2011: The Year that was Out of the Past

For some reason a lot of the films this year were obsessed with the past. Whether it was the distant past or recent tragedies like 9/11, this year was all about it. Which is a cool thing, right? Mostly yes. But to be honest, I haven't been this unenthusiastic about a year of nominees in a long while. Maybe since 2005. I was a big fan of the winner and I wanted it to win, so that was pretty cool. And I'd even go so far as to say that I liked most of the nominees. But...they were just kind of bland. Nothing we haven't seen before. Not like last year's line-up of innovative films. You can't be original every year though. Which is why it's ironic that the year's most original movie was a throwback to the roots of cinema itself. So without further ado, here is yet another deluxe edition of my Oscar watch. 9 nominees people, prepare yourselves.

After all of that build-up, I didn't particularly like The Descendants. I am really glad that Jim Rash, one of the writers, won an Oscar though. Solely for the reason that he's on Community and now they can say "watch Oscar-winning actor Jim Rash on Community this Thursday at 8!" It's the only reason I'm glad it won for Adapted Screenplay because the movie is mostly twaddle. The acting is good, but the characters are annoying. Both daughters did a great job of being snotty daughters but that doesn't make it any less irksome. The film is basically about a man whose wife is in a coma and he's trying to raise his two daughters without her and as it turns out she was cheating on him. And there's something else about him having land that was left to him by his Hawaiian ancestors and whether he should sell it or not. I'm not sure what the pro/con list was for that land deal because the movie spends like 2 minutes on it. It seemed important though. So after much tedious family bickering which isn't funny (was it supposed to be? No idea) he finally tracks down the guy that was sleeping with his wife. And it's Shaggy. And Scooby-Doo was a while ago, because Shaggy got fat. So this woman was stepping out on George Clooney for fat Shaggy. Because that sort of thing happens. I'm sure it does, but as I've often mentioned: the movies have to be more realistic than real life. I don't make the rules...but that's one of them. Well as it turns out this guy only seduced her because of Clooney's land claim. So what is the point of this movie exactly? It has all the makings of a great dark comedy. Except it isn't funny. Most of it comes off as melodrama more than anything else. I was legit expecting to like this one too. Alexander Payne directed and I'm a fan of his other work. Plus one reviewer called it "a bit sitcom-y" so I figured the issue was that it was too goofy. As opposed to too stereotypical. Oh the one daughter has lost her way since her mom was in a coma! Oh the younger one might be going down the same path! Yawn.

Continuing on this negative trend is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. My friend Andrew said he read one critic that postulated: "is this movie one of the worst ever to be nominated for Best Picture?" The answer is: quite possibly. It has a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes...so that's unusual. You may notice that the vast majority of the time I spend bashing movies is usually about the story or the themes or the acting or the style. Things that I'm not a personal fan of. This doesn't necessarily mean that the movies are bad. It often means they shouldn't have been nominated...but that's different. This is legitimately not a very good movie. It's not awful but it's pretty bad. It's sloppy and the premise is a thinly veiled "oh let's mine people's emotions by having it be about 9/11." It is based on a book but that just means my issue is with the author. I could look up who that is but I don't care enough. In the age of Wikipedia, that's saying something. The movie is about this kid whose dad died in 9/11 and he (the dad) leaves him (the kid) a key that opens a lock somewhere in the city. Or a door. Or something. Because it's feasible that a person could find said locked object in a city like New York. He does have a clue: the last name of Black. Of all of the surnames they picked Black. The kid literally has lines like "I found 3 Blacks today" "there are a lot of Blacks in New York City" and other eyebrow-raising phrases. They must have known this. Right? I just don't know anymore. Anyway, the kid teams up with his grandfather (spoiler alert! That old guy is his grandfather) who has taken a vow of silence or something. Those parts were definitely the closest to being real scenes. The flashbacks with his dad (Tom Hanks) were good too at times. Their "oxymoron duel" was cute. But the movie is almost entirely about the kid, who is just super annoying. The old guy's story is far more interesting. He never speaks in the movie. They just abandon his perceived character arc entirely. And of course the search for the lock is really just him coping with his dad dying and yadda yadda. The part at the end where his mom reveals that she's been helping him along the whole time was nice. But the whole thing is just sloppy. Poorly constructed and overly done with too many similar scenes. The idea is interesting and maybe could've made a good short film but that's about it.

