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OSCARS 2012: PRESS PLAY contributors argue for their favorites

OSCARS 2012: PRESS PLAY’S staff picks their favorites

After last week’s announcement of this year’s Oscar nominees, a handful of Press Play contributors gathered together via email to discuss the highs and lows in some of the major award categories. Below are some of the highlights of the conversation, and as always, we encourage you to keep the discussion going. The site's consensus picks for the films and individuals that should win be announced next week, starting Monday.

Matt Zoller Seitz: Has anybody seen A Better Life, for which Demián Bichir was nominated as Best Actor? That seemed out of left field. I feel like Gary Oldman might be a lock for that one, what do you think?

Glenn Close and Rooney Mara nominated for Best Actress is interesting, too. Some thought Close's work was too stunt-y. Mara seems a total surprise for me, as her character is so not Academy-friendly (in terms of looks and demeanor), and Mara is not anywhere close to a known quantity.

Ali Arikan: Rooney Mara has been lauded by the critics and the industry, and the studio had been hyping her since the summer, so I'm not at all surprised that she got a nomination. Despite the fact that the Millennium books are terrible, people seem to love them, and Lisbeth Salander has become an iconic character. Plus, she also did sterling work in a solid film. What is interesting, however, is that either she or Glenn Close edged out Tilda Swinton for We Need to Talk About Rosemary's Omen. I thought she would be a lock.

I am happy about Moneyball, a film I thought I would hate, but ended up loving. I am one of the few in "our circles" who felt The Tree of Life was lacking, and I don't think it deserved a Best Picture nomination over Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Extremely Loud and The Help are just risible. The latter was always going to be in there, but I thought Bridesmaids might have snuck in instead of Extremely Loud. Either way, having nine nominees obviously shows that the field is still pretty wide open.

Matt: I like The Tree of Life best of the Best Picture nominees, though I know opinion in this thread is mixed. It's the most unconventional of any nominated film, so much so that I am pleasantly surprised that it became a sort of event when it hit theaters. I think more films that experimental should be made at the Hollywood level. There are not too many directors holding down the fort for that kind of experience, not even Malick's fellow '70s movie brats Spielberg and Scorsese.

Aaron Aradillas: I would argue that in their own ways, both Hugo and Tintin are experimental films. I mean, if it wasn't for their directors, I seriously doubt a studio would've rolled the dice on 'em.

Sarah D. Bunting: Margin Call got a Best Original Screenplay nod. Shut up, Oscars. Barf.

Ali: I also second Sarah's barf. Ewww.

My feelings about Melissa McCarthy mirror Scott Tobias' thoughts on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I disliked Bridesmaids, but I despised her performance.

Aaron: I've yet to fully grasp the dislike for her performance. I know it exists, but I don't get it. I don't remember anyone being offended when Kevin Kline won for making a mockery of being a dumb, sexist man.

Nick Nolte is terrific in Warrior, but it is clearly a great performance of something he does well. He makes look effortless what Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton huff and puff and make look so tiring. Besides, Nolte did a better version of this in Affliction.

Christopher Plummer gives his career performance. There's no fat on it. Unlike The Insider, where he's a hoot, Plummer doesn't push it in Beginners, and that's why he leaves such an impression on those of us who love the movie. The way he embraces life at such a late date is funny, touching and ultimately quite sad. Ewan McGregor's character never acknowledges it, but he learns his father's final lessons and that's what leads to the movie's astonishingly hopeful and romantic ending. He is finally his father's son. Plummer's presence is felt in every scene. It be McGregor's story, but it's Plummer's film.

I'm a fan of Midnight in Paris, but Woody Allen's screenplay is not entirely original. It's kind of a variation on The Purple Rose of Cairo. Margin Call is a script written about how we're living right now. It trumps Mamet by not getting all tangled up in being clever with its verbal scenes.

Mara's my second choice in the Best Actress category, but Viola Davis is the only lead actress who literally has to create a character from scratch. The other performances all have something already existing that they're working off of.

