For Feisty Feminists

In The Social Network, Rooney Mara plays Erica Albright, the young woman who opens the film by breaking up with our anti-hero Mark Zuckerberg, and comes back halfway through to cut him down to size for the things he wrote about her online. It’s a great, full performance in two short scenes, but Mara does a lot with her screentime. She adeptly handles Aaron Sorkin’s rapid-fire dialogue; she shows the transition from admiring and being interested in Mark to being fed up and wanting nothing to do with him, in a few minutes time; and she handily provides the movie’s moral center and the best entry point to the film for the audience, her dismissal of Mark in that second scene giving the audience permission to think he’s kind of a dick.

A lot of reviews have boiled down the character of Erica to ‘Zuckerberg’s Rosebud‘, and while that may be putting a bit too fine a point on the Citizen Kane/The Social Network comparisons that have been floating around, Mara never reduces her character to something so simple as ‘the one that got away’.  She never defines her character in terms of the impact she has on Mark, but instead shows why Erica would make the choices she does for her own sake. She presents Erica as the kind of whip-smart, likable woman that would be interested in someone like Mark in the first place, but would have enough self-respect and intelligence to abandon him when he becomes condescending and even insulting. It’s sharp, clear, film-defining work, doing so much with a very small amount of screen time.

This is part of Stinkylulu’s Supporting Actress 2010 Blogathon, a Tribute to Actressing at the Edges.

Book 45 of Cannonball Read 2

The Films of Werner Herzog: Between Mirage and History is a collection of articles about the famous obsessive filmmaker, published in 1986. It came after his two acknowledged masterpieces starring Klaus Kinski - Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God - but well before the current renaissance he has been enjoying as a filmmaker and celebrity, kickstarted by Grizzly Man.

This is a motley collection, as many compilations tend to be. There is a piece on his short documentaries; another on the use of blindness in Land of Silence and Darkness; on whether his method is the medium; and, even over twenty years ago, on the way his persona interacts with and informs his filmmaking.

While Herzog is a fascinating figure, some of these essays aren’t. It’s a mixed batch, so maybe skipping around, reading in tandem with the films explored in the book is your best bet.

This book also offers up a new ‘batshit Herzog’ anecdote. In one scene in The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner, a short film about a ski-jumper/sculptor, the titular Steiner crash lands, and it is unclear whether he has suffered a serious or even fatal injury. Herzog steps in to say ‘at this point, our film could be over.’ That single-mindedness - placing real human suffering lower in importance than the movie you are making - may be maddening on a human level, but damn if it doesn’t make for some great art.

I was originally going to write more detailed reviews of each of the SIFF movies I saw, but as the festival has been over for almost two weeks, I’ll just write brief thoughts on each.

Winter’s Bone - an atmospheric blend of mystery and regional portrait, this story of Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) and her quest in the Missourri Ozarks to find her absent, meth-cooking father is a solid movie bouyed by Lawrence’s performance. John Hawkes is also great as Teardrop, Ree’s menacing uncle, but many of the other performances, trying for minimal affect, feel flat and wooden instead. Great pacing and storyline, interesting depiction of gender roles amongst the backwoods inhabitants. B

Dear Lemon Lima - this locally filmed production about a group of high school misfits banding together, headed by Vanessa (Savanah Wiltfong), is overwhelmingly cute and twee, but it hit me in the right mood, and so came off as more adorable than cloying. A sudden development late in the film comes off as rushed and gratuitous, rather than emotionally resonant as intended (seriously, if you see this movie, you will know exactly what scene I am talking about), and some of the lovable misfit stuff is just too much, but there are some great elements - Vanessa’s obsession with her former boyfriend, the smarmy rich boy Phillip, leads to some funny scenes, as does people’s perception of her ties to her Yup’ik Indian heritage. Also, I have a soft spot for movies that treat teenage girls like they are actual people, which is the heart of this well-meaning if imperfect comedy. B-

I Killed My Mother is pretty astounding. It captures the relationship between a teenage boy (Hubert, played by writer-director Xavier Dolan) and his single mother (Anne Dorval) perfectly, with Hubert careening between affection and anger on a dime, and Dolan avoiding giving the audience a likely surrogate. Both Hubert and his mother do completely selfish and fucked up things, but both also act out of love and devotion at times. Dorval gives a wonderfully funny and sad performance, and the script avoids easy solutions to a complex relationship. A-

