NYFF Diary #10 - The Descendants

At long last, after seven long years of waiting, we have a new Alexander Payne movie. My somewhat against the current reactions to my Most Anticipated Film of the Year are posted at The Film Experience, and drawing some argument.

Click for The Full Review

NYFF Diary #9 - My Week With Marilyn

Simon Curtis's My Week With Marilyn purports to take the viewer behind the curtains to meet the real Marilyn Monroe, but in truth the movie operates from a perspective as starry-eyed as the pushiest autograph hound.

Chronicling the filming of Laurence Olivier's The Prince and The Showgirl, My Week is based on the memoirs of young third assistant director Colin Clark who struck up a brief relationship with Marilyn during filming. Right from the start, having Clark as the dreamy, naïve protagonist not only slows things down to a crawl so we can trudge through all the coming-of-age clichés in the book - I lost count how many times we heard some variation on "Don't fall in love with her, kid." - but it guarantees we will always be at a distance from the subject, watching through a haze of dewy idol-worship. Imagine if Topsy -Turvy was called My Week With Gilbert and all the great backstage material was constantly interrupted so we could watch the eager young stagehand flirt with the comely stage manager. Oh wait, they already made that as Me and Orson Welles, and the clichés were just as boring in that movie as they are here.

My Week With Marilyn not a complete waste of time. Eddie Redmayne in the lead does the best he can with all the coming-of-age slop he's forced to shovel, while Michelle Williams does an heroic job with the impossible task of embodying the former Miss Norma Jean Baker. She strikes the right balance between trying to capture Monroe’s mannerisms and aura without getting too bogged down in impersonation to deliver an original performance. It’s not quite Christian McKay’s blow-the-doors-off performance as Orson Welles but it’s close, and McKay had better material to work with. 

As Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh is a hoot, hamming it up to the point I half-expected him to yell “ACTING!” every time he finished speaking. The filmmaking scenes are by far the best in the film as Olivier quakes with frustration trying to direct his temperamental, rarely sober star who shows up hours late to the set every day only to keep everyone waiting as she works through her method acting exercises with Paula Strasberg. It takes all Olivier's patience not to yell, "Can't you just fucking PRETEND?" It would be fair to accuse Branagh of playing it all too broadly to remain convincing, but when the film is already so far from authenticity we in the audience are grateful for his effort.

Of course, for all her difficulties, when Monroe nailed a take, she nailed it like no one in the history of movies. Unfortunately, the film is just as mystified as Olivier as to where this came from. As dignified as Williams's portrayal is the film ends up diminishing Monroe, giving the impression her performances were less the result of skill than some unexplainable magic that occurred if you let the cameras roll long enough.

5 out of 10

NYFF Diary #8 - The Skin I Live In

The constant question for measuring the new output of master filmmakers like Pedro Almodovar: Judge them against films in general or against their own established potential? If The Skin I Live In was the first effort of an brash young filmmaker, I am convinced critics would be leaping from their seats to run through the streets Paul Rever style heralding the coming of a new master. But as a film from the man who delivered All About Mother, Talk to Her and Bad Education one after another, not so much with the cartwheels.

Click Here for the Full Review

NYFF Diary #7 - A Separation

If the Best Picture category can be expanded to accommodate big budget feel-gooders like The Blind Side and indie curios like A Serious Man than it should be bloody well big enough for a flat-out brilliant foreign language film like Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's A Separation. It is inconceivable that there will be nine or ten better films this year.

Farhadi's note-perfect storytelling recalls the films of the great Krzysztof Kieslowski. His films, like Farhadi's, watch attentively as characters make choices which lead to other choices and the ramifications of which ripple out in all manner of unexpected direction until we find that the very lives of the characters are on the line. They never feel like filmed screenplays, but rather seem uncannily like real life being lived.

The seeds of A Separation's story are planted in the first scene when a marriage falls apart over the question of whether to leave Iran. Their relationship isn't dead, both parties are reasonable and relatively calm, but she want to leave and he doesn't and the marriage cannot function in this state of stalemate. She moves out leaving him and their daughter ill-equipped to provide the 24-hour care his senile father needs. A maid is hired who is unaware of the extensive nursing duties that are to be a major part of her responsibilities.

