence of Saving Private Ryan and should absoltely be seen on the big screen. The sweep and scope of the film is often staggering and, though it sometimes overplays its hand just slightly, it is ultimately a terrific achievement.

Today I Feel Like This...

2012-01-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

Looking Back at 2011

2011-12-31T14:00:00.000-08:00

Well, there it is, another movie year over and done with. Looking back on the 2011 movie year, my feelings are somewhat mixed. On the one hand, there weren’t many movies that I felt were truly “great,” that really inspired passion in me. On the other hand, there were fewer movies that I flat out didn’t like – even the film that I would call the “worst” that I saw all year was one that I actually enjoyed quite a bit because it was so terrible that it was fun to watch. Essentially, it feels like it was kind of a middle of the road year – not great, but far from bad.

My movie going year started as it usually does – catching up on films from the previous year that didn’t go into wide release until January. This year those films were The King’s Speech, True Grit, Incendies and Blue Valentine. The former two I was able to see in time to include in my 2010 Top 10, the latter two would definitely have made the top 10 if I’d seen them in time. Incendies is yet another great film from Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, whose previous films Maelstrom and Polytechnique I also admire a great deal. Blue Valentine is a marital drama starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, both of whom had a really great year in 2011 even if you don’t count Blue Valentine.

The first proper 2011 movie I saw this year was The Roommate, a film that is at once terrible and awesome. Yes, it is a cheap, teen version of Single White Female and has plot holes you could fly a plane through, but it’s a fun movie to watch with the right attitude and in the right company. I enjoyed watching it, but it is unquestionably a bad film. The last film that I saw this year is a great film that I enjoyed watching, Michael Hazanavicius’ silent beauty The Artist. In between those two films, I saw a handful of great movies, from Cary Fukunaga’s beautiful adaptation of Jane Eyre, Abbass Kiarostami’s intriguing Certified Copy, Terrence Malick’s long delayed (and worth the wait) Tree of Life, Werner Herzog’s outstanding documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Nicholas Wending Refn’s cold as ice thriller Drive, and Lars von Trier’s end-of-the-world tale Melancholia.

I saw a decent number of films that I would characterize as just a touch short of greatness, including the moving father-son drama Beginners, the stripped down western Meek’s Cutoff and the more bombastic and referential western Rango, the delightful Midnight in Paris, the classic Spielberg throwback Super 8, the surprisingly strong sports drama Moneyball, the unsettling dark comedy Young Adult, and George Clooney’s one-two punch, political thriller The Ides of March, and the family saga The Descendants.

A lot of films landed solidly in the middle of the spectrum for me, movies that I enjoyed a lot and that I think are “good” but not more than that – films like Bridesmaids, Hanna, Paul, The Debt, The Help, My Week with Marilyn and Crazy, Stupid, Love - and movies that I think are well-made, decent films but that I ultimately felt a little lukewarm about - The Adjustment Bureau, The Bang Bang Club, The Skin I Live In, The Conspirator, Source Code and Martha Marcy May Marlene. I liked Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, though I know that that puts me in the minority, and Bad Teacher, though I thought it was a bit too uneven. The only films that I found truly disappointing were Our Idiot Brother, The Rum Diary, Horrible Bosses and J. Edgar, and all things considered, that’s a pretty good track record for a year of movie viewing. There are still a couple of 2011 movies I want to see – War Horse, The Iron Lady, A Separation, Shame, and We Need to Talk About Kevin (the latter three I expect I probably won’t get to see until they’re on DVD) – but at this point I’m pretty satisfied with the 2011 movie viewing experience.

Looking ahead to the 2012 slate, there really isn’t anything I’m looking forward to seeing until the end of March when The Hunger Games comes out. Beyond that I'm planning to see The Five-Year Engagement, Dark Shadows, Prometheus, Snow White & the Huntsman, Brave, The Dark Knight Rises, Dog Fight, Argo, Les Miserables, Django Unchained, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Life of Pi, World War Z and, though I may deny it later, Rock of Ages. I'm also equally anticipating The Great Gatsby, because that's my favourite book, and dredding it because it's going to be 3D. Bring it on 2012!

Review: The Artist (2011)

2011-12-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * * *
Director: Michael Hazanavicius
Starring: Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo

In Preston Sturges' great Sullivan's Travels, the conclusion that the protagonist comes to is that "there's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan." Comedy very rarely gets the same level of respect as drama, perhaps because happiness seems somehow like a less profound emotion than sadness, but it takes just as much skill, if not more, to make someone laugh as it does to make them cry. To make a successful comedy requires talent; to make one that feels effortless is nothing short of a miracle. Michael Hazanavicius' The Artist is such a film, and it pulls it off (almost) without saying a word.

Set in Hollywood during the heyday of the silent film era, The Artist is a film that is textually about the movie industry and which is stylistically influenced by silent and classic cinema and by the behind the scenes lore of Golden Age Hollywood. Its protagonist, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a Douglas Fairbanks-esque screen idol whose career is at its height just as sound film becomes ascendant. As the story opens, Valentin's latest film of foreign intrigue has its premiere and he meets Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), a fan and aspiring actress who accidentally stumbles into his photo op. Shortly thereafter she manages to get a small role in Valentin's next film, where the attraction between them becomes apparent, and during which time Valentin gives her the idea of penciling a beauty mark on her cheek to give her something to set herself apart from the sea of aspiring actresses around her.

As Peppy works her way through the ranks, building her career and becoming poised for stardom just as sound film is about to change everything, Valentin's life and career begin to fall apart. Believing sound to be a fad that will quickly fade away, Valentin self-finances his next silent film, confident that the audience will stick with him. When the film bombs and the stock market crashes, Valentin loses everything in short order: his wife (Penelope Ann Miller) leaves him, he's forced to auction off his possessions, and he has to let his loyal chauffer (James Cromwell) go. Except for Peppy and his scene stealing dog, he seems to have been forgotten by everyone. Luckily Peppy is now a huge star and is able to strongarm the studio boss (John Goodman) into agreeing to give Valentin a co-starring role in her next film, offering him a chance to make a comeback in a big, splashy musical.

The basic plot of The Artist isn't particularly new - it wasn't even new in 1952 when Singin' In The Rain did it to perfection. What The Artist does is take this well-worn plot and make it seem fresh and even exciting. Although the film could easily have added up to little more than the novelty of its form, writer/director Michael Hazanavicius' complete investment in it elevates it to a level above mere experiment. His direction is so assured and expert that it never feels like an imitation of an old form, but rather like an authentic example of old form filmmaking. The Artist is a film with wonderfully constructed shots, big, busy sets, and dance sequences which occur in unblinking long shots rather than as a mess of quick cuts that chop up the dancer into a series of disembodied parts. Thematically The Artist doesn't run too deep, but it's a work of technical excellence and an absolute joy to watch, particularly in its final scenes. It's been written off by some critics as "fluff," but I wouldn't dismiss it so easily. It's light, but that doesn't mean that it's devoid of meaning or that it's incapable of moving you. It's perhaps not as ambitious as some of the other Best Picture hopefuls of the year, but it's pitch perfect for what it is.

Much of the credit for The Artist's success goes to Hazanavicius as its architect, but credit must also go to its two stars, Dujardin and Bejo. Both actors perfectly fall into the silent acting style, delivering performances so charming and effective that the inherent artificiality of the exaggerated and overly expressive performances demanded by the silent film format never feels distracting. The characters are archetypes, but both Dujardin and Bejo are able to bring strong senses of individuality to Valentin and Peppy, respectively, creating distinct characters rather than allowing them to remain simply "types." The performances exist in harmony with each other and with the world that Hazanavicius has constructed around them, and help make The Artist a great cinematic note on which to end 2011.

Friday's Top 5... My Most Anticipated Films of 2012

2011-12-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

#5: Prometheus

There's been a bit of back and forth about whether or not Prometheus is part of the Alien franchise (official word is no, however the new film's tagline is "In space something can hear you scream," which, you know, if awfully reminiscent of Alien's tagline), but regardless of its cinematic affiliation, the trailer makes it look pretty awesome.

#4: Les Miserables

Les Mis is a huge, sprawling story so my curiosity about this one mostly has to do with seeing how it gets scaled down for a film version and whether it can do so without losing its essence. A cast that includes Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway just makes it all the more intriguing.

#3: Django Unchained

I have yet to see a Tarantino film that I haven't liked, so obviously his next film is something I'm greatly looking forward to. After the awesomeness of Inglorious Basterds, which itself begins with an homage to classic westerns, I can't wait to see this Tarantino take on the spaghetti western starring Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz.

#2: Brave

Pixar's first (!) adventure with a female protagonist looks terrific. I'm not generally one for animated films, but I can't wait to see this one.

#1: The Dark Knight Rises

Could there be any other? No, there could not. Don't let me down, Christopher Nolan!

Awards Roundup

2011-12-28T18:00:00.000-08:00

* Golden Globe nomination
+ Guild nomination
* Critics Choice nomination

The winners so far:

Best Picture

(11) The Artist**:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle
Washington D.C. Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Boston Film Critics

(5) The Descendants**:
Southeastern Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics

(4) The Tree of Life*:
Chicago Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
African-American Film Critics Association
San Fransisco Film Critics

(2) Hugo**:
Austin Film Critics
National Board of Review

(1) Drive:
Utah Film Critics

(1) The Help:
Black Film Critics Circle

Best Director

(8) Michael Hazanavicis, The Artist**:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics
Utah Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle

(5) Martin Scorsese, Hugo**:
Southeastern Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(4) Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life:
Chicago Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics

(4) Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive*:
Austin Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics

(1) Steve McQueen, Shame:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Alexander Payne, The Descendants**:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics

(1) Dee Rees, Pariah:
Black Film Critics Circle

Best Actor

(6) George Clooney, The Descendants*+*:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Southeastern Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(5) Michael Shannon, Take Shelter:
Austin Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online

(4) Michael Fassbender, Shame**:
Florida Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics (also for A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class)
Houston Film Critics

(2) Brad Pitt, Moneyball*+*:
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle (also for The Tree of Life)

(2) Jean Dujardin, The Artist*+*:
Phoenix Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics

(1) Paul Giamati, Win Win:
Indiana Film Critics

(1) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 50/50*:
Utah Film Critics

(1) Woody Harrelson, Rampart:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Olivier Litondo, The First Grader:
Black Film Critics Circle

(1) Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:
San Fransisco Film Critics

Best Actress

(10) Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn*+*:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Utah Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(4) Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin*+*:
Austin Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
National Board of Review

(3) Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady*+*:
Southeastern Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle

(2) Viola Davis, The Help*+*:
Black Film Critics Circle
African-American Film Critics Association

(2) Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene*:
Phoenix Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics

(1) Yun Jung-hee, Poetry:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo*
St. Louis Film Critics

(1) Brit Marling, Another Earth:
San Diego Film Critics

Best Supporting Actress

(5) Shailene Woodley, The Descendants**:
Florida Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
National Board of Review

(4) Octavia Spencer, The Help*+*:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Black Film Critics Circle
African-American Film Critics Association
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(3) Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids+*:
Las Vegas Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online

(2) Jessica Chastain, The Help*+*:
Los Angeles Film Critics (also for Corolianus, The Debt, Take Shelter, Texas Killing Fields, The Tree of Life)
New York Film Critics Circle (also for Take Shelter, The Tree of Life)

(2) Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter:
Austin Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics

(1) Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life:
Chicago Film Critics

(2) Berenice Bejo, The Artist*+*:
Phoenix Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics

(1) Viola Davis, The Help:
Indiana Film Critics

(1) Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs*+:
Southeastern Film Critics

(1) Carey Mulligan, Shame*:
Detroit Film Critics

(1) Vanessa Redgrave, Corolianus:
San Fransisco Film Critics

(1) Amy Ryan, Win Win:
Utah Film Critics

Best Supporting Actor

(16) Albert Brooks, Drive**:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics
Austin Film Critics
Utah Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
St. Louis Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Black Film Critics Circle
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
African-American Film Critics Association
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle

(7) Christopher Plummer, Beginners*+*:
Southeastern Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
National Board of Review

(1) Nick Nolte, Warrior+*:
San Diego Film Critics

Best Screenplay

(10) The Descendants**:
Utah Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Southeastern Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
St. Louis Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Florida Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
National Board of Review (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(8) Moneyball**:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Chicago Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Detroit Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics (as Adapted Screenplay)
Toronto Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle

(5) The Artist:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle (for Best Original Screenplay)
Phoenix Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
Chicago Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
St. Louis Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
Florida Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)

(3) 50/50*:
Utah Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
Washington D.C. Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
National Board of Review (for Best Original Screenplay)

(3) Midnight In Paris**:
Austin Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
Southeastern Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
San Diego Film Critics (as Original Screenplay)

(2) The Help:
Phoenix Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
Black Film Critics Circle (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(1) Drive
Austin Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(1) I Will Follow:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Margin Call:
San Fransisco Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)

(1) Pariah
Black Film Critics Circle (Best Adapted Screenplay)

(1) A Separation:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:
San Fransisco Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(1) Win Win*:
Indiana Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)

Best Documentary

(7) Project Nim:
Southeastern Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Boston Film Critics

(4) Cave of Forgotten Dreams:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(2) Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey:
St. Louis Film Critics
Black Film Critics Circle

(2) Page One: Inside the New York Times:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics

(2) Senna:
Austin Film Critics
Utah Film Critics

(2) Tabloid:
Detroit Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics

(1) The Black Power Mixtape:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Nostalgia for the Light:
Toronto Film Critics

(1) Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory:
National Board of Review

(1) The Interrupters:
Chicago Film Critics

Best Animated Feature

(14) Rango:
Phoenix Film Critics
Utah Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
Southeastern Film Critics
Black Film Critics Circle
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(5) The Adventures of Tintin:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
St. Louis Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Toronto Film Critics

(1) Arthur Christmas:
San Diego Film Critics

Best Foreign Film

(7) A Separation:
Utah Film Critics
Chicago Film Critics
Southeastern Film Critics
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle
National Board of Review

(5) The Skin I Live In:
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
Phoenix Film Critics
Florida Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(2) 13 Assassins:
St. Louis Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics

(2) I saw the Devil:
Austin Film Critics
Houston Film Critics

(1) Certified Copy:
San Fransisco Film Critics

(1) The City of Life and Death:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Incendies:
Boston Film Critics

(1) Kinyarwanda:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Mysteries of Lisbon:
Toronto Film Critics

(1) Le Quattro Volte:
San Diego Film Critics

Review: Young Adult (2011)

2011-12-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * * 1/2
Director: Jason Reitman
Starring: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) longs to return to her high school days because she believes that that was when she was at her best. What she fails to realize is that it wasn't so much that she was at her best in high school as that she still had people around to validate her awfulness. Reuniting writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, Young Adult is a film as acid as Juno was sweet, replacing a naive but likeable protagonist with one almost dangerously delusional and misanthropic. It's the feel good movie of the holiday season!

When we first meet Mavis, she's passed out in bed, beginning the day's battle against a hangover. We will find her in similar fashion throughout the film, though no one seems to notice (or, perhaps, care) that if she's not yet an alocholic, she's flirting with it pretty heavily - no one, that is, except for herself and when she shares her suspicions with her parents, they simply laugh it off. Mavis is the writer of a young adult series (though her name appears only on the inside jacket of the books while the covers credit the series' creator) struggling to write the book that will bring the series to a close, who finds herself completely derailed by the news that Buddy (Patrick Wilson), her on-again/off-again boyfriend from high school and college, has just had a baby with his wife. Projecting her own unhappiness onto her ex, she decides to leave her glamorous big city life behind and return to her hometown of Mercury.

On her return to town she connects with Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), a former high school classmate that she doesn't remember until she realizes that he's "the hate crime guy" who got beaten up for being gay even though he isn't actually gay. Though she never spoke to him in high school, Matt becomes her confidante and tries to talk her out of trying to break up Buddy's marriage. But Mavis remains convinced that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Buddy cannot possibly be happy and powers ahead in her plan, eventually going so far that even she can no longer deny how unhinged she's become.

With such a singularly unpleasant protagonist, not to mention an ending that subverts the expectation that Mavis will learn anything, Young Adult will probably prove to be a polarizing film. Living in a state of prolonged adolescence is an unattractive quality in pretty much any adult and Mavis positively wallows in this state. Despite her own unhappiness, she still clings to the notion that just getting out of her hometown and moving to the city somehow means that she "wins" over her former classmates; when she overhears teenagers talking melodramatically about their lives, attributing an unwarranted level of complexity to their problems, she glows with recognition because her mindset remains in the same unsophisticated state. She cruises around town in the car she drove in high school, listening to a mix tape Buddy once made her, steadfastly refusing to grow up, all of which might make her insufferable were it not for Theron's finely calibrated performance. To so baldly play a character's negative qualities is brave all on its own, but Theron also mixes in an intense vulnerability that exposes the insecurity that lies at the root of Mavis' nastiness. It's in the way her eyes plead for praise when Buddy off-handedly asks her to sign a copy of one of her books, and in the flicker of hurt that emerges when he reveals that the book is for his niece. And it's in a marvelous scene towards the end that occurs between Mavis and Matt, after everything has blown up in Mavis' face.

