A Growing Divide

It's no news that the Academy Awards are to the European film festivals what entertainment is to art in film. Still, expectations start with the New Year. This time the disappointments came as early as the nominations. We didn't even have to wait until the ceremony.  Most disappointingly, the Hollywood of old continues to run through the veins of the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  Even in the year 2015 it can feel as if we're in the Hollywood of Gone with the Wind.

This year, however, they've been called out on it. (#OscarsSoWhite)

It’s not just about race, but that is certainly the best example of the disassociation of the Academy from the world that surrounds them. That only one black person is among the 20 nominees for the best acting categories in the year of the amazing acting in Selma, most particularly that of David Oyelowo; the year of Tessa Thompson who shines in Dear White People, Riz Ahmed in Nightcrawler, Chadwick Boseman as James Brown in Get on Up (given that this is a year of biopics) and many more who have been so unjustly overlooked.  In the Best Director category we have all white males, when the beautiful film that is Selma was made by the talented Ava DuVernay. It is a shame that the Old Hollywood continues its sorry track record: in the 87 years of the Oscars, of the 2,900 winners of the coveted statuette, only 32 have been black.

This is only one of the controversies to surround the Oscar nominations this year. Besides the snubs, there is the nomination of American Sniper in the Best Picture category. There has not been as divisive a film as this one in many years. But let’s put aside the polarization to which it has contributed and the more than $308 million dollars that it’s earned so far. Even if we overlook the fact that this film has overlooked facts, including the “little” issue of the non-existence of WMDs that led to the whole presence of American troops in Iraq in the first place; even if we pretend that the real sniper was like the Bradley Cooper sniper (the real one was quite racist); or imagine that the “dark” sniper, the Arab one, fabricated as contraposition to the good “white” sniper in typical Clint Eastwood Manichean style was actually killed by the “good guy” (he wasn’t); even overlooking all this, the film is still not nomination worthy. Who can dismiss the sloppiness (or should we say laziness?) Eastwood shows in this film? How will we ever not chuckle, for example, when we remember Bradley Cooper rocking those plastic dolls meant to be his babies? 

Eastwood is certainly Old Hollywood and knows how to pull heart strings in some moviegoers. In a Google survey on the Oscar Best Picture nominees, a whopping 42% voted American Sniper as the Best film, followed distantly by The Grand Budapest Hotel in second place and Selma in (honorable) third place.

My Two Oscar Favorites

No surprise that these three films favored by the Google voters are nowhere near being the front runners for the Oscars. That would be Boyhood directed by Richard Linklater and Birdman directed by Alejandro Gonzáles Iñáritu. One of the two will take Best Picture and the other Best Director. These films are the bland pudding to the fiery hot issues of the world we’re living today. Boyhood was an original feat, filmed over 12 years with the same cast meeting every four, so maybe, yeah, it deserved the nomination for originality. But it’s hard to not wonder why a film that shows a white, working-towards-middle class family living in Texas, where the population is 40% Latino, has no contact with people of color, except for the gardener whose life is changed by an off-hand remark made to him by the character Patricia Arquette embodies. A more “white-savior” moment is hard to find in film. And although the boy in this family drama has a sister, the film is all about him and as he grows, she fades, the point that towards the end it seems like he’s an only child. A more adequate and realistic title would have been “It’s All about the Boy (the White One)”.  The Academy members seems to relate. Patricia Arquette will probably win Best Actress, Ethan Hawke was nominated for Best Actor, Richard Linklater for Best Director in a film that, besides the 12 years it took to make, is otherwise quite unremarkable.

The Front Runners

Alejandro’s film, while made by a Latino filmmaker, is also far removed from the everydayness of people. It’s about an actor doing a Broadway play in New York, another city where about 60% of the people are of color, with another all-white cast. Not that every film needs to reflect the diversity of where it takes place, but, still! The film has a pretentious feel to it, that of someone trying too hard to make a “deep” story of the many times done script of a washed up actor who seems to have made the same mistakes most blockbuster actors of Avengers statute make in Hollywood: drugs, alcohol, infidelities, wasting away lots of money, bad relationships with family and kids. This time the old story is adorned with visual effects and even a drunk man calling out (in case you haven’t picked it up by then) Shakespeare’s Macbeth line about the “poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more”. I say no more.

