All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

I really wanted to like Raven Jackson's All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, but boy oh boy is it boring. It looks cool visually, and probably would have been successful as a short film. But mostly this is trying to do a sort of Terrence Malick thing (but with only a whisper of a screenplay) or perhaps a Tsai Ming-Liang thing (but without the commitment to a still camera). Either way I was bored. And I’m afraid the movie really takes us nowhere.

Sublimity: 1917 and A Hidden Life

I am in love with Sam Mendes' 1917. In fact, I can't wait to see it again when it opens nationwide next weekend. In the first place, I love World War I movies – actually, I kind of love WWI everything. That period of time is so interesting to me, and WWI doesn't get enough press as an event that shifted the course of history, overshadowed as it is by the Second World War.

You probably know that 1917 is shot by the genius cinematographer Roger Deakins. You may also know – although this is not clear from 1917's trailer – that the entirety of Sam Mendes film is edited so that it looks as though it is a single long take. This is showy cinematography, and it works excellently. Of course, the fact that it appears to be a single shot means that one begins to pay more attention to the camera itself, where it goes, what it looks at, who it follows.

There are some drawbacks to this approach. As I say, this camera work is flashy, and there are moments in act two when I was so visually blown away by what I was watching that I was thinking more about Roger Deakins and less about the story. There is also the question of cuts. It's clear that there are some cuts, and so (at least in act one) I was playing a small game of oh they could have made a cut there. But all of this is worth it.

But this one-shot gimmick (and it is a gimmick, even though it works well and I loved it) also begins to work thematically. The camera never gets off the ground to look at the war from a distance. World War I is not a war that was fought from a distance. It was fought on the ground, in the mud, in ditches. And it was fought over lands that used to be filled with people – small towns, farmlands, churches. Because we never leave our two main characters, we feel the weight of their mission in a kind of horizontal way. They must get from here to there and they must cross through, go under. They must run. They (and we) are not allowed the relief of seeing the war from the sky or from the point of view of strategy of any kind. They (and we) see it as immediate, mundane. It's a brilliant filmmaking strategy.

There is also the question of time. This is a film in which two young men are given a mission that they must execute immediately. They must cross a large distance and they must do it quickly or sixteen hundred men will die. So the fact that the camera never leaves them, never looks away, is a kind of insistence, a demand that they move. The stakes in 1917 always feel very, very high.

1917 is a simple story designed to pack an emotional wallop. And it does. It also tells the kind of war story I like – one told from the perspective of the men and women who fought the war and one that is very, very clear about the effect of war on the bodies of the soldiers, the civilians, the land, and in the case of WWI, the animals. It's a wonderfully told story, and I was deeply moved. This has, also, in part to do with the excellent acting in 1917. Most of the roles in the film are quite small – little more than cameos – but these appearances are uniformly excellent. Andrew Scott has a brilliant section in act one, and my sister and I both looked at each other and smiled when Mark Strong showed up (she recognized him by his voice even before I knew it was him). Strong is, as always, superb. Claire Duburcq has a single scene, and she is also wonderful. And then there's Richard Madden, who has a gorgeous, extraordinary role near the very end of the film that I won't say anything more about other than to say that Madden absolutely knocks this out of the park and that I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. The film's two leads, George Mackay and Dean-Charles Chapman, are perfect. I loved both of them from the very beginning, and they're doing top-notch work throughout. I would give both Oscar nominations if it were up to me.

I will stop talking about this movie, but I want to say that if much of the pleasure of watching 1917 was, for me, witnessing the extraordinary filmmaking that Mendes and his team did, the film always feels grounded, deep, and honest. It doesn't get lost in its own flash. The filmmaking is in service of something much larger, and I don't think Mendes' film loses sight of that ever.

Oscar: I would expect a boatload. Sound mixing, sound editing, visual effects, Thomas Newman's score (which is by turns action-packed and gentle), cinematography (obviously), picture, director, and screenplay all seem like slam-dunks to me. Film editing and production design both seem possible as well. Makeup and hairstyling could happen, too. It might be as many as 11. They're deserved.

* * *

Another gorgeously shot movie is Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life. Now, I love Malick very much – The Thin Red Line, The New World, and The Tree of Life are some of my favorite films. But his approach has started to feel a bit repetitive, as if he's stuck in something of a rut and can't quite get out of it. Malick is invested in nature and nature photography, especially the relationship of human beings with the land.

But A Hidden Life has more of a script – and maybe more of a plot – than Malick's last few films. This movie is about a conscientious objector in Austria during World War II. August Diehl and Valerie Pachner are farmers in the mountains of Austria who live in a small village beneath gorgeous towering cliffs and a waterfall. It's an idyllic, beautiful space, and it's shot lovingly by Jörg Widmer. Malick's usual voice-overs are, in this case, actual letters that Franz and Fani Jägerstätter wrote to each other while he was imprisoned by the Third Reich.

The film didn't totally work for me. It's beautiful, of course, and Malick's ability to capture affection and care and his meditations on family and community all work very well. But there's something indirect or tired here, for me. Maybe it is that Malick doesn't really seem to be investigating anything here. He knows the answers already, and so the story feels over before it begins. In many ways, the whole film (and it is a long one) is played in one key, as if it is over before it begins. This is, perhaps, a philosopher's approach, but for me it lacks dynamism.

Like 1917, A Hidden Life has a lot of appearances by great actors. Matthias Schoenaerts, Alexander Fehling, and the late great Bruno Ganz all have small parts. Franz Rogowski, who is so great in this year's Transit, is excellent as Franz's friend.

I want to highlight a very strange but very cool choice that Malick made as he crafted A Hidden Life. The film is not shot in sets that look like Nazi prisons. Instead it's shot in prison ruins. At times we are in rooms where there are dozens of bed frames but no beds, for example, or where plants are coming in through the walls. (Even the churches in A Hidden Life are actively being restored during the course of the movie.) So what we see instead of a realistic portrayal of Franz imprisoned by the Germans is a kind of strange rumination about this philosophical or ethical question as a kind of haunting of the German prison. This is a fascinating choice, and for me this made much of the prison stuff feel strange and spiritual in a very good way.

