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.

5/10/15: A Real Wild Child

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2015 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, abusive childhood, Art Alexakis, based on a book, based on a true story, Best Actress nominee, Best Supporting Actress nominee, brother-sister relationships, casual sex, Cathryn de Prume, Cheryl Strayed, cinema, Dallas Buyers Club, dead mother, director-editor, dramas, drug addiction, dysfunctional marriage, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Gaby Hoffmann, grief, hiking, infidelity, isolation, Jean-Marc Vallee, Keene McRae, Kevin Rankin, Laura Dern, Martin Pensa, memoir, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, multiple editors, Nick Hornby, Oscar nominee, overcoming adversity, Pacific Crest Trail, Reese Witherspoon, self-discovery, self-help, self-improvement, set in 1990s, sex addiction, Wild, Yves Bélanger

Author C.S. Lewis once described grief as “like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” While this is certainly a poetic and serene way to look at it, I’ve always equated the emotion with something older and a bit more mythological, personally. As far as I’m concerned, grief is a hydra: cut off one head and numerous ones sprout up to take its place. In order to truly overcome grief, one needs to get right to the heart of the matter…trying to tackle each individual feeling, each moment of pain, sorrow and heartbreak is as pointless a task as Hercules trying to sever each individual head, only for two more to grow back. In order to truly overcome grief, one must confront the inciting incident head on: emotional honesty, no matter how painful, is the only true way out.

When Cheryl Strayed started out on her 1,100-mile trek down the Pacific Crest Trail, from Mexico to Canada, she was motivated by grief: after losing her beloved mother to cancer, Strayed spiraled into a mess of drug addiction, marital infidelity and self-destructive behavior, culminating in the realization that she either had to get better or risk a complete and total meltdown. Her intensely arduous undertaking (difficult for an expert hiker, all but impossible for a complete novice like Cheryl) would begin as a way to find some sort of peace in her life but would end with her finding something more important: herself. In the hands of French filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee, Strayed’s journey comes to vivid life with Wild (2014), based on her memoir of he experience. While the story is an interesting rumination on grief, the film ends up being disjointed and rather rote, a decided step down from Vallee’s previous effort, the similarly Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club (2013).

Employing a flashback structure, Wild starts us in the “present day” (June 1995), as Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) is just beginning her incredibly long hike, before jumping us backwards to get a sense of the events that led up to her decision. We see her relationship with her hard-working, single mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern) and younger brother, Leif (Keene McRae)…we see Cheryl and Bobbi taking college classes together…we see Bobbi diagnosed with a particularly vicious form of cancer…and, of course, we see Cheryl’s life collapse around her after the death of her mother. Falling into a toxic combo of drug addiction (first smoking, then snorting, finally shooting smack), casual sex with strangers (particularly troublesome given her current married status) and self-hatred, Cheryl seems doomed, burning alive by the intense heat of her own grief.

After hitting rock bottom, Cheryl makes the spur of the moment decision that would end up changing her entire life: she decides to hike all 1,000+miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, with no previous hiking experience. Her (now ex-) husband, Paul (Thomas Sadoski), is cautiously supportive. Her best friend, Aimee (Gaby Hoffmann) thinks she’s nuts. Regardless, Cheryl sets out on her journey with no idea of what she’s doing, a pack that’s at least five times heavier than it should be and more determination than a small city. Along the way, Cheryl will see plenty of natural beauty, run into a few natural hazards and meet lots of interesting folks, including fellow hikers, a kindly farmer, a reporter for the “Hobo Times,” sinister hunters and a Grateful Dead cover band. She’ll learn to rely on herself and the kindness of strangers but she’ll also learn an even more important lesson: no matter how white-hot the pain of grief may be, life does, in fact, go on. Sometimes, all we can do is go along for the ride and see where it takes us.

As a story, Wild has an almost irresistible pull: there’s something primal and inherently satisfying about watching a damaged, fractured human being take a healing journey, especially when the backdrop is the awe-inspiring beauty of the great outdoors. Witherspoon does a great job bringing Cheryl to life, making the cinematic version feel like a real, flesh-and-blood person as opposed to just a character. As usual, Witherspoon is an all-in performer: in order to fully appreciate Cheryl’s redemption, we need to see her degradation and Witherspoon holds nothing back, whatsoever, resulting in one of her rawest roles since Freeway (1996). While I didn’t think that her performance in Wild was the very best of last year, it certainly deserved the Oscar nomination and proves, if nothing else, that she continues to defy the expectations imposed on “mainstream” Hollywood starlets by the industry, as a whole.

While Witherspoon’s performance is typically strong, however, the film is a lot more problematic, in general. My biggest complaint comes via Vallee’s flashback structure, which ends up doing two things, neither of which seems desired: it tends to make the narrative unnecessarily confusing (in particular, the timeline seems all over the place) and makes the film feel like more of a series of vignettes than a cohesive whole. For the most part, the film breaks down thusly: Cheryl walks around, flashes back to drug use and orgies, meets interesting folks, lather, rinse, repeat. In short order, Wild begins to seem distressingly formulaic, which certainly robs the film of much of its tension: even during presumably high-stakes moments like the redneck hunters, Wild seems constrained by its structure.

There’s a sparse, spare quality to much of the film that’s both lovely and thematically important (Cheryl is, after all, desperately searching for some sort of stillness within herself, the same stillness echoed by the natural landscape) but this spare quality is constantly dashed by the endless flashbacks. Perhaps if the peeks into the past had felt more organic and motivated, as opposed to part of a regimented structure, they would have retained more impact and had less (negative) effect on the film’s tone. As it stands, however, Wild ends up feeling more disjointed and piecemeal than it does cohesive.

I also had a problem with the relationship between Cheryl and her mother, at least as depicted in the film. While I’m not familiar with Strayed’s actual memoir, I have to assume that the intense connection between her and her mom is better delineated on the page than it is on the screen. As depicted, however, we really don’t get a clear sense of this devotion: Bobbi seems quirky, positive and fun-minded, sure, but the flashbacks to her and Cheryl don’t seem to hint at an on-screen relationship that’s any more intense than any other cinematic mother-daughter pairing. Losing her mother seems to be the catalyst for Cheryl’s spiral into a drug and sex-fueled hell but, prior to her death, the pair just seem to get along okay: for me, at least, this ended up being a bit of a disconnect from the film.

