Category: Nominees – 2000s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up in the Air – 2009

This was a very good movie.  It was an intellectual film that had multiple themes and plots.  It starred George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick in the leads, with smaller parts filled by Jason Bateman and Danny McBride, along with a few cameo-sized rolls played by recognizable names like Sam Elliott, Zach Galifianakis, and J.K. Simmons.  One might call it a dramedy, though I’d just call it a slightly romantic drama.

It is about Ryan Bingham, played by Clooney.  He is a professional corporate downsizer, otherwise known as an axe-man.  His job is to travel the country and fire large numbers of people for companies that don’t want to do it themselves.  As part of the service, he offers the affected employees termination assistance.  But you have to be a certain kind of person to succeed in such a profession.  To a certain extent, you have to be a jerk who is comfortable with people getting upset in front of you and at you.  Ryan fit the bill perfectly.

In fact, he was also a part-time motivational speaker that tried to help people by telling them to live free of baggage, both physical and emotional.  In order to achieve this, one must cut down on physical possessions and friends.  He is happy with his solitary life until he meets two women.  The first is Alex Goran, played by Fermiga.  She is a traveling business woman who spends nearly as much time flying around the country as he does.  They meet and begin an affair that is completely free of expectations or commitments.  They do everything they can to plan their constant travel schedules to meet for their trysts.

The second woman is Natalie Keener, played by Kendrick.  She is a smart and driven young college graduate who gains employment at Ryan’s company.  She convinces Ryan’s boss, Craig Gregory, played by Bateman, that they could save money if they implement a video conference platform for firing people remotely, thus eliminating the need for all the travel expenses.  Ryan’s well-ordered and happy life of flying from one place to another is put on the path to extinction.  His occasional liaisons with Alex are also put in jeopardy.

Getting fired or laid off is something that is personal, difficult, and upsetting.  It can bring up feelings of anger, betrayal, fear, hopelessness, and depression, the kinds of things you don’t wish on anyone.  But the movie spent a considerable amount of time focusing on Ryan and Natalie as they travel around the United States so he can teach her the ropes of the trade, giving her first-hand experience firing people and dealing with the emotional baggage that goes with the job.  As the two get to know each other, she becomes harder, and he becomes softer.

But I think the main theme in the movie was really the romance.  If you hadn’t guessed it, though Ryan claims to be happy in his solitary life, he falls in love with Alex and finds that he is no longer happy being alone.  I really liked the way the movie effortlessly developed their relationship.  It felt natural and organic.  Clooney and Farmiga had an easy on-screen chemistry that was really nice to watch.  And I was completely taken in by their romance, right up until the last second.

You see, when Ryan realizes that he is in love with Alex, he jumps on a plane to go to Chicago, where he plans to surprise Alex in her home and declare his love for her.  The familiar romantic music starts playing.  He seems to be walking on air as he rings her doorbell.  But I knew something was wrong.  She opens the door and we can see her kids playing behind her.  We can hear her husband asking who is at the door.  It was sad, but I really liked how Alex wasn’t made out to be a bad guy, except maybe a little because she was also falling in love with Ryan.

And Natalie’s little subplot was just as poignant and dramatic.  She had only moved to Omaha to work at Ryan’s company to follow a boyfriend who had since dumped her.  Then, when her online firing plan is about to be implemented, she learns that one of the people she fired with Ryan has committed suicide.  Distraught, she quits her job and moves to San Francisco to get the job she really wants.  Ryan, having turned over a new leaf in his life, writes her a glowing recommendation letter.

The film was interesting and unique, and the casting was perfect.  Film critic Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times stated it perfectly when he said, “Up in the Air makes it look easy. Not just in its casual and apparently effortless excellence, but in its ability to blend entertainment and insight, comedy and poignancy, even drama and reality, things that are difficult by themselves but a whole lot harder in combination. This film does all that and never seems to break a sweat.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up – 2009

This movie shouldn’t have been nominated for Best Picture.  To be honest, I have an issue with animated features being nominated for the top prize because the only acting in the movie are voices.  By all means, recognize the films for their technical achievements, their scripts, maybe even their directors.  Recognize them for their production design, or cinematography, if you must.  But there is a category at the Academy Awards for Best Animated feature.  Put it in there.

But aside from those things, the movie was your standard juvenile fantasy adventure.  It was silly, ridiculous, and ninety percent of the film was obviously aimed at young children.  So why was Up nominated for Best Picture?  Well, it was for that other ten percent.  Behind the flying house, the talking dogs, and the kooky birds, we have the story’s main protagonist, Carl Fredricksen, voiced by Ed Asner, a man who falls in love with a woman who is a kindred spirit.

We see them become friends as kids, fall in love as young adults, and finally marry.  They live blissful lives of happiness until we learn that she is unable to have children, a fact which throws an ever-present pall of sadness over the couple.  The two of them do their best to be happy, but eventually she falls ill and dies, leaving him alone and depressed.  That little bit was almost enough to bring me to tears, I’ll admit.  But after that, the little boy, Russel, showed up, voiced by Jordan Nagai.  If this were a live action film, I would say that the cardinal rule of movie-making had been broken.  Cute for the sake of cute is never cute.  Never.  But this is a glorified cartoon aimed at eight-year-olds.  So now that we have a cute character that children could identify with, the film turned into a run-of-the-mill, kid’s movie.

