Line Reading Hall of Fame #2

"Oh, you English are soooooo superior, aren't you?"

Three Wishes

I need a break from discussing who should or shouldn't win tonight, so here are three hopes for tonight that have nothing to do with winning and losing.

1 -No Dead People Popularity Contest

Repeat after me: "Please hold your applause until the end." How hard is that?

Every year the excruciating low point of the ceremony is the ghoulish rising and falling applause as the audience fails to recognize a series of writers, cinematographers and other behind the scenes craftsmen. Hey, how about just muting the sound of the audience for TV viewer and playing us some sad music. It would really help along the credibility of a show established to honor the craft of film if the most distinguished off-camera talent isn't met with crickets while a shot of Leslie Nielsen brings the house down.

2 - No King's Speech Stammering Jokes  

Please, God. It's going to be tough enough getting through the evening if King's Speech starts to sweep without hearing an endless series of "Boy, now I know how King George felt!" and "I wish Geoffrey Rush was here to help me!" Spare us. Especially if you plan to make a big deal about how inspiring Speech is, no turning around and treating us to your best Porky Pig. 

3 - Go Off Prompter

Of course everything would go smoothly if all the presenters hit their marks and read their lines, but who's interested in things going smoothly? This is the Oscars. We want to honor the best in cinema, sure, but we also want schadenfreude, fuck ups, and immeasurable levels of tackiness. So forget that canned banter on the prompter. Who are the producers to try to contain your valuable voice? You were in Valentine's Day, dammit! The world needs to hear your views on Tunisia. Or whatever. Just start ad-libbing. I'm sure you'll come up with something.

Final Thoughts

Picture - I can no longer tell if there is actually a close race between Social Network and King's Speech or if the incredibly vocal, badly jilted Social Network fans have merely succeeded in creating that impression despite what is really an open and shut victory for Speech. My gut says close race. My head says King Speech by a comfortable margin. My gut really loved Social Network so its judgement is highly suspect. Prediction: The King's Speech.

You wouldn't know it to read movie sites over the last two months but there are actually eight other movies nominated for best picture. I've said that Black Swan is my favorite of the year, but if I were casting a ballot that would not be my number one. That vote would go to Toy Story 3.

Three reasons. First: At a certain level of quality ranking certain films against each other becomes silly. Out of the nominated ten I think Swan, Social Network, Toy Story and Fighter would all be fantastic winners, but Toy Story is the one that is most undeniably a new classic - a film that's going to be enjoyed 50 or 100 years from now. Second: An opportunity to stick it to the people who look down on animation as a lesser films. Third: How awesome would that be?! It would set off a nuclear explosion in the heart of conventional wisdom. From then on every declaration of lock status would have to be followed with, "Remembering Toy Story 3, of course." Less certainty, more quality. That's what I'd vote for.

Director - I think this is a much more open race than Best Picture since, despite Speech's front runner status, the Academy almost always goes for recognizable names in best director and Fincher's auteur cred far outranks Speech's Tom Hooper. That said, I still think Hooper will be the victor for reasons I recently spelt out. The simplest outcome is probably the most likely. They loved King's Speech. It made them smile and cry and they got to do their one millionth World War II victory lap. Therefore Tom Hooper wins.

I will spend the night holding out hope for a Polanski-style, left field win for Aronofsky.

Actor, Actress, and Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay - Firth. Portman. Bale. Social Network. Over. Done. Sewn up pretty much from the second the respective movies hit theaters. They should be given as free spots on Oscar Ballots the way Wheel of Fortune concedes RSTNLE to the contestants.

I've read numerous theories about how Annette Bening or Geoffrey Rush are going to surge ahead in the eleventh hour. Not buying it. If such an event occurs all are welcome to return here to dance a merry jig in the comments and exhaustively detail my feeble predictive skills and remind everybody how YOU saw it coming the whole time.

No complaints about any of these winners. Although I would probably place Firth behind Eisenberg and Franco and maybe Bridges on my ballot, he is still an entirely worthy choice (Even if Firth's work here doesn't lay a finger on his performance last year in A Single Man, but such is Oscar.)

Best Original Screenplay - Probably just as locked up for King's Speech as the above categories, but if Speech isn't headed for a sweep one of the other popular nominees like Inception or Kids Are All Right could knock it off. Wouldn't bet on it though. Another Year is the only one of these five that would make my ballot so that's what I will be rooting for even though Mike Leigh never wins, he just gets nominated in order to class up the joint.