Young Adult succeeds because of Theron's fearless performance, but also because Reitman and Cody do an excellent job at tempering her madness. This is a film that understands the difference between sympathy and empathy, that can feel sorry for the protagonist who has nothing but the glossy sheen of the image she's desperate to project, without sinking down into the dirt with her and asking us to excuse her behaviour. We don't root for Mavis and the film doesn't want us to. This is a portrait of youthful promise fallen into decay and the film is able to address that in a way that is very direct and very funny. Though I don't expect that Young Adult will be as widely embraced or celebrated as Juno, I have a sneaking suspicion that it might prove to be more enduring.

Awards Roundup

2011-12-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

* Golden Globe nomination
+ Guild nomination
* Critics Choice nomination

The winners so far:

Best Picture

(8) The Artist**:
Detroit Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle
Washington D.C. Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Boston Film Critics

(3) The Descendants**:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics

(3) The Tree of Life*:
Toronto Film Critics
African-American Film Critics Association
San Fransisco Film Critics

(1) Hugo**:
National Board of Review

Best Director

(4) Michael Hazanavicis, The Artist**:
Detroit Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle

(3) Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life:
Toronto Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics

(3) Martin Scorsese, Hugo**:
Boston Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(3) Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive*:
San Diego Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics

(1) Steve McQueen, Shame:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Alexander Payne, The Descendants**:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics

Best Actor

(3) George Clooney, The Descendants*+*:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(3) Michael Fassbender, Shame**:
Detroit Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics (also for A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class)
Houston Film Critics

(3) Michael Shannon, Take Shelter:
San Diego Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online

(2) Brad Pitt, Moneyball*+*:
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle (also for The Tree of Life)

(1) Jean Dujardin, The Artist*+*:
Las Vegas Film Critics

(1) Paul Giamati, Win Win:
Indiana Film Critics

(1) Woody Harrelson, Rampart:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:
San Fransisco Film Critics

Best Actress

(6) Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn*+*:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(3) Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin*+*:
Houston Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
National Board of Review

(2) Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady*+*:
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle

(1) Viola Davis, The Help*+*:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Yun Jung-hee, Poetry:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Brit Marling, Another Earth:
San Diego Film Critics

(1) Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene*:
Indiana Film Critics

Best Supporting Actress

(4) Shailene Woodley, The Descendants**:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
National Board of Review

(3) Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids+*:
Las Vegas Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online

(2) Jessica Chastain, The Help*+*:
Los Angeles Film Critics (also for Corolianus, The Debt, Take Shelter, Texas Killing Fields, The Tree of Life)
New York Film Critics Circle (also for Take Shelter, The Tree of Life)

(1) Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter:
Toronto Film Critics

(2) Octavia Spencer, The Help*+*:
African-American Film Critics Association
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(1) Viola Davis, The Help:
Indiana Film Critics

(1) Carey Mulligan, Shame*:
Detroit Film Critics

(1) Vanessa Redgrave, Corolianus:
San Fransisco Film Critics

Best Supporting Actor

(8) Albert Brooks, Drive**:
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
African-American Film Critics Association
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle

(6) Christopher Plummer, Beginners*+*:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Detroit Film Critics
Toronto Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
National Board of Review

(1) Nick Nolte, Warrior+*:
San Diego Film Critics

Best Screenplay

(6) The Descendants**:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
National Board of Review (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(6) Moneyball**:
Detroit Film Critics
San Diego Film Critics (as Adapted Screenplay)
Toronto Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle

(2) 50/50*:
Washington D.C. Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
National Board of Review (for Best Original Screenplay)

(1) I Will Follow:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Margin Call:
San Fransisco Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)

(1) Midnight In Paris**:
San Diego Film Critics (as Original Screenplay)

(1) A Separation:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:
San Fransisco Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(1) Win Win*:
Indiana Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)

Best Documentary

(5) Project Nim:
San Diego Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Boston Film Critics

(4) Cave of Forgotten Dreams:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(1) The Black Power Mixtape:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Nostalgia for the Light:
Toronto Film Critics

(1) Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory:
National Board of Review

(2) Tabloid:
Detroit Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics

Best Animated Feature

(9) Rango:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
Houston Film Critics
Las Vegas Film Critics
San Fransisco Film Critics
Indiana Film Critics
Boston Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(2) The Adventures of Tintin:
New York Film Critics Online
Toronto Film Critics

(1) Arthur Christmas:
San Diego Film Critics

Best Foreign Film

(4) A Separation:
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle
National Board of Review

(2) The Skin I Live In:
Indiana Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(1) 13 Assassins:
Las Vegas Film Critics

(1) Certified Copy:
San Fransisco Film Critics

(1) The City of Life and Death:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Incendies:
Boston Film Critics

(1) I saw the Devil:
Houston Film Critics

(1) Kinyarwanda:
African-American Film Critics Association

(1) Mysteries of Lisbon:
Toronto Film Critics

(1) Le Quattro Volte:
San Diego Film Critics

Friday's Top 5... Head Scratchers of the 2011 Awards Season (So Far)

2011-12-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

#5: Melissa McCarthy is a Best Supporting Actress frontrunner

Look, I loved Bridesmaids and I loved Melissa McCarthy in it, but did she really give one of the best supporting performances of the year? Really, New York Film Critics? And Vegas? And Boston? Really?

#4: The National Board of Review's Continuing Love Affair with Clint Eastwood

In the past ten years, Clint Eastwood has made 10 films as a director. 7 of them have made it onto the NBR's annual top 10 list. J. Edgar, Hereafter, Invictus and Gran Torino made the list for 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008, respectively. None of these are great films (although I know that Gran Torino has its champions) but it seems like an NBR list just wouldn't be the same without some Eastwood. It's like he's the only director they know.

#3: No Love for Vanessa Redgrave

I haven't had the opportunity to see Corolianus yet, so this is based purely on what I've heard and what I've learned from Oscar seasons past (it is, after all, never just about the performance), but I'm surprised that a veteran actress of her stature, giving a universally acclaimed performance, can get so thoroughly shut out of the precursor awards.

#2: The Disappearance of Elizabeth Olsen

She came out of Sundance with a bang and was tagged as this year's Carey Mulligan or Jennifer Lawrence... and yet she's been almost entirely absent from the early awards. It's a shame, too, since her performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene is really excellent.

#1: The Rush to Announce

Admittedly, this is not a 2011 specific issue. Every year awards announcements and ceremonies seem to happen earlier and earlier. Oscar bloggers have speculated that one of the reasons seemingly Oscar friendly fare like War Horse and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close have failed to make much of a showing is that too few people have had an opportunity to see them, so why release your list of nominees/winners before having had a chance to take scope of the entire year? Obviously, none of the awarding bodies wants to get lost in a sea of awards or written off as simply following along with the crowd but, let's be honest, the only award people really care about is the Oscar so why not take the time to create a list that shows thought rather than speed?

Golden Globe Nominees

2011-12-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

Nominations were announced first thing this morning - and once again, the HFPA and I disagree on what constitutes a "drama" and what constitutes a "comedy." Here are the nominees:

Best Picture (Drama)
The Descendants
The Help
Hugo
The Ides of March
Moneyball
War Horse

Best Picture (Musical or Comedy)
The Artist
Bridesmaids
50/50
Midnight In Paris
My Week with Marilyn

Best Director
Woody Allen, Midnight In Paris
George Clooney, The Ides of March
Michael Hazanavicius, The Artist
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Best Actor (Drama)
George Clooney, The Descendants
Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar
Michael Fassbender, Shame
Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Actress (Drama)
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Actress (Musical or Comedy)
Jodie Foster, Carnage
Charlize Theron, Young Adult
Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids
Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn
Kate Winslet, Carnage

Best Actor (Musical or Comedy)
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Brendan Gleeson, The Guard
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 50/50
Ryan Gosling, Crazy, Stupid, Love
Owen Wilson, Midnight In Paris

Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Albert Brooks, Drive
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Viggo Mortensen, A Dangerous Method
Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Best Supporting Actress
Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help
Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Best Screenplay
The Artist
The Descendants
The Ides of March
Midnight In Paris
Moneyball

Golden Globe Predicts

2011-12-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

Nominations are announced tomorrow, here are my predictions:

Best Picture (Drama)
Drive
The Help
Hugo
Moneyball
War Horse

alt: The Girl with the Dragn Tattoo

Best Picture (Musical or Comedy)
The Artist
Bridesmaids
The Descedants
Midnight In Paris
Young Adult

alt: Carnage

Best Director
Michael Hazanavicius, The Artist
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo
Steven Spielberg, War Horse
Nicholas Windig Refn, Drive

alt: David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Actor (Drama)
Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar
Michael Fassbender, Shame
Ryan Gosling, Drive
Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

alt: Michael Shannon, Take Shelter

Best Actress (Drama)
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Best Actress (Musical or Comedy)
Jodie Foster, Carnage
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Charlize Theron, Young Adult
Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids
Kate Winslet, Carnage

alt: Marion Cotillard, Midnight In Paris

Best Actor (Musical or Comedy)
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 50/50
John C. Reilly, Carnage
Owen Wilson, Midnight In Paris

alt: Matt Damon, We Bought A Zoo

Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Albert Brooks, Drive
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Patton Oswalt, Young Adult
Christopher Plummer, Beginners

alt: Ben Kingsley, Hugo

Best Supporting Actress
Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Vanessa Redgrave, Corolianus
Octavia Spencer, The Help
Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

alt: Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Best Screenplay
The Artist
The Descendants
Midnight In Paris
Moneyball
Young Adult

alt: The Help

Screen Actors Guild Nominees

2011-12-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

Here they are:

Best Ensemble
The Artist
Bridesmaids
The Descendants
The Help
Midnight In Paris

Best Actor
Damien Bichir, A Better Life
George Clooney, The Descendants
Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Actress
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Best Supporting Actress
Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help

Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Armie Hamer, J. Edgar
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Best Stunt Ensemble
The Adjustment Bureau
Cowboys & Aliens
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
X-Men: First Class

Screen Actors Guild Predicts

2011-12-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

The announcement will be made tomorrow morning, here are my predictions:

Best Ensemble
The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Help
Midnight In Paris

alt:Bridesmaids

Best Actor
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Michael Fassbender, Shame
Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

alt: Michael Sheen, Take Shelter

Best Actress
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

alt: Charlize Theron, Young Adult

Best Supporting Actress
Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Vanessa Redgrave, Corolianus
Octavia Spencer, The Help

alt: Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Albert Brooks, Drive
Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

alt: John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Best Stunt Ensemble
Fast Five
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Review: The Descendants (2011)

2011-12-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * * 1/2
Director: Alexander Payne
Starring: George Clooney

Alexander Payne is an expert at finding comedy in unlikely places. His debut feature, Citizen Ruth, was about the battle over the legality of abortion, About Schmidt was about a recent widower and retiree who fears that life is meaningless and futile, Sideways is about a failed and alcoholic writer, and his masterpiece Election is about the epic battle between a frustrated high school teacher and a manipulative, over-achieving student. His latest, The Descendants is about, amongst other things, the process of grief and like his previous films mixes comedy and drama so seamlessly that he makes it look deceptively easy.

Set in Hawaii, The Descendants juxtaposes its paradisiacal setting with the tragedies - major and minor - of its characters. Its protagonist, Matt King (George Clooney) is a successful attorney and a wealthy descendant of Hawaiian royalty who must decide the fate of thousands of acres of undeveloped land. His wife is in a coma following a boating accident and he struggles to care for their ten-year-old daughter, Scottie (Amara Miller). When he learns that his wife's condition will not improve and that the doctors will be taking her off life support, Matt retrieves their troubled older daughter, Alex (Shailene Woodley), from boarding school, hoping to enlist her help in breaking the news to family and friends. Instead she fills him in on the source of the recent conflict between herself and her mother, namely that she caught her mother having an affair.

Together Matt and Alex learn as much as they can about the man, a real estate agent named Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), whose connection to Matt runs even deeper than Matt initially suspects. While trying to sort out this increasingly messy situation, Matt also has to deal with his extended family and their competing desires with respect to the fate of the family land. Though the decision ultimately lies with Matt as the sole trustee of the estate, he has agreed to put it to a vote, only to start to have second thoughts about what the "right" thing in such a situation might be. He is also, of course, struggling to come to terms with the fact that his wife is going to die and dealing with the complex emotions of his daughters, as well as his gruff, violence prone father-in-law (Robert Forster).

Payne, who in addition to directing co-wrote the screenplay with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, can always be counted on to present fully fleshed characters whose conflicts arise in ways that feel natural rather than contrived for the sake of the plot. Matt, for example, has a reason to be angry and bitter and sometimes, in private, gives in to those impulses. In public, however, he masks his pain for the sake of his daughters, specifically Scottie, and to preserve his wife's memory as best he can. When he finally confronts Brian, he is motivated not only by a need to lash out at the one person who can actually answer his questions, but also to allow Brian to the opportunity to have closure. His act is equal parts selfish and selfless and the film never gives short shrift to either side of the situation.

Clooney has long since established himself as an actor of substance, rather than merely a passable talent with matinee idol looks. He consistently makes interesting choices and with Matt, he plays a character who opens up yet another facet of Clooney's abilities as an actor. The role is very different from what you might expect from him and his restrained but effective performance is surrounded by colorful supporting performances, specifically from Woodley and Forster. Both actors take what could be stock characters - for Woodley the bratty teen, for Forster the ornery codger - and manage to give them some substance that helps give depth to the relationships. Though I think The Descendants falls just short of being a great film, it's a very good one indeed, thanks in no small part to the actors and the care with which Payne helps craft their performances.

Awards Roundup

2011-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

2011 Winners so far:

Best Picture

(4) The Artist:
New York Film Critics Circle
Washington D.C. Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Boston Film Critics

(1) The Descendants:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Hugo:
National Board of Review

Best Director

(3) Martin Scorsese, Hugo:
Boston Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(2) Michael Hazanavicis, The Artist:
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle

(1) Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life:
Los Angeles Film Critics

Best Actor

(2) George Clooney, The Descendants:
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(2) Brad Pitt, Moneyball:
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle (also for The Tree of Life)

(1) Michael Fassbender, Shame:
Los Angeles Film Critics (also for A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class)

(1) Michael Shannon, Take Shelter:
New York Film Critics Online

Best Actress

(2) Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady:
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle

(2) Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn:
Boston Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(1) Yun Jung-hee, Poetry:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin:
National Board of Review

Best Supporting Actress

(2) Jessica Chastain, The Help:
Los Angeles Film Critics (also for Corolianus, The Debt, Take Shelter, Texas Killing Fields, The Tree of Life)
New York Film Critics Circle (also for Take Shelter, The Tree of Life)

(2) Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids:
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online

(1) Octavia Spencer, The Help:
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(1) Shailene Woodley, The Descendants:
National Board of Review

Best Supporting Actor

(4) Albert Brooks, Drive:
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle

(2) Christopher Plummer, Beginners:
Los Angeles Film Critics
National Board of Review

Best Screenplay

(3) The Descendants:
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics (for Best Adapted Screenplay)
National Board of Review (for Best Adapted Screenplay)

(2) Moneyball:
Boston Film Critics
New York Film Critics Circle

(2) 50/50:
Washington D.C. Film Critics (for Best Original Screenplay)
National Board of Review (for Best Original Screenplay)

(1) A Separation:
Los Angeles Film Critics

Best Documentary:

(3) Cave of Forgotten Dreams:
Los Angeles Film Critics
New York Film Critics Online
Washington D.C. Film Critics

(1) Project Nim:
Boston Film Critics

(1) Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory:
National Board of Review

Best Animated Feature

(4) Rango:
Boston Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
Washington D.C. Film Critics
National Board of Review

(1) The Adventures of Tintin:
New York Film Critics Online

Best Foreign Film

(3) A Separation:
New York Film Critics Online
New York Film Critics Circle
National Board of Review

(1) The City of Life and Death:
Los Angeles Film Critics

(1) Incendies:
Boston Film Critics

(1) The Skin I Live In:
Washington D.C. Film Critics

Friday's Top 5... Actors Who Should Be Too Good To Be In New Year's Eve

2011-12-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

#5: Abigail Breslin

Oh, Abigail. You were doing so good. You were nominated for an Oscar at the age of 10. You were in the little seen gem Definitely, Maybe and the much seen Zombieland. I promise you: you are better than this.

#4: Halle Berry

Yeah, I know, things have been on a bit of a downslide since she won her Oscar for Monster's Ball, but have you ever seen her performance in Jungle Fever? Or Introducing Dorothy Dandridge? Or Their Eyes Were Watching God? Halle Berry is better than this.

#3: Hilary Swank

For reasons I've never fully understood, Hilary Swank is an amazingly devisive movie star. But even her most fervent detractors must agree that she deserves better than New Year's Eve. I mean, c'mon. She has two Oscars and is a great actress in the right kind of role.

#2: Robert De Niro

Now, granted, Robert De Niro hasn't been in a great movie since 1997's one-two punch of Jackie Brown and Wag the Dog, but even though he's spent the last 14 years making shitty movies almost exclusively, it still hurts to see him in the trailers for New Year's Eve.

#1: Michelle Pfeiffer

Hollywood is not kind to women over 40, but surely there is something better out there for Michelle Pfeiffer, who is great both as an actress and a movie star. Fingers crossed for the Dark Shadows adaptation, I guess.

