Emerging Oscar Storylines

With "Argo’s" recent wins at the Golden Globes, PGA (Producers Guild of America), SAG (Screen Actors Guild), and BAMBCA (Brothers Affleck Memorial Bar Crawl Awards) it seems to have become a virtual lock for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. How did this happen? This happened because of what the Argo that provides “Argo” with its title is not – a good story.

Hollywood, theoretically, is all about good stories, and awards seasons looks for and then latches on to good stories. And often screenwriters (the barbacks of awards season) will tell you they have to get a ways into their script before they fully grasp the direction and meaning of the story. That is what has happened.

When Ben Affleck failed to land an Oscar nomination for Best Director while his film itself, “Argo”, earned a Best Picture nod, he became a story. We thought (i.e. I thought) that Kathryn Bigelow not getting a directing nod for “Zero Dark Thirty” was the story but it turns out that and the controversy surrounding the depiction of torture in “Zero Dark Thirty” was merely the teaser campaign to this awards season. Because once Affleck was “snubbed” and he then proceeded to win the Critics Choice Award and the Golden Globe, he became the story which, by extension, made “Argo” the story. Thus, it will win Best Picture.

The story of Best Supporting Actress has turned into Anne Hathaway Overload. At this point, Anne can’t do anything – not a single thing – without having the Twittersphere and gossips snap at her. Every word she utters during an acceptance speech is awful and if she were therefore to choose not to utter a single word during an acceptance speech she would be belittled because not speaking would be a sign that she is selfish for not thanking all the people everyone was complaining about her thanking. If she is seen buying a latte at Starbucks in the next month, she will be vilified for not getting a mocha. If she buys a cat, she will be persecuted for not buying a dog. If she doesn’t leave her house, she is a shut-in. If she leaves her house, she is a glory-seeker. But the Overload cannot officially crescendo UNTIL she wins the Oscar. Thus, she has to and she will.

Seriously, people, Tommy Lee Jones has not been amused for years. This isn't news.

The story of Best Supporting Actor has turned into Tommy Lee Jones’ Not Amused Face at the Golden Globes. I find the Not Amused Face amusing because if anyone had seen the college football documentary “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29” they would have seen Jones interviewed (he played offensive lineman for the Harvard football team in the late 60’s) and they would have already seen the Not Amused Face. Seriously, I can’t tell you how Not Amused he appears in that movie. But now Academy members want to see how Jones reacts if he wins. Thus, he has to and he will.

The story of Best Actor is that there is NO story. Daniel Day Lewis will win. He will win because he floats in the regal ether above the pedantic stories of the Academy. Hype rolls off of him. Backlash is frightened to death of him. Twitter is powerless to stop him. Daniel Day Lewis is Daniel Fucking Day Lewis and that is why he will win.

The story of Best Actress has drifted from “the motherfucker that found this place” (Jessica Chastain) to The Face Of MTV’s Super Sweet Sixteen (Jennifer Lawrence). Lawrence, upon winning at SAG, thanked MTV because it was doing promos for their “Super Sweet Sixteen” program that earned her a SAG card at the age of 14 which she proclaimed as the best day of her life. You tell that story, you win. Pick up the hymnals, Chastain. Mass is over.

At this point, Eli Roth might still be in the running for Best Director

The story of Best Director, on the other hand, is akin to “Last Year At Marienbad.” I don’t know what the hell’s going on. Ben Affleck won the Globe after not being nominated and it certainly feels as if momentum is on his side to take home the DGA (Director’s Guild of America) award this Saturday. If that happens, all bets are off. I mean it – all.bets.are.off. Steven Spielberg could win for “Lincoln” and then go all Ving Rhames and call Sofia Coppola up onstage and just give her the Oscar instead – whoops! That was my own fantasy! I meant to say, he could call Ben Affleck up onstage and just give him the Oscar instead. David O. Russell could win and then launch into a tirade about how the Oscar validates his genius OR he could win and serve the entire audience cake. Michael Hanenke could win for “Amour” and take the opportunity to advance the agenda of snuff films. Benh Zeitlen could win…….ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Okay, I guess not ALL bets are off.

Long story short, sometimes you just have to go with the flow and figure out the story after it’s all over.

And I’d like to discuss the story of the Best Original & Adapted Screenplays but the producers are telling me we’re all out of time.

Pause for the Cause

As I do each and every year on this day, I would like to take a moment and give thanks and pay homage to the anniversary of the single greatest moviegoing experience of my life. You know the film.

Hope Springs, Or: What The Hell Happened To Elisabeth Shue?

Early in “Hope Springs”, directed competently if basically by David Frankel, the grouchy, closed-off, incessantly polo and khakied character of Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) orders an “Arnold Palmer and a tuna melt.” That’s pretty much “Hope Springs” as summarized via a restaurant check. Straightforward. Conventional. Opposed to risk taking. After years of wedded doldrums, Kay (Meryl Streep) forces Arnold to pack up and attend a week of intensive marriage therapy with Dr. Field (played by Steve Carrell in a role that essentially requires him to sit in the same chair with a few hardly noticeable costume changes) in scenic Maine.

You know how it’s going to go. I know how it’s going to go. We all know how it's going to go. Streep and Jones, however, admirably play their parts in such a way to make it appear as if they do not know how it's going to go. Kay is unable to communicate just how she feels or how she wants her marriage to improve, even if Streep conveys that Kay clearly does not feel right and clearly wants her marriage to improve. Arnold cannot communicate at all and does not want to communicate at all and makes even the smallest acts of communication come across like pulling teeth. Best of all, though, in spite of how foregone the conclusion might be, the screenplay refuses to manufacture asinine roadblocks on the road to the conclusion. It allows the characters work their issues out on their own.

However, none of that is what I would like to discuss in regards to “Hope Springs.” No, the most crucial issue at its conventional core is Elisabeth Shue.

You remember Elisabeth Shue. Twenty-five years ago she burst onto the scene as the most heroic babysitter of all time. Seven years later she earned an Oscar nomination (in my estimation she should have won) for her gut-wrenching work in “Leaving Las Vegas.” Slowly, however, her star has faded and in “Hope Springs” she turns up as a local bartender who serves Streep a bit of white wine. A ha!, I thought, Shue is playing the part of The Helpful Bartender, dispensing wisdom to Streep and then, probably later, Jones and maybe even being allowed to romance Carrell’s Dr. Field in a subplot. Excitement filled the air!

That woman? That woman whose face you can't see? That's Elisabeth Shue, Oscar nominee.

Except, no. Elisabeth Shue was never seen again. I repeat: Elisabeth Shue was never seen again. An Oscar nominee, she turns up in this $30 million film for about two, three minutes, serves a little wine, calls out a few locals for “not getting any” and is never heard from again. How can this be? Were there scenes left on the cutting room floor? How can you hire someone with a name as known as hers for a single scene of such inconsequence? It makes no sense. Unless this is really what Elisabeth Shue’s career has come to – excitedly jumping at a one scene walk off that could just as easily have been played by Khrystyne Haje.

“Hope Springs” revolves around a woman who has been marginalized in her own marriage. Tragically, “Hope Springs” does the exact same thing to Elisabeth Shue.

