OVP: The Client (1994)

Film: The Client (1994)
Stars: Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Renfro, Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony LaPaglia
Director: Joel Schumacher
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Susan Sarandon)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

During the 1990's, one of the biggest writers on the planet was John Grisham (still an author that can command bestseller lists, though with a thin hold on larger pop culture), and pretty much every major Grisham novel was bound (for a time) to be brought to the big-screen.  This was because he was basically a star attraction in the title, and it worked-movies like The Firm and The Pelican Brief were big hits, and it wasn't until the late 1990's with box office disappointments like The Chamber and The Rainmaker that the phenomenon of the Grisham adaptation started to die down.  The Client, though, was released during the heyday of Grisham's movies, and is one of only two of his film adaptations (despite all of them having buzzy casts) to win an Academy Award nomination for acting (the other being The Firm for Holly Hunter), getting Susan Sarandon the third of the four nominations she received from 1991-95.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on young Mark Sway (Renfro), an 11-year-old frequently in trouble who accidentally witnesses a suicide.  Before he dies, though, the man who kills himself tells Mark the location of a US Senator's body who has gone missing, and is presumed dead.  It turns out he is dead, and was killed by a rebellious mob hitman named Barry "The Blade" Muldano (LaPaglia).  Both US Attorney Roy Foltrigg (Jones) and henchmen of the Blade's gang begin to harass Mark, his brother (who has been traumatized by the suicide & stopped speaking) and his mother (Parker), so Mark hires a recovering alcoholic attorney named Reggie Love (Sarandon), who despite not being of the same educational caliber as Foltrigg, is able to go toe-to-toe with him, frequently outsmarting his tricks.  Despite friction between the two, Mark & Reggie form an unlikely friendship, and in the end Reggie is able to find the senator's body with Mark, and put Mark's family into witness protection, while still providing Foltrigg with enough evidence to win his case & mount a run for the governorship (the Blade is killed by the mob for his reckless behavior).  Thus, happy endings all around for the heroes, and comeuppance for the villain.

The movie feels a bit like an extended episode of Law & Order upon revisit, albeit with a helluva guest star budget.  I have not read The Client, but I have enjoyed Grisham's books in the past (my favorite is probably The Runaway Jury), as they're pulpy and the sort of thing you can take on a family vacation without having to really consider the book, and frequently putting it down at different intervals (it's not like reading Portnoy's Complaint).  But the movie itself meanders too much, and  doesn't ground Mark with enough consistency, even for an 11-year-old.  Renfro launched his career with this film, which would eventually include hits like Tom and Huck and Sleepers before he would become a tragic case of child stardom gone wrong (drugs, arrests, and death-by-overdose at the age of 25 would follow).  He's good in this movie, but the script does him few favors, making him lose trust in Reggie too often to feel plausible, particularly considering that he has a decent relationship with his mother, even if she's not June Cleaver, and so overreacting to female authority figures feels like a reach.

The movie won one Academy Award nomination, in line with our theme this week, for Best Actress. Sarandon for a brief period in the early 1990's got nominated for everything.  Oscar sometimes does this with actors they feel deserve to eventually win a trophy, increasing their odds of getting one by citing them always, and then immediately lose interest after they win (I suspect if Amy Adams wins a nomination in the next couple of years, she won't be able to get nominated under any circumstances in a similar way afterward).  This was at a point in that push to honor Sarandon, and I honestly wonder if she was close to winning considering how famously bad the category was in 1994 (Jessica Lange ended up winning for a film that had sat on Orion's shelf for three years), but this would've been a weird Oscar win.  Sarandon specializes in playing smart, loquacious women, but this isn't a serious film, and this is merely a good performance in a middling movie.  That being said, I've seen a chunk of these nominations, and I can't promise I won't also consider Sarandon for the win as, yes, 1994 was a strange year for Best Actress.

OVP: Ad Astra (2019)

Film: Ad Astra (2019)
Stars: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland
Director: James Gray
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Mixing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

In recent years, we've seen a plethora of space epics that take place closer to home.  Gone are film franchises (well, not gone, but alongside of in this case) like Star Wars and Star Trek, where we are venturing into galaxies unknown, and instead we see movies like Gravity, The Martian, and First Man, films that take place right outside of our front door, and feel within reach.  Ad Astra is another installment in such a trend, but it still manages to take us to worlds' unknown.  A film whose focus is on finding ourselves as we venture into the furthest corners of the solar system, Ad Astra is a gargantuan movie, one that feels like James Gray has crossed paths between the best of Christopher Nolan and the most coherent of Terrence Malick, to come out a provocative case study of one man's obsession with the truth, and another's need to observe the world he's been given.

(Spoilers Ahead) Roy McBride (Pitt) is the son of space legend Clifford McBride (Jones), a hero of the space age who when Roy was young, went off into space to try and find extraterrestrial life, but ultimately was lost, never to return evidence of such an encounter.  Years later, his son has followed into his footsteps, and is convinced by the government that his father is not, in fact, presumed dead, but still alive, at the outskirts of the solar system.  His ship is potentially causing surges back on earth, which are threatening all human life.  Roy must go to Mars to launch communication to his father, in a vain hope to stop him (or let him know that he is still alive and needs to be stopped).  However, Roy decides to go all the way to Neptune to meet his father, in the process becoming part of a solo mission after all of the people onboard attack him on command's orders.  Once he reaches Neptune, he discovers that his father was not a hero, but a man driven mad by loneliness who killed his entire crew, and despite years at the periphery of space, has not given up hope of finding alien life in the universe.  Roy tries to rescue Cliff, but Cliff doesn't want to be rescued and face what he left behind, and admits he never really cared about any of it, including Roy.  Roy lets his father physically and metaphorically go, and stops the surges, with him eventually returning to earth to share his father's data, that there is no other intelligent life in the universe, and reconnects with his estranged wife Eva (Tyler).

