Melancholia

Pressed for time, another couple of short reviews to be posted...

Melancholia begins with the end. We see the world coming to its conclusion as two planets, one presumably being Earth, collide to a piece of music from Tristan & Isolde. The prologue plays like a dream, with imagery showing the impossible becoming possible (humans emitting electricity, the ground sinking so deep as branches come out to grab you). Some of this imagery repeats, mostly in a thematic sense as the film flashes back to months ago. The first half of the movie is about Justine (Kirsten Dunst) marrying Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) at the estate of Justine's sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The second half of the movie is about Claire, along with her husband and son (Kiefer Sutherland and Cameron Spurr), observing a new planet about to make a fly-by across the Earth's path.

In the beginning of the movie, Justine is depressed as Claire tries to make her realize how happy she should be. In the second half of the movie, Claire is worried that the dreamscape we witnessed in the prologue will come true as Justine is ready to accept death. The sisters are polar opposites and in powerful feat of filmmaking, writer-director Lars Von Trier delivers one of his most impressive films to be a part of his devastating and inquisitive ouvre. Von Trier's film is visually simplistic, but features some of the best cinematography of the year. Everything about this film feels like it comes from a purely energetic and creative standpoint of trying to come to terms with the essential question of "why are we here?" As if our personal concerns have any relevance in the grand scheme of things.

Aside from the impressive cast (also starring Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Jesper Christensen, Stellan Skarsgard, Brady Corbet, and Udo Kier), with particular notice to the intense performances of Dunst, Gainsbourg, and Sutherland, Von Trier's grasp on creating intrigue out of the most unique situations (from dinner toasts to advertising taglines) cements him as one of the great living cinematic minds that is active in the industry today.

Updated Oscar Picks

This year has been a bitch to figure this out. Aside from the new 5-10 Best Picture nominees rule, several notable films have yet to come and even before that the field is already crowded. So instead of sticking to a finite number of slots and an alternate as I did last year, I'll mention all the films I think can possibly be nominated.

BEST PICTURE (5-10 slots, 13 picks)

-The Artist

-The Descendants

-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

-The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

-The Help

-The Ides of March

-J. Edgar

-Midnight in Paris

-Moneyball

-Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

-The Tree of Life

-War Horse

-Young Adult

DIRECTOR (5 slots, 10 picks)

-Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris)

-George Clooney (The Ides of March)

-Stephen Daldry (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

-Clint Eastwood (J. Edgar)

-David Fincher (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

-Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)

-Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life)

-Alexander Payne (The Descendants)

-Jason Reitman (Young Adult)

-Steven Spielberg (War Horse)

ACTOR (5 slots, 9 picks)

-Demian Bechir (A Better Life)

-George Clooney (The Descendants)

-Matt Damon (We Bought a Zoo)

-Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar)

-Jean Dujardin (The Artist)

-Michael Fassbender (Shame)

-Gary Oldman (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)

-Brad Pitt (Moneyball)

-Michael Shannon (Take Shelter)

ACTRESS (5 slots, 9 picks)

-Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs)

-Viola Davis (The Help)

-Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia)

-Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

-Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene)

-Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)

-Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin)

-Charlize Theron (Young Adult)

-Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn)

SUPPORTING ACTOR (5 slots, 7 picks)

-Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn)

-Jim Broadbent (The Iron Lady)

-Armie Hammer (J. Edgar)

-Nick Nolte (Warrior)

-Patton Oswalt (Young Adult)

-Christopher Plummer (Beginners)

-Max Von Sydow (Extremly Loud and Incredibly Close)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS (5 slots, 7 picks)

-Berenice Bejo (The Artist)

-Sandra Bullock (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

-Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs)

-Carey Mulligan (Shame)

-Vanessa Redgrave (Coriolanus)

-Octavia Spencer (The Help)

-Shailene Woodley (The Descendants)

J. Edgar

The founder of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio), is depicted in this biopic as being tough, proper, paranoid, a control freak, and a fashionisto. Director Clint Eastwood and writer Dustin Lance Black (Milk) have a lot to play around with because of how complex an individual Hoover is. He ran both an investigative agency and a publicity machine. He was rumored to be gay, but he gathered evidence on anyone who was socially "promiscous" whether it was supplying communist propaganda or campaigning for civil rights. After all, the man served under six presidents, so there is a lot to showcase and that might be the film's chief problem. John Dillinger, the Lindbergh baby, Martin Luther King Jr... that is a lot of ground to cover.

