Lincoln

Lincoln (2012)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Screenplay by Tony Kushner

Based on the book, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, Tommy Lee Jones, John Hawkes, Jackie Earl Haley, Tim Blake Nelson, Lee Pace and Joseph Cross

There was trepidation in watching Steven Spielberg's latest movie. Another year, another biopic for gimmee gimmee lotsa Oscars. It is played out and stale. The movie was nomianted for 12 Oscars, which is eight too much in my opinion. You can possibly tell there was not love out for this movie.

It seems that Spielberg and company wanted to take an atypical biopic like Capote (hated it) or Milk (meh). Make it a one word title, specifically the last name and try to focus on one specific time in the insert historical person here's life and spit it out to the American public. Here, the film focuses on the last four months of Lincoln's (Day-Lewis) life as he tireously tries to get the thirteenth amendment passed and signed into law. That's it. That the whole movie in a nutshell.

The movie is like watching long drawn out version of The West Wing with a bunch of filler to over-stuff it. The boring back and forth about a piece of legislation. The movie did not focus on Lincoln that much. It was all about the damn amendment. It should have been called The Thirteenth Amendment. This is no way downgrading what the piece of legislation has done to my ancestors and many others, but nobody wants to hear a bunch of stuffy men talk about legislation for over two hours. It grows tiresome after ten minutes.

A movie having a 86 Metacrtic would have been at least enjoyable. There was some dozing moments on my end. Everybody is touting that DDL will be the first actor ever to win three Best Actor Oscars. What's so special about this performance? It was laid flat. No nuisance. No gravitas. It was a dead fish. His performance in There Will Be Blood was leaps and bounds better than his Lincoln lite he put on.

The only person worth mention is the brilliant performance of Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, the Pennsylvanian Representative that fought for most of his life to get slavery abolished in the country. Whenever he was onscreen, nobody was in the room. He has an intensity that few could master. Bravo, TLJ.

Sally Field on the other hand was cartoonish in her portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln. It felt like she was in a different movie. Like she was in a soap opera the way she was speaking. It was reminiscent of Soapdish (which she was in) and not in a good way.

My expectations were very low of this movie and it did not exceed them in the slight bit. There is something that bothered me, when the credit were rolling, did anybody catch the obvious lens flare? Really, Mr. Spielberg? you wanted to do this movie for the last decade when Liam Neeson was attached to play Lincoln. This is what you came up with. Back to drawing board, sir.

My Rating

Jodaeiye Nader az Simin

A Separation (2011)

Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi

Currently #100 of the Top 250 Films of All Time on IMDb (as of this posting)

Stars:  Peyman Moaadi, Leila Hatami, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhadi, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, Shirin Yazdanbakhsh, Kimia Hosseini and Merila Zarei

I heard nothing but great things about this movie. Sometimes when a movie gets overly hyped, I tend to have hesitation about the movie when I watch it. It was on top ten lists across the board. The movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at last year's Oscars. I enjoyed the movie, but I don't think it's a masterpiece.

Nader and Simin (Moaddi, Hatami) are the separating couple. Simin wants to move to another country to more opportunities for their daughter, Termeh (Farhadi), but Nader doesn't want that. Simin leaves the house to stay with her mother for the time being. Nader has to take care of his ailing father (Shahbazi) that has Alzheimer's. Nader needs a caregiver to help out with his father while he goes to work. He enlists the help of Razieh (Bayat) who is pregnant with her second child had to take her daughter, Somayeh (Hosseini) with her. The arrangement falls through as the tensions rise in the household that comes to a head.

Maybe this is my Westernized mind at work, but I was very confused at some moments of the film. I am not familiar with the culture of Iran or anything Muslim. I couldn't understand why the Razieh couldn't clean the father. I didn't understand the reason why Nader and Simin were separating. It seems frivolous to me. Those were my main complaints about the movie.

When the movie got going, I thought it was very poignant look at how a family dissolves when unforeseen circumstances come into their lives. I can't really say anything else about the movie. I don't want to spoil it for those that have not seen it yet.

