Category: Nominees – 2010s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Captain Phillips – 2013

This was a good movie, but one that only needs to be watched once.  It is a historical drama that chronicled the harrowing experience of merchant mariner, Captain Richard Phillips, who was the Captain of the Maersk Alabama, a container ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009.  It had some good drama which, from what I have read, was fairly true to history.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, Phillips’ first mate, Shane Murphy, said that he was satisfied with how the movie portrayed both Phillips and himself, and stated that he was only disappointed that the film didn’t show footage of the crews’ families at home or the president’s comments on the hijacking.

Tom Hanks is one of those actors who can seem to do no wrong.  Not only is he a master of his craft, turning in one memorable performance after another, but I hear that he is just a super-nice guy.  He always seems to throw his heart and soul into his acting, delivering real emotion and honest gravitas.  I have never seen him in a film in which I wasn’t thoroughly entertained.  Here, of course, he played the title role of Captain Phillips.  He knows his shipping rout takes him through pirate infested waters, and he tries to be as prepared as he can be.

But the pirates are desperate men driven by fear, machismo, and greed.  They are young men who work for an African warlord who forces them at gunpoint to their piratical endeavors.  The main pirate is Abduwali Muse, played by Barkhad Abdi.  With him are Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, and Mahat M. Ali, as Muse’s fellow criminals, Adan Bilal, Nour Najee, and Walid Elmi.  When the pirates first attack the ship, Phillips uses trickery to turn them back.  But when a group of four pirates take it upon themselves to return for a second attempt, they are successful.  They board the ship armed with guns.  The scene when they threaten the lives of Phillips and his helmsman, Mike Perry, played by Corey Johnson, is terribly nerve-wracking.

Phillips’ first mate, Shane Murphey, played by Michael Chemus, and his Chief Engineer, played by David Warshofsky, were able to subdue two of the four armed men.  They worked out a deal in which the pirates would go free along with the thirty thousand dollars in the ship’s safe.  The defeated pirates agreed and were ready to leave in a lifeboat, but things went from bad to worse when the pirates decided to take Phillips with them as a hostage, demanding a $10 million ransom.

After that, the U.S. Military got involved.  The Navy Seals were mobilized to get Phillips back unharmed.  In my head, I knew that at that point, the four uneducated schmucks from Somali were screwed.  You don’t mess with the Seals.  After a long and harrowing chase fraught with failed negotiations and an escape attempt, the Seals arrived and ended the situation… quickly.  Muse is the only one of the four to survive.  The rest were all shot simultaneously by Seal snipers.  Hank’s reaction in this scene was very emotional, making me feel his relief with him.

The film’s director, Paul Greengrass, did a fantastic job of building the tension slowly until the climax had me on the edge of my seat.  And then, when Phillips is finally rescued, Hanks was really given a chance to shine.  The traumatized Captain is in shock and nearly incoherent.  Then the relieved tears began, and I found that my own eyes were no longer dry.  If I had any real complaint about the film, it has to do with a trend in filmmaking that is so common nowadays, but one that I rarely like.  The entire movie was filmed with a hand-held camera, giving the movie a more real and documentary-like feel.  It also has the effect of making the action feel more serious.  But for me, the constant unsteady motion is just annoying.  It can even give me an upset stomach.  I understand that they are trying to put the viewer in the middle of the action, but it was just a little too much for me.

Now, although the story was very historically accurate, there was one aspect of reality which the film got pretty wrong.  The fact of the matter is that Captain Phillips was not as much of a hero as the movie depicts.  Apparently, a few members of his crew said that Phillips ignored safety in order to make money by delivering the cargo faster.  More than half the crew of the Maersk Alabama filed lawsuits against him, claiming that he sailed too close to the Somali coastline, despite warnings of pirate activity in the area.  But the film actually did address the crew dissatisfaction with the dangers of the job.  They said they didn’t sign up for dealing with pirates.  Phillips’ response was that they knew what they were getting themselves into, and if they didn’t like the danger, they were welcome to disembark at the next port.

And as a last thought, I have to mention that Barkhad Abdi, the leader of the pirates, was widely recognized by critics as an outstanding actor.  But I disagree.  It isn’t that the actor did a bad job, but that the role itself wasn’t worth a Best Supporting Actor nomination.  I didn’t see how the role was any more dramatic or demanding than those of his fellow pirates.  But hey, what do I know?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Hustle – 2013

Spoiler Alert

This was one of those movies that I have really been looking forward to. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was about, but it had a great and talented cast and it was billed as a dark comedy, a genre of which I am particularly fond. I saw the poster and liked its look and the way it clearly evoked the early 80s. I had visions of watching a film about some kind of team based heist like the popular movie Oceans 11. But when I saw the film, I didn’t get what I was expecting, and I think that was all for the better.

What I got was a movie that was loosely based on the FBI ABSCAM operation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. And I do mean loosely based. In fact, the film opens with a message on the screen saying, “Some of this actually happened.” In other words, we’re telling you right from the start that historical accuracy is not our goal here, and because of that honesty, I was completely on board.

