Southern Wild Flexes Its Muscles

I've added Beasts of the Southern Wild to the Oscar charts making it the first legitimate contender in Best Picture as well staking a strong claim in places like Actress, Supporting Actor, Score, Cinematography and more. 

Brave also made a dent in the charts, although not nearly as dramatically. It does account for the first potential nomination to achieve "Lock" status.

Review: Brave

Brave justifies a trip to the multiplex simply as an opportunity to groove on the textures and details Pixar's team of artists took the care to get just perfect. Like the way the animators capture Princess Merida's wild cascades of red curls bouncing about her shoulders, or the way every item glimpsed cluttering up the shop of a batty old woodcarver is intricately designed and beautiful in its own right.

After seventeen years and a dozen feature films I worry that Pixar's unparalleled commitment to quality is starting to get taken for granted. When Buzz and Woody first burst open the computer animation floodgates, critics were falling all over each other to compose epic poems to the visuals. "Pixar has done for plastic what Bambi did for nature!" I remember EW proclaiming. Now I read a lot of reviews that pay lip service to the pretty pictures before quickly moving on to pick apart the story.

So let's hold on a moment before we dig into the story structure and gender roles and acknowledge that there is movie magic of the highest order illuminating every frame of this, Pixar's thirteenth feature film. It is the reason Brave is an event film even though it falls short of joining the ranks of the studio's recent masterworks.

So with that out of the way, yeah, about that screenplay...

It is not that the movie doesn't work. The story unfolds in nice clear lines and at a compact 93 minutes never has a chance to drag. A lot of the bits are clever though never really laugh-out-loud funny - like the hijinx of three impish younger brothers - and the main character of Princess Merida is a memorable one with a spirited vocal performance from Kelly MacDonald.

The problem is that underneath the finely rendered surface, we sense a lot of familiar plot gears turning. Merida is a princess of the Scottish highlands who, as she approaches adulthood, balks at the thought of sacrificing her freedom for the sake of an arranged union. So right away Brave calls up powerful memories of Ariel, Belle, Jasmine and a half dozen other willful animated heroines who objected to having their fates chosen for them. When Merida rides through nature at the story's beginning, firing off arrows and reveling in the majesty of nature, the only thing separating it from the Disney Renaissance of the early 90's is the lack of a good show tune.

Also less than shockingly original is Brave's second act plot device involving Merida resorting to a magic spell to remedy her problems with disastrous results. (Helpful hint to headstrong princesses everywhere: When making magical wishes on which your fate and the fate of all your loved ones depend BE SPECIFIC)  

Brave attempts to take these well-worn elements, shake them up and alchemize them into something new. I understand why Pixar was so confident that they could pull it off. With a small army of the film industry's most talented artists at their back why wouldn't they conclude they could transcend the routine material to move and thrill audiences? 

Yet no matter how expert the presentation the formula is still the formula. It is tough to generate much excitement when we surmise early on that if a story hinges on mother and daughter reaching heartfelt reconciliation or else suffer the permanent effects of black magic, then said reconciliation will take place, most likely at the last possible moment following a frenzied race against time. 

There was an opportunity around the halfway point to really raise the stakes and have the movie achieve takeoff velocity. A moment when the audience braces itself with anticipation to discover where the story will turn next, like WALL-E crashing out of Earth’s atmosphere clinging to the side of that spaceship. Nothing inspires that level of awe here. Brave keeps things on a more modest scale - at times it feels like it might have been adapted from a stage play with the carefully choreographed entrances and exits of various characters scuttling around the castle.


If this were one of Pixar’s great films it would take more seriously the idea of Merida being forced into a horrible marriage or the magic spell causing permanent disaster. The consequences of Merida’s abandonment of her duties are mostly played for chuckles with the buffoonish clans descending into slapstick brawling every time they are on screen. Likewise, the dark history Merida uncovers surrounding the magic spell strains for significance but succeeds mostly as ominous atmosphere.

When Merida digs deep to come to an understanding with her mother or finds the courage to stand alone against her people we are pleased because we like the character and are involved with the story. But we are nowhere close to being as stirred as when we watched the critic eat at the end of Ratatouille or moved like when Andy left his childhood behind at the end of Toy Story 3.

