Recapping the Oscars

Well, that was ... something.

The show was disappointing — belligerently unfunny and lacking all affability — and largely, so were the results. Time and time again, the winners proved themselves to be the central element of the showing, excepting presenter Kirk Douglas, who brought more energy and verve and genuineness than almost anyone else at the ceremony. What began inauspiciously (hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway doing the full 1990s Billy Crystal by “appearing” in the nominated films) ended just as inauspiciously, with Steven Spielberg at the microphone holding the envelope and providing a caveat for the ages: just as many great films lose Best Picture as win it.

Some of the highs and lows:

• Early in the night I tweeted, “Most of those who complained the Oscar season was boring have started off 0-2.” And that’s pretty much the way the rest of the night went. I correctly predicted 16 out of 24, exactly two-thirds, which is my worst Oscar prognostication in three years. (In 2010 I guessed 18 right, and in 2009 I guessed 17 right.) I missed Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Documentary, Makeup, Original Score, Original Song, and Short Animated Film. If I hadn’t changed my prediction from Inside Job to Restrepo at the last minute, it would have been the first time I correctly predicted all of the above-the-line categories. Oh well—there’s always next year.

• My preferences overlapped with the Academy at a three-year-time low also, with only 6 out of 24, including: Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Editing, Original Score, Visual Effects, and Documentary. (Although I professed a ballot preference for Exit Through the Gift Shop, I’m not sad at all that the magnificent film Inside Job won for Best Documentary.)

• This was one of the most evenly split Oscars in a long time. No film took home more than four awards, including the Best Picture winner. Tied with The King’s Speech was Inception, with four technical awards, followed by The Social Network with three, and Alice in Wonderland (!), The Fighter, and Toy Story 3 with two. I like it when the Oscars spread the love, but Alice in Wonderland is my pick for worst film of the year, so there’s definitely a limit to acceptable love-spreading.

• I mentioned how the winners drove the show forward. Some of the better acceptance speeches included Aaron Sorkin, David Seidler (the best speech of the night), the director of the short film God of Love, the director of Inside Job, and Colin Firth.

• The show itself, if I may speak more analytically to its failures, was tonally off almost from the get-go. Much of what the Academy tried to do in the theater didn’t transfer well to televisions at home. Some segments went on far too long; some seemed so fleeting it made one wonder why they tried it at all. Although the failure for the humor lies with the show’s writers, James Franco deserves to be knocked around for acting like he couldn’t wait to go home. (In some respects, he acted like this before the show even began.) Anne Hathaway had white-knuckle charm even as she plowed, self-knowingly, through one bad joke after another. The show reached such an abysmal low that when Billy Crystal himself appeared on stage, not many people seemed to want him to leave.

• With The King’s Speech as Best Picture winner, I should say the Oscars have awarded better and the Oscars have awarded worse. I like the film quite a lot, though I’m not sure it’s one for the ages. Perhaps, though. We simply never know.

For more of what I liked and didn’t like, keep an eye out for my Best of 2010 list, which should arrive in a couple months. Until the next awards season, it’s back to film criticism.

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If I Had a Ballot

“I still think awards are stupid. But they’d be less stupid if they gave them to the right people.” — Ron Swanson, Parks & Recreation

Here are my Oscar predictions and preferences. If my previous track record is any guide, I’m wrong on about twenty percent of these — and hopefully a few preferences become realities.

Best Short Film & Documentary Short Subject
I haven’t seen enough of these to cast a ballot with confidence.
Will Win Short Film: God of Love
Should Win Short Film: N/A
Will Win Documentary Short: Strangers No More
Should Win Documentary Short: N/A

Best Animated Short Film
I have a soft spot for this category, which is (perhaps) my favorite of the below-the-line Oscars. I loved Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage, which is a beautiful and striking and lovingly animated short film. I also enjoyed Pixar’s Day & Night, a poignant examination of differences, and The Gruffalo, a British adaptation of a children’s book that features many celebrity voices. The latter two are probably where the contest is, and the winner typically is the longest of the shorts, which would be The Gruffalo. Yet, it seems a little thin so Day & Night might swoop in.
Will Win: The Gruffalo
Should Win: Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage

Best Visual Effects
Although the visual effects field was expanded from three to five, most of the nominees this year are exactly the kind of tired, regurgitated effects that fulfill more-is-more Academy preferences instead of useful, resourceful, compelling CGI. Inception — with its reality-defying dreamscapes — will take home the gold and, of this weak field, rightfully so.
Will & Should Win: Inception

