OVP: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

Film: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

Stars: Andra Day, Trevante Rhodes, Natasha Lyonne, Garrett Hedlund, Rob Morgan

Director: Lee Daniels

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Andra Day)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

All week we've been focusing on next week's Oscar nominations with our reviews, as I finish off some of the biggest missing pieces of this year's award season.  Today will be our final film that is in contention of the week, and thus until we know the nominations.  I always think it's more fun to discuss the nominated films while they're still competing for a win, so if an unseen movie is nominated next week for the OVP categories (and I have access to it), I'll be seeking it out so I'd imagine we'll have more chats soon about this year's race but for now we're going to leave it with a movie that in the last couple of weeks graduated from potential Oscar nominee to sure thing.  Andra Day's surprise win at the Golden Globes is an indication that AMPAS will soon follow (Shirley MacLaine in 1988 was the first, last & only time an actress has won the Globe for Actress in a Drama and not translated with Oscar...and that was only because of a three-way tie with two future nominees), and so I had to catch this one before Monday.  What I found was the actress, largely making her film debut after only a big part in Marshall and a voice role in Cars 3, can deliver an interesting performance, but the film surrounding her is an abject mess.

(It's a biopic-do you need a spoiler alert?) The movie is about the extended life of Billie Holiday (Day) not always focused on her childhood (except for one flashback) but instead on her biggest star years, from the early days of "Strange Fruit" until her untimely death at the age of 44.  The movie explores her relationships with cruel men, including an FBI agent who double-crosses her named Jimmy Fletcher (Rhodes), and watches as her drug abuse is used as an excuse to have the FBI constantly harass her, eventually arresting her on trumped up charges because Harry Anslinger (Hedlund), the bureau's narcotics leader, is intent on using her for her connections to the world of drug dealers (and to make an example of a Civil Rights leader).  The film shows that while Holiday ultimately died, her message didn't-"Strange Fruit" was eventually recognized as one of the most important songs of the 20th century, and she is now considered an early figure in the Civil Rights movement.

Billie Holiday is a solid choice for a biopic.  Beautiful, talented, troubled, and complicated, Day sinks her teeth into the role.  Day uses fine mimicry with her voice, and brings an aching into her singing that others would have just used a recording for (Rami Malek, hint hint).  It's still an early performance in her career-she shines above the rest of the cast, but there's too much "tick tick tick" in her performance, giving us not enough of the Billie she's crafting & more of what the script needs to hang together.  This isn't entirely Day's fault (in fact little of it is), but as we're about to be discussing her alongside four other actresses fighting to claim the top acting prize of the year, I feel the need to be a little picky.

But the real problem here isn't Day, it's the movie itself.  Lee Daniels has not been able to hold together a coherent movie combined with his huge appetite for swinging between genres since Precious, and this is no exception.  Visually & technically Billie Holiday falls apart-at one point it becomes two intersecting narrations, and it leaves huge gaps in the plot that it never really picks up.  Natasha Lyonne might be in love with Billie?  We don't care about that.  Leslie Jordan is a gay man obsessed with Billie initially narrating parts of the story?  No, we'll drop that too.  The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a bad movie, the kind that shows up once or twice a year with a decent performance so we try to forgive it, but it's a mess, and one that both Holiday & Andra Day deserved better from.

OVP: Mudbound (2017)

Film: Mudbound (2017)
Stars: Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, Jonathan Banks, Rob Morgan
Director: Dee Rees
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress-Mary J. Blige, Original Song-"Mighty River," Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

