Listmania ’11! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Four
Finishing this in February feels so wrong it’s almost right. By now I’ve actually seen movies released in 2012 and I’m still posting about last year (the movies from this year being The Muppets, which the UK got obscenely late, and Chronicle, which is fantastic stuff and well worth a watch). The Oscar nominations have also been announced, with the deeply-average The Descendants and the deeply-awful War Horse getting a few nods while Fassbender, Swinton and Brooks are snubbed. Disgusting. If ever proof was needed that the Academy doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have a whine about that before the award ceremony, so without any further ado, let’s end Listmania! with a bang. The only other posts that have taken me this long were my Lost finale posts, which took three months to write. This only took a month and a half, so I’m getting better at this. If you’re a fan of pointless miscellania, you’ve come to the right place.
Best Movies I Saw In 2010 That Were Released More Generally In 2011: Black Swan, 13 Assassins, Archipelago, Amigo, Meek’s Cutoff, Submarine
Best Scene: Rango walks through the desert during a crisis of confidence (Rango)
Honorable Mentions:
Tom Cruise climbs up the side of the Burj Khalifa (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol)
Matthew Broderick attempts to teach a class of precocious kids about King Lear and it doesn’t go well (Margaret)
Michael Shannon and his family attend a meal with their fellow townsfolk and it doesn’t go well (Take Shelter)
Jung tries to tell his new buddy Freud about synchronicity and it doesn’t go well (A Dangerous Method)
Kristin Wiig gets drunk on a plane and it doesn’t go well (Bridesmaids)
Best Action Scene: Tintin and Captain Haddock chase a hawk through the streets of Bagghar (The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn)
Honorable Mentions:
The final physics-mangling car chase in Rio De Janeiro, including some serious hardcore badassery from The Rock and Vin Diesel (Fast Five)
The longest and most explosives-packed train in the history of the world crashes for a long time (Super 8)
The Revolutionary Army of Apedom makes a break for freedom through San Francisco (Rise of the Planet of the Apes)
Alex Pettyfer, Teresa Palmer and a big alien dog wreck a high school using telekinesis and big lasers (I Am Number Four)
Guy Ritchie goes crazy with ramping and cameras attached to people running and all sorts of tricks in a forest (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows)
Best Hero: Caesar – Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Honorable Mentions:
Captain America – Captain America: The First Avenger
Thor – Thor
Moses – Attack The Block
The Driver – Drive
Rango – Rango
Best Villain: Loki – Thor
Honorable Mentions:
Bernie Rose - Drive
Society’s indifferent or vexed reaction to those unfortunate enough to be afflicted with mental illness – Melancholia
The oppressive horror of modern life – Take Shelter
Rattlesnake Jake – Rango
Chris Cleek – The Woman
Best Couple: David Norris and Elise Sellas (Matt Damon and Emily Blunt) – The Adjustment Bureau
Worst Couple: Emma and Adam (Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher) – No Strings Attached
Most Doomed Couple(s) of the Year: Justine and Michael and Claire and John (Kirsten Dunst, Alexander Sarsgaard, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Keifer Sutherland) - Melancholia
“I Hope These Guys Make It” Couple Of The Year: Russell and Glen (Tom Cullen and Chris New) – Weekend
“Please Bite Them And Get It Over With, Evil Colin Farrell” Couple of the Year: Charley Brewster and Amy Peterson (Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots) – Fright Night
“Okay, I Really Don’t Think He Should Be Attracting These Improbably Hot High School Hotties In These Movies, What With Looking Like A Surly Child Half The Time” Couple of the Year: Porter and Norah (Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence) – The Beaver
Greatest Disparity In Energy Levels Between Partners of the Year: Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris (Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively) – Green Lantern
Most Improbable Couple of the Year: Ernesto Botta and Laura Aliprandi (Toni Servillo and Sarah Felberbaum) – The Jewel
“Only In The Movies” Adorable and Romantic Couple of the Year: George Valentin and Peppy Miller (Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo) - The Artist
“Only In The Movies” Twee Asshole Couple of the Year: Enoch and Annabel (Henry Hopper and Mia Wasikowska) – Restless
“Rather Raunchy For A PG-13 Movie, Eh What?” Couple of the Year: Ren McCormack and Ariel Moore (Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough) – Footloose
Most Adorable Fuckbuddies of the Year: Dylan Harper and Jamie Rellis (Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis) – Friends With Benefits
Most Inappropriate Couple of the Year: Robert Ledgard and Vera Cruz (Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya) – The Skin I Live In
Worst Love Triangle of the Year: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black (Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner) – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One for the third year running
Best Love Triangle of the Year: Brian O’Conner, Dominic Toretto and Luke Hobbs (Paul Walker, Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson) – Fast Five
Most Satisfying Finale: The Artist
Honorable Mentions:
Attack The Block
Melancholia
Real Steel
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Arriety
Best Finale in a Bad Movie: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger
Least Satisfying Finale: Green Lantern
Dishonorable Mentions:
The Adjustment Bureau
I Don’t Know How She Does It
Blitz
In Time
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Worst Finale in a Good Movie: Source Code
Badass of the Year: Lisbeth Salander – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Best Double Act: Tucker and Dale (Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine) - Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Worst Hero: D’Artagnan – The Three Musketeers
Dishonorable Mentions:
Hal Jordan - Green Lantern
Mater – Cars 2
Theseus – Immortals
Joey the Super-Special Horsey – War Horse
Dagny Taggart – Atlas Shrugged: Part I
Worst Villain: Karl Hendricks – Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Dishonorable Mentions:
The concept of generosity – Atlas Shrugged Part I
Hector Hammond – Green Lantern
The Red Skull – Captain America: The First Avenger
That sinful sexuality in any form it’s SO SINFUL – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One
Blackbeard – Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Most Likeable Cast: Thor
Least Likeable Cast: Blubberella
Most Annoying Character of the Year: Sid – The Descendants
Dishonorable Mentions:
Moberg - The Rum Diary
Kate Reddy – I Don’t Know How She Does It
Dexter – One Day
Sean Cassidy (aka Banshee) – X-Men: First Class
Homer Yannos – Tomorrow, When The War Began
Best Live Action Animal: Uggie The Dog – The Artist
Best Animated Animal: Snowy – The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn
Best Trailer: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Honorable Mention: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Best Poster: The Tree of Life
Worst Poster: Hall Pass
Limited Edition Poster I Wish Had Been Used: This superb retro Captain America: The First Avenger poster by Paolo Rivera
Most Profound Poster: Shame
No photo of it will do it justice, but the poster for Shame that we saw outside the London Film Festival screening had a reflective surface, but with the word “Shame” printed at the bottom. Because the movie speaks for all of us who have shame, do you see? Something to think about.
Most Misleading and Tonally Inaccurate Poster: We Need To Talk About Kevin
Nicest Photography In A Headshot Poster: Martha Marcy May Marlene
Most Defiantly Wrongly-Angled-By-90° Poster of the Year: Super 8
Most Fucked-Up / Desperately Controversial Poster of All Time: The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)
Most Out-Of-Control Trend In Posters: Character variants (::deep breath:: The Adjustment Bureau; Arthur Christmas; Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked; Bridesmaids; Cars 2; Conan the Barbarian; Contagion; Cowboys and Aliens; Crazy, Stupid, Love; Drive; Footloose; Friends With Benefits, Fright Night, Gnomeo and Juliet; The Green Hornet; Green Lantern; Hall Pass, The Hangover Part Two; Happy Feet Two; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two: Hop; Horrible Bosses; Hugo; Immortals; In Time; Johnny English Reborn; Killer Elite; Kill The Irishman; Mars Needs Moms; Margin Call; Martha Marcy May Marlene; Melancholia [!!!!!]; Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol; The Muppets; Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides; Priest; Puss in Boots; Real Steel; Red State; Rio; Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; The Smurfs; Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; Spy Kids 4: All The Time In The World; Straw Dogs; Sucker Punch; Super; 30 Minutes or Less; Thor; The Three Musketeers; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Tower Heist; Transformers: Dark of the Moon; A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas; Warrior; Water For Elephants; Winnie The Pooh; X-Men: First Class; Your Highness; The Zookeeper)
How many of these posters ever make it into cinemas? How many of them convince people to go and see these movies? Do casual cinemagoers see any of these and think, “Well, I wasn’t going to see Green Lantern but now that I know Tomar-Re is in it I’m IN”? Will people really be excited at the array of not-really-that-well-known actresses in the cast of Bridesmaids before they see how funny they all are (scroll down for the full selection)? Do we really need 31 posters for The Three Musketeers? Do we need more than one poster for Melancholia? It’s not harming anyone, obviously, but it still seems like a waste of resources. If anyone can explain why we need so many variants, please let me know.
Best Publicity Campaign: Paranormal Activity 3
Usually SoC likes to praise a publicity campaign that successfully promotes a tough sell, but this year I have to give huge props to the makers of Paranormal Activity 3 for doing something that should’ve been done a long time ago. However, to do that I have to spoil, so please consider all of the text between these two scary-as-fuck trailers a huge spoiler for PA3‘s best trick.
I won’t lie. That first trailer for this franchise scared the absolute shit out of me when I first saw it, and it deserves some credit for making even this cynic forget about the overwhelming familiarity of the Paranormal Activity template and vow to see the third one as soon as it came out. In that sense, job done. However, what’s really great is that that scene doesn’t happen in the movie, and neither do almost all of the biggest shock moments in the trailer below.
Seeing that at home and getting annoyed at all of the spoilers is one thing; I switched it off halfway through as I was horrified at the amount of spoilage. But if you’re in a cinema and can’t escape, you’re going to absorb all of that information, and more than likely you’re still going to see it (because these movies make money hand-over-fist without even breaking a sweat). And yet all of that stuff you’re expecting won’t happen. Instead you’ll get a bunch of other scary stuff. And even better? You still got scared by those trailers, as if you’re watching a very very short horror movie for free. I’ve waited for a long time to see this done so well. The movie was okay too. That’s a bingo, I reckon.
Worst Publicity Campaign: X-Men: First Class / Green Lantern
Nerds are hard to please; I know because I am one. Thor and Captain America did a mostly good job of introducing two less well-known characters, with the non-mainstream Thor making $450m worldwide and the super-patriotic Cap overcoming some of the anti-American prejudice that could’ve prevented it making any money at all ($370m’s okay. Green Lantern wishes it made that much). If they’re an example of how to do it right, the other two big superhero releases of the year show how to do it wrong, thus squandering all of the nerd energy they needed to stay alive.
Each campaign commits a different crime that has the same result; underwhelming box office. X-Men: First Class‘ promotional crime was to destroy a lot of good will towards a franchise that desperately needed it, even more than the previous X-Men movie did. Wolverine should have killed X-Men dead but Fox wasn’t going to let the franchise go to waste when it could release yet another movie and maybe resurrect it for another few sequels. A lot of good decisions were made regarding casting and crew choices, but all of that was hobbled by some terrible promotional errors.
One was to have the only convention appearance take place at the inaugural London Comic-Con, with an appearance by co-writers Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz. Other than that, the production and release schedule meant they unfortunately missed out on those opportunities, and had to rely on trailers and posters. While all of the trailers are good enough, if a little calm, the first leaked picture of the cast was a disaster. Even worse were the posters: the ones above were two separate teasers, with little heads gestating inside shadowmen; the one below is an advert for X-Men-themed bobbleheads. I can’t understand why someone would sign off on it.
Only one of the posters was any good, but if you look at the bottom of the page you’ll see even more awful examples, including some shocking Japanese ones. XM:FC was considered enough of a success to warrant a sequel (it made less than Cap and cost a bit more, but it’s not a dramatic difference), but that success was only because of the (bafflingly) good reviews and the fact that it had the weekend to itself. Though it’s not a representative sample, there were a number of X-Men fans of my acquaintance who were burned out on the franchise after Wolverine and even the raves for this couldn’t persuade them. Who knows what that opening weekend would have looked like if Fox had done a better job of getting my nerd brethren off their sofas?
Warner Bros., on the other hand, couldn’t do anything to get anyone into the cinema to see Green Lantern. I only went because I try to see as many films as possible, and we’re talking about my favourite superhero of all time here. To be fair to the folks responsible for promoting GL, they were dealing with a (relatively) obscure character with a mythology that’s hard to explain in posters and short trailers, plus it was saddled with a cast and team of writers that didn’t excite the fans either, so they were trying to ice-skate uphill from the start. The posters were okay, I guess. They were nice and colourful enough, though that fucking stupid mask really doesn’t help.
The mainstream audience doesn’t love Ryan Reynolds or Blake Lively enough to take a risk on a movie that looks like the adventures of a rubber-bodied space man versus a creature made of sentient dreadlocks, but readers of the comic weren’t likely to show up either. Most of the initial reports on the movie made it seem like the filmmakers were trying to be loyal to the comics while getting the tone entirely wrong. There was also barely any sight of Oa or the Corps early on (most likely because the FX weren’t finished), so the fans felt even more nonplussed. When footage was released at Wondercon the fans justifiably went nuts. Sadly, that was almost all of Oa / Corps footage that appeared in the finished movie. WB shot their wad in desperation. The movie opened to at best, indifference; at worst, derision. Was that the fault of the promotional campaign? Well, it certainly didn’t help.
Best Hair: The assorted period-appropriate ‘dos in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Worst Hair: Daniel Craig – The latter half of Dream House
Most Appropriate Hair For A Cancer Patient: Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s unnerving shaved head – 50/50
Least Appropriate Hair For A Cancer Patient: Mia Wazikowska’s tasteful pixie-cut – Restless
Best Facial Hair: Dominic Purcell - Killer Elite
Worst Facial Hair: Clive Owen - Killer Elite
Scariest Hair/Make-Up Combo: Tom Hanks - Larry Crowne
Best Wig (Actor): Nicolas Cage – Season of the Witch (possibly borrowed from the set of last year’s winner The Sorceror’s Apprentice)
Best Wig (Actress): Emily Browning – Sucker Punch
Worst Wig (Actor): Logan Lerman - The Three Musketeers (actually they were glued-in extensions but you get my point)
Worst Wig (Actress): Cate Blanchett – Hanna
Wig I’m On The Fence About: Justin Theroux – Your Highness
Best Hats: The Adjustment Bureau
Honorable Mention: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Best Dressed Chap in Sweden: Daniel Craig – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Worst Casting: Sensible Reese Witherspoon as a PG-13-raunchy and unpredictable acrobat in Water For Elephants
Most Scatological Movie of the Year: Spy Kids 4D: All The Time In The World
I’m kinda glad I didn’t see this at the cinema with the Smell-O-Vision scratch card; if the middle section of this movie is anything to go by, I’d just be sniffing a piece of cardboard soaked in Essence of Fart. But I’ll be honest; the cavalcade of poop, barf and fart jokes made me laugh more often than most adult comedies released this year. Shame about that incoherent final act, though.
