*Sigh* The Oscar Nominees

Ok, here's the full list of nominees, courtesy of Yahoo. I'll also include how many of my predicted nominees made it

1. Best Picture: " The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk," " The Reader ," " Slumdog Millionaire ."

Of these, Curious Case was the best, then Milk, then a very wide gap followed by Frost/Nixon and then an even wider gap followed by the atrocious Slumdog (it would feel redundant to go back and edit my review of Slumdog again, but that ** rating is starting to feel too high for a film that should have gone straight to DVD, which was the studio's original plan). I still refuse to see The Reader. 4 of my 5 predicted nominees made it.


2. Actor: Richard Jenkins , "The Visitor"; Frank Langella , "Frost/Nixon"; Sean Penn, "Milk"; Brad Pitt, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Mickey Rourke, " The Wrestler ."

I didn't see The Visitor, but I like Jenkins, so it's nice to see him nominated. Langella was good, but not great in a very mediocre film. Penn and Pitt were both very good and Rourke, who had better win, was fantastic. I'd much rather see Dicaprio (for Revolutionary Road) and the others I mentioned in my other entry than Langella or Pitt. 4/5 made it


3. Actress: Anne Hathaway, "Rachel Getting Married"; Angelina Jolie, " Changeling "; Melissa Leo , " Frozen River"; Meryl Streep, "Doubt"; Kate Winslet, "The Reader."

I hope Hathaway wins, she was my favorite in this group. Leo is a good underdog story, so it's nice to see her here. Streep just wasn't good at Doubt. Winslet deserved it for Revolutionary Road, but I always thought The Reader was a supporting role for her. I didn't see Changeling, so I won't comment on Jolie. I'm shocked that they snubbed Sally Hawkins, and I'm disapointed that Rebecca Hall didn't sneak in. 2(3?)/5 made it. I don't know if I should count Winslet or not.


4. Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin , "Milk"; Robert Downey Jr ., " Tropic Thunder "; Philip Seymour Hoffman , "Doubt"; Heath Ledger , " The Dark Knight "; Michael Shannon , " Revolutionary Road."

It's great to see Downey on here, and Shannon and Brolin were both great (I'd have picked Franco and Hirsch over Brolin out of the supporting cast of Milk). Ledger should win and I think he will. I love the work of PSH, but Doubt just wasn't that good. 3/5 made it


5. Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, "Doubt"; Penelope Cruz, " Vicky Cristina Barcelona "; Viola Davis , "Doubt"; Taraji P. Henson , "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Marisa Tomei, "The Wrestler."

Well, if I had known that WInslet was being submitted as a lead actress for The Reader, I would have put Adams into the fifth spot, as she is my favorite of these five. Cruz and Henson were both excellent. Davis was very good, but I think people have overrated her performance. Tomei would be my second pick; her performance was brave and heartbreaking, and she made a perfect compliment to Rourke. 4/5 made it


6. Director: David Fincher, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Ron Howard, "Frost/Nixon"; Gus Van Sant , "Milk"; Stephen Daldry, "The Reader"; Danny Boyle , "Slumdog Millionaire."

Fuck Slumdog. It just wasn't a very well-directed film (neither was Frost/Nixon, but Slumdog was much more disapointing) This went as expected, with the exception of The Reader getting it over TDK. 4/5


7. Foreign Film : "The Baader Meinhof Complex," Germany; "The Class," France; "Departures," Japan; "Revanche," Austria; " Waltz With Bashir ," Israel.

Of these I've only seen Waltz with Bashir, which was fantastic. I really want to see The Class, but it won't be here for a while.


8. Adapted Screenplay : Eric Roth and Robin Swicord , "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; John Patrick Shanley , "Doubt"; Peter Morgan , "Frost/Nixon"; David Hare, "The Reader"; Simon Beaufoy , "Slumdog Millionaire."