This is the basic plot of Ad Astra, but it's a film that's hard to summarize into just simple pieces, as the best moments of Gray's epic are actually just tiny little chapters in the film that show what life is like in a world where Earth, the Moon, and Mars are actually connected, and not just three different rocks orbiting the sun.  The scene where lunar rovers try to kill Roy for simply driving over their share of the moon, seemingly for no other reason than territorial violence, speaks to man's need to constantly control, even in the most remote of places.  And the shocking, bloody sequence with the baboons literally floating around in space, having murdered & overpowered the astronauts of their scientific expedition, is jaw-dropping in its intensity (and scary as hell).  Gray's film is gorgeous, but it also gives us a look at how alien worlds will still be so distant from our own.  The film's central tenet, at least in terms of Tommy Lee Jones's character, is the question of whether life exists beyond our planet; Gray shows here that even if it does, it will still feel out-of-reach and alien, impossible for us to properly connect with it.

The final scenes with Pitt & Jones are probably the best.  Pitt, so good at letting his gorgeous, expressive eyes and face do the talking for him with introverted characters, watches as the man he has modeled his whole life around falls apart before him, his stony visage crumbling as we learn he's a person who couldn't handle failure, or at least the answer "no" to his life's mission.  Jones is only in a small scene, but he's perfectly cast as Cliff, a man who couldn't handle the idea that all of space was just vast & cavernous, not filled with other creatures like himself.  Gray's message with Ad Astra is ultimately one of hope in showing it is Roy, not Cliff, who must continue on after this journey, even though Cliff's is the quest we as humans are obsessed with knowing.  Roy is there to show us that what we have on earth is precious enough that we should protect that even if it means that we don't know the answers of the universe.  It's an optimistic moment for a man who has not allowed himself any sort of emotion; everything you want in life is right here, you just need to allow yourself the vulnerability to find it.  Ad Astra is a gorgeous, sumptuous feast, but it's also about two men's journeys into the unknown, and the strength to come back not knowing the answers to the questions you sought to learn.

OVP: Actor (2007)

OVP: Best Actor (2007)

The Nominees Were...

George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

My Thoughts: We continue on our newly brisk pace with 2007's OVP with a deep dive into the Best Actor field, one that features one first-time nominee, one man that for a brief moment there seemed destined to win a trophy, and three men who had already won a statue in their careers at this point.  It's strange to look at 2007's list in part because there are no newly-discovered talents here or character actors finally getting their due, as has been the case so often in recent years.  These are all five major leading men, though not necessarily at this point in their careers (looking at you, Tommy), who managed to make up yet another strong lineup in a great cinematic year.

Since I mentioned him and since he's the sore thumb in this lineup of movies that were otherwise huge in 2007, let's begin with Tommy Lee Jones.  Jones was that annual Oscar acting nominee that came out of virtually nowhere.  We'll get into some of the also-rans in a second, but pretty much no one had predicted Jones nomination when it was announced.  While Paul Haggis isn't my favorite director, I did like Elah, and I thought Jones did a fine if not-groundbreaking job in the movie.  I liked his quiet demeanor, and he underplays scenes that could have been a lot hammier for the actor (father looking for the man who killed his son is not a part that is lacking in dramatic opportunities).  There are moments where he feels like he's underacting, and Jones' style occasionally uses his own many movie memories as a crutch for the character, but I loved particularly his scenes toward the end of the picture, and overall this was a relatively pleasant surprise inclusion, even if I don't know if it deserved to be there.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Daniel Day-Lewis, who was assured this nomination perhaps the moment he signed the dotted line with Paul Thomas Anderson.  While Day-Lewis has played many iconic characters in his career, none have stuck in the pop culture subconscious quite the same as Daniel Plainview, and there's a reason for that: he's superb.  Day-Lewis dominates the screen as this larger-than-life character, a Mount Rushmore of acting.  The way that he makes Daniel both completely plain-spoken, obvious, and yet unknowable is a triumph.  He's addicting to watch, even if we're terrified and occasionally just want the character to be done.  Combined with great chemistry with Paul Dano's fascinating (and usually successful) take as Eli Sunday, he sinks his teeth into Anderson's raw script, and manages to create a truly haunting villain.  In my personal opinion, it's his best performance, and considering it's Day-Lewis, that's saying something.

Viggo Mortensen was the only first-time nominee at the time (though he would eventually get out of the one-and-done club this past year), and his Eastern Promises is a bit of an odd-duck in terms of nominations, as outside the 70's criminals don't typically get nominated for Best Actor, but instead stick to the supporting categories.  The performance is solid, if reminiscent of most of Mortensen's work.  His Nikolai is an unknowable creature, occasionally too much so as Mortensen doesn't quite mask the violent history of his character, of his own ambitions.  Mortensen probably won this nomination due to the iconic "naked bathhouse" fight scene, and while I'm not a huge sucker for physical acting the way AMPAS can be, this is an accomplishment in direction/acting, a groundbreaking sort of scene that has been mirrored everywhere in years since, and still is thrilling and frightening to watch.

