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| Syd |
 Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:52 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Tentative top 10 of the year (I'm still waiting on The Hurt Locker and Anvil: The Story of Anvil):
1) Goodbye Solo
2) Up in the Air
3) Adventureland
4) Sita Sings the Blues
5) Inglorious Basterds
6) Fantastic Mr. Fox
7) Moon
8 ) Up
9) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
10) Watchmen
11) Avatar
12) Coraline
13) Where the Wild Things Are
14) Zombieland
15) Sherlock Holmes
16) Paranormal Activity |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:37 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I'm pre-emptively claiming screenplay for the Blanches, because I want to split it again between adapted and original so I get a chance to vote for both Up in the Air and Inglourious Basterds. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:44 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Okay, let's try this one more time.
Though no longer as likely a Best Pic pick as it was before being actually seen.Nine is perched to receive a sizeable portion of AMPAS noms by virtue (if that's the right word) of Harvey Weinstein's much-practiced, ruthlessly relentless campaign strategies; the longstanding periodic penchant of the technical/craft branches, the producers branch and the actors branch (as witnessed by their Four Plus Five love in the SAGGY nods) to give a not-good big-budget turkey some professional sympathy -- Hello Dolly!, HELLO; and the Anything Can Happen aspects of this 10-films-in-play year.
And the imbalance between Best Picture's playing field and the unextended directorial slate means that Avatar could quite conceivably take top honors without gaining James Cameron a second Bald Gold Man With A Sword for helming it. Ms. Bigelow is at present The Director in town, not least because there's a lingering feeling about it finally being a womyn's turn, plus, Hurt Locker is that well regarded, all over Whollyweird. Furthermore, there's a growing sense that this year Aclademites may be ready to favor Content over Commerce, Substance over Style. Will believe it when I see it, but that's what the Buzz buzzeth at the moment.
Having previously deleted the AMPAS-screener-initiated notice of It's Complicated, thinking it unfair to opine on something before it was in cinemas, can only say that it's not half as inconsequential as it could have been, closer to the Last Chance Harvey template than the Something's Gotta Give rehash I'd feared it might be. Mrs. Gummer has seldom been more relaxed, spontaneous, unpredictable or downright alluring in a mainstream fillum, particularly though not exclusively her hilarious extended stoned sequence. Steve Martin is indeed underutilized (ditto the wonderful trio of Mary Kay Place, Alexandra Wentworth and Rita Wilson as Streep's galpals), but he made a quietly charming counter to Alec Baldwin's no-holds-barred seriocomic scene-grabber. I really wasn't sure, right up to the end, which one, if either of them, Meryl's character would end up with, in itself some kind of achievement in these prefab times. John Krasinski continues to hone his straight-faced whipcrack timing; there are some very well-considered observations about the double standard toward men and wommyn of a certain age; also, how divorce affects children for the rest of their lives; and if it didn't seem any kind of miracle, let alone a great film -- Meyers Formula remains a pretty darned calculated commodification -- it was a better-than-average romcom popcorn seller, and will only buoy up SASSY's Icon's front-runner status for the Nora Ephron entry, so that's all right. The mater found it very cute, the equivalent of a rave from her.
Saw Precious. In three words: Oh. My. God. Given that I scrapped my most recent Julie & Julia review attempt, despairing of precisely accounting for why that film enchanted (and, courtesy of the DVD a dear friend gave me for Festivus, continues to enchant) me -- electing instead to start from scratch with a recipe format, fingers crossed -- I am hardly able to do justice to something as artless, unstinting and heartfelt as the film Based on the Novel Push, by Sapphire, proved to be. Mlle. Sidibe may never do another role as suited to her as this one is, but she'll always have done this one, and it's hard to overpraise her spot-on rightness as the title character, grave and funny and frustrating and stolid and riveting and heartbreaking, all at once. As for Mo'Nique, provided she does enough post-NYCrix-snub damage control by the time final ballots are due, she is indeed The One To Beat for Supphose Actress, a harrowing, unsparing and electrifying turn, though there's plenty of thespianic potency to go around, especially Mr. Kravitz and the revelatory Ms. Carey. Can't say it's the most subtle writing or supply directed film I've seen in a while -- Lee Daniels has more heart than panache, for all the kicky verve he brings to Precious' fantasies and the raw slam he finds in street speak and violent upheavals -- but it's nothing if not impactful and affecting. Will leave it at that, or I'll start crying again -- for once, a Demands to Be Seen film really DOES demand to be seen -- and its informed power for me far outweighed its various stylistic and sociological quirks.
