The Film Junkie

It is nice to see Woody Allen experiment with form and content, but unfortunatly this film misses the mark.

It begins as a sort of ‘Dinner With Andre’ (1981), as a group of friends (including ‘Andre’s Wallace Shawn, best known as Vizzini in 1997’s ‘The Princess Bride’) discuss the difference in viewing the world either as tragedy or comedy.  Thus two differing perspective storytellers embark on telling a similar story in their respective genres.  The film is cross-cut (like 1998’s ‘Sliding Doors’) between the tragic and comic stories, with the only constant being Melinda.

Radha Mitchell (1998’s ‘High Art’) takes the inenviable task of portraying both suicidal damned Melinda and lighthearted lovable Melinda.  The former comes to visit her friend, Laurel (the great Chloe Sevigny can play anything and be unforgettable) and her husband (Jonny Lee Miller, Sick Boy from 1996’s ‘Trainspotting’) and falls in love with a talented musician (my beloved Chiwetel Ejiofor, check out my ‘Kinky Boots’ review) before it all turns to shit.  The latter is a stranger who stumbles into the home of an out of work actor, Hobie (Will Ferrell doing an odd Woody Allen impression), and his wife, a domineering filmmaker (an out of place Amanda Peet); Melinda becomes quick friends with the couple and after falling for a talented musician (’Rescue Me’s Daniel Sunjata) realizes that she loves another.

I wish Allen had stuck with the comedy, Ferrell shows some promise under his direction, but we never get enough time with him to grow attached, and Steve Carrell as his friend could be one of the great Allen buddy roles, but is only allowed two scenes. 

The tragedy is too sad and pompous to like, if the comedy had more time it may have been something.  Mashed together, this is half of two films; a great idea that is simply not well executed.

Grade: C+

Forest Whitaker (2002’s ‘Panic Room’) is a tour de force in this mostly true story about 1970’s Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.  The film itself is about Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy in a brilliant departure from his family friendly faun Mr. Tumnus in 2005’s ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’), a Scottish doctor who comes to Uganda to escape his father’s shadow and initially works with a doctor and his attractive wife (Gillian Anderson in an almost unrecognizable departure from ‘The X-Files’s Dana Scully (1993-2002)) but eventually becomes the personal physician to Amin.

Garrigan loves the good life with Amin and is totally unaware of the atrocities taking place under his rule.  He becomes interested in Amin’s third wife, Kay (Kerry Washington from 2004’s ‘Ray).  Washington is brilliant as ever in her role, she remains one of the most underestimated actresses in the US.

But with all the stylized 70’s costumes and music, this film is made by Whitaker in a powerhouse role.  He has been underestimated ever since his breakout role as the tough guy jock in 1982’s ‘Fast Times At Ridgemont High’ through 1992’s ‘The Crying Game’ to his recent foray on TV’s ‘ER’.  However now is Whitaker’s time to shine, he is both aggressively masculine and decidedly weak chand childish, he is compassionate and violent.  He is every bit the contradiction the real Amin was, and in the final moments of ‘Scotland’ they show you footage of the real Amin and we are able to see just how great a performance Whitaker’s truly was.

Grade: A-

It is that time of year again, my very favorite day occurs tomorrow.  Forget Xmas, summer vacation, birthdays…tomorrow, my friends, is the 79th Annual Academy Awards. 

Some may say the Oscars are out-dated, or don’t appreciate movies that challenge what they are comfortable with.  Though many of these claims have their value, I am still a sucker for the best awards’s show of the year.  So here are my thoughts on the eight major categories (my picks are underlined):

Best Picture:

Babel

The Departed

Letters From Iwo Jima

Little Miss Sunshine

The Queen

My Thoughts:

In my humble opinion, ‘Babel’ was undoubtedly the film of the year.  It was beautifully designed, excellent acting, and a message about globalization and the inter-connectedness of humanity.  However ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ is gaining a lot of traction, winning many of the awards leading up to the big night.  ‘The Departed’ could take it, it is Scorsese’s best in years, but it is the most economically successful of the big 5, which is not usually a favored fact in recent Oscar history.  ‘Letters’ and ‘The Queen’ don’t stand a chance.

Best Actress:

Penelope Cruz, ‘Volver’ 

Judi Dench, ‘Notes on a Scandal’

Helen Mirren, ‘The Queen’

Meryl Streep, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’

Kate Winslet, ‘Little Children’

My Thoughts:

This is Mirren’s year and she absolutely deserves it.  Streep’s part was too small; Cruz doesn’t have enough cred in America even if she is brilliant in ‘Volver; Dench’s film was seen by very few and she has won before; and poor Kate Winslet will simply have to go home empty-handed for the fifth year.  Personally, I would love a Winslet upset, but I doubt it.