The movie starred four actors who were nominated for the four acting awards on Oscar night. For Best Actor and Actress, we were treated to Christian Bale and Amy Adams, playing con artists and lovers, Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prossler. Then there was the FBI agent, Richie DiMaso, played by Bradley Cooper, who arrests them and makes a deal with them. In this deal the con artists agree to line up four bigger arrests for the FBI. But things go awry when Irving’s young wife, Rosalyn, played by Jennifer Lawrence, starts making waves. She is beautiful but selfish, manipulative, and unintelligent.

DiMaso wants to become famous for the major sting operation in which he hopes to arrest and convict corrupt high profile criminals and politicians. The first one he goes after is the Mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Carmine Polito, played by Jeremy Renner. The movie also has a few supporting roles played by notable actors like comedian Louis C. K. as Stoddard Thorson, Richie’s FBI supervisor, Michael Pena as Paco Hernandez, or the phony Sheik in the con, and an uncredited Robert De Niro as Mafia boss, Victor Tellegio. The one scene in the film, in which De Niro appears is one of the most intense scenes in the entire movie. He is the kind of mobster who will make sure you are killed if you cross him. He almost sees through the con, insisting that the Mexican-American FBI agent to speak to him in Arabic.

But the scam works a little too well. Mayor Polito is a man who really wants to help his citizens, and buys the con, hook, line, and sinker. He wants to build hotels and casinos in Atlantic City, and of course, when legalized gambling comes into play, the Mafia gets involved. The con starts spinning out of DiMaso’s control. On top of that, he starts to fall in love with Sydney, while a jealous Rosalyn starts an affair with a mobster, to whom she nearly divulges the entire operation.

The film continues and almost becomes a character study as we try to discern who is conning who, what their motivations are, and how it will all turn out. Not only did Bale, Adams, Cooper, and Lawrence do a fantastic job but I think special props have to be given to Renner, who easily kept up with them. I’m a little surprised he wasn’t nominated for an acting award as well.

I also liked the details in the film’s aesthetics. Michael Wilkinson was nominated for the Oscar for Best Costume Design, and it was well-deserved. David O. Russell was also nominated for Best Director, and the film was nominated for Film Editing, Production Design, and Writing, Original Screenplay. With all ten nominations the movie received, I am surprised American Hustle didn’t win anything.

Now, even though the film acknowledged the fact that they were not going for historical accuracy, it is interesting to know some of the facts that were changed to make the film more entertaining. For example, the film portrays Carmine Polito as a basically honest politician who gets suckered into corrupt behavior. But in reality, Angelo Errichetti, the man on whom the character was based, was already a corrupt politician before he was approached by the FBI and their convicted con artists. In the movie, Sydney was an American girl who was masquerading as a British aristocrat named Lady Edith Greensly. There is drama when her true identity is revealed to DiMaso. In reality, Evelyn Knight, the inspiration for her character, actually was British, though not an aristocrat, and she was barely involved in the ABSCAM operation.

The end of the movie was pretty satisfying. Irving and Sydney not only avoid going to jail, but are able to blackmail the FBI into giving them immunity in the scandal, and go legit as art dealers. The ABSCAM operation is a huge success and Polito, along with one corrupt Senator, six members of the House of Representatives, three Philadelphia City Councilmen, and one inspector for the US Immigration and Naturalization Service are convicted of felonies. DiMaso gets taken off the case for his incompetence, and his career is ruined. Meanwhile Rosalyn ends up with Pete, the Mafia man, played by Jack Huston. Everyone seemed to get exactly what they deserved. Cheers to a well-written script and a great cast of talented actors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zero Dark Thirty – 2012

I didn’t care for this movie, not because it was a bad movie, but because I just wasn’t interested in the subject matter.  It was a historical drama documenting the ten year search for the international terrorist who engineered the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, Osama Bin Laden.  The film, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, was very similar in feel to her other Best Picture Nominated film, The Hurt Locker, which won the top prize in 2008.

The movie was well-made, had some competent acting, and a definite point of view.  But like The Hurt Locker, there was an air of self-indulgent self-importance about it that I didn’t like, and apparently a lot of historical inaccuracies.  It promoted itself as a hard-hitting and definitively true story, but the number of historical falsehoods for the sake of dramatic tension damaged its credibility.  To address this, Wikipedia did a good job of clearly defining what I was already thinking.  “Former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Graham T. Allison, has opined that the film is inaccurate in three important regards: the overstatement of the positive role of enhanced interrogation methods, the understatement of the role of the Obama administration, and the portrayal of the efforts as being driven by one agent battling against the CIA ‘system.’”

The first part of the movie was glorified torture porn.  It was graphic and unapologetic.  But it was there to introduce the main character, Maya, played by Jessica Chastain.  She is a CIA operative who is newly arrived in Pakistan.  It is her job to track down and capture or kill Osama Bin Laden.  I didn’t like the way the movie made it seem like it was just Maya and the tiny team she worked with who were the only ones looking for him.  And as the movie progressed, everyone else either seemed to lose interest, lose hope of success, or were killed off in terrorist attacks, so that in the end, she was the only one left, obsessively continuing the search.

The movie came under a lot of criticism because it implied that Bin Laden was ultimately located based on the information obtained through torture, which is false.  But the scenes were there to show how the beautiful and delicate-looking Maya was just as hard and un-squeamish about the practice of torture as the guys.  They were also saying to the audience, “Look!  This movie is going to show you gritty reality.  We’re not going to shy away from the dark side of what the CIA really did to find the terrorist.”  I get it, but it felt a little heavy-handed.

