A Hollywood Fairy Tale

Tarantino's new film Once upon a Time... in Hollywood was, I assumed, a fun reference to Sergio Leone's Once upon a Time in the West and Once upon a Time in America. (In fact, the television actor Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Tarantino's movie does go to Italy to make pictures). But Tarantino's title does more than nod in the direction of Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western; Tarantino is also marking his film as a fairy tale, a kind of magical story or fable in a far-away place, one with heroes and villains and magical objects and a princess who needs saving.

I am going to have to spoil the film's ending as I write this response to Tarantino's movie, so be warned. It's almost impossible to talk about Once upon a Time... in Hollywood without talking about its third act, because so much of what happens in the third act justifies what Tarantino does for the first two-thirds of the movie.

Hollywood is three stories in one. It is the story of Rick Dalton, one of those actors in Hollywood who made movies in the 1950s and then destroyed their film careers by accidentally but permanently moving to television, where they could get parts more easily and money more quickly. It is the story of Rick Dalton's stuntman Cliff Booth, whose career is in the dumps, who doesn't get along with other stuntmen and so has become Rick's driver, handyman, and general factotum. And it is the story of Sharon Tate, who, unlike Dalton and Booth, is a real human being who lived in Hollywood in 1968 and 1969. She was a rising star and a talented comedienne, and she was married to Roman Polanski, the Polish film director who had only just made Rosemary's Baby in 1968.

Sharon Tate is a puzzling figure in Hollywood – mostly because she simply doesn't seem to fit in the movie. The movie is so obviously focused on Cliff and Rick, and when the film leaves the two men and follows Sharon for an afternoon as she picks up a hitchhiker and watches a movie downtown or when she goes to a party with Steve McQueen at the Playboy Mansion, Tarantino's film feels confused, even meandering. Why are we watching Sharon Tate? DiCaprio's character is so much more interesting! I will admit that these thoughts crossed my mind while I was watching – so I can imagine that for the three young men next to me at the theatre (young weightlifting-type guys), who told me after the movie was over that they hated it, these Sharon sequences must've been painful. But this movie makes no sense if you don't know who Sharon Tate is and you don't know she was murdered by members of Charles Manson's "family" fifty years ago in August of 1969. Anyone watching the movie without knowing about the Sharon Tate murders – and I wager this is quite a few people – isn't going to be able to make sense of what Tarantino is doing here; his film depends fundamentally on knowing the context.

Pitt is as cool and effortless as ever

I'll come back to Tate in a bit, but first let me just say that all of Tarantino's films are bathed in nostalgia, especially nostalgia for the movies, and Hollywood is no exception. This film – and I'm not a huge Tarantino fan, to be honest – felt aimed directly at me. So many delightful movie references: from the marquees of 1968 releases, to the Los Angeles scenery, to the extended sequence with Bruce Lee, to the constant mentions of Edward O'Brien, to the absurd re-shot sequence from The Great Escape. I was in movie-lover heaven. Tarantino's movie taste and my own don't usually sync up, and so his film references don't usually land for me, but it all worked for me this time. Hollywood is also really funny, and both Pitt and DiCaprio are doing great work as comedians in this. Even when DiCaprio is being his most emotionally vulnerable in Hollywood, he is still allowing us to laugh at him. The extended afternoon we spend with him as he films that television pilot with Timothy Olyphaunt has some great acting in it.

Which isn't to say that Hollywood isn't overly long. Tarantino doesn't make tight movies. He makes fat, slightly messy, mostly shallow movies with slick surfaces and cool simulacra. That's the brand, and the movies are always too long. Tarantino thinks too much of himself to trim with any real zeal. But again – and I don't feel this way about Hateful Eight or Django Unchained – I was never bored during Hollywood. And everything felt justified by the film's insane third act. I guess it's time to talk about that now...

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate

As we moved toward the night of the murders I started to get nervous. In the first place, this Kurt Russell narration took over again once we moved to Italy, and Russell's deadpan voice – especially as we got closer to the early morning of August 9th – reminded me that we were watching something that really happened. Tarantino gives us timestamps throughout. Sharon and her friends went to this Mexican restaurant; they came home and played the piano; they smoked marijuana; it was the hottest day of the year; one of Sharon's friends was watching television while the other went to bed. It's all so true and so it's a reminder that something terrible is about to happen. But the point is that he uses the generic conventions of documentary drama here to put us into a certain mode of watching.

And because of Tarantino's well-known infamy as a filmmaker who shoots violence savagely and coolly (there has been a great deal written about this), I started to get very worried. How would he film Sharon's murder, given how affectionate his film had been with her so far? But – and here's the surprise – Hollywood never switches fully into the genre. It never becomes one of those episodes of "The F.B.I." that Cliff and Rick watch. It stays... comedic. We are laughing, even as Rick yells at the Manson family's noisy car, as the driver speeds away after having "forgotten" her knife, even as they bust into the house and stand off with Cliff, who is on a mild acid trip. The fight with the Manson family is uproariously funny and is intended to be. The violence is brutal, absurdly, insanely brutal, and Tarantino takes pleasure in destroying and mutilating these horrible people, who (it is impossible to forget) actually murdered four people and Sharon's unborn baby, stabbing each person over a dozen times.

I have written before about the shift that I see in the violence in Tarantino's movies with Django Unchained, whereby I believe that QT has become much more ethical in his presentations of violence. As I have argued before, Tarantino is careful about which violence we can enjoy and which we cannot. He invites us to enjoy the violence in this sequence and in the sequence with the hippy out at the Spahn Ranch, but that doesn't mean that Once upon a Time... in Hollywood contains gratuitous violence. It doesn't. Tarantino could easily have shown us, just for example, Cliff (accidentally?) shooting his wife with the harpoon on the boat. He doesn't. He is being judicious about the violence we see. This isn't Pulp Fiction. In any case, watching these murderers get destroyed by Brad Pitt and his dog and then by Leonardo DiCaprio and his flame-thrower is endlessly delightful. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Sharon Tate with Bruce Lee and Nancy Kwan

It's an ending that in many ways replays what QT did with Inglourious Basterds, a bold lie told in the face of history, a fantasy of what might have happened. It's... a fairy tale, if you will. Sharon Tate gets to live in this story. And as I thought about that while the movie ended, and even now as I write these words, I am deeply moved. It's a beautiful, generous, impossible fantasy, but one absolutely filled with hope and respect. Sharon's voice over that intercom at the end of the movie, and Jay Sebring's hopeful treble as he asks Rick questions honestly felt like gifts from Tarantino to me. He has imagined a world in which Sharon didn't die and this washed up actor's career is resuscitated because he saves Sharon's life and is neighbors with Roman Polanski (maybe in this universe Rick plays the lead in Chinatown or one of the men in Tess).

And this magical, fairy tale ending makes clear what Tarantino was doing with Sharon Tate in the first two acts of the movie. We simply spend time with her, get to glimpse her brightness and her pleasure, her sheer joy at being in the movies, her pride at having done a good job, her grace and kindness with everyone around her, her excitement about her baby. None of this is dramatic. It's simply a reminder of how lovely she was (especially compared with the hard-drinking asshole that Rick is). This respect for Tate is underlined by Tarantino's use of actual footage of Sharon Tate from the Dean Martin film The Wrecking Crew. As Sharon watches the movie, we don't watch Margot Robbie as Tate: we watch Tate herself. It's a strange choice for Tarantino to have made, until it becomes clear that QT is paying tribute to Tate and her talents. The more I think about it, the more I think it's an extraordinary thing to do.

....And all this at the end of a hilarious, Coen Brothers influenced, Hollywood western.

