Film Review: Miguel Gomes' Tabu

Take a little David Lynch, toss in some Luis Buñuel, spice with a bit of Herzog, and flavour with a dash of his fellow countryman, Manoel di Oliveira, and you have Miguel Gomes' Tabu.  But don't get me wrong, for even though one can easily see traces of influence from all of these directors in Gomes' work, the Portuguese filmmaker more than stands on his own two cinematic feet in this beautiful and lyrical film.  Divided into two parts ("Paradise Lost" and "Paradise"), Tabu is the story of Aurora, an emotionally troubled elderly woman living in modern day Lisbon, and, in flashback, the tale of a young Aurora and her love affair that, if we are given to believing Gomes' flights of fancy, pretty much caused the downfall of colonialism in Africa.  But more than anything, this film is about love, about beauty, about the Bohemian sensibilities of these ideas, and the way they are ripped asunder, leaving us basically as a shell of a human being.  Uplifting, huh?

Shot in grippingly sharp black and white, and paying homage to F.W. Murnau's 1931 film of the same name (it too is divided into "Paradise" and "Paradise Lost"), Gomes first gives us a seemingly mundane modern day existence - a sort of cinema of endurance-esque take - and then, in the second half, he lets us all see the beauty, the love, the romantic idealism that, sadly, leads to such a mundane existence.  This feeling is beautifully captured - both visually (a shivering innocence can be found in the work of cinematographer Rui Poças) and in the acting (Ana Moreira and Laura Soveral, as the two ages of Aurora, are quite resplendent) - and the film is equal parts lustful and harrowing - sometimes with these two particulars encompassing the same space and time even.  What I am trying to say here, is that Tabu is a romantically induced tragedy, shot in the most succulent cinematic manner.  In other words, what cinema is all about.  The film's detractors have complained about Gomes not taking a serious enough stance on colonialism, and this attitude comes mainly from, instead of the director showing the darkness of war and revolution, he shows the darkness of love lost forever.  The actors show the range of emotion in their eyes, in their movements, in their bodies.  Cinema is meant to entertain, but it is also meant to show the utter beauty in everything as well - even if that beauty acts as tragedy, as it does not only here, but in much of classical literature and art - and that is exactly what Gomes does in Tabu.

Film Review: Ang Lee's Life of Pi

I must admit that, even being less than a rabid fan of the CGI-addled cinema that is so prevalent today, I think Ang Lee's CGI-heavy Life of Pi is a pretty goddamn good-looking film.  Pretty goddamn good-looking indeed.  Granted, the story is rather trite, even with the heavy issues it tackles, but at least it looks good.  Sure, there times when the computer-generated Bengal Tiger, looks quite fake, but considering they could not, nor would not, get a real tiger to do the things he is meant to do here (not without ripping off some faces that is), this is more than a fine replacement.  At least he isn't as bad as Jar Jar Binks.  But seriously, Ang Lee has fashioned a stunning visual work together here, and that alone is enough to recommend such a work - even if the story gets real tiresome, real quickly, and we are left wallowing around inside a schmarmy mess of emotional manipulation, and a bunch of new agey clichés and sucking narrative twaddle.  But hey, it is still goddamn good-looking at least.

Granted, the aforementioned new agey clichés and sucking narrative twaddle that permeate the film, are something the mainstream moviegoer will most likely fall for, hook, line and sinker (to use my own cliché'd saying), which is why the movie was such a hit (as was the original novel by Yann Martel) and is currently up for eleven Academy Award nominations.  Yes, most of these Oscar nods are in the technical categories, which is all fine and dandy (remember, goddamn good-looking), but it is somehow up for Best Picture and Screenplay as well.  This just goes to show that even those who work in the movie industry can still be taken in by such emotional fakery and cheap uplifting hooey as is Life of Pi.  But, once again, it is goddamn good-looking.  The visuals that Lee engulfs his film in - from the gorgeous colours that are India, to the wide open space of the seas and the stars and all the life within, to the vibrations of ten thousand meerkats running across a so-called magical island, to that damn Bengal Tiger again, to the most amazing flying fish attack one is most likely ever to see - are just purely spectacular.  Just purely spectacular.  There are actually some moments in the film that one could call downright mind-blowing.  One of the few 3D movies to use the technology to its best and fullest extent.

Now, even though the film is full of hokey sentimentality (and this criticism coming from an avowed sentimentalist such as this critic), the underlying idea of the film - the mystical over the mundane, the magical over the middling, art over truth - is a statement that rings very true with my own thoughts of the artistic, the spectacle, the grand illusion.  It is just too bad, we have to take such a narratively cheap road to get to such an idea.  Perhaps I am a bit too harsh on the storytelling of the film, for I do share its ultimate thoughts, its ultimate goals if you will, but then again, perhaps that is exactly why I am being so harsh on it all.  Lee has done much better (The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Brokeback Mountain are more than mere proof of that) but then Lee has been more mundane as well (Lust, Caution and Taking Woodstock are sad reminders of this).  What we get with Life of Pi, is a a lot of hokum, that luckily, eventually does enlighten itself with an ending that gives way to not just the obvious mysticism of the story (just more of the same hokum), but to the whole idea of art and beauty and what one would choose to believe.  Oh yeah, and it's goddamn good-looking as well.

Film Review: David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook

After he finished watching David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, a friend of mine called it a chick flick for guys.  I suppose, that is one way of looking at it.  Here's another.  Russell's adaptation of Matthew Quick's best selling novel, is an audience pandering, cliché-addled, overlong, even at barely just two hours, achingly middle-of-the-road attempt at being quirky and funny and, ultimately poignant.  In other words, a fail.  Perhaps not an epic fail, for there are still things to like about the film, but a fail nonetheless.  Director Russell began his directorial career, back in 1994, with the Sundance hit and Independent Spirit Award winner, Spanking the Monkey.  The film - an acerbic black comedy about incest and masturbation - showed great promise for its budding director.  Ever since this debut, Russell's films have become increasingly less edgy, and increasingly more mainstream, finally becoming replete with a typical mainstream mundane attitude - or perhaps saying lack of attitude would be more apropos.   

Following a career that went, after Spanking the Monkey, from the early days of the funny Flirting With Disaster (one of Ben Stiller's few enjoyable films) and the satirical Three Kings (probably the director's best film), to the mediocrity that was I Heart Huckabees (a mere Wes Anderson wannabe) and the sheep-in-wolf's-clothing that was 2010's Oscar winner The Fighter (outside of a brilliant performance by Christian Bale, the film was trite and expected), comes the director's least edgy film yet - and such a claim is made even more palpable by the fact that Russell, much like in The Fighter, seems to believe himself to be just as edgy here as ever.  The main problem here, as is the case with most mainstream films, is that nothing ever surprises.  At no point during this film, which incidentally is about a man getting out of the mental ward, after being locked up for beating up his wife's lover, and having to go back home to live in his childhood home, was I ever surprised at what a character does.  At no point, did I ever say, "Wow, I did not see that coming."  Granted, once you have seen as many films as this critic has - five digits, easily - that moment of surprise comes less and less easily with each passing year, but here, the by-the-book mechanizations of narrative storytelling get especially heavy handed indeed.

