Eat Pray Love (2010)

Film: Eat Pray Love (2010)

Stars: Julia Roberts, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis, Billy Crudup, Javier Bardem

Director: Ryan Murphy

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In Notting Hill, there's a memorable scene (possibly the best scene) of Julia Roberts saying "one day, my looks will go, they will discover I can't act, and I will become some sad middle-aged woman who looks a bit like someone who was famous for a while."  In real life, Roberts got a happy ending (and her looks will likely never go-movie star beauty has more endurance than us mere mortals), marrying her husband of 20+ years Danny Moder in 2002.  But her career would never have the same sort of sparkle that it did in the years after her unmatched 1997-2002 run.  Roberts would get $25 million for Mona Lisa Smile in 2003, but the film didn't live up to the giant grosses of Notting Hill and Runaway Bride, and she would spend much of the next two decades alternating between forgettable mid-sized vehicles (Larry Crowne, Duplicity, Mother's Day, Money Monster), and attempts at prestige that went nowhere for her in terms of a return to the Oscars (Charlie Wilson's War, Secret in Their Eyes, and the best of her films/performances during this era, Closer).  While she did get an Oscar nomination in 2013 (for August: Osage County), Roberts, at one point the biggest star in the world, had to resort to category fraud to secure her nomination since it was felt she couldn't compete with costar Meryl Streep, an actress in a different lane than her in the 1990's, but by 2013 Streep had become a far more consistent box office presence.  Just two live-action films during this era can be called "true" hits, ones that would have fit in with her 1990's runs, both out in 2010-the much-maligned Valentine's Day, and our final movie with Roberts, Eat Pray Love, which would set off enormous conversation about the film itself, and would become shorthand for a specific type of "rich white woman finding herself" motif in the years that followed.

(Spoilers Ahead) Eat Pray Love is about the spiritual awakening of Liz Gilbert (a real-life journalist played by Roberts) who decides that the unrest she feels in her marriage to Stephen (Crudup) is too much, and as part of the divorce (and a recent breakup with an actor, played by Franco), she leaves her life in New York City, upending herself financially, and moves to a series of destinations (Italy, India, & Indonesia) where she can try to find meaning in her life.  In these places, she finds friendship, life, adventure, experiences, and food (so, so much food), but until Bali, when she finally opens herself up to a man named Felipe (Bardem), she doesn't admit that what she needs is a willingness to take a risk again, to feel open with another person.  In doing so, and getting married to Felipe, she finally resets the clock, and lives more fully.

You'll notice that I didn't write as much about the plot of Eat Pray Love as I normally do in these reviews, and there's a reason for that-for a film that is 140 minutes long, not a lot really happens.  Sometimes this isn't a bad thing-there are moments in this that are just about watching the simple pleasures of life like a thoughtful meditation or eating a plate of pasta with friends, that gives you a sense of what Liz is trying to get out of this travel.  As someone who is going to go on a trip to Europe in a few weeks (and am, like Liz, both really hopeful that it will give me some new perspectives as well as honestly terrified about taking a leap, by myself, into a place I don't know and into locales where I don't speak the languages), I can understand this.  One of the hallmarks of Eat Pray Love was that it did market a sort of romance about travel that you still see today in lifestyle shows on Netflix and Food Network.  The movie frequently plays with the concept of "cultural appropriation" without really acknowledging that as a concept, but it also does so in a way that at least feels celebratory of those cultures...this is truly about trying to learn about yourself by seeing (and respecting the world).  Liz does not pretend she is an expert in the lives of any of the people she meets, just that she's better for having met them...which feels less like cultural appropriation to me (which this movie has been accused of) and more like cultural appreciation, which I think is a fairer categorization.

