Little fantasy but some awards
Movies seen at the start of 2006.
Originally written: April 2006
2006 Oscars
Walk the Line
Aristocrats
Capote
The Memoirs of a Geisha
Brokeback Mountain
Syriana
A History of Violence
Firewall
The 2006 Academy Awards demonstrated two things: in its bestowing of the awards, the Academy is finding the right balance between art and economics in determining who should win the prizes; and the Awards Ceremony itself is moving farther and farther away from being the night of nights in the entertainment business. As the nominated films become less bland and more controversial, the ceremony moves in the opposite direction. Admittedly there are fewer acutely embarrassing moments, and fewer glaringly obvious examples of bad taste, but what is left is so anodyne that it starts to lose its cachet. Now if that reputation was for the declasse and the bathetic, so be it; at least that was something to talk about. Admittedly there were still a few items worth remarking on: Tim Burton's hair, for example, showed that not everyone has become buttoned-down and bourgeois; the stars' faces indicated that too many of them had either spent too much time in the tanning studio or had applied a brown color that was about 5 shades too dark - with J Lo being the stand out in the people of color award (in the light of that it was good to see that our Nic and our Naomi bucked the trend, both looking like they'd spent the Australian summer well and truly indoors); Jennifer Garner, obviously a recent mum, and Hilary Swank were among those that let too much hang out, while Charlize Theron looked as if she had stowed her bounties under a very large bow over her left shoulder; and the less said about Dolly Parton, who combined an awful dress with recent disfiguring cometic surgery and awful make-up and hair to win the annual Bjork Award, the better. In terms of the awards themselves, Reese Witherspoon was the only one to give us a real Sally Fields moment, although she was nowhere near the Gwynneth Paltrow level of hysteria.
CM
is the Featured Attractions Review and Criticism section.
Also in
CM
Alphabetical archive of movies reviewed
also in
Movies
Opening Credits
Critical Mess - Reviews
From the Director's Chair - Essays
Lists
The ceremony wasn't inspiring. Jon Stewart was an able host but appeared to be too witty and sophisticated for his audience. I thought he kept the ceremony moving but lacked the spark of a Billy Crystal or a Whoopi Goldberg. Still, it was step up from David Letterman. The best schtick award goes to Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep awarding a deserved Life Achievement statue to Robert Altman and the worst to the perennially unfunny Ben Stiller. The songs (only 3 this year) were universally badly delivered and the winner (a rap song from Hustle and Flow) goes straight to the top of the worst all-time winners list.
Of the winners, my main whinge was that the awarding of Best Picture to Crash aborted my proposed complaint about the Academy again rewarding the serious and worthy over better picture making. As you will see below, I liked Brokeback Mountain, but it is essentially a very conservative film, for all its gay themes. Crash is much more enterprising and edgy, moving away from linear narrative and relying on an ensemble cast and brilliant editing to make its point. Of the performances I saw (and that covers most of the nominees) my only quibble would be the award to George Clooney - Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Giamatti both delivered far better performances but neither directed another nominated movie. George was awarded more for his versatility than for his performance, in my view. I was very happy to see Ang Lee finally rewarded, and for a movie in which the direction was the outstanding element.
2005 was a good year for good, small, independent pictures. It's a bit of a shame that the showpiece awards ceremony was similarly small.
On the other hand it's been a huge couple of months for good - and some great - films.
Rocking the Cash Machine
In lots of ways, Walk the Line is a retread of Ray, and of many other musical biopics. It is the story of Johnny Cash, a singer who rose from rural southern poverty to some fame, before succumbing to the allure of drugs and girls, abandoning a marriage before finding redemption with a second partner and a renewed career. Because American country music was not prevalent on Australian rock radio in the 1950s and 1960s, I became aware of Cash around the time he made an album of his concert in Folsom Prison. Strangely enough, this film starts with that concert and tells much of the story in flashback, leading up to his reinvigoration of his career. The outstanding aspects of the film are the acting and the songs. Joachim Phoenix (formerly Leaf) has come of age with this performance. It is a nuanced and profound exploration of the demons that haunt the talented and those thrust before their time into the spotlight. Matching him in this film is Reece Witherspoon, ditching the blond locks and the ditzy characterisation, to present a very centred version of June Carter, a veteran country star from a family of country singers, who became Cash's way back. What makes the two central acting roles so good, among other aspects, is that Phoenix and Witherspoon eschew voice doubles and sing the songs themselves (unlike Jamie Foxx in Ray, whose singing was that of Ray Charles). In many ways this is superior film-making, because the tight script and direction keep the story zinging along. The script has a number of insights into the career of Cash and the influence of Carter but falls back, too frequently on by-the-numbers biopic material: the angry, guilt-ridden father; the vulnerable star; the redemption. But the staging of the musical numbers, and the performances of the leads, transcends these drawbacks. The music reminds you of why Cash was such a big, and influential, star and that Carter was something more than just Mrs Cash - she wrote "Ring of Fire", for example, one of the enduring rock-country classics of the late sixties. I enjoyed this far more than I expected, for the reasons noted above, and I think that in the end the Academy got it right when it nominated the two stars (and she won) but neither the movie nor the director. Recommended.