Oh! Side note: in 2019 I read George Eliot's Middlemarch, from which this film's title is taken. I loved this novel, and I've shared the quotation before, but it's worth sharing again. A Hidden Life and Middlemarch both end with the following: "Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

After the film, I wondered aloud what all of these meditations on nature have to do with the Nazis and political imprisonments and Dayne said something like If you appreciate life, you can't choose to kill or It is much easier to destroy life when you don't know how beautiful it is. Dayne is, of course, right about this, and it does help me see A Hidden Life in a smarter way. But I do feel like this movie is a bit too repetitive ("do you think this matters to anyone?" is repeated a great many times) and just a bit too one-note.

Oscar: James Newton Howard's score, which is absolutely beautiful, is overshadowed in the movie (Malick always does this) by music by Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki so much that JMH was certainly disqualified in this category. Widmer hasn't made a lot of films, and so it seems to me that the cinematographers branch probably won't nominate him. The actors are all European... in short, I don't think we're looking at any nominations, despite the obvious quality of the filmmaking.

One of My Favorite Films of 2017

A Ghost Story is one of my favorite movies of the year. Right now I have it at #2. It's a beautiful film.

A Ghost Story is a haunting, mysterious fable about longevity, about what lives on after us, about letting go. It also manages to be whimsical in lots of ways, and to rethink what we even mean by a ghost. The image of the ghost with the sheet over its head and holes for eyes is a very old one – a child's image of a ghost, or perhaps a Hayao Miyazaki image of a ghost. This is childish or whimsical; it's even sort of silly. But it turns serious quite quickly, even haunting, and there is an extraordinary payoff to its sheet-over-the-head aesthetic.

David Lowery's film is a kind of fusion of Kelly Reichardt, Tsai Ming-Liang, Terrence Malick, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and it was just my cup of tea. The thing is, it doesn't feel derivative. It feels totally original and fascinating, and once you think you've figured it out, it goes further, into uncharted, strange territory.

(One warning. This is not a long movie at all, but it is a slow, contemplative film. If you don't like Reichardt, or Tsai or Weerasethakul, you will be annoyed by this movie's pace.)

The film's third act is my favorite section of the film. These parts of the film are about time and waiting and being. At one point we seem to project thousands of years into the future and then jump back another thousand and start again. A Ghost Story wonders what it means to live on, to live with, what it means to be in the first place. This meditation is about how people (or things?) haunt us – it is a ghost story, after all – but it is itself haunting, as we might think about how we are going to live on or what came before us or, indeed, what we are in the first place.

I loved this movie.

Song to Song

It took me a while to like Song to Song, but then I really warmed up to it. To my mind it is the best film Malick has made since Tree of Life. It's about indecision and betrayal, but then it is quite hopeful, really, and the film moves from being a series of disconnected images à la King of Cups into steady shots of locations – a shift that signals the characters' own groundedness.

The Knight of Cups, the Melancholy Drifter

I can totally see why no one liked Knight of Cups, and indeed (especially after To the Wonder), why people are wondering if Terrence Malick has simply run out of things to say. 

Knight of Cups includes Malick's usual lush, gorgeous imagery, and his typical whispered voiceovers, but this film is not The New World or The Tree of Life. The subject matter here is Christian Bale playing a kind of washed up or tired screenwriter who has no subject matter to work on. (If, indeed, Malick himself is the screenwriter who can't think of anything to say, this makes a great deal of sense, but I don't think I'll go there.) But this isn't a film about Hollywood or screenwriting or Los Angeles, really. Sure, it is filled with gorgeous images of Southern California, certainly – from Descanso Gardens to Santa Monica to Hollywood Boulevard to Skid Row – and there are some great sequences in Las Vegas, with beautiful, stunning images. And the parties in Knight of Cups are also really fun, although they lack the energy and wit of the parties in, say, The Great Beauty or even, dare I say it, The Great Gatsby.

That is because Knight of Cups is not a film about Hollywood moviemaking or money or Vegas or even Los Angeles. It's a film about a man and "the women he has loved" or somesuch nonsense. And the Malick voiceovers, therefore, are all inanities about romance and losing a person and things like that. When Natalie Portman says, somewhere in the film's third act, "I know you have love in you", I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Why does it matter whether you think he has love in him or not? What I mean to say is that Knight of Cups' subject matter is just not compelling. I actually even think that this film would have been better without the voiceovers – I am fairly certain I would have liked it better if it had simply been a series of images of him with these various women, his brother, his dad, and the few bits of actual dialogue we got. Instead, the voiceovers dumb everything down, and they are so short and clichéd that they seemed to me like finger painting on the surface of a Rothko.

Still, the images: They're stunning. Nearly every frame bursts with beauty. And it was a pleasure for me to see Los Angeles itself photographed so gorgeously. Most of the actors, too, do lovely work. Armin Mueller-Stahl and Antonio Banderas were particular highlights, to my mind. I still think the film is unmissable. I wouldn't have skipped it, even if I didn't love it.

And I am not going to worry to much about Malick and whether he's lost his mojo. He is the master and this is what he's interested in right now. Eventually he's gonna work through whatever he's working through about love and masculinity, and young women frolicking amid blowing curtains, and then maybe we'll get something else. He doesn't owe me anything.

Enter Pursued by a Bear

Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant is titled like a horror movie, but it isn't one. It also isn't exactly an action/adventure movie either. Stylistically, it's something like a cross between Terrence Malick's Tree of Life and The New World with Joe Carnahan's The Grey. (Since I'm mentioning films that I love, this is me telling you that I loved The Revenant.) If The Revenant looks like a Malick movie (it's shot by the great Emmanuel Lubezki) and is plotted like a survival or disaster film, the story of The Revenant is revenge. And revenge is one of my absolute favorite things.

The film is contemplative and very slow at times – a couple exiting the theatre with me wondered Why did they show so much of the scenery? – focusing on the world inhabited by these eighteenth-century colonialists. This slowness and contemplation makes the film gorgeous, of course, but it is also what the film is about to a large extent, the way violence exists on the surface of a world that is beautiful. The natural world itself is also incredibly violent – particularly in the snow-covered mountains and icy waters the men are traversing. Perhaps I am reading this into the film, but the film's violence, shocking though it is at times, and often extremely brutal, is also beautiful. In this way, it seemed to me that for Iñárritu, the natural world and then men and women who are a part of it are all violent, and all capable of beauty, even when they are violent. (This seems to me a larger theme in Iñárritu's work – think back to that incredible shot of the blood bubbling on the Teppan grill in Amores Perros.)