Ali: I am not basing my dislike of McCarthy's performance on a curve. It was too easy, without any nuance and did not add anything to a film that definitely needed some sort of a breakout-star factor to make it less boring (and, you know, funny). So, I'd love to hear the case for her.

Aaron: The beauty of McCarthy's performance is there isn't a trace of self-loathing or self-doubt that would probably get in a dozen other comedies with a character like hers. She is the most confident and aware person in the circle of Bridesmaids.

I'm willing to make a gentleman's bet that Meryl Streep will not win Best Actress. I think Viola Davis is going to "surprise" everyone and take it home.

Kevin B. Lee: If anything, Davis is the odd sober person surrounded by a carnival of sass, crass and crazy in The Help. Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain are like intrepid migrants from John Waters-land, while Davis anchors it in gravity and respectability ‒ she's the whipped cream atop the shit pie. I'm not sure whether she saves the movie or adds a layer of Oscar-mongering disingenuousness to what really should be an all-out camp farce. But her final scene standing up to Bryce Dallas Howard is a feat of acting gymnastics, going through a series of emotional states in lightning succession.

In contrast, The Iron Lady is pretty much all Meryl Streep (and everything that implies, good and bad). But it's an MVP performance; she actually made me like Margaret Thatcher for two hours.

Lisa Rosman: The Help is a tepid movie at best, offensive at worst, but as is so often the case, the performances far outstrip the film. Viola Davis never gives up an inch ‒ she may cater less as an actress than anyone else in Hollywood ‒ but so much goes on behind the eyes that she ignobles what could be a wretched role. And on that note, I love Rooney, but this is not the film for which she should win an Oscar. It's a one-trick-pony role and though she does it well, it doesn't have enough shades to win a golden naked man.

I hate hate hate hate the idea of McCarthy winning this. The role is not just unfunny; it's mean-spirited and she executes it more poorly than she's done anything else in her career. (Wherefore art thou, Sookie?) Nay, for me it's Janet McTeer, who does everything that Close herself fails to do in the otherwise craptacular and super outdated Albert Nobbs. It's a finely tuned performance that brings real pathos and humor and at least three dimensions to the kind of person that Hollywood always, always gets wrong.

The rest I am less adamant on. I love Malick but The Tree of Life is not legible in ways that actually matter to me. Scorsese should take Best Director for Hugo, but I can understand why others do not agree. Gary Oldman should, of course, take it; it's a terrific performance, and Tinker Tailor the Thief Cook should get Best Adapted Screenplay. I don't love any of the Best Picture nominees but think Moneyball comes closest to being what I want a big movie to be. And sorry for the barfers, but I love Margin Call for Best Original Screenplay.

Aaron: I'm for Brad Pitt. I think he gives a star turn and acting powerhouse at once. George Clooney is great (and I have no problem if he wins), but he was going deeper into a character he does best: the good-looking asshole who is brought up short by life.

There is real mystery to Pitt's take on Billy Beane. He loves the game, but knows the game is changing. He knows he has to get wins in order to keep his job and is more than willing to modernize for that reason. But he also knows there is something you can't calculate about the game of baseball. The scenes of Pitt driving to work or sitting in the locker room show a man who is constantly trying to figure out the odds and knowing deep down that there are some things you can't figure out. Also, Pitt is a great subtle comic performer in the scenes where he's making deals or bossing around others in the room. Like Jesse Eisenberg, he is a natural when it comes to Aaron Sorkin's writing.

Kevin: I think Pitt's performance falls under the same school of acting I endorse. (Clooney, on the other hand, is on autopilot).

Aaron: Clooney's not on auto, but I'll leave it at that. I do know Pitt is happy as can be to be nominated in the same category as Gary Oldman. His death scene in Fight Club is inspired by Oldman. Pitt says on that film’s commentary, "No one dies like Gary!" It should also be noted that Pitt gets a slight advantage in that his work in both Moneyball and The Tree of Life show how wide a range he truly has.

