On the Oscars

I’m finishing up this kick of writing about last year’s movies. This will be the last post on this subject for a while, I promise.

I don’t see much point in predicting what WILL win, so instead I’m going to write about what I think SHOULD win, both from what the nominees actually are, and from a theoretical universe where I can choose from whatever I want.

BEST PICTURE

From the nominees: THE TREE OF LIFE

From everything: THE TREE OF LIFE

A weird set of nominees. I’ve seen six of them, and I think Tree of Life is certainly, the best, though The Artist, Hugo, and Moneyball are all very good. Martha Marcy May Marlene really ought to have been at least nominated. I think it was pretty much shut out, which is a real pity. And though The Arbor is still my absolute top pick, it’s disqualified from this for being a documentary. (And possibly for being released in the UK in 2010?)

BEST ACTOR

From the nominees: BRAD PITT (for Moneyball)

From everything: BRAD PITT (for The Tree of Life)

I’ve seen all the movies with best actor nominees except for Demian Bichir in A Better Life. This is a tough one; I just wasn’t that blown away by any male actor in a clearly leading role this year. Out of the nominees, I think Brad Pitt in Moneyball just edges out Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In the world of infinite freedom, I would choose Brad Pitt for his performance in Tree of Life, though I think it’s slightly unclear whether he’s actually the lead in that film. It’s always seemed tricky to me to determine what’s a lead and what isn’t.

BEST ACTRESS

From the nominees: ???

From everything: ELIZABETH OLSEN (for Martha Marcy May Marlene)

I actually haven’t seen any of the movies nominated for best actress, so I can’t render an opinion on that. Ignoring the nominations, I think it has to be Elizabeth Olsen, for her very believable and very scary performance in poor shut-out Martha Marcy May Marlene. Would have been nice to see a nomination for Charlize Theron for Young Adult or Adepero Oduye for Pariah, who were both also great.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

From the nominees: CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER (for Beginners)

From everything: BEN KINGSLEY (for Hugo)

I liked Jonah Hill and Christopher Plummer, but how about John Hawkes for Martha Marcy May Marlene, Ben Kingsley for Hugo, Charles Parnell for Pariah, John Hurt for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, or Patton Oswalt for Young Adult? Out of the nominees, I like Christopher Plummer. Out of everything there are almost too many options. I’ll go with Ben Kingsley, partially because I’m just very surprised that he wasn’t even nominated; Hugo was not a small movie…

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

From the nominees: MELISSA MCCARTHY (for Bridesmaids)

From everything: MELISSA MCCARTHY (for Bridesmaids)

I think it’s awesome and a little unexpected that Melissa McCarthy got this nod for Bridesmaids. I hope she wins.

BEST DIRECTOR

From the nominees: TERRENCE MALICK (for The Tree of Life)

From everything: TERRENCE MALICK (for The Tree of Life)

Malick really deserves to win this.  See my earlier post.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

From the nominees: KRISTIN WIIG AND ANNIE MUMOLO (for Bridesmaids)

From everything: SEAN DURKIN (for Martha Marcy May Marlene)

Bridesmaids’ screenplay was great, and it’s nice to see a straight-up comedy nominated for this. I also wish Diablo Cody’s script for Young Adult got at least a nomination.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

From the nominees: BRIDGET O’CONNOR AND PETER STRAUGHN (for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)

From everything: DEE REES (for Pariah)

The Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy crew deserve serious credit for making an understandable movie out of a story that can seem crowded in a BBC miniseries.  I think the best screenplay of any movie I saw this year was Pariah, though, which I assume counts as adapted since it was based on an earlier short film.

***

I think this is about where I stop having any idea what I’m talking about in terms of categories. I will say, I hope Planet of the Apes wins for special effects, and I will be incredibly happy if Man or Muppet wins best original song. Will it be performed at the ceremony? If so, that’s amazing. (Also why are there only two songs nominated this year? I’m not complaining, but all these rule changes are very mysterious to the layperson.)

Calamity Jim’s Most Disappointing Movies of 2011

George Clooney doesn't know it, but he is in Hell.

Well, I’m back for another installment, buoyed by the fact that my father, mother, and aunt all read this blog, and disheartened by the fact that Calamity Jane doesn’t seem to.

