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The Film ‘The Revenant’ Could Have Been

Later this evening, I expect The Revenant will be named Best Picture winner at this year’s Oscars. This being the most wide-open Best Picture race in years, there is still room for a surprise, but director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu appears poised to make it back-to-back wins. For all the preview goodness you need, have a listen to the latest episode of our podcast.

The Revenant is a fine winner if not, I suspect, one that will go down as an all-time great, and my review of it was overwhelmingly positive. That said, toward the end of it, I hinted at the movie being a bit of a letdown for me personally.

Perhaps for the better given his limitations as a storyteller, Innaritu deviated pretty heavily from the novel, written by Michael Punke, in two ways:

By including Hugh Glass’ half-Pawnee son as a character, when, in the book, he has no son at all. The murder of his son by Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) adds extra weight to Glass’ quest for revenge. It certainly didn’t spoil the film adding this detail, but it does change the story quite significantly. Glass’ righteousness is exactly doubled because of the murder, though I’m not sure it really needs to be. Isn’t being left for dead enough righteous justification for everything that comes after?

By bringing the film to an end with a deadly showdown between Fitzgerald and Glass when, in the book and, apparently, the historical record, Glass is unable to actually fulfill his quest. By the time he’s caught up to Fitzgerald, his enemy is a member of the U.S. Army and as a result protected.

Again, I’ve got no problems with a victory by The Revenant, and I think it’s probably for the better that Innaritu made the choices he did. The story is simpler as a consequence, allowing for his craft to shine through. But I’ll always wonder what kind of statement this would have made were Glass not quite so righteous and were he unable to exact his revenge. I think it might have told us more about survival and the American character, instead of fixating so heavily on vengeance alone.

#the revenant #film #movies #oscars

Though Watney clings to survival throughout, the idea of creating life and a home in such an empty new world is as challenging and stirring as the most idyllic visions of the Wild West.

Before we close the book on 2015 films fully, I’ve been meaning to link this piece from The Atlantic, one of the finest pieces of film writing from last year.

2015 Leftovers

With both of our top 10 lists out, we’ve essentially moved on to 2016 on the blog. That said, I will be continuing to round out the year by at least watching all of the films from The Weekend Pick.

Collected here are some very brief reviews of those films:

Insurgent (March 20): I must confess, I find these films oddly compelling despite the fact that they are simply much, much dumber versions of The Hunger Games. They’re so dumb that the primary villain, played by Kate Winslet, goes by her first name, Jeaneen, like she’s some loathed co-worker. Dumb as they are, I’ve found myself invested in both so far at the end.

Maggie (May 8): This is an awfully clever concept for a tired genre -- Arnold Schwarzenegger tries to care for/protect/hide his daughter as a zombie virus slowly overtakes here. It’s just lacking in execution. There’s no reason it should have been this slow.

Ted 2 (June 26): Not half bad for a comedy sequel -- probably because it didn’t rehash the same jokes and plot from the original. I think we’ve seen enough of the Ted character for a lifetime, but it’s been fun while it lasted.

Tangerine (July 10): A worthwhile film because of the respect it shows its characters -- a couple of transgendered women and two men who love them -- and because of the payoff at the end. This isn’t about opening your eyes or the struggle of transgendered folks. It’s about friendship, plain and simple, and as a result it’s very powerful.

Straight Outta Compton (Aug. 14): I must say, I do not understand all the fuss about this film. It’s a fun trip down memory lane musically, and there are some standout performances, but this checks every biopic cliche box that there is and maybe creates a few new ones. There’s far too much telling about the impact the members of N.W.A. had on each other and American society, with hardly any showing.

Omar Sharif

I’ve been meaning to write about Omar Sharif for months. Sharif died back in July and, well, other things keep coming up (many other things) keep coming up.

Sharif is one of the stars in one of my very favorite films, Lawrence of Arabia. What I find so interesting about his career arc is that he was able to use that film as a stepping stone to traditional roles that, to put it bluntly, you would think would go to a white guy.

