Taylor Kitsch Returns In: Water For Aliens
First things first. There will be NO REFERENCES to the phrase “You sank my battleship!” during this review, except for just now in the middle of this sentence when I did it to illustrate a point. This joke will no doubt be used in every single review of Peter Berg’s Battleship, though I will award a troublemaking, furniture-wrecking, sleep-disrupting but very pretty cat to the critic who makes the most original play on the phrase. All I could come up with after sitting through it was, “The only thing Battleship sank was my enthusiasm for Peter Berg movies.”* I almost tweeted it, but it’s just so painful to say. Because I love Peter Berg, as long as I ignore Very Bad Things, aka the proto-Hangover. After all, this is the man who brought us Friday Night Lights, one of the finest TV shows ever made, for which he earns a deserved Shades of Caruso Free Pass.
And yet I’m increasingly troubled. The Kingdom was politically dubious but professionally made; the final fifteen minutes are lizard-brain-thrilling to the max. However Hancock was a mystifying, garbled mess in search of a point, marketed as a simple parody of superheroics while actually being a continuity-heavy franchise opener that made lots of money but seemingly no fans. People say Seven Pounds was the movie that halted Will Smith’s physics-defying career momentum, but I think it was the general annoyance over Hancock‘s failings that slowed it down enough for that to happen.
Battleship will most likely be the movie that does the same to Berg. It’s already been relentlessly mocked since it was announced; seeing Berg defend the movie over and over again is painful for a fan, because no matter what justification or defence he uses, all anyone wants to say is, “I wonder if anyone says, ‘You sank my battleship!’” as if they’re the only ones who thought of it. (Sorry, I said it again to illustrate that new point.) And for once it’s not just the critics who think it’s boneheaded; everyone seems to be scratching their heads. How can you adapt a board game into a story?
Anyone who has ever played a board game should realise by now that each iteration of that game has something that could be considered a narrative flow, just not a three-act one. Events happen in sequence and there is an ebb-and-flow of power throughout as players make decisions, attack or sabotage other players, or find themselves at a disadvantage as other players move against them. The idea of adapting a rulebook is worthy of derision, but the power plays that occur within a game are surely the kind of thing that can inspire an idea. They can be triggered by anything, and what is story but a way to interpret events, emotions, and relationships within the framework of a manipulated world?
Sadly Battleship only occasionally tries to make something of the interesting dynamic between players within the famous location-guessing gameplay, preferring instead to allude to the game with references to the shape of the pegs, or the invisibility of your opponent, or the grid with its familiar location codes. Critics will be thrilled with the late-movie action sequence with characters calling out grid references for strikes against two alien battlecruisers. They can base a whole derisory paragraph on that scene, with the only complication being that it’s arguably the only sequence in the movie that generates even a smidgen of tension, and to be honest the sheer brass balls of doing that in the middle of a blowout summer blockbuster should be applauded.
Additionally, Berg’s insistence that this is not just a lazy cash-in is very true. It’s apparent that a lot of effort has gone into making something that has some kind of dramatic or emotional heft. There is a very strong central character arc involving Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) turning from feckless charmer into a naval genius and captain of men in the space of a single day. There is an alien force with technology that feels consistent from one scene to the next, an interesting design, and an ambiguous motivation. Naval battle tactics are outlined well and have obviously been given some thought. There are a couple of reasonably orchestrated setpieces. There is an attempt at creating a range of character archetypes. Liam Neeson’s in it and everyone loves Liam Neeson, right? The camera is mostly in focus. Erm…
Okay, I’ll get to the point. There is effort expended, but the movie is ruined by weird decisions and shoddy editing, especially in the dull mid-section. Scenes feel like they’ve been plonked in at the last minute, or added in the wrong order, or shot after focus-group complaints showed serious structural faults. The result is a baffling half hour where nothing makes any sense. Big whirring balls of fire and metal wreck an airbase (makes tactical sense), demolish a random freeway (makes no sense) and terrorise a kid playing baseball (a waste of FX money). Meanwhile, some characters die off screen and an alien is captured. Both times we’re treated to exposition to cover up the cracks, but it just makes it look like a low-budget movie with cut corners, not a huge potential tentpole with a $200m budget.
Just as annoying, the decision to make the motivation of the aliens unknown is a grave error, and having someone very loudly proclaim, “This is an extinction level event!” at one point without prompting doesn’t help. They obviously have more going on than the plunderers of Battle: Los Angeles or Cowboys and Aliens; they make decisions about who to attack or ignore, and do things like waft their alien hands over machines while their HUDs show battery-filling bars like in a video game, but none of it is explained. It’s obvious that someone thought, “Making your antagonist a ship is a bad idea,” and so the alien invaders have more character than usual. We see their eyes through their visor, we see them make choices, but without knowing what they’re doing this characterisation feels like half a solution. Has this information been shifted to the sequel that won’t happen?
That said, they do better than most of the humans. Only Alex Hopper has an arc; everyone else is there to provide help or hindrance on that arc, or to be sassy (Rihanna) or dopey (Jesse “Landry” Plemons; a welcome sight for FNL fans). It’s all archetype and cultural representation. Liam Neeson (underused) plays a grouchy father figure to appease. Alexander Skarsgård (tall) plays the disapproving family member. Tadanobu Asano plays Iceman (by way of Yokohama) to Kitsch’s Maverick. Yes, Battleship is Top Gun on boats, with a dash of Battle: Los Angeles and a hefty dollop of Transformers. If you dislike any of those movies, you’re gonna dislike this.
The Transformers comparison is the hardest one I have to make. Midway through Battleship, as the characters suddenly exclaim, “They’re on the boat!” before scuttling down hallways with guns in a scene that looks like it was added after principal photography wrapped, I realised what was bugging me. Berg is a better director than the material here, and could have been off doing something far more interesting. Though everyone hates Michael Bay, he would have been perfect for something as mechanical as this, and in fact would have made a better, dumber movie, much as it pains me to say it.
In fact, it feels like an amalgamation of his movies. It’s set in Pearl Harbor, and features the elaborate sinking of one ship that is reminiscent of the unwieldy but technically dazzling centrepiece of his epic pile of WWII crap. The machines don’t turn into cars but they do clank about and change shape in a way that’s meant to evoke the movement of the robots in Transformers. Steve Jablonsky did the score. There’s also a lot of jingoism and military fetishism, though Berg approaches this in a more interesting way, which I’ll get to in a bit.
And yet what Battleship lacks that Transformers 1-3 have is clarity. I don’t mean in editing; I’ve said many a time before that Bay’s action scenes are not edited with the eye in mind, but the ear. They’re drum solos, not ballet. If you happen to like that kind of thing, as I do, then it can be exhilarating to experience that bewildering mash of image and cacophony. But within that garbled and clumsy tumble of event, the imagery is relatively clear, considering the Bayhemian tumult. You can see things within the syncopated cuts. Some of Bay’s imagery is piercing, even stirring at times. Despite his misogyny and racism (and never let us forget those despicable flaws), he’s good at that.
Battleship, on the other hand, is quite ugly. The palette of the movie is almost entirely blue, green or battleship grey; at least Bay throws a lot of orange in there as well to mix it up. The effects here are used mostly to obscure what’s going on. Thematically that makes sense, as the game is about not being able to see what’s going on, but it’s a pain in the eyes. There are also enough lens flares to make JJ Abrams run to the box he keeps his lens flares and start wailing in horror at the horrible theft of ALL THE LENS FLARES. Even his use of ramping and slow motion is disappointing. Though I’m not one to dismiss CGI altogether, and in fact take a great deal of pleasure in well-executed computer effects, the worst thing a director can do is not choreograph his action properly, instead expecting the FX guys to fix things in post.
The result of this is ugly distortions of image through energy effects such as the blast from engines, water vapour in the nautical scenes, so many lens flares, or just general smearing of the image. During shooting (not just in Battleship but in many modern SF movies) the camera is whipped around to denote the frenetic darting movements of objects not present on set, and the FX guys have no choice but to work with that clumsily-shot footage, with the result that the objects have to move with no connection to the world they’re supposed to be in. Even objects from a technologically advanced civilisation would be hamstrung by momentum, inertia, gravity or atmosphere. Instead movies too often feature poorly-choreographed scenes with no awareness of how the final product will look.
Berg has not yet mastered this; Hancock was similarly poorly shot on an FX level. Battleship features far too many moments where the FX work isn’t integrated properly. Compare the action scenes here to the bug scenes in Starship Troopers, or anything by Peter Jackson, or even Transformers 3, where there are many more physical effects than you would think, allowing Bay to choreograph the subsequent CGI better. These filmmakers, and guys like Spielberg or James Cameron understand this — especially Cameron, whose action scenes are clear, choreographed with care and feature imaginary objects designed with an engineer’s rigour. Too many other directors have yet to understand that FX can’t fix everything.
Of course Berg is a much better filmmaker than Bay, especially in terms of his facility with actors and his treatment of women and ethnic minorities. He’s also better at filming action than Battleship would have you believe. As mentioned earlier, the end of The Kingdom is truly nail-biting stuff, and his early action classic The Rundown / Welcome To The Jungle shows that he knows what he’s doing, and has an imaginative approach to the staging of an action scene. As an actor he also knows how to get quirky performances from his actors; Rundown and both film and TV versions of Friday Night Lights are perfect examples of this.
However the demands of something as vast as Battleship has forced his attention from the small and onto the vast, meaning the only scene with any real life to it comes right at the start, as Kitsch attempts to woo Brooklyn Decker (given nothing to do except be blonde in some short shorts, even Rosie Huntington-Whitely gets more agency in Transformers 3). It’s a terrifically funny and likeable meet-crazy scene, with Kitsch evoking a dopier Tim Riggins in a way that made me think I was in for a treat. It also showcases Kitsch’s charms — and potential movie-star charisma — way better than John Carter; a far far superior movie but one that regrettably couldn’t tap into the source of the absurdly handsome actor’s best attributes (no, I’m not talking about his finely-chiseled musculature).
Sadly, much as military life crushes the individual, as soon as he ships out that sense of fun mostly vanishes, which moves the burden of making us laugh onto Plemons (a good choice) and Hamish Linklater (an excruciatingly unfunny scientist). The strictness of naval protocol saps much of the movie’s energy and robs Berg of chances to goof off. It’s not entirely laugh-free, but Bay’s awful shouty-jokes approach would, again, have done much to save Battleship from its doldrums. The tone of the movie hints at funnier things to come; it’s a box that says “funny” on the outside but inside only has packing peanuts and not one but TWO instances of someone saying, “motherfucker” with the soundtrack prudishly cutting away halfway through. And that’s just unacceptable.
But it’s not all bad. While Berg has made a movie praising the glory of the military-industrial complex, in which the only thing that can make a man out you is military service, he’s not just about the Ooorahs and “Bring the rain” nonsense of most of those paeons to the penis. While this sub-genre of action cinema is filled to the brim with gallons of stinky testosterone and troubling patriotism, Berg is thankfully more thoughtful than that, and while we get the requisite pro-armed forces message, it’s tempered by an awareness of military history, tradition and international comity that would baffle Bay.
For a start, the presence of Tadanobu Asano would never happen in a Transformers movie. In Battleship Asano’s Nagata is noble but impulsive, the only vaguely interesting character next to Alex Hopper. In Transformers 4: Metal Machine Music he would be a shrill fool who gets trapped in a toilet. Twice. I guess this is part of the international strategy for Battleship; it opens worldwide over this week, then eventually appears in the US in the middle of May. Studios are finally committing to chasing international dollars first on a movie that’s so expensive a slow US opening weekend would likely taint it with seeming failure. Nevertheless, it’s gratifying to see the rapprochement between the US and Japan dramatised in this way, especially in the historically significant locale.
That’s one of the more interesting things about the movie. Additionally, there’s a sizeable role for Gregory G. Gadson, Director of the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program. Bay’s military fetishism has so far found no room for the war-wounded, but Battleship features a significant sub-plot for Gadson’s character getting over the terrible injuries he received in Afghanistan. It’s an entirely predictable arc, but for highlighting this aspect of war in the middle of a populist action movie about killing aliens, Berg deserves some credit. [Spoilers coming up in the next paragraph.]
Even more interesting is the final act, in which the crew of the USS John Paul Jones are forced to go analogue and commandeer the USS Missouri, the decommissioned battleship currently standing as a museum in Pearl Harbor (“You recommissioned my battleship!”) (Sorry). Along with the old ship comes a crew of old-timers, former navy crewmen who get their own walking-in-slow-motion moment that made the audience I saw it with burst into laughter. (Ugh, kids today. No respect for their elders and betters.) With this crew of expert seamen helping them, they take the Missouri out to sea one more time to take on the main alien superbattleship that conveniently appears in an end-of-game big boss stylee. [Spoilers end]
This awareness of naval history was entirely unexpected, and while it’s no less patriotic than anything else in this sub-genre, it’s also quite touching to see something modern pay tribute to the fighting men of the past. Who would have thought that a dumb sci-fi movie about alien invasion could take the time to comment on the real world with a more respectful manner than Bay and Bruckheimer had when making a film about the actual attack on Pearl Harbor? It’s one of the reasons why the movie rallies in its last 15 minutes. It doesn’t suddenly become good, but the set-ups pay off better than anyone could have hoped.
Yes, the battles depend on the belief that enormous ships can manoeuvre as nimbly as jet-skis, and one particular move made by Kitsch in order to defeat the final ship is… how can I put this delicately… fucking bonkers? But it was at that moment that I realised what the movie could — and should — have been. Naval battle is slow and thoughtful. It’s strategic and smart and doesn’t depend on dexterity or speed, like a video game. It’s a crawl to victory, like a board game. Battleship shouldn’t have tried to mimic Transformers, which is influenced by the pace and power of a first person shooter. It should have emulated the greatest movie about naval warfare ever made: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
That’s a movie that owes a lot more to Battleship the game than anyone seems to want to admit. It honors naval history, it is filled with detail and character and fun, it revolves around a cat-and-mouse chase between two vessels, and is exciting even when things move slowly. If Berg had been able to fully commit to making a modern Master and Commander instead of hinting at a link between the two, I would have dedicated my life to making a case for it to be the biggest film of all time. Instead I say this; despite being one of the few people who looked forward to this, and despite being its target audience, while I very strongly doubt it’ll be the worst movie I see this year, I just as strongly doubt it won’t be the best movie I see this week, and I only intend to watch one other one. No one is more upset or disappointed about this than I am.
