Sunday, February 28, 2010

2010 Best Picture Nominees

Somehow I've managed to do pretty well at keeping up with the nominated films this year -- I've seen all ten Best Picture nominees, all the screenplay nominees, and all of the acting nominees, except those in "A Single Man" and "The Last Station".

Initially I was skeptical of the decision to expand the Best Picture category to ten nominees, but the choices were generally pretty strong. Below are my (largely spoiler-free) Best Picture thoughts, in order of preference. I wrote these blurbs for three reasons:

1) Writing is always worth doing. And putting my thoughts here gives me a place to refer people when I get asked what I thought about the choices this year.
2) For people who write their own material and want to work in movies, even bad movies are worth seeing, and thankfully the majority of these films were not bad ones at all.
3) Stuff like this helps me to think about what I've seen.

Here goes nothin'...

AN EDUCATION
Describing all of the things I admire about An Education isn't an easy task, especially in brief, but the remarkable performance by newcomer Carey Mulligan is as good a place to start as any. The degree to which we can buy into the decisions that drive this film relies mostly on Mulligan's ability to hold our affections and our trust in every single scene. She does, and gracefully, saying more with a glance or gesture than some actresses twice her age might accomplish with full monologues, and somehow allowing us to visibly track the intangible as Mulligan's Jenny matures before our eyes and the scales of adolescence fall from her own. In pairing that kind of performance with screenwriter Nick Hornby's clean, honest, unfettered dialogue that turns "small" scenes between student and teacher or young woman and adult lover into something full and complex and sometimes a little bit scary, An Education left me unsettled and charmed and surprised simultaneously. And I haven't even mentioned the quietly brilliant performances from Emma Thompson, Olivia Williams and the always awesome Alfred Molina as three people who think they know what's best for Jenny but who come to realize she must ultimately navigate life's bumps and question marks on her own. To my own pleasant surprise, this was my favorite film of the year.

THE HURT LOCKER
Invigorating and contemplative in equal measure, The Hurt Locker is one of those rare war films that's less concerned with politics or pyrotechnics than with the unique psychological challenges of the men and women (well, in this case, all men) who fight our battles for us. From a hold-your-breath tense opening sequence to a bittersweet, understated conclusion, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have created a story that feels lived in rather than written, letting us follow an American bomb disposal unit (almost uniformly the strong, silent type) through the heart of Iraqi conflict and into the center of their own often largely unarticulated doubts and fears about heroism, masculinity, death and domestic life. For some of these men, war is truly hell. For others, it's a job they just can't quit. Bigelow films combat in a way that is chaotic but never disorienting, putting us right in the action without losing sense of geography or character. Jeremy Renner isn't exactly a star yet, but he will and should be after giving one of the most understated, close-to-the-vest performances of the year. This is that unique but satisfying Hollywood risk -- an action movie with a brain -- that never provides easy answers, but might engender even more appreciation for how we utilize our military overseas.

UP
Like many of the best Pixar experiences, Up took me on a ride through pretty much every emotion a filmgoer can feel — and this time it did it in what must have been only a five-minute montage of the arc of a relationship. As a short film, that sequence alone would have been worth lining up for, but the rest of Up's 96 minutes are almost as deft and effective, melting the buoyant, wide-eyed wonder of childhood with the pains of age and loss in ways which feel unique not only for animated film but for film in general. Sure, the eventual 3D chase sequence does feel a little like a lead-in to the inevitable Up videogame, but most quibbles I have about the film (like, for example, a villain who should be dead of old age) are ultimately swallowed whole by its inventiveness, tenderness and light, tragicomic touch. The world of animation allows for levels of freedom and implausiblity that "real world" filmmaking usually can't get away with, and Up uses all of them to grand and totally satisfying effect.

UP IN THE AIR
Unfolding like some kind of Frank Capra film for a more jaded atmosphere, Up in the Air moves smoothly, confidently and very entertainingly toward an outcome that's quite different (and yet, somehow more appropriate) than the sort most American audiences might expect. By allowing its characters to change in baby steps rather than in sweeping arcs, by luckily situating itself among the ruins of the current economic downturn and all of its uncertain fragility, and by eschewing the typical Hollywood philosophy that marriage solves everything, Up in the Air manages a balance between cool remove and heartfelt pathos that's more than a little like its main character himself. Okay, so George Clooney essentially plays a slightly more vulnerable version of the George Clooney we already know — but he's become so good at it that it doesn't much matter, and he's given two strong actresses off of whom to spark in very different ways. Clooney, Anna Kendrick, and the very lovely, very subtle Vera Farmiga seem to relish the verbal dances the script provides, and so did I.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Like a lot of Quentin Tarantino's work, Inglourious Basterds is a film primarily about Tarantino's feverish love of film itself. And that's okay, because this one is his most entertaining work since Pulp Fiction, mashing western and military genres as it glides between edge-of-your-seat suspense (the opening sequence set at a farmhouse is close to Hitchcockian), baldly gratuitous nonsense (you could snip Mike Meyers' entire scene and lose nothing), and relationships that feel more human than any his films have bothered with in years (Melanie Laurent is great as a woman conflicted about the future of her movie theater, her romance and her country). Though Tarantino's unique vision and voice are sometimes better at creating great sequences than they are at making great films, Inglourious Basterds is a well-fashioned, adrenaline-soaked human cartoon that also happens to be a smart, tongue-in-cheek military thriller that never stops entertaining. Does it match the distinctiveness and energy and intelligence of Pulp Fiction? Nope. But it's good to see some of the magic is still there.