My Rating

There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson

Based on the novel, "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair

Currently #176 of the Top 250 Films of All Time on IMDb (as of this posting)

Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier, Ciarán Hinds, Sydney McCallister, David Willis, Kevin J. O'Connor, David Warshofsky, Hans Howes and Russell Harvard

One of the greatest omissions of all time is that I have never seen P.T. Anderson's epic, There Will Be Blood. Okay, backpedaling. I saw maybe the first ten minutes of the movie and stopped, because the silence. After seeing and loving 127 Hours, it had long silences. I thought it was high time that I see this movie again. It was nominated for eight Oscars and won two for Best Cinematography and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis. I enjoyed the movie, but it's not flawless.

During the height of the Gold Rush and Oil Boom in the turn of 20th century, Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) hit the big time by striking oil. He turns into a oil mogul that is buying up land to build oil derricks to pump out the oil. One day, Daniel is approached by a boy, Paul Sunday (Dano) about a possible place where oil is found near the family ranch. Daniel goes to where the oil source might be and tries to buy the land from the father, Abel (Willis) with a stipend to donate a large sum of money to church where son, Eli (Dano) is a minister at.

Sometime when I movie comes around, I would think that it is clear Oscar bait. I have that perception about a lot of movies. This movie feels like that to me. You have Day-Lewis who gives a grandiose performance. Has he ever given a bad performance? If you name one, I will eat crow. I understood why Plainview did some of the things that he did. He did some monstrous things, because I understood the motivations behind them. It was not like that in Match Point where similar actions happened. Daniel did deserve his Oscar.

The movie feels very epic in scope, but I felt that the movie was too long. One strike against the movie would be the pacing. There are some superfluous scenes that needed to be cut out.

The another strike against the film is Paul Dano. I have to say that I didn't understand why P.T. Anderson decided to make Dano play Paul and Eli where you see that Daniel was not surprised to see Eli looked like Paul. Paul was never mentioned again until the end of the movie. Dano was not in the same league as Lewis. It was a David vs Goliath situation and Goliath bitch slapped David. Dano was wooden in the movie. I didn't understand he let the person that was going to be Eli, Kel O'Neill go. I thought it was a big mistake.

My Rating

Sling Blade - The Director's Cut

Sling Blade (1996)

Directed by Billy Bob Thornton

Screenplay by  Billy Bob Thornton

Based on his play of the same name

Stars: Billy Bob Thornton, Lucas Black, John Ritter, Natalie Canerday, Dwight Yoakum, James Hampton and Robert Duvall

This movie has singlehandedly solidified Billy Bob Thornton's career as it introduced audiences to an undeniable character of Karl with his simple nature and his sniff upper lip. Awesome. BBT won the Oscar for adapting his play -- which I didn't know -- to the big screen. The movie has the making of a great film, but it has flaws.

Karl Childers (Thornton) is a mentally challenged man that is being released from the mental institution that he spent the last twenty years in for killing his mother and her lover. After he is released, Karl feels lost in the town that he grew up. The director of the institution Jerry Woolridge (Hampton) sets Karl up with a job at an auto repair shop. Karl becomes friends with a boy, Frank Wheatley (Black). Frank wants Karl to live with him, his mother Linda (Canerday) and her abusive boyfriend, Doyle (Yoakum).

I am not gonna bash this movie. I am not going to do that. That being said, the movie felt disconnected to me. BBT was fantastic in the movie. He was unrecognizable in the role. The biggest problem I had with this movie was the pacing. It was a huge problem, because I was engaged with that monologues that Karl was retelling about his past. There are some instances that the momentum grind to a halt and my attention waned. It seriously did.

I wanted to love this movie, but the pacing was its biggest downfall.

My Rating

Platoon

Platoon (1986)

Written and directed by Oliver Stone

Stars: Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Keith David, Forest Whitaker, Francesco Quinn, Mark Moses, Kevin Dillion, Johnny Depp and John C. McGinley

Currently #144 of the Top 250 Films of All Time on IMDb (as of this posting)

Platoon is one of those movies that should be seen and studied by any film buff. I had this movie in my DVR for the longest time without seeing it. I thought it was time to see the film. I'm glad I did. The movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning four including Best Picture and Best Director. I think that the movie should have won more. I want to shower this movie with more awards.

To rinse the taste of the previous movie out of my mind, this movie is not the typical Vietnam War movie. Based on some director Oliver Stone's own experiences in the war, the film follow Bravo Company in Cambodia. Most of the attention is shown on Chris Taylor (Sheen), a grunt that volunteered to go into the service after dropping out of college. He gets ragged on by his fellow soldiers. They are counting the days until they leave. There is trouble within Bravo Company between the asshole Sgt. Barnes (Berenger) and the level headed Sgt. Elias (Dafoe) that might endanger them from the Vietcong.