*Actually, at the moment of finishing this review I also thought of “You spunked my crappleshit” but that’s just gross, and too mean. It’s a 3-5/10 movie at worst.
We Need To Talk (And Talk And Talk) About Oscar
Why am I doing this? There was once a time I would dazzle all those around me as I applied an almost precognitive talent for award prediction to numerous hastily organized Oscar ballots. Oh how I was feted, carried high on the shoulders of friends and enemies alike, given ambrosial liquor to sup on from jewel-encrusted golden goblets. They were glorious times, my friends, and those efforts were the stuff of legend. But since making my predictions via this blog, my hit rate has dropped into the low fuckalls. Once Shades of Caruso was described as “usually fairly reliable“. Well, not in terms of Oscar predictions. So why put myself through this ordeal again? Why humiliate myself when my former predictive talents as a modern-day Cassandra have suddenly and inexplicably morphed into those of just some random lass called Sandra?
To be honest it’s only to justify having sat through the combined clusterfuck-a-thon of War Horse, The Iron Lady and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; three movies so wretched they should be investigated as hate crimes against my very soul. And yet here they are, given baffling nominational attention from the various elders who constitute the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The anguish caused by this triumvirate of terribleness, and their baffling inclusion on the Oscar shortlist, is the fuel that powered this epic post, so if you get bored to extinction by the time you get halfway down the page, blame Stephen Daldry, Eric Roth, Abi Morgan, Phyllida Lloyd, Lee Hall and Richard Curtis (Spielberg gets a free pass for Tintin, which was aceballs).
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Who Will Win: George Clooney – The Descendants
Jean Dujardin may have been winning awards by smiling a smile that honestly looks like it could melt through steel like Superman’s heat vision, but I think the Academy members are ready to give Gorgeous George the big prize at last, mostly just to get it out of the way. There are worse things that could happen; though I’d be more than happy to see the thoroughly handsome Dujardin win and do a little tap-dance or something, Clooney was the best thing about The Descendants (other than Shailene Woodley, who was also very good). It’s odd to look at the mostly quiet work he does here, the way he balances light comedy and heavy tragedy, and think back to the way his performances were merely an amalgamation of irksome tics when he was on E.R. and not-massively-popular action extravaganza The Peacemaker. Now look at him. He’s really very good. And still handsome. An Oscar win here is no bad thing.
Who Should Win: Gary Oldman – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
But of these five candidates, surely it’s Oldman’s prize. He’s survived the fallow years caused — I’m sure — by appearances in two Luc Besson movies with only Airforce One and Lost in Space to separate them, and has proved cynics (such as myself) wrong time and again. By now even his shaky appearances in crap like Red Riding Hood are usually worth watching. It’s enough to make me think he will take over from Sir Anthony Hopkins in the Endlessly-Entertaining-Actor-Shaped extra chamber in my heart once the great Welshman has sadly entered the Odinsleep. Tinker Tailor was an impeccably performed movie; picking out individual acting highlights is hard, but pretty much every moment Oldman is onscreen, like a shade sucking all of the light from the room, it’s as if everyone else has faded into the awful period-appropriate wallpaper. His voicework in Kung Fu Panda 2 was good too. We take Oldman for granted; time we stopped doing that.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Michael Fassbender – Shame
Maybe it’s a good thing Fassbender didn’t get nominated. The outrage generated by that stupid-but-expected decision will power his career for a while longer as he comes to work on projects to be filed under the heading True Quality, as opposed to the gilded, establishment-approved version of art represented by the Academy’s often-mystifying choices. It also means that the inevitable dirty tricks campaign could dig up some pretty unpleasant stuff about Fassbender, and at this point in his career (or at any point, really) that’s not a good thing. Best he sits this one out until a year when a very driven producer doesn’t have a dog in this fight.
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Who Will Win: Christopher Plummer – Beginners
Beginners was a good enough movie, one that made it okay to like Ewan McGregor again, but without the storming performance from Plummer I think it would be forgotten fairly quickly. His energy levels here are remarkable, and make an average movie unmissable. Hopefully people won’t go on about how he’s bound to win because he plays a terminally ill gay man who finds a new lease of life in his final years, thus completing some kind of Oscar-Worthiness Bingo card. He deserves to win because he deserves to win. It’s that simple.
Who Should Win: Christopher Plummer – Beginners
Though a spanner was thrown into the works when Max Von Sydow got nominated as “The Renter” in Stephen Daldry and Eric Roth’s monumentally awful Extremely Insensitive and Incredibly Corny. The great man has been acting for nearly 700 years now and has never won an Oscar, so surely he’s due one. Hell, make it a retroactive award for The Virgin Spring. Despite this, and despite the fact that he’s the only good thing to come of Daldry and Roth’s wretched miasma of relentless sentiment, it has to be Plummer who wins this. He’s been cranking out great performances for the past few years (he should’ve won for The Insider, to be honest), and if he gets this, he’ll have a BEGOT (not just your Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony quadfecta, but also a Bafta as well). If you don’t want to root for such an achievement, please fill out the order form below to request a new, fully-functional soul.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Sir Ben Kingsley – Hugo
Lots of folks complained about the numerous snubs in this nomination list, with much of the justifiable frustration directed at the miserable lack of Albert Brooks, but I’ve only seen a couple of people point out that leaving Sir Ben off the list for his superb work in Hugo was an egregious omission. Maybe Best Supporting Actor is the wrong category, as Uncle Georges is arguably the protagonist of this movie, but there’s more room for him here than in the crowded Best Actor slot (ahem Jonah Hill ahem). Sir Ben is in the same category as Sir Anthony Hopkins; he’s usually the most interesting thing in whatever movie he appears in, and Hugo is no exception. If it works at all, it’s because of his skill in bringing to life the sweet-and-sour mystery at the heart of the film.
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Who Will Win: Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady
A horrible inevitability has descended upon this category. Many are talking up the relative lack of Oscars Meryl has received despite being in the list of top twenty most awesome people in the history of the world, and I’m sure many people are aggrieved that she didn’t win anything for her impersonation of Dan Aykroyd in Julie and Julia, but even so, the thought of her playing a real live actual person is just too much. The Academy must have written this winner on their scorecards without even seeing the movie. She truly embodied the pluck and lovability of Margaret Thatcher completely (i.e. it was correctly completely absent from the movie). Plus there was a lot of make-up on her face. The assorted critics of the Daily Telegraph plumped for Viola Davis en masse, but I still think this is Meryl’s to win.
Who Should Win: Michelle Williams – My Week With Marilyn
And it would be the worst crime of the night. Don’t get me wrong; I genuinely adore Meryl Streep. She might even be my favourite actor, if not vying for joint fave with Jeff Bridges. Nevertheless, the obnoxious fractured editing by Phyllida Lloyd — which is obviously meant to mirror Mrs. Thatcher’s current unfortunate medical situation — means the movie never settles down long enough for us to have any idea what Meryl’s performance is like. As I tweeted after the godawful mess finally came to a close, it feels like a 100 minute trailer for a 17-hour-long movie, mostly made up of stock footage. It makes W.E. look like a coherent film, which I thought would be impossible. The glimpses we get of Meryl in excelsis suggest she did good work but I honestly can’t attest to that. So I say it should have gone to Michelle Williams. Cheeky of me, as I haven’t seen My Week With Marilyn; I’m burned out on such things thanks to The King’s Speech. But MW was unfortunate to have given a performance of such brilliance in Blue Valentine in the same year that Natalie Portman brought her A-game in Black Swan. Williams deserves to unlock the Reversal of Fortune Achievement for that. (1000 Gamerpoints)
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Tilda Swinton – We Need To Talk About Kevin
What else do I need to say? Excise the horrible cartoonish display by the otherwise excellent Jessica Chastain in The Help, and put Tilda in where she belongs. She’s said she’s happy to avoid going to the ceremony, but what about her fans, who look forward too seeing her appear in white dresses before being described as “androgynous” by every fashion expert? An essential part of the award season is now sadly missing. Plus she was phenomenal in WNTTAK. That too.
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Who Will Win: Octavia Spencer – The Help
This was a movie that made me very uncomfortable, much as The Blind Side did a couple of years ago, but at least The Help had great performances (and not-so-great, Jessica Chastain and Bryce Dallas Howard) on its side. Octavia Spencer managed to out-act Viola Davis without having to do that snotty nose thing Davis does in so many movies; Davis even managed it again in Extremely Long and Incredibly Offensive, probably because she knew that disappointing us by not featuring it would have ruined hundreds of Extremely Twee and Incredibly Pretentious drinking games. This is another of the most predictable wins of the ceremony, and one I back almost 100%.
Who Should Win: Melissa McCarthy – Bridesmaids
Except that it would be so nice for a comedic performance to get an Oscar nod, and Melissa McCarthy’s much-loved work is the most likely possibility for many a year. Admittedly if she won over the other candidates there’s a possibility that in time she would be given the same treatment Marisa Tomei got when she won for My Cousin Vinny, but as someone who likes Marisa Tomei and My Cousin Vinny, and who has done a complete 180° on McCarthy now that I know she has more about her than was shown in Gilmore Girls (shudder), I’d back this win also. Not gonna happen, though.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Charlotte Gainsbourg – Melancholia
Fair to say that Uncle Lars’ Bedtime For Hitler storytelling at the Cannes Film Festival sank any chance that either Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg would get a nomination. I suspect the screeners for this sat unwatched on many an Academy member’s coffee table. A pity, as it was one of the highlights of the year. Gainsbourg was just as good in Antichrist, but maybe this kind of soul-baring work isn’t ever going to find favour with the assorted old white men who vote for these things. “Why, she’s just got the vapours,” they would say into their mug of restorative potions made from the tears of discarded Hollywood dreamers. “Just buy her an ironing board and be done with it.” And that, my friends, is why the Oscars mean jack shit.
Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
What Will Win: Rango
Ha ha ha ha ha ha Cars 2 didn’t get nominated ha ha ha ha ha. Reap the merchandising whirlwind, Pixar, and thanks for pissing on your legacy (until your next incredible film comes along and makes me forgive you for temporarily misplacing your soul). Anyway, Rango was the frontrunner over a year ago and nothing has changed since.
What Should Win: Rango
Seriously, why are we even talking about this? Rango‘s a masterpiece. End of.
What Should Have Been Nominated: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Of course, there was the amusing upset during the Golden Globes when Spielberg’s much-maligned performance-capture movie won the animation award, but then it didn’t get in here. There are lots of theories why, from “is it animation?” to “it’s not animation“, to “it wasn’t good enough”. Whatever the reason, its omission here is pretty bizarre, made all the worse by the nominations dropped into War Horse‘s trough. This vibrant, manic blast of imagination gets nothing while that risible failure gets a bunch of nods? Shocking. But it still wouldn’t deserve to win. Why? Because Rango. Like I just said a paragraph ago.
Achievement in Cinematography
Who Will Win: Robert Richardson – Hugo
I have a theory, for which I have absolutely no proof, that if the movie with the most nominations doesn’t win Best Picture, it will be given Best Cinematography as a consolation prize. The Artist might or might not not win many awards this year but I believe it’ll win Best Picture at the very least, which would leave Hugo wanting. As a result, I think Robert Richardson’s 3D cinematography will win out. Or Ludovic Bource will win for The Artist because he isn’t using that new-fangled technology? No, it’ll definitely be Richardson. Unless that lovely, clear, monochrome photography persuades the oldsters. ::is utterly undecided::
Who Should Win: Emmanuel Lubezki – The Tree of Life
If there is one word I could use to describe Malick’s meditation on cosmic gubbins and personal strife — other than pretentious, or powerful, or intricate, or unsubtle, or preposterous, or profound, or overlong, or ambitious, or breathtaking, etc. etc. — it would be luminous. Thanks to Emmanuel Lubezki’s work, this film glowed. It throbbed with the very life its titular tree is full of. Maybe it was just that we saw this on a good screen, brightly lit and digitally projected (a rarity nowadays), but it was so gloriously shot that I felt I was looking straight through a window into another world, or at least into the mind of Malick, and it was as beautiful a place as I had hoped.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Sean Bobbitt – Shame
In the past Bobbitt filmed a lot of Ye Olde Worlde settings for some of the seemingly infinite number of period adaptations made by the BBC, so it must have been a nice change for him to capture the most memorable images of New York in recent memory. Not that that mattered to the Academy, who don’t care about his ability to paint the city with terrifying reds, soft golds, and rainy greys. All they think is, “But he pointed the camera at a dong”, and that’s your lot. Sorry Sean. Maybe some day you’ll make a movie set during the first quarter of the 20th Century and the Academy members will be falling out of their bath chairs to give you a nod. Fingers crossed, eh?
Achievement in Art Direction
Who Will Win: Laurence Bennett and Robert Gould - The Artist
It’s in these technical categories that the two love letters to silent cinema will fight their most fraught battles, where the majority winner will be decided. As a result it’s hard to deduct who will win using my usual scientific rigour. Instead I have to rely on guesswork, and the thought that last year the Weinsteins managed to strongarm the Academy into giving Tom Hooper — TOM HOOPER — the award for Best Director. I’m sure Harvey has been going door-to-door this year, telling more anecdotes about how clever he was to acquire the rights to this, buying bunches of grapes for the voters and promising to give them back-rubs and what-not. Even though half of my brain is convinced the voters will be more charmed by the charming charming super super charming charm of Hugo (an excellent read, that), I think Harvey’s carpet-bombing techniques will win again. Plus the art direction on The Artist was very nice.