Once again, same as expected except with The Reader instead of TDK. 4/5
9. Original Screenplay: Courtney Hunt, "Frozen River"; Mike Leigh , "Happy-Go-Lucky"; Martin McDonagh , "In Bruges"; Dustin Lance Black, "Milk"; Andrew Stanton , Jim Reardon and Pete Docter, "WALL-E."

So I guess The Wreslter, Synecdoche and Rachel Getting Married really were just too much for the sensibilites of the academy. In Bruges, Milk and Wall-E were great, and I'm sure the others were good, but really? Nothing for the year's three best original screenplays? 2/5


10. Animated Feature Film : "Bolt"; " Kung Fu Panda "; "WALL-E."

Bolt ahead of Waltz with Bashir? I guess it doesn't matter, since WALL-E has this locked up


11. Art Direction: "Changeling," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "The Duchess," "Revolutionary Road"

The three I saw all looked fine. It's not like I was expecting The Wreslter or Rachel Getting Married to be nominated here anyway, but Synecdoche had some really fantastic set design


12. Cinematography : "Changeling," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "The Reader," "Slumdog Millionaire."

Curious Case and TDK were good. I'm done talking about Slumdog for now. There were no standouts a la No Country or TWBB this year.


13. Sound Mixing: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "Slumdog Millionaire," "WALL-E," "Wanted."

Wanted was nominated for more Oscars and Synecdoche New York. The academy should be ashamed


14. Sound Editing: "The Dark Knight," "Iron Man," "Slumdog Millionaire," "WALL-E," "Wanted."

Wanted was nominated for more Oscars and Synecdoche New York and Rachel Getting Married combined. The academy should be ashamed


15. Original Score: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Alexandre Desplat ; "Defiance," James Newton Howard ; "Milk," Danny Elfman ; "Slumdog Millionaire," A.R. Rahman ; "WALL-E," Thomas Newman .

I hated the music in Slumdog, and the music in TDK was far better than any of the nominees. Otherwise this is ok


16. Original Song: "Down to Earth" from "WALL-E," Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman; " Jai Ho " from "Slumdog Millionaire," A.R. Rahman and Gulzar; "O Saya" from "Slumdog

Millionaire," A.R. Rahman and Maya Arulpragasam.

Two songs from Slumdog, and they ignore Springsteen's song from The Wrestler? I don't give a shit about Springsteen and even I love that song. Now we have to listen to the two songs from Slumdog during the actual ceremony. Great job AMPAS


17. Costume: "Australia," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Duchess," "Milk," "Revolutionary Road"

I'm ok with this


18. Documentary Feature: "The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)," " Encounters at the End of the World ," "The Garden," "Man on Wire," " Trouble the Water."

I loved Encounters and Man On Wire, and I haven't seen the others. Waltz with Bashir really should have been nominated


19. Documentary ( short subject ): "The Conscience of Nhem En," "The Final Inch," "Smile Pinki," "The Witness — From the Balcony of Room 306."

I have no idea


20. Film Editing: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk," "Slumdog Millionaire."

Nothing special about Slumdog or Frost/nixon, the others were good.


21. Makeup: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "Hellboy II: The Golden Army."

I fully support these choices
22. Animated Short Film: "La Maison en Petits Cubes," "Lavatory — Lovestory," "Oktapodi," "Presto," "This Way Up."

No idea


23. Live Action Short Film: "Auf der Strecke (On the Line)," "Manon on the Asphalt," "New Boy," "The Pig," "Spielzeugland (Toyland)."

No idea


24. Visual Effects: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," " Iron Man."

Hellboy had far better effects than the severly overrated Iron Man



I hate the academy. They ignore Synecdoche and give out three total nominations to The Wreslter and Rachel Getting Married. They snub The Dark Knight in the best picture race in favor of The Reader, a film whose basic plot I find so insulting, to both history and the viewer, that I refuse to see it and their outdated rules stopped Let the Right One In from getting a nomination for best foreign film. Worst of all, they continue the needless amount of praise heaped on Slumdog, a film that history will hopefully allow us to forget very soon.
As a side note, the first two episodes of the fifth season of Lost were absolutely perfect, so even all of this can't make me that mad.