Major Academy Snubs

The members of this Academy seem to be growing old locked up in their eternal ivory towers, holding tight to what they know best, which is always the safest thing to do. Only thus can we understand tomorrow’s probable Oscar wins. It is how we’ve come to accept that Argo could win over Amour or Beasts of the Southern Wild, or that The King's Speech win over Black Swan, True Grit or The Fighter. The Hollywood of old. That’s entertainment!

It’s not what people want in our very political and much polarized world. The divide between people of privilege and those without grows exponentially and rapidly (in old Hollywood terms: To Have and Have Not).  An excellent movie like Snowpiercer, that addresses this inequality, would have been a great addition to this year’s nominees, as would have Dear White People, which touches upon the issue of race in the 21st Century, or even Nightcrawler about our media and violence-frenzied world. But the Academy has played it safe once again. And this time it has lost.

More than Surviving. Celebrating!

Grand Budapest, Snowpiercer, The Hunt, Selma

When I began this blog two years ago in January I really didn’t think much about its future, but I don’t believe I expected to keep it up beyond a few months. The time that has elapsed since my first post is a testament to my love of film but, much more so, to you, my readers. By today’s standards, I barely have any at all in this mega ocean that is the internet. I am, however, thrilled to the bone that the posts I’ve written here in Kentucky have been read in such distant, wonderful places as are China, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Romania, Croatia, Saudi Arabia and many more.  I’m thrilled that I have readers in the US and Canada, as well, where so many movie blogs exist. In Latin America! This is the energy that fuels my writing, sharing this love of movies.

I have received encouragement in the form of comments. I’d love to receive more. We are growing in awareness that technology can serve as a tool of alienation, but it can also build conduits across continents and cultures. Art has always done this and now technology allows us to do so even more.

Also by means of this bridge-building technology, we are able to stream films from around the globe; a kaleidoscope of experiences that remind us of our fascinating differences and our surprising similarities. There is no doubt that they make us richer human beings. We’re also witnessing a rise in quite fantastic made-for-streaming television series. Like the serial movies of old that my father told me about, those cliffhangers that had people lining up outside the theater from week to week, there are now so many series that keep us hooked and impatient for what is to come. We have to wait quite a bit longer, but can then binge watch a season at a time.

But nothing, nothing compares to seeing a movie at the movie theatre and those are the ones I write about in this blog. I confess to becoming somewhat Walter Mittyish when I take my seat at the theatre. I get lost in the story and the wonder that is the film I am watching. I live so many emotions and lives. Yes, it is, sometimes, survival by film.

But now I am not only surviving, I am celebrating. Do I have any celebratory words on this, the second anniversary of my blog? I celebrate that there are still dazzling and daring films. I celebrate that Wes Anderson uses symmetry, specific pallets of color per film, and shot The Grand Budapest Hotel in three aspect rations. That Tim Burton keeps using the most fascinating camera angles and lighting, merging reality with fantasy, even as he’s making a feminist statement in Big Eyes. That Laura Poitras travelled to China to interview Citizen Four and opened our half closed eyes to the reality of corporate / government control. I celebrated that South Korean director Joon-ho Bong took us on the scariest and most dystopian of rides on the metaphoric train of class struggle, greed and our growing income inequality in Snowpiercer.

I celebrated that these past two years have brought us more movies by older, already beloved directors, like Michael Haneke’s Amour, the Coen Brother’s Inside Llewyn Davis, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, Alejandro Gonzales Iñáritu’s Birdman, but also the new enthusiasm of films by newer directors, Ava Du Vernay’s Selma, Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales, Justin Simien’s Dear White People.

 Of course I could go on! But it’s all here, in these posts, in the shorter reviews of Fresh Cuts, sometimes in the Film News and Movie Quotes that exist because you read them. So thank you and Salud!

 

Pacific Rim, Fruitvale Station, Birdman

The Truth, Marching On

"How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody’s asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?"

(Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Address at the conclusion of the March from Selma).

Even if this past year hadn't been the year in which we were witness to the acquittal of police officers that killed unarmed black men and boys, Selma would still be a forceful call for a nation to re-examine itself on the ignominy that is racism. But it was that year, so this movie is tenfold an invocation to remember the struggle for justice and equality and to act against it, in the vein of the non-violent movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Oprah Winfrey as Annie Lee Cooper in Selma

Director Ava DuVernay’s film could not have come at a more important juncture in the history of this country, when fifty years after the march in Selma, Alabama for the right to vote, which is shown in the movie, this right continues to be threatened for people of color, to the point that the President of the United States’ Justice Department has filed suit against Texas and North Carolina to block voter laws that so discriminate. It comes at a moment when black boys and men continue to be profiled and justice continues to be “wounded”. There are still too many people in this nation whose right to decide over their lives and destiny is still at peril because of the color of their skin, and too many others that continue to live the lie that is white supremacy and the shame that is racism.