Who Should Win: Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo - Hugo
That said, the art direction on Hugo was even better. Dante Ferretti’s collaborations with Scorsese are always a feast for the eyes and his interpretation of what a semi-fantastical Parisian railway station would look like — with toy shops, overstocked bookshops and clockwork labyrinths included — is some of the best work he’s done. Plus he’s on a roll, having won his last two nominations for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and The Aviator. So I could well be wrong here.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Maria Djurkovic, Tom Brown and Zsuzsa Kismarty-Lechner – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Friend-of-the-blog Beggar So’s Hat wisely noted that the shockingly grim production design of this was horribly snubbed. I hadn’t even noticed that. I think I tried to blot the miserable look of the film from my brain rather than be reminded once more of the horrors within. It made me think of my childhood, which now feels like it happened in the 50s and not the 70s like it actually was. It’s as if England was frozen in time for fifty years, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was just a snapshot of that. Which is to say, Mr. Hat was right. The production design on TTSS was worthy of many awards, especially this one, but also Grimmest Evocation of the Cigarette-Smoke-Stained Dilapidation of 20th Century Britain.
Achievement in Costume Design
Who Will Win: Mark Bridges – The Artist
Again, it’s all down to who will be the overall winner. If it’s going to be The Artist I have to go all in and give it to Mr. Bridges…
Who Should Win: Sandy Powell – Hugo
…while thinking that Sandy Powell’s work is more deserving. By now I must seem like a guy who hated The Artist, but I didn’t. I adored it. Hugo was the movie that left me cold, even though it’s obviously a thing of great precision, as intricate and lovely as the clockwork contraptions that litter it. But all that effort from Scorsese was futilely expended trying to shift the enormous rock that is my heart, and it wasn’t going to work. ::hands in film buff card::
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Eiko Ishioka – Immortals
Nevertheless, that’s not as big a crime as neglecting Eiko Ishioka’s brain-maddening work which so dominated Tarsem’s latest empty trinket. It’s especially frustrating as the world is now bereft of her singular genius. Creating works of art for ill-received genre movies directed by someone with… shall we say, a questionable grasp of narrative… means her work wasn’t really seen enough. When we see Mirror, Mirror later this year, it’ll be a bittersweet experience. And not just because it’ll almost certainly be desperately boring crap. #Uncharitable
Best Documentary Feature
What Will Win: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
As usual I haven’t seen any documentaries this year, not even depressing ones about how the economy is about to explode with the force of a million megaprolapses, so I can’t really talk with any authority here, but I’d wager Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky will get the nod for campaigning successfully for the West Memphis Three. Unless the Academy is still mad at Berlinger for Blair Witch 2, which is understandable.
What Should Win: IDK SMDH
As I can’t say anything authoritative here, I’ll keep my fat mouth shut.
What Should Have Been Nominated: Tabloid
Yep, I didn’t even see Senna, the most critically acclaimed documentary of the year, but everyone I know who has seen it adores it. Nevertheless, I would’ve loved to have seen Errol Morris’ crazily entertaining Tabloid get some recognition. Perhaps because it’s so much fun it never stood a chance of getting any Oscar love; that old “comedy is too frivolous to be worthy of recognition” thing again. Which is a shame, because I’d say Tabloid has some pretty hefty points to make about news cycles, journalistic arrogance and human venality. It just also happens to be very amusing while it makes those points.
Best Documentary Short Subject
What Will Win: God Is The Bigger Elvis
Best Animated Short Film
What Will Win: La Luna
Best Live Action Short Film
What Will Win: The Shore
Okay, I’ll come clean. I haven’t got a clue about any of the nominees in any of the three categories clustered here, as was the case last year, so I’m just going to pick for the stupidest reasons. I just read about God Is The Bigger Elvis a few hours ago, La Luna because I like the name of the director (Enrico Casarosa), and The Shore because it’s made by Terry and Oorlagh George, and I always get annoyed that I confuse Terry George and Terry Southern even though their surnames and careers are completely different so I guess that’s an omen or something. Sorry to all of the nominees in these categories; I should give you respect, and instead I give you this excrement-soaked corsage. You deserve so much better.
Achievement in Film Editing
Who Will Win: Thelma Schoonmaker – Hugo
It’s arguable that Hugo was a bit slack, to be honest, and could have done with a bit of tidying up, but you’re a fool if you bet against Schoonmaker, who has won three of the six Academy Awards she has previously been nominated for (can you believe she didn’t win for Goodfellas? WT actual F?).
Who Should Win: Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
As I said last year, David Fincher’s editing team on The Social Network did a fantastic job of wrestling a ton of footage and talking to the ground and making it work as a narrative. they’re here again with a movie that’s less talky but just as complex (if not more so) than that. Dragon Tattoo may not have blown my socks off the way Fincher’s best work does, but it’s a great thriller, perfectly paced and seemingly effortlessly compelling. Baxter and Wall deserve this win twice over now.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Paul Hirsch – Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol / Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber and Mark Yoshikawa – The Tree of Life / Joe Bini – We Need To Talk About Kevin
Quick run through of my reasons here. 1) The best action movie of the year deserves a nod, especially when the action scenes are so clearly drawn and beautifully constructed. It was a joy to watch, and much of that was down to veteran Hirsch’s command of the AVID. 2) A team of five head editors wrestling with what was probably 65,000,000 miles of footage featuring kids running down alleys or Brad Pitt standing on a lawn, and in the end we get an impressionistic collage of mood and image as powerful as this? I may complain that Hugo was slack but any flabbiness here was probably intentional. The longueurs are as important as the moments of emotion, and the superb judgement of this team — and Malick — will probably become more apparent with each rewatch. 3) It’s as if Nicolas Roeg is making major motion pictures again, and Bini is as important as Lynne Ramsay in creating a fractured but exhaustingly scary like Kevin. Again, a major omission for this exceptional artistic accomplishment.
Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
What Will Win: A Separation
Of course the Academy has a talent for arsing this category up, which could be good news for Agnieszka Holland — I’d think of it as an award given in honour of her stunning Treme pilot; one of the best episodes of TV ever made – but honestly, how on earth could anything beat Asghar Farhadi’s magnificent family drama? I would’ve like to have seen it do a Crouching Tiger and get a Best Picture nomination as well, it’s that good (yes, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was nominated for both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture, a fact that seems to elude many professional Oscar prognosticators each year).
What Should Win: A Separation
Time spent thinking about this masterpiece since seeing it right at the end of last year has made it seem even more profound, even more exciting. I may not have seen any of the other films nominated here but still it seems only right that this wins.
What Should Have Been Nominated: The Skin I Live In
To be honest, though I enjoyed Pedro Almodovar’s macabre thriller, it still left me a little cold. I’m sure there’s some arcane reason why this wasn’t included (that’s usually the case; did Spain even offer it as a nominee?), but if that’s not the case then I guess its omission here is pretty surprising. Other than that, the majority of the foreign language movies I saw last year just weren’t good enough to warrant inclusion here. Even Peter Chan’s Wu Xia — a film which made it onto my best-of-2011 list — would seem out of place. The closest thing I can think of for inclusion would be Andrea Molaioli’s Il Gioiellino, the fictionalised dramatisation of the Parmalat fraud scandal, but even that’s too dry to really pass muster. ::shrug::
Achievement in Makeup
Who Will Win: Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland – The Iron Lady
I almost feel like I’m saying this because it had the most make-up, mostly on Meryl’s chin for Thatcher’s later years…
Who Should Win: Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland – The Iron Lady
…but as Daisyhellcakes said when we tried to stay awake during this possibly endless collision of stock footage and poorly shot comedic shenanigans, “That’s a really convincing wattle”. And she’s right. It’s a really convincing wattle.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Contagion
The most startling physical transformation of the year was a digital effect; the enfeeblenising of Chris Evans in the first third of Captain America: The First Avenger is a baffling, seamless effect that convinces so completely that post-super-serum Evans looks somehow more wrong than the wimp. I’m tempted to say this should have been nominated just for the wicked Red Skull make-up on Hugo Weaving, but I think Contagion may be a more worthy nominee, for the nasty sweaty death pallor on the victims of MEV-1, Jude Law’s pasty face and rotten tooth, and one very fun autopsy scene.
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)
Who Will Win: Howard Shore – Hugo
I can’t actually remember a single note of it, even though I’m a big fan of Mr. Shore (his score for A Dangerous Method was particularly lovely; he does his best work for Maestro Cronenberg), but I doubt either of Williams’ scores will win (vote splitting), and there’s the possibility that Kim Novak really does have some insider information about how the soundtrack to The Artist did something unspeakable and illegal to Bernard Hermann’s Vertigo score. That leaves Shore’s score.
Who Should Win: Alberto Iglesias - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Of course, this wonderful score by Alberto Iglesias should be the frontrunner here for anyone who has ears. It’s an absolute corker, sinister and peppered with smokey-jazz moments; perfect for the film and powerful in its own right. And yes, I know this won’t be a consideration for the Academy, but the inclusion of this great, nerd-funky version of La Mer just shows how much care was put into the music. It’s such a great choice for the scene it accompanies that I did a joy-pirouette without leaving my super-comfy Odeon-Swiss-Cottage seat.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Michael Giacchino – Super 8
My favourite soundtrack of last year was Cecile Corbel’s delicate score for Arrietty, but as the movie wasn’t released in the US until this year, it wasn’t eligible. I’d like to say Hans Zimmer’s score for Rango should’ve got in, but considering the fuss over Ludovic Bource’s The Artist soundtrack, Zimmer’s re-appropriation of The Blue Danube and Ride of the Valkyries — not to mention similarities with Carter Burwell’s Raising Arizona score — mean it’s better off out of it. Giacchino’s Super 8 score managed to conjure up memories of some of John Williams’ work with Spielberg while remaining recognisably his own work. It might not be the best thing he’s done, but it played an important part in conjuring up the air of nostalgia that made J.J. Abrams’ homage work.
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song)
What Will Win: Man or Muppet (Bret McKenzie) – The Muppets
I’ve not heard the Rio song, but is there any doubt?
What Should Win: Man or Muppet (Bret McKenzie) – The Muppets
It’s just what a musical number should be. It’s thematically relevant, perfectly judged on a tonal level, it signals a big plot moment, it’s full of clever lyrical tricks, and it’s a proper showstopping earworm. It brought the house down at the BFI a month ago and I reckon this happens everywhere this movie plays. Is this the most assured winner of the night?
What Should Have Been Nominated: Star Spangled Man (Alan Menken / David Zippel) – Captain America: The First Avenger
Still, the feeble number of nominees here means there’s no real reason why Menken and Zippel’s entertaining pastiche of WWII propaganda songs didn’t get a nod. It’s not as good as Bret McKenzie’s song, but it’s still a witty and catchy tune. I guess the Academy members didn’t want to be reminded of the war that took place during their middle age. Yeah, I went there!
Achievement in Sound Editing
Who Will Win: Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom – War Horse
It might be a load of old chuff but I think War Horse will get at least one Oscar just because Spielberg and the rest strained so damn hard to make something timeless and noble that I bet someone will feel sorry for him. That’s not to say the work of Hymns and Rydstrom isn’t worthy of an award. The movie has a wide array of excellent whinnies, clip-clops, and gunfire.
Who Should Win: Ren Klyce – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Normally I’d pick Transformers: Dark of the Moon for two reasons: 1) to annoy everyone by continuing to not crap all over Bay’s carnage-laden doomfuck, and 2) because there were about one zillion sound effects in this movie, and I’m sure there was a small army of sound recorders trying to find the material for this movie’s sonic tapestry of boom. Nevertheless, I’ll pick Ren Klyce’s work on Fincher’s bleak midwinter tale for two different reasons: 1) I always tend to pick Ren Klyce because Ren Klyce is ace, and 2) the sound of Lisbeth Salander’s steel-toed boot clanging noisily against a very large metallic anus-seeking dildo has haunted me for two months. That counts for something.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Oliver Tarney and Mark Taylor – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
My two picks here (Nicholas Becker for Andrea Arnold’s glorious Wuthering Heights and Koji Kasamatsu for Arrietty) are again not eligible because of US release dates. Instead I’ll pick the team behind the sound effects in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. There’s some lovely work done during the action scenes, but also the thrum of Victorian London is captured as well as in the first movie, which was also deserving of a nomination.
Achievement in Sound Mixing
Who Will Win: Tom Fleischman and John Midgley – Hugo
Big noisy setpieces in a train station where every individual, important noise is clearly picked out? It’s a lock.
Who Should Win: Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush and Peter J. Devlin – Transformers: Dark of the Moon
The soundscapes of Michael Bay’s noisiest movies are widely loathed as merely a wash of explosions and screaming, but when blasted at with a good THX sound-system, it’s likely that the volume will deafen you to the amount of intricate work done here. It’s not just queueing up a bunch of banging and sticking it all in a blender; there’s more layering of sound than you’d think. Then again, I’ve always been a fan of percussion, so I’m more likely to enjoy an extended drum solo than the finely-picked notes of a symphony. Make of that what you will.
What Should Have Been Nominated: Peter Miller, Adam Kopald, J.R. Grubbs and Addison Teague - Rango
Among the many joys of this astounding triumph of animation is the lovely audio track, evoking the eerie silences of Sergio Leone’s classics while changing gears for some huge, complicated action scenes. Truly a feast for the ears as well as the eyes.
Achievement in Visual Effects
Who Will Win: Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, R. Christopher White and Daniel Barrett - Rise of the Planet of the Apes
I’m tempted to say Hugo will win this too, but the furore over Andy Serkis’ performance and the technology used to capture it means this might have a shot, as a sop to the campaigners.
Who Should Win: Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Matthew Butler and John Frazier - Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Once more I’m picking complexity and logistical madness over subtlety or beauty, but the scale of the FX work in this movie is simply breathtaking. It’s also seamlessly integrated with reality; you’ll really believe Chicago had its arse kicked by robotic dickwads. The only caveat here is that they’re not really breaking new ground; we’ve seen this kind of thing before, just not on this scale. Nevertheless, my eyes boggled at the monumental mechanical madness, and I really appreciate that.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Douglas Trumbull, Dan Glass, Peter and Chris Parks – The Tree of Life
What a lovely welcome back for the legendary Doug Trumbull; a snub by his peers that probably would have stung if he had even noticed them, bearing in mind he is a colossus who bestrides the discipline of visual effects and probably thinks Digital Domain is little more than an interesting ant-farm. Bear in mind, this is a man who, while everyone else in the FX business was learning how to use a mouse, was either working on IMAX and Showscan technologies or trying to fix the BP oil-spill. Does he need an Oscar? If the FX industry members of the Academy can’t find it in their hearts to give this visionary the award he deserves, he can get over the insignificant pain by inventing another world-changing doohickey. Trumbull does not need your baubles.
