"The Social Network" (2010) -
Columbia Pictures
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"The Social Network" (2010)  |  |  |
This reminds me of a similar debate from last year, when I said the same thing about Avatar. I said it before the nominations, I said it after the nominations, I said "The Academy may be dumb sometimes, but not Avatar for Best Picture dumb." And I maintain that now, here, in this Awards season, the Academy is still not that dumb. The Academy is not The King's Speech is Best Picture dumb. Or a more accurate statement would be "The Academy is not The Kings Speech is Best Picture Old Fashioned." Maybe in 1954. Maybe even in 2004. But not in 2011.
Now, don't get angry. If you loved The King's Speech, I am not aiming to insult you, it is definitely a good movie. It has Emmy written all over the delightful Masterpiece Theater-esque script, cinematography & direction. But the only, and I mean ONLY thing that elevates The King's Speech from good ol' PBS quality (other than the film grain...) are the performances, most specifically Colin Firth's, and he will be rewarded for it.
Also, the idea that BRITISH AS HELL movie in The King's Speech is poised to clean up at the BRITISH FILM AWARDS shouldn't surprise anyone in any universe. Does anyone understand how rare and beautiful a thing it is when an AMERICAN studio movie is as good, relevant, successful & well received on all levels as The Social Network is? Cinematical writer & film buff David Ehrlich will rarely consider an American studio picture as worthy of his top five, but The Social Network is his #2 (behind Certified Copy, technically a 2011 release.) I've heard arguments that the "people who overlap the voting bodies for the BAFTAs and the Oscars overlap more than the Globes and the Oscars, therefore..." But, was anyone arguing against that fact? Did anyone ever offer the argument that the Globes influence the Oscars because they share voting members? Didn't think so. My hair is SUCH a bird.
Not to mention, once you remove the BAFTA overlap, there are still thousands of AMPAS members remaining. The closest number anyone has been able to estimate, in terms of overlap, is roughly 1000. There are just under 6000 members of AMPAS. Plus, the BAFTAs are notorious for having an obvious and acceptable bias towards British film. Most importantly, in the past 11 years, the BAFTAs and the Oscars have only agreed on Best Picture four times. That's not even half. NOT EVEN HALF. OF THE TIME. LESS than HALF. You with me?
A conventional, safe British film about a 20th century king, consisting mostly of close-ups and sentiment is not going to win Best Picture in a year where the competition involves an astonishingly original science fiction movie, the return of the Western, a new & unconventional story about a new & unconventional family dynamic, a hallucinatory extravaganza set in the world of ballet - even The Fighter isn't the typical schmaltz-fest the trailers made us think it was. The best movies in 2010 were not Oscar bait, they've been original, innovative, creative, often times genre-bending, and in the case of The Social Network, perfectly scripted, acted, directed, edited and relevant.
One thing I'll grant you -- in such a predictable year, having something to root against is fun, it at least allows for a tiny bit of suspense come February 27. But don't kid yourselves. The King's Speech doesn't ACTUALLY have a chance. And can we please take a moment to appreciate that fact? This is a good thing, guys. The Academy is
nt rom-com.
"No Strings Attached" (2011) - Paramount Pictures
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"No Strings Attached" (2011)  |  |  |
 | "A perfectly acceptable romantic comedy." |
No Strings Attached kind of wants to pretend that it came up with the idea of friends with benefits, that somehow this concept has gone long undiscussed and by gum, it's time to have a real exploration of this important issue facing our society. "Can there be sex without someone getting hurt?" The film begs us to consider, and from the get-go it seems impossible. The problem is veteran director Ivan Reitman isn't breaking new ground or exploring anything other than the very modern and deeply ingrained desire to have it all, and we as an audience are pitted against the characters even as we cheer them on toward a relationship as they make a halfhearted attempt to keep it simple. Love seems to need obstacles to overcome, and the obstacles in this case aren't time- or space- or family-related, but are the fears and concerns that make up our everyday lives.
Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) play longtime friends who decide to make a go of it, trading on their mutual attraction for a sexual relationship with no expectations. She's the busy doctor who can't commit and doesn't believe in love anyway, he's the goofy romantic Hollywood assistant who's willing to take her on her terms. So far so good. With each of them daring the other one to fall in love, it seems obvious from the start that they're perfect for each other. We follow them through their non-relationship, complete with secret trysts, emotional complications, family dinners, and various obligations as they attempt to navigate their own feelings as well as the problems that keep a relationship from happening.
