Catching Up: Mini-Reviews (Oscar Edition)

We're in the heat of awards season now, so I am catching as many films as I can before year's end. This past week I caught three films, all of which seem tailor made for the Oscars. Will any of them score with the Academy? I suspect at least one of them will. The other two? Well, read on...


Invictus

Clint Eastwood's latest is also among his worst, if not his outright greatest failure of the decade. I am generally a fan of Eastwood, which makes Invictus all the more painful. He has seemingly assembled all the right pieces together: a great historical figure in Nelson Mandela, a stellar cast (Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon), and a script that both works on its own and as an allegory for the current political climate here in America. And yet, none of it works. Eastwood is intent on oversimplifying the whole affair, to the point where Mandela comes across as naive and hopelessly lost in his new found position of power because all he cares about is rugby. We do not see him in any context except that which pertains to his dream of uniting the nation through the Rugby World Cup. Did Mandela actually do anything else, political or otherwise, in this period? Invictus would lead you to believe no.

The acting is unexceptional, Damon especially. Freeman is never bad, but he is not given a whole lot to work with. It's a shame, too, because Freeman seems like he makes a good Mandela, from what I can tell. But perhaps the most cringeworthy thing in this film, and the moment that made this go from simply bad to among year's worst, is the way in which it suddenly invokes 9/11 imagery for no reason. Now, in the right context this sort of thing is completely justified, but not here. As the final match of the World Cup begins, we get an out of nowhere scene in which a pilot informs his crew that he accepts full responsibility for what they are about to do. We watch as he pilots his plane towards the stadium. The plane just barely misses the stadium, and we see that the bottom of the plane has a message of congratulations written on it. This scene adds nothing to the film, aside from unnecessary tension and a sense of discomfort. What was Eastwood trying to say with this moment? Nothing, I suspect, and the film itself amounts to much the same thing: nothing.





The Lovely Bones

After four years out of the limelight, Peter Jackson is back with The Lovely Bones. The last time he adapted a beloved book we got Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, lightning does not strike twice, although I suspect at least part of that is due to the source material. Never outright bad, The Lovely Bones does very little right, either. The story of a young girl who is murdered and watches from heaven (or is it?) as her family and her murderer go on with their lives. At the film's center, Saoirse Ronan is quite good. She is shaping up to be quite a skilled young woman, and I look forward to her future projects. Beyond her, though, little is worth mentioning, as the other performances are largely forgettable. As the murderer, Stanley Tucci feels like an amalgamation of killers we've seen before, never hitting any new notes. As the grieving father, Mark Wahlberg plays every scene in wide eyed wonderment. The rest of the cast don't even have enough screen time or character development to warrant much thought. Which is a shame, as they seem like they could have had real weight given the right director.

And indeed, Jackson seems ill-suited for this kind of story. He once might have been able to handle the smaller scale of the story, but his output this decade has steered his sensibilities towards spectacle and bloat. His vision of heaven (or is it?) rings false, largely due to the tacky and obvious cgi used. These images also overwhelm the human story at this film's center. By film's end, you feel slightly exhausted instead of emotionally satisfied. This story probably would have worked far better in the hands of an up and coming director who could make the picture smaller and more intimate, streamlining the novel's narrative in a more meaningful way. As it is, it simply doesn't work.





Up in the Air

This film is the real deal. After stumbling in a big way with Juno, Jason Reitman is at the top of his game here, as is George Clooney, who hasn't been this good in years. Up in the Air follows Ryan Bingham as he travels the country firing people for companies who can't seem to do it themselves. When he learns that he may himself soon be out of a job, he starts to question what it is that he wants out of his life. Clooney really makes you start to believe that his lifestyle would be fun, which is why he is the perfect man to play this role. When his walls start to come down, and he starts to second guess himself, we are right there with him. A lesser actor would have had us against him from the beginning. The rest of the ensemble are equally strong, with Vera Farmiga in particular standing out with her feisty and unexpectedly nuanced performance. Reitman has proven to have a knack for collecting the perfect actors for his movies and utilizing them correctly.

A great film is more than the sum of its parts, and such is the case here. I could go on and on about the great acting across the board, the smart and timely script, the way certain themes weave in and out of the story in subtle ways, and so on 9and I probably will in my best of the year countdown). But really, it is the film as a whole that is so wondrous. Everything in the film is there to serve everything else in the film. And as I think about this film, and as I write about it, I can't help but think how close to a masterpiece this film is. It absolutely needs to be seen.

Juno

Juno is a victim of its own hype. It's a film that has garnered lavish praise and awards chatter, yet ultimately it's nothing more than a quirky teen comedy with a pretty impressive central performance. Had it been released in March, no one would be talking about it in the same breath as No Country for Old Men, Atonement, or There Will Be Blood. If you can get past all the hyperbole surrounding this film, you might find a moderately sweet diversion. If not, prepare to sit through an occasionally agonizing 90 minutes of overly quirky dialogue and familiar plot points.

Juno (Ellen Page) is a loud mouthed, wise beyond her years 16 year old who has just learned she is pregnant. The father is her geeky friend and one time fling Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). She decides to keep the baby and give it to a family who can't have children of their own. The couple, Vanessa and Mark (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), don't seem totally ready for kids, with Mark being an overgrown kid and Vanessa being a bit too stuffy and self-centered. The film follows Juno over the 9 months of her pregnancy, her relationship with Paulie, and the struggles of Vanessa and Mark as they come to grips with parenthood. A lot of people have been calling the screenplay from newcomer Diablo Cody a revelation, but clearly they weren't talking about the plot.

I fear they were talking about the dialogue. If so, I have a little bit less respect for the film critic community. The dialogue is often gratingly unrealistic and "clever" in the worst sense of the word. Cody seems to have spent more time trying to think of things that made her say "wouldn't it be funny to hear someone say that?" and less time thinking about what would actually be true to her story and characters. The worst offenders were the characters of Juno herself, as well as her friend Leah. People don't talk like that, and to hear a person say things like "honest to blog?" or "this is one doodle that can't be undid, home skillet" just takes you out of the reality of the film. I honestly stopped caring about some of the characters because they were clearly not meant to be anything more than simple cartoons there to make us laugh.

The actors all try their best to rise above the jarring dialogue. Ellen Page really is pretty good as Juno, and there are times where I think she really tried to elevate her character above the bad one liners and quirky vibe Cody infused upon her. I almost cared about Juno towards the end, and that was 100% thanks to Page. Cera is, as expected, understated, and he actually feels like a real human being for the most part. Garner and Bateman may be the best part of the film, however. Not saddled with the same idiotic lines their costars have, they are able to create two fully former characters that actually have depth. Both are likable and unlikable at the same time, and I honestly was warmed by the final two scenes with Garner. Bateman could have come across as a villain with his role, but thankfully he is smarter than that. We might not agree with what he does in the film, but we can easily see why he feels the need to do it.

Director Jason Reitman made one of my favorite films of 2006 with Thank You for Smoking. He was lucky to have an intelligent, funny script to work off of with that film. Here he does the best that he can with Cody's inane quips, and I suspect that he still has some growing to do as a filmmaker. He may be one to keep an eye on, however, as he is clearly a major talent in the comedy genre. I wish I could have loved this film as much as everyone else seems to love it, but I simply hated every word that came out of certain characters' mouths. No one talks like this, and the strong performances and solid directing are all weighed down by that one simple fact. As it stands, Knocked Up from last June is a far more funny and intelligent look at unexpected pregnancy, and it's a shame that film won't be the one garnering all the awards attention come next February.