Having said all that, within its conventional framework Brave deviates enough from the expected that it is well worth seeing, unlike, say, the Cars films.

It's is a welcome innovation to not only give Merida two functioning parents but to also have the mother-daughter relationship as the story's centerpiece (A first?) More intriguing still, is the total absence of a romantic interest for the Princess. Even Belle, the best, most strong-minded of Disney heroines, found herself ballroom dancing in the arms of a prince by film's end. When Merida declares she wants no part of an arranged marriages she means it, and not because she has her eyes on some hunky street urchin like Jasmine. It's easy to imagine Merida ruling as a Warrior Queen for a long while before she finds any man worthy of striking her fancy.

Verdict: So Brave won't have the usual throngs of critics falling on their knees in praise of its glory like other Pixar films. It is still a fine example of a major Hollywood film and it provides a platform for a lot of artists to do stellar work around the margins of its familiar tale. 7 out of 10

Next...The Woodblocks

The Oscar race page for Best Original Score has just gone up and at the year's halfway point already lists a trio of strong contenders, one of which I have been listening to on my iPod all week and has the feeling of a potential winner to me.

I may be getting a bit carried away, but as I said earlier, no score since The Social Network has grabbed me like this.

Judge for yourself .

Attack of the Sexy Witches

Has the statute of limitations run out on Cabin in the Woods spoilers yet? Or does that not happen until it’s been on video for a month or two?

Just to be considerate I'll move this discussion below the fold for those of you out there waiting for video. For the rest of you, click through for what is possibly the greatest chart since the Ron Swanson Pyramid of Greatness...

CLICK FOR THE WHITEBOARD OF TERRORS 

Fight For Your Darlings

This episode of Burning Questions is all about standing up for the underdogs. If you are a film lover that means you surely have a handful of films which rank as undisputed masterpieces in your book, but fall somewhere between minor works or disasters in the court of critical opinion.

So over at The Film Experience I make a case for my personal cause and then open up the floor for everyone to make a case why their unheralded favorite should be listed among the greats. The comments are already flooded with nominations... 

GO ADD YOUR OWN

Ethereal Beasts

Leaving the BAMcinemaFest screening of Beasts of the Southern Wild a quote from Christopher Nolan's The Prestige came to mind: "Pardon me. It's very rare to see real magic".

So, yes, to put it mildly Beasts delivers on it's rapidly growing hype. I will have lots to say in the coming weeks about this story of the rocky relationship between father and daughter as they float through Hurricane Katrina but first some brief reactions while I'm still basking in the afterglow:

• Of all the many elements of Beasts worthy of singling out for praise I will start by saying Beasts has the most striking original score since The Social Network. Rather than aping the action like 99 out of a 100 scores it filters the world musically through the mind of a precocious child. 

• Beasts of the Southern Wild is the definition of a "just go and see it" movie, as in "No words I say can properly capture the experience so trust me,  just go and see it." If I had to force it into Hollywood pitch speak it's the magic realism of Maurice Sendak +  Days of Heaven + When the Levees Broke. Does that help?

• Without taking anything away from the great screenplay, nothing in Beasts feels written. Even when the film is straying from reality it maintains a documentary vibe, as if the cameras are just barely keeping up. Much credit to director Benh Zeitlin and cinematographer Ben Richardson. 

• Despite taking place during Katrina, Beasts is a politics free zone, taking place in its own private world away from the world of FEMA and the Superdome and all of the familiar images of the catastrophe .

• I'm not as convinced as some that an Oscar nod is in the cards for the amazing Quvenzhane Wallis who was, I believe, five years old during filming. It is possible, but there isn't really a big scene like Keisha Castle Hughes' teary monologue in Whale Rider where the film rests entirely on her performance for an extended period. She mostly delivers a line or two or registers a reaction before cutting away. Not that she isn't a strong engaging presence or that it's not a real performance. She is and it is and audiences will surely fall in love with her. But it might be viewed more as the director's achievement than an acting one.

• I'd be surprised, on the other hand, if Dwight Henry's captivating, unsentimental work as Wink, Hushpuppy's boozing father, was not on the supporting short list come 2013. It's a totally natural, unmannered performance that carries much of the weight of the film. Once you factor in the astonishing story of how the man left his bakery to act on film for the first time, the competition will have to be pretty stiff for him to miss out.

