Weekly Update (Is This Becoming a New Thing?)

This week, I:

- Reviewed Cosmopolis over at PopMatters.
- Discussed Silver Linings Playbook's amazing Oscar achievements.

What have y'all been up to?

Silver Linings of Oscar Nods.

I imagine this is probably what Bradley Cooper looked like yesterday morning after receiving notice he'd been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his work in Silver Linings Playbook. If I wasn't so lazy, you'd know how much I loved this movie, however due to my lack of reviewing mojo, you'll have to trust me on this one. The movie surprisingly achieved a historical feat which I pointed out on Twitter:

#SilverLinings is the first movie to get acting nominations in all acting categories in 31 years. "Reds" was the last.
— Jose Solís (@josekicksass) January 10, 2013

(Follow me if you haven't yet...)

Anyway, besides my joy over SLP, I was ecstatic that my favorite movie of the year received nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actress, Screenplay and Foreign Language Film! (My fave movies and performances of the year are coming soon...)

Now, check out what else I've been up to:

- I wrote about some of the best male performances of 2012 - including Cooper - over at PopMatters, where I also reviewed Game Change and Following.
- Over at the Statuesque awards blog I wrote about the best under the radar cinematography of 2012.

Now, go read and comment!

Short Takes (Haiku Edition)

Due to some taxing personal events during the past few weeks, my writing is something I've been neglecting. The movies - as always - have remained a beacon of hope amidst these dark times and needless to say so, I've been sucking on to them like a unicellular creature would to some more advanced life-form. I apologize for not having been as friendly in the blog-o-sphere as usual and I apologize for not writing. Both you and this medium keep me alive, and today felt like a good day to resurrect. I give you reviews for some of the latest films I've seen in haiku form (Today also felt like a good time to try out some new literary techniques...)

Limitless (dir. Burger, 2011) **

Magic pill powers

don't explain why Bradley

is a movie star.

Bad Teacher (dir. Kasdan, 2011) *

Cam as rotten fruit
punches Lucy out of
comedic classroom.

L'amour fou (Thoretton, 2011) ***

Legacy of style
sold in heartbreaking auction
fashionable tears.


Larry Crowne (Hanks, 2011) **

Old school charm abounds
but Julia and Hanks feel like
our folks making out.



 What have all of you been watching?

The Hangover Part II *

Director: Todd Phillips

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis

Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Jeffrey Tambor, Jamie Chung

Paul Giamatti, Mason Lee

It's not that The Hangover Part II is bad (it is) but it's just how unnecessary it feels what makes such a waste of time. Essentially, in order to capitalize on modern audience's needs for lazy writing, the people behind this film have remade the first movie and changed a few bits.

Instead of Las Vegas, the action moves to Thailand, instead of a cute baby for Galifianakis to obsess about, we get a drug dealing monkey and instead of having Justin Bartha's character getting married, now we have Ed Helms' doing it.

If you had a blast watching people reduced to stereotypes in the first one and love the way in which bromance has become the new rom-com, then this movie might still treat you to a fine time. However for those seeking their entertainment without condescendingly chauvinistic winks at how masculinity only comes to happen if you get shot, make fun of gays, think about getting laid all day long, have no regard for societal rules etc. then this film will be a massive waste of time.

Perhaps the perfect analogy to describe this movie is that it does feel like a lesson not learnt. Watching it and realizing how preposterous it can get, might remind you of a hangover you got the week after you promised yourself not to drink any more.

Any seemingly meta explorations of human behavior found in the previous statement, which might make the movie sound any better, are pure coincidence.

While Watching "New York, I Love You"...

I was shocked to realize that Brett Ratner had directed my favorite segment in the omnibus film. Yes, Ratner of "Rush Hour" glory outdoes Akin, Marston, Attal, Nair (although I have to confess I don't really like her work), one of the Hughes and Natalie Portman.
His segment is the most refreshing bit in a movie filled with too many artsy pretensions and little cohesion.
Anton Yelchin and Olivia Thirlby are pitch perfect as an imperfect couple on prom night and their sweet, funny story is the only bit in the film that reminds us, as one character says, that New York City is "the capital of everything possible".
Other things of interest in the movie were...

Several plotlines are very interested in smoking as a social ritual.
I know that strangers do come up to you as if the nicotine drew them closer like a magnet but it was odd to see cigarettes made such an important point within a city that's slowly trying to eradicate them for good.

Eli Wallach is a living acting god. Too bad his segment wasn't all that (A surprise considering Cloris Leachman is his costar and Joshua Marston directs)

The cinematography in Shekhar Kapur's segment is gorgeous even if Anthony Minghella's screenplay doesn't have too much to say and is the less New York-ish of the tales.

Drea de Matteo is a phenomenal actress. Someone should give her a role that isn't a mobster or a Jersey girl. She pretty much devours Bradley Cooper in their bit together.

Christina Ricci should be in more movies...

I really don't see Bradley Cooper's appeal. Can somebody explain it to me?
Justin Bartha on the other side, very underrated.

Is anyone else as psyched about this as I am?

