Oscar Nominees 2010

I don’t know if it was just a better year for movies or if the frontrunners were just obvious earlier, but this year’s nominations seem both predictable and hard to quibble with. The Academy, for the most part, seems to have acknowledged well-made films, if not much off the beaten track. I have seen five of the ten Best Picture nominees so far, and have Winter’s Bone downloaded from Amazon previously. That leaves me four to get myself to before the show – I might actually be able to do that.

As I’ve gotten older, and learned more and more about the Academy, I am less mentally on board with the Oscars. They’re petty, and based on popularity, and all the other complaints that get trotted out every year. Sure. (And they have terrible taste in music: Best Song is almost always a travesty.)

But emotionally, I can’t quite let them go. Part is nostalgia; my father and I both love film, and he and I used to pick apart the nominations and then watch the show together, while largely ignoring the SAG Awards, the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, etc. These award shows were always firmly in the “useful in as far as they help you predict the Oscars” category for me as a child.

And I have to say, I love the schmaltz, to a point. I grew up in the golden Billy Crystal years (his Titanic send-up to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme will always be timeless to me). And though the post-Crystal hosts have been uneven, seeing everyone dressed to the nines, seeing the little montages interspersed throughout the evening, the occasional Adrien-Brody-kisses-Halle-Berry moment… they’re all fun, and as long as I have the distance to treat them that way, I try not to get too bent out of shape.

(My father, to this day can’t watch The Sound of Music without angrily commenting that Doctor Zhivago was ROBBED.)

So while everyone and their mom knows that Hailee Steinfeld was in no way a supporting actress, or that all but one of the Best Actor slots were basically locked even before the nominations were announced, or that Natalie Portman is an all but sure thing, I can’t quit the Oscars altogether. Partly because it’s a link back to movie history, even if the Hollywood machine, political side of it, and partly because I am still at heart one of the little girls practicing her acceptance speech with a shampoo bottle. (Though after last year, I felt less self-conscious about the fact that my imaginary award changed from actress to director when I was 15 or so.)

Comments on the Best Picture nominees I’ve seen: reviews for True Grit and Black Swan are up.

Inception was my personal favorite film last year, but I don’t know that it was the best, necessarily; also, given the type of film it is, it has no shot at winning. It is nice, though, to see it get a nomination, and I think this year showed nicely that there were ten films worth recognizing.

Toy Story 3 was an excellent, heart-wrenching film, and while the Toy Story franchise is not necessarily my favorite part of Pixar, it’s hard to find flaws with it. Again, not going to win, but we’ll see how many years in a row Pixar gets a nomination. (And an easy lock for Best Animated Feature.)

The Kids Are All Right struck me as a movie with some phenomenal acting, but that would have been critically unremarkable if not for the genders of the three leads. I’m not saying it was a bad film, because it wasn’t, and I quite liked both Annette Benning and Mark Ruffalo in it, but the screenplay was a bit “eh” to me. I am all for more mainstream, loving depictions of non-heterosexual, cis-gendered couples in which their sexuality is not a huge deal; I just don’t expect the movie to be patted on the back for that alone.

I am very much looking forward to Winter’s Bone. More word on that once I watch it.

And, finally, on a side note, I was glad to see the Coens get an unexpected nod for Direction, even if I do mourn that it probably knocked Chris Nolan out. Both True Grit and Inception were so-well directed it seems a crime to ignore either.

Black Swan

I was not surprised that Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan was a horror movie. I was surprised, however, that it was more or less only a horror movie. From the ads and the bit of critical response I read, I expected something more Yellow Wallpaper-y; a Gaslight style “is she crazy or isn’t she?” psycho-thriller.

The film however, commits early and rather explicitly to the idea that Natalie Portman’s Nina is crazy. The word “nightmarish” has been thrown around, and not without reason. The film has a dreamy sort of logic (or lack thereof) and creates a sense of claustrophobia as we see Nina going farther and farther into her own obsession and paranoia.

I love Swan Lake, and its presence in the film is gorgeously done. Though Nina is problematic, as I’ll discuss in a moment, Natalie Portman does well with what she’s given to work with, for the most part – she’s a little too trembly and whispery, but she does a lot of great nonverbal work. The supporting cast is excellent; Vincent Cassel is creepy, Barbara Hershey is a bit “mommie dearest” but mostly good, and I was pleasantly surprised by Mila Kunis.

