Animal Kingdom

The first shot in David Michod's Australian crime opus is a stunner.  Josh (James Frecheville), 17 years old, sits on the couch in a small apartment watching a game show. His mother appears to be sleeping on the couch beside him. Then the door opens and the paramedics enter. They inquire as to the situation. Josh detached, almost uninterested, explains his mother has overdosed on heroin. He stands as the paramedics tend to his mother and as they do Josh does a most interesting thing - he briefly turns his attention back to the game show. His mother has od'd and is about to be pronounced dead but for a moment there the TV is just a little more interesting. You could serve up a three-and-a-half hour voiceover describing every detail of Josh's past and not have it say as much as this shot.

So Josh goes to live with his mother's sister Janine (Jackie Weaver), who had an eternal falling out with his mom over a game of cards and lords over a home that is a much more sinister, much less fun-loving version of Jack Horner's home in "Boogie Nights." Her three sons comprise a band of Melbourne bank robbers who are led by the quietly frightening Baz (Joel Edgerton), though the bank robberies are nowhere near the film's point. In fact, the only robbery glimpsed is done in stark black and white, security camera photos over the film's opening credits, accompanied by its understated, creepy, electronic score. Indeed, Michod's focus here is on the mental and the internal as opposed to the more traditional gunfire and chases.

As a protagonist, Josh is less than magnetic, possessing next to no charisma. He is sullen and withdrawn. But then 17 year old male teenagers are rarely magnetic and charismatic. They are often sullen and withdrawn. They are often searching for some sort of direction, particularly if they are dealt a hand in life similar to that of Josh's who now, with nowhere else to turn, is essentially forced into the family business in a short sequence where Baz presses a gun into Josh's hand and encourages him to chase off a few hooligans on the street. One of the film's saddest but most poignant scenes involves Josh's girlfriend Nicky (Laura Wheelwright), taking him home and asking her parents if he can stay with them a short while, this most common of living situations coming across like Shangri-la when compared to the aforementioned opening shot. (There is another brief moment involving Nicky in which her mom, played by Susan Prior, explains how difficult it is for her to cope with the fact her daughter is sleeping with her boyfriend that contains an intelligence, a delicateness, and a maturity that the last 500 teenage movies put together you've seen don't possess.)

He winds up staying there because events involving his criminal brothers and their friend, as they must, spiral out of control in ways I will refrain from revealing. Suffice it to say Josh is brought into the fold against his will and a gentle detective, Leckie (Guy Pearce), will keep on Josh to help him with the investigation since he can sense the 17 year old clearly knows more than he lets on while Josh's family, particularly Pope (Ben Mendohlson), an embodiment of the term Loose Cannon, makes veiled and then not so veiled threats to keep his mouth shut.

As the behind the scenes matriarch, Jackie Weaver, recent Best Supporting Actress Oscar Nominee, is earning most of the praise and it's a performance of decided sneakiness in the way she shows us everything with the lightest and most graceful of gestures, like in those unsettling on-the-lips kisses she gives to her sons. What's more, the role, as written, is extravagant in its patience. The expectation is a riff on Angela Lansbury in "The Manchurian Candidate", terrorizing and pulling the strings from offstage. Yet for much of the movie she strikes you as entirely maternal, often seen in the background of shots stirring something or other in a pot on the stove. She isn't completely clueless, she's aware of her sons' and their ally's misdeeds, she enables, but she also seems content to remain on the sidelines and keep out of harm's way. For awhile the viewer may honestly wonder why this turn has generated so much fuss. Ah, patience, viewer, patience, because once she's needed her performance goes hypersonic - figuratively, only figuratively. That's the key. The change is subtle but clear and can be registered through those eyes and through her voice which remains maternal but transforms into maternally menacing. It's really rather amazing to witness. Who's ringmaster of this circus? Jacki Weaver, that's who.

Maybe. Weaver's work deserves the accolades but ultimately "Animal Kingdom" itself belongs to Josh. It takes the film's entire running time to get Josh to where he needs to. The boy has become a man except then you realize that perhaps the film's greatest tragedy is that he never actually got any time to be a boy. 

Pause For The Cause

As is customary each year on this day I would like to take a moment to pay reverence to the anniversary of the greatest Moviegoing Experience Of My Life.  You know the film.

I still can't thank them enough.

My Great Movies: Captain Blood

About 45 minutes in our valiant hero Doctor Peter Blood, who has been made a slave down Jamaica way, is threatened with a whip by his plantation's owner, villainous Colonel Bishop. "Nothing can save you now!" bellows Bishop as he rears back the whip and at that precise moment, without warning, as if on cue, cannonfire sounds and a lookout shouts "Pirates! Spanish pirates!" And so it is. Nothing could have saved Peter Blood....well, except for pirates. Spanish pirates. And Peter Blood gets a smile and says - actually says out loud - "What a timely interruption this is! And what may come of it the devil himself only knows!" When was the last time you saw a movie where the main character addresses a deus ex machina out loud and without irony? This scene breaks every single rule of screenwriting. Every single one. Yet, I love it. God help me, I do love it so. It summarizes the longtime, unique, momentous relationship I have with this 1935 Michael Curtiz swashbuckler that launched the brief, volatile, celestial career of one Errol Flynn.

Long before the kids of today saw Captain Jack Sparrow and his other Bruckheimery scaliwags loot and pillage their way through Port Royal and eat, drink and be merry in Tortuga, Peter Blood (Flynn) and cohorts were the scourge of these infamous outposts. Well, on second thought, scourge might be too strong a word. Captain Blood and friends were less bloodthirsty buccaneers than benevolent bandits, dignified debaucherers. Once on the run these men form a noble code and stick to it. Rules are rules, not guidelines, not in 1935 on the Warner Brothers backlot, which is to the say the most important code was The Production Code and they stuck to it, come hell or high water.

The background: Peter Blood is an Irish physician in England, content to stay out of the rebellion that seeks to overthrow King James, "a healer, not a slayer." But one dark night a few rebels summon the good Doctor Blood to treat a wounded comrade which he does willingly. "My business was with his wounds, not his politics." But English soldiers storm his practice and arrest him on the charges of aiding and harboring rebels. At his foregone trial he declares his innocence leading to one of the film's many breathless exchanges:

-"Your duty, rogue, is to your King."
-"I thought it was to my fellow man."

Not in the eyes of the court. And so Peter Blood and his fellow convicts are sentenced to be hanged, only in a twist of fate - the movie's first and not its last - they are spared death and instead sold into slavery in the English colony of Port Royal, Jamaica. Once there it seems certain Blood's gentemanly contradictory nature will get him bought and banished to a life of hard labor in the salt mines of a devious dude named Dixon. Enter: Olivia de Havilland as Arabella Bishop, the niece of the colony's governor. Rather than allow this handsome devil to fall victim to a salt mine sentence she swoops in to purchase him. Quite likely this is the only Meet Cute in cinematic history centered around the purcashing of a slave, which might seem in poor taste if not for two inarguable reasons.

This was the first of eight cinematic couplings of Flynn and de Havilland, an ongoing onscreen relationship that was, in the words of John Lichfield, "the most quietly conflagrational in the history of movies." Indeed, the first time de Havilland's Arabella glimpses of Flynn's Blood her eyes sparkle in such a way to suggest it was not necessary for the actress to fake her way through these scenes. No real life memories need be conjured to convey romance. She smiles when she sees him and she smiles when she talks to him and she smiles when she walks with him. No need to tell Arabella to put on a happy face, not even when the situation is dire and frowns abound for never before and never since has a movie character so often smiled when onscreen.

