Oz the Great and Powerful

Alternate Title:  The Wonderful Wizard of Schlock

One sentence synopsis:   A carnival magician is transported to the magical land of Oz, where he must fulfill a prophecy to destroy the Wicked Witch.


Things Havoc liked: Say what you will about this movie's qualities, it has an awesome title.

L Frank Baum's Oz series is a never-ending source of astonishment to me, if only because of the sheer bulk of the thing. I knew only that there was a book and the classic movie made therefrom, but it turns out Baum wrote no fewer than fourteen Oz books, with another forty-odd being published by a host of authors afterwards, which would appear to make Oz the fantasy equivalent of Lovecraft (there's a crossover I'd like to see). Having never seen a thing from all this material save of course for the 1939 Judy Garland movie, I could only assume that this prequel is derived from canonical sources, and that given everything here, the film-writers were free to plunder a near-infinite quantity of material for their adaptation of what happened before Dorothy found the red shoes.

Some adaptations, reboots, or sequels, don't even seem to be aware of the existence of their previous work. No such difficulties here. The opening sequence of the film, the first 30 minutes or so of it, is a beat-for-beat remake of the opening for Wizard of Oz. We are introduced via a sepia-toned crop-formatted sequence to a series of characters that we will never see again for the rest of the film, but whose actors and voices will follow us into the land of Oz itself. This transitions, following a tornado, into a wonderful technicolor (or in this case, 3D) panorama, showcasing the miracles of modern film-graphics. Though I saw the movie in 2D, 3D and the latest digital effects are here intended to stand in for the miracle that was color in 1939, but the design doesn't just pile images on us. Backdrops are created to look rather uncannily like the expansive matte paintings of yesteryear, generally with more success than failure, while the world has a vibrancy and broad, pastel palette that one doesn't often see, even in this age of oversaturated CG.

Though the movie is theoretically about the Wizard (more on him later) the focus is oddly enough on the three witches Glinda, Evanora, and Theodora, of various, shifting allegiances good or evil. A fair amount of time is spent establishing the three of them, particularly Evanora, played by Rachel Weisz. Easily the best actor in the film (helped by getting the best material), Weisz's associated antics are the most realistic (not an attribute in high supply around Oz) and the easiest to follow. Though she hams it up when necessary, she provides a nice sheen of grounding to a story that could very easily fly completely to pieces. Several of the smaller details are appreciated as well. A visit to a village made entirely of porcelain results in the Wizard finding a small girl made of china, who joins the inevitable "party" as they make their way towards destiny. The China Girl verges on annoying at times, but the movie manages to keep her bearable, while the effects used to produce her are, in this case at least, genuinely fascinating, putting aside the big-budget spectacle in favor of real texture and sharpness to a fictional character.


Things Havoc disliked:  You may have noticed that I've finished with the stuff I liked without discussing the main character, most of the rest of the cast, the writing, story, and cinematography. I think you know why.

First of all, what is Sam Raimi doing here? I understand the desire to branch out, but this is so far from Raimi's strengths that I cannot for the life of me figure out what he was thinking. Raimi cut his teeth on low-budget horror-schlock such as Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, or Drag me to Hell before breaking into the superhero business with the original Spiderman trilogy. I love these movies, but none of them are anything like Wizard of Oz, and whoever decided that Raimi, who never met a slapstick routine he didn't like, should be given the keys to a reboot of a 70-year-old fantastical wonderland classic should have their damned heads examined. Raimi, characteristically, fills the movie with wacky pratfall nonsense, particularly in the first half when he simply stops the movie for about ten minutes so that the 3D audience can get their money's worth. When things aren't being thrown at the screen, we instead get pratfalls and slapstick, not perhaps to the extent of the Transformers atrocities, but plenty. Many of these involve Tony Cox (of Bad Santa and the Epic Movie series) or Bill Cobbs (the poor filmmaker's Morgan Freeman), neither of whom belong anywhere near a movie about Oz.

But Cox and Cobbs are secondary actors. Let's talk about the main actors, such as James Franco, playing Oscar Diggs, a carnival magician turned Wizard-savior. I respect the hell out of Franco's absurd commitment to his craft and truly mad work and study schedule he follows religiously, but I've never liked him in damn near any movie he's been in, not even movies widely regarded as tours-de-force (127 Hours, for instance). His work in the Spiderman films was among the low points of the series, and he singlehandedly ruined Rise of the Planet of the Apes for me with his laconic, wooden style, a style he carries over, I'm sad to say, into this film. It's not that Franco's horrible, he's really not, but he can't act worth a damn beyond his usual vaguely-stoned, detached schtick, and while there's roles that works for, I assume, this is not among them. There's no real sense of wonder (or for that matter, sincerity) from Franco's performance, to the point where, when the movie calls for him to play the actual Wizard of Oz, complete with floating smoke-head, pyrotechnics, and fiery wrath, he comes across sounding like a parent trying to scare their five-year-old into thinking there's a ghost in the closet (Oooooooo! I'm the big bad Wizard of Ozzzzzz!). Granted, the screenplay does him no favors, sending him on a boring, predictable rote-telling of the "hero's journey", wherein he must learn to overcome his greed and be the good person he always was etc etc... But even pedestrian material can be elevated by a great performance, and Franco's not up to the task.