I wrote in 2009 that I wasn't sure whether Clooney's best, most iconic role was Michael Clayton or Up in the Air, but upon re-watch I think it may well be his work in 2007.  Michael Clayton is the movie of 2007 that I really changed my first opinion on when prepping for this OVP series, initially writing it off as a Law & Order at the cinema, but then seeing all of the great ideas and acting behind it.  Clooney's Michael wouldn't work if he was a saint, and he wouldn't work if he was only in his dire situation with no other solutions.  I love the way that Clooney, playing a character that feels at-home in his movie star persona, still finds new facets in Michael, constantly reevaluating his situation and moving the character's confidence and demeanor around.  Later work from Clooney has veered into mugging, and it's hard to imagine him pulling off Michael today with the same sort of boldness and lack of scenery-chewing, but it's a pitch perfect star turn, something that's very hard to pull off.  I do in fact feel it's his best work because it's the performance that best melds that Grade-A movie star charisma he oozes with his fine, if usually underused acting chops.

Johnny Depp is our final nominee, and I have to admit that it's bizarre to me at this point to think of Depp as a serious actor who gets nominated for Oscars rather than a hackneyed over-actor who is intent on just getting a paycheck (I suspect this is what it'll be like when we start to revisit Jon Voight's pictures as well).  Depp's acting style meshes well with Sweeney, and I will admit up-front that I quite liked him in this role.  He has solid chemistry with Carter, and her choice of how to play Mrs. Lovett (a very different interpretation from either Angela Lansbury or Patti LuPone).  I love how even from the beginning he plays Sweeney as doomed, as someone simply on the borrowed time of revenge without any hope for a brighter future with his daughter Joanna; it's a smart decision considering a musical that is heavy on foreshadowing.  That being said, he does not remotely have the vocal pipes of Len Cariou or Michael Cerveris, and it strains in Sondheim's soaring score.  It's impossible not to think of what a better actor would have done, as Burton's rock interpretation of a thickly Broadway-musical doesn't always work, even if it looks great.  Putting in an actor who could belt may well have made the movie itself better, but considering he's not a good musical-singer, Depp still holds his own otherwise.

Other Precursor Contenders: We start with the Globes, which distinguish between Drama and "Comedy/Musical," and of course musical is a key word this year with Depp in contention.  As I've mentioned before Jones was a huge surprise, so he's out here while the other four show up: in Drama, Clooney/Mortensen/Day-Lewis are joined by James McAvoy (Atonement) and Denzel Washington (American Gangster), with Day-Lewis winning, while Depp triumphed over Ryan Gosling (Lars and the Real Girl), Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson's War), Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Savages), and John C. Reilly (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story).  The SAG Awards found room for Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) and Ryan Gosling over Jones & Depp, while the BAFTA's also skipped Jones/Depp in favor of McAvoy and Ulrich Muhe in The Lives of Others (which wasn't eligible for the Oscar that year as it had won the trophy the previous year for Foreign Language Film...so we'll get there eventually).  Day-Lewis won both trophies, but the real question here is who gets sixth place.  My gut says that Hirsch and McAvoy were both too young and pretty, and that instead the Academy would have gone with Gosling who had dominated precursors and had just been nominated.  However, considering that Oscar went with the more traditional work of Jones for the fifth slot, it's also possible that Washington or Russell Crowe may have been lurking behind the scenes for American Gangster, as both are major Oscar favorites.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Oscar has a weird obsession with ignoring the pretty boys, but Emile Hirsch and James McAvoy were both stupendous in the best work of their careers in Into the Wild and Atonement, respectively, and it's a shame Oscar didn't find room for at least one of them.  More glaring, though, is that Brad Pitt is giving a triumphant performance in The Assassination of Jesse James, truly one of the most iconic in his long career and the kickoff to a huge string of successful roles for the actor, and no one seemed to notice.  His dangerous, fascinating relationship to himself, Casey Affleck, and literally everyone in that movie is dynamite, and it's a pity that in a year where Clooney and Day-Lewis were both shooting for the stars Oscar didn't latch onto the third iconic performance on its plate.

Oscar’s Choice: There was never anyone that could beat Daniel Day-Lewis, a performance that arguably could have won in any year of this millennium.

My Choice: Day-Lewis has to win it, it's too good to deny.  Behind him is Clooney, followed by Depp, Jones, and Mortensen.  All-in-all, though, not the lineup I would have picked but there's no stinker in this bunch.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you agree with the awards consensus of Day-Lewis, or is there someone out there who wants to side with one of the other actors?  Why do you think that McAvoy and Hirsch never seemed to make it into major contention again (and quite frankly-what is Emile Hirsch even up to these days)?  And who would you have cast in Sweeney Todd if they'd have gone with a more musically-inclined take on the Sondheim masterpiece?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2007: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2007

Past Best Actor Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

OVP: In the Valley of Elah (2007)

Film: In the Valley of Elah (2007)
Stars: Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, Jonathan Tucker, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Wes Chatham
Director: Paul Haggis
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actor-Tommy Lee Jones)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The words "directed by Paul Haggis" do not inspire much confidence in me when I see them attached to a movie poster or film opening credits.  Ten years later, I still have whiplash from Crash somehow beating Brokeback Mountain (if you think my write-ups have been snarky toward Slumdog Millionaire so far, just you wait Henry Higgins), but I try to enter every film I go into with an open mind, and quite frankly I didn't realize this was a Paul Haggis film until the end credits (I must have missed it at the beginning), so I met this film with few preconceived notions.  The movie, a surprise Oscar nominee (at the time most people figured that Emile Hirsch or Ryan Gosling, not Tommy Lee Jones, would be the fifth Best Actor nominee), follows Jones' Hank Deerfield as he tries to find the true reason for his son's death.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is told in a pretty dark, dry style, almost reminiscent of a Clint Eastwood picture (it should be noted that Haggis originally wanted Eastwood, and not Jones, to play the lead role), and follows through a small military town, with Hank upending a police investigation of his son (he is a former military police detective) by bringing in his experience, and wanting to figure out why the military is so quick to dismiss his son's death.  He is joined by a police detective (Theron) trying to prove herself with whom he becomes friends.  The film unfolds in an interesting way, and Haggis actually maintains a solid amount of the mystery as the movie progresses, with us eventually finding out that Mike was killed for largely inconsequential reasons, likely driven by his fellow soldiers' paranoia and PTSD.