Most Weather: Wuthering Heights
Best Recasting: The mostly awake and reasonably charming Rosie Huntington-Whiteley replacing orange-hued erotic rabbitbot Megan Fox on Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Messiest Eater: Mickey Rourke - Immortals
Most Expressive Fist: Ryan Gosling - Drive
Biggest Build-Up For Least Payoff: The appearance of Kominsky – New Year’s Eve
Midway through Garry Marshall’s fractured compendium of schmaltz, Hilary Swank decides she needs to hire the legendary Kominsky to fix the broken new year ball in Times Square, and this causes a ripple of excitement to run through the extras clumsily assembled around the set. Kominsky, they whisper with amazement, she’s getting Kominsky. There is much fuss, palaver and hullabuloo about the imminent arrival of Kominsky. It’s infectious. This is, after all, a movie that features a dazzling array of cinema legends like Lea Michele and Josh Duhamel, while filling the smaller roles with yer DeNiros and Pfeiffers. So what legend will they get to play Kominsky? Pacino? Cruise? Hanks? No, silly! It’s Hector Elizondo! For fans of Garry Marshall I’m sure this was a big deal. For the rest of us? Even those of us who have nothing against Hector Elizondo? Not so much.
Most Admirable Commitment To Onscreen Skeeviness: Ben Foster (duplicitous assassin in The Mechanic, wheelchair-bound substance-abusing snitch in Rampart, convicted sex offender and possible murderer in 360)
Most Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Michael Fassbender – Shame (And also X-Men: First Class, A Dangerous Method and Jane Eyre)
Honorable Mention: Hayley Atwell – Captain America: The First Avenger
Least Convincing Lust Object of the Year: January Jones – X-Men: First Class
Dishonorable Mention: Ryan Reynolds - The Change-Up
Most Obscenely, Depressingly Beautiful Cast: Immortals
Ugliest Contact Lenses: The Rum Diary
Honorary Manuela Velasco Award for Services to Scream-Queen Culture: Florencia Colucci - The Silent House
Most Depressing Mise-en-Scène: Tyrannosaur
Honorable Mention: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Best Use Of Split Screen: The Green Hornet
Worst Use Of Split Screen: 360
Most Depressing Depiction of a Sexually Aggressive Woman: Jennifer Aniston – Horrible Bosses
Dishonorable Mention: Marisa Tomei – Crazy, Stupid, Love
Cheapest But Most Effective Device In A Horror Film: The swiveling camera in Paranormal Activity 3
It’s just a camera on the bottom half of an oscillating fan, but that simple trick, with the camera panning back and forth very slowly, amps up the tension more than any expensive CGI trick. Kudos to Henry Joost, Ariel Shulman and Christopher Landon for coming up with it.
Worst Product Placement: New Year’s Eve, because nothing says New Year’s celebrations like those joy-embodying products from Toshiba, Phillips and Nivea.
Worst Manners: Jason Statham – Blitz
Weirdest Impersonation of What Sounds A Bit Like Ray Winstone: Mel Gibson – The Beaver
Weirdest Impersonation Of What Sounds Like Jennifer Jason Leigh In The Hudsucker Proxy: Andrea Riseborough – W.E.
Most Logistically Impressive Movie: Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Honorable Mention: Battle: Los Angeles
Most Unusual Fighting Implement Wielded by Zoe Saldana In An Otherwise Forgettable Luc Besson/Robert Mark Kamen C-Movie Actioner: A toothbrush (Columbiana)
Best Location Shooting: The Descendants (Hawaii)
Honorable Mentions:
Blitz (London)
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Chicago and many other parts of America)
A Dangerous Method (Germany, Austria)
Wuthering Heights (Yorkshire)
Thor (Asgard)
Worst Cinematic Trend of 2011: Underwhelming third acts – Insidious, Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, The Ides of March, Hugo, The Silent House, The Eagle, Dendera, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, Warrior, Paul, Cowboys and Aliens, The Adjustment Bureau, The Skin I Live In, Source Code, The Descendants, War Horse, Super 8, Drive, In Time, Trespass
Anne Billson wrote this great article on the problem of the bungled third act, and though I enjoyed a couple of her examples, there are a few there that cannot be argued with. Too many movies this year fell apart in the last 20-30 minutes, sometimes so badly that the rest of the movie was irreparably damaged. I’m not sure what the reason for this is, other than that too often films aren’t rewritten often enough before reaching the set, but whatever it is, three-quarters of each of the films above were reasonably-good-to-great, and that’s a very frustrating fraction.
Most Publicity Pictures of a Director: Paddy Considine – Tyrannosaur
Last year (scroll down to the bottom) I noticed the IMDb page for Biutiful‘s images featured a lot of shots of Iñárritu (aka The Director Formerly Known As Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu), most of them featuring him pointing and looking very thoughtful on set. It struck me that he was going for the title of Most Pictures Of A Director Pointing And Looking Very Thoughtful on IMDb, a title currently held by Michael Bay. And yet this year there’s a new potential winner in the shape of Paddy Considine, with four pictures on IMDb, more than co-star Eddie Marsan (he gets one), and as many as Olivia Colman. Bear in mind, Considine’s not even in the movie.
Even more shocking, Bay only has three on-set photos from Transformers: Dark of the Moon on IMDb this year, the other 600 pictures being 67% shots of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley getting out of cars, and 33% images of smoking rubble. Considine even manages two more shots of himself than Bay got on his debut movie Bad Boys, though none of the shots of Considine are as moving as this ferociously erotic pic of Bay’s torso. So this race to the bottom of the ego continues, but with a new contender around, THIS SHIT OFFICIALLY JUST GOT REALER.
And with that, I’m finally done. Thanks to all who have contacted me about this epic series of posts, and to everyone who has made their way through this mass of opinion and bad jokes, I doff my cap, and say, until next time. ::theme tune plays me out:: ::collapses::
Listmania ’11! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Three
Oh blogging. You are the occasional pastime that makes me absurdly unhappy, for the most part. That’s because I don’t do it as often as I would like, and so when I do I over do it and write posts large enough to choke Cthulhu. And this last post in Listmania metastasised as soon as I started complaining about something; griping posts tend to run out of control. Friend of the blog @Beggarsoshat said to me after my Listmania! Crew Contributions post that he looked forward to me listing my favourite dolly grip of 2011, and after I had stopped crying because of how much he had cut me to the core, I wondered if there was maybe something in that. Why not keep spinning this out? I’m scratching my blogging itch even though all I’m doing is lazily transcribing the thoughts I’ve had lying around in my “mind palace” for months anyway.
But how could I? How could I keep talking about last year’s movies when I’d only seen 120 of them? Simple; why not talk about movies released in 2010? People love reading reviews of movies released 14 months ago. I traditionally do this during Listmania! season as an aside in the last post, but as this post had already gone all top heavy, why not post this section on its own without all of the other photo-heavy stuff I had planned on posting (and which will turn up in Listmania ’11: Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Four, and probably Five, Six and Seven too)? And so here we are, with a couple of thousand words on three movies that I’m sure only a handful of people have already talked about. After all, the first movie here was a pretty obscure little number.
Best Film(s) From 2010 That We Saw In 2011: True Grit / Tangled
Both of these movies were released in the UK just after SoC finished its last Listmania (which was done a lot quicker and with less baloney than this one, I can tell you), but would have radically changed the state of my Best Movies of ’10 completely. Both would have breached the top ten, with True Grit possibly making it into the hallowed and legendary top five of that year. The Coens were coming off the back of one of their least accessible — but most highly regarded — films with A Serious Man, and True Grit represents one of their “crowdpleasers”, if that’s the right word, as they did with No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading. This is a slightly different beast, too dramatic to qualify as one of their comedies, but too funny to be a tragedy. It’s the most successful blending of their two different “flavours” to date.
The pleasures of this magnificent Western are numerous, but the best thing about it is the precise dialogue, which evokes the Wild West in a way only David Milch has ever come close to achieving. This poetry — so often evident in their writing but at its most striking here — is matched by the photography by Roger “King” Deakins, who does career best work with shadows and darkness; the night-time ride to save Mattie is one of the most haunting scenes in recent cinema, a dream painted almost solely with black. Hailee Steinfeld shines in her first role, perfectly riding the line between charmingly forward and obnoxiously precocious. I can picture her playing The Hunger Games‘ Katniss Everdeen far more readily than Jennifer Lawrence — an actress I admire but who is too old for the character, as are co-stars Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson.
She’s matched by Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, who both have their own balancing acts to do, between humour and drama. While Bridges has the flashier character to work with, Damon has a harder job, playing a dandified and ridiculous ranger LaBeouf who wins over Mattie and the audience despite being an awful blow-hard. Obviously, he succeeds; with each performance SoC realises how lucky we all are to have such a thoughtful, charming actor working today. This is not to take away from Bridges, though, who is as good here as he is in The Big Lebowski. This was already a late-career classic from the Coens, but his vastly entertaining turn pushes True Grit up there with Lebowski, Miller’s Crossing, and A Serious Man.
But I’ve had trouble figuring out whether I love it more than Disney’s Tangled, which so completely fried my brain at IMAX that I became a fervent and boring proselytist for it for months after. If you’re a 3D sceptic, this is the movie to change your mind. Seeing this in 3D, on that vast screen, was a memorable, tear-inducing experience I shall cherish forever. The whole film is great fun and filled with lovable characters (none more so than defiant horse Maximus), but the most memorable scene is also the single greatest use of 3D I’ve ever seen. Being in that room, dwarfed by the vast IMAX screen, was the most immersive cinema experience I’ve ever had. The illusion of being surrounded by floating lanterns was utterly convincing; when I wasn’t distracted by wiping tears from my eyes, that is.
The songs by Alan Menken feature lyrics from his sometime collaborator Glenn Slater; a happier fit than Stephen Schwartz, at least on this small sampling. They’re rich and funny and charming, reminiscent of his best work with the late, much-missed Howard Ashman. They’re the cherry on top of a superbly well-designed movie, that matches its symbolism (the light motif is present throughout) with its story so deftly that I wanted to applaud throughout. I’ll even go so far as to say… ::deep breath:: …I think I like it more than Beauty and the Beast, and I really loved Beauty and the Beast. It’s a triumph for Disney; a thrilling modernisation of their animation technique that pays humble tribute to the studio’s history, and possibly a portent of great things to come. SoC can’t wait to see what comes next.
Worst Film From 2010 That We Saw In 2011: Morning Glory
Until last year it looked like the movie output of Bad Robot Productions was going to be less diverse than their TV division, which has tried (and failed) to tap non-nerd audiences with Six Degrees and What about Brian? It’s worth praising them for adding Morning Glory to a roster that so far contains only sci-fi and spy movies (not counting Joy Ride), but the addition of something this unchallenging makes you wonder if Bad Robot’s other movies are as cynically produced as this. Even with a terrific cast (including Harrison Ford, in his liveliest performance since The Fugitive) and an interesting director, it has an enormous handicap: a rote script by dreaded screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna.
If Michael Bay is a cinematic villain for aiming all of his movies at the same Mountain-Dew-drinking, FHM-absorbing, Call-Of-Duty-playing fratboy demographic, then can we add Brosh McKenna to Hollywood’s rogues gallery for making numerous movies from the same template in which a doofy woman — with work skills so brilliant and yet so poorly depicted that she almost appears to have mystical powers — has trouble finding a man due to a habit of occasionally bursting with an emotion-geyser like all the normal people don’t. So far ABM has churned out 27 Dresses, The Devil Wears Prada, I Don’t Know How She Does It, and now Morning Glory; it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between them as they come tumbling down the conveyor belt like malformed Barbie dolls.
Among its crimes: trying to make us believe that Rachel McAdams’ awkwardness is representative of some large cross-section of the female audience, and that bagging Patrick “Saintly and Uncomplicated Love Interest” Wilson is some kind of victory for these mythical klutzy women; making Diane Keaton rap with 50 Cent in a display of cinematic desperation unmatched by anything else released in the past four years; punishing McAdams by making her run in high heels in almost every scene, which just makes her look like a lunatic with superhumanly strong ankles; inadvertently making Anchorman — a Dada-esque comedy — the superior comment on the treatment of women in the TV industry; setting up Harrison Ford as a villain with the AWFUL crime of criticising McAdams’ fringe/bangs; making me pine for another Bridget Jones sequel just to stop Brosh McKenna from going back to that dried-up well.
Worst of all, it attempts to make a case for breakfast news as something worthwhile, something as necessary as serious investigative journalism. Ford’s Mark Pomeroy is portrayed as a conceited horse’s ass who has a snooty attitude to the fripperies of breakfast TV, objecting to the clowning of Daybreak’s jokiest segments. We’re meant to be excited when he abandons his serious self in order to make a frittata in an effort to magically summon McAdams from her job interview with NBC (because all job interviews are done in the morning while you’re supposed to be at work).
This character moment, which shows what he is willing to sacrifice in order to placate his producer McAdams, softens him — a nice twist on the romcom trope where a romantic interest humbles himself in order to win the girl. And yet no matter what side-effects this final act has, we can’t escape the fact that this is a betrayal of a good point personified by the grizzled old news hound pining for his old career. All the way through the movie he’s right about the importance of investigative journalism, and McAdams is so averse to his philosophy that he has to lie to her to get her to cover the scandal story he’s been trying to tell her about for weeks, and only seems to recognise its value for the sake of plot convenience. And to stop her looking like a complete idiot.
This is similar to the scene in Devil Wears Prada in which Meryl Streep defends fashion from criticisms that it isn’t important. It’s a very well-acted speech by a great actress, but her claims that high fashion is what eventually trickles down to the lowest forms of clothing — that the Cerulean blue she celebrates in haute couture one month becomes the blue that everyone wears later — isn’t really the answer to the question “why should we care about fashion”, because if we weren’t wearing that shade of blue we’d just wear another. What she’s arguing for is the influence of fashion journalism, which is fine, but it’s a bit disingenuous to assume that without Vogue we wouldn’t know how to dress ourselves. Though I will say InStyle is a fine publication (one for @Ms_RH there).
So here we’re meant to swallow the line that breakfast TV is an essential component of the news cycle, that it acts as the “sugar” that sweetens the “fibre” that constitutes news. As if the world isn’t awash with sugar, while fibre is rarely present in our news diet. Anyone who watches, say, BBC Breakfast (which SoC has railed against before), will note that what little serious news is shown inbetween puff pieces and appearances by the magnificently oleaginous Chris DeBurgh is poorly researched, biased, and revealing of the presenters’ poor preparation. Any time the show covers matters of popular culture more racy than Midsomer Murders, or youth issues, will know that this is less fibre, more asbestos.
So to see a movie attempt to make excuses for something inconsequential, when in actual fact it’s salty and challenging investigative journalism that needs to be celebrated, is like hearing the self-defensive and unconvincing justifications of someone caught watching something frowned upon by others — say for example, a cliche-ridden Aline Brosh McKenna movie that sets back gender politics about 20 years. If you want to watch a breakfast show that spends more time covering Al Roker being a clown than it does serious issues, that’s your prerogative. If you want to argue that this is important, do it by making your case, not by belittling serious journalism. And Bad Robot? Stick to what you know best (i.e. lens flares).
