John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy

Yesterday I slummed it on the couch and gazed at (among other things) two-thirds of John Ford's well-known cavalry trilogy, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon ('49) and Rio Grande ('50). 
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With this week or two of relative downtime, I'm working hard to get my definitive "Best Westerns" list together, which was partly spurred on by my dalliance (good or bad) with The Coen Brothers' True Grit and that interesting, highly combative Playlist article. 
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Truth is, with a few notable exceptions, I've never been really big fan of John Ford's westerns. Stagecoach ('39) and My Darling Clementine ('46) are pretty great and Fort Apache ('48) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ('62) are pretty stirring for the way they demythicize the Old West.
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His so-called masterpiece, The Searchers ('56), is a confounding American classic with an astonishing closing shot and numerous vistas of wide-screen mastery that somehow mask what a mess it is. 
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With She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande, Ford's trademark Monument Valley wide-angles, service reverence and goofy camaraderie take center stage on equal footing with his sloppy continuity and errant grasp of time and space. In short, they're beautiful, strangely watchable calamities. 
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Which isn't to say they aren't worthy of a viewing or in any way bad films (the visual craftsmanship on display is head-and-shoulders above anything of the time period), but for this viewer anyway, the roll call, hoo-rah narrative, dusty outpost conflicts and cloying humanism frankly border on tedium. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon: [C+] Rio Grande: [B-]

Quick Review: Rabbit Hole (2010)

John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole is a bald-faced, gut-wrenchingly honest marital drama, not just about the grieving process, but about faith, cruel fate and our place in what is an unpredictable, highly enigmatic existence. 
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Nicole Kidman's by turns touchy, boiling and solemn powerhouse effort is the anchor, but Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest and the debuting Miles Teller all bring genuine human emotion to a film that can at times feel too carefully arranged - emphasizing scenes of importance rather than scenes of observance.
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Overall, it's just a touch too pat and assertive, but the truth here isn't necessarily in the actions but in the feelings, for Rabbit Hole captures the confused, combative and unshakeable affliction of grief like no other in that it offers no easy answers. [B+]

You're Only a Day Away

So tomorrow I'm off to see Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's True Grit - again. I saw the film last week and I was severely underwhelmed. Is it an exceptionally polished production? Unquestionably, that wasn't the issue. 
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My problem stemmed from the fact that it was entirely too content to hem and haw and spout its admittedly glorious old-West dialogue without ever going anywhere. In the end it's too folksy and sentimental and I desperately needed just a spark of that Coen Brothers hard-edged cynicism. 
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I'm giving it another shot tomorrow (perhaps my over-laughing audience I saw it with initially was ticking me off to its charms), so we'll see. One things for sure, though, this certainly isn't No Country for Old Men and it sure as hell isn't A Serious Man, this is a straight-up twelve-to-six curveball. 

Blu-ray Round-Up: Jonah Hex, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Last Airbender

"JONAH HEX" (2010) d: Jimmy Hayward
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What's to say? It's an unmitigated disaster in every possible way, starting and ending with Josh Brolin and that severe, grotesque grill. The script, based on the DC Comics character, is a threadbare revenge tale that can barely sustain itself for 80 minutes and even the design elements are badly misguided.  
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It's essentially Wild Wild West without the whimsy and The Punisher without the grit, what that leaves us with, I'm not really sure. [D-]
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"THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE" (2010) d: Jon Turteltaub
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Using a segment from Fantastia and turning it into a full-length feature hardly seems like a good idea and, truth be told, what's contrived here is hardly loftier than a second or third-rate young adult novel, yet miraculously, The Sorcerer's Apprentice actually manages to squeak out some goofy fun. 
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The colorful cast is generally the reason why, mostly because this is the most fun Nicolas Cage has been having on screen since the seldom mentioned Bad Lieutenant. Not to mention the amusingly gangly Jay Baruchel and Toby Kebbell who do all they can to make this wizarding hoopla go down a bit easier. [C+]
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"THE LAST AIRBENDER" (2010) d: M. Night Shyamalan
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Aside from a few distinctive visual flourishes and an overall luscious production design, The Last Airbender remains relentlessly silly and fatally self-serious. 
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And the young cast certainly can't carry this kooky material with its barefaced dialogue and cluttered storytelling. Shyamalan directs with flair, but this dopey fantasy didn't deserve its live-action jump. [C-]

Metropolis at The Texas Theatre

I drove to sunny South Dallas today for a 3:00 screening of Fritz Lang's Metropolis at the historic Texas Theatre. 
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 Now The Texas Theatre has a rich history given that it was originally owned by Howard Hughes back in the late 30's before becoming most well known as the house where Lee Harvey Oswald hid out and was eventually arrested on November 22nd, 1963.

