Oscar Nominations 2022: 5 of 9

I think before we get into the Andrea Riseborough of it all, we should perhaps talk about the way that the nominating process works. First things first, the academy has 17 branches. And each branch nominates in specific categories. A member can only be a member of one branch, and if she is invited to join more than one branch, she has to choose. There is an actor branch, a costume designer branch, a casting director branch, a director branch, a music branch, a writer branch, a documentary branch, etc. And there are ten more: cinematographers, executives, film editors, sound, makeup artists and hairstylists, marketing and public relations, producers, production design, visual effects, and animation and short films (which are grouped together for some reason). There are also two member-at-large groups – one for artists and one for agents. During the nomination process, each of the 23 Oscar categories is nominated by the branch responsible for it. If you're a costume designer, at this stage you get to vote to nominate two Oscar categories only: costume design and best picture. For actors that is more: there are four acting categories plus best picture. Music has two plus best picture; so do the writers. You get the picture. (International film has a whole other complex process that has changed a lot over the years.) But there is a very specific key to the nominating process: You get to vote for a slate of 5 nominees in each category, but you rank them. And only one of your votes counts. 

If you want BTH to get nominated, you put his name at the top.

Let's take my list of nominees for Best Supporting Actor this year: I would have voted for 1. Anton von Lucke in Great Freedom, 2. André Holland in Bones and All, 3. Jeremy Strong in Armageddon Time, 4. Albrecht Schuch in All Quiet on the Western Front, and 5. Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin. When they count the ballots, they put them all in large piles. So: let's just assume that most people voted for Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Gleeson. They get nominated and all the votes that put them at the top get removed. (If you voted for one of them at the top of your list, that's who your vote counts for. No one else on your list matters.) Next: they take the people got the least amount of votes (like Anton von Lucke) and they redistribute. Now they put my vote in the André Holland pile, but of course, he's also eliminated quickly, so they move it to the Albrecht Schuch pile. Maybe my vote never counts at all, or maybe my vote ends up in the Barry Keoghan pile. (There's no ballot anyway, since I'm just an amateur Oscar fan.) But if you're really, really set on someone, you put that name at the top and you move the big names – who you love but are less passionate about – lower on your ballot. This is how Paul Mescal got an Oscar nomination, and Brian Tyree Henry got an Oscar nomination, and Stephanie Hsu ended up with a surprise Oscar nomination. And this, of course, is how Andrea Riseborough got one. There's one in every category, actually. The fifth slot ends up working exactly the opposite of how you'd expect it to. Rather than it being a consensus vote – where the eventual nominee would be the person everyone sort of likes but no one is obsessed with – it is a passion vote. The eventual fifth nominee in each category is mostly unexpected; it represents a surge of affection within (in this case) the acting branch of the Academy. You can see this in other categories too: for the writers with Glass Onion (the film's only nomination), for example, or for Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris in the costume category.

This year's nominees:

To Leslie

1 Nomination

• Actress: Andrea Riseborough

Director: Michael Morris

Cast: Riseborough, Marc Maron, Allison Janney, André Royo, Owen Teague, Stephen Root, James Landry Hébert, Catfish Jean, Marc Brandt, Matt Lauria

I think it's a generally good thing that a bunch of celebrities figured out how to beat the bushes – avoiding all of the usual campaigning – in order to get a film with no powerful distributor this surprise nomination. I refer to nomination morning my Christmas morning because I'm in it for the surprises. This was an enormous surprise, and the whole thing is very interesting. As it turns out, Riseborough is great in To Leslie – she's great in almost everything she does – and the movie itself is pretty good too. It's a story of addiction and potential redemption that I felt managed actually to work despite the clichéd pitfalls surrounding this narrative. The "scandal" of her nomination will be one for the Oscar history books, but it isn't really a scandal at all. The scandal, it seems to me, is that usually the Academy just sees a handful of about 30 movies all year (if that), and they're the movies the big studios tell them to watch. They send them screeners and campaign to get them to watch them, and then the critics groups and other awards organizations fall in line and nominate around 20 films for everything. It becomes boring and predictable, and it just goes to show how few movies these experts are actually watching. The To Leslie campaign tried something else, and what do you know? It worked! I guess I find it pretty remarkable. And the movie's actually good.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #29 out of 66