But the movie doesn't have much to do beyond that, and in being so long (and in making Liz's journey so central to the story) it falls flat.  Roberts, in her early forties here, looks and acts as beautiful-as-ever, radiant in every moment, but no one else matches that charisma (including the dialogue).  In a sea of potential leading man, neither Franco, Crudup, nor Bardem seem worthy of Roberts herself (even if they might be good enough for the less impressive Liz, who is unusually indecisive for a woman headed into the fifth decade of her life).  Not even a short part for Viola Davis (just off her first Oscar nomination and about to become a movie star in her own right) makes much of a difference here.  The film looks great (putting 3-time Oscar winner Robert Richardson behind the camera can have that effect), but it's empty when you think about it for longer than a minute.

Roberts, as you will know, is still working.  In 2022, she starred in her first non-ensemble romantic comedy since 2011 with George Clooney in Ticket to Paradise (another movie that looks great but needed a much better script), and will be taking on her most interesting-looking role in years in Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt later this fall.  What's in store is a question mark for an actress that perpetually redefines herself (even though she'll always be the exact same Julia Roberts to some audiences, that twinkling waitress they fell for in Mystic Pizza).  Next month, we're going to conclude our sixth season with the woman that spent all of the 1990's as Roberts' chief rival for the title of America's Sweetheart, one whom the media was far kinder too, but unlike Roberts, when she fell from grace, she wasn't able to recover.

OVP: Actor (2000)

OVP: Best Actor (2000)

The Nominees Were...

Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls

Russell Crowe, Gladiator

Tom Hanks, Cast Away

Ed Harris, Pollock

Geoffrey Rush, Quills

My Thoughts: All right, let's move into the lead actors, and a reminder of how I miss the era of the 5-wide Best Picture nominees sometimes.  In 2000, if you can believe it, only one of the Best Actor nominees (usually the category with the most correlation with Best Picture) was from one of the top films of the night.  This isn't to say that there weren't films that would've made it in a ten-wide field.  In a ten-wide field Cast Away for sure and maybe Quills is going to get into the top race, making this feel more generic than it seems, but in 2000 it was only one man, getting his second of three back-to-back nominations from the Academy (his only three nominations to date, bizarrely enough).

That man is Russell Crowe, who gets to be one of the final vessels for me to complain about Ridley Scott's Gladiator.  It's not that Crowe is necessarily bad here.  He gives, for my money, the best performance in Gladiator, and finds some humanity in a characterization that easily could've been a bland, Mel Gibson-style performance.  There's just not enough of it.  I needed more swagger...it might've helped if Crowe had had a little more chemistry with Nielsen (or hell, Phoenix), but for someone who was billed as a sex symbol at the time, the film is not interested in capitalizing on that.  It's also just not written to be a great performance-Crowe would need more swagger as an actor to make this jump off-the-screen in a bigger way, and that's not how he's playing it.

Quills is a film that is very much written to be sexy, but it's not, and not because Rush is not generally considered a sex symbol in the way that Crowe is (though Rush does have more sexual chemistry with Joaquin Phoenix than Crowe does in his movie!).  This is the least of Rush's Oscar-nominated work, and it's a performance that indulges many of his worst traits as an actor.  Rush is not a subtle performer, and pretending he is always gets you into trouble (his best performance is in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, which uses that overacting to its advantage).  That's a problem in the messy back-half of Quills, where he takes an already "too much" character and turns him up to eleven, which is a bad counter to some of the more grounded work Kate Winslet is doing here.

Ed Harris is also at-odds with his work in Pollock, though it's not always his fault as an actor.  Harris (as director) is pulling double duty, and in the process he feels like he's pulling away from the character onscreen.  Pollock writes Jackson as being full of misery, and only focuses on that misery.  This makes the film feel like half a picture, and the characterization as half a performance-we're meant to understand that Jackson has at least some draw beyond just his art (that people are fascinated by him), but it doesn't come across in Harris's work (in many ways, this is how I felt about Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, another actor, like Harris, I generally enjoy but was in the minority on one of their most lauded performances).