I confess that mine is not an impartial view of the subject matter dealt with in this movie. What’s more, I am quite a strong admirer of Dr. King. I have visited his birth place and where he now rests; I have visited the spot where he was shot, seen the rifle that killed him in body; visited the long awaited monument to this leader in Washington. I was, therefore, excited and at the same time apprehensive about one of the first major movies made about Dr. King and such an important moment in the struggle for equality. Would it do him and the movement he led justice?

I was, of course, very pleased to hear that the director behind this challenging task was Ava DuVernay, an African American woman director who had already won Sundance praise for her previous film Middle of Nowhere. I was curious to see why she chose British actor David Oyelowo to play Dr. King. True that they had worked together in her previous film and she was well aware of his talent.

Well, I can say, with much emotion that Ms. DuVernay’ film surpassed my expectations. This is a tremendous and transcendent movie that not only captures the complexity of what transpired around the march in Selma, but brings it to our days. There is no way to watch this movie without drawing the necessary parallels to what occurs today.

David Oyelowo emobies Dr. King to the point you feel you are in the presence of this great leader and not the actor who portrays him. We have seen enough videos of Dr. King to know who astonishingly well this actor has been able to bring him to life in this film.

It is maybe still an expression of hegemony that is present in the press that a “controversy” has arisen over how Ms. DuVernay portrayed President Johnson. With respect to this character, I would maybe concede that another actor, one with the thick, Texan accent that LBJ had, should have played Johnson instead of British Tom Wilkinson, but this is the only change I think could have been made. I think historians forget the legacy of this conservative democrat, too close to J. Edgar Hoover and too involved in sending troops to Vietnam for anyone’s liking, when they protest the film.  If anything, he is shown quite in the hero’s light when, standing before the American flag, gives his speech to Congress ending in with the protest song “we shall overcome”.

Tom Wilkinson and David Oyelowo

It is a moving film, as it should be. But it is more than just the subject matter that is dealt with. Everything in the film works well: the acting, the screenplay, the cinematography, and the score. It is a beautiful tribute to those that died for this struggle for equality, beginning with Dr. King; a remarkable portrayal of Dr. King in all his humanness; and a forceful reminder that this history is too recent to think that this struggle is over. 

Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King - Selma

On the Outside Looking In

Maybe Jack Skellington’s large, empty eyes were Tim Burton’s way of not allowing anyone to see into his soul. (We did anyway!) In Big Eyes, Burton’s most recent work of art, we are invited to dive into those big, sorrowful eyes; not the ones that Margaret Keane painted on her waif-like children, but those of the artist herself, her soul, remarkably well portrayed here by Amy Adams at her best.

Tim Burton has outdone himself in this film. The film concentrates many aspects of the creative style he has been building over the years, like his use of colors, for example. Burton’s films are always marvelously colorful, whether he is using pastels, like he does here or in Edward Scissorhands, or dark hues, like in Batman, Dark Shadows or even Alice in Wonderland. His camera angles are another example of his skill. There is a little bit of Hitchcock, a little Wes Anderson, but a lot of just Tim Burton, his close-ups, his landscapes, his so very carefully crafted sets where there is so much movement, so much to see in each shot! The screen is truly a canvas for this director and there is never a wasted moment of film. It is still Tim Burton and Wes Anderson that keep American cinema in the forefront of creativity and give the audience so much more than just a story.

But even in the choice of the story we find Tim Burton’s style. Once again, as in Ed Wood, here is an artist with a rather obscure place in art history. Were Keane’s paintings art? Were Ed Wood’s films? Who defines what art is and how is it determined? What about popularity and art, "mass" art? All touched upon here, but this time Burton not only dives into the art of Margaret Keane and has his eyes on her soul, but he also impressively presents the dynamics of her relationship with Walter Keane, the husband that passed her art off as his and dominated her almost to the point of destruction.

Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams

The plot, then, is not just about Keane and her art, it is about a woman confined, dominated, as women were (and too many still are), trapped in a relationship that is slowly sucking the life out of her.  Burton is brilliant at capturing the feeling of suffocation, of despair that Keane suffers. With the talent of Christoph Waltz, who plays Walter Keane, we also witness the undoing of the domineering man; as women begin to take control of their lives, the men who dominate them also see their senseless world begin to crumble. We witness their ridiculousness, their smallness. The movie is a feminist statement in this way and more. For many women, it is a roller coaster of emotions and we are never removed from the characters on the screen.