Second, de Havilland proves, as always, she is not some senseless strumpet and out-foxes her own uncle by getting the good doctor Blood off the plantation (uh...never mind the other men) and conscripting him into service of Port Royal's Governor, suffering severely from the gout and fed up with the "ill begotten blunderers" posing as his current physicians.

Ah, but even with his good fortune Peter Blood yearns for freedom and plots escape with his fellow prisoners that at first comes undone but re-awakens via the aforementioned "timely interruption" of Spanish pirates, which allows for Blood and his band of mirthful charletons to hijack a Spanish warship and nobly save the town of Port Royal before turning their attention to a conquest of the high seas which in the outlaw outpost Tortuga leads Blood to make a pact with a fellow buccaneer, the French Captain Levasseur (Basil Rathbone), agreeing to equally divide whatever booty they may take. Of course, 4.7 seconds upon making this pact Captain Blood forlornly says to himself that he regrets making this pact. So....why did he make it?

Duh. Because Captain Levasseur had to intercept the ship sailing from Port Royal to England with (guess who!) Arabella Bishop and her escort Lord Willoughby aboard so that dastardly Captain Levasseur could take her a prisoner and/or prize and upon seeing her at a scenic island rendezvous, Captain Blood, ever clever, tells Captain Levasseur this was not in the spirit of their "sharing" arrangement, convinces him to put Arabella up for auction at which point Captain Blood purchases her. This would be wicked good fun all in the having come full circle to him now having purchased her except, of course, buccaneer squabbles do not end so amicably and, thus, Levasseur draws his rapier, Blood draws his and so commences the first occasion of Errol Flynn getting to stab Basil Rathbone in the heart. (If no one in cinema today can smile as splendidly as Olivia de Havilland, then no one in cinema today can die as dramatically as Basil Rathbone. That's to say, no one. Seriously, man, do Method actors let themselves get stabbed in the heart by a rapier to know what it's like to be stabbed in the heart by a rapier?)

And so Blood points his ship back toward Port Royal which, as it happens, has come under attack by the French, what with Colonel Bishop out and about and on the prowl for Captain Blood himself rather than protecting the colony, and upon learning from Lord Willoughby that King William has deposed tyrant King James upon the throne Captain Blood agrees to once again save Port Royal which he, of course, does by implementing a strategy Russell Crowe's Captain Jack Aubrey would rip off, oh, about 120 years later in "Master and Commander: The Far Side Of The World" which leads to a crazy awesome concluding scene that is as much screwball as swashbuckler in which Captain Blood is named Governor of Port Royal with Arabella at his side....well, actually, literally, on his lap.

A couple years ago there were rumors flying about a possible "Captain Blood" remake, probably in an attempt to cash in on the whole "Pirates of the Caribbean" craze, and it seems these rumors, from what I can tell, burned out and this is good if for no other reason than we have no actors in the here and now comparable to Errol Flynn. I'm not suggesting we don't have actors who are better than Flynn, because we do, but we have no actors who can do the precise things which Flynn did so well. When he and his marauders make off with the Spanish ship, Captain Blood hollers "Up that rigging, you monkeys! There's no chains to hold you now! Break out those sails and watch them fill with the wind that's carrying us all to freedom!" and he as he says it he looks back toward the Port from which they have just escaped, longingly, for Arabella Bishop. It is a moment of absurd melodrama that he convincingly sells with the greatest of ease. It would crumble in the hands of any present day actor. Thank God Flynn worked in a cinematic era that knew not of irony.

Oh, I can't say as an avid film lover that I despise any and all irony. I mean, I lived in the 90's, man. Irony was all the rage and it screwed up a lot people, like the people who watch, hmmmmmm, let's say "Captain Blood" and think the damn thing's so ludicrous for being so (egads!) earnest. There are a few movies you watch very early in your life and, whether you know it or not, these experiences will shape your cinematic beliefs for all time. An earnest romantic, that's me, which is to say I am eternally grateful I saw "Captain Blood" when I did. I often feel that if I were Captain of this celluloid ship I would maroon Irony and give it a pistol with one shot.

Blue Valentine

A decidedly uncomplicated film about the vast complications of a marriage, "Blue Valentine" is like Springsteen's "Tunnel Of Love" - lovely and hopeful and then gloomy and foreboding - without the bolo tie. It is not merely Kitchen Sink Realism. This is Custodian Closet At O'Hare Sink Realism. It's a gritty indie, to be sure, but it's not grimy. The color is not consistently drained from every shot and shaky camera work is present for only about two scenes. The remainder of the time the camera is still, contemplating, and employs a visual scheme of extreme close-ups as if to confirm for the audience that we - like the characters - have nowhere to escape.

As you may have heard, the film was initially slapped with an NC-17 rating for a graphic sexual encounter between leads Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in a "cheesy sex motel" that is far less graphic than the sexual encounter between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in "Black Swan", though much more emotional which is to say it is entirely emotionless which makes it really bad on your cinematic digestive system. It's funny, isn't it, how movies where people are beheaded or gutted or shot to literal pieces can earn PG-13 ratings so long as there is no sex and just a few bad words but "Blue Valentine" - rated R - nearly got the NC-17. Having watched the film I don't think it had anything to do with that sex scene. I think it had everything to do with the first 10 or so minutes which are brilliantly descriptive in how they are so non-descript, in the way writer/director Derek Cianfrance and his two actors portray a marriage clinging, desperately, blindly, to that buoy of their little daughter (Faith Wladyka). I think the ratings board saw this beginning and every member thought, "My God, that looks and feels just like my marriage. Who's ever gonna want to get married after seeing this? NC-17! NC-17! Quickly!" This is to say, a good chunk of "Blue Valentine" is hard to watch.

That said, it's not impossible to watch, and this is partly due to its parallel storylines, flashing back and forth, without dumbed down title cards, to the beginning of the relationship between Dean (Gosling), under-educated, working for a moving company, but kind, romantic, full of heart, and Cindy (Williams) who wants to go to college to study medicine but is also saddled with a jackass boyfriend (Mike Vogel) and an oppressive home life, save for her handicapped grandmother whose presence allows for a rather organic, unadorned Meet Cute. These sequences allow the present day to work because - unlike Gosling's more recent film, "All The Good Things" - the audience is never in doubt as to why these two wound up together and why they would try to save their marriage in the face of looming disaster.

In the present Dean and Cindy have really only added six or seven years yet they both appear and feel as if they have aged a great deal more. Dean is now a housepainter who claims that having a job where he can start drinking beer at 8 in the morning is a reward (and takes his wife for their nighttime getaway while wearing a shirt bearing a bald eagle, the kind which you pick up at the rural truck stop along with your beef jerky, for which "Blue Valentine" should win the Oscar for Costume Design alone). Cindy works at a medical clinic as a nurse. They both love their daughter and treat her kindly. But the marriage is in free fall. The movie, in perhaps its most refreshing aspect, refuses for the most part to provide us standard emotional cues and clear cut plot points. The narrative is jagged, not smooth, and that's the point. No explicit references are made as to why this holy union has so quickly deteriorated. "There's a room of shadows that gets so dark brother/It's easy for two people to lose each other." So sang Springsteen and it becomes quite clear over the course of the film's two hours that Dean and Cindy have lost each other in that damned tunnel of love.

