We saw The Avengers on Sunday night. 3D Imax version over at Megabox. I’ll get to the movie in a second.

Megabox.  Jeez.  First of all, on a weekend, the place is mobbed.  There was a two block line-up of cars waiting to get into the parking lot there (and due to the odd design of the building, you often end up having to park on the 16th floor).  The outside lot across the street was almost full, to the point where they were taking car keys and stacking cars in the aisles (so to speak).  For where we live, it would almost be better to call a taxi to go there.  Public transportation is out for us – I figured it would be two buses then two trains and then another bus vs. a 20 minute drive, go figure that one.  There’s mammoth branches of Ikea, Pricerite, Jusco, Suning (they had one Nikon D800E in stock!), H&M, some of the other stuff.  The ice rink is great for families and kids.  The outdoor observation deck is super nice, when it’s open.  Although honestly, we’ve never had a good meal there.  Perhaps the huge Cantonese places on the upper floors are okay but we’ve never tried those and any other place we’ve eaten there has ranged from barely acceptable to horrible.  (Of course we haven’t tried every restaurant in there so if you’ve got one you like, please share it with me.)  Also, I was looking to buy a USB card reader that could do CF cards and I couldn’t find it there.  (Maybe in Jusco? Suning didn’t have one and the Apple-ish shop closed down.)

Okay, now the movie, thanks for bearing with me.  If you like comic book movies, this is as good as it gets.  Really.  Joss Whedon and his team came up with a script that gave each main character plenty of screen time (and what passes for character development in this type of film) and even some of the “side” characters (Clark Gregg, Stellan Skarsgard, Cobie Smulders) had their moments.  Look sharp and you’ll see Powers Boothe and Jenny Agutter, too, but I completely missed Harry Dean Stanton.  Oh, and you’ll have to wait until almost the end for Stan Lee’s obligatory cameo.

I really admired the way the end mega-battle was shot and cut, the way it seamlessly moved from character to character, giving each one their moments.  About the only thing I could complain about is I’m so tired of some super villain or alien flying over the streets of some American city and seeing cars blowing up.  Really.  It’s been done.  To death.  It’s become the modern day equivalent of the car chases where a car always plows into a fruit stand.

And I gotta say, those alien invaders are pretty weak.  (Possible spoiler coming up.)  First of all, they hardly seem like an army, maybe there’s a hundred or two of them.  And then they’ve got these huge anthropomorphic ships that seem terrifying but Hulk can kill an entire ship with just one punch?  Let’s face it, this invasion didn’t really need a bunch of super heroes to stop it.  A few F-16s probably could have taken care of business.

Of course Robert Downey Jr. is the star and he gets his share of moments.  But a large round of applause to Mark Ruffalo, finally someone gets The Hulk right (if that matters to you).  And damn if Whedon doesn’t succeed in making Gwyneth Paltrow sexy and appealing (apparently not an easy task).

In other words, if this is the kind of thing you like, you’ll really like this.

Now, the 3D.  It sucks.  And keep in mind that I’m a fan of 3D, at least when it’s done right.  The 3D in Hugo is amazing and as necessary as 3D can be in a film.  But here?  I don’t know, there’s nothing that Whedon does that takes advantage of it.  The best 3D we saw the entire night was in the Imax trailer before the start of the film.  Was this even shot in real 3D or was it converted in post production?  Not even any of Hawkeye’s arrows shooting out into the audience – and really, what more obvious candidate for a 3D effect could there have been?  So let’s leave aside the technical issues of how 3D darkens the image and takes away resolution.  It’s just completely unnecessary to see this in 3D.  On the other hand, the super large Imax screen is always nice, especially in Hong Kong where most movie theaters are tiny little shitboxes.   Go see it in 2D.  You won’t miss anything and you can take the money you save and spend it on movie snacks.

I was thinking afterwards – I wonder if the film is meant as a metaphor for the state of the U.S.A. today?  Think about it.  You’ve got a handful of “heroes” who can’t stand each other.  They spend much of the movie arguing and pushing each other out of the way while a Norse god and a bunch of crappy aliens are chewing up the planet.  They don’t succeed in saving the planet until they can put aside their differences and work together for the common good (or at least to attack the common evil).

That being the case, there’s probably a game or two to be played of guessing which Avenger is which current politician.  Except I think that’s already been done better with Game of Thrones!