In case you hadn't guessed it, I really liked Once upon a Time... in Hollywood. I know this movie isn't going to be for everyone, but I laughed for most of the film and was very moved by the movie's end.

* * *

Final side note. You probably knew that Tarantino has a thing for women's feet: they appear with frequency in his movies, and I've written about all of the feet in Pulp Fiction before. Well, Once upon a Time... in Hollywood is no exception. In fact, I think this obsession is even more apparent in this movie than it's ever been.

Even DiCaprio's feet make an appearance in this one. Equal opportunity.

The Bad Batch

The Bad Batch could have been a good 35-minute film. Instead it was a boring 118-minute film. This is a film-school wank of a movie that loves Tarantino but doesn't have the dialogue, wit, or irony that Tarantino has. (Could the poster be any more of a Tarantino tribute?) Ana Lily Amirpour uses all of the most recently typical cannibalism tropes, so this film is about capitalism and vegetarianism. Fine. The first twenty minutes of the world-building are great, but then the film starts to think it's really smart. Oh well. There is lots of funny stuff in The Bad Batch, but that good comedy is stuck inside a long, sententious movie about exploitation and true love or something. I was bored.

Point Blank

If you are interested in an absolutely perfect gangster picture from 1967, John Boorman's Point Blank is for you. This movie is tight, gripping, and haunting. It's filmed, in many ways, like a John Schlesinger film, and it seems to predict much of what he would do with Midnight Cowboy vis-à-vis flashback and slow motion. It's also a very obvious inspiration for Pulp Fiction, although Boorman is doing something other than Tarantino entirely. This is a real gangster picture that winds up being, fundamentally, about what it means to seek revenge, and what the ethics of killing are. The respect among the real guns is my favorite thing about this, but the ending is exquisite, and every bit of it is riveting.

Point Blank is also very violent and in surprising ways. At one point Lee Marvin actually throws a naked man off of a roof! This was, of course, while the PCA was still in power, and so this film must clearly be grouped with those films – The Killing, Bonnie and Clyde – that contributed to the end of the production code. For this we should all be grateful.

One of the coolest things this movie does is recreate the style of a film noir in color. In other words, it uses shadow and the kind of disappearing/reappearing tactics that the noir filmmakers used, even though this is a color film.

And keep a look out for the gay couple that helps Lee Marvin sneak into the apartment complex in act two.

But more than anything, Point Blank just needs to be watched as a brilliant piece of crime cinema. It's perfect.

Early Tarantino: '93 and '94

How long has it been since you watched yourself some early Tarantino?

I'm not a die-hard fan or anything, but I am currently writing a little something that involves Pulp Fiction, and while I have seen that film multiple times, I had never before seen two of Tarantino's early films, True Romance and Natural Born Killers, both of which he wrote (although QT told Rolling Stone back in 1994 that NBK had basically been rewritten by Oliver Stone, who directed). In any case, I watched both of these movies recently, and then I rewatched Pulp Fiction after reading an entire host of scholarly and critical readings of these films. I can't say that I totally enjoyed myself while doing this, but I offer some things I noticed while revisiting the early 1990s.

True Romance is a fun throwback to crime capers of old like Gun Crazy, except that this film was not made under the PCA. True Romance has a lot of great things about it, honestly, and I rather enjoyed myself.

Although everybody makes a big deal about Vincent Vega being in the bathroom for so many scenes in PF – Sharon Willis, for example, offers (and I don't totally disagree with her) that "the bathroom anchors a dense nexus that connects blood and violence to anal eroticism and smearing, that permits delicate intersections of aggressive soiling impulses with tense efforts to consolidate, to clean" – Tarantino uses exactly this same scenario in the final shootout in True Romance, in which Clarence White is in the bathroom talking to his mentor–Elvis when the Sicilians, the police, and the drug dealers all shoot each other. Indeed, Alabama kills James Gandolfini in the bathroom of the motel where they’re staying. The bathroom, to be sure, is not a standard location for crime films or for the well-made play (although there is at least one key scene in a bathroom in Point Blank), but the bathroom shows up rather a lot in Tarantino’s version of the gangster flick.

This film has just as much pop culture pastiche in it as the rest of them. The characters in TR cathect through pop culture. They fall in love by talking about movies, form relationships by discussing Elvis fandom (as Clarence does with a total stranger at one of the many burger joints he visits), and characters establish trust by trashing movies they both hate. The characters fall in love while talking about Sonny Chiba. They connect with one another not because they are particular people – we really know nothing about who Alabama is (except that she is from Tallahassee and is a call-girl) except that we know or think we know that she likes specific pop-culture products. In truth, I wouldn't even remember anymore which pop-culture products these characters liked unless I had made notes. I remember Sonny Chiba, of course, because he comes up again and again in QT's work, but the thing is that it doesn't much matter which objects these characters like; it's arbitrary.

* * *

Natural Born Killers is almost nothing like a Tarantino movie. It’s an enormous satire on television media. What is, perhaps, ironic about this is that, although this movie got pulverized for being some kind of indication of the way movies have just gone too far vis-à-vis violence, the film is, in fact, about television. It cites Married… with Children and those true crime shows explicitly.

This film is also vaguely Lynchian. It is like a fever dream half the time, and there is an entire subplot with Tom Sizemore that feels insane and as though Lynch himself might have directed it. (The function of this subplot is to establish that the cops are just as fucked up and perverse as the criminals, and it is worth noting that Tom Sizemore appears in both this movie and as a cop in True Romance.)

There is one similarity between NBK and PF – the phony backgrounds through which the cars drive. In both movies, it is obvious that the backgrounds are movie screens. This is, I would say, without thinking much about it, a kind of internal reference within the film, to the fact that the characters themselves understand themselves as stars of the films of their lives, to the way they make sense of their own worlds through movie-culture. These are characters who believe themselves to be characters.

Otherwise it is rather hard to believe that Tarantino even wrote this thing. It really has very few of his themes and (to my mind) showcases few of his obsessions. As much as NBK appears to be in on its own ironic jokes, I don't think it actually is. The irony all feels pretty forced here. It's as though someone who takes himself very seriously (Oliver Stone) is trying to loosen up a little.

I mostly hated this.

Oooo. But I liked Tommy Lee Jones. He was over-the-top and very funny.

* * *

I've seen PF a bunch of times, and I am actually writing about it for something that I want published, so I won't say too much here, but, two things:

Some critics have said that Vincent is really killed because he doesn't wash his hands. (We know he doesn't wash his hands because we "watc[h] [him] wash them" at Jimmie's house and he still turns the towel into a bloody mess.) If he had just washed his hands after using the bathroom at Butch's place, he would've given Butch time to get away, and the toaster pastries would have popped up earlier and wouldn't have surprised Butch. But as much as I agree that Vincent really should wash his hands, I think way too much has been made about Vincent in the bathroom. As I said above, the bathroom appears a lot in QT movies: Jules uses the bathroom as soon as they get to the bar in the prologue (which allows for Butch and Vincent to be alone together, and for Vincent to insult Butch by calling him Palooka) and Fabienne and Butch have an entire conversation in the bathroom – him in the shower, Fabienne brushing her teeth. And she brushes her teeth (and spits in the bathroom) again in the morning. Honey Bunny, too, announces that she needs to pee. None of these bathroom uses has to do with Vincent and his death. The bathroom is just a place that QT finds interesting for gangsters. Even professional criminals have to poop, it turns out. (If you want to think about how revolutionary this is, by the way, take a minute and imagine your favorite movie gangster pooping: James Cagney? Edward G. Robinson? Alain Delon? Jean-Paul Belmondo? Marcello Mastroianni? I'm having a hard time doing it.)

