Well, it's Sunday, I'm at work, and thus have nothing to do. So, for your consideration, time for a well-balanced rant. Not necessarily a topical or timely one, but one that's been spinning around my head for months.
We've long known that the Academy Awards are a joke. It's quite obvious that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is an utterly human organization, prone to the same back-biting, glad-handing and shallow politics of pretty much any organization. Still, it's quite disconcerting that a body purporting to be presenting has made so many selections that even the most generous film scholar would shake their heads at. How on Earth did the bloated The Greatest Show on Earth get a Best Picture nomination, let alone win? Why has Peter O'Toole been nominated for Best Actor eight times and not one once? Where's Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar? Cary Grant's? Robert Mitchum's? Need I go on? No, it's all politics, and quite frankly, the Academy is such a joke that it's unlikely that it had any credibility to lose in the first place.
As if we needed any further proof of that, let me present perhaps the best case for such an argument: Last year's Best Picture nominees. Five films, ranging from mediocre to slightly above-average, were selected for the crown of the best cinema had to offer for the year 2007. The most baffling thing, however, is not that any of the individual selections got nominated, but rather, that not a single one of them could be classified as a truly great film. It's not like there weren't great films to choose from; it's just that great movies like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, or The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, which makes a very strong case for the best film of the decade, get overlooked for a pile of mediocre crap.
I have full length-reviews of There Will Be Blood, Atonement, and Juno posted on IMDB, which are more well-organized, thoughtful, and arguably more serious and less sarcastic than these. I haven't gotten around to writing anything about No Country For Old Men or Michael Clayton. If you don't wish to click and read all of the above, then please indulge me and these mini reviews - seven months too late, but then I didn't have a blog seven months ago.
Michael Clayton
Commentary: Perhaps it's not fair to judge a film I don't remember a great deal about, but then perhaps it wasn't fair for the Academy to nominate such a mediocre, middle-of-the-road film for Best Picture. Michael Clayton shares its primary characteristics with pretty much every other thriller that's been made by Hollywood in the last twenty years or so. One could assemble a check list of cliches and they'll have about 99% of the movie covered.
Talented and handsome but amoral protagonist with serious personal problems? Check.
Lawyers? Check.
Evil corporation? Check.
Unintended negative consequences of said corporation's products/experiments? Oh yeah.
Cover up by the Evil Corporation, with an ever-growing body count? Big check.
Crazy informant who turns out to be right about everything even though no one will believe him? Check MATE.
Murder of said informant by thugs who are able to make it look like a suicide? Check-a-rino.
Car bombs? You bet your ass.
Big denouement where the hero manages to rip the CEO a new ass with a smart-ass bluff revealed to be empty (but it works)? What, are you kidding me?
Annoying, repetitive pseudo-techno score? Guess.
So, really, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't all of that been done about 8,456,404 times before in films just like this one? (The answer is yes.)
The movie certainly has its share of positive attributes. Tony Gilroy's direction is solid if unremarkable, complemented by the appropriately moody and dark cinematography by Robert Elswit. Clooney is okay as the lead, although Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton (both of whom got well-deserved Oscar nods) steal the show. So, it's a slick and well-made thriller, but what is there about the film to distinguish it from the fifty thousand films of the same basic genre? Very, very little.
Why it got nominated (cynical explanations, of course): I honestly haven't the foggiest idea aside from its pretensions as an intelligent thriller. Maybe the Academy felt the need to award George Clooney yet again for being the biggest prick and egomaniac and Hollywood.
Rating: A very generous 7 crooked corporations out of 10
Juno
Commentary: Further proof of the vapidity and idiocy that plague the Academy are the four nominations, including, inexplicably BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR (alright, who's buying whose votes?), bestowed upon Juno, this year's version of Little Miss Sunshine - an overly clever, self-aware, and smug entry in the hipster pseudo-indie film subgenre. (Did the Academy really think that The Assassination of Jesse James etc. was so bad that it got overlooked in both of these categories in favor of THIS!?!) Juno isn't a complete failure, and is inclusion as an Oscar nominee isn't quite as baffling as, say, Michael Clayton, but that doesn't make it any better, all things considered.
Let's start with the obvious: Juno Macguff is such a hideously obnoxious, self-absorbed character, spouting inane one-liners, lengthy monologues about how she's so super and everyone else is so stupid and lame, pointless bits of quirk like a FUCKING HAMBURGER PHONE, and pointless, mis-attributed pop culture references ("I'm Morgan Freeman! Got any bones you need collecting?"), that it's impossible for the viewer to feel any sympathy with her - rather, they likely want to smash her head in. The script is largely at fault, but I don't think Ellen Paige does much to redeem her character's more obnoxious side. Michael Cera is a gape-mouthed fool for most of the film, although to be fair he fails to fall to the Stygian depths of annoyance provided by his co-star. And the soundtrack... God, the soundtrack! Ten minutes of listening to the droning moody faux-indie rock bleating and strumming is enough to induce any human being to insanity and suicide - until you realize that there's still 90 minutes to go! To be fair, the movie lets the viewer in on the kind of film it is right off the bat - an animated Juno walking down the street drinking a gallon of Sunny D - and no, unfortunately that isn't a joke.
