In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail in Rampart.
The searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor. Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.
If you still need to catch up on the Oscar winners, you can see the Best Picture Oscar winning The Artist and the rockem sockem thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,
I have also commented onSteven Spielberg’s War Horse, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady, the feminist action thriller Haywire and Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
Oscar deserving Michele Williams (with Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller) in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
I’m really not too exercised about tonight’s Oscars because I trust that it will a good night for my favorites among the nominated films: The Artist and The Descendants. Most of the nominations are relatively deserved, so it’s not like two years ago, when I was gnashing my teeth over the battle between The Hurt Locker (my fave) and Avatar (NOT my fave).
I am really rooting for Michele Williams to win the Best Actress Oscar. Her performance is deserving, and she warrants recognition as the best of our younger actresses – and one who bravely picks quality scripts (Brokeback Mountain, Wendy and Lucy, Blue Valentine).
If you’re betting, the three biggest locks are Christopher Plummer for Supporting Actor, Rango for Animated Feature and A Separation for Foreign Language Picture.
Oscar nominated Berenice Bejo in (and married in real life to the Oscar nominated director of) THE ARTIST
It’s Oscar Weekend, your chance to catch up with the magical silent romance The Artist, Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) family drama The Descendants with George Clooney, Martin Scorsese’s revelatory 3D tale Hugo, the rockem sockem thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and the searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation.
Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor. Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.
I have also commented onSteven Spielberg’s War Horse, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady, the very odd fable Albert Nobbs, the feminist action thriller Haywire and Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
I haven’t yet seen the Woody Harrelson police corruption thriller Rampart, which opens this weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick of (last) week is Drive starring Ryan Gosling, a stylishly violent noir tale unfolding on a brilliantly filmed canvas.
You might ask what the script of a silent movie looks like. Well, here’s the screenplay for The Artist, a film with only three lines of spoken dialogue (and a fourth line while the credits roll). BTW in a silent movie, the cards that pop up between live action shots are called “intertitles”.
In the crowd, a young woman right at the front is staring at him in rapture. She drops her bag and, as she bends to pick it up, a swell in the crowd pushes her underneath the arms of the policeman in front of her, out of the crowd and into George. She stares at him, more in love than ever, delighted to be there. The police wait for someone to give orders. George doesn’t quite know what to do. Nobody moves. The young woman finally bursts out laughing, which, after a moment of shock, causes George to laugh too, thus placating the cops and tacitly signaling to the photographers that they can take pictures of the scene. The flashes seem to lend the woman self-confidence who, in a very carefree manner, begins to clown about in front of them. George is delighted at the sight, by the whole scene and, realizing this, the young woman steals a kiss. Flash. The image becomes static, then dissolves into the printed picture on the front page of “The Hollywood Reporter” newspaper, along with three other pictures of the scene and the headline WHO’S THAT GIRL?
George Clooney and Shailene Woodley in THE DESCENDANTS
The best films in theaters are the magical silent romance The Artist, Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) family drama The Descendants with George Clooney, Martin Scorsese’s revelatory 3D tale Hugo, the rockem sockem thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and the searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation.
I have also commented onSteven Spielberg’s War Horse, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady, the very odd fable Albert Nobbs, the feminist action thriller Haywire and Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
If you’re going to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a romantic movie tonight, I recommend the magical romance The Artist.
Although they are excellent films, tonight I would avoid the two films of marital breakdown, The Descendants and A Separation. You don’t want to kill the mood.
Or you could stream Franco Zefferelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet, with its ultra romantic score by Nino Rota. It’s an exceptionally beautiful film, which won Oscars for cinematography and costume design.
Some of the year’s very best films are in theaters now. I especially recommend these four:
The Artist: A magical romance given us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.
The Descendants: Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) family drama is set in Hawaii and contains a brilliant performance by George Clooney.
Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s revelatory 3D tale of an orphan living in the bowels of a 1920s Paris train station who strives to survive by his wits, keep his independence and solve the puzzle of an discarded automaton.
I highly recommend A Separation, the searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama, but it’s a tough watch. It’s a cinch for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
Here are my comments on some other current films, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady and the very odd fable Albert Nobbs.