Rock of Ages

One of the very first images of the 80's-themed musical "Rock of Ages" is our heroine Sherri Christian (Julianne Hough) on a bus bound from her native Oklahoma to the bright lights of the L.A. Strip flipping through her vinyl collection. The first record? Aerosmith's "Permanent Vacation." I confess, Aerosmith's "Permanent Vacation" was one of the very albums (cassette tapes) I ever owned. I sighed, whimsically. Not long after this Sherri Christian leads the entire bus in a singalong to "Sister Christian" (ah?). This flashed me back to a bus ride in the dark of the night after a middle school event in the midst of a whole-bus singalong to Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer." I sighed, whimsically, even louder.

This is all to say, I am the target audience for "Rock of Ages." I was raised on this music. I grew up listening to Poison and Def Leopard and Bon Jovi and Guns 'n' Roses on Q-102. I should have loved the holy hell outta this movie! And I didn't. I really, really didn't. In fact, once we got past the opening ten minutes, I thought it was downright awful. So the question becomes: why did this happen? Why did it fail so miserably? Let's investigate.

"Rock of Ages", directed by Adam Shankman, follows Sherri Christian as she arrives in Hollywood desperate to become a singing star. She meets Drew (Diego Boneta), a barback at the legendary Bourbon Room, a raucous club that pulls in the best rock 'n' roll acts of the 80's, where he is able to finagle her a job. The club is owned by Dennis Dupree, played by Alec Baldwin in an apparently endless line of deft performances, who owes so much in back taxes ("taxes are sooooooo un-rock 'n' roll") that he is entirely dependent on an upcoming performance by the mercurial superstar Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise). Jaxx, however, is so spectacularly mercurial that his gig may not even happen. Meanwhile the new Angeleno Mayor (Bryan Cranston) and his Westboro Baptist-esque better half (Catherine Zeta Jones) are fanatically intent on putting a stop to this rock 'n' roll invasion, cleaning up the strip and shutting down the Bourbon Room.

Perhaps the previous paragraph clues you into one of the movie's significant issues - namely, there is a lot going on. Too much going on, one might say, and it is made that much worse by the never-ending Monster Hits Of The 80's that while sometimes commenting on the action at hand, more often leave "Rock of Ages" with the decidedly painful sensation of a never-ending montage. But where it really trips itself up is in the handling of its best character and its second best performance (I was partial to Baldwin, who is shoved aside too soon) - Stacee Jaxx.

In the brilliant "Wag the Dog", Dustin Hoffman's producer Stanley Motts, hired by the White House to stage a phony war and, thus, create a phony war hero says of said war hero the following: "Schumann is Jaws. You have to tease them. You don't put Jaws in the first reel of the movie. It's the contract, sweetheart. The contract of the election, whether they know it or not, is 'Vote for me Tuesday, Wednesday I'll produce Schumann.' See, that's what they're paying their seven bucks for."

In "Rock of Ages" we are paying our seven bucks to see Stacee Jaxx. He and his superstardom and immense talent and mind-bending eccentricity is hinted at almost immediately. The contract of the movie, whether we know it or not, is pay for the movie, stay with the movie, at the end it will produce Stacee Jaxx. You can't put Stacee Jaxx in the first reel of the movie. You have to tease us.

And while Stacee Jaxx is not in the first reel of the movie, per se, he is at least in the second reel of the movie and then again in the third and so on. And while even though the one scene I most enjoyed was obviously Stacee Jaxx and Rolling Stone reporter Constance Sack finding out what love is aboard a backstage pool table simply because Constance Sack was played by my official Cinematic Crush Malin Akerman, well, sorry, but I recognize poor storytelling when I see it.

Then again, Shankman may have realized he needed Stacee Jaxx to turn up earlier simply because the Sherri/Drew storyline is so devoid of the all-important "Magic Touch" and because the Mayor and his clean-up-the-strip initiative isn't satire but mismanaged fluff. Please understand, it is not the derivativeness, because the derivativeness is the whole point, but the uninteresting way in which all of this is acted and presented.

"Rock of Ages" is like buying a cassette based on that one really good single and then quickly realizing the rest of the album is pure crap.

Jessica Chastain Is Calm (And So Am I)

A long time ago, so long ago I was in my twenties, my friend Daryl made a movie that shall remain nameless. It was based on a script he and I wrote together via US Mail (yes, US Mail) when I was living in Arizona.

Late on New Year's Eve (i.e. early on New Year's Day Morning), after the so-called party had wound all the way down, Daryl and I and our friend Dave, having imbibed one to four too many glasses of whiskey, decided to watch the movie that shall remain nameless. I struggle to remember much of this viewing but can remember fast-forwarding through a great deal of it, struggling to endure. But we did manage to watch at least one scene in its entirety.

This was the one scene that featured Daryl and I as a couple of moronic office peons. For reasons too pointless to explain, there is a moment when Daryl orders me to "Stay calm" and I reply "I am calm!" but holler it in such way as to betray the fact that I am not calm AT ALL.

Watching "Zero Dark Thirty" a second time I realized there is a moment when a colleague of Jessica Chastain orders her to "Stay calm" and she replies "I am calm!" but hollers it in such a way as to betray the fact that she is not calm AT ALL.

In other words, it is quite clear the potential Oscar winner for Best Actress totally ripped me off.

You're welcome, Chastain.

Winslet/Woodley (The New Maverick/Iceman?)

Collider reports that Kate Winslet, The Greatest Actress In The World, is negotiating to play a part in "Divergent", an adaptation of an apparent young adult novel written by Veronica Roth. The film is already set to star Shailene Woodley who, you might recall, gave Cinema Romantico's Favorite Performance of 2011 in "The Descendants."

Naturally, this excites me, although, as you can guess, I have no idea what this "Divergent" is. Collider quoting Amazon says this: "In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself."

Woodley is set to play Beatrice who, it would appear, is sorta the Katniss Everdeen of dystopian Chicago. But who is Kate The Great playing? Collider indicates it is unclear but what is clear is this - how can Winslet, who is honest AND selfless AND brave AND peaceful AND intelligent possibly belong to just one of these factions? Unless there is a sixth faction called the Badass faction. That would probably be her faction.

Entertainment Weekly, however, suggests Kate The Great could be playing someone named Jeanine Matthews, "villainous and brilliant." Villainous, you say? Does this mean Kate and Shailene could find themselves squaring off?  

Who knows? Until then, I'll be the thirtysomething dude on the train reading the young adult novel.

Friday's Old Fashioned: American Graffiti (1973)

What really got me were the character postscripts just before the closing credits. Movies, particularly movies centered around coming-of-age quests, enjoy utilizing this device. Movie ends and, by extension, the quests of the respective characters end, except then the movie provides a brief coda on top of the coda by telling us what the respective characters went on to do long after the conclusion. Typically these postscripts are less serious and more humorous (think: “Animal House”), a way to let the audience release a few more laughs and get ready to face the night with a smile.

