A Star Is Born (a movie review post)

Bradley Cooper may be the best actor of his (my) generation. Which is saying a lot, I know, but he's able to become a character in a way few other actors are ever able to do. Daniel Day-Lewis, but he's always been hampered by how far into a character he goes to be able to portray that character, taking him years to re-emerge after a role. And that's less about acting than it is about just becoming some other person for a time. Like a deep undercover agent.

Christian Bale has always been willing to go to whatever physical extreme for his roles, like dropping to something around 90 lbs. for his role in The Machinist, but he always just seems like Christian Bale as far as the actual acting goes.

Bradley Cooper seems like something else entirely.

Or maybe I'm just biased. I've liked Cooper since Alias. At the time (wow, that was more than 15 years ago!), I told my wife that he was going to be somebody. Not that she paid any attention to what I was saying. I mean, why should she have? The comment wasn't even worth disbelieving; it was flung out into the cosmos like a piece of rock from an asteroid collision.

Despite Cooper's burst into stardom a few years ago, it's with this movie more than any other (except, maybe, American Hustle (with Christian Bale, no less)) where Cooper really shows the full range of his skills. Sometimes, he's hard to watch on screen. It's painful.

And I'm not even talking about his adoption of Sam Elliot's voice, but wow! I've done voices, and I've done voices that have hurt and damaged my throat, and I'm beyond impressed that Cooper was able to pull off that voice for such a sustained amount of time. Oh, and fun fact: He decided on that voice before they'd actually cast Elliot as his brother, so it was sweet that they got him and amazing to hear them exchange dialogue.

But this isn't really about Cooper; it's about the movie. Which he also directed. So, yeah...

The movie is great. I haven't seen the original nor have I seen the Streisand remake of the 70s. Or, at least, I have no memory of seeing it, though it's possible I may have actually seen that as a kid, because my mom was a huge Streisand fan. All of that to say that I'm looking at this film on its own merits without any comparisons to other iterations. I really enjoyed it. It almost brought me to tears on a number of occasions but didn't quite manage to cross that line. I don't know if that's a plus or a minus.

Lady Gaga was also amazing. This isn't really her debut role as an actress or anything, but it also kind of is. I think she was perfect. And believable. What more can you ask?

I already want to see the movie again.

Arrival (movie review post)

Right up front: This review is going to be full of spoilers, because I don't know how to do the film any justice in a review without talking about it, and you can't talk about this movie with spoiling it. The only way to do it is to say, "Go see the movie. It's really good," and leave it at that. And, actually, go see the movie. It's great.

It's not often you see a movie about linguistics. The idea of needing to translate something is really more of a gimmick that shows use to increase tension and complicate the plot. Like when a word is incorrectly translated causing the hero to do the wrong thing. Hmm... So, thinking about it, I can't think of any other movies where linguistics were the core of the plot. There might be some, but I don't know what they are (and I'm not going to go look because it's not that important).

The idea of translation, of communicating well and effectively, is one of the vital strands of the movie. I say "strands" because Arrival has several that are all effectively woven into one strong rope of a plot, something at which most movies fail. Which is why most movies are pretty straightforward with just one main idea. Taking several themes and weaving them into a whole is difficult, but director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer pull it off with aplomb. The story is stronger for what they have done and would suffer if any of the strands were pulled out to make it simpler.

Not that the movie gets down into the minutiae of linguistics, but it clearly demonstrates the importance of words and meanings right from the very beginning by telling us what the Sanskrit word we take to mean "war" really means: a desire for more cows. It's a not so subtle foreshadowing of one of the central conflicts of the movie involved in translating the language of the aliens. Oh, yeah, there are aliens, which I was taking as a given but maybe it's not.

The other linguistics issue the movie deals with -- and it's a central theme -- is how language shapes the way we think and how learning other languages can sort of re-wire our thoughts and how we see things. They don't really go into the theory in the movie -- choosing rather to show us as Louise learns to speak the alien language -- but I'm aware of the basics of it. A good example is how we describe things in English, placing the adjectives in front of the noun (the fast little red car), as opposed to the Romance languages (French, Spanish, etc.), placing the adjectives after the noun (the car red fast little). This very simple variance shifts the way we look at the world, and does it in ways we can't see from inside ourselves.

I'm sure there's a metaphor in there.

This whole idea leads into the non-linear aspect of the movie, and this is probably the best non-linear movie I've ever seen. It hearkens back somewhat to Slaughterhouse-Five -- at least, it feels the same tonally in my head, but, then, it's been a while since I read Slaughterhouse -- but much more personal and intimate. It's beautiful and heartbreaking.

And leaves us with the other big question of the movie: If you know that something beautiful is going to end in pain, the kind of pain that will leave you wishing you could die, do you accept it anyway? That's a hard question to answer, and the movie doesn't exactly answer it for us, but it does push us in the direction it wants us to go.

