The 88th Annual Academy Awards: Who Will Win, Who Should Win (Part Two)

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2015 Academy Awards, 88th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Awards, award shows, Oscar nominee, Oscars

And now: the final part of my Oscar predictions, as we approach the kick-off to the big event.

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Best Animated Short

Bear Story

Prologue

Sanjay’s Super Team

We Can’t Live Without Cosmos

World of Tomorrow

What Should Win: World of Tomorrow/Sanjay’s Super Team

What Will Win: Sanjay’s Super Team

Right up until I actually saw Sanjay’s Super Team, this seemed like another one of those grudging “can’t stop it” categories. After all, Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow is the obvious winner, a smart, moving and powerful examination on the basics of humanity that says more in its 15 minutes than most films say in two hours. Bear Story was an amazing, intricately made expose on the subtler evils of fascism, while We Can’t Live Without Cosmos was a bittersweet look at friendship, set around the trappings of the Russian space program: both were good but, compared to World of Tomorrow, just didn’t have the big vision and reach. Prologue? Way too strange and head-scratching, despite some amazing visuals. I figured that Sanjay’s Super Team would win simply for being the resident Pixar offering: combined with its superhero focus, that seemed unbeatable. And then I actually watched it. Let’s be clear: World of Tomorrow is a phenomenal piece of art, deep, moving and important. Sanjay’s Super Team is, likewise, a deeply moving bit of art with the added benefit of a visual style that, for lack of a better word, is next-level. The short will win and it will absolutely deserve it, despite a lot of very worthy competition.

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Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Mad Max: Fury Road

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared

The Revenant

What Should Win: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared

What Will Win: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared

Up until I actually watched The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared, I was fully prepared to give this to Mad Max, part and parcel. The Revenant was truly impressive (that bungled scalping…shiver…) but, like the rest of the visual effects, a little to organic to really stand out. Mad Max, on the other hand, was a virtual cornucopia of varied makeup, a cast of thousands with a thousand different looks, style sand quirks to go with it. Case closed.

Not quite. Turns out that not only is The 100-Year-Old Man Who…one of the best, most original and flat-out funniest films of 2015 (maybe the best: I have some serious re-evaluating to do), the makeup effects are equally impressive. Just the aging makeup of the lead character, alone, puts this over the top (the actor is in his mid-40s, in real-life, yet realistically ages from his twenties through to hundred across the span of two hours). Add in all of the really great historical figure impersonations (the Stalin, Bush and Reagan ones are spot-on) and you have a nominee that upholds excellence in every measure of the category. For me, this is an absolute no-brainer.

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Best Original Screenplay

Bridge of Spies

Ex Machina

Inside Out

Spotlight

Straight Outta Compton

What Should Win: Ex Machina

What Will Win: Inside Out

Caveat: I never got around to Spotlight, so if that was the best script, I defer to more knowledgeable souls. Of the remaining four, it’s a bit of a shoving match. To not put to fine a point on it, Straight Outta Compton had a terrible script, one of the most tone-deaf, obvious and awkward of the entire year. The film might have had its share of problems but the script was absolutely at the top of the list. Bridge of Spies was a consistently twisty, thorny screenplay, yet wasn’t always as clear as it could’ve been: perhaps one needed a scorecard to tell the players during the event but one shouldn’t need the same for a fictional cinematic adaptation. Inside Out has a really smart, sensitive and mature script, with a profound insight into not only childhood but depression, mania and other mental conditions. This seems like a lock and I wouldn’t complain in the slightest.

For my money, though, Ex Machina had the best, most subtle and most intriguing script of the bunch. The ideas were less conventional than the others, the dialogue was smart and the big questions that were raised had a genuine sense of impact and importance. Perhaps it speaks more to my particular sensibilities but this was the film that I found myself returning to the most (of the nominees) and I credit that in no small part to the excellent screenplay.

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Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, The Big Short

Tom Hardy, The Revenant

Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Who Should Win: Tom Hardy, The Revenant

Who Will Win: Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Since I only saw two nominees here, my opinion probably won’t carry much weight. Of the performances I saw, Hardy did a phenomenal job portraying a true cretin with just enough self-doubt to prevent him from becoming a sub-human monster, while Rylance subtly portrayed a wry, unflappable spy with a charming mixture of understated humor, stoicism and grim acceptance. I lean towards Hardy, here, although either one seem equally worthy.

In the grand scheme, however, is anyone really going to beat Sly here? Not only does his return performance as Rocky tick off pretty every box on the Academy’s “What We Like” list, it also “corrects” the error of never awarding him a trophy for his initial go-round with the character. They’ll see it as proper and that’s probably as good a reason as any.

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Best Supporting Actress

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight

Rooney Mara, Carol

Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Who Should Win:

Who Will Win: Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

Despite my intentions, I only ended up seeing one of the nominated performances, which is a real shame. Despite enjoying Jennifer Jason Leigh’s full-blooded, foul-mouthed and vilely exuberant performance as the condemned centerpiece in Tarantino’s Hateful Eight, it was still a pretty cartoonish performance and devoid of much nuance or shading. A great performance, mind you, but the kind I would consider one of the year’s best.

Of the ones I didn’t see, I’m going to pull McAdams’ name out of my magician’s hat. I’m not sure how much love Spotlight will see at the Oscars but all reports have indicated that McAdams was a pivotal point in the film’s acting ensemble. At this point, however, it’s definitely a coin toss.

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Best Picture

The Big Short

Bridge of Spies

Brooklyn

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

What Should Win: Mad Max

What Will Win: The Revenant

At long last, the main event. I ended up screening five out of the eight Best Picture nominees (I didn’t get to Brooklyn, The Big Short or Spotlight, unfortunately), so at least this will be a bit more informed than the Supporting Actor/Actress categories. I enjoyed Bridge of Spies but never found it more than a pleasant diversion: call it Spielberg-lite (very lite), an enjoyable film but altogether forgettable. The Martian was duly impressive when it stuck with the core idea of Damon lost on Mars but became too conventional and rather uninteresting whenever it left the Red Planet and returned to ground control. The Room was an impressive, tense rape/abuse analogy that suffered from the same basic issues as The Martian: when it left the confines of the titular location, the film became much more familiar and infinitely less spectacular.

This leaves us with the final two in the running: Inarritu’s ode to vengeance, The Revenant, and George Miller’s return to the wasteland, Mad Max: Fury Road. Quality-wise, both films are on par, for different reasons: they’re both fully immersive, in their own way, are the furthest things from spoon-fed multiplex pap and demand that audiences keep up if they want the full experience. They’re both technical marvels, The Revenant utilizing nothing but natural light and adverse weather conditions to produce an unparalleled vision of the unforgiving natural world, while Mad Max throws everything (including the kitchen sink) at the screen in an overwhelming successful attempt to portray a world spun completely off the wheels.

At the end of the day, this will be a contest decided by two very different, yet equally exacting, takes on the art of filmmaking. Will the Academy award Inarritu’s hell-and-back approach to filmcraft or will old master Miller finally get recognition for a truly stunning, outsider career that’s managed to spring like Lazarus from the dead? Can Inarritu score back-to-back Oscar wins or is that one lottery ticket too many?

When all is said and done, my gut instinct tells me that The Revenant will end up standing tall. Production narratives have as much to do with a film’s Academy success as anything else and, regardless of what one thinks about the actual film, there’s no denying that The Revenant is pretty much a one-of-a-kind production. I would, personally, rather see Mad Max take the prize but I just don’t think that’s in the cards.

Perhaps I’m wrong, however. One way or the other, we’ll all find out soon. Happy viewings, friends and cyber-neighbors!

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The 88th Annual Academy Awards: Who Will Win, Who Should Win (Part One)

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2015 Academy Awards, 2015 Oscars, 88th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Awards, Oscar nominee, Oscars

Things can always be different. In most cases, they should be different. At the end of the day, however, especially when it comes to awards shows, we can only really deal with what’s in front of us. Taking a look at this year’s Oscar nominees, there’s a whole lot that I would do differently. For one, there’s a lot of female directors that should have been on the list this year (Marjane Satrapi, Shira Piven and Celine Sciamma spring instantly to mind). There are at least a bakers’ dozen of extraordinary films and performances that weren’t so much as nominated (Kristen Wiig, Slow West, Girlhood and Bone Tomahawk are all on the “shafted” list this year). As I’ve said before, so shall I say again: do Academy voters actually watch more than 10 films a year?

All of that being said, we’ll deal with what “could’ve been” in a future post: at this time, we can only examine what was nominated, for good and bad. I did my best to see as many nominated films as I could this year but, as always, there were plenty that slipped through the cracks: Carol, The Big Short, Anomalisa, Mustang, Brooklyn and 45 Years were all films that seemed immensely worthy and right up my alley: unfortunately, we just never ended up being in the same place at the same time. Cest la vie, I suppose: after all, that’s what Mop-Up March is for.

In that spirit, here’s the first part of my educated (or not) guesses at what might tickle Academy voter fancy this Sunday. Part Two will follow later, including my guess at Best Picture.

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Best Live Action Short

Ave Maria

Day One

Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)

Shok

Stutterer

What Should Win: Stutterer

What Will Win: Shok

This ended up being a pretty tough category due to the consistent quality of the nominees. Ave Maria was fun, if rather slight, and benefited from being the only truly lighthearted one of the bunch. Day One and Alles Wird Gut were intense little micro-movies, bolstered by great performances, if unrelentingly grim. Stutterer ended up being my fave of the bunch: the Irish/UK production was visually dazzling, had a really neat central conceit and used the proper proportions of giddiness and internal suffering. I’m pretty sure that nothing will beat Shok, however: this Kosovoan production is a 21-minute descent into almost abject misery with a climax that (literally) took my breath away. Nothing about this short is fun, in any way, shape or form, but it absolutely deserves to be seen. I’d rather see the more hopeful Stutterer take the trophy but Shok is, arguably, the most deserving.

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Best Documentary Short

Body Team 12

Chau, Beyond the Lines

Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness

Last Day of Freedom

What Should Win:

What Will Win:

This is one of those categories where I didn’t see enough nominees to make an informed decision. Neither of the two shorts I saw really blew me away: Chau was uplifting and well-made but thoroughly conventional and obvious, whereas Last Day of Freedom had a great, important central concept but lost me due to the stylistic affectations (skittery, animated line drawings that distracted from the powerful story). If I had to guess, Chau seems like the kind of short that the Academy tends to favor but this could really go to any of them, I suppose.

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Best Sound Mixing

Bridge of Spies

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

What Should Win: Mad Max

What Will Win: The Revenant

For me, this is technically a toss-up between the unholy cacophony of Mad Max’s never-ending apocalyptic din and the all-encompassing stillness of The Revenant’s purgatorial chill. While I lean towards the more chaotic side of the spectrum, I think that The Revenant’s momentum will make this an easy lock. Nothing about the sound mix in either Bridge of Spies or The Martian really stood out, although I can’t comment on Star Wars, as that was one of the ones that got away.

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Best Sound Editing

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Sicario

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

What Should Win: Mad Max

What Will Win: The Revenant

See my above reasons for Sound Mixing, with the added caveat that I really like the sound editing in Sicario. Despite that, however, I still think Mad Max and The Revenant are the two to beat.

