Oscar Roundup - Six Months Later

I barely had time to see all the nominees back in the good ol' days when there were only five... with ten, who could possibly watch them all? Hence my six-month delay. I don't think you'll mind.

The Artist - 3/5

(dir. Michel Hazanavicius)

I know I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this one, but I've got to stick to my guns: The Artist is not extraordinary. Good, yes. At times, very good. But that's about it. Hazanavicius's lackluster script is brought to life by an extraordinary pair of actors (Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo - who actually look like they could have been silent film stars), and I commend their work and recommend the film solely to see them. If I were just reviewing their performances, the rating would be much higher... but I have to take the film as a whole, and as a whole I could appreciate the concept and the intent, but in the end it just didn't really "hit" me with any sort of impact. This is a film that flits and dances and looks nice, but there's almost no weight to it - it's like getting the dessert without any meal. The Artist does try for gravitas and pathos, but in my view those are the most awkward scenes in the film. Dujardin's character becomes too over-the-top and unbelievable in his melodrama. When we see his marriage deteriorating early in the film, it's believable because he still approaches it with that charming arrogance he's established... by the time we reach a suicide attempt, it just doesn't work. This is not a man who would kill himself, and certainly not in the manner in the film. So why does it happen? Because it's convenient for the plot. It's this sort of thing which undoes the film and prevents it from making any substantial impact. I love the sentiment, the finale, the music, and the performances - I just wish the story were good enough to dance with those elements.

The Help - 2/5
(dir. Tate Taylor)

The Help is yet another caucasian apologetic for segregation, and it plays as such. Charming, hilarious performances from Octavia Spencer and (especially) Jessica Chastain elevate the material from soap opera, but there is nothing here that hasn't been seen or done before - in worse and better movies. White people exploited black people, but black people endured and carried on with pride and quiet dignity... We get it. I'm not saying these are not important issues, but they stopped being cinematic some time ago.

Midnight in Paris - 3.5/5
(dir. Woody Allen)

Those who know me best would say I'm just being preferential to Woody, but it's hard to say bad things about this charming little film from the master. I will be the first to say it does not compare to his better work, but few movies do. The point here, though, is that it was a return to form for Woody - who's been pretty hit or miss this century - and was able to contend pretty well with other critical darlings this past year. I'd sooner watch this again than any of the other nominees.

The Tree of Life - 3.5/5

(dir. Terrence Malick)

What can I say that I haven't already said about The Tree of Life? Enigmatic, poetic, epic, and yet at its core very enduring and human. The best way I can describe it is by comparing it to a Thomas Pynchon novel: it's about everything and nothing, the universe and the humanity, all wrapped under one heading; and while you may hate it, there is no denying the talent on display. What really burns me is that this somehow lost the Cinematography Oscar. That truly is unfathomable to me. Do Academy members have cataracts? Hugo was fine, and I love Robert Richardson as much as the next guy, but... there simply is no contest. Comparing Lubezki's work here to any film this year - even comparing it to almost any color film ever - is like putting men against boys.

Hugo - 3/5

(dir. Martin Scorsese)

Speaking of which, how is Hugo? It's perfectly fine, good, fast-paced, interesting to watch... but it feels half-baked. Based on a (supposedly) popular children's book, Hugo is perfectly good when it focuses strictly on the main character and his storyline; it's when the film ventures outside that main circle that it starts to drag and (worse) feel irrelevant. Most movies can stand to lose a few minutes here and there, or maybe even a scene to keep things moving: Hugo has entire characters and subplots which add nothing to the film, the protagonist's journey, and are not even particularly amusing on their own; they should have been cut, leaving the film better overall and about twenty to thirty minutes shorter.

The performances are good (Chloe Grace Moretz again shows she's the real deal, stealing virtually every scene she's in), the editing is superb, and the design and look of the film are top-notch, though that does come with a caveat... I love Robert Richardson. He's one of America's best cinematographers, no question, but his work is somewhat diminished here. Still looks great, don't get me wrong (he has an amazing way with faces), but too often his photography is undercut by unnecessary CG flourishes, and I'm still scratching my head in regard to the blue-yellow color scheme, especially when he's produced the most extraordinary reds and greens ever captured. In short, good as it is, this is not his best work, and for those interested, I recommend you see JFK and Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control - not just for the subject matter (great movies, both of them), but for the extraordinary cinematography. Those deserved Oscar wins, Hugo merely a nomination.

