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

2011: Best and Worst

This is my Best (and Worst) of 2011 List so far. Most of the Oscar bait have not come my way yet, and for those that have, I have not had the time to watch. Such is life. This list will be updated, changed and purged multiple times when I see films worthy (or, for the bottom, not).

First update: 26 February 2012
Second update: 14 March 2012
Third update: 19 March 2012
Fourth update: 29 April 2012
Fifth update: 9 May 2012
Sixth update: 25 August 2012

The Best
1. Tree of Life. The year’s head-scratching-ist film is king: A drama about the creation of the universe, God, and one family’s birth and shattering. A near religious experience from Terrence Malick.
2. Melancholia. A twisted sister to No. 1, this equally head-scratching film is about the death of all life, by Lars von Trier. Darkly beautiful.
3. A Separation. Writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s tale of two families at odds in modern Iran is universal, painful, and a slam of theocracies.
4. (Tie) The Artist and Hugo. Directors Michel Hazanavicius and Martin Scorsese create two wildly different films celebrating cinema and life.
5. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy. Gary Oldman gives the performance of his career as an aging spy in a game that takes your life, now or later.
6. Take Shelter. Michael Shannon plays a man stricken by either schizophrenia or divine knowledge. The question: Are they the same?
7. Shame Michael Fassbender stars in a cold, brilliant tale of man tortured by sex, the liquid inside him. More NC-17s, please, Hollywood.
8. Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen uses literary and artistic greats and a time travel trick to remind us that, no, life was not better back then.
9. 13 Assassins. Takashi Miike’s kick-ass, bloody violent samurai film is a throwback to Kurosawa's greatest sword romps. Nasty fun.
10. (Tie) Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Pina. Directors Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders takes us on two inspiring journeys, inside a cave and inside a dancer’s mind, to see art at its grandest and purest.

The Worst
5. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. A feel-good 9/11 movie about a mentally ill boy reconnecting quirky-like with his dead dad. Fuck no.
4. J. Edgar. Because of the scene where FBI director/dictator Hoover – played by Leonardo DiCaprio -- wears his mother’s dress and pearls.
3. (Tie) Just Go With it, Jack and Jill, and Zookeeper. Adam Sandler spreads his toxic film-making sensibilities to Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino, and Nick Nolte, the latter getting it easy as the voice of a gorilla.
2. Green Hornet. Star Seth Rogen and director Michel Gondry toss a snickering “F.U.” to comic-book movie fans. Right back at you guys.
1. Sucker Punch. Zack Snyder calls this a feminist shot against misogyny. Right, and “Birth of a Nation” is a call for Civil Rights.

Melancholia (2011)

Ditching the 200-word limit count here, this film deserves the attention…

“Melancholia” is about nothing less than the shocking, smothering power of depression on the human psyche and the end of all life on Earth as know it, and writer/director Lars von Trier welcomes that end with open arms.

“The Earth is evil. … Nobody will miss it,” he says, through the mouth of his “heroine,” Justine, played marvelously and bravely by Kirsten Dunst.

This film – shocking, maddening, infuriating, heartbreaking and brilliant even when it derails off the tracks in spectacular fashion – is the twisted sister of “Tree of Life,” 2011’s other film about the universe, God, and a shattered family.

Important note: von Trier does not believe in God. Sub-note: This is not a date film.

Von Trier opens with the end of the Earth, as a massive planet -- previously hidden behind the sun -- coined by the press as Melancholia makes its way toward Earth, drifting, and then smashing our planet into bits.

Between scenes of cosmic death, he shows us Justine and her family in their final moments, both in reality, and inside their scarred souls and minds, as they face annihilation. The chunk of film – on first viewing -- is inexplicable and scored loud to Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.”

(A second viewing is a must, and a revelation. On the big screen. With big sound.)

We then flashback months to an equally massive disaster, Justine’s wedding, as she and her new husband (Alexander Skarsgard) arrive at a reception at her sister’s rural mansion. She looks to the night sky and sees a red star, and also – in her mind – death and hopelessness. Justine truly believes herself to be, and her world crumbles.

The reception spirals out of control as the bride drifts into a deep depressed state, one her broken family knows too well, and commits heinous acts as a way to bring on the end, her end, full tilt. Sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) can only attempt to help. Weeks later Justine moves in with Claire and her husband (Kiefer Sutherland, never better as a self-righteous prick).

Similar to Melancholia smashing Earth, Justine’s arrival lays ruin to the family of wife, husband and young son.