Supporting Actress - Here I'm going to go out on a limb and say Hailee Steinfeld upsets Leo. Every person who talked to me about the film singled out her performance as their favorite part of the movie, so I'm going with my gut and betting on the newcomer. If it happens I'll feel bad for Leo, who was excellent, but I'll feel just as bad for Steinfeld whose victory would be tarnished by writers giving credit to the ridiculous controversy about Leo's ads instead of Steinfeld's wonderful performance.

My favorite, Amy Adams, is probably in the running, since I imagine it's a very close race across the board, although it's hard to imagine Weaver or Bonham Carter pulling out a win.

Costumes, Art Direction, Cinematography - King's Speech is a perfectly enjoyable, handsomely mounted film. I'm totally resigned to the idea that it will win Picture as a reward for being pleasant and unchallenging and mildly uplifting. What I cannot stomach, however, is the idea that Academy will lazily check off Speech all the way down the ballot instead of noting the far more impressive visuals in films like Inception and True Grit. King's Speech is the least impressive nominee in each of these categories and selecting it as the best of the year there amounts to an abdication of duty on the part of the Academy. So why do I think that's exactly what will happen?

If only they'd worked in old footage of Hitler

Film Editing - I have not a clue. Swan and 127 Hours may have less support but they compensate by having showier editing, and voters have shown a willingness to stray outside the frontrunners for flashy work in the past, like wins for Bourne and The Matrix. I'll just predict Social Network since it combines a showy fractured structure and wide support overall, but honestly, nothing but The Fighter would surprise me.

I'm still shocked Inception isn't nominated here.

Sound Effects, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects. Inception. Right?

Makeup - I love this category for giving the world such accurate phrases as "The Oscar-nominated Norbit." I'm betting on The Wolfman since they usually just go with the film the piles enough latex onto the actors to give them a lifetime of neck and back aches. The Way Back looks to be the subtler work, but the last time the Academy went for an artistic merit over excess was Topsy-Turvy, and that wasn't up against a monster movie.

Less is More                             More is More

Song, Score - For song, I'll say Toy Story since it's a fun tune and I think the other nominees are a fairly bland bunch. Plus it's a chance to give Toy Story a second Oscar, which doesn't hurt. For Score, I can't imagine they go for something so subtle as Trent Reznor's Social Network score, so its probably between the memorably booming work on Inception and King's Speech. 

I'd vote for Social Network, but I'd be happy with Inception. I'm predicting King's Speech. This is getting depressing.


Documentary Feature: I can't imagine they'd be cool enough to vote Exit Through the Gift Shop. They've been quaking for weeks, worried that Banksy will show up in a monkey mask and give Mickey Rooney a heart attack or something similarly undignified because God forbid entertainment should break out and disturb all the thanking of agents. Inside Job is the safe choice.

Poster Girl

Shorts - I went into depth on these already here. For the record my predictions are Doc: Poster Girl, Live Action: Na Wewe, Animated: Madagascar, A Journey - although they are all far from locks.

Spiltsville

As you can see from this prediction chart over at Awards Daily the majority of Oscar watchers are predicting a split between the picture and director Oscars with The King's Speech taking the big prize but with Social Network's David Fincher still managing to grab the trophy for directing.

While such a scenario would please me infinitely more than a Speech Sweep there's one nagging question that makes me wonder about the chances, namely: Has a Picture/Director split ever been predicted in advance? Or are they exist exclusively under the heading Wild Card Surprises?

I delve into the subject at The Film Experience looking over the modern history of picture/director splits as well as predicted splits that never happened.

The Short Films: Part III

Hitting iTunes today for purchase are the Oscar nominated short films. If you're are curious which shorts are worthy of your time and cash, or if you are just want to know which of these mysterious titles to mark down in your Oscar pool, head over to The Film Experience where I've been going through the categories one at at time.

Sun Comes Up

I just finished this rundown on the documentary shorts which are so strong across the board we are witnessing that rarest of Oscar occurrences: the genuine five-way race. Check it out.

Review: Cedar Rapids

Is there anyone currently acting in movies with a better face than John C. Reilly? 