Speaking of actors I run hot-and-cold on, let's get to Javier Bardem.  I do not generally enjoy the films of Julian Schnabel, whose films feel like they're stuck in a kaleidoscope (and not in as pleasant of a way as that sounds, as generally that'd be my thing).  Bardem's work here is surprisingly nuanced.  Like Rush, he's someone that frequently overacts, but as a dying gay poet, a role filled with indulgences, he is far more naturalistic than you'd expect.  I just wish the movie was able to anchor around that work a bit more, finding a way to steady itself so they felt more in sync.

Tom Hanks in 2000 was at the top of his game, and it would be so weird to think that he'd soon be entering his "Oscar wilderness phase."  This is particularly true because Oscar would pick such a fine piece-of-work to go out on until he became Mr. Rogers.  Cast Away has been parodied quite a bit in the years since Hanks made it a genuine blockbuster (the film is, after all, a movie about a man obsessed with a volleyball), but that doesn't take away from his achievement here.  The work he does, oftentimes having to have chemistry with an inanimate object, and giving us a hopeful, human story is really splendid work.  For an actor that I think is thought of more as a "movie star" than a thespian, there are scenes here that number amongst the best of his career (particularly the "Wilson goodbye").

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  The Drama statue went to Hanks, atop Bardem, Crowe, Rush, & Michael Douglas (Wonder Boys) while Comedy/Musical went to George Clooney (O Brother, Where Art Thou?), besting Jim Carrey (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), John Cusack (High Fidelity), Robert de Niro (Meet the Parents), & Mel Gibson (What Women Want)...side note, but don't you miss the era where they would only have proper comedies in this category & we'd get five names that weren't in contention at the Oscars?  SAG gave their statue to Benicio del Toro for Traffic (I believe this was a mistake in filing for the wrong category that showed just how unstoppable del Toro was for Supporting Actor), against Crowe, Hanks, Rush, & Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot), while BAFTA favored Bell against Rush, Douglas, Crowe, & Hanks.  At the time, most assumed Michael Douglas would get in for the spot that went to Harris, and that's probably the case even if Bell makes more sense based on how we think about the Oscars as a game of math today (an article for another day, but I do think that that over-prognostication of awards season may have inadvertently ruined awards season), given that the Academy has never been kind to nominating young male actors for lead acting roles.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I don't generally nominate young actors either (I do think there's something to be said for them being a product of strong direction), but there's no way I'd miss Bell here, particularly knowing what a fine actor he'd grow up to be.  His work in Billy Elliot is aces, and adds so much to a film that could've been an otherwise disposable coming-of-age picture.

Oscar’s Choice: Crowe's win at the time was something of a surprise (Hanks was expected to win his third statue even with Crowe's name in the game, and a lot of heat for Ed Harris), and would unknowingly make Denzel Washington's win the following year possible.

My Choice: It's easily Hanks, who is the only person in this lineup giving a truly Oscar-worthy performance.  I debated between Bardem & Harris for second, and while I had Harris in that position when I started this article, I've talked myself into giving it to Bardem, whose work is subtler and better for his picture.  Crowe is in fourth, and I'll leave Rush in last place.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you think Oscar got it right with the Gladiator, or will you be stuck at sea with Tom & I?  What do you think Ed Harris's, a four-times nominated actor who likely will never win, best performance is?  And was it Jamie Bell or Michael Douglas in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2000: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2000

Past Best Actor Contests: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Actor (2021)

OVP: Best Actor (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos

Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog

Andrew Garfield, tick, tick...BOOM!

Will Smith, King Richard

Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

My Thoughts: We have not yet gotten to an Oscars year where I didn't watch the actual ceremony live with the Oscar Viewing Project.  By the end of the year, that will not be the case; I started watching the Oscars in 1994/1995, and I've already finished watching a full OVP year from before then that we'll write about later this year, hopefully this summer at my current pace.  But as a result, it's sometimes impossible to separate the category from what I felt at the time, and when it's a category as infamous as this one, it's worth reminding people: we base who wins here solely on the performance at hand, not whether or not someone may have, say, ruined one of the most successful movie star careers of the past three decades with one simple slap.