"Blue Valentine" is the sort of film that rests entirely within the hands of its actors because if they don't deliver then the writing and direction and all the rest really don't matter. Gosling has the more broad role of the two, brushing up close against 1.) indie cliche in the form of a trusty ukulele and 2.) mainstream cliche in the form of the husband-turned-movie-monster scene near the end at Cindy's place of work. Yet with his trademark Gosling-esque intensity he just sort of barrels right past both those potential pratfalls. Williams' responsbilities are even heftier since, clearly, this is a marriage where both parties are in denial and Cindy is the one who breaks free from that denial. But why oh why does she wait to break free until the husband-turns-movie-monster? The film doesn't pretend to know why because, really, no one can ever pretend to know why.

Another Year

"She’s something else." This is what a character says about the wine swilling, nerve jangling, ceaselessly chattering, entirely uneasy going Mary, played by Lesley Manville in a performance that has generated a smattering of hype, every last bit of it deserved. Her work could be described as a punch to the stomach, or perhaps to the face, but that just is not enough. It’s the flat side of an oar to the back of the head. It’s a jump into Lake Champlain after a good half-hour in a sauna. It’s a car crash with no airbag in a Steve McQueen movie. As the good friend of our movie’s primary couple you at first watch her and laugh and then you laugh awkwardly and then you stop laughing and just grin as best you can and bear it and then you lose the grin and put your head in your hands because you’re simply unable to take any more of it. It's no wonder a film like "Another Year" gets limited release in America. If this film went wide Panic Marriages in this country would increase by 50%.

Do these people look happy to you?

The film opens with an extended shot of a depressed wife (Imelda Staunton) visiting a doctor because she’s having trouble sleeping. The doctor sends her to a therapist, Gerri (Ruth Sheen), in the same office. Gerri is married to Tom (Jim Broadbent) and they seem to have a happy union, tending to their garden, and hosting their friends, their most present friend, of course, being Mary, who in her first appearance at Gerri and Tom's dinner party tosses back wine and babbles endlessly about purchasing her first car which will allow for “freedom” of which she will take absolutely no advantage, instead finding more reasons to worry, all of which she can babble about over more wine at more dinner parties.

Divided into four acts comprised of the four seasons, the next will find Tom’s old friend, slovenly, utterly single Ken (Peter Wight), coming for visit. He possibly drinks more than Mary, and is in just as dire straits, and maybe sees - or forces himself to see due to a lack of any options - a future with Mary who does not see it, perhaps because she has a too-good-to-be-true image of Mr. Right when considering she long ago found herself married to Mr. Wrong. The third act finds Tom and Gerri’s son (Oliver Maltman) bringing home his kind-hearted girlfriend (Karina Fernandez) which finds Mary indulging her most self destructive of impulses. And the fourth act involves the death of Ronnie's (David Bradley), Tom’s brother’s, wife and a mournfully gray, uncomfortable funeral that might seem a bit out of place at first but makes more sense when Ronnie’s son (Martin Savage) turns up and, like Mary, like Ken, is an illustration of what can happen when you don’t have a necessary person or group for support.

It would be easy to label Tom and Gerri’s marriage as being ideal but the whole time writer/director Mike Leigh seems to make you consider, without ever specifically saying so, that perhaps these two are not as in touch as they believe and, in some ways, might just be enablers of their friends’ issues. Gerri’s a therapist, isn’t she? How can she not identify Mary’s alcoholism? Her complete desperation in every aspect of life? How can Tom not recognize the slippery slope on which Ken treads? They seem to recognize it in Ronnie's son, someone they have not seen in years, but not in those people closest to them? But then that, too, might paint Mary more as being a victim which is not accurate either. All these characters have dimension and for some it is clear at first glance and for others it reveals itself the more you ponder.

The film closes with a shot that circles the dining table of Tom and Gerri where so much time in the movie has been spent and it closes with a shot that pairs gorgeously - well, make that, frighteningly - with the first shot of Imelda Staunton and suggests a horrifically bleak circle of life.

Oscar Nomination Q & A

Now that the nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards have been unveiled the time has arrived for Cinema Romantico to answer the most pertinent questions.  Let's get to it. (A full list of the nominees can be found here.)

Q: What are your thoughts on Tom Cruise's announcement that he and Katie would not be attending this year's ceremony? ......... Wait, why are you gathering batteries, canned food and bottled water?

A: I just assumed the world was ending.

Q: Is Christian Bale ("The Fighter") a lock for Best Supporting Actor?

A: He is, unless a Youtube video surfaces in the next 6 weeks of him on his latest film setting the craft services table on fire while berating interns. Which is 72% possible.

Q: During his Golden Globe acceptance speech did Bale really say of Mark Wahlberg (lead actor in "The Fighter") that "You can only give a loud performance like I gave when you have a quiet anchor. I've played that character many times and it never gets any notice."

A: He did.

Q: So did Mark Wahlberg's performance get nominated for Best Actor?

A: No.

Q: So we're assuming Colin Firth's got the Best Actor for "The King's Speech" all sewn up?

A: Oh, absolutely, and he's entirely worthy of it. Although I'm still sad Edward Norton got absolutely no play whatsoever for his work in "Stone."

Q: "Stone?" I haven't heard about that one. Is that a biopic about Oliver Stone?

A: (Head in hands.)

Edward Norton & Milla Jovovich will tragically, but predictably, each only be attending the Oscars as someone's date.

Q: Do you like Annette Bening's ("The Kids Are All Right") chances to beat out Natalie Portman ("Black Swan") for Best Actress?

A: As a totally non-partial, unbiased observer I can say that I toasted champagne when Hilary beat you in 2005, Bening, and I'm gonna toast champagne in 2011 when Natalie beats you into oblivion again.

Q: Damn, man, have you got a personal grudge against Annette Bening?

A: No! Honest, I don't! She just keeps getting nominated opposite these performances that mean a great deal to me. I was rooting against Kate Winslet in 2005, for God's sake, I wanted Hilary Swank to win so much!

Q: Really? Does Kate Winslet know about this?

A: Just forget it. It never happened. Next question.

Q: Melissa Leo ("The Fighter") earned Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes? Does this put her in the driver's seat for the Oscar?

A: Finally! A category with some juice! Leo squaring off her with own film's co-star Amy Adams and with Helena Bonham Carter for "The King's Speech" and Jacki Weaver for "Animal Kingdom" (who's totally awesome, by the way) and Hallee Steinfeld for "True Grit".

Q: Hold it. Wasn't Hallee Steinfeld in essentially every scene in that movie?

A: Hey, she has a better chance winning in this category than she does for Best Actress.

Q: So you think Steinfeld will win?

A: Nope. I'm predicting......wait for it......Amy Adams! That's right, loyal readers! Mark it down! You read it here first! Amy Adams overcomes the Cancel-Each-Other-Out Factor with Leo to win and thereby give the most "painfully earnest" acceptance speech in Oscar history!

Call your bookie today!

Q: Looking at the nominees for Best Director seems to indicate-

A: Fincher.

Q: But I didn't get a chance to-

A: Fincher.

Q: You're rooting for Aronofsky, though, so don't you think he might-

A: Fincher.

Your next winner for Best Picture?