Obviously, I don't mean that he is the most attractive person in movies. Just that I often find myself wondering how such an interesting mug ever got past Hollywood's beauty police. Reilly's doughy, clown face always sets him apart out in the sea of taught, angular faces with prominent cheekbones.  That, along with his theatrical showmanship, make him a natural born character actor and the only choice to plain Dean ("Call me Deanz-y!") Ziegler - the cheerfully vulgar, perpetually drunk Dionysus of the annual Cedar Rapids conference of insurance salesmen. As good as the whole cast is here, and the ensemble performance is the main attraction, the movie more or less belongs to Reilly the second he strides on screen.

To Cedar Rapids also arrives Tim Lippe (pronounced "Lip-ee") played well by Ed Helms. Tim is a guy in his mid-thirties whose ideas about life have remained pretty much unaltered since they were locked in place around age twelve. He has never left his small Wisconsin home town and is working at the same insurance company where he got his first job running errands. He has never been on a plane, eyes alcoholic beverages warily, and is deeply impressed that his hotel has real honest-to-god palm trees next to pool. That his current love affair involves the grade school teacher he had a crush says all you need to know about his limited worldview.

The star salesman of Tim's company has just died under unspeakably scandalous conditions and Tim is dispatched to the conference with a long list of Do's - save the company, restore its wholesome reputation, win the coveted Two Diamond Award - and one single emphatic Don't - do not go anywhere near Dean Ziegler. Naturally Ziegler and Lippe end up sharing a room and it is not five minutes before Dean has decided that he and "Timbo" are to destined to become the very best of friends. 

More time need not be spent on the plot of Cedar Rapids. Suffice it to say Ziegler serves as instigator for a flurry of modestly-scaled debauchery including such firsts for Tim as first time drunk, first fight, and first time sexual encounter with a woman within two decades of his own age. Part of the appeal of Cedar Rapids - or a flaw depending on whether or not you're amused - is how down to Earth all the shenanigans are. There is no Hangover-style tiger in the bathroom, no car chases, and the big fight scene mostly involves Helms being pummeled for a good thirty seconds. All the hijinks are more or less plausible for a group of middle-aged insurance salespeople.

I have no doubt that many moviegoers who are used to their big Hollywood comedies aggressively assaulting them with gags are going to label Cedar Rapids boring. It's not an explosive laugh riot and it isn't, with a few exceptions, trying to be. It's more of a smile movie, not a fall out of your chair laughing Animal House. You smile when John C. Reilly says a rapid series of inappropriate things during the morning pre-breakfast prayer. You smile when Lippe suffers a panic attack and gets stuck at the top of the climbing wall. And so on. For me, it worked. I smiled.

Cedar Rapids feels like a cousin of the films of that Maestro of the Midwest, Alexander Payne. (He was producer on this film) What director Miguel Arteta lacks in the depth and bite of Payne's films, he attempts to make up for in sweetness. The main charm of the film is in hanging out with the cast of comic pros who bring an unforced camaraderie to the material. They are all, when you get down to it, just likable people. Even blowhard Ziegler turns out to have more integrity and self-awareness than we first suspected, like when he confesses that he knows he is "kind of a jagoff."

Helms deserves praise for playing the character straight and not turning Lippe into a caricature. He is also not afraid to be unlikable in the first scenes of the film when he is such a close-minded boob that he  would be intolerable were it not for the underlying innocence. The big discovery - or I should say rediscovery - of the film is Anne Heche as Joan the wife and mother who uses Cedar Rapids as a vacation from the responsibilities of family life. After a decade of tabloid nonsense and substandard projects I had forgotten what a presence she can be on screen. I haven't seen Heche be this charismatic since 97's Wag the Dog. She brings a lot of depth to a not incredibly deep part and crucially makes us buy that a fox like Joan could go for a dweeb like Lippe not in the least because she has so little to choose from.

Cedar Rapids fills out its cast with a deep bench of comic ringers including Stephen Root, Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat, Reno 911's Thomas Lennon, Rob Cordry, and the always welcome Kurtwood Smith. You would hope a collection of talent this impressive would produce a new comic masterpiece. That's not the case. Rapids is a decidedly average movie. The third act takes the story in a disappointingly routine direction and they take more than one easy shot at the small town characters. Comedies up to the level of such gifted performers are hard to come by these days in Hollywood. It seems to me that these actors can either use their talents playing second banana to special effects in a big budget time-waster or they can get together to elevate projects like Cedar Rapids into something worth checking out. They have my gratitude for choosing the later.