The theater was just recently bought by Aviation Cinemas (a nod to Hughes) and restored for repertory screenings about two months ago, so when given the chance to head out there, I couldn't resist taking in a Dallas landmark and a classic silent film on the big screen. 
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Also, before Metropolis got going, a Buster Keaton/Fatty Arbuckle short entitled The Cook was played with a live piano accompaniment - very cool. 

Review: The King's Speech (2010)

So much has already been said about Tom Hooper's The King's Speech at this point that writing a formal review feels rather perfunctory, so I'll just keep things simple. 
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What we have here is a very classy, very warmly-made British drama that because it's exceedingly well-acted and delivers emotionally in the closing moments is a surefire Best Picture nominee, and you know what, I don't have a problem with that.
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I would, however, take offense to the film actually taking the Oscar back home across the Atlantic, because as easy as it is to slip into and admire, it's too dapper and antiquated - gently amusing and affecting, yes, but it's aspirations are modest, just like Hooper's previous film, the intelligently crafted footballer, The Damned United.
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However modest the film may be, Colin Firth is anything but. His stuttering and hesitant King George VI is a very mannered but intelligent and compassionate performance that deserves recognition - delivering that acceptance speech might be a bit tricky, though. [B]

The Rest

The year is winding down, but now comes that painful process of waiting out the remainder of the awards-season layabouts well into January. 
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The must-sees before even considering putting together a Top 10 list are Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine, John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole, Mike Leigh's Another Year, Claire Denis' White Material, Olivier Assayas' Carlos, etc, etc. 
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I hate this waiting game, I really do. 

White Christmas

The Shops at Legacy, taken at about 6:50pm.

The Angelika Film Center in Plano, Texas.

Auditorium #5, just before a 7:30 showing of Michael Curtiz's White Christmas ('54).

Review: The Fighter (2010)

As mentioned previously, David O. Russell's The Fighter really bristles with that Massachusetts blue-collar toughness and tenacity - its real and rousing and its more about learning how to balance your family and your loved ones with what you do and in that way, much more than just a flimsy boxing biopic. 
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It's mostly about how Mark Wahlberg's Micky Ward is trying to avoid falling victim to the same letdown achieved by his older brother (Christian Bale) and how his brother, in turn, tries to reclaim that dream and that passion that he couldn't get back or live up to through his own mistakes.
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The wild, carnivorous Ward family constitutes the majority of the drama and handles it quite well, but Christian Bale's path to redemption from crackhead to ringside supporter is the real meat of the film and his performance is unquestionably raw and bony and magnificent. 
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Russell shoots the boxing scenes in highly digitized mid-90's HBO fashion, feeling for and accomplishing urgency and authenticity in a film that has plenty of it. Gone are the days of Ron Howard's sepia-drenched "cinderella" stories, The Fighter is as ugly and redemptive as they come. [B+]

Buttons and Belated Prints

Yesterday my originally planned 10:40am showing of The King's Speech was cancelled - not by me, but by the Angelika Film Center in Dallas - who said that the prints had not arrived on time due to inclement weather up North - Chicago, in fact. 

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It was certainly a new one by me, but luckily I ended up squeezing it in yesterday, along with The Fighter and Tron: Legacy. 

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While there, I found these buttons which are a brilliant marketing ploy by Fox Searchlight that just might be a month too late. The buttons read: "I kept my eyes open for 127 Hours". Now this is how you turn a negative into a positive. I've already seen banner ads on Oscar blogs with this same tagline on it.

Review: Tron: Legacy (2010)

Joseph Kosinki's Tron: Legacy is essentially a techno-musical action film - a pulsating dance-wave soundscape surrounds, engulfs and influences the movements of everyone involved, whether it's a program or a user. Most films use music to accent or enhance the scene, but here, it's the other way around.
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Of course, the French electronic duo Daft Punk deserve the credit as they supply the booming sonic synths (and their traditionally helmeted appearances in a brief, humorous cameo) to a film that's helplessly indebted to their musical bass-line. Heck, they're the beating heart to this thing, can't you hear it?
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For the rest of the film is a jumble of tired and inept storytelling (father-son melodramatics, murky backtracking, wayward, senseless digital buffoonery) that tries to put a stranglehold on the world's first cinematic dance-rave, yet luckily takes enough of a backseat to keep from wearing off this killer buzz.
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Ultimately, the effect of the film's glassy, neon-piped atmospherics and the throbbing, bassy electronics is quite often transfixing and addictive. Like what Arthur said to Ariadne earlier this year in Christopher Nolan's Inception, there's just nothing quite like it. [B+]

The Fighter Instant Reaction

Taken at 11:05am this morning, just before an 11:15 showing of The Fighter.

