Overall, pretty great year for the Academy. But there's yet another period piece that I am, no joke, CURRENTLY sitting through. It actually bores me to the extent that I am simultaneously doing this blog entry. Which brings to mind: I should do a live video blog, one of a movie I like and one of a movie I really don't. If I had any kind of techno-skills or if I was social enough to ask someone about it who does, that'd be a cool idea. Or I could just get together with the two people who read my blog and pay them to listen to me blather, same thing. But for now, let's get to it.
The first entry is yet another sub-par film coming from the U.K. but not the one I'm currently watching (we really need to stop nominating British films. Is this another form of white guilt: revolutionary guilt?). It's The Crying Game and it might be pretty good aside from the infamous "twist" and a scattered plot. The first 40 minutes or so is largely a two person show between Forest Whitaker, who plays a British soldier, and Stephen Rea, who plays his captor. These scenes are well-acted and give us a nice insight into the psyches of the two men. And I'd like to point out that Forest Whitaker is probably one of the most overlooked and under-utilized actors of our time, he's really quite good. But anyway, once that whole plot thread ends and Forest dies and Stephen wants to go take care of Forest's girlfriend, the film goes downhill really quickly. For those of you who A)are unaware B)don't care or C)do care but it's my blog and I could care less if I spoil it for you: the twist is that the girlfriend is actually a dude. Now you might be thinking: "what is a shocking gender-bending twist doing in a psychological thriller about political strife between Ireland and Britain?" The answer: absolutely nothing. Worst. Twist. Ever. It literally has nothing to do with the story. It's thrown in for seemingly no reason, but was able to net the film some attention and allowed it to gross more money than it likely would have otherwise. But envision this: what if the big twist in Planet of the Apes wasn't that they were on Earth the whole time, but that one of the apes was actually a human in a bad costume the whole time? You might be surprised, sure. But it adds nothing. In fact, in this case, it takes away from a film that was otherwise fairly good. The entire storyline doesn't play at all. And though I knew from the beginning that the girl was a dude, I'm pretty sure I would've either known it anyway or at the very least not found them attractive in the slightest. If they had gotten a woman to play the role, then the audience could've gone through the same type of situation as the character and it might've come off better. Similar to the way that Hannibal Lecter is seducing the audience while he's seducing Clarice because he's looking directly into the camera. Oh and before I move on to the next film, this movie began with the song "When a Man Loves a Woman" and ended with a male-sung version of the song "Stand By Your Man." Is that supposed to be funny? That's what The Simpsons would do, and it left me wondering if the whole twist was supposed to be a joke (it wasn't).
But that day wasn't a total waste because as soon as I was done with that movie I started watching A Few Good Men. I originally phrased that sentence "I popped in A Few Good Men" but I decided that was less than apt...anyway, this film is not only very good it's also interesting to me in a few ways. Actually, just one way: Tom Cruise used to be a good actor. I think as soon as he played the character Jerry Maguire, he just started playing him in every other movie. In this film he does a great job at starting out almost as a "several years later" version of his Top Gun character (whose name escapes me because I really don't like that movie much, it reeks of the 80s). Then as the movie progresses we see that inner district attorney really come out (which I guess is like his work in The Firm? I haven't seen that one either, but if so then I recant my previous statement about his acting, because he's just mixing and matching). Aaaaaaaaaaaand we're bringing the blog back to the movie: it's written by Aaron Sorkin, so right there I knew it would be good. He has a way of integrating humor into drama without taking away from either. And though the movie is about a possibly accidental death within a military barracks, it still manages to be funny. Side note: I looked up The Firm and it came out the year after this, so he's still a poser of himself but not the way we thought. Okay, that was the last one, I promise (until next paragraph). The film sort of under-uses Jack Nicholson, which is really effective because that makes his character more god-like and mysterious. And there's no greater test of a famous line such as "you can't handle the truth!" than when you know it's coming and you've seen it spoofed, and yet it still plays so well. I also really liked how his speech "justifying" the actions taken by his underlings actually made some sense, so it kept the whole situation in a nice shade of grey.
