Ranking the Coen Brothers

I was surprised to look back and see that I never did do a ranking of the Coen Brothers films until now. If I had to, they’d probably get my vote for best filmmakers in the world right now (not best living – that would be Scorsese, but for the filmmakers doing the best, most consistent work right now, it’s between the Coens, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher and Michael Haneke, with the Coens having the slight edge). Anyway, Inside Lleweyn Davis is coming out soon – in New York & LA this week, although I apparently have to wait another two weeks, so I thought I’d look back at their 15 features to this point. They are not all masterpieces by any means, but it’s a remarkable consistent filmography – with only 3 films I wouldn’t gladly watch again right now.

15. Raising Arizona (1987)

I know ranking Raising Arizona as the Coen’s worst film will be controversial to some – it has some big supporters – but to me, the film just never comes together. I normally like the Coen’s when they go absurd, but try as I might (I have seen the film multiple times); I just don’t think the movie ever really finds its wavelength. There are good moments in the film to be sure – the best being the old man in the bank questioning the robbers contradictory orders to “Freeze! Get down on the floor!”, but overall this story of a sad sack criminal (Nicolas Cage) and his former cop wife (Holly Hunter) who kidnap a baby from a rich man (they had quintuplets, so they figure they won’t miss one) is just so relentlessly quirky, and tries so hard to be clever, that I didn’t really laugh during the movie. This was the Coen’s first true comedy, and they got better, but unlike many, I don’t think they succeeded right out of the gate.

14. Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

The Coens brief foray into mainstream studio comedies in the early 2000s inspired two of their weakest efforts – including Intolerable Cruelty. But just because Intolerable Cruelty is weaker than most Coen brothers movies, does that mean that it is joyless? Not at all. Inspired by the screwball comedies of the 1930s, the film perfectly casts George Clooney as a brilliant divorce lawyer, and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a woman marries rich men, than divorces them for their money. Of course Clooney falls for her. The two leads are so perfect together, and the Coen’s provide them with such wonderful comic dialogue, that it is possible to overlook the rest of the movie – which doesn’t really work (except for the guy with asthma). With Clooney and Zeta-Jones the Coens were half way to a great screwball comedy before they began – sadly, they don’t get all that much further. An enjoyable film to see once, but that’s about all.

13. The Ladykillers (2004)

The Coen’s follow-up to Intolerable Cruelty was another more mainstream comedy for them and once again, the movie has two leads that redeem the movie. Tom Hanks is miles away from Alec Guinness in the original (although if he was going to play the role the same way, than why the hell make the movie). His wildly over the top performance is matched by his wildly over the top dress – he looks like a young Colonel Sanders – and even his wildly over the top name – Goldthwait Higgison Dorr. He is a con man and a criminal, who along with his associates rents a room from an old lady, so they can tunnel into the nearby casino. It is the old lady – played brilliantly by Irma P. Hall – that steals the movie. She is wonderful in every scene – yes, she’s played a comic caricature, but one that is well-drawn, hilarious and recognizable. Like Intolerable Cruelty, everything surrounding the two leads doesn’t really work all that well – the movie tries too hard to be funny. But when Hall is onscreen, there is still something to like about The Ladykillers. Like Intolerable Cruelty, not as bad as you may have been led to believe – but also a film that is enjoyable to watch just once.

12. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

I’m not sure if it’s a sign that The Hudsucker Proxy should be higher on this list or lower, but my wife, who normally hates the Coen’s comedies, loves this movie. “You know, for kids” has become an inside joke between us, that never fails to get us laughing. This is another throwback to the films of yesteryear – a comic version of a Frank Capra movie, where a seemingly innocent buffoon seems to be taken advantage of by knowing Big City types, when really they may be the smartest one in the movie. Tim Robbins is perfectly cast as the Coen’s version of Longfellow Deeds – a man who starts working in the mailroom of a huge corporation, but has dreams of making the hoola hoop (the drawing of it inspired the line that keeps me and wife in hysterics). He becomes the CEO of the company, because the head of the Board of Directors – played wonderfully by Paul Newman – wants to make the company stock plummet so he can buy it on the cheap – and thinks this moron will all but destroy the company. Then there is the wonderful Jennifer Jason Leigh as a tough, cynical reporter – doing a wonderful Katherine Hepburn (or Rosalind Russell) – who, of course is gradually won over by Robbins’ innocence. I understand the criticism that the movie is all style and no substance – but it’s a grand style, the performances are top notch, and the movie is one of the funniest the Coen’s have made. I wouldn’t get away with calling many Coen brothers movies underrated – but this one is.

11. Burn After Reading (2008)

The year after the Coens made their Oscar winning No Country for Old Men, which is a timeless movie (it could really be set at any time after the end of WWII without changing much, and it would still have resonance), they made Burn After Reading – which is a film very much of its time and place. Will the film age badly? Perhaps – but Burn After Reading was perhaps ahead of the curve in some regards (we’ve seen numerous films this year about Idiot Culture in America – the Coens did it five years ago). Burn After Reading is an extremely cynical, and extremely funny, movie in which all but one character is a complete and utter idiot – and of course, he’s the one who suffers the most. He’s played by John Malkovich,  who plays a recently fired CIA agent because of his alcoholism – but he’s an alcoholic because he’s frustrated that everyone else in an idiot. And the movie proves his point when one of his disks, with apparently secret information, falls into the hands of two gym trainers – Frances McDormand, desperate for plastic surgery, and Brad Pitt, who is relentlessly cheerful, because he’s too dumb to be anything else. There’s more of course – I haven’t even gotten to George Clooney yet, a doofus of a federal agent, building a strange contraption in his basement for the wife who has already left him. In terms of pure laugh out loud moments, Burn After Reading is one of the Coen’s funniest films. I don’t know if it will stand the test of time – but it’s stood up for five years now, and everyone else is just catching up.