Q: So is "The Social Network", winner of the top prize at The Golden Globes, a shoe-in for Best Picture? Or will "The King's Speech", recent winner of Best Picture at the Producer's Guild Awards, steal its facebooking thunder?

A: Myron Plotz, associate director at the National Backlash Center in Burbank, CA, predicts a significant wave of backlash post-nominations against "The Social Network" for "misreading new media" will propel "The King's Speech" to front-runner status before a wave of backlash against "The King's Speech" for choosing to portray Colin Firth's cinematic stutter solely as "a by-product of emotional abuse" allows "The Social Network" to surge back to the lead and hold off "The King's Speech" by a nose at the wire.

Q: But what about the fact that in real life Mark Zuckerberg did not create Facebook simply as a means to get girls? That he actually already had and continues to have the same girlfriend?

A: Did you know that the real life Karen Hill of "Goodfellas" had an affair with the Paul Sorvino character and that the Joe Pesci character tried to rape her?

Q: Well-

A: Did you know the real life Robert Gould Shaw of "Glory" at first declined the offer to command the 54th Massachusetts Infantry and that there wasn't actually a runaway slave named Trip in the outfit?

Q: Yeah, but-

A: Did you know that the Max Schreck of "Shadow Of The Vampire" who filmed "Nosferatu" in 1921 wasn't really a vampire? ......... Wait, why are you trying to unplug my keybo-

Looking For Eric

Here is a movie that is not exactly what you expect. The premise of this 2009 film as stated by Netflix: "With his work life and love life in shambles, Eric seeks advice from his hero, the famously philosophical Manchester United star Eric Cantona (playing himself)." Now what do you expect from reading such a synopsis? A comedy, probably, or, at the very least, a dramedy. Especially if I told you that the Eric Cantona the Eric of the film is talking to is imaginary. But none of this even mentions the soccer hooligans or the blue suede shoes or the supersoaker loaded with red paint. But even that makes it sound like a comedy or, at the very least, a dramedy and, really, honestly, it's not. The director is Ken Loach, Britain's gritty master of realism (and director of the miraculous, criminally underseen "A Fond Kiss") and he seems to possess little interest in the fantastical aspects of his story, keeping it firmly at ground level.

As the film opens Eric Bishop (Steve Evets), a British postman, is in a car wreck, the reasons for which will eventually be revealed. His friends and co-workers try to cheer him up in the face of his recovery but he isn't really having it. He has a daughter whose mother, Lily (Stephanie Bishop), Eric walked out on when he was just 21 and he has two teenage sons, Ryan (Gerard Kearns) and Jess (Stefan Gumbs), at home from his failed marriage, both of whom are problematic, though one, Ryan, is more problematic than the other. Pushed to the brink of his sanity, Eric lifts a little weed from Ryan's secret stash, stows away in his home, smokes it, and voila! Eric Cantona appears! And this is where the movie shows it true colors.

It gets the obligatory "Is that really you?" and "Am I dreaming this?" inquiries outta the way immediately and then settles into the fact that whether real or imagined Eric becomes a mentor to Eric. Loach presents this subplot entirely matter-of-fact. But because it's Loach he also has more on his mind than the premise of one Eric revealing all the mistakes and regrets of his past to the other Eric.

Into "Looking For Eric" comes a gun. Now typically this is an ominous sign. As Tony Gilroy, the best screenwriter currently going in Hollywood, once, kinda derisively, opined: "The most makeable screenplay idea is to write a hero part for a guy between thirty and fifty....with a gun." But Loach has different ideas how to incorporate a gun into his screenplay. As in, Eric finds Ryan is stashing a gun when he goes to hijack a little more weed. A father's failing aids in discovering a son's failing. I love it.

It seems Ryan has become caught up with a couple thuggish drug dealers who have more or less ordered Ryan to stash this gun for them until they need it to do whatever it is they need to do with it. The decisions made by Eric upon this discovery are fairly flawed, quite questionable, though entirely heartfelt and maybe even a little noble. He just wants to protect this son he has spent a majority of his life neglecting. Yet, by attempting to protect Ryan he, in fact, potentially exposes the rest of his family whose love he is trying to re-earn to undeserved harm. One by-product of this decision is extraordinarily difficult to watch. How could he have done it? But you know precisely why he did it. "Looking For Eric" is not black and white but Pacific Northwest overcast gray....with a lot of laughs.

And a mesmerizing lead performance. This is the first time I have ever seen Steve Evets act (apparently he was the "Ragged Messenger" in the recent "Robin Hood" reboot I will never ever watch) and while it is technically a 2009 performance and it is among the finest I have encountered in 2010. The accent is a tough brogue and for the first 10, 15 minutes you will only understand bits and pieces but stick with it and it gets clearer - truly, it does - and on display is a layered, sensitive turn of a man who cannot help but screw up, sometimes with the right intentions, sometimes with the wrong ones, who sincerely reaches a point where he recognizes what he has done wrong and seems to pledge his forgiveness while knowing full well he does not necessarily deserve to be forgiven.

The film's most powerful moment is a flashback to Eric and Stephanie Meeting Cute at a dance and cutting a rug to a little bit of Elvis and then Eric Cantona asks our Eric to re-live it and, thus, to dance with him and, naturally, our Eric balks at first but then gives in and they dance and this scene has all the makings of something comical, or ludicrous - two men, one imaginary, gettin' down tonight.  But instead the camera pushes in on our Eric's face, ignoring the other Eric entirely, and in our Eric's face, in his smile, that beaming smile, as the film then flashes back and forth between then and now, you can see how this moment was The Moment of his life and how it starts him on a path, however unmarked, toward redemption.

A Scene To Go Home With You

(And now, for the fourth year in a row, I will lift the exercise of the esteemed New York Times and write about the one cinematic scene from 2010 that I found the most memorable.)

Screwball movies pretty much went out with Truman and, thus, screwball couples went with them. My generation has no Nick & Nora, no Walter & Hildy. Oh, we have some cool couples, don't get me wrong - Jesse and Celine were striking and Rob and Laura were pretty badass and Jack and Karen straight up sizzled - but we've never had a bonafide screwball couple to call our very own. We've tried. Lord knows, we've tried, but we keep failing and usually we fail miserably. Why just this year we managed to take the un-unlikeable Amy Adams and make her unlikeable by trying and failing in the mighty miserable "Leap Year". We really tried with "Date Night." It seemed like a good idea on paper. Take two high wattage stars (of the small screen, admittedly), Steve Carrell & Tina Fey, stick them in a bunch of farcical situations stemming from a misunderstanding and wrap it all up in slapstick and fast-paced, witty repartee.

"Date Night", directed mostly gracelessly by Shawn Levy, stars Carrell and Fey as Phil and Claire Foster, trapped in the doldrums of marriage and who therefore decide to spice up their traditional date night by venturing from the cozy confines of Jersey into the "city" to have dinner at a sushi restaurant called Claw, so chic that reservations are booked weeks in advance and, thus, when the reservation of the "Tripplehorns" is called and the Tripplehorns don't respond, Phil and Claire take it. Oops. Not long after two men pull Phil and Claire into the alley and then pull guns and then demand a "flashdrive" that apparently the real Tripplehorns possess. So after some hijinks, Phil and Claire find themselves sneaking up a fire escape to the Tripplehorns' apartment in hopes of finding this mysterious flashdrive. On the way up the fire escape Claire says a funny thing to Phil: "Everything you're doing I'm doing in heels."

