Oscar Preview: Best Actress

Carey Mulligan in “An Education”

It’s autumn and the prestige pictures are starting to be released, and have seen by many at film festivals. The names of potential Oscar nominees sprout on Oscar-ninny Web sites like bamboo shoots. As usual, this year the Best Actress contenders are fairly easy to call, as there aren’t that many. There are some familiar names (but no Cate or Kate this year) and some newcomers on the short-list.

I see three actresses with virtual locks for nominations. They include the most nominated performer of all time, Meryl Streep, for her luminous portrayal of Julia Child in Julie and Julia. It would be Streep’s sixteenth nomination, a growing total that is just mind-boggling. She will have twenty-five percent more nominations than her next competitor, Katharine Hepburn, and before the age of sixty!

 

I also see two new names as being near mortal locks. Carey Mulligan, a young British actress, has been getting all sorts of terrific buzz for An Education. This category is kind to out-of-nowhere actresses, especially those from the British Isles. Her situation reminds me of Julie Christie in 1965 for Darling.

 

The third sure-thing is Gabourey Sidibe for Precious. This film, about an overweight teenage black girl in the inner city who suffers from parental abuse seems like a natural for award consideration. I’m not sure the film itself will get nominated, as it seems like it may be too gritty for the rarefied air of Best Picture, but Sidibe’s Cinderella story-line will surely get her a nomination.

 

In the next tier are three actresses, two of whom are familiar Oscar competitors. Every five years, like some sort of Hollywood cicada, Hilary Swank emerges with a high-profile picture. She won both times, in ’99 and ’04, and she looks to be back this year with Amelia, a splashy biopic about the legendary aviatrix. Interestingly, each time Swank wins she beats Annette Bening, who also seems to be on a five-year cycle. She’s back this year in Rodrigo Garcia’s Mother and Child. If these two don’t take the last two slots, it could go to Abbie Cornish, who shines in Bright Star.

 

Of course there are always surprises, and many times this category has performances in foreign languages. The two actresses who could sneak in are Penelope Cruz in Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces or Audrey Tatou in the title role of Coco Before Chanel. As last year’s nomination for Melissa Leo shows, actresses from very small indie pictures can also break into this category, and two names getting some attention are Robin Wright Penn for The Private Lives of Pippa Lee or Michelle Monaghan for Trucker.

 

Speaking of Cruz, she is also in the cast of the musical Nine, one of five women in the cast who are  Oscar winning actresses (the others are Sophia Loren, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman and Marion Cotillard). I would imagine that most of these roles are too small for the lead category, but we’ll see.

Review: Bright Star

Bright Star, which tells the brief story of the romance between poet John Keats and his neighbor, Fanny Brawne, gets off to a stuffy, Masterpiece Theater sort of start, but the accumulating emotion, centered around his untimely death, crept up on me, and made the film a very rewarding experience.

Written and directed by Jane Campion, the film is set in the years 1818 to 1820. Keats (Ben Whishaw), in his early twenties, struggles with poverty as he pursues his calling as a poet. He relies on the generosity of his friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), also a poet. Brawne (Abbie Cornish) is from the middle-class, with a younger brother and sister, and excels as a seamstress. The act of stitching, whether of Brawne’s threads or Keats’ words, is a prevalent theme throughout the film.

Keats has limited renown and less money, so a marriage with Brawne is out of the question. Brown and Brawne share a mutual disdain, which makes their housing situation difficult when the Brawne family move into the same house with Brown and Keats. The center section of the film sags a bit when we get different iterations of how unfair it all is that though they love each other, it’s just not to be between our two lovebirds.

The final act, though, is very moving. When Keats stumbles in after getting soaked in the rain, the savvy viewer will get that “uh-oh” feeling, even if they don’t know their literary history. Watching the principles come to grips with the inevitable is exquisite drama, and when Fanny’s mother (Kerry Fox) acquiesces to their engagement it would take a stone heart not to be affected.

Given that her movie is about a poet who used vivid natural imagery, Campion’s film is something of a visual poem. There are exquisite scenes from all four seasons, with abundant uses of natural beauty (the first line of Keats we hear in the film is “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”). There are some remarkable shots: a servant in a kitchen, looking like something out of Vermeer; Fanny leaning back on her bed, flush with the excitement of love, a curtain billowing out of a window before her; a room full of butterflies; a long shot of three figures stalking angrily across a meadow. Full credit should be given to the cinematographer, Greig Fraser.

