The Official Review Thread of 2011

[Sabin]

Well, I can't compare the two films, but while I can't deny that the first film is certainly about something, it's laid back to a fault, like PIXAR's Pocahontas. I found it pretty soporific...which is the last thing I want from a PIXAR film. Except for Up which I feel rushes a bit too quickly, I love that the films of PIXAR have throttling narratives. I suppose I'd be more okay with a film like Cars taking its time if I cared about the characters. Which I don't.

[OscarGuy]

I'm surprised people have said Cars 2 is better than Cars. The first film at least had a homespun sensibility, a quiet simplicity that made it more enjoyable than I expected (since I don't care much about cars in general). This second film is bad. It focuses almost entirely on Mater and while some of thee visuals are still nice, the plot is sluggish, incredibly dim and lacking in anything that seems like an important theme. Be yourself, accept others for who they are, etc. It is easily the worst Pixar to date.

[Sabin]

This is the first year where I have not gone to see a PIXAR movie in theaters. I'm just uninterested in the characters. Several friends of mine have said that Cars 2 is superior to the first and actually a pretty slick action flick. But ticket prices what they are, I can't bring myself to care. Likely on DVD.

On a side note, I'd like to advocate the best scores of the year as of current to be a coin toss between The Chemical Brothers for Hanna and Roger Neill, Dave Palmer, and Brian Reitzell for Beginners.

[criddic3]

CARS 2
I probably would've given this a slightly higher rating had this film been made by lesser animation studio but this is PIXAR. It's like your straight-A student showed up with his first "B" grade. It's still pretty good but a disappointment considering the high expectations. Young kids who are fans of the first film will find little to complain.

Because of all the hesitation and the people saying how it's lesser Pixar, I expected much worse. I really enjoyed this one. Had this been the first Cars, it may have gotten more enthusiasm for an Oscar nod. I agree it could still sneak in, depending on how the year winds up. It's certainly better than Shark Tale!

[anonymous1980]

CARS 2
Cast: Larry The Cable Guy, Owen Wilson, Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Eddie Izzard, John Turturro, Joe Mantegna, Thomas Kretschmann, Bonnie Hunt, Franco Nero, Vanessa Redgrave, Tony Shalhoub, Cheech Marin, Jason Isaacs, Jenifer Lewis, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger (voices).
Dir: John Lasseter

The streak of PIXAR's animated masterpieces and near-masterpieces ends with this film. That's not to say this is a bad film. Far from it. It's a colorful, visually eye-popping and very entertaining and solid film but no more than that. I probably would've given this a slightly higher rating had this film been made by lesser animation studio but this is PIXAR. It's like your straight-A student showed up with his first "B" grade. It's still pretty good but a disappointment considering the high expectations. Young kids who are fans of the first film will find little to complain.

Oscar Prospects: It may get in Animated Feature if nothing else pops up. Could get in Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score and maybe Original Song.

Grade: C+

[Sabin]

The Help

I left The Help about four hours ago. I thought to myself during the film that those involved were very smart to hire somebody to compose a score that evoked American Beauty, that other great, slightly overrated but still pretty good "serious film" that balanced caricatures ugly and sensitive with audience surrogates. Then I found out that it was Thomas Newman himself, and that's about what you need to know. Everyone involved with The Help seemed to be on the same page w/r/t the right notes to hit to produce a smash. And The Help is a smash. It's the kind of smash that Hollywood can be proud of. I'm not sure if a film about this much pain should have so much laughter in it. Some of it is a bit gauche, but The Help is therapy for whites and blacks alike. It alleviates white guilt by providing a very contemporary Emma Stone - the sole consequence being a mild querying into her orientation before it is dropped - for whom we can identify with. Because Lord knows in a past life, we couldn't ever be like those other wretched women! No, we would have the courage to be Emma Stone. And Mister Tee talks about Viola Davis' lack of humor in the film. Make no mistake about it, Aibileen is a contemporary figure. She is written as a figure who almost seems to be waiting to overcome, but Viola Davis has such conviction that she doesn't seem cliché. It's a very good performance, but it is one within an ensemble. I was pretty amazed at a good swath of story that she is not there for.