Neither, by the way, are Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis, playing the other two witches. I haven't seen Kunis since Black Swan, and based on this performance, I'm in no hurry for the next encounter. To describe her character fully would enter the realm of spoilers, but suffice to say she spends the majority of the movie either making a pastiche-quality attempt to imitate a classic character from the original film, or creeping out the rest of the cast and the audience with a weird, disjointed performance. The best thing I can say about her character involves a makeup effect. Williams, meanwhile, playing Glinda the Good, is caught helplessly between the roles of "mentor who sees the true potential in our hapless protagonist" and damsel in distress, possessing neither the necessary gravitas for the former role, nor the proper chemistry with Franco for the latter one. The result is an uneven, bland performance, uninteresting even when the scriptwriter decides to steal the wizard duel from Fellowship of the Ring wholesale and present us with a witch's duel which, on paper, should work, but thanks to its inept blocking and terrible pacing, simply does not. The best that can be said of Zach Braff meanwhile, who voices a winged monkey that joins Oz on his journey, is that he doesn't stoop to Jar-Jar Binks levels of annoyance. But then that's hardly glowing praise.


Final thoughts:    That's really the story of Oz the Great and Powerful. There's nothing wrong with a fresh look at Oz in principle, but neither Raimi, nor these actors, nor the screenwriters seem to have had any real ideas of substance to bring to it. Even Danny Elfman's score is instantly forgettable, not even attempting to approach Herbert Strothart's fantastic contribution to the original. Mired in modern contrivances and lacking any genuine charm, the movie simply has nothing to offer beyond a tired tramp through a thin knock-off of a classic film. Not being an obsessive fan of the original, I can't exactly cry betrayal over this tepid remake, but if you're looking for a movie to recapture some of the magic of the original Wizard of Oz, then I'm afraid this one's nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Final Score:  4/10

Alternate Title:  The Power of Positive Thinking

One sentence synopsis:   A young Chilean advertising producer is asked to help run the campaign to vote down Augusto Pinochet's regime in the plebiscite of 1988.


Things Havoc liked: I've been waiting for a movie like this, I think. One that deals with the actual business of getting people to vote the way you want them to, come hell or high water. What methods you use to convince people to take action, even in defense of their own presumed best interests, are not always as simple as the straightforward polemics that one hears from talking heads and pundits. The mechanics of winning an election, whatever the subject or conditions, are fascinating to me, and thus I was predisposed to like this movie from the start.

For those who've never heard of it, No is a movie from Chile, set in the late 80s, when the rule of Augusto Pinochet had long-since solidified into a sort of society-wide apathy. In response to escalating pressure from abroad to legitimize his regime, Pinochet decided in 1988 to hold a plebiscite to determine whether or not he should remain in power for another eight years. Both the government and the opposition would get television time in the days running up to the election to present their cases, which is where our main character comes in. Rene, a comfortably middle-class advertising director, with a young son and an ex-wife who is considerably more politically radical than him, is gradually brought into the forces of the "No" camp, and asked to craft for them a political campaign to stamp out Pinochet forever.

And what a task he has ahead of him. Beyond question, the element of this film I loved the most was the sheer "reality" of it all. Rene's co-workers are an eclectic collection of dissidents of all sorts, radicals, moderates, socialists (the repeated insistence on ever-more rarefied terms to avoid the word 'communism' become hilarious), exiles, indigenous rights activists, students, lawyers, anarchists, the works. Merely getting them all to agree to participate in the referendum in the first place is an exercise in near-maddening futility, as fifteen years of bitter resentments are not easily set aside in the service of actually "winning". The key issue is Rene's strategy, which is to play up the positive aspects of freedom and democracy rather than yet another kludgy sermon on the evils of Pinochet. Yet when he unveils this presentation to the assembled party leaders, one of them stands up and violently denounces him and his team as collaborators who wish to "marginalize" the suffering he and his people have undergone. Refusing to hear even a word edgewise, he tells Rene to fuck himself and storms out of the building, never to be seen again. I have met these people, people so blinded by the bitterness of their own political grudges that they refuse to allow the subject of the political conversation be anything besides the evil done to them, willing to brand anyone who simply wants to win as a traitor. Yet doggedly, Rene sticks to his message, that the only possible way to galvanize a people so brutalized by Pinochet for so long is to give them a vision of a future worth seeing. Perhaps it's just a personal reaction, but I found the character, and the voluminous flack he receives from every side (radical, moderate, and reactionary), highly compelling. Though a liberal opposed to Pinochet, Rene's exhaustion with those among the leftists who want to do nothing but complain about Pinochet to one another is palpable. "I'm sick of your fucking denunciations" he shouts at one point to an aide who suggests holding another press conference to condemn the government. It's a line I could well have uttered.