Cornish dominates the film. At first she is like a Jane Austen heroine, bristlingly ahead of her time, but then playing two basic notes: pining for John Keats, and grieving for him. Despite these limitations, she excels. She reminded me a lot of Charlize Theron, but without the self-consciousness. Her scene of anguish after learning of Keats’ death is draining to watch. She will certainly be on the short list of Oscar hopefuls.

Whishaw is also fine, playing a consumptive genius without sentimentality and fully-shaded. One can really believe he is a poet, too. There’s a great moment for English majors when he’s called upon to recite a poem and responds with “When I have fears I may cease to be,” and then can’t remember it (this was at a time when people recited poetry for amusement, a charming thing that almost makes up for the abysmal health conditions). But the best performances may be by two supporting players, Schneider and Fox. Schneider, almost unrecognizable from his current role on TV’s Parks and Recreation, plays Brown as a brash, bearish man who is protective of Keats but lacking in tact. When the arc of his character is complete, and he realizes he has failed his friend, Schneider nails the scene brilliantly. Fox, who has less to do, is an integral player in that it is she that sets the tone of John and Fanny’s relationship, and when she changes the film changes with her.

A final note to complain about boorish movie audiences: over the closing credits Whishaw recites “Ode on a Nightingale.” Nevertheless, patrons at the theater I attended stood up and put their coats on, chatting loudly, their rudeness on full display. And these were not teenagers, but respectable Princeton citizens of a certain age. Another reason why I’m watching more and more films at home.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol: Trailer

Click on the rather unfortunately expressive poster below:

(picture from IMPAwards)

A Visit to the Walt Disney Family Museum

Earlier this year I joined Disney’s D23 on an impulsive whim. Sometimes I am given to these flights of fancy and usually pay for it, literally in dollars, soon thereafter. However it has only taken me 6 months to see a return on that investment: admission for 4 to the soon-to-be-opened Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio in San Francisco. This visual/architectural/technological/audtorial spectacle is sure to be the destination of many a pilgrimage from the time it opens this Thursday October 1st.

There are countless Disney fanatics who can (and probably already have) go into great detail about anything and everything, including ‘easter eggs,’ found in each of the museum’s 10 galleries. I am not that person, but I will do my best to try! As they would not allow cameras of any kind inside, and I had to rush through due to my tickets being for the last timeslot of the day, my memories will have to suffice.

Jackrabbit Slim Meets the Star of The Girlfriend Experience

"Watch the hands, Buster!"

Worst of the Decade

Worst of the Worst (courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes)

I know James has his “Decade In Film” series running, but after seeing this on Rotten Tomatoes I just had to make a post. I’m usually a little ashamed that I haven’t seen the balance of AFI’s (or critics or whoever’s) top 100 list. However, I can say that I am fully proud that I have only seen 7 of these worst 100 movies (and even then only 1 in the “top” 40 – Kickin’ It Old Skool). Thoughts?

Opening in Chicago, 09/25

Bright Star (trailer)
Director: Jane Campion (The Piano, The Portrait of a Lady, Holy Smoke, In the Cut)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Seems like it’s been forever since Jane Campion had a new film, but while it actually has been, part of that perception is that I never saw her last two. In other words, it’s been over a dozen years since I’ve seen one. While I’m on the subject, The Piano is one of the great neglected movies on DVD, having only ever received (in R1, at least) a non-anamorphic bare-bones release over a decade ago. Might have to make that suggestion on Criterion’s Facebook page.
Metacritic: 81

Disgrace
Director: Steve Jacobs
Personal Interest Factor: 7
Never heard about it until I saw Ebert’s 4-star review this morning. Stars John Malkovich as a disgraced South African professor.
Metacritic: 71

Fame (trailer)
Director: Kevin Tancharoen
Personal Interest Factor: 1
What do you do if you’re a struggling studio and you want to get a piece of the High School Musical action, despite not having the rights to High School Musical? Here’s the answer, I guess. Gonna learn how to fly!
Metacritic: 47

