A professor seen in a stark, extreme close-up is eloquently screaming at an academic body as they threaten to revoke a prize they’ve given the professor’s father. It’s one of “Footnote’s” most intense moments.
But there’s an underlying joke, a footnote if you will. Director Joseph Cedar has put these people into a shoebox-sized room, one that requires people to stand and juggle chairs to even open the door. It’s hard to not see all this as Earth shattering when the stakes are so low.
The Israeli film “Footnote” is a clever, intellectual comedy with an enormous scale, but one that remains aware of how trivial it all seems.
It tells the story of a father and son academic of Talmudic Studies. The son, Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi), has just been inducted into the Academy of Israeli Sciences while his father, Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba), sits uncomfortably just off stage as he’s been overlooked yet again.
In two breathtakingly studious scenes, we learn how deeply Eliezer is jealous of his son and his accomplishments. We see it in the disturbed expressions on his face and the empty seat beside him during Uriel’s acceptance speech, and we see it again as a security guard both literally and figuratively asks Eliezer who he is and what he lacks.
You see, Eliezer worked all his life studying a version of the Talmud only to have his work made entirely obsolete mere weeks before he was ready to publish his findings. We learn all this in a deliciously exciting and stylized sequence that flutters through Eliezer’s and Uriel’s life story as though it were told on microfiche. We get juicy, encyclopedic details about each characters’ quirks, failures and achievements through animation, pop-up figures and an urgent, Bernard Hermann-esque score. It’s such a visually impressive sequence from a previously stately movie, you wouldn’t think it had it in it.
That’s the overall message behind “Footnote.” Beneath our surface level of understanding of people and things, there are interesting underlying footnotes of life that can provide for some of the most intimate and intense moments of rippling tension.
The whole film boils over into something magnificently exciting when Eliezer is awarded the coveted Israel Prize. He’s been rejected for the past 20 years and is overwhelmed. But the governing body made a severe mistake and meant to award the prize to Uriel.
It gets at the dilemma of trying to respect someone by following in their footsteps and being even better than them. Uriel has a devastating line to his own deadbeat son that reflects his own complicated emotions with his father: “I am a millimeter away from where I stop helping you and just want to see you suffer so I can gloat.”
The latter is the point where Uriel and Eleziel are at. The two are in such close professions and even share scenes, but we rarely see them exchange dialogue. Cedar gets at the underlying apprehension and hatred running between them as he establishes little academic games in which each one tries to prove who is the better researcher by best understanding the other. Rarely are films so in-tuned to the way academic study works.
So much of “Footnote” is wickedly smart and grave while maintaining an aloof sense of humor. It’s sad to see the film devolve into exasperated surrealism in its last 20 minutes. But maybe all academic study eventually gets beyond the realm of normal understanding.
Do you finally become the person you were always meant to be at the age of 40? Judd Apatow is now 45, and “This is 40,” his fourth film, is him struggling with his mid-life crisis. Apatow is finally showing his colors as a filmmaker, and the result is an unfinished, messy movie.
Maybe that’s life, or more specifically marriage, full of incomplete projects, spontaneous and tumultuous emotions and a life that seems to go on forever. But there are rocky, yet healthy relationships and then there are relationships when it’s really best to just pull the plug.
Something about “This is 40” is missing. Apatow knows how to write a good script, and he can create effortless chemistry between Paul Rudd and Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann because he’s writing so close to the heart. But when the film is another jumble of obscure pop culture minutiae (is “Lost” still a thing?), hipster weirdness (Charlyne Yi?), stream of consciousness vulgarity, nonsensical cameos (Billie Joe Armstrong?) and overwrought drama, all of which were problems in his last film “Funny People,” the act just starts to get old. And if this is film is about anything, it’s that getting old sucks.
Rudd plays Pete, who is turning 40 in a few days, just around the same time as his wife Debbie (Mann). Debbie chooses to lie about her age under the pretense that she doesn’t suddenly want to start shopping at Ann Taylor Loft, just one example of how Apatow’s film likes to throw out “40 stuff.”
Even the vulgarity, not just the pop culture references, is slated at an older audience. Annie Mumolo gets a big laugh talking about how she can no longer feel anything in her vagina, as does Melissa McCarthy during the film and during the credits as she spouts profanity to the school principal in defense of her son, but none of it has the outrageous appeal of an actual set piece that we might’ve seen in something like “Bridesmaids” or even parts of “Knocked Up.”
Apatow even stages these scenes as clearly improvised riffing, constantly cutting away and back for individual punch lines without actually weaving the comedy into the narrative.