Blonde

1 Nomination

• Actress: Ana de Armas

Director: Andrew Dominik

Cast: Armas, Bobby Cannavale, Adrien Brody, Xavier Samuel, Evan Williams, Julianne Nicholson, Dan Butler

I can't believe this movie got made. Well, of course, I guess I can, but it's one of the most sexist, offensive pieces of shit I've seen in a while. This movie purports to be a kind of inside-the-mind version of Marilyn Monroe, where we see much more from her perspective. It isn't that. Instead, we watch Marilyn from the perspective of the many men in her life. One early example is when she auditions for a part and then leaves the room, and we sit with the men while they talk about how great her ass is. It's outrageous. There's another sequence where we sit at the bar with DiMaggio, who has been given naked pictures of Marilyn. He becomes enraged and we sit with him while he gets angry, then we follow him home, he slams the car door – the camera is following his perspective – and he comes home, finds Marilyn in her bedroom, surprises her, and slaps her so hard he knocks her off the bed. How can this film justify showing us all of that from this man's point of view? In a movie purporting to be from hers! I was enraged; I'm getting enraged all over again just thinking about it. Add to that the truly absurd talking fetus (what the fuck was that?), Ana de Armas's inaccurate accent, and the fact that this abomination is three hours long, and I wanted to rip my eyes out. I'll say two positive things about this movie: Adrien Brody is excellently cast as Arthur Miller, and Blonde did actually try something – it failed, but it tried something, and this makes it just slightly better than The Whale. 

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #65 out of 66

Glass Onion

1 Nomination

• Adapted Screenplay: Rian Johnson (Knives Out)

Director: Johnson

Cast: Daniel Craig, Janelle Monáe, Edward Norton, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, Madelyn Cline, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Hugh Grant

This was a very boring movie. I know a lot of people liked it, but I just was very bored the whole time. It's weird: I used to really like Rian Johnson, and I've always thought he was good at mysteries (I was very into Brick in my twenties). But for me these new mysteries he's doing are not interesting. They feel too formulaic and glossy to be of any actual interest. That said, I think it'll probably win the adapted screenplay Oscar. What I want to talk about is how this is an adapted screenplay. In short, Glass Onion isn't an adapted screenplay. You know what else isn't an adapted screenplay? Top Gun: Maverick. Both of these films, instead, involve characters who have appeared in other places. But their storylines, their dialogue, and a majority of their characters are original. These scripts are actually not adapted from another document the way Living or All Quiet on the Western Front or The Whale or Blonde are. (I've already made known my feelings about Triangle of Sadness being considered "original".) This is a very odd policy in regard to writing that the Academy has had in place since around 2004, and I think it makes no actual sense. It has meant "adapted" nominations for completely original scripts such as Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Before Midnight, and most insanely, Toy Story 3. It makes no sense. How are these scripts that remix characters and do new things with them any different from scripts considered "original" that use old characters like Midnight in Paris or The King's Speech or The Trial of the Chicago 7. That last film had to be adapted from actual transcripts from the actual trial, for example, with the screenwriter adapting some speeches wholesale from historical documents. Yet that is an "original" screenplay and Glass Onion, which is literally not based on anything; it merely repurposes a single character from a different film to follow a new, convoluted story with original dialogue, an original scenario, and a dozen original characters. It's nonsense. 
Will Win: Adapted Screenplay

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #61 out of 66

Causeway

1 Nomination

• Supporting Actor: Brian Tyree Henry

Director: Lila Neugebauer

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Henry, Linda Emond, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jayne Houdyshell, Russell Harvard

This is pretty good! I liked this even though I don't really like Jennifer Lawrence. But she's perfectly cast in this, and Linda Emond and Brian Tyree Henry are great. This surprise nomination for him is really excellent, and I'm glad he snagged it. The movie is a small thing – the story of two people but mostly Jennifer Lawrence's character. It might have been a better movie if it had been the story of two people but mostly Brian Tyree Henry's character, but this is how this filmmaker decided to go about things. Anyway, this is worth a watch. The acting is very good, and if there's not much of a story here or any kind of real takeaway or conclusion, it's an intriguing double character study with some excellent sequences (I won't spoil it, but the scene at the prison is a highlight). P.S. As far as I can tell, the title makes no sense whatsoever.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #41 out of 66

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Elvis

2. The Fabelmans, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

3. Avatar: the Way of Water, Triangle of Sadness, The Whale, and Babylon

4. The Batman, Women Talking, Living, and Aftersun

More posts coming soon:

Bonus post about the animated shorts

6. Argentina, 1985, Close, Eo, and The Quiet Girl
7. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Pinocchio, Puss in Boots: the Last Wish, Turning Red, and The Sea Beast
8. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Empire of Light, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, RRR, and Tell It like a Woman

I'd love it if you checked out my new book Love Is Love Is Love – out March 24!