10. True Grit (2010)

Even if John Wayne never made a version of Charles Potter’s novel – that won him an Oscar – the novel itself lends itself perfectly to the Coens. It is an a comic novel, with dark undertones, and while the earlier film played it more or less straight, the Coens get back to what made the novel so good in the first place. I’m not a huge fan of the original film – but I love this one. Jeff Bridges’ performance is better than Wayne’s – and more original as well. We’re used to our Western heroes to be just that – heroic, steadfast and unshakeable. Bridges’ Rooster Cogburn is violent, drunken and not very nice – I’m reminded of what Quentin Tarantino told Robert DeNiro to do in his role in Jackie Brown – play him like a pile of dirty clothes. That’s pretty much Bridges in this movie – and it works brilliantly. Matt Damon is also excellent – a more typical lawman, or at least what seems like a more typical lawman on the surface. But they both take a backseat to the remarkable performance by Hailee Steinfeld, only 13 when she made the film, but brilliant in every scene. Perhaps not the Coen’s most personal work – it’s still one of the best Westerns in recent years – and one that is still undeniably theirs. 

9. Blood Simple (1984)

The Coen’s debut film was acclaimed as soon as it opened – Pauline Kael even referenced Orson Welles’ debut film when talking about how good a debut the Coen’s made. That may be overpraising Blood Simple a little bit – but it does deserve a lot of praise. The first film the brothers made is a nasty, bloody, brilliant little thriller – with Frances McDormand as the cheating wife of a rich husband (Dan Hedaya), John Getz as her lover, and M. Emmett Walsh (in a wonderful performance) as the man sent to kill the lovers. The film is a thriller, and it is at times almost unbearably intense (like when a body needs to be disposed of), but it is also  darkly funny all the way through. The performances are excellent, and from the start the Coen’s established themselves as masterful stylists. They have surpassed their debut film multiple times over the years, but it is still worthy of attention.

8. Barton Fink (1991)

Barton Fink stars John Turturro as a New York playwright, who considers himself to be a “poet of the working man”, and even though he has come to Hollywood during the Depression to sell-out, he still thinks he can be a great writer – even if his first assignment is to write a wrestling movie for Wallace Beery. There are only three problems – one, he’s not a good writer, two, he has writer’s block and three, even when presented with a real live working man – John Goodman’s travelling salesman who lives in the same hotel – he doesn’t listen to him, or what he wants, he just tells him what he thinks he wants. Barton Fink is a strange, knowing Hollywood comedy – perfectly cast from Turturro’s bumbling idiot, to Goodman’s fake goodness, to Michael Lerner as an over the top studio boss, to John Mahoney as a drunken Faulkner clone to Judy Davis as his “secretary”, the Coens perfectly cast their absurd comedy, that somehow gets funnier and darker as it goes along, leading to a wholly unexpected conclusion. There are deeper undercurrents to the movie if one wants to look for them – about how ineffectual this “intellectual” is in the face of horror, but Barton Fink is still an absurd, comic movie. While the Coens have made other, better films, Barton Fink is still not to be missed.

7. Miller’s Crossing (1990)

By this point in the list, it should be apparent that the Coens are lovers of old movies. We’ve already covered their trip back to 1930s Hollywood, some screwball comedies, a Western and their take on Capra – and we have their film noir and Preston Sturges movies to come. Miller’s Crossing is their gangster movie. Set in 1929, the film stars Gabriel Bryne as a gangster, who works for Albert Finney – the king of the city’s underworld, who doesn’t know if his younger wife – Marcia Gay Harden, a perfect gangster’s moll, truly loves him. We know she doesn’t, but because he loves her, Finney makes mistakes – and Bryne has to clean them up. The best performance in the movie may just be John Turturro as Harden’s weak, sniveling brother who causes all the problems – and the scene in the forest remains one of the best set pieces in the Coen’s careers. The film is high style – great cinematography, sets and costumes, but there’s more to it than that. The dialogue is perfect, and the performances capture the right feel. You can say for filmmakers as skilled as the Coen’s, this is just a genre exercise – but what an exercise it is.

6. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

Watching The Man Who Wasn’t There, you wonder why the Coens never made a film in black and white before – and why they haven’t since, since they are so comfortable there. The film is their take on film noir – with Billy Bob Thornton’s barber narrating his story that will involve more than one murder. Like many film noir heroes, he cannot understand how he got himself into the situation he’s in, but we know – we see all his mistakes. Thornton plays him as a nearly silent man, always smoking, always watching, but never quite sure of what to do next. The cast that surrounds him are all more forceful than he is – from his nagging wife (Frances McDormand), her boss (the late, great James Gandolfini), a slimy defense lawyer (Tony Shaloub), another slimy character (Jon Polito), and the teenage girl who somehow becomes infatuated with him (Scarlett Johansson). The Coen’s are comfortable in this world – they take their time moving the plot forward – they savor the small details and craft a stellar film noir. A little long? Perhaps, but the film always gives you something to admire.

5. O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

Fans of the great Preston Sturges know that in his 1941 classic Sullivan’s Travels, the filmmaker Joel McCrea hit the road to live life as a tramp as a way to research his next movie – which he said was going to be titled O Brother, Where Art Thou. Sturges never made that film within the film, so the Coen’s went ahead and did it for him. This is one of the Coen’s craziest, most absurd comedies, and also one of their funniest. George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson play prisoners on a Depression-era chain gang who expect together, and go on an Odyssey reminiscent on Homer (the film was actually nominated for an Adapted Screenplay Oscar – with Homer being the author adapted). Now, you don’t need to know Sturges or Homer to like O Brother Where Art Thou – but it helps. The movie is full of bizarre comic set pieces – a man who sold his soul to Devil to learn to play the guitar, a trio of Sirens in a river, John Goodman as a Cyclops, a Klan rally – and through it all it is buoyed by music supervised by T-Bone Burnett. Once again, the Coen’s style is on full display – you could make the argument that out of all of their films, none have better cinematography than this one (and that’s saying something). One of their most enjoyable films.

