Smokin' Aces

Smokin’ Aces, the rowdy sophomore directing effort from up and comer Joe Carnahan is a complete 180° turn away from his debut Narc, the low key, gritty cop drama that made him a notable new name. While Narc strived to create true to life chills, Smokin' Aces is more the sort of film intended to elicit whoops and hollers. I’m not going to accuse it of being inferior, but I will say that it is much more of a disposable entertainment piece than its predecessor. Fortunately, this is perhaps the greatest, most intense action trifle to come along in quite a while. Carnahan rips off The Conversation and just about everything by Quentin Tarrantino, but a little bit of borrowing here and there is excusable when the outcome is such a fun and wicked spectacle.

Smokin’ Aces is like a wild carnival ride. By the time that it’s over you are likely to be thrilled, disoriented, and shocked at where everyone has landed. There’s a final act “twist” that feels like a flimsy coda, but the long journey getting there is just such a vicious thrill ride that you can’t help but love this thing. The general premise involves mob rat, Buddy “Aces” Israel, (Jeremy Piven) who is supposedly being targeted in one of the highest paying assassination jobs of all time. Hit men and women from all walks of life compete to besiege his hotel suite and collect the bounty on his heart (yes, heart) without ending up dead themselves. By the time the movie climaxes, there’s many an unstable murderer parading in and around Israel’s crowded hotel. There’s so much death and blood splatter that hardly anyone seems capable of coming out alive and the twists and turns of who lives and who dies make this quite an insatiably involving experience. In most action films it’s clear: the marquee name lives, the nobody dies. In this cast of rookies and B-level actors everyone is fair game. More importantly, Carnahan has a brilliant knack for capturing the genuine emotions behind these action movie clichés. He litters the film with surreal and hyper stylized violence but still manages to make us care about these people despite how ludicrous the world around them seems.

There’s a pretty clear understanding between the filmmakers and the audience that what you’re paying for with this one is a low brow, tour de force of giggles and violence and on those terms, Smokin’ Aces excels. It takes a while to gear up and settles down a little too much near the end, but while it’s in motion, it is a truly exciting movie loaded with great performances, brilliantly staged action, and an unnerving techno score. It’s above average for a film of this kind, but do not enter if you don’t want an R-rated bloody good time.

Grade: B+

DVD of the Week: Catch A Fire

This Phillip Noyce directed political thriller is the best that's new to DVD this week, but it's also not really the best film to be watching. I gave it a fairly positive B- back when I reviewed it in November, but i have hesitations about suggesting it too strongly. It's certainly smart, well acted, and engaging. It's bound to work for you on some level. My discouragement comes from the almost too simplistic nature of its narrative given the social backdrop that it boldly occupies. Set in South Africa near the end of Aparteid, Catch A Fire captures an escalating sense of national tension with Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke) representing the cultural sway of even the most reasonable men toward violent rebellion. Tim Robbins co-stars as a repressive government officer and although both he and Luke are phenomenal, the screenplay has such an underdeveloped sense of storytelling that so much potential is lost. A man's decision to succumb to violence if a murky moral territory that deserves a bit more rumination than the basic thriller structure given to it here. This is in many ways a fine film, but in others a less than satisfying experience. Anyone looking for something worthwhile to rent should steer themselves toward this one, but maybe this is a weekend best spent catching up with Oscar contenders out at the nearest theater.

Catch and Release

Erin Brockovich scribe Susannah Grant makes her directorial debut with Catch and Release, an unexpectedly gloomy and sincere dramedy about a mourner’s quest for new love and self discovery. Advertisers might be pitching the movie as romantic comedy a la Julia Roberts in her golden age, but this is really a frothier, less convincing little sister to something along the lines of Garden State. The sad eyes and soulful soundtrack fit the bill, but this whole film just can’t help but persistently feel just a few shades too sappy to really click dramatically. More importantly, Grant might have a knack for crafting clever dialogue, but as a director she’s a fairly unimaginative and sloppy first timer. The ending to this film plays like such a shoddy, awkward, and false conclusion of convenience that it sinks what I would have considered to be a solid film into something that’s only decent. If the mantra “a movie is only as good as its ending” applies, then this thing tanked.

So much works here, but so much misfires also. It’s admirable of Grant to have romantic comedy aspirations beyond the basic meet cute, get mad, get back together sort of game plan that most films of this nature employ. The formula is certainly the same, but there’s ample character and emotion to successfully fill out the clichéd narrative. What’s different here is that the events leading from point A to the inevitable and predictable point B are complicated in ways that fail to be transparent or obnoxious. The characters are sympathetic, flawed, and above all believable in many if not all of their convictions. They might be living in Julia Roberts-ville but they come from another planet entirely.

Jennifer Garner breaks hearts and beams with earnest effervescence as Gray Wheeler, a woman whose fiancé dies tragically shortly before they are due to wed. The film begins at his funeral and follows Gray from a defeated almost widow to her jubilant rebirth as a newly in the know woman able to accept the truth and keep on living. Part of that living involves her fiancé’s best friend Fritz (Timothy Olyphant) whom Gray has had only disdain for in the past, but who comes readily to her aid in her time of crisis. It’s a relationship that comes with enough genuine baggage to explain why it takes them so long to find the happiness we all know that they’re headed toward. It’s exciting for the simple fact that it is, shockingly enough, a romantic comedy romance with some actual depth. Also shocking is the unforeseen talent of Kevin Smith, who gets over being silent as close friend and secretly sulking boozer Sam. He is given both humorous and tender moments and Smith thrives as a likable onscreen presence. All the characters here come full of more information and deeper layers of personal connection than initially expected and it’s the discovery hat makes this film fun and actually involving. Even Juliette Lewis’s dim adulteress is provided a sincerity that a lesser film would reserve only for its barely believable heroine.