For my Thanksgiving movie extravaganza (I planned on seeing nearly a dozen movies over the five day period), I started with a trip into Netflix's biggest prestige drama-to-date.  While Netflix has cornered the market on television awards, with hit series like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Stranger Things being trophy magnets, they've largely missed out on nominations from its movie side, except when it comes to the Best Documentary Oscar.  Mudbound was the platform's first real play at nominations in the big leagues, though.  Based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, the film chronicles two families (one white, one black) in Mississippi before, during, and after World War II.  The movie has an all-star cast, and comes from Dee Rees, whose movie Pariah put her on the map as a filmmaker to watch.  Unfortunately, Mudbound falls into some of the worst of Netflix's tendencies toward too many ideas, too little cohesion, and can't seem to find enough to say about its plethora of characters onscreen.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie's central problem, in my opinion, is that it never really translates well-enough from the book.  I haven't read Hillary Jordan's novel, but I've seen enough adaptations to understand a translation problem when I see one.  The movie, to begin with, has too many characters.  You see up-top that Carey Mulligan (who plays Laura) is the top-billed star of the film, and this isn't entirely because she's the most famous actor in the movie-she's also probably in the most scenes.  Yet her narrative gets lost as the picture continues.  It feels like so much of the story is centered around her as a means-to-an-end, getting Laura's brother-in-law Jamie (Hedlund) to eventually meet Ronsel (Mitchell), the actual central protagonists.  The problem with this is that Laura's narrative is interesting, and yet we just sort of leave her hanging unless it's in service to one of these two men late in the film.  There's a jarring moment in the picture where the wife of a field hand whom Laura's husband Henry (Clarke) fired comes to the house, saying that she's going to kill her husband for raping their daughters.  It's the sort of deeply heavy, harrowing plot that is thick in the movie, but we never really go beyond that with Laura-this scene happens, the woman ends up killing her husband because Laura refuses to take her to town as a distraction, but we don't get any sense of what's going on underneath Laura's facade.  This might be a little bit on Mulligan, but it's more on the writers, who don't give her anything to do once Jamie and Ronsel come home except to fall into lust with her brother-in-law.

The movie has a lot of ideas, which is probably why it made a compelling novel, but they aren't picked apart or parceled through enough, just presented as "this is what happened" without cohesion to a larger theme.  Mary J. Blige as Florence, Ronsel's mother, is getting the lion's share of the praise for the film, but this is shocking to me in part because it's not particularly special work, and also because it's a really small part that's not particularly consequential to the film in the end.  Blige's Florence is a fascinating look at a woman who is forced to take care of a white woman's children, despite not wanting to do so like her mother did, almost completely because of the economic and societal requirements that are heaped on her as a black woman that aren't also brought upon Laura.  This would have been an interesting story, but we also have to find time for Ronsel and Jamie's ill-fated friendship, Henry's latent racism and his father's (Banks, who is so hammy you expect your computer to start shooting out bacon) cruel prejudice, and of course the frequent shots of the sepia-soaked fields of Mississippi (filmed with care by Rachel Morrison, but also as if Netflix was trying to prove that nothing is lost by viewing such outdoor shots on your computer screen...but it is, as the scenes are too small to capture the light in the way a big-screen would have, and has a boring sameness that makes me hope this isn't the way Morrison gets her first Oscar nomination after years of more interesting work).

The best performance in the film, and the only one in my opinion that distinguishes itself in this jumble of a screenplay, is Hedlund's.  As a charming, sexy, but damaged former soldier with a progressive streak (certainly compared to the rest of his family), he finds a center at his character that lasts beyond the screenplay, and he has enough attention from the plot to actually stick his arch.  I loved the way that his motives with his sister-in-law remain more of a mystery than his clear admiration for Ronsel (it makes her obvious love of him all the more fascinating-what if she loves the brother who doesn't truly want her?), and Hedlund is able to parlay his absurd handsomeness to his advantage, creating a live-wire dynamic that keeps the film's predictable (is abbreviated) story beats from becoming too plodding.

Honestly, that's about all I have to say about the film.  It always feels weird to rag on a movie with such a heavy (and sadly, deeply relevant) topic, but it's just not a very well-constructed or interesting picture.  If this is what Netflix offers to aspiring narrative filmmakers, I have to say I'm not looking forward to them gaining the same sort of foothold in film as they have in television.

Top 10 Films and Performances of the Decade (So Far)

The Film Experience, one of my favorite blogs and a daily part of my routine, recently put out a list of the Top 10 Best Performances of the decade so far.  I decided to take that a step further and actually do both my favorite performances and my favorite films of the 2010's (have we decided what we're going to call this decade yet?),  Weigh in with your own in the comments.  First the movies:

10. Carol (2015)

9. Pride (2014)

8. Gravity (2013)

7. Drive (2011)

6. Brooklyn (2015)

5. Short-Term 12 (2013)

4. Weekend (2011)

3. The Social Network (2010)

2. Boyhood (2014)

1. The Tree of Life (2011)

And now the top ten performances...

