Oscar Profile: Milk

In the eleventh hour, a mere two days before Oscar night, I finally got out to see Gus Van Sant's Milk.  I have now seen all the picture nominees and  I can safely say that Oscar got it right, sort of, with this one.  Milk is based on the true story of gay activist Harvey Milk's crusade for equal rights in San Francisco during the 1970's and deals with an important debate that is especially relevant today.  What Van Sant has made is a political film, but he is savvy enough as a filmmaker to sidestep the traps of more generic Hollywood biopics that would sermonize about their subject or pay tribute to their central character without grasping his/her flaws.  Thanks to a brilliant performance by Sean Penn, Milk is never maudlin or predictable.  We are given the full scope of his vision and ambition, but we are also provided with a context for his social failures and the bridges that he burns.  

Penn's performance is arguably the best of his career, because unlike so many of his other roles, Harvey Milk is a man of good humor even in difficult times.  Milk's sly double-entendres and ability to laugh at himself, gives Penn new room to play as an actor and I will admit that this is probably the first performance I have ever seen from him, that didn't keep me at a distance.  The other characters don't fare as well.  As the end credits roll, we are introduced to photos of the real people that the film is based on and I realized that I hadn't really gotten to know any of them.  There aren't a lot of characters to connect with in the film, because this isn't a picture about people.  This is a picture about a movement.  

The period of the film is seamlessly recreated with vintage cars, costumes and hair design.  The film is shot on ultra-grainy stock to mirror the texture of so many 70's pictures and everything in the atmosphere of the film is completely authentic.  Van Sant's story is cleverly constructed using what looks like super 8 film, actual and simulated newsreel footage, photographic stills and variable camera speeds that -- while stylized -- only add to the authenticity of the film.  Milk never feels less than authentic as a portrait of a movement that galvanized Northern California at a specific point in time and yet, despite all of these considerable virtues, the film is overlong and sometimes difficult to access.  

It may seem a strange comparison, but as I was watching it I found myself thinking about Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas -- a film that also tells a story about a group of people who changed America during a specific period in history.  GoodFellas is 20 minutes longer than Milk, but it is full of propulsive energy and we really get to know the central characters.  That doesn't happen here, despite the canny chemistry between Penn and James Franco -- his primary love interest.  Josh Brolin also delivers a powerhouse performance as the mysterious and contradictory city councilman Dan White, who becomes Harvey Milk's sole political adversary, but there is something strangely aloof about the way their rivalry plays out.

Is Milk one of the best films of the year?  I would say yes, but it is not one of my favorites.  It is accomplished, clever and provocative, but it asks you to engage with the idea of the film rather than its characters.  I point this out, not as a statement of it's flaws but rather as a declaration of where my personal preference lies when I go to see a film.  Some people respond to movies with their heads and others with their hearts.  I think the truly great films force you to do both.  Milk is hard to connect with emotionally and you may find it doesn't stick with you for that reason.  

Liam Neeson Wants Justice

Pierre Morel's Taken, based on a screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen is a slickly packaged, by-the-numbers, thriller that succeeds in generating major thrills thanks to a riveting performance by Liam Neeson.  If you take the time to think about it, questions start to creep in and you might ask yourself if it's even possible that Neeson could get as far as he does without so much as a scrape.  But, as Hitchcock would say: this is a question for "the plausibles" -- that segment of the audience who would rather dissect what they're watching than sit back and be entertained.  Taken  is not a movie for the plausibles.  Taken is a movie for people who like to believe that super-spies like Liam Neeson exist, to preserve the order of civilization and defend the innocent against insidious unseen evils.  If you get onboard with the concept, the movie will sweep you away and leave you breathless for 90 rapidly paced minutes. 

The story centers on Brian Mills (Neeson), a former-spy who has retired and moved to Los Angeles in order to be closer to his estranged daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).   When Kim asks him for permission to fly to Europe for the summer he reluctantly agrees, weighed down by apprehensions based on years in the field.  The early scenes between Mills, Kim and his ex (Famke Janssen) are overwrought, as the Mills family dynamic is mapped out in broad strokes, but it turns out Mills is right.  Within moments of stepping off the plane in Paris, Kim and her friend Amanda are seduced and ultimately kidnapped by an efficient female slave trafficking syndicate.  Mills is on the phone with Kim as she is taken and even under pressure he is resourceful enough to record the call as he promises her kidnappers: "I don't know who you are...but I will find you and I will kill you."