Waltz With Bashir

As a preface to this review, I should probably note that I am a non-practicing Jew who has spent a decent amount of time in Israel and has many friends currently in the Israeli army. I say this because these facts made it very difficult to simply review Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir on an intellectual level. This was one of the most emotional movie-going experiences I've ever had. This animated documentary (I'll get to that later) is one of the most highly acclaimed films in Israeli history, and was one of my most anticipated films of 2008. It has already won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and is the front-runner for the Oscar in that category as well as a dark horse in the best animated feature category (although I'd be shocked if anything actually beat Wall-E). When I first heard that this was an animated documentary, I really didn't know what to think. It just sounded like too much of a contradiction, unless you count an animated educational film as a documentary. Waltz With Bashir has advertised itself as the first feature-length animated documentary, and, given the way it is filmed, I agree with that label. The film is centered around a series of interviews and discussions between Folman and others who were with him in the 1982 war with Lebanon. These sequences were first filmed in a studio, and then the animators drew them separately (it was not rotoscoped, like Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly, which is where they animate over the actual image). Then their interviews lead to a story of flashbacks and hallucinations about the war. At first I didn't realize how these could be considered part of a documentary, but I realized that they are no different from the reenactments in The Thin Blue Line, except in that they use a separate medium.
As the film opens, Folman sits in a bar with an old friend from the war who explains a recurring dream in which he is chased down the street by 26 angry dogs. In Lebanon, they knew he couldn't kill humans, so his commanders made him kill the guard dogs instead, and he sees this recurrent nightmare as his punishment. After this interviews, Folman realizes that he doesn't remember a thing about the war except for one hypnotic flashback where he and two others wake up in the ocean and walk into Beirut, only to see a large crowd fleeing the Sabra and Shatila massacres, in which a large group of Christian Lebanese entered two Palestinian refugee camps and slaughtered the refugees while the Israeli guards just stood by, paralyzed by the chain of command. Folman goes to interview one of the men who was in the dream (he can't remember the other), and, through interviews with him and various others who were there in that time, he begins to put together what happened. Through this, we get a series of fascinating, interconnected vignettes about the war and its effect on people. The only one of these that doesn't work perfectly involves Folman working a VCR so his colonel can watch porn; however this is soon followed by the best scene in the film. As they entered Beirut following the assassination of Lebanese leader Bachir Gemayel (pronounced Bashir), Folman's company faced heavy enemy fire. After a few minutes, his commander knew that they needed to cross the street, so he grabbed a heavy machine gun and walked out, shooting into the air, performing a crazed Waltz amid the gunfire and posters of the fallen leader. Near the end of the film, there is an abrupt switch from animation to archival footage. This scene, aside from showing the true effects of war in far greater detail, perfectly uses the dreamlike imagery of animation to contrast the real, and reminds us of the line between dream, memory and fact.

I really can not express my admiration for this film enough. Every little detail was alternatively fascinating and heartbreaking. The animation was both dreamlike and beautiful, perfectly capturing the feel and the themes of the film. The score, which won composer Max Richter best composer at the European film awards, is occasionally overbearing, but otherwise perfect, especially during the main hallucinatory sequence. Folman is a perfect guide for this journey, always allowing the story to come out on it's own, and the interviewees, from his friends to the reporters to the military higher-ups at the end, all give us the exact piece of the puzzle that we need from them. My emotional connection to the people and places in the film certainly helped my personal reaction to the story. I can't deny that, but this is an important film, especially now, and it is something that everyone should see. Waltz with Bashir really is one of the best and most innovative films of 2008.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Oscar Predictions

Ok, the Globes are (thankfully) over, I've seen most of the perspective nominees (I'm just waiting on Waltz with Bashir and maybe Revolutionary Road, I refuse to see The Reader) and most of the award shows have announced their nominees, so it's time for my Oscar picks. First will be my dream ballot, then my actual predictions

Best Picture:
Hope:
Synecdoche, New York
The Wrestler
The Dark Knight
the Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Rachel Getting Married
Actual:
Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Knight
Benjamin Button
Milk
The Wrestler
Most people have Frost/Nixon making it over The Wrestler. I just can't believe that they'd nominate two films as needlessly mediocre as Slumdog and Frost/Nixon, and while Slumdog was unquestionably the lesser film, it also has much more hype. The Wrestler was the best reviewed non-documentary of the year.

