In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Movies that Oscar missed

    As film junkies, we all know it happens. Usually every single year there are one or more films the Academy passes over for Best Picture consideration, in some cases because there are, after all, just five slots available, but in others because, well — they blew it.

    Like the rest of you, I sit and listen to the nominees announced live every January and have never had a year when I did not roll my head and ask to no one in particular, “Where is such and such or so and so?”

    I mean for me, the great honor is the nomination, because when “Kramer vs. Kramer” defeats “Apocalypse Now” for Best Picture, how can you possibly take the winners seriously? However, a nomination — that is decidedly different.

    Where was the Best Picture nod for John Ford’s masterful “The Searchers,” arguably the greatest American western ever made? And Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” which redefined the horror genre?

    Since 1980 there have been a number of truly brilliant films passed over, leaving this critic often shaking his head in disgust, though I get over quick enough to watch the damned awards…talk about hooked. But it amazes me how “The Empire Strikes Back” can be a better film than “Star Wars,” yet not be nominated in the big race. Ditto Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out,” possibly the finest film of his career, ignored in every category despite its artistic mastery. The very same year Milos Forman gave us “Ragtime,” a much stronger film than “Chariots of Fire,” which won the Oscar, or even “On Golden Pond,” one of the five nominees!

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  • New poll

    In lieu of a decent talking point surrounding this year’s somewhat underwhelming Cannes fest, I thought I’d keep it simple this week and grab an assessment on this weekend’s blockbuster. Tell us where you stand in the new poll.

  • No surprises as Cannes jury surprises

    Well, I missed that one badly. As is so often the case, the Cannes jury threw a curveball, handing their top prize to a late-breaking film that had generated very few column inches. Admittedly, I should have paid more attention to “The Class,” French auteur Laurent Cantet’s school-based docudrama.

    I was a huge fan of Cantet’s 2001 film “Time Out,” an ingeniously constructed character study, and while his 2005 follow-up “Heading South” was a major disappointment, Cantet’s name on the competition list should have rung more bells – not least when the very warm reviews started rolling in yesterday. Variety called it “one of the most substantive and purely entertaining movies in competition at Cannes this year.”

    Congratulations to Cantet then, and to France, scoring their first home victory at Cannes since “Under Satan’s Sun” triumphed in 1987. The other awards threw up fewer surprises, with Benicio Del Toro taking Best Actor as I, and many others, predicted. Meanwhile, “Three Monkeys” and the Italian one-two punch of “Gomorra” and “Il Divo” all took home major silverware, if not necessarily in the categories that I anticipated.

    I must admit to being shocked that the widely beloved “Waltz With Bashir” went home empty-handed; an omission for which Sean Penn and fellow juror Natalie Portman seemed almost apologetic. No matter: Ari Folman’s animated war documentary leaves the festival with a dedicated following, and I’m certainly putting it on my Best Animated Feature shortlist.

    The full list of competition winners follows:

    Palme d’Or: “The Class”

    Grand Jury Prize: “Gomorra”

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  • Cannes: uneducated guesses

    Well, it’s almost over. The competition films have all been screened, picked over and digested by the world’s critics, and now all that’s left to do is that finicky business of handing out some prizes. Sean Penn and his formidable jury (Marjane Satrapi, Alfonso Cuaron and Natalie Portman are just some of those involved) will be deliberating over a crop of films that has generally been deemed a solid selection, with few outright “Brown Bunny”-style disasters.

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  • Where have you gone, Al Pacino?

    It has been more than 30 years since Al Pacino gave his career-defining performance as cold blooded Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part II.” He radiated quiet danger the moment he appeared on screen without ever raising his voice or allowing his mouth to wrap its way around words and spit them out like venom.

    While a one-two punch of “88 Minutes” and “Righteous Kill” slithers its way to theaters this year, audiences are reminded once again that one of the cinema’s all-time legends has immersed himself once again in either sub-par material or, as has become his cliche, the tendency to overreach and overact on his way to becoming a walking spoof of himself.

