2012 at the Movies: farewells

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Andy Griffith in A FACE IN THE CROWD

This year I wrote farewells to four of my movie favorites.

Most Baby Boomers first saw Ben Gazzara as the star of the 60s TV series Run for Your Life, and cinephiles point to his work in two groundbreaking John Cassavetes films, Husbands and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.  I immediately thought of the Coolest Movie Character Ever, John Russo in Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed.

Levon Helm‘s 17 acting credits include some very top shelf stuff. He was Loretta’s father in Coal Miner’s Daughter. In The Right Stuff, he played Ridley, test pilot Chuck Yeager’s aircraft mechanic, the guy who loans him Beeman’s chewing gum before each life-risking test flight. He was also the narrator in The Right Stuff.  I particularly loved one of his last roles, Old Man with Radio in Tommy Lee Jones’ overlooked 2005 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Susan Tyrrell was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for a dead-on performance as a pathetic sad sack barfly in the under appreciated Fat City (1972).

For his very first feature film, Andy Griffith shed the likeability and decency that made him a TV megastar and became a searingly unforgettable villain.  In the 1957 Elia Kazan classic A Face in the Crowd, Griffith played Lonesome Rhodes, a failed country guitar picker who is hauled out of an Arkansas drunk tank by talent scout Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal).  It turns out that he has a folksy charm that is dynamite in the new medium of television.   Presaging communication in the television age, A Face in the Crowd is one of our most important political movies.

2012 at the Movies: the year’s best movies

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THE KID WITH A BIKE

Here’s my list of the best films of 2012: 1)  The Kid with a Bike, 2) Beasts of the Southern Wild, 3) Argo, 4) Lincoln, 5) A Separation, 6) Silver Linings Playbook, 7) Take This Waltz, 8) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, 9) Elena and 10) Polisse, .

Continuing with my list of 2012’s best films, here are my honorable mentions:  Monsieur Lazhar,  End of Watch, Rampart, Moonrise Kingdom, Headhunters, Bernie and Detachment.

(Note:  I’m saving room for some films that I haven’t yet seen, especially Amour and Zero Dark Thirty, which I won’t get a chance to see until mid-January .)

You can watch the trailers and see my comments on all these films at Best Movies of 2012.

According to Metacritic, all of my picks (except Detachment) were highly rated by prominent critics.  I did disdain some well-reviewed films, most notably The Master, which made lots of critics’ end-of-year lists.

(Further Note:  A Separation won the 2011 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and Monsieur Lazhar was nominated, but neither were widely released in the US until 2012.  Similarly, The Kid with a Bike was screened in October 2011 at the New York Film Festival, but was not theatrically released in the US release until March 2012.  These films are on my 2012 list because, like most Americans, I couldn’t see them until 2012.)

Happy Anniversary to The Wife

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Donna Reed in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE - the second best wife ever

Happy Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa The Love of My Life!

We howled in surprise together at the hilarious Norwegian curling comedy King Curling.   And, in gown and tux, we sneaked out of a  gala to catch a late night screening of The Ghastly Loves of Johnny X at Cinequest.

I cherished her company at Bernie, Moonrise Kingdom, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Ruby Sparks, Brave, Searching for Sugar Man, Argo, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook.  And, at home, I especially enjoyed sharing the 1979 BBC miniseries version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Although she’s always skeptical about French movie fare – especially on a Friday night – she was a good sport for some French films this year – and Israeli, Iranian and two Norwegian ones, too!

She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog, and I appreciate her and love her.  Happy Anniversary, Honey!

2012 at the Movies: biggest disappointments

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DAMSELS IN DISTRESS

1. I haven’t seen Undefeated, the Oscar winning documentary about an underdog high school football team, or the French political thriller The Minister (L’exercice de l’État )   because – as far as I know – they haven’t yet been released in the US.  How can an Oscar winner not get a release?  You can read descriptions and watch trailers of these films as Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

2.  There was also no US release for the hilarious Norwegian curling comedy King Curling or the creepy Slovak voyeur thriller Visible World.  I think that, given a chance, American audiences would have responded to both of them.

3.  Sometimes my favorite filmmakers let me down.  There wasn’t much to Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths, which I had been eagerly awaiting for months.

Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Barcelona) hadn’t made a film for thirteen years and then came up with Damsels in Distress. With the tedious Greta Gerwig.  Really, Whit?