Coming off the serious dramatic success of Black Swan and her heralded performance in it, Natalie Portman is only acceptable in her coldhearted and steadfast refusal to be swept away by emotions. Ashton Kutcher plays a slightly less hyper version of himself, all grinning excitement and boyish charm, filled with so much zest for life and patient understanding that it's a little exhausting just to watch this saint of a human deal with the rest of the civilians. The supporting cast is a vast crew of friendly faces, including Kevin Kline as the preposterous and blustery father of Ashton Kutcher's character; Greta Gerwig and Mindy Kaling as Portman's BFFs; Cary Elwes as a distinguished doctor; and the surprising Lake Bell, who stands out above all else as an awkward and timid co-worker looking for love.
No Strings Attached isn't particularly funny; the comedic moments are mostly tired-out tropes that would have been annoying a decade ago. Yet the film is realistic in some ways, and a complete lie in many others, but at its worst it's still a perfectly acceptable romantic comedy. The female characters are capable and strong, if not a little silly, the men are full of bravado and machismo that melts away when it needs to, and there's a dearth of idiotic one-liners (only one violent offender springs to mind). And let's hear it for a film that is set in Los Angeles that actually utilizes the city: Adam is an (improbably attractive) assistant with writer aspirations on a TV show that is Glee-esque, Emma hangs out downtown, and the pair even end up at the very recognizable L.A. County Museum of Art. Whereas 500 Days of Summer tried to convince us that Los Angeles was really more like San Francisco or New York, No Strings Attached likes Los Angeles the way it is, just brighter and cleaner. No Strings Attached won't surprise or enthrall you, but it's a fine way to spend a few hours.
"The Way Back" (2010) - Newmarket Films
| | "A worthy venture." |
The Way Back begins with a spoiler: In 1941, three men trudged into India after walking 4,000 miles from Siberia. This is their story. Our question as we watch the movie: Which three will it be?
The film is loosely based on Slawomir Rawicz's 1956 book The Long Walk, a bestselling account of the author's journey after escaping a Russian gulag. The story's veracity has been rather strenuously questioned since then, and the film is only "inspired by" the book anyway, so it's best not to keep thinking, "Wow, this really happened!," because a lot of it probably didn't.
Fiction or not, though, it's an amazing story of survival, directed by Peter Weir (The Truman Show, Witness) with his usual serious, workmanlike skill. It's a good enough film, and what keeps it from being better might be endemic to the story. The tale of a 4,000-mile walk is almost unavoidably going to have some lag time.
The benefits of putting a prison camp in Siberia are obvious, as summarized by one of the guards early on: "Nature is your jailer, and she is without mercy." Even if inmates escape from the gulag itself, they have a few hundred miles of frozen wilderness to contend with.
Having established the stakes, The Way Back proceeds to tell about some people who do escape from the gulag and who do face the natural perils thereafter. They are an odd assortment of different types, including a Polish dissident (Jim Sturgess), a cryptic American (Ed Harris), an actual criminal (Colin Farrell) -- most of the inmates are merely political prisoners -- and a handful of others. (Sebastian Urzendowsky, Alexandru Potocean, Dragos Bucur, and Gustaf Skarsgard -- a German, two Romanians, and a Swede -- round out the multinational cast.) There are some fatalities that thin the ranks, and a teenage girl, played by Saoirse Ronan (Atonement), who joins the group mid-trek.
For a good long while the film's depictions of hardship and deprivation are the kind that inspire awe and respect in audience members, who will feel very grateful to have warm places to sleep tonight. (If they do not have warm places to sleep tonight, at least they can take comfort in knowing they are not in Siberia. If they are in Siberia, then I don't know what to tell them.) Weir, working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Keith R. Clarke, conveys the toll of such a journey -- physically, mentally, hygienically -- realistically without dwelling on the grosser aspects. He doesn't pull punches, though. This isn't the kind of long-distance movie trek where everyone arrives at their destination with smooth skin and healthy teeth. (Not for nothing was the film shortlisted for the Oscars' makeup category.)
After a while, though, the journey grows repetitive. I know, I know -- think how it must have felt for them. But from a storytelling standpoint, this is a problem. After conquering one obstacle, the group simply faces another one. We got past the freezing cold; now we're in the boiling desert. Good-bye wolves, hello mosquitoes. There are new challenges, but no new developments or characterization. The dynamic within the group evolves the way you'd expect, tension giving way to camaraderie, and there are some nice, human moments with the band of refugees. The whole thing is beautifully photographed (on location, not in a studio) by Russell Boyd, who won an Oscar for his cinematography on Weir's Master and Commander.