There is in my opinion a much stronger story between Octavia Spencer's Minny and Jessica Chastain's Celia, both of whom are caricatures, and yes, caricatures have more fun. I was not immediately down to embrace Spencer's Minny, a black woman who on-screen discusses her love of fried chicken, at one point saying "Minny don't burn no chicken." I looked around the theater to see if there were any humorless faces and there were not. Only delighted white people, but I digress. She is established as a self-described sass-mouth, whose lower jaw always seems to retreat up her mouth in astonishment, her eyes in a state of perennial bug. She is a very funny-looking woman, one who had me laughing to a degree I wasn't always comfortable with. I'm not talking about the business of the pie that she serves up. That's for a different audience. But a very amusing piece of caricature. And so in her efforts to find work, she assists in helping a white trash bride elevated to nouveau riche status. This is Celia, and my God does she have range! She is an outsider who embraces Minny as a friend to a degree that Minny doesn't know what to do with. This is a basic and yet effective scenario for easy comedy and pathos, both of which are served and delivered. They grow and learn from each other, and yet they seem to be having so much more fun than anybody else on-screen that I couldn't really care about the deeper innate implications at work. When I watched those two, I was aware that The Help is at heart very pleasant middlebrow nonsense, but it's never more pleasant than when it allows itself to be funny.

Ultimately, the film has its heart in the right place. The credits rolling alphabetically? Maybe that's just a show. But it plays out at two hours and twenty minutes. David Fincher couldn't wrangle more for The Social Network, but The Help plays out exactly as long as it needs to and that happens to be more than two hours. Cut it by twenty, and it would be mildly intolerable. Make no mistake about it: this is a lot of stars playing dress-up. But it's a very well-acted film, especially by Davis, Spencer, and Chastain. I think the key to its success is that it is not a film about Civil Rights, but about black women overcoming racist white women, and this is much easier to stomach. There are more horrible white broads in The Help than any other film this side of Bride Wars. And these are white women, as embodied by Bryce Dallas Howard, whose husbands were intimated by their racism which stems from the hypocrisy of being a woman rather than being white. I find that to be a bit disingenuous.

Will The Help get a Best Picture nomination? Yeah. I think it will be bolstered by precursor noms from the WGA, PGA, and likely a SAG win. Viola Davis will probably be pushed for Best Supporting Actress because they will push everybody, but Octavia Spencer will possibly be nominated as well. Best Adapted Screenplay is also very likely. Maybe something for Thomas Newman's score. A nod for the costumes wouldn't be deserving but seem pretty likely.

[danfrank]

I'm also a big fan of Beginners. It's funny, quirky, poignant, thoughtful, and very human. I haven't seen much of 2011's crop of films, but so far it's my favorite film of the year next to The Tree of Life, which is in a category of its own.

[anonymous1980]

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE
Cast: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei, Kevin Bacon, Jonah Bobo, Analeigh Tipton, John Carroll Lynch, Josh Groban.
Dirs: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa.

I had rather low expectations of this based on the synopsis/trailer of the film but the enthusiastic response of some people I know persuaded me to check it out and I have to say I, too, was pleasantly surprised. Most romantic comedies make me wanna run for the hills but when one turns out to be good, it's a pleasure to watch. Some flaws aside, the film works primarily because of the strong ensemble cast who turn on the laughs, charm and sweetness on just the right levels.

Oscar Prospects: Longshot for Original Screenplay. It could get Golden Globe nominations though.

Grade: B

[The Original BJ]

I also quite liked Beginners. It felt to me like a charming French movie, only set in Los Angeles and without subtitles.

Christopher Plummer's work is really touching and funny, too -- I do hope he gets some Supporting Actor traction despite the fact that the film seems to have come and gone without much fanfare.

[Sabin]

Glad to see another fan of Beginners on this board. While there are two scenes missing from the film and I think I know exactly what they are, it's an incredibly emotional experience within the confines of personal essay filmmaking, and often films of the latter genre tend to be overly distant or ironic.