The Revenant – like the director's non-Birdman films – is also very interested in worlds colliding, in different languages (there are at least three in the film, including extended sequences in Pawnee), in the problems that are bred out of miscommunication, and in the inhumanity that accompanies racism. Like all of Iñárritu's films, The Revenant is also interested in magic, in powers and abilities that don't seem to make sense through scientific explanation. This makes the film seem both improbable and also constantly wondrous. I spent much of the movie with my jaw dropped, shocked at the images onscreen. In the film's first act, Leonardo DiCaprio is brutally mauled by a bear: His throat is torn open, his back ripped to shreds. And from this, he comes back. That he continues to survive despite absurdly harsh weather conditions, three different groups of people who wish to kill him, and the terrifying wildlife of the Americas, is both improbable and amazing to watch.

But The Revenant doesn't have the quality of absurdity that might accompany the jumps and explosions in a James Bond film or something from the Mission: Impossible series. Instead, one wonders about the man's existence itself. Is he dead? Is he a spirit? A ghost? A zombie? Can he be killed at all? Is there some earth-magic that is keeping this man's shell alive so that he can execute justice on his enemy?

Alternating wild action sequences and vicious, violent fights with slow consideration of rivers, waterfalls, sky, and even fire, The Revenant is a kind of superb meditation on everything. What does it mean to be racist out in the middle of nowhere when humans should be working together to survive? What does it mean to get revenge in the middle of nowhere, completely outside of society? What are barbarism and civilization? What is humanity's limit? What are the limits of the human body?

The Revenant is perfectly directed. It is gorgeously scored by Ryuichi Sakamoto (it's my favorite score of the year, and of course it is ineligible for the Oscar because the Music branch is insanely twisted). The movie is impeccably shot and edited; it is no exaggeration to say that Lubezki might and probably should win his third consecutive Oscar.) And it is superbly acted – Domnhall Gleeson's work is particularly great, providing exactly what is needed in DiCaprio's most emotional sequences, and I thought Will Poulter was exceptional as well, but all of the performances are excellent.

The Revenant is certainly not for everyone, but I loved it.

Beasts of No Nation

Clearly one of the best films of the year so far is Cary Joji Fukunaga's Beasts of No Nation.

It is true that I generally find it difficult to find a lot of words when I am talking about a movie that I simply love without almost any reservation, but I am holed up in the Portland airport waiting for a red-eye back to Central Florida from the ASTR conference, and I am way too tired to read. In other words, forgive me if this post is out of control; know that I have slept very little the last few days and won't get to sleep for another large number of hours.

Beasts of No Nation is a film about child soldiers, better even than 2013's War Witch. This is a film mostly in English and it is upsetting a lot of people because it is being released on Netflix simultaneously with its (Academy-qualifying) theatrical release. Distributors can say whatever they like about this, however. It will not alter the fact that this is a superb film.

If War Witch is Beasts of No Nation's most obvious recent cinematic reference point, if you ask me the film's debts are primarily to the ecologically minded utter genius filmmaker Terrence Malick. Malick's style isn't copied here – that would be profoundly unfair – but many of Fukunaga's questions about the world are the same. Like Malick, Fukunaga is fundamentally interested in the natural world that violence destroys and the ways that adults have powerful effects on children.

I am evoking Malick, too, because Fukunaga uses (but does not overuse, as some of Malick's acolytes do) a voiceover technique, where the film's main character articulates to us the reasons he has made the decisions he's made and the ways he deals with the psychic wounds of having done what he has been forced to do. This allows Fukunaga (who also wrote the screenplay) to describe the wounds experienced by a character while at the same time turning his camera on the jungle or on plant- or animal life.

Both filmmakers also present the violence in their films in fundamentally ethical ways, treating acts of bloodshed with horror and surprising the audience with the viciousness exhibited by their characters. Fukunaga doesn't let us be sentimental about violence without then following sentiment with ruin, with terrifying details that shock us out of our tendency only to mobilize the default emotions of pity or fear. (I guess I shouldn't speak for all of us, but I am convinced that this is how these things work so I'm just going to keep talking.) Sequences of excessive violence treated with a truly horrifying perspective have the power to unsettle us deeply, so that once we move past pity or shallow sentimentality, we can move into an area where we no longer feel like we understand this violence's limits. What I think this refusal to allow us to see violence's limits does is transmit to us a deep feeling that we no longer understand what humans are capable of doing. It becomes clear – we know in our bodies – that there are worse things than the director has allowed us to see. We know we have not understood. Beasts of No Nation does not let us rest in the complacency of believing we "get" it. The limit Fukunaga's film makes clear is not the limit of the violence of child soldiery but the limit of our ability to think it.

It is this kind of superb moviemaking for which Fukunaga has come to be recognized. Think about some of the sequences in True Detective's first season; there were entire sections of that show when my jaw was in a permanently dropped position.

Mr. Attah

It goes without saying that the film's photography is breathtakingly detailed and exquisite. Fukunaga was his own DP, and the film's cinematography is precisely what we have come to expect from his camera: images worthy of Malick himself. His camera, like the master's, lingers lovingly on the land, treats with beauty and respect the bodies that have been destroyed, refuses the pleasure that audiences desire when they watch violence. And he has set the film in the most gorgeous locations. Characters slog through trenches of bright red clay, the sun on the ocean serves the function of allowing the film finally to breathe near its end, and the banal, artificial lighting of the war rooms and bunkers allow the audience to appreciate beauty where the film wishes us to do so, and feel constrained and even slightly nauseous when such a feeling is merited.

I must, of course, also tell you that the acting is excellent. Abraham Attah, a fourteen year old Ghanaian actor, is absolutely riveting as the lead character, Agu. And Idris Elba brings extraordinary depth to this terrific villain. His performance is so extraordinarily brave that the film, almost entirely through Elba's performance, is able to address the tensions of desire that exist between the exploiters and the exploited in this situation of child soldiery. I am using only the word desire (without qualification) here on purpose. What becomes clear throughout the film is a kind of longing for youth, for acolytes, for sexual subjectivity, for mastery, that comprises the exploitation of child soldiers. It is a harrowing insight from what is, finally, a brilliant film, absolutely not to be missed.

Noah

This post is about Darren Aronofsky's bizarre religious film Noah. I decided to have a conversation about the movie with my buddy Rick. Our own religious backgrounds are slightly different (Rick was raised Catholic and I was raised Baptist), so we have different takes on the way the movie uses religion, but unsurprisingly the same take on the quality Aronofsky's film.

Aaron: First off, when you think of the Noah story, you think: rain, giant boat, animals, dove, rainbow. Those are the standard images, right? There is also this story in the bible where (after the flood) Noah gets drunk and his sons see him naked and cover him. (As a child I thought this part with the naked man was very important.)