Maya had a few fellow CIA operatives, like Dan, Jessica, George, Joseph, Jack, Steve, ‘The Wolf’, Jeremy, Debbie, Larry, Hakim, and John.  These various parts were played by some recognizable names like Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, James Gandolfini, and Harold Perrineau.  But it was hard for me to keep track of any of the character names because their names were rarely used, except for Dan and Jessica, played by Jason Clarke and Jennifer Ehle.  Dan was important because he did most of the torturing at the beginning, though I at least liked that the character left to go back to the states because the terrible job burned him out.  And Jessica had the distinction of being Maya’s friend who gets killed in a terrorist bombing.

And then there was the film’s half-true climax.  From the torture at the film’s beginning, information is gained and leads are followed.  Unnamed characters would magically show up with just the information Maya needed to continue her investigation and then disappear, never to be seen on the screen again.  This leads to almost randomly finding Osama Bin Laden’s courier and tailing him to a heavily fortified compound in Abbottabad.

The house is put under surveillance, even though there is absolutely no direct evidence that Bin Laden is there.  But somehow Maya becomes convinced that he is.  She fights with her superiors to get them to covertly raid the complex.  She is so persuasive that the National Security Advisor, played by Stephen Dillane, assigns a team of Navy Seals to take two super-secret stealth helicopters and attack the complex.  Among the team are two recognizable names, Joel Edgerton and Chris Pratt as Patrick and Justin.  But again, the actual names didn’t seem to matter.  The mission is successful and, of course, Maya’s groundless beliefs prove to be true.  Osama Bin Laden is killed and his body is taken by the team of Seals.

But in reality, they found Bin Laden because a Pakistani ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence, walk-in gave him up for the $25 million reward, something which the White House has denied.  But I guess that’s not as exciting or dramatic as torture and obsessive investigating.  So I suppose that Zero Dark Thirty was good enough to watch once, but only once.  Just don’t mistake it for a true depiction of real events.  And just as a final interesting note, it is true that the film was criticized because the film opened with actual 9/11 victims voice recordings as a voice-over, but they were used without the family member’s knowledge or permission.  You couldn’t just get some actors to do that? Not cool Bigelow!  Not cool!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silver Linings Playbook – 2012

This was a better movie than I remember it being.  I first saw this film when it was in theaters back in 2012.  I remember it being slow and boring, with characters to whom I couldn’t relate.  I thought the plot was contrived and unrealistic.  But after watching it a second time, I have changed my opinion.  The movie actually had some pretty spectacular acting, and some great directing.  It had a smart script and I really enjoyed it this time around.

The movie starred Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as people with mental problems, people who other people were afraid to be around.  Cooper plays Patrizio “Pat” Solitano Jr.  He is severely bipolar with a tendency for dangerous violent outbursts.  He has no control of his own emotions and no filter on his mouth.  Lawrence plays Tiffany Maxwell, a young widow dealing with clinical depression.  The film begins as Pat’s mother is taking him out of a mental institution.  Pat had caught his wife cheating on him, and had nearly beaten her lover to death.

Now, as Pat gains his freedom, he stops taking his medication because he doesn’t like how it makes him feel.  He is obsessed with winning back his wife’s affections, but must keep a distance from her because of a restraining order.  He meets Tiffany through his friend Ronnie and his wife Veronica, played by John Ortiz and Julia Stiles.  There seems to be an instant connection between Pat and Tiffany.

Pat must also deal with his parents, Pat Sr. and Dolores, played by Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver.  His mother is the consummate peacemaker of the household, but Pat Sr. is extremely obsessive compulsive, and has his own issues with violent outbursts.  He is also a compulsive gambler.  Three more characters round out the main cast.  Chris Tucker plays Danny, one of Pat’s former inmates at the mental hospital, Shea Whigham playing Jake, Pat’s brother, and Anupam Kher as Pat’s therapist and friend.

The main interest of the film is the romance that blossoms between Pat and Tiffany, of course, and Cooper and Lawrence had a great on-screen chemistry.  I especially liked Cooper’s performance, though it was Lawrence who took home the Oscar for Best Actress.  It is important to note that Silver Linings Playbook was nominated for a total of eight awards, and was the first film since 2004’s Million Dollar Baby that was nominated for the Big Five Awards at the Academy Awards, which includes Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay.  It was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

The film’s depiction of mental illness was very realistically portrayed.  Cooper had all the right mannerisms for someone with bipolar disorder, especially when it is shown that he is not taking his medication.  He had the fast and rambling speech, the disregard for other people.  The frightening violence, the confusion, and even the way he was never quite in touch with reality, was so perfectly played.  When he accidentally hits his mother and gets into a fist fight with his father, he is inspired to start taking his medications.  Cooper really impressed me.  Well done Bradley!

So Pat is obsessed with getting back together with his wife Nikki, played in the film’s climax by Brea Bee.  Tiffany agrees to ignore the restraining order and pass a letter from Pat to Nikki.  In exchange Pat agrees to take part in a dance competition in which Tiffany wants to compete.  The two work together, knowing that they will never win, but just wanting to compete.  Then things get serious when Pat Sr.’s compulsive gambling expands a football bet to include the dance competition.  Not only do the Philadelphia Eagles have to win against the Dallas Cowboys, but Pat and Tiffany have to get a score of at least 5.0 in the competition.  If either of these wagers are lost, Pat Sr. will lose all his money.