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Best Visual Effects

Ex Machina

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

What Should Win: Mad Max

What Will Win: Star Wars

With its seamless blend of physical effects and CGI, Fury Road was an all-encompassing experience and my easy pick for Best Visual Effects of the nominated films I saw. While Ex Machina was impressive on a smaller scale, I find it hard to believe the Academy will give it much love. The Martian was nice but certainly nothing special, while the effects in The Revenant (barring that terrifying bear attack) were so organic that they never really stood out. All of that said, however, I don’t think that anything will beat Star Wars in this particular category: with so few nominations, tossing it the VizFx statue seems like a no-brainer.

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Best Costume Design

Carol

Cinderella

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

What Should Win: Mad Max

What Will Win: Cinderella

Although it might seem as if I’m just picking Mad Max in every category, that’s not quite the case. In this example, as with the above, I genuinely think it was the best of the best. With its unique vision of end-of-the-world-couture and a seemingly endless variety of eye-popping outfits, this (to me) is what costume design is all about. Nothing about The Revenant’s costume design really stood out for me, although the organic authenticity was certainly impressive. All of this being said, the Academy really can’t pass up a safe bet and I’m sure that Cinderella’s ball-gowns and fairy-tale fashion will fit that bill to a t.

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Best Production Design

Bridge of Spies

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

What Should Win: Mad Max

What Will Win: Mad Max

This is another category where I just can’t see a lot of competition. The period detail in Bridge of Spies was just fine but certainly nothing special: ditto the science-factual details of Scott’s The Martian. The Revenant looked consistently lovely but seemed rather sparsely designed, barring the handful of scenes in villages and way-stations: it’s overriding strengths were the huge, endless outdoor vistas and that gorgeous natural light. Of the four films I saw in this category, only Mad Max sported the kind of meticulous, exacting attention to detail that’s necessary to make an utterly fantastic world spring to gritty life. I could definitely see The Revenant taking this home, especially if it sweeps, but I still think Mad Max is the most worthy candidate.

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Best Film Editing

The Big Short

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Spotlight

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

What Should Win: Mad Max

What Will Win: The Big Short

If you think about it, Mad Max is really one big, two-hour car chase: that’s a film where editing is not only important but pretty much the sink-or-swim pivot. Not only is the film always coherent and spatially easy to follow, the integration of physical effects and CG work is nothing short of seamless. In a perfect world this would be a lock. That’s not to say that the editing in The Revenant wasn’t seamlessly fluid, mind you, or that any of the ones I didn’t screen might be equally worthy. As far as what will win, however? My money is on The Big Short (which I didn’t screen), which has amassed quite a bit of pre-awards buzz and feels like an all-around safer bet for the Academy.

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Best Cinematography

Carol

The Hateful Eight

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Sicario

What Should Win: The Revenant

What Will Win: The Revenant

Just like last year, there may be several viable choices in the Best Cinematography category but there’s really only one front-runner: Emmanuel Lubezki’s work in The Revenant is pretty much what awards were created for. While The Hateful Eight brought 70mm film back to the masses, it just didn’t do as much awe-inspiring stuff with its vistas as The Revenant did: Tarantino’s newest might smoke lots of the competition but it’s at least a half-step behind Inarritu’s survival chiller. In any other year, either Roger Deakens’ work in Sicario or John Seale’s heart-stopping cinematography in Mad Max would be solid locks for the pole position. As any good Highlander knows, however, there can be only one: this year, The Revenant looks to lop a lot of heads.

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Best Original Song

“Earned It,” Fifty Shades of Grey

“Manta Ray,” Racing Extinction

“Simple Song No. 3,” Youth

“Til It Happens to You,” The Hunting Ground

“Writing’s On the Wall,” Spectre

What Should Win: “Til It Happens To You,” The Hunting Ground

What Will Win: “Writing’s On the Wall,” Spectre

Despite having seen none of the nominated films, I did manage to listen to all of the individual songs. “Earned It” and “Simple Song No. 3” are both rather forgettable tracks, each one falling into the category of Muzak for one reason or another. “Manta Ray” is a great song but seems too brittle and spare to really go anywhere. Personally, I found Sam Smith’s “Writing’s On the Wall” to be the most banal, middle-of-the-road tune of the bunch, just the kind of forgettable anthem that seems aimed at most Academy voters. Only Lady Gaga’s “Til It Happens to You” struck me as a song suitable for both on and off the screen. I’m predicting that Smith wins by a landslide, naturally.

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Best Original Score

Bridge of Spies

Carol

The Hateful Eight

Sicario

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

What Should Win: The Hateful Eight

What Will Win: Star Wars

As far as I’m concerned, this category is one of the easiest of the bunch: not only was Ennio Morricone’s score for Tarantino’s Western one of the very best of the year, it was one of the very best of the illustrious composer’s rather incredible career. Menacing, thrilling, driving and as integral to the film as any of the visual components, Morricone’s Hateful Eight scores is one of the rare bits of filmic music (just like his Good, The Bad and The Ugly score) that’s just as good off-screen. Among the others, I found Thomas Newman’s score for Bridge of Spies to be just about the most generic, forgettable one of the year, while Johann Johannsson’s work for Sicario was nothing spectacular. That being said, this is a year that sees legendary composer John Williams nominated for a Star Wars film: in Vegas, they call that a “sure bet.”

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Best Foreign Language Film

Embrace of the Serpent, Columbia

Mustang, France

Son of Saul, Hungary

Theeb, Jordan

A War, Denmark

What Should Win: Theeb, Jordan

What Will Win: Son of Saul, Hungary

Yet another category where I only got to see one entry but I’m a lot more confident calling a winner in this one: there really hasn’t been buzz for any of the nominees save Son of Saul and that looks set to win by a landslide. That being said, I absolutely loved Theeb and would be overjoyed if that decidedly old-fashioned Western (by way of Lawrence of Arabia) were able to surge ahead and take the prize. Biggest disappointment, here, is not getting to see Mustang, which I’m pretty sure is absolutely amazing.

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Best Documentary Feature

Amy

Cartel Land

Look of Silence

What Happened, Miss Simone?

Winter on Fire

What Should Win: Cartel Land

What Will Win: Amy

While the worst thing that I can say about any of these entries is that Oppenheimer’s Look of Silence was a disappointment (for me, at least) and a step down from his unforgettable The Act of Killing, the clear winner is Cartel Land. Amy is a well-made, sad look at a popular public figure (hence, my assumption that it will win) and is much less politically-thorny than the Nina Simone biopic, while Winter on Fire hews a little closely to previous nominee The Square. Cartel Land, on the other hand, is a fiercely original, terrifying and massively thought-provoking look at the war on drugs that arrives like an anvil to the face and instantly eliminates the competition. I feel the same way about Cartel Land that I did about The Act of Killing: it should be required viewing for every citizen of Planet Earth.

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Best Animated Feature

Anomalisa

Boy and the World

Inside Out

Shaun the Sheep

When Marnie Was There

What Should Win: Anomalisa

What Will Win: Inside Out

While I didn’t get to screen Anomalisa in time for the awards ceremony, I have no doubt that Charlie Kaufman’s puppets-in-crisis drama is nothing short of next-level amazing. The very fact that a film like that is nominated in the Animated Feature category makes this year’s selections rather intriguing. Of the others I saw, Shaun the Sheep was a disappointment, being the first Aardman film that didn’t completely charm me. I can’t see anything stopping Inside Out, however, and there’s nothing wrong with that: this genuinely incisive look into childhood emotions and the terrifying joy of getting older and letting go of your youth is the rare “kids” films that’s aimed as squarely at adults as it is wee ones. It’s a genuinely lovely film with a positive message, great voice acting and lots of fun setpieces: I’d be a complete Scrooge if I tried to crap on its rainbow.

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Best Adapted Screenplay

The Big Short

Brooklyn

Carol

The Martian

Room

What Should Win:

What Will Win: The Big Short

In this particular category, the only films that I got a chance to screen were The Martian and Room: ironically, I had the exact same problem with both films. To whit, the movies are much better when they’re smaller and more contained: when it’s just us and Mark Watney or us and Joy and Jack, both The Martian and Room are virtually airtight. Once they’re expanded to larger canvasses, however, the films lose their impact and become altogether more generic and familiar. From what I understand, The Big Short did a good job of not only compressing a lot of information into its two hours but also in educating its audience on various difficult concepts and terminology. On face value, that seems like a pretty admirable job to me but, as always, my sincerest apologies to the unscreened.

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Best Director

Adam McKay, The Big Short

George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road

Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant

Lenny Abrahamson, Room

Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

Who Should Win: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road

Who Will Win: Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant

While there may be five individuals nominated here, this particular race is really only about two: Miller and Inarritu. Both longtime auteurs produced staggeringly difficult, singular works, each with more obstacles to overcome than most filmmakers deal with in their entire lives. While Inarritu’s production travails on The Revenant have entered the public zeitgeist in a way not seen since Francis Ford almost lost his marbles in the jungle, I’m Team Miller on this one, all the way. Inarritu used minimalism and natural order (along with an exceptionally game cast) to craft a chilly piece of brutalist art, whereas Miller turned overriding chaos into one of the most beautifully orchestrated, choreographed and riveting pieces of thrash-pop we’ve ever seen. It’s the difference between fire and ice: I’m all about the fire on this one.

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Best Actor

Bryan Cranston, Trumbo

Matt Damon, The Martian

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

Eddie Redmayne. The Danish Girl

Who Should Win: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Who Will Win: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

I only got a chance to screen The Martian and The Revenant so, again, my apologies for a slightly uninformed opinion here. As usual, Damon was massively charismatic, the kind of matinee idol who can easily carry a film on nothing more than his “aw shucks” bearing and goofily endearing grin. That being said, there also wasn’t anything here we haven’t seen from him in the past: it’s a great performance from a great actor but it never struck me as the best of the year. As far as DiCaprio goes, we’ve all heard the narrative of woe, by this point: nearly frozen to death in the frigid wild; forced to eat steaming animal liver, puking it back up in the take that actually makes the final cut; crawling through icy cold water for days on end; taking a bite out of a living fish…if Olivier thought Dustin went a bit overboard, wait’ll he gets a load a this guy, eh?

The thing is, DiCaprio is great in The Revenant for more than his ability to go the extra mile (literally). He does a lot with a relative scarcity of dialogue, slipping into the strong, silent antihero (ala classic Eastwood and Bronson) with a surprising ease: it’s like we blinked and Jack suddenly became a man. He’s always 100% invested in the character (obviously) but he brings that investment to all the small things, as well: the expressive eyes and skittering glances…the constant, realistic pain and reactions to the elements…those rare moments where peace and calm slip across his face before being brushed aside. If the point of a Best Actor nomination is to award the actor who gave us the most immersive, fully-formed and complete character interpretation of the proferred group, I’m pretty sure that DiCaprio fits that definition. Go ahead: give Leo the damn trophy, already.

