Funny or not, The Onion's Quvenzhané Wallis tweet was effective satire that reflected back at us.

That so many were so outraged this morning is precisely the point.  Satire at its best highlights the lesser parts of society, using amplification to reflect it back at us and make us take notice of our own behavior.  Those decrying The Onion, a satirical newspaper, for running an offensive tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis are possibly missing the point.  Obviously this wasn't someone online expressing an honest opinion about how they felt about a nine year old actress celebrating her first Oscar nomination.     It wasn't Rex Reed calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo or Brett Easton Ellis whining that Kathryn Bigelow wouldn't be considered a great director if she wasn't a hot white woman who made manly war pictures (essay).  This was an intentionally offensive, knowingly disruptive statement intended to provoke outrage and offense sent out by a technically 'fictional' twitter avatar.  Sadly, it wouldn't have been as shocking if an even slightly older woman had been called a "cunt".  Because we do *that* all the time.

Weekend Box Office (02/24/13): Identity Thief tops Oscar weekend, Snitch and Dark Skies open "okay".

I can't confirm this offhand, but I'm pretty sure Snitch has the biggest opening weekend of all time for a film based on a Frontline documentary.  The 'mandatory minimum sentences are evil' action drama debuted with $13 million this weekend.  That's not a huge figure, but it's above the sub-$8 million debuts from Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jason Statham in the last two months.  Lionsgate/Summit procured the film for just $5 million, so this is a solid win all-around.  The picture played 77% 18-49 and 53% male, earning a B from Cinemascore.  The solid 3.17x weekend multiplier, especially considering the predicted Oscar drop today, means that the film may have legs and an outside shot at $45 million.  It's not a massive success, and it means that Dwayne Johnson needs a viable franchise to be 'box office', but for a film with nothing but The Rock to sell, this isn't a bad debut at all (it's higher than the $8 million debut for 2010's Faster, for example).  Johnson still has G.I. Joe: Retaliation next month and the sure to be *huge* Fast & Furious 6 on tap for May, so this almost qualifies as his "one for me" art film.  It's a good movie that I hope finds an audience and it's clearly a better choice for action junkies than A Good Day to Die Hard.

It's what we say we want: The Oscar case *for* Argo.

Argo (review) is not my favorite film of the year.  It didn't even make my best-of-2012 list.  It had to settle for the Runner-Ups section along with fellow nominee/front-runner Lincoln, a choice that caused no end of consternation from my mother-in-law who considers both to among her favorite films of 2012.  My favorite film of 2012 is Cabin In the Woods, a film that had about as much of a chance of winning Best Picture this year as Kung Fu Panda 2 did last year.  My favorite film among those nominated is Zero Dark Thirty, which went from front-runner to also-ran after Sony made the financial choice to not fight back against the frankly shameful 'this film endorses torture!' arguments until after the film's wide release.  There are a few films that are nominated that I don't care for (Les Miserables, Silver Linings Playbook), but I'd have to say that if we're picking a Best Picture on a the basis of what film most positively represents the year that was 2012, Argo is the best and most logical choice.

Why Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar snub is a moral outrage.

For a general discussion of the Oscar nominations, go HERE.

In the broad scheme of things, the only Oscar snub that qualifies as an outrage is the omission of Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director.  Not because it's a bigger slight than snubbing Ben Affleck or Samuel L. Jackson or the like, but because her omission is clearly the result of the kind of smear campaign against the film that has made politics next-to-impossible for the last decade or so.  It's the same kind of baseless campaign that prevented Susan Rice from being nominated for Secretary of State, it's the same mud-slinging that caused Obama to (wrongly) dismiss Van Jones early in his term, thus providing the GOP their first scalp.  And to add insult to injury, Bigelow has been deemed wholly responsible by those who wrongly believe that Zero Dark Thirty endorses torture, leaving screenwriter Mark Boal (who got a nomination) off the hook.  If this kind of stuff happens every time someone tries to make a challenging film for adults, then we can kiss such things goodbye from those who seek award recognition.  If this is a sign of things to come, where Hollywood becomes as frenzied and maddening as politics, then that is a troubling thing indeed.