Best Actor:
Hope:
Mickey Rourke The Wrestler
Sean Penn Milk
Phillip Seymour Hoffman Synecdoche, New York
Brendan Gleeson In Bruges
Sam Rockwell Snow Angels
Actual:
Sean Penn
Mickey Rourke
Brad Pitt Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frank Langella Frost/Nixon
Clint Eastwood Gran Torino
Dicaprio is the dark horse, but I doubt he'll get it. The academy is far too stupid to actually honor Synecdoche, and they've already forgotten In Bruges and Snow Angels. Langella and Eastwood were fine, so I'm not really complaining.

Best Actress:
Hope (honestly, I haven't seen that many films with female leads this year, so I'm just basing this on actresses I like):
Anne Hathaway Rachel Getting Married
Sally Hawkins Happy-Go-Lucky
Kate Winslet Revolutionary Road
Rebecca Hall Vicky Christina Barcelona
Cate Blanchett The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Actual:
Hathaway
Hawkins
Winslet
Hall
Merryl Streep Doubt
I don't know much about this category. Streep gets the nod over Blanchett because she's Streep.

Best Director:
Wish:
Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche, New York
David Fincher The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Chris Nolan The Dark Knight
Darren Aronofsky The Wrestler
Jonathon Demme Rachel Getting Married
Actual:
David Fincher
Chris Nolan
Danny Boyle Slumdog Millionaire
Ron Howard Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant Milk
I think the directors of the five best films deserve the nominations (all five films had great visuals in their own way). Ron Howard is a bad director. People don't seem to understand this. Danny Boyle is a good director. Slumdog is his worst film. Even fewer people seem to understand this. I have no problem with Van Sant getting the nomination. Milk was a very well-directed film.

Supporting actor:
Wish:
Heath Ledger The Dark Knight
Emile Hirsch Milk
Javier Bardem Vicky Christina Barcelona
Robert Downey Jr. Tropic Thunder
Ralph Fiennes In Bruges
Actual:
Ledger
Brolin Milk
Fiennes The Reader
Phillip Seymour Hoffman Doubt
Javier Bardem Vicky Christina Barcelona
I refuse to see any films that can be described as manipulative dreck about the holocaust, so I haven't seen The Reader, but I do love Fiennes, and his performance in In Bruges was wonderful. Doubt just wasn't that good, so I'd rather see Hoffman's spot go to Downey, who gave the year's funniest supporting performance. They may be marketing Bardem as a lead actor, but he was great. Ledger should win.

Best supporting actress:
Wish:
Penelope Cruz Vicky Christina Barcelona
Amy Adams Doubt
Samantha Morton Synecdoche, New York
Marissa Tomei The Wrestler
Rosemarie Dewitt Rachel Getting Married
Actual:
Cruz
Tomei
Kate Winslett The Reader
Taraji P. Henson The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Viola Davis Doubt
I'm in the minority on this, but I thought Amy Adams gave the best performance in Doubt, and essentially saved the film from absolute mediocrity. Things that make me angry: 1. The lack of any love for Synecdoche

Original Screenplay:
Wish:
Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche, New York
Robert D. Siegel The Wrestler
Jenny Lumet Rachel Getting Married
Andrew Stanton Wall-E
Martin McDonagh In Bruges
Actual:
Lumet
Stanton
Black
Woody Allen Vicky Christina Barcelona
The Coen Brothers Burn After Reading
Why can't anyone recognize the brilliance of Synecdoche? Burn After Reading was great, but not really Oscar-worthy. I'd be perfectly ok if Allen was nominated.

