Mud (***1/2)

MUD
Written and Directed by Jeff Nichols

***1/2

The degree to which Matthew McConaughey has attempted to change the trajectory of his career these last few years fascinates me, I must admit. He had spent the better part of the last two decades as not much more than a go-to scruffy alternative for fluffball romantic comedies. For a guy who made his start in compelling dramas like A Time To Kill and Amistad, by 2009 there were a lot more films like Fool's Gold and Ghost of Girlfriend's Past on his resume. He had become one of those actors that was essentially a stamp that said movie was probably going to be less-than-watchable, and seemed more than happy with that reputation (after all, acting is a job and a paycheck is a paycheck). But since 2011, his projects have become more interesting and he chooses his roles more carefully, noting characters that utilize his sexuality and charisma twofold. It's odd to live in a world where I have to take McConaughey seriously, but after watching his career-best performance in Mud, I seem to have no choice but to.

Pain & Gain (**)

PAIN & GAIN
Directed by Michael Bay

**

There's no other filmmaker that I actively dislike more than Michael Bay. His films create visions of a certain America that I want no part of, ripe with men that think only with their muscles and women who seem to only work for the benefit of those men. And the explosions. My lord, there isn't a car big enough or fancy enough that he didn't want to blow to smithereens. His 2001 film, Pearl Harbor, was such a deliberately ignorant piece of garbage that used the pages of history books as toilet paper. It offended me as a film lover and as an American, and I hadn't seen a Michael Bay movie since then. That is, until now, as Bay attempts to tackle something on a smaller scale. Pain & Gain is Bay's first non-Transformer film since The Island in 2005 and it might be the most interesting story he's ever told -  not that we're talking about any crowning achievement.

To The Wonder (***1/2)

TO THE WONDER
Written and Directed by Terrence Mallick

***1/2

Despite Terrence Mallick's already formidable reputation, Tree of Life seemed to come out of nowhere two years ago as this breathtakingly beautiful, yet frustratingly whisper-y meditation on life and the universe. It was Mallick's biggest hit since 1999's The Thin Red Line, and it got him several Oscar nominations. Now, the filmmaker notorious for taking many, many years to complete projects (there was a 21-year gap between Days of Heaven and Thin Red Line) is churning out pictures with alarming speed, and To The Wonder is just the first of four films that should be released within the next year or so. It's just as etherial and meandering as all of his previous films, but To The Wonder seems to have an earnestness and a beauty that I've never really seen (or perhaps, never really appreciated?) in anything else he's done. Even in its most cynical moments, To The Wonder is probably the most uplifting cinematic achievement of his career.

Room 237 (***)

ROOM 237
Directed by Rodney Ascher

***

In the middle decades of the twentieth century, a powerful literary movement thundered through America called the New Criticism. It was started by John Crowe Ransom and popularized by towering literary figures like T.S. Eliot. This new way of analysis stressed close reading, attempting to find the true meaning and status of a work, particularly how it can work as its own "self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object" (thanks Wikipedia). This movement was probably the way literature was deconstructed up until about 1975. That is, until people found the process tedious and unnecessary (there's only so many times you can find meaning in The Waste Land before you'd want to put your head in the oven). I feel like the New Critics would have really loved Room 237 and its five contributors who go deep down into the abyss to find what they feel to be the true meaning behind Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror film The Shining.

Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

I've seldom written in this blog unless its to either write a film review or write some Oscar-related fanboy screed and I've written precious few In Memorium pieces (though there are a few - the most puzzling, even to me, is probably the one I wrote about Michael Jackson, but I digress). That being said, I can't think of a single person who has had a bigger influence on this blog and my style as a film writer than Mr. Roger Ebert. The man was a legend, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and probably the most popular film reviewer of all time. A master of the written and the spoken word, I have gladly followed the word of Ebert for the last decade plus, and while I would be lying if I said I agreed with that word 100% of the time, there was no one else who I was more willing to watch wax poetic/pontificate.