Best Sound Mixing
Nothing in the Academy bylaws dictates that voters understand the differences between Sound Mixing and Sound Editing — or even what they are — which is why the winners in these categories tend to be loud, blockbuster films or better-loved films. Never mind how theater-vs.-home experiences alter the perception of sound. Inception is the likely winner, but each time I’ve seen The Social Network, I’ve marveled at how its soundscape balances all the elements and allows Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue to remain crystal clear.
Will Win: Inception
Should Win: The Social Network

Best Sound Editing
Ditto here what I noted in Mixing. These categories are so different it’s rare (in my opinion) that the same film should earn both awards. Inception will be a worthier winner here than in Mixing, but still not the best sound editing job of the year. For that, turn to the subtle, atmospheric, naturalistic sounds and snaps of the western landscape in True Grit. The Coens’ sound team, nominated in both categories for work on No Country For Old Men, is among the best sound crews in the business.
Will Win: Inception
Should Win: True Grit

Best Original Song
It was a bad year for original songs in films. My prediction, written by Alan Menken, feels a little derivative of his earlier work. I enjoyed A.R. Rahman’s song the most.
Will Win: “I See the Light” from Tangled
Should Win: “If I Rise” from 127 Hours

Best Original Score
Alexandre Desplat, the hardest working composer in the film business, is a good bet here. A great dark horse would be John Powell’s high-spirited, Celtic-infused melodies and evocations of friendship that back How to Train Your Dragon. The best score is the unorthodox fusion of electronica and classicism in The Social Network.
Will Win: Alexandre Desplat, The King’s Speech
Should Win: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Social Network

Best Makeup
To be honest, I haven’t seen any of these nominees and I haven’t lost any sleep because of that. The more-is-more theory of Oscar voting would predict a win for The Wolfman. The maybe-ostentatious-crap-was-nominated-but-we’re-not-that-desperate theory of Oscar voting (cf. Transformers) says Barney’s Version might prevail.
Will Win: Barney’s Version
Should Win: N/A

Best Editing
Without Inception editor Lee Smith in this category, it’s a safe bet to call it for Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, who serve the rhythms of Aaron Sorkin’s rapid-fire Social Network screenplay.
Will Win & Should Win: Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, The Social Network

Best Costume Design
Colleen Atwood’s complex yet gaudy duds for Alice in Wonderland might prevail here, but I suspect this will another boat lifted by the rising tide of The King’s Speech. A better choice would be the thematic threads of I Am Love.
Will Win: Jenny Beaven, The King’s Speech
Should Win: Antonella Cannarozzi, I Am Love

Best Cinematography
Nine-time nominee and long-time Coen collaborator Roger Deakins will likely strike gold this year for the impressive work on True Grit, which, in addition to rewarding Deakins, also fulfills the postcard replica standard the Academy often brings to this category. Matthew Libatique’s richly textured and fluid work on Black Swan is practically a ballet in and of itself, though.
Will Win: Roger Deakins, True Grit
Should Win: Matthew Libatique, Black Swan

Best Art Direction
I suspect this will be another of the technical categories that The King’s Speech brings along with its Best Picture win. It wouldn’t be my vote, but its art direction is still better than any of the travesties nominated in this category last year.
Will Win: The King’s Speech
Should Win: Inception

Best Foreign Language Film
How does one predict a category that requires a voter to see all the nominees? Well, it’s difficult unless you’re on the ground talking to actual Academy members. If the last few years have been any guide, a fallback option is to predict the film most likely to be the safe median of five. I’ve only seen Dogtooth, so I’m not in a position to say which film should win.
Will Win: In a Better World
Should Win: Check back in a few months.