Catch and Release is a film about secrets and lies, but it also remains weary of truth’s complexities. From uncovering what’s beneath the surface, characters grow and develop, but they also must leave behind their old ways and relinquish the ideals they had imagined for themselves in precious moments past. The movie is genuinely good at times, but it also has every tired retread story arc that you might expect and a tremendously garbled ending that nearly compromises the entirety of its otherwise relatable story. Keep in mind that what you’re watching is imperfect and maybe your eyes can forgive the washed out conclusion, but generally this is as solid an entry in this genre as there has been in a long while.

Grade: B

Awards Coverage: SAG Winners

Last night Hollywood actors celebrated themselves with the Screen Actors Guild awards. Film winners were pretty much consistent with the current predictions for this year's Oscar winners with Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Hudson, and Eddie Murphy all taking home individual acting awards. The only real surprise was SAG's decision to award the trophy for film ensemble to the indie comedy Little Miss Sunshine over more favored films such as Babel and The Departed. Sunshine's talented cast is more than deserving and given it's sweep of the PGA awards ealier this year, its chances for Best Picture look less and less like a long shot every day. Below are the nominees with winners in bold.

Oustanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

• Babel
• Bobby
• The Departed
• Dreamgirls
• Little Miss Sunshine

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

• Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
• Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
• Peter O'Toole, Venus
• Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
• Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

• Penélope Cruz, Volver
• Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
• Helen Mirren, The Queen
• Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
• Kate Winslet, Little Children

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

• Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
• Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed
• Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
• Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
• Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

• Adriana Barraza, Babel
• Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
• Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
• Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
• Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

Freedom Writers

Freedom Writers is more or less exactly what you expect it to be: an inspirational overcome the obstacles drama about reconciling differences and striving together against…blah, blah, blah. It’s a hard sell to anyone not wanting to be forcibly inspired. More importantly, it probably won’t win over a cynical viewer since it is as cliché and redundant as its detractors might hope. I can’t in my right mind give it a strong recommendation, but I can confess that anyone desiring a film of this nature will probably be more than satisfied.

Carved warmly out of true tales of struggling students wrangled in by their wide eyed freshman English teacher, Erin Gruwell, (Hilary Swank) Freedom Writers provides a substantial amount of weight and truth to its otherwise unimpressive narrative. Swank gives a performance with just enough spirit to sell her optimism but also enough cynicism to keep us from tuning out of her cartoonish chirpiness. She’s sympathetically imperfect and often awkward in her early attempts to earn the respect of her caustic teenage students. While their inevitable bond works well enough inside the bubble of the classroom, it leaves you feeling as though the movie has just skipped over the difficulties in other spots. So much of what Gruwell gets done clearly would have taken plenty more effort and aggravation than is depicted on screen. We’re also given limited information on how her students really go about changing their lives. Momentary mentions of their familial and personal issues as well as those of Gruwell (e.g. Patrick Dempsey as an almost nonexistent husband) do not truly encapsulate the full story of these people’s lives. It’s the shorthand of all that’s going on in the world around the school that leaves this feeling slightly vacant.

Unlike Half Nelson which focused on the complete story of one troubled student and shaped a story truthful in its extreme detail and complexity, Freedom Writers gives us a few snippets here and there of the tragic stories of these kids without fully realizing how they play out and get resolved. So much gets glossed over that the movie loses some of its honesty and becomes something of an overly sweet melodrama averting its eyes from the true conflicts at hand. It’s as if we’re given only the smiling happy picture at the end of the battle and never really shown the grueling amount of labor that lead to that moment. Achieving victory is the goal here and while the film suggests that Erin and her kids are working against difficulties none of these gets displayed with the weightiness it deserves. The intention is clearly just to deliver the happy moment at the end and not necessarily to burden the audience with something painfully complex. It works well enough as is, but anyone desiring deeper, more wholly authentic stories should go elsewhere.

Grade: B-

News: Weekend Expansions

Three more Oscar nominees are opening in wide release this weekend (one for the second time). Best Picture frontrunner, The Departed, returns to theaters for the first time in months while fellow nominees Volver and Notes on a Scandal are both opening in major markets around the country as part of a slow rollout plan that started for both in 2006. Anyone who has not yet gotten to see these films should probably consider checking them out. I'm posting links to each one's review. All three received mostly positive comments.

Notes On A Scandal
The Departed
Volver

Alpha Dog

The youth oriented crime drama, Alpha Dog, plays like a pop art parable meant to warn its target teen demographic about the consequences of being bratty and boozy. Unfortunately, director Nick Cassevetes stays a little too long at the party himself and ends up making a film that’s more callous than cautionary.

The movie follows a crew of faux California gangsters as they go about their “hardcore” lifestyles doing small time drug deals in a neighborhood full of wealthy people living privileged lives. Their arrogant leader, Johnny Truelove, (Emile Hirsch) escalates his notoriety by casually hijacking the younger brother of his most recent rival, but must inevitably deal with the looming threat of kidnapping charges. The outcome is bleak and, according to the film, true to the actual decisions of real life thug Jesse James Hollywood on whom the movie is based. It should be noted that although many of his coconspirators have been convicted, Hollywood remains on trial and is technically still to be considered innocent of these crimes.

It’s the dark turns in the final third of the film that make this movie palatable and marginally worthwhile. For the most part, Alpha Dog tries so hard to stave off the severity of its subject matter that it compromises its own dramatic integrity. The bulk of the film is a rancid and unenjoyably vulgar account of how Johnny and his friends buddy up with their young hostage and happily expose him to the world of rich kid parties chock full of drugs, sex, and alcohol. Think Almost Famous remade with no dignity and William Miller recast as a pawn in a drug deal gone wrong.

