I know I am late with this, but I was really wanting t0 wait until I had seen everything I believed would end up on my top list. I hope the lateness does not deter people from reading it. I am not sure how much longer I will really continue updating this blog, but we shall see. Anyway, what follows is my end of the year stuff: favorites, least favorites, surprises and whatnot.
My Ten Favorite movies of 2008
10. Forgetting Sarah Marshall- This was my favorite straight up comedy of the year. It made me laugh from beginning to end and there were singing vampire puppets!
9. Frost/Nixon- Amazing acting and writing and somehow made an interview crazy intense. It found a way to make me feel sympathy for Richard Nixon
8. Milk- The most relevant story of the bunch. It has great acting and a tremendous heart. Sean Penn throws himself into the role and everyone around him follow suit.
7. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button- An impressive marriage of intimate and epic. Brad Pitt gives the performance of his career and the technical side of the movie will change the way CG is used.
6. In Bruges- I loved this nice little surprise of a movie. It is funny, politically incorrect, featured a few cool shoot outs and gave Colin Ferrell the best performance of his career. I really hope more people find this little gem.
5. Slumdog Millionaire- I expected nothing out of this story, but it moved me and made me, even if briefly, believe in the idea of fate. It never feels false and it somehow makes beauty out of an ugly situation. It is a moving and powerful story.
4. The Wrestler- Heart breaking in so many ways, this is an intimate and tragic story, with a big heart and a powerhouse performance from the most unlikely of sources. It is really a movie about love and going out on your own terms. Live the life you want to live!
3. Wall-E- I cannot believe how amazing I found this movie. It is a gorgeous love story, a sweeping sci-fi epic and a message film all rolled up into one. Plus, Wall-E is soooo damn cute. How could you not fall in love with the little robot who wants nothing more than to hold hands with something?
2. The Dark Knight- I cannot say anything else about this movie that has not already been said. It is a moving, violent, sweeping and manic movie that makes superhero movies look good. I wonder how the pessimism of Gotham City will look under the new administration.
1. Rachel Getting Married- This is somewhat of a sentimental choice, I admit that, but I was so unbelievably moved by this suffocating family struggle. The way music and cameras are used to further the story only made things more intimate and interesting. I cried my way through it and when it was over, I wanted to believe in love and change.
The Next Five (11-15)- Tropic Thunder, Redbelt, Valkyrie, Ironman, Revolutionary Road
The 10 worst movies of 2008
10. Twilight- This movie carried hype, otherwise, it might have just been some forgettable movie I saw once and it would not have made this list. It sucked. The romance sucked, the action sucked, the effects sucked and the music sucked. If you liked this movie you are just flat out wrong.
9. The Mummy 3- Pointless sequel alert!! This was a mess from beginning to end and having Yetis that somehow understand Chinese and Yetis that have a sense of humor did nothing to help matters. This was also plagued with bad CGI.
8. Mamma Mia- I am still trying to forget I ever saw this garbage. Meryl Streep is not one for musical comedy and it was sad to watch her try. It was an uninspired movie, with one good sequence and a bunch of hot people, but still a waste of time and money.
7. Prom Night- Characters is slasher flicks have to be a bit stupid for a movie to exist, but this movie is full of the stupidest characters doing the stupidest things. I hated this thing so much because I just wanted them all to die of stupidity.
6. Speed Racer- This was probably the biggest disappointment for me this year. I wanted to like it but it was a disaster. The colors got headache worthy pretty early on, and the story did nothing to save it!
5. Saw V- It is not every year that a Saw movie does not end up in my worst 3 list, which means this was either not as a bad as the other ones or this yr just had more worse movies. You can pick whichever you like.
4. Punisher: War Zone- Gore, blood and bullets can help make a movie better, but if the movie is awful, they cannot change that. This was awful in every way imaginable. It should have gone right into the DVD bin.
3. Bangkok Dangerous- Such a string of pointless cliches tied together into a movie. Nic Cage has awful hair, again, and his acting is even worse. I am not sure what the point of it all was, I just know I was glad when everyone was dead.
2. In the Name of the King- I was so sure this would be number 1. I guess it should thank number 1 for coming out. I guess it is fitting that this is number 2 because it is a big steaming pile of crap.