The film cuts back and forth a lot, from the 20s on and then to the 60s. I don't feel like there is much of an even ratio of time spent in certain decades than the other. This isn't a problem, I just don't think this style of storytelling benefits a director like Clint Eastwood. Eastwood has tackled a wide variety of material in the past ten years, but his films love to boil and build until they explode towards the end. The kind of characters he seems attracted to are very thoughtful and meditative until they are forced to act. The lead roles (some of which he has played such as in Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, and Gran Torino) often feature characters who are trying to stick to an ideal of what they should represent versus how they personally feel.

Hoover is a character who is trying to maintain a public image. He has a great deal of shame because of what he is personally hiding compared to how he represents himself in public. This can make Hoover hard to identify with, but the character is very interesting because of the lengthy life he lived. Black's script has some great parts and others that are severly lacking because they seem to be included to be sure we have an accurate depiction of what Hoover accomplished in his life. Despite how fascinating the characters are, the inclusion of such lengthy expository moments makes the film emotionally distant. Most of the emotive moments seem to generate from the relationship between Hoover and his male assistant, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer).

DiCaprio is very subtle and yet persuasive in his role and Hammer plays off of all of that so very well. The film also stars Naomi Watts as Hoover's secretary and Judi Dench as his mother. They feel slightly underused, especially Watts after her "first date" scene and Dench seems there only to play the stern mother. Still, the acting is absolutely phenomenal. Each performance is nuanced and feels naturalistic as time goes on. The production value of the film is fantastic in how it captures each decade and the makeup is also superb (although the actors seem to keep using their regular voices, thus making it weird to see a sixty year old have Hammer, Watts, and DiCaprio's youthful vocals).

I can't stress how big of a gap there is between these fantastic performances and the film's script. Then again, the script isn't that bad. Black seems to have good intentions because he is really trying to paint the picture of a truly interesting individual. If anything, Black exceeds his wishes into the point of making the film feel about a half hour too long. It'll be interesting to see what reception this film gets this awards season. Will it be admired for its production and acting or be ignored because of how tired it feels to experience? I feel that audiences are going to be asking themselves the same question.

Tower Heist

Note: I'm not going to have much blogging time coming up, so the reviews for Red State, A Better Life, and Tower Heist are a little rushed and not as well thought out, coherent, or in depth as I'd have wished.

Directed by Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Red Dragon, X-Men: The Last Stand) and written by Ted Griffin (Ocean's Eleven) and Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can), Tower Heist is an okay heist movie, but is unfortunately a really unfunny comedy. The film deals with a hotel staff being ripped off after having invested in the penthouse tenant, Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), who is arrested for fraud by an FBI agent (Tea Leoni) and her team. Some of the staff (Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck, Michael Pena, Gabourey Sidibe), a bankrupt wall street banker (Matthew Broderick), and a convicted thief (Eddie Murphy) all decide to break into the equisite penthouse and find where Shaw is keeping some of his extra money.

It was refreshing to see Murphy play a street-smart character similar to his roles from 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop. Everyone else is also very well casted, but the script is just not witty or logical and it feels like the typical PG-13 action/comedy of the week I used to see when I was in middle school. This should be viewed during an afternoon of sitting on a couch watching the TBS movie of the day. The heist and absurdity is briefly fun to watch, but that charade vanishes quickly and with such an ensemble, that is a real shame.

Movies watched in October

*- Indicates a re-watch.

American Graffiti (1973, George Lucas)

A Better Life (2011, Chris Weitz)

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, Wes Anderson)*

The Ides of March (2011, George Clooney)

The Last Picture Show (1971, Peter Bogdanovich)*

Like Crazy (2011, Drake Doremus)

Margin Call (2011, J.C. Chandor)

Nashville (1975, Robert Altman)

Pi (1998, Darren Aronofsky)*

Red State (2011, Kevin Smith)

The Rum Diary (2011, Bruce Robinson)

The Thing (2011, Mattheis Van Heijningen Jr.)

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971, Monte Hellman)

The Wild Bunch (1969, Sam Peckinpah)*

A Better Life

Note: I'm not going to have much blogging time coming up, so the reviews for Red State, A Better Life, and Tower Heist are a little rushed and not as well thought out, coherent, or in depth as I'd have wished.