This is the line Ginger Rogers used to say about all her Fred Astaire movies. "I did everything he did backwards and in heels." Fred and Ginger, of course, were staples of the screwball era and here is a film trying desperately to awaken the echoes of the screwball genre for a whole new generation and, of course, failing miserably. Why? The pace is slack. The pace is like that miniature outboard motor on the boat in the Central Park lagoon in which Phil and Claire make their four mile an hour getaway. The dialogue is severely less than rapid fire and rarely clever, dependent on far too much improv from its stars. And what's with that crummy lite/singer-songwriter rock montage as Tina Fey gets dressed at the beginning? Ugh.

So anyway, back to the fire escape, Phil and Claire sneak in through the window and run into things and make noise and so on and so forth and the lights turn on and we get our first glimpse of them the "Tripplehorns".......Taste (James Franco) and Whippit (Mila Kunis). "Who's there?" Taste asks and Phil replies that "It's not what it looks like" which leads to Taste slugging him in the face. Claire dives in: "I can explain!" So Whippit grabs her by the hair and howls: "Then start talking whooooooore!" Taste yells some more and Whippit yells some more and so Phil pulls the Civil War-era pistol he lifted from Mark Wahlberg's house (don't ask, it doesn't matter), sticks it in Taste's face and orders them both to sit down. They do. 

Phil: "So you must be Thomas Felton?"
Taste: "People call me Taste."
Phil: "I bet people also call you....Tripplehorn."
Taste: "I'm a big Jean Tripplehorn fan."
Phil: "Yes. She is a fine actress." He points to Whippet. "Who's this?"
Whippit: "I'm Whippit."
Claire: "Whippit? Like the dog?"
Whippit: "No. Like when you suck nitrous out of a whipped cream can."
Claire: "Okay, okay."
Whippit: "Stupid skank."
Claire: "Oh my god. Do you have any contact with your mother at all?"

The look Kunis gives Fey here, with the gun - the gun that Kunis doesn't even act like is there - hovering in the foreground of the shot, is hysterical and perfect, this look that says "Really? You're gonna try and make this about mommy issues?"

Taste: "That's a nice piece. What are we gonna do, have a duel at ten paces?"
Phil: "Hey, zip your face!"
Taste: "Zip my face? Are you serious?
Whippit: "Yeah. He said zip your face."
Taste: "That's your best tough guy line?"

Awhile back I, of course, named Franco's lines here as my favorite movie line of the year and I admit on its own they might not sound that funny but part of it is Franco's indignant delivery. He's insulted by this pitiful attempt at bravado.

Phil: (quieter) "You heard me. Zip your face."
Taste: "Why don't you zip your vagina, Raymond Burr?"
Phil: "I have no idea how to respond to that." (Searching.) "Eff you." (Note: He really does say "Eff.")
Taste: "Eff me? Eff you."
Phil: "Eff you!"
Taste: "Eff you, man, what are you doing here?!"
Phil: "Eff you, mother-effer."

Now Phil turns the gun sideways which is a reference to earlier when the two thugs searching for the Tripplehorns turn the gun sideways on Phil and Claire which leads to Phil shouting "Kill shot!" which makes it funny when, seeing the gun sideways, Taste and Whippit calm right down. 

Taste: "What do you want?"
Phil: "You have no idea what you've done to us. When you missed your reservation at Claw you ruined our lives."
Whippit: "We didn't miss anything, ya dumbass. We saw the two goons casing the place so we took off. What's it to you, anyway, are you the reservation police or something?"
Taste: "Yeah? What's it to you?"

Notice the way Franco and Kunis play off one another right here. This is the sort of magnetism in cinematic couples that has all but gone extinct. It would seem surefire, wouldn't it, to take Carrell and Fey and put 'em together but the entire running time of the film they feel like nothing beyond a couple aspiring comedians at Second City asked to do a sketch about a bored married couple on the run from bad guys. There's comedy in the air, sure, but there's no chemistry. None. And then Franco and Kunis turn up and then she says "What's it to you?" and Franco, not wanting to miss out on the action, adds his own "Yeah, what's it to you?" and, sweet Jesus, they just blow Carrell and Fey off the effing screen.     

Clare: "As it happens we didn't have a reservation and so we took yours and now they think we're you."
Taste: "You just took our reservation? Who does that?"
Whippit: "What kind of people are you?"

Now is there is arguing from both sides.

Whippit: "How did you find us anyway?"
Clare: "I stole your number from the reservation list."
Taste: "That's smart."
Clare: "Thank you."
Whippit: "You used our home number to make the reservation?"
Taste: "I didn't use the home number. I used the cellphone."

Franco's line reading here suggests he is rather infatuated with what he perceives as own brilliance. Whippit ain't havin' it.

Whippit: "Ooooooh. Wow. That's brilliant, Taste. You're just a god damn criminal mastermind, aren't ya?"

And now Taste is like the pre-schooler sent to the corner of the room to wear the dunce cap.

Taste: "This is about how I'm an asshole all the time, isn't it? How you have no trust that I can pull things through? How I can't do anything right? I buy the wrong soda. The wrong beer. The wrong nipple clamps."
Whippit: "Those clamps hurt me!"

I can't even describe how Kunis says that line.  You have to hear it.  Amazing.

Taste: "And then you come home and you don't even look at me. I have to beg you to have sex with me. Like it's a gift. And forget about the backdoor! Forget about that!"
Whippit: "I'm sorry if I'm a little tired after working all night to just come home and jump on you and give you a free lap dance. I was perfectly happy stripping and tricking at the Hippo! It made me feel good about myself! I got a ribbon!" ("I got a ribbon!"  God, I love that line, and I love the way she says it. So proud.) "But no, you had to go and get greedy and start stealing everything from everyone!"
Taste: "Excuse me for dreaming! Like I want to spend the rest of my life selling stolen wheelchairs!"
Clare: (to Phil) "I feel like you're losing control of the room."

This line speaks volume because not only is Phil losing the control of the room but Carrell and Fey are losing control of their own movie. The problem is, Carrell and Fey never really sold us on their marital discord. They're too self aware. Everything's at a distance. They're basically the same couple you saw presenting at the Golden Globes. Nothing more, nothing less. This is where you truly see the line between comedians and actors. Taste and Whippit are absurd but Franco and Kunis are so honest. They throw themselves into every single line - not just the one liners - with such gusto. These two are dysfunctional but they are in love and, thus, we love them, too. Movie couples no longer have 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 martini lunches and they are no longer squabbling newspaper reporters (since, as Egon Spengler noted, "Print is dead"), they are ex strippers and guys selling stolen wheelchairs to make ends meet.

Whippit: "But what about my dreams?!  What about me?!"

Phil waves the gun, shouts a little bit and gets them to quiet down.

Phil: "Listen, these goons are after us. They think we have a flash drive that you stole from us so you're gonna go to them and tell them you're the Tripplehorns."
Taste: "Wait a second. Are you telling me these goons are tracking you right now?"
Phil: "Have you not heard a word I said? That's why we're here! You need to help us out of this!"
Taste: "No. We need to get outta here right now. Whippit, baby, two minute drill! Ready?!"  Kunis nods vigorously.  She knows.  She's ready.  "Go, go, go, go!"

And so Whippit begins tossing things in a suitcase as Phil and Claire object to no avail.