Right then, on to one I unexpectedly enjoyed: The Help. It's Oscar bait and it's manipulative but I still liked it. Mostly because it was intelligently done and well-acted. If it had won anything besides stuff for acting I would've been pissed. But it didn't, and it was a popular movie and got nominated so that's always pretty cool too. It's basically about a young white girl writing a series of articles that reveal the struggles of the maids who work for her overly snooty neighborhood. All of the maids are black of course, as this was the still-racist 60s in the South. The supporting roles definitely steal the show in this one. In fact, in addition to the Octavia Spencer/Jessica Chastain storyline being more enjoyable than the Emma Stone/Viola Davis one...I actually felt like they were in it more. I was surprised when Spencer was the Supporting Actress nominee and Davis was the Actress nominee. Emma Stone was an interesting character in a way, don't get me wrong, but not as fun as Jessica Chastain. Not even a little. Stone's character was kind of a Moses figure, which is something I wish they'd done more with. One of the main cruxes of the film is the idea that these maids raise the white children who then grow up to be their new masters. So Emma decides she wants to "free" them in a sense by making their voice heard. So...raised by slaves...wants to free them...doesn't feel at home in her own society...see where I'm getting this Moses thing? It does come to fruition I suppose but she ends up sort of being the MacGuffin for the movie more than anything else. Still an interesting thought. The Octavia Spencer story is much more the "odd couple" type storyline, which has been a staple of the industry for a reason. It's predictable but it's fun. The chemistry between the two actresses was undeniable. Then it'll switch over to Viola Davis and she's just being kind of pouty the whole time. Boooooooring. Well-done...but still. The movie is a bit long for what it is but I definitely enjoyed it: once again proving I do indeed like stuff that I expected to hate (on occasion).

Easily my second favorite film of the nominees was Hugo. I was expecting to not like this movie up until the second I actually started watching it. All of the commercials made it look like a schlocky kids movie that's little more than substance-less fun. And then I saw a clip on The Daily Show with a terrible special effect involving a wind-up mouse. Knowing Scorsese, it was probably intentionally odd-looking in the same way the blue peas were in 2004's The Aviator (check my write-up, it'll make sense) but it takes you out of the scene all the same. As it turns out: the movie is wonderful. It's about a young orphan who meets the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliés and helps to bring his work into the spotlight once more. But it's about so much more than that. It's about how the cynicism that followed World War I destroyed the idea of an escapist film. Well, destroyed it for a little while. This is not unlike the rampant cynicism that has been flooding our fiction since 9/11. It's there, even if you don't know it. I'm not saying this movie is about 9/11, so stop wondering! I'm just saying we've become a cynical society and this movie is asking us to believe in the magic of dreaming again. As though we were wide-eyed children like Hugo and his ladyfriend (significantly more charming, yet less badass, than she was as Hit Girl in Kickass). I had the privilege of seeing many of the films portrayed within this movie and so it was nice to see them be "mainstream" even if they were just clips. So basically: it's every bit the schmaltzy movie that it looks like. It's just one that I happen to like. This is also largely due to the fact that the film doesn't focus nearly as much on the relationship between Hugo and Méliés as the trailer implied. Because that whole "kid in need of a father-figure, old guy in need of a son-figure" schtick is dead now because Up did it perfectly. It was more about the relationship between the kids. And Hugo brings Méliés back from "the edge" if you will, but it's in a more understated and effective way than it would have been in the hands of a lesser director.

Another unexpected delight was Midnight in Paris. I'm wary of any movie that has "in Paris" in the title but this was actually quite good. It's Woody Allen, who's been stale in recent years (read: since 1977), and the Netflix sleeve did it no justice. It says something like "a couple vacationing in Paris begins to examine their relationship." Nowhere in that description is there a mention of time-travel or the meeting of amazing artistic minds from the early 20th Century. Umm...why? Not only is that basically the whole movie, that's pretty cool! How many movies say that they're about a couple examining their relationship? Every Kate Hudson, Kristen Bell, and Julia Roberts movie. Times 47. How about a delightful movie about a writer who gets to travel back in time and meet people like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Salvador Dalí? Not nearly enough of those around. In true Woody Allen fashion, the time travel is never explained. Nor should it be. It is a comedy after all, not a laugh-out-loud one but a fun one. The dialogue is fresh and the actors deliver it well. A true ensemble performance. Great actors like Adrien Brody stop in for like 2 minutes, which shows you the type of gravitas Woody Allen brings with him. Don't tell anyone, but I'm kind of a hopeless romantic. You have to earn it with me though. Which is good because otherwise I'd probably like chick flicks. This is an intellectual's (and yes: snob's. I'll say it) romantic film and it definitely worked its magic on me.