Best Actor:

Leonardo Dicaprio, ‘Blood Diamond’ 

Ryan Gosling, ‘Hald Nelson’

Peter O’Toole, ‘Venus’

Will Smith, ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’

Forest Whittaker, ‘The Last King of Scotland’

My Thoughts:

It’s a battle between O’Toole and Whittaker.  One is the old pro, often nominated but never won, who already has a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy but came back to show them he’s still got it.  The other has been around for years, in many great performances but comes to this Oscars with his first nomination.  The bets seem to be on Whittaker, and I hope it comes true, but I think the Academy’s nostalgic voters will go for O’Toole.  As for the others, Dicaprio might have won if he was nominated for ‘The Departed’, but not for ‘Diamond’.  Smith gives a good performance, but in a somewhat-lame movie.  Gosling would be a surprise win and there is nothing that would make me happier than this brilliant Canadian actor taking the gold, but alas I think he’ll have to wait for another year.

Best Supporting Actress

Adriana Barraza, ‘Babel’

Cate Blanchett, ‘Notes on a Scandal’

Abigail Breslin, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’

Jennifer Hudson, ‘Dreamgirls’

Rinko Rikuchi, ‘Babel’

My Thoughts:

Forget about ‘American Idol’ and look at Hudson as the incredible performer she is, yes performer, not just singer, but her acting rules the film.  She is Effie and she is unforgettable.  Blanchett won two years ago, Barraza and Kikuchi will split the ‘Babel’ vote and though Miss Breslin was great, the nom is enough.  I would love to see a split vote between Hudson and the heart-breaking Kikuchi, but if I have to choose, it is Hudson’s year.

Best Supporting Actor:

Alan Arkin, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’

Jackie Earle Haley, ‘Little Children’

Djimon Hounsou, ‘Blood Diamond’

Eddie Murphy, ‘Dreamgirls’

Mark Wahlberg, ‘The Departed’

My Thoughts:

Murphy absolutely killed me in ‘Dreamgirls’, his talent in my estimation has shot up considerably.  However, he currently has the number one movie in the US wherein he returns to dressing up in fat suits.  I would love to see him witn, because I totally think he deserves it, however the ill-timed release of ‘Norbit’ might kill his chances.  So if that does happen (and it would be very unfortunate), as far as the other nominees: I love Arkin in ‘Sunshine’, but he should have been nominated for ‘The Slums of Beverly Hills’ in 1998, a much better and bigger role.  Grandpa is good, but small.  Wahlberg’s part is so small it should be in a new category ‘Best Supporting Supporting Actor’, only then would he stand a chance of winning.  Haley could win for those who love a comeback story (he was a teen star in the 70’s, with 1976’s ‘The Bad News Bears’, but lost his fame as he grew up) and I hear he is great, however many people missed ‘Little Children’.  And Hounsou just seemed to get nominated because he is Djimon Hounsou and people still feel bad about not nominating him for 1997’s ‘Amistad’.  Therefore, if Murphy doesn’t win, I think it will go to Haley, or possibly Arkin.

Best Director:

Clint Eastwood, ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’

Stephen Frears, ‘The Queen’

Paul Greengrass, ‘United 93′

Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, ‘Babel’

Martin Scorsese, ‘The Departed’

My Thoughts:

It’s finally Scorsese’s year.  It just has to be.  I am glad they didn’t give it to him when he didn’t yet deserve it (ahem, 2002’s ‘Gangs of New York’, 2004’s ‘The Aviator’), because ‘The Departed’ is a brilliant return to form.  Eastwood won’t beat him again as he did in 2004, ‘Letters’ doesn’t come close.  Frears did a good job, but ‘The Queen’ could almost be a TV movie.  Greengrass or Innaritu would be brilliant upsets for making the two most politically important films of the year, but come on folks, it’s Marty time.

Best Original Screenplay:

Babel

Letters from Iwo Jima

Little Miss Sunshine

Pan’s Labyrinth

The Queen

My Thoughts:

This is a tough one, they usually give this award to the film they wish they had the balls to nominate for best picture, thus ‘Pan’s’ could take it.  However, I think ‘The Queen’ has a good chance because it realistically imagined the world of the British monarchy that we all wish we could see.  ‘Letters’ could challenge, but the film is over-long and sometimes dull.  ‘Sunshine’ is sweet and smart, but I doubt a comedy will take it.  I have to go with ‘Babel’ because it so brilliantly intertwines four storylines in four different circumstances.