Directed by Chris Weitz (About a Boy) and written by Eric Eason and Roger L. Simon, A Better Life follows an undocumented Mexican immigrant father named Carlos played by Demian Bichir. Carlos lives in Los Angeles and is a gardener whose wife left him alone to raise his now fifteen year old son, Luis. Luis is drawn to the street life of gangbangers and thugs, thus distancing himself from his hardworking father. Carlos gets the opportunity to buy a truck, but it is quickly stolen by a fellow worker. Carlos ends up getting drunk and when he comes home, he explains to Luis how he just wanted to give his son what he didn't have (hint: look at the title of the movie). So the next morning, Luis offers to help his father locate the truck in a Bicycle Thieves-esque plot that draws the pair closer.

The film is beautifully shot, edited, etc., but the real reason I'd heavily reccomend seeing this is the both unbelievably desperate and coureagous character of Carlos as played by Bichir. This will probably be the best performance of the year that may not get any recognition from industry awards ceremonies. The last scene between Carlos and Luis is a beautiful monologue that sums up the spirit and themes of this film better than I could hope to. I really don't have much else to say about the film, other than to look into it, see if any reviews written about it make it sound even more appealing to you, and then set aside a quiet night to watch a father-son story so heartfelt, that I wish Weitz could keep making films like these and move away from the more commercial fare he has been involved with as of late.

Red State

Note: I'm not going to have much blogging time coming up, so the reviews for Red State, A Better Life, and Tower Heist are a little rushed and not as well thought out, coherent, or in depth as I'd have wished.

Prolific writer-director Kevin Smith has made a film that I can't help but feel comes from a personal place of his sometimes-funny, sometimes-disturbed psyche. He hinted at his feelings on religion in Dogma, but I'd argue he hasn't made something that showcases his unique voice since Chasing Amy, and before that Clerks. Red State feels like Silent Bob is raging against many things, but primarily religious radicals and government lackeys who are despicable when it comes to their jobs.

The film follows three small-town teens (Michael Angarano, Nicholas Braun, and Kyle Gallner) who go out one night looking for sex, only to be abducted by the Five Points Church and its pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks, who I'm quite sure has to be channeling Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church). When a police officer is shot while investigating the church compound, an ATF agent (John Goodman) is called in to surround the area.

I pretty much walked away from this movie feeling unchanged and conflicted. There are a few things I both admire and dislike about the film, both having to do with how unique this return to an independent production has led Smith to make some off-the-beaten-path choices about how to tell this story.

Michael Parks is the real draw. His sermons are lively, demented, and poetic all at once. The cast is also full of known and lesser-known actors who I recognized immediately (also starring Melissa Leo, Stephen Root, Kevin Pollak, and Kevin Alejandro). They are all talented and convincing, although much of the emotional weight of the film lies in the viewpoints and monologues of the characters played by Parks and Goodman (the ensemble has no lead characters with everyone acting in a supporting role to each other). The film's greatest achievement is perhaps its stark cinematography by Smith's regular D.P., Dave Klein.

On the other hand, nothing of importance or consequence ever seems to happen. We witness these extreme events, but for what purpose? We can form our own interpretations, and for that I'm thankful, but the structure of this story never seems to support other choices Smith makes primarily in terms of the pacing. There are occassionally some editing choices (when Root's character is in his office) and a random placement of title cards that only appear maybe once or twice that just feel off (I feel that title cards that just simply say the time and day should probably be removed as they just feel dated and corny if they aren't pertinent to our understanding of the material).

Smith wants us to feel something, I'll be damned if this was made for entertainment purposes, but I don't feel anything from any of the development or even lack of development both in plot and character. Look at Alejandro's character. What spurred his change of heart? Are we not supposed to know?

Smith has always been a much better writer. Horror is however a medium where one's directing instincts seem to be more useful (perhaps that is why this feels more like a thriller and less like a horror film than the marketing and press releases made it out to be). I appreciate Smith's voice and as a viewer who is always looking forward to what he does next, I can't help but acknowledge his wish to flex his proverbial muscles of versatility. This film just doesn't leave any lasting impressions on me. Perhaps it is because I saw in the fall when you have new films from Nicolas Winding Refn, George Clooney, Bennett Miller, Jonathan Levine, Steven Soderbergh, and Gavin O'Connor that were much more thoughtful and emotional than Smith's tale of religion-gone-awry.