We'll get Will Smith out of the way, and to this day I'm still not entirely sure what he was thinking.  But I do get what the Academy was thinking.  Smith is one of the last big movie stars of the 1990's (possibly the last) to not have a competitive Oscar who ended up getting one, and he's good here.  Richard Williams isn't a role that he'd be naturally the right choice for, but he does a strong job of combining the cool, assured persona that has made him a household name with against-type frustration on Williams' part as he tries to break down the barriers of the very segregated world of professional tennis.  Like his costar Aunjanue Ellis whom we talked about yesterday (links to all past contests at the bottom of the page), he is hurt by the screenwriters unwillingness to write Williams as a complicated, three-dimensional man rather than an always-right hero, and so it never feels like a complete performance, but he does well with what he has.

One could hardly say that Denzel Washington was handed a bad script, given that Joel Coen's adaptation of Macbeth is almost verbatim the original text from Shakespeare.  But he is aided in this version of the classic play by the cool, eerie ambience of this performance.  Even better for Washington are his scene partners (specifically Kathryn Hunter) who complement Washington's take on Macbeth quite well.  Washington plays the ill-guided king as a fool, but one who clearly has a confidence that is stripped by madness as the film goes.  It's a smart look at (honestly) the third most interesting character in a play despite him being the title character, and as a result, he outshines Frances McDormand, who has the better role.

Benedict Cumberbatch is a weird conundrum for me in that, before Power of the Dog, I'd never gravitated toward him.  I didn't like his oftentimes modernist takes on classic characters, and his screen persona was always a bit smarmy or (in his other Oscar-nominated film) scenery-chewing.  But this...this is fantastic.  His affected accent (not really western, clearly struggling behind his natural posh London accent) works really well for a character who is so much pretense, and he plays Phil as a dangerous character you can't help but stare at, and not just because Cumberbatch has never been so sexy onscreen.  There's a raw magnetism there, one that you can't deny as you're watching, and one that you're worried Smit-McPhee will fall into because, quite honestly, Cumberbatch is so good the audience is definitely headed that direction.

Andrew Garfield has been sexy (quite frequently) onscreen, but is looking more along the lines of "affably dorky" in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tick Tick Boom.  Garfield's got a better script than his competitor Smith, in part because the script isn't shy about Jonathan Larson's faults as a self-involved genius, one incapable of the romance he wants to bring to his plays.  Garfield isn't a natural singer, but he holds his own, and puts so much assured personality into his vocals that what read as out-of-the-box casting before the film feels like inevitability when you're watching it onscreen.

Our final nominee is Javier Bardem, and for me, it's the one dud in an otherwise good lineup.  Bardem was also out-of-the-box casting in a film brimming with it, and he's the one actor that doesn't work.  His Desi Arnez isn't charming enough, doesn't have enough chemistry with Kidman's Lucille Ball, and his character spouting the type of hyper-expositional dialogue that Sorkin is drowning his actors in here is the one least-equipped to make it believable given Arnez is meant to be more opaque about his feelings.  Sometimes casting a star for a role they aren't a good fit for works (Cumberbatch, Garfield, & Smith all did it), but Bardem is proof not every casting director is infallible.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  Drama went with Smith as the winner atop Bardem, Cumberbatch, Washington, & Mahershala Ali (Swan Song) while Musical/Comedy went to Garfield against Leonardo DiCaprio (Don't Look Up), Peter Dinklage (Cyrano), Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), & Anthony Ramos (In the Heights).  SAG went verbatim with Oscar's lineup (winner included), and BAFTA also picked Smith, though they went for a totally different Best Actor roster, with Cumberbatch, DiCaprio, Ali, Stephen Graham (Breaking Point), and Adeel Akhtar (Ali & Ava) the other nominees.  For sixth place, at the time I predicted Nicolas Cage for Pig (which, honestly, still feels plausible...precursors ain't everything), though if you wanted to think DiCaprio was in sixth you'd likely have more company than me on the Cage ledge.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Overall, Oscar did well here and there's a lot of overlap with my personal list which we'll get to in the next few days.  But for sure I'd want at least one of these guys out, and the easy answer of who to throw in would be Dev Patel, who is (for me) finally fulfilling the promise of a swaggering, handsome movie star with his electric performance in The Green Knight.