10. Viola Davis (The Help)

9. Garrett Hedlund (On the Road)

8. Cate Blanchett (Carol)

7. Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)

6. Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)

5. Brie Larson (Short-Term 12)

4. Charlotte Rampling (45 Years)

3. Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine)

2. Reese Witherspoon (Wild)

1. Brad Pitt (The Tree of Life)

Pan (2015)

Film: Pan (2015)
Stars: Levi Miller, Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Adeel Akhtar, Amanda Seyfried
Director: Joe Wright
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Yes, I had read the reviews, and I still went in anyway.  I have loved JM Barrie's story about the boy who doesn't grow up since I was a kid, and that love has grown through the year's, what with PJ Hogan's masterpiece in 2003 (if you haven't seen it, get thyself to thy Netflix queue) and just generally how the story has so many classic elements.  As a result, with actors like Garrett Hedlund and Rooney Mara, brilliant director Joe Wright, and the Pan lore, I couldn't miss this movie even with its giant splat of a tomato over on RT.  That was clearly a faulty logic considering what I ended up viewing, but there it is.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film has so many problems it's hard to know where to begin.  I think what might be the first and worst problem is the beginning.  The Peter (Miller) here is pretty nondescript, and not someone with any sort of real personality, which is sort of appropriate-Peter Pan is not known for being one of your deeper protagonists.  However it shows when you put him center stage and not Wendy, so thoughtful and full of contradictions.  Peter here is seen as an imp, but considering he's under the control of a cruel pirate nun (it comes across as ridiculously as it sounds in what is surely the worst portion of the film, though that's not for a lack of competition) it's seen as totally justifiable.  After the nun sells the boys to the pirate Blackbeard (Jackman), things get even weirder.

It must be discussed, since it's arguably the sequence that people have eye-rolled the most over, but the entire Nirvana/Ramones scenes are just terribly bad.  I'm not sure if Joe Wright spent too much time watching Mad Max, but I don't get why we had an elaborately-staged musical scene in a film with almost no other musical scenes, in the middle of the movie where Jackman and all of the Lost Boys perform Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" like we've just entered the Thunderdome.  Did Wright not realize that we would be getting another Mad Max movie this summer that would clearly make this parallel not only ridiculous but also people would pick up on it?  Either way, the entire scene is jarring in a bad way and doesn't jive with the rest of the film, and sort of puts you off of Jackman's Blackbeard during his very first scene.  While admittedly I am not nor have I ever been a Hugh Jackman fan, Daniel Day-Lewis himself could not sell this scene.

Jackman's performance is appropriately hammy given its nature, though it never finds the calculating brilliance that Jason Isaacs brought to Hook in 2003's Hogan adaptation (again, I would have nominated him for an Oscar that year-for real).  While Isaacs played his character as a cartoonish human, Jackman just goes full-on cartoon, a narcissist who doesn't really play on his narcissism, who is willing to ruthlessly dig up Neverland just to extend his rather pointless seeming life.  He isn't aided by much else in the film though.  We have Rooney Mara eyeing the racism line pretty hard as Princess Tigerlily.  While she never explicitly is stated as being a Native American, her father clearly is and considering Mara is white in real life, I feel like the filmmakers made a grave mistake here not casting an actual Native American actress to play the role (which PJ Hogan did #justsaying).  Mara's performance, like a lot of her work, is pretty hit-and-miss here (click the tag below for my complicated history with the admittedly-talented but not always consistent Oscar nominee), as she plays the role as too straight and kind of boring.  Garrett Hedlund, an actor I more consistently admire and follow, isn't much better, especially in earlier scenes where he seems to go from zero to ninety in terms of Captain Hook's lunacy.  The script does him no favors in this regard, it's worth noting; despite us knowing him as the future nemesis of Peter Pan, we get very few hints aside from fourth wall-breaking winks as to why Hook would eventually come to despite Peter.  Instead we get a horny, cranky, and manic piece-of-work from the actor, and the entire time I just kept thinking "but he was SO good in On the Road!"

The production work is sort of in the vein of How the Grinch Stole Christmas-there's so much of it that you want to think it's good, but in reality it's mostly gaudy and awful.  The steampunk design of the clothes is the sort of costume work that is showy, and maybe even wins accolades, but it doesn't fit with the film's motif, particularly when you compare it to the docile World War II sequences and the Hook-inspired Tigerlily and her tribe.  The Visual Effects are also bloated and gross-the Neverbird in particular is a weird creature, one you can't tell if it's good or evil, but just that it looks like the creature from Up!.  All-in-all even the visuals, which should have been a silver lining, are atrocious.