Leaves of Grass - I tried to love this movie, and I tried to love Edward Norton in it, but I ended up only loving parts. Leaves of Grass is the story of twin brothers, both played by Norton, who grew up together as rednecks in Oklahoma. One (Bill) is now a classics professor who has worked hard to hide his roots, the other (Brady) is a pot grower who fakes his own death to get Bill to visit. Norton is good as Bill, but his portrayal of Brady suffers, as does the movie, from some condescending mockery and backwoods platitutes. Leaves of Grass can’t seem to decide if the Oklahoma residents are braindead rubes or good country people who will save your soul, and either option is reductionist and patronizing. Additionally, the story takes a few strange turns that feel sudden and unsupported. C+

The Seattle International Film Festival has been underway for three weeks now, but I’m just getting around to writing about the movies I’ve seen. I’ll post my thoughts on the various movies I see at the festival.

First off, I saw I am Love, an Italian movie featuring Tilda Swinton. Swinton plays Emma, the Russian trophy wife of a rich Italian businessman. The movie centers around Emma’s family life; her son and husband have been named heirs to the family business, but the son is more interested in opening up a restaurant at his friend Edoardo’s remote mountain home, and her daughter is dealing with new revelations about her personal life. Emma, seduced by Edoardo’s cooking, begins an affair with him.

Emma’s relationship with her children is lovingly drawn, and she shares quiet moments of  affection with each child that are touching and genuine. Her affair with Edoardo is compelling, showing the forces that draw her down a destructive path. However, for the first 3/4 of the movie, I found it surprisingly dull and uninspiring despite Swinton’s weird and amazing screen presence. The final portion of the movie was emotionally wrenching, with Emma making monumental choices in relation to her family and her own life.

The score, by John Adams, is beautiful, but until that gut punch of a finale, it is mostly confined to establishing shots of beautiful Italian countrysides and cityscapes. This might be why the first portions of the movie felt so uninspired; we get used to musical cues that heighten emotion and tell us what to feel. I’m really not sure what to make of I am Love, other than to adore the parts that work well - Emma’s loving relationship with her children, Swinton’s performance, Edoardo’s blazing hotness, the score, and the sumptuous visuals - and appreciate it for that.

The Freebie is an entirely different movie; a mostly improvised movie based on a 6-page outline, written by director/star Katie Aselton. Aselton and Dax Shepard play a married couple who haven’t had sex in quite some time. In a late night conversation, they both admit that they have things they would explore with other people, and they agree that, for one night, they can each sleep with someone else. Their agreement affects them both in ways they did not expect

The Freebie is a bit similar in style to Humpday and The Puffy Chair, and the strongest point of the movie is the acting. The portrayals of the relationships of long-time friends, relatives and lovers feel incredibly lived-in, the conversations spontaneous. The story develops fairly naturally, and feels more realistic than the implausible dare at the center of Humpday (I mean, really. One of the characters motivations for wanting to fuck another straight man on film is summed up as ‘I don’t know why I want to do this, but it’s important to me.’) Aselton and Shepard are best in show, but Ross Partridge, as the bartender at Aselton’s ‘free night’ is also notable for his funny and sexy turn.

The Freebie also avoids the biggest pitfall of these improvised and/or mumblecore movies; it is not visually awful, though it is not particularly visually inspired, either. The Freebie also has a greater deal of depth, exposing the ugly underbelly of a marriage that at first seems ideal, and suggesting that the husband and wife would rather lie to each other than have some difficult conversations. Overall, The Freebie is enjoyable, with understated comedy amid some difficult truths about relationships.

This past weekend’s viewings took in a blockbuster that was supposedly about the visuals, with a ludicrous storyline and horrific acting and characters, that lasted too long at 2 hrs 27 minutes; and a movie from 19 years ago from a writer-director full of ideas, rich characters, and dialogue-heavy scenes, with some botched visuals. Guess which one I liked better? Hint: duh.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen has a silly plot that is simultaneously mind-numbingly stupid and difficult to follow. Every scene seems silly and ridiculous, the action scenes look like complete shit despite the fact that it cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, and the best acting in the movie comes from Josh Duhamel.  I don’t hate action movies, not at all, but I hate soulless blockbusters that make me ponder the question “which is worse - if the makers of this movie actually thought this was good, or if they knew that it would make money despite its innate shittiness?” This movie is definitely in competition for the worst movie ever made.

