By Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter
The Golden Globes and most of the motion picture guild awards have been presented, so now we race towards the Academy’s big night, which comes early in March. In the meantime, here’s a continuation of the best of 2013, for your big screen or home viewing pleasure, accompanied by the usual crabby commentary.
Her
Here was a concept– man falls in love with his “virtual” assistant—that was ripe for a witty director to see its potential and bring it to life. And Spike Jonze was the right man to navigate the pitfalls inherent in the material. Whip smart, and gifted with a keen eye, Jonze ha shown the horse sense to cast the endlessly versatile Joaquin Phoenix as a lovelorn dreamer, match him up with the throaty, seductive voice of Scarlett Johansen, and then to place the real Amy Adams at his side, as a flesh and blood counterweight. Added to the mix is the shrewd and inspired production design that suggests the near future with a few telling details and a sly wink.
As screenwriter, Jonze develops the relationship between the reclusive Theodore Twombly and Samantha, his “operating system,” like they were ordinary strangers who chance upon one another in the course of everyday lives. He goes deep into the emotional variables that bring people together and often cause them to separate, studiously creating a time line, from their initial flirtation to the almost inevitable estrangement. And for the most part he’s done it with a mixture of humor and feeling.
There’s only one angle that I couldn’t accept, although it’s a critical one; a daring attempt to bridge the gap between the digital and the corporeal. After hurtling the obvious, early obstacles between man and machine, Jonze dashes into the one nearly unthinkable aspect of their union; the actual sex act. Here the movie takes a giant leap into the world of fantasy. Because Jonze insists on treating it explicitly, the credibility gap is just a little too large for him.
Jonze’ best films, “Adaptation” and “Being John Malkovitch,” show a fearless disregard for reality. He’s willing and able to use the elastic quality of film to repel the laws of physics. But Theodore and Samanthas’ love scene attempts more than phone sex, and strains to make concrete what would have been better left to our (and their) imagination.
The film recovers from this one misstep, and concludes on a note of bittersweet enlightenment, not unlike the end of “Annie Hall.” For good reason, the screenplay has been lauded and awarded several times, and may take the Oscar.
Oddly, word of mouth hasn’t been strong enough to keep “Her” in the multiplexes. And it seems ironic that the nearly unanimous critical approval has done little to recruit the massive, I-Pad generation for which the movie seems custom made. But while “Her” isn’t a hit, like the similarly low-key “Philomena,” (which is aimed at an older audience,) it isn’t a flop. Instead, it’s performed as a kind of double, which probably comes as a disappointment to its distributor, Warner Bros. My guess is, that like a lot of Woody Allen’s output, “Her” will be better received overseas.
A story went around LA that Jonze sent Steven Spielberg a preliminary edit of “Her” that came in at more than two hours, and that a day later, the master director returned him a cut of the movie that ran 90 minutes. The theatrical version of “Her” now runs a full two hours, and, at times, feels it.
Nebraska
Cynics might say that the multi-award winning Alexander Payne played it safe by setting “Nebraska” in his home state. Or that he relies too heavily on the shop-worn conventions of the “road trip” genre. Or that he’s leaned on the predictable, empty vistas of the plains as a metaphor for the lives of his small town characters.
But they’d be wrong. “Nebraska” is not a road trip movie; it settles down to one location a half hour in, and Payne’s characters stand out in sharp relief to their backgrounds. If anything, the small town setting belies the hard-edged greed, pointed vitriol, and naked jealousy that nearly leap off the screen whenever its denizens speak their minds. And the result is a comic blast, with surprises at every turn.
Cannes blessed Bruce Dern’s central performance with a best actor award. And the little-known June Squib has been deservedly recognized for her articulate turn as the long suffering wife of a drunk and a crackpot. But not enough attention has been paid to Will Forte as Dern’s son, the glue that binds the story whole.
Think back to Barry Levinson’s “Rain Man,” and the acclaim showered on Dustin Hoffman as an autistic-savant. There’s no arguing that the veteran actor found “Raymond’s” voice and physical bearing. But Tom Cruise, as his ambivalent brother, rose to the more prickly challenge as a man torn between the equally unappetizing choices of taking responsibility for a damaged sibling and institutionalizing him.
Forte, best known for several seasons on “Saturday Night Live,” and continuing roles in a various sit-coms, takes on the difficult role of a neglected son who makes the decision to take his shiftless, deluded father to retrieve a million dollars from a bogus sweepstake ticket, little more than a fool’s errand. Right from the beginning we know that the old man has shirked most of his duties to his children, and that by all rights they should be done with him, but Forte effortlessly conveys the competing impulses of contempt and duty. Dern does wonders in a showy part, but his young co-star finds the feeling below the lines.