I’m thinking specifically of Doctor Zhivago. Here is this Egyptian, a relative nobody three years earlier, playing a Russian heartthrob opposite blonde bombshell Julie Christie in an epic classic. Hollywood can be a true land of opportunity. At the same time, it is hard even now to imagine Sharif’s footsteps being easily followed -- for someone like him to avoid being horribly typecast.

#omar sharif #hollywood #films #movies

Reviews in Brief: ‘Get Hard’

We can’t get to everything on the mothership. “Reviews in Brief” gives you a brief taste of our takes on the films we miss initially.

Kevin Hart and Will Ferrell are both very funny people. Both have also been in their share of lousy comedies over the years.

Unstoppable force, meet immovable object, in the form of Get Hard, a comedy where Ferrell, playing a hapless fall guy bound for prison, enlists the help of Hart to toughen up before he heads inside.

My choice of metaphor is deliberate because, well, I couldn’t decide a winner here. Get Hard is not a particularly good comedy, but it is not all that bad either. Both Hart and Ferrell have appeared in far worse films, and in ones that are not as self-aware as this one seemed to me.

There is, of course, an uncomfortable racial component to the laughs here. It’s not so funny that black people are imprisoned at a disproportionate rate in this country, while people of the ilk of Ferrell’s character end up receiving little or no punishment.

Get Hard does just barely enough to disarm that discomfort. One of the key plot points in the setup is that Hart has zero experience with prison. He needs the money offered to him by Ferrell’s character to move to a better neighborhood, and as a result is willing to play in to the stereotypes Ferrell’s character has about him to make that happen.

In so doing, Get Hard seems to be poking enough fun at its own premise to make the rest of the jokes easier to laugh it. Again, this is not a great comedy, but it does have its moments.

#get hard #will ferrell #kevin hart #movies #films

Consider this sh*t: When historians of the future try to pinpoint the precise moment that the film industry crawled out of its deathbed and back onto its feet, there’s a good chance they’ll land somewhere in March 2013, when a fledgling distribution company called A24 Films transformed a Harmony Korine...

I’ve been wondering about the production company A24 since, oh, about the time I saw A Most Violent Year. They’ve been on the front of some of the best, most interesting non-blockbuster films of the last few years. Best of all -- they don’t shy away from making films that could easily be studio blockbusters (or maybe could have been recently).

This article might drive you a bit nuts if marketing drives you nuts, and I’m not sure I agree with the premise put forward in the headline, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.

#films #movies #a24 #movie industry

Reviews in Brief: ‘McFarland USA’

We can’t get to everything on the mothership. “Reviews in Brief” gives you a brief taste of our takes on the films we miss initially.

McFarland USA is so superficially cliche that it didn’t even bother finding someone besides Kevin Costner to portray the crusty old coach/fish out of water trying to get the best out of a bunch of misfits. From Tin Cup to Field of Dreams to Bull Durham to For the Love of the Game, this, more than anything else is Costner’s wheelhouse -- equal parts wise, down on his luck and determined.

Viewed through a Costner-centric lens, McFarland USA is the very definition of nothing special -- a sentimental sports film with a painfully obvious message and a plot so familiar you could probably recite it in your sleep.

But Costner is not the only thing of note about this film. The kids he is coaching are the sons of migrant farmers in dusty, little California team. He is coaching them to run -- cross country, to be exact. And both Costner and the makers of the film possess unabashed admiration for this unlikely group of runners, delivering it without being patronizing in the least.

McFarland USA is still a cliche, obvious story. There aren’t many surprises, but there’s nary an unpleasant moment. A good sports movie should have us rooting on the good guys and reveling in the journey. This film accomplishes precisely that.