The plot is simple.  Carl once made a promise to his wife that they would go on an adventure to Paradise Falls in South America, just like their hero, Charles Munts, voiced by Christopher Plummer.  He was a world famous explorer who had gone to Paradise Falls, trying to prove the existence of a mythical bird called a “snipe”.  After his wife’s death, Carl lives a solitary life, trying to keep her memory alive.  When he is finally forced to go into a retirement home, he escapes by attaching thousands of helium balloons to his house and flying away to South America.

However, Russell, a Wilderness Explorer, or Cub Scout, who had been trying to earn his final merit badge by helping an elderly person, is discovered on Carl’s porch in mid-flight.  The grumpy old Carl lets Russel in the house and together, the two fly almost all the way to Paradise falls.  The house sets down several miles from the actual waterfall, which is Carl’s goal.  So in order to get the house to the desired location before the helium in the balloons gives out, Carl and Russell begin the grueling trek across the South American wilderness, dragging the barely floating house behind them.

Along the way, they meet Doug, voiced by Bob Peterson, a dog with a collar that allows him to speak, the flightless snipe bird, which Russel names Kevin, and Charles Muntz, now an old man, who is still hunting the elusive snipe.  They also find Muntz’s comical army of talking dogs.  There are exciting chases, daring rescues, and funny “SQUIRREL!!” Yes, there’s no denying that there were some funny jokes.  But, I hold a Best Picture nominee to a higher standard.  This is a kid’s movie that was intended to be silly, and it succeeded.  But that little ten percent of depression threw a wrench into the works, lending the movie a distinctly adult subplot.

Now, I know the movie was pure fantasy, but I have to voice one thing that kept bugging me.  If you establish a fantasy world, you have to abide by the rules you set down, no matter what they are.  Helium balloons lifting a house into the air?  OK.  Never-mind that if their pull was strong enough to lift the entire house, they would have ripped off the fireplace grate they were tied to.  Never-mind that there weren’t nearly enough strings tied to that grate to cover the sheer number of balloons holding the house up.  For that matter, why wasn’t the house hanging at an angle if the top of the chimney wasn’t in the exact center of the house?

But no, my problem was this: the movie went out of its way to show Carl as a feeble old man.  He used a mechanical chair to go up and down his stairs.  He walked with a cane.  But then, you can’t just turn around and show him performing Herculean feats of physical strength and agility like Indiana Jones.  I get it.  It is a fantasy for kids.  But you need to follow your own rules.  Unless the point was that he was never feeble or un-athletic in the first place.  Maybe depression had caused Carl to accept his old age.  Or maybe I’m just over-analyzing a children’s fantasy film.  I’m not saying it wasn’t a good movie.  But a nominee for Best Picture?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Serious Man – 2009

I went into this Cohen Brothers movie without knowing much about it.  A friend told me that it was a modern telling of the story of Job from the Bible, a story with which I am fairly familiar.  After watching the film, I can say that there were similarities between the two narratives, but certain key components were left out of the film, leaving the connection a fairly vague one.

In the Bible story, there were reasons behind the tragedies which befell Job.  They were designed to settle a bet between God and Satan concerning the strength of Job’s faith.  He had everything taken from him, his possessions, his friends, his family, and his health.  People try to convince him to curse God for all his misfortune, but he ignores their advice.  In the end, Job’s faith in God proved to be steadfast, and he is rewarded with health, long life, earthly wealth, and happiness.

In the film, the struggles endured by Larry Gopnik, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, seemed to be random and meaningless, making him question his faith.  His wife Judith, played by Sari Lennick, hits him from out of left field, telling him that she is having an affair with Sy Ableman, a widower played by Fred Melamed.  Larry’s marijuana smoking son, Danny, played by Aaron Wolff, is weeks away from his Bar Mitzvah, and his daughter Sarah, played by Jessica McManus, just wants to wash her hair, something she cannot do while Larry’s live-in brother Arthur, played by Richard Kind, is in the bathroom draining his cyst all the time.

There was no mention of any contest between Good and Evil.  There was no purpose behind any of the misfortunes that plagued Larry, or at least, if there was, the film failed to show the audience.  In the end, Larry compromised the principles of his own faith-based moral code, even going so far as to smoke pot and dream about having sex with his neighbor’s racy wife, Vivienne, played by Amy Landecker.  In a complete departure from the Bible story, Larry is not rewarded with long life, wealth, or happiness.  In fact, it is heavily implied that his doctor has news of an impending terminal illness, and that Danny is about to be killed by a tornado.

