Motifs in Cinema '13: Failure

"Motifs in Cinema is a discourse across film blogs, assessing the way in which various thematic elements have been used in the 2013 cinematic landscape. How does a common theme vary in use from a comedy to a drama? Are filmmakers working from a similar canvas when they assess the issue of death or the dynamics of revenge? Like most things, a film begins with an idea – Motifs in Cinema assesses how various themes emanating from a single idea change when utilised by varying artists." - Andrew K.  

Be sure to check out all the other entries on the many more 2013 motifs at Andrew's site, Encore's World of Film & TV.

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Maybe it's because of the two ton of issues facing the nation where I make my home, the two ton of issues facing us on a global scale or merely the baggage I bring all on my own (which is considerable), but I have found myself pontificating the notion of failure - and its hair-trigger - a lot lately. A multitude of places in our world seem braced at national and social and economic tipping points, as if we are a geopolitical landmass, rumbling and ready to splinter and drift off to who-knows-where.

Llewyn Davis, an ungrateful folk-singing sourpuss, and the world he inhabits of Greenwich Village in the early 1960’s are at a tipping point he either does not recognize or will not admit to. His singing partner may have realized it or admitted to it, which may be why he threw himself off the George Washington Bridge, but then maybe he just suffered from depression. Maybe Llewyn suffers from depression, or maybe he’s just a dick, his surliness providing a perfect answer to the question Jack Black posed way back when in “High Fidelity”: “Is it better to burn out than to fade away?”

He mythologizes himself in his own mind, fancying himself as the ultimate starving artist rather than homeless, deriding his former girlfriend’s attempts at eking out an actual life beyond the stage as “a little careerist” which is, in turn, “a little square.” In the story as he might tell it, he’s the hero, holding out and not giving in, adhering to the purity of what he does, though at one point he dismisses his own music as his “job” which seems to betray what he really thinks. He seems to sense the world shifting beneath his feet and rather than readjusting, he lashes out, convinced his failure is fate’s ploy while all the signs of a new path go unheeded. And even when he finally does sort of acknowledge his failure and reluctantly determines to re-enlist as a merchant marine in the square quest for something new, he fails, failing to have his merchant license as required. Eventually he winds up tossed out in the alley, not so much surrendering to a brave new world as telling it “au revoir” as it passes him by in the night.

If Llewyn was an emblem of the radical shift between the fifties and sixties, his artistic wayfaring soul sister, Frances Halladay, is a emblematic of a different era. It’s not failure, per se, that Frances experiences as much as casual fuck-ups and reckless frivolity. She doesn’t really do what she does, as she puts it, and this led some critics to view the film as nothing much more than a series of scattershot vignettes. I saw it more as a series of wholly un-tactical withdrawals and spastic counterattacks. (She can’t afford to move to Tribeca with her friend. She retreats to crashing with friends in an effort to conserve funds. She counterattacks by booking a trip to Paris on a credit card.) Still, she seems so light on her black Converse-clad feet, dancing her way across New York City sidewalks, chatting in that extraordinary livewire Greta Gerwig-ese, that occasionally you might forget the fecklessness with which she approaches adulthood and that future failure is possible if she doesn’t find focus. A.O. Scott termed the film “a bedtime story”, which is spot-on, implying that as the economy burns and the job market ebbs and flows, the youth of America can tuck themselves in by watching “Frances Ha” and having pleasant dreams where ultimately the sweet smell of success is served by your friendly neighborhood barista.

Failure, though, which Frances doesn’t and can’t understand, at least not yet, is often not an all-at-once proposition. It’s a long fade-out, and Woodrow T. Grant’s fade-out is nearing its end. Bruce Dern’s performance in “Nebraska”, his face paralyzed throughout in a sort of weary perplexity, never makes it quite clear that the character is aware of its top billing in its own farcical tragedy. He is a Midwestern Ponce de Leon and a random sweepstakes notice which he misunderstands as having granted him a million dollars is his Fountain of Youth. It’s all a myth, of course, and Woody concluding his episodic journey by wearing a Prize Winner hat is the cruelest irony. Ultimately his good-willed son (Will Forte) makes a couple concessions to provide his father a moment in a version of the limelight. These concluding moments, however, strike a strange tone, precisely because they are, in a way, as false and unearned as the million dollars. If failures are meant to yield lessons, it's legitimate to wonder what Woody has learned. It's possible he has learned nothing.

These failures, however, are not just limited to America. They are global. “Captain Phillips” was heavily involved in telling the tale of the real-life man who gave the film its name, obviously, and it opens with a fairly obvious sequence of Phillips and his wife lamenting the economically unstable into which their children are venturing. But this instability pales compared to the instability facing the Somali pirate who hijacks Phillips’ ship, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), subtly wresting the film from its primary character. With success in his society almost exclusively reliant on violence with no fallback plan, his demeanor is as resigned as desperate. He knows that his wayward attempt to hold Phillips hostage and ask for ransom is likely to end in failure, but he also knows that failing to push forward in that attempt will result in failure too – failure in the form of death. The film’s claustrophobic third act might well be a demonstration of American military might, as has been claimed, but I read it much more as Muse’s out-of-options swan song. Abdi is so frighteningly relaxed in these late-film sequences, fully aware he was born under the sign of failure. All he’s doing is running himself into the ground.

Elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, “All Is Lost”, J.C. Chandor’s sterling cinematic experience of Robert Redford & The Sea, opens with a halting, pointed voiceover by its star. “I tried,” he says. “I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right. But I wasn't. And I know you knew this. In each of your ways.” We don’t know who he’s talking to, of course, and we never find out, and that’s fine because the overriding point is clear – whomever he’s writing, he’s admitting he failed them. And that’s an interesting tack for the film to take – to place the failure front and center. The film is about a man braving the elements, to be sure, matter-of-factly facing each setback as it comes, but I saw it as so much more. Apologies for momentarily getting religulous but a Corinthians verse came to mind: “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” This is a man slowly, perhaps even unwittingly, casting off the failure of his old life bit by bit until, in a closing moment of arresting glow, the new has come.

Then again, most of us aren’t like Robert Redford. Most of us more like Gary King (Simon Pegg) of “The World’s End.” Not so much the obnoxiousness, lunacy and alcoholism, perhaps, as the lingering regret, the moment in our past we are so sure if we just got one chance to do over would make our lives everything we originally wanted them to be. In Gary’s case, he has fixated on The Golden Mile, an epic pub crawl he and his best friends never finished, and he will stop at nothing to reconvene them all in middle age to right this wrong and recalibrate his life. The others present themselves as having grown up and moved on and while this is true to a degree, their facades mask their own fears of failure, and their re-attempt at winning the Golden Mile will bring all those fears to a head as they find themselves face to face with failing themselves, the pub crawl and the world.

In its own hyperkinetic, Cornetto-inflicted way, “The World’s End” ultimately presents its heroes an opportunity to wash away their pasts (and their presents), for the old to pass away and the new – a warm, welcoming new – to come, for their failure to be rendered . Their reaction to this rare opportunity initially wreaks of liquid heroism, but there is something both deeper and simpler. Failure and Success, Success and Failure, this is what makes them (us) whole.

Countdown to the Oscars: My Favorite Movie Scene of 2013

It’s hard out there for women in Hollywood. It’s hard for them to simply show up in movies. As Linda Holmes noted, with an understandable flair for the dramatic, on NPR this past summer: “In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn't a documentary or a cartoon — you can't. You cannot. There are not any.” She was not suggesting there were no movies featuring women, but rather there were no movies featured specifically about women. Because once women do appear in movies, it becomes that much more difficult for them to genuinely live and breathe on their own terms, to not be singularly defined by the movie’s men, and to not be objectified. It is a serious and deep-seated issue worthy of incisive cinematic commentary, and who knew arguably 2013’s bro-iest movie would be the one to do it?