Acting-wise, Wild is full of good performances, although the vast majority end up being short, bite-sized little bits as opposed to more substantial scenes: this is very much the story of Strayed and Witherspoon is, for the most part, always the focal point. Despite garnering a Best Supporting Actress nomination, I wasn’t particularly impressed by Dern’s performance as the doomed Bobbi: despite being a big fan, her transition from happy-go-lucky to hair-pulling felt too abrupt and nothing really stuck out for me. Ditto for Gaby Hoffmann, who ends up with a few minutes of screen time as Cheryl’s friend, which seems a bit of a waste given Hoffmann’s ability to handily steal focus. Kevin Rankine is personable as Greg, the hiker that Cheryl keeps bumping into on the trail, but Keene McRae is fairly awful as brother Leif…it’s a real “six of one, half-dozen of the other” scenario.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Wild but was never blown away: considering how great I thought Dallas Buyers Club was, this definitely struck me as a bit of a disappointment. While I think the core story is a fascinating one (if the notion of a complete novice hiking over a thousand miles to “find” herself doesn’t strike you as fascinating, the core issue definitely doesn’t reside with the movie), the actual film never really clicked for me. To each their own, of course: while the actual film ended up being a bit of a let-down, Strayed’s story is interesting enough to make this worth a watch, even if it’s decidedly more run-of-the-mill than it could have been.

4/19/15: The Game of Life

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2014 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, Alan Turing, Alex Lawther, Alexandre Desplat, Allen Leech, arrogance, Óscar Faura, based on a book, based on a true story, Benedict Cumberbatch, Best Actor nominee, Best Actress nominee, Best Adapted Screenplay winner, Best Director nominee, Best Film Editing nominee, Best Original Score nominee, Best Picture nominee, Charles Dance, cinema, code-breakers, crossword puzzles, cryptography, dramas, early computers, Enigma machine, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Graham Moore, Headhunters, homophobia, homosexuality, Jack Bannon, James Northcote, Keira Knightley, life during wartime, Mark Strong, mathematicians, Matthew Beard, Matthew Goode, MI6, Morten Tyldum, Movies, multiple award nominee, mystery, Oscar nominee, persecution, race against time, romances, Rory Kinnear, Russian spies, secrets, set in 1940s, set in 1950s, set in England, spies, The Imitation Game, thrillers, Tom Goodman-Hill, Turing machines, war films, William Goldenberg, World War II

True heroes, unlike their cinematic counterparts, rarely receive the appreciation that they deserve. Oh sure: they may be honored, feted and immortalized via statuary but this is usually long after they’ve ceased drawing breath on this particular plane of existence. The reason for this, in most cases, is that true heroes…the kinds who save tens of thousands, if not more…usually operate in the shadows, away from the spotlight of public scrutiny. They’re the doctors and scientists who discover new cures and immunizations on a regular basis…the engineers who continue to craft safer buildings, bridges and roads…the unsung politicians, bureaucrats and civil servants who toil away behind the scenes, not for power, money or glory but because they honestly don’t want to see their citizenry starving or freezing to death in the streets. Cinematic heroes are a lot more thrilling, sure: watching Batman punch the living shit out of garishly clad supervillains is much more thrilling IMAX fare than watching Jonas Salk develop a Polio vaccine. When it comes down to brass tacks, however, it’s kind of obvious that Salk has saved at least a few more folks than Batman has, albeit with much less panache.

Morten Tyldum’s multi-Oscar-nominated The Imitation Game (2014) takes a look at one such unsung hero, the prickly, brilliant mathematician/cryptologist Alan Turing. Aside from being responsible for the Turing machine, a proto-computer that would be a nice enough feather in anyone’s cap, Turing was also one of the British code-breakers responsible for cracking Germany’s infamous Enigma machine during World War II, allowing the Allies to move the war into its endgame. Estimates put the number of lives saved by ending the war early at around 14 million, give or take: in other words, not bad for a guy who wore a sweater and slacks to  work instead of a spandex suit. Along with being a world-class code-breaker, however, Turing was also a gay man during a time period when sexual orientation was illegal. Years after his triumph over the Engima machine, Turing was prosecuted and found guilty of indecency: choosing chemical castration, Turing would go on to commit suicide roughly a year after his “therapy,” at the tender age of 41.

Similar to The Iron Lady (2011) and The Theory of Everything (2014), The Imitation Game takes the real facts of Turing’s life and expands, folds and manipulates them into something altogether more “cinematic,” if arguably less factual. By employing a flashback structure, Tyldum runs three simultaneous timelines: the “present-day,” circa 1951; the “war years,” circa the 1940s; and Turing’s childhood, circa the late-’20s. While the meat of the story takes place during the war, the “present-day” material opens the film and sets up a mystery (of sorts) that the school and war eras will attempt to “solve.”

In the present day, we follow Detective Robert Nock (Rory Kinnear) as he investigates a mysterious break-in at the home of Prof. Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch). As Nock investigates the incident, with a minimum amount of support and help from the prickly Turing, he becomes stymied by the reclusive professor’s redacted military record. This leads us into the film proper, with Turing attempting to offer his services to the British government as a decoder, despite a complete lack of interest in politics, social disorder or even a rudimentary understanding of the German language.

As Turing butts heads with his rigid, disapproving commander (Charles Dance), he also manages to tick off the other code-breakers that he’s supposed to be working with, labeling each of them as “worthless” in each own, indomitable way. He does, however, manage to find a kindred spirit in Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley): their friendship eventually develops into an engagement, albeit one inherently doomed by Alan’s homosexuality. We then get the third part of our little “triptych” as we journey back to Turing’s boyhood years and witness the young genius (Alex Lawther) as he’s introduced to the world of cryptography and falls in love with his classmate, Christopher (Jack Bannon). As these three timelines move and maneuver around each other, we gradually develop a more complete picture of Turing as the quintessential outsider, a man tasked with saving the social order that , ultimately, condemns and hates him. You know: pretty much the definition of the selfless hero.

While the historical details behind The Imitation Game are certainly up for debate (as they were in the aforementioned biopics) the film, itself, is a much sturdier, well-made and entertaining affair than either The Iron Lady or The Theory of Everything. Credit certainly must go to Cumberbatch, who tears into the role of Turing with complete and absolute gusto: while he gets several “big” scenes, it’s all of the small, almost invisible personal tics and quirks that really make the character come alive. While there’s nothing here that’s completely foreign to Cumberbatch’s work with the new Sherlock series (aside from a new-found sense of vulnerability that would fit the smug detective as poorly as a reverse-mohawk), he’s pretty effortless as getting across the commingled pain, hubris and awkwardness that seemed to be at the heart of the character. Cumberbatch is an actor who understands how important it is to listen: there’s a rare joy to be found in watching an almost endless cycle of emotions sail across his expressive face, from boyish mischief to hopeless defeat. Rather than simply indulging in mimicry (as with Streep’s take on Maggie Thatcher or Redmayne’s performance as Stephen Hawking), Cumberbatch does it the old-fashioned way and just acts.

As befits this type of large-scale production, Cumberbatch has quite the cast to back him up. While Keira Knightley has never especially blown me away, I quite enjoyed her low-key performance as Joan: the bit where she tells the obnoxious Turing that, as a woman in a man’s job, she “doesn’t have the luxury of being an ass,” like him, is subtly (but witheringly) delivered but as sturdy as concrete. There’s also good work coming from Matthew Goode, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard and James Northcote as Turing’s put-upon co-workers, with Goode getting some especially nice moments. If Charles Dance and Low Winter Sun’s Mark Strong come off more stereotypical and clichéd (as the stodgy commander and sneaky MI6 agent, respectively), chalk this up to roles that serve more as plot-points than to any deficiencies in the acting, which are top-notch.