#Kevin Costner #McFarland USA #film #movies #moviefilms

Reviewses in Brief: Girlhood, Last Days in Vietnam, The Search for General Tso, Amira & Sam

We can’t get to everything on the mothership. “Reviews in Brief” gives you a brief taste of our takes on the films we miss initially.

I’ve been too busy to give each of these films even a few paragraphs, but wanted to weigh in since I have seen them, with at least a few sentences.

Girlhood: Not sure this film would be so critically adored were it in English. But it is a painfully honest coming-of-age story, and the “Diamonds” dancing scene is worth the time spent. (Available on Netflix)

Last Days in Vietnam: Typically terrific stuff from PBS’ American Experience -- a broad and yet also personal documentary of the United States’ departure from Vietnam in 1975. It at once gives you reason for hope and is a microcosm for everything that went wrong during that ill-fated war.

The Search for General Tso: Like so many documentaries these days, an interesting topic holds your interest even as the actual filmmaking remains straightforward and uninventive. Great history on the origin of America’s favorite Chinese dish. (Available on Netflix)

Amira & Sam: A quirky and legitimately great romantic comedy for long stretches that wastes a lot of its goodwill on an absurd fantastical ending. Great to see Martin Starr in a more conventional leading role too.

#movies #film #girlhood #last days in vietnam #the search for general tso #amira & sam

Me and Earl and All That Backlash

I’ve been more than a little surprised by the small but vocal minority that has come out of the woodwork and panned Sundance darling Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in the last week.

I loved it. I can understand not feeling the same way. But the vociferous nature of some of the criticism of the film has left me taken aback.

Take Scott Tobias at The Dissolve:

The world is little but a mechanism to advance his narrative—to make him a better filmmaker, to make him a better friend, and perhaps to get him into the college of his choice. Everyone else in the movie might as well be dead by the end of it, too, for all their individual destinies matter in the grand scheme of things. Gomez-Rejon has erected a gleaming shrine to adolescent narcissism.

Or how about Sheila O’Malley at RogerEbert.com:

Other than that acquisitive movie-mad mindset, it is a pandering, self-flattering mess, featuring unearned catharsis, lazy clichés and characters presented in broad, sometimes-offensive stereotypes.

I get some of this negativity. I really do. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, taken at face value, is a film about the least interesting and, so, least deserving character to be found -- a young white male with every advantage in life compared with the two other titular characters.

The thing is, I don’t really understand taking it at face value. Me and Earl is about the adult-making realization that the world doesn’t revolve around you, bub. The negative reviews of the film either do not acknowledge this at all or completely diminish the validity of such a story.

I dunno, naysayers, maybe Rachel and Earl are one-dimensional characters because the film needs Greg to be a self-absorbed jackass (like so many other teenagers) so that his character arc is fully drawn by the end.

Just a thought ...

#me and earl and the dying girl #film #movies

Michael Bay is the most demanding special effects director ever. When we do the Transformers movies, Michael lives at ILM with them. He just goes up and camps out there.

Steven Spielberg in WIRED’s must-read oral history of Industrial Light & Magic. A great story that might change the way you think about some people in Hollywood and some of the films they’ve made.

#Michael Bay #Steven Spielberg #George Lucas #ILM #film #special effects

Orson Welles edited lesbian porn, 3 AM, for Gary Graver in 1975 in order to finance Welles' last movie, The Other Side Of The Wind.

The more I learn about Orson Welles ... the more I, well, y’know

#orson welles #citizen kane

The researchers find that exposure to "Harry Potter" stories changes the attitudes of children and young people toward people from disadvantaged backgrounds, specifically refugees, immigrants and gay people. So it turns out "Harry Potter" may be an effective tool against prejudice.

“The Greatest Magic of Harry Potter” via NPR. (So Roger Ebert was scientifically accurate that movies “are like a machine that generates empathy.”)

#harry potter #science #roger ebert #film #movies

Reviews in Brief: ‘Appropriate Behavior’

We can’t get to everything on the mothership. “Reviews in Brief” gives you a brief taste of our takes on the films we miss initially.