Great Last Scenes: Bon Cop, Bad Cop

2011-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Year: 2006
Director: Eric Canuel
Great Because...: It goes for it and it gets away with it. In film the line between the good guys and the bad guys is pretty distinctly drawn, particularly in action films. Heroes are supposed to get the bad guys, not kill them in cold blood. Bon Cop, Bad Cop not only manages to allow its heroes to brutally eliminate the villain, it does so with a smile on its face.

Bon Cop, Bad Cop is your basic mismatch buddy cop movie, in this instance pairing up an uptight Ontario detective (Colem Feore's Martin Ward) and a too-cool-for-school Qeuebec detective (Patrick Huard's David Bouchard). The two are thrown together after a murder victim is found straddling the border between the two provinces and as they struggle to decide who has juridiction, the find that they're after a serial killer and that each murder is connected in some way to the National Hockey League.

The film climaxes (as films like this must) with a showdown between the two protagonists and the heretofore unstoppable killer in a remote and interesting location. This leads to a gun fight/car chase/hand-to-hand combat sequence which ultimately ends with a bomb being slipped into the killer's pocket and the killer not realizing it until he's in the midst of running away on foot, by which point he doesn't even have enough time to fully curse his situation before he's blown to smithereens. The two heroes react to this a shrug, basically, and a crack about having recycled the killer's bomb, ending the film on a comedic note despite the fact that, you know, we just watched a dude get blown up.

Bon Cop, Bad Cop is a film that fully embraces genre conventions (albeit while giving them a distinctly Canadian twist) but also manages to end on a note that subverts convention without making it feel unbalanced. The film has its tongue planted firmly in cheek from the beginning and gradually continues raising the stakes throughout so that it can end on a note that is incredibly violent while still playing it for laughs. Although it's not unheard of for the hero to end up killing the villain, what makes this scene seem unique is the fact that they don't have to kill him. Ususally the villain ends up killed in a straight forward me-or-you scenario; here the villain is running away, posing no immediate threat to the heroes. The way the villain is dispatched should undermine the notion that Ward and Bouchard are heroes, but because the film has done such a meticulous job at sending up (while seeming to play into) genre conventions, the ending instead solidifies their heroic status. The final scenes subverts expectation and opens a new realm of possibility in a very traditional genre.

Review: Swimming Pool (2003)

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * *
Director: Francois Ozon
Starring: Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier

Francois Ozon's crime thriller Swimming Pool is one of those hypnotic, challenging films that you'll puzzle over and debate about long after seeing. It's a film that seems deceptively straight forward and then, in its final act, completely pulls the rug out from under you. This last act turnaround will be frustrating to some viewers, but for others it will simply add a new, rich dimension to what was already a first-rate thriller.

Swimming Pool centres on Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling), a writer of popular crime fiction struggling with a case of writer's block. Her publisher (Charles Dance) suggests that she go to stay at his country house in France in order that she can get the peace and relaxation she needs in order to start working again. Shortly after arriving at the house Sarah starts working again, the story suddenly coming easily to her, but her solitude is quickly disrupted by the unexpected arrival of Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), the daughter of the publisher. Sarah and Julie quickly find themselves at odds - Sarah wants peace and quiet to work on her book, which is difficult when Julie is up all night and bringing home a series of men - but slowly Sarah's annoyance turns to fascination and she finds that rather than being a hinderance, Julie may actually be the inspiration she needs.

Sarah becomes obsessed with Julie, trying to find out as much as she can about Julie's mother and about Julie herself. Although the two women begin to grow closer, their tentative bond is undercut by Franck (Jean-Marie Lamour), the owner of the local cafe with whom Sarah has developed a raport, but who Julie seduces. The tensions between the three lead to a murder and a cover-up... or do they? The film's ambiguous ending raises questions about how much of what came before was real, if any of it actually was, and how we view the film as a whole is determined by the "solution" that we fall upon.

There are a number of ways that the narrative can be viewed. The most popular theory is that Julie and the events which take place at the country house are entirely Sarah's invention, that it's the story she's writing or a simply a fantasy that she is inventing in her head. Another theory is that the publisher has two daughters, one acknowledged (Julia), the other secret (Julie), that the events in France really did happen and that Sarah, herself rejected by the publisher, decides not only to protect Julie from prosecution for murder but also decides to use her novel (called "Swimming Pool") as a means of forcing her publisher to "see" Julie. There is also an interesting (and rather compelling) theory put forward by someone on the IMDB board that Sarah has multiple personalities and that color cues indicate when Sarah is "Sarah" and when she's "Julie" (a blue motif indicates the former, red the latter). The fact that the film can be read in so many ways ensures that it has a degree of fascination built-in, but even laying the twist aside, it's still a very compelling and well-made thriller. Ozon and co-writer Emmanuele Bernheim, keep the tensions simmering throughout, ratcheting things up at a consistent pace until things finally explode. If there was no twist at all, Swimming Pool would still be a film worth talking about.

Aside from the masterful way that the film is constructed, the performances by Rampling and Sagnier also make Swimming Pool very much worth seeing. Rampling, no stranger to sexually provocative roles, plays Sarah as someone deeply repressed whose sensuality slowly uncoils itself as the film unfolds. Sagnier, meanwhile, brings a dangerous, reckless aura to Julie without ever obscuring the loneliness at her core. The two make an excellent pair, so excellent that it's odd that Ozon has never paired them up again. Although Rampling, by virtue of the greater size of her role, does the majority of the heavy lifting in Swimming Pool, this is definitely a duet, not a solo.

Review: My Week with Marilyn (2011)

2011-12-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * *
Director: Simon Curtis
Starring: Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh

Movies like My Week with Marilyn exist for one reason and one reason only, and that's as a showcase for a performance. All the eggs go into this particular basket and everything else becomes of secondary importance, which leaves little room for error with that central performance. Fortunately, Michelle Williams' turn as Marilyn Monroe is fantastic, the kind that goes beyond "impersonation" and firmly into "inhabitation." However, the caliber of her performance can't disguise how average the film itself is, as it does little to break away from the cliches of its genre, and does even less to offer any new insight into the woman who was, arguably, the greatest film star of all time.

Based on the memoir by Colin Clark, My Week with Marilyn is told from Clark's point-of-view, when he was 23 and got a job as third assistant director on the film that would become The Prince and the Showgirl. Clark is played by Eddie Redmayne, who brings a certain dewy, wide-eyed innocence to the role that makes the character's naivety believable but which also makes his deep insights about the people around him, and their relationships, a bit of a hard sell. At one point he tells Monroe that the problems between her at her co-star/director Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) stem from the fact that "he's a great actor who wants to be a film star, and [she's] a film star who wants to be a great actor." It's the kind of serviceable observation that wraps things up nicely and comes with the benefit of hindsight; at the time, however, the tensions between the two stars probably did have a bit more to do with Monroe's notorious habit of holding up every production she was a part of, not to mention tensions Olivier would have been experiencing at home due to the fact that his wife, Vivien Leigh (played all too briefly here by Julia Ormond), originated Monroe's role on stage but was deemed "too old" to play the character in the film.

There are many conflicts on the set, from Monroe's nervousness about working with actors of the ability of Olivier and Dame Sybil Thorndike (Judi Dench), to Olivier's feeling of having his authority as director undercut by the presence of Monroe's acting coach, Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker), and those conflicts put Monroe in the mood for flight. Having decided that Clark is someone she can trust, Monroe embarks with him on a series of small adventures, making him her confidante and, perhaps, considers making him more. However, as Monroe's producing partner, Milton Greene (Dominic Cooper), warns Clark, she has a short attention span with men and he shouldn't count on a happily ever after.

Playing Marilyn Monroe would no doubt be a daunting task for any actress, not simply because she was such a magnetic on-screen force, but also because so much has been written about her that any performance is going to have a huge burden of expectations attached to it. Williams is more than up to the challenge, as she's able to tap into the luminous quality that Monroe had and bring a sense of humanity to the larger-than-life chracter. Although the story imposes limitations on the character in that it views her through the prism of Clark's impressions of her, impressions which rely on the standard, popular view of Monroe (ie, she was insecure, had an almost incapacitating fear of abandonment, and was desperate to be taken seriously), Williams is able to make her real, overcoming the cliches and delivering a performance that is intense, vulnerable, and complex - and she makes it look easy. There is not a whiff of articiality to her performance; it feels just as authentic (albeit in a completely different way) to Williams' masterful performance in last year's Blue Valentine.

Williams' performance is the biggest and best reason to see My Week with Marilyn, but the film itself isn't without merit. Director Simon Curtis unfolds the story at a good pace and mixes the comedic and dramatic elements in an effective way that helps to highlight the way that Monroe's incandescent on-screen quality was usually the result of a Herculean effort off-screen. The film does have a few structural issues (for example, Dench simply disappears for a large part of the film and her presence is definitely missed, as she brings a great deal of charm to her role), but for the most part My Week with Marilyn is soundly made. It isn't a great film by any means but it's a decent one.

Friday's Top 5... Spy Movies (non-James Bond edition)

2011-12-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

#5: The Hunt for Red October

The best of the Jack Ryan films (starring, arguably, the best Jack Ryan). This Cold War submarine thriller is expertly directed and acted and remains greatly entertaining. Just try to ignore the fact that Sean Connery makes absolutely no attempt to sound like anything other than a Russian guy with a Scottish accent.

#4: Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains. What more do you need to know? The story involves a love triangle and a Nazi cabal, and the production includes one of Hitchcock's most celebrated shots and cinema's longest on-screen kiss. It's a great film generally, but a great spy film specifically.

#3: The Conversation

Francis Ford Coppola's character-driven thriller is a chilling, fascinating work about a spy who finds himself tormented by the potential fallout from his work. Made between the first two Godfather films, The Conversation is Coppola at his absolute best, before Apocalypse Now broke his brain and took him from unqualified master storyteller to hit-and-miss filmmaker.

#2: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

John le Carre's novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is often cited as the best spy novel of all time, which meant that Martin Ritt's adaptation had a lot to live up to. Fortunately it does and this dark, cynical film secured an Oscar nod for star Richard Burton, who gives one of his best performances here.

#1: North By Northwest

One of the best movies, helmed by one of cinema's greatest directors, and anchored by one of the greatest movie stars of all time. In one of his best roles, Cary Grant stars as a man with a case of mistaken identity who finds himself entangled in plot to gain control of microfilm containing government secrets.

Review: A Short Film About Love (1988)

2011-11-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * * *
Director: Krysztof Kieslowski
Starring: Grazyna Szapolowska, Olaf Lubaszenko

The late Krysztof Kieslowski was, without question, one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. Many storytellers can talk about ideas, but he was (and remains) one of the few who could dramatize an idea. The series that best demonstrates this ability is The Decalogue, a series of short films based on the ten commandments, from which two segments (this one and A Short Film About Killing) were later expanded into full length films. Though slightly altered from the segment as it appeared in The Decalogue, A Short Film About Love is still an excellent and thought-provoking film.

Centering on Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko), a nineteen-year-old postal worker, A Short Film About Love is a story of obsession. Every night Tomek uses his telescope to spy on Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska), the woman who lives in the apartment complex across the courtyard from his. Though initially content to spy on her from afar, he begins trying to draw her closer by sending her notices that a money order is available for her to pick up at the post office. He also takes a second job delivering milk, which gives him an excuse to be in her apartment building and approach her door.

Eventually Tomek reveals himself - and what he's been doing - to Magda. Furious but also, perhaps, flattered and intrigued, she taunts Tomek by making a show of her relationship with her boyfriend and then tipping her boyfriend off about their spy, which results in Tomek getting punched in the face. Later still, Magda sexually humiliates Tomek and he reacts by attempting suicide. Plagued by guilt, the tables suddenly turn with Magda now becoming the one who watches endlessly, searching for signs of Tomek and trying to put things right.

On the surface, the story of A Short Film About Love is really simple. It's about three characters - Tomek, Magda, and Tomek's unnamed landlady (Stefania Iwinska), who is the mother of a friend of Tomek's and treats Tomek himself like a son - and a narrative that, ultimately, moves very little. The spareness of the plot, however, simply leaves room for the characters to bloom and Kieslowski makes the most of that, helping to craft characters who are intriguing enough to carry the film. The world of the film is small, but never claustrophobic, and both Szapolowska and Lubaszenko deliver wonderful and very deep performances.

Most of the changes between this extended version and Decalogue 6 are minor, however the ending presents a major change. The ending to Decalogue 6 is darker, presenting a complete reversal in Tomek and Magda's relationship which sees her having become obsessed with him and him gleefully rejecting her. The ending to A Short Film About Love is more optimistic and a little more ambiguous and, ultimately, just a little less resonant. Still, this only feels like a flaw if you've seen Decalogue 6 and taken on its own, A Short Film About Love is pretty much a perfect film.

Review: The Skin I Live In (2011)

2011-11-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * *
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya

Pedro Almodovar is very good at what he does; I'd say that he's one of the most consistently excellent filmmakers working today. With The Skin I Live In he takes the admirable step of trying to branch out from familiar territory, but steps a little too tentatively and falls back a little too readily on those familiar tropes and techniques. It's still a good and often fascinating film (and beautiful looking even at its ugliest moments), but it's not quite everything that it could be.

Like many of Almodovar's films, The Skin I Live In is cut up into multiple timelines which inform each other and dovetail at the end. The present day timeline involves Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), a doctor who claims that he's cultivated a special skin that can protect human beings from burns and diseases spread by insects. His research is inspired by his late wife, who died shortly after being severely burned in a car crash, and he claims that mice have been his test subjects, though in truth he's been experimenting on Vera (Elena Anaya), a woman he's kidnapped and keeps captive in his home. He's aided in his plot by Marila (Marisa Paredes), a faithful servant (with a secret; natch), however, when Marila allows her wayward son, Zeca (Roberto Alamo), into Robert's compound for a visit, he finds out about Vera and things start to go wildly off the rails.

In flashbacks the film plumbs the depths of Robert's obsession with "creating" Vera. His wife (who had run away with Zeca) was burned "to a cinder" from the car crash and though Robert was able to save her body, her psychological state remained terribly fragile and, ultimately, she was unable to cope with the physical toll the accident had on her body and committed suicide. Her suicide, in turn, undermined the psychological stability of their daughter, Norma (Blanca Suarez), who had to be institutionalized and, following a traumatic incident during a temporary release from the hospital, committed suicide herself. In the aftermath of all that, Robert focused his anger on Vincente (Jan Cornet), the young man whose actions pushed Norma over the edge, and crafted an elaborate revenge plot that allowed him to regain his lost sense of control.

The Skin I Live In is grounded in ideas of body horror, with Robert acting as a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein and Vera as his "monster," created from bits and pieces of others (though Robert denies it frequently throughout the film, other characters note the facial resemblance between Vera and Robert's late wife). Robert's gifts as a surgeon could be used for good, but instead he uses them as a means of physical and psychological warfare and, perhaps, to realize his own unconsious desires. Almodovar's films tend to be awash in sexual ambiguity/fluidity and to adopt as one of their themes the voyeuristic aspect of moviegoing. There is a scene early in The Skin I Live In where Robert watches Vera on closed circuit television as she reclines in bed and he mirrors her position on the chaise lounge at the foot of his bed. It's a brief moment but when considered in conjunction with aspects of the story that are revealed later on, it suggests that Robert is literally exploring with Vera the figurative emasculation/loss of power he felt as a result of his wife's infidelity and suicide and his inability to protect his daughter. In modifying Vera by making her skin impenetrable to wounds, he is perhaps trying to bolster the part of himself that he sees as most vulnerable or weak.

The act of watching Vera through various monitors in the house is something the film returns to often and in doing so not only asks us as an audience to empathize/identify with Vera, but also makes us complicit in Robert's crimes, which means our sense of place within the story is constantly shifting and unstable. The best horror films accomplish this (perhaps the best example of this is Psycho where our protagonist, Marion Crane, is ripped away from us early and replaced with Norman Bates) because such shifts not only draw us closer to the horror, but the uneasy feeling that the shift creates also heightens the story's intensity. Intensity is something that The Skin I Live In has in spades and the complexities of the two main characters and their relationship to each other is something that will give you a lot to think about long after the film is over.

With these elements in place, the film begins very promisingly and Banderas' performance is appropriately intense and creepy, but The Skin I Live In's weakness is, ironically, one of the strengths of so many of Almodovar's other films, which is the high melodrama that winds its way through the narrative. The power of the horror aspects ends up being somewhat watered down as a result of its uneasy marriage with the splashy, soapy elements and the film ends up feeling just a bit too superficial. It isn't a bad film by any means, but it's the sort of film that ends up being "just good" despite having had the potential to be great.

Unsung Performances: Tilda Swinton in I Am Love

2011-11-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

When I made my "Best of 2010" lists, Luca Guadagnino's sumptuous I Am Love came up again and again. It's a film that I admire a great deal and there's nothing I admire more about it than the central performance by Tilda Swinton. One of the most consistently great (and interesting) actors working today, Swinton never disappoints and often surprises with her ever shifting screen persona. Here she plays a much softer character than she typically does, but loses none of her usual intensity in doing so.

