#10 Spotlight
The Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis often gets the very first run of buzzed -about movies all to itself, and it is always spot on with its marquee displays. When we went to see Spotlight this November, the marquee read "Hulk Breaks Story in: Spotlight. Get it? Because, like, Mark Ruffalo plays Hulk, and he breaks stuff?
The Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis often gets the very first run of buzzed -about movies all to itself, and it is always spot on with its marquee displays. When we went to see Spotlight this November, the marquee read "Hulk Breaks Story in: Spotlight. Get it? Because, like, Mark Ruffalo plays Hulk, and he breaks stuff?
Moving on.
When the 1974 case against the Catholic Church was brought up and then subsequently buried, my own father would have been 18 years old. I mention this simply because my father was an altar boy in an Irish Catholic community of Portage Wisconsin. He himself never had any contact that I know of with abuse, but I do feel like the experience itself left him a disillusioned enough to not practice as an adult.
Well, that and being a teenage hippie in the early 1970s.
Again, moving on.
We are in an era where sexual misconduct being reported among the Catholic Church is, sadly, not terribly surprising. In fact, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis were under fire for the very same allegations as recently as a couple years ago. It wasn't always this way. There had to be a trailblazer, and that trailblazer was the early 2000s staff of The Boston Globe.
The relatively small investigative journalism department, led by Walter "Robby" Robbinson (Michael Keaton), had just wrapped a story on misconduct going on in the construction community and were looking for something new, when new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schrieber) brings up the idea of doing a piece on the Geoghan case.
"What the hell is the Geoghan case?" They ask.
"I'll tell you," he says.
According to his previous work, Baron has come to find out that in the 1970s, at least 6 sexual molestation charges were brought against a priest in Massachusetts who was never convicted. Robbie brings up the fact that these are sealed documents. This would essentially mean they would have to sue the Catholic Church. And that's exactly what they do.
"What the hell is the Geoghan case?" They ask.
"I'll tell you," he says.
According to his previous work, Baron has come to find out that in the 1970s, at least 6 sexual molestation charges were brought against a priest in Massachusetts who was never convicted. Robbie brings up the fact that these are sealed documents. This would essentially mean they would have to sue the Catholic Church. And that's exactly what they do.
The rest of the team - Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Matt Carroll (Brian D'Arcy James), and the quirky Mike Rezendez (lone ensemble nominee Mark Ruffalo) - start digging in deep. With doors consistently getting slammed in their faces, they nevertheless move forward. What they unearth, literally decades of buried accusations, brings a voice to a once voiceless pantheon. Since the Spotlight team's work, things have never been the same for the Catholic Church.
In the early goings, it seemed like Spotlight was going to blow through everything in its path on its way to the gold statue, reminiscent of the movie it has most often drawn comparisons to, 1976's All the President's Men (Redford and Hoffman as Woodard and Bernstein, the two journalists that blew open the Watergate scandal). Since then, Leo and Iñárritu have come on like a steam engine. You never know--maybe this'll play Rocky to The Revenant almost 4 decades later.
(Sorry-one more quick "did you know": In real life, Ben Bradlee Sr., played by Jason Robards in All the President's Men, was the managing editor of the Washington Post when they blew the doors open on Watergate, and Ben Bradlee, Jr., played by silverfox John Slattery in Spotlight, was managing editor of the Boston Globe when they exposed the Catholic Church. Cool, huh?)
#9 Inside Out
Pixar has created an entire catalogue of films based on one simple premise: protagonist gets lost/separated from friends/separated from family, protagonist has to find their way back, protagonist experiences character arc along the way.
This may sound like I'm dissing an entire animation studio, but that's not the case at all. The formula works, and you know what they say - if it ain't broke, make another Pixar movie.
Riley is an adolescent who leaves Minnesota with her family for her dad's (Kyle MacLachlan) new business opportunity in San Francisco. It's easy to tell from the set that she is not exactly pleased with this situation. Sure, she's excited. But what about her friends? And how exactly is she supposed to play hockey in California?
( editor's note - the Los Angeles Kings have won two National Hockey League championships in the last 5 years.)
Early on in the film, we are introduced to a group in something that represents a control room in charge of managing Riley's emotions. They are a who's who of former NBC sitcom employees: joy (Amy Poehler), anger (Lewis Black), fear (Bill Hader), dis-
Wait, did someone say Bill Hader?
Sorry. Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and sadness (Phyllis Smith). Housed in their giant control room with teeth-shaped windows are shelves upon shelves of bowling-ball shaped memories, color-coded to represent each of the various emotional figureheads. Up to this point, Joy has mostly helmed the controls, but now that Riley is dealing with endless changes at once (new school, empty bedroom, sh*tty local pizza), anger is contorting his face and blowing his stack,
fear is rocking his Beaker-looking mug back and forth and fainting,
'
and sadness is slouching and slumping and crying all over the damn place.