Ebert had been writing reviews since his college years in his school paper, but became the lead film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967 (where he was already championing films like Bonnie & Clyde). He also collaborated with controversial filmmaker Russ Meyer to write the screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. But what probably made Ebert the household name that he's been for the last three decades was his collaborations with fellow Chicago film reviewer Gene Siskel. The two began reviewing films together in 1975 on the show Sneak Previews. Their style - conversational but introspective, friendly but combative - was unlike any other show of its kind. It was not like even the film review shows of today, because Siskel and Ebert were true friends, and these were conversations that, if they weren't having them in front of the camera, they certainly were having them off of it (this similar strategy is being utilized on ESPN with the show Parden The Interruption which is built almost entirely on the chemistry of sports journalists Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon - incidentally, this is best show that network has).

As the success of Siskel and Ebert grew, so did the reach of their show. The show's name became At The Movies, and the two created the now infamous "thumbs up, thumbs down" grading system which was probably meaningless as a true judge of film, but iconic in representing the two film giants. This would be the catchphrase that would be attached to these two men for the rest of their careers, and they both wore it like badges of honor, posing with the proverbial thumbs up in media appearances. In 1999, Gene Siskel passed from surgical complications regarding his own battles with brain cancer. His absence was not only tragic, but it effected the balance of the show from that point on. The magic of At The Movies was all about Siskel and Ebert, and though the show pushed on with Ebert's fellow Sun-Times writer Richard Roeper, it never really had the same magic that came from the two originals. Siskel's death, both sad and sudden, was its own day of mourning in the film industry and a topic that Ebert would revisit in his own writing many, many times.

But if Siskel's death was a surprise, Ebert's passing seemed to be a matter of time. He was originally diagnosed with Thyroid cancer in 2002. And while the illness took its toll, it did not stop him from writing about films for his weekly reviews. He was even able to return to At The Movies until 2006, when complications from a second surgery left him without the ability to speak. As the cancer progressed, Ebert was even left without his lower mandible, creating deformities to his physical appearance. This did not stop him from making public appearances to talk about movies, unafraid of what his condition and appearance may seem to other people. More than anything, he continued to keep writing about movies, and while he may not have been able to speak, that familiar voice was still ever so present throughout his weekly reviews (and this guy was no slouch, he saw EVERYTHING). That is until recently, when he had a setback with his illness, and his reviews became fewer and farther between fellow contributors writing in his place. Until today, the day he finally passed.

Ebert in one of his many appearances after losing his lower jaw.

Roger Ebert was not my favorite film reviewer because I agreed with him a whole lot. Actually, we probably didn't have very strict agreements on many films at all. We almost never agreed on what the best film of any given year was. But its his conviction, his intelligence and more than anything his love of movies that really set him apart. In a subsection of writing that is flooded with pious megalomaniacs shouting out fire and brimstone about their ever-so-important opinions, Ebert wrote with a wit that always seemed humble to the point of self-deprecating. Not that he couldn't be mean. Oh boy, could he be mean. He once filled an entire book with his most popular negative reviews, entitled Your Movie Sucks. But despite all that, he always managed to seem fair and he never seemed to have an agenda. And while he may have a reputation for being partial to commercial films, he was always a champion for the smaller filmmakers (just last year, he wrote a LONG blog post imploring people to recognize the work of Chop Shop and Goodbye Solo filmmaker Ramin Bahrani).

More than anything, Ebert rooted for films that he enjoyed, even if it wasn't in his best interest to enjoy them. Just a few years ago, he gave the dubious Nicolas Cage vehicle Knowing a four-star review and even had the gaul to include it on a list of the ten best films of the 2000s. And that it was I respect the most about Ebert: his knowledge that the most important part of how you view a particular film is how much you enjoyed it. You can use vocabulary of hifalutin film theory and metaphors to support your case, but in the end you either enjoyed the film or you didn't. And if you enjoyed Knowing as much as you enjoyed No Country For Old Men, well so be it. (*For the record, I have still never seen Knowing and don't plan to. So, I have no comment on that debate.) So, Ebert was both a film scholar and a terrific middle finger to all film academics who feel you can only enjoy movies only after you've studied Andre Bazin or baked out on Stan Brakhage movies. He was the ultimate populist in this way.

