ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012)
It seemed unlikely that the filmmaking
team of director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal could top their
Oscar-winning snapshot of fearless soldiers defusing bombs in Iraq, but taking
on the search for Osama bin Laden was a good start. And while the slow,
agonizing detective work that led to his death—as seen through one very
determined CIA operative—is fascinating, it never reaches the minute-by-minute
intensity of “The Hurt Locker” or offers enough dramatics to turn the
investigation into compelling cinema.
As satisfying as it is to see the
behind-the-scenes maneuverings and, finally, the assault on his Pakistani
compound at ground level, I had a hard time sharing the characters’
frustrations when I knew the end results from the opening frame. This is a superbly
made and acted chronicle of one of the landmark events of recent history and
shouldn’t be missed, but it requires patience; like so many films released at
this time of the year, it easily could have been trimmed by 30 minutes.
Attempting to hold it all together is
Jessica Chastain’s Maya, a young, inexperienced agent who goes from being
shocked by water boarding at a Black Op site to a hard-hearted zealot who
throws herself completely into the pursuit of OBL (as they refer to the elusive
terrorist). Chastain, who emerged as a top actress last year with “The Tree of
Life” and “The Help,” is handcuffed in her portrayal of Maya because the
screenplay offers barely a hint at her personal life. Even with all her screen
time, the lack of depth makes her seem like a supporting player much of the film.
The extensive length of the movie is, in
part, necessary to show the interminable 10 years it took to piece the intel all
together, but the filmmakers trade away energy and intensity with the leisurely
pace. The film also takes a long time to find a compelling counterweight to steely
Maya. The always superb Mark Strong has some nice moments as her direct
supervisor who is slowly convinced of her evidence, but it takes the arrival of
James Gandolfini as the CIA director to bring out the feistiness in Maya. He
nearly steals the picture with just two or three scenes.
The
brilliant recreation of the raid, shot as if seen through night goggles, will
probably and understandably earn the picture a boatload of Oscar nominations.
It reminded me of the nail-biting scenes that filled “The Hurt Locker,” except
here we know how it ends and that, even in the face of danger, the Navy SEALs
will leave unscathed.
The closest comparison to “Zero Dark
Thirty” is “United 93,” Paul Greengrass’ re-creation of what went on behind the
scenes on Sept. 11, 2001. The details of that day are vastly more familiar than
this new film’s decade-long saga, yet the filmmaker made you feel the almost
unbearable reality of the moment and created a great film about a terrible
event. Under similar circumstances, Bigelow and Boal fail to draw the audience (at
least this one) into the minutia of the story, greatly reducing the impact of
the picture. I’m not sure what kind of film they would have had if bin Laden
had not been found and killed—they started the project before the May 2011
raid—but without the mesmerizing final 30 minutes all you’d have is Maya flying
around the globe to verify another sliver of intel that might move the
investigation one step closer to him; interesting history, but not exactly
cinematic.
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012)
The last time David O. Russell dipped into
the quirky dynamics of fragile family life, he came up with “Flirting with
Disaster,” one of the funniest and most insightful comedies of the 1990s, a
screwball worthy of the classics that chronicles contemporary America’s
obsession with finding roots.
Sixteen years later, “Silver Linings
Playbook” is just as smart and hilarious, jam packed with memorable characters
and featuring, at its center, a pair of unstable souls looking for a chance to
start anew.
Like his 2010 film, “The Fighter,” this
is the year’s best acted movie, with no less than six superb performances. But,
acting wise, the big surprise of the picture is Bradley Cooper, best known from
the “Hangover” films, playing a former substitute teacher with anger management
issues. After flipping out when he catches his wife in the shower with another
man, he ends up in a mental facility.
When the bipolar Pat comes back to his
parent’s Philadelphia home it quickly becomes clear why he has so many issues.
Pat Sr., (Robert De Niro, in a return to glory) who has recently taken up book
making in hopes of earning a down payment on a restaurant, is an obsessive,
superstitious fan of the Eagles football team and clearly hasn’t tried very
hard to understand his son. Pat’s sympathetic mother (Jacki Weaver) does her
best to keep a calm lid on the household, but his father inevitably sets him
off and, luckily, he finds someone to turn to. His refuge turns out to be an
equally troubled, recently widowed young woman named Tiffany (Jennifer
Lawrence, brilliantly portraying the stoic sarcasm that defines so many in her
generation), who enlists him as a dance partner.
There’s no good way to explain how
exhilarating this movie is as it explores Pat’s mental state, his misguided
mission to reunite with his wife, the swirling chaos of his family, and the
growing attachment to the blunt but vulnerable Tiffany.