Unsettling and uncomfortable from first to last frame, this plays as von Trier’s most personal film, his ode to his own depression. His Justine is unaffected by the pending doom of Melancholia, for her world already has ended. Justine grows strong as her sister falls to despair.

Von Trier – having previously made the grim as hell but wildly imaginative “Breaking the Waves” and “Dancer in the Dark” -- is a madman for sure, a complete jerk by all accounts, and a cretin. But he’s a master filmmaker. Who says Vincent van Gogh was cordial?

The scope of this small epic comes into orbit of the giant Terrence Malick epic “Tree of Life,” touches it. The films would make a perfect double of much majesty, and not a small bit of artistic madness. Von Trier was off his meds when he made this, and was at Cannes.

Von Trier’s miracle move is to make a nightmarish wedding reception seem like the end of the world, only to show us the end of the world, and he makes every moment – even the ugliest ones – a work of artistic beauty.

As for Dunst, she of the recent “Spider-Man” films, she shines bright as a woman so smothered in darkness, so weakened she can barely rise from bed.

In the end, you will want to cheer von Trier, or punch him in the face, but you will react. Strongly. That, folks, is what art is supposed to do.

And “Melancholia” is art. A

Tree of Life (2011) – A second look

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.

And, now, on my second viewing, I realize those first thoughts and impressions were wrong. Fully and wildly dumbass wrong. I will not re-edit my first review. I still stand by it. As with a diary entry, it must remain, as this film – the most mind-blowing movie of 2011 – is something all new to me. Twelve days later. To understand my second-take reactions, one must read my first (naïve) impressions.

Malick, director of “Badlands” and “The New World,” here has made nothing short of a biblical love poem on film -- a psalm -- to not just the glory and passion of his own family, but God Himself, and all the meanings of His passion. In passion, there is great pain. And there is great pain on screen in this film. Death. (Sorry to get all religion, which I normally approach gingerly and awkwardly, always and forever.)

I realize now, that there is no Rapture or end of world drama in “Tree of Life,” I think, but only an adult man’s dream-like, memory-fueled acceptance of his beloved younger brother’s death by suicide and his re-finding of faith in God and life, the light if you will. That leap, that bridge, inspired by the planting of a tree at a glass-encased office tower.

It recalls the tree, the God-like tree, in front of his childhood home. The one associated with his own mother. Sean Penn is that man, Jack, an architect who was raised in a small Texas town by a strict and over-bearing, but loving and passionate, father (Brad Pitt) and free-spirited mother (Jessica Chastain).

I also now understand Malick’s use of creation and the very start of all life, for the miracle and darkness found in every childhood -- growing up, laughing, playing, maturing, rebelling -- is as majestic and beautiful as the very start of our and God’s universe and as dark as the cataclysmic death by meteor of all dinosaurs. It is beauty. Infinite.

I’m already well past a preset 200 word limit, and ready to spill another 1,000 words on this epic film – ready to spill on the dark traces of father and son relations that I experienced growing up, every boy did I surmise, and am re-living after seeing this work of beauty, and the way Jack’s younger self (Hunter McCracken) has his entire since-birth-driven belief in God and goodness ripped apart after watching a child drown.

An act, an event, I also saw as a child, as I spoke of in my first take.

And I did not realize until hours after my second viewing that the building that is central to Penn’s character, I have not only visited, but stayed at and photographed: The Hyatt Regency Hotel and Reunion Tower. I slept many nights, for several years running on an annual business trip. (It is within eye line of Dealy Plaza.)

I imagine my take will be fully different on a third viewing. How often does that happen in movies, to create such a personal reaction? Me, I loved it. But I respect the haters of this film, too. It is art. Made to provoke. If you think this film is shit, God bless, standby your reaction. Scream it. But know this: Does any human being actually give two farts about "Cowboys & Aliens"? I do not. I cannot even recall it. I bet fans of the film cannot either.

Few other films in 2011, or 2010, or 2009, and on and on, can make that claim. This is art. Mind-blowing, core of the soul, church in a cinema, art. New grade: A+

Tree of Life (2011)

Terrence Malick’s latest ruminating avant-garde cinematic riff is “Tree of Life,” a 2 hour 20 minute drama about the creation of the universe and life itself, a 1950s small-town Texas family and the tragedy that befalls them, and a man seemingly lost or aloof in a city seemingly made of glass, steel, concrete and little of anything organic. That is, of life.

It ends on a beach in a wondrous scene that makes the finale of “Lost” seem as straightforward as a Hallmark card. Without the plane and dog, naturally.

It’s taken me more than a week – almost two to be exact – to even collect my thoughts on this voyage through Malick’s view of God, the universe, life, birth, family and death. Words failed me. Still do.