From this point on, the film kicks into overdrive as we follow Mills to Paris on a private jet and he proceeds to systematically attack and pursue every clue with ruthless determination and brute force.  All of this would be utterly ridiculous if not for Neeson's grounded performance.  He anchors the film and keeps us emotionally invested until the film's feverish final minutes.  Taken brings to mind relatively recent kidnapping yarns such as Roman Polanski's Frantic  and Ron Howard's Ransom, but this movie is significantly better thanks to a fresh and irresistible hook.  In Taken the kidnappers mess with the wrong family.  Even as the story probes dark material, we are exhilarated by the chase and by Neeson's determination.  The movie isn't just about the payoff, it's about watching bad people pay for their sins and there's a genuine catharsis in that.  

Oscar Profile: Frost/Nixon

I finally got around to seeing Frost/Nixon this week.  It often comes down to the week before Oscar night for me to make time to review those more esoteric, self-important, picture nominees that seem to have been created solely to win Oscars and Frost/Nixon is a perfect example, but I'm pleased to say that it actually exceeded my expectations.  The movie is about as solid a mainstream entertainment as Hollywood is making nowadays and the two central performances breathe new life into this vintage story.  Political corruption is not the big news that it was back in 1977 when the original interviews took place, but Ron Howard and writer Peter Morgan do a nice job of building tension around the potent game of one-upsmanship that prompted Richard Nixon to confess his guilt over Watergate on national television.  

The movie is certain to have an added fascination for viewers who lived through the event.  For today's generation the hook will be watching both men as they desperately try to keep their feelings in check, under intense media scrutiny.  The Frost/Nixon interview was a prime early example of the media's increasing influence over the collective consciousness.  Is the movie truly relevant today?  Although uniquely timed to coincide with the end of Bush's tenure as President, it is not a particularly memorable or groundbreaking film.  Just solid, and I will take solid over a lot of the other movies out there.  

The performances -- particularly Frank Langella's, are stellar but one doesn't feel the director expending his heart and soul on this material.  The docudrama approach with cutaways to talking heads of name actors playing real people grows increasingly tiresome and artificial as the movie rolls on.  It is almost as if the filmmakers began to insert these arbitrarily in order to maintain their motif, but they undermine the power of the unfolding story.  

Curiously, the film's biggest virtue: the cinematography by veteran commercial DP Sal Totino has been overlooked.  The film is cleverly shot with a camera that slowly drifts in and out of focus, mirroring the inner states of the two leads as their own focus wavers during the exhausting interview proceedings.  Production design and lighting is all suitably understated.  Technical aspects earn top marks.  Worth a look, but there were better films this year.  

Nick & Norah's Infinitely Indulgent Playlist

The problem with Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, the "hot" new release on DVD this week, is that many adults will go and see the film hoping for another Juno.  But Juno this isn't.  It also isn't Adventures In Babysitting, Ferris Bueller's Day Off or any of the other myriad of 80's teen comedies that center on adolescent rebellion and hold a place of nostalgia for the generation of 30-somethings who were weaned on Atari, Lite-Brite and Kool-Aid.  I say this because the movie is clearly intended to trigger this nostalgia, starting with the grainy, high contrast film stock on which it's shot and carrying over to its kitschy production design and eclectic underground-style soundtrack.  

Having grown up in the 80's, I really wanted to like this movie.  The story centers on Nick (Michael Cera), a goofy, endearingly low-rent teen musician who cannot get over a recent break-up with his girlfriend Tris (Alexis Dziena) and demonstrates this by sending her mix-CD after mix-CD of his favorite underground artists.  In one fateful night, he meets Norah (Kat Dennings), the daughter of a famous record producer who is suffering through an on-and-off relationship with a boy she knows is just using her to win favor with her father.  In one of the movie's few palatable contrivances, Nick learns that Tris has been pitching his mix CD's into the trash, but Norah has been rescuing and listening to them approvingly.  

Nick and Norah meet after Nick completes a set on stage with his all gay band "The Jerk Offs."  Neither of them really fit in with their friends and so they discover an offbeat symmetry together.  The rest of the movie is a tribute to those endless nights of excess and self-discovery that many of us would like to forget from our teenage years.  Nick and Norah set out to find "Fluffy" an underground rock band who are performing at a mystery location circa 2 am that night.  In the process, their drunken friend Caroline goes missing and drags them off course as they scour the city looking for her.  None of what ensues is as funny as the filmmakers think it is, as we the audience are subjected to a relentless onslaught of vomit sequences designed to make us guess whether or not lost, drunken, Caroline is going to lose her dinner in an awkward place.  

Interspersed with this is the love story -- if you can call it that.  The names Nick and Norah are an allusion to Dashiell Hammet's witty detective couple Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man.  They were known for their witty, urbane banter and elegant fashion sense -- something that will never be remembered about Cera or Dennings.  Still, the two of them have considerable pseudo-grunge charm together and there's something sweet and genuine about watching them find themselves in each other.  