4. The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Coens will probably never make a funnier movie than The Big Lebowski. The film takes two stereotypical characters from the 1970s – the pot smoking, relaxed hippie and the crazed Vietnam vet – places them in 1990s L.A., and gives them a strange detective plot that would have Raymond Chandler confused. They also have a bowler named Jesus, a rich, handicapped man, his “artist” daughter, a strange narrator, nihilists, the most awkward scattering of ashes ever caught on film and a hatred of The Eagles. The Coens have often been accused of hating, or at least mocking, their characters – a complaint I don’t agree with, but at least understand in some cases. But not in The Big Lebowski. They love The Dude, and his crazy friend Walter (not to mention poor, poor Donnie) – and as played by Jeff Bridges and John Goodman they are one of the best comedy duos in movie history. I doubt anyone knew just the sort of life this movie would take on over the years – but there is a reason it has a huge cult following – it’s brilliant and hilarious.

3. A Serious Man (2009)

Poor, poor Larry Goptnik. He’s a physics professor in 1960s Minnesota, whose life is falling apart one piece at a time – and worse still, he has no idea why. A Serious Man is the Coens retelling of the Book of Job, with Michael Stuhlberg’s Larry as their Job – a man who may be cursed because a distant, long dead relative once let a Dyybuk into their home. Whatever the reason, Larry is doomed, and everyone around him seems to sense it. As the humiliations pile up and up and up, poor Larry tries hard to stay good – a series of visits to various Rabbis does him no good (“Just look at the parking lot”). But Larry is almost able to make it through to the end without doing anything wrong – but when he does, he may just bring on another Apocalypse. A Serious Man is a funny movie – not laugh out loud like The Big Lebowski, but much more subtle – but I’ve never understood the complaint that the movie is looking down on poor Larry – he is perhaps the most sympathetic character they have ever created, and he is brilliantly play by Stuhlberg. This is the type of movie you get to make when you have won an Oscar (I got that from Ebert, who got that from someone else – but it’s true). An absolutely brilliant comedy.

2. No Country for Old Men (2007)

No Country for Old Men is the darkest film the Coen’s have ever made – there are only a few moments where their comedic side comes out at all. Still, it is every bit a Coen brothers film – and the Cormac McCarthy novel they adapted for the movie seems to have been written with them in mind. The film is the story of one man (played brilliantly by Josh Brolin) who happens upon a massacre, and steals the money he finds there – setting into motion a chase as a ruthless, contract killer (Javier Bardem) tracks him down, another killer (Woody Harrelson) on his trail, and small time Sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) trying to stop the impending murders, but powerless to do so. The film is brilliantly written and directed by the Coens, and features some of the best performances they have ever gotten from actors – Bardem deservingly won an Oscar for his Anton Chigruh, and Tommy Lee Jones is perhaps even better. The film is timeless – and by that I mean it would be relevant in any post WWII period in American history – it’s about human weakness and frailty – and ends on a somber note (which annoys many) as Jones simply decides he cannot do it anymore – he no longer understands people and why they do the things they do. No Country for Old Men is a perfect crime thriller – and like the best of the genre, has relevance beyond its genre trappings.

1. Fargo (1996) 

Fargo in the Coen’s best film because it is the film that combines everything they do better than anyone else into one perfect film. The Coen’s have made several crime films throughout their years, and Fargo is the best – because it keeps the crime at a human level. There are no mastermind criminals here – just somewhat naïve people thinking they can get away with things that they cannot. The film is also full of the Coen’s unique, absurd humor (there is a great conversation between two minor characters – a cop and a bystander who has placed a call to them about something he has seen that is as brilliantly written, directed and acted as anything scene I have ever seen, even if it is a throwaway scene). Fargo should have also been the film that forever dispels the notion that the Coen’s don’t like or mock their characters. Yes, the movie has fun with the character’s accents, but the movie also creates sympathetic characters out of everyone in the movie (okay, perhaps not Peter Stomare – but they also don’t mock him). The film is perfectly realized on every level – and contains perhaps the two greatest performances, and characters, ever in a Coen Brothers movie – William H. Macy’s sad Jerry Lundegaard, just trying to get ahead, and completely screwing everything up, and especially Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson, a pregnant cop, who is kind, sweet, smart and hilarious. McDormand justly one an Oscar for her role (Macy should have) – and the Coen’s won an Original Screenplay Oscar. They should have one more. Fargo is a masterpiece – pure and simple. The best film the Coens have ever made, and one of the all-time greatest films.

Movie Review: Philomena

Philomena
Directed by:  Stephen Frears.
Written by: Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope based on the book by Martin Sixsmith.
Starring: Judi Dench (Philomena), Steve Coogan (Martin Sixsmith), Sophie Kennedy Clark (Young Philomena), Mare Winningham (Mary), Barbara Jefford (Sister Hildegarde), Ruth McCabe (Mother Barbara), Peter Hermann (Pete Olsson), Sean Mahon (Michael), Anna Maxwell Martin (Jane), Michelle Fairley (Sally Mitchell), Charlie Murphy (Kathleen), Cathy Belton (Sister Claire), Simone Lahbib (Kate Sixsmith), Sara Stewart (Marcia Weller).