    There was a time when Pacino was thought of as one of the greatest American actors in movies…period. His work in the 1970s was nothing short of sublime, with strong performances in “The Godfather,” “Serpico,” “Scarecrow,” the aforementioned sequel to Coppola’s study of La Cosa Nostra and “Dog Day Afternoon.” In the latter he gave his most electrifying and properly energized portrayal.

    Along with many of the fresh-faced actors of the day, Pacino owned the decade. Sure he faltered with “Bobby Deerfield,” which meant he was not the type for romantic films…right? Or was this his limitations beginning to become apparent?

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  • Rob Lowe commercial

    I keep seeing this Rob Lowe advertisement for Orange cellular service in the previews segment of films here in London, and I end up laughing my ass off each and every time. I had to share:

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=FsBDUe4UPd0

  • 10 things I hate about ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’

    1) Mac McHale
    In a long line of wonderful secondary characters — Sallah, Marcus Brody, Henry Jones Sr., Short Round — screenwriter David Koepp, and whoever might have made their mark on the screenplay prior, manages to crank out a pointless, unbelievably benign individual who sits in the stomach of the film like a glass of out-dated milk. It’s all the more painful that director Steven Spielberg chose Ray Winstone to portray McHale, forcing the audience to watch a truly great actor suffer under the burden of an under-written throwaway.

    2) The set pieces
    Spielberg is a natural with creating exciting, edge-of-your-seat action numbers, yet he lends a bloated effect to the film in his desire to take everything to 11. They appear to have been filmed at a theme park — and with terrible, seam-revealing CGI to boot! Speaking of which…

    3) The CGI
    A shame throughout, making the already clumsy action scenes all the more sore on the eyes. This is a breach of religion, if you ask me, especially when one considers Spielberg’s view on these tools throughout the series. Thank God for saviors like Christopher Nolan, who believe in the practicality of filmMAKING.

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  • Which film will take the Palme d’Or?

    Wells is already speculating and Foote is ready to move on, but let’s think it out here. In a festival that has been a bit underwhelming to most, both artistically for the critics and fiscally for the buyers, someone’s still gotta win best in show.

    Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorra” and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” might be the safe guesses, as both were quite well-received. But the Palme has made a habit of being elusive to the films one would expect to claim it.

    Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” enjoyed a pleasant love-fest for a time, before the director was roughed up by a colleague and then hit a wall of sorts with The New York Times.

    Then there are the fringe possibilities of Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” — mixed on receipt, but that hasn’t stopped efforts in the past — and “Synecdoche, New York” from Charlie Kaufman, which has the benefit of being the last film out of the gate.

    What’s it going to be?

    If I had to bet, I’d say “Three Monkeys.” If I ventured a guess in the midst of rampant unpredictability (which is Cannes in a nutshell), I’d say “Synecdoche, New York.”

    We’ll see how it pans out over the weekend.

  • A.O. Scott on ‘Che’ and ‘Synecdoche’

    Thankfully SOMEONE took some time to properly respond to Steven Soderbergh’s one-two punch of “The Argentine” and “Guerrilla” — “Che,” for the Cannes world premiere. I respect as much as anyone the need to get the reaction out there fast, but more than a few critics were a bit hasty in rounding up extended thoughts hours after the 6:30 screening Wednesday night.

    After all, the film’s first reaction came from Jeffrey Wells, who has paced himself yet and refrained from offering a full-blown review until the dust has at least settled somewhat.

    A.O. Scott’s piece in The New York Times is part-review, part-Cannes immersion study, and he ties his thoughts to a partial reaction to Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.” He doesn’t venture solid opinions on either effort, though he does note that the filmmakers have perhaps raised the bar too high with their previous work to judge these films as anything other than a little disappointing.

    It is regardless an intriguing think piece presenting his American perspective on the global cinema 7-11 that is Cannes:

    This is one of the frustrations of Cannes, for American critics at least. We see lots of fascinating movies — not all good, but very few completely worthless — and then wonder if we, or our readers, will ever see them again. I’m not in the movie business (a mutually beneficial arrangement, believe me), and not inclined to speculate with someone else’s money. I do hope, however, that sometime in the near future I can take part in the long and contentious conversation that “Che” deserves, and also see how my own initial ambivalence about the film resolves itself.

    (Pull-quotes on “Che” and “Synecdoche, New York” after the jump.)