Anyway, yesterday you saw my favorites, today I’ll share a much shorter list of the movies that I found the most disappointing in 2011. I’m not claiming these are the WORST films of 2011; I probably didn’t see those, because I wasn’t looking for pain.  I knew enough not to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, for instance.  These are the ones I DID see, and was least impressed with. We’ll just bite the bullet and start with:

THE DESCENDANTS

I hated The Descendants. It was a terrible movie, and everybody else seems to love it, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to win best picture at the Oscars. So that makes me sad. To be fair to the movie, I’ll start with what I think are the good things about it.

GOOD THING #1: the scenery is very pretty. I know, damning with faint praise, but I mean it. Hawaii is gorgeous, and you get to see a lot of it. There was some top-notch location scouting that went into The Descendants if nothing else. Part of the plot is that there’s this piece of land that Clooney is deciding whether or not to sell, and it’s a breathtakingly beautiful cove that I really want to visit now.

GOOD THING #2: the acting is really good across the board. Clooney is great. Whoever plays his daughter is great. Judy Greer as the wife of the man who had an affair with Clooney’s wife is great.

So, you ask, if the acting in this movie is universally good, why did you hate it? Because, mom, dad, and aunt MJ, the poor actors are proving their chops by doing their absolute best with a horrible horrible script. There’s not  single line in this entire movie that sounds like anyone an actual human would ever say. That’s the simple answer to why this movie was terrible. Humans don’t talk like these people talk. They don’t act like these people act. It’s awful; it’s like watching a movie written by someone who learned how to talk by watching daytime television or something. It’s just infuriatingly unreal.

That’s the big one, but there are other reasons this movie made me so annoyed. One is that it’s all about the travails of the very rich. Clooney is supposedly the descendant of the original Hawaiian land barons, so he’s mega-wealthy and owns all this land, which is the major subplot of the movie, as I said. Their trust is expiring or something, so they’re figuring out whether to sell their last remaining huge chunk of land to developers to make even more money.

I’m aware that there are a lot of very good movies about rich people, but this one has a truly bizarre attitude about it. The rich have it harder than us, it seems to argue, they have to make these big decisions. And then at the end, when Clooney decides not to sell the land [spoiler alert, I guess, who the hell cares] we’re supposed to feel that he’s doing a heroic thing by not letting there be a hotel development because his youngest kid wants to go camping there. Too bad if someone’s kid who isn’t a land baron wants to go camping there. I don’t know, it just rubs me the wrong way. And there are lines like, “you should give your children enough money to do something, but not enough to do nothing.” Very witty, chortle chortle, went all the audience I was with at the Coolidge Corner Cinema. How many people does that advice apply to? Go to hell Alexander Payne.

And finally, I like slack-key guitar, but an entire soundtrack of it is infuriating. That is all. If this movie wins best picture, I hope that Payne and Clooney are devoured by Peter Dinklage and Uggie the dog.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

I also thought Midnight in Paris was very stupid, though I ultimately don’t think I loathed it quite as much. But again, everyone seems to love it. Am I the jerk here? And to be honest, I didn’t come to this completely unbiased, having sort of given up on Woody Allen, but… I don’t know, I think it’s bad regardless. I’ll start again with what I liked.

GOOD THING #1: Hemingway. That’s all. The plot of this movie is that Owen Wilson is a wealthy Hollywood script doctor in Paris with his horrible fiancee and her horrible parents, and he starts traveling back in time to the 20s every night. This allows him to spend time with a lot of historical figures, but none of them are terribly amusing except Ernest Hemingway, who is absolutely hilarious. He talks like Hemingway’s prose style and gets really drunk and challenges people to fight and is generally very funny. I don’t know who the actor is, but he’s pitch perfect and the only good thing in the movie.

Everything else is awful. First of all, just to get it out of the way, all these people are all very rich again. Why? I think just because Woody Allen is. The fact that they are rich doesn’t matter to the plot; they could be middle class people and the movie would be otherwise identical. So again it pisses me off.

The movie is also terribly written and not very funny. Besides Hemingway, there were like like three lines that got a chuckle out of me. For Woody Allen, who wrote friggin’ Annie Hall, that’s pathetic. The film is also horrifically misogynistic. Owen’s fiancee is this harpy caricature of a woman with whom we’re supposed to feel no sympathy and does nothing except tell Owen not to follow his dreams and to buy her more stuff. It’s embarrassing. So Owen escapes into the arms first of a 20s Parisian prostitute/all-purpose mistress, and then ends up with a properly subservient art seller. Hooray, he dumped the harridan! Somewhere, Mia Farrow is wringing the neck of a puppy.

