Every year, my theatre history professor assigns her Modern Theatre History class the latest Pulitzer Prize winning play as the final reading assignment of the semester. When I took the class the play was John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, and it was an experience I have never forgotten.
Everything is quiet and normal at St. Nicholas school, until the arrival of Walter Miller, a young boy who also happens to be the only African American in the entire school. Lonely and bullied by the other children, Walter finds himself under the caring wing of Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who goes out of his way to make sure that the boy is looked after. One day, after returning from a meeting with Father Flynn in tears, his teacher, Sister James (Amy Adams), goes to Sister Aloysius in concern, prompting the suspicious principal into an internal witch hunt, determined that Father Flynn has somehow had an inappropriate sexual relationship with the boy.
I was worried by the look of the trailers that the film would portray Sister Aloysius as a stereotypical hateful nun - a villainous figure. But thankfully that was not the case. Sister Aloysius is not a bad person, she truly has the best interests of the children at heart. Streep digs deep to find the character's humanity, the soul and compassion beneath the stern veneer; while Hoffman is her mirror image as the seemingly kind hearted Flynn, who wants to give the church a more friendly reputation. The real scene stealer though, is Viola Davis as Miller's mother. In one short scene, Davis leaves a greater impression than any other character. With powerful understatement, Davis portrays a woman determined for her son to have the best possible education no matter the cost, and makes surprising and heartbreaking decisions to achieve those goals. Her character serves to further complicate Sister Aloysius' crusade, and by the time Flynn finally confronts her, it is a titanic showdown between two master actors at the very top of their game.
There must be an entire circle of Hell devoted to banal teen slasher flicks, and this one, a remake of a 1980 film starring Jamie Lee Curtis, is one of the worst. It's a senseless waste of time about some of the most boring, vapid teenagers imaginable.
Goofy doesn't even begin to describe this ridiculous, campy third installment of Italian director Dario Argento's horror trilogy trilogy that began in 1977 with the classic Suspiria. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Three words: heroic fighting yeti.
Perhaps proof positive that George Lucas has lost his mind, this shameless big screen marketing plug continues the trend of destroying everything we love about the original trilogy.
Roland Emmerich's wanna-be epic about cavemen with British accents, woolly mammoths, and pyramids (yes, those pyramids...in 10,000 B.C.), is as dumb as movies get.
Morgan Spurlock goes from eating Big Macs to hunting for the world's most wanted terrorist in this self important doc that thinks it's asking a lot of big questions, but is really just about Spurlock tooting his own horn.
Lots of potential is completely wasted in this turgid historical epic that would be tailor made for the Academy if it weren't so ineptly directed by the guy who brought us Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Not even a fine cast can save dialogue this bad.
A train wreck of a life becomes a train wreck of a movie in this overwrought true life tale of murder and incest. At least Eddie Redmayne and Unax Ugalde make a hot couple.
Quite possibly the most unintentionally hilarious movie of the year. Yeah I know it's supposed to be scary, but I just can't take outrunning the wind (or this horrible dialogue) seriously.
I don't remember anything about this film, do you? Didn't think so.
The Duchess is by no means a classic, but it delivers on what it sets out to achieve, and manages to rise above the constraints of its genre. And in a film like this, that is a welcome thing indeed.
The first half of the film is scattershot and messy, getting bogged down in its bogus premise and the slapdash way it is thrown together.However, the second act is quite a bit better than the first. Caruso slows down with the lightning-paced editing and begins focusing on the characters and the source of the deadly instructions, turning the film into an allegory of sorts for the dangers of unchecked government surveillance. If his villain bears a striking resemblance to HAL of "2001: A Space Odyssey," it speaks to the unimaginative weaknesses of the film - a narrative shortcut that still leaves open many questions and stretches its credibility to the max.
Savage Grace is a poorly constructed, flaccid drama that treats complex emotional and psychological issues with all the depth of a particularly dull rock, and is an embarrassment to all involved. Rarely is such potential so blithely thrown out the window and wasted, and Savage Grace is one of the worst offenders I have seen in a long time.