If I haven’t written too many film reviews here lately, that’s because I haven’t seen too many films that have moved me enough to write about them.  Shame got inside my skull in its first few moments and I think it’s going to be stuck inside there for a long time.  It’s an astonishing piece of work from writer-director Steve McQueen (quite obviously not the deceased actor; McQueen is a British artist, awarded the OBE and winner of the Turner Prize, who has directed two feature films).

First off, note that in the US, this film is rated NC-17.  There is graphic sex and full frontal nudity (male and female).  There is violence.  There is drug use.  There is enormous sadness and, well, shame.  It’s not a plot-driven film per se.  In its first half it is more reminiscent of the character-driven films we used to get in the 70s and that indie cinema sometimes still brings to us.

Anyway, plot, and I’ll try to steer clear of spoilers but can’t guarantee it.  Brandon is your typical upper middle class Manhattanite.  He’s got a nice apartment in Chelsea and what seems to be a good job (there are many scenes at his office but we never find out what he does and it doesn’t matter).  He also has a compulsion.  He is a sex addict.  His life is filled with prostitutes, porn and easy conquests in NYC bars.  He has no real relationships in his life and he’s okay with that.  Brandon, it should be noted, is not some 60 year old fat guy trawling through Wanchai style places.  He’s young, he’s good looking, he has money, he’s played here in an astonishingly committed performance by Michael Fassbender.  (Fassbender’s been in X-Men First Class and Inglorious Basterds and is in Ridley Scott’s upcoming Prometheus.)

One day his sister turns up at his apartment.  She’s played by Carey Mulligan in an equally brave performance.  It’s pretty clear that these two people are damaged people – damaged in different ways but each severely flawed.  We don’t find out why.  We can guess that their parents may have been monsters or perhaps they were abused as kids, but there are no flashbacks, no easy answers.  But there is this amazing scene in which Mulligan, a sometime nightclub singer, is performing in a club.  She’s seated at a piano and sings a radically slowed down version of “New York, New York.”  The camera remains in tight close-up on her face for almost the entire song.  What was a happy, bouncy song in the hands of Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli becomes tragically sad, an almost wistful look at a fantasy that the singer knows will never come true.

All right.  I’ll stop myself on the plot summary there.  But I’ll give away the theme of this film.  What happens when the one thing, the only thing in your life that gives you pleasure no longer gives you that pleasure?  What happens when you can’t find something to take its place, when you can’t stop doing it even though it brings misery and, yes, shame and not pleasure any more?  There is no Hollywood ending here.

There is, as I mentioned, a lot of nudity here.  But despite all of the sex that takes place on (and off) screen, despite the fact that almost everyone taking part looks great, almost none of it is erotic.  It’s not meant to be and kudos to McQueen for figuring out how to do that here.  Well, “almost none.”  There’s one scene that is erotic, very purposefully so, but it doesn’t end the way you might expect.  I could kind of guess where it was going.  I’ve known people like this.  Some might even say that I was once like this myself.

I will tell also tell you it’s not an easy film to watch.  In his 4 star review of the film, Roger Ebert writes, “This is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don’t believe I would be able to see it twice” and I know just what he means.  Many of you who view this film either won’t be able to sit through all of it, many will hate it.  This is not film-making for the masses by any means.

As for my gf, she surprised me.  40 minutes in, she started getting restless.  ”There’s no story!” she exclaimed.  I paused the film.  ”We can switch to something else if you want and I’ll watch the rest of it myself later.”  ”No, let’s stay with it.”  She stayed with it.  And when it was over, we discussed it for 10 minutes.  That doesn’t happen to us with many films.

I’m kind of with Ebert.  I don’t know that I’m going to rush to watch this again, at least not any time soon.  I do know that I’ve steered clear of McQueen’s Hunger (also starring Fassbender) but now I’m quite anxious to see that.  And even more anxious to see whatever McQueen comes up with next.

I think the film is just opening in Hong Kong around now.  You can find it on Amazon – the Blu-Ray  edition also comes with a standard def DVD.  McQueen’s previous film, Hunger, can also be found on Amazon, in a Criterion edition Blu-Ray.

So here’s the full list of Oscar winners, grabbed from HuffPo, in case there’s anyone out there who relies on this site for news.  I was in a hospital while the awards were telecast live and the hospital’s TV didn’t have the channel showing the awards.  All I could do was watch CNN, “breaking news” about something political in Australia that I could care less about, the crawl on the bottom gradually listing off the award winners.

Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson, “Hugo”
Best Art Direction: Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schavo, “Hugo”
Best Costume Design: Mark Bridges, “The Artist”
Best Makeup: Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland, “The Iron Lady”
Best Foreign Language Film: “A Separation”
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, “The Help”
Best Editing: Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”
Best Sound Editing: Phillip Stockton and Eugene Gearty, “Hugo”
Best Sound Mixing: Tom Fleischman and John Midgley, “Hugo”
Best Documentary: “Undefeated”
Best Animated Feature: “Rango”
Best Visual Effects: “Hugo”
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”
Best Original Score: Ludovic Bource, “The Artist”
Best Original Song: Bret McKenzie, “Man or Muppet”
Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, “The Descendants”
Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”
Best Live Action Short: “The Shore”
Best Documentary Short: “Saving Face”
Best Animated Short: “The Fantastic Flying Books Of Mr. Morris Lessmore”
Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”
Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”
Best Picture: “The Artist”

So look, I don’t think The Artist deserves the award for best picture, but it’s fully in line with the Academy’s history to bestow an award on a film like this.  It’s a very old story, frequently told before, but it’s a film that took some guts to make and the end result is an audience pleaser.  I suppose it took a lot of guts and vision to make a film in 2011 that was mostly in black and white and only had about 2 lines of dialogue – The Artist is most definitely not a silent film, as its award for best score should certainly indicate.  There is music and sound effects and a little bit of very well-placed and critically important dialogue.  It is probably as perfectly realized as it could have been.  It makes audiences feel good and it makes the Academy members feel good for voting for it.

It almost feels odd to fault this film for lack of ambition and yet, I do.  It’s not just a matter of waiting for plot twists that never came, for some spin on the Star Is Born story to revitalize it, it just feels that way after having seen Hugo and Tree of Life.  Tree of Life is wildly ambitious and it may not always succeed but it was truly unique.  Hugo was, as I’ve said, an out and out winner start to finish for me, a marvelous return to form in a completely new genre for Scorsese.

But that’s how the Academy rolls.

BTW, Streep may now have three Oscars (in a minor upset over Viola Davis) but Woody Allen now has four (three for writing, one for directing)(you didn’t think he had one for acting, did you?).  Hard to believe that Christopher Plummer only now is getting his first one, he’s been so good in so many things for so many years.

Also kind of difficult to believe that people are upset over Billy Crystal wearing blackface to do a Sammy Davis Jr impression, something he’s been doing for about 30 years.  It was never racist, and it was never “blackface,” not like the blackface minstrel shows from a hundred years ago.  And if you want to say it’s not funny, that’s fine but it’s not as if this was his first time doing it or as if people didn’t love Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder so I’m not sure where it’s coming from.  It’s political correctness carried way over the top. There’s lots of stuff out there far more worthy of being upset over than this.

I’ve said it before (and I’ll probably say it again), Martin Scorsese is one of the directors I admire most.  But it’s his “early work” – Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz, King of Comedy, New York New York (yes, I even love this one), Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More, Last Temptation of Christ. I have, to one extent or another, felt let down by every fiction film he’s made in the past 15 years.  I’m glad he’s survived, I’m glad he’s now loved and respected, but recently I’ve been more interested in his documentaries and film preservation work.  With every new film, I cross my fingers, make a wish, and go … hoping ….

But I never would have expected that he would make a film that would rank among his best and that such a film would be … a family film … starring kids …. in 3D.

And then I saw Hugo.

“I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason.”

Hugo is several films rolled up in one.  In its first hour, it’s the tale of an orphan in Paris circa 1931.  Hugo Cabret’s father, a watchmaker, dies in a fire.  His uncle drags him off to Montparnasse station and teaches him to take care of all the clocks there and then abandons him.  Hugo lives inside the walls of the station, observing what goes on every day, stealing bits of food, his only companion a broken robot that his father found on a trash heap and was trying to repair.  Hugo is convinced that if he can repair this robot it will give him a message from his father.  (Sounds almost like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, eh?)  Django Reinhardt plays guitar in a quintet in a cafe in which Salvador Dali sits sketching.  (Sounds almost like Midnight in Paris, eh?)

The people in the station that he watches include the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), a book seller (Christopher Lee), a newsstand dealer (Richard Griffiths), a cafe owner (Frances de la Tour), and a toy shop owner (Ben Kingsley).  (Jude Law plays his father and Ray Winstone his drunken uncle. Michael Stuhlbarg plays a film professor.)  Hugo is portrayed by Asa Butterfield and Chloe Grace Moretz is the girl who becomes his friend.

