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What's
new
1/3/09
New
Blog Entry
Crix
Nix Crix Picks: Catching up with the Awards Season
12/31/08
New
Feature Article
The
Best Movies of 2008
New
Reviews of
Doubt
****
Valkyrie
***1/2
12/30/08
New
Reviews of
Slumdog
Millionaire ***
The
Spirit ***
New
Blog Entry
The
10 Worst Movies of 2008
12/26/08
New
Review of
Bedtime
Stories ***1/2
12/21/08
New
Review of
Seven
Pounds **
12/16/08
New
Review of
...Around
****
12/14/08
New
Blog Entry
Wolverine
Hosts the Oscars and the Awards Season Marches On
12/13/08
New
Review of
The
Day the Earth Stood Still ***1/2
12/10/08
New
Blog Entry
Slumdog,
WALL*E and Milk! Oh, My!
12/6/08
New
Review of
Nobel
Son **1/2
12/5/08
New
Review of
RocknRolla
***
12/4/08
New
Blog Entry
...And
So It Begins: Award Time!
11/30/08
New
Reviews of
Australia
*
Bolt
3D ****
Transporter
3 **1/2
New
Blog Entry
The
Small Market Movie Blues
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Cream
of the Crop
The Best
Movie Currently in Wide Release

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Doubt
"Upon divesting its'
development slate of projects like Ali, About Schmidt and
The
Shipping News in the late 90's, Sony chairman John Calley uttered these
immortal words: “We're not going to make movies for audiences that
need to be dynamited out of their homes.” He was only saying aloud
what most of the industry was thinking, as the era when Saving Private
Ryan and Armageddon could co-exist as 1998's two 200 million
dollar grossers gave way to the one in which no non-franchise drama grossed
100 million this year. What happened? Sure, there was a whole
lot of self-fulfilling babble about home theaters and DVDs, but the truth
of the matter is that drama as a genre got labeled with a scarlet
B
for an entire generation of moviegoers. And, yes, just as a good
many action movies and comedies are soul-numbingly stupid, a good many
dramas are a tad, er, deliberate. But I have come here to tell you
that it need not always be so. In the right hands, a filmed stage
play about a couple of nuns wondering if their Priest has “acted inappropriately”
toward a Catholic school student can emerge as the year's most gripping
thriller. That play is Doubt, brilliantly adapted and directed
by Pulitzer-winner John Patrick Shanley. In addition to his, the
hands are those of actors Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams
and Viola Davis, who make every one of his ever-so-carefully chosen words
cause to perch on the edge of our seat.... Shanley wrote the Tony-winning
play and won the Pulitzer for it, so the credit his brilliantly observed
dialog and cleverly designed story deserve is unquestionable. But
in only his second outing as director (the other being the 20-year-old
cult favorite Joe vs. the Volcano), he has a perfect sense of how
to make this material work on screen. He doesn't just open the locations
up by taking a number of scenes outside, he makes the cold a character.
As someone who's lived in the Northeast all my life, I can tell you that
a woman sitting on a bench thinking in the middle of December is thinking
about something bad, because otherwise she'd be doing it indoors.
And he takes advantage of all sorts of subtle ways to make the indoor scenes
cinematic, tilting the camera at odd angles to increase our unease and
using the noises of that creaky old school (and a ringing phone) to maximum
benefit. Some directors know what scares us: here, Shanley
knows what makes us uncomfortable, and he goes to it early and often...Doubt
gripped me from almost its' first frame and never let me go because I believed
in these characters and I cared about not just what happened to them but
about the answer to its' maddeningly unanswerable central question.
Watching acting this good is its' own reward, but Doubt allows you
to double-dip by putting it in the middle of a truly sensational story.
Yes, Virginia, there is still great drama at the movies. Don't make
me bring the dynamite to get you to it." |
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The
View From the Balcony:
Lamar's
Blog
1/3/09
Crix
Nix Crix Picks: Catching up with the Awards Season
Here,
at last, is what I've been waiting for! While I was busy stuffing
my face with December releases and wrapping presents, pretty much every
critics group known to man (why, I ask again, why is there no Pennsylvania
Film Critics' Society? Not Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, the whole state,
nothing!) announced their awards for 2008. And what do I see?
Variety! Consensus has emerged in only a few categories, where the
late Heath Ledger has stood mostly (but not entirely) unopposed for his
work in The Dark Knight, ditto Best Documentary
front-runner Man on Wire. And no one has knocked WALL*E
off its' perch as Best Animated Feature. So, bucking all recent trends
toward sameness and boredom, the awards season remains just as interesting
as when it began even as we close in on the increasingly contrarian Golden
Globes. Here's a quick rundown of everything that's been awarded
since I last blogged on the subject:
BEST
PICTURE
The
Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Houston, St. Louis)
The
Dark Knight (African-American Critics, Austin, Utah)
Frost/Nixon
(Las Vegas)
Happy
Go Lucky (Satellite Awards Comedy)
Milk
(San Francisco, Southeastern)
Slumdog
Millionaire (Dallas/Ft. Worth, Detroit, Florida, New York Online, Oklahoma,
Phoenix, San Diego, Satellite Awards Drama, Women Film Journalists)
WALL*E
(Chicago)
Waltz
With Bashir (National Society of Film Critics)
Wendy
and Lucy (Toronto)
BEST
DIRECTOR
Danny
Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire (African-American
Critics, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Florida, Houston, Detroit, New York
Online, Oklahoma, Phoenix, San Diego, St. Louis, Southeastern, Women Film
Journalists)
Jonathan
Demme, Rachel Getting Married (Toronto)
Mike
Leigh, Happy Go Lucky (National Society of Film Critics)
Ron
Howard, Frost/Nixon (Las Vegas)
Christopher
Nolan, The Dark Knight (Austin)
Andrew
Stanton, WALL*E (Utah)
Gus
Van Sant, Milk (San Francisco)
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more
Blog
Archive
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