Review: The Impossible (2012) is a disturbingly whitewashed, yet unquestionably effective disaster drama.

The Impossible

2012
105 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

As a technical exercise and an acting treat, The Impossible is pretty terrific. You want an authentic look at both the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and what it was probably like to actually survive such a thing?  Juan Antonio Bayona gives you exactly that.  The film is a peerless technical representation of mass disaster and a wonderfully acted melodrama.  The big question, and this may well be a deal-breaker for many, is whether one can justify the relative white-washing at play.  In short, while the lead family has been altered from Spanish to British (ie - somewhat Caucasian to lily-white Caucasian) the bigger and more disconcerting issue is how the indigenous locals have been turned into cameo players in their own story.  I don't know the details of what actually occurred at that exact location in Thailand back in 2004, nor do I know the exact demographic make-up of the affected population at this specific area (that specific area being a new tourist-friendly hotel frequented by traveling Europeans).  But it's hard to ignore not only the overt whiteness of the lead family but the film's continual cutting to white victims and white mourners over and over again, while the actual Thailand population is reduced to faceless corpses and proverbial caretakers.  That I can possibly look past this in good conscience is due to the sheer quality of the film itself, and my own ignorance of what is fiction versus non-fiction in this allegedly true story.

Review: Amour (2012) is an unflinching, devastating, but ultimately humane look at what awaits us all.

Amour

2012
127 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Michael Haneke's Amour is among the best films of the year, yet I'm not entirely sure who I would recommend it to.  It is fearlessly acted by its leads (Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) and it is insightful in ways beyond the mere clinical exhibition of its subject matter. It is the best film about aging since Sarah Polley's Away From Her and even that Alzheimer's drama has a few moments of release that Haneke is unwilling to provide here.  But it is almost cruel in its depiction of the inevitable and for those not predisposed to seek out cinema for cinema's sake, it is a film that will bring only discomfort and pain.    It is arguably a masterwork, but it's not a movie I ever intend to watch again.  Whether you feel the need to watch it once, that's up to you.

Review: Django Unchained (2012) entertains but is oddly generic and surprisingly conventional.

Django Unchained

2012
165 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Quentin Tarantino arguably made Django Unchained (teaser/trailer) because he wanted to try his hand at a Spaghetti Western, and that's basically what he has done.  Alas, the film is little more than a genre exercise, with little more than the obvious role reversals to justify its artistic existence.  That is is mostly entertaining and well-acted across the board goes without saying, but after the slyly subversive Inglorious Basterds, I frankly expect more from the filmmaker.  For a filmmaker known for narrative surprises and challenging the expectations of his audience, his newest entry is oddly conventional and almost timid in terms of how it approaches its subject matter.  Oh, it surely qualifies as another film focusing on revisionist revenge-fantasy history, as well as how we often use the cinematic lens to comprehend the least savory parts of our history, but as a stand-alone film it is lacking in substance.  It is a good movie, for sure, but it is quite frankly not a very good film.

Weekend Box Office (12/16/12): The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens with an expected (and record) $84 million.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (review/teaser/trailer) basically opened like a Lord of the Rings film, give or take various variables.  Its $84.7 million estimated debut clobbered the December record, which is the $77 million earned by Avatar ($77 million, $80 million adjusted for inflation) and I Am Legend ($77.2 million, $89 million adjusted for inflation) in 2009 and 2007 respectively.  It soundly thumps the various other Lord of the Rings films, but this is where it gets tricky.  The prior Peter Jackson Middle Earth pictures opened on the weekend before Christmas week, which I've long argued is the best weekend of the year to open your picture.  So the fact that The Hobbit opened a week earlier makes this number a little more impressive, although the pre-Christmas weekend is more about legs than opening weekend.  On the other hand, the prior films all opened on a Wednesday, meaning that their would-be opening weekend was spread out of five days.  And of course, we have to take into account nine years of inflation and the whole 3D/IMAX price bump. So purely looking at inflation and comparing the Fri-Sun portion, this opening is about on par with The Two Towers ($62 million, but $84 million adjusted for inflation) and well ahead of Fellowship of the Ring's ($72 million, but adjusted-for-inflation $66 million) and King Kong ($50 million, and $62 million adjusted for inflation) for what that's worth. It's a bit behind the $72 million/$95 million opening of The Return of the King.  