The movie is shot on what looks like either 8mm film or VHS tape, giving it a grainy, washed out look, with an editing structure that cuts rapidly between scenes without missing a beat in whatever conversation was being had. The result almost resembles found footage at times, and blends seamlessly well into the whole lunatic design and feel of the late eighties (a scene where Rene and his young son sit in front of their brand new microwave and watch it heat soup made me smile). The style lends itself to a highly-realistic feel, helped in no small part by the character relationships as established and presented. Rene's boss at the ad agency, Luis, is a conservative supporter of the government, who eventually winds up working for the rival "Yes" campaign. Yet rather than the expected scene wherein the two characters rupture with one another amidst fireworks and drama, the two continue to work together perfectly normally outside the campaign, despite Luis' ever-escalating attempts to cajole, bribe, or even plead with Rene to stop working for the opposition. At one point Rene responds to an ever-escalating series of bribes all with "No, fire me", fully aware that Luis cannot and will not fire him, as of course is Luis. What might sound like melodrama is made almost comedic by the fact that the conversation is taking place on set of an advertisement shoot, with both parties being interrupted every ten seconds by actors or lighting technicians as they try to do their jobs. Similarly, when Rene's radical ex-wife mocks him as a stooge of the government for even believing Pinochet will allow the referendum at all, the result is not an impassioned speech or a drag-out fight, but the sort of sudden subject shift that naturally comes from two people who know one another well enough to know what the other is going to do and say.


Things Havoc disliked: Of course, refreshing as this style is, it does leave us with the ugly fact of just why most movies spice everything up with drama and confrontation. Removing all of the interpersonal conflict (or muting it down to a nearly-invisible level) doesn't render the film boring, but it does leave the filmmakers with something of a quandary as to what they can actually show us for the two hours this movie runs. Their answer, by and large, is political ads, most of which I must assume were lifted directly from the actual campaigns in question. These ads are interesting, in a sort of weird retro-style, but only to a point. Around halfway through, the movie freezes the characters altogether in favor of an unending succession of three different types of scenes: Scenes of politicians and activists (opposition and government alike) discussing or filming their respective ads, scenes of those ads showing, and reaction shots of the characters watching the ads of the other side in silence. These scenes contain interesting little moments (the government ads often look shoddy because none of the first-rate choreographers or artists will work for them), but given that the thrust of both sides' arguments is established early on in the movie (Democracy is Fun vs. Chaos without Pinochet), it's hard to shake the feeling that the movie is spinning its wheels through a fair portion of it. This tendency is re-enforced with the addition of several enormous (five+ minute) steadicam shots of Rene walking through a "situation" of some sort. When that situation is a brutal government crackdown on an opposition demonstration, the result is tension and interest, but not so much when it's him walking through a celebrating crowd or an advertisement set


Final thoughts:    This isn't a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, No is one of the better films I've seen on the subject, effortlessly cutting through the pretensions and story "dressing" that so many films like it fall prey to. But these lengthy, almost empty stretches of film really strike me as a wasted opportunity. At the end of the movie (spoiler alert), when Rene returns to work, unchanged in circumstance save for a brief mention at a pitch meeting that he was associated with the No campaign as a sort of resume point, the intention (I think) is to show how the election, big as it was, did not instantly change people's lives. Yet in showing no consequences to any of the decisions that the characters made, it makes that point too well. An election happened, a dictator was deposed, the sun came up the next day, and the world went on. Perhaps that's how the world works, but if the subject was so inconsequential, why make a movie about it in the first place?

Good material sells itself. But a filmmaker has to have the courage to present his topic as worthy of the audience's time.

Final Score:  7/10

The Gatekeepers

Alternate Title:  The Men on the Wall

One sentence synopsis:   The six retired heads of the Shin Bet discuss the nature of Israel and Palestine's enduring conflict.


Note from the Author: This movie, and for that matter, this subject, defies facile divisions. As such, rather than review the movie in my traditional method, I will simply be expressing such thoughts as I have regarding it and its subject matter.




It has been years, literal years, since I heard anything reasonable said on the subject of Israel and Palestine. Mention Israel, or for that matter Judaism in these parts, and you will more likely than not be treated to a virulent diatribe regarding the putrid evils of the state of Israel, all who support it, and if you are unlucky, Jews in general. And should one go to states such as Texas or Georgia, the mere suggestion that Israel is deserving of criticism will be met with violent opposition from those whose rejection of the Palestinians and all their works approaches almost religious levels of fervor. I have seen and heard the most horrific things being said to those who dared offer their opinions on the subject, and heard in turn truly vile distortions of reality, common sense, and human decency offered up in the guise of "analysis" of the situation in the Holy Land, both from talking heads and ordinary people. And yet, in the midst of all this vitriol and hate, along comes a film that asks no more than our attention for a couple hours, as half a dozen old men recount to us the way things are in Israel, how they got to be that way, and where, they believe, things should go from here.