Will this ever end? Can I keep this going forever? If not, I’m taking a break from it as soon as Listmania! is finally brought to heel, which will either be by mass reader apathy or a typing coma.
Listmania ’11! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Two
No preamble, nothing worth saying when there’s already almost 5000 words here, but I should stress that I felt bad writing this post due to all the negativity involved. Bear in mind two of the movies I criticise here are films I like and have seen more than once. I just wish they were perfect. Thanks to the folks on Twitter who threw ideas at me while I was writing this; I’ve tried to credit you all, but if I’ve missed anyone off I apologise.
Most Pleasant Surprise of the Year: Real Steel
Though SoC tried to keep an open mind, sometimes it’s so so hard. A boxing movie about robots starring an actor whose recent choices had seemed so wobbly and which was directed by the dictionary definition of the journeyman and featuring a performance by Lost‘s least popular actress some time after she had promised us she was done with all that acting malarkey because she had had such a terrible experience living in Hawaii for six years oh dear. I’ll watch any old SF crap but even this didn’t appeal. It looked like a classic Disney merchandise trawl (well, Dreamworks, but Touchstone distributed it, so you know what I mean), and after enduring the cynical cash-in of Cars 2, I didn’t feel like going through that again.
But reviews were good, Levy had won a spot in our hearts for making the much-rewatched-and-enjoyed Date Night, and friends of the blog seemed to enjoy it, so we put it back on our watchlist, even though the sight of Hugh Jackman teaching a sparring robot how to box in the trailers never failed to reduce Daisyhellcakes to a mess of derisory laughter. Turns out those friends were right, as we were rewarded with an emotionally honest surprise, a family movie unafraid to paint its characters as douchebags who earn their redemption. What had seemed from the trailers to be the kind of toothless thing Disney would once release back when Kurt Russell was a fresh-faced kid was surprisingly hard-nosed.
That’s not to say it’s some gritty drama; it’s about a guy who tries to make a living by pitting his robots against other robots in boxing matches, so we’re already in a weird and unbelievable future world. Nevertheless, protagonist Charlie Kenton is surprisingly unpleasant. He doesn’t give a damn about his son and only agrees to take him on because his step-uncle is going on holiday and doesn’t want him around. He’s also an idiot who takes forever to actually earn any cash, and even then it’s only because his son has a better understanding of the robot boxing world. I doubt Shawn Levy would have pushed Charlie’s sourness so far if he hadn’t got Jackman on board. It’s amazing what he gets away with in the film while still maintaining audience goodwill.
There are some problems with Real Steel, and not just because it’s so implausible and riddled with plot holes (this podcast makes that case very well). It’s certainly too long, lasting over two hours. Large chunks of plot come from two movies by Sylvester Stallone — Rocky and arm-wrestling nonsense Over The Top — with barely any alteration visible. Also Evangeline Lilly’s in it. I mean, how can it be expected to survive all of these problems? And yet it does, because it does two things well; it takes itself seriously, and it treats the fights lightly. As a result, it becomes a genuine crowdpleaser with real emotional charge.
By this I mean it doesn’t make light of the stakes involved. Charlie is on the verge of real trouble throughout, and Jackman’s performance is dark enough that we get a sense that he really will become a broken and lonely old man if something drastic doesn’t happen to change it. The way his fate, the relationship with his son, and the slow climb out of the pit of his self-loathing, is beautifully intertwined with the world of robot boxing in a way that would utterly fail if Charlie’s plight — and what looks like depression — isn’t addressed. Levy does a fine job of bringing Charlie and son Max together in such an organic way that it was only when Real Steel hits the end-of-second-act crisis that I realised how close they had become, how likeable the pairing is, and how much I wanted them to prevail.
It also helps that Levy and writer John Gatins don’t anthropomorphise the robots too much. Though Max bonds with their sparring-bot Atom there is no hint that he has sentience. He really is just an avatar for Charlie, and a symbol of Max and Charlie’s relationship — he’s rescued from a pit by Max and is fixed by Charlie before being taught how to fight, like a father would teach a son. It’s not a subtle metaphor but it’s a powerful one. I won’t lie; there comes a point during the final fight when the link between Charlie and Atom becomes more personal, and Max watches his father overcome his self-doubt, that made me blub the happiest tears I had blubbed in quite a while.
And yet the film doesn’t unbalance itself by making Atom a character with agency, which would turn this into Short Circuit 3. The fights are fun but they’re not treated as if the stakes are about the robots. We’re not meant to fret about what happens to Atom — early in the film we’re disabused of the notion that the robots are anything to sympathise with as Charlie loses two bots in quick and humiliating succession. We’re meant to be concerned about the people involved, and as a result what had looked like a silly robot movie in the publicity becomes one of the best popular movies about familial bonds to be released in a long time.
Other smart choices, such as the decision not to make Hope Davis and James Rebhorn’s aunt and uncle characters into out-and-out villains enhance this air of seriousness. There is more dramatic weight here than expected, at least considering how it was marketed as something inconsequential and cynical for kids who just like robots. Ditch your preconceptions about Real Steel before you watch it — and I do urge you to watch it. If you’re anything like me you’ll find yourself craning forward in your seat during the superbly orchestrated finale, and realise you just lost yourself in a robot boxing movie for a moment and you really just don’t care.
Most Frustrating Movie of the Year: Captain America: The First Avenger
As I said in my review of Thor, Marvel are on a hell of a roll right now. If Avengers is even half as good as everyone hopes, it might be too much for this old nerd to handle. At the beginning of last summer Thor appeared to be the wildcard in Marvel’s deck, with Captain America guaranteed big US box office; at least to pundits who foolishly thought the movie would be gung-ho patriotic nonsense. But Marvel are smarter than that, and its international box office doesn’t reflect the care they put into making it universally appealing. Thor won out, and in the process overshadowed Cap. Maybe other countries were sick of superheroes by that point in the summer season, in which case we can happily add one more thing to the list of Green Lantern‘s crimes.
However, just on the level of its quality as a film, Cap was problematic. Not because it was bad, but because it was almost Marvel’s finest hour. I was horribly conflicted over it, even more so than when watching X-Men: First Class, which squandered its best opportunities before it even got to the screen; a consequence of diluting the potentially amazing Magneto: Nazi Hunter thread with way too much plot. Cap made it to the screen with some brilliance intact but dropped the ball halfway through. Not so much as to ruin the experience completely, but enough to leave me deflated as I walked out of the cinema.
The first half of the movie was fine. Better than fine. Miraculous, even. Until Cap breaks Bucky and the rest of his platoon out of the Red Skull’s factory, I’d argue that Captain America: The First Avenger represents the best thing Marvel has done. Regular readers may recall my common vexation with superhero movies that don’t feature super heroes, merely superpowered people who get into fights with each other. Villainous threats to the public are either ill-defined or non-existent, and often supervillains are only interested in punishing the friends and families of our protagonists; fine on a basic dramatic level, but kinda missing the point of why people like superheroes in the first place.
Captain America, at least in its magnificent first half, might be the primary example of a superhero movie that’s actually about someone who wants to do good. Steve Rogers wants to be a hero more than anything else, and goes through hell to fulfil his dreams. I won’t lie; the sight of Steve Rogers leaping on a grenade and yelling at everyone to run away, or begging Howard Stark’s scientists to finish their experiment on him despite his agony, made me sob happy tears out of my face. There’s very little that stirs me more than pure heroism in movies; in recent times only Kick Ass has revolved around someone who wants to do the right thing no matter the cost.
It gets me right there, and Cap’s sincerity and heroism was exactly what I’ve been waiting for in a superhero movie. It’s also one of the reasons why criticism of Chris Evans’ pitch-perfect work as the titular hero has upset me so much. Critics have complained that he’s boring or muted, apparently not realising that Evans’ portrayal of the quietly heroic Rogers is absolutely spot-on. Longtime fans of the character picked that up immediately, and have quietly noted the silliness of the criticisms; yet more proof, if proof be needed, that mainstream critics are just not qualified to judge this corner of culture.
Evans personifies the stoic righteousness of Captain America, whose sense of duty is as overdeveloped as his muscles, and who takes no pleasure in being a super-soldier. Even though SoC has long been a fan of Evans we fretted that he had too flighty a personality to play someone who is meant to be an inspiration to everyone around him, as Cap is in the comic, and as the country he represents is meant to be to all of the nations in the world. We shouldn’t have doubted. Evans excels as the beacon of hope, virtue and courage. It’s thrilling, terribly underrated work.
That’s not the only success of the first half of the movie. We’re also treated to yet another showstealing turn from Stanley Tucci as Abraham Erskine, whose recognition of Steve’s inherent decency and courage led to even more tears. Tommy Lee Jones and Hayley “Rather Pretty” Atwell were perfectly cast too; great picks by Joe Johnston, who was a perfect choice as director considering his time on fantastical WWII movies Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Rocketeer. The now-traditional Marvel stamp of quality meant every element was an integral part of a greater whole, and an example of gratifying attention to detail, not to mention nods to the comics, like the first shot of Arnim Zola, or the references to Cap’s fight against Hitler. It’s popular moviemaking done right; 100% effort from very smart people.
And then the wheels came off. As soon as Cap is united with Bucky and the Howling Commandos, it all starts to feel a bit hollow. Part of that is the underwhelming villainy of the Red Skull, who spends the first half of the movie growling in labs and the second half getting angry in front of a green screen. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely do their best to create a link between Cap and Red Skull by pushing the idea that the Super-Serum enhances a person’s inner self, turning Steve Rogers into the angelic antithesis of Johann Schmidt’s demon. Nevertheless, coming after Thor‘s resonant hero/villain dynamic between Thor and Loki, Cap suffers in comparison.
It doesn’t help that the final act of the movie has little impact and makes so little sense. The threat that the Red Skull poses to the US is barely described, but apparently at the end he’s flying over to the US with some things that do some stuff that won’t be nice. That’s not enough. We needed a demonstration of some kind of Doomsday device, even though we know he has harnessed the power of the Cosmic Cube and even though demonstrations of Doomsday devices in movies are overdone. Even just a quick shot of Red Skull destroying a city would’ve been enough to enhance the tension at the end. Instead we’re not sure what Cap is sacrificing himself for. As for the logistics of that sacrifice, I’ll let this superb video speak for me:
That’s bad enough, but as the movie zips through the war in a lengthy montage, we only get a sense of what Cap meant to the world; a problem as we head toward The Avengers. Apparently that will mostly focus around Cap, so there’s a chance his legacy will make more sense, but as of this moment, we don’t get enough Cap vs Nazis, and certainly not enough of the Howling Commandos. That’s the price we pay for that superb first hour. Minimal Peggy Carter, minimal Dum Dum Dugan and co. If we knew they’d be back in a sequel it wouldn’t feel like we just got shortchanged but how can they return? To have spent so little time with these great characters is like a kind of punishment.
It’s not all bad. That first hour is amazing, and the second hour has numerous pleasures too: quick but heartening glimpses of proactive badass Peggy Carter, Bucky’s “death” (surely a Winter Soldier set-up), a couple of nifty action scenes. Even more pleasing is how this movie acts as the connective tissue for the Marvel universe so far, with Yggdrasil, the Stark Expo and the Super Serum bringing the other movies together; a revisit to Louis Leterrier’s Hulk was far more pleasurable after having seen Captain America.
But it could have been Marvel’s Superman – The Movie. Part of me hopes for a 6-hour directors cut with loads of extra action scenes, and maybe a cameo from Namor, and a scene where the Red Skull’s version of the Afrika Corps is repelled by an African nation with access to incredible technology. But that’s not to be, and until Avengers or Cap 2 comes along to show me what comes next, I’m going to feel a bit deflated when I think of this, and what could — and should — have been.
“Greatest Gulf Between Critical Opinion and the Feelings of SoC” Movies of the Year: Tyrannosaur / Snowtown
After swimming through the grimy water of Innaritu’s Biutiful SoC took the opportunity to have a good old moan about miserabilist movies, that sub-section of cinema that mistakes the skin of the kitchen-sink genre for the meat. The consequence of this error of judgement, other than to present us with an unpleasant flagellatory experience, is to delude the makers into thinking that they are providing some kind of education. This glimpse into horror, they seem to say, will make you a better person. You’ll understand humanity more for seeing how the other half lives. And I shall bask in this glow as a brave chronicler of the lowest circles of our man-made hell.
SoC thinks that this is absolute horseshit. Life can be cruel, no doubt. There are people out there suffering terribly, in lives of quiet desperation, but making movies about this kind of experience is a problematic exercise that can’t honestly capture what a bad life is like. It’s a noble intention, but inescapably patronising, even if the story told is directly analogous to something genuinely experienced. Too often it’s a contrived distillation of the worst of life presented as a real document of what it is to exist in the modern world, and as such is fundamentally dishonest.
Of course all narrative is a mixture of translated truth and opportunistic lies, but this is a different kind of falsehood, one that insults the people who do suffer terribly through lives of squalor and unhappiness. They also represent a negation of the human spirit. Though many of these stories feature some kind of redemption (as Tyrannosaur does to a certain extent, and Precious before it), there’s often a sense that until that moment there is absolutely nothing that makes life worth living. The woes that are heaped on such characters can often reach comical levels of misfortune; the number of vile events that stack up by the end of Tyrannosaur are almost unintentionally funny, if you haven’t bought into it by that point.
I say almost; any possibility of laughing had been smacked out of me by the time writer-director Paddy Considine was done slathering his movie in depressing circumstance, but the crucial thing is that I didn’t buy into his film for even a second. Though I have no idea what this film meant to him, or whether it represents something of his life, it’s curious that he chose to make this as his first project, in much the same way that Gary Oldman and Tim Roth chose to make Nil By Mouth and The War Zone respectively. That’s an odd trilogy of gritty grey misery right there.
Is this penance for living a reasonably lucky life, or guilt over escaping lives of desperation (I know that Oldman wanted to dramatise the effects that alcoholism had on families, after experiencing something similar in his own life)? I’m not about to judge their motives, or the reasoning behind Justin Kurzel and Shaun Grant’s decision to make Snowtown – the dramatisation of Australia’s most notorious serial killing spree – but I will happily say that these movies are oppressively unpleasant for reasons that don’t justify this approach.
I don’t trust Tyrannosaur as a depiction of real life, and I don’t think anything can be learned by picking at the sordid details of John Bunting’s crimes in Snowtown other than to say people who are disenfranchised may say or do unspeakable things. That’s a message that can arguably be justified in terms of fiction – I’d defend Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or Man Bites Dog, especially as their larger point was to question the complicity of the audience in the violence shown or not shown onscreen – but when it’s something real, a line is crossed.