It was a strange little film that almost seems to teach about the futility of faith in God.  Be a good person, forgive your persecutors, and remain steadfast in your faith in the face of adversity, but don’t expect any kind of reward for your efforts. Larry is a good person.  He is kind a gentle, and when his life starts to fall apart, it is easy to sympathize with him.  Stuhlbarg did a good job.

But there were three things about the film that really stood out for me.  The music, the time setting, and the aesthetic.  First, the musical score was written by Carter Burwell.  It had a kind of deep melancholy about it that was at times depressing, while at other times, calming.  It really went a long way to set the tone of the film.  In fact, the only prominently featured song in the film that was indicative of the 60’s is Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane.  Second, the film took place in 1967.  Most of the time when we think about the 60’s, we automatically jump to hippies, flower power, psychedelic fashions, and hallucinogenic drugs.  But the little Jewish community had little to do with those things.  Even so, this was a true side of the era that was still grounded in the styles and the mindset of the 50s.  These were the squares, the suburban mid-westerners.  In other words, normal people.

And finally, I have to mention the film’s non-sequitur opening sequence.  It was an old Jewish folk tale, which was written by Joel and Ethan Cohen, the film’s writers and directors.  Its dialogue was completely in Yiddish.  It concerned a young couple in Eastern Europe who encounter a mysterious stranger whom the husband has invited home for some soup.  When he tells his wife the man’s name, she becomes frightened because she knows the man who bore that name to be dead.  She calls him a dybbuk, or a malicious ghost.  She shocks her husband, and the stranger, when she stabs him in the heart.  The mortally wounded man stumbles back out into the snow while the husband stares in disbelief.

There seems to be little reason why the movie is opened in such a way.  By the Cohen Brother’s admission, the tale has nothing to do with the rest of the film.  It was only there to… well, I’m not sure why, but the directors felt it was somehow appropriate.  Another thing the Cohen Brothers say in interviews was that the film was originally supposed to be about Danny and his Bar Mitzvah, specifically about the mysterious old rabbi who gives each young boy personal advice, and his father Larry was supposed to be a secondary character, but as the script was being written, it evolved into what it is today.  I think that is all for the best, although I suppose a humorous film about a boy’s preparation for the event, and the fact that he is completely stoned when it finally happens, could be amusing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire – 2009

This movie was good, but it was difficult to watch.  It is hard to watch mental, emotional, and physical abuse.  It isn’t easy to be a casual observer of acts of absolute cruelty, especially towards a child or young adult.  But that is what Precious is about.  That, and how that child eventually learns to fight back and take control of her life through education.

Precious, played by first time actress Gabourey Sidibe, is a sixteen year old, morbidly obese, black girl growing up in Harlem in the late 1980s.  Her mother Mary, played by Mo’nique is one of the meanest pieces of work I’ve ever seen on film.  She is pure poison on feet.  She treats her daughter like a domestic slave, calls her fat, calls her worthless and stupid, and tells her things like she should have aborted her before she’d been born.  She also has a habit of hurling thing at her daughter’s head.  She seems to hate Precious with a passion.

Precious goes through her meaningless existence taking in nothing but abuse, and giving out nothing, not even anger or contempt.  She learns nothing in school and has no desire to improve her life.  She barely cares when she is kicked out of school for being pregnant with her second child.  Her first is a girl with downs syndrome who lives with her grandmother.  And we learn that the father of both her children is her father, Mary’s boyfriend, who raped her.  And if all that weren’t bad enough, we later learn that when she was raped, she was infected with the AIDS virus.

But Precious’ life is saved by a single act of kindness.  A teacher who cared went out of her way to tell Precious of a special kind of alternative school that would take her in.  She goes just to get out of her home and be away from her mother.  There, Precious meets Ms. Blu Rain, played by Paula Patton.  Ms. Rain teaches for the joy of teaching.  She inspires Precious to begin her education.  Precious is illiterate, so Ms. Rain teaches her to read and write.  As she learns, she becomes aware that there is a world outside the horrible situation.  Eventually, Precious develops a desire for learning so that she can be a good mother to her babies.  She goes to see a social worker named Ms. Weiss, played by Mariah Carey.  Ms. Weiss learns of the abuse and the incestuous rape, and attempts to act as a counsellor.

Precious does well in school and eventually gains enough self-confidence to recognize the wrongness of the abuse she constantly endures from her mother.  When she goes into labor, she is taken to the hospital where she meets a friendly male nurse named John, played by Lenny Kravitz After giving birth to her second child, a boy she names Abdul, she returns home.  Mary screams at Precious, accusing her of ruining her life.  Precious fights back to protect Abdul and the two get into a violent skirmish.  Precious takes Abdul and flees out onto the snowy streets before Mary can kill her or her baby.  She goes to the only person she can think of, Ms. Rain, who takes her and her baby in from the cold.

As I was watching the movie, I found myself wondering how many children have to grow up in such an unsafe and unhealthy environment.  How many children are as unloved as Precious?  This film is a testament to them, to every one of them who is able to get away and improve their lives, the ones who find the strength to hope for something better.  It is just frightening to imagine how many children have to endure that kind of cruelty and abuse.