With so much riding on his dancing, Pat is nervous.  But to make matters worse, Nikki actually shows up to watch the competition.  And all that brings me to the film’s worst flaw, and by that I mean its ultimate predictability.  We all know what’s going to happen, don’t we?  Pat realizes that Tiffany is the woman he truly loves and not his ex-wife.  But right before the end, she sees him talking to Nikki.  She thinks he has succeeded in winning her back and leaves the dance hall in tears.  But of course, he is really just telling Nikki that he doesn’t want her back.  He chases after Tiffany and declares his love and the two of them share their first kiss in the street.    Sadly, you see it coming a mile away and there is no surprise, no chance of failure.

But really, this is a minor flaw.  I enjoyed watching the movie.  The script made up for its problems with its all too realistic depictions of bipolar disorder and clinical depression.  In my life, I have known people struggling with those illnesses, and I know the signs when I see them.  Cooper and Lawrence were fantastic, animated, and yet not too over-the-top.  The film’s director, David O. Russell, should be commended for his efforts.  I’m glad I got to give this film a second chance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lincoln – 2012

Abraham Lincoln will always be remembered as the president who abolished the horrific practice of slavery in the United States.  We all know the stories about how he ended the Civil War and about his tragic assassination.  But who knows all the details?  How did he accomplish all these great things?  What obstacles did he have to overcome?  Who were the people who opposed him?  Who were his allies?  Who were his family?  What kind of a man was he?  Who was Abraham Lincoln?

This movie expertly uses the last four months of his presidency to answer these questions, and the result is fascinating.  Directed by Stephen Spielberg, Lincoln is a wonderful biopic, going into those little-known details concerning the man’s final months.  Daniel Day Lewis played the part that nobody thought could be played, and he did a phenomenal job.  He took home his third Oscar for Best Actor for his efforts, the other two being My Left Foot in 1990 and There Will Be Blood in 2008.  Apparently Liam Neeson originally had the part but had to drop out, so Daniel stepped in.  And thank goodness he did.  I can’t imagine anyone else doing the demanding role justice.

Sally Field played Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd Lincoln.  I think I remember hearing once that she had a questionable mental stability. But the film seemed to imply a few things I couldn’t find in my meager research.  It implied that after the death of their third son, Willie, Mary couldn’t stop crying and Abraham threatened to lock her away in a madhouse.  Maybe this was true, or maybe it was just a little foreshadowing, because it is a fact that after Lincoln’s assassination, Mary was so inconsolable that their first son, Robert, played in the film by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, actually did lock her up in an asylum.

Anyway, I really loved Sally Fields’s performance.  In fact, she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress award, though she did not win.  But the movie had a star studded cast, each of whom did a fantastic job.  Big names like Tommy Lee Jones, playing the part of Thaddeus Stevens, James Spader as William Bilbo, Hal Holbrook as Preston Blair, and David Strathairn as Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William H. Sweard, characters who were operatives and politicians involved in the House of Representatives.  Jones was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Another lesser known actor who caught my attention was Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant.  Also, playing various members of Congress were Michael Sthulbarg as George Yeaman, Peter McRobbie and Lee Pace as George Pendleton and Fernando Wood, the Thirteenth Amendment’s leading opponents, and David Costabile as James Ashley.  They all did a great job and deserve to be recognized.

The film had a rather slow pace and lasted nearly two and a half hours, but in this case, it didn’t bother me.  The drama was both interesting and informative.  The main conflict of the film was the effort of Lincoln to get the votes needed to pass the Amendment before the end of the Civil War.  They started off being twenty votes short with only a few months to go.  That’s it.  That’s the main focus of the film.  And I got excited every time a new congressman was converted.  But it was the drama of Lincoln having to deal with his family at the same time that gave the movie its gravitas.

Lincoln’s oldest son Robert felt it was his moral imperative to join the Union Army.  Mary feared that if he did, he would die like many sons were dying.  If that happened, she would forever blame her husband.  But Lincoln realized that if Robert were not allowed to enlist, he would blame his parents for the rest of his life.  The movie was really about the enormous pressures placed upon the shoulders of the President during the final months of his life.  There was even a very humanizing scene in which Lincoln slapped Robert in the face during a heated argument.  I think we tend to regard our heroes as saints, and it is easy to forget that they are just as human as everybody else.

And the scene in which the Amendment is passed was exciting to watch.  Obviously I knew the Amendment would be successful, but I was not aware it was such a close decision.  And as a side note, I also didn’t know that Lincoln’s assassination took place only two and a half months after he abolished slavery in the United States.  The film was very intense and perfectly executed.  But I expected no less from such a prolific and accomplished filmmaker like Spielberg.  And, of course, Spielberg’s long-time collaborator, John Williams provided an excellent score.