Lisa: I actually agree Clooney's not on auto, but I disliked the conceit of the casting of that film immensely. (Alexander Payne loves to get notoriously charismatic actors to play schlubs; it underscores his misanthropic view of "average people.")

Ali: I, too, am for Pitt, even though I liked Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Doo-Dah Doo-Dah more than any other American film this year. Goldman is magnificent as George Smiley, closer to John le Carré's vision than Alec Guinness' portrayal, and he explodes with understated pathos (paradoxically) the one time he shows his emotions (the incredible Soviet national anthem scene where he sees his wife having it on with Colin Firth).

That said, I have a problem with his voice and accent. He sounds like a constipated baboon trying to do an impression of Ian McKellen. It was but a minor quibble when I first saw the film, but after three times, it's just grating. (For what it's worth, Tom Hardy gives the best performance in that movie.)

As for Brad Pitt, first of all, his is an almost old-fashioned movie star performance. He's charming and cheeky and funny, and hella good looking. (Yes, I've just used "hella" ‒ I am a 14-year-old kid from 1998.) I have no idea who Beane is, so this is my estimation of the character as he is seen on the screen: as Aaron said, here is a person who decides to ride the waves of change. Pitt plays him as a nexus of frustration; he never made the big time, so he is trying to make up for that lost opportunity. He is clever, though. He knows that he is unable to see the forest for the trees (the final scene with Jonah Hill, the earlier conversation with his daughter, etc.), but that's what obsessive-compulsive people are like. They know what they're doing is irrational, but they have to keep doing it.

Also, the final shot shows him in full command of his face ‒ an incredibly important skill for a screen actor.

Matt: What about this Demián Bichir fellow? Nobody's really mentioned him as a contender….

Aaron: A Better Life is good, and he's really good, but not award-worthy, especially when you consider someone like, say, the criminally underrated Steve Carell or Kevin Spacey's triumphant return to good acting in Margin Call. If one is going to label his nomination the Indie Nod, I much prefer Michael Shannon. Take Shelter is far from perfect, but Shannon is amazing.

The biggest problem with A Better Life is the character of the 14-year-old son. The actor is pretty bad and the character, as written, is pretty thin. An old-school Mexican dad would not put up with half the shit this kid gives him. Compared to the father-son dynamic in A Bronx Tale, A Better Life comes up short.

Can I make my case for The Help one more time? If the best 9/11 movies are not explicitly about 9/11 (Zodiac, Munich), then why can't one of the best films about race today be a movie about recent history? The outcry from so-called open-minded liberals was telling in that just because the movie was supposedly playing it safe by telling a story we all can agree on that it wasn't also making people think about the here and now.

Race is the one truly unspoken-about issue in this country. When it is spoken about, it is in an obvious safe way. The Help is about the moment when an open discussion was needed in order for change to occur. What the movie also makes clear is that discussion needs to be ongoing. And that is simply not the case right now.

Just because the movie delivers its "message" in bawdy, emotional, mass-appeal entertainment doesn't make it unworthy of praise (or awards). The Help not only attempts to keep recent history fresh in our minds, but also old-fashioned awards-worthy entertainment alive as well.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: UNDEFEATED

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Fearless Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is making it her mission to watch every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

It's not generally a compliment to say that a film reminds you of other films, or has the DNA of other films; the phrases "a poor man's" or "but with less" seem inevitable. To call a documentary "well made" isn't the highest of praise, either, suggesting as it does the absence of anything extraordinary. "Every shot in focus — a triumph of competence!"

Undefeated did remind me of other stories, and it is well put together, but that doesn't mean it's derivative or dull. It's a straight-ahead chronicle of a year in the life of a North Memphis football team that has never darkened the doorstep of the state playoffs in the school's long history. Practice is held on a hillocky field surrounded by abandoned buildings, and presided over by a plump ginger volunteer coach named Bill Courtney who will bellow the same speech about failures contributing to character until his team hears it.