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (trailer)
Director: Bob Gosse (Niagara, Niagara, Julie Johnson)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Don’t care at all about this, but I’m intrigued by the line from Frank Scheck’s review (from The Hollywood Reporter) that is excerpted on Metacritic: “outdo[es] Dumb and Dumber in sheer grossness and detail with its depiction of the unfortunate effects of explosive diarrhea.” It’s worth noting that D&D is neither particularly gross nor detailed in this aspect; that scene was based completely on Jeff Daniels’s facial expressions and perhaps a couple of mild sound effects.
Metacritic: 34

Pandorum (trailer)
Director: Christian Alvart
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Pity poor Dennis Quaid. First GI Joe, and now this.
Metacritic: no score yet

Paris (trailer)
Director: Cédric Klapisch (L’auberge espagnole)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Interest here stems mostly from the presence of Juliette Binoche. It’s about a guy needing a heart transplant, who moves in with his sister and her three kids. That’s all I know.
Metacritic: 61

The Providence Effect
Director: Rollin Binzer (Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
With a title like that, you’re probably swearing that it’s a Christian-themed movie, possibly with someone like Kirk Cameron in the lead, but it is in fact a documentary about a successful prep school here in Chicago.
Metacritic: 71

Surrogates (trailer)
Director: Jonathan Mostow (Breakdown, U-571, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
Jonathan Mostow used to be a semi-prominent action director, but each of his movies has been less satisfying than the last. Roughly the same can be said of Bruce Willis over the last who-knows-how-many years.
Metacritic: 47

A Woman in Berlin (trailer)
Director: Max Färberböck (Aimee & Jaguar)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
I don’t really know how to say this, but … I’m awfully tired of over-earnest WWII movies being an instant ticket to credibility. I’m sure that this has all kinds of emotional truth and carefully calibrated moral ambiguity and whatnot, but it just looks like an enormous chore and if I’m being completely honest, I’d just as soon not bother.
Metacritic: 74

Two and a half years at WordPress and I still can’t remember our URL

“We’re at, uh wordpress.goneelsewhere…no, wait…it’s goneelsewhere.word.press.  No, there are no hyphens…”

No more!   http://www.gone-elsewhere.com

Review: The Informant!

You never know what you’re going to get with a Steven Soderbergh film, and with The Informant! you’re not even sure as the closing credits roll. I think it’s a psychological drama masquerading as a comedy, but it might be the exact opposite. Some critics, specifically A.O. Scott, write that this genre-bending is part of the film’s genius, but I’m not so sure. This film may be as bipolar as its main character.

Viewers can be excused if they swallow this film as nothing more than a comedy in the Coen Brothers tradition, from the exclamation point at the end of the title, to Matt Damon’s cheesy moustache, to Marvin Hamlisch’s bouncy score, which recalls the canned music from 1960s sit-coms. Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a bioscientist who has made VP at agricultural conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland. He comes to his bosses with a story about a Japanese rival looking to extort money in exchange for information on a saboteur, and in turn the FBI is brought in (primarily in the form of agent Scott Bakula). This, though, is just the start of a slippery slope of misinformation, as Damon goes to work as a mole for the FBI, gathering information on price-fixing.

What starts as a film about corporate malfeasance that any liberal could love, Soderbergh slowly twists it into something else entirely. Whitacre, it turns out, is entirely unreliable, and I won’t say more in order to avoid spoilers. Suffice to say that the film is really about a pathological liar, and the destruction of a man’s life. It gets harder to laugh at the more the movie progresses.

But there are plenty of laughs. Soderbergh frontloads the film with manic comic energy, and also peppers the cast with stand-up comedians (including cameos by both Smothers Brothers). I found the funniest bits to be Damon’s running commentary of stray thoughts that come in his head, even as he’s meeting with FBI agents or his bosses, about things as meaningless as neckties or how polar bears hide their black noses when they hunt (“How do they know they have black noses?” Damon wonders).

Whitacre is an inspired creation. This is based on a true story, but I have to believe that everything we see of Whitacre is Matt Damon alone. He plays the man as an overfed, seeming well-meaning Midwesterner who is over his head, but as the movie progresses darker and darker layers of Whitacre emerge, and Damon, while hilarious through most of the film, also can be chilling in his pathology.