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Children of Men

The Departed

Little Children

Notes on a Scandal

My Thoughts:

Because so much of ‘Borat’ is improvised, I don’t think the Academy will recognize it as an achievement in writing.  ‘Departed’ is great, but much foul language doesn’t bode well for it.  ‘Little Children’ apparently veers quite far from the script.  I have heard that some of ‘Notes’ is not that great.  Thus I will have to go with ‘Children of Men’ because it is a brilliantly designed epic for the ages that I hear is better than the book.

In the grand tradition of odd British comedies about risque subject matter (see ‘The Full Monty’ (1997), ‘Billy Elliot’ (2000) and ‘Calendar Girls’ (2003)), this adds another classic to the pantheon.  The story follows Charlie, the son of a shoe-maker (Joel Edgerton, played Owen Lars in the last two ‘Star Wars’ prequels) who is about to give up on his father’s factory and legacy when he stumbles upon Lola (the underappreciated genius Chiwetel Ejiofor) a drag queen who complains about the fact that women’s shoes will not support a man’s weight.  Thus is born the idea of turning the factory into the first shoe-making enterprise made especially for drag queens.

Oh, and it’s based on a true story.

The story is predictable, but sweet.  Edgerton is likeable enough and there are some laughs with the Northampton locals, but this is the Ejiofor show and everyone else is simply a guest.  You remember Chiwetel Ejiofor (pictured below both in and out of drag) from one of the following: 2002’s ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ (he was the Nigerian doctor immigrant), 2003’s ‘Love Actually’ (he played Keira Knightley’s husband), 2005’s ‘Four Brothers’ (he was the badass dude), 2005’s ‘Serenity’ (he was the antagonist with a strict moral code), or 2006’s ‘Children of Men’ (he was the mutinous leader of the Fishes). 

His is a name you will want to remember, his is a face you will never forget, and though this may not be his best performance to date (that would go to ‘Dirty Pretty Things’, a brilliant film about immigration and the black market), he gives a new range of emotions to the drag queen role that has been dragged through the mud in recent cinema (yes, Wong Foo, I am talking to you).  His Lola is a real person and you can see her heart sopping through in every scene.

A good movie.

Grade: B/B+

This three hour epic tells the story of one of the most epic names in the history of Broadway.  Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was a great producer, a man of spectacle who recognized great beauty.  He was also responsible for some of the most sexist and beauty-obsessed shows in Broadway history.  His ‘Ziegfeld Follies’ were artistically tremendous as they showed women lavishly, and often barely, dressed and paraded around while lovely men in tuxedos sang about the glory of a beautiful woman.  Ziegfeld has been portrayed in many films over the years, but this Best Picture winner is the most comprehensive telling of his life. 

The great William Powell (1934’s ‘The Thin Man’) does great service to the larger than life Ziegfeld.  He ages surprisingly realistically for the times and demonstrates the addiction to popularity that “Flo” could not avoid.  Ziegfeld was almost always broke and looking for the next big idea.  Powell was one the great actors of his day and this role gives him a lot to chew on.  Not even the death of Ziegfeld, as epic as director Robert Z. Leonard would like to make it, can make him become anything more than simply a man.  He slips away like anyone else, dramatically dropping a flower, still dreaming of the grand staircases he was famous for.

This film is far too long and focuses on the showmanship of the Ziegfeld brand more than it probably needs to, but it is great to see a tribute to the man and not the girls behind him.  You have heard his name as the discoverer of Fanny Brice (who makes a cameo in ‘Ziegfeld’ as herself) in the 1968 Barbra Streisand classic ‘Funny Girl’.  You may have even seen 1941’s forgettable ‘Ziegfeld Girl’ starring Judy Garland and Lana Turner.  But despite his name being often mentioned, here we see the man who put the spectacle, for better or worse, into Broadway. 

His journey is one worth taking.

Grade: A-

There are very few songs that can illicit the reaction in me that this song does.

I first discovered the Jennifer Holliday original version when I was about 12, and I would sit in front of my computer and just bawl. Her voice, so empowering, it wasn’t about the words, it was about a song completely taking over this woman.

In the years that followed I continued my infatuation, and when ‘Dreamgirls’ came out this year I went to the theatre and Jennifer Hudson made me cry. She had her own take, but once again this unbelievably powerful song just took over her body, mind and soul.

Then once again tonight I was watching, of all things, ‘American Idol’ and this girl Lakisha Jones busted it out. Last song of the night, because nothing can top it.

Does anyone else have a song like that in their lives, a song that when you hear you lose control?

In the pantheon of teen girl sports movies, there are very few credible candidates…so trust me I was not expecting much from this film about a rebel gymnast, Hayley (’Life As We Know It’s Missy Peregrym), who returns to the sport she dramatically walked away from at the World Championships a few years before.  She teaches the other gymnasts that there is more to life than judging and training, but she also re-discovers why she loves the sport.  If this brings to mind 2000’s  ’Bring It On’ that is because the writer of that film makes her writer-director debut here.