The Hangover **

Director:Todd Phillips,
Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis
Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, Jeffrey Tambor

The bachelor party is the heterosexual male ritual by excellence. During it, the groom-to-be is indulged by his friends with the last moments of utter freedom he will have for as long as the marriage lasts.
The bachelor party in Las Vegas, is the only location where Hollywood sees fit to fulfill this heterosexual male ritual.
In "The Hangover" we miss the actual party, but wake up with the guys the morning after amidst what can only be described as disaster.
Cocky schoolteacher Phil (Cooper) calls bride-to-be, Tracy (Sasha Barrese) to let her know that her fiancé Doug (Bartha) has gone missing. With only five hours left before the wedding, we go back in time two days trying to uncover what the hell happened.
Doug and Phil left Los Angeles with nervous, nerdy dentist Stu (Helms) and Tracy's weird brother Alan (Galifianakis); after a couple of Jager shots at the Caesar's Palace roof, they wake up to find their $4,200 a-night-suite completely shattered, one of Stu's teeth missing, a tiger in the bathroom and a baby in the closet.
With only twenty four hours left to find the groom, and the title physiological effect ailing them, they set out like frat boy detectives to uncover what went wrong.
The plot, like many before it, indulges in all that is crass, loud and politically incorrect (baby masturbation should not be as funny as it is when delivered by Galifianakis) and while some of the situations work out for great comedic relief, most of the movie fails to click.
The ensemble is great, Cooper stretches out his pretty boy-ness to the max (his cockiness is disturbingly charming sometimes), Helms gives the movie a soul of sorts (even if his character is forced to enact some over the top couple drama with his possessive girlfriend played by Racahel Harris), Galifianakis gives the kind of performance deemed to achieve eternal emulations and Graham turns in a surprisingly sweet performance as the hooker with a heart of gold (she channels Julianne Moore's Amber Waves from "Boogie Nights").
Even if their distinctive personalities get a chance to shine, you never really know how is it that they all became friends in the first place because honestly the one thing they have in common is that they are guys.
And it is through this where the film has both its greatest ally and foe.
For some guys in the audience the film will feel like constant deja-vus and remind them of how they bonded through shameful experience (no morality tales here, even the ending gives the guys something to cheer about).
Some others though will see the film as a representation of everything that might result terrifying for men(morning after babies, drunken marriages, insane significant others, small gangsters who can kick their asses, Mike Tyson...) -one might even say the whole plot is a subconscious manifestation of the groom's fear of commitment- and wonder why the hell is this marketed as a comedy when it should be a horror movie.

He's Just Not That Into You **

Director: Ken Kwapis
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore
Jennifer Connelly, Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson
Ben Affleck, Kevin Connolly, Bradley Cooper, Justin Long

When a film based on a book, based on the plot of an episode in a television series is made, you would think that this postmodernist basis would also be said film's axis or at least help it.
This romantic comedy however chooses to take the cliché path and delivers an old fashioned, trite plot with very modern intentions.
Several storylines involving the main actresses are intertwined as they all deal with a specific man who just isn't into them.
For Beth (Aniston) it's her boyfriend of seven years (Affleck) who has no intention of marrying her. In Gigi's (Goodwin) case she's so disappointed with men that she starts taking advice from a misogynist (Long). Anna (Johansson) is set on conquering a married man (Cooper) who's having trouble of his own with his wife (Connelly).
Then there's Mary (Barrymore) who is having trouble adjusting to the need of keeping up with all the possible ways of meeting people nowadays and who receives her advice from the men she works with, all of whom are gay.
Their stories, announced by title cards with phrases that explain their problems, are preceded by documentary like interviews with people (mostly unknown actors) who give the "every(wo)man" point of view before we get to see the big stars put on the show.
And in fact when the cast is so good as the one featured here, there's at least the satisfaction of watching them mingle onscreen.
The rest of the time they just blabber and move towards emotional realizations we've seen coming for ages.
That's perhaps the film's biggest problem; anyone can argue that the "rom-com" has become perhaps the most predictable of the genres, which is why it's also a known, but rarely accepted, fact that people don't come to them for advice of any sort of wisdom.
We come to see these movies because we want to escape our own realities. So a film that takes the extra step and tries to deliver a little bit extra should not comply and follow traditional genre rules which is exactly what happens here.
Some scenes are uncomfortable to watch, not because they ring emotionally, but because they are so forced that you can't laugh, be inspired or even entertained by them.
The screenplay is loaded with so many lazy symbolisms (a marriage coming apart while their home is being remodeled...just imagine all those deconstruction analogies you can come up with) that you wonder how people fail to see that this "chick flick" actually has no idea how to treat women.
Men who think female audiences are driven to anything involving romance will be hugely disappointed to learn that, when it comes to love, in fact female and male processes of thinking and perceiving information couldn't be more apart if they tried.
This doesn't mean that one is better than the other, they're just different and the film works when it grasps on to that and spices it up with some irony and tongue in cheek humor (Barrymore's monologue about how she must use eight different technologies to know if the guy is interested is brilliant!), but then the director comes and reduces these women to stereotypes we've seen in a million different movies.
Stereotypes nobody in the audience is going to want to take advice from. That the film ends with a character emphasizing what is arguably the most popular word in the current English language (it rhymes with "mope") is more than enough to know that for all its intentions the director works like the boyfriend who ignores his girl throughout the game, but then gives her a present expecting she'll forgive and forget.