Sareh Bayat

And from there it would be criminal of me to give away anything else except to say that there is an incident, which escalates to an argument, which in turn leaves all parties involved feeling like the victim. Without resorting to Rashomon-style multiple perspectives Farhadi does an astonishing job of presenting us with a situation that on the surface seems cut and dry, but the truth of which is continually kept just out of our grasp. The facts of the case are more or less established at the outset but every time we think we are closing in on the heart of the matter we get a new angle and the ground shifts beneath our feet again. It's an amazing piece of writing.

The entire cast is spot on (look alive SAG ensemble award) but I would single out, in performances certain to get zero recognition, Sareh Bayet and Shahab Hosseini, as the maid and her short-fused husband. In a perfect world both would be contenders for supporting honors from every group on the circuit.

I would be stunned - and ecstatic -  if A Separation does not end up being the finest film I see at the New York Film Festival. It is cinema at its best, where we find ourselves utterly absorbed in the lives of the characters on screen and caring deeply about what happens to them. Don't miss this one.


9 out of 10

For Your Consideration - Early 2011 Performances

As the first waves of the Fall movie season wash over us Oscar slots are being snapped up on a near daily basis. Michael Shannon is going to be a legitimate dark horse with Take Shelter and I hear more and more rumblings that Woody Harrelson's work in Rampart is strong enough to make a play not just for the nomination but for the trophy as well.

So with all eyes on the hot new titles, each trying to wedge their contenders into already overflowing categories, it can be all too easy to overlook strong performances from earlier in the year. Here are four performances worth remembering from the first half of 2011.

Best Actress

Don't Forget...Saoirse Ronan for Hanna

I wasn't the biggest fan of Joe Wright's stylish but shallow tale of a child super-assassin but there is no denying Ronan's striking work in the title role. It is a remarkable physical performance, with her wild animal reflexes, icy stare and convincing presence in fight scenes with men triple her size. Ronan is quickly turning into this generation's Jodie Foster, attacking a series of roles with an intelligence that bucks the "child actress" title. Here she takes an idea of a character and humanizes her in a way few actresses could. A second nomination would not be undeserved.

Best Actor 

Don't Forget...David Hyde Pierce for The Perfect Host

It's not quite right to tell voters to think back to a film when 99% of them didn't give it a chance in the first place. If any of them catch up with Nick Tomnay's Sleuth-like battle of wits on video they will be presented with a case for Pierce as one of the deepest wells of untapped star charisma in Hollywood. As Warwick Wilson, the seemingly meek dinner party host who gives violent home invader Clayne Crawford more than he bargained for, Pierce is called upon to deliver a consistent and believable performance even as the script piles twist after twist onto his character. Pierce doesn't miss a beat. He holds together the story even when it should be flying apart from outlandishness. It's a complex performance that is all the more impressive because of how fun it is.

Best Supporting Actress

Don't Forget...Mary Page Keller for Beginners

Supporting Actress is the category that boasts the most legitimate pre-Fall contenders what with the ladies of The Help and (fingers crossed) Melissa McCarthy's raucous Bridesmaids performance still in the conversation. But how about a genuinely supporting performance like Mary Page Keller as Christopher Plummer's unhappy wife in Beginners. She may not have a lot of screen time but her melancholy yet defiantly sharp character is the emotional lynchpin of the film. Her work colors the mood of every scene and provides an unforgettable context for the actions of the main characters.

Best Supporting Actor

Don't Forget...Bruce Greenwood for Meek's Cutoff

Every once in a while the Academy sees fit to single out a consistently excellent, yet under-appreciated actor - think Robert Forster in Jackie Brown. This year the actor most deserving of that honor is Bruce Greenwood for his fascinating, original work in Meek's Cutoff. His role of the grizzled pioneer guide is an engraved invitation to overact, but Greenwood declines. He plays him instead as mystery. A man who is either a dangerous fool, a crazy person, the last hope of these desperately lost travelers or some combination of all three. His peculiar presence does what every great supporting should do which is make everyone else look better. Greenwood brushed up against Oscar once with his more traditionally award-friendly work as JFK in Thirteen Days. Here's hoping he doesn't get glossed over again.

