The Official Review Thread of 2008

anonymous1980
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Post by anonymous1980 »

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
Cast: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Rubiana Ali, Tanay Hemant Chheda, Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala, Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar.
Dir: Danny Boyle.

FINALLY!!! I avoided downloading or borrowing pirated/screener copies of this film and waited until the Best Picture winner got a theatrical run here and I have to say, despite my lowered expectations due to the high amount of awards and praise this got, it's still a pretty darn good motion picture. Danny Boyle's best film? Not quite but it's winning combo of tight, kinetic filmmaking and rousing against-all-odds underdog love story won me over.

Grade: B+
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Post by Mister Tee »

I can't find anything anyone else wrote about The Bank Job, to which I finally got this past weekend.

I enjoyed the movie more than anticipated, or, put better, in a different way than anticipated. I'd presumed from reviews that it would be a competent heist thriller, but I was surprised at just how out-there the plot details were. Is this seriously a documented story? It feels like something writers came up with on mushrooms, and goes well beyond the standard Rififi contours.

The film was set in the 70s, with all the obvious period details, but it also kind of FELT like a 70s movie, in the way it quickly (sometimes jarringly) moved from comic to horrifyingly real violence (as opposed to over-the-top, Tarantino-style blood-letting), and also in the generous, utterly gratuitous but pleasing displays of female flesh. Three stars at best, but engaging.
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Post by anonymous1980 »

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, David Harbour, Kathryn Hahn, Zoe Kazan, Dylan Baker, Jay O. Sanders, Richard Easton.
Dir: Sam Mendes.

Personally, I prefer the TV series Mad Men's take on suburbian angst in 1950's America but this film is not too shabby. It's far from perfect but is elevated by impressive performances (this is the role Kate Winslet SHOULD have won for this year. Eh, I'll just pretend she won for this). I thought Michael Shannon was terrific but I think Kathy Bates is underrated.

Grade: B
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Post by dws1982 »

Cadillac Records

Your fairly typical musical biopic, only this one tries to follow about five different characters over more than two decades in a two hour runtime instead of just one. And so it's one of those movies that should've just followed one character over about ninety minutes, or followed every character in detail and been a ten-hour HBO miniseries.

Lots of things are skimmed over or left out, like Leonard Chess's brother Phil, himself an important figure in Chess Records. He has one scene here, and you'd be hard-pressed to figure out who he is or what he does based on it. No mention of Bo Diddley, or Chess Records branching out to jazz and comedy. It's the kind of movie where the Rolling Stones appear for no other reason than to tell Muddy Waters that they took their name from one of his songs. Which is another way of saying that is basically a highlights reel, and you can imagine that writer/director Darnell Martin had a lot more material that she wanted to fit into the movie but couldn't. This is one of those films that works more on a scene-by-scene basis than as a coherent whole.

Overall it works about halfway. It's not boring, and if you know you aren't going to get much real insight about Chess records, it'll go down easily enough. The music scene work the best, although there's are a few spots where the performers mouths are clearly out of sync with the words they're supposed to be singing. Dramatically we get a lot of neglected wives and marital-discontent scenes, and so Gabrielle Union just gets wasted crying neglect to Jeffrey Wright's (good but not great) Muddy Waters, while resisting advances Columbus Short's (a standout) Little Walter. Beyonce shows up after the hour mark as Etta James, and she's interesting. About three-quarters of her performance is a standard loose cannon type, but she has a pretty stunning scene with Adrien Brody after she nearly overdoses. It's far beyond anything I've ever seen her do before, and if the rest of her performance had been at that level, she would make my supporting actress list, no question. If she were to get serious about acting (and I wish she would, to spare us her vapid music), she could go places. Adrien Brody does nothing at all special, but there was no need to here; dramatically speaking, this is not much of a role, and he seems to know it. I like Brody a lot, like that he tends to underplay scenes most actors would overplay, and that he's generous enough to let fellow actors take the spotlight without trying to one-up them. Like I said, this isn't the type of role that yields a great performance, but it reminds me why I like Brody.

The makeup work is bizzarre--the makeup for Columbus Short's Little Walter perfectly captures the way his hard living would've aged him prematurely, while the characters of Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, and Gabrielle Union barely seem to age over the quarter-century the film covers. (Adrien Brody begins with Leonard Chess in his mid-20's, and follows him until his death at 52, where he only has a couple of gray hairs to show for it.).




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Post by anonymous1980 »

THE READER
Cast: Kate Winslet, David Kross, Ralph Fiennes, Lena Olin, Bruno Ganz, Susanne Lothar.
Dir: Stephen Daldry.

Despite the strong performances (and nude scenes) of Kate Winslet and David Kross, this film is oddly dull and uninvolving thanks to a below average screenplay and mediocre direction. The story has been told a hundred times better by at least dozens of other films but this material could've been made fresh and even compelling with the right filmmaker and screenwriter.

