The Official Review Thread of 2010

Sabin
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Post by Sabin »

(Damien @ Feb. 25 2011,7:46)
Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)

With absurdist comedies, the easy part is getting the dry tone down right. Dogtooth does that exemplarily well, from the first couple scenes. It’s what to do once that tenor has been established which tends to hamper filmmakers, and such is very much the case here. The movie is not oppressively tedious like, say, Roy Andersson’s ghastly Songs from the Second Floor, but it remains resolutely one-note. And while individual sequences can be clever and amusing, all that the movie has to say, it says in the first 10 minutes. And, truth to tell, it has nothing much to say – overly restrictive parents stifle their children’s growth; being extreme in protecting others will backfire. Well, duh. The narrative goes nowhere. Like many smug films, it has very little to be smug about.
4/10

I don't agree that it is about parents restricting growth. Rather the film is an argument about whether or not society is inbred or conditioned. Dogtooth goes back and forth throughout the film. And it absolutely leads us to believe that society is conditioned, and then the younger daughter starts to break it down, dancing in a fashion that she clearly could not have been taught but one might see a child doing as imitative of MTV. The film is a sick joke, but I don't believe it's as simple as several on this board are making it out to be both in terms of how the arguments go back and forth and by how extreme it is taken.
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Post by Damien »

Death At A Funeral (Neil LaBute)

Even though it’s directed by the misanthropic hack playwright, Neil LaBute, this picture is less mean-spirited than cranky. And it’s also a lot of fun. The pacing isn’t always as tight as it should be, but what the film does offer is a host of terrific characters played to the hilt by a wonderful cast of actors who take borderline stereotypical roles and imbue them with freshnesss, originality and great humor. A pleasing film, although the (literally) toilet humor’s a drag. Nice to see Barney Miller’s Ron Glass back in action, and Chris Rock is marvelous as the film's center of sanity. (This is supposedly a slavish remake of the original, which I haven’t seen.)
6/10
===================

Salt (Phillip Noyce)

Not a lick of sense in the entire thing, and each individual action scene is as preposterous as the narrative is as a whole. Still, you’ve got to give it credit – the film never stops moving and, rather than being relentless and tedious, it’s a lot of fun. Jolie’s a terrific centerpiece tough, sexy, physical, and performing with utter conviction (and her stunt double gets quite a workout), and, happily, the film never wastes its time on expository scenes, which in this type of picture are pretty much useless. And the script does keep you guessing – it’s amazing to have a protagonist take on so many people on our side with such abandon. And as action films go, Robert Elswit’s photography is first-rate, much more impressive than Wally Pfister’s nominated work on Inception.
5/10

=================================

Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)

With absurdist comedies, the easy part is getting the dry tone down right. Dogtooth does that exemplarily well, from the first couple scenes. It’s what to do once that tenor has been established which tends to hamper filmmakers, and such is very much the case here. The movie is not oppressively tedious like, say, Roy Andersson’s ghastly Songs from the Second Floor, but it remains resolutely one-note. And while individual sequences can be clever and amusing, all that the movie has to say, it says in the first 10 minutes. And, truth to tell, it has nothing much to say – overly restrictive parents stifle their children’s growth; being extreme in protecting others will backfire. Well, duh. The narrative goes nowhere. Like many smug films, it has very little to be smug about.
4/10
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Post by Sabin »

The story behind Get Low is charming. The story we watch is beyond dull. Very quickly, I saw a huge problem with this film: directionless desperation. Nothing in Get Low is funny. Nothing in Get Low is moving. As a story of redemption, Get Low is a film experienced from the outside because Felix's transformation from hermit to cuddly eccentric is lightning quick. He begins the movie incapable of finishing a sentence and within moments he is the backbone of the town. He absolutely turns into a lovable rascal! He's a pain in the ass in the way that only a lovable rascal could be a pain in the ass. I don't mind that his big secret is nothing special. What I personally cared about was the idea that he was throwing his funeral party while he was alive so that he could hear what everybody would say about him...and this was not explored. There is a much funnier film struggling to get out of the boring one that we have. I found myself thinking there might be an amusing comedy more from the outside of this individual, where people show up, expound, and we deal with the aftermath, but instead it follows an incredibly familiar trajectory of redemption. I'm not asking for someone to reinvent the wheel. I just want to be entertained, and everything in Get Low reeks of convention, compromise, and cliche.