It would be easy to dismiss Philomena as simple, middlebrow fare made for old people and Oscar voters. There really is no denying that Philomena is “middlebrow” – safe entertainment with clearly drawn lines between good and bad that will make the audience laugh and cry at various points, and have them leave the theater feeling good. All of that is true. But is also doesn’t suggest what this movie does well. Directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, and featuring two excellent performances – by Coogan himself and Judi Dench – Philomena may not be an overly challenging film, the pleasures it offers may be small, but it is precisely the movie it wants to be – and somehow pulls off the trick of being sentimental, but not overly sentimental. In my recent review of The Book Thief, I complained that the film tries so hard to get the audience to cry, that I simply resisted it. The reason why Philomena works as well as it does is because it doesn’t seem like it’s trying at all.

The film is about Philomena Lee (Dench), an Irish lass who in the 1950s does the worse thing an young Catholic teenage girl can do – have sex. She gets pregnant – of course – and her family is so ashamed they send to live with the nuns. In exchange for taking her and her child in, all Philomena has to do is sign away her parental rights, so the nuns can sell her child, and then work for four years essentially do slave labor in the laundry. They let her see her son for one hour every day – until, of course, someone shows up with some cash, then he’s whisked away with no one bothering to tell Philomena beforehand. The bulk of the film takes place 50 years later – in 2003 – with Philomena still haunted by her “decision” to give Anthony up for adoption. Finally, she tells her daughter about her lost long son. Into their lives comes Martin Sixsmith (Coogan), a former journalist, and now a disgraced former government spokesperson, who has no idea what to do next. He doesn’t do “human interest” stories – but hell, it’s better than doing nothing so he agrees to help Philomena track down her long lost son – thinking he’ll get a good story out of it.

Frears is a journeyman director, who career still has a remarkably high consistency level – at least until the last few years, when he makes stinkers like Cheri (2009) and Tamara Drewe (2010). While I always like when he goes darker – in films like The Hit (1984), Prick Up Your Ears (1987) or Dirty Pretty Things (2003) – he is also at home with prestige fare like this – having made Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005) and The Queen (2006). Here he keeps the direction light, and the pace moving – knowing full well that the stars of the show are Dench and Coogan, and their unexpected chemistry together. For the most part, Frears simply stays out of their way.

The performances by the pair really are good. Coogan is a fine comedic actor – but he excels most at playing himself – literally in films like Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes or the pair of Michael Winterbottom films Tristam Shandy and The Trip. In Philomena, he goes a little bit dramatic – but still retains his comedic side – some of his best moments are his deadpan comic asides (my favorite “ Oh look – it’s a series”). He does get to flex his dramatic muscles a few times – and he’s surprisingly effective when he does. Then there’s Dench’s performance – which is really what makes the film worthwhile. Dench is the kind of actress who has sometimes been nominated for Oscars simply for showing up – I thinking her nominations for Chocolat, Iris and the aforementioned Mrs. Henderson Presents. Yet there is a tendency for some to write off all her work in the same way – and that’s simply not fair, as she was excellent in her other nominated work – Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love and especially Notes on a Scandal – not to mention a host of other films, like last year’s Skyfall, where her small performance elevated the entire movie to arguably the best Bond film ever made. It would be easy for her to go broad in Philomena – to make her into a caricature, but Dench doesn’t do that. Her Irish accent is spot on, but subtle – showing Americans that you don’t need to make yourself sound like the Lucky Charms leprechaun to play Irish. And Dench also makes the daring choice to underplay her characters biggest dramatic moments, which makes them all the more impactful. Her Philomena is a woman who has all the reasons in the world to be angry at the Catholic Church, yet she maintains her faith in God, and refuses to give herself over to that anger. It is some of the best screen work Dench has ever done.

Philomena is a safe movie – it won’t challenge you very much, and doesn’t really try to make things overly complex and messy. It is the very definition of middlebrow entertainment. But it’s well done middlebrow entertainment, and contains a wonderful performance by Judi Dench at its center. It may not be my idea of a great movie – but I know a lot of people who would disagree with me. I think I’ll recommend it to my mother.

The Oscars - Documentary Shortlist

There have already been numerous complaints about the new process for voting for the Best Documentary Oscar – mainly that with no selection committee, members are finding it impossible to see everything that is eligible this year – which was 147 titles. Some have argued that this will favor the bigger titles over the smaller ones. That is, of course, true. But it’s no more true here than in every other Oscar category. I do not hear people saying the Academy needs to have some sort of selection committee to ensure someone like Brie Larson’s brilliant performance in the tiny indie Short Term 12 has an equal shot at being nominated for Best Actress this year as Meryl Streep has for August: Osage County.

Personally, I like the new system. In general I’m in favor of a wide open system where voters can vote for whatever films they like and NOT vote AGAINST films they don’t like, which is what has happened in the past (this is why a film like Hoop Dreams didn’t make the cut). Does that mean that some worthy smaller films probably will not make the cut? Yes. That is too bad – but I insist that the Academy should be rewarding films that actually allow audiences to see the movies in question. Too many docs only want a 1 week qualifying run and then hope they can squeeze into the race – or at least the shortlist – to use it as a marketing tool. When this happens, it hurts the award – and the film nominated for it – more than helps. Some complain that having a separate category for docs “ghettoizes” the films – that’s also true, but we all know that if the Academy did not have a documentary category, than these films wouldn’t win anything. What further ghettoizes the category is too many films that no one outside of a few festival audiences has gotten a chance to see. How can anyone feel passionately about an Oscar race for Best Documentary when even people who love documentaries have not had a chance to see more than a couple of the nominees? In general, I think this is why the new rules came into play – to encourage documentary distributers to actually release their films to the public at large – this helps bring buzz, which will ensure more voters make time to watch your film, and more will vote for it. I like that. I want to be able to debate the category just like every other category – but too often two or three of the nominated films have not actually been released for many to see – so I end up all but ignoring the category. That’s a shame.