Granted, Russell's film is a fail, but, as I more than alluded to earlier, it is not an epic fail.  The thing that keeps this inexplicably well-awarded film from, as they say, stinkin' up the joint, are the performances handed in by its leads - Jennifer Lawrence, and especially, or at least more surprisingly, Bradley Cooper.  Lifting themselves above the trite material, Cooper and Lawrence do a fine job showing crazy, without ever going overboard on it.  But even these quite nuanced performances cannot save an otherwise mediocre work such as this.  Sure, the film is, in no way, something to include on anyone's worst of the year lists, but in an even more troublesome scenario, the film just aches of a staid pedestrianism - which in my book, is a much worse fate than being truly bad, or even rotten.  To finish my review off with yet another reiteration of a theme - something Russell's film does in veritable spades, yeah, we get it, you want to be a better person - Silver Linings Playbook is mere middlebrow folderol, made popular by the mainstream moviegoer's desire to see unthreatening, unoriginal and ultimately uninspired stories.  Sure, newly-minted Oscar nominees Cooper and Lawrence keep things going as best they can - Bobby D. and Jacki Weaver are along for a pair of Oscar nominated rides as well, but in no stand-out kind of way - but the quirk and edge of Russell's earlier films is just, as Kansas would say, dust in the wind.

Film Review: Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty

Okay, let's get all that controversy-cum-in-defense-of boiler plate crap over with right away.  As anyone who has not been living under a rock (or in a cave in Afghanistan) knows, director Kathryn Bigelow's military procedural action thriller Zero Dark Thirty, though mostly praised by we critics (a thing I will be mostly doing myself in this review), has been getting cut down left and right.  Literally (or is that figuratively) from the actual left and right.  As conservatives bitch that they think the Obama white house gave away too much confidential information in helping the filmmakers make the film, liberals are whining that Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, are acting as Bush/Cheney apologists, and condoning torture.  Social critic Naomi Wolf has even likened Bigelow to Third Reich director extraordinaire Leni Riefenstahl.  In my, not-so-humble opinion, I believe these allegations, form both sides of our bi-coloured political spectrum, to be total and utter bullshit.

Yes, the film does open up a dialogue on the moral ramifications of torture.  Was it a necessary evil?  Would we have gotten Bin Laden without the aid of torture?  These are questions we cannot possibly answer.  Yes, information gotten by means of torture led to the finding and killing of Osama bin Laden, but how are we to know we still wouldn't have gotten him without it.  Is torture wrong?  Of course it is, but perhaps, in some cases it was that very same necessary evil I questioned just above.  The fact that war even has supposed social conventions is quite ridiculous.  Basically, the act of war comes down to one side hoping to kill more people than the other side.  To question tactics in such an endeavor is downright ridiculous.  Of course, all this rambling about the use of torture, will probably bring controversy to me as well.  Maybe Naomi Wolf will liken me to fascist-sympathizing writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline - an assumption that would be just as wrong as her comparison of Bigelow to Riefenstahl.  Should torture have been used?  Morally no, but pragmatically, we can never say.  But no matter what was done to get the information that helped to track down and kill the man who orchestrated 9/11, in no way does Bigelow condone such acts in this film.

What Bigelow and Boal do in Zero Dark Thirty is show what occurred (and yes, torture did occur, whether the denyists want to believe it or not), and allow we, the viewers, to decide what is right and what is wrong, what is necessary and what is beyond the scope of morality.  We see Jessica Chastain's CIA operative, Maya, turn from someone who is disgusted by the waterboarding she witnesses as a newly assigned foreign agent, to a woman so determined to catch Bin Laden, that she is willing to do anything to make that happen.  It is not the filmmaker's job to say this is right or wrong, but instead to show us what they show us, and let us decide for ourselves.  Was the torture the right, or better yet, the necessary thing to do, or what is just wrong, pure and simple.  To paraphrase a famous quote from A Few Good Men, "Perhaps, deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want certain people, certain acts, on that proverbial wall," and in thinking this, maybe we are all complicit in the actions, whether right or wrong, of what it took to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden.  As for the right wing's accusations that the Obama white house allowed Bigelow and Boal and their crew, access to secret files - that too is pure bullshit.  If they were allowed access to anything, it was only files involving a mission that has already been done and gone several years prior.  But enough of all this tallywagging about who did what and who condoned what and who complained about what - let us move on to a review proper.  

The story, as if you didn't already know (really, have you been in a cave in Afghanistan the past six months?), is about the hunt for public enemy numero uno, Osama bin Laden.  The film stars the most dangerously talented Jessica Chastain - drop dead in both looks and ability - as a woman who spends the better part of a decade in search of the phantom known as bin Laden.  We watch her Maya go from determined but disenfranchised field newcomer, shading her eyes from the waterboarding of a detainee, to willing participant, to obsessed, self-proclaimed motherfucker, to, finally, when all is said and done, and the big man is dead and buried at sea, and her long, lonely struggle is at an end, a lost soul with no idea where to go from there.  Chastain pulls off this difficult, multifaceted character with a subtle grace and wicked chutzpah, that just helps to prove that the actress, since suddenly popping on the scene just two years ago (she was in every movie of 2011, right?), has become one of the finest actors around today.  All this and an almost inevitable Oscar in her near future.  Chastain is surrounded in the film by the likes of Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt, Mark Duplass, Kyle Chandler, Édgar Ramirez and James Gandolfini, but this is her picture, and she not only makes it her own, but she, as the kids are saying these days, blows it out of the motherfucking water.

And to go along with this bravura performance by Chastain, is the pinpoint screenplay by Mark Boal and the balls out direction of Kathryn Bigelow.   Women can't make action films, my ass!  Much like the duo's previous collaboration, 2009's Oscar winning The Hurt Locker, the film that made Bigelow the first ever woman to win the Best Director Oscar, Zero Dark Thirty is an intense military drama - a procedural thriller that is as much an adrenaline rush as a psychological mindfuck - that gives as much of its attention to those quiet moments between battles, as it does to the battles, the missions, themselves.  Let's face it, we all know how this film is going to end.  We all saw the announcement on TV, when the president let the nation know that its number one villain was dead and gone.  There is no real mystery here - by film's end, we will get the bastard.  What Bigelow does though, is make every moment - from those aforementioned quiet ones to the explosive ones - filled to the veritable brim with a living intensity.  The film never shuts down.  It is always on.  Whether we are in the CIA offices, a detention center, or at the titular half past midnight, with the night-visioned Navy Seals creeping up on their eventual target like deadly goblins in the night, Bigelow's film vibrates with intensity.   We know what is coming next (though I must admit to experiencing a rather jump-out-of-my-seat moment) but it never calms down.  It never lets us rest.  It is unrelenting - and it damn well should be.

Zero Dark Thirty is an uncompromising thriller-diller of a motion picture, created by a director that, oddly enough, much like the aforementioned Fraulein Riefenstahl, can turn the horrendous into the gorgeous. Zero Dark Thirty is more than just a movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden - more than mere, albeit harrowingly seductive, action movie.  Zero Dark Thirty is a film that opens up a dialogue - a much needed dialogue.  Zero Dark Thirty is a film that dares us to think for ourselves - understand what needs to be done, and what did or did not need to be done.  Whether we see the condoning of torture or not (and to reiterate, we most certainly do not see that), Bigelow may very well be seen, to borrow a term from Woodrow Wilson, on Griffith's Birth of a Nation, as writing history with lightning.  What she is really doing, is making a film full of viscous, ofttimes reprehensible acts, as well as heroic, redemptive ones - and she is putting it all together with a surprising melange of subtlety and intensity.  What she is doing, is making a film that doesn't necessarily make us choose between right and wrong, between blind patriotism and questioning our government as Jefferson had wanted us to do, but a movie that makes us realize that good and evil - whatever those terms even mean in a discussion such as this - need each other in order to survive.  And I for one, applaud that, and in turn I applaud Zero Dark Thirty as well.

