THE KING'S SPEECH (2010)
Oscar Record: Best Picture (4/10), Best Actor (4/5), Best Supporting Actor (1/5), Best Supporting Actress (2/5), Best Director (4/5), Best Original Screenplay (2/5)
I take the Oscar catnip and am thoroughly pleased. There's a little bit of shallowness to this movie but the lead performance by Collin Firth is one of the best I've seen. Although it's not graphically similar to the physical torture Natalie Portman goes through in Black Swan, I was cringing and uncomfortable with the main character's verbal tribulations all the same. The gravity of the situation a monarch participates in, perfectly orchestrated by the director makes you feel all the worse for this king. That solid drama keeps you engaged the whole time, even if the supporting characters don't have much depth at times. As the drama starts to become too conventional (not a fan of using that overplayed Beethoven symphony movement for a climatic scene) it adds just the right difficulties, in particular a short scene with the King watching footage of Hitler that not too subtly suggests the power of rhetoric. Very good, and I wouldn't be too annoyed if it won all the Oscars out there.
THE PASSENGER (1975)
Nope, I haven't finished Antonioni's Italian trilogy yet, but I received this later film of his starring Jack Nicholson and it's an incredible combination of talent. I was actively following the metonymic style I'm supposed to be looking for when I'm watching this director's movies, but then I just got lost in the beauty and desolation of it all. How a movie can never be urgent but never be boring is such a filmmaking feat. One of the final shots of the film (which is pretty famous in film appreciate circles) reminds any cinephile why these kinds of movies hit a very sweet spot. I love how I've learned to understand and appreciate this style of movies, and have learned to appreciate it distinctively from other types of entertainment, including excellent "traditional" movies. This could definitely be a gateway for a lot of casual movie goers to get into artsy movies.
PERFORMANCE (1970)
Back to the long list of older films to see, this was a bit of a risk, coming from an Ain't It Cool DVD release column a year or so ago and available via Netflix Instant. For a good part of it, it was similar to a few hippie dippy trip-fests of films that were released around this time. It's very colorful and confusing at times, but it wasn't completely incoherent, which believe me, is saying something. It's grounded in a story about a gang enforcer hiding out in a hedonistic den after going too far with one of his projects. Mick Jagger's appearance is I guess what originally intrigued me, and he was interesting in this movie, though hard to understand. Mostly it's quite random, though, not an easy film to introduce to someone if you want them to appreciate your tastes.
FOOD INC (2008)
Wrapped up an excellent holiday weekend of traveling and movie watching with a documentary from WIFF 2009 that got a lot of exposure in other circles. I'm thinking about the leftover turkey cutlets I will eat after writing this, because turkey is one of the few foods whose production methods aren't thoroughly decimated in this expose'. That means turkey is safe, right? This documentary covers a lot of ground and I mainly took away, as I do from these rabble-rousing things, that there are so many odds stacked against the little guy, and the ultimate ideal of the little guy in America is the farmer who is selflessly feeding us through his hard labors. Now, corporate America, likely housed in urban boardrooms is managing agriculture and rural life with an iron fist. It's hard to imagine what I personally can do to change this, but Food Inc. offers a hopeful vision that this movement about agribusiness is being tackled from multiple angles, including a surprising amount of support from Wal-Mart. I need to plan my cooking projects a little more in advance so I can buy at farmer's markets more.
Whew... got to watch less, update more, or be more brief. Movies are awesome!
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