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Christmas in November: 2003, Day Five

New to me this round: 21 GramsBad Santa, The Barbarian InvasionsBrother Bear, The Cooler, In AmericaMaster and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and The Missing. Everything else I was seeing for only my second time, except Love Actually, which I’ve seen many many many many times.

Brother Bear
release: November 1
nominations: Best Animated Feature
dir: Aaron Blaise / Robert Walker
pr: Chuck Williams
scr: Tab Murphy and Lorne Cameron & David Hoselton and Steve Bencich & Ron J. Friedman

A young man kills a bear in anger, the Spirits transform him into a bear, and now he must journey to a sacred mountain peak to change back. A straightforward, spiritual story, one so lean, you can feel the padding in every "comic relief" bit featuring the two moose played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. It doesn't need the padding, the simplicity of its tale of self-discovery and brotherhood is enough. It's also, visually, the most beautiful traditionally animated Disney film since...hm...maybe The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The depiction of Autumn, Winter, and Spring in a lush pre-colonial North American wilderness is gorgeous, an unspoiled Eden. Quietly one of the studio's best films?

Elf
release: November 7
dir: Jon Favreau
pr: Jon Berg / Todd Komarnicki / Shauna Robertson
scr: David Berenbaum
cin: Greg Gardiner

An elf discovers that he is actually a full-grown human and leaves the North Pole to connect with his long-lost father, a grouchy book publisher. An inventive premise buoyed by great performances by a committedly hyperactive Will Ferrell and a quietly fuming James Caan, great comic foils. Score much better than it needs to be, genuine magic. Loses a bit in its finale when it becomes about saving Christmas: the idea of Santa's sleigh being powered by Christmas Spirit is fine, but how is this year the one with the least Christmas Spirit imaginable? I just watched a whole movie in which New Yorkers, out of the goodness of their hearts, accept and embrace a man-child in an elf costume and become better people for doing so, and you're telling me they don't have enough Christmas Spirit? Come on, now. 

Love Actually
release: November 7
dir/scr: Richard Curtis
pr: Tim Bevan / Eric Fellner / Duncan Kenworthy
cin: Michael Coulter

Romantic-comedy about various Londoners experiencing love over the holidays. Ensemble films like this are always tricky: with so many storylines, there are bound to be ones you connect with and ones you don't, with none of them given the right amount of time to breathe. For what this movie is trying to do, I find it all pretty perfect. Yes, even the man making sadsack signage for the woman he loves (his best friend's new wife); yes, even the kid breaking through security and racing through the airport post-9/11; yes, even and especially the Englishman who falls in love with the Portuguese housekeeper without either of them understanding each other. This is fantasy, once you accept that, everything else falls into place. 'Course, having said that, the best bits are the ones rooted in reality: Emma Thompson keeping friends and family together only to have the rug pulled out from under her, Liam Neeson and Thomas Sangster navigating a new stepfather-stepson relationship in the wake of their wife/mother's passing, Laura Linney having to decide between the life she wants and the responsibilities she has. Balances the sentimental, the tragic, the camp, the romantic, and the absurd beautifully. The music! They can never make me hate you, Love Actually!

21 Grams
release: November 21
nominations: Best Actress (Naomi Watts), Best Supporting Actor (Benicio Del Toro)
dir: Alejandro González Iñárritu
pr: Alejandro González Iñárritu / Robert Salerno
scr: Guillermo Arriaga
cin: Rodrigo Prieto

Three people brought together by tragedy, revenge, and addiction. Ignores linear storytelling but I'm not sure to what end. Perhaps to muddle the fact that most of the scenes are dramatically inert? Confuses despair with depth. Feels like the writer and the director are both sitting next to you, watching you, occasionally exclaiming at full volume, "Makes you think, doesn't it?" It does: it makes me think life is a precious thing, and I've lost two hours of mine watching this.

The Barbarian Invasions
release: November 21
wins: Best Foreign Language Film (Canada)
nominations: Best Original Screenplay
dir/scr: Denys Arcand
pr: Daniel Louis / Denise Robert
cin: Guy Dufaux

College professor is dying, family and friends gather. Meanders pleasantly enough. Discussions of changing times. Heroin addiction and its perils and pleasures. Sex, lots of discussions about that. Yeah. Didn't really connect with it. I seem to remember the director accepting the Oscar and saying something along the lines of, "Thank you for remembering Canada is indeed a foreign country!"

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
release: November 21
wins: Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing (Richard King)
nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (William Sandell / Robert Gould), Best Film Editing (Lee Smith),  Best Costume Design (Wendy Stites), Best Makeup (Edouard F. Henriques / Yolanda Toussieng), Best Sound Mixing (Paul Massey / Doug Hemphill / Art Rochester), Best Visual Effects (Daniel Sudick / Stefan Fangmeier / Nathan McGuinness / Robert Stromberg)
dir: Peter Weir
pr: Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. / Duncan Henderson / Peter Weir
scr: Peter Weir & John Collee
cin: Russell Boyd

British ship pursues French ship during the Napoleonic Wars. More when we discuss Best Picture later this week.

