Bad Vibes: Alice In Wonderland

Is anyone else getting a serious case of the creeps from the Alice in Wonderland ads?

And I don't mean the delightfully whimsical, charmingly strange mood you would expect from Lewis Carroll. I mean genuine skin-crawling, Tod Browning's Freaks, avert your eyes kind of stuff.

Look at this image:

I don't trust that flamingo either

Why is Wonderland so gloomy? The dominant color is gray. Alice's dress is drab and her skin is pallid. You just want to wrap a blanket around her.

The plants seem like they've been shipped in from the nearest dank swamp. Even the brighter flowers look poisonous. In fact, it appears as if Burton has imported the cheerless, funereal atmosphere wholesale from Sweeney Todd. I'm going to be on edge for the whole mad tea party waiting for Alice's chair to fly back and drop her down a chute to be made into meat pies by Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Which reminds me-

This:

Bring the Kids!

While waiting for the subway the other day, my girlfriend and I stood in front of this poster for twenty minutes and could find no end to the ways it made our skin crawl. It is as if a roomful of people spent five hours shouting out ways to make the Mad Hatter repulsive and Depp and the costumer designer Colleen Atwood ignored no suggestions. Make him wall-eyed! Give him a bruised corpse hand with rotting, fungal fingernails! Don't skimp on the facial make-up - he should look like a cross between a homeless mime and a demonic clown from the nightmare's of a five-year old.

Don't get me wrong. I think the best kid's films are often the scariest. Children's classics such as Dumbo and The Wizard of Oz's have had kids covering their eyes for decades. But here I get the feeling Burton has crossed the line from memorably scary into just plain off-putting. I can't say where that line is exactly but I imagine it to be on this side of casting Crispin Glover.

That's right. Crispin Glover. Thanks to Disney's advertising blitz, in two weeks kids all across the country will be lining up to see this guy in all his 3D IMAX glory:

The Politics of Hurt Locker

*Spoilers*

There is an excellent chance that on March 7th the Academy is going to award one of the most effective anti-war films ever made with the Oscar for Best Picture, and this fact has been greeted with near-universal silence by the media.

It was only five years ago that the release Fahrenheit 9/11 caused the whole of cable news to drop everything and spend months expounding on everything from its influence on public opinion to the validity of its conclusions. Now, having picked up both the top prizes from the Director's Guild and, in a stunning upset over Avatar, the Producer's Guild, The Hurt Locker has to be considered the odds-on favorite to take the big prize, with nary a peep from those same pundits on what, if any, messages the film contains.

This can largely be chalked up to the box office returns. Oscar contenders like Fahrenheit and Brokeback Mountain generated lots of cash before they generated lots of controversy. Although it is currently turning into a big success on video, The Hurt Locker stalled around thirteen million dollars in its theatrical run. For comparison, last year's Slumdog Millionaire earned forty-four million by the time it was nominated for an Oscar. Commentators will debate just about anything if it makes enough money. Back when The Dark Knight was raking in the dough a brief, ridiculous fight broke out over whether Batman was really an exoneration of Bush's counter-terrorism policies (Answer: Nope)

Political?

Surely the lack of controversy surrounding the release was also a deliberate strategy on the part of the filmmakers and the studio. Iraq films have been branded box office poison after a series of earnest but ponderous Iraq war films like In the Valley of Elah stiffed with audiences. The Hurt Locker was marketed as a film with all of the excitement of war films with none of the preachiness, and the ecstatic reviews greeting the film focused mainly on Bigelow's filmmaking prowess with the action scenes.


So I suppose it should not have surprised anyone that it didn't spark a wave of discussion upon release, but if it does manage to overcome its meager box office to take the Oscar in three weeks, expect some observes to come to the sudden realization that the Academy has just honored a film that ruthlessly dismantles the idea US involvement can affect change in the Middle East.

At first this declaration seems unsupportable from the film itself, which studiously avoids addressing the politics of the situation. The names of Bush and Obama are never mentioned, nor are Republicans or Democrats or the political views of any of the characters. Most would say that the film is neutral, and like a political Rorschach test, the viewer only sees the political messages they wish to. It's not difficult to imagine both Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann coming away from The Hurt Locker with very positive reactions.

Yet there is more to a film's meaning then merely scanning its component parts for overt political statements, and finding none, declaring the film impartial. The most powerful messages come not when audiences are spoon-fed morals, but when they are presented with a vivid reality from which certain conclusions are inescapable. The Hurt Locker presents a reality in which the mission is an afterthought, the enemy is faceless, and progress is inconceivable.



The argument that the film's lack of explicit political statements represent a lack of a view point is especially unconvincing. The mere fact that Mark Boal, the screenwriter, was able to tell the entire story without once referencing the larger purposes of the conflict speaks volumes in itself. Could there be a World War II film that doesn't reference Hitler or Nazism? Or a Revolutionary War film that omits the overthrowing of English tyranny? The three heroes of Hurt Locker are totally disconnected to any larger purpose for their mission. They head out every morning and attempt to stop bombs from killing anybody. The fact that it is happening in Iraq is irrelevant to their purpose.

The film undermines any connection between the bomb squad and the civilians they are ostensibly there to help. Anybody on the street could be the one that set the bomb and the Iraqi waving his support with one hand could be using his other to activate a detonator. Past the main three characters the connection between the unit and its fellow soldiers is short circuited as well. They are mostly seen fleeing the bomb in question, their job in the area never mentioned, and in one lengthy sequence they are called upon to rescue a team of mercenaries for hire, in Iraq only to pick off high ranking al Queda for the cash reward.

The enemy in these incredibly tense bomb disposal scenes is seen only glimpses, if at all. The enemy isn't terrorism or al Queda so much as the ever-present prospect of an instant violent death. In this aspect, The Hurt Locker the most in common with the Vietnam movies like Platoon that showed warfare as an intractable stalemate, where the anonymous foe is undistinguishable from an innocent bystander, and death often came without warning before you can even pick up your weapon.