The film culminates in one of the funniest
set pieces I’ve seen in years; in the family living room after a bruising Eagle
loss, Tiffany faces off with Pat Sr. on football jinxes, a bet for all the
marbles and the right course for Pat. Brilliant writing (Russell from a novel
by Matthew Quick) and perfect comic timing (young Lawrence matching the great
De Niro line for line) make the scene unforgettable.
Other performances worth noting include
John Ortiz as Pat’s best friend, who is having his own marital struggles,
Anupam Kher as Pat’s offbeat therapist and the wild-eyed Chris Tucker, who I
hadn’t seen in years, playing a fellow mental patient who keeps popping up just
to further demonstrate that there’s a very thin line between crazy and just being
human.
“Silver Linings Playbook” may be the
year’s best film, a biting, fresh and daring comedy worthy of the best of Billy
Wilder, Preston Sturges or Woody Allen.
LINCOLN (2012)
There is plenty in this remarkable
re-creation of the final days of the Civil War to admire, but towering above it
all is Daniel Day-Lewis’ flawless, commanding, hypnotic portrayal of the
country’s most important president.
This 55-year-old, two-time Oscar winning
British actor creates the definitive Lincoln, not an icon or a revered martyred,
but a flawed, occasionally unsure leader carrying the burden of a bloody war
and the fate of 4 million slaves, along with difficult family issues. That he
maintains his calm exterior and ability to tell a witty story in the midst of
this turmoil seems nearly inhuman, but Day-Lewis helps us understand, turning
this legend into flesh-and-blood while confirming his greatness.
The smartest decision Steven Spielberg and
screenwriter Tony Kushner made in “Lincoln” was to narrow the time period covered
to when the president maneuvered the 13th Amendment through Congress
while winding down the Civil War. It allows the actor to present a Lincoln at
his most serious, avoiding the usual bio-pick clichés of romance, day-to-day
life and artificially jumping from one state of life to another.
I wouldn’t call “Lincoln” a great film;
it’s burdened with too many obvious stereotypes, corny sentimentalism (the
opening scene in which Lincoln talks to black and white soldiers may be the
worst of the picture) and overall conventional filmmaking. Yet it’s a
remarkable record of the country’s rebirth and a film everyone needs to see.
Even in the shadow of the magnificent
Day-Lewis, other performers shine. Tommy Lee Jones is an unsmiling standard
bearer of full equality for blacks, Thaddeus Stevens, the most influential
member of the House who endures a decisive tongue lashing from the First Lady
Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field giving one of her most powerful performances of
her long career). Both give Oscar-worthy performances as does James Spader as a
roguish, foul-mouthed early version of a hard-nosed lobbyist who does the
president’s dirty work. A dozen others have memorable moments, including Joseph
Gordon-Levitt as the president’s son who wants to enlist, the always reliable
David Strathairn as Secretary of State Seward, and Jared Harris as an
insightful Gen. Grant.
“Lincoln” is a motion picture that
seems to arrive—not unlike the director’s “War Horse”—from another era, yet
could only have been constructed by this master storyteller. But equally
important are the contributions of Kushner, whose script doesn’t shy away from
complex political discussions and legislative maneuvering that are not always
easy to follow but infinitely compelling, and director of photography Janusz
Kaminski, Spielberg’s secret weapon for nearly 20 years, who recreates the gas
light look of the 19th Century, burnishing the god-like profile of
Lincoln and visually expressing with every frame the undeniable truth that no
man has ever been so essential to this nation.
WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? (1971)
and
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?
(1969)Tell me this isn’t the perfect drive-in double feature, circa 1971? These insanely titled clunkers—attempting to cash in on the popularity of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”—feature battling star actresses and a title question that’s not worth answering.
In “Helen,” Debbie Reynolds and Shelley
Winters play a pair of small-town mothers thrown together when their sons are
convicted of murder. Reynolds’s Adelle, a dance teacher with big dreams,
decides they’ll start a new life in Hollywood. Winter’s Helen, a dreamy, unstable
woman, goes along reluctantly.
Adelle’s dance studio, exploiting tots
and their parents longing to become Shirley Temple clones (the film is set in
the 1930s), seems to be a success and she hooks up with a rich Texan (Dennis
Weaver) who is the father of one of her students.
But Helen is constantly worried that
someone from their past is stalking them and soon there’s a dead body in the
parlor. The manner in which it leaps from a seemingly conventional drama into
weirdly benign slasher flick, as directed by Curtis Harrington, is both clumsy
and startlingly clumsy. (The next year,
the director conned Winters into a follow-up question movie, “Whoever Slew
Auntie Roo?”)