[Sonic Youth]

I'll try to do my part to get the board active again and find something to say about all these films. In any event, here's what I've seen this year so far. As I said, I've seen more major studio films and fewer indies/international films than usual, unfortunately. And I'm grading generously for many of these films because I've been in a generous mood all year.

***1/2
Beginners
Tree of Life
Certified Copy

***
X-Men: First Class
Win Win
Of Gods and Men
Source Code
Super 8
Crazy Stupid Love

**1/2
Hanna
Midnight in Paris
Incendies
The Lincoln Lawyer
Captain America

**
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
The Conspirator
The Adjustment Bureau
Thor

[anonymous1980]

COWBOYS & ALIENS
Cast: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach, Paul Dano, Noah Ringer, Keith Carradine, Clancy Brown, Walton Goggins, Abigail Spencer.
Dir: Jon Favreau.

This film had the potential to be the great genre blockbuster of the summer: It's a straight up Western mashed up with straight up science fiction. Though this film has quite a number of great moments, the tone is all over the place and uneven and it doesn't quite mesh together as a whole. It's highly tricky concept to pull off and expectations for this were kind of high. So I can see why it's a disappointment for many. But the film is nevertheless entertaining and has many fun moments with the actors giving it their all.

Oscar Prospects: A longshot for Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Art Direction.

Grade: C+

[Mister Tee]

Pauline Kael used to speak about the occasional movie that few with any taste would call actually good, but which stirred things up or touched enough nerves in people that they were somehow worth seeing anyway. I'm thinking that's the category in which The Help belongs.

There are all sorts of easy-to-pinpoint problems with the movie, starting with the fact that the writer of the original book had way too much control (hiring a friend to write and direct), which I assume -- not having read the book -- more or less insured the book would be preserved intact rather than reshaped for the screen, a la the first, stultifying Harry Potter book. The film as a result rambles on far longer than it should, and never really finds a central focus. Beyond that, much of Stockett's original material is broad and/or corny -- the Junior League white women are cartoonishly racist mean girls (with tacky lacquered hair), many of the multiple storylines seem more suited to soap operas, and some incidents (including one central one) feel so contrived I'd just about bet they're lifted from real life but emerge phony regardless. And of course there's the standard drawback of one of the central positive characters in this racial-conscious story being an enlightened white woman (though I don't think that's as big an issue here as in Cry Freedom/Ghosts of Mississippi, given how much screen time is given over to the black female characters).

As to why I think this movie will be/maybe to a degree should be seen anyway...it's pretty much tied up with those black female characters, particularly Viola Davis' central Aibileen (I may be spelling that wrong). Stockett has one grabber of an idea at the center of her material: that many young Southern white women saw and related to their maids as surrogate mothers...until they grew older, and became (in Mississippi terms) their social superiors, which caused ugly dislocation on both sides of the relationship -- the white women often becoming even worse taskmasters than their mothers had been. Emma Stone's Skeeter is just at the age to be experiencing such a reboot, but, partly because she's denied rapprochement due to the departure of their family's maid, and partly because she's a better evolved human being, she seizes the moment to delve into the phenomenon by talking to the maids. And she's lucky that her first interviewee is the force of nature that is Aibileen.

Viola Davis is, for me, a unique screen presence. Most actors who really take command of the screen do it with at least an undertone of wit; they know how to enlist an audience into cheering them on. But Davis, at least from the work I've seen so far (King Hedley II onstage, Antwone Fisher/Far from Heaven/Doubt and this onscreen), has little time for humor. (The one moment where she does laugh here with Skeeter comes as almost a shock) Davis as an actress seems to carry a world of woe in her persona -- if she suddenly burst out with "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen", no one would dare challenge her. And this full-on seriousness serves her well: it makes her as commanding an actress as I've seen emerge in recent years. When she speaks to someone, they damn well know they're being spoken to (and if the mores of the time dictate she needs to hold back, you can feel the volcanic force being restrained in the moment). When she agrees to talk with Skeeter, the interview project takes on a level of gravity that Skeeter perhaps didn't anticipate. This maid has got some stories. Davis maybe doesn't have the screen time here of a typical leading actress, but I never for a moment felt this wasn't her story, given how powerful her moments are. Her character, and her performance, demand one's attention, even in this context that's often frivolous and ramshackle.