1. The Love Guru- Words cannot even fully describe just how bad this movie is. Superlatives do not exist with enough gusto to properly place this movie in the right amount of suck. Actually let me try, if this movie had been released in the same year as Pirates of the Caribbean 3, this would have been the worst movie and not Pirates, which is saying something.
S0 there it is my 2008 wrap up. It is time to look forward to The Oscars and then of course, to 2009. Please let me know what some of your favorites of 2008 were, unless you just want to talk about how amazing Twilight was. In that case, just keep it to yourself, no one needs to know that. :-)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Revolutionary Road
Before I walked into the auditorium of this movie, I saw a friend who was also going to watch this movie. We were commiserating that perhaps watching a depressing movie while we were jointly depressed was not such a good idea. Then he said that maybe it would provide a sort of catharsis and it could cleanse the soul to cry. I think that is what I was hoping for all along. When I saw Rachel Getting Married, that is what happened. I felt terrible going in, cried a lot and felt better when the whole thing was over. I did not get my catharsis in The Wrestler, even though I had just watched it, so I was kind of hoping to get it from a movie about a very unhappy couple. That was my mind set going in. Iw as expecting sadness and I was expecting tears. I needed sadness and I needed tears. Perhaps that is too much pressure to put on a movie and to put on myself. I find that when you expect to cry, you can force the tears and that does no one good. Perhaps I was expecting too much? I had no idea what to expect, really.
Frank and April meet one night at a party. he is fresh from the war and spending time in France. She is studying to be an actress. The next moment, they have been married for 9 years and she was just in a miserable community play. Frank and April proceed to have a knock down drag out fight on the side of the road. The kind of fight movie couples have at the end of the movies, not at the beginning. It leaves them both rattled. The next day Frank cheats, while April tries to fix things. She remembers when they moved into the suburbs. She feels trapped. She believes Frank feels trapped. She knows what to do; she will move them and their two kids to France where she will work and he will find himself because he is miserable in his job. With that decided the couple finds happiness again. All the have to do is make it through the summer and then they will be gone. No one understands them. Everyone believes they are a perfect couple. When you live in the perfect house, have two kids and make good money, is that not the American Dream? Things are far from perfect and a few things keep Frank and Alice from moving. Alice gets pregnant, again and Frank gets a promotion and raise, and he thinks he is supposed to take it. He needs to provide for his family. he cannot have a child born in France. Their unhappiness spills over immensely. She cheats, he cheats again. He tells her he cheated and she asks him why he told her. He responds in some inane way and they explode yet again. With all of this going, everyone continues to think they are perfect, until they are not perfect anymore.
I did not find the catharsis I was seeking from Revolutionary Road because I did not find the tears. The movie is one of the relentlessly depressing movies like Requiem for a Dream, Leaving Las Vegas or The Fall. When it was over, I just sat in the auditorium trying to move, but feeling paralyzed by anger, by fear and by sadness. When I got to my car, I just sat there for 10 minutes wondering "why?" Why that movie? Why did those characters say those things and why did those characters do those things? What was the movie trying to say to me? Was I supposed to feel something other than rage for both of the characters? I could not figure it out? I felt like I was sitting in the front row of a play starring real life lovers as a couple who fight all of the time and at some point the characters are taken over by the actors and they are using the play to say the nastiest things to each other. I was uncomfortable the whole time. I could not sit still. I felt like I was gasping for air. I wanted the camera to move back. I wanted to get out of the house, but I couldn't because everything was just so damn interesting. I needed to know what was happening and why it was all happening. I have been sitting with this movie for about 18 hours now, and the questions still linger.
As far as the movie itself goes, everything is pretty flawless. Leonardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet are combustible in every moment together and both are playing characters that are shallow, but they give them some kind of subtext. I was trying to read between the lines in every moment. They have an amazing chemistry on screen and they sure do look good together. Winslet was made for movies set in the 1950s. The way those outfits hug every perfect curve of hers, gives her character the outward appearance of perfection and Winslet does phenomenal work at making April far from perfect. The screenplay is brutal, but literary. The words roll of the tongue of the actors and it is smart, but it never strays from feeling realistic. There is strong supporting work from Kathy Bates as that Suburb neighbor woman and Michael Shannon shows up in two scenes as a man who has been trapped in a loony bin. He tears through his two scenes, putting to rest subtlety, in favor of blunt and loud honesty. His scenes pop and he is important to the story, but I am still not sure what I thought of him and what he really brought to the story.
