Comments & Review
Movie Diary
After the Grammy Awards, one can hardly wait for the four hour Republican Hate-a-thon known as the Oscars. Only at the Oscars do we learn that Heath Ledger is the second coming of John Wayne or that the vile exercise in pederasty known as American Beauty deserves the title of “Best Picture.” This year’s Oscars promise more big mouthed and small brained “actors” spouting off while most of America hits the mute button but it also includes a few pretty good pictures, some of which will be discussed in the next week.
Best Picture Nominee
Little Miss Sunshine
It seems the typical American family as portrayed in Hollywood has come to resemble the Manson family more and more every year. Certainly the Hoovers of New Mexico have some genetic connection to old Charlie. The father, played by Greg Kinnear portrays Tony Robbins as a family man, spouting off his nine steps to happiness throughout the film even as he follows the nine steps to personal bankruptcy. His wife simultaneously yells at him and tries to keep the family together, which is a losing proposition. Her daughter, played by Abigail Breslin, is a pudgy beauty pageant star wannabe with little talent but a band of family groupies praising her abilities. Named Olive – Rosie would have been more realistic – she suffers from the same delusions as the rest of the brood.
Her brother is a malcontent who refuses to speak but wants to enter the Air Force. He spends much of the movie moping around, writing notes while everyone watching hopes he will never get behind the controls of a plane. Fortunately he is color blind, preventing him from serving in the force and cutting short a career that likely would have ended with him driving halfway around the country wearing adult diapers in order to pepper spray a romantic rival.
By far the best characters are the father, played by Alan Arkin, who earned a best supporting actor nomination but doesn’t deserve to win. He snorts heroin and provides his grandson with advice on women, favoring quantity over quality. The uncle, played by the always humorous Steve Carell, is a world renown expert on Proust – I think the writer not the 1984 winner of the World Series of Poker Main Event – and who tried to commit suicide when his male student decided he liked another professor more, much more.
The whole band is headed to California for Olive to appear in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. They are plague by misfortune after misfortune as they bicker about the meaning of life and happiness. Aaahh, reminds me of all of my family vacations. Unfortunately the pageant is less about talent and more about training the next Anna Nicole Smith and proves to be a disaster for the entire family. Usually pageants end with a song, this one ends with a plea agreement.
Overall there are funny moments, the malfunctioning horn, Steve Carell buying magazines at a gas station, Olive’s musical number, but it is not a movie that remains memorable, not a best picture. Alan Arkin was believable as the grandfather but the best lines about him come after he has died. Abigail Breslin is effective as the child who only wants to perform with the funniest scene being her musical number and the shocked and outraged expressions of those Little Miss Sunshine hardliners. She could be a surprise choice for the best supporting actress, the youngest since Tatum O’Neal and Bad News Bears.
The Departed
L.A. Confidential. That is my advice to anyone who wants to see a movie portraying crooked cops, gangsters and lots of blood spatter. The Departed tries to steal some of the magic from L.A. Confidential but stumbles badly. Though Martin Scorsese directed one of his typical gangster movies, the screenplay and the actors let down what could be a fascinating and exciting movie.
The two main characters, Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio – Leo not Leonardo, there is one Leonardo and he has been dead for several centuries – are cops who take different roads in their career. Damon is the good boy with the spotless record who also works for the Irish mobster played by Jack Nicholson. Dicaprio is the hard edged cop with family connections to Nicholson but who is convinced to go undercover to catch Nicholson. That is the first thirty minutes of the movie then the rest becomes cell phones, brutal incompetence and lots of blood spattering.
The Cops: Rarely have there been three more incompetent people trying to catch criminals. The leader of the enterprise to catch Nicholson is played by Alec Baldwin, who provides his typical over the top performance as a dull witted leader who makes all the wrong choices. Beneath him are Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg. Sheen is not a convincing cop, spending most of his time with that silly grin on his face that looks as if he bought an expired tube of Denture grip and his teeth are slipping. The only positive part of his performance was the header he took off the ten story building, providing a measure of pay back for seven years of the West Wing. Wahlberg is a bit better, a foul mouthed cop who loves to insult people, without much effect. His best scene is the last one, making everyone feel better and providing the best example of blood spatter.
The Robbers: Jack Nicholson can play a lot of characters but an Irish mobster just does not fit him. His smirking, smart aleck comments seem to be jokes lacking punch lines rather than threats that make the heart chill. He knows there is a police spy in his operation but doesn’t do what most mobsters would, torture until they confess. Instead he engages in long conversations that go nowhere and solve nothing but allow the movie to drag on between blood spatters. Only his thugs were frightening with Nicholson’s bad comb over hardly making one’s blood crawl.
By far the most convincing character is DiCaprio though again he is stuck in long discussions with his psychiatrist and with Nicholson. His darting eyes and nervous agitation certainly suggest he is in danger though it seems none of his fellow criminals seem to notice. Damon as the crooked cop is less believable, his sputtering and the lame explanation he provides for being found with three dead cops at his feet were exercises in creative script writing rather than reality.
Then there were the cell phones. Everyone using cell phones, cell phones ringing, text messages being sent, whispered conversations, all sponsored, I suspect, by Verizon. At least if your cell phone goes off while watching the movie no one will notice. If the cell phones were not annoying enough there were the endless connections. Damon is living with Dicaprio’s shrink, Nicholson is an FBI informant, there is more than one mole in the police force, all of it making a mess of a story that is only corrected by a murder spree at the end, a typical Scorsese way of preventing sequels.
While the film was not Scorsese’s best, I preferred Casino and GoodFellas among his more recent gangster works, he does do a good job at creating tension with his shots and in making sense out of a movie that appeared to lose its way about two thirds into the plot.
Last Update 01/15/2007 | ©2007
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