Octavia Spencer, the other black actress getting alot of ink, is perfectly fine in a more standard though not totally formula role. She's comic relief alot of the time, but she lets us see there's rage simmering just below. Imagine a Hattie McDaniel character who got to speak her mind to her full satisfaction. The rest of the maids have less full characters, but the movie -- on the side of the angels -- views them all with great sympathy. I know there's some criticism out there that merely casting these actresses in roles that were once movie stereotypes reinforces the type, but I guess I don't see that. There's a long real-life tradition of black women filling these jobs -- even unto this day, especially in the South -- and unless we're saying writers are forbidden to deal with the subject, I think having actresses play the parts is unavoidable. It's like when you cast an Irish actor as a cop: yeah, it''s a stereotype, but it also reflects alot of reality.

Alot of people are probably going to hate this movie on principle; I thiought I would, from the trailer. Conversely, some critics (like Gleiberman) have gone overboard the other direction, praising it for virtues I don't quite grasp. What I see in the end is a big, generally engaging muligan stew of a studio movie, stuffed with plenty of cheap moments alongside some genuine ones, but one that gets a few points for touching areas of life no movie has really dealt with prior. And, above all, for giving Viola Davis a role in which she can use much of the full range of her talent.

[Mister Tee]

Expectations suitably downgraded by BJ, I more or less enjoyed Rise of the Planet of the Apes, though I don't disagree with most of what BJ said about it. It's a sign of how devolved the summer blockbuster has become that we no longer expect an original idea, a witty execution or a truly thrilling directorial feat (most of which were in evidence when Spielberg birthed the genre in the 70s/early 80s); we merely hope it isn't entirely stupid and zips by with a little flair.

I haven't partaken of any of the other reboots (well, I guess except Star Trek), and I'd be hard-pressed to know how this compares to others -- or even how it squares with the Planet of the Apes series. The original Apes film opened when I was in high school, and alot of folks I know saw it (enough that the ending was spoiled for me a dozen times over), but I never cared enough to go on my own. I finally caught it on TV in the 80s, and was indifferent -- I certainly never pursued any of its multiple sequels.

What do I like about this movie, at least enough to give it a pass? Unlike many recent bloated efforts, it moves along briskly, clocking in at about 1:40 (the Michael Bay version would have been 2:20, minimum). Its main story is simple but not quite primitive (though certain stock characters -- the asshole neighbor, the sadistic youth -- bring the rest of the film down). And the film doesn't seem designed around its effects. It takes its time letting the situation build, and, even though once the apes escape the action takes over, I didn't get the sense the movie had been idling impatiently till then -- it seems invested in its characters and their emotions, however simple they are. And even during these big late sequences, the storyline didn't get lost. When a helicopter burst into flames, I realized 1) it was the movie's first explosion and 2) I was watching it because it mattered to the story, not for its own "blowed 'em up real good" sake.

I'm perennially one of the board's least educated when it comes to the visual effects category -- usually I catch up with many of the nominees in DVD post-nomination -- but it's hard for me to imagine anything impressing me much more than the way they made these apes look perfectly real for a huge amount of screen time. The blogger talk about "an Oscar for Andy Serkis" is the usual silliness, but as a technical feat it's hard to deny: they really do make Caesar into a relatable character. I'd also single out the film's score -- Patrick Doyle is a favorite since the Branagh days, and he seems to have come up with music that doesn't just recall half the other action movies around.

As I said to start, nothing on a par with Jaws or even Men in Black. But amusing enough on its own terms.

[mayukh]

Any thoughts on The Help yet? Most of what I'm hearing about it (not only the bad reviews, but the good reviews, too, and the "pleasant" and reasoning they use, their benign language, etc) makes me think I'll hate it – exploitative revisionist bullshit that's excused because, ahem, the acting is good.