Oscar’s Choice: Had they voted during the ceremony, I think Garfield or Washington might've gotten the statue, but with all ballots delivered pre-slap, this was Smith in a walk.

My Choice: Cumberbatch, by a healthy margin...in my opinion the least of these actors given the rest of their collective body of work, this is proof that you have to just give it by the performances at hand, as he's marvelous here.  Garfield, Washington, Smith, & Bardem follow (in that order).

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you going to go with the default coronation of Smith or do you want to join me in crowning the unlikely Cumberbatch?  Do we think that anyone will win an Oscar for Shakespeare again?  And am I crazy for still thinking it was Cage who was in sixth (rather than the more traditional DiCaprio)?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2021: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2021

Past Best Actor Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: The Sea Inside (2004)

Film: The Sea Inside (2004)
Stars: Javier Bardem, Belen Rueda, Lola Duenas, Celso Bugallo, Mabel Rivera
Director: Alejandro Amenabar
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Foreign Language Film-Spain*, Makeup)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's a new week on the blog, and if you've been following along at all this summer, that means a new theme!  This week, since Americans shouldn't (and in most cases, can't) travel abroad, we're going to do that cinematically by taking a peak at five films that were nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and we're going to start out with a movie that actually won this trophy, Spain's The Sea Inside.  The film takes place kind of in a weird point in Javier Bardem's career.  At this point Bardem had been nominated for an Oscar (for Before Night Falls), and was famous enough that there was a lot of talk about him getting nominated for this performance in 2004, but wasn't quite at the place he is now, post his Oscar win & stint as a James Bond villain.  Therefore this is still on his climb up the ladder in the real-life story of Ramon Sampedro, a quadriplegic who wanted the right to die.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film features Ramon (Bardem), a writer who during a freak accident in his youth paralyzed himself from the neck down, thus making it virtually impossible for him to move in the way he had once done.  He is interviewed by Julia (Rueda), a woman suffering from Cadasil syndrome (which seems to have a situation that typically arises in your 40's and 50's where you continually have a series of strokes, and there isn't a cure), who has sympathy for his lifelong cause-to legally be able to kill himself, something he is unable to do on his own because of his situation.  His family loves him, and has a complicated attitude toward his fight (understanding his pain, but not wanting him to die despite his curmudgeonly attitude toward them).  Eventually he meets a woman named Rosa (Duenas) who falls in love with him, enough so that she's willing to help him die.

The film is intriguing, mostly because this is a political issue that rather than being resolved in one side's favor, kind of just disappeared (at least in American domestic politics-I'm aware this is more of a conversation in Europe, particularly in The Sea Inside's country of Spain).  Euthanasia was once a more hot-button issue (certainly I remember it being so in 2004), but unlike social issues such as stem-cell research or gay marriage, it didn't pick one side, and unlike abortion, it isn't something we still really discuss in the States.  If there's any side that euthanasia lands on, it's against Ramon's belief-most countries (including the United States) don't allow for euthanasia in this situation, since Ramon has brain function and his disability is physical, rather than mental or terminally medical (he is not going to die from this, even if it causes him pain).  Thus, the movie feels like a strange curiosity as unlike issue films, even international ones, this doesn't really get resolved in the direction of what the main characters are trying to achieve in the real world.

The actual film, though, is a snore.  This movie is repetitive-its story is compelling, but it doesn't know what to do with it, and Bardem doesn't bring enough life to his main character.  I feel like a lot of the kudos were more for the physical endurance that he had to achieve for playing this character, but there's not enough spirit in what he's bringing to the screen-there's not enough doubt as he encounters people who might want to change his point-of-view like Julia and Rosa.  I left the movie feeling like it was overlong and kind of schlocky, a missed opportunity that got bogged down in a political conversation that doesn't feel timely.

