Adam's Rear Window

Facts, Predictions, and Reckless Predictions for Oscar Nomination Morning

2012-01-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

Fact: The Best Picture lineup doesn’t hold a candle to last year’s incredible selections. In fact, the Oscar race in general this year strikes me as very bland compared to last year’s.

Prediction: Last year, a whopping five of the BP nominees ended up on my Top-10 of the year list. This year, at most, there will be two that Oscar and I agree on.

Reckless Prediction: I still haven’t seen my #1 movie of the year yet.

Fact: No one really knows how many Best Picture nominees there will be this year. Most are predicting 7-8 nominees, but is that based off of data, or is it just an average? I’m personally sticking with 7 nominees for now, but no number of nominees would truly shock me. No one knows.

Prediction: My predictions in the Big-8 categories this year won’t be as accurate as they were last year (in which I correctly predicted 39/45 possible nominations). It’s a weird year.

Reckless Prediction: Since it’s a weird year, I think it’s highly possible that a film that hardly anyone is predicting will be nominated for Best Picture, and that it will be one of these: The Tree of Life, Drive, Bridesmaids, The Ides of March.

Fact: The Help’s only saving grace as a probable Best Picture nominee: at least it wasn’t as bad as The Blind Side.

Prediction: War Horse misses out on a Best Picture nomination. The Spielberg name can only take it so far.

Reckless Prediction: Spielberg makes an epic comeback next year with Lincoln (at least, let’s hope).

Fact: Back in September when I made my early Best Picture predictions, one of my “reckless predictions” was The Artist winning Best Picture, and now it looks like that has a very good chance of happening. I should really quit my day job and do this for a living.

Prediction: My student loan debt will keep me from quitting my day job.

Not-So-Reckless Prediction: Student loans suck.

Fact: The Lead actor and actress categories are the easiest to predict this year. For the actors, Clooney, Pitt, Fassbender, and Dujardin are all locks. I predict that the fifth spot will go to yet-to-be-Oscar-nominated veteran Gary Oldman, although DiCaprio and Michael Shannon are also possibilities. In the actress category, Davis, Streep, Williams, and Swinton are locks. Glenn Close has suffered a couple of setbacks by failing to be nominated by BAFTA and a couple of others, but I feel that she’s pretty safe here. Other contenders for the fifth slot here are Charlize Theron and Rooney Mara. (Side Fact: I’m very disappointed in the lack of attention Charlize Theron is getting for career-best work in Young Adult. Sad.)

Fact: The supporting categories are far more difficult to predict. If I end up getting 4/5 correct in either category, I will be happy.

Prediction: Melissa McCarthy’s probable nomination for her sink-diarrhea-laden turn in Bridesmaids will go down as one of the worst, ever.

"It's coming out of me like lava!"

Reckless Prediction: The aforementioned sink-diarrhea scene will be McCarthy’s clip when they announce the nominees at the show, and I will laugh.

Fact: Last year I made a nice little chunk of change on a Tom Hooper bet for Best Director.

Prediction: There is money to be made on bets this year for The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius, George Clooney, Christopher Plummer, and Octavia Spencer, and I plan on taking full advantage of this.

Reckless Prediction: My wife will (a) divorce me, or (b) get a temporary injunction with respect to our marital property upon reading the previous two sentences.

All that said, here are my Final Oscar Nomination Predictions for 2012, which will be announced Tuesday January 24^th in the AM. Feel free to check back and see how poorly I did after the announcement.

Expect The Artist to score big with the Academy
this year.

Best Picture:

The Artist

The Descendants

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Help

Moneyball

Best Director:

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Martin Scorcese, Hugo

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Best Actor:

George Clooney, The Descendants

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Actress:

Viola Davis, The Help

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

I'm okay with the love for The Help in
for a couple of reasons.

Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Best Supporting Actor:

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Albert Brooks, Drive

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Best Supporting Actress:

Berenice Bejo, The Artist

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Best Adapted Screenplay:

The Descendants

Moneyball

The Help

Hugo

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Best Original Screenplay:

Midnight in Paris

50/50

The Artist

Bridesmaids

Win-Win

On Families & Film: Thoughts on 'The Descendants' and 'Beginners'

2011-12-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

I’ve always been a sucker for films about families. I think it’s because there’s always at least some little detail that I’m able to relate to. Even films that I objectively realize aren’t great films on their own merits can be enjoyable and rewatchable for their portrayals of family life. Dan in Real Life and The Family Stone are two more recent examples of this.

Mary Poppins takes top honors
in my latest list.

There are two reasons I’ve been thinking about this. The first reason is that we’re in the midst of the holiday season, a time that many of us spend with our families. When I was hanging out with my family over Thanksgiving recently, it got my wheels turning about what my favorite films about families are. As I am incapable of resisting the urge to make a list for everything, I thought I’d just throw out a quick list for you guys of my five favorite films where one of the central themes is the concept of “family.” I’m being very strict about this, i.e. To Kill a Mockingbird has a lot of good stuff in there about family but I wouldn’t really say that’s what the movie is “about” (same goes for The Godfather, Star Wars, etc.). Ya feel me? Without further adieu:

1. Mary Poppins

2. Ordinary People

3. The Incredibles

4. It’s a Wonderful Life

5. Kramer vs. Kramer

List making aside, the other reason I’ve been thinking about “family” films is because I’ve seen two movies recently that primarily dealt with the concept of family as a central theme: Beginners and The Descendants. The latter is the latest film from one of my favorite directors, Alexander Payne, and stars George Clooney as a man whose wife goes into a coma and leaves their two daughters in his stead. The situation forces the family to face their issues as they try to deal with her inevitable and oncoming death.

The Descendants is going to do well and win all kinds of awards this winter, but to me it was the least refined and controlled film from Payne, a director who I credit on my shortlist of filmmakers responsible for making me fall in love with movies. It suffers heavily from an identity crisis and odd tonal shifts between melodrama and black comedy (Sideways has elements of both but transitions smoothly between them). Although I think Clooney gave a very good performance, it was not near his best, in my humble opinion. I did enjoy the film, but suffice it to say it did not reach near the heights of his earlier films.

Beginners, however, I adored greatly. It’s a relatively autobiographical film by writer/director Mike Mills, about a 30-something whose father comes out at the age of seventy-eight after the death of his wife of forty-six years. To boot, the father has terminal cancer. Beginners is a precisely executed, funny and stylish film anchored by three solid performances by Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, and the gorgeous Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds).

But unlike The Descendants, the real star of Beginners is the power of the message of familial relationships and their effect on each individual involved. It hit me during the film how easy it can be to put up our walls with family, even though they are the people we should be putting up walls around the least, ideally. There’s this natural tension between opening up about they way we really feel about things while doing it in a loving way. But what Beginners, and what some other films on my list above show, is that forgiving ourselves and our families is the first step in the process of mending a relationship.

It shows us how being open and vulnerable with one another as family members produces understanding, and understanding reveals love. It shows us how this progression enables us to in turn learn something about ourselves. Namely, in this case, McGregor’s character learns from his father’s coming out that it’s never too late to be the person you want to be, and that there are few excuses for not trying. This message is handled with such care and grace that it could have only come from someone who personally experienced it.

Like some of my other “family” films listed above, Beginners is one I will be watching again and again.

Review: 'Take Shelter' & 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'

2011-11-14T20:20:00.000-08:00

I’ll be honest, I’ve had trouble being inspired lately. Becoming a real adult will have that affect on you, I suppose. Hopefully I won’t go this long without writing a post too often in my blogging career.

There are two movies that I’ve seen recently, however, that did give me a little inspiration, and these two films will probably not play for long and they’ll likely only be at art-house theaters, so I wanted to write this review for them to give you a little shove out the door to catch these before it’s too late.

These films are actually related thematically in that one focuses on the impending doom and paranoia about the future, while the other deals with the demons of our past coming back to haunt us.

Take Shelter (2011)

The film that takes a look at the paranoia about the future is Jeff Nichols’ brilliant Take Shelter, which is my current #3 film of the year. Michael Shannon gives a wonderfully balanced performance as Curtis, a blue-collar everyman with a beautiful family in middle-America who begins to have visions about a coming storm. These visions, which come to Curtis in his dreams, contain dark clouds that rain an oily substance, birds that fall dead from the sky, and mysterious masked men who try and abduct his daughter, a deaf 5-year old. The visions are wonderfully directed by Nichols, and had my heart racing at several different moments. A certain revealing moment in the film’s climax was one of the more intense scenes that I can personally remember seeing in a theater, ever.

Curtis begins to wonder whether these visions are some sort of sign coming to him about the future, or if he has a mental illness. To hedge his bets either way, he begins to obsessively build out the storm cellar in his back yard, preparing it with all the necessary provisions to last several weeks in case the storm does indeed come; additionally, he begins to study up on mental illness and starts to see a psychologist.

On the surface (without giving too much away here), a major focus of the film is to keep the audience wondering whether the visions are going to come true, or if it is simply a mental illness. I had an intense sympathy towards Curtis’s plight to keep his family safe from the coming storm, but I was also sympathetic toward his wife (played wonderfully by Jessica Chastain, aka “actress in every movie of 2011”), who wanted to help her husband through his possible illness.

But I’d like to believe that the river runs deeper than that with this film. As I tweeted after seeing the movie, I feel that a big part of this movie is about our society right now. Many Americans right now are scared about the future due to the economy, the loss of jobs, a more divided government than ever, etc., not to mention the downright creepy weather patterns happening across the nation and the world. A lot of people are wondering whether they will be able to provide for their family if and when the “storm” comes. The decision by Nichols to make Curtis’s character an average Joe that we can all relate to makes me think that there is a strong current of this sentiment flowing through the veins of this film.

8.5/10.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

It’s been a few days since I saw this one, and I like it a little bit more every time I think about it. In this film, Martha is a 20-something who escapes from a Manson-esque commune and goes to stay with her sister and brother-in-law (Lucy and Ted) who are vacationing in upstate New York.

It tells both the story of her stay at the commune, as well as her stay with her sister, in a very interesting way. Martha has post-traumatic stress from her time in the commune, so she often is confused about where she is and what she’s doing. Director Sean Durkin puts you in Martha’s shoes—there are several scenes that begin without the audience knowing where she is. Like her, you often don’t know which world she is waking up in. The directing is easily the best aspect of the film.

Like its main character, MMMM keeps the audience at an emotional distance. You feel bad for what Martha has been through, but her refusal to talk about it or warm up to Lucy and Ted makes it difficult to really care. Lucy tries to mend their relationship, but comes off very cold and judgmental at times.

What is also very interesting about this film is that even though the experience at the commune is a very horrific one for Martha, and justifiably so for reasons I won’t spoil, it also doesn’t treat the upper-class lifestyle of Lucy and Ted as though it’s any better. The creepiness of communal living is matched by the creepiness of the traps of being rich and successful: vanity, isolation, and pettiness.

But the core of the film is about the psychological effects that living in the commune has had on Martha. Her inability to open up about or deal with her past causes her to become increasingly paranoid about what has happened, and manifests itself through bizarre behavior. Elizabeth Olsen, as Martha, is a revelation in this film and is as good as advertised. She perfectly executes the coldness of the character without totally pushing the audience away.

The high level of acting all-around (not to be forgotten in any review of this film is the excellent supporting turn of John Hawkes as the leader of the commune), as well as the great directing I’ve already discussed are enough to make this film a must-see. I imagine with a more engaging script it would have been one of the best-reviewed films of the year.

7.5/10.

Film Friday: September 30, 2011

2011-09-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

September 2011 has been a great month for adult movies (perhaps one of the better months in recent memory), with Moneyball, Drive, and somewhat surprisingly for me Contagion all being as good as advertised. Oh, and don’t forget The Lion King (3D), which was every bit as excellent as when I was 9. This weekend I hope to finish off the month with 50/50, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt dramedy that should be right up my alley. I do highly recommend all three (four if you count Lion King) of the above films, but I may save some thoughts for those in their own column.

Right now, I wanted to write another installment of Film Friday and recommend a couple of off-the-radar types, as well as discuss another film that I’m pretty sure wasn’t good (more on that in a minute). As always, the order: Good New-ish film, Good Old Film, Not-so-good Film.

Everything Must Go (2011)

After giving an outstanding semi-dramatic performance in Stranger Than Fiction in 2006, I thought Will Ferrell had given up on the genre altogether. This film proved to me that he still has the chops and is still interested in pursuing more serious work, which does excite me. Here, he plays Nick, a salesman with a drinking problem who loses his job, wife, house, and car all in a matter of one day. He comes home after being fired from his job to find the locks on his house changed, and his property strewn across the lawn. The movie is largely about his decision to live on his lawn and deal with his problems instead of running from them.

The not-so-subtle metaphor that the movie makes is that Nick’s problems are all out in the open for everyone to see, gawk at, and feel pity towards, even though many of those same people have their own set of issues and problems that they hide behind closed doors. This is played out primarily through Samantha’s character (Rebecca Hall), a new neighbor across the street who has just moved across the country while pregnant.

I guess the reason that this one worked for me was that even though it bordered on the melodramatic, it had the genuineness to back it up and a healthy dose of comedy (but not much) to balance it out. 7.5/10.

Persona (1966)

I strongly considered dedicating an entire column to this film because it was one of the more interesting displays of artistry that I’ve seen recently, but I figured after writing my last post on Another Woman that I’d really be pushing it with the snobby film discussion. However, I thought it at least deserved a slot in this column.

Auteur director Ingmar Bergman’s films usually have some component of human psychology or philosophy, and that is no more on display than in this film. The two main characters (and the only characters, really) are two women with very different life experiences. The first is Elisabeth, a movie star who recently had a mental breakdown and has been rendered mute, and the second is her nurse, Alma, who comes from a more modest background. The two retreat to a seaside home to administer therapy on the movie star.

Things get very interesting at this point. Due to the Elisabeth's muteness, Alma ends up doing a lot of talking, and soon develops a bond with the movie star because she can so easily and openly discuss her feelings. It soon becomes evident that Alma has many problems of her own, despite Elisabeth being the mental patient, and Alma's shame and guilt is revealed as she confesses her regrets to the mute confidant she now has. Alma soon becomes aware of how she is turning out to be just like Elisabeth, which produces contempt in her heart. The result is sort of an icy psychotic thriller.

As always with Bergman films, the cinematography is breathtaking, and if nothing else, you should watch it just for that. This film isn’t quite as good as The Seventh Seal (my favorite Bergman film), but it is darn interesting at the very least. 8.5/10

Last Night (2010)

I should really re-title this last slot from “not-so-good film” to “see it for yourself” film, in this case especially. The movie stars Keira Knightley and Sam Worthington as a married couple who have a night away from each other in different cities. There may or may not be some cheating involved, but it’s not really about that as much as the doubt each of them experience in whether or not the other is being faithful to them while away for a night.

There’s a lot of potential here, but it’s largely wasted due to a bad script, and horrible acting from Eva Mendes and Sam Worthington (although Keira is great, as always). There is also some directorial flair going on here from Massy Tadjedin, and I hope to see more of her work in the future, hopefully with a good script.

This may be a film that you enjoy, but for me the script needed a lot of work, and better casting choices would have been good as well. 5.5/10.

Film Friday: Screw It, I Want to Write About This Film

2011-09-15T22:46:00.000-07:00

Two for you, one for me. After giving you guys a thorough preview of coming films that I am excited about, and some overly in-depth Oscar coverage, I thought I would take this opportunity to take a step back and discuss a film that has been on my mind fairly consistently since I watched it a few weeks ago, Woody Allen’s Another Woman.

I know, I know, I’ve written about Woody Allen films a few times recently and the thought of reading about one of his lesser-known films from the late ‘80’s isn’t exactly exciting or totally relevant. But dang it, I’ve tried to leave it alone, but I can’t stop thinking about it, and it deserves to be seen. So screw it, I’m going to review an old(ish) movie that practically no one has seen.

The movie stars Gena Rowlands, best known to teenage girls everywhere as the Alzheimer’s-stricken woman opposite James Garner in tearjerker The Notebook. Here, she plays Marion, a university philosophy professor who is writing a new book. Marion rents an apartment solely for the purpose of having a space in which to write without distraction, only to discover that a psychiatrist has rented the apartment next door, and, through the heating ducts, Marion becomes privy to the therapy sessions. As she begins to listen to the conversations going on, she starts to examine her own life, as fundamental questions of love, friendship, ambition, and above all, regret, begin to overwhelm her.

I have never once connected with a female character as strongly as I did with Marion in this movie, and that, to me, is one of the major triumphs of this film. Marion has a life we would all covet—a distinguished career as a professor, living in a fancy apartment in uptown Manhattan with her similarly successful husband, being invited to parties, fancy dinners in restaurants, writing books, etc.

But, Marion realizes exactly how lackluster her attitude toward her picturesque lifestyle has become, and moreover, the outright façade that it is. Woody Allen uses various symbols to display Marion’s dullness of life, the least subtle of which is the grey and brown-hued costumes of the main characters, as well as the low-lit and unremarkable interior design of apartments and restaurants that Marion visits. Through listening to the problems of these unseen therapy patients, she begins to confront the various demons from her past, and ultimately, her present; only then can she start the difficult process of accepting herself.

I, and I assume many of you, relate to this human condition strongly. I have weak moments where I ponder the monotony of life, which leads to questioning and regret. When I hear a beautiful piano tune, I regret that I never practiced harder and became as good as I should have been. When I see moving film, I often regret not giving the film industry a go, as you can probably tell. I frequently see “friends” on Facebook and question the circumstances that led me to lose contact with that person, and I’m remorseful of those circumstances. And yes, in the weakest of moments, I think of former relationships, and wonder if it could have worked out in some alternative universe.

An emotional sequence near the end just about
wrecked me.

I have to remind myself often of just how good I have it—a wife whom I happen to be ridiculously in love with, a two-bedroom apartment with the Rocky Mountains in view from my deck, a couple of cars, friends and family that I can count on no matter what, and above all, a spiritual life that grows daily, providing a peace and understanding that nothing of this world can offer. When I think of these things, I realize how low of me it really is to mull over a few things that can’t be changed. In the end, that’s life: accepting that our choices—whether successes or failures—have made us the people that we are, and that we are better off because of those choices.

Moreover, as Marion realizes, amends can be made. Whether it’s me dusting off the piano and learning a new tune, or spending some time on screenplays I’ve neglected, or rekindling old friendships, self-examination gives us the opportunity to start anew. We are more than able be the person we want to be, even if it’s a person we may have lost site of, like Marion did. This process is difficult and often involves swallowing pride and exercising demons that are haunting our present, as this film portrays.

Well, at this point I’ve pretty much thrown objective film criticism out the window. Indeed, a dreamy montage at the end of the film portraying Marion in a rainy romantic rendezvous (which nearly brought me to tears) happens to feature a beautiful piece of music that was in my own wedding, so the chances of my being objective were slim to none. But if a film can’t cause you to completely abandon objectivity every once in awhile, then what’s the point of it in the first place?

If you have wrestled with any of the things I’ve discussed here in your own life, then I highly suggest surrendering a mere 81 minutes of your life on this buried treasure of a film, which is available on Netflix Instant, and for me is a straight-up 10/10.