This week’s lightweight pick is the feminist action thriller Haywire. My heavyweight pick is Ralph Fiennes’ very fienne contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
I haven’t yet seen the Denzel Washington spy thriller Safe House, which opens this week. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
Some of the year’s very best films are in theaters now. I especially recommend these four:
The Artist: A magical romance given us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.
The Descendants: Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) family drama is set in Hawaii and contains a brilliant performance by George Clooney.
Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s revelatory 3D tale of an orphan living in the bowels of a 1920s Paris train station who strives to survive by his wits, keep his independence and solve the puzzle of an discarded automaton.
Here are my comments on some other current films, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady and the very odd fable Albert Nobbs. Plus, I liked the lightweight feminist action thriller Haywire.
I haven’t yet seen A Separation or Pina 3D, which open this week. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
The Oscar nominations are out, and there are few of the head scratching inclusions and omissions that we frequently see. Of the Best Picture nominations, The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo and Midnight in Paris all made my Best Movies of 2011. Although they didn’t make my Best of the Year list, War Horse and Moneyball are very good movies that I recommend. I haven’t yet seen The Help, which is, by all accounts, a fine film. Although I hated The Tree of Life, it was the biggest art film of the year and much praised by mainstream critics. The one jaw dropper is the critically scorned Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which exploits 9/11 in the pursuit of a three hankie weeper.
My biggest disappointments were the snubbing of Michael Shannon’s performance in Take Shelter and the innovative screenplay by Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman for Young Adult.
The acting categories seem a little light to me this year with the exception of Best Actress, with two performances for the ages by Michele Williams in My Week with Marilyn and Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady.
One of the most rewarding aspects of watching movies is seeing the emergence of new talent. Here are some pleasant surprises from the past year.
1. Denis Villenueve: Because Incendies is anything but stagey, you can’t tell that this little known French-Canadian director adapted the screenplay from a play. In fact, he created the most gripping film of the year.
2. Jessica Chastain: She’s on everybody’s “breakthrough” list for a damn good reason. First, she delivered a fine performance as an enabling 1950s mom in the most coherent part of The Tree of Life. She followed that with a riveting performance as a 1960s Mossad agent (the younger version of Helen Mirren’s character) in the thriller The Debt. In Take Shelter, she plays a well-grounded housewife who must deal with a mentally disintegrating husband. She won critical praise for the trashy but aspiring housewife in a film I haven’t seen – The Help. She’s a tough cop in The Texas Killing Fields. And then she’s in Ralph Fiennes’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
Six movies in six months – that’s quite a way to start a career. And she’s at the top of her game in all of them, playing soft and tough, brittle and sexy, action and romance.
3. Nicholas Winding Refn: With apologies to Ryan Gosling, Refn is the real star of the vivid and compelling Drive. He has a great eye and a great sense of pacing, and could produce a masterpiece with the right material.
4. Michel Hazanavicius: He came out of nowhere to strike gold with The Artist. Who would think to make a silent film today? Everyone will want to see what he can come up with next.
5. Shailene Woodley: Her performance is absolutely essential to the success of The Descendants. It’s not just that she perfectly plays a bratty teenager, but that we can see that some of her brattiness is hormonal and some of it is entirely voluntary and manipulative. Woodley had to convincingly play a character who is at times self-centered and shallow, but who can rally and reach within herself to serve as the family glue and support her dad and little sister.
6. Ben Ripley: The key to Source Code is a breakthrough screenplay by Ben Ripley. In a year with at least some smart action films, Ripley’s is the smartest. He came up with the scifi premise that supersoldier Jake Gyllenhaal can inhabit the brain of a terrorism victim for the same 8 minutes – over and over again. Each time, he has 8 minutes to seek more clues. Can he build the clues into a solution and prevent the terrorist atrocity? Ripley had us on the edge of our seats.
7. Ryan Gosling: He has already established himself as one of our best actors (Half Nelson, All Good Things, Blue Valentine), so why is he on this list? Because this year he has broken out of quirky roles in indies and has carried more mainstream films. He proved that he can play an action star (Drive) and also be the funniest guy in a Steve Carell comedy (Stupid Crazy Love). And he proved that he can carry a George Clooney movie as the male lead holding his own with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti (The Ides of March). He could be looking at a Clooney/Hanks/Nicholson career.
