TEN movies in one post

2012 Oscar-nominated shorts; Amour; Barbara; From Nothing, Something; Identity Thief; Magic Mike; Movie 43; Price Check; Side Effects; Starlet.

Amour (2012). Well done and difficult to watch, this French language Best Picture nominee stars Emmanuelle Riva in an Oscar-nominated performance of an elderly woman before and after suffering a stroke. Her co-star, Jean-Louis Trintignant, is every bit as good and was, in my opinion, robbed when he didn't get nominated as well.

Side Effects (2013). Jack and I were captivated by this thriller about a woman on a roller coaster from her anxiety meds, said to be director Steven Soderbergh's final picture. Rooney Mara is outstanding as mood-swinging Emily; Jude Law terrific as her cutting-edge new psychiatrist Dr. Banks, Catherine Zeta-Jones scary as her tightly-wound old shrink Dr. Siebert, and Channing Tatum doesn't have many scenes as Emily's loving husband Martin.

Identity Thief (2013). Slapstick hilarity (CPA (Jason Bateman) goes after white trash woman (Melissa McCarthy) who stole his identity for serial shopping sprees) that would have benefited from removing all traces of sentiment. We went opening day and enjoyed it immensely nonetheless.

Movie 43 (2013). Tasteless, offensive, puerile, and occasionally funny, this collection of silly shorts, loaded with penis and poop jokes, will be better seen on DVD and/or when you can skip parts. That being said, I laughed like a loon at Kate Winslet's comic-horror at a single sight gag in The Catch. Try not to learn the gag before you see it. Chock-full of stars, behind and in front of cameras.

2012 Oscar-nominated live action and animated shorts. Our favorite live action one is Curfew, a very dark comedy about a man on the edge brought back by a child-care request from his sister. Here's the trailer. I hope it wins. The others are Death of a Shadow, Henry, Buzkashi Boys, and Asad. When the Disney logo began the fifth animated one, Paperman, I said to Jack, "I hope it loses." But it is my favorite--a love story with flying papers. Close second is Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare. The other nominees are Adam and Dog, Fresh Guacamole, and Head Over Heels. Added to the program are three honorable mentions: Abiogenesis, Dripped, and The Gruffalo's Child, a sequel to the 2010 nominee. Noteworthy that the only animated short with dialog is the last one.

From Nothing, Something (2012). Filmmaker Tim Cawley, in a pre-recorded introduction, cited It Might Get Loud as inspiration for this documentary about the creative process. Far reaching. But accurate. We loved it as well.

Magic Mike (2012). An older Soderbergh picture we watched on demand, this was nominated for (but lost) a People's Choice Award, and has earned Matthew McConaughey a bunch of awards and nominations as the owner/head stripper of a Florida night spot. Apparently based on star Channing Tatum's pre-Hollywood life as a male stripper. Alex Pettyfer stars as the novice Tatum trains.

Starlet (2012). The best of the three I saw at an independent film festival in January. Dree Hemingway (Mariel's daughter) stars as flakey 21-year-old Jane, who befriends an elderly lady after an encounter at a yard sale. Jane's chihuahua is named Starlet. Lest you think this is a sweet movie about a girl, a granny, and a puppy, be forewarned there is a graphic sex scene with full nudity about 2/3 of the way through. Won one Independent Spirit Award and nominated for another. Will induce MPMS.

Price Check (2012). Parker Posey is, in Jack's words, never afraid to commit, and here she is stark raving mad as a driven grocery executive. Unfortunately her co-star, Eric Mabius, is bland and ruins the movie.

Barbara (2012). Judy and I didn't love this 1980s period piece about the titular doctor who has been banished from the city to a rural hospital in East Germany. But the Eastern European acquaintances we talked to after the screening loved it and said it was spot on.

Sorry, readers. I promised myself I wouldn't complain anymore about how far behind I was in writing. But here I am with too many, it seems, to catch up. If and when I write more about each title, I'll link the postings to this page. Be sure to watch not only the Oscars on Sunday night February 24 (and/or go to your neighborhood Oscar party), but also the Independent Spirit Awards Saturday the 23rd on IFC at 10pm Pacific and rerun at 10pm Eastern.