There are some really visceral moments in the movie, which I won’t spoil here, but it really does succeed in being scary, at least for me. But the excellent execution can’t, for me, completely erase the underlying issues with the screenplay.

It’s not that I can’t enjoy movies if they have a less than enlightened view of gender – I am a James Bond fan, after all – but in Black Swan, the Madonna/whore dichotomy isn’t examined or undermined. It simply sits there, almost assumed. The repressed, virginal Nina can’t explore her sexuality without going from brittle to shattered; and while I thought that the film might eventually make a statement that violence, not sexuality, was the true darkness Nina is reaching for, all the actual violence in the film is directed inward. The self is the woman’s only possible target in this film, not just for Nina, but generally.

What frustrated me about Black Swan was that, with all sorts of fantastic elements working for it, I felt like the viewer knew oddly little about Nina, considering we’ve been trapped inside her mind the entire time.  She isn’t much except a frame to display neuroses, and while she could work as a character in a different film, the center of this one feels oddly hollow.

While watching the movie, I couldn’t help but think of two other films that clearly had to be influences and, sadly, both stand a bit better on their own for me.  The first is the 1948 film The Red Shoes, which explores the tension and the tragedy of being driven to sacrifice any sort of personal happiness to attain artistic perfection. Vicky Page, the protagonist of that film, is just as haunted as Nina, but is the more tragic because she isn’t crazy. She is caught between art and personal happiness in a way that’s almost simplistic to the point of being archetypal.  It’s a little dated, but still a good watch.

The other film, which has a much closer stylistic kinship to Black Swan, is Carlos Saura’s 1983 Carmen. The mixture of dance and plot is similar, with the dancers’ story echoing that of the piece they’re mounting.  Also like Black Swan, the dance is the center of the story, weaving in and out but always drawing the characters and the viewer back in. However, the inter-character tension is all too real, and the way that the story mirrors life is both more direct and less heavy-handed. We don’t need the choreographer to explain the significance of the dance’s story; it becomes self-evident throughout the film, even if a viewer wasn’t familiar with the story of Carmen.

On the whole, I wasn’t sorry to see Black Swan, but I felt it was a squandered opportunity to explore some interesting themes in favor of just being creepy and shocking. There’s nothing wrong with either of those, but the film is very formulaic about female insanity in a way that is sometimes almost condescending.

Grade B – Well executed, but in need of a firmer, more thoughtful foundation.

What to Watch Tonight

I have about half of a thoughtful meta entry written, but it just didn’t happen. New review this Thursday though – I can promise that.  In the meanwhile, three more recommendations! All available to stream on Netflix, but worth hunting down for those of you without.

Yes, I know I just did one of these.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) –
The original, and still one of the best science fiction films ever made. Its plot is simple, almost fable-like, but like a lot of good alien stories, allows us the illusion of looking at humanity from the outside. The effects hold up decently well, considering the production year, and you get all kinds of nerd cred once you know what “Klaatu barada nikto” means.

The real interest, though in The Day the Earth Stood Still, is the way in which it takes all sorts of tropes and devices that fill the crappy, MST3K-fodder films of the period, and weaves them into a solid, thoughtful story. The moralizing may seem a bit heavy-handed to a modern viewer, but it serves as a nice bookend to 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a Cold War-era cautionary tale.

Blazing Saddles (1974) –
With True Grit poised to nab several Oscar nominations, following the success of a variety of Westerns and neo-Westerns in the past few years, it’s safe to say there’s a renewed interest in the genre. Which is great, as it means more people can appreciate the brilliance that is Blazing Saddles. For my money, it’s one of the funniest movies ever, with the bonus of actually functioning (for 2/3 of the movie, at least) as an example of the genre. (Good parody is funny because it’s true.)

Gene Wilder is brilliant as ever, and Cleavon Little is amazing in the starring role. Madeline Kahn is always worth watching, and the writing is some of Mel Brooks’ very best. If you haven’t seen it, treat yourself, and if you have… treat yourself again. It’s the rare comedy that rewards close re-viewings, but this is one of them.

Star Trek (2009) –
The most recent installment in the Star Trek franchise shows what a good reboot can do. You do enough homage to the original to keep most of your existing fanbase, but you make the huge mythology re-accessable to newbies who might be scared off normally. J.J. Abrams crafts a beautiful popcorn movie, gleefully using and reusing the conventions of space opera while at the same time keeping the film grounded in its franchise.