Knives Out

I have a serious question. Why wasn't Knives Out funnier? The trailer looked great; the poster is really amazing, but Rian Johnson's film simply doesn't deliver. It's much busier being a  morality tale than it is making us laugh or giving us the clever twists and turns that we expect both from Johnson and the genre in general. This is fine, but Knives Out isn't really good at doing what it wants to do. And actually, now that I think about it, this isn't fine. What it is is sentimental nonsense.

Quite frankly, however, I thought Chris Evans was hilarious.

Oscar Nominations 2018: Part 3 of 12

Back to Part 1 or Part 2.

My Best of 2017.

Call Me by Your Name

4 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Timothée Chalamet 
• Adapted Screenplay: James Ivory
• Song – "Mystery of Love": Sufjan Stevens

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, Victoire Du Bois, Vanda Capriola, Antonio Rimoldi

This is my favorite movie of the year. I love it unapologetically and unabashedly. One of my favorite things about it is that it is a deeply sensual film – like of all of Guadagnino's movies – but that when Elio falls in love with his idol Oliver, the film shows us this in ways other than the traditional male-gaze ways of doing this (normally the camera would focus on specific body parts and linger on them, and through this we would experience Elio's attraction to Oliver). But Guadagnino shows us that Elio sees Oliver not as a sex object but as a conquering hero, someone way cooler than him, someone free and unrestricted and confident, and it is this that attracts him. The novel on which this is based covers a great deal more area than this film; in the tradition of the coming-of-age movie, Guadagnino and Ivory's movie focuses on the one summer of Elio and Oliver's meeting, and only gestures toward the longterm effects of that summer. This is a choice that works well for the film. Movies need to cut down the plot elements in novels for time reasons (Mudbound ought to have taken a note about this). There is so much more to love about Call Me by Your Name. I think I loved every single scene. I found the whole thing deeply moving. I love this film, and so I also think it is ridiculous that it didn't get a best director nomination, that Michael Stuhlbarg didn't get a supporting actor nomination, that Walter Fasano isn't nominated for editing, and that Sayombu Mukdeeprom didn't get a cinematography nomination. Apparently this connected with Academy members fairly well, but they weren't as overwhelmed as I was. Oh well. As for winning Oscars, James Ivory is going to win. Although he has been nominated for directing A Room with a View, Howards End, and The Remains of the Day, this will be his first Oscar in his more-than-fifty-year career. I can't wait for his speech.

Will Win: Adapted Screenplay

Could Win: Actor, Song

My Rating: #1 out of 78

Mudbound

4 Nominations

• Adapted Screenplay: Dee Rees & Virgil Williams
• Supporting Actress: Mary J. Blige
• Cinematography: Rachel Morrison
• Song – "Mighty River": Mary J. Blige & Raphael Saadiq & Taura Stinson

Director: Rees

Cast: Garrett Hedlund, Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Rob Morgan, Mary J. Blige, Jonathan Banks, Kerry Cahill

This movie is a real disappointment, and I continue to be surprised that of all the Netflix movies that would actually break through, that it is this mess of a film that managed to do it. (Beasts of No Nation, which appeared only two years ago, easily deserved six nominations and got zero.) I guess what maybe is even more disappointing to me is that Dee Rees, whose first film was the lesbian coming-of-age drama Pariah made this rather boring movie that is mostly about straight white folks. I hope her next movie is a return to something interesting. I don't think I'll say anything more about the film; I've already written about how wooden I think Mary J. Blige is and what a mess the screenplay is, but I will say I recently saw Hostiles, and that film's cinematography is much, much, much better than the work in this movie. So now I'm annoyed about that nomination, too. Sigh. Who knows why the Academy likes what it likes.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Song
My Rating: #62 out of 78