Reynolds and Winters can’t match neither
the star power nor the venom that filled those earlier gothic exercises, “Baby
Jane” and “Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte.” And even though the pair seemed long
past their primes they were only 41 (Reynolds) and 51 (Winters). The leap from
1950s Hollywood to the late ‘60s and early ‘70s turned most 40-plus stars into
relics. (Though Winters scored a huge hit the next year with “The Poseidon
Adventure.”)
There an amusingly dark ending to the film
but by then it had become such a parody of itself that it’s hard to care.
More serious, but much less fun, is
“Aunt Alice,” in which Geraldine Page chews up the scenery as a widow left with
nothing who moves to New Mexico and starts killing off housekeepers. The film,
produced by Robert Aldrich, who directed “Baby Jane” and “Sweet Charlotte,” has
huge gaps in the plot; my guess is that it was chopped down from a longer running
time. The scheme has Page’s Mrs. Marrable tricking the domestics into investing
their life savings with her money manager, killing them and then burying them
in the garden.
Ruth Gordon plays Alice, a friend of one
of the “missing” housekeepers who gets herself hired to investigate. The script
would have been more compelling if the actresses had just made it up as they
went along. But Page does manage to give a compelling performance, even as her
motivations and machinations seem ridiculous.
The real question about both of these
films is: Why did I waste my time watching them? I don’t have an answer for
that one either.
DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012)
After providing Jews a taste of
better-late-than-never revenge in “Inglorious Basterds,” master blood-letter
Quentin Tarantino offers African-Americans a fictional shot to exact a price
for 250 years of slavery.
Utilizing the laconic pacing and threat of
sudden violence of spaghetti Westerns with the spit-in-their-face attitude of
blaxploitation, Tarantino holds nothing back (as if he ever does) in this tall
tale of a well-spoken, German-born bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz, Oscar winner
for his Nazi in “Basterds”) who frees a slave (Jamie Foxx) to make him his
partner in the killing business.
The writer-director, boldly practicing his
pitch black humor and willingness to show the most gruesome of deaths, doesn’t
succeed as well as he did in “Basterds,” in large part because he stretches out
scenes to such length (Waltz’s Schultz is the most verbose horse-riding man in
history) that they are too often drained of their inherent dramatic energy. At two
hours, “Django” might have been a great film—the extra 45 minutes just deflates
it. And maybe, just maybe, the death toll could have been reduced by 20 or 30
percent, making those surviving killings more meaningful.
The story is pretty simple: After the
pair team up to kill the Brittle brothers, handily dispatched at a vast
plantation run by Big Daddy (Don Johnson), Schultz promises to help Django find
and free his wife after they spend the winter collecting bounties.
They locate Broomhilda (Kerry Washington)
at Candyland, the property of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), who
specializes in “Mandingo fighting,” a especially despicable sideline of slavery
in which the fittest slaves viciously fight one another, usually to the death.
What makes “Django” valuable—though I will
resist suggesting it for a double feature with “Lincoln”—is its focus on what
slavery really meant for blacks. Forgot about the lack of freedom or
back-breaking work; what Tarantino hammers home is the constant threat of torture or death and the hateful degradation
by the white population; the daily crushing of the human spirit by being treating
like livestock. I can’t think of another director who would be willing to take
on this delicate subject (not even Spike Lee)—showing the hideous beatings, the
oppressive use of the n-word—and actually get the film made. Yes, the script
could have been sharper and the editing tighter, but you have to give Tarantino
credit for throwing it out there, for better or worse.
ARBITRAGE (2012)
Robert Miller, like most Wall Street
players, wants it all. And, for a moment, he achieves that goal—the indulgent,
supportive wife; loving, successful children; the exotic, Euro-artiste
mistress; cooperative friends and accountants propping up his cash-poor
investment firm; and a rich, willing, if coy, investor prepared to pay him
millions for the company.
It all seems to be, if not under control,
within his grasp. Then, on a romantic whim (the best and worst kind), he heads
off with the mistress for a weekend getaway. His 60th birthday ends
badly as he dozes off while at the wheel, crashing the car and leaving the girl
dead.
This finely detailed character study of
an extremely resourceful man trying to escape the irresponsible actions of the
privileged class serves as a brilliant analogy for the broken, frankly gamed,
system that the American economy has evolved into. Fueling this autopsy is a surprisingly
blunt script by writer-director Nicholas Jarecki (making his feature directing
debut) and a spot-on performance by Richard Geer, an actor who has rarely
received his due as one of the finest of his generation. Not only has he given
iconic performances in some of the most influential romantic/sexual movies
“American Gigolo,” “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “Pretty Woman,” but he’s delivered
under-the-radar exceptional work in less popular fare, including “Beyond the
Limit,” “Internal Affairs,” “Primal Fear” and “The Hoax,” for decades.