QT uses his someone-in-the-bathroom-while-a-shootout-is-happening thing twice in PF. It happens in True Romance, it happens at the house where Jules and Vincent kill the three boys, and then it happens again when Honey Bunny and Pumpkin hold up the Denny's or Spires or whatever it is.

"Let's go."

The women-with-bare-feet thing has not been given enough attention. Do you know about this? Mia wears no shoes for a majority of her scenes in the film, including during the dance. And the camera lingers directly on her feet before they go to Jackrabbit Slim’s while they're still at the apartment. But also there's this painting on the wall that QT commissioned especially for the movie with Uma Thurman as Mia on a sofa with her bare feet prominently displayed. And QT did interviews where he talked about her sexy feet. (Indeed, her feet are on display again in Kill Bill.) I've read about this in various places, but it isn't only Uma's feet that the camera loves in Pulp Fiction. Esmeralda Villalobos drives the cab with bare feet, and Fabienne is in bare feet for basically the whole film even though they are in a rather seedy-looking motel. So: I know that it is standard in film theory to spend all of our time talking about phalluses and castration, and that's all good and well. And it's also true that some other critics have tried to invert this by focusing on the film's economy of anality – Captain Koons hiding the watch up his ass, the rape in the pawn shop, Vincent taking a shit (twice), Jules's talk about Brett trying to "fuck" Marsellus – this is where all the bathroom talk starts actually to look quite important. But it seems to me that the film is much more interested in women's feet than either phalluses or anuses. (And yes I do know that a fetish is supposed to be a substitute for the phallus in Freudian thinking. I'm just noting that it's the fetish that has currency here and not the phallus itself.) Film theorists haven't spent a lot of time thinking about how a katana or a Louisville Slugger or a shotgun might signify a woman's foot – they're too busy seeing phalluses everywhere they look – but perhaps it's high time we started.

For me, Pulp Fiction mostly holds up – it's been 22 years since it came out! I still like the "Gold Watch" section the best, and the stuff with Samuel L. Jackson continues to be a highlight. But I also continue to be bored by the Mia Wallace section. I find that whole section so phony. Not that any of the dialogue seems natural because it doesn't, but the Mia Wallace section seems especially writerly or contrived or arch to me. I find that entire sequence to be bloated.

Related:
On The Hateful Eight.
On Django Unchained.

Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 3 of 11

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11.

Room

4 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Lenny Abrahamson
• Actress: Brie Larson
• Adapted Screenplay: Emma Donoghue

Director: Abrahamson

Cast: Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Tom McCamus, Sean Bridgers, Wendy Crewson, William H. Macy

I was telling two colleagues about this movie last night and they both started to get tears in their eyes and said that they didn't know if they'd be able to handle it. I liked Room and it's well made. The way the film works, however, is (especially considering its subject matter) a kind of sentimental business, and so I think I liked it less than I might have had the director taken a more hard-hitting approach. Because the film is partially about seeing the world for the first time and the sort of wonders that the material world holds, Room also works in a through-the-eyes-of-a-child Steven-Spielberg kind of way. This perspective is something the Academy (and most everyone, actually) really loves. The world is magical and beautiful, even though sometimes really horrific things happen. This is not my view of the world, and I guess this is what I mean by sentimental vs. hard-hitting. In any case, the acting in Room is superb. Larson (who had her breakout three years ago with a film called Short Term 12), Tremblay, and Allen are aces, and the film is very moving.

Will Win: Actress

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #29 out of 62

The Danish Girl

4 Nominations

• Actor: Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)
• Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander
• Production Design: Eve Stewart (Les Misérables, The King's Speech, Topsy-Turvy) & Michael Standish
• Costume Design: Paco Delgado (Les Misérables)

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Redmayne, Vikander, Matthias Schoenaerts, Amber Heard, Ben Whishaw, Sebastian Koch

I surprised myself by really liking The Danish Girl. I think mostly because as much as the film is about gender, it is about confusion and mystery surrounding gender. The acting in this film, too, is quite excellent, and I (who was very skeptical of his showy performance in the tepid Theory of Everything) thought Eddie Redmayne was just wonderful in The Danish Girl. The film still has many problems – it is too long, too weepy, the cinematography almost never makes any sense, and the film (rather conspicuously) seems to ignore sex – but the acting is great, Alicia Vikander is lovable in the extreme, the costumes are exquisite, and the score is lovely. Vikander's nomination in the supporting category is a total fraud – she might even have more screentime than Redmayne, and you come away from the film almost feeling like she might be the eponymous Danish girl – but I'd say that that makes her win more likely, not less. This is especially true because she was memorably stunning in another of this year's nominated movies: Ex Machina.

Will Win: Supporting Actress

Could Win: Production Design, Costume Design
My Rating: #28 out of 62

Brooklyn

3 Nominations

• Picture
• Actress: Saoirse Ronan (Atonement)
• Adapted Screenplay: Nick Hornby (An Education)

Director: John Crowley

Cast: Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Emma Lowe, Maeve McGrath, Fiona Glascott, Eileen O'Higgins, Emily Bett Rickards, Eve Macklin, Nora-Jane Noone, Samantha Munro, Jessica Paré, Emma Lowe

This is a beautiful film. When I recommend it to anyone, I keep reminding people that it is a small film. This is a romantic drama, a story of immigration and coming of age, and it isn't a deep film about the soul or about politics or about world affairs. That is to say, Brooklyn is not at all self important. It knows what it is and simply goes about being itself. Because of this, I fell in love with Brooklyn and fell deeply in love with its characters and their performers. Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, and Domhnall Gleeson are so wonderful in this film, and they are a joy to watch. This kind of simple, beautiful character portrayal doesn't often get as much awards press as this film is getting, and I find Brooklyn to be a delightful anomaly. Julie Walters, I should add, is completely charming. Prepare to fall in love. Side note on Domhnall Gleeson: Is he having the best 2015 of anyone? My friend Tom mentioned this to me a day or two ago and I feel like he is exactly correct. With plum roles in Brooklyn, Ex Machina, The Force Awakens, and what I suspect will be eventual Best-Picture-winner The Revenant, Bill Weasley has surely arrived in Hollywood as a dependable and excellent character actor.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Actress, Adapted Screenplay

My Rating: #21 out of 62

The Hateful Eight

3 Nominations

• Supporting Actress: Jennifer Jason Leigh
• Cinematography: Robert Richardson (Django Unchained, Hugo, Inglorious Basterds, The Aviator, Snow Falling on Cedars, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon)
• Original Score: Ennio Morricone (Malèna, Bugsy, The Untouchables, The Mission, Days of Heaven)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Channing Tatum, Dana Gourrier

Ennio Morricone has never won an Oscar, and I say that it is time. So does Harvey Weinstein – in fact, he was saying that back when Morricone was nominated for Malèna fifteen years ago. But let's talk about Tarantino's movie. It is a very Tarantino movie, perhaps the most Tarantino of all Tarantino movies, in the sense that it is distilled. Nine people stuck in a cabin  threatening one another and eventually killing each other. The Hateful Eight is, of course, too long – all of his movies are too long – and this is because The Hateful Eight is also in love with its own cleverness. In truth, all of this is sort of fine. I rather enjoyed the movie. I like all the actors and I had a fairly good time. (Walton Goggins, by the way, is the standout performer here.) But one does have the feeling that Tarantino sort of missed a couple of boats with this movie. At one point, Hateful Eight feels like it might become a mystery film, akin to And Then There Were None, but Tarantino consistently abandons generic conventions, opting instead for his own generic brand. But what is that? What is the Tarantino genre? I know what the style looks like – bloody, pitiless, comic, witty, clever – but what kinds of stories are these? I guess they're Westerns; The Hateful Eight is obviously set in the "west". But I can't help feeling that if Tarantino had been clearer himself about the conventions of the story he was telling, the film would've been better. A last note on black actors and #oscarssowhite: how come no one has brought up Samuel L. Jackson's name as one of the black actors that got snubbed by the Academy? He is the star of this film, but literally no one has mentioned him in this context as far as I can tell. Isn't that a little odd?