The benchmark for this film is really the 80's gem The Sure Thing, starring John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga as two warring college sophomores who are stuck on a cross-country road trip to California at Christmas time.  That movie was endlessly inventive and a model example of teen romantic comedy.  This one doesn't come close and in the end, even the music lets us down.  Fluffy's climactic performance is not the revelation we've all been waiting for and in fact the entire soundtrack is disappointingly unmemorable.  I guess we'll have to wait a little longer for a teen comedy that lives up to its own hype.  

Vamp-uberty!

Going into Twilight, my knowledge of the film (based on the novel by Stephanie Meyer) consisted of two vastly different reviews by my wife and a twelve year old girl I had occasion to interview.  One of them called Twilight unintentionally laughable and the other called it a gritty, romantic date movie.  First let me dispense with some obligatory good-will so my wife won't kill me: Twilight is a good date movie.  That is, as long as you're willing to shut off your brain.  I'm not one of those purists who think think that there is no place for angsty teen literature or programming in the arts.  I will even admit to getting a giddy chill from the nostalgia of certain teen-oriented CW shows like Dawson's Creek and Everwood.  

The movie version of Twilight is written by Melissa Rosenberg who cut her teeth on television shows like The O.C. and Party of Five and one of the central problems is her script which reads like some of the worst of these programs and is directed with a surprising lack of cohesion or investment by Catherine Hardwicke.  Hardwicke worked as an Art Director before segueing into a directing career and the production design in the film is impressively understated.  The sets feel lived in and the setting lends the film a suitably gothic atmosphere, but I was surprised by how little the characters register.  After all, Hardwicke is the same director who was praised for her gritty, insightful, direction of the teen film Thirteen.  

Generally speaking the movie is shot like a student film, in a fashion that does little service to the acting and lacks a consistent point of view.  The sequences in which Ms. Hardwicke attempts to raise the temperature with special effects or big revealing camera moves, fail to convince and seem at odds with the rest of the film.    She is not an instinctive action filmmaker and the requirements of the story highlight the times that she is in over her head.  Particularly the "tree climbing" scenes, which are meant to be euphoric and lyrical but play like Crouching Tiger lite.  Unfortunately, much of the dramatics are equally lacking.  There are lingering, conspicuous, close-ups filled with strained silences and anguish-filled faces from the two leads.  A discussion of these close-ups may seem overly academic for a movie like this, but the fact is they slow down the pace and prevent the movie from realizing its full potential.  

In theory, the story of a teenage girl who moves to a small town and falls in love with a boy at school who happens to be a vampire, has the promise of a modern day Romeo and Juliet.  The two star-crossed lovers come from very different worlds.  We learn that Edward Cullen is a "good"vampire, feeding only on animals.  His path to becoming immortal was a story borne out of survival rather than a lust for power.  Bella, his love, is the daughter of divorced parents and her father is the town Sheriff, investigating a series of "animal" attacks that we are told is in fact something else.  

The problem is the script doesn't mine the material enough.  Bella's parents are remarkably absent from the story and from her life as she grows more involved with Edward.  Likewise, Edward's "family" is remarkably accepting of Bella -- considering the risks.  The leads, Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson, are attractive and appealing.  They do their best to sell the love story, but the script ignores every potential obstacle and every opportunity to generate meaningful conflict.  Bella is instantly embraced by a new group of friends, the day she arrives at her new school and they remain loyal, background characters in spite of her obvious disinterest and even contempt for them.  When Bella enters her science class and Edward first gets a whiff of her, the comical look on his face is the picture of a man who has just drunk a carton of milk that's past the expiry date.  Rather than thumb her nose at his rebuff, Bella is intrigued.  Who is this boy who's so repulsed by me?  Eventually she confronts him and his warning to stay away from him only makes her want him more.  

The fact that he's a vampire is a foregone conclusion.  We know this going in.  What is missed is an opportunity to build mystery around what he is after.  Imagine if we were kept in the dark as to who is responsible for the "animal attacks," with all clues pointing to the Cullens while Bella's father investigates.  If Bella's father were more driven to stop these attacks and his mounting evidence were pushing him towards a climactic confrontation with the vampires, the movie might have also forced Bella towards a more difficult realization.  As Bella became more intimate with Edward, she would also ironically grow further from her father.  This would also make the arrival of the murderous rival vampire clan a bigger surprise and a more ominous threat in the final stretch of the film.  