And it’s the toy shop owner who provides the film with its purpose because he is none other than Georges Melies. His films have been destroyed, he is forgotten by the public that once adored him and thought dead, he spends his days sitting in a shop in an obscure corner of the station, existing only for his wife and god-daughter, a broken and bitter man.

So the second half of the film builds his legend, presents re-enacted scenes from his films and is basically a plea for film preservation, all done in a family-friendly, heart-warming way.

Trust me, I haven’t come close to trying to explain just how magical all of this is.  And magic it is, indeed.  Scorsese brings all of his prodigious technique to this film, together with the great cinematographer Robert Richardson, Scorsese’s long-time brilliant editor Thelma Schoonmaker, a score by Howard Shore, seamless digital effects.  It’s completely real life (aside from one dream sequence) and yet it plays out like a fairy tale.  Who knew that Scorsese could tug on one’s heartstrings so artistically?

I’ve now watched the film twice – first in 2D and honestly, you won’t miss out if you only see it this way.  My second viewing was 3D and the 3D definitely enhances the experience but probably most important is to see it the one way I haven’t – on a really big screen.  The film finally opens in HK this week Thursday and I’m seriously considering going to see it again.

Hugo has received the most Academy Award nominations this year – 11.  Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects.

I’m sure there are going to be some people who won’t “get” this film, who will be bored in the second half when we see clips from Melies’ surviving work, when the film professor teaches the kids about the early history of cinema and explains to the audience what went into rescuing these films.  And that’s a shame.  I basically loved every second of this film from start to finish and I can’t think of the last time I said that about a Scorsese film.

Look, go see it, I guarantee you the first ten minutes, the bravura opening sequence, it will blow you away.

So I’ve now seen 7 of the 9 films nominated for the Oscar this year.  The Artist, The Descendants, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life.  I haven’t seen Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,  War Horse.  I still think that Tree of Life should be rewarded for being so wildly ambitious but I don’t think it stands a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.  People seem to think The Artist is a shoo-in and I loved it but it’s simply not as ambitious or as emotional as Hugo – it does have a cute dog, it makes you smile, I won’t mind if it wins.  I just have this sinking feeling that The Help might win.  Feh.

Addendum: meant to add this last night – I think there’s a very conscious irony to this film that adds to its appeal.  The irony is that it’s a $170 million budget film with state of the art computer effects and 3D all in tribute to someone who made hundreds of black and white silent films probably on a budget of a few dollars per film.  I don’t detect any specific “winks” to this effect in the film but probably they’re there and I just haven’t spotted them yet.

Yes, you all know by now, Whitney Houston is dead.  She was a great singer, great voice, beautiful, talented.  All these people moaning about “what a great loss it is”, I guarantee you none of them bought a Whitney Houston record in the past ten years, unless it was one of many compilations released to keep making some money off a once-great performer whose life spiraled out of control.  You either liked her or you didn’t or perhaps you didn’t even know who she was (or maybe think it’s a cool pose to say you didn’t).  Whatever.  The tributes will flood, more greatest hits albums and remix albums and live albums, screenings of her films, so on and so forth.  Listen and watch if you care, ignore if you don’t.

What bugged the crap out of me was the second raters on CNN on Sunday afternoon, forced to devote all the air time to her passing and clearly not good at improvisation.  Within an hour I heard at least 5 times how amazing it was that her rendition of the national anthem became a single (with two minutes of comparison to Kelly Clarkson’s version).  Then it went even further downhill.  They got Larry King on the phone.  ”Larry, what do you think about all of this?”  Who could possibly give a rat’s ass what Larry King thinks about this?  And then even further downhill when they got that massive talent, Jermaine Jackson – live on the phone from Istanbul! – for a good miserable five minutes – though it seemed like an eternity.  Then interviewing nobodies on the street.  ”Oh, I’m so sad.” “Oh, my favorite song was I Will Always Love You.”  I mean, come on, this is a global network, all the power and muscle of Time Warner behind it, struggling to maintain second place ratings behind Fox Fake News, and this was all they had?

The only thing I could do at that point was switch off cable and put on a movie.  We Need to Talk About Kevin.  It’s directed by Lynne Ramsay and it’s her first feature film in almost a decade.  It stars Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly as the parents of the devil.  Well, not quite the devil, but from birth on Kevin hates his mother and makes her life hell until, right before his 16th birthday …. [SPOILER!] he goes on a killing spree.  (Maybe not that big a spoiler, almost every review of the film mentions this.)