Rust and Bone (De rouille et d'os - 2012)

We really liked this powerful story of a two people rebuilding their lives--a single father of a 5 year old and a woman who loses both legs in an accident at Marineland on the French Riviera where she trains killer whales. While understandably scary and sad, it's not depressing. The gory details of the accident are offscreen, but the man's boxing career ensures this isn't a blood-free movie. You can infer from my comments in the last post, Quartet, that I believe the man, Ali, is the protagonist, and Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts (new to me) is great as the guy trying to grow up. However he has only one of the 28 nominations and wins on the imdb list which is more extensive than mine. Marion Cotillard (she was working on The Dark Knight Rises concurrently with this one--think back to her character in that one, and know that she had given birth in May 2011, started Dark Knight in July, and added her starring role in Rust and Bone before the other was finished) has one win (Hollywood Film Fest) and six nominations, including Screen Actors Guild, Critics Choice, and Golden Globe, for her role as Stéphanie. Here's where I need to insert a shout out to the digital effects team, inexplicably nominated for nothing. We see her foreshortened legs a lot and they look totally real. No effects are needed for this talented actress to convince us of her emotions, though. Supporting strength comes from adorable little Armand Verdure as Ali's son Sam and Corinne Masiero as Ali's older sister who takes them in.

Director/co-writer Jacques Audiard and co-writer Thomas Bidegain (same jobs on A Prophet) have artfully merged two short stories by Craig Davidson: "Rust and Bone" about a boxer and "Rocket Ride" about a man losing his legs, but Audiard has said he had enough men in A Prophet so made Stéphanie female. Audiard also preferred a boxer to an actor for the part of Ali, but settled on Schoenaerts, who is both.

There really is a Marineland in Antibes, and the production was allowed to shoot there, both with full audiences and after hours, as well as in neighboring Cannes and the magnificent beaches in the area. For some snowy scenes at the end they went to Belgium.

Once again, composer Alexandre Desplat (most recently blogged in Zero Dark Thirty; in the last four years I've seen 18 of the 31 projects he has scored and there have been 143 since he started in 1985) provides the soundtrack. When does this guy sleep? There are also a number of songs, every one in English, on the soundtrack. You can listen to long clips on this site. The Katy Perry song Firework is featured as well but not listed anywhere. I guess they figured they didn't need to help her sell it.

As fast as everyone talks you'll be glad there are subtitles. Rated 81% by critics and audiences alike on rottentomatoes, this is well worth your time.

Quartet (2012)

Our quintet of "young" (post-1950) boomers loved this story of a home for retired musicians that gets disrupted by the arrival of a diva who sang opera with three of the others and was married to one. Dame Maggie Smith (profiled in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), Golden Globe-nominated for her role, is wonderful as the brooding, vain Jean, resplendent in her makeup, ash blonde coiffure, and pumps. Jack and I are big fans of Billy Connolly (covered in Brave), whom we loved watching crack jokes as the lecherous Wilf, which earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the British Independent Film Awards. Pauline Collins (last in these pages in Albert Nobbs) is adorable as the ditzy Cissy and Sir Tom Courtenay (Oscar-nominated for Doctor Zhivago (1965) and The Dresser (1983), and won The British Academy's Most Promising Newcomer for The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), among his dozens of accomplishments) is arguably the star (my rule, not hard and fast, is that the first person you see on screen is usually the protagonist) as Reg, Jean's ex-husband, who loves teaching his opera class to teen-agers. Yo La Tengo named a song after him but didn't put his name in the lyrics, only Julie Christie's (his co-star in Zhivago) and Eleanor Bron's (as far as I can tell Bron never worked with him, but, like Christie, was a sexy English actress in the 1960s and beyond). The reason young Dr. Cogan looked so familiar to us is that the actress, Sheridan Smith, was notable as the saucy maid in Hysteria. Michael Gambon (last in Fantastic Mr. Fox) also shines as a male diva (divus?) who is directing the home's annual Verdi birthday gala.