Star Wars: Episode VIII – the Last Jedi

4 Nominations

• Score: John Williams (Star Wars: Episode VII - the Force Awakens, The Book Thief, Lincoln, War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin, Munich, Memoirs of a Geisha, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Catch Me If You Can, Artificial Intelligence: A.I., Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Patriot, Angela's Ashes, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Sleepers, Nixon, Sabrina, Schindler's List, JFK, Home Alone, Born on the Fourth of July, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Accidental Tourist, Empire of the Sun, The Witches of Eastwick, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The River, Return of the Jedi, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, The Towering Inferno, Tom Sawyer, Cinderella Liberty, Images, The Poseidon Adventure, Fiddler on the Roof, The Reivers, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Valley of the Dolls)
  
• Visual Effects
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Effects Editing

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Mark Hammill, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, Carrie Fisher, Domhnall Gleeson, Gwendoline Christie, Laura Dern, Benicio Del Toro, Andy Serkis, Frank Oz, Lupita Nyong'o

Yesterday I listened to a friend of mine go on a rant about why this movie was not good, but his points were related to the plot choices that the series is making – not enough Skywalkers – and then also a discussion of the silliness of the movie, its irony about its own cheesiness. Obviously I am not really a fanboy of this series, and so it does not matter to me what they do plot-wise. And because I already think these movies are really cheesy, I rather like it better when a film admits to being silly, when it knows it is silly. As pertains to Oscar, I will say that I was actually sort of shocked that John Williams' score for this movie got nominated. The music branch will nominate Williams every single year – this is his 51st nomination. That certainly is no surprise, but it is odd to me that they didn't opt for his music for The Post instead of the recycled scoring in this movie. It's sort of embarrassing that they do this every year.
Will Win: Visual Effects

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #34 out of 78

I, Tonya

3 Nominations

• Actress: Margot Robbie
• Supporting Actress: Allison Janney
• Film Editing: Tatiana S. Riegel

Director: Craig Gillespie

Cast: Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Paul Walter Hauser, Julianne Nicholson, Bobby Cannavale, Ricky Russert, Anthony Reynolds, Joshua Mikel

This movie was not for me. It was fun for everyone I saw it with, but I was rather annoyed with its single note, its almost complete lack of stakes, and its missed directing opportunities. I never knew what the stakes were at any given moment – if she wins this competition what happens? Does she get rich? Does she get an endorsement deal? Does she think she'll be happy? The movie never communicates any of this. This is partly because of the perspective that the film takes, where we're listening to interviews about something that happened a long time ago, but it is partly because the film doesn't script these things into what its doing and the direction is unclear. I liked Margot Robbie in the movie well enough, but Allison Janney plays the same scene again and again; I found this a bit exhausting, actually. The more I've thought about it, the more I think this movie would've been better if it had been a better sports movie.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Supporting Actress
My Rating: #50 out of 78

The Last Jedi

I kinda liked this. I mean, I think Star Wars is sort of dumb, so I guess I am not the right audience, but it hit all the right buttons as far as I am concerned. It was way too fuckin' long, and, as always, it was self-important, but mostly I was into The Last Jedi.

Oscar Nominees 2013: Part 5 of 13

The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey

3 Nominations

• Production Design: Simon Bright (King Kong) & Dan Hennah (King Kong, The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King, The Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring) & Ra Vincent
• Visual Effects
• Hair and Makeup

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Aidan Turner, Dean O'Gorman, Sylvester McCoy, Andy Serkis, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, William Kircher, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee

Apparently no one liked The Hobbit's first installment. Well, that's sort of a lie. It has made over $600 million worldwide so far. And counting. But the Academy, it seems, was not having it. In categories where the Lord of the Rings franchise cleaned up – score, editing, both sound categories, cinematography – this movie got left out, despite its technical brilliance. My sympathy, as you can probably imagine, runs low. But I have to say that it deserves to win a few things, and I think it will win Hair & Makeup (I mean just look at the hair in that poster!). And... if I am being honest, I would probably watch this movie again. Just to give it another chance. In a guilty-pleasure sort of way, you understand.