Maybe I'm being unduly critical.  We're supposed to surrender to stories like this without analyzing them on such a microscopic level and judging by the $180 million the film has grossed domestically, it seems as though I am in the minority.   Maybe its naive of me to expect more from a movie like this.  I haven't read the books, so comparisons may reveal new insights. All I know is that the world of the story and the concept driving Twilight had the potential to make for great teen escapism.  Instead it made me smile goofily and apologize to my wife for being so close-minded.  

The Oscar Cop-Out

By now, much negative press has already been lavished on this year's Oscar race and critics are predicting that this could be the most boring Oscar ceremony ever.  The academy has been accused of selling out, the nominees have been complaining that their sails do not have enough metaphorical wind to push them towards the triumph they so rightly deserve.  And yes, the awards are predictable this year.  The nominations smack of one too many "been there, done thats" but I'm not going to talk about that.  I'd like to take just a minute to point a finger at the people who are really responsible: the filmmakers themselves.  

I spent several years working in LA as a part of the Hollywood "machine" and the problem (as I see it) isn't just the kind of movies that are getting nominated, but the kinds of movies that are getting a push from the studios.  There are only two seasons in Hollywood.  Summer Movie season -- which now starts in March and why not? This is when the studios make the big bucks.  And of course, there's Oscar season, which starts as early as October and consists of no less than a full-scale marketing assault, promoting lovingly-crafted, highbrow cinema "for your consideration" via the trades (Variety and The Hollywood Reporter).

Oscar season is the time when all the executives who had the sophistication and forethought to greenlight a contending "prestige picture" pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves -- if not others, on a job...done.  Whether or not the films live up to their pedigree is another thing entirely.  Academy members are bound to make mistakes, but the Oscars used to stand for something.  They were designed to recognize and inspire excellence in the art of motion pictures, but rather than inspire they became a means in and of themselves.  By coming back every year, writer's strike or not...the Oscars have become a comfortable old shoe that any high-minded, end of the year, Hollywood film has a chance of fitting into.  

When did this happen?  When did blockbusters and prestige pictures become mutually exclusive?  It's time that Hollywood started taking their blockbusters a little more seriously -- The Dark Knight was a major step in the right direction this year, as was The Departed in 2006.  And, likewise it is high time that the so-called "important" films became a little more entertaining.  Still, like everything important in life, the choice has to come from within.  It isn't enough to insist on retribution here and there is nothing pointing to a decline in Oscar movie marketing anytime soon.  The only chance of things improving is if all us cinephiles and filmmakers band together to demand more of ourselves.  It's time to say no more to being a pushover.  It's time to say no more to valuing earnest message films, regardless of their originality.  

The marketing of these Oscar films is insidious.  It is so effective and so relentless, that ambitious misfires like last year's Atonement suddenly start to look good to me.  Yes, I admit, after five successive weeks of Atonement ads, including full page spreads and complimentary DVD samplers, I too was willing to throw reason and my opinion to the wind and admit that I had been wrong...Atonement was in fact a masterpiece after all.  If I were still subscribing to the trades, I might be telling you the same thing about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- another overhyped awards darling.  Don't get me wrong, I value ambition over execution if a film has a point of view.  The problem I have is how few Oscar contenders genuinely have one.  

One Chance Too Many Harvey

Last Chance Harvey by writer/director Joel Hopkins is a misconceived project that is elevated by two great performances by Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson but ultimately falls flat.  Harvey Shine (Hoffman) is a man at twilight's door, looking back on a failed existence when he meets Kate Walker (Thompson) on the eve of his daughter's London wedding and she inspires hope within him.  Unfortunately the movie doesn't give the actors enough to play with.  

The camera pulls away just when it should be moving closer, as things start to click between Harvey and Kate.  As romance blooms, we follow Kate and Harvey through several charming London locations without getting close enough to fully to invest in them.  They speak but we don't hear what they are saying.  Instead we hear a melancholy musical score by Dickon Hinchliffe that lends the film all the character of a standard movie of the week.  Music goes a long way towards setting the tone of a picture and it would have seemed a natural fit to write a jazz score, since we learn that Harvey -- a commercial jingle composer -- once dreamt of being a jazz pianist, but this is just one of several missing elements.  

Big moments happen, but the connections between them seem to have been left on the cutting room floor.  The wedding sequence is the centerpiece of the film and is designed to mark a turning point in Harvey's growth, but just as things heat up we are again directed away from the central conflict.   Harvey's troubles with his daughter are resolved in one gulping, melancholy speech that miraculously seems to solve everything between them.  That is, until Kate walks out on the party when she sees him having fun and he is forced to get her back.  The actors inhabit their roles with gravitas and they do their best to sell the ending of the film, but ultimately it hinges on a giant leap of faith and there just isn't enough meat on the bones here -- not that I should even know what that means as a lifelong vegetarian.