The Official Review Thread of 2008

[Sabin]

All of the friends I've recommended A Christmas Tale to have come back saying "Who knew that Amalric could do *that*?!" I replied that doing that seems to be all he does in French movies. In American movies, he's either wearing a trenchcoat or peering out one eye. He is in danger of being typecast. This plays in a way as One For The Fans, almost as though Desplechin is indulging in his friends' talents and personas and just kind of created a miasma of his prior work. That being said, I think that A Christmas Tale was far more cohesive than Kings and Queen. That it simply stopped is starting to jar me a little more as time goes on. A Christmas Tale might be that rare movie that works at two hours or four hours and nothing in between.

William Goldman wrote once about how Casablanca is incredibly shrewd in not revealing too much about Rick, leaving his heroism and shame largely shrouded, how knowing too much about his pain would ruin the cool. That's how I feel about Art School Confidential. You see this movie and you see Zwigoff's and Clowes' histories and insecurities laid so bare that you can't help but retroactively hate them for being such pussies in college, for if this is the idealized versions of themselves then they, indeed, do suck.

[Mister Tee]

I'm about 90% in agreement with you on A Christmas Tale, Sabin, but we part company at the end. My first reaction to it (I saw it at home, if that matters, through the miracle of IFC on Time Warner) was simply what a pleasure it was to be watching a complicated, adult narrative, after the uninspired efforts I'd been seeing all year. I'm a fan of sprawling narratives, and enjoyed the many story lines and the unexpected encounters. My only quibble was, maybe Amalric has to watch for becoming too predictably cast -- i.e., "a typical Amalric screw-up". But the other characters were fresh and engaging, and the 2 1/2 hours flew by.

Where we part company is, at the end, my feeling was, Wow -- they really didn't find a way to tie it all together. As far as I'm concerned, the film, in the old phrase, didn't end...it stopped. And in this way I'd call it inferior to Kings and Queen, which also covered alot of ground, but seemed to (barely) gather itself to coherence at its finale.

Still a highly worthwhile effort -- one of the best I've seen in my poor-attendance year. I just wouldn't rate it quite as high as you.

To briefly address another film you discussed elsewhere: I just caught up with Art School Confidential over the weekend, and, ye gods, you're right -- how could such talented people have turned out this disappointment? I could barely imagine the vague plot contours yielding a decent film, but it'd require a far more acid approach (one of which you'd think these guys would be capable). For most of the way, it felt perilously close to a studio teen movie.

[Sabin]

Making my top ten list is going to be impossible this year. I've heard 2008 called a weak year for film but I don't see it at all. There are only a few out-and-out masterpieces but a slew of films that I think are just terrific. Happy-Go-Lucky is one of them and A Christmas Tale is another. I've only seen Kings and Queen prior, which I enjoyed but found its editing style just a bit too aggravating and its tangental nature too loose. I could tell though that Desplechin would become a favorite of mine. A Christmas Tale is much better. The seams in his Desplechin's filmmaking show visibly but the choices are so bold I didn't mind. A Christmas Tale is outwardly novelistic, and only superficially and topically similar to The Royal Tenenbaums. While I prefer Wes Anderson's film, Desplechin is the filmmaker who wants you to truly live his family's eccentricities. It starts a bit bumpy but eventually I didn't want it to end, and I think the greatest strength of Desplechin is that his characters have such rich history that in a way they don't. They just continue onward and I was glad to be a part of their evening. A triumph that I am still digesting.

[flipp525]

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

I found Poppy's sort of netherworldly bubbly disposition strange and maybe even foreign on one hand, yet also oddly comforting in a way I wasn't prepared for on the other. Happy-Go-Lucky succeeds on the strength of Sally Hawkins' delightful performance, but also on the very idea of her character -- someone who has committed themselves to a life of happiness. Delving deeper into that idea to show the audience the implications of leading such a life is the reason why we have an actual movie with Poppy at its center, rather than a spritely, surfacey oddball character popping up in a supporting role in someone else's film. It was an oddly refreshing experience for a Friday night.