And I thought that Aardman Studios’ Pirates! Band of Misfits was a bore.

Note: I don’t have a Worst Ten Movie list because, unlike professional critics, I don’t have to see every movie.  I do see over 100 new movies each year, but I try REALLY, REALLY HARD to avoid the bad movies.  So my worst movie going experience is always either 1)  on an airline flight when I see a movie that I normally wouldn’t; 2) a hyped art film that disastrously falls on its face and/or really pisses me off (The White Ribbon); or 3) something I find on cable TV while channel surfing (Paul Blart: Mall Cop).  But usually, the culprit finds its way aboard a long airline flight.  Not this year.

4.  That being said,  the worst film that I saw was probably Dorfman, which would have derailed if it had started out on the rails.

 

Django Unchained: Holy Tarantino!

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In Quentin Tarantino’s pulpy Django Unchained, a bounty hunter(Christolph Waltz, the Jew-hunting Nazi colonel in Inglorious Basterds)  and a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) hunt down slave holders and slave merchants and dispatch them in increasingly creative and cinematic fashion.  The plot gives them each a credible motivation to do so, but this movie is really just a revenge fantasy aimed at American slavery.

Let’s not short the revenge film genre, which includes many top drawer movies – Winchester 73, The Searchers, Carrie, Gladiator, even The Virgin Spring and Zero Dark Thirty.  (If it’s a really good revenge film, people tend not to identify it as a revenge film.)  But Tarantino is never squeamish about the enjoyability of genre films, and Django Unchained is gloriously pedal-to-the-metal exploitation.

Waltz and Foxx are very good.  The most fun performance is by Tarantino fave Samuel L. Jackson as the malevolent house slave who uses his wiles to advance the causes of his dim masters and of slavery.

Django Unchained – from its title on – is a love letter to the spaghetti Western genre.  We have a title song that could have come from the Italian Ringo movies, lots of Ennio Morricone-like music and even the first movie Django himself (Franco Nero).  The titles are blazing red, and some of the locations (as in the Italian movies shot in Spain) are hilariously inappropriate (California oak grasslands for Mississippi, some rocky California desert for East Texas and a random sequence in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, apparently just because Tarantino wanted to show some bison).  For spaghetti Western aficionados like myself, it’s a lot of fun.

There’s a lot of violence, including an especially gory final shootout that would have unsettled Sam Peckinpah.  One thing for sure – it’s a lot of movie for your money.

2012 at the Movies: year of the child actor

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Quvenzhane Wallis in BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a special film, and its star Quvenzhane Wallis carries the movie. Although this is her first film and she was only six years old during the filming, I would not be surprised if she is nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. That’s how stirring her performance is.

As I wrote in my comments on Beasts, writer-director Benh Zeitlin was specially audacious to bet his movie on the performance of a six year old. But we’ve seen some remarkable performance by child actors this year – and in many of my Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

In my current pick for the top film of the year, the Dardennes brothers’ The Kid with the Bike , the story revolves around the 12-year old first time actor Thomas Doret. Doret pulls it off, delivering a performance of gripping intensity.

Although Mohammed Fellag is the lead in Monsieur Lazhar, there wouldn’t be a film without the performances by the kids, Sophie Nelisse and Emilien Neron.

Similarly, Wes Anderson’s delightful Moonrise Kingdom is carried by newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayman. Moonrise Kingdom is their movie; even Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand and Bill Murray are just along for the ride.

And in Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, the key point of view is that of the ever watchful teenage daughter. She desperately wants her parents back together, views everything through this prism and is powerless to make it happen. She is played by Farhadi’s real life daughter Sarina.

Pierce Gagnon plays one compellingly terrifying four-year-old in Looper.

Overall, it’s an uncommonly impressive year for child actors.

Les Miserables: Now I’m miserable, too

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Let’s get this out of the way first – having neither seen nor desired to see the Broadway musical Les Miserables, I am not the target audience for this movie.  I don’t care for melodramas – and Les Mis is two melodramas in one – the story of the saintly Jean Valjean being chased for decades by the monomaniacal Javert and a romance between two kids.  So I was mostly bored.  If, however, you love Les Mis, you’ll probably enjoy this long, long, lavish all-star effort from director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, The Damned United, John Adams).