All-in-all then this is a failure.  I would normally bemoan this fact since Peter Pan is such a wonderful story, but as I've pointed out several times this has already been done, and quite well, by PJ Hogan so we have a definitive version of this tale.  Apparently we also needed a prequel for some reason, or so some now-fired studio executive thought.

OVP: Unbroken (2014)

Film: Unbroken (2014)
Stars: Jack O'Connell, Dohnall Gleeson, Miyavi, Garrett Hedlund, Finn Wittrock
Director: Angelina Jolie
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Arguably the most shocking downfall of this past Oscar season was the fall of Angelina Jolie's Unbroken.  Every year there's at least one film that manages to be drowned by its own expectations, faltering because people expect it to be a natural Best Picture frontrunner.  In the defense of pundits, a World War II epic based on a critically-acclaimed biography directed by an Oscar winner and lensed by one of the most acclaimed cinematographers of all-time...well, it's the sort of stuff that the Oscars salivate over.  And yet, I agree with the critical consensus here-Jolie may know how to create all of the right elements, but Unbroken lacks passion and nuance enough to make it an interesting picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The story of Louie Zamperini, a World War II veteran and Olympic runner, was destined for the screen.  By all accounts Zamperini was a truly extraordinary human being-overcoming bullying in school to become an Olympic athlete (who, according to some reports, was ballsy enough to steal Hitler's personal flag from him in 1936) and then became an incredible hero in World War II, followed by a long career as a Christian inspirational speaker.  His story feels like it was lived by three different people, and his biography, particularly his compelling overcoming the odds in Berlin and later in Japan, is the stuff that biopic-fans salivate over.

The problem for Jolie, of course, is that it's difficult to frame Zamperini in an actual film setting without making him larger-than-life, because quite-frankly he was.  This was a person who doesn't appear believable and would be mocked at by critics if he weren't non-fiction, as he seems too good to be true.  The character in the film, it should be stated, may well have been what Zamperini was (he genuinely seems like an extraordinary human being), but the film itself doesn't know how to find angles to sort of test his endurance.  Perhaps this is a situation where a plot on paper doesn't work in actuality-Zamperini doesn't have the shades of grey as a protagonist that would make for a more compelling film.  Instead, his story may be better suited for a biographical documentary, where you can stagger his story a bit more ferociously and have less need for cohesiveness.

This isn't the only problem that Jolie runs into with her film, though.  For starters, while the film is immaculately shot with beautiful aerial views (it's Roger Deakins behind that camera, y'all), the actual cast may be a bit too, well, pretty to be believable as a unit.  Unless Tom Ford had a hand in casting World War II, it's ridiculous to watch, with gorgeous Finn Wittrock, Jack O'Connell, Luke Treadaway, Jai Courtney, and Garrett Hedlund all somehow ending in the same orbit.  I know that an army uniform helps pretty much any guy in this regard, but this is ridiculous.  Additionally, aside from the scenes on the raft, they manage to stay gorgeous throughout the film.  Somehow in a war camp where they are deprived of human dignity and hope, they still have regular access to hair gel.

The performances are all over the board.  Jack O'Connell clearly has a magnetism that's going to serve him well in future roles, but I have to admit that he was just okay here-he doesn't know how to crescendo his performance, as his big moments end up appearing less big and more out-of-character.  Not to criticize Jolie too much, but I feel like he needed more direction here and to be pushed a little harder.  Garrett Hedlund is always wonderful, but we know next to nothing about his Fitzgerald (the same can be said for Domhnall Gleeson's Phil and Finn Wittrock's Mac, both strong actors who are given roles that don't demand much and they don't push them enough to be very memorable).  Miyavi, playing the "Bird," a famed prison guard, gets the plummest of roles but thoroughly disappoints.  He doesn't find any sort of internal aspects of the character-we're left with him being awful, but little indication of what sets him off in Louie, or why he is such a sadist.  I normally blame the screenplay in these situations, but I have to admit that the script is there, but Miyavi holds back, perhaps because he's more a practiced singer than an actor, and as a result this aspect, crucial to the film's success, left me completely cold.  This result is the ending being less capable than it could have been; when you don't ever think that Louie won't succeed, you don't really have any uplift when he does.

