Monthly Archives: January 2014

Jan 03 2014
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WGA Nominations

Writers-Guild-Awards

Of all the various guild awards, the Writers Guild nominations are traditionally the least likely to match up with the Oscars. This is because their eligibility rules are notoriously strict, and every year several major contenders are deemed ineligible. This year that list includes, among others, Blue is the Warmest Color, Fruitvale Station, Philomena, Rush, and the prohibitive winner of the Adapted Screenplay Oscar: 12 Years a Slave.

There are still surprises to be had, though. In the Original category, Inside Llewyn Davis was eligible but still missed a nomination. The excellent Dallas Buyers Club nabbed its spot. Gravity missed the boat too, which is a real shame, though not all that surprising. All the talk surrounding that film has been how it’s screenplay is its weakest link. This is totally bogus, of course; just because it’s dialogue is sparse doesn’t mean it’s not a deeply layered and inventively structured story. It wouldn’t be tied for the lead in the Best Picture race if it’s script was really as unmemorable as they say.

In the Adapted category, the biggest surprise is Lone Survivor, which gets its first mention of the season. I haven’t seen that film yet, but from everything I’ve been reading, if this weren’t such a competitive year, I imagine we’d be looking at a potential Best Picture with this one.

Here the full list of WGA nominees…

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

  • American Hustle, Written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell; Columbia Pictures
  • Blue Jasmine, Written by Woody Allen; Sony Pictures Classics
  • Dallas Buyers Club, Written by Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack; Focus Features
  • Her, Written by Spike Jonze; Warner Bros.
  • Nebraska, Written by Bob Nelson; Paramount Pictures

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

  • August: Osage County, Screenplay by Tracy Letts; Based on his play; The Weinstein Company
  • Before Midnight, Written by Richard Linklater & Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke; Based on characters created by Richard Linklater & Kim Krizan; Sony Classics
  • Captain Phillips, Screenplay by Billy Ray; Based on the book A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty; Columbia Pictures
  • Lone Survivor, Written by Peter Berg; Based on the book by Marcus Lutrell with Patrick Robinson; Universal Pictures
  • The Wolf of Wall Street, Screenplay by Terence Winter; Based on the book by Jordan Belfort; Paramount Pictures

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY

  • Dirty Wars, Written by Jeremy Scahill & David Riker; Sundance Selects
  • Herblock – The Black & The White, Written by Sara Lukinson & Michael Stevens; The Stevens Company
  • No Place on Earth, Written by Janet Tobias & Paul Laikin; Magnolia Pictures
  • Stories We Tell, Written by Sarah Polley; Roadside Attractions
  • We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks; Written by Alex Gibney; Focus Features
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Jan 03 2014
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“Blackfish” Poll Apparently Stacked by SeaWorld

Blackfish_documentary_banner

Blackfish is an amazing documentary about SeaWorld’s mistreatment of Orcas. (It made #12 on my best of the year list.) It hasn’t been very widely seen; box office returns were fairly low. Even still, it seems SeaWorld – giant corporation that it is – is doing everything it can to try to mitigate the damages. That’s not surprising: the film is incredibly damning. And since it release, they’ve battling backlash on all fronts. Several high profile musicians, including Willie Nelson and Trisha Yearwood and a bunch of others,  pulled out of their big concert series in response.

Not unexpectedly, many of SeaWorld’s efforts to contain the shitstorm have not reflected well on them. Just one example from the Orlando Business Journal…

On Dec. 31, Orlando Business Journal posted a poll asking readers: “Has CNN’s ‘Blackfish’ documentary changed your perception of SeaWorld?” As of midday Jan. 2, the results were staggeringly in favor of those saying the film hasn’t had any impact on their perception of the parks — roughly 99 percent siding in SeaWorld’s favor.

Sounds a little fishy, no? OBJ checked the numbers, and guess what they found.

…imagine our surprise when we noticed that one single Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) accounted for more than 54 percent of the votes, or about 180 of the total 328 votes. IP Addresses are typically unique Internet identifiers given to a computer or series of devices — say a multi-computer network in your office.

And who’s the owner of the domain name and company that address belong to? SeaWorld.com and SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment.

Read the full article here.

Blackfish is available for streaming from Netflix. You owe it to yourself to watch it.

 

EDIT: Here’s SeaWorld’s response. That makes sense, and it sure sounds legit and legal. But it still looks really bad. It looks like they’re willing to do anything they can to save face. It looks like they’re scared. Good.