Rick: The most fun part of the Noah story is obviously the animals! But Aronofsky makes the bizarre choice of not showing us one single moment with a real animal. Noah and his family don't even collect the animals; the animals, CGI all of them, come to Noah, quickly running into the ark where they're put to sleep by some kind of incense.

Aaron: Right. All CGI and all oddly napping.

Rick: This could have been hugely entertaining cinema, right here. You could have comic relief, obviously ("This one's definitely male"), but also a chance for real spiritual reflection. Maybe Japheth has a moment where he realizes, Hey, this aurochs is another living being, we're all part of God's creation, etc.

Aaron: But the film's version of the god's power is really one of violence and power, no? I mean, the god of the Old Testament is essentially vengeful and terrifying. The film gets that part right – although it is unmoored from any spiritual arrangement. The god in Noah is more like a king or a government.

Rick: In fact, Noah and his family have no agency at all, because not only do they not collect the animals, they don't actually build the ark! The ark is built by what I can only assume are the beings of Genesis 6:4: King James calls them "giants"; my Catholic bible calls them the Nephilim. Darren Aronofsky apparently thinks they're like the rock monster from The Neverending Story. In the movie, they tell Noah that they're fallen angels, but the bible says that they're the result of sexual intercourse between angels and humans, which aside from being biblically faithful, would have been a hell of a lot more interesting from a storytelling standpoint.

Aaron: The nephilim? Giants who are not fallen angels, as the film would have it, but (according to Genesis), the men of old, who were the children of (apparently male) angels and the "daughters of men". The way they worked in Noah made me think of a kind of Hebraic tradition of golems. That's how Aronofsky apparently saw them, but the way they are described in the film is a generic blending of the myth of the fall of Lucifer (who does not really appear in this film) and the Greek story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to the humans. Aronofsky is Jewish anyway, right? He is not a Christian, so his relationship to the bible is going to be much different from ours (not that I'm a Christian either.)

Rick: But the film's relationship to morality and spirituality is what I'm interested in. Why does God bring the Flood? Because of the wickedness of man. But the movie never shows you in a concrete way just how wicked man has become. You see some men acting like douchebags, and the narrative text in the opening sequence tells you that the descendants of Cain created an "industrial" society. In this same vein, you never see why God loves Noah so much. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord, says Genesis 6:8. According to Aronofsky, he found this favor because he told his kid once, Hey, don't pick that flower if you don't need it. The thing is, the story in the bible is pretty short, and presented rather journalistically. But given the opportunity to flesh the whole story out, Aronofsky presents the events in the same way. The God of the Old Testament is a bastard. And a fascinating, complicated character! He's capricious, vengeful, loving; Moses even argues with him. But He's barely present in this movie.

Aaron: My favorite characters, for exactly this reason, were the Ray Winstone (descendant of Cain) and Logan Lerman (Ham) figures. Winstone's character understands that he is made in the god's image, right? And so this means that everything he does is justified. His decisions are reflections of the god's own decisions. He mirrors the god. He knows this. But still the god refuses to talk to the descendant of Cain. And he begs him: talk to me. Why won't you speak to me? The arbitrariness of the entirety of the god's decisions is so clear in these moments that we spend with Ray Winstone. The god doesn't like that guy, but - as you say - we never really are told why he should choose this guy over the other.

Rick: Probably the deepest problem with the whole movie is that at its heart is a contempt for humanity. There's never a moment where Noah displays uncommon kindness towards another person or even acts in a way that makes him particularly likeable. All he does is stoically look after his family, which is, as Chris Rock once said, what you're supposed to do, motherfucker! And aside from Ham's barely-sketched love interest in the latter half of the film, not one human being who is not a member of Noah's family is portrayed sympathetically. The movie never once encourages us to ask, Hey, maybe God's making a poor choice here, and Noah himself never questions humanity's fate. At the end of the film, Hermione tells Noah that he's a good person because he "chose love." This is a sort of vaguely Catholic-ish value, but the theological idea of love (based on my layman's understanding) is first of all, a New Testament concept, and secondly, not love for your family, but caritas, or love for humanity. Which this movie clearly does not have.

Aronofsky's The Fountain

Aaron:  I found the way that the film portrayed Noah's (not the film's) contempt for humanity strange. Noah totally goes off the deep end, right? I mean, he sincerely believes that humanity needs to end, and I am intrigued by this because there are these radical left-wing sects that believe that the planet would be better off without humanity. Anti-humanists and then other people who refuse to reproduce, who plan only to die out. The film rejects this as completely psychotic, of course, which is why it interests me – as a kind of rupture in a narrative that assumes we all are on the side of heterosexual reproductive futurity. (Which you might style as the vaguely Catholic-ish value "love"). As for Hermione's argument about "love" at the end of the film, the argument is identical to the one that the Descendant of Cain uses. I was made in the god's image, therefore everything that I do is a reflection of the god and, therefore, the right thing to do. This is, to my mind, identical to what she says at the end of the movie: The god chose you because it knew that you would do what is right, therefore, everything you've done is right. I am, I suppose, agreeing with you that the arguments for what is morally correct here are tortured beyond all sense and end up being just vaguely liberal.

Malick's The Tree of Life

Rick: It just seemed utterly drained of any theology or spirituality. I spent the entirety of the film wishing it had been directed by Terrence Malick, because he has a knack for making a scene seem suffused with spiritual meaning (Noah even has an "evolution" sequence somewhat like the one in Tree of Life).

Aaron: An odd thing, really, since Aronofsky's π as well as his later effort The Fountain (both of which I loved), both interrogate spirituality in rich, fascinating ways. But I for one am glad Malick isn't wasting his time on nonsense like this. I was initially interested in this movie because I am interested in revisioning Biblical mythology from modern points of view. I am interested in stories about old gods and our relationships with them. But, as you say, the god doesn't ever show up in Noah. He just flexes his muscles. For me the god was most present in the film when Ray Winstone was begging him to speak to him and he was answered only with silence. This, to me, is a much more modern understanding of how a person's relationship with god might work. Noah has it both ways – three ways, really. The god is an old man with white hair in the mountains, and the god is in the sky sending the rain, and the god is in your dreams at night. The whole thing was a big ol' mess.

Rick: A total mess, with too much CGI, crappy, ponderous writing, one-dimensional characters, and no moral message beyond Be a good person, and maybe don't eat so much meat. Oh, and every human being alive on Earth today is descended from white people.