Moneyball - 4/5

(dir. Bennett Miller)

A rare accomplishment. Think of the typical baseball movie, or even just the typical sports movie: a schmaltzy tale of an underdog, able to succeed on pluck and determination in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. The whole point of sports movies, generally, is to recreate the experience of going to a sporting event: the filmmakers want you to cheer, they want to get your adrenaline going - they want you to want the team to win. Moneyball takes this in an entirely different direction. This is about what happens off the field, what goes into creating that experience; it intellectualizes and deconstructs both a real-life visceral event and a fictional narrative convention. The amount of baseball in Moneyball, for instance, is very little; in fact, basically insubstantial. What little of the game is shown is rarely given context - merely used to highlight the characters' unconventional approaches to the sport. I'm sure if one were to add up the minutes of actual baseball footage, it would be comparable to the minutes of Raging Bull boxing footage. The result is something new, refreshing, and... oddly spiritual - another nice touch. Moneyball has a meditative, soulful quality missing from the typical sports movie, indeed from most movies. And I don't mean sympathy, empathy, or excitement (usually served up in heaping amounts with this kind of story), but actual spiritual resonance - a quality deeper than viscera, even emotion. I wish more people would give it a chance and take the movie on its own terms - it really is something special.

The Descendants - 3/5

(dir. Alexander Payne)

Another case of a film which is incredibly hard to rate numerically. The strengths of the film are obvious - a few truly devastating, heart-wrenching scenes, capped with nice, nuanced writing and acting. The weaknesses, however, are not so obvious, so it's no surprise critics were doing backflips when it's really nothing more than a compelling, strong, yet all too typical drama. Let's start with the strengths... obviously, Alexander Payne knows what he's doing. Since his exceptional Election, he's been one of Hollywood's premier unsung heroes, delivering high-quality work with compelling, character-driven dramedies. So of course the script is nice, the acting top-notch, and the direction clear and unfettered. Those things are no surprise. What was shocking, to me anyway, is that despite a compelling story that really does hit you hard (a couple of these scenes are hard to watch with a dry eye, unless you have no heart), the film carries an air of affectation throughout its entire running time. At the beginning it is especially noticeable (the narration is unnecessary and sounds comprised of direct lifts from the source material), but even later in the film - when we're actually interested and invested - I just couldn't shake the "film"-ness of it... Too many scenes just felt contrived, pretentious - so subtle and understated that they were heavy-handed and overstated. There is a great movie to be had from this material, I'm just not sure this incarnation gets the tone right. (Also, as a postscript, I was let down by Clooney's performance. He does a fine job, but mostly as a surrogate for audience members. He does not bring a unique take to the character, playing him truly as an everyman. The actress playing one of his daughters, however, Shailene Woodley, steals every scene she's in and has quite a promising career ahead of her.)

War Horse - 2/5
(dir. Steven Spielberg)

With a career as successful as his, it is no wonder Spielberg's films (especially the recent ones) have been labeled as overly sentimental, heavy-handed, emotionally cloying, fraught with plot devices and contrivances, obvious Oscar baiting, and hammy in their "verisimilitude." War Horse is all these and more, and I'd go so far as to say it's one of Spielberg's worst. There are, quite simply, very few things the movie does right. A few of my major complaints: (1) None of these characters develop, or are interesting on their own, or are even given anything interesting to do... but never mind that - it's the casting that is really the problem. I've watched a number of foreign films, even simply from the UK, but a number of these actors are frankly hard to understand. It's not cockney, it's not the hyperstylized slang of Trainspotting, they just kind of mumble and the sound mix doesn't make their voices crisp enough. Plus the voice of the lead male bugs me - he sounds too whiny. Sorry. (2) This one surprised me... No matter the film or its weaknesses, Spielberg has always been at the technological forefront, but it seems like he had some trouble deciding what he wanted War Horse to look like, or maybe he had trouble photographing the animals. Albert's farm house, for example, is lit too much like a set. The way the light reflects off the rocks and the grass, and the multiple angles at which the actors' faces are lit - it all calls attention to itself and as a result simply looks fake. Then later on he seems to take an almost episodic approach to the cinematography: the war scenes are soft, ethereal, romantic (almost as if vaseline has been spead over the lens); night scenes have an overly blue tinge, like shooting day for night; and the extremely romanticized red/orange of the ending raises an obvious parallel to Gone with the Wind. This would be fine if the material itself were episodic, but as War Horse follows the titular animal, there should be a photographic consistency which is frankly lacking. (3) Not to beat a dead horse (pardon the pun), but this may also be John Williams's worst work in recent memory. My guess is that he was simply taking his cue from Spielberg's overdone sentimentality in terms of direction, but the score here is so overblown it approaches cringe-worthy... All in all, War Horse is by no means unwatchable, but a film with such a talented crew should have been much, much better. Despite a couple very strong, emotional scenes near the conclusion, the film as a whole is a bit of an embarrassment.