In I Am Love Swinton stars as Emma, the Russian-born wife of a wealthy Italian businessman. Her role within the family has been carefully managed and rigidly defined - we later learn that her name isn't even "Emma," but that that's the name her husband chose for her. She has essentially been "invented" by her husband to suit his needs and desires, stifling her own needs and desires in the process. Though her life has not necessarily been unhappy, it hasn't really been fulfilling for her to live in a family where tradition is valued over the personal needs of its members.

Emma's life is turned upside down by two people. The first is her daughter, Elisabetta, who breaks with expectation first by turning away from drawing and towards photography, and second by revealing that she's a lesbian. Her assertion of self inspires Emma to take control of her own life and identity and she begins to move away from the persona so carefully cultivated for her by her husband.

The second person who inspires Emma's change is Antonio, a friend of Emma's son with whom she begins an affair. As the film frames it (and as Swinton plays it), it isn't so much that Antonio changes Emma or that she changes for him but, rather, that being with him frees her to be the person that deep down she has always been. The relationship opens up a world of possibilities that Emma had forgotten about, as if he's walked into the room and turned on a light (there is, in fact, a scene in the film which finds Emma bathed in light as she tries a dish at Antonio's restaurant). The process that Emma undergoes is more realisation than change and as the film progresses Swinton charts Emma's rising level of consciousness.

Swinton's performance is low-key, relying on subtle shifts in her expression and bearing rather than through big speeches or scenes of scenery chewing and big emotions. Her performance is delicate and moves so naturally along with the story, that the transitions the character goes through are seamless. Though the performance is measured, I wouldn't call it restrained; it's a deeply emotional performance that hits a lot of different notes and hits them all very well. Neither the film nor the performance garnered a ton of attention last year (though the film did receive a Golden Globe nod in the Foreign Film category), but both are gems just waiting to be rediscovered and properly appreciated.

Friday's Top 5... Marilyn Monroe Movies

2011-11-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Note: for the purposes of this list I'm only looking at the movies in which she had a starring role, otherwise All About Eve, in which Monroe is fantastic but only features for about five minutes, would take the top slot.

#5: How To Marry a Millionaire

Suspend your disbelief long enough to buy that Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall would have any trouble landing a millionaire. Monroe's performance as nearsighted Pola, who refuses to wear glasses, is one of her comedic best.

#4: The Seven Year Itch

Arguably the most famous image of Marilyn Monroe comes courtesy of this film, an adultery comedy from writer/director Billy Wilder. Though pretty tame by today's standards, the Hays office was all over it during filming in 1954 due to its "indecency."

#3: The Misfits

The final film for both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable and, all things considered, not a bad note for either to go out on. Both actors - and co-stars Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach - deliver terrific performances and the film is solidly made and beautifully shot.

#2: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

A fun musical comedy from Howard Hawks in which Marilyn Monroe plays against Jane Russell. The combination is great, which has helped the film remain an enduring comedy classic.

#1: Some Like It Hot

One of the best films ever made, period. Sugar Kane is the character that Marilyn Monroe was born to play.

Book vs. Film: Fugitive Pieces vs. Fugitive Pieces

2011-11-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

Basic Plot: After narrowly escaping from the Nazis (and watching his family be dragged off by them) in Poland, young Jacob Beaer is rescued by Athos Roussos, a Greek archaeologist who hides him for the duration of the war. Afterwards the two move to Toronto, where Jacob grows up to be a writer and is haunted by his past. He marries but the union is unsuccessful do to his inability to let go of the past and after their divorce, he finds love again but first must find a way to reconcile himself to his survivor's guilt.

Primary Differences Between Book and Film: The book is split into two parts, the first exploring the story from Jacob's perspective, the second exploring the story from the perspective of Ben, a neighbour of his whose parents survived the Holocaust. Though Ben plays a fairly significant role in the film, the film ultimately sticks with Jacob as its sole protagonist. The other big change is that by the end of the novel Jacob is dead, whereas the film ends on a much happier note, with Jacob alive and expecting a child with his second wife.

For the Book: Anne Michaels, Anne Michaels, and Anne Michaels. A celebrated poet before she wrote Fugitive Pieces, Michaels brings a lyrical quality to the story, unfolding it with vibrant, beautiful prose. Her writing style is so integral in terms of exploring the depths of the story that the film often relies on voice-over narration in order to move the story forward.

For the Film: Despite the reliance on voice-over narration (which is generally a sign of a lazy adaptation), writer/director Jeremy Podeswa does a great job at capturing the feeling of the book and translating it to the screen. The film moves gracefully, capturing the elusive and profound qualities of this story of love, loss and survival. The film is anchored by terrific performances from Stephen Dillane and Rade Serbedzija.

Winner: Draw. The film version was my favourite movie of 2008 and the book is a fantastic read. This is truly one of those rare cases where the movie lives up to the novel on which it is based.

Review: Il Postino (1994)

2011-11-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * * 1/2
Director: Michael Radford
Starring: Philippe Noiret, Massimo Troisi, Maria Grazia Cucinotta

Michael Radford's Il Postino (aka, the movie called The Postman that's actually good) is a lyrical and beautifully rendered story about love and friendship. Much rewarded at the time of its release, it is one of the few foreign language films to achieve crossover success with AMPAS, earning nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Adapted Screenplay (though it was not nominated for Foreign Language Film, as Italy chose to submit Giuseppe Tornatore's The Star Maker instead). Although it remains utterly charming, it does feel just a bit dated now, albeit still well worth a look.

Set in the early 1950s, Il Postino is about the exile of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) to a small village in Italy and the friendship he develops with Mario (Massimo Troisi), the postman charged with delivering his mail. Poorly educated and unable to express himself well, Mario turns to Pablo for advice to help him in his pursuit of Beatrice Russo (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), who works in the village cafe. With Pablo's help, Mario is able to overcome his shyness and articulate his feelings, though he still has to overcome the strong dislike of Beatrice's aunt - something for which Pablo is ill-equipped to help since his illicit poetry has a lot to do with the aunt's disapproval.

Despite the aunt's objections, Mario and Beatrice eventually marry, though Mario's desire for Pablo to be his best man presents a problem when the priest refuses to allow a communist to take part in the ceremony. Shortly after the wedding, Pablo learns that there is no longer a warrant out for his arrest and returns to Chile, leaving Mario feeling somewhat adrift. He writes to Pablo but does not receive a reply for several months and becomes disheartened when he finds that the letter is from Pablo's secretary and that it asks Mario to pack up his belongings. Mario's dream of an enduring friendship with Pablo seems lost, though Pablo's influence on him is never broken, leading to the story's bittersweet end.

Il Postino is the kind of light drama/gentle comedy that European filmmakers tend to be particularly good at making. It's grounded in "personality" rather than "plot," focusing on developing the characters, their relationships and their community first, and making the narrative arc secondary. The central relationship - that of Mario and Pablo - is well-developed and often moving, and the conflict that develops - Mario's feelings of abandonment after Pablo leaves and seemingly forgets all about him - is believable. The performances by Troisi and Noiret complement each other well, providing the film with its emotional core. That, combined with the fact that Troisi died just one day after completing filming, gives the film a deep sense of resonance.

Though Il Postino remains charming and many of its strengths are still obvious, there is nevertheless a somewhat muted/dated feeling to it watching it in 2011. It's still a really good movie, but I think the shine has worn off just a little bit and it isn't quite as enduring as some other films released around the same time. It's definitely worth revisiting, it's perhaps just not the instant classic it was thought to be in 1994.

Review: Melancholia (2011)

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * * *
Director: Lars von Trier
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsborough, Kiefer Sutherland

It probably says a lot about Lars von Trier as a filmmaker and/or person that he begins his tale of the apocalypse by showing that the earth will ultimately be destroyed, thereby removing any underlying sense of hope that might otherwise have marked the story. And yet, despite that, Melancholia may very well go down as one of von Trier's most light hearted films. Although perhaps not as challenging nor as provocative as some of his other recent work, it is nevertheless an entirely captivating and fascinating film.

Melancholia is split into two parts, each named for one of the sisters who act as the film's protagonists. The first part is named for Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and takes place at her wedding reception at the massive estate of her sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsborough), and brother-in-law, John (Kiefer Sutherland). The reception is fraught with tension as Justine and her new husband, Michael (Alexander Skarsgard), have arrived late to the reception, Justine's divorced parents (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling) are openly feuding, Justine's mother is vocal in her disapproval of the marriage and, in fact, the idea of marriage ("Enjoy it while it lasts," she tells them in her toast), and Justine's increasingly alienating behaviour not only enrages the wedding planner (Udo Kier) to the point where he can't even bring himself to look at her, but it also brings her marriage to a halt before it even really gets started. She senses something, something to do with a star that seems to burn brighter than normal, and it brings her to despair, though she cannot make the people around her understand why.

In part two, named for Claire, the source of Justine's uneasiness has become clear: there is a massive rogue planet called Melancholia on a collision course with earth - though scientists optimistically hope that Earth will merely experience a "fly by" with the Melancholia. While Claire is anxious about the planet, John tries to convince her that the so-called "dance of death" between Earth and Melancholia is just fear-mongering, and enthusiastically awaits the close encounter with the other planet. Justine, meanwhile, begins the chapter massively depressed and then is drawn out of it, growing calmer and more rational at the same rate that Claire seems to be falling apart. Justine accepts their fate and, in doing so, reverses the roles that she and Claire have always played.

The performances by Dunst and Gainsborough complement each other so beautifully that it's difficult to consider one without the other. Claire is the sensible one, the caretaker firmly grounded in reality. But, while Justine is flaky and the less dependable of the two, she's not necessarily "weaker;" her strengths just aren't terribly compatible with life as we know it. She's perfectly suited to deal with a reality in which Earth is on the verge of destruction, whereas Claire can't bring herself to accept it. Towards the end of the film, in what is perhaps its best scene, the sisters have a frank conversation about what will happen, in which Justince demonstrates that she's made peace with their fate and calmly lays out the things she knows to be true (such as that Earth will not be missed and that life on Earth is evil), while Claire demonstrates her inability to wrap her head around the planet's imminent destruction, asking simply where her son, Leo, will grow up. Claire's unwillingness to accept the truth (going so far as to attempt to run away from the estate, as if that might solve the problem) forces Justine to take charge and the transition occurs so smoothly that it's barely noticeable.

von Trier is a filmmaker that I'm more familiar with by reputation than experience, as many of his films (particularly Anti-Christ) have always sounded just a little too daunting and intense, but Melancholia makes me want to rectify that. From the darkly beautiful and operatic prologue, in which von Trier shows the entire story's trajectory, including the Earth's destruction, straight through to the nightmarish ending, Melancholia had me absolutely riveted. There are still a number of films I have left to see this year, but I have a hard time imagining that Melancholia won't be included in my year end best list.

Review: Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

2011-11-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * *
Director: Sean Durkin
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy

If this year follows the pattern of the last couple, which saw Jennifer Lawrence, Gabourey Sidibe, and Carey Mulligan breaking out of Sundance and riding a wave of critical praise to awards glory, then Elizabeth Olsen is well on her way towards a Best Actress nomination. With only a few film credits to her name (most of which were mid-90s vehicles for her sisters, the Olsen twins), she announces herself here as an actress to watch out for.

Moving back and forth through time, Martha Marcy May Marlene tells the story of Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) who is given the name "Marcy Macy" during her time in a cult (Marlene is the name all women in the cult use to identify themselves over the phone). The film opens with Martha/Marcy May's escape from the cult and its leader, Patrick (John Hawkes) and her reunion with her sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson). Lucy brings Martha to the Conneticut home she shares with her husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy), and Martha tells them nothing about the true nature of her two year long absence, though her increasingly odd behaviour suggests deep trauma.

In flashbacks we see Martha's life in the cult, how she's drawn in and made to feel that the only thing preventing her from being wholly accepted are her own boundaries, how she's ritualistically raped by Patrick and afterwards made to feel that it's a positive thing that has cemented her bond to the group, how she sinks deeper and deeper into group think and how and why she's jolted out of it and forced to run. In the present day we see that just because she's escaped the location of the cult, doesn't mean she doesn't continue to carry some of the values she adopted under Patrick's roof. She's quietly offended by Lucy and Ted's enormous house and money-focused existence - though not so offended that she's unwilling to benefit from it, as Ted is quick to point out. Besides the ideological remnants of her time with Patrick, she's also increasingly haunted by her memories and her growing instability shows just how fragile she really is beneath her confident and knowing veneer.

Olsen carries the film with aplomb, making it believable that Marcy would be susceptible enough to fall in with a cult, but also that she would be strong enough to leave it of her own accord. It's a performance that is equal parts vulnerability and self-assurance, one rooted in quiet intensity that slowly becomes uncoiled over the course of the film, as Martha begins to lose her ability to separate past from present.

The strengths of Martha Marcy May Marlene are rooted in the performances and the complex dynamics between the characters. Though their history is never fully elaborated on, Olsen and Paulson bring a sense of of it to Martha and Lucy's interactions which suggests that their two year disappearance from each other's lives is hardly unusual. The other key relationship in the film is the one between Martha and Patrick which is, of course, deeply disturbing. Hawkes, who earned an Oscar nomination for last year's Winter's Bone, delivers another powerful and darkly charismatic performance. Patrick is a scary guy (in look, if not necessarily in rhetoric, he seems to be channelling Charles Manson), but you can also see why someone as damaged and in need of validation as Martha might be drawn to him and might buy the line he's selling.

Though the film is well-acted and very well-directed (Sean Durkin crafts scenes of almost unbearable suspense as the film nears its conclusion), there are some weaknesses with respect to storytelling. Though it moves fairly easily between two time periods, I think that the elliptical narrative gives it the illusion of having more story than it truly possesses, and perhaps more substance as well. I still think that Martha Marcy May Marlene is a good film, but I think it reaches into the indie bag of tricks (which includes the ultra ambiguous ending) a little too often.

Review: J. Edgar (2011)

2011-11-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * 1/2
Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench

Stately and handsomely mounted but ultimately a bit empty, Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar is less a story than a survey course on a segment of American history (and enduring political gossip). It is stacked with fine performances - led by Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover - but performances alone can only get you so far when the film itself succumbs to the worst habits of the biopic genre.

Written by Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar for Milk), the story moves back and forth between two time periods: the 1960s and early 70s, when Hoover is nearing the end of his life and writing a book that he hopes will assure his legacy, and the 1930s when Hoover and the FBI are ascendant in power. A significant portion also takes place earlier, during the politically and socially unstable period that saw Anarchist bombings and would lead to the Palmer Raids of 1919/1920, and which would put Hoover in the position to rise to significant power. This period of Hoover's life, however, is used primarily for establishing his hatred of communists, his relationship with his mother (Judi Dench), and his lifelong (platonic) relationship with Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) who, as his secretary, is with him from the FBI's inception right up until Hoover's death and who, at one time, Hoover entertained notions of marrying.

Helen declines the marriage proposal (shocking, considering that Hoover's idea of a romantic date is taking her to the library and showing her the card catalogue system he implemented) and though Hoover later considers another woman as a potential wife, the film makes it clear that his heart belonged to Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), his second in command at the FBI. As envisioned by the film, the relationship between the two was devoted and emotionally intimate, but ultimately physically chaste due to the combination of the era they lived in, pressure from Hoover's mother (who tells him plainly that she would rather have a dead son than a gay son), and likely Hoover's own paranoia about evidence of a relationship with Tolson surfacing and being used against him - which is fair enough given the number of times he uses information about the sex lives of others to his own advantage. It's interesting that, in the end, the only person who is actually able to push back at Hoover and make him nervous is Richard Nixon, possibly the only contemporaneous figure who was as conservative, paranoid, and uncharismatic as himself.

As Hoover, DiCaprio delivers a restrained, but nevertheless effective, performance. The role requires that he play two layers simultaneously in that he has to project the person that Hoover wants to be in the minds of others and the man that he truly is behind the mask. Because the performance is so controlled, it might be easy to overlook the work that DiCaprio has put into it, but make no mistake: this is one of his finest performances to date. The supporting players are similarly excellent, particularly the note-perfect Watts as the loyal, but never naive, Gandy. There's a moment late in the film, when Hoover is plotting to take down Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandy is utterly horrified by what he's come to, that is the best example of the year (so far) of actors expressing everything while saying nothing. The dynamic between Hoover and Gandy is complex as their relationship is part friendship, part partnership and, towards the end, there's a degree to which Gandy steps into the role left open by Hoover's mother (albeit as a far less domineering figure). In comparison to DiCaprio, Watts and, of course, Dench as Hoover's tiger of a mother, Hammer is a little bit out of his league but he does sell Tolson's affection for Hoover, which in turn helps humanize Hoover as a character.

The problems with J. Edgar are the problems that are common to the biopic genre. It wants to tell a sweeping and comprehensive story and it wants to do so in the context of relating the story of someone's life, which is almost impossible to do since life doesn't unfold in such a way as to make for tidy narratives. The result is that instead of telling one congent and successful story, it tells several stories that are never afforded the proper depth and attention. It does make an attempt to break out of the conventional mould by suggesting that the story, told by Hoover through a series of ghost writers, is merely a last ditch attempt at self-aggrandizement on his part rather than the literal truth, but this element is never really developed enough to be meaningful. In the end, J. Edgar is merely an adequate film made memorable by the performances at its core.