I think this film edges around greatness, but never gets there, and I left the theater underwhelmed. I’d give it an uninspired B-minus, but will expect Damon to be in conversation when it comes to Best Actor nominees.

GEE: The Box review

Last Thursday night was the world premiere for Richard Kelly’s The Box, his third film after the excellent debut Donnie Darko and embarrassingly bad follow-up Southland Tales. The world premiere took place at the opening gala for Fantastisk Film Festival in Lund in the south of Sweden, inside a huge tent erected in the Lundagård park especially for the occasion.

While the idea of having a world premiere inside a big tent is audacious – and there was no doubt that the organizers had spent a good deal of time making it as viable an option as they could within their budget constraints – the reality was that the seats were cramped and uncomfortable, the sound for the feature badly calibrated during the first ten minutes and the projectionist had to take a five minute break in the middle of the film to change reels. It was fun trying it once but I would reconsider such a venue next time. I did like the big fountain sticking up out of the main reception area.

My mobile camera doesn't work very well with bad lighting, as you can see

The Box takes place in Virginia during the winter of 1976. Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) are a stable couple with one quiet but intelligent teenage son; she a school teacher and him a scientist at NASA working on the Mars program, having dedicated his life to become an astronaut. They wake up one early morning to find a small box at their doorstep. Inside it is a wooden box consisting of a red metal button and a letter telling them to wait for instructions. Later that afternoon Arlington James Steward (Frank Langella), a man with half his jaw missing, drops by their house to explain the nature of the box. If they press the button someone they don’t know will die and they will receive a payment of one million dollars. They have twenty four hours to make a decision. Initially dismissing Mr Steward as a hoax or madman, during the following day some of the preconceptions of their lives are tested and as the deadline approaches pressing the button becomes a tempting possibility.

Based on Richard Matheson’s short story Button, Button (also filmed as an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1986) The Box has many hallmarks of what you might now call Richard Kelly’s style. The plot is labyrinthine, going off on tangents that appear to lead nowhere, and it probably requires more than one viewing to make sense. There is an all-encompassing conspiracy and potentially the fate of not just the main characters but the world at stake. There are enough odd sci-fi elements for three films. The characters will occasionally ramble philosophically about their dilemmas.

The film looks great and could just as well have been filmed in the seventies, if it weren’t for Kelly’s apparent fondness for whatever cgi software James Cameron used in The Abyss. Despite that, Mr Steward’s facial deformity is probably the main effect in this film, and Langella is such a professional actor that he steals the film from under Diaz and Marsden’s feet. Diaz is a capable actress, and she doesn’t embarrass herself here, but even though she plays a cripple in this film, I doubt she will ever win an Oscar. Marsden is solid in his role. The score is supposedly by members of Arcade Fire but I can’t say I noticed. It sounded like most scores for these kinds of films.

To be blunt, The Box is a much more concentrated and even restrained effort than Southland Tales but it still makes you worry that the wunderkind let initial success go to his head. The film starts off well, with a sense of atmospheric paranoia (the 70s setting serves well in this regard) but as the director slowly introduces one plot element after another, some of them bordering on silliness, it begins to test your patience. It’s hard to discuss the film without going into spoiler territory (as Ms Diaz apparently did at Comic-Con) but the central question – “Would you kill someone you didn’t know with the press of a button for a million dollars?” – shouldn’t require the wild plot this film has. There is a scene at a library involving water that I still don’t quite understand the point of. There are also two jumps in time between a car crash, an airplane hangar and the couple’s house that seemed to be missing a few scenes.

The Box is a gothic sci-fi thriller melodrama that some will like but more than a few will shake their heads at. I liked it, overall, and I’d probably watch it again, which is the best compliment you can give this film. Kelly is a good director, but as a screenwriter he tends to want to include any and all elements that appeal to him, even though it makes little sense to the overall picture. He’s not exactly a master of restraint. I would like to say that Kelly was back on track, but this is more of a step into the right direction, even though I wonder where it’s leading.

