After an August spent mostly outdoors, I have started
screening some of the 2011 award nominees which are now coming from the library
and confirmed what I expected – it was a lean year. Scripts seem to be the weak
link. Production values are high, acting is not a problem and direction is
adequate, but a movie cannot rise above a poor screenplay. These movies are
often too lengthy, probably because the editors couldn’t rearrange and snip an
inherently bad script into something better, so they just left it alone. Maybe
another manifestation of the problem is the overuse of established actors in
cameo and bit parts. Their appearance is distracting from the story, and the
money paid for the use of their name in marketing the film would have been
better spent paying some good writers to come up with a better script.
Ironically, as scriptwriting classes and software have expanded, scripts seem
to have worsened.
Here is what I have watched since I posted my last list.
[The ratings I give are on my own number system which is explained at the link
on the sidebar].
This Is What
Democracy Looks Like – 2000 (3.3). Using footage from scores of people who
filmed in the streets during the 1999 demonstrations against the WTO at their
meeting in Seattle, and integrating subsequent interviews with participants and
organizers, this documentary was put together by local media activists and does
an inspiring job of presenting what is obviously a more genuine telling of what
happened than what was shown by the mainstream media. The prospect that this
would become a model for labor, environmentalists and social activists to unite
in effective opposition to corporate tyranny enabled by corrupt or incompetent
government is tremendously heartening. The reality that it has not yet happened
is profoundly disappointing. The special feature interviews with Noam Chomsky
and Vandana Shiva are lucid and especially informative. You can watch the movie on line at YouTube.
Foyle’s War – (Seasons
One and Two) 2003 (3.2). This British mystery series is stylish as expected and
covers an interesting time, the early days of WWII on the home front, when emotions
are high and there is fear of a German invasion. Our widowed police detective
has to cover murders on the home front while intermeshing with war related
matters. The story arc includes his son who is a young RAF pilot, his sergeant
who is a disabled war vet and his driver who is a young woman in military
service. The stories involve new crimes each episode and all take their time to
develop before a clever solution is found perhaps a bit too rapidly to give the
viewer a chance to figure it out, especially since the clever police always
seem to have a little more information than we do.
Foyle’s War –
(Season Three) 2004 (3.2). The mystery aspects of the series continue in the
same vein, but with each episode we are learning about new ways that people
coped with and capitalized on (legally and criminally) what took place on the
home front in the early stages of the war. The story arc involving the son and
the female driver heats up and there is a hint of Foyle opening up to the
possibility of an interesting woman coming into his life.
Midnight in Paris
– 2011 (2.9). Owen Wilson takes over the Woody Allen role while Woody just
directs this romantic comedy about an American writer engaged to the wrong
woman, in which the couple visits Paris with her parents and the man ends up
wandering around on his own and being taken back in time to Paris of the 20s,
where he interfaces with the creative celebrities and meets a woman with whom
he is a better match. Despite winning the screenplay Academy Award, the script
is nothing new, except for one twist that comes before the predictable ending.
The Beauty of Paris is well captured by the cinematography, the celebrity
characters are fun and entertaining and the overall experience of the movie is
quite pleasing.
The Help – 2011
(2.8). This movie about the struggles of African-American domestics in 1960s
Mississippi seems like it was rushed into production to capitalize on the
popularity of the novel on which it is based and the presence of a President
Obama in the White House. The subject is certainly worthwhile and interesting
but for all the extra length of the film there is an uneven feeling that
important things were shorted while trivial received too much time. The family
relationships of the domestics with their own children and with the men at home
or in their own community were barely shown. In fact the role of white men was
seriously downplayed, including the omission of scenes of sexual harassment and
physical intimidation. The script had no dramatic flow beyond the question of
when other domestics would agree to tell their stories to the young white woman
who was writing a book about domestics. Some of the problems with the script
can probably be traced back to the novel and some are from the adaptation which
was done by the director, a rather inexperienced childhood friend of the novelist.