Best Documentary
This much can be said: 2010 was an impressive year for documentaries. One could have easily doubled the size of this category. I’ve seen four of the five nominees — Waste Land is my blind spot — and each is impressive. The Academy typically aims big with this award (“Best” often means “Most Important” by their standards) but what that means is unclear. Could it be the politically savvy Inside Job? The intense and harrowing Restrepo? The tongue-in-cheek art criticism of Exit Through the Gift Shop? Another in a come-from-behind? For weeks most Oscar bloggers have had Inside Job as the prediction; at the last minute there’s been quick switching to Waste Land. I’m switching too, but guessing a different film.
Will Win: Restrepo
Should Win: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Best Animated Film
It’s almost enough to make you wonder when Pixar is going to give someone else a chance. Toy Story 3 takes this in a cake-walk, although The Illusionist would be a very, very worthy alternate.
Will & Should Win: Toy Story 3

Best Original Screenplay
Usually this is the stronger of the two screenplay categories, but I tip my hat to the adapted field this year. Three of the five original screenplay nominees have critical problems. David Seidler is a careful writer, but Mike Leigh’s Another Year is another of the director’s stellar examinations of the human condition.
Will Win: David Seidler, The King’s Speech
Should Win: Mike Leigh, Another Year

Best Adapted Screenplay
It’s unlikely anyone can topple Aaron Sorkin’s crackling screenplay for The Social Network, more likely than ever to score a win here.
Will & Should Win: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

Best Supporting Actress
I just don’t know what to make of this category. At some point or another, four of the nominees — Melissa Leo, Helena Bonham Carter, Amy Adams, and Hailee Steinfeld — seem as if they could be possible victors. The wave of support for The King’s Speech might even truly lift Carter’s boat if Leo and Adams split and Steinfeld doesn’t emerge strong. Hell, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they called Jacki Weaver’s name.
Will Win: Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Should Win: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Best Supporting Actor
That Christian Bale is poised to win this category for an unremarkable scenery-chewing performance in a mediocre film is a source of great consternation for me. Perhaps the only thing more frustrating is the omission of Andrew Garfield. I’m holding out for a Geoffrey Rush upset, which seems quite possible. He’s my number two vote, anyway.
Will Win: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Should Win: John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

Best Actress
There’s little doubt that Natalie Portman does the most acting in this category (i.e., clearest on-screen acting), but does that alone earn one an Oscar? While Black Swan sends all its arrows in her direction, and she suffers them well, there’s little to no lining behind her to buoy her performance above a spectacular freak-out. It’s not my number-one choice, at least; for that the contest is more fierce between Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine and Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole.
Will Win: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Should Win: Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole

Best Actor
Colin Firth will soon join the ranks of the people who should have won the previous year and will win go on to win not as a conciliatory gesture but for genuine, powerful acting. What’s still up for debate is my personal vote: Firth and Jesse Eisenberg gave two incredibly resonant performances: one a man physically struggling to speak, the other desperately yearning to be heard. In many respects they’re the opposite of each. Firth brings life to an almost instantly likable character with a difficult impediment, while Eisenberg brings a measure of likability to an impediment-free twentysomething. Comparing the two side-by-side might be a future project of mine. I literally had to flip a coin and leave it to fate to decide.
Will & Should Win: Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

Best Director
Tom Hooper snagged the Director’s Guild Award, which is basically a silver bullet when it comes to this category. There’s always a 10% chance it’ll go to someone else, and of those who are stepping out on a limb, many are predicting David Fincher might be lucky. That’s an awfully big “might,” even if it’s more artistically appealing. I’m no Oscar historian, but I do know a think or two about the award’s history, and splits are quite unlikely. When a film has a show of love as strong as The King’s Speech has among the Academy, it’s dangerous to pick otherwise. Still, my fingers are crossed. Also, for all of Black Swan’s problems (screenplay-related), Darren Aronofsky would be deserving as well.
Will Win: Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech
Should Win: David Fincher, The Social Network

Best Picture
If you love film and care about the outcome of the Oscars at least one percent, you do so likely because of the possibility that a winning film might be seen by people who might not otherwise have watched it at all. If you love Black Swan, or The Fighter, or The Kids Are All Right, or any of the other films nominated, you want as many people to see your beloved film — reward the artist, enrich the mind, encourage more work, champion your darling of the year. For me, of the ten nominees, that film is The Social Network, which is likely to lose this evening. That’s okay; it’ll join a long list of great films that turned up short of the big prize. And although the blogosphere has circled the wagons and painted The King’s Speech as a usurper to the crown, I have nothing against the film and in fact actually like it quite a bit. It just doesn’t resonate for me as a great film. Oscar could do better; Oscar has done worse.
Will Win: The King’s Speech
Should Win: The Social Network
Preferential Ballot: The Social Network, Toy Story 3, The King’s Speech, True Grit, Winter’s Bone, Black Swan, Inception, 127 Hours, The Kids Are All Right, The Fighter

In the coming months, I’ll slip back into this blog post and edit these categories somewhat after I catch up with some of the films I’ve missed. I saw many more Oscar nominees this year than I anticipated, what with having a new job and a new baby at home. And hopefully in a few months I’ll be ready to post my Best Of 2010 list.