Will Win: Original Score

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #26 out of 62

Tonto & the Ranger

Julie and I, as a part of a long tradition, get drunk and watch The Lone Ranger.

* * * * *

 

Julie: I'm ready.
Aaron: Give me ten minutes.
Julie: Sure, but I hope you know this mess is two and a half hours long.
Aaron: I do. Such plaintive music! I think these are visual effects.
Julie: Haha. You may be right. Also we have not discussed the most important thing: What are you drinking?
Aaron: Merlot!
Julie: That seems a little classy for Tonto.
Aaron: Merlot isn't so classy, is it?
Julie: There he is! In the museum!
Aaron: "THE NOBLE SAVAGE". We are starting with that racism?
Julie: Well, Tonto is inherently a racist character.
Aaron: Oh this is good makeup!
Julie: Is he eating animal crackers?
Aaron: This is a weird way to begin an action movie. Where is the action? I think they're peanuts.
Julie: Here we go! The non-use of articles is one of the most racist things about this character. Apparently that is a Tonto tradition.
Aaron: Oh great.
Julie: Also, he has always been played by a white guy, so. There's that.
Aaron: But Johnny Depp isn't quite white, right?
Julie: That's the best part! Johnny thinks he might be Cherokee. But according to ancestry.com... He's African American.
Aaron: No you did not bust out ancestry.com.
Julie: Hahahahaha.
Aaron: No way. Really??? That is amazing.
Julie: Right? I mean, we can't trust that site. But: hilarious.
Aaron: Well, this is a Hollywood tradition, right? Non-white people or ethnically ambiguous actors are constantly being paid to play non-white characters.

Aaron: Is that... Tom What's-his-name?
Julie: Um?
Aaron: Hey, it's Pensatucky! I am watching this movie only for the cameos.
Julie: Wait, really? Is that her?
Aaron: Yeah. The woman behind Helena Bonham Carter.
Julie: Oh, I was distracted by HBC's whorish red red red lips and costume
Aaron: I approve of whorish red lips. Do you like Armie Hammer?
Julie: I forgot the Winklevoss was in this. No he's just a pretty face. Perhaps he will be interesting in this one! Or.. perhaps not.
Aaron: I think more than his face is pretty.

Julie: Well, that guy's face sure isn't pretty. Wait, is that the mom from Saving Mr. Banks?!
Aaron: It's her right? Oh maybe it is. I thought it was Pensatucky.
Julie: Ruth Wilson. She's not been in anything else of note.
Aaron: Oh. Hm. Well good for her. 2013 was a big year I guess.
Julie: This poor girl will always be in period dress with a bad accent.
Aaron: Let's hope not, poor thing.
Julie: And that would be Tom Wilkinson. FYI.
Aaron: Tom Whatshisname, Tom Wilkinson. Tomato, Tomahto.
Julie: That dude has a gnarly beard.
Aaron: Who directed this mess? Michael Bay? Gore Verbinski? Is it "Tanto" or "Tonto"?
Julie: Tonto.
Aaron: In Spanish, tonto means foolish.
Julie: I know. When Spain dubbed the original Lone Ranger, they changed his name to Toro. Look at me, I'm a fountain of useless knowledge.
Aaron: I appreciate it. I don't know thing one about this film except what nominations it got. Hahaha. That was funny. PG-13, of course. So the violence will all be fake and only for laughs.

Julie: Well, I guarantee you none of these actors knows as much about Tonto as I just told you. When did Johnny Depp go so wrong? Was it the fourth of fifth Pirates? He is a mess.
Aaron: Long before that.
Julie: He did things before Disney? It's been so long.
Aaron: Well, I was thinking of the second Pirates.
Julie: Oh, yes. That is correct.
Aaron: That second Pirates movie is the worst thing.
Julie: By the way, I already have no idea what is happening.
Aaron: Armie is some kind of district attorney? Something about railroad men? I am glad some action is happening, at least.
Julie: But how did they get together? Did I miss that?
Aaron: Yeah. Armie came in just in time to save Johnny from the criminal guy who just got rescued. But then Armie refused to kill that guy (you know, like you do) and then they both got locked up/captured by those outlaws. What's there to know? Stop the train. Fight the bad guys.
Julie: And why was Johnny locked up again? Because everyone is racist against Injuns? I need some motivation here, Aaron. Help me out.
Aaron: That was not explained as far as I can tell.
Julie: Oh, ok. Then we'll stick with the obvious, if silent, racism.
Aaron: Why is there a bird on his head?
Julie: Because he's an Indian! And that's what they do! What is this music? Who wrote this?
Aaron: Shall we try to guess?
Julie: Hans! The Zimmer Man! (Sorry, I had already looked it up.)
Aaron: Haha. But I love Hans Zimmer. All those drums. By the way, they asked Johnny why he was locked up and he answered "Indian", so your theory was correct.
Julie: Yes! Racism is always the answer. Sondheim should've scored this.
Aaron: Hahaha. Poor Steve. You're terrible.
Julie: Wait, what!? Don't pretend like you don't agree with me.
Aaron: Hahaha. You know I agree.
Julie: Just because he's old doesn't mean he's off the hook.
Aaron: But he's so old and white and closety.
Julie: He's not closely! He has a 25 year old boyfriend or something Doesn't he?
Aaron: He does? Good for him.
Julie: Closely? Am I that drunk? I meant closety.
Aaron: You can't be drunk yet! We have like two hours left in this drama.
Julie: I'm almost done with my first beer. And half the Cheez-its. I eat my feelings! The Racism is making me upset.
Aaron: Step away from the Cheez-It.
Julie: I can't. They're so cheesy.

Aaron: I think this movie used to be called Rango and starred a lizard. Now he's a Texas Ranger?
Julie: Well, it is Gore Verbinski!
Aaron: Is it? I was thinking it was Michael Bay.
Julie: I want a spirit horse!
Aaron: I do too!
Julie: How does one get one of those, do you think?
Aaron: Wasn't there a movie called Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron where Matt Damon was a horse? I think for it to be your spirit horse you have to break it yourself or something.
Julie: Oh my gosh, there sure was. I want a Matt Damon Horse. Yes, but where are all the visual effects?
Aaron: There are, so far, a bunch of really cool shots.

L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de La Ciotat

Julie: Yes, but where are all the visual effects?
Aaron: A train came right at us!
Julie: Um. Wasn't that the first film ever made? Haven't we made any improvements in a century?
Aaron: Did you see Elysium? I think it was robbed in the VFX department. You are so right about that train and the first film.
Julie: Elysium was boring as hell and the effects were no bueno.
Aaron: Trains always make me think of Freud and trauma, too.
Julie: Freud has a thing with trains? It is your time to shine dramaturgically and tell me what that means.
Aaron: Honestly, I am the worst Freudian. I have forgotten all of that. But Freud's first explanations of post-traumatic symptoms are related to having experienced a train crash.
Julie: The Lumière Brothers. They did the train first, and it was better.
Aaron: Perhaps the Academy was feeling nostalgic? (Like in the 2011 season?)