Adapted Screenplay
Wish:
Eric Roth Benjamin Button
Jonathon Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer The Dark Knight
John Ajvide Lindqvist Let The Right One In
David Gordon Green Snow Angels
Dan Gilroy, Tarsem The Fall
Actual:
Roth
Nolans and Goyer
Simon Beaufoy Slumdog
Peter Morgan Frost/Nixon
John Patrick Shanley Doubt
The Fall really didn't have a great screenplay, but there weren't that many films I liked this year from adapted screenplay, namely the final three films listed here.

Dream major nominee count:

Synecdoche: 5

The Wrestler: 5

Rachel Getting Married: 5

Benjamin Button: 4

Dark Knight: 4

Milk: 3

In Bruges: 3

Vicky Christina Barceona: 3

Snow Angels: 2

Happy-Go-Lucky: 1

Revolutionary Road: 1

Tropic Thunder: 1

Doubt: 1

Let The Right One In: 1

The Fall: 1

Wall-E: 1

I'll pick winners after the actual nominations come out

The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky's films have always had a polarizing effect on audiences. Personally, I have at least sort of enjoyed all of his films. Pi is kind of a mess, but it was interesting enough to keep me watching, Requiem for a Dream is one of the most perfectly disturbing films of all time (can anyone give a legitimate explanation for Ellen Burstyn losing best actress to Julia Roberts?), and The Fountain, aside from some mediocre acting, is a pretty good film. All of those films are highly stylized and do occasionally rely too heavily on different camera and editing tricks to get the point across. When I finally saw the preview for his latest film, The Wrestler, I was shocked. The film looks like it was shot on a handheld camera (just like Rachel Getting Married) and uses none of the stylistic tricks of Aronofsky's earlier work. This film simply relies on a great story, good, simple (at least for Aronofsky) direction and one of the great screen performances in recent years from Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson.

As the film opens, the camera stays behind Rourke as he sits in the changing room after a match. He walks out and the camera follows him, almost afraid to show his battered face to the crowd. The other wrestlers and the devoted fans all treat the Ram as a hero, and his opponents are honored to lose to him. His promoter gets him to agree to fight a rematch of his most famous bout, against a wrestler called the Ayatollah, at an upcoming convention, and Randy, now relegated to weekend fights in high school gyms and rec centers, sees it as his shot at a comeback. That night he goes to a strip club to see his one friend not involved in the wrestling industry, a dancer named Cassidy, played by Marissa Tomei. She is nearly Randy's age, and she can also sense that her days in this career are coming to an end. During the days he works, unloading boxes at a grocery store. After a brutal match involving barbed wire and a staple gun, Randy has a heart attack, and his doctors tell him that he must quit wrestling. He tries to leave the ring, pursue Cassidy and reconnect with his teenage daughter (played by Evan Rachel Wood), but nothing works out. Despite their obvious connection, Cassidy has a thing against dating customers, and his daughter hates him, deservedly so, for never being there and ruining her life. Even when he has a shot with her, he forgets to go, and she decides that they will never see each other again. Randy realizes that his life is in the ring, and he reschedules the rematch. The final shots of The Ram giving it all for the crowd in what he knows may be his final match are among the most intense and heartbreaking in any film this year.
Without Rourke, this film would have been nothing. If you have read any reviews of The Wrestler, you have heard enough of how Rourke's career path perfectly follows Randy's. The audience's knowledge of Rourke's life, going from Hollywood heartthrob to broken down boxer to resurrected star, adds to the depth and reality of the performance. The Ram's final speech to the crowd, where he talks about how he has always done this for them, feels more real than any other moment in film this year. If the Oscars were actually based on artistic merit and not politicking, Rourke would already have his trophy. As it stands, he is the leader in a race with Sean Penn for Milk and Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, which I plan on seeing later this week. Since the academy will no doubt ignore Phillip Seymour Hoffman's work in the criminally underrated Synecdoche, New York, the other nominees will probably be Brad Pitt for his great work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and either Clint Eastwood, Leonardo Dicaprio or Richard Jenkins. I can say with full certainty that Rourke's performance is the best of the bunch. outside of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and maybe Hoffman in Synecdoche (the two performances are very different but essentially equal in my mind) it is probably the strongest leading role over the last few years. Tomei also got a golden globe nomination, and I think her work was strong enough to earn her a best supporting actress nomination later this month. Finally, just as a matter of note, any film that can make me forget how much I hate Guns 'n Roses, even if it's just for a few minutes, must be a great film, and that certainly describes The Wrestler.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Man on Wire