So as Pete struggles with a failing record label and Debbie attempts to discover how $12,000 is missing from her clothing store, “This is 40” wallows in the minutiae of white people problems. Having high cholesterol or playing iPad games in the bathroom for too long sometimes earns about as much weight as the revelation of a surprise pregnancy.
Important and interesting characters like Pete’s father (Albert Brooks) or Debbie’s personal trainer (Jason Segel) come and go. Discussions about money, health and romance erupt into enormous, mounting conflicts and then dissipate into inconsequential drama about pop music the next.
Apatow doesn’t capture the feel of a generation or being a certain age as well as something like HBO’s “Girls,” which Apatow produces. It’s full of lovely, funny and charming moments, but is it a movie you’ll want to live with and cherish when you’re Apatow’s age?
Every year there are great performers and films that for whatever reason do not get the attention they deserve at the Oscars. Sometimes they’re underrated, sometimes they’re critical darlings and sometimes the field is just too vast.
I guess I should be proud that when I did this feature last year, none of the movies or performers I named got nominated. Is that a good thing? Anyway, here again I’ve picked some names that have nary a prayer when the Oscar nominations are announced next Thursday. If it feels like I’m missing a really good one, assume they actually have a shot.
Best Picture
Looper
The Kid With a Bike
The Turin Horse
Bernie
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Rust and Bone
The Impossible
I’ll maybe wish I included my four of my Top 10 movies of the year on this list when they don’t get nominated. Those are “The Master,” “Skyfall,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”
But the movies I have selected are all just as wonderful and not Oscar bait at all. “Looper” is exactly what clever studio filmmaking should be. “The Kid With a Bike” is such a heartbreaking and darling film about a kid who loves too strong the things that don’t love him back, and it’s only being forgotten because it premiered two Cannes film festivals ago. “The Turin Horse” is so gigantic, epic and hard to watch, it may just be considered one of the best movies ever made years from now. “Rust and Bone” is a daring romance that the Academy simply hasn’t seen. “Bernie” treads the line between comedy, drama and documentary a little too closely for the Academy to care. “Perks” is destined to be a teen classic alongside “The Breakfast Club.” And “The Impossible” should have Oscar bait written all over it, but Academy voters have already booted it out of contention in fields such as Visual Effects and Makeup.
There’s no questioning that the movies that are being nominated for Best Picture are quality films, but some of my picks might hold up in the culture’s eye just a little better over time.
But I’m not, and what makes it all the worse is I know someone who is. He had asked me to make some recommendations for him on what he should get tickets for. Cause I’m the movie guy and all.
So not being able to do anything halfway, I did a lot arguably unnecessary reconnaissance. And I really wish I was going to Sundance this year. The line-up of both in competition films and those just making their world premieres is impressive.
Aside from being in one of the best places for skiing on the planet, Sundance has that rare quality of discovery that other film festivals don’t anymore. Cannes has always featured a smaller line-up, usually foreign masters trotting out their latest art house experiment, and Toronto has become a stomping ground for awards bait movies to make their premieres.
But as I told my friend, Sundance is unique in that, you can do all the research about directors and stars that you want, but the next great film of the year, the “Beasts of the Southern Wild” or “Winter’s Bone” or what have you, will be full of unknowns and come as a complete surprise. It’s a place to discover the films that will never get a distributor, not the mid-range indie product that’ll be released just months from now. Here then is just part of the message I sent to my friend:
“So with that in mind, take some chances on some films. There will be scheduling conflicts, there will be movies that will be sold out, and of the 10 that you choose to go to (or whatever your number ends up being), there will likely be some bad ones in the bunch. The ones that might be most worth your time are the smaller films without big casts or directors that might never get distribution. Some of these are in competition and a lot are just premiering. Look into some foreign films or maybe even a short film program.”
I really did go all out in making suggestions, going as far as to provide a list of miniature blurbs and ranking my top choices, so at that point I decided I may as well turn this into an article and offer these suggestions to anyone else who may be going.
“Kill Your Darlings”
Before Midnight – In 1995, Richard Linklater did a movie with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in which the two of them just walked around and talked and fell in love, “Before Sunrise.” 9 years later he revisited it with “Before Sunset,” and it was equally experimental and moving. This is the third time he’s revisited them, and it’s bound to be a big hit.
Sound City – This is Dave Grohl’s new documentary about a legendary recording studio that closed recently. I would go because he’s definitely going to be there, but the movie itself will be available for download in February, so it’s not like you’ll never see it if you really wanted to.
