Oscars Picks - Jessica Chastain's Cojones

Best Motion Picture 
Lincoln This is the whole package; story, acting, directing and great cinema. It is a real feat to make the 13^th Amendment great drama.

Achievement in Directing

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook Why did I pick this guy? Spielberg and Ang Lee already have Oscars and the Academy likes to spread it around. Anyway it is a complicated and multi-level movie well done.

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

He is the complete actor. He inhabits his character from his clumpy walk to his unruly hair. Day-Lewsus could have been Honest Abe’s body double. Bummer! 

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

This woman had cojones. She played the role hard, as she had to.  

Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

Alan Arkin, Argo

Alan Akin is the shit! This guy is pure New York attitude. He acts with natural force. 

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

Sally Field, Lincoln

I noticed of her acting right from the start. Not only was her resemblance to Marty Todd Lincoln uncanny she portrayed her as a tortured soul on the verge of insanity.

Original Screenplay Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal

Beats out the rest. A complicated story told.

Adapted Screenplay

Lincoln, Tony Kushner
If you can take a history book and make it into a great movie you deserves the Oscar. Enough said.

 Original Song

"Skyfall," Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth; Skyfall Heard it; liked it.

Achievement in Production Direction

Life of Pi
This is a very trippy movie. The scenes are surreal; simple but effective.

Side Effects - I asked for a ticket for Side Ways

It started badly. At the movie theater I asked for a ticket for Side Ways. In a low voice the clerk said the title is Side Effects. Oh, I said, using my advanced age as an excuse for my lapse. The side effects in Side Effect are often heard warnings on TV for anti depressant drugs: causes dry mouth, may cause dizziness, may cause insomnia and increased thoughts of suicide.

This movie is supposed to be a psychological thriller. Not to worry Hitch, you can rest peacefully. The cast is outstanding: Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Catharine Zeta-Jones and Jude Law. But with a loopy script and misdirected direction this top shelf cast is wasted. Only Rooney Mara did some acting as if she was zonked out on some powerful drug, not a push for a Hollywood actor. Regrettably for most of the movie Channing Tatum keeps his clothes on (Did I just say that?) Zeta-Jones plays an uptight psychiatrist who wears horrible square glasses and sports a hair bun is so tight it gives her face that yanked Botox look.

The financial sub plot is pedestrian. Hollywood is tapping in to the recent financial malaise to make the movie relevant. The only problem is their money scheme is implausible. As for the medical plot it lacked credibility. As a professional, Jude Law looked the part with his two day old bread and beige sweater vest. However, he made some bad calls which would have landed him in with a malpractice suit. Anti-depression drugs were tossed around like piñata candy. For a movie called side effects it seems that no read the warning label.

There was one redeeming scene between Zeta-Jones and Mara. They were standing close to each other, too close. Mara undid one button of Zeta-Jones’s white silk blouse; hope sprang eternal. It was getting pretty steamy when there was a rude knock at the door and then the scene went nowhere, just like the movie. I should have gone to see Side Ways.

The Impossible

The Impossible

If you have a fear of water, tsunamis or dying on vacation this is not your movie. It’s a true story of unimaginable destruction and the insurmountable will to survive. This family was vacationing at the Thai seacoast for a Christmas holiday. On December 26, 2004 a powerful earthquake set off a killer tsunami. The scene in the movie is terrifying. You sensed the terror of the vacationers as a towering wall of brown water crushed everything in its path. One of the sons was thrown into the pool like a rag doll. Naomi Watts crashes through a glass pane and is caught in an underwater whirlpool.

The story is heroic. The family is swept away and separated. Two boys go with their father, Ewan McGregor, and the other son with Naomi Watts. For the rest of the movie they struggle to reunite. Their ordeals are horrendous. Every parent hopes they would have the courage do the same thing for their family.

Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts are excellent actors. However, I think their roles in this movie are too narrow and lack range for a great performance. This is almost like a Passion play; lots of suffering and lots of love. I do not see how Naomi Watts is nominated for best actress. Her performance cannot compare to Jennifer Lawrence or Jessica Chastain for example. Those roles were rich and complex.