Adapted Screenplay
Who Will Win: Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash – The Descendants
Hugo should win this considering the overwhelming critical praise for it in the US, but I have a feeling the sentimental Academy members will be more drawn to The Descendants, which is a very writerly movie with big dramatic beats, terminally ill people, confrontations that play out in unexpected ways, and speeches that run on for perhaps a bit too long. It also has a terrible voiceover in the first half of the movie that should make invalidate it, but I doubt that that’s a dealbreaker. Or maybe this is just wishful thinking because I want to see Dean Pelton win an Oscar? If so, can Magnitude come on stage for a celebratory “Pop pop!“?
Who Should Win: Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Much as I enjoyed Moneyball, mostly because Sorkin’s worst excesses were curtailed by the low-key performances and direction, I don’t think it’s the best script here. I also don’t think that honour belongs to The Ides of March; yet another Clooney / Heslov disappointment that feels four drafts away from completion. Surely Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the only logical choice here. It’s a labyrinth of words and actions and information but there’s emotion here, real aching pain. It’s a magnificent achievement.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Christopher Hampton – A Dangerous Method
As is Christopher Hampton’s expansion of his play The Talking Cure. Its absorption and translation of the ideas and theories of Freud, Jung and Spielrein into dramatic forms is breathtaking, made all the more memorable for its puckish wit and satisfying emotional charge. Though I’d resigned myself to seeing this underrated movie get little Oscar love I held out hope for this screenplay as the sole nominee, but no. What a pity.
Original Screenplay
Who Will Win: Woody Allen – Midnight in Paris
Remember all those days ago when The Artist won the Bafta for best screenplay and amateur comedians and film critics said, “How can it win best screenplay when there’s no words in it duhhhhh duuuuuuh a-duuuuuhhhhhhh?” Well I guess that won’t happen here, but only because the truly sentimental choice is to give Woody another Oscar for his latest self-indulgent wallow in nostalgia. Usually that yearning for simpler times is a subtext to his usual light middle-class semi-intellectual drama, but here it’s right at the fore-front. Who was the Twitter wag who said that this movie was like Woody’s “Things I like” list made celluloid flesh? Because well done, that person, you got it in one.
Who Should Win: Asghar Farhadi – A Separation
That victory for a second-rate script would be a crime when Asghar Farhadi’s brilliantly constructed, humane, intelligent, complex, multi-faceted screenplay has also been given a nod. In a perfect world this would’ve been the only nominee. If ever anyone asks me what screenplay I would pick as an example of brilliant screenwriting, I’ll pick George Gallo’s script for Midnight Run. If they couldn’t find that, I’ll pick this.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Kenneth Lonergan – Margaret / Scott Z. Burns – Contagion
That said, I would’ve liked it if Kenneth Lonergan had received any kind of recognition for his notorious movie, but I guess there was no chance of that happening with the lawsuits flying back and forth like flaming buzzards of doom. Also, we’ve not even seen the full movie; I long for the director’s cut of this challenging and audacious movie. I also would’ve liked it if Scott Z. Burns got nominated for Contagion, but that’s because I’m a big Scott Z. Burns fan and I think he’s great so there.
Achievement in Directing
Who Will Win: Martin Scorsese – Hugo
Okay, hear me out. Yes, I think The Artist will win Best Picture. Yes, I know that Michel Hazanavicius won the Director’s Guild Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film Award, and that’s usually a pretty reliable marker of who will win the Academy Award, but I think Scorsese has played a blinder here; making a homage to the birth of cinema, eoo-goog-alising one of the earliest pioneers of the medium, and passionately campaigning for the virtues of film preservation within the film itself. A pretty ballsy move, to turn a children’s movie into a two-hour lecture about archiving and storage technology. The Artist might be a love letter to silent cinema, but Hugo is a billet-doux attached to a heart-shaped box of chocolate cherries with a bit of sexy lingerie hidden under the crepe-paper tray. There’s no way the assorted dodecagenarians of the Academy will be able to resist giving Scorsese his second director’s gong for this.
Who Should Win: Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life
Even though I really loved The Artist (I did! Honest!), and thought Scorsese did a good job of methodically stripped the magic from his children’s film by the time the final reel arrived just so he could prove a point, this category belongs to Malick. Alexander Payne served up a curiously listless dramedy, and Woody Allen woke up for a little while; not really work worth lauding. But Malick’s bold vision was even more daring than his usual work, happily comparing the travails of a family to the beginning and end of life. What brass balls. It’s the best thing he’s done since Days of Heaven, and more than deserving of some Oscar love. If they don’t do it now, they’ll only regret it in future when he suddenly starts making action movies starring Channing Tatum (mark my words, this will happen).
Who Should Have Been Nominated: David Cronenberg – A Dangerous Method
The great man can’t win. When he makes a genre movie — albeit a genre movie with an intellectual ambition that dwarfs almost everything else around — clueless critics proclaim that he’s little more than a provocateur debasing his better instincts. When he makes a movie that’s sober and thought-provoking, everyone whines that there’s not enough parasites or inappropriate vaginal images in it. So when he makes something as crystalline as this, so perfectly hewn and formally precise, critics say it’s too dry. “It’s too dry,” they say, drawing attention to what they think is an excessive dryness. Seriously, that’s all anyone could say. Well bollocks to that. It’s exactly what it needs to be, and Cronenberg is the only filmmaker in the world smart enough to get that right. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; one day critical opinion will swing back Cronenberg’s way. Sadly, not before voting ended.
Best Motion Picture of the Year
What Will Win: The Artist
Critical mass has been reached for The Artist. I don’t think anyone on the planet expects another movie to win, except Stephen Daldry, probably; a conclusion I’ve reached after enduring Extremely Bad And Just Generally Incredibly Incredibly Dire And Awful Jesus What A Stinker, which seems to have been directed by someone who has absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever. I was tempted to predict a Hugo surprise here, but I think we all know that’s not happening. Harvey Weinstein has been prowling the streets of Hollywood like a cross between Batman, Wilson Fisk and P.T. Barnum, pimping out that movie for all he’s worth. It’s a foregone conclusion.
What Should Win: The Artist
And I’m absolutely fine with that. Not just because it’s the best movie of the nine nominees, but because I still think so fondly of it a victory in this category would make my night. I’m sure in time the numerous haters will multiply like mogwai under a waterfall, but for now a big win would almost feel like an extension of the movie’s deliriously happy vibe. Like a 4D experience for its fans. Plus it’s a last chance to see Jean Dujardin charm us with another impromptu dance. Vous dansez comme un nuage enthousiaste, vous bel homme!
What Should Have Been Nominated: Take Shelter / A Dangerous Method
If that vile… vile… thing with the obnoxiously precious title can get nominated, then surely anything can. Two of my favourites of last year are more than good enough to get in here, usurping Daldry’s slimy ode to sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-McSweeney’s-style precocity and Spielberg’s admittedly hilarious and Dadaesque World War One comedy The Adventures of War Horse: The Siren-Centaur Hybrid of Death, not to mention The (Wonderful Way White People) Help(ed Those Relatively Unimportant Black Folks). Put these two brilliant movies in there, dammit, and why not add Fast Five while you’re at it. That movie was better than at least seven, arguably eight of the movies in that list, even if only for the moment when The Rock and Vin Diesel crash through a wall during a fight. Better than Malick’s dinosaurs, I reckon.
That”s enough making a fool of myself in front of the entire internet. See you on the other side of the award ceremony, and what will likely be a really cozy opening monologue from Billy Crystal featuring at least one — maybe five — jokes about the lacklustre box office takings of Mr. Saturday Night. Mazel tov!
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.
Announcing The Imminent, Belated Arrival Of The 2010-2011 Caruso Awards
Hello, sexy readers!
Right, quick explanation for the blog inactivity of the last few months. Seems I didn’t read the small print on my blogging licence. Turns out you can’t say anything good about Michael Bay movies at all. Can’t say you enjoyed bits of them even if you were bored or appalled by other bits. Can’t say you understand why he’d want to hire talented, popular actors to fill out smaller roles. Can’t even say you like the cut of his jib; apparently this is racist against giblets.
I didn’t know any of this, and so I foolishly posted a review of Transformers 3: Dark Chocolate Moon Pie that didn’t call for Bay to be sealed in a casket filled with excrement and fired into space. For that, I can only apologise completely and profusely. Transformers 3 was obviously worse than beetroot pickled in rabies and served on a plate made of skunk bone. I must have been brainwashed using some kind of microwave beam to have even momentarily considered otherwise. (Here is a picture of my credibility.)
Anyway, the penalty for this infraction of BlogLaw was temporary suspension of blogging privileges, in case I infected the world with more heretical ideas. It’s been awful. I so wanted to write about the disappointing third act of The Skin I Live In, the frustrating final half of Captain America: The First Avenger, my newfound love of The Good Wife and The Vampire Diaries, my immense and gargantuan adoration of Attack The Block and why I think it’s one of the most important British films of our time, but no. The Bloggery Enforcementation Division (BED) is too powerful to fight against.
Anyway, the period of censure is at an end as of today, so I’m here to announce that from tomorrow I will belatedly begin the 2010-2011 Caruso TV Awards, which have totally been delayed by the tyrannical regime that controls the Internet and not because I’ve been waiting for Breaking Bad to finish because it started so late in the year and I really wanted to put an episode in my Best Episodes list. Nothing like that. It was the Man what stopped me. Anyway, stay “tuned”.
Bayhem Productions Presents: The Chicago Explode
Let’s get my main criticism of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon out of the way before I get into the specifics of what works and what doesn’t: WHY DID TYRESE NOT GET TO SAY BRING THE RAIN? That phrase is like the “This shit just got real” of the Transformers franchise, and its absence is sorely felt. Yes, okay, he didn’t say it in the second one, but he did write it on an Army-issue napkin or something, and that counts for a lot.
At one point in this someone says something like “shorten the threat chain” or something similar while pointing at a screen with some rapidly oscillating graphics on it. I can’t quite remember the exact wording; I was too busy being distracted by the guy on my left engaged in some top-level phone-checking, and the three folks on my right who were loudly narrating the movie to each other. “Optimus is fighting now!” Yes, thank you, I had noticed.
Perhaps that’s the most noticeable thing about Transformers 3D: Moondance. It’s the first Michael Bay Experience that contains enough pauses and/or longueurs to allow the attentive viewer to be distracted by the real world. Which is not to say the man has made a reflective piece about the human condition. Rest assured, this is still a frenetic montage of sparks, flames, smoke and mirrors. Nevertheless, shooting in 3D has slowed him down enough that even the lengthy battle in Chicago feels like a collection of discreet setpieces instead of the incoherent and exhausting examples of overkill from his previous films.
These setpieces are still narrative-light – they are all basically “We need to get from point A to point Z to accomplish goal X” – but still, this feels like progress, as does the more cautious editing and cinematography. Bay really does seem to have taken the 3D process seriously; this feels less disorientating than some other 2D movies I’ve seen in IMAX (I had no idea what was going on in Eagle Eye or Star Trek; the latter only made sense to me once I saw it on TV).
And really, IMAX 3D is the way to go if you’re going to see this. Anything less is a waste of time. As I said to someone on Twitter this week (I think it was the lovely Max Renn, who has had to put up with my paranoid pleas not to unfollow me for going on about this movie so much this week. Hello Max Renn!), this is not a movie; it’s a cacophony delivery system. Seeing it on a smaller screen takes away much of its impact, and impact is all it’s aiming for. As a result everything else is merely present for the sake of being present, and as such I honestly feel that criticising it for failing to do the things that good movies do is almost missing the point of it.
Bay isn’t here to address issues or construct finely-honed character arcs, to deliver subtle wit, quiet moments of introspection, a pleasant flow of mood and tone. He’s here to make crude neanderthal-pleasing jokes, objectify the hot ladies, cram in as much cacophonous sound and flashing imagery as possible, and to DESTROY ALL THE THINGS. This is a well-established stylistic choice on his part. A lot of people hate him for that. I get it, and I understand, though I think it’s a waste of energy. Let’s move on.
Bay really does destroy all the things in this one. Thanks to the exceptional effects work, I honestly believed that Chicago had been almost entirely torn to the ground by the end of the shoot. It’s only because I’ve communicated with Chicagoinians since it finished that I know it’s still standing. The main attraction in Transformers 3D: Moon Unit Zappa is the long final act which sees the Decepticons taking control of Chicago and repelling a valiant attack by the Autobots and – in a gratifying expansion of their roles – the human soldiers who have spent the last couple of movies ineffectually bringing the rain. In this movie, they finally bring some thunder and lightning along as well. Some of the most exciting moments of the finale involve the NEST soldiers doing cool shit like jumping out of airplanes (in an astonishing stunt that actually happened and wasn’t an effect except for the bits when they fly through burning buildings because that would be beyond even Bay).
It’s a bravura sequence, which amused me by bringing to mind the far superior 13 Assassins, which also featured a slow build-up before a huge blowout finale. Of course, Takashi Miike’s samurai epic is a modern action masterpiece made with laser-like focus, unwavering control of pace, and a real emotional and visceral charge. Transformers 3: Dark Moon Rising has none of the above. It has speaker-shaking noise and that special kind of lighting that makes everyone glow orange like over-tanned supermodels shot during the magic hour. But that’s fine, in its own way. I wouldn’t recommend TF3 to anyone, to be honest; most folks seem to have made their mind up about it, which is their prerogative. I would recommend 13 Assassins, though. You haven’t seen it yet? Get on that shit.