I’ve never been a huge history buff, but I recognize a well-made movie and incredible acting when I see it.  Lincoln, honestly, exceeded my expectations and I enjoyed watching it.  Whenever great or terrible things in history are accomplished, they are enacted by great or terrible historic figures.  It must stand to reason that the unknown dramas surrounding those figures would be fascinating material for cinematic greatness.  Lincoln is a film that proves this to be true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life of Pi – 2012

This was a visually stunning movie with a premise that really makes you think.  It contained a twist in the end which throws a new light on the entire film you’ve just watched.  The tale is presented as a fantasy, though the true story is eventually revealed.  It is clearly a tragic narrative, but it is the protagonist’s way of dealing with that tragedy in the telling of his story that makes the film so interesting.

Pi Patel, is our main character who we are first introduced to as an adult, played by Infan Khan.  He is being interviewed by author Yann Martel, the author of the book upon which the movie is based, played by Rafe Spall.  He is in search of his lost inspiration.  As Pi tells his story in flashback, we learn how he was raised in a zoo in India, along with his parents, Santosh and Gita, played by Adil Hussain and Tabu, and his brother Ravi, played by Ayan Khan.  Though he doesn’t have permission, he is daring enough to feed the dangerous Bengal tiger who, due to a clerical error when he was acquired for the zoo, is named Richard Parker.  Pi believes that he can see Richard Parker’s soul through his eyes.  But when he is caught trying to feed the animal from his own hand, he is made to watch the savagery of the beast as it is fed a live goat.  Pi thus learns of the soulless nature of the beast.

When he is sixteen years old, his family is forced to sell the animals of the zoo and move to Canada.  They board a Japanese shipping vessel with the animals to cross the Pacific.  In the Pacific, a great storm arises to assail the ship.  In a fantastical sequence, we see the freightliner sink into the ocean depths, taking all hands and passengers, including Pi’s family, to their watery graves.   He becomes stranded on a lifeboat along with an injured zebra, a gentle orangutan, a vicious hyena, and Richard Parker.

In quick succession, the hyena kills the injured zebra and the orangutan, the tiger kills the hyena, and Pi and Richard Parker must learn to survive together.  Pi builds a raft so that he doesn’t have to share the boat with the hungry tiger.  Eventually the two must work together to stay alive.   Pi cannot tame the wild animal, but he feeds him the fish he catches and the rainwater he collects.  Then he shouts at the tiger and pokes at him with a boat hook until he is effectively cowed.  After the two come to a mutual understanding, they learn to share the single boat.

Pi and Richard Parker experience the ravages of the sun and the sea, starvation, dehydration, and shared madness.  Caring for the tiger helps keep Pi sane, though they also share an experience of ephemeral beauty and surreal danger as a giant whale breaches the surface of the sea, destroying Pi’s raft and most of his supplies.  But then came the part of them movie that made very little sense, especially in light of the movie’s surprise twist.  They reached a mysterious carnivorous island inhabited by thousands of meerkats.  There, Pi and Richard Parker regain their strength, but go back out to the ocean before the island can consume them.

They finally reach the shores of Mexico.  Pi is heartbroken when Richard Parker leaves him without a glance or acknowledgement of friendship.  As the only survivor of the sunken shipping vessel, he is interviewed by the Japanese, to whom he tells his fantastic tale.  They don’t believe him, so he tells them the real story of his experience.  In it, the zebra was an injured sailor.  The orangutan was his mother.  The hyena was the mean spirited galley cook, played in the first part of the movie by Gerrard Depardieu.  And he himself was the tiger.  The cook killed and ate the wounded sailor, then murdered Pi’s mother and tossed her body into the sea.  Then Pi murdered the cook.  But none of that explained the significance of the flesh eating island, so I’m not sure what I missed.

The whole film cost $120 million to make, though it ultimately grossed $609 million at the box office.  The CGI work that made up most of the film’s visual effects were spectacular.  Nowhere was this more amazing than the tiger.  According to visual effects supervisor, Bill Westenhofer, the tiger was about eighty-five percent CGI and fifteen percent live.  But it all looked so real!  It was beyond incredible.  It is worth watching the movie just to see what the CGI artists were able to accomplish.

Though, there was some controversy concerning the visual effects studio, Rhythm & Hue, which provided Life of Pi with its amazing visuals.  The effects for the film were so expensive that Ang Lee neglected to recognize the CGI artists for their participation in making his film when giving his Best Director acceptance speech.  In addition to that, when Westenhofer was accepting his Oscar for Best Visual Effects, he tried to thank Rhythm & Hue, which had bankrupted itself creating the effects for Life of Pi.  But during that portion of his speech, his microphone was turned off.  Apparently, all he was trying to do was to criticize Hollywood for treating visual effects people as simple technicians instead of the artists they are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Les Miserables – 2012

This is the second adaptation of the Victor Hugo Novel of the same name to be nominated for the Best Picture award, the first being the 1935 version starring Fredric March and Charles Laughton.  This film version of the stage musical had a pretty recognizable cast with big Hollywood names like Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen.  Throw a couple of lesser known names in there like Samantha Barks and Aaron Tveit, and you have yourself a movie.  I’ll not go into a plot synopsis, but I will comment on the acting and the performances.

First of all, I’ll say that I liked the acting, but for the most part, I hated the singing.  Why?  Because they cast actors who could sing, not singers who could act.  It seems like a subtle distinction, but I think it is a critical one.  Sure, Russell Crowe is a fantastic actor, but the roll of Inspector Javert requires a powerful baritone with a clear and aggressive tone.  Crowe’s tone was so swallowed and soft that there seemed to be a lack of conviction, a trait that is central to the character.  Bonham Carter, playing the part of Madame Thenardier, had such a whispery quality to her singing that it undercut the acidic crassness of the character.

