Roger Ebert: Farewell and Thank You

I haven't done the actual counting, but by my best guess, at least 20 percent of my blog posts are all or partially about why I haven't been writing lately.

There are lots of long-winded explanations about work schedules and business travel and selling homes and choir rehearsals and blah, blah, blah.... But none of them get to the heart of the matter, which is this:  I've never made writing a priority.  It's not the first thing I do, but the last; a luxury not an essential, a pastime to be indulged only after the chores are done, the checkbook is balanced, the closets are organized..... you get the picture.

Only very recently did it occur to me that it may be time to turn this kind of thinking on its head.  It is not a coincidence that this revelation has come to me at a time when the country is mourning the loss of its most popular and, arguably, most prolific film critic - Roger Ebert.

To begin at the beginning....

Ebert didn't figure largely in my early awareness of film and film criticism, despite the fact that I grew up well within the reach of Chicago media.  My family was a Tribune-reading household, so it was Ebert's rival, Gene Siskel, whose writing informed my early tastes in film and my ideas of what film criticism could be.  I was in my teens when Siskel joined Ebert 'in the balcony' for Sneak Previews, the PBS forerunner of the ground-breaking film review show that would later become Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, and propel the Windy City duo to national fame.

Back in those early days, I watched Sneak Previews every week with the greatest enthusiasm, and it seemed to me that Siskel was the smarter, more persuasive of the two stars, more discerning in his tastes and relentless in his badgering of Ebert whenever the latter professed to have enjoyed some unambitious, mainstream popcorn movie.  Those perceptions were obviously biased, fuelled by youthful arrogance and a good deal of "Tribune snobbery" (my image of the Sun-Times, based on nothing that I can substantiate, was of a shoddier, downmarket paper - and that was years before it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch.)

But meeting Gene Siskel in person in 1993 was a turning point.  I ran into him at a movie memorabilia collector's show in the Chicago suburbs.  It took me a second to realize who he was; I approached him shyly and asked as politely and quietly as I could "Aren't you Gene Siskel?"

Before I could say another word, he grabbed a program out of my hand, signed his name on it in a hurried, irritated way, and moved quickly on. At no time, did he make eye contact. His behavior was all the more puzzling because I hadn't asked - or even thought to ask - for an autograph.  All I wanted was to tell him what his writing had meant to me as a young film lover, and then-aspiring critic myself. But he clearly wasn't interested in hearing it.  

After that day, my perceptions of Siskel and Ebert were completely turned around.  I'd watch them together on At the Movies or the Letterman show and decide that Siskel was the pushier, snottier, more annoying of the two, whereas Ebert was the nice, smart 'regular guy.' 

Looking back from my middle-aged perspective, of course I understand that none of my perceptions were entirely accurate or fair.  Maybe Siskel was having a bad day or was seriously rushed for time when I approached him. Maybe - probably - Ebert had surly, cranky moments himself.  But a bad experience with a one-time idol can be a powerful thing, and I sometimes wondered how Ebert would have responded to me if I'd encountered him at the movie memorabilia show that day.  I still like to believe it would have gone down quite differently. From the many accounts I have read over the past few days, it's clear he was an approachable and congenial man,passionately interested in encouraging young people to write. (See this letter he wrote to then middle-schooler Dana Stevens who went on to write about film for Slate.)  

In fact, just about everything I've read about the man - not just in the three days since his death, but for the last several years - has only increased my admiration and respect for him.  His response to his long battle with cancer is particularly astonishing and humbling.  At a time when most people would curl up and retreat from the world, Ebert got busy and put it all out there - first and foremost on rogerebert.com, which is one of my favorite places to hang out, so to speak.  His smart, robust, deceptively conversational prose goes straight to the heart of every film he reviews.  Few other critics engage so passionately and personally with every film they review.  Even when I vehemently disagreed with him, I still found Ebert's work fascinating and a joy to read.  I seek out his reviews of almost every film I see, not the new releases, but older films and classics that I am slowly making my way through discovering. And I cheered on every one of his entries in the weekly New Yorker cartoon caption contest.  Spend much time on his site, and you'd realize you weren't just dealing with a film critic, but with an man consumed by enthusiasm and a vibrant passion for life itself.

But of all the things Roger wrote, here's the passage that has been stuck in my brain for the last few days:

“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try.”

That was written by a man who had lost his jaw - and with it his abilities to speak and to eat solid food - and yet was still writing prolifically and living life with passion and vibrancy.  (Hell, the man even wrote a cookbook!)  I have remembered these words often in the last three days - when I'm in stalled traffic and getting irritated, when I'm frustrated and tired and within an inch of letting go with a cranky remark - and they serve as both rebuke and instruction to me, a gentle but powerful reminder that no matter how bad life gets, there is no excuse for making it worse with my own anger or bad behavior.  Roger Ebert didn't do that, even when his ill health would have given him every justification to do so.  