So, while I know that Roger Ebert was just popular enough to have a sizable backlash, I announce that today is not for them. Instead, we celebrate the life of one of the single best film writers in the history of the medium.

I should probably admit now that I have also very recently lost my older sister, Chloe, just last month to illness. It was an event that, while also not a complete shock, was a moment that shook me cold and made death a much more real and perceptible concept for me. Not that I'd ever compare the two experiences, but losing both of these immensely important figures in my life so close together really does give me a feeling of melancholy that I did not expect. Goodbye Roger. And just know that you made movies that much more enchanting for this little boy from Pembroke Pines, Florida. More enchanting than you'll ever know.

Spring Breakers (**1/2)

SPRING BREAKERS
Written and Directed by Harmony Korine

**1/2

Harmony Korine enjoys blurring the line between trash and art, and attempting to expose that the line the separates the two is a lot thinner than most people realize. A film like his Trash Humpers from 2009 does this almost literally. But what else can we expect from a guy who was once quoted as saying that he'd like to direct a minstrel show staring Tom Cruise? His latest film Spring Breakers seems to be made specifically for the cult following that is almost assured to attach itself to it in the coming years. The film is so incredibly aware of its nihilistic style that its hard to figure out whats an inside joke and what is just a blast of overwhelming dub-step cinema. And this constant imbalance that the audience is in works as Spring Breakers best and worst trait.

Ginger & Rosa (***1/2)

GINGER & ROSA
Written and Directed by Sally Potter

***1/2

The two Fanning sisters, Dakota and now Elle, both have seemed to possess a delicate, but occasionally powerful screen presence that seems beyond their young ages. They've both been working since they were young children, and both gave performances during that time that garnered rave notices (Dakota in 2001's I Am Sam, Elle in 2010's Somewhere). Too often, I feel, great child performances are dismissed as terrific direction or editing, feeling that its almost impossible for children to possess the emotional intelligence needed to truly excel at acting. This issue was front and center when Quvenzhane Wallis was nominated for a performance that she performed when she was six years old. Elle Fanning (and her older sister) are no longer small children, but they are still delivering top-rate performances - which adds some interesting fuel to the debate.

Oscar thoughts? I Have Several...

 

So that is that, as they say, as a particularly interminable Oscar ceremony wheezed to a close, running all the way until midnight and including little in the way of serviceable filler between each award (here's a link to see all of the winners, in case you missed it). One thing that I've always loved about the Oscars is that they present each and every award during the ceremony, even if its the smaller, unsexy kind (like, for instance, all of the short film categories). In an awards race that had several races still up in the air, the award winners managed to produce several surprises (in the end, I ended up scoring a respectable but still mediocre 14/24 on my final predictions), while still giving off the feeling that everything went the way that it was supposed to. Here are a few thoughts that I had while watching last night:

Seth MacFarlane, Not Terrible
Not that that's saying much, but for the most part I enjoyed his schtick. I even loved the self-aware skit at the beginning of the show (after all, the host is always going to get blamed for the laborious efforts of the show's producers - too often, the host is the one catching heat for this every year). MacFarlane didn't reinvent the wheel, but his jokes were funny enough by middlebrow Oscar host standards, and the few zingers that he did bring hit home pretty well (his line before the Best Actress award was probably best in show). As much as I don't want to say this, if he were to come back to host a second time, I don't think I would mind.