“This Is The End” was a virtual silver screen invasion of Judd Apatow’s army, a bunch of movie acting chums getting together and playing themselves, reminiscent of a “movie” you might have shot with your friends in high school on Dad’s camcorder but with higher production value and more A-list cameos. Threaded throughout the party experience, however, is yet another storybook tale of bromance, Jay Baruchel flying to Los Angeles to visit BFF Seth Rogen, only to realize they have grown apart. This is crystallized when Seth drags him to a party at James Franco’s house, stocked with old reliables like Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson, before the apocalypse breaks out on the front lawn and forces these dudes to bond (and deal with Danny McBride). Boys will be boys, even when under fire from the rapture.

It is telling, though, who is at and what takes place during James Franco's classic rager. Everyone made a big to-do about Michael Cera’s wonky cameo, and he is funny, but he is primarily there to be rhapsodized by Mindy Kaling and get slapped by Rihanna after he’s objectified her. Good on Rihanna for standing up for herself but, hey, couldn’t she and Mindy Kaling have had a moment to chat around James Franco’s cheese wheel about, I dunno, gender equality on the Warner Bros. back lot? Seems like a fairly typical Bechdel Test failing pseudo-frat party, no?

From there, "This Is The End" morphs into a cinematic bottle episode, as our sextet of Hollywood glitterati fend off (ignore) the burgeoning apocalypse by getting high and arguing over who gets to eat the last Milky Way. Even with Jay Baruchel's neurosis about where he belongs in the group intertwined with the narrative, this still feels like a $32 million excuse for a few friends to get together for a few weeks and hang out. Until Emma Watson busts through the front door with an axe, that is, at which point "This Is The End" suddenly becomes spectacular and a spectacularly funny social commentary.

First off, it's important to note that Emma Watson, playing herself like everyone else, English accent in tow, has apparently managed to survive the catastrophic events taking place all by her winsome self. This is telling, and it is telling because while, say, James Franco cannot even bear to part with his sleeping mask and satin sheets, Emma Watson has been going toe-to-toe with Satan and his minions and winning. She’s already got more figurative balls than any of the leading men.

But now, busting her way into the ex-Oscar host’s boarded-up home, she is just searching for a place to crash, just for a few hours. The guys gladly offer a bedroom. She enters, exhausted, and closes the door. The guys, meanwhile, stand right outside and debate “the elephant in the room”. That is, they are six men in the midst of the Apocalypse. With a lone woman. They don't want to emit a vibe. A certain kind of vibe. A vibe no one wants to namecheck because to say it aloud immediately renders you dubious in the public's eye. But finally Danny McBride says it because of course he does. “A rapey vibe.” Eeeeeee. Of course, none of them want to give off a rapey vibe because none of them have any intention of having their way with Emma Watson. Alas, once the word “rape” is broached the entire animal house becomes so desperate not to offend that they inevitably, inadvertently blunder right across the line.

"The joke's on all of them," Alyssa Rosenberg writes at Think Progress, "and on all of us." She notes how the joke is not based "on the idea that it would be hilarious for Watson to get raped" but "how hard it is for men and women to talk about rape." This is entirely true, a finely-tuned deconstruction of a sensitive topic too often discussed with little forethought or odd irreverence. Because in their specific attempt to avoid being offensive, the guys succeed mightily in offending Emma Watson when she overhears their blabbering mouths from inside her temporary resting spot and becomes concerned for her safety. So she re-hoists her axe, steals their supplies and makes her escape. And this is why the sequence goes beyond just its spot-on analysis of untoward rape jokes and speaks directly to the pervasive woman problem in Hollywood.

Here is a skilled actress playing herself as a consummate badass consciously portrayed as being physically and mentally tougher than the boys. The screenplay, however, deliberately turns her presence into “the elephant in the room”, which is to say it does not know how to deal with her presence. So, it panics and immediately writes her right back out of the story.

Consider the scene reduced to its essential stage directions: Woman Enters Movie. Woman Is Immediately Objectified. Woman Exits Movie. In a few brief minutes of screen time, "This Is The End" and its bros have broken down and pointed out the disturbing and repetitive cycle of how Hollywood chooses to treat its women. Show up, be pretty, let us talk about you, and then go away.

Then again, the closing sequence set in a white-shrouded heaven populated by the Backstreet Boys, a bunch of front-and-center dudes and background women in revealing clothing functioning solely as arm and eye candy, might suggest that Hollywood's vision of eternal paradise is just as chauvinistic as its vision of reality, and that our bros at the controls have not even paid heed to their own lesson.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Song Re-imagined

Today Cinema Romantico re-imagines the slowly-becoming-irrelevant Oscar category of Best Song as if it was one combined category and the songs did not have to be "original" or fit some other antiquated piece of Academy criteria and I and I alone was judge and jury in regards to the five nominees.

5. Take Me Away by Lucero in "Mud". "Mud" is pure storytelling but it also provides an unforgettably straight-up sense of place, a dying way of life alongside a river, somehow feeling both modern and bygone. A particular sequence, scored to to Lucero's one-minute-and-twenty-one second snippet of a tune, finds our protagonist, teenage Ellis, and his father skimming along the pavement of their southern small town in dad's truck, delivering fish out of coolers. A great many movies can last ninety to a hundred twenty minutes, if not more, and not so ably capture the graveled melody of life's struggle.

4. Let It Go in "Frozen." The unfurling of this likely actual Best Song Oscar winner charts Elsa's (Idina Menzel) transformation from kindly Princess to exiled Ice Queen. Maybe it's just because I like Ice Queens, but I saw it as a Disney version of Katy Perry going from Christian songstress to California Gurl. And yes, I mean that whole-heartedly as a compliment.


3. Hang Me Oh Hang Me by Oscar Isaac in "Inside Llewyn Davis." When I watched a Robert Mitchum film last year with my Dad and my Stepmom, I referenced what I like to call Tragic Inevitability. To which my Stepmom, understandably, replied, "Isn't that just Fatalism?" To which I replied, "Well yes, but doesn't 'Tragic Inevitability' sound more poetic than 'Fatalism?'" An example: the melancholy, self-absorbed, folk-singing title character (Oscar Isaac) of "Inside Llewyn Davis" introduces himself to us by singing the words "Hang me oh hang me, I'll be dead and gone." I mean......that's Tragic Inevitability.


2. Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites by Skrillex in “Spring Breakers”. In pontificating about Skrillex’s “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” (the whole album), Robert Christgau, the self-appointed Dean Of Rock Critics, compared its “synthesizers” to “doom dybbuks”, which is just about the most wonderful thing ever. Dybbuks, in Jewish mythology, are believed to be the dislocated souls of the dead, and watching all the spring breakers do as spring breakers will in the rapturously smutty opening credits sequence of Harmony Korine’s opus seems very akin to a Miami beach full of “doom dybbuks.” “But when he swears rock n' roll will take you to the mountain,” Christgau concludes of Skrillex almost in spite of himself, “he's being sincere.” Nearly a year later it still stuns me to think this scene takes me to the mountain, but it does, and “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” goes a long way in making it happen.

1. If I Needed You in "Broken Circle Breakdown." I can explain it to you, how Didier and Elise meet and fall in love and sing harmonies in a bluegrass band and have a daughter and lose that daughter to disease and wonder if their daughter's spirit lives on in lieu of their daughter's tangible self and fall apart and break up and reconcile, kinda, but are uncertain if reconciliation is even possible in the face of  such pain and then come to the above moment on the stage and......but no. I can't explain it to you. This film is so much about the physical, and you have to feel this whole film to feel this scene and feel each of those close-ups of hands and how they want to reach out and touch one another but metaphorically can't even if figuratively they can. (Watch the scene here. But seriously, just watch the whole movie.)