Revolutionary Road is all about the show. We see pretty people in the perfect house, putting on the show of happiness, but it exposes an ugly truth. It is not a new ugly truth, but they do it very effectively. There are no good guys and no bad guys and when the whole thing is over you will wonder if something important just happened. There are two epilogue type things that I think could have been eliminated, but I understood the message behind them, I just feel emotionally it would have resonated more without them. I was emotionally detached from Frank and Alice, but was very involved with their lives. I wanted to cry for both of them, but could never figure out if they were worthy of my tears. Maybe that was not really my decision to make and perhaps I would have found my catharsis if I was not being so hyper-judgemental about Frank and Alice as a couple and as people. I guess I'll never know.
Final Grade: A-
Frank and April meet one night at a party. he is fresh from the war and spending time in France. She is studying to be an actress. The next moment, they have been married for 9 years and she was just in a miserable community play. Frank and April proceed to have a knock down drag out fight on the side of the road. The kind of fight movie couples have at the end of the movies, not at the beginning. It leaves them both rattled. The next day Frank cheats, while April tries to fix things. She remembers when they moved into the suburbs. She feels trapped. She believes Frank feels trapped. She knows what to do; she will move them and their two kids to France where she will work and he will find himself because he is miserable in his job. With that decided the couple finds happiness again. All the have to do is make it through the summer and then they will be gone. No one understands them. Everyone believes they are a perfect couple. When you live in the perfect house, have two kids and make good money, is that not the American Dream? Things are far from perfect and a few things keep Frank and Alice from moving. Alice gets pregnant, again and Frank gets a promotion and raise, and he thinks he is supposed to take it. He needs to provide for his family. he cannot have a child born in France. Their unhappiness spills over immensely. She cheats, he cheats again. He tells her he cheated and she asks him why he told her. He responds in some inane way and they explode yet again. With all of this going, everyone continues to think they are perfect, until they are not perfect anymore.
I did not find the catharsis I was seeking from Revolutionary Road because I did not find the tears. The movie is one of the relentlessly depressing movies like Requiem for a Dream, Leaving Las Vegas or The Fall. When it was over, I just sat in the auditorium trying to move, but feeling paralyzed by anger, by fear and by sadness. When I got to my car, I just sat there for 10 minutes wondering "why?" Why that movie? Why did those characters say those things and why did those characters do those things? What was the movie trying to say to me? Was I supposed to feel something other than rage for both of the characters? I could not figure it out? I felt like I was sitting in the front row of a play starring real life lovers as a couple who fight all of the time and at some point the characters are taken over by the actors and they are using the play to say the nastiest things to each other. I was uncomfortable the whole time. I could not sit still. I felt like I was gasping for air. I wanted the camera to move back. I wanted to get out of the house, but I couldn't because everything was just so damn interesting. I needed to know what was happening and why it was all happening. I have been sitting with this movie for about 18 hours now, and the questions still linger.
As far as the movie itself goes, everything is pretty flawless. Leonardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet are combustible in every moment together and both are playing characters that are shallow, but they give them some kind of subtext. I was trying to read between the lines in every moment. They have an amazing chemistry on screen and they sure do look good together. Winslet was made for movies set in the 1950s. The way those outfits hug every perfect curve of hers, gives her character the outward appearance of perfection and Winslet does phenomenal work at making April far from perfect. The screenplay is brutal, but literary. The words roll of the tongue of the actors and it is smart, but it never strays from feeling realistic. There is strong supporting work from Kathy Bates as that Suburb neighbor woman and Michael Shannon shows up in two scenes as a man who has been trapped in a loony bin. He tears through his two scenes, putting to rest subtlety, in favor of blunt and loud honesty. His scenes pop and he is important to the story, but I am still not sure what I thought of him and what he really brought to the story.