The main character in The Hurt Locker, bomb diffusing expert Sergeant James, twice tries to attach some meaning to his mission beyond his obsessive need to outsmart the bombers. The first time he attempts to exact some measure of justice for a young boy he believes was used as a human bomb, and the second he leads them into the night to track down those responsible for a roadside bomb. Both attempts lead only to confusion and danger without purpose. With the mission into the night he finds himself literally running through the dark, listening to the sounds of violence, unable to discern their source or meaning. His attempts to avenge the boy are not only fruitless, but are thrown back in his face when he is forced to question whether the crime in question was committed at all. The conclusion is unmissable: He was better off trying to stay alive than trying to do good.


It is entirely possible that the films weak box office was a result of this challenging approach to the material. To oversimplify things, there are two kinds of war films: The War is Hell film and the War is Heroism films. Most post-Vietnam films fall into the former category. Which is not to say the War is Heroism films necessarily sugar-coat things. Saving Private Ryan did more to de-romanticize combat than any film since All Quiet on the Western Front. Yet for all the horrific violence there was the comfort of knowing that it was serving a grander purpose. For all the ads promising Hurt Locker is a thrill-ride action film, my guess is audiences stayed away when they suspected correctly that this was a film that was not going to tuck them in at the end, kiss them on forehead and tell them everything's going to be alright. There was going to be no uplift at the end with old Matt Damon saluting Tom Hanks' grave.


In a more traditional, rah-rah, war film the obsessive Sergeant James would have been a supporting character with the more sympathetic, level-headed Sergeant Sanborn in the lead trying to do some good while keeping the hot-headed James alive. But The Hurt Locker is James's story. He represents the American mission as fixated on immediate problem solving, oblivious to the big picture. He wants to defuse those bombs not because its the right thing to do, but because he needs to be prove he is smarter than the person that set them. James, like America in Iraq and Vietnam before that, simply cannot accept anything but victory as an option. He is convinced he can think his way out of any situation, and while he is successful on a case to case basis, the bombs keep coming in a seemingly endless supply and his mission extends from year to year.

If Hurt Locker does win the Oscar for Best Picture and manages to break through to be seen by a wide section of the country it is not a stretch to conceive of it having an impact on public opinion. Simply put: It is difficult to imagine anyone watching the film with an open mind and concluding that it is anything but madness to leave the troops there with any expectation good will come of it.

Towards the end of the film Sgt. James encounters an Iraqi with a bomb strapped to him with a series of heavy duty locks. The man begs to have the bomb removed. He says he doesn't want to hurt anybody and pleads to be saved. James attempts to extricate the man far past the point it is safe to do so, but despite his best efforts the situation is hopeless. When he has no choice but to flee he looks the man in the eye and apologizes, saying he did all he could. The president's speechwriters should take note.

Review: Avatar

Avatar works. Let’s just state that right up front.

James Cameron has succeeded in applying his considerable skills to directing a film that takes nearly three hours to move with great fanfare from A to B and from B to C. Along the way there is little by way of surprises or depth, and even the casual filmgoer will have little trouble predicting plot turns an hour in advance. In the age of Transformers 2, when most blockbusters are ugly, mean-spirited films, bludgeoning the audience with incoherent noise posing as fun, maybe there is something to be said for a film like Avatar, which uses top notch Hollywood craftsmanship to move in nice clean lines from beginning to end. The good guys win, the bad guys die, and when you stagger back into the parking lot afterwards you don’t feel like demanding you money back. Shouldn’t that be enough?

Ordinarily, I’d say sure. For a normal movie I would say Avatar deserves a nice pat on the back and a sincere “attaboy,” and we could all move on to something more worthy of our time and attention, probably whatever Christopher Nolan is up to.

Ah, but as we all know Avatar is not a normal movie. Avatar is officially a block-busting, record-smashing, line-around-the-block, must see, cultural event. And as is the case with such movies, any discussion of the actual merits of the film in question is quickly hijacked by breathless coverage and hyperbole until it's distorted past all connection to reality. But the reality is this: Avatar is just not that good.

When the dust settles from the current hype storm and audiences revisit the film in the cold light of day, Avatar’s myriad flaws are going to come shining through in digital 3D. It is not going to be pretty.

First and foremost among the film’s shortcomings is the thorough lack of imagination involved in the creation of the alien world of Pandora. The marketing for Avatar has gone to great lengths to label James Cameron a visionary genuis with an imagination to rival Walt Disney or Fritz Lang, but the truth of the matter of is that under the shiny, digital surface there is scarcely an original idea in the whole of Avatar.

Like the Navajo, but blue

You could argue that good sci-fi/fantasty material has traditionally used the familiar as a jumping off point. The main characters in Alien were just ordinary truckers in outer space, after all, and ET was just a little lost boy in the body of a stretchy, puppy-eyed space bug. But once those film got the audiences emotionally invested, they took them places and showed them things they’d never seen before. Avatar gets the audience involved in the familiar story of the noble natives versus the heartless military and proceeds to deliver that story beat for beat exactly as you would expect right down to the drippy ballad over the end credits.

Compare that to one of the most genuinely original fantasy films of the modern cinema, Pan’s Labyrinth. That film took the familiar tropes of the fantasty world, including a little girl dealing with fantastic creatures right out of Alice in Wonderland, and twisted them in a way that was totally new. I had never seen those creatures before. I had never seen the magical world bleed through to the real world like it did it in that film. And I certainly had never seen a fairy tale story told with such a pervasive sense of danger before. The whole production took the basic elements of fairy tales and synthesized them top to bottom into something unique.