The combination of an unbelievable main character and an underwhelming villain make this film pretty much the disappointment it's described as, though I will say they chose correctly on the nominations.  Particularly with the Sound Editing, there's a ferocious crispness to the air scenes that make them easily the best aspect of the film (the way that dialogue is still audible but feels drowned-that's strong sound mixing in this critic's opinion).  And of course Roger Deakins is superb, though I will say that there were sequences of the movie where it felt like he was just leading up to the next terrific shot (the scenes in the camp, for example, where he isn't showing the same care that Lubezki did with Birdman or Dick Pope does with Mr. Turner).

Those are my thoughts on this film-how about yours?  Were you with myself (and critical consensus) or were you a closet cheerleader for this film?  Where do you see Jolie taking her career as a director and O'Connell taking his career as an actor?  And what are your thoughts on the nominations that the film did pull (should it win any of them)?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

Film: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Stars: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, Justin Timberlake, F. Murray Abraham, Adam Driver
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Sound Mixing, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I follow the Coen Brothers almost everywhere, and as a result, I’ve been largely rewarded and occasionally burned.  While True Grit still remains a bit of a head-scratcher, for the most part this is a cinematic pair that I generally tend to love.

As a result of seeing so many of their movies, however, it’s getting harder and harder for them to surprise me.  I know the quirks that I’m about to encounter, the familiar off-beats and brilliant cinematography.  So I was somewhat surprised how much Inside Llewyn Davis, one of the near-missses in last year’s Best Picture race (that admittedly still scored two Oscar nominations) connected with me.  Days after I viewed it I found myself returning to its familiar tunes and lived-in characters, wondering why they had affected me so well.

The reality is, of course, that the film is very familiar to all of us who have seen a film about someone struggling with their own reality and the vision they had for their lives.  Llewyn Davis (Isaac, in a wonderfully felt performance) is not someone without talent.  Struggling to make it as a solo act after his singing partner committed suicide, Llewyn finds himself playing beautifully-felt folk music (most of the songs in the film are based on classics from the past, reinvented for the Coen Brothers) to audiences that are more attuned to other such things (this is 1961, after all).  Llewyn is forced to pay for the abortion of his ex-girlfriend Jean (Mulligan) and play with her current boyfriend’s (Timberlake) band in a ridiculously funny sequence (the song, “Please Mr. Kennedy,” gets much of its comic sensibility from the he’s-just-good-in-everything-lately Adam Driver, finding new facets for his quirky persona).  After that, armed with an orange cat (you always want your cats to be orange), he sets off on a road trip across the country with a beat poet Garrett Hedlund (who, like Driver, is great in basically everything these days) and a heroin-addled jazz musician John Goodman (it wouldn't be a Coen Brothers film without him), and slowly finds himself growing up, if not entirely giving up on his dream.

The film was wonderfully received by critics, and even those that didn't like it used words like "sad," "slow," and "grey," words that I latch onto like flypaper, so I can say most assuredly that I loved the movie.  I think what really stuck out to me most (aside from the music-so specific and crisp) was the effective work of lead actor Oscar Isaac.  The Juilliard-educated actor makes Llewyn so believable-I love the way that his hair always wants to pull distraction and the way his eyes roll.  This is someone who clearly has spent a considerable amount of time looking in the mirror, practicing for the big break that never seems to come.  I also love the level of exhaustion he seems to feel that the world hasn't caught up with his genius-there's something arbitrary about success, and the way that Llewyn doesn't quite get that at the beginning of the film and slowly has it dawn on him is really shrewd observation, and you wouldn't get there were it not for Isaac.

The rest of the cast is hit-or-miss for me.  For every excellent turn like F. Murray Abraham's dreamlike record producer or Garrett Hedlund's angsty Johnny Five, you get a performance that isn't quite there.  Carey Mulligan is a fine actress, but for some reason she's very hit-and-miss for me, and this wasn't a bullseye.  She plays Jean as too shrill, too conniving, and not nearly in-mesh with someone that we'd picture Llewyn falling in love with; this may be in small part the fault of the writers, but Mulligan doesn't help this by skipping out on what made her nuanced work in something like Shame or An Education so intoxicating.  Equally off-putting was Justin Timberlake's naive moron Jim, who is Jean's going-places lover.  While I liked that they made his stupid song a hit (again-the arbitrary nature of success), can we all just admit that Timberlake is not a good actor and call it a day?  I know that he has hilarious Saturday Night Live episodes and that he was in The Social Network and he's crazy sexy, but the reality is that parts in films made by David Fincher and the Coen Brothers should go to actors of actual promise.  Think of how much better Adam Driver would have been if he'd been promoted up to the Jim role or how an actor with the confidence of a Ryan Gosling could have handled Sean Parker, and tell me I'm wrong.