Mother! (2017)

Film: Mother! (2017)
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I am sitting in an airport right now, desperately trying to fight off jet lag (I never got used to my new time zone, so the next three hours of my life could be rough as I’m not good at being tired, and I’m already starting to fade).  That being said, I am going to try and keep myself awake while writing film reviews, and boy-howdy is it hard to sleep when you’re thinking about something as strange, controversial, and genuinely confusing as Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!.  So, let’s give this a shot.

(Spoilers Ahead…and genuinely, avoid spoilers if you are planning on seeing this movie at any point, as the punch isn’t going to work if you don’t) The film focuses on Mother (Lawrence-all of the characters are unnamed in the picture), a beautiful young woman who is refurbishing the house she shares with her husband, creating something from nothing as he fruitlessly works to create something great from his writing (he is the Poet).  One day, a strange Man (Harris), shows up at the door, dying but clearly enamored with the work of the Poet.  He is soon joined by the Woman (Pfeiffer), his wife, who prods at Mother over why she hasn’t had children, and continually shows misguided scorn toward her.  The film unfolds with the two being intensely rude guests, breaking a stone that at the beginning of the film had transformed the house, and having sex after Mother tries to throw them out.  When one of their two sons kills the other one, an impromptu funeral unfolds, and at the end after taunting the Poet, Mother becomes pregnant and the Poet is suddenly inspired to write as a result.

This may sound a bit strange, but honestly-this is the normal part of the movie.  In the second half of the film, utter madness ensues.  While we have lost the Man and Woman, the Poet is worshiped by hordes of increasingly lecherous intruders, ripping the floor apart and destroying the house that Mother has so cared for, and eventually even killing her baby, breaking his neck and eating his remains.  The movie eventually has her burning the house to the ground, giving her love to her husband in the form of a hardened crystal similar to the beginning of the movie, and then being reincarnated as a different fair-faced young woman, seemingly doomed to repeat the same scenario over and over again.

The film is, for its many, many faults, quite ambitious.  Aronofsky is not pulling any punches here, literally having a baby die during a crowd surf and then being eaten whole by a mob of people.  The movie, at least in its first half, is a pretty clear biblical metaphor, with Adam & Eve represented in the form of Man and Woman, with their sons being Cain-and-Abel (the elder kills the younger after learning that his inheritance was to be tossed aside), and the Poet is a god of some sorts, while Mother represents the Earth prior to humanity.  The similarities here are too direct to not clearly be alluding to the Bible, though one could argue the film also has an environmental message, is an allegory for social media, or even is as direct as the destructive nature between artist/muse.  But for me, the first half feels pretty similar to a biblical story.

This means the second half fails, in my opinion, quite miserably.  The idea of reincarnation of the planet seems more at home in other religions (Hinduism or Buddhism), than a Judeo-Christian one housed in the first half of the picture.  The movie also loses all direction when there isn’t any goodness or misunderstanding in some of those who ravage the house, the planet that Mother so deeply cares for-is Aronofsky’s view of humanity so bleak that he doesn’t have room for goodness?  It doesn’t help that it’s obvious by the film’s midway point that the only thing that we can’t predict is how disgusting the imagery is willing to be (oh, and Kristin Wiig-genuinely didn’t see her cameo coming as I didn’t realize she was signed up for the film-if the religious allegory works, she seems to be some sort of opportunistic religious zealot, trying to use the Poet while caring little for his muse, perhaps like a politician who claims to be Christian but then destroys everything that his God holds dear).  Pretty much any interpretation of the first half of the picture doesn’t work with the second half-Aronofsky is trying hard for a provocative metaphor, but metaphor only works if you make it consistent.  Otherwise it’s just shocking, which is what I feel like the second half achieves.  It’s an interesting failure, but a failure narratively-speaking.