The Young Victoria, anything but an original film in form or function, is a reasonably satisfying bauble, even if the period it covers is unavoidably inchoate in dramatic resolution -- the real meat of the Victoria/Albert story begins at the point the film ends. But it's very well appointed, the locations and wardrobe pure costume-drama eye candy throughout. Moreover, the supporting cast includes such treats as Jim Broadbent having a brief but vivid field day as King William, Paul Bettany circumventing being somewhat too young for Melbourne through his conflicted internal responses, and those ever-reliable fixtures Harriet Walter (as Queen Adelaide) and Miranda Richardson (as Victoria's Duchess of Kent smother) giving unostentatious punch to every scene they appear in. It's all, however, about the central romance, which a Star-Actress-Is-Arrived-level Blunt Emily and the never-more-sensitive Friend Rupert inhabit with enormous skill, delicacy and conviction. There's one fairly impressive moment, cinematically speaking, at the post-coronation ball where Victoria and Albert actively register their emotions while waltzing, which has something of the flavor of Joe Wright's analogous (though vastly more complex, elongated and substantial) dance sequence in Pride and Prejudice. The counterpoise of the political and personal has been done more profoundly and dexterously elsewhere, and it's unlikely to be The Last Word on this topic; Anglophiles and fans of the stars should nonetheless be fairly sated. Good show, intelligent, entertaining and handsome, with a beautifully aligned pair at its core.
Invigorating and disarming, for roughly half its length, was Inglourious Basterds, which we finally saw at a screening over the holiday. Despite my own desire for caution, Christoph Waltz is absolutely the single surest-bet awardee as Col. Hans Landa -- somewhere in Cinema Heaven, the shades of Pierre Fresnay, Conrad Veidt, Jean Marais, Richard Widmark, Anton Walbrook and Claude Rains are nodding in envious approval. Indeed, an Instant Classic Performance, and, along with Mélanie Laurent's poised transparency as Shosanna, for my money the most effortlessly successful at merging Old-School Pastiche with Postmillennial Immediacy amid the great big international cast, with Diane Kruger's tartly composed Bridget von Hammersmark coming in a very close third. (Michael Fassbender's Brit-critic-turned-undercover-agent Lt. Archie Hicox is an easy fourth). Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine never remotely made me forget he was Brad Pitt, yet that's its own kind of endearing Golden Age/B-Movie convention, and generally Mr. Jolie's ham's-holiday antics made me laugh quite a lot. The screenplay, simultaneously a typically over-indulgent Tarantino fanboy's riff and a noteworthy Quentin Matures leap forward, had a self-delighting blast in its mixture of sardonic wit, stomach-churning charnel-house graphology, ambitious linguistic scope and nonstop film references -- Look, a Searchers doorway! Wow, a Colonel Blimp crosscut! Ooh, baby, how The Dirty Dozen sure does still resonate! Ad infinitum maximus! -- and self-circumscribed attack. Furthermore, the editing, sound editing, art direction, costume design, cinematography and score represented a rarified order of detailed, controlled-effect heft. That said, though the opening chapter transfixed me, the subsequent developments intrigued me, somewhere around or shortly after the LaLouisiane bust-up my attention started to fray more than somewhat. However spectacularly realized the final chapters and conflagrational denouement were, they impacted me solely by dint of their technical oomph -- my emotions were disappointingly uninvolved. Maybe it's my subjective shortcoming, considering that a climactic, potentially galvanic face-off between Landa and Shosanna, which the ending of the first chapter and the tensile luncheon scene with Goebbels seemed to juicily portend, failed to materialize. Tarentino instead opted to somersault headlong into Alternate Universe Multiple-Reversal Revenge Fantasy Territory. While that carried a deranged, Tex Avery-meets-Fritz Lang-by-way-of-Mescaline kind of logic, it seemed an easier out, and finally wore me out to the point of annoyance -- much as Eli Roth's alleged performance as Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz had done long theretofore -- the closing shot a shallowly winking sick joke, no matter how synoptically, ironically slashing it was. What began as a dangerously irreverent, potentially trailblazing homage lopingly ambled along to end up slicing, searing, spraying and spattering about in a wildly sophistic, goofily sadistic film geek's playground. Still, it's unquestionably among the more considerable films of 2009, however polarizing and off-putting to some sectors of society it may be, and guaranteed to get some love, anticipated and otherwise, from that other, um, film society come March.