After watching quite a few period pieces about the lives of historic, royal figures, you begin to feel like you've seen it all before. Already this year we've had The Other Boleyn Girl, The Duchess of Langeais, and The Last Mistress, and now Saul Dibb's The Duchess, which has the unfortunate position of coming last.
Stuck in an arranged marriage with the Duke of Devonshire (the Golden Globe nominated Ralph Fiennes), the strong willed Georgiana finds herself unable to produce the desired male heir and that her life, while surrounded by the glamor of being a popular socialite, is missing that certain spark. She becomes even more convinced of this when her best friend, Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell), becomes involved with the Duke, creating what is essentially a three way marriage.
Unlike the cold and uninvolving The Other Boleyn Girl, The Duchess is a much more emotionally accessible film, and I think most of the credit belongs to Knightley. Although Fiennes does quite an admirable job with a difficult character, turning what is essentially a deeply unlikable man and giving him a duality that is refreshing to watch. There is a kinder nature beneath the hardened exterior, and when Fiennes allows that man to peep out, the film really opens up.
It is no small wonder that Eric Roth is the same man who wrote "Forrest Gump" 14 years ago. His latest screenwriting effort, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," based on a short story by Tennessee Williams, very much follows a Gump-esque story arc.Note to self: proofread.
Does that mean it's going to win any Oscars? Well right now it's fighting for its life on the precursor circuit, with the Golden Globes being the only ones to have really shown it any love. The film is absolutely dripping with quality and prestige, but it never comes across as preening for awards attention. It's raw, honest, and ultimately quite bleak, perhaps too dark for the Academy in what is shaping up to strike a more hopeful tone than recent ceremonies. With Slumdog Millionaire leading the pack, it's easy to see the sense of hope that voters, and indeed audiences, may be seeking in their films. Revolutionary Road pulls none of its punches and it's absolutely riveting as a result.
From The Dispatch:There is something deeply touching about the tale of Benjamin Button, its profound universality and the idea that even in our old age, we all end up as children. The intersecting lives of Benjamin and Daisy provide the perfect backdrop for a powerful meditation on life and the nature of love, and how it can render time irrelevant. What Fincher has created is a film that succeeds on its own terms, flaws and all, leaving us with a sense that what we have seen, while not perfect, is something very special indeed.Click here to read my full review.
The words "animated" and "documentary" are not the kind of thing one often hears used in the same sentence. But in 2008 we have seen two such films, starting back in February with Chicago 10, and now Ari Folman's haunting Waltz with Bashir, which doesn't feel like a documentary so much as a vivid dream, a recollection fading into nothingness after suddenly waking up.
It is a legitimate question to wonder why the film is animated and not a live action film or documentary. At one point in the film, he is told by one of the men he is interviewing that he could not take pictures, but he could draw. And thus the film we see is born. Folman uses actual interview tapes with his subjects and animates over them, which gives the film its dreamlike narrative atmosphere. Through animation, Folman has achieved a greater depth of feeling and aura than he would have if he had made this in a conventional way. And what gorgeous animation it is. Not beautiful in the conventional sense, necessarily, but so exquisitely detailed that at times it's easy to forget you're watching an animated film. When coupled with Max Richter's evocative score, which mixes elements of classical and rock, the film comes to almost breathtaking life. The weeping violins that accompany Folman's dream become an elegy not just for the innocent civilians who lost their lives in a violent conflict, but to the young men who lost their souls along the way.
Folman allows to to see the conflict from multiple angles and multiple perspectives, filtered through two decades of memory. They are sometimes contradictory, sometimes shocking, and always deeply, profoundly moving. He has created some unforgettable images, as easy to burn into the mind as they were into his. He has captured the feeling of dreaming in a way that would have made the early surrealists proud. They may not be nonsensical in the sense of Luis Buñuel, but they do conjure a certain atmosphere that is associated with dreams.
For all of his commercial successes, I have only ever regarded Ron Howard as a competent, middlebrow craftsman. His movies tend to be well made but generally unextraordinary, leaning more toward quality commercial work than works of art.
