Her

In the near past, The Beatles told us that all we need is love; in the near future, Spike Jonze’s Her elucidates that the ever-evolving world around us may make The Beatles’ timeless message untrue or, at least, only partly true.

Narratively, Her is a love story about Theodore Twombly and Samantha, an artificially intelligent operating system. But it’s much more than that.

I could talk about the separate elements that make up this remarkable film, such as Joaquin Phoenix’s often touching, intermittently heartwrenching performance as Theodore Twombly; or Scarlett Johansson’s tremendous, powerful voice-work as Samantha, the titular Her; or Amy Adams’ lovely, underrated work as Amy.

I could talk about Spike Jonze’s beautiful, heartfelt direction or his ingenious, visionary, often hysterical (sometimes uneasily so), tight-rope-walking script, which is probably the best I’ve encountered in years.

I could talk about Arcade Fire’s surprisingly great, low-key score; or Hoyte van Hoytema’s gorgeous, largely unsung cinematography; or K.K. Barrett and Gene Serdena’s stunning production design; or Casey Storm’s interesting costumes, composed of a mixture of hipster designs and 70’s tweed.

I could talk almost endlessly about how all of these elements contribute to create the film, and yet I would never begin to scratch the surface of what makes this movie so powerful and compelling.

The near future Jonze envisions is a strangely dystopian world in which an outwardly paradisiacal world conceals a deeply troubled society within. It is a world whose inhabitants are so caught up in the increasing pace of life in their technologically advanced world that they routinely fail to connect with that world.

They hire people to write their thank you notes and congratulatory letters for them. They spend far more of their time using their technology than they do taking advantage of the natural world around them. Worst of all, perhaps, they give up on their personal relationships seemingly at the smallest signs of adversity, having lost either their ability or their will to persevere through rough patches.

Their fast-paced lives have changed them. They want the quick-fix solution.

Physical sex and phone sex have replaced dinner or a cup of coffee as the staples of personal relationships. Indeed, once the passion in a relationship seems to have disappeared, people seem to be more willing to move on than to continue in the relationship.

Into this troubled world steps an artificially intelligent operating system that caters to the personality of its user. It both undermines the problems of this dystopia and affirms them. It largely takes away the physical, carnal aspect of love, allowing for a connection based on emotional compatibility, not physical attraction. But it also exemplifies the desire for a quick-fix. It allows them to answer a few questions and instantly be supplied with a personality that, at least initially, is an emotional match.

Her is a film about love and relationships, but not necessarily about succeeding at either. It is a film that challenges our preconceptions about the nature of love and who can love whom. It is a fascinating examination of the limitations of the human heart’s capacity to give love, of the human mind’s facility to understand what it feels, and, most importantly, of humanity’s ability, or inability, to control what it creates.

Despite its setting, this film isn’t just about the future. Even now, Jonze argues, we have lost sight of what love really is and what it genuinely entails to love another person. The residents of Her’s near future, much like people today, are afraid to do anything real because they fear the heartache and adversity it may, at times, cause. They, and we, fear commitment, want a perfect emotional match, and are willing to sacrifice the tangibility of the human body for an easier time of it.

At one point, Samantha tells Theodore that “The past is just a story we tell ourselves.” In that commitment-afraid world, and in the world of the now, that message is an important one to remember.

No, it’s not totally perfect. I would have liked Jonze to have begun his assessment of the issues surrounding the film’s central relationship about 10-15 minutes earlier than he did. But once the assessment does begin, I could not have asked for a better film. It is a film with a definite thesis, a thesis of important ramifications, but it is never a film that attempts to convince you to agree with it; it is never heavy-handed or pandering, rarely pretentious or haughty, always genuine and honest.

“Only connect” is the powerful and important message of E.M. Forster’s masterful 1910 novel Howards End and of the terrific 1992 film adapted from it. Forster meant that people of all classes and backgrounds should connect with each other. Jonze’s take on this idea is just as powerful. It also could not be timelier. We are who we are because we are human, because we have form. Technology does not. We must connect with other people, or else technology may just decide to get up and walk away. Emotional and physical connection are of equal importance.

96

Saving Mr. Banks, Frozen, and Nebraska

1/8/14:

Saving Mr. Banks:

Saving Mr. Banks is an interesting film, but not a great one, and arguably not an important one, either.

The film follows Walt Disney’s efforts to convince P.L. Travers to allow him to make Mary Poppins, as I think most are aware. But much of the scenes involving the script-reading, song-singing, etc. are acted standardly by Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzmann, and B.J. Novak and are dreadfully directed by John Lee Hancock, known best for his saccharine, yet still somehow watchable, The Blind Side. He infuses each and every scene in the cinematic present with sugary sentimentality, which it didn’t need at all because Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith’s script is perfectly fine just how it is where that’s concerned.

To elaborate, Marcel and Smith’s script isn’t fantastic, but it’s certainly strong. It may be a little sugary, but it never comes close to being overly saccharine. Its weakness is its first third to a half are too sparsely written. The film is also hurt because Hancock fails to create any sense of dramatic tension.