2012's Nominees: Part 3 of 10

The Tree of Life

3 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line)
• Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men, The New World, Sleepy Hollow, A Little Princess)

Director: Malick

Cast: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan, Fiona Shaw.

This is my favorite movie of the year – and I suppose it was bound to be. When Malick makes a movie it is my favorite movie of the year. That's just how it goes. The master has, of course, never won an Oscar; he will not be winning his first one this year; and I don't imagine him, quite frankly, ever winning an Oscar. And he doesn't need to. He's going to keep making a great movie every five years or so with or without awards, right? I also just want to say that I was over the moon that this made it to be one of the nine Best Picture nominees. I know a lot of people (shout out to Michael, Dayne, and Jordan) for whom this is their absolute favorite picture of the year, but I wasn't really imagining it as one of the nominees. I am delighted. As for Lubezki, his work on the last two films for which he was nominated, The New World and Children of Men was just extraordinary. He's never won, and I just don't think he can be ignored this year. (Incidentally, The New World was my favorite movie of 2005 and Children of Men was my favorite movie of 2006. Coincidence?)

Will Win: Cinematography

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #1 out of 65

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

3 Nominations

• Actor: Gary Oldman
• Adapted Screenplay: Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan
• Original Score: Alberto Iglesias (The Kite Runner, The Constant Gardener)

Director: Tomas Alfredson

Cast: John Hurt, Oldman, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, David Dencik, Ciarán Hinds, Kathy Burke, Simon McBurney, Amanda Fairbank-Hynes.

I loved this movie too! People have found its plot confusing and its acting underwhelming. I had the precise opposite reaction. The number of talented actors in this film is staggering, the plot is completely engaging and unexpected, and the story is a deeply moving one about betrayal, sacrifice, honesty, and loyalty – as well as violence, intrigue, and espionage. Gary Oldman is great, and so is his supporting cast. The score to this film is absolutely gorgeous, and I have been listening to it on a loop for at least a week now. It will not be winning on Oscar night, but it is lovely nonetheless.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #12 out of 65

Albert Nobbs

3 Nominations

• Actress: Glenn Close (Dangerous Liaisons, Fatal Attraction, The Natural, The Big Chill, The World According to Garp)
• Supporting Actress: Janet McTeer (Tumbleweeds)
• Makeup

Director: Rodrigo García

Cast: Close, Mia Wasikowska, Aaron Johnson, McTeer, Brendan Gleeson, Pauline Collins, Phyllida Law, Jonathan Rhys Myers.

This is a very sweet, very small movie that had a couple of excellent sequences and that I liked quite a bit. It is based on a play by Simone Benmussa, and Glenn Close is superb in it. Janet McTeer earns a well-deserved second Oscar nomination: she is fantastic in this. The film itself is a big departure from García's usual work, and I'm not sure if I understand it, but I can see why he was drawn to the material, even if it's not his usual thing.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #25 out of 65

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

3 Nominations

• Art Direction: Stuart Craig (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The English Patient, Chaplin, Dangerous Liaisons, The Mission, Gandhi, The Elephant Man), Stephenie McMillan (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The English Patient)
• Visual Effects
• Makeup

Director: David Yates

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Felton, Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, John Hurt, Evanna Lynch, Matthew Lewis, Jason Isaacs, Helen McCrory, Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, David Thewlis.

No film from the Harry Potter franchise has ever won an Oscar. It's also never been nominated for makeup. So... I think this is the year. The makeup really is extraordinary – that Voldemort face. Seriously. But in this one there is also the makeup job on Ciarán Hinds as Dumbledore's brother and that dead-body-slash-chandelier in the first Voldemort scene. It makes me shudder just to think about it. As for being impartial about this franchise, I don't think I can be. It's easy to say I didn't like The Order of the Phoenix (I didn't) but I love, love, love Harry and Ron and Hermione, and when I recently re-watched The Deathly Hallows: Parts 1 & 2 I was reminded just how good these movies were. Objectivity? Forget about it.

Will Win: Makeup

Could Win: Visual effects

My Rating: #21 out of 65

Oscar Hopes

My favorite day of the year is this Tuesday, January 24th. My friend Jaime calls it my christmas morning.

That's because on Tuesday, at 8.30a, the Oscar nominations will be announced. (You can watch the announcement live here.)

Now, the reason I love this day so much is because nomination morning is all about surprises. By the time the little gold men are handed out in February, we pretty much know how it is all going to break down: who is going to go home with which little gold man can be fairly easy to predict if one has been paying attention (not always, but for the most part). But there are always surprises on nomination morning. People get snubbed. Various branches choose bizarre people to award. Actors no one has been talking about get nominated. It can be really cool.

So instead of posting predictions I would rather actually not predict who is going to get nominated and instead tell you who I'll be rooting for on Tuesday morning.

Alberto Iglesias. He has some great scores this year, and I hope he gets some recognition. Perhaps for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In general. I am definitely rooting for Gary Oldman, but also for a screenplay nomination, editing, and cinematography, as well.

A Separation. I would love it if this got a screenplay nomination as well as a foreign-language nomination.

Win Win. I really liked this picture, and a screenplay nomination would be great.

Tilda. I haven't seen her movie We Have to Talk about Kevin yet, but I love Tilda, and she didn't get a deserved nomination for last year's I Am Love.

Terrence Malick. His movie is my favorite film of the year. Heaven knows the man does not need awards or recognition in order to continue making good pictures, but I am crossing my fingers for the master anyway.

Janet McTeer. I loved her in Albert Nobbs. Here's hoping.

Michael Fassbender. They wouldn't leave him out, would they? They might. I'm crossing my fingers that they don't.

I am also hoping for one or two nominations each for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

And in general I am, of course, hoping that all of my favorite movies do well on Tuesday morning.

What do you all think?

I am so excited...

Summing Up 2011

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?
I went to a Florida State Seminoles' football game. And it was awesome. And I swam in a lake. Unfiltered water is a little creepy, I have to admit. But it was fun. Also I drove to Chicago and, for the first time, presented some of my work on the discourse surrounding male/male rape.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My New Year's resolution for 2011 was to have an approved dissertation prospectus. I crossed that hurdle in early November. 2012's resolution will be a degree in hand.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes. I have a new niece! Sofia Isabella was born on August 23rd. I built a lot of her baby furniture this summer, but I haven't met her yet. I will get to when I am in Los Angeles in December. She is so beautiful. I cannot wait.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully, no.