From a filmmaking perspective, The Imitation Game mostly works, although I’ll admit to not being a fan of the flashback structure. For my money, this would have worked much better as a more traditional narrative, moving from Turing’s childhood up to his indecency conviction: the constant cutting between eras often has the effect of pulling us out of the moment, making it difficult to ever get fully invested in the structure. The “present-day” material also exists solely as a contrived “mystery,” especially since the final emotional resolution occurs via screen-text after the film has actually ended. Running it chronologically (with, perhaps, a return to the childhood-era for the final revelation/emotional wallop) would have kept the focus on Turing, eliminating the unnecessary mystery element. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that the various newsreel cutaways and war scenes, while de rigueur for this type of film, really stick out like a sore thumb: they never feel authentic or, to be honest, even particularly well-integrated.

While The Imitation Game would go on to rack up an altogether impressive array of award nominations (including a win for Best Adapted Screenplay), there were also plenty of critics who decried the film’s various historical inaccuracies and seeming desire to minimize Turing’s homosexuality. From my perspective, I didn’t necessarily find this to be the case. While it’s certainly true that the film makes certain deviations from the historical record (including creating characters and conflicts that never existed), it would be difficult to find a cinematic biopic that doesn’t do that: certainly, The Imitation Game seems no more guilty of this than does the similarly lauded The Theory of Everything, which managed to paint its subject in such glowing terms that the whole thing seemed more than a bit fanciful and overly romantic. The Imitation Game is a much more gritty, down-to-earth film, albeit one with a foot planted firmly in the kinds of historical biopics that multiplex audiences will be more than familiar with.

I also felt that Turing’s homosexuality was portrayed in a much more organic way than many films like this might opt for: the silly “mystery” angle notwithstanding, the childhood and war-era storylines opt for a refreshing “show, don’t tell” mentality that never feels forced. While the final text does seem like a bit of a cop-out (for the most part, the entirety of the film’s equality message is shoe-horned in right before the credits roll), there’s enough subtle characterization and commentary, throughout, to get the message across loud and clear.

Ultimately, The Imitation Game is a suitably sturdy, well-made character study, although I certainly didn’t find it to be the best film of 2014 (or even one of the best, to be honest). While Tyldum is an assured hand with the material here, guiding the film’s many tense setpieces with a ruthless sense of efficiency, there’s also very little that stands out, aside from the excellent performances. For my money, Tyldum’s previous film, the astounding Headhunters (2011), was a much more impressive, mind-blowing piece of art: The Imitation Game, while more important and “serious,” is certainly the lesser of the two, in close comparison.

Despite its (decidedly minor) issues, however, there’s no denying that The Imitation Game is a solid, powerful and well-crafted film. In an era where the LGBT community still fights for the rights, respect and understanding that has been sadly absent for too long, there’s no denying that this is a story that definitely needs to be told. As long as any person is forced to go through what Alan Turing was put through, all of humanity collectively suffers. Here’s to hoping that, in the future, our children will look back on the events depicted in The Imitation Game as an example of a petty, small-minded and terrible time that no longer exists.

True heroism, after all, isn’t about making the world better for yourself: true heroism is about making the world better for everyone, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, nation of origin, religion (or lack thereof), political-leaning or personal wealth.

3/1/15: Everybody is Somebody

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2014 Academy Awards, 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, 87th Annual Academy Awards, adventure, Alison Brie, animated films, Batman, Channing Tatum, Charlie Day, Chris Pratt, Christopher Miller, cinema, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, co-directors, co-writers, colorful films, destiny, directing team, duty, Elizabeth Banks, family films, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, friendships, good vs evil, heroes, individuality, Jonah Hill, Lego Movie, Liam Neeson, Mark Mothersbaugh, Morgan Freeman, Movies, multiple writers, Nick Offerman, Oscar nominee, Oscars, personal expression, Phil Lord, positive films, positivity, romance, Shaquille O'Neal, stylish films, superheroes, The Lego Movie, Will Arnett, Will Ferrell, Will Forte

In an increasingly cynical, self-absorbed world, genuine displays of emotion often stick out like sore thumbs. When everyone is shuffling around with their hands in their pockets, rolling their eyes and being openly dismissive, the person who’s jumping around, laughing, shouting and having a great old time seems quaint, at best, and kind of idiotic, at worst. That, unfortunately, is one of the myriad curses of our modern age: our healthy sense of irony has mutated into an outright dislike of anything that seems too sincere…after all, what’s cool about that?

Being cynical is not a problem for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s The Lego Movie (2014), however: I wager that you’d be hard-pressed to find a film that wears its heart on its sleeve more proudly than this one. In fact, their film is so upbeat, jubilant, frenetic and good-natured that it seems ready-made for nothing less than complete and total derision…even kids movies are world-weary these days, after all. The crucial thing here, however, is that The Lego Movie is actually the furthest thing possible from a mindless, slobbering puppy: in reality, the film is actually quite clever, combining a dizzying, scattershot approach to pop culture references (albeit in the furthest way possible from the dated treacle of the Shrek films) with a tenderly insightful look into father-son relationships. The themes are always big and on the nose but it’s also pretty impossible to keep from getting swept up in the spectacle: in every way possible, The Lego Movie is the epitome of a big-budget, multiplex kids’ movie with heart, spirit and something to say.

Our plucky hero, Emmett (Chris Pratt), is a thoroughly average, cheerful, workaday drone who always follows the rules, has little imagination, no friends and no chance for any sort of wider recognition. His thoroughly average life comes to an end, however, after he meets the rebellious Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and comes into possession of the fabled Piece of Resistance. As luck would have it, Emmett appears to be the prophesied “Special,” the Master Builder who can save all of the Lego realms from the dictatorial homogenization efforts of President Business (Will Ferrell), who sidelines as the evil, outrageously outfitted Lord Business. Business hates individuality and wants to use the dreaded “Kragle” to freeze the denizens of Legoland in place.

In the best epic tradition, it’s up to Emmett and Wyldstyle, along with a motley group of new friends, to save the day. Along for the adventure of a lifetime are Wyldstyle’s arrogant boyfriend, Batman (Will Arnett); Metal Beard (Nick Offerman), the hybrid-pirate; Uni-Kitty (Alison Brie), the perpetually chipper horned cat; Vetruvius (Morgan Freeman), the wise wizard who foretold Emmett’s appearance; and Benny (Charlie Day), the displaced astronaut who just wants to make an old-fashioned spaceship. The group will need to work together if they want to succeed, however, since President Business’ right-hand-man, Bad Cop/Good Cop (Liam Neeson) is hot on their trail. As the dreaded TAKOS Tuesday looms, will Emmett restore individuality to the various kingdoms of Legoland or will the Kragle seal their fates forever?