The technical production elements of the film are quite well done. The costuming and art direction are perfect. Thomas Newman’s score is also fascinatingly modern for a film that takes place in the 1960s and early 1900s.

Instead, it is the scenes not directly related to Travers’ script-scrapping and conversation-recording that pack the punch and compose the best parts of the film. This is surprisingly astute film that isn’t just about the making of a “Hollywood classic.” It’s also, in equal measure, about guilt and forgiveness and family and love. It’s about saving Mr. Banks, but it’s also about saving P.L. Travers from herself, from the guilt she feels about her father, whom she is unable to save, perhaps a major reason she feels the need to have Mary Poppins save Mr. Banks.

The film’s quality improves gradually, and the final third to a half is great. Much of this is due to the improving quality of the flashbacks and the increasing number of scenes involving just Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks.

Overall, the film is saved by the acting of Emma Thompson, as P.L. Travers, of Tom Hanks, as Walt Disney, and of Colin Farrell, as Travers’ father. Emma Thompson is my favorite living actress. She has this natural austerity, some might call it coldness, coupled with a remarkable ability to show humanity and vulnerability beneath the rough exterior, and it makes her perfectly cast as Travers. She utilizes her skills as an actress brilliantly, managing her entire transformation wonderfully, even when the script is somewhat lacking at her critical transformative scenes. That people don’t change all that much is a recurring theme of the film, and she works it into her character beautifully; she’s changed, transformed even, but she’s not a different person than she was before.

Tom Hanks, about whom I had qualms, fearing he was severely miscast, is a surprise. His Disney is sweet and, more importantly, sincere in his almost constant positivity. He has a couple of great scenes, but his scene with Thompson in the living room about art’s healing power is easily his best. He and Thompson share a strong chemistry, especially in the film’s second half.

Honestly, though, Colin Farrell is the unsung hero of the film, and, for the life of me, I can’t understand why nobody, and I mean nobody, is singing his praises. He is wonderful and sincere and, finally, heartbreaking. He made me feel more sympathy for Mr. Banks than David Tomlinson ever did, despite not literally portraying him.

This is a decent film, perhaps even a good, but not quite a very good one. It is a sweet film at heart that is ruined by a director who instills enough sugary badness in movies to make them diabetic.

P.S. It’s also a great film to train yourself to watch a movie critically. It’s full of connections between time periods to tie the film together. On an unrelated note, it’s also interesting that the quality improvement of the film as a whole is a rough microcosm to the gradual improvement of Travers and Disney’s relationship.

76/100

1/9/14:

Frozen:

This film is pure joy, plain and simple.

The film, written by Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck, and Shane Morris and based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen, follows Elsa and Anna, the princesses of Arendelle. Elsa, however, has been gifted with the ability to create ice and snow, but it’s also a curse she struggles to control. When their parents die, Elsa is crowned, but her powers get the best of her and she retreats into self-imposed exile, simultaneously creating universal winter. Anna has to go get her to restore summer. True love and all that good stuff are also involved, as per typical Disney.

At face value, it’s not a groundbreaking storyline, with a few elements beginning in a clichéd manner. The brilliance of the screenplay, however, is in its resolution of each of these elements. Not one of the situation resolutions is as to be expected, even the act of true love necessary to save the heroine. In fact, this act is touching and raw (strange to say that about any aspect of an animated film). While the script doesn’t measure up to the height or ambition of those of 12 Years a Slave or The Wolf of Wall Street, it makes up for it by being funny and heartfelt, two qualities that help it become a film for both children and adults.

The animation is gorgeous and stylish and Christophe Beck’s score adds perfectly to every moment of the film in much the same way Alan Menken’s did in the early part of the Disney Renaissance. He will not receive the credit he is due for two reasons. One: he is not Alan Menken. Two: the score is overshadowed by the absolutely brilliant songs.

Husband-wife team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez have written 8 of the best film songs in recent memory, and they will likely win the Oscar for one of them. Let It Go is a powerful song sung by one of the musical theater industry’s most powerful voices, Idina Menzel, and while its message in the film itself isn’t the greatest, the basic idea of being yourself and not letting other people get to you, is. The rest of the songs are all unique, and all have great messages. Whether it’s that we all have things about us that aren’t the best that make us special or that sometimes other people aren’t all that nice, the messages are intertwined with some of the catchiest tunes. They’re also surprisingly satisfying musically speaking.

That the film’s messages, the foremost of which is, of course, the power of love (and also of family), do not become cumbersome is a testament both to the screenplay and the film’s directors, Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, who I’m strongly considering putting on my personal ballot in the category.

The film has incredibly realistic characters and (relatively) realistic resolutions. Its heroine is a real person as opposed to an ideal for 5-year-old girls to never living up to. Sure, she’s beautiful, but she’s spunky and smart and socially awkward and simultaneously sure and unsure of herself. She doesn’t end up with the most handsome guy, the “prince charming,” but with the other guy, though I must say that this other guy has a strange ruggedness and big-boned Scandinavian-ness that does, I assume, make his reasonably attractive. She’s exactly what animation studios have been trying to create for probably a decade: a strong female, a feminist, even.