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Best Actress

Cate Blanchett, Carol

Brie Larson, Room

Jennifer Lawrence, Joy 

Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Who Should Win: Brie Larson, Room

Who Will Win: Cate Blanchett, Carol

This, alas, was a category where I only got to screen one film, making my ultimate analysis a bit of a dice toss. I thoroughly enjoyed Brie Larson’s portrayal of the imprisoned mother, however, so I don’t feel bad tossing all my support behind that. She’s always been a great actress (Short Term 12 was absolutely amazing) and her performance here is full of subtle moments and quiet gestures that say more than a thousand lines of dialogue ever could. It’s a difficult role, emotionally, but Larson turns in a pretty stunning performance. All of that being said, however, I have a sneaking suspicion that Cate Blanchett will actually win this particular award. Call it a hunch, intuition or just the notion that Room may have been a bit too small to gain as much attention (despite its Best Picture, Director and Actress nods) but I just have a feeling. I could also see Charlotte Rampling taking this, although 45 Years was another film that didn’t seem to receive as much attention from the Academy.

Stay tuned for Part Two, faithful readers.

2/21/15 (Part Four): The Fiddle, The Flame and The Left Behind

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87th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, air evacuations, Ambassador Graham Martin, archival footage, Best Feature Documentary nominee, black ops, cinema, Communism, covert military action, documentary, fall of Saigon, film reviews, films, Henry Kissinger, interviews, Keven McAlester, Last Days in Vietnam, Mark Bailey, moral dilemmas, Movies, PBS, refugees, Richard Armitage, Rory Kennedy, South Vietnam, South Vietnamese, troop withdrawal, U.S. embassy, Viet Cong, Vietnam, Vietnam War, war, work camps

When the Paris Agreement was signed in 1973, effectively ending America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and withdrawing the bulk of our troops, legendary diplomat Henry Kissinger hoped that the resolution would lead to a situation similar to that in Korea: two separate states, one for the North Vietnamese and one for the South. These hopes were shattered when the North launched a massive assault on South Vietnam, systematically taking back any territory that had been ceded only a few short years earlier. With fresh memories of the atrocities that the North inflicted on their first campaign through Vietnam, the South Vietnamese civilians (and military) fled in panic before the rising surge. As the country was quickly retaken by the North, it became apparent that the cause was lost: at this point, the only thing to be done was for the refugees and remaining American military and diplomats to leave as soon as possible. Despite the increasingly dark clouds on the horizon, however, one man was determined to make a stand and prevent the inevitable: as the North marched and the South fled, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin was determined to stand strong, come hell or high water.

This story of American involvement, Northern aggression and Southern stoicism forms the foundation of Rory Kennedy’s Last Days in Vietnam (2014), the full-length, Oscar-nominated ‘American Experience’ documentary that details the time period between American withdrawal in 1973 and the fall of Saigon in April 1975. Through a mixture of archival footage and interviews with American and Vietnamese military personnel, Kennedy shows the ways in which Ambassador Martin stalled the withdrawal as long as possible, partly because he refused to admit defeat but also because he seemed to genuinely want to save as many South Vietnamese civilians and military as possible. As one interviewee states, this “terrible moral dilemma” was the ax that hung over everyone’s heads, from President Gerald Ford to Richard Armitage to the individual men and women who were stationed in Vietnam. Despite having their marching orders, no one on the ground could just stand by and watch their former comrades-in-arms succumb to the very enemy they’d been jointly fighting: while not everyone made it out (short of a miracle, not everyone could have), thousands of South Vietnamese were rescued at the 11th hour, thanks to a combination of Ambassador Martin’s moxie, military black ops and good, old-fashioned stubbornness.

One of the most illuminating aspects of Kennedy’s documentary is its laser focus: rather than rehash pro and con arguments for America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, Last Days in Vietnam focuses on the very end game, when everything had already been decided and the world only waited for the dust (and blood) to settle. It’s a smart move, since it allows the film to really dig in to its subject: in particular, we end up with a pretty balanced, nuanced portrayal of Graham Martin, an individual who’s easily as divisive as they come. While there’s still more than a heaping dollop of political machinations to Ambassador Martin’s decision to delay withdrawing from Vietnam, it’s pretty hard to deny that he also carried very deeply for the South Vietnamese: his plan to stretch out the withdrawal by only including a couple of Americans in every chopper full of South Vietnamese was a bold one and one that could have easily blown up in his face. Regardless of what U.S. politicians were doing at the time, the diplomats and personnel who were actually on the ground, in the shit, were scrambling to come up with real solutions and plans of action, even as Viet Cong tanks rumbled through the countryside.

Some of the most powerful scenes in the film deal directly with the South Vietnamese military: the bit where a pilot heroically lands his chopper on a U.S. naval carrier, rolling out one side of the machine before the whole thing slides right into the ocean; the interviewee who talk about missing the last chopper out of Saigon and spending the next 13 years in a North Vietnamese work camp; the heartbreaking moment where the South Vietnamese military lower their flag and sing their anthem for the last time…when Last Days in Vietnam kicks, it kicks like a mule. Just as powerful, for different reasons, is the scene where Martin finally admits defeat and prepares for “Option Four (the chopper evacuation)”: for the first time in the footage, Martin looks old, tired and defeated, a quick-witted huckster watching his kingdom burn for the last time.

As a film, Last Days in Vietnam is very well-made, although it never feels far removed from what it actually is: a PBS documentary. As such, we get all of the expected elements, from the archival footage to the overall tone. While the film was informative, it never really surprised or went the extra mile needed to really set itself apart. Nevertheless, history buffs, those interested in the Vietnam War or the vagaries of America’s international diplomatic policies should plenty of good stuff here. More than anything, Kennedy’s film helps to shed light on a chaotic, dark and terrible time in human history: it shows how oppression can dim but never truly extinguish the human pilot light…where there’s a will, there’s a way, no matter how slim.

If the point of history truly is to learn from the past and avoid the same mistakes in the future, may films like Last Days in Vietnam and their ilk continue to make it impossible for us to ever truly bury these terrible events. If we ever really need a reminder, let’s think about the thousands of refugees who were able to make it out…and the hundreds of thousands who didn’t.

2/18/15: Love is a Battlefield

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2014 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, auteur theory, based on a book, Ben Affleck, Best Actress nominee, Carrie Coon, Casey Wilson, cinema, dark comedies, dark films, David Clennon, David Fincher, electronic score, Emily Ratajkowski, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl, infidelity, Jeff Cronenweth, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Kim Dickens, Lisa Banes, Lola Kirke, media circus, misogyny, Missi Pyle, missing person, missing wife, Movies, mysteries, Neil Patrick Harris, Oscar nominee, Oscars, Patrick Fugit, Rosamund Pike, Scoot McNairy, Sela Ward, spoiler alert, spoilers, spousal abuse, Trent Reznor, twist ending, twists, Tyler Perry, unreliable narrator, voice-over narration

Whenever I review or discuss films, especially recently released ones, I always try to walk a careful line between giving enough information/support/examples to back up my points and trying not to spoil another filmgoer’s enjoyment of said film. Some films are just easier to spoil than others, however: films like The Crying Game (1992), The Usual Suspects (1995) and The Sixth Sense (1999) are predicated on their twists, prior knowledge of which certainly tends to lessen one’s enjoyment of these otherwise varied thrillers. There are just some cases where reviewers need to tread a little lighter: after all, one of my primary reasons for doing what I do is to help turn folks on to new films…what would be the point if they already knew how they all ended?

I begin my review of David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014) thusly for one reason: it’s extremely difficult to really discuss the film – and my subsequent reactions to said film – without spoiling major chunks of it. Like the aforementioned films, Gone Girl utilizes several twists and “surprises” which must be experienced blindly in order to get the full effect. Since any discussion I tried to base around the meager bit of the story that IS common knowledge (man’s wife mysteriously disappears, suspicion falls on him) would be rather worthless, I find myself in the rare position of needing to spoil a film’s plot: if you have yet to see Gone Girl and intend to, read no further than this paragraph. For anyone who plans to see the film and wants the Cliff Notes version of my opinion, here it is: as with most of Fincher’s films, I found Gone Girl to be extremely well-crafted, albeit exceptionally shallow, rather silly and, occasionally, flat-out ridiculous. Most of my issues with the film are directly related to the midpoint twist (the first of several), making the following spoilery discussion necessary. Know one thing, though, gentle readers: as someone who’s always enjoyed Fincher’s output, I found Gone Girl to be the slightest, least impressive film in his canon.

We begin with Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), our hapless protagonist and initial narrator, on the morning of his wife, Amy’s (Rosamund Pike), disappearance. It’s their five-year anniversary, although we get the impression from Nick’s snarky conversation with his twin sister, Margo (Carrie Coon), that the marriage has been anything but a happy one. His griping about his “awful” wife is belied by the flashback that we then get, showcasing the couple in much happier times. The film continues to cut back and forth between the present, where Nick discovers evidence of foul play concerning Amy’s disappearance, and the past, where we see the couple meet, fall in love, marry and go through all the usual trials and tribulations that married folks go through.

Our journey through the past is guided by Amy’s voice-over, as she narrates from her journal. Amy’s narration paints a picture of a happy marriage that gradually devolved into endless conflict and strife thanks to the usual economic conditions that foil many couples. Amy’s tale gradually gets darker, as she discusses her husband’s increasingly violent temper and her worries that he’ll eventually end up killing her. In the present, Nick is dogged by the incredibly determined Det. Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens, channeling Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996)) and her partner, Officer Gilpin (Patrick Fugit), who seem convinced that Nick is responsible for his wife’s disappearance. As Nick’s sister does whatever she can to help her brother, Amy’s parents, Marybeth (Lisa Banes) and Rand (David Clennon), begin to believe that their son-in-law isn’t quite as innocent as he claims. The other shoe drops when we discover that Nick, a professor, is having an affair with one of his students, Andie (Emily Ratajkowski): by the film’s midpoint, things just don’t look good for ol’ Nick.

But then, of course, we get that aforementioned twist: as we find out, Amy isn’t actually dead or even missing…she’s orchestrated the whole thing in order to frame Nick for her murder and punish him for his affair. We come to see that everything we’ve been told, through her journal entries, has all been a web of lies, misdirection, exaggerations and innuendo. As an audience, we’ve fallen into that whole “unreliable narrator” morass and it’s grabbed us, fast: just when we think we’ve got it figured out, Fincher and friends pull the rug from under our feet, dumping us right on our collective butts.

The second half of Gone Girl parallels Amy’s efforts to finish off Nick and stay out of the public eye with his efforts to clear his name and prove his innocence, especially once he finds out that Amy set him up. Amy’s scheme is nothing if not thorough, however, and it seems like Nick doesn’t have a hope in hell of avoiding death row, even after he gets help from Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry), a larger-than-life lawyer who specializes in messy “relationship” issues like this. Nick’s only hope for clearing his name hinges on the testimony of two of Amy’s former boyfriends/victims: Tommy O’Hara (Scoot McNairy) was falsely accused of rape and had his whole life implode, while wealthy Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris) was branded an obsessive stalker and put on the business end of a restraining order. If Nick and Tanner can get either of the men to tell their stories, they can prove that Amy’s actions follow a very definite pattern, one that aims to destroy any and every man she’s with.