Christoph Waltz, A Huge 'DUH!' in Retrospect 
I even wrote this in my predictions piece, but even I overlooked it. Waltz had won most of the awards going into last night's ceremony (including the Golden Globe and the BAFTA). But for some reason most people could not get past the raging hype that was supporting Tommy Lee Jones (who did win the SAG award, after all) and the somewhat charming, somewhat sentimental storyline that it would be nice to give Robert DeNiro a third Oscar for his first fully realized performance in what felt like forever. In the end, I think it was Waltz' very recent first win that turned most people away from him actually predicting him. Django Unchained actually had a better night than most expected, when Quentin Tarantino picked up his second Oscar for Original Screenplay (another thing most people weren't predicting), and went on to give a speech which I'm sure ingratiated and pissed people off in equal measure.

Final Oscar Predictions

Tonight is the night. At 8pm Eastern, the film industry has its annual, back-padding celebration known as the Oscars. I'm excited. I'm excited because this might be the first ceremony in many years where several of the major categories have legitimate suspense. Will Roger Deakins finally win his first Academy Award? Does Steven Spielberg pick up no. 3? Is there really a chance that a 9-year-old girl can win Best Actress? How about an 86-year-old woman (on her birthday, no less)? For the first time in a while, it's going to be an exciting show. And the truth is, in a lot of the categories, I really don't have a definitive feeling about who will win. But because I'm a sucker for tradition (as well as sticking my foot in the conversation), here are my official Oscar predictions.

Best Actor
Will Win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Should Win: Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Daniel Day-Lewis has been driving a freight train toward this award for several months now. It's pretty much a done deal and the single least suspenseful award of the night. Day-Lewis is movie legend now, and a professional who does a great job at making acting look really hard while also creating fluid, fully-fleshed characters effortlessly. It's a tremendous piece of work from a great actor, and even a true, groundbreaking tour-de-force from Phoenix will prevent the inevitable.

Best Actress
Will Win: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour
Should Win: Riva

Jennifer Lawrence has probably stacked up more awards than Riva (including an Independent Spirit Award just last night), but she's had the benefit of not having to face Riva in several of the races. For reasons that mostly have to deal with Amour not being an English, Riva has seldom been nominated against Lawrence, and I feel like Riva is really the performance that has the edge here. For one, it's the best performance of the bunch, but also it's the best story. A legendary French actress who can win an Oscar on her birthday. I wouldn't mind seeing Quvenzhane Wallis sweep up and take the award, and I'm not saying Lawrence has no shot, I'm just saying Riva just has the edge.

No (***1/2)

NO
Directed by Pablo Larraín

***1/2

In 1988, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet caved into international political pressure and allowed the people to have a choice: elect him to lead for the next eight years or choose to take him out of office. More simply, they had to choose yes or no to more Pinochet. The 1988 Chilean National Plebiscite changed the course for the South American country, leading to the end of Pinochet's 16 years of punitive, military dictatorship. As is the case with most dictatorships, Pinochet's rule began with a coup d'etat and the hostile takeover of Socialist leader Salvador Allende, with most people hoping that Pinochet would bring peace. Pinochet and his people used the usual tactics to regain power, but 16 years later he would be faced with a whole new kind persuasion, led by a man who truly knew how to go about swaying the minds of the people.

Side Effects (***)

SIDE EFFECTS
Directed by Steven Soderbergh

***

Steven Soderbergh's latest film already has the interesting asterisk of possibly being the final theatrical release of this celebrated filmmaker's career (to be sure, Soderbergh's final film is setting up to be the much-anticipated HBO TV movie Behind The Candelabra - a biopic about Liberace). That Side Effects may have to hold the mantle of being his last movie in the theaters probably puts a little more pressure on this small but compelling film then needs to be. But I don't think Soderbergh sees his career that way. He seems much happier to go out with very solid work than concluding it with a big bang. It's all circumstance, really, and I just feel that this is the story he felt he needed to tell right before the end - and to be honest, I find it fitting. 

