For Easter we watched that classic Easter-themed film, “King Kong.” The Easter Gorilla was Eugie’s idea, who then had some issues with the length of his appearance. It was Peter Jackson’s extended version, but when a film has that strong a holiday theme, why complain?
Two “Pirates of the Caribbean” films (got too late to make it three, but that’s what tomorrow is for) and “D-Wars” (strictly for background).
Or St. Patrick’s Day if you like that name better.
In this remake of the ‘70s Superman and Superman II, Zack Snyder takes his second shot at merging Ayn Rand with comics. At least it fit with Watchman, but Rand’s Virtues of Selfishness is the antithesis of Superman. But then so is brooding.
Snyder has stated that he hates the character Superman, and it shows. It shows in the ugly, muted color pallet. It shows in the somber, charisma-lacking Superman who dislikes saving people. It shows in the insane, libertarian-wingnut that is Jonathan Kent who thinks it best just to let the weak die, and who we, as viewers, are supposed to like. It shows in the bland and incompetent Lois Lane (Amy Adams, who glows in other parts, but under Snyder’s care is a lump). And it shows in the non-stop Jesus metaphors. You see, Snyder also hates Jesus, which is odd for someone who obsesses over him.
To distance themselves from the successful Marvel MCU films, Warner chose to make their DC comic book films humorless. This was a terrible idea. But it is possible to have a fun humorless movie. However, Snyder doesn’t understand fun. Pretension, that he understands.
Snyder also seems to hate newspapers. Perry White is a pathetic editor (and has no reason to exist in this film). He’s matched by Lois Lane’s inability to be a reporter. But then Pa’ Kent is a pathetic father and Clark is a pathetic superhero. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film where I disliked more people. I don’t want to spend time with them or their stories. Clark, Lois, Zod, Jonathan, Martha, Jor-El, Perry, the general/colonel/soldiers, the children and parents of Smallville—I am repulsed by all of them.
No one has a conversation is this film. They make speeches. That’s fitting as Man of Steel isn’t a motion picture, not one where events flow. It is a series of self-serious moments, clipped together. It is all very, very important, at least to Snyder. To anyone else…not so much. It ends in a battle that goes on and on and on. Many fans have indicated that the result of that battle ruins the movie, but there’s nothing to ruin.
Man of Steel was followed by the worst big budget film I’ve ever seen, Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice. Superman had previously appeared in Superman verses the Mole People (1951) and Superman (1978), Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983), and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1983), and semi-sequel Superman Returns (2006).
Just in time, my choices for the Academy Awards. Since so many of this year’s best weren’t nominated, I’ve selected a best from the nominated works, and then what I consider to be actually the best in that category. Perhaps a secret write-in campaign will follow my choices. Perhaps not…
I’ve skipped a few categories for various reasons (no song deserves anything this year, missed as few docs and shorts, saw several films only on the small screen makes judging sound unfair, etc)
Onward. This is not a prediction of what will win, but what should win.