Early Best Picture Facts, Predictions, & Reckless Predictions

2011-09-11T21:20:00.000-07:00

This time of the year is really the kickoff for Oscar campaigning, with various festivals such as Venice, Telluride, and especially Toronto acting as a launch pad for many fall films. So I thought I would get a head start this year on the Oscar over-analyzing, and start it off with a full-on discussion of the Best Picture race with a few facts, predictions, and reckless predictions. In the coming weeks, I plan on breaking down some of the other major categories also.

FACT: No more than 8 films will be nominated for BP this year. If you’re not a complete dork like me who follows these things, you likely don’t know of the rule change that the Academy made this year, which is that anywhere from 5-10 films can be nominated for Best Picture, but to get in the field, a film must have at least 5% #1 votes (voters rank their BP choices). This is actually a difficult threshold (the speculation is that last year, at least two films would not have made the BP field based on this criteria).

As someone who follows the Oscars closely, I’m still not sure what to think of this rule change. I blow hot and cold. On the one hand, it’s cool that in years with an exceptional amount of great movies, it’s likely that more movies will be nominated for BP. On the other hand, what if a film is really good, but a large majority of voters put it at #2 or #3 on their ballot, and fails to get at least 5% #1 votes? Does it really not deserve to get nominated over a film that isn’t on most voters’ ballots, but that somehow still meets that threshold?

I am indeed predicting that the star of
'Norbit' will do well as host of the Oscars.

Regardless, it’s sort of laughable that the Academy has undergone two significant rule changes regarding the BP field in the past 2 years (the other being the original decision to expand to 10 nominees). It smacks of instability in the organization, being blown every which-way like this and not standing by their decisions.

FACT: No animated film will make it into the BP field this year.

PREDICTION: The Help will make a run at some acting nominations, but fail to be nominated for Best Picture.

RECKLESS PREDICTION: Eddie Murphy will stun everyone with his Oscar-hosting gig, and actually be very funny and a refreshing change of pace. In making this prediction, I am assuming that Norbit was an elaborate joke played on the American public.

FACT: For the first time in 84 years (and only the second time ever), a silent film (The Artist) will be nominated for Best Picture.

I'm just saying, I think this is
gonna win it all.

PREDICTION: One of these 3 films will WIN Best Picture: War Horse, The Descendants, or The Artist.

RECKLESS PREDICTION: The Artist will win Best Picture (that’s Babe Ruth calling his shot right there).

FACT: Harry Potter will not receive a Lord of the Rings-style “career” award/BP nomination despite being one of the best-reviewed films of the year.

PREDICTION: A Woody Allen film, Midnight in Paris, will be nominated for BP for the first time since 1986.

RECKLESS PREDICTION: It will be the last Woody Allen film ever nominated for Best Picture.

FACT: There is a 70-year-old dude who looks like Gollum who has been staring at me with a creepy frown for the past 10 minutes in the coffee shop I am currently in.

PREDICTION: The movie Drive is more in play for a BP nom than you think. It will, at the very least, be in the conversation come January due to critical success and better-than-expected box office.

RECKLESS PREDICTION: The Gollum guy will have a stroke in the middle of the coffee shop if he continues the intense staring for much longer, and I will somehow feel responsible for this.

Don't you dare cross Walter White.

FACT: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Breaking Bad is the best shows on television right now, and in the conversation for best TV show ever. Season 4 has just been otherworldly good. This with all due respect to Mad Men, which is neck and neck with it.

PREDICTION: Many of you will disagree with me on that last fact.

RECKLESS PREDICTION:

(Speaking of drug use and violence) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo will fail to be nominated for Best Picture, despite critical success and a Best Actress nomination for Rooney Mara. Just looks a little too gritty.

FACT: George Clooney’s The Ides of March will be largely irrelevant in this year’s Best Picture race. It will not be nominated.

(SAD) FACT: So will Polanski’s Carnage.

PREDICTION: This year’s Best Picture field won’t hold a candle to last year’s in terms of quality.

RECKLESS PREDICTION: One of these 3 long-shot films will emerge as a contender upon its release, and be nominated for Best Picture: Moneyball, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Young Adult. Right now, people in the know about these sorts of things aren’t predicting any of them.

FACT: Transformers 3: The Dark of the Moon will not be nominated for Best Picture, even though they sent out an invite to Academy members for a special screening, specifically campaigning for Best Picture. Excuse me while I try not to burst out laughing.

PREDICTION: I have watched twice as many movies in the last 6 weeks as I will at any future 6-week period ever again in my life. You want the list? Fine: The Dark Knight, The Lincoln Lawyer, Crazy Stupid Love, Stranger Than Fiction, Source Code, Dog Day Afternoon, The Way Back, Hall Pass, Barney’s Version, The Illusionist, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Syriana, Another Woman, Manhattan, Alice, Kill Bill, Brothers, Heavenly Creatures, Insidious, Naked, Gangs of New York, Limitless, Network, Tangled, Unstoppable, 30 Minutes or Less, Sideways, The Lost Boys, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Win-Win, Our Idiot Brother, The Conspirator, Hunger, Dumb and Dumber, Hot Tub Time Machine, Secretariat, The Fighter, Bottle Shock, Mary & Max, Contagion, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, The Beaver.

That’s 44 total. In 43 days. Judge me.

RECKLESS PREDICTION: My wife will divorce me upon reading the prior paragraph. (Actually, that should have been a fact).

-----------------------------------

Now that I’ve made some predictions, here is how I see the Best Picture field lining up as of this moment. My plan this year is to give you an updated chart every couple of weeks or so. Just remember, I’m probably wrong.

Best Bets:

War Horse

The Artist

The Descendants

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Midnight in Paris

Trying to Separate From The Pack:

J. Edgar

Tree of Life

The Help

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Ides of March

Long Shots:

Harry Potter

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Moneyball

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Young Adult

Drive

Film Friday: The Top-15 Films You Should be Looking Forward to in Fall 2011

2011-09-02T09:18:00.000-07:00

Fall is easily my favorite season. People always talk about New Year’s as the time of year for starting over, renewal, resolutions, etc., but I’ve always thought of autumn as the time for starting over, personally. There’s something about the weather changing, the shorter days, and getting back into the swing of things after the summer that really invigorates my soul.

Top 5 Things About Fall:

5. Pumpkin Spice Lattes from Starbucks

4. Cooler Weather

3. Pumpkin Spice Lattes from Starbucks

2. Football

1. Good Movies (duh)

As such, this is probably one of my favorite columns to write every year (see: only the 2^nd year now) because it is ripe with anticipation, potential, and most of all, because I freaking LOVE making Top-10 lists (well, 15 in this case).

Let the countdown begin!

15. Contagion (Trailer Here)

You’d think a movie made by one of my favorite directors (Steven Soderbergh) starring two of my favorite actors (Matt Damon & Kate Winslet) as well as a host of A-listers (Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Lawrence Fishburne) would be much higher on my list. It looks intriguing enough, but I feel like this apocalyptic ground has been tread before, and I’m not sure how interesting and moving it can ultimately be. Still—Soderbergh + Damon + Winslet = A spot on this list.

14. Young Adult (No Trailer Yet, Dang)

Director Jason Reitman is probably one of Hollywoods youngest success stories, with all three of his films having been heavily rewarded by the industry (Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air.) Charlize Theron always brings her A-Game and she looks very interesting here as a woman returning to her hometown after a divorce. I’ve heard this is a bit of a departure from his earlier work, but as long as Reitman brings his usual dramedy elements into the film, I have no reason to believe it won’t be good.

13. Take Shelter (Trailer Here)

I’m not totally sure what all this film is about other than some sort of apocalyptic weather issue, but the trailer looks amazing and I’ve read that Michael Shannon (known most notably for his sinister supporting role in Revolutionary Road) is simply stunning.

12. The Artist (Trailer Here)

A silent film?? Yes, a silent film, which is already being hailed as a bona fide contender in the Oscar race. Had I not already heard all of the raves out of Cannes film festival for this film, I would have said that it looks slightly too self-conscious and gimmicky for my taste. But I will trust the general consensus that it is a heartwarming and effective film.

11. War Horse (Trailer Here)

A World War I film? A period film? Based on an award-winning play?? Directed by SPIELBERG??? ABOUT A NOBLE HORSE AND A BOY????? There’s no way this won’t be the best movie in the history of cinema, right? Well, I haven’t read/seen the play but I hope Spielberg takes it easy on the sentimentality, because the trailer is absolutely dripping with it. Still, Indiana Jones/Crystal Skull excluded, I trust Spielberg, and can’t see any situation where this isn’t at least the best popcorn film of the year, if not better.

10. Moneyball (Trailer Here)

This film wins the newly-created “The Social Network Award” this year for being the most incredibly uninteresting subject matter in a movie that could actually be very good. The subject matter being the Oakland A’s, a baseball team that never won anything or even got to the World Series during the time this movie takes place. However, it does have something else in common with The Social Network, in that it was written by Aaron Sorkin. He rarely lets me down in the writing department, and when you throw in Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Jonah Hill, I’m pretty excited for this film.

9. Melancholia (Trailer Here)

This film by notorious weirdo Lars Von Trier could turn out to be one that I either love or hate. I’ve never been a huge fan of his work, although Dogville starring Nicole Kidman is one of the most interesting films of the 2000’s, IMO. This end-of-the-world flick, however, looks visually stunning which usually means it will be right up my alley, and plus, Jack Freaking Bauer is in it, which is never a bad thing.

8. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Trailer Here)

So all of this time, the Olsen Twins have had a younger sister who was prettier, a much better actress, is way more in touch with reality, and actually went to acting school at NYU? How does that make sense? In any case, her name is Elizabeth Olsen, and she is the star of this eerie indie drama that won Best Director at Sundance Film Festival this year. Look for it to be a “little engine that could” hit in the vein of Winter’s Bone.

7. A Dangerous Method (Trailer Here)

Viggo Mortenson, Michael Fassbender, and Keira Knightley, in a movie about Sigmund Freud and his associate, Carl Jung, involving some, ahem, questionable psychological treatment methods. Color me excited.

6. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Trailer Here)

This Cold-War era espionage thriller starring Gary Oldman is one that has been on my radar for awhile. If you’ll allow me to be my most snobbish self for a minute, the reason it’s been on my radar is chiefly due to it having been directed by Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson, who made one of my favorite movies of 2008, Let the Right One In (which is my favorite vampire movie ever). He has the perfect tone to create a cold-as-ice spy movie and the perfect star in Oldman to pull that off.

5. The Ides of March (Trailer Here)

Political thriller, directed by and starring George Clooney, with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Paul Giamatti. So you can see why this one wasn’t difficult to sell to me. Oh, and this is my favorite movie poster of the year, hands down.

4. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Trailer Here)

As a general rule, I am opposed to American remakes of foreign films, but exceptions certainly have to be made when one David Fincher is involved. Rooney Mara looks crazy weird/sexy as the title character Lisbeth Salander, and co-star Daniel Craig should be a major upgrade from his Swedish version’s counterpart, which I thought was the worst aspect of that movie. I don’t expect this film to be in the Oscar picture, but I do think it will be a pleasant return to gritty Fincher fare a la Se7en and Fight Club. Also, a Fincher film has my favorite trailer of the year for the second time in a row, so that’s cool.

3. Drive (Trailer Here)

The other Ryan Gosling film on my list is this Hollywood heist flick about a stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver. My man crush on Gosling would be enough of a reason for me to be excited anyway, but it also happens to star Carey Mulligan, who is probably my favorite under-30 actress right now. If the movie is even half as good as all of the rave reviews have been so far, then I will be happy. I do, however, hate that they stole the tagline "There are no clean getaways" from one of my favorite movies, No Country For Old Men.

2. The Descendants (Trailer Here)

Been waiting around for this one for a long time. If you’ll recall, director Alexander Payne’s Sideways was my #7 film of the 2000’s decade, so his pairing here with George Clooney in a family drama fascinates me. I’ve read that this film is a little less of a dark comedy than some of his prior work, but as long as Payne holds on to the emotional realism that he wielded so well in Sideways, then this should end up on many-a critic’s Top-10 lists this year.

1. Carnage (Trailer Here)

Two of my Top-10 movies of all time are A Streetcar Named Desire and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The films are probably two of the best acting showcases in cinematic history, and both are centered around the interaction of two male/female couples, with varying levels of craziness involved. Roman Polanski’s new film Carnage, based on the Tony Award-winning play God of Carnage, follows a similar formula as those two movies—it’s about the parents of two junior high boys who meet to discuss a fight that occurred between them. Starting out fairly cordial and gradually deconstructing into craziness, it should be a very humorous and sadistic piece of filmmaking, and the acting quartet of Winslet, Waltz, Reilly, and Foster is probably my favorite cast of the year.

Film Friday: August 12, 2011

2011-08-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

As always, here is the order: 1. Good New Movie, 2. Good Older Movie, 3. Average or Below Average Movie.

Let me know in the comments if there are any movies you’d like to see me write about for Film Friday over the coming weeks.

Cedar Rapids (2010)

John C. Reilly owned me in this movie.

So far, this is my favorite comedy of the year, although most people would give that title to Bridesmaids. Ed Helms, who does a pretty good impression of Andy Bernard in this movie, gives a great performance as the most naïve man alive, a guy from a one-horse town in Wisconsin who goes on his first out-of-state trip to a conference for his employer, an insurance company. Along the way, he meets John C. Reilly’s character (who totally steals the show and is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors), and Anne Heche’s character (who was so pretty with long red hair that I didn’t even realize it was Anne Heche at first), and both characters indoctrinate him in all ways of debauchery. The result is a comedy that is hilarious in the most uncomfortable way possible. 7/10.

Paper Moon (1973)

As with most of the “older” films I recommend in this column, I wonder how I only recently got around to watching this one. Ryan and Tatum O’Neal star as a team of father-daughter cons who go around selling Bibles to the widows of recently deceased men in depression-era Kansas. I found myself wondering if this film was the spiritual Godfather of the Coen Brothers’ movies—main characters in a specific middle-America setting who get in over their heads with something—although director Peter Bogdanovich is a little more light-hearted and screwball than the Coens. Young Tatum O’Neal is the standout performance-wise, but Bogdanovich regulars Ryan O’Neal and Madeleine Kahn are also great. Currently on Netflix Streaming. 8.5/10.

Kick-Ass (2010)

The only thing that made this film worth watching to me was Chloe Moretz’ performance as an 8 year-old lethal assassin. The story set up to be fairly interesting, if a little cliché: a nerdy kid (in a very average performance from Aaron Johnson) starts to fight crime under the pseudonym “Kick-Ass” in order to raise his self-esteem, who meets several people along the way that may or may not also be interested in fighting crime along with him. An intriguing concept to me was the various shades of gray represented between hero and villain in the story. However, neither one of these aspects of the story were executed with any sort of emotional connection, and the result is a standard action film with a lot of thematic potential left on the table. 5/10.

Summer of Hits & Misses

2011-08-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

My life is back. After a summer spent toiling away at my legal studies—studies which, at points, seemed about as useful in a real-world setting as going to Wikipedia, clicking “random article” and memorizing the first 300 pages that they pop up—I can finally get back to doing a thing or two that I actually enjoy. This morning, for example, I woke up at 6:30 (optimum film-watching time for me, for whatever reason), ate an embarrassing amount of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, drank coffee in my underwear, and watched Dog Day Afternoon, and it was one of the best mornings of my life.

And, of course, this also means that I hope to be updating here more often. I plan to bring back my Film Friday column, talk a little bit more about upcoming movies that you may or may not be interested in, and hopefully give a little bit more depth on this year’s awards race, which is shaping up to be pretty great.

This summer in film has given us some head-scratching hits and misses. For example, why did Thor do so well but The Green Lantern didn’t? Why is Smurfs destroying everything in its path while poor Winnie The Pooh was hung out to dry? Who knows. For now, I thought a good way to cover some ground that I’ve missed over the summer would be to identify some personal hits and misses. I’ll also throw in some other general hits and misses from the summer, both in the movie realm and in otherwise.

Hit: Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. I touched on it briefly in my Tree of Life review, but this was a very fun and imaginative effort by Mr. Allen, who didn’t necessarily tread any new ground thematically but looked at it from an impressively refreshing angle.

My Disappointment of the Summer.

Miss: J.J. Abrams’ Super 8. I really, really, REALLY wanted to like this, and at first I thought I would, but the plot here went from “fun and adventurous” to “Double-U-Tee-Eff” in a matter of about 14 minutes, and it ruined the whole thing for me.

Hit: My first summer where I’ve lived at an apartment with a pool/hot tub.

Miss: Not being able to actually go to the pool due to studying.

Hit: My first watching of Gone With The Wind. As I tweeted afterward, it’s completely worth the hype. I’ll have to knock off half a point for the romanticizing of the antebellum south, but other than that it sits nicely at a 9.5/10 for me. The horrific final hour of the first act is among the most riveting sequences of cinema I’ve ever seen.

Miss: AMC Theatres charging $15/ticket for a fake IMAX screen. Give me a break. If I’m going to get raped by a price at the movie theater, at least let me get some popcorn and coke out of it.

Hit: Ryan Gosling in Crazy Stupid Love. The movie itself was meh, but Gosling (and his love interest Emma Stone) were well-worth the price of admission. Plus, when my wife oggles him, I can’t even be mad because even I realize what a sexy beast he is. It’s unfair, really.

Miss: Everyone else in Crazy Stupid Love, especially the annoying 13-year old pervert son.

Hit: The Taco Bell, Chipotle and Starbucks that were right across the street from CU, where I spent most of my summer studying. It’s like they knew exactly what I needed.

Miss: My digestive system, due to Taco Bell & Chipotle.

Hit: For the snob in me, the Cannes Film Festival back in May produced some much-buzzed-about films to be released over the coming months. The Artist, Melancholia, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Skin I Live In, and especially Drive (starring the aforementioned Mr. Gosling) are all on my radar, and they should be on yours, too.

Miss: Anyone who went to see Zookeeper.

Hit: The NFL in ending the lockout.

Miss: United States Congress. You know why.

Hit: Matthew McConaughey in The Lincoln Lawyer. Surprisingly good performance in a surprisingly good film.

Miss: Source Code. Apparently I’m in the minority on this one, but this was a disappointment to me. Maybe I was expecting too much.

Hit: Me actually having time to watch and write about films again.

Miss: The U.S. unemployment rate, which is why I will have time to watch and write about films again.

Top 10 Animated Films All-Time: Pt. II

2011-07-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

Before unveiling my top 5, there are some honorable mentions that I’d like to hand out:

Sword in the Stone

Bambi

Toy Story 3

WALL*E (Just missed the top 10)

Coraline

Cinderella

The Secret of Nimh (scared the crap out of me as a kid)

Melody Time (so underrated)

The Jungle Book

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

#5: The Illusionist (2010)

Only non-Disney entry on the list, which I also wrote about in detail here in my top-10 of 2010 list. I do try to be objective most of the time, and objectively this is a brilliant film, but for me there’s a subjective component as well: anytime there’s a relatively unknown and unseen film, in true hipster fashion I will champion that film all the more. It’s just human nature. Regardless, this film is beautiful both aesthetically and thematically; it’s sweet, fun, heartbreaking, and unique. Everyone needs to go to Redbox and rent this immediately.