Joy is used to being the boss to the underfeelings, so she scrambles back and forth to protect the core memories, i.e. the 5 most important memories from Riley's past, from getting tainted in any way. When sadness accidentally touches one, she and joy are then swept into the recesses of Riley's long term memories via vacuum, where they are far away from the control booth and totally lost. With the help of Riley's childhood toy, a pink elephant named Bing Bong (voiced by Richard Kind), they work to find their way back to control, trying desparately to keep everything intact and come to terms with the new emotional working arrangement.
This is Pixar's best since Wall-E. The casting is almost too perfect, the concept is interesting enough to simultaneously hold adults' interest and wow their kids, and the animation is rainbow bright. Pete Docter and co. do a fantastic job of demonstrating that kids, especially at that age, are more complex than you think on the inside, an alway-changing everlasting gobstopper of experience.
#8 The Revenant
Let's get this out of the way first and foremost: The Revenant is not Birdman. It doesn't have the same ingenuity, not the same talented ensemble, not the same wild, frenetic pace, not quite the same inner psychosis and on-screen unraveling of its protagonist.
If Iñárritu and co. go back to back, though, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. It doesn't hold a candle to their previous time out, but it's still a pretty damn good film.
Hugh Glass (Leo DiCaprio) is a fur trapper and trader in the 1820s, who we are shown early on has lost his Native American wife in a raid and is left to take care of his son. About 10 minutes after that, we are treated to a dazzling visual sequence reminiscent of Birdman: A group of Arikara tribe warriors attack the fur trading camp in a highly choreographed, long tracking shot with hidden edits to make it appear as one shot over the course of the scuffle. It lasts about 10 minutes, and is an absolute treat to watch.
Domnhall Gleeson (making his way into my top 20 for now the 3rd time) is Captain Henry, and he's obviously a little pissed that he's lost so many men, but he has to come up with a plan to regroup. It comes to the light that the chief thinks that one of his men has taken off with his daughter, Powaqa, and they are going to keep coming at the traders relentlessly until she is found. In other words, we need to hustle back to home base like our lives depend on it, which they do. John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) consistently taunted Hugh's son for being half Indian, and Hugh consistently talks his son out of doing anything back.
The next morning while out for a stroll in the woods, Hugh is flopped around like a DiCaprio-sized rag doll by a grizzly. He is badly hurt, and captain feels he has no choice but to pay a few to stay back and care for him while the rest forge ahead. The three who volunteer are Hugh's son, Fitzgerald, and Jim Bridger (Will Poulter of We're the Millers and The Maze Runner fame). Thanks to Fitzgerald's crazy ass, things go awry quickly and they split, leaving Hugh Glass back by himself. Miraculously, Glass manages to get to his feet eventually and he slowly, painstakingly, he makes his way in the direction of Fitzgerald and revenge.
By all accounts, this was a terribly difficult shoot, one that Iñárritu said he would never take on again. They only shot in the limited daylight they had to make it appear natural at all times, and his storied high expectations and sometimes erratic behavior as a director caused many crew members to walk. They went way over budget due to weather issues and delays and both DiCaprio and Hardy said it was the most trying performance of their respective careers.
It is supposed to win tonight, and again, it wasn't my favorite of the eight, but I wouldn't necessarily disagree if it did. Thinking about the collective group, it is probably the most complete of the bunch (direction, cinematography, performances, music). The score is by Mulhern-household-childhood mainstay Ryuchi Sakamoto, back composing for American cinema for the first time since 1987 best picture winner The Last Emperor, and it's great. The landscape (shot almost entirely in the Canadian Rockies) and cinematography (again by über-talented Emmanuel Lubezki) is absolutely-shake-your-head and blink-real-fast-in-disbelief gorgeous.
By all accounts, Leo DiCaprio should win tonight, in more of a "we should probably give this guy an award already" than a performance-based statue. He was really good; it wasn't his best ever. I think beyond the overdue angle, people are also impressed with the grueling "Castaway in the Snow" scenario he had to act his way through (frostbite, eating bison liver, learning 2 Native American languages). He deserves to be in the mix, certainly, and I won't be mad if he wins, but there was someone who should be taking it home tonight who wasn't even recognized.
Read on.
#7 The End of the Tour
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the biggest Academy Awards snub of the '15-'16 season:
Not only is Jason Segel not the frontrunner for the best actor hardware, he is not even nominated for it, having given, in my personal opinion, the best performance of the year by a long shot. Segel, since the Freaks and Geeks era, has always shown a knack for schlubby-guy comedy with a tinge of sadness (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement, some of his How I Met Your Mother arcs). Taking on a dramatic lead for the first time, he is positively stunning as reclusive author David Foster Wallace.