There Be Oscar Nominations Maties!...and a New Poll Too!!

Well folks, Oscar Nomination Morning (a strange little holiday in our household) has come and gone, and we are left with all of our why's and WTF's - and I am left with my worst prediction rating in...well, in as long as I can recall.   Garnering a rather pathetic prediction percentage of just 71% (slightly lifted to a still quite poor 77% when including just the big eight categories), I should well be ashamed of myself.  I am not, but I should be dammit.  Anyway, to get on with what gave me such a low rating, here we go.

I went four for five in all the acting and both the writing categories, and I went eight for nine in Best Picture (I even aced the costumes - so there), but alas, it was Oscar's quite surprising choices for the director slot that got me, and many other Oscar precogs I am sure, all befuddled and bewildered.  Allow me to quote what I wrote yesterday, when predicting this category. "The top three here are locks.  No doubts.  In fact, I think Affleck may actually take the Oscar, but that is a story for next month."  Well, those top three, and I may add, the top three on nearly every other prediction I came across yesterday, were Steven Spielberg, Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck.  Anyone who was up early to watch the nominations this morning, or anyone who has looked up the nominees since then, you already know full well that the latter two of those supposed locks, were not named today.  Snubbed, royally snubbed indeed.  So, in the very same category that I boldly claimed that I was assured of at least a 60% accuracy rate, I got just a 40%.  Yeah, I figured picking Tarantino was a bit of a stretch, but I figured Affleck and Bigelow were safe bets.  Locks, no doubt, some said.  Anyway, I digress.

There were some nice surprises too.  Like, to go right back to that director fiasco, Michael Haneke's first ever nomination in the category - as well as a nod for screenplay (and the film is also up for picture, actress and, of course, foreign language as well).  I did have the Austrian master pegged as my dark horse pick at least.  Other dark horse picks to grab nominations were Joaquin Phoenix for Best Actor and Quvenzhané Wallis for Best Actress.  Wallis, along with Haneke's Amour star Emmanuelle Riva, are now the youngest and oldest ever Best Actress nominees, respectively.  Other nice picks were Tarantino for Screenplay and Christoph Waltz for Supporting Actor.  As a fun sidenote, for the first time ever, all five nominees in a single category (Best Supporting Actor in this case) are former Oscar winners.  So there.  Granted, I would have liked to have seen Matthew McConaughey and/or Ann Dowd get surprise nods, or possibly P.T. Anderson, but alas, 'twas not to happen.  As for who will win, my best conjecture right now is Lincoln, Spielberg, DDL, Chastain, De Niro, Hathaway.  My Alt. Picks: SLP wins all six of these. My Alt. Alt. Picks: Haneke wins Best Director, and Lars von Trier suddenly becomes frontrunner for next year.  But, I am getting ahead of myself here.

Hey, before I go, I should probably mention the new poll here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.  Starting today, and running through February 22nd, you can cast your vote for the film that you think SHOULD win the Best Picture Oscar.  As I am sure you can see (this golden-coloured poll can be found near the top of the sidebar of this very site), all you need do is choose which of the nine nominees you would vote for if you had a ballot.  Remember, not what you think will win, but what you think SHOULD win.  Winners (and losers) will be announced the day before the Oscars - as will my final Oscar predictions.  Here's hopin' I do better than I did today.

Oscar Nomination Predictions

Well, ladies and germs, it is that time of year again.  Granted, it is a bit earlier this time around, but it is still time for my annual Oscar nomination predictions.  With the announcement coming tomorrow morning, here are my predictions for who will get nominated in the wee hours of 5:30 am PST (8:30 am around these Atlantic coast parts).  In 2009, I did a bang up job of predicting, and had a prediction rate of 89%.  In 2010, I dropped ever-so-slightly, to an 87%, and then last year, I kind of plummeted a bit, to a rather lackluster 82% prediction rate.  Here's hopin' I can bring that number back up again, but this year seems a bit more difficult to narrow in, so that may not happen.  Anyway, here we go.

Best Picture

Since we are never sure these days, just how many nominations will come in this top category (the academy officially says between five and ten), I will list them in order of probability, starting with the big five.

• Lincoln
• Les Miserables
• Zero Dark Thirty
• Argo
• The Silver Linings Playbook

If it goes further (my prediction is eight)...

• Life of Pi
• Django Unchained
• Beasts of the Southern Wild

Then again, it could go to ten...

• Moonrise Kingdom
• Skyfall

But Don't Count Out: Amour
Dark Horse: The Master

Really, any of the top three could be considered the frontrunner here, but we are not here to talk about who might win, but instead, who will get nominated, and the top three are definite locks for that.  In fact the top five are all locks for nominations.  I think Django, though controversial, will slip in there as well, as will Life of Pi and Beasts.  Then it gets tricky.  Will there be a ninth or tenth nominee?  Who knows.  There were nine last year, but what does that matter?  The PGA gave nominations to the top nine on this list, and a tenth one to Skyfall, but will Oscar actually nominate a Bond film?  Probably not, but hey, almost anything can happen when we reach ten nominees.  As I say above though, I think it will stop at eight.  Then again, we should not count out Michael Haneke's Amour.  A virtual lock for the Foreign Language Oscar, it's name has been ballyhooed about on many an Oscar predictor's table.  And then, we also have The Master.  PTA's film had once been thought the frontrunner, but those days are long past.  Now it is merely wishful thinking that this film, my second favourite of the year, will get a BP nomination.  As for one final longshot possibility - let's go with Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and leave it at that.

Best Director

• Steven Spielberg for Lincoln
• Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty
• Ben Affleck for Argo
• Ang Lee for Life of Pi
• Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained

But Don't Count Out: Tom Hooper for Les Miz and/or David O. Russell for Silver Linings
Dark Horse: Michael Haneke for Amour

The top three here are locks.  No doubts.  In fact, I think Affleck may actually take the Oscar, but that is a story for next month.  As for Lee, I think he has a strong near-lockish feel.  But this is when we get into trouble.  Who will be that fifth nominee?  The DGA just announced its nominations, and the top four, along with Tom Hooper, were their choices.  Normally, the DGA and the Oscars match four for five, so that means one of these five will need to be tossed aside tomorrow morning.  Obviously, I have chosen that person to be Hooper. Common sense says this won't happen. Les Miz is probably too big a film to let that happen, and it is considered a frontrunner for the BP Oscar, but still, my heart says go for the wishful thinking of good ole QT, so go with him I shall.  I suppose Hooper could still get in, and Tarantino would replace Lee.  Of course, we could see a 5 for 5 match with the DGA.  Then again, we should not count out Russell, and some people are talking a surprise nod for Haneke.  As for P.T. Anderson - like his film, three months ago he would have been a veritable shoo-in.  Now though, forget about him.  It would be great to see though, huh?  Anyway, to throw one other possible, but quite unlikely surprise in, howzabout Banh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Yeah, probably not.  Like I said, this is the most difficult category this year, but at least I am assured of a 60% ratio on this one.