To be honest, I expected to have more to say about it, but I think I may have exhausted my supply of opinion about Bay in these two posts. Transformers 3D: Moonlight Shadow is probably the best of the trilogy but that doesn’t mean to say it’s a triumph or anything. It’s just the best example yet of this kind of movie, but it is riddled with the same flaws that his movies always do, above and beyond the usual complaints that critics level at him.
Surprisingly, the final third of the movie is the most stern thing he has yet done. The cheap laughs that populate the other 66% of the film dry up in order to facilitate a grinding gear change into solemnity. There are approximately four trillion shots of people rising up into the frame with a sad look on their face, debris and ash blowing in the air, Jablonsky-Strings emoting all over the place like a crying orchestra. Even for someone like myself who tries hard to take these movies seriously, this was kinda hard-going. Oh how I yearned for Bumblebee to piss all over Jon Turturro one more time.
There were other things to like, though. Without Mudflap and Skids shucking and jiving in the background, the concerned liberal can relax a little. I’ve seen some take offence at the characters played by Ken Jeong (a weird and manic scientist) and Alan Tudyk (a sexually “ambiguous” facilitator associated with Turturro), but I didn’t really see anything that bad about them. Jeong is playing the stock Jeong character, and Tudyk’s sexuality isn’t really the joke. The comedic point of him seems to be his shame at being a tough guy hacker genius; a curious joke, but one pulled off with such charm and aplomb by the great man that it’s hard to hate him.
It’s also great to see Frances McDormand here too, as one of the very few female characters in the franchise that actually gets to do anything other than point their sculpted behinds at the camera. John Malkovich is in high energy mode, and I’m sure his presence in such a wacky role will be considered a black mark on his filmography, but he made me laugh, so job done. Who knows what these beloved thespians thought when they signed up for this, but they give their all, like the professionals they are. In a way I wish Bay could go back in time and hire Laurence Olivier to be in one of his movies. Olivier would have jumped at the chance; people forget some of the shit he turned up in. It can be argued that Bay’s habit of employing Oscar-nominated actors to appear in his lowbrow epics is a cynical move, but he has money and he wants talented and recognisable performers in his films. Why wouldn’t he?
Perhaps the biggest casting surprises are Patrick Dempsey and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Dempsey is an actor I have only ever had the most passionate dislike for; repeated viewings of Enchanted have left me almost paralysed with rage at his floppy, lustrous hair and oleaginous demeanour. These are put to great use here; the franchise badly needed a human villain (Turturro was too silly to be a bad guy in the first movie), and he manages to pull off the final act misgivings, fears and inevitable mustache-twirling resolve very well. He should stick to villains in future.
Huntington-Whiteley is not exactly a revelation, but she’s likeable, funny, and – from what I could tell by the lingering shots of her body – slightly attractive. Her character is obviously meant to be Megan Fox’s Mikaela; some of the choices she makes at the very end are obviously meant for someone who has had dealings with these robots before. Nevertheless, Huntington-Whiteley’s good-natured charm is a world away from Fox’s sullen and unconvincing efforts. It’s a nice change, and a shrewd casting move by Bay.
(I note that this week that “lovable” scamp Shia LeBeouf hinted that he managed to have conjugal relations with his former co-star Fox, saying that their close proximity and high-emotion onscreen relationship meant that there was some bleed-through into the real world. If we’re to take this bold claim at face value, there is also the assumption that because he has the same onscreen relationship with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, that means he probably got it on with her too. I wonder what her real-life boyfriend, Jason Statham, would think about that. I trust that Mr. Statham will be having words with Mr. TheBeef in due course. Words that are delivered through the medium of his High-Kicking Action Feet.)
Other than that, what is there to say? The robots are better written than before. When some of them die there is finally a sense that something other than a swirling congregation of pixels has met his maker. I particularly liked Megatron’s new look; wearing a hood of tattered cloth and held together with chains after the events of the second movie. Optimus Prime and Sentinel Prime have a mildly diverting back-and-forth throughout. In terms of the Transformers franchise, this is as close as we’re going to get to an actual relationship between two people, though inevitably it ends up being about explosions and rain-bringing. There’s also a line delivered by Leonard Nimoy (as Sentinel Prime) that will likely make Star Trek fans vow to hunt down and kill Bay and screenwriter Ehren Kruger. I suggest they avoid Comic-Con for the next twenty years.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is that I didn’t think it was a very good film but I did think it was quite a good fairground ride, and as I quite enjoy fairground rides and don’t feel cheated when they don’t have a complex and resonant narrative, this feels like a win to me. Perhaps it helps that I watched Green Lantern earlier this week; a truly execrable movie that failed at doing just about everything that Transformers 3 failed at doing but didn’t have any of the fun stuff to make up for it. So yeah, “Transformers 3: better than Green Lantern just by being more confident, which is all you can hope for, I guess.” And that, my friends, is the poster quote.
Can Someone Please Buy Kenny Branagh A Spirit Level?
Apparently, according to professional troll and tired-shtick-purveyor Joe Queenan and mysteriously grouchy former colleague Stephen Evans, British acting-giant Kenneth Branagh is suffering from terrible career-doldrums, and has seemingly consigned himself to the dumpster. They have a point. Once on track to becoming a national institution a la Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry, Branagh has gone from making a few energetic but clumsy Shakespeare adaptations (Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing), to the craziest reincarnation-murder-mystery imaginable (Dead Again).
From there he made what is unarguably the most deliriously awful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), to a supporting role in a derided Nazi-riffic thriller with a pre-spoiled finale (Valkyrie), to what is surely, if his critics are to be believed, absolutely the worst thing that could happen to anyone; directing a massive-budget tentpole release at the start of summer, a huge logistical project which stands a good chance of making a shedload of money and is arguably the best thing he has made by a country mile, kicking off the blockbuster season with such a burst of surprisingly confident film-making, crowd-pleasing fun and franchise-ensuring success that he can basically write his own ticket for years to come. Won’t you join me in laughing at the dreadful hubristic failure of that poor loser Branagh?
Of course, there is a chance that it won’t actually make that much money; it has already opened in Australia where it was beaten at the box office by The Fast Five and The Furious Five. Audiences probably won’t recognise the character Thor, and many of them don’t know who Chris Hemsworth is unless they have a special ability to see through the obfuscatory lens flares in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. However, the reviews are rightly positive and this could end up with great word-of-mouth. I await its US opening figures like a child waiting to see how high White Lines by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel will appear in the UK top 40 on a Sunday afternoon in 1983 (true story).
N.B. I would wait to see what the UK figures are like but the damn thing is opening in the same week as some wedding or other; I think Jordan’s marrying Andrew Marr or something. Means it might be worth my while to go see it again on Friday, hopefully in a cinema that is only sparsely attended and where my enjoyment won’t be interrupted by numerous incontinent men, wailing vomity babies, and important people checking for the arrival of important emails on their super-bright phones; three hypothetical irritants that in no way pissed me off this morning, no not at all.
So why is Thor a success, above and beyond any financial concerns? Mostly because it continues Marvel Studios’ streak of good-to-great superhero adaptations, and yes, in that list I do indeed place Iron Man 2 despite the considerable backlash against it for not being explodey enough or whatever the hell crime it committed against humanity. As I said in my end of year poll last year, that loose structure and air of genial knowingness was something that I considered a plus, and having Hott Sam Rockwell along for the ride was even better news.
The complaints about it being nothing more than a set-up for the wider Marvel Film Universe (MFU) concern me not a jot, as that’s something that I want to see, and get actively excited about. I didn’t find it annoying in the slightest, and the same goes for Thor, even though the major Avengers set-up in the middle of the movie – featuring a damp Jeremy Renner on a crane getting cramp in his fingers – looks like it was filmed last week and spliced in during the drive to the big factory where they replicate all of the prints (I don’t know how these things work; I assume it’s done using a big hard-drive and a shitload of memory sticks).
Thor isn’t as smart-arse as Iron Man 2, but then it doesn’t feature Robert Downey Jr., and I doubt Branagh has a sarcastic bone in his body. He’s hyper-sincere, which turns out to be exactly the kind of thing Thor needs. The previous Marvel movies featured a couple of big set-pieces but were mostly conversation-and-character-based; being a bit more of an universe-spanning epic about “gods”, Thor’s big chats take place in gargantuan golden rooms, vast crumbling ice cities, and in a town built (especially for the movie) on the side of a hill looking down at a desert. It has something the other movies lacked; a sense of grandeur.
That’s helped by the use of 3D – a smarter choice than expected, as there are hardly ever more than two planes in the movie; the foreground where everyone is talking, and something else about a mile away. It’s a nifty post-production conversion, and does add a bit to the sense of scale, though the majority of the heavy lifting is done by the amazing FX guys at Buf Compagnie and Digital Domain, and eye-massaging work from ace production designer Bo Welch (who also directed The Cat in the Hat, but let’s just forget about that for today).
Which is not to say Thor isn’t funny. One of the best things about the Marvel Film Universe is that fun is not a dirty word. I’m quite happy to watch a “gritty” superhero tale if the tone fits the character and the movie is good, but too many filmmakers are not willing to expend an effort in making the characters likeable, or their adventures appealing. Iron Man was a perfect opening act for the Marvel Film Universe for a lot of reasons, but most importantly for making sure the audience is having a good time, which has thankfully become the template for the other movies.
I suspect that was originally the plan with The Incredible Hulk but sadly Edward Norton is a weirdly alienating actor at the best of times and much of the light stuff happened between him and Liv Tyler, who was wearing her customary “Did the director just say action?” look of incomprehension. Those jokes landed with an uncomfortable thud. Thor features a number of big laugh-out-loud moments, happily puncturing the pomposity of the genre / the epic scope of the tweaked Norse mythology without mocking it. When you hear critics or film buffs lamenting the passing of the adventure movies that cropped up at the beginning of the summer blockbuster era, the Marvel Studios movies are the kind of movies they’re talking about. Bit of romance (but not too much, and must be untragically unrequited), bit of swagger (but with eventual humility), plenty of derring-do, and a smattering of hearty jokes based around character.
They’re not quite as good yet, but I honestly think of the Marvel Studios movies as being the spiritual descendants of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future. The studio has become the 21st Century Amblin. In fact, I’ll go even further, and I expect this will make people think I’ve taken a leap into the crazy abyss: Marvel Studios is the only large, big-budget film-making production company currently making movies with a similar level of consistency and care as Pixar. Now, that’s not to say I think any of the Marvel Studios movies released so far are as satisfying, finely-wrought, or intellectually satisfying as Pixar’s big successes, and I doubt they could ever make a superhero movie as perfect as The Incredibles (or any of their non-superhero movies). However, I honestly believe they’re as safe a pair of hands as we’ve seen in a long time.
Even The Incredible Hulk, which was an entertaining movie but certainly not a great one, was made with care and attention and didn’t feel half-arsed in any way. Iron Man 2 is harder to argue for in that respect, but that supposed demerit – the hints and set-ups for The Avengers – show that it was conceptualised and made as part of a much greater whole. This wasn’t like the G.I. Joe movie, where so many choices seemed to be the easiest options, or the various adaptations of popular YA novels, which are often hamstrung by weak source material (e.g. Twilight). People sweated over those decisions in Iron Man 2, whether the audience liked them or not, and these choices were okayed by the creative collective at the heart of the studio – people who love and understand the Marvel Universe better than anyone, and are making an effort to create an enormous, consistent world filled with thrilling detail.
Who else is stepping up to the plate in an attempt to make a bigger impact on the popular consciousness than a quick first-weekend burst of goodwill? Bruckheimer Productions? Much as I love my boy Jerry, right now he’s in danger of becoming The Guy Who Produces the Pirate Movies, after last year’s failed franchise attempts. Bad Robot? I liked them, but Morning Glory was such a lazy and apocalyptically awful failure that they’ve lost all of my good will in one fell swoop. Di Bonaventura Pictures? Any production company that has made a movie with a first draft script written in a couple of weeks does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Pixar, no matter how many times Michael Bay says he knows that was a bad idea.
This admittedly crazy comparison came to me about twenty minutes into Thor, as our hero (at this point basically a bit of a dick) ignores his father’s advice and zips off from Asgard to Jotenheim alongside his companions – Sif, Hogun, Fandral and fan-favourite Volstagg – via the Bifrost, also known as the Rainbow Bridge. I have no idea what that looked like on the page, but here it is a propulsive and emotionally satisfying thread from Thor’s arrogant dismissal of Odin (perfectly set up in the previous scenes showing him as a brash child) to the manipulation of his friends, and then to an incredible FX blow-out; a sequence of crazed imagination and exquisitely detailed visualisation culminating in an enormous ruck.
For a while there – and at other points throughout the movie – Thor operates for maximum efficiency and effect on every level, adapting the original source material with as much respect and imagination as Peter Jackson brought to Lord of the Rings. If a movie is going to be a big-screen success aimed at a large crowd of people, it needs to wow, and Thor does just that. The clever casting, the narrative confidence, the appealing dynamics between the characters, and the conceptual boldness of the frankly beautiful Bifrost (like a huge golden railgun creating Einstein-Rosen Bridges that propel Asgardians through the cosmos at a terrifying velocity); it was more than I could have hoped for. I was, at that moment, Thor‘s bitch.
Much of the praise for Thor‘s success goes to every writer who has ever tried to bring this larger-than-life character to the screen, a list that includes J. Michael Straczynski, Mark Protosevich and credited screenwriters Ashley Miller & Zack Stentz (from Fringe), and Don Payne (er, My Super Ex-Girlfriend and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer). While many superhero adaptations have featured characters that I’m familiar with, Thor is a bit of an unknown quantity to me, mostly because his world often has so little to do with anything else going on in the Marvel Comic Universe (MCU). Much as Green Lantern has his own thing going on in the DC Universe, Thor has the Nine Realms (from the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology) to explore, and that, along with the large cast of characters, made jumping in seem like a fool’s errand.