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  • The soon-to-be extinct ‘Benjamin Button’ trailer…

    …looks positively AMAZING. Catch it while you can. I’m sure it’ll get yanked soon enough.

    The visual effects look so exquisite and seamless.  Director David Fincher has supposedly been pretty tight-lipped about his recipe in that arena for a while, but it looks to be a truly unique blend of CGI and makeup artistry.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjnd0wsISY0

    Wow.

  • As Cannes winds down, TIFF looms…

    With Cannes on the downswing, it becomes time to to start making preparations for the annual Toronto International Film Festival, for which screening announcements begin next month. I have been covering Toronto for more than 15 years and can safely say it is Christmas to a film critic.

    Each September I move into the Delta Chelsea Hotel for the duration of the festival — it makes no sense to make the 90 minute drive home each night as the days begin at dawn and often tie into the following morning. My wife and girls make the drive into the the city for the weekend and swim while I screen. And if time permits, I take Sherri to a Gala screening at Roty Thomson Hall.

    Over the course of each festival I see between 30 and 50 films (50 being my personal high, in fact) and though it sounds like tons of fun, and I would not miss it for the world, it is exhausting to say the least.

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  • Festival-goers file out of ‘Synecdoche’

    UPDATE (5:38 a.m.): Allan Hunter of Screen International has written the first full review out of the fest I’ve come across. He raves the effort as follows:

    Synecdoche is about one man’s lifelong struggle to understand the meaning of his existence. Unadventurous audiences may feel the film is a two hour struggle to understand the meaning of its intentions but as the story appears to move in ever decreasing circles, it remains incredibly engaging and ultimately very moving. Hoffman gives a bravura performance that provides the film with all the focus it requires, capturing everything about Caden that makes him immensely sympathetic and instantly recognizable as a symbol of everyone on planet earth who is…struggling with the challenges of being human.

    EARLIER: We should be hearing word in the next few hours on Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, “Synecdoche, New York,” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Samantha Morton — and one my most anticipated flicks of the Cannes fest this year.

    Here is Jeff Wells’ one-off, on his way to the post-screening goings-on:

    I’ve just emerged from the semi-nourishing, semi-tortured Fellini-esque Chinese box mindfuck-dreamscape that is Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York…and the press conference is just starting. [Ten minutes later] Kaufman has just explained the title’s pronunciation: Syn-ECK-duh-kee. At least that’s settled.

    Mike Jones at Variety, meanwhile, had some fun yesterday with Croisette-goers about said pronunciation.

    More to come, I’m sure.

  • Actor/movie star — who walks the line the best?

    Continuing the conversation from a few days ago on actors that are more than icons, only one name comes to mind: JACK.

    For more than 40 years Jack Nicholson has been one of the most dominat acting forces in movies, with an impressive array of performances that both challenge him as an artist and also please audiences from time to time with his wild man portrayals.

    In fact, after “Batman,” in which he stole the film from under the nose of Michael Keaton, Nicholson was often accused of playing “Nicholson.” It’s a claim I find absurd considering his performances in subsequent films such as “Hoffa,” “A Few Good Men,” and “The Crossing Guard,” one of his most daring performances ever. Recently the actor has given at least two of his most courageous performances, in “The Pledge” for director Sean Penn, and going totally against type in “About Schmidt,” reminding audiences of the great thespian lurking within the body of the movie star they know so well.

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  • Soderbergh puts himself in the company of Salles

    I stumbled across this zinger today at Anne Thompson’s blog. Obviously I haven’t seen “Che” yet, and want to love it when I do, but this?

    Walter’s movie is really an Act One. With these, now it’s a trilogy.

    Strong words.

  • Hmmm…

    “Che” = “Medellín?”

  • The story so far

    The Times of London has a very handy roundup of the highlights of the Cannes Film Festival thus far, echoing the widespread acclaim for such titles as “Gomorra,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “Waltz With Bashir,” and the long-awaited new film from Terence Davies, “Of Time and the City” – which, while out of competition, has probably been the festival’s most universally adored film so far. They also share my suspicion that Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” may nab the Palme d’Or over the more extravagantly hyped contenders.

