The holiday movie season is also known as awards season for a reason: of the nine films reviewed here - all released within a three-week span, mind - five of them went on to be nominated for Oscars, two of them even winning!:
You Can Count On Me
release: December 1
nominations: Best Actress (Laura Linney), Best Original Screenplay
dir/scr: Kenneth Lonergan
pr: Barbara De Fina / John N. Hart / Larry Meistrich / Jeffrey Sharp
cin: Stephen Kazmierski
Single mom's struggling brother returns home.
The single moment that sells me on this movie: siblings Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo out on the front porch, having a talk; at one moment, she makes a subtle shift to be closer to him, and he puts a reassuring arm around her, no pause, no eye contact, just the familiar communication between brother and sister. The movie is filled with such honest moments, as well as moments of frustration, of barriers up under the guise of brutal honesty, of raw anger coming from a hurt heart, of bad decisions nimbly navigated and barely justified. So funny, too. I can't believe it took me this long to see this movie but I'm glad I finally did - and now I'm telling you, you should, too.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
release: December 8
wins: Best Score (Tan Dun), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Tim Yip), Best Foreign Language Film (Taiwan)
nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song ("A Love Before Time"), Best Film Editing (Tim Squyres), Best Costume Design (Tim Yip)
dir: Ang Lee
pr: Hsu Li-Kong / William Kong / Ang Lee
scr: Wang Hui-Ling and James Schamus and Tsai Kuo Jung, from the book by Wang Du Lu
cin: Peter Pau
The theft of a sword leads two warriors to political intrigue, old grudges, and forbidden love.
We'll get more into it when we talk about the Oscars in the coming weeks. I do want to say: I could have watched the Zhang Ziyi-Chang Chen desert romance forever.
Dude, Where's My Car?
release: December 15
dir: Danny Leiner
pr: Broderick Johnson / Andrew A. Kosove / Gil Netter / Wayne Allan Rice
scr: Philip Stark
cin: Robert M. Stevens
Two idiots try to reconstruct the events of the previous night.
Real "yes, and..." dramaturgy, no idea too ludicrous, no joke too stupid to follow through to its most unexpected yet, somehow, natural conclusion. From the galactic lava lamp that is the opening credits to the horny, objectifying final joke, it's full of jokes and narrative turns that could be shallow, offensive, moronic...but there's a charm. An absurdity, you might say, one that reminded me, yes, of Bill and Ted, but also of the films of Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, even of the sweet-natured looniness of the Beach Party flicks. Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott are just so likable - so attractive - as stoner himbos (whom we never see imbibe). There's even a running transphobic joke that somehow transcends into being not so phobic...at least, like...it's very cartoonishly executed, but ultimately the joke is not on the trans, bit on the phobes. Quite a trick, but it works. The whole thing works.
Pollock
release: December 15
wins: Best Supporting Actress (Marcia Gary Harden)
nominations: Best Actor (Ed Harris)
dir: Ed Harris
pr: Fred Berner / Ed Harris / Jon Kilik / James Francis Trezza
scr: Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emshwiller, from the book Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
cin: Lisa Rinzler
Before Night Falls
release: December 22
nominations: Best Actor (Javier Bardem)
dir: Julian Schnabel
pr: Jon Kilik
scr: Cunningham O'Keefe & Lázaro Gómez Carriles & Julian Schnabel, from the book by Reinaldo Arenas
cin: Xavier Pérez Grobet / Guillermo Rosas
It is interesting to take Before Night Falls and Pollock in tandem. Both are biopics about artists: respectively, Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas and American painter Jackson Pollock. Both attempt to filter conventional biopic structure - the struggle, the anonymity, the sudden fame, the struggle of that, death - through the sensibilities or philosophies of the men at their center. Both have only an occasional grasp on the passage of time and levels of fame of its protagonists, stressing the fleeting nature of both time and fame: yes, certainly, they knew when they were being toasted and exalted, but generally, they just lived. Both films also take the time to really live in the spaces: the cruisey beaches and hotels of pre-Communist Cuba, the shit-strewn, rat-packed cells for political prisoners of Castro's Cuba; the cramped, boho apartments of 1940s New York, the open greenery and peeled-paint paradise-purgatory of a modest home in the Hamptons. There's plenty of booze imbibed in both, carnality is often indulged, and both even recreate documentary footage taken of their subjects!