The rest of the cast is filled out with actual retired professional musicians, many of whom are named and pictured in their youth during the credits, so don't leave early! The grand mansion is divine and I'm glad there are a few aerial shots of it. Not as big as Downton Abbey, but quite lovely.

Much of the delightful music comes from the players (many of the pieces are on this site, albeit performed by others), all rehearsing for the gala, although Alexandre Desplat (most recently in Zero Dark Thirty) is credited as the movie's composer for the tunes he contributed. This page will play short clips from the soundtrack album, including the Desplat tracks. Film student note: when you see the source of the music onscreen, e.g. the players, the radio, the turntable, it's called source music. Speaking of which, you may recall my post on Les Misérables in which I said I don't like opera. I loved the singing in this one, so I guess I do like opera (just not the sung dialogue). For those keeping track, there's a lot of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado, and the piece that the four are planning for the gala is Bella figlia dell'amore, from Act 3 of Rigoletto. You can listen on the continuation of the first link in this paragraph and watch for a potential Joan Sutherland wardrobe malfunction.

78 year old screenwriter Ronald Harwood (Oscar winner for The Pianist (2002), Oscar-nominated for The Dresser and the wonderful The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007); others I've enjoyed were the Julie Andrews vehicle A Fine Romance (1992), Annette Bening's triumph Being Julia (2004), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007), and Australia) (he also wrote Courtenay's screen debut Private Potter (1962), but I didn't see it) adapts his 1999 stage play. I don't think you'll mind this mild spoiler: after it was over Mike turned to me and said, "I'm so glad nobody died!"

At 75, Dustin Hoffman (in detail in Barney's Version) makes his directorial debut (he doesn't appear), and has won the Hollywood Film Festival Breakthrough and Chicago Film Fest Audience Choice Awards, as well as this movie having been chosen as one of last year's ten best from the National Board of Review. Rottentomatoes' critics average 80%. Which makes it all the more maddening that our local paper once again chose to print a negative review of this charming movie. Make a point of seeing it! Not to be confused with A Late Quartet, which is also outstanding. Catch this one on the big screen for the sets and locations and get a DVD of the other.

Gangster Squad (2013)

Despite the violence Jack and I enjoyed ourselves at this film noir-style story of 1949 rogue cops trying to rid L.A. of mobster Mickey Cohen's dominance. Jack was eager to see anything by Ruben Fleischer, the director of Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less and he wasn't disappointed, though we were sorry it was missing the humor of the previous two.

The cast is all great. Josh Brolin (most recently blogged in Men in Black 3) stars as Sergeant O'Mara, leader of the pack, which includes Ryan Gosling (last in The Ides of March) as Sergeant Wooters, Anthony Mackie (The Adjustment Bureau) as Officer Harris, Robert Patrick (familiar due to a small part in Trouble with the Curve and other action roles unseen by me) as Officer Kennard, Giovanni Ribisi (I liked him in The Rum Diary, though it wasn't very good) as Officer Keeler (the brains of the operation), and Michael Peña (End of Watch) as Officer Navidad Ramirez. Cohen is played by Sean Penn (the last thing I liked him in was Fair Game) in a prosthetic nose (Cohen was an ex-boxer, which fits nicely into the plot). Emma Stone (The Amazing Spider-Man) and Mireille Enos (played twins JoDean and Kathy on Big Love) round out, so to speak, the ensemble as partners for Wooters and O'Mara respectively.

This is the first screenplay for Will Beall (story editor/writer on the TV series Castle) who adapted the book Tales from the Gangster Squad by Paul Lieberman (Lieberman's book is based on his 2008 seven part series in the Los Angeles Times), and Lieberman acted as an Executive Producer. The movie was supposed to be released last year, but a scene of bad guys firing into a crowded movie theatre was removed, rewritten, and reshot after the tragedy in Aurora Colorado, all of which delayed the release until this month. The gangster squad really did exist, though some liberties were taken, especially with the conclusion.