In Memoriam: Harold Ramis

"Much as I want to be a protagonist, it doesn’t happen, somehow. I’m missing some tragic element or some charisma, or something." - Harold Ramis 

In the seminal "Ghostbusters", our trio of entrepreneurial parapsychologists are eating Chinese takeout in their shabby Tribeca headquarters. Unexpectedly, a call comes in. A hotel is reporting a ghost. The alarm sounds. The three men descend the close-at-hand fireman's pole to their waiting mode of transport. Stantz (Dan Akroyd) plummets with an urgant pep. After all, half the reason he wanted to buy the place was because of the pole. Venkman (Bill Murray) slides down with a box of the aforementioned Chinese food in one hand and chopsticks between his teeth, transforming a heroic moment into something sardonic. Spengler (Harold Ramis) slides down by literally hugging the pole, his face a shriek of abject terror.

Well, we'd all like to be have either Stantz's joy or Venkman's cool irony, wouldn't we? But most of us don't. Most of us are Spengler, sliding down the fireman's pole of life, scared out of our minds. Much as most of us want to be protagonists, it doesn't happen. Instead, we have to be content as supporting players, living our own lives off to the side, only a fraction of it picked up by the camera, content with our hobbies of collecting spores, molds and fungus.

Of course, even supporting players can play a major role. The first person Michael Jordan thanked in his Hall of Fame Introduction speech was Scottie Pippen, and Ramis was sort of the Pippen to Bill Murray's Jordan. The story has been told so many times as to induce overkill, but on this morning it bears repeating - Ramis going for a run on the set of "Caddyshack", which he directed, and giving a dramatic play-by-play of his jog aloud to himself in the manner of a sports broadcaster, and consequently pitching that idea to Bill Murray in his small but vital role as Carl Speckler. Murray ran with it, improvising his famed "Cinderella Story" speech. You get by with a little help from your friends.

I am aware of "Caddyshack's" place in pop culture but I will confess it is not a film close to my heart. Still, last summer when my friend Matt - a "Caddyshack" fan - asked me to tag along with him to a special screening of it at the Music Box, the old-school indie theater in my neighborhood, I obliged. Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips spoke afterwards, and listening to him espouse on how Ramis the director had to both harness and wrangle outsized and combustible personalities like Murray, Chevy Chase and Rodney Dangerfield made me realize how much movie directing is also human resources. If I have a favorite scene in "Caddyshack", it's the lone tete-a-tete between Chase and Murray, which Ramis mediated since each man despised the there. Chase and Murray may have made it funny, but Ramis made it happen.

As an auteur, Ramis's most notable quality was really just non-fussiness. His real skills were writing and deploying talent. In Tad Friend's insightful 2004 New Yorker interview, Akroyd notes that Ramis's contributions to the "Ghostbusters" screenplay were incalculable. "(H)e knew which passes to throw Bill," Akroyd said, "so Bill would look funny throughout.” (Scottie Pippen!!!)

"Groundhog Day", a screenplay which Ramis heavily rewrote before directing, was an utterly brilliant mixture of tone - as funny as it was poignant, as wry as it was heartfelt, comedic but imbued with a philosophy that while simple was never hokey. It was a truly special achievement, a film that in keeping with its theme has, somehow, not seemed to have aged a day. I vividly remember watching that in the theater as an idiot teenager and being as moved by it as I am as a mawkish thirty-six year old. Maybe this is because we are all in an eternal struggle to better and/or make peace with ourselves. I don't know that Ramis ever climbed higher than that 1993 peak, and I don't know that he'd disagree with me, and I don't know that any comedy director could have climbed higher.

In 2007, Ramis, who passed away yesterday at the age of 69, was featured in a cameo as Seth Rogen's dad in "Knocked Up", a film featured under the Team Apatow umbrella. As that character, in that scene, Ramis projected such conviviality. The script did not allow him to delve much into his background in raising Rogen's Ben Stone, but the performance conveyed a gladness in his path and a gladness with where he wound up. Apatow and others on his Team have not been shy in singling out the influence of Ramis, and this is what made the moment doubly patriarchal. Ramis's character was happy with his son and Ramis himself was happy with his legacy.

Countdown to the Oscars: Totally Legitimate, Completely Ridiculous Oscar Predictions

As always, these are my no b.s., for realsies Oscar predictions. I pick with my heart (and sometimes with the satirical devil on my shoulder), and to paraphrase the wise sage Frankie Dunn, show me an Oscar prognosticator who’s all heart, and I’ll show you an Oscar prognosticator waiting for a beating. 

Totally Legitimate, Completely Ridiculous Oscar Predictions

Best Picture: “Her.” I want “American Hustle” to win, except I don’t want “American Hustle” to win AT ALL. Because I don’t want it to turn up on those asinine “10 Films That Shouldn’t Have Won Best Picture” lists a decade from now, which would just be so stupid I can’t even get into it for fear this entire predictions post will turn into an expletive ridden rant. So I'm taking $10 in quarters and putting it on "Her" at 100-1. Go get 'em, Spike.

Best Director: Martin Scorsese, “The Wolf of Wall Street.” And then he hurls Peter Dinklage into the audience.

...and then Marty dropped the mic and left the stage.

Best Actor: Bruce Dern, "Nebraska." Because how cool would it be to hear the thunderous applause sure to greet his name?

Best Actress: Amy Adams, “American Hustle.” If she wins, I’ll post a Vine of me doing The Hustle in my living room (*Fingers Crossed) and then douse the Twitter backlash with my leftover Lady Edith Greensly celebratory champagne.

Best Supporting Actor: Barkhad Abdi, “Captain Phillips.” To be followed by “The Five Oscar Winning Limo Drivers You Meet In The Hollywood Hills” by Mitch Albom.

Best Supporting Actress: Sally Hawkins, “Blue Jasmine.” I’ll go down with this ship if I want.

Cinema Romantico's last communication was heard at approximately 8:04 PM (CST).  It reported: "We are content with our prediction and will not take it back."

Best Original Screenplay: Nicole Holof………oh. Right. Forgot. Not nominated. I sit this one out in protest. #Principles

Best Adapted Screenplay: Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, “Before Midnight.” Listen to me, Academy, and listen to me good – if you could give “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” twelve-zillion Oscars as “reward” for a multi-year achievement, then you can do the same goddamn thing for Linklater, Delpy and Hawke. DO YOU HEAR ME?! I'M NOT PLAYING AROUND HERE! GIVE JESSE & CELINE AN OSCAR!!!!!!

Best Animated Feature: “Frozen.” For ultimately staying true to itself.

Best Foreign Language Film: “Broken Circle Breakdown.” Shine on, Alabama Monroe.

Best Documentary Feature: “20 Feet From Stardom.” “The Act Of Killing” is extraordinary, yes, but you can’t argue with the heart, dear reader. That’s an argument you can’t win. And my heart is squarely on the side of the also extraordinary women at the center of “20 Feet From Stardom.”

Best Documentary Short: "The Lady In Number 6: Music Saved My Life." It focuses on the world's oldest Holocaust survivor. So you know.....

Best Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel for “Inside Llewyn Davis.” It’s not merely New York that Delbonnel’s washed-out camera makes ache with such melancholia – it’s Chicago too. I can’t seem to shake the shots of our Llewyn trudging through the snow beneath the roaring freeway overpass, not a hero on his way to the guitar shootout but a six-time loser in the midst of his long 104 minute fade out.

Best Costume Design: Michael Wilkinson for “American Hustle”. I have a dream. It’s this: Ben Stiller & Christine Taylor present this award dressed like Amy Adams & Bradley Cooper.

Best Film Editing: “Gravity.” “Gravity” is a lot of things. It is Sandra Bullock and it is visual effects and it is cinematography and it is a fairly insistent allegory but what “Gravity” is – what it really is above all and above all the other nominees – is editing.

Best Production Design: “Her.” It’s new and old and right now all at once.

Best Makeup & Hairstyling: “American Hustle.” Wait, what? This wasn’t nominated? I have a half a mind to smear the Academy’s headquarters in Jennifer Lawrence’s eyeliner. (“Lawrence's Eyeliner Resembles A D.C. Housewife Much More Than A Jersey Housewife” says a skeptical Slate article.) So let’s see……well, I’m not picking “Jackass: Bad Grandpa”, that’s for sure. I'll pick “Dallas Buyer’s Club”. Because its Makeup & Hairstyling budget was $250. No. Really. $250. But when it wins, I’ll be thinking of Bradley Cooper’s hair curlers.