Even at nearly two hours long, The Lego Movie packs an awful lot of action, plot and chaos into its stylish framework, making the film as dizzying as it is relentlessly upbeat and fun. There are so many small details crammed into every frame, so many running jokes, gentle satire and pop culture references, that the film sometimes feels like being dropped into a life-size Pachinko machine. There’s a method to the madness, however, a natural flow that allows one to get caught up in the eye-popping visual candy and just go with it. Unlike many modern animated films, which often seem so frenetic as to be unintelligible for anyone older than a pre-teen, The Lego Movie never seems completely nonsensical, even as it constantly smashes the wall between audience and action, animation and live action.

One of the film’s neatest coups is the way in which it mashes together so many disparate pop culture figures, superheroes and assorted film franchises. Not only do we get a full complement of iconic superheroes (besides Batman, the film also features Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Superman, and, if I recall correctly, Spiderman) but we also get Star Wars characters (Han and Lando show up for a funny bit), real-life figures (Shakespeare and Honest Abe are here, along with Shaquille O’Neal, for some inexplicable reason) and at least a couple dozen that managed to sail right by me. If there’s one deficit to The Lego Movie’s “everything and the kitchen sink” approach, it’s that it’s pretty impossible to catch everything the first time through: it’s like the scene in I Love Lucy where she tries (and fails) to combat the conveyor belt. By the time we’ve recognized and laughed at one reference, we’ve missed three more. On the flip side, however, I’d rather have an embarrassment of riches than a veritable wasteland…there, literally, is something for everyone here.

Along with being upbeat, fun and goofy, The Lego Movie also comes with a raft of good, positive messages and morals behind it: the importance of imagination; building people up rather than tearing them down; fostering teamwork; self-sacrifice; giving your children enough autonomy for them to succeed (or fail) on their own terms; the need to think outside of the box in order to solve problems…they’re all here and none of the messages (including the father-son bit) are so forced, maudlin or obvious as to be cloying. As previously mentioned, Miller and Lord’s film is the furthest thing from “big, dumb and loud” that there is (although it is pretty noisy, to be honest).

As far as voice talent goes, The Lego Movie is like an endlessly replenishing Horn of Plenty: we get the now ubiquitous Chris Pratt (giving Bradley Cooper some competition in the box office recognition stakes), a great performance from Banks as the self-assured Wyldstyle, terrific comedic support from Offerman, Day and Brie (the part where Uni-Kitty goes ballistic is pure gold) and incredibly fun performances from Ferrell and Neeson. Neeson, in particular, seems to be having a blast playing off his recent tough-guy image and he really lights up the screen whenever he’s barreling through the action. And then, of course, there’s Arnett as (arguably) the most self-centered, egomaniacal Batmen in the history of the character. Arnett is always fun but he’s especially good here, managing to bring subtle nuance to a character that didn’t really need it: thanks to his performance, the Emmett/Wyldstyle/Batman love-triangle has just enough pathos to feel real.

At the time, much was made of The Lego Movie’s general snubbing at this year’s Academy Awards (the film was only nominated in the Best Original Song category, which it won). After finally seeing the film, I must freely admit to being just as baffled by its exclusion: while I’ve yet to see the actual nominees, I find it rather hard to believe that How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) was a better “mainstream, multiplex” choice for nomination than The Lego Movie. The integration of actual Legos with computer animation, alone, makes the film eminently more interesting and impressive than many animated films I’ve seen recently and it’s intelligent enough to appeal to adults, as well as children. To be honest, it’s a real head-scratcher that ranks along the exclusion of Enemy (2014) and Nightcrawler (2014), at least as far as I’m concerned.

As someone who dislikes noisy, crass, chaotic, self-referential modern animated films, I was fully prepared to hate The Lego Movie, even though I really enjoyed the duo’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009). Instead, I was kind of blown away by it: the film is consistently impressive and, when it soars, it really hits some heady heights. Add in a great score from Devo mastermind Mark Mothersbaugh and there’s really precious little to complain about here. Whether you’re a parent, a kid or just someone who loved Legos growing up, I’m willing to wager that you’ll find something to love here.

One of the most beautiful aspects of childhood is the sincere joy that kids have over everything that they come across: kids don’t “like” stuff, they just like it, no qualifiers or snark necessary. The Lego Movie understands how important it is to dream, believe and shoot for the stars, how the boundless depths of our imaginations once took us to unbelievable places…and how they can still take us there, if we let them. In many ways, The Lego Movie is about the pure, undiluted joy of being a child: you’d have to be a real Lord Business to make fun of that.

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.

6/9/14 (Part One): Young’uns and Dragons

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'80s fantasy films, 1980's, baby dragons, Caitlin Clarke, cinema, Conan the Barbarian, debut acting role, Disney films, dragons, Dragonslayer, fantasy, film reviews, films, Galen, Industrial Light and Magic, John Hallam, John Milius, King Casiodorus, Matthew Robbins, Movies, Oscar nominee, Peter MacNicol, Ralph Richardson, romance, special-effects extravaganza, sword and sorcery, the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, Touchstone Pictures, Tyrian, unlikely hero, Valerian, virgin sacrifice, wizard's apprentice, wizards, writer-director

When I was a wee young’un, I was a bit of a fantasy/sword and sorcery buff. Okay: I was actually more of a fanatic but let’s not split hairs. During those all important formative years, I watched (and re-watched) dozens of knight/wizard/dragon/mysterious land epics, although there were two that I found myself returning to more often than the others: Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Dragonslayer (1981). To this day, Conan the Barbarian still stands as one of my favorite films: I re-watch it on a regular basis and will defend its merits to my dying day. In fact, if you haven’t seen John Milius’ awe-inspiring classic, drop what you’re doing and fix that error, post haste…you’ll thank me later.

Although my lifelong love of Conan the Barbarian has never waned, I must admit that I haven’t actually sat down to watch Dragonslayer in at least a decade, although it may be closer to 15 years. When I was putting together my recent viewings, I had the bright idea to revisit the film and see how it holds up today. Despite my former obsession with the film, I honestly couldn’t recall much more than the hero’s frizzy hair and a scene involving baby dragons. Would this be a case like Clerks (1994), where a formerly beloved movie has turned into vinegar, or had Dragonslayer become a “fine wine” over the years?

It would appear that the people of Urland have a bit of a problem: an ancient, spiteful, fire-breathing dragon has been terrorizing the kingdom for years and the people are held in the icy grip of fear. In order to convince the dragon to quit setting everything on fire, King Casiodorus (Peter Eyre) has been holding a lottery twice a year, a lottery which all female virgins in the kingdom are required to participate in (with the exception of his own daughter, Princess Elspeth (Chloe Salaman), of course). The “winners” of the lottery get to become dragon snacks, while the “losers” get to look forward to the next lottery. As is noted later, the rich denizens of Urland tend to buy their way out of the lottery, so it’s only ever the poor daughters who get sacrificed to the giant lizard.