It's no secret to regular readers of my blog that we love period details, and this one, designed by Maher Ahmad (dozens of credits including Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less) is terrific: cars, sets, props, and the rich cinematography by Dion Beebe (won an Oscar and his guild's award for Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Oscar-nominated for Chicago (2002), and nominated by his guild for Collateral (2004) and Nine, among many of his credits). The location shots of Los Angeles, whether real, computer-generated, or shot out of town, are spectacular as well.

Steve Jablonsky (apparently best known for composing soundtracks to several Transformers movies and the series Desperate Housewives) gives us an exciting score that you can stream from this link.

Though not for the faint of heart, as the mayhem isn't exactly cartoonish, this is still good and we recommend it for those with strong constitutions.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

I looked away from the torture scene at the beginning but otherwise Jack and I agree this dramatization of the hunt for and assassination of Osama bin Laden is a good movie, albeit a tad long at 157 minutes (!). With five Oscar nominations and much more (see my list), it's one you've all thought about seeing. I don't like gore either, but found it possible to avert my eyes enough to prevent nightmares. Speaking of Oscars, director Kathryn Bigelow, like Ben Affleck for Argo, was snubbed for Best Director even though this project was nominated for Best Picture. Three years ago The Hurt Locker (I profiled her in that post), won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (Bigelow), and Best Original Screenplay (Mark Boal, who wrote and is nominated for this, his second script). Just as "hurt locker" is a military term for someplace you don't want to go, "00 dark thirty" refers to an unspecified time in the sunless early morning.

Jessica Chastain (last in these pages in Take Shelter) stars as Maya, the quietly intense brains behind the operation, who tends to drop an F-bomb when meeting her superiors. She has won all the major awards so far for which she's been nominated for this role. Jason Clarke (I haven't seen any of his TV work and don't remember him in Public Enemies or anything else) is the guy in the trailer who says, "I am bad news." In the imdb trivia, they refer to Joel Edgerton (most recently in Warrior) as having a leading role. He's actually in only the third act, as one of the SEALS who goes on the mission with Chris Pratt (Moneyball). They're both featured in the trailer, however, as is James Gandolfini, still breathing loudly even when at rest (when I wrote about him in Where the Wild Things Are I referenced his mouth breathing, but he does appear to use his nose, just with difficulty) (I'm all for body acceptance, but at this point the guy is damaging his health with his extra pounds).

Much has been written about the aforementioned torture scene--here's one article.

Alexandre Desplat (Argo) once again gives us an eminently listenable soundtrack, this time with the London Symphony Orchestra, available on youtube--look down the right side after each numbered track ends and you can find then next one.

The often handheld cinematography by Greig Fraser (Bright Star) may bring on motion picture motion sickness (MPMS), so those of you who are susceptible should sit at the back of the room.

You don't need me to encourage you to see it--it's averaging 93% from critics and 85 from audiences on rottentomatoes.

The Impossible (Lo impossible - 2012)

Heart-wrenching, this powerful story of a family's surviving the 2004 tsunami in Thailand is so good one can hardly look away (except for some bloody images which my readers know I block from my field of vision). The movie was made in Spain (hence the Spanish title above), where "the producers" (I don't know which of the seven) heard a radio show about the true story and decided to make the movie. Survivor María Belón (shown here with Naomi Watts) gets a story credit. Her family is Spanish and lived in Japan when they vacationed in Thailand for Christmas 2004. In the movie we are to assume they are British, as Watts (last blogged in J. Edgar), Ewan McGregor (most recently in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), and the wonderful boys playing their children, Tom Holland (his first time in front of a camera but he had starred and co-starred in a couple of London productions of Billy Elliot), Samuel Joslin (in his debut he shows strength in his one important scene), and Oaklee Pendergast (can't be more than 6 but was in a 2008 episode of the British comedy series EastEnders and is in something coming out later in 2013) all speak English with UK accents. Watts was nominated for an Oscar, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice (she lost the latter two to Anne Hathaway from Les Misérables), among others, for this role and young Holland, although he lost the Best Young Actor/Actress Critics Choice award to Quvenzhané Wallis from Beasts of the Southern Wild, won an award from the National Board of Review for his role of eldest son Lucas. Jack said to me during the movie, "That kid ought to win something!" Note: the "old woman" watching the stars is Geraldine Chaplin, 68 year old daughter of Charlie Chaplin and Oona O'Neill Chaplin, herself the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. In the movie Chaplin (1992) she played her grandmother Hannah Chaplin.