Great Last Scenes: American Psycho

2011-11-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

Year: 2000
Director: Mary Harron
Great Because...: It manages to be the darkest moment in a film that is dark right from the beginning. To put it simply: Patrick Bateman is a fucked up guy living a fucked up, shallow existence - one in which he will forever be trapped and which may not even exist outside of his own head. Sort of fitting, don't you think?

Patrick Bateman is everything that's wrong with his era: he's vain, materialistic, and desires nothing but status. His life is nothing but empty symbols and when his rival, Paul Allen, displays slightly more impressive status symbols (specifically his business card), Patrick gives into his darkest urges and brutally murders him. He then goes on a murderous rampage, taking out a number of people (mostly women) before things finally catch up to him and he leaves a long, desperate message for his lawyer, confessing to everything and declaring himself "a pretty sick guy."

Certain that morning will bring the punishment he deserves (and, perhaps, masochistically desires), Patrick instead finds that his confession has come to nothing. Not only does his lawyer think the confession is a joke, he has recently had lunch with Paul Allen, suggesting that the serial killing spree has merely been a figment of Patrick's sick imagination. As the film closes and he realizes that his only punishment will be continuing to live the way that he is, Patrick sums up the story's anti-moral:

"My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing."

This deeply nihilistic ending is perfectly suited for the film that comes before it. Nothing in Patrick's life - indeed, nothing in the lives of anyone around him - matters, so why should there be any closure for him? Further, because he's so focused on empty accomplishments (such as having the most impressive business card), it's fitting that his only "true" accomplishments (the string of murders) are merely illusions, the knowledge of which leaves him more isolated and alienated from the rest of the world. His pain, such as it is, is something he will have to suffer alone and his prison will be the one in his own head, one from which he can never escape. It isn't what you can call an "uplifting" ending, but it is incredibly appropriate for the character that Patrick is. There is no meaning here, there is no meaning to him - it is nothing, which makes it perfect.

Canadian Film Review: Margaret's Museum (1995)

2011-11-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * *
Director: Mort Ransen
Starring: Helena Bonham Carter, Clive Russell, Kate Nelligan

Helena Bonham Carter is like a Venn diagram that shows the intersection of classy and crazy, equally at home in fare like The King's Speech and her films with the Merchant Ivory team, and as a host of creepy and freaky characters in Tim Burton's films. In Mort Ransen's Margaret's Museum she gets to do both at once, starring in a period piece about a hardscrabble mining town which eventually leads to her going totally insane. Good times.

Based on Sheldon Currie's novel "The Glace Bay Miners' Museum," the story is set in 1940s Cape Breton and centres on Margaret MacNeil (Bonham Carter). As the film opens Margaret has already lost both her father and a brother to life in the mines and lives with her hard-hearted mother, Catherine (Kate Nelligan), and younger brother, Jimmy (Craig Olejnik). She longs to escape but instead finds love with Neil Currie (Clive Russell), a charming Scot who sweeps her off her feet. Despite Catherine's warnings that Neil, who was once a miner but got himself fired, will lead her to ruin, Margaret marries him and they settle into a happy life together.

It's not long after the marriage, however, when financial problems begin to take their toll on the relationship and force Neil to go back to the mines so that the family can stay afloat. When accidents in the mine claim the lives of Neil and Jimmy, Margaret has a mental breakdown which leads to her being locked up in an institution. Upon her release she returns to the rundown house that Neil had been fixing up prior to his death and opens a museum in honour of the miners who've been lost. It's a nice thought, except for the rather extreme way that she has chosen to comemorate her lost loved ones.

Margaret's Museum is a quirky little indie film which moves easily between humour and drama, and deftly combines the tragic love story of Margaret and Neil, with the coming-of-age story of Jimmy. Although the story ends on a note of the grotesque/fantastical, it's grounded in gritty realism that is emphasized by Ransen's no frills direction. The emphasis here is on the characters and on the little world of their community and the film makes good use of its on screen talent to bring both to life. A lot of the plot elements are a bit formulaic, but because the characters themselves are distinct enough the familiarity of the narrative never really detracts from the film itself.

The supporting performances are strong, but the film lives and dies with the performance of Bonham Carter. She perfectly captures Margaret's small community shyness but blends it with an inner strength and a certain boldness that makes her stand out as a character. A character working his or her way towards a mental breakdown can seem like an invitation to overact, but Bonham Carter never seizes the opportunity to chew scenery and instead turns inward, expressing Margaret's madness with a quiet intensity and a dark twinkle to her eye, rather than by blowing up. It's an effective, often riveting performance that goes a long way towards making the film so special.

Filmography: Leonardo DiCaprio

2011-11-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

On Friday Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar hits theaters and with it the Oscar season truly gets started. Star Leonardo DiCaprio is an early frontrunner for a Best Actor nomination which, if it does occur, would shockingly only be his 4th nomination. Over the course of the last 21 years, DiCaprio's career has seen several phases, from childstar to cult heartthrob to superstar to serious and respected actor. Let's take a look back at his filmmography:

The Essential Works

What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993): DiCaprio was already somewhat well-known by the time this film came out thanks to his role on TV's Growing Pains, but is almost unrecognizable as Arnie, the mentally challenged younger brother of Johnny Depp's eponymous hero. His performance in the film earned him his first Oscar nomination and truly announced him as an actor to watch out for, but it's also the sort of performance that only could have worked at that exact stage in his career. If it had come any later it probably would have been about as well received as Sean Penn's performance in I Am Sam which, although it earned the actor an Oscar nomination, also became a punchline as a self-important acting exercise.

Catch Me If You Can (2002): This is a rarity amongst DiCaprio's films in that it's one in which he gives a performance that might be described as "joyful." As conman Frank Abagnale, Jr. he moves through multiple characters within the character, using his charm, charisma and, most importantly, his intelligence to keep his game in motion. Directed by Steven Spielberg and co-starring Tom Hanks, Catch Me If You Can is escapist, but in the most serious and expertly handled way.

The Aviator (2004): DiCaprio's dynamic performance as Howard Hughes earned him his second Oscar nomination. Over the course of the film DiCaprio captures the inherent contradiction of Hughes, that he was a larger than life man who did things that drew massive amounts of attention (from his aviation career to his love life to his career as a movie mogul), but also a recluse whose phobias made it just about impossible for him to be around other people. The performance is rich and complex and though the film tends to drag a bit, DiCaprio is never less than excellent.

The Departed (2006): Arguably the best of the DiCaprio-Martin Scorsese collaborations, The Departed finds DiCaprio playing a dual role of sorts, playing a cop so deep undercover that he might never be able to get out. A genre picture of the highest order, The Departed is easily one of the finest crime thrillers to come out in the last ten years and DiCaprio's intense and layered performance is one of its many highlights.

Revolutionary Road (2008): The film which reunited DiCaprio and Kate Winslet ended up getting burried under the weight of lofty expectations when it was released theatrically, but it's a film that is deserving of critical reassessment. DiCaprio and Winslet star as a couple torn apart by disillusionment in themselves and each other after having abandoned their youthful dreams for the sake of their adult responsibilities. Both actors deliver mature, intricate performances that plumb the depths of despair and keep the film afloat even when Sam Mendes' sometimes ponderous direction threatens to sink it.

Shutter Island (2010): Another so-called "genre" film from DiCaprio and Scorsese and another highlight of their collaboration. This moody and atmospheric psychological thriller sees DiCaprio as a cop tasked with unravelling a mystery... or does it? The film has plenty of twists and turns and an ambiguous ending and DiCaprio's performance is, as usual, top notch.

Inception (2010): Arguably the movie of 2010, Incepion also has an ambiguous and much discussed ending. A technical marvel with a tightly plotted narrative, the film has plenty to recommend it even before you start discussing the performances. DiCaprio's performce as the extraction expert tortured by his past anchors the film, helping to provide it with a sense of humanity and giving the audience an emotional entry point into the story.

The Intermediate Works

This Boy's Life (1993): Released about six months before Gilbert Grape (though not as widely seen), this was DiCaprio's breakthrough role as a serious young actor. Based on the memoir by Tobias Wolff, DiCaprio plays a young Wolff who struggles to deal with his violent and dominating stepfather. Still a teenager when he made the film, DiCaprio more than holds his own with co-stars Robert De Niro and Ellen Barkin.

The Basketball Diaries (1995): Scott Kalvert's adaptation of Jim Carroll's memoir about teen angst, heroin addiction, and basketball, is a deeply flawed film but has also become something of a cult favourite. It's also somewhat notorious for being one of the films singled out during the post-Columbine panic due to a sequence in which DiCaprio's character fantasizes about bringing a gun to school. The film is more than a little uneven, but the performances by DiCaprio and co-star Mark Wahlberg are fantastic.

Romeo + Juliet (1996): An argument could be made that Baz Luhrmann's modernized/punk version of the Shakespeare classic set the scene for the veritable tsunami of fame that swept DiCaprio up courtesy of Titanic. Playing the hero of the ultimate teen angst love story, DiCaprio (a thoroughly modern actor) is not entirely at home with the dialogue but brings a lot of passion and intensity to the role.

Marvin's Room (1996): For a film with so many stars - DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton (Oscar nominated for her performance), and Robert De Niro - Marvin's Room seems to have been rather easily forgotten. It's a shame since this is a solid family drama about two estranged sisters coming together after one of them is diagnosed with leukemia. The film makes the most of the complex dynamics of its characters and its top notch cast and it holds up really well today.

Titanic (1997): The career gamechanger, Titanic made DiCaprio the most famous and sought after actor in the world. A massive success when it was released, the tide of public opinion changed on this one fairly quickly, but it's better than its now battered reputation. Sure, the epic disaster film has a fair amount of cheese ("I'm king of the world!"), but it can't be said that DiCaprio and co-star Kate Winslet don't invest themselves fully in their roles as the tragic (and now iconic) lovers.

Gangs of New York (2002): To me, Gangs is an unweildly vanity project with several isolated moments of greatness (a Scorsese film, no matter how self-indulgent, cannot be entirely devoid of cinematic value), however, I know that a lot of people would argue otherwise and classify this film as a masterpiece. Like the film itself, I find DiCaprio's performance here a bit uneven, however co-star Daniel Day-Lewis' electrifying performance may very well be worth the price of admission.

Blood Diamond (2006): An action thriller masquerading as political commentary, Blood Diamond suffers from the same affliction of several of director Edward Zwick's films - it's a film with a grand idea/important issue to explore, but it does so in a terrifically shallow way. Still, at least it's trying to say something, which is more than you can say for a lot of films these days. DiCaprio earned his third Oscar nomination for his performance and as solid as it is, it's difficult not to think that the nomination was given because The Departed felt too much like an ensemble piece to justify giving him a Lead Actor nomination for that performance.

The Lesser Works

The Quick and the Dead (1995): A ridiculously silly movie, albeit a fairly entertaining one, Sam Raimi's western of female empowerment (well, sorta) stars DiCaprio as "The Kid," a fast shot with daddy issues out to prove himself. The film doesn't contain characters so much as types - Gene Hackman stars as the iron-fisted law in town, Sharon Stone is dreadfully miscast as the strong, silent Clint Eastwood-type, and Russell Crowe is featured as the man of God with a violent past - but while its waters may not run deep, it's not a bad way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Total Eclipse (1995): A now largely forgotten DiCaprio film from his pre-mainstream period. Here DiCaprio stars as poet/enfant terrible Arthur Rimbaud and, coming off the heels of The Basketball Diaries, it seems less like an opportunity for DiCaprio to stretch himself as an actor and more like an extension of his performance as Jim Carroll. Exploring the tumultuous relationship between Rimbaud and poet Paul Verlaine, the film wallows in the scandal of their lives but never really captures what made them such important figures.

The Man in the Iron Mask (1998): Based loosely on the work of Alexandre Dumas and the eponymous legend, this historical action adventure is kind of forgettable. Being DiCaprio's first post-Titanic release, it was fairly successful financially (though obviously not nearly as successful as its predecessor), but it's a plodding and generally charmless film that fails to capitalize on its assembled talent.

Celebrity (1998): All actors want to work with Woody Allen. After all, he's the man behind some of the best American comedies ever made. Unfortunately, for the better part of the last 20 years he's also been wildly inconsistent, which means that actors who sign on to work with him might end up in the next Vicky Cristina Barcelona or they might end up in the next Whatever Works. Though not out and out "bad," Celebrity is a really uneven film in which the number of things that work and the number of things that don't are just about equal.

The Beach (2000): Danny Boyle's realization of Alex Garland's novel of the same name is sort of a bridge film in terms of DiCaprio's career, joining his young heartthrob phase to his serious adult actor phase. All in all, the film is a fairly shallow adventure/utopia-gone-wrong, notable primarily for its beautiful location.

Body of Lies (2008): A fairly conventional action thriller from Ridley Scott that is perhaps a little too impressed with its own twists and turns. DiCaprio and co-star Russell Crowe deliver fine performances, but the film itself is too cookie-cutter to be of much note.

The Mystery

Don's Plum (2001): Since DiCaprio and Toby Maguire sued to keep this film out of exhibition in the US and Canada, I've never seen it, but it certainly sounds like a pretentious student film. Alas, I shall perhaps never know.

Review: Horrible Bosses (2011)

2011-11-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

* *
Director: Seth Gordon
Starring: Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell

Horrible Bosses has all the necessary ingredients for a great black comedy, but ends up feeling just a little bit undercooked. Yes, it has moments that, even if they don't quite attain greatness, at least deliver on comedy but with such a skilled cast you'd expect nothing less. If you see Horrible Bosses, chances are pretty good that you'll laugh, but I'd wager the chances are equally good that you'll forget the film completely not too long after.

The premise of Horrible Bosses is simple, relatively speaking. Three friends - Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day), and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) - hate their bosses - Harken (Kevin Spacey), Julia (Jennifer Aniston), and Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell), respectively - and decide that working for them is so unbearable that the only solution is to kill them. Since they would be obvious suspects in the murders, they hire a hitman (Jamie Foxx) to take care of the job, but when the hitman has to back out of doing the deed himself, the three enter into a "strangers on a train" situation wherein each will kill the boss of one of the others.

A plan this well thought-out can't possibly go wrong, which is why it immediately starts to go very wrong. While on a recon mission at Bobby's house, Nick and Dale accidentally do some of Bobby's cocaine (long story), Kurt leaves DNA everywhere (disgusting story), and they steal Bobby's phone, an important plot point for later. The next task is to stake out Harken's house, which ends with Harken going into anaphylactic shock after accidentally coming into contact with peanuts, and Dale saving him even though that's entirely contrary to the whole plan. The episode does, however, give the trio an idea: instead of murdering their bosses in an obvious way, they can arrange for "accidents" to befall them which will not arouse the suspicion of authorities. The new version of the plan is just as flawed as the original, however, and it isn't long before the trio finds themselves facing down the police in an interrogation room.

The problem with Horrible Bosses, first and foremost, is that it is never quite as daring or bold as its premise. At no point do you actually believe that the three protagonists will actually kill their bosses so the third act resolution plays like the proverbial get out of jail free card. The bigger problem is the film's undercurrent of nastiness. One rape joke indicates laziness on the part of the writers; multiple rape jokes are indicative of a complex. When you consider the film in context with the many, many articles that have been published in the last couple of years about how the economic collapse has taken its toll on the sense of masculinity of working men (specifically white men), and a discourse in which the word rape is often used hyperbolically (as in, "the recession is raping men of their pride"), Horrible Bosses, with its three white male protagonists and their preoccupation with sexual violation, starts to seem a bit like an empowerment film for the least disenfranshied group in the world.

All that being said, the thematic issues at play in Horrible Bosses could be overcome if the film was funny enough, but it's not. This is a wildly uneven film that can't focus long enough to actually build the necessary comic energy. There are funny moments and the performances by the three leads are solid enough, but the film just doesn't really hang together.

Review: Bad Teacher (2011)

2011-11-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

* * 1/2
Director: Jake Kasdan
Starring: Cameron Diaz

It's easy to review a movie that you either love or hate, it's harder to review a movie that you enjoyed but that, objectively, you know isn't really good. Bad Teacher is a movie that I liked a fair bit while I was watching it, but its flaws as a film (which are many) are always fairly prominent. It is, however, a huge leap forward for screenwriters Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, whose previous cinematic credit was the aggresively terrible Year One.

Cameron Diaz stars as Elizabeth Halsey, a middle school teacher who you might say hates teaching, except that pretty much nothing that she does actually qualifies as "teaching," so you might be opening yourself up to a semantics issue. After becoming engaged to a wealthy man Elizabeth happily gives up her job but when her fiancée realizes that she's a golddigger and tosses her out, she's forced to return to the job that she hates and try to find a new target. As the new school year begins, she quickly sets her sights on Scott (Justin Timberlake), a substitute teacher who happens to come from money, but she has competition in the form of Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch), also a teacher and one who has as much enthusiasm for the work as Elizabeth has antipathy.