A movie I was less enthusiastic about but still liked is Moneyball. After admitting my hopeless romanticism in the last paragraph I probably shouldn't mention that I like Brad Pitt in pretty much anything. But...I like Brad Pitt in pretty much anything. I used to think he was a useless prettyboy. And then I saw Fight Club. And Se7en. And like a million other things. The dude is legit. I also have to give props to Jonah Hill, who has come a long way from being the fat kid in Superbad. Now then, this is the closest thing to a nihilistic sports movie that I've ever seen. Brad Pitt says at one point that even though their team had the biggest winning streak in American League history, if they don't win the World Series no one's going to care. And that's pretty true. I didn't even remember this whole story happening and it happened like 10 years ago. It also taps into the inherent meaninglessness of the whole sports scene. And yet, how that makes it meaningful. You'd expect such a thing from a movie co-written by Aaron Sorkin. I've said it before, that man has so much talent that it's literally disgusting. I want to punch him in the face and then beg him to teach me his ways. I can tell a lot of the lines of dialogue within the movie that are his because his style is unmistakable. That's the main highlight. The story itself is mostly like every other sports movie, except that they don't win the championship of course. They do point out that the money-saving technique described in the movie was used by the 2004 World-Series-winning Red Sox, so that was pretty cool. One of my friends did point out that if you're not a baseball fan then you probably have no reason to like this movie. That's probably true. I am a fan so it's hard for me to say for sure. But that's probably accurate. It's also a little overly long and the tones are kind of all over the place. I definitely enjoyed it for what it was though. Not a life-changing movie by any means but a good one.

Now we come to the movie I have the most and the least to say about: The Tree of Life. W.T.F. That's all I have to say. I don't know if I liked this movie or hated it. I don't know if it's good or not. I don't know who I am anymore after I watched it. I will say this: it held my attention more than any film has in a long time. Because I was mesmerized by it. Not even in a good way. Not remotely in a good way. In a fascinated way? Perhaps. I both want no one to suffer through this movie and want everyone I know to watch it, just in case we can figure out what it means sometime before those infinite monkeys write "Macbeth." It's supposed to be about a boy who loses his innocence (not in a Mrs. Robinson way, in a Colonel Kurtz way) after the death of his brother. What it's actually about is a bunch of quasi-philosophical jargon that's offset by some admittedly beautiful cinematography and then there's a 20 minute sequence about the beginning of the universe. Sean Penn is in it and doesn't talk. Jessica Chastain is in it and floats. Dinosaurs are in it without Jeff Goldblum. W.T.F. There's hardly even a complete sentence for 45 minutes. The middle portion, which is more coherent, is actually pretty good. It deals with the boy's relationship with his father (Brad Pitt, who's everywhere) and is actually a fascinating character study in many ways. Too bad most of the audience is already asleep. Sean Penn himself (who, I take it back, has one line of dialogue in narration) said that when he read the script it was the best he'd ever seen...but that's not indicative of the film. Terrence Malick is notorious for being weird and also for filming like 4 hours worth of movie. The fact that any bit of it can be cut out without detracting from the overall point is very telling. I feel like there was a lot more with the boy when he grows up to be Sean Penn. Or perhaps there was just more floating. Lots of fascinating things at play to be sure. And I actually would like to watch it again someday with some other seasoned film veterans. But it makes 2001 look like it has the over-coherence of a CBS crime drama.

Almost the complete opposite of that movie is War Horse. It's basically every easily digestible 1950s movie you've ever seen. Except prettier. It's definitely beautifully filmed and John Williams, as always, delivers an incredibly beautiful music score. It's very problematic as a movie though. The only main character is the horse...and it's not a Pixar horse so it doesn't really work. There's no one you can really connect with. Which is unfortunate because even when I thought the whole movie was the boy and his horse I knew it'd have issues. It's pretty blatantly a movie that's trying to make you cry, and not exactly for much reason. Which is fine but it kind of bothers me on a fundamental level. But it's not even that. Different actors and characters fade in and out of the movie and so you have no one to relate to. You care about the horse immediately and you want to see him survive. But A) it's not really a character, as pretty as it is and B) you know he'll survive so the driving force of the movie is a foregone conclusion. The boy does get reunited with his horse and it's all very nice but I'd have liked it much better if we saw what the boy was up to the whole time. Don't get me wrong, the movie has some stunning cinematography and some truly breathtaking scenes. It'll make you cry and it'll swell your heart, just as promised. And the horse is undeniably awesome. But I guess I was expecting a bit more from Spielberg, especially since he doesn't make as many movies nowadays. Definitely worth watching, but not quite as good as I was hoping.