Since one major twist isn’t quite enough, however, we get another “shocker” when Amy ends up back with Desi: she pleads for his help, claiming that she fled the abusive Nick and only wants the safety of her “true love,” the still head-over-heels Desi. While with Desi, Amy is treated like a queen, although his odd personality and some rather sinister proclamations indicate that Desi might have a few screws loose, too. In a rather bravura moment, Amy slashes Desi’s throat in the middle of a particularly aerobic lovemaking session, ending his rather pathetic existence. She then “escapes” back to the safety of her husband and the waiting media circus that surrounds him 24-7: she tells everyone that Desi kidnapped and repeatedly assaulted her before she was finally able to dispatch him and escape. Above all else, she tells the world, she’s just glad to be back with her loving husband.

Except, of course, for the little fact that Nick knows the whole thing is bullshit. Amy knows that he knows, too, and is confident that any attempt by her husband to clear up the whole mess would only result in him hanging himself all over again. The film ends with the couple in a holding pattern: Amy is back and their projected facade is nothing but happy and sunny. Behind the scenes, however, Nick must face the fact that he’s stuck, for all intents and purposes, with an exceedingly clever, amoral, murderous and cold-as-ice sociopath: til death do they part, indeed!

Up to the midpoint twist, I didn’t love Gone Girl but felt it had lots of potential: Affleck and Pike have a tremendous amount of chemistry in the early scenes, as do Affleck and Coon, and I was genuinely intrigued by the inconsistencies between Nick and Margo’s version of Amy and what we get from her flashbacks. If anything, this had a bit of the feel of Rashomon (1950), albeit filtered through the pulpy sensibilities of film noir. It seems as if the film will drag the mystery out across its 2.5 hour running time, maybe even leaving us in doubt as the final credits roll…not the worst case scenario, if you think about it.

The revelation of Amy as not only coldly calculating but also wildly misanthropic, however, effectively drops the film on its ass…hard. For one thing, it removes the mystery angle, which significantly curtails one of the most effective aspects of the film, up to that point: our collective doubt over Nick’s guilt. Once we see that not only is Nick innocent but that Amy is kind of a monster, Gone Girl becomes an entirely different film. At this point, Pike becomes a scenery shredder: she’s so villainous that it becomes impossible to really side with her, despite whatever might have happened between her and Nick. We know that Nick had an affair, one of the few facts that both he and Amy seem to agree on, but we get no sense of the details or even the time-frame: was the affair what set Amy over the edge or was the affair in response to Amy’s original behavior? We’re never told but, thanks to how unreliable the rest of Amy’s narration proves to be, it’s not difficult to guess.

Once the truth comes out, the film lurches from one unrealistic scenario to another. While the first half was just pulpy enough to feel unique, the second half is a complete mess of over-the-top performances, eye-rolling coincidences and wild tonal shifts. While Affleck and Coon still seem to be playing it fairly straight, everyone else seems to be stretching for comedy beats that just aren’t there: particularly egregious is Perry, whose Tanner Bolt never comes across as anything more than a spectacularly goofy, forcefully “quirky” character. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Missi Pyle’s silly “Nancy Grace” impression, however, or the way in which quirky Casey Wilson seems to have wandered onto set from her previous role in the TV show Happy Endings.

Dickens, as mentioned earlier, just plays Det. Boney as a variation on Marge Gunderson (you can almost, subliminally, hear her delivering the lines in regional dialect) and I was never sure what Patrick Fugit was doing: his entire performance seemed to involve him sagely nodding or cocking his head to one side…it was almost a pantomime and rather odd, if I do say so. In a suitably ironic moment, the only cast member who consistently under-acts is Neil Patrick Harris: his take on Desi Collings is as far from any of his previous roles as possible, yet is also so dry and uninteresting as to be largely a wasted opportunity…I didn’t think it would be possible for Harris to come across as “dull” in a performance but Gone Girl proved me wrong.

One of the biggest surprises, for me, was just how over-the-top Pike ends up being, despite the fact that much of her performance is a slow-burn. I expected quite a bit more from the performance, especially after she secured an Oscar nomination, but it never really worked for me: all of the beats and character tics were way too obvious and there was no nuance to the role. Critics (and audiences) tend to love performances where actors get to simultaneously portray both sides of the coin but I never felt that Pike’s portrayal of Amy ever got above surface-level: she’s “good,” then she’s “bad” and that’s pretty much all there is to it.

Affleck, by contrast, comes across as more likable (by default) but he also becomes a bit of a non-entity after the revelation: in many ways, the film becomes more about Amy’s continued attempts to fry Nick than it is about his attempts to clear his name. On a purely nitpicking level, I was also rather turned-off by Affleck’s oddly mush-mouthed delivery, especially in the early sections of the film: there are parts that seem like he’s just sort of mumbling to himself, which (sometimes) fits the character but more often feels like lazy delivery.

The film also felt more than a little misogynist, to me, which seems a strange complaint given that both the original source novel and the screenplay were written by a woman, Gillian Flynn. While Flynn has been quoted as being surprised at being labeled a misogynist for simply writing about “bad women,” my complaint with Gone Girl actually goes a bit deeper than that. In an era where we have several high-profile examples of women coming forward with rape and abuse allegations only to be largely dismissed (the recent Bill Cosby controversy is only one example), it was a little bothersome that part of Amy’s evil plan involves falsely accusing men of rape and abuse. To me, it almost felt as if the film was making a silent condemnation of these various real-life incidents, as if to say, “You just can’t trust these lying women, can you?” Since the film never firmly establishes whether any of the men in her life ever abused her or whether Amy has always been dangerously disturbed, it makes the case that every man in the film is a victim, whereas she’s the only real “villain.” Again, hard to say whether this an issue with the script or Fincher’s direction but it was something that kept rearing its head, time and again.

As far as filmcraft goes, Gone Girl is up there with Fincher films like The Panic Room (2002) or The Social Network (2010), although it’s nowhere near as “dark” as his classics like Seven (1995), Fight Club (1999) or Zodiac (2007). One thing that I noticed was how lukewarm the normally reliable Trent Reznor score is: while I was really impressed with Reznor’s work on The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake (2011), the subtle score, here, blends into the background, becoming the equivalent of white noise. It certainly doesn’t take one out of the film but it also seems like kind of a waste: I definitely expected more.

More than anything, I can’t help but wonder how the film might have played if the “twist” hadn’t been delayed as long as possible, allowing us to stew (along with Nick and the others) in the juices of our own indecision. By establishing that Amy is a monster (at least in relation to the film that we’ve been given), the element of mystery is gone and we’re left with the decidedly odd situation where we’re supposed to root for (I guess?) a sociopath as she frames innocent people for her actions. Nick might not be innocent (again, aside from the affair, we’re not given anything else to go by) but he’s practically a saint when compared to Amy. While the film functions just fine as a rather middling, if decidedly silly, take on film noir, it just never came together enough for me to fully embrace and enjoy it. Fitfully intriguing, mostly frustrating and occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious (for all the wrong reasons), Gone Girl stands as one of the larger missteps in Fincher’s oeuvre, to this point. While the masses seem to have embraced Gone Girl, count me as one of the ones standing on the sidelines, wondering what the fuss is about. Going once, going twice…gone, girl…way gone.

2/17/15: Where Eagles Dare

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21 Grams, 87th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Amores Perros, Amy Ryan, Andrea Riseborough, Antonio Sanchez, Armando Bo, art films, auteur theory, Babel, backstage drama, Best of 2014, Birdman, Biutiful, Broadway play, cinema, co-writers, colorful films, difficult actors, divorced parents, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Emmanuel Lubezki, father-daughter relationships, favorite films, Film auteurs, film festival favorite, film reviews, films, glory days, hallucinations, infidelity, insanity, Lindsay Duncan, mental breakdown, meta-films, Michael Keaton, Mike Shiner, Movies, multiple award nominee, multiple writers, Naomi Watts, Nicolás Giacobone, Raymond Carver, Riggan Thomson, single-take shots, superheroes, washed-up actors, writer-director, Zach Galifianakis

Amidst the stunning technical razzle-dazzle of auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014), there’s one scene that, perhaps more than others, exemplifies how truly impressive the film is: after discovering the remains of a joint in the possession of his fresh-out-of-rehab daughter, Sam (Emma Stone), washed-up Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) explodes into a mess of self-righteous fury, blaming her for trying to scuttle his chance at a comeback, only to have her turn the tables by giving as good as she gets. Sam slashes her blowhard, absentee dad to the bone, reminding him of just how irrelevant he really is, how little he matters in the larger scheme of the world.

After all, what makes him any different from the faceless slobs who live, toil and die in anonymity: what kind of massive, sick ego makes him think that any of his shit is more important than anyone else’s? The camera stays on Sam after she finishes her rant, however, allowing us to see the pain and sympathy that’s crept over her formerly hard, angry features. Everything she’s said is true, no two ways about it: Riggan doesn’t really have anyone but himself to blame for his current situation. But words can hurt as much as weapons and the instant regret that we see is confirmed when the camera finally turns to show the defeated, shamed shell of a man who stands before her. It’s a lot easier to “cut someone down to size” if you don’t have to actually look them in the eyes, after all.

Much of the attention centered around Iñárritu’s extraordinary follow-up to Biutiful (2010) will probably center around two key elements: the film’s duly mind-blowing cinematography and technical polish and Michael Keaton’s all-in lead performance. To be fair, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that reaction: the filmcraft is masterful and Keaton hasn’t been this commanding since the ’90s. In fact, on the first go-through, both of these aspects loom so large that it might be difficult to focus on everything else. This is tunnel-vision, however, since multiple viewings reveal an endless variety of subtle details, outstanding performances and sly commentary on everything from the nature of celebrity to the virtue of sacrifice and the dangers of complacency. In every way, shape and form, Birdman is an extraordinary film, one of the very best of 2014 and, quite possibly, one of the biggest “no-brainers” for early inclusion into the canon of classic cinema. For the fifth time, in a row, Iñárritu has delivered something unforgettable: how’s that for consistency?

Birdman follows (quite literally) the aforementioned Riggan, a former shining star in Hollywood who portrayed the titular superhero in three blockbuster films before hanging up the costume in order to focus on more “serious” pursuits. We know how this story always ends, however: the general public is much more interested in superhero punch-ups than maudlin drama, so Riggan has seen his star gradually fade as he’s distanced himself from the multiplex junk that used to pay the bills. In a final, desperate bid for relevance, Riggan has turned the Raymond Carver story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” into a Broadway show, which he directs and stars in.

When one of Riggan’s co-stars, Ralph (Jeremy Shamos), is taken out of commission by a falling stage light, he’s forced to come up with a replacement at incredibly short notice. Ralph was a terrible actor, however, so Riggan is more than happy to have him gone: he’s even happier when another co-star, Lesley (Naomi Watts), is able to get her famous actor boyfriend, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), to agree to step in. Riggan’s best friend/producer/lawyer, Jake (Zach Galifianakis), is thrilled with the development, since Shiner has instant name appeal and will help give the production the visibility it desperately needs, with opening night on the horizon.