I never did meet Roger Ebert, never attracted him to my blog, - although many of my blogging colleagues  have rightfully received his notice and blessing; it speaks to his generosity that he was so willing to promote others' writing as well as his own.  But the way he lived and the way he wrote have been a legacy to me.  Part of that quote is about how making ourselves happy is the first step to bringing happiness into the larger world.  Few things make me as happy as writing, and it's a joy I've denied myself for too long.  It's time for me to get busy again.

Thank you, Mr. Ebert for sharing your joy and your passionate love of film.  There is - was - no other critic like you.

The Oscars 2013: The Good, the Bad, the Overlooked and the Undeserving

Not much is certain about this year's Oscars, but I have one prediction for tomorrow night's award ceremony in which I am absolutely confident:  It's going to be a wild ride.

Let's start with this year's host:

Seth MacFarlane, the wildly talented creator of "Family Guy," is bright, funny, and sings like a dream.  All good for an Oscar host, right?  But MacFarlane's humor is notoriously raunchy and mean-spirited. (See "Family Guy"'s gratuitously nasty swipes at this year's underdog darling, Ben Affleck here and here.  Or this legendary insult to Best Supporting Actress nominee Helen Hunt.) It remains to be seen whether he reins it in or goes all Ricky Gervais on us.  I, for one, will be watching him in nervous anticipation of cringe-inducing missteps - as I suspect Affleck, Hunt and countless others will be..

Then there are the awards themselves.  As a fascinated Oscar observer since the age of 11(the year Patton won Best Picture in case you're wondering), I can't recall a year in which the races for most major awards have been so volatile and unpredictable,with favorites in the major categories changing almost weekly and backlash upon backlash affecting the odds.  The only really safe bet at this point is that Daniel Day Lewis will take home his third Best Actor trophy for his legendary portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. 

So it is with great trepidation that I play the annual parlor game of second-guessing the Academy:

Best Supporting Actress

Will - and should - win:  Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables

Talk about backlash!  Hathaway is the odds-on favorite in this category, having scooped up an armload of major awards already for her electrifying portrayal of Fantine, the factory-worker-turned-prostitute who gets beaten up and spit out by life.  There's been lots of spiteful chatter in the blogosphere and elsewhere of late about Hathaway's overeager geekiness and awkward acceptance speeches - but so-the-fuck-what?  Anyone who saw Les Miserables knows she killed in that role, and if all her preparation (extreme weight loss, extensive research, eschewing her contacts lenses to give the character a limiting myopia) helped her give that emotionally devastating performance, then let her talk about it!! No one beats up on Robert DeNiro  or Daniel Day Lewis for that kind of stuff - but then, they aren't young women.  

Overlooked:  No One!

Seems almost impossible, but this year, I can't think of a single actress who was unfairly overlooked in this category.  For once, the Oscars got it right.

Best Supporting Actor:  

Will win:  I have no idea!!!

This category is seriously up for grabs.  At this point, I think the only nominee we can rule out completely is Alan Arkin for Argo.  Any of the other four actors - Robert DeNiro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christoph Waltz or Tommy Lee Jones  - could conceivably get that winner's call to the podium, and I'm not going to commit to a prediction until I fill out my Oscar party ballot at 6:00 tomorrow night.

Should win:  Robert De Niro in Silver Linings Playbook

Every actor in this category is great, and every one of them gave a stellar performance (as far as I know anyway- I actually have yet to see Django Unchained, but I've never seen Waltz be anything less than mesmerizing onscreen).  Jones was my early choice, but - having now see Lincoln twice - I realize that I never forget I'm watching Tommy Lee Jones give that part the ole-crotchety-Tommy-Lee-Jones spin. And seeing Silver Linings Playbook for the second time, just this afternoon, I realized that DeNiro is giving his best performance in years as the tough, tender, obsessive-compulsive father and rabid Philadelphia Eagles fan. There's not a single moment when he's onscreen that doesn't resonate with emotional authenticity, yet it's a light, subtle performance, carefully calibrated and utterly brilliant.

Overlooked:  Tom Holland in The Impossible

Naomi Watts is getting all the award buzz for The Impossible, but for the life of me, I can't understand why. The real stand-out performance in that film - the one that holds the whole story together - is young Tom Holland's.  Technically it's a leading role, but had Holland been nominated, it likely would have been in the supporting category since he's a kid, Quvenzhane Wallis' Best Actress nod notwithstanding.

