Amour (2012)

5 Nominations, Wins To Be Determined

Nomination: Best Picture - Nominees To Be Determined
Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film - Nominees To Be Determined
Nomination: Best Director - Michael Haneke
Nomination: Best Actress in a Leading Role - Emmanuelle Riva
Nomination: Best Original Screenplay - Michael Haneke

Films with the word "Love" in the title are usually light comedic fare (Love, Actually; Everyone Says I Love You) or overwrought romances (Love and Other Drugs, P.S. I Love You), exploring either the fun and exciting side of love or the yearnings of unrequited love.  Director Michael Haneke's films are usually described with adjectives like dark or subversive, and his film about love, Amour, explores the darkest side of love: the end of love, not the beginning.

Georges and Anne (the common name for leading characters in Haneke's films) are first introduced to us as an elderly Parisian couple with the ultimate cinematic signifier of sophistication, a love of classical music.  As we watch the two go about their ordinary life, Anne tells of a burglar who has recently broken into a nearby home.  This act sounds all the more awful because of how the burglar broke into the home, entering through the ceiling instead of the front door.  This seemingly throwaway bit of dialogue becomes the central metaphor of the film, as Anne has a sudden blockage in her cartoid artery, the artery that supplies the head with oxygenated blood, leading to a flood of health problems that leaves her a shell of her former self.

The ailing spouse plot is not new to cinema, but has rarely, if ever, been told with the same maturity and complexity as it is in Amour.  Like the wonderful 2006 film Away From Her, Amour asks the difficult questions about the extent of love and what love really means, instead of simply seeking to reduce the audience to a weepy state, as in The Notebook.  As we see Georges's heart break as he painfully watches his wife bathed by a nurse or as he unhesitatingly checks whether his wife has soiled her diaper, we see acts of love far deeper than any Lloyd Dobler-esque boombox demonstration or rain-soaked apology/declaration.  Haneke's films look at some of the darkest aspects of humanity, but they also show how humans react to these aspects, and in Amour we see how love can cause us to react to the worst circumstances in the most heroic manner imaginable.  Amour has been repeatedly described as a depressing film, and while it is hardly lighthearted fare, it is one of the truest love stories in years.

Amour is very much Michael Haneke's film in the auteur sense of the word, but as much as the film is the product of his vision, the film's success must also be attributed to the brilliance of the two leads, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.  Riva's nomination as Best Actress was well deserved, and though I have not yet seen Jessica Chastain's performance in Zero Dark Thirty, of the four nominated performances I have seen Riva would easily earn my vote as Best Actress.  Much of the praise she has received has centered around her ability to portray Anne in her illness, but what should not be overlooked is her ability to transition from that illness to her few moments of clarity, switching from uncomprehending confusion to intelligent curiosity with supreme fluidity.  The difficulty of such transitions in a performance as deep as in Amour cannot be overstated, and Riva's ability to move between what amounts to two very different characters is stunning.

Though Riva's performance has garnered more attention, Trintignant is equally brilliant in a less showy but no less demanding role.  His eyes display such love and compassion for his character's wife, even in the most horrifying of conditions, and he exerts maximum restraint as an actor as he fights with his Georges's daughter over the decisions relating to Anne's care.  This is a sophisticated and heartbreaking performance of the highest order, and the lack of a nomination as Best Actor is a disappointing oversight by the Academy.  Still, it is rare that the Academy gives such recognition to a foreign language film, and Amour has rightly been recognized by the Academy for its deep and sophisticated look at a subject that is too rarely treated with such care.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012)

1 Nomination, Wins To Be Determined

Nomination: Best Animated Feature Film - Peter Lord

In the New York Times "And the Nominees Should Be..." article, in which the paper's film critics named their choices for the nominations for the major Oscar categories, Manohla Dargis bestowed imaginary nominations for The Pirates! Band of Misfits for Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Grant) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Gideon Defoe).  I was surprised, to say the least, by this recognition to a movie that I was only vaguely aware of and had mentally jumbled with the VeggieTales movie The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.  I made a mental note that perhaps the film was worth watching on cable in the future, but after the film received an Oscar nomination and I learned that it was produced by the wonderful Aardman Animations, I stopped by my local Redbox and paid my dollar to see whether Manohla Dargis is as crazy as I suspected.

While I believe that Dargis's praise for the film is overblown and that the Academy rightly limited the film to its sole nomination in the Animated Feature category, I was pleasantly surprised by what was an enjoyable and clever, if not terribly unique film.