The Sherut haBitachon haKlali, more commonly known by the Hebrew acronym Shin Bet, is Israel's lesser-known, but arguably more important secret service. If the Mossad is Israel's CIA, Shin Bet is their NSA, responsible for internal security, counterterrorism, and the protection of both the populace and senior officials from whatever threats might arise. The six men that this film introduces us to are the six living former heads of the organization, representing between them an unbroken line of succession covering the twenty-four years from 1988 to 2011. Before and during this period, these men oversaw and participated in every major Israeli counter-terrorist endeavor since the Six Day War of 1967, and the film consists of them talking about these experiences, no more, no less. From the establishment of networks of informers in the West Bank to the campaign of targeted assassinations against leaders of Hamas, through scandals, Intifadas, peace accords and terrorist attacks, the movie is simply the six leaders of Shin Bet explaining themselves in as much detail as they can, buttressed only on occasion by prompts from an unseen interviewer.

And what explanations they have. The film uses the evolution of Israel's relationship with Palestine and the on-again, off-again efforts towards or away from peace as its narrative thread, and the men describing what happened do so with a complete disregard for equivocation and codewords that is almost unheard of in modern politics. "Forget about morality in a War on Terror," says one. "Find morality in terrorists first." Yet another admits, almost with a smile, that to the Palestinians, of course, he was a terrorist, something he came to understand and even accept. Descriptions of torture techniques used against recalcitrant Palestinian prisoners stray perhaps a bit from the mark, what with references to "moderate physical compulsion", yet the heads admit that there were incidents where men died under torture. Some express regret, even anger that such a thing should happen. Others defend the fact that these men were holding literal "ticking time-bomb" information that led to saving dozens of civilian lives. One outright admits "I was tired of seeing live terrorists in court." But none try to duck the issue.

It is, of course, impossible to bring up the subject of Israel without bringing ones own worldview and opinions into it, for me as much as anyone. Pro-Israeli as I am, though not to the point of rendering the state immune to criticism, I found, I will admit, much within the film to confirm what I previously believed. The movie glances at, but does not belabor the point that Shin Bet's actions, however misguided or foolish, were generally aimed at reducing or eliminating civilian deaths, primarily in Israel, but also in Palestine, particularly as the extreme right in Israel began stoking its own flames of hatred and madness. By contrast Hamas, and the other organizations Shin Bet was pitted against, were explicitly aimed at causing the maximum number of civilian deaths, Israeli or otherwise, in the service of goals related to a permanent state of war and genocide. One of the officers recounts how he met his counterpart from the PLO in a peace conference in London, and was told that the Palestinians would ultimately win, if only because "our victory is to make you and your children suffer." Two more explain how a pair of botched operations and situations (the extra-judicial killing of two Palestinian bus hijackers, and the deaths of a dozen civilians during an air strike on a Hamas cell) resulted in their immediate resignations, and the fall of the Israeli governments which oversaw them. If this was Justice, it was a thin sort for the relatives of those who died, yet the men point out that had Hamas performed such actions, the consequences would have been lionization and praise, followed by a repetition of the attacks as often as possible. That said, does the simple fact that Israel acted in a more forthright manner than Hamas (a low bar if ever there was one) excuse such actions? None of the men present think so. Several become angry, furious even, over the lapses and errors that led such things to occur. None, to my recollection, attempt to pass the buck.

Yet for all the confirmation I received from this film, I received plenty of surprises, checks, and disabusals as well. The men at the heart of the Shin Bet see a very different side of the major figures of the Middle East than the rest of us do, and I was surprised how much variance there was between these perceptions. Figures like Golda Meir, lionized by the Israeli left as a champion of peace, or Menachim Begen, who shared a Nobel peace prize for signing peace with Egypt, are considered by these men to have been completely uninterested in the Palestinians, their grievances, or the peace process. Begen is remembered by one to have bragged about how many settlements he had overseen the foundation of. Conversely, right-wing figures such as Ariel Sharon, remembered nowadays as a blood-drinking warmonger, is portrayed here as having had the most concern of any Israeli PM over the collateral effects of the targeted assassination theory. At one point, one of the Shin Bet directors speaks of pleading with him to authorize a strike to destroy much of Hamas' leadership, insisting that to hold back would be to guarantee more Israeli dead. Sharon refused to attack. Other revelations included the sheer extent of contact between Shin Bet and the relevant Palestinian security authorities, with whom they seem to have worked fairly closely, through Intifadas and even wars. "We are not helping you for your sake," one of the heads was told by a Palestinian officer. "We are doing it so that we can one day have a state." Much time is spent discussing the rise of Jewish terrorists within Israel, and Shin Bet's efforts to head them off, defusing, among other things, a plot to literally blow up the Dome of the Rock. Other attacks were not defused in time, including the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli ultranationalist, something several of them regard as their greatest failure.