Another one of the film’s innumerable strengths is its voice acting. As the heroine, Anna, Kristen Bell, best known as Veronica Mars, is blessed with arguably the greatest lead female character in animated film history (Belle (and possibly Ariel and Pocahontas) are her only real competition), and takes full advantage of it. She is outstanding. Despite being in an animated film, I felt as though I were almost watching her live. Every syllable, spoken and sung, matched and resonated with her character perfectly. As her sister, Elsa (the Snow Queen), Idina Menzel, best known as for originating the role of Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway, is actually heartbreaking. Her singing voice, quite frankly, is enough to have me worshipping her, but she infuses it and her speaking voice with the same dejectedness and power and, at times, incredible warmth she did as Elphaba. Finally, as a snowman named Olaf, Josh Gad, another Broadway import known for originating the role in The Book of Mormon, which also had its songs co-written by Robert Lopez, is hysterical, and, if not for the character being a snowman, he could have been Olaf in the flesh or snow, carrot, sticks, and coal or whatever.

This is easily the best pure Disney film since The Lion King and arguably the most purely enjoyable and lovable Disney film ever made.

95/100

P.S. I thought I’d include the Let It Go video just for kicks to show the brilliance of the song and of the animation.

Nebraska:

To say I thought Nebraska was anything more than slightly below average would be a lie. It was, at best, a disappointing film.

It’s an Alexander Payne character study of a disconnected man. He’s done it before: 4 times actually (you could argue 5, but it’s more of a stretch than I’m willing to make). But he co-wrote each of those films. This time, Payne’s absence on the writing credits is probably the film’s fatal flaw.

Bob Nelson’s script about a boozy Korean War vet, who’s travelling from Billings, MT to Lincoln, NE with his son because he believes himself to have won a contest for $1,000,000, can’t say no to people, and can’t wrap his head around the world that changed while he blinked, seems, more often than not, like a lesson in how not to write a script. It wants to be witty and personable and off-beat and under, with a wonderfully unexpected (but not jarring) sense of warmth and with important messages about the importance and the oddity of (extended) family, but it just isn’t. It’s rather like a Coen brothers’ movie without both the entertaining performance of the dialogue and without any of the characterization aspects of the dialogue.

The first two-thirds of the film is composed of scenes have sparse, wooden dialogue with more of a sense of caricature than humanity. There are glimpses of truth, but nothing long-lasting. Payne’s films are occasionally chastised for mocking their subjects. Here, luckily, that isn’t an issue; instead, there isn’t anything, character-wise, to mock.

Payne’s direction, unfortunately, mirrors some of the script’s shortcomings. It’s fine enough, but lacks conviction of almost any kind.

But it’s not completely bad. The film’s final act is quite a bit better than average, very good, even, but still not great. The writing shows some warmth toward the end, mixed with the off-kilter sense of humor so clearly Nelson’s goal throughout. This third act provides nearly all of the script-provided nuance of characterization.

The performances, as can be expected, suffer from the script, but they are probably the best thing about the film as a whole. Bruce Dern is lucky because he doesn’t speak much, especially early on, and does a quite good job expressing his trouble and general lack of understanding. Will Forte, who would be my favorite in the film if he was similarly silent in the film’s opening. He does his best during this period, but is unfortunately wooden. He loosens as the film progresses, though. June Squibb is given the best material and delivers accordingly, adding some emotional subtlety to her part as events progress. Her scenes in the cemetery and when returning the compressor are her best.

Phedon Papamichael’s cinematography, much praised, is nothing but standard and would be nowhere near awards talk if it weren’t in black and white.

But it can’t save the film. Now maybe I just don’t understand where the film is coming from because I’m only 20, but I stand by my criticism of it. It’s a lacking film, which is really a shame because its premise had such potential.

62/100

The Wolf of Wall Street

1/4/14:

The Wolf of Wall Street:

The Wolf of Wall Street is a terrific satire following Jordan Belfort from his first day as a Wall Street stockbroker to a brilliant, (semi-)depraved multi-millionaire to his legal and personal downfall to his rebirth.

I am a big fan of Martin Scorsese. I think it is all but impossible to dislike the majority of his films (he does have some duds) unless you are completely turned off by huge amounts of vulgarity, drug use, sexual content, and violence. Indeed, his films can be incredibly vulgar. Previously, his most vulgar movie probably was Casino, with 428 f-words in about 3 hours, followed by Goodfellas with 300 in 1.5 hours and The Departed with 237 in 1.5 hours. The Wolf of Wall Street blows all of these out of the water, making up for its essential lack of violence with 506 in 3 hours.

