Wherein I try to watch as many Oscar-nominated movies in as short a time as possible.
#1 is The Wrestler, which is hard to like or dislike, though thankfully Aronofsky has (at least temporarily) shed most of the the annoying tendencies of his last two movies. You could take the movie as the failure of the american dream (not the rags-to-riches one, the find-what-you-love-and-do-it-and-everyone-will-love-you-and-youll-make-oodles-of-cash one), but really it's more about its success -- this is what you actually want when wanting stuff. For ambition to be more important than family, health, etc. In characteristic movie fashion, professional ambition is put against family and love and stuff: movie-success, since movies all want to tell us that family and love and stuff are more important than anything. The scenes with his daughter feel phoned-in, the scenes with the stripper would have felt it too if not for the natural vivacity of the characters, old but still frisky. What is hard to stomach is his speech at the end, about the audience being his family -- we know it's a lie, he knows it's a lie, and yet there's supposed to be something triumphant about the ensuing battle. Up to that point he'd been at least trying, but then he gives up — and giving-up is essential to the American Dream, the stubborn, stupid, self-destructive American Dream. Aronofsky understands this, re: Requiem, but here it seems that he has to sell the dream back to us.
#2 was Frost/Nixon which does a lot to be obviously about what most plays are about anyway. Language as competition. As such it's the most thrilling movie about a conversation I can remember to have seen. Where it fails for me is in the character of Frost, who is portrayed far more weak/lucky than you think he should be -- I didn't feel at all the scenes where we're supposed to feel the mirrored connection between the two combatants, in fact Frost seemed to be everything that Nixon railed sympathetically against, which tips the scales way too far toward Nixon in the identification department. This seems to be more a failing of the directing than the portrayal, since Howard seems to be trying to squeeze every bit of capital-e Entertainment out of this script as possible. Hence Frost is weaker and less charming than we know he should be so it becomes more of a struggle for him to succeed. Which leaves you feeling at the end that Frost is simply lucky.
#3: In Bruges — very entertaining while not extremely good. The writing was fresh and jumpy (another playwright) but most of the scenes had pacing problems, abnormal pauses, the signs of a young/shaky director. And yet, very much worth watching, if only for the Colin Farel's character. You can't keep your eyes of him, he's so twitchy and excitable and juvenile and fun, one of those characters bigger than the story he's in. Also, best eyebrow acting since David Tennant. He picked up a Golden Globe for it too, but no Oscar nods. And as good as Heath Ledger's performance was, his Joker was still very much contained in his story. Curiously though, if the Best Supporting goes to Ledger this will be two years in a row of villains. But Chigurh will always be much more frightening.
#4: Milk, the best of the lot so far. It's a biopic, doesn't pretend to be more than a biopic, but hits everything evenly and well. Very balanced — entertaining without being sensational. And it avoids the big pitfalls of biopic: First it skips right over the rise/fall that makes most of them get weighty and predictable in the third act, since its main character dies right at the top (nothing to be thankful for but hey, makes for good cinema). Second, it skips the backstory, the inner life, the secret woes etc. Milk is portrayed as a public figure, there's nothing to him that isn't right there up front, which is part if not all of his charm. And the performances were all pitch-perfect, down to the smallest roles, each with his/her own fascination about them. Another benefit of biopics, even the bit parts are real people.
#5: Happy Go Lucky plays like a love letter to the social, so strange in a medium full of rugged individualists and tortured loners. I got bored by the middle of the movie while it started to be About Things; thankfully it didn't end up being about much. Poppy is unconcerned with the things the neurotic people around her are: ambition, career, procreation, pensions, adulthood, etc, which the movie portrays as things we use to stave off loneliness. Poppy staves off loneliness by being social, and so tries to help people. And thankfully the movie doesn't gloss over the fact that this is the result of number of neuroses of her own, but at the same time doesn't dwell on them. Some people like to help people. And we all can't be social (if we were we wouldn't be on the internet) but it's nice finally give a bit of thanks to those who are, 'cause where would we be without them really. This doesn't mean that we're gonna make eye contact on the street or anything.
#6: doubt was. alright? It was too long for its content and too short for its subject. Meryl Streep was better than I expected but worse and worse as it went on. Hoffman was capable. Viola Davis was the standout of course. Her scene kinda reminded me of the scene with William Holden's wife in Network — both small, almost throwaway scenes that do little to further the plot but add so much, taking you outside the little squabbles we're concerned with on screen and reminding us that maybe there are real people out there being affected.