And now the ever-elusive film that I wanted to win...and is also this year's winner: The Artist. Overall, this year wasn't very impressive for films. So it was a great year for this little gem to sneak in and snag the Best Picture award. It's the first true silent film in a long, long time. I say that because Mel Brooks' 1970s spoof doesn't really count. In a year where every movie was looking back, this film was looking forward. It sounds strange but it's true. It's about a silent film star who is dealing with his increasingly obsolete career in the face of the invention of talking films. It's all done in a completely delightful and fun way, but that's the underlying theme. He's trying to hang onto the past; no matter how increasingly irrational that goal is. He soon meets a young actress and they are quite smitten with each other, but she becomes a rival of his when she begins to headline a lot of "talkies" (as they called them). Eventually he decides that he cares more about her than he does about his "legacy" as he thought it would be. The film ends with the uplifting thought that he'll have a successful second career, which not every silent screen actor was given. That's pretty much the whole movie. Quite simple. Also quite enchanting. As my friend Andrew pointed out (maybe he should have his own blog, I've stolen enough of his ideas today): Hugo told us why we should care about old movies but The Artist showed us why. It is both a love letter to silent films and a subtle spoof of them. There are lots of little moments that play with the genre (if you can call it that), such as someone moving their lips a lot with the caption "yes" or someone mumbling briefly followed by a large paragraph. There was also a brilliant misdirect that had to do with the imaginary sound effects of silent movies. And of course...I'm a sucker for dream sequences and this movie has a nightmare sequence about the onset of sound in the movies that is simple stunning. I can't recommend the film enough, it's obviously not the most innovative or incredible movie of all time but it is a supreme delight and it's hard for me to imagine anyone not liking it. I'd like to think that when the Academy Awards began in 1927, that was the only criteria required for a Best Picture win.

Well that's it for this year. Now my blog is going to go hide in obscurity for another year. For you persistent readers: my 1947 entry should be up in a week and a half or so. Depending on how quickly I feel like sitting through some intense dramas involving a lot of anti-anti-semitism. Good stuff...but rough I'm sure. For the rest of you: I'll see you in 2013 for next year's Oscar round-up! Avengers, anyone? Doubtful. But one can hope.

1948: The Year that The Melancholy Dane Donned a TuTu

You'd think my title was a merge between the famous Shakespeare play and a ballet movie but oh...it wasn't. It's just the play. Despite my title's implication, this was quite an edgy and dark year. Which is odd because I'm sure the people back then were thinking that a new age of harsh films was about to be ushered in. Well I've seen the 50s nominees and this was largely not the case. So what happened? This was such a great year with such interesting stories and even though several of them ended more cheerfully than I would've liked...they were still pretty excellent. Perhaps America cried out in disgust and they scaled it back. I have no idea. But let's hope that this trend continues on my reverse journey because if it does then the 40s are going to be awesome.

Well after all of that buildup we start off with the only movie this year that I thought was crap: Johnny Belinda. It seems that even in 1948 there were exploitative films that were edgy just for the sake of being edgy. That's how I viewed this film. Because other than the acting, which netted Jane Wyman an (in my opinion: undeserved) Oscar, there's no point in this movie existing. It only seems to be here to shock people and to be an excuse for audiences to say: "what a powerful performance." As has been said many times, if you play someone disabled in a "high brow" film then there's a good chance you'll get a nomination. Tom Hanks, Daniel Day-Lewis, the list goes on. I think it's kind of a cheat. You're playing someone who inherently garners sympathy by being disabled and since the manner in which these characters think and act is foreign to most of us it concordantly feels more like "acting." The same goes for playing psychopaths but I'd say that for the most part, they at least have actual characters and there's more to them. In the case of this film, Jane Wyman plays a deaf-mute woman named Belinda. So her whole performance is just with expressions. Impressive? Sure. But then again, I think acting is about subtlety. So once again: it's a cheat to telegraph all of your emotions because that's what your character needs to do. Of course it's realistic but from a purely objective standpoint...it's a cheat. Anyway, the first 40 minutes might as well be the Helen Keller story. Then she gets raped. Then she has a baby. Then the father of the child tries to steal the baby with his wife and Belinda shoots the guy (!). She then goes on trial and is acquitted. Cue happy ending music. Whaaaaaaaaa? It's based on a true story but there are lots of messed up things that happen which don't need to be movies. The film is mostly known for being the first to really deal with issues like rape in an in-depth way. To which I say: that's disappointing. The first movie to deal with such a heavy and important subject should've been more than a 102 minute excuse to shoot a rapist with a shotgun. I'm always in support of movies that shoot rapists with shotguns or other firearms but there should be more to it.