5. What countries did you visit?
I was in Montréal, QC this Fall for the American Society for Theatre Research's annual conference. It is a gorgeous city.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
A new job.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
On July 3rd I got to officiate at the wedding of my two dearest friends Justin Abarca and Elizabeth Triplett (I have always covertly referred to them on this blog as R&J). It was an incredibly special day – actually an entire weekend of fantastic times. The wedding was beautiful, and they threw a great party in the evening. An experience like this is so humbling and precious. I cannot tell you how meaningful it was to me. It feels so great to have been such a large part of such a special day.

I also had an absolutely great time in New York this May 13th at the reception for my friends Catie and Graeme's wedding. So many people I love were there and I had a great time drinking and dancing and wishing the bride and groom well. Bonus points for the impromptu afterparty we had drinking bud light and generally being raucous in the lobby of the hotel in Hackensack New Jersey.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Hm. It's hard not to feel accomplished this year. I passed my comprehensive exams and I have an approved dissertation prospectus. I have to say, though, that I continue to be most proud of my role as a teacher. It remains the most satisfying career I can think of. Being a teacher also means continually feeling proud of the work of my students and their achievements as learners. I have some truly extraordinary students.

I should also mention that I was extremely proud of the LGBTQ preconference we held at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education's annual conference. We held it at the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago. Our keynote speaker was the amazing Sharon Bridgforth, and for our keynote performance, my friend and mentor Brian Herrera performed his one-man show I Was the Voice of Democracy. It took a lot of planning, but my co-planner Jason Fitzgerald and I ended up really proud of the entire day.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Well, there are many many miniature failures of which I accuse myself every day, but I guess that if I have to pick a single big one, I would go with not publishing either of the two articles I wanted to publish this year. I will send them other places and maybe they will get published, but these kinds of things do make one feel like a failure.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nope.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My buddy Rick was talking up rice-cookers one day when we were on the phone, and I had a gift-card to Williams-Sonoma, so I got myself one. It is a magic miniature devil. I always used to burn rice. No more. This little guy makes perfect rice every time.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My friend and former workout buddy Sean, who moved out to Los Angeles not knowing anyone.
My friend Kalon, who covered an entire dining-room table with nachos.
My friend Elizabeth, who is living her dream of being a writer.
My friend David, who put up a reading of his first play, MMF.
My friend Linda, who deservedly made full professor this year.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
I was absolutely disgusted by anyone and everyone who made the so-called "Anthony Weiner Scandal" into a scandal this summer. The sex-negativity surrounding this brouhaha made me angry beyond belief. A legislator with great ideas is actually driven out of office because he tweets a few pictures of his clothed penis? Are you kidding me?

14. Where did most of your money go?
This is boring but true: my mortgage.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Geoff and Ashley's visits to Tallahassee. Elizabeth and Justin's awesome wedding. The fourteen hours I got to see spend with Julie and then Caleb and then Michael in Manhattan and Brooklyn in May.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

Irving Berlin's "You Can Have Him" sung by Nina Simone. I discovered this on Michael's laptop this summer and fell in love.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier.
b) thinner or fatter? About the same.
c) richer or poorer? Poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Drinking beers with George McConnell.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Grading papers. Worrying about things over which I have no control.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Headed to Los Angeles to see my family in just a few days. I am very excited.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
I didn't fall, but I spent a lot of time falling for a very handsome guy this summer. He's such a good man, and I am grateful to know him.

22. How many one-night stands?
The big zero this year. I'm getting old, I guess. Ha.

23. What was your favorite TV program?
I finished The Wire finally this summer. And I've been watching Oz regularly – I am done with the first four seasons – for my dissertation. But I have to say that I think the show is awful, so calling it my favorite television program is decidedly less than accurate.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
You know, I don't think I do. I must be getting more generous. I will hope that's true.

25. What was the best book you read?
At the beginning of the year I finished Nicole Krauss's amazing Great House, the praises of which I have been singing since. You really must read it. It's wonderful.
Another of my favorite things I read this year is Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question. And I really liked Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
My friend Bryce Page introduced me to James Blake this summer. And then Blake released a second (6-track) CD for 2011 called Enough Thunder, which includes a track with my other 2011 obsession, Justin Vernon.

27. What was the best piece of theatre you saw?
I mostly saw student theatre here at FSU this year. Probably a production of Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife done by two of my students this Spring. I was really excited to finally be able to see a production directed by my friend Michael Stablein in Brooklyn, though, so seeing Stand: an Autumn Play was a highlight for me in 2011.

28. What did you want and get?
A Blu-Ray player. Finally broke down and bought one recently. It's so pretty.

29. What did you want and not get?
An iPad. But who can afford that? I ain't complaining about it either. I do not need one; I just wanted one.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
So far it's Terrence Malick's mindblowing The Tree of Life. I can't imagine anything being better than this picture this year.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned thirty. I celebrated by going to my friends Ashley and Geoff's wedding here in Tallahassee. It was so much fun and I love them a whole lot, and it was kind of a delight to be celebrating something other than my own birthday as I turned thirty. Also, a whole bunch of my friends made me an amazing (and hilarious) DVD wishing me happy birthday. It was coordinated by my friend Mark, and it made my birthday really special.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I cannot think of anything that would have made my year immeasurably more satisfying. The year has been very satisfying. I would have liked the year a lot better if I had been living somewhere other than Tallahassee, but the work gets done, and the world spins forward. It is no good to regret things beyond my control.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
I am starting a new policy of dressing up much more frequently. But this is not a 2011 fashion concept. It is only a lesson I learned this year, which will be implemented in the future.

34. What kept you sane?
Talking to Michael, Ryan, Mark, Catie, and Jaime on the phone (the people in my life who just understand). Hanging out with Drew and George and Ashley and Geoff and Walter and Jeanne and Matt and Jenny in Tallahassee.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Armie Hammer. (Even if I did trash his new movie.)

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
I think I got the angriest about the so-called Anthony Weiner scandal. I was also completely delighted by the performance art of Herman Cain and his phony bid for the Republican presidential nomination. I remain fascinated by the 99% Movement.