Muscle Shoals – Here’s another intriguing music doc. This one is about Rick Hall, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and the music that arose out of the Alabama scene in the ’60s. The first time director Greg Camilier has assembled a flock of great musicians to say wonderful things about Hall and FAME Studios, including Mick Jagger, Etta James, Bono and more.
Kill Your Darlings – “Kill Your Darlings” is the story of what drew the beat poets William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac together, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg. It has a first time director but has an amazing cast that also includes Michael C. Hall, Elizabeth Olsen, Jack Huston, David Cross, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kyra Sedjwick and Ben Foster.
Touchy Feely – If you’re looking for a really depressing, mind-bending movie, this is probably it. It’s from Lynn Shelton, the director of “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” and it’s about a massage therapist who suddenly is afraid to touch people, starring Ellen Page, Rosemarie Dewitt and Allison Janney.
Mud – This one was actually slated for 2012, so it’s not a world premiere. But it stars Matthew McConaughey as a fugitive on the run from bounty hunters in this Americana character drama and thriller. It’s directed by one of my favorite up and coming directors, Jeff Nichols. He did “Shotgun Stories” and “Take Shelter,” which were also drenched in Americana.
The Spectacular Now – This tells the story of a teenager who is a budding alcoholic, and it has a coming of age story vibe about a kid who gets in an argument with his nerdy friend, gets drunk and ends up meeting the “cool kids” when he wakes up. The director, James Ponsoldt, is supposedly providing it with the same tone as his film “Smashed” released in 2012, also about an alcoholic and starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
The Way, Way Back – A dramedy from the writers of “The Descendants,” it’s about a 14-year-old visiting his mom and her annoying boyfriend on summer vacation. It stars Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Toni Collette and Maya Rudolph.
Magic Magic – This is a kind of surreal drama starring Michael Cera and Juno Temple. It’s about a girl who dabbles in hypnosis and suffers from insomnia.
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints – This is a first time film starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara in a runaway love story that’s got a big “Bonnie and Clyde” or “Badlands” vibe.
The East – Brit Marling is a younger actress/screenwriter who really impressed me with the smart sci-fi “Another Earth,” and this film is a larger scale thriller about a secret agent who goes undercover to stop a group of activists attacking CEOs, but she eventually begins to like some of their ideas.
A.C.O.D. – A comedy starring both Adam Scott and Amy Poehler; what’s not to love?
Don Jon’s Addiction – The directorial debut of Joseph Gordon Levitt, this is a comedy about a guy addicted to porn but who can also land 10’s any night of the week. Stars JGL and Scarlett Johannson.
Stoker – A thriller/horror movie from the director behind “Oldboy,” Stoker stars Mia Wasikowska fearing the motives and potential of her increasingly unstable mother (Nicole Kidman) and her mysterious Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode).
Lovelace – Amanda Seyfried stars as Linda Lovelace, the porn star from the 70’s movie “Deep Throat.”
The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete – This a coming of age drama about inner city kids living on the street, and it’s got a bunch of big stars in bit parts like Jennifer Hudson, Anthony Mackie and Jordin Sparks. It has something of a “Precious” vibe, and it’s from a debut filmmaker, George Tillman Jr.
The Gatekeepers – Another documentary that’s actually on this year’s Oscar shortlist, it’s about Israeli military leaders and is supposed to be really insightful into understanding the Middle East.
No – A Chilean film and on this year’s Oscar shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film.
Sweetgrass – A Western starring Ed Harris and January Jones.
Breathe In – A drama from the director of the 2011 Sundance winner “Like Crazy,” it’s about a family and the tension that spawns after they take in a foreign exchange student.
May in the Summer – Director of “Amreeka,” which won a prize at Cannes a few years back.
In a World… – A comedy from Adult Swim’s and “Children’s Hospital’s” Lake Bell about a struggling vocal coach. It also stars Demetri Martin and Rob Corddry.
Toy’s House – Three teenage boys go off to the woods to build a house of their own. Stars Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Megan Mullaly.
Austenland – For any “Napoleon Dynamite” fans, “Austenland” is a comedy about a girl (Keri Russell) obsessed with “Pride and Prejudice” and visits a Jane Austen theme park to find true love. It comes from Jerusha Hess, cowriter of “Napoleon” and sister of brother Jared Hess.
jOBS – This is the closing night film of the festival, and maybe it’s terrific. But it’s the biopic about Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher, a casting that always rubbed me the wrong way. It’s from the director of “Swing Vote,” and it was just picked up by Open Road Films for a April release date.