Anyway, here are the list 15 films that will be competing for this year’s 5 nominee slots, and eventually, one winner:

·         The Act of Killing
·         The Armstrong Lie
·         Blackfish
·         The Crash Reel
·         Cutie and the Boxer
·         Dirty Wars
·         First Cousin Once Removed
·         God Loves Uganda
·         Life According to Sam
·         Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer
·         The Square
·         Stories We Tell
·         Tim’s Vermeer
·         20 Feet from Stardom
·         Which Way Is the Front Line from Here?

I cannot say I’m overly surprised by the inclusion of any single title – between the Gotham Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, the Cinema Eye Awards, the International Documentary Association Awards and the Producers Guild Documentary awards (all of which have already announced their nominations for the year) – 13 of these films had already shown up somewhere. The two that didn’t – The Armstrong Lie and God Loves Uganda – are hardly ones that have not received attention, as both have been released to varying degrees of praise this fall. And, refreshingly, most of these films have also allowed themselves to be seen by audiences – either theatrically or on HBO (or some other network)– the exceptions being (I think), First Cousin Once Removed, Life According to Sam, The Square and Tim’s Vermeer- all of whom did a qualifying run, and not much else – but I also know that The Square and Tim’s Vermeer will be opening wider either later this year or early next – I don’t know about the other two.

There were some notable snubs – Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known, alongside Martha Shane & Lana Wilson’s After Tiller, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks (although director Alex Gibney did get shortlisted for The Armstrong Lie), Tim Donahue’s Casting By, Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust, Joe Brewster & Michelle Stevenson’s American Promise, Jason Osder’s Let the Fire Burn, Jacob Kornbluth’s Inequality for All, Penny Lane’s Our Nixon, Dawn Porter’s Gideon’s Army, Dave Grohl’s Sound City, Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel’s Leviathan  and Marta Cunningham’s Valentine Road. I think all of these films were eligible this year – and some undoubtedly would have made my own list (in particular The Unknown Known, even if it’s not Morris’ best work).

Of these 15 films, I have seen 7 – The Act of Killing, Blackfish, Cutie and the Boxer, Dirty Wars, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, Stories We Tell and 20 Feet from Stardom. I’m rooting for The Act of Killing – which unless something comes along and blows me away will be my favorite documentary of 2013 and Stories We Tell – which I named the Best Documentary of last year, because that is when it was released in Canada. I would also love to see Blackfish get a nomination. And I quite liked the other four films that I have seen as well.

Of the 8 other films that I have not seen – I SHOULD be able to see The Armstrong Lie this weekend (hopefully I have time), and The Crash Reel is opening at the Lightbox at some point in December. As far as I know, Which Way to the Front Line From Here? has been on iTunes for months, so I’ll also catch up with that one. That makes 10 – which is far better than I normally do.

I have no idea when I’ll get a chance to see Tim’s Vermeer, The Square, First Cousin Once Removed, God Loves Uganda or Life According to Sam yet. If and when I have the chance, I’ll see them – especially if it’s before the nominations come out.

No system for selecting Documentaries for awards is ever going to be perfect. More docs than ever are being released each year. I love documentaries, and even I struggle to see more than 30 in a given year (mind you, if I were an Academy member, and was sent screeners, I’d watch for more – but I digress). Even the best process will most likely leave worthy films out – after all, only 10% of the films eligible even get to this point, and only a third of them will actually get nominated. We live in a movie world where lots of great documentaries come out every year – and as long as the Academy spotlights worthy films, than I’m happy. Would my list look different than theirs? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean theirs is bad though.

Now, because it’s mandatory, what do I see being nominated? Here’s how I would rank them right now:

 

Favorites

1)       The Act of Killing – this will, I think, dominate the critics’ awards this season and the uproar if it didn’t get nominated would be huge.

2)       Stories We Tell – what doesn’t go to The Act of Killing in the critics’ awards will likely go to Sarah Polley’s doc (as the New York Film Critics did today)
3)       The Square – This has been a buzzy festival film all year, and received a ton of praise. Hard to imagine it not making it in the top 5.
4)       Blackfish – perhaps the most talked about doc of the year outside of movie circles – it crossed over to make waves when it aired on CNN.
5)       Tim’s Vermeer – the late breaking audience pleaser – have heard nothing but positive things from the festival screenings.

Alternates
6)       20 Feet From Stardom – the audience pleaser in the bunch – the top grossing doc of the year – but perhaps it will be squeezed out.
7)       Cutie and the Boxer – Artist docs don’t always cross over well – but this one has quite a bit of support.
8)       The Crash Reel – Could be a sentimental favorite – the preview practically had me crying
9)       Which Way is the Front Line From Here? – Sebastian Junger’s documentary about his co-director of the Oscar nominated Restrepo – who was tragically killed covering the War on Terror. Could be a sentimental favorite.
10)   God Loves Uganda – important subject matter is never a bad thing here - especially since this one has actually received praise as well.

Long Shots
11)   First Cousin Once Removed – Has gotten a lot of praise – I could easily be underestimating this one.
12)   Life According to Sam – Perhaps the PGA nomination should have me taking it more seriously – but until that happened, no one had even heard of this one.
13)Dirty Wars – Despite a rather high profile release for a doc, it didn’t exactly catch on. May have a feeling of beenthere, rewarded that to it.
14)   Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer – I liked this documentary – but didn’t love it. Wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not the only one in that boat.
15)   The Armstrong Lie – They’ve already rewarded Gibney in the past – and for more acclaimed films.

Please keep in mind this branch never does what everyone expects it to, so this could really go any which way. Anyway, that’s how I see it now.

Movie Review: The Book Thief

The Book Thief
Directed by: Brian Percival.
Written by: Michael Petroni   based on the novel by Markus Zusak.
Starring: Sophie Nélisse (Liesel), Geoffrey Rush (Hans), Emily Watson (Rosa), Nico Liersch (Rudy), Ben Schnetzer (Max), Oliver Stokowski (Alex Steiner), Carina N. Wiese (Barbara Steiner) Rainer Bock (Buergmeister Hermann), Barbara Auer (Ilsa Hermann), Roger Allam  Roger Allam (Narrator / Death).