37. Who did you miss?
I missed my friend Jaime in Seattle. I missed my friend Michael in Brooklyn. I missed my best friends in Los Angeles. I missed my boys Dayne and Dexter in London. I missed my friends David and Catie in Astoria. I missed my friend Wahima in Sunnyside. I missed a lot of people.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Chad Larabee, obviously.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:
I am learning, this year – and this is a process, of course – to worry less about things over which I have no control, and to spend more time working on the things I can affect on my own. Again and again I am finding that if I buckle down and do my work, if I work hard at producing things of quality and remain a perfectionist with my own tasks, the things I want to happen will follow of their own volition. Other valuable life lessons I learned: about living in the present, and about balance.

40. Share an important quote from 2011:
My friend Geoff Kershner said something to me this year that I am never going to forget. I was telling him how one of my life goals is to make myself smaller.
That's so interesting, he said to me, I see my goal as making other people bigger.

The Tree of Life

If you've read A.O. Scott's review of The Tree of Life in the New York Times then you do not need me to write a review of it.

Scott places Malick in the company of Walt Whitman and Hart Crane and Herman Melville. The film, Scott argues, "stakes out well-traveled territory and excavates primal, eternal meanings". The review is a slam dunk and the film is nothing less than visionary. It demands to be seen. And implores the audience to work at making coherent sense of it.

For my part, I didn't have much trouble allowing the movie's parts to cohere. The film is a delicately cubist (a descriptor which is overused and seems inadequate for The Tree of Life) exploration of a man's grief as he mourns the loss of his brother and asks important questions of god, the universe, his country, and most importantly his parents during this mourning.

The ending is absolutely perfect, and this is so true that the audience at the screening where I saw the film sat quietly while most of the credits rolled.

The Tree of Life is a Terrence Malick film, so I don't need to tell you it's shot breathtakingly, edited beautifully, and scored almost painfully well. Malick is the master. The film demonstrates an ability with form that is, I think, unparalleled in contemporary USAmerican cinema.

So: basically, you should go.

The New Malick

Finally, finally, finally. The trailer for The Master's new movie is out:

Casey Affleck Double Feature

Last week Julie and I went to see Andrew Dominik's ostentatiously titled The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It's a film heavily influenced by Terrence Malick, which means, of course, that I was very fond of it. It's an extremely slow-moving film, and because of this, is able to take every moment and allow tension to build between characters. The suspense that Dominik is able to achieve with the movie is remarkable simply because he's decided not to hurry his way through the plot. So the movie becomes scary, dangerous, taut. It's also incredibly beautiful. The score is sweet and slow, and each shot is gorgeously designed. It's poetic and loving, in a way, and seems exquisitely choreographed. But the truly remarkable thing about James/Ford is the acting. A slow movie like this is obviously a character-driven thing and Dominik has chosen actors who prove fascinating studies. Brad Pitt is scary and unpredictable as Jesse James, and gives an excellent performance, but attention must be paid to Casey Affleck, who gives what is probably going to be my favorite performance by an actor this year. He's nervous and skittish, while maintaining arrogance. He is, obviously, a coward, too, and Affleck isn't afraid of being viewed like this, he lets us see every nervous, disgusting twitch in Robert Ford's eyes. The rest of the cast is fabulous, too. Sam Shepard, Sam Rockwell (!), Paul Schneider, and Garrett Dillahunt are all wonderful. It's great ensemble work, and the way Pitt plays off of them is masterful. Affleck's role is the flashy one—and, as I said, my favorite—but I should make clear that the movie's center is Pitt. He is all-powerful in every scene he inhabits. Pitt makes acting look easy, which is probably why he gets as little notice as he does. I never knew what his next move in James/Ford was going to be, and it is a testament to his work that someone as famous as he is can still constantly surprise.

At a new friend's encouraging I also saw Gone Baby Gone, which stars Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman. The film was directed by Ben Affleck. The direction is smart and Affleck's sense of timing and storytelling are very good. I am excited for his next movie. Gone Baby Gone is a mystery story based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (who penned the less-interesting, much less tightly woven Mystic River). Casey Affleck and Monaghan are private investigators who are asked to look into the disappearance of a little girl. Performances are great all around. It's a genre picture much like Mystic River was, but it is interesting and surprising and maintains engaging throughout. It also turns on a powerful moral question that Casey must answer at the end of the film. This works as a moral conundrum for the audience as well. What is especially fascinating, I think, is the way Ben Affleck handles this turning point. Politically, the film has its heart very much in the right place. It's very intriguing morally. Another point about Affleck's direction that I want to make is that the actors aren't Hollywood-pretty. He's shot the film in the streets of Massachusetts and he's made sure to shoot people who look like real people as extras in his film. To my mind, it's a smart move, and the film seems more honest because of it. A quick shout out about my favorite performance in the film, which is by Amy Madigan, Ed Harris's wife. She has a thankless role that disappears halfway through the film, but her characterization is excellent and she creates the film's most beautiful emotional moments.

Quick Reviews I Haven't Posted Yet

I'm behind on telling y'all what I've been seeing lately. All of a sudden I have things to do and projects to work on and friends who want to spend time with me. So here we go

Theatre:

Swan Lake, in a fabulous, completely thrilling production by Matthew Bourne returned to Los Angeles and is at the Ahmanson now (or will be until Sunday night). I saw it in the highest seats in the theatre and in a packed house last Thursday night. I totally loved it. Matthew Bourne is a genius, if a bit self-conscious, and the production is superb. This show is awesome and not to be missed. Thankfully, you can all get it on DVD since the show is almost ten years old.

Mother Courage and Her Children at Cal Poly Pomona's Theatre Department (my alma mater and on-again-off-again employer) was dreadful. It's a shame, too. Many of my former students were in the show and there is a lot of talent in the department: it just needs to be trained and tapped in the right ways. Letting the actors loose with little to no direction and giving them Brecht to speak is no way to teach a group of young actors anything, unfortunately, and that is just what happened with this production. It's closed, now, thankfully, so let's all start putting it behind us and move on to something more closely resembling good theatre.

Old Movies:

Terrence Malick's Badlands, his first feature film, is a really good film about disaffected youths (there are so many of these). I saw this movie after seeing Malick's other three (later) features, so I can only really watch it through the lens of Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World. So to me, Badlands is a fascinating piece about the loss of innocence and our ability to be controlled by forces around us; led, if you will, by those who are stronger than us. I don't necessarily mean forced or raped or anything like that, but just influenced, by will perhaps, by those we love and those who wish to affect us (and maybe even those who don't want anything from us.)

