Monthly Archives: February 2012

2011 Best Actress: Davis or Streep?

20 Monday Feb 2012

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“THERE IS NO such thing as society,” Margaret Thatcher famously remarked.  There is, however, such thing as the Oscar and soon, five leading ladies – Glenn Close, Rooney Mara, Michelle Williams, Viola Davis and Meryl Streep – will get their chance to pick up the golden calf of the film-acting world.  Having just caught Streep as British Prime Minister in “Irony Lady,” I have good reason to predict that her competition, Viola Davis (“The Help”), will pick up her first gold-guy next Sunday night.  There are five reasons why, in fact, Davis will triumph one week from tonight:

  1. It’s the Movie, Stupid:  By now you’ve likely heard or read that “Iron Lady” (directed by Phyllida Lloyd, from a script by Abi Morgan) is less than a perfect film.  Actually, it’s a scrambled egg of a story and one that talks out of both sides of its mouth: heroizing its steely subject while also humiliating her.  Ruling for eleven years, Mrs. Thatcher was a polarizing leader who became the first prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812-27 to win three successive elections.  What “Irony Lady” does, cruelly so, is reduce her to a lady who irons (laundry) and talks to the spectre of her beloved husband.  As Dennis Thatcher, Jim Broadbent keeps popping up like a cross between Marley’s Ghost and a jack-in-the-box.  Even more confounding is that a biopic which features Maggie protesting, “I cannot die washing up a teacup,” actually ends with Maggie washing a teacup.  The GOP would practically combust if a film ostensibly about Ronald Reagan condensed his achievements to sound-bites and portrayed him as the Madman of Simi Valley, wandering the hallways in his pajamas and crying out for Nancy.
  2. Been a While, But Streep’s Got Two Already:  Streep is the Madonna of cinema.  Yes, she’s nearly a decade older than the Material Girl but she’s a ruthless impersonator and proof that indeed women can command the stage and screen over the age of fifty.  Yes, it’s been a while since she sealed the deal – her first Oscar Nomination, for “Deer Hunter” in 1978, is as old as I am, and her two wins followed in quick succession (for “Kramer vs. Kramer” in 1979 and “Sophie’s Choice” in 1982) – but she’s the most-nominated living movie actress and may remain so, at least until the performance and the film are better matched.
  3.   Aibileen as the Heart of “The Help”:  Coincidentally, Davis earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for just eight minutes’ worth of screen time with Meryl Streep in “Doubt” (2008).   Davis has a fascinating face – deep, protuberant eyes always on the verge of crying – and she’s the emotional core of “The Help” who provides our white heroine Skeeter with first-person accounts of her race-based humiliations.  One of Skeeter’s questions, which we hear twice, is even sadder the second time: “How does it feel to raise white children while your own children are being raised by someone else?”  Unsure, or perhaps afraid, to answer, Aibileen can only stare at the portrait of her dead son (the victim of a racial hate crime) on her kitchen wall.  A movie is only as good as the memories it leaves you, and that singular scene stings the day after.
  4. Is Davis Drama’s Version of Melissa McCarthy?:  The other estrogen-driven ensemble film of 2012 is “Bridesmaids” and the unforgettable supporting member of that cast, Melissa McCarthy (as the frisky Megan), has been repeatedly singled out, even for a Best Supporting Actress, as the stand-out of the ensemble.   The Academy may want to honor the baby, though not the bathwater, by elevating Viola Davis above all others, honoring a perfect performance in a less than perfect film.
  5. Always Bet on Black (Unless You’re Oscar): It’s jaw-dropping to think that only one black woman has won movie-acting’s highest achievement: that’s Halle Berry in 2001’s “Monster Ball.”  Yes, 2001, in a film in which the late Heath Ledger co-starred.  Been a while, indeed.  Last year’s “The Help” is only the third film in movie history to feature black nominees for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress and made Davis, alongside Whoopi Goldberg, the most nominated black actress with just two nominations (Streep has an astounding 17 nominations, not to mention 26 Golden Globe nominations).

Note to Oscar: help yourself and give the gold to Viola (“The Help”) Davis!

Postscript: The 2011 Oscar for Best Actress went to Streep.

 

Review: “This Means War”

18 Saturday Feb 2012

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“Bizarre Love Triangle”

Grade: F (SKIP IT)

A HEAPING PILE of celluloid excrement, “This Means War” is the first bonafide bust of a film released in 2012.  Reese Witherspoon walks the line as Lauren, the object of affection for not one but two undercover CIA agents, played by Chris Pine (“Unstoppable”) and Tom Hardy (“Warrior”).  Numbly named FDR Foster and Tuck, the men are in Hong Kong and on the hunt for a criminal named Heinrich (Til Schweiger).  When they botch the mission, their boss (played by Angela Bassett) demotes the two to desk duty.   Enter Witherspoon as Lauren, a product testing exec who, prompted by friend Trish (Chelsea Handler playing Chelsea Handler), joins a dating website and meets Tuck and later, FDR.  When the men realize they’re dating the same woman after showing each other Lauren’s picture on their laptops, they make a gentleman’s agreement and begin the love-game: may the best man win.  From there, the forgettable plotline involves tranquilizer darts, romantic pizza dinners, and one image that aptly mirrors the film itself: a car going off an unfinished bridge.