• Best Picture, director, screenplay, editing, cinematography - even sound design - this film is going to be a contender - although I am far from convinced it will end up taking home any of those trophies. I can, however, easily see this dominating the Indie Spirits with several wins. 

• The film's ace in the hole is the hard-earned tear jerking climax. It shows again that movies begging for my tears (cough War Horse cough) tend to leave me unmoved but characters determined to remain strong and resist sentiment in spite of deep emotions tend to unleash the water works.

• There is a sequence toward the end on a floating nightclub that is a mesmerizing, perfect stretch of filmmaking that is going to make Benh Zeitlin as a name director, just you watch.

• Beasts of the Southern Wild makes me want to try fried alligator, which I certainly didn't think possible

• I am very, very curious to see how this performs at the box office. I can imagine anything from 15 to 150 million. It is an unusual mix of unpolished art house aesthetic and crowd pleasing wonder and emotion. It could see it going either way.

Verdict: 9 out of 10

Fair Price

Pixar Illustrator Josh Cooley took it upon himself to mock up some famous R-rated movie scenes in classic Golden Books style, and the results are priceless. Or not so much priceless as $50. I am sorely tempted. It's high time my little nephews learned about the consequences of messing with a made man:

The full gallery is here.

Fassbending

Fassbender is rapidly outpacing George Clooney as the guy who is so goddamned cool and talented you want to hate his guts, but you can't bring yourself to do it because he is so goddamned cool and talented.

Now his performance as an android is the the only part of Prometheus getting unambiguously positive reviews. Even the film's detractors single him out for praise. So I think it is only fair that he be the one to kick off the my Oscar tracking page for Best Supporting Actor, currently the lone contender.

Prometheus also crops up on my pages for Art Direction, Costumes, and the already crowded Visual Effects race. When the sound pages go up look for it there too, since those categories are its most legitimate shot at recognition.

Also going up is the sparsely populated race for Best Director. The list of big name auteurs with ucpoming titles is long indeed, but at this point it is just two favorites out of Cannes, alike in art house cred but complete opposites in just about everything else.

Still Lingering

When a film goes way out on a limb like this, it isn’t necessarily possible on first viewing to know if it hits the mark. Now, nearly three years later, I can say with certainty this ending lands in a big way.

The gut punch combo of the phone call from the doctor and this image leaves a visceral dread hanging in the air. A cold shiver at the sudden appearance of non-negotiable death. 

Venus on Film

For this week's Burning Questions column I go looking through the current crop of Broadway shows for potential cinematic treasures. At the top of my list is David Ives' Venus in Furs starring the riveting - and now Tony-winning - Nina Arianda.

With this terrific show ending at the end of the week there is some urgency behind posting. Like Liza in Cabaret or Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon it would be ideal for the originator of the role to be the one immortalized on film. So come on money men - with such a bare bones production, financing would be a limited risk, especially when Nina's brilliant performance guarantees attention.

Remember how great it was when Broadway adaptations made new stars instead of providing vehicles for the existing ones?


READ THE COLUMN

Review: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

When a comic book sequel is directed by the team behind the gleefully batshit crazy Crank movies, and said film is about a hero who signed a pack with the devil and now rides Hell's motorcycle through the night with the flaming, laughing skull of a demon for a head, well, one attends such a film with certain expectations. When said movie stars Nicolas Cage those expectations expand exponentially

Unfortunately, those of us hoping for a movie of epic badness to rival The Room will be sorely disappointed. Somewhere in development a Marvel executive realized it might not be in the best interest of the Ghost Rider brand to make a movie even one tenth as insane as the Cranks (Have you seen those movies. It's like staring into the mouth of madness) As a result rather than being memorably awful the film is frustratingly ordinary with Ghost Rider tasked to protect a kid who is maybe the Antichrist, in exchange for breaking his curse. It all makes disappointing amounts of sense and amounts to a big load of who cares.