Carol Reed's film noir piece The Third Man is widely considered one of the best in the genre. It stars Joseph Cotten mostly with Orson Welles appearing eventually. Most everyone has seen this movie and I know I'm sort of late to the game on this one. I liked it, and it's rather good film noir, but not quite black and white enough for my taste (too much happens during the day). I kept wishing someone slightly stronger than Cotten was leading me around that the script was a little more hard-boiled. It's written by Graham Greene, so I should've expected it to lean toward the Romantic, and perhaps that's placing an unwanted requirement on the film. I don't know; once you've seen Robert Siodmak's The Killers, I don't think there's anywhere to go but down. Still, Welles is great, there are some really cool lighting moments and the chase scene at the end is awesome.

Movies from 2005:

Zhangke Jia's The World is a slow-paced Chinese movie that reminded me a lot of Tsai Ming-Liang's Goodbye Dragon Inn. The World is not quite as slow as that, but it sure takes its time. It follows several people around a theme park in Beijing that (get this) has replicas of monuments and buildings from all over the world. The main character performs in these huge extravaganza shows that are not like anything so much as those enormous dance shows staged by Lorenz Ziegfeld in the early part of the Twentieth century. It's mostly about consumer culture and how Capitalism is ruining China, but it's often touching and powerful. The end is awful and a huge letdown, but I liked it more than I disliked it. #63 out of 85 films.

And this morning I finally got to see Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, which everyone should go see. It's easily the best animated film that came out last year and should undoubtedly have won the Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards (but then, they didn't hand out Best Picture correctly, either, did they?) I loved this movie. It's absolutely bursting with awesome vistas and new-fangled magic. It's powerful and moving and it had stolen my heart after the first twenty minutes. It also features the voices of Jean Simmons, Lauren Bacall, Christian Bale and (!) Billy Crystal. Rent this one for sure. Miyazaki is the mastermind behind Spirited Away and I think I may like Howl's Moving Castle even better than that film and that's saying a ton.

Movies from 2006:

Christian Carion's Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas), which was France's entry for Best Foreign Language Feature last year, totally sucks and it shouldn't have even been nominated. It's a cheese-ball pile of silliness with few redeeming qualities. It will probably be one of the worst movies on my list for 2006. Joyeux Noël is full of hokey laugh-out-loud sequences that require all suspension of disbelief but ask to be taken with complete seriousness. More than once I said "Give me a break!" out loud in the theatre and had to be shushed by strangers. This film is allegedly based on true events, but I didn't believe a bit of it.

Thankfully, I followed up Joyeux Noël by going to see last year's winner of the Oscar for Foreign Language Film: Gavin Hood's Tsotsi. And let me tell you, this movie deserved its award. It connects to the audience immediately and never looks back. I couldn't help but love the anti-hero at the center of the film and I wanted him to succeed more than anything. Presley Chweneyagae, who plays the main character is mesmerizing and compelling. There is no way to watch this movie and not fall totally in love with him. Go see it.

Oscar Nominees: Part Three

JUNEBUG

1 Nomination: Best Supporting Actress
A Really great film, buoyed by excellent performances all around. The script is really great, too. I wish this film had gotten more recognition, but I suppose I should just be happy Amy Adams nabbed a nomination.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Supporting Actress (I hope I hope I hope)
My Rating: #8 out of 82 films

MATCH POINT

1 Nomination: Best Original Screenplay
Woody Allen's return to greatness? Pretty much... or so it appears. I have loved Woody Allen for years and it's nice to see him get another Oscar nomination. The last one was eight years ago for Deconstructing Harry.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #13 out of 82 films

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE

1 Nomination: Best Original Screenplay
Clever little film with truly odious characters. This movie was critically acclaimed and truly deserves its nomination, but it hasn't a prayer to win... and I don't really think it ought to, either. My reasoning for this is chiefly based on the horrible, horrible outfits Laura Linney wore throughout.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #55 out of 82 films

THE NEW WORLD

1 Nomination: Best Cinematography
My favorite film of the year and the most maligned by the Academy of all the films nominated. It probably suffered from its extremely late release date. But it is a truly gorgeous film and Emmanuel Lubeski very much deserves his nomination.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #1 out of 82 films

BATMAN BEGINS

1 Nomination: Best Cinematography
The best comic book movie that's come out in a long time. Christopher Nolan did great work with the Batman mythology and everyone in Hollywood was pleased. I expected it, frankly, to perform better on nomination morning, but a B-picture is a B-picture, and action films aren't usually the stuff of Oscars. A shame, because the costume design and art direction for this film were excellent, and the score (disqualified by the Academy—too many composers) had people talking as well.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #29 out of 82 films

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

1 Nomination: Best Costume Design
Tim Burton! Hi! I'm Tim Burton! Look at how weird I am! I'm being mean. I actually really liked this movie, but I guess I'm one of very few. Everyone else seemed to really dislike it. It's box office was pretty good, but critics panned it and none of my friends liked it either.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #34 out of 82 films

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

1 Nomination: Best Art Direction
How this missed for Visual Effects I just don't know. Ah well. Harry Potter has all the money in the world. He doesn't need a bunch of Oscar nominations to boot.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #26 out of 82 films

STAR WARS - EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH

1 Nomination: Best Makeup
No comment. Why did I see this movie again?
Will Win: Jack Shit Nothing
Could Win: Visual Effects
My Rating: #82 out of 82 films

The New World

Tonight I went to the Arclight to see Terrence Malick's The New World. I should write a proper review of the film, but I can't really handle that right now. Instead I will say that I am absolutely ecstatic about this film. I feel a little bit drunk on it, if you know what I mean. Like I was feeding off of the film and now it's over and I'm a little helpless. It's a wonderful, sensory-overload kind of thing with two lovely performances at its core. Colin Farrell's John Smith is a haunted, tender man and the new-to-cinema Q'orianka Kilcher's Pocahantas is a rare gem of a performance. In this girl's eyes are held everything anyone could ever hope for: the rise and fall of nations, pain like you wouldn't believe, and all the forgiveness in the world. I'm sold. The movie is wonderful: a feast for the eyes and ears. The cinematography is so stunning I wanted to cry and the score (by James Horner) is heartbreakingly lovely.

I had planned on seeing The New World tonight anyway, but when I got home from the Airport, I read an item saying that tonight was the very last night that this current version of the film will be playing. After tonight, they will replace this version with a shorter-by-seventeen-minutes cut of the film. I'm glad I saw the cut I did.

I moved The New World to number one on my list for the year. Malick may not be your thing, but it's definitely mine, so I'm recommending it to everyone. Go see it.