Revolutionary Road is all about the show. We see pretty people in the perfect house, putting on the show of happiness, but it exposes an ugly truth. It is not a new ugly truth, but they do it very effectively. There are no good guys and no bad guys and when the whole thing is over you will wonder if something important just happened. There are two epilogue type things that I think could have been eliminated, but I understood the message behind them, I just feel emotionally it would have resonated more without them. I was emotionally detached from Frank and Alice, but was very involved with their lives. I wanted to cry for both of them, but could never figure out if they were worthy of my tears. Maybe that was not really my decision to make and perhaps I would have found my catharsis if I was not being so hyper-judgemental about Frank and Alice as a couple and as people. I guess I'll never know.
Final Grade: A-
The Wrestler
At work we often get miniature sized posters to give away to our customers. Typically we only put out the posters for movies we are actually playing, but when we got minis in for The Wrestler, I put them out anyway, because I wanted to promote the movie, even though I had not yet seen it. This kind of movie is, for the most part, lost on the general Woodland audience. This has been further confirmed by the youth of the town who see the mini posters and are trying to figure out which WWE superstar that is on the poster. How funny would it be if these kids ended up seeing the movie and got very confused as to what was going on. In fact, there is no John Cena, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan references to be found. There are real wrestlers in the movie, but they are has beens or never weres. People like K-Kwik and other low level guys who are cameoing it up in Darren Aronofsky's latest film.
Randy "The Ram" Robinson(Mickey Rourke) was quite a big deal as a wrestler in the 1980s. He was a super power. However, 20 years later, The Ram is no longer on top. He is still wrestling, but he is wrestling in high school gyms and small auditoriums. He gets paid in cash and often it is not the amount he hoped because the turn out was not big enough. He is the kind of guy who cannot make enough money to keep paying rent on the mobile home. He has hearing loss and scars all over his old and broken body due to the punishment of wrestling. The kids around his trailer love him, but he is all alone. His only "friend" is an aging stripper Cassidy(Marisa Tomei), but she still makes him pay for dances because she is as broken and tapped out as he is. After a brutal hardcore match, where he had staples shot into him and glass fragments jammed into his body, The Ram suffers a heart attack. His career is over. The thing he threw himself into, was being taken from him. He is all alone, but he does not want to die alone, so he tries to get back in touch with his daughter, Stephanie(Evan Rachel Wood). He was not a good father because wrestling was everything to him. He is trying to make it up to her, but he has beaten into her years of emotional scars and will not be let off the hook easily. He works the deli counter at a local grocery store and is wasting away, trying to feel anything at all. Unfortunately the only time he feels anything is in the ring and the opportunity for a re-match with his most heated rival from the 80s has come up. It will not take place at Madison Square Garden like their last match did, but it is something. The Ram is a wrestler. He bleeds, he lives and he breathes wrestling. He needs wrestling. he needs to know there are people out there who want him and want to cheer for him.
Much has been made of Mickey Rourke's performance and it is all deserved. Who knows what kind of movie this would have been if someone else had been The Ram. The story is small, slow and requires an acute attention to detail and there are long sequences where there is no dialog at all and the role requires so much pain and who knows the pain of recapturing glory the way Rourke does? Is he playing an extension of himself? Yes, of course he is, but to watch an actor leave it all on "mat" is quite a stunning thing to watch. Rourke is funny when he needs to be and infinitely charming, which is good because he is in every scene, but he will also break your heart in the final 30 minutes and he will melt your heart when he needs to. He is an incredible talent and this is the perfect vehicle for him to show what he is capable of doing. That being said, he is matched every second of the way by Marisa Tomei. Now, I do not know any 40 yr old strippers, but my guess is Marisa is prettier than most of them, but she is void of all vanity here as a woman desperate for something, anything good to happen to her. Tomei conveys so much in her body language, even when she is not writhing around the stage naked. She matches Rourke's hopelessness and his sadness and their scenes together are quite a study in subtle acting.
Aronofsky is an odd director. I find that people either love his movies or loathe them. However, he is a very visually aware director and his movies have this flare to them. Requiem of a dream and The Fountain are both excellent movies, but they would be less so if they weren't visually stunning with colors, lights, effects and camera tricks. The Wrestler is about as far away from that as possible. The movie was shot using mostly natural light and everything is minimalistic. The camera follows The Ram wherever he goes, and the camera work is so straight forward, it is almost a documentary. Gone are Aronosky's visual tics, replaced by a bobbing and weaving camera in the style of that handheld camera so common these days. It takes a good clean director's eye to make it work and Aronofsky has pulled off quite a feat. He is set to remake Robocop next, showing he is not afraid of tackling things so diverse. He deserves much of the credit for making this movie what it is. He never rushed a shot, never rushed a scene and he was confident that his audience would allow him to tell this story in a real way. It is nice to see a movie that is not so concerned with quick jump cuts. Only in the wrestling is there a lot in the way of editing.