Of all the actors in the film, the ones who caught my attention were Mo’Nique and Mariah Carey.  First of all, Mo’Nique played such an awful character, I don’t know if I could have done it.  How does any actor believably play such a monster?  Before watching this film, I didn’t know the first thing about her, but now I can’t imagine her not winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this film.  Fortunately, she did.  She was frightening and incredible at the same time.  The scene in which she describes why she hated Precious so much was so intense!  Mary admits that the sexual abuse had started when Precious had been three years old.  Her boyfriend had preferred having sex with the toddler more than her, but she allowed it so that he wouldn’t leave her.  Mo’Nique played Mary’s breakdown in front of Ms. Weiss perfectly, letting the mentally unstable craziness bubble to the surface in an almost sickening way.

Carey was also good.  She act her part well, completely transforming her physical appearance to that of a homely social worker.  It was a complete contrast to her glamorous persona as one of the world’s biggest pop stars.  The change was appropriate for the role, but I almost didn’t recognize her. And of course, Sidibe was also good.  She was impressive, considering this was her first film.  She took us on a difficult journey, making us believe and take notice of what she could do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inglorious Bastards – 2009

This was a really good movie.  Quinten Tarantino is one of those directors that has a unique and recognizable style, one which I might say, you either love or hate.  This movie had a great cast, a great script, and a captivating story.  The dialogue is spoken in German, French, and English, so the movie is heavily subtitled.  And while Nazis are never a laughing matter, the film is almost a dark comedy.

It is a fictional World War II story that gives us an alternate end to the terrible conflict.  Here the war is ended when Hitler and his top brass attend a German propaganda movie premier in France.  Two assassination plots take place at the same time.  The secretly Jewish woman named Soshanna Dreyfus, played by Melanie Laurent, owns the theatre.  Her plan is to lock Hitler and his generals in the cinema and then burn the place down.  But her plan is complicated when the German war hero, about whom the movie is made, Private Fredrick Zoller, played by the very handsome Daniel Bruhl, becomes smitten with her.

The second plot is led by the Bastards, a special-forces commando unit on their own in Nazi occupied France.  They are led by Lieutenant Aldo “The Apache” Raine, played by Brad Pitt.  His men are Jewish-American soldiers.  Aldo gives his men instructions to kill and scalp all the Nazi soldiers they can.  Among his company are men like Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz, played by Eli Roth, and an ex-Nazi officer who hates the Third Reich named Hugo Stiglitz, played by Til Schweiger.  The bastards are joined by British Royal Marine, Archie Hicox, played by Michael Fassbender.  Their plan is to make contact with a German actress who is a spy for the Allies, Bridget von Hammersmark, who will get the Bastards into the movie premier so they can blow it up in a suicide mission with a ton of explosives.

The movie is a study in mounting tension.  The scene in which that Bastards and Hicox meet with Bridget von Hammersmark was so masterfully written and filmed, it had me on the edge of my seat.  The movie’s final climax at the cinema is just as nerve-wracking.  Movies with Nazis have a natural tendency to be suspenseful.  But here, the film’s main bad guy, SS Colonel Hans Landa, expertly played by Christopher Waltz, was the kind of man who made even his fellow Nazis nervous.  He was nicknamed “The Jew Hunter,” and with good reason.  He was incredibly smart, zealous about his work, and even charming when he wanted to be.

He didn’t seem to hate the Jews.  But he was so obsessed with performing the duties of his job, he took pride in his work, even if it included carrying out atrocities against the Jews and their sympathizers.  He was a great character, very well-written, and very well-acted.  In fact, Waltz won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role.  But Colonel Landa is also very self-serving.  Once he learns that Bridget is a spy, he strangles her to death and then captures Aldo and one of his men, Private Smithson, called “The Little Man”, played by B.J. Novak.  He makes a deal with United States Intelligence and allows the assassination to proceed in exchange for immunity and rewards.

In the end, pretty much everyone dies except The Apache, The Little Man, and The Jew Hunter.  And as a parting gesture of hatred for Landa and all Nazis, Aldo betrays him by carving a swastika into his forehead, so that even if he goes to America and takes off his uniform, he will always have the symbol of his crimes on display for the world to see.

As I researched the movie, I read what some critics had to say about the film.  It was generally well-received, except for a few dissenters who said that for a movie about WWII and a band of Jewish commandos, the movie had very little emphasis on the fact that they were Jewish.  It was even pointed out that the Bastards reflected poorly on the Jews because they are portrayed as terrorists who commit the very atrocities inflicted upon them in the war, thus becoming Nazis themselves.  But I disagree.  First, you have to consider that the movie was fictional, and it never pretended that it wasn’t.  We all know Hitler wasn’t gunned down and blown up in a cinema in France.  Also, the Bastard giving the orders, Aldo Raines, was clearly not Jewish.  He commanded a group of Jewish men who hated Nazis with the sole purpose of being a terrorist group to strike fear into Nazi hearts, and to kill as many of them as possible.  And the entire feel of the movie leaned more towards action, suspense, and comedy rather than drama or a movie about war atrocities.