The film is at its best when it's trying to state something interesting about the military, and perhaps something unpopular.  It's worth noting eight years after the fact that this film was made in 2007, during the nadir of public support of the Iraq War, and so a discussion of how the military was mistreating its veterans wasn't as politically radical as it might have seemed six years earlier or even eight years later, but it is something that seems odd from a filmmaker as politically conventional as Haggis.  The film moves at a leisurely pace, occasionally stopping off into sections of the movie that don't really work but usually making a detour that's of interest (particularly in examining the masculine energy and forced respect of the military).  It helps that Haggis hired an ace cinematographer (I swear I didn't know that Roger Deakins, whom I sing the praises of constantly on this blog, was the cinematographer until just now but I did write "beautiful, desolate shots" in my notes on the film) who gives the film a poshness that always makes it look like a great movie.  It also helps that most of the bigger moments are underplayed, such as the final revelation of who killed Hank's son Mike.  Tommy Lee Jones is not a showy actor, but he's one who gets the job done and never overplays his character.  Occasionally this feels a bit underwhelming, but for the most part I was convinced and liked what Jones brought to Hank.

The same cannot be said for the female characters in the film.  Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron, like Jones, both have Oscars but you'd be right to question this fact based on this movie.  Sarandon's entire part could have been written out without anyone even noticing, and she does little aside from very easy story beats (like being sad when her son dies) to make the character more interesting.  The same could be said for Theron, who has the co-lead role but can't decide exactly what her motives are, and frequently relies on the underwritten script for inspiration, coming up short.  Is she a woman fighting to make it in a man's world, and that's her only motivation?  It's hard to be able to tell, and even she doesn't seem to understand her relationship with Hank.  As a result whenever Jones isn't onscreen you get nothing really from the rest of the cast (including James Franco, who has a bizarrely small part considering he was coming off the Spider-Man movies here and Josh Brolin, who since this is 2007 made his mandatory appearance in the film).

Overall, then, I was whelmed (10 Things I Hate About You joke!) and thought it was good but not great (and the final scene was ridiculously over-the-top, since I probably will never get to mention that again).  What did you think of the movie?  Are you a fan of Jones' surprise nomination or were you more Team Emile or Team Ryan?  Why do you think that Paul Haggis can't seem to direct decent parts for women?  And are you still reeling from Crash winning the Oscar?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Film: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Stars: Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper
Director: Joe Johnston
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Captain America, in my mind, was always the most boring of the Avengers growing up reading the comics.  Iron Man was a cool gadget-y guy, Thor was a studly God, and the Hulk was giant and green.  Captain America, on the other hand, was just a sort of lifeless figure on the page.  He was too generic, too noble-he was the Marvel equivalent of Superman, classic but with no edge.  It's the principle reason why I actually skipped out on the first two Captain America films when everyone else across the country was catching them in theaters (I didn't get acquainted with Chris Evans in this role until The Avengers).  However, when Winter Soldier got a shock Best Visual Effects nomination, it became a need and not a want to see the film, and so that I did.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film on the surface feels like almost every other superhero movie at this point.  Honestly, part of me was really glad that Guardians of the Galaxy came out this past year because it felt different, something that was still an origin story but with humor and fun and panache.  Captain America: The First Avenger isn't what you'd consider one of the more beloved films in the Marvel franchise, and there are a variety of reasons for that.  For starters, the Hydra villainy here isn't what you'd call particularly impressive.  The film's focus, which is in the first half on a scrawny Steve Rogers and in the second-half on a jacked-to-the-hilt Captain America, spends probably too much time trying to have it all, and that starts by making us feel like there's a compelling villain at the center of everything.  Hugo Weaving's Red Skull is too major of a character from the Captain America comic books to not be his first villain, but I have to admit that I never found him super eye-catching (this has always been the problem with Marvel villains compared to the iconic cavalcade of DC baddies-someone like the Joker or Lex Luthor is always going to tower over a Red Skull).  Part of me almost wished they'd gone with Toby Jones' Arnim Zola (thankfully they did in the sequel) for the villain as he always felt a bit more ruthless and get under your skin.

The rest of the film occasionally veers into fun, which is welcome in the increasingly serious world of Marvel comics.  Sebastian Stan, for example, is wonderful as Bucky, Rogers' sexy and over-confident best friend who has the roles reversed on him when Steve becomes a leader rather than a sidekick.  I also loved the whole sideshow aspect of the film-there was something so unsettling about the way that they turn Captain America into something of a war propaganda tool, rather than the hero we consistently see in the comic books.  Chris Evans is such a game performer, and so loose at comedy and charm that this was the perfect avenue to take him in (this was why he's the saving grace of the Fantastic Four movies).  I also thoroughly enjoyed Hayley Atwell's Agent Carter at the beginning, though I felt like toward the end she lost much of her identity to Captain America and his love interest (Marvel cannot seem to write interesting female love interests, even if they're far better at female superheroes...even though the only one they seem interested in is the Black Widow).  Aside from Weaving, in fact, the only person who feels a bit on autopilot here is Tommy Lee Jones, who is doing his curmudgeonly act for the 17,000th time, and there's nothing new here to warrant mention except when everyone else seems to be elevating their game you'd think he would too.