But Amy is Elizabeth's competition in more ways than just one. Having decided to get breast enhancement surgery in order to help her quest to land a rich husband, and having discovered that the teacher whose class earns the highest score on the state's standardized test will be rewarded with a $5,700 bonus, Elizabeth sets out to claim it - a goal she's unlikely to reach given both her own abilities as a teacher and the fact that Amy has won the bonus several years in a row. After making a slight effort to actually teach her class, Elizabeth instead decides to just cheat, winning the bonus but also making Amy determined to take her down and expose her as the fraud that she is.

The frustrating thing about Bad Teacher is that there are multiple occasions on which it seems like it might start to gel, but it just never does. Diaz's performance as the boozing, pot smoking, lying, thieving Elizabeth is solid, making the character likeably wretched, but the film itself is a bit of a mess. Laying aside its very skewed moral compass (Amy is annoying, but it's kind of difficult to argue that she actually deserves her fate since she's actually totally right about Elizabeth), Bad Teacher is a really shapeless film. It has the beginnings of several plot threads - Elizabeth's feud with Amy, Elizabeth's pursuit of Scott, and Elizabeth's developing relationship with Russell (Jason Segal), the gym teacher - but never really focuses on any of them and instead just jumps back and forth between them. There's no sense of narrative cohesion, which is just emphasized by the fact that Elizabeth's personal arc, such as it is, involves her suffering no consequences and learning nothing.

That being said, Bad Teacher still manages to be a pretty funny movie. The humor is fairly broad but the actors - Diaz, in particular - work well within its confines. Punch makes for a great foil for Diaz (though, as I've said, it's difficult to really see her as the "villain" the film would have you believe she is), especially as she becomes increasingly desperate to deliver Elizabeth's comeuppance. While the film itself is far from perfect and doesn't fully hold together, it does manage to deliver on laughs.

Ebert's Greats #14: Seven (1995)

2011-11-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * * *
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman

Seven wasn't David Fincher's first feature film (that would be Alien 3), but it was the film that announced him as one of the defining directors of his generation. In lesser hands, Seven could have been just another gimicky thriller, a dark police procedural not unlike hundreds of other films of the genre. Instead, it's one of the greatest thrillers of the 90s, perhaps even of all time. Suffice it to say, going from Alien 3 to Seven is pretty much the exact opposite of a sophomore slump.

In an unnamed, rain-swept city, soon-to-be-retiring detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) meets his new partner, David Mills (Brad Pitt), and begins investigating a series of murders based on the seven deadly sins. As the victims mount up (each dying in a more horrific way than the last) and it becomes apparent that the killing spree is part of a long-range plan on the part of the killer, Somerset and Mills sink deeper and deeper into the investigation, trying to capture the man they refer to as John Doe. John Doe, however, is always one step ahead and is never "caught;" he simply folds the police into his game, proving himself to be the ultimate puppet master.

As the investigation begins to take over their lives, Somerset and Mills begin to develop a friendship which leads to Somerset becoming a confidant to Mills' wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow). The marriage is going through a difficult period, with Tracy unhappy about the move to the city and worried about the prospect of raising children there. She's so worried that she hasn't told her husband about her pregnancy and is considering having an abortion, a secret which Somerset keeps on her behalf and which will figure in John Doe's climactic coup de grace.

There's a lot about Seven that's basic genre boilerplate, from the "creative" serial killer, to the pairing of the stoic, often silent senior partner and the hot-headed younger cop, to the rainy, decomposing setting. It's Fincher's masterful direction that really raises the film to the next level, transforming it from standard to seminal. Gore is easy, and darkness is a feature of just about every other movie; Fincher brings feeling to the images, a sense of dread, a tangible sense of the moral decay that is being reflected in the city itself. One of the reasons why Seven was and remains so powerful is that it actually engages with moral questions rooted in its premise, rather than simply using the seven deadly sins as a shallow narrative device. The film's ending is not just a last minute twist; it's a complex and psychologically shattering finale that puts humanity itself under the microscope, asking where the breaking point lies.

Anchoring the story are the performances by Freeman and Pitt, both of which are solemn, but in different ways. Freeman's Somerset has the world weariness of a survivor, someone who has seen more than anyone should and just keeps going. Pitt's Mills, particularly as the film reaches the end, is more shellshocked, realizing that there may be more evil in the world than he's quite prepared for. The two play off of each other very well, making it somewhat surprising that in 16 years no one has ever paired them up again. Then again, it can certainly be argued that the point was made with just one film - one terrific, enduring thriller of a film.

Review: The Rum Diary (2011)

2011-10-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

* *
Director: Bruce Robinson
Starring: Johnny Depp, Michael Rispoli, Aaron Eckhart, Amber Heard, Giovanni Ribisi

The Rum Diary has the feeling of being a labour of love. Originally set to begin filming in 2000, the project ended up stuck in development hell until finally being filmed in early 2009 and then having its release delayed until now. The novel on which the film is based has a similar history, having been written by Hunter S. Thompson in 1961 but not being published until 1998. The film version plays like a love letter to Thompson, but one which unfortunately never reaches a level of cohesiveness that matches its affection.

Johnny Depp stars as Paul Kemp, an aspiring novelist newly arrived in Puerto Rico to write for the San Juan Star, a paper on its last legs. After pushing the limits of his new employer's hospitality by drinking his way to a large bill at the hotel the Star is paying for, Paul moves in with Bob Salas (Michael Rispoli), the paper's photographer, with whom he shares various drunken adventures. The pair is sometimes joined by Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi), who also works for the paper but never shows up in the daytime because if he does, he'll get fired, and is the sort of drunk who drinks so much that his bloodstream is pretty much 90% alcohol at all times.

Shortly after arriving in San Juan, Paul meets Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), a powerful wheeler dealer who brags that while a lot of people know how to make money on the island, he knows how to get it out. Sanderson is involved in a plot to buy up land to build hotels and wants to hire Paul to help by writing brochures that will sell people on the idea. The more he learns about the plan, and the more he begins to see how the locals are suffering as a result of the development of the island into one giant tourist haven, the less Paul wants to be involved but he finds himself continuously drawn back to Sanderson due to the charms Sanderson's fiancée, Chenault (Amber Heard).

Depp's performance transitions easily between suave and smooth and down and dirty, his character equally at home in sports jackets and with his hair slicked back, and looking like he's coming out the other side of a months long bender. His ability to move between different worlds is further emphasized by the company he keeps, with Bob and Moberg representing the shabby, rough and tumble end of the spectrum, and Sanderson and Chenault representing the more glamorous other side. Although Eckhart and Heard are good in their respective roles, the film only really comes alive in the scenes Depp shares with Rispolo and Ribisi, both of whom render great performances. If the film had focused more on the adventures of Paul, Bob and Moberg (or, alternately, if it had focused more on developing the hotel plot and love triangle), it would have been a much better, move cohesive film.

Although not really connected to 1998's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, since both films are based on novels by Thompson and star Depp as characters who are Thompson stand-ins, The Rum Diary does end up seeming like a pseudo-prequel. However, while Fear and Loathing worked in large part because director Terry Gilliam's surreal stylization captured the spirit of Thompson's writing style, part of the reason why The Rum Diary doesn't work is that the visual style is so straight forward that rather than seeming like a fever dream, the film just rambles from one adventure to another in search of something that can connect its disjointed parts. The film never really decides what it wants to be about and so it feels like the beginning of several stories that never end up going anywhere. There are moments when The Rum Diary feels like it might start to come together, but ultimately its just a bunch of loose threads winding around each other but leading nowhere.

Review: Training Day (2001)

2011-10-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * * 1/2
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke

In terms of bad movie cops, Denzel Washington's Alonzo Harris ranks right up there with Popeye Doyle and The Lieutenant from Bad Lieutenant. Crooked and violent, he completely undermines the concept of "to serve and protect," a concept which his new partner, Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), considers as gospel. Bad cops and mismatched partners are nothing new in the world of fiction, of course, but few such stories have been brought to life with as much intensity as Antoine Fuqua's Training Day.

Training Day takes place over the course of one (very) eventful day as Hoyt trains as a narcotics officer with Harris. Harris immediately puts Hoyt on edge, greeting him with coldness and proceeding to brutalize him psychologically and physically as the day progresses. During the course of the day, Harris manipulates Hoyt into smoking PCP-laced pot, ropes Hoyt into the murder/robbery of a drug dealer and informant (Scott Glenn) and blackmails him into helping the cover up, and just generally does everything that he can to shatter Hoyt's view of right and wrong.

By about mid-way through the film, Hoyt seems pretty much completely demoralized and broken, having betrayed his own values and taken the first step over into the dark side where Harris reigns supreme. However, after Harris abandons him in the clutches of Mexican gangsters and he escapes through the sort of deus ex machina plot twist that only happens in fiction, he regains his sense of self and sense of purpose. He sets out to track Alonzo down and retrieve the money that Alonzo stole from the drug dealer, money that Alonzo needs in order to pay off the Russian mob, which leads to an extended shoot-out/fight scene that serves as the film's climax.

The film transitions fairly smoothly from dark character drama to full out action movie, primarily because the tension is so high from beginning to end. Alonzo's fate is telegraphed virtually from the beginning as he strides through the world as if it owes him something, as if everyone around him ought to accomodate his whims. He walks in front of cars, stops his own in the middle of busy streets, does whatever he wants, whenever he wants to and has no fear of anyone, even if they happen to be shooting at him. No one with a God complex this overwhelming can possibly avoid taking a major fall and when Alonzo's world, which he has ruled with an iron fist for so long that he takes his power for granted, begins to crumble, it unfolds in spectacular fashion.

Washington won Best Actor for his performance, a fact which in some circles is considered a "make up" Oscar for having lost previously (either for 1999's The Hurricane or 1992's Malcolm X, depending on who you ask), but I think this is unfair. His performance is highly engaging and exciting and he creates a very memorable, and sometimes terrifying, character where a lesser actor would have found himself completely done in by the character and the moments which present an open invitation for scenery chewing. Washington's high octane performance is balanced out by Hawke's much more grounded performance, which helps tether the story to the real rather than allowing it to spiral completely into the realm of the fantastic. Although some suspension of disbelief is required (could everything that happens in this movie really happen in the span of one day?), Training Day is a taut and effective thriller.

Review: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

2011-10-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * *
Director: Jake Kasdan
Starring: John C. Reilly

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is, quite possibly, the most underrated comedy of the last five years. I remember seeing trailers for it when it was out in theatres and thinking that it looked really lame, but it's actually pretty much entirely awesome from beginning to end. Written by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan (who also directs), this is a sharp and hilarious send up of the musical biography genre.

Walk Hard begins the way so many biopics do, with the protagonist (John C. Reilly) in the present day about to set foot on stage for a performance that will solidify his legacy. As he's staring into space a stage manager calls to him that it's just about time for him to go on, only to be told by Dewey's drummer, Sam (Tim Meadows), that he's going to need a minute because before he can go on, he needs to "think about his whole life." The story then goes back to the beginning and the incident that will define the rest of Dewey's life, when he and his musical prodigy brother, Nate, spend an innocent day engaged in such normal childhood activities as tractor vs. horse chicken, rattlesnake baiting, and welding, only to have things turn bad when a machete fight results in Nate "being cut in half pretty bad." Nate dies and their father blames Dewey (even though, to be fair, the machete fight was Nate's idea) and spends the rest of his life periodically reminding Dewey that "the wrong kid died!"

Following Nate's death Dewey turns to music and at the age of fourteen sets out on his own with his twelve year old girlfriend, Edith. One of the film's funniest gags is that from the age of fourteen onwards Dewey is played by Reilly and Edith is played by Kristin Wiig, with absolutely no attempt to make them look younger than their actual ages. Nate and Edith marry and have approximately twenty kids in the span of about a couple years and no matter how successful Dewey becomes (successful enough to buy a monkey and a giraffe), Edith never stops believing that he's going to fail. After recording his signature song, "Walk Hard," however, Dewey's career takes off and he sets out on the road where he eventually meets his inevitable second wife, Darlene (Jenna Fisher), and becomes addicted to various kinds of drugs.

Dewey's life unfolds as a series of stints in rehab and subsequent career resuscitations which allow the film to cycle through parodies of a number of musicians. Though Walk Hard owes its most obvious debts to Walk The Line and Ray and, by extension, to Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, Dewey at various times also resembles Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, and a Pet Sounds era Brian Wilson. While moving through the stages of Dewey's life and career - and employing many of the tropes favoured by the biopic genre, especially the reliance on montages for the sake of time compression and narrative tidiness - the film manages the difficult task of being a self-referential parody (at the film's midpoint, when Dewey is at the height of his addictions, he randomly screams, "Goddamnit, this is a dark fucking period!") while also still featuring solidly constructed characters and a sound story. The thing that separates movies like this from the Date Movie/Epic Movie/Disaster Movies of the world is that actual effort has gone into it and, even though it's a parody film, it can still be taken seriously as a film.

Walk Hard succeeds because it finds the right balance between playing it straight and flat out acknowledging the silliness of what it's doing, and also because the music featured in the film can actually be taken seriously as music that could conceivably have been popular in the real world. Reilly's performance, though broad in parts according to the dictates of the film's tone, is engaging and well realized and he's surrounded by terrific supporting and cameo performances (including Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzmann as The Beatles in the film's nod to the genre's sometimes dreadful miscasting). When it was released in theatres in December of 2007, Walk Hard topped out at about $20 million. For comparison's sake, Alvin and the Chipmunks, which was released one week earlier, took home $361 million. Needless to say, the wrong movie bombed.

Review: Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)

2011-10-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * * *
Director: Werner Herzog

I hate 3D. Really, really hate it. Nine times out of ten, I think it's completely unnecessary and little more than a money grab. But then there's that tenth time, that film that makes you grateful that 3D technology exists. Werner Herzog's documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams is one of those films, a spellbinding and thoroughly awe inspiring film about art and its capacity to bridge unfathomable temporal distances, drawing the echoes of the past into the present.

In 1994 in the Ardeche department of southern France, the Chauvet Cave (named after its first modern explorer) was discovered and, in it, the oldest known cave paintings in the world. Sealed for tens of thousands of years by a rock slide, the contents of the cave have been perfectly preserved, the paintings looking as if they have only just been completed, though dating techniques date them as about 32,000 years old. In order to protect this rarest of finds, the cave has been sealed once again and access to it limited primarily to scientists and art historians. Only with special permission from the French minister of culture was celebrated director/noted crazy mofo Werner Herzog allowed to enter the cave and even then under major restrictions.

Herzog was limited to three crew members and battery-powered handheld equipment that gave off no excess heat. They could not touch the cave's wall or floor and instead had to stay firmly on the 2 foot wide walkway that has been built along part of the cave, and they had only 24 hours (4 hours a day over the course of 6 days) in which to film in the cave. When they reach the end of the walkway, they're shown one of the cave's most intriguing sections, where a partial view of a painting suggests a vision of a chimerical figure. The painting, however, shows only the lower half of the figure while the rest of it remains (for now) a mystery, out of view of the walkway, which can get no closer because the ground is too precious, the integrity of the fossils embedded in it would be compromised by building the walkway any further. Elsewhere in the cave there are a series of handprints, and drawings of various animals that appear side-by-side but which carbon dating reveals were drawn about 5 thousand years apart.

The paintings display an astonishing level of sophistication, several designed to give the illusion of movement (an illusion which may have emphasized by the flickering torchlight that the artists would have been working with and which Herzog's lights attempt to emulate). In addition to the paintings, the cave also contains the fosselized remains of cave bears (there is also evidence of some form of ceremonial event having taken place involving cave bear skulls), and the preserved footprint of a child left approximately 27,000 years ago. In unfolding the contents of the cave for us Herzog manages to be both very direct, touching on the scientic explanations for how everything has been preserved, while still maintaining the natural sense of wonder that these finds inspire.

The 3D technology is used here to demonstrate how the artists worked with the shape of the cave's walls, folding their images around curves and using the natural bulges and contours of the rock to suggest the musculature of their subjects. Although I believe that the film would still be wholly compelling and fascinating in 2D, I really can't stress how much it should be seen in 3D if at all possible. Not only does it look beautiful but, given that the caves are kept under lock and key, it's the closest the majority of us will ever get to this amazing piece of our collective past. Rather than diminishing the artistry of the film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams' use of 3D brings the past to life in a remarkable and very moving way.

Review: The Ides of March (2011)

2011-10-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * * 1/2
Director: George Clooney
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, George Clooney, Evan Rachel Wood, Marissa Tomei

"Because how one ought to live is so far removed from how one lives that he who lets go of what is done for that which one ought to do sooner learns ruin than his own preservation: because a man who might want to make a show of goodness in all things necessarily comes to ruin among so many who are not good. Because of this it is necessary for a prince, wanting to maintain himself, to learn how to be able to be not good and to use this and not use it according to necessity."
- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

As the junior campaign manager for a Presidential candidate, Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) is an idealist in a profession that opens the doors wide to disillusionment. He's campaigning for Pensylvania Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney), a man he believes to be the real thing, a politician with integrity intact who can actually make a difference. Stephen is on the fast track, well-regarded within political circles and the right hand man of Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the senior campaign manager. Although he claims to be "married to the campaign," he finds time to start a relationship with Molly Sterns (Evan Rachel Wood), an intern on the campaign and the daughter of the chairman of the DNC.