But the character postscripts in “American Graffiti” are strikingly serious. For its duration it is a mostly joyful, humorous, romantic, nostalgia-tinted examination of Eisenhower-Era Anytown, U.S.A. Nearly every second is coated with one joyous pop tune of the era or another and, thus, the movie always feels rambunctious and alive. And then, at the very end, one of our characters flies away – literally, aboard a jetliner – and the pop songs vamoose and, suddenly, wham! The character postscripts. One character would get killed by a drunk driver just a couple years later. Another character would go on M.I.A. in Vietnam three years later. One character would become, gulp, an insurance agent, perhaps the worst fate of all. The fourth and final character would become a writer, but by then the heartbreak had already consumed me.

The setting is a classic endless summer night in 1962. Steve (Ron Howard) and Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) are set to depart for college in the faraway northeast the following morning. Steve is gung-ho to get going, so much that he has few pangs about casting his longtime gal Laurie (Cindy Williams). Curt, however, is having second thoughts, frightened of the future. John (Paul LeMat) and Toad (Charles Martin Smith), the street racer and the nerd, meanwhile, are almost resigned to the fact their future is the present.

Together the gang goes off alone, one by one, on some sort of youthful escapade. Curt finds himself caught up with a threatening gang before, oddly, accidentally, endearing himself to them. John scoops the loop in search of an out-of-town drag racer (Harrison Ford, nostalgically reminding us of the wonderful time when his acting was not simply frowny-face gruffness) only to pick up an unexpected passenger in the form of Carol (Mackenzie Phillips) who he spends all night trying to ditch until he finally ditches her and realizes he actually had a pretty nice time. Toad borrows Steve’s hot rod which aids him in picking up a righteous babe (Candy Clark) with whom he kinda, sorta scores - not really - before the hot rod gets stolen and sends them on a quest to get it back.

The latter day George Lucas is often prodded for his insipid, unsubtle storytelling (and I am one of the prodders) which makes it all the more stunning to witness the storytelling craft on display in his second feature film (for which he earned an Oscar nomination for directing). Working with co-writers Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, he never forces the characters’ fates but rather allows their decisions to come to light through the film’s narrative.

More than that, though, the film really is not about anything specific as far as the grand scheme. It is about a time and a place and a few kids on the cusp of real life who do not realize they are on the cusp of real life because, of course, they are kids.

I suppose this is why the character postscripts resonate so strongly. Here is a quartet living for today - or, more accurately, for tonight. And then, in the blink of an eye, it is tomorrow.

Not A Good Day To Die Hard (At All)

My friend Daryl had a radical idea. "A Good Day To Die Hard" (out Valentine's Day), the fifth installment of the "Die Hard" saga that began way back in the waning days of the Reagan administration, should end with Bruce Willis's constantly-encountering-massive-trouble protagonist, L.A. cop John McClane, waking up on the tarmac of Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. on Christmas Eve night 1990 right after having cleverly employed his cigarette lighter to blow the airplane transporting General Esperanza, Colonel Stuart and their band of no-good mercenaries sky high.

Now, typically I am anti-"It Was All A Dream!" endings but, hey, this was perfect. And it was perfect because it could at last wipe clean the slate of the "Die Hard" movies to follow. Oh, I suppose "Die Hard With A Vengeance" (1995) wasn't awful - maybe on part with "Die Hard 2" itself - but would you be willing to sacrifice the third one to cancel out the fourth and fifth? Yeah. That's what I thought.

John? Where did the cigarette go?

In 1988 Bruce Willis, see, was John McClane. In 1990 Bruce Willis was still John McClane. I'm not simply referring to the fact that John McClane had some semblance of hair and looked younger and was allowed to smoke and fully complete the phrase "Yippe-ki-ay, motherfucker" (fuck you, PG-13!). No, I'm talking about the shift Bruce Willis made 'round about "Pulp Fiction" where he started speaking in that sort of, shall we say, art house rasp.

In "Die Hard" he did not speak with an art house whisper. He spoke with a Jersey annoyance. And in the trailer for "A Good Day To Die Hard", much like "Live Free Or Die Hard", he's speaking with the art house rasp, much more akin to Lt. A.K. Waters than John McClane.

Bruce Willis is no longer John McClane. John McClane is Bruce Willis.

Over-Analyzing New Photos From Before Midnight

So this past weekend "Before Midnight", the uber-anticipated sequel to "Before Sunset" which was itself the sequel to "Before Sunrise" (discussed previously here), made its first public appearance at the Sundance Film Festival. The reviews and word-of-mouth essentially made it sound like, if I were to boil it down to one phrase, The greatest thing since Moses came down from Mount Sinai with The Ten Commandments..

Tragically, for those of us not in Park City, Utah we are forced to wait until......uh, well, I have no idea how long we are forced to wait until since the film is at present without an official release date in the U.S. I mean, sure, "Paranormal Activity 5" already has an official release date and, of course, "Grown Ups 2" has an official release date and it just goes without saying that "The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug" has an official release date. But, hey, you know, some of us geek out about Jesse & Celine the way other people geek out about Middle Earth and, for the love of God, why can't anyone throw us a frickin' bone?! HUH?! WHY NOT???!!!

....woah, I think I just blacked out for a second. Anyway, long story short: could someone out there in The Beehive State please pick up "Before Midnight" and distribute it and give us a definitive date for release so we can circle that date on our calendars at once? Thank you in advance!

Until that time, however, we must be content with the four new images of "Before Midnight" that just hit the worldwide interwebs. Which is why today Cinema Romantico will over-analyze each one in an effort to determine the deeper meaning since we will not - repeat: will not - be reading a single word of a single review prior to the film's release.

Image #1

Hmmmmmmm. It would possibly appear that our dear Jesse and Celine are at a hotel. Would you say that's a hotel? Let's say it's a hotel. Are they checking into the hotel? Are they checking out of the hotel? Are they trying to get a room at the hotel only to learn none are available? Did they agree to meet at this hotel eight years after they met in Paris? Were they both staying at the hotel and just happened to run into each other? But, what if it's not a hotel? What is it then? Is it an art gallery? Have they become art dealers? Or have they just decided to stop at an art gallery during their latest walk-and-talk session? What if it's not an art gallery OR a hotel? Then what the hell is it? Is it a Pier One Imports? Do they have Pier One Imports in Greece? What's going on???!!! Please release this movie!!!

Image #2

What are they looking at? They are obviously looking at something. Right? They can't not be looking something. It's something amusing, I assume, or otherwise they would not appear so, well, amused. Is it something they were watching on purpose? Or something that just happened to whimsically unfold by some sort of cosmic happenstance? Does it tie into their plight? Or is it but a stray moment of good cheer? WHAT'S GOING ON??? PLEASE RELEASE THIS MOVIE!!!

Image #3

Woah! Hold the phone! Check out that P.D.A.! Yes, yes, yes. I realize that they had sex in both movies. (Well, it was implied that they had sex in the second movie but......seriously. We all know what happened.) But if you watch the first two films carefully you will realize how cautious is when Jesse is walking side-by-side with Celine. You can tell he WANTS to do something like he is doing in this photo but you can also tell he is not sure if he SHOULD do something like he is doing in this photo. He is so respectful of Celine's space even though he loves Celine so f---ing much he wants nothing more than to invade that space. It appears here that he is invading it. Is this because he is through with the charade? Is this because they both left their respective significant others and ran off to Greece together? Is this because their significant others are IN Greece with them and they have just gone off on the sly? Are they a couple now? O.M.G. What if they are a couple?! (Nick briefly dies and is then resuscitated.) And WHAT is he saying to her?! Is it pithy? Romantic? Sexual? Stupid? An "Airplane!" quote? WHAT'S GOING ON??? PLEASE RELEASE THIS MOVIE!!!