Jennifer Lawrence just heard the news her film was not nominated for Best Makeup.  

Best Sound Editing: “All Is Lost.” Because the film is as much sound editing as anything. ("Is that REALLY the sound a rogue shipping container makes when tearing through a yacht?" wonders skeptical Slate article.)

Best Sound Mixing: “Inside Llewyn Davis”. This interview was conducted with Skip Lieysay, nominated in this category for both “Gravity” and “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Reading makes it clear why “Gravity” likely will and probably should win and yet……my heart (uh oh!!!!) returns to the aforementioned “Llewyn” scene beneath the freeway overpass in Chicago. The roar of traffic. The howling wind. The crunch of snow beneath Llewyn’s pitifully inadequate shoes. The way it was all mixed together moves me.

Best Visual Effects: “Gravity.” I hope that when this inevitably wins, Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, David Shirk and Neil Corbould ascend the stage walking east to west, rather than west to east.

Best Original Score: A great many hate on the Golden Globes because it's just some possibly made up Press Association's excuse to chill with movie stars for a night but hey, they gave Best Original Score to Alex Ebert for "All Is Lost." Which was literally the Best Original Score I heard this year. (Listen to his incisive NPR interview. Oh, that alto flute! If there was a sub-Original Score category for Best Instrument In Original Score, Ebert's Alto Flute should win.) Oscar just nominated John Williams (the Meryl Streep of this category) for the three-thousandth time and snubbed Ebert. So I'll pick "Her." Because it's Arcade Fire. And don't you want to see what Arcade Fire wears to the Oscars?

Cheryl Boone Isaacs was heard to ask: "Uh, who are they with?"

Best Original Song: "Step Back In Time", Kylie Minogue for "The World's End." Oops! The Academy is telling me this song was not composed in a room labeled "Original" nor were the lyrics originally registered with the official tag "Original" nor was the song itself originally composed on Academy-approved recording equipment which officially makes it ineligible for Best Original Song but does it make it eligible for Best Non-Original Song Originally Recorded In A Non-Original Room With Original Lyrics (Not Labeled) Not Originally Intended For Its Film Origin But Used In An Officially Originally Manner (Labeled). This award will be presented at the Scientific & Technical Awards. (Side Note: I pick "Let It Go" from "Frozen." Because, like, duh.)

Best Live Action Short: "Just Before Losing Everything." We’ve covered this one. There is absolutely nothing - nothing - I will be rooting harder for than this on Oscar night.

Best Animated Short: "Get A Horse!" It's Mickey Mouse, man. You're telling me Disney isn't strong-arming people behind the scenes?

Suddenly Savchenko/Szolkowy (Olympics, Adieu)

The en vogue term this winter has been Polar Vortex, conspirator to wreak North America with cold of only slightly toned down "Day After Tomorrow" proportions, and the Polar Vortex is a phenomenon born of something called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming. The semantics have to do with westerly winds doing funky things and causing an uptick in the northern hemisphere's frigidity. So basically, winter is being a bit wintry, as it will, and then suddenly! you wake up one morning and there is a raging blizzard or the temperature has plummeted to a minus 48 wind chill.

Everything in the Olympics, Winter and Summer, is sudden, but it seems that much more overt in their version served via frosted mug. Bode Miller this, Bode Miller that, he owned the downhill course in training, the Gold Medal is a lock, so on, so forth, and then he pushes out of the gate and rockets down the mountain and he finishes eighth and it’s all over before it even feels as if it began. A cross-country skier named Sophie Caldwell is on the verge of becoming only the second person from America and the first in thirty-eight years to win a medal and she makes the finals of the Individual Sprint and she’s in contention and then she comes around a bend and her skis tangle with an competitor’s skis and she falls and in an instant it’s over.

“I’m not exactly sure what happened,” said Sophie after the race, and that sounds about right. Bode Miller didn’t look like he knew exactly what happened after the downhill. The quartet of female U.S. curlers definitely didn’t seem to know what happened after Great Britain's beguiling Scot Eve Muirhead laid down the seven end smack, turning a crude 2-1 match into a 9-1 curb-stomping. The Americans stood around like four people who have just tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and are doing that thing you do when you act perplexed by the crack’s seemingly mystical all-of-a-sudden emergence.

You train for four years. You practice during your lunch break. Your crowd source for funds to afford to go. Then, poof, it’s over. You stand there or lay in the snow or look up at the videoboard displaying everyone's times, dumbfounded. The gallant red-headed American Skeleton rider Katie Uhlaender lost out on a Bronze by four measly hundredths of one stupid cotton picking second. What's the difference? A bump? A nudge? A momentary misplacement of a single philange? "I put my heart out there," she said. "The reason I'm crying is because it broke a bit."

There is no crying in baseball but there is a lot of crying in the Olympics. Probably because baseball seasons last 17 months of the year and Olympians get a day, maybe two, and even then only a few minutes. But what makes this suddeness so devastating is the endlessness that goes in between. Every night in every country you can likely hear a variation of this refrain: They waited four years for this moment. Take Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy, the pairs figure skating team from Germany. They won Silver four years ago in Vancouver and in the immediate aftermath declared they would return to Sochi to win Gold. They were in second place as the final night of competition began and their routine kicked off and they skated for rougly 22 seconds and they did their first jumps and Szolkowy fell and that was it. Vaya con dios, Gold Medal. Instead, they earned Bronze, one step further down podium than four years prior. Figure skating is a poetically cruel mistress.

Except this overt focus on Gold, Silver and Bronze completely discounts Hot Pink. That happened to be the color of the bodysuit Savchenko wore for their short program routine the previous night when they surged into penultimate position. I admit, her bodysuit caught my attention. How could it not? All you see in figure skating are sequins and sparkles and here was Savchenko - at 30, less spritely than so many of her competitors, a one-time girl who had long since become a woman - in a hot pink bodysuit.

Their routine commenced and, by extension, their music. It was the theme from “The Pink Panther.” Well, of course it was. But this wasn’t Peter Sellers as Inspector Closeau. This was David Niven, debonair, and Capucine, elegant, but telepathically fused together with the guile of Claudia Cardinale. This was a performance born of “The Pink Panther’s” European heist film affectations, not its buffoonery. Szolkowy hurled Savchenko up into the air where she almost appeared to achieve a more fragrant version of sub orbit, and when she landed, Lord have mercy……the landing was the lightning strike, the crowd was the thunder. She grinned. She grinned through the whole performance. The NBC color commentators, Scott Hamilton and Sandra Bezic, meanwhile, spent the whole performance blathering about how they changed to this routine five weeks before competition and how such a decision was folly and wreaked of panic, because apparently when in the presence of figure skating efflugency they can't bring themselves to just shut the hell up.

Figure skating is so often compared to ballet, and the Russians do, in fact, train in conjunction with the Bolshoi, but this didn’t feel balletic. This felt like Rogers & Astaire when they were really revved up, in unison even when they were apart, and reveling not in grace under pressure but in joy of performance, feeding off the excitement of what they knew they were in the midst of doing. Their reaction at the end was less relief or validation than a (forgive me) Katy Perry-stylized battle cry of That’s How We Do. Of course, immediately after it ended, Bezic, from high upon her perch, reduced the entire ecstatic routine to one word: "beatable".

Oh, the Olympics, their petty whining and asburd nationalism, their sob stories and conspiracy theories. The spectacuarly named Tessa Virtue, however, the Canadian who won Silver (a mite controversily) in Ice Dancing almost a week later, was asked about the way in which her sport was judged, its indecipherable numbers, the fine line between "winning" and "losing". She replied: "We have to be true to what we are doing." That, I dare say, is a level of reflection beyond NBC's "McDonald's™ Medal Count."