#4: Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Let's be honest: the hookah-smoking caterpillar
is the coolest Disney character EVER.

3 films on my list, including Alice, Fantasia, and my #1 choice, were all considered flops by Disney at the time of their release. With Alice, this makes a lot of sense to me, because it doesn’t strike me as the type of film that would enthrall a majority of children in the ‘50’s—it definitely lets its freak flag fly a lot, which is when it’s at its best. It’s also the reason that Tim Burton’s version this past year doesn’t hold a candle to the animated version; for all of Tim’s hype of being an off-kilter director, he tried to make the setting weird without letting the story play out in such wonderfully chaotic and confusing fashion as this one does—a fatal mistake.

#3: Ratatouille (2007)

My second Brad Bird film on this list, and Pixar’s best, as far as this blogger is concerned. As if the beautifully-detailed animation of Paris, the sophisticated and lavish portrayal of France’s food culture, and the outstanding musical score weren’t enough, what really makes this film an accomplishment is the story and the writing, which was Oscar-nominated. Perhaps no other film that I’ve ever seen has so poignantly shown the struggles of an artist—the struggle of being recognized by his industry as an unknown, and the struggle for understanding and acceptance from his family. This is highlighted by some great writing in one of the best parts of the film, a monologue by food critic Anton Ego, in a review of Remy’s food:

Great animation here from the good folks at Pixar.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.

#2: Beauty & The Beast (1991)

Clocking in near the top of the list is my favorite of the early-90’s comeback films from Disney, and the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture. It also contains my favorite music of all the Disney films. If you don’t get at least a little emotional when Belle walks down the stairs to the ballroom while the piano prelude to “Beauty and the Beast” plays, then please go find a soul somewhere. Other aspects that make it a top contender:

1. The film’s intro: great music coupled with an artfully crafted retelling of how the Beast became a beast through stained-glass window storyboards.

2. Belle is the most beautiful animated female in history. By Far. Is that a weird thing to say?

3. Great supporting cast, Lumiere in particular.

4. Best love story of all the Disney movies.

5. Great rustic animation of the French town, the castle & surrounding land, and the various set pieces, such as the lodge where Gaston hangs out.

6. (Belle is hot).

#1: Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Many of you knew this was coming. Recently, my while trying to defend my adoration of this film to my brother-in-law, he accused my parents of not raising me right. Seeing as my top two films here have “Beauty” in the title, I’m questioning that myself. However, allow me to defend my #1 pick through an explanation and a few videos.

The animation in this film was modeled after medieval art, and the sort of sharp, angular way it is drawn is visually beautiful yet dark and harrowing at the same time. It also has one of my favorite villains of all time, Maleficent, who is graceful, eloquent and oddly beautiful all while being arguably the most evil biyatch ever put on screen. The musical score is great--it's solely Tchaikovsky's music from his ballet, which I think is cool since it's the only Disney movie to do something like that. Just look at the use of these design elements coupled with a creepy part of the musical score in this section (with Chinese subtitles, no less!)

Pretty creepy. For some more creepiness, if you have the time, watch this final encounter with Maleficent as she turns into the dragon. The music here is just ridiculously good, and the artistic elements even better if you realize what the animators are going for—one might assume that the angular art is elementary, but it actually perfectly resembles the harsh nature of the film as well as the medieval time period itself. Particularly, the thorns and the flames in this scene, as well as the castle, are a good example of that objective. Check it out:

I appreciate the producers of the film trying to do something truly different--it was kind of risky to animate like that instead of using the usual sort of "soft", kid-friendly animation and the typical "fun" Disney original songs which are not present here--and oddly enough in their endeavor to create a true work of art they also ended up making something that kids of all generations since have enjoyed nonetheless. A unique visual style along with great music is something that will always, always, always appeal to me as a movie-goer.

That's my list. Hope you have enjoyed this magical journey. The End.

Top 10 Animated Films All-Time: Part I

2011-07-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I tweeted about a Time Magazine list authored by Richard Corliss that purported to be the 25 Best Animated Features of All Time. As with most Disney children, this subject is obviously near and dear to my heart. (Disney Children=anyone who grew up after VCR’s were invented and who wore out the tapes on our favorite animated Disney films and whose parents at least once considered committing a murder-suicide when their 4 year-old demanded to watch Robin Hood for the 8^th time in a week...just me? Ok.)

So when I excitedly dove in to Mr. Corliss’s article, my excitement soon turned to confusion, which later turned into frustration, which quickly turned into anger, as I kept wondering where all of the good movies were, and how Happy Feet somehow made the list. It’s seriously an awful list and left out some great classics, not only Disney but otherwise as well.

This naturally led me to ponder over making my own personal list, which I now bestow upon you—the result of hours of tweaking and consideration (I know that sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not. Don’t judge me please). My purview may not be as wide as a professional critic’s is, and thus have never been exposed to anything like The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) (which looks pretty sweet if you ask me, btw). I also haven’t had the honor of watching many seizure-inducing anime films, save for Spirited Away (2001), and I’m not totally sure they would be my cup of tea anyway. My list is Disney heavy, but considering they’ve handily dominated the medium going on a century now, that’s not too much of a stretch, I don’t think.

Hope you enjoy my list. Here is Part I, where I will discuss my #'s 10-6. In a day or two I will post my #'s 5-1 and some honorable mentions. Let me know your thoughts and your own choices in the comments.

(WARNING: TOTAL NOSTALGIA PIECE FOLLOWING)

#10: The Lion King (1994)

Disney’s incredible makeover-run of Little Mermaid-Beauty and the Beast-Aladdin-The Lion King in the span of 4 years announced to the world that they were back, that they were staying for good, and that horny people worked for Disney (there is some sort of sexual Easter-egg in every one of those films. I promise, look it up). I definitely had a lot of trouble deciding what to pick for the last spot, but the great animation (ex: wildebeest stampede) and heartwarming, loosely Shakespearian story was enough to make the cut here.

#9: The Incredibles (2004)

A lot of my favorite animated films have a healthy dose of style, which is what caught my eye and made me enjoy The Incredibles so much. I love the mid-century design of the characters and setting which is perfectly reminiscent of the time period when superhero culture was so prevalent. Director Brad Bird definitely has that eye for style, and always produces meaningful stories—in this case a man who desperately wants to buck the monotony of his daily routine, return to former glory, and be something special in the eyes of his family—and the subtlety and richness in the way he tells it is not found often in cinema, animated or live action.

#8: Fantasia (1940)

Umm, this dude's kinda scary.

I mean, it’s not so much that I love the naked dancing winged babies (Clelyn tells me they’re called cherubim), or the devilishly handsome centaur men, but I do love the imagery that Disney was able to use here in combination with some great classical music. This film is as much about the experience of watching it as anything, and from that standpoint, I think it is a wonderful success. The animation is great not because it is incredibly meticulous, but rather, because it is so extravagant and lush—the various bursts of color and light is just great cinema. And there are also more restrained portions that are equally compelling (like right here, for instance). Simply a treasure in cinema history that will never be replicated.

#7: 101 Dalmatians (1961)

Love the London/England setting. Love the great ‘60’s-era jazz. Love the rigged British animation. Love Cruella DeVille. Love the awkwardly charming Pongo and Roger. Love the tenseness in the scene where all the Dalmatians roll in the soot so as to trick Cruella. Love the “twilight bark.” What’s not to like? Next.

#6: Robin Hood (1973)

With all due respect to Errol Flynn and Cary Elwes, this debonair cartoon fox is easily my favorite depiction of the legendary character (and with little respect to a sleepwalking Russell Crowe, or a laughably miscast Kevin Costner). In addition to a host of fully realized characters, it also has the second-best music as far as this list goes (first coming up later). A particularly great sequence to me is when the Sheriff robs an earnest church-mouse couple of their tithes, while Rooster Bob Dylan strums a great, simple acoustic tune, “Not in Nottingham:”

"Every town
Has its ups and downs
Sometimes ups
Outnumber the downs
But not in Nottingham
I'm inclined to believe
If we were so down
We'd up and leave
We'd up and fly if we had wings for flyin'
Can't you see the tears we're cryin'?
Can't there be some happiness for me?
Not in Notthingham"

...Stay tuned for Part II!

Review: 'The Tree of Life'

2011-06-12T15:25:00.000-07:00

Me and my wife’s first evening spent out and about in our new digs was celebrating my birthday, which I had spent alone (utterly alone) by myself the week before. All I wanted for my birthday was the chance to see two new films that I had been highly anticipating from two of my top-10 favorite directors, Woody Allen and Terrence Malick. Their two films, Midnight in Paris and The Tree of Life, respectively, could truly not be any more different, so it was really an interesting double feature. Woody’s latest combines his distaste for intellectualism with a charmingly fantastical narrative, which follows Owen Wilson around Paris at night as he meets an eccentric cast of characters, who give him inspiration in his first attempt at writing a novel. The dialogue is plentiful, the themes are (for better or worse) exposed and overexposed, it’s not lacking in wit or romance, and it is all around a good time at the movies.

Juxtapose that with Malick’s latest and the focus of this review, The Tree of Life, which focuses not on the intellectual, but rather on the spiritual and the instinctual, and compared to Allen's Paris, is extremely contemplative and sparse.

Where to begin with a film this ambitious—honestly the most ambitious film I’ve ever seen. I held off on tweeting about it, as I normally do, right after I saw it, because what could I say that could give any sort of indication of my thoughts? It would be an insult to cram the breadth of a proper reaction to a film like that into 140 characters.

But I will start where Malick starts, the Book of Job in the Old Testament: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? While the morning stars sang together, and the angels shouted for joy?” Yes, a spiritual film this is, and there are many Christian symbols and references, yet I feel that anyone with a general belief in the human soul, or even someone who seeks purpose on this earth, will glean something from this film.

The film follows the O’Brien family of Waco, TX, and in terms of a narrative, there’s honestly not much more to say. The only major plot device comes at the beginning of the film, which reveals that one of the three sons in the family is dead at the age of 19, though we do not know the cause. The oldest son, Jack, is seen in the present contemplating and grieving over this loss, while his parents back in the ‘60’s are grieving it as well, calling out desperately to God and boldly questioning him. The abstract jumping around time periods and settings in this sequence really gives you only a taste of where it is about to go.

Remember when I said the film is ambitious? Yeah...a few minutes into the film, Malick conducts a 20-minute overture of the creation of the universe and the earth. No dialogue, just CGI’d cosmic beauty and operatic voices showing us how inconsequential our existence is. I mean, I don’t even know if you can call it ambitious, it’s like that word doesn’t even begin to describe what the film does here. And the majesty and glory of it is breathtaking—unlike anything you’ve ever seen, I promise.

The bigness of the cosmos gives birth to the smallness of the beginnings of the O’Brien family (Brad Pitt and the beautiful Jessica Chastain being the patriarch and matriarchs of the family), who we see getting married, having children, and building a life together. The family scenes are fairly episodic—it is really as much about the 1950’s Texas setting as it is narrative, yet each little episode does have meaning to it. I found some of these scenes a little lengthy and ponderous, and it did take away from my enjoyment of the film, yet my co-critic disagreed with me on this point, so I suppose it’s entirely subjective.

The Biblical allegory is fairly clear: Mr. O’Brien represents “the way of nature”, and Mrs. O’Brien represents “the way of grace,” which references the Old/New Testament versions of salvation. But it also runs deeper than that: as Jack, the oldest son, grows older, we realize that grace and nature is not an either/or situation, but one of inner conflict that he must overcome.

If you are familiar with any of Malick’s other films, you know how much imagery is used to tell his stories. In The New World, shots of unexplored coastal Virginia tell the story of coming to a new place and beginning a new life; in The Thin Red Line, tranquil islands in the Pacific Rim are beautifully shot to contradict the horrors of war being depicted on screen, showing the hypocrisy of initiating violence to achieve peace. Even more so does nature play a role in telling the story of The Tree of Life. Fundamental, but beautiful images of bodies of water, Texas live oak trees, and landscapes are used to remind us that this universe is not one of nature OR grace, but one of both, simultaneously.

Additionally, it could be argued that the stupefying beauty and vastness of the cosmic elements during the creation sequence are not used to remind us of our insignificance, but rather, to highlight a similar complexity inside the human soul. In that regard, the abstract nature of this film will certainly be unsettling for some, and even for myself was difficult to sit through at points, yet the power of its message is undeniable. It’s a film that I admired more than I enjoyed, no doubt.

The camerawork in this film is nothing short of a masterpiece.

So, back to the wonderful birthday date I was having. One of me and my wife’s “fears” of moving to Denver from Houston was the downgrade in the sushi department, you know, being more landlocked and all (only in America in 2011 could that be even jokingly called a fear). But in between the two films we saw, we decided to give a sushi restaurant a shot. We walked about half a mile to the restaurant from the theater, soaking in the last bits of the Colorado sun and enjoying the cool breeze unfamiliar to us in the month of June.

When we got to the restaurant, we enjoyed some sake and toasted to our life together in our new home. We had an appetizer consisting of nothing but fresh raw scallops served with just a little fresh lemon and soy sauce, and they had that unadulterated, pure flavor that reminds you that God exists. So we ate, laughed, had a wonderful conversation, enjoying each other’s company, and it was kind of one of those random wonderful moments in a marriage that make me incredibly grateful to be blessed in such a way.

And so I was thinking about that moment in terms of the movie; how we sometimes think that God makes us feel small by the utter majesty of his nature, and we wonder why things happen to us, and wonder if God even cares. But there are moments like the one I shared with my wife, which some would pass off as entirely insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe, yet from my standpoint, somehow make me feel deeply and intensely connected with that power and the cosmic plan. Some may walk into this film and feel small, but what I feel is part of a plan so beautiful and comprehensive that it had the time to include you and I. In that way, this film is a message of hope, and it makes me realize that I should be nothing but grateful for the gift of partaking in the beauty of the conflict that lies in being a part of this world.

Film Friday: Woody Allen Edition

2011-04-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

The first Woody Allen film I ever watched was 2004’s Melinda & Melinda, a fairly forgettable film (and possibly boring, but I’m not sure since I can’t even remember it), that should have been much better considering its unique script, which was two different takes on the same story from both a comedic and dramatic viewpoint. Given that I had already prematurely claimed myself a film buff at that time, it’s kind of weird that I hadn’t seen any of Allen’s films yet. However, I’m glad that I hadn’t, because his films are much more enjoyable when you have relatable life experience, i.e., been in love, and making someone fall in love with me had proved quite difficult through that point in my life.

Since then, I’ve seen probably 12 or so of his films, and I can tell you my experience has been a grab bag of everything from good, to really good, to mediocre, to stunningly great, to simply awful. Go ahead right now and take a look at his IMDb filmography. He’s written and made a movie EVERY SINGLE YEAR since 1977. Every year! That’s unprecedented. So with a filmography that huge, everyone’s “Woody DNA” will inevitably be unique: some things you will hate that others love, and vice-versa. I plan on watching several more over the course of the spring and summer, and see what gems I have missed. Per my usual Film Friday column, I will lay out a couple I liked and one I hated. Just remember that your Woody DNA might be different than mine.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

VCB is your run of the mill Woody script, dealing with various love triangles and relationships. The thing that makes it your better-than-average Woody to me is the acting, which gives it substantially more charm than, say, Melinda & Melinda or Scoop. And the major source of that comes from Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz (who won an Oscar for her role), the violently-in-love couple depicted in the film (and in real life, since they just created what will probably be the most beautiful child in human history). I also enjoyed the Spanish locations and working in various elements from that culture, such as food, art, music, etc. Woody doesn’t really say anything new here, but it moves briskly and entertains easily. 7/10.

Hannah & Her Sisters (1986)

Romantic comedies are, in my opinion, one of the most difficult genres to do well—lots of filmmakers can do either funny or real, even in the same movie, but it’s hard to do both at the same time. That’s why, when I saw Annie Hall back over Christmas, I gave it a 9/10 and thought it was the best Woody Allen film I had seen thus far. That was until I watched Hannah & Her Sisters a couple of weeks ago, which now sets the bar for me.

The Manhattan-set story follows the lives and various romantic relationships of three sisters. Hannah (Mia Farrow) is a family-woman and down-to-earth homemaker, whose husband (Michael Caine) falls for her younger sister, Lee (Barbara Hershey), who is also in a relationship. Woody Allen also stars and basically reprises his role from Annie Hall, but is more charming and funny here than in that movie—and trust me, it was as weird for me to write as it was for you to read a sentence that contains the words “Woody Allen” and “charming” together, but it’s true. Finally, Dianne Weist, who won an Academy Award for this role, plays the eccentric third titular sister who rekindles a relationship with Allen’s character.

The script is chalk-full of relationship issues family-dynamics, but it’s all woven together marvelously. It’s not as funny as Annie Hall, but it is quite a bit more romantic. As I said with a review of that movie a few months ago, I wish Woody would slow down with his film-a-year routine and maybe try and tailor a script that functions at a level this high. 9.5/10 (for anyone keeping score at home, that's the highest mark I've given a film so far in this particular column).

Whatever Works (2009)

A year after the entertaining Vicky Christina Barcelona, Woody made the worst film of his that I’ve seen. I thought there could be no better vessel for the neurotic characters that Woody comes up with than Larry David, star of Curb Your Enthusiasm and creator of Seinfeld. But I was wrong—so wrong. All of the characters are the biggest stereotypes imaginable—the liberal elitist atheist, the bible-banging southerner, the naïve teenage bimbo—it got really old really fast. I haven’t had as big of an urge to walk out of a movie in a long time. 2/10.

Film Friday: Reader's Edition

2011-03-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty stoked about introducing this post to you. The first reason is that I didn't have to write it for once. The second reason is that I knew I'd be in good hands with one of my most devoted readers, and someone who spends 80% of conversations with me discussing film, writing for us (oh yeah, she's my sister, too).

I took a little break from this column for a few weeks but I'm glad to make the comeback with some great thoughts from Emily on these films. Remember the format: 1. Good New Film, 2. Good Older Film, 3. Bad Film. If any of my other readers get the hankering to write about some favorites or anti-favorites, let me know and I'd be glad to let you contribute as well...provided that you're not a better writer than I am.

Be sure to check out some more of Emily's thoughts on life at her blog.

Waiting for Superman (2010)

Whether or not you agree with Davis Guggenheim, no one can argue that he lacks passion when he makes a film. The filmmaker who brought us An Inconvenient Truth has taken a look at the American public education system to try an find out why it has become so woefully inadequate.

The film is like a triangle with three sides: The first being the students that you follow. You watch these kids and their families talk about the hopes they have for their future and the film does an excellent job of making you feel like you are also personally invested with these kids. The second is the interviews with people on all sides of the education system: certain “change agents” such as Michelle Rhee (the now former chancellor of DC public schools), Geoffrey Canada (who runs Harlem Children’s Zone), and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.

The third is the startling statistics that Guggenheim provides. Among these statistics are the declining reading and math scores, the comparatively low American education standards, union contracts and the undoubtedly the flawed tenure system. One of my personal favorite (is that even the right word I want to use here?) moments comes when the filmmakers mock lousy teachers getting moved from school to school in a piece known as the Dance of the Lemons or the Turkey Trot.