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Jan 02 2014
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Top 10 Films of 2013

Tom Hanks

And here it is: my Top 10 for 2013! (In case you missed 11-20 and the rest, check it out here.) Without further ado, #10…

10. Dallas Buyers Club

One of the best films about the earlier years of the AIDS epidemic. While not a comedy, it’s surprisingly funny at times. It deftly avoids the overly sentimental treacle one often expects with this subject matter. Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto give the best performances of their respective careers.

9. Philomena

Judi Dench has still got it (as if there were ever any doubt). Steve Coogan’s script could’ve easily treated its main character as just a stupid country bumpkin, and for a while you think it does. Before long though, you realize you’re looking at a deeply complex, intelligent individual and the Coogan’s big city journalist may me the short-sighted one. It also sheds much-needed light on a horrible true past, but to say more would be giving away too much.

8. Rush

Do you think this is a sports movie? Think again. This is a hugely enjoyable character study of two Formula One drivers whose complex relationship is one of the most riveting things on screen in years. Chris Hemsworth and especially Daniel Brühl are perfectly cast.

7. Mud

McConaughey continues his amazing “McConnaisance,” but the real stand outs are Tye Sheridan as main kid, Ellis, and director Jeff Nichols who continues his run of incredibly poignant portraits of rural American south. (His last, Take Shelter, was one of the most defining films of the decade.)

6. Captain Phillips

Paul Greengrass’ greatest gift is his ability to strip the sentiment and judgment away so that the only emotion left is genuinely your own. Tom Hanks’ final scene will break you.

5. Prisoners

What looks on the surface to be an average popcorn thriller, turns out to be a deeply layered, tightly wound, and deftly directed morality play. This will haunt you for a very long time after the credits roll.

4. 12 Years a Slave

Director Steve McQueen drops the pretension of his first two films (Hunger, Shame) but keeps the artistry to create the most powerful vision of slavery ever put on film. Chiwetel Ejiofor is outstanding as always in the lead and Michael Fassbender is terrifying as his brutal owner. Beware the hanging scene – I’ll say no more.

3. Gravity

The groundbreaking visual effects make better use of 3D than any film in history. That alone would make it one of the best movies of any year. But it’s the deceptively simple structure and struggle for survival at its heart that makes it one of the greatest films ever made.

2. Nebraska

Alexander Payne’s best film since Election is the most relaxing and pleasant time I’ve spent in a movie theater all year. It’s at once measured and hilarious. Bruce Dern gives a completely lived-in performance as Woody, but the biggest stand out is June Squibb as his un-self-censored wife. (See my review here.)

 -TIE- 2. Her [UPDATE: Added 1/21/14]

Spike Jonze hits refresh on the romance genre with this love story between a man and his computer. Set in a gorgeously designed near-future, this film moves beyond the usual genre tropes to explore the very concept of relationships. (See my review here.)

1. The Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Scorsese one-ups his own legendary repertoire by taking the true life of the worst of Wall St scumbags and making it an outrageous comedy. Leonardo DiCaprio gives the best performance of his illustrious career. But don’t confuse the deceptively light tone with a lack of seriousness. The raucous chaos at the very heart of the film paints an extremely poignant vision of corporate greed and excess. (See my review here.)

Agree? Disagree? Think I missed something? Let me know in the comments!

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Jan 02 2014
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Reviews

Review – American Hustle

After seeing them both in the same weekend, it’s hard to talk about American Hustle without comparing it to the far superior The Wolf of Wall Street. Both are near-period pieces based on true stories. Both trade in themes of greed and corruption. And both are highly chaotic in terms of style and structure. But where Scorsese expertly sculpted his chaos into a specific vision with something to say, David O Russell seems content to throw a lot of parts on screen and hope that what sticks adds up to a cohesive whole. It doesn’t… Not quite, anyway.

Make no mistake, Russell is a supremely talented artist, working with a top-notch cast and crew – also like Wolf, both films have incredible performances from actors at the top of their game. His last two films, The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, are among my very favorites in recent memory. Both were taut little character studies that hit home in small unexpected ways. This time he brings the same cast from both those films, but the characters all suffer from being drowned out by all their co-stars. A problem exemplified perhaps most fittingly by the 3 different narrators trading the story back and forth. It gets confusing, to say the least.

The standout performances are Jennifer Lawrence as a housewife like no other, Louis C.K. as a fantastically milquetoast FBI chief, and Amy Adams’ side-boob which, as amazing as Adams is, chews up more scenery, with more screen-time, than she or any other actor has the chance to compete with. But Lawrence has the biggest chance of an Oscar nomination, and it would be a deserved one. Along with her Oscar win last March and her performance in The Hunger Games 2, she’s having one hell of a year.

The technical standouts are the costumes, the outlandish hair, and as always Christian Bale’s physical transformation. Seriously that guy is going to die of heart failure in the next 10 years if he keep ballooning his weight up and down with every other film!