Nowhere was this more evident than something at which Tarantino is a virtuosic genius.  Hi chooses some of the best music to support his scenes.  In this film, a lot of it is strange, jarring, in-your-face, and yes, nearly comical, but it all works.  It is perfect to incite the bizarre confusion and tension he was going for.  I don’t know how he does it, but it is part of what makes this awesome movie unmistakably his.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Education – 2009

Once again, it is time to scale things back a bit as we are treated to a pleasant little BBC drama, in contrast to some of the big-budget blockbusters with big-name stars that were nominated for Best Picture along-side it like James Cameron’s Avatar and Quentin Terantino’s Inglorious Bastards .  It is a coming of age movie that takes place in 1961, starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike, Emma Thompson, and Alfred Molina.  It was a great movie in that it was more subdued, realistic and charming.

The main protagonist was Jenny Mellor, played by Mulligan.  She was a sixteen year-old girl who is in school, preparing to go to Oxford University.  In fact, her controlling father, played by Molina, structures her time and curriculum with that single goal in mind.  Her mother, Marjorie, played by Cara Seymour, generally has no say in anything though it is clear that she feels a certain amount of disappointment because she never got to have any fun before she got married.

Jenny leads a predetermined life, nearly following in her mother’s footsteps, until she meets the handsome and charming David Goldman, played by Sarsgaard.  He appears out of nowhere and sweeps Jenny off her feet.  Though he is mid to late twenties, he sweet talks the young girl, gets to know her parents and charms his way into their good graces.  He is always the perfect gentleman, never taking advantage of the girl, never mistreating her.

He seems to have plenty of money, wears nice clothes, and drives a fancy sports car.  David’s fun and exciting friends, Danny and Helen, played by Cooper and Pike, accept her into their group, and Jenny quickly begins to fall in love with him.  He lifts her up out of her boring existence and shows her a new world.  She begins to enjoy her life instead of just existing in it.  David takes her away on weekend trips an even convinces her parents to let her go to Paris with him and his friends.

The only problem is that David is a con man.  He and Danny are business partners who make money through shady deals and dishonest practices.  For example, after stealing a valuable map from an old lady, David has to confess what he does to Jenny.  He says, “We’re not clever like you, so we have to be clever in other ways, because if we weren’t, there would be no fun.  We have to be clever with… maps and… and… Do you want to know what ‘stats’ are? ‘Stats’ are old ladies who are scared of colored people.  So, we move the coloreds in and the old ladies move out, and I buy their flats cheap.  That’s what I do.  So now you know.”

And caught up in the excitement of his romantic charm, she turns a blind eye.  And then he asks her to marry him.  She drops out of school and her father supports her, thinking that she will at least be taken care of.  But then Jenny finds one last dishonesty.  David is already married and has made the same ovations of love to many other young girls.  She is devastated.

Mulligan and Sarsgaard both did a fantastic job, especially Mulligan.  She reminded me of a young Audrey Hepburn in the 1953 classic film, Roman Holiday.  She had an intelligence about her that was absolutely necessary for the character, as well as a bright and cheery disposition.  She was light and graceful with an air of nobility.  She was a delight to watch.  Sarsgaard was dashing and debonair with boyish good looks and yet a subtle dangerous mysteriousness as well.  Funny enough, he reminded me of a young Keifer Sutherland.  And the two had a really great on-screen chemistry that was easy to see.

The entire film was well-cast.  The two significant teachers at Jenny’s school, the Miss Stubs, the literature teacher who has high hopes for Jenny, played by Olivia Williams, and the school’s headmistress, Miss Walters, played by Emma Thompson, who did not allow Jenny to return to the exclusive academy after dropping out.

And the movie had a nice feel-good ending.  Jenny picks herself up emotionally and goes to Miss Stubbs at her home.  She apologizes for her impertinent behavior and asks her for special tutoring.  With a renewed sense of drive and ambition, Jenny is accepted into Oxford University, despite the interruption in her education.

The film was nominated for three Academy awards, including a Best Actress nod for Mulligan, but it sadly took home none.  It was a nice little breath of fresh air that didn’t rely on big names or a big epic story, or even a big budget to lend it credence.  It simply told a nice little story with a bit of drama, delivered by a competent cast of actors.  But let’s be honest.  Though it was a good movie, it never really had a chance of winning the Best Picture award.  It was just too small.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

District 9 – 2009

This was a science fiction based movie about real-life socio-political science.  It is based on a short film, Alive in Joburg, by Neill Blomkamp, the man who also wrote and directed District 9.  It explores themes of xenophobia and social segregation.  The story was apparently inspired by the events in District 6 in Cape Town during the apartheid era, in which sixty thousand people were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to suburban ghettos.

This connection was easy to make.  There was a realism in the film, despite its science fiction nature.  It was all presented in the style of a found-footage documentary.  Character interviews, security camera feeds, and news program footage make up nearly the whole film, although at times this has to be somewhat discounted.  For example, for half the movie, a man is on the run and yet the camera clearly follows him as he tries to hide.  And yet the shaky, hand-held camerawork never goes away, as if the character is being followed by a news crew.