We'll be getting to those two Oscar nominations in short time (we should be finishing up the 2009 OVP in the next couple of weeks, and will be rolling right into 2013, which I'm almost done with).  However, in the meantime-what were everyone's thoughts on Inside Llewy Davis?  Did you agree that it was mostly hit and a little miss?  What are your thoughts on Justin Timberlake as an actor?  And where do you think it should have made it with Oscar?  Share in the comments!

On the Road (2012)

Film: On the Road (2012)
Stars: Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge
Director: Walter Salles
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

There are books that I can say with a little bit of "I'm getting around to it" shame that I haven't read like The Help, where the novel hasn't reached any sort of level of classic fame and is really just a popular book club selection.  Then there are books where admitting you haven't read it feels like you're admitting you're an alcoholic or that you took your parents' car joyriding or some long-seated truth that you've hidden in the dark.  So, friends, readers, Romans, countrymen, my name is John and I've never read On the Road.  Whew, glad we got that out there.  I promise that I will get around to Portrait of a Lady so we don't have to have this awkwardness again when we get to the 1996 Oscars.

(Spoilers Ahead) While I wasn't familiar with the book, I was familiar with the Beat Generation, and had seen Howl (yes, I haven't read that one either, and yes, I will be making more of an effort to get a little more literary in the upcoming year), and had read about the Beat Generation (...in Vanity Fair...leave me alone!) and its impact on artistic culture, so I went in with a bit of a preconceived notion, and while I can't say that I know Kerouac's written story, in the hands of Walter Salles, I got to see both the good and the bad of this drug-addled, mind-bending band of artists.

The film tells the tale of Sal, a character clearly inspired by Kerouac himself, who, after the death of his father, takes up on a trip on the road with two Bohemian spirits, Marylou (Stewart), a young, beautiful woman who happens to have fallen in love with the lawless, uninhibited Dean Moriarty (Hedlund), a name that sounds like a Sherlock Holmes villain for about twenty seconds and then Hedlund owns it with a confident, naked swagger.

The film after this is a series of interactions, and while both Sal and Dean slowly alter their own sense of friendship and attitude toward life, Salles, perhaps at the film's peril, is a bit too preoccupied with throwing at us cameos by a bevy of actors that we'll react to with a "she's in this movie?!?" sort of awe.  This sometimes works-Kirsten Dunst, for example, is wonderful as a good girl that has been brought down by the magnetism of Dean's appeal, and through the film we see her slowly lose herself, going from a reputable young woman to a single mother, a thought that demands a far sharper stigma in the 1960's than it does now.  Dunst, who has proven adept recently in films like Melancholia once again proves that her sometimes prickly onscreen demeanor can lend itself well to the characters who aren't villains, but aren't necessarily to be cheered for either.

On the flip side, you have Amy Adams, tragically miscast as a woman of the Bohemian wilderness, consumed by lust and drugs.  Adams, who is a superb actress when suited for the right role, seems to not understand her character, and while previous life experience hasn't hurt her in the past (I assume that she hasn't led any cults) it seems to be causing her to be too cartoonish in this role.

However, if there's an actress listed above that you want me to discuss, she isn't Adams or Dunst.  I fear that for some, Kristen Stewart has entered the realm of actresses beyond reproach, with people putting her in the same field as Kim Kardashian and Pia Zadora in terms of acting ability, but I'm sorry to say that you'll be disappointed, as Stewart is very good in this movie.  This, and not Bella Swan, is the style of role she was born to play-wild, unknowable, with motives that shift erratically.  She may not be an actress of Dunst's or Adams's abilities yet (or perhaps ever) but an actor who can excel in a particular role can work magic for decades onscreen (if you don't believe me, ask Cary Grant).