Full disclosure here: I’m an educator and so is my husband. I was a member of one of the unions discussed in the film and my husband still is. But there wasn’t much in the film that I disagreed with. I appreciated Geoffrey Canada talking openly about the rough and horrible home lives many of his students come from and how good systems can overcome that. Knowing that there are schools out there working in these kind of environments gives hope.

No matter what your views are, this film is worth seeing if you’ve ever been in a public school, or will ever at some point have a child in public schools. The film is best summed up by a quote from Michelle Rhee when she says, “We sacrifice what’s best for our children in the name of harmony for adults.” A poignant and timely observation, no doubt.

7.5/10

12 Angry Men (1957)

So there’s this movie that takes place almost entirely in one room. You know none of the characters’ names. There is no action, only dialogue. The only actors in it are white men. There’s no leading man and, in fact, it’s a movie that relies mostly on character acting. It’s not a crime drama, because the crime has already happened. It’s not a courtroom drama because the trial is over...save the verdict.

I know. It doesn’t sound like a promising premise but that’s exactly where 12 Angry Men takes you. The film is based on a stage play by Reginald Rose who, as the story goes, wrote it after he served on a jury. At the beginning, the jury is set to deliberate on a case where a teenager has been accused of stabbing his father. A case that, if found guilty, would come with a mandatory death penalty. The 12 men are all pretty satisfied to hand down a guilty verdict quickly, so they can get home and go about their business. But Henry Fonda (Juror #8) feels like if they are handing down the death penalty to a teenager, they at least owe it to him to discuss the case. And that’s when the titular anger begins. In addition to the pressure of deciding a young man’s life, it’s hot in New York that day; very hot. And as you’re watching the movie, you get hot too.

They go through all the evidence, the eye witnesses and the murder weapons and as this happens, each man comes to face his own prejudices and demons. The movie almost feels like it was shot in real time, even though it’s not. Director Sidney Lumet doesn’t have much to work with as far scenery. But he makes the most of it: as the camera angles make the room appear smaller and smaller, the men sweat more and more making the viewer feel almost claustrophobic. By the end, the viewer is as angry as the jury because you feel like you are there with them.

This film forces us to take a look at our own narrow-mindedness without being preachy. It’s political and patriotic, but in no way polarizing. It’s realistic and simple. 12 Angry Men proves that movies don’t have to be over the top to be amazing. It’s a pure classic that everyone should see.

8.5/10

Out of Africa (1985)

I’ve had Out of Africa on my Netflix queue for awhile and I was really excited about watching it. In theory, it’s full of things I should love in a movie: Amazing scenery? Check. Meryl Streep? Check. Robert Redford? Check. Directed by Sydney Pollack? Check. Sweeping musical score? Check. It’s my favorite movie genre (that being: People Who Have Romantic Problems During Wars A Long Time Ago).

So the film has a lot going for it. And the scenery and cinematography is truly wonderful. It tells a somewhat autobiographical story of a Danish Baroness named Karen Blixen (Streep) who marries a crude, womanizer named Bror who brings her to Nairobi and then leaves her while he goes off on various hunting and war ventures. She meets an independent and confident hunter named Denys (Redford) and forges a friendship with him that leads to a love affair after she kicks Bror out. Denys makes no secret of the fact that, while he loves Karen deeply, he has no intention of marrying or being tied down and ultimately, their love is destined to fail.

This is a long, drawn out movie. I don’t mind a long movie but it’s the drawn out that made me dislike this movie so much. About 30 percent of the movie could be done without. Combine that with Streep and Redford’s completely aloof and somewhat dull performances, Streep’s heavy and sometimes inaudible accent and Redford’s total lack of one (the character is British) and you get a movie that tries really hard but just falls short of being interesting. I know there are a lot of people that really love this movie but I found it was lacking many redeeming qualities and, quite frankly, boring. I really struggled to stay interested enough to even finish it. The genre will still catch my eye every time but this is one that might be better if you don’t waste your time. All three hours of it.

5/10 (And all five points are awarded Africa, which is the most beautiful thing in the movie.)

Top 10 of 2010: Part II

2011-03-08T12:37:00.000-08:00

If you missed it, check out my numbers 10-6 below. Now, before unveiling my top-5, here are ten runners-up that just missed the cut, in no particular order:

Winter’s Bone

Easy A

The Kids Are All Right

Toy Story 3

Biutiful

True Grit

The Fighter

Inside Job

Cyrus

Catfish

5. Blue Valentine

So what if I have a man-crush on Gosling?

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams give two of the best performances of the year in this relationship drama directed by Derek Cianfrance. The film starts off with a minor tragedy and from there it doesn’t really let in many glimmers of hope afterward. It was honestly a little bit grittier than I was expecting, though that doesn’t take away from the film, but I’m not sure it really added anything, either (sure, I’d love to see an abortion performed!). However, the reason that it works so well is because the director really allowed Gosling and Williams to stretch their acting legs; it was obvious that there was a healthy balance between adhering to the script and giving the actors the freedom to perform their own interpretations of the characters.

Why This One Stuck With Me:

It’s simple: anyone who is married that has seen this would agree that aspects of the relationship in this movie are painfully realistic, and if they don’t then they are lying. Some things I didn’t identify with personally, but a lot of things I did. There is a universal nature to the portrayal while keeping it specific enough to tell an entertaining story.

4. Another Year

I wrote in no uncertain terms how I felt about this movie by Mike Leigh about six weeks ago here, and time has only strengthened my stance that for me this is an unforgettable movie, although I realize that it’s not a film for everyone, unlike, say, The King’s Speech is (and I know that statement sounded douchey but I really don’t mean it that way—one of my biggest movie pet peeves is when someone makes a dismissive statement like “you just didn’t get it,” that kind of thing makes me want to pour a scalding-hot latte in the lap of whoever says it. All I mean is that I recognize that this particular type of slow moving story without much of a rising and falling action is not really everyone’s cup of tea...it’s not always my cup of tea, either, for that matter.).

Anyway, as I stated in my review, the film follows a retirement-age couple, Tom & Gerri, and their various friends and family members that come around during the course of a literal year in their lives. I read something interesting recently about how director Leigh crafts the script for his films: he makes rough outlines for each character in the film, and then spends a great deal of time working with each of the actors he casts in order to write the arc of each character. Only then is the overall script of the film put together. I found this to be very intriguing and it explains the amazing detail that each of the characters in his films typically have, and this film is no different.

Why This One Stuck With Me:

Time plays a bittersweet character in this film. For some of the characters, such as Mary and Ken, the passing of the year in the film reinforces their feelings of loneliness, their inability to attain the relationship that Tom & Gerri have. But for some of the other characters, time is good: the birth of a child occurs, a new relationship is formed, brothers are reunited, etc.

Tom & Gerri are able to push through some of the bad things that happen to them throughout the course of the year because of their love and respect for each other, and because they take the time to enjoy the blessings they have. Happiness many times is a choice that we all must make in the face of both good and bad in our lives. No other film this year gave me so much to reflect on inwardly and made me think for such a long time afterward.

3. Exit Through The Gift Shop

The mysterious Banksy.

The most unique and fresh film of the year, undoubtedly. As I wrote about back in the summer, this follows an odd (see: borderline insane) French man, Guetta, who films everything in his life, and is particularly interested in LA street art. As this interest turns to obsession, he finds out about Banksy, a famous British street artist and begins to document his work.

But the real fun and interesting part of the story comes when Banksy tells Guetta that he should be making his own art. Guetta comes up with the moniker “Mr. Brainwash,” and begins selling completely unoriginal art at ridiculous prices just because he has the endorsement of Banksy behind him. Banksy effectively turns the camera back around on Guetta and begins to document this transformation, and the result is basically a big “screw you” to not only the art community, but also, the public at large who gets duped by Mr. Brainwash’s somewhat worthless art.

Why This One Stuck With Me:

This was the year of the “fakeumentary”: Joaquin Phoenix’s I’m Still Here was admitted to be fake, while there are questions as to the events depicted in Catfish and this film. For me, however, it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other whether or not this film is “real,” and perhaps even makes it better if it’s not. I mean, what is the definition of “real” anyway when it comes to documentaries? It’s not as if no documentary filmmaker has ever manipulated the facts of their subject in order to make a point (*cough* Michael Moore *cough). And it’s even less of a big deal here than say, a film supporting a particular political viewpoint, because Gift Shop is really, at it’s core, just a commentary on society in general, and that point is made whether it’s completely real, completely fake, or somewhere in between.

2. Black Swan

One of the only films in my top-10 that I haven’t written about at some point. From the first scene, as Nina (Natalie Portman) dances an oddly freaky duet in her dream with the Swan King, I knew that this was going to be unlike anything I had ever seen, and it absolutely was. Nina is cast as the swan princess in “Swan Lake,” and goes through an unforgettable transformation as she tries to shed her sheltered, over-mothered persona in order to be able to play the role of the sexy and confident black swan.

Portman’s performance was great, obviously, but the real star of the film for me is director Darren Aronofsky. I love “director-centric” movies just in general, and Aronofksy’s style is ever-present--he never lets you forget that he is there, controlling every suspenseful, hallucinogenic moment as Nina tries desperately to set herself free from her own restraint. Adding to the horror elements of the film is the score by Clint Mansell, which, for the most part uses Tchaikovsky’s score from the original ballet. It is extremely effective.

Why This One Stuck With Me:

Have you ever seen a ballet-centered horror film? Kind of hard to forget, really. On top of this, Aronofsky is one of maybe five modern directors that I would say is responsible for getting me into film, and he is definitely at the top of his game here in a fully-realized piece of cinema. Black Swan doesn’t have the humanity of The Wrestler, or the visual beauty of The Fountain, or even the visceral grittiness of Requiem for a Dream, though it does have a little of each. But what it does have is a story that grabs you by the scalp and doesn’t let go; beautiful, dark, and richly-layered cinematography and camera-work; amazing performances by Portman, Hershey, and Kunis; and a few unforgettable moments involving random body parts.

1. The Social Network

Was there any doubt?

I haven’t been shy at any point about expressing my fanboy-esque love for this film by David Fincher. When it came out, I wrote a review here proclaiming it as the best movie to come out in some two years, and 3(!) rewatches have only made it better. Since I’ve already reviewed it extensively here and in a live-tweet session I had a few weeks ago, I’ll spare you more gushing and skip straight to the “why it stuck with me” section.

Why This One Stuck With Me:

Instead of looking at the film from a broad perspective, since most of you have seen it by now, there are several great details that I’ll point out instead:

1. Acting: When Mark meets with the Winklevoss twins, they ask him about the mp3 software he created (that Microsoft apparently tried to purchase), and he says he uploaded it for free. The Winklevii ask him why he did this, and he just shrugs his shoulders with a cold blank stare, as if to say, “why not.” Perfect acting by Eisenberg. Perfect.

2. Screenplay: During the first scene of the movie, Mark says that he needs to do something to get the attention of the clubs. He wants to be a part of an exclusive group, which leads to parties, and “a better life.” At the end of the film, while facebook employees are having a celebration for their 1 millionth user (or was it 10 million? Can’t remember), Mark stays behind at the office after betraying his friend, missing out on a party of the club that he essentially himself created. Brilliant writing by Mr. Sorkin.

3. Cinematography: After the breakup scene at the beginning, we follow Mark on the Harvard campus as he goes toward his dorm while the opening credits roll. The dark and glossy sheen typically used by Fincher is very present during this scene. His digital camera captures so much detail, as lampposts and moonlight reflect the wet streets and ivy-league cobblestone walkways. All of this is made appropriately ominous through Trent Reznor’s score in this scene.

4. Direction: Of all the many possibilities that I could point out, the one that stands out (and I tweeted about this earlier) for me is the scene in the San Fran nightclub with Mark and Sean. As Sean is manipulating Mark, the waving beams of light flash across his face—bright hues of red, purple, green, yellow, etc. Conversely, when the camera shows Mark’s face, softer colors of white, and muted yellows and pinks are reflected (full disclosure--the wifey pointed this out to me the first time we saw it--she is infinitely more perceptive than I am).

This is just one detail that director Fincher incorporated into the movie, and when you put every little detail together like this, there is no doubt that it is one of the most accomplished works of cinema this year.

Top 10 of 2010: Part I

2011-03-04T13:41:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday night I convinced the wifey and a friend to go check out Biutiful, the Best Foreign Film-nominee from this year starring Javier Bardem. It was the last on my list that I really wanted to see before the Oscars on Sunday. It was a great film, in my opinion--certainly memorable in many respects, mostly because of Bardem's ridiculously good performance and for the gritty texture of the Barcelona underbelly that director Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu incorporated into the film. (FYI--it's really depressing...it gave my wife a headache for the rest of the night (or did she just make that up for other reasons? Did I just say that out loud?), so if you don't like watching grown men wearing diapers because they can't control themselves, or seeing red urine, or several dead bodies, or a movie that gives you a general feeling of hopelessness, then I wouldn't recommend it, even though I enjoyed it.)

Anyway, my point in bringing up this movie is this: I spent much of this winter and early spring prognosticating about the Oscars--I read blogs, saw any film I could that was nominated for anything, made my own predictions, etc., etc; but when I came home from a really great Oscar party at a friend's house, after all of the hooplah and hype of the Oscars ended, I didn't sit in my living room thinking about the results of the Oscars--I was still thinking about Biutiful, a film that won zero awards, and I didn't even care.

The Oscars can certainly validate a film, and obviously I think exceptional films deserve recognition. But when it comes down to it for me, when I think about what films I really like, I don't think about it in terms of awards--I think about it in terms of why it stuck with me, why it was personal to me. So, in each of the write-ups for my Top-10 of 2010, I tried to write a little about why the film stuck with me, because ultimately, that is what's important.

10. The Ghost Writer

Roman Polanski’s most successful films follow the same, simple equation: Atmosphere + Suspense. It’s a winning combination. Whether it’s the private-investigator thriller set in bleak, depression-era Los Angeles (Chinatown), or a Jewish man hiding out and fighting for his life in Nazi-occupied Poland (The Pianist), or a political-thriller set on a creepy and isolated New England island as in this film, the coupling of these two elements in his films build a beautiful crescendo resulting in an edge-of-your-seat experience.

Polanski: mastering the art of suspense, thrill, and subversion
of the American justice system.

Ewan MacGregor, who for my money is always worth the price of admission, gives a great performance as a cocky writer who gets in a little over his head on a gig to ghost write the memoirs of a recently ousted British Prime Minster (Pierce Brosnan). Secrets surrounding the PM’s term have been locked up (literally), and MacGregor’s character begins to fear for his safety after he starts to suspect that something’s up.

Why This One Stuck With Me:

It’s not that the story of political corruption was anything particularly new or groundbreaking, it’s more that the execution here from director Polanski was so tight and flawless that the whole thing was just a thrill-ride.

(Yep, went through that whole review without making any statutory rape jokes about Polanski. Ease off the man people! He made Chinatown for goodness sakes!!)

9. Inception

Written about exhaustively on this blog, I’ve now had seven months to reflect and, recently, give it another watch. My ultimate boil-it-down take on the film is this: it is a visionary, unique, yet flawed piece of filmmaking. The entertainment value that Nolan brings to the table is enough to squeeze in here at #9. The flaws come in the form of too much exposition in the writing and through what I think was horrible miscasting in Ellen Page (she really sticks out like a sore thumb).

However, on my recent rewatch, I really upped my appreciation for many of Nolan’s shot selections and the general visual feast that the producers put together, not to mention Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-nominated score.

(Okay, let’s get real though for one second: don’t we all know at least ONE person who thinks they’re really smart (even though they’re not) for liking this movie just because it seems smart to them, and doesn’t that really annoy you? I can think of 5 people like that, right now. Is that a mean thing to say?)

Why This One Stuck With Me:

The little things. The zero-gravity/rotating hallway fight scene is good enough scene to cure many ills in the movie. The beautiful design elements that made up Cobb/Mal’s dreamworld were pure art. The inner-dream manipulation of Fisher was great writing by Nolan. The look on Cobb’s face at the end when he (spoilers!) wakes up from limbo is a great piece of acting from DiCaprio.

8. 127 Hours

Maybe Danny Boyle should have
directed the Academy Awards, too.

James Franco’s turn in this latest Danny Boyle film is undoubtedly better than his performance as host of the 83^rd Academy Awards (seriously though, was he high? Or just nervous? Both maybe? I’m not sure which was more sad—his lack of enthusiasm or Anne Hathaway’s desperate attempt to make up for it. Please join my “J-Lake for Host Next Year” campaign. Thanks.)

Boyle & Franco do a great job at providing the energy needed to sustain a story set almost entirely in a claustrophobic environment (screenwriter Simon Beaufoy should also be credited for this), while keeping the character and the story tender enough that you care about every minor success and failure that happens to him.

Why This One Stuck With Me:

The various sounds effects, split-screens, frantic editing, camera shots through tubes and in a Nalgene bottle, and a couple of trippy dream-sequences all made for a memorable film that has a harder edge than Slumdog Millionaire without succumbing to as much sappiness, yet does have a message worth telling.

7. The King’s Speech

Unfortunately, this fine piece of cinema is already drawing comparisons to Shakespeare in Love, Ordinary People, and Rocky (Best Picture winners that beat out “clearly” superior films), which I find to be a little bit of an overreaction. This film is still really good in its own right, despite whatever “better” films it may have beat out.

As I tweeted after I saw it, Colin Firth gave the most dedicated performance of the year, even though it’s not my favorite. The chemistry between him and Geoffrey Rush was pure gold, and Helena Bonham Carter was certainly worthy of her nomination as a comforting wife to Bertie.

Why This One Stuck With Me:

I’ve found that in many British movies, especially period pieces, there is a certain cold, standoff-ish type quality to the style of the film, (see: Gosford Park) and perhaps this has as much to do with rigid British subject matter as anything. However, Speech deals with some of the same material (royalty, family politics) but with a warmer and more inviting approach. Say what you want about Tom Hooper’s Best Director win, but his first two films have each made my top-10 of the year lists (The Damned United in 2009, which I wrote about here), and I think he’s got a great career ahead of him.

6. L'Illusioniste (animated)

The art in The Illusionist is simply breathtaking.

Like in another certain Pixar animated film that came out in 2010 (which just missed my list, by the way), the central character in Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist is a man who begins to feel that his usefulness in society is decreasing considerably. This gorgeously hand-drawn film follows an aging magician and his stowaway partner (a young girl) through various beautiful locales in England, Scotland and France.

Chomet’s story touches on several thematic subjects, which is pretty impressive considering its 80-minute runtime, and the fact that there is maybe 2 lines of dialogue in the whole thing. At its center, as I mentioned, is a man facing the changes and progress of the mid-20^th century while trying desperately to hold on to his dignity, while his young friend is very much representative of that younger generation ushering in the change.

Why This One Stuck With Me:

Because the Chaplin-esque nature of the film had me grinning ear to ear for much of it. Because in my lifetime I can only hope to see such beautiful animation again. Because the film’s story may intentionally allude to the demise of 2D animation—just as the magician in this story tries to work hard to provide shiny new things for his lady companion, but can’t quite give her all that she wants, so goes our society’s thirst for the new—whether it be computer-generated animation or 3D technology, or whatever the next new thing will be.

And because, despite this, for my money I find unequaled richness and depth in this most human of mediums.

