The Messenger Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The 25th Independent Spirit Awards were held in Los Angeles last night, and our friends at indieWIRE were there to celebrate the big night for the little guys. They covered the ceremony minute by minute, so whether you missed the broadcast of the awards on IFC or just want some excellent first-hand commentary from independent film experts, check out the complete live-blogged report here.

The big story of the evening was that Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire swept the major categories and won every award it was nominated for, including Best Feature, Best Director (Lee Daniels), Best First Screenplay (Geoffrey Fletcher), Best Supporting Actress (Mo'Nique) and Best Actress (Gabourey Sidibe). Sidibe made me smile when she cited Welcome to the Dollhouse as a major influence on her decision to pursue acting. As for Daniels, he somewhat acknowledged that he didn't have to compete with Oscar favorite Kathryn Bigelow, as The Hurt Locker was a nominee at last year's Spirit Awards (though not for Best Director).

Not to vent on how lame and old I am, but Nirvana was in their prime around my sophomore and junior year of High School. I clearly remember about a quarter of the boys in my school being obsessed with bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and with that whole grunge movement. I swear, no one in my class got a haircut for like 3 years. To this day my wife and I talk about Kurt Cobain and ponder what sort of music he'd be making and what sort of collaborations he'd be getting involved with if he were still alive today. And while it's painful to think about how much brilliant music we missed in all the years since Cobain's death, it's still nice to hold onto what we do have and cherish it; celebrate it.

By now you've probably heard of the upcoming Cobain biopic that Oren Moverman (The Messenger) is in talks to re-write and direct, based partially on Charles R. Cross' Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain. Since The Messenger (co-written by Moverman) features a brilliant script, I have faith that this biopic will turn out great so long as they get the right person to play Cobain. In my opinion, there's only one actor alive today who should be playing Cobain: Ben Foster. And since Moverman and Foster already have that connection from The Messenger, I'm real hopeful he'll at least be considered.

So here we are in the days before the Oscar nominations for calendar year 2009. We've been breaking down everyone's chances from the first stage of the critics' awards through the Guild nominations and onto the eventual winners of the two groups whose taste tends to be in line with Academy voters - the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Broadcast "Film Critics" Association. How sad. We can ignore their populist vibes, but must embrace the statistics that tell us that nominations are almost inevitable if not always a golden victory. Piece by piece we will look at the Top Eight categories until eventually having predictions in all of them (right down to the technical ones) of what will be on the list of contenders come the morning of Feb. 2. We begin with ten slots for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress

THE LOCKS
That would be Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) and Mo'Nique (Precious). Now hold on, I'm not making my full-on Oscar predictions yet. These are just the nominations. Wouldn't that be a shock though? Either one of the two performances dominating nearly every possible voting group award NOT getting a nomination? Someone would definitely be throwing a television down the stairs on that one.

If you read up on the breakdown of the leads, then you know there are five voting bodies we are considering - the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Golden Globes, the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Screen Actors Guild and the BAFTAs. In the Lead categories, there were 33 performances since 2001 that got nominations from all five groups. In the Supporting categories, there have been 15. 17 if you count the fact that Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) and Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener) was nominated as the lead by the SAGs and BAFTAs, respectively. All 50 performances were nominated for an Oscar. Based on that stat alone, we can fill five of the ten Supporting slots with Waltz and Mo'Nique as well as Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones), Vera Farmiga (Up In The Air) and Anna Kendrick (Up In The Air).

Chances are if you know Ben Foster by name, it's because his characters – and indeed, his performances – are almost unforgettable: Spacker Dave, a pierced and perforated neighbor to Frank Castle, a/k/a The Punisher; Mars Krupcheck, a homicidal teenage home invader in Hostage; Russell Corwin, a troubled artist on Six Feet Under; Jake Mazursky, a fearless, mercurial older brother looking for his sibling in Alpha Dog; and Charlie Prince, a sociopathic bounty hunter in 3:10 to Yuma. Add another role to that growing list: The Messenger's Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery, a soldier assigned to notify parents and loved ones that their sons, daughters, husbands and wives were killed in the line of duty.

Foster gives the performance of an already-impressive career as the tortured young soldier, turning his own tightly-wound on screen persona into a portrait of a man trying to come to terms with his own life through announcing the deaths of others. Cinematical recently spoke to Foster via telephone about Montgomery and his participation in The Messenger; in addition to talking about his collaboration with fellow cast and crew members, Foster reflected on the kinds of roles he tends to tackle, and talked about the process of creating such memorable performances in one film after another.

Cinematical: Where did you see this guy at the beginning of the movie, and where did you want him to sort of end up?