This film is basically a documentary made into a movie. It should have stayed a documentary. The tsunami killed 230,000 people in three countries. Compared to this cataclysm their story is just an ember in a wild fire. There wasn't even a post script at the end of the movie as a testimony to the dead; only a picture of the real family who survived the Impossible. We pray there were others.

joe

Silver Linings Playbook - Yuck, Baltimore

Silver Linings Playbook

What a fabulous movie. After you read my review I recommend you go see it. It has the cinema trifecta: a great script, great directing and great acting. The actors play to each other, their timing is pitched perfect. Nuance makes for great performance. De Niro’s slight down turned lips, tilt of his head and begging eyes define the scene. Bradley Cooper captured the unsettling stare of man with psychological problems. Jennifer Lawrence invades Cooper’s personal space by literally by running into him.

Cooper left his Hangover, A-Team bad boy persona behind to become a head shaven garbage bag jogger and one hell of an actor. His character, Pat, is Bipolar; more manic than depressed. He is released from a psychiatric institute in Baltimore (yuck, Baltimore) to return home. He brings with him a lot of unresolved problems. Mental illness is a contagious disease and his family suffers from it.  Trepidation and sadness molds his mother’s face. Even De Niro cries; just two tears.

De Niro is a bookie who makes an oversized bet to solve his financial problems. Football is his salvation. He wants his son to watch the games with him so they can bond. His sincerity is questionable. Since he is very superstitious he feels his son’s presence with help the Eagles cover the spread. This home situation is not a place of mending.

Jennifer Lawrence uses her physical presence as part of her performance.  In most of the movie she is in Cooper’s face defining the tension between them. Cooper hopes to make up with his estranged wife and Lawrence pretends to help. Lawrence has her own issues. Unintentionally these two emotional cripples help each other find peace and love. This is the engine of the movie.

My one complaint is that Chris Tucker did not have more of role. He was the original manic actor but here he is subdued and understated. He is a psychiatric patient and Cooper’s friend. His limited scenes bring some of the funniest moments of the movie. His humor is better than any medication.

Ok, enough said. Go see this great movie.

joe

Zero Dark Thirty - Yeah, Like She Blended in Pakistan

Zero Dark Thirty

It took two hours of a two and half hour movie before the Navy Seals attacked Bin Laden’s compound. What happened during those first two hours? A meticulous orchestration of tension. The beginning scenes show torture and water boarding. News footage of Obama plays denying that Americans use torture. Are we just as bad as the terrorists? Of course not, we’re the good guys. The torture scenes were few, but what set the tension was the pursuit for Bin Laden that lasted years. The false starts, mountains of information, satellite surveillance, phone taps. There were also terrorist acts, some successful and some not.

The cast was great. Jessica Chastain played Maya the CIA agent with the flaming red hair (yeah, like she blended in Pakistan). She showed singular determination in her quest to capture Bin Laden. As a woman in a counter intelligence op, fitting in was a challenge. Was she a woman trying to act like a tough man or was she just a tough woman? In an opening torture scene she removes her balaclava to demonstrate her nerve. When asked to bring a pitcher of water for water boarding, she does so without hesitation; a baptism of sorts. In a meeting with her superiors she is relegated to the back of the room like a child. She lets her presence  be known by using a profane expletive. The boss liked it.

James Gandolfini played a spot on foul mouth Leon Panetta. Other cast members were formidable.  Jason Clarke plays the clinically cold blooded interrogator who has a Phd in God knows what. Kyle Chandler is the uptight station boss who pushes Maya for results and instead gets smacked down by Maya. Tough chic.

The raid itself was by the book. Interestingly the soldiers were never referred to as Seals. It was a bit anticlimactic since we all know the ending. Nevertheless, there was an impressive body count, with the Seals double tapping everyone, men and women. The only sign of a dead Bin Laden was a tuff of grey beard sticking out from a body bag.

The last scene shows Maya totally spent. When a pilot asked her where she wanted to go she did not answer. How do you fit back into the normal world when everything you did for the last several years was abnormal and probably illegal? 

But we are the good guys, right?

joe

Django Unchanged - The Italian Cowboy With the Fro

Django Unchanged is homage to the spaghetti western. It is a combination of the good and the bad. There really is no ugly, except maybe for Samuel L. Jackson. It is a simple script. Thebounty hunter frees the slave, the slave becomes a partner of bounty hunter; they go get slave's wife; bang, bang and boom! Go Quintin!

 

More N bombs were dropped in this movie than at a Chris Rock concert at the Apollo Theater. This was Quintin’s way of letting us know that slave owners were prejudice. They were also brutal. When it came to the horrors of slavery the film was almost a documentary. I am not sure if this was intentional.