So can stories about the struggles of the unfortunate, unemployed, unloved working classes be handled at all, if I were to have my way? I’ve got more time for tales of sadness that either tell a story other than “look at how totally shit I’ve imagined life can be”: Andrea Arnold’s three wonderful full-length films trade in some of the tropes of miserabilist cinema but she’s also telling stories about vivid, interesting, mysterious characters, who experience more than just a hundred gallons of bad-luck-bukkake. There is also the matter of her superior artistry, but that’s a viewpoint I don’t really have the vocabulary to explain, and I’m sure someone will have a coherent and convincing argument for Kursel’s washed-out visuals and Considine’s choice of an oxtail-soup palette.
The bitter pill of modern realism can also be sweetened with genre touches: Attack the Block‘s message about the effect of disenfranchisement on modern youth was rendered more powerful by being handled as the metaphorical subtext of a sci-fi horror movie, and the replicants of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner are more memorable for being tragic slaves treated with an exaggerated disdain that the working classes suffer now (“Skinjob” as the next decade’s “Chav”?). John Carpenter’s They Live shone a light on the plight of the homeless in LA in a way that very other few movies have, and its allegorical treatment of the victimisation of the poor by our heartless corporate overlords has struck a chord that very few miserabilist movies ever could.
This diet of glum social commentary, served up like worthy gruel, is no good for you, I’m telling you. It’s sad that these two movies hit me in this way, almost one after the other. Except for good work from Daniel Henshall as the charismatic leader of the murderous gang in Snowtown, and the exceptional, award-worthy performance by Olivia Colman in Tyrannosaur, there was nothing else in either movie to keep me watching once the semi-parodic roll-call of social-realist images began to pour past my eyes like gloopy misery-treacle.
I’m not asking for every movie to be some kind of Chris Tookey-placating floofy feel-good marshmallow, but I’d ask that a work of art at least address that life is a tapestry of feelings, that it’s not all misery (and no, the one happy scene in Tyrannosaur doesn’t count as it’s set during a wake, a choice that made me wonder if Considine was actually taking the piss). As much as I regret that the lives of the poor and weak in the world are under-represented in the media, the thought of them being treated as little more than Dickensian victims to be stared at and pitied is even worse. Arnold gives her characters agency and stories to live within, and Kurzel and (for the most part) Considine don’t.
A lot of folks I know and respect liked one or both of these movies, and I don’t doubt they derived some genuine… well, not pleasure, but inner appreciation for these movies. Let my criticisms here not stand as criticisms of their viewpoint, or dismissal of their criteria for success in a story. But know this; if there was ever a kind of movie that would be SoC’s Kryptonite, these represent the most shocking examples, that sucked the heart out of me and left nothing in its place but a suspicion that I had been duped. I hope I never see even a frame from either of them again.
Movie That Would’ve Found A Place In My Top Ten If It Wasn’t For That Goddamn Third Act: The Adjustment Bureau
Nothing else released this year annoyed me as much as this, George Nolfi’s directorial debut and adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s short story. Nothing else bothered me and niggled at my brain as much as this during 2011. Total abject failures are one thing, and I added those to my worst movies list. Good movies that fall slightly short still have a chance of getting onto my best films list, as seen with the lower-numbered inclusions like Tintin and Kung Fu Panda 2. But this film, which mostly succeeded, just couldn’t find a home. And so it shall be placed here, for me to fawn over and rail against simultaneously.
Romance in sci-fi is often badly handled. Good examples that come to mind include Han and Leia in the Star Wars movies and Deckard and Rachel in Blade Runner. A quick Twitter survey came up with Neo and Trinity (thanks, @ericthehamster), Tom and Izzi in The Fountain and Wall-E / Eve (gracias @cockbongo), Kyle MacLachlan and his own fringe from Dune (cheers @nathanditum), Sean Connery’s red nappy and The Eternals from Zardoz (merci Masticateur), and Bud and Lindsey Brigman in The Abyss (Xie xie, @Cowfields).
Then I was reminded of Eddie and Emily Jessup from Altered States (how could I forget that? Sorry @catvincent), Chris/Kris Kelvin and Rheya/Hari in the two versions of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (spasiba, @FilmLandEmpire), Tom Cruise and himself (not sure if the lovely @KitCaless meant Tom in Minority Report or War of the Worlds), Logan and Jessica in Logan’s Run (nicely done, @douglasmillan), and Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor in The Terminator (well picked, @SparklyPaws). All fine choices, and gratefully received.
Mostly, though, if you look at the sheer number of movies made, the memorable choices are pretty limited. And not just in SF. Romcoms of recent years have made a hash of representing actual romantic feelings with any kind of verity. Just shoving a wild-eyed and panicky Katherine Heigl into a movie with some rictus-grinned B-lister does not a relationship make, and so whenever a film comes along that features any kind of chemistry between the leads, it’s worth beating a path to see it.
In recent years I can only think of Mila Kunis paired with Justin Timberlake in Friends With Benefits and Jason Segal in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Drew Barrymore paired with Justin Long in Going The Distance and Hugh Grant in Music and Lyrics, as truly convincing partnerships between people who seem to enjoy each other’s company. The stakes in these movies mean something because we want these guys to stay together. I’ve haven’t cared if J-Lo gets together with the male lead in a movie since Out of Sight, and I doubt I ever will again.
Which is why The Adjustment Bureau has stayed in my head all year. The relationship between David Norris (Matt Damon) and Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) is arguably the most convincing and endearing love match in a movie for years. Blunt’s natural energy and Damon’s easy charm combine to create a pairing that seems perfect. George Nolfi has to be congratulated for bringing these two together, and for letting Blunt go wild with her off-kilter charm. It’s been a miserable experience watching almost every director squander her charisma. Adjustment Bureau deserved a place on SoC’s best movies list just for giving us that burst of unfiltered Blunt. (For the record, I’ll happily admit that I’m a chronic Bluntman. So keep that in mind.)
By placing that easy, funny and flirtatious relationship at the heart of his SF paranoia tale, Nolfi is already streets ahead of most other filmmakers, as the stakes instantly become raised. After years of waiting for a really likeable pair to show up onscreen, the thought of them not getting together is genuinely troubling. We root for them as Nolfi cleverly casts his Dickian tale as a parable for all thwarted relationships. A lot of people watching will have had a “What if…” romance in their past, and by casting those past failures as a matter of cosmic significance, Nolfi flatters the audience and reinterprets our past dalliances as mistakes erased by God.
It’s such a versatile idea that it should have become a universally accepted trope, like the Deja Vu explanation in The Matrix. Nolfi even goes so far as to draw parallels between political spin and the micromanagement of the Bureau; a nice little touch. However, even though Nolfi creates two thirds of a brilliant, affecting movie from Dick’s original idea, there’s nowhere to go by the end, no way for our heroes to resolve the situation, which sees them kept apart through divine intervention. Nolfi tries to fix this problem by giving David and Elise a real corporeal threat in the form of Thompson (menacing Terence Stamp), but there’s no way for them to combat that without the help of Mitchell (Anthony Mackie, fantastic as ever), who gives David a chance to do something.
Unfortunately, that “something” would see their lives ruined; his intervention, though inspired by his frustration with the Adjustment system, doesn’t really have an endgame. David’s final gamble should have seen him lobotomised. No one can predict that it would turn out okay but it does, with a very literal deus ex machina. It’s such a monumental cheat that it undoes all of the good work previously done by Nolfi. It also doesn’t help that there is a long scene of Mitchell prepping David for his plan, but in the end David just ignores it; obviously this was to give him more agency in the final minutes, but it also wastes our time.
And what else does the ending give us? A lot of running. There’s no other way to finish the story so Nolfi just makes our heroes run around a lot, but he hasn’t figured out a way to visualise the supernatural threat, or where they are spatially. The door-jumping technology is cleverly used earlier in the movie; John Slattery’s frustration with the tangle of subspace jumps through downtown is a lovely light touch that helps the audience look past the reality-bending confusion of Nolfi’s conceit, but in the third act there’s no sense of menace or danger. It’s just running and running and running. Maybe if Nolfi added some kind of abstract visualisation of the labyrinth of doors and subspace jumps, it might have worked. Instead all of the tension created by that point evaporates.
As for that menace, it has to come at the expense of the good-natured air in the first half. Richardson, so well-played by as the perpetually annoyed John Slattery, is such a fun antagonist that it’s a huge loss when he gets sidelined. I understand that the threat needed to be amped up after David and Elise hook up for the third time, but to lose such a richly developed character is a crime. Once he’s sidelined and the chirpy, good-natured air of the first two-thirds is replaced by a necessary but unavoidably grumpy earnestness, my enthusiasm for the film began to wilt, and by the end, when a magic wand is waved and everything turns out okay, I was done.
Does this movie deserve to be pilloried the way it was by some mainstream critics? Absolutely not. Does it deserve to be complained about by a shlub like me with a very narrowly-defined sense of what constitutes a success? Of course! Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t think the movie counts as a failure at all. It’s a not-success, and that’s arguably worse. If it had stuck the landing this could have been a huge commercial and critical hit, and could live on beyond 2011 as an ingenious allegory for romantic strife. That it didn’t is a crying shame. Nevertheless, it remains essential viewing. Anyone considering making a romantic drama or comedy in the future should be forced to watch this first. It may fall short of greatness, but its representation of love between David and Elise should become the benchmark for movie romance. For that, I’m eternally grateful to all involved.
“Is it over?” begs the reader. But no, I’m still not done. 
BFI LFF 2011: Six Degrees of Jude Law (360 + Contagion)
My first experience of the 2011 London Film Festival was attending 360, the instantly derided new project from Fernando Meirelles and Peter Morgan, who were in attendance for the movie’s second screening following the opening night gala. Sadly the second experience of the festival was watching a fight almost break out between the guy sitting next to me and the couple sitting in front of us who conducted a phone conversation with an unseen third party through the first five minutes of the movie; a little gift to the audience that included some calisthenics from the guy who stood up, turned around, sat down, got back up, all while chattering away as if he was the only person in the room. I’ve whined about the unusually poor behaviour of festival attendees before, but this was on a whole new level. It didn’t bode well.
One miserable consequence of this was that I missed the opening of 360, in which Mirkha (Lucia Siposová), a young woman preparing to begin work as a high-end escort, is photographed by a sleazy pan-European pimp. As this happens we hear a voiceover which I suspect is from her sister, Anna (Gabriela Marcinkova) who, as far as I could see past Mr. Inconsiderate Twirling Guy, was talking about things coming full circle which, if you think about it, is super-apt considering the fact that the movie, named 360, is a loose adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde. Annoying that I couldn’t see the subtitles, but then I knew, just from the format of the movie, that I would get another chance to read them again at the end of the film, when it inevitably finished with the same speech. And what do you know, I was right. This is not a movie that contains a multitude of surprises, then.
Maybe it’s delayed fatigue brought on by exposure to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, which hopped around the globe from story to story, showing how connected we are, or maybe it’s my belief that this kind of linked anthology story has already been written definitively by David Mitchell (dedicated Cloud Atlas fan here), but 360 felt tired almost from the very first shot. Mirkha leaves the Grimy Room of Depravity™ to begin her escorting career by travelling across Europe to meet with Jude Law, a seemingly inept businessman hoping to have a sexual encounter while away from his wife. An unfortunate encounter with one of the pushy men he has travelled to see stymies his sexcapade, and from this moment on, a wave of accidental meetings, misunderstandings and revelations sweeps across the globe, changing the lives of a number of otherwise unconnected characters.
Meirelles’ critical stock appears to have fallen precipitously over the years, and for a while it felt like I was the only person still banging a drum for him. From critical adoration (City of God) to bemused grumbling (Blindness), his reputation has lost its lustre. Personally I liked Blindness, thought the performances were strong and the movie’s aesthetic appealing enough that I ignored the obviousness of the tale’s metaphorical conceit, but there’s hardly any way to defend 360. It’s a disappointingly ugly movie, rendered in washed-out tones, while the sludgy pace caused by its stop-start anthology structure means Meirelles struggles to generate any tension. The final scenes attempt to create some suspense but so little time has been spent with the characters the only way to make it work at all is to throw some pretty cheap melodramatics at the audience.
It’s possible that the version we saw was incomplete; it’s so flatly shot there’s a chance it hadn’t even been colour-coded, and the subtitles contained spelling and grammatical errors. And I’ll admit 360‘s plotting is mostly drum-tight, with only an occasional unrealistic fudge to help the narrative along. It’s also a surprisingly optimistic film, which gives it an edge over the modish, unconvincing dourness of Iñárritu’s work. In the Q&A following the movie Morgan happily admitted that he’s a jolly person at heart and didn’t feel it necessary to add any bleakness to the tale. It’s refreshing to see something so cheerful and life-affirming, especially considering the stream of huge downer movies I subjected myself to over the next two weeks.
Unfortunately it also means that 360 has little bite, except for a mid-movie sequence sullied with the most startling tonal inconsistency imaginable. Most of the movie’s indiscretions involve adultery, here seen as a chain of infidelity that spreads across Europe. Through a number of linked events we see heartbroken Laura (Maria Flor) leave London to head back to her native Brazil. On the plane she meets kindly Anthony Hopkins, a lonely bereaved father who helps her out, and during a layover in the States she encounters Tyler (Ben Foster), a sex offender struggling with an almost overwhelming urge to rape her and who may have been responsible for the death of Hopkins’ daughter and eh what hold on?
Foster (on admittedly fine form) is just dropped into the movie without any previous connection. A quick discordant scene establishes that he has been released to travel across the States to a halfway house thanks to the intervention of an apparently blind and delusional care worker. That’s very nice, but considering how jumpy he is, how easily tempted he is and how much he is still struggling to overcome his urges, it seems utterly inconceivable that he would be allowed to do this alone. Upon meeting this twitchy, unpleasant, antisocial mess of grunts, Laura is instantly, insanely smitten and drags him back to her room, thus brushing off Anthony Hopkins, who has agreed to meet her in the airport diner because he’s such a lovely and friendly old man but fuck that, eh? Who wants to hang around with someone like that when you can attempt to get over your heartbreak by trying ineptly to seduce a redneck whose body language screams “rapist/murderer” (or should I say “Actor who thinks rapist/murderers act like rapist/murderers”)?
The upshot of this is that we see a ridiculous split-screen suspense sequence seemingly directed by a mogodon-dosed De Palma in which a number of bureaucrats and jobsworths slowly realise that maybe letting someone as transparently dangerous as Tyler out to roam the world might not have been a good idea after all. We also, in the middle of a movie that gaily skips between light drama and broad comedy, get to see Foster in a bathroom frenetically masturbating and miming violent abusive sex acts in an attempt to stop himself from accosting poor oblivious selfish Laura. It’s so bizarrely inappropriate, compared to the rest of the movie, that I felt like asking if the reels had been switched. The fact that this is the only sequence in the movie to generate any kind of frisson complicates matters further. It’s desperately manipulative, almost comically so, but I guess it worked. Insert sadface here.