Best Actress

Will  - and Should -Win:  Jennifer Lawrence in The Silver Linings Playbook

After some early buzz for Jennifer Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, Lawrence has emerged as the likely winner in this category, while Emanuelle Riva is the critical darling/dark horse of the race.  I respect the hell out of Riva's brave, heartbreaking no-vanity performance in Amour, but Lawrence's is the performance I want to watch over and over again.  She's a rarity among today's overexposed It girls - a fearless, ferocious young actress who never hits a false note, and as the young widow whose tough love redeems a troubled Bradley Cooper, she is is the brightest light in a uniformly terrific ensemble cast.

Overlooked:  Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea

Where is the Oscar love for Weisz's luminous performance?  She scooped up a New York Critic's Circle award and a Golden Globe nomination, but Oscar overlooked her and it is a crime.

Best Actor

Will - and Should - Win: Daniel Day Lewis in Lincoln

The only major category that is absolutely locked down and dead certain is Best Actor - and a record third  win - for the phenomenon that is Daniel Day Lewis.  In a perfect world, Joaquin Phoenix would have received more attention for his brilliant turn in The Master.  But Day Lewis gave a legendary performance while playing a legend, and he'll rightfully take home the trophy.

Overlooked: Jack Black in Bernie.....

... and John Hawkes in The Sessions

Speaking of events taking place in a perfect world, another would be the absence of Hugh Jackman from this list of nominees.  Instead, we'd see one of these talented gentlemen in the running. Black's sweet, guileless Texas funeral director-and unwitting murderer - was about as far from his usual comic wild-man persona as it was possible to get, but he fully inhabited that role with in any way commenting on or condescending to it.  Hawkes was sensitive and funny as the quadriplegic looking for intimacy.  If his co-star, Helen Hunt, deserves her nomination (and she does), Hawkes deserves one equally.

Best Director

Will Win:  Ang Lee for Life of Pi

Poor Steven Spielberg.  He was the strong early favorite in this category, but somehow over the weeks since the nominations were announced, Lincoln has acquired a tarnished (and unfair) reputation as a tedious history lesson and the mighty Spielberg lost his Oscar momentum. (Meanwhile, every other awards-giving body in Hollywood has bestowed sour grapes accolades on Oscar-snubbed Argo director Ben Affleck.)  Ang Lee has emerged as the new front-runner, and that's not a bad thing.  He made a moving and exciting film from a novel that was considered unfilmable, using unknown actors and stunningly lifelike CGI animals.

Should Win:  David O. Russell for The Silver Linings Playbook

All due respect to Spielberg and the undeniable achievement of Lincoln, as well as to Michael Haneke's unsparing and grimly unsentimental Amour. But (of the directors actually nominated) my heart belongs to Russell. It's no accident that Silver Linings Playbook has nominees in every acting category. Russell knows how to bring humor, emotional truth, and a sense of place and history into stories of troubled families.  His films holds up beautifully to repeat viewings.

Overlooked:  P. T. Anderson for The Master

I betcha thought I'd say Ben Affleck, didn't you? Nope, I'm disappointed in Affleck's snub but he's riding a crest of goodwill and I predict he'll be back. I'm not as enamored of Zero Dark Thirty as many are, so the omission of Kathryn Bigelow is even less troubling to me.  But Anderson deserves to be on this shortlist. The Master was, of course, complicated and enigmatic and not everyone's cup of tea, but it was also, undeniably, a staggering artistic achievement, and that was Anderson's doing, first and foremost.

Best Picture 

Will Win: Argo

Yes, this will be Ben Affleck's consolation prize.  No it really isn't the best film of the year, but its probable win doesn't offend me in the least.  Argo was a hell of an entertaining ride, suspenseful and very well acted, the kind of movie we go to the movies for.

Should Win:  Lincoln

So it's a history lesson? So what?  It's also a superbly acted, richly atmospheric and staggeringly intelligent political thriller.  It's top-tier Spielberg with the look and feel of a Great American Movie, and if the Academy had only seen fit to nominate Ben Affleck, we'd probably see it take the Oscar.  Alas, in a year of crazy Oscar politicking and backlashes that feel more like whiplash, Lincoln has been unfairly shuttled to the side.

Overlooked:  The Master.

What more can I say?

My Last Word on 2012: The Year's Best (and Worst)

What follows here is a celebration of MY year with films - not a definitive overview of cinema in 2012.

The year just ended was a time of personal and professional transition for me, a year when I didn't blog much or often, and sometimes didn't get to a movie theater for a couple of weeks at a stretch.  Many major releases and critically acclaimed arthouse darlings passed me right by. But I've made a heroic year-end effort to catch up, averaging a movie a day for almost the last two weeks. And I'm ready to celebrate the best of what I saw this year (just 12 hours after the Academy announced its Oscar nominations - I'm a day late and a dollar short as usual.)