HONORABLE MENTION

I've already mentioned that Drive was among my favorite films of last year, and overall 13 Assassins topped the list. I see absolutely no reason why Drive was overlooked at the Oscars (deserved a number of acting nominations), but the real travesty is the following snub...

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - 4/5

(dir. Tomas Alfredson)

What a stunner... Interesting, engaging, complex. This is not a film for the casual film-goer - even film-lovers will have a hard time following all of these tenuous plot threads - but we need more movies like this. Not just Hollywood - the world. A wonderfully intricate film aimed at intelligent people (what a thought!).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy does not really have a central character, but if it did, it would be George Smiley. It's unclear if Smiley is his real name or a cover, but he and virtually the entire cast work in British intelligence during the Cold War era. Word is there's a mole who's penetrated the highest ranks, and Smiley and others take it upon themselves to uncover the secret.

Sounds like yet another inane plot from yet another big budget actioner, right? That's what's so great about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - where it takes you, how it keeps you guessing, and how it leaves you unsure of just about everything right up to the end. This is not some romanticized, idealized, adrenaline-fueled version of the spy lifestyle; this is what it would actually be like to be a spy, I imagine... Never quite sure who to trust, never quite sure whether you've just heard a truth, a lie, or something in between. The tension (and paranoia) of the film is palpable. A must-see for anyone serious about movies.

p.s... A word about cinematography. Specifically, it's just about perfect in this film. Not flashy, mind you, but more movies would do well to keep their photography more understated. It's rare to find a film which is so balanced by itself... Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy engages us with its complex plot and characters; the cinematography complements them perfectly, showing us all we need to see, omitting some things we'd like to, and allowing us to actually appreciate the pace and composition rather than be bludgeoned by unnecessary movements and banal close-ups. A beautiful film for the eyes and the mind.

Three Visions of Philip K Dick

I'm a fair-weather science-fiction fan. I've read only a handful of science-fiction stories and books, but I'm a big fan of science-fiction movies. Science-fiction, like no other genre, is in an interesting position to comment on our humanity, the condition of the species, and where we could be headed. A number of authors and films side-step these implications in favor of strange worlds, peoples, and wild technology, but the best remain grounded in reality. Somewhat fantastical, yes, but always plausible.

That's where I would place Philip K Dick. A giant of the genre, I'd say he was a somewhat mediocre writer. His biggest weakness was his failure to create convincing, three-dimensional characters... This weakness is overshadowed by his absolutely brilliant concepts and ideas and his break-neck pacing, but it's there nevertheless. Of what I've read, my favorite book of his would be Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, aka the Blade Runner source material. Highly recommended, even if you dislike the movie (like me).

"We'll Remember it for You Wholesale" is the source story of Total Recall. As a story, it's classic Dick. The idea is great, the characters... so-so. In a nutshell: Quail has recurring dreams of Mars, and he decides one day to visit Rekal, a company which specializes in memory manufacture. He is skeptical ("An illusion is an illusion, no matter how convincing"), but decides that this is the best way to rid himself of the dreams... Except something goes wrong. He decides on the secret agent/Mars package, but it turns out he's already been there and done that. Technicians freak and release him, sending him home in a stupor. When certain artifacts are discovered supporting this former life, he believes them and it seems Rekal has done its job effectively... And then something else goes wrong. A transmitter in his brain allows him to be tracked, and when he is attacked by heavily armed agents, Quail finds that he suddenly has extraordinary close-combat abilities. Authorities want to extract his memories, and after a brief negotiation, he says that he will give up the memory of Mars in exchange for his deepest psychological desire - which is that he saved the world from aliens as a boy. Authorities agree, but during the procedure, it turns out that this too has already happened.

I don't usually provide such literal descriptions of media, but it's hard to talk about the story or the movies without describing some of the actual events - if only because the nature of those events is so often called into question. The story obviously deals with memory and whether it can be trusted. If memory can be implanted - actual, realistic memory - then the implication would be that we are not who we think we are, our personalities too are some sort of construct, etc. As the saying goes, it's turtles all the way down! Profound psychological and philosophical implications, and only twenty pages!