It’s impressively acted, shot and edited.  The opening sequence, I lost track of how long it lasts, 15 minutes or more, cuts back and forth across time, making little sense on the surface but it’s impressionistic.  For some reason it reminded me of Gaspar Noe’s films or at least his style.  The narrative never settles into a conventional chronological tale but keeps jumping around- albeit a little bit slower and with more dialogue – till the meant-to-be-shocking climax.  The thing for me was, despite it’s being so incredibly well made, it didn’t add up to much.  All this talent, all this technique, all this art – applied to what’s really little more than a standard horror story that doesn’t get tied into any greater truth.  It’s too arty to be drive in fare but the script refuses to reach deeply enough to make any psychological or sociological point.  I admire the hell out of Ramsay and Swinton and Ezra Miller (the teenage Kevin) but can’t bring myself to admire this film.

Oh, btw, despite my promise to myself to never watch another Lars Von Trier film, I did finally watch Melancholia.  And I made it all the way through.  It’s weird, those first 5 minutes or so, such lushly gorgeous images out of the reach of most directors, followed by a film that’s mostly jerky hand-held camera, telling a relatively silly story.  I guess those first 5 minutes sucked me in and a great cast – Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan and Alexander Skarsgard, John Hurt, Udo Kier (!) – but I suppose I can admit that mostly it was because I knew Kirsten Dunst had a couple of nude scenes.  And yes, she did look quite okay, but all the same, if I could get back that 2-1/4 hours of my life, I wouldn’t complain.

…. catching up on more Oscar nominated films …. The Descendants, loved it but not as much as Sideways …. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, only great if you already know the story, but I’m now rooting for Gary Oldman for the best actor oscar, which he won’t win …. The Artist, well worth your time and it should put a huge smile on your face unless you’re a complete philistine ….

Every year when they announce the Oscar nominations I get excited.  Don’t ask me why; it’s not something I can easily explain.  Sure, once upon a time, in a different century, I had dreams of being nominated and I’ve sort of figured out by now that’s not likely to happen.  I know the Oscars are political, I know they’re driven by mass opinion and by advertising dollars and I know that in many years the most deserving often didn’t win.  Nonetheless ….

Best Picture – 9 nominated films this year – Tree of Life, Moneyball, Midnight in Paris, The Help, Hugo, Warhorse, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Descendants, The Artist – I’ve seen 5 of the 9 so far.  I’d love to see Tree of Life win; not that it was the best picture but it was the most wildly ambitious and partially succeeded.  The Artist (which I watched last night) probably doesn’t stand a chance.  Maybe Spielberg’s Warhorse, which I haven’t seen, or the feel-good mush of The Help or a nod to Woody Allen’s film – it is the top-grossing film in his long career.

Best Director – Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne, Michel Hazanavicius, Malick.  They won’t give it to Hazanavicius for The Artist simply to spare the presenter from having to pronounce his name.  I love Payne but haven’t seen Descendants yet.  It could come down to a New York war – Scorsese vs. Allen – each of their films set in Paris, Scorsese’s a love letter to cinema, Woody Allen giving advice to Luis Bunuel on film-making.

Best Actor – Demian Bichir (A Better Life), Jean Dujardin, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Gary Oldman.  I think it’s Clooney’s year. I haven’t seen A Better Life so I can’t say about Bichir but all the other nominees did really strong work.  Actually I don’t know who Bichir is and I think most people were expecting Michael Fassbender to get nominated here.

Best Actress – Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs), Rooney Mara, Viola Davis, Meryl Streep (her 17th nomination!), Michelle Williams.  I’ve only seen 2 of the films here and it does seem to be Ms. Davis’s year.

Best Supporting Actor – Kenneth Branagh, Nick Nolte, Max von Sydow, Jonah Hill, Christopher Plummer.  I’ve only seen 2 of the films and thought that both Hill and Nolte gave great performances, Nolte’s all the better because no one thought he had anything left at this point.  But all the attention is going to Christopher Plummer who is old, has been good for decades and I think never won.

Best Supporting Actress – Berenice Bejo (The Artist), Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Janet McTeer.  Two noms for The Help might cancel each other out.  I absolutely loved McCarthy in Bridesmaids and could have watched another hour of her.  But I fell in love with Bejo in The Artist.