While the plot takes too many loose turns for this to be considered a great film, Hedlund's performance frequently makes it seem as if you're watching one.  His work as Dean Moriarty is spellbinding-from the second he saunters onto the screen, stark naked and completely aware that people are staring but hiding his pride behind a cheshire grin, he devours the film.  His work slowly shows a man desperate for attention, a closet extrovert whose wild, manic lifestyle threatens to destroy him, but to give it up would be like suicide.  With Dean, we see that there is no moral line that he cannot cross, even as others who claim not to have one find their own.  Hedlund's performance, largely due to the poor release schedule of the film (it's finally hitting a wider audience in the past week, despite the Box Office insurance of Stewart), was ignored during the awards season, but I'll give you this: not only is he better than all five of the supporting actors that were nominated this past year, he was better than every supporting performance in 2012.  If this is a sign of things to come from him, I am excited, but if he somehow finds himself relegated to franchises and Hangover-style films, I'll still have Dean Moriarty.  I'll still dream of Dean Moriarty.

OVP: TRON: Legacy (2010)

Film: TRON: Legacy (2010)
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner, Michael Sheen, Beau Garrett
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

So, where last we left off, Flynn had vanquished the Master Control Program and I had written a rather scathing review.  I decided to follow-up the last TRON movie with the first one because A) I love a theme and B) both happened to be part of the OVP, and as we're inching closer and closer to capping off 2010, so I figured I wanted to get through this one as soon as possible.

(Spoilers ahead) This film follows Flynn briefly, with Jeff Bridges in a moment of creepy, Polar Express-smoothness transported back to his mid-30's, comforting his son before taking off and disappearing.  Only an idiot would assume that he hadn't fallen onto the grid that the first film made famous, and so thankfully Disney doesn't spend a great deal of time wasting both ours and Flynn's son's (played as an adult by Garrett Hedlund) in the real world, instead sending us quickly and easily (a little too easily, if you ask me) to the world of Clu, Tron, and now Flynn, who has been trapped there for decades thanks to his doppelganger Clu going rogue and killing anything he finds imperfect.

The film then enters a series of rather stunning visual acrobatics, and while it loses all of the charm and silliness of the first film in favor of something sleeker, faster, it does have some exciting action set pieces, particularly those in the arena where Sam must rather quickly discover his skills with a disc and a motorcycle (thankfully, he rides one in the real world, otherwise we would have a giant, gaping plot point to throw in for that ability).  The movie moves at a brisk pace, only slowing down during a bizarre interaction with Zeus (Sheen), who seems to have crossed David Bowie with the Emcee from Cabaret for a puzzling and off-putting combination.  Is he hitting on Sam, or just merely stalling him?  Or both?

The film's final scenes play out so predictably that you feel like they were written in a paint-by-numbers afterthought party, when all of the Pixar writers taunt the less talented writers at Disney.  The film is coolly beautiful, and sticks to the color scheme of the first picture, but also sadly sticks to the hackneyed endings, this time watching Flynn sacrifice his freedom to send his son and his inevitable love interest, played by Wilde (there is no "winner's kiss" but you know it happened off screen eventually, or will wait for the sequel).  It would have been a nice change if, for example, all three would have gotten out-it wouldn't have hurt its chances at a sequel (and there's certainly going to be a sequel-why else give Cillian Murphy a thankless, uncredited role as Flynn's nemesis's son?), as they could still have Bridges go back in to save the day if another villain wormed his way into the grid.

The stars of the film are hit-and-miss.  I found Sheen's over-the-top scenery-chewing a bit reminiscent of his bizarre work in the Twilight films, and while I've come to enjoy Olivia Wilde as a celebrity, I have yet to be impressed by her as an actress.  Bridges, a little bit too reminiscent of "the Dude" and his real life persona, is a bit sloppy, though it's still Jeff Bridges, so his longer monologues have an intensity that's difficult to put down.  Finally, there's Hedlund, who has the same confidence and swagger that Bridges had in his early days (and the Costume department seems intent on exploiting it), and the sexy, pretty boy with a deeper side that elicits both swoons and intrigue.  His work in On the Road this past year was mesmerizing, and I want to say this may be the start of a young movie star, if he can ever find a way to combine a critical and commercial success in the next few years.

The film's sole Oscar nomination was for Sound Editing, and while it's sturdy, it's not really superb.  The film relies heavily on the first film for its soundscape, and nothing about this movie screams "Oscar!"  It's not that it's too subtle (which would be welcome in a Disney film), it's that it's just "meh."