A few qualifiers:

For purposes of compiling my "Ten Best" list, I limited myself to films that were first available in the Chicago area between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012, which means you'll see some films here that were on most critic's lists and award slates for 2011.  It also means you won't see Zero Dark Thirty or Amour on my list as neither opens here till tomorrow. As you'll see, I also considered at least one "extended cut" that was released to DVD for the first time in 2012, even though the original film was released in 2011.  Maybe that's a cheat - but, hey, I make the rules here.

And, as in every year, there are the "blind spots": the ones that got away due to missed or limited viewing opportunities, running out of of time, or sheer lack of interest. The list of these is pretty long this year:  The Dark Knight Rises, Magic Mike, Looper, Skyfall, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Holy Motors, This is Not a Film, Rust and Bone, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, The Impossible, Django Unchained.

Anyway, let us begin with a few introductory - occasionally dubious - accolades:

I Enjoyed it More Than I Was Supposed To, Part 1: Ted

Yes, I'm a middle-aged woman, but I swear my sense of humor is more like a 15-year-old boy's. Watching a blissfully infantile Mark Wahlberg and his talking Teddy bear do bong hits while watching Flash Gordon made me laugh out loud, as did much of the rest of this hilariously profane farce.  The swingy, Sinatraesque theme song is my enthusiastic choice for this year's Best Original Song Oscar.

I Enjoyed It More Than I Was Supposed To, Part 2: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

When I saw this scene - Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Celia Imrie, Maggie Smith - all lined up at the airport awaiting their flight to India, I thought "I want to go anywhere they're going!"  Because with a seasoned and delightful troupe of actors like those, you know the trip will be memorable.  It was a little predictable in places, and the jokes about the effects of spicy food on delicate English tummies a wee bit overdone, but director John Madden gave us a seductive, glowing sense of place without turning this dramedy of late-middle-age transitions into a travelogue.  And, to an actor, the cast were - as we knew they'd be - simply impeccable.

The Best Movie You Didn't See: Perfect Sense

A melancholy apocalyptic love story in which humans gradually lose their senses of smell, taste, hearing and sight as the world hurtles towards the end days.  The last-chance romance between two lonely commitment-phobes (Ewan MacGregor and Eva Green) is ostensibly the main story, but even more compelling is the imaginative resilience of all the characters as they adapt to, cope with, and even rise above catastrophic changes. (People continue to dine out after their sense of taste is gone, for example, because they learn to celebrate and enjoy the varied textures and colors of food.)  Haunting and hopeful - and too little seen.

And the Worst Movie (which I hope you didn't see): W. E.

Tedious and dramatically inert, this Madonna-directed travesty is part Wallis Simpson-biopic, part fictional tale of a modern-day Wallis wannabe - and both parts ridiculous. Pretty to look at, but utterly and unforgivably mendacious (The Windsor's fascist sympathies were documented fact, not just the product of malicious rumor as alleged here, and I doubt anyone ever mistook Edward for a socialist).  I almost didn't pick this because Andrea Riseborough managed to pull out a flinty, intelligent performance as Wallis. But even she couldn't save the day.
Runners- up:  The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Darling Companion

The Ten Best Films I Saw in 2012 (in ascending order of preference)

10. Ruby Sparks

Screenwriter and star Zoe Kazan kicked the shit out of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl cliche.  A whimsical conceit (writer concocts his dream girl on the page and then finds she has come to life and moved in with him) turns into something richer and darker. One of the best in a year full of refreshingly mature and complicated romantic comedies.

9. The Deep Blue Sea

Terrence Davies' emotionally ravishing film was like a Douglas Sirk melodrama filtered through the foggy grayness of postwar England.  I'm cursing the academy today for overlooking Rachel Weisz' devastating performance.

8. Argo

Ben Affleck's hostage-rescue drama was a tense, wildly entertaining ride, with a climactic airport sequence so unbearably suspenseful I wasn't just on the edge of my seat - I was halfway into the seat in front of me!
That's what we go to the movies for.

7. The Silver Linings Playbook

Boy comes home from mental hospital.  Boy meets girl.  Boy tries to adjust to life the real world. It's not easy.... Well I won't give away the rest of it.  But we've seen this story before, right? (Think Greenberg, Two Lovers, Ordinary People, the list goes on.) David O. Russell's romantic dramedy hits on all those familiar tropes - and yet it feels completely fresh, original, like something you've never seen before.