The Pirates! is the story of The Pirate Captain's (voiced by Hugh Grant) efforts to win the Pirate of the Year Award, a title for which he is woefully unqualified (his only previous award was for Best Anecdote About a Squid).  The Pirate Captain undertakes a harebrained scheme to win this award, but he finds that he must decide if he is willing to give up what is most important to him to win the award. If this plot sounds familiar, it could be because it is a nearly exact copy of Wreck-It Ralph, and at times it feels as if the two tales are two variations from the same Mad Lib (Main Character: Pirate!  Video Game Villain!...Object of Desire: Trophy!  Medal!)

Yet even though the plot is simple, the film contains much of the unexpected and unusual humor that has made Aardman's previous efforts so wonderful.  The inclusion of a young, hopeless, and rather pathetic Charles Darwin (voiced by David Tennant) is a great addition to the cast of pirates, and Queen Victoria (voiced by Imelda Staunton) might be the best film villain of the year.

The Animated Feature category this year consists of five big studio films, a shift from the Academy's recent recognition of more independent animated fare (Chico & Rita, A Cat in Paris).  The Pirates! Band of Misfits is very much in the tradition of the standard animated story structure, and it sticks to the structure well to tell a nice, neat story.  The film is at its best when it allows itself to be a bit off-the-wall, and it could have benefited from more of these moments.  Still, The Pirates! is a breezy, enjoyable hour and a half, and I can only imagine that it is far superior to its similarly titled VeggieTales counterpart.

Kiss Me Kate (1953)

1 Nomination, 0 Wins

Nomination: Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture - Andre Previn and Saul Chaplin

Ten minutes in to my first viewing of Kiss Me Kate, I began to question the wisdom of my action earlier that evening, when I had declared to my wife "Let's watch a classic musical tonight."  The Every Oscar Ever project has given me a long list of musicals that I need to watch, largely due to the music categories, particularly Scoring of a Musical Picture, which gave most musicals the chance to receive at least one nomination.  My wife, never in need of persuading to watch a musical, happily complied, and after finding a Turner Classic Movies DVD Musical Collection at Target that included three nominated musicals I had not seen (Kiss Me Kate, Show Boat, and Annie Get Your Gun) as well as one of my favorites (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers).  After just a few minutes, I had grown so bored that I began to curse the names of Howard Keel, Target, and, I admit, even the sacred Turner Classic Movies.

But like many movies I have watched as part of the Every Oscar Ever Project, Kiss Me Kate slowly won me over.  Once the opening scene in the apartment of Howard Keel's character ended (a scene which the New York Times's original review of the film referred to as "one of the silliest and clumsiest beginnings that a musical has had") and we move to the "put on" portion of the "Let's put on a show" musical, Kiss Me Kate nearly immediately won me over with its clever structure, strong performances, and, most of all, the bundle of top-notch Cole Porter songs.

The film's greatest drawback is its lack of visual interest.  Because Kiss Me Kate is a show-within-a-show, nearly the entirety of the movie takes place in a theater, leading to long, static shots of dressing rooms and wings of the stage, hardly the makings of exciting visuals.  The film brightens whenever the characters are performing The Taming of the Shrew, with the colorful costumes and set design representing the Italian setting of Shakespeare's play, but that vividness quickly dissipates the moment the characters are off stage.  This obviously would not have been a problem for the stage musical, but it is a hindrance to the otherwise lively film adaptation.  While later film adaptations like Chicago would solve this problem by taking the performed scenes out of theater, the earlier backstage musicals often suffered from the problem of static visuals.

When the characters are performing The Taming of the Shrew, there is no such lack of visual interest.  Kathryn Grayson performs a fun and memorable "I Hate Men," and Ann Miller steals a scene of her own with "Tom, Dick or Harry."  The film's best number is "From This Moment On," featuring three dancing couples each taking a minute to perform a duet.  According to the Kiss Me Kate DVD's bonus features, each couple was given wide latitude in choreographing their dance.  The first two couples each perform stellar dances, but they are overshadowed by third couple, Carol Haney and a young Bob Fosse.  In only a minute, Fosse gives the world a preview of what he would bring to the theater in the following decades, jazz hands and all.  Perhaps the jazz dance is a bit out of place in a Shakespearean adaptation, but I can't imagine the film without it.