Captain Phillips
This well-crafted nail biter came on strong in the early fall, and performed well at the box office both here and overseas. But it’s a dark horse for the Oscars, except perhaps for the screenplay, which was adapted from the true life captain’s memoir.
Recent events set the appropriate platform for the movie, which recreates a harrowing encounter between players from the developing world and the west. The visual aspects are especially strong; an assault on a massive freighter by a handful of bone thin invaders in a rickety runabout. Barkhad Abdi, a newcomer in the role of the Somali pirate in charge, delivers a chilling and complex portrayal of a desperate man burdened with an overwhelming task. But one element didn’t quite gel; the title role.
Tom Hanks gives it his all, but in the end the script fails him. This is partly due to circumstances beyond his control–the physical presence of his adversary is simply more compelling. But it goes deeper. We follow Captain Phillips every move in the tense cat-and-mouse that follows the hijacking of his ship, but we have no access to his process. His relationships with the crew, his decision to take the ship into dangerous waters, and his general disposition, are sketchy, at best. Even his thought process, and Hanks broods as well as anybody, remains beyond our reach. When he gives in to overpowering emotions in the last sequence it’s hard to see where it all came from.
The wary pirate, on the other hand, is developed in brief, lightning-like passages that almost wordlessly conjure the desperation of his everyday existence. Sun burned images of a churning ocean and the hovels that line its’ shore, speak volumes about the characters’ dilemma. His daring, matched with an indelible face and body, keep us riveted at every turn. While the action moves at a steady pace, and is never less than engaging, the movie feels shallow. Because the captain is rarely more than the sum of his actions, the story lacks the full bodied drama that would take it to a higher level. It never addresses the uncomfortable questions about the soft war that continues to roil the high seas.
Dallas Buyers Club
It took 20 years for Ron Woodfruffs’ story to secure the five million dollars that made its production possible. Was it the hard edged character, (a vulgar womanizer who contracts Aids,) the lack of a bankable leading man, or the simple reality that money is always hard to come by for independent productions, that scared off financers for so long? Chances are, it was the story and the uncompromising script, its strongest assets. And though it’s a shame that this chronicle couldn’t have been realized back in the 90s, closer to the time when writer Craig Borten interviewed Woodruff and composed the screenplay, what we have before us now is powerful and entertaining.
It turned out that Woodruff lived seven years after doctors told him he had, at best, six months before Aids would take him. In addition to fighting for his own survival, he managed to help scads of others extend their lives by finding and selling controversial therapies through a business he called the “Dallas Buyers Club.” As the movie shows in great detail, Woodruffs’ disease was actually less daunting than the health officials who tried to close his business down. What none of them realized in going after him, was how formidable he could be and the depth of his commitment to other Aids patients.
Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards have already gone to Mathew McConaughey for his transformative lead, and Jared Leto as his cross-dressing sidekick, Rayon. Clearly this has been McConaugheys’ year, with this, his tough but tender fugitive in “Mud,” and a lively cameo as a drug addled broker in “Wolf of Wall Street.” It’s also been good for Leto, who made an unexpected return to movies after five years as a musician. His performance in a role other actors shunned, is an eye opener. But with so much excellent competition this year; think Christian Bale (“American Hustle,”) and Jonah Hill, (“Wolf of Wall Street,) among others, will the duo be crowned by the Academy on March 2?
Nobody has the inside track, as far as I can tell, but one thing is clear: the nominees of the past few seasons, a list of American actors that runs from the twenty-something Jennifer Lawrence through the forty-ish Christian Bale, is second to none. Even when the films don’t entirely work, their performances do. This generation of actors, which grew up watching DeNiro, Nicholson, and Streep, (just to name a few,) continues to take the craft to new levels, even when scripts let them down.
A final note of sadness….
No one who breathes is unaware of the loss of Philip Seymour Hoffmann, an actor of such remarkable powers that it was often impossible to separate him from the films he starred in. Where his talent came from is a matter of mystery and magic, and he’s left us with little to go on beyond the performances themselves. To get a sense of his astonishing range I’d return to four titles; “Almost Famous,” “Capote,” “Doubt,” and a challenging film that I consider a landmark in popular culture, “The Master.”
Next up: A few more titles to remember from 2013.