Although set on an alien world, it is difficult to think of any element of Avatar that is truly alien. The jungle is just an Earth jungle with a smattering of neon bugs and tacky glowing plants. The Pandoran creatures are your standard issue space animals, just like our animals but with an extra horn or eye tacked on. Not really an alien but a “space horse” or a “space rhino”.

Those aren't horses. Those are space horses!

As for the Na’vi themselves, they are, and there is simply no dancing around this fact, big blue American Indians. They have villages like Indians, use bows and arrows like Indians, and weep at modern man’s indifference to their natural world like Indians have in movies since time immemorial. Save for the splicing in of some feline genes here and there they even look like Indians. When Terrence Malick presented his straight-up telling of the Pocahontas story in The New World, he actually succeeded in making his Native Americans seem more alien than the aliens in Avatar.

Now that's alien.

The one genuinely other-worldly aspect about the Pandorans is their ability to tangibly connect with nature via gooey biological strings that emerge from their cat tails. This is an idea with great potential that goes woefully unexplored in this film. Rather, Cameron uses this as opportunity to portray the Na'vi as even more simplistically noble and pure than you would expect. Most of the time Hollywood stops short of making Indians genuinely magical, but since these are Native Pandorans instead of Native Americans, Cameron feels free to make their spirituality literal, and the result is the most over-the-top romanticizing of an indigenous people since Disney had Pocahontas taking advice from a talking tree.

It is this unexplored connection between alien and nature that Avatar drops the ball most dramatically. The inevitable conflict between natives and military approaches, and we eagerly wait for the moment when the planet itself will rise up to defend itself. We anticipate the epic - grand sweeping scenes as the fates of worlds are decided. This is the kind of feeling the Lord of the Rings delivered so vividly. I could have forgiven a lot of clunky writing if Cameron had delivered this soaring emotion at the climax. What we get feels more like the Pandoran zoo being let loose, combined with some well-executed but routine action scenes. It's quite a let down.

Grandeur: Shown here in a film that is not Avatar

As for the supposed game changing, take-your-breath-away effects I can only shrug and struggle to scrape together some enthusiasm. Maybe I’m just not tech savvy, but I can’t see anything on display that Lord of the Rings didn’t do just as well, if not better, five years ago. For that matter, I thought Pixar’s Up incorporated 3D more effectively into the movie, but then again Up had a story and characters I cared about.

Don’t get me wrong, the effects certainly are good, and there are a handful of shots where Avatar generates a nice gee-whiz effect, particularly the destruction of the grandest tree on Pandora. But when you get down to it 3D is never going to make a bad movie good, or a dull movie exciting, and during the long, flat midsection of Avatar I would have traded all the 3D in the world for a better screenplay. It did no more to enhance the experience than a decent speaker system. It was honestly a distraction as often as it was an advantage.

What 3D promises

If I can get philosophical for a minute, the reason 3D is never going to be an essential element of the filmgoing experience is because it works against the basic nature of movies. Films work best when they break down our barriers and makes us forget that we are watching a movie at all. 3D does the opposite - always popping out of the screen to dazzle us, taking us out of the story. The irony is that Cameron need not have spent a wealth of time and money on new effects because a great story can already immerse us in a movie better than 3D ever will.

What 3D delivers

Now that Avatar is raking in enough cash for Cameron to build himself an army of solid gold terminators, Hollywood is undoubtedly going to assume that the masses are clamoring for more 3D. We are sure to get a glut of it. I suppose this will be the new reality until a film as big as Avatar goes belly-up and studios realize all the 3D in the world won’t save a crappy movie. The best 3D can hope for is to go unnoticed in a good movie and pick up the slack in a bad one.

I could go on for pages and pages sorting through all Avatar's faults. Like how Cameron seems to have borrowed George Lucas’s ear for dialogue - too many lines of dialogue don’t pass the laugh test. Or how his obvious attempts to ladle political allegory on top of the whole thing clunk terribly (one mention of “shock and awe” in particular is a real forehead slapper) Cameron stock military characters would not have been out of place in last Summer’s G.I. Joe movie. For that matter, all of Cameron’s characters are pretty damn thin. With Titanic you figure Cameron would have learned the value of charismatic actors to cover for mediocre writing, but Sam Worthington in the lead role is a total blank.

But there is little pleasure to be had in beating up on Avatar. I wish there were more guys like Cameron out there swinging for the fences, staking everything on their vision. I am not so cynical as to suggest that Cameron tailor's his visions to maximum marketability. For James Cameron this is what a personal film looks like. Here is a guy whose visions go hand in hand with commerce. I just hope his next vision is less about showing the world effects they’ve never seen before and more about crafting a story we’ve never seen before.

Verdict: Box office success can make a film a lot of things - influential, important, widely discussed – but you can’t buy your way into greatness, and great Avatar is not. The test of time is going to do brutal, merciless things to Avatar, and while the film has some undeniably memorable moments, when the dazzle of the effects wears off over the years the creakiness of the storytelling is going to groan louder and louder. Eventually Avatar is going to join Titanic as a shorthand for hokey filmmaking with mass appeal. 6 out of 10.

The Ten Most Anticipated Films of 2010

10. Greenberg - Dir. Noah Baumbach

Noah Baumbach made a big splash in 2005 with his painfully funny indie hit, The Squid and the Whale. His follow up, Margot at the Wedding, was a dud with critics and audiences alike. Judging by the clever trailer this looks to be a return to form, with break-out hit potential. It is almost certainly Ben Stiller's best role in ages, or at least since he played himself on Extras. Maybe it will remind everyone that before he started running from CGI dinosaur bones full-time, he looked like he might become a pretty decent actor.

9. Black Swan - Dir. Darren Aronofsky

Aronofsky is one of those directors whose every film is an event every film lover has to see to keep up with the conversation. Even his flops like The Fountain develop instant and passionate cult followings (I include myself in that group) His last film was the near perfect The Wrestler, so if his new film, something about ballerinas and ghosts, is anywhere near as good, it will be an absolute must-see.