Best Actor

• Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln
• Hugh Jackman in Les Misérables
• John Hawkes in The Sessions
• Bradley Cooper in The Silver Linings Playbook
• Denzel Washington in Flight

But Don't Count Out/Dark Horse: Joaquin Phoenix in The Master

This is probably the easiest category to predict this year.  Almost anyone who is anyone has these exact five names getting announced tomorrow morning.  I see no reason to change that.  A few months ago, both Bill Murray and Anthony Hopkins were thought to be pretty good bets, but now, we can forget 'em.  The only other possible surprise would be Phoenix sneaking in, but I suppose that ship has pretty much sailed.  Still would be fun to see though.

Best Actress

• Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
• Jennifer Lawrence in The Silver Linings Playbook
• Marion Cotillard in Rust and Bone
• Naomi Watts in The Impossible
• Emmanuelle Riva in Amour

But Don't Count Out: Helen Mirren in Hitchcock
Dark Horse: Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild

Chastaine and Lawrence are pure locks.  The actual Oscar is probably a battle between the two of them.  Cotillard is what one would call near-lockish, and Watts seems to be a pretty strong contender as of late.  Then we have that fifth spot. Helen Mirren was thought of as a lock just a month ago, then her film came out and it just wasn't very good.  Rachel Weisz, for The Deep Blue Sea, may have had a chance, but no one remembers the film.  For the longest time, many - myself included - were pushing for a nod for nine year old Quvenzhane Wallis.  That could still happen, but I think instead of the youngest (she was just six when she made the film) will end up making way for the oldest, in 85 year old Emmanuelle Riva.  Riva blew most - myself included - away with her stunning performance, and even though it is a foreign language performance (Oscar has never been overly big on such, and Cotillard may already have the token foreign spot here), I think she will grab that fifth nod.  Then again, Wallis could still get in, taking Watts place instead. 

Best Supporting Actor

• Alan Arkin in Argo
• Robert De Niro in The Silver Linings Playbook
• Tommy-Lee Jones in Lincoln
• Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master
• Javier Bardem in Skyfall

But Don't Count Out: Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained
Dark Horses: Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike and/or Eddie Redmayne in Les Miz

I would say the top four are locks, though Hoffman may be only a semi-lock, since his film is getting a bit bamboozled this awards season.  As for the fifth spot, DiCaprio is probably the safe bet here (and a bet that I have been saying for months now - even as far back as my June early bird predix), but there is so much love for Skyfall (really, it isn't that great people) that I think the first ever acting nod from a Bond film will actually happen.  The thing I would love to see happen is McConaughey sneaking in, which, I suppose, could happen.  Yeah, right, but a guy can hope.  I suppose I should mention that, if the voters have really taken to Django, we could see not just DiCaprio, but possibly Christoph Waltz in there as well, but that scenario is highly unlikely.  Still wanted to mention it though.  One final thought on this category.  If Eddie Redmayne is nominated tomorrow morning, that means the love for Les Miz is through the proverbial roof, and it will take home BP.  There ya go.

Best Supporting Actress

• Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables
• Helen Hunt in The Sessions
• Sally Field in Lincoln
• Amy Adams in The Master
• Maggie Smith in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

But Don't Count Out: Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy
Dark Horse: Ann Dowd in Compliance

Hathaway is the lockiest of locks (this and Actor seem to be the two big locks for actual Oscar night), and Hunt and Field are in there for sure as well.  Adams, like Hoffman above, should still get in, even without the love for The Master.  Then, like with most categories, we have that fifth spot.  Some are saying Kidman, some are saying Dame Maggie.  It really could go either way, but I think Smith will get the nod tomorrow morning.  I would love, love, love to hear Dowd's name announced tomorrow, and this tends to be the category most rife with surprises over the years, so who knows.  We probably shouldn't count out Hathaway's costar, Samantha Barks, or another dame, Judi Dench for Skyfall, but both still quite unlikely.

Best Original Screenplay

• Zero Dark Thirty
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Django Unchained
• Amour
• The Master

But Don't Count Out: Flight and/or Brave
Dark Horse: Looper

Best Adapted Screenplay

• The Silver Linings Playbook
• Lincoln
• Argo
• The Sessions
• Beasts of the Southern Wild

But Don't Count Out: Les Misérables and/or Life of Pi and/or Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Dark Horse: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I think this is Paul Thomas Anderson's best, and probably only, chance at a nomination this year.  I think both of these sets are relatively strong bets.  I probably should include Les Miz, but I already kicked Hooper to the curb in the Director category, so why not here as well. Of course Les Miz could easily pick up 12 or 13 nominations tomorrow morning, and, and like its musical contemporary, Chicago back in aught two, blow this all out of the water.

Anyway, that is it for me this year.  I suppose I could go on and add predictions for the rest of the categories, but I have other things to do.  Oh hell, I don't have that much to do, here they are in quick succession.  Cinematography (Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Life of Pi, Django, Skyfall); Art Direction (Lincoln, Les Miz, Life of Pi, Anna Karenina, Django); Film Editing (Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Skyfall, Argo, Django); Costumes (Les Miz, Lincoln, Anna Karenina, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman); Make-up (Lincoln, The Hobbit, Looper); Sound Mixing (Les Miz, Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, Avengers, Skyfall); Sound Editing (Avengers, Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall, Looper, Zero Dark Thirty); Visual Effects (Avengers, Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, Life of Pi, Prometheus); Score (Lincoln, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Anna Karenina, Beasts of the Southern Wild); Song ("Suddenly" in Les Miz, "For You" in Act of Valor, "Skyfall" in Skyfall, "Everybody Needs a Friend" in Ted, "Touch of Sky" in Brave); Animated (Brave, Frankenweenie, Paranorman, Le Tableau, Rise of the Guardians); Doc (The Gatekeepers, How to Survive a Plague, This is Not a Film, Sugar Man, Chasing Ice); Foreign (Amour, The Intouchables, Royal Affair, No, Beyond the Hills).  So there.

I'll be back tomorrow, and let everyone know how well (or poorly) I did in my predictions.  I know you are all waiting with giddy anticipation.  See ya then kiddies.

Film Review: Spike Lee's Red Hook Summer

Remember when Spike Lee used to make good movies, even great ones on occasion?  Yeah, me neither.  Okay, okay, I do remember, but hey, it has been awhile.  I would say it has been at least a decade, since 25th Hour, that I have been generally thrilled with one of Spike's joints - and even longer if you try to reach back to his early days of great prospect.  The man that once gave us such revolutionary work as Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, now gives us the pandering Miracle at St. Anna, and the dreadfully boring, and the dreadfully cliché, She Hate Me.  Granted, the man's docs are still interesting, and I am looking forward - with quite a bit of anticipation, mind you - to his remake of Park Chan-wook's Oldboy, but I must say that the guy just doesn't seem to have it anymore.  The spark, so to speak, has gone out of his fireworks.  This becomes achingly evident during the first two acts of his latest film, Red Hook Summer.  