Julie: Ewwww. Is he taking his heart?
Aaron: I don't know, but this is way too much for a PG13 movie.
Julie: Ewwww. Did I need to see him vomit?! PG13 my ass. This shit nasty.
Aaron: I think he ate something. Like his kidney or something.
Julie: I feel that is racist in some way. I don't know how. But it is.
Aaron: Haha! It is, of course. The true lawmen are behaving properly. But the evil guys are "savages" right?
Julie: Ok, this narrative frame is total cribbing of Princess Bride.
Aaron: This narrative frame is asinine.
Julie: This is stupid. Is it supposed to teach me something? Also, is that Johnny Depp?
Aaron: Best Makeup. Yes.
Julie: Nice. But is it as good as Bad Grandpa? That is the question.
Aaron: No way. Absolutely not.
Julie: What is the other nominee? I forget.
Aaron: The winner: Dallas Buyers Club.

Spirit Horse!

Julie: Aw shit. I hope not. (Side note: I finished my beer and am drinking water until you catch up.)
Aaron: Catch up to what? I've had a quarter of a bottle of Merlot. And of course Dallas Buyers Club is gonna win.
Julie: Haha. You've got nearly 2 hours to polish that off. Spirit Horse! Do you think they painted the horse? I feel like he must be in white-face.
Aaron: HAHA. It is a really white horse.
Julie: He must be an albino.
Aaron: All of this exposition. It is so unnecessary.
Julie: Ew that horse crap was unnecessary.
Aaron: This is Verbinski's main problem. It's for teenage boys. So we have shit jokes. And racism. Teenagers love that shit.
Julie: I just looked him up and didn't realize Gore was so young! I feel like he's 65 but he isn't.
Aaron: He and Brett Ratner are about the same age, right? They've always seemed really similar to me.
Julie: Brett's four years younger, so basically.

Julie: Bunnies!
Aaron: Back to the narrative frame. Oh. No. It's just bad effects.
Julie: Oh my goodness, do you remember that oscar short that was all bunnies a few years back? It was so good. Sorry, I'm distracted by the bunnies.
Aaron: No. Bunnies?
Julie: Rabbit a la Berlin. So good!
Aaron: OK. I will watch it later. Or perhaps during this film.
Julie: I recommend the latter.

Julie: Did he just say his bird hat was angry?
Aaron: "Bird. Angry."
Julie: Angry Birds?
Aaron: Disney's product placement. So. Much. Exposition.
Julie: Really? I guess I'm just not listening to any of it.
Aaron: I know, but that's the point: why is there so much exposition? The film could be so much better if there were some guns or some explosions or something.
Julie: He needs to stop saying Kemosabe.
Aaron: Or an evil animated rattlesnake.
Julie: Well, we still have an hour and a half. It could happen.
Aaron: Also, let me just say that I wish this were a little more homoerotic.
Julie: Again, we have an hour and a half. 

Julie: I feel like Baz Luhrmann wants to be in this scene.
Aaron: I was just going to say that. Party sequences filmed by Baz.
Julie: He should totally do that! Just film everyone else's party scenes and leave the rest of the movie to the professionals. Is this like Batman? No one can recognize him because his eyes are covered in a black mask? Oh my god, her shoes. They just shot the table!
Aaron: Such a Tarantino rip-off.
Julie: Oh yeah? Huh.
Aaron: The guy who ate the heart is an evil spirit actually.. A windigo or wendigo or something. He eats human flesh.
Julie: He's just like Charlize Theron. I wish this were campier, like that movie.
Aaron: This movie has racist portrayals of black people, too.
Julie: Wendigo! Wait, there are black people?
Aaron: The bouncer.

Julie: The horse is as drunk as I am!
Aaron: Haha. I need more Merlot.
Julie: I need more Harp.
Aaron: The horse is supposed to be a spirit animal. And it gets wasted? Why does he keep saying kemosabe? Did you look that up too? What does it mean?
Julie: Ke-mo sah-bee (often spelled kemo sabe or kemosabe) is the term of endearment and catchphrase used by the intrepid and ever-faithful fictional Native American sidekick Tonto. Tonto originated that word! Who knew!
Aaron: Apparently white people in Texas were just as racist back then as they are now.
Julie: Ultimately derived from giimoozaabi, an Ojibwe and Potawatomi word that probably meant "scout", it is sometimes translated as "trusty scout" or "faithful friend". Its use has become so widespread that it was entered into Webster's New Millennium Dictionary in 2002.
Aaron: You are a font of knowledge.
Julie: I am good at Wikipedia.
Aaron: It's a good thing to be good at.
Julie: I wish this was a horror movie. I mean, dude is eating hearts! Why isn't there a Tonto horror movie like that? (Racism.) OH MY GOD. Is he in blackface?! AND A DRESS?
Aaron: He is. "This ain't what it looks like mister. I just like them pretty things." Well it looks like blackface drag. Is that what it is?

Julie: HAHAHA. Johnny should get the Razzie for this. It is terrible.
Aaron: So what keeps happening is that the film continues to point out that white people are, like, really racist and awful and xenophobic. While the film itself also manages to be really racist and awful with every single one of its portrayals.
Julie: Well, Disney isn't exactly known for being PC. Song of the South and all. They are kind of clueless, even when well-intentioned.
Aaron: Effects! Flying horse.
Julie: I missed the effects! because I was thinking of zip-a-dee-doo-dah! Dammit.
Aaron: I am willing to wager that your memory of Zip-a-dee-doo-dah was better than the effects. Ugh. More cartoony PG13 violence.

Julie: HAHA. Probably true. The redface is making my night. This movie is out of control with the racist makeup.
Aaron: For which it received an Oscar nomination. Actually, I am pretty sure the makeup nomination is for the old-age makeup in the frame.
Julie: He just explained Kemosabe! We were supposed to wait for it.
Aaron: So he did.
Julie: But that took an awfully long time.
Aaron: I am glad you looked it up. What did he actually say?
Julie: Oh, I don't know. I'm drunk.
Aaron: "Young brother"?
Julie: That sounds right.
Aaron: The guy who dresses in drag is named Butch. [I got this wrong, actually, but who can blame me?]
Julie: I love that he's still wearing that bonnet.
Aaron: And the wendigo just told him to "tell him straight"!
Julie: Hahaha

Julie: You can't shoot Mrs. Banks!
Aaron: I think we've all seen enough of these movies to know he doesn't shoot her. Why even bother setting it up?
Julie: But that face plant was awesome.
Aaron: I mean, it's all so predictable! Oh no, I missed it!
Julie: Mrs. Banks falls well. Hey, Black Beauty showed up! OH NO!
Aaron: OMG.
Julie: Animal cruelty. I am calling PETA.
Aaron: "Horse. Dead." Jesus.
Julie: Who's spirit animal was that? What a shame.
Aaron: He only uses nouns.
Julie: He just used a verb.
Aaron: This music was composed by Hans Zimmer?
Julie: Yessir. He just called himself a savage. Was he being ironic?
Aaron: Ironically.
Julie: Is he a hipster Injun?
Aaron: He's Johnny Depp. He invented hipster culture.
Julie: So true.