What follows is one of the most riveting meeting of the minds television has ever seen, with the lightweight newcomer Frost in one corner, and the seasoned politician Nixon in the other. Through Langella's extraordinary performance (which focuses more on capturing the essence of the man rather than mimicry), Richard Nixon comes to life with a balance of cunning and humanity that adds a disarming depth to the character. He takes a character that could have easily been portrayed as a villain, and makes him sympathetic. For all his wrongdoing and mistakes, Nixon was a man just like anyone else. In many ways, Frost/Nixon succeeds where Oliver Stone's W failed. While that film managed to paint Bush in a sympathetic light as well, Brolin's W was always more a caricature, albeit a very good one. Langella turns in a performance so compelling that it is impossible to take your eyes off him.
What struck me as most fascinating about the dynamic between Frost and Nixon is that despite the contentious interview process, the two never come across as enemies. Political adversaries perhaps, but never enemies. The two seem to have a grudging respect for one another, a recognition of each other's abilities that leads to a sort of strange friendship.
OK, raise your hands if you've heard of the Mumblecore movement. Anyone? Creepy longhaired guy in the back? You? OK, that's what I thought.
Yeah it all sounds rather uninspired. But giving credit where credit is due, Baghead isn't your typical slasher film. Far from it.
That's the biggest problem with the film - the stiff and stilted nature of the improvisation and slapdash structure. Without script or direction, the film meanders dangerously, leaving long stretches of emptiness between the more effective scare moments.
Let's get this out in the open right now before we move on. I consider myself an atheist. I do not believe in a god of any kind. I did the agnostic thing for a while, but after a while saying "I don't know" gets repetitive, not when you have seen anything that could possibly pass as evidence for the existence of god. There just isn't any. So until then, as far as I know and until proven otherwise, god does not exist. So by that standard, Bill Maher's Religulous, which blatantly and sharply pokes fun at the more ridiculous tenets of organized religion, should be right up my alley.
He makes several good points, but they seem to get lost in his belligerent stance. He spends the entire film making fun of religion and extolling the virtues of doubt and agnosticism (although I think he is more of an atheist in denial), but never offers any solid alternative. He says that the world would be better off without religion, and while I am inclined to agree, he fails to really explore the ramifications of that. Other than pointing out flaws in religious thinking, he never really explains why we shouldn't believe.
As much as it may often seem like a cosmic joke, religion is quite often very serious, especially when fundamentalism threatens other people and cultures. Don't get me wrong, I think religion is a perfect candidate for stinging satire. It needs, and often deserves, it. But Maher's brand of comedy is probably more suited to his own television show. Here, out in the open, he is rankling fur for the sake of rankling fur, throwing a rock at the hornets nest just to see them swarm. There is no intellectual backing for this kind of blanket provocation.
It may be a release of the theatrical wing of the Discovery Channel, but Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World is anything but your run-of-the-mill nature doc.
McMurdo is, in a very real sense, its own little world; its citizens becoming philosophers and dreamers who are living out a great fantasy. These are the people who populate this wondrous world that Herzog as captured with clear eyed awe. His capturing of Antarctica's natural wonders have an almost religious reverence to them, so much so that diving beneath the ice is referred to as "going down to the cathedral." And indeed, the icy ceiling feels like the Sistine Chapel of nature's glorious temple.
I am not a religious person myself, but one can almost feel an element of the divine in Encounters at the End of the World, inasmuch as "god" is a human projection of the awesome wonders of nature. Herzog follows creatures that seem alien on our own planet, and Antarctica is another world frozen in another time and place. He opens up a window into a new universe that is at once enthralling and humbling.
China's Three Gorges Dam, the largest engineering project ever conceived, has received a lot of attention in 2008. First was the excellent documentary, Up the Yangtze, a poignant examination of displaced citizens forced to relocate by flooding caused by the dam.
While on their respective journeys, Shen and Huang explore the flood zones and get to know its citizens, living among them in the waning days before whole towns disappear in the name of progress. Their stories are not connected but are inexorably linked. Zhang draws subtle connections between the two stories, be they in the simple items they acquire along the way, or similarly framed shots, or an angelic little boy singing songs while others work...the universality of their struggle is never in question.