Grade: F

Jungle Fever is Spike Lee’s look at an interracial relationship. It is about an affair between married architect Flipper (Wesley Snipes), and his temp assistant from an Italian-American neighborhood, Angie (Annabella Sciorra). The movie also deals with the lives of their families, including Angie’s father and brothers who expect her to wait on them hand and foot; her erstwhile suitor, played by John Turturro; Flipper’s wife and child, as well as his crack addict brother (a pre-Pulp Fiction Samuel L. Jackson) and his parents, a loving Ruby Dee and the crazy ‘reverend doctor’ Ossie Davis.

Lee’s usual strengths are on hand here. The performances are stellar - career bests from Snipes and Sciorra, and he has a strong eye for undiscovered talent, with not only Jackson but Halle Berry on hand.  The characters are well-drawn, and even when the dialogue becomes hyperbolic, it still seems consistent with the characterizations.

Lee’s weird point - for me at least - is the structuring of his ideas about race; namely, that if there is a racial issue at play, it is the only issue. Flipper cheats on his wife, which is not a big deal according to his best friend, until he reveals that it was with a white woman. His wife throws him out, apparently because he had sex with a white woman. When Flipper eventually breaks up with Angie, he tells her that they both just had jungle fever. Lee seems to be promoting this single-minded mentality. I think it’s a bit more complex - if it’s acceptable for men to cheat on their wives in Flipper’s world, could some of his wife’s anger be simply expressing her feelings about cheating in general, through a socially acceptable outlet of anger about race? If Angie lives in a working-class neighborhood and doesn’t know anybody who thinks beyond those limits, could some of her attraction to Flipper be about his upper-class status? Could Flipper be interested in cheating on his wife with a younger woman who is impressed with him, and also interested in what it would be like to be with a white woman? Lee doesn’t deal with these complexities, and that is both a strength and a weakness. He makes his points clearly, but does not leave room for complicated human emotions.

Lee’s weak point is visuals. He experiments with certain aspects of visuals, but they just don’t work. Lee stages numerous conversations where the participants are walking down the street with weird tracking shots, where it looks like the actors are floating rather than walking. It looks like shit, although not as shitty as any single scene in Transformers 2.

Despite all these flaws, Jungle Fever is, like almost all Spike Lee movies, well worth seeing due to the dialogue and characters. Jackson’s character in particular is great, showing how different members of his family deal with a fundamentally dishonest, scamming, drug-addicted brother or son. The character is only one of many that are interesting; there almost doesn’t have to be a plot to make a movie about these characters watchable. I criticize the heavy-handedness of the writing and directing, but Lee’s heavy hand is what makes his movies so interesting, and this is no exception.

Grade: B

Ah, my secret shame: awards-gazing. I follow the Oscar blogs fanatically, and I look forward to the announcement of the nominees and the awards themselves perhaps a bit too much. Inevitably, I am disappointed. This year is a bit less disappointing than usual - those 10 Best Picture nominees yielded an interesting group, and I’m solidly behind two of the locks for acting awards (Mo’Nique and Christoph Waltz). There were a few duds in the nominees, and there could be in the awards themselves - but I’ll talk about that only if it happens.

Best Picture: Avatar; The Blind Side; District 9; An Education; The Hurt Locker; Inglourious Basterds; Precious; A Serious Man; Up; Up in the Air

I have seen all 10, and I like 8 or 9, love 3 to 6 of them (the three I definitely love are A Serious Man, Inglourious Basterds, and The Hurt Locker. I might love Up, Precious, and District 9, but would probably have to see them again to be sure).

The upside to this batch is that we got an interesting mix, and that these are all movies that at least some people genuinely loved - there’s no coasters, although the quality of some nominees is debatable.

Prediction: The Hurt Locker

Spoiler: Avatar

My favorite: Don’t make me choose between Basterds and A Serious Man. OK, it’s Basterds for now.

More after the jump.

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Here’s the conversation Ben and I had about the Live Action shorts nominated for Oscars, including our predictions for which one will be taking home the prize on Sunday night. Check out Ben’s place for some video clips of the animated nominees, too.

Ben: OK, so I finally made it to the live action shorts as well.  On the whole, I was fairly disappointed.  I saw them last year and, as a group, they were much stronger.  That said, I did enjoy seeing some different interpretations with what can be done with 20 minutes of screen time.

So, they were pretty dark and bleak.  Every single one has some sort of violence or death (at least imagined death, in the case of the true comedy of the bunch.  My favorite was definitely Miracle Fish, about an 8-year-old schoolboy is a bit of an outcast at school. He gets upset, sneaks into the nurse’s office to take a nap, and wakes up to find an empty building.  This was definitely the only one of the films where I couldn’t predict where it was going.  While it probably had the lowest production values of any of the films (it seemed a bit blurry to me), it had the most compelling story.