It’s hard to be critical of a story that feels so personal -- so authentic and genuine that you can feel the pain of the person telling it to you. Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior is quite clearly straight from the heart.

She is the writer, director and star of her first feature-length film, which chronicles the growing pains of Shirin, a bisexual, Iranian-American twentysomething living in Brooklyn and trying to come to grips with her sexuality and keep her much more conservative parents happy.

Comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls abound (Akhavan has since appeared on the HBO comedy), but the child-of-immigrants bent to the story gives Appropriate Behavior a very different vibe. There’s a much more genuine (and much less winky) struggle for identity and acceptance at the center of this film than in anything from Dunham’s creation. One isn’t really any better than the other; instead, I bring this up to point out the fairly stark differences between two contemporaneous pieces of art that are so superficially similar.

All that said, Akhavan does not quite have the writing polish of her counterpart nor does she have the backing of HBO, which has enabled Dunham to go out and cast people like Adam Driver.

The emotion and heart of Akhavan’s tale rings true, but some of the writing and much of the acting doesn’t quite live up. It is far too blunt and stilted. Akhavan does seem to possess considerable raw talent, so the guess here is that Appropriate Behavior becomes a footnote in the future as she does bigger and better things.

#desiree akhavan #appropriate behavior #movies #film

Reviews in Brief: ‘Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief’

We can’t get to everything on the mothership. “Reviews in Brief” gives you a brief taste of our takes on the films we miss initially.

Documentarian Alex Gibney’s latest film, an expose of the Church of Scientology based on Lawrence Wright’s book of the same name, has a lot of ground to cover.

Scientology is still so mysterious that Gibney has to explain the basics (what it actually is) -- dipping in to rare interview footage with founder L. Ron Hubbard to do so. He must chronicle the Church’s stunning rise to power, an effort led by its current leader, David Miscavige, and boosted significantly by the wealth and influence of notable celebrities, especially Tom Cruise and John Travolta. And he must also fulfill the promise in the title -- given the absurdity of the “religion’s” central tenets, how have the likes of Hubbard and Miscavige been able to create such a devout (albeit small) following.

As such, Going Clear is three films in one -- each of them fascinating, but a little bit of a tease in retrospect. I suspect Gibney could have gotten three full films out of this material (or at least two, given the rarity of Hubbard footage), and I think I might have liked this effort a whole lot more.

As strange as it is to see Tom Cruise saluting the likes of L. Ron Hubbard and David Miscavige at these bizarre private events, Going Clear is at its best when it’s examining the stubborn, often unyielding power of faith -- something that goes far beyond Scientology and to the core of human nature. Good stuff here from Gibney, but it could have been great.

#alex gibney #scientology #going clear #film #movies #going clear: scientology and the prison of belief

Reviews in Brief: 'Divergent'

We can’t get to everything on the mothership. “Reviews in Brief” gives you a brief taste of our takes on the films we miss initially.

The easiest way to describe Divergent is also the best. This is a very dim-witted version of The Hunger Games. It is not a terrible story, and this is not a difficult film to watch, but it does mean that all of the substance of the story is right there on the surface.

In this dystopian vision of the future, members of society are overtly sorted in to different groups so that they can best serve the greater good. Budding star Shailene Woodley is "divergent" -- meaning she simply doesn't fit in to one of those groups -- and her eventual unwillingness to conform sets up the conflict in the film and surely many more to follow.

I was more dismissive of Divergent as I was watching it than I am now. It's total lack of subtlety leads to some extremely groan-worthy moments and robs Woodley of the chance to deliver the kind of nuanced performance she proved capable of in The Descendants. But as cheesy entertainment, you could do worse.