And Owen Wilson is decent, but his character is this drippy sad-sack whom I at least wanted to punch in the face all the time, so it never becomes clear why the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway and Stein and Bunuel and everyone find it any fun hanging out with this loser. I certainly didn’t.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

I’ll spend much less time on this, because I didn’t loathe it like the other two. I just found it really dull. But it’s in the same league of disappointment, because I was hoping it would be great. I have a lot of trust in Spielberg, possibly because I’ve never seen Hook, and I love the Tintin books, so I was genuinely excited. Plus, the movie has a pretty great cast, and it was written by Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright.

But it just never amounted to anything. It wasn’t pretty or visually interesting by any means; Captain Haddock looked weird and scary. The plot sort of chugged along and nothing vital ever seemed to be at stake. Tintin himself is a cipher, and Captain Haddock isn’t very interesting, and not very funny either. The villain is completely bland and unengaging, and I just kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever did.

You didn’t get the beauty and excitement of a Tintin comic; the thrills and mystery of a Spielberg movie, or much of anything. Bianca Castifiore is transformed from a brilliant running gag to a lame device to further the plot. It’s all just a huge pile of meh.

Again, it’s not an awful movie, but the gap between my expectations and reality probably made it the biggest disappointment of the year for me.

***

More is still to come. Leave comments. What was your biggest movie disappointment?

Calamity Jim’s Top Ten Movies of 2011

Hi blog readers (my dad)!

So I’m home sick from work today and thought it would be a good time to try to write another blog entry after this small 9-month gap.  (Welcome Calamity Jim Jr!  Just kidding.)  Also, my brother inspired me by writing something on his own long-neglected blog.

So here goes with my list of my top ten movies of 2011.  As always, this list only includes movies that I have seen. (Some movies I HAVEN’t seen but I suspect might be in contention if I had: Take Shelter, Drive, Melancholia) And I’ve lumped documentaries and dramas in together, mainly because of my choice for #1, which is an odd combination of both.  Let’s begin…

#10 — RANGO

I don’t think this movie got as much love as it deserves, although it will probably win the Oscar for best animated film now, which it certainly should.  It’s one of the most deeply weird animated movies I’ve ever seen.  It has deliberately ugly character design, a completely insane protagonist gecko-chameleon-thing voiced by Johnny Depp, and includes lines like “I found a human spinal column in my fecal matter once.”  Also cameos by Hunter Thompson and Clint Eastwood, sort of.  It’s nothing like the Shrek-style kid-friendly story with occasional pop culture allusions that we’ve been conditioned to expect from non-Pixar CGI films.  And it’s nothing like the Pixar formula either. It’s its own, completely bizarre thing, and it has Harry Dean Stanton voicing this horrible thing.

# 9 — PARIAH

This is a movie that I think about 20 people saw, although Meryl Streep gave it a nice shout-out in her Golden Globe acceptance speech.  It’s a semi-autobiographical story by writer and director Dee Rees about coming out as a lesbian as a teenager.  The lead actress, Adepero Oduye, is just amazing, along with just about everyone else in the movie. (Charles Parnell, the guy who plays her father, who is also incredible, does the voice of Jefferson Twilight on The Venture Bros.)  In a year where a movie like The Descendants — where not a single word that’s said in two hours sounds genuine — is as widely acclaimed as it is, it’s really refreshing to see a movie like Pariah where everything that’s said sounds real.  It never seems acted or written.

#8 — HUGO

I just really enjoyed this movie.  I think it has the best use of 3D that I’ve seen since Avatar, plus a really compelling and almost scary performance by Ben Kingsley. It’s true — as has been widely pointed out — that for the last third or so of the film, the plot kid of fizzles away, and everything becomes a Scorsese PSA for film preservation, but I don’t mind it.  Everything on screen it so beautiful that the plot is almost beside the point.  Plus  this movie redeems Sacha Baron Cohen for me after the hugely disappointing Bruno.

#7 — RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

This was the year’s happiest surprise for me. I expected this movie to be at best decent; instead it was by far the best summer-blockbuster-type movie that I saw this year.  It was thrilling and genuinely moving pretty much throughout. James Franco is great, and Andy Serkis plus however many WETA animators are just astounding as the rebellious chimp Caesar, who is the most convincing and moving CGI character I’ve ever seen.  Bonus points for [spoiler alert] telling the story of the end of humanity in a minute-long sequence during the closing credits.