Top of the Water – The wonderful director Jane Campion’s new film is about a private detective investigating disturbances in a small New Zealand town, and it’s her first film at Sundance in over a decade. It’s probably lush and beautiful, but the only problem is, it’s six hours long. Yikes.
I’ve got a cousin who is about 15 right now. I don’t really know what kind of music he’s into, but he’s probably at the stage I was at his age, maybe still in a mostly Beatles phase and liking other good music but not quite there yet as someone who lives and breathes it. I always wondered what kind of person I’d be if I was listening to Arcade Fire in 2004 when I was 14, so I had hoped to get him started on the right foot. Maybe I didn’t need to try and turn him into a misanthrope by giving him as much Cure, Smiths and Joy Division as I did, but the question remains: How do you get someone, either a kid or someone who is behind the curve, into loving music?
Well for one, you could show them “School of Rock.” This was a movie I had watched a lot from about the ages of 12 to 15, and I wondered if it would hold up as well now that I’m 22 and like music a little more complex than the ACDC the movie salutes. Jack Black’s Dewey Finn still lives in that “Golden Age” of meat and potatoes ’70s rock that would soon transform itself into ’80s hair metal and Spinal Tap self parody, and you could probably learn more about good music from the likes of “Almost Famous” or “High Fidelity,” which also stars Jack Black.
But the reason this is still a great movie to have on a parent’s DVD shelf for their kids is that it instills in them these exciting values of rebellion and thrashing out to epic rock without dipping into any of the cynical territory that usually goes along with it. Of course it mildly alludes to drinking, sex, drugs and violence, but those things are mostly frowned upon and afterthoughts to the idea of changing the world with a face-melting guitar solo by a 10-year-old. It maintains a sense of innocent rebellion by telling “The Man” to “step-off” by singing in very blunt terms, “I had to do my chores today/so I am really ticked off!”
Jack Black is really at the core of the movie’s good-hearted vibes, not the kids. He puts on that air of “don’t give a crap” when he first walks into the children’s classroom, but he quickly drops that act and is otherwise brimming enthusiasm and sincerity at every moment he gets to listen to these kids perform. Take that first scene where he discovers if they all can play. The scene works way too well in getting these kids up and rocking at once, but the movie doesn’t jam obvious references down your throat, and Black puts so much energy into cartoonish hand gestures and memorable one-liners (“you turn it on its side and ‘cello’ you got a bass!”) that you, nor your kids, will mind.
Black is his own vocal instrument, and he can give the idea of exciting rock while being funny doing it. Most kids today have heard shredding guitar solos on their dad’s Zeppelin albums, but they maybe shrug in ways previous generations didn’t. Black does one better by performing every bit of his own ridiculous song. Kids will remember his goofing around, not the music itself, but they’ll get the idea.
And by the movie’s end, both in the live performance on stage and in the post-credits sequence, “School of Rock” delivers everything as promised. Each of the kids, who all have their individual moments of token problems and growth, get to strut their stuff in one epic finale. It’s simple, ’70s rock, but it has the style and the attitude just right.
Ali (Matthias Schoenearts) is always OP. OP is short for operational, which in Stephanie’s (Marion Cotillard) terms means, if she’s ever looking for sex, he’s available. But clearly if this relationship is going to survive, Ali needs to be more than just functioning.
“Rust and Bone” is a film about incomplete people. They’re emotionally damaged and physically broken, and they need each other to mend. It’s a lush, powerful French romance recognizing that for as much as we love, we’re not always all there.
It begins by introducing us to Ali and his 5-year-old son Sam (Armand Verdure), both traveling without much money or a job to finally reach Ali’s sister Louise (Celine Sailette). He’s had to resort to theft and train hopping to feed his son, and the abrupt editing provides us with punctuated moments of fatherly care. He soon gets a job as a bouncer and meets Stephanie when she’s being harassed at his club.
Stephanie is a trainer at a SeaWorld in France, working with the killer whales in the stadium shows, but after a horrible accident in a scene so riveting you can hear a pin drop in the audience, both of her legs have to be amputated.
Director Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet”) handles this realization beautifully. It’s a long shot of Stephanie’s lonely hospital room, looking in from a door at a bed that looks as though something is missing from beneath the covers. She pulls back her blanket and her legs have disappeared, which is especially impressive considering the actress, the lovely Marion Cotillard, has legs that go on forever. They’ve been digitally removed, and Cotillard is miraculously convincing as a person hampered by this new disability.