I am surprised that many critics haven’t seen a lot of what I’m pointing out in a film that I consider one of the most complete films of the year. Again, maybe it is because a lot of movie critics are male, very mainstream and safe within their privilege. (The same ones that found Keanu Reave’s macho movie John Wick so compelling!) Burton’s humanity sheds so much of his male privilege and he is able to see into the soul of women dominated. Because he has looked into the world of the “outsider”, of those on the margins of society so many times in his films, he is able to takes us along as he looks into the souls of his characters, making us all the more humane in the process.

Director Tim Burton

A Good Year

The floodgates to the better movies of the year open in fall. Then it’s hard to catch up. Not just writing about them in this my most humble blog, but even watching them. I also don’t write from a major city, although its proud inhabitants would probably scorn me for saying this, so we have to impatiently wait for some of the more talked about films to arrive. I will not be able to make my top ten list of the year until they do, even as I read with gusto the ones being made by my favored film critics. It is these I want to share, even though many may have already read them in the newspapers and magazines they originally come from.

Noteworthy in this year’s top ten is the variety in the selections among critics who, in the past, have pretty much agreed on their ten favorite films of the year. This is good news. It means there were a lot of good ones to watch. This year my favored critics all agree on only one film: Linklater’s Boyhood, the movie feat filmed over twelve years. I have seen the movie and was not captivated, while I understand the accomplishment this director has achieved. Could it be that the critics are all male; does that make the difference? I did not include Manohla Dargis on the chart, even though I enjoy her critiques, because her list was in alphabetical order and included much more than ten films, so we don’t know which her top were, but Boyhood certainly was on the favored list.

Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood

I think all critics agreed that there were more than ten films they would have selected as the best of the year. This is wonderful for us film lovers. If we just count the number of movies on the chart below, there are 28 very good movies on the list. The directors of these great films are also from all around the world, including South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Russia, France, Poland, the UK and Spain, alongside some very talented US directors. Some of the American directors are very well known, like Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher and Christopher Nolan, and others still quite new and young, like Dear White People’s Justin Simien and Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle. There are only three women directors on the chart, one of them, Laura Poitras, for a documentary film. It is, however, fantastic that Ava Du Vernay stands out with her film Selma, included in the majority of critic’s choices on this chart.

Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons in Whiplash

The Lego Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy are surprisingly on these lists, surprising because it is rare that the movies on the top ten box office list are included on a film critics top ten. They were both fun to watch and wonderful achievements in digital and FX talent, so good for them!

Will these lists coincide with the films that the Academy and the different movie guilds and associations choose for their nominees? Most certainly the fact that this has been a good year in movies, but with such diversity, will probably make the choosing hard and the award season that much more interesting.  Happy Holidays indeed!

Ranking	New York Times A.O. Scott	Rolling Stone Peter Traverse	Entertainment Weekly Chris Nashawaty	The Guardian Adam Boult	Time Magazine Richard Corliss
1	Boyhood Richard Linklater	Boyhood Richard Linklater	Whiplash Demian Chazelles	Under the Skin Jonathan Glazer	The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson
2	Ida Pawel Pawlekowski	Birdman Alejandro G. Iñáritu	Boyhood Richard Linklater	Boyhood Richard Linklater	Boyhood Richard Linklater
3	Citizen Four Laura Poitras	Foxcatcher Bennet Miller	The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson	Inherent Vice Paul Thomas Anderson	Lego Movie Phil Lord, Damian Miller
4	Leviathan Andrey Zvyagintsev	Selma Ava Du Vernay	Life Itself Steve James	Whiplash Demien Chazelles	Lucy Luc Besson
5	Selma Ava Du Vernay	Gone Girl David Fincher	Selma Ava Du Vernay	Leviathan Andrey Zvyagintsev	Goodbye to Language Jean-Luc Godard
6	Love is Strange Ira Sachs	Whiplash Demien Chazelles	Guardians of the Galaxy James Gunn	Two Days, One Night Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne	Jodorowsky's Dune Frank Pavich
7	We Are the Best! Federico Padilla	The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson	Gone Girl David Fincher	Nightcrawler Dan Gilroy	Nightcrawler Dan Gilroy
8	Whiplash Demien Chazelles	Unbroken Angelina Jolie	Snowpiercer Joon-ho Bong	Ida– Pawel Pawlekowski	Citizen Four Laura Poitras
9	Dear White People Justin Simien	Under the Skin Jonathan Glazer	Birdman Alejandro G. Iñáritu	The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson	Wild Tales Damián Szifrón
10	The Babadook Jennifer Kent	Interstellar Christopher Nolan	Jodorowsky's Dune Frank Pavich	Lego Movie Phil Lord, Damian Miller	Birdman Alejandro G. Iñáritu