My most notable exposure to him came during Kurt Busiek and George Perez’ run on the Avengers (arguably the definitive run), with special mention to his Nuff Said issue in the middle of the Kang Dynasty epic (issue #49, volume three, fact fans!), where Thor screams in horror and pain as his efforts to save Washington fail. Powerful stuff. Bearing my ignorance in mind, the various writers have done a magnificent job in getting the audience up to speed quickly, with information about Thor’s world cleverly parcelled out during the movie’s running time (the mention of Yggdrasill late in the movie, and its depiction in terms of science, is very pleasing).
Even better, any fears that Thor will sit apart from the “realistic” movies in the rest of the MFU are quickly removed; though the comics are filled with magic and castles and suchlike, the Asgard of Thor is a technologically advanced world populated by what is likely an alien civilisation that resembles humanity living in an inter-dimensional city with floating buildings, vast waterfalls, and lots and lots and lots of gold. It’s not said outright that this alien origin is the case, but there is more than enough wiggle-room for any possible interpretation. The result is a surprisingly consistent vision across the MFU, in which we can have a “Norse God” hanging out in a small town and getting pestered by the same vaguely-sinister SHIELD agents that keep bugging Tony Stark and not have this seem like a contradiction or a leap of logic. A small miracle in itself.
Thor‘s most successful stroke of genius might be in the casting; another example of Marvel Studios really taking care to make sure every aspect of their universe works. Just about every character is cast right, with special praise to Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston as Thor and Loki. Their disintegrating relationship is the heart of the movie, even more than that of Thor and Odin, and Hiddleston does incredibly effective work as the “betrayed” son who lets his sense of pride ruin his life. He is scarily good in every scene, and promises to be one of the best things about all of the forthcoming stories told in the MFU from this point on.
Also great are Ray Stephenson, here escaping the terrible dark pull of that last, execrable Punisher movie by embodying the burly and voracious Volstagg, and Jaime Alexander as brave Sif – a fearsome warrior who doesn’t need a schoolgirl’s outfit when she fights, cough Zack Snyder cough cough. As for DJ Big Driis, aka Idris Elba, in the role of Heimdall, all I can say is I forgive you for Loofah OMG you are a fucking badass to the max OMG you need a spin-off movie stat holy shit that golden armour and massive sword really look good on you. Sadly, the much-missed Rene Russo gets little to do, but at least she swings a sword at one point. I guess. ::sadface:: Anthony Hopkins makes up for that; he does his traditional Hopkins thing, but for some of us (i.e. me) that’s more than enough. Especially as Asgard doesn’t have as many objects for him to do his trademark lean on, so he has to improve his posture for once.
The human characters are also well-cast, with Kat Dennings being more charming than usual as Comedy Relief Girl (she has a name, but she’s pretty much just Designated Clown Who Mentions Facebook And Abs; luckily she does it well), and Stellan Skarsgård thankfully eradicating the memory of Mamma Mia by being generally funny (and, it seems, playing a more important character in the MFU than I thought; he’s in The Avengers too). Natalie Portman is less noticeable, but then Jane Foster is not the most interesting of characters anyway. Sadly that flatness is a big problem for the final act; some of the choices Thor makes don’t have the impact they should, as it’s hard to really care for his relationship with this earthwoman after just an hour in their presence.
The filmmakers and actors attempt to make the relationship work by taking a few shortcuts, meaning they kind of leap into each other’s arms by the middle of the third act, but the unfortunate side-effect of this is that, as some tetchy Tweeters have already complained, Foster suddenly seems to go all “HE’S SUCH A DREAMBOAT!”, thus eliminating her as a recognisable human being. I’d argue that this weird post-post-post-post-feminist “He’s such a hunk!” swooning is necessary in terms of plot, and is kinda played for laughs anyway (“Look! This guy is just so impossibly hot and heroic that the strong woman lost her cool!”), but yeah, it seemed like a bit of a stretch.
There are other flaws here too. The finale is really hectic, with lots of “Let me explain what the terrible outcome of this action will be if you do that thing!” exposition delivered while various characters hurtle through walls. Loki’s motivation is explained in a single exhale just seconds before everything kicks off, which robs the final showdown of its power. Many of the characters are underused, but that’s inevitable, and just makes me want many sequels so we can see Sif and the Warriors Three at full power. Some of the action sequences are garbled and confusingly edited, which is nothing new, sadly. Many of the scenes on the Rainbow Bridge sadly look like what they are; a bunch of folks arguing in front of a green screen. Things pick up considerably when those incredible sets are used.
Much has been made of Thor’s jump from brat to hero, which does seem to skip a few steps, but it struck me that his initial petulance upon turning up on Earth had more to do with him not really understanding how serious Odin is. His “WHYYYYYYYYY??!!??” of horror wasn’t just Branagh over-egging the drama; it’s the moment Thor realises his pops really did just cast him out of the family home. His immediate reaction is to finally doubt himself, and the subsequent scene is what pushes him over the edge. It’s speedy, but it’s not inconsistent.
Worst of all is Branagh being his own worst enemy, as usual. Though he thankfully allows much of Thor to play out relatively calmly, dialling down the Branaghnian shouting and running until the relevant dramatic scene, he still can’t resist using the most obnoxious Dutch tilts ever committed to film. Much of the movie appears to take place on a severe incline; audiences will more likely suffer neck pains than headaches from the 3D conversion. Still, I’ll take that over his usual style; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the first movie ever made where all of the actors were required to sprint around the set while screaming at each other. Less is more, Kenny.
Flaws aside, this is an immensely entertaining movie, made with love and ready to give the audience the good time for its very very many pounds / dollars / shekels. This is something that is done so rarely nowadays that it’s easy to forget how much fun it can be to sit in a cinema watching a couple of hundred million dollars get squandered just to make you believe a big hollow robot can shoot fire out of its retractable face like Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still (except this time he’s ribbed for our pleasure). The naysayers and haters can back off for now; 2011 summer blowout has arrived with a big, colourful splash. Thank you to Branagh, Hemsworth, and the rest of the cast and crew on this good-time epic because, against all of the odds, it has made a believer out of me, and turned me into a fan of the God of Thunder. HAVE AT THEE!
P.S. Advice for those who have yet to see it; keep an eye out for what I think might be the Eye of Agamotto in one scene, and do stay for the post-credits scene. Instead of just being a tiny hint about the next MFU installment, this actually seems to be a key plot-point for The Avengers. I doubt it’s crucial, but it does give an idea of what is in store.
BFI LFF 2010: Never Let Me Go / Archipelago / 13 Assassins
Never Let Me Go achieves something almost unique: it’s a movie whose artistic achievement arguably dooms it. Directed by Mark Romanek and adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel by Alex Garland, the movie depicts an alternate timeline in which organ donation technology was perfected in England in the 1950s. In order to provide organs for harvesting, donors are bred and raised in schools, where they are prepared for a short, perfunctory shadow of a normal life and an inevitably protracted and grisly death. This process is shown through the eyes of Kathy (Carey Mulligan, on fire as usual), a donor whose love for Tommy (Andrew Garfield: even better here than in Social Network) is thwarted by the machinations of Ruth (Keira Knightley), a betrayal which Kathy stoically endures for several years before their unavoidable fate brings them back together for a reckoning.
Writing it out like that makes it seem as if the movie is a melodramatic and emotional rollercoaster, but Romanek – whose first movie, way back in the 80s, was the similarly clinical Static – has been given the unenviable task of dramatising the tale of three people whose emotional spectrum is compromised to the point of frigidity, and whose range of action is necessarily restricted. A snap decision by Kathy midway through the movie to become a “carer” is possibly the only action in the movie that passes for agency: even Tommy’s insistence that he can convince his former teachers of the existence of his soul through the use of art is presented as an almost indifferent act, though this could be a side-effect of the demands placed on the actors.
Dissecting the movie afterwards shines a light on Romanek and Garland’s choices, and it’s apparent that the mysterious nature of the donors is intentional. There is no explanation of the logistical and medical processes behind the programme (are they clones or test tube babies?), and as we experience this alternate world through the eyes of three people whose knowledge of their predicament is incomplete it makes sense to keep us in the dark as well. Nevertheless, if we’re meant to empathise with these people, it doesn’t help that the audience has to expend so much energy attempting to ignore all of the questions thrown up by the scenario. One particularly egregious act change happens abruptly, with the events of the next few years – events that radically change the relationships of the three “protagonists” – are brushed away with a quick burst of expositionary voiceover. Choices like that make the movie so slippery it’s hard to hold on to it, or to connect.
As time has passed since seeing it, I’ve come to appreciate many of the narrative decisions made here, while being resigned to not really caring about the finished product much. I wish I’d read Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel just to know how many of Romanek and Garland’s choices were out of loyalty to the author or were experiments that went awry. There’s so much to commend about the movie, especially the breath-taking performances from Andrew Garfield and Carey Mulligan, both of whom are good enough that I will happily recommend the movie just for them alone. It’s thought-provoking, beautifully shot and sensitively scored, but in dramatising the emptiness of these “people” and leaving out so much backstory, the experience rings frustratingly hollow. It really doesn’t help that after two hours of commendably/annoyingly spare storytelling, the final scene of the film features a little voiceover speech that explicitly spells out one of the major themes of the movie. Imagine if The Godfather ended with a voiceover from Michael Corleone saying, “As the door shut on my wife Kay, it occurred to me that the terrible choices I had made and the events that led to me becoming the head of a crime family have estranged me from the woman I loved and corrupted my soul.” It’s that bad.
The single strongest emotion I experienced while watching it was horrible futile anger at the society that had created these people and asked them to live an empty life before being butchered for the sake of others, especially as the donors accept their fate with such glum resignation. As others have commented, this makes the story a companion to Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, in which James Stevens refuses to leave the societal box he was born into even though this prevents him from finding true happiness. Britons certainly love their immobile class strata, or rather Britons resent it terribly but don’t seem to have a problem watching people “beneath” them trapped in their amber of their upbringing. On that level Never Let Me Go is almost a success: it pushed that class-conscious button in my soul about as hard as it ever has, and American director Romanek deserves recognition for capturing the frozen nature of British society — and the miserable country-wide decision to treat it as an immutable fact — so well.
Regrettably, the necessary narrative gap that keeps us from understanding the true predicament of the protagonists also makes it hard to equate with them. Are they accepting of their fate because of some hardwired conditioning? Because they have been taught to be this way? Is there something missing from their chemistry as a result of the process that created them? How much of this story is directly related to the ways in which societal strata are enforced by the education and culture in the real world? If it’s a biological amendment to people who would have developed to be humans with agency, is this an allegory for something else? The technical details of this world shouldn’t really matter, and I’m not so anal that I can’t make a few leaps of assumption, but knowing the exact purpose of the movie is inevitably stymied by the vagueness of the rules.
That means Never Let Me Go succeeds at least partially as brain food, but the sad side-effect is that it’s even harder to make an emotional connection with the often affectless characters. I can praise it as a satire on the British class system (scenes depicting working class people so overwhelmed with pity that they are unable to even look at the donors are probably the only ones that stayed with me when the movie ended), and maybe even fondly consider it some form of weirdly clinical agit-prop designed to subconsciously drive the viewer into a rebellion against the prison of their social standing, but no matter how hard I try I can’t see it as a tragic love story or fable about the fleeting nature of life itself, despite the considerable efforts of the main actors and the focus of much of the narrative. It’s a movie to admire rather than feel, though the sound of sniffing in the auditorium suggests I may be alone on this one. Is it wrong that I wanted to watch Michael Bay’s The Island as soon as I left the screening? (Please don’t answer that one.)
Strangely, the cold tone of Joanna Hogg’s Archipelago didn’t bother me at all, but then the suppressed emotional charge of her movie wasn’t at odds with the theme, as with Romanek’s film. Her second movie (the first, Unrelated, came and went so fast it only left two or three positive reviews in its wake) depicts a family getaway to the isle of Tresco that goes awry. Actually, that is probably the wrong way of looking at it. This family, comprising Edward (Tom Hiddlestone, soon to be Loki in Branagh’s Thor), Cynthia (the wonderfully unpleasant Lydia Leonard), their mother Patricia (Kate Fahy), and their absent father, is already horribly broken at the start of the holiday, and over the course of the movie they pretty much just decide to stop pretending that everything is all right. It’s the slowest of slow burns: almost nothing happens for the running time, but those little chinks in their armour, those very British stiff-upper-lip pretences, are revealed in mesmerising detail, all while the incredible scenery is battered by metaphorical tumult.
It should be exactly the sort of thing that repels me, but Hogg’s control of tone and pace is impressive, and her ability to draw convincing and naturalistic dialogue and performances from her actors is second-to-none: how gratifying to see someone picking at upper-middle-class mores and concerns with such respect and restraint, while critics are compelled to mistakenly gush praise at Mike “Snide” Leigh and his reliance on caricature and mockery. Hogg is perfectly happy dragging scenes out to almost unendurable length, the uncomfortable silences stretching out to the point that I almost ran out of the cinema to avoid them (my inability to handle such uncomfortable moments is most horribly displayed in my eagerness to ask questions at film festival Q&As. When no one seemed to want to ask Shirley Henderson a question after the screening of Meek’s Cutoff I almost rugby-tackled the guy with the microphone just to end that excruciating moment).
Just to make Archipelago even more British, Hogg adds two extra characters: a pretentious painter (the oleaginous Christopher Baker) who hovers around Patricia as her loneliness grows, while giving amusingly vague advice to Edward, and Rose (Amy Lloyd), the cook who accompanies them all, attracting the listless romantic attentions of Edward and some withering class-borne disdain from Cynthia. It’s arguable that both of them are there as temptations for Patricia and Edward, but Rose’s most important role is as counter-point to the silly concerns of the family. While they squabble about Edward’s decision to take a gap year break in Africa to battle AIDS, and pine for their absent and uncaring father, Rose is forced to travel to Tresco from far away in search of employment, and is still mourning the unexpected death of her father.