But despite this monstrous number and the extensive amounts of drug-use and (mainly) female nudity, The Wolf of Wall Street, though certainly seeming at least somewhat depraved at times, never seems incongruous with its vulgar elements, and even seems to require them the majority of the time. This feat is owed completely to three elements.

Some types of films can rely on their art direction, visual effects, or cinematography to make the film great, but a great satire must be blessed with a great screenplay, great direction, and great performances. The Wolf of Wall Street has all three.

Terence Winter’s (creator of Boardwalk Empire and staff writer for The Sopranos) script is brilliant. Equal parts seriousness and hilarity, it masterfully mixes them into a magnificently over-the-top, rarely, if ever, farcical, film. The final act of the film works so well because the rest of it is so satirical and not farcical. The way some of the episodes are told is brilliant (the Lamborghini scene springs to mind).

Scorsese is rightly considered one of the best directors ever, and he shows why here. Winter’s script, no matter how satirical, could have become farcical if directed incorrectly. Scorsese is no stranger to challenging projects, and directs this film brilliantly. The tone he sets throughout is simply perfect.

Scorsese movies are almost always all about the men, and Wolf is no different. Leonardo DiCaprio, in his fifth collaboration with Scorsese, gives possibly his best performance ever (The Departed is the competition). The film also could have strayed into farce if the acting had been done incorrectly. As my statement about DiCaprio’s performance indicates, this is not an issue. He is simply brilliant. He appears in probably 85% to 95% of the film, and completely dominates it every second. He is an absolute riot (his crawling scene is brilliance). He is always ACTING, but everything he does is completely believable in creating a complete and surprisingly complex character. Furthermore, his performance in the final act is startlingly powerful.

Overall, the supporting male cast is quite good, even if not truly great. Jonah Hill, as Donnie Azoff, could surprise for an Oscar nomination, and he would be more deserving here than he was for Moneyball, but he is nowhere near my top 10, even. The style he chooses doesn’t work particularly well with the film, as he seems to be underplaying many of the scenes when his usual comedic, over the top style could have worked well, especially since he seems to be going for laughs the entire time, strange given his simultaneous underplaying.

While Hill, despite his large amount of screentime, is simply acceptable (sometimes slightly better), Matthew McConaughey, with just two early scenes to his credit, is my favorite supporting male performance in the film. I love how he has reinvented himself as an actor, and his performance here, specifically in his second scene, is immensely entertaining. He gives great life to Mark Hanna in just about 10 minutes. It’s a case of terrific casting, but also of even going beyond that casting to create a great performance.

The rest of the male supporting cast is pretty good across the board. Rob Reiner is pretty funny in his first scene but is unfortunately subdued the rest of his screentime. Jean Dujardin is characteristically charming but nothing more. Kyle Chandler, who has the ability to be a great actor, is sidelined here, just as he has been since jumping from Friday Night Lights to films, to the law enforcement. His scene on the yacht shows shades of his abilities, but those abilities are never again utilized.

As with most Scorsese films, The Wolf of Wall Street treats most of its female characters (nothing more than appearances, really) as objects for male lust and sexual use. Just as with most other Scorsese film, too, there are a few (sometimes just one) female character(s) that could be considered, in some way, strong and/or complex women (i.e. Lorraine Bracco’s character in Goodfellas and Vera Farmiga’s in The Departed). Margot Robbie portrays Wolf’s, Naomi Lapaglia, very well. She’s stunning but definitely not stupid, and aware of both. Robbie gives her depth, and while she doesn’t necessarily build upon the script all that much, she makes up for it with two great scenes: the teddy bear scene and her final scene. Joanna Lumley, as Naomi’s aunt, Emma, is also pretty good.

With its huge runtime, a huge, but not unexpected plaudit must be given to longtime Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker for her terrific editing job that makes the film feel shorter than it is (though it still does feel long). Rodrigo Prieto also deserves credit for his cinematography, as he finds new shots so that the film’s shots don’t become repetitive and boring.

All of the criticism about how it’s condoning the sort of behavior exhibited by the protagonists is absurd. The only worry is uneducated and/or unintelligent people who see the film thinking getting the wrong idea about investment. The argument that more about the victims should have been shown is equally ridiculous. This film is timely because the recession has made victims of millions of people, so many have experienced, be it first- or second-hand, the potential devastation of these terrible practices. No, the film is about exactly what it should have been about: the outrageous extravagance, selfishness, and power of the stockbrokers, nothing more than that and nothing less.

This is a brilliant satire and a monumentally entertaining affair that succeeds extraordinarily well.

94/100

Dallas Buyers Club and American Hustle

Dallas Buyers Club and American Hustle

1/3/14:

Dallas Buyers Club

Oliver Stone is possibly my least favorite director. He takes powerful stories about people and makes them politically charged and heavy-handed. For this reason, I am immensely glad he had no interaction with Dallas Buyers Club.

It is a story about the plights of people, but it’s also a story of political statements. It’s a story about the dangers of controlling and unrepentant government. It’s about the dangers of capitalism, but also about all the good that capitalism can do if used correctly. The film could have been heavy-handed. Instead, it is quite the opposite.