It's a joke, Joyce
The Aristocrats is one of the more fascinating documentaries in an era when docos have become one of the more interesting genres. The McGuffin here is a joke, one that has been told for generations among comedians as a sort of shibboleth - a password that distinguishes them from the mundane population who are not comedians. Paul Provenza has made this film, not just be having a number of comedians retell the joke, but by having them discuss it, its implications, variations and derivations. The older comics tell it as a brief and slightly dirty joke, with an emphasis on toilet humor; their younger compatriots have expanded it, turned it into a genuine shaggy dog story where the emphasis is on the level of offensive detail that can be squeezed into the retelling, and added as much confronting sexual content as can be borne. The third wave of comedians have then started playing around with the joke, creating surreal riffs on it: one of my favorite sequences in the doco was the telling of the joke by a mime artist. In essence the joke has an agent describing an act to a booker. The comedian packs the offensive and confronting material into a description of the act. The punchline concerns the name of the act. The joke does not work because of the punchline; it works through the improvisation that the comic comes up with the describe the act. In many ways the doco works the same way. By finding a variety of ways of telling the joke, and a variety of ways of discussing its history and its implications, Provenza has provided a unique insight into a neglected sub-culture, and produced a great documentary. This is not a film that will appeal to all: it contains graphic material, confronting language; and deliberately offensive content. But it also contains some of the funniest sequences, some genuinely thigh-slapping material. When Gilbert Gottfried outs the joke at a Roast of Hugh Hefner a week or so after 11/9/01 and you see the hilarity of his fellow comedians and the utter bewilderment of Hefner, you have one of the great scenes on film. Not for the faint-hearted or easily offended but recommended for the broad-minded.
To Mock a Killingbird
I didn't have the best seat in the house for Capote. In fact, at the preview we attended, we arrived late and were forced to sit in the front row, leaning back over the top of the seat in order to see the screen. Nonetheless, despite this handicap, I found this an outstanding piece of film-making, with perhaps the best performance by an actor of an historical character I have seen. The film takes place at a time when Truman Capote is a well-known writer, having already published, among other books, Breakfast at Tiffany's. When he reads of the homicide of a family in Kansas, he sees the possibility of a magazine article or two. Travelling with his childhood friend, Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), whose only novel (To Kill a Mockingbird) is about to be published, Capote finds more than he bargained for and the story of the Kansas murders, and the men who carried them out, become an obsession, a tale eventually to be told in the first, and greatest, work of dramatic non-fiction, In Cold Blood. The argument of the movie, based on a biography of Capote, is that the author came to identify with Perry Smith, the dominant murderer ("It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he went out the back door and I went out the front.") and to love him in a way. But his book required an ending, so Capote had contradictory impulses: his empathy for Smith and his need to have Smith and Hickock executed so that he can get his book out. The achievement of writer Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller is that they manage to effect this dichotomy without really destroying the audience's identification with the main character, who moves from a sympathetic outsider to what appears to be a heartless exploiter. In this they are assisted immensely by one of the great characterisations in modern film. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a character actor, largely renowned for playing strong supporting roles in movies like Magnolia, State and Main and Almost Famous, and is here given the responsibility of the lead. He has to play a character whom many will remember and do so in a way that does not alienate the audience despite his actions, which can be seen in a poor light. In this respect it is a pitch-perfect performance. His characterisation never becomes an impersonation but is an embodiment of the artist at war with himself. He deservedly won the Oscar. That he is matched by two equally good performances, Keener as Lee and Clifton Collins as Perry Smith, is a bonus. The film covers half a decade in Capote's life, during which time To Kill a Mockingbird is published, Breakfast at Tiffany's is released as a film, as is Mockingbird, Capote travels to Spain and the machinations of the Smith/Hickock trial and appeals go on. Like Walk the Line, it spotlights the downsides of talent: the obsessions and pitfalls that emerge. Capote didn't write another novel, fiction or non-fiction, after In Cold Blood. This movie goes some way towards explaining why.