The effect of Chris Evans body, I have to say, feels like an effect that just isn't going to age well.  It's such a cool idea that I am totally behind it in concept, but the execution feels sloppy-you never really believe Chris Evans is a scrawny dude and the entire effect feels cheap, like something you'd see in a 1950's Sci-Fi film.  The fight sequences, as well (except for the one where Bucky falls from the train) are also underwhelming.  This may in fact be because there just aren't that many, but to that I wonder why they didn't get outside the traditional action film mode a bit more.  What's the point of having even a super-villain to conquer-why not just have Captain America become someone that could become a leader and make it a personal growth story?  Why force a romantic connection to the only female character when you could have a friendship there, at least at first (we don't need Peggy Carter to be Steve Rogers' girlfriend for the subsequent film to work, after all)?  These sorts of questions are worth pondering as we get more and more and more superhero films out into the market and we start to hit a saturation point.

All-in-all, though, this is a fine if not particularly compelling ride.  It's different enough to be interesting, but not different enough to be great, and there's nothing truly marvelous to see here.  We'll get to the sequel in a day or two, but what are your thoughts in the meantime?  Do you share my ambivalence for the film (and Captain America in general)?  What do you think of Chris Evans and the way that his career has become about two superheroes?  Share in the comments!

The Homesman (2014)

Film: The Homesman (2014)
Stars: Tommy Lee Jones, Hilary Swank, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, James Spader, Hailee Steinfeld
Director: Tommy Lee Jones
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Hilary Swank and I have not had what one would consider a harmonious relationship.  I have never seen Boys Don't Cry (as she won an Oscar for it, I'll clearly get there with the OVP someday, but no, this is a gaping miss in recent Oscar history for me) and was not a huge fan of Million Dollar Baby (I will probably enjoy it a bit more on re-watch, but I will never understand how she managed to defeat Winslet, Staunton, or Bening that year, let alone all three).  I also distinctly recall not being wild about the way that she ended her relationship with Chad Lowe, speaking out of turn against him, which I usually find a bit off-putting when she had already started a relationship before the divorce and when she's on the cover of Vanity Fair discussing the breakup.

However, Swank has grown on me through the years as a person, though as an actress her wilderness period following her second Oscar has been perplexing (she frequently gets compared to Sally Field in this regard, but Field just stopped being nominated for Oscars-she didn't stop making hits).  She's clearly someone who has a deep respect for her characters and contributing something to the film community (and she has an appreciation for film history and for the arts, which comes across during her interviews, which have been far more professional in the wake of the Vanity Fair story).  She's also someone who has a certain awareness of the role of her celebrity (that Ramzan Kadyrov scandal clearly had an affect), and has become a very strong advocate for women.  I've been itching, in fact, to bury the proverbial hatchet with Swank for a while now, and thankfully Tommy Lee Jones gave me that opportunity with The Homesman.  While the film has tonal problems and an uneven story focus, Swank is back in fine form here-the best she's been since Million Dollar Baby, and the best I've ever seen her.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout (yes, the same guy who wrote the novel Where the Boys Are), tells the story of Mary Bee Cuddy, a woman who lives "uncommonly alone" in the Nebraska prairie, isolated from most of the world and perpetually single and lonely.  The opening scene is her basically begging a neighbor to marry her, then cruelly being turned down when he called her too bossy and too plain to be his bride.  Cuddy is a woman who clearly has regrets about her move from a New York schoolhouse to the open prairie, but is too ingrained in her faith and the belief that "god will provide" to contradict him by moving back home (plus she's too invested in the community).

Through a series of men ducking out of their duties to their wives, she is entrusted to move three women, gone crazy with "prairie madness" across the wilderness, initially by herself but eventually with the help of a claim jumper named George Briggs (Jones).  As the film progresses, their initial friction, like it so often does in the movies, moves into admiration, and eventually respect.  Though it never seems to be that of a romantic love, a platonic love eventually emerges between the two.

The film is at its best when it is focused on learning about Swank's character.  Jones the director is, for the most part, smart enough to keep the focus on her, and if that had been the true point of the movie, we'd have added a couple of stars up-top.  Swank manages to make Mary Bee someone who is difficult to like but hard to explain why.  She's clearly had an incredibly rigid life, and has been hardened by the constant rejection of society and the men around her.  We see that in the way that the village ladies titter on about her.  I loved the way that she says, "uncommonly alone," a phrase we haven't heard earlier in the film but you can tell that Mary Bee has heard her entire adult life.  Her sympathy for the women is remarkable-it's hard for someone to come across so genuine and earnest and still believable in the movies-it's a difficult trick to not make the person appear fake or without any sort of qualms about their belief system, and that carries through to the end of her journey.

The movie also isn't shy about making Swank feel things that are deeply uncomfortable onscreen.  The reality is that while the audience knows initially the viciousness of the lives of the women who are being trucked across the country, they don't immediately recognize the mental anguish that depression and loneliness have done to Mary Bee.  We see that toward the end when she finally gives her virginity away, worried that that may be the only way that she can find a man, and then (I wasn't kidding about those spoiler alerts!) kills herself for shame and based on the reality that she will never be loved.  It's a harsh performance from Swank, who eschews vanity and downplays her loveliest features (those brown eyes) to play a "plain" woman, and isn't afraid to play into the loneliness, a difficult emotion to put onscreen, and make us feel horrible for judging her earlier.  In many ways it recalled Lesley Manville's excellent work in Another Year a few years back-both women are desperate to find a way to make love fit into their world, and both cannot seem to find it while it comes so easily to others.