Seeking some way out of their present situation, a small group of Urlanders, led by the scrappy Valerian (Caitlin Clarke), go to see the all-powerful wizard Ulrich (Ralph Richardson), paying a visit to his creepy, isolated castle. Ulrich may be cantankerous, forgetful and given to rather vague proclamations but he’s also the only wizard left in the land and someone has to be able to take on the dragon. Upon examining one of the dragon’s recovered scales, Ulrich notes that the beast is ancient: it must be decrepit, miserable, in constant pain and spiteful. In other words, Ulrich recognizes a kindred spirit and offers his services, along with those of his loyal apprentice, Galen (Peter MacNicol, of Ally McBeal fame): he’ll take out the dragon, as requested, although his reasons seem to involve ending its pain as much as saving Urland.

As the group is about to set out for Urland, disaster strikes in the form of Tyrian (John Hallam), King Casiodorus’ blood-thirsty man-at-arms. Tyrian and his men have been sent by the King to prevent the citizens from “stirring the pot,” as it were: the King quite likes the delicate balance in the kingdom, particularly since it doesn’t really impact his family and is worried that a pissed-off dragon might mistake unacceptable rich folks as snacks versus the court-approved poor slobs. In the guise of testing Ulrich’s powers, Tyrian ends up killing him, seeming to put an end to the quest before it even leaves the castle’s front yard. Luckily for the Urlanders, Galen is a plucky young lad and, with the assistance of Ulrich’s faithful manservant, Hodge (Sydney Bromley), he eagerly offers to take up the quest himself. He might not be an all-powerful wizard, like Ulrich, or a steel-nerved swordsman like Tyrian but he has something that neither of them had: really frizzy hair. He also has a magic amulet, which will probably prove useful, and a sack full of Ulrich’s ashes but the hair, presumably, is what makes the difference.

Along the way, Galen comes to the shocking realization that Valerian is actually a young lady, after a skinny-dipping incident in which he notices that her hidden parts look different from his. In a rather awesome parallel, this actually seems to tie Dragonslayer in with Just One of the Guys (1985), a stereotypical ’80s comedy in which a young lady impersonates a young man in order to get the scoop on a high school football team: how’s that for synergy? Galen and Valerian banter back and forth and, despite an ever so brief moment where it appears that Elspeth and Galen might hook up, it should be pretty clear that this couple is “meant to be.”

Back at Urland, Galen comes across as a bit of a jackass: in a bid to impress everyone and bring a hasty conclusion to the nasty business, he causes a landslide to bury the dragon’s cave opening. After the dust clears, Galen wipes off his hands, beams and waits for the applause to roll in. The King isn’t quite as overjoyed with this development, however, for reasons already mentioned, and has Galen thrown right into the dungeon. If the young whelp is right and the dragon is dead, the King will release him and throw him a party. If, however, Galen just ended up pissing off the dragon, as the King suspected, Galen will be choosing the prize behind Door Number 2: a swift execution. When the dragon makes an appearance, opting for a real scorched-earth policy, all signs point to Galen being kinda screwed. Fear not, faithful readers: this is a Disney movie, after all, and good must eventually succeed over evil. Freed from his prison, Galen must use all of his training and courage, along with some able support from Valerian and his magic amulet, to finally destroy the dragon and free the kingdom. Sometimes, however, young pluck is not enough to overcome ancient evil. Sometimes, you really do need a hero…or a wizard.

For a time, in the early-mid ’80s, Disney seemed to be trying to break from their squeaky-clean image with a group of films that were decidedly darker, more “mature” and violent than previous films. This trend seemed to begin with the ultra-dark, sci-fi epic The Black Hole (1979) and would continue with The Watcher in the Woods (1980), Dragonslayer, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), The Journey of Natty Gann (1985), The Black Cauldron (1985) and Return to Oz (1985). Eventually, Disney would create Touchstone Pictures to handle these “more adult” films, scrubbing a bit of the mire off Disney’s tarnished “innocence.” In certain ways, then, Dragonslayer is a bit of a watershed moment in that it reflected a fundamental change in the Disney ideal, during the early ’80s. It’s also notable for its consistently impressive special effects, effects which earned it an Oscar nomination for Visual Effects, which it lost to some forgotten film named Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

Without a doubt, the effects in Dragonslayer are pretty amazing, especially for the time, even if they might seem a bit dated by modern standard. In at least one instance, however, the effects in Dragonslayer seem to be at least the equal of modern films: as the dragon rears up and blasts Galen with a huge stream of fire, we get a truly awe-inspiring wide shot of the action. With the dragon occupying one side of the frame and Galen and his enormous shield occupying the other side, the shot looks just as beautiful and immaculately composed as any illustration or painting, with the added benefit of the cinematic sense of motion and space. Tt’s a heady moment that absolutely thrilled me and was, I’m pretty sure, at least 70% responsible for my previous love of the film. Bottom line: it’s a fantastic shot that could easily compete with the best of Jackson, Cameron, et al.

In general, the effects work (by Industrial Light and Magic) is strictly top-notch, featuring a great use of puppetry (the aforementioned dragon pups), a really neat flaming lake location and the dragon, itself, which ends up looking just as realistic, in close-up, as many of the dinosaurs in Spielberg’s groundbreaking Jurassic Park (1993). While the effects are never less than stupendous, the image, itself, can be a little dark, at times, or given to a “bleary-smeary” filter effect that makes it seem as if the viewer is mildly intoxicated. I didn’t mind the occasionally too dark image, since it really complimented the film’s atmosphere, but the bleary lens got a little tiresome: at times, this felt like one of those old Liz Taylor perfume ads with a Vaseline-smeared camera lens.

As with other films in Disney’s “dark era,” Dragonslayer doesn’t shy away from more graphic material. The bit where Ulrich is killed is a little disturbing, as is the scene where Tyrian murders Hodge, but neither of them really compare to the later scene where the baby dragons end up eating one of the main characters alive. As this was one of the very few aspects of the film that I could (kinda/sorta) recall from my childhood, I’m pretty sure that it made a big impression on me. Whether it’s responsible for any of my current morbidity is an issue up for debate, of course, but I’m sure it at least contributed. The film also features some brief, full nudity, thanks to Valerian’s skinny-dipping scene, which was probably a bit of a concern for parents who took their children to, presumably, the newest Disney family film. By comparison, try to remember the last time you saw full female nudity in a Disney film: I’m betting you can’t come up with anything. While this element adds nothing whatsoever to the story (although it does provide for a nifty visual reveal of Valerian’s true identity), it certainly gives the proceedings a more “mature” quality.