The story of a teenage boy from Hotlanta, Atlanta, who is sent by his single mother, to spend the summer with his estranged preacher grandfather in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn, is a film that tries to take on the ideas of spirituality and the absurdities of religion.  As we see this iPad-toting, vegan, effeminate thirteen year old, making his way through this newly dangerous world of Brooklyn (are we to believe he had no previous problems in the crime-riddled Atlanta?), befriending a neighbour girl, who at first berates him for "talking white" (is his explanation of having gone to a private school, meant as an apology for having dared to not fall into the linguistic wasteland that is inner city youth culture?), and getting threatened by the most generic of drug dealing neighbourhood hooligans (see, even Spike Lee, a man who blindly berates other filmmakers for supposedly mocking his culture, can jump on the stereotype bandwagon), we are left quite unmoved.  Having to sit through the quite ridiculous dialogue written by Lee and co-writer/producer James McBride, we become painfully aware that Lee's black youth culture sounds just as silly as Diablo Cody's white counterparts.  But, these kids, with such affectatious monikers as Flick Royal and Chazz Morningstar (we are not suppose to take this seriously so much as fantastically), are first timers, so we should at least give them a break.

The performance of The Wire star Clarke Peters, as Flick's obsessively preachy grandpa, Da Good Bishop Enoch Rouse, manages to hold the film together quite well - even when everyone around him seems either a joke or a stereotype, or both.  But as this film moves on, this insular world we see them living in (replete with multiple walk-ons by Lee himself, reprising his role of Do the Right Thing's Mookie - still delivering pizzas nearly twenty-five years later), begins to grow on you.  When we finally get to the obvious and inevitable third act, even though it is seen coming the proverbial mile away, it comes as almost a redemption of the rest of the film.  Much like the souls that Da Good Bishop wants to save, Lee saves his own cinematic soul by having it be reborn in the final act - an final act that is an emotionally brazen half hour or so, and makes us remember why we fell in love with Lee's early films in the first place.  Granted, the film already looked quite spectacular (Lee has always been one to use the entire colour palette to its fullest advantage - sort of like a Brooklyn-based Nick Ray or Stanley Kubrick, or even Godard), and even though its script is less than desirable, this final act brings it all home again.  I suppose, I must admit to having enjoyed the damn thing after all.  So there.

Best of 2012

It is that time of year again.  That time when all we film critics (and all those who claim to be film critics) churn out our annual best of the year lists.  So, without further ado, here are my choices for the best films of 2012.

1. Django Unchained - I am kinda biased when it comes to Tarantino.  I think they guy is just the living end.  To die for, in a cinematic idol worship kinda way.  Can't get enough of the guy's often quite politically incorrect attitude, or his violence-drenched and self-referential playfulness. Of course, with this said, it should come as no surprise that this blood-splattered, inappropriately heee-larious Spaghetti Southern sits atop my list of the best of 2012.  My review can be read here.

2. The Master - Like QT above, Paul Thomas Anderson is another one of those auteur's that seems to be unable to do any wrong in my book.   Also like Tarantino, PTA has made a film that is easily one of the most divisive of the year.  But then again, I have always been a fan of those films that make everyone else a bit woozy in the head.  Oh yeah, and Joaquin Phoenix gives the performance of a lifetime.  My review can be read here.

3. The Turin Horse - Somber, distressed and morose.  Sorrowful, sick and mournful.  Dreadfully sad.  So sad, that one may not be able to even make it through this black and white, incredibly slow-moving, and even more incredibly sad, Hungarian film.  Yet, Bela Tarr, in what the director claims is his final film, makes even the most despairing of tales, a thing of rapt and terrifying beauty.  My review can be read here.

4. Zero Dark Thirty - There is controversy galore over this film, with a lot of conservatives bitching that too much confidential information was given to the filmmakers and liberals whining about a supposed condoning of torture, but whatever one thinks of such things (and I think such allegations, from either side of the political spectrum, to be bullshit), Kathryn Bigelow's military thriller is an enthralling, brilliant movie.  My review can be read here.

5. Cosmopolis - This makes four out of four in films I adore, yet are hated by just as many as love them.  David Cronenberg's Odyssean take on capitalism and greed, is an abrasively methodical film, that beats with a cadence that forebodes and foretells the very downfall of man, all the while making the viewer uncomfortable in their seats, as they wait around every corner for the ball to drop on the action.  My review can be read here.

6. The Cabin in the Woods - I am kind of a sucker for the writing stylings of Joss Whedon (film, TV, comicbooks - whatever), and this twisted, Escher-esque mindfuck of a horror film - one that takes all the tricks and tropes of the genre, and flips them on their arse - co-written with director Drew Goddard, is one of his most intriguing screenplays.  My review can be read here.

7. Killer Joe - When a film comes with the tagline, "A totally twisted deep-fried Texas redneck trailer park murder story," ya just know it's gonna be a hell of a lot of fun.  A rip-roaringly hilarious movie about a cool-as-ice hired killer, the idiots that hire him but cannot afford to pay him, the innocent teenage girl they give to him as collateral, and the most interesting thing ever done with fried chicken on the big screen.  Oh yeah, and Matthew McConaughey is, as the kids are saying, off the hook, yo.  My review can be read here.

8. Haywire/Magic Mike - These two intriguing films, from the always versatile Steven Soderbergh, are the best one two punch from any director since Soderbergh did the same thing three years ago with The Girlfriend Experience and The Informant.  These films, a spy thriller-cum-genre experiment, and a good ole boy, male stripper tale, are like the proverbial day and night of cinema, and that just goes to show that Soderbergh can do just about anything he puts his mind to.  My review can be read here and here, respectively.

9. The Kid With a Bike - Probably the most humanistic, and quite possibly the most humour-filled, of any of the Dardenne Brothers' films, this tale of - you guessed it - a kid and his bike, harkens back to a simpler time in cinema, and to films like the obviously influential The Bicycle Thieves, and, with its no-frills poetic realism, is a simply beautiful film to watch.  My review can be read here.

10. Compliance - A story so unbelievable, so impossible sounding, so implausibly ridiculous, that it just has to be true.  Telling the crazy tale of a fast food manager who is duped by a prank caller pretending to be a cop on the other end of the phone, and the poor young employee who is demoralized, humiliated, and much much worse, this subtly brilliant little film is one of the biggest revelations of the cinematic year.  My review can be read here.

11. Prometheus - Many of my fellow critical compatriots called this film a dismal failure.  I suppose it was a bit of a failure in certain, perhaps a too-high expectations category (in anticipation of its coming release, I had expected it to eventually make my top three), but the film, though not the desired second coming of Blade Runner, is still quite enjoyable to watch.  At least it was for this critic.  My review can be read here.

12. Damsels in Distress - It has been thirteen years since Whit Stillman's last film, the sardonic Last Days of Disco, and the director is finally back with another quite acerbic, yet also quite fun-loving, look at the emotionally messed-up lives of his lovable but distressed characters.  I have talked with many a cinemagoer who did not understand this film, and therefore disliked, or even hated it, but all I can say to those people is, hooey.  My review can be read here.

13. Les Misérables - My love of this film kinda caught me off guard.  I mean, I love the musical genre, but that love is usually reserved for the old Hollywood style of musical, not the splashy, over-the-top Sondheimian kind, but this newer, stagier version pretty much blew me away anyway - and all you haters can go on hatin'.  My review can be read here.

14. Hit & Run - Written and co-directed by Dax Sheppard, and starring the actor-turned-director, his girlfriend (and every nerd's wet dream) Kristen Bell, and several of their clsoest friends (Bradley Cooper, Tom Arnold), this crazy comic chase film may not be your typical high end artistic cinema piece, but damn, it is a hell of a lot of fun.  My review can be read here.