6. Take This Waltz

A young woman (Michelle Williams) is torn between the husband she cares for but married too young (Seth Rogen, playing it completely straight) and her brooding artist neighbor (Luke Kirby). Yes, it's that simple, but    there's an authenticity about this film - both emotional and atmospheric - that stuck in my memory for days after seeing it, plus a genuine erotic heat in Williams' burgeoning romance with Kirby.

5.  The Turin Horse

Believe me, no one's more surprised to see this on my list than I am.  Just a few days ago, I posted on a comments thread at Wonders in the Dark that I was awed by the stark, terrible beauty of the cinematography, but found it "a monotonous slog" and labeled it an "eat your vegetables" film experience.
But what I found was that I couldn't get Bela Tarr's last, great film out of my head - it's shattering final image and many of the images that preceded it haunted me for three straight days.  I'll concede this is a great film albeit a difficult one.

4. The Master

An enigmatic work of flawed genius, P. T. Anderson's epic was a thing of beauty, graced with exceptional acting by Joaquin Phoenix and Phillips Seymour Hoffman.  I still don't fully understand it, but I could look at it all day.

3. Lincoln

A literate, atmospheric political thriller with a magnificent performance by Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.  We already know he's going to win an Oscar, and I'm predicting this will take Best Picture as well.

2. A Separation

I saw this very early in the year, and while the particulars of the story have fallen to the edges of my memory, what I clearly remember is siting in my theater seat though the closing credits as if shell-shocked.  I couldn't move and I didn't want to leave.  It is very rare for me to be so completely moved and engrossed in a film that the world falls away and I become totally involved in the character's lives  - without thinking, at all, about whether I like the film as I'm watching it or what I'm going to write about it later.  That's what seeing A Separation was like for me.

1. Margaret (Extended Cut)

I saw many films in 2012 that lingered in my mind and emotions for days afterwards, but none had the staying power of Margaret. Kenneth Lonnergan and his star, Anna Pacquin, brilliantly capture the heightened, desperate emotions of a young person's first experience of tragedy (a tragedy she may have, unwittingly, helped to bring about) against a richly detailed landscape of post-9/11 Manhattan.  The initial 2011 theatrical release was itself a stellar achievement, but the additional scenes in this summer's "extended cut" DVD release only deepen and enrich the film's complex themes and character development.  It's a long and meandering film, but it's ambitious in scope and rarely dull. And may I just add how wonderful it was to see Jeannie Berlin an all-too-rare screen appearance, bringing a welcome no-bullshit briskness to a pivotal supporting role.

The Ten "Second Best" Films of 2012 (in alphabetical order):  Anna Karenina, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Bernie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Les Miserables, The Life of Pi, Oslo August 31, Perfect Sense, The Sessions, The Skin I Live In.

Best Supporting Actress:  Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables - Because she rescued "I Dreamed a Dream" from Susan Boyle and the legions of community theater actresses who've been using it for an audition number since the early '90s.  It's Fantine's song again, and Hathaway's Fantine breaks our hearts.

Honorable Mention: Helen Hunt (The Sessions); Jeannie Berlin (Margaret); Allison Janney (Liberal Arts);Vanessa Redgrave (Coriolanus); Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs).

Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln - Not many actors could kick that much ass while wearing such a ridiculous wig.  Tommy Lee is always a force to be reckoned with.

Honorable Mention:  Robert DeNiro (Silver Linings Playbook); Eddie Redmayne (Les Miserables); Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master); Jude Law (Anna Karenina).

Best Actress:  Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea - Watching her as she watched her young lover with unabashed wonder in her eyes broke our hearts.

Honorable Mention: Anna Pacquin (Margaret); Meryl Streep (Hope Springs); Michelle Williams (Take This Waltz); Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern  Wild); Judi Dench (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel); Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks); Andrea Riseborough (W.E.)

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln - Well, duh!

Honorable Mention:  Joaquin Phoenix (The Master); Jack Black (Bernie); John Hawkes (The Sessions); Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables); Anders Danielsen Lie (Oslo August 31).

This is not the post I had planned

So I had planned to come home from work tonight and write this glowing review of SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

But then today happened.

This morning in Newtown, Connecticut, a young man walked into an elementary school and killed 27 people, including 20 young children, before turning a gun on himself.  And in the wake of something so brutal and awful, so incomprehensibly and unspeakably evil, I can't even think about a movie.

These mass murders are happening too frequently, and each one worse the one before.  The Newtown massacre is the most wrenching yet because so many young, helpless, innocent children were taken.  Twenty sets of parents sent their precious babies off to school this morning, fully expecting to see them again this evening.  I cannot imagine the weight of their grief tonight.