The vast majority of the credit for this fine-line-walking goes to Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack for their funny, entertaining, touching, emotionally truthful adaptation of Bill Minutaglio’s 1992 article in The Dallas Morning News. It’s gritty and raw and all the more powerful and compelling because of it.

The film’s events are centered in Dallas, Texas, the city in which I have grown up, and on homophobic electrician and rodeo bum Ron Woodroof, who contracts HIV, which later turns into AIDS, from unprotected sex. His story is one of change and do-it-yourself Texas spirit, of hope and devastating illness, of sex and drugs and alcohol.

But it’s not without fault. Jean-Marc Vallée’s direction falters every once in a while, especially in the film’s final 30 minutes or so, and his editing, done with Martin Penza, has some real head-scratchers, many during that same 30-minute stretch.

Luckily for Vallée, McConaughey, who has decided, over the past two years or so, to make good movies for a change, is simply astonishing. For the 2^nd time in the last 3 days, Chiwetel Ejiofor has been leap-frogged in my best male lead performance standings, and Isaac may be overtaken depending on how both he and McConaughey sit with me. McConaughey, as Woodroof, gives an electrifying, tour-de-force performance. Every line is perfectly delivered, every facial expression deftly handled (his eyes do most of the handiwork), every personal transformation pitch-perfect. He is immensely deserving of any and all accolades he has and will receive.

Jared Leto, as the homosexual, pre-op transsexual Rayon, is fabulous. He is incredibly convincing. His mannerisms are minimal, and those he does utilize seem like natural extensions of his body and his personality. He is helped in his transformation by his makeup, but I would have been convinced by his performance without his mascara, fake eyelashes, and lipstick. It is his performance of a lifetime, and, just like McConaughey, any accolades he has and will receive are much deserved.

Jennifer Garner is a pleasant surprise. As the film’s best argument for a moral center, she is touching and effortlessly likable. I only wish she and the script had given her character, Dr. Eve Saks, slightly more depth near the beginning of her screentime.

This is a film I loved. Contrary to what I’ve heard as a negative about Dallas Buyers, it is not disrespectful to gays nor does it take advantage of them. I was thoroughly engrossed throughout, and it’s ending, a classic example of personal failure followed by friendly adulation, is heartwarming and potentially tear-inducing instead of being schmaltzy and unbearably sentimental.

94/100

American Hustle:

Going into the theater for American Hustle, I had heard it described as brilliant or unremarkable. It is neither, but, on the whole, more of the latter.

Directed and co-written (with Eric Warren Singer) by David O. Russell, the film does a fantastic job recreating the late 1970s. The characters, too, are brilliantly written. They are wonderfully conceived, each one different than any other, yet with personality traits and personal situations recognizable to any viewer.

This praise aside, I was bored during pretty much the entire first 45 minutes of the film. The voiceovers provided by Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Bradley Cooper are uninspired. And for a heist movie, nothing of note happens, or even if it did, the editing by Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers, and Alan Baumgarten is, at best, uninspired, and David O. Russell’s directing is pretty

The film’s opening act is also hurt by its lack of music. There just isn’t be any dramatic or comedic tension anywhere to be found in this opening act, and the lack of music, be it Danny Elfman’s nonexistent score or the film’s soundtrack, which kicks in later on and ends up being terrific, does nothing to help.

Luckily for the film, things pick up after this stretch of supreme boredom, and the film turns out a wonderfully entertaining film, much of which is due to Russell and Singer’s screenplay later on. It also picks up because the soundtrack is so great for the rest of the film. The acting also improves greatly, though it is still anything but perfect.

Amy Adams’ performance is the best in the film. After her voiceover debacle, she handles the script, which gives all 3 leads disparate character pieces to put together, extremely well. Everything she emotes is at once truthful and questionable. She is probably my favorite lead female performance of 2013, though I have almost all of the contenders left to see.

The film’s next best performance is given by Jennifer Lawrence, as many have said before me. She is absolutely hysterical. “The Power of Intention,” a scene she shares with Christian Bale, is my favorite of the film. Her outbursts seem entirely natural, and she deserves the Oscar nomination she will assuredly receive, though a win seems a little unnecessary, and not even because she won Best Actress last year.

Unfortunately, Christian Bale’s performance is mostly boring, especially early on, though he does have a couple of good scenes, but he mostly does nothing. His nonchalance makes him seem uninterested as opposed to being charming like he intends.

Bradley Cooper, instead of being boring, is all over the place. His underacts during the first act. Once the film’s pace improves, he alternating overacts and acts terrifically. It’s a scatter-shot performance for an all-over-the-place character, which it needn’t have been. It’s a surprising disappointment for an actor I thought did so well with a similarly all-over-the-place character in Silver Linings Playbook just a year ago.

So was there a male performance I actually thought was above average the entire time? Yes: Jeremy Renner. He’s great, especially during his speech at the hotel and in his final scene, but he isn’t given anything to do, which is a shame, really.