I have seen a lot of Vietnam War movies. Some are good and some are bad. This movie is a thing of beauty. I have never been so engrossed in a story before. I cared for the characters. I wanted them to survive the countless clashes that they have with the Vietcong. I was happy that Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger were nominated for Best Supporting Actor for their work. They were fantastic in the film. They lost out to Michael Caine. He must have been an acting clinic in that movie to trump these two.

It was weird to see Forest Whitaker pop up, Kevin Dillon from Entourage, Mark Moses from Desperate Housewives and Johnny Depp in a bit role as a translator.

There was one thing that bothered me about this movie is the sound. The sound of the gunfire were very muddled in my opinion. The movie won the Oscar for Best Sound. I guess by 1986 standards, it was good. I thought it was muffled gunfire. That was my only gripe with this movie.

My Rating

Kiss of the Spider Woman

Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)

Directed by Hector Babenco

Screenplay by Leonard Schrader

Based on the novel by Manuel Puig

Stars: William Hurt, Raul Julia, Sonia Braga, José Lewgoy and Milton Gonçalves

I have heard of this movie basically from the Broadway musical version of it. I knew a couple of things about the movie. I knew that one of the characters were gay and that was it. The film was nominated for four Oscars and won the Best Actor for William Hurt. I thought that this movie was disgusting for a gay person to watch.

Detained in a South American prison, the movie focuses on two of the most unlikely cellmates, Luis Molina (Hurt), the flaming homosexual that flails about in kimonos and all that. The other is a political prisoner named Valentin Arregui (Julia). Most of the action takes place in their cell where Luis talks about a Nazi propaganda movies where he talk about the love story in it. The warden (Lewgoy) wants to make a deal with Luis to get him parole that will test his friendship with Valentin.

I thought that the movie would be interesting to me, but it wasn't. I did not understand why this movie was made. Why was the movie nominated for Best Picture? I didn't care about the endless stories Luis was re-interrupting to Valentin. There would be a good story if it focused on the relationship between Valentin and Luis. I didn't care for it. Did I say that already?

When I said that this movie is disgusting for a gay person to see is that in the early 80s, portrayal of gay men were less than flattering. Luis has to be a flaming queen that gets to be called fag or faggot by every character in movie and then he has to die. The fag has to die. It's not a spoiler it was commonplace in the early 80s where a gay man is portrayed as a limp-wristed queen who preys on little boys and spreads disease and should die for his perversion. That is the main reason why I hate this movie so much. It was a waste time. I don't know why William Hurt won the Oscar for this role. I am disgusted with this movie. I'm insulted.

My Rating

Terms of Endearment

Terms of Endearment (1983)

Directed by James L. Brooks

Screenplay by James L. Brooks

Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry

Stars: Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, John Lithgow, Danny DeVito, Lisa Hart Carroll, Huckleberry Fox and Troy Bishop

Terms of Endearment has been a movie that I have been avoiding for the longest time, because I cannot stand obvious tearjerker movies. Since I'm doing a blog-a-thon, I might as well add this movie to the list. The movie was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won five including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screeplay for James L. Brooks, Best Actress for MacLaine and Supporting Actor for Nicholson.My only thought is why did this movie get so much acclaim?

An overbearing mother Aurora Greenway (MacLaine) tires her best to raise her only daughter, Emma (Winger) the best way that she can. Their relationship is tempestuous to say the least. Emma tries to beak away from her mother's controlling ways by marrying Flap Horton (Daniels) and moving from Houston to his new teaching position in Iowa. With over a thousand miles separating them, Aurora tries to butt into Emma's business over the phone. Emma thinks that her mom needs to have a man in her life and she finds it in her next door neighbor, Garrett Breedlove (Nicholson) who is an astronaut.

Let's get this out of the way, all of the characters are assholes. They are so mean to each other I didn't care what happened to them. I don't understand what was Aurora's problem with Flap. Was it that he was not good enough for her daughter? Was Danny DeVito in the movie fawning for Aurora and that other guy? Why was John Lithgow nominated for essentially five minutes of screen time?

