Review: Greenberg
Filed under: Drama, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, Focus Features
Noah Baumbach made a bit of a splash with his excellent 2005 feature The Squid and the Whale, which was steeped in his own family history, and darkly funny, but never shying away from pain or truth. Everything seemed to click on this movie. Unfortunately his next feature, Margot at the Wedding (2007), failed to repeat the trick; this one came across as agitating and prickly, with characters that never connected and all-too-obvious dialogue and symbolism (a dead tree?). Baumbach's new Greenberg seems to fall somewhere in the middle. It's a tough film to read; it's definitely irritating and off-putting, but it also seems to come from a place of genuine anguish.
Part of the film's success -- and trouble -- is lead actor Ben Stiller. Stiller is perfect for this kind of selfish misfit, and Baumbach reels him in before any typical Stiller slapstick can take over. But he also keeps himself at a little distance, a little defensive. He plays the title role, Roger Greenberg, who winds up in Los Angeles, housesitting while his brother and brother's family vacations in Vietnam. Roger has apparently just been released from some kind of mental hospital, and at age 41 has decided to "do nothing for a while." He passes the time doing some carpentry and writing complaining letters to corporations. While in town, he catches up with an old friend, Ivan (Rhys Ifans), with whom he was once in a band and was once inches away from a record deal. Roger goes to a party and sees his old girlfriend, Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is newly divorced. He begins to imagine getting back together with her.
The Greatest Scenes Ever Shot?
Filed under: Fandom
Sometimes it's hard enough to make a list of favorite movies, let alone favorite scenes from favorite movies. But that's just what a handful of filmmakers have done for writer Philip French for a new article in The Guardian. French kicks things off with an appreciation of Psycho (the shower scene of course) and a few other favorites. Then we get down to business. Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson and Sugar) chooses the great chase sequence in The French Connection. "It was the kind of thing that you just would never get away with these days," he says.
Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley) is next, and chooses the bicycle scene from Jules and Jim: "It evokes what you imagine to be the perfect French vacation." Oscar winning animator Nick Park ("Wallace & Gromit") chooses the skeleton scene in Jason and the Argonauts. "Disney films didn't make me want to go home and do it myself because it was shrouded in mystery and technique. But when I saw the skeletons in Harryhausen's film I wanted immediately to do it myself, because you got a sense of how it might be done," says Park.
Our favorite grindhouse-lovin', movie-crazy English director Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz) also chooses a scene. So does the brilliant Claire Denis from France, as well as filmmakers Beeban Kidron, Stephen Poliakoff, and producer Stephen Woolley, but I'll leave their choices for you to discover. Meanwhile, I'll submit a favorite choice of my own: the swimming pool scene from Cat People (1942), with the shimmery lights on the wall, and the echoing screams creating a kind of mysterious terror nearly unequaled in movies.
Your thoughts/choices, dear readers?
Fan Made: Spoof Oscar Posters
Warren Beatty once remarked that "the Golden Globes are fun, and the Oscars are business." Many of us -- myself included -- are guilty of taking the Oscars far too seriously, and these hilarious spoof posters -- found over at CollegeHumor.com -- offer some great perspective. It turns out that the Oscar nominees are not as gloriously untouchable as they might appear. All ten of last year's Best Picture nominees have been lampooned and advertised for what they really are, including orgasmic quotes from respected critics at the top of The Hurt Locker: "Oh God Oh God Oh God." Of course, Avatar has already seen its fair share of spoofing, but who has bothered to send up An Education with "who was the moron that gave this movie such a deceptively boring title?" Amen to that.
Will people be offended by the spoof of Precious? Is that movie just too serious and important to ridicule? The poster warns "don't bring a date. Seriously," which is, frankly, a pretty honest assessment. (I won't even tell you the spoof movie title.) Or what about trading A Serious Man for A Boring Man, "The Jew Film from Joel and Ethan Coen"? I don't know. I liked four of the ten real-life nominees a great deal, and the other six a little less, and I laughed at all these jokes. The funniest one, though, is for Up, and I'll let you see that one for yourselves in our gallery below ...
Free Flick of the Day: The Lady Vanishes
Filed under: Classics, Fandom, Home Entertainment
One of Hitchcock's best films, available online for free? What are you waiting for? Alfred Hitchcock made The Lady Vanishes in 1938, and it was widely considered to be the culmination of all his work up to that point. It uses a unique blend of comedy and suspense, and the two elements are playfully, masterfully mixed and intertwined to enhance one another, such as a lengthy scuffle with a suspect in the baggage car. It creates nervous laughter.