A far better film that I shockingly really liked is The Red Shoes. It's about ballet. This means there are entirely too many ballet movies that I like (2). And this one was likely an influence on the other one: Aronofsky's masterpiece, Black Swan. When I read the Netflix description of: it's about a lady who has to choose between her love of ballet and her love of guys with moustaches (slight alteration), I was thinking it'd be crap. Well, high-class drivel anyway. It ties in with a Hans Christian Anderson tale also entitled "The Red Shoes" which is about a ballet dancer who uses a pair of red shoes (shocking). But when she wants to stop dancing, the red shoes don't. So that's already a very interesting little morality tale about obsession with one's work. But it goes far beyond a brief mention at the beginning of the film. The ballet dancer's lover creates a ballet based around the story, which of course becomes the writing on the wall for the fate of the characters. The movie starts off somewhat slowly but the cinematography soon makes it simply mesmerizing. Its usage of color was particularly impressive, considering the year. And the lengthy ballet sequence was just incredible. Very cerebral filmmaking for 1948. The ballet plays out in an eerie, dreamlike way. There are a lot of reds and dark colors, creating an almost afterlife-esque feel. See now, remember when complained at length about the overly long dance sequence in An American In Paris? That's because that was bloated and useless. This meant something. There was a story to this dance sequence, both within the ballet itself and as a reflection of the main character's inner struggle. This is always a fascinating theme to me in many movies: career vs. relationship. To me it's always been a struggle between immortalities. You live on through your children but will be forgotten after a few generations. If your career is impressive enough then you will be immortal through that but you'll likely live your life utterly alone and probably miserably (if the "tortured writer/artist" stereotype is to be believed). Kind of a lose-lose. But that's the human condition for you. She initially picks her lover but will that last? As per usual, I don't want to spoil movies that I find actually good. Apparently this is one of Scorsese's favorite movies and I can see why. It was a truly great surprise to discover this film and it reminded me why I went on the escapade in the first place.

Another surprisingly great and dark film was The Snake Pit. Its ending was a little too upbeat for my taste and they missed a great opportunity to have a Twilight Zone ending (before that show was made of course). But it was still a great piece of acting by Olivia deHavilland and I think she should've taken home the Oscar instead. Even though she's playing someone who's losing her mind and that can also be a cheat: she has an actual story arc. There are flashbacks to when she was first losing her mind, further flashbacks to when she was sane, and then she brings her way back around to sanity again (probably). So there's a lot of variety in there. If she was just being crazy the whole time then I'd say forget it. But that wasn't the case. Essentially this is just about a woman in an insane asylum who is trying to remember what happened to her with the help of various psychiatrists. Its usage of flashbacks was particularly forward-thinking back then, in terms of how they're used to slowly reveal her backstory. Notice how I'm pointing out that it was both innovative and effective. They weren't doing flashbacks just to do them; they made sense within the story. That's how it's done when you're doing it correctly. Her condition ties into a very Electra-esque complex involving her father which is truly fascinating. And we're left with this question at the end of whether she's truly cured or not (at least I was). All in all some pretty great stuff.

Another good one that I had actually heard of before (getting rare these days) is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I asked my dad what it was about and all he said was "greed." He's ominous and cool like that sometimes. And I couldn't have said it any better myself. It's about treasure hunters looking for gold in the mountains who let their lust for money get the better of them. This is another one with an oddly upbeat ending, but considering someone had been beheaded in the movie fairly recently it was actually a disturbing ending...so it was pretty cool to me of course. And any movie that involves Bogart in a cool hat automatically goes up a few points in my book. Something truly fascinating that it touched on with one brief scene (but an important scene that also established a main theme of the movie) is the idea that gold is inherently worthless. This is something I've been thinking about for a while: the idea that money is essentially based on the honor system. A heavily regulated and enforced honor system of course...but an honor system nonetheless. The guy essentially says that the pursuit of gold is circular reasoning. People spend so much time trying to find it that its worth increases due to the amount of man-hours spent trying to find it. That's why the whole thing kind of baffles me. You find some food or some shelter and that's inherently useful. Gold is the world's most expensive paper weight. A vestige from humanity's "ohhhh look, shiny!" age which is all too prevalent today. The fascinating thing about this film is that some of the characters start going crazy before all that much money is involved. And they also have to keep the whole operation a secret because otherwise hordes of people would be scouring the same location. So their wealth wouldn't be readily attainable anyway. It's all about the idea of the money. The idea of having more than your fellow man. The paranoia that their chief priority is taking what you have. It's the world's most destructive pissing contest. This is why I find it so funny that the oft-quoted line from the movie is "we don't need no steenking badges!" In addition to being misquoted anyway, that's one of the goofier scenes in the movie. It touches on another major theme of corruption within organizations with money...but still. Odd that such a great movie about such an important issue is mostly remembered for funny Mexican accents. But that's society for you.

