Jan 23 2012

Year in Review: The Best of 2011

I know that I haven’t been writing lately. But I’ve been busy watching movies and reading and smoking cigarettes. I also have been working harder than Mitt Romney, which is pathetic in its own right. Anyway, if there’s anyone out there, here’s what I considered the Best of 2011, in order.

 

Best Films

“The Tree of Life”

“Drive”

“Shame”

“Melancholia”

“Hugo”

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

“A Dangerous Method”

“Beginners”

“The Descendants”

“The Iron Lady”

“Bloodworth”

“Captain America”

“Contagion”

“Midnight in Paris”

“Carnage”

“The Artist”

“The Last Rites of Joe May”

“The Ides of March”

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

“Passion Play”

“Sucker Punch”

“Moneyball”

“X-Men First Class”

“Warrior”

“Thor”

 

 

Best Director

Terrence Malick

Martin Scorsese

Nicolas Winding Refn

Lars von Trier

David Cronenberg

 

Best Actor

Michael Fassbender, “Shame”

Gary Oldman, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Hunter McCracken, “The Tree of Life”

Ryan Gosling, “Drive”

Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”

 

Best Actress

Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”

Kiera Knightley, “A Dangerous Method”

Kristen Dunst, “Melancholia”

Charlotte Gainsbourg, “Melancholia”

Jodie Foster, “Carnage”

 

Best Supporting Actor

Albert Brooks, “Drive”

Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”

Brad Pitt, “The Tree of Life”

Robert Forster, “The Descendants”

Christoph Waltz, “Carnage”

 

Best Supporting Actress

Jessica Chastain, “The Tree of Life”

Carey Mulligan, “Shame”

Melanie Laurent, “Beginners”

Carey Mulligan, “Drive”

Kate Winslet, “Carnage”

 

Best Ensemble

“Tree of Life”

“Carnage”

“A Dangerous Method”

“Melancholia”

“Hugo”

 

Original Screenplay

“The Tree of Life”

“Midnight in Paris”

“Shame”

“Beginners”

“Melancholia”

 

Adapted Screenplay

“Drive”

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

“A Dangerous Method”

“Carnage”

“Hugo”

 

Best Television Programming

“Californication”

“George Harrison: Living in a Material World”

“Breaking Bad”

“Homeland”

“Too Big to Fail”

 

 

Jan 23 2012

“The Iron Lady” – 2011 Dir. Phyllida Lloyd


With Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent and Richard E. Grant

“What have we done Maggie, what have we done?

What have we done to England?

Should we shout, should we scream?

What happened to the post war dream?

Oh Maggie – Maggie what have we done?”

-Pink Floyd’s “The Final Cut”

To me, Margaret Thatcher is arguably the most important woman of the previous century. She not only shaped the way women were viewed in politics, but also had a significant impact to the image of all women of the world. Along with Ronald Regan, Thatcher represented modern day “conservatism”, promoting only free markets and heavy handed slashing of social programs; directly resulting in the decay of Brittan’s Great Society.

    This film is a mixed bag. Meryl Streep, in the title role, proves to us that she may in fact be the greatest actor in cinema (obviously I’m omitting Daniel Day-Lewis). With every tilt of her head, gaze of her eye, every word spoken Meryl Streep is enchanting, allowing even a bleeding heart liberal (like myself) to create an emotional bond with Thatcher.

    Streep overshadows the film, which isn’t a bad film by any means, but perhaps a very light film, or a Cliff Noted version of what should have been a three hour brooding epic. It lacks the substance that a film about Thatcher deserves. It reminded me much of Oliver Stone’s “W”, which felt very light and didn’t show us anything more than a lampoon of a very interesting man.