Verdict: Cedar Rapids isn't going to challenge Airplane! for the title of funniest movie ever, but if you are the kind of viewer who can get into this movie's low key, and you enjoy seeing a great collection of comic actors get an opportunity to flex their muscles, then you could do a lot worse.  6 out of 10

The Shorts Part: II

Continuing our look through the Oscar nominated short films we go in depth into the Live Action nominees. This year there is a small scale version of the eternal Oscar battle between drama and comedy, with strong contenders from both genres. Check it out the full article at The Film Experience.

Luke Matheny's God of Love

The Short Films: Part I

When looking over your Oscar pool do you stare in bafflement at seemingly random collection of foreign names in the Short Film categories? If the answer is yes, or if you one of those lucky few who have managed to see the short film nominees and you are looking for a lively discussion, then head over to The Film Experience where I am going through all three short categories one at a time.

Not only will it fill you in on how to check off on your ballot, but it will give you a head's up on which shorts are worth dropping a few bucks for when they for sale on iTunes this Tuesday.

First up: The Animated Short Films 

Line Reading Hall of Fame #1

"Did you just call me Coltrane?"

"No."

"You didn't"

"No."

The Coen Brothers Riding High

Seven weeks into release and True Grit is still in the top ten at the box office. Topping 155 million it appears the brothers Coen have their first blockbuster on their hands. 

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The remake of an somewhat obscure western going up against a sequel to the biggest comedy hit of all time. But like Rooster facing down four gunmen, True Grit rode right into the fray, just recently overtaking Fockers' grosses after a month and a half, an outcome surely few predicted.

Are the days of the Coens as the beloved cult favorite of art house film lovers over for good and all?

One of my formative experiences as a budding teenage cinephile was witnessing the reaction to Fargo in 1995. I can't remember if I knew their names before then, but after that, loving the films of Joel and Ethan was one and the same as loving movies. I can clearly remember watching Siskel and Ebert as they flailed their arms about, practically weeping as they recounted the unmitigated euphoria they felt watching the film. I expected them to forgo thumbs altogether and simply end the review hugging and laughing and declaring, "Fargo! Fargo!" until they cut to commercial.

Still they remained an acquired taste for film lovers - a shorthand with rich to recognize other like-minded individuals: If they love Blood Simple they must be alright. Not that they didn't occasionally crossover to the average Joe Moviegoer with, say, Raising Arizona, but you could be sure that only fellow cinephiles had gone out of their way to see Barton Fink or really genuinely loved Miller's Crossing. These flicks are religion to film lovers, but even after Fargo you could be reasonably certain the majority of the public didn't know their name. No longer.

The Mainstreaming of the Coen Brothers

1991: Barton Fink wins the Cannes Film Festival and nets three Oscar nomination, the first for a Coen brothers production. Their place of honor among film lovers is cemented, but they are still anonymous to the general public.

1995: Fargo is a breakout hit, becoming a cultural touchstone with its portrayal "Minnesota nice". They nab their first Best Picture nomination losing to The English Patient, and win Oscars for Screenplay and Lead Actress. The brothers win a host of new fans although Fargo doesn't exactly set the box office on fire finishing the year at 67th behind such '96 titles as Muppet Treasure Island and Striptease. 

2000: Soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? becomes an out-of-nowhere, Grammy-winning, smash hit.

Somewhere between 2000 and 2002: The Big Lebowski goes from DOA flop to bona fide cultural phenomenon spawning a die-hard following to rival The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

2007 - No Country for Old Men is there biggest hit to date raking in Oscar for Best Picture but still never finishing higher than fifth at the box office.   

2008 - Buoyed by all-star cast Burn After Reading is their first film to top the box office opening weekend, edging out a Tyler Perry movie, no less.  

2009 - Despite making little impact at the box office A Serious Man still lands a Best Picture nod in the newly expanded category. Clearly the Coens have achieved favored status, like Scorsese, with a devoted following among Academy voters.