Julie: Nice scream, Armie. LOL!
Aaron: He is hot.
Julie: I am just not into him.
Aaron: I'll say this for Armie: he knows what kind of movie he's in. Orlando Bloom never did.
Julie: Truth.
Aaron: Barry Pepper! Told you  I was in this for the cameos.
Julie: But there aren't that many! There should be more.
Aaron: There should.
Julie: Also, Armie's mask is throwing me off. It's like he's going to the masquerade in the Phantom. He's in the sweat lodge! I hope they start singing "Colors of the Wind".
Aaron: That is not a sweat lodge. That is just a regular old teepee.
Julie: Whatever. They can still sing.
Aaron: This is so racist. Oh Jesus.
Julie: See! They're laughing at his mask too!
Aaron: "Many moons ago"? Really?
Julie: Exposition. 
Aaron: By which you mean more exposition.
Julie: But this is the first time I'm listening. Kind of.
Aaron: See, this is the thing that pisses me off. They act like evil white people killed the native peoples of the Americas. Such bullshit. The people who killed the natives were regular middle-class assholes. Not special hateful ones. Just normal ones.
Julie: The stories we tell ourselves...
Aaron: Right. "We are already ghosts". Wow. That was a good line. I'm actually emotional about that one.
Julie: I am emotional about the fact that that Native American actor is in this piece-of-shit movie.

Aaron: Where is the magic horse, Júlia?
Julie: I don't know, but I need some magic.
Aaron: Me too. Visual effects!
Julie: YAY! Horsey's back! Oh my god, he's so cute. And he just ate the scorpions.
Aaron: He is cute!
Julie: Um, no. Armie cannot pull himself out of sand with his teeth. Ridic. I have to (tee)pee. Be right back.
Aaron: If there is going to be a silver mine, there will probably be Chinese immigrants, too. Yep. Here they are.
Julie: Naturally.
Aaron: What we just saw was preposterous. A cave that has been dug by miners or railroad men cannot have Indian cave paintings on it. It has just been dug.
Julie: Aaron, you are being logical. But this movie is not. You have to accept its fictions!
Aaron: Finally an explosion. I've been waiting.

Julie: Fun music, Hans! Is he gay or straight (in real life)?
Aaron: Hans Zimmer?
Julie: HAHAHA. Well, yes, I'd like to know that too. But I was talking about Armie.
Aaron: Armie Hammer, as far as I know, is quite straight. [So is Hans Zimmer, as it turns out.]
Julie: Hmm.
Aaron: Long term girlfriend, I think.
Julie: I kind of want to watch Pirates now. Johnny is way more fun in that.
Aaron: He is really good in that.

Julie: Is she about to get acupuncture?
Aaron: Chinese woman? Keeper of oriental mysteries. This film.
Julie: Haha. truth. Is that Barry?
Aaron: It is.
Julie: Wow, we haven't seen him in anything in a long time.
Aaron: This man is obsessed with the railroads. But in 21st-century film that signals über-capitalist obsession. Which signals: bad. So Tom Wilkinson will turn out to be a villain of some sort. Just wait.
Julie: Well, clearly. I already thought he was one.
Aaron: Barry Pepper knows what kind of movie he's in, as well.
Julie: She certainly doesn't.
Aaron: What is happening? Whoa. This just got crazy.
Julie: Tom was praying.
Aaron: Is this Fiddler on the Roof? I thought they were going to sing "Sabbath Prayer"
Julie: Tom's beard is really bad. It is too bushy and not the right color.
Aaron: Is his beard fake?
Julie: Um, clearly
Aaron: I think that beard is real.
Julie: Really? How can we find out?
Julie: "Stupid white man." Yup.
Aaron: Yup. Eating Caesar salad.
Julie: Hahaha. I love a good Caesar salad.
Aaron: Julie, I am obsessed with Caesar salads. I make them at home now.
Julie: Really? One can be obsessed with Caesar salads?
Aaron: I crave them, honestly. I know. It's crazy.
Julie: But they are like so unhealthy for you. I remain unimpressed by these train visuals.
Aaron: As do I. What's wrong with a sensible Caesar salad?
Julie: Wait, I thought that kid was Armie's? Who is his dad?
Aaron: Maybe it is. I don't know, actually. How old is he?
Julie: No, he was whining about his dad maybe being dead. So it can't be Armie.
Aaron: The boy, I mean.
Julie: 10?
Aaron: Well, Armie says that the girl and he stopped talking 8 years ago. So... maybe.
Julie: Mmmmk.

Aaron: In these kinds of movies, why don't people who want each other dead simply kill one another?
Instead, they defer it.
Julie: Because then the movie would be 10 minutes long.
Aaron: The death, I mean. What would Derrida say?
Julie: WWDS?

Arrow-scene from Zhang Yimou's Hero.

Aaron: The Chinese workers are actually wearing the hats they wear on the rice paddies. Like, seriously? For digging tunnels? Seems impractical. And fucking racist.
Julie: YESSSSS SO MUCH RACISM. Hard to believe we still have 40 min to go.
Aaron: Oh for Heaven's sake. We do? What else could possibly occur?
Julie: Exposition.
Aaron: Hahahaha. True.
Julie: The Indians are coming!
Aaron: This scene brought to you by Zhang Yimou.
Julie: :D
Aaron: At least Verbinski watches other people's movies. OMG! Kurosawa shot. That is the famous Seven Samurai shot.
Julie: I love Hans just rocking out in the background. He knows how to get the job done.
Aaron: This is horrible.
Julie: And by horrible you mean amazing. Explosion!
Aaron: That was cool. By horrible I just mean how the slaughtering of thousands of native people is just one more fun adventure sequence.
Julie: Barry killed the old Indian!!!!!! I hate Barry. He really is a ghost now.
Aaron: JULIE!
Julie: What?
Aaron: Does Johnny's whiteface wash off in the river? Apparently not.
Julie: Where is the horse? That's all I'm worried about. He is the best actor in this thing.
Aaron: Seriously. The film keeps forgetting about the horse.
Julie: I don't understand how you can forget about a spirit animal like that.
Aaron: Me either.OK but seriously where is the horse?
Julie: Yay! We just saw him!
Aaron: Oh there he is.
Julie: :)

Aaron: Wait, this is somehow about the transcontinental railroad?
Julie: I don't care about the railroad. And I don't think this film does either.
Aaron: Cameo! It's the guy who plays that guy who loves staplers in Office Space. No. You are wrong. This film is obsessed with calling the railroad evil. This film is anti-technology.
Julie: But that is so weird.
Aaron: Stephen Root? I think I thought of his name.
Julie: Who? I don't know who that is.
Aaron: The guy Tom Wilkinson is talking to.
Julie: He's talking to a lot of guys.
Aaron: This scene stolen from The Godfather.
Julie: HAHAHA. Yes. The Lone Ranger, The Godfather. Basically the same.
Aaron: "Hurry up wid dem grapes". What?
Julie: Is the black guy Jamaican? What the hell is happening?
Aaron: "The National Anthem".
Julie: Johnny is not anti-technology, though. There goes that train.
Aaron: Is he stealing all that silver? Is that what's happening?
Julie: I'm not sure. But the horse is back, so I'm happy.
Aaron: This is the William Tell Overture.
Julie: Sure is.
Aaron: Is that a Lone Ranger thing?
Julie: Yes.
Aaron: I love the William Tell Overture. These are visual effects. YES.

Aaron: Terrible. This movie is terrible. Did it do well at the box office?
Julie: You were just excited about it! No, I'm pretty sure it did badly.
Aaron: He hit the girl in the head with a piece of coal And she fell like a cartoon and then got back up.
Julie: Reference: "Johnny Depp Blames Critics for Lone Ranger Bombing at the Box Office".