    ”The Iron Lady” briskly pans over Thatcher’s life, showing us brief highs and lows. While this film doesn’t bash Thatcher, it certainly doesn’t go into enough detail of the problems she (and conservatism) brought to England, and how she nearly destroyed the country by cutting social programs, shutting down sections of the manufacturing industry because she refused to negotiate with unions. Starting an Atlantic skirmish with her financially cut military, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of British soldiers. One thing Thatcher was good at was never, ever compromising.

    Abi Morgan (co-writer of “Shame”) delivers an abridged screenplay, which moves quickly and doesn’t get bogged down too deep into Thatcher’s rein of power or her psyche, which actually was a mistake. Thatcher is a person who deserves a better film that has more meat and gravitas to it, showcasing her pitfalls as a leader. The one thing Thatcher did get out of this film was a heart breaking performance by Streep, which is more than Maggie deserves.

Rating: 8/10

Nov 22 2011

“The Descendants” – 2011 Dir. Alexander Payne

With George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Matthew Lillard, Judy Greer with Beau Bridges and Robert Forster

    Poignant, is the only word that I know that perfectly describes an Alexander Payne film. Payne has a unique ability to make our own feelings bubble to the surface as we watch the painful landscape of a family collapse in front of us. But Payne is very sly in his subtle use of humor that softens the life examining situations that arise. “The Descendants” follows in line with his previous body of tragic comedies that examine the core of the modern American Family.

A much deglamorized George Clooney guides us through this new epoch of Payne’s filmography and uproots us from the Midwest, where Payne has set his previous films, and takes us to anew and just as foreign place, Hawaii.

Clooney plays Matt King, a reluctant patriarch who has to come to terms with his wife’s lingering death, reaching out and informing his family, reconnecting with his daughters while juggling a multimillion dollar land deal where King is the sole trustee to his family’s legacy.

This land deal not only holds the financial future of his dead-beat extended family, most of which is made up of free spirited cousins who just live to straight up party, but also holds the fate of a Hawaiian island in the balance.

Oh, and his daughter informs him of his wife’s infidelity with a schmucky real estate agent played by Matthew Lillard. Yes. Mattew Lillard.

Fuck being Matt King.

    With Clooney giving a career best performance in this film, as well as giving his career best film with “The Ides of March”, you have to start to accept (if you haven’t already) that Clooney has inherited Warren Beatty’s mantle. Clooney gives a stripped down portrayal as an everyman who struggles with the extraordinary aspects of life.

Clooney’s persistent execution of continuously letting us forget that he’s not George Clooney, but Matt King is truly remarkable and is going to win him the Best Actor Oscar this year. His talent seems to not have any boundaries, as he constantly pushes himself with each new film he presses out.

The supporting cast firmly backs Clooney, and won’t allow his star power to overshadow their own performances. Veteran actor Beau Bridges shows up as a laidback trust fund cousin who is pushing a reluctant Matt King to sell off their family’s land. Bridges is very effective, and is able to counter King’s animosity and inner torment with his light and breezy demeanor.

    The great Robert Forster plays King’s hard barked father-in-law who is the pure essence of the “old school” alpha male. Seeing the frame filled with both Clooney and Forster is an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and awe. Just as Tim Burton’s “Batman”, the only believable boss for Jack Nicholson is Jack Palance, here the only believable father-in-law to Clooney is Forster, who deserves an Academy Award Nomination for his heartbreaking performance.

Alexander Payne is our most talented overlooked filmmaker who continues to put out touching and heartfelt films that never get wrapped up in themselves and don’t become soapbox films. I will continue to look forward to Payne’s films and his love for cinema, and for his terrific vision that he never lets get the best of him.

Rating: 9.5/10

And look! Tim Matheson agrees with me that Robert FORSTER should be nominated for an Academy Award, too. Just sayin…

Nov 20 2011

Bellflower

Many people play or listen to a particular type of music – heavy metal, for instance – as a means of catharsis.  It allows them to purge their pent-up tensions without physically harming themselves or those around them.  Writer/director/producer/editor/actor Evan Glodell came up with the idea for his first feature as a 22-year-old trying to reassemble his worldview after it was shattered by a failed relationship.  Bellflower represents filmmaking as catharsis.  Thankfully he put his violent urges to film (rather than acting on them), and they make for one hell of an entertaining ride.