Crowd Pleasers

There are a couple of somewhat overworked moments in Birdman, the otherwise very original and captivating film by Mexican auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu; in one of them a wannabe street actor screams out the famous lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Scene 5:

 “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

In Birdman it is literally an actor upon a stage that embodies the line, which fairly summarizes one of the themes of the movie. This “nothingness” and the need to overcome our otherwise pithy existence through fame, on the stage, in front of a camera or behind it, is something that unites Birdman with another recent release Nightcrawler, Dan Gilroy’s directorial debut about a disturbed young man who becomes a crime videographer and moves into “some-thingness” through his ruthless work.

Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler

Both movies also show the voracity, the almost cannibal-like nature of the modern day viewer that preys on other people’s weaknesses and disgrace. The movies denounce the vicious cycle that we seem to be caught up in, where many use technology and things like social media so cruelly that they are negatively impacting art, journalism and, more importantly, our morals, our compassion, our humanity.

Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in Birdman

The main characters in both movies are men whose egotistical nature is extreme to the point of insanity. They live only to be known by people who really don’t care. The directors of both movies, who are also the writers, make these points vividly clear. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) tells the story of a washed-up actor, Riggan, who once played an iconic superhero, Birdman. Riggan is played by Michael Keaton who once also played an iconic superhero, Batman. Probably not a coincidence. Riggan puts everything into a Broadway play to try to reclaim the success he once knew. His young, drug addicted daughter, very well played by Emma Stone, harshly grounds him by reminding him that he is a nothing who doesn’t even have a Facebook account, no “followers” on Twitter. Later, in his disgrace, he quickly gains many. Such is the case also with Nightcrawler’s Lou Bloom, who is making his way to fame and fortune by giving people what they want to see. As Nina, the news director he sells his crime videos to, tells him very frankly: “If it bleeds, it leads”.

Emma Stone in Birdman

The other thing that these movies share is amazing acting. Michael Keaton is great in Birdman, as is Edward Norton, who most certainly steals many scenes (yet fades as Keaton grows). We expect both actors will be nominated for many statuettes come award season, something they will share with other actors that have worked in front of Alejandro G. Iñaritú’s lens, like Javier Bardem nominated for Biutiful, Benicio del Toro and Naomi Watts for 21 Grams (Watts is in this movie as well), Gael Garcia Bernal for Amores Perros, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kukuchi for Babel. Competition will be steep, beginning with Jake Gyllenhaal and, surprisingly, Rene Russo for their excellent acting in Nightcrawler.

Renee Russo in Nightcrawler

Both movies are reminiscent of other greats. Birdman strongly reminds us of Bob Fosse’s All that Jazz; Nightcrawler has a very Taxi Driver feel to Blooms increasing craziness,so evocative of Travis Bickle, so wonderfully acted by Robert De Niro. Iñaritu’s directing is, however, closer to Fosse’s or Scorcese’s genius. He has chosen to reduce cuts to nothing (visible) and his camera flow is amazing, in constant movement, completely fluid, even when moving from interiors to exteriors, through different points in time. In an interview, Iñaritu expressed his objective saying: “I realized — and I am probably the last person in the world to realize this — that we live our lives with no editing. From the time we open our eyes, we live in a Steadicam form, and the only editing is when we talk about our lives or remember things. So I wanted this character to be submerged in that inescapable reality, and the audience has to live these desperate three days alongside him.” And this we do. The interruptions to this very realistic fluidity come with the majestic and magical scenes when we are inside Riggan’s mind.  Most certainly this will lead to a Best Director nomination for a director who clearly has surpassed his previous films with this one.

Of course these movies leave us feeling disheartened and wondering how we will be able to move away from so much of the dehumanization that has come with the tinsel-like values of the small screens that we carry everywhere with us now, the ever shorter messages that force us to stereotype humans and reduce art and communication to clichés; a society where everyone feels they have fame at their fingertips, and we live to please these nameless crowds.