That, however, is not at all going to happen with Antichrist, which, in a spurt of masochistic charity that startled even me, I permitted the Baroque Violinist to cajole me into giving another chance yesterday. While it was now possible to appreciate the structural symbology more; and note how equally beyond praise or criticism Mr. Dafoe was against La Gainsbourg; and, thankfully, the scenes of mutilation, animal grotesquerie and such were now foreseeable and hence eye-avertable; it still made very little sense to me. Had von Trier continued the probity of the first "Grief" sequence, he might have had a film that actually merited a final-credits dedication to Tarkovsky, and I guess the epilogue says something intense about centuries of man's misogynistic abuse of wommyn finally being exorcised, or sump'n, but overall, it was just unnnervingly impenetrable, a forehead-smiting Whatzis of a Whangdoodle, Gynocidal Division. At least I tried, Lars can't say I didn't try, but enough is enough. Life's too short. I might yet want to go camping at a cabin in the woods, sometime in my future existence, without having to sage it and my head out first.
Coming up next on screeners: Bad Lieutenant, Crazy Heart, The Messenger and A Simple Man. Coming up next in theeyatur: Up in the Air (since malareviewer was indisposed on Christmas, preferring to wait and be well enough to fully enjoy the Clooney fix) and A Single Man and Avatar. Happy holidaze, belated and upcoming, all around. inla out.
Edited because as always I left out something. At least I left in the obvious typo. So sue me. |
Last edited by inlareviewer on Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:32 am; edited 5 times in total
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:19 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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inla--Your reviews send me to heaven. Why don't you have a mainstream venue? I know, I know, and why haven't I won an Oscar? But really, you write divinely.
But which man are you talking about here--"serious" or "single"? Because I can't wait to hear your take on "serious," my favorite film of the year.
inlareviewer wrote:
Coming up next on screeners: Bad Lieutenant, Crazy Heart, The Messenger and A Simple Man. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 9:21 am |
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| Inla, thanks and I hope you had a Merry Christmas. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:05 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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marantzo, you're welcome, and backatcha. It was a quiet Christmas, a mercy in itself these days. Ate way too much almond bark, but otherwise, it was a good Yule. Watched a lotta movies, some of them even new. LOL.
willybeeds, blush deeply you make me. I work for a mainstream venue that poaches its talent instead of promoting its stringers, all the while the profession is gradually going extinct. Cannot say why you don't have an Oscar. We need to get you hooked up with Harvey Weinstein.
And I clearly have some sort of Freudian tic that makes me turn Serious into Simple.