The Book Thief is an overly earnest, overly sentimental attempt to do something that is basically impossible – trying to explain the horrors of the Holocaust and Nazis to children. The film is nowhere near as awful as The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas a few years ago – where a the son of the Nazi who heads up a concentration camp befriends a Jewish boy on the other side of a barbed wire fence – neither of them seemingly knowing what the hell is going on until it’s too late. That film was wrongheaded in the extreme, overly manipulative and just plain ridiculous. By contrast, The Book Thief is an honest effort that simply comes up short – because there really isn’t a way to pull off what the film attempts to do. The film has some good performances at its core, but overall it feels like it’s pulling its punches – mainly because it is.

The film stars young, gifted Quebec actress Sophie Nelisse (who won numerous prizes – deserved – for her performance in Monsieur Lazhar a few years ago) as Liesel who in 1938 Germany, along with her brother, is taken from their Communist mother, and shipped across the country to live with a new family. Her brother doesn’t make it however, and at first she is shy around her new parents – kindly Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and strict Rosa (Emily Watson) – but gradually Hans wears her down simply because he’s such a nice guy. Liesel has no understand of where her mother is and what’s happened to her – which is a flaw, because is Liesel in the movie cannot understand it, how can the “young adults” the film is aimed at understand it?

Liesel quickly befriends the boy next door, Rudy (Nico Liersch) – a boy so innocent he doesn’t understand why pretending to be Jesse Owens, complete with black face, is offensive to pretty much every one - and is trundled off to school – where her secret – she cannot read – is revealed to all. After a few short scenes of Hans teaching her, all of a sudden, Liesel is in love with reading – and reads everything she can get her hands on. The Nazis, of course, hate books and burn them – making Liesel into a rebel. Further rebellion happens when Max (Ben Schnetzer) arrives on their doorstep – he is a Jew – and the son of the man who saved Hans’ life in WWI – so they take him in and hide him in the basement. Max, like Liesel, is an avid reader – and he’ll teach her even more about books and their power.

My biggest problem with The Book Thief is that I don’t really think it achieves what it sets out to do. The film is based on an acclaimed, best-selling Young Adult novel (unread by me), and I suppose the purpose of the movie is to introduce children to the evils of the Nazis. Yet the movie doesn’t really want to address what the Nazis actually did. Although the film is narrated by Death (and that’s not a typo), it pretty much remains firmly from Liesel’s point of view – and she doesn’t really understand what the Nazis are doing. She doesn’t know why her mother, a Communist, was taken away. She’s told that they must hide Max, or else the Nazis will do bad things to him, but she is never told what they’ll do or why they’ll do it. When she sees a group of Jews being marched through the streets or some taken away the movie never tells what will happen to them. So if the movie is supposed to introduce children to what the Nazis did, but it never explains what they did, how can they possibly understand it? You can, of course, make a movie about the events through the eyes of children who do not fully understand the events happening around them – sometimes the result is ghastly, like The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas, and sometimes it works wonderfully – as in Cate Shortland’s Lore from earlier this year. But Lore works because the audience brings the knowledge of what the Nazis did with them into the theater – something that the target audience for The Book Thief may not.

This wouldn’t be quite so much of a problem had the movie been better overall – but despite fine performances by Watson, who gradually reveals more layers to the seemingly bitchy Rosa, Rush, who really does make Hans into an idealized father figure and especially Nelisse, who somehow keeps the naïve Liesel from becoming overly cloying and annoying, the film just never seems to quite find its footing. It’s too earnest, too overly sentimental – it quite simply tries too hard to make the audience FEEL, that I found myself resisting it.

All told, I didn’t hate The Book Thief as much as many seem to do – I certainly don’t think the movie is as awful as some other WWII films aimed at children. And yet, I cannot say that the movie really worked for me in any real way. When a movie tries this hard to milk tears from me – and everything about the film from the performances to the writing to the direction to John Williams score tries really, really hard – I often find I have the opposite reaction to the one the filmmakers intended. Such is the case with The Book Thief, which never feels authentic, and doesn’t achieve what it sets out to do.

Movie Review: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Directed by: Francis Lawrence.
Written by: Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt based on the book by Suzanne Collins.
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss Everdeen), Josh Hutcherson (Peeta Mellark), Woody Harrelson (Haymitch Abernathy), Donald Sutherland (President Snow), Elizabeth Banks (Effie Trinket), Liam Hemsworth (Gale Hawthorne), Stanley Tucci (Caesar Flickerman), Lenny Kravitz (Cinna), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Plutarch Heavensbee), Jeffrey Wright (Beetee), Amanda Plummer (Wiress), Sam Claflin (Finnick Odair), Jena Malone (Johanna Mason), Willow Shields (Primrose Everdeen), Paula Malcomson (Katniss' Mother), Lynn Cohen (Mags), Toby Jones (Claudius Templesmith).

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is an improvement in almost every respect over the already quite good original movie from last year. Part of this is because of the increased budget – the first film was hardly a low budget affair, but the studio hedged their bets a little bit, just in case they misjudged the market, and The Hunger Games turned out to be more like The Golden Compass and less like Twilight in terms of widespread appeal. When the film became a huge hit, the budget for the sequel increased – and we see that extra money throughout the film – from even more elaborate costumes, and making the Capitol into an even greater shrine of excess, to casting better actors in new roles. There is a marked difference between what Philip Seymour Hoffman can bring to a role like Plutarch Heavensbee, head games maker, to what Wes Bentley brought to his role as the previous game maker in the original film – which was basically just crazy facial hair.