8. Iron Man 2 - Dir. Jon Favreau

No other film guarantees to be more pure movie fun in 2010 than Iron Man 2. Having been a card carrying member of the Robert Downey Jr. Fan Club since Wonder Boys, it's gratifying to see him graduate from supporting turns in The Shaggy Dog, to King of Hollywood, throwing his weight around at the box office like he's Will Smith in a film costarring ridiculous aliens. Following the infallible rule of sequels that states the second in the franchise is always the best (Dark Knight, Spiderman 2, Wrath of Khan) this is sure to be a blast.

7. Get Low - Dir. Aaron Schneider

Get Low stars Robert Duvall as a hermit in the 1930's throwing himself a funeral while he is still around to enjoy. I'm not sure I could name two actors I am more pleased to see turning up in a movie than Robert Duvall and Bill Murray, so chances are I was going to see this no matter what. The fact that this gentle comedy got great buzz at last year's Toronto Film Festival is just gravy.

6. Green Zone - Dir. Paul Greengrass

Director Greengrass has been taking Hollywood to school with his last few films, showing everyone the correct way to make action movies with the last two Bourne films, while silencing all the "too soon-ers" with his heart-stopping United 93. He reunites with Damon for this political thriller due in March. With so many crappy action movies littering the multiplexes I'm not about to pass on the one guy doing it right.

5. Toy Story 3 - Dir. Lee Unkrich

Do I need to explain why any new Pixar film is a reason for celebration? With a string of modern classics (I'm going to politely ignore Cars) culminating with the recently Best Picture nominated Up, Pixar is on a run of success to rival Disney's golden age of the early forties or the early nineties animation renaissance that peaked with Beauty and the Beast. It's hard to imagine a new Toy Story will end their winning streak.

4. Cemetery Junction - Dir. Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant

Separately the writing/directing team of Gervais and Merchant are hit and miss. Gervais's stabs at Hollywood stardom have lacked his trademark edge, while Merchant is paying his acting dues playing second banana to the Rock in The Tooth Fairy. Together they are practically the Lennon/McCartney of comedy, producing two unimpeachably great TV shows (The Office, Extras) and one hilarious record-breaking podcast (The Ricky Gervais Show). Cemetery Junction is their first foray into feature filmmaking.

3. True Grit - Dir. The Coen Brothers

Due at the end of the year, this is the second version of the novel True Grit, the first version of which won John Wayne an Oscar. Jeff Bridges is slated to take over the John Wayne role in the Coen's version. To repeat, that is Jeff "the Dude" Bridges reuniting with the Coen brothers. If you need more convincing than that to get excited about this film, I don't know what to tell you.

2. Inception - Dir. Christopher Nolan

To say Christopher Nolan is on a roll is a massive understatement. Nolan has directed five quality films in a row, starting with the modern mystery gold standard Memento, and climaxing with 2008's megahit The Dark Knight, which you may have heard was not half-bad. Judging by the mind-blowing trailer for his new film it is not out of the realm of possibility that he has found a way to top himself. Also, it looks like Nolan has managed to assemble one of the best casts, well, ever.

1. Shutter Island - Dir. Martin Scorsese

Some of your snootier film writers will tell you Scorsese is past his Taxi Driver/Raging Bull prime and a new film from him is not the big occasion I make it out to be. I'm having none of that. Even one of Scorsese's misfires like Gangs of New York has more vitality than the average month's worth of major Hollywood productions, and the same cineastes who today are dismissing Scorsese's current output, will be falling all over each other in ten year's time to declare films like Bringing Out the Dead and The Aviator overlooked masterpieces. All this is a roundabout way of saying that Scorsese is pretty much the living embodiment of film as an art form, and, if you care the least little bit about cinema, when he releases a film you go.

As for Shutter Island, the trailer seems fantastically unhinged, suggesting that Scorsese, having finally won his Oscar, feels liberated to follow his instincts in any bug-nuts direction they lead. In case you were wondering, the formula goes Wild Scorsese = Awesome Scorsese.

Did I miss anything that looks great? Let me know in the comments.

Razzies & The Cinematic Crimes of 2009

As they do every year the day before the Oscar nominations, the Razzies announced their slate of the damned this Monday. Worst Movie nominees range from ill-conceived cash grabs like Land of the Lost to lumbering behemoths like Transformers 2 to soul-stealing gazes into the abyss of human suffering like All About Steve.

The average viewer five minutes into All About Steve

I managed to successfully avoid all of 2009's Razzie honorees. But rather then let my worst offenders of 2009 get off scott-free, I'm calling them out here. These are the films and performances of the past year that sapped my spirit and irreparably damaged my belief in a loving God.

Worst Movie: The Men Who Stare at Goats

Goats are never not funny, right?

If you want to judge a film's badness by its squandered potential then The Men Who Stare at Goats is a film for the ages. The filmmakers began with an allegedly true story about the Army's attempts to train a legion of psychic warriors. They then filled the cast with ringers like George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Ewan McGregor, and Jeff Bridges. My guess is after that they lit up some celebratory cigars and started clearing space on the mantel for all the awards that were sure to come rolling in for their surefire satirical masterpiece. What could go wrong?

Well, for starters, the film cannot settle on an attitude towards its main characters. Goats holds them up to mockery as a bunch of deluded buffoons one minute only to turn around the next minute and ask you to root for them as good-hearted crusaders. It also goes back on forth on whether the mysticism presented in the film is a bunch of New Age gobbledygook or honest spirtuality held hostage by the big bad military complex. Imagine Dr. Strangelove if every few minutes Kubrick presented the stockpiling of nuclear weapons as not such a bad thing, and you will get a feel for what it's like to watch this film.

Goats meanders incoherently from scene to pointless scene taking their dippy mess of a story and piling on clunky, unearned sentiment (They're freeing the poor, trapped goats! Clooney has cancer!) and clunky, unearned political statements (Torture bad!). God help me, I think the goats are even symbolic for things.