Or maybe there's some new film upcoming out there called A Simple Man. A remake of Aaron Slick From Punkin Crick, perhaps. It's a puzzlement. A Serious Man, that's the film in the screener queue. It's appalling that I haven't seen it already, but 2009 was a trying year. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| Kate |
| Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 5:09 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1397
Location: Pacific Northwest
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| I was not so crazy about Sherlock Holmes. I went in expecting to really like as I am a big fan of Robert Downey and Jude Law, but it fell decidedly flat for me. Right off the bat I was confused by the plot and never really caught up, so that was frustrating. But even the bits I did follow, I found dull. Now, I have never read a SH book, so I wonder if that had a negative impact on how I would feel about the film. Rachel M's character had very little to work with and was not introduced to the story very well either. I also really have to be in the mood for a Guy Ritchie film, guess this wasn't one of them. I might try it again later to see if it was just my mood. |
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| Kate |
| Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 5:10 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1397
Location: Pacific Northwest
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| I also found Avatar visually stunning, but rather uninteresting in the character development. But man, was it a treat to watch - very fun. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 7:52 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Saw It's Complicated, which I found suprisingly dull, and The Blind Side, which I liked enough to put at the bottom of my top 10. Sandra Bullock is quite good here and merits the talk of an Oscar nomination, but I strongly doubt she'll win. I think Bullock is better these days in dramas rather than comedies. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 10:13 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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My favorite films of 2009 (so far):
The Hurt Locker
An Education
Adventureland
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Goodbye Solo
Public Enemies
Avatar
Bruno
Bad Lieutenant
Drag Me To Hell
Anvil
Julia
Silent Light
Thirst
500 Days Of Summer |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 10:53 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| I'm back from the long drive (Whiskey) it took to see Broken Embraces and Crazy Heart. Too tired to say more than they were both very worth seeing. I'm ready to have the Crazy Heart cd.......great music! |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:16 am |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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| Saw Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. It's undeniably more energetic and rococo in its out-there-ness than Mssr. Ferrara's original, though far less organic -- something of a mess in fact, but just try to look away. Mad Nicky easily trumped my wildest expectations as the title antihero, embracing the crack-pipe shenanigans without flinching, even while managing an unusually shaded and nuanced array of responses throughout. Especially appreciated his variants of facial expression and hunched physicality; and got a real pull from his interplay with Eva Mendes' coolly assured hooker-girlfriend, to say nothing of his gleeful lunacy over the iguana (which had Star Lizard writ large upon it -- look forward to a spinoff pitting it against the Geico gecko). Val Kilmer was more on form than I've seen him in a while as the anything-but-incorruptible partner, and Jennifer Coolidge, nearly unrecognizable in person and performance as Dad's beer-swilling doxie, came nearest to stealing the film from Cage as anyone conceivably could. It is its own weirdly ramrodding, post-surrealist trip, and am not really sure it needed to be made in the first place. Yet, if Herr Herzog was hemmed in a tad by as much procedural detail and plot as this film contained, you'll never catch him letting it hinder his idiosyncratic blend of unsettling composition, sudden turns of focus and dream-like oblique narrative thrust. The ending, more upbeat than I'd expected, inexplicably tickled me. Am now off to an aquarium to muse on the sleep patterns of fish. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:40 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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inla--Right on the money about Bad Lieutenant, even down to the comment on Jennifer Coolidge. That lady has more nuances than I would have dreamt. What's next--Jane Lynch plays Medea?
Eva Mendes gets farther on looks than any so-so actress in memory. What a knockout! |
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| chillywilly |
| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 3:55 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8251
Location: Salt Lake City
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billyweeds wrote: That would be great. Probably won't happen, though. In the olden days they used to split Best Picture and Best Director a lot more than they've done recently. The last time it happened (I think) was in 2002 when Chicago won BP and Polanski won BD. If Avatar wins BP Cameron will probably pick up the director award as well.
Actually, in 2005, Crash won BP and Ang Lee won BD. |
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Chilly
"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend" |
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| chillywilly |
| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 3:55 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8251
Location: Salt Lake City
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Kate wrote: I also found Avatar visually stunning, but rather uninteresting in the character development. But man, was it a treat to watch - very fun.
Pretty much my thoughts on Avatar, too. |
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Chilly
"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend" |
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