15. Holy Motors - Bizarre and beautiful, this French comedy(?), drama(?), action film(?), thriller(?), satire(?), whatever(!), is another one of those films that the masses will never understand, but that this critic, in all his own bizarre and beautiful tastes, just loves to see.  I am still not able to confidently explain what the damn thing is about, but I still like it.  My review can be read here.

16. John Carter - Yeah, that's right.  I liked this film dammit.  So much hatred, and pure and despicable hatred, formed not by the critically intentioned folk who come down on the films that top this list, but by a bunch of silly pedantic bullies, has been spewed toward this film, but I do not care a wit for them, nor for their priggish criticisms.  The film is fun dammit.  Pure, unadulterated fun.  My review can be read here.

17. Amour - Harrowing.  Terrifying.  Unflinching and quite disturbing indeed.  All the things that make, for better or for worse, a Michael Haneke film, a Michael Haneke film.  But what this film has that no other Haneke film has had, is a streak of humanity, and it is in this quite unexpected humanity, that we are sucked in, and spit out an emotional wreck.  My review can be read here.

18. Little White Lies - It may have taken nearly three years to finally make its way to these shores, but this French dramedy was, as they are prone to saying, well worth the wait.  Written off by many as a mere Gallic Big Chill (and there are blatant similarities, though I doubt if they were necessarily on purpose), this film is actually quite stirring, in the emotional arena of things.  All that, and you get Marion Cotillard too.  My review can be read here.

19. The Avengers - Written and directed by the always able Joss Whedon (haven't we already been here?), this mega billion dollar smash hit (top grossing film of all time, that is not directed by James Cameron), takes this critic back to his long lost youth, when the monthly arrival of Marvel Comics' titular superhero team, was a must read moment in the life of this then ten year old future film critic, and lifelong comicbook reader.  My review can be read here.

20. Beasts of the Southern Wild - Granted, it has its faults, but once one gets past its rather cliché storyline, the remarkable visual beauty of the film, in both its uplifting, awe-inspiring moments and tragic realistic ones, and the surprising powerhouse performance of six year old Quvenzhané Wallis, make for a pretty darn good movie.  My review can be read here.

Ten Runners-Up (in no particular order): Bernie, The Deep Blue Sea, Flight, 21 Jump Street, Attenberg, Moonrise Kingdom, Miss Bala, Turn Me On, Dammit!, Savages, Chico & Rita.

Film Review: Tom Hooper's Les Misérables

When it comes to the musical - a genre that, historically speaking, is one of my favourites - my tastes tend to lean more toward the Minnelli/Berkeley/Donan & Kelly camp than the Sondheim/Lloyd Weber/Cameron Mackintosh arena, so my adoration for this cinematic adaptation of Les Misérables, comes as much of a surprise to me as it does to anyone who knows me.  But, be that as it may, this film, directed by Tom Hooper, a director whose last film, the Oscar winning The King's Speech, left this critic more than a bit cold, seriously blew me away.  From Hooper's choice of framing his all-singing cast up close and personal, as if he were filming a musical homage to Sergio Leone, to the brazenly artificial CGI-created Parisian backgrounds, that create the most beautiful of cinematic frauds (and I mean that in the most complimentary manner), to Anne Hathaway's blow-them-outta-the-water belting out of "I Dreamed a Dream," an emotional powerhouse, single shot performance, that has all but assured the actress an Oscar, this musical extravaganza, though perhaps not quite in the realm of some of the better examples of those aforementioned Minnelli/Berkeley/Donan & Kelly campers, is easily one of the finest films of the year.

The story, based, of course, on Victor Hugo's 1862 novel about the most miserable of French citizenry (and for the uninitiated, if you are looking for a feel-good movie experience, you might want to look elsewhere), was first turned into a stage musical in France in 1980, before becoming a hit on the London stage in 1985, and eventually a Broadway smash in 1987.   Now, nearly five years after its final Broadway bow (the show is still going strong in London's West End), producer Cameron Mackintosh (also known for such "minor" hits as Cats, Miss Saigon and The Phantom of the Opera) has teamed up with Tom Hooper, to recreate the magic that filled those past 7,176 Broadway, and 10,000 plus London performances.  And to accomplish this, director Hooper has filled his show with both the biggest wigs of Hollywood hitdom and the sadly unknown, but quite resonate forces of the Broadway and London stages, because no matter what Hooper does with his camera, o matter what he may do in the editing room or in post production, the movie either plummets or soars by the vocal and acting abilities of its cast - all of whom do their own singing, and most of whom do said singing, unlike in most musical films, live on camera - and, aside from a few rather lackluster moments (which do not deteriorate the enjoyment all that much, but we will get into that in a bit), the film does indeed soar.

Hugh Jackman, always the triple threat (quadruple if you include his adamantium claws), takes on the über-heavyweight role of Jean Valjean, a man sentenced to nineteen years at hard labour for stealing a loaf of bread (well, five years, but with time added on for escape attempts).  Jackman's voice is something of a laudable stage presence, and that shines through here.  Sure, he may not be tapdancing his way about the stage like a cheeky new millennial Fred Astaire (his musical strength), but he more than holds his own, in both vocal range and acting depth, in the tragically iconic role.  We even get a glimpse of Colm Wilkinson, West End and Broadway originator of that very same tragically iconic role, in a cameo appearance as a kind-hearted bishop who rescues Valjean's body and soul.  As for Russell Crowe, as Javert, the prison guard turned inspector who spends his life tracking down Valjean after the ex-prisoner changes his identity and makes a new life for himself, the tough guy actor may not have the chops of Jackman, but his more rocker-like voice plays well enough for us to keep listening.  But, as I more than alluded to earlier, it is Hathaway, in the role of the fateful Fantine, struggling single mother who is forced into prostitution, is the stand-outiest of all the stand-outs in Hooper's musical motion picture.  Hathaway, who between her few scenes, is only on the screen for about fifteen or twenty minutes, if even that, hands in one of the most emotionally cathartic performances in a long long time, and it is this performance, this character, that is the veritable tragic crux of the film.

Granted, the film does lose some of its momentum, some of its passion, when we see Cosette, the now grown daughter of Fantine, as played by the rather underwhelming Amanda Seyfried, but the character, though quite important in tying all the separate threads together, is probably the least interesting character in the bunch anyway, and these momentary slips into such lackluster territory, are not near enough to bring down an otherwise quite strong film.  Jackman and, especially Hathaway, are more than enough to keep this revolutionary ship afloat.  Add to them, performances by Eddie Redmayne as Marius, a student protester and lovesick squire of Cosette; Aaron Tveit, stage star, and Gossip Girl regular, as Enjolras, leader of the revolutionaries; Samantha Barks, who makes her film debut by reprising her West End role of Éponine, cruel but ultimately self-sacrificing former playmate of Cosette; and Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as Éponine's unscrupulous parents and roguish con artists, and you have yourself one hell of a musical.  Powerful, emotional, tragically beautiful (if ya don't cry, then ya ain't human), Tom Hooper's adaptation of Schönberg and Boubill's adaptation of Hugo's classic novel, is much much greater than this critic was ever expecting.  The last ten minutes or so, are enough to make even the sturdiest of constitutions break down in fits of weeping despair - and yet the whole thing is such a gorgeous spectacle, one cannot possibly come out of it without a bounce in their step as well.