The acting in Dragonslayer is decent, if more than a little hammy, at times (which is perfectly in line with almost every sword and sorcery film of the ’80s, to be honest). Peter Eyre is kind of a fidgety mess as the king (he is one severely weird lookin’ dude, let me tell ya) but John Hallam is pretty great as Tyrian, playing his character as such an unrepentant son of a bitch that his final battle with Galen has some real emotional potency to it: we really, really want to see Galen kick his ass in a most righteous manner. Ralph Richardson is a more than suitable Ulrich and there may even be hints of the Ian McKellen version of Gandalf in his quirky idiosyncrasies. Finally, Peter MacNicol and Caitlin Clarke make a pretty cute couple as Galen and Valerian but I never quite bought MacNicol as a hero: he was always too goofy and self-deprecating, less like someone thrust into a dangerous situation and more like someone goofing around to kill time. Clarke, for her part, makes a suitably spunky heroine but her mid-film transformation into an “actual” young woman is one of those eye-rolling “Ugly Duckling” moments where removing someone’s glasses and letting her hair down transforms said person into Helen of Troy. It’s silly and clichéd but, at the very least, the filmmakers skewer the convention a little by having Galen pull her onto the “dance-floor” as a medieval band strikes up a “tune.” While Valerian’s “transformation” is old hat, this parallel with more conventional teenage romances seemed to be rather subversively clever. At the very least, I got a good chuckle out of it.

While the action occasionally gets a bit silly, writer-director Matthew Robbins tends to keep things fairly straight-faced and a little less bombastic than the competition. Robbins would go on to direct The Legend of Billie Jean (1985) and *batteries not included (1987), although he’ll probably be best known as a writer: he had a hand in the scripts for The Sugarland Express (1974), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), MacArthur (1977) and Mimic (1997) and is currently attached to Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Crimson Peak horror project. Robbins’ script for Dragonslayer isn’t amazing but it is rather tightly plotted and features several genuinely thrilling beats, moments which are replicated pretty exceptionally in the film, itself. Again, while nothing exceptional, Robbins brings a sure and steady hands to the proceedings which certainly gives the film a little added weight.

To return to my original question, however: did the film hold up for me after all these years? Absolutely. While it wasn’t amazing (with the exception of that wonderful dragon/Galen shot and the mean scene where the dragon pups chow down), Dragonslayer is consistently good, easily the better of other films in that particular subgenre like The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982), The Beastmaster (1982), Krull (1983) and Deathstalker (1983). I was particularly taken by the film’s dark, mysterious look (those damned Vasoline shots notwithstanding) and must admit that the superb final fight did make me feel like a kid again: it’s the best kind of ass-kicking, fantasy-badassery and ends the film on an enthusiastically high note. Throw in some last-minute, but no less timely, observations about the ways in which both religions and governments tend to take credit for the work of others and you have a film that sets a pretty high bar and manages, for the most part, to hit its marks.

Dragonslayer isn’t the best ’80s sword and sorcery film by a long-shot (that is, was and always will be Conan the Barbarian, with honorable mention going to John Boorman’s batshit-nuts Excalibur (1981), a film so insane that it belongs in its own category altogether) but that doesn’t prevent it from being superbly entertaining in its own right. Matthew Robbin’s film is a reminder of the days when fantastical worlds weren’t necessarily a given in the world of film and viewers had to work a little harder to get that suspension of disbelief. It’s a little more work, to be sure, but I think the rewards are a little bigger, too.

 

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?

3/18/14: The Faint Spark of Hope

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Alan Parker, Americans abroad, Angela's Ashes, auteur theory, based on a book, based on a true story, Best Adapted Screenplay winner, Best Director nominee, Best Original Score winner, Best Picture nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, Billy Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Brad Davis, buddy films, cinema, college student, critically-acclaimed films, dark films, drama, drug smuggling, drug trafficking, electronic score, Erich, escape from prison, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Giorgio Moroder, Hamidou, homoerotic tension, homophobia, Irene Miracle, jail-break, Jimmy Booth, John Hurt, legal nightmare, Max, Midnight Express, Mississippi Burning, Movies, multiple Golden Globe winner, multiple Oscar winner, Norbert Weisser, Oliver Stone, Oscar nominee, Oscars, Palme d'Or nominee, Paolo Bonacelli, Paul Smith, prison films, Randy Quaid, Rifki, The Wall, Turkish prison, Vangelis

We’ve all done stupid things: that’s the one constant across humanity, regardless of age, race, gender, creed, nationality, income level or relative place in the historical timeline (cavemen did stupid things, too). Part of the human experience is learning and one of the best ways to learn something is to royally screw it up. Touch the open flame once and you know not to touch it again. Poke the tiger? Not twice, you won’t. We’ve all said and done things that were stupid: many of us may have even done things that were stupid and illegal (never a great combo). For the most part, any and everything is a good excuse for a learning opportunity: after all, many of the most powerful and respected people in the world have pasts that are littered with everything from petty crimes to outrageous public declarations. As long as your stupidity doesn’t actively hurt someone else and you’re given the opportunity to learn and grow from the situation, what’s the big deal? In fact, the whole point of youth is to be stupid, make mistakes and learn from them: it’s the “entry-level-fast-food-job/internship” phase of life, setting you up for the “responsible career” phase that’s to come.

But what if you make that one stupid mistake and, rather than a learning experience, it becomes a game-ender? Normal, average people make stupid choices and screw things up everyday: what if your “mistake” was so serious that it landed you in prison? What if you were a young, naive American college student, facing a life sentence in a harsh, barbaric Turkish prison? If you were Billy Hayes in the 1970s, these wouldn’t be questions: they would be facts. Alan Parker’s critically acclaimed Midnight Express takes viewers into Billy’s world and shows how the stupidest actions can have the most dire of consequences. In the process, it also shows us that most miraculous of human traits: the ability to hold on to hope, even when all hope seems lost.

Midnight Express begins with Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) making one of those aforementioned stupid decisions: he opts to smuggle (or attempt to smuggle, as it were) hashish out of Turkey. Even better, he does this in the dawning years of the 1970’s, during a time when Turkey and the Middle East were experiencing particularly high levels of terrorist attacks. As such, authorities are ever vigilant and Billy…well, he’s a bit of a dumb-ass. After sweating, stuttering and barely inching his way past airport security, he ends up on an Amtrak track that, unfortunately, passes through a security checkpoint. A cursory pat-down reveals the dope and our poor schmuck begins his journey down a very long, dark, grim pathway.

After a failed escape attempt, Billy winds up in a Turkish prison, where he promptly runs afoul of head guard Hamidou (Paul Smith), one of the vilest cinematic creations ever shat unto the big-screen. Hamidou beats Billy senseless for having the temerity to take a blanket and, when he comes to, he’s being cared for by a trio of prisoners: crazy-eyed Jimmy Booth (Randy Quaid), strung-out philosopher Max (John Hurt) and gentle Erich (Norbert Weisser). They quickly show Billy the ropes and cue him in on a few important facts: Steer clear of Rifki (Paolo Bonacelli), a nasty prisoner who rats out other prisoners for money; be careful of the children who run around everywhere, since they’re as untrustworthy as the guards and Rifki; all foreigners and homosexuals are considered scum but almost all prisoners practice homosexuality when no one is looking; for the right price, the Turkish legal system can be bought and sold; and, perhaps most importantly: once you’re inside, you’re probably not getting outside.