Is this movie biased in favor of Israel? Maybe. I don't think so. It regards the aspirations of the Palestinian people as self-evidently justified, talks of the various upheavals and intifadas as not merely natural, but obvious and predictable outgrowths of Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories. "We as good as planned for it" says one, throwing his hands up in disgust. Is it one-sided? Yes, but the purpose is not to produce artificial 'balance', but simply to illustrate who these faceless men were, and what they think of what they did. And indeed, the opinions we receive are far more balanced than one might accept. Every single one of these former terrorist-hunting heads of intelligence, men whose lives were sought by their enemies, and who sought and took the lives of dozens and hundreds of would-be terrorists, is publicly and unequivocally in favor of advancing peace by any means. "Coming out of this job, you naturally become something of a leftist" says one, arguing in favor of shunting Israel away from its religious wing and fulfilling the two-state solution for Palestine, whatever the short-term cost. Of all six men, the one most militant in defense of his policies, also makes the claim that Israel should talk to "everyone, absolutely everyone, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, even Ahmadinejad," if it has the slightest chance of accomplishing anything. All of them make distinctions between the 'tactics' of their operations, which they claim were highly successful, and the overall 'strategy' of long-term peace, which they claim was entirely non-existent for most of their tenures. "Killing them [Hamas leaders] did reduce attacks, but did not produce moderation," admits one. The purpose of the film is not to argue for facile solutions, though some are suggested, nor to beat drums of Israeli nationalism or terrorism or any other hot button issue. It is, and remains, six men with a unique perspective, discussing their work like adults. Insofar as they can be self-critical, they make the attempt. Most men in their position would not.

Roger Ebert and I have disagreed many times on this little sounding board of mine, but in this matter we are of uniform opinion. In his review, he called the movie the most pro-Israeli film he had ever seen, specifically because it was so practical. "In recognizing Palestinian points of view (though without endorsing them), it sees Palestinian self-determination as synonymous with Israeli peace." Does it tell the whole story? Probably not. But unlike most rhetoric on the subject, it at least tells part of the story, a story that, if we are to grapple with this issue at all, deserves to be understood. In the end, we are left with six old men, whose job it has been to shield Israel from her enemies, expressing a desire to see an end to it all through dialogue and compromise. Insofar as it expresses these wishes, it is unexpectedly thus, as Ebert himself claimed, the most hopeful film I have seen on the subject.

Final Score:  7.5/10

The 2013 Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films

The 2013 Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films

The Animated candidates for short film were a strange bunch. I don't know if this is normal or not, but many of the films were extremely short, two of them at less than five minutes' runtime and one at less than two. I grant, this is the 'short' film category, and further grant that animation is hard to produce, but the program I was at had to append several 'honorable mentions', including a half-hour long British children's tale, in order to bring the whole thing up to an acceptable feature length. Regardless, without further ado...

The Longest Daycare: Yes, the Simpsons made an animated short film, and yes, it got nominated for an academy award. Go figure. This silent Simpsons sequence consists of Maggie being dropped off at her day care and suffering through the absurdities of staff and the ill-will of her nemesis, Baby Gerald. I'm aware that conventional wisdom has it that the Simpsons have been a terrible show since 1996, but Hipster-cred aside, I thought the gags worked well, like an accelerated version of vintage Simpsons (the 'Ayn Rand School for Tots' was a nice touch). It's light, it's inconsequential, it's short and it's reasonably funny. What more can one really ask for?

6.5/10

Fresh Guacamole: Um... what? This two-minute stop-motion short consists entirely of an unseen person making guacamole out of unconventional objects such as hand grenades, dice, poker chips, and baseballs. Clever? I suppose, but it's over in the blink of an eye, and plays more like the sort of gag a longer (though still short) film would use to establish the strange world or quirky behavior of a central character. I don't hate it, but how the hell did something this limited wind up getting a nomination?

5/10

Head over Heels: A metaphorical story about an older couple who now live in different worlds (or more specifically, by different sets of physical laws), this film managed to be fairly heartwarming despite its absurd premise and lack of dialogue. The stop motion here is extensive and expressive, and the direction gets the point of the film across easily without having to burden us with oversymbolism. The best animated films let us explore human themes through stylized methods, and that's precisely what this movie does.

7.5/10

Paperman: Disney had to have a contribution in the nominees of course, and it wasn't hard to spot. Paperman is the story of a man who meets a girl in a train station and tries, for complex reasons, to find her again by means of paper airplanes with a life of their own. Hand-drawn in 2D (not a common thing anymore), Paperman is wonderfully animated, with characters that are magnificently expressive, down to subtle, complicated emotional representations. The story is inventive enough, if not groundbreaking, though told almost entirely without sound, speech, or even color. It may lack some of the emotional strength of others on the list, but it serves to remind just how good professional animation can be, even when restricting itself to the practices of the past.

7/10

And the award for Best Animated Short Film goes to...

Adam and Dog: I defy anyone who has ever owned a dog to watch this film with dry eyes. A lush, gorgeously-animated film done in the Japanese style (no, I don't mean Anime), Adam and Dog is exactly what it says on the tin, a story about the first man meeting the first dog, and that which befalls them thereafter. Entirely silent (as were all the animated shorts, come to think of it), the film tells its story entirely through the skillfully drawn animation of a dog whose movements I would have thought rotoscoped were it not for the art style. Yet the strength of the film is not in its animation, but in its story, a simple tale of the ancient bond between humans and dogs, one which can transcend anything in the world, and maybe even things beyond.

