I kept hearing critics talking about what a bad year 2011 was for movies, and thought they must be nuts. I saw AWESOME movies last year. Then I looked at this year's Best Picture nominees and I realized, oh, THAT's what they mean.See, "Troll Hunter" and "Point Blank" might have been awesome movies, but they're not Oscar movies. If you pick up 2011 and shake it hoping that ten slightly artsy but refreshingly mainstream films for the Academy to choose from are going to fall out, you will indeed be disappointed.
So we ended up with one of the dullest nominee lists of all time, including that one year that Andy Warhol was nominated for his film about paint drying in Taylor Mead's house (the follow-up about his ass was better received. That's not even a joke, by the way, Andy Warhol did an entire movie about Taylor Mead's ass. It was called..."Taylor Mead's Ass". I swear I am not making this up). Still, it's not all bad...just mostly bad.
***
1. Incredibly Loud & Extremely Close.
Every year there's one nominee that I didn't bother to see. And here it is. The title strikes me as a comment on how uncomfortable it is watching movies in 3D. Were that the subject of the film, I might have sat through it. Moving on.
"This looks so much easier when chimpanzees do it on the Discovery channel."
2. The Artist.
Everyone else can just stay home, this should clearly be our winner. I’m not being sarcastic, I LOVE this movie.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "A black and white French silent film about the golden age of Hollywood!?" I know, it's like they read my diary, right? I mean, sure, I throw coins into that wishing well all the time, but if I knew it would actually pay off I'd probably have wished for a cure for cancer or peace in Darfur.
...actually, no, I'd probably still have wished for this. "The Artist" comes at a time when complaints about the lack of originality in mainstream movies are at an all-time high. I guess in the midst of endless franchise films and remakes, someone finally had the idea that if we're just going to build on what's already past, why not go as far past as we can?
One of these is Jean Dujardin, and the other is his dog...but I'm actually having trouble telling which is which?
3. Hugo.
At first I thought this must have been a typo, and that the actual nominee was that movie where you see Michael Fassbender's penis. (See, they meant to write "Huge"...which is not the title of that film either, but it's probably still what they would have written.) But no, apparently they really meant this, an oddball kid's movie about an orphan who lives in a train station and builds the creepiest looking onscreen robot since they finally killed off Brent Spiner's "Star Trek" character (seriously, it's one thing to visit the Uncanny Valley, it's another to build a resort there).
"Hugo" is pretty sterile. It's a love letter to the golden age of filmmaking, but it's going head to head with "The Artist", which is a bit like seeing a Beatles cover band open for Paul McCartney. While "The Artist" illustrates what was wonderful about that period, "Hugo" just talks about it, in a way that seems self-indulgent and self-congratulatory.
So why the (brace for it) eleven nominations? Well, I guess they figured if Martin Scorsese has finally gone nuts enough to think he's the man to create children's fare, they probably shouldn't antagonize him. Though Scorsese did try to helm one other kid’s movie in the past. Sadly, no one was interested in his "It's Time to Meet the Motherfucking Muppets" script. Shame.
I actually find Chloe Grace Moretz more disturbing when she's not swearing like a sailor and murdering people in a movie.
4. The Help.
Here's a movie that would have been a sure winner had it been released in 1993 or so. Emma Stone plays an upscale white woman in Jim Crow-era Mississippi who publishes a book profiling the lives of black maids working in her community. I watched the whole thing just hoping we'd find out why her character is named "Skeeter", in the vain hope that M. Night Shyamalan did a final revision on the script and she'd turn out to be some kind of Roger Corman-style mosquito woman, but to no avail.
"The Help" won the Screen Actors Guild award for "Outstanding Cast", which is apparently a real thing and a hell of a boon for whoever gets paid to manufacture those little award statues. Viola Davis is up for "Best Actress", which after "Eat, Pray, Love" and "Nights in Rodantha" validates her longstanding insistence that if she just keeps making movies based on books that Oprah read on a plane it will eventually pay off. Also a good movie to see if you're a Jessica Chastain fan and somehow missed the 17 other movies she did last year.
Huh. There's something different about the "Sex and the City" gals. Can't put my finger on it.
5. The Descendants.
Right around the first week of October, George Clooney was relaxing in whatever woman's apartment he finds himself in these days and thinking "Boy, I hope 'The Ides of March' does well, otherwise they're going to have to nominate that other movie I did." Yeah, I was holding out hope too, George.
Remember how "Up in the Air" was slow and quiet but in an endearingly eccentric, vulnerable way, and how "The American" was slow and quiet in a tense, pathos-laden way? Well, imagine those movies without the eccentricity, vulnerability, tension, pathos, or Vera Farmiga's body double. Ta-daa: "The Descendants", a movie about coming to responsibility late in life. Clooney plays a man struggling to keep his family together after an accident puts his wife into a vegetative state. The audience joins her presently. More compelling dialogue was heard in "The Artist" (think about that one for a second).
God how I hoped King Kong would come crashing out of the jungle right at this moment. Or maybe just one of those dinosaurs from "Jurassic Park". I wasn't feeling picky.