All the casting is very good – Zachary Quinto is a standout as Spock, but I love Karl Urban’s McCoy. The cinematography gets a little lens-flare happy, as you might have heard, but also isn’t afraid to show off its big-budget effects in ways that actually move the plot forward. Michael Giacchino’s score is also a thing of beauty. Much fun.

True Grit

Remaking True Grit seemed to be a silly idea, on first blush. It’s acclaimed one of the greatest Westerns ever, featuring John Wayne at the top of his game in an Oscar-winning performance. But if anyone was going to do it, the Cohen brothers were a team to raise relatively fewer eyebrows.

Though I’ve seen the original, it has been many years, and I don’t feel comfortable comparing the two effectively without a fresher memory. That said, this True Grit has the feel of a Cohen brothers film right through, and that is both its greatest strength and its biggest weak point.

All the acting is excellent. Jeff Bridges salutes Wayne while making Cogburn his own. Matt Damon and Hailee Steinfeld are both pitch-perfect, delivering the stiff, pseudo-biblical dialogue as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It is Cogburn, not the young Mattie Ross, who seems a bit out of place in his speech, which shifts the alienation to the marshal more fully. The emotional connections are still genuine, however – I was moved by the scene where Mattie begs to go with LaBoeuf (Damon) and the ending was nicely played.

The filming is also, as you’d expect from the Cohen, superb.  Many shots memorably frame themselves, from Mattie entering the boarding house (past a lazily smoking Texas ranger), to the surreal image of a bear riding a horse out of a snowy grove of trees.  The emotional underscoring is also cleverly done; the use of horses to make people look up or down at one another was understated but canny, and the lighting is always more or less natural, but suits the tone of both individual scenes and the film as a whole.

In the Cohen brothers’ films, at least the ones I’ve seen, there’s a recurring sense of emptiness that arises when characters get what they think they want. Though it’s most notable in Fargo, it turns up in films as evidently different as O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading. This film is no exception. It’s never spelled out, but when Mattie gets the revenge she’s after, it doesn’t give her present or eventual satisfaction as far as the viewer can tell. The sorrow of a revenge that doesn’t heal is a subtle undertone of the entire film.

I liked this element of the movie, but the emptiness at the heart of True Grit left some lagging moments on the journey to get there. The pace was variable, and sometimes left me wondering why it lingered or where it was going.  Building character was clearly one of the movie’s greatest concerns, but it also left the plot to start and go as necessary.

This is also completely me, not the film, but the choice of “Leaning On the Everlasting Arms” for the main musical motif distracted me, because all I could think of was Night of the Hunter. The hymn will never be anything but creepy for me.

Iris DeMent does a nice job on the credits version, irony of the choice aside, but it threw me out of the film when it turned up in the score.

Regardless, the film was mostly solid, and did a good job of creating tension and tracing character growth within a relatively slow-moving story.

Grade: B+ Though the pace needed some work, high quality elements combined to make this a compelling and worthwhile film.

 

What To Watch Tonight

Brief ones tonight, but no less recommended than usual. All available to stream.

The 39 Steps (1935) –
Early Hitchcock is still awesome Hitchcock. Reminiscent of North By Northwest (among others) in the way a normal man is drawn into a situation that’s anything but. The atmosphere is creepy, the mystery is intriguing, and the cast (none of whom you’re likely to recognize) do an excellent job. (Even if all I can think of is the Sesame Street sketch.) It’s also only 86 minutes, for those looking for something a bit on the shorter side.

Enemy Mine (1985) –
This is one of my very favorite sci fi movies; it deserves much more attention than it gets. Dennis Quaid and Louis Gosset Jr. are spot on as stranded soldiers from opposing sides forced to survive together. Sure, it’s filed with tropes, but it does them thoughtfully and to good effect. The effects are a little dated, but it’s a movie that isn’t about effects so much as concepts. The differences in Draconian and human cultures (and biologies), while glossed, are still intriguingly handled, and even where the movie doesn’t succeed, it tries in interesting ways.

The Fall (2006) –
Please, please watch The Fall. Every rewatch has been incredibly rewarding, but even the first one was enjoyable. The Fall tells the story of an injured stuntman (Lee Pace) and his relationship with a little girl (the astoundingly good Catinca Untaru) as they both heal in a California hospital in the 1920s. The visuals are unbelievably lush, the storytelling (both meta and not) is engrossing, and it marries a sense of fable to a very grounded emotional core. Also, effective use of Beethoven. Gorgeous.