 

Christoph Waltz was fantastic. This guy could read the Queens phone book (if we had one) and make it fascinating. His acting is eloquent and understated, but in a quite Austrian way he can be a cold blooded killer. Jamie Foxx is the Italian cowboy with the fro. His humor is not in what he says but how he looks (spoiler alert-and how he dresses). His character does not have the richness of a “Ray”. Basically he is a former pissed off ex-slave killing as many white southerners as possible. No acting range is needed here. If swagger were an Oscar nomination he would win. He is fun to watch.

 

Leonardo DiCapprio plays the sadistic dandy plantation owner of Candyland. The best part of the movie is the confrontation between DiCapprio, Waltz and Foxx. This staging gave Tarentino the perfect opportunity for his trademark orgy of blood. Quintin has issues.

 

Samuel L. Jackson plays the Uncle Tom with the M.F. attitude. Not to give much away, but he is more than what he appears to be. His appearance was totally stereotypical. Howls of racism would be justified for this depiction, but then Jackson would tell the offended to go do something with themselves.

 

Worth mentioning; there is a hysterical scene on Don Johnson’s plantation of a KKK raid. It is pure Monty Python and very original.

 

This is not a complicated movie. The film cobbles together stereotypes with old western favorites. The hype is bigger than the movie. If you want to kill two hours forty five minutes go for it.

 

Joe  1/8/13

Les Miserables - Two Beefs

I do not particularly like movie musicals. There are exceptions of course like West Side Story (Once your a Jet,your always a Jet, snap,snap). Les Miserables does not have any snap, rather it is quite  bleak. The main force of the movie is redemption. Hugh Jackman's character rose from a prisoner to a factory owner of rosary beads who pledged his life to the salvation of an orphan girl whose dead mother worked in his factory. 

Anne Hathaway is one of the big stars in the movie. I have two beefs with her. She is only in the movie for about 25 minutes. The movie is about  three hours. Ads imply she is in the movie for the entire time. The other  thing is her signing. "Dream the Dream" is the soaring anthem of  Les Miserables (remember Susan Boyle). Anne Hathaway's rendition never left the tarmac.In this movie there were more actors singing than singers acting. Almost all the dialogue was sung, which was very boring.

The one bright exception was Hugh Jackman. As a song and dance man and he sang his numbers with power and passion. His entire performance was outstanding. He deserves any nominations he gets. Then there is Russel Crowe. He plays the meanie (what a stretch). His acting arch is from sour to dour. Russel sings in his own band... so much for resumes.

Sasha Baron Cohen mercifully adds some desperately needed humor to this epic. He play's a Fagin like character who owns a tavern where he lifts  valuables from his customers. It is not so much what he says that is funny it is more how he looks. I do not recall if he sings, thank God.

One thing  bothered me. There was this kid who was a member of the French Revolutionary cell. His East London accent was as thick as Stilton cheese. What gives? They couldn't find some little frog to play the role? One positive thing he was the only actor with bad teeth in the movie. With all the grim and filth heaped on  Anne Hathaway, her perfect white bright teeth glowed.   

I think you should still see the movie and make up your own mind. Oh, yeah there is no dancing ( I want to be in America, I want to be in America, snap, snap).

joe

Lincoln - I Liked Movie

I saw Lincoln, my God what a fantastic movie. Whenever Daniel Day Lewis appears in a movie the word Oscar invariably is used. It is not misused here. Not only was his physical resemblesspot on (thank God for the five dollar bill) but the nuances of his demeanor played to his character. Obviously I do not know them exactly but historians know that Lincoln probably suffered from depression and bore great burdens from the war and his personal life. Daniel Day Lewis wore wiriness like a make on his wrinkled riddled face. His pain was silent but deep. His Lincoln was a passionate sensitive man with great determination to do great things.

Sally Field was fantastic. She was at the top of her game. People may not know much about Mary Todd Lincoln but I know a little. Her resemblance, and height, were spot on. She was the Mad Hatter of the White House. Her bi-polar condition swung from being a caustic critic of Congress to a compassionate mother who suffered the bitter loss of a child. I will go on record not only will she be nominated for an Oscar she will win.

It was an ensemble cast, but there were no minor characters. Tommy Lee Jone's character will be known more for what he didn't rather than what he did. His plastic face spoke volumes withwiry eyes accosting his foes. When he was nice it was not much better. Wow, Tommy lose that wig.

I am no Civil War buff but the battle scenes (just a few) were reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan only with dead horses rather than dead fish. The political fight for the 13th Amendment (freeing the slaves) was the center of the movie but not a belabored civic lesson. It framed the movie.

I liked movie.

joe