Image #4

She has a frown. Right? That looks like a frown. Doesn't it? But he's smiling. Right? Why is he smiling when she's frowning? Did he make an asinine crack that has left her unamused? Or are they addressing something of much more emotional heft? Were they addressing something of emotional heft and then he made an asinine crack? I mean, that would, like, totally be a Jesse thing to do. You know? Maybe that's what she's addressing - the fact that he's always making asinine cracks when they try to address something of emotional heft? If it is something emotional, how hefty is it? Why does she have a glass and he doesn't? Did she need a drink and he didn't? Is he on the wagon? Is he holding his glass and we just can't see it? If he is holding a glass that we can't see, were they toasting? If they were toasting, what were they toasting? What TIME is it? It looks later in the day then the other photos, doesn't it? How close is it to midnight? What happens at midnight? WHAT'S GOING ON??? PLEASE RELEASE THIS MOVIE!!!

Take This Waltz

For being only her second film as director, Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz” is an impressive feat of tone and what makes it so impressive is its willingness to stick to its guns throughout so that, in a sense, it becomes a deconstruction of the very fanciful genre it inhabits. She is not interested in the cries of the Credibility Crowd – how does an artist who will not sell his artist and only means of an income is driving a rickshaw afford that place? – and she is not interested in the cries of the Anti-Whimsy Crowd – a Meet Cute at a historical re-enactment? – because she is most interested in employing all this to hone in on her theme.

Michelle Williams, so insistently precious you could add a chorus of “Awwwwwww” to the soundtrack every time she appears, is Margot, a writer of pamphlets, or some such, and married to Lou (Seth Rogen) who, on account of writing a chicken cookbook, cooks chicken all day every day which underscores his “it tastes like chicken” ordinariness. But on a working trip to Nova Scotia, Margot encounters Daniel (Luke Kirby) and on the flight back to Toronto they wind up setting next to one another and then they wind up splitting a cab and then they discover that (gasp!) they live right across the street from one another! This is both convenient – for the story - and problematic – for Margot – because a spark develops between the two and this allows ample opportunity for them to follow it up.

Margot is not as unhappy as she is restless. Her marriage to Lou seems nice and stable but devoid of energy. Polley’s casting of Rogen, in fact, is quite a coupe because she cleverly uses his standard film character persona – always cracking wise, always chortling, very gracious but not always aware – to show what it might be like to actually be married to the charming lug as opposed to just being in the advanced stages of courtship. Daniel, as he must be, is everything Lou is not, mysterious, emotional, willing to talk, overtly express what he wants to do to her sexually, and always at Margot’s beck and call because, hey, he sets his own hours. It is as if the fickle gods of love have placed him in the same neighborhood solely to tempt Margot. She does not officially succumb and she does not turn her back on her husband, still displaying some percentage of admiration for him throughout, but there is something in her that feels less than unfulfilled.

The counterpoint to Margot is her sister-in-law Geraldine (Sarah Silverman), an alcoholic, ten months sober, a deft character (and performance) that in minimal screen time captures and underscores the idea that one decision can either completely reinforce or unravel our lives.

The beats of the film play out in a fairly predictable manner and, yet, just when the film seems to be hitting its natural conclusion, Polley chooses to keep it going. This might feel unnatural at first and elicit the complaint of “overlong” and, truth be told, this complaint is correct. But it is correct because overlong and unnatural is precisely the sensation that Polley is striving to achieve. You know how a romantic movie ends and viewers espouse: “I want to see what happens to that couple AFTER they get together”? That is exactly what the last 30 minutes of “Take This Waltz” shows us. Every relationship initially presents itself as some form of The Rickshaw Driver Of Our Dreams only to eventually reveal reality in the form of It Tastes Like Chicken.

Is "something better" really all that better or is it destined to end as more of the same? I was reminded of the words of one of my favorite singer/songwriters, the incomparable Tift Merritt, speaking with NPR: “You always hope that you’re going to find that place where you belong – you know, you follow the map or the playbook that everyone in the world seems to have, or understand, and you arrive at the place where things make sense. And I think that’s a little naïve, and that you have to build that place yourself.”

She makes it sound so easy, doesn't she?

Oslo, August 31st

Chronicling a day in the life of a recovering addict as he makes his way through downtown Oslo, meeting friends and encountering new faces, "Oslo, August 31st" is astonishingly powerful, haunting and the second genuinely great Norwegian movie I have seen in as many years.

Presenting his film in a linear 24 hour fashion, director Joachim Trier elicits the sensation of a camera extremely intimate with its main character but without the static look and feel of a docudrama. Rather he skillfully crafts the film so each scene augments the last, creating a gradual, if often tense, build-up and then a release that strangely comes across as cathartic as it does awful.

Anders (Anders Danielsen Le) has been clean and sober for 10 months. He is granted a day pass from his drug rehab facility to venture into downtown Oslo for a job interview as an editorial assistant. First, he meets up with his old pal Thomas (Hans Olav Brenner), married with two young children. Anders expresses his doubts about attempting to re-enter real life. Thomas scolds him - he has friends, family, and brains to back him up. He can still make it.

At the job interview everything is going well until the interviewer wonders about the considerable gap on Anders' resume. He is honest. He was an addict. It is not explicitly said so but the looks on the faces of both men make it clear that this gap will forever loom over the rest of his life. He goes to meet his sister for a cup of coffee. She does not show up. She is worried he will slip and slide out of sobriety. She cannot bear to face him. He calls his ex-girlfriend in New York, makes semi-serious pleas of perhaps re-uniting, but she does not call him back. He attends a party Thomas had invited him to earlier in the day but Thomas does not show.

Friends? Family? Brains? One by one the film lines 'em up and knocks 'em down.

A man who reviews a movie must admit he is that man and I must admit that last summer at the age of 34, the same age as Anders, I all of a sudden begin to feel the worlds' walls close in on me in a way I both had never felt before and still cannot quite adequately express, except to say that even when I tried to shake it away it stayed. I am not as worse for wear as Anders, not even close. I have friends and family and some smattering of brains but I can identify with at least part of Anders' quandary - the frightening thought that contrary to Kevin Spacey's imparted wisdom in "American Beauty", maybe sometimes it is too late to get it back.

Anders sees a world where others have moved on or moved away and where those who are left seem less than blissful and self-medicated in their own chosen ways. Thomas explains how he and his wife glean their only pleasure from a couple of glasses of wine and a video game. And Le, in a performance mesmerizing in its restrained intensity, lets his face delicately register each piece of newfound information, as if they merely reinforce long held suspicions of the uselessness of taking it one day at a time in a society so insistent on conjuring up Five Year Plans.