Zhang frames each shot with an incredible deep focus, reinforcing the beauty of the Yangtze as well as the national history that it represents. The gorges that it winds through will soon be little more than lakes, the towns and homes along its banks just a memory. He has a remarkable eye for breathtaking imagery, which only serves to make the imminent destruction more heartrending. Much of the towns they once new are already gone. When Huang takes a taxi to his wife's former home, he finds it completely underwater, lost forever - family histories, memories, and homes have all been swept away.
There is a moment in Kelly Reichardt's lovely, minuscule drama Wendy and Lucy, where Michelle Williams' Wendy, a down on her luck drifter on her way to find work in Alaska, is told by a mechanic (Will Patton) that her car is completely dead, and that it needs a replacement motor. Wendy, trying to live off a meager $500 on her cross country trip, has been suddenly presented with an insurmountable hurdle. But the magic of this scene is in Williams face. She walks in thinking that the only thing wrong with her car is a worn out belt; but when the mechanic delivers the bad news, something extraordinary transpires. In a remarkably subtle and magnetic performance, Williams allows this final blow in a day full of bad news and setbacks, to melt her spirit in one devastating moment. You can see the fear in her eyes as her mind scrambles to come up with a solution to a problem without an answer. It is a raw, deer in the headlights reaction that sums up what is best in this quietly devastating little gem.
Things begin to go awry for her, though, when she takes a rest stop in a small Oregon town, and the old maxim "when it rains it pours" comes painfully true. Arrested for shoplifting a couple of cans of dog food for Lucy, Wendy finds herself detained by a small town legal system bent on making an example against petty theft, and returns to the grocery store to find Lucy missing. Stuck in a strange town with no car and very little money, Wendy begins a desperate search to find Lucy, where her only solace is in the kindness of strangers whose help may seem small and insignificant, but offers a glimmer of hope in a world that has left her behind.
By shouldering the entire weight of the film's dramatic power, Williams turns in an extraordinary performance. It is a heartbreaking, unassuming depiction of an woman at the end of her rope, just trying to get by, stuck in a rut she can't seem to fight her way out of, no matter how hard she tries. Even the background grocery store muzak plays the same generic tune she often hums (a barely noticeable detail Reichardt wisely underplays).
You'll forgive me for posting another Dargis quote I'm sure, but her analysis of Clint Eastwood's surly, poignant Gran Torino has perfectly captured what makes this film so special:These spectral figures, totems of masculinity and mementos from a heroic cinematic age, are what make this unassuming film — small in scale if not in the scope of its ideas — more than just a vendetta flick or an entertainment about a crazy coot and the exotic strangers next door. As the story unfolds and the gangbangers return and Walt reaches for his gun, the film moves from comedy into drama and then tragedy and then into something completely unexpected. We’ve seen this western before, though not quite. Because this isn’t John Wayne near the end of the 20th century, but Clint Eastwood at the start of the still-new 21st, remaking the image of the hero for one more and perhaps final time, one generation of Americans making way for the next.
That probably sounds heavier than I mean, but “Gran Torino” doesn’t go down lightly. Despite all the jokes — the scenes of Walt lighting up at female flattery and scrambling for Hmong delicacies — the film has the feel of a requiem. Melancholy is etched in every long shot of Detroit’s decimated, emptied streets and in the faces of those who remain to still walk in them. Made in the 1960s and ’70s, the Gran Torino was never a great symbol of American automotive might, which makes Walt’s love for the car more poignant. It was made by an industry that now barely makes cars, in a city that hardly works, in a country that too often has felt recently as if it can’t do anything right anymore except, every so often, make a movie like this one.
Gran Torino is a sort of throwback, and Eastwood's Walt is a kind of symbol for a bygone era in America. He's tough, prejudiced, and set in his ways, but ultimately not beyond redemption. Coming at the end of the Bush era and the still uncertain but hopeful dawn of Obama, Gran Torino represents not just potentially "fascist" (as Pauline Kael once called Dirty Harry) Hollywood iconography, but something much larger than itself, probably even more so than it realizes. It is an elegy for a country looking for atonement after losing its way in macho xenophobia. Walt's may be a dying way of life, and the gang an even more passe trapping of unbridled machismo, but it is segueing into something new, keeping traditions while stepping timidly into the 21st century.