Original Screenplay – Midnight in Paris, The Artist, Bridesmaids, Margin Call, A Separation.  Bridesmaids won’t stand a chance because most voters will think it was mostly improv.  Margin Call was an exceptionally strong piece of work, balanced and nuanced.  But this one is a sure win for Woody.

Adapted Screenplay – Moneyball, The Descendants, Hugo, The Ides of March, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  Not having seen The Descendants, I think it’s a strong contender here.  But Moneyball has names that Oscar likes – Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian (and Stan Chervin).

Foreign Language Film – Bullhead, Footnote, In Darkness, A Separation, Monsieur Lazhar.  Everyone is going to say A Separation.  All I’ll note is that the only Asian films nominated this year come from Iran and Israel.

Animated Feature – A Cat in Paris, Chico & Rita, Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, Rango.  I don’t even know what the first two films are.  I’m hoping for Rango.

Okay, there’s 14 more awards, but not going to run them down here.  But here’s the scoreboard:

Hugo – 11 nominations

The Artist – 10 nominations

Moneyball & Warhorse – 6 each

The Descendants – 5

Midnight in Paris – 4

Studio-wise, Sony did the best with 20 nominations.

So what are your picks for the winners?

The Golden Globes is the most bizarre awards show year after year.  It’s the awards given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and there are less than 100 voters, allegedly influenced in their voting by perks and junkets, and since these are the men and women writing about films for foreign newspapers and magazines, they are perceived to wield a lot of influence.  But every year, many of their choices are just downright bizarre, the most famous being when they voted Pia Zadora as the best new actress or talent or whatever.

Not even having seen all of the nominees nor some of the winners, some of the results this year are wacky.  Meryl Streep for her impersonation of Maggie Thatcher over Viola Davis’s outstanding performance in The Help (a movie I didn’t care for but she’s amazing) or Rooney Mara for Girl With the Dragon Tattoo?  Okay, Christopher Plummer is 83 and never won one of these awards so if they’re going to give him one rather than Albert Brooks for Drive or Jonah Hill for Moneyball, I’m not gonna complain too much.

Here’s the one that strikes me as the oddest.  Best actor in a TV drama series. The nominees included Steve Buscemi for Boardwalk Empire.  Perennial Emmy winner Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad.  Jeremy Irons in The Borgias.  Damian Lewis for Homeland (I’ve never watched this – is it something I need to catch up on?).  The winner?  Kelsey Grammar for something called Boss.  Really?

And now let’s look at best performance by an actor in a TV comedy series.  Was it Alec Baldwin for 30 Rock?  David Duchovny for Californication? Johnny Galecki for Big Bang Theory?  Thomas Jane for Hung?  Try Matt LeBlanc.  Seriously.

Anyway, best drama film was The Descendants, best comedy film was The Artist, best animated film was Tin Tin, best foreign film was A Separation.  As the Globes go, so go the Oscars?  We’ll know soon enough.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything related to films I’ve watched.  That’s mostly because most of the ones I’ve seen have been extremely unremarkable.  Here are brief reviews and I’m saving the best for last.

Last night we went to see David Fincher’s remake of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I remember watching the original Swedish film and thinking that the story was okay but that the film itself was artlessly made, ran far too long (this was before an extended director’s cut edition was made available) and was poorly paced.  When I heard that David Fincher would be doing an English language remake of the film, I was dismayed that he was doing a remake and revisiting what for him would be old territory.  Yet I was certain that he was the one director who could turn this into greatness.

I was wrong.  Okay, we get the star power of Daniel Craig – to which I say, why?  He has almost nothing to do here and exhibits about the same level of charisma as Michael Nyqvist.  The changes from the previous film are mostly subtle and it still runs too damned long.  Yes, they had to keep this in Sweden – especially for reasons that become more apparent in the following films – but it’s distracting to listen to all these people speaking English in Swedish accents (and all written material displayed on screen is in Swedish).  Tech credits are solid but overall I found the best thing about the film to be the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and the performance by Stellan Skarsgard (one of those guys I just love to watch onscreen).

Rise of the Planet of the Apes – Simply put, I wanted to hate this, I expected to hate this, I should have hated it – but I didn’t.  It may be faint praise to say that this is the best of the 7 Planet of the Apes films but it is.  It probably works well if you haven’t seen any of the others but it’s even better if you’ve at least seen the original.