Aside from Molly - who refers to Stephen as "the big man on campus" within the campaign - Stephen also attracts the attention of Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), the campaign manager of Morris' rival, an Arkansas Senator whose chances of winning the election are slim, but who may be able to finagle the Democratic nomination by making the right kind of deal with the influential Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright). Against his better judgment, Stephen agrees to meet with Duffy, who offers him a job and reveals a bit of information about Thompson's ambitions. Stephen declines the job offer and ignores what he's been told about Thompson. While doing one or the other might be permissable, having done both sinks him with Zara when it all comes out, leaving Stephen scrambling, suddenly forced to find a way to sink or swim where before he was sailing smoothly.

Based on a play by Beau Willimon and adapted for the screen by Clooney and Grant Heslov, The Ides of March is fast moving and tightly plotted, even if its subject matter doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel. It's no surprise to anyone at this point that politics corrupts, that the climb to the top often necessitates lightening the load by shedding ideals and morality, and as the narrative winds its way through various victories and reversals, it's no surprise to watch as the characters drop their ideal facades and reveal the hunger underneath. The characters want power - from Mike and Stephen, to Thompson, to Paul and Tom, to Ida (Marissa Tomei), a reporter who will play any angle in order to walk away with the scoop - and will do what needs to be done in order to attain it, even if it means going completely against the grain of the image they're trying to project.

Where The Ides of March does give a new spin to the familiar story of political maneuvering is that it entirely removes party affiliation from the equation. This isn't a story about the Presidential race itself, but about a primary campaign, which means there's no "Democracts = good," "Republicans = bad" messages because all of the characters are of the same party. This is to the film's benefit because it removes the argument that liberal Hollywood is hard on Republicans and allows the story to comment on the contemporary political system without seeming to have an agenda that might alienate roughly half the audience. As it is, The Ides of March can acknowledge the flaws in the political system without taking sides and becoming a piece of minor propaganda.

Clooney, in his fourth outing as director, keeps the story moving at a brisk pace that balances out the more predictable elements of the plot. As an actor he embodies the ideal image of a politician - charming without seeming slick; informed without being dry - and is content to let Gosling take the lead, remaining in the shadows while Gosling's Stephen drives the narrative. Gosling, in a completely different mode as an actor compared to his performance in last month's Drive, is up to the task of carrying the film, guiding the audience through the stages of Stephen's disillusionment without ever missing a beat. The final shot of the movie, an extended closeup of Gosling's face, is chilling because Gosling has shown that Stephen is capable of just about anything and there's no telling what he's planning next. The subtle shifting of his facial features in this scene is perhaps the finest acting Gosling has done all year - and he's had a pretty great year.

Although The Ides of March has "prestige" written all over it, what with its multitude of Oscar winners and nominees and the very high expectations of Oscar watchers, it may be a little too glossy to make the final cut with the Academy. It's a very good film but it might be too neat, too tidy; it makes it look so easy that one might overlook the craft behind the enterprise. Whether it survives the Oscar campaigning season or not, though, it's definitely worth a look.

Review: Meek's Cutoff (2011)

2011-10-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * * 1/2
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Starring: Michelle Williams

Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff is the kind of movie that only a cinephile could really like. It is minimalist to the extreme and consists of a lot of scenes which are simply long shots of people in pioneer garb walking through the desert, growing increasingly despondent. It's the kind of film that could easily be called pretentious were it not for Reichardt's abilities as a craftsman.

Based on a true story, Meek's Cutoff is set in 1845 and follows an ill-fated journey along the Oregon Trail. Three groups of settlers - Soloman and Emily Tetherow (Will Patton and Michelle Williams), Thomas and Millie Gately (Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan), and William and Glory White (Neal Huff and Shirley Henderson) and their son, Jimmy (Tommy Nelson) - are being led west by Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), a man who talks a big game but may not actually have the knowledge to back it up. As the journey stretches on with no end in sight, and water and supplies start to become scarce, tensions rise between the settlers and Meek, particularly after the capture of The Indian (Rod Rondeaux), who Meek wants to kill in order to prevent him from signalling to his tribe, and who Tetherow wants to use in the hope that he can lead them to water.

The dynamics of the group shift dramatically with the introduction of The Indian, creating a division between the members of the group who distrust him and want to kill him, and those who want his help. Tetherow argues for keeping The Indian alive and tries to put the others' minds at ease, though the possibility that they will be led into a trap instead of to water is constant. Still, with his authority undercut, Meek falls out of the leadership role, passing it on to Tetherow and putting the lives of the rest of the group in his hands and on his conscience.

Meek's Cutoff is an extremely spare film. There is little dialogue and little plot; it is dependent almost entirely on the atmosphere of dread and on the way that the relationships between the characters are brought out. Fortunately Reichardt is the kind of filmmaker who can really make more out of less and so even though this is the kind of film where "nothing" happens, it's still a powerful and engaging work. One of the most interesting things about it is the way that it examines the balance of power between its male and female characters. The male characters are nominally "in charge," making all the decisions about where they're going, how long they'll travel during a day, etc. But the relationships between the individual couples demonstrate varying degrees of partnership, with the relationship between the Tetherows coming closest to one of equality. Emily speaks to Soloman in a direct way, offering her opinions of the way the journey is progressing, and when it comes to making the decision to throw items away in order to lighten their load, Soloman leaves it to Emily to decide what stays and what gets left behind.

Of the characters, Emily is the most clearly drawn, the one the narrative looks to again and again to give it some sense of shape and purpose. She's a very active character, even when compared to the male characters. There's a moment late in the film when she offers to repair The Indian's moccasin, explaining to Millie that she wants him to owe her something. In this moment and various others throughout the film, we're given the sense that she's not someone who will go down without a fight; she's someone who will find a way to survive. Williams' performance is strong and subtle which is perfectly in harmony with Reichardt's directing style. There is a confidence to the film, a knowledge that there is no need for embelishments. Although I don't think that Meek's Cutoff is quite as strong as Reichardt and Williams' previous collaboration, Wendy and Lucy, it's still a really good film, just a hair short of greatness.

Review: The Conspirator (2011)

2011-10-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * *
Director: Robert Redford
Starring: James McAvoy, Robin Wright

History is not linear; it’s circular. What goes around comes around again and again, which means that the best way to understand the events of the present is to look towards the past. Though Robert Redford’s The Conspirator takes place in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, it is equally about the current war on terror and the way that governments and the public react in times of uncertainty and political instability. At its core, the explores the question of how liberty can be of any value when governments can suspend during the times when it is needed the most.

The film begins, more or less, with the assassination of Lincoln, and the attempted assassinations of William Seward and Andrew Jackson. Washington is in a state of chaos as the authorities search for the culprits and worry about further attacks and/or a resurgence of Confederate forces, but most of the men involved in the conspiracy are quickly captured (though the most famous, John Wilkes Booth, is killed) and imprisoned to await a military trial. When they fail to capture one of the alleged conspirators, John Surrat, they settle instead for his mother, Mary (Robin Wright Penn), who ran the boarding house where the conspiracy is alleged to have been hatched. Facing death for the part she is accused to have played in the assassination, Mary is originally to be represented by Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), but before the trial begins he realizes that it would be better for her to have a Northerner for a lawyer and enlists his friend, Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) to takeover. Aiken is reluctant, due to his inexperience as a trial attorney, but also because he fought in the war for the Union and believes that his client is guilty.

As the trial gets underway, Aiken begins to have a change of heart about defending Mary, less because he believes in her innocence than because the way the trial proceeds offends him to his very core. The trial is essentially for show as Mary is denied the right to be tried by a jury of her peers, denied the right to speak in her own defence, and denied the right to examine the evidence against her prior to trial. The die was cast with her arrest but because the United States was founded on principles of liberty and equality, those in charge have to at least engage in the formality of a trial. Though he eventually softens towards Mary, Aiken’s passion is really for the principle of fairness. After all, if the government can do this to Mary today, there is no telling who they might do it to tomorrow.

The parallels of the film’s story to the current situation with the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are unmistakable. In the film as in reality, civil liberty is suspended in the name of national security, which begs the question: how do you fight in the name of freedom by employing the weapons of terror and tyranny? Redford and screenwriter James D. Solomon create in The Conspirator a sharp criticism of this gross hypocrisy and for the most part they create a very engaging story out of it, too. On a thematic level the film is very strong, but its cuts corners a little bit when it comes to characterization. For example, the relationship between Aiken and Mary, which should be central, is not quite as developed as the film would like you to think it is. When John Surate tells Aiken towards the end that he’s been “more of a son” to Mary than himself, it rings somewhat hollow because it’s a matter of tell rather than show. The story doesn’t really build the relationship between Aiken and Mary enough to justify that comment. Yes, Aiken is upset by what happens to Mary, but it’s less about how he feels about her as a person than it is about his growing disillusionment with what he thought he fought and nearly died for.

McAvoy is a consistently dependable actor and brings the right mixture of conviction and self-doubt to the role of Aiken. Aiken is a strong man and gradually becomes suited for the role he’s been thrust into, but he’s not larger than life or indestructible. There is a growing air of defeat about him as everything in his life – his professional reputation, his social standing, his relationship with the woman he’s long expected to marry (Alexis Bledell, slightly out of her depth in this role) – slips away and McAvoy plays that to great effect. Wright also fares well as Mary, creating a complex character out of one who might have been little more than a symbol of noble suffering. The interesting thing about the film is that Mary is not a character with clean hands; she knew that something was going to happen to Lincoln, though she didn’t know exactly what, but didn’t turn the conspirators in to the authorities because she didn’t want to turn on her own son. It’s the fact that she isn’t a complete innocent that gives the film its real sense of meaning. It’s easy to defend an innocent person, to feel outraged that someone who did nothing wrong should be persecuted without cause and subjected to a trial that makes a mockery of the justice system. But even the guilty deserve a fair trial in a democracy, otherwise what’s the point of democracy? Although The Conspirator is occasionally a bit heavy handed in this message, it’s a solid film and, unlike so many films today, at least it has something to say.

Review: The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

2011-10-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * 1/2
Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal

Sometimes you just have to turn off your brain in order to enjoy a movie. If you actually thought about it and took it seriously, Roland Emmerich's disaster epic The Day After Tomorrow... well, actually, you can't take it seriously. It's an inescapably silly movie. It is quite possibly even sillier than the parody version South Park did. The good news is that none of that means that the film is without a bit of entertainment value.

Like virtually all movies of its type, The Day After Tomorrow rests on the shoulders of character types - not actual "characters," mind you, but "types" with whom the audience is already familiar from countless other stories. There's the guy with all the answers who no one will listen to until it's too late (Dennis Quaid), the self-sacrificing sidekick (Jay O. Sanders), the young man who has never been able to work up the nerve to admit to the girl he likes that he likes her (Jake Gyllenhaal), the girl in question who will of course be injured in some way before the end of the film (Emmy Rossum), and the martyr who refuses to leave the story's most helpless character behind (Sela Ward). These characters are quickly, efficiently established as the story moves on to its premise, which is the real star of the show: global warming is about to thrust the earth into a new ice age.

As the film sees it, global warming has reached such a critical stage that massive climate change occurs pretty much instantly, transforming all of the northern hemisphere in a matter of days. One minute people are minding their own business and the next they're dealing with multiple tornadoes, or enormous tidal waves, or some other meteorological phenomena, and in the moment after that they must contend with the drop into sub-zero temperatures. As science, the film is junk; as spectacle, it works fairly well. A good chunk of the film takes place in New York and the scenes of its destruction are really well done, starting with flooding and moving on to the city being frozen over. In a movie like this, it's the effects that matter because the story is so absurd that you can't really invest in the characters. To The Day After Tomorrow's credit, the effects are worth investing in.

It should also be noted that while, as a whole, the film is kind of dumb, it does have brief flashes of narrative brilliance. For example, when people begin heeding the warning to flee south and suddenly the political conversation about the US-Mexico border is turned on its head, with Americans sneaking illegally into Mexico, it's actually kind of darkly funny. Next time people start talking about building a border wall to stop illegals and their "anchor babies," someone should remind them that they'll be singing a different tune if The Day After Tomorrow comes true. Less hilarious is the fact that the film's Vice President, not very subtly modeled on Dick Cheney, ends up becoming President, albeit a President in weather imposed exile in Mexico and of a country where a significant portion of the population has just been killed.

The Day After Tomorrow isn't the kind of trascendant action movie that can be classified as truly "good" despite its absurdities, but it is the kind of action movie that is so gloriously stupid that you just accept it for what it is and enjoy it on its own dubious merits. It's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's enjoyable enough as a bit of mindless entertainment.

Friday's Top 5... Scary Movie Houses

2011-09-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

#5: The House of Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher)

Jean Epstein's silent classic The Fall of the House of Usher (adapted from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe) is all about the dreamy (well, nightmarish) atmosphere. Of course, a story that takes place in a house that has a tomb in the basement only needs a little atmosphere to be entirely creepy.

The Victorian Mansion (The Changeling)

The Changeling is a genuinely creepy ghost story in which George C. Scott discovers a conspiracy involves murder and identity switching - and almost gets killed by the strange goings on of his new house in the process.

#3: The House (The Amityville Horror)

A house so scary it requires multiple movies. By my calculation there will be yet another movie based on the "true" story of the Amityville house in about... five years. Mark my words.

#2: Count Orlock's Castle (Nosferatu)

There's a reason the villager's won't go anywhere near the castle in which Count Orlock (aka Dracula) resides. If only Hutter (Jonathan Harker in other versions of the story) had heeded the warnings.

#1: The Overlook Hotel (The Shining)

Okay, technically it's not a house but the Torrance family did live there... for a while.

Review: Three Kings (1999)

2011-09-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * * *
Director: David O. Russell
Starring: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube

1999 was a great year in film. It was the year of Fight Club, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty and Boys Don't Cry, just to name a few. These movies were great in 1999 and they all hold up really well today, though none feel quite as prescient as David O. Russell's Three Kings. Set during the First Gulf War, the film tackles subject matter that is arguably more relevant now than ever, as if Russell (who wrote the screenplay in addition to directing) anticipated the issues that would dominate the last decade of political discourse.

Three Kings begins on a very meta note, with Mark Wahlberg coming into frame and asking over his shoulder, "Are we shooting?" But it's not Wahlberg the actor addressing Russell the director; rather, it's Wahlberg's character, Troy Barlow, asking one of his comrades if they're still shooting Iraqi soldiers. This first scene not only establishes the film's underpinings of self-referentiality, it also establishes the sense of confusion that permeates the story. Soldiers don't know whether the war is over or ongoing, don't really know what their obligations are to Iraqi civilians, and in some cases are unaware that they have arab allies in addition to enemies.

After obtaining a map leading to purloined bullion from Kuwait, Troy and his friends, Chief (Ice Cube) and Conrad (Spike Jonze) join forces with Archie Gates (George Clooney), and set off to find the bunker where the gold is being kept. Although finding the gold is, all things considered, relatively easy, in the process they also rescue several political prisoners, which kick starts a series of confrontations with Iraqi soldiers still loyal to Sadaam Hussein. In the confusion following a firefight, Troy is captured while the other three are rescued by rebels who take them to their underground hideout. While Troy endures brutal torture at the hands of Sadaam's loyalists, his cohorts find themselves making a deal, agreeing to help the rebels and refugees cross the border into Iran, in exchange for their help in rescuing Troy.

Three Kings is a movie that isn't easy to classify. It's a war movie, obviously, with very strong political overtones and a very direct point-of-view, not to mention a lot of action. It's also a heist movie, a drama, and a satire. In addition to the story following the soldiers, there's also a subplot involving reporter Adriana Cruz (Nora Dunn), who gets as close to the action as possible, but still struggles to find an actual story there. By the time of the march towards the Iranian border, Adriana is right there alongside the soliders and the refugees, finally able to document that something is actually happening. Her scenes with her military liaison, Wogeman (Jamie Kennedy) - who is only her liaison because her actual liaison, Archie, has pawned her off on him - are some of the film's funniest, adding a welcome bit of levity to a film that might otherwise be overburned by darkness and brutality.

What's particularly interesting about Three Kings in 2011 is its examination of the role of the "liberator" in the post-liberated society. The Americans toppled Sadaam with the help of rebels but, as characters in the film point out time and again, left their allies hanging to deal with the fallout on their own once the limited scope of their mission was complete. The arguments which take place between the characters in the film are interesting because, when considered in conjunction with the discourse surrounding the current occupation of Iraq, it demonstrates the "damned if they do, damned if they don't" position that the US often finds itself in with respect to its foreign policy. They didn't stick around long enough the first time and are seen as abandoning the civilians; they've stayed too long the second time and are seen as stiffling Iraqi self-determination in order to protect their own interests.