Maybe Savchenko & Szolkowy’s routine was beatable - well, in fact, we know it was beatable, because the Russians (and the other Russians) beat it - but it won my idiot American heart. In the finals, after Szolkowy had already fallen, they reached the ultimate moment wherein he would literally throw her into a dare devilish Triple Axel, a bout of extreme risk-tasking, and a risk that would metrically appear pointless having already lost Gold four minutes ago. Why take the plunge when you can't "win"?

He threw her into the Triple Axel anyway. She fell. They remained true to what they were doing.

Curling's Grand Mystery

There is a clock in curling. It’s a lesser mentioned aspect of the winter sport, only coming into play if it begins running low on time toward the match’s end, seeing as how each team is provided seventy-three total minutes to complete a match. My mom, quoting her dad, used to say that baseball is the only game in which time does not matter. Curling having a clock would appear to counteract this sentiment, yet I would argue its having clock makes an even stronger case for time not mattering. It really comes down to the curler’s demeanor, never histrionic in the face of the forever looming big hand and little hand, tick-tocking away, reserved resolve. If we are powerless to stop time, after all, why waste it getting ourselves in a dither?

This is not to suggest curlers can’t be fiery. The fieriness, however, is never misplaced, never directed at the opponent or the judge. The most fiery they get is in the high-decibel hollers to “sweep haaaaaaaard!” That is, for their teammates to sweep the ice with their trusty brooms to speed up the stone as it slides, positive reinforcement as opposed to negative browbeating. These hollers can become so notorious that CNBC, the business cable channel hinterland to which so much of Sochi’s Curling coverage in America was relegated, had a ceaselessly airing commercial this past fortnight of its no-name stable of anchors mocking it. Sigh.

It’s an easy game to poke fun at, I suppose, with its lingo and its brooms. It’s also the sort of game you watch and arrogantly assume “I could do that”. A stone slides down a sheet of ice, a couple people sweep, and you try and get your stone closer to the center target than other guy’s stone. What’s so hard? That simplicity on the surface – and the television camera in curling is often positioned above the surface, evoking the cinematic God’s-Eye-View shot and reinforcing the idea that even the least knowledgeable spectator instantly assumes he/she is God and knows all – belies its innumerable intricacies, artistic necessities and incessant strategizing.

For instance, there are entire ends, involving eight shots apiece for each team, in which essentially nothing happens. The greatest value in curling is possession of “the hammer”, which is the opportunity to throw last in the end, and often to maintain possession of it, which can be desired for a myriad of reasons, teams will actively seek not to score. It probably sounds boring. But blank ends, as they are called, are, in an overarching sort of way, my favorite. I have a co-worker who only takes days off so she “can get things done.” I always implore her to take a day off for herself and to do nothing. She never acquiesces. The blank end resembles a day off to do nothing, and that curlers are willing to do this in the midst of an Olympic match signifies so much.

Ever since tuning into the United States’ opening Olympic curling match against Team Switzerland, I have turned coat and hitched my star to the red flag with the white cross. Being that I’m a shallow American male, this occurred on account of the Swiss vice skip, Carmen Schaefer, wholly because she sports a tongue stud and a nose ring, a sartorial merger so stunning Helen’s face would have launched two thousand ships if she’d only just pierced it in both those places. But in watching Carmen play match after match, I was eventually just as struck by her steely nonchalance. A good shot might result in the nod of her head, if that, and a bad shot would result in a “what-are-you-gonna-do?” shrug. It’s the calmness of curling, I think, to which I’m ultimately drawn. Skips holler and sweepers shred the ice, but the sport doesn’t gussy itself up. I noticed that even during ski jumping, where you might assume men and women literally flying through the air would be enough to maintain its allure, they pipe in tub-thumping music to keep your attention. Curling is content on its own sheet of ice, free of that annoying need to be liked, and that’s why I like it.

The parlor game goes like this: Is curling really a sport? This is the game because the majority of sportswriters enjoy nothing more than applying fatuous criteria to determine either x or y and NOTHING INBETWEEN BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO PICK A SIDE BECAUSE THIS IS HOW WE DO IT. I contend curling is a sport, but I’m not interested in debating that and that’s not the overriding point. There is something else going on in curling beyond your usual athletic drama, something that, at the risk of sounding vapid, I’m not certain I even understand on a conscious level. Typically I turn to sports for their endorphin rush, which I love, like the ballyhooed U.S. / Russia hockey game of one Saturday ago. Curling, on the other hand, draws you to a place where you’re aware of the stakes but still able to retain perspective, as if for upwards of 73 minutes you achieve cessation of dukkha.

There was a curling match the other day between Switzerland and Sweden. The winner would advance to the Gold Medal match, and it was fascinating because for so much of the match those stakes felt non-existent, no different from any other Swiss curling match I watched this past fortnight. The tenth and final end, however, with Switzerland down by a point was when the true situation presented itself, though not in the disposition of the curlers. Even when it's metaphorically do or die, it never emits a fatal vibe. An efficiently played game gave way to errors by everyone involved, including my beloved Carmen (she was still stoic), and it all came down to one final shot by the Swiss skip Mirjam Ott. If she made it, they would win. If she missed it, they would lose. She missed.

Carmen looked about how she looked after any of her very few wayward shots – “What-are-you-gonna-do?”. Outwardly she was gracious, shaking hands with vanquishers as curlers kindly do. I’d like nothing more than to claim her eyes betrayed her. I can’t, unfortunately, because they really didn’t. Throughout the Olympics, the camera routinely caught sight of her simply standing there post-shot, those singularly iced eyes thinking……well, I’m not sure what. Was she content? Pissed off? Accepting? Begrudgingly accepting? Indifferent? Pondering where to grab a post-match Baltika?

It’s a mystery.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Wintertime (1943)

As a self-professed (problematic) Olympics junkie, figure skating is a sport that in many ways encompasses this particular Olympics junkie’s obsession. It’s a sport to which I admittedly pay no attention for four years. Then suddenly, in an Olympic year, I become a proponent of the Triple Lutz (confession: I still have no idea what a Lutz is, and I kind of never want to know) and become wholly invested in the plight of men and women wearing sequins and wearing fake smiles the size of a Buick. Of course, eventually the competition ends, and when it does the skaters all return to the ice for a non-competitive exhibition, sort of an Ice Capades Sponsored By The IOC (International Olympic Committee). I, however, never watch the non-competitive exhibition, and I never watch it because nothing is at stake. (Figure Skating purists now have permission to pelt me with rotten fruit.)

Stakes is one of film criticism’s buzzwords. The higher the stakes, the more urgent the narrative, the more involved the viewer, or some such. But stakes, I would submit, are relative. For instance, a movie can about be about a plot to take the Vice President hostage at the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Finals and, yet, if the filmmaking is inadequate and the casting doesn't hit it may feel as if nothing more than the outcome of a 4th of July hotdog eating contest is at stake (see: “Sudden Death”). On the other hand, if the filmmaking is up to snuff and you cast the right actors, then simply moving a bottle of liquor between rooms can come to matter as much as life itself (see: "To Have and Have Not").

There is a curious moment in “Wintertime” when a Norwegian millionaire named Ostgaard (S.Z. Sakall) learns his vast sums of money cannot be wired to him in Canada because his homeland has just been invaded by the Nazis. Well, then. It’s not simply a smack-in-the-face reminder of the world in which “Wintertime” was set, but an unfortunate indicator of just how much the drama lags.

Actually, drama might not be the right word. Rather than act as “drama”, “Wintertime” is more like wannabe French Canadian Bedroom Farce. In doors, out of doors, up the stairs, down the stairs, and  because the setting is almost exclusively a resort, this even allows for mischief wherein one character on a balcony is looking for or hollering at another character that is just below the balcony. There are so many misunderstandings and bamboozlements and ruses and so many romantic pairing-offs (whether legitimate or for personal gain) it is nearly impossible to track who is with who when unless you’re taking notes (which I wasn’t). This is one of those films in which plot is everything and nothing at once – as in, describing the plot, the comings and goings, the doings and dealings, could take upwards of ten to twelve paragraphs, but none of it has to do with anything. This is, of course, a Sonja Henie film, and a ice-skating she must (and will) go.