#6 — THE TRIP

The first I knew of this movie was seeing a clip on YouTube of one of the Michael Caine imitation bits, which itself is worth the price of admission.  That plus the whole “we rise at daybreak” bit, which Calamity Jane and I still quote compulsively.  Basically Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon reprise their roles of “Steve Coogan” and “Rob Brydon” — heightened (I assume) versions of their real selves — that they played in Tristram Shandy. They go around the Lake Country on a tasting tour of fancy restaurants and we learn just how sad and terrible a person Steve Coogan is.  The two-hour movie is adapted from a 6-hour miniseries that aired on the BBC, which I’m very eager to see if I could figure out how.

#5 — BRIDESMAIDS

I never got the whole “Bridesmaids is the Hangover with women” idea, because Bridesmaids is a LOT better than the Hangover (which I liked).  It’s very funny, but also does a good job of making you care about the characters, especially Kristen Wiig’s lead.  It was the best comedy I saw all year. It got a lot of press for “proving that women can be funny,” which I suppose it does, for anyone who hasn’t managed to become aware of that in the past century or so of talented female comic actors. What did impress me was that the movie was actually made, because it certainly is true that there aren’t many comedies out there that focus on women who aren’t constantly talking about men. My guess is that’s not because there aren’t a lot of talented women out there writing those scripts! It’s because we like our women in comedies to be ritually humiliated sex objects — see Katherine Heigl. And yes, Melissa McCarthy poops in a sink.

#4 — POETRY

This is a very disturbing South Korean movie focusing on an elderly woman just beginning to struggle with Alzheimer’s, who is taking care of a grandson who may or may not have committed a truly horrible crime with awful results.  This is not a feel-good movie, despite the subplot of the protagonist taking up poetry. I didn’t know anything about the lead actress, Yoon Jeong-Hee, but Wikipedia tells me she was a major star in the 60s and 70s.  You can see why, it’s impossible to take your eyes off her. There’s so much going on under the surface of every scene and conversation it’s almost painful to watch.

#3 — MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

Aaaaaand speaking of movies that are very good but also horribly disturbing. Wow. John Hawkes takes another step to being eternally typecast as a vicious backwoods patriarch. Elizabeth Olson plays a teen who is recovering from her time at an abusive cult (led by said John Hawkes) in upstate New York.  She’s staying with her sister — (Ms. Isringhausen from Deadwood, a lot of Deadwood love in this movie) — and her wealthy husband at their country house. And, hoo boy, did her time at that cult screw her up. In tone, this is closest to a straight-up horror movie. You get deep inside Martha’s mind, and it’s not a pleasant place to be. Smart editing makes it hard for you tell what’s past and what’s present in a way that mirrors the lead character’s trauma and makes you just as paranoid as she is. This is a creepy creepy film, made worse by a spooky ambiguous ending.

#2 — THE TREE OF LIFE

This is the movie that ought to win best picture at the Oscars, though I have a strong hunch that it won’t — the terrible The Descendants will. It’s almost stupidly ambitious, telling the story of the entire life of the Universe through the story of one Texas family in the 50s. Yes, that means there are dinosaurs, plus the big bang, the death of the planet, and some cool obviously Cassini-inspired shots of Saturn.  Most of it is people though. I’ve never seen a movie that’s shot like this one. Ultra close-ups, loving, lingering shots on body-parts and curtains and shadows. And through all of this, it puts out its own thesis on the meaning of life, death, the Universe, and everything. I’m not sure I agree with that thesis, but I challenge you to show me another movie that does that. This movie gets a hundred brownie points for sheer balls, but somehow manages to be entertaining and visually arresting as well. See it.

#1 — THE ARBOR

I know, what? If about 20 people saw Pariah, I think four people saw The Arbor. I only did because it was on Netflix Streaming. So, The Arbor is a sort-of documentary  about the life of Andrea Dunbar, an alcoholic British playwright from the Yorkshire slums. The Arbor tells Dunbar’s story mostly through the words of her kids and acquaintances — the actual recorded voices of these people, which are then lip-synced by actors on the screen. It sounds strange, but it’s incredibly compelling. It also includes bits of Dunbar’s actual plays that illustrate her own story, staged outside in the midst of the housing projects she’s writing about. And Dunbar’s story, and that of her kids, is terrible and brutal and fascinating. And by the end of the film, you feel pity and admiration and loathing for Andrea Dunbar and her kids. And it’s all real people going through real life.