It takes talented writers, actors, and directors to mold interesting characters out of shallow and obnoxious people. Unfortunately, the cast and crew of Alpha Dog don’t seem prepared to explore this desperate generation of party kids far beyond hazy, stupid shots of coked up socialites. Where we really want to be as an audience is inside the minds of Truelove and his crew, but instead we’re given only a glimpse of their self-important surfaces. The movie makes easy targets out of ignorant parents and silent witnesses to the crime, (which it literally points out one by one) however, we’re never given a look into the motivations of the main characters of the film. There are a few new notes of emotion from the better than you’d expect Justin Timberlake in the film’s redeeming final act, but it’s still not enough to make a splendid movie experience out of a generally sour film.

Grade: B-

Awards Coverage: Academy Awards

Here's a rundown of some of the major Oscar categories. A complete nominee list can be found at http://www.academyawards.com. I'm pretty much satisfied with this year's batch of nominees. The Academy Awards have never actually nailed down the best of the best in my opinion, but on years when they come close I'm more or less happy. Excluding Dreamgirls for Best Picture and director Bill Condon for Best Director was the right move. It was an enjoyable film, but it was far from the best of the year. I feel more or less the same about The Queen which did sneak its way into Best Picture and earned veteran director Stephen Frears a nomination. I'm whole heartedly behind the campaign to make the brilliant Helen Mirren an Academy Award winner, but her performance is what sustains the fairly TV movie-esque film from beginning to end. As gifted as Frears may be, this was not his finest moment as a director and there were simply far more interesting directors working this year (like pleasant surprise nominee Paul Greengrass). However, the most wonderful surprise of this year's nominations was the universal recognition for Clint Eastwood and his masterful war epic Letters from Iwo Jima. Unfortunately, his cast got snubbed, but the film was represented in 4 categories. The same goes for the family fun road trip flick Little Miss Sunshine which has got to be one of the most delightful little films to squeeze into the persistently somber Best Picture race. Also making me very happy is the inclusion of Ryan Gosling in the Best Actor competition for his fine work in the little indie, Half Nelson. Not making me happy? The exclusion of Maggie Gyllenhaal's fine work in her little indie, Sherrybaby. And can we all sigh collectively at the nomination of Mark Wahlberg? The Departed apparently led a weird awards campaign that made the categorization of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson as lead or supporting actors unclear to many voters who must have split their votes between the two possible categories. How else do you explain Mark Wahlberg? How? It's also why Leo has his lead nomination for Blood Diamond instead. Apparently, he tried to pass off his role in The Departed as supporting work which didn't quite work out for him. Although, Wahlberg aside, the Supporting Actor category was an interesting shake up with the brilliant inclusion of Alan Arkin and Jackie Earle Haley being my favorite part of the shaking. I'm minorly angry over the limitation of nominations for both Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth, but given their oddly low awards profile, I'm glad to see them at least pop up somewhere on the nominees list. And I'm just generally thrilled over the large quantity of nominations for Babel. I named it as my favorite film of 2006 in my top 10 earlier this month and I still stand by that.

BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR

• Babel
• The Departed
• Letters From Iwo Jima
• Little Miss Sunshine
• The Queen

ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING

• Alejandro González Iñárritu - Babel
• Martin Scorsese - The Departed
• Clint Eastwood - Letters From Iwo Jima
• Stephen Frears - The Queen
• Paul Greengrass - United 93

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

• Leonardo DiCaprio - Blood Diamond
• Ryan Gosling - Half Nelson
• Peter O'Toole - Venus
• Will Smith - The Pursuit of Happyness
• Forest Whitaker - The Last King of Scotland

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

• Penélope Cruz - Volver
• Judi Dench - Notes on a Scandal
• Helen Mirren - The Queen
• Meryl Streep - The Devil Wears Prada
• Kate Winslet - Little Children

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

• Alan Arkin - Little Miss Sunshine
• Jackie Earle Haley - Little Children
• Djimon Hounsou - Blood Diamond
• Eddie Murphy - Dreamgirls
• Mark Wahlberg - The Departed

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

• Adriana Barraza - Babel
• Cate Blanchett - Notes on a Scandal
• Abigail Breslin - Little Miss Sunshine
• Jennifer Hudson - Dreamgirls
• Rinko Kikuchi - Babel

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

• Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham & Dan Mazer - Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
• Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton & David Arata & Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby - Children of Men
• William Monahan - The Departed
• Todd Field & Tom Perrotta - Little Children
• Patrick Marber - Notes on a Scandal

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

• Guillermo Arriaga - Babel
• Iris Yamashita - Letters From Iwo Jima
• Michael Arndt - Little Miss Sunshine
• Guillermo del Toro - Pan's Labyrinth
• Peter Morgan - The Queen

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR

• After the Wedding
• Days of Glory (Indigenes)
• The Lives of Others
• Pan's Labyrinth
• Water

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM OF THE YEAR

• Cars
• Happy Feet
• Monster House

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

• Deliver Us From Evil
• An Inconvenient Truth
• Iraq in Fragments
• Jesus Camp
• My Country, My Country

DVD of the Week: The Puffy Chair

Somewhere near the beginning of this darling little movie, heartbroken twentysomething Josh stands outside his girlfriend’s window blasting Death Cab’s “Transatlanticism” on a stereo held high above his head and explains “You’ve still got my Peter Gabriel CD!” It’s the sort of cheeky, delightful, and altogether wonderful scene that defines this deeply earnest and undeniably quick witted slice of fly on the wall fiction. The general concept involves a cross country road trip to secure an old fashioned recliner purchased on eBay for Josh’s father. It’s an exact replica of the chair he had when Josh and his brother, Rhett, were kids and it’s destined to be the perfect birthday gift if only this trip would work out as planned. This is simply one of my favorite films of the year and it needs to be seen by anyone with a love for low key, talky indie flicks.