For a while she seems lost in time and beyond help, the editing drifting slowly as she looks on emptily. Months pass and she calls Ali out of the blue to help her around. The two form a mutual bond built on friendship first, then sex, but it’s clear each needs the other more than they let on.
Schoenaerts gives a wonderfully unsentimental performance. Training as a kick boxer and participating in vicious back alley brawls for money, he’s intensely unpredictable. His personality reflects the movie’s tone. He’s harsh, ambiguous and abrasive, but he has a sense of humor, heart and energy. Stephanie goes through a rebirth of sorts when she’s dropped into the water to swim for the first time since she lost her legs, but it’s Ali who helps pull her out, showing the harried fatherly care of a person who doesn’t have any real responsibility to care for this human being, but feels obligated all the same.
“Rust and Bone” is cinematically stunning, often feeling like the visual tone poem “The Deep Blue Sea” tried to be. There’s a beautiful shot of Cotillard touching the side of an aquarium and being met by the nose of a killer whale, a perfectly elegant and symbolic statement about two unlikely beings forming a bond.
But through the use of pop songs and a grizzled, handheld cam in other moments, “Rust and Bone” is more grounded than some of the art house fare you could compare it to. Stephanie is occasionally surly and quick to lose her temper, and Ali is a deadbeat father who sleeps around and takes shady jobs. Both of these people are far from perfect, and although they both are mending physically, Stephanie with prosthetic legs and Ali in the gym, they still have a lot of mental growing to do.
You should know that I don’t really consider the year over until all four and half hours of the Oscars have aired, so I have no reason to do a 2013 movie preview just yet. There are more than enough blogs with lists that’ll tell you there’s a new “Star Trek” movie coming out or that there are a half dozen superhero sequels and reboots set to clog up the summer.
Frankly I’m more interested in the movies that absolutely no one’s heard of yet, but suffice it to say there are a few already that have piqued my interest. So these are just the movie guy movies that don’t have established fan bases nor require plot speculation. I can be comprehensive next season.
Inside Llewyn Davis – Coen Brothers (TBD)
If you’ve called yourself a film buff in the last 10 years, how could a new Coen brothers movie not by at the top of your most anticipated list? Their new film is a dramatic foray into the world of 60’s folk rock. Oscar Isaac, who you might recognize as Carey Mulligan’s (also starring here along with Justin Timberlake) husband in “Drive,” plays the title character, a New York based producer modeled off the life of Dave Van Ronk.
“Prisoners” is the first English language film from the French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, who brought us the excellent Oscar nominated drama “Incendies.” “Prisoners” has an absolutely terrific cast including Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Viola Davis. The screenplay, however, by the writer of the unfortunate “Contraband” has been on the shelf awhile as it changed casts and directors.
Gravity – Alfonso Cuaron (October 18)
Alfonso Cuaron is supposedly attempting an unbroken take that lasts for 30 minutes in his new sci-fi “Gravity” (who does he think he is, Bela Tarr?) starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. If he pulls it off, it’ll be mighty impressive considering that it’s being shot in 3-D.
To the Wonder – Terrence Malick (April 12)
“To the Wonder” was almost universally hated when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year and was pushed back to 2013, and frankly, the trailer was edited in such a way that if you were to make a parody trailer of what a Terrence Malick movie looked and felt like, this would be it. If there’s less buzz surrounding it than Malick’s untitled Austin, Texas music scene movie that apparently stars everyone, that’s because “To the Wonder” is a companion piece to “The Tree of Life,” even going as far as to use some of the same footage. Granted, it could still be a masterpiece.
The Wolf of Wall Street – Martin Scorsese (TBD)
Yes, Scorsese pictures with Leo in them are great and all, and this one about a crooked NY stock broker seems to be more up Marty’s ally than “Hugo” or “Shutter Island,” but the big buzz is that the screenplay comes from “Sopranos” and “Boardwalk Empire” creator Terence Winter. It also stars Jonah Hill (could we soon be saying TWO-TIME Oscar nominee Jonah Hill?) and Matthew McConaughey, who is no doubt on a roll.
Labor Day – Jason Reitman (TBD)
Thankfully not another idiotic incarnation of the “New Years Eve” and “Valentine’s Day” movies, “Labor Day” is Jason Reitman’s first real foray into drama. The screenplay is his own from Joyce Maynard’s novel about a depressed woman (Kate Winslet) who offers a ride to an escaped convict (Josh Brolin).