2010: After releasing a hugely popular, Johnny Cash-propelled trailer True Grit opens at Christmas time on over 3000 screens. Since then Grit has edged into the top 15 biggest grossers for 2010, threatening to bump Clash of the Titans down a notch. For perspective their previous biggest hit, No Country, finished in 36th place for the year with 74 million and change. No other film of theirs finished in the top fifty with their most recent film, A Serious Man, finishing at 145th. 

With any other director, now that they're raking in the big time cash we could expect them to announce they have signed on to direct some bloated comic book adaptation. Yet I don't expect to see anyone angrily clutching their Hudsucker Proxy DVD yelling "Sell Out!" any time soon. These are the guys, remember, who followed up the biggest successes of their career with a film as impenetrable as A Serious Man. Popularity has only made them more valuable. Who else has kept their artistic integrity so perfectly in tact on the way up the box office charts?

First Impressions - Notorious

Introducing a new feature: First Impressions. A look at our first glimpses of some of the screens greatest characters. First up, one of my favorite intros in film history: Cary Grant as Devlin in Hitchcock's Notorious.

Roughly three minutes into Notorious and we see Ingrid Bergman as Alicia Huberman hosting a small party. In the first scene we saw her father sentenced to twenty years in prison as a Nazi spy. Now, staged by Hitchcock in one unbroken shot, we see Alicia floating among her tipsy guests, affecting an air of indifference while she attempts to drink her troubles away.

Only we quickly notice that there is something odd about the construction of this shot. Hitch has placed a silhouetted figure prominently front and center with his back to us. The man sits motionless, saying and doing nothing, just observing. As the shot continues on without cutting pretty soon he is all the audience - and all Alicia - can look out.

Under the guise of offering everyone more booze Alicia addresses the mystery man. Still without cutting Hitch pushes in to emphasize the moment between the two of them.

Alicia: How 'bout you, handsome? Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

Even her boldness draws no response from the gentleman, although he does lift his glass - the first thing we've seen him do besides sit. The audiences increasing eagerness to know the importance of this person mirrors Alicia's curiosity at this handsome stranger in her home. Alicia attempts to play it cool:

Alicia: Well it doesn't matter. I like party crashers.

One of the other partygoers, the women staggering through the herky-jerky dance with the extremely intoxicated gentleman chimes in:

Women: He's not a party crasher. I brought him.

Our first bit of information on the figure, though it doesn't tell us much. Someone changes the subject to the cops following Alicia's every move.

Women #2: I wouldn't mind being followed by a cop.  

Alicia: I hate low underhanded people like policemen. pussyfooting after you...

This change of subject acts as artful foreshadowing since Alicia will end up as a person sneakier than any cop, a spy who marries her subject to get close to him. But for the purposes of this scene the subject hasn't changed at all. Alicia is still has a single-minded focus on "handsome" whom she keeps affixing with sly glances. 

The drunken dancing couple is a seemingly random touch but they serve a number of purposes. They introduce Alicia to us - and through framing to the mystery figure - as a heavy drinker by association, which will be important to her character. The man babbles about dishonest fish stories reinforcing the theme of duplicitousness. As for the talk of fishing, Alicia believes she has her hook in the mystery man and she is going to try to reel him in.

So much for playing it cool. An intoxicated Alicia brazenly addresses the figure, who has still said not a word:

Alicia: You know something? I like you.

For a fraction of second Alicia seems to forget the rest of the party is there lost in the eyes of the mystery figure. She snaps to, and that's that. Time for everyone to go.

Alicia: I'm very sorry you all have to go. It has been a perfectly hideous party. 

And with that the party starts to clear out Hitchcock pushes in one last time on the figure, until the back of his head fills the frame.

The entire scene has been about him and his quiet chemistry with Ingrid Bergman. We fade back in on what is almost the same shot we left on, only this time it's later in the evening and the camera turns to reveal Alicia and her mysterious guest. What man could possibly live up to expectations after such a build up?

Oh. Right.

It's many drinks later but he seems no worse for wear. He is entirely in control. The rest of the movie will involve his struggle to remain in control.

Alicia on the other hand is less successful at hiding her emotions, at least for now. Totally drunk, she is unashamedly staring.

It's difficult to imagine pulling off such a bold stylistic gambit without the stars of Grant and Bergman's caliber to make it work. Us mortals can have regular intros but with Cary Grant the audience needs a little time to prepare.