Yet the difference between this and may other teen girl movies is that here there is no love story to root for, the love story of this movie is between Hayley and gymnastics.  For all the misery it has brought her, it is her passion and she is incredibly skilled at it. 

The gymnastics scenes in this film are great, if you watch the Olympic gymnastic competition, you will love this movie.  Peregrym and the other actresses are amazing, and for once I honestly couldn’t tell if they were doing the stunts themselves or if they had stunt people, and the athletics were so good, I really didn’t care.

This film is very artistic and less sappy in its presentation of the sport, there are some amazing scenes of all different gymnasts performing the same apparatus edited on top of one another, which just may blow your mind.  Sure, they go a bit overboard with the prom dress cart wheels, but all in all I was impressed.

Peregrym is a talent to watch, she carries this movie with her heart and soul and makes you believe that she really is having conflict as opposed to over-emoting and scaring us off (a la Julia Stiles in 2001’s ‘Save The Last Dance’)/

Oddly impressive.

Grade: B+

This movie seems to have the idea of breaking boundaries by having a woman be the badass Kaiser Sose type and a black woman at that.  But Regina King (the president’s sister, Sandra on the current season of ‘24′) is wasted as this badass chick, Rayne, and the film soon falls into crap B-movie plotholes.  Blair Underwood (’Sex and the City’) plays a misogynist cop, Craig Sheffer (he played Lea Thompson’s asshole boyfriend in 1987’s ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’) plays the dumb cop who falls for Rayne.

I don’t know how the filmmakers got all these actors to agree to this crap fest, which is predictable through and through, but it may have something to do with the ending.  Yes, the ending almost saves the movie, but it simply isn’t enough to erase the image of ‘Blossom’s Jenna Von Oy as a stripper from my mind.

Grade: D+

Yes they have made many film that rely too much on star power and this is most certainly one of them.  This musical stars the “hilarious” and “charming” Danny Kaye as the title character who works his magic through a series of impossible situations while trying to restore the rightful king of England (a baby with a “hilarious” birthmark) to the throne.  He falls in love with the beautiful Maid Jean (Glynis Johns, best known as playing the suffragette mother Mrs. Banks in 1964’s ‘Mary Poppins’) who is almost a feminist character as a captain of the rebel army, but gives up that distinction when she gives all the due to the fact that her father “wanted a son”. 

Ah, yes a medieval kingdom with many vertically-challenged people (is that the PC term for those people who probably played munchkins in a certain 1939 film?), we hear about that all the time, right?  That is just the kind of thing that passes for humour in this movie.  Also, isn’t is bizarre that Kaye is the only actor in the piece who didn’t even attempt a British accent? 

Perhaps the most interesting part of this ho-hum movie is Angela Lansbury, at age 30, lovely and devious as Princess Gwendolyn.  You can see her star quality sparkle though years before ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’ (1971).  The film also boasts tremendous art direction, the costumes and castle sets are colourful and quite the achievement.

This movie is all right, but it does not translate as comedic in the modern age.  Frankly, I don’t really see how it could have been all that funny 50 years ago.

Grade: B-

A melodramatic dirty little love letter to Hollywood.

Vincente Minnelli had plenty of fodder for his film that picks apart the loves and motives of a producer, director, star and writer as their lives intersect.  The producer is a Machiavellian climber played with considerable vigour by Kirk Douglas.  He loves and leaves a starlet played by Lana Turner, who he also helps break of her drinking habit to get her through a film.  He disposes of his director buddy (Barry Sullivan) when a bigger name comes along.  Finally Shields has a hand in killing the wife (the incomparable Gloria Grahame who won an Oscar for this role) of a writer (Dick Powell).  Shields fights his way to the top, but upon his downfall he finds that his own ego has left him next to nothing.

Minnelli was famously married to Judy Garland from 1945-1951, producing the child Liza Minnelli, and many saw him as intrumental in getting the heavily addicted Garland through ‘Meet Me In St. Louis’ (1944) and ‘The Pirate’ (1948), the latter of which she was completely incoherent while making because of Minnelli romance with her co-star Gene Kelly (if you can find this film it is an interesting look at how a performance can be pieced together from nothing).  He also worked with the famously Machiavellian producer Arthur Freed and perfectionist director Busby Berkeley (who coincidentally helped get Garland addicted th pills when she was a teenager).  Traces of each of these characters are apparent throughout the film and some of the fun of watching this film is guessing which situations and people Minnelli is truly depicting.

This is a great campy black and white drama that clarifies that Hollywood has always been as maddening as it is now, we had just forgotten.

Grade: A-