The cast is mostly excellent.  Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne (My Week with Marilyn), Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Barks and Aaron Tveit are all excellent singers and give outstanding performances.  Redmayne is exceptional.  Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are very funny in the comic roles (the highlight of the movie for lowbrow me). The other lead is Russell Crowe, who really can’t match the singing ability of the other actors, which is a distraction.

Hooper has made the costumes and make-up very realistic for the filthy and scabby period.  This, for me, was jarring when juxtaposed against the artificiality of the characters breaking into song and some very cheesy CGI sets.

Now here’s one of my pet peeves – movies that should be over but linger like an unwanted guest.  Here, both of the plot threads (the chase and the romance) are resolved, yet the movie goes on for three more songs, including a death scene and the stirring finale.  Aaaack.

Movies to See Right Now – the big Holiday movies

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DJANGO UNCHAINED

It’s the Holidays and big Holiday movies are joining the great choices already in theaters.  I haven’t yet seen Tom Hooper’s all star epic Les Miserables, but the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained is gloriously pedal-to-the-metal exploitation.

In Lincoln, Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis push aside the marble statue and bring to life Abraham Lincoln the man.  Argo is Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis. The rewarding dramedy Silver Linings Playbook has a strong story, topicality and humor, but it’s worth seeing just for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance. All three films are on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Don’t overlook The Matchmaker, a gem from Israel or the solid thriller Deadfall that is flying under the radar this holiday season.

Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling. The Sessions is an uncommonly evocative, funny and thoughtful film about sex leading to unexpected emotional intimacy. Denzel Washington stars in Flight, a thriller about the miraculous crash landing of an airliner and the even more dangerous battle against alcoholism.  Skyfall updates the James Bond franchise with thrilling action and a more shopworn 007 from Daniel Craig.

The FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson is a bore.  The crime drama Killing Them Softly wastes an excellent cast on a run-of-the-mill gangster story. Skip the forgettable non-comedy Lay the Favorite. The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

2012 in the Movies: thoughtful geezer movies

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THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

2012 featured a crop of thoughtful films about the aged.  Of course, one of the year’s most popular indies was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the surprisingly deep story about Brits seeking a low-budget retirement in India.

All Together works much the same territory with a French sensibility and Francophone actresses Jane Fonda and Geraldine Chaplin.

In Robot & Frank, Frank Langella’s performance elevated a curmudgeon comedy to a revealing study of getting older.

Of course, this year’s biggest geezer film will be Amour (which most of us will be able to see on January 18, 2013);  this Austrian film plumbs the ultimate issues of aging –  frailty and death – and is a lead pipe cinch to win the Foreign Language Oscar.

Now before we get all misty-eyed, let’s remember that these four movies are all foreign and indies – the Hollywood studios still run screaming from scripts about people over 40.   Still, this is a welcome trend, and, as Baby Boomers continue to age, I think we’ll see more and more good movies about older people.

2012 in the Movies: the year of the alcoholic

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Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Octavia Spencer in SMASHED

An extraordinary group of 2012 movies featured searingly realistic depictions of alcoholism.  The indie drama Smashed portrayed the drinking life and the challenges of recovery and relapse, informed by the personal experience of co-writer Susan Burke.  In a potentially star-making performance, Mary Elizabeth Winstead played half of a couple navigating life while drunk.  Can they stay together and flourish when she sobers up?  Winstead realistically took her character through the carelessness, denial, humiliation and self-degradation of drinking and the fears and determination that co-exist in her recovery.

A much bigger movie, the Hollywood hit Flight, takes on deceit’s centrality to alcoholism, and Denzel Washington brilliantly evokes the protagonist’s achingly vulnerable loneliness and self-loathing.

The excellent documentary Bill W. tells the story of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it’s quite a story.  Wilson was a reluctant movement leader. His primary passion was for business, in which his drinking killed his potential success. Instead, he achieved fame and historical importance in a field not of his choosing. As the founder, he could have easily formed AA into a hierarchy with himself at the top – and AA as his personal power base. But, once AA could stand on its own, he chose to walk away from its leadership.

The appealing documentary Paul Williams Still Alive, tells the story of the songwriter, omnipresent in the 70s, but not now.  Paul Williams is now twenty years sober and very content in his skin; he doesn’t dwell on the time when he was rich, famous and unhappy.

And in the overlooked Take This Waltz, Sarah Silverman co-stars the protagonist’s sister-in-law, a recovering alcoholic whose relapse sparks a fierce moment of truth telling.