There is nothing in this film we haven't seen before, nothing that can't be predicted within moments of the film's beginning. It's just very dull and not entertaining. It's not funny. It's not moving. It's not deep. It doesn't provide a window. What does it do? Are we to be engaged by this antiquated piece of work? You say that you had not a problem with the editing (as done by the director) but I would say there is not a worse edited performance this year than Bill Murray's in Get Low. Watch it again and it becomes quite clear that his performance is something very entertaining and done grave disservice by the man marking IN and OUT in Final Cut. I became incredibly aware that I was watching something that required a different pair of eyes, and when I learned the director edited it, ye gods! Worst Edited Film of 2010. But I digress...

I don't want to be too hard on this film, but seriously what does it have to offer? The story in it is valid but the execution the definition of unexceptional. It's entirely possible a film of these modest aims just aren't for me, but the editing I found impossibly distracting, the trajectories incredibly predictable, and the entirety of it totally forced. Lucas Black is quite good, but on the whole I call it a missed opportunity and too full of lead to be a mixed bag worth carrying.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Boy, you must have been in a foul mood when you saw this one. It's a lovely piece of work.

The secret is not something the man should have kept bottled up for forty years, and it's nothing special to anyone else, but it is to him. He doesn't turn into a lovable rascal. He's still a pain in the ass at the end, which is why there were so few people at his graveside when he actually croaked. It is, after all, based on a true story.

I had no problem with the editing. As a slice of Americana it's warmer and cozier than True Grit and Winter's Bone. As an exploration of the life of a man who doesn't communicate very well, it's as good as The King's Speech with a better written screenplay.

I don't usually mention producers, but the producer on this one is the son of the guy who produced Jaws; The Verdict and Driving Miss Daisy and the woman who was Charlton Heston's love interest in Planet of the Apes. He's the grandson of the man who produced The Grapes of Wrath; How Green Was My Valley; Wilson; Gentleman's Agreement and The Longest Day. His dogged attempts to get this film made took eight years. He's clearly got something in the blood. Fortunately for him he looks more like his mother than his father. His name is Dean Zanuck.
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Post by Sabin »

(Big Magilla @ Feb. 22 2011,1:33)
Get Low (Aaron Schnedier) 8.5/10

Another pleasant surprise. Sometimes not expecting much really helps.

I suppose.

I can't think of a lazier film this year. There are more wrong-headed films like It's Kind of a Funny Story, and more pretentious films like Biutiful, but everything about Get Low just reeks of pandering middlebrow half-assery. It's a terribly edited film, probably the worst edited film of the year. Schneider absolutely botches the performances in the lab, especially that of Bill Murray whose work is absolutely atonal. And the shift that Duvall's character makes from decades-secluded hermit to lovable rascal is unbelievable. His secret is nothing special. I would love to go easy on this film, but outside of Lucas Black, an always reliable (and underused) Sissy Spacek, and a nice score by Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, I see little of value in this dull film.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Get Low (Aaron Schnedier) 8.5/10

Another pleasant surprise. Sometimes not expecting much really helps.

I have not really liked Robert Duvall in anything since Lonesome Dove, but here he plays a a character very much in tune with his star-making Boo Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird.

It's the fact-based story of a Tennessee hermit in the 1930s who throws himself a funeral party at which he reveals a deep, dark secret. That's basically it, but the film is beautifully photographed by David Boyd (Kitt Kittredge), as overseen by Schneider who is a long time cinematographer himself.

The film which took eight years to make, mainly due to the lack of financing, is wittily written and sharply acted by Duvall, Bill Murray and Lucas Black as the local funeral directors and Sissy Spacek as Duvall's old friend.

Duvall vies with Mark Wahlberg for the fifth slot on my list of the year's five best actors - his is the best performacne by a veteran actor this year, not Jeff Bridges'. Murray vies with Sam Rockwell and Jeremy Renner for the fifth supporting actor slot.