As for the actual wrestling, it is fantastic looking. I remember watching Ali and thinking boxing could never be filmed better than it was in that movie. You felt every punch and felt every near punch. In The Wrestler, the wrestling scenes are so intimate they are suffocating. Audience members winced at every drop, every slap and every fall. People know the outcomes of matches are rigged and much of the action is "fake" but the bumps people take are real, especially if you are not making tons of money doing it and the wrestling in the movie feels real. I know real wrestlers choreographed it and The Ram's rival used to wrestle under the name "The Cat" in WCW and The WWE, and I know Mickey Rourke trained endlessly for the wrestling and it shows. It comes out a gritty, dirty ballet worthy of the title "action sequence." Of course, the wrestling is secondary in the movie, but it is not treated as such and it makes the climax that much more satisfying.
I will not give away the ending, but I just want to say that the final shot is perfect. Much is being made about what happens or what did or did not happen, but I think those people are missing the point. It is a perfect ending to a wonderful story. I am not sure I would call this the best movie of the year, but it is definitely in the conversation. It is hard not to feel something throughout The Wrestler. We feel for the stripper, for The Ram and mostly for the man playing The Ram.
Final Grade: A
Randy "The Ram" Robinson(Mickey Rourke) was quite a big deal as a wrestler in the 1980s. He was a super power. However, 20 years later, The Ram is no longer on top. He is still wrestling, but he is wrestling in high school gyms and small auditoriums. He gets paid in cash and often it is not the amount he hoped because the turn out was not big enough. He is the kind of guy who cannot make enough money to keep paying rent on the mobile home. He has hearing loss and scars all over his old and broken body due to the punishment of wrestling. The kids around his trailer love him, but he is all alone. His only "friend" is an aging stripper Cassidy(Marisa Tomei), but she still makes him pay for dances because she is as broken and tapped out as he is. After a brutal hardcore match, where he had staples shot into him and glass fragments jammed into his body, The Ram suffers a heart attack. His career is over. The thing he threw himself into, was being taken from him. He is all alone, but he does not want to die alone, so he tries to get back in touch with his daughter, Stephanie(Evan Rachel Wood). He was not a good father because wrestling was everything to him. He is trying to make it up to her, but he has beaten into her years of emotional scars and will not be let off the hook easily. He works the deli counter at a local grocery store and is wasting away, trying to feel anything at all. Unfortunately the only time he feels anything is in the ring and the opportunity for a re-match with his most heated rival from the 80s has come up. It will not take place at Madison Square Garden like their last match did, but it is something. The Ram is a wrestler. He bleeds, he lives and he breathes wrestling. He needs wrestling. he needs to know there are people out there who want him and want to cheer for him.
Much has been made of Mickey Rourke's performance and it is all deserved. Who knows what kind of movie this would have been if someone else had been The Ram. The story is small, slow and requires an acute attention to detail and there are long sequences where there is no dialog at all and the role requires so much pain and who knows the pain of recapturing glory the way Rourke does? Is he playing an extension of himself? Yes, of course he is, but to watch an actor leave it all on "mat" is quite a stunning thing to watch. Rourke is funny when he needs to be and infinitely charming, which is good because he is in every scene, but he will also break your heart in the final 30 minutes and he will melt your heart when he needs to. He is an incredible talent and this is the perfect vehicle for him to show what he is capable of doing. That being said, he is matched every second of the way by Marisa Tomei. Now, I do not know any 40 yr old strippers, but my guess is Marisa is prettier than most of them, but she is void of all vanity here as a woman desperate for something, anything good to happen to her. Tomei conveys so much in her body language, even when she is not writhing around the stage naked. She matches Rourke's hopelessness and his sadness and their scenes together are quite a study in subtle acting.