In due time, Billy’s life becomes a waking nightmare of harsh conditions (the prison is like a squalid, rat-trap hotel where the concierges occasionally beat you so bad that you herniate), a bizarre, nonsensical legal system (Billy can’t even understand the language during his trial, much less offer any useful defense) and the constant, terrifying notion that he’s doomed to spend the rest of his days in this living hell. When his original “generous” sentence of 4 years is over-turned for a more “reasonable” 30-year sentence, Billy finally decides to jump onto Jimmy’s crazy train and attempt a prison breakout. As expected, this doesn’t go quite as planned, leading to more confrontations with Hamidou and Rifki, as well as a long-in-the-making mental breakdown for Billy. After a certain point, Billy’s life seems completely hopeless. If he can just manage to keep his head above water, however, there just might be a light at the end of the tunnel after all.

In certain ways, Midnight Express is a strictly by-the-book prison film, one of those myriad productions where a “good” person ends up in the pokey and must adapt to survive. The Turkish setting is certainly novel, although anyone who grew up on any of the faceless, Philippine-set prison films of the late-’60s and ’70s won’t find much to be surprised by here. The setting certainly does give the filmmakers ample opportunity to play up the disparity between the Westerners and the native Turks but, more often than not, it devolves simply into “complex Westerners” vs “feral, rabid, caveman Turks.” In hindsight, there really aren’t any positive portrayals of Middle Eastern characters in the film: they’re all either vicious, sneering sadists or bumbling, incompetent Keystone Kops. Since the screenplay is written by Oliver Stone (for which he won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar), I wasn’t particularly surprised by this but it was, nonetheless, fairly tiresome. By the time we get to Rifki hanging a cute kitten and Hamidou attempting to violently rape Billy, the “villains” don’t resemble humans so much as fairy-tale ogres. Since the actual Billy Hayes has complained about the negative portrayals of Turkish characters in the film, this seems to be a problem that at least a few folks have had.

Since the film tends to be a fairly standard “men-in-prison” film, it also features plenty of familiar beats: the newbie getting instructed on the lay of the land; the intricate escape plans; the scene where a friendly character is falsely blamed for something; the homoerotic tension between cellmates; the rat; the vicious head-guard. None of these are particularly unique and the only aspect that has the potential to bear interesting fruit (the homoerotic tension between Billy and Erich) is dispensed with pretty quickly. Since this is a film adaptation of a true story, I wasn’t expecting anything particularly “tricky,” as it were, but much of Midnight Express seemed rather old-hat to me Perhaps my opinion would have been different had I seen it when it was released (you know…when I was 1) but decades of prison films since have neutered its impact a bit. Don’t get me wrong: the film is still intensely grim — the scene where a screaming Randy Quaid gets dragged out to be beaten so bad that he’ll lose a testicle is not something that anyone will forget easily — but it’s also not something inherently “fresh” or shocking.

My other major complaint with the film definitely revolves around the musical score by Giorgio Moroder, which inexplicably won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. There are times when the score seems unobtrusive (not high praise, mind you) but, for the most part, it sticks out like a sore thumb. One of the silliest moments has to be Billy’s initial escape from police custody, before he reaches the prison. His escape attempt is scored by some truly ludicrous electro music, complete with laser sound effects: not only does it do nothing to create tension, the score actually made me burst out laughing, which (presumably) wasn’t the desired effect. Later on, Billy mopes about the prison grounds as a moody electronic score plays: I’m pretty sure the intent was something similar to Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner but, again, the execution just doesn’t produce anything but groans. I’m actually a big Giorgio Moroder fan and was pretty excited when I saw his name in the credits: this, however, was like getting coal for Christmas.

On the other hand, the things that work in Midnight Express work fairly well. The performances are uniformly good, with special praise due for Quaid and Hurt’s rock-solid turns as Billy’s only friends. Quaid’s performance is a good reminder that, once upon a time, he was an actor to take seriously. Paul Smith and Paolo Bonacelli are absolutely phenomenal as Hamidou and Rifki, with Bonacelli especially noteworthy. Truly detestable villains are hard to pull off and Midnight Express’ pair of baddies are almost an embarrassment of riches. The only “main” character that seems to get short shrift is Billy’s girlfriend Susan, played by Irene Miracle. Miracle does just fine with what she’s given but she’s not given much: the emotional climax of her character is definitely the moment where she bares her breasts for Billy during a jail visitation but Brad Davis ends up doing most of the heavy lifting. Likewise, Mike Kellin, playing Billy’s dad, is pretty much a non-entity, his participation in events essentially boiling down to the moment where he tells Hamidou to “take good care of (Billy), you Turkish bastard.”

Overall, Midnight Express exists as one of those “critically over-acclaimed” films that can’t help but be a bit of a disappointment, especially when one considers previous films in director Parker’s canon, films like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Mississippi Burning and Angela’s Ashes. As your standard “men in prison must escape” film, Midnight Express is good but nothing legendary. When the film is more understated, it works quite well, although it too frequently lapses into melodrama and overwrought theatrics (the scene where Billy breaks down in court is particularly over-the-top).

As I stated earlier, however, it’s a little hard to fully get behind Billy’s plight since his own stupidity got him there in the first place. It was much easier to sympathize with Jimmy (in prison for stealing two candlesticks from a church) and Max (a heroin junkie) than it was to support Billy: the others were people caught in bad situations, whereas this dumbass college student put himself there…big difference. As a study in people making bad decisions, Midnight Express has to be one of the most on-the-noise. As a prison film, it’s pretty standard fare. As a character study, however, it just doesn’t seem like it has a lot to say.

3/15/14: Just a Couple Good Old Boys

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actor-director, Altamont, America, American Dream, Best Original Screenplay nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, bikers, Billy, Bob Dylan, Born to Be Wild, buddy films, Captain America, Charles Manson, cinema, classic movies, counter-culture films, counterculture, Dennis Hopper, directorial debut, Easy Rider, end of an era, film reviews, films, friendship, hippies, Hoyt Axton, Jack Nicholson, Luke Askew, Mardi Gras, motorcycles, Movies, Oscar nominee, Palme d'Or nominee, Peter Fonda, Phil Spector, rednecks, road movie, road trips, Sharon Tate, Steppenwolf, the American Dream, the Manson Family, The Pusher, Wyatt

When, exactly, did the Summer of Love go up in flames? Conventional wisdom usually points to Altamont, in December 1969, as the point where the promise of free love and hippy Utopianism soured. For my money, though, I always pinpointed Sharon Tate’s murder, on August 9th of the same year, as the real tipping point. Even though the Woodstock festival (usually seen as the pinnacle of “hippyism”) would follow Tate’s murder by less than a week, I always viewed that as sneaking one last one in before Manson and his followers nailed down the coffin lid. By the time the Mason family had cemented their terrible legacy, it was pretty apparent that the shiny red apple of peace, love and harmony contained more than its fair share of rot. While Altamont may have slammed the door shut, it had begun to close long before then. In fact, some folks could see the end way before then: when Dennis Hopper’s now-iconic Easy Rider was first released, in May 1969, who could know that the man would seem like Nostradamus a mere seven months later?