The other parents who sent their children off to school today will get them back, but they will be forever changed, their innocence shattered - even though the police who lead them from the school instructed to keep their eyes shut as they walked past the carnage.

Last night I watched a story on CBS news about a doctor who tends to victims of terrorist crimes and land mine explosions. I don't even recall where in the world his clinic was (Israel? Palestine? Afghanistan?).  All I remember is how gravely and sadly he spoke of the bombs and other devices that are so much more sophisticated and deadly now that just ten years ago.  A little boy, maybe six years old, was brought into the clinic, wrapped in bandages and covered in blood. He'd found a small device that he thought was a toy and put it in his pocket.  The device exploded and by the time he was brought to the clinic, there was nothing to be done.  The news cameras lingered at a discrete distance from his lifeless little body as his family wailed beside him.

The world seems a sick and scary place to me tonight, and the early winter darkness - that wearying kind of darkness that starts to set in around four in the afternoon, and feels heavy and impenetrable long before six - seems a perfect metaphor for the times.  

I listened to Sarah McLachlan's Wintersong CD on my drive home from work.  I was singing along with "Happy Christmas/War Is Over" until that final chorus where the children take over, singing with angelic innocence: "War is over if you want it/War is over now."  Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I felt a sob rise up in my throat and I immediately fast-forwarded past the rest of the song to keep that sob from escaping.  The subsequent carols - each containing a plea for a savior, Emmanuel - sounded more poignant and pleading than ever before, like desperate and heartfelt cries to the heavens for a God who would bring us mercy, justice and peace and make sense of our increasingly senseless lives.  I want to believe in that kind of God.  My faith has been shaky in recent months, but belief seems urgent now.
   

Beat the Crowds! Three Good Movies You Can See Without Getting Off the Couch

Whether at the mall or the multiplex, crowds are not my thing.  I'm the kind of woman who celebrates Black Friday by sleeping late and having leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast while watching Turner Classic Movies. (And, by the way, TCM really knows what to do with a Black Friday: this year, they served up a fantastic day full of Hitchcock classics, including Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest.)

At this time of year, the movie theaters are as packed as the shopping centers, and it's worth the time and hassle to see many of the big, serious awards-courting films like Lincoln. But if you, like me, need an occasional break from the holiday crowds - and you have access to Video On Demand services - there are some good movies you can enjoy without so much as getting up from the couch.

May I recommend:

Sound of My Voice:  You can tell right away that this thriller was shot on a budget approximating a shred of a shoestring, but that only enhances its creepily engrossing vibe.  A pair of journalists (Christopher Denham and Nicole Vicius), who are romantically as well as professionally paired, infiltrate a cult with the intention of exposing its lies in a secretly filmed documentary.  But the dividing line between reality and sham soon begins to fall away for Denham as he succumbs to the charismatic manipulations of the cult's ethereal leader (Brit Marling, who also co-wrote with director Zal Batmanglij). More than that I will not give away; the ensuing, increasingly disorienting layers of revelation will be best experienced when you're not prepared for them. Although the writing could be tighter in places, Batmanglij and his cast effectly create one tantalizingly ambiguous scene after another in which our perceptions of what is truth and what is falsehood can shift back and forth in a single moment.

Price Check:  Parkey Posey is working in her sweet spot here, playing the kind of insanely driven, laser-focused, bipolar bitch role at which she excels. (Think of her searching for the Busy Bee dog toy in Best of Show or screaming about her lost Tic Tacs in the stalled elevator scene of You've Got Mail.) In Price Check, she's the boss from Hell, newly assigned to the administrative offices of a struggling supermarket chain. She bursts onto the scene with a armload of 'strategies' for increasing the chain's market share and takes an attractive, underachieving middle manager (Eric Mabius) under her wing, insinuating herself into his family and private life. (She invites herself to his son's pre-school Halloween party, showing up in a short, skintight Pocahontas costume, a dream catcher dangling over her bare midriff).  The film starts squarely in the same territory as TV's The Office - an  outrageous workplace comedy that bears little resemblance to the world where most of us actually work. But it gradually evolves into a something a bit deeper and closer to most people's work and economic realities, and ultimately gives Posey's character some depth without imposing any gooey softening on her manic edge.