The ending of the movie was spoiled to me over the last couple of years. The characters dwelt in the chain of events  way too long. I was bored with the movie. There was a lot of eye rolling, yawning, getting distracted by other things, etc. The overly melodramatic score by Michael Gore did not help matters. I was like, come on. Really? This movie won Best Picture. Are you kidding me? It must have been slim picking back in '83.

My Rating

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Directed by David Fincher

Written by Steven Zaillian

Based on the novel "Män som hatar kvinnor" by Stieg Larsson

Stars: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright,Yorick van Wageningen, Joely Richardson, Geraldine James, Goran Visnjic, Donald Sumpter and Ulf Friberg

This movie was my most anticipated ones that I wanted to see last year, but I had lockout on watching movies last year. I was listening to a podcast and I was compelled with the movie. I did watch the original Swedish movie and reviewed it. The biggest problem I had with that movie was that I thought the pacing in the first half of the movie made it almost unwatchable. This has the opposite reaction.

The film is split between parallel narratives. There is one with Mikael Blomkvist (Craig), a journalist was convicted on libel for publishing a false story about Hans-Erik Wennerström (Friberg). He has to take a leave of absence from his post at Millennium Magazine leaving his sometimes lover, Erika Berger (Wright) in charge. He is summoned by Henrik Vanger (Plummer) to find out who killed his beloved niece, Harriet forty years earlier.

Little does Mikael know, that he was investigated himself by world class hacker, Lisbeth Salander (Mara) who was summoned by Henrik's lawyer, Dirch Frode (Berkoff). Lisbeth is a ward of the state since she was twelve because of a incident that happened when she was twelve. Eventually, the story lines intersect as the two delve into the Vanger mystery.

I have read the English translation of the book and I know that screenwriter Steven Zailian had to cut subplots that were not integral to the main story. I found that like the pacing of this movie better than the original. I was engaged in the mystery even though I knew what was going to happen. A big part of that was the fitting score of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The cinematography was truly extraordinary by Jeff Cronenweth. I'm glad that Fincher did not shy away from the brutality that happened in the book.

The film was nominated for five Oscars including Rooney Mara for Best Actress. I thought that Lisbeth was a meaty part of any woman. There is so much for Mara to do here. I was rooting for her when Lisbeth's case worker, Nils Bjurman (van Wageningen) gets his comeuppance. The only thing I did like was the ending shot of the movie. If you have seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. I mean, really?

I was not bored with the movie. The movie is almost two and half hours long. I was not checking my watch. I was engaged with the narrative.

My Rating

The Artist

The Artist (2011)

Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Currently #160 of the Top 250 Films of All Time on IMDb (as of this posting)

Stars: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller and Missi Pyle

I never heard of this film until awards season came into full swing and took over everything. The movie was nomianted for ten Academy Awards and won five including Best Picture, Director and Actor. Everybody has been showering praise to this movie that doesn't deserve it that much.

Taking place during the early days of the Golden Age of movies, silent film star George Valentin (Dujardin) is riding high on his success. He is living the life or so you think. His marriage to his shrew of a wife, Doris (Miller) is crumbling down. The owner of Kinograph Studios, Al Zimmer (Goodman) wants to switch into uncharted waters. He wants to go into talkies. George thinks that people are not ready for talkies, especially him. His life goes into a tailspin when a young ingénue Peppy Miller (Bejo) is going from extra to leading lady i.e. his direct competition.

I have this unwritten rule that you should always watch silent films in the daytime, because there is a possibly of you dozing off. I 'm saying that I hate this film. I like the movie, but I think that the hype machine elevated this film into being greater than it actually is. I have seen actual silent movies that were better than this movie. The movie felt like a typical romantic comedy, but there are no words in it.

I didn't understand how when the actor are talking there were not that many dialogue cards to figure out what the hell was going on. It might the copy that I had, but the title cards were in French and the actors were talking in English. Quite baffling. I think it's because it was a silent film in 2011 that it's the greatest thing ever.

I liked the performances of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo were nominated for their performance and Dujardin won. I understood the path the character was going, but I did not think it was worthy of an Oscar. I thought the little dog in the movie was quite delightful. I really enjoyed the score of the film which won an Oscar. It deserved it.

I think this one of those movies that is not going to remembered in ten years. It was a movie for the moment kind of film that will never be thought of again.