Which brings me at last to this year's winner, a film I had some mixed feelings about: Hamlet. This is THE version according to most people. It stars Laurence Olivier (not yet a "sir") who was once known as "the greatest actor in the English language." I'd hate to have that title personally. Pressure! He requested any slobbering actors that met him to call him "Larry," as he was uncomfortable with his acclaim. This is what has always saved his performances for me, because I know that he holds himself to a normal standard and not a crazy one. And his performance in this is undeniably excellent of course, but I was never a big fan of the play. It runs the same risk as Olivier himself, interestingly, because it's so often called the greatest play of all time that when you finally read it or see it you're kind of like "eh?" Well, when the "you" in that sentence is "me" anyway. I was always more of a "Macbeth" man myself. Or "Richard III" or "Henry V" or any number of ones besides this one. Macbeth and his wife go on a true character journey. He starts out as the reluctant villain and she is the criminal mastermind and by the time it's the end they've switched places. Great stuff. Richard III was the pre-modern Tyrion Lannister (of Game of Thrones fame): an impish genius who connives behind the scenes to manipulate people who are dumber than him (which is everybody). Hamlet is about a guy who sits around and whines because he wants to bang his mom. There's more to it of course but that's essentially it. He sits around contemplating for 4 hours (this version is 2 1/2, which many purists complained about but I say it's still too long) and is basically in the same position at the end that he was in at the beginning. Except he's dead now. That's his whole character journey: melancholy dane to melancholy dead. There are speeches in it that I've always really liked (especially poor Yorick) but that's about it. What's cool about it is that it's directed in a very interesting manner. I read that it was emulating Citizen Kane but it more reminded me of a lot of Bergman films. Very cerebral and ominous and odd. Stuff that should make you laugh from the hokey delivery but instead really creep you out. And it all looks like it was filmed on a stage (which I'm sure it was) but this actually helps the feel. Due to some aspects of the story being a "play-within-a-play" and of course the play itself having been popularized on stage, this really works. Not that this is intentional, I'm sure they had to film on a stage, but it's effective anyway. So for the atmospheric cinematography and acting I give them a lot of credit. And by "them" I largely mean Olivier who also directed. But it definitely isn't as good as The Red Shoes, which was also robbed of a cinematography Oscar. But when you drop the Bard on Hollywood, this can be the effect. I enjoyed it more than almost any other Shakespeare movie I've seen though, I'll say that.

Well that was overall a pretty excellent year. They're reinforcing the idea that I really should've lived in the 40s. Awesome suits, awesome hats, awesome cinema. I hope that next year continues the positive trend. All I know for now is it'll include a possibly drunken clergyman, a possibly drunken Santa, and a possibly drunken anti-semite. Just got real on you on that last one.

1949: The Year that I Was Into Before Everyone Else Thought It Was Cool

I'm hipster-ing it up in Starbucks right now so I thought I'd stick in a hipster title. Also: it's getting increasingly difficult to come up with clever titles when basically everything is about World War II. This was a pretty solid year actually. I knew I'd enjoy the winner and it exceeded expectations. But on top of that: there was a melodrama I actually enjoyed (gasp!) and the World War II movies actually resembled something different. Not bad!

