Saturday, February 21, 2009

81st Academy Awards

The ceremony is tomorrow. I've seen all the films except Frost/Nixon.

My top picks (more than one pick indicates equally fine films or performances):
Actor: Sean Penn
Actress: Kate Winslet/Meryl Streep
Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin
Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis/Amy Adams
Film: Slumdog Millionaire/Milk/The Reader
Director: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire

My top picks for the best five films of 2008 in no specific order:
Gran Torino
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
Doubt
Milk

The Wrestler

I really didn’t like this film. It was dark, depressing and the main character was so weak that when given the chance to change his life for the better, he escapes to the easy and the known even though that means his own destruction. He is so seduced by the mediocre fame he had as a popular wrestler 20 years ago that he can’t live his life in the present with a woman who cares about him or a daughter who gives him a second chance.

Mickey Rourke gives a very good performance. He deserves his Oscar nomination. He’s an actor I always enjoyed watching on screen. There’s an old 80s film with he and Bob Hoskins called A Prayer for the Dying. He’s terrific in that film. It’s good to see him back in film. Marissa Tomei is good as a stripper who is a friend to Rourke’s character, Randy. He wants more than friendship, but she is reluctant because he’s a client at the strip joint and she doesn’t date clients.

I think someone who enjoys wrestling would like this film better. I found the wrestling scenes rather disgusting and nauseating to watch. The pain and violence inflicted on their opponent for entertainment purposes wasn’t entertaining to me.

I’d give this film a C+. The plus only because of the performances.

The Reader

This is one of the top films of 2008. It contains one of the two top performances by an actress of 2008 (Meryl Streep is the other in Doubt). Kate Winslet is phenomenal in this film. Obviously the writing of her character Hanna Schmitz is very fine. But Winslet makes you care for a former SS guard who has shared responsibility for the deaths of quite a few Jews who were murdered during WW II and also conducts an affair with a 15 year old boy. Just think about that for a moment…

She is certainly not the most sympathetic character. Yet Winslet brings such a fully realized character to life that you find your self sympathizing with Hanna’s plight when she ends up being the guard who is railroaded into to taking the brunt of guilt for a crime that she was involved in as an SS guard, but no more than her fellow female guards who walk away with a much lesser sentence. Hanna takes the blame because of embarrassment. I don’t want to give away more plot than this.

When I was a child I thought about what it might have been like to be a German in post WW II Germany while I studied history. What must the guilt have been like that the horror of the Holocaust was allowed to happen when so many turned a blind eye as to what was going on in their country, town and back yard. I thought about it because my ethnic background is German and distant family could possibly have been involved. This is the first movie I’ve seen that dealt with that guilt.

The main character in this story is played by a young German actor named David Kross (a terrific first film performance). Because of his involvement with Hanna as a young man and his subsequently finding out about her involvement in the extermination of the Jews in Hitler’s Germany, his entire life is affected. This story takes place in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This boy was too young to have memories of WW II. He wouldn’t have been born until the end of the war. But, the shame existed for him nonetheless.

Ralph Fiennes does a very good job of playing him as a man. He seems to give an interesting performance worth watching no matter what character he plays in a film. Just this year his roles in In Bruges, The Duchess and The Reader catch your eye as you watch these movies. Again how did he not win an AA for Schindler’s List?

Another movie you’ve got to see. I give this one an A-. Don’t forget In Bruges, and The Visitor are already out on DVD.

Milk

See this film about the life of slain San Francisco politician Harvey Milk. Gus Van Sant has made a very good film with Milk. One of the top five of 2008. The performances by the actors are wonderful. Sean Penn deserves the Academy Award for this role from what I’ve seen so far. I haven’t seen The Wrestler as yet to chime in on Mickey Rourke’s performance. Penn just won the SAG award for Best Actor for the role. Josh Brolin is great as the so tightly wound Dan White that his failures and frustrations lead him to kill his rival Harvey Milk along with Mayor Moscone (a small role by the always good character actor, Victor Garber).