The biggest sin of all is that the film is just plain not funny. The filmmakers think its comic gold to drop a Star Wars reference every time there is a stretch of dead air. They end up dropping a lot of Star Wars references.

Worst Actor: Zac Efron in Me and Orson Welles

"Zac, in this scene I want you to show that your character is nervous yet excited. Or you could just make that face. Like you have in every scene so far."

I came out of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles convinced that Welles' portrayer Christian McKay was a brilliant breakout star. On later consideration, it may just be that one cannot help but look like a whirligig of creative genius opposite Efron, whose performance is straight out of the Sears catalogue school of acting.

It is testament to Linklater's film that the whole production doesn't get sucked into the charisma black hole at its center. Efron isn't completely awful (see: worst actress). He's just a total blank in a part that required some youthful charm at minimum. Unless it was Linklater's plan to have the Mercury Theater Company appear vibrant and alive next to Efron's mannequin-like presence. In which case, mission accomplished, sir.

Worst Director: Woody Allen for Whatever Works

No matter how badly burned I get by the middling crap he's been churning out since the turn of the century, I don't think I will ever stop shelling out good money for Woody Allen films. So many of his films make up the foundation of my love of cinema that I've granted him a lifetime pass. And abuse that pass he does with Whatever Works, a film which runs through the same old scenes and topics we've seen in literally dozens of other Allen movies, only this time without coming within a mile of believability.

Whatever Works is as bad as anything Woody has ever done including Hollywood Ending and Scoop. It is so bad it makes you question whether Woody has permanently misplaced his gifts. If history repeats, this is Woody's cue to release an almost-great film like Match Point or Vicky Christina. A film that is just good enough to get us back in line for his next phoned-in flop. Thank you sir, may I have another.

Worst Actress: Malin Akerman in Watchmen

Malin Akerman: Shown here being outacted

The makers of Watchmen claim that they waited until special effects technology advanced far enough to do justice to all the wonders of the graphic novel. It is disheartening then that the film manages to create a credible alternate reality, complete with all-powerful Dr. Manhattan, only to watch as Malin Akerman is defeated in scene after scene by the challenge of playing a normal person talking in a room.

Where to begin with this performance? How about the fact that she seems less convincingly human than the detached man-deity played by Billy Crudup? How about Akerman's laughable scenes as a supposed tough, ass-kicking superhero? I might go with the fact that she shows less emotional range than the guy with the Rorschach mask over his face for 85% of the movie. Akerman also distinguishes herself by participating in the most unintentionally hilarious sex scene since Munich.

Simply put, Akerman gives the most incompetent performance I can remember seeing in a major motion picture. Whenever she was on screen I was distracted by my attempts to figure out how she landed such a plum role in the first place. Are there no other pretty actresses left in Hollywood?

Worst Screenplay: Richard Curtis - Pirate Radio

Cue the montage!

You know what was awesome? The sixties. There simply hasn't been enough films about young people enjoying sex, drugs, and rock and roll while all the square old fuddy-duddies grumble about these darn kids with their devil music and do spit takes when The Kinks come blaring over the radio.

According to writer Richard Curtis this is such a blazingly original idea it doesn't need characters or a story. Curtis squanders a killer cast by having them do little more than shout "Let's rock!" and cut to all the English kiddies jumping on their mattresses while the soundtrack blasts the same sixties classics we hear all day in car commercials. I'd wager a good thirty minutes of screen time is spent watching teenagers dance in their bedrooms.

Throw in a smattering of sanctimony about the power of music, some off-the-shelf sexual hijinx, and a bunch of cartoonishly evil government censors who want to shut down pirate radio, including one named, I kid you not, Mr. Twatt, and presto: You have a movie so unnecessary it makes the Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel seem urgent.

Oscar Nominations: All You Need to Know

The Good:

• They didn't land a perfect ten, but by and large the Academy showed surprisingly good taste with the expanded field of nominees. They even went out of their way to include films such as A Serious Man and District 9 which are smaller and stranger than their usual fare. Well done. My hat's off to you.
• The writer's branch truly outdid themselves this time. Not only did they nominate ten superior screenplays without a bum pick in the bunch, but they managed to stay immune to any pressure to jump on the box office bandwagon and nominate James Cameron' clunky, derivative script for Avatar. Bonus points for having the savvy to remember the brilliant In the Loop.
• Here's to the Academy for resisting the same old stuff, in Best Picture anyway. The Oscar bait films that usually gobble up nominations, quality be damned, all came up short this year. Prestige pics like Invictus, Nine, and The Lovely Bones all dead on arrival outside the acting categories and a few stray technical noms.
• Pixar finally gets its due. After a string of masterpieces, including WALL-E and Ratatouille, all failed to break out of the animation ghetto, Up finally became Pixar's first nominee for Best Picture, only the second animated film ever to do so after Beauty and the Beast in 1991.
• Speaking of overdue, three cheers to Christopher Plummer finally landing his first nomination at the age of eighty for playing Tolstoy in The Last Station. Plummer has been giving quality performances from The Sound of Music in 1965 through to modern classics like The Insider (99) and The New World (05).

About damn time.

The Bad:

• Oh Sweet Suffering Jesus, they nominated The Blind Side. Come on, Academy! Be a little discerning. You're supposed to be professionals. I'm not a total snob. Precious and Avatar may not have made my ten, but I won't deny their nominations represent a significant group of people who consider them among the most deserving films of 2009. The vote for The Blind Side represents the most complacent and superficial of voters. The voters who like voting for nice films about nice people and who never bothered to throw in the screener for The Messenger because it looked "too depressing".
• The complete shut out for Where the Wild Things Are stings. Such an orginal, daring production, it could have rightly shown in up in any number of categories including Best Cinematography, Costumes, Director, and Adapted Screenplay for the beautiful job they did adapting the spare children's classic into a full movie.