The movie also makes the wise decision to provide subtitles for the absolutely impenetrable Yorkshire accents. Here is a sample. Just kidding. (Cardboard box? You were lucky!) But seriously, between this and the Red Riding movies and books, remind me never ever ever to go to Yorkshire. I think it’s on a Hellmouth.

But anyway, this is the best movie I saw in 2011. It was real and terrible and beautiful all at the same time. Also, Netflix streaming! How can you go wrong.

*****

So those are my top picks.  Look forward shortly to another post about what I thought the biggest disappointments were. A hint: you may have gathered that I’m not a huge fan of The Descendants. Another hint: watching Midnight in Paris is as fun as vacationing in Yorkshire. More soon, faithful reader(s). Leave comments!

Jane Eyre n’ Me

Mr. Rochester performed music so underground his band didn't even exist yet

The new Jane Eyre was good, though slightly anti-climactic for the swoony 11^th grader in me. By way of explanation: Jane Eyre was one of those books that I devoured in high school. A plain and chubby but plucky girl myself, I immediately imagined myself as Jane  to a thrillingly Byronic imagined Mr. Rochester (at this time——circa 2000—most often manifested by a bearded Johnny Depp). The connection with the novel, re-read about five times since then, was so strong that no film adaptation could ever quite match up with my personal expectation. Previous movies were enjoyable, but left no significant impression, save for the version in which Sookie Stackhouse plays cheeky Young Jane.

Which brings me to the new film by Cary Fukunaga: Well-acted (check-nice supporting work by Jamie Bell, Judi Dench, and Sally Hawkins, to boot!), well-scripted (check plus-the script retells the story out of sequential order, breaking up the tedium of the earlier Jane adaptations) beautifully shot (check—Thornfield Hall is lovingly realized).  I can’t fault the acting of the major players, though Michael Fassbender is decidedly waaaay too conventionally gorgeous to be Mr. Rochester.  I’ve always considered Rochester to have a bit of a caveman about him which contributes to his allure in a bizarre way that was very appealing to seventeen-year old Me. Here,  he is more like a gentle, scruffily bearded flannel-bedecked frontman for an Allston band that would be called Dear Mother Owls  or something similar. Mia Wasikowska is lovely as Jane, though I’d love to see her retain a bit more of the ballsy confidence that animates Jane as a child. Upon reflection, my real disappointment with Jane Eyre is personal, nostalgic, and impossible to rectify: that after imagining myself so long as the character, it has become impossible to be pleased with a heroine other than myself.

Today’s Final Post

Jane Eyre movie review post coming soon…until then:

Is there any literary character that you feel possessive over? Any book you would hate to see dramatized for fear that your beloved mental picture of a character would be desecrated?Upcoming Gatsby 3-D and On the Road adaptations, I’m looking at you….

Calamity Jim’s Top Ten Movies of 2010

The rules are simple. It had to have come out in 2010 and I have to have seen it. Also I’m separating out documentaries for some reason, even though I have seen far fewer than ten. Here we go, whores.

1. Toy Story 3
2. The Black Swan
3. Winter’s Bone
4. The Social Network
5. The Town
6. The Kings Speech
7. The Kids Are All Right
8. Harry Potter 7
9. How to Train Your Dragon
10. The Last Station

In making up this list, my takeaway is actually that this wasn’t such a great year for movies. Last year, I had no trouble whatsoever in thinking up ten that I really liked a whole lot. This year, it honestly gets a little thin down near the bottom of the list. And I saw a LOT of movies this year, including some that got a lot of praise – Inception, Scott Pilgrim, the Prophet, Ajami, Vincere, Mother, and so on. But I just wasn’t that blown away by many of them. (Vincere especially was just kind of unpleasant.) Does this mean movies are getting worse, or I’m getting to be sadder and more difficult? I don’t know.

But Toy Story 3 was great, no surprise there. I’m not sure that Pixar is capable anymore of releasing a movie that isn’t awesome. The Black Swan and Winter’s Bone were both spectacular, and are movies I just can’t stop thinking about. The Social Network is very good, although it’s one of those movies that the more I think about it, the LESS I ultimately liked it. And I think How to Train Your Dragon was a lot of fun and deserves a lot more kudos than it got.

So let’s go to documentaries.

1. Restrepo
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop

Aaaaand apparently that’s my top ten because they’re the only two I saw. Whoops. Restrepo was terrific. Exit Through the Gift Shop was very good. I really want to see Inside Job still, and possibly Waiting for Superman, though my suspicion is that it might end up making me angry.

Anyway, what do you think of all this? Especially you, Calamity Jane.