Drive is a low budget crime film that just oozes style.  It’s not quite as good as its admirers will tell you; it stands out mostly because 2011 was such a shitty film year.  Ryan Gosling stars as a guy who works as a mechanic, drives get-away cars in heists and occasionally works as a stunt driver in films.  Gosling’s pretty good but it’s the supporting cast that’s worth mentioning here – Albert Brooks in particular is so completely convincing and so different from any other role he’s ever played, I can smell Oscar nomination here.  Bryan Cranston’s quite okay but is there some new rule in Hollywood that says he has to be in every picture made now?  Christina Hendricks is wasted, Carey Mulligan isn’t given too much to do, Ron Pearlman stands around and acts scary.  At its best moments, it seemed the film was reaching to be on the level of Michael Mann’s magnificent Thief but it never quites get there.  Even so, it’s an entertaining diversion and director Nicolas Winding Refn is clearly someone to watch.

The plot of Warrior is so over-the-top preposterous that you keep waiting for someone to tell you it’s based on a true story but it’s not.  A family split apart by the actions of an alcoholic father, two brothers who haven’t spoken to each other in years both fighting for the UFC championship.  It seems like something a 12 year old might write and who would think that a “sport” like UFC could yield an Oscar caliber film – and yet that’s what this is.  Start with an amazing comeback performance from Nick Nolte (although his character seems to fade into irrelevance in the final third of the film) and a nuanced and controlled performance from Tom Hardy.  Then there’s the script which manages to rise above its B-movie material in the way it looks at the disintegration of the family, the ravages of alcoholism, the way Americans are coping with the 21st century.  The fight scenes are appropriately brutal, the editing is tight – on the other hand the open 20 minutes or so are more than a little clumsy in terms of exposition and the film runs long.  Nolte will probably see an Oscar nomination (if he manages to stay out of prison and the gossip pages) and director Gavin O’Connor has a real winner here.

I loved Moneyball even though I really couldn’t give a shit about baseball.  Maybe it’s because I’m a computer geek but I found myself actually caring about something that I don’t ordinarily do – this tale of a baseball manager trying to figure out how to build a winning team by using computers and statistics.  Brad Pitt gives a great performance but even more surprising is the chemistry between him and Jonah Hill.  Philip Seymour Hoffman is excellent and the script comes from two Hollywood heavy hitters – Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian – and it’s one of those films that manages to transcend its subject and is worth seeing even if you don’t understand anything about the game.

Probably the best movie I’ve watched in the past month is Margin Call.  Taking place mostly in a single night, an analyst at an investment bank discovers just how leveraged the bank is.  The senior staff meet through the night trying to figure out what to do.  First of all, this is the best that Kevin Spacey has been in years.  And the two scenes in which he goes toe to toe with Jeremy Irons are about as good as film acting seems to get these days.  Paul Bettany and Zachary Quinto also turn in great performances, smaller roles filled by Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci are also well-handled.  It’s the debut feature film from J.C. Chandor, who also wrote the original script.  The script is brilliant in the way that it allows every character to get his or her moment in the spotlight and the way in which all sides are presented relatively fairly.  Irons’ character may be monstrous and yet he is almost sympathetic and when he explains why he’s about to destroy the economy of the world in order to save his company, you can at least understand his motivation.  This is the first great fiction film covering the financial meltdown of 2008 (Inside Job of course being a great documentary on the subject).  There’s only one minor flaw here – these are all insiders talking to each other.  They all know what these financial terms mean and there’s no one “on the outside” whom they have to explain it to.  I worked for investment banks in the 90s and I know this stuff all too well but others might have a hard time wading through the jargon.

Here they are, with US box office grosses, via Pajiba:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: $381 million
2. Transformers Dark of the Moon: $352 million
3. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1: $275 million
4. The Hangover Part II: $254, million
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides $241 million
6. Fast Five: $209 million
7. Cars 2 $191 million
8. Thor: $181 million
9. Rise of the Planet of the Apes : $176 million
10. Captain America: The First Avenger: $176 million
11. The Help $169 million
12. Bridesmaids: $169 million
13. Kung Fu Panda 2: $165 million
14. X-Men: First Class: $146 million
15. Puss in Boots: $145 million
16. Rio: $143 million
17. The Smurfs: $142 million
18. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: $134 million
19. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: $132 million
20. Super 8: $127,004,179
21. Rango: $123 million
22. Horrible Bosses: $117 million
23. Green Lantern: $116 million
24. Hop: $108 million
25. Paranormal Activity 3: $103 million

I count 6 movies out of 25 that are neither sequels nor based on comic books.  You have to get down to #11, The Help, to find a film targeted at an adult audience – that’s if you don’t count the R-rated Hangover II.  (Frankly, I’d sooner sit through Hangover II again than The Help.)  I’ve seen 15 out of these 25 and enjoyed some of them well enough I suppose but still, it’s a pretty vacuous list of escapist crap.