This wasn’t my favourite sequence, however. I will not hide the fact that I’m a fan of every single one of Anthony Hopkins’ brilliant acting tics; the gabbled run-on sentences, the oddly creepy smile, the constant leaning, and that rich, commanding voice. In drunken moments I have attempted to imitate him, so dearly do I love him. This has been a great year for fans of the thespian colossus. He was brilliantly unhinged in the otherwise unwatchable exorcism movie The Rite, magnificent in Kenny Branagh’s vastly entertaining Thor, and endearingly dopey in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall, Dark Stranger where, sadly, he had to share a lot of screentime with Lucy Punch, hammily playing the worst chav caricature imaginable. Yes, worse than Mira Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite and Patricia Clarkson in Whatever Works. Nice work Woody, you massive fucking snob.
In 360, however, we get to see what happens when a writer and director completely indulge him. Morgan gives him a long speech about his dead daughter, delivered at an AA meeting, that goes on for what feels like about five minutes. I’m not sure what guidance Meirelles gave him, but the result is a long, unbroken slice of pure Hopkinia, and it took all of my power not to hoot with joy throughout. There is SO MUCH ACTING in this scene. The great man throws in every single tic and technique you can imagine, but goddamn it, the scene works like gangbusters, at least for me. Hell, I’d watch a whole movie of this. Someone get on that shit immediately.
It would certainly be more entertaining that this bitty hodge-podge of promising but underdeveloped short stories. For something that supposedly spans the globe and pays tribute to the hoary old idea that we’re all part of the same great human melange, 360 feels small and inconsequential. There’s no great truth here, and while it passes the time well enough, it’s disconcerting to see something so half-hearted come from Meirelles, who previously seemed to have a better grip of what it is to be alive in the modern age. This is a pick-and-mix bag compiled by someone who doesn’t understand you; there’s probably something in there you’ll like, but there’ll also be far too much licorice, and some of those unappetising-looking fried egg sweets with that nasty foamy texture.
I feel bad saying any of that because 360 is kinda sweet, and both Meirelles and Morgan were utterly charming in the post-movie Q&A. While looking for info about this movie online just now, I spotted here that Morgan’s inspiration for 360 includes the viral contagion that also, regrettably, connects us with each other. Jude Law also showed up in Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, which takes that idea and runs with it, and though Contagion wasn’t included on the London Film Festival roster, I saw it while the festival was happening and it struck me as such a perfect companion piece with 360 that I have to talk about it. Also, because I think Soderbergh’s movie has been given an unfairly rough ride by critics.
Contagion has been described in the same damning way as David Cronenberg’s superb A Dangerous Method; too clinical, too sterile, not fluffy and crazy and melodramatic enough. Just as I strongly believe that such criticism of A Dangerous Method is wide of the mark, and will eventually be consigned to a dustbin once people have seen it more times and have come to appreciate its subtlety, I think Contagion will be treated with greater respect over time (coincidentally, the critic who seemed to value Contagion most was Amy Taubin, whose incisive and similarly enthusiastic review of A Dangerous Method can be found here). Nevertheless, it irks me to hear this gripping, serious drama compared negatively to Wolfgang Peterson’s ridiculous — though admittedly entertaining — plague movie Outbreak.
Written by the brilliant Scott Z. Burns (who was responsible for the exquisitely scripted The Informant!), Contagion follows a number of people affected by a global outbreak of a deadly new virus, MEV-1. Burns and Soderbergh focus mainly on the scientists struggling to find a vaccine, but also show the effect of the pandemic via bereaved citizen Matt Damon and blogger Jude Law. There are multiple strands here, but unlike 360, which parcels its stories out in discrete lumps, Contagion‘s stories run parallel to each other as the virus flourishes, triggering vast societal changes as humanity struggles to cope with impending disaster.
And yes, it is clinical. Soderbergh avoids melodramatics — there are only a couple of histrionic flare-ups during the movie, mostly from poor, terrified Damon, struggling to protect his daughter from the fate that befell other members of the family. But this approach, eschewing easy drama, is entirely appropriate for a movie dedicated to celebrating the best of the human intellect. What might seem like an oddly subdued movie about apocalypse is teeming with suppressed emotion, most of which is tamped down in order to maintain scientific objectivity to prevent the death of almost 10% of humanity. This is a paean to the great minds toiling away to prevent global catastrophe, a testament to the unsung experts who try to save us from our hostile world.
Many years ago I was lucky enough to read Laurie Garrett‘s The Coming Plague, which triggered a fascination with epidemiology and virology. Contagion is the first movie to successfully channel these fascinating subjects in an a serious fashion, but then this is probably because Ms. Garrett was one of the consultants who helped Burns write his authoritative screenplay (Dr. Larry Brilliant and Dr. Ian Lipkin were also among the contributors). The movie screams authenticity; there’s no synthesis of barrels of vaccine in a couple of minutes, there’s no temporary stupidity gaps among the scientists in order to generate fake tension or emotion, there’s no plucky maverick saving the day, and no applause for anyone who isn’t a professional. This is a movie that loves the intelligent, objective elites that know their shit. For this novel approach alone Contagion should be heralded as a major success.
I may rail against Aaron Sorkin as often as I praise him, but his love of the smartest of the smart — most often expressed by giving his characters speeches where they reel off their CVs to a clearly stunned audience of drooling lesser-folk — is refreshing, when not distorted by his personal bias against anyone who dares to question his brilliance. Too often the template for movies is to provide a little man to cheer on as he does battle against the know-it-alls who dare to order the rest of us around. It’s this glorification of the plucky ignoramus that has led to the rise of ideologically motivated idiots like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchens, Jon Gaunt, Amanda Platell and the rest of their malevolent small-minded ilk. This is most definitely not a good thing.
Meanwhile the quiet brains that make the world better or safer are drowned out by this frothing torrent of anti-knowledge, best shown in Contagion via Jude Law’s financially-motivated blogger Alan Krumweide. There have been some grumblings that Contagion is tarring all bloggers with the same brush, but I don’t think Soderbergh and Burns mean to use the vile Krumweide as a critical tool against those of us who write online without the seal of honour provided by a paid job by the official media (see also: Sorkin and his mean-spirited complaints against amateur writers). There are a number of comments made by Krumweide that plainly show their satirical target is the kind of corrupt individual who seeks to alter public perception of scientific endeavours for financial gain.
Their target is almost certainly Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who campaigned against the MMR vaccine. There is dispute over whether his now-discredited claims about links between the vaccine and a rise in autism diagnoses have caused a surge in measles cases around the world, but nevertheless his motives for arguing against MMR closely align with the motives of Krumweide, who promotes the use of Forsythia as a cure for the MEV-1 virus in order to capitalise on the inevitable run on the false remedy. He is a pitiful, unpleasant character, but he is at least given a few moments of what seems to be doubt and pity. I usually react negatively to unrepentant villainy in movies, but my own sense of anger at such venal behaviour in the real world meant Krumweide seemed almost insufficiently evil.
Contagion doesn’t deny that there is a political element to public health provisions, governmental disaster response, or the financial, social and religious reactions to outbreaks, but it strenuously lobbies for a cessation of needless complicating actions when faced with the death of millions. There is a sense of great anger against such behaviour in this movie, and the way in which attempts to capitalise on crisis inevitably obstruct the nobler work of scientists. This is a hero-worship movie, and how you respond to that will be linked to how much you think the CDC is trying to help humanity or exploit it. As someone who thinks these guys are to be trusted, Contagion is the movie I’ve been waiting for since discovering their humbling, courageous work.
And for those who feel Contagion is a heartless movie that denies any expression of emotion, I direct you to the final act of the movie, where we see the assorted characters get a moment to pause for breath. It is in these final scenes that we see them find time to react to the global — and personal — shift caused by the pandemic. There is humanity here in spades. It just had to be put on hold for a while. How rare it is to see something in popular culture praise reflection and professionalism, to take a break from severing Gordian knots with an slashing knife instead of taking the time to unravel it, before exhaling and embracing the horror that the characters have survived.
360 may have tried to tell a story about the wonder of humanity in the connected 21st Century but it rarely rises above the level of potboiler. Contagion is the movie that eulogises the best of our species, by showing how, even when the majority panic and try to make things worse, we were once at least smart and civilised enough to have prepared the safety net that will save us. There is fear here, and raging frustration, and Soderbergh and Burns dramatise both brilliantly, but they also offer a vision of hope. Their cleverest trick comes in the very last minute, in which we see just how fragile we are as a species, and how much we can jeopardise ourselves if we’re not careful. We can be almost entirely undone by the smallest fluke moment, but still we prevail. That last note is haunting, but even as it hangs in the air we can still hear the minimalist symphony of hope played just before. We will prevail, no matter what gets thrown at us. We’re going to be just fine.
In Which I Become Horribly Grumpy In The Process Of Writing A Huge Oscar Prediction Post
Traditionally this is one of those periods in the year when I get obnoxiously, nerdily excited about something many discerning film buffs dismiss as irrelevant: the Academy Awards, where overpaid buffoons receive the acceptance of their similarly overpaid buffoonish peers in the form of a gilded trinket. My enjoyment of this ceremony and all of the nonsense surrounding it flies in the face of serious film criticism, but then so does my love of garish and noisy explodofilms, and I guess that means I’ll never get that job at Sight & Sound, WOEZ.
This year is a bit different. Aside from a blip caused by this excellent and informative Tom Shone piece about the Academy voters, RL problems have taken some of the steam out of my usual preparation for the ceremony, and we won’t even be having our traditional Oscar party this year, where a bunch of lovely folks come around to eat Pringles, set off party poppers at 4 in the morning (::panics::), and shout insults at the thoroughly dreadful Sky Movies Oscar show presenters Claudia “I haven’t seen it yet” Winkleman and Mark “I haven’t seen it either but I bet it’s crap” Dolan. Sorry guys, it would have been fun, even with those endless Moet-sponsored inserts from England. Besides, would there be anything quite as thrilling as this in this year’s ceremony? I think not.)
Maybe it’s a lucky escape for all of us. Watching the ceremony is seriously damaged by enduring these ninnies wonk on about things they do not understand. Watching the Golden Globes earlier this year was a truly disheartening experience, the only entertaining aspect of it being Jessica Stevenson-Hynes cashing a paycheck for turning up at the studio and then crocheting for four hours (seriously, she just got her crocheting equipment out and got on with it) while Sky’s fashion correspondent and that stand-up comedian who looks like he’s taking a break from getting rejected by hot girls at fresher’s week blithered on about how The King’s Speech has to win everything just because it’s British and if it fails we’ll all die because our self-worth has somehow become inextricably linked with its baffling worldwide success.
Maybe that’s another reason why I’m not looking forward to the ceremony as much as usual. For the illumination of readers who live outside the UK, it’s fair to point out that all you hear about right now is King’s Speech King’s Speech King’s Speech 24/fucking/7, and it’s ruining my enjoyment of everything. It’s not a terrible movie, per se. It’s just unsurprising and overdirected. British movies revel in these “loser overcomes adversity” plots, applying them to every subject imaginable, though at least we can be glad Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush didn’t have to end up naked like the cast of The Full Monty or Calendar Girls. King’s Speech is no exception to this reliance on the rote and cliched plot template, though much of my irkety feelings about the damnable box office colossus is aimed at the final scene.
Audiences across the country might be weeping openly at King Thingy’s triumphant pronunciation of “thet scahhndrel Mestah Hetlah”, but the scene is so badly edited it really does seem like Tom “Off-Kilter Composition” Hooper is saying the final speech was delivered with such adversity-conquering power that Britain went insane with joy at their monarch getting it finished in a reasonable amount of time, instead of thinking “Oh shit, we’re going to war and we’re going to be bombed to blood-drenched ribbons and our sons are either going to die or be traumatised for the rest of their lives, oh God, oh God, oh God.” No no, our lips were too stiff for all that: huzzah for our imperial leader’s newfound confidence! That’ll make digging an Anderson shelter in the back yard and living on birdseed and gravel for ten years all the more fun.
Which is not to say I hated it entirely. It’s pretty difficult not to enjoy the seemingly now-legendary performance from Colin Firth, who is commendably spiky and unlovable as the spiky and unlovable monarch. The cast is generally very good, though Guy Pierce’s accent is hilariously distracting and Timothy Spall’s genial take on Churchill is a poor choice. It would have been much better had it been directed by someone who wasn’t so eager to draw attention to his work. Mr. Hooper, please stop with the maddening camera-frippery please please please. Your first movie – the far superior Damned United – was similarly marred by showy compositions, and it just makes you look a bit silly. You’re never going to have to go back to directing episodes of EastEnders now, so you don’t have to prove you’re the next Orson Welles. And look! Mark Lawson thinks that your time in the TV trenches makes you and your partner-in-overcompensating-visual-splurge Danny Boyle more capable than David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky! So congrats, one temporarily senile media pundit says that you’ve made it. Now please use the centre of the frame like a grown-up, okay?
So yeah, the worrying possibility of a King’s Sweep has soured me on the awards this year. I’m not crazy enough to assume that my favourites of the year – Black Swan and Inception – would win much, but I’d be perfectly happy with The Social Network winning a bunch of stuff. The topicality of it has made many see it as a movie that will date badly, but I think it says enough about our approach to relationships and interactions that it will fare better than previous tech-movies (who can watch, say, War Games and not laugh at the LP-sized floppy discs). I’m also hoping for some love to be thrown at The Kids Are All Right: it can be dismissed as light indie fare but I think it’s a better crafted movie than that, and earns all of its emotional payoffs with enough invisibly deployed effort that many US indie movies of the past few years couldn’t even begin to imagine. I’d also be very happy to see a surprise deluge of naked gold men all over the Coen Brothers’ triumphant True Grit, a film that ranks up there with their very best.
My sourer impulses hope for a shut-out of ADHD Boyle’s predictably empty 127 Hours, which is little more than a grisly advert for Humanity that relies almost exclusively on Sigur Ros’ Festival to generate any emotion amid the frenetic and mostly random frame-shuffle: classic Boyle, then. Despite my adoration of James Franco (so, so good here, and very amusing in his Green Hornet cameo), there’s little else to praise in 127 Hours. Oh, the photography is very nice. But still, Boyle has even less to say here than usual: the message of the movie seems to be “don’t die if you can help it, and be a little nicer to your mom”. Okay, thanks for the advice, go away now. It would also be nice to see Alice in Wonderland receive none of the technical awards it was nominated for just because I hate it so much (and yes, I’m using hate in the non-hyperbolic sense that I actually do hate it: properly hate it and get red-mist-angry whenever I think about it), but the technical categories were the only ones where I thought it was worthy of praise. That’s a tough one that won’t matter at all as I doubt it will win anything even though the Academy likes to pat successful movies on the head for being profitable, no matter how inexplicable or undeserving that success is.
So anyway, who do I think will win, and who do I think should win, and who do I think was unfairly shut out? See below for further details.
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Who Will Win: Colin Firth – The King’s Speech
Fairly obvious. His ascendance to Oscar glory wasn’t even damaged by the weird attempt by some unscrupulous scoundrel to stymie him by pointing out that King Whats-His-Name was a huge fan of Hitler (he had all of his albums, even his ill-advised dubstep experiment Das Reichbeat). The only thing that could stop Mr. Firth from winning this year would be for him to reveal he used a stunt double in THAT SCENE in Pride and Prejudice as he didn’t want to get his britches wet.