There's a reason, of course, that I gave the film two stars, and that's Tommy Lee Jones, both as an actor and as a director.  While the self-involved, morally-bankrupt character that he plays is something that Jones, a longtime veteran of the screen, could do in his sleep, he seems to not know what direction to take the character.  Swank is able to make subtle shifts in her character, a woman so wanting for affection that she eventually sacrifices everything she believes in in its pursuit, but we don't ever really know Briggs-he's just a prop to reflect Mary Bee, and as a result, the moments after Mary Bee's death ring hollow.  I HATED the scene with James Spader, as it was clearly trying to aid a subplot we hadn't really explored properly to that point (that Jones is now a good man rejected by society), and Spader is such a hammy, over-baked actor (I honestly don't know if there's a name I groan louder over when I see it in the credits to a movie), and honestly the only person who can save the story is Meryl Streep, who has a remarkable cameo toward the end of the film, landing the "reject Briggs" story (notice how quickly she wants him on his way, despite clearly celebrating the man's actions), speaking toward the class and rank of her position as the preacher's wife, and only hinting at genuine awe toward what these women had to endure.  Streep's character is clearly well-researched and thought-out, never being without an idea of what to say, and being deeply practiced in what her character would do in this situation, only straying from it for mere moments.

The film also has a serious tonal problem that Jones should have nipped in the bud.  This is a deeply serious film, and didn't need comic bits in its course such as Jones dancing and drinking, and could have been far more successful being a straight drama and perhaps giving more background or growth to the three women, who become interchangeable (seriously-I had trouble keeping Miranda Otto's and Grace Gummer's stories apart in particular) throughout the movie.  By making the audience laugh when it doesn't want to-that made the ending seem more about Jones' Briggs than about Mary Bee, and that's a crime in a film where Swank towers over Jones in terms of performance.

Those were my thoughts on this film-what are yours?  Do you feel that this is Swank's best work in a decade?  Do you think she'll gain an Oscar nomination for it?  And do you wish that Jones would perhaps leave behind the director's chair going forward?  Share in the comments!

2014 Oscar Predictions: Best Actor

As proof that these articles are a bit silly to be writing right now, as I pointed out in my Best Actress article, these are all just a snapshot, since clearly after the raves The Theory of Everything Felicity Jones got at Toronto she’ll likely go lead and might even win the entire thing.

Still, though, it’s a fun bit of silliness and I hate starting things I don’t complete (the 2013 OVP is starting up again this week, I promise), so we’ll continue on with Best Actor.  This category always feels ridiculously full, and once again that’s the case with a number of actors taking on many challenging roles, though I must admit that even here I feel a tad underwhelmed.  I genuinely get bored with AMPAS’s bizarre and constant love of biopics.  The reality is that while these are occasionally brilliant (Zodiac, A Social Network, basically the David Fincher ones), by-and-large they are boring because they stick to well-known and predictable narratives and while they occasionally have superb acting, they rarely delve into tangents and interesting ways of telling a story.

Still, though, this is about Oscar’s opinions and not mine, and Oscar loves him a biopic, which should surely help the handsome and affable Eddie Redmayne make his way into the Academy’s good graces.  The Theory of Everything got an outstanding response in Toronto and though he is pretty young by this category’s standards, I still think we should count on his name amongst the nominees.

Ditto Steve Carell, playing against type in Foxcatcher.  The constant delays for this film makes me raise an eyebrow, but Bennett Miller got lead nominations for both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Brad Pitt-I doubt that this will be any different.  The real question continues to be whether or not Channing Tatum correctly campaigns here or if he is demoted to a supporting performance ala Julia Roberts last year.  I’m guessing supporting for now, so that gets us to two.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s The Imitation Game has a little bit of a smell around it right now in my opinion, though I am basing that on nothing other than the trailer, which gave away the entire movie (that always leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and makes me a bit nervous about the movie).  Still, this is Harvey’s big player this year, and it’s hard to imagine Cumberbatch, who is at “that moment” in his career, going much longer without Oscar attention, especially for something so BAIT-y.

Continuing the oddly first-timer heavy aspect of this category (really, there’s a decent chance that all five of the nominees in this category will be first-time nominees, which would be the first time this has happened in Best Actor since 1934) we have Michael Keaton, back from the career abyss with a show-stopping role in Birdman.  Hats off to Keaton for playing a very meta character (a washed-up actor most famous for playing a superhero…sound familiar?), and I think that if this delivers Keaton could be in a position very similar to Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler a few years ago.

There are a number of former winners/nominees, of course, that could continue that 1934 streak.  Bill Murray is getting strong recognition for St. Vincent, and is clearly pushing for a nomination for that role.  You’ve got Tommy Lee Jones in yet another passion project for The Homesman (hey, it worked with In the Valley of Elah) and Matthew McConaughey could have an afterglow for Interstellar, though with True Detective already out doesn’t it feel like he’s been rewarded enough?  Brad Pitt is back once again with Fury and that certainly looks captivating, though Pitt’s so good so often these days I wonder if the Academy will continue to recognize this.  And there’s of course Joaquin Phoenix, who gets put in Oscar’s good graces as often as he’s ignored, but Inherent Vice has a solid aura surrounding it.