Glodell stars as Woodrow, who spends most of his time making flamethrowers and Mad Max inspired muscle cars with his buddy Aiden (Tyler Dawson).  I’m convinced that the film takes place in some post-apocalyptic near future, even if it’s never directly addressed.  None of the characters appear to have jobs, yet real-life issues like rent are brought up repeatedly.  The streets are always empty, leaving plenty of opportunities for open-road mayhem and booze cruising, and the only times Woodrow and Aiden go out in public are to visit some grungy surplus store in the middle of nowhere or a dive bar where their small gang makes up the majority of the crowd.  And they’re supposed to be in Los Angeles.

Anyway, Woodrow is also a hopeless romantic who quickly falls for Milly (Jesse Wiseman) after she defeats him in a cricket eating contest and they engage in a long night of drinking.  Things don’t end well between Woodrow and Milly, as you probably figured out from that opening paragraph.  Even as Glodell begins blurring the lines between reality and nightmarish hysteria, you’re swept away by the intoxicating vengeance that sticks with you like a bad memory.

The phrase “independent film” gets thrown around a lot these days.  Far too much in my opinion.  Watching Bellflower, you know this it was created for no other reason than to deliver a good film — completely independent of audience expectations, pre-established marketing strategies and merchandising tie-ins.  Even as we form our own new expectations of where things might be going as the film transpires, Bellflower shoots them down in flames.  It makes for a raw and refreshingly original viewing experience, proudly boasting that punk rock DIY mentality.

Glodell made the film for $17,000 and developed his own custom camera to create Bellflower‘s dream-like world, filled with saturated colors and intimate, limited focus shots.  What might be seen as technically imperfect excessively grainy or blurry shots actually add to the realism of the plot’s hallucinatory nature.  Woodrow suffers from an emotional whiplash, and one point sustains some equally devastating physical injuries.  I often experience blurred vision as a result of migraines.  Bellflower‘s unique visual style replicates that feeling.

The actors are expectedly amateurish, but the cast does a decent enough job of delivering the naturalistic dialogue that captures those awkward, exciting moments from when you first fall in love.  I’m not talking Zoe Deschanel cute-awkward.  I mean authentically awkward, like when a guy lacks the confidence to directly ask a girl to be his girlfriend so he kind of backs his way into it.

When that excitement turns to anger and resentment, the shift feels real.  It might be easy to think that the film carries the misogynistic theme that women are the root of man’s problems, but beneath the surface I think it’s eluding to the devastating power of love.  And much like how time is the only true cure for a hangover, the same is true for a broken heart.  Payback sex and the torching of an ex’s personal belongings isn’t going to accelerate that process, and will likely only work against it.

It’s beautiful what one creative mind can stir up when there aren’t dozens of executives and investors dipping their filthy hands into the product.  I imagine this is how some people felt watching Clerks back in 1994.

Bellflower is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Oscilloscope Laboratories.  Do yourselves a favor and help out a great company that always delivers some of the finest in home video presentation.  Better yet, pay just $99 and get their next ten releases sent directly to your home.

Grade: B+

Nov 13 2011

Deep Cuts: “The Last Rites of Joe May” – 2011 Dir. Joe Maggio

With Dennis Farina, Jamie Anne Allman, Meredith Droeger, Ian Bradford with Chelcie Ross and Gary Cole

    Fresh from the Tribeca and Chicago Film Festivals comes “The Last Rites of Joe May”. Dennis Farina stars as the title character who has been in Cook County Hospital for the past six months. May has spent his life being a short money hustler, always looking for the quick cash opportunities.