8.5/10

The 2013 Oscar-Nominated Short Films

And now for something else completely different

Last year, around the heart of the doldrums season, I found myself faced with an impossibly poor selection of films to go and see, a time when my best options were movies like Battleship or Tyler Perry's Good Deeds. Rather than subject myself to a moviegoing experience that was guaranteed to be awful, I elected instead to go and see a collection of all of the Oscar-nominated short films, every one of which were guaranteed (I assumed) to be better than whatever crap I would otherwise be subjected to. The result was, on the whole, excellent, with several of the short films (particularly the one from Norway about the old man who massacres seagulls with a machine gun) still vivid in my mind. As such, this year, with the Doldrums in full swing and my other options consisting of films like A Good Day to Die Hard and Escape from Planet Earth, I have decided to double down, and view not only all of the Oscar-nominated shorts, but the animated shorts as well. And as the Oscars have technically not happened yet, I will therefore be giving you my personal selections for short film of the year in both categories.

Therefore, without further ado, I give you:

The 2012 Oscar-Nominated Live Action Short Film

Death of a Shadow: I'm honestly surprised to see a movie like this nominated at all. The Academy's antipathy towards anything that even hints at science fiction is well known, yet here we have a Belgian film that involves time travel, Purgatory, and steampunk soul-cameras. Death of a Shadow is about a dead Belgian soldier from WWI who must capture ten thousand souls at the moment of death for an 'art gallery' in order to return to life, all while reminiscing about a woman he met shortly before his own demise. The subject matter reads like a Steven King short story (take of that what you will), but the movie has a wonderfully creepy vibe all the way through it, without ever once segueing into actual horror. For sheer cinematographic style alone, this one gets major points.

6.5/10

Henry: Manipulative tripe. This french-Canadian soft-focus tearjerker about an old man who is losing his memory to what we assume is Alzheimers is a classic example of sentiment over substance. Within thirty seconds of the movie's commencement, I knew precisely what was going to happen and what revelations we were to be subjected to. Yes, the subject matter is incredibly sad, and yes, it drew tears from the audience, but the mere ability to reference sad things is not skill, and I've seen this particular subject handled with much greater pathos and care, for example in last year's superb Robot & Frank. Alzheimer's is a horrible, tragic thing, but it does not follow that the only action required to make a great movie is to gesture in the direction of Alzheimer's. Tragedy without context is just melodrama, material that beats the audience over the head without challenging or enhancing their understanding of the world. Shameful.

4/10

Buzkashi Boys: A bleak and starkly-photographed movie from Afghanistan, Buzkashi Boys is about a pair of young boys, one a blacksmith's son, one a homeless beggar, who are friends, and dream of escaping the misery of their lives by means of the ludicrously awesome sport of Buzkashi (or as I call it, 'Goat Polo'). Like Henry, this film is a major downer, but unlike Henry, it does not seek to manipulate its audience, instead simply showing them what Kabul has been reduced to after so many years of war, and the lives that its children must lead. A somber, quiet piece of haunting imagery, this movie was intended to kick-start Afghan cinema following years of suppression under Soviet and Taliban rule. Good luck.

7/10

Asad: Continuing our theme of 'children in Hell', we have Asad, a movie from Somalia, about a fisher-boy who wishes to become a pirate. Yet to my surprise, Asad was not another bleak descent into the pits of despair but a movie that showcases just how 'normal' life can be in even the most strained of circumstances. Being left behind by his pirate friends, threats by mujahadeen bandits from Mogadishu, near-starvation, these things are normal to Asad, who does not dwell upon the miseries of his life but simply lives. Unlike Buzkashi Boys, the film is shot in glorious, vibrant color, giving life to the setting and surrounding, and while some elements of the story make no sense (how did a pleasure yacht that size get to the coast of Somalia, and exactly what happened on it?), the movie doesn't dwell on such issues. The film ends very abruptly, even for a short film, but coming as it does from a failed state whose very name seems to be a byword for tragedy and evil, it was quite a revelation.

7.5/10

And the award for Best Live-Action Short Film goes to...

Curfew: The live action shorts this year were a collection of downers, alternating in subject matter between Alzheimer's, child-death, loss, murder, and hopelessness. At first glance, Curfew is no exception, a film about a man attempting to kill himself who is suddenly interrupted by his sister's demand that he look after the niece he is forbidden from seeing. And yet Curfew is a strange beast, poignant and tense and weird and even funny at times, despite its subject matter, expressing in the end (assuming it wishes to express anything) what the power of a single 'roadblock' can mean to one hellbent on killing himself. Though the other films (with one exception) were good movies, this one told the most complete story of them all, and a story I could easily have seen more of.

8/10

Stand Up Guys

Alternate Title:  Once More Unto the Diner

One sentence synopsis:   Two old friends are re-united for one last night on the town after one is released from his 28-year prison term.


Things Havoc liked: Al Pacino is a great actor, but it does not follow that every performance he's ever given was a great one. He has a well-deserved reputation for chewing scenery in every role since 1980, with results that vary between hilarious (Devil's Advocate), awesome (Heat), and completely stupid (The Recruit). Christopher Walken, meanwhile... well... is Christopher Walken. Descriptions seem inadequate to describe either his career or acting style, but suffice to say that Walken is not famous for the restrained, understated nature of his performances. And so we come to Stand Up Guys, a movie that pairs the two of them together and sets them loose on an unstated rust-belt town for one more night of wacky antics and fun.