Kiss Me Kate received its sole Academy Award nomination for its score, losing out to Alfred Newman's scoring of Call Me Madam.  Previn and Chaplin's score is a bright and bouncy effort built around Cole Porter's songs, and the score is a great help in keeping the film feeling lively despite being weighed down by the lack of visual interest.  It is a strong score, no surprise considering the talent of Previn and Chaplin.

Despite my reservations early in the film, my initial excitement to watch Kiss Me Kate turned out to be well founded.  Though the film drags for long stretches and screams out for more creative directing, it was far ahead of its time in many ways.  Even at its slowest moments, the unparalleled Cole Porter songs and enthusiastic performances from the cast make the film well worth watching, despite its weaknesses.

How to Survive a Plague (2012)

1 Nomination, Wins To Be Determined

Nomination: Best Documentary, Feature - David France and Howard Gertler

There have been many documentaries made about the AIDS crisis since the outbreak of the disease, including some truly stellar efforts, such as the well known Common Threads: STories from the Quilt.  These films have covered scores of different stories that have resulted from AIDS, but the superb How to Survive a Plague is the first I know of to tell successfully the story not just of the disease, but the early efforts by the brave members of ACT UP and other organizations to fight for increased research and access to crucial medications to battle AIDS.

How to Survive a Plague is David France's first film as director, a surprising fact considering the expert hand employed in culling the vast amount of footage used in the film.  France is best known for his well-respected career in journalism, and he tells this story very much in a journalistic tone.  Though the film does include brief modern interviews from some of the people shown in the film, the success of the film comes from the inherent drama of the footage shown, without modern interpretation or comment.  France knows enough to let the footage speak for itself and allows us to make our own judgments without telling us what to think.

Unlike many documentaries that largely rely on splicing together fly-on-the-wall footage from the past, How to Survive a Plague is able to escape the trap of  emotional distance.  By somewhat narrowly focusing on some of the movement's most compelling figures, notably Peter Staley and Bob Rafsky, we are connected to the human faces of the plague, making the drama even more impactful.  This decision to focus on these figures allowed France not to have to decide between taking a comprehensive look at the response to the AIDS crisis as a whole or focusing on a few individual's stories, but instead to tell the story through the lives of its leaders.  This technique is far from revolutionary, but is all too infrequently used, and rarely as successfully as in France's hands.

The outbreak of the AIDS crisis and the government's inexcusably slow reaction combined to make the period of time depicted in this film one of the most terrifying and shameful eras in American history.  Yet out of this shame, David France has told the inspiring story of the New York homosexual community's brave effort to fight through fear and indifference and push for the rights of AIDS patients.  It is a fine and surprising film, and a beautiful tribute to the heroes of the movement.

The 85th Annual Academy Award Nominations Are In

After a long break in which I recharged my batteries, watched some movies that (gasp) did not receive any Academy Award nominations, and waged war with my cable provider to make sure that I continued to receive Turner Classic Movies, with the Oscar season upon us I am excited to return to the Every Oscar Ever project to watch and write about both this year's nominees and nominees from past years, many of which I will watch on 31 Days of Oscar.

This year's nominations stuck largely to expectations, but there were a few surprises. While I'll be forced to watch a few films I am less than excited about due to their nominations in technical categories, namely Mirror Mirror, the nominations also give me the necessary push to catch some films that interest me, but I might otherwise miss (Chasing Ice, Kon-Tiki).

So without further ado, here are the films nominated that I have yet to see.

Nominated Films I Have Yet to See
Amour - 5
Django Unchained - 5
Zero Dark Thirty - 5
Flight - 2
The Impossible - 1
The Sessions - 1
ParaNorman - 1
The Pirates! Band of Misfits - 1
War Witch - 1
No - 1
A Royal Affair- 1
Kon-Tiki - 1
Mirror Mirror - 1
Snow White and the Huntsman - 2
Hitchcock - 1
Chasing Ice - 1
Prometheus - 1
5  Broken Cameras - 1
The Gatekeepers - 1
How to Survive a Plague - 1
The Invisible War  - 1
"Inocente" - 1
"Kings Point" - 1
"Mondays at Racine" - 1
"Open Heart" - 1
"Redemption" - 1
"Adam and Dog" - 1
"Head Over Heels" - 1
"Paperman" - 1
"Asad" - 1
"Buzkashi Boys" - 1
"Curfew" - 1
"Death of a Shadow" - 1
"Henry" - 1

It looks like I have a full dance card, with 21 feature-length films and 13 short films ahead of me. As always, the hardest part won't be making time to watch the films, but simply finding means of watching some of the more obscure nominees. If anyone has any leads on some of the harder-to-find nominees, particularly the shorts, please get in touch.

