Best Picture: Ranking the year's crop

. . . or I should say ranking the 4 I've seen since my interest in Frost/Nixon is minimal at best.

4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: A technically impressive film with one great performance (that'd be Cate Blanchett) that nevertheless left me pretty unaffected. Full of clunky historical allusions to space shutte lanches, hurricanes, and music of The Beatles, this film was doomed from day one with a screenplay that values Q-U-A-N-T-I-T-Y of elements over any particular emotionally affecting quality. The end take on a slightly creepy vibe as well that I don't think was intentional. Had this not been the presumptive Best Picture winner before anyone saw it, I doubt anyone would still be paying attention to it outside of the techinical categories.

3. The Reader: A perfectly adequate movie in every way but not one I'm likely to remember for much longer. Whereas I'll still be impressed with a few of David Fincher's visual tricks for a while, most of this movie has already evaporated from my subconscious. Kate Winslet will probably win Best Actress for this, which is a shame because I can't think of anything particularly special in what she did here. Most of the film's attempts at sensual eroticism came off a little silly, and the plot is a pastiche of been there, done that elements. The best thing it has going for it is David Kross, a young actor who I hope finds better vehicles to display his growing talents in the future.

2. Milk: Well-made and perfectly acted by a group of solid actors, it does a good job of setting itself up as a period piece without resorting to jarring historical introductions. Instead, it integrated vintage television footage and newsreels in seemlesly, blending them into the film's narrative structure. Depicting events that feel as relevant today as they ever have, this film finds itself at the #2 spot simply because, try as Gus Van Sant might, I don't think there's a way to make a biopic that doesn't feel in some small way that it's all been done before, especially in the past decade. The screenplay also suffers from a few over sentimentalized points that just didn't need to be there (the kid in the wheelchair as exhibit A).

1. Slumdog Millionaire: Say what you will, but I think this would be a uniquely strange choice for Best Picture, even if it's path to the top spot of a film coming out of nowhere near the end of the year is all to familiar from the recent past (Million Dollar Baby, etc . . .) Danny Boyle's messy, hyperenergetic visual and storytelling style fit perfectly into the story, compensating for the (at times) visible inexperience of his lead actors. This is not a perfect film, but it's an interesting one, as most Danny Boyle films tend to be, and one that's distinctly different and diverse pedigree of creators would be a welcome choice for the top prize. Call it Crash 2.0 all you like (though, really, I have NO idea where you can make those comparisons from), but I'd be quite happy to see it go home with a golden boy.

It is Written: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

I flat out love Danny Boyle, and I'm not afraid to admit it.

What makes Boyle a great and brave filmmaker is that he's always teetering on the edge of over direction and unnecessary strangeness, but (with the exception of the very bizarre The Beach) he has the skill to never quite fall over the line. His films have always celebrated a kind of magical realism, whether it be through visions of dead babies climbing on the ceiling, manifestations of Hindu gods, or visions of patron saints.

Really, the only fairly bland entry in his diverse filmography is A Life Less Ordinary, the one time Boyle attempted to make (essentially) a typical Hollywood romantic comedy, casting Cameron Diaz in the lead, an actress who might as well change her name to 'we've run out of ideas' at this point.

Boyle needs to take risks. He needs to indulge his inner schoolboy and let his imagination run wild to keep himself engaged in the process. He'll never really fit in among mainstream Hollywood because of it, and I really hope he doesn't try.

Kids.

Listen, I don't want to like out myself here as cold hearted but I really cannot stand children in movies about 90% of the time. Every time I see a trailer for a movie starring Jayden Smith or Connor Cruise, I can practically smell the contract negotiations and Caesar Salads eaten by lawyers and publicists in development meetings. I was really happy with the kids in this movie. A LOT of this movie relies on the performances of the kids playing the younger versions of the film's 3 main characters, and (as Boyle has proven before) Boyle knows how to direct children. The kids are cute, without being precocious. The kids are skilled, without feeling unbelievably over rehearsed and hollow.

Dev Patel is, as many have already noted, charming as Jamal, and Frieda Pinto is likeable, sweet, and really knows how to look alluring in lots of yellow, but if I were to single out one performance, I would probably highlight Madhur Mittal's work as the adult version of Jamal's older brother, Salim. With what probably amounts to no more than a maximum of 10 minutes of screen time, Mittal makes a pretty distinct impression that should be getting a lot more press.

Slumdog Millionaire is a really interestingly and beautifully realized Dickensian fable that only a maniac like Danny Boyle could have directed.