The movie is that good. Maddeningly so.

Then I realized the answer was in front of me, staring at me in the face. It is in the film’s poster, which I luckily snagged from the local artsy movie theater. (I got connections, don’t hate.) The poster contains 70-some images from the film, stills that represent memories of the film like snapshots from a family album, memories, a group of postcards from the universe’s beginnings to the film’s end.

Finally, I got it.

“Tree of Life” is about memories, the aloof man (the family is his, from childhood) and maybe God’s memories. Or Malick’s version of God, looking back at the universe He created out of nothing and then brought to an end. (That’s my theory on the end, it is the rapture.)

In its editing, “Tree” eschews linear design, dialogue, action and time. We witness dinosaurs hunting in a river that we later will see the Texas children traipse through as they play. This is pure Malick -- a polarizing, perplexing, maddening (that word again) and utterly fascinating filmmaker, maybe the best one of our day. (David Lynch being the top. In my book.)

“Badlands” and “Days of Heaven” are among my favorite films, and I’m still mesmerized by “The Thin Red line,” Malick’s World War II drama. The man would rather show forest animals and birds fleeing a South Pacific gun battle than show the men fighting and bullets whizzing by. It is that view that fascinates me, not just outside the box, but outside the world the box is in.

Here in “Tree,” more than any other film, he is saying we humans with all our dramas are part of something much larger than ourselves. As a friend wrote on Facebook the other day, referring to a Rick Warren book, “It ain’t about you.” Or something to that affect.

This is not a film for everyone. Its legion of fans may be rivaled if not well outnumbered by its detractors, many fine and decent (and some stupid ones I’m sure) folks who have walked out lost or outright angry at the inscrutable images of God’s first light breaking the darkness of space, giant fish, cells, blades of grass, waterfalls, cars, bi-planes, and fields of sunflowers. And then much of 2 hours of children playing.

Yes, God figures into this film in a major way, as the Creator of our world and the seemingly absentee Father that he now appears to be. (Go on, debate away. I debate myself on it.)

Sean Penn is Jack, the aloof man/architect in the city, looking back on his childhood, with his overly strict father (Brad Pitt) and his luminous, angelic mother (Jessica Chastain), and two brothers, the most innocent of who will die years later. For reasons never shared.

(News interruption: Malick grew up in 1950s Texas, and had a younger brother who committed suicide at 19. The brother dies at 19.)

Adult Jack lives with a woman, maybe his wife, who he does not look at. Jack’s childhood scenes take up the majority of the film, and they are among the best of Malick’s work: Snippets, chunks and wide-swaths of Jack’s memories and barely recalled dreams are all innocent, terrible and scary. Rebellious, too. As is childhood, no?

Young Jack (Hunter McCracken) climbs trees – the title tree is in the family’s front yard – and swims, and talks his little brother into sticking a metal wire in lamp (it’s not plugged in) and putting his little finger over a barrel of a bb-gun (oops, it’s loaded).

I’ve never seen a film the better captures interaction of a family. The beautiful simpleness. To Jack, the mother is the perfect loving God(dess), and in one scene she floats in the air above the family tree. Like God would.

Dad is not that by far. He will toss the dinner table over to hit one of the children who dares disobey him. He is wrathful. In one scene young Jack sees an opportunity to kill his father. He leaves it be. We can take this as a troubled child reacting to his parents, or as one friend (go Dana!) suggested, mother is the New Testament God, father the Old Testament. My father wasn't Dick van Dyke for sure, and, man, that scene hit close to home. Been there. Dreamed that.

Indeed, church is a major part of the family’s life, and when a child friend drowns (it is shown from afar, but still packs a stomach punch) or a polio-stricken man walks by, the children are confused, befuddled, and ask their parents why God would let such things happen. As do all or most children. As did I, as many of the themes and actions in this film I directly experienced. I at age 9 watched a child drown. It still haunts me. When the youngest boy later dies as a young man, the mother asks God the same question, why?

Malick reaches far. The dinosaurs are too damn much. I only think the ending is the Rapture, some Christ-like figure appears. But the man is reaching. Who does that nowadays? To make a film that will divide audiences and get a group of adults talking about a film for more than a week, as has happened in my circle of friends?

No one is making films like this right now, going for such high themes as God, daring to freely mix the theories of creation and evolution, the universe and our place in it. Children playing, pranking and smashing windows.

This is what filmmaking is supposed to be out, right, the art form of our time? Abstracts welcomed. Love it or hate it, just see it. And see it on the big screen where it belongs. A