Aronofsky is an odd director. I find that people either love his movies or loathe them. However, he is a very visually aware director and his movies have this flare to them. Requiem of a dream and The Fountain are both excellent movies, but they would be less so if they weren't visually stunning with colors, lights, effects and camera tricks. The Wrestler is about as far away from that as possible. The movie was shot using mostly natural light and everything is minimalistic. The camera follows The Ram wherever he goes, and the camera work is so straight forward, it is almost a documentary. Gone are Aronosky's visual tics, replaced by a bobbing and weaving camera in the style of that handheld camera so common these days. It takes a good clean director's eye to make it work and Aronofsky has pulled off quite a feat. He is set to remake Robocop next, showing he is not afraid of tackling things so diverse. He deserves much of the credit for making this movie what it is. He never rushed a shot, never rushed a scene and he was confident that his audience would allow him to tell this story in a real way. It is nice to see a movie that is not so concerned with quick jump cuts. Only in the wrestling is there a lot in the way of editing.
As for the actual wrestling, it is fantastic looking. I remember watching Ali and thinking boxing could never be filmed better than it was in that movie. You felt every punch and felt every near punch. In The Wrestler, the wrestling scenes are so intimate they are suffocating. Audience members winced at every drop, every slap and every fall. People know the outcomes of matches are rigged and much of the action is "fake" but the bumps people take are real, especially if you are not making tons of money doing it and the wrestling in the movie feels real. I know real wrestlers choreographed it and The Ram's rival used to wrestle under the name "The Cat" in WCW and The WWE, and I know Mickey Rourke trained endlessly for the wrestling and it shows. It comes out a gritty, dirty ballet worthy of the title "action sequence." Of course, the wrestling is secondary in the movie, but it is not treated as such and it makes the climax that much more satisfying.
I will not give away the ending, but I just want to say that the final shot is perfect. Much is being made about what happens or what did or did not happen, but I think those people are missing the point. It is a perfect ending to a wonderful story. I am not sure I would call this the best movie of the year, but it is definitely in the conversation. It is hard not to feel something throughout The Wrestler. We feel for the stripper, for The Ram and mostly for the man playing The Ram.
Final Grade: A
Monday, January 12, 2009
Gran Torino
First a story entitled "The Time I met Clint Eastwood." It is about, well, the time I met Clint Eastwood.
For a few years, my father, my brothers and I would go to Pebble Beach for the ProAm golf tournament. We set up shop at one hole and watch everyone come through. We were usually the first ones at the hole and as people came, we would get trapped into our spot. This was not usually a problem, but when a pro golfer hit a shot that was off and coming right towards us and there was nothing we could do. I turned away from the ball so it would not hit me, but it hit me right on my ass. It stung badly, and while the golfer was trying to figure out how to hit his ball (it ended up under a chair and blanket), I heard a voice saying "The ball hit you on the ass, huh?" I turned to the voice and had to look up to see the face and there he was, Dirty Harry in the flesh. I nodded my head and he said "Well you took like a champ" he touched my shoulder, started laughing and walked off." As he walked off, I regained my ability to move and think and I thought about it and realized, Dirty Harry had just touched me, had just made a joke at my expense and I was still scared of him! The man is walking danger. If ever there was a man at over 70 years old who could make a movie about an old man killing some young gang bangers it is him.
Watch the trailer before going further:
I start with the trailer because my review is going to discuss the trailer, possibly at length. It will not become common practice for me to use the trailer as my synopsis, though, so do not worry.
What the trailer shows is a movie that looks an awful like a generic revenge film, like Death Wish, Falling Down, Death Sentence or The Brave One. You see a lot of violence and guns and Clint being a bad ass. This gave me the impression that the movie was going to be a run of the mill movie with a Vietnam war vet who hates everyone else, drinks beer and shoots people. If I was not into watching all possible Oscar contenders, I never would have seen Gran Torino because of what the trailer showed me the movie was. The trailer is wrong. I cannot believe how badly marketed this film is. I mean, I understand it because it is marketed for maximum appeal, but it is not the trailer. In fact, with one exception all of the guns in the trailer make up all of the guns in the entire movie. The movie is not at all a revenge film. It is not at all generic. I was wrong when I told Robbie how basic and run of the mill it looked. But, can you blame me?