“This Means War” is directed by the mononymous McG (“Charlie’s Angels”) from a script by Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg, the latter of whom wrote “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and has basically retooled that earlier script about special agents on the down-low.  And speaking of the down-low, the most remarkable thing about this unremarkable romantic comedy is the length to which FDR and Tuck go to get the girl in a film where the real love story is a bromance between two very undercover agents.  (The same could be said of Lauren’s closeness to Trish insofar as the film’s strongest bonds are same-sex.) The fact that the men plant bugs and hidden cameras in Lauren’s home to spy on her – or could it be each other? – isn’t just creepy and unfunny but deeply homosocial.

Film critic Manohla Dargis of The New York Times writes that when “the men’s rivalry soon escalates into a spy versus spy shenanigans […] you’re watching a cuddly stalker flick,” but an even more astute angle on “This Means War” can be found in the work of Gayle Rubin who, as queer theorist Eve Sedgwick once wrote, argued that “patriarchal heterosexuality can best be discussed in terms of one or another form of the traffic in women: it is the use of women as exchangeable, perhaps symbolic, property for the primary purpose of cementing the bonds of men with men.”  This means that the most curious scenes are those between FDR and Tuck and that, when Lauren enters, it’s not so much war but a bore.

The Times’ Dargis also believes Witherspoon to be miscast, writing: “She’s too calculating and self-contained a presence for most romances.”  What do you think: is Witherspoon too feisty for such light fare?

Review: “Safe House”

10 Friday Feb 2012

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“Off the Res”
Grade: B+ (SEE IT)

TO SAY THAT “Safe House” moves at breakneck speed is an apt description given one dazzling sequence in which rogue CIA operative Tobin Frost (played with great aplomb by Denzel Washington) escapes a BMW’s trunk, through the backseat, only to strangle the car’s driver, fellow agent Ryan Reynolds, from behind.  The unrelenting action of “Safe House,” expertly choreographed by Swedish director Daniel Espinosa, makes the film more unstoppable than Washington’s last film, “Unstoppable,” more full of bullets ricocheting than his “Ricochet” of 1991.  “Safe House” barely slows down to catch its breath and when it does, it’s aided by a strong cast including Vera Farmiga, Sam Shepard, and Brendan Gleeson, all of whom demonize Frost for going, as they put it, “off the res.”

Frost’s first line in the film, “This is not a negotiation,” along with the remarkable deftness with which he pulls of a high-stakes operation, alerts us to his steely, sociopathic nature.  Intermittently captured, then lost, by Reynold’s character Matt Weston, Frost is a supreme source of mystery: like a Dr. Lecter, he uses his psychological acumen to get under Weston’s skin with a probing I’m-just-like-you/you’re-just-like-me approach.   The CIA, meanwhile, describes him as a “notorious” and “expert manipulator of human assets,” but we’re not sure why.  Only later in “Safe House” do we realize our alliances are misguided, thereby proving another of Frost’s aphorisms, which he imparts to Weston: “Everyone betrays everyone.” The relationship between the two men, which begins as a simple cat-and-mouse pursuit but develops into something deeper, unfolds in a Bourne-like world in which political espionage and double-crosses collide.  In fact, David Guggenheim’s script is well served by editor Richard Pearson (“The Bourne Supremacy”) who juggles multiple scenes like he’s spinning plates.

There are some minor improbabilities in “Safe House” that catalyze the action but make no real sense.  Why would the CIA dispatch Weston, for example, to a crowded sports arena to pick up a GPS device when all hell can, and does, break loose with a wily Frost in custody?  Are there no quiet spots, like a Mailbox Etc., in Cape Town?  Does it really take more than 24 hours for the brass in Langley, Virginia to catch a flight to South Africa and help out the flailing Weston with Public Enemy #1?

Then again, it’s all about the action in “Safe House,” which crashes into you with shoot-outs, screaming mobs, sniper fire, and a veritable bloodbath that sends Reynolds flying through windshields and windows, all of which make it safe to say that “Safe House” is the first true action film of 2012.

Review: “The Woman In Black”

05 Sunday Feb 2012

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“Scary Potter”
Grade: B- (RENT IT)

THE VICTORIANS MAY not have invented the tale of the haunted house but they sure as hell perfected it.  There’s the “dreadful house” in Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story” – hand-chosen by none other than Mr. Charles Dickens for his journal Household Words in 1852 – outside which an “evil child” lurks in the snow.  Then there’s Dracula’s love-pad which Stoker describes as a “vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky.”