6. Moneyball.
Christ, maybe this WAS a lousy year. Don't get me wrong, "Moneyball" is based on a really riveting story...which translated into a dulldulldulldulldulldulldulldulldull (dull) film. This will be great for those who thought "The Descendants" was just too fast-paced and kinetic.
Brad Pitt plays Oakland A's manager Billy Beane as he attempts to hornswaggle a championship for his put-upon team with the help of a ivy league-educated economist played by Jonah Hill. Yeah, Beane was cast as Brad Pitt, and Paul DePodesta ended up as Jonah Hill, which I guess explains why they changed his character's name and everything about him, probably for fear of being sued. (Don't worry, that wasn't a fat joke; Johan Hill just lost a ton of weight, and he's still unattractive and starring in bad movies. I wouldn't want to be played by Jonah Hill if they digitally grafted his head onto Michelangelo's "David").
"Moneyball" is not actually a sports movie, but rather something of an anti-sports movie. Turns out, winning isn't about "heart" and teamwork, it's about what the Beane counters (*rimshot*) in the main office did with their spreadsheets. Pitt's character would be the antagonist in any other movie about baseball, as he joylessly commodifies his players. Normally this would bring dark, cancerous joy to my misanthropic little heart, but in this case it's SO hard to care. The movie shoehorns in a subplot about Beane's strained family life and relationship with his daughter, which was so disinteresting in its own right that it was spun off into its own film: "The Descendants".
Pitt himself comprised the entire crowd for this season's A's opener.
7. Midnight in Paris.
Okay, let's talk about a good movie for a change. Save me Woody Allen, save me. No, I did not say “Soon-Yi”, I said “save me”! Concentrate, man!
After seemingly losing his mind/talent for most of the 90s (so much so that he pointedly starred in a movie about a director who has gone blind; this too-apt metaphor is widely regarded as his worst movie/therapy session ever), Woody Allen is enjoying something of a last-minute creative renaissance in recent years. I dunno, maybe he was saving it up?
Here he directs Owen Wilson (I know, I know, but stay with me here) as a put-upon writer who is mysteriously transported to 20s-era Paris, where he gets to hang out with his artistic idols and, increasingly, stop giving a crap about his banshee-like fiance. That the movie is genuinely funny and charming came as a surprise; that it’s endearing and thoughtful was a shock; that I finally finished an Owen Wilson movie without wanting to re-break his nose is fracking miracle.
As you can see, some people still haven't quite recovered from "Crash" winning Best Picture seven years ago.
8. War Horse.
Well, at least this saved me from dropping cash the stage show.
I should come clean up front: I have always hated movies about horses. As a kid I was force-fed a great many family films about a young person's "special bond" with some fucking horse, and good lord did I ever not give a crap. As soon as this one opened with imagery of a foal prancing through a sun-dappled meadow I knew I was in for a long night.
At the heart of the movie is a relationship between a horse and his boy so uncomfortably intimate that it feels a bit like someone put “Equus” in a blender with “Saving Private Ryan” and this is what poured out. I felt like I should leave and give them some peace. Matter of fact, that would have made me feel more peaceful too. "War Horse" is turgid and bloated, showcasing forced sentimentality that constitutes some of Spielberg's most self-indulgent work to date.
This close to having to black box the pic.
9. Tree of Life.
And then there's this one, which shouldn't even be on the list. Comparing "Tree of Life" to other movies is...it’s not even like comparing apples to oranges, it’s like comparing apples to an image of an apple in the background of a Dali painting on the jacket of a book about string theory. And if you’re complaining that that analogy doesn’t make any sense, well, I watched “Tree of Life” start to finish, so I feel like it’s my prerogative not to make sense if I want to.
The movie stars Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain (see) as parents at loggerheads over how to raise Lil Sean Penn, she being gentle and holistic and he subscribing to a more Kobra Kai brand of parenting. But that's only what the movie is about when it takes the time to remember that it's about something.
What do I mean? Well, look, just by way of the most immediate example, at one point there are dinosaurs. Yes, dinosaurs. There’s a scene of CGI dinosaurs in a primeval forest, and the dinosaurs enact a little pantomime drama for us, and then the scene ends and we go back to the principal domestic plot without any context at all. Oh, but actually, first we have footage of jellyfish swimming, and then asteroids in space, and volcanic eruptions, and THEN we get back to the plight of Lil Sean Penn.
What the hell was that all about? Well, I have my own analysis, and I’m sure plenty of other people do too. And then a lot of people are just confused as hell. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, because no matter how you spin it, “Tree of Life” just isn’t put together the same way as “Moneyball” and “The Help”. It may very well be the best movie of the year...but it’s hard to make an argument for it, because it would depend too much on your point of view. While all criticism is subjective, “Tree of Life” is a movie in which there pretty much is no object.
And there are dinosaurs.
"Hey, I'm late, where's Clooney shooting? If I miss my cue that movie is going to be boring as shit!"
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