Who Should Win: Colin Firth – The King’s Speech
I used to be a Colin Firth agnostic, but this performance – and his adorable humility in the face of overwhelming praise – has made a believer of me. I’ll be just as pleased at his inevitable win as all of the journalists who will be able to print “GOD SAVE THE KING!” on the front page on Monday morning.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Ben Stiller – Greenberg
I don’t think anyone nominated this year should be excluded. Even the fact that Biutiful is an appalling movie can take anything away from Javier Bardem’s impressive work. Nevertheless, I think Stiller’s bold and detailed performance deserves more praise than it got. Ah well.
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Who Will Win: Geoffrey Rush – The King’s Speech
I think the initial rush of enthusiasm for Christian Bale’s bold work in David O. Russell’s annoyingly conventional The Fighter has passed, though not because of anything Bale did or didn’t do (though not taking out ads of himself with his current Jesus ‘do with the word “Consider…” above it was a good move, ahem ahem). The Weinsteins are going all out with the promotion for The King’s Speech, as they always do, and I think it will swing it for Rush. Which is no crime. He’s very entertaining in that movie, though he sadly does not top his most towering and haunting performance as Casanova Frankenstein in Mystery Men.
Who Should Win: Christian Bale – The Fighter
But seriously, Bale’s performance is more than worthy of the nod. After a couple of years of harassing cinematographers and being overshadowed by his co-stars, this amazing transformation into a haunted and hyperactive loser on a redemptive path is initially showy enough to attract attention but allows for the development of quiet notes later in the movie that knocked my socks off. It reminded me of why I was thrilled when I heard he was going to be Christopher Nolan’s Batman many years ago: because he’s a really, really talented actor and has incredible screen presence when given some room to breathe. That is the main reason I’m not shouting from the rooftops about John Hawkes, who will surely now get the work he deserves after wowing us as the amoral scumbag Teardrop Dolly in Winter’s Bone.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Zach Galafianakis – It’s Kind of a Funny Story
As feeble as this movie is, Galafianakis’ unshowy stillness in the centre is the only thing that stays in the memory after the credits roll. I would have been miffed to see Fleck and Boden’s twee failure be recognised, but it would have been worth it to see Galafianakis receive his due (and not Due Date, which is what the poor bastard ended up with).
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Who Will Win: Natalie Portman – Black Swan
This is possibly the strongest category this year, and yet there is still a frontrunner. While everyone else is preparing bunting for King Colin, I’m expending all of my energy rooting for Natalie. Let’s hope No Strings Attached isn’t her Norbit.
Who Should Win: Natalie Portman – Black Swan
I was impressed by all of the performances in this category (and was especially glad to see Nicole Kidman remind us of why she is such a fascinating actress with some very strong work in the heartbreaking Rabbit Hole), but even so, there is only one that can win. I think the only people who would be more upset if she lost would be all of the Marvel marketing folks who will have prepared countless Thor posters bragging that it stars two Academy-Award-winning actors (and Kat Dennings) in its line-up.
Who Should Have Been Nominated:
Let’s see: Catherine Keener for Please Give, Kristin Scott Thomas for Partir, Rachel Weisz for Agora, Greta Gerwig for Greenberg, Carey Mulligan for Never Let Me Go, Emma Stone for Easy A (I’m 100% serious), Julianne Moore for The Kids Are All Right (it would split the vote against Annette Bening, but it would have been nice anyway), Marion Cotillard for Inception, Angelika Papoulia in Dogtooth… The list goes on and on. What a year for incredible performances from actresses.
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Who Will Win: Helena Bonham Carter – The King’s Speech
You’ll note a trend developing here. I’m really convinced there’s going to be a landslide for The King’s Speech, certainly in the top tiers, and this – or a win for Geoffrey Rush – would be the first sign that Hollywood has gone Monarchy-Mad. Melissa Leo screwed the pooch with her ill-considered campaign (though if she felt the Paramount marketing department were letting her down she’s perfectly entitled to do something about it, I guess), and it’s going to cost her. Plus her performance was really cartoony: even more so than Bonham Carter’s silly Queen Mom with her clipped tones and humourlessness and no mention of all that Nazi sympathising, of course.
Who Should Win: Hailee Steinfeld – True Grit
I guess? I don’t know, this is a tough category. I don’t think I loved any of the performances here (whereas the best actress category is overloaded with greatness), though I haven’t seen Jacki Weaver’s work in Animal Kingdom (released in the UK two days ago FFS). I did enjoy Steinfeld’s funny turn in True Grit, and if Bridges isn’t going to win (and Matt Damon isn’t even going to be nominated, which is bullshit), then this is where the acting praise should fall. Amy Adams was okay in The Fighter, but I’m never very keen on seeing her play working class folks (don’t get me started on Junebug). So yeah, Steinfeld gets my vote and a shrug.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Olivia Williams – The Ghost (Writer)
Ms. Williams was almost obscenely entertaining as the sour and unpredictable wife of Fierce Pierce’s puppet PM, but perhaps appearing in a thriller was enough to make the voters ignore her. Or maybe there was no effort to lobby for her nomination. Whatever the reason was, it’s a crime. See also a lack of nominations for Dale Dickey in Winter’s Bone (so terrifying) and Rebecca Hall in Please Give.
Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
What Will Win: Toy Story 3
Is there any question? I haven’t seen The Illusionist, even though I liked Chomet’s Belleville Rendezvous quite a bit when I first saw it, and so can’t attest to its quality, but even so, Toy Story 3 is one of the richest, smartest, and cleverest films of the year, as well as being the cruellest. In a good way, obviously. Cheerleaders for The Illusionist still hope for a surprise, but it’s not going to happen. This is Pixar’s year. Again.
What Should Win: Toy Story 3
See above. I’m still getting over it. Lee Unkrich and Michael Arndt owe me some new tear ducts.
What Should Have Been Nominated: Tangled / Megamind / Summer Wars
It’s a shame they didn’t expand the list to five nominees this year, because while 2010 might not have been as impressive as the previous year for animation, it was still pretty great, even if only for Walt Disney Animation’s phenomenal Tangled. It was deemed worthy of a Best Original Song nod but nothing else? Even with only three nominations I’d place this above How To Train Your Dragon which, I should stress, I liked a great deal. That said, I preferred Dreamworks Animation’s other big release of the year, the irreverent but surprisingly affecting superhero comedy Megamind. It would also have been nice to see Mamoru Hosodo’s paean to family life and the power of technology get on the list, but I realise that I’m now asking for the moon on a stick.
Achievement in Art Direction
Who Will Win: Eve Stewart and Judy Farr – The King’s Speech
In years past I’ve grown frustrated with the habit of awarding this Oscar to the movie with the stateliest stately home, mostly because I prefer the flash of a fully designed set to the stultifying idea of sitting in an antiques shop trying to find the right vase for a specific period. I suspect I’m not alone in this: everyone who loves film remembers the name Ken Adams, but does anyone remember the names of the (very talented, I’m sure) production designers and set decorators on any randomly chosen period drama from the Great British Period Drama Machine? Still, King’s Speech is bound to win this, with the grungy basement studio of Lionel Logue providing the only interesting set in the whole worthy film. Only Jess Gonchor’s designs for True Grit stand a chance of beating it, which would be nice, as I’ve enjoyed her work before now.
Who Should Win: Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias and Doug Mowat – Inception
I suspect I’m only saying this because I love the idea of a rotating set so much, but I did think Inception had some lovely sets, including the team’s ramshackle workspace, the grimy first level of the dream and the demolished hotel room in Cobb’s subconscious. Or maybe I think True Grit should win it. I’ll have to ponder that one. (No I won’t. This is bloody exhausting. There are, like, a million categories!)
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Dante Ferretti – Shutter Island
Martin Scorsese’s energetic movie may have been muddled and unfortunately stuck with the most glaringly obvious “twist” ending imaginable, but it as a technical exercise in ramping up suspense it was well worth the effort. On top of that it looked the BUSINESS. Part of that was Dante Ferretti’s brilliant production design, a highlight being the asylum on the eponymous island with its intricate nightmarish dungeons, plucked straight from the recesses of Hitchcock’s subconscious. Shutter Island may not have been a total success, partly because the movie serves the twist and not the other way around (for an hour nothing makes sense in order to hide the ending from the audience: a lethal narrative choice), but hell, it got no nominations, even in the technical categories? I guess the Academy figured that after Scorsese won for The Departed they could just forget about him.
Achievement in Cinematography
Who Will Win: Roger Deakins – True Grit
King Deakins amazes again! They should just have an award ready for him every year, and then another one for best runner-up. Truly lovely and textured work, a joy to behold. LOVE!
Who Should Win: Roger Deakins – True Grit
It’s a strong category, but even though I liked almost all of the work here (with the exception of The King’s Speech, though I blame Tom Hooper for that, not Danny Cohen), it has to go to Deakins.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Shelly Johnson – The Wolfman
As weak as that film was, it was so beautiful it was almost possible to completely ignore the phoned-in performances and creaky shock-jumps. Johnson took the black-and-white photography of the original Universal monster movies as a starting point and created a beautiful modern update with flickering shadows, delicate bounced light and an almost monochrome palette that allowed the blood to stand out in all its grisly glory. It reminded me of Emmanuel Lubezki’s terrific work on Sleepy Hollow (a film released in one of the strongest ever years for cinematography, with Conrad Hall and Dante Spinotti excelling on American Beauty and The Insider respectively).
Achievement in Costume Design
Who Will Win: Jenny Beaven – The King’s Speech
I’m actually just saying King’s Speech now as a form of temper tantrum. I’m actually not sure it will win (True Grit is a likely winner too), but I dread its dominance so much everywhere I look I see some obnoxious fish-eye close up of King Colin swallowing noisily. Ugh, I’m beginning to hate the fucking thing.
Who Should Win: Sandy Powell – The Tempest
I haven’t seen it, but I’d imagine Julie Taymor would ask her collaborator to come up with something a little more interesting than something based on a design hanging in a museum somewhere. [/bitter]
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Penny Rose – Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
This misfiring Bruckheimer game adaptation managed too look great despite Mike Newell’s seeming indifference (I expected more from him: maybe the focus groups ruined it, or perhaps the scale of it was too overwhelming to allow space to breathe). Part of that was Ms. Rose’s lovely designs. As I know nothing about clothes I won’t embarrass myself by trying to explain why I liked them so much. I just thought everyone looked really cool. Maybe I should rename this blog I Can’t Believe It’s Not Film Criticism.
Achievement in Directing
Who Will Win: David Fincher – The Social Network
At last I suspect the grim claws of the Weinsteins will loosen a little, and sanity will prevail, though part of me (the miserable pessimistic part) fears Hooper will win and then deliver his speech just to the side of the podium, facing the wrong side of the stage. But no, surely Fincher will finally get his trophy. Surely! The alternative is too depressing to comprehend: a Hooper win and Fincher following up The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo with a Driving Miss Daisy remake starring Brad Pitt as Miss Daisy and Jodie Foster taking on the role of kindly chauffeur/slave Hoke in order to appeal to the addle-brained sentimental twits who are ruining movies for everyone. Because come on, what the hell does one of the most impressive and intelligent directors to come out of America in the last twenty years have to do to get a goddamn Oscar? ::looks at Best Director snubs in the past:: Never mind.
Who Should Win: Darren Aronofsky – Black Swan
After all that I may seem like I’m being contrary, but while I thought Fincher did astounding work wrestling with Aaron Sorkin’s verbal splurge, my heart belongs to Aronofsky this year. Regular readers will be praying for me not to lose my head over Black Swan again, after writing an absurdly hyperbolic review last year, so I’ll leave it there.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Christopher Nolan – Inception
A no-brainer, surely. His ambitious screenplay has been attacked for being exposition-heavy, though there are those of us who think the exposition was actually pretty elegant considering he had to front-load the movie with about a million pages-worth of universe-explaining rules in order to make that amazing final half flow so smoothly. Whatever side of that divide you come down on, I would’ve thought only the movie’s most vocal detractors would think Nolan doesn’t deserve something for creating something so singular and odd and appealing despite being a total left-brain project without all of that lovely heart that apparently all movies require nowadays.
Hence the inclusion of Tom Hooper and David O. Russell on the list. Yes, though I love Russell’s previous work his direction of The Fighter was disappointingly straight-forward here. It would be crazy to expect his usual quirkiness considering the formulaic nature of the sports movie, but Aronofsky found a way to make The Wrestler seem uniquely his. Conspiracy theories about Russell attempting to store some mainstream capital after the Nailed debacle seem more and more justified. (For the record, I liked The Fighter well enough — I’m a sucker for boxing movies, it seems — and it was well-performed. It was just kinda flat, is all.)
Best Documentary Feature
What Will Win: Waste Land
Apparently it”s emotional and universally well-liked, so why not? As with many of the categories to come, this is a bit outside my wheel-house, so I’m guessing here. I’ve only seen Restrepo, which is a solidly made and very depressing movie, but I don’t think it will win: war is so last decade. Same with Inside Job, which I think may alienate a lot of the voters. But what do I know? I don’t even know what Gasland is about, and haven’t bothered with Banksy’s movie even though everyone loves it.
What Should Win:
Okay, I promise I’ll make more of an effort next year, because this is always a bit embarrassing. Why don’t I watch more documentaries? I really like them, so there’s not even an excuse.
What Should Have Been Nominated:
::depressed silence::
Best Documentary Short Subject
What Will Win: The Warriors of Qiugang
Is it bad that I’m only picking this because it sounds like it could be an action movie starring Donnie Yen? (Answer: yes, you twat.)
Who Should Win:
As I haven’t seen any of the nominees in this category, it’s best I just walk away before I embarrass myself further.
Achievement in Film Editing
Who Will Win: Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter – The Social Network
Some great work here, taking the excellently paced performances and making them shine, keeping the pace up. The barrage of information should be overwhelming, but Wall and Baxter control it perfectly. Not since Oliver Stone’s JFK have I been so impressed by the way the audience is guided through choppy waters by an editing team.
Who Should Win: Andrew Weisblum – Black Swan
However I think this just pips it just because Black Swan is so immersive and exhausting. It’s a technically perfect movie, and I would love to see everyone involved on the tech side of the movie get their reward.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Inception
I would have thought this was a certainty, as well-liked action movies often get a cursory editing nomination as a sop to the filmmakers who won’t see any other award love during the night, but apparently this doesn’t warrant a mention, even considering there is so much information to impart that if it hadn’t been edited as clearly and cleverly as it did the whole thing would have fallen apart. This might be the most inexplicable snub of the night, other than the sound awards, which I will get to in good time. (Note: I don’t just think editing a movie well is a matter of getting all of the footage in the right order, but it’s worth noting that two of this year’s best films were very info-heavy and relied on steady hands and smart decisions in the editing room to keep the audience onboard.)
Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
What Will Win: In a Better World
I know nothing about this as it hasn’t even been released in the UK yet, but I’ve heard chatter about it from better critics than I who have caught it at festivals. Choosing this feels right: how often does the foreign language award go to the best known movie nominated? It’s always something I’ve never heard of. It’s science.
What Should Win: Dogtooth
Yes, I’m picking this as I’ve seen it, but also because it is amazing. Will it win? Will it bollocks. Too upsetting and daring to gather votes, but it’s okay, I won’t cry. Just as long as the execrable Biutiful loses, I’ll be happy.
What Should Have Been Nominated: A Serbian Film
Kidding! Except not, because it is good. Unwatchably horrific, but good. Even more depressing than Biutiful, in fact. Isn’t that why people like that artfully-presented chunk of sentimental crap? (Okay okay, I’ll drop it now.)
Achievement in Makeup
Who Will Win: Rick Baker and Dave Elsey – The Wolfman
It’s Rick Baker, bitches! I have no idea how good the work is on the other movies nominated, but I do know the effects here are just fab. Almost as good as Baker’s ground-breaking work on American Werewolf in London.
Who Should Win: Rick Baker and Dave Elsey – The Wolfman
See above. Yes, I would like Peter Weir’s first movie since the mighty Master and Commander to win something, but come on! A werewolf movie! It’s the make-up genre. Surely werewolf movies should win every year. They have to put a ton of hair and teeth on people’s faces! That shit is hard, you know.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Black Swan
It’s the only film I can think of that had any notable make-up in it, so I plump for that one. Red contact lenses and shoulder feathers are this year’s hottest new look.
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)
Who Will Win: Alexandre Desplat – The King’s Speech
One of the few things I really liked about King’s Speech was the traditional terrific soundtrack from Mr. Desplat, who is surely the most talented man in the world whose name almost decribes the sound made when a tomato falls on the floor. It might not be as good as his wonderful work on Fantastic Mr. Fox or Birth (surely his masterpiece), but it’s still worthy of admiration. (Caveat, there’s a good chance Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will win if Speech is starting to rack up the wins and Social Network is suddenly found wanting. I’m tempted to suggest that this award will be crucial in determining who will win the most big awards on the night, but I suspect I’m overthinking it.)
Who Should Win: Hans Zimmer – Inception
Though my choice will anger at least one Facebook friend who maintains the music doesn’t work as a movie score at all (back off, Johnny May), I still maintain Zimmer’s conceptually bold and pulse-quickening score is one of the all-time greats. The fact that it references the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service score by the much-missed John Barry cements it for me. There could well be an upset on the night.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Clint Mansell – Black Swan
Dear Academy voters, yes, Britain is sorry about the whole Pop Will Eat Itself thing, they were not great, but Clint Mansell has apparently turned out to be a massive music genius and we’d really appreciate it if you throw him some love. Fourteen thousand trailers using his music can’t be wrong. Cheers, Admiral Neck. (Yes, I know, it wasn’t eligible because it referenced Tchaikovsky’s ballet so directly, but even so, it looms over almost everything else recorded this year like a bulging ballet-dancer’s groin filled with violins and such.
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song)
What Will Win: We Belong Together (Randy Newman) – Toy Story 3
Surely the only way the Academy can honour the majesty of Toy Story 3 is to hand another award out for this terrific, heart-flensing ditty from the maestro. All three films have featured a wonderful song: the benefit of this one is that it’s actually possible to listen to it, unlike When She Loved Me, which is still the most lethal piece of music ever recorded.
What Should Win: I See the Light (Alan Menken and Glenn Slater) – Tangled
The highlight of Walt Disney Animation’s lovely fairy tale Tangled is this soaring love song fit to rival Aladdin‘s A Whole New World for combining emotion, theme and imagery with such satifying skill. It’s the centerpiece of the movie, and seriously folks, if you hear people dismissing 3D or IMAX, this is the scene to quell the doubts. The combination of visuals and thematically resonant storytelling is one of Shades of Caruso’s favourite cinema moments in years. Sorry Randy, I want that moment GILDED by the Academy.
What Should Have Been Nominated: I’ve Got A Dream (Alan Menken and Glenn Slater) – Tangled
As the rules for this category state that a movie can have up to two songs nominated, I would have loved to see a nomination for the other showstopper from the truly magical Tangled (seriously I LOVED IT). It’s silly and broad, but it’s a proper crowdpleaser, sending audiences full of kids into all sorts of gurgling paroxysms: the sort of behaviour that usually annoys a grouchy bastard like myself but merely added to the fun in this case, because Tangled is such a joyous movie. I’m going to keep banging on about this one, so get used to it!
Best Motion Picture of the Year
What Will Win: The King’s Speech
What Should Win: Black Swan
In no world would this get the requisite amount of votes, unless there is a Fringe-style alternated universe where Paul Verhoeven, Dario Argento and David Cronenberg are treated with the fawning respect they deserve. As I’ve said before, I won’t go on about it as I’ve already exhausted reader goodwill, and I will add the caveat that a win for Social Network would please me almost as much, but I just don’t think we’re going to get either. It’s especially frustrating as The Social Network has been “in the lead” for so long, but something tells me the bubble has burst thanks to Harvey “Wilson Fisk” Weinstein’s usual obnoxious efforts. Or maybe it was that Screen Actors Guild win. It’s Crash all over again!!!
What Should Have Been Nominated: Please Give
Yes, only a few people watched it, but my other suggestion for this spot – Agora – was watched by even fewer. I seem to recall a burble of positive notices when this came out but by the end of the year no one remembered. I blame The King’s Speech. [/irrational]
Best Animated Short Film
What Will Win: Day and Night – Teddy Newton for Pixar
Yes, it’s the only one I’ve seen, but I’d be surprised if anything else won. It’s a memorable and imaginative piece of genius.
What Should Win:
It’s not fair to speculate, having not seen anything else (I really want to see The Lost Thing, having loved Shaun Tan’s work in the past), and I can’t think of any other short that should have been animated, so let’s move on.
Best Live Action Short Film
What Will Win: Wish 143
I have no idea if any of these are any good, and am only selecting this one as I’ve heard a lot about it this week (from the predictably patriotic papers that are thrilled to bitsies every time a Brit gets nominated for anything that isn’t a technical award, which is a bugbear of mine), plus the making of it has a story that will appeal to voters. I’m sure it’s very good on top of all this strategic thinking.
What Should Win:
Again I haven’t seen any of the other movies, so I won’t predict. Usually I rely on friend-of-the-blog Mim for help on these matters as she is connected, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about it lately. She has better things to do than give me tips about short movies.
Achievement in sound editing
Who Will Win: Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey – True Grit
Part of the reason I’m adding this is the old standby of “Well, they have to honour it somewhere”, but also because the Coens always go the extra mile to make their movies completely distinct from everything else out there, and hiring Lievsay and Berkey to provide a new Western soundscape to distinguish this from every other Western in recent years was a shrewd choice.
Who Should Win: Richard King – Inception
Inception’s freshness was partly down to the imaginative choices made by King: the distorted music cues, the swish of the dream machine, the crisp gun battles and explosions. This is probably just as likely to win as True Grit, but I suspect the voters will want to hand the award to someone shoring up a genre seen to be in decline as it is to praise the new. Not to disparage anyone’s work here: it’s another strong category, though with one egregious omission…
What Should Have Been Nominated: Black Swan
Seriously, what the FUCK happened here? How could Craig Henigan’s amazing sound design and mix get missed off the roster? There were a lot of misses this year that caused some headscratching, but this is possibly the most baffling. The sound work on Black Swan was absolutely exemplary, and there is just no excuse for this snub. Okay, yes, the other nominees deserved their nods, but surely something could have been moved for this. I guess it’s a good job I’ll never be asked to join the Academy, because omissions like this make me wonder if I would fit in.
Achievement in sound mixing
Who Will Win: Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick and Mark Weingarten – The Social Network
It’s easy to miss a lovely piece of sound mixing, but one of my favourite moments in 2010 came as the fictional construct referred to as “Mark Zuckerberg” walked across campus after being dumped by his girlfriend. The melange of chatter from the students around him reflects the imminent chatter on the internet as he unleashes The Facebook – one of many clever touches by the always brilliant Klyce and his ace team.
Who Should Win: Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick and Mark Weingarten – The Social Network
Either that or the work on Inception, which goes from introspective silences in the first half to increasingly chaotic clatter in the hour-long setpiece. Perversely I would also like Salt‘s sound team to win as well, just so that Salt could win an Oscar. That would entertain me almost as much as that crazy movie did.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Black Swan / Shutter Island
Again, all of the sound work on Black Swan should have been given some praise, but Shutter Island‘s snub is similarly peculiar. The experience of watching both movies was immeasurably enhanced by the feeling that the room was alive with noise, sharp clicks and cracks peeping out from the expertly mixed ambient noises not for shock value, but merely as stabs at the amygdala. Your nerves jangled more and more as the movies progressed: a wonderfully unpleasant thing to endure.
Achievement in Visual Effects
Who Will Win: Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb – Inception
The incredibly clever and imaginative in-camera effects of Inception would probably be a sure thing most years, but as it will likely win bugger all other than a sound award, it’s guaranteed to win here. I’m tempted to think the last Harry Potter movie will win big in technical stuff next year: kind of like a Return-of-the-King sop to the incredibly profitable series, which is why it won’t win here.
Who Should Win: Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb – Inception
From the moment we saw Paris fold over on itself, it was obvious we were going to see something special in Nolan’s action masterpiece. It doesn’t matter that the Limbo effects were a bit murky and smudged: these are the visuals that caught our imagination this year. They deserve all the plaudits they’re getting.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Tron: Legacy / Black Swan
The first is a crazy FX blowout, the second has many effects that are almost invisible. As usual, I’m surprised and more than a little disgusted with the FX voters (industry folk who tend to judge on standards that we don’t necessarily understand). I figured both movies were destined to be nominated (I especially loved the FX in Tron: Legacy), but as usual we get this weird curveball, the same kind of thing that saw Speed Racer and the Matrix sequels snubbed (did John Gaeta spill red wine on some voter’s white carpet?), and E.T. winning in the same year Blade Runner was released. Always a weird category, this.
Adapted Screenplay
Who Will Win: Aaron Sorkin – The Social Network
The surest sure thing imaginable, no offence to all of the other fine screenplays nominated here (not counting 127 Hours, which manages to stretch nothing out – an achievement I’ll grant it though it doesn’t really fill the understandably threadbare story out with anything interesting). This is a tougher victory for Sorkin than you’d expect, as I’m sure there are many who think the Coens should win again. This is why I think True Grit won’t win much, even though it’s terrific. The competition this year (not counting King’s Speech and 127 Hours) is just too strong.
Who Should Win: Aaron Sorkin – The Social Network
I have many, many problems with Sorkin’s work, but I also think he’s amazing. I go back and forth on this all the time. When he’s good he’s really really good, and when he’s bad he’s fucking dreadful. The Social Network is him at his best, even with all of the tics, recycling and showing-off. Sorry Coens! I thought you did a great job too.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughan – Kick-Ass
Stop laughing at the back! I genuinely loved what Vaughan and Goldman did here, keeping enough of Millar’s voice to make it pleasantly anarchic while tightening up his most pointless excesses and adding powerful emotional cores. The motivations of all characters were grounded amid all of the other madness, enough that I’ve been moved to the brink of tears each time I’ve watched it. Their work hasn’t yet received enough praise. Or any praise, really. Except from me and a couple of other people. I’m sure this will make up for all the difficulties I’m sure they’re experiencing while trying to make X-Men: First Class their own while Fox attempt to fuck it all up like they always do.
Original Screenplay
Who Will Win: David Seidler – The King’s Speech
Cliched, inaccurate, sentimental, really really inaccurate, and ultimately kind of lazy, but it’s a sure thing. Fuckety piss. At least it will shut out Mike “Sourdoughballs” Leigh. That’s something.
Who Should Win: Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg - The Kids Are All Right
Cholodenko and Blumberg’s light-yet-deeply structured screenplay is an almost pure joy, some last act clumsiness aside. This is the film’s only chance to be given some Oscar love this year, but it’s not about to happen. No triumph over adversity: just truth. Who wants that? ::kicks picture of Buckingham Palace into a furnace::
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Nicole Holofcener – Please Give
Holofcener’s delightful screenplay is one of the many wonders of her underrated rumination on white middle-class guilt and the ways in which we try to profit off each other to get ahead. It looks like a fluffy indie comedy but it’s filled with insight about modern life, all while being thrillingly well-observed and funny. Come on planet Earth! You complain about all the crappy movies being released and we’ve got an incredible artist and reliable entertainer standing RIGHT OVER THERE! ::points in what one assumes is the direction that leads to Ms. Holofcener:: What the hell is wrong with everyone? ::kicks picture of Windsor Castle into furnace::
Well what do you know. I start this post all agnostic and shit about The King’s Speech and end up thinking it is the deformed bastard spawned by the unholy union of Crash and Slumdog Millionaire. ::sigh:: It’s going to be a long night.
Matthew McConaughey and the Genre of Potential Doom
Matthew McConaughey is one of those actors I can’t help but like. He’s a man who — in the real world — seems like a perfectly affable party fiend who would be fun to hang around with. Someone who doesn’t really give a damn, who makes movies to fund his lifestyle, and only gets to make movies because he’s just popular enough to justify a continued career. He’s famous for pot-smoking, naked bongo playing, and anecdotes about goat sex. His website is so completely “him” it’s as if he has been reduced to a computer echo of himself, a la Jeff Bridges in Tron, and then blasted onto our screens as a series of chill statements and photos of him on mountains, complete with lazy faux-dub rhythms in the background. The most lovable things on the site are the randomised “McConaughey Facts” that pop up at the bottom of the screen. Sample McConaughey Fact: “In my most recent trip to Papua New Guinea I was inducted into the Kuppa Tribe of the Malagan Clan.” That’s just so McConaughey.
As I’ve said many a time, anyone who can laugh at himself is all right in my book. When presented with footage of Matt Damon doing an impression of him on Letterman…
…he seemed to take it with good humour. (It’s about two minutes from the end of the clip.)
My favourite thing about that clip is that at the end of the interview, as the presenter is trying to wrap things up, he goes off on a tangent about spending his Christmas with a family he once visited as an exchange student. It’s right out of nowhere, but that burning need to communicate some random fact about himself for no reason other than that he seems to be looking forward to the excursion is something I — a notorious blabbermouth — can really relate to.
Even though I find McConaughey the Man endlessly entertaining, McConaughey the Actor is another matter. Watching one of his movies is a bit of a crapshoot. Will we get one of his committed performances, such as his delicate turn in Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, or as the demented Van Zan in Reign of Fire (which he was easily the best thing about)? Or will it be a frustratingly light but not particularly funny effort, as in Ron Howard’s instantly forgettable EdTV? For every Frailty or Lone Star there is a Wedding Planner, a Fool’s Gold, and probably a Failure To Launch to boot. Appearing in disposable romcoms might work to keep him in sex wax and bandannas, but it makes following his career difficult. Any hope that he might become Brad Pitt to Richard Linklater’s David Fincher fell apart when The Newton Boys came and went without making a ripple in the popular consciousness. He’s doing better than former girlfriend and fellow romcom stalwart Sandra Bullock right now, but it’s becoming touch and go.