Not that anyone cares: even Edward is only interested in her as a distraction from his worries. At least he’s civil to her: Cynthia really shines in the moments when she interacts with Rose, treating her as the help, a viewpoint that initially seems uncaring and mean but eventually presents itself as arguably correct. As with Never Let Me Go, the proles know their place and accept it. Social mobility is fine as something to aspire to, but in the moment, it’s best to ignore it. Cynthia and Patricia’s treatment of Rose is cruel, but it rings with uncomfortable truth. Of course, that’s not to say that Cynthia is in the right: she spends much of the film sucking the joy out of rooms in much the same way as Anne Hathaway’s Kym from Rachel Getting Married. The best scene in the movie sees the five characters visiting a local restaurant for a mid-afternoon meal, during which Cynthia’s behaviour tips over into obnoxious tyranny, her impatience with the trip and her companions mutating into boorish behaviour. Hogg is only ever going to give us hints as to why she is behaving the way she does, but it’s enough to realise she is suppressing terrible emotional pain and acting out like a spoiled brat. The British audience visibly shrank and moaned throughout: I chewed my knuckles in anxious horror.
As Daisyhellcakes pointed out afterwards, the whole movie plays out like the Eddie Izzard routine about British movies (the first minute of this clip), but it is also genuinely insightful. As with Never Let Me Go there is no real emotional connection to be had with the characters: they’re all quite ridiculous, and we never really get to experience their emotional state in a raw way. It’s telling that both movies hide the few scenes of emotional expression: Tommy’s howl of agony is almost drowned out by the diagetic and non-diagetic soundtrack, and the outbursts of Patricia and Cynthia in Archipelago occur off-screen and are recorded by mics that reduce their words to barely recognisable gibberish. We’re British, you see. We don’t do that kind of thing. What makes Archipelago a success is that it holds its focus on this gap between inner and outer life, never needing to rely on a voiceover a la Never Let Me Go to reveal the desires of its characters. Those desires are unimportant: it’s their suppression that is key. Hogg’s skill at skewering that conflict in the British psyche is admirable: let’s hope she soon gets the following she rightly deserves.
Both movies captured the dreadful emotional stasis caused when you know your place and feel you have no choice to accept it, though neither of them were interested in expressing the pain one feels at this situation in anything other than an oblique way. Not so Takashi Miike’s mind-boggling 13 Assassins, which would’ve been my favourite movie at the festival if I hadn’t had my brain stabbed to happy death by Black Swan. Nevertheless it was a close call: Miike’s incredible achievement is essential viewing for anyone who has ever enjoyed an action movie, mostly because it isn’t a winking joke. It could have been the samurai version of Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead (no disrespect to that balls-out classic), but thankfully we get a serious-minded tale of the end of an era, as the feudal system of 19th Century Japan leads to ossification, corruption and madness.
The rigid laws – both implicit and explicit – of the Shogunate system have allowed an intolerable situation to develop: the utterly demented Lord Narigatsu Matsudaira (Gorô Inagaki) is terrorising the land and considering bringing war back to peaceful Japan. His actions — which include using a family as target practice, and the brutal maiming of a woman he then turns into a slave for his amusement — are truly deplorable, but his relation to the Shogun means no one can directly act against him without bringing great shame upon themselves. All that is left is futile gesture: the movie begins with one court member committing seppuku in protest. It’s an act of dishonour that forces his compatriots to hatch a plan: to convince one honorable man to bear that dishonour, and find a way to stop the evil lord.
Shinzaemon Shimada (a thrilling performance from Kôji Yakusho) is a lower-tier samurai, deemed expendable by those in power, but shrewd enough to grasp that while his act will be a suicidal one, it will be honorable in a way that is not formally recognised by Japanese society. Courtiers and heads of important families take turns attempting to persuade Shinzaemon to betray his loyalty to the Shogun by revealing Narigatsu’s evil deeds, his murder and rape and disfigurement of those around him, actions borne of madness and boredom. Disgusted to the point of fury, Shinzaemon forms a group of samurai and ronin who understand the importance of the insurrection, and a trap is created to dispose of Narigatsu. The main obstacle in his plan is the Lord’s protector, Hanbei Kitou (Masachika Ichimura), a former friend of our hero who is more wedded to the concept of respect for the Shogun, to the point that he is willing to defend the odious lord even at the cost of his life.
That’s the first hour of the movie: a stately and reflective series of negotiations that get to the heart of this society and the contradictions therein. The order of the Shogunate system is strong enough to bring about a period of peace in Japan, but so rigid that there is no way to correct difficulties without dooming oneself. Shinzaemon and his band of warriors are willing to break that rule of law, but the cost might not just be their lives: the samurai code could die with them, bringing about the end of the tradition, and the collapse of Japan’s feudal system. Another hour depicting that quandary would have been amazing too: Miike does an incredible job of exploring the nature of this ideological conflict. Nevertheless, what follows is on another level altogether: a 45-minute sequence set in a town that has been transformed into a deadly trap, as Shinzaemon and his 12 assassins face off against over 200 enemies in a protracted battle that is staged with the precision of a master and the energy of a maniac. Miike truly delivers, and then some.
Livestock burns, buildings and people explode, a river runs red with blood, and mutilated bodies pile up, while the battle progresses from orderly precision to chaotic skirmish through to madness. The final moments of the battle are terrifying, with characters succumbing to exhaustion and insanity before the final showdown between the best of the old order and the corrupted offspring that jeopardises everything. It’s a bravura setpiece the likes of which I’ve never seen: an attempt to find the original version by Eiichi Kudo has failed, and so I have no idea how long the final battle in that lasts. Here it is lengthy, but paced so the ebb and flow of action feels like structure. It’s a movie in itself, almost, and left me reeling in my seat and suppressing the urge to cheer throughout — one powerful moment that shows Shinzaemon unfurling a scroll nearly made my brain combust with joy (you’ll understand when you see it). For that, and for numerous other ridiculously exciting moments, 13 Assassins is officially the Acme of Badass Cinema.
The only problem I have with it is a choice in the final moments of the film, which I won’t spoil here. I’m not really sure what Miike was trying to do with the last conversation, other than to note the passing of the feudal era and the Way of the Samurai, but his method of doing so was out of odds with every other perfectly-judged choice. Still, it’s not enough to ruin what is a remarkable achievement. It is truly the thinking person’s action movie, a flawlessly constructed band-of-warriors movie that rightly crushes Stallone’s incoherent and lazy Expendables into the dirt, and stands as the best samurai film since Yôji Yamada’s The Twilight Samurai. Whenever it comes out near you, do everything you can to ensure you see it.
The Top One Hundred and Six Movies of the Oughts (106-91)
Longtime readers will know that I’m a fiend for lists the way Sonny Crockett is a fiend for mojitos. Don’t believe me? Check out this blurry video:
My Best of 2009 movie list has been percolating for a while now, with only a few contenders for best or worst film to come before I shut things down at the end of December (oh yes, I won’t stop watching until I’m sure I have it right). Meanwhile, even though I’m uncomfortable with the idea of this decade being 1999-2009, I’ve been pondering my own best of the decade list. This should be something to be excited about, and yet until last week I just couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for it. When I search my soul I come to the uncomfortable but inescapable conclusion that it’s because any list I would come up with would both be horribly incomplete and would betray my populist taste. What makes me more uncomfortable than that is realising that such an admission makes me uncomfortable at all.
Any list I could make for this decade is already off to a bad start when I admit that I’ve yet to see many of the best reviewed and most beloved movies of recent times. The gaps in my viewing history include Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return, and anything by Wong Kar Wai, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, or the Dardennes. I’ve also only seen a couple of (terrific) movies by Claire Denis and a single, memorable one by Michael Haneke. Some film buff I am. This short list is merely the tip of the iceberg. According to this list, I might as well not consider myself a film lover at all, as I’m not looking for movie excellence in the right places (though the entire list is invalidated by the praise for Woody Allen’s technically disastrous and intellectually vapid Cassandra’s Dream: surely one of the ten worst films of the decade).
All of that shame over my taste is wrapped up in feelings of mortification over class and intellectualism and authenticity and so many other things. I know that none of it is important but the expression of some kind of discernment in my opinion helps to legitimise my amateur film criticism, something I take very seriously even when I talk about things that readers might consider beneath contempt (my defence of Michael Bay, for instance, or my enthusiasm for The Dark Knight). Therefore it scares me to openly admit that I’m a sucker for a well-choreographed action scene with some pretty explosions included. No one wants to admit to enjoying those movies without losing their credibility, so why should I be the one to stick my neck out?
Maybe it’s time to get over those silly fears and say it loud: I’m a fan of populist cinema. Yes, I can appreciate works of cinematic art on many levels, though perhaps I might have greater difficulty expressing that appreciation or placing those works in context with works by other artists. However, when I talk about how much I love Joel Silver movies of the 80s and 90s, or Bruckheimer’s output in the late 90s to the current day, I’m on firmer ground. Perhaps this is why Shades of Caruso concentrates on those movies: it’s safer to talk about the joy I get from seeing a movie by the Wachowski Siblings than it is to attempt to unpick the works of Abbas Kiarostami. Any list I would make for the past decade would skew heavily towards populist movies, partially because most of the movies I’ve seen were major releases by Western writers and directors, but also because these are the movies that speak directly to me.
It was upon staring at that shame, and the shame I feel for having that shame, that I said bollocks to it and compiled this list. I hereby reject that shame, expel it from my soul, and embrace the movies that filled my soul with joy or heart-ache. The construction of this list is helped by the clear cut-off point in my past: 1999 was the year I moved out of my hometown for the second time and headed to London, where I found enough time and opportunity to attend more movies. As a result my enthusiasm increased, until I had no choice but to start a blog to use as a pressure valve for this energy. I’ve seen hundreds of movies in that time, and so I expect this list to be incomplete and filled with egregious misses, plus some movies have been missed off (Pan’s Labyrinth) or put low on the list (No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood) because I’ve only seen them once. I’ll need to revisit them with a clear head, free of hype, to do them justice.
One more caveat: I’ve not included films from this year. I know, this seems to make the whole process pointless, but I like to have at least a little gap between seeing a movie and putting it in a list this big. The End-Of-Year lists are made with the proviso that I understand how my opinion will change over time, and watching films right up until Dec 31st means I will be cramming in movies even though my opinion of them has yet to settle. Who knows whether time will be kind to these movies or not. I’ve certainly been surprised with how some movies I initially loved have dropped out of my favour, and others that I enjoyed well enough on first viewing are not breaking into the top fifty. For the record, at least three from my forthcoming 2009 list would definitely qualify for inclusion here, but I don’t want to add them now as the year has yet to finish, and I’m hoping two or three more will qualify. Perhaps when I’ve finished compiling my 2009 lists, I will write an addendum explaining where they would go in this list.
And so, here is the first part of my list of the best 106 movies of the period 1999-2008. Why 106? Because I just couldn’t leave the last six movies off without writing a little bit about them, as I enjoyed them greatly and felt they would never in a million years get any list love otherwise. As this post has already run on, I’ll only list the first 16 here, and the next 90 films will be revealed as the week progresses. Yes yes, there are simpler ways of doing this, but anyone who knows me will understand that when there is an easy way and a hard way to do anything, I will ignore both and then do something completely self-indulgent that makes a mockery of my original goal. Just play along. I’ve kept my explanations for why I love these movies as short as I can. I hope I’ve lauded a secret favourite of yours, dear reader, one that has been snubbed by every critic in the land.
Honorary Bad Movie Inclusion — The Room
It is quite simply the worst movie ever made, but its rewatch value, its quotability, and the fearless depiction of the dreadful inner life of its emotionally immature writer and director make it almost infinitely fascinating. Its inclusion here is no reflection of its quality, but of the hold it has over anyone who watches it. It’s a true curio.
106. Avalon
After leaving a screening of Avalon, my viewing companion commented that there is good boring and bad boring, and this was a perfect example of the former. Starkly beautiful and glacially paced, Mamoru Oshii’s ode to the power of gaming predicts a future where our desire to transcend our mundane world will drive us to abandon it.
105. Kung Fu Hustle
What made me love Stephen Chow’s madcap martial arts comedy wasn’t the expertly choreographed actions scenes, great though they were. Neither was it the broad humour, though I enjoyed that too. The best thing about it was how the wacky tone morphed into effective dramatic energy. At first you laugh at the caricatures, but by the final act you fear for their safety.
104. The Mothman Prophecies
Poorly marketed as a bog-standard X-Files-esque alien abduction flick, this dread-soaked thriller is more interested in dramatising our insignificance in the face of supernatural forces that move us around like game pieces. Strong performances and meticulous direction from Mark Pellington help to ground the potentially silly project.
103. Moulin Rouge
At his worst, Baz Luhrmann is a vulgar artiste who has zero impulse control, but when his approach works, it can wrench your heart open. This fearlessly sincere musical is the most successful example of the Luhrman effect. Though many have resisted its garish onslaught, my cynicism melted twenty minutes in and stayed that way.
102. The Rundown (aka Welcome To The Jungle)
What should have been the gateway drug to the paradise that is Loving The Rock instead faltered at the box office, but who cares? For its sheer exuberance and demented asides — not to mention a totally hatstand performance by Christopher Walken — this Midnight Sprint shall be remembered and adored.
101. Solaris
Though Steven Soderbergh’s adaptation of Stanislav Lem’s SF classic fails to capture the essence of that novel (as does the previous version by Andrei Tarkovsky), the result explores equally interesting philosophical questions. Clooney excels as a bereaved astronaut forced to confront living memories of his dead wife, a celestial manifestation distorted by his yearning and twisted perceptions of reality.
100. Mushishi
Katsuhiro Otomo’s live-action adaptation of Yuki Urushibara’s manga is a curious beast. Though overlong, the tale of Mushi master Ginko’s journey through a polluted and hostile pastoral land is a feast for the eyes. The gloomy atmospherics and cascade of ideas more than make up for any flaws.
99. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Kevin Smith’s low-budget comedies often fail to fly thanks to their self-imposed parochial restrictions. His ambitious and controversial religious satire Dogma was an improvement upon those early movies but this self-lacerating road-movie was the one that really worked, and well enough to finally make me appreciate his scatological shtick.
98. I Heart Huckabees
It achieved an awful notoriety as the movie where director David O. Russell lost his mind on set and bollocked Lily Tomlin, but I Heart Huckabees was also a disorienting blend of philosophy and Dada-esque nonsense, often incomprehensible but almost always entertaining. However, unlike many chaotic cult movies (ahem, Richard Kelly), this actually made sense if you unfocused your brain while watching.