True to vampiric roots, Hollywood has sucked the life out of most, if not all, of the horror tropes bequeathed to us by the Victorians and “The Woman in Black,” director James Watkins’ new film, from a Susan Hill novel from 1983, is no exception.  Set in the early 1900s, it’s as chockfull of clichés – dead kids, rocking chairs, handprints on window panes, doors that grind and groan as they open – as it is candles, antique dolls, and things that go bump in the night.  One more close-up of a cymbal-banging monkey toy and I would have gone bananas.  Nevertheless, the titular woman is one scary chick and proof that a motionless silhouette standing in head-to-toe black amongst headstones still has the power to unnerve us.

The house in question, including its family cemetery, is for sale and that’s where lawyer Arthur Kipps (played by Daniel Radcliffe) comes in:  leaving his son behind, the young widower travels by train to a north England village called Crythin Gifford to prepare the house for purchase.  If the villagers look as if they’ve seen a ghost, that’s because they have. Ignoring their warnings, Arthur traverses the marshlands surrounding the estate and begins poking around.  The only local who doesn’t pull down the shade as Kipps approaches is Mr. Daily (played by the great Ciaran Hinds with his doleful eyes and downturned mouth).  Mrs. Daily (Janet McTeer) is grieving the death of their son Nicholas and carving the image of a hanged woman in her dining room table with a butter knife.  If this doesn’t get those thick eyebrows on Radcliffe raised, the supernatural somersaults he sees once inside the house certainly do.   Yet his friend Mr. Daily remains a skeptic.  “It’s just an old place,” he tells Arthur, “cut off from the world.”

Not so, Arthur learns the hard way, and the best portion of “The Woman in Black” is its last act when all the apparitions come out to play; despite its 95-minute running time, it still feels long, as marshy and slow-going as those wagon wheels stuck in the wetlands outside.  Very little here feels freshly inspired though it manages to get under your skin without a heavy dose of blood and guts.

Consider it Radcliffe’s post-Potter depression.

Review: “The Grey”

01 Wednesday Feb 2012

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“Wolves on Film”

Grade: B (RENT IT)

REMIND ME TO shell out the extra forty bucks and check action star Liam Neeson as my carry-on luggage when I next traverse Alaska in the dead of winter, in a howling storm.  To the passengers of the luckless aircraft that makes a crash landing, the experience is terrifying – a plane breaking apart hasn’t sounded this cacophonously life-like since “Cast Away” (2000) – but to the wolves on the ground, it’s lunch and dinner.  Where is Sarah Palin and her high-power rifle when you need her?

In “The Grey,” directed by Joe Carnahan (“The A-Team,” “Smokin’ Aces”) from a script co-written with Ian Mackenzie Jeffers (from his story “Ghost Walker”), Neeson plays a survivalist man on the ground named Ottway, conveniently a wolf-hunter working for a big-oil company who, post-crash, becomes the hunted.  The solemn voice-over narration, alongside the lupine howls of the white wilderness, that open Carnahan’s film alert us to some of its more unconventional aspects: a suicidal protagonist, pauses in the action to meditate on faith and providence, and the utter irresolution of the ending which left one loud-mouth in my local theatre yelping: “That better not be the ending!”

Then there’s Neeson himself who, Roman nose and all, hasn’t exactly hung up his acting hat but turned, as of late, to fast-paced action films in which he stoically takes on European prostitution rings and identity-thieves (i.e. the convoluted “Unknown”).  Since “Taken,” the finest action film from the 2000s in terms of sheer pacing, Neeson has been honing a particular set of skills – “skills,” as he menaces there,” that make me a nightmare for people like you.”

He’s met his match in “The Grey” wherein a bloodthirsty pack of wolves and the unrelenting forces of nature bear down on him and his men, an equally fine group of actors including Dermot Mulroney, Nonso Anozie, Dallas Roberts, and Frank Grillo.  It’s a motley crew – all bearded and bellicose – and the most surprising thing about “The Grey” is that the men collectively ponder spiritual matters – “Did you feel him go?” one of the men asks as a priest-like Neeson administers last rites to a dying man, “I felt him go!” – as the noose around them tightens.  There’s also a touch of humor: after killing a wolf which Neeson describes as the pack’s “omega,” they fire up the spit-roast and remark: “I’m really more of a cat person.”  As the stolid Ottway, Neeson follows in the footsteps of Robert Shaw’s Captain Sam Quint in “Jaws” (1975).  The wolf is his land-shark and he instructs the men: “They’re man-eaters and there’s blood in the air and death.”

“The Grey” doesn’t exactly rise above predictability – we know that when seven survivors set out, at least one has to wind up in a body-bag (or is it doggy-bag?) – but the filmmakers do “go there” in terms of the film’s homosocial conditions.  There’s a passing reference at the start to the late Timothy “Grizzly Man” Treadwell as that “fag who likes bears.”  And when the fur starts to fly, so do anti-gay epithets like “girls” and “fairies” as each man’s masculinity is tested.  When Neeson is forced to keep his drowning friend alive via mouth-to-mouth, the film’s interest in men-in-cramped-conditions, well, bubbles to the surface.

It was at that queer moment in “The Grey” that the old diddy from Duran Duran came to mind: “I’m on the hunt/I’m after you/Mouth is alive with juices like wine/And I’m hungry like the wolf.”