I found myself more interested in Pollock, I confess. Maybe that's because, for me, it's the more approachable, more conventional of the two: as a director, Harris takes the Cassavetes approach of lived-in misery, getting everyone in a room to booze it up and slide their verbal shivs in deep. Schnabel is more abstract, going back and forth between English and Spanish, allowing the original language and rhythms of Arenas' poetry to guide us through pictures of old Cuba, then of New York, eventually giving him the final word even after death. Before Night Falls' approach may be bolder, but its style sometimes undercuts connection; Pollock insists upon that connection.
I don't think I'd watch Before Night Falls again; it's admirable, but just not for me. I know I'll watch Pollock again, I bought a copy.
Cast Away
release: December 22
nominations: Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Sound (Randy Thom / Tom Johnson / Dennis S. Sands / William B. Kaplan)
dir: Robert Zemeckis
pr: Tom Hanks / Jack Rapke / Steve Starkey / Robert Zemeckis
scr: William Broyles, Jr.
cin: Don Burgess
After a plane crashes, an executive is stranded on a desert island...for four years.
I love how much time it takes to establish Tom Hanks' character's specialty in timeliness, his life with Helen Hunt, the life and career and priorities he has before we get to him being wrecked on that island. I love how much time we spend with him in his first year, learning how to fish, how to build a home, how to make fire, how to entertain himself, cutting his hand, trial and error. I love the film's use of detritus, some immediate, some gradual, as it washes up on shore: is it all from the downed plane, is it from other accidents, or careless discards? I love the use of sound, the rare silence, the continuing white noise of wind and water. I love this movie!
Dracula 2000
release: December 22
dir: Patrick Lussier
pr: W.K. Border / Joel Soisson
scr: Joel Soisson, story by Patrick Lussier & Joel Soisson, from characters created by Bram Stoker
cin: Peter Pau
After centuries in slumber, Dracula is resurrected by treasure hunters - and is mysteriously drawn to a young woman in New Orleans.
There are, like, three really good ideas in this movie, phenomenal ideas, actually. It's a movie that seems genuinely excited by those ideas, though ultimately conveyed as cheaply and in as few sets as possible. A sprawling cast of characters is almost immediately offed...though not forever, so they get to be offed again! Fun! A field reporter is killed on camera, and we see it from the POV of the lens...and remember, those lenses need mirrors to work, which vampires don't appear in! Fun! The secret of the Van Helsing family, which I dare not spoil here - amazing! Fun! And the origins of Dracula himself, with explanations for his "weaknesses", many of which were not strictly vampire lore until this specific character's introduction? Ingenious, worth the price of admission, fun! I don't think it's the greatest masterpiece, but it's inventive, a good time.
The House of Mirth
release: December 22
dir: Terence Davies
pr: Olivia Stewart
scr: Terence Davies, from the book by Edith Wharton
cin: Remi Adefarasin
A socialite deals with the consequences of pursuing wealth instead of love. I think.
I wish I liked this more. I wish I liked The Age of Innocence more, too, but maybe I should actually read Edith Wharton so I can see what she's going for, what the film adaptations are going for, and what is being lost in translation (not necessarily by the filmmakers, I, too, can mistranslate). Gillian Anderson gives a strained performance that feels uncertain, surprising since I usually find her a confident performer. The costumes are good. Laura Linney and Elizabeth McGovern convince in their manner and delivery that they are of the period in ways that much of the cast seem unable to meet. It's just not a very interesting movie, is it?
State and Main
release: December 22
dir/scr: David Mamet
pr: Sarah Green
cin: Oliver Stapleton
A film crew descends on a small town in Vermont and cannot keep their shit together.
One of those insider Hollywood satires about how shamelessly amoral and yet infectious movie-making can be. Clever, often hilarious writing with pitch-perfect performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, and David Paymer. Rebecca Pidgeon plays her character as written: a space alien whose rhythms of speech are unlike that of any other New Englander...or mortal.
And we haven't even gotten to Christmas! That's tomorrow....
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