But there’s more to it than just extra money – it’s also the story itself. The first Hunger Games had to spend so much time setting everything and everyone up that it effected the pacing of the entire movie. This time, the movie jumps right into the plot – trusting that the audience knows what happened last time, so it doesn’t need to catch them up (it still does that, a few times, but it’s at least somewhat organic to the story and not just a “Previously on The Hunger Games style intro). In a few short scenes, the film establishes everything that has happened in the year since the last Hunger Games – especially how Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) has dealt with it – which isn’t very well. She’s traumatized by the events, and still hasn’t resolved anything between herself and either of her love interests – Gale or Peeta. To make matters worse, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) is not all that happy with her – her stunt at the end of the last Games inspired discontent in the districts – and has given rise to an uprising of sorts. The Capitol is starting to lose a little bit of control – and Snow makes it clear to Katniss that this is not acceptable. They are about to embark on a “Victory Tour” of all 12 Districts and the Capital – and Snow makes it clear that if she doesn’t play nice, and help quell the rebellion, there will be repercussions – not just for her but everyone she loves. The tour doesn’t go well, the Capital responses harshly – and then Snow’s new gamekeeper Plutarch comes up with an idea. The next Hunger Games will be the Quarter Quell – something that happens once every 25 years, and always has a special twist. This time, the twist is that all the Contestants will be made up of one male and one female Victor from each district. Since Katniss is the only female winner ever from District 12 – she’s assured to go back into the Games. And this time, Snow is determined that she will not win.

In many ways, Catching Fire benefits from being the middle installment of the trilogy. I know some think that the middle chapters are always little more than a holding pattern, but I think they are often the most satisfying chapter onto themselves. The Empire Strikes Back is clearly the best Star Wars movie ever made for instance, and personally, I would argue the same thing about The Two Towers in Lord of the Rings. When you’re a middle chapter, you don’t have to waste your time setting everything up, or come up with a satisfying resolution – two things that often trip up movies. The story is free to exist unto itself. Catching Fire was the best of the three books by Suzanne Collins – and I have a feeling it will be the high water mark of the movie franchise as well – it’s already bested the original Hunger Games, and the studio has made the unnecessary, cash grab decision to split Mockingjay into two movies (something the story of that film clearly does not need).

As was true of the last film, Jennifer Lawrence is the anchor that grounds Catching Fire. I find her character of Katniss to be somewhat refreshing in terms of young adult fiction and movie heroines. Katniss is strong willed and resourceful, but not much of a planner – she reacts better than she thinks ahead. The movie also makes it clear that very few people actually care about Katniss herself – who she is as a person. To most, she is little more than a symbol – something to inspire the rebellion or something to squash without turning her into a martyr. Everyone simply wants to use her – which simply infuriates her even more.

The movie adds quite a few supporting players this time around – too many perhaps for them to all fit in a two and half hour movie, and some don’t leave much of an impact. That cannot be said about Jena Malone as Johanna – a pissed off victor who is pulled back into the Games, or Jeffrey Wright as a genius who won his games by outsmarting, not outfighting everyone else or Lynn Cohen, who somehow manages to deliver a complete performance as Mags – the oldest victor pulled back into the Games, despite the fact that she has little screen time, and never says a word. The best addition is Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has a very difficult role as Plutarch, but who pulls it off well. The best supporting performance in the film belongs to Donald Sutherland as President Snow – especially in the scenes between him and his granddaughter, who clearly idolizes Katniss. With little other than a look in his eye, and a subtle change in his voice, he maintains his sweet grandfather exterior, while letting the audience know just how pissed he is by every word of praise his granddaughter has for Katniss.

2013 has not been a great year for franchise movies – most have stumbled over themselves to be bigger and better than the previous installments – and while many have offered minor entertainment, none have really come close to greatness. Catching Fire is not a great movie – but it comes closer to being a great franchise movie than anything else I’ve seen this year.

Movie Review: Oldboy

Oldboy
Directed by: Spike Lee.
Written by: Mark Protosevich based on the manga by Garon Tsuchiya & Nobuaki Minegishi.
Starring: Josh Brolin (Joe Doucett), Elizabeth Olsen (Marie Sebastian), Sharlto Copley (Adrian / The Stranger), Samuel L. Jackson  Samuel L. Jackson (Chaney), Michael Imperioli (Chucky), Pom Klementieff (Haeng-Bok), James Ransone (Dr. Tom Melby), Max Casella (James Prestley), Linda Emond (Edwina Burke), Elvis Nolasco (Cortez), Rami Malek (Browning), Lance Reddick (Daniel Newcombe), Hannah Ware (Donna Hawthorne), Richard Portnow (Bernie Sharkey), Hannah Simone (Stephanie Lee).

The best remakes are the ones that bring their own specific take on the material. When you watch Martin Scorsese’s The Departed for example, you do not really think about the excellent Hong Kong action film, Infernal Affairs, which it’s based on. It’s a Scorsese film through and through. A remake like the underrated Let Me In emphasizes different aspects of the story than the admittedly better Swedish original – Let the Right One In. This is something that Spike Lee’s Oldboy doesn’t really achieve. It’s clear that Lee loves Chan-wook Park’s original film – perhaps too much. The film is littered with references to the original film – in jokes that you’ll only really get if you’ve seen the original. Lee is also guilty of trying too hard to one up the original film. So I think it would help to see the original film before you see this remake – to know what Lee is building off of. And yet, Oldboy is also a film that relies heavily on the shocking twists the story takes to work as well as it does. Although I saw the original years ago – and loved it – I’ve avoided re-watching the film for that simple reason – I worried that now that I know the secrets of the film, it wouldn’t hold up nearly as well to multiple viewings. Besides, the original is so memorable, that it remains seared in my memory even now – nearly a decade after seeing it. Yet, despite all of the film’s flaws – and I’ve only scratched the surface of them in this opening paragraph – I have to say I still kind of liked Lee’s version.

