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Jan. 22nd, 2008
More and more the few films I want to see I wait for the DVD, so I've only seen four Oscar-nominated films so far this year.
There Will Be Blood - If this is a great film, I'd rather be a philistine. So obsessed with itself as a showcase for Great Acting that it forgets to be coherent or even make much sense. Many otherwise enthusiastic reviewers have called the final scene a grotesque miscalculation, but for me the entire film was like that. For one thing, that final scene is a deliberate counterpoint to earlier scenes which were just as stupid. (If you want to know what happens without having to watch the movie, see these spoilers.) The best thing about this movie is the score (alas, it did not get an Oscar nomination), much of which sounds like Giacinto Scelsi. Wild!
Charlie Wilson's War - This one I enjoyed. It has superb acting that doesn't call attention to itself (after watching this film, I went home and pulled out my old videotape of Big, just to savor the range of Tom Hanks's acting ability), and it makes captivating and lucid sense out of a complex and potentially boring subject. My objections are extra-cinematic and concern its relation to the real world. This film makes war sound both easy and fun, and it neglects to mention that those noble Afghan insurgents later became known as the Taliban. Oops. Sorry, Charlie.
Ratatouille - B. disliked this because she doesn't like rats. I thought it was OK, a tribute to what can be done with animation these days, but nothing worth writing home about. The basic problem was that the plotting was slack and meandering, a fatal flaw in a story that's essentially a fairy tale. Shrek worked, in the first place, because the fairy tale plot was a classic, and was as tight as a drum. Start with something like that, and then we'll see what you can do with the actual writing and the animation and the geegaws.
Juno - Wasn't at all sure I'd like this, but it was good enough to make me momentarily forget Citizen Ruth. It's not an exterior-focused film like that one, but a very interior-focused one that, though it concerns a pregnant teen who wants to give up her baby, is not really about the adoption process at all. The real subject, I think, is the interaction between romantic and parental love in people's lives, and all ends happily except for one character who doesn't quite get it. What's amazing, especially for a film discussing sex, is that there is not one speck, tittle, or jot of sniggering, at anybody. One thing Juno has in common with Blood: I liked the music. Here it's drugstore scrap songs: untrained voice, weird lyrics, and a guitar.
Of the other Best Picture nominees besides Blood and Juno, the one I want to see on DVD is Michael Clayton, largely because George Clooney is in it; and another nominee in other categories that I want to see on DVD, and this one B. wants to see too, is Enchanted.
ETA: But I don't want to see Atonement, because even the favorable reviews have given me the impression summarized by Jon Carroll's comment: "What is the big deal about 'Atonement'? It's like a 'Masterpiece Theatre' played at half speed. Vanessa Redgrave comes on 10 minutes before the end and makes all the other actors look as though they were dead, which they may have been. Academy Award? Please."
There Will Be Blood - If this is a great film, I'd rather be a philistine. So obsessed with itself as a showcase for Great Acting that it forgets to be coherent or even make much sense. Many otherwise enthusiastic reviewers have called the final scene a grotesque miscalculation, but for me the entire film was like that. For one thing, that final scene is a deliberate counterpoint to earlier scenes which were just as stupid. (If you want to know what happens without having to watch the movie, see these spoilers.) The best thing about this movie is the score (alas, it did not get an Oscar nomination), much of which sounds like Giacinto Scelsi. Wild!
Charlie Wilson's War - This one I enjoyed. It has superb acting that doesn't call attention to itself (after watching this film, I went home and pulled out my old videotape of Big, just to savor the range of Tom Hanks's acting ability), and it makes captivating and lucid sense out of a complex and potentially boring subject. My objections are extra-cinematic and concern its relation to the real world. This film makes war sound both easy and fun, and it neglects to mention that those noble Afghan insurgents later became known as the Taliban. Oops. Sorry, Charlie.
Ratatouille - B. disliked this because she doesn't like rats. I thought it was OK, a tribute to what can be done with animation these days, but nothing worth writing home about. The basic problem was that the plotting was slack and meandering, a fatal flaw in a story that's essentially a fairy tale. Shrek worked, in the first place, because the fairy tale plot was a classic, and was as tight as a drum. Start with something like that, and then we'll see what you can do with the actual writing and the animation and the geegaws.
Juno - Wasn't at all sure I'd like this, but it was good enough to make me momentarily forget Citizen Ruth. It's not an exterior-focused film like that one, but a very interior-focused one that, though it concerns a pregnant teen who wants to give up her baby, is not really about the adoption process at all. The real subject, I think, is the interaction between romantic and parental love in people's lives, and all ends happily except for one character who doesn't quite get it. What's amazing, especially for a film discussing sex, is that there is not one speck, tittle, or jot of sniggering, at anybody. One thing Juno has in common with Blood: I liked the music. Here it's drugstore scrap songs: untrained voice, weird lyrics, and a guitar.
Of the other Best Picture nominees besides Blood and Juno, the one I want to see on DVD is Michael Clayton, largely because George Clooney is in it; and another nominee in other categories that I want to see on DVD, and this one B. wants to see too, is Enchanted.
ETA: But I don't want to see Atonement, because even the favorable reviews have given me the impression summarized by Jon Carroll's comment: "What is the big deal about 'Atonement'? It's like a 'Masterpiece Theatre' played at half speed. Vanessa Redgrave comes on 10 minutes before the end and makes all the other actors look as though they were dead, which they may have been. Academy Award? Please."