The year is 1982.  An extra-terrestrial ship arrives on Earth, full of sick and malnourished aliens.  They are bipedal insectoids with moderate apparent intelligence and a propensity towards violent and unpredictable behavior.  The somewhat dangerous creatures are segregated into a run-down shanty-town outside of Johannesburg.  Twenty-eight years later, the locals demand that the aliens be removed to a new camp.  Multinational United, or MNU, is a private military company that is hired to forcibly move the alien population to a different area.

A bumbling corporate “yes” man named Wikus van de Merwe, played by first-time actor, Sharito Coplry, is put in charge of the relocation force.  He is not terribly bright, and displays ceaseless prejudices against the undesirable aliens.  But for all his species, or one might use the word “racial” slurs, calling the aliens “prawns”, he is portrayed as a good natured man who is only prejudice because everyone is.    During the day when eviction notices are given to the alien residents of District 9, Wikus is sprayed with a strange biochemical fluid.  And here is where, for me, the movie turns from its commentary on politics, racism, prejudice and social injustice, and becomes a horror movie.

The infected Wikus undergoes a transformation in which he turns into one of the insect-like aliens.  His hand turns into a claw.  The fingernails of his other hand begin to peel off.  Horrifying growths begin appearing all over his body.  Over the course of the film, as his transformation progresses, Wikus is horrified and disgusted by what is happening to him.  He is slowly turning into an inhuman monster.  And for some reason, for me, that is the stuff of nightmares.

But really, that is only part of the plot.  What is more important is what the MNU does to Wikus when they discover his condition.  They begin to experiment on him, and eventually decide to dissect him.  Wikus is terrified of his growing physical deformities, and even more terrified by the way his fellow humans turn on him.  Not to mention being separated by his deformity from his poor wife, Tania, played by Vanessa Haywood.  The plot was unique and well told.

That is… until about two-thirds the way through the movie, at which point it becomes a science fiction action thriller, complete with an armored robot battle, a gun fight, and a horrifying death by dismemberment for the main villain, the evil and psychotic military man, Colonel Koobus Venter, played by David James.

The aliens themselves were almost portrayed as mindless savages, except for the smart one in the orange vest, named Christopher Johnson, played by Jason Cope, and his uber-intelligent son.  Wikus escapes his tormentors and hides out inside District 9.  He teams up with Christopher to recover the canister of biochemical fluid that will power the space ship and allow the aliens to leave Earth.  Christopher says he can reverse Wikus’ metamorphoses, but after learning that humans are torturing and experimenting on his people, he leaves to get reinforcements to save them, leaving the poor man to completely transform into an alien.

But the most horrifying part, for me is that it is clearly shown that Wikus retains his own human mind, even though his body is now just that of another alien, one of two and a half million of them living in the new alien ghetto, which looks like a garbage landfill.  Very, very sad.  The man in the body of a monster, waiting in vain for Christopher to return to make him human again.  Again, I know it wasn’t the main focus of the movie, but for me, it was the plot’s most disturbing aspect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Blind Side – 2009

I enjoyed this movie much more than I thought I would.  Before going into it, I assumed it was a sports movie.  Rich white woman takes a poor black guy under her wing and inspires him to excel on the football field.  Something happens and he loses confidence right before the big game, but just when the game seems lost, he triumphs over his demons and wins.  That is what I thought I would be watching.  Thank goodness I was wrong.

The football is secondary to the plot.  The movie is about several things.  One is the journey of the poor black kid, another is the developing relationship between the woman and the boy.  Another is the idea that if a child is never pushed to do well in school, the bad grades might not be an accurate reflection of the youth’s intelligence.  And whose fault is it anyway?  Is it the kid, or the parents and teachers who wrote the youngster off as dumb?

This movie is based on the true story of Michael Oher, played by Quinton Aaron, a young black man who happens to be a natural-born offensive tackle.  By the time he is old enough to play college football, he has coasted through school without ever learning anything.  His teachers would constantly give him the minimum passing grade just to get him out of their class.  When his father dies and his crack-whore mother disappears, Michael becomes homeless.

In steps Leigh Ann Tuohy, played by Sandra Bullock.  She is the wife of Sean, played by Tim McGraw, a very wealthy businessman.  They have two beautiful children, Collins and S.J, played by Lily Collins and Jae Head.  Leigh Ann is also a devout Christian with a caring nature.  When she sees Michael wandering the streets alone in the cold, she takes pity on him and invites him to sleep on her couch.  Fortunately, the rest of the family instantly grows attached to him as well.