Wedding Fever

Head over to The Film Experience where my new post is up taking a look at the trailer for Kristen Wiig's new movie Bridesmaids and wondering, among other topics, if Hollywood will ever make a movie for women that does not focus on a wedding.

Review: Biutiful

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is a filmmaker to be reckoned with. There's no denying it.

You can feel him reaching for greatness in every inch of Biutiful. And while in certain stretches there's no question he's hitting career high-points, there's the unavoidable fact the same problems that interfered with 21 Grams and Babel are present again, raging in full force. The hope held by many that he would break free of them after parting ways with screenwriting partner Guillermo Arriaga are dashed here. The flaws are worse than ever, only arranged this time in chronological order instead of scrambled. What is it about Inarritu's films that leave me with an empty heart and a weight on my shoulders?

That standard answer is that they are miserable. Seriously, I defy to you to find one review on Rotten Tomatoes without some form of the word "miserable". Misery, miserable, miserabilist. There is undeniably truth to this. Suffering is to Inarritu's films what dancing is to Astaire and Rogers. Biutiful begins with funerals, poverty, cancer, sweatshops, and adultery and then it gets depressing. But there's got to be more to it than just downer material. I've never been one to shy away from sad movies and some of the bleakest are also the most fulfilling. From The Pianist, Umberto D, through Mike Leigh's Naked and right up to this year's Rabbit Hole. Unsparing, occasionally brutal films all of them, but I leave them feeling lifted up. Biutiful left me feeling beaten down.

Biutiful / Ikiru

In a lot of ways Biutiful mirrors Kurosawa's great Ikiru, only instead of a lead character with a death sentence trying to make up for a life wasted, this protagonist has a history of misdeeds to make up for. The protagonist in question is a low-level criminal named Uxbal, played in a performance of bottomless emotion by Javier Bardem. Uxbal works in Barcelona facilitating the hiring of cheap Chinese immigrant labor to work in sweatshops and construction sites. He is not an evil man, but he is more than willing to turn a blind eye to the consequences of how he earns a living. The rewards for this life are less than lucrative and he lives in a rundown slum with his two young children. The children's unstable mother is out of the picture since her manic depression and substance abuse makes her unfit to parent. Uxbal is more or less resigned to slog through this situation until a trip to the doctor suddenly imbues everything with a new urgency.

And did I mention Uxbal can communicate with the dead? The movie just casually throws that in as one more thing for him to deal with. He uses this skill to make a few extra bucks by dropping in on funerals to pass on a few last words from the recently deceased. Bardem's character doesn't appear to view this ability with much wonder, treating it at first as a particularly unpleasant way to make cash on the side, as if he had a night job unclogging toilets.

These story elements don't really work together as much as they are arranged as three roughly parallel tracks united by Uxbal's belated attempts to do good and a tone of oppressive sadness. The family storyline is most effective. Uxbal's need for a backup plan for his kids leads him to grant his repentant wife one more chance to reclaim her position in the household. There is even a brief window of happiness where it seems like there just might be hope for this family to pull itself together without everything falling apart as we certainly expect it to.

The supernatural element is the least successful. I see what Inarritu was aiming for and I think it was wise of him to mix it in to the story matter-of-factly giving it the same weight as all the other story threads, but at some point I think the film should acknowledge that this is kind of a big deal, don't you think? As it stands it's something of an afterthought, something that's referred to every half hour or so to remind the audience, "Oh, right. Dude can hear dead people." I think it's fair to ask if the script lacks focus if the whole communing-with-the-dead thing gets lost in the shuffle.

Bardem's performance in the lead role is far and away the best thing about Biutiful. I remember reading that Woody Allen said he wouldn't have even made Vicky Cristina Barcelona if he couldn't get Bardem for the lead, and watching him on screen you understand what he meant. Inarritu's film wouldn't work nearly as well as it does without Bardem's presence. He is compulsively watchable even in the dreariest moments, projecting at all times an intense soulfulness. He, along with the film's beautiful visuals, give the film a veneer of depth that the material doesn't necessarily support.

Also elevating the material is Maricel Alvarez as Marambra, the wildly unstable mother of Uxbal's children. She breathes live-wire energy into the material whenever she is on screen - energy that's lacking even in Bardem's performance since he's boxed into his tightly-coiled suffering. Alverez is playing a deeply-flawed person and atrocious parent but she avoids turning her into a hiss-able caricature. Instead she plays up her neediness and her despair in the face of her own uncontrollable mood swings. It's complex, convincing work and it would have been worthy of a surprise Oscar nomination to go with Bardem's.