The role of the generically named Miller,
an unruffled, quick thinking, still attractive money manager, plays to Gere’s
strengths and it’d be a shame if Oscar voters didn’t reward him with a best
actor nomination; it’s among his best performances.
The film is an American tragedy turned on
its head—a lesson in “deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Not to get
politically righteous, but, as “Arbitrage” pointedly demonstrates, Americans
have accept the country we have; be it a massacre of innocents in a school room
or million dollar winks in the boardroom. It’s all the same corruption that has
no master except the bottom line.
Great acting abounds in this film,
including the ageless Susan Sarandon as Miller’s long-suffering wife; Tim Roth
as the detective who is determined to nail him; Stuart Margolin, a veteran of
50 years of television, playing Miller’s clever, cautious lawyer; and Brit
Marling as his loyal daughter, a partner in the business, who is shaken to her
core when she discovers the financial reality of her father’s business. She
plays “us,” the fools who have invested our futures, our retirement, everything
we’ve spent a lifetime working for in the slim hope that we can get a little
piece of the pie that others are feasting on.
LUCKY BREAK (2001)
Just as rewarding as seeing a great film
for the first time is discovering a gem you’ve never heard of. The title of
this thoroughly entertaining and thoughtful British comedy says it all.
The only reason I recorded it was because
the film’s lead actress is Olivia Williams, one of Britain’s most appealing
actresses (she was priceless as the object of desire in “Rushmore”). In “Lucky
Break,” she’s simply enchanting as Annabel, a prison therapist who, in spite of
her better judgment, falls for one of the convicts. She reminds me of early
Diane Keaton as she tries to remain professional, sensible, as she fights off
her growing affection for this charismatic, self-assured bank robber Jimmy Hand
(English TV veteran James Nesbit).
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The film
opens with long-time crime partners Jimmy and Rud (Lennie James) botching a
bank robbery, which earns them 15-year prison terms. I had no idea where the
movie was headed as it introduces various prisoners, mostly as they work out
their anger in Annabel’s group counseling sessions. But director Peter
Cattaneo, who I had completely lost track of since he was nominated for an
Oscar for “The Full Monty,” brings a working-class sensibility to the prison
culture that makes it easy to simply enjoy the film’s collection of
characters.
It’s when Jimmy first encounters Warden
Mortimer (another quirky, late-career turn by Christopher Plummer) and
identifies the song he’s quietly singing from “South Pacific.” Soon, Jimmy is
cast as the lead in the warden’s own musical based on the life of Admiral
Nelson. And, of course, being the only female in the place, Annabel is forced
to take on the role of Nelson’s love, Lady Hamilton.
Yet, for Jimmy and Rud, the play is just a
cover for a planned prison break.
The off-handed realism that Nesbit brings
to Jimmy, encouraged by the romantic neediness of Annabel, is the center of
this engaging picture, while the supporting cast brings out the reality that
not all convicts are scary thugs.
James, in a nicely understated
performance, makes Rud’s growing interest in his role in the musical as
Nelson’s sidekick amusing and touching, while Timothy Spall’s Cliff, a gentle,
brow-beaten prisoner, becomes the heart of the picture; he’s way too naïve for this
world of bad guys. Bill Nighy’s Rog is another repressed character, constantly
apologizes for no reason, who knows he’ll be fine if he can return to his
beloved Amy (a feisty Celia Imrie). And then there’s Ron Cook’s snarling,
vindictive guard who lords over these easily bullied prisoners.
Attracting Nighy, Spall and Cook, among
the Empire’s finest character actors, along with the legendary Plummer says
more about the quality of Ronan Bennett’s script (based on a novel by actor
Stephen Fry) than any adjective I can type.
I’m not a big romantic comedy fan, at least
not the ones that Hollywood makes these days, but “Lucky Break” restores my
faith in the genre, and in the hope that love, even when it seems impossible, can
make everything right.
SKYFALL (2012)
Though too often the franchise has felt
weighted down by its long history and jerry-rigged plots, I remain a devoted
fan of the granddaddy of spy thrillers, the Bond movie.
Since I was a kid (my father took me to see
“Thunderball,” maybe the first “adult” film I’d ever attended), I have made it
an obligation to see them all, even the cartoonish crap fronted by Roger Moore
and, as rigor mortis set in, the painful Timothy Dalton years.