The ending, too, is pretty weak, and Bale’s terribly boring voiceover is much to blame.

That I’m giving the film this high of a score is a testament to the immense strength of it middle hour-and-fifteen-minutes. It is, at times, a great film, but too much of it amounts to nothing more than a series of potentially interesting and entertaining, but ultimately problematic, misfires.

56/100

Inside Llewyn Davis and Philomena

Over the first 10 days of January, I am planning on seeing many of the films I have yet to see from the awards season, and while some I will be unable to due to not being in theaters anymore, 

1/1/14:

Inside Llewyn Davis

I went into Inside Llewyn Davis with certain expectations. One: that I would at least enjoy it because I think the Coen Bros. (Joel and Ethan) are easily the best director/directorial duo alive. Two: that the humor would be odd and dry and therefore great. Three: that the performances would be great.

All of these things were true. The Coens see the world in a different way than anybody else, and all of the quirky comedy in their films comes from how their characters talk to each other. The scenes are written expectedly well, but their style does not work brilliantly in this film’s format, a character study. The film, never seems to go anywhere, and while that’s sort of the point, given the personality of the main character, it does not make for incredibly compelling viewing as a story.

That being said, the rest of the film elevates the slightly above average narrative to great heights. The Coens’ editing (as Roderick Jaynes, of course) is superb as always, the production design is terrific with a brilliant color-scheme. Perhaps most importantly, Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography makes you forget that Roger Deakings didn’t shoot it.

This is a film of uncommon wit and intermittently devastating melancholy. It is a film of characters, and the performances that embody these characters are uniformly great. All of the smaller roles are ably handled, but three stand out. Oscar Isaac has overtaken Chiwetel Ejiofor as my favorite lead performance of the year, giving a performance making his unlikeable character so pathetic that the audience cannot help but sympathize with him. He is a character only interested in himself, and while this normally makes a character unlikeable, his inability to make choices suitable to his own ends, and the way Isaac portrays his numerous shortcomings are simultaneously heartbreaking and infuriating.

Carey Mulligan, who gave my favorite female lead performance of 2009 in An Education, gives her best performance since in a short, potentially clichéd role as Jean. In what essentially amounts to 10-or-so minutes of screentime, she is fiery, downtrodden, and completely electric. She won’t receive an Oscar nomination, but she definitely deserves one.

Lastly, John Goodman gives an immensely fun, short performance as jazz musician Roland Turner. While he is helped by his great, biting lines, his performance is quite entertaining and only left me wanting more, though I don’t think he deserves an Oscar nomination (which he won’t get). His performance does give credence to the mantra that Goodman’s only great roles are in Coen Bros’ movies.

The music is terrific and is, aside from Isaac, my favorite part of the film. All of the songs, aside from “Please Mr. Kennedy”, are traditional folk songs performed live by the cast, and they are, without exception, brilliantly chosen and passionately performed. Oscar Isaac’s performances of “The Death of Queen Jane”, “Fare Thee Well”, “and “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” are gorgeous and immensely powerful. “Please Mr. Kennedy” is a hysterical song by Ed Rush, George Cromarty, T Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake, and the Coens, and performed by Timberlake, Isaac, and Adam Driver. I am ashamed for the Academy, which will, in all likelihood, fail to recognize its comedic greatness and juxtapositions of musical styles when nominations are announced.

This film has grown on me since I watched it yesterday, and while I still do not think it is anywhere near as good as Fargo or No Country for Old Men, I do think it is worthy of a Best Picture nomination. I would watch it again, something I could not say for sure yesterday, if only to be entertained by the Coens’ way with words and Isaac’s show-stopping performance.

93/100

Update: I have somewhat changed my opinion on the film, hence the now A-level rating. It is not the Coens' best work, but it's better than I originally gave it credit for. It's a melancholy movie with a melancholy ending, so I initially felt like it went nowhere in the end, which I wasn't okay with. Its initial rating of 87 was so high because the other aspects of the film, especially Oscar Isaac's lead performance, are all so incredibly strong. Thinking back, I still don't like the circular nature of the film's character study, but I appreciate it more than I originally did, therefore I am giving it back 3 of the points I originally deducted from its score.

Update #2: I keep thinking about this film and how much I enjoyed it, so now it's a 93.

1/2/14:

My second film of the break was Philomena. The film, which chronicles the journey of a reporter who left the BBC only to be sacked from his job as a government press secretary and 60-something Irish woman as they search for the son taken from her while she lived in a convent, is, I think, quite an achievement.

No, none of the production qualities, be they cinematography, Alexandre Desplat’s score, editing, or production design itself particularly groundbreaking. Neither is Judi Dench’s performance as the titular Philomena Lee, for which she will almost assuredly receive her 7^th Oscar nomination. Sure, she is very good, but Dench could do this in her sleep, and probably do it better than she does here. She could have done so much with this part, but instead it almost seems like she’s just going through the motions. That’s not to say she isn’t good, but just nowhere near what I’ve come to expect from this particular Dame.