Biutiful is far from a wipeout. You'd have to be a complete gargoyle not to feel some twinge of emotion in the film's closing scenes, and every so often Inarritu will give you a flash of the greatness the film could attain if he could marshal all the disparate elements into a cohesive whole. There's a smashingly filmed police raid on illegal street vendors, and a late-in-the-movie sequence in a nightclub that looks like it was shot on location in Hell. The craft of the film is pretty much impeccable down the line.

Yet in all Inarritu's post-Amores Perros films I don't walk out feeling like I've had a full meal. They have developed a kind of tunnel vision focus on pain that leaves out so much of the richness of life. In the end only faint echoes of the film's intended emotional impact reach the audience through the fog of artful despair.

Verdict: With some directors it's love at first frame. Sure you have the occasional spat (Burn After Reading or, say, Ready to Wear) but nothing dire. You're together for life. Then there are other filmmakers who are much more contentious. They're talent is too clear to be dismissed, but then so is their baggage. It's right up front, detracting from scene after scene until you shout, "Dammit, get it together. I want to love this." For me Inarritu is this second kind of director. He's clearly the real deal and one day I hope to emerge excitedly from a screening shouting that he has finally made the masterpiece he is obviously capable of. This is not that film. 5 out of 10

Serious Film Birthday Clip Show

Yes, Serious Film's first post was one year ago today! Pop the champagne! Or don't! Because champagne is expensive and I have yet to make a dime off of this thing!

Never mind that. This is a labor of love. Unpaid, broke-ass, moths-flying-out-of-empty-pockets love. Honestly, I feel like I'm just starting to get the hang of this blogging thing, so thanks to everyone who reads and comments and I hope you keep coming back in Year Two. I'm bursting with new ideas for the site and I'm dying to get past picking through the aftermath of 2010 and dive into the films of 2011.

In the meantime - Clip show! Here is a list of favorites from my year one of this impetuously launched project of mine. Enjoy and spread it around. If there's one thing Serious Film wants for its birthday it's more followers. (Speaking of which, are you following on Twitter?)

The Politics of Hurt Locker - Was The Hurt Locker as politically neutral as it was purported to be?
Replacing Citizen Kane - No offense to the Orson Welles masterpiece, but isn't it time we had a new consensus choice for the best film of all time? I run down the candidates and nominate a replacement.

Mad Men - Season 4 Yearbook- Once in a while I will diverge from the cinema to dive into one of my other obsessions, and Mad Men's brilliant fourth season was certainly that.

The Wonka/Fincher Connection - I make a mind-blowing discovery about the plot of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Cinematic Legal Dream Team - If you were on trial for your life which lawyers from film history would you turn to? I pick the all-star team.
5 Great Overlooked Horror Scenes - Moving beyond the shower scene from Psycho. I call attention to some new iconic moments in the horror genre.

"How About a Little Fire Scarecrow?" - It turns out, no, I wasn't the only person who had never noticed this one disturbing detail in The Wizard of Oz.
8 Vocal Performances Deserving of an Oscar Nomination - Technically vocal performances are eligible for Oscar nominations, but we all know it will never happen. Here are eight candidates who deserved the honor.

Unsung Heroes - One of the highlights of 2010 for me was getting tapped to be a regular contributor to one of my favorite movie sites: Nathaniel Roger's addictively entertaining Film Experience - a must read for any film junkie. My main contribution was this recurring series on great under-appreciated achievements of film history. Some of the filmmakers mentioned even stopped by to comment.
Pulled from the Wreckage: Great Performances in Terrible Films - The most viewed post from year one. A tip of the hat to those actors who struggled valiantly against hopeless material.
Notes from Film School - Undercover reportage from inside the heart of film school experience.
2010 Laugh-O-Meter - A rundown for The Film Experience on 2010: The Year in Comedy. Have you seen Four Lions yet?

Top 10 Films of 2010 - Couldn't have asked for a better year to start a film blog. No shortage of great stuff to write about.
The Anti-Streep - This post from last week in tribute to the incomparable Tilda Swinton quickly became one of the most popular things I've yet written. Apparently a lot of people agree.

Roll film on year two...