We begin with Battleground. At first I was like, "oh look another movie about how war is bad and stuff. Or about how war is good and stuff." I actually thought it played out quite well though. It reminded me of the tones set in the excellent Band of Brothers and somewhat-less-excellent-but-still-good The Pacific. It portrays the soldiers as human beings without explicitly manipulating you into caring about them. No monologues about "my girl Jenny back home" or "my little brother died when I was 9 and that scarred me." Just soldiers on the battlefield, involved in one of the most influential and famous battles in WWII history: The Battle of Bastogne. They might be playing imaginary baseball one second and ripping a German's throat out with their teeth the next second. Which brings me to another upshot: it was pretty freaking explicit for 1949. The throat-ripping occurred off-screen of course, but that makes it even more effective (something a lot of filmmakers today don't seem to understand). All you see is the American jumping on the German and then you see the German's feet go limp. Then the American stands up and wipes blood from his mouth. There was also an American soldier hiding in the snow and dying because he stayed too long and a German being brutally stabbed to death. We're talking about some pretty intense crap. That's what gave it some extra oomph. I might have mentioned this in my 1998 write-up (who remembers? No, seriously, does someone remember?) but my favorite Saving Private Ryan scene is when we find out that Tom Hanks is a high school teacher. It really brings home that point that the fate of the world rested not on a bunch of Batmen and Jason Bournes but instead on the soldiers of everyday people. So all of that mixed with the fact that this particular movie was a good length at about 2 hours, made it a pretty unexpectedly great film.

Something I totally expected to hate but ended up enjoying is The Heiress. Just from the title you can tell that I would be apprehensive. I'm thinking: "right then, here's another melodrama that will try to tug at my heartstrings before it ultimately ends up happy and stuff." Not the case at all. Everyone ended up miserable in the end. Just like all of my favorites! It's about a rich heiress (predictably) who is supposed to be quite plain-looking (they made up Olivia de Havilland to look ordinary) and how an attractive younger man is attempting to woo her. Her oppressive father thinks it's just because of her money but she thinks he legit cares about her. Cue the cheesy music and the womanly swoon as it's revealed that he really does care. Nope! He pretty much was just interested in her money...maybe. They leave it somewhat ambiguous. But he definitely does leave her on the eve of their elopement (eloping? Elopage?) and she becomes Mrs. Freeze. In the end, her father is dead and she doesn't care. And when her former lover returns, she pretty much tells him to get lost. Her housekeeper tells her she's become quite cruel, to which she responds: "I have been taught by masters." Chilly! They also kept it to an appropriate 115 minutes. This meant that almost every scene was important and moving along the story in some way. So this proves that a drama that takes place mostly on one set and with only 3 or 4 main actors actually can be compelling. On a side note about happy endings: too often they feel like the end of a whodunit. As though the whole thing was leading up to that one revelation and there's no point in the rest of the story existing, except for the purposes of stalling. That's why sad endings are better. Or: powerful endings that are happy but required some sacrifice or hardship first. The people involved with this film knew what was up. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering William Wyler was the director. Look him up, you'll be shocked at how many famous movies one man can direct.

A movie that I actually own (somewhat knownst to me) is A Letter to Three Wives. When I graduated from high school, my dad's best friend hand-picked about 6 or 7 DVDs for me that he considered classics. This was one of two that for some reason I hadn't watched yet. And I can't disagree with a single choice of his. Side note: one of them was Out of the Past, a truly fantastic noir with a really rotten femme fatale. Love that stuff. Anyway, this movie I thought was quite good aside from the setup. I thought that was a little thin. Basically, it's about a woman who sends a letter to her three ladyfriends that says: "I'm stealing one of your husbands, best of luck over the next hour and forty-five minutes figuring out who." Well, something like that anyway. The rest of the movie is told in flashback though. And the backstories are fascinating little vignettes that are well-acted and compelling. I think vignette-y stories can be a waste or a cheat sometimes. But when they're done well, like this one, they're very effective. Because you're getting several complete stories that intertwine in interesting ways. In fact, I found myself thinking that a lot of the other relationship dramas I've viewed were basically one of the backstories stretched out into a full movie. Whereas this film wisely keeps each individual story to no more than 30 minutes or so. Over the course of the film, they leave you with an odd feeling because none of the marriages are particularly sound. So not only could any one of them be splitting up with their husband, you're not entirely sure how you feel about it. They might be better off. Or perhaps the overall point is to work it out. It has a predictably happy ending, that the book apparently didn't exactly share, but even so: the overall ambiguity through most of the film was quite compelling. See? There's two examples of borderline-melodrama that I've enjoyed. Maybe something is just wrong with my brain. Don't worry, soon my 2011 entry will be up (after the Oscars air later this month) and that is sure to get me all ranty.