Review: Les Misérables (2012), via rigid source fidelity, sadly makes us question our love for the original show.

Les Misérables

2012
155 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

The harshest thing I can say about Tom Hooper's Les Misérables (teaser/trailer) is that I can only imagine those who have not seen the original show wondering what the fuss has been all about.  The film is painfully faithful, but film is a wholly different medium than live theater and the translation doesn't quite work.  The picture is full of fine performances, almost too good in fact. The film's much-discussed live on-set singing pretty much works, but it only yields inherently different results in a few occasions.  But still, the overall production feels akin to seeing the show for the first time, and that's not a good thing.  What perhaps felt epic on stage comes off onscreen like a rushed and overstuffed story with occasionally inexplicable narrative choices and occasionally misplaced character emphasis.  It comes off feeling less like one of the great epics of Broadway and more like a simplified and audience-pleasing version of the original Victor Hugo novel.

How Zero Dark Thirty's unflinching objectivity opens the film up to simplistic accusations of ideological partisanship.

Spoiler warning, I suppose...

There is going to be a lot of debate over the next few months about just where on the political divide Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty happens to sit.  I argued in my review that it merely looks at what happened and what was done without explicitly endorsing or condemning it.  But in our somewhat simplistic media age, impartiality can be seen as being politically partial, depending on what your film happens to contain.  I've written about this before, back when The Green Zone came out (read it HERE).  Just because a film is about evil corporations who kill people doesn't mean it's intended as liberal propaganda and just because a pregnant woman chooses to not have an abortion doesn't mean it's an anti-choice screed.  I'd argue part of the point of Zero Dark Thirty is that non-fiction rarely falls into specific political or ideological dogmas.  At a glance, the film shows brutal torture ordered by Republican President Bush eliciting information that allowed for Democratic President Obama to order a mass killing by US troops in a sovereign country with only a token belief that the people about to be gunned down were the intended targets.  The film dares to neither explicitly condemn the torture nor remotely take joy in the climactic execution, presenting both events as morally reprehensible even if perhaps necessary to the proverbial 'greater good'.  Even if you argue that the film states that torture may well have worked (although the film certainly acknowledges that the carrot works better than the stick) and that we certainly 'got' Bin Laden, it also argues that we damn well should take a moment to inquire at what cost our 'victory' was achieved.

Weekend Box Office (12-09-12): Playing For Keeps bombs as the moviegoing world awaits the Christmas rush.

The decision by Warner Bros. to move The Gangster Squad (trailer) to January, 2013 and Universal's choice to move Les Miserables from next weekend to Christmas day should have caused a giant game of musical chairs.  It didn't, and now we have the second December weekend in a row (with one more to come) with just a single new release).  Meanwhile the last two weekends of the year are going to be jam-packed with major films (Jack Reacher, This Is Forty, DJango Unchained, The Guilt Trip, etc.), all of which could have *easily* topped the box office and/or dominated the competition had they opened this weekend or last weekend.  But weekends that are barren of new releases save for a Gerald Butler vehicle tend to be very boring box office weekends indeed.

Deserved but denied: Six Oscar-worthy contenders who almost certainly won't get that nomination...