NYFF Diary #6 - Shame

Festival screenings are all about searching for that breakout film. Wanting to burst out the theater into the daylight screaming "Masterpiece! Masterpiece!" For a lot of the running time I thought Shame, Steve McQueen's hotly anticipated follow up to Hunger, might be that film. But even if it ultimately doesn't cross that particular marker, there is still a lot to talk about in this fascinating movie. Read my reactions here.

NYFF Diary #5 - George Harrison: Living in the Material World

A few thoughts that went through my mind during the screening of Martin Scorsese's documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World at the New York Film Festival:

• After this and No Direction Home I want Scorsese to make a documentary about every major figure in rock and roll. They are both unabashedly brilliant films.
• I'm ashamed I don't have more George Harrison solo material on my iPod and intend to remedy this immediately.
• I did not expect to get this emotional this often during the screening.
• You never know any subject as well as you think you do, even one as familiar as The Beatles. Not even close.
• This will surely be one of the best things I see at the NYFF 
• I would really, really love for George Harrison to drive up to my house with a trunk full of ukuleles like Tom Petty says he used to do.

For my full write up of my reactions to this doc head over to The Film Experience. 

NYFF Diary #4 - Carnage

Let's first get out the way the question everyone seems to be asking. Which of the principle actors wins the de facto four-way acting showdown in Roman Polanski’s Carnage?

The answer, if you’re curious to know, is that Christoph Waltz takes it in a walk, although it should be said that it was never a fair fight to begin with. In addition to having the best character and all the best lines, there is that spark that occurs when precisely the right actor is cast in a plum part, and for the second time in his career that is the case with Waltz. Of course, being an amazing performer isn’t hurting his odds any, but Winslet, Reilly, and Foster aren’t exactly minor leaguers themselves, and  none of them catches similar lightning in a bottle.

So manufactured competitions aside how was the movie? Well, the headline should rightfully read “Carnage a Success” but the truth is much more complicated. 

Carnage, for anyone who doesn’t know, is Roman Polanski's faithful adaptation of Yazmina Reza's award winning Broadway hit God of Carnage. The story opens with Waltz and Winslet’s son walloping Foster and Reilly’s son in the mouth with a stick but good. After that brief prelude the story is made up entirely of the two sets of parents meeting to hash out what consequences, if any, are to come of this violent incident. There is much mutual congratulation at the start at how reasonable and civilized everyone is being, so it doesn’t take a degree in literature to predict that things will descend into full on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-style acrimony as the script progresses. Much of the fun of the material is watching how the quartet reconfigures itself into various alliances as the argument twists and spins out on tangents, piling up 3 to 1 against Reilly only to turn on a dime and split along gender lines.

(And may I quickly add that the title change is one of the most awful and counter-productive in recent memory. God of Carnage sounds like a prestigious theatrical property. Carnage sounds like a direct-to-DVD Jason Statham movie.) 

Even as a big fan of the play as I can acknowledge its weaknesses, most of which find their way, in tact, onto the screen. The truths uncovered by the material, that we’re all wildly hostile and selfish creatures under our civilized exteriors, aren’t exactly Earth-shattering, and no matter how well the whole filmmaking team sells every moment, one never really buys it on a gut level. They duke it out not because of any real dramatic urgency, but because it’s more entertaining that way and when the show is this much fun it’s ungrateful to dwell on the artifice at its core.

On stage the material made up for all this with the electricity of live performance. Polanski’s version attempts to make up for a lack of immediacy with his finely tuned visuals and crisply paced editing. He wisely avoids any silly attempts to “open up” the material for the big screen, opting instead to polish the material down to a smooth surface. It bears the fingerprints of the master in every finely captured composition and nuanced cut. It is, in fact, difficult to picture what a better adaptation would look like. It is only in the nagging empty feeling that follows in the movie’s wake that you notice that all the pieces aren’t quite in place.

6 out of 10

NYFF Diary #3 - Miss Bala

Only three titles into the New York Film Festival and I've hit my first flat-out great movie experience: Gerardo Naranjo's nerve-jangling Mexican drug cartel thriller Miss Bala. Head over to The Film Experience to watch me ring the bells and sound the trumpets to announce the arrival of what is easily one of 2011's best films to date and sure to be a strong contender for Best Foreign Language Film at next year's Oscars.

And while you're there why not check out highlights from fellow festival goers Nathaniel and Kurt as they take on some flicks I have yet to catch like A Dangerous Method and The Loneliest Planet.