A film I found fairly "meh" but not necessarily bad is Twelve O'Clock High. It's got Gregory Peck, who looks exactly the same in 1949 as he did in 1962 (insult? Compliment?), and it's about dogfighters during World War II. Now here's an important note on grammar and pronunciation kids. "Dogfighters" means people who channel the Red Baron and get all retro badass in their old-timey planes (or "now-timey" planes, as they were known back then). Dogfights are cool. "Dog fights" are not cool. That's when certain NFL quarterbacks decide that croquet has gotten a bit old and decide to instead be incredibly cruel to animals that are awesome. And then they get less time in prison than someone under SOPA would get for posting a video of their kid singing Frank Sinatra. Oops...didn't mean to get all political on you there. Nawwwwwww but...SOPA is dumb. I feel quite certain that the people who wrote it don't know what the difference is between what the Internet actually is and Tron. Anyway...back to World War II stuff. This movie was about 20 minutes too long but I found it to be overall interesting. It's mostly people talking in a room but there are also some thrilling flying sequences, which were apparently made up of actual footage from World War II pilots on both sides. That was probably a super awkward conversation when whichever producer asked the Germans for some Luftwaffe footage. Like: "oh hey, so you guys have been decimated twice in about 30 years by us and our allies but can we get some footage of you sucking horribly? Kthanks." The finest parts of the film, however, are the beginning and the end. Very contemplative stuff. It begins and ends with a former soldier visiting a location that was once a key battle spot during the war. It was overgrown with foliage and peaceful. No one would be able to inherently tell that such horrific bloodshed once took place on that very spot. A message of peace? That the toils of war have been buried by beauty? Or perhaps a message of the futility of war? Both? That's why I'd call it contemplative, there's no inherent definite meaning or "right answer." It just makes you think. Whereas a lot of movies like this would have a guy stop and be like, "what was the point of it all? Gahhhhhhhh!" That's a little much. This was intelligently done and well-acted throughout. So even though it wasn't great, I can't really fault them for any of it.

This year's winner is one of my favorites from the whole escapade and is perhaps more relevant today than it was back then: All the King's Men. What a fantastic film, through and through. Truly an incredible performance by Broderick Crawford as underdog-turned-corrupt-politician Willie Stark. I'm going a little hyphen crazy (hypen-crazy?) today. Apologies. This film is based on a true story about a politician from a small town who rises to great power, only to have it Caesar-ed away from him. Isn't that always the way? He begins by getting the people all riled up and angry, without actually saying what he stood for. I LOVED this because you see it every day now that the election is in full swing. Anybody starts laying out policy thoughts and I'm like "hmm interesting" but 95% of people are like, "booooooooring!" Not to get all political on you again, but then somebody like Gingrich gets up and says "I say we shoot America's enemies in the face!" What does that even mean? And to be fair, Obama did a similar thing in 2008 when he was like, "hope! Whatever that means!" Most popular politicians essentially get up and say non-specific stuff and people get all excited. So it's either incredibly depressing or highly enlightening to think about how little things have changed since that time. Willie Stark rises to power in just this way, by calling the crowd a bunch of bums and saying that he's one of them. He promises to burn the fat cats, all while becoming a fat cat. The film is also filled out with a great ensemble cast who have the unfortunate task of being what I call "Karl Malden" roles. This is in reference to Karl Malden's excellent performance in Patton which is completely overshadowed by George C. Scott. You could say the same thing about Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight. He did an incredible job as Two-Face but not as many people noticed. What's weird is that the only other person who won for this movie was the one I thought to be the weakest performance. Everyone else did a low-key and realistic performance (or over-the-top and realistic one in the case of Crawford). But what she did was kind of a classic 40s-50s bit of stage acting. She delivers her one-liners with such an implied "zing!" that I thought I was watching a CBS sitcom. Thankfully she's not in it a whole lot...but still. On an interesting side note: they originally offered the lead role to John Wayne but he sent it back in disgust because he was actually optimistic about American politics for some reason. No offense meant, but this movie would have SUCKED if he was the politician. Seriously. That would have been one of the biggest miscasts in film history. So it's a good thing John Wayne was more patriotic than vitriolic. Thankfully they ended up casting a pessimist (0r someone willing to act like one) and the movie turned out great. I would definitely recommend anyone and everyone to watch this film, especially people like me who are cynical about the whole political process.

Well that's it for 1949, way too positive if you ask me. Where ya' bad movies at? Probably in 2011, which might be my next entry. I think I'll make it through 1948 before the Oscar telecast later this month though. So for now let's assume that my next entry will include: melancholy Danes, melancholy treasure hunters, and melancholy amnesiacs.