Opening in Chicago, 09/18

A bit short on the comments this week. We’re flying to Denver early in the morning and I still need to pack. Fortunately, other than The Informant!, there’s not a must-see this week. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Amreeka (trailer)
Director: Cherien Dabis
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Story of a single Palestinian mother who emigrates to the US in search of a less sectarian environment.
Metacritic: 70

The Burning Plain (trailer)
Director: Guillermo Arriaga
Personal Interest Factor: 5
I could feign interest if I wanted, based on Arriaga’s pedigree, but seriously, there’s no reason to think this is good. The reviews are pretty tepid and the trailer could hardly be worse
Metacritic: 53

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (trailer)
Director: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Personal Interest Factor: 2
I like food. But the thought of it raining food is far more off-putting to me than the thought of a talking rat who is a chef. This movie looks frankly disgusting to me.
Metacritic: 68

The Informant! (trailer)
Director: Steven Soderbergh (Bubble, The Good German, Che, The Girlfriend Experience)
Personal Interest Factor: 10
Steven Soderbergh makes a Coen Brothers movie. Can’t wait.
Metacritic:

Jennifer’s Body (trailer)
Director: Karyn Kusuma (Girlfight, Æon Flux)
Personal Interest Factor: 2
I guess this movie’s supposed to have pedigree because Diablo Cody wrote it, but … please.
Metacritic: 44

Lake Tahoe
Director: Fernando Eimbcke (Duck Season)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Never heard of this movie until I started writing this tonight, but Eimbcke’s Duck Season, about a couple of kids home alone during an afternoon, was a charming little movie from Mexico. I doubt I’ll have the time to see this, but if I do, I might check it out.
Metacritic: 72

Love Happens (trailer)
Director: Brandon Camp
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Self-help guru who can’t help himself, a woman who’s sworn of romance, etc. You know how it is.
Metacritic: 37

No Impact Man (trailer)
Director: Laura Gabbert, Justin Schein
Personal Interest Factor: 1
I’ll be honest. I recognize the good intentions here but it looks as tedious as a movie possibly could be. And as activism, it strikes me as quite likely to counterproductive to its cause; the last thing people want to be told is that they’re going to have to adopt extreme lifestyle changes in response to environmental crisis. Far-fetched do-gooder shit like this gives liberals a bad name.
Metacritic: 63

Review: 9

I wouldn’t be surprised if some enterprising Intro to Theology teacher screened 9 for his charges, but I would be if it were shown to film students. The film is loaded with religious allegory, but despite evocative animation the story is routine adventure.

Directed by Shane Acker, based on a short film of his that is unseen by me, the film is co-produced by Tim Burton, and I remember when I first saw the trailer for 9 Burton’s name popped into my head before I saw his name in the credits. It has his visual fingerprints all over it. I’m not sure of the reason for this–did Burton influence Acker, or was Burton drawn to it because it tickled his sensibilities–but in any event this film looks a lot like Burton films such as Edward Scissorhands and the Henry Selick-directed Nightmare Before Christmas.

9 concerns a time just after the expiration of the human race, which have been destroyed by machines that were created as their salvation. This, of course, strongly smacks of the Terminator films, and there’s also quite a bit of The Lord of the Rings in the story, as a small band of individuals go on a quest to save their kind (Acker was an animator for The Return of the King). Where Acker shows some originality is the characters themselves: they are dolls, about a foot high, made of burlap, with binocular lenses for eyes.

These dolls were created by the scientist who also invented the machine that destroys humanity. He makes nine of them, each marked by a numeral. The story begins when the last, 9, is created, and he stumbles into being. Soon he meets others of his kind, namely 2, an elderly inventor. When 2 is grabbed by a spidery robot and taken to a distant structure, 9 wants to save him, but the leader of the group, 1 (natch) balks. 1 is a representative of fundamentalism–when 9 asks why “the Beast” (surely a reference to Satan) is after them, 1 scoffs and says that these questions are pointless. 1 is at odds with the scientific 2, and is interested only in preservation, preferring to hide away and leave 2 to his fate.

9 influences 5, who is sort of the Samwise of the group, to help him, and they meet up with 7, the only female and a warrior who wears a bird skull as a helmet. But while trying to rescue 2, 9 awakens the dormant mother machine, and there’s hell to pay.