Taste: "Forget the latex! Only the essentials! Two suitcases?! You're always overpacking! What's the deal? Nothing you can't walk away from in thirty seconds! Bobby DeNiro! 'Heat!' Classic!"  (The thought of modern day thieves operating off Robert DeNiro's code in "Heat" makes me laugh a lot.)

Phil waves the gun, telling them no one's going anywhere and then starts hollering about the flash drive and so Taste tosses the flash drive to Phil and he and Whippit hurry to the window. But Whippit gives pause.  She looks around sadly.

Whippit: "Maybe leaving isn't such a great idea. This is our home."
Taste: "No, it's not." He opens his shirt, revealing a Whippit tattoo over his heart. "This is your home." He pounds it a couple times for good measure. "This is your home."

Whippit smiles, nods, takes him in his arms and they make out, with a ton of tongue, before vanishing out the window. End scene.

And as Taste and Whippit vanish we realize that everything Carrell and Fey have been trying to do and will continue to try to do for the remainder of the film's running time, Franco and Kunis just did backwards and in heels. Uh, figuratively. A couple that is jerked out of its element, forced to confront its staid nature, before being jerked out of its element a second time at which point they realize that despite all the crap, yes, they really are made for one another. Franco and Kunis steal an entire movie and they only need five minutes and one scene to do it. This is why I am now down on my knees - literally!  down on my knees! - beseeching the movie gods and Hollywood and whoever else to please - please! - pair up Franco and Kunis again, and soon. They deserve it. We deserve it. At long last we no longer need to hold our heads in shame when older generations brag on Powell & Loy and Grant & Russell. At long last we have our answer.

This is our screwball couple.

The 6th Annual Prigge's: Top 5 Movies Of 2010

In the wake of my review of "Black Swan" someone asked me how I could already deign to declare it "the movie of the year" when it was merely early December and so many potentially quality movies had yet to arrive onscreen? My answer: when you see the Movie Of The Year, you know. You don't need to ponder it or consider it or debate it or examine evidence because you just......know. Yup. That was it. There she was. Game over. 

I honor "Black Swan" as my Movie Of The Year because of the way it made me feel, because of the way it took me there. Where? There. To that beautiful place I ceaselessly crave where physically I'm in a movie theater but mentally I'm not, to that place where the movie leaves the pesky screen way behind and sashays down to where I am and says "hello" and wraps itself around it me and won't let go, not even when it ends, because it's still with me when I'm staggering down the street and still with me during my post-movie whiskey at the Firkin Pheasant because I need a post-movie whiskey to settle my frayed nerves and my shattered soul and my beleaguered mind and still with me when I awake that night, suddenly, in bed in a pool of sweat because I just had a nightmare (literally) about that scene where Nina peels that skin off her finger. Shudder.

I honor it as my Movie Of The Year because of the way it transcends any and all genres. Whether it's a psychosexual thriller, horror, camp, melodrama, a gaudy drive-in exploitation horror flick set at Lincoln Center, or a sports movie (oh, just punch me in the face) is of no interest to me. Let everyone else discuss the arbitrariness of what it's "supposed" to be. It's visceral, man, that's what it is, as visceral as the cinema gets. You know what I think "Black Swan" is? I'll tell you what I think it is. I think it's a masterpiece, and while I employ an insane amount of superlatives on this blog the term masterpiece is one I use only when truly deserved. It's deserved. Truly.

I honor it as my Movie Of The Year because I just want to live and ensconce myself in every moment of its 108 minutes. Perhaps there is some bit of profound technical wizardry that results in that shot near the end when Nina has become the Black Swan and as she's dancing onstage her face moves forward, right toward the camera, with what feels like this unmistakable, breathless WHOOSH! and all three times I've seen it it's pinned me back in my seat because I can feel it - I can feel it! right here in Chicago! - and perhaps it is the film critic's job to analyze this sequence in slow motion, millisecond by millisecond, to ascertain why this moment makes me feel like I've just seen God but I don't want to. I don't want to!!! I just love it, I just love the indestructible gloriousness of that moment in the same way I love the indestructible gloriousness of the whole film. And isn't that enough?

1. Black Swan. See directly above.

And after saying so much about #1 I will attempt to say everything about #2-5 via one sentence descriptions. 

2. Winter's Bone. "Nothing survives but the way we live our lives." 

3. Salt. An inhaled chocolate malt of delicious awesomeness.

4. Rabbit Hole. A subtle sledgehammer.

5. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. "Thundercats are gooooooooooooo!!!"

The 6th Annual Prigge's: Top 5 Performances Of 2010

By the time the Oscars finally drop in February the backlash and the praise, the condemnation and the acclaim of Cinema Romantico's #1 Performance Of 2010 will have flipped back and forth so many freaking times your head will likely be spinning. Wait, you'll be thinking, I saw the movie and I know what I thought of her but now I can't quite remember. Did I think she was good or bad? Believable or unrealistic? Heavyweight or Bantam? Your thought process on this particular actress's turn will be ransacked by information overload. Pop culture enthusiasts will dissect her Golden Globes "dorky giggle" and decide it is endearing before deciding it is annoying before deciding it has become re-endearing before re-deciding it was annoying before declaring it played out before deciding it is a non-issue before claiming, once and for all, it to be endearing. Maybe. Critics will pour every single piece of minutia that exists and a whole lot of minutia that doesn't exist. Adjectives of all kinds will be employed and references to films gone by and genres, genres, genres, GENRES!!!!!! will be served up and you will lose the ability to keep any of it straight. They will discuss performances like that of Brunhilde Hildebrandt during the reign of Nazi Germany cinema and how her performance is "quoted" in "Black Swan", most especially in the way Hildebrandt seems to be encompassing the "aesthetics" of "vaudeville" while "simultaneously cultivating" a "tangible conviction" in her work as a suffering Third Reich ballernia except you won't be able to find any information for Hildebrandt on IMDB or Wikipedia and so you will wonder if you heard the critic right of if it's all just in your head. Endless articles will digress on her physical transformation, her weight loss, her real life "bodily fragility", and how this is not really "acting", per se, and how it clouds all the emotional relevancy of her work except you'll swear that while watching the movie you never once pondered her physical transformation and that all you thought about was how she gradually enveloped you in her psychosis so that by the time it reaches its nadir you were reaching the nadir with her except you'll wonder if maybe you were pondering the physical transformation sub-consciously and at that point you'll become so irreversably confused you'll begin to hallucinate that, in fact, Jennifer Aniston's work in "The Bounty Hunter" was pretty darn good and, hey, why didn't she get nominated and then you'll get chest pains and collapse on the floor.

All of which is to say, I'd like to advise any and all past and/or forthcoming backlash against this performance to kiss my a--.

1. Natalie Portman, "Black Swan." See directly above.

2. Jennifer Lawrence, "Winter's Bone."  Vivid like her film's setting, more heroic than Spiderman, driven by circumstance, she earns implicit empathy without giving a fig newton whether we like her or not.  By the time it all ends we know what it's like to walk in Ree Dolly's shoes.  Nominate her, Academy, or I throw a rock through your window.

3. Edward Norton / Milla Jovovich, "Stone."  Hypnotic, noir-ish poker-faced performances that rely as much on the physical as the verbal. 