Jackman was alright as the story’s main protagonist, Jean Valjean.  Again, his acting was great, but his singing voice, while better than others in the cast, was far from perfect.  His upper register was very nasally, so much so that his high notes stuck out like sore thumbs.  Seyfried, playing the adult Cosette, similarly, had a very shrill upper register which is dangerous for a high soprano.  Hathaway’s performance as the tragic character Fantine was praised so universally that she took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but again, I have to disagree.  As a singer, myself, I know that one of the most important elements in singing a song, is being understood.  If you are so overcome with emotion while you are singing that your tears and sobbing get in the way of the song, then you’ve just failed in performing the number.  Yeah, she shed a lot of tears, but there were times in which her words, her carefully written lyrics, literally disappeared behind her crying.

And that brings me to something else I didn’t like about the music.  Remember, this is a musical.  You should be singing all your notes.  Suddenly speaking a line in a song doesn’t lend it greater emotion.  Instead, it takes me out of the song.  And this movie adaptation of the musical did that a lot.  Also, there many times when a song required the singer to hold out a long note.  But many of those held notes were cut off quickly, destroying the musical phrasing written into the music, and giving the melodic lines a more speech-like cadence.

But in doing my research, I have found an explanation for these flaws, as well as a few pitch problems which crept into the film.  Tom Hooper, the film’s director, made the choice of recording the live performances of his actors who had piano tracks playing in their ear-pieces.  Then the instrumentation was added later.  The advantage to this method was that the actors were allowed more freedom to emote during their performances.  On the other hand, there is a reason why studio recordings sound so good.

Also, as a side note, I’ll mention that I really liked that nearly all the music from the stage show was kept in the movie. The only exception to this was one that was really annoying.  The young Cosette, played by Elizabeth Allen, only gets one song in the entire show.  For some unknown reason, an entire verse was removed from her number Castle on a Cloud.  The whole unabridged song is under two minutes.  They kept everything else in.  Why not this?  In fact, one of the musical’s original composers, Claude-Michael Schonberg, returned to write a  whole new song called Suddenly, in which ValJean sings about what suddenly having a daughter means to him.  The first time I saw this movie years ago, I thought the song wasn’t necessary.  But now, I like the character development the song provides.  Unfortunately, it had a really sparse instrumentation compared to the rest of the show.  This had the unfortunate result of making it seem like it didn’t belong.  It was pretty, but felt very out of place.

But to give proper credit, I thought some of the cast did a pretty good job.  Redmayne stood out to me as a good singer who really seemed to understand his character of Marius, and Barks was a really good Eponine.  Her singing was very good and her death scene was very touching.

And finally, I have to make mention of the most emotional part of the plot for me.  It brings me to tears every time.  There is a scene in the beginning in which the Bishop of Digne, played by Colm Wilkinson, lies to preventing Valjean from going back to prison for stealing the church’s silver.  He not only gives him all he was trying to steal, but even more silver that he hadn’t tried to steal.  After the police leave, he tells Valjean to use the silver to become an honest man.  “I have saved your soul for God.”  And it is this act of kindness which propels the rest of the story.  So beautifully written.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Django Unchained – 2012

I liked this movie a lot!  It was just really fun to watch.  But one of the first questions I have to answer honestly about Django Unchained is, what was it about the film that I liked?  What do all of Quinten Tarantino’s films have in common?  Excessive violence.  When we go to see one of the famous director’s films, we know what we are in for.  We expect it, and we aren’t really satisfied if we don’t get it.  We love his over-the-top style, the heavily stylized blood and gore, and the almost comical, cartoonish violence.

And this film certainly delivered.  But in my experience, Tarantino’s style encompasses two kinds of violence.  There is the gratuitous violence, and the serious violence.  The movie gave us both kinds.  It takes place in the pre-Civil War west and the Antebellum south, and that being said, it is important to note that the film is meant for entertainment, not historical accuracy.

The trick is that the serious violence, the violence that dealt with slavery and the cruelties perpetrated against black slaves by their white oppressors, was accurate enough.  At one point a white slave owner allows a runaway slave to be torn apart by rabid dogs.  Then later, when Django retaliates and goes on a killing spree at that slave owner’s plantation, the gratuitous, and sometimes comical violence came into play.  And yes, I loved it all.

The story begins with the meeting of two men.  Django, played by Jamie Foxx, is a slave who is being led through the wilderness.  He has been separated from his wife, beaten, and whipped.  Dr. King Schultz, played by Christopher Waltz, is a German bounty hunter who dislikes slavery but loves money.  He knows that Django would be able to recognize his current target, and so goes out of his way to free Django by killing his slavers.

The two men become instant friends.  Schultz teaches Django the bounty hunting trade, and most importantly, teaches him to shoot.  The two friends become partners and make a lot of money killing and catching criminals.  But eventually, they agree to track town Django’s wife Broomhilda, played by Kerry Washington.  She is owned by the sadistic southern gentleman, Calvin J. Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.  Candie is into Mandingo fighting, or the practice of entering slaves into death matches against each other.