Thoughts on Why/How 'Argo' Became the New Best Picture Front-Runner

With a win for the Producers Guild Award earlier in the day and then a Best Ensemble win at the Screen Actors Guild Awards (an award that could be more interesting, but more or less becomes SAG's version of Best Picture every year) later that night, Argo has seemed to have vaulted to front-runner status amongst the films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. This comes only a few weeks after people seemed to think Affleck's snub in Best Director was a death knell for the film's chances (documented earlier in the month here). But when Affleck won the Golden Globe for Best Director - and the attending crowd gave him a standing ovation as if he were Jimmy Valvano - moods shifted toward Affleck and Argo. This has been an interesting development for me for two reasons: 1) Upon the announcement of the Oscar nominations, it was Kathryn Bigelow's snub that got the most press, and you would have thought she would have been the beneficiary of the sappy "oh-we-didn't-nominate-her-so-lets-award-the-film" sympathy; and 2) The sudden rush by Hollywood toward "Let's get Affleck an Oscar!" seems to ignore the fact that Affleck already has an Oscar ('97 Original Screenplay, Good Will Hunting).

So why the change of heart toward him? There are several reasons. First and foremost, Argo is very good. I thought it was one of the ten best of the year and so do many others. It's stirringly taught, very well acted (though, for the fucking life of me, I don't understand why the only person they want to showcase for that is Alan Arkin) and directed with the steady hand of a filmmaker far more specialized than someone who is only on their third film. But let's be real here. Oscars are rarely won on merit - they're mostly won on stories - media-generated narratives that will give the Monday morning newspapers the chance to sprinkle in a nice headline and a great cover shot. So, what is the story with Argo? Have people really fallen for Affleck that hard? That's certainly a possibility. Oscar has a very long history of going out of its way to show affection toward good looking male movie stars turned directors, which explains why Kevin Costner, Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood all have Best Director Oscars, while Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles don't. (Now, that doesn't totally apply here since Affleck can't win Best Director without a nomination, but its fitting that Affleck may win the second Oscar of his career - for producing Argo - while his contemporary, Paul Thomas Anderson - a filmmaker Affleck specifically name-dropped in his Globe speech - still doesn't have any).

So has everyone just fallen in love? I think its something a little more complicated than that. After all, Argo did come out all the way in October, and if the love for it was really this fervent, why was their the sudden lull in enthusiasm in December/early January? The Oscar season essentially sounded off when Argo came out to huge fanfare last year, and the fact that the season has come full circle and come back to Argo suggests something to me that's a little more sinister. To me, it's less important to think about why Argo is now the front-runner, and more about why the other films that used to be at the front of the line now are not. So let's go through the rounds and see why certain films - and there have been more this year than usual - took their place atop the mantle and then subsequently fell off.

Lincoln (released Nov. 16)
Probably the most anticipated film of the season, Lincoln was released to blisteringly great reviews and when Affleck was left off of Best Director, it seemed like it was Lincoln's year to dominate. Not to mention that Lincoln has six nominations in the major categories, while Argo only has three. So, how did this movie lose its thunder? In a lot of ways, the fact that Spielberg was the only major player to make the cut in the big shake-up in the Best Director category may have gained the film a little bit of resentment. Spielberg may be the most overexposed film director of all time, and I think there may be the feeling that we've given him enough credit (and really, many film lovers have felt that way for a while), and we don't need to rig the system by eliminating the competition. In a lotta ways, Argo may be getting a head of steam toward Best Picture because people are upset that they want to give it Best Director, but can't. People have been told that Lincoln is the best for too long. It's too prestigious and too obvious a choice - it has the feeling of a movie specifically made just to win awards. Ironically, I think Lincoln may actually still be even with Argo if Affleck had managed to sneak in.

Zero Dark Thirty (released Dec. 19)
While Argo getting snubbed in Best Director may have given it a underdog-like boost in the media storylines, Bigelow's snub was a much more devastating blow. It came at the culmination of a feisty tug-of-war between the film's fans (Zero Dark may have gotten the most hyperbolic "best of the year!" boasts - and most of those came before people got a chance to see it) and the film's critics (a smaller, equally as rabid group that shunned the film's apparent approval of torture methods). By the time people were actually given the opportunity to see it, they were either upset about the waterboarding, or upset about being waterboarded by over-enthusiasm. Zero Dark's meteoric plummet from front-runner to non-contender is particularly interesting since all of the outcry over Bigelow not getting nominated was swept under the rug once Affleck won the Golden Globe. As I said, this time of year we migrate toward the stories that are better, not the films.