Gothika
release: November 21
dir: Mathieu Kassovitz
pr: Susan Levin / L. Levin / Joel Silver / Robert Zemeckis
scr: Sebastian Gutierrez
cin: Matthew Libatique

A psychologist at an asylum wakes up to find herself one of the patients. An old-school ghost story mystery about the abuse of institutional power. It's not very good, it's not all bad, either. When I watched it at home with my sisters at 14, I was struck by Penelope Cruz's performance - now there's a woman who'll get an Oscar with the right role, I thought to myself. She's still the best thing about it, though Libatique's cinematography is also perfectly spooky.

Bad Santa
release: November 26
dir: Terry Zwigoff
pr: Sarah Aubrey / John Cameron / Bob Weinstein
scr: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa
cin: Jamie Anderson

Alcoholic asshole mall Santa has his selfish, cynical worldview challenged by the presence of an ingenuous kid. Crude comedy full of piss and profanity, with plenty of sex and death to satisfy - and yet, dare I say, it’s one of the best tales about Christmas inspiring the redemption of a man’s soul since Dickens? Not a false note to be heard among the performances, great work from Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, John Ritter, and Bernie Mac. Brett Kelly as The Kid was a great find. An adult fable that actually works!

The Cooler
release: November 26
nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Alec Baldwin)
dir: Wayne Kramer
pr: Sean Furst / Michael A. Pierce
scr: Frank Hannah & Wayne Kramer
cin: James Whitaker

Professional loser falls in love with a cocktail waitress. Nothing distinctive about this one, good or bad.

The Haunted Mansion
release: November 26
dir: Rob Minkoff
pr: Andrew Gunn / Don Hahn
scr: David Berenbaum
cin: Remi Adefarasin

A realtor interrupts a family vacation to take a look at a prospective new house…only to trap his family in a haunted mansion whose inhabitants have plans for the wife. Based on the Disney Theme Parks attraction. I don’t remember this coming out the same year as Pirates of the Caribbean, but I do remember seeing it in theaters! Goes down easy, it’s spooky enough, just the right vibe for an all-ages scary movie. Should’ve come out around Halloween, not Thanksgiving, but I wonder if the success of Pirates got Disney over-optimistic. 

In America
release: November 26
nominations: Best Actress (Samantha Morton), Best Supporting Actor (Djimon Hounsou), Best Original Screenplay
dir: Jim Sheridan
pr: Arthur Lappin / Jim Sheridan
scr: Jim Sheridan & Naomi Sheridan & Kirsten Sheridan
cin: Declan Quinn

Undocumented Irish immigrants make a life for themselves in New York City. Lovely observations about community, people taking care of each other, even total strangers, because we all exist together. Harrowing often: every scene feels like their whole world is about to burn up with one lost dollar, one bad conversation with a local addict looking for a fix, one knock from a cop. Amidst the peeled paint and stained walls and stifling, rotted-wood rooms, there is beauty and strength.

The Missing
release: November 26
dir: Ron Howard
pr: Brian Grazer / Ron Howard / Dabiel Ostroff
scr: Ken Kaufman
cin: Salvatore Totino

Western about a woman whose daughter is kidnapped by human traffickers led by a witch; her estranged father, who she hasn’t seen in 20 years I think?, helps. This was the other pleasant surprise for me. Cate Blanchett’s mastery of accents is Streepian in its range, Tommy Lee Jones gives you a face full of stubbornness and clamped-down regret. It’s very careful about making sure the villains are a multiracial hodgepodge of ne’er-do-wells exploiting the most vulnerable. Love any movie that acknowledges magic is real and a part of nature and we must accept it. Beautifully shot!

The Triplets of Belleville
release: November 26
nominations: Best Original Song ("Belleville Rendez-Vous"), Best Animated Feature
dir/scr: Sylvain Chomet
pr: Didier Brunner / Viviane Vanfleteren

Animated French film about a grandmother searching for her kidnapped bicyclist grandson crossing paths with an aged singing group. Very very little dialogue, its entire story told visually. And what visuals they are! The bodyguards that come together like a brick wall, the mouselike mechanic, the oversized calves on the otherwise thin cyclists, the elasticity of a maître d’, the slurping of frogs! It’s not beautiful, thank goodness no, but it’s not gritty realism. We currently live in an era where animated movies are constantly being remade as live action films; here is a film whose every frame declares that it can only be animated, it is not the same movie, it is not the same story if it is not.


Tomorrow, the end of the year.

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