Until then, I’ll be live-tweeting the Oscars at my Twitter account, @ScreenSavour, so if you’re online there, come follow along. Monday I’ll have a wrap-up and the obligatory “now-let’s-get-back-to-watching-movies” sigh of relief.

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Apocalypse Now (1979)

d. Francis Ford Coppola / USA / 153m.

At the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now made its world premiere, the director said something during a press conference that is as an important a place as any to begin discussion of the film:

My film is not about Vietnam; it is Vietnam. It’s what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.

Coppola has been rightly derided for the arrogance and pretension of such a statement, of equating a frenzied production of a movie to an actual calamitous war, but in many respects it’s an intriguing proposition to consider. What is the relationship, if any, between the chaos of a film’s production and the subsequent chaos captured on film? Must a filmmaker and the crew experience the truly harrowing highs and lows in order to create the most realistic — most expressionistic — depictions of fear, anxiety, and turmoil? Is a war film likelier to resonate with the audience if making the film is also a battle or a journey through the darkest corridors of the soul?

That metaphoric drumbeat — “war is hell, war is hell, this film was war, this film was hell” — plays almost ad nauseam in Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper’s documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), which pieces together after-the-fact interviews with cast and crew and footage shot on location by Coppola’s wife, Eleanor. The Coppolas are very insistent on the point that their journey in making the film was as much of a journey into the darkest corners of the soul as the film’s protagonist, Willard (Martin Sheen), a fraught Army captain sent on a mission upriver into Cambodia to assassinate Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), an AWOL colonel. In fact, the Coppolas are so insistent on the point that it begins to get under one’s skin after a while, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable to the discussion of the film’s success.

I can’t speak to what it must have been like for Coppola and his crew to film in the jungles of the Philippines, their stand-in for Vietnam. Principal photography took 238 days. Filming was sidetracked by a typhoon, the Philippine government, and mental and physical problems among the actors and crew. The leading man was fired; the replacement had a heart attack. The script was incomplete, with Coppola toiling away into the night doing rewrites and many of the actors simply improvising their lines. Drugs were rampant. The studio was nervous, money ran out, and Coppola invested his personal Godfather fortunes into the film. Nor can I speak to whether it’s an authentic hell, as I didn’t fight in Vietnam and have never participated in a war. Everything I know about the film’s behind-the-scenes story suggests it was the nightmare it’s been portrayed to be. What I can speak to — the only thing I can speak to — is the sort of film Apocalypse Now became: a milestone of American cinema and one of the best films about war.

The film is not subtle; carnivals of horror rarely are. Coppola, in revising an early script from John Milius, doesn’t paint with a small brush. Tigers jump out of the jungle. A helicopter attack led by the aptly named Kilgore (Robert Duvall) is set to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” permanently altering the popular impression of the composition for a generation. A carabao is ritualistically slaughtered and spliced to juxtapose the film’s ultimate kill. Humanity is laid bare in the film’s spectrum. This film’s Kurtz, in similarity to the Kurtz of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (the film’s source material), is baldly presented as a corrupted ideal — the ravaging power of colonialism, the futility of American-led containment through ground war, a bull trying to “do good” in a china shop. Even the title itself invokes the tense duality of awe and catastrophe lingering on the precipice or, perhaps worse, occurring in the very moment.

These expressionistic elements, however, are the origins of the film’s tremendous strength, and what has been frequently cited as the film’s weaknesses — the episodic structure the journey upriver, the stark and mysterious third act, the anticlimactic final moments where explanation is supplanted by stillness — are instead better viewed as existential rejoinders to the shocking and inexplicable elements of war, the way the world begins to fall apart and what once made sense becomes maddening. Apocalypse Now is a collection of strange and haunting moments, emotions, sounds, and visuals held together by alarm, a sensation that closely mirrors the unexpected aspects of war. Whether this is an accident or, as Rob Humanick puts it, a cunning use of “what are obviously troubled elements to subversive and ingenious ends,” is ultimately beside the point. Many war films collapse under the weight of cliche or cleanliness, and while Apocalypse Now doesn’t prove a war film must have a turbulent production in order to capture war’s splintering effect, it does suggest that a successful rendering of war must provide a new (unseen, unheard, unfelt) and disquieting experience.