Picture
Nominees: Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty
Best of Nominees: Django Unchained
Best: Marvel’s The Avengers
Director
Nominees: Michael Haneke (Amour), Ang Lee (Life of Pi), David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook), Steven Spielberg (Lincoln), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
Best of Nominees: Steven Spielberg
Best: Ridley Scott (Prometheus)
Actor
Nominees: Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook), Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln), Hugh Jackman (Les Misérables), Joaquin Phoenix (The Master), Denzel Washington (Flight)
Best of Nominees: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best: Daniel Day-Lewis
Actress
Nominees: Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook), Emmanuelle Riva (Amour), Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Naomi Watts (The Impossible)
Best of Nominees: Naomi Watts
Best: Naomi Watts
Supporting Actor
Nominees: Alan Arkin (Argo), Robert De Niro (Silver Linings Playbook), Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master), Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln), Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)
Best of Nominees: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Best: Michael Fassbender (Prometheus)
Supporting Actress
Nominees: Amy Adams (The Master), Sally Field (Lincoln), Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables), Helen Hunt (The Sessions), Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook)
Best of Nominees: Anne Hathaway
Best: Anne Hathaway
Writing – Original Screenplay
Nominees: Amour, Django Unchained, Flight, Moonrise Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty
Best of Nominees: Django Unchained
Best: Marvel’s The Avengers (unless we count it as an Adapted Screenplay, in which case it is best there)
Writing – Adapted Screenplay
Nominees: Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook
Best of Nominees: Lincoln
Best: {See Original Screenplay}
Best Animated Feature
Nominees: Brave, Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Wreck-It Ralph
Best of Nominees: Brave
Best: Brave
Best Production Design
Nominees: Anna Karenina, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln
Best of Nominees: Anna Karenina
Best: Upside Down
Best Cinematography
Nominees: Anna Karenina, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Skyfall
Best of Nominees: Anna Karenina
Best: Prometheus
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Nominees: Hitchcock,The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Les Misérables
Best of Nominees: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Best: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Best Film Editing
Nominees: Argo, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty
Best of Nominees: none (they are all horrible in editing)
Best: Marvel’s The Avengers
Best Visual Effects
Nominees: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Life of Pi, Marvel’s The Avengers, Prometheus, Snow White and the Huntsman
Best of Nominees: Marvel’s The Avengers
Best: Marvel’s The Avengers
Once again the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have created a feeble list, but it is what we’ve got, so I’ll sort it.
Let’s see: Amour is a linear affair that holds off for two hours what was obvious in 10 minutes and manages to be oddly distancing for a story that has nothing to offer but emotion. Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are semi-true tales that are only interesting if they are true. Beasts of the Southern Wild is on the list because the Academy likes indies and fantasy films that aren’t fantasies. Django Unchained is clever and timely; not Tarantino’s best, but one of his better works. Les Misérables is a horrendously shot, poorly sung, never ending festival of tedium with only a single true moment (and that should be rewarded in the supporting actress category). Life of Pi looked beautiful, and was fairly successful, but Lee just couldn’t elevate it to what it should have been. Lincoln was powerful with great moments. One of the few films that should be on this list, but the script meandered, departing from its real story of the 13th Amendment to Lincoln’s personal life far too often, but not often enough to say anything. Silver Linings Playbook could have been a zany romantic comedy, or a complex drama about mental illness. By trying to combine these, it became an unfunny comedy that deals with mental illness in a thoughtless, closing in on offensive, manner. So:
9 – Amour
8 – Les Misérables
7 – Silver Linings Playbook
6 – Beasts of the Southern Wild
5 – Zero Dark Thirty
4 – Argo
3 – Life of Pi
2 – Lincoln
1 – Django Unchained
The Academy loves docudramas. I’d say it’s because it makes members feel smart, but that’s psychology and what do I know about psychology? This year we’ve got two nominated for best picture (OK, there are three, but Lincoln is a whole different critter), both CIA spy stories, and both closely related to the truth. Not truth, but related to the truth. They are similar to the truth, and oh, what sins can hide in similarity. And they hide there because these films are sold as truth, just with a footnote of crossed fingers.
A few years back the docudramas of the moment were The King’s Speech and The Social Network. They shared a problem, but it is so much clearer with The Social Network: It was only interesting because it was real. Would anyone have even sat through The Social Network if it was about the languid rise of a fictitious computer programmer named Fred, and the film’s ending was known to all? There just wasn’t enough story, or conflict, or development. But hey, that’s OK, because it was real. Except it wasn’t. Through omission, Zuckerberg’s biography was altered, and his motivation was created. What we were given was a movie too inaccurate to be a documentary, and not interesting enough for a narrative.
Which brings us back to 2013. Neither of the docudramas have much in the way of plot. Argo has enough of a story for a cute 45 minute short. It follows a CIA agent as he attempts to get six US embassy workers, who have been hiding with the Canadian ambassador, out of Iran during the Iran Hostage Crisis. He does this by creating a fake film, that is to be shot in Iran, and claiming the “house guests” are Canadian filmmakers. Zero Dark Thirty‘s plot can be covered in one tag line: CIA agent has a hunch on how to find and kill Bin Laden, and she’s right. What saves them, what should save them, is their reality. But of course, they are only related to reality.