The New York Times' Manohla Dargis, probably the contemporary critic whose work I most respect, said this in her year end write-up about Gus Van Sant's Milk:Mr. Van Sant’s other film, of course, is “Milk,” a touching if aesthetically unremarkable biography of Harvey Milk, the assassinated gay rights pioneer. I like “Milk,” which has a strong, showy, often moving performance from Sean Penn as Milk and one gorgeously directed and choreographed sequence — shot by the great cinematographer Harris Savides — in which Josh Brolin, oiled in flop sweat and hair grease as Milk’s killer, Dan White, walks alone through a series of grim institutional corridors that put the killer’s existential isolation and desperate journey into bold visual terms. “Milk” is undeniably moving, but it earns most of its power from its historical resonance and because it holds up a mirror to another charismatic community organizer who rose from the streets on a message of hope.I don't think I have heard anyone put it better. Milk is a fine film, and a very moving one, but it just misses its shot at greatness by being, quite honestly, just another biopic with a great story. It is well told, and well performed, and socially relevant, but artistically unremarkable.
No other performance this year tapped into the zeitgeist and became so instantly iconic as Ledger's maniacally unhinged Joker. It is the stuff of legend, a performance for the ages, its genius made even more immediate (and poignant) by Ledger's untimely death just before the film's release.
Sorry Twilight, but this eerie, snow covered gothic fantasy about two 12 year olds in love - one a shy, bullied little boy, the other an ageless, androgynous vampire - takes the cake as the year's most touching undead romance. Darker, more macabre, and ultimately more touching than anything in Catherine Hardwicke's popular teen flick, Let the Right One In hits every note just right.
Chalk up Kym's cringe inducing "it's all about me" rehearsal dinner toast as the most painful scene of the year; and Anne Hathaway's beautifully subtle performance makes it totally believable. Aren't you glad this isn't your family?
OK, honestly, how often do you get to say those three words in a row? Seriously though, it's brilliant. Watch it.
Who needs Mamma Mia when you have the deliriously romantic French tunes of Christophe Honore's sublime Love Songs?
I was tempted to go with XXY here, but it was rightfully praised by the few people who saw it during its woefully short, week long American release. Harmony Korine's peculiar little oddity, Mister Lonely, on the other hand, completely failed to find an audience, either popular or critical. I found it to be a lovely, eccentric tale of lonely misfits who find solace in a group of people just as strange as they are. It is alternately joyous and tragic, but the ultimate feeling is one so unique and beautiful that it's hard to resist.
As much as I would like to sound sophisticated and say OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (although it's a close second), or be ironic and say The Happening, no other movie this year made me laugh my ass off like this one did.
Breathtaking doesn't even begin to describe the gorgeous imagery of Tarsem's unhinged, flawed masterpiece, The Fall. Extra points for not using any computer effects, and for featuring two of the most stunning scene transitions I have ever seen.
Changeling may have been flawed, but as Gran Torino more than proved, even at 78 years old, Eastwood can still knock 'em out of the park. Honorable mention to Gus Van Sant for Paranoid Park and Milk.
Yes I still love it. So sue me. But there's just something incredibly cathartic about Sylvester Stallone's ultra violent, gleefully over the top jungle adventure.
Gus Van Sant's biopic of the first openly gay man to be elected to public office would have still been a powerful film no matter when it was released, but coming right on the heels of the regrettable passing of the discriminatory Proposition 8 in California which repealed marriage rights for homosexuals, suddenly makes Harvey Milk's historic struggle against the even more insidious Prop 6 (which would have allowed the state to fire gay teachers and their supporters) seem poignantly immediate.
You never see it coming, but when it does, you can literally feel the wind being knocked out of you. Honorable mention to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for its brilliant denouement.
The always reliable Thomson brought a touch of class and refinement to this otherwise turgid adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel.
My brain is saying to go with the haunting stunner of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, or the quiet grandeur of Silent Light, or the warped tenderness of Let the Right One In, but my heart is saying go with the tragic beauty of Benjamin Button, a deeply powerful turnaround from the film's pedestrian, Forrest Gump-esque middle stretch. You'll just have to see it to understand.