Turns out, however, that Mike is a pretty terrible person: egomaniacal, given to violent, drunken outbursts and so shifty and backhanded as to be one step removed from an outright villain, Mike is a human wrecking ball and the last thing that a struggling play needs. He’s big in the theater world, however, which is what Riggan needs if he’s going to win over people like stodgy, unpleasant critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), a Broadway power-broker whose poison pen can either make or kill a production, regardless of its relative merits.

As Riggan juggles all of this, he must also deal with his caustic, perpetually unpleasant daughter/assistant, Sam; his concerned ex-wife, Sylvia (Amy Ryan); his pregnant girlfriend/co-star, Laura (Andrea Riseborough); his own feelings of inadequacy and anger, as well as his increasingly precarious mental state. You see, while all of this is going on, Riggan is constantly harassed, mocked, pestered and belittled by his gruff-voiced Birdman alter-ego: Birdman doesn’t think Riggan is living up to his full potential and wants him to don the suit again, in order to resurrect both the feathered crime fighter and his own flat-lined career. As his world begins to collapse into chaos, Riggan becomes increasingly unfettered from the constraints of reality: Riggan Thomson, the man, may be a laughing-stock but there still might be a chance for Birdman to swoop in and save the day. Will Riggan be able to stand his ground, defy the naysayers and fulfill his lifelong dream or will he retreat to the safety of public acceptance and weekend box-office returns?

Right off the bat, Birdman looks and sounds amazing: while the Academy doesn’t always (or often) get their nominations right, I don’t think anyone can deny that Iñárritu’s film absolutely deserved nods for legendary cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera-work, as well as the truly impressive sound design. While the single-take element of the film was thoroughly impressive the first time I watched it, I couldn’t help but feel that I was missing subtle cuts: there was no way it could all be one take. After watching it a second time and really focusing on the cinematography, however, I’m pretty sure I’m dead wrong: with the exception of the obvious cuts at the beginning and end, as well as a small handful of moments during the film (the genius transition into the bar, a possible moment where the camera passes into darkness), I’m pretty sure this was all done as a single-take. In a word: wow.

The sheer level of planning and raw talent that goes into planning something like this is truly mind-blowing, especially when one considers the frequency of mirror shots in the film, the seamless integration of CGI elements and the overall length of the piece: DePalma gets plenty of love for his long, single-take scenes but that’s child’s play compared to what Iñárritu and Lubezki come up with here. Even though the camera can’t cut, we still need to be able to transition to other characters, locations, and time spans: it’s in these moments where the film really flexes its considerable muscles. Employing a technique whereby the camera follows one character before “jumping” to another, we seamlessly follow the action from Point A to Point Z, giving us a complete overview of everything that’s happening. It’s dizzying but, once you surrender to it, completely intoxicating: there’s a flow and poetry to Birdman’s camera movement that manages to blur the line between fiction and fact, audience and actors. We’ve seldom been this close to the action and it’s a helluva feeling.

The other benefit to the single-take approach is that it puts a premium on the entire cast’s performances: despite being the “subject” of the film, Keaton’s Riggan is absolutely not the only element that “matters.” Since Iñárritu and Lubezki can’t fall back on the traditional back-and-forth cutting element of most cinematic conversations, we get whole scenes where the camera focuses exclusively on one character, allowing us to see the full range of their emotions. The aforementioned scene with Sam reading her dad the riot act is an obvious highlight but the film is chockfull of scenes just like that. Each and every performer in Birdman needs to be “on” in every scene, making this one of the most masterfully acted films in some time.

While Norton is pretty great as the unrepentant shithead know-it-all and Stone is superb as the broken-down but defiant Sam, the film is full of wonderful performances. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Galifianakis, finding him to be one of the most annoyingly one-note performers to come down the pike in some time but his performance as Jake is, easily, a career highlight: for the first time, Galifianakis actually comes across as a real person, rather than a blustery caricature, and it works marvelously. Naomi Watts brings a genuine sense of pain to her portrayal of Mike’s long-suffering girlfriend and the scene where she breaks down is truly difficult to watch. By contrast, Andrea Riseborough isn’t given nearly enough to do as Riggan’s girlfriend, which is a shame: the few moments where the film focuses on her are some of its most impactful scenes. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t throw a little praise at Lindsay Duncan, who manages to make Tabitha one of the most effortlessly loathsome characters in quite a while. The scene where she, matter-of-factly, tells Riggan how she plans to ruin him, without even giving him the benefit of the doubt, works on a number of levels and she proves integral to the film’s internal machinations.

While the cinematography and acting are out-of-this-world, the rest of Birdman’s filmcraft ably follows suit. The sound design is quite genius and impossibly immersive: the way in which the non-diegetic, percussive score (courtesy of Antonio Sanchez) seamlessly becomes diegetic is a brilliant way to illustrate Riggan’s growing mental divide and used to great effect. The film is also full of so many smart background details, immaculate production design and vibrant colors that the entire film seems to be a constantly breathing, shifting organism: my second viewing revealed so many details that I missed the first time around, it makes me wonder what the fifth viewing will reveal. One of my favorite, subtle bits is the “A thing is a thing, not what people say it is” placard that’s tucked into the corner of Riggan’s dressing room mirror.

The script, credited to four writers (including Iñárritu), constantly loops and wraps around itself: while the film is fairly linear, it’s anything but straight-forward. The parallels between the on-stage world of Riggan’s play and the “real world” of his life are subtle but they help to establish the kind of complex intertexuality that’s so key to filmmakers like Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze. Despite how “tricky” the film is, it never feels pretentious or overly showy: indeed, Iñárritu and crew have created an “art film” that manages to feel decidedly down-to-earth, despite its more fantastic flights of fancy.

And, of course, there’s that central performance by Keaton: a former superstar, himself, Keaton IS Birdman and wears the character like a second skin. I’ve heard some critics say that Keaton is a “character actor” and, therefore, not worthy of Academy consideration for his performance. This, of course, is the exact same insult that Tabitha tosses in Riggan’s face like acid: he’s a “celebrity,” not an actor. Just as in the film, the condemnation holds no water: the quality of a performance has nothing to do with the performer and everything to do with the performance, itself. Keaton displays a range and depth, here, that’s consistent with some of the best performances of the year: while I’m not sure that his was the “best,” it was certainly one of the strongest of the year and eminently worthy of award consideration.

All in all, Birdman is a hell of a film: eye-popping, deliciously dark and surprisingly funny, it’s the kind of film that usually gets ignored by the mainstream, which makes its nine Oscar nominations a bit of a head-scratcher. I’m not saying that it doesn’t deserve all of them (even without seeing all of the nominees, I know that Birdman belongs there) but I’m certainly surprised. For my money, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler (2014) has a slight (ever so slight) edge over Iñárritu’s latest but that, ultimately, says more about my particular sensibilities than anything: in most ways, the two titans line up pretty evenly, at least in my book.

At the end of the day, Birdman is a towering achievement, a film about the vagaries of backstage life that easily rivals predecessors like Noises Off (1992) and Living in Oblivion (1995). It’s a film about the eternal, pointless crusade for cultural immortality, the never-ending war between “art” and “commerce” that’s split the art community since at least the Middle Ages. It’s a film about accepting one’s place in the world, while refusing to stop reaching for the stars. It’s a film about a father and daughter taking the first, tentative, painful steps towards reconciliation. It’s about ego, self-sacrifice and the need to be loved by someone, anyone, before we shuffle off this mortal coil. Iñárritu’s Birdman is an ambitious, exquisitely made love letter to dreamers, dabblers and the people who love (and hate) them, set against the bustling crowds and marquees of Broadway.

It’s a one-of-a-kind film which, I suppose, makes it just another day at the office for Iñárritu.

2/2/15 (Part One): Hiding in Plain Sight

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abused children, Academy Award Nominee, Best Feature Documentary nominee, biographical films, Charlie Siskel, child-care, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, documentaries, film reviews, films, Finding Vivian Maier, interviews, John Maloof, Movies, multiple directors, multiple writers, mysteries, nanny, Phil Donahue, photography, street photography, Vivian Maier, writer-director-cinematographer

At one point in Finding Vivian Maier (2014), filmmaker John Maloof makes one of the truest statements that anyone’s ever made: “You have to draw an understanding of the individual from the information you have.” In this day and age of over-sharing, this wouldn’t seem to be a huge issue…after all, you can basically find all the personal information you’d ever need just by spending a little time browsing someone’s social media presence. At a time when waiting for your 15 minutes is passe, it seems like folks are only too eager to shout their life stories from the nearest rooftop, in the desperate hope that the right person is listening and ready to turn the spotlight in their direction.

It wasn’t always like this, however: in previous eras, folks seemed to value their privacy more than they do now and it wasn’t uncommon for public figures, much less “commoners,” to be all but anonymous. For some people, even exceptionally talented artisans, there’s nothing glorious or desirable about the white-hot scrutiny of the masses. In some cases, individuals would rather leave behind a lifetime of unseen, unappreciated art than deal with people poking into every nook and cranny of their lives. There’s more to being a public artist than just talent and intent, after all: you have to actually put yourself out there and “live” among the people, as it were.

Maloof’s Finding Vivian Maier, one of the nominees for this year’s Best Feature Documentary Oscar, tackles this subject head-on as it purports to examine the life and work of the formerly mysterious titular subject, a life-long nanny who also happened to be one of the very best street photographers around. Maloof came into contact with Maier’s work when he happened to buy a chest full of her negatives at an auction house. After examining the negatives, Maloof made a rather exciting discovery: not only was there a tremendous amount of material to pore through (upwards of hundreds of thousands of negatives) but the photographs were, for lack of a better descriptor, absolutely stunning. Perfectly composed, exquisitely lit and with a definite eye towards the “darker” side of life, Maier’s photos were real works of art. This, of course, led Maloof to the next, most logical question: just who, exactly, was Vivian Maier?

The answer to that question, such as it is, makes up the bulk of this extremely engaging documentary. As Maloof delves into Maier’s life, he discovers that she spent her life as a nanny for various families: various interviews with the people who employed her, as well as their grown children, help paint an intriguing, contradictory portrait of the secretive woman. She spoke with a French accent, yet was born in New York City. Some of her charges say that she approached all of her subjects, while others say that she shot everyone on the sly, leading to more than a few heated exchanges with her unwitting “subjects.” Vivian is described as being beloved by the children, yet each of them mentions a number of incidents that would paint her, at the very least, as casually abusive and abrasive. She took hundreds of thousands of photos, yet developed only a small handful. In every way, as Maloof (and us) will discover, Vivian Maier is an enigma, a mystery to be examined, figured out and “solved.” As he mentions, we must form our opinion based on the information about Vivian that we’re given and, as we see, there aren’t a lot of concrete facts floating around out there.

Despite a slightly rough start, Finding Vivian Maier gets gradually better, as it goes along, and ends up being quite the quiet little powerhouse by its final moments. One aspect that briefly kept me out of the movie (aside from its sometimes overly kinetic style) is actually John Maloof, the writer-director (along with Charlie Siskel, who we never see). At first, I found him to be uncomfortably aggressive and way too driven: there are times when he has more the feel of a bull in a china shop than a thoughtful commentator. As the film goes on and Maloof gets deeper into the mystery of Vivian, however, his passion for the subject begins to overtake his personality and I found my earlier reservations falling by the wayside. Call it a case of taxiing to get up to take-off speed but the film (and Maloof) find their groove at roughly the same time.