Gene Siskel used to ask, whenever he was uncertain about a movie's quality, if the film was more interesting than a documentary about the same actors having lunch. This movie effectively is a documentary about these actors having lunch. And dinner. And breakfast. Pacino plays Val, a convicted gangster who has finally gotten out of prison after 28 years, while Walken is "Doc", his best friend and fellow retired gangster, who is under orders from a local crime boss (played by Mark Margolis) to kill him. Lest this sound like a spoiler, the movie itself dispenses with the pretense early on, allowing us to simply watch the antics of these two old men as they live out what they know will, for at least one of them, be their last day. Pacino, playing a man who knows, and even seems at peace with what is to happen to him, comes off the best. Tamping down his tendency to overact, his character seems more or less like a man who recognizes that he's come to the point where there's no reason to fight for his life. He initiates everything the characters do, be it stealing cars, rescuing an old friend (Alan Arkin) from a retirement home, visiting brothels, doing drugs, or dancing with women at a bar, all while Walken employs his usual deadpan (for once) to actual dramatic effect, letting small hints of the conflict inside leak out as he tries to decide when and how and whether or not he can do what he is under orders to do. It may not be the most groundbreaking material in the world, but Walken and Pacino can not only play characters like this in their sleep, and manage to get across a great deal with an uncharacteristically minimalist pair of performances.


Things Havoc disliked: The film is a series of vignettes, as the characters go to hospitals, brothels, diners, and drug dens, sometimes repeatedly, and have conversations or encounters there before going on to the next one. As narrative structures go, I've seen worse, but unfortunately not everything that the characters do really seems to amount to anything. Repeated visits to the brothel, for instance, seem to be included in the movie only for the purposes of an extended Viagra gag, or to show that Alan Arkin's character is still virile, despite his age, while an ongoing subplot involving Julianna Margulies serves no purpose at all, mostly because Margulies' performance is wooden and stilted, particularly given who she's acting next to. A sequence with a stolen car that turns out to have someone locked in the trunk is interesting enough on its own merits, but once more, does not seem connected at all to the greater story, insofar as you can even speak of one.


Final thoughts:    If it sounds like I'm struggling for things good or bad to say here, there's a reason. Stand Up Guys is ultimately a movie that isn't about a plot or story, it's a concept that was brought to film because of the inherent appeal of putting actors like Christopher Walken and Al Pacino together, regardless of the circumstances necessary to do so. That's not to say the movie has no qualities beyond the cast, the last third or so in particular is reasonably strong, but there's just not much to the film that excites the mind beyond seeing these great actors acting.

My mother, with whom I saw this film, posited that as the baby boomers and their movie icons age into retirement, we will see more films like this, paeans to the giants of that period, with whom the boomers have grown old. Last week's offering was of a similar theme, after all. Being a cinephile myself, and appreciative of these actors, I can't say I mind this trend overmuch, but if it's not too much to ask of the filmmakers in question, the next time they wish to produce a love letter to an aging acting great, could they perhaps include a movie as well?

Final Score:  6/10

Quartet

Alternate Title:  The Grand Finale

One sentence synopsis:   Four retired operatic singers must perform a celebrated piece from earlier in their careers to save their retirement home.


Things Havoc liked: Maggie Smith is a gem. She's been in something like a billion films, plays and television shows over the course of her career, and amassed a haul of awards for them so long that wikipedia had to give the list its own page. I'm aware of course that her career spans six decades, but to me and those my age, Smith has always been an old lady, defiantly disposing of the notion that there exist no roles for women above a certain age, and being continuously awesome as she does so. Yet ageless as she might appear to me, Smith, like all of us, is not eternal, and at 78, one does wonder how many years she will be able to continue her epochal career. If such a question appears overly morose to lead off a review with, then I must beg indulgence, for it is with such concepts in firmly in mind, that we turn to Maggie Smith's latest starring role, in Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut, Quartet.

Smith's character, Jean Horton, was once an opera singer of fame and renown, now long-since retired and forced at last by ill health or penury (it's never stated which) to move into Beecham House, a stately English country manor that serves as a retirement home for singers and musicians. If there's a character archetype that Smith knows how to play with her eyes closed, it's this one, a biting, superior, elderly matron, dignified and aristocratic and vaguely contemptuous of the bedlam that she finds around her. No, the role is not really a stretch from her parts in Gosford Park or Downton Abbey, but watching her react to her erstwhile surroundings and companions feels less like a rehash and more like the reprisal of a comfortably-established character. Having done this sort of thing for so long, Maggie Smith has become an almost archetypical figure, whose appearance in different films under different names feels not derivative but warmly familiar. She is, of course, spectacular in the role, but then we knew she would be going in. Indeed, it's why we came to see her.