A relationship develops between Leigh Ann and Michael.  She invites him to stay with them and even gives him his own room in the house.  Even further, she eventually becomes his legal guardian.  At the same time, Michael’s grades improve in school, and because of his size, the Touhy family encourage him to join the football team, even though he has never played the game in his life.  He doesn’t know the first thing about the sport.  But he learns, slowly at first, but with encouragement and training from the Touhys, he takes to it like a fish to water.  One of the most fun parts of the movie was when little S.J. sends a video of Michael dominating a football field to college recruiters.  They see him and recognize his natural talent.  After that, they are falling all over themselves to lure him to play ball at their colleges, sending head coaches to the Touhy house to make him their best offers.

The only thing in his way are his scholastic grades which have never been important to him.  In order to be accepted into any college, he has to get a better GPA.  Leigh Ann hires Miss Sue, a private tutor, played by Kathy Bates.  With enough personal attention, Michael gets the grades he needs and accepts the offer from Sean and Leigh Ann’s alma mater, Ole Miss.  But then an investigator is sent from the NCAA to determine if the Touhy family adopted him just so he could play for Ole Miss, which brings into question Leigh Ann’s moral ethics.  The investigation makes Michael doubt her motives for ever taking him in in the first place.  The issue might be a problem as it might be the start of a trend of white families adopting inner city kids for the sole purpose of boosting their alma mater’s football teams.

And to the film’s credit, the character of Leigh Ann questions herself, asking if she did the right thing for the right reasons.  And in this conflict, an unanswered question that I mistook for a plot hole was addressed.  The Touhy family pushed him to be a football player without ever asking him what he wanted, a fact that was not lost on me.  Finally, during a break in the NCAA investigation, Leigh Ann asks Michael what had been on my mind for half the movie.  Did he even wants to play football?  Nobody had ever bothered to ask.

Now I have to make special mention of two things I really liked about the movie.  The first is Michael’s emotional essay on the nature of courage, inspired by Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade.  It is really the testament to Michael’s efforts to improve his grades.  Second is the character of Sean Touhy.  Sure, Bullock was great, and the one who took home the Best Actress Oscar for the movie, but it was Tim McGraw who really created a character who I fell in love with.  He was handsome, charming, intelligent, calm, and good natured.  He was a good husband, a wonderful parent, and a solid father figure to Michael.  Characters like that always impress me.  Good writing and good acting.  Well done everyone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Avatar – 2009

Avatar was a true science fiction film, a spectacle for the senses.  It was a big blockbuster film with dazzling visuals which were largely CGI, a competent cast of actors, and masterful direction by one of the biggest names in Hollywood, James Cameron.  In fact, Cameron has said that the film was roughly 60% CGI and 40% live action.  But the CGI was so well-done that it didn’t matter.  The use of motion capture and improved methods of capturing facial expressions made for completely alien characters that looked as real as anyone had ever seen.

The attention to detail was amazing.  Cameron created an alien world that had just enough earth-like realism to make it look believable, and just enough pure fantasy to make it magical.  And what changed the visuals from impressive to spectacular was the use of color.  The use of iridescent and phosphorescent illuminations as lighting was very other-worldly.  Bright glowing pinks, purples, greens, and blues made it look both beautiful and mystical.

And the aliens themselves were so perfectly designed, with their blue skin, their giant-like size, their tails, and their all too human faces.  The whole concept of the film, and what gives the movie its name, is that human beings grow alien bodies, into which they can install their own minds, controlling them as they would their own bodies.  In other words, avatars.  They do this in order to interact and develop peaceful relations with the alien species.  Why?  Because the planet on which they live contains an incredibly rare and valuable metal called, and I personally think this was a really dumb name, unobtanium.  But never-mind that.  To get their hands on this metal, humans are perfectly willing to murder the planet’s native population, the Na’vi.  Of course, the egg-heads want to study the aliens without destroying them.  It is the evil military men and the soulless corporate men who will stop at nothing to get their greedy hands on the unobtanium.

As the film begins, we learn that a man is perfectly suited to be part of both camps.  He is Jake Sully, an ex-military man who has been paralyzed from the waist down, played by Sam Worthington.  His scientist twin brother, who’d had an avatar grown specifically for his own genetic code to use, died, and Jake, whose DNA is similar enough to his twin, is able to use it.

On the scientist side, we have Dr. Grace Augustine, played by Sigourney Weaver, Dr. Spellman, played by Joel David Moore, and Dr. Max Patel, played by Dileep Rao.  The movie’s resident bad guy is the testosterone engorged military madman, Colonel Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang.  His heartless corporate counterpart is Parker Selfridge, played by Giovanni Ribisi.  In between the two opposing sides is a military pilot who is sympathetic to the Na’vi, Trudy Chacon, played by Michelle Rodriguez.  The aboriginal, warrior-like Na’vi include Jake’s love interest Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana, the tribe’s chief, Eytukan, played by Wes Studi, the tribe’s shaman, Mo’at, played by C.C.H. Pounder, and the warrior who is destined to be the next chief, Tsu’tey, played by Laz Alonso.  And there’s the cast.

As you might easily expect with a film directed by James Cameron, the plot gets pretty preachy about environmentalism and the evil nature of corporate greed and an unfeeling, jar-head, military attitude.  Technology is to blame for destroying nature.  Human beings are generally a horrible lot who carelessly destroy anything that gets in the way of their insatiable avarice.