My Rating

Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris (2011)

Written and directed by Woody Allen

Stars: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy,  Léa Seydoux, Corey Stoll, Adrien Brody, Michael Sheen, Carla Bruni and Kathy Bates

I am not familiar with the works of Woody Allen. The only movie I have seen in its entirety is Annie Hall, which I loved. When i heard that Allen won his fourth Oscar for his screenplay of this movie, I wanted to see it. Parts of the movie was wondrous and others left a bad taste in my mouth.

The setting is 2010 Paris where an engaged couple, Gil and Inez (Wilson, McAdams) are visiting the city while Inez's parents, John and Helen (Fuller, Kennedy) are trying to take in the sight and sounds of the city. It seems that trouble is in paradise when Inez's old school crush, Paul (Sheen) comes to try to make them feel like Parisians with his grandiose observations of French culture. One drunken night, Gil walks around the Parisian to find himself transported to the 1920s where he is swept away by the likes of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway. Gil tries to make sense of things when this successful screenwriter struggles to write his first book.

Can I say that this movie is a hodgepodge? There were certain elements to this movie that I loved when Gil was in the 20s where he meets a beautiful Parisian woman named Adriana (Cotillard). I was completely swept up in those moments of the film. The modern day moments of the film were very repellent with the ice queen, Inez pissing Gil's parade, the parents that are upper crust that they spit on regular people and the Michael Sheen character trying to make the dumb American look stupid.

I loved sense of discovery and wonderment when Gil meets these greats of art, literature and music. Sometimes, I had to question why does Allen want to jam pack all these people into one particular place at the same time. You had a rogue's gallery of people like Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Matisse, T.S. Eliot, Gaugin, Degas and list goes on. It felt like a drive by people to come in to shock Gil and leave never to be seen again. I wanted to point out that I thought the lowlight on the film was Adrien Brody as Salvador Dalí. He kept droning on about rhinoceros. Who gives a fuck about rhinoceros!

The ending of movie felt rushed and things were not resolved. I was left hanging. If the movie was more of the wonderment of Gil into this fantastical world that inspires him to write his novel, I would be on board. I wish the modern part where jettisoned all together. It was filler.

My Rating

The Help

The Help (2011)

Written and directed by Tate Taylor

Based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett

Stars: Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Alison Janney, Mike Vogel, Sissy Spacek and Cicely Tyson

I have heard great things about the Tate Taylor's debut film, The Help, since it was released last summer. It was a sleeper hit as some people called it. I know that people were surprised that the black driven movie could make money.

I have this unwritten rule that I usually shy away from the black movies, because these movies reflect on me. I cannot support a movie where people, especially black are the butt of jokes at people's expense. This movie I wanted to see, but I didn't get the chance to see until the movie premiered on Showtime a couple of days ago. Is it as good as people say it is? Yes and then some.

This time is 1963. A spunky journalist who recently graduated from Ole Miss, Skeeter (Roberts) has a hard time adjusting to the crusty society of Jackson, Mississippi. Skeeter's quietly observed the way that her childhood friends treat the maids working for them. Skeeter wants to be a serious writer instead of doing a cleaning advice column. She tries to enlist the help of Aibileen Clark (Davis) and her sassy friend, Minny (Spenser) to write a book about the lives of the help. Tentative at first, they decided to try to make a difference and instill some change for generations to come.

This movie is beautiful beyond words. I could not believe that this white women would treated people like they were a dog. I know that I did not live during that time. My mom, late dad, aunties and uncles lived through that time where everything was separate but equal. Colored people did not have many opportunities in those days. People criticized the movie for the language that they speak. It's not correct English. People need to understand that the black people were not allowed to be educated. Some had to drop out of school to support the family. If this is the kind of movie that gets made, there is something wrong with Hollywood not giving black writers and filmmakers many chances. I was not offended with the movie. It made me proud that a movie like this exists.

I have to talk about the performances. I know that the movie movie was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress and two Supporting Actress nods. I love the cast, but I thought to myself, "Why was Jessica Chastain nominated for this movie?" I felt like it was a bit part like the other ladies. She didn't have that much to do. Octavia Spencer who won the Oscar for role of Minny is likable, but I didn't think it warranted an Oscar. The other performances must have been really weak. I am not knocking on Spencer's talent. I think it was wasn't Oscar worthy in my opinion. I thought Viola Davis really deserved her nomination. She made me laugh and cry at the same thing. I wanted hear to be okay and pulled through.

It is a great example of how a newcomer can make a movie that no one else would make. Thank you, Tate Taylor.

My Rating