#divergent #shailene woodley #movies #film

Five Thoughts on 'Selma'

Selma is indeed terrific -- both an excellent historical drama and a film that is unfortunately a little bit too relevant today. Steve covered the basics, but I wanted to hone in on a few parts of Ava DuVernay's piece

1. From a purely visual perspective, this is the best film of 2014, bumping The Immigrant out of my top spot in that regard. DuVernay is in complete command as a director. She frames her shots perfectly, using negative space and the rule of thirds to bring the appropriate weight to each and every scene. She employs movement when she has to -- a tracking shot before one of King's speeches, an aerial zoom-out on the protesters' second attempt to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge. And about that negative space: DuVernay filled it up with wonderful symbols in almost every scene. There was a rainbow in a schoolroom as Dr. King discussed threats against his life. There was the portrait of a Confederate general between Alabama Gov. George Wallace and the head of the State Police. There was half of the word "Coroner" on a window at the hospital, a hint of Jimmy Lee Jackson's fate before it was confirmed in heartbreaking fashion.

2. The honesty with which Dr. King's story is told is admirable. This is as true for his infidelity to Coretta Scott King as for his tactical mastery of the situation. I think it's important to understand that King's principles alone weren't enough to achieve his goals. He had to expose his opponents as virulent racists for all the world to see. He was also asking for a set of somethings that was reasonable to most people and were deliverable within the rule of law. I sympathize greatly with the Michael Brown and Eric Garner protests. I even think the frustration that has ended in riots and violence is understandable and defendable to a degree. But I think if you want to understand why that movement does not enjoy the same broad support that Dr. King's did, it is instructive that the Brown case lacks clear, irrefutable, horrifying visual evidence, and that no cohesive set of demands have been put forth. Most reasonable people are of course troubled by the militarization of the police, mass incarceration, disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans, police brutality, etc. To get them "off the sidelines," as King puts it, you need to give them clarity about what they should work toward. There's a great scene where King and other members of the SCLC are arguing about what they should ask for. Seems to me that discussion is still under way.

3. The historical context is perfect. If you watch 12 Years a Slave and Selma back to back (and please don't do this, for what a bleak afternoon that would be), you begin to understand how slavery bleeds in to Reconstruction, how Reconstruction bleeds in to Jim Crow, how Jim Crow bleeds in to wherever we are now. The Confederate flags, the portrait of the general in Wallace's office and King's speech about the lie rich whites have told to poor whites to institutionalize racism rings down to the present.

4. I do wish some of the dialogue hadn't felt like part of a high school history class. I guess most people don't know what the acronyms SCLC and SNCC stand for. Maybe they should look it up after the movie is over rather than having it hand-fed through a few clumsy lines.

5. I don't understand the LBJ fuss at all. Even ignoring caveats about artistic license and assuming this is perfectly accurate (which is not a standard any filmmaker should be held to), there isn't shame in his maneuvers any more than there is shame in, I dunno, not supporting same-sex marriage until it is politically convenient. Which is to say that politics is an often times shameful profession, Let's not hold a politician from 50 years ago to higher standards than the politicians of today.

#Selma #Ava DuVernay #MLK #LBJ #movies #film

Reviews in Brief: 'Sin City: A Dame to Kil For'

We can’t get to everything on the mothership. “Reviews in Brief” gives you a brief taste of our takes on the films we miss initially.

How are you supposed to feel about a sequel that makes perfect logical sense as an extension of the previous film, but fails to take you anywhere new?

Ambivalence?

I think that's about right, and I think that about sums up my feelings toward Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller take us back to their visually arresting, super-seedy world -- the one we first visited much more memorably in 2005 -- and give you more of the same.

Again, this makes perfect logical sense because the first movie only told a piece of the graphic novel written by Miller.

Logic doesn't always lead to intrigue I am afraid. Some of the faces are new (Bruce Willis and Clive Owen are out, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Josh Brolin are in), but the story is the same. There just isn't much left to say in Sin City, despite Rodriguez and Miller's attempts over the course of the sequel.

#Sin City: A Dame to Kill For #movies #film #Frank Miller

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