My Oscar Takes

As of this writing, the Oscars are over. The winner chosen. Here are my takes on the final nine, some quite worthy of a nomination, but others ... Not. Why the Academy went beyond five, I find just lame ...

The Artist
Director/writer Michel Hazanavicius’ much-celebrated “silent” black-and-white comedy-drama “The Artist” is a high-wire act of cinematic love that pays homage to and plays with the earliest movies. The plot: Boisterous star of 1920s action films George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) falls hard from celebrity as “Talkies” become Hollywood’s mantra, ironically sweeping the starlet (Bérénice Bejo) he discovered to fame. Hazanavicius trumps expectations throughout, putting Valentin in a nightmare world of “sound” where glasses clink and dogs bark, but our hero has no voice. Sly jokes abound, too: A grammatical error in a dialogue card nudges a scene into hilarity. The lack of vocals forces us to focus on the faces and gestures of the actors, the artists on screen and appreciate their craft: Dujardin, Bejo, James Cromwell, and John Goodman. Dujardin and Bejo’s onscreen chemistry is priceless, and their final scene packs two surprises: The long-lost glory of dance in movies, and the real fear why Valentin feels he has no voice in America. Rare is the moment when “Artist” is truly silent, for it packs a stellar score using music new and old to serve as a substitute for voices, a narration of orchestra and ’20s jazz. Also, best dog ever. A

The Descendants
Alexander Payne’s awesome “The Descendants” pulls the rug out from our under feet in a quick minute as we open on a beautiful woman water skiing. Cut to black. A narrator tells us the woman – his wife -- lies in a coma following a boat crash. This story should be happy. We are in Hawaii, paradise to us in the mainland U.S. But Matt King won’t have it. “Paradise can go fuck itself,” he says in a voice over. George Clooney is Matt. Perfect performance. Bitter and angry, full of new-found reality. Every scene is perfectly written and plays between genres. Payne and his co-screenwriters, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, follow it with a brutal scene as Matt rips into the friend with full-on rage and fear – “Did she love him?” There are three dozen such perfect scenes, quiet, wordless scenes, too. Clooney may well win the Oscar as a heartbroken, newly awakened man who must forgive, but cannot save, his wife. He deserves it. A

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a feel-good 9/11 movie. It opens with a body falling pretty-like from the World Trade Center, and ends with a similar motif, intercut with a boy on a swing. It’s made with Oscar in mind with Stephen Daldry (“The Reader”) behind the camera, and Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Viola Davis on screen. The boy is Oskar Schell, a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome (he claims the tests were inconclusive) grieving the death of his beloved father (Hanks). One day Oskar finds a key in his father’s closet and sees it as a last gift from dad, who used scavenger hunts to bring the boy out of his shell. Schell. Get it? So the boy hunts, seeking an answer as to why dad died that Worst Day. The story is intriguing, but halfway I near bolted. Oskar clearly is in desperate need of psychological care – he fears everything and self-tortures his own body -- but the movie treats his illness as a quirky plot device, worsened by clueless, impossible-to-exist adults. As Oskar, newcomer Thomas Horn shines with majestic soul, but that doesn’t make anything here OK. A feel-good 9/11 movie is not quirky, it’s insulting. The grade is for the boy. C-

The Help
“The Help” is impossible to hate or dismiss. If you have a sense of justice. But make no mistake about it, this is a Disneyfied dramatization of the long civil rights struggle by African Americans, and yet – a Hollywood tradition in “Glory” and “Mississippi Burning” and dozens upon dozens of other films – it chooses to focus on wealthy white characters. The people who should be our total and absolute focus are secondary. Worse, for every heartbreaking scene of racism, evil decorated in twisted Southern American Christian pride, the filmmakers serve up a comedic aside or comeuppance to let us know, we will leave the theater feeling good. No, “Help” is not great. But by the sheer strength of Viola Davis’ acting as a maid and the scary notion that an entire block of American voters (conservative Santorum-loving assholes) consider this era to be America’s finest, it must be seen. Flaws and all. But, really, Emma Stone as the lead?1?B-