Easy Rider is many things: a buddy film…a road movie…a counter-culture landmark…a return to the sensibilities of On the Road at a time when that attitude seemed not only passe but quaint…a drug movie…a critique of the fractured America of the ’60s…More than anything, however, Easy Rider serves as a death knell, a dire warning from one of the original “freak-flag-flyers” that times were changing and that the peace-and-love hippies were about to be swept from the Earth in the same way that the dinosaurs once were. You could stay the same, he posited, but you would die: that was a given. You could, of course, leave behind your ideals and survive by evolving into something else entirely, something colder, more calculating, less romantic. But isn’t this, in the end, the same sort of death as offered in the first option? Above all else, however, Hopper was making concrete the words of Bob Dylan, albeit casting them in a much darker light than Dylan originally intended: the times, indeed, were a changin’.

As a film, Easy Rider has a pretty simple structure: it’s essentially a series of vignettes featuring Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Wyatt (Peter Fonda), usually addressed as “Captain America.” As the two men travel around the back-roads of America, they meet with an odd assortment of characters, including a hitchhiker (Luke Askew) and his hippy commune, a drunken lawyer (Jack Nicholson), lots of rednecks and some good, old-fashioned, middle-American squares. They sell cocaine to Phil Spector (not the “person” of Phil Spector but the actual man: he’s billed as “The Connection” and wears one seriously yellow suit, complete with matching gloves and glasses), visit a whorehouse in New Orleans and leave a diner one step ahead of an angry mob of rednecks and small-town cops.

For the most parts, events in the film fall into a pretty basic formula: the duo rides to a new place, Billy acts like a square, the Captain tells him to chill out, there’s a musical interlude and the whole thing repeats. Each interlude, however, serves as a way for Hopper (who also wrote the screenplay, with Fonda) to dig a little deeper into the whole notion of the “American Dream.” The opening pre-credits drug-dealing sequence begins with Steppenwolf’s version of “The Pusher,” before their iconic “Born to Be Wild” slams us right into the credits. It’s a subtle way to establish Billy and the Captain’s manifesto (they do whatever they want, man), while also commenting on changes in the pop culture zeitgeist: “The Pusher” was written by Hoyt Axton, a popular folk singer in the early ’60s but it was Steppenwolf’s cover, not the original, that Hopper used. As one of the “heavier” new bands to emerge in the late ’60s, Steppenwolf was a good representation of the direction music was taking, at the time, away from the folk and early rock of the ’60s and into the hard rock and metal of the ’70s. Steppenwolf was pushing Axton out, just as the darker mid-late ’60s was crowding out the peace and optimism of the earlier part of the decade.

They end up on the hitchhiker’s commune but don’t get to stay long: the hippies end up picking on and ostracizing Billy, leading us to the notion that maybe these “peaceniks” aren’t quite as nice as they first seem. Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, Hopper was prophesying what would happen with the Manson family: the hippy exterior concealed a dangerous, deranged interior. Lest it be thought that Hopper is unduly picking on the counterculture (which is rather absurd, since he’s been a genuine, card-carrying member of the counterculture for his entire life/career), we also get scenes like the ones where Billy and the Captain get arrested for “parading without a permit” in a small town and are, essentially, chased out of a diner by a group of locals (including the sheriff) that are a few pitchforks away from the mob in Frankenstein. If the counterculture isn’t necessarily who they say they are, then the average middle-American “square” is exactly what they seem to be: small-minded, suspicious, frightened and utterly resentful of the “freedom” that Billy and the Captain represent. That these small-town folk and rednecks will, ultimately, end up being the undoing of Billy, the Captain and George (Nicholson) is certainly telling: although the counterculture has begun to collapse from the inside, its greatest threat still comes from the outside – the world at large.

All of these events eventually culminate in a truly apocalyptic ending for Billy and the Captain (and poor George, of course), although it’s a finale that would probably only provoke a shrug from the kinds of people who helped perpetrate it: those long-haired, weird bastards got what was coming to them. While the finale few moments of Easy Rider holds the answer to Billy and the Captain’s fates, it’s a moment just before that actually spells everything out for an entire generation. After finally achieving their “goal” of visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras and surviving everything that came before, Billy is absolutely triumphant: they’re both “rich” now, thanks to the opening drug deal and have finally “made it.” “That’s what you do, man,” he tells the Captain, “you go for the big money.” The Captain’s response, however, takes the wind out of not only Billy’s sails but our own, as well: “We blew it, man.” By compromising their principles and losing sight of the “big picture” (changing the world for the better), Billy and the Captain (along with the entire “Free Love” movement) have truly “blown it.” The true extent wouldn’t be felt for some time, of course, but the writing was on the wall: whatever moment might have existed was now past and the movement would continue to spin out into irrelevance.

As a pivotal moment in the history of the counterculture, Easy Rider, much like Kerouac’s On the Road, cannot be easily discounted. Although certain elements have, by necessity, become dated, the overall themes and angles of the film hold up surprisingly well. As a film, Easy Rider is quite good, with sterling performances from Hopper, Fonda and Nicholson, along with some excellent cinematography that is reminiscent of the same year’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It’s always a hoot to see Hopper play the “straight” guy, particularly with the decades of crazy characters that would come after this. Nicholson, in particular, is excellent, providing yet another example of why he became one of the most beloved actors of all time. There’s a sense of playfulness that easily recalls Depp’s work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, although Nicholson owned this type of role for some time before Depp wandered down Jump Street.

If there can be any complaints, it would have to be that the film definitely becomes formulaic well before the ending, although the final 15 minutes are still some of the most powerful film moments ever. Even though the film seems a bit dated now (the commune scene, in particular, is of its era, complete with a truly bizarre mime performance and some really hippy-dippy philosophizing), it’s held up much better than similar films of the era, such as Fonda’s ultra-silly The Trip from a few years earlier. In the end, Easy Rider exists as both a fascinating curio of a forgotten era and a timely reminder that we must be ever vigilant, if we hope to truly change the world. As Sisyphus knew, the moment you quit pushing forward and forging new ground is the moment where the boulder begins to slide back down the hill. In the ’60s, the hippies managed to push the rock quite a ways up the hill. The tragedy, of course, is that it crushed them all on the way back down.