February 5, 2009
"Doubt" is about a strict traditionalist nun Sr. Aloysius who is a terror principal of a Catholic School. She frowns upon modernities like ballpoint pens and secular Christmas carols. She suspects improprieties regarding their progressive younger parish priest Fr. Flynn. When one of her teachers Sr. James tells her about a suspicious incident involving Fr. Flynn and the school's first African-American student Donald Miller, Sr. Aloysius uses this to launch her virulent attack against the priest.
"Doubt" is truly an acting vehicle. When it played on Broadway in 2005, the actors who played Sr. Aloysius, Fr. Flynn, Sr. James and Mrs. Miller all got nominated for Tony Awards. When playwright John Patrick Shanley reincarnates his script for film, he decides to direct it himself. Now, as then, all four actors who played these rich characters are again nominated for Oscars.
Playing the imperious Sr. Aloysius is none other than Meryl Streep. Her attack on the role is a bit theatrical, but it is really masterful, like no other actress can do it (without sinking into caricature). Each of her one-on-one scenes with Amy Adams (Sr. James), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Fr. Flynn) and Viola Davis (Mrs. Miller) is an acting highlight which also brings out the best in the other actor. All of these actors fully deserve their nominations given their very realistic portrayal of these difficult and complex roles.
*************spoiler alert
When you watch this film, you fully appreciate its theater origins. It is driven by very strong and incisive dialogue alone. Despite the fact that this film is all talk, with no real action, I liked it very much. I like that it is thought provoking. I like that the ending did not really tell the audience what really happened. Fr. Flynn did not categorically say if he is guilty or not. Sister Aloysius did not really say what she was doubting at the end. It is all for us to decide for ourselves.
February 4, 2009
This is the 4th Best Picture nominee I have seen. Honestly, I do not think I would even watch it if it were not nominated. I do not really like Sean Penn. Even his Oscar-winning role in "Mystic River" did not really work for me as I found it to be overacting.
Sean Penn already won the SAG Best Actor award for this performance and he is the front runner in the Oscar race. I do not know the real Harvey Milk, so this is just Sean Penn acting gay for me. He was good in giving powerful political speeches, but nothing really spectacular. I do not get the love, sorry.
The nominated role of Josh Brolin as Milk's political nemesis Dan White lacks something in the way the role was written and executed. His motivations are not clearly rationalized. And his acting was quite leaden, especially in the "drunk" scene.
As for the ensemble acting, OK, I would agree that they were good in portraying homosexuals. However, Diego Luna is too over the top as the unstable Latino toyboy Jack. Emile Hirsch's character Cleve came out of nowhere, I do not know why he was there. High School Musical's Lucas Grabeel surprisingly appears here in a very un-Disney role, but very minor though.
However, the revelation here is James Franco. He is actually very good as the loyal boyfriend Scott. He was daring yet sensitive, showing a different dimension in his acting range (especially for those who only know him as Harry Osborne). He should have been nominated for Supporting Actor instead of Brolin, in my opinion.
"Milk" has a good documentary feel to it, and that is thanks to the directorial talent of Guy Van Sant. I like the mix of historical clips and the recreated scenes. I guess it is just that the subject matter that I do not really care for, so the whole movie did not matter to me.
February 2, 2009
This is another one of those difficult to watch movies. Unfortunately, there is nothing neutral about this movie. Anything I mention about it can spoil another person's appreciation of it. I think it would be safe to say that this is a very polarizing movie. It plays two very emotionally charged cards which are bound to upset viewers -- one is about pedophilia, and the other one is about the Holocaust.
Yet here it is, a nominee for Best Picture in the upcoming Oscar Awards. Being the most unexpected of the five nominees, this is the film most blamed for kicking out the popular choice "The Dark Knight". So, does "The Reader" measure up?
**************** Spoilers ahead!
The first third of the movie is of a very sexual nature. The female party Hanna Schmitz is 36, but the male Michael Berg is only 15! OK, granted that even if the female party looks like Kate Winslet, this would still be disturbing for some. Though admittedly not so much than if the sexes were reversed, would it?
Aside from this detail, those very frank execution of these sex scenes were really unexpected especially since one party is supposed to be a minor. There was even uninhibited frontal nudity by both Winslet (she's not the Rose of "Titanic" as we remember it anymore) and the 17 year-old promising (and daring) new actor David Kross. And I thought they did not really resort to such gratuitous exposure anymore these days, but I guess this is the proverbial "for art's sake" in its truest sense. However, as an unusual fetish, Hanna would request Michael to read books to her before they would make love, thus giving their affair another dimension; and this movie its title.