Oh . . . and my co worker has a theory that anyone who walks out before the credits sequence is over has no soul. He may be right.

(Yes, I'm rooting for it come Oscar time)

I'm developing a major crush on Dev Patel . . .

I just saw Slumdog Millionaire (review coming soon), and I am helpless to resist his charming goofiness

It CAN'T be just me . . . can it?

The Twelve Movie Meme

Piper tagged JA who tagged Glenn who tagged me so . . . here goes nothing. The general idea is to program your own 6 night mini-film festival. I tried to 'program' each night with two films with similar themes or aesthetics.

NIGHT #1

À la folie... pas du tout (Laetitia Colombani, 2002) and
Jeux d'enfants (Yann Samuell, 2003)

Two quirky French comedies with surprisingly wicked edges

NIGHT #2

The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979) and
The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

Two paranoia driven thrillers of the innovative American film movement of the 1970s

NIGHT #3

Diva (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981) and
Mauvais Sang (Leos Carax, 1986)

Two classic entries into the New French New Wave Movement of the 1980s

NIGHT #4

Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968) and
The Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinnemann, 1973)

Two narratives following the path of killing spree inspired by true events

NIGHT #5

Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet, 1974) and
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

Two character packed features directed by masters of the cinema of the 1970s

NIGHT #6

Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) and
28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002)

Two recent and bleak looks at mankind on the verge of collapse

And, hey . . . there's a whole day of the week left over for me to screen all 6 hours of La Meglio gioventù (Marco Tullio Giordana, 2003)


Technically, I'm supposed to tag 5 people, but I'm pretty sure anyone who plans on doing this already has. If I'm forgetting you, just leave a comment and consider yourself tagged.

Woops!

So, with all of this marathon movie viewing, it seems I forgot about stinkylulu's supporting actress blog-a-thon. It's probably too late to enter this, but I think I'll address it anyway.

There are already some entries for some of my favorite supporting performances this year: Marie-Josée Croze, Kelly Macdonald, Jennifer Garner, Margo Martindale, Saoirse Ronan (probably the year's best), Tilda Swinton, and Kristen Thomson. They all impressed me but, as they've already been addressed, I feel like singling out someone who, though not the best of the year, managed to surprise me in a film I never would have expected it from.

But first, let me just point out two lovely ladies who have also been overlooked thus far:

Romola Garai in Atonement



AND

Emmanuelle Seigner in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly


Both delivered wonderfully heartfelt performances, but have been by and large overshadowed by their directors or fellow cast members.

And now, for the main event . . .

IMOGEN POOTS IN 28 WEEKS LATER


As I said, I don't mean to imply she gave the best supporting performance by an actress this year. Rather, in the interest of (let's be honest) trying to be a little different, I thought I'd talk about a surprisingly solid performance in a film you would probably not have expected it from.

I feel confident in calling Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later one of the best horror films of the last ten years. It was eerie, tense, well-acted and directed, and boasted one of the better horror film scores in recent memory. It became a surprise hit and, inevitably, spawned this year's sequel. Though it starts out promising enough, I couldn't help but be disappointed when it sunk back into old horror cliches and flaws in logic that the first film was able to avoid (though some would argue even that film went off the rails in the last third).


Despite all this, Imogen Poots still manages to give a mature and quite impressive performance as Tammy, one of the first children allowed back in the safe zone of London after the infection of the first film has been wiped out. With her piercing eyes and vulnerability, Imogen delivers from square one, providing something I would have thought impossible: a young role in a horror movie that does not come off as obnoxious or detrimental to the film's narrative.


While struggling with her father's news of the death of her mother, Tammy and her brother indirectly play a part in reintroducing the infection. The chaos that ensues in the aftermath of this throws Tammy into a situation she doesn't know how to deal with and forces her to commit acts no child or teen should be forced to do. The scene in which she SPOILER has to shoot her infected father, only to discover a bite mark on her brother, the last remaining family member she has left, is remarkably true to how a young person thrown into such a situation would feel and react.


Her fear is real, and, through the course of the movie, she will be forced to grow up and make decisions she could never have imagined. Horror films are at their best when the actors are in the moment, believing every infected human or creature from the deep is a threat to their survival.


Perhaps if the film had been a tad more interested in the challenges facing these two kids and less interested in overblown CGI and stock characters (Jeremy Renner and Rose Byrne's army officers, see above), it would have succeeded on a level closer to the original. As it stands, the film is a decent enough sequel with a few stand out performances (Robert Carlyle and Imogen) that could have been so much more.