All in all, American Hustle is still a really good movie, but it’s not quite a great one.

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Jan 02 2014
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Reviews

Review – The Wolf of Wall Street

I’ve never taken cocaine, but I imagine the effect is something like how I felt after watching The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s a hilarious 3-hour drug- and sex-fueled ride through the depths of white-collar 1-percenter debauchery. Martin Scorsese’s comedic masterpiece is controversial, and I can understand why: Jordan Belfort is a horrible human being, and Leonardo DiCaprio plays him with a raucous, joyous energy that audiences would rather associate with a character much farther on the “pro” side of “protagonist”. And make no mistake, (mild SPOILER ALERT, though it’s far from unexpected) Belfort hardly gets what he really deserves for his crimes (END SPOILER). But you’d be a fool to believe that the comic treatment is in any way condoning what’s on screen. We may be taken so far into the lions’ den that we don’t see the rabbits, but we get one hell of a graphic close-up of the claws and fangs. They’re more gruesome than most of us would expect.

DiCaprio’s performance is his best ever. He throws himself into the role of Jordan with terrifying commitment. Beyond that, he takes the physical comedy to a new level that makes me wonder why we haven’t seen this side of him before. The rest of the ensemble is fantastic across the board, but for me there was other clear standout. Matthew McConaughey – smack dab in the middle of his remarkable “McConnaisance” – appears for all of maybe 15 minutes near the beginning as Jordan’s mentor. But in one scene he breathes such life into this “minor” character that he is infused throughout the next 2 and a half hours, never shown again, but never forgotten.

A word about the length: 3 hours is a long movie, no question. But in this case you don’t feel it, not the way you’d expect anyway. The energy is super-high throughout, and you’ll never have a chance to be bored. But beyond that, Scorsese uses the very length of the film to service its theme, namely: excess. He tells the story of a monster through his own eyes. Jordan doesn’t see himself as the monster he clearly is. He sees his life as a joyous endless thrill ride, so that’s what he shows us. And in that chaotic mess is the exacting genius of a filmmaker perfectly presenting a precise vision. The separation between audience and characters on screen is nothing more or less than the conclusions we take away after the credits role. As it should be.

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Jan 02 2014
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Reviews

Review – Inside Llewyn Davis

Probably the most honest and accurate reaction I can give is that this is the type of film that defies quick reactionary reviews. For instance, I enjoyed the Coen Bros’ A Serious Man when it first came out a few years ago, but since then I’ve come to absolutely love it – though I’ve still only seen it the once. As I’ve sat and ruminated over it the past few years, it’s grown fonder and fonder in my memory. I strongly suspect this new movie of theirs to have a very similar effect. I can say this is one of the Coens’ best films, but I have to qualify that by saying I think that category includes about 70-80% of their work.

It’s much more of a character study than a plot-driven story. The structure is so cyclical that even after the credits you expect Llewyn Davis [Oscar Isaac] to trod through all the events of the movie again and again, exactly the same, over and over and over like Sisyphus on Groundhog Day. Isaac does a perfect job (including his own singing and guitar work) as Davis. He’s a wholly unpleasant, unlikable guy, until he’s behind his guitar. I kept expecting this or that character (or cat) to be the entry point for the audience to be ale to connect with him, but each of them is merely a passing bystander. Instead the music is the soul that makes us feel for the poor guy.

And soulful it is. In a perfect world this soundtrack would do for 60’s folk music, what O Brother Where Art Thou did for Roots Americana. Unfortunately it won’t. That film had the added benefit of being more easily accessible to the every day movie-goer. This is a bit more cerebral. It’s hilarious too, yes, but headier and darker. But for those of us who enjoy that sort of thing, it’s much much MUCH more fulfilling.

One final note: John Goodman has a “minor” (I use that term ironically) role that has him onscreen for all of maybe 15-30 minutes. But holy SHIT that’s one hell of a show! Seriously that guy is getting better and better with every movie these days, and he’s doing a lot. But this may be his best yet. The Oscars should have a Best Cameo category, for smaller supporting roles, just for him.

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Jan 02 2014
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Reviews

Review – Nebraska

This is director Alexander Payne’s best work since Election. (Yes, I do mean to say it’s better than Sideways and The Descendants and About Schmidt – all of which I loved, by the way.) The pace is relaxed and comfy, and yet just a little stilted, mirroring the main character’s arthritic gait. The script uses that to hilarious effect, with a number of jokes and situations that could only work with the slower rhythm. The first half is a very good, very funny movie, and about halfway through it becomes a great film.