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Post by Sonic Youth »

I was aware of your wife's health, but not of the fine details. I'm very sorry to hear that, and I hope she gets better soon.

FWIW, I ended my precursor boycott on Oscar nomination day, but I've been so busy (GOOD busy, mind you) that I've barely had time to go over most of the posts in detail, let alone write any. I mean, those are loooong posts some of you have been writing lately.

Anyway, I get the feeling Mrs. Tee will enjoy the movie very much. She's a theatre woman, as I recall, and subtextually the movie is about theatre and performance anxiety. Which is probably why the actor's branch likes it so much.
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Post by Mister Tee »

Sonic Youth wrote:
Okri wrote:And it's an Innaritu film.
Amen.

Mister Tee, are you boycotting "The King's Speech" or something? To the extent that you'd subject yourself to this film instead?
Possibly your self-imposed precursor boycott has kept you out of threads where I've explained.

My wife's health has kept her inside for the past few months. She had decided that the one late-year release she should see was The King's Speech, so I've been holding off as long as possible to see if she revived, or if an opportunity arose...

...which it at last has, as a friend of mine was on the SAG Nominating Committee, and gave me the screener today. So, tonight or tomorrow night, I expect to watch, finally making myself conversant with the main race. (Bardem was my only other missing entry from the films/performances group)
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Okri wrote:And it's an Innaritu film.
Amen.

Mister Tee, are you boycotting "The King's Speech" or something? To the extent that you'd subject yourself to this film instead?
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Post by Okri »

And it's an Innaritu film.
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Post by Mister Tee »

flipp525 wrote:
Mister Tee wrote:Remember the old t-shirt, "Life's a bitch and then you die"? That's Biutiful in a nutshell.
Wow, thanks for giving that away. Ever heard of "SPOILER ALERT"?
It's spoiled about 15 minutes into the movie.
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Post by flipp525 »

Mister Tee wrote:Remember the old t-shirt, "Life's a bitch and then you die"? That's Biutiful in a nutshell.

Wow, thanks for giving that away. Ever heard of "SPOILER ALERT"?




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Post by ITALIANO »

Eat Pray Love... Well, he probably bought a villa near Cadiz with the money he got from that.
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Post by Sabin »

Oh, absolutely. And it's hard to begrudge Bardem's nomination both for the quality of the performance, the strength of the actor, and the nature of the nomination. It would seem as though Bardem's main competition came from Robert Duvall (lazy, in the terrible Get Low), Ryan Gosling (strong but overly mannered, in the mediocre Blue Valentine), and Mark Wahlberg (fine but underused, in the enjoyable The Fighter). He's an actor who has resisted the ethnic ghetto in America, working on Eat Pray Love, No Country for Old Men, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona; and to a degree, there is some tokenism there, but it's not like the quick turnaround Christoph Waltz went from Basterds to The Green Hornet. Javier Bardem is a ridiculously charismatic actor and he is entirely compelling throughout Biutiful. However, I gauge the strength of a performance by how deeply I feel I know this person and the film undercuts my ability to do that at almost every turn.

This is one of the better lineups for Best Actor in some time. My only caveat is that there is an alternate world where Biutiful is quite a good movie and Bardem thrives more because of it, and we do not live in this world. And there is a degree of monotony to Jeff Bridges admittedly amusing work in True Grit. But Eisenberg, Firth, and Franco are all top notch. My top five would have included Lars Eidinger from Everyone Else and Tahar Rahim from A Prophet, which obviously would never happen. I would have no problem citing Paul Giamatti Barney's Version, Ben Stiller for Greenberg, or to be fair Christian Bale's lead performance in The Fighter.
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Post by ITALIANO »

It's true that the movie is pretentious. I think Bardem makes it watchable though - the character he plays, with his would-be Dostojevskian moods and endless misfortunes, could become unintentionally grotesque, the way such characters are in the lesser novels of the Naturalist movements - those, essentially, not saved by Zola's (or even Verga's) talent as a writer. But of course he' s nominated because rich actors always admire other rich actors who play poor and desperate - the luckless version of themselves, a nightmare any star must have had at some point in his/her life and career.

But far worse performances have been nominated.
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