Some of this is engaging, but I was gripped with a sense of impatience almost immediately, as if I’ve seen this all before. We’re all familiar with the look of post-apocalypse–the perpetually dusky skies, the ruined buildings, the detritus of human existence such as old cars, newspapers, and broken doll heads. And though the film is very short and gets into the action right away, the core of the action is so simplistic–characters are attacked, some get taken, remaining characters go to the rescue–that a metronomic quality of the film overwhelms the theme.

What is most interesting about 9 is that theme, which is one of the most basic to humanity though it is relatively unexplored in films that play in multiplexes: who created us, and why are we here? The dolls of 9 struggle with this in different ways, with 1 choosing not to even think about, to 7 choosing to fight, to 9 questioning. With the character 6 Acker even references deeper meaning, with the character being fashioned out of what looks like mattress ticking that resembles the rags worn by those in concentration camps during World War II.

But all of that goes by the wayside when the mechanisms of the plot muck up the works. I give screenwriter Pamela Pettler a perverse sort of credit, because I wouldn’t be able to type lines of dialogue such as, “We’ve got to go after them” (I believe this is said more than once) or “I started this, and I’m going to finish it.” I’m not even sure small children would enjoy this film, as it is almost unrelievedly grim, and has an ending that is spiritually uplifting (it made me think of the end of Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves) but won’t send kids out of the theater looking to buy action figures.

Opening in Chicago, 09/11

Alien: The Director’s Cut
Director: Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Body of Lies)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
I saw a DLP reissue of Alien several years back, which I guess was the “Director’s Cut” being shown again now. The Music Box is showing it this week (in 35mm) for it’s 30th Anniversary, and obviously it holds up pretty well. Fun fact: to this day, I’ve yet to see Aliens.
Metacritic: 83

The Baader Meinhof Complex
Director: Uli Edel (Last Exit to Brooklyn, Body of Evidence, The Little Vampire)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
The final Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee to open here, about the notorious Red Army Group. Reviews have been good, but you have to admit, Edel does not have an inspiring filmography to date.
Metacritic: 73

I Can Do Bad All By Myself (trailer)
Director: Tyler Perry (Why Did I Get Married?, Meet the Browns, The Family That Preys, Madea Goes to Jail)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Say what you will about Tyler Perry – and I can’t really say much, since I’ve never seen any of his work – but he’s settled into a two-films-a-year output level that’s putting even Steven Soderbergh to shame. If nothing else, the man is extraordinarily prolific.
Metacritic: no score

Import/Export
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Film about two people leaving home in search of better lives. Premiered at Cannes two years ago.
Metacritic: not listed

9 (trailer)
Director: Shane Acker
Personal Interest Factor: 9? No, 7.
Weirdly enough, this reminds me of the artwork for the liner notes of The Smashing Pumpkins Machina/The Machines of God. I don’t know why that is; they aren’t at all similar. But they’re both appealing to me in the same way. Of course, that album wasn’t very good.
Metacritic: 60

The September Issue (trailer)
Director: R.J. Cutler
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Documentary about Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the inspiration for Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. Seems like stright-up cult-of-personality type stuff and I’m really not at all interested.
Metacritic: 69

Sorority Row (trailer)
Director: Stewart Hendler
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Am I missing something, or is this just a straight-up ripoff of I Know What You Did Last Summer? Which was itself a stright-up ripoff of a teen horror novel that I remember reading, although I don’t remember its name. Which itself was probably a straight-up ripoff of something else that I don’t know about.
Metacritic: no score

Whiteout (trailer)
Director: Dominic Sena (Kalifornia, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Swordfish)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
Kate Beckinsale in an Antarctic murder mystery. Maybe Werner Herzog should have made this movie instead of Encounters at the End of the World. “The gay penguin did it!”
Metacritic: 36

Review: World’s Greatest Dad

This is the first of Bobcat Goldthwait’s directorial efforts I’ve seen, but I was well aware of his comedy, having once seen him in person. He was something of a bomb-thrower, basing his comedy on saying something outrageous for the sake of outrageousness and not being particular sophisticated about it. There’s some of that in that World’s Greatest Dad, a movie on the whole I liked, but is awfully thin gruel.