Iris (Margaret Lockwood) is an independent young lady traveler, who is about to embark on the last leg of her journey, returning to England to marry. Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) is a happy-go-lucky musicologist who annoys everyone with the noise from his hotel room. Gilibert and Iris hate each other at first, which pretty much assures that they will fall in love. On her way to the train, Iris gets bonked on the head, and the kindly, elderly Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) helps her find a seat. Iris slips off to sleep and when she wakes up, Miss Froy is gone. Even weirder, no other passenger admits to ever having seen her. There are some scant, fleeting clues but that seem to disappear along with the noise and wind of the train. To further disjoint us, the passengers on the train are a huge international mix and many speak a fictitious foreign language that we can't understand.
Along with Lifeboat, Rope and Rear Window, The Lady Vanishes is one of Hitchcock's best "enclosed space" movies, in which he makes intricate, insidious use of a single, finite location. (Which also made it harder for the master to insert his trademark cameo.) The movie was a huge success, and after one more film, Jamaica Inn (1939), Hitchcock was able to make the jump to Hollywood. And the rest is history.
Get your free ticket to The Lady Vanishes over at SlashControl.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - Distribution Blues
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
You go to the multiplex and scan through all of the titles and decide that there's "nothing good." And sometimes it's true. If only there was a multiplex that let you decide from among all the movies in the world. If viewers knew the number of titles that never make it to the United States, their heads would spin. And you might assume that we get the "best" of all the films, but that's not necessarily true. Some of the greatest cinema masters in the world have trouble finding distribution here. Their films are not easily marketed, and probably not worth the financial risk, even if the rewards would be far greater than financial.
Right now we have one to celebrate: Alexander Sokurov's The Sun (3 screens) very recently snagged U.S. distribution, even though it was made all the way back in 2005. (I reviewed it for Cinematical back in 2006.) Sokurov earned some distinction and a minor arthouse hit with his Russian Ark (2002), which was filmed in a single shot. But aside from that feat, Sokurov is a wonderful filmmaker with a very vivid, painterly style, whose first major films were made in the early 1990s. Ironically, The Sun is the third part of a trilogy about world dictators, the first two parts of which did not get distribution (though the second film, Moloch, is on DVD).
The Best Director Oscars by Decade
Filed under: Fandom, Steven Spielberg, Oscar Watch
Many movie buffs love to complain about the Oscars, me more so than anyone else, but I have to admit something. If you break down the awards decade by decade, from the 1930s to the "noughties," the Best Director category shaped up to be the best one, ever, over these past ten years. Let's take a look.
The 1930s: Frank Borzage won, but for one of his less interesting movies, Bad Girl. John Ford won for The Informer, a gorgeous film that has since fallen out of favor with critics and fans. I'm not even sure what to say about Norman Taurog for Skippy or Frank Lloyd for Cavalcade. (Has anyone seen those movies in the past 30 years?) Frank Capra won three times (!) during this decade. I like Capra, but I don't really love him; I'd say he probably deserved one Oscar, maybe for It Happened One Night, but not two others for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and You Can't Take It With You. Of course, Victor Fleming won for Gone with the Wind, though he only directed about a third of it. And the decade's finest award went to Leo McCarey for his great The Awful Truth, although he also deserved one for Make Way for Tomorrow.
Review: Green Zone
Filed under: New Releases, Universal, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, War
The Oscar nominated British director Paul Greengrass seems drawn to "issue" movies. His feature directorial debut was the disease-of-the-week movie The Theory of Flight (1998), and he found acclaim with the explosive Bloody Sunday (2002) and the gripping, grueling United 93 (2006), though none of those exactly resulted in a bonanza of ticket sales. He seemed to come closer to his true calling with the second two Bourne films, The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), bringing his gift for tense action as well as uncommon intelligence to a pair of summer action films. If there were any "issues" in those movies, they were buried deep in the kinetic plots.
Now we find Greengrass at a crossroads. Clearly the issue movies bring more glory and more personal satisfaction, but the action movies bring in happier customers and more riches. It's a conundrum many artists have faced since the days of Sullivan's Travels (1941), when a comedy filmmaker hit the road to make a film about the "real America." But Greengrass has asked an interesting question: why not do both at once? The answer to that question is Green Zone. Loosely based on a nonfiction book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, it's a fictionalized thriller with fictionalized characters, taking place in a realistic setting. (Greengrass credits the 2006 book with helping him jump-start a project he had begun working on in 2004.)