Maybe if it had been in 3D

• And, while we're at it, jeers to the acting branch for being such a bunch of pushovers. While the writing branch was seeking out worthy nominees in unlikely films, the actors were larding up there categories with some of the most boring choices available. They managed to ignore such exciting work as Melanie Laurent and Diane Kruger in Basterds, Paul Schneider and Abbie Cornish in Bright Star, Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles, and nearly anyone from the supporting casts of In the Loop, The Hurt Locker, or An Education. Meanwhile folks like Morgan Freeman or Meryl Streep coast in for some really unexceptional work on name recognition. They even nominated the wrong Matt Damon performance, inexplicably nominating his forgettable role in Invictus while ignoring his killer comic work in The Informant.

The Trivial:

• Lee Daniels became the second ever black person nominated for Best Director while Kathryn Bigelow became the fourth ever woman nominated in that category.
• Pixar continued its dominance of the animation category with its seventh nomination for Best Animated film. Every film Pixar has released since the inception of the category has been nominated and it has won the award four times. Up also became the sixth Pixar film nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
• Wallace and Gromit picked up their fifth nomination in the animated short category. Don't bet against them.

They Will Crush You

• Other nomination totals: Meryl Streep picked up her record-extending 16th acting nomination. The Coens picked up two more nods today bringing their career total to 11 nominations. Randy Newman was nominated for no less than his 18th and 19th awards in the music categories.
• District 9 is the first Best Picture nominee to be part Mockumentary.
• The Hurt Locker would be the first war film to win Best Picture since Platoon in 1986 (If you don't count Gladiator, Braveheart, or Lord of the Rings as war films, which I don't.)
• Avatar and District 9 became only the 4th and 5th sci-fi Best Picture nominees ever, adding there names to a list that includes ET, A Clockwork Orange, and Star Wars. No sci-fi film has ever won Best Picture.
• Every Best Actress nominee is playing a real woman or a character based on a real woman.
• If you look closely you'll notice that Mike Myers, Tim McGraw, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey, Evangeline Lilly, and The Office's BJ Novak can now all claim to having acted in a Best Picture nominee. Let that sink in.

The full list.

Serious Win: Director's Guild

This Saturday Kathryn Bigelow took the Best Director's prize from the DGA for her direction of The Hurt Locker. It's worthing pausing for a moment to acknowledge that for all the endless talk of box office, momentum, and popular appeal that exactly the right person won for exactly the right film and for no other reason than her film was a superior piece of craftsmanship. Let's hope that this epidemic of good taste lasts through the Oscars.

Review: Crazy Heart

Before I saw Crazy Heart I was sure I did not need to see any more films about alcoholics, especially films about alcoholic musicians. After watching a drunken Joaquin Phoenix stomp through the woods like a boozy Frankenstein in Walk the Line I was positive I had seen all I needed to on the subject. The genre even had its own parody in Walk Hard with a drug-crazed John C. Reilly rampaging through the streets half-naked, overturning cars. But in Crazy Heart Jeff Bridges and writer/director Scott Cooper demonstrate that even the most worn cliches are good for one more spin if they are executed with the attention to detail shown here, and for the most part Crazy Heart works, even when you hear the same old plot creaking away under the surface.

Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake, a country music has-been currently playing dives and bowling alleys, treading on his fading fame for all the free drinks it can buy. Bad Blake has been circling the drain for a long time before the movie starts and the majority of the film is a waiting game to see when and how Bad is finally going to hit bottom.

The film succeeds most in these early sequences, documenting life on the bottom rung of the showbiz ladder. It is here Bridges provides a master class in acting, playing this shambling wreck of a man without a trace of vanity. All the details ring true, from the way Bridges loosens his belt at every opportunity to accommodate his expanding gut, to the way his groupies have started to creep into their mid-forties. I particularly enjoyed the way that Bad, even at the bottom, retains the ego of someone who knows he is the best. Watching him wrangle with a condescending roadie over his sound mix is one of the film's highlights.

We watch as Bad attempts to navigate through the days spending as little time as possible sober, but without getting too drunk to stand. At the start of the film, Bad is still clinging to his status as a functioning alcoholic. He may have to slip back stage during a performance to dive retching, head-first into a garbage can, but he fishes his shades out of the vomit, wipes them off, and troops back on stage to finish his set.

In all of these scenes Bridges is utterly convincing, never playing up the alcoholism, instead playing the gifted man whose personality and talent are warped by his addiction. Unlike other great actors like Russell Crowe or Johnny Depp who seem to morph into different people with each role, Bridges always seems to be playing Bridges. It is not until we look back over a career that encompasses roles as diverse as the President, Starman, and The Dude that we realize his range. Bridges is an actor deserving of the national treasure status applied to the likes of Streep and DeNiro.

Into Bad's life come two people who break up what was certain to be an uninterrupted slide into oblivion. Colin Farrell as Tommy Sweet, Bad's former back-up musician turned superstar, and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Jean, an aspiring music writer looking for an interview with the old legend and a potential love interest. Colin Farrell's scenes work better, with the hot shot young star defies expectations by being a pretty nice guy. Tommy harbors a lot of admiration for his former boss despite what was clearly a grueling time working for him in the old days. Bad Blake is in no condition to accept generosity and can only seethe with bitterness and humiliation when Tommy offers to let Bad open for him. Bad's unconcealed irritation when Tommy joins him on stage for a duet is priceless.

It is worth noting that with his quietly engaging supporting turn here, along with his quality performances in The New World and In Bruges, Farrell has turned his career around. His presence in a film once screamed, "Avoid at all costs!" as he starred in such disposal dreck as SWAT, Daredevil, and (shudder) Alexander. Now his name on the credits promises superior work.