The black and white photography is beautiful, and the score memorable and a perfect fit. Payne seems to be nodding slightly at the Coen Bros. style of bruised character study – not too far off from his own usual bread and butter, but refreshingly less acerbic. Woody is the heart and soul of the film. It’s very personality is his personality, and Dern gives an a hell of a performance. But perhaps my favorite and most fun character is that of his wife, played by June Squibb. She’s an unfiltered loud-mouth who’s put up with Woody’s shit for a lifetime, but she’s also a surprisingly strong and confident no-nonsense gal, and one of the few people who actually has a clear head on her shoulders.

I don’t yet know how my Top 10 for the year is going to play out, but I have a strong suspicion this will be a big part of it.

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Jan 02 2014
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Movie Reviews Are Coming!

If all goes according to plan, I expect movie reviews to be a regular feature here on The Screen Life.  I’m about to post my 4 most recent reviews, written before I started the blog: Nebraska, Inside Lleywn Davis, The Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle.

[EDIT: The reviews are now posted. Click on the titles to go read them.)

My philosophy in regards to movie reviews, and criticism in general, is that the general public’s average attention span for reviews is several paragraphs shorter than the average professionally published review. I know mine is. This isn’t a bad thing. We just have a lot of other articles competing for our time, as we click from screen to screen.

Because of this I try to make my reviews shorter than most, giving the most useful critiques in less space. As a naturally long-winded person, the constraints should also help improve my writing skills, forcing me to be more economic with my words. At very least maybe I will fill out a niche, with people choosing my reviews over other to save time.

This is not to say I won’t have a few very long reviews. But I’m going to do my best to keep a healthy balance.

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Jan 02 2014
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PGA Nominees

PGA logo

Ever since the Oscars expanded their Best Picture category, the Producers Guild has synced up with the Academy more and more, with usually only one or two differences, if any. If you want to predict Oscar nominees, this is a good place to start.

The biggest surprises here are whats missing – namely Inside Llewyn Davis and The Butler. Nice to see Blue Jasmine in the mix though. I was starting to think most groups were forgetting that there’s more to that movie than Cate Blanchett.

The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures:
American Hustle
Blue Jasmine
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Saving Mr. Banks
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures:
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Epic
Frozen
Monsters University

The David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television:
American Horror Story: Asylum (FX)
Behind the Candelabra (HBO)
Killing Kennedy (National Geographic Channel)
Phil Spector (HBO)
Top of the Lake (Sundance Channel)

The 25th Annual PGA Awards will be announced on Jan. 19th.

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Jan 02 2014
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The Films of 2013

What better way to begin this new blog on New Year’s Day than with a rundown of all the new films I watched over the past year! These are all the movies released in 2013 that I had a chance to see.*

I’ll announce my Top 10 in a separate post tomorrow. For now, I present #11-20. I divided the rest into 3 categories and listed them alphabetically.

This was an incredibly strong year for great movies. Even some of those I listed under “Very Good” could have made it into the Top 10 of another year with less competition. On top of that, this list leaves out several films I’ve heard great things about and still look forward to seeing, such as Her, Frances Ha, Stories We Tell, Blue is the Warmest Color, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and a bunch of others.

One final note: Every year someone will ask me why my list skews so far toward the positive. Surely there must be far more bad movies out there than good; everybody knows the average quality of Hollywood’s output has been on a steady decline for decades, right? Every year my answer is the same: Research. Read reviews. Read this blog. Read ANYTHING, but read a lot. Save yourself from having to sit through dreck like Oz the Great and Powerful. Sure a few stinkers still slip through, but as expensive as movie tickets are, you owe it to yourself to do everything you can to spend your money wisely. That’s what I do.

Enjoy my list! It’s by no means definitive. If you disagree with any of my rankings, let me know in the comments!

TOP 11-20
11. This Is the End
12. Blackfish
13. Out of the Furnace
14. Much Ado About Nothing
15. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
16. Inside Llewyn Davis
17. Ernest & Celestine
18. Frozen
19. The Conjuring
20. Blue Jasmine

VERY GOOD
All Is Lost
American Hustle
Elysium
The Fifth Estate
Fruitvale Station
Kon-Tiki
Monsters University
Pacific Rim
Side Effects
Star Trek Into Darkness
Warm Bodies
The Way Way Back
White House Down
World War Z
The World’s End

OK
42
The Butler
The Croods
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
John Dies at the End
Mama
Saving Mr. Banks
Spring Breakers
Thor: The Dark World
The Wolverine

BAD
Carrie
G.I. Joe: Retaliation
The Great Gatsby
The Lone Ranger
Man of Steel
Now You See Me
Oblivion
Oz the Great and Powerful

*Kon-Tiki made last years Oscars for Best Foreign Film, but didn’t open here in St Louis until this past spring.

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