Eventually the film itself is something of an endurance test, and not as rewarding as it hopes to be. But it's a worthy venture, earnest and well-produced and occasionally gripping.
Fuzzy Recollections on Total Recall
Elisabeth Rappe struggles to remember anything about the 1990 Mars adventure.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid - "Total Recall" (1990) - TriStar Pictures
But I have very curious gaps. Everything prior to 1995 is a bit hazy, including the movies I saw. They all sort of blur together into one hallucinogenic memory of Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Starman, The Flight of the Navigator, and The Neverending Story II. I'm always amazed when friends and colleagues no older (and often younger!) than I rattle off memories of seeing Back to the Future, as I only remember seeing E.T. That's my clearest childhood movie memory. Otherwise it's just a barrage of Jeff Bridges, robots, aliens, and luck dragons that adulthood has had to untangle into separate stories.
Now, I mention all of this because my beloved editor, Laremy Legel, asked that I write about the 2012 Colin Farrell remake of Total Recall, and what we could expect from it. It was meant to be another installment in the grand tradition of our "What to Expect When You're Expecting" features.
Well, the resulting piece was all about how cool it would be to see Farrell as a gamer recruited as a gunner for alien defense, and how applicable that was to our modern gaming systems. I must have spent a paragraph gushing about how dramatic the crash on Mars would be, and how much better the popping eyeballs would be with modern CGI.
Surprise! Guess who mixed Total Recall and The Last Starfighter up. My bad. I've seen Total Recall twice, but both viewings were pre-1995. Also, I only ever saw it edited for television, which undoubtedly colors my perception even further.
Laremy was pretty shocked, but he found a way to turn lemons into deadline-meeting lemonade. He tied me down in a desk chair (it was the closest we had to a memory machine) and demanded I recall all I knew about Total Recall. Here's the transcript ....
1. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays some kind of bookish nerdy guy, who is married to Sharon Stone. He's feeling tired and overworked, and he decides he wants to go to Mars. Sharon Stone looks at him funny, and says they can't afford it.
2. Schwarzenegger decides he will fake a trip to Mars. This is a future where you can take mental vacations, and implant sexy memories of Mars. He goes to the memory alteration place, and then everything goes wrong. He freaks out and breaks the equipment.3. The doctors either tell him they can't implant the memories, and he goes home to experience acid flashbacks, or he does it right there. I can't remember. Either way, he begins to remember that he actually has been to Mars and that his entire life with Sharon Stone is a lie. They used this same memory generator to cook him a new life because they needed to prevent him from doing something heroic and Arnold Schwarzeneggery.
4. He goes to Mars to try and uncover his past. He is wearing a cool jacket, and is no longer bookish and nerdy.
5. He meets a mutant girl, and a lady with three breasts. I've never actually seen her topless since they always edited that bit for television. Oddly, they didn't edit out the popping eyeballs or the mutant people. Only breasts are bad things.
6. It turns out that whoever Schwarzenegger was, he was involved with a beautiful brunette hooker/action heroine/secret agent who is really furious he doesn't remember her.
7. Sharon Stone shows up, fights him, and Schwarzenegger kills her. There is some kind of witty and sarcastic quip here.8. The evil plot he must uncover has something to do with oxygen supply to Mars. The fans slowly turn off, and the little mutant girl looks so sad.
9. There's a mutant guy with a twin/clone/good lord what is that living in his belly. This is the part that was referenced on South Park. I remember being as nauseous as I was during Aliens. He has a prophecy for Schwarzenegger, which is really kind of odd, but at this point anything goes.
10. The big fight over the oxygen supply leads Arnold and Brunette Lady to go outside, where their eyes pop out of their heads. I remember this so vividly because it was also in the back of some movie magazine I had, and I finally had to tear the page out because it freaked me out so badly. At the time, I had no idea it was from Total Recall, but my friends did!
11. Whatever the conspiracy is, they're able to render the fans obsolete, and oxygen floods everywhere through Mars. Their eyes magically go back into their heads at the whisper of a breeze. This is medically impossible.
12. The end.
Yes, I know. I really should see Total Recall again. Especially since I can't remember how the whole joke about the three seashells fits in ... oh wait. That's 1993's Demolition Man. Clearly, I need Total Recall, on the double.
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