Getting beyond the story, the acting is great. Amy Adams delivers a stellar performance. [It's the kind of movie that makes me want to say that she deserves a best actress Oscar for it, but I don't think her performance in this stands out amongst her body of work overall. American Hustle, yes, but this felt pretty "normal" for her.] Jeremy Renner was great, too. They were a good match on screen. Basically, all of the performances were good and solid, lending to the quality of the film as a whole. As such, no one stands out to me as having given the "best performance of his/her life;" it all just works together perfectly.

Of movies that are likely to get nominated for Best Picture (of the ones I've so far seen), this is my pick. Knowing myself, this will probably stay my pick. I don't think it will win, but I'm going to guess that Arrival will stay my favorite.

The Oscar Challenge

Some of you may have noticed the spate of movie reviews on my blog, lately, and the more astute of you may have noticed that most of these (nearly all) have been for movies that are nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards. See, several years ago, my wife and I decided to actually try to see the movies that were nominated before the awards were given out. [She's not all that into the big, blockbuster-type summer movies (with some exceptions (Avengers)), so this our movie thing that we do together.] It didn't go so well that year, because we waited until after the nominations were announced, and many of the movies were no longer at the theater and not yet available on DVD. Since then, we've been working on our technique.

Last year, we managed to see six of the nine nominated films before the awards ceremony (we've seen all but one, at this point). Although I was glad that Argo won (for Affleck's sake), I think Lincoln was the better film. At least, Day-Lewis won for best actor, though, because anything other than that would have just been wrong.

This year, we are up to six of the nine nominated films (as I write this, because I think we'll be at seven before this actually gets posted). Of course, my belief is that the count should be seven of 10, because Saving Mr. Banks certainly should have been nominated. Some of what I've read suggests that it didn't get nominated due to Meryl Streep and that she was actively campaigning to keep that nomination from happening. And I get that a big part of the Academy Awards is political, but that kind of stuff just bothers me. And, no, I don't know Meryl Streep, so I can't say that that's true, but I did read about her anti-Disney speech, and I do know that that film should have been nominated.

But maybe it wasn't nominated so that it wouldn't win. I mean, if it was nominated, it would be difficult to justify picking a different movie over it, like, say, 12 Years a Slave, but, if it's not nominated at all, then it can't win. Which is messed up logic, too, but the Academy people do like to go with "important" movies and, maybe, it's still too close to The Artist's win in 2011 for them to go with another Hollywood-ish film even if this one is deserving (as opposed to The Artist, which wasn't).

Anyway...

At the moment, from the nominated movies, I'm going with 12 Years a Slave as the eventual winner. I don't think it's the best film, but I do think it's the most likely to win. Of the ones I've seen, I think Dallas Buyers Club is the most deserving of the Best Picture Oscar, but I don't think it will win. I do hope that Matthew McConaughey gets Best Actor, though; he was tremendous in a similar fashion as Day-Lewis in Lincoln.

Did I say there should be 10 nominations this year? Actually, I don't really think that. I think there should only be nine, because The Wolf of Wall Street doesn't deserve its nomination. It's this year's Beasts of the Southern Wild, the movie that people can't bring themselves to say that they don't get. Sometimes, when a movie doesn't make sense, it really just doesn't make sense. Don't pretend you get it by talking about how deep it is and how other people just don't understand, especially if, then, you're not going to bother explaining because, you know, if you didn't get it on your own, you just can't get it. Do people still believe that line? I suppose they must.
Anyway, I've already been through that class, so it doesn't work on me. Heck, I've been on the other end of that, so it really doesn't work on me. [Seriously, one of my English profs in college would give A's to any paper that was just outside of his understanding. Or, you know, if it was too confusing but you could make him think he just wasn't "getting" it. Rather than look like he didn't get it, he'd just give the paper the A.]

Captain Phillips is this year's Life of Pi for me. It's the movie I just can't manage to make myself want to see. We knew when it was out in theater that we should go see it. We talked about it a lot. It always came down to, "Well, do you want to see it?" "No, do you?" "No..." And, so, we never went to see it, and there's probably no way, now, to see it before Oscar night without buying it, and I really don't want to do that. Although, if we manage to get in the other two beforehand, we might break down. It has been mentioned.

And, yeah, I did, eventually, see Life of Pi, and, yeah, it would have been a cool movie to see in the theater just for the visual aspect of it, but, beyond that, I wasn't overly impressed (you can click the link and read the review if you want).

I guess the real question from all of this is, when all is said and done, "Do I feel, really, like I've watched the year's best movies?" Yes, actually, on the whole, I do, especially this year. There are movies I enjoy more just for the thrill of watching them, but I don't have any illusions of that making them better movies than they are. As with food, enjoyment does not equal quality or goodness (for you). Look, I loved Thor: The Dark World, and I would (and will) watch it again, but Dallas Buyers Club is a better movie. I'll probably never watch Dallas Buyers Club again; it's not the kind of thing you want to watch again (most people, anyway); but I'm really glad I saw it the one time, because it was a powerful and moving movie.