Pretty women do little
After Chicago, The Memoirs of a Geisha seems like a strange choice for director Rob Marshall. After all, his metier is musicals, that most western of all genres, and he is a man. How then was he supposed to film an expose of that most eastern and feminine of institutions, the geisha? Since the movie is based in fact on a book written by a man, and a westerner at that, there are no real problems. The likelihood that this would be anything other than a standard Hollywood fantasy were zilch. As empty as it is in terms of plot and character, it is a truly beautiful movie, moving with exactly the grace you'd expect from a choreographer like Marshall and a cinematographer like Australian Dion Beebe. The furore has been about the choice of three Chinese actresses to play the lead roles, but the real knock on this film is the sheer emptiness of the main plot, no matter who plays the leads. The three actresses in question are pretty enough and look right in their parts. The problem is that there is little to do and nothing to surprise us. Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang) is sold to a geisha house after her mother's death and, after years of virtual servitude to the head girl of her house, Hatsumomo (Gong Li), she is adopted as a pupil by Mameha (Michelle Yeoh) who trains her to be the best damned geisha in Kyoto. This enables Sayuri to try and win the love of The Chairman (Ken Watanabe), a man she met as a child and whom, we are to believe, she continues to love. Meanwhile Mameha is plotting to win control of the geisha house through Sayuri. All this is set against the rise of Imperial Japan, WW2 and the post-war American occupation. This is one of the most beautifully realised films you'll see - the romantic equivalent of the special effects movie - beautiful but empty. Pretty to look at but casting no real light on either human emotions or the institution of the geisha.
Boys will be boys
Brokeback Mountain is undoubtedly a great movie, if a little slow moving, and is brilliantly acted and directed but I still left the cinema just a wee bit underwhelmed. For all its purported confrontational nature, it is at heart a very conservative movie that is not so much about the possibility of gay love among the cowboy set as it is about obsessive behavior. Jack and Ennis spend a winter herding sheep on the eponymous mount. During that time they find in each other a companionship - and more. To Jack it is a love that he has not been able to find and which, despite his searching for it, he cannot find elsewhere. For Ennis, it is an obsession that he tries, at first, to deny but which he cannot finally surrender. Ennis marries his sweetheart and starts raising a family. Jack returns to the rodeo where he meets and marries an heiress. Yet they are drawn back to each other and to the Mountain, where they spend vacations together, re-igniting the spark first lit during their winter of sheepherding. [Plot Spoiler Alert] The affair eventually destroys Ennis' marriage and leads to Jack's death, and it is only after that event that Ennis truly appreciates what he had and, ironically, is able to return to a more reasonable existence. Apart for the fact that the story is set in the west, and the protagonists are two men, this is an oft-told tale. What sets it apart is the level of performance that director Ang Lee is able to elicit from Heath Ledger as Ennis, and especially from Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack. Ledger uses taciturnity to convey Ennis' inability properly to express his feelings, and this allows Gyllenhaal to be more expressive in his emotional range. The two performances complement each other and are equally effective in conveying their respective character's emotions and thoughts. Using a narrative technique that follows the developments sequentially, and a lyrical script from Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Ang Lee has built a film that allows the relationship to be developed slowly and clearly, against the backdrop of Ennis' attempts at a more acceptable reality and Jack's occasional experimentation with alternate lifestyles. There is nothing truly original here but there is a genuine shining of the light on human emotions and an understanding of human frailty. For that it deserves great praise. If it falls slightly short of Crash it is in the area of innovative film-making. The latter film confronts its audience with far starker choices and far more real scenarios. Brokeback Mountain is a great film and thoroughly recommended. It had the misfortune to be released in the same year as a better movie.