Film Review: Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained

Granted, he doesn't take as long as Terrence Malick once did, but still, the nearly three and a half years since his Inglourious Basterds blew up the big screen, is an unbearable length of time for someone so enamoured with the cinephiliac workings of the mind of Quentin Tarantino, someone who finds each and every one of the director's films - even Jackie Brown, even Grindhouse - an almost religio-filmic experience, someone who waits with the most baited of breath for another goddamn masterpiece of uncomfortable hilarity and creatively over-the-top wham-bam-biggery to come our way, someone who doesn't care what all the (obviously wrong-minded, and quite misguided) naysayers out there say (more on these punks later), but who believes Tarantino to be the second coming of Sam Fuller or Nick Ray or Sergio Leone or even Stanley Motherfucking Kubrick - someone like, say, me - to have to wait.  Unbearable, I tell you.  Unbearable indeed.  But that wait is finally over, and now here we are, finding ourselves in, what one could call, a bit of a pickle.  

So, how exactly does one such as that adorably gaga guy described above, one such as me (adorable or not), even begin to give an honest critical analysis of a Quentin Tarantino film, without sounding like nothing more than a gushing fanboy or a lovesick schoolgirl, or even a preening motherfucking idiot?  Such worries have kept me from ever reviewing a Tarantino film.  Even though I was already a working film critic by the time of their respective releases, for fear of sounding like nothing more the president of the Quentin Tarantino fan club, no reviews of Kill Bill, Death Proof nor the aforementioned Inglourious Basterds, has ever seen the light of day 'round these parts.  But, I suppose, this is as good a time as any to let one out of the proverbial coop, and see what happens.  Let the bitch fly, if you will.  With that said, the creature you are about to read, though gushing as any preening, lovesick fanboy and/or schoolgirl-cum-idiot ever could be, not to mention most likely playing out as a defense of the director and his work, is meant as a highly critical look at the film, with all due disclosures, that this particular critic calls the best film of the motherfucking year.  Oh yeah, and in keeping with the tone set by good ole QT, there may be quite a bit of goddamn swearing.  Ye have been warned.

Based, obviously, though quite loosely, on the 1966 Sergio Corbucci Spaghetti Western, Django, starring Franco Nero in the title role, Django Unchained, the eighth feature film from provocateur Tarantino (seventh if one were to count the Kill Bill's as one entity) moves his story to Texas and the deep south of 1858 and 1859.  This new breed of film - a Spaghetti Southern, if you will (and no, I cannot take credit for that term) - takes the ultra-violence of its predecessor genre, and ramps it up to a typically burning hot Tarantino degree.  Tarantino's film tells the story of a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter (shades of Doc Holliday perhaps), played by Christoph Waltz, juiced up with just as much vim and vigor as he gave to his Oscar-winning portrayal of Colonel Hans Landa, aka the Jew Hunter, in Basterds, and the slave he purchases and then frees, and then partners with in order to make enough money to rescue Broomhilda, Django's wife, here played by Jamie Foxx in a performance that straddles the finest line between stoic early Eastwood-esque nonchalance and broad Tarantino-required over-the-top-ness.  Set up as a revenge movie - a genre that the director has some rather intimate knowledge with - Django is just as bloodthirsty as Kill Bill or Inglorious Basterds, and just as giddily playful at it as well, and believe me when I tell you that the director bloody damn well wants us to know it.

Now, there are more than a few Tarantino haters out there - movie goers, both of the knowledgeable and of the novice variety, who are put off by the director's violent tendencies, his supposed arrogance and/or self-indulgence, and what many, including most notably the always angry Spike Lee, have mistakenly referred to as political incorrectness.  There are also a whole bunch of these haters - several I know personally, and several who are not exactly unschooled in the art of film and film theory, mind you - who dislike the director for "stealing" from other movies.  Not to sound to much like the auteur's defense lawyer, but this is total hogwash.  Total hornswallow.   Total bullshit, if you will.  Sure, go ahead and dislike a film, or a filmmaker, hate them even, but at least have a viable argument for such dislike or hatred.  As far as the violence goes, I understand how weaker-stomached folk may turn a disgusted eye away (my lovely wife does such, but she never takes the other eye off the screen), and especially with both the inevitable penultimate and climactic blood baths that literally repaint the sets red with an orgiastic amount of blood (enough to even put someone like Peckinpah to shame), but the violence that Tarantino uses is like an artist painting with a super artificial palette.  In fact, the whole idea of cinema is based on the ultimate artificiality.   Outside of things like Cinéma vérité, and, of course, documentaries, what we are watching on whatever screen we happen to be watching, is a fantasy - and it is this fantasy on which Tarantino erects his own insular universe.

Granted, this universe is filled to the veritable gills with cinematic references - many of which go over the head of those non-cinephiliac filmgoers - but to say the auteur steals is something else.  Okay, okay, Tarantino himself has been quoted, half tongue-in-cheekly, saying basically the same thing, but what Tarantino steals is nothing more than what other modern day directors - everyone from Spielberg to Lynch to Scorsese, Fincher and both the Anderson's - are doing with every film.  The only difference is, Tarantino makes no bones about it.  Every great director is influenced by those before them, but when someone like Tarantino puts it out there so blatantly, it makes some cinema purists cringe.  Of course, if someone is not in on the joke, then they too, are off put.  Those who do not notice the obvious references to Leone or Peckinpah or Sammy Fuller, will just never get it.  Those who hear that Waltz's horse is named Fritz, and do not automatically think of Fritz Lang, will never get it.  Those who see the screen filled with the word Mississippi, and do not see the connection with both Gone with the Wind and the films of Jean-Luc Godard, will never get it.  Those who wonder why the soundtrack has both Tupac and Jim Croce on it, will never get it.  Those who are not thrilled by that meta moment midway through when Foxx's Django is sidled up on by the original article, Franco Nero, in one of the best played cameos in the film, and the in-joke shared between them, will never get it.  The artificial universe created by Tarantino in each and every one of his films (the director even goes so far as to claim that Django and his wife, played wispfully by Kerry Washington, are the great great grandparents of seventies iconic streetwise character, Shaft) may not be for everyone, but for those who get it, those for whom said universe was created, it is the blastiest of blasts.

As for that other argument - the one that says the constant use of a so-called N-word (and this may be a record amount of times spoken) is racist - it simply holds no water.  It is an argument that is brought forth by the same type of people - angry, fed-up blacks and guilty-feeling liberal whites alike - who want this same dreaded word erased from the likes of Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin.  This is history people.  Granted, it is a terrible, ugly history, and we as a nation should feel ashamed such a history was perpetrated on an entire race like it was, but it is still history.  In 1850's Mississippi, this word was most likely used quite a bit, and mostly unashamedly, and to remove it from such a story would just be ridiculous.  Of course, some claim it is taken overboard here, and yes, Tarantino does tend to take pretty much everything overboard in his films, but again, this is a fantasy, and should therefore be looked upon as one.  An artificial construct.  A thousand armed beast.  A goddamn movie.  But enough of all this Tarantino-defending.  There are just those who get it, and those who do not.  Instead, let us concentrate less on explaining to the unfortunate masses, why they should like, and enjoy, the work of Tarantino, and more on preaching to the so-called choir.  Well, that, and talking a bit about the film.  Of course, that latter part is a bit difficult, since too much talk will give away all the film's secrets, and all the film's surprises - and there are quite a few in the casting alone.  Then again, Jonas Mekas once said, "It is not my business to tell you what it's about. My business is to get excited about it, to bring it to your attention. I am a raving maniac of the cinema."  Well damn, I can do that.