As opposed to my feelings toward this next movie, which is still on as I write this, because those feelings aren't grey. They're the color of intense dislike (orange-ish red?). The movie is Howards End and I'm so glad it's the last British period piece for a while because I really can't take any more. And they're all based on books, so I feel like any kind of subtle brilliance that the stories might have should be attributed to the original author and not the filmmakers. For instance, within this movie the overall plot surrounds property called Howards End. And ownership gets passed around of the property (whilst any number of non-amusing side plots go on). This is supposed to represent how ownership of Britain was uncertain after WWII and at the end of the movie the social situations reflect what ended up happening in Britain. At least, that's what Wikipedia says. I didn't pick up on any of that, and there's still 28 minutes left in the movie so I certainly haven't seen the ending yet. Did you notice how this is yet again a "oh poor Britain, we used to run the world and now we don't" story? Either suck it up or start re-conquering your old territories! I don't care which, just stop complaining about it within films that are 2 hours and 15 minutes or more and essentially consist of British people being snooty and whiny. And they all seem to star Emma Thompson, who I'm really getting sick of seeing. She's a good actress, but all of the characters are basically the same somewhat timid but somewhat forward-thinking British woman. Anthony Hopkins is back too, which is an upshot, but he doesn't have much to do unfortunately. And Helena Bonham-Carter plays the young floozie, which makes no sense. There's a reason she's made a career out of playing crazy witches, women who bake people into pies, and the Queen of Hearts. She's scary. Tim Burton is her lover and the father of her offspring, that says it all right there. Because we've all seen the twisted stuff that goes on in his head (twisted and awesome! I normally like Helena in those roles, but she's miscast here). So there you have it, if anyone else was doing what I'm doing now and reviewing a movie I'm still finishing then I'd probably berate them. But you know what? 24 is over, Lost is over, and so my life is over. So I'm breaking the rules. Plus, the rules don't apply when it's less a film than it is a form of torture and time-sucking.
Now that we've got all that negativity, let me talk about a movie I wasn't expecting to enjoy and ended up loving: Scent of a Woman. I try not to look up anything about the movies I watch if I can avoid it, because then I can have the most pure viewing experience possible. And from the title I expected this movie to be some sort of romantic comedy that somehow snatched Al Pacino for the cast. NOT THE CASE. This is a wonderfully written character study that manages to make its relatively-hefty-for-a-movie-of-its-type running time of 2 hours and 40 seem like nothing. Basically it centers around a student at a prep school (Chris O'Donnell) who takes up a weekend job to earn some extra cash. And that job is to look after a crotchety old war veteran, who is also blind: Al Pacino's well-deserved Oscar-winning performance as Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade. And though the side-plot with Chris is fun and touching in a way (it actually turns into a bit of a precursor to Up in some ways) the movie is really about watching Al Pacino be awesome. Basically: a weekend in the shoes of Frank Slade. He was the Dr. House of the 1990s: an extraordinarily dark character who still manages to make you laugh. The man essentially wants to have one last exciting weekend of his life and then kill himself. And of course that doesn't happen and of course the bond between the two vastly different characters heals them both and all of that stuff that you see coming from minute one. But the script is so great and the performance is so good that no one should care. Also: Al Pacino completely rips apart prep schools and the culture of academics at the end and I flipped out. Because I think "academics" (the people, not education itself) are useless snobs. And so does Frank. If I could make that whole 5 minute speech my ringtone, I would. Great stuff. All in all, this is more of an acting movie than anything else but since the script and the music are also very good I think the movie itself more than earned the nomination.
But it was a lifetime-achievement type year for the Academy, and ironically so (as I'll explain shortly) because the year's winner was none other than Clint Eastwood's final Western: Unforgiven. The reason I say it's ironic is because they wanted to tip their hat to Clint for his body of work, and then he went on to become one of the best directors of our time and earn several more nominations (and he'll probably get a few more in the years to come). However, given the other films that came out in the year, this one actually does manage to be more interesting than the nominees both culturally and within the story. It also features some solid performances from Eastwood himself, Morgan Freeman, and a (somewhat-oddly-awarded) winning performance from Gene Hackman. The directing is beautifully haunting and the story ends up just the way I like them: powerful and somewhat-depressing. It's pretty much the same overall plot: former gunfighter gets pulled back into action to stop a corrupt lawman. Yeah, I know. It's like every other Western. But the delivery is what's so good. It largely functions as a requiem for not only every preceding Eastwood film but also Westerns in general. Clint's character, as a TA of mine once phrased, is the personification of what happens to the hero after he rides off into the sunset. Well, his wife eventually died and now he's stuck doing menial tasks on a farm to scrape a living. And when he finally revert back to his old ways at the end, it's not glamorous. It shows that all of those guys, even if they weren't portrayed this way, were cold-blooded killers who happened to be on the right side. The only Westerns I've seen that also broach this idea are the outstanding The Searchers and The Wild Bunch, directed by John Ford and Sam Peckinpah, respectively. The film reminds us that beneath all the Hollywood glamour, these characters are disturbed individuals doing bad things. Albeit these bad things are to some pretty bad people. But I love the fact that when you shoot a man to an awesome song you get an adrenaline rush and when you shoot him to no music at all, you're disturbed. Aside from all that meta-stuff, the film is pretty solid and has some sweet shoot-outs at the end.
Fittingly, the British nonsense literally just ended as I said "the end." I'm awesome. Now we can say goodbye to all that crap, at least for now. More relevantly, 1992 was a pretty great year. I had seen only one film which I already liked and 50% on the remaining titles is better than I get in some other years. The two I have to watch for 1991 are both on instant watch on Netflix which means I'll either take much less or much more time to watch them. But next year will include: one of film's greatest villains, an animated pariah, and a love story involving two people I find completely unattractive. Should be scary times.
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