The boiling point Sabin refers to was one of the most genuine and real moments I've had in a theater in quite awhile. Anyone going into this film thinking that's it's a soul-less trifle or simply an airy confection, should re-evaluate their preconceptions. Eddie Marsan gives one of my favorite supporting performances of the year and had me in tears in his final scene. It was very brave work.

The scene with the homeless man had me on the edge of my seat in an almost terrifying way. It was the moment I knew that I was watching something truly special being committed to celluloid. Hawkins deserves all the accolades she has been receiving for this film.

As a footnote, the scoring of the film is wonderful, especially its use in the opening sequence.

A-



Edited By flipp525 on 1229430599

[Sabin]

'Happy-Go-Lucky'

I don't entirely know what to make of this year. My primary topic of conversation between my friends and myself re: film (outside of 'WALL-E''s outright awesomeness and 'The Dark Knight''s incredibly relative awesomeness) is the pervasiveness of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in films today, the otherworldly energetic and unreal manifestation of the director's wish fulfilment given life and tits. In 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona', we have two women who have clearly never met. In 'In Search of a Midnight Kiss', the chain-smoking receptacle for a mopey social moron. In 'Zach and Miri Make a Porno', OF COURSE Elizabeth Banks will get caught up after some of that awesome Rogen sexin'. So in watching 'Happy-Go-Lucky', perhaps I just saw something that engaged me on the topic of unreal female effervescence in a way that I needed. For some it will prove aggravating. For me, I loved the margins and I loved the thesis.

Sally Hawkins plays a character I've seen many times and met a few, but never like this. Poppy (né Pauline, 30, manic, and joyous) is as A-Type an Optimist as Eddie Marsan's driving instructor Scott is a misanthrope. The film's screenplay (which just now won the Los Angeles Film Critic's Association award for Best Screenplay which represents such class on their behalf! This film builds to such an overpowering boil that you barely see it coming.) leisurely tracks new obstacles in her body, at work, in leisure, and in love, and uses the vehicular interactions she shares with Scott as benchmarks along the way. It doesn't want to bring them together but casually reveal something sad about both worlds that they live in: a casual pain in Poppy's life, and an everyday one in Scott's that she barely could hope to skim the surface of.

I loved Sally Hawkins' performance as much as I loved Eddie Marsan's and Alexis Zegerman's as her best friend, a casually flippant best girlfriend, a polar opposite who clearly is enamored with her Poppiness and warrants a film of her own.

[OscarGuy]

Although I kinda like the guy, I read this and thought it would make most of you chuckle.

Pattinson's Masculinity Ended His Modelling Career

9 December 2008 8:13 AM, PST

Twilight heart-throb Robert Pattinson was forced to end his modelling career at the age of 16 - because he started to look too manly.

The British actor was a child model from the age of 12 but had to give up his life in front of the camera when work dried up just four years later.

And Pattinson, who subsequently turned to acting, blames growing into a man for his modelling rejections.

He tells British magazine Closer, "When I first started I was quite tall and looked like a girl, so I got lots of jobs, because it was during that period where the androgynous look was cool. Then, I guess, I became too much of a guy, so I never got any more jobs. I had the most unsuccessful modelling career."

[cam]

There are, indeed, some tender and lovely moments between Hiam Abbas and Richard Jenkins, but I have to side with Mister Tee in thinking that Jenkins has been rather surprisingly heralded. I'd be shocked if he hung on throughout awards season: aside from a brief outburst during the end of the film, there's nothing remotely flashy about the performance. And to me this was less an example of the power of subtlety than solid work by an actor in a pretty thin role. (I didn't really think he fleshed out the character much beyond what was there on the page.)

Has its nice moments, but I think this minor effort is woefully miscast as an awards contender.