The story is about Joe Douchette (Josh Brolin) – an ad executive, drunk and all around asshole. He’s the type of person who will tell his ex-wife that it doesn’t matter if he shows up to his 3-year old’s birthday party, because she won’t remember it anyway. One night he blows a key account – and he knows it will cost him his job. He goes on a bender through the streets of New York City – and then simply vanishes. He wakes up in a hotel room – but one that he cannot leave. His jailers don’t talk to him – do not tell him what is going on – and they feed him the same three meals every day – through a hole in the door, so he will not see them. He spends his time watching TV and getting drunk. He learns from the TV that his ex-wife has been murdered – and that he is the only suspect (the evidence against him is apparently airtight). He observes everything that happens outside through the TV – from 9/11 to Katrina to Obama being inaugurated. After seeing his daughter on TV, he becomes determined to escape, prove his innocence and mend his relationship with his daughter. Then, one day, after 20 years, he simply wakes up in a trunk in the middle of a field – his release is as unexplained as his imprisonment. He quickly meets Marie (Elizabeth Olsen) – a young woman who works with mentally ill people, who thinks Joe needs her help. He also reconnects with his old friend Chucky (Michael Imperioli) to help him figure out who put him in that hotel for years – but they won’t stay hidden for long.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about Lee’s Oldboy is that he doesn’t soften the material from the original. When I first heard Hollywood was going to remake the film, I worried that any studio who was going to take on a remake would want to soften the material so much that any remake would be toothless or pointless. Lee doesn’t do that – this film is perhaps even more violent than the original, and although Lee does change some of the plot details and twists in the film he certainly did not do so for commercial reasons – you could even argue this film is an ever bigger downer than the original.

Lee also takes on the challenge of trying to up the ante on a film that was already ultra-stylistic in the first place. The most famous sequence in the original film is the long fight scene, done in one shot, on the main character fighting his way through a group of thugs with a hammer. The original scene took place in a hallway, seen from the side, as he does battle. Lee keeps the scene – but this time sets it on a two level parking garage – and is also done in one shot (or looks like it does – Lee does admit there is one cut in the scene – and he’s not happy about that). The original shot is still better – but I have to admire Lee for trying to do something even more complex. While it’s clear that this film is Lee as a director-for-hire, and unlike his last film in this vein, Inside Man (2006), I don’t think I can really say Lee leaves his fingerprints on it (he does have his trademark tracking shot – of course). But Lee does remain a gifted visual stylist – so while it may not be one of his most personal films, the film certainly looks great.

The performances are a mixed bag. Brolin is excellent as Douchette – who goes from despicable alcoholic and all around asshole, into a sympathetic, broken man trying to piece together his own life story. Brolin has that old school masculine energy that so few more modern actors can pull off – but were a staple in film noir of old. Samuel L. Jackson is very good as his sadistic jailer – and does add another horrible hair cut to his resume (I think he has an ongoing bet with Javier Bardem on who can do more movies with ridiculous hair styles). It’s a small role, but Jackson delivers. Elizabeth Olsen is undercut by the screenplay a little (or perhaps by the mandate to make the film shorter – apparently there is a three hour cut of the film out there). Without giving anything away, I will say that she plays a big role in the major twist in the film – the problem being it doesn’t feel like something her character would actually do – just something the screenwriter needs her to do. Then there’s Sharlto Copley. I have no idea what to make of his performance – he dons such a strange accent, that sounds like no one in history has every sounded – and his performance in mannered in the extreme. Yet it is certainly a distinctive performance – not one that you will easily forget.

Oldboy is not one of those remakes that takes everything special about the original and completely eliminates it, draining it of the reason to make the film in the first place. But it is not an remake that truly adds much to the original either – there really is no reason to see this film with the original still out there – unless you’re like me, and enjoy seeing different directors taking on the same story. Oldboy is clearly not nearly as good as the original film.  Yet it’s not a boring, pointless film either. It exists somewhere in between. I’m glad I saw this film. It’s not great – I’m not even sure if it’s really good either. But it’s something different from Lee. He takes chances in his direction here – they may not all pay off, but I admire Lee’s efforts a great deal – even if, on this occasion, his reach outdid his grasp.

My Answer to this Week's Criticwire Survey: Family Movie Memories

Q: What's your favorite memory of watching a movie with your family?

I have to be honest, and say I don’t remember watching many movies with my family as a child – with my mom, sure, but with her AND my two brothers – not really. The one that stands out is a story I’ve told countless times over the years, but I go back to watching JFK on a bus. We were coming back from my brother’s hockey game – some three and half hours away – and everyone was pissed off. After all that travel, my brother’s team played horribly. Parents had taken the afternoon off work (it was a Friday) and taken younger children – like me, who was 10 – out of school to go to the game, and they played awful. The coach came onto the bus and said to put on a long movie and shut-up – and so someone put on JFK.

I sat next to my brother on the bus, and the experience stands out to me because for once my childhood memory of him doesn’t involve him tormenting me in anyway. We both sat there in rapt attention for the entire length of the movie – I don’t remember either one of us saying a word, although we probably did. He has never been much of a movie fan, so this is perhaps the only time I remember bonding with him over a movie (I have never brought it up with him to see if he remembers it at all – and there’s little danger of him reading this).

The experience also taught me a lesson about how different people see movies differently. My mother, who sat across the aisle from us with another hockey mom, was bored by the movie and ended up talking to her friend the entire way home (strangely, I don’t remember hearing her). A few years later, when I bought JFK on VHS my other brother – the hockey player – asked why I would buy such a terrible movie. As I made clear in last week’s answer about culture gifts to your loved ones, me and my family don’t share much in the way of common interests in this area – something that JFK taught me.