Director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchéz were much awarded for their first feature The Orphanage (El orfanato - 2007), and will doubtless get more work in the future. One line from the trailer that has stayed with me is Watts saying to Holland, "Go help people. You're good at it." So sweet. The special effects are spectacular yet believable. May cause motion picture motion sickness so sit in the back if you are susceptible.

Fernando Velázquez' (scored The Orphanage and many others unknown to me) music is appropriately scary or sad--listen to this preview. Do see this before the Oscars.

Les Misérables (2012)

Jack said he didn't hate it. But I did. This extravaganza about 19th century French people yearning for justice and happiness and finding only, well, misery, is crack for those who loved the stage version (fourth longest running Broadway show in history--just over 16 years). The special effects and long steadicam shots are pretty spectacular, too.

Here's the thing: I detested the musical in London the summer of 1986, less than a year before it opened in New York. My friend and I flew from L.A., left our luggage at the hotel, he insisted we see a show, and tickets were available. He promptly fell asleep and I sat grumbling in my seat. Sure, I was in a foul mood, what with the 8 hour jet lag and all. But there is art that can transcend one's subjective frame of mind and then there is this. Up until about a month ago I thought Les Mis was by Andrew Lloyd Webber and I don't like him either (the two longest running Broadway shows are his: Cats and Phantom; the third is Chicago. I loved Chicago).

The movie's director Tom Hooper (won the Oscar for The King's Speech) is enamored with proving his actors are singing live. Some wags (in links below) have referenced the close-ups of actors' tonsils. As a musician, I agree they would have sounded way better in a studio and not braying into the camera. And this musician isn't an opera fan. Grumble grumble grumble. Not everyone agrees with me. The movie has many wins, nominations, and  beaucoup bucks in box office receipts. I do admire those who can sing while crying, but I had had enough after about a half hour of this movie. Actually I kind of got the giggles, not only from the weep-singing but also because the person next to me, not Jack, was constantly making noise--rustling his popcorn bag, crunching, applauding, humming, fidgeting, even jingling metal in his pocket.

Hugh Jackman (known to many simply as Wolverine in five movies and counting--two more are in the pipeline--he can do much more: I liked him a lot in Someone Like You... (2001), Scoop (2006), The Fountain (2006), and The Prestige (2006)) works really, really hard, as does Anne Hathaway (last in these pages in The Dark Knight Rises). Russell Crowe (most recently in State of Play) sings while hanging ten (toes) at the edge of a precipice. Twice. Even the antics of Sacha Baron Cohen (The Dictator) and Helena Bonham Carter (Dark Shadows), though mildly amusing, can't save this.

And on to the snark. On NPR the other day David Edelstein, in listing his top 12 movies of 2012, made me laugh out loud as he trashed this one. If you care to, listen here from 9:00 to 10:45 for those comments. David Denby of the New Yorker is in complete agreement with me in this blog post (within that post is a link to Anthony Lane's equally harsh New Yorker review). Then Anne Hathaway and Samuel L. Jackson made a silly video they called the "Sad Off" about their Christmas movies, this and Django Unchained. Sam wins.

So please don't let me deter you from enjoying this blockbuster, if it's your thing. Do what you wanna do. Audiences are averaging 84% on rottentomatoes to critics' 70. It got eight Oscar nominations this morning to add to its growing pile of accolades. But this gal would rather be just about anywhere else.