With the Oscars looming just hours away tonight, AMC's annual Best Picture Showcase wrapped up last night with the final five nominees. Some cities also hosted a 24-hour marathon of all nine films, though my market was not one of them.
Day Two was a day filled with surprises. I wasn't looking forward to the majority of films on the schedule, but was pleasantly surprised to find I enjoyed most of them more than I thought I would.
Hugo is a film about an orphan boy living in a train station in France, where he keeps the station's clocks in working order. After a tragic fire killed his father - a clock-maker himself - Hugo is left with only one link to him - a metallic man called an automaton.
Hugo attempts to repair the robot, believing there is a message from his father hidden within, but is thwarted when the shopkeeper he has been stealing parts from (Sir Ben Kingsley) catches him and threatens to burn his notebook, filled with sketches of the automaton that detail how to get it working once more. In his attempts to gain his notebook back, he encounters the shopkeeper's goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), and the two quickly become friends and set out to solve the mystery of the automaton.
Hugo is a family-friendly adventure, but what it truly is is magic. It is both a testament and a reminder to the magic of movie-making, with gorgeous visuals (and easily the best 3D I've seen yet), a moving score, excellent performances, and an admittedly self-serving story about films being able to bring dreams to life. Scorcese's direction is impeccable, and though the film does come off as a bit self-congratulatory, it is no less true that movies have the power to transport viewers to another time and place.
The Help was one of the films I was not looking forward to seeing. After seeing the book's author, Kathryn Stockett, interviewed on The Daily Show, it sounded like little more than a privelaged white lady's guilt, and in some ways it certainly is that. The Help is touching, heart-wrenching, and oftentimes upsetting (for all the right reasons), but I still never quite shook the feeling that it was less about the help themselves than how courageous Emma Stone's Skeeter Phelan is for telling their story.
Any movie that tackles a tough subject like racism is going to come off a little heavy-handed. It's nearly impossible to avoid it because any civilized human being knows racism is a terrible, awful thing, but it's difficult to exemplify and vocalize that without sounding obvious. The Help does a good job of showing some of the struggle black house servants went through in the days of our nation's monstrous Jim Crow laws, which called for segratation in all ways of black and white Americans. Blacks were not allowed to use the same toilets, drinking fountains, or even books as whites, and it was a disgusting, vile injustice that should make all audience members, regardless of race, cringe.
That's what The Help does particularly well. The tougher scenes will evoke reactions in anyone with a heart, not just a certain skin pigmentation. Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer both give incredible, top-notch performances, and Davis is a shoe-in for the Oscar, in my opinion. In fact, I would say anything less would be a crime. Her portrayal of Aibileen shows strength, dignity, humility, and an undercurrent of fear. Spencer's Minnie is more brash and sassy, and many of the film's funniest lines stem from her attitude, including the film's biggest payoff - the "terrible awful" she exacts on her former employer, the overprivelaged, despicable socialite Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard). It's also noteworthy that Minnie's employer after Holbrook, Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), is rather ignorant of the class structure in 1960s Mississippi and treats Minnie very much as an equal, showing that not everyone displayed the same bigotry, though it could certainly be duly noted that a white woman being snubbed by a bridge club is in no way the same as the injustices her black house servant faces, no matter how much the film tries to make it analogous.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Help, but there were a few too many scenes that involved patting aspiring journalist Skeeter Phelan on the back for having the courage to tell the servants' stories. While it's true that, in those days, she would have been a target for her friendly association with them, it still came across a bit too much like trying to make white people the heroes of the civil rights movement at times. Still, The Help isn't the pandering film I expected it to be, and two remarkable performances from Davis and Spencer, as well as a truly villainous one from Howard, make it worth seeing.
The third film of the day is one I have lobbied against being nominated ever since the nominations were announced. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a movie that less than 50% of professional critics gave positive reviews to, yet enough members of the Academy thought it was the best picture of the year to earn it a nomination. I was puzzled by this, and I tried to keep an open mind as I watched it, but I felt like my suspicions were vindicated.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close tells the story of young Oscar (Thomas Horn), who loses his father (Tom Hanks) in the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and that's problem one with the film. The film tries to deal with the boy's way of coping with his beloved father's death, and his attempts to hold onto his memory, but it's so overwrought and heavy-handed with constant reminders of the horrors of "the worst day" that come across as disrespectful manipulation. Scenes of people falling from the burning towers and Oscar shouting angrily about his father being killed by "people who didn't even know him" are incredibly manipulative, not to mention a gross oversimplification of a complex issue.
If the film were truly about Oscar's relationship with his father, they could have went another route. 9/11 was chosen because of the feelings it invokes in all of our hearts and memories, and I found it borderline offensive that it was used simply to tug at our heart strings.
Beyond that, the film is simply ridiculous at times. After Oscar finds a mysterious key with the name "Black" on the envelope housing it, he sets out on a journey through all of New York to interview all 472 Blacks in the five burroughs. Along the way, he meets a silent old man living in his grandmother's apartment (Max von Sydow), whose relationship to him is obvious from the instant they meet, and they continue the search together. He meets all kinds of people, most of whom are friendly and sympathetic, painting New York as the Greatest City in the World, as we've so often been told.
Honestly, it almost felt like a Home Alone movie at times, and at others it was so ham-fisted it made me angry. It's possible my bias towards it being nominated clouded my judgment, but I felt vindicated in my dislike from the way the film uses 9/11 as a manipulative plot device. The most positive things I can say about it were it had a beautiful musical score, and it is expertly shot.
What is probably going to be the most polarizing film of the Oscars, The Artist, was the fourth film. A black and white silent film, there will likely be no middle ground here. You will either love it or hate it. My feet stand firmly planted in the former category. I was curious about The Artist from the onset, but having seen it I feel like all the critical praise it has received was justified.
Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, a silent film star who quickly finds himself irrelevant once "talkies" become all the rage. Valentin's pride gets the better of him and he soon becomes a forgotten relic of a bygone era, while the beautiful young actress he met years prior, Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), has become a mega-star of the new age.
The Artist is a tribute to the age of silent films with some modern sensibilities thrown in. As a result, how much you enjoy it will depend solely on whether or not you can watch a film for nearly two hours that has no dialogue. As someone who owns several silent films himself (including several on blu-ray), I found it utterly entertaining from start to finish. Like all silent films, there is a fair share of mugging but plenty of comedy, romance, and drama to keep me riveted just as much as any modern movie has.
Familiar faces pepper the crowd, including John Goodman, James Cromwell, and a brief appearance by Malcolm McDowell, but Dujardin and Bejo are both outstanding in their roles, emoting perfectly without the benefit of audible dialogue. The film's musical score is vintage as well, and does a wonderful job of keeping you invested in the mood of any given scene, be it humorous or sad.
In this day and age, making a picture like The Artist is a bold, daring move, but that alone doesn't mean it deserves Best Picture. The fact that it truly is a great film is what earned it its place on the list. Sure, it's a bit of Hollywood patting itself on the back, but it's also a glimpse into history and another reminder, much like the first film of the day, of the magic of motion pictures.
Closing out the night was a film that earned my Surprise of the Showcase award, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. After Vicky Cristina Barcelona, I was predisposed to hate this film, and the inclusion of Owen Wilson certainly didn't leave me with high hopes, but I was shocked to find that I enjoyed it immensely.
Wilson plays Gil Pender, a screenwriter who yearns to be a novelist. He and his fiance (Rachel McAdams) are on vacation in France, where they're constantly being dragged around by her snobbish, pedantic, highly educated friend (Michael Sheen), much to Gil's chagrin. One night he decides to leave them to their own devices and walks the streets of Paris, where a strange car whisks him away to a party inhabited by legendary and long-dead authors and artists including F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll).
The premise may seem far-fetched, but it's actually quite funny, charming, and the moral of the film is actually rather brilliant. Midnight in Paris is about escaping the drudgery and depression of our modern lives to a "golden age," whatever we feel that might be. It's about the way we romanticize the past and remember it through rose-colored glasses, oftentimes ignoring what is right in front of us. As someone who is steeped in nostalgia himself, I actually related with Gil.
I couldn't believe how funny the film actually was. Stoll's Hemingway waxes poetic on courage and truth one minute, then looks for a fight the next, and Adrien Brody's brief appearance as Salvador Dali is hysterical. Most importantly, the film's cinematography doubles as an advertisement for the French board of tourism. I have never wished I could see a place in person more than I now do France after seeing it captured through Director of Photography Darius Khondji's cameras. Allen will get most of the credit as the director, but Khondji is the master visualist behind such films as David Fincher's Se7en and Panic Room, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen, and Danny Boyle's The Beach, to name a few. Through his lens, he captures to breathtaking scenery and beauty of Paris, both day and night, like no other film I've ever seen.
Sadly, the showcase was at an end, but at least it ended on a high note. While The Descendants is probably my favorite film overall (I know I said Moneyball in my previous recap, but The Descendants has stuck with me), I think The Artist is a lock for Best Picture tonight. Though I think the nominees as a whole aren't quite as strong as they were last year, there are still plenty of great movies worth seeing, and once again I have to thank AMC Theaters and the attendees of the Best Picture Showcase for making this such a fun and memorable event every year. I'll see you all in 2013!
On Hugo: agree with everything. I assumed the movie would be at least 'good', but that movie was pure magic, and I only regret our AMCBPS showing didn't have 3D. Later I told my kids that it was my favorite of the 9 films, though not necessarily the 'best picture'.
Posted by: Digby_C | February 26, 2012 at 01:45 PM
On The Help: I had exactly the same reaction. During the film I struggled with Skeeter being the white person who saves them, even though I knew that wasn't completely fair. Overall a good film, but I didn't love it.
Posted by: Digby_C | February 26, 2012 at 01:47 PM
On EL&IC: knowing of the 46 Metacritic rating and how Daldry sneaked this film out at the last minute, and also knowing that most reviewers liked Thomas Horn but hated the film, I was dreading this, but like you tried to be open-minded.
Weirdly, though, I went the opposite way from the critics: I thought there was a potentially really good film there, but the kid was so freaking annoying that I wanted to cover my years. Daldry should be shot for over-directing (or under-directing) this kid.
Also, knowing that a 9-11 film can't avoid being about 9-11, I was prepared for that, but the pictures of people falling were gratuitous. I understand they were in the book, but a book is not a movie, and I didn't want that in my face.
Posted by: Digby_C | February 26, 2012 at 01:50 PM
On the Artist: I neither loved nor hated this! I though Jean Dujardin was fantastic and fun to watch, and obviously the dog was great, but I didn't feel particularly attached to anyone. Perhaps if "Bang!" had really been "Bang!" it would have been more interesting in the end.
Posted by: Digby_C | February 26, 2012 at 01:52 PM
Finally, on Midnight in Paris: I dreaded Owen Wilson, I dreaded Woody Allen, and yet like you in the end I came away completely charmed and happy. I have been listening to the soundtrack today, and expect to watch this again.
And a note on the theme: all this talk about yearning for the old days doesn't just apply to artistes like Woody Allen; I don't think it's an accident that he takes a shot at the Tea Party early in the film.
Posted by: Digby_C | February 26, 2012 at 01:55 PM