Penn’s supporting players put some very good performances in here too: James Franco as his lover is especially fine and Emile Hirsch as a young man who goes from street hustler to helping to spearhead Milk’s campaigns.

What really shines through in this film is the goodness of Harvey Milk’s heart and his never give up attitude to try and give a political voice for the gay citizens of San Francisco and California. I lost count of the number of times Milk ran and lost before he finally was elected into office. You found yourself wanting to stand up and cheer each time he uttered the words, “My name is Harvey Milk and I’m here to recruit you.”

Don’t miss this film! A rating.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Right off I’ll tell you I thought this film was good, but not great. The performance of Brad Pitt was very good and Tilda Swinton in a supporting role was terrific as she always is. The story was interesting as was the concept of a man born old who ages but regresses physically. Now right off this is a problem since in the beginning of his life he’s infant size, but has qualities of an old man. Yet at the end of his life he physically appears a normal infant, but inside…you guessed it, has the body of an old man. Okay, that bugged me even though I know this is fantasy and you’re supposed to suspend disbelief.

Cate Blanchett plays the love interest from their time of childhood through their time of old age. They meet in the middle for romance when they are of a similar age. Cate looked gorgeous in this role, but I really didn’t adore her Daisy that much as I have other characters she’s played in the past. The two had good chemistry as Benjamin and Daisy, but I quite enjoyed Benjamin’s first romance with the married, but lonely, Tilda Swinton character more.

Where this film seems to beg for Academy Award nominations would be in makeup. What they do with Pitt as Benjamin is amazing and impressive. You truly can’t believe your eyes. The cinematography is beautiful too.

The film moved a bit slowly and was overly long. I think it would have been better if it had been trimmed down by maybe about 20 minutes. I give the film an overall B rating.

Doubt

Doubt is an excellent film about…doubt! This is a play adaptation, but I didn’t have the constant feeling that I was watching a play made into a film. The story is interesting and keeps you wrapped up in the two competing sides of the view of the Mother Superior (played by Meryl Streep) and the side or denials of the priest (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman). A young nun caught between the two is played by my favorite young actress Amy Adams. She has the ability to bring a certain wide eyed innocence to a character without it seeming to be put on (see Junebug and Enchanted).

Hoffman and Streep are terrific. In another year they would be shoe-ins for the Best Actor and Actress Academy Awards, but this is a year of many strong lead performances so they may be considered underdogs though they certainly should be nominated. So far I haven’t seen performances that I think were stronger than theirs, but perhaps equal in quality. Suddenly Sean Penn in Milk came to my mind and his is an equally amazing performance this year.

The best scenes in this film are when these two go head to head. And they sure butt heads. At first you seem convinced that this terrific priest is entirely innocent of the possible accusations. The Mother Superior is against change of nearly any kind. She believes in rules and discipline to the chagrin of the students at the school. The priest is a heralding in of the new views of the church. But, there is so much more to her and the priest’s character. As the movie unfolds you start seeing more and more shades of gray. Amy Adam’s character seems to bring out a softer gentle side of both the characters and she also hears the point of view of them.

There is one scene that is phenomenal that doesn’t include these three characters in some interaction. The one African American student at the school may be the child being abused. You would think the outrage of a parent when called to school to discuss this would blow the school apart. But, this was a different time and a different society because of the 1960s setting. Viola Davis is the actress who plays the boy’s mother. She is fabulous in this small part where she goes one on one with Streep. It was nothing that I would have expected and in that it’s such a refreshing and heartbreaking scene.

This truly is one of the five best films of 2008. I’m moving on toward countdown to the Academy Awards to try and see all the top films. Doubt gets a solid A from me. I’m hoping all four of the top performances will get acting nominations (and they did). I’d love to see this get best film, best director and best adapted screenplay nominations as well though it seems slim right now for best film and director. So far the films not to miss that I’ve seen recently were Gran Torino, Doubt, Slumdog Millionaire and Milk. Reviews are still to come on Milk and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Then later I’ll get my thoughts down on Last Chance Harvey and Marley and Me.