Argo‘s shifts from truth are less damming, and harder to understand. OK, I get why they added a nonexistent chase at the airport (as the 6 Americans are escaping on a plane). The reality of their covers holding up and them passing through customs smoothly is not terribly dramatic. But why downplay the Canadian’s role? Or state that the British refused to help? Those are pointless lies. And why make up a never-existing sci-fi script, when in reality they used the screenplay and art for a film version of Zelazny’s classic novel Lord of Light. Any science fiction fan would be all over that nugget of information. But instead Affleck and company go for a less interesting fiction.
Zero Dark Thirty is a police procedural, with spies. For two hours it follows Maya, an obsessed, methodical desk jocky, who likes to go with her hunches. She looks at a lot of pictures, questions a lot of prisoners, takes a lot of notes, and without the facade of this being real, every viewer would be snoring. She does hang around torture at the beginning, which isn’t entertaining, but at least something is happening. At the end, the film violates good story telling form by leaving the only character we’ve been with for two hours, to give us twenty minutes of Bin Laden killing with characters we don’t know (If Bin Laden’s death is a spoiler for you, you need to read the news more often). Unlike Argo, which at least has an amusing premise, Zero Dark Thirty has nothing except the truth. (Yes, the acting is good, but good acting does not make a good movie.) The killing of Bin Laden was a significant event; it is important. It is worth the truth. But this isn’t the truth…not quite.
I’ll narrow my focus to one bit, the most notorious part of the film: the torture scenes. Maya gets her big break from the torture of a prisoner. Many congressional movers and shakers have come out saying that isn’t true. Is it true? Is it false? It is really essential to know in our current political climate. It is essential to the story. But director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal didn’t care. They have no idea what is true, and Bigelow has stated she just put in the scene because torture was part of what was going on, and that was a good place to put it dramatically. She isn’t lying, she’s just making shit up.
Most people smile and say it is dramatic (or poetic) license, and then put it out of their minds. But this is the history that people will remember. Truth gets lost in dramatic license, and that’s a shame. But I’m a film critic, not a historian. So I can instead say that it’s a shame for film as well. These are movies that are loved because viewers can laugh afterwards and say “Wow, you just can’t make that stuff up.”
Only they did.
And if everyone clearly understood that they did, no one would care about these films.
Watching all of the films nominated for awards in the major categories for the 2012 Academy Awards. This means they are responsible for the my torturous two hours of Amour. Yet, if I were to hit the members of the Academy with a rock, I’d be in trouble.
Watching it now. My god, does Les Misérables ever end? Or does it just go on and on, forever, with semi-songs searching, but rarely finding a melody, and actors constantly in fear of having their noses smacked by the camera?
1976 Best Picture
Was: Rocky
Should have been: Network … or … anything.
1951 Best Picture
Was: An American in Paris
Should have been: The African Queen
2012 was an excellent year for fantasy, science fiction, and horror films…at the top…but it didn’t have a lot of depth. I’ll ignore mediocrity for now and focus on the winners.
I’m starting with a cheat. I can’t say that Upside Down is the 5th best genre film of the year, even if I can type it. But nothing in the bundle of gore-feasts, animated horror comedies, and action dramedies that could take its place stand out. They just aren’t special. Upside Down may not truly be better than all the second tier offerings, but it is spectacular.
It creates a universe new to film, where two worlds hang within spitting distance of each other, and both have the strange property that their gravity only effects objects from that world. People from “up top” are upside down to those “down below,” which leads to some fascinating office furniture layouts. Of course this isn’t science fiction (the science doesn’t hold up, nor is it meant to), but a romantic fairytale set in an incredible dystopia. OK, the story wobbles around, the narration should have been cut, and the romance is not believable (though Kirsten Dunst is charming enough that I wanted it to be believable), but the world(s) is so brilliantly conceived and breath-takingly realized that the rest can be forgiven. If it was slated to win the Oscar for Art Direction and been nominated for cinematography, I’d have let it be, but as it won’t be getting the honors it deserves, it will have to settle for my #5.