It should be noted that 2011 represented the lowest box office performance in the US since 1995.

Red State, the latest film from Kevin Smith, is not a good film by almost any definition. And yet I found my eyes glued to the screen, unable to look away and I suspect I’m going to end up watching it again.

What is it with Smith? He shot out of the gate in 1994 with Clerks, his low budget self-financed hit, filled with promises for subsequent greatness that have never been realized. He had a pretty good run for awhile after that, no major commercial success but his films were always worth watching, at least for awhile – Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.  And then something seems to have gone wrong, starting with the misbegotten Jersey Girl, not quite as bad as the critics said, but not that much better.  Clerks II didn’t come close to the original.  Zack & Miri Make a Porno – Smith teaming with Seth Rogen should have been a win win but just misfired.  And then came Cop Out and let’s face it, there was simply no excuse for this.  In the past few years, he’s become more famous for his blogging, his activity on Twitter, and 4 DVDs of him telling stories to college crowds that are only a hair away from stand-up comedy performances. It’s not where I expected him to go.

And so now we have Red State. A film that Smith not only wrote, directed and edited but also distributed himself, with almost no screenings for critics.  For those who don’t know, those states that tend to vote for the democratic party and have more progressive agendas are called Blue States while those that vote Republican and are conservative are referred to as Red States.  The film takes place in such an unnamed state, presumably somewhere in the U.S. midwest.

There are spoilers ahead.

The film starts off in what seems like typical Smith territory. Three horny high school kids find an ad on the internet from an older woman who says she’ll sleep with all three of them, but only if they do it together. And so off they go.  But the mood is not as light as it ought to be and obviously we’re being set up for something.  I was thinking maybe zombies or vampires.

So of course it turns out to be a trap. Preacher Abin Cooper hates gays so much that he and his flock (mostly members of his family) kidnap them, torture them and kill them, secure in the faith that this is their path to salvation and heaven. The three kids have of course been set up (they’re deemed gay even though they’re looking for sex with a woman because they’re willing to all take part at the same time). And for awhile, the film seems poised to descend into torture porn, perhaps not as graphic as the Saw series but not for the weak of stomach.

And then federal agents surround the church and there’s an extremely bloody confrontation.  Clearly Waco is in Smith’s mind here. And it’s here that Smith makes his biggest wrong turn. Just as the shoot-out is reaching its climax, there’s an abrupt cut to the aftermath.  The head ATF agent being grilled by his bosses. Smith doesn’t want to show us how things end, he has a character tell us. It’s an astonishing let down.

Aside from that, the film looks cheap. The cinematography by David Klein (I’m guessing this was shot on digital) never reaches any sense of style; it just looks quick and dirty. Smith’s editing is all over the place, frequently resorting to jarring jump cuts that don’t make a whole lot of sense.

So why watch this film? Really, it comes down to Smith’s dialogue (one gift that he hasn’t lost) and some amazing performances. Melissa Leo is incredibly convincing as one of Cooper’s psycho daughters. John Goodman is excellent as always as the head of the ATF squad, a lot of small details in his performance that he’s really nailed. And then there’s Michael Parks who is simply astonishing at Abin Cooper. Smith was clearly in love with Parks’ charismatic performance and lets his scenes run on for far too long, completely destroying any rhythm the film might have had.  We get to his sermon in his church and it just goes on and on and the film grinds to a halt.  But clearly if you took Parks’ performance here and put it into a better film, there would be Oscar talk. Stephen Root and Kevin Pollak are both good in smaller roles.

Kevin Smith is clearly angry at many things. Angry at homophobia. Angry at religion (big shocker there, eh?). Angry at the government. But he’s unable to channel all of this anger into a coherent narrative. He can still write great dialogue and can still coax great performances from his cast. And after Cop Out, I suppose he couldn’t have gotten worse.

And yet, as bad as Red State is, I think this is one that I’m going to file away in the guilty pleasure file.