Side note: my last point is even further evidenced by the fact that this film played on exactly ONE screen for a measly two weeks in the 4^th biggest city in the nation. So, so sad.

Check back early next week for the unveiling of my top 5 of the year!

Official Oscar Predictions 2011

2011-02-26T21:25:00.000-08:00

No Introduction Necessary. This column is all you need for you Oscar pool tomorrow night. Unless you want to win, of course. Then go read a blog from a real Oscar pundit.

Another quick note or two: A) be sure to check out the podcast in the post below with some more Oscar prediction chat. B) I will be tweeting some thoughts tomorrow night, so if you want some cynical insight on the way the night is turning out, then be sure to follow me at http://twitter.com/adamswindow.

The King's Speech will take
home the big one tomorrow.

Best Picture: The King’s Speech

% Sure: 70

Comments: Unfortunately I feel like I’ve already talked about this ad nauseum on here because of the amount of time I’ve discussed it with friends and read about it online, but I guess I haven’t really gone into detail about it on here yet. But this is the movie that will win tomorrow night, unless a welcome upset from The Social Network shocks the world. This was the movie that made people feel good, and it was a period piece about overcoming a disability, all things the Academy loves. So, there ya go.

Could Win: The Social Network

Should Win: The Social Network

Should Have Been There: Another Year or Blue Valentine

Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network

% Sure: 51

Comments: On the podcast yesterday I predicted Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech. As of this moment I am hereby switching my vote and going with the conventional wisdom that David Fincher gets his statue tomorrow night. It does irk me a little that if a voter thinks The King’s Speech is the best movie of the year that they wouldn’t vote for Tom Hooper, but that’s just me, I guess. A lot of times when there is a Best Director/Best Picture split, it is because the director made the more avant-guarde film of the two and people want to reward that while giving the overall BP award to the film they liked or enjoyed more, which is normally the conventional one. I guess that’s the case here. I know now that I have predicted this that Tom Hooper will win, so you might want to take that into account as well.

Could Win: Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech

Should Win: David Fincher, The Social Network

Should Have Been There: Mike Leigh, Another Year

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

% Sure: 100

Comments: Unfortunately, this is the only acting category that I’m absolutely sure on. Which is sad, because I predicted all four correctly last year, and this year I’m in serious jeopardy of being able to get only one or two out of the four. I will be really happy to get just three correct. The worst part about all of this is that I spend otherworldly amounts of time reading awards blogs and such, and when it all comes down to it, my guess is going to be as good as anyone else’s on many of these categories. So why do I waste all this time researching this crap? I...I don’t know...

Could Win: Adam Sandler, Grownups. Because if you think about it, he has just as big of a chance to win as anyone who’s nominated that’s not named Colin Firth.

Should Win: Colin Firth (with all due respect to James Franco who I loved in 127 Hours).

Should Have Been There: Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Natalie Portman, Black Swan

% Sure: 89

Comments: Natalie Portman will win. A few people are predicting an Annette Bening upset but that’s a pretty gutsy prediction considering that Portman has won just about every award that counts so far this season. HOWEVER, in 2008 Mickey Rourke was the frontrunner for Best Actor in another Aronofky-directed film, The Wrestler. What happened? He lost to Sean Penn, a respected Hollywood veteran playing a homosexual in Milk, just like Bening this year. So it won’t completely floor me if Bening steals it.

Could Win: Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right

Should Win: (My personal pick out of the nominated choices would be Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, but Portman is a totally respectable winner if she does end up pulling it out.)

Should Have Been There: Julianne Lawrence, The Kids Are All Right

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Christian Bale, The Fighter

% Sure: 85

Comments: This is by far my favorite of the acting categories. Any of the nominees would be a respectable choice to win, and even though Ruffalo is my personal favorite, Bale and Rush also gave two of the best performances of the year, and would be totally happy if either won.

Could Win: Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech

Should Win: Mark Ruffalo (Sue me. It’s my blog, I’ll pick who I want, leave me alone!)

Should Have Been There: Andrew Garfield, The Social Network

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Melissa Leo, The Fighter

% Sure: 30

Comments: Anyone’s game here. In fact, I would say it is the one category in the entire list where there are 3 or even 4 nominees that I could see taking it. But that’s just me. You have a veteran frontrunner in Leo who almost spoiled her chances by taking out her own tacky “For Your Consideration” adds, which is leading some to believe that she won’t take it, despite her SAG win and Golden Globe win, among many others. Then, you have Hailee Steinfeld, a freaking 14-year old who somehow steals the show from Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon in True Grit. Category confusion, I think, kept her from being able to win some precursor awards, which is the sole reason I’m not predicting her.

Then, there’s Helena Bonham Carter who, for once in her life wasn’t playing a witch, an evil queen, or a cannibalistic pie-baker, and I enjoyed her understated, delightful portrayal of the Queen Mother in The King’s Speech. If she wins, it will be on the coattails of a movie that looks to win several other awards. Jacki Weaver is another interesting long-shot possibility, and in a just world she would be getting far more attention for her evil-mother role in Animal Kingdom. Amy Adams probably should just be happy to be there, but maybe I’m just biased since I thought she was only the 11th best actor in her movie (behind Bale, Leo, Walhberg, and the 7 sisters).

Final Odds Tally: Leo = 30%, Steinfeld = 25%, Carter = 25%, Weaver = 15%, Adams = 5%

Could Win: Steinfeld or Carter

Should Win: Steinfeld

Should Have Been There: Olivia Williams, The Ghost Writer

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network

% Sure: 100

Comments: Aaron Sorkin is a beast, and this category is a lock. End of story.

Could Win: Toy Story 3

Should Win: The Social Network

Should Have Been There: I’m actually pretty happy with the lineup as it is.

Best Original Screenplay: The King’s Speech

% Sure: 99.5

Comments: Another easy call here for your Oscar poll. The only precursor it didn’t win was the WGA, but it wasn’t eligible because the screenwriter isn’t a member of the guild, so I don’t see that as a hurdle. However, a lot of people liked both The Kids Are All Right and Inception’s screenplays, so there’s a couple upset contenders waiting in the wings. I feel pretty safe on this category, but I did last year as well and I got both screenplay categories wrong, so who knows.

Could Win: The Kids Are All Right

Should Win: Another Year

Should Have Been There: Blue Valentine

The Illusionist would be my pick for animated
feature, but no one asked me.

Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3

% Sure: 200

Comments: Pixar continues their streak of greatness with a third installment in their flagship franchise. If this doesn’t win then I don’t know anything.

Could Win: How To Train Your Dragon

Should Win: The Illusionist (call me a snob, whatever. TS3 is great but The Illusionist is one of the most unique films of the year)

Should Have Been There: Just happy that The Illusionist got a nod.

Best Editing: The Social Network

% Sure: 85

Comments: Such a unique and noticeable editing style, switching back and forth between multiple storylines infused the movie with drama and anticipation. The only way it loses is if there is unbridled affection for The King’s Speech within the Academy. Oh wait...there is.

Could Win: The King’s Speech

Should Win: The Social Network

Should Have Been There: All good nominations.

Best Cinematography: True Grit

% Sure: 75

Comments: True Grit is the most prototypical candidate and the cinematographer and frequent Coen Brothers collaborator Roger Deakins is well overdue. True Grit has 10 nominations and by my calculation, this is the only one that it will win...I don’t think it can go home empty-handed, but that’s me.

Could Win: All of the other candidates are very close, but a certain King’s Speech bias could be enough to take this category. Are you sensing a pattern here?

Should Win: Either Black Swan or The Social Network (but I will be happy if True Grit does indeed win.)

Should Have Been There: The American

Best Art Direction: ~~Inception~~ The King’s Speech

% Sure: 25

Comments: I hate this category. When it comes down to it I’m going with The King’s Speech because it’s a period-piece and a Best Picture frontrunner. Inception and Alice in Wonderland could easily take it. In fact, I almost switched my vote just now to Inception. Ah, screw it.

Could Win: Inception

Should Win: Meh...Inception I guess.

Should Have Been There: Another Year

Best Costume Design: The King’s Speech

% Sure: 50

Comments: Once again, throwing darts at the board. Going with the frontrunner again, even though on yesterday’s podcast I picked Alice. At the very least I can get one of the two correct between this category and Art Direction if I pick the same for both. Then again, if it wins neither, I’m screwed.

Could Win: Alice in Wonderland

Should Win: The King’s Speech

Should Have Been There: The Fighter

Best Makeup: The Wolfman

% Sure: 75

Comments: Whatever.

Inception will deservedly take home 3 technicals,
by my count.

Best Sound Mixing: Inception

% Sure: 90

Comments: The Academy I think will go for the Best-Picture nominated blockbuster here.

Best Sound Editing: Inception

% Sure: 95

Comments: See above.

(My Should Have Been There for each of these categories is 127 Hours. I will never forget the sound of Franco gulping his own urine.)

Best Visual Effects: Inception

% Sure: 97

Comments: This should be more of a lock than it is considering the competition, but whatever. I think it will win for the same reasons that it will win the sound categories.

Best Original Score: The King’s Speech

% Sure: 75

Comments: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score from The Social Network could easily surprise here.

Could win: The Social Network

Should Win: The Social Network

Should Have Been There: Black Swan (it was disqualified, but oh well).

Best Original Song: “We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3

% Sure: 65

Comments: I actually haven’t heard any of these. Great insight, huh?

Could Win: “If I Rise” from 127 Hours

Bardem's acting might be good
enough to get Biutiful a
foreign film win.

Best Foreign Film: In a Better World

% Sure: 51

Comments: Only seen one nominee, Dogtooth, and that’s not winning, but it looks to be a three-way race between In a Better World, Biutiful, and Incendies. Most are predicting what I am though. This category is always difficult to get a handle on.

Best Documentary Feature: Inside Job

% Sure: 65

Comments: I really, really, REALLY want to pick Exit Through The Gift Shop here, as it is a favorite of mine and because seeing what kind of stunts Banksy will pull if he won would be great. However, I’m sticking with the conventional and topical doc by Charles Ferguson as my prediction. It was a really well-made movie and would be a deserving win in most years, but this year I just felt that Exit was so original and fresh that it would be very disappointing if it loses. The steak-eaters in the Academy probably won’t go for it though.

Best Animated Short: Madagascar, A Journey Diary (although I can totally see Day & Night winning, and I’m going to be mad at myself when it does.)

Best Live-Action Short: Wish 143

Best Documentary, Short Subject: Strangers No More

That's it, and I'm on the record. Hope you enjoyed it.

Oscar Time!

2011-02-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

My friends and I recorded a little Oscar podcast in anticipation of the awards tomorrow night. We go through our predictions and other dorky Oscar-related stuff. Check it out below! For the hearing impaired, I will be posting my predictions and some other thoughts later this afternoon or tonight. For now, enjoy the podcast. Sorry I'm not very technically savvy or I would have had it up sooner and in a better format.

Quick thanks to Mike and Allison for joining me on the pod and giving great insight. Allison posted a couple of Oscar preview items on her blog, so be sure to check that out as well.

Adam's Rear Window: Oscar Podcast from Adam Brown on Vimeo.

Film Friday: 2010 Movie Awards

2011-02-18T13:16:00.000-08:00

I’m baaaaaaaaack. So I’ve been working on a solid Top-10-of-2010 list to share with you guys, but there are just a couple more movies from 2010 that I want to see before finalizing the list. However, The Gay Superbowl (aka Oscars) are next Sunday night (and you can bet on an amazing Oscar predictions and preview column coming next weekend), so I thought before that I would take this time to pass out a few awards of my own.

(Speaking of superbowls, have you ever noticed that all four superbowls are in February? The Straight White Male Superbowl (THE Superbowl), The Gay Superbowl (The Oscars), The Black Superbowl (The NBA All-Star Game), and The Bieber Superbowl (The Grammy’s). It’s a little too much for 4 weekends in a row. We should just throw in a Douche Superbowl (UFC Fight), and a Terrorist Superbowl (a World Cup match) as well so everyone can be represented. I mean really.)

Anyway. In lieu of my normal Film Friday column with 3 recommendations, here are my 2010 Film Awards. There will be no “Best Picture” award because I have to keep the suspense up until my Top-10 list is released (although if you know me, it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out). I’ve mixed in the “real” awards with the sarcastic ones, so pay attention. Enjoy!

The Ghost Writer: Soooooo Underrated.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Best Retarded Teenage Boy Movie: Hot Tub Time Machine

Best Teen Movie Since Mean Girls: Easy A

Most Overlooked Movie: The Ghost Writer

Sexiest Actress: Mila Kunis, Black Swan (And it’s not even close. She basically melts the screen just by looking at it. Am I done looking like a pervert? Yes. Am I done thinking about Mila Kunis in Black Swan? No......no I’m not.)

Movie Most Likely to Make You Depressed and Question Everyone in Positions of Power and Give You a General Feeling of Hopelessness: Inside Job

Biggest Waste of $200,000,000: Tim Burton in making Alice in Wonderland.

Biggest Waste of $335,000,000: Everyone who went to see Alice in Wonderland.

Movie Most Likely to Make You Say “Did that really just happen?” More than 40 Times: Dogtooth (as I tweeted after I watched this, it is easily the most screwed up movie I’ve ever seen. Easily).

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right (sorry Christian Bale, you were great in The Fighter but Ruff was better in this blogger’s opinion).

Comeback of the Year Award: Goes to movies in general this year. It was an incredible year for movies, nearly everything in my top 10 list is better than anything I saw last year, and that’s the honest truth. Plus, kudos to the Academy for nominating 10 really good movies for Best Picture this year. No complaints from me.

Best Oddly Sexy Actress: Noomi Rapace, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Piercings? Tattoos? Emo hair? Works for her.)

Best Random Scene: The Rowing Scene in The Social Network.

Best Musical Score: The Social Network (never would have thought that a member of Nine Inch Nails would create one of my favorite scores).

Biggest Letdown: Never Let Me Go (it was decent, but nowhere near its potential).

Biggest Surprise: The Fighter (I would say The Ghost Writer here but Roman Polanski directed it, so to say that it was a surprise that Polanski made a good film would be pretty stupid).

Best Cinematography: Black Swan

Best Documentary: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Best Creepy Mom: Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom (narrowly edging Melissa Leo in The Fighter)

Best 3D Movie/Only 3D Movie I Saw in 2010: TRON: Legacy

The “Not As Annoying As Usual” Award: Shia LaBeouf, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps

The “Just as Annoying As Usual” Award: Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston for any movie they were in this year (they all kind of bleed together but I’m pretty sure they were both in one together).

Moore gave a great, conflicted performance
in The Kids Are All Right

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right (narrowly edging Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone).

The “Up and Coming Director” Award: Derek Cianfrance, Blue Valentine (although he worked on that movie for several years. Let’s see if he’s got another one in the tank.)

The “As Good As Advertised” Award: The King’s Speech (it would also get the “movie most agreeable to critics, movie-watchers and awards bodies” award, which is why it will win Best Picture, but more on that next week.)

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network

Best Original Screenplay: Another Year

Best Dialogue in a Film: True Grit

Movie That Will Be Most Highly Regarded in Twenty Years: The Social Network (Yeah, I said it.)

Best Blockbuster: Inception

Gutsiest Studio: Warner Brothers, for letting Chris Nolan & Co. produce Inception, a completely original, non-franchise, non-superhero, non-sequel action thriller that you actually had to think a little to watch and wasn’t in 3D. And they got their money’s worth. Let’s hope this will encourage some studios to follow suit.

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine (sorry Colin Firth)

The “Dear God Please Stop It” Award: Adam Sandler & Kevin James, Grownups.

The “Best Depiction of Mutilation of the Human Body” Award: 127 Hours (narrowly edging Winter’s Bone, Dogtooth, and Black Swan.)

Will there ever be a better lead acting duo than
Marlon Brando & Vivien Leigh? Don't count
on it.

Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network (duh.)

And Finally...in lieu of a Best Picture of 2010 award, I give you an award for:

The Best Movie I Watched for the First Time in 2010:

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

(Words cannot describe the way I feel about this movie, although at some point I should try.)

Review: 'Another Year'

2011-01-31T18:29:00.000-08:00

I saw this movie on Friday and decided to write an honest-to-goodness review of a film for once. Sorry it got a little long-winded, hope you enjoy.

There’s a scene in Another Year in which Gerri, a post middle-aged woman played by Ruth Sheen, is tending to her and her husband Tom’s (Jim Broadbent) allotment, a modest little garden outside of London, where they grow tomatoes. It is autumn, and the sun is shining and the vines are bearing plump, lipstick-red, ripened tomatoes. Taking a quick break from the labor, Gerri looks up to the England sky as a breeze gains momentum and passes through the meadow, and closes her eyes to enjoy this brief and beautiful moment in time. This scene could tell you much about the film, or not; the film itself leaves it up to you to decide.

Perhaps it was because I was enjoying my own little slice of life; a great day of January whether in combination with a day off of school. Before going into the theater to watch the movie, I sat outside a coffee shop next door enjoying an espresso, neglecting my usual distractions of my iPhone or my laptop in favor of observing the other customers, their dogs, other folks passing by along the sidewalk, and the hustle and bustle of nearby shops.

Perhaps I harnessed that joy I was feeling, that acute awareness of my simple blessings that comes along maybe once a month, as I walked from the coffee shop into the theater. Perhaps that is why this film, directed by the Brit veteran Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake) is one that had me smiling from ear to ear at points and nearly in tears at others, and was a viewing experience that I won’t soon forget.

Tom and Gerri (yes, you read that correctly) are the emotional anchors at the center of the narrative. The long happily married couple work at modest jobs, but make enough to have a decent home, and entertain guests with good food and wine. Among these guests are Gerri’s co-worker and friend Mary, a middle-aged, nervous, very single, wine-gulping and depressed woman, wonderfully played by Lesley Manville. Another is Ken, an old school buddy of Tom’s who is equally as hopeless as Mary, but unlike her he seems to have accepted this fate. There is Tom’s brother, an almost-mute who experiences the loss of his wife. And lastly is Tom and Gerri’s son, a 30-something who comes by every so often, and maintains a balanced relationship with his parents.

A very telling seen involves a dinner with Ken, who, after devouring plates of food as well as several beers and who knows how much wine, opines over a cigarette that things aren’t like they used to be. When he was younger, people would “meet at the pub, have a few drinks, and go out for a curry,” but that doesn’t happen anymore. Mike Leigh, who also wrote the script, consistently reminds us about the passing of time (the film is a literal year, broken into four sections denoted by the seasons); people change, get older, both a birth and death occur, a new relationship forms, while another may be squelched.

Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen give great
performances in Another Year.

Tom and Gerri understand that time is precious, and therefore treat each other, as well as their friends and family, with love and respect, despite their flaws. Mary’s character comes into the forefront of the story as the year progresses—for all of Tom and Gerri’s stability, Mary’s contrasting instability becomes grating. Her faint hope of finding a man to take care of her dwindles by every season, starting with spring and ending, for her, in the cold reality that is winter. But the suggestion is that Tom and Gerri have found happiness because they have chosen it, whereas Mary or Ken may expect it to come by way of luck, and therefore remain disappointed in the way their lives have turned out.