It is in the scenes with Maggie Gyllenhaal that the film steps wrong and never quite finds its footing again. I've been a fan of Gyllenhaal's in the past but she seems lost in this part. Maybe the script is to blame since it requires her to be both a clear-eyed realist and a romantic fool. Gyllenhaal eyes seem to shout from behind the character that she is smarter than the woman she is playing. We keep waiting to find out what is wrong with this woman that causes her to trust Bad so ill-advisedly, and it's frustrating to watch a character who has no inkling of disasters we can see coming a mile away.

Contrast this with the relationship between Marisa Tomei and Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, for example, and it throws Crazy Heart's flaws into sharp relief. In that film Marisa's stripper understood Rourke's down-and-out wrestler from the start and was painfully reluctant to let such a damaged man into her life. But you could also see why she felt for the big lug, and how the situation in her own life that was not so different from his. You bought it top to bottom.

In Crazy Heart Gyllenhaal's writer, a woman who has already survived one bad marriage, recognizes Bridges as a mess from the start and still she falls for him like a star-struck teenager. I'm not saying that it is impossible for such a pretty young thing to find something appealing in the over-the-hill star who can still write a beautiful tune, especially when said star is played by someone as charismatic as Bridges. But here we have a man who is soaked in alcohol 24/7 and who wakes up each morning lying on the bathroom floor whimpering like the foot of Death is pressing on his neck. It takes a certain kind of woman to look at that and see a babysitter.

It doesn't help matters that Robert Duvall is on hand in a small part to remind everybody about Tender Mercies, his flawless film about another has-been alcoholic country singer. Films like that and The Wrestler cast long shadows over Crazy Heart. They dug deep on larger themes of loss, love, understanding, success, and regret. Crazy Heart touches on those themes as well, but only glancingly. There is an effective scene where Bad calls an estranged son he hasn't spoken to in decades. It works, but only as an example of an obvious plot device, well-executed, never mustering anything as delicate, and poetic as this scene.

Verdict: Jeff Bridges makes this worth seeing all by himself. It is a standout performance in an already distinguished career. Outside of his work the film never goes as deep as it could, and the romantic scenes fall jarringly flat. Yet there is still enough to admire in the authentic portrayal of the country music scene as well as some wonderful original music, so that Bridges is not completely on his own. 7 out of 10.

Best Picture Free-For-All

This is just about the time in years past when the Best Picture category would be all locked up. Film watchers would be toying with the idea of an upset here or there, but the ever-expanding glut of early awards groups makes sizing up the Oscar race all too easy, and the Academy would deliver the predicted five like clockwork. This year would be no exception, were it not for the fact that for the first time since Casablanca won in 1944 the Best Picture field has been expanded to ten films, meaning past the first five or six nominees any combination of over a dozen films is suddenly in play. If Billy Crystal ever returns to host he will surely collapse from exhaustion in the first fifteen minutes trying to cover all of them with cutesy song parodies.

Personally, I am thrilled to finally have some suspense hang over the nominees. Over the last decade, I can only spot two genuine uspets, the snubbing of The Dark Knight and Dreamgirls in favor of The Reader and Letters from Iwo Jima, respectively. Every other line-up was a cinch to call weeks in advance.

Many have harumphed that this diminishes the honor by lowering the bar for an Oscar nomination. But I don't see any problem with widening the field for the biggest category of the night. It didn't hurt Casablanca's reputation any defeating nine films instead of four, and if it means that a few popular films of questionable quality squeeze through the widened gates (cough*blind side*cough) then it also means some small worthy films that would otherwise be overlooked can eke out enough votes as well. For those deserving titles the nomination could mean the difference between obscurity and millions of viewers over the decades.

The Locks

The main rationale given for expanding the Best Picture field was that the Academy was worried snubs for big hits like WALL-E and The Dark Knight were marginalizing them, essentially turning them into a glitzier version of the Indie Spirit Awards. "Nobody's seen the films!" was the constant refrain. It is amusing then that this year's sure things not only include legitimate box office hits like Up in the Air and Inglourious Basterds, but also the Galactus-Eater-of-Worlds-sized hit Avatar. Left at five it still would have been the most populist list of nominees since Lord of the Rings was cleaning up a few years back.

Avatar: Strange, but it was not even two months ago when people were debating whether Avatar would be an epic flop. The trailer received mixed reaction, James Cameron was running around giving interviews in a made-up gibberish language, and a team of theoretical mathematicians were working around the clock to figure out exactly how much dough was spent on this big blue turkey. I distinctly recall dismissing it as "Planet of the Blue Jar-Jar's" myself. Now with Cameron set to best the box-office record he set himself with Titanic on the same day Avatar gets nominated for Best Picture, Cameron can now be excused if he wants to climb out on the bow of a ship DiCaprio-style and, arms outstretched, shout in Na'vi for all of his doubters to suck it. Avatar is not a sure thing for a win yet, but nominations don't come any more locked.

Inglourious Basterds: Oscar voters usually like their war films a combination of dour, sober, and gravely serious. Maybe with a touch of hard-earned uplift at the end. So when this ripping yarn landed in cinemas in the late Summer gleefully rewriting history and, sin of sins, making a war movie fun, it seemed way too oddball for the Academy to embrace. It's a pleasant surprise then that Basterds proved just too engaging to ignore, and voters have stuck by it all year. Tuesday morning it will rightly be included as one of the defining films of 2009.

The Hurt Locker: The critical consensus choice of the year. Topical without being overtly political or preachy. Thrilling without sacrificing smarts. The Hurt Locker has dominated the early awards culminating in stunning pair of wins at the influential Producer's and Director's guilds. It would likely continue to steamroll to a win if it didn't have a major Achilles Heel in its poor box office performance. It topped off at a meager twelve million over the Summer, about three million under its budget. Winning would be an impressive feat, making it the lowest grosser in four decades to take the top prize.