The film has echoes of everything from Hoosiers to Hoop Dreams (the rising and falling fortunes of Money and Chavis) to The Blind Side to the late great Friday Night Lights, but that's a pretty impressive list of memorable narratives to have echoing down your movie. (Well, I loathed The Blind Side on film, but I'm told the book is good.) Directors T.J. Martin and Daniel Lindsay trust their story, and their subjects, and rightly so; Bill Courtney probably knows what the filmmakers are going for, and he's good at boiling those things down, but not in a sound-bitey way. In one longish interview, he ruminates on giving up on people, how you know if it's a test or a lost cause. Elsewhere, he grumps that football does not build character, "football reveals character."

Martin and Lindsay (the latter of whom also made a doc about the road to the world beer-pong championships; awesome) don't try to reinvent the wheel, or get all hectic with interstitial fonts in an attempt to apologize for a straight-ahead conventional documentary. It's kids, hope, and grown men getting their crying done through football. You don't have to spread much mustard on that. (And that crying scene is a killer.)

More on this when I write my Best Doc overview, but it's a nice piece of work that basically has no shot.

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded Television Without Pity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: MONEYBALL

When I heard that Moneyball was set to become a film, I didn't get it. It's a good book, and I'm a huge baseball fan, but as far as a narrative with wider cinematic appeal, I didn't see a there there. It's a story about a guy using statistics to exploit market inefficiencies, so…good luck with that?

It's not that it's uninteresting material per se, or difficult to follow, in the hands of the correct writer. (Like, say, Bill James, the godfather of statistical baseball analysis who's mentioned frequently in the film.) I love that stuff. But how do you get people who don't care about baseball to care about it on film, for two hours plus, using arithmetic — and without alienating diamond nerds like myself who would sit there, arms folded, the Nit-Find-o-Tron 4000 ready to start picking?

I can't speak to what baseball atheists got out of it. I can name maybe two other people who got the same frisson of hilarity out of the casting of Chad Kreuter as Rick Peterson as I did. I know for a fact that nobody else snickered at "No bunting whatsoever," but I of course collect comments like that. But I'm pretty sure "Who's Fabio?" "He's that shortstop from Seattle"; the "I'm just saying, his girlfriend is a six, at best" sequence; and Billy Beane's ex-wife's new husband and his man-dals got laughs from other people, because I'm pretty sure Moneyball is a good movie qua movie, sharply observed and well acted across the board.

It's not perfect. The last half hour is draggy, and co-writer Aaron Sorkin couldn't resist one or two of his patented And Now My Proxy Will Lecture You In A Tone Of Self-Congratulation (Supplemental Oxygen Will Not Be Provided) speeches. But one of those speeches is about not getting sucked into the romance of baseball, which is good advice for baseball-movie screenwriters — in a script that miraculously avoids 98 percent of the hero-journey mawkishness the sport tends to churn up. And Brad Pitt as Billy Beane is fantastic. The performance grew on me steadily, and by the time Beane snarked at Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman, also very good and styled authentically, which is to say he looks like hammered hell), "Every time we talk, I'm reinvigorated by my love of the game," then did that herky ass-out-of-joint walk out of Howe's office, he had me. Ever since Ocean's 11, Pitt is usually having more fun than anybody else onscreen; here, part of that is Beane, but Pitt gets that a strong, thoughtful performance doesn't have to look like a Metamucil ad. He's fun to watch.

Every performance is good. I don't get Jonah Hill's Best Supporting nomination here, because we've seen the performance before, it seems like. But he won't win, so it's fine, and he and Pitt have flawless boss/underling bro chemistry onscreen. I want them to do another movie together. This movie probably isn't in the Best Picture discussion, which I'm okay with, but it exceeded expectations as far as splitting the difference for both fans and agnostics. A little too long, but the best possible iteration of the material.