Also new to DVD is Sherrybaby, a film grounded by a brilliant performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal that should have earned her an Oscar nomination but didn’t. She plays a junkie in pursuit of a clean life and a relationship with the daughter that she lost along the way. It’s heartbreaking and genius in small and simple ways.

The Hitcher

The Hitcher is the latest in a long line of horror remakes plaguing movie theaters. It teams token TV sex kitten Sophia Bush (“One Tree Hill”) with newcomer Zachary Knighton (an unconvincing doppelganger for House of Wax star and “Supernatural” heartthrob Jared Padalecki) and sends them on a road trip that’s destined to end in bloodshed. Sean Bean plays John Ryder, a vicious man on an unexplained mission to kill. When the young couple invite Ryder into their car for a quick ride to a nearby hotel, he traps them in a fairly mundane game of cat and mouse that’s as tired and clichéd as the expression “cat and mouse” itself.

This is a dull piece of horror schlock guaranteed to elicit plenty of titters from its audience and only a few valueless gasps of shock. There’s nearly a dozen times during the film’s brief 84 minute runtime when something menacing pops into frame from an off screen source. This cheap ploy is mildly unnerving, but by the third or fourth time it rolls around the audience has become so clued in to the movie’s tricks that it barely merits a jolt. The fright these moments create is simple, sudden, and short lived. It’s hard to find a really good scare or a genuine moment of suspense anywhere in this mixed bag of gimmicks.

The couple’s initial encounter with Ryder is staged with a believable and eerie intensity, but the film soon plummets into the abyss of implausibility. What starts out as an utterly disturbing invasion of personal space and betrayal of trust morphs into an on the run thriller full of surreal plot twists and grotesque violence. The movie’s edge gets quickly lost in the shuffle and it begins to feel like just another dumb blood and guts horror flick. By its end, it has become some ludicrous and bloodthirsty that nothing really matters anymore.

There is a kernel of truth imbedded in Sean Bean’s steely eyed performance as John Ryder, but it’s so underdeveloped and unused that even Bean’s best efforts go to waste. He makes John Ryder a charismatic creepster with a two sided demeanor that delivers both rough charm and unnerving intimidation. Unfortunately, we’re never given the opportunity to peak behind his haunted eyes and see the inner workings of a mad man. He plays mind games with his prey, but we never really sense an actual motive behind his cruelty. There are hints that he may have suffered a tragic past, but there is never really any concrete explanation for his interest in his sadistic pursuits. Had he been granted greater pathos, the film might have been able to carry itself more proudly as the ghastly portrait of a killer. Sadly, the filmmakers had no such interest in more complete storytelling. Instead we’re faced with an ugly and uninteresting splatterfest that plays out like a guidebook to horror movie clichés.

Horror purists might consider this to be a messy good time and some nonserious viewers might enjoy it as a humorously awful gross out movie, but its cheap scares and thin narrative will not be worth the price of admission for most moviegoers.

Grade: D-

News: Friday Expansions

A lot of people have commented that a lot of what I review has not yet been made available to a wide audience and while that's true, the chance to see a lot of the buzzed about Oscar hopefuls will be coming in the next few weeks leading up to the big awards on February 15th. This Friday marks the expansion of several major films in hopes that the building Oscar buzz will bring people out to see these movies. Some of my reviews for these films can still be found on the main page (which covers the last 30 days worth of posts): The Good German, The Painted Veil, Letters from Iwo Jima, Pan's Labyrinth, Venus. A few of the films coming to more theaters on Friday were released much earlier in the year and have since been relegated to the archives of this site. Below are the links to the reviews of those films. It's much easier to link from here than to search through the October/November archives.

Babel
The Last King of Scotland
The Queen

Trailers: Hot Fuzz

The guys who made the hilarious cult hit Shaun of the Dead are back with a second feature that looks like it could exceed their first. Director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost return for Hot Fuzz, a film designed to do for the action, buddy cop genre what Shaun did for horror and zombie movies. With a love of the game that keeps the story looking and sounding true to the genre and a tongue in cheek attitude that keeps all the action fresh and funny, the trailer delivers a taste of what could be one of the best comedies this year.Hot Fuzz hits theaters April 13th.

Trailer:

QuickTime High
http://www.roguepictures.com/viewer.php?f=hotFuzz&c=trailer&ext=mov&w=480&h=202

QuickTime Low
http://www.roguepictures.com/viewer.php?f=hotFuzz&c=trailer&ext=mov&w=320&h=134

Windows Media High
http://www.roguepictures.com/viewer.php?f=hotFuzz&c=trailer&ext=wmv&w=480&h=202

Windows Media Low
http://www.roguepictures.com/viewer.php?f=hotFuzz&c=trailer&ext=wmv&w=320&h=240

My Top 10 of 2006

Now that the year is well gone and I've had a moment to think back on all the movies I've seen and reviewed, I finally have a top ten for you guys. It's very hard to actually narrow down this sort of thing and I'm very indecisive, which makes it doubly hard. I would encourge everyone to check back in the archives because there's a lot of great stuff that I couldn't quite fit in here, but that should still get seen. Anyway, here's the rundown.