  • First ‘Che’ reactions land

    UPDATED (4:15 PM): Not so fast, there.  It seems Anne Thompson has chimed in and sort of doused the flames of passion a bit with a sobering perspective on these two efforts.  The next few hours ought to be interesting as more opinions trickle in.

    Here’s what Anne had to say:

    “A folly.” “A mess.” “Great.” These words came from some of the critics coming out of Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour 18 minute Spanish-language Che Wednesday night. At the end there was slight applause; no boos. My own description: noble failure.

    EARLIER: Jeff Wells is on the ball with quick (probably too quick) reactions to Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” twofer of “The Argentine” and “Guerrilla.” If you ask me, this is the center piece of this year’s Cannes fest and the one I’ve been waiting with bated breath to hear about.

    On “The Argentine” (is it still called this?) Wells had the following to say:

    I know I predicted this based on a reading of Peter Buchman’s script, buy the first half of Steven Soderbergh’s 268-minute Che Guevara epic is, for me, incandescent — a piece of full-on realism about the making of the Cuban revolution that I found utterly believable and politically vibrant and searing.

    It’s what I’d hoped for and more. The tale is the tale, and it’s told straight and true. Benicio Del Toro’s Guevara portrayal is, as expected, a flat-immersion that can’t be a “performance” as much as…I don’t know, some kind of knock-down ass-kick inhabiting. Being, not “acting.”

    And on “Guerrilla,” what will likely be the less awards-ish of the flicks:

    The second half of Che, also known as Guerilla, just got out about a half-hour ago, and equally delighted although it’s a different kind of film — tighter, darker (naturally, given the story). But I’ve been arguing with some colleagues who don’t like either film at all, or don’t think it’s commercial.

    Wells mentions Variety’s Anne Thompson, Cinematical’s Kim Voyner and Glenn Kenny, formerly of Premiere. Each of them attended the screening, so keep an eye on their respective outlets to gauge further reaction.

  • A bit of perspective

    A day after its Cannes premiere, more “Changeling” reviews are coming through, and while the general feeling towards the film is still positive, some high-profile dissenters are emerging. The inestimable Manohla Dargis at The New York Times, usually an Eastwood die-hard, is surprisingly agnostic on the film, particularly with regard to Jolie’s performance:

    Despite Ms. Jolie’s hard work and Mr. Eastwood’s scrupulous attention, the difficult, fairly one-dimensional character fails to take hold. For much of the film, Christine weeps and pleads, begging the police for help and fending off disbelievers. She clings to hope, the problem being that Ms. Jolie, whose off-screen role as Angelina Jolie is so much more vivid and all-consuming than the parts she now plays on screen, this one included, does not come across as a clinger or a whiner or a pleader or even much of a waterworks. Like Joan Crawford, Ms. Jolie seems capable now of only playing variations on herself, which is why she was more persuasive holding back her tears as a steely Mariane Pearl in “A Mighty Heart.”

    On this side of the ocean, meanwhile, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw is distinctly underwhelmed, declaring the film “long, self-conscious and cumbersome.” He goes on to say:

    The film’s heart is very obviously in the right place, but it is trying to be so many things at once: family drama, cop-corruption thriller, child-snatcher nightmare – and, for Jolie, another flight over the cuckoo’s nest, only this time with far more queenly dignity than in Girl, Interrupted. Accompanied with a syrupy musical score to cushion the dramatic blows (and to ensure that the audience isn’t too horrified or upset too early on) this over-long film fails to convey – is in fact afraid of conveying – the real horror of child loss.

    Finally, Jeff Wells has posted his verdict, and while he joins the yea-sayers, he ultimately deems it “not a great film, but a very fine one.”

    Make no mistake, “Changeling” still sounds like a helluva contender, but it’s useful to get some balance of opinion. The industry adores Eastwood, which explains the trade papers’ lyrical reviews; but that doesn’t always make for critical consensus. With another 2008 release still on the cards for Clint, it anyone’s guess how the man’s awards season will play out. He sure keeps the game interesting.    

    As for the whole title issue, there still appears to be confusion – even Eastwood doesn’t know what it’s called. I say they should take a cue from Awards Daily, retitle it “The Changelina,” and stick with it.