I come not to complain about what will be nominated in this year's Oscar race, but rather to shed a light on some under-loved and/or undervalued examples of 2012's film line-up.  Be it strong performances, sharp screenplays, and everything in between, here is just a sampling of the people and things that darn-well deserve a nomination but all-but surely won't get one.  Obviously share your own in the comments section:

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Walken in Seven Psychopaths:
This Martin McDonagh gem turned out to be a splendidly brilliant and insightful riff on both violent gangster melodramas and the very nature of how we romanticize fictional doers of violence. Pretty much everyone in the large cast delivers solid work, but Christopher Walken stands out and turns in what I consider one of the finest performances of his long career.  I don't want to spoil too much about his mournful and thoughtful 'psychopath', but the work is a perfect blend of 'Christopher Walken the gimmick' and 'Christopher Walken the fantastic actor'.  It's witty and moving work, and it acts not only as the film's proverbial heart-and-soul but an iconic take on Walken's entire career.

I loathe the merely mediocre The Silver Linings Playbook because it's considered Oscar-worthy. Fair/Unfair?

I didn't much care for The Silver Linings Playbook.  I found it to be a painfully formulaic romantic comedy that seems to think making its lead duo a little quirky justifies a paint-by-numbers screenplay and rather thin characterizations.  I think the film's strong and painful first act, where David O Russell doesn't shy away from the heartache and constant stress of living with a mentally-disturbed adult, gives way to a 'up with quirky people' rom-com where Jennifer Lawrence basically plays a fantasy fuck toy and/or manic pixie dream girl who exits purely to pull Bradley Cooper out of his mental anguish (that she may win an Oscar for this of all performances merits an essay in-and-of-itself).  I think Robert De Niro's alleged 'comeback' turn is wildly overrated, as he is given little to do aside from two token monologues.  And the film goes completely off the rails into contrivance in its final thirty minutes, with the kind of inexplicable 'raised stakes' that would have been laughed off the screen in a vehicle starring the likes of Kathryn Heigl or Jennifer Aniston.  Yet here we sit where this completely generic and contrived romantic comedy is considered an Oscar contender.  So the question becomes, is it right that I carry more negative feelings about the picture primarily because of its alleged award-worthy status?  

Review: Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (2012) is a powerful tale of the costs of 'justifiable' violence.

Zero Dark Thirty

2012
150 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (trailer) is a refreshing 'just the facts' procedural drama that maintains an almost allergic aversion to melodrama.  The film is ice-cold throughout, maintaining an even-keeled approach to the decade-long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, pausing only occasionally to acknowledge the aftermath of violence.  At a glance, the film is basically the Jessica Chastain show, as she quickly becomes the center of the film and dominates the proceedings even when the focus shifts in the final thirty minutes.  Hers is a dynamite movie star performance, one that is not only Oscar-worthy but will likely win her the statute in a few months time.  The film surrounding her is an intense and often fascinating 'inside' look at both the 'dark side' and the mundane side of the would-be War on Terror.  It's a nasty bit of business, and its matter-of-fact presentation of unsavory details could be read as an implicit endorsement, just as its climactic brutality denies you the catharsis you might be expecting.  It merely exists to tell its story, not tell you how to feel about it.

Review: Killing Them Softly (2012) is a strong crime drama slightly bogged down by overly explicit subtext.

Killing Them Softly

2012
95 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly has, from a conversational standpoint, one of the finest screenplays of the last few years.  It is a relatively low-key crime drama, filled with crusty character actors doing chewy character turns.  But more importantly, certainly more importantly than its sledgehammer subtext (more on that later), it is an absolute revelation in terms of the art of cinematic conversation.  The film is rich with authentic dialogue and thoughtful discussion, both of the film's issues and of matters related merely to character.  Frankly most of the film involves two or three characters conversing with each other, so it's a good thing the dialogue is so darn good.  When the film stays within its own world, it is a top-notch entry in its sub-genre.  Its only real fault is in trying too hard to achieve topicality and relevance, to the point where the subtext becomes explicit text.

Weekend Box Office (11-11-12): Skyfall opens with $90 million while Lincoln earns $900k on 11 screens.