Our heroes concoct a plan in which they will approach Candie, offering him twelve thousand dollars for one of his best Mandingo fighters, but with the intention of also purchasing Django’s wife.    The almost succeed but for two things.  The first is Candie’s loyal head house slave, Stephen, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who figures out the plan and tips Candie off.  The second is Dr. Schultz’s moral center which drives him to murder Candie rather than shake his hand.  You see, after Django and Schiltz’s plot is revealed, Candie chastises them but agrees to simply sell Broomhilda for the twelve thousand dollars.  Everything would have been fine if Schultz would have only shaken his hand to seal the deal.  But after seeing how cruelly Candie treated his slaves, he murders him instead, after which he is instantly killed, himself.  Then the bloodbath begins.  Django kills white man after white man before being captured, giving himself up to save his wife’s life.

But he quickly escapes and returns to the plantation to get his woman.  He gets the drop on the few survivors and kills them all in cold blood.  He kills Stephen, and in a comical turn, he shoots Candie’s innocent sister.  When the bullet hits her, she flies backward as if she’s been tied to a runaway train.  Then he proceeds to blow the mansion up.  Never-mind the fact that the dynamite was in a single area of the house, but the spectacular explosion came from every area of the building.

As for the stand-out member of the cast, I have to recognize Christopher Waltz.  He was great, creating a character with style, personality, panache, humor, and a fair amount of pathos.  I haven’t seen him in many films, but he always seems to turn in a fantastic performance.  Foxx was alright but his character was a little one-note.  He simply played a modern-day gangster in an old west setting.  True, it happened to work for this movie, but Waltz was just better.

As with all of Tarantino’s films, the music plays an important part.  He has an uncanny knack for choosing the perfect pieces of music to fit any scene.  In fact, very little music was actually written for the film.  Other musical selections, in this case, mostly from between 1966 and 1974 were used.

In fact, the entire film was Tarantino’s homage to the Spaghetti Western genre, based on the 1966 Italian Spaghetti Western film which was just called Django.  It is interesting to note that the man who played the title role in that film, Franco Nero, had a bit part in Django Unchained.  Other notable actors like Tom Wopat of The Dukes of Hazard fame, and Don Johnson from Miami Vice, also had cameo roles.  It is also fun to note that the title, Django Unchained, is an homage to both the 1959 film Hercules Unchained, and the 1970 movie, Angel Unchained.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beasts of the Southern Wild – 2012

This was a very well-made film.  It was a depressing drama that sported an air of hope.  It is described as having an element of fantasy, but I disagree.  If it had truly been in that genre, it would have tried to imply that the supernatural elements were real.  But I think it was clear that they were all contained within the imagination of the film’s main protagonist, Hushpuppy, a six year old girl, played by Quvenzhané Wallis.

The story is a sad and dramatic one.  Hushpuppy and her father, Wink, played by another first-time actor, Dwight Henry, live in an area of a Southern Louisiana bayou community known as the Bathtub.  The area is prone to danger from hurricanes and flooding.  They live in extreme poverty and squalor which is nothing more than a glorified garbage heap.  Wink is an alcoholic whose wife left him years earlier, though it is never made clear why she is gone.

Wink loves Hushpuppy very much, though he is sometimes physically abusive to her.  He is a fisherman who owns a boat made out of the back half of a pickup truck.  He tells his daughter that they live in the best and most beautiful place in the world, and like the child that she is, she believes him.  The filthy living conditions are all she knows, and so she is, for the most part, happy, though it becomes clear that Wink is afflicted with some kind of serious blood or heart condition.  But it is all just set-up for the real story.

A great storm comes which destroys the community.  Rather than flee their homes, Wink and Hushpuppy stay to weather the gale.  When the storm is over, they get in their boat and take to the flooded streets, looking for survivors.  They find Jean Battiste, played by Levy Easterly, Miss Bathsheba, the local schoolteacher, played by Gina Montana, and Walrus, played by Lowell Landes.  Together, the rag-tag group tries to rebuild their homes and their lives.

But it is a hopeless endeavor.  The salt-water surge from the storm has contaminated the fresh water supply and both the livestock and vegetation start to die.  To solve the problem, Wink and Jean Battiste blow up a levee, which drains the flood, but brings them to the attention of the mainlanders.  They are quickly rounded up and forced into a shelter.  Hushpuppy has never been in such clean surroundings.  She is afraid and feels like she is in a prison.

And here is the real tragedy of the story.  Hushpuppy grew up in garbage, poverty, and squalor.  There are actually people who live in such terrible conditions, and the fact that the residents of the Bathtub escape the shelter as quickly as they can to get back to the dump they call home is all too believable.  So Hushpuppy will never know that there is a better, healthier, and more sanitary way to live.  I find that even sadder than the film’s actual climax, in which Wink dies of his blood poisoning.

The pseudo-fantasy element of the film takes the form of giant, man-eating, horned pigs which, through the teachings of Miss Bathsheba, manifest in Hushpuppy’s imagination as a metaphor for tragedy or the end of the world, or maybe eventually, her father’s death.  They are shown as coming after Hushpuppy throughout the film, getting closer each time we see them. When they finally catch up with her, she confronts them and they submit to her.  Then she has the courage to face her father’s failing health.