TCM offers a ten-sentence breakdown of “Wintertime’s” production and, frankly, it sounds as dizzying as the film’s Tilt-A-Whirl of love affairs. The film had five writers and two directors, Brahm giving way to Archie Mayo specifically for the ice skating sequences (shades of Irwin Allen only handling action sequences). The cinematographers are credited as Joe MacDonald and Glen MacWilliams, except production charts, it seems, also grant cinematography credit to Charles Clarke and to James Van Trees who filled in when Joe MacDonald fell ill. A Johnny Johnson assisted second unit director Otto Brower, though Johnson’s exact contributions are unknown. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s five writers, two directors, two second unit directors, and four cinematographers. Oh, and Sonja Henie needed a new screen skating partner when her initial screen skating partner was drafted mid-production.

Thus, it only seems an inevitable that “Wintertime” would feel so herky-jerky and unfinished, establishing the primary plot point as Quebec’s Chateau Promenade being faced with foreclosure until figure skating champion Nora (Henie) and her uncle, the aforementioned Norwegian millionaire Ostgaard turn up as guests. Sensing that Ostgaard’s millions could be the resort’s savior, schemes emerge to enlist the aid of Ostgaard and Nora.

It’s all a bit like watching that old SNL sketch where Nancy Kerrigan is made to ice skate with Chris Farley. The production itself and the scattershot story lumber and stumble like Farley while Henie comports herself with as much grace as the situation allows, likely wondering what she’s gotten herself into. She would only make two more films after “Wintertime.” Perhaps this spurred her toward deciding she’d had enough.

Cool Runnings Was Good, Even If It May Not Have Been A Cult Classic

I have written a version of this before but it bears repeating…..though the above sequence may be corny, my quixotic heart can’t help but envision it as a perfect image of the Olympic spirit, stronger than any flame in any cauldron, mightier than any laminated motto. John Candy in a Rastafarian hat – Americans and Jamaicans co-mingling and, eventually, later on, East Germans leading slow claps. 

Slate, the venerable Internet magazine which has never encountered a story about which it could not find cause to bitch, recently took umbrage with Jon Turtletaub’s mostly made-up re-telling of the story of the Jamaican Bobsled Team, going right after it in a typical PAY ATTENTION TO US!!! Headline that went “‘Cool Runnings’ Was Not Good, And It Was Definitely Not A ‘Cult Classic’”. We’ll tackle those claims in reverse order. I’m not sure I was aware of “Cool Runnings” status in pop culture as a cult classic, but then as Justin Peters notes – paraphrasing Matthew Power – it isn’t a cult classic so much as a “’pop culture punchline’ – a movie that’s continually referenced not because it’s good but because it is a strange cultural artifact that a lot of 30-somethings remember.”

I am one of these 30-somethings to whom Peters alludes. My first Olympics were the Winter Games of Calgary in 1988 which doubled as the Jamaican Bobsled Team’s introduction to the culture, and as a 10 year old I naturally became their fan. I gave a high school speech about the Jamaican Bobsled Team, gleaned, as this was pre-Internet Boom, from my back issues of Sports Illustrated and Encyclopedias. (My teacher gave me a C, as I recall, and a note that went something like, “Very sparse in detail.”) I saw “Cool Runnings” the night it opened at the Westwood 6 in West Des Moines, Iowa. Why just this past NYE when I noticed legions of people were using Twitter as a platform for celebratory poetry, I got in on the act and Tweeted out the “Cool Runnings” Chant. (My friend Cindy did not get the reference. Apparently she is not part of the “cult”.) Of course, discussing it this way only offers ammunition to Peters’ argument – I fondly remember this strange cultural artifact and I am referencing it rather than really arguing for it as a quality piece of filmmaking.

In August 2012, in an effort to assuage my traditional Post-Olympics Depression, I re-watched “Cool Runnings” for the first time in a long time. As I noted in my review: “Re-visiting it nearly 20 years later as a wannabe cineaste, I figured I knew what would happen. I would be gravely disappointed in its rampant factual inaccuracies and in its pedantic sports movie clichés.” And those are present, without question, and I listed several, like the intrepid Jamaicans training with some sort of shabby contraption in possession of a steering wheel, which is absurd because bobsleds don’t have steering wheels. Also, why all the hubbub to get two extra members onto the team alongside Durice (Leon) and the lyrically named Sanka Coffie (Doug E. Doug) when there is, you know, a two man bobsled event? PLOT HOLES! PLOT HOLES! PLOT HOLES!

To be fair, Peters is not simply excavating plot holes in his takedown but questioning both its comedic and communal chops. For instance, as he notes, much of the humor, particularly in the early-going, centers around – him quoting The Washington Post’s Desson Howe – “cartoonish natives.” Bobsled, see, is a cold-weather event and they are from a warm-weather island, see, and so it’s funny when they go to Calgary because it’s SO cold. (Never mind that the Calgary Games, like Sochi, were notoriously warm-weathered. PLOT HOLE! PLOT HOLE! PLOT HOLE!)

Peters references Roger Ebert’s First Law Of Funny Names in regards to not only Sanka Coffie but bald and fearsome Yul Brenner (Malik Yoba). But perhaps Peters would have done well to re-visit the late great Ebert’s original “Cool Runnings” review. It is not a rave, per se, rightly referencing the film’s obvious structure and noting that “If a bunch of guys can get (to the Olympics) by practicing in a bobsled with wheels, nothing is sacred.” Truth. Ah, but Ebert, like only the best film critics, had the willingness to admit that a film’s temperament can succeed even if its framework may be lacking. “It’s not a bad movie,” he says. “In fact, it’s surprisingly entertaining, with a nice sweetness in place of the manic determination of the average sports picture.” But it is David Anthony of The AV Club, reconsidering the film last November, who really gets it right, pointing out how “Most Disney sports stories drive home the importance of victory above all else”, how “Achievement…cannot be measured in growth or personal success” and how “’Cool Runnings’ subverts this lesson.” Indeed, it is less about competitive triumph than mere competition, “glory of sport” as the Olympic oath puts it.

I admit part of my Olympic-fascination (obsession) stems from my nostalgia-problem. Every four years two years, I inevitably flash back to Fourth Grade Me in February 1988, suddenly, miraculously swept up in this all-consuming fortnight of transcendent athletic feats, captivated not just by Jamaicans but by East Germans and Soviets and an American who skied and then shot a gun (what?) and a Finn who literally flew. Peters terms “Cool Runnings” a film for kids, writing “I liked it a lot when I was 12. I also liked it because I was 12, and not yet old enough to realize how hacky ‘Cool Runnings’ was.” Is “Cool Runnings” hacky? Sure. After all, one scene finds our intrepid islanders involved in a country & western saloon-stylized brawl with the requisite villains. You can only roll your eyes. But in the bar brawl’s preamble, Sanka Coffie and a nameless woman very nearly non-verbally become pals on the dance floor, an embodiment of mythical Olympic ideals, not distant strangers but unified line-dancers.

“Cool Runnings” does not so much make me feel like I’m 10 again as remind me what it felt like to be 10 – when I believed wholly in the “glory of sport”. Frankly, I still do, even if I now know “glory of sport” is less tangible than ineffable, and the Olympics are “an imperfect interregnum,” as Jill Lepore wrote for The New Yorker last week, “the parade of nations a fantasy about a peace never won.” And that’s ultimately what makes “Cool Runnings” so wonderful, because in spite of its hackneyed imperfections it still gets that fantasy perfectly right, dreaming it up in a line dance and in the whimsical tendering of a Rastafarian hat.

Sunlight Jr.