10. A Prairie Home Companion

Robert Altman’s final feature, A Prairie Home Companion, is one of the most effortlessly endearing movies I’ve ever seen. It has a naturally unpolished, brassy charm that emanates from its down home musings and warmhearted characters. Meryl Streep gives the most wonderfully jubilant performance of her career and Virginia Madsen is as softly soulful here as she was in her career redefining role in Sideways. Altman’s cluttered, cinematic tapestry style could not be more perfect for photographing the on stage and behind the scene antics of this spontaneous, clumsy old fashioned radio show. Repeat viewings are highly rewarding since its scenes are so full of movement and detail. A Prairie Home Companion is a laugh out loud comedy treat, but it’s also fittingly level headed. As lovely a film as there ever will be about death, this movie just explodes with energy and exuberance even when tragedy strikes. We all face our own finales in life, and as the cast and crew of the show sing their final number, “Red River Valley,” it feels every bit as painfully ambivalent as life itself.

9. Mutual Appreciation

If John Cassavetes were alive to make a film in 2006, then this would probably be the kind he would make. Up and coming festival favorite Andrew Bujalski has mastered the sublime art of nothingness by capturing the awkward rhythms of twentysomething drunken banter and the thinly philosophical ramblings of their adorably pretentious ordinary days. Every “like...,"well…,” and “umm…," is like a gift cinematic realism heaven that helps make every second of this beautiful little film feel as true as documented footage. These characters come alive through their imperfections, the cracks in their logic, and the thinly veiled ulterior motives they can barely hide from each other let alone the audience on guard. We can witness their slips and their falls and see things about them that no one within the frame can recognize. It’s the closest thing to capturing an actual piece of life on film since Bujalski broke out with his equally honest Funny Ha Ha last year.

8. Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine has all the makings of a dreadful road trip movie, but the sincerity and integrity of high end cinema. It may look like a simple family movie farce, but this film has more heart than most others to hit the big screen this year. Little Abigail Breslin is a show stopping heartbreaker as Olive, a little girl who just wants to win big at a local pageant. She’s supported by one of the most impressive ensembles in any film this year. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette sparkle with prickly charm as her bickering parents and Alan Arkin, Steve Carell, and Paul Dano make for the most earnest and hilarious comic foils of the year. All three deserve Best Supporting Actor recognition come Oscar time, but I doubt any of them will get it. However, this is without a doubt the year’s very best comedy.

7. The Proposition

The Proposition is a grisly Western that reestablishes the genre as a template for the expression of brutish men with wounded souls. The always wonderful Guy Pearce gives a completely flawless performance as a fugitive of the law who has made a deal to kill his more criminal older brother in exchange for the life of his softer, sweeter younger brother. His voyage to perform the dreadful task would be fodder enough for a brilliant film, but we also experience the film from the perspective of the law. This is particularly rewarding in the scenes with Emily Watson who gives a performance of such delicate beauty that it makes every gunshot resound with even more devastating nervousness. It’s an ugly film about vicious people, but it also takes time to spotlight characters of innocence. This, however, is not a film where the innocent prosper. It’s designed to be a tragic tale of violence and bloodshed that weighs heavily on the heart and mind.

6. Little Children
If American Beauty and Las Liasons Dangereuses had an even more poetically obscene lovechild, it would probably be something along the lines of Little Children. Based on the Tom Perotta novel of the same name and adapted by In the Bedroom auteur Todd Field, the movie is a desolate, dark hearted tour de force of romance, sleaze, and hypocrisy. More than just another suburban satire, the film charts very complex relationships and plays tricks on the minds of even its most attentive and intelligent viewers. Its final scene is one of the most devastating and shocking montages of truthful tragedy to be witnessed all year. More importantly, it makes the audience as guilty as the local town in the unfortunate way we read into Jackie Earle Haley’s troubled sex offender. Who exactly is the victim becomes as blurred and complicated a judgment to make as you could hope for from a thoughtful film likes this one.

5. Letters from Iwo Jima
Clint Eastwood has released not one, but two films of great beauty and raw complexity in the last three months and this is the better of the two. Letters from Iwo Jima is a somber and justifiably vicious war drama that explores the social, cultural, and personal significances of battle rather than basking in the glory of fight scenes and explosions. It looks not only at the lives of these people during the time of war, but also who they were before being turned into soldiers. The lives of these people and the families they’ve left behind are at the core of the film. The war is merely the obstacle standing in the way of their return. With this Iwo Jima saga, he has dissected the myths and exaggerated media representations of war and restored the human integrity of the soldier as a person rather than a picture or a story in a newspaper. He champions humanity and remains weary of what can happen when people stop being seen as human and start being considered pawns in a game played for national interests.

4. Children of Men
Children of Men is the sort of epic that unites movie goers everywhere. It’s an exciting, embattled vision of the future full of violence and adventure, but it’s also one of the most deeply emotional and artful tales of the year. It’s a thinking man’s thriller that both indulges in fun spectacle and carves out its own visual style. Handheld cameras walking through futuristic London seem strikingly original in the face of so many cold, stiff interpretations of our future world. Here Alfonso Cuarón is depicting a future where the world has changed, but people have more or less remained the same. They’re still stubborn, selfish, and well meaning at their very core. Some try to be leaders while others just sit around casually waiting for the world to end. The complexity and the layers of detail here are astounding. It’s as honest and imaginative a depiction of the future as there’s ever been and one of the most original and moving films of the year.

3. Pan's Labyrinth
Fauns, fairies, and revolutionaries stand side by side in this brilliant, adult-sized fairy tale from visionary Guillermo del Toro. It depicts the life of a young girl at the time of the Spanish revolution who is summoned into a mysterious maze by magic creatures claiming that they will save her from her troubled life. Never has there been a film of this kind with such a vivid and terrifyingly real portrayal of both human and magical monstrosities. War and terror dominate the nation as little Ofelia makes her dangerous bid for painless immortality and seeks escape from the treacheries of humanity by cavorting with beasts and monsters. For every creature, there’s a comparable human and the real surprise is that sometimes the monsters are less horrifying than the humans they come to represent. The film touches on the universal ugliness in our world and gives us all a darkly ambiguous answer about whether anyone can really ever escape it at all.