Grade: C
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Post by anonymous1980 »

GRAN TORINO
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Christopher Carley, Brian Haley, Brian Howe, John Carroll Lynch, Geraldine Hughes, Dreama Walker, Doua Mua.
Dir: Clint Eastwood.

Clint Eastwood films have this funny effect on me. I go in with rather low expectations yet I always seem to come out liking the film more than I thought I would. Eastwood probably gives one of his career-best performances in this film (He was robbed of an Oscar-nom!) and although it's marred slightly by a merely adequate, at best, supporting cast, the film still doesn't lose much of it's power.

Grade: B+




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Post by Sabin »

And why was Hiam Abbass never mentioned as a Supporting Actress possibility? -- she's wonderful.

No idea. She's so much stronger than all these nominees. Hiam Abbass creates a small lifetime in her scenes and that can't be said for any of the other nominees.




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Post by dws1982 »

A film named Hunger opens in New York and LA on March 20. I'm posting about it in this thread because IFC gave it a qualifying run in December. It won the Camera D'Or at Cannes, and won something at the BAFTAs. They probably could have had a sleeper on their hands if they had handled it better. It's about Bobby Sands and the 1981 Hunger Strikes.

I didn't get to watch this the proper way (saw it on a 15-inch computer), but it's still clear that this is an amazing work. It's made by a director so confident that he doesn't even introduce his protagonist until over twenty minutes into the film, and then he does it so nonchalantly that you probably won't even notice. (Unless you've seen stills from the film.) It's visually audacious, but it's not the empty technique that bothers me so much about Paul Thomas Anderson. It builds to something very powerful and overwhelming. Probably the best movie of 2008 for me.

Make a point to go see it next month when it opens.




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Post by dws1982 »

I thought Hall was worlds better in her toss-off role in Frost/Nixon than in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She seemed sexy and charming, where she just seemed frigid and neurotic in the Woody Allen film.



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Post by Hustler »

--anonymous wrote:(Somebody please cast Rebecca Hall in more movies!)

Have you seen her in Frost/Nixon?
As for Woody´s film, I got tired of its monotonous and repetitive style to emphasize with actions everything that the voice in off counts.




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Post by anonymous1980 »

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
Cast: Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, Patricia Clarkson, Kevin Dunn, Rebecca Hall, Chris Messina, Zak Orth, Carrie Preston, Pablo Schreiber.
Dir: Woody Allen.

Woody Allen's best, it certainly is not. But it does contain some pretty good performances (Somebody please cast Rebecca Hall in more movies!) and is quite entertaining. But unfortunately, it feels all so been-there-done-that-better-in-the-past despite the new location. Although Cruz has been getting most of the accolades (and largely deserved), I would like to point out that Patricia Clarkson is as usual excellent in her small part.

Grade: C+
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Post by Big Magilla »

While I think this year's supporting actress nominees are all worthy of their nominations, Hiam Abbas in The Visitor, Hanna Schygulla in The Edge of Heaven and Emma Thompson in Brideshead Revisited were just as worthy. I personally would be happy with any combination of the eight.
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Post by rain Bard »

Glad there's someone else here with nice things to say about this film. Hiam Abbass was mentioned very occasionally as a deserved nominee, but not as a likely or even longshot actual nominee. At least not by the right people.
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Post by Damien »

The Visitor. What a lovely film this is. Modest in scope and ambitions, it is nevertheless hugely affecting and has the richness one finds in a fully realized short story by an author like Alice Munro. Director Tom McCarthy is no great shakes as a visual stylist, but he's near perfect in conveying mood and characterization. The understated qualities of the film allow its emotionalism to sneak up on you and it becomes all the more powerful for that reason.

Having now seen the film, I still can't recall ever having seen Richard Jenkins before. His is a beautiful low-keyed performance which captures the varying and evolving emotional states of the character without telegraphing any of them. I would love to see a 4-way tie for Best Actor because Jenkins, Penn, Rourke and Langella are all deserving of the statuette, and are all a damn sight better than last year's ridiculous winner (or, for that matter, the winners in 2006. 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000 . . . )

And why was Hiam Abbass never mentioned as a Supporting Actress possibility? -- she's wonderful.
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Post by The Original BJ »

--Mister Tee wrote:I find it interesting that the screenplay survived the cut where Hawkins couldn't -- suggesting either it was one of the strongest contenders in the category, or, considering his three previous nods, that Leigh is simply held in consistent, Woody Allen-like high regard by this branch.

I find this interesting, too. To me the success of Happy-Go-Lucky first and foremost relies upon Sally Hawkins. Certainly Eddie Marsan and Leigh's direction also play key roles.

Leigh's script, while not undeserving of recognition, is for me one of the less crucial elements of the film. Strange that it was the only aspect left standing come nominations time.




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