My choice for favorite documentary of 2008 (to be fair, I haven't seen that many documentaries in 2008) appears to be coming down to two of the year's best reviewed films, Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End of the World and James Marsh's Man on Wire, which currently stands at a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the best reviewed film in the history of the sight. Unless you count the animated Waltz With Bashir, which doesn't open anywhere near me for a few weeks, as a documentary (some do, some don't, I'll wait until I see it to decide), these two are set to form a very solid top two. What I find so interesting about this is that the subject of Man on Wire, high-wire artist Phillipe Petit, seems like someone from an Herzog documentary. He may not be as insane of Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man), and his actions would feel out of place in Herzog's world, but his obsession fits in perfectly. After seeing an article on the construction of the world trade center, Petit, who had already walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, knew what he had to do, and his singular obsession began to grow.

Using Thin Blue Line-like reconstructions, archival footage (the film's strongest part) and interviews with Petit and his huge supporting crew, we see him begin his obsession, find the friends and enablers necessary to pull off a job so huge and, finally, we see the heist-like trip to the roof and mid-morning journey across the chasm separating the two iconic buildings. Part of what makes the story so interesting is the fact that it feels like a heist film. Nearly every element of a classic heist film appears as part of their plan (Petit is a fan of the genre). What made this specific heist so appealing to Petit (and the public) was that he managed to do something this exciting and entertaining without the possibility of hurting anyone except himself (unless you count his one friend who was deported). It was an entirely self-sacrificing action which fulfilled his own needs while providing an entirely new and original entertainment for the masses. There was no "why?' to his actions, no real reason, he just knew that it had to be done.

For a film based on a true story with an obvious ending to succeed, it must make us forget what we know and truly care about how that ending came about. Milk was able to do it perfectly, and Man on Wire succeeds just as well. Petit is constantly interviewed throughout the film, and we are fully aware of the fact that he survived, so the heist-like tension that Marsh creates is necessary to keep the audience involved. The reenactments are very well done, and the interviews with Petit and his gang are equally fascinating, providing necessary quick insights into the psyche of a man who would do this, but I wish there had been a bit more archival footage, especially of the walk itself.

While it is clearly on everyone's mind for the entire film, the events of 9/11 are never explicitly mentioned. In an interview with the BBC, Marsh said "What Philippe did was incredibly beautiful...It would be unfair and wrong to infect his story with any mention, discussion or imagery of the Towers being destroyed." At first, I didn't quite agree, but I think this was the right choice. While hearing Petit's thoughts on the attacks would have added a different kind of emotional depth, I think the film is much more poignant as is. Man on Wire serves as a beautiful study of one man's obsession with the towers, and it reminds us of what we lost without forcing anything upon us, which is how this amazing story had to be told.

Rating (out of ****): ****

The Day The Earth Stood Still

I don't really want to write a full review of Scott Derrickson's remake of Robert Wise's 1951 film The Day The Earth Stood Still. They clearly didn't put a full effort into this film, so I won't put one into the review. You all know the story. Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), an alien ambasador, comes to earth with his robot Gort, and they try to get the humans to stop their destructive ways (nuclear weapons in the original, global warming here). He meets a widow and her young stepson (Jennifer Connelly and Jaden Smith), who try to help him escape from various government figures-both good and bad (Kathy Bates, Kyle Chandler and Jon Hamm among others), and with the help of an eccentric professor (John Cleese), try to convince Klaatu to not kill all humans.