Stephen Frears’ direction, too, is less than spectacular. It’s certainly far from bad, but, just as in virtually every other major film he’s directed, there’s one thing keeping his direction from being great. This time, it’s the flashbacks in the film’s first act. For a film as heartwarming and funny and heartwrenching as this, the flashbacks are too standard, too “I want to make you cry.” But how is “heartwrenching” incompatible with “I want to make you cry”? Frears’ direction, unfortunately, makes it so. The flashback scenes, as written, are painful enough, but Frears felt the need to add a little extra melancholy, and it only diminishes from the scenes.

So what makes this movie so completely watchable, immensely likeable and utterly satisfying? Steve Coogan. Coogan’s complete body of work on this film is dynamite. His script, co-written with Jeff Pope, is brilliant. It instills a simultaneous sense of melancholy and of happiness and playfulness. All of its jokes are spot-on and well-delivered. Its sense of narrative is effortless, its honesty refreshing. The ending walks the tight-rope of sentimentality extremely well.

This composes only half of Coogan’s involvement, however. His acting as Martin Sixsmith is quite good and relatively unsung this awards season, probably because there are so many other performances in bigger films getting all the buzz. He is both charming and off-putting in an effortless fashion that makes him completely human. His transformation from a man worried only about his public reputation and Russian history to one who truly cares about a human interest story is very well handled.

I want to dispel the one major criticism of the film I have heard, which is that the film is anti-Catholic. The film is, by no means anti-Catholic. If anything, the film shows a disdain for the inability of some churchgoers to see the opposite side of the religious argument. Coogan’s atheist is completely incapable, or rather unwilling, to consider faith, and Sister Hildegarde is unwilling to even consider that God would give love instead of punishment to all of the mothers who underwent teenage pregnancies. In the end, the only character who comes out a winner is Dench’s Philomena, the true, faithful Catholic, whose level of faith is equaled only by her love for everybody around her.

Overall, this is a heartwarming film that has a few problems, but whose heart and charm outlast anything bad about it.

79/100

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: Better Than the First: Pretty Good

Note: This is a very long review because I’ve also begun with a combinative look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the first Hobbit movie to put this review in perspective. If you want to only read my thoughts on this film, scroll and look for the quintuple-spaced paragraph break or just “Ctrl+f” “but this is a review”.

I must admit to having begun viewing the first entry in the Hobbit trilogy segment of Peter Jackson Middle Earth sextology of adaptations during the approximately 4 hours before attending the midnight premier of this, the second entry. (I actually was unable to see the end of the film as I had to leave in order to get a reasonably good seat at the theater.) Also, I have not read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit since I was in 7^th grade, and therefore remember very little about it. I felt I should mention these two points as a disclaimer before I begin in earnest, so take them for what you will.

I will begin with some thoughts on the first film as well as on the Lord of the Rings trilogy in order to put my thoughts on this most recent entry into perspective.

That first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Adventure was, most certainly, a letdown, though still a passable effort. The film was, as can be expected of a Peter Jackson film or any film benefitting from New Zealand’s scenery (the film, of course, had both of these going for it), visually great. But with a decided smaller amount of panning scenery-shots, its cinematography paled to that of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, while its CGI was about on par.

The LOTR trilogy had terrific writing in my opinion, Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh, and Jackson, did a terrific job making the fantasy genre accessible, as well as meaningful, to people for whom elves, dwarves, and orcs might not be their elevensies, sorry, cup of tea. The storytelling was masterful, and while there were a fair amount of obvious lines, I can let them slide because that’s just something you get in fantasy and because watching Orlando Bloom deliver them is a real treat (“They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard!”).

The acting is also quite good from much of the cast, despite the limitations on the characters. Sean Bean and Ian McKellen in the first, Bernard Hill and Andy Serkis in the second, and Sean Astin and Ian McKellen in the third give great performances, with Viggo Mortensen providing consistently solid support, that were worthy of awards recognition (McKellen’s first, of course, was the only one that received any). Along with the storytelling, the editing was fantastic, with each one of the storylines cut exactly where necessary to make the story flow perfectly.

The first Hobbit film did not really have any of these qualities. In fact, where the film really floundered, I thought, was in the writing. It was, admittedly, a lively film with occasionally great humor, humor that, at times, rivalled anything the trilogy has on offer, but the storytelling itself was greatly lacking. Despite expanding the writing trio to a quartet with the addition of the great Guillermo del Toro, the story was disappointingly episodes and queasily edited. Storyline jumps were haphazard (and there weren’t even that many of them), and the story just failed to flow as any sort of cohesive whole.

As a result, the rest of the film suffered greatly, directly and indirectly. The acting, especially, was sunk. Acting in these film has always been difficult, especially in certain roles because of relative lack of character arcs, but the first film’s lack of plot all together made any attempts to create a compelling character essentially moot. Martin Freeman, who I think is a great, emerging actor, creates a wonderfully loveable character in Bilbo Baggins. Ian McKellen is solid at being old and wise (which he probably does in his sleep), and Richard Armitage tries really hard as Thorin Oakenshield, and might have actually succeeded to some noticeable degree if the script had provided any character development whatsoever.