Aaron: Zimmer is having a good time.
Julie: Well somebody should be.
Aaron: There are two railroad tracks that run parallel to one another. In what world?
Julie: Hahahahaha In Gore's world.
Aaron: Hahaha. That grape slingshot thing was a good joke This movie's second good joke. I've forgotten the first.
Julie: I missed both of them.
Aaron: Never bring a knife to a gunfight. Or an unloaded gun to a knife-fight.
Julie: That was the first joke?
Aaron: No. That was just good advice.
Julie: Ah. I'll keep that in mind. I am waiting for them to make this into a ride at Disney World. That would be fun.
Aaron: Depp blamed the critics for this film's bad performance?
Julie: Apparently. Isn't that hysterical? It couldn't possibly be his terrible performance.
Aaron: Perhaps he ought to have blamed a) his lack of a desire to get in shape for the film and b) his continual need to work with Verbinski. But, like, the critics were right. I love Hans Zimmer right now, though. He just hasn't stopped!
Julie: Yes, he's making this part tolerable.
Aaron: He truly is.
Julie: He just threw Armie a bullet. And he caught it. From a moving train. This movie.
Aaron: Like. James. Bond.
Julie: Just. Like.
Aaron: You cannot shoot a car off a moving train. I am sorry.
Julie: In Gore's world, anything is possible. What is with this time piece?
Aaron: I don't know. The future? The past? No idea. Another watch.
Julie: Hmm. Another of Gore's enigmas.
Aaron: Remember when Rango won Best Animated Feature?
Julie: Unfortunately.
Aaron: Dayne and I always talk about how awful it is. He says thank you for the Her score link, by the way.
Julie: You're welcome? I'm mad at those Her people. That is ridiculous. [We are talking about the fact that the score for Her hasn't been released on iTunes or CD.]
Aaron: It is! That score is gorgeous!
Julie: And it's the only one that would actually make money and they just failed to make it. Like, seriously? Wait, is it over? The bunny just ate the scorpion! What does that mean?
Aaron: Huh? Back to the frame?
Julie: You missed it.
Aaron: No, I saw it. I've onloy had one bottle of Merlot.
Julie: Onloy?
Aaron: OK.

Mr. Fichtner.

Julie: Never take off the mask. Oh. It's over.
Aaron: There will be a button, surely.
Julie: You and your buttons. I always just turn shit off.
Aaron: And now the credits. Which clearly arrive with shame. Who would take credit for this?
Julie: Johnny was a producer. Hans!
Aaron: Well usually I just fastforward until the end of the credits to make sure there isn't a button. I like this tupeface. Typeface.
Julie: Tupeface? Hehehehe.
Aaron: It might be my favorite part of the movie. William Fichtner? That was Willliam Fichtner? James Frain was in this? Who was he?
Julie: I don't know; they all had beards.
Aaron: Remember when he used to get work regularly? I miss him.
Julie: That button sucked.
Aaron: Seriously, though, this movie was already made. And it was called Rango. And it was about greedy railroad barons. And it was just as Manichaeistic as this one.
Julie: Well, as Tina and Amy say, if something goes kind of well, Hollywood will just keep doing it until everyone hates it. I really don't think I even watched Rango all the way through. I am over putting myself through this shit.
Aaron: Haha. This score is great. The winner for the evening is Hans Zimmer.
Julie: Sorry, Hans, but I've gotta go with the horse. I mean, he at the scorpions and was generally delightful.
Aaron: Oh. You might be right. I change my vote. Horse and then Hans.
Julie: Wait, did the horse even have a name?
Aaron: Silver! "Hi yo, Silver!"
Julie: Oh. HAHAHAHA.
Aaron: Julie. Come on. I thought you researched this shit.
Julie: He didn't say it until the end! And then I was just like, oh! Yeah! That phrase! haha.
Aaron: Yeah, but, like. It's famous.
Julie: Shut it.
Aaron: No, they had a whole convo about naming the old mare.
Julie: At least I knew the William Tell Overture was from The Lone Ranger.
Aaron: True. I knew enough to ask...?
Julie: They had convos about a lot of things that were unimportant, Aaron. How was I supposed to know when to pay attention?
Aaron: Can I ask a question about the botton? Button. Jesus. Merlot.
Julie: HAHAHA Sure.
Aaron: Where is Tonto going?
Julie: I have no idea. He got all dressed up and everything. No clue.
Aaron: He is wearing a suit.
Julie: He must be looking for Silver.
Aaron: I'm looking for another glass of wine.
Julie: Hahaha. How many have you had? I only had two beers. And I am ready to pass out.
Aaron: Let's close out the Lone Ranger. Does it win anything?
Julie: No.
Aaron: Anbolutely not.
Julie: Yeah, I mean, that old Indian makeup was good, but that's not enough to win. And visual FX were not even on par with the other noms.
Aaron: Totally agree.
Julie: Sorry, Johnny.
Aaron: Also, no one is going to see this except us.
Julie: So sad. So true.
Aaron: Not sad.
Julie: We are dedicated (fools).
Aaron: Indeed.
Julie: Ok, I need to go to bed. Please edit me into a coherent, sober being.
Aaron: Good night.
Julie: Peace out. Hi-yo Silver. And all that Jazz.

Some of our earlier dialogues: The Avengers, Snow White and the Huntsman, Anonymous.

12 Years a Slave

Steve McQueen's latest is just as smart as his last two films, although 12 Years a Slave is very different from both Hunger and Shame.

Mr. Ejiofor

Some great things right off of the bat. The acting is superb. McQueen has cast Chiwetel Ejiofor as the lead Solomon Northup, and the film also boasts not only usual McQueen-muse Michael Fassbender but also superb supporting performances from Lupita Nyong'o, Adepero Oduye, Alfre Woodard, and Sarah Paulson. And that's before we talk about the much smaller roles that are beautifully performed by excellent actors (Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Dwight Henry, Quvenzhané Wallis, Michael K. Williams, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Dano).

The acting is unbelievable. Expect at least three acting nominations come Oscar morning. Four actually seems more likely.

Ms. Nyong'o and Ms. Woodard

The film is also really smart about the complicity of everyone in the South with slavery. There are no nice white women in this film feeling bad about themselves while their husbands torture and abuse the people they've enslaved. No way. 12 Years a Slave has no time for such narratives. And this means that at times McQueen's film is unbearably violent. Now, I thought that Tarantino's latest was also smart about violence, but McQueen makes the violence in his film ubiquitous and almost banal. Unlike in Django, in 12 Years the violence is never on show. We are not there to watch violence: we are there to watch how it affects people, how it damages lives, how it is used to maintain a criminal system. When I say it is banal, too, I mean that it is a part of what enslaved men and women dealt with on a daily basis. 12 Years makes this point again and again. The film's characters' lives and safety are always under threat. Always. This is life under terror. There is never a moment of peace.

The film also takes its time. It moves poetically in ways similar to McQueen's previous films (although this is less pronounced in 12 Years). More than once the camera lingers on Ejiofor's face for longer than it is comfortable for the audience, and once he looks directly at the audience. These shots are haunting and beautiful. After one of the men dies in the field, his family and friends stand beside the grave and the camera simply stares at Topsy Chapman and waits for her to do something. She eventually starts singing, and the pause before her song is almost as heartbreaking as the song itself.

I had one qualm about 12 Years. There is a way that the film allows us to believe that Solomon Northup doesn't really belong in the South, isn't really a slave, that he deserves to be free because he is actually a freeman from the North. Now, all of this is true. He is a freeman from a Northern state. But none of the people enslaved in Louisiana ought to have been there. Every single one of those people would have been free if justice existed anywhere near those plantations. With the ending of 12 Years (which is a little bit like the ending to The Color Purple), the film allows us to celebrate Solomon's escape to freedom, the justice that he finally received thanks to USAmerican law. After I saw the film with my friend Leah, I told her that what I wanted from McQueen was one last shot of the plantation after Solomon's escape: one final reminder that if the USAmerican justice system finally allowed Solomon his freedom, that same legal system continued to enforce the enslavement, torture, and death of unnumbered others whose names and histories are lost to us.