Will Win: Hair & Makeup

Could Win: Visual Effects

My Rating: #51 out of 61

Flight

2 Nominations

• Best Actor: Denzel Washington (Training Day, The Hurricane, Malcolm X, Glory, Cry Freedom)
• Original Screenplay: John Gatins

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Washington, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Bruce Greenwood, Don Cheadle, Tamara Tunie, Tommy Kane, Brian Geraghty, Melissa Leo

Um, Best Original Screenplay? It's a little odd because the time-travel picture Looper looked like it was going to get this nomination, but who knows what the writers branch was thinking. Instead they went with this highly moralistic screenplay that is, in many ways, a retread of The Lost Weekend. Being an alcoholic is bad, guys. Not that I disagree, but this film gets across its message... inelegantly. There are good things about the movie – I actually rather liked it – Denzel Washington is great and Zemeckis' direction is tight and exciting, but Gatins' screenplay is heavy handed and unnecessarily sentimental. All that to say: this movie is not taking home any Oscars.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #29 out of 61

Snow White and the Huntsman

2 Nominations

• Costume Design: Colleen Atwood (Alice in Wonderland, Nine, Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Memoirs of a Geisha, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Chicago, Sleepy Hollow, Beloved, Little Women)
• Visual Effects

Director: Rupert Sanders

Cast: Charlize Theron, Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, Sam Spruell, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, Brian Gleeson

This film is not winning any Oscars. But I think I probably screamed out loud when I saw that it was nominated. See: I thought it was going to be terrible, and so my friend Julie and I got drunk and watched it together. In fact, it isn't the least bit terrible. The visual effects are delightful, the narrative is interesting, the costumes are completely fabulous, and Charlize Theron goes for absolute broke in the role of the evil queen. It really is a very fun film marred just slightly by a fairly uninteresting heroine. I want to say, too, that two Oscar nominations is kind of a lot! It's more than, say, Cloud Atlas or, say, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen got. Colleen Atwood has enough Oscars, however – three, actually; can you believe she has three? – and she does not need another one for Snow White and the Huntsman. But if her nomination gets you to rent the camp-fest that is this movie, I say more power to the Academy for honoring good design and visual effects work, no matter what kind of movie they appear in.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #35 out of 61

The Brothers Bloom

That you will like Brick director Rian Johnson's new film The Brothers Bloom less than you liked his first film is inevitable. (I take for granted that you liked Brick's formal devices and witty screenplay quite a bit.) Still, there is lots to recommend about The Brothers Bloom, and while I didn't like the film all that much, it is quite funny for most of its running time and very clever if not always unpredictable.

The Brothers Bloom is a crime-caper-con-artist buddy-comedy which stars Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as con-artist brothers who have become the best of their profession. They pull off long-con schemes conceived by Ruffalo's character Stephen. In these schemes, Brody's character Bloom is the lead actor and he seduces the mark and becomes the protagonist in the dramas Stephen pens. These dramas all have poetry and narrative beauty and are composed by Stephen in order to give Bloom the life that Stephen thinks he wants. So far so good.

Early on in the film (but not early enough in the film) the important con of The Brothers Bloom begins and Stephen and Bloom (and their sidekick Bang Bang, who is played hilariously by Rinko Kikuchi of Babel fame) take on an absurdly wealthy heiress played by Rachel Weisz. Bloom and the heiress fall in love and the rest of the film is a meditation about whether or not what we do and feel are real, how we script our lives, and whether or not living inside of a narrative has value in and of itself.

The film is fun and whimsical. It is often very funny. Kikuchi provides lots of the humor (she doesn't speak throughout and so a single glance from her or a raised eyebrow is wonderfully loaded with meaning.) But Johnson's script also contains some delightful displays of wit. During a very smart sequence at the beginning of the movie, Bloom tells Stephen that he wants to live a life that Stephen hasn't composed for him. He wants to play a character that comes from himself, to do something that he hasn't been told to do by his brother. "I want..." Bloom says. "An unwritten life?" Stephen asks. And there is a pause. And then Bloom repeats his brother: "an unwritten life." This kind of very intelligent writing that contains its own ironies is where Rian Johnson excels.

The caper fake-out trickster stuff—of which movie-makers are lately so fond—is much less successful in The Brothers Bloom. The whimsical treatment of the film's first act continues through the second and third acts, but the whimsy wore thin when real danger was threatened, and it became hard for me to take anything in the film seriously when I was pretty sure that what I was watching was a con (the characters conning each other and the filmmaker conning me.)