DISTRICT 9
District 9 might not be for everyone — for the first thirty minutes or so, I wasn't sure it was for me — but as an allegory about segregation, persecution and government-sponsored racism it accomplishes far more than Avatar and with a fraction of the budget and running time. This is the kind of movie that sneaks up on you as you watch it, allowing time and specificity to transform its lead through a series of very credible, very human (and frankly, very selfish choices) until his decisions lead him and us to a place where we're not so sure he'll do the heroic thing after all. Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchel's screenplay efficiently places us in a world both similar to and radically unlike our own and mixes action, sci-fi, and buddy picture genres to create something truly unlike any movie I've seen. District 9 might be kind of a ruddy, odd-looking flick featuring an extraterrestrial who dresses like Marty McFly, but its cumulative impact is a pleasant and welcome surprise.

PRECIOUS
I love small, intimate, underdog stories as much as the next guy, but Precious is not the story of triumph and uplift its marketing (and Oprah) might want you to believe. It is, instead, a cramped, dark, almost relentlessly sad story with awkwardly inserted moments of golden-tinged fantasy as sixteen-year-old Precious escapes into her imagination to dodge the ceaseless verbal, physical and psychological abuses of her mother, her classmates, and the father who twice impregnated her. Some of her fantasies involve Precious as a red carpet celebrity, some of them (like those including images of Malcolm X and and Martin Luther King, Jr.) are more overtly grandiose and odd. And then...well, let's just say that one of Precious's most horrible and irreversible twists of fate is seemingly forgotten by the film not long after it's introduced. There are plenty of admirable performances from people not exactly known for their acting prowess (Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey, and especially Mo'Nique, who turns a two-note villain into something closer to a three note one) but what are we really to make of the larger picture? As I watched our overweight, largely stoic, black protagonist run down the street with a stolen bucket of fried chicken, I didn't know whether to cringe at the obvious uncomfortable stereotype or cheer the poor kid on. She deserves a break.

AVATAR
As much as I admire filmmaker James Cameron's incredible attention to environmental and cultural detail, it's a real shame that so little of that meticulousness is attuned to character or story or surprise in Avatar. This eco-conscious, bluntly obvious juggernaut has been touted, rightfully, as a great achievement in visual effects and will, wrongfully, probably make James Cameron king of the world for the second time. But a great achievement doesn't always equate to a great film — not when the story Cameron had allegedly been refining for fifteen years is as flat and bland (and needlessly long!) as it is here. Not when he's somehow able to make even Sigorney Weaver seem wooden and bored. Not when both the film's hero and villain have all the shadings of low-level G.I. Joe cartoon characters and when the film's third act dives headlong into blitzkrieg explosion mode and never looks back. In relying too heavily on his cool new toys and forgetting to make his characters act, talk, or connect like real people, Cameron has created a shiny, bloodless theme park ride from which only Zoe Saldana emerges unscathed. And its success reinforces an unfortunate precedent that will no doubt continue to influence more films in the studio pipeline: if you put together a pretty, shiny package, if you paint by the numbers and hit your marks, maybe throw in some references to pop spirituality and an underexplored romantic connection, the rest practically writes itself.

THE BLIND SIDE
I'm sure there's a great story somewhere at the heart of the The Blind Side (which sprung from true events about a white Southern woman who raised a homeless black teen and helped him find the confidence to launch a professional football career) but the film itself never gets a handle on it. Instead, it settles for trotting out far too many jokey reaction shots and characters that feel entirely like constructions -- everything from the Self-Consciously Adorable Little Kid to the Bland, Agreeable Husband to the Gun-Toting Black Gangbanger is here in full display -- before reaching a conclusion that's entirely too pat to pay service to what I'm sure was a much more interesting true-life ordeal. Sandra Bullock is fine here, although the script is so concerned with going for soft laughs and easy solutions that her character is given no place to go and no real change to experience, leaving Bullock's character simply spunky and assertive from beginning to end. Though she flat-out tells us that the experience of raising poor, near silent, unexplored, dull-eyed Michael has "changed" her, it'd be nice if the script had let us in on how. And perhaps most disturbing about The Blind Side is that every patronizing scene involving race relations plays like something from sixty years ago, only reinforcing my feeling that the source material might have been deserving of a less lazy, superficial treatment.

A SERIOUS MAN
"Doing nothing is not bad, ipso facto," somebody tells the lead character of the Joel and Ethan Coen's amazingly inert, strangely sour A Serious Man. That maxim may or may not hold true in life, but if you're the protagonist of a motion picture, doing nothing will make for a damn boring movie. The Coens have a facility for funny dialogue and enviable eyes and ears for uncomfortable human behavior, which only makes it sadder that their powers are in lukewarm display here. This is, in fact, a stunningly dull, almost smug sort of anti-movie — enough to make me wonder whether it isn't all part of some kind of a Coen brothers prank. After having won so many trophies for No Country for Old Men (which actually had, you know, something approaching story and mood and characters making decisions) I wouldn't be surprised if they'd decided to thumb their noses at audiences and critics and see if everybody would still bow to them, see if people would treat their antihero's kvetching as something deep and profound as the Coens pummeled him with endless blows from fate or God or...whatever. And what does the protagonist do in response to the shitty hands he's dealt? Literally almost nothing. For two hours. I seriously don't get it.

For awhile, this was my least favorite film experience of the year. And then I saw Nine.