This is where the scene that I described at the beginning of this review becomes important. By what methods do we find contentment—luck or choice? Gerri’s choice to stop and delight in the breeze asks us this question. Do we resent a spring shower that comes while working in the garden, or are we thankful for the moisture that it brings? Do we invite friends into our homes for food and drink and company, or do we wait to be invited? Some measure of luck is no doubt involved, but our decisions, over time, make us who we are.

And so Another Year is exactly what its title claims—a small measure of time in the lives of no one in particular. In this way, perhaps it tells us more about ourselves than it says about the characters in the film, which is a remarkable cinematic achievement in itself.

Besides the wonderful direction, script, and acting, which I’ve already discussed, the cinematography, score, costumes and makeup, and particularly the art direction/set design add a genuine and wonderful feel to the film. These technical elements will not go noticed by awards bodies due to their lack of flashiness, but perhaps added as much to the aesthetic of a film as any I’ve seen this year.

9/10.

Film Friday: Volume IV

2011-01-22T14:36:00.000-08:00

Before diving in to this weeks films, allow me to tell you about one of my favorite subplots for this Oscar season, and 2010 as a movie year in general.

A Tale of Two Films:

The first film was produced by one of the biggest entertainment studios in the world on a budget of 200 million dollars, the 20^th highest budget in film history. Despite playing on over 3000 screens with hiked up prices from 3D and IMAX, in one month it has grossed 158 million dollars, which isn’t exactly chump change unless your still 40 million short of your investment and falling off quickly from week to week. This first film will probably inch its way toward meeting its budget over the next few weeks while executives of this studio sweat in their Armani suits, sitting in their corner LA office, afraid to answer their phones or check their email.

The second film is the passion project of an auteur director. Despite the fact that his previous film grossed 26 million from only 670 screens on a meager budget of 6 million, and garnered two Oscar nominations in acting categories, this director had all kinds of trouble financing his new movie. Even though one of Hollywood’s hottest young Oscar-nominated actresses was starring in the particularly sexy lead role, the film almost didn’t get made AT ALL until a studio decided to throw the director a bone, giving him 13 million to stretch as thin as possible. The film has now grossed over 77 million on 2300 screens and has only played wide for 3 weeks or so. As this second film briskly walks its way to 100 million dollars, racks up all kinds of nominations/awards from critics and awards bodies, including probable Best Picture, Director, and Actress nominations from the Academy, this director will be smoking Cubans and drinking Scotch out of crystal glasses while counting Benjamins and laughing to himself at the gutless execs.

Natalie Portman will win an Academy Award thanks
to the creativity of director Darren Aronofsky

The two movies, as you may have guessed, are TRON: Legacy and Black Swan, respectively. I totally don’t have anything against TRON at all (in fact I recommended it on this blog a few weeks ago) but my point in writing this is that this year, if anything, has proven to me that the cheap and uncreative methods of turning a profit in the film industry did not work out as well for the studios as they have in the past, while intelligent and adult films with modest budgets are racking up all kinds of awards while making some money along the way, and it has sort of restored my faith in American filmmaking, to be honest with you. Let me further illustrate the point with a few examples (Grosses through 1/20):

True Grit: Budget=38M, Gross=138M

The King’s Speech: Budget=15M, Gross=49M (only played wide for a few weeks)

The Fighter: Budget=25M, Gross=68M (this movie almost didn’t even get made)

The Social Network: Budget=40M, Gross=94M

And even Blue Valentine on a mere 230 screens in 3 weeks has pulled down 3M on a 1M budget, a staggering $9,000 per theatre average. When it releases wide, it will make bank.

All of this to say, creativity hasn’t quite been killed, not just yet. I must keep hope alive.

Now let me talk about some movies, and if you haven’t seen this column yet then check out the idea behind it here.

“The Damned United” (2009)

Back in the summer I mentioned on the blog here how much I enjoyed this movie, but I recently watched it again and I’m going to keep singing this film’s praises until I feel it starts getting its due. Michael Sheen stars as Brian Clough, outspoken manager of British “football” (proper) team Leeds United in the early 70’s, and he gives undoubtedly one of my favorite lead male performances of 2009. He effortlessly carries the film on its shoulders and transforms a seemingly pedestrian real-life back-story into a compelling and dramatic character study.

Give credit where credit is due though, to Tom Hooper, the Brit director at the helm of the whole thing. (You will hear his name announced as Best Director nominee on Tuesday for his magnificent work in The King’s Speech). He captures so much authenticity and adds just enough directorial flair without ever getting in the way of his own stories that he is telling, and manages to engage viewers at moments in a narrative where many would bore. Even though there is not much in the way of actual sports taking place on screen, this is by far my favorite sports film of the past few years (well, other than The Blind Side, of course...).

It’s on Netflix Instant. Check it out. 8.5/10

“Annie Hall” (1975)

I know I’m REALLY breaking some new ground here by recommending Annie Hall to you, but I just saw it for the first time over my Christmas break and I have to say, it lives up to every bit of hype it gets. It laid out the template for the modern rom-com, which many have imitated but haven’t quite replicated. Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are wonderfully charming, funny, and in Keaton’s case, sexy. The star of the film, though, is Woody Allen’s script, which had me laughing all the way through, even at more dramatic moments. In my opinion, the reason the script works so well is because it is partly autobiographical, and therefore is handled with great care by Mr. Allen.

A young Allen here is his patented cynical self without resorting to disdain, as many of his recent movies do, and he has enough wide-eyed belief in love and relationships for the viewer to take the cynicism in stride. If Woody Allen slowed down every once in awhile and made one movie every three or four years that was HALF as good as Annie Hall, he would be a first ballot hall-of-famer, so to speak. 9/10.

“Away We Go” (2009)

For my film that I do not recommend, I chose this film by Sam “I hate suburbia” Mendes. Oh, look Jon Krasinski has a beard, and long hair, and thick-rimmed glasses, he must be quirky! Look at all of the wacky personalities they meet on their journey to find a new home! They don’t want to settle down and be like everyone else, they must different...and better than YOU!

Sam Mendes (director of American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) clearly has an intense aversion to middle-class suburbanites, which would be just fine with me as long as he didn’t make it so painfully and unavoidably evident in all of his films. This movie could have been fun, but it was so chalk-full of holier-than-thou pity that hovered over the whole thing like a cumulus cloud of flatulence that you couldn’t even take it remotely seriously as a work of art. 3/10.

Oscar Nomination Predictions 2011

2011-01-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

Here they are, as promised.

But first, before presenting to you these nominations that you can take to the bank, let me make some comments. Originally in this post, I wrote up some "Oscar subplots for 2011," but that ended up being over 2000 words and basically blew up into a post of its own. Then, I was planning on discussing the minutia behind just about every prediction...I started doing that and that ended up being like 2000 words also. Long story short, this post, unedited or restructured, would have ended up passing as a term paper at most colleges. I figured I would save you the time.

However, let me just say this: predicting Oscar wins after the nominations have been announced is fairly easy; but predicting noms themselves, not so easy. If you pay attention all the way through awards season (actually, if you just read anything at all during the awards season), the race shapes up pretty solidly by the time Oscar night rolls around. The Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild, Producers Guild, Writer's Guild, etc...all are highly indicative of who will prevail come Oscar night. Yes, there are a few curveballs thrown every once in a while, a la Crash beating Brokeback Mountain in 2006 for Best Picture (although the reason for this may have been anti-gay motivated more than anything). There's almost always a surprise in one of the acting categories as well (last year was an exception to this rule).

However, predicting Oscar nominations is a trickier game. Obviously, having 5x or 10x the number of movies to predict in each category is part of the reason for this. It's gonna be difficult to get everything right in any given category--I'm shooting for 4/5 or 8/10 in all of the categories. If you can pull off a straight 5/5 or 10/10 though, you look like a genius (I will).

For my predictions, I'm only doing the "above the line" categories, meaning only Picture, Director, Acting, and Screenplay categories.

So here they are, in all of their glory:

The Social Network is still the film to beat this Oscar season.

Best Picture
The Social Network
The King’s Speech
The Fighter
Black Swan
Inception
True Grit
Toy Story 3
The Kids Are All Right
127 Hours
Winter’s Bone

Best Director
David Fincher, The Social Network
Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
Christopher Nolan, Inception
Joel & Ethan Coen, True Grit

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
James Franco, 127 Hours
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Robert Duvall, Get Low

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Mark Ruffalo gave one of my favorite performances of the
year in The Kids Are All Right.
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Christian Bale, The Fighter
Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone
Andrew Garfield, The Social Network

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Hailee Steinfield, True Grit
Helena Bonham Carter, The King’s Speech
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Amy Adams, The Fighter
Mila Kunis, Black Swan

Best Adapted Screenplay
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
127 Hours
True Grit
Blue Valentine

Best Original Screenplay
The King’s Speech
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
Another Year
Black Swan

Film Friday: Volume III

2011-01-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

Check out the idea behind this new series of posts here.

I try to mask my insatiable love of Oscar season as much as possible on this blog, but unfortunately for all of you, I can’t hold out too much longer on writing a lengthy Oscar predictions post, which will be forthcoming this week in advance of the announcement of the nominations on January 25^th. I know in the past I have promised columns and not gotten around to writing them, but you can bet the farm that I will be writing this one in the coming week.

In the mean time, for today’s Film Friday, I wanted to write a little bit about a few films that will not be (or weren’t) anywhere near the Academy Awards; cause, you know, they occasionally (rolls eyes) miss some good movies from time to time.

“Cyrus” (2010)

Another movie that was a total surprise for me this year. It probably won’t end up on my top-10 list for the year, but it was a really heartfelt comedy that manages to stay funny throughout the film while making an emotional connection with the audience—something that many comedies try to achieve but do not come anywhere near doing so.

The story centers around John C. Reilly’s character, a slowly recovering divorcee who somehow scores a date with Marissa Tomei’s character (only in movies). Unfortunately for Reilly’s character, she has a grown up son (Jonah Hill) still living at home and attached to her hip.

One of the things that makes this a solid film is the acting that directors Jay & Mark Duplass manage to draw out of Reilly and Hill, two actors who tend to play the same type of characters over and over, but here find themselves very comfortably inside the skin of the written characters while adding just enough of their own traditional flair to them. This movie went under the radar for a lot of people, but it’s out to rent now and I highly recommend checking it out. 7.5/10

“The Bicycle Thief” (1948)

This was a film that I watched back in the summer as part of my attempt to become a classic film snob. It’s an Italian film, so the combination of Foreign + Pre-1960 Film gets you a LOT of snob points.

It was immediately easy for me to see why this is regarded as such a classic when I was watching it. It has the simplest story: A man looking for work in post-WWII Italy finally gets a job that requires him to have a bicycle to ride around on. After selling sheets and blankets in order to purchase the bike, it is tragically stolen from him. He then embarks on a journey with his young son around the city to find the bike and the thief, and to bring them to justice. What ensues is a morally ambiguous and politically-driven narrative that is well-acted and SUPREMELY directed. It’s on Netflix Instant and has a mere 90-minute runtime, so do yourself a favor and watch it. 8.5/10

“Greenberg” (2010)

For my film that I do NOT recommend, I chose this Ben Stiller vehicle driven by highly regarded director Noah Baumbach. I’m sort of sticking my neck out here in proclaiming I didn’t like it, because apparently a lot of people did like it as it is getting nominated for a lot of awards.

Ben Stiller stars as Roger Greenberg, a boy in a man’s body who apparently is obsessive-compulsive (one of my least favorite character devices in movies unless we’re talking about Nick Cage in Adaptation), and who is staying at his brother’s LA home while the brother is out of the country for awhile.

Roger Greenberg is a bitter man that manages to piss off pretty much every other character in the film at some point, particularly Florence, his love interest, played by Greta Gerwig (one of the only good aspects of the film is her character). It’s not that I’m inherently against a-hole characters in movies, it’s just that Greenberg has almost literally zero redeeming value as a human. He has no character arc, never learns from any of his lessons. It makes little sense that anyone, especially Florence, would want to keep spending any time around him. I know I didn’t.

I’ll give this a generous 5/10.

Seven Intriguing Storylines for 2011

2011-01-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

This story about some 2011 movies coming out caught my eye, and my interest some of you. Courtesy of the LA Times. Which one of the storylines here interest you most? Mine might have to be Mel Gibson's The Beaver.

"January brings New Year's resolutions, holiday hangovers and, apparently, a lot of "The Dilemma" commercials. Although the Vince Vaughn vehicle isn't a huge storyline in moviedom, there are a number of narratives in and around the film world set to unfold in the coming months. Here are a baker's half-dozen to keep an eye on.

The "Twilight" crowd, the morning after: They've branched out into other roles before. But 2011 will bring moments of truth for all three lead actors in the "Twilight" franchise: Robert Pattinson in the period circus drama "Water for Elephants" (coming in April), Taylor Lautner in the teen fugitive thriller "Abduction" (coming in September) and Kristen Stewart in the adaptation of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" (date TBD). The last two movies in the franchise that made them famous are shooting now. Which of the trio can fashion the most productive post-Forks career?

The Battle of the Greens: When footage of Seth Rogen's comedic "The Green Hornet" screened at Comic-Con last summer, it drew a tepid response, paling in comparison to Ryan Reynolds' more muscular "The Green Lantern." But in the last two months, the tide has turned: The Rogen movie, coming out later this month, is testing well, and the trailer for the springtime Reynolds movie elicited some perplexed reactions. Is there room for two green superheroes? Or will only one of the films take the ring?

Reboot Redux: We've seen a fair number of reboots already, but 2011 will bring a slew of them: a new "Planet of the Apes," a new "Smurfs" movie, a new "Conan the Barbarian." Some say enough with the rummage sale, but reboots like "Star Trek" and "The Karate Kid" have performed well. Can the streak continue?

"The Hangover" hangover? It was one of the biggest surprises of 2009. But the sequel has been filled with more hiccups than a Bjorn-held baby. First there was a fracas over the casting, and then non-casting, of Mel Gibson. Then came the news last month of a serious injury to a stunt man. Can Todd Phillips successfully take his endearingly ragtag group of man-children from Vegas to Thailand, or would he have better luck at the Bally's craps table?

A tree grows in Malick-ville: Rarely does a movie not based on a comic book generate this much advance hype. But more than four months ahead of the release of "The Tree of Life," the buzz is already nearing crescendo levels for Terrence Malick's long-developing autobiographical epic. Will it live up to the standards of the director's "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven?" Or will its meditative tone make even "The New World" seem like a potboiler?

How super "Super 8"? With J.J. Abrams writing and directing and Steven Spielberg producing, it's one of the most high-profile collaborations in modern commercial fimmaking. It's also one of the most secretive. The 1979-set film, scheduled for a June release, may or may not be about an alien invasion, supernatural occurrences or any of another number of phenomena. Is it the second coming of "Star Trek" or a marketing idea in search of a story?

Beavering: It was a much-ballyhooed story long before a trailer was even released. The story will only heat up as the months become weeks for the release of "The Beaver," the first Mel Gibson movie to come out since he allegedly verbally abused ex-lover Oksana Grigorieva, and one with some additional challenges given its beaver-puppet themes. Will the actor turn out to do publicity? And will the public forgive him he does?"

--Steven Zeitchik

Film Friday (On a Saturday) Vol. II

2011-01-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

Check out the idea behind these new weekly posts here. December has given me an embarrassment of riches as far as the quality of movies I have seen in the theatre, including The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter, True Grit, and TRON: Legacy, which I write about below. I plan on writing a little more about a couple of these this coming week. Here are my picks for this week, and for the love of mercy remember the order: first movie = good new movie, second movie = good older movie, third movie = bad movie.

“TRON: Legacy” (2010)

I almost hesitate to recommend this here because I wasn’t a huge fan of it, but I did think it was such an audio-visual treat that I think a lot of you would enjoy watching it. This is definitely one that you want to see in IMAX 3D or you might as well not even bother. If you want to see it at all, don’t wait and simply rent it.

I could talk about the story but I’m not even sure if it matters. Garrett Hedlund, the lead of the film, wasn’t given very much love critically for his performance but I actually enjoyed what he did with a very underwritten character. Jeff Bridges gives a very interesting performance, as he not only reprises his role from the original but also plays the villain.

None of that even matters...as I said, it’s all about the audio-visual aspects of the film. Daft Punk’s electronica-sounding score is one of the best I’ve heard this year, and perfectly complements the film. Visually, the action sequences taking place on “the grid” are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, though there are spots where I felt they were recycling the same things over and over.

Despite the meandering story, I still recommend checking this one out before it leaves the theatres. 6.5/10

“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946)

I’ve written before about how my dad is a huge old movie buff. This is one of his favorite films, and I finally got a chance to check it out a couple of weeks ago. It follows the different lives of three WWII veterans as they return home the war, and looks at the challenges that each one of them face in returning to civil life: one, a young amputee with hooks for hands; another, a poor man with marital troubles and post-traumatic stress syndrome; and lastly, a family man who has missed several important years of his children growing up.

William Wyler, the director of this film (and the most Oscar-winningest director of all time), is a natural at the emotional storytelling that takes place. At the same time, one of the things that I appreciated most about the film is that it is emotional about veteran life without being overly sentimental or unrealistic about it. Wyler gives enough directorial flair to turn what would have been a really good movie into a great movie. This Best-Picture winner is not one to be missed. 8.5/10.

“It’s Complicated” (2009)

Meryl Streep, I expected better from you. Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, not so much...but you, Meryl?

Nancy Meyers (director of such classic films as The Holiday, Something’s Gotta Give, and What Women Want) returns here to give us another story about the pain and drama in the lives of the middle-aged upper class. Excuse me if I don’t exactly feel their pain. Streep and Baldwin star as divorcees who fall back in love with each other, “complicating” things.

The only problem is that neither Meyers, nor Streep or Baldwin make me feel at all during the film that anything is actually complicated. The film should rather be called “It’s Slightly Inconvenient in My Otherwise Privileged and Lavish Lifestyle.” I’ll give you that I’m not really the target audience of a film like this. However, a good director would make this story appeal to more than just a very specific pocket of people, and instead of stereotyping and generalizing the characters to appeal to this pocket (and the lowest common denominator in that pocket), they would have tried to bring the film to life through some more specific characterization for Streep, Baldwin and Martin. It pains me to say it, but none of the three of them give even a decent performance.

Whatever. People will see this anyway, and I'm sure a lot of people liked it/will like it, but it just wasn't for me. At all. How's that for film criticism? 3/10.

Time Waster x 1000

2010-12-30T21:32:00.000-08:00

Just discovered this little gem of a website, Flickchart, and I think my life as I know it may be over. Okay, I'm being dramatic, but I just started playing around with it and it's pretty fun.

Part of me hates turning the arts into trying to find some kind of scientific formula, but when you think about it we do that all of the time with our Netflix ratings (which are SCARY accurate about what I will like), and rating a movie a certain amount of stars (or grade letter, or number out of ten, etc.). So I will accept this website I suppose.

Just wanted to make everyone aware of it and give you a little time waster.

Film Friday: Volume I

2010-12-24T08:37:00.000-08:00

As I was discussing in my previous post, I love Twitter and the vast amount of information it provides me. It’s like having your own newspaper, catered exactly to your needs. You get updates on the things you want updates on, and aren’t cluttered with things that you couldn’t care less about. I get updated hourly on things going on with movies, sports, politics, etc, and links to websites and other blogs that I might be interested in. Besides the occasional sex-bot that tries to get me to follow them and “check out their pics,” Twitter is pretty great.