    After arriving back home, May finds that his apartment has been rented out to a Jenny Rapp (Jamie Anne Allman) and her daughter (Meredith Droeger). Joe May has to come to terms with his life, and how he had always thought there was something waiting for him in life, that big break that was always on the horizon. In reality, May finds that his six month disappearance hasn’t had an effect on anyone. No one missed him, no one visited him, and everyone assumed he was dead.

    This film is much like the archetypal story that we were shown in “Crazy Heart” and “Gran Torino” – a man who has lived a selfish life and is now looking for redemption, one last shot to prove their worth.

Farina is the pure definition of subtle good. He brings animation and life to a film, which without him would have been a drab, generic film. Its Farina’s Chicago background (he was a Chicago cop for 20 years prior to being an actor) that brings much command and authenticity to this film and especially to Joe May.

Chicago has never looked so good on film. Watching the film reminded me much of Michael Mann’s debut film, “Thief” – where the grittiness of the Chicago streets just adds to the character of the film. There aren’t glamorous shots of a Chicago skyline, or over-the-top pans of Chicago landmarks; instead director Joe Maggio films the streets of Chicago. He films the buses, he films the El, the beautiful dilapidation – it looks fantastic.

This film is very small, and very personal. Farina puts everything he has up on screen and its wonderful experience to soak up. Joe Maggio, who also wrote, is able to develop interesting characters around May, especially May’s “boss” Lenny who is perfectly played by Gary Cole, who is so apathetic to Joe May, it’s very embarrassing for us to watch.

While some of the film can be slightly lacking at times, it’s so culminating to watch Joe May fight for redemption. This film is now available VOD on Cable, Satellite, Amazon Prime and iTunes and is well worth the money to rent it.


Rating: 8.5/10

Nov 10 2011

J. Edgar

Many of the best biopics, like Bugsy or The Aviator, manage to get to the heart of what their subjects really stood for while concentrating on just a small portion of their lives.  Director Clint Eastwood’s new film, which spans J. Edgar Hoover’s entire 48-year career as the director of the FBI, feels like the CliffsNotes version of a larger Hoover mini-series by comparison.  Sure, it has some good scenes, but they never really add up to much.

J. Edgar merely glosses over pivotal (and cinema-worthy) portions of his term like his run-ins with U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, conflicts with President Richard Nixon and the investigation of the kidnapping of Charles Lindberg’s baby boy.  All the while, Hoover’s implied homosexuality sits at the forefront.  Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) seems to insist that the most interesting thing about J. Edgar Hoover is that he was gay in an era and position that wouldn’t allow him to be honest with himself.

The film clumsily jumps back and forth from an elderly Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) reciting his memoirs to the supposed highlights of his life and work.  By his side the entire way are his personal assistant Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) and his next-in-command (and suggested life partner) Clyde Tolson (The Social Network‘s Armie Hammer).  Watts impressed me more than she ever has, exhibiting an undying devotion to Hoover that is never resentful despite dedicating her entire life to her career.  As for Hammer, he has strong chemistry with DiCaprio during their moments of subtle flirtation, but he’s glaringly unnatural and clearly outmatched in one shouting match between the two.

As for Leo, he isn’t distractingly bad as Hoover, probably because his version of Hoover is far less over-the-top than recent portrayals by Billy Crudup (Public Enemies) and Enrico Calantoni (“The Kennedys”), but this doesn’t approach his best work.  His tone and delivery undergo no noticeable change between his 30-year-old Hoover and his final days.  He and Hammer are also highly unbelievable as old men, looking more like they’re doing bad impersonations of senior citizens than accurately mimicking their movements.

But the make-up department did them absolutely no favors.  None of prosthetic aging work is good, but Hammer’s in particular makes him looks like the creepy grandpa from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  There’s no progressive aging process, either.  No subtle wrinkles or gradual weight gain.  They characters take just two physical forms:  young and fit or old and fat.  Even the fat suits look terrible — they don’t move in a naturally and Leo’s noticeably presses up into the bottom of his chest every time he sits down.