The acting, though, is at least worth recommending.  Lawrence has never done a part like this before, and it’s fascinating work even if it isn’t always successful; her movie star charisma is shelved in favor of a blank loveliness, passive to the point of frustration, and naïve to the point where the audience was laughing at certain points of the picture, but she does the trick.  It’s nowhere near her best work (still think that’s American Hustle), but it’s miles away from the boredom of Passengers, so she’s at least recovered in that regard.  Her male costars are underwhelming-Bardem in particular feels too all-over-the-place, playing a role that at once feels almost typecast for him and yet one that he doesn’t uncover much of its heart within, playing everything surface-level.  The best of the bunch, though, is Pfeiffer, who gives the film some heat where it seriously would have lacked it otherwise.  She is knowing, specific, and anchors the movie’s scarier tendencies before Aronofsky completely discards the picture you were promised in the trailers.  If the film were more accessible, I suspect we’d be hearing about a comeback fourth Oscar nomination, but I have to wonder if AMPAS voters won’t stop the film an hour in, wondering what they’re being subjected to from Aronofsky.

Those are my thoughts?  Anyone want to share theirs?  Anyone else wishing they’d seen the film that they’d been promised in the trailers, or is this bizarre jumble up-your-alley?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Supporting Actor (2007)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2007)

The Nominees Were...

Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

My Thoughts: As we've learned throughout our 2007 dissection, film really had a remarkable year in terms of the Oscars, as AMPAS dismissed some obvious prestige plays and went with a series of dark, powerful films.  And yet, the real shocker may be that looking at the Best Supporting Actor lineup they didn't somehow screw this lineup up.  Even in the best of years, the Best Supporting Actor list is almost always filled with duds.  Respected character actors, semi-lead performances, and scene stealers in Best Pictures are the standard line in this category, and again in 2007 they stick to these cliches, but in a surprise most of these performances are not dull, but instead are quite exceptional and career bests in a couple of cases.  So, given that refreshing bit of prelude, let's start with the worst of these performances.

I was never a big fan of Philip Seymour Hoffman's acting style in movies.  People loved his deeply method approach, the way that he managed to be a movie star that looked like a character actor (a trick not many people get the opportunity to portray, but Paul Thomas Anderson and Bennett Miller saw to his having it), but I always felt his performances were too harried and theatrical.  In fact, the most impressive moment I ever saw from in his career was when he played Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, a towering achievement and one of the best performances I've ever seen on the New York stage.  But that was the theater, where he could get away with some of his more indulgent acting tics.  As a result other than The Master I've never been particularly struck by anything Hoffman did as a film actor, and that includes Charlie Wilson's War.  Here he plays a bombastic CIA operative, whose only temperatures are loud and louder when it comes to the way that Hoffman portrayed him.  There's technical skill here, but honestly even by the low bar I set for Hoffman, this is the least of his Oscar nominated roles, and feels more like an afterglow citation by people still enamored with his work in Capote.

Much better is Casey Affleck, a fine actor who occasionally gets in his own way in terms of technical skill.  This is the film that pushed him out of the way of his brother's shadow, likely leading to him eventually taking the Oscar for Manchester by the Sea.  Though he's never as good as Pitt, who has the more understated and challenging role, Affleck brings a mannered approach to Robert Ford that makes you constantly guessing about him and his motives, perhaps because as Ford is written his motives seem to always be changing.  Is he in love with James, or is he simply trying to become him?  It's not clear, but Affleck doesn't shy away from the Celluloid Closet angles of this part, and though his speaking pattern is sometimes frustrating, it's never out-of-character and well-considered.  My biggest problem with this nomination is that Affleck is the main character, hardly supporting at all-he has more screen-time than even Pitt himself, and was only relegated to supporting because he was not yet a matinee idol.  I dock quite a few points for what is one of the most egregious cases of category fraud I've seen in a long time.