In order to stand apart from its peers, a war film must present something that feels fundamentally new. Cinema will never be able to capture the true reality of war — as Samuel Fuller once suggested, there would need to be a sniper in the theater actually shooting audience members in order to capture that — but it can come close by magnetizing the audience either through extraordinary realism or unsettling surrealism. Apocalypse Now falls into the latter and succeeds through its frenzied aural and visual elements. The soundscape, crafted by a team that took home that year’s Oscar, has a hallucinatory effect that weaves rock music and synthesized battle noises and spirals deep into the ear. The cinematography of the great Vittorio Storaro is fluid, revealing, and expertly handled. The camera often moves with the same creeping slowness of the patrol boat gliding downriver. In fact, throughout the film’s first half there always seems to be something moving: whether it is a single soldier moving across the bottom of the screen or a black helicopter moving across the top, a smoldering fire caught in the right side of the frame or smoke billowing in the left. In the famous helicopter attack sequence, the frame is often crowded and layered, the eye pulled in numerous directions, each shot revealing previously unseen from the prior viewing.

This stylistic device is balanced in the film’s final third by the heavy shadows that eclipse much of Brando’s Kurtz. Although the result of Brando’s vanity and general refusal to be photographed in light (which would have revealed the weight he’d gained), the simplifying but focused effect plays well against the film’s earlier, densely composed moments. For all the trouble Brando caused Coppola during the filming, his presence on screen in Apocalypse Now is arresting, and what he says — part poeticism, part nonsense, all in all captivating — gains potency as he remains the cynosure of Willard and the audience.

Coppola’s interviews in Hearts of Darkness reveal that, more than anything, he feared the film emerging as a form of unadulterated pretentiousness. For a film that succeeded so monumentally in its first incarnation — and without his, or anyone’s, guiding interpretation — he’s remained strangely fickle about its elements, even going so far as to re-edit and re-release the film in 2001 as Apocalypse Now Redux, with a restoration of its previously excised, and increasingly sought after, footage. That fickleness often manifests itself as defensiveness, and one begins to sense that Coppola will never be satisfied with the product and will never see the film the same way the rest of the world does. Perhaps that’s related to his emotional, financial, and psychological investment in the film, perhaps not: regardless, the film is a towering achievement. Few attempt something so ambitious, and even fewer succeed. When it ends, with the patrol boat back on the river and the empty silence without ending credits, the film severs itself from the viewer, but it lingers — and lingers, and lingers — and, whether appreciated or not, is not easily forgotten.

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Media Month: January 2011

Welcome to Media Month January 2011, the first of what I hope will be many installments of essays that review my media consumption in the preceding month. Due to a number of factors — career, family, writing of fiction and poetry, etc. — my schedule rarely permits me to post with frequency, but that desire to comment on cinema remains as strong as ever. With the Media Month format, hopefully I’ll retain a bit of a presence in this small corner of the film blogosphere.

January is a notorious dumping month for new cinema in theaters, so I spend most of my Januarys catching up with Oscar-nominated films and films from the previous year in attempt to have my best-of list completed by March (if possible) and be able to cast an “ideal” ballot for the Academy Awards. This January has been no different, and I’ll hold off on assessing 2010 films until I’m ready to disclose my list and my ballot. What has been different this January is balancing film-viewing activities with relocating to a new college for an English faculty position, raising a two-month-old son, and acclimating myself to a new community. What follows seems like a small amount of films, but with all the 2010 releases I’m leaving out of discussion, I feel like I’ve been submerged in cinema.

There isn’t much of a rhyme and reason to the films I chose to watch this past month, except for a few primary factors. I tended to favor films I could watch with my wife (our two-month-old son is keeping us from going out on dates, so we’re watching more movies together at home), and I tried to catch certain selections that were slated to leave the Netflix streaming service. Unexpectedly, most of the films I watch were from the 1990s, a rather curious decade whose popular offerings seem to be aging in discordant ways.