Eastwood’s faint piano scoring sounds like a continuation of his previous compositions and he again uses the same monochromatic grey tones he used on Changeling, among others.  Why?  I have no idea.  To the best of my research, neither film is based on a graphic novel.

J. Edgar Hoover revolutionized criminal investigation through innovations like the fingerprint identification system and the implementation of forensic research.  Other aspects of his personality, such as his paranoid and potentially obsessive-compulsive nature were hinted at in the film.  But apparently what this all boils down to in the eyes of the filmmakers is that despite all of his achievements, J. Edgar still feels unaccomplished because he could never bring a nice girl home to mama.  Now that would have made her proud.

I get that things were pretty tough for gay men during Hoover’s time.  Hell, they still are.  But frankly, this material just isn’t that provocative anymore.  We can find edgier representations of sexuality on prime time television any night of the week.

Grade:  C-

Nov 10 2011

“Beginners” 2010 – Dir. Mike Mills

With Ewan McGregor, Melanie Laurent and Christopher Plummer

“Well, let’s say that since you were little, you always dreamed of getting a lion. And you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait but the lion doesn’t come. And along comes a giraffe. You can be alone, or you can be with the giraffe.”

    The quest for understanding who we are is not an easy feat. It makes us open doors that should remain shut, it causes us to accept truths that we don’t want, and it causes us to shine that magnifying glass of perception, which we so easily put over others, on ourselves.

Ewan McGregor gives his best performance as Oliver, an introverted artistic intellectual (PARADOX!) who struggles with the responsibility of life. His father Hal (Christopher Plummer) has recently died, but before he did he came out that he was gay when his wife of forty years died, and when he was diagnosed with cancer.

    While Oliver spends most of his time reflecting over the newfound relationship he had with his distant father, he meets Anna (Melanie Laurent) who is a traveling actress who is running from problems of her own. The film brilliantly cuts between real time with Oliver and his emotional ride with Anna, to Oliver spending time with his father, and his new gay friends, as well as taking care of him when he’s close to death.

“Beginners” is an incredibly touching and heartfelt film, and it is able to stand on its own merits, as opposed to being held up by a crutch of some real life event (I’m looking at you “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” – seriously, the audacity!). Mike Mills, who also directed, wrote an amazing semi-autobiographical screenplay of one man’s journey to find himself, and bring peace to his life while trying to understand it all.

What makes this film work, on such a high level, is not only the quality of the actors brought on board, but the quality of their craftsmanship in this film. McGregor who is a really good actor, when he’s given the right material shines as the broken Oliver, who masks his sadness so well.

Melanie Laurent is wonderful, and though I’ve only seen her in this film and in “Inglorious Basterds”, I find that she’s such a remarkable actress, everything she does just seems so effortless, and so real. She’s adorable and smart, but also just as broken and sad as Oliver.

    The Academy should just give Christopher Plummer the Oscar now for Best Supporting Actor. I’ve beaten the drum for Albert Brooks for “Drive”, and I’ll continue to do so, but Plummer is outstanding as the jovial man who has just liberated himself from a lifelong secret, but now faces his mortality. Plummer is such a wonderful actor, who always gives a good performance, even when he’s not at 100% (“Must Love Dogs”).

This film is very touching and sad, but don’t let that detour you because it’s also a very, very funny film. There is a scene in the film where Hal calls Oliver at three in the morning, and Hal is all excited because he went to his first gay bar. Hal is wearing a pink button down, with the top unbuttoned showing off his chest and his excitement grows as his tells a sleepy Oliver about the “wonderful” music that was playing the club.

“It was something I’ve never heard before. It was like “itsssss itsssss itsssss.”"

“That sounds like house music – Dad.”