Tom Wilkinson arguably has some category fraud in his corner as well, though at least his work in Michael Clayton could convincingly be called supporting (there's no question that George Clooney's titular character is the main point of focus).  Wilkinson, like Hoffman, plays this part so bombastically it's hard to take it seriously.  Honestly-that whole scene where he proclaims "I am Sheva the God of Death" is so manically over-the-top that you almost wonder if Tony Gilroy is playing this part for comedy.  Unlike the very specific decisions made by his costar Tilda Swinton, this feels more muddled and all-over-the-place, and very different from Wilkinson's fine work in In the Bedroom.  A disappointment, but he's aided by Michael Clayton being quite a fine film.

The last two performances are from actors giving, in my opinion, the best performances of their careers.  Javier Bardem managed to turn his Anton Chigurh into a movie star-career, getting him spots in major cinematic franchises like James Bond and Pirates of the Caribbean, and overall becoming a household name.  His Chigurh is pitch-perfect, and still lives up to the hype.  He keeps the character foreboding, dangerous, and unknowable.  There's no need for back story here, which the Coen Brothers smartly avoid, as he's simply a demon that is intent on winning at all costs.  The film lives and dies on this performance, and Bardem knows it, keeping his part restrained when other actors (including, quite frankly, Bardem himself in later years) would have over-played their hands with such a plum part.  That he keeps such an iconic villain subdued is a miraculous feat, and shows why he became an acting icon after this movie.

Finally, we have Hal Holbrook playing the annual part of an aging character actor who finally gets his due from the Academy.  The only thing that upsets this cliche is that Holbrook is marvelous in Into the Wild, playing a lonely man drawn in by the youth and kindness of a wayward stranger.  Holbrook gets scenes that could play to the rafters, but he keeps them back, eventually bringing out a difficult vulnerability that shatters against the emotionally-stunted Chris McCandless (played by Emile Hirsch) when he asks him to adopt him.  The pain on Holbrook's face, finally taking a chance after a long life of playing by the book, and then realizing that he was rejected, is marvelous-it honestly haunted me for months after seeing the picture, and made me think the movie itself is better than it is.  That's what great supporting actors do, and I'm so glad that Holbrook got to be included in Oscar's pantheon after a long career as a bit player in entertainment.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes were largely similar to the Oscars despite them getting a bit more creative in other categories, with only Holbrook missing (the HFPA, as is their style, went with the movie star in a crowd-pleaser: John Travolta in Hairspray).  The SAG Awards skipped Hoffman instead, a bit of a surprise considering he seemed like a sure thing with Oscar at the time, picking Tommy Lee Jones for No Country for Old Men.  Finally, the BAFTA Awards also went with Jones, as well as Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood, skipping over the more America-centric Holbrook & Affleck.  The only thing all lineups had in common was an easy win for Bardem, who was giving one of those performances that couldn't be ignored.  For me, it's hard to tell whether it was Travolta or Jones in sixth place, but considering Jones's shock Best Actor nomination part of me thinks Travolta's major comeback in 2007 was the sort of crowd-pleasing hit that just missed with AMPAS.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: I've never been as smitten by Tommy Lee Jones as some other filmgoers, but honestly-his work as Ed Tom Bell is the best performance of his career, and deserved a nomination.  I also would have found time for Max von Sydow's tortured father in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, as well as one of the many outstanding supporting performances in Zodiac, with Mark Ruffalo likely being my favorite of the bunch.

Oscar’s Choice: An easy win for Bardem, though second place is harder to call-would they have gone with the sentimental favorite of Holbrook or would a quick second win for Hoffman have been in the cards?  I could make a case for either, but I'm guessing Hoffman would have had an edge.

My Choice: I also can't stop what's coming, and will pick Bardem over Holbrook.  In third place is Affleck, who would have been a threat for going higher were it not for the category fraud, followed by Wilkinson and finally Hoffman.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with the consensus choice of Bardem, or does someone want to make an argument that another man deserved this trophy?  Who was second place, Hoffman or Holbrook?  Who was sixth place-Jones or Travolta?  And which Zodiac supporting player was the most snubbed?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2007: 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 Supporting Actor Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014