The original film was one of the most interesting and relevant sci-fi films of the 50s, and it relied on tension and character instead of action. This version stays interesting and exciting for about 25 minutes, and then it decends into standard sci-fi cliche. Reeves gives his usual emotionless performance, but, like in the first Matrix movie and A Scanner Darkly, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Klaatu would benefit from a better actor, but Reeves isn't awful. Connelly tries her best with the awful dialogue she's given, and makes it work when possible. Cleese and Hamm (of TV's Mad Men) are both very good in limited roles, but Bates is clearly phoning it in. Jaden Smith may not be a bad young actor, but he plays the exact same stunningly annoying role as Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds. The effects are terrible, the dialogue is weak and the visuals are bland and uninspired. The original story could work very well as a remake, but this is clearly Fox trying to make a quick buck with a lazy, usless effort.

See this ^ instead

Rating (out of ****) *1/2

Doubt

Every once in a while, I'll see a movie poster, and, without knowing anything about the film itself, I know that I will see it. This was the case with John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. The names Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams on their own are usually enough to get me to see a movie (although even Streep couldn't get me to see The Devil Wears Prada or Mama Mia). I would watch the three of them standing in a white room talking for two hours and I'd probably be entertained. After I saw the poster for Doubt, I looked up the play it is based on, and I got even more excited. Rapid fire dialogue and criticism of religion are generally things that I like. Combined with the actors, it seemed like the recipe for a sure-thing best picture contender. Unfortunately, something went sort of wrong.

The film takes place in the Bronx in 1964. Father Flynn (Hoffman) is the new priest at the St. Nicholas parish and school in the Bronx. He begins with a sermon on Doubt, and how in uncertain times, it can bring us together. This message resonates with Donald Miller, an alter-boy and the school's first black student. His teacher, Sister James (Adams), an innocent, kind young woman, tries her hardest to care for him and the rest of the class, a group she truly loves. In contrast is the school's tradition-minded principal, Sister Aloysius (Streep). She disapproves of the priest's new, kind attitude toward the students, and immediately suspects the worst when Sister James comes to her with worries about the relationship between Father Flynn and Donald. After a failed confrontation, Sister James begins to doubt her suspicions for their lack of evidence, but Sister Aloysius goes on and calls in Donald's mother, played by Viola Davis. During their confrontation, Aloysius learns more about Donald and begins to understand his situation. Afterwords, she confronts Flynn one final time.

Talking about this film, the first thing one must bring up is the acting. All four leads have been nominated for Golden Globes and Viola Davis already won best breakthrough performance from the National Board of Review. Davis, despite only having ten minutes of screen time, deserves all the praise she gets. In her scene, she goes through every possible emotion and more than holds her own with Streep. Just like last year's Charlie Wilson's War, Adams and Hoffman rescue a mediocre film and bring to an acceptable level of quality. Amy Adams portrays her character's innocence with such heartbreaking intensity the she would have my vote for best supporting actress if I had a ballot. I have never seen Phillip Seymour Hoffman give a bad performance, and, after this fall's combination of Doubt and Synecdoche, New York, I don't think I ever will. Oddly enough, Streep, the best actress of her generation, is the weak link in the cast. It's not a bad performance by any means, it is simply average. She's intense when called for, and her accent is OK, but there is nothing to make it rise above the rest of her work or the other performances in this film. Maybe she is the victim of high expectations, but her past performances have all lived up to the hype. The performances are not the film's problem. Shanley may be a great playwright, but he has only directed one film before this, the awful 1990 Tom Hanks film Joe Versus The Volcano, and this film suffers from an inexperience hand. The cinematography from Coen Brothers regular Roger Deakins is fine, but the score from Howard Shore fails, and the pacing never feels quite right. The original play only had four characters and was almost all dialogue. The extra focus put on the kids and the heavy-handed use of weather metaphors, neither of which was in the original (which, may I remind you, I haven't seen), and they are two of the weak points here. Still, this is not a bad film, as the dialogue (except for the final scene) is pretty good, and the performances from Davis, Adams and Hoffman are great, but it is a disapointment.

Rating (out of ****): ***