Hugo
Leave it to Martin Scorsese to not just set a new high bar for children’s films, but all 3D movies. “Hugo” is a – superlative! -- masterpiece, a tale of an orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) in love with machines, cinema and stories, living in a Parisian train station as a clock master. The film itself glows with a boundless joy of movies and books beloved by Scorsese, making his best film in years, and his brightest, most wide-eyed adventure in ... forever. Hugo – this will upset Fox viewers – is poor, and steals food and drink to survive. (Call Newt!) That thievery puts him at odds with a short-fused toy shop owner named Georges Melies, who you well know if you know cinema. The plot kicks into glorious gear when Georges (Ben Kingsley) confiscates a notepad from Hugo, not knowing it once belonged to the boy’s dead father (Jude Law). I will say nothing more of the plot, watch and enjoy. Everything in “Hugo” – from the scenery and special effects to the actors and words -- is for proudly childish dreamers of all ages, all the ones who ever held a film camera or took pen to paper and thought, “What world can I create today?” Amazing from start to finish. A

Midnight in Paris
“Midnight in Paris” is a delight. A reminder that Woody Allen is one of the best movie writers/directors out there no matter how creepy he is off camera. This is a comedy about a struggling American novelist (Owen Wilson) who becomes lost – figuratively and literally – in Paris’ nighttime streets, the lights and spirits of deceased artists, musicians and writers lulling him in utopia. Then he gets lost – in time – when a 1920s taxi, every night at midnight, whisks him away to the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway, what Owen’s Gil considers the greatest era for artisans in history. This just isn’t a new classic Allen comedy, it’s a tweak at nostalgia fever by both Tea Party Americans who long for the founding days of America, and daydreaming liberals who think art was somehow more pure 100 years ago. Both are wrong. “Midnight” is near perfect. A

Moneyball
It's 2001 and Oakland Athletics’ GM Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is coming off a post-season crushing by the Yankees. Co-written by Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zallian, “Moneyball” is about any passion or business – pizza-making, movie-making, banking or professional sport – steam-rolled by Big Money, all the joy and unknowns crushed under consumer surveys and greed. The baseball scenes are almost beside the point as Beane never watches the games. That said, the tumults of an imploded 11-0 lead make for damn fine filmmaking by director Bennet Miller, who made “Capote.” Yeah, the ending goes long in the bottom of the ninth, but it is painless. I cannot say enough how much I dug Pitt’s performance, and Jonah Hill is brilliant as a numbers geek, who knew? A-

Tree of Life
On my first viewing of “Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s epic drama of God’s creation of the universe, one Texas family during the 1950s, and such small potatoes as life and death, it took me more than a week to even form words to describe a reaction. This is my pick for the Best Movie of 2011, i cannot say more, if you wish to know more, search this blog. No more words can be made. Sorry. Seriously, one of the all-time great works of art. A+

War Horse
Steven Spielberg's “War Horse” is an unabashedly, unapologetic and amazing big-screen World War I drama about a boy-turned-man and his horse that recalls a 1950s Techicolor epic long gone from cinemas, but with an important distinction, there is no glorification of war here. The horse of the title is conscripted to serve in battle, and Spielberg is grandiose and sentimental about it, and John Williams’ old-fashioned score pulls out the full orchestra, and whips and pulls for every emotion, but when Joey -- the War Horse -- is running shell-shocked and horrified through a godless battlefield, ripping through barbed wire, cut to pieces, the guy who made “E.T.” reduced me once again to blubber. Awesome, no other words. A

The Help (2011)

“The Help” is impossible to hate or dismiss. If you have a sense of justice. But make no mistake about it, this is a Disneyfied dramatization of the long civil rights struggle by African Americans, and yet – a Hollywood tradition in “Glory” and “Mississippi Burning” and dozens upon dozens of other films – it chooses to focus on wealthy white characters. The people who should be our total and absolute focus are secondary.

Worse, for every heartbreaking scene of racism, evil decorated in twisted Southern American Christian pride, the filmmakers serve up a comedic aside or comeuppance to let us know, we will leave the theater feeling good. No, “Help” is not great. But by the sheer strength of Viola Davis’ acting and the scary notion that an entire block of American voters consider this era to be America’s finest, it must be seen. Flaws and all.