And on the flip side, the film clearly paints the nature dwelling natives as peaceful people who are just trying to defend their homes.  Like the American Indians?  But what I really like about them is their incredibly unique and fascinating connection to the natural world in which they live.  Through special tendrils sprouting from their heads, the Na’vi are able to physically connect with and mentally commune with most living creatures on the planet and even to special trees, in which live the spirits of their ancestors.  This amazing connection allows them to control the animals, but also develop an emotional and mystical bond with all of nature.  It is a beautiful and unique world, despite Cameron and his environmentalist soap box.

To make a nearly three-hour long story short, Jake, through his avatar, is able to become trusted by the Na’vi as one of their own.  The genocidal Quaritch wants him to betray them, but Jake goes native and ends up leading the aliens in a revolt that defeats the evil humans and their technological destruction machines.  Like I said, the visuals were stunning.  The realism in this mostly CGI world was jaw-dropping and the film really deserved the Oscars it won for Best Visual Effects, Best Cinematography, and Best Art Direction.  The movie was a true feast for the senses and a beautifully made science-fiction masterpiece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Reader – 2008

This was a good movie with a very unique plot.  It stars Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, and David Kross.  The performances were good, especially Winslet.  The movie, at its core, was a love story, but it was very unconventional in its approach.  There was also a subplot having to do with the Holocaust, but despite what many critics complain about, it was not a Holocaust movie.  It was a romance that involved two complex characters.

Kross played the character of Michael Berg as a teenager.  Fiennes played him as an adult. As an interesting little note, I thought Kross looked more like a young Michael York than a Ralph Fiennes, though York would have been far too old to play the adult Michael.  Winslet played his lover, Hannah Schmitz in both time periods.  In the latter parts of the film, they gave Winslet the old age makeup, which reportedly took seven hours to apply every day.

Anyway, the story was about young Michael who meets and has an affair with the older Hannah.  She is very controlling and often insensitive to the boy, but he latches on to her with a love born of infatuation and she teaches him about sex.  Michael is still in school, studying to be a lawyer.  Seeing his school books, Hannah asks him to read to her.  She insists that being read to should become a part of their trysts. But eventually the affair ends because Hannah gets a promotion at her job.  You see, Hannah is illiterate and her promotion would cause her shameful secret to be discovered.

But really, that is all setup for the moral dilemma of the plot.  Years later, Michael’s law class attends a trial which accuses a number of German women of a Nazi war crime.  The accused women allegedly locked three hundred Jewish women in a church while it burned down.  Among the defendants is Hannah.  For me, this is where Winslet really earned her Oscar.  Her character was not very intelligent.  It wasn’t the fact that she allowed all the other defendants to put most of the blame for the travesty on her in order to hide her illiteracy from the court.  It was because of her strange attitude towards the horrible event itself.

When asked about her compliance in the cruel deaths that were being called murders, she was not only honest and matter-of-fact about it, she actually defended what had happened.  She seemed confused as to why she was on trial, what she had done wrong.  She was confused about why the other women were denying what they had done.  When asked, “To make room, (for new arrivals at the concentration camp) you were picking women out and saying ‘you and you and you have to be sent back (to Auschwitz) to be killed.’”  Her uncertain but honest response was, “Well, what would you have done?  Should I never have signed up (to be a guard) at Siemens?”

And when asked about why they had refused to unlock the church doors, she responded by saying, “Obviously.  For the obvious reason.  We couldn’t.”  “Why couldn’t you?”  “We were guards.  Our job was to guard the prisoners.  We couldn’t just let them escape.”  And further, “If we’d opened the doors there would have been chaos.  How could we have restored order?”  Winslet made me believe that the character of Hannah really believed what she was saying, that it would have been wrong of her to open the doors.  It was a wonderful moment in the film that really drove the character and her motivations home.  Well done, Kate!

And here is where the main conflict of the plot is finally addressed.  It concerned the young Michael’s moral dilemma, when, during the trial, he realizes that Hannah could not have written the incriminating document for which she was sentenced to life imprisonment.  He has to decide whether he should tell the court, or abide by her obvious wishes to keep her illiteracy a secret, and allow her to be judged unfairly.  As penance for keeping her secret, Michael spends years of his life sending her cassette recordings of himself reading books to her.  And using his recordings, Hannah teaches herself how to read and write.

But the ending is sad.  Having learned to read, she reads a book written by one of the few survivors of the church fire massacre in which the horrific events are described in detail.  Hannah finally understands, and in a fit of guilt and remorse, she hangs herself.  Yes, there were other sub plots, one in particular involving Ilana Mather, the survivor who wrote the book, played by Lena Olin, was interesting.  But all in all, it was a very unique story that made me think, and was well-told, despite all the nudity, which at times, almost seemed a little gratuitous.  Incidentally, I read that the sex scenes were filmed last after David Cross turned eighteen.  The film’s director, Stephen Daldry, should be commended.