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1/31/2012
Oscar-Nominated Short Films 2012
There hasn’t been a closer Oscar race in years. After SAG muddied the waters with its Best Actor (Jean Dujardin), Best Actress (Viola Davis) and Best Cast awards (The Help), there are still no frontrunners in all three major categories. Will gold go to the beloved The Artist? Will Clooney best handsome Frenchman Dujardin? And will Meryl finally triumph again against Davis, who is looking for her first statuette? It’s fitting, then, that this year’s Oscar-Nominated Short Films 2012 are as hard to call. Will the animation award go to the redoubtable Pixar (La ...
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1/18/2012
Albert NobbsStarring Glenn Close, Janet McTeer, Mia Wasikowska
As a male waiter in 19th century Dublin, Albert Nobbs (Close) disguises her gender to keep her job. The film—handsomely made but totally vacant—gets at the issue of how gender roles of the Victorian era were constructed. But Albert Nobbs is alternately fascinating and frustrating as it depicts its title character’s knotty sexuality. Watching the tightly wound Close not express herself is where her Oscar-baiting performance is best. In presenting Nobbs’ stifling self-control, there is no feeling for the character and her situation; Close’s ‘mannish’ performance is often too mannered. A ...
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1/4/2012
Addiction Incorporated
In this day and age of Nicorette, nicotine patches and electric cigarettes, it’s hard to believe that it was once a secret that tobacco/nicotine is addictive. Well, it was—a secret that the evil f*ckers at big tobacco companies like Philip Morris went to great, diabolical lengths to keep under wraps. Dr. Victor DeNoble was one of the key figures and whistleblowers, hired by Philip Morris to create a “safer” cigarette during the 1980s but in the process established just how addictive nicotine is. He’s a charismatic speaker, compelling, and he’s one of the central talking heads in Charles ...
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12/20/2011
The Flowers of WarStarring Christian Bale, Ni Ni
The Flowers of War—set against the 1937 devastation of Nanjing, China, by the Japanese—is an imperfect epic. Directed by Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern), with Christian Bale as the wartime mortician John Miller, this is a war film flecked with grace. It doesn’t skimp on scenes of wrenching violence (the first 30 minutes are especially fraught), though Yimou’s work is delicately intimate as he involves us in the lives of young girls at a Catholic refuge, the rapscallion mortician played by Bale and a group of working women hiding ...
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12/6/2011
Angels CrestStarring Thomas Dekker, Lynn Collins, Jeremy Piven
Urgent music, artful images and anguished emoting—Angels Crest is an indie drama with a capital D—for depressing. Ethan (Kaboom’s Dekker) leaves his sleeping three-year-old in a truck during a blizzard and the boy disappears/dies. The event shatters the boy’s mother, Cindy (Collins), an alcoholic sleeping with Ethan’s best friend. The local D.A. (Piven), who has his own baggage regarding a dead son, investigates the crime, asking folks like lesbians Jane (Elizabeth McGovern) and Roxy (Kate Walsh) about Ethan’s parenting skills. The film leaves little doubt about Ethan’s (ir)responsibility, making ...
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11/22/2011
I Melt with YouStarring Thomas Jane, Rob Lowe, Jeremy Piven, Christian McKay
Friends since college, the four 44-year-olds in I Melt with You—the would-be writer Richard (Jane); the depressed, divorced doctor, Jonathan (Lowe); the loaded and legally troubled Ron (Piven); and the grieving gay guy Tim (McKay)—meet up for an annual reunion weekend. They ingest copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. They also participate in plenty of sobering male bonding (while hungover, of course). They mostly discuss how their lives didn’t quite turn out the way they thought they would. Then one day an incident shakes up these disillusioned ...
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11/9/2011
The ArtistStarring Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman
Hysterically in love with cinema—and often hysterically funny—The Artist is a great comeback for silent movies. The film opens with the image of George Valentin (Dujardin) getting electroshock treatment. He screams, but no sound is heard. “I won’t talk!” he says, according to the intertitles—and he doesn’t. Not to the baddies in the film-within-a-film, and not to the audience. The Artist is full of such clever double meanings and sight gags. George is a silent star who helps a plucky and charming young extra, Peppy Miller (Bejo), rise to fame. ...
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10/25/2011
5 Star DayStarring Cam Gigandet, Jena Malone, Max Hartman
Why is 5 Star Day a two-star movie? It’s not because Cam Gigandet isn’t adorable—though he could have taken his shirt off more. It’s because this lame film about disproving astrology is often illogical. Writer/director Danny Buday has student Jake (Gigandet) losing his job, his girlfriend and flooding his apartment on his birthday. So he travels across the country looking for other people who were born on the same day/around the same time as he was to see if they all had “five star days.” Why he didn’t just find ...
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10/6/2011
The Double
Starring Richard Gere, Topher Grace, Stephen Moyer
Let’s get what’s wrong with The Double out of the way first. It’s shot (by Jeffrey L. Kimball) and edited (by Steve Mirkovich) like a TV procedural (albeit a good one). John Debney’s score is nearly a satire on film music—before the titles even came up, my viewing partner asked if we were watching a thriller. And neither Richard Gere nor Topher Grace are all they could be as FBI agents Paul Shepherdson and Ben Geary, respectively. (Stephen Moyer of True Blood is laughable in a small role as a Russian ...
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9/27/2011
Dirty Girl
Starring Juno Temple, Jeremy Dozier, Nicholas D’Agosto
In Dirty Girl, Temple gives a skillful performance as the saucy title character Danielle, and newcomer Dozier distinguishes himself as her queer co-conspirator, Clarke. But this mismatched comedy-drama-cum-road movie about a mismatched couple on the lam from his dad (Dwight Yoakam)—and in search of hers—never quite excites. In 1987 Norman, Okla., high school whore Danielle gets kicked out of sex ed and sent to the remedial class. She is partnered with virginal outcast Clarke on a project—they must treat a bag of flour as their baby (obviously reinforcing the film’s family ...
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