2. Half Nelson
Pure and simple, Half Nelson is the low key indie film of the year and one of the best films that could be seen anywhere in 2006. It’s a spirited yet somewhat bleak take on people living workaday, strung out lives in contemporary Brooklyn. Ryan Gosling gives the performance of a lifetime as the good hearted, drug addicted teacher at a local public school who connects in Lost In Translation fashion with a young student (Shareeka Epps) in a bond that defies age. One of the most painful and electrifying scenes I’ve ever see occurs here when the two social outcasts submit to their addictions and difficulties and cross paths in the least ideal of circumstances. This is one of the most truthful films anywhere this year. It’s a simple story about simple lives in the modern age.

1. Babel

Language and communication are essential to a civilized society. When within the walls of one’s own nation and granted the ability to speak intelligently in the language and style of those in proximity, it seems a perfectly simple and natural fact of life. When one crosses borders and reaches across the cultural, generational, and personal divides that stand between people of different mindsets and backgrounds, things become more complicated. Babel is the ambitious, intercontinental drama that aims to explore the difficulties of human expression in all of its forms. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett play an American husband and wife on vacation in Morocco who find themselves lacking communication skills in their new setting. Adriana Barazza is brilliant as their nanny who must unexpectedly care for the couple’s children while across the border in Mexico. The third major standout performance and my favorite of the bunch is that of newcomer Rinko Kikuchi who gives a fierce and vulnerable performance as a deaf Japanese teenager trying to communicate without the capacity for any verbal language at all. It’s a massive and wonderful film that extends itself in every way to further define, detail, and stumble over the little complexities of making one’s thoughts verbally understood. The film itself is made as though ripped from the minds of its authors, Guillermo Arriaga and Alejandro González Iñárritu, to demonstrate for us all their thoughts on connecting in a world full of disjointed souls.

The Dead Girl

Director Karen Moncrieff’s second feature film, The Dead Girl, is a bleak, heartbreaking series of vignettes that explores the various effects of a young girl’s murder. They look at death from all angles, beginning with the woman who finds the body and gradually moving closer and closer toward the primary players in the dead girl’s final moments alive.

As dire and painful as the film can be, it also touches on the way in which this death liberates the people in its path. It cleanses them of emotional burdens, reveals many truths, and ignites a fire in them to live their lives more fully. The unfortunate, desolate lives of these people come to a crossroads as the news of the murder breaks into their daily routines and shakes up their low satisfaction existences. The outcomes are brutal and sometimes shocking, but they also often contain a muted sense of lovely transformation. In grief, people find inspiration to confront the difficulties they’ve been living with and stand up for themselves while they opportunity still exists for them to make a change.

Moncrieff is perfectly gritty and minimalistic in her choices of photography, but it’s the impressive cast that truly makes this sad-eyed collection of soul searchers really come to life. Hollywood beauties Brittany Murphy, Kerry Washington, and Rose Byrne demonstrate a skill for transformative acting that none has ever really shown before. Washington in particular gives a performance of such distinct body language and intimidating manners that she’s practically unrecognizable. The same can be said of the often wasted but very talented James Franco who unleashes a heretofore unknown inner dork.

It’s not solely young Hollywood that wins you over with this movie, though. There’s also an ensemble of veteran leading ladies who utilize their skills to masterful effect. Toni Collette, Mary Steenburgen, Marcia Gay Harden, and Mary Beth Hurt all deliver devastating performances that are rich with nuance. While the younger cast members find truth by dressing down and playing with their messy, unglamorous appeal, the more established members of the cast intricately weave broken hearts residing beneath finely knit sweaters. Playing mostly conservative mothers, they each express through their pained eyes a wound that runs as deep as any visible laceration on the corpse of dead girl. This is not at all an easy film or a pleasant film, but with this kind of talent at work, it’s an unquestionably well done tragedy.

Grade: A

Awards Coverage: WGA

The Writer's Guild made some odd choices with their recent year end nominations. Comedy features got an unexpected leg up over more somber, dramatic material. Nominating bright shining newcomer, Zach Helm, for his trippy and creative Stranger than Fiction script is an inspired decision. The same can also be said for the Thank You For Smoking adaptation, which was a wonderfully acidic and brilliant farce. However, a few of these feel a little bit too fluffy to be serious contenders. Do the folks who brought The Devil Wears Prada to the big screen really deserve an award for their writing skills? It seemed like a pretty conventional and uninspired screenplay to me. And how do they justify nominating Borat when the bulk of the film was improvised comedy? Why not elect to honor an eloquent adaptation like Patrick Marber's Notes on a Scandal instead?

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Babel
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen
Stranger Than Fiction
United 93

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Borat
The Departed
The Devil Wears Prada
Little Children
Thank You For Smoking

News: Universal Sudios Talks Sequels

From the director of XXX and Stealth comes The Mummy 3. No joke. That's the tagline you'll be seeing come 2009 when Universal Studios rolls out its latest dopey sequel idea. Not only is shlockmaster Rob Cohen at the helm, but it's not even clear whether franchise stars Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz will return. Fraser's at somewhat of a dead spot in his career and is a probable hire for a sequel, but as much as Weisz might want to reprise her fun, booksmart Evelyn character, she should cling tightly to her Oscar and stay far away from this project. The original Mummy movie is actually one of my favorite guilty pleasure adventure flicks. It's a fun, tongue-in-cheek action comedy a la Indiana Jones. Unfortunately, there was no life or charm at all to the sequel and eventual spin-off vehicle for The Rock. Now, with original director, Stephen Sommers, reduced to a producer credit, it's doubtful that this new movie will have any of the playful, light-hearted, popcorn popping fun of the original. It's bound to be yet another dud sequel in a long line of neverending franchises. The real sign of danger? No one even seems to know what it's going to be about. Once the money's in line, they'll worry about little things like plot and character.