For me, the underrated Pierce Brosnan, in
the Bond saddle for four pictures, the best being “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997) featuring
Michelle Yeoh as his wing girl, revived the series’ dignity, restoring a
semblance of relevance to the ageless, martini-swilling MI6 killer.
Then the franchise got lucky: the market
for complex action heroes sprinting across the globe exploded on the heels of
the success of “Bourne.” With a more ferocious, less playful, leading man in
Daniel Craig, the series moved into a higher gear. Resetting the character with
“Casino Royal” (2006), Ian Fleming’s original novel, the film gave hope that
Craig and company could improve upon what Brosnan had done. Then the producers
took a step back with 2008’s “Quantum of Solace.” Happily, for us devotees,
“Skyfall” is first-class Bond, maybe the most engaging film since the Sean
Connery era and certainly the best acted in the 50 year history of the series.
I’m not sure what kind of arm twisting went
on to secure Sam Mendes, the first Oscar-winning filmmaker to direct a Bond
(his debut, “American Beauty,” also won best picture), but the unlikely choice
turns out well. He stages the always-spectacular opening set piece, aboard and
on top of an Eastern Europe train, with the flawless skill of an action
veteran, while putting greater emphasis on what’s going on inside these characters’
heads and their complex relationships.
The plot, not worth lingering over,
involves the stealing of a list of agents (why do agencies’ even make such a
list?) and a vow by the twisted bad guy to expose them one by one. Predictable
stuff if it wasn’t for Javier Bardem’s Silva, an ex-MI6 agent who feels
betrayed by M (Judi Dench in one of her finest screen performances) and wants
revenge. Silva also may be the first out-of-the-closet gay villain, his
sexuality played not for laughs or shock, but as another aspect of this bad
guy’s life.
“Skyfall” puts the focus on M like never
before, exploring the bond between her and James and her metal as she’s
threatened both by Silva and by her new bureaucratic boss (Ralph Fiennes). And
if Dench, Fiennes and Bardem don’t offer enough acting history, near the end of
the film, Albert Finney shows up in a choice role as caretaker of Bond’s family
estate in Scotland—there’s 16 Oscar nominations among those four.
The script by John Lange, Neal Purvis and
Robert Wade keeps the action moving at a breakneck pace (or it wouldn’t be a
Bond), yet finds space for real characters exploring the results of their
actions, creating a spy thriller that isn’t just a live-action video game. Now
we just need someone to convince Craig he’s needed for a fourth film.
THE MASTER (2012)
Paul Thomas Anderson crafts motion
pictures like few ever have. Combining unfiltered reality, larger-than-life
performances and surreal, unexplainable sequences, staged and filmed with the
precious of a diamond cutter, the 42-year-old writer-director is utilizing the
language of filmmaking with a cool perfection and sudden brazenness that makes
his films simultaneously confounding and stunning.
Yet, since his brilliantly audacious 1997
debut, “Boogie Nights,” he hasn’t made a satisfying film. I could show you
clips from any of his last four films, “Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” “There
Will Be Love” and “The Master,” that would convince you that each was a
masterwork. His command of the mise-en-scène (the French phrase for what a
director brings to an individual sequence) is unmatched in contemporary
cinema—he makes Martin Scorsese look messy. But I’ll take messy every day if it
adds up to an intellectually and emotionally truthful story, a film with
meaning and clarity.
In “The Master,” we meet the damaged
outsider who has been the centerpiece of all of Anderson’s films; this time
it’s shell-shocked World War II soldier Freddie Quell (a effectively bizarre
Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in with a group of philosophical cultists
surrounding the man they call “The Master,” Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour
Hoffman, in an unfocused performance). He’s a bit of Scientology founder L. Ron
Hubbard, a bit of Rush Limbaugh, but also not unlike the pseudo heroes that
made Frank Capra films so appealing. But, from my point of view, he’s not as
interesting as any of those characters and certainly not as defined. I never
really understood much about his theories or what drew all these sycophants to
him like moths to light.
Quell is a lost soul looking for a
reason to live and he finds it in Dodd. Why the all-powerful, but strangely
nervous Dodd embraces Quell is never addressed, beyond the fact that the
not-very-bright ex-soldier makes potent bootleg liquor.
There are a half dozen scenes in “The
Master” that left me totally confused—was it real or someone’s dream and what
exactly does Anderson wants us to make of it. Dodd’s wife, played by Amy Adams,
gives some hints that this cult is really about sexual freedom, but Anderson
never tips his hand; in some ways, this film hides more than it reveals.
Filmgoers are left with Quell’s view of Dodd’s world, a naïve, muddled
understanding—not exactly why I watch a movie.