Three Kings is an often intense film (I honestly can't over emphasize how difficult the torture scenes are to watch), vividly brought to life by Russell. The three leads are great in their respective roles, with Wahlberg in particular infusing the story with a strong sense of humanity. If you haven't seen Three Kings since 1999, or just haven't seen it at all, put it on your list.

Friday's Top 5... Brad Pitt Performances

2011-09-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

#5: Burn After Reading

Brad Pitt is, hands down, my favourite thing about Burn After Reading. His portrayal of his dumb as rocks character is brilliant, both in terms of line readings and body language.

#4: Thelma & Louise

Thelma and Louise is one of the movies that made him a star and it's easy to see why. He's perfect as the smooth operator who charms his way into Thelma's bed and leaves devastation in his wake.

#3: Kalifornia

A crazy Brad Pitt is often a good Brad Pitt. His performance in Kalifornia is truly terrifying and a good precursor for some of his later crazy characters like...

#2: 12 Monkeys

... The activist/madman of 12 Monkeys. Seriously, crazy Brad = awesome Brad. The Academy agreed, nominating him as Best Supporting Actor for his performance.

#1: The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

The Assassination of Jesse James... is one of the most underrated movies of the last 10 years and Pitt's performance as the outlaw/folk hero is amazing.

Canadian Film Review: Saint Ralph (2005)

2011-09-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * 1/2
Director: Michael McGowan
Starring: Adam Butcher, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Tilly, Gordon Pinsent

There's no such thing as an original story; even Shakespeare got his inspiration from other sources. It's what you do with the idea that matters, it's in how you take the bare bones and create a living, breathing thing out of it. Great films transcend the well-worn elements of their plots. Saint Ralph is not a great film but even if it doesn't transcend its cliches, it at least has good taste in them.

Set in 1953, the film centres on Ralph Walker (Adam Butcher), a teenager attending a strict Catholic school run by Father Fitzpatrick (Gordon Pinsent), whose father was killed in World War II and whose mother (Shauna MacDonald) is in the hospital battling an unnamed illness. Ralph is something of a wayward soul, constantly in trouble at school and beyond, and is forced to join his school's cross country team in order to keep him occupied and to give him a venue in which to expend the excess energy he has been using to make trouble. Things begin to change, though, when Ralph's mother takes a turn for the worse (she falls into a coma) and he becomes determined to be better in the hopes that by doing so he'll be able to perform a miracle in order to bring her back from the brink.

When informed by his cross country coach Father Hibbert (Campbell Scott) that it would take a miracle for someone from their school to win the Boston Marathon, Ralph sets his sights on doing just that. He begins training in a somewhat haphazard way which eventually inspires Father Hibbert, who was once a runner himself, to take over Ralph's training regimen so that he can at the very least put in a decent showing at the marathon. Their training hits a speed bump, however, when Father Fitzpatrick threatens to expel Ralph unless he gives up on running the marathon (since Ralph keeps claiming that he'll win the marathon and it will be a mircale, Fitzpatrick considers the plan blasphemous).

Written and directed by Michael McGowan (One Week, Score: A Hockey Musical), Saint Ralph has sequences that are excellently rendered - the marathon sequence and the denoument from the race manage to pack an emotional punch even though they're built on a foundation of very familiar sports movie imagery - but it has a lot of problems with respect to tone. The first part of the film plays like a coming-of-age comedy with Ralph getting into trouble at school, dealing with bullies, becoming notorious for, um, a moment of sexual exploration with one of the jets at the local pool, and trying to convince the girl he has a crush on to go out with him (kind of difficult after the pool thing); but then it suddenly turns into a very serious and somewhat dark drama and the lack of consistency with respect to tone is a bit jarring.

Saint Ralph has a few other problems - the acting is, at times, a bit wooden and the "miraculous" moment at the end is a gross narrative miscalculation that undercuts, rather than enhances, the genuine emotional impact of the film's climax - but the film certainly isn't without merit or charm. Nothing about it is groundbreaking, but the familiar can sometimes be comforting and within the limited confines of its ambitions, Saint Ralph is a decent enough movie; not truly good but still a far cry from bad.

Book vs. Film: The Talented Mr. Ripley vs. Purple Noon and The Talented Mr. Ripley

2011-09-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Basic Plot: Tom Ripley is a small time conman who weasles his way into the life of his former acquaintance, Dickie Greenleaf, after Greenleaf's parents become frustrated with their son's extended vacation from his responsibilities. Dickie is amused by Tom at first, but quickly grows tired of him which eventually leads to Tom killing Dickie and assuming his identity. Thus begins a cat and mouse game as Tom tries to elude the authorities but still maintain his hold on Dickie's fortune.

Primary Differences Between Book and Purple Noon: The Rene Clement directed film skips over a lot of the book's set up, beginning the story in medias res with Tom and Dickie's friendship already on its last legs, and giving the story a totally different and very un-Highsmith ending. The film also foregoes the sexual undercurrents of the two men's relationship and has Tom instead reserving his interest for Dickie's girlfriend, Marge, whom he intends to marry after forging Dickie's will so that the money will be left to Marge.

Primary Differences Between Book and The Talented Mr. Ripley: The Anthony Minghella directed version is actually fairly faithful to the book, although it ups the death count (which is no mean feat given how much Patricia Highsmith loved killing off characters) and actually plays up Tom's homosexuality, which Highsmith's novel is somewhat vague and indirect about.

For The Book: Patricia Highsmith doesn't have the most notable prose style - her sentences tend to be rather blunt and dry - but she is excellent at crafting scenes of suspense and at delving into the psychology of her characters. Tom Ripley is an endlessly fascinating character and Highsmith unpacks his inner self for the reader, teasing out the dark corners of his psyche and using his growing turmoil to set and reset the tone of the novel. It's a fantastic read that can be revisited multiple times without losing any of its particular magic.

For Purple Noon: It's a very stylish film and Alain Delon's performance as Tom is really captivating. The ending is well-constructed and, while completely different from the ending of the book, is still pretty great, just in a different way.

For The Talented Mr. Ripley: Minghella's take on the story is intelligent and well-made in a glossy, Hollywood way and Matt Damon's performance as Tom is solid and complex. The film also features Jude Law's fantastic, star making (and Oscar nominated) turn as Dickie Greenleaf.

Winner: Book. Both films are well made - though Purple Noon has the edge over The Talented Mr. Ripley - but Highsmith's complex and thrilling book is a tough act to follow.

Review: The Debt (2011)

2011-09-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * *
Director: John Madden
Starring: Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Similarly, if you say that you dispatched of a Nazi war criminal in one way and there's no one who can dispute your version of events, then what's to stop your version from becoming the official story? John Madden's long delayed thriller The Debt centers on a trio of Mossad agents who become famous for killing a Nazi war criminal and then, 30 years later, must contend with the potentially explosive collision of their story and the actual truth. It's a solid and very effective thriller and definitely worth a look.

The film opens in 1997 with the launch of a book about the capture of Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), infamously known as "the Surgeon of Birkenau," by three Mossad agents in 1966. The writer is the daughter of two of those agents, Rachel (Helen Mirren) and Stefan (Tom Wilkinson), and the publication of the book coincides with the reappearance of the third agent, David (Ciaran Hinds) and his sudden suicide. Stefan soon fills Rachel in on the fact that the truth about what happened is about to come out which will not only destroy their legacies, but also destroy their daughter's career.

The film moves back and forth between the 1997 timeline and the 1966 timeline, which shows how Stefan (Marton Csokas), David (Sam Worthington), and Rachel (Helen Mirren) came together and how their plan to capture Vogel and bring him to trial went awry. At the time Vogel is living in East Berlin, working as an OB/GYN. Posing as a patient with fertility issues, Rachel gets close enough to Vogel to inject him with a sedative and then he's spirited away by Stefan and David, posing as paramedics. The trio keep Vogel prisoner in their apartment while waiting to make the pre-arranged escape back to West Berlin, but the plan is foiled and they find themselves needing to regroup, wondering how they'll get out of East Berlin alive and what, exactly, to do about Vogel.

One of the weaknesses of The Debt is that because it relies so predominently on Rachel, she ends up being the only character who is really well drawn and can stand on her own as a character removed from the plot. There isn't really a ton to either Stefan or David; they are simply archetypes fulfilling roles in the inevitable romantic triangle - Stefan as the smooth talking bad boy, David as the shy good guy - and we can't really get invested in the triangle because we already know at the beginning how things turn out in terms of the trio's relationships. That being said, the effort that goes into developing Rachel as a character is not wasted and she is a compelling character when played by both Mirren and Chastain. Her work as an agent is not easy for her but her discomfort never gets in the way of her ultimate ability to perform the tasks requested of her. The picture The Debt paints of her is of a strong woman who never loses sight of her humanity, even while looking at the bigger picture.

Madden, perhaps best known for his awards friendly period pieces Mrs. Brown and Shakespeare In Love, guides the film with a strong and assured hand, building scenes of incredible tension. The escape attempt is an extremely well constructed and exciting sequence, but perhaps the film's most memorable scene is the one in which Rachel sedates Vogel. The scene begins with him conducting a pelvic exam on her, putting her in quite possibly the most vulnerable position imaginable, and then the power dynamic suddenly shifts and he's the one vulnerable and exposed, completely at Rachel's mercy. The scene builds and plays brilliantly and is executed absolutely flawlessly by Madden, Chastain and Christensen. The movie itself isn't without a few flaws but it has many fantastic individual sequences and, overall, it's a strong effort and a nice change of pace from the mindless action of the summer season.

Review: Drive (2011)

2011-09-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * * *
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks

He's a driver. It's what he does and who he is, no more, no less. Taking its cue from its protagonist, Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, based on a novel of the same name by James Sallis, launches itself along a deliberate, no frills trajectory, working its way towards the only ending that a story like this could possibly have. That feeling of predetermination, however, does nothing to detract from how thrilling the film is and it comes to transcend the boundaries of its genre. Drive is the rare action movie in which you find yourself actually caring about the characters and what will happen to them.

Ryan Golsing stars as a character known only as Driver, a mechanic and movie stunt driver by day, and a getaway driver for hire by night. His life revolves pretty much entirely around cars and driving and he seems to need little more than that, though he does begin to develop a tentative relationship with his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan). Irene has a young son, Benicio (Kaden Leos), and a husband (Oscar Isaac) whose release from prison quickly relegates Driver to the sidelines. When Driver learns that the husband owes protection money to Cook (James Biberi), a low level gangster, he offers to help him out and plans are made to rob a pawn shop.

The robbery goes wrong, resulting in the death of the husband at the scene followed by a high speed chase. Driver quickly learns that Cook double-crossed them, intending for them to steal the money and then be killed, and that the amount stolen is much, much more than they were expecting. Turns out the money belongs to the east coast mob, which makes Cook and his boss, Nino (Ron Perlman) and Nino's business partner Bernie (Albert Brooks), all the more anxious to get it back. This sends Drive on a bloody mission to eliminate his new found enemies before anyone can make good on threats against Irene and Benicio.

The action sequences in Drive are excellently rendered. Refn carefully builds up the tension before the action starts, putting the focus on the characters rather than just making the action a show of technical proficiency. The action also has a feel of authenticity, of actual people doing actual things rather than computers creating a flurry of CGI images, which gives the film an even greater feeling of intensity. Refn directs the film with style and confidence, blending the look of late 60s/70s auteur cinema (Refn has said that 1968's Bullit was one of his influences) with the feel of 80's John Hughes films (this comes through primarily with the soundtrack, but also with the credits styling) and creating something that seems unique and special.

Refn's considerable skill goes a long way towards Drive's success, but for a film like this to truly transcend its genre trappings, it needs really solid performances, and Drive has that in spades. Gosling delivers an intense, internal performance that is so dry it could start a fire (and I mean that in the best possible way), and he is surrounded by more expressive performances by Mulligan, Perlman, Brooks, and Bryan Cranston as Driver's pseudo boss and father figure, and the supporting performances help keep the energy up and expand the scope of the world created by Refn and screenwriter Hossein Amini. The performances work together in harmony and Brooks, in particular, is the stand out of the supporting players. I don't know how likely it is that Drive can garner much attention at the big awards (it's very dark and very violent, which the mainstream awards tend to shy away from), but the film itself, as well as Refn, Gosling and Brooks all deserve to be in the conversation.

Canadian Film Review: The Bang Bang Club (2011)

2011-09-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * *
Director: Steven Silver
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Taylor Kitsch, Malin Akerman

The line between being a witness and being a passive collaborator can be thin sometimes. War photographers are in a tricky moral position in that they are tasked with capturing the horrors of war and thereby be active in the creation of a narrative, but they also have to be passive observers and interfere as little as possible with what they're documenting. The Bang Bang Club, based on a book of the same name, tackles this quandry, creating a compelling and often thought provoking film, albeit one that doesn't quite reach the heights it aspires to.

The Bang Bang Club were a group of four photographers working in South Africa during the final years of apartheid: Greg Marinovich (Ryan Phillippe), Kevin Carter (Taylor Kitsch), Ken Oosterbroek (Frank Rautenbach), and Joao Silva (Neels Van Jaarsveld). Together the four take countless photos of atrocities occuring in South Africa, competing amongst themselves and with other photographers for the fame and glory that comes from taking a perfect shot. Their work is not for the faint of heart: often they are right in the middle of fire fights, trying to take pictures while bullets whiz past their heads - and, sometimes, those bullets connect.

The four men are always living on the razor's edge, not only because they cheat death everytime they go out to do their job, but also because even if they do live, they have to live with what they've witnessed. There are instances when they literally stand there taking pictures while a person or group of people murder someone right in front of them. During a trip to the Sudan Kevin takes a photo of a starving child being stalked by a vulture, winning the Pulitzer Prize for his efforts but also the emnity of the world. He took a great picture, yes, but what people really want to know is whether he did anything to help the child.

The Bang Bang Club raises a lot of interesting questions about the act of documenting/witnessing tragedy. War photographers serve an important function because they bring the reality of a situation to the attention of the world but, at the same time, you have to wonder where documenting ends and profiteering beings. The members of the Bang Bang Club constantly have to shut off their humanity in order to do their jobs - at one point Greg goes to take photos accompanied by his girlfriend/editor, Robin (Malin Akerman) and she tearfully admonishes him for being concerned about getting the right light at a time when a child is literally dying right in front of him. The Bang Bang Club presents these situations with a lot of complexity, but doesn't focus on this element enough to really make a profound statement on the role of war photographers one way or another.

The Bang Bang Club is based on a true story, though like all "based on a true story" movies, you have to assume that sometimes it drifts into the realm of "truish" in service of a tidy narrative. Written and directed by Steven Silver, the film is very solidly constructed and told. The acting is very good (Ackerman has never really done it for me as an actress, but her performance here is good) and the characters are, for the most part, fairly well drawn. The Bang Bang Club never quite attains the heights of its potential, given the very big themes it touches on, but it's nevertheless a good film and worth a look.

Review: 8 Women (2002)

2011-09-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

* * *
Director: Francois Ozon
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Ludvine Sagnier, Virginie Ledoyen, Firmine Richard, Danielle Darrieux

If you've ever wondered what a film that doesn't take itself too seriously looks like, I highly recommend Francois Ozon's 8 Women. A musical locked room mystery featuring several of the most stunning and celebrated stars in the history of French cinema, this is an extremely fun, albeit slightly silly, romp.

The eight women in question are Gaby (Catherine Deneuve), her two daughters Suzon (Virginie Ledoyen) and Catherine (Ludvine Sagnier), her mother (Danielle Darrieux), her sister Augustine (Isabelle Huppert), her cook Chanel (Firmine Richard), maid Louise (Emmanuelle Beart), and her sister-in-law Pierrette (Fanny Ardant). Trouble begins shortly after Gaby returns home from picking Suzon up at the train station when her husband, Marcel, is found dead in his bed with a knife in his back. As the women take stock of the situation - the dogs made no noise during the night, suggesting that he was murdered by someone familiar, and the phone line has been cut - they realize that one of them may be the killer - and may not be finished.

Pierrette, who has allegedly been estranged from her brother, shows up a little while after all this, claiming to have received a mysterious phone call about her brother's death. When the women attempt to leave to get the police, they find that they're trapped on the estate, and as their various secrets start coming out, they begin to turn on each other as each woman begins to look like a more likely culprit than the last. In the end the solution to the mystery is simultaneously simpler and more complicated than anyone could have suspected.

From the first frame, Ozon aims to throw the audience off guard with the film's almost aggressive artificiality. The snow covered exterior is just a little too Hollywood perfect and even the inside of the house has the unlived in polish of a set. This works because Ozon and the cast so fully embrace the off-kilter, unreality of the project and that in turn makes the transitions into the musical numbers seem a little smoother. Each actress gets a musical number to perform, most of them fairly silly but certainly fitting with the film's frothy, fun tone.

All eight of the actresses are really great, but if I had to pick any one as the stand out, it would be Huppert. She brings a great comic energy to the film as the spinster aunt with a few dramatics up her sleeve, who eventually transforms herself into a more confident and glamorous self after getting a bit of advice from Louise. Huppert, Ardant and Darrieux all received Cesar nominations for their performances but, as I said, all eight actresses are great, each bringing a different strength to the piece. All in all, 8 Women is an absolutely delightful film.