I'm sitting here eating lunch having just seen David O. Russell's The Fighter and my gut-reaction is that it's tough, it's gritty, it's real and it's rousing. Although the film is a boxing movie and it predictably climbs that mountain in the end, the emotional connection comes from the relationship between Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale, and the latter really knocks it out of the park - he's stunning. 

Review: True Grit (2010)

Having just sauntered out of Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's True Grit, I can say that it's certainly a traditionalist western in many ways - elegant, wide-angled, reverent - yet the result is confoundingly disappointing, essentially a series of saucy, slick verbal volleys set against the breathtaking New Mexico landscapes (substituting for the river valleys of Arkansas).
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There are flashes of brilliance in the zingy, period dialogue and in the exquisitely rendered lensing by Roger Deakins, but while the film bears the humor, craft and language of your typical Coen Brothers outing, that's all it is. The Coens make their actors snarl, spit and swig but the rest they leave to Charles Portis.
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Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn is a carefree drunkard with a quick trigger and Bridges plays him with an exaggerated growl, a weary limp and a comedic stare. All things considered, he holds up pretty well to the iconic role, if not quite matching the Duke than giving us something worthy of his imitation. 
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Matt Damon, as the well-dressed and haughty Texas Ranger La Boeuf, is pretty much a hoot while Hailee Steinfeld, as the wise-beyond-her-years Mattie Ross gives, if not the best performance of the three, certainly the most surprising. (Although I'll be damned if Barry Pepper, as the jagged-toothed Ned Pepper doesn't threaten to walk away with it in his brief moments.)
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It's just a shame to see the Coen Brothers abandon their tenacity and hard-edged cynicism in favor of folksy charm. With True Grit, they've made an accessible, spunky little western-comedy that's as beautifully composed and formally presentable as they come - it's also about as empty as those glass whiskey bottles that a scruffy Rooster Cogburn so casually discards. [C+]

Short Review: Tangled (2010)

Nathan Greno and Byron Howard's Tangled is pretty much as close to a throwback animated film as you can get. Refreshing the classic German fairy tale, Disney has crafted a beautiful and exemplary insta-classic that's a bit too sickly sweet, but inevitably, irresistible. 
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Emphasizing its characters as more than their blatant archetypes (the dashing hero Flynn Rider is, rather contradictorily, a nobody and an egomaniac), the film has a wonderful simplicity about it that's lacking from the more schizoid, modernized animated films of recent memory. (The dopey science-fiction spoof Monsters vs. Aliens comes to mind).
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And even if there is an air of disappointment at the film's relative comfortability (or the muffled, half-hearted musical numbers) we must remind ourselves that this type of romanticized animation is a dying breed - and that, my friends, is just as sad as Repunzel's lofty imprisonment. [B+]

Golden Globes Bend Over Backwards

I'm not going to bother posting all of the Golden Globes nominees which were announced this morning (you can check them out here if you want), but isn't it time that the Hollywood Foreign Press just gets rid of this whole Comedy/Musical category altogether? 
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It's always been pretty laughable the five films that they manage to scrounge together every year, but this year's slate takes the cake:
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Alice in Wonderland
The Tourist
The Kids Are All Right
Burlesque
Red
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The sad thing is The Kids Are All Right isn't the best film of that bunch.

Darren Aronofsky: "It's just The...Wolverine"

"We're definitely gonna make something great, it'll be very different...it has nothing to do with anything in that franchise or whole universe."
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-Darren Aronofsky talking about The Wolverine.
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This one-on-one David Poland/Darren Aronofsky interview is pretty captivating. Of course, the majority of the time is spent talking about the beautiful and sublime Black Swan, but I really loved the way Darren talked about his upcoming venture into true Hollywood filmmaking with The Wolverine.
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It's been well-documented that Darren hasn't been comfortable filming his last two features (The Wrestler and Black Swan) because of extremely limited funding, short shooting schedules, etc. and it's been widely accepted that the confounding announcement that the Brooklyn-born auteur would be directing the next Wolverine film was a clear and well-deserved paycheck gig.
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But listening to the way he discusses it, I think we can expect something pretty special. He seems generally really excited about it, citing his freedom with the project, the comfortability with his crew (who will be working with him again) and, more importantly, completely disassociates the film from any X-Men or Wolverine franchise before it. 