Rather than spiraling straight down, however, "Oslo, August 31st" boldly offers a couple passages of defiant beauty, one involving a young woman (Kjaersti Odden Skjeldal) who is almost a celestial re-invitation to the straight & narrow and another involving a piece of classical music. These moments, though, are fleeting, and that is what Anders, terribly, seems to recognize without having any idea how to cope.

Earlier at the party Anders sits on the roof with a kindly ex-girlfriend who is shrouded in a sweet sadness. She says: "I think there's something wrong with me, some defect. I don't know what. It's just....." and her words trail off into nothing.

5 Movie Roles For Kylie Minogue

Earlier this week news briefly broke that my dearly beloved Kylie Minogue, the Australian whose music can make even the crummiest day sparkle like New Year's Eve at Sydney Harbour, was retiring from recording music. It only took a few hours for that news to thankfully prove erroneous - Kylie eventually quashed the news herself - but, rest assured, for those few hours the daylight turned pitch black and every Kylie-ite around the world suffered a nervous breakdown.

It turned out that she was merely splitting with her longtime manager while also taking a hiatus from recording music to focus on acting. She was featured last year in the much lauded "Holy Motors" but she was also featured last year in the much reviled "Jack & Diane", a film which I suppose I should see on account of being a Kylie-ite. Then again, I still have not seen "Bio-Dome" (and have no immediate plans to do so). Thus, I thought it a fine time to offer Ms. Minogue a few suggestions on how to proceed in her burgeoning cinematic career, to avoid the "Swept Aways" of Madonna and the "Battleships" of Rhianna.

5 Movie Roles For Kylie Minogue

1. A remake of Roger Vadim's 1968 camp classic "Barbarella" as written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Kylie as, well, obviously.

2. Kylie, playing herself, or perhaps playing a character like herself, perhaps named Ana-Maria, plays a show for some charitable cause in a remote town in the northern territory of Australia but is unable to get out before The Wet arrives, flooding the roads and leaving her no choice but to wait out the rains. Now, at this point the film can go one of two ways, both of which we will need to discuss with Kylie, her agent and her entourage. 1.) It becomes a wacky but endearing comedy (think: "The Dish") in which Kylie, or Ana-Maria, bonds with the locals and helps them re-evaluate their lives even as they help her re-evaluate her life. 2.) It becomes a modern day companion piece to the infamous "Wake in Fright" in which Kylie, or Ana-Maria, is enveloped and then terrorized by the locals.

3. "She's the Man" meets "Ben Hur"! Kylie disguises herself as a male to become the best chariot driver in all of Rome! When her identity is revealed just before the Big Race against the Emperor's favored chariot driver (Will Arnett) she goes out and beats him anyway and then leads of all Rome in the new-fangled Dionysus Dance Craze!!!

4. Kylie stars as Brianna Goodine, judge on a reality talent show called CROON. It transforms into a hard-hitting exposé of reality TV as Brianna suffers a mental breakdown and goes all Peter-Finch-In-"Network" on the season finale.

5. Disney decides to center its new "Star Wars" movie around the Cantina at Mos Eisley where Kylie plays a nightclub singer who has emigrated from Nar Shaddaa, the Smuggler's Moon. After an opening, action-packed prologue in which she escapes from Jabba's palace after being imprisoned as a Leia-ish dancer, she clashes with her manager (Gerard Depardieu), romances a smuggler (Paul Bettany) and is to illegal pod races in the desert what Joan Allen is to "Death Race."

Friday's Old Fashioned: Live A Little Love A Little (1968)

An Elvis movie, of course, is not about making some sort of grand point. An Elvis movie is about, well, Elvis. It is about songs and dances and one dimensional characters and awful one liners and motivations born of nothing and pretty ladies who make eyes at Elvis because he’s, well, Elvis. They are the chili cheese fries of cinema. This is why I love them so.

“Live A Little Love A Little” was Elvis’s 28th movie – he did not have many left after – and dropped into theaters in October 1968 just a couple months before his infamous comeback special on NBC. And watching it with that knowledge in mind one can easily detect an Elvis determined to evolve. The majority of his films are known for their fake sets and backdrops, rear projection in cars, fluffy tunes, and star power substituting for story. This one, however, utilizes real locations, employs only three songs post-opening titles, bases its script off a book (by Dan Greenburg), and seems to really want to try and place The King in an honest-to-goodness screwball comedy.

As if insistent on calling attention to being truly on location right from the get-go, opens with Elvis carousing in a convertible along a Malibu beach, singin’ a song and encountering becoming Alice (Michele Carey, a performance I admit I enjoyed on an entirely frivolous level). Presley is Greg Nolan, a news photographer, apparently insistent on living a carefree and unattached life which is why he resists the forward charms of Alice who, feeling scorned, calls upon her faithful dog Albert to chase Greg into the cold water which leaves him stricken with a fever which causes Alice to take him to her oceanfront home and tend him back to health. Meet Cute? Well……

Turns out her name is not Alice. It’s Betty. We learn this when her Milkman (Sterling Holloway) shows up. Except it turns out her name is not Betty either. It’s Bernice. We learn this when Harry (Dick Sargent) shows up. Who’s Harry? He’s a guy Bernice used to date but who keeps showing up at her place because he thinks they are still dating or because she has not made it clear they are not dating or because she just likes the attention. Who knows? Long story short: she’s crazy. Greg finally gets back to work but then gets fired because, you know, he’s been AWOL for a few days and then goes home to cool his heels and formulate a plan only to find out his home has been rented out. Say again? That’s right, rented out, and the back rent paid and his belongings moved out by……Bernice. C.R.A.Z.Y.

Greg’s mad, sure, that she has schemed her way back into his life, but rather than run away he lands himself two jobs so he can provide for himself and pay her back for his back rent. Say what? So you know the game. Greg can’t stand her but Greg falls for her and meanwhile Greg is working as a photographer for two companies in the same building, one of which is a magazine for adults and one of which is an adult magazine. Hijinks ensue. Love blooms. So on. So forth.

I am describing the plot because that’s what the movie is – it lays out the plot and then just sort of leaves it laying there, never expanding much beyond a barebones synopsis. The charm in an Elvis movie, though, usually rests in the kitschy songs and general ludicrousness. But when you limit the songs (the soundtrack includes “A Little Less Conversation” which you probably know as the song later updated and remastered for a Greatest Hits package) and try to structure the ridiculousness, the charm is rendered mute.

“Live A Little Love A Little” admirably aims to be more Struges than Elvis. In the end, it’s neither. It’s just not much fun at all.

Only You

“High Fidelity” memorably opens with John Cusack’s Rob Gordon looking directly into the camera and wondering: “Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or am I miserable because I listened to pop music?” I have long suspected my own life could be viewed as a variation of this query. As in, “Did I watch movies because I was a romantic? Or am I a romantic because I watched movies?”

The characters at the heart of Norman Jewison’s whimsy-infused 1994 old-fashioned rom com “Only You” have clearly watched other rom coms because we see them acting out the infamous scene from the infamous “Roman Holiday” in which Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn visit the Mouth of Truth. Did they watch “Roman Holiday” because they were romantics? Or were they romantics because they watched “Roman Holiday”?