What Should an Oscar Winner Look Like?
Avatar won the Best Cinematography Oscar, which brings up an interesting question. As one of my movie friends so aptly put it: "C'mon, that is not cinematography. That is 3D visual effects." The movie is probably about one-third live action footage and about two-thirds computer generated imagery, so which are we counting? If we're just talking about the footage that was run through an actual camera -- the footage of actors sitting and chatting in rooms in front of scientific machines -- it's really not all that impressive. If we're talking about the much more impressive footage that was generated in a computer, then we've entered a strange new realm. And it's something that the Academy is going to have to address.
If computer-generated imagery counts, then movies like Up should also be considered for Best Cinematography, and taken shot-for-shot, that movie is much more beautiful and visually effective than Avatar. Computer artists use different tools from cinematographers to achieve the same ends. They use light, and control the way the light falls into the picture. The light can be strong or soft, originating from all different angles. It can be a harsh spotlight or deep shadows or a bright sky. Computer artists also arrange their frames in much the same way, placing a figure in an empty landscape to communicate isolation, or surrounding the figure with buildings or trees to convey something else.
Who Won Oscars for Their Best Work?
Filed under: Awards, Oscar Watch
Most of the time, it seems as if the Academy is playing catch up, as they will be doing this year if they give awards to Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock. There have been so many great actors throughout history and comparatively few awards to give. And every time the Academy gives an Oscar to some flavor-of-the-moment (Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine in 1943 for example), it takes more time to catch up. Usually they catch up with actors late in the game, and they usually only notice when the actor plays either 1) a real person, or 2) someone with a disease or malady of some kind. So when an actor actually wins for a truly great performance, it's something to celebrate. The following is my selection for the best choice in each of the four acting categories from the entire history of the Oscars. Let us know what yours are!
Best Actor:
Gene Hackman for The French Connection (1971)
My first thought here was Robert De Niro for Raging Bull, but you could make an equal or better argument for De Niro in Taxi Driver, and not to mention that it's one of those very common biopic awards. But I'm going with Hackman, because for once the Academy recognized a great actor in his early prime, and they awarded him for a very atypical movie. The French Connection is a superbly detailed cop/chase with some rich characterizations, and it may have been a heat-of-the-moment Oscar for a hit movie, but it has really stood the test of time and remained one of the best and most entertaining movies of the 1970s. Hackman is absolutely fearless in his role as Popeye Doyle (who can forget that name?), caring not the least bit for likeability or redemption.
Other nominations: Bonnie and Clyde (1967), I Never Sang for My Father (1970), Mississippi Burning (1988)
Other wins: Unforgiven (1992).
400 Screens, 400 Blows - Calling the Plummer
Filed under: Oscar Watch, Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
The morning of the Oscar nominations, I got a surprise. None of the nominations themselves were very surprising, but when I was going through and counting the past number of nominations for each nominee, I was surprised to learn that Christopher Plummer, at age 80, and a full fifty years after his motion picture debut in Sidney Lumet's Stage Struck, received his very first one. And frankly, he has thrown a monkey wrench in all my predictions and prognostications. It's his first nomination, he's 80 and he's playing a real-life person -- Leo Tolstoy, no less -- in The Last Station (352 screens). It doesn't even matter that the movie isn't very good and that Helen Mirren steals the movie away from him as Tolstoy's long-suffering wife. Plummer has become a serious contender.
Plummer has enjoyed one of those amazing careers as a supporting actor, having appeared in a broad range of interesting movies, but never stealing anyone else's thunder. In his early days, he worked with Nicholas Ray and Anthony Mann. Both Spike Lee and Terry Gilliam have worked with him twice. He was in The Sound of Music, even if everybody remembers Julie Andrews. He was in The Man Who Would Be King as Rudyard Kipling, even if everybody remembers Michael Caine and Sean Connery. He was Hamlet, Cyrano de Bergerac, Sherlock Holmes, Santa Claus, and Mike Wallace (in The Insider). He can appear in movies as disparate as The Return of the Pink Panther, Dragnet (1987), or Oliver Stone's Alexander, and come away unscathed, still distinguished enough for casting consideration the next year.
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