That being said, I think we’re looking at a first-timer at this point for the fifth slot.  Jack O’Connell is the lead of one of the year’s biggest pictures (Unbroken), but is probably too young at 24 and way too hot to be nominated in a category that likes their nominees middle-aged and sexless.  Timothy Spall is leading a Mike Leigh film which is occasionally good for an acting citation (though Leigh's more consistent for writing, where he's almost certain to be nominated again this year).  Therefore, my gut is telling me that this is going to go to David Oyelowo at this point.  His star is on the rise after The Butler, and Selma has that sort of feel of a film that is going to land a huge number of nominations.

My Predictions: I’ve kind of already gone there (Cumberbatch, Oyelowo, Carell, Keaton, and Redmayne).  If I had to name some names that I think are being underestimated, we’ve got Gael Garcia Bernal (Jon Stewart is going to campaign the hell out his Rosewater and everyone likes Stewart), Spall (whom I already listed but bears repeating: he did win Cannes, after all), and perhaps Oscar Isaac who is a major emerging talent but may be picking too Indy of films with Inside Llewyn Davis last year and A Most Violent Year this year (which will help him in the long run with his career but will probably mean he’ll have to wait for a milquetoast biopic in a few years to compete with Oscar).

Is there a winner? Oddly, while his costar Jones is nearly the perfect age to win, Eddie Redmayne is almost certainly too young to win Best Actor with Oscar.  Instead, I’d suspect that he’ll settle for an “investment nomination” and he’ll applaud for either Keaton or Carell, both of whom are at the right point in their careers to pull off a Forest Whitaker-style win (winning on what will likely be your only nomination).  How bizarre would it be for Steve Carell to have an Emmy but no Oscar though?  Share your thoughts on this and this entire slate in the comments!

OVP: Supporting Actor (2012)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2012)

The Nominees Were...

Alan Arkin, Argo

Robert de Niro, Silver Linings Playbook

Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

My Thoughts: Part of the reason that I write "Snap" Judgment on my reviews is that on occasion (and let's be honest, with some regularity), my opinions of a film will shift over time.  Granted, films that I give great reviews to I generally remain on the positive side of, but after time passes, the things that I judge about a movie on the critical side or that I really enjoy start to weigh against each other.

So it's a little weird to write this after writing all five of my reviews on this blog, as some of the performances have lost quite a bit of their gusto.  This is perhaps appropriate (we have the most positive experiences with a film immediately after we view them, as the film is vivid in our mind, and we're also running off of the endorphins of going to the movies, something that, regardless of how terrible a film may be, is always an enjoyable time), and it's also worth noting that when it comes to giving out an Oscar, arguably the highest honor that a filmmaker can receive, the stakes are appropriately higher.  So, with apologies to some of the most accomplished actors of their generations (this is the first Academy acting lineup to have all previous winners in it), here we go.

I should start right off with Robert de Niro, who is goofily staring me in the face right now (I love that picture).  De Niro has been one of those great filmic conundrums for the past twenty years or so.  Ever since his critically-acclaimed turns in GoodFellas and Cape Fear, the man who redefined acting in the 1970's (he is probably my favorite actor of that era) has been coasting off of goodwill he got from decades of fine acting.  Granted, some actors do tend to sluff off in their old age, when the parts aren't as plum, and it's impossible for almost any actor to duplicate the Scorsese-fueled run that de Niro enjoyed in his heyday.

So I was excited to see Bob actually get rid of the Taxi Driver impersonations and try to create a unique character.  On occasion, that greatness showed through, and I standby that this is his best performance in the past decade, possibly the past twenty years (I've missed a couple of his more critically-recognized films of the 1990's, including Analyze This and Heat, both of which just got added to the Netflix queue out of shame).

That being said, I can't help but feel that if this were "Random Character Actor" we wouldn't have seen de Niro here (or maybe we would have-Harvey was behind this film, after all).  The performance, while strong, never has that key moment that locks you in for the rest of the movie.  De Niro, clearly suffering from OCD, gets a more respectful ending to his story arch than Lawrence or Cooper, but he never quite hits the same heights those two actors (particularly Lawrence) hit, and while this is good, it's not Oscar-worthy.

I also feel, a bit more controversially, the same about Tommy Lee Jones work in Lincoln.  Jones is a good actor (not quite the actor that de Niro is, but let's not quibble).  His work in, say, last year's Hope Springs was really remarkable and still actually sits more with me than this particular piece.  The film allows him some wonderful "actorly" work, but his role never grabbed me in the way that Day-Lewis's did (a high bar, to be sure, but a bar nonetheless).  His story also seems a bit cheapened, in my opinion, by the stunt toward the end of the film (the twist where the love of his life is a black woman, thus providing the catalyst for his wanting freedom for all)-I think that it would have been better had they either left that out, or even better, driven that as a major part of his plot line, as it would have added another human story behind the bigotry that was on display in the congress.  This is not, of course, Jones's fault (he doesn't have unilateral control over the script), but I feel that it hurts his performance as it leaves too many questions and not enough answers from his work.

Christoph Waltz is one of two men on this list who really have no business on this list, regardless of performance quality.  I know that category fraud is a hot topic amongst awards aficionados and the Academy rarely seems to care about such things, but Waltz is in almost every scene of this movie.  There is absolutely nothing "supporting" about his work, and I have to imagine that people like Leo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson, both of whom had supporting roles in the film that got some press, were royally pissed that Waltz got to be a supporting with twice the screen time.