Precious: Every year the Oscars seemingly sets aside one slot for the break-out indie hit of the year, think Juno, Capote or Lost in Translation. This year that film is undoubtably Precious. It hit all the right marks: It has a social message, a fervent block of critical support, it got people talking, stirred a little controversy, it has The Oprah pushing it, and crucially, it made a big profit on its tiny budget. It's in.

Up in the Air: Before Hurt Locker took the lion's share of critic's prizes and Avatar turned a 3D Fern Gully into a global sensation, Up in the Air was the film to beat. Its heat has cooled a bit but those counting it out completely should look twice. Up in the Air is right in the Oscar wheelhouse, with the heart and human story its competition lacks. If Annie Hall can take down Star Wars, Up in the Air can edge out Avatar.

The Safe Bets

The Academy doesn't release voting totals so there is no way to know for certain which films just miss the nominations. (Rightfully so, if you ask me. If you want to diminish the honor let the public know the winner only beat the competition by two votes.) That said it is usually not hard to spot the films that landed in the sixth or seventh spots and, luckily for these films, this year sixth or seventh is more than enough.

An Education: After the Toronto Film Festival this film seemed like a formidable contender for year end honors. Then its box office stalled, The Hurt Locker hogged all the accolades, and suddenly it was just lucky to be included. Still, its a high quality film with a star-making lead performance from Carey Mulligan and a SAG nomination for the ensemble that shows it hasn't been forgotten by voters. Should make a top ten with ease.

Invictus: If some mad scientist filmmaker were to attempt to Frankenstein together the spare parts of other prestige pictures into a perfect Oscar bait monster designed only to win nominations the results would look a lot like Invictus. A Clint Eastwood directed biopic starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela AND it's an underdog sports story to boot? The Oscars were probably halfway to the engravers when people finally saw the film, and woops, it kinda stinks. Not horribly, mind you, but like Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers it is the kind of mediocre snooze-fest that is everybody's ninth choice for Best Picture and probably ends up with a nomination for Best Sound Effects Editing and nothing else. But with ten nominees there will likely be enough lazy voters to push this through, if only so it can sit on the list of nominees and look prestigious. Plus, Clint will show up!

Free For All

After those seven the last three are completely up for grabs. Any combination of the following ten films is completely plausible.

Up: By all rights, Up should be a contender for the top prize. A huge box office and critical hit it's an animated film that still had the adults weeping on their Junior Mints. Pixar is due. Except: There's some people who simply will not vote for an animated film. If someone would care to explain to me the difference between Up and largely CGI-animated film like Avatar I'd be happy to explain to them why they are stupid.

A Serious Man: The Coens have a big base of support in the Academy. They won Best Picture just two years ago for No Country for Old Men, and A Serious Man is one of their best reviewed films to date, a masterpiece many called it. Except: It's a strange film to put it lightly. The Coen's supporters don't turn up with every film.

District 9: This breakout hit from a small budget it is exactly the kind of film the field was expanded to include. With its political overtones it seems possibly arthouse compared to something like Star Trek. Except: It is still a weirdo sci-fi film with alien bugs eating cat food. Well outside the Academy's comfort zone.

500 Days of Summer: A well-reviewed indie hit -it has its supporters. Except: It is awfully slight, and the critical support was solid but not overwhelming. Even its supporters might not be passionate about it, and passion counts with Oscar's ranked voting system.

The Messenger: A powerful film, it is about the Iraq war without being controversial. The buzzed about performances have people watching it. Except: It's small, small, small. The Messenger has yet to crack a million at the box office. Even with ten slots that's tiny.

Where the Wild Things Are: Maybe they want to reward a daring film that took big risks and delivered a successful, moving film based on a beloved children's classic. Except: Remember when I said that District 9 was too strange? Half the cast of this film is giant puppets. Plus, it has to share the open-minded voters with Up.

Star Trek: If the Oscars wants to reward big crowd pleasers look no further. Star Trek got great reviews and made enough scratch to relaunch a flat-lining franchise. Except: It is still the eleventh film in a franchise. Voters looking to reward a big hit have plenty of more prestigious choices.

The Blind Side: What better way to pander to the viewers than to nominate this breakout tearjerker hit? Except: If the Academy doesn't want to turn into the Spirit Awards they don't exactly want to turn into the People's Choice Awards either. The Blind Side got some savagely bad reviews. Honoring Sandra Bullock is plenty without having to honor the whole cornball production.

Nine: This could go toe-to-toe with Invictus for the title of most Oscar-friendly production ever. It's based on a broadway classic! Directed by Chicago's Rob Marshall! Starring a cast of previous Oscar winners and nominees! Sophia Loren even shows up! They should just skip the regular Oscars and go straight to the Lifetime Achievement Oscar for this. How can it possibly miss? Except: It sucks. That's how. Nine is sitting at a 37% at Rotten Tomatoes. For perspective 2012 managed 38%. It's ten nominees, not fifty.

Crazy Heart: This film has picked up serious steam with Jeff Bridges now the front runner to win Best Actor and vocal supporters such as Roger Ebert pushing the film as a whole. Bridges' buzz has everybody checking it out. Except: They will probably feel honoring Bridges is a suitable way to honor the film as a whole. It's still awfully small for a nomination and films like The Wrestler covered similar turf more effectively without landing in the big show.

Final Prediction

With ten possible slots everything after the locks is a shot in the dark. It's near impossible to rule anything out. Julie and Julia, Bright Star, A Single Man, In the Loop, The White Ribbon, The Hangover. Any of these could have devoted supporters waiting in silence to push their choice into contention. I even saw Peter Hammond predicting Michael Jackson's This it It over at Movie City News. Having said that:

• Avatar
• The Blind Side
• District 9
• An Education
• The Hurt Locker
• Inglourious Basterds
• Invictus
• The Messenger
• Precious
• Up in the Air