After that, my favorite was “Instead of Abracadabra,” a sort of Swedish Napoleon Dynamite about a 25-year-old amateur magician who still lives with his parents.  This was shown last, and you could tell the audience ate up the chance for some laughter.

“Kavi” and “The Door” were well-made, but not surprising or all that interesting.  Kavi actually seemed a touch too reminiscient of Slumdog Millionaire.  I think it even had a song by the composer from Slumdog.  The Door, about the Chernobyl disaster and its affect on one family, was beautifully made but, again, a little familiar.

“The New Tenants” started out strong, with some funny repartee between the gay couple who just moved into an apartment.  It gets a little too “wacky” for me, though, and I hated the ending.

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Today, I’m here to help you win that office Oscar pool.  My old friend Ben and I sat down (metaphorically) and had a conversation about this years nominees for the Oscar for best animated short film. We both agree that the new Wallace and Grommit adventure is poised to win, but disagree on the most likely spoiler. Read the transcript below, and check out Ben’s blog, too!

Rebecca: I didn’t notice right away how much this year’s nominees are about death and violence, probably because the tone tended more towards dark humor and. ‘The Lady and the Reaper’ is about an old woman who wants to die, but is filmed as a slapstick battle for her soul between the grim reaper and a heroic doctor. ‘Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty’ is a fairytale turned into a rant about old age. ‘Logorama’ features a murderous Ronald McDonald taking Big Boy as a hostage, as well as an earthquake ripping part of California off of the coast. ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’ is about a serial killer who murders bakers, and Wallace might be the next target. ‘French Roast’ is the only short that doesn’t deal directly with death - it’s about a guy who forgot his wallet sitting in a cafe.

First things first: I love the look of stop-motion so much more than computer animation, it’s hard for me to be unbiased about ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death.’ There’s so much character and nuance that comes out of stop-motion, whereas the computer animation in ‘French Roast’, ‘The Lady and the Reaper’, and ‘Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty’ starts to all look the same. ‘Logorama’ was an eyesore, but that’s part of the point, as everything is constructed out of corporate logos.

I enjoyed ‘Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty’, ‘French Roast’, and ‘The Lady and the Reaper’ (in descending order). In addition to the similar CG visual styles, they all consist of a simple concept made into a humorous short film of 6-8 minutes. The reason ‘Granny O’Grimm’ was my favorite of those three was the great vocal performance at the center of it, and the visual contrast in styles between the grandmother/child framework and the Sleeping Beauty story itself. ‘French Roast’ and ‘The Lady and the Reaper’ were enjoyable enough, but didn’t really stick with me.

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Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies is a collection of hooks’ essays on various films, as well as interviews with some lesser-known black filmmakers. I’ll keep this short, as I have 11 short reviews to write in the next 4 days. hooks is, as always, an engaging and straightforward writer, who can tackle complex theoretical topics while managing to keep her language simple. I love her analysis of movies, even the ones I haven’t seen - I wanted to take a look at Spike Lee’s Crooklyn after reading her essay, even though what she has to say is not a glowing endorsement. She also clearly knows a lot about film, briefly mentioning technical aspects while making her point about the politics portrayed - and her knowledge of film is encylopedic. She makes a point to mention and interview black filmmakers who are not only progressive in their politics, but advanced in their filmmaking, and she repeatedly makes it clear that there was a thriving black american cinematic tradition well before Spike Lee came along. Use this book to read as a companion to the movies she writes about - Crooklyn, Girl 6, Leaving Las Vegas, Pulp Fiction - or to come up with a list of lesser known, interesting films to watch like Killer of Sheep and Daughters of the Dust.

 Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood relates the making of the five nominees for Best Picture at the 1968 Oscars: Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Doolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. The story starts with the genesis of each story, from a Hollywood studio picture (Doolittle) to two outsiders coming up with an idea for a New Wave treatment of a crime story (Bonnie and Clyde).

The history of these movies is far-ranging, from the racial politics for which Sydney Poitier (the star of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night) became a lightning rod to the personal problems - a shaky marriage, alcoholism, and out-of-control ego - of one Rex Harrison, the star of the absolutely disastrous Dr. Doolittle.

Pictures at a Revolution not only elucidates the process of making movies, from little movies that became classics to bloated epics that no one remembers, it captures the cultural history of the time period perfectly and with great detail.