4. Steve Evets, "Looking For Eric."  Okay, I'm cheating.  This movie was released in 2009 but I didn't see it until 2010 and I want to include it because it truly meant that much to me.  I will post my full review of it in a few days but he was phenomenal and despite spending a significant portion of the film conversing with an imaginary person he created a completely real human being in so much as really all humans being are - when you get down to it - is an ongoing list of good-hearted, confused, cataclysmic f--- ups.

5. Nicole Kidman, "Rabbit Hole." As a mother dealing with the death of her son this, too, like Norton and Jovovich, is a performance of immense physicality but also one of immense emotionalism wherein she again and again, over and over, makes you want to laugh and cry and empathize and look away in horror all at once.

 

Random Cinematic Awards 2010

As always, these are your appetizers until the flamboyant overstatements next week. Enjoy!

Sienna Miller and some other dude are here to present Cinema Romantico's 2010 Random Cinematic Awards!

Best Line Of The Year: "Zip my face? Are you serious? That's your best tough guy line?" - James Franco, "Date Night"

Best Line Of The Year Runner-Up:  "We need to call a moratorium on pauses.  Five years of my life has gone out the window listening to actors pause." - Alan Arkin, "City Island"

Best Line Of The Year 3rd Place: "I don't know if a man is interested in me until he's naked.  I mean, the pants come off and then I'm like, 'oh, I guess you don't really want to see my CD collection or talk about Kerouac.'" - Rachel McAdams, "Morning Glory"

Best Out-Of-Context Line Of The Year: "Ding ding ding ding." - Natalie Portman, "Black Swan."

Best Use Of Pop Music In A Movie: "Rivers Of Babylon", The Melodians in "Jack Goes Boating". The sight of Amy Ryan, John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin Vega belting this out to Phillip Seymour Hoffman after he's locked himself in the bathroom is one of my favorite moments of the year.

Best Use Of Pop Music In A Movie Runner-Up: "Don't You Want Me", Human League in "Cyrus"

The Annual I'll-Buy-You-A-Stella-Artois-Award (Presented Annually To The Best Screenplay Of The Year, which the Academy annually fails to nominate): David Lindsay-Abaire, "Rabbit Hole." 

The Annual Amy Ryan Award (Presented Annually To The Most Underused Actress/Actor Of The Year): Michael Keaton, "The Other Guys."  As the TLC-spouting, Bed, Bath and Beyond part-time working police Captain, Keaton's fantastically deft turn continually gets the shaft screen-time wise so Will Ferrell can, you know, scream a lot.

The Annual Sienna Miller Award (Presented Annually To The Film Character On Whom I Had The Biggest Crush): Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), "Get Him To The Greek."   She's English and a pop diva.  I mean, really, people, how did you not guess this one?

Jackie Q, you make everything groooooovy.

Best Non-Action Movie Tragically Trapped In The Guise Of An Action Movie: "Iron Man 2"

Best Netflix Experience Of The Year:  "Welcome."

Best Opening Scene Of The Year: "The Social Network."

Most Underrated Movie Of The Year: "Stone."

Worst Movie Of The Year: "Leap Year."

Best Movie Review Of The Year: "Leap Year", as written by my colleague Louis at Obscure Movie Thoughts For Obscure Movie Fans. You should read it. Right now.

Best Movie Review Quote Of The Year: "Because actors then found a glorious equilibrium between the mad flailing of the silent era and the quiet brooding of today." - Simon, Four Of Them.  This is included in a lovely post about why she loves old movies.  You should read it.  Right now.

Best Movie Dissertation Of The Year: Andrew of Encore Entertainment did a comperehensive breakdown of a select scene from "Atonement." It's breathtaking stuff.  You should read it.  Right now.

Globes vs. Oscars

The 68th Annual Golden Globes are set for this Sunday.  The Globes take a lotta flack for being nothing more than a bunch of starstruck (baby, could you blow my heart up) ass-kissers and, well, this is a fairly accurate assessment.  But are the self-important Academy Awards really all that better?  Pat Forde, venerable sportswriter, has invented what he calls The Likeability Index. I will now take his Likeability Index and apply it to the snarky Globes and the stuffy Oscars to see which one, really, truly, is the grand dame of this awards show season.

If only they'd let Anne Hathaway & James Franco drink.

If you get to imbibe adult beverages while the show is in progress add 10 points.

If you have to wait to imbibe adult beverages until after the show or in the green room deduct 5 points.

If your host is a retread of your host from last year who wasn't as funny as he theoretically should have been deduct 5 points.

If your hosts are ravishing (and really quite funny when she wants to be) Anne Hathaway and (Acting With) James Franco add 33 points. (Yes. 33 points. I love these two as co-hosts. Absolutely love it. I think it's an awesomely inspired idea.)

LIKEABILITY INDEX: Globes - 5 points. Oscars - 28 points.

If you have nominated "Burlesque", "The Tourist" and "Red" for Best Picture deduct 5 points for each.

If you have a separate category for Best Comedy/Musical but can't seem to fathom what a comedy/musical is deduct another 5 points.

If you have bestowed Best Picture to "Crash" deduct 5 points.

LIKEABILITY INDEX: Globes - Negative 5 points.  Oscars - 23 points.

If Kate Winslet and Bruce Springsteen were onstage within approximately 54 seconds of each other add 30 points.

If Lauren Bacall was kept offstage but Miley Cyrus was allowed onstage deduct 25 points.

LIKEABILITY INDEX: Globes - 25 points. Oscars - Negative 2 points.

If you choose to have TV nominations and fail to nominate "Parks and Recreation" and "Community" for Best Comedy deduct 15 points.

If neither of your punk shows have ever awarded anything to Michael Mann deduct 5 points.

If we all know you would nominate Johnny Depp for Best Actor even if it was for a remake of "Bobby Deerfield" deduct 12 points.

Deduct 10 points for bestowing Best Actress to Madonna for "Evita."

Add one point for each Kate Winslet nomination.

LIKEABILITY INDEX: Globes - Negative 10 points.  Oscars - Negative 1 point.

If we all know your governing body is made up (seriously, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association?) deduct 20 points.

If a blogger receives no responses from your governing body when attempting to get Kelly Macdonald a nomination deduct 10 points.

If Ryan Bingham failed to collect his award because he was at the bar add 10 points.

If Marlon Brando failed to collect his award and sent an aspiring actress posing as an indian activist to collect it for him add 20 points.

If Kate Winslet was awarded Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress and then gave rambling but entirely earnest speeches and then was ceaslessly criticized for being so "painfully earnest" by the exact same people who ceaselessly complain about how painfully fake the Golden Globes are, well, which one is it?  Huh?!  WHICH ONE?!  MAKE UP YOUR MIND!  PICK A SIDE AND GO WITH IT, WHY DON'T YOU?!  ........  Wait, where was I?  What was I talking about?  Who gets the points here?  How many times have I mentioned Kate Winslet in this post?  Seventy-three?   

Look, I'll be honest, if I could establish some sort of pretend entity (the North Center Press Association?) as a means to throw a boozy soiree simply so I could hob-knob with Kate Winslet, I would.  You're damn right, I would.  And you would, too.  Fess up.  But I would also hope the Academy would have enough sense to not watch and think, "Hey, those noisy drunkards must really know that they're doing.  I think I'll copy their every move."

So the HFPA can have its fun, I just hope the Academy isn't paying attention.  Unless, of course, "Black Swan" wins everything.  In which case I hope the Academy copies their every move.