So the film starts out delightfully: very funny, very clever, but Johnson doesn't quite know where to go with his plot as the film progresses and so he cannot escape his own formal strictures. Thus, the world of The Brothers Bloom becomes rather mired in its own cleverness and never achieves either the emotional levels it attempts or the fake-out wizardry of a really good caper film.

Two Movies / No Movies

No new movies today. I re-watched portions of Rian Johnson's Brick—it's on DVD now, so if you missed it, you should go rent it immediately—and Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring. I love Brick and I enjoyed the pieces I watched all over again. It's funny and clever and dark and a damn good mystery. As for the South Korean film, I know I've gone off before on how good it is and it this was drilled into me again as I sat and watched the whole thing again. I just can't turn away. It's amazing how a film this silent can say so much and be so beautiful. I laughed, I cried. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring was my favorite movie of 2004, so if you missed it, you're not paying attention. Go rent it.

Noir, Neo-Noir & More Coming-of-Age

I liked Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol a lot better than I liked The Third Man (which he made a year later in 1949), and I would venture to say the reason is that I think it's a better piece of film noir than The Third Man is. Sure, The Third Man is about murder and intrigue in post-war Europe and all kinds of consulates and things like that, and The Fallen Idol is really the story of a little boy's attachment to a servant, Mr. Baines. But as I complained about before, The Third Man isn't really in black and white: it's a gray film more than anything, if you get my meaning. And though the topic of The Fallen Idol is less typically noir than you'd expect, Reed shoots entire, riveting sequences like a master of German Expressionism. The plot, too, becomes more and more gothic as the film plays on and a true villain emerges in the form of the evil Mrs. Baines.

I saw The Fallen Idol in its limited re-release down at the Rialto theatre yesterday afternoon, and though I thought the sound quality left quite a lot to be desired, the movie is great: exciting, never obvious and definitely thrilling. And because the center of the film is an irritating, unpredictable young man with good intentions to burn, one never knows what will come out of the little tyke's mouth and how much damage he can do.
*

Then it was off to see Rian Johnson's debut feature Brick, about which I've already raved. I wanted to add one thing, though. I read (was it in the L. A. Times?) a review that called Brick long on style and panache but extremely short on substance. I totally disagree with this, and I don't think I would've liked the picture as much if it had been true. (I do love movies solely because of style, but there aren't too many of them.) At Brick's noir-ish center is a group of young people who don't care one solitary bit about education, but who, in a godless world, are looking for a way to become important, to make their lives matter. Brick is a portrait of often drug-addicted, always self-important youth who establish hierarchies among themselves and move in circles of their own creation. Authority is always in question and re-negotiated on a daily basis through means violent, intellectual and monetary. But the motivating purpose behind these young people, we find by the film's end, is a desire to last longer: immortality through parenthood and/or the creation of a legacy (biological or not.) It's a fabulous film, definitely long on style and panache, but also a fascinating description of America's youth.

*
This morning's movie was Louis Malle's 1971 Le Souffle a Cœur (Murmur of the Heart). It was alright. Challenging, I suppose, in it's day, but more coming-of-age stuff... and to tell you the truth I'm a little burned out on that. Plus it's all about sex. Sex, sex, sex. Which is interesting, to be sure, but it's Louis Malle, so it's heterosexual sex. Which, I am bound to say, is rarely interesting to me. The film is similar in subject to last year's Ma Mère, and Murmur of the Heart is far superior to that film, though that really isn't saying much at all.

Go See This Movie

Do not miss Brick. It's Rian Johnson's neo-noir debut feature and it's the coolest thing I've seen so far this year. It has just the right amount of irony and more witty dialogue than I could wrap my head around. I was laughing unapologetically in the theatre and so was the rest of the crowd. Brick is just right for gen X-ers who've seen more than a few films, but even if you don't fall into this category, I would bet no small amount of jake that you'll think Brick is almost too cool for its own good. But not.

So awesome. Go see it.

Brick stars Joseph-Gordon Levitt (so good these days—did you catch Mysterious Skin) and Lukas Haas ("The pin. Older. Like, twenty-six.") I shelled out $9.00 and saw it at my local multiplex, so it's not just an art-house thing. Go. Seriously.