The central joke is that an obnoxious teenager, who doesn’t do anything much but jerk off to Internet porn, dies accidentally by autoerotic asphyxiation. His sad sack father, a schoolteacher and frustrated writer (Robin Williams), decides to cover up the cause of his son’s death and makes it look like a suicide. He then crafts a suicide note that makes his son seem like a misunderstood genius.

Goldthwait pushes this as hard as he can. Daryl Sabara does a great job making his character reprehensible, and you can believe that a parent of his would question the concept of unconditional love. Sabara is rude, crude, and without a redeeming characteristic, yet I think I’ve known people like him. Williams gives one of those performances that makes you forgive his work in crap like RV, playing a mild-mannered poetry teacher with gracious humanity. I particularly liked a scene where he breaks down in sobs while looking at a  newsstand filled with his son’s favorite porno mags.

That being said, World’s Greatest Dad is a 100-minute film that could have been half that. When Williams’ ruse turns his son into a deceased hero, with kids wearing his image on t-shirts and listening to his favorite music (Williams tell them it’s Bruce Hornsby, who is really his favorite singer) he realizes that his life is starting to become everything he dreamed of. His secret relationship with a pretty young art teacher (Alexie Gilmore, bearing a perhaps unfortunate resemblance to Shelley Long) hits its stride, and after he fakes his son’s journal, he makes contacts with publishers.

The ending is kind of predictable, and Goldthwait pulls back his claws for a resolution that is morally correct but toothless. All along I was rooting for Williams to make the most of the situation, which I guess makes me a bad person. Goldthwait does score some points satirizing the reaction to teen suicide, but I’m not sure it wasn’t said already twenty years ago in Heathers (“I loved my dead gay son”).

Movies whose popular and/or critical success I just. don’t. get.

If you would allow me, for just a moment, to speak on something I bring up not to be a firestarter, not to throw tinder on a smoldering set of pine needles nestled somewhere deep in the San Fernando Valley, but rather to ask, to foment discussion and out of a true sense of “Why?”: How have these films become the critical and commercial success they have? Are they popular because of their pedigree? Their director, stars, filming location/backstory, etc.? Are they looked-upon as they are because everyone everywhere decides you must look on them with reverence simply because everyone else tells you to?

If you can explain to me why these films are what they are and the reason they are that way, then please, by all means, let me know. But do not just throw in simple explanations like: “You’re retarded, that’s why you don’t get it.” (And please don’t use retarded as a pejorative. It’s juvenile and really insensitive.)

So with no further adieu, I give you Part 1 of the list of movies that I just. don’t. get.

First-and-absolutely-foremost on my list is that bloated carcass of an “epic”:

1. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Lawrence of Arabia

Okay. I know what you are all going to say. I know the backlash this will engender and I know I must be out of my mind. But I’m being completely honest when I say I Just. Don’t. Get. It. This is a bloated 3-hour mass of men riding camels through the desert. I tried recently to watch this again and, once again, I saw the same thing. So what is it? The cinematography? Then say that. Is it the direction? Then say that. Is it the acting? All this seems to me is a director at the height of his power making the movie he wanted to make…and everyone drinking the Kool-Aid of an obvious master.

2. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

No Country For Old Men

Okay. I’ll give you Fargo. Probably more-so, Raising Arizona. Hell, I even loved Hudsucker Proxy for what it was. But this movie? With a script that was probably thirty pages of actual screenplay that goes nowhere but back around on itself and  a thumb-its-nose-at-convention ending, I think this is a great example of critics getting together and asserting their will for a pair of filmmakers who are well-liked and who can influence academy voters and decided they would make a campaign to elevate a decent movie that is simply a generic heist thriller polished with the wry approach of two masters-of-the-game. Even more criminal than how Kevin Costner and Dances with Wolves took the Oscar from Goodfellas was the idea that this movie could beat There Will Be Blood and the upstart Paul Thomas Anderson. “Okay, Coens, you have Tommy Lee Jones as a sheriff? Javier Bardem in a bowl cut? A suitcase of money? Josh Brolin finally coming into his own? And what do you have, Paul? Daniel-Day? With a Noah Cross voice? And a really good oil derrick scene? Here’s a cinematography Oscar.”