Side Effects – Steven Soderbergh (February 8)
“In some instances, DEATH may occur,” i.e. the best tagline ever. You know Soderbergh, no one is going to believe that you’re retiring if you keep putting out a movie every six months. “Side Effects” is a romance and thriller surrounding a depressed woman (Rooney Mara) and the doctor (Jude Law) providing her prescription medication. It should make for a good thriller, as Soderbergh is working with the same screenwriter behind “Contagion.”
Before Midnight – Richard Linklater (Sundance first, then TBD)
In “Before Midnight,” Richard Linklater is revisiting Jesse and Celine again another nine years after “Before Sunset,” which of course was the sequel to “Before Sunrise” from 1995. Both Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are now credited writers in what is sure to be another intelligent and improvised character study.
This is the End – Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (June 14)
I’m always wondering how some comedians today can make an outrageous and even groundbreaking web series or video and yet can continually make boring and cliché Hollywood comedies. Well, my prayers have been answered with “This is the End,” a movie that throws a bunch of celebrities together and lets them play off their own perceived screen personas in a madcap comedy about the end of the world. The Red Band trailer is hysterical.
I’m So Excited – Pedro Almodovar (March in Spain, then hopefully US before long)
It’s been nearly two decades since Pedro Almodovar has made a comedy, and he’s never made one with his two muses, Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, both together. The trailer features three very gay flight attendants in very flamboyant colors singing the Pointer Sisters, so yes, I’m very excited.
The Place Beyond the Pines – Derek Cianfrance (March 29)
I have to keep telling myself this is not “Blue Valentine” meets “Drive.” It stars Ryan Gosling as a motorcycle stunt driver on the run from a cop (Bradley Cooper) in Derek Cianfrance’s follow-up to his indie darling. Both characters however are strong father figures, and this thriller uses that as a powerful theme throughout.
“The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: His” and “Hers” (TBD)
“The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” is actually two films, although I’m not sure what either has to do with The Beatles, if anything. One is told from the perspective of the husband in a troubled relationship (James McAvoy) and the other is from the wife’s (Jessica Chastain).
Oldboy – Spike Lee (October 11)
Yes, this is a remake of the IMDB Top 250 darling “Oldboy” by Chan-wook Park, who is ironically also releasing a movie this year, “Stoker.” It stars Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Brolin, “Martha Marcy May Marlene’s” Elizabeth Olsen and “District 9’s” Sharlto Copley.
Captain Phillips – Paul Greengrass (October 11)
I was disappointed with Paul Greengrass’s last film “Green Zone,” so I’m hoping for a return to form in “Captain Phillips.” He’s cast Tom Hanks in the title role as a captain dealing with the first of the Somali pirate hijackings that took place in 2009. The screenplay comes from Billy Ray, director of “Breach” and co-screenwriter of “The Hunger Games.”
“The Monuments Men” – George Clooney (December 20)
“The Monuments Men” will be George Clooney’s fifth film behind the camera. It’s a World War II story about art historians trying to retrieve artwork stolen by the Nazis. It’s rumored to star Daniel Craig, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman and “The Artist’s” Jean Dujardin. Could be Oscar gold.
Ender’s Game – Gavin Hood (December 1)
“Ender’s Game” is one of my favorite childhood books I have no recollection of, a “Hunger Games” esque story in which kids are trained for intergalactic battle by participating in war games. Author Orson Scott Card was for a very long time hesitant to release the rights to the film, fearing that the movie would have to be very different from the book to be successful. Well, supposedly now it is, and he feels confident about the script. “Ender’s Game” is directed by Gavin Hood and stars Asa Butterfield, Abigail Breslin and Harrison Ford.
The World’s End – Edgar Wright (October 25)
Edgar Wright is returning to his collaboration with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to create the third film in what’s known as “The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy.” Despite being yet another comedy about the apocalypse this year, these guys are a tried and true pairing.
Sound City – Dave Grohl (February 1)
Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl, in his quest to be everywhere at once, has now taken up documentary filmmaking with his debut movie “Sound City.” He’s gathered a huge flock of his rock star friends to discuss the joys of recording at a long forgotten studio called Sound City. The film will premiere at Sundance (and Grohl will be on hand with a performance by the newly formed Sound City Players) but will be available for download shortly thereafter.
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III – Roman Coppola (February 15)
Roman Coppola’s (frequent Wes Anderson collaborator) second film could just be the most bananas comedy of the year, and not just because the movie poster is just one giant banana. Charlie Sheen plays Charles Swan III in this bizarre, surreal comedy starring Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray.
Dead Man Down – Niels Arden Oplev (March 8)
The trailer looked pretty ho-hum, but Niels Arden Oplev gave me the biggest surprise of the year in his Swedish version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” This English language film actually reunites him with Noomi Rapace in a crime thriller about a woman who seduces a mobster to seek revenge.