Total Recall - 3.5/5
(dir. Paul Verhoeven)

Verhoeven's Total Recall is fairly faithful to the source material... at least, as much as a two-hour movie based on a twenty-page story can be. Schwarzenneger is the main character (his name changed to Quaid, though if you watch the lips of the actors, it seems that it was "Quail" during filming but changed to Quaid during post-production), and he turns in some pretty nice work. He's always been known for his physical skills rather than his acting chops, but the film never asks too much of him; and while it can straddle the line of camp, he remains convincing and entertaining nonetheless.

The film's best decision is to expand upon his dream and add some pretty extensive subplots. The story, for instance, hints at a disruptive "revolutionary" force, but never really does much with it; likewise, it's stated that Quail is being followed by authorities because of someone he killed as an agent - this film expands upon that and uses his agent identity as a linchpin for much larger questions about identity, action, and desire. For instance, in the film Quaid finds out about midway through that he was actually the bad guy - his real name is Hauser, and he infiltrated the rebel movement to usurp them and eventually destroy them. Numerous times he's given the chance to abandon the rebel cause and resume his "true" identity, but each time he refuses. What an implication! This is truly an example of "our actions define us." His wife's role is also expanded: in the short story, she is simply a nagging wife, telling him to ignore his dreams and get back to work. In the movie, she is a distraction, revealed eventually to be an agent working for Hauser's original employer, and thus prepared to kill him if he discovers the truth.

There are also some very nice additions to the source material. There is an extensive subplot involving his "true" love - a rebel named Melina, who is not mentioned at all in the story. Think about this, though... If he infiltrated as Hauser and truly intended to squelch the revolution, then his love for her was a lie. And yet, she's the only thing about his former life he "remembers" - she shows up frequently in his Mars dreams as an idyllic companion. So did he really have feelings for her, or was that a cover? And after Rekal, do his new "true" feelings override his original intentions? Another bit of original material involves "mutants" - beings which suffered extensive developmental deformities from radiation exposure (itself part of another subplot dealing with alien technology on Mars that would make the atmosphere breathable). The mutants to me are the least interesting part, and it seems they're there mostly to show off some nice make-up effects. Some are vital to the plot, so it's not like the movie could do without them, but in my view they don't add much thematically - they just look nice.

So all in all, Total Recall may be outdated and verge on silliness frequently, but there are a lot of interesting implications and profound questions buried in the film. And if you'd rather ignore them, it's entertaining and exciting all the same.

Total Recall - 1.5/5

(dir. Len Wiseman)

For months, director Len Wiseman and members of the cast of this new film had been saying that fans of the original shouldn't worry - they were going to follow Dick's story more closely, therefore this new incarnation wasn't really a "remake"... That's a lie. A flat-out lie. Quaid doesn't go to Mars, and there are no mutants, so in that sense this version is more "faithful" to the source material, but virtually everything else is the same. Even most of the dialogue. Melina is still there, his "true" identity is still super-agent Hauser, his wife still works for the former employer, etc... It's like Wiseman took the original screenplay, shuffled around a few of the scenes, removed/combined a lot of the characters, and then decided that this was truer to Dick's vision. The strange thing is, though, that despite all the changes, the original film is actually more faithful to the ideas and concepts of the story than this new, streamlined version is.

How can that be? After all, if the original film added so many elements, it stands to reason that a new version without those additions must be closer, right? Literally yes, thematically no. This new film basically uses Rekal as a jumping-off point. Quaid still asks things like "Who am I?" in response to these revelations, and the film still deals with identity, but only in the most cursory, superficial of ways. (And the new film doesn't take the same chances as the old one. For instance, this time, Hauser is a double-agent - working for Cohagen to infiltrate the rebels, but really he was working with the rebels to get to Cohagen... This is a small change, essentially making Quaid the good guy the whole time, but it also lessens the emotional payoff of the original film - ie, it's more satisfying for Quaid to choose good over bad rather than to simply be good all the time.) Really, the differences between the versions are moot, as the changes of the new film are just an excuse for long, drawn out chase sequences. And that's the problem. The original film may be unintentionally goofy at times, but it's always interesting. This new incarnation, even with all its fancy CG effects and non-stop action sequences, is rarely interesting - in fact, it's rather boring. There's one standout sequence involving horizontal and vertical elevators, but other than that even the action scenes are visually uninteresting. Even if you ignore the first film - of which this is definitely a remake - this is still a disappointment.