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino solidified the Nouveau Grindhouse movement with Kill Bill, From Dusk Till Dawn, Machete, and of course Grindhouse, a group of playful, self-aware films that honor the ’70s “grindhouse” and drive-in era. The Man With the Iron Fists is the newest entry in the movement and the best not made by Rodriguez or Tarantino (though Tarantino does have a finger in as “presenter”). If you long for old school Hong Kong chopsocky, but with the addition of greater racial diversity and Hollywood A-listers, your dreams have come true. Rapper RZA takes the director’s chair, as well as the role of the titular character, giving the feature a 2012 vibe, with a nod and a wink. Hands get lopped off, bodies get ground up, blood sprays across rooms, and it is all good fun. Russell Crowe hasn’t displayed this much life in years, and Lucy Liu shines with all the strength and mesmerizing beauty that she lacks in her weekly TV show.
I would have found the movie more rewarding with a change in who won (it was a given that the bad guys would lose, but that doesn’t mean all the good guys win), but it does nicely as is.
Call it a flawed jem. Ridley Scott’s return to science fiction is the most beautiful film of the year, and the most confounding. It gives us the year’s best character (the android David), the coolest spaceship, the greatest mysteries, the tensest moment, and the only self applied human/squid abortion. The last might not be a plus for everyone, but it was for me.
A semi-prequel to the highly influential Alien, Prometheus often is overly familiar, and then it leaps into no man’s land. It answers far fewer questions than it asks and can be a frustrating ride for anyone not wanting to put in an hour after viewing figuring out what it all meant. But if you love to swim in seas of symbolism, Prometheus is your ocean.
I wrote an article on the character issues in the film (Geek-Out: Let’s Save Prometheus). Since, a sequel is planned, there is still a chance that Scott will deal with those issues, in which case I’ll raise Prometheus to #2.
Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard manage to close out the horror genre in grand style. Really. It’s all done. There is nowhere to go after The Cabin in the Woods. Pack it up because any fright fests are just going to look silly now. I’ve tried it, following it with Sinister and The Apparition and I was left giggling. OK, there might be another explanation for that…
Going meta on the meta films, the pair turned all previous horror films into weak prequels to this final installment, and along the way managed to make hundreds of terrible monster movies watchable as they now make sense. This is a real horror film, not a parody, with all the scares and two times the gore that anyone could ask for. But it is also jammed with humor. If you haven’t watched a few hundred horror movies, you’ll laugh at the clever dialog and twisted characters. If you have, you’ll bathe in the in-jokes and homages. This is smart horror, and that is a very rare beast. Sure, it killed the genre, but what a way to go.
Whedon would have had a good year if all he’d done was write and produce The Cabin in the Woods, but he had another project:
I can’t recall having a better time at the movies. The Avengers is perfectly crafted entertainment and perhaps the most satisfying picture of the decade. Filled with charismatic actors playing appealing characters in a big colorful action-fueled epic, it has invoked cheers at every screening I’ve attended.
Marvel bet big, and won. Four stand-alone superhero films, and one sequel all acting as prequels to this massive mash up; it could have gone wrong in so many ways. How many multi-character superhero films have toppled over the cliff? Somehow they’d pulled off those prequels, but they weren’t over-stuffed with gadgets, plot threads, and stars. Enter Writer/director Joss Whedon, master of the ensemble. Every character has a moment, none dominate, and all feel necessary. It is the ultimate feat of juggling. And character is the key. The action scenes in The Avengers are as good as any in 2012, but they aren’t the draw. It is the dialog. The joy comes from listening to Tony Stark banter with Bruce Banner. Captain America trade jabs with Thor. Nick Fury speechifying (look it up) to everyone. If they happen to be blowing things up at the same time, all the better. No film in 2012, of any kind, had better dialog, and with those spoken words, The Avengers earns its #1 spot.