When my sister visited me last month she partook in my annual viewing of my beloved “Serendipity” – a ludicrous but lovely (to me) film centered entirely around matters of fate and destiny – and this made her wonder if I had seen “Only You.” I confessed I had not and my sister expressed her bewilderment, essentially indicating that Marisa Tomei’s character was like Kate Beckinsale’s character in “Serendipity” taken up a notch. At which point I immediately threw “Only You” into the Netflix queue and moved it to the #1 spot. You had me at “Kate Beckinsale’s in ‘Serendipity’ character taken up a notch.”

Tomei, exuding a kind of hard-headed effervescence, plays the “subtly” named Faith, engaged to be married to a considerate but vanilla doctor (podiatrist) in a week’s time. She seems okay with it, until a friend of her fiancé calls to advise he cannot make the wedding and indicates his name to be Damon Bradley. See, when Faith was a precocious six, a Ouija Board proclaimed her future husband would be named Damon Bradley and a fortune teller backed this up. She has waited her whole life to find this Damon Bradley and here he is. And so she and her sister-in-law Kate (Bonnie Hunt) give chase in an epic but epically scenic journey that takes them from Venice to Rome to the Amalfi Coast.

Perhaps it is a spoiler to say that Faith does meet Damon Bradley, although Damon Bradley may not be as much Mr. (W)Right as a romantic bloke named Peter played charmingly by Robert Downey Jr. is, but it is a spoiler of an 18 year variety which means it is in peak condition and so it cannot be withheld any longer. Ah, but as with any com worth its rom it is less about the rivelazione than breathing in the aroma of the way the rivelazione is set up and produced. For instance, is Faith, at the end of this arduous journey, finally going to say “I do”? You bet she is, but the way in which she says it is so unexpected and so sweet and so sincere, and the place that she says it and what it leads to and how it is sumptuously calibrated to shine on a light on the differences between American and Italian ideals, is perfect. And whether these differences are exaggerated or not, well, does not matter so much – and perhaps it should not matter so much since so many romantics themselves tend to exaggerate.

Indeed, that is how Peter proves himself worthy of Faith – he is just as insistently nuts as she is.

Watching Total Recall (And Rooting For Kate Beckinsale)

Oh, woe is Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell). I mean, sure, he lives in a traditional futuristic dystopian society where a massive war has left earth reeling and, sure, he has to commute from Australia to Britain every day (don’t ask) for his crummy job putting together robots but, hey, Quaid! You get to wake up every morning in bed next to Kate Beckinsale (Lori)! KATE BECKINSALE! That’s not enough?! You really wish your “life had turned out different”? Different than waking up every morning in bed next to Kate Beckinsale? Sorry, pal, but I've got no sympathy for you.

Now, I get it. Okay? I do. I get that this is not REALLY Quaid’s life. I get that this life has been implanted in his memory and that Lori is not his wife but actually working undercover for the UFB (United Federation of Britain) since Quaid is not Quaid but Hauser, a spy for the obligatory Resistance which has risen up to fight back against UFB. So I get that Quaid is the Good Guy and Lori is the Bad Guy (Girl). I get that I am contracted to root for Quaid and root against Lori.

But this is a Kate Beckinsale movie. I don’t watch Kate Beckinsale movies to root for Colin Farrell. I watch Kate Beckinsale movies to root for Kate Beckinsale. And once you get past “Total Recall’s” apparent Anglophobia (notice how Kate Beckinsale only employs her English accent once she’s revealed to be evil), it’s easy to root for Kate Beckinsale. She glares out from behind her tortured bangs, often with a bloodthirsty smile that makes it seem as if she has sensual fangs. If you claim she is really bad at her job because Quaid/Hauser keeps escaping her clutches, well, you clearly don’t understand this is all part of the games people play. Kate Beckinsale, see, is it in for the thrill of the chase. She coulda wrapped this ball of uninspiring CGI up in a cool 15 minutes but just took it a little too far and paid the price, though, rest assured, no one has ever paid the price with such elegance.

Having said all that, I regret to inform the less Kate Beckinsale-obsessed viewers that director Len Wiseman does virtually nothing with the concept of the possibility of our memories being implanted and instead decides to make his version of "Total Recall" (Paul Verhoeven's came first, as you might recall, with Arnie Schwarzenegger back in 1990) one extended chase scene.

Kate Beckinsale has very stylish boots.

Except the chase is, like, soooooooooo boring, man. I am writing this less than ten hours after having seen it and I remember nothing aside from Kate Beckinsale's stylish 5th Avenue Boots. I don't know, there is a lot of punching and kicking and guns fired and evil robots and flying cars and this, that and the other, but it is all filmed with no imagination or wit and no desire to have it make visual sense for the viewer.

Come to think of it, this is the third Kate Beckinsale movie (along with "Van Helsing" and "Underworld Awakening") that has briefly (literally) put me to sleep. That's a fairly significant problem.

Amour

A ways into Michael Haneke's much lauded film, we find Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) feeding his wife Anne (Emmanuelle Riva, nominated for an Oscar) in bed. He is doing this because the right side of her body is paralyzed, so much to the point that she can barely form a coherent syllable let alone open her mouth to eat. Georges is reduced to sort of shoving his baby-foodish concoction into the corner of her mouth and then wiping off what does not make it down. This happens three times. Feed. Wipe. Feed. Wipe. Feed. Wipe. Haneke's camera watches all this unfold without breaking away.

As this happened, I confess, tears welled in my eyes. It is the Amour of the title, and all any of us really want is to love someone so much that we would be willing to feed her/him baby-food and wipe away her/his baby-food dribbles or have that person do the same for us.

"Amour", which runs a shade over two hours, is akin to the third act of "Million Dollar Baby", but without the old-fashioned melodrama and as if it had been made by the director of "Funny Games" and "Caché" instead (which, of course, it was). It is unsparing, a cold, hard look straight into the face of the otherworld. In fact, the film's very first scene refuses to hide this fact, showing Anne's deceased body laying in her bed. The message is clear: death is coming. Death is coming for her. Death is coming for us all.

And so it does. An easygoing opening transitions jarringly but quietly into Anne's abnormal and unexplainable behavior followed by a surgery to cure her fatal ailments that proves unsuccessful and leaves her in a wheelchair, paralyzed. She makes a plea to husband: do not take her back to the hospital. Regardless of the severity of her condition, regardless of badly or quickly she spirals, she wants to remain in her home, and so she and we will. "Amour" remains inside those four expansive walls for the duration of the film, a sensation that does not necessarily register at first until, slowly, we begin to feel ourselves climbing those same walls right along with Georges.

For as his wife fades away into dementia, Georges finds himself in the position of caring for her, an endless and difficult task that he is not necessarily up for in his decidedly own brittle state. Nonetheless, he perseveres, never asking for pity, feeding and cleaning her, cleaning up after her, and so on.

But even he begins to collapse under the strain, taking issues with the nurses who come in good grace three times a week and even snapping at his daughter (Isabelle Huppert) who, living in a different city, feels out of the loop.