At the end of the day, however, a documentary lives or dies by its subject and Vivian Maier is a suitably fascinating one. While I’m fairly certain that progressive mental illness was responsible for many of her quirks, particularly late in life, there’s no denying that she was a helluva person and a genuine artist. The photos, themselves, are nothing short of amazing and are easily comparable to photographic greats like Annie Leibovitz or Ansel Adams: her portrait shots have a way of delving below the subject’s surface and revealing the myriad little tics that make us all such individuals, something that’s readily apparent in Leibovitz’s photography. It’s also fascinating to discover how intelligent and politically minded she was: the video footage of her interviewing various people about Nixon’s impeachment is a real revelation, as is the bit where she traces a crime from the scene all the way back to the victim’s home. In many ways, Maier was way ahead of the curve, a “citizen journalist” before the phrase even existed.

Many folks will probably have issues with Maier, the person, especially once the film begins to dig into the abusive incidents that the grown children describe. The film never picks a side, however, since everything is filled with such contradictions: we’re constantly hearing two versions of Vivian, sometimes from the same person, which only helps to drive home the notion of her as a living enigma, a reclusive, mysterious figure who lived life on her own terms. Was she misunderstood? A monster? Insane? A tortured artist? Ahead of her time? From what we’re shown/told, she may have been all of these things or none of them. The only thing we know for sure is that she managed to take hundreds of thousands of amazing photographs over the course of her lifetime.

As a lifelong writer who has the equivalent of Maier’s hundreds of thousands of negatives sitting around in the form of half-finished manuscripts, boxes of short stories and poetry, there’s definitely something about Maloof’s film that personally spoke to me. There’s a point in the film where someone remarks that Vivian did all of the hard work involving her art but none of the hard work that goes into being an actual “artist”: she didn’t try to put herself out in the world, to any great extent, which is what any successful artist needs to do. I found something terribly sad about the notion that Maier died without ever knowing the impact her art would have: who knows what difference that might have made in her life? For all of its sterling qualities as a documentary, perhaps the greatest thing that can come from Finding Vivian Maier is that it might convince similar artists to take a leap of faith: if you never try anything, you never succeed. For those of us who toil in obscurity (whether desired or not), Maloof’s film is nothing short of thought-provoking. By “finding” Vivian Maier, Maloof and Siskel might just have helped us all find ourselves.

1/31/15: The Galaxy According to Groot

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Academy Award Nominee, action-adventure, aliens, based on a comic book, Ben Davis, Benicio del Toro, blockbusters, box office success, Bradley Cooper, Chris Pratt, cinema, co-writers, comic adaptations, comic book films, Dave Bautista, Djimon Hounsou, Drax, ensemble cast, favorite films, film reviews, films, Gamora, Glenn Close, Groot, Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn, John C. Reilly, Josh Brolin, Karen Gillan, Lee Pace, Lloyd Kaufman, Marvel comics, Michael Rooker, Movies, Nicole Perlman, Peter Quill, Rocket Raccoon, Ronan, sci-fi, science-fiction, Slither, special-effects extravaganza, Star Wars, Starlord, Super, superheroes, supervillains, Thanos, The Avengers, Troma films, Tyler Bates, Vin Diesel, writer-director, Zoe Saldana

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, writer-director James Gunn was but a lowly scribe pumping out scripts for bad-taste powerhouse Troma Pictures. Almost twenty years from his debut, the “Shakespeare-by-way-of-the-vomitorium” Tromeo and Juliet (1996), Gunn is responsible for Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), one of the biggest, brightest and most successful blockbusters of 2014 and, perhaps, the most “un-Marvel” of all Marvel comic adaptations. It may seem like an impossibly long and outrageously strange journey from Troma to the top of the charts, as it were, but anyone who’s followed Gunn’s career since his directorial debut, Slither (2006), knows that the signs were there all along: it’s just taken everybody else a little longer to figure it out, that’s all.

In many ways, Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy is the perfect antidote to the self-important, uber-serious comic book adaptations that have begun to clog the multiplexes. As comic film storylines continue to get darker, more cynical and more “mature,” ala the Dark Knight series, Avengers, et al, it’s refreshing to watch a big budget, tent-pole action-adventure film that’s indebted to the old days of Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and that largely eschews the self-flagellation, dreary visuals and po-faced acting of modern comic franchises. While GOTG is far from a perfect film, it’s never anything less than a complete blast to watch and handily establishes a new superhero team that promises some really awesome things for the future. Gunn has returned the “fun” to comic movies and, for me, it’s about damn time.

We begin on Earth, in 1988, with young Peter Quill (Wyat Oleff) at the bedside of his dying, cancer-stricken mother. Too upset to take her hand as she fades into nothingness, Peter runs outside and is promptly beamed up into a massive spaceship. 26 years later, Peter (Chris Pratt) is grown up and going by the name “Starlord.” He’s been working with the aliens that “captured” him ever since the incident, a group of scurrilous interstellar scavengers led by the blue-skinned Yondu Udonta (Michael Rooker).

When we first meet the adult Peter, he’s in the middle of recovering some sort of orb artifact for Yondu. After acquiring the artifact, Peter runs afoul of a group of heavily armed thugs, narrowly making his escape: he ends up on the shit-lists of both his former “employer” and the evil Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), your basic, everyday super-villain who wants to use the orb to destroy the planet that he so abjectly hates, Xandar. Ronan is an underling of Thanos (Josh Brolin), a massively powerful, godlike Titan who seeks to rule every galaxy he comes in contact with. Thanos’ “daughters,” Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) work with Ronan and Gamora is dispatched to retrieve the orb from Peter.

Meanwhile, Peter has ended up in the sights of Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel), a pair of intergalactic bounty hunters and one of the funnest “odd couple” teams in some time. Rocket, a motor-mouthed, anthropomorphic and heavily-armed raccoon is the “brains” of the operation, while Groot is some sort of incredibly strong tree-creature who communicates with the sole phrase “I am Groot.” After engaging in a heated battle with Peter and Gamora, all four adventurers end up in the high-tech Xandarian prison known as the Kyln. Once there, the group meets up with Drax (Dave Bautista), a burly, impossibly literal warrior with a burning hatred for both Ronan and Gamora. Forming an uneasy alliance, the group work together to escape the prison. After learning the truth behind the orb and the limitless power it contains, Peter decides that he must keep it from Ronan at all costs. As Ronan’s forces mass against our intrepid heroes, however, and utter devastation gets closer and closer to the defenseless people of Xandar, the Guardians of the Galaxy will find themselves in the fight of their lives. At stake? Nothing less than the fate of all humanity. Are they up for the challenge? Well, they don’t call ’em the Guardians of the Galaxy for nothing, right?

From the early scene where Chris Pratt pops his headphones on and shimmies and bops across the alien temple, all the way to the epic final fight with Ronan, Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy is one ludicrously fun setpiece after another. For two hours, Gunn manages to keep the tone light and sprightly, despite such heavy subjects as massive destruction, individual death and the end of humanity as we know it. Anytime things threaten to get too weighty, Gunn throws in another nifty effects sequence, some funny jibber-jabber with Rocket or another breath-taking fight scene: there might be the occasional furrowed brow, here, but it’s always followed by some sort of fist-raising bit that keeps the dial firmly on the “fun” side.

As mentioned earlier, GOTG is actually more beholden to something like the original Star Wars than it is to any of the modern-day Marvel comic adaptations that it follows. There are certain moments in GOTG that fall within established comic film clichés (the obligatory “hero sacrificing” moment, the rather contrived “moments of doubt” that help bring the group closer together, the decidedly moldy scenes involving the Xandarian government wringing their hands) but the thing is much more a “space opera” than a straight-forward superhero film. If anything, GOTG is much closer in spirit and tone to del Toro’s Hellboy adaptations than The Avengers, etc.

Special-effects-wise, GOTG ranges from the absolutely stunning (some of the backgrounds are so beautiful that they should be framed) to the strangely obvious and slightly awkward (some of the compositing during the space-ship dog-fight scenes is oddly clunky and there are several instances of the CGI looking obviously fake and sterile). Many of the creature effects are achieved with makeup (hence the film’s Oscar nomination for Best Makeup), which is always a nice surprise, and there is certainly a massive amount of variety to the various creatures, aliens, locations and ships. Particularly noteworthy is the awesome Knowhere location, which channels the futuristic slums of Blade Runner (1982), as well as the Kyln, which reminds of things like the space cantina in Star Wars. While the film usually looks amazing, I found myself pulled out of the movie just often enough to wish that the effects-work was more consistent.

The film’s score, by composer Tyler Bates, is your standard-issue heroic space fare but special mention must be made of the oldies-oriented soundtrack, centered around Peter’s “Awesome Mixtape Vol. 1.” There are several scenes where the soundtrack really adds to the film, such as Peter’s opening exploration and the awesome slo-mo bit involving the Runaway’s “Cherry Bomb.” The songs help provide a nice juxtaposition between the film’s high-tech polish and its old-fashioned vibe and shows that Gunn’s attention to detail doesn’t just extend to the film’s visual aspects.

As with any comic film, casting becomes crucially important: as with most other aspects, GOTG is appropriately solid with its casting. While I’m not (quite) ready to crown Pratt as the next matinee hero, I’ll admit to finding him effortlessly likable, sweet and fairly kickass here. I wish that he was able to jettison a bit more of his “Andy-ness” (from Parks and Rec), though: at times, the character of Peter vacillates between seeming like a sweet doofus and a sarcastic, square-jawed hero, ala Han Solo. For my money, the square-jawed hero aspect works much better but this is also Pratt’s first real time in the “hero” seat, so there’s room for growth. Saldana is decent-enough as Gamora, although she doesn’t seem to get a whole lot to do. Ditto Bautista, as Drax, who gets some nice scenes but all too often seems to exist as a lot of background noise. I’ll admit to being less than thrilled with his ultra-literal method of thought/speech, which often feels like it reduces the character so something like an extraterrestrial Tarzan.

By and large, however, Cooper and Diesel handily steal much of the film as the unbeatable team of Rocket and Groot. In particular, Cooper is a revelation as Rocket: I’ll admit to taking almost everything Cooper does with a grain of salt (I am absolutely not ready to crown him one of the greatest actors of our generation, despite what the Academy seems to think) but I was over the moon with his take on the character. Despite being a mo-cap creation, Rocket ends up being (almost) the most realistic, “human” character in the film: I love his quips and snarkiness but the scene where he breaks down and bemoans his unnatural “creation” is a real powerhouse. While given decidedly less to do, at least vocally, Diesel ends up being the real heart of the film as Groot: using his physicality and some choice, if subtle, facial expressions, Diesel manages to make Groot unbelievably sweet, cool and relatable. Even better, Cooper and Diesel work fantastically well as a team: we absolutely buy their friendship and relationship, which adds tremendous emotional resonance to several latter-half plot developments.