So, mostly, yeah, I think they do a pretty decent job of picking out the "best" movies. The movies with something to say. Except 2011. I don't know what was going on that year. At any rate, that we watch these movies allows me to step a little outside of the movies I would normally watch. It's like (exactly like) reading a book outside of your favorite genre, and it's always good to experience new things. Some of them will suck (Wolf), but some of them will be extraordinary and you'll be really glad you stepped outside of your box even if you're just going to get right back inside (because I totally plan to see Robocop). The thing is, if you do it enough, you'll find that your box isn't quite cube-shaped anymore, and that's a good thing.

Oh, and just to throw it out there, my wife is totally going for American Hustle. I think it's the hair.

Are You Being Hustled?

Some of these things actually happened.

But probably not many of them. At least not in any way close to the presentation in American Hustle. 

That doesn't stop it from being an excellent movie, though.

It's one of the few movies I've seen where I had no idea about what was coming next. At its base, it's a con movie, so you're never quite sure who's conning whom and what anyone has up his sleeve. Or under her skirt, I suppose, since the women are perpetually dressed as they are in the poster. And, then, at least a couple of the characters are at least slightly unhinged, and you never quite know which direction the story is going.

Surprisingly, the movie opens with one of those flash-forward/flashback type things that I normally hate, but they really made it work in this one. For one thing, the movie doesn't start near the climax, just at the point of the first sting operation. It's the place where we meet all of the major players, so to speak. Once the deal falls apart, we flashback with Irving Rosenfeld for a first person narration (which I also usually hate) of what brought him to that point. But what makes it interesting is that when we get to the part where he crosses paths with Sydney Prosser, she picks up the narration and, then, they have this kind of dueling narration giving us the back story, and it really works. It helps that it's not a "36 hours earlier" kind of scenario. It's the characters telling us about who they are, you know, as people, and that's what makes it work.

As interesting as the story is, though, it's the acting that makes this movie. The performances, all of them, are incredible.

Christian Bale shows us once again just what he's willing to do physically to become his character, this time putting on a bit of a paunch (which he shows off in the movie in a very unflattering way) and shaving a bald spot onto his head (also unflattering). He's what can only be described as a sleazy character, a con man, but, by the time we get back to the point in the story where it started, we have total sympathy for him. I just want to point out that I am not a Bale fan. I have respect for what he's willing to go through for a role (like in The Machinist and Rescue Dawn), and I think he's a good actor, but I don't really like him that much. That I say he was impressive in this role is, then, saying something.

Amy Adams--cute, sweet Amy Adams--shows us she's anything but as an ex-stripper trying to reinvent herself. Her boobs should probably also have received some sort of credit. Not that they ever fully appear onscreen or anything, but it's hard not to be aware of them when she's onscreen. She's like some 70s porn star or something. Or like what I think a 70s porn star must have been like. I'm not really sure. At any rate, her performance is pretty amazing, and you're never quite sure what she's up to, just that she is up to... things. It's her performance that provides a lot of the tension in the movie, because you're never really sure whose side she's on. Well, other than her own, that is.

Bradley Cooper is amazing as a somewhat overzealous FBI agent. And I'd say more about him, but I don't think I can without spoilers. I'll just say that I think Cooper has a certain intensity about him that not many actors can equal. And, according to my wife, he and Adams deliver one of the sexiest scenes she's ever seen. The amazing thing about that is that nothing happens in that scene. Well, not nothing but, you know, nothing happens: there is no loss of clothing or anything like that. But it's intense, and most of that is from him.

Jennifer Lawrence continues to show that she's more than just a pretty face. I'm not quite sure she deserved her Oscar last year (not that her performance wasn't good; it was. I've just never been convinced it was "best actress" quality), but, if she gets a best supporting Oscar for this role, it will be deserved. The scene with her and the "science oven" is almost enough all by itself to earn her the Oscar.

And, then, there's Jeremy Renner. And his hair. Because if Amy Adams boobs almost deserved a screen credit, Renner's hair certainly did. I could not take my eyes off of it. It was amazing. And, in a movie where everyone's hair was pretty amazing, that's saying something. This is the first movie I've seen him in where he shows me he can do something besides play "taciturn hero" (and, no, I haven't yet seen The Hurt Locker, but, knowing what it's about (loosely), I'm guess he plays "taciturn hero" in that one, too). He's pretty great as a New Jersey mayor in this. He's pretty great in the sense that I did not actually know he was in the movie before I was seeing the movie, and, then, I kept wondering if I was wrong and maybe that wasn't really him, so that, I think, is a pretty good performance.

Louis C.K. also fit in nicely. I don't think there was any kind of stretch for him as an actor, but he worked well with everyone else. As did Elisabeth Rohm (from Angel); I didn't recognize her at all.

The end result is a lot of compelling performances and an interesting plot. Enough so that, as I sit here writing this up, it makes me want to watch it again. Especially Jeremy Renner's hair. I don't think I've been so captivated by anyone's hair since the Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl back in '93 (I think) and someone (Emmitt Smith?) poured a cooler of water over Jimmy Johnson's head, and his hair didn't move. It was like he had on a plastic, hair-shaped helmet. It was fascinating.

Oh! And the cameo appearance by De Niro... the perfect touch.