This qualm is no small criticism, but it is, in truth, only a gripe. 12 Years a Slave is an excellent film by a filmmaker at the height of his abilities. It's poetic, it's powerful, and it's extraordinarily smart. This is must-see stuff.

An Appreciation of Supporting Actors

I am not one to rant about whom the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences decides to nominate for its big awards. I think the nominations really are the coolest thing about the whole Oscar process. Because the nominations are given by peers who are working in their fields, I really do believe that it's an honor just to be nominated.

First-time nominee Bradley Cooper

This year, there were four actors nominated for the very first time – Bradley Cooper, Hugh Jackman, Quvenzhané Wallis, and Emannuelle Riva. This is an incredibly small number by any standard. Last year there were nine actors with first-time nominations. In 2011 there were eight. In 2010 that number was a whopping twelve.

Two thoughts. First, it is to the Academy's benefit to nominate a large number of new people every year, to give a kind of official blessing to actors who have been working hard for many years and to enable them to get more and better work (like Jacki Weaver or Shohreh Aghdashloo or Octavia Spencer or Sophie Okonedo), and when they fail to do this, they really fail a whole bunch of good, hard-working performers. Second, what this small number of first-time nominees demonstrates even more fully is an absolutely astounding lack of imagination. Instead of nominating a bunch of truly amazing supporting performances, they chose to nominate in both supporting categories ten actors who have all been nominated before. All of them. For the men it's even worse. Every single one of the nominees for supporting actor has won an Oscar before. Each and every one of them has an Oscar. Robert De Niro, in fact, has two.

Now it is true that in Silver Linings Playbook De Niro probably gives his best performance in the last fifteen years. Broad love for the film meant that he was definitely getting a nomination. But is it really an astounding performance in any way? Tommy Lee Jones, Philip Seymour Hoffman (who I think is always overwrought), and Christoph Waltz? All of whom already have Oscars? Why is it that 4 of the 5 nominations in this category come from Best Picture nominees? Last year that ratio was 2 out of 5. In 2011 only 1 out of the 5 was in a movie nominated for Best Picture (eventual winner Christoph Waltz).

My favorite performances of the year from supporting actors – apparently – had no shot of a nomination. Most have never been nominated for Oscars before, I guess, and so they're on nobody's radars. A true shame because there were some really wonderful performances by hard-working, excellent actors happening on the sidelines of this year's movies. I will stop complaining for the rest of this post and (instead) talk about some of these great performances.

Tom Holland is great in The Impossible. This true (but totally preposterous) story of a family separated and battered by the tsunami in 2004 is an emotional rollercoaster and is filmed in gruesome detail. Holland plays the eldest of a trio of boys who are separated when the giant waves hit. Holland's character Lucas manages to locate his mother (played by Naomi Watts) and though she is very badly wounded, he helps her to safety, rescues a random baby, and then while he's in this hospital filled with refugees, he starts to help people find their family members, going from room to room calling out names in the hope that people will be reunited. As I say it is incredible, but my generally skeptical heart of stone melted constantly when Holland was onscreen. His performance is honest and beautiful and completely believable, and as we follow the ups and downs of his narrative of loss and terror, the overwhelming nature of what he is going through also manages to be our way of going through it. It is an excellent performance.

Nate Parker in Arbitrage plays a young man named Jimmy who gets embroiled in the dealings of Richard Gere's scheming, criminal businessman Robert. Gere's character basically foists his entire problem onto Jimmy, and Jimmy has to deal with the difficult ethical question of whether or not to turn Gere's character in to the police or to protect a man to whom he feels indebted. Richard Gere's performance created quite a lot of buzz during Awards season, but Nate Parker is a revelation. His moral quandary and his total desperation as the noose around him and Robert tightens are beautifully performed, and – given that he is also the ethical center of the film – his decisions resonate deeply with the audience. Arbitrage, at key points in its narrative, asks us to put ourselves in Jimmy's shoes, and Parker's performance has a suppleness and power that makes that identification riveting and deeply emotional.

In A Royal Affair, Mikkel Bøe Folsgaard plays the crazy Danish/Norwegian king Christian VII in eighteenth-century Denmark. The performance already won the 2012 Silver Bear at the Berlinale, and his work is really impeccable. Folsgaard manages to play this young monarch with a vulnerability and humanity despite his truly ridiculous and oftentimes violent and cruel behavior. And as much as the audience is alternately disgusted with him and terrified of him, I found myself sympathizing with this young man, who has no control over his irrationality, and needs more than anything else someone to attempt to understand him. It is completely due to Folsgaard's excellent work that the performance doesn't descend into Tom-Hulce-in-Amadeus craziness. Instead, King Christian is a character we want to succeed, whom we want to forgive even when he behaves erratically.

In Monsieur Lazhar, a primary-school teacher kills herself in her classroom and in the morning, she is found when the school bell rings. The film is no great shakes, honestly, but Émilien Néron, who plays the young boy who discovers his teacher's body, and who harbors an enormous amount of guilt about his teacher's suicide – he blames himself. Néron is superb in this part. He communicates his character's terror and disaffection perfectly. This kid will break your heart; I promise. I couldn't watch him without welling up. It is exactly the kind of performance that deserves to be honored, and it isn't just me who thought so: Néron won the 2012 Jutra Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Monsieur Lazhar.

In the excellent Beasts of the Southern Wild there is more than one standout performance. Everyone is understandably talking about young Quvenzhané Wallis's fabulous work in the movie, but Dwight Henry as Hushpuppy's father is also wonderful, and in a true supporting fashion that never overshadows or eclipses Wallis. In many ways, Henry's character is the conflict of the film, pulling his daughter in various directions and teaching his daughter the things she needs to know before he goes. It's a desperate performance of parental anguish and physical agony. If the film is as intensely moving as it is, this is not due only to Wallis, director Benh Zeitlin, and the excellent script, score, photography, etc. (it really is the best movie of the year) but also due to Dwight Henry's performance and the fierceness with which he approaches this role.

And you already know how much I loved Samuel L. Jackson in Django Unchained since apparently I can't seem to shut up about how good he is in that movie. In fact, Jackson steals the movie from all of his co-stars. Jackson's role, granted, is the best written role in the film, but the actor's skill at playing Tarantino's dialogue to the hilt, his genius at knowing just what kind of film he is in, and his way of making a role into something iconic illustrate that Jackson is not only one of the most exciting actors to watch onscreen these days, he is clearly also one of the most shrewd. The performance is over-the-top while managing to be empathetic and surprising, and it's completely, totally, perfect for Django.
 

And there are more. Anna Karenina's earnest farmer Levin is played with mannered intensity and timid passion by Domhnall Gleeson. His performance is eager and honest, and it is perhaps the most emotionally charged work in what I thought was a beautiful film. And Christopher Walken's sad, aging dog-napper in Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths also deserves mention. It's an excellent performance of a profoundly tired character dealing with great loss. There is also Irrfan Khan as the adult survivor of a great adventure in Life of Pi, and Javier Bardem psychopathic villain in Skyfall.

No matter how you look at it, there were some beautiful performances by supporting actors this year. Some of these performances were the best things in their films, and some simply made excellent films even better with their honest work. In any case, I had a great time watching these actors at the movies this year, and I hope they stay on all of our radars, Oscar nomination or no.