Movies you might think I’d be more excited for, but no
“The Great Gatsby,” “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” “Oblivion,” “Star Trek Into Darkness,” “Elysium,” “Pacific Rim,” “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” “Saving Mr. Banks,” “Oz the Great and Powerful,” “Man of Steel,” “The Wolverine,” “Anchorman: The Legend Continues,” “Iron Man 3,” “Kick-Ass 2,” “Thor: The Dark World,” “The Lone Ranger”
Did you know that “Zero Dark Thirty” is already dead in the water in the Oscar race?
It was news to me too, not only because it’s the new consensus title amongst critics as the best picture of the year, but mainly because it’s already January 1st and I still haven’t seen it!
Kathryn Bigelow’s film is in a peculiar place this year as the most talked about movie of the year that no one has watched yet. Controversy over being Obama propaganda and an advocate of using torture in interrogation, “ZDT” has stirred innumerable debate amongst critics, Academy voters and Hollywood insiders, but it doesn’t release wide until January 11.
“Zero Dark Thirty” is still a sure-fire Oscar nominee if not a guaranteed winner, but the wave of discussion may have peaked too soon. Because Oscar nominations come out the day before the movie is released, the press may already have moved on by the time “ZDT” hits the Midwest. The general public can’t help but be way behind the curve.
“Zero Dark Thirty” is just one example of how movie culture is limping beside TV and music. With a wave of great movies this fall, critics were quick to declare 2012 a terrific year for the movies while simultaneously penning columns that declared cinema itself dead.
It sounds like an oxymoron, and no can seem to figure out why these movies with such rich critical discourse are being forgotten about in place of cheesy family movies and gargantuan blockbusters.
They can’t figure it out because they’re part of the problem. Film criticism has remained exclusive while intelligent discussion about other forms of pop culture has been effortlessly provided to the masses. We’ve resigned to the belief that people who are deeply interested in the movies will come looking for criticism while the rest just read for recommendations. We’ve isolated ourselves from the national conversation.
People can now watch TV and listen to music like critics. I can immediately stream Frank Ocean’s “Channel Orange” on Spotify and read Pitchfork’s review all on the day it comes out. I can watch the new episode of “Parks and Recreation” and read Alan Sepinwall’s review the next morning, if not within hours. And if I’ve missed it, I can watch it the next day on Hulu. In both cases, I can be part of the critical discussion as soon as the paid critics are, and I can have just as loud of a voice on my blog and on Twitter. Continue reading “Is Movie Culture an Endangered Species?”
There’s a big difference in seeing an actor’s face 50 feet high on the silver screen than seeing an actor just five inches high on a stage that’s a mile away. There’s definitely something to seeing and hearing that little person live, but there’s a lot of emotion and expression that we only get from the movies.
So part of the thrill of this new adaptation of the classic musical “Les Miserables” is in making the emotions of Jean Valjean and Fantine be as big as possible. Director Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”) has put them in an appropriately sized film that feels epic but not overstuffed, but did he really have to make their faces so big too?
Simply put, “Les Miz” is frustratingly un-cinematic. It achieves images that the stage never could but stifles the possibilities of what a camera can do and what an epically proportioned musical can and should look like. At every moment it emblazons these characters in intense close-ups and very little breathing room. Try as Hugh Jackman might to parade around the room of a monastery, the camera follows him mercilessly, refusing to break from a centered close-up of Valjean’s ill-fated face as though the camera were attached to a harness around his chest.
Hooper covers his tracks by chopping the movie to bits in the editing room. The average shot length is infuriatingly short, but not in the excessive Baz Luhrmann way either; Hooper simply doesn’t know when to stay put.
He does however realize that there’s true wonder in seeing the whole cast belt out a medley of themes during magnificent pop opera numbers like “One Day More,” and this is especially true when we get the opportunity to see them on stage together. Why then should Hooper separate each individual singer into claustrophobic boxes? Why does he refuse to let multiple characters share the frame at once? Why must it look like we’re watching this whole movie on a stadium Jumbotron?
It gets nauseating and delirious watching something so jarring. The makeup and hairstyles are garish, the lighting is dark and muddy, and the camera captures Parisian alleys and sewers with Dutch angles and a quivering hand. It can be as punishing as watching Fantine (Anne Hathaway) drunkenly stumble around in agony during the “Lovely Lady” number.