He doesn’t even have an action career to fall back on. U-571 is only memorable for the shameful lies about the Enigma decoding effort, and Sahara — a film I quite like — is notorious for being one of the rare projects whose financial workings have been put on display for all the world to laugh at. Though not me. Seriously, I liked it. It was refreshingly irony-free, just a big crazy adventure about guys who get into scrapes for fun and do the right thing with no soul-searching. It was not of its time, sadly. It’s another film used as a short-hand for excessive Hollywood trash by people who haven’t seen it. Yes, it was obscenely expensive, and there’s no argument for that, but it’s got some charm. With about 20-25 minutes lopped out, it would’ve been treated with a lot more affection.
Unfortunately Ghosts of Girlfriends Past sees too much of the coasting McConaughey, with only hints of his real film-star energy. In a very loose adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore aim for easy emotional targets and don’t bother to complicate the story too much. McConaughey plays Connor Mead, a photographer with Austin Powers’ hunger for consequence-free sexual encounter but none of the dental problems. Forced by a flicker of conscience to attend his brother’s wedding, Mead quickly upsets and alienates the wedding guests with his cynical anti-marriage attitude, until he is visited by the ghost of his lothario uncle Wayne, played as a Robert Evans/Hugh Hefner hybrid by Michael Douglas. Wayne warns his Scrooge-like nephew that he will be visited by three “ghosts” (though at least one of them is still alive; the movie ties itself in knots trying to be light while addressing themes of death and loneliness). These apparitions — who enjoyably treat the “visions” like interactive videos — show Mead the miserable consequences of his actions, and reveal the reason he’s so emotionally disconnected: as a teenager, he was snubbed by his true love, Jenny Perotti (Jennifer Garner). It broke his heart and sent him to find solace in the dubious wisdom of Uncle Wayne.
Mead’s dark night of the soul forces him to accept the idea of true love just in time to help his brother (Breckin Meyer) marry his long-term sweetheart (an unbearably whiny Lacey Chabert), and to rescue Jenny from a relationship with potential suitor Brad (Daniel Sunjata). This last task is the most problematic one in a movie that otherwise has too many easy answers. Though we’re meant to side with Mead as he throws off his selfish persona, he’s also trying to ruin a potential relationship between Jenny and a scarily handsome volunteer with Doctors Without Borders who seems to be a really sweet guy. Mead, on the other hand, is intolerably arrogant and thoughtless, though he maintains the same level of oily charm throughout. McConaughey isn’t given enough room to adequately show his conversion to the cause of love, so that while Dickens did a thorough job of showing how Scrooge could change from curmudgeon to saint, Mead’s post-revelation persona seems much like his previous personality, except more manic.
This isn’t the only problem. Lucas and Moore’s script holds few surprises and fewer laughs than even their inexplicably popular breakout hit The Hangover. Director Mark Waters, whose work on The Spiderwick Chronicles was so impressive, manages to bring some life to this formulaic project, with the added bonus that he lights the movie with something other than a very very bright light — a concept that seemed to elude the directors of other 2009 romcoms, especially the biggest romantic comedy hits of the year, Robert Luketic’s The Ugly Truth and Anne Fletcher’s The Proposal. Waters also gets entertaining performances from Michael Douglas and Emma Stone as the “ghost” who deflowered Mead in college. Garner is given less to do, but she sells her big emotional moments, including a moving bedroom scene midway through. It’s also McConaughey’s best scene, with Mead forced to watch his past self mistreat the woman he loves simply because he’s scared of his feelings. In moments like that, the conceit of making the romcom Christmas Carol seems more inspired than it actually is.
My affection for Garner is even greater than my support for McConaughey. Ever since her career-making turn in Alias, I’ve been a huge fan, obnoxiously maintaining that she would get an Oscar nomination (at least!) by the end of the decade. Unless the Academy is going to surprise me and give her a nod for her extremely entertaining turn in The Invention of Lying, I think I’m going to come up short on that one. Her decision to cut down on film roles while raising her children is an understandable one, but I wish she made more movies. There hasn’t been a single film featuring Garner that wasn’t massively improved by her presence — even something as weak as Daredevil occasionally flies thanks to her. In fact, the only thing that didn’t suck about Electra was her performance as the titular assassin; she brought far more pathos and commitment to the project than it deserved.
Compare Ghosts of Girlfriends Past to The Invention of Lying, which was even more fascinated with the interplay of honesty and self-deception. After a brilliant riff on belief and religion, it spends a long, entertaining time banging its head against the disparity between the concepts of love and biological necessity, playing games with the conventions of the genre while at the same time pointing an accusing finger at the audience for expecting such cliches. (500) Days of Summer plays a similar trick; a love-struck Joseph Gordon-Levitt is beguiled by a romantic vision of life soundtracked by The Smiths and Belle & Sebastian and then left crushed by the realisation that he’s been deluding himself as much as he has been lied to by Zooey Deschanel’s idealised Summer. Compared to those two movies, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past has no big ideas to share, other than that love is all you need.
Maybe it’s unfair to give Ghosts of Girlfriends Past a black mark for not matching up to the ambition of Gervais and Robinson’s high-concept fantasy or Mark Webb’s deconstruction, but now that filmmakers seem eager to break the genre down in order to build it back up, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past might end up being the last even vaguely entertaining traditional romcom made. Surely we can at least give it gold stars for being a more involving, charming, and imaginative movie than those flat and cynical laugh-free disasters The Proposal and The Ugly Truth. Where they trade in cheeky, strained jokes about sex and modern gender politics, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past has more luck focusing on the people in the relationship than the gimmicks that get in their way, and then trounces those films completely by casting two charming actors who seem to have some sparks together. Though McConaughey’s performance is disappointing and lacks modulation, the relentless charm that stops him from hitting a deeper note still has its uses. More so than many male leads in recent romcoms, at least he can flash a winning smile and drawl some flirty come-on with naughty aplomb, and when he’s matched with Garner’s wholesome persona, it’s hard to dismiss the rote shenanigans completely. Sometimes, making a reasonably successful movie really is that simple.
What I Did At The London Film Festival (So Far)
We walked on a red carpet on Monday. I felt like an interloper, especially clad in hobo jacket, Converse, and Green Lantern T-Shirt, but it was still a weirdly thrilling moment. Getting tickets to the first UK performance of Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! (oh, that infuriating exclamation point…) was an accident of timing, not an attempt to rubberneck at a glamour collision, but it’s fine. The London Film Festival seems to be pretty casual. Only Soderbergh, writer Scott Z. Burns and producer Gregory Jacobs were dressed to the nines, and even then they seemed relaxed. Seeing Soderbergh delighted daisyhellcakes, who has had terrible luck spotting celebrities in the past (so far she’s seen Johnny Vegas, Bill Bailey, Jeffrey Archer and Queen Nigella), but refused to take a picture of the great man, stating that it would be gauche. As I’d seen the Enter The Void audience eagerly snapping away at Gaspar Noé last week, I figured it would be okay, but after taking this blurry picture…
…I convinced myself that the final stutter in Soderbergh’s short speech was caused by him spotting me and thinking, “Dude, that’s totes gauche.” For the record, I’m sorry Mr. Soderbergh. I liked Solaris, if that’s any consolation.
The lack of a distribution deal for Enter The Void is making me unbelievably sad. Attending that screening was something I did on a whim after seeing Drew McWeeny become so enthusiastic, and now I realise that if I hadn’t gone I might never have had the chance to see it on the big screen. Just yesterday Edgar Wright was tweeting his frustration at having missed it, and it threw my good fortune into perspective. Is there any way to start a campaign to save it from oblivion on DVD, when the only distribution deal it has seems to be getting a release in Finland next April? As the version I saw was seemingly different from those at Cannes and Toronto, perhaps it’s still being fine-tuned, and then it will be put on the market again. Certainly there are longueurs at about the 100 minute mark, but I’m not sure what could be removed without ruining the flow.
The one thought I had would be for the Prince Charles Cinema to stump up for their very own print. Despite its punishing length, this is the perfect midnight-screening cult movie in waiting, with massive appeal to counter-cultural audiences and cinephiles who can understand what Noé is trying to achieve (a group that excludes J. Hoberman and Variety’s Rob Nelson, who completely missed the point of the movie). It would take time for them to get their money back, as the buzz on this film has yet to grow properly, but it would be a wise investment. Unless it did suddenly get a distribution deal and the film turned up elsewhere, but still, right now, it’s not looking too good.
Sadness over the fate of that one movie aside, the festival has been extremely enjoyable so far. Even the one movie I’ve not liked — Jason Reitman’s disappointing Up In The Air, which I hope to write about soon — has its pleasures, especially the terrific performances from George Clooney and Anna Kendrick. For the most part audiences have been great too, with enthusiastic responses to The Men Who Stare At Goats and The Informant! reminding me why seeing movies at the cinema can be a rewarding experience, though Mr. Honking McOverlaugh who sat behind us during The Informant! was a bit of a trial. Yes yes, it’s a very funny film, but Mr. Soderbergh is sitting at the back of the room and even your guffaws cannot reach that far, especially when my eardrums are absorbing 90% of the sound energy.
It’s not all roses, though. If you’re a new reader visiting this site after searching for info about London Film Festival screenings, please can I beg you to do the right thing and arrive at the screenings with plenty of time to spare? If you’ve not already picked up your tickets, there can be terrible queues, and that’s after navigating the barriers, security guards, and photographers blocking the pedestrianised roads of Leicester Square. The movies have tended to start a few minutes late, but there are no trailers or adverts, so if a film is supposed to start at, say, 16:15, the film will be on the screen at around 16:20, and arriving at 16:30 is going to piss a lot of people off. Oh, and the tickets have allocated seat numbers on them FOR A REASON. This message is directed at the numerous people who seem to love sitting wherever they want, and then look put out when they are evicted from their seats by ushers not long after the film has already started. I’m looking at you, selfish idiots who figured sitting by me was the thing to do and then ruined the start of Enter The Void and White Material, with extra bonus fuck you’s to the couple who turned up late at White Material and then left their phones on. Assholes.
I’ve had fun with the odd connections between the movies I’ve seen so far. The Informant! and Claire Denis’ White Material are centred by main characters (played with great skill by Matt Damon and the incredible Isabelle Huppert respectively) whose inability to see the dire consequences of their behaviour dooms them. In Soderbergh’s movie Mark Whitacre’s insanity is played for laughs for the most part, though those laughs run out by the end as you realise the man is so deeply embedded in his fantasy life that he doesn’t even seem capable of keeping track of it. Maria Vial — the protagonist of White Material — is in just as much denial, but perhaps even to the extent of not recognising her own cultural and ethnic background. Her ambiguous actions in the final moments of the film could be the product of derangement or berserk revenge, but whatever their origin, they were enough to deeply upset the lady sitting next to me. She seemed traumatised, poor dear.
Other connections abound. Jason Bateman teams up with Jason Reitman again for Up In The Air, and also features in Extract, which I’m hoping to see tomorrow. Melanie Lynskey appears in Up In The Air and The Informant!, and is similarly weak in each movie. Clooney appears in The Men Who Stare At Goats and Up In The Air, and co-produced The Informant! Up In The Air and Up (which I saw again on Sunday, though it was not part of the festival) is about men who find escape in flying, and learn to connect with others. The protagonists of White Material and Enter The Void are often filmed from behind: in White Material as a representation of how Maria is hiding her true face from herself and others, and in Enter The Void as a consequence of the PoV conceit. Enter The Void and The Men Who Stare At Goats features talk of esoteric beliefs, as well as the use of hallucinogens.
That was one of the things that annoyed me most about Goats. While Enter The Void took the use of hallucinogenic compounds seriously, Goats used it as a stupid punchline, with characters acting as if they were drunk and high-lariously falling over a lot and talking about how hungry they are. Goats was a lot of fun, but the relentlessly silly tone made it hard for the film to shift gears in the final act when we see the negative consequences of letting a bunch of insecure New Age dipsticks into the army. What was, in Jon Ronson’s excellent book, a sobering portrait of US psy-ops torture techniques gone weird is here transformed into a slapstick romp with one minute of “Oh noes, war is bad” added to give the protagonists something to fight for. The book still manages to be funny, but Ronson’s a skillful enough writer to juxtapose the wacky with the awful. Here it’s shoehorned in, and seemingly only to give a dramatic edge to the Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) character arc that suddenly appears midway through the movie. Writer Peter Straughan does some good work in translating the oddness of Ronson’s book into movie form, and keeps the funniest material mostly intact, but the artificial three-act structure and neatness of the final few minutes smack of laziness. Still, it remains very entertaining, and what it gets right it really gets right. Jeff Bridges — as New Earth Army leader Bill Django — perfectly channels the craziness of First Earth Battalion leader Jim Channon…
…and first-time director Grant Heslov is good enough to recreate the pictures shown in Channon’s manifesto: a lovely touch. It feels like the film will touch on all aspects of the insanity of war in a similar way to Clooney’s previous Gulf War film Three Kings, but even with the addition of warring Blackwater-esque security forces and asides showing Clooney and Ewan McGregor wandering through Iraq getting into scrapes, it never fully takes off. I’d still recommend it, though. As with Up In The Air, Clooney does miracle work holding everything together. It’s easy to forget what a great film star he is. He does comedy and drama equally well, and now he’s removed almost all of his tics, he can excel at both over-the-top dopey comedy or subtle and moving character work. We’re lucky he’s around.
My recommendation for The Informant! is much stronger. Though we were exhausted while watching, and were sitting in the Odeon West End which — unlike the Vue West End which is showing the majority of films — is not air-conditioned, it turned out to be almost as good as we had hoped. Spoilery trailers and press releases have given away the delusional nature of Mark Whitacre, but Soderbergh and ace writer Burns hide the depth of his craziness until a wonderful final act where everyone involved in the Lysine price-fixing investigation is shocked by his slowly unravelling web of lies. The cast doesn’t have a single weak link, with an unexpectedly complex performance from Matt Damon at the heart of the movie, but I have to give special props to Scott Bakula, who is particularly affecting as the enthusiastic FBI agent whose career goes awry thanks to Whitacre’s deceptions. His increasingly heartbroken face adds a bittersweet note to the zany proceedings. Props also to Joel McHale in his first dramatic role: weird seeing the snarky Soup host playing straight man to Damon.
I also heartily recommend White Material, but I’m still processing that one, so I won’t go on about it too much, except to say that a) Claire Denis has a mastery of pace and atmosphere that would shame other directors, but then you probably already knew that, and b) Christopher Lambert was good enough to make me partially forgive him for his dire performance in Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales. I can lay the blame for that on Kelly, I guess. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, after all.
-
Who We Are
admiralneck
daisyhellcakes
masticateur
Shades of Caruso Mini-Blog- Listmania ’11! The Best Movies Of The Year December 31, 2011