97. Shanghai Knights
Shanghai Noon was fun, and the pairing of Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson was more successful than the tiresome team-up of Chan and Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour movies. The London-set sequel was a massive improvement, mostly because helmer David Dobkin was the only US director who seemed willing to spend time with Chan to create fights almost as complex and funny as his classic Hong Kong work.
96. Michael Clayton
Clooney again in full force, this time as a corporate fixer who gets messed around once too often. What could have been a rote corporate thriller instead becomes a fascinating character study, one where terrible decisions are made in good faith, and good decisions happen for the wrong reasons. It also propelled Tilda Swinton into stardom: for this I am eternally grateful.
95. Mulholland Drive
Is it poor form to admit that upon first viewing I didn’t understand anything about David Lynch’s tinsel-town nightmare? All that I knew was that the final scene was almost unwatchably terrifying. Days later, the mood of dread still lingered. That residual horror — and Naomi Watts’ excellent star-making performance — is enough to justify inclusion on this list.
94. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Easy to forget how big an impact this movie had on first release. Even though the final installment of the trilogy ripped all of the fun from the franchise, the first is still a near-perfect swashbuckler. The first appearance of Captain Jack Sparrow is a contender for Best Entrance of the Decade.
93. The Prestige
Initially the blatantly obvious “twist” at the end of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation soured an experience that had been extremely pleasurable. Upon repeated viewings, it becomes apparent that the Transported Man trick is not the point of the movie. Instead, Nolan is more interested in painting a picture of a man driven to unthinkable acts because of his thirst for revenge. Compared to dreadful fallout of that psychological damage, magic is nothing.
92. The Chronicles of Riddick
Many choose to focus on the flaws and hubris of David Twohy’s Space-Conan-meets-Lord-of-the-Rings hybrid, but that occasionally inspired vision – and that amazing twist ending — are enough to justify the entire ambitious, galaxy-hopping project. Another film where the cult grows every year, with the prospect of a continuation of the saga now tantalisingly close.
91. eXistenZ
Arriving between the reality-warping brain food of Alex Proyas’ Dark City and The Wachowski’s Matrix, Cronenberg’s only self-scripted film of the decade was greeted with an initial burst of excitement and then seemed to be forgotten. A shame. It’s his most playful movie since Naked Lunch, skipping gleefully between levels of reality and throwing in traditionally unpleasant body horror with abandon.
Okay, that’s enough for now. Keep checking back to see more updates as the week progresses.
The Last Action Rodent
Shades of Caruso makes no bones about its enjoyment of truly bad movies, and our search for the right kind of cinematic dreck means we watch a lot of movies that are dismissed by critics. This approach has pros and cons. While something that feels like it was made in a kind of mass delirium (e.g. Obsessed, My Sister’s Keeper) can be a real source of pleasure, films that are merely formulaic and boring (e.g. Bangkok Dangerous, The Boat That Rocked) can really defeat us. Nevertheless, while our hunt for something terrible is a pretty cynical way of watching films, there is another reason to do it. Critics watch even more films than we do, and as a kind of cerebral shortcut will make assumptions about movies — especially genre movies — before seeing them.
I’ll happily give any genre movie a chance, hoping to stumble upon something that has been dismissed en masse which contains some purpose or highlight that has been overlooked. Occasionally, we watch a movie that got shortshrift for hiding a greater ambition under generic trappings, and this makes the effort of watching the chaff of cinema worthwhile. That said, though I’m obviously some kind of wonderful saint for doing this, it’s easy to aim my anger at critics who treat childrens’ movies with this kind of frustrated huffing and puffing, as I don’t have to put up with the same amount of cynical, poorly thought-through tripe that clogs multiplexes during holidays. It’s all well and good going to see Pixar movies or my beloved Speed Racer, but what about the rest?
In the interest of fairness, I recently subjected myself to Dragonball Evolution, the caucasian-ised live-action version of Akira Toriyama’s manga. Directed by James Wong of X-Files fame, it tells the hackneyed tale of a nerd boy with a secret past and no parents trying to find a series of MacGuffins before they are claimed by a poorly sketched bad guy who will use the MacGuffins to destroy the world or enslave it or maybe both depending on who is re-telling the expositional bits about evil magicians and aliens and monsters and dragons etc. Much as I try to give every film a fair shake, and will admit that even really terrible movies have some redeeming qualities, when something is lazy and pointless, I’ll grant that. Dragonball Evolution certainly qualifies as the biggest waste of time I’ve subjected myself to in a long while, and even managed to make me temporarily not like Chow Yun Fat. Unacceptable!
Any critic who had just had to see that feeble collection of cliches and cheap effects would have been forgiven for groaning at the thought of an incredibly expensive and aggressively marketed spy movie aimed at kids. Hoyt Yeatman’s guinea-pig spy action epic G-Force has several strikes against it immediately. It’s a kid’s movie not made by Pixar. It has a premise — intelligent guinea pigs working as spies against an evil corporation — that sounds unworkable. It has a starry cast, which is often a way of adding clout to a movie that might otherwise be some cookie-cutter money-making exercise. It’s full of CGI. It’s the sort of movie that’s built to create a line of merchandising to further bankrupt parents everywhere. The trailer is full of awful jokes and crashing explosions. Nic Cage is in it and the received wisdom, lazily trotted out by people who don’t have the time to inspect this claim, is that he’s crap nowadays. What could be more unappealing than this?
Worst of all, it’s produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who — in the eyes of much of the critical community — is the enemy of good taste and art, a galumphing unsubtle populist who doesn’t care about educating audiences or giving them breathing space between hectic, orange-tinted action scenes. His movies cost millions and make billions, and that lowest-common denominator approach to filmmaking has debased our culture to such an extent that no one learns anything any more. Bruckheimer is a name now automatically attached to any discussion about the soul-deadening dreadfulness of contemporary commercial filmmaking, a one-man blame-magnet. While Michael Bay destroys the art of direction, Bruckheimer destroys the possibility of thought-provoking adult cinema with his roller-coaster ride ethos and relentless tide of tightly plotted fireworks displays. Never forget, he once made a movie based on a theme park ride.
Of course, it’s best we forget that the theme park movie — Pirates of The Caribbean — was enormously entertaining and not to mention made with real skill and love of the swashbuckling movies of old. It’s also best to forget that while it’s undeniable that a lot of Bruckheimer movies are not that great, he has also been responsible for the first Beverly Hills Cop — a pacy comedy-thriller that still holds up well — as well as the excellent Fail-Safe-esque Crimson Tide, prescient surveillance thriller Enemy of the State, and the endearing bombast of The Rock. The ratio of bad movies to good is probably not something I should think about too hard while constructing an argument for his movies, but even though he has delivered some awful, lazy movies, he has also given us some gems. These are never considered when rushing to denounce him as the worst thing to ever happen to popular cinema.
Of his previous movies Con Air might well be my favourite, though this is treated like the absolute bottom of the barrel by many. Those who do praise it usually refer to it as a guilty pleasure movie, “so bad it’s kinda good”. Those who hate it consider it especially tasteless and garish, the dumbest film Bruckheimer has produced. Perhaps it deserves a slot beside Starship Troopers as a satire that many people didn’t get, though Troopers had a higher aspiration than Simon West and Scott Rosenberg’s action comedy. It’s plainly obvious that the movie is making fun of action movie memes and expectations, with a cast of supervillains standing between our whiter-than-white hero (Cameron Poe, played by a hilarious Nicolas Cage) and a reunion with the daughter he has never met.
Very nearly every scene is played for broad laughs, with a nice compliment of sly gags running in the background. It makes fun of movies that fetishise serial killers — Steve Buscemi’s character is awful, but not much worse than the widely-adored Hannibal Lecter — not to mention the moral equivalence of good and bad. For instance, Poe might be a hero, but he’s also a killer himself, as are many “heroes” in action movies. We also get to see an action-liberal (as Bruckheimer is a Republican, it’s amusing to see a sandal-wearing pencil-pusher saving the day several times), and one of the most extreme and hilariously protracted “Bad-Guy-Deaths” ever, as John Malkovich’s Cyrus Grissom is stabbed, thrown through a building, electrocuted, and then has his head crushed. This play on the delightfully ghoulish tradition in action movies to have the villain killed in outrageous fashion might be my favourite moment in all of Bruckheimer’s movies.
This interest in picking apart the conventions of his own movies is similar to that shown by 90s action producer Joel Silver, whose movies were so formulaic he could afford to make fun of that template three times over. The Last Action Hero is exactly the kind of genre deconstruction Shane Black does better than anyone, and the movie managed to pull of the difficult trick of showing its plot machinery while still working as an exciting and hilarious crowd-pleaser. Demolition Man had as much fun playing with action movie tropes as it did with the idea of a joyless politically-correct world gone mad.
More notoriously, Hudson Hawk set those conventions in a deeply absurd world that paid homage to 60s spoofery (e.g. The Pink Panther, the Flint movies) as well as Silver’s actioners. Both movies suffered the same fate as Con Air, their satire missed or ignored by audiences and critics alike. Making fun of these solid conventions is a tough trick to pull off. Trey Parker and Matt Stone had to use puppets to make sure the comedic point of Team America: World Police wasn’t missed.
To this list of action satires can be added G-Force. Though it’s not as successful at making fun of the stable it comes from as the other movies mentioned above, it is still silly and self-lacerating enough to stand alongside them. The film opens with a team of secret agents infiltrating the home of Leonard Saber (Bill Nighy, excellent as usual), the shady owner of electronics and appliances firm Saberling Industries (is this a nod to director Brad Silberling? And if so, why?). Though the mission is successful, their mentor — FBI scientist Ben (a subdued Zach Galafianakis) – has operated without authorisation from the supervisor he is trying to impress (Will Arnett, not given enough to do), and the team is disbanded. Separated from Ben, team leader Darwin (Hott Sam Rockwell) rallies his colleagues and tries to prove the nefariousness of Saber while eluding Arnett’s agent goons, who seek to capture the team to use in experiments.
Bit harsh, but then the team is made up of guinea-pigs (and Nicholas Cage’s mole computer expert Speckles). As you can imagine, a lot of the comedy in the movie comes from the sight of well-animated guinea-pigs wise-cracking and getting into various scrapes involving grappling hooks, skateboards and motorised exercise balls. There are also almost unbearable wisecracks and cultural catchphrases quoted at depressing length as in the worst kind of sub-par cheap-skate animation: if there is anything that made my enjoyment of the movie drop to worrying depths, it was the stream of unfunny puns from Blaster (Tracy Morgan).
The movie is at is funniest when it plays things as straight as possible, with the team of tiny mammals acting like stereotypical covert spies and computer experts, spewing tech-speak as if they were action movie archetypes. Such straight-faced chatter is overused in modern movies and usually bears only a passing resemblance to real life: many of my favourite moments in 24 come from hearing CTU computer experts panicking over opening sockets and tasking satellites. Nevertheless, we take it for granted that this is how these people speak, until these words come out of the mouths of CGI guinea-pigs. Re-contextualised, the absurdity of these action movies — and the oeuvre of Bruckheimer — is exposed to the light of scrutiny.
Better than that is the flirty sparring between Darwin, Blaster, and female guinea pig Juarez (Penélope Cruz). Not only does she rebel against a young girl’s attempts to feminise her with dresses and make-up (a refreshing change to see a female character unsoftened by this kind of brainwashing), she also plays both men off each other in order to win their affection on her terms. It genuinely sounds like a romantic sub-plot from another movie drafted in without alteration. The effect is discombobulating.
I wasn’t the only person delighted by this playfulness. The Guardian’s David Cox (the only critic working on that paper who seemed to understand what Tarantino was trying to do with Inglourious Basterds) wrote an excellent piece about G-Force‘s satirical bent, while pretty much every other critic waved it away with a bleat about how it was mere summer-movie kids fodder with not a thought in its mind. Tasha Robinson of the AV Club stated:
Pointing out G-Force’s plot holes would be redundant; it’s more hole than plot, and more videogame commercial and exhausted-old-trope clearinghouse than film. Events follow each other with a sublime disregard for coherence or story continuity.
Thus missing the point. Her comments about the plot are especially aggravating as screenwriters Cormac and Marianne Wibberley have done a good job of emulating the tried-and-true action plots of recent times, and from where I was sitting it seemed watertight.
Even more surprising was the considerable emotional charge therein. While I was less invested in the sub-plot involving team leader Darwin and his brother Hurley (Jon Favreau), the final act revelations about the villain and the true reason for his evil plotting is unexpectedly powerful. Though even I would baulk at claiming the movie is some kind of classic, or even one of the year’s best, I cannot lie about the effect the final fifteen minutes had on me. In those moments what had been a fun diversion with a cunning sense of its own absurdity became a real dramatic triumph, helped by first-time director Yeatman’s nifty handling of the final act action scenes. The sight of an enormous robot rising out of Bill Nighy’s estate and raining space debris down on FBI officers is an image I won’t be forgetting any time soon.
I strongly feel a little gem has been ignored in the rush to damn a movie for wasting the time of critics who would much rather be watching L’Avventura. Bruckheimer is man enough to know that the product he churns out has a formula. Here he has given Yeatman and the Wibberleys permission to have fun with that template, and we’re all the better for it. Even the seemingly lazy witticisms could be seen to be digs at the usual macho catchphrases of action heroes, though I’ll admit they truly do test the patience.
Nevertheless, even if that is a satirical dig too far, the voicework is spirited enough to dispel the audience’s annoyance. I’m tempted to say this is worth renting just to listen to an almost unrecognisable Nicolas Cage, channeling his Charlie Bodell voice. His work is almost solely responsible for G-Force‘s most satisfying moments and, along with his turn in Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, signals a real return to form. For that, and for exceeding my expectations so completely, I shall seek to defend G-Force from lazy criticism from now until someone comes up with an equation proving me wrong.
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Shades of Caruso Mini-Blog- Listmania ’11! The Best Movies Of The Year December 31, 2011