On the acting down-side, we get a completely negligible performance from the normally reliable Gillan as Nebula (she’s ridiculously shouty, way too intense and never believable), a bit of a non-starter from Pace as Ronan (the character is interesting but Pace never does much with it and comes across as thoroughly anonymous) and less Rooker than he (and we) probably deserve. I’ll also toss a little shade at Glenn Close, who turns in one of those cookie-cutter performances that seems to come straight from the factory conveyor belt, as well as poor Benicio del Toro, who gets virtually nothing to do as The Collector.

As someone who grew up on Troma films, I’ve followed Gunn’s career from the get-go. While his debut, the gory, goofy, horror-comedy Slither felt like the natural post-Troma move for one of Lloyd Kaufman’s proteges, Gunn really came into his own with the followup, Super (2010). Using Rainn Wilson as an appropriately blank canvas, Gunn came up with a truly ingenious commentary on the superhero genre, one that managed to bleed all of the fantasy and mystique from caped crusaders and reveal the sad, damaged heart at the core of costumed vigilantism. For my money, GOTG absolutely feels like the next logical progression for Gunn: he’s increasingly finding ways to subvert the mainstream, sprinkling that trademark “Troma humor” atop some notably “un-Troma” types of film. There are plenty of examples to be found here but two of my favorites would have to the scene where Peter challenges Ronan to a dance-off (absolutely classic) and the laugh-out-loud bit where John C. Reilly’s Corpsman Dey makes the brilliant comment that he “doesn’t believe that anyone is 100% a dick.” Far from feeling like a neutered version of his earlier films, GOTG feels like Gunn just has a much bigger, more vibrant canvas to work with.

As someone who’s the furthest thing from a comic film fan, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Guardians of the Galaxy before I actually sat down to watch it. While I’m a huge fan of Gunn’s work, I had the feeling that this might amount to “gun for hire” work, coming across as nothing more or less than a glossy waste of time. I’m familiar with the Guardians from my comic-reading youth but I haven’t actually cared about comic books since I was a kid: I’ve always viewed comic films as mindless entertainment, no more or less. I did enjoy The Avengers (2012) for what it was but I certainly don’t attach any measure of importance to it (or other Marvel projects, for that matter). In other words, I’m probably the absolute last person that this film was “made” for.

But you know what? I ended up kind of loving the film, anyway. While it’s not always smooth-sailing, GOTG has a tremendous amount of heart and is never anything less than full-bore entertaining. The cast and storyline are fun, the film is fast-paced and nothing gets bogged-down in undue sentimentality (or, at least, not for very long). Most importantly, nothing wears out its welcome: unlike the jaded, burned-out opinion I have of films like the Avengers series, I was ready for more GOTG as soon as the film ended. Rather than viewing the obligatory sequel with dread (already scheduled for 2017, apparently), I’m actually looking forward to the continued adventures of Starlord and friends. This could all change should the franchise get beaten into the dust, of course, but it all seems fresh and new at this stage: the far reaches of space, as they say, are the limit.

As a longtime fan of Gunn’s, I expected to enjoy aspects of Guardians of the Galaxy but I certainly wasn’t expecting to like the film as much as I did. For my money, GOTG was (probably) the best “spectacle” film of last year (aside from Edge of Tomorrow, perhaps) and yet another movie that made me regret my theatrical embargo: there were scenes and visuals, here, that I bet would have been absolutely mind-blowing on the big screen. Lesson learned, however: when Gunn is ready to get his next installment of Guardians of the Galaxy off the ground, I’ll be waiting at the box office, money in hand. I might not care for superhero films, for the most part, but I’m always ready and willing to watch a great director bring his A-game to an interesting project.

12/25/14 (Part Three): Missing Pieces

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86th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, archival footage, autobiographical, autobiography, Best Foreign Film nominee, Cambodia, cinema, clay figures, documentary, film reviews, films, Jean Baptiste-Phou, Khmer Rouge, massacres, Movies, Pol Pot, Rithy Panh, The MIssing Picture, writer-director

The human capacity to bounce back from tragedy is, perhaps, one of our most necessary traits: while we may be initially flattened by disasters, wars, crime, disease and violent death, something about the human animal compels it to stick its chin out, put one foot before the other and continue marching forward into the face of adversity. Without this natural resilience, after all, it’s unlikely that any of us would have made it past the caveman stage, let alone the 20th century. You may push a human down but you can’t keep a human down, unless that’s where they choose to be: we’ll always find a way to come back stronger than before.

When the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia in 1975, it set the stage for one of the worst, most flagrant displays of evil in the entire history of the human animal. Over two million people became refugees, over night, and famine, death, disease and torment became rampant in the Southeast Asian country thanks to leader Pol Pot’s iron-fisted regime. At the time of the take-over, Rithy Panh was a typical 13-year-old: happy-go-lucky, obsessed with movies and close to his family. During the Khmer Rouge’s four-year reign of terror, however, Panh would lose everything and go from a typical teenager to a beaten-down survivor scrabbling together his existence from whatever he could get his hands on. Over thirty years later, Panh’s remarkable tale of struggle and survival forms the basis of the immensely powerful documentary The Missing Picture (2013), a film which gives a personal voice to the millions of disenfranchised Cambodian victims of the ’70s massacre.

While Panh’s story would make a fascinating documentary regardless of the format, The Missing Picture is unique in that it mixes archival footage of pre and post-revolution Cambodia with dioramas that Panh creates using hand-crafted clay representations of his family, friends, neighbors and countrymen. At times, Panh combines both types of footage together and the results are nothing short of dizzying: there’s a remarkable degree of reality to his clay figures and he’s able to imbue their features with a startling amount of expressiveness. It may seem odd to think that immobile clay figures can have overly expressive faces but Panh works some sort of magic and, at times, I was hard-pressed not to see the whole thing as a crude, if effective, form of stop-motion animation. Subject-matter notwithstanding, it’s a really cool, fascinating effect and Panh pulls it off flawlessly.

One of the most powerful aspects of The Missing Picture ends up being the way that narrator Jean Baptiste-Phou’s calm, mannered voice relates any manner of atrocities and hardships that befell Panh. There’s something soothing about Baptiste-Phou’s voice that creates a jarring contrast with much of what we see and hear: there’s an almost mournful quality to it that really suits the film’s elegiac mood, especially once we get into the heart-breaking section where Panh watches his father starve to death, little by little.

Lest The Missing Picture seem like an unrelenting tragedy, however, Panh manages to mix in some truly joyful pre-revolution scenes, scenes which focus on the vibrant music, night-life, dancing and filmmaking of the Cambodian people. There’s one amazing moment where Panh clay avatar goes “flying” over a crowd of dancing clay people and the effect is absolutely wonderful: for the briefest of moments, we get to feel some of the joy and love that filled Panh’s life before the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot summarily destroyed it all.

Ultimately, however, The Missing Picture’s message is one of hope, not horror or defeat. The very fact that Panh could survive such trials, at such a young age, and go on to such important work is testament to that aforementioned resilience of the human spirit. Rithy Panh’s journey from starving youth to Academy Award-nominated filmmaker (he ended up losing to The Great Beauty) is an inspirational one and The Missing Picture stands as a work of no small importance.

As Panh’s words state near the end, “This missing picture, I now hand over to you.” We’ve all been given this “missing picture,” and this film, so that we may never forget the innocent victims of the Cambodian massacre. We owe the survivors nothing less than to honor their memories and continue to shine a light into the darkest corners of our collective history. As the incomparable George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Rithy Panh has done his part to ensure that we’ll never forget: it’s now time for the rest of us to do our part.

4/20/14: A Mother Knows (Oscar Bait, Part 16)

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2013 Academy Awards, 86th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Awards, adoption, Barbara Jefford, based on a true story, BBC journalist, Best Actress nominee, Best Adapted Screenplay nominee, Best Original Score nominee, Best Picture nominee, Blue Jasmine, buddy films, Catholic church, character dramas, cinema, drama, film reviews, films, homosexuality, Judi Dench, Mare Winningham, Martin Sixsmith, Movies, multiple award nominee, nuns, Oscar nominee, Oscars, Peter Hermann, Philomena, road trips, Sean Mahon, Stephen Frears, Steve Coogan

In the hustle of bustle of awards season, when it seems that every film is bigger, more important and more prestigious than the next, it can be a refreshing break to sit down with something a little more modest, a bit quieter. The 2013 Oscar season was filled with lots of very big, very vibrant films, including American Hustle, 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street, but one multiple nominee stood out a little: the Steve Coogan/Judi Dench-starrer Philomena. Not only did Philomena tell a much smaller, more personal story than the other nominees, it managed to focus on character in a way that (in my highly biased opinion) was only matched by Nebraska and Dallas Buyer’s Club. It was also a bit of a David vs Goliath story, since everything about the film marked it as the scrappy underdog to the more established powerhouses helmed by Scorcese, Cuaron, McQueen and Payne. Like its subject matter, Philomena is the scrappy little newcomer that can – and does – get its day in the sun.

Ostensibly, Philomena is the true story of a woman looking for the son she gave up for adoption 50 years earlier. The woman, in this case, is Philomena (Judi Dench) and she’s forced to give her son Anthony up for adoption when he’s just an infant. Philomena, you see, has been sent to a nun-run home for wayward girls after her “indiscretion” with a local boy and the nuns make it plainly clear that it’s God’s will that the children be separated from their mothers as quickly as possible. Philomena’s best friend Kathleen (Charlie Murphy) loses her daughter, Mary, when the child is adopted and the nuns decide to make it a two-fer, throwing in young Anthony, as well. Philomena loses her son, without even getting to say goodbye, and spends the next 50 years wondering what became of him.

When Philomena’s grown daughter contacts disgraced former BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) with the story, he initially blows her off. He doesn’t do human interest stories, after all, since he’s a serious journalist. Something about the story ends up resonating with him, however, and he sets off on a journey of discovery with Philomena, starting with the abbey in Ireland where it all began and ending in America, where they finally track down Philomena’s son. Revelations will abound, however, and the hot-headed Martin will gradually lose his patience with the frustrating “culture of silence” surrounding the Catholic church’s adoption practices of that era. In the end, however, this is Philomena’s story and she knows that forgiveness is the glue that really holds the world together. Will she ever find out the truth about her son? Will Martin ever land the big story that will put him back in the public eye? More importantly, will these two strangers be able to make a change in an unfair system?

As mentioned earlier, Philomena is definitely a labor of love: Coogan got the idea for the film after reading the original newspaper article and was involved in nearly every aspect of the film, including the Oscar-nominated screenplay. One of my favorite stories during this last awards season was the one where Coogan got the shocking phone call about his modest little film being nominated for multiple Oscars, including Best Picture. Stories like this, similar to the buzz that surrounded Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, serve as a wonderful tonic to the usual entertainment industry propaganda machine, adding a little human element to everything.

It’s certainly surprising to see Coogan attached to something so heartfelt but he ends up being the real revelation of the film. As portrayed by Coogan, Sixsmith is an incredibly well-rounded character: a complete, churlish asshole, yet filled with righteous indignation and good intentions. He makes a wonderful foil for Dench and their relationship is the real foundation of the film. At its heart, Philomena is a buddy road movie and those always live or die by the believability of the central relationship: by this rubric, Philomena not only lives but thrives. There’s something almost elemental about Coogan snarking his way through the minefield of contemporary society while Dench projects the sweet, naive air of a child. She’s nice to everyone, regardless of how much they spit on her, while he can’t seem to find anything good to say about anybody, including her. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, Martin makes a condescending comment about Philomena’s good nature that ends up saying as much about her as it does about him: “She’s told four people that they’re one in a million…what are the odds of that?”