But Smith is hardly the only one here. The core of the story centers around Smith and three other former singers, played by Tom Courtney (who looks like an older Benedict Cumberbatch, and plays Smith's dignified, and still bitter ex-husband), Pauline Collins (playing a forgetful, oblivious, motor-mouth), and Billy Connolly (getting the best lines in the film as usual as he plays a randy old goat). Every one of the above actors is a towering veteran of the English film and theater scene, with decades of work behind them, and all of them are, of course, excellent here. Connolly in particular uses some vague excuse of a stroke to explain why he refuses to filter anything he says and hit on anything walking, while Collins acts like a cheerleader on some kind of amphetamine, finding the worst possible time to say things with unerring, mathematical precision. Courtney, meanwhile is the soul of dignity, matching Smith's performance quite handily as he tries to deal with the sudden interruption of his ex-wife and the many, many years of baggage into his quiet retirement. A scene early on with Courtney discussing opera and rap with a pack of teenagers transcends the expected cliche of the out-of-touch old fart by actually letting him talk about a subject he obviously cares deeply about, even if his knowledge of the intricacies of rap is, of course, lacking. Similarly, while the subject matter of the conversations between him and Smith, or Smith and the rest of the quartet, may be material we've seen in other films (will the old flames learn to love one another again, the audience asks expectantly), we've rarely seen it done this well, as the actors are superb, and the writing sounds like the sorts of conversations that adults might actually have.

As I mentioned before, Dustin Hoffman directed this film, his first ever, and based on the evidence, I can't figure out why he waited this long. The marks of a good (or bad) director can be hard to parse out sometimes, as they neither write nor edit nor score nor act in the film, but instead weave these things together to produce a holistic result, but even with that in mind, this film is clearly directed with a steady hand. Much time is taken with various supporting characters, most of whom are actual retired singers and musicians whom Hoffman cast to lend verisimilitude to the project. Tiny bits, such as the complaint by chorus singers and orchestral musicians that the soloists are still lording over them unfairly make Beecham House seem like a real place, or at least a place that could exist, filled at all hours with musicians and singers still practicing their craft after all the decades. A good many of these actors I have, of course, never heard of, but Hoffman does add in several other stars of British cinema to thicken the mix, including Michael Gambon, who prances about in a dressing gown and barks orders like the music director he clearly used to be, and even Michael Byrne, of Indiana Jones fame, with a small role that nevertheless brought a smile to my face. It's decisions like these, the decision to turn the film into a outright showcase of British actors over 70, the decision to focus more on the setting and tone than on the largely-derivative plot, even the decision of how to handle the basic fact that the movie is leading up to an operatic performance that, manifestly, none of these actors are capable of rendering, that shows Hoffman's skill. Unlike Spielberg or Scorsese or Polanski, Hoffman doesn't try to establish a "style". He just makes the right decisions for the film, consistently.


Things Havoc disliked: And it's a damn good thing he does, because the plot of this movie is even older than our leading actors. Stop me if you've heard this before: "We have to put on a good show or we won't be able to keep our charming-yet-quirky facility running any longer." For bonus points, try this one: "Let's take the flighty, stubborn lead actor who has finally begun to mellow a bit out to dinner and surprise them with a request to do something they don't want to do, which will in no way cause them to interpret the affair as a setup and make them hate us for the designated third section of the movie. I'm sure that bringing along the kooky supporting character who has been established as being unable to keep her mouth shut will not result in awkward revelations at inconvenient moments."

I know it's hard to write an original story. Maybe impossible. I also know that I see more movies than most people tend to. But seriously, is there any audience still left in the world that doesn't roll their eyes when they hear the old cliche of "how will we get the money to save the farm/orphanage/theater/studio/whatever" answered with "we'll win the conveniently-timed contest/competition/gala/festival/whatever"? Can there possibly be anyone who, upon hearing that Maggie Smith and Tom Courtney used to be married, but that their marriage ended on a sour note of bitterness, believes that they will end the movie still genuinely despising one another? Is it really a spoiler to answer the question of whether or not Maggie Smith puts her pride aside in the service of saving Beecham House and agrees to perform with her old friends? This is not a long film, and much of its runtime is taken up with establishing shots, colorful supporting characters, and interludes of music or singing, all decisions I suspect might have had something to do with the fact that the plot of the film is not merely tired but very thin.


Final thoughts:    But then again, I can't say that the thickness of the plot or lack thereof was on my mind as I watched this film. If it has no better reason for existing than merely to revel in the skills of the older generation of British actors, I certainly cannot condemn it on that account. And indeed, for all the lighthearted music and song of the movie, there is quite a strong undercurrent of finality to this film, whether it be shots of Smith reflecting on what her life was and what it has been reduced to, or a simple moment when Connolly, experiencing a rush of dizziness, gets an unmistakable look of 'is this it?' on his face. I spoke before of Maggie Smith's age (a gross indelicacy for which I must beg her pardon), not simply to fill space, but because the film plays rather like a swan song for many of the actors involved. Of course there has been no sign of Smith or any of the others ending their careers (Connolly will be joining the Hobbit's cast for the next two films), but inevitably, they, like the characters they play in this film, will eventually no longer appear to dazzle us anew. Yet rather than seeming funereal, the film celebrates both actors and characters for who they are, not who they were, not even if the latter was many times more lustrous than the former. Ultimately, all the film can do is afford these great actors an opportunity for yet another dignified bow. And if it should prove to be the last, then if nothing else, it can see them off to one final round of genuine applause.

Final Score:  8/10