But what do you think of TRON: Legacy?  Are you clamoring for a sequel, or was this conclusion enough?  Do you wish they had stuck to the more primitive visual effects or do you like the, to quote Will Smith, "new hotness?"  And where do you see Garrett Hedlund's burgeoning career taking him?

OVP: Country Strong (2010)

Film: Country Strong (2010)
Stars: Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim McGraw, Garrett Hedlund, Leighton Meester
Director: Shana Feste
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Original Song-"Coming Home")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I remember the exact moment that I found out that Gwyneth Paltrow could sing.  It was in a grocery store, and her version of "Cruisin" appeared on the Muzak, and I was hooked.  I mean, not hooked enough to actually go out and see Duets (the trailer did not look good-if it's something I should investigate, let me know), but enough to be excited about when Gwyneth would next tackle another musical.  Unfortunately for all of us, it took a decade for that opportunity to come up, and even more unfortunate, it was in the form of the mediocre, cliched Country Strong.

Spoilers to follow I will explain the plot of Country Strong, but you already know it, so it seems like an exercise in futility.  The story is about a recently recovering alcoholic/musical superstar (Paltrow), who is trying to stage a comeback that her husband (McGraw) keeps pushing, despite her clearly not being ready for the limelight again. It's also about her affair with a younger stud (Hedlund) who is also on the outskirts of stardom, and also wrestling between the charms of the alluring Paltrow and the younger, on-the-rise Chiles Stanton (Meester, sporting a moniker that basically forces you to be a country singer).

We all know where this is going-after some hemming, hawing, and cheating: Paltrow returns to her husband and puts on that one great concert, sealing her fate before she slips quietly into the night, and Hedlund and Meester find happiness just being with each other, not caring too much for the shiny lights of stardom, and settling for love.  It's an ending that people enjoy (I'm not entirely knocking happy endings), but the troubled music superstar story line is one of the oldest ones out there, and it's so formulaic that it's hard to get excited about the actual film.  It's not like there aren't strong attributes-Paltrow, despite all of the naysayers (what is lost in the whole 1998 Best Actress battle is that both women put on strong performances, even if you preferred Blanchett's dramatics to Paltrow's comedic), has a star quality about her that is hard to deny.  It's a pity that we see her Kelly fall so quickly and rise so late, because clearly this is a woman who could pull off "top of her game."  One of the reasons that I've been drawn to ABC's new show Nashville is that we get to see two women who are performing at the top of their games, so it isn't completely obvious who will win in the end (don't just assume because she's the villain that Hayden is the loser).  It'd have been interesting to see a little more Eve Harrington/Margo Channing in the film moments between Paltrow and Meester and a little less, drunk cat and wimpy mouse.

Garrett Hedlund, doing his best sexy country boy, and has some pipes on him, enough so that I may stop confusing him with the Hemsworth brothers with time.  The less said about Meester's performance the better, as her character arch makes no sense-how is it that she becomes less confident the more successful she gets, and with no one commenting on it?  Ditto McGraw's domineering husband-is he mourning the loss of his unborn child, or is he just a jerk who is using Kelly for her money?  It's hard to say, mostly because McGraw just sulks and considers an affair with Meester the entire movie (a story that goes nowhere, by the way).  And also, how is it that you cast Tim McGraw in a country music movie and you never have him sing?!?

The best thing about this film is the soundtrack, and that's where the OVP aspect of this review comes into play.  The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for "Coming Home," a charming country ballad, though why they didn't go with the far catchier and more memorable title song, I have no idea (case in point-I had to go listen to "Coming Home" on iTunes to remember what the song sounded like, but "Country Strong" I know the chorus by heart).  Hedlund also has a number of wonderful, gravelly country songs in his repertoire, and if you really want to enjoy this film, buying the CD and skipping the DVD would probably be your best way to go.  Though I will say that I'd love to see both Paltrow and Hedlund tackle a different musical in the future, albeit one with a better screenplay.

And with that, let's turn it over for you-what did you think of Country Strong, and "Coming Home" in particular?  Do you think it deserved Best Song in the odd 2010 lineup?  What would be the best musical vehicle for Gwyneth in the future?  And finally, do you also think Garrett Hedlund looks like a Hemsworth brother?