Hanna and Michael's affair occurred in the summer of 1958, abruptly ending when Hanna left the city. The setting then fast forwards to 1966 when Michael was attending law school. As his seminar class sat in on a case involving atrocities of Holocaust guards, he was shocked to hear his beloved Hanna's voice on the witness stand as one of the accused guards. In the trial, Hanna withholds a vital secret that could have spared her from a life sentence. Should Michael reveal himself and this secret he also realized in order to save Hanna?
Fast forward again to the 1970s when Michael (now played by a very cold Ralph Fiennes) gets divorced and visits his old home. There he finds his collection of novels, so he suddenly decides to record himself reading these novels aloud as he did before, and send these tapes to Hanna in prison. Of course, these recordings succeeded to buoy and encourage Hanna's spirits and gave her a renewed sense of purpose in life. However, in 1988, the story of Hanna and Michael ends unexpectedly for a reason I am not entirely clear on.
The best part of this movie is really Kate Winslet, who is so bold as to accept and tackle such a thanklessly negative role like Hanna, and yet still come out as someone that audiences can somehow sympathize with. This audacity of Ms. Winslet is perhaps why the Academy correctly elevated this role to Lead (not the Supporting that the Golden Globe recognized). However, this is not to downplay Kate's effort in "Revolutionary Road" which is no walk in the park either. Her roles were both offbeat, irrational and miserable, yet she was able to portray them with sensitivity and dignity. She is ripe for an Oscar win this February.
The script loses points with me not really because of the emotional buttons it pushes, but because it fails to clarify character motivations that drive critical moments of the story. The great mystery that the movie's tagline invites to unlock almost seems too trivial in the greater scheme of the events. That meeting of Berg and the Holocaust survivor at the end was not very well written and fails to evoke its planned dramatic purpose.
The treatment by Director Stephen Daldry may be a little too bleak. Although, it has the same feel and look of the other Daldry masterpiece "The Hours." But I guess there may have been no other way to portraying the emotionally-charged material, but straightforwardly and frankly, as this movie certainly did. Daldry is an Academy favorite. He has only done three major films ("Billy Elliot", "The Hours" and now "The Reader") and he has been nominated Best Director for all of them!
(As the credits rolled, I noted that this movie is dedicated to the memory of recently departed Oscar awardees Anthony Minghella and Sidney Pollack, both of whom collaborated with this project as producers. These names further add to this film's Oscar pedigree.)
January 30, 2009
Definitely, the best thing about "Australia" is the cinematography. Each scene is big, a panorama -- the desert, the cattle herds, the horses, the battleships, the fighter planes, the bombs. Even the most intimate scenes are photographed to be larger than life. This definitely has to be seen on the big screen to fully appreciate all the color and drama of the awesome photography.
I was very surprised to see just now that "Australia" only earned one Oscar nomination, and it is NOT for cinematography. I do not really know why of all things, its unimpressive Costume Design was the one cited by the Academy.
Honestly, even at the start, I felt the story would not be too good. The beginning sequences are not really too interesting for me. The romance angle is too obviously following the old "bickering at first, lovers at the end" route. Luckily, lead stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman have a huge likability factor for the audience to stay on and watch. (But I wonder why Director Baz Luhrmann seemed to have played up Hugh Jackman's "People Magazine Sexiest Man Alive" citation a wee bit too much with all the close-ups and slow-mo devoted to him?)
The basic romance story winded from cattle herding in the outback to World War 2 to aboriginal issues. All of which really took up what felt like a lot of extra time for each of these subplots. While still a visual spectacle, overall "Australia" was a picture of excesses. A more streamlined cut would have been a more palatable feast.
January 28, 2009
***** SPOILER WARNING *****
A "changeling" in European folklore is an elf or other enchanted entity that is secretly left in the stead of an abducted child. Director Clint Eastwood takes this legend and applies the name to the 1928 case of Los Angeles woman whose boy went missing one day and another boy was returned to her. Incredible as it may sound, this is supposed to be a true story.
Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is a single mom working as a supervisor in a telephone service. One day in March 1928 she came home from work to discover her son Walter missing. A few months later, the L.A. police return another boy to her who is clearly not her son. Despite her repeated protests (and I mean REPEATED), the police, specifically Capt. J.J. Jones (sinisterly played by Jeffrey Donovan) do not believe her and even put her in a mental institution!
While this was going on, Detective Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelly) stumbles upon a house where grisly murders of boys have been committed. This child murderer Gordon Northcutt (disturbingly played by Jason Butler Harner) would randomly pick up boys on the street, keep them in a chicken coop and mercilessly hacks them to death. An unwilling accomplice confessed to the crimes and identified Walter Collins as among the kids they had abducted.