Opening with a flurry of positive buzz and already-cemented megahit status overseas, James Bond finally returned to US theaters this weekend with San Mendes's Skyfall (review 01/review 02).  The film easily crushed the opening weekend record of the 007 series, earning a massive $90 million in its debut.  This also includes $2.2 million earned via its Thursday IMAX-only release, as the film earned $13.1 million in IMAX theaters since Thursday (the large-scale format's biggest non-summer opening ever).  The picture played 60% male and 75% over 25-years old. For comparison, the last six 007 films had the six biggest weekends of the franchise, with Pierce Brosnan's GoldenEye moving 007 into modern-day blockbuster territory back in 1995.  For the record, the numbers are $26 million (GoldenEye), $25 million (Tomorrow Never Dies), $35 million (The World Is Not Enough), $47 million (Die Another Day), $40 million (Casino Royale), and $67 million for Quantum of Solace four Novembers ago. Not only is this the biggest opening weekend for the 007 series by a long shot, it eclipsed the opening weekends of all but the last four series entries by the end of Friday (if you want to play the inflation card, it still eclipsed the openings of all-but the last six entries by the end of Friday). Even though the overall consensus on Quantum of Solace was mediocre, four years of waiting but an ability to market Skyfall using the whole "50 years of Bond" angle made this one just as much of an event, if not more so, than the last few entries.  

Review: Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012) is a mostly engrossing, richly moral inside-baseball political drama.

Lincoln
2012
145 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

In terms of long-gestating passion projects, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (trailer/background) is much closer to Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd than Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York.  In what may qualify as irony, the film is slightly undone mostly by its perceived duty to be incredibly important.  Yes, the film is about an very important person (Abraham Lincoln) during what may arguably be the most important portion of his life (his month-long battle to bring about a constitutional end to slavery), but Spielberg's refreshingly micro-targeted biopic is at its best when it is lightest on its feet, telling what almost amounts to a political caper set at the end of the Civil War. Tony Kushner's literate and thoughtful screenplay (based on a portion of Doris Kearns Goodwin's A Team of Rivals) stages what amounts to a 1860s-set series arc from The West Wing, as a wise president blessed with verbal diarrhea articulates grand ideas and espouses telling anecdotes while those on his staff do the political dirty work to make great things happen. As a look into how politics worked in the mid-1800s, and of course how it still works today, it's surprisingly funny and endlessly compelling.  But the need to create a defining portrait of our sixteenth president creates both needlessly solemn subplots and some narrative repetition that prevents true greatness.    

Review: Flight (2012) is generic and conventional would-be character study that never takes off.

Flight

2012
140 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

That Robert Zemeckis's Flight does not resemble the film that is being advertised (trailer) it not in itself a crime.  Marketing is often a game of misdirection and, considering Zemeckis's reputation for spoiler-filled trailers, it's a little ironic that his return to live-action film making is advertised is such a bait-and-switch fashion.  But while I'll honestly admit that I would have preferred the film being advertised versus the film that was delivered, the core flaw of this well-acted Denzel Washington vehicle is that it's not a very compelling version of what it is.  In short it's *not* a character-driven mystery involving a plane crash and how exactly it went down and who or what was responsible.  It is simply a character study of a functioning alcoholic.  What grounds Flight is the fact that it's simple not a very good film about a functioning alcoholic, as several major narrative choices work to lessen our interest and emotional investment.

Les Miserables gets character posters and a very familiar theatrical one-sheet. Can't friggin wait...!

The four character posters, highlighting the four lead actors/characters (Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfriend, and likely Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway) are after the jump.  I have little to add only to repeating my foaming-at-the-mouth excitement from earlier discussions of this project.  December 25th, or whenever Universal lets me see this thing, can't come soon enough.  The above comparison, which basically speaks for itself, came from Average Film Reviews.

Scott Mendelson

If you have the time, watch the entire 42-minute Steven Spielberg Q&A from last night's Lincoln screenings.

I will hopefully be seeing Lincoln when the regular press screenings begin, but for now here is the complete 42-minute Q&A that followed a national sneak of sorts that took place last night at various AMC theaters (the LA one started at 4:30pm, so I didn't even try to sneak in).  Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis were in attendance.  For now, enjoy this rather enjoyable video. if the embed crashes or doesn't work, the link is HERE.

Scott Mendelson