As for Diablo Cody's witty, brilliant Academy Award-winning screenplay? Let's take a look at the dialogue that the Academy deems worthy of an Oscar, the highest award that can be bestowed for screen-writing achievement:
"That ain't no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be undid, home skillet."The scariest thing about that horrific excuse for dialogue (besides the crater where my face once was after actually typing said dialogue out) is that it isn't even the worst line of the movie.
The movie does have a few redeeming values, no doubt. It's adequately directed and shot, although in this kind of film technical aspects tend not to rise above the competent. The supporting cast takes the ball from Paige and Cera's annoying and vapid protagonists and runs away with it; J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman give performances of surprising depth, which are deserving of a much better movie. Juno's relationship with Bateman is an interesting subplot, as is his and Garner's clearly troubled marriage. The movie's more serious and contemplative last half hour is well-done, honest, and even touching, as Juno must confront the fact that happy relationships don't just come along, but you have to do your best to make them work. It's too bad the rest of the movie is an obnoxious gab-fest, an attempt by Cody, Paige and director Jason Reitman to pose their film as the coolest damned thing to ever turn up in Hollywood. You are, like, so wrong bitches. Honest to blog, this film sucks. (Great. Now I'm going to have to amputate my hands for typing that..)
Why it got nominated: Because Hollywood needs to seem hip and with it and nominate a pretentious Indie flick every year, I guess.
Rating: 6 pointless pop culture references of 10
Atonement
Commentary: Atonement is one of those films that got me all hot and bothered before it came out. The trailer was gorgeous, and the promise of anything remotely David Lean-esque - an epic romance caught in the tides of history - one of my favorite subjects in literature and film - made me squeal with delight. Even my repulsion for the bitchy, minimally talented, teeth-grinding Keira Knightly wasn't enough to keep me away. Hell, I've read the book since seeing the movie, and I honestly thought it was one of the best novels I've ever read. So imagine my huge disappointment when this film, when it turns out to not really be a romance at all. Well, that's not actually THE big problem with it, but Gone With the Wind it ain't. (Not that Gone With the Wind is all that great, but anyway...)
Despite the beautiful cinematography and Joe Wright's excellent direction, the movie fails to capture the magic of a Doctor Zhivago or The English Patient, and remains curiously empty throughout. The movie's biggest problem is pacing; it's only just over two hours long, but feels at least three. For a film purporting to be an "epic", that is quite a curious thing. We (as in, me) are also annoyed by the film's conceit of showing us an event from Briony's perspective, then literally rewinding it to show how it really happened. Gag. The biggest flaw that the movie suffers from, however, is its inability to transcends the confines of its genre. Every single shot and scene, no matter how well-composed, seems to be arranged solely for the purpose of proving the movie to be a BIG EPIC FILM.
Atonement comes pretty close to being the best of these five, however, by virtue of its many, many virtues. The story is fascinating throughout, even when the pace flags, its conceit of an author and the narcissism and God complex which inevitably results from their creation of fictional worlds - only, in this case, it has actual ramifications in reality. This is an utterly fascinating concept, one which Ian McEwan did brilliantly in the novel, and which at least manages to come through - if imperfectly - in the film. While Keira Knightley is as wooden and shark-like as usual, James McAvoy gives a great performance as Robbie, who finds himself inexplicably trapped in a personal hell beyond his control. All three Brionys - Saorise Ronan, Romola Garai, and Vanessa Redgrave - give excellent performances, showing Briony's character to be narcissistic yet troubled and repentant. Needless to say, the cinematography by Seamus McGarvey is gorgeous, including (but not limited to) the oft-lauded Dunkirk tracking shot, and Dario Marianelli quite justly won an Oscar for his inventive, evocative score. The film also offers a heartbreaking twist ending that goes a long way in redeeming what came before it.
In the end, Atonement is a good movie with flaws, and not a flawed movie with some good bits, as most of the other films on this list are. But, having read the source novel, I think it could have been much, much more.
Why it got nominated: Oh come on, isn't this obvious? It was advertised and marketed as being a great epic romance a la Gone With the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, The English Patient, and Titanic, all of which but the latter were name dropped in this post. Which shows that this movie should have fired its publicity department, and that Titanic really has fallen out of public favor since it first came out.
Rating: 7/10
There Will Be Blood
Commentary: The movie that launched fifty-thousand jokes about milk shakes, and how one is going to drink them up, perhaps even with a straw that reaches waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay across the room. Quite frankly, I think it deserves such a fate, as it contains what must be one of the most painfully contrived and insulting climaxes in the history of cinema.
Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is, for all the hype and acclaim built up around it by critics yearning for a new American Masterpiece, a remarkably empty film for a myriad of reasons. The biggest being that the character of Daniel Plainview is not very interesting. In the end, he is an empty, shallow caricature, whose only character traits are greed and misanthropy. Perhaps this would work were he a supporting character, or even the centerpiece of an ensemble drama, but as the solitary lead, with no characters of remotely comparable screen time or importance around him (except the hideously annoying Paul Dano as the obnoxious preacher Eli Sunday), Plainview is just an obnoxious bore. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a remarkable performance (even if his John Huston impersonation is rather silly), and is fascinating to watch for most of the length, which is all the more remarkable given how weak his character is.
The film starts out promisingly with ten minutes of brilliance, a wordless scene as a younger Plainview, working in a silver mine, comes across his first oil strike. Strikingly shot, without any dialogue and only ambient soundtrack noise, it is a brilliant piece of bravura film making. The movie remains strong in terms of direction, cinematography, and Johnny Greenwood's striking musical score. The movie does a great job of building itself up, only to slowly lose its way in the last half as it unspools in a series of increasingly pointless scenes. Its attacks on religion and big business are pretty typical socialist primer material (well, it WAS inspired by an Upton Sinclair novel), with nothing new, insightful, or interesting to say. And the climactic showdown between Eli and Daniel is just painful - one of the worst written, most ill-conceived, insulting and ludicrous anti-climaxes that completely lets down everything that came before.
So, yeah, the milkshake. Perhaps the dumbest line ever written by a Hollywood screenwriter, in one of the most ludicrous scenes in cinema history. Worthy of mockery? You betcha. When a movie is as pretentious and self-important as this one, you can't really feel sorry for the film makers.
Why It Got Nominated: Besides the pretentious "art film" construction of the movie, the selection overall seemed to be retributive glamor for wunderkind Paul Thomas Anderson's history of being overlooked by the Academy, a self-correcting action that they habitually engage in (Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, for just one of the more obvious examples). And Day-Lewis is admittedly very, very impressive.
Rating: 6 milkshakes out of 10
No Country For Old Men
No Country For Old Men, the next-to-latest offering (now that Burn After Reading is in theaters) from Joel and Ethan Coen, is an intriguing mess. More than anything else, its inclusion as an Oscar nomination seems, like Anderson's, to be a sort of "payback" for the Coens' failure to win an Oscar for their previous works.
The movie's plot is muddied and confusing. The narrative is pretty straight-forward on paper, but one can hardly be blamed for having a hard time for following the episodic adventures of its cadre of anti-heroes. The basic plot - ne'er-do-well drifter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin)'s recovery of a cache of drug money, and hulking hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem)'s attempts to retrieve it - is done in such a scanty, tertiary way that it's difficult to follow, and its only exacerbated by throwing in the seemingly unrelated investigation of Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), whose role in the story is pretty much to bitch about how old he is and how times have changed for the worse, and the bizarre, disconnected subplot involving Chigurh's employers hiring another hitman (Woody Harrelson) only muddies the water to the point that it's impossible to see. I don't really have a problem with the ending, except from a cathartic point of view; I just don't see why we end it with the Sheriff. If the movie was really about him, they should have made it apparent in some way.
And yet, No Country manages to be an intriguing film, for all its flaws. The Coens' direction is harsh and effective, with an atmosphere and feel culled from Sergio Leone Westerns and Fred Zinnemann's Day of the Jackal (with its intense, meticulous assassins and lack of music). Josh Brolin is a pretty good protagonist; he's been an extremely undervalued actor for years, and I'm glad to see him finally coming into his own as a star (see also his roles in American Gangster, In the Valley of Elah, and Oliver Stone's upcoming W). Javier Bardem won an Oscar, and most of the acclaim, and I can't disagree; he's a truly intimidating, frightening presence. Tommy Lee Jones' character seems largely out of place, and quite frankly I don't buy the reading that the movie is all about him. That's just cack.
So, there's a good amount of quality on display here. No Country definitely deserved the Best Picture against its competition. And there's enough there to suggest that I might enjoy it more with a rewatch. But really, the best film in all of 2007? Are you quite serious?
Why It Was Nominated: See above. It's also the best of this lot, which admittedly isn't saying a great deal.
Rating: 7 air-blasted holes in the forehead out of 10
I guess the overall conclusion of this post is this: either the Academy is made up of a bunch of fools and tools, or 2007 was a really bad year for films. I think I'd put my money on the former, personally, but then, I've been wrong before. Either way, there are many films far better than those nominated who failed to get a Best Picture nod, and surely 2007 is one of the most egregious years of poor selection by an institution that long ago forfeited its dignity and pretensions of seriousness.
Okay, rant over.
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