Occasionally the film is nearly impossible to watch, particularly because it works to remind us that what we see onscreen looms in each one of our futures and because the two performers are so sober in the rendering of this depressing truth. It builds to a coda that is, at first, warmly reassuring, a fairytale, the hope that merging with the infinite will be so simple, so lovely and that we will not be alone.

Ah, but grief never vanishes forever. It is merely a baton passed on to another.

Cinema Romantico's 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2013

It’s that time of the year! The time when discussions and lists about movies in 2012 wind down and discussions and lists about movies forthcoming in 2013 emerge. Most of your looking-ahead lists will contain your usual suspects – your “Superman: Man of Steel”, your “Star Trek 2”, your “Iron Man 3”, your “Hunger Games: Catching Fire”, your “Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug” (what the hell does that even mean?). Thus, we here at Cinema Romantico would like to draw your attention to the movies scheduled (hopefully) for release in 2013 that we most want to see.

1. Top Gun 3D (February 8). I have long wondered what it would be like to see Val Kilmer chomp his gun at Tom Cruise in 3D. Now I'll know!

2. Oz: The Great and Powerful (March 8). A prequel of sorts to the landmark 1939 "The Wizard of Oz", Sam Raimi's film chronicles the rise, fall and redemption of The Wizard himself. Franco re-unites with Kunis, finally.

3. The Iceman (May 3). Michael Shannon assumes the role of a real life hit man/family man. But frankly, the above photo is really all you need to see to know you need to see it.

4. Frances Ha (May 17). Noah Baumbach, master writer, reunites with Greta Gerwig, awkwardly luminous. If I can only see one movie this year...

5. White House Down (June 28). Roland Emmerich. A paramilitary group invades the White House (because of course they do). A Secret Service Agent saves the day (because of course he does). Stop looking at me like that, okay? Can't a dude want some empty cinematic calories now and again?

6. Gravity (October 18). Finally!

7. The World's End (October 25.) Synopsis per comingsoon.net: "20 years after attempting an epic pub crawl, five childhood friends reunite when one of them becomes hellbent on trying the drinking marathon again." And......I'm there. (Oh, it's also the latest product of Pegg/Wright/Frost. So you know.)

8. & 9. & 10. Labor Day & Blood Ties & The Bling Ring. The latest efforts of, respectively, Kate Winslet & Billy Crudup & director Sofia Coppola, all three films are scheduled for 2013 but sans official release dates. I want to see all three of them a whole big lot. Crossing fingers.

Zero Dark Thirty

“What else have you worked on besides bin Laden?”

“Nothing. I’ve worked on nothing else.” 

The first time we truly get a good look at Maya (Jessica Chastain) is in an interrogation room where an al-Queda operative named Anmar (Reda Kateb) is strung up and sadistically water boarded by burly C.I.A. officer Dan (Jason Clarke). But many of these shots are struck in a wide frame so that we can see Maya to the left, standing on the sides of her feet, arms crossed in such a way to suggest she is trying to huddle with herself, generally evoking someone out of her element, fearful and leery of the tactics on display. When we return to the same room and same prisoner later there is a brief moment when Maya is left alone with the prisoner. He senses, as we sense, her wariness. He pleads for help. She replies: “You can help yourself by being truthful.” Woah. She is not quite who we thought she was.

"Zero Dark Thirty", a joint effort by director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter (war corespondent) Mark Boal, is a re-telling of America’s attempt in the wake of September 11th to find and kill the man responsible, al-Queda king Osama bin Laden. It stretches across years, chock full of names and dates and places, stops, starts and dead ends. The real deed took, as acting director of the C.I.A. Michael Morell has noted, “the selfless commitment of hundreds of officers.” Bigelow and Boal, however, choose, correctly, to make Maya our one surrogate, our entry point, a character that does not necessarily come manufactured as imposingly heroic and slogan-barking but frightened, suspicious and, ultimately obsessive. 

The much-debated torture scenes in the film are explicit and treading murky, inflammatory ground. It is not outright propaganda but nor does it deny, and in one sequence we watch characters watching President Obama on "60 Minutes" claiming torture was not used in locating bin Laden. The most significant bit here is the characters’ reaction – that is, they have none, as if it is business as usual, as if the President is merely reciting the company line. That is a fairly strong statement. And if this is a political film, and that can certainly be argued, well, this is the film drawing a line in the sand and taking a side, and what are politics if they are not drawing lines in the sand and taking sides?

Does it argue that torture was instrumental in the capture and killing? It does, yes, in that the most crucial clue is revealed by Anmar. And though he reveals it in a moment of water boarding reprieve, of being afforded food and water, it is quite clear that torture laid the groundwork for this revelation. At the same time, the clue is specifically called “a needle in a haystack”, underscoring the notion that clues – strong or weak – were gathered from an assortment of places and that wherever they came from, however they were obtained, it was going to take a person or people to latch onto one and have the faith (compulsion) to see it through.

The clue is a name. Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. A false name, as it turns out, but a false name that could lead to a real name. He becomes, in a sense, the Sean Regan of "Zero Dark Thirty", the (mostly) unseen focus of attention, the piece of intel to which Maya clings with fervor, the name she will track to the ends of the earth, convinced to her core that whoever he is will unlock the gate, figurative or otherwise, to bin Laden’s hiding place.

When a few of her colleagues are killed in the tragic attack at Camp Chapman in 2009 she tells another character: “I’ve lost a lot of my friends. I believe I was spared to finish the job.” We know bin Laden will be found and killed, of course, and he is in an elongated sequence that in spite of our awareness of its conclusion will still you breathless. Yet, in a strange way, if the film has a storytelling flaw it is that for this chunk of running time, Maya, to whom and to whose quest we have become so attached, is effectively sidelined. 

More telling is the build-up to the “jackpot”, the way in which the infamous walled-off compound at Abbottabad is discovered and how colleagues, be it C.I.A. or Presidential advisers, waffle in their desire to move on the location without definitive knowledge that the desired target is inside. Maya is definite. She knows. SHE.KNOWS. Everyone goes around an obligatory conference table reciting in percentages their confidence level. They are moderate to less than confident. Then Maya declares: ”One hundred percent.” She quickly amends it to “ninety-five percent. Because I know how people feel about certainty in here.”

Throughout the film we never see Maya off location. She is always at the job, tucked away at some computer with some stack of files, questioning some detainee. She counts off the days since the compound’s discovery with no action by scribbling the number with a magic marker on her boss’s office window. So often “possessed” characters in movies are given requisite home front scenes in which they are glimpsed ignoring spouses and forgetting children’s birthdays. Maya does not even have THAT. A female colleague wonders if she has at least hooked up with another guy on base. Ha! Maya taking time away from the job to hook up? Please! 

Bin Laden and his operatives, for all the atrocious harm they committed across the globe, had an unshakable, if misguided, belief in what they were doing. They were zealots. So is Maya. It takes one to catch one. And in the last stunning shot a single tear is shed. You could read this as relief. Re-consider it, and then consider what Maya is going to do whenever she gets where she is going. “Nothing. I’ve worked on nothing else.”

Often great movies do not reveal themselves in full until the final second and that is "Zero Dark Thirty’s" intention all along – it belongs to Jessica Chastain, and in that instant she cracks the entire movie wide open.