You long for the firm hand and intricate medium shots Hooper used to excess in “The King’s Speech” and “The Damned United.” How did this director change so thoroughly between films? Now Hooper’s close-ups are so intensified, they’d be boring to look at if Anne Hathaway weren’t pouring her heart and soul into “I Dreamed a Dream.”
She, amongst the rest of the cast, really are the saving grace of “Les Miz.” Hathaway’s Fantine is really just a minor character in this epic revolution drama, but amongst all the moments each character gets to themselves, hers is by far the most memorable, her face convulsing in agony and her eyes too sad to even care the camera is so close.
Much of these gripes won’t matter much to most audiences. They’ll be swept up in the way I was upon first seeing a touring production of “Les Miserables” in London, invigorated and inspired by the story’s themes of commitment, honor and spirituality. But to those who pay attention to cinematography and editing, least of all in a treasured musical where these things matter most of all, “Les Miz” will feel mighty clumsy.
If “Inglourious Basterds” was really a Spaghetti Western in a World War II setting, then “Django Unchained” is really a Blaxploitation film in Spaghetti Western clothing. This could be frustrating in its own way, but it may be that “Django’s” intentional identity crisis is what makes it seem jumbled, messy, overlong and almost incomplete.
The ironic part is that this is true of every Quentin Tarantino film. He’s crafted an entire genre all his own in which the messy parts make the experience so damn fun. But Tarantino really was working up to the wire on “Django;” reshoots and last minute editing took place up until early December.
Yet to call “Django Unchained” incomplete makes it sound as though there’s something missing. That would be like having a German folk legend without a mountain; of course there’s one. What’s absent is the spark and allure that made “Inglourious Basterds” so infectious and invigorating.
Gone is the tingling suspense in the dialogue that suggested Hans Landa knew more than he was letting on or that ordering a glass of milk was a sign of an epic search years in the making.
Here in “Django,” the characters are more exciting and colorful than the story, and their dialogue is concerned with whether someone will snap at yet another instance of the N-word and ignite a “Wild Bunch” proportioned firefight. The details behind the motivations seem to be just a matter of circumstance.
Take The Brittle Brothers, a mysterious and vicious gang with a big bounty on their heads. Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a man gifted with his guns but more so with his words, wants to capture them badly, but he knows neither their whereabouts nor what they look like. Django (Jamie Foxx) however, does. Schultz goes through the trouble of freeing Django from a pair of slave owners and enlists his help, and the two dismantle the trio of brothers in no time. The brothers’ threat and their reason for being matters little.
The real story then is Django’s quest to reunite with his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). They discover through the uninteresting means of a logbook that she is the property of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the wealthy owner of the Candieland plantation. Candie is an avid lover of Mandingo fighting, in which black people brutally beat each other to death in front of adoring whites, and Django and Schultz’s plan is to impersonate wealthy buyers so that they can purchase Broomhilda out from under them.
Even Broomhilda is no one of consequence to anyone but Django. Broomhilda’s transaction could conceivably be handled civilly, but Schultz craves a good battle of wits, and Candie is a Southern Gentleman who just doesn’t want to be made a fool. Django is really just along for the ride.
That’s the problem with “Django Unchained;” in its current edited state, the plot too seems to be along for the ride. Tarantino squeezes juicy moments from the lot, such as Django’s garish blue outfit, some verbose wordplay by Waltz and a few gunfights scored to gangster rap, but they matter less than in the Westerns and Blaxploitation films they were inspired by.
Consider one of the film’s best scenes in which Candie places a skull of a black man on his dinner table in front of Schultz and Django. He eloquently preaches the pseudo-science of Phrenology to explain why black men are inferior to whites, wielding a hammer in a threat to bash some skulls both figuratively and literally. The moment is electric, but it’s a put on, isn’t it? It’s very convenient that Candie has a skull lying around, and he’s only doing it to be showy.
There’s also the moment where a posse of whites ride in brandishing torches and wearing pillow sheets to lynch Django. Just before their attack, one of several of the film’s spontaneous spectacles, he rewinds back to a hilarious routine in which everyone complains that they can’t see out of their sacks. Wouldn’t you say this scene almost intentionally interrupts the movie’s flow?
By the time Tarantino arrives at his exorbitantly bloody finale, he barrel rolls past it to remind you it’s not a Western but a Blaxploitation film, wedging in a torture scene, a director’s cameo and a new, less interesting villain. Something is definitely jumbled if the climax seems to have passed.
“Django Unchained” is like Candie’s belief in Phrenology. The science seems to all be there, and it’s captivating when you hear it, but there’s definitely something about it that feels wrong.