Silver Linings Playbook (released Nov. 16 - though not wide til two weeks ago)
I'm throwing this one in here even though it has never really been a "front-runner", as we tend to define it (ie, for the previous three films, there was a point where it seemed like a lock - never so with Silver Linings). At the same time, its an overwhelming crowd-pleaser that managed to load up eight nominations, and it wouldn't shock anybody if it managed to come out on top. The eight noms (which seemed like more than expected) gave the film a nice boost which was accompanied by the Weinstein Company FINALLY giving the film a wide release after nearly two months of being in limited theaters. The Weinsteins sure are shrewd this time of year, but it seems to me that they have unloaded the chamber on this one, as it still hasn't made it to the summit. Likely, it never will.

Now, I don't mean to sound like Argo is definitely going to win. Thoughts can change between now and February 24th, and we already thought Zero Dark Thirty was a lock less than a month ago. After all, if we concede that Lincoln will win Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and (probably) Best Director, is it crazy to think it can win Best Picture too? I don't. Argo is in front now, but for reasons that have very little to do with cinema. There's still time for one more shift if there is one, and I think that this current maneuvering has made the Oscar ceremony next month suddenly more exciting than it had been when the nominations were initially released. How will Argo handle the home stretch? I believe the Weinsteins and Spielberg will have their say before things are decided officially.

Promised Land (***)

PROMISED LAND
Directed by Gus van Sant

***

The last time Gus van Sant and Matt Damon worked together on a film, they produced Good Will Hunting. Hunting became a huge splash, won a couple of Oscars, ran through a gauntlet of cruel backlash haterism and has now settled into a place in cinematic history that it truly earned: a sentimental, albeit heartfelt melodrama that combined fantastic performances and a smart script to tell a really effective story. Good Will Hunting's meteoric rise still has many detractors, but I love it. So that being said, Damon's reunion with van Sant in this latest movie, Promised Land really peaked my interest. This time, instead of writing with hometown friend Ben Affleck, Damon penned the script with another popular actor, John Krasinski. The result is a film that falls short of the greatness of Hunting but is still pretty damn good.

The Impossible (*1/2)

THE IMPOSSIBLE
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

*1/2

The 2004 Tsunami disaster was one of the biggest natural disasters in our memory, an unrelenting force that blew through several countries and wrecked havoc unlike any we've ever seen. The Impossible takes a peak at this phenomenon through an interesting prism: an English family visiting a Thai beach resort. What follows is a brutal display of just how powerful and destructive this tsunami was through the eyes of a single family. We see just about all you'd expect from this kind of film, and lot of things you wouldn't expect. What we don't get though, is the tight, coherent film that this story deserves.

Best Director Blame Game

One thing that people have not been able to STFU about since the Oscar nominations were announced this Thursday was the big surprise in the Best Director category. Here's the official line-up:

Michael Haneke, Amour
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Behn Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

The big shock? That only one of the high profile directors expected for a nomination (Spielberg) actually made the final five. Left off were the legitimate contenders in Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty) and Ben Affleck (Argo), as well as two other directors that made uneven films and puzzling directorial choices but that were also late-season megahits (Hooper for Les Mis and Tarantino for Django). It's become a big deal, getting media coverage even in non-movie-lover's circles, including the influential sports writer, Bob Simmons, who took to Twitter with his complaints.

So, technically speaking, this is the final five that would have made general audience Oscar followers happy (and I'm using "general audience" in the pejorative, slightly condescending sense in that these are the people that, more or less, only go to the movies to watch easy-to-swallow, basic-three-act kinds of movies - which makes up a majority of people but doesn't exactly make the best subjective choices):