Walt Kowalski(Eastwood) is a Vietnam vet. He is a racist, he does drink beer, a lot and he hates religion, but that is only the beginning of the movie. Walt is a dying breed and he sparks a friendship with a Hmong family. A family that puts up with his horribly racist comments and a family that loves feeding him delicious food. Gran Torino is a movie that is exploring Xenophobia or what it means to be American. It is exploring what it means to be a real man and it shows political incorrectness in a world increasingly more politically correct every day. It is a sometimes funny, often times uncomfortable film with a tender center and Eastwood has done a wonderful job as a director and a good job as an actor. Yes, Walt does kick a bit of ass and he is a scary man who is not afraid of threatening people, but that is only the surface of the movie. If the trailer had focused on his budding friendship with the two Hmong children, I would have been singing a different tune. If I knew at its core, Gran Torino was discussing cultural events in a real way, or had been a movie about what being a man means, I would have been interested.
Now, as it has been discussed at great length at my job, I am not ever the target audience for the mainstream, regular guy movie goer. I saw this movie even though the trailer turned me off. I am just that guy. So, trailers are not meant to appeal to me. I am an oddity in terms of movies. However, I can be won over by trailers. I can be suckered by them (Hello, My Bloody Valentine) and I want trailers to reflect what the movies will actually be about and Gran Torino's trailer fails on a massive level. Now, the movie does not always succeed, either. I respect Clint for wanting to cast actual Hmong people, but in order to do that, he had to cast a whole bunch of non-actors and it shows. There are moments when the acting from the kids is so bad it distracted me to no end, especially around the climax. The screenplay is a bit too repetitive at times and The stuff with the young priest gets a annoying at times, although the conclusion of the Walt/Priest dynamic is nice. However, considering what I expected, I was pleasantly surprised by Gran Torino and I can respect what it was trying to do.
Final Grade: B+
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Frost/Nixon
If only two people could be nominated for an award together. That would be the perfect scenario with Frost/Nixon. Frank Langella as Richard Nixon gets the big showy performance with an incredible monologue during one off the most powerful phone call conversations to be captured on film and Langella deserves all of the accolades coming his way as he gives us a Richard Nixon who is smart, funny, nasty and accountable. However, Michael Sheen as David Frost is every bit as good. He does not have the big Oscar moments, but his performance is a study in nuance and subtlety and he is just as deserving. Together, though, they are a whole other animal. Each of their scenes pop with energy, intensity and if there was a way for them to be nominated as a collective, it would serve them both nicely.
David Frost is a playboy talk show host with dreams of interviewing Richard Nixon right after Nixon resigned the presidency. No network believes it will happen and Frost has to try and raise the money and conduct the interview. He hires a "crack investigative" team to help research and plan and they land the interview. The interview takes place over 4 2 hour sessions, spread out over a few weeks. The contract allows for certain things and both sides must stick to it. Nixon thinks he can use the interview to rebuild his reputation and Frost, at first, just wants the ratings and the glory of the American audience. However, he also wants to get Nixon to admit wrong doing.
The movie is told sort of documentary style in parts, with most of the players speaking directly to the camera, as if they have been asked questions about what was going to happen or what happened. The 4 interview scenes are perfectly paced and we get a very good idea as what is going on inside the heads of the two combatants. Kevin Bacon, as Nixon's right hand man deserves some consideration this awards seasons for his performance as a man willing to follow Nixon until the very end. Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt add some great drama and comedy as the team assembled by Frost to prepare him for the interview. I was expecting to feel bored at some point, but Ron Howard really kept the action moving, even within scenes. He displays a confidence in his material and is not interested in getting in the way of his actors, the story of the wonderful script. He is a facilitator in this project and he understands his role and makes the most of it.
Frost/Nixon continues a trend for me this fall/winter: great movies that are just missing something to make them better than great. I could not put my finger on it with Frost/Nixon, but it joins Milk, Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in that category. There is nothing technically wrong with Frost/Nixon. Everything is sound and it all functions perfectly, but there is element missing, a sense of cinematic wonder or surprise.
