My wildcard pick this year is Oliver Stone’s addictive,
blistering Savages about the weed
business. Depending on how you look at this brash and reckless movie, you may
deem it a frustrating failure or an exhilarating entertainment. Then again, why
choose? Oliver Stone does the equivalent of bringing an Uzi to an
archery range. He makes quite the mess of things but you can’t say he doesn’t
hit his target. The movie is too long and the ending is a strange, ungainly
disaster but I can’t say that any other movie this year shocked or thrilled me
more. If you’re looking for the most bang for your buck, look no further.
Honorable Mention: Argo (Original Review)
A terrific audience-pleaser and perhaps the best thriller of
the year, director Ben Affleck’s Argo is
great, edge-of-your-seat entertainment. It tells the absurd, true story of a
CIA mission that faked a movie production to retrieve a group of American
citizens during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. The movie acknowledges the
fraught international politics of the time but is first and foremost a daring
rescue movie. This one is loads of fun and smart to boot.
At the end of The Master
there are loose ends left untied and mysteries that go unexplained. Frustration
with the film’s anticlimax and lack of a resolution is perfectly natural. But
part of the fun of this movie – and this is assuming you share my idea of fun –
is sifting through this strange and fascinating drama and guessing at what it
could all possibly mean.
This is not to say the film is some sort of scholarly
exercise; it’s much better than that. Watch the bizarre bond that forms between
a mentally unstable WWII veteran named Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, unhinged
and with a wild look in his eye) and Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman,
never better), the charismatic leader of a dubious New Age church. Their
relationship twists and turns as the two men gain power and leverage over one
another. The Master is a half-mad swirl
of sexual impulses, pseudo-scientific babble and violent outbursts. I can’t say
I understood it all but I was never bored.
There are a number of thorny issues at play in Zero Dark
Thirty – the use of torture on political
detainees, the gender politics of women in government – but the heart of the
film drives at a larger, more encompassing question: Is the ultimate objective
of the War on Terror to protect the homeland from future attacks or to punish
those responsible for 9/11? For Maya (an intensely focused Jessica Chastain), the
distinction is irrelevant. Either way the goal is the same – take out Osama bin
Laden.
The film is a historical approximation of the leads and
events that resulted in bin Laden’s death on May 2, 2011, but what elevates it
beyond the level of a made-for-TV movie is director Kathryn Bigelow’s
remarkable craftsmanship and eye for poetic detail. The final assault on bin
Laden’s compound – a flurry of night vision green and fiery explosions set
against the darkness of night – is as tense as any action movie. When the dust
clears, the human drama ends on a note of bittersweet uncertainty. Whether bin
Laden was killed for the sake of homeland security or justice may not matter
from a military perspective but emotionally how does one reconcile the two and
move on?
3) Amour
Amour is a movie of
few words so it seems wrong to use too many here to describe its greatness.
This quiet, poignant love story follows an elderly couple as the husband
grapples with the deteriorating health of his wife. Through the keen direction
of Michael Haneke the film reveals intimate depths of its characters’ emotional
lives often with little or no dialogue.
Amour is a
devastating study of life and love in its final stages. It explores the
difficulty of dying with dignity and of finally letting go when the time is
right, but it is not all doom and gloom. Few movies are this honest and true.
Every moment in it feels real and its message is ultimately life affirming.
2) Lincoln (Original Review)
There’s no sense in hiding it. Director Steven Spielberg and
screenwriter Tony Kushner’s Lincoln is a
history lesson. But what this impressive, entertaining movie shows us is that
the participants of history were real people with large personalities, not some
culmination of dates and facts like our high school curriculum might have us
believe. They were politicians who were as prone to grandstanding and as
stubbornly biased as today’s elected officials are. Lincoln’s thirteenth
amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, was an ambitious piece
of legislation and its passage required bravery and political cunning, but also
bribery.
There is no mistaking that Lincoln is a Steven Spielberg prestige picture – it is
beautifully shot and features a slew of exceptional performances that will no
doubt make the Oscar voters swoon – but it is also vibrant and alive in a way
few period pieces are. Abraham Lincoln and the congressmen of his time
understood they were making history but for them it was a very real present
where victory was far from certain. History lessons are rarely as fascinating
and exciting as this one.
Moonrise Kingdom has
the warm feel of a half-forgotten childhood memory and director Wes Anderson
brings it to life with the visual whimsy of a picture book. The movie breezes
by, telling the story of Sam and Suzy (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, each
pitch perfect), two lovesick kids who run away from home to be with one
another. They are mature beyond their years and yet also heartbreakingly naïve,
blissfully unaware of the crushing reality that awaits them outside the bubble
of childhood.
This sad fact of life is not lost on the other inhabitants
of the small New England island where the film takes place. The remaining cast
of characters, a motley crew of melancholic grown-ups, drift in and out of the
picture, desperate to find Sam and Suzy while also preoccupied with their own
adult problems. Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola’s script finds bittersweet humor
in their characters’ lives but never condescends to them. This blend of comedy
and pathos is a delicate balancing act but Wes Anderson and his terrific cast –
including Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Ed Norton and Bruce Willis – walk the
tightrope wonderfully.
Much like the private cove its young heroes discover and
seek refuge in (and also gives the film its name), Moonrise Kingdom is an inviting paradise. One visit is not enough.
- Steven Avigliano, 2/24/13