One of the things I like about Twitter is “Follow Friday”, where people who you follow on Twitter will recommend a few other people for you to follow. So, in the spirit of Twitter, I’m starting a “Film Friday” column that I will (try to) run every Friday, where I will briefly recommend two movies to watch and one to NOT watch. The format will go like this: the first movie will be a new-ish film (as in this year or last year) that I recommend. The second movie will be an older (as in older than 2 years ago) that you either may have not heard about or just something that I personally want to champion. The last movie will be a movie that I do NOT recommend. A lot of these will be recent movies that I hope to steer you away from but there could be some older ones as well. So each week when you come to read the column it will look like this:

1. Good new movie.

2. Good older movie.

3. BAD movie.

So here’s my first entry for “Film Friday”:

"The Fighter" (2010)

Put this one in the category of total surprises for me. Mark Wahlberg stars as boxer Irish “Mickey” Ward, and the film looks at a brief period of his boxing career in the early 90’s. It isn’t really a typical Disney-style feel good underdog story, but rather, it is a character study with the boxing as more of a backdrop and the glue that holds the plot together.

The movie is an actors’ showcase. By now most people have at least heard about the turn that Christian Bale makes as Mickey’s brother, Dickey (I guess that family took a page out of Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s book), who is a crack-addict, former boxing star and Mickey’s trainer. He knocks the performance out of the park. Melissa Leo also makes quite the impression as the controlling matriarch of the family. The chemistry of those two characters is outstanding and it really captures the family dynamic. Mark Wahlberg and Amy Adams hold up their end of the bargain, although they are outshined in almost every scene by one of the other two I mentioned. I also thoroughly enjoyed the brief performances by all of the seven sisters. Just see the film and you will agree with me on that. The movie is in theatres now, so go check it out. 7.5/10.

"You Can Count on Me" (2000)

I’ve wanted to write about this one for quite awhile now. Family dramas always get a little extra boost from me just on default, but this one is done quite well. Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo star as siblings who lost their parents when they were children. Linney’s character is a single mom who stays around the town her and her brother grew up in and works at a bank to provide for her son. Ruffalo’s character is the antithesis—a wayward pothead who dreads the thought of residing in the town they grew up in. His poor choices bring him to stay with his sister and her son for a few days as they work out their personal lives and their relationship with each other.

As in The Fighter, the greatness of the movie has much to do with the acting and the chemistry between the leads. Even Rory Culkin (in his screen debut) gives a wonderful performance that would take most dramatic actors to task. The emotional connection that the characters create with each other and the audience is outstanding—it’s one of those movies where, on the surface, you don’t relate to the characters’ situations at all, yet for some reason you feel that it is about you. If a movie can make you feel that way, you know that something special occurred. 8.5/10

"The Lovely Bones" (2009)

It’s too bad that the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy couldn’t pull this one off. This was one of the most disappointing movies I’ve seen in awhile as far as potential vs. actual. I haven’t read the book, but anyone who has will tell you it is an amazing piece of literature. The movie was disjointed and failed to successfully take what was in the book and adapt it appropriately.

The acting was mostly bad. Stanley Tucci gives the only decent performance as the creepy child molester/killer, but even he was a little bit of a caricature and over the top at some points. As always with Peter Jackson’s movies, there are some cool visual elements (for the scenes in “Heaven”) matched with decent music, but even both of those are misguided and serve little purpose to the narrative. It’s like Jackson just said “let’s make this cool globe-looking thing roll down a mountain and splash in a lake!” but no one ever thought to ask him why.

This one is a huge misfire that I do not recommend. 4/10.

Blogoversary/Season's Greetings

2010-12-22T05:18:00.000-08:00

I’ll admit, my lack of posting in the last two months is depressing. Quite depressing. Being bogged down in schoolwork is most of the reason, but that’s really no kind of excuse that I wish to invoke. In fact, the reason this blog got started almost exactly one year ago was as a deliberate distraction from exam preparation. I wanted to remind myself that even though school was hell, there were still things in life that I found joy in and could get excited about. This semester, rather than seeking to be energized from a productive distraction while studying, I mainly just felt suicidal. Kidding! (Kind of.)

But don’t worry—I still very much enjoy writing on here. So much so that the other reason that I haven’t been posting as much is because I’ve been considering some changes/enhancements to the blog after running it throughout the last year. It will be nothing serious, but here are a few changes you can expect in the near future:

1. A new weekly Friday column that I will be rolling out this week called “Film Friday.” I’m pretty excited about this, and I’ll explain more when I unveil it.

2. Film news/rumors/awards season chat: Most of my entries as of now consist of 1,000-word prose on random topics that I just feel like writing about in that moment. And I will keep doing that for sure. However, posting news will be a way that I can update the site more than once every week or two—I hope with this that I will be posting on here at least twice a week, if not more, and that it will be a place that you can check several times a week for my thoughts on random things going on.

3. Twitter handle. You can now follow me @adamswindow on Twitter!!!! Woohoo!!! I joined the 21^st century!!! No but seriously, I love twitter and spend unjustifiable amounts of time on it. The only problem is that I never tweet. Mostly because I prefer to communicate with my friends over facebook. But this is a way that I can tweet new columns when they are up, tweet when I’m watching movies, post random news, etc. In fact, my personal twitter account could very well just go away and vanish into thin air.

So those are just three ideas that I’m currently working with, although there are others that I’m tossing around. If you have any other ideas you would like to share about how to improve the site, feel free to let me know.

In other news, Happy Holidays everyone. I hope everyone gets to catch up on some holiday films during their time off from work/school (What’s that? You spend time with family during the holidays and don’t watch ridiculous amounts of movies? Weird.) There’s been some GREAT stuff coming out lately in theatres, and I’ve hardly been able to keep up. I plan on writing about a few of them really soon. I also hope to catch a few of my favorite Christmas films over the next few days. What are my favorite Christmas films, you ask? I think this calls for a top-5 list!

1. Home Alone

2. A Muppet Christmas Carol

3. White Christmas

4. A Christmas Story

5. A Charlie Brown Christmas

937. Jingle All The Way

That’s all I’ve got for today, but remember to check back Friday for my new weekly column and to follow me on twitter @adamswindow.

10 More For 2010: Part II

2010-10-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

Continuing last weeks post, here are numbers 5 through 1 in my most anticipated for the rest of 2010...

#5: The King’s Speech

Trailer Here.

Check out this plot synopsis:

“Tells the story of the man who became King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II. After his brother abdicates, George ('Bertie') reluctantly assumes the throne. Plagued by a dreaded stutter and considered unfit to be king, Bertie engages the help of an unorthodox speech therapist named Lionel Logue. Through a set of unexpected techniques, and as a result of an unlikely friendship, Bertie is able to find his voice and boldly lead the country through war.” (From IMDb)

Sounds like it should be some sort of boring BBC Miniseries, right? Well, a few things: first, it has been getting rave reviews everywhere it has played so far. As in, it is a frontrunner in the Best Picture race, Colin Firth is a lock for a nomination (if not a win); that type of talk/buzz is surrounding it. Second of all, this was directed by Tom Hooper, and after seeing The Damned United this summer, I will watch anything he makes (FWIW, he also made the John Adams miniseries on HBO a couple years back). So yeah, pretty excited about this one even though it doesn’t seem like anything that would ordinarily be right up my alley.

#4: Blue Valentine

Trailer Here.

An acting match made in heaven

Okay, now we’re moving from “excited about these movies because I’ve read about how good they are and I like the directors/actors involved” territory into “really excited about these movies because there is something particularly compelling to me personally about either a person involved in making it and/or the subject matter” territory. Blue Valentine fits that description perfectly. For one thing, it stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, who, if pressed, I might say are the best under-30 actor/actress that we have out there right now, (although they won’t be 30 anymore when the film releases) and if you scoff at that statement then go watch Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl for Gosling and Wendy & Lucy for Williams, then come back to me. For another thing, I’m really into the whole melodramatic quirky romance genre (i.e. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Lost in Translation). To boot, the directorial-style demonstrated in the trailer just seems pretty awesome and fitting.

#3: Somewhere

Trailer Here.

Speaking of Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola, the director of that film, returns to us in 2010 with this one here. That one dealt with odd and unexpected things that can happen in our romantic lives, while this one seems to deal with unexpected things that can happen in our familial lives. I really appreciate the way Sofia Coppola directs—the slow moving, focused, contemplative tendencies with her camerawork are very emotional and personal. She is also great at bringing out the best in her actors, and by all accounts has resurrected Stephen Dorff’s career with his lead performance in this film.

#2: Black Swan

Trailer Here.

I am a total fanboy of Darren Aronovsky. I am continually lambasted by some of my friends for my adoration of The Fountain, which I believe to be a misunderstood masterpiece. The Wrestler and Requiem for a Dream are also great films (even though you couldn’t pay me enough to watch the latter one a second time). So of course I am excited about this thriller with Natalie Portman as the star. Like all of his other films, obsession seems to play an important role thematically, and the dark nature of the material will fit perfectly with his style, perhaps even more so than with The Wrestler. Also, Clint Mansell is doing the musical score, and if you’ve ever heard his work you know what a plus that is for the film. (By the way, is that not the coolest movie poster you've ever seen? Check out some other cool ones for this movie here.)

#1: The Way Back

Trailer Here.

Weighing in as the champ in my most-anticipated list is this film that wasn’t even on my radar until a little over a month ago. Peter Weir, director of Master & Commander, The Truman Show, Dead Poet Society and Witness makes his filmmaking return here after a seven-year hiatus. Let me be the first to admit that the trailer was a little underwhelming. However, I personally love the way Peter Weir tells stories in his movies. Unlike numbers 2 and 3 on my list, whose directors rely heavily on style to tell their stories, Weir manages to get his message across simply through strong narrative and characterization. Accordingly, the true story he is telling here seems very compelling, and the cast is superb. Anyone who has seen Master & Commander knows that Weir is painstakingly detailed when it comes to authenticity of his sets, his locations, costumes, accents, etc. and this film looks to be no different. It was announced last week that this film will be released in late December for a qualifying run in this year’s Oscar race. Yay.

Post your most anticipated movie in the comments below!!

Honorable Mentions that you should be looking out for:

Conviction

Rabbit Hole

Love and Other Drugs

Tangled

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows: Part I

Hereafter

How Do You Know?

Made in Dagenham

Biutiful

10 More For 2010

2010-10-14T16:49:00.000-07:00

After having seen The Social Network, which as I stated last week, is my favorite movie so far this year, I thought I would make a list for my most anticipated films for the rest of the year and tell you why you should be anticipating them, too. This blog isn’t really bloggie (bloggy?) enough sometimes, so I’m glad to offer something here other than my boring 1200-word reviews. I’ll separate this into two parts and then toss in some honorable mentions at the end as well. Also, if you’re reading this, then I demand that you COMMENT afterwards and tell me your most anticipated movie. C'mon, I don't ask for much. Heaven forbid we get an actual discussion going.

#10: Inside Job

Trailer Here. (Random tip, sometimes I have to refresh my screen to get trailers to play on IMDb).

Coming in at #10 on my list is this documentary that covers the global financial crisis (you know, that one we’re still in the middle of). While I don’t expect this to be 100% “fair and balanced” (although it probably would qualify as that under certain networks’ apparent definitions of the phrase), I have heard that it is very informative and gives you a really great overview of how everything went down, literally. Additionally, it is supposedly very well made.

#9: Another Year

Trailer Here.

This would be higher on my list, as it’s by an A-list director (Mike Leigh) with a great cast and has been dominating the festival circuit, except for the fact that the subject matter looks a little depressing. I’m sort of inherently against movies with zero redeeming value, which seems like it could be the case here, but the combination of director + cast + scriptwriter should be good enough to give it a shot.

#8: TRON Legacy

Trailer Here.

First of all, yes, I’m serious. For some reason I have been ridiculously excited about this film ever since I saw the trailer back in the summer. I don’t expect it to be a tour-de-force of acting or any sort of moving screenplay or plot, but the visual effects are stunning and unique, and looks like it will be a real dazzler in IMAX 3D. Second of all, the music was scored by Daft Punk....I mean, how can this be anything short of awesome?

#7: 127 Hours

Trailer Here.

Coming off of his success with Slumdog Millionaire, director Danny Boyle is sticking with Oscar-bait here. James Franco stars in this true story as the Dude Who Cut His Own Arm Off when he got it stuck under a rock (oh, did I spoil it for you?). I was a huge fan of Into The Wild, so if this has a similar naturalistic vibe to it, then I will like it. I’m not quite ready for any solid Oscar predictions yet, but you can bet I will point back to this post in January when this movie is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, because it will be.

#6: True Grit

Trailer Here.

The Dude wearing an eye patch has no chance of failure.

The Coen Brothers? Check. Jeff Bridges wearing an eye patch? Check. Matt Damon? Check. Western? Check. Remake of a John Wayne Movie? Check.

Okay, I’m in.

The Social Network (2010)

2010-10-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

The proverbial bar for the year has been set.

The Social Network is the best (new) movie I’ve seen in over two years. Period.

And before you read this, here’s the honest truth about this entry—I had originally planned out one of my “How to Make a Movie” posts and I was going to explore the three best aspects of the movie from a filmmaking standpoint. But then I couldn’t come up with the three best aspects, because there are at least seven or eight that would have to be mentioned in a post like that.

I mean, for starters, I would have discussed the screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, which starts from the very beginning firing bullets of genius dialogue, and you better keep up or get out of the way. At the same time, it’s never imposing and the great dialogue fits perfectly within the flow of the plot development. At least a third of the movie takes place inside a conference room during depositions. Boring, right? Wrong. These are some of the most memorable scenes of the film. Aaron Sorkin will undoubtedly have a room full of awards come March for his work on this script.

And then I would have talked about the acting. Jesse Eisenberg gives a career performance; and while I think he’s normally a good actor, many times I feel like he’s just playing Jesse Eisenberg, which is definitely NOT the case here. He was totally immersed in the character of Mark Zuckerberg. He was funny in a jerk-ish sort of way, and definitely captured the “idiot-savant” feel that he was going for—a mal-adjusted genius, sure of his intellect but not of himself. The supporting cast is outstanding. Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake and particularly Armie Hammer (who played the entertaining Winklevoss twins), all held up their end of the bargain.

(By the way, Justin Timberlake has officially solidified himself as the most talented entertainer in the world. There, I said it. Dude is a multi-platinum recording artist both in a group and as a solo act, he can put on an amazingly electric concert, he’s in the conversation for one of the best SNL guest-hosts ever, he can dance, and now, he has proven that he can act, and will rack up some awards nominations for sure, and possibly an Oscar nom. For those keeping track at home, that’s (1) Singer (2) Recording Artist (3) Dancer (4) Comedian (5) Serious Dramatic Actor. Oh, and by the way, he’s only 29. Case closed. He will probably run for office some day, and God help me, I’d vote for him.)

Ahem.

And let’s not forget who directed this piece of work, the man himself, David Fincher. This is a huge comeback for him IMO after Benjamin Button, which obviously a lot of people liked, but to me was a very technically well-produced movie that had about as much soul as a side salad from Wendy’s. Here, he combines his brand of gritty, technically flawless production with Sorkin’s script and character development. He’s definitely less present than in some of his films like Fight Club, but he does get a few chances to flash his brilliance—one scene in particular where the Winklevoss twins are at a rowing tournament (where they foreshadowingly place 2^nd) is a little treat for Fincher fans who appreciate his pizzazz.

I would also definitely have to mention the film's trailer, which I believe is a lost art in Hollywood. This is absolutely one of my favorite trailers of all time. Radiohead's "Creep" as sung by a children's choir in the background, the random facebook profiles displayed that seem weirdly ominous given the music, and then the tension builds more and more as the storyboard is revealed. "Creep" is the perfect song to represent this movie and the character of Mark Zuckerberg, and in general it is representative of the facebook generation. I obviously wouldn't even be mentioning the trailer if it hadn't been so pitch-perfect and amazing.

And then I’d probably end by saying something about the zeitgeist of the whole thing. It wonderfully captures the spirit of the times we live in. I mean, I was in college when facebook was created, and I can tell you that the insanely fast way that facebook caught on like wildfire and was spread was accurately depicted in this movie. Moreover, the characters were all representative of the millennial generation—the way the company started without much organization, Zuckerberg forcing students to take shots of liquor while writing code in order to “try out” for facebook, all of the males’ distorted viewpoints about women—it was all very “true,” for lack of a better word. The wifey and I were commenting on how many twenty-somethings were in our theater with us on the opening night of the movie. It was a good 80% of the people there. The movie will play to older crowds, because of the great dialogue and the somewhat indicting nature of the film towards millennials, and it will play to the younger teens who are just now getting into facebook, but I can’t help but feeling that my generation will particularly “get” this film.

But the thing I can’t help but mentioning is just what a well-rounded film this is. People I normally chat about movies with often point out to me that it’s difficult for me to really enjoy films if they are not well-rounded. Take Inception, for instance, a thoroughly enjoyable blockbuster that lacked character-development and above-average dialogue. Was it a great piece of filmmaking? Yes. Was it a great piece of well-rounded filmmaking? No. And films in the latter category will always appeal way more to me, which is exactly why The Social Network is at the top of my list right now for 2010, and I will not be surprised if it remains there until the end.

In my next couple of posts I’ll discuss some of my most-anticipated films for the rest of 2010, and why you should be anticipating them too.

The Conversation (1974)

2010-09-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

So, I guess last week’s post was the official bringing in of the fall film season. As I stated then, I started out with a bang on Easy A and The Town. The fall season is typically when many of the awards contenders will make their commercial releases, after premiering at festivals such as Telluride, Toronto, and Venice, which have all taken place within the last month or so. I am very excited about some of the projects coming out this fall, and expect it to be a great year for movies.

Soon enough I plan on writing up a post on some of my most anticipated for the rest of the year, but for now I wanted to slip in a review of a little film called The Conversation before I get rolling too heavily on the fall film madness.

I am sad to say that I wasn’t even aware of this film’s existence until about 2 years ago. It was directed by this guy—you may have heard of him—Francis Ford Coppola? Yeah, him. The guy known for making The Godfather films, as well as Apocalypse Now, some of the most celebrated films of all time, yet in the few weeks since I’ve seen The Conversation, it is becoming harder for me to think that it isn’t his best film.

It stars Gene Hackman as a surveillance guru who’s kind of a loner, and it becomes clearer and clearer as the film gets going that he has some skeletons in his closet that will affect many of his choices the further he goes along.

The direction is breathtaking—forgive me for being trite, but Coppola has quite the eye. The first scene of the film (which takes place in San Francisco) is a bird’s eye view of Union Square (see picture on left). We are watching and listening to different groups of people—wondering who we are supposed to be watching. As Coppola zooms in, we hear “the conversation” going on between a couple—which forms the basis of the entire plot—and then learn that Hackman’s character is bugging them, listening to their every word.

As he painstakingly plays their conversation over and over throughout the film, intending to solve the mystery, I became increasingly nervous and worried—the conversation, which at first seemed so innocent—starts to become sinister. A haunting little song—“when the red red robin goes bob-bob-bobbin along”—is used several times, masterfully, as a device to keep the audience on edge.