Let us get my major grind out of the way. “Help” is geared toward the widest American audience possible, so it will not cut bone. It will not show the true Jim Crow South, made horrifically real and alive in the book “Carry Me Home.” (Read that book. Do it. Now.) It will not dare go the route of Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” with a rightfully angry black man -- that is a fine, true Civil Rights film -- ready to tear down the institution that has torn him down his entire life. It mostly avoids blood and death, and follows a liberal, white, pretty girl, because that’s what Hollywood thinks we want. Looking at box office receipts, they nailed an “Easy A,” to bring up Emma Stone. (“Easy A” is Stone’s biggest hit film.)

Stone plays the hero: Eugenia, a … wait for it … newspaper reporter (liberal!) who starts out writing a housecleaning advice column but soon dives incognito into telling the stories of black maids/ nannies – The Help -- hired by wealthy families. Including her own. In a Hollywood story, a young black woman or man could never dream up this idea. No. Help, so to speak, has to come from outside. Just like the heroic FBI (!!!) had to help in a certain Gene Hackman film I mentioned above. (Talk about a crock of history.) And, I know, it’s all based on a book. A best-seller. Whoopdeefriggin’ do, my point still stands.

But I digress. Stone’s newly minted University of Mississippi grad Eugenia returns home to the town of Jackson as an aspiring writer, her eyes now open to the horror that she was raised in and never thought of for a second. Eugenia’s first choice for the book is Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), the caretaker of her best pal’s daughter. Aibileen is, of course, scared of revenge from her white employers and local Klan, the latter of whom never actually appears. That would scare test screening audiences after all.

Eugenia asks upfront dumb questions: Do you regret raising the babies of others, whilst missing out on the lives of your own children? And do you have dreams other than being a maid? Well, no, shit, girl. Really? But here’s the beauty of this film: Davis rips the film from Stone with a fierce, devastating performance. She makes that awkward scene work. When Aibileen talks of her life, her body language vibrates with heartbreak, sadness, regret and, yes, anger, directed at herself and the world that belittles her based on skin color. (I can’t image being so treated, I’d rage forever. I would burn buildings down, no lie? Would you not?)

We also follow another white family, headed by a Stepford Wife-type monster, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. She is the villain, a young lady who speaks of Christian charity and yet proclaims Separate but Equal must always stand. The character veers close to caricature, but Howard – pouring out judgmental evil from her eyes – makes it work. Hilly, that’s her Southern Belle name, takes great pleasure in ridiculing her own maid, Minny (Octavia Spencer). And Hillies still exist today, no lie, and I have met them.

It is Minny who serves a dish of revenge, the comedic comeuppance, and brings about the film’s most controversial moment. It’s funny. I admit I laughed. I did. I also wondered if any such thing could have ever truly happened, in a state where murder upon African-Americans for the lightest infraction was the norm. The whole gag seems a modern, not historical, touch. I suppose from the book. I skipped reading it. Thankfully, the final scenes have Aibileen taking on her oppressors. No Eugenia about. It ends seriously, with quite a heart-breaker, and with an uplift.

So, see the film. Watch it for the scene toward the end where Eugenia walks into Aibileen’s home and sees a roomful of African American women. It is the first time I have ever seen a summer Hollywood flick that featured a roomful of African American woman, and that in itself says the struggles depicted here are not ancient history. They still exist. And be warned, when we have presidential candidates saying our Founding Fathers worked to end slavery and congressmen who shrug off the Civil Rights Act as passé federal oversight, and make a half-hearted apology that they were taken out of context. Jim Crow, institutionalized racism with state’s rights ... it could happen again. (That “Take our country back” mantra is a threat, do not doubt it. We have a black man in the Oval Office.)

But also know this: When you are watching and laughing along at the funny bits (and I am guilty) in a movie about this era, remember not many people were laughing during the real 1963. Not in the South. The emotions, I gather from stories told to me and read by that occurred before my birth, were far more grim. On both sides of the divide. Give me “Malcolm X.” It is far closer to the ugly truth. This could play on TV, Sunday night movie, uncensored, and not raise a pulse. B-