It's absolutely true that 2009 was a great year for movies, but I'm not altogether sure that 2009 was a year for great movies. The difference, some might argue, is negligible, since there probably shouldn't be any sort of division between smarter and more substantive fare and populist entertainment. In a year like, say, 2008, that might have been true, at least where its biggest blockbuster, The Dark Knight, was concerned. But in '09, it seemed like about five people saw the "serious" movies, while everyone else was watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

That said, the value of being entertained isn't necessarily less than that of being enlightened or inspired, and box office success isn't automatically antithetical to quality. (I actually kind of liked Revenge of the Fallen, after all.) Ultimately, however, making a Top Ten list for 2009 has seemed like a more ambiguously-defined process than in previous years, because I realize that many of the movies I enjoyed were not the most meaningful or deep, and ones I admired or respected were not always the ones that readily thrilled or excited. As such, here's a list of my top ten favorite films of the year, arranged in deliberate but basically arbitrary order. By all means discuss, debate, and disagree, but I'd love it if I could get folks to see even one or two of these that they haven't already, even if it's to fortify their arguments why I'm wrong.

One mark of a world-class actor is the ability to convince us that a character exists outside the confines of the screenplay. It is one thing to skillfully deliver a dramatic monologue, to tap depths of volcanic rage or crippling grief for a big Oscar moment played to the cheap seats. Far rarer and more valuable are performances that quietly suggest what isn't spelled out: key character details expressed through gait or inflection; off-screen experiences hinted at with a look, a gesture, or a wayward smile. This is really a difference between an actor and a performer. Tom Cruise is a great performer. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor. So is, for example, Patricia Clarkson.

In The Messenger, Ben Foster plays Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery, who is shipped home after an injury, and assigned to serve out the last three months of his enlistment on "notification duty" with the apparently unbalanced Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson). The two of them are tasked with telling the next of kin that a soldier won't be coming home, a job that consists of knocking on a door, reading from a script ("the Secretary of the Army extends his deepest condolences..."), and bracing oneself for a likely onslaught of abuse.

Just when movies about the war in Iraq had exhausted audience interest, this summer's sleeper hit The Hurt Locker came along. And just when those same audiences thought there was only one movie about Iraq that could resonate with them, The Messenger comes along. Starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton, the film is not only a revelatory look at the war's logistical repercussions stateside, but an examination of the emotional toll not only battle but survival takes on soldiers, culminating in a poignant tale of redemption that counts as one of the very best films of the year.

Foster (3:10 To Yuma) plays Will Montgomery, a staff sergeant more or less waiting out his last days as a military officer after an extended tour of duty in Iraq. Although he initially (and understandably) reluctant to participate when he is enlisted to inform families of the deaths of their loved ones, he bonds with his superior officer, Tony Stone (Harrelson), and slowly emerges from his own emotional morass as a result of reaching out to these grieving families. But when he and Tony inform a mother named Olivia (Morton) of her husband's death, he becomes inextricably involved in her and her son's life, realizing that the tenuous relationships he previously participated in are no substitute for something more meaningful.

The Messenger opened the 12th Savannah Film Festival with a bang: a sellout crowd, international press, and Hollywood stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster in attendance to rub elbows all night. Even without the glitz, though, Savannah was a smart place to screen the Iraq drama. Oren Moverman's film is a character study about a soldier (Foster) dealing with the aftermath of war, but like Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq film The Hurt Locker, it's about the personal toll Iraq leaves on soldiers who survive and the families of those who don't; the politics of war are hardly an issue. And so, in a city that supports two military bases and the men and women who serve them, The Messenger played like gangbusters.

Foster stars as William Montgomery, a recent Iraq returnee dealing with serious leftover issues and a new assignment to play out his final three months of service: informing families that their loved ones have been killed on duty. As Montgomery's partner, Harrelson provides moments of levity, but there were plenty of sniffles throughout the film just the same.

While it was pretty easy to figure out what the general consensus was, there were three figures in particular I was watching for a reaction – the only three uniformed soldiers in attendance, who may or may not have been connected to the production. (The film has been screened for military personnel, and Harrelson and Foster personally met soldiers at Hunter Army Airfield prior to the night's screening.) When asked what military folk have thought of his film in the post-screening Q&A, director Moverman deferred to one of the officers in the audience to share his reaction with the crowd. What follows is the unnamed soldier's impromptu review of The Messenger.

I'm in Savannah, Georgia to spend a week as a guest blogger for the Savannah Film Festival, an eight-day fest hosted in the historic Southern town by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). [Read my entries in the "Voices from the Fest" section on the festival website.] As the town prepares to kick off the 12th annual festivities with the Iraq film, or rather post-Iraq film, The Messenger, I'm wondering how SFF's growing success might reflect or even influence the rise of film festivals that similarly fall somewhere in between the biggies (Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice) and the little guys.

For starters, a brief look at SFF's line-up and star-studded guest list. The festival begins today, October 31, with The Messenger, a Sundance entry that has Oscar possibilities but more likely will make a run at the Indie Spirit Awards. Stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster will be in attendance. (I will be attempting to run into them at the local Starbucks or wherever it is that Hollywood actors hang out when they visit other cities.) Another Oscar hopeful, the Emily Blunt-starring period biopic The Young Victoria, is screening the following day.

And then there are the almost certain Oscar pictures: George Clooney in The Men Who Stare At Goats; Lone Scherfig's An Education; Michael Haneke's Cannes winner The White Ribbon; Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, with star Jeremy Renner in attendance; and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, which will bring both director Lee Daniels and his star Gabourey Sidibe to town.

Read on for more about this year's Savannah Film Festival.