Planes, Trains, Automobiles, and Del Griffith's Soul

On the eve of New Year's Eve I caught a showing of "This Is 40." On New Year's Eve proper I re-indulged in 1987's "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." This was pure coincidence as I had planned to watch the latter on Thanksgiving eve only to have it fall victim to the dreaded "long wait" in my overflowing Netflix queue. So, it moved down, a few films moved up, it became available, and when I returned to Chicago after going home for Christmas - presto! It was waiting for me!

Later in the evening in the midst of a New Year's Eve semi-soiree, the conversation drifted to J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" which led into "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" which I had mentioned watching earlier. A friend took issue with how much of Abrams' reboot of the beloved Gene Rodenberry franchise was stuffed with extreme bouts of happenstance. Another friend said this was his exact problem with "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" - he said, "Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong." My first friend rebutted that this was okay because "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" was, above all else, a comedy, and in comedies such transgressions are more easily forgiven. But, to myself I wondered.

I did not wonder about the argument of happenstance. No, I wondered about the declaration of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" as a comedy.

Well, it is a comedy. Of course, it is a comedy, and that is precisely what got me to thinking. Its maker, John Huges, has been compared to Judd Apatow - or maybe I should say it is the other way around - and in Apatow's last two films, "Funny People" and "This Is 40", he has really tried to meld comedy with drama, not always successfully. And what resonated with me most during the NYE viewing of Hughes' mid-80's film was how poignant it was and how it achieved that poignancy through no more than two scenes.

"You want to hurt me? Go ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right. I talk too much. But I also listen too much. I can be a cold hearted cynic like you. But I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Think what you want about me but I'm not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. Because I'm the real article. What you see is what you get."

That's Del Griffith (John Candy) talking to Neal Page (Steve Martin), two men thrown together by fate when they attempt to hail the same cab and wind up sitting next to each other on a flight to Chicago that is diverted to Wichita which is where they are - in a cramped one bedroom motel - when Neal, fed up with his suddenly new roommate's boorish behavior, unleashes a hysterical if terribly mean-spirited monologue. ("I could tolerate any insurance seminar. For days I could listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They'd say, 'How can you stand it?' I'd say, 'Because I've been with Del Griffith. I can take anything.'")

John Candy was thought primarily of as a comedian and, rest assured, he wrests every bit of hilarity possible out of the chatty Cathy Del. But Candy also had an underrated and mostly untapped ability to mine for drama, and as Martin throws punch after punch we watch Candy take each one with pain and with dignity.

You can sense years of hurt that perhaps he has repressed in the way he listens as Neal piles it on. Yet, when Neal finishes and Del gets his chance to respond, we get a different sense - the sense of a man who has made with his acknowledged faults and no longer minds the man in the mirror even though he knows full well the man in the mirror ain't perfect.

"Well, Marie, once again, my dear, you were right as rain. I am, without a doubt, the biggest pain in the butt that ever came down the pipe. I meet someone whose company I really enjoy and what do I do? I go overboard. I smoother the poor soul. I cause him more trouble than he has a right to. God, I've got a big mouth. When am I ever gonna wake up?"

That's Del Griffith talking to himself much later in the movie in a scene that would be ridiculous - he is in their burnt-to-a-crisp rental car (no longer with windows or a roof) dressed up in his parka and plaid cap, like a forlorn Frosty as it begins to snow - if it was not so close to the heart.

It's the first time we essentially see Del AWAY from Neal and alone with his own thoughts and without the possibility of idle chatter to distract from what he really feels. And this, apparently, is what he really feels. And this is when we realize he DOES mind the man in the mirror, that he is hyper aware of his faults, and has been for quite some time, and is still unable to deal with or correct them. This is when we realize that in that first scene, that scene underscored by sentimental synthesized 80's music, he was lying to himself. When he's gonna wake up? Clearly, he doesn't know.

Maybe he suspects he never will.

Oscar Reaction/Long Live The Oscars

So a weird thing happened today. The Oscar nominations were announced, as per usual, before I even had my first cup of coffee and, as per usual, my jaw dropped. Last year my jaw dropped when Shailene Woodley, giving my favorite performance of the year in “The Descendants”, went un-nominated (though I was also sick – so sick, in fact, that I was partially convinced I had hallucinated her not being nominated). This year my jaw dropped when Kathryn Bigelow failed to land a Best Director nomination for “Zero Dark Thirty.”

John McCain & Carl Levin. Keeping tabs on American cinema since 2012 so film critics don't have to.

It’s not that that I’m a massive fan of “Zero Dark Thirty”, though I am (and though I think it gets even better the more I ponder it), but that it seemed as if this snub was politically motivated. As if The Capital Hill Gang – Senators Diane Feinstein, John McCain and Carl Levin – and their protests and the protests of so many others over the portrayal of torture in the film – which is to say showing torture AT ALL – held sway. And that, in turn, this inspired the Academy not to snub the lead actress (Jessica Chastain, nominated) - since she was excellent - or the film itself (nominated) - since anyone who supposedly has a grasp of how a movie works would understand not only the craft behind “Zero Dark Thirty” but how deeply it dares to challenge us and to ask ambiguous questions - but to snub the person most directly responsible for its creation in the first place. To say, hey, we have to thwack someone’s fingers with the ruler to appease The Capital Hill Gang and the other protestors and, sorry, Kathryn, but it’s you.

I was angry. I love movies and politics piss me off. Bring politics into movies and I get really pissed off. Thus, I was really pissed off. Thus, I composed my typical (fake) Q&A session littered with smarmy put-downs and declarations that the Academy had no balls (because it kinda doesn’t).

Then I read the esteemed Roger Ebert’s take on the nominations. He writes: "The Oscars are the most important way the American film industry can honor what it considers the year's best work. But for millions of movie lovers all over the globes, they are something else: A show."

He's right, of course. I'll rephrase: he's right...to me. Because when you cut through the Bigelow snubs and such what he says is what I love about the Oscars - the show. And not the show itself, per se, though I do love that a whole lot, but just, well, the Oscars themselves. The whole dealio. I've said it so many times before but I'll say it again - of course, they don't get everything right. How COULD they get everything right? What I think is right, you think is wrong. What you think is wrong, I think is right. And on and on it goes.

I perused the nominations again and I realized something. I realized my favorite film of the year "Silver Linings Playbook" was nominated for Best Picture. And its director - David O. Russell - was nominated. And its lead actor and lead actress, Bradley Cooper & Jennifer Lawrence, were nominated. (Lawrence might be the favorite.) And the prodigal Robert DeNiro was nominated for supporting actor. And Jacki Weaver was nominated for supporting actress. Why was I whining?!

The Academy Awards are a show! I don't care if "Silver Linings Playbook" doesn't win! It's just an honor for my favorite movie to be nominated for ANYTHING! And on Sunday February 24th my living room will make like the Linc (that is, Lincoln Financial Field). There will be food and drink and revelry! I might trade in my sleek suit this year for a Desean Jackson jersey!

I'M MAKING CRABBY SNACKS AND HOMEMADES!!! THIS IS THE OSCARS!!! LET'S DO THIS!!!