The Loneliest Planet: Julia Loktev's spare and unnerving film does not so much tell a story as it just quietly observes the shifts in the relationship between two young Americans as they backpack through the mountains of Georgia (the former Soviet state, not the American one). The couple (played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) radiate an innocent, admirable openness to adventure and other cultures, spiked with an unsettling undercurrent of naivete. Midway through the film, something shocking happens - I won't reveal what - which immediately changes not only their relationship, but their interactions with their guide (Bidzina Gujabidze) as well.  Loktev includes lots of wide, long shots of the mountains to remind us of how alone and isolated these travelers are, and underscores them with string music just discordant enough to create a subtle, but not oppressive, sense of foreboding. Meanwhile, Furstenberg plays every possible nuance of her character's reckless playfulness in a manner that adds another layer of unease.  Loktev and her actors orchestrate the emotional shifts among the three characters with great skill and clarity, and although nothing much happens here in the purest narrative sense, there's a lot going on just beneath the surface.

Just a Few Words about: LINCOLN

The multiplex auditorium in which I watched Lincoln last Saturday night was sold out and packed. If you, too, saw Lincoln this past weekend, I suspect you encountered the same kinds of crowds. I furthermore suspect that audiences across the country were more or less equally divided between celebrants and mourners of the recent election results, men and women who'd spent the previous months on opposite sides of a wide and bitter political divide. But on Saturday night, we were gathered together, sitting side by side in a darkened theatre, united in a common desire to see our country’s core values affirmed in the mythos of our most revered president, as rendered by our most mythos-serving filmmaker.

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is the kind of film that fully satisfies such lofty desires, and not because it’s a gassy, overwrought, sentimental spectacle with an obtrusive John Williams score. It’s actually none of those things, but rather a highly literate, and meticulously atmospheric portrait of a complex man and the rancorous political climate in which the final months of his presidency played out. More specifically, it's a terrific political thriller about Lincoln's quest to get the 13th amendment through Congress, thereby abolishing slavery in America forever before the Civil War ended and the returning Confederate states were able to overturn the Emancipation Proclamation.  There's plenty of impassioned speechifying on the floor of Congress, with highly entertaining flourishes of 19th century rhetoric (screenwriter Tony Kushner adapted and embellished the actual words of the key Congressmen) and the incidental pleasures of playing Spot the Character Actor Behind that Facial Hair with James Spader, Michael Stuhlbarg, Hal Holbrook, Tim Blake Nelson, John Hawkes and Jackie Earle Haley in memorable supporting turns.  Tommy Lee Jones probably has a Best Supporting Actor Oscar all tied up; his portrayal of radical abolitionist Thaddeus Stephens is shot through with the actor's own familiar gravitas and charisma.

But ultimately, of course, it's all about the man, Abraham Lincoln. That Daniel Day-Lewis is magnificent in the title role is not surprising in and of itself, yet  I was unprepared for just how completely he rescues Lincoln from the folksy, railsplitting plaster sainthood of American legend. His Lincoln is equal parts prairie sage and shrewd political manipulator, impressively presidential and wearily melancholy in almost the same moment, exuding both integrity and vulnerability. It's a performance that manages both to affirm the legend of the man and allow us to peek behind the legend to see his sadness, his affection for his sons and his complicated feelings towards his difficult wife (Sally Field, who's effective but a good twenty years too old for the part.)  In that respect, above all others, Lincoln feels like an exceptional achievement.

The Awful Truth

(This post also appears today on Wonders in the Dark, as part of their Comedy Countdown series.)

A few years back, when memes were passed around the film blogosphere like a flu virus, I was invited to name my ten favorite film characters of all time.  Right at the very top of my list, I placed Lucy and Jerry Warriner, the sparring, on-and-off spouses played by Irene Dunne and Cary Grant in Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth.  In retrospect, that was a telling choice.

With the possible exception of the Thin Man movies, I can't think of another screwball comedy whose principal characters are so much fun to watch regardless of what they're doing or what's happening around them. Screwball comedies aren't typically character-driven; their motors run on  intricately structured plotting and razor sharp, rat-a-tat dialogue. The Awful Truth, by contrast, belongs wholly to the screwball genre, and yet stands apart from it in significant ways, and its character focus is the least of it. Its loose, free-wheeling style is a result of its being made without a completed working script; bits of comic business were improvised and McCarey notoriously wrote much of the dialogue while on the set. Thus the film is a bit short on plot, but very long on brilliantly funny, sketch-like scenes that could each, more or less, stand on their own.  You could dive into the film at say, the beginning of the nightclub scene where the estranged Warriners and their ill-chosen new partners end up at the same, uncomfortable table, and still follow and laugh at the proceedings.