Rabbit Hole

You wanna talk some writing?  Good.  Let's talk some writing.  Early on in "Rabbit Hole", adapted by David Lindsay-Abaire from his own stage play, our main character Becca (Nicole Kidman - Oscar Nomination, please!) receives a late night phone call. She goes down to the jail to bail this younger girl, Izzy (Tammy Blanchard), out. So, who is this girl? You probably have a guess. I have a guess. But the movie eases us into a natural, if uncomfortable, rhythm between the two and then in a later scene has one of them address their "mom" in an extremely unforced way and so now we know. Izzy is Becca's sister.

Now if you've seen the preview for "Rabbit Hole" you know exactly what it's about but if you haven't seen the preview the screenplay delicately unravels its intentions. Again, you probably have a guess as to what it's about but the characters - who are now eight months into what it is they are dealing with - never clarify circumstances specifically for the audience's benefit. They speak precisely as they would at any given time. Lindsay-Abaire's refuses to let the characters spout expository dialogue they would never - under any circumstances - say solely as a means to set the viewer's table.

Okay, so with what are Becca and her husband Howie (Aaron Eckhart) dealing? It is the death of their 4 year old son Danny who chased his dog into the street and was hit by a car. Ugh. Not easy stuff. These are two characters who barely exist outside of their home, their home which is still stuffed full of the unseen presence of Danny.  Howie has a job and Becca used to have a job and they have friends, or used to have friends because now they rarely see anyone, but none of these things matter because the tragedy has wholly usurped their lives.  Their marriage, their wits, their relationships with others, it is all terribly strained. This material is ripe for ceaseless shouting matches between husband & wife, between daughter & mother (Dianne Weist), between sisters, but Lindsay-Abaire is so much more intelligent. Pay attention to how the script builds to its lone shouting match - between Becca & Howie - placed squarely in the film's middle and then recoils from it, never shouting again.

Pay attention to how conversations between Becca and Howie don't feel like pages ripped straight out of self help manuals but sound like two people dancing around critical issues, shutting down or ignoring when they actually hit on the real topic, and taking time-honored zings at one another that never come across false. "You're roping me in with Al Green?" Risky, too, is the issue of faith, addressed early in group therapy with other couples who have lost children when one father utilizes one of the Ten Most Overused Phrases In The English Language. "It's part of God's plan." Oy vey. Becca scoffs. She's done with the group. She doesn't like the God freaks. But....she winds up, by choice and by accident, reaching out to the young teen (Miles Teller) who unintentionally killed her son. These moments are perilously close to the Minefield Of Heavy-Handedness but avert blowing up with elegant ease. He never asks for forgiveness and she never pledges forgiveness but it is quite clear she is forgiving him without feeding that point to the audience like a bucket of slop. Becca may not be a "God freak" but it never fails to amaze me how many "God freaks" spend their time unforgivingly slinging mud. 

Despite the film's origin as a play, director John Cameron Mitchell never becomes desperate to remind everyone that this is a MOVIE by forcing in little bits of cinematic business or firing up the steadicam.  The various settings may feel suffocating, but they are never stagy.  And as much as I adore writing that doesn't mean I don't also adore directors who refrain from giving their actors any place to hide.  "Hey, guys, I'll get you in the proper places, you'll have some killer words to say, but this is your show.  Deliver."  Everyone does but, of course, Kidman as Becca is front and center and she does deliver, and she does so in one of the more ancient roles - Grieving Mother - by somehow finding humor and bitterness and confusion in equal, unmanipulative doses and undergoing a change but never having the easy-way-out "A Ha!  This Is The Meaning Of Life!" epiphany.

The material in "Rabbit Hole" is tough to take, of this there is no doubt, but the execution of it all is supremely easy to watch.  This is one of the very best movies of 2010.

Somewhere

As a sort of Hollywood A-list actor Stephen Dorff in "Somewhere" doesn't so much act or react as just.....kind of.....kind of......kind of.....kind of......kind of.....kind of..........exist.  If that sentence seems drawn out, well, good, because it should do a fine job of approximating the experience of watching Sofia Coppola's fourth feature film as writer/director.  I imagine Sofia setting up a scene: "Okay, Stephen, we're gonna have you just sit here on this couch and sip at a beer and smoke a cigarette.  Nothing else.  We'll do this for about, oh, two minutes and then how about if at the end you see this avocado in this bowl on your coffee table and pick it up and sort of look at it and think, like, 'Wow.  Avocado.  Craaaaaaaazy.'"

Dorff's Johnny Marco is currently staying at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont.  Can't say he does much there.  He lays in the pool, he drinks, parties seem to spring up in his room without his knowledge or approval, he sleeps with women whose names he never takes down.  He is promoting some sort of action film on the verge of Italian release.  He likes to fall asleep to the sites and sounds of rather bland strippers who come equipped with their own stripper poles.  He also has an eleven year old daughter named Cleo (Elle Fanning).  She turns up one morning.  Then she turns up another morning when she is not expected and Johnny gets a call from his ex-wife who says she "needs some time away."  From what?  Well, everyone, no matter their class status, needs time away.  And so Johnny and Cleo just kind of.....kind of.....kind of.....kind of.....kind of......kind of.........exist.

It takes a ballsy (pardon the adjective, Sofia) director to stay with a shot of a man (Dorff) sitting in a chair, alone, with some sort of gooish glob covering ever inch of his face to construct a latex mask for a particular role for that long, pushing in, slowly and gently, or to film an entire figure skating routine.  Seriously, it's the entire figure skating routine, cutting between Cleo on the ice and Johnny watching from the stands.  Even actual figure skating movies don't deign to show us entire routines!  (Of course, because this is Sofia's World the figure skating routine is set to Gwen Stefani which works to make it more enjoyable than any actual figure skating movie.)  You can practically hear the inevitable response to this film rising up in unison by the time the opening shot - 180 degrees from Paul Thomas Anderson - concludes.  You know how it goes.  Say it with me!  "Nothing happens!"  Or, as the young gentleman sitting in front of me at the theater said to his companion upon returning from the restroom, "Did I miss any car chases?"

Does anything happen?  Well, no.  It doesn't.  It's more a film of tons of individual moments all packaged together (and, let's be honest, a lot of these individual moments are ripped straight out of Sofia's own "Lost In Translation"), more a mockumentary of the Hollywood culture, an introverted "Bowfinger". 

But.....but.....but......but.....but......but......but.

It's not that the shots are static and it's not that the shots are the longest of long takes.  This is fine.  It's that the shots are so often un-evocative.  Sofia spent three movies creating grand and memorable images.  I always flash back to that extended shot of King and Queen in "Marie Antoinette" still going through their ridiculous and antiquated dining routine while we hear the mobs shouting outside.  I don't think she moves the camera all that much partly because she still has faith in the good, old Human Attention Span.  Whether that faith is naive or not is a discussion for another post, but I respect it and that's why I've always deeply respected her as a filmmaker.

But.....but.....but.....but.....but..........but.  If your images are showing us nothing and telling us nothing and refusing to work on our emotions, what then?  I get it.  Okay?  I do.  I get the point, and if I didn't get the point, Johnny Marco's brief phone call there at the end would have made sure I got it.  If he's what he says he is, and it's quite clear he is, then the film has done a solid - make that, spectacular - job of making its point.  But that point, by its very nature, makes the entire film that has preceded it unwatchable.