First on my slate will be the documentary How to Survive a Plague, which is available via Netflix streaming. I hope to have a review up later this week.

Happy Oscar season everyone!

Pentecost (2011)

1 Nomination, 0 Wins

Nomination: Best Short Film, Live Action - Peter McDonald and Eimear O'Kane

For the second consecutive year, Ireland has produced an Academy Award nominated short film about a young boy navigating his way through Catholicism.  Yet there is little else in common between last year's offering, "The Confession," and this year's "Pentecost."  "The Confession" was one of the darkest, most depressing short films I have seen in a long time, while "Pentecost" is a fun, joyful short about a young altar boy who has one shot at redemption after spectacularly ruining the mass service.  Like many young Irish boys, his mind is always on the football pitch, and it is this distraction that is the source of his troubles in church.

The story of "Pentecost" is thin, and it lacks the cleverness of some of its fellow nominees, especially "Time Freak."  Yet it is a sweet story, and the use of "Ode to Joy" as the musical cue is inspired.  "Pentecost" is very forgettable, but I enjoyed it while I watched it.  Though it isn't as memorable as "The Confession," I'd watch "Pentecost" a thousand times before I would watch "The Confession" again.

RoboCop (1987)

2 Nominations, 0 Wins

Nomination: Best Film Editing - Frank J. Urioste
Nomination: Best Sound - Michael J. Kohut, Carlos Delarios, Aaron Rochin, and Robert Wald

Special Achievement Academy Award (Non-Competitive): Sound Effects Editing - Stephen Hunter Flick and John Pospisil

The 1980's was a significant period in the history of action films, as the genre grew dramatically in response to the birth of the blockbuster in the 1970's and the increasing technological abilities of special effects artists.  Several talented young filmmakers worked in the genre, and though much of the output was schlock, the decade produced some of the best action films yet made.

Though I am a fan of action films - the more explosions the better - I am still catching up on many of the finest offerings from the 80's, which I missed due to my parents' questionable belief that R-rated action films weren't appropriate for a child who still had to stand on his tiptoes to get on roller-coasters and who cried when Webster burned down his family's apartment with a science kit.  Due to the even more questionable belief held by Hollywood that many of these action films should be remade, I've had the motivation to dive in to the originals in advance of their mutant offspring's appearance.

I didn't have high hopes for RoboCop, since I came of age during the Showgirls-Hollow Man Paul Verhoeven era, missing the Total Recall-Basic Instinct era.  I also was exposed to the rightfully aborted RoboCop: The Animted Series as a child, the awfulness of which was far more damaging to a four-year old than its slightly less cartoonish counterpart would have been.  Thus I was pleasantly surprised that RoboCop was not completely atrocious.

This isn't to say that I found RoboCop to be a good movie.  The film is terribly paced, dragging on way too long without any consequence.  When the newly robotized protagonist is introduced far too late into the film, his lack of humanity makes him completely uninteresting.  The point of the film, of course, is that though RoboCop is no longer alive, he still has the slightest glimmer of a soul under the machinery.  Yet this glimmer is not enough to sustain interest in the character as he seeks revenge.  It's hard to invest much emotion into questioning whether a mostly-dead robot can get revenge on an equally soulless criminal acting without much motivation. 

The film suffers due to its inadequacies in plotting and character development, but there are interesting aspects to the film as well.  The film expresses some type of political view, though it is hard to discern whether its anti-authoritarian, authoritarian, anti-union, or anarchist; I'm sure more than a few theses have been written about it.  The filmmakers made a half-hearted attempt to pose some questions about the ethics associated with policing, but these quickly fall by the wayside.  The fake newscasts are great, and Kurtwood Smith chews the scenery with aplomb.  The film's technical work, which was what the Academy recognized, is very impressive, and both of the nominations and the special award were well deserved.  Kohut, Delarios, Rochin, and Wald probably deserved the Oscar for Best Sound, and likely would have won if not for The Last Emperor dominating the year's technical categories.

Once the movie moves on from its slow ending, it moves breezily along.  Even with its faults, its enjoyable enough to watch, and it's certainly better than its animated spin-off. 

Remaining: 3163 films, 874 Oscars, 5440 nominations