Naomi Watts is a naturally beautiful woman, of course, evinced by the fact she was just recently able to portray Princess Di, regardless of the performance's quality. But Watts, unlike many of her contemporaries, is equally able to ditch the makeup (in theory) and dress down and play rough and tumble. She did it to Oscar-nominated acclaim in "21 Grams", a hard-edged performance I significantly valued, and she has done it again in writer/director Laurie Collyer's followup to 2006's "Sherrybaby." Though her natural Wattsness may initially cause her to stand out, ultimately she is believable as an under-educated woman traipsing everywhere in a hideous canary yellow polo she wears to her job behind the counter at a central Florida convenience store called Sunlight Jr.

The title, of course, is meant to be ironic. There seems to be little sunlight in the lives of Melissa (Watts) and her boyfriend Richie (Matt Dillon), disabled and bound to a wheelchair. He makes vague references to a prior life of good money in construction, but makes just as vague a reference to spending it all away. These are not people who talk in absolutes. These are people who talk in lax Dollar Store cliches - "Don't make a federal case out of it." They live in a grimy one room motel, the sweat of humidity imbued in the sheets on the bed. They can hardly afford gas for the car, so much so that Richie covertly wheels out in the middle of the night to siphon some from a neighboring car. Whatever it takes.

This might make it sound as if "Sunlight Jr." is another indie film intent on simmering the viewer in the characters' crushing depression as a means to illustrate the unreachable nature of the so-called American Dream for so many, and that is there, but then listen closely to the soundtrack. It is scored entirely by J. Mascis, the frontman of Dinosaur Jr., and Collyer chooses to serve the majority of her film with Mascis's music for accompaniment. It is sorrowful only in moments, mostly choosing for aural optimism, even in situations that appear less than optimistic.

Mascis's score is matched by Watts and Dillon, who for all the drudgery they are made to endure, still convince as a couple in love, carnally and emotionally, even if their emotions might not reach enlightened intellectual plains. They argue, but the arguments are born of realistically difficult situations and all the fear they entail. Inevitably Melissa becomes pregnant, and when she rushes to the hospital in a scary emergency, though it turns out to be false alarm, Richie conveys concern for his wife but also disbelief at her fiscal irresponsibility. When you cook on a hot plate and fish expired peanut butter out of the trash, how can you afford emergency room visits?

And that ultimately becomes the characters' struggle within each of themselves - not only if it's feasible for them to raise a child, but is it responsible? In fact, we see Melissa's mother raising (neglecting) a gaggle of foster kids, and wonder if the same fate awaits her daughter. Melissa sees it too. Sure, sure, Richie relentlessly promises that he will take care of her, but this is empty rhetoric with passionate delivery. And they both know it.

The trajectory of the film is "predictable", except that it's predictable to the characters too, and their journey becomes about recognizing its own end. Thus, "Sunlight Jr." concludes with a scene of genuine tenderness, but also genuine dread. Where do they go? The movie doesn't pretend to know the answer. Neither do the characters.

Short Term 12

In keeping the circular theme of other notable 2013 films, the conclusion of “Short Term 12” mirrors the beginning, both scenes demonstrating a simultaneous cheerful and pragmatic resolve in its characters continuing to face the day. And even if the content of the scenes was not indicative of this resolve, it would be conveyed in the demeanor of Brie Larson, the remarkably natural and affecting lead actress who owns the film in spite of its overall winning nature. A face and a gait and posture can say so much, and Larson utilizes all three, effortlessly evoking the job's wear and tear, but also reminding of its inherent reward.

Larson’s character name, Grace, could have been symbolic overload. You think of grace and you think of comporting one’s self in a near regal manner, feet floating just above the sidewalk when strolling. Larson’s Grace, however, kind of plods, hunched over, as if she didn’t get enough sleep, which is wholly likely, and her tired eyes search from behind droopy bangs. That her mettle is constantly tested, and that she takes it on with such determination and caring patience means her name could have been, say, Bertha, and every review for this film would have still noted her grace. 

By any name, Grace is a twenty-something working at a foster care facility for troubled teenagers where the small staff asks that doors always stay open and secrets shared in an effort to talk them out. Well, it goes without saying that Grace has her own secrets, like a relationship on the sly with gregarious co-worker Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), a relationship that will arrive at a tipping point by film’s end. The screenplay provides a time marker in the form of Marcus, on the verge of turning 18 which means he must leave the facility behind. He is played by Keith Stanfield in a charged performance, one that employs rage to mask his fear in having to strike out on his own and to bely an impassioned nature. He has struggles, but he also has successes, and this is what “Short Term 12” effectively illustrates – how struggle and success goes hand in hand, and how swiftly it can switch.

Another at-risk kid is Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), the closed-off newcomer, who shares a volatile relationship with the father we never see, a relationship that proves similar to Grace’s own problematic upbringing. It becomes the film’s most vital pairing, even more so than Grace and Mason, and it is also the film’s foremost conundrum.

“Short Term 12”, meant to embody the messiness of life, the hairpin twists and turns, how things can be going one way, stop on a dime, and go the other way, is neatly aligned so that our protagonist is provided a mirror character in Jayden to helpfully allow for confrontation with herself. If Jayden has trouble with her father, so does Grace. If Jayden has a history of cutting herself, so does Grace. They match up perfectly, and so even though much of the film is about – paraphrasing Mason in admonishing Grace – letting other people in, this point-by-point similarity essentially negates the need for Grace to let anyone in when she’s more or less conversing with herself.

Yet it is Grace’s flaws that draw me most not only to the character, but to the movie itself. This is because Grace is not undone by some epic error in judgment, but by the sort of little mental foibles that have all added together in her twenty-some years to render her as willful as she is confused. She is there for her kids, even if she fails to always be there for herself and the people closest to her. There is always work to do, always a little sanding away that our emotional makeup may require, each life a work-in-progress than cannot be mended by a single motivational speech.

Perhaps at-risk kids are not supposed to see the pitfalls in their caretakers, but I wonder if it's reassuring for them to see Grace not always succeed and still be successful.

Two Happy Faces: The Magical Tale Of The Women's Olympic Downhill

At their finest, sports never feel simply like games people play but like works of improbable fiction. The arena becomes a canvas, the athletes become characters upon it and the game or event is riddled with thematic text and plot twists. This, in essence, describes what transpired during the signature event of the women’s alpine skiing at the Sochi Winter Olympics – the fierce, fretful downhill. And just as brilliant drama so often refuses to conform to expectations, the women’s downhill ultimately resisted NBC’s pre-packaged, heat-to-serve narrative, and became so much richer and joyously confounding. The Norse god of skiing, after all, is not actually a god but a goddess, and if I didn’t know better (and I most certainly don’t), I might be tempted to say that Skaði took it upon herself to author the story.

As an unabashed but American Olympic fan whose mornings and afternoons are ensconced in work, I am more or less forced to view them through the prism of NBC. And since my preferred viewing method is spoiler free, I have spent the last week walking on social media eggshells, tip-toeing around the Internet. It’s exhausting but necessary, and yet even in my extreme caution, I can still trip up. To wit, one morning this past week, groggy, while checking my email, I foolishly refreshed my Twitter feed. Naturally the first Tweet that appeared betrayed the fact American skier Julia Mancusco had not won the women’s downhill. I hung my head. I think I even cursed. Still, when my friend Dave, a fellow Olympics enthusiast, came over that night to watch coverage with me, we tuned into the women’s downhill, though it felt anti-climactic with the knowledge of Mancuso’s defeat. Little did I know that knowledge was merely this fable’s preamble.

A Swiss skier named Dominique Gisin took to the starting gate. She’s twenty-eight years old. She’s had nine knee surgeries. Nine! How on earth she can wage war with g-forces on a pair of skis post-nine knee surgeries is utterly beyond me, but she does. She had a horrific crash at the Vancouver Olympics downhill, leaving her with a concussion. A headline writer might say this made it about redemption, but more likely it just made Right Now that much more important. I instantly threw the weight of my pointless support behind Gisin. Maybe I did so because I already knew Mancuso wasn’t going to win, but then again I’m the dude who turned on the US/Swiss women’s curling match and immediately turned coat because a Swiss curler was sporting the elegant tongue stud/nose ring combo and so maybe I have just long repressed an affection for Swiss culture. Either/Or/Or Something Else, Gisin flew down the mountain and took the lead. If the nine knee surgeries had not already won me to her side, her reaction at the conclusion of her run might have – screams of bewildered delight. Her face, her body language, it all said: “Really?! REALLY?!” Really. She stood in the waiting area, a woman in a waking dream, racer after racer falling short of her time.