Waltz's work and one-liners are admittedly fun, but it's hard to see this as anything but a shadow of Hans Landa, his previous Oscar-winning role.  Here, though, we have an even murkier set of background morals (I know this is somewhat explained with the plot and his stories of his younger years, but his character never quite compromises what he's doing with his sense of right, and that is a fault of both the writers and Waltz).  The best parts of his performance have already been done before, in an oddly similar film.  I know I'm not supposed to judge outside factors within the OVP, but on occasion I do that (think of Visual Effects of sequels) because it has such an impact on the work, and Waltz's performance here is borrowing a lot of Landa's mannerisms and quips without actually having them apply to the character in the same way. Landa's craziness and evil makes sense within the confines of his performance; Dr. King Schultz's character needs a different set of tools, and Waltz doesn't give him any.

I remember after people initially saw Argo they thought that Alan Arkin was a shoo-in for the Oscar (this was pretty deafening, so let's not pretend this didn't happen).  Some complained about how Eddie Murphy must be pissed that Arkin got an "old age" Oscar a few years back and suddenly he'll win a second one just six years later.  I saw the film, and the thing that stood out to me was how small and overrated the performance was.  Arkin gets some good one-liners, admittedly (and he gets the "Argo fuck yourself" line, which was clever and well-timed), but his story arch goes nowhere.  There's no great scene in this film with Arkin, there's nothing particularly noteworthy about the film.  If Arkin had never won an Oscar nomination in the past, I could see this as an appropriate, even if unearned, way of acknowledging his work as a character actor for the past fifty years or so, but he's an Oscar-winner already, and has two other nominations from his heyday.  This wasn't necessary, and he wasn't even better than his costar John Goodman (who also didn't deserve a nomination, but had a banner year at the movies and would have been easier to forgive).  All-in-all, perhaps the most throwaway nomination of the bunch, and even in an admittedly weak year for the category, Oscar nominations should never be thrown away as there's always something worth noting out there.

Finally, we have the other category fraud contender, Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Forget that he is possibly the title character (I know some say it's Adams or even Phoenix that is in that position, but I've always sided with the obvious here).  He's also in most of the film, and along with Phoenix, is the main character (a film can have two leads of the same gender, despite what Oscar may say).

So while I discount some points for the category fraud (if there were an equally good performance, that would break the tie), this is far-and-away the best performance of the bunch.  Hoffman is an actor that I generally have no patience for, with his scenery-chewing and hammery, particularly in past work with Paul Thomas Anderson.  The best way to describe his work, and why he does better in the lead than in supporting is, to quote someone I frequently cite about Hoffman but can never remember who it was (if you know, please tell me as I would love to give them credit), "Hoffman is a movie star trapped in a character actor's body."  This is why he works so much better on the stage-he can be the center, drawing the audience in, rather than having to sit on the sidelines, wanting to project when he should hold back.

As Lancaster Dodd, though, he gets to be the center-of-attention, he gets to be the man who controls and is loud and the energy onscreen.  Think of how well he chastises poor Laura Dern when she matter-of-factly points out inconsistencies in his work, despite being one of his most fervent admirers.  The film is a great acting duet between Phoenix and Hoffman, and while I will admit that Phoenix, with the showier role, is the better of the two, that's like comparing two great Baroque masters-who wants to judge amidst all the flourishes?

Other Precursor Contenders: If you'll recall correctly, there was actually a bit of talk in this race of competition, and thanks to Christoph Waltz missing at the SAG Awards, this resulted in some variety amongst the nominees in all of the precursors.  At the Globes, while Waltz was victorious, we skipped de Niro and instead got Leo DiCaprio (my hunch for sixth place, and since Waltz may well have been in fifth place amongst the nominations, he might have won the award had he been nominated).  The SAG Awards skipped Waltz, with Javier Bardem in Skyfall actually making the cut (another legit contender for the sixth place, and wouldn't a James Bond film getting an acting nomination have been a hoot?), and Jones pulled off the trophy.  And finally, there were the BAFTA Awards, where Waltz was also victorious, but they found room for Bardem over de Niro.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Since I would have put Hoffman as a lead (I would have nominated him, though), none of these men (or DiCaprio or Bardem) would have made my cut.  Amongst my nominees would be Matthew McConaughey, who did a gangbusters job in Magic Mike, a film that gets better on repeat viewing.  I also would have included Ezra Miller, who gets beautifully inside the mind of an early 1990's gay teenager, and adds his own spin on a stock character.  And finally, I would have given the trophy to the brilliant work that Garrett Hedlund did in On the Road, a performance so much better than any of the work here (save, perhaps, Hoffman) that I'm stunned he didn't get more critical support.  I blame an idiotic release schedule for this lack of support (it stars a major box office draw in Kristen Stewart-why didn't it go wider, sooner?), and am still wondering why no one is noticing that Hedlund is turning into a surprisingly fine actor.

Oscar’s Choice: Despite what was clearly a close race, the frontrunner won (I remember hoping for almost anyone else on Oscar night, not because of quality, but because I wanted a surprise), with Waltz taking out Jones and de Niro, in roughly that order, for the trophy.

My Choice: You throw Miller, McConaughey, or Hedlund into this race, and they easily win it, as I don't like giving this trophy to lead work.  But I can't in good faith skip Hoffman when there's nothing in the same league as him down the ballot.  I'd follow him with de Niro, Jones, Waltz, and Arkin.

There's the first of our four acting races-we'll head into the supporting ladies later today, but first, what do you think of these gentlemen?  Did you like the five winners race, or were you hoping for a little more wealth to be spread?  And did you appreciate Waltz as the victor of the five (getting a second trophy three years after his first), or were you hoping for a different actor?  Share in the comments!

Also in 2012: Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2012

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2010, 2011