The entire cast did a good job, but Quvenzhané Wallis really stood out as a fantastic little actress.  She seemed to have two things the character needed to work.  She had fire, and she had innocence.  Wallis really surprised me and I was impressed.  She was the youngest person to ever be nominated for the Best Actress award.  She had strength and fierceness, and the capacity for unfettered joy that made her completely endearing.

And there were also some tender moments that showed yet another facet of her character.  There was a sub-plot that involved Hushpuppy’s search for her mother.  After their escape from the shelter, she and her friends swim out to a floating brothel called the Elysian Fields.  While there, she befriends a cook named Joy Strong who may or may not have been her mother, played by Jonshel Alexander.  She invites Hushpuppy to stay with her, but the girl knows she must return home to her dying father.  It was a little out of left field, but sweet.

Overall, even though director Benh Zeitlin made the odd choice of purposefully making a lot of the hand-held camera-work that ended up on the screen out of focus, giving the film a vaguely disorienting feel, the movie had a good story, and some good acting.  I just question the film’s moral message.  Behind all the film’s dramatic trappings, it said that home is where the heart is.  But I find it a hard sentiment to embrace when home is a trash dump.  I guess when you have so little, it is hard to let go of what you have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amour – 2012

This was a very emotional French language film, but what do you expect from a title that simply means Love.  It dealt with a subject that few movies have the courage to deal with, and it did so with extreme care and sensitivity.  The plot is a simple one and can be summed up in just a few sentences.  An elderly man must cope with caring for his wife as her health steadily deteriorates.  Under this strain, their love is not so much tested as it is tempered and strengthened.  However, the sad climax, where the man euthanizes his wife, while not completely unexpected, was, I think, not as depressing as it could or should have been.

Of course, because it was all in French, I spent the entire movie reading subtitles.  It’s not my favorite way to watch a film, but it’s alright.  The two lead actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, played Georges and Anne Laurent, retired music teachers whose students have gone on to become world-renowned musicians.  One morning Anne suffers a silent stroke, during which she becomes catatonic, completely unresponsive to her bewildered husband.  After a few minutes, she revives.  The frightened Georges questions her, but she cannot remember what happened.  The couple is about to ignore the incident when it becomes apparent that Anne cannot perform the simple task of pouring herself a cup of tea.

The next time we see her, she is in a wheelchair.  Her mobility is limited and Georges must now help her with things that were once simple.  He must help her to bathe and go to the toilet.  He must help her dress and get into bed.  At one point Anne seems to rally as if she is on the mend, but then suffers a second stroke which leaves the right side of her body paralyzed.  From then on she is confined to a sick bed.  Georges must now feed her and change her diapers.

But the film isn’t about Anne so much as it is about Georges.  It is really about his struggles, both physical and emotional as he cares for the woman who he dearly loves.  His emotions are strained as he sees his wife suffer.  He goes through sorrow, depression, anger, and fear as he tries to keep his own spirits up.  He is visited by their daughter, Eva, played by Isabelle Huppert, and one of Anne’s former students, Alexandre, played by Alexandre Tharaud.  As her health declines, Anne begins by telling Georges that she doesn’t want anyone to see her.  Eventually Anne talks about wanting to die.  After that, she loses the ability to speak intelligibly.  Georges’ love remains strong and steadfast as he does his best to respect her wishes.

Eva says that her mother should be put in a home to receive professional care, but Georges remains true to his promise to his wife, stipulating that he never do such a thing.  In the end, when he can no longer bear to see Anne suffer, he smothers her with a pillow, and it seems like a kindness rather than a murder.  It is a subject that the film handles with care and we never see Georges as a killer.  Indeed, he is portrayed as sad and merciful.

But that brings us into an examination of a serious and topical subject.  In such a situation, is euthanasia an acceptable course of action?  Was Georges right or wrong in what he did?  And despite appearances, the film takes care to not answer the question.  Director Michael Haneke doesn’t apologize for the ending, nor does he aggrandize it.  Instead, he leaves it up to the viewers to judge for themselves.  You see, after killing his wife, Georges seems to disappear.  He arranges her body with care and dignity, and then walks out the front door.  We are never told what happens to him, except that it is implied that he never returns home.

Is he fleeing the scene of his crime?  Is he wandering off in a sorrowful daze of depression?  He obviously doesn’t tell anyone of his wife’s death, something we know because the story is framed by short scenes at the beginning and end.  In the beginning, we see police breaking into the house and discovering Anne’s quietly decomposing body.  In the end, we see Eve as she tearfully wanders the emptied house.

Trintignant, Riva, and Huppert are the only actors in the film that had any really significant dramatic acting to do.  Of the three, Riva was the clear standout.  In fact, she was nominated for the Best Actress award for her efforts.  She was eighty-five years old at the time, making her the oldest woman to ever be nominated for the category.  She lost the award to Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook.  I’ll be watching that film again soon enough, but based on my admittedly poor memory, I think Riva should have been the winner.  The way she portrayed the different stages of her illnesses and debilitating health problems was incredible.  Anne’s decline was so believably realistic.  I was very impressed with how vulnerable and yet how visceral her stellar performance was.  She was simply wonderful.  The film, as a whole, was very well made, and I’m glad I watched it, despite the fact that the subject matter was inherently depressing.  It was as real as life.