55

But this is a review of the second film, not of the first and not of the trilogy, so I’ll get on with it, 675 words in.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is, compared to the collective averageness of the first installation I have just described, a definite step up. The writing is much improved, the editing pretty well-done, the cinematography and CGI are gorgeous, and the acting firmly founded.

The improved writing yields a cohesive storyline that provides pretty good character development opportunities, a well-done examination of the title phenomenon, a very fun and adventurous tone, some terrific action sequences, and at least one hysterical moment that surpasses any humor theretofore present in Middle Earth.

Because the cohesion and character development improves, so do the performances. Freeman is, once again, a complete joy, but, simply because of how his character develops relative to the storyline, he will not get a chance to show his true stuff until the third, and final, installation next year. He reminds me somewhat of Mickey Rooney, except that Freeman is much better. They both utilize(d) a pretty set repertoire of mannerisms. The difference is that, while Rooney’s could get annoying and repetitive and sometimes, depending on the part, were out of place and failed, Freeman’s aren’t. In fact, they make his character endearing, and he understands how to use them to the appropriate ends. Many of the mannerisms he uses in this are essentially identical to those in Sherlock, but they evoke something completely different.

McKellen is given a much better storyline, and he delivers admirably, but, as I hinted at earlier, he’s done this same thing many times before and here he does none of it any better than he has in the past.

Richard Armitage succeeds far more than he did in the first one, mostly because his storyline is much improved. But I do not wish to take anything away from him. He quite effectively portrays Thorin’s ongoing battle between the side of him that wants to retake the Lonely Mountain for his people and the side of him that wants to retake it for, to best honest, I have no idea. It’s not really his greed for gold, at least not too much more than the greed any other dwarf feels toward it, but it’s not really the power, but this open-endedness isn’t really an issue because Armitage makes you it real and believable, even though I can’t really name it.

As the voice of Smaug, Benedict Cumberbatch is terrific. His voice is one of my favorites currently in show-business, so its masking in the first half of his performance was unfortunate, but not his fault. Voice performances are typically hard to judge, but not this one. He voice alone exudes the malice, greed, intelligence, manipulation, conniving, and convincing nature of the dragon.

Armitage and Cumberbatch would be vying for my favorite performance in the film if not for Luke Evans. As Bard, he surprised me completely. In his character, as well as in Armitage’s to a lesser extent, is seen the exploration of the titular desolation of Smaug, and they both do an amply good job in portraying it. In addition to looking like Orlando Bloom from Pirates of the Caribbean, Evans very effectively portrays the mysteriousness of his character and the pain from his past and his present, much of which is due to Smaug. He quietly commands every scene he’s in and is the character I cared about the most.

Not everyone is great, though. Lee Pace, who I think was brilliant on Pushing Daisies, but who I found underwhelming in Lincoln, convinces me even more he should only be in comedy-dramas. As the king of the wood elves, he exudes so much malice it’s actually ridiculous and renders him ineffective. This malice also makes any of his attempts at exuding the grace and elegance of elves fall totally flat. In a later scene with a captured orc, he’s quite good in a short reaction, but this cannot make up for his earlier debacle.

The editing, as well, is much better, though there still are a couple of rather awkward cuts, such as the final Gandalf-Necromancer one. The CGI, especially inside the Lonely Mountain (especially Smaug and the forge sequence), is absolute brilliance and completely deserves to win the Best Visual Effects Oscar. The action sequences, too, are excellent. The forge sequence is astonishingly brilliant and beautiful and the escape from the wood elves is terrific, especially because of the inclusion of Legolas (who, quite thankfully, speaks very little and fights very much) and, more importantly, because of what I will call “Bombur’s Barrel Bowl,” is the funniest sequence in any one of the Middle Earth movies yet.

But all is not sunshine and rainbows and puppy dogs. The writing quartet introduces Tauriel, a female elvish archer. I’m not complaining about her introduction, not least because the stunning Evangeline Lilly portrays her. I am complaining, however, about the ridiculous love story tacked on with her on the female end. It’s decently well done for what it is, but it’s wholly unnecessary and adds an additional 20-30 minutes to a movie that’s already long. Also, despite being better written than the first, Desolation still completely pales in comparison to any one of the three LOTR film in terms of its ability to storytell and draw the audience into the story.

As a side note, I would’ve liked to have heard a less self-derivative score from Howard Shore. He succeeded completely with the LOTR films by making the scores somewhat derivative of each film’s main theme (Two Towers’ scores flounders somewhat because it’s too fanfare-oriented), but in the first Hobbit film and now this one, he is simply being completely derivative of his LOTR work, which would be fine in moderation, but moderation is nowhere to be found.

Overall this was a pretty good film that could have been so much better.

83/100

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