There is one utterly gonzo sequence with Cage interrogating a baddy while the Ghost Rider persona keeps bubbling to the surface while Cage's performance goes full tilt bananas. That and a random WTF moment with Ghost Rider pissing a stream of fire for no discernible reason are as far as it goes for the hilariously awful. Everything else you can chuck right in the bin.

Verdict: 2 out of 10

Rosebud Replaced

Since the new Sight & Sound poll of the greatest films ever made is right around the corner I'm reposting this article I did back in 2010 arguing that it is time for Citizen Kane to step down as the perennial winner and evaluating a few replacement titles.  Here's the link.  Check it out.

Am I wasting my breath? Are we in for another Kane coronation? My gut says yes.

Inception: A Second Spin

Since Warner Home Video sent a Blu-ray of Inception my way, why not get around to that second viewing I've been planning since Summer 2010? If ever a film demanded more than one viewing it's this one. Plus, I'm eager to immerse myself in the Christopher Nolan world again so I can get my mind blown to maximum effect at Dark Knight Rises. 

So let's give that totem another spin...

• The most interesting things about the second viewing was that although I could now unravel the story with relative ease, I didn't feel the need to bother. Inception, I discovered, works best in the moment. Simply give up trying to follow the thread of the logic and wait for the next awe-inspiring image to wash over you. On that level it rewards repeat viewings much better than I expected.

Read the Full Post

The Hydra-Goblin

Wes Anderson continues the practice of releasing short films to accompany his theatrical releases that he began with the terrific Darjeeling Limited companion piece, Hotel Chevalier. 

This time it is six brief animated shorts to accompany the six stolen library books Suzy packs for her escape in Moonrise Kingdom. Bob Balaban narrates, of course:

"We Would've Been Burnt For This Film..."

I eat this kind of stuff up. Where does one go to find talk like this on TV these days? Craig Ferguson made a go of it recently with his hour long conversation with Stephen Fry, but beside that it really is podcasts alone that have the attention span to sustain this depth of discussion.

This is part 3 of 4. The whole things is worth a watch. Palin is trying to play peacemaker while Cleese is a scrapper.

Cleese pretty much scores a knock out around the 3:24 mark. The host nails the point of the whole kerfuffle at 10:15 only to be airily dismissed by the Bishop.

Snap Judgments: Django Unchained

• The big thing that jumps out in bright flashing letters is that DiCaprio is going to absolutely kill in this movie. I could claim I was the one to observe he desperately needed to lighten up, but really, after his endless series of tortured, jaw-clenched, brow-furrowing anti-social head-cases, pretty much the whole Internet reached the conclusion that the dude needed to take a Xanax and do some comedy. 

"He is a rambunctious sort, ain't he?"

• Now to see Leo sipping from a coconut, smirking like the devil and generally having a blast is an immediate breath of fresh air to his career. I'm tempted to pencil him onto the Best Supporting Actor short list based on this trailer alone

• I'm of the opinion that Marion Cotillard is the most beautiful woman in the world but Kerry Washington certainly puts that theory to the test. After a hat trick of strong ladies with the Bride, Jackie Brown and Shoshanna it looks like it's all about the guys this time, but who can say? Michael Fassbender didn't feature into the Basterds trailer at all and he ended up stealing any scenes Christoph Waltz hadn't already made off with. Speaking of which...

• Great to see Waltz back together with Tarantino. He's made interesting choices since he went supernova with Basterds but he deserves to join Uma and Sam as one of Quentin's go to muses. Like Joe Mantegna with Mamet he just gets how to make Q's dialogue sing.

• Prediction: Bright solid blue suits with frilly doily bows that make the wearer look like Prince time-traveled back to the 19th century are going to be this year's Scorpion Jacket

• This looks to be easily the most satisfying big screen outing for Foxx since the one-two punch of Ray/Collateral way back in 2004. His choices have been spotty since mixing noble failures like The Soloist with misbegotten would-be blockbusters like Law Abiding Citizen. Happy to see him get to the opportunity to flex his considerable acting chops and star charisma. Here's hoping he makes Will Smith kick himself hard for lacking the creative fire to tackle this project. 

• The winner of the Quentin Tarantino Career Resuscitation prize appears to be Don Johnson who makes a split second appearance in full on Colonel Sanders regalia. Scuttlebut coming out of the Cannes was that Johnson does wonders with his screen time. Django could always end up with the rare double supporting actor nominees. Quick, without looking what was the last film to land two supporting actor nominees? Hint: You have to go back two decades.