A bunch of skiers and a couple commercials later and we had arrived at the Slovenian skier Tina Maze, a part time pop star. NBC trotted out a patented puff piece, telling of Maze’s home country, its tiny population embroiled in financial crisis, and what she means to them. I immediately panicked because I knew that in this moment NBC had to be selling its own narrative. “They wouldn’t show this if she didn’t win!” I cried. But Dave wasn’t listening. The puff piece had understandably moved him. “She’s got the weight of a nation,” he declared. “You have to go for Maze.” “Nine knee surgeries!” I countered. “WEIGHT OF A NATION!” he yelled. “NINE KNEE SURGERIES!” I hollered.

So there we were, lines drawn in the living room carpet, hanging on a race that ended something like eighteen hours ago, he for the Slovenian, me for the Swiss. And the run was pure drama. She took the lead early in her run, barely, and held it the whole way, until she took a final turn a bit too wide. She flew for the finish. Gisin or Maze? Maze of Gisin? Who would it be?!

Well, you probably know……it was both. In a sport decided by hundredths of a second, the runs of Gisin and Maze were identical down to the second and that second’s hundredth – 1:41.57 – and they both won Gold. And lest you think this was disheartening to either of them, I offer as evidence the camera catching sight of Gisin embracing Maze in a garrulous bear hug. Maybe I welled up, maybe not, I’ll let you work that one out on your own.

Ultimately, ironically, learning Mancuso’s fate ahead of time only strengthened my experience of witnessing this mountainside event, reminding of the folly in assuming one knows how the script is written. This is not to suggest I was happy that Mancuso lost, far from it, but that I was enthralled with and ultimately overcome by the twists the story took. Two skiers, both with their own backstory, both richly deserving of a happy end, both getting it. By claiming a sporting event can become an improbable work of fiction, and to specifically reference a Norse god, would, I know, seem to suggest the result was not in Gisin’s and Maze’s hands. I don’t literally believe that to be true, even if romantically a part of me might like to, it’s just that on occasion an event can unfold so exquisitely and end so perfectly that you’ll swear a higher power just had to be holding sway.

Afterward, the inevitable idea of timing to the one-thousandth of a second rather than the one-hundredth was argued for, a better way to know the true “winner”. “If it’s gaugeable,” said former Olympic skier Picabo Street, “let us have it.” She continued: “Give it to me. Give me the thousandth. I want it.” Well, of course she does. She’s an American, and you know how Americans love their absolutism.

I much prefer the words of Maze: “Two happy faces.”

8 Couples Jesse & Celine Could Become

This past year found our beloved Jesse & Celine of “Before Sunrise” / “Before Sunset” morphing into wearied, acidly argumentative (non) married couple in “Before Midnight.” It was bitter cup of tea to drink (or spit out while running around screaming, waving your hands above your head). And it’s why it got me to thinking today – the most “romantic” of all days – just where their relationship could progress nine or eighteen or twenty-seven years from now in “Before Noon.”

8 Couples Jesse & Celine Could Become

Isidor & Ida Strauss, “Titanic.” 

In real life, philanthropists Isidor & Ida were an unabashedly in-love elderly couple who perished together on April 14, 1912 when Ida refused entry to a lifeboat to meet her maker alongside Isidor, saying “Where you go, I go.” Sigh. In James Cameron’s 1997 masterpiece (yeah, that's right, I said it) you might remember Mr. & Mrs. Straus as the couple laying together on the bed just out of reach of the rushing water about to consume as “Nearer My God To Thee” sets the mood. Sigh. So, could this be elderly Jesse & Celine? Meeting their fate with a final declaration of true love aboard a Royal Caribbean Cruise gone wrong? 

Odds: 95 – 1. I mean, you saw “Before Midnight”, right? 

Larry & Carol Lipton, “Manhattan Murder Mystery.” 

Jesse & Celine could move to Madrid! It could be Madrid Murder Mystery! Javier Bardem could play the Alan Alda part! Penelope Cruz could play the Anjelica Huston part! OH MY GOD, THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN! 

 Odds: 90 – 1. This isn’t happening.

Peter & Agnes, “Bug.” 

I admit this would be a somewhat surreal direction for Jesse & Celine to take but hey, they spent damn near the whole back half of “Before Midnight” locked in a hotel room. Who’s to say next time out they don’t go mad, imagine a bug infestation and stow themselves away from the outside world? Yes, this sounds depressing, but I truly thought the end of “Before Midnight” was even more depressing. Even if Peter & Agnes were literally out of their minds, they weren't playing make believe.

Odds: 50 – 1. Remote possibility……but not that remote.

Georges & Anne, “Amour.”

I know. Believe me, I know. It’s soul crushing to envision Jesse doing that to Celine (if you’ve seen the film, you know exactly what I’m talking about). But take a deep breath, a glug of Glögg and hear me out – can’t you kinda see it ending this way for Jesse and Celine? They are loving but combative, and if you put Celine in the same position as Anne, I think she’d take it about as well. And I think Jesse would handle it about as well as George. And while some critics claimed "Amour" was all a polar vortex put-on, a mean-spirited exercise in pretend empathy, I disagreed. Ultimately I saw the way in which those in amour, probably wish they could more or less go out together, a la Johnny & June. Isn’t that a poetic thought for Jesse & Celine?

Odds: 25 - 1. 

Frank & April Wheeler, “Revolutionary Road.” 

Imagine an inverted telling of the Richard Yates novel, with Jesse & Celine living in the Paris suburbs and Jesse commuting to work every day (his latest series of novels have flopped) and Celine staying at home with the girls and, frustrated, deciding to take off for New York where Celine will work so Jesse can be free to write until……well......(weeping).

Odds: 17 - 1. 

Team Zissou (Steve & Eleanor), “The Life Aquatic.” 

“I’d like to speak on the record for a moment. Eleanor has always been the brains behind Team Zissou.” I’m not saying Jesse & Celine will begin going on oceanic expeditions and filming them, I’m merely saying that one day Jesse will admit that Celine is the brains behind Team Jesse & Celine.

Odds: 12 - 1.

David & Linda Howard, “Lost In America.” 

There is a moment in “Lost In America”, about a couple played by Albert Brooks and Julie Haggerty who discard their possessions (and eventually, erroneously, their “nest egg”) to travel the country in a Winnebago, when he says to her, “This is like ‘Easy Rider’, only now it’s our turn!” I envision Jesse saying to Celine, “This is just like ‘Lost In America’, only now it’s our turn!” And then Celine saying, “Only I’m not going to be the numbnuts who gambles away all our money.” Pithy road trip ensues. Jesse and Celine in a moment of desperation wind up working together at a Sunglasses Hut. They are forced to borrow money from their twin daughters who have formed a successful synth pop duo.   

Odds: 9 – 1. 

Alex & Anna, “New York, I Love You.” 

I admit this could potentially be getting meta, only because Ethan Hawke’s character in “New York, I Love You” is technically part of the same short as Chris Cooper’s Alex and Robin Wright’s Anna. Nevertheless, as you may recall, Alex and Anna talk each other up on the sidewalk outside a restaurant over a cigarette as if they don’t know each other. Anna keeps referencing her "husband" waiting inside and, of course, the ultimate Reveal is that her "husband" is......Alex!!! Now, if you've seen "Before Midnight", you know they choose to conclude it with Jesse and Celine having a brief bout of play-acting. So, play-acting, cigarettes, a love once bloomed now shriveled? Yeah, this looks an awful lot like where our dear Jesse & Celine may end up.

Odds: 3-1.