This film arrived and left very quickly in the theatres, but having seen the hype( here) around Jenkins, I rented it last night.
I feel exactly the same way--there was nothing WRONG with the structure of screenplay, and nothing WRONG with any of the performances, but Jenkins' character as written did smack a bit of White Man's Burden.
I would be extremely surprised if this performance made it to the top five at the Oscars: it may appear somewhere else as a nominated performance, and could rightly do so, but it's too small a movie to be more than a very good story and a very good film, and I kept waiting for Jenkins to do something more to relay to us that he was as good as some of you say: and the one blow-up late in the film was not enough of a defining moment.

[Eric]

I always fall back on the film professor who always told his classes that every film is worth seeing once. Of course, whether Damien wants to argue that cartoons aren't films is entirely his prerogative, but said film professor would always respond to the inevitable snarky question whether porno films counted with, "Yes, I suppose. Even them."

[kaytodd]

Changeling (Clint Eastwood)

Liked it a lot, though I agree with those that point out examples of how this film missed opportunities to be a great film. It was not necessary to make the LAPD into one dimensional cartoon character villians. I think Jeffrey Donovan was twirling a handlebar mustache during a couple of scenes. One poster here made a good suggestion that having one or two fewer "He's not my son!" scenes and spending more time on Donovan's character and motivations would have been an improvement. It would not have been necessary to go into detail about how the LAPD got to be such a bad organization during that time. That would have spoiled the main dramatic thrust of the film. But a little time fleshing out Captain Jones may have helped us understand why he and the rest of the LAPD treated Christine Collins so badly. I have to admit, I was puzzled about Captain Jones motivations and that disappointed me.

But these were minor annoyances since the actors were all so good and the technical aspects of the film were first rate. I loved Angelina. When she showed restraint and when she showed anger or broke down in tears, it always seemed at just the right time to me. I loved the scenes when she was being interrogated by the doctor and by Captain Jones. Her facial expressions were wonderful as she was trying to be oh so careful about what she says to these men and how she says it. Smart performance.

And I agree with the almost unanimous praise given to the supporting characters (happens a lot with Clint's films). I even liked how Angelina's boss was dropping hints about wanting to see her outside of work and how she handled it. A smile crossed my face when she told him she would go out to dinner with him to celebrate if her choice for Best Picture Oscar (It Happened One Night) won the prize. The fact that something so minor stuck with me shows what a good job Clint does with the details in his films.

Grade: A-



Edited By kaytodd on 1228070805

[Okri]

And your point is?

That perhaps an animated film is not inherently unworthy by virtue of it's animation?

But a vampire movie is?

No, but maybe one starring the cheekbone of the month directed by Hardwicke adapted from the teen sensation might be.



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241381839

[Damien]

It's better than sitting through Twilight.

And your point is?

That perhaps an animated film is not inherently unworthy by virtue of it's animation?

But a vampire movie is?



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241381851

[Damien]

BOLT

Christ, Irwin, do you really think your time on earth is so long that you can give over 3 hours of your existence (including travel time to the theatre) to sit through something like this?

Give the guy a break. Not every movie can be Alvin and the Chipmunks.

:p

Alvin and The Chipmunks was so much fun.



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241381877

[The Original BJ]

BOLT

Christ, Irwin, do you really think your time on earth is so long that you can give over 3 hours of your existence (including travel time to the theatre) to sit through something like this?

Give the guy a break. Not every movie can be Alvin and the Chipmunks.

:p



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241381898

[Okri]

Christ, Irwin, do you really think your time on earth is so long that you can give over 3 hours of your existence (including travel tie to the theatre) to sit through something like this?
.

It's better than sitting through Twilight.

And your point is?

That perhaps an animated film is not inherently unworthy by virtue of it's animation?



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241381908

[Damien]

BOLT

Christ, Irwin, do you really think your time on earth is so long that you can give over 3 hours of your existence (including travel tie to the theatre) to sit through something like this?
.

It's better than sitting through Twilight.

And your point is?



Edited By Big Magilla on 1241381936