Seriously though, this film is indeed brutal and bloody, biting and badass.  It is most certainly a film that does more than its share of button-pushing, and it is a film that will most likely be hated by as many people as love it, but it is also a film that, once one removes the stick from one's ass, can be a gorgeously shot piece of pop cinema fetish fantasy, that never once wavers in its onslaught of both its agonizing brutality and shockingly gleeful irresponsibility.  From Foxx's demanding performance as a man caught between two worlds (there is one moment of utterly harrowing wrongfulness, where Django must watch as an innocent man dies, by almost his own hand, in order to save his wife, that gives the character a terrifying depth) to Waltz's show-stealing turn as the wickedly good mirror image of his Jew Hunter role (it is funny to note that the most racially sensitive character in the film is German, and is played by the same man who made us hate/love the quite evil-minded Col. Landa just a few years back) to Leonardo DiCaprio's take on the maniacally depraved, yet oh so the southern gentleman, Calvin J. Candie (a role that the usually just meh actor, manages to devour and make his own sick and twisted amalgamation), to Sam Jackson's hybrid of Stepin Fetchit and Jules Winnfield (a character that seems to be parodying the white-washed southern house nigger of Gone with the Wind), Tarantino's film is a motherfucking blast to watch.  And at 165 minutes, still does not seem long enough.  Of course, I am far from the right person to ask to criticize such a film (remember, gushing schoolgirl and all), but for what it is worth (and remember, I even liked Four Rooms), I give it as many thumbs up as I can, and consider it the logical extension of the director who created Inglourious Basterds lo those aforementioned three and a half years ago.

Film Review: Sasha Gervasi's Hitchcock

Bookended with out-and-out references to Hitchcock's iconic television series, Sasha Gervasi's adaptation of Stephen Rebello's 1990 book, "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho," is a fun watch indeed.  It may not have the depth that one would hope for in a film about the making of one of this critic's all-time favourite films, but the portrayal of the Master of Suspense, by Anthony Hopkins, is a pitch perfect portrayal.  Granted, much like Phillip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar-winning turn as Truman Capote, Hopkins' portrayal of Hitch is a bit mired down in what seems like cliché, but what is really just a perfect rendition of a bizarre and unique individual, but nevertheless, he sure is fun to watch.  Oh yeah, and Helen Mirren ain't bad either.  That last comment was, of course, tongue-in-cheek, as Ms. Mirren's performance as Alma Reville, wife of the legend, is as remarkably wry as ever.  Yes, perhaps the film is a bit lackluster in certain places, and quite unspectacular in others, and much of this has to do with the direction, which seems to dangle a bit too long in middle-of-the-road territory, but the lead performances, and the cinephiliac asides and in-jokes, are enough to bring that dangle into more friendly territory for the duration.

Not actually a biopic - the crux of the film takes place over just six months or so - this film tries to play out less like a look into the life of the great and glorious Alfred Hitchcock, and more like a case study in paranoia, but in the end, it is nothing more than a pair of bravura performances, surrounded by a flat, yet fun, motion picture.  There is a fun turn by James D'Arcy as Anthony Perkins, in which he becomes a veritable dead ringer for the late great actor.  Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Biel, aka the new Mrs. Timberlake, are rather staid as Janet Leigh and Vera Miles, respectively - but then they are not really given much to do, so they are not really to be blamed for such underwhelming performances.  With an ongoing motif of birds - supposedly to give us rather obvious foreshadowing of Hitch's next film, a foreshadowing that is needlessly heavy handed - and little nods and winks into film jokes, and cultural references of the time period, this film can be fun at times - cute even - but overall, this critic was hoping for more - a lot more.  Still though, since watching a film based on one of your own heroes, can be quite dodgy - will they get it right, or more importantly, will they get it the way you want it to be, right or wrong - this film could have been quite a lot worse that the middling, but often fun film that it ends up being.  Good evening, he said in his best Hitch voice.  No offense Sir Anthony, but let us leave here with an image of the real Sir Alfred, and our own bird motif.

Film Review: Joe Wright's Anna Karenina

So far, the oeuvre of Joe Wright has included the stunning, and surprisingly spry visual wit of Pride and Prejudice, the gorgeous dream-like feel of Atonement, the rather mediocre aching of The Soloist, the kinetic kitsch of Hannah, and now, the middling, yet ultimate failure of Anna Karenina.  I suppose this means the director is currently running at a 60% success rate overall, but such a stat still does not help make this mish-mashed version of Tolstoy's classic novel any more bearable than it is.  Which, incidentally, outside of a certain visual audacity, is not all that bearable at all.

Now, as any well read person can surely tell you, Tolstoy's novel is beyond reproach.  Though I tend to lean toward Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment as my favourite, Anna Karenina may very well the single greatest novel ever written in the Russian language.  A classic of eternal depth through and through.  With such a stature, a film version is bound to come off as something less than desired.  Of course, since it is inherently difficult - one could even say impossible - to adapt any great work of literature into a proper film version, especially one as detailed and intricate as Karenina - anything shy of a sixteen hour Sergei Bonderchukian epic could never do it justice - one should not expect an adaptation of Tolstoy to include every minute detail the author put in there.  There have been twelve film versions of Anna Karenina, beginning as far back as 1914, and though I have only seen but three of these - four counting Mr. Wright's recent addition to the stables - it is a rather safe bet to say that none of these managed to recreate the novel in any sort of semblance of its entirety.  Even my personal favourite, the 1935 Clarence Brown version which stars Great Garbo in the title role, does not do complete justice to the book.  What it does do, is create an atmosphere where one can see and feel what Tolstoy saw and felt while writing his novel.   What we felt reading it.  This is all we can hope for in such a situation.  This is what we desire.  Much of the strength of the Garbo version has to do with the exotic enigma that was, and always will be, Garbo.  What Wright's version lacks is the feel of Tolstoy.  What else it lacks is the power of someone like Garbo to give its title character her much needed power.

I am not saying Keira Knightley is a bad actress.  She is not.  Given the right role (Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, Cecilia Tallis in Atonement, even Sabina Spielrein in A Dangerous Method) Ms. Knightley can truly shine.  Given the wrong role - one that needs a depth the actress has never been able to reach - she only flounders, and so too does the film.  I know that the actress is Wright's muse and all, but she just does not have the heft to pull off such a character.  One could easily see someone like Carey Mulligan or Michelle Williams or Natalie Portman pulling this off - Kate Winslet would own the role - but just not poor Keira.  If one has read the book, they will inevitably wonder upon seeing this film, why such a strong-willed character as Anna Karenina, is made to seem like a whiny and shallow bitch throughout.  I suppose a good portion of those seeing this film, have probably never read the original, so such a problem never rears its ugly head.  But still, the problem is there.  Jude Law does what one would call a bang-up job in his role, and Aaron Johnson is fine as the sadly underdeveloped Vronsky, but Knightley just doesn't swing it.  And none of this even starts to ask why Wright has decided to Baz Luhrmann his settings up by staging much of the action on a purposefully stagey erection, which would be perfectly fine - and the film does indeed have many moments of sheer visual beauty - if he did not then randomly break free from such erections with no real rhyme or reason.  Ah well, the director is still running at 60%, so I suppose we can only hope his next project puts him at 67% and not down to 50%.