Now for me everything else after this point, I felt the movie lost its focus. Instead of ending it right there, it still went on to depict in detail the murderer's escape to Canada, his capture there, the extensive trials (two simultaneous cases vs. Northcutt, and vs the LAPD), his fruitless audience with Christine before his execution and his hanging (complete with his spooky singing of "Silent Night")!
Not being satisfied with that, the movie even fast forwarded to five more years ahead, when a boy suddenly returned and revealed that he was among the kids abducted by Northcutt. He said that he remembered Walter, and that Walter was also able to escape. However, the movie ended with Christine still not being reunited with Walter at all.
As a result, the movie really felt very long. There were so many scenes that felt repetitive and unnecessary in the telling of the story. And I have not even mentioned the part of John Malkovich! I felt that Eastwood tried to milk everything out of this story, much to the detriment of the story telling.
Fortunately, the acting performance of star Angelina Jolie, upon whom the entire movie hinged, was sincere. She was very good in conveying subtleties of emotions required of her persecuted character. Her very heavy eye and lip make-up may be a bit too distracting at times to the drama, but otherwise, she was spot on. She deserves her Oscar nomination, along with the Academy citations for Art Direction and Cinematography that this film has earned.
January 25, 2009
Jamal Malik is poor young man from the slums of Mumbai joins the TV game show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" From that simple yet ingenious plot and setting, this most memorable film unfolds, detailing the events in this boy's miserable life which (very) coincidentally enables him to answer the trivia questions in the quiz show.
I like that the movie delved on the relationship of two brothers, Jamal and his elder brother Salim. While Salim goes the gangster/hitman route, Jamal strove to make a more decent life for himself as a call center gofer. While there is violence in their relationship, brotherly love still comes through in repeated occasions.
In addition, there is also a love story here. A slum girl named Latika had her life intertwined with the brothers during an ethnic massacre when they were kids. Jamal and Latika naturally become fond of other, but are separated two traumatic times, but can they find each other again at the end?
The story was told as flashbacks from their childhood, teenage years and their young adulthood. The child actors were most affecting in their portrayal, especially the boys. The child Jamal had that wide-eyed innocence, while the child Salim had that worldly-wise jadedness. I do not know why the adult Jamal (Dev Patel) was acting in such a flat manner in several parts, but he is most effective in his scenes with Latika (Frieda Pinto).
Honestly, I really felt that 'Slumdog" had a big similarity with the Brazilian classic "City of God" when it came to the brutal and unforgiving depiction of the squalor and violence in the slums. The unmitigated violence in the treatment of the poor slum kids is most disturbing. The big difference of course is that "Slumdog" is more neatly tied up and positive in its final message when compared to "City".
This movie already won the Best Picture Drama in the Golden Globes. Yesterday, it won the Best Picture in the Producers Guild of America. And just this morning, it won Best Cast in the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It certainly bodes very well that this movie is the film to beat come Oscar time for Best Picture.
The treatment of Director Danny Boyle (of "Trainspotting") is very exciting and dramatic. Though story elements can be quite contrived (like that final 20M rupee question could not have been that easy, could it?), it will still hold you at the edge of your seats until the very last scene.
January 25, 2009
My choices that day was between "The Haunting of Molly Hartley" and "Bride Wars." I decided that this one should be the lesser evil, so to speak. I did not know anyone in the cast, yet the horror genre certainly appealed more to me than the chick flick. Even though this is horror of the teen kind. And the title, hmmm, could this be a sequel to "The Exorcism of Emily Rose"?
Molly Hartley (pretty newcomer Haley Bennett, who can wear a mean school uniform) has just survived a murder attempt by her own mother. Her father transfers he to a new private school for a fresh start. But she is constantly being haunted by visual and aural hallucinations and nose bleeds as her 18th birthday draws near. Diabolical revelations were eventually made to explain what was going on.
Of note here for me was the inclusion of a sequence showing her consultation with an ENT that revealed an angiofibroma inside her sinus cavity causing her headaches and hallucinations. She even underwent endoscopic surgery to excise it! Of course, we all saw that that was a red herring a mile away.
OK, the horror was not that scary. It relied on a lot of sudden jumps in the soundtrack to create the scare. The generic young all-American good looking cast was well like so OC or some random TV teen drama series. There are moral problems with this film as there was a disturbing depiction of the Molly's Christian classmate as a weird fanatic and an attempted murderer. The story was further marred by the apparent triumph of evil at the end. Watch at your own risk.