If Coogan’s performance is a big surprise in the film, Dench’s is pretty much business as usual. Over the course of some 100+ roles and almost 60 years in the business, Dench was become synonymous with impeccable performances and her turn in Philomena is no exception. I do feel that Dench has got a bit comfortable over the last several years, since most of her recent characterizations seem to follow pretty identical arcs (there’s not much difference in personality between Dench’s role here or her performance in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, to be honest) but there’s no denying how effortless she is. Dench is the kind of performer who can energize anything and she invests the film’s various emotional beats with a spunky sense of purpose.

Ultimately, however, Philomena suffers from something that’s distinctly a filmmaking issue: as a whole, it lacks dramatic tension. Despite the trials that Philomena and Martin go through, the stakes never seem to be high enough, lending everything the feel of a slightly bittersweet made-for-TV movie. None of the film’s revelations really affect anything and the one that potentially could, the revelation of Anthony’s lifelong homosexuality, is deflated almost instantly: Philomena always knew that her son was gay, even if no one else did, so this isn’t news to her, even if it is to the audience. Philomena is such a wonderful, understanding person that, ultimately, this particular revelation couldn’t have any affect on her: that’s just not how her mind (or world) works. Likewise, the banter between Philomena and Martin never reaches a critical boiling point, even though Martin frequently acts like a privileged jerk. Like its titular subject, Philomena is such a thoroughly easy-going, good-natured film that it doesn’t seem particularly interested in rocking any boats. After all, the final confrontation is handled not with the tongue-lashing that we know is well-deserved but with the act of forgiveness that might prove impossible for many watching. Like the battered nun in Bad Lieutenant, Philomena forgives her oppressors, allowing her soul the peace it needs but robbing the audience of the easy gratification of retribution. It’s a mature, reasoned way to handle things but it does tend to make for a fairly even, uneventful story arc.

Since I watched Philomena after the Oscar ceremony, I wasn’t able to really consider it as I watched the telecast but the other nominees were definitely front-and-center in my mind as I watched it. How does Philomena compare? In many ways, the film is the epitome of “good but not great.” While Dench’s performance was typically good, I certainly don’t think it was better than Cate Blanchett’s turn in Blue Jasmine. Similarly, while I thoroughly enjoyed the film, it had nowhere near the impact of Dallas Buyer’s Club, 12 Years a Slave or Nebraska. It’s a much smaller film, obviously, much more of a Little Miss Sunshine than an event picture. The script, while quite good, was also overshadowed by Woody Allen’s script for Blue Jasmine, one of his best in years. If anything, I firmly believe that Coogan was robbed of a Best Actor nomination, finding his performance to be much more nuanced and interesting than Christian Bale’s turn in American Hustle. Provided Coogan keeps at the dramatic roles, however, I see no reason why he won’t (someday) be able to take a statue home for his troubles.

In many ways, Philomena is an absolutely lovely film (the scene where Philomena, Martin and Anthony’s boyfriend sit down to watch home movies brought tears to my eyes in the best, most non-exploitative way possible), filled with wonderful performances, some nice cinematography and a fairly unobtrusive score (also Oscar-nominated, for some reason). There are a few too many obtrusive flashbacks for my liking and the aforementioned lack of narrative tension tends to sap much-needed drama from the proceedings but patient audiences will find much to like here. Philomena may not have been the best film of 2013 but it was certainly one of the nicest ones. At the end of the day, can we really ask for more?

2/25/14: Lost in Space (Oscar Bait, Part 9)

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2013 Academy Awards, 86th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, Alfonso Cuaron, All Is Lost, astronauts, auteur theory, Best Actress nominee, Best Cinematography winner, Best Director nominee, Best Film Editing winner, Best Original Score winner, Best Picture nominee, Best Sound Editing winner, Best Sound Mixing winner, Best Visual Effects winner, Children of Men, cinema, disaster films, Ed Harris, Emmanuel Lubezki, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, George Clooney, Gravity, lost in space, marooned, Movies, multiple Oscar winner, outer space, rescue mission, Sandra Bullock, sci-fi, space shuttle, special-effects extravaganza, thriller, trapped in space

My Oscar-prep viewing for the last week of February continued with Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. Of all of the nominees, I was probably (initially) most excited to see this one, since I’m a huge fan of Cuaron’s previous film, the wonderfully dystopic Children of Men. After waiting seven years for a follow-up, how would Gravity stack up? And did it really earn all ten of its Oscar nominations? Read on, gentle readers…read on.

As a boy, my twin loves (above and beyond anything else that I loved) were dinosaurs and outer space. If there was a book about the subject(s), I read it. if there was a show or movie, I watched it. I’ve always been fascinated by huge, open expanses but my inability to swim has always rendered the deep-sea about as terrifying as diving into an active volcano. Space, however, was a different story. As frightening as the notion of all of that vast emptiness was, I never ceased to be fascinated and drawn to it. As time went on and I got older, my former obsession with dinosaurs gradually faded into my childhood, although I remember being fairly agog when I first saw Jurassic Park in the theater. My obsession with space, however, has never waned. If anything, I find myself more fascinated by it now then I ever was: we truly live in a glorious time for anyone who’s ever wondered about what might be “up there,” since we seem to get word of astounding new galactic discoveries on a fairly regular basis. If there’s one thing me and my boyhood self would agree on, it’s this: outer space is pretty damn amazing.

Interestingly enough, however, my lifelong love of space hasn’t really translated into a love of sci-fi films. I’ve found many, over the years, that I really enjoy and a few that I even love: 2001; Alien; The Black Hole; Event Horizon, to name a few. For the most part, however, I’m not really drawn to the space shoot-em-ups of stuff like Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica. I’m much more interested in low-key, intellectual films like Moon, Europa Report, 2001 and Solaris. Part of the appeal of space, to me, has always been the inherent mystery of it: the best sci-fi films manage to preserve this sense of mystery while still giving something to thrill along to.

Gravity could certainly be said to exist in the same company as the aforementioned “intelligent” sci-fi films, but it’s not quite the same thing. There is nothing lunk-headed or especially clumsy about the film but its heart is definitely more interested in action (sometimes so non-stop as to almost seem real-time) than it is in wonder or inquiry. There’s nothing wrong with this, mind you, but it immediately puts Gravity into a slightly different category and is one of the reasons why I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed after the whole thing was over.

Story-wise, Gravity is simplicity itself: Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) are American astronauts on a routine spacewalk when disaster strikes. The Russians have accidentally bombed one of their own satellites, which has caused deadly space debris to travel into the Americans’ vicinity. Too late to avoid the bombardment, Stone and Kowalski find themselves adrift in space, no contact with Earth and only their connecting tether keeping them from spinning away into the vastness of forever. Using every ounce of their strength, courage and cautious optimism, the two must do everything they can to make it back home, lest the far reaches of space become their frigid tomb.

In a nutshell, that’s pretty much it: just slightly over 90 minutes of Bullock trying desperately to get back home. In many respects, Gravity and All Is Lost (Redford stuck at sea on a sinking sailboat) are kindred spirits. Both are claustrophobic, quick-paced thrill rides that feature one protagonist (it’s no spoiler to say that Bullock spends the majority of the film alone), almost no supporting characters or additional actors and minimal locations. While I heartily enjoyed Gravity, I’ll have to give the edge here to All Is Lost for one very important reason: it didn’t dilute its impact with unnecessary emotional baggage. In All Is Lost, we end up knowing as little about Redford’s character as possible: he doesn’t even get a name. This isn’t to say that there’s no character information whatsoever: through a few small, subtle scenes, we find out enough about Redford’s character (wife and kids back home, well-to-do older man) to become invested in his struggle. At no time, however, does the film wring unnecessary mileage out of the emotional beats: they’re just there to humanize the character.

In Gravity, however, Ryan’s back-story directly influences her actions in the film and, at times, is used as the sole emotional ballast. For my money, this wasn’t the best way to humanize the character and, to be honest, had a bit of the opposite effect for me. At times, I found myself questioning Ryan’s actions: she would be unthinkingly swift and decisive one moment, curled in a fetal position and looking “lost” the next. While this might be a natural reaction for any normal person caught in the situation, it still had the effect of dragging down the film and injecting a maudlin, overly emotional tone that was at odds with the film’s more clinical inclinations. It’s almost as if Cuaron was unsure if the audience would be fully invested in the actual things happening to Bullock’s character (who the hell wouldn’t find being lost in space terrifying and thrilling?!), so he decided to hedge his bets by piling on a tragic back-story for her to overcome. It’s a reductive measure and, effectively, boils down Ryan’s entire experience in space to “overcoming personal adversity.” It’s equivalent to Ripley coming at the Mother Alien with the robot suit only to end up shaking hands and hugging it out. This is particularly puzzling since, aside from the too obvious back-story and some beats with Clooney’s character, there isn’t anything obvious about the actual film. This was a pretty big disappointment for me, since it seemed like a concession to what modern audiences expect from films, not what filmmakers actually intend. I keep wondering how amazing this film would have been as a non-stop, tightly-shot, A-B-C thriller and it makes the final product even more disappointing.

But, let’s be absolutely frank here: most people going to see Gravity won’t be going for the character development, the writing or anything of that nature: they’ll be going to experience a huge, eye-popping visual smorgasbord. And on that count, Gravity absolutely does not disappoint. In fact, I daresay that I really have no appropriate words to describe how utterly, sumptuously amazing the film looks. There isn’t one frame that didn’t look meticulously composed and I still have no idea whatsoever how many of the shots were achieved. As far as I can tell, Cuaron took a small crew into deep space and filmed: that’s about the best explanation I have for a lot of the film. The SFX are seamless, the space visuals are so stunning that I got teary-eyed (really) and the sound effects put you right in the thick of everything. If there’s one part of the filmmaking I didn’t care for, however, it would definitely have to be Steven Price’s intrusive, too-obvious score. Something more minimalist and  moody would have helped the film but I felt like the score tried to be too leading: I’m not a fan of hand-holding between filmmakers and the audience and the score was definitely that. As far as the technical awards and the Best Cinematography statue, however? There was simply no other film in the running after this one: even discussing other films’ effects as being equitable is absolutely ridiculous.

At the end of the day, perhaps my own unreasonable expectations led me to be disappointed by Gravity. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed most of the film as I was watching it (save for the overly emotional bits referenced above). I was even stunned at several points, especially that jaw-dropping opening. It was a fun, exquisitely crafted film with a rock-solid performance by Bullock (not Oscar worthy, IMHO, but damn close), a very Clooney-esque performance by George C and a totally awesome reference to my favorite scene in Jaws. It was also, unfortunately, a rather slight film, almost more of an effects exercise then anything else. I remember how much I found myself pondering and returning to Children of Men after I first saw it. After watching Gravity, my only thought was, “Damn: shoulda seen it in the theaters.” While Gravity was a good Cuaron film, it looks like I might have to wait another seven years for a great Cuaron film.