... and one for oil
Syriana makes no concession either to conventional story-telling or pandering to the audience. It is a deliberately episodic film where the audience knows just about as much as the protagonists about the convoluted and confusing plot. Naturally it concerns US foreign policy in west Asia and deals largely with the politics of oil. There are several plot strands that gradually work their way into some sort of coherence although, by the end, there are no real answers, just a whole lot of further questions raised. There are elements here dealing with corporate greed and malignity; with international agreements (and how they are circumvented); with US intelligence agencies and how they can get played and play the game; with the questionable politics of royal succession in Arab countries; and with the mechanisms by which the innocent are duped into becoming the terrorist weapons of manipulative religious leaders. George Clooney plays a long-time intelligence operative caught between his superiors and some enemies seeking revenge; Matt Damon is an investment banker, with some ideals, trying to exploit an oil-rich state; Chris Cooper is an oil company executive trying to stitch together a deal; and Jeffrey Wright is a Justice Department lawyer out to expose the corruption at the heart of the oil deals. Everyone, from princes to dupes, thinks they know what they are doing but the lesson is that the complexity of the situation is beyond them all and even the manipulators are being manipulated. It is a Caucus Race, the film, says, and if you think we're winning it's only because you don't understand the game or the rules it's played by. Directed and written by Stephen Gaghan, based on the book by a former intelligence operative, the film ends up being a lot more than the sum of its parts. It's very like Crash in its structure, apparently episodic but with the episodes adding together to form a pattern for out discernment. It does not pander to those who would find a simplistic solution to complex problems, and it challenges its audience to think about the issues it raises. That it does so in a consistently entertaining way, despite its complexity, is a testament to good direction and editing. It will reward a couple of viewings.
Cronenberg loses the plot
A History of Violence ends up being something less than the sum of its parts. What starts as an interesting look at random and controlled violence in a small community goes right off the rails and peters out in senseless violence in the climax, and into some degree of incredibility and illogic. Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) runs a diner in a small town into which come two desperados, who take over the diner and threaten its customers. Tom reacts in an instinctive way, disarms and kills them. He becomes a hero in the community, although the concatenations from the incident reverberate inside his family, particularly as they affect his teenage son. Then into town comes Carl Fogerty (Ed Harris), a scarred gangster who thinks that Tom may be a fugitive from the Philadelphia crime scene. The possibility that Tom may have a history of violence, and that his son may have inherited his propensity, haunts the middle sections of the film. But director David Cronenberg and writer Josh Olson appear to run out of ideas around the time that Ed Harris exits stage left. The confrontation between Tom and the town, personified by the local sherriff, is left to wither and the intra-family conflicts start to make less and less sense. History is in essence a story and it must be a story that is logical in its context. The beauty of the establishing parts of this movie is that the story arises logically from the people and places portrayed. The tragedy is that, at a certain point, the logic is junked, and the context is ignored. This makes it difficult to maintain any suspension of disbelief into the climax, with involves a confrontation between Tom and Richie (William Hurt), the head honcho of the Phillie rackets. That Hurt's performance is as unbelievable as the scenes in which he appears is a little sad, especially since he was nominated for the Oscar for this performance, which is a pale imitation of his better roles before he got Lost in Space. The last 30 minutes or so spoil what was good in the first hour, which is sad because Cronenberg was establishing an interesting story that might shed some light on violence and its place in American society. It's also a shame because some good performances, particularly from Maria Bello as Tom's missus and Ed Harris are wasted in the denouement. This could have been so much better.
Still holden the ford
Harrison Ford is getting too old to be playing the same action hero. In fact, he was too old several action heroic plots ago. In Firewall he is asked to reprise Air Force One, only this time he's a bank security maeven (Jack Stanfield) and his family is held hostage by a mad bank robber (Paul Bettany) rather than by ethnic madman Gary Oldman. And President Marshall was an ex-soldier so there was more logic to his derring-do. Here we have a convoluted plot, with plenty of tech double-talk. Basically though, it is a heist movie: about the kidnapping of his family to force Jack to breach the bank's security and transfer money electronically to an offshore account. There are the usual complications, plans to effect an escape, plots within plots to cover their tracks, and a completely superfluous merger back story to add another level of complexity. The main story arc, though, is the confrontation between Jack and Cox (the head robber) as each tries to anticipate the other's moves. There are a number of silly plot devices in the execution of the robbery and some reasonably violent confrontations, but the essential goody-v-baddy storyline is followed. Director Richard Loncraine has been responsible for much better work than this, including McKellen's Richard III, but handles the material quite well, keeping the story moving. I quite liked the plot device that enables Jack to track down the robbers and the parts played in the movie by Virginia Madsen as his architect wife and by Mary Lynn Rajskub as his secretary, but the ending to too incredible and the film itself is about 30 minutes too long. This is acceptable for its genre but nothing special.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]