Incredible Opening Shot by Coppola

And then there’s the way in which Hackman’s character deals with all of this. His guilt from whatever past-life we don’t know about seeps its way into the story, so much so that at some points we aren’t sure if what is happening is real or a projection of that guilt. This is supplemented by his paranoia of the people he is working for, and the combination of these two themes makes for an incredibly intense film.

This film is definitely high-concept art compared to the other three ‘70’s Coppola films that I mentioned above (by the way, has anyone ever made 4 better movies within 7 years?). But The Conversation seems so personal, so real and warm compared to the chilliness of The Godfather films, for instance. The style is deliberate but very fitting for the themes portrayed. An overall fantastic film. 9/10.

The Double Feature

2010-09-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

I don’t say this enough, but I married into a wonderful family. Both of my wife’s parents are amazing cooks (the #1 test of a good family), they always take my side on everything (even when I’m wrong), and my father-in-law and I like mostly all of the same sports teams (even though he’s a sport’s bigamist, claiming he likes both OU and UT).

But nowhere did I realize how much I would fit in with my then future in-laws more than in December of ’05. Clelyn and I went and saw a movie with her dad while visiting Little Rock for the holidays, and afterwards we were leaving to go hang out with some friends. As we were walking out of the movie theatre and towards the exit, her dad careened towards and into another theater.

Homer & I both love popcorn
& double features

Me: “What’s he doing?”

Clelyn: “Oh, he’s just doing a double-feature.”

Me: “Whoa.”

The next morning at breakfast he told us that he saw not a double-feature, or a triple-feature, but a quadruple-and-a-half-feature. 10 straight hours of film accompanied by a refillable large popcorn and coke.

Now this is a family that I knew I had to be a part of.

Anyway, in the spirit of the Chapin family, we try and catch a double-feature every once in a while. On Saturday we saw Easy A followed by The Town. Easy A is probably my favorite teen comedy since Superbad, but it’s a completely different type of comedy. As far as comparisons go, it’s much more along the lines of Clueless and Mean Girls—satire on the politics of high school social life. Emma Stone is hilarious and has more than enough chops to carry the film, but it doesn’t hurt that Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci play her parents, and all-but steal every scene they are in. You can bet this film will be a big hit and have lasting impact.

The Town is the type of movie that makes me wish I didn’t ever talk about movies with other people, or constantly read about/analyze film on the web. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was a really solid film. But everyone I talk to thinks it’s the best crime movie since _________________ (insert whatever hyperbolic comparison you wish, ranging anywhere from The Departed to Mystic River to Pulp Fiction). And others have already handed it the Best Picture envelope. Anyway, the point is that it is a really high-quality heist film that is well-directed by Ben Affleck (in his second effort), and features an incredible ensemble cast (highlighted by the amazingly evil Jeremy Renner), but that’s ALL it is—a good, solid heist film. I’d venture to say that it’s not even as good as Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck’s directorial debut), which had at its center quite a bit more substance than The Town—it was morally and ethically ambiguous in a way that The Town wasn’t (not that it didn’t try), and moreover, it did a better job at representing all the different layers of Boston society. Having said all of that, The Town is definitely an entertaining flick worth seeing, and I really wish my enjoyment of it hadn’t been curbed by people freaking out about how amazing it is; but I guess that’s really my own fault.

All in all, great Saturday at the movies.

(Note: this blog post in no way condones theft of any kind. Any person seeing more than one movie in a row should obviously pay for both tickets, even if that person was gouged up the rear by popcorn and/or coke by paying upwards of 5,000% of its value.)

Basic Instinct (1992)

2010-09-12T19:00:00.000-07:00

Robocop.

Starship Troopers.

Total Recall.

Showgirls.

Hollow Man....and

Basic Instinct.

Well, hello there Ms. Stone.

What do all of these fine American films have in common? No...it’s not my current Netflix queue. They were all directed by one of my new favorite people in the film industry, Paul Verhoeven. I want to meet this man. I want to know his mind. His twisted, beautiful mind. What else do all of these films (except Hollow Man) have in common? The best way I can describe it is that they are all “infamous” films. They’re not bad films per se, and they’re definitely not good films either. But I get the feeling that Mr. Verhoeven isn’t seeking to make “good” films. Rather, he is seeking to make something provocative. Whether the shock value comes from warped sci-fi action as in Starship Troopers & Totall Recall, or sexually in Showgirls & Basic Instinct, Verhoeven wants us to see something that we have not seen before. They are all well-known films, but not because they are good.

So, with a vague awareness of Paul Verhoeven’s films as well as the film itself, I recently sat down on a Saturday morning with my cup of coffee, my wife and dog, and...Basic Instinct. And what a pleasant Saturday morning it was.

As far as plot outlines go, if you haven’t seen it, all you really need to know is that it’s about a cop (Michael Douglass) is in charge of the investigation of a murder, in which the prime suspect is a beautiful young woman (Sharon Stone).

Basic Instinct may literally be the most unintentionally funny film I have ever seen. The pure sincerity of Michael Douglass and Sharon Stone as they speak some of the cheesiest lines in film history. The brash confidence of Ms. Stone as she unclothes herself over and over, no matter who may be watching. The various murder scenes playing out like some sort of 70’s teen-slasher homage. The whole thing is just one entertaining romp after another. My wife and I were laughing through the entire thing.

And speaking of homage, the movie is largely a deranged homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, one of my personal favorite films. Both movies take place in San Francisco, involve murder investigations, and follow the leading men as they trail their respective femme fatales down the rabbit hole of seduction and desire. The ironic thing is that the film with no gratuitous sex, graphic nudity, and provocative violence and language (Vertigo) accomplishes exactly the reaction that Verhoeven sought to invoke with those things in Instinct. The payoff in Vertigo is so huge because of what it doesn’t show, whereas the payoff in Instinct is comparatively tiny because of what it had already shown, if that makes sense.

Verhoeven is quoted as saying that he wanted this to be the first mainstream film ever released that had full frontal male nudity. Well, fortunately for me, this didn’t actually come to pass. But he did manage to make something that is provocative as all get-out and incredibly fun because of how serious it takes itself.

Oh, and then, there’s the infamous “leg-crossing scene” (see above).

(Note: please, try your hardest not to judge me for watching this film)

Weekend Recap

2010-08-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

So over the last couple of weeks the wifey and I have been discussing the possibility of getting rid of our cable. It’s not the cost as much as the fact that between our laptops and the TV, the last two hours of every week night inevitably turn us into zombies, and by 10:30 we are communicating solely through a series of grunts until we lay comatose in bed. So on Thursday I finally called AT&T Uverse, our cable provider, to cancel. The conversation went something like this:

Mad Men dominated the Emmy's and my weekend.

Me: We’re gonna have to cancel our cable. I just don’t think we can afford it anymore.

AT&T Guy: I think we can upgrade you from the U100 to the U200 for the same price as you are paying now.

Me: Well, it’s just too much right now, I don’t think more channels would help the cost.

AT&T Guy: Well, we can also knock 30 bucks off of your monthly payment.

Me: Yeah, that would help, I just don’t know if 30 bucks would be enough right now.

AT&T Guy: Well, I want to do everything I can to get you more for your money. How about, in addition to what I already mentioned, I include an HBO/Movie package as well?

Me: Hmm. Yeah, that sounds pretty good but I just wish we could do something more about the cost.

AT&T Guy: Well I can’t do anything more about the cost—how about I throw in a sports package and free HD for the next six months also?

Me: Hmm. Yeah that would help, I just don’t know though...I think I’m still gonna have to cancel.

AT&T Guy: (thinks for a little bit)...Well sir, I want to do everything I can to help, so how about I wipe out all of your monthly charges for the next month.

Me: You’ve got yourself a deal.

So basically, we will remain zombies for the time being, except now that we have HBO, NFL Network, TCM, IFC, Sundance, and Cinemax, we will be like super zombies. Not just undead, but double-undead. Needless to say, my weekend in film turned out to be great—Funny People, The Informant!, (500) Days of Summer, Monster’s Ball, XMen Origins: Wolverine, Basic Instinct (more on this later), and The Hangover were all part of my weekend with HBO. Add on top of that The Kids Are Alright, which I saw Thursday night at River Oaks, and a great Sunday evening involving Mad Men and the Emmy’s, and you can guess just how often my butt deviated from my couch. In a related story, for any of my gambling friends, the over/under for how much longer my marriage lasts is 9 months.

Look for a glowing (and I mean GLOWING) review of Basic Instinct coming soon.

How To Make a Movie, Volume II

2010-08-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Atticus Finch definitely taught me a thing or two.

A few weeks ago I started my new favorite running series on my blog, “How to Make a Movie.” Once again, I must stipulate that I’ve never made a movie, which would be enough to stop most people from instructing others. However, I’m only sure of about nine things on this earth, and one of those nine things is that To Kill a Mockingbird is a nearly flawless film. Thus, I don’t think it is too much of a stretch for filmmakers to take a cue from it on how to make a movie.

The other night I took my wife out on a date (!), and in a lame attempt to be romantic, I asked her this question: If you could choose any ONE work of art (i.e. painting, sculpture, movie, song, book, poem, stage-production, TV show, anything that could remotely be considered art) that most embodies something about who you are or connects with you more than any other work of art, what would it be? Her answer was the book “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte. But this post isn’t about her answer. As I was asking myself the same question, literally the first thing that flashed across my mind was To Kill a Mockingbird. Perhaps the reason for this is that it connects with me on multiple levels. I first watched it when I was around the age of five, and since then, I have probably seen it somewhere in the vicinity of fifty times. What’s great is that the narrative is told from the perspective of Scout (the six year-old tomboy), and so even though there are important issues covered, it is told in a way that even small children can understand. As I grew older, Scout’s older brother, Jem, became the character I connected with. I had a secret treasure chest in my room, just like Jem, and I’m pretty sure I pretended several times over the years that a certain neighbor on my street was Boo Radley. Obviously, growing into adulthood, and especially beginning law school, Atticus Finch became the character I looked up to; an inspiring yet soft-spoken, understated yet powerful man who embodies everything good in this world—specifically, defending a black man accused of rape in the 1930’s in Alabama—and goes about this business as if it’s just another Tuesday morning.

So specifically, out of about 537 things that To Kill a Mockingbird could teach someone about making a movie, three seem to stand out to me:

Step 1: Use the Camera Lens to Your Advantage

Or, in other words, enhance the story through your medium. Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most celebrated American novels ever written. Most directors could have just told the story in the book without doing anything fancy and the movie would have turned out pretty well. However, director Robert Mulligan used the camera to his advantage. The story is told in the novel from Scout’s perspective, and he never lets us forget it. Most of what we see in the film is through her eyes. We are just as scared of the Radley household as Scout and Jem are, because that is the way they see it. The scenes in the courtroom , even though they feature Atticus, constantly show the children and their reaction to everything. Additionally, there is one great scene at the end in which an altercation takes place between Boo Radley and Bob Ewell with Scout present, only we can’t see them, because Scout is stuck inside a ham costume and can’t see them. Many directors would have taken the easy route with this film, and focused it more on Atticus and the trial, but Mulligan delivered something substantially more meaningful because of his willingness to take a risk and enhance the story through his lens.

Step 2: Be Relevant

One of the reasons To Kill a Mockingbird was successful was that it was made during the Civil Rights Movement. Obviously the racial implications of the story are relevant, but one thing I like is that it doesn’t necessarily hit you over the head with an overly moral or holier-than-thou approach. Rather, the story tackles the tough issues with a childlike wonder that is not found often in cinema. Yes, there are a few Atticuses in the world, people who will do the right thing in any circumstance; and yes, there are a few Bob Ewells in the world, people who are simply filled with hate and intolerance and nothing else. But most of us in this world are Scouts—people who are seeking to do the right thing but don’t always know the best approach; we clumsily find our way through our various prejudices on our quest to find understanding and empathy in this world, and we should surround ourselves with Atticuses and Jems on that quest. The great thing about this theme is that it is an enduring one—what was relevant in the 60’s to racism has now turned into other issues—yet the same lessons still apply.

Step 3: Be Emotionally Engaging

A step that may seem difficult but this movie makes it look easy. A lynch mob seeking to kill Tom Robinson in his cell turns around after Scout speaks to Mr. Cunningham and says that she’s friends with his son at school. After unsuccessfully defending a black man in trial, a whole balcony of African-Americans honor Atticus by standing up as he passes through under them. When Scout finally meets Boo Radley, she immediately realizes that not only is she not scared of him, but that he has loved her for her entire life.

...and of course I could go on and on. This is a dearly beloved film and book that I doubt I need to sell many of you on. When I think about what movies should resemble, this is one of the first films that comes to mind. I think about how it’s not just important to do the right thing, but to go through the process that teaches you to do the right thing. I think about how things that we don’t understand seem scary until we look them in the eye. I think about love—familial love, love in friendships, love in community, and love of mockingbirds—who “don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy...they don't eat people's gardens, don't nest in the corncrib, they don't do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.”

Inception, Part II: The Bad, and then some more Good

2010-07-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

In part I below, I set out to discuss the good aspects of Inception, but then realized that I only discussed one good aspect of it and failed to hit on some of the finer points that warrant praise. So after I discuss what I didn’t like, I’ll compliment sandwich the film, ending on some good notes.

I’m not sure whether or not this was intentional, but the only character in the film that had more than one dimension was Dom Cobb, the main character (although it’s arguable that Mal, his wife, had more than one dimension, we only really see one side of her since she is a projection of Dom’s subconscious). All of the other characters seem to fill the screen like some sort of Hollywood paint-by-numbers: the sidekick who questions the main character’s ability to not let his personal life get in the way, the young protégé who asks all the questions, and of course, the token foreigner in charge of the mystic sedatives. This would have been fine if we actually got to explore their characters a little further, but as it stands they end up being no more than set props to help play out the narrative.

A lot of reviews are raving about Hanz Zimmer’s score, and yes, it is really good. However, another problem I have is not with the score itself, but how it is used. As in The Dark Knight, Nolan doesn’t take a break from the score for the entire third act of the film, slowly building its crescendo throughout, so that by the end all we get are 20 minutes worth of thunderous trombones. Like I said, the score is good but I’m not really sure why it had to be used in this way.

As with many movies, there is a personal aspect to the equation, and I will fully admit that 10% of any of my problems with this film can be attributed to that.

See, if I had to come up with a top-5 list for reasons I got into film, Chris Nolan’s Memento would unquestionably be on the list. I remember thinking the first time I watched that film at age 16 how original and new it seemed to me; and that if movies like that could be made, then the possibilities for artistry in the film medium were endless.

To me, his success with The Dark Knight and now Inception can be likened to a band that you liked before any of your friends knew about them—maybe their first album was raw, but the music was personal to you because of the band’s relative anonymity. Once the band got popular, produced a polished-studio album, and had their hits played all over the radio, you still enjoyed the music but it was a totally different experience. The romance was somehow sucked out of it. Well, it’s difficult for me to not feel this way about Nolan. I obviously enjoy his recent films, but part of me wishes that at some point he’d trade in a Hollywood blockbuster in for a scaled back character-driven piece—that he’d summon his inner Hitchcock instead of his inner Spielberg. Maybe it’s the film-snob in me, but I believe that’s where his A+ talents lie. Surely he’s got something as good as Memento up his sleeve, right? I guess the good news is that either way, he’s made seven films now and there’s not a dud in the bunch, so even if he sticks with the Hollywood-esque grandiose films, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’m going to see a great film with him at the helm.

Some more good that I didn’t hit on: the acting is superb (although I wish Ken Wantanabe would learn to speak English a bit better). I wouldn’t call this a career performance for Leo, but he definitely carries the film effortlessly. Joseph Gordon Levitt gives us a side that we haven’t seen of him yet in his role, and I’m very excited to see where his career will go after the success of this and 500 Days of Summer. I also really enjoyed Tom Hardy in his role, as well as Cillian Murphy as the “target” of the Inception. Given that the characters weren’t extremely well-written, I was impressed. As I said earlier, the score was great and added the necessary tension. The aesthetics of the film were obviously amazing: production design, cinematography, costumes and even make-up were all really well-done. Nolan tends to work with the same people over and over in these areas (including actors) and it is clear that they have become a well-oiled machine.

Full disclosure: I have no idea how to end this post. This and my last posts are unequivocally the most difficult and frustrating posts I’ve worked on since starting up this blog. There are so many elements and angles to explore, and there is simply no coherent way that I can put it together. I suck. The magnitude of Inception is almost too much for even a real film critic to get a handle on, much less mainstream audiences and wannabe bloggers.

And maybe that, above anything, should tell you all you really need to know about 2010’s Inception.

Inception, Part I: The Good

2010-07-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I wrote a (very) tongue-in-cheek post about how I wanted to become the biggest Inception fanboy of all time. Now, after seeing the zealous response of the critics and masses to the film, spending some time on IMDb forums, and being a firsthand witness to the complete euphoria of every (repeat: every) 19-year old male computer-geek in Cupertino, CA at the midnight IMAX premiere of the film, I realize there is just no humanly way that would have been possible for me, even if I was dead serious in that endeavor. The hype for this film, both pre and post-release, has to rival just about any original (i.e., not Twilight or Harry Potter) film ever, including last winter’s AVATAR.

In that post, I was being serious when I stated that we, as movie-goers, deserve to be wowed every once in a while—that for every 50 Leap Year’s, Sex and the City 2’s, Marmaduke’s, and Saw #7’s that we belabor through, there is at least one Gladiator, The Departed, or The Dark Knight that we can hang our hat on—a blockbuster that entertains, thrills, and invokes a sense of wonder, and (gulp) is well-made. And on that note, the summer of 2010 was kind enough to give us Inception, which succeeds mightily on that front.

In part I here, I’ll discuss the good. I give the film a solid 8/10, though I’m open to bumping that up on a second watch. The magnitude of the story is too much to digest in the first viewing, even for the smartest people (i.e., not me). I will not attempt to delineate any of the logistics involved with the film in this post, but for a great analysis of the different layers of the dreams, rules associated with the dream-world and such, check out my buddy Taylor’s IMDb post. Anyway, Christopher Nolan goes back to an old stand-by theme used in some of his earlier work (Memento & The Prestige (and Following for the most fervent of Nolan snobs)): Reality vs. Perception. Obviously, Nolan conveys this motif through the various layers of dream scenarios in this film, and plays with the characters and audience in this epic ping-pong match between what is real and what is not, up until the very end. Dom Cobb’s entire existence revolves around straddling this line, as he manipulates the dreams of others in order to influence their reality. Unfortunately for him, the ability to do this to others enables him to manipulate himself, and make no mistake: that is what the film is about—to what degree has Dom Cobb manipulated his own reality?

The fact that a summer movie can give us something that big to chew on gives me hope for mankind. The fact that it can be done in such an entertaining, cerebral, action-packed, well written, logistically genius and mind-bending film that is 2 ½ hours long is nothing short of spectacular. Is Christopher Nolan the next Hitchcock or Kubrick? Maybe not…yet. But did he give me everything I could possibly want in a summer blockbuster? Yes, yes, and yes.

See Part II for the Bad, and then some more Good.