Hal quickly puts on his glasses and reaches to the notepad next to the phone and he begins to write as he slowly repeats: “house…music…”

Rating: 9/10

Oct 17 2011

Deep Cuts: “Cobb” – 1994 Dir. Ron Shelton

With Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Wuhl, Lolita Davidovich and Lou Myers

“Baseball is a red blooded sport for red blooded men. It’s no pink tea, and molly-coddles had better stay out. It’s a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.” – Ty Cobb

    I’ve gotten into many sports related arguments in my life, and some of my opinions are wrong, but I will live and die by my certainty of Ty Cobb being the best baseball player of all time.

“I have 4,191 base hits in 11,429 at bats, 920 stolen bases, 2,244 runs scored, and 93 batting records.”

Director Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham”, writer of “Blue Chips”) writes and directs his most ambitious project to date, the story of Ty Cobb who some consider the best baseball player of all time, and who is renowned as the most vicious baseball player ever.

The story centers around a sports writer, Al Stump (Robert Wuhl, HBO’s “Arliss” or for us old people, we’ll remember him from Tim Burton’s “Batman” as Alexander Knox) gets summoned to Ty Cobb’s mansion in the dead of a blizzard to write the only authorized biography of Cobb’s life.

Stump, being the biggest Ty Cobb fan jumps at the chance to write Cobb’s biography, but soon realizes that the man he’s idolized his entire life, isn’t who he thought he’d be. Cobb is a tired, old, dying man who is so filled with hatred and rage that he will spew his bile at anyone who will listen.

Stump is taken aback by Cobb, but Cobb knows he has the upper hand, because Stump needs Cobb more than Cobb needs him. Cobb knows that if Stump publishes the book, it will launch his career.

What ensues is a road trip to the opening of Cooperstown where Ty Cobb will be the first baseball player inducted into the Hall of Fame. While on the road, Stump deals with an internal struggle, whether or not he’s going to write the work of fiction that Ty Cobb wants him too, or if he should publish the non-glorified version of Ty Cobb, and tell the truth about him.

While this movie is based on Al Stumps actual book, I can’ tell you for certainty how factually accurate this film is. The film alleges that Cobb once killed a man, saw his Mother murder his Father, invested heavily in aluminum because he knew Coca-Cola was going to move to cans instead of bottles.

Tommy Lee Jones gives his finest performance, in a tour-de-force as the legendary and infamous Ty Cobb. Jones doesn’t hold back at all, and throws his entire mind, body and soul into the performance as a very jaded and haunted man.

His performance is very raw. At times, you really, really sympathize with Cobb, and at other times you’re scared of him. While watching this, I saw Ty Cobb, not Tommy Lee Jones, who rarely deviates from his typecast. It’s his masterpiece.

The problem with the finished film is that it isn’t even half as good as Jones’ performance. Jones’ performance is so big, and so much larger than life that his performance demands a better film, and the finished product isn’t that.

At times, this film can be painfully generic, and Jones’ showboat of a performance is sometimes washed out by the film. Basically this film doesn’t pay as much attention to detail as Tommy Lee Jones does to playing Ty Cobb.

Rating: 6.5/10

Oct 12 2011

Don Johnson joins Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained”

    Don Johnson has been cast as Spencer Bennett, who is a plantation owner who pimps out slaves, including the title character from Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.”

The part of Spencer Bennett is a small and is promised to be just downright nasty. I’m looking so forward to this film, and now that the cast keeps expanding with this pallet of actors, I’m ecstatic. Don Johnson who has fallen out of our eye made quite a bang when he was cast in Robert Rodriguez “Grindhouse” follow-up, “Machete” along with guest staring in HBO’s “Eastbound & Down” as Kenny Powers (living in Mexico, washed up) father, has made quite a resurgence to an audience who really appreciates him, and his washed-up image.

“Django Unchained” is currently filming and stars JamieFoxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Kenneth Williams, Kerry Washington, Laura Cayoutte, Dennis Christopher, M.C. Gainey, Gerald McRaney and Kurt Russell. It’s due out Christmas Day 2012.