Universal also revealed that they hope to make yet another sequel to the smash hit Meet the Parents. The latest in the comedy series, which also includes Meet the Fockers, would reportedly be called Meet the Little Focker and would focus on the child of Greg and Pam (Ben Stiller and Teri Polo respectively). However, the project is still in its infancy and no commitments have been made by any of the cast members. The film would presumably also include the return of Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner as Pam's parents and Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as Greg's parents, the Fockers. I must say that I did very much enjoy the original Parents comedy, but found the sequel to be the most disappointing sequel in some time. Needless to say, I'm hesitant to embrace the idea of a third film, which will probably be even less coherent and more unbearably stupid than the Fockers debacle. My only real request for the the next movie is that director Jay Roach finds a way to work in the delightful Kali Rocha as the feisty airline stewardess for a third time.

I'm very sad to report that pretty much the only sequel Universal Studios does not seem interested in developing is the much deserved sequel to Joss Whedon's sci-fi epic Serenity. It's really an inexplicable shame given the surplus of bad material on their shedule.

DVD of the Week: The Illusionist

This period mystery stars Edward Norton as a magician in pursuit of a beautiful princess played by Jessica Biel whom he first fell in love with as a young boy. Rufus Sewell plays the dastardly politician that stands in their way and Paul Giamatti steals the show as an underling who’s willing to betray Sewell’s vicious villain in order to uphold the truth. Though it’s hyped by its ad campaigning as a twisty, shocking thriller, it’s more gifted at drama and romance than thrills. The real pleasure is director Neil Burger’s lovely visual style. He creates a sort of hazy, eerie landscape that makes this film all the more romantic and quietly unsettling.

There’s also another creepy, odd indie mystery coming to DVD this week. It’s called The Night Listener and it stars Robin Williams as an author pursuing the truth about a little boy who claims to have written a book about his harrowing and abusive childhood but may only be a figment of a sociopath’s imagination. Like The Illusionist, it was wrongly marketed as an action packed thriller, but really this is a sordid Sundance entry about psychosis, pedophilia, and paranoia. It’s a dark hearted, vicious mystery with a painful dramatic center that stings until the very end.

Those more inclined toward straight drama should check out Quinceañera, the little indie that took last year’s Sundance Film Festival by storm. It’s a truthful, simple film about a young 15 year old girl who becomes suddenly pregnant and gets disowned by her family. She forms a little community of rejects with her gay cousin and elderly grandpa. It’s something sweet but somber, and very good indeed. If you’re fond of talky indie pictures, then you might also enjoy Conversations with Other Women starring Tim Burton muse Helena Bonham Carter and Thank You for Smoking’s Aaron Eckhart as “Man” and “Woman” and shot in an experimental split screen format that keeps both sides of their lengthy night long conversation on screen at all times. It’s something in vein of Before Sunset (although not as good), which studies people and general ideas as represented by two individuals who have the wonderful gift to speak eloquently.

Awards Coverage: DGA

The Director's Guild nominations are out and they are quite foretelling of Oscars to come. The DGA winner has won the Best Director Academy Award for 51 out of 57 years. The nominees are Bill Condon (Dreamgirls), Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), Stephen Frears (The Queen), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel) and Martin Scorsese (The Departed). Notable absences include Clint Eastwood (Letters from Iwo Jima), Robert Altman (A Prairie Home Companion), Todd Field (Little Children), and Paul Greengrass (United 93) among many others.

Venus

Venus is the sort of rough around the edges, low key delight that makes independent filmmaking so interesting. The May-December romance is not the most original of concepts, but it’s never been done to this extent and with such an absence of idealism. Peter O’ Toole is amazingly good as a washed up actor named Maurice who lusts naughtily after the niece (Jodie Whittaker) of his close friend, Ian (Leslie Phillips). He likens her to the goddess Venus for inspiring love and passion in his tired old heart, and though she’s not nearly as fond of their situation as he is, she concedes to somewhat of a relationship due to his gentleness and occasional financial generosity. She’s been made bitter by a family and former lover who both used her up and cast her out and takes nicely to the idea of opening herself up to a harmless old man. The two form a tender bond between them, but their relationship is never really clear cut or easy. Much of the film’s charm is in the way it depicts this connection in all of its odd nuance and complication. They are sometimes charming together and at other times make for hideously ugly enemies. She is usually glad to be treated so nicely by Maurice, but she often strikes out against the unconventional circumstances in which she’s found herself.

The movie itself has a wonderfully messy, earnest style of photography and a refreshing comedic undercurrent. The characters are lovable but for the most part they are also utter dolts. Maurice and Ian bicker hysterically from time to time in a friendship based on self pity and disdain for the modern world. They’re both vestiges of another era, coping with life in a world that keeps moving and bodies that keep deteriorating each day. Maurice has been made frail and vulnerable by age and finds himself in a similar predicament as his beloved Venus, who has been made vulnerable by cruelty. She provides him with a taste of her youth in exchange for the warmth of his kindness. The film is as complicated and funny as their fragile relationship, making for something rich with life and just plain wonderful.