The infamous chocolate pie incident was in “bad taste” [pun intended].That the movie
is passable is due to the inherent appeal of the domestics themselves and of
the fine performances by the actresses who portrayed them.
Moneyball – 2011
(2.7). Using computer generated analysis to identify undervalued baseball
players enabled General Manager Billy Beane of the Oakland team to build a top
team with a bottom level budget. This story was told in a very good non-fiction
book which I enjoyed reading and it could have made an equally interesting
documentary. Unfortunately the choice was made to film it as an overlong drama,
and it does not work very well. The statistical analysis at the heart of the
story is glossed over in the script, but is not replaced by anything dramatic.
The significant back story of Beane’s unexpected failure as a player is only
touched on piecemeal. The conflict with the on field manager falls flat. Beane’s
personal life is barely touched except for a few cloying scenes with his
daughter. The resuscitated players, the old scouts, the computer expert and
every other character seem to have no personal stories, except for the one old
All Star player in the twilight who Beane asks to become the leader in one
brief scene and then who then tries to offer leader type encouragement to
another player in another brief encounter. Read the book.
Monsieur Lazhar –
2011 (2.7). Surprisingly, a one man play is the basis for this foreign Oscar
nominee French Canadian piece about an Algerian immigrant who takes over as
teacher for an upper elementary school class whose teacher has committed suicide.
The movie takes place in and about the school and in other locations, so it
never feels stage bound. The acting is good and the kids are realistically
appealing. It is a slow moving film but of reasonable length. There is some
drama but it is seriously underdeveloped. This is a very introspective story as
the students and teachers awkwardly deal with the death and the immigrant deals
with his own issues which he keeps to himself. It would be interesting to see
and compare the play.
1981 – 2009
(2.7). In the year of a title the family of a sixth grade boy who is a bit of a
dud moves to a new area in Quebec. This movie primarily follows his adjustments
to his new school and classmates and secondarily shows the effect of the move
on his parents and younger sister. The movie is pleasant enough, perhaps because
it liberally borrows bits from other films and TV shows, but the bottom line is
there is nothing particularly memorable or informative here. The acting and
direction are a little better than the script.
The World According to Monsanto – 2008 (2.7). The filmmaker in this
Canadian TV documentary used Google as a source of information about what
Monsanto has been doing to effectively take ownership of the world food supply
by dominating and aggressively extending biogenetically engineered seeds.
Traveling the globe to track down the Google sources, and then interviewing farmers, activists, scientists
and public officials, and showing the damage done by Monsanto, the movie makes
a strong case against the corporation. However, sometimes the science is a little
technical and repetitious and one wishes some of that screen time had been
spent on presenting more about who actually runs Monsanto, such as the Board of
Directors, and who are the largest owners of shares and what is being done to
attack the company from within, by shareholder resolutions and whistleblower
support, and what is being done to try to mount a viable defense against this
monolith.
Sliding Doors – 1998 (2.7). Gwyneth Paltrow plays a woman living
parallel lives after she misses a subway train in one version and catches her
boyfriend in bed with another woman, while in the other version, she misses the
train and misses catching him in the act. The script cleverly intertwines the
two lives and manages to hold attention, but ultimately does not really have
anything to say beyond the obvious.
Once Were Warriors – 1994 (2.2). A drama from New Zealand about
domestic violence in a modern day Maori family and a strong woman who manages
to rise above it, should have provided an opportunity to celebrate the history
of Maori culture, inform viewers of the prejudices and politics that impact the
modern Maori, inspired victims of domestic violence to break out of the cycle
and shamed perpetrators into mending their ways. This movie did none of these
and instead stereotyped the Maori as alcoholic perpetual partiers, ignored
prejudice and politics entirely, made the victims unsympathetic and left the
perpetrators intact. That this list of failures was accomplished with a bad
script, poor direction and amateurish acting should not be surprising, and is
certainly disappointing, especially since some people have actually praised
this movie.