Review: Valhalla Rising (2010)

Those expecting high-octane Norse axe-wielding will be discouraged by the lyrical and rhythmic Valhalla Rising, a hushed, minimalistic viking travelogue from Danish provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn, who seems to be channeling Terence Malick here with his primal, uncharted landscapes.
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Split into six "parts", it charts the journey of an enslaved fighter named One-Eye (Mads Mikkelson) from his initial escape to his partnership with a pack of Christian crusaders bent on retaking the holy land before becoming hopelessly sidetracked.
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The film jolts with startling outbursts of brutality juxtaposed against the seemingly peaceful, motionless terrain, and the journey - a desperate, contentious half-quest - is certainly not for the faint of heart, but by its prophecy-fulfilling conclusion, the mood it manages to evoke more than makes up for its middling prophecies and philosophical quandaries. It's frequently dazzling filmmaking. [B+]

Boston Film Critics Awards

Nothing earth-shattering, David Fincher's The Social Network runs the table again, which is perfectly fine by me, especially if Jesse Eisenberg is going to turn himself into a serious contender in the Best Actor race - probably not, but surely a nomination is all but in the bag.
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Natalie Portman for Black Swan (well deserved) and Christian Bale for The Fighter (he's got all of the momentum).

Review: Black Swan (2010)

Having just seen Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan again, I can say that it's just as ludicrous, lurid and frantic as it was the first time - which is to say that I can't wait to go back for thirds. I need to sit through those ghastly hysterics and on-stage transformations again and again. 
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Black Swan is a film that exudes craft, authorial ownership and exquisite design, even as the film's erotic, surrealistic undercurrents begin to overwhelm the screen and our unexpecting young dancer, Nina Sayers (a battered and marvelous Natalie Portman). 
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The backstage melodramatics, chilly atmosphere and post-adolescent awakenings are reminiscent of early Roman Polanski or Dario Argento, but the massive, soaring musicals cues and psychological nails-on-a-chalkboard unravellings are pure Aronofsky.
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And oddly enough, this ends up being the perfect companion piece to The Wrestler, continuing with the director's current fascination with grainy 16mm stock, over-the-shoulder tracking shots and professional self-abuse.

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The biggest influence here, however, is the way Aronofsky has taken his swiftness in the ring and brought it to the stage. The ballet scenes here are simply stunning in their choreography and complexity, swirling and prancing to the powerful swells of Tchaikovsky and never far from the gaze of its star performer, who is more than up for the moment.
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But the film wouldn't work without Aronofsky's whole-hearted commitment to his world - from spotlight to pointe, he's given us something grandly operatic, concentrated and sublime - something befitting for the stage. [A]

Tree of Life Revealed Friday

It's all over the place, but in case you didn't know, Terence Malick's Tree of Life is getting a trailer and you can see it if you go to the theater for Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, which hits Friday.
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It'll be very odd experiencing a two-minute promotional reel for a film in which we know so much - and yet so little - about. 

National Board of Review Winners

The Social Network dominating the National Board of Review's awards announcement today doesn't really help its cause against the British invader, Tom Hooper's The King's Speech, but it doesn't hurt, either. 
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I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a strong backlash just stacking up against it, though - there's the stuffy English aroma, the god-awful marketing (including that disastrous poster) and the simple fact that it's a film that will carry a stronger impact overseas. Plus we've seen this story before where the odds-on favorite in October eventually stumbles into March as a non-factor. Atonement? Up in the Air, anyone?
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David Fincher also took home Best Director today with Jesse Eisenberg (yes!) taking home Best Actor. Lesley Manville won Best Actress for Another Year and Christian Bale won Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter while Jacki Weaver won Best Supporting Actress for Animal Kingdom (I love the film, but come on...)
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Rounding out the NBR's Top Ten (or Top Eleven if you count out The Social Network), are Another Year, The Fighter, Hereafter, Inception, The King's Speech, Shutter Island, The Town, Toy Story 3, True Grit and Winter's Bone.
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Couple more things. First off, Christian Bale (The Fighter) will take down Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech) for Best Supporting Actor, I'm convinced. Bale is a guy who's ripe for some recognition, he's a major movie star of the now and Rush has already had his fun in the sun. 
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And Ben Affleck's The Town is getting nominated, no question. I'm kind of lukewarm on it myself (it's a really solid meat-and-potatoes crime movie with no nourishing vegetables), but not only do people of all shapes and sizes seem to really like the film, but people really like Affleck and this would be a nice pat-on-the-back for the transition from actor-to-director. (Plus, keep in mind the actors make up the biggest % of the voting body and this will help it immensely.)