The story, such as it is, is this simple:

We open with Jerry Warriner at his club, getting a sunlamp-induced tan so he'll convincingly look as if he's been in Florida for the last two weeks before returning home to his wife, Lucy. (Where he's really been and what he's been doing are never specified.)  When he does return home, along with a coterie of friends he's invited for cocktails, Lucy is nowhere to be found.  Eventually, she arrives - still in last night's evening dress, trailing her handsome-but-clueless voice teacher (Alexander D'Arcy) behind and brightly spinning a story about the car breaking down. Jerry's ruse about the Florida trip is exposed when Lucy spots the "Grown in California" stamp on the "Florida oranges" he's brought her as a gift.  With their trust in each other shattered, the couple makes a seemingly half-hearted decision to divorce. Forced to cross paths repeatedly afterwards (mainly due to a shared custody agreement over their dog, Mr. Smith), they spend the rest of the film scheming to break up each other's rebound romances until they are finally reunited for good. In the meantime, Lucy is briefly engaged to Oklahoma oilman, Daniel - an exuberantly innocent rube played with comic gusto by Ralph Bellamy - while Jerry first dates a nightclub singer named Dixiebelle (Joyce Compton), then a "madcap heiress" (so-called anyway; Molly Lamont seems mostly grim and humorless in her brief scenes.)

Re-watching The Awful Truth is always a tremendous pleasure for me, not so much because I get invested in the suspense of whether the Warriners end up together (I take that for granted), but just for the fun of watching them tease each other and get under each other's skin. Like most screwball characters, they're wealthy, witty and elegant, and move through a certain elevated stratum of society with ease. Unlike the typical screwball denizen, however, neither is particularly madcap nor given to eccentric behavior. If anything, the Warriners  are models of middlebrow propriety and emotional reserve, only letting down their guard and allowing themselves to look foolish when their attempts to win each other back become desperate. This point is brilliantly and exhaustively elucidated by James Harvey in his scholarly tome "Romantic Comedy in Hollywood," where he notes "they concern themselves with appearances finally so that they can defy and rise above them. They immolate themselves like other great lovers - but for laughs."

The aforementioned nightclub scene is a case in point.  Jerry's date, Dixiebelle, takes the stage to sing "Gone with the Wind," accompanied by wind effects that blow her dress up over her silken panties whenever she sings the title phrase.  The icy mortification at the table where Jerry, Lucy and Daniel watch this display with escalating levels of unspoken horror and discomfort is a little masterpiece of comic nuance, although - significantly - no one laughs or makes a rude remark.  Later, after bragging of the "cups" he's won for his ballroom dancing skills back home, Daniel gets Lucy on to the dance floor for a wildly enthusiastic, floor-stomping performance that brings the nightclub to a standstill. Dunne plays Lucy's' acute embarrassment at being part of the spectacle, as well as her determination to gamely support Daniel in his moment of glory, with a delicious play of barely controlled facial expressions and body language. Grant, meanwhile, is every bit as funny registering Jerry's happy enjoyment of Lucy's predicament.

Ultimately Jerry wins Lucy's heart back only by pratfalling into her voice recital (mistakenly believing it is a behind-closed-doors tryst with her voice teacher) and noisily collapsing his chair as she hits her final high note - in short, he makes a fool of himself and makes her laugh.  Through another series of complications, her loses her again, but this time Lucy goes to her own comic extremes to win him back.  She shows up unexpectedly at the home of Jerry's heiress fiancee, Barbara Vance, and her stuffy highbrow parents, disguised as Jerry's "sister," Lola: a floozy in oversized hair bow and tight fitting dress who asks for a drink, announcing "I've had five or six already, but they're starting to wear off and you know how that is!" (A great line. I'm actually laughing as I type it....)  She caps off the night by performing Dixiebelle's nightclub number to the quietly registered horror of the Vances - and the irrepressible amusement of her ex-husband.

It's always a treat to re-experience these scenes and other bits of funny business that still make me laugh out loud after innumerable repeat viewings. Some of those laughs are not particularly sophisticated.  Take for example, Jerry's first post-divorce visit to Lucy's apartment to see Mr. Smith.  He plays the piano loudly with Mr. Smith barking along for accompaniment, stopping abruptly so Mr. Smith can "take it" - which he does barking in a  perfectly rhythmic solo.  I can't tell you why that's so funny, but it just is - even more so when Grant merrily cracks up himself.

Dunne and Grant, whose marvelous comic chemistry gives The Awful Truth its lovely, lunatic charm were a classic screen couple. They worked together again with Leo McCarey on My Favorite Wife, which actually recycled some gags from The Awful Truth, and with George Stevens on the oppressively weepy Penny Serenade.  McCarey won a Oscar for his direction of the film, with both Dunne and Bellamy nominated for their work. Of course, the inexplicably missing nominee there is Cary Grant. The Academy may have had their heads up their collective behinds when overlooking him, but Hollywood caught on fast; Grant became one of the screen's greatest comic leading men making the classics Holiday, Bringing Up Baby,  The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday in just the next four years alone.