• The visuals look impeccable. Love mixing the wintery landscapes into the traditional western stuff. Glad to see Quentin is going beyond the straight up Leone homage which must have been on his mind.

• No less than two appearances of the Travis Bickle sliding sleeve gun. Too bad this past season of Justified beat it to the punch. Speaking of Justified, no sign of Walton Goggins in the trailer. Excited to see what he can do with QT dialogue.

Justified

• Of course the big commotion is going to be over the racial material which would be touchy even if it weren't written by the same man who crafted Nice Guy Eddie's dialogue. There will surely be oceans of digital ink spilt to calculate just how many generations Tarantino set back the cause of civil rights, but why not a film that shows a black character of that era in a context other than noble Oscar-bait suffering? Especially when most Westerns simply flat out ignore racial issues. 

• The only cause for concern I spot in is that the blaring funk music used here makes it appear as if Django doesn't approach the material with enough seriousness. But then ANY trailer for a Tarantino film is going to sell it is Fun! Fun! Ass-kicking! Fun! The trailer for Basterds made it look like the Brad Pitt Happy-Time Nazi Beating Fun Show but save for a few moments of questionable goofiness it was never exploitative in its treatment of the subject matter. Entertaining ≠ Disrespectful. 

• MC Gainey of Lost and Citizen Ruth fame is always welcome. Of course if he's playing some lunatic, whip-cracking baddie with what appears to be Bible passages fastened to his clothes, well, that's just gravy. 

Snap Judgment: Is there any question? This was way up on my list of the year's most anticipated movies, and although this trailer doesn't suggest that this film will dislodge Pulp Fiction from the top of my personal QT Pantheon it is still second only to PT Anderson's The Master as far as my eagerness to see it.

Review: Cabin in the Woods

Cabin in the Woods has a classic opening. We are introduced to Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins riding a golf cart through an office complex. They are wearing standard middle aged office uniforms of dress shirts and ties and ID's clipped to their belts. Then, in the middle of some inane office chitchat about child-safe locks, the title comes shrieking onto the screen in giant blood-red letters. We realize boring old Whitford and Jenkins are the pasty, balding faces of evil. It's a bold start to a movie that sets out to subvert and deconstruct horror conventions, and for the most part succeeds in hilarious fashion.

It's true that there is little left dissect about horror film tropes since Scream and all its meta descendants picked the bones of that carcass clean. Yet Cabin finds a spark in the material against all odds. The masterstroke was to step back from a standard horror story and watch it all with total detachment through the eyes of these bland, mysterious puppet masters. It's not exactly Blazing Saddles level satire here but it is mighty entertaining and consistently clever.

Even better is that just when the premise is set to run out of steam the director pulls back to find a third, bonkers layer of reality lurking underneath the first two. Granted, this third act twist is beyond preposterous and doesn't make a lick of sense in retrospect.  But Cabin goes for it with such gusto - and the story has been so much fun up to that point - that it's hard to penalize the film for flubbing minor details like logic. 

Verdict: 8 out of 10

Beyond Quirky

Hitchcock made Hitchcock films his whole life. Woody Allen has been making Woody Allen films for over forty years and Aronofsky makes Aronofsky films whether the subject is wrestlers, dancers or mathematicians. None of this counts as news, yet in some circles the fact that Wes Anderson continues to turn out Wes Anderson films is greeted with shock and dismay whenever one his films are released. Were they expecting Paul Greengrass style shaky cam realism, I wonder?

In my new column at The Film Experience I suggest maybe we could try a little harder and look past the meticulously composed surface to the surprising darkness of the material. Give it a read.

Moonrise Over Picture

Oscar race pages continue to go up with pages now running for Picture, Art Direction, and Animated Film.

There has been a handful of moderately respectable contenders in the visual categories, but thus far only a single film has eked its way into the Best Picture hunt, and as quite the long shot at that.

The race for Costume Design remains the most competitive by far, now with Moonrise Kingdom and Snow White and the Huntsmen crowding into a category already filling up with legitimate contenders.