Grade: A

Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer

Tom Twyker broke titillating new ground with his techno frenzied thriller Run, Lola, Run and now he returns in this truly bizarre twist on the genre. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a lush, stylized stab at what seems like slasher poetry. It chronicles the bizarrely tragic life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who is literally born into the gutter of 18th Century Paris and lives what appears to be a cursed life. His mother tries to kill him, gets killed, and everyone he meets thereafter either dies mysteriously or becomes his victim. He preys on beautiful young virgins in order to create the ultimate perfume and distill the essential scent of pure beauty. He’s born with such a powerful sense of smell that he becomes a ravenous monster in his attempts to make a smell that will satisfy his desires. He has no family, an inability to feel or love, and no scent of his own. Only the scents around him can satisfy his hungry nose. It’s an interesting way to create a villainous protagonist. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille has both an innocence and a heinousness about him that make him terrifying and heartbreaking. He’s as embodied and intense a monster as the horror genre has ever seen.

My fondness for this film is more in its ambition and its exciting originality than due to its execution or its enjoyableness. It’s involving and engaging for large portions of its excessive runtime but it falls into a sleepy monotony elsewhere. It’s based on a 1985 novel of the same name and it has the distinct feeling of something that’s been adapted. It feels shorthanded and never fully rendered, like reading the Cliff’s Notes rather than the genuine article. So much feels squished in and so little seems to come to a proper end. Twyker does get credit for making one of the most inventively odorous films ever produced. His images are so intoxicatingly vivid that you’d swear you smell them as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille does. There is no question that it is a visual pleasure in every way, but it wears thin and grows to an oh-so-ridiculous climax that despite all its artistic propensity cannot help but strike at least a slight note of strange confusion in even the most astute viewer.

The moral behind the madness deals with the viciousness entailed in producing true beauty and the power it bestows upon its possessor. Beautiful scents give Jean-Baptiste Grenouille the power to control even the most disdainful of people. Everyone succumbs to a scent as lovely as the one he has made from the bodies of 13 dead young girls. To call all of this ridiculous would be somewhat expected, but it’s a wicked allegory of beauty’s power in the world and an eerie piece of surrealism that toys with genre guidelines to the point that you’re caught up somewhere in a period/thriller/horror/art house/psychodrama and wondering how you got their in the first place. Its results are mixed, but it’s quite a ride.

Grade: B

Miss Potter

Miss Potter is as pleasant a surprise as anything released in the last few weeks. Despite being sandwiched between the most cutthroat flood of last minute Oscar contenders in history, this is a little gem of a film that should find an audience in the next few weeks or perhaps on DVD. It’s plagued by a minor case of adorableness, but, for the most part, it’s an authentically charming and joyous piece of simple storytelling. Something like a cross between Finding Neverland and Bridget Jones’ Diary, Miss Potter finds Renée Zellweger in one of her better roles of late, playing Beatrix Potter, the reclusive spinster author of beloved children’s books such as 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit.' Viewed by society and her own family as a rebellious and untraditional failure, Potter nevertheless carries on with her life as she intends it. She chooses to remain unmarried and sets about pursuing a career as a writer and artist at a time when such a thing was considered an unsavory course of action for a woman of wealth and high social class.

Beatrix is lonely but ambitious and eventually both of those needs become sated by Mr. Norman Warne, (Ewan McGregor) a tradesmen looking to publish her book and one day take her hand in marriage. Spoiling the obstacles and detours that get in the way of both these goals wouldn’t be much fun at all, but needless to say, this is one of the most enjoyably sweet movies I’ve seen in some time.

Thankfully, Miss Potter has enough dignity and weight to elude the tragedy of cutesy trifle cinema. This is lightweight and lovely, but rightfully hardened by some tragic circumstances and a sense of cynicism that the society has toward these idealistic characters. The joy is in savoring the wild fun of its sweet hearted protagonists as they fly willingly in the face of good manors. Zellweger has a habit of being awkwardly aggressive in her attempts to be adorable, but she musters the best of her charm for this role and delivers something odd and special. Also worthy of praise is the ever talented Emily Watson as Mr. Warne’s unmarried sister, Millie, who eagerly proclaims upon first meeting Beatrix “I’ve decided that we’re going to be great friends” and never ceases to burst with a refreshing enthusiasm. McGregor has had far more complex and exciting work in his past, but it’s nice to see him take on a pleasant project sans CGI. He seems to relish the chance to be awkward and embarrassed and makes the most of a meager role.

This isn’t exactly revolutionary filmmaking, but so many films claiming to be sweet come off tasting sour that it’s a treat to see one that actually works. It’s a biopic at heart, but it takes on its own life and creativity, shaping enchanting characters and clever stories that define the spirit and whimsy of Miss Potter in her life and in her books. A free spirited gleefulness flows throughout the picture no matter how dire the circumstances. It breezes by in a whirlwind of beauty, humor, and absolute joy.

Grade: B+

Awards Coverage: SAG

The annual Screen Actors Guild nominations have been announced and they're pretty awesome. I'm not sure I really see the point in nominating Leonardo DiCaprio in both the lead actor and supporting actor categories, but the rest are pretty much unobjectionable. They gave Ryan Gosling the nomination the Golden Globes failed to produce. Ditto for veteran genius Alan Arkin who was also snubbed at the Globes. There were also some pleasant surprises, including the much deserved nomination for Little Children supporting player Jackie Earle Haley and Little Miss Sunshine's pint sized Abigail Breslin. I'm also happy to see that despite being generally overlooked, Emilio Estevez's Bobby got a nomination for its massive and amazingly talented ensemble. Here's the list of film nominees.

Oustanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

• Babel
• Bobby
• The Departed
• Dreamgirls
• Little Miss Sunshine

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

• Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
• Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
• Peter O'Toole, Venus
• Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
• Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

• Penélope Cruz, Volver
• Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
• Helen Mirren, The Queen
• Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
• Kate Winslet, Little Children

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

• Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
• Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed
• Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
• Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
• Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

• Adriana Barraza, Babel
• Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
• Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
• Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
• Rinko Kikuchi, Babel