Final Grade: A-
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Doubt
Very few things scream Oscar season like Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman and when you combine their talents in one movie, it is an Oscar's wet dream. Such is the case with Doubt. Throw in 1 time nominee Amy Adams and a story about Catholic pedophilia and you have the makings of an Oscar sweep. Not so fast, though because the movie is written and directed by John Patrick Shanley. This is the man responsible for writing Congo and the last movie he directed was Joe Versus the Volcano, not exactly movies that were winning awards, or winning anything positive for that matter. Yet, on stage Doubt was a success, critically and so it made sense that transferring it to the screen and sticking Hoffman and Streep in it, all would be good, right?
Set around the time of JFK's assassination, Doubt takes place in a Catholic church and school, where Sister Beauvier(Streep) is the principal and she rules with an iron fist. She is a prison warden and she likes it that way. She is uneasy about the new Father, Father Flynn. Flynn gives sermons on doubt and he is a friendly man who preaches love, compassion and understanding. He wants to add secular songs to the Christmas pageant and wants to bring the church forward. Meanwhile, Sister James(Adams) is a young teacher and she is worried about the lack of warmth from the sisters and teaches her class without the super strict rules that Sister Beauvier tries to get her to enforce. One day Sister James thinks she sees things that do not seem right. Donald Miller, a student is called to a private meeting with Father Flynn. He comes back and Sister James thinks she smells alcohol on his breath. He is lifeless and sad. Later she sees Father Flynn putting one of Donald's shirts back in his locker. She tells Sister Beauvier what she thinks because Sister Beauvier warned everyone to keep an eye on Father Flynn because she did not like him. Sister James and Sister Beauvier call Father Flynn into an office and state their unsubstantiated claims. He gives a logical reason for everything, but is he lying? He has moved around a lot in the church and the church has been known to protect their priests.
I have a tell. When I am bored in a movie, it is not difficult to know. Erik figured it out years ago. I fidget. I do not mean just shifting in my chair because I do that often, but I get unusually fidgety. I check my watch often, but the biggest sign that I am bored is when my watch comes off. When I take my watch off to start playing with it or whatever, the movie has lost me. I believe about 35 minutes into Doubt, my watch was off. At first, I could not put my finger on it. The acting is phenomenal and the one scene where Streep, Hoffman and Adams share the screen is a knock out blow. The writing is exceptional and the story is interesting and I loved how ambiguous it was about whether or not The Father was innocent or guilty. Yet, there I was, sitting in The Tower Theater, fidgeting, checking my watch and eventually removing it. Something just was not working. Then in one moment, like a giant gust of wind, it hit me. Well, it hit me like a giant gust of wind, because it was a giant gust of wind. A giant gust of wind in the movie directly after Streep said something about the winds of change. It was not enough for her to say "The winds of change," the director felt need to include actual wind! There it was, the moment that brought the movie into focus for me.
I understand the idea of using weather or setting as a metaphor for something else. Yes, I get German Expressionism. it is easy to grasp but according to film classes, it is the end all be all in movies. Movies are brilliant when they use weather a symbol or metaphor, brilliant! I do not, on principal, take issue with it. I take issue with a director not trusting his writer, his actors or his audience to get the ideas. His actors are on screen acting their collective asses off and he ruins it. His screenwriter wrote an amazing script and he ruined it. His audience is most likely smart enough to appreciate the great level of talent involved and he ruined it. The whole thing is made worse when you realize he was his own screenwriter! Rarely has a movie had such a high level of acting and such a low level of directing. Here was a man who was just out of his league. Someone should have stepped in on this project and realized all of these amazing performances were going to go to waste, especially Viola Davis. Davis, in 1 scene as the young man's mother, gives the performance that makes careers. She is unbelievably heart breaking and it is even more impressive when you realize she is with Meryl Streep the whole scene and I have to give Streep credit because she gave the woman the scene. In fact, all of the actors are very giving, in the whole movie. They all believed in the project and they were let down.
A movie like this should have left me with questions and I should have been pondering the questions the movie poses. I should want to discuss with others my thoughts on the guilt or innocence of Father Flynn, or what Sister Beauvier means at the end when she breaks down and says she has doubts, but honestly I did not care. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to get away from the German Expressionism and the bad handling of it all from the director. I wanted to get away from the crows, the dead rats, the feathers, the open windows and the literal winds of change.
Final Grade: C-. but the acting gets an A.
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