Take, for example, Boogie Nights (1997). Paul Thomas Anderson’s examination of the soaring highs and nightmarish lows of the porn industry echoes with the influences of panoramic and pop directors like Altman, Scorsese, and Tarantino without managing to come within striking distance of any of them. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Robert Elswit and impressively acted by a large ensemble including a startlingly good Burt Reynolds, the weak thread in the fabric of Anderson’s quilt is his own screenplay that spreads the wealth too thin. Although numerous characters possess interesting qualities, few reach the level of development that would allow for complete audience identification, so the film relies on the essence of the performances (always a good thing) and pre-existing generalities (always a bad thing) to carry through many of the story arcs. Couple this with the fact that Anderson — pining to reach the level of visceral cinematic violence proffered by Scorsese and Tarantino — regularly resorts to tactics that feel cartoonish in comparison and Boogie Nights turns from full of potential into potential unfulfilled.

Or consider Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998), another wonderfully acted film with notable production values that falls just short of surpassing the trappings of typical historical melodrama. Were it not for the sometimes patchy editing, Elizabeth would ring as a success driven by Cate Blanchett’s magnetic, shrewd performance as the monarch in the early days of her reign, when neighboring royalty wanted either her hand or her head and the Catholic Church rallied its bishops in ardent opposition to her policies. Whereas the film stutters on some technical issues, it absolutely needs Blanchett to be at her best in order to be even watchable — and on that count, it succeeds. The supporting cast varies in terms of quality, from a weak Joseph Fiennes to a loopy Vincent Cassell, from an over-utilized Richard Attenborough to an under-utilized and perfectly cunning Geoffrey Rush.

Queen Elizabeth’s life seems suited to dissection through a sliced, reworked biographical depiction of her. On the other end of the spectrum is Charles Chaplin. “If you want to understand me, watch my movies,” he opines in the unrelentingly frustrating biopic Chaplin (1992). It’s impeccable advice to be sure — even Chaplin’s weakest films provide more sparks of life than Richard Attenborough’s film, gnarled through clunky direction that attempts to capture as much of the icon as possible, misses numerous opportunities to explore the emotional complexities of what it meant to be arguably one of the most famous men on the entire planet. A scene at a bar where Chaplin is harassed by a World War I veteran for making films instead of fighting loses its power when stacked against droll love conflicts and Chaplin’s tawdry love life. Each of Chaplin’s major films are relegated to mere minutes inside this film, which again misses an opportunity to dig deep and explore the psyche and passion of the comedian who produced politically aware films such as Modern Times and The Great Dictator. Robert Downey Jr. earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal, which includes both stupendous miming and not-so-stupdenous work as off-stage Chaplin. The recently late John Barry’s lovely score, mixing melodrama with an evocation of silent comedy, was also nominated, and arguably should have won.

Revisiting a pair of Michael Mann films from the 1990s — Heat (1995) and The Insider (1999) — revealed films that were less rich than I had previously considered. The primary selling point of Heat continues to be the famed pairing of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, a cop and a criminal respectively. There is some admirable work done within the film, including some nicely choreographed and pulse-raising action sequences balanced with steely and spare moments that would qualify for Raising Tension 101. There’s an admirable stab at illustrating the conflict of profession versus domesticity as well, as the film’s men stand in contrast to the film’s women. But if Mann is able to masterfully control the moment, he’s less able to control the mammoth quality of the film in totem. This ebb and flow doesn’t quite (pardon the egregious pun) generate the heat that is necessary for complete success. The Insider, however, has better rhythm but inferior structure. In that film, there are actually two insiders: Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), a dismissed tobacco company executive, and Lowell Bergman (Pacino), a CBS News producer. Wigand blows the whistle that Big Tobacco was well aware of the addictive power and danger of cigarettes while Bergman finesses Wigand into a story for 60 Minutes. The resulting fallout tears apart Wigand’s personal life, which is the emotional heart of the film, and sends Bergman into a rage against the system after the corporate chiefs nix Wigand’s story. The performances remain strong, but the central flaw arrives through narrative unevenness and the resulting emotional disconnect. Mann and his co-writer, Eric Roth, tell the story chronologically and swing too far from Wigand toward Bergman in the second half. While the behind-the-scenes look at CBS News makes for some thrills under Mann’s steady direction, Bergman’s story doesn’t carry the heft of Wigand’s.