The End of the Tour takes place over a five day period in 1996. Burgeoning author David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) pitches an idea to Rolling Stone to all him to interview D.F.W., whose landmark, sprawling Infinite Jest has turned him into the rockstar of the literary world. And after all, Rolling Stone is all about rock stars, right? Having read about half of it himself, he is shell-shocked by how good it is; as he is packing to head to Bloomington, Illinois to meet him, he catches his girlfriend Sarah (Anna Chlumsky) reading it.
He arrives to find Mr. Wallace hanging out in his one-story house in the middle of nowhere with his two dogs, and the conversation begins. And for five days, it doesn't end. They talk in diners, convenience stores, his classroom (he taught English at Illinois State University), back at his place, in the car, on walks with the dogs. They fly to Minneapolis for the last stop of his Infinite Jest meet and greet tour and hang out at the Mall of America. Because as it turns out, despite his one-of-a-kind brain, Wallace wants nothing more than to be thought of as a normal guy.
This is part of what makes their conversation so compelling: Lipsky, full of a strange combination of both talent-jealousy and hero-worship, is basically so worn down by Wallace's reluctance and humility that eventually, he does learn to see the normality, and he almost can't stand the disappointment. The movie, directed by James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), was promoted by the tagline "What's the best conversation you've ever had?" And watching the push-and-pull of Lipsky and Wallace's 5-day dynamic is really something to behold. It's a quiet, simple film that in some ways is the most life-affirming one of the year, despite the fact that Wallace would go on to commit suicide in 2008.
Even though Eisenberg is his usual fast-talking, nervous, squirrely self, this might be the best version of himself to be put on screen since Zuckerberg, and as for Segel? I literally can't say enough about how shafted he was. He was good enough and convincing enough in the role that it motivated me to finally finish the damn thing after two previous unfruitful tries, in which I got to about page 200 and gave up. Book-wise, it doesn't get much better, and neither does Segel's performance as the guarded, resistant, surprisingly normal man behind the masterwork.
Stay tuned for more all day!
Wait, did someone say Bill Hader?
Sorry. Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and sadness (Phyllis Smith). Housed in their giant control room with teeth-shaped windows are shelves upon shelves of bowling-ball shaped memories, color-coded to represent each of the various emotional figureheads. Up to this point, Joy has mostly helmed the controls, but now that Riley is dealing with endless changes at once (new school, empty bedroom, sh*tty local pizza), anger is contorting his face and blowing his stack,
fear is rocking his Beaker-looking mug back and forth and fainting,
'
Joy is used to being the boss to the underfeelings, so she scrambles back and forth to protect the core memories, i.e. the 5 most important memories from Riley's past, from getting tainted in any way. When sadness accidentally touches one, she and joy are then swept into the recesses of Riley's long term memories via vacuum, where they are far away from the control booth and totally lost. With the help of Riley's childhood toy, a pink elephant named Bing Bong (voiced by Richard Kind), they work to find their way back to control, trying desparately to keep everything intact and come to terms with the new emotional working arrangement.
This is Pixar's best since Wall-E. The casting is almost too perfect, the concept is interesting enough to simultaneously hold adults' interest and wow their kids, and the animation is rainbow bright. Pete Docter and co. do a fantastic job of demonstrating that kids, especially at that age, are more complex than you think on the inside, an alway-changing everlasting gobstopper of experience.
#8 The Revenant
Let's get this out of the way first and foremost: The Revenant is not Birdman. It doesn't have the same ingenuity, not the same talented ensemble, not the same wild, frenetic pace, not quite the same inner psychosis and on-screen unraveling of its protagonist.
If Iñárritu and co. go back to back, though, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. It doesn't hold a candle to their previous time out, but it's still a pretty damn good film.
Hugh Glass (Leo DiCaprio) is a fur trapper and trader in the 1820s, who we are shown early on has lost his Native American wife in a raid and is left to take care of his son. About 10 minutes after that, we are treated to a dazzling visual sequence reminiscent of Birdman: A group of Arikara tribe warriors attack the fur trading camp in a highly choreographed, long tracking shot with hidden edits to make it appear as one shot over the course of the scuffle. It lasts about 10 minutes, and is an absolute treat to watch.
Domnhall Gleeson (making his way into my top 20 for now the 3rd time) is Captain Henry, and he's obviously a little pissed that he's lost so many men, but he has to come up with a plan to regroup. It comes to the light that the chief thinks that one of his men has taken off with his daughter, Powaqa, and they are going to keep coming at the traders relentlessly until she is found. In other words, we need to hustle back to home base like our lives depend on it, which they do. John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) consistently taunted Hugh's son for being half Indian, and Hugh consistently talks his son out of doing anything back.