Lighter fare from the decade, like My Blue Heaven (Herbert Ross, 1990), provides entertainment but nothing much else. A riff on the story of Henry Hill — he of Goodfellas fame — starring Steve Martin as a mobster gone into Witness Protection and the FBI agent (Rick Moranis) charged to protect him, My Blue Heaven scores some easy laughs without breaking new ground. Within days its comic elements fade from memory. Worse for the wear is Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987), which today seems more like an impeccably assembled time capsule of late ’80s excess than a gripping drama about power, greed, and the cutthroat atmosphere of lower Manhattan’s business sector. But as a time capsule candidate reflecting the antic, brutal, out-of-the-chaos-comes-cohesion filmmaking abilities of Stone, Wall Street doesn’t pass any test. Michael Douglas, an Academy Award-winner for best actor in a weak year, chews the scenery but not much else. The film is as stiff as over-gelled hair or a starched collar. For a better look at the naked elements of human nature, turn to Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages (2007), in which Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney portray siblings caught in the inadequacies of life as they put their ailing father into a nursing home.

What should come as no surprise to the regular readers of this blog is that my heart lies with older offerings, and I was pleased to be able to see Leo McCarey’s great Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) for the first time. The film has earned a reputation for having one of the most hard-nosed endings in the history of Hollywood, a moment so achingly beautiful and sad that one would never expect a major studio offering today to end in such a way. (“It would make a stone cry,” Orson Welles reportedly said.) And it is true that McCarey doesn’t turn away from the hard reality that elderly parents are often ignored or pushed aside by their children, no matter how well-intentioned those children can be. The film has magnificent pacing and a screenplay steeped in universal emotion, and it remains as relevant and powerful today in a beautiful restoration by the Criterion Collection. Rome Open City (1944), the first of Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist war trilogy, is also available on Criterion and worth the time. Famously shot on the tightest of budgets and with whatever film stock Rossellini could find mere months after the Allies liberated Rome from its Nazi-occupation, the film is a strong profile of ordinary Italians who are struggling externally and internally when caught between their occupiers and the Resistance. Rome Open City encapsulates a similar, yet different, feeling of emotion exhaustion, although most of its unflinching characteristics are borne out expressively, on screen. It is a fine, early example of its neorealist genre and of its country’s cinema during the 1940s.

McCarey and Rossellini aside (and one other film, which will appear with its own review soon), the foray into film this last month was not as completely satisfying as a foray into episodic television. I watch the first few seasons of Parks & Recreation (NBC) and Modern Family (ABC), which are available through Netflix and the premium subscription to Hulu. Both shows follow the single-camera, laugh-track-free, documentary-esque format made popular by a spate of recent network television successes like Arrested Development and The Office. (30 Rock, while eschewing documentary format, nevertheless embraces the single-camera format.) In fact, those shows are particularly helpful guides, as Modern Family bears resemblance to Arrested Development and Parks & Recreation bears resemblance to The Office. Each takes its predecessor a step further — Modern Family weaves three core nuclear units into a larger tapestry, creating a larger ensemble than Development; Parks & Recreation, once it settled into a groove and found its voice in the full-run second season, took the often surreal and highly comic office environment and spliced in governmental satire and created characters that seem more robust and complete than the Americanized version of The Office, which lost steam after its third season. For someone who usually doesn’t watch much television except in DVD and instant-streaming formats, these two shows proved to be exceptionally bright spots to counteract winter doldrums.

I don’t quite have the time to explore the literary offerings I consumed during January, but let me give some recommendations of books I read that I enjoyed: The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (edited by Kevin Young, an eclectic mix classic and contemporary verse exploring the innumerable facets of grief); Beowulf (the Old English epic translated by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney); Gideon’s Trumpet (a chronicle of the landmark Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright with in-depth at how the court functions, written in superbly clear prose by Anthony Lewis); and 1 Henry VI (Shakespeare’s classic examination of power-hungry factions that cause the state more harm than good, largely considered to be literature’s first “pre-quel”).

Coming up: an ideal 2011 Oscar ballot, the best films of 2009 (only a year late!), and a standalone review of Apocalypse Now because I have too many thoughts on it to be constrained to the Media Month feature. Until then: what was the best film, new or otherwise, you saw during January?

Ratings:

Film
Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937): ★★★★½

Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945): ★★★★

The Insider (Michael Mann, 1999): ★★★★

My Blue Heaven (Herbert Ross, 1990): ★★★½

Heat (Michael Mann, 1995): ★★★½

Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997): ★★★½

Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur, 1998): ★★★½

The Savages (Tamara Jenkins, 2007): ★★★½

Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987): ★★★

Chaplin (Richard Attenborough, 1992): ★★

Television
Parks & Recreation (NBC, Seasons 1 & 2): ★★★★½

Modern Family (ABC, Season 1): ★★★★½

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