The next morning while out for a stroll in the woods, Hugh is flopped around like a DiCaprio-sized rag doll by a grizzly. He is badly hurt, and captain feels he has no choice but to pay a few to stay back and care for him while the rest forge ahead. The three who volunteer are Hugh's son, Fitzgerald, and Jim Bridger (Will Poulter of We're the Millers and The Maze Runner fame). Thanks to Fitzgerald's crazy ass, things go awry quickly and they split, leaving Hugh Glass back by himself. Miraculously, Glass manages to get to his feet eventually and he slowly, painstakingly, he makes his way in the direction of Fitzgerald and revenge.
By all accounts, this was a terribly difficult shoot, one that Iñárritu said he would never take on again. They only shot in the limited daylight they had to make it appear natural at all times, and his storied high expectations and sometimes erratic behavior as a director caused many crew members to walk. They went way over budget due to weather issues and delays and both DiCaprio and Hardy said it was the most trying performance of their respective careers.
It is supposed to win tonight, and again, it wasn't my favorite of the eight, but I wouldn't necessarily disagree if it did. Thinking about the collective group, it is probably the most complete of the bunch (direction, cinematography, performances, music). The score is by Mulhern-household-childhood mainstay Ryuchi Sakamoto, back composing for American cinema for the first time since 1987 best picture winner The Last Emperor, and it's great. The landscape (shot almost entirely in the Canadian Rockies) and cinematography (again by über-talented Emmanuel Lubezki) is absolutely-shake-your-head and blink-real-fast-in-disbelief gorgeous.
By all accounts, Leo DiCaprio should win tonight, in more of a "we should probably give this guy an award already" than a performance-based statue. He was really good; it wasn't his best ever. I think beyond the overdue angle, people are also impressed with the grueling "Castaway in the Snow" scenario he had to act his way through (frostbite, eating bison liver, learning 2 Native American languages). He deserves to be in the mix, certainly, and I won't be mad if he wins, but there was someone who should be taking it home tonight who wasn't even recognized.
Read on.
#7 The End of the Tour
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the biggest Academy Awards snub of the '15-'16 season:
Not only is Jason Segel not the frontrunner for the best actor hardware, he is not even nominated for it, having given, in my personal opinion, the best performance of the year by a long shot. Segel, since the Freaks and Geeks era, has always shown a knack for schlubby-guy comedy with a tinge of sadness (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement, some of his How I Met Your Mother arcs). Taking on a dramatic lead for the first time, he is positively stunning as reclusive author David Foster Wallace.
The End of the Tour takes place over a five day period in 1996. Burgeoning author David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) pitches an idea to Rolling Stone to all him to interview D.F.W., whose landmark, sprawling Infinite Jest has turned him into the rockstar of the literary world. And after all, Rolling Stone is all about rock stars, right? Having read about half of it himself, he is shell-shocked by how good it is; as he is packing to head to Bloomington, Illinois to meet him, he catches his girlfriend Sarah (Anna Chlumsky) reading it.
He arrives to find Mr. Wallace hanging out in his one-story house in the middle of nowhere with his two dogs, and the conversation begins. And for five days, it doesn't end. They talk in diners, convenience stores, his classroom (he taught English at Illinois State University), back at his place, in the car, on walks with the dogs. They fly to Minneapolis for the last stop of his Infinite Jest meet and greet tour and hang out at the Mall of America. Because as it turns out, despite his one-of-a-kind brain, Wallace wants nothing more than to be thought of as a normal guy.
This is part of what makes their conversation so compelling: Lipsky, full of a strange combination of both talent-jealousy and hero-worship, is basically so worn down by Wallace's reluctance and humility that eventually, he does learn to see the normality, and he almost can't stand the disappointment. The movie, directed by James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), was promoted by the tagline "What's the best conversation you've ever had?" And watching the push-and-pull of Lipsky and Wallace's 5-day dynamic is really something to behold. It's a quiet, simple film that in some ways is the most life-affirming one of the year, despite the fact that Wallace would go on to commit suicide in 2008.
Even though Eisenberg is his usual fast-talking, nervous, squirrely self, this might be the best version of himself to be put on screen since Zuckerberg, and as for Segel? I literally can't say enough about how shafted he was. He was good enough and convincing enough in the role that it motivated me to finally finish the damn thing after two previous unfruitful tries, in which I got to about page 200 and gave up. Book-wise, it doesn't get much better, and neither does Segel's performance as the guarded, resistant, surprisingly normal man behind the masterwork.
Stay tuned for more all day!
No comments:
Post a Comment