FEATURE FILM WITH VIDEO ESSAY: Brian De Palma’s RAISING CAIN is re-cut

VIDEO ESSAY WITH FEATURE: Brian De Palma’s RAISING CAIN RE-CUT

Raising Cain Re-cut is my attempt to approximate Brian De Palma’s original vision of Raising Cain, before the director chose to compromise its structure in post-production. The re-cut uses all of the scenes in the theatrical release and puts them back in the order they were intended, giving rise to a dramatically different viewing experience.

Acquired taste

Within Brian De Palma’s already divisive filmography, appreciation of Raising Cain (1992) is thought of as something of an acquired taste. While some critics consider the film minor De Palma, others claim it’s his overlooked masterpiece. No matter what the consensus, it is clearly the work of a formalist at the top of his game, having a ball screwing around with audience expectations. If you like your storytelling plain and unobtrusive, look away: this movie is not for you.

De Palma is a full-blooded visual stylist. So visual, in fact, that he’s the polar opposite of an invisible narrator. Like any other filmmaker, he manipulates. What sets De Palma apart is that he’s frank enough to show his hand. This refusal to cover his tracks, I feel, is the main reason why people either love or hate his work. De Palma directs classic suspense with a deliriously postmodern sensibility. He’ll have you trapped inside a cinematic moment at the same time he’s commenting on it. The fourth wall be damned!

Raising Cain combines all of the elements of a vintage De Palma thriller and raises the stakes for both maker and spectator. It’s easy to get lost in the film’s labyrinthine framework centered on Dr. Carter Nix (John Lithgow), a murdering child psychologist with multiple-personality disorder, and his unfaithful wife Jenny (Lolita Davidovich). But for those who are able to keep up with the various role reversals, dream-like transitions and densely interwoven plot threads, the journey is all the more rewarding.

Second thoughts

Such artistic playfulness can be a tough balancing act. Even De Palma himself wondered throughout the process of making Raising Cain if he was going too far. In the final stages of post-production, he drastically re-arranged his film and settled on a more or less chronological order, mainly to avoid a drawn-out flashback that may have alienated the viewer.

In an interview with CHUD.com in 2006, the director admitted to regretting this last-minute decision:

“The interesting thing about that movie is that I could not make the beginning work, and it drove me crazy. (…) I always wanted to start the movie with (the woman) and her dilemma instead of with the Lithgow story.”

The Lithgow story is front and center in the theatrical release. One of the strongest readings of the film is that of John Kenneth Muir, who explained Raising Cain as a caustic social satire on the crisis in masculinity in the heyday of Mr. Mom. This analogy makes perfect sense, particularly because the film introduces Carter Nix straight off the bat as a caring husband and parent, very much in touch with his feminine side—until his suppressed “inner macho” shows up in the form of Cain, his id-ridden imagined twin brother.

In the book Brian De Palma by Samuel Blumenfeld and Laurent Vachaud (in French and currently out of print), the director explains how this first act hurts the film:

“The problem with the current cut is that it starts with scenes featuring Cain. Because I'm starting the film in an atmosphere of schizophrenia, with this guy with 25 personalities, the audience is not ready to accept the romantic fantasy that follows, which is what Jenny's story is about.”

I tend to agree with De Palma that Jenny’s story pales in comparison to what precedes it in the theatrical cut. And judging from the puzzled reaction of the audience I first saw the movie with, a case could be made that the overall narrative derails a little too quickly. The switch to chronology may have made Raising Cain easier to follow, but the trade-off is unevenness in tone and minimal build-up.

A different beast

Film critic Jim Emerson once wrote that the opening shot of a movie teaches you how to watch it. Seen in this light, the restructuring of Raising Cain Re-cut couldn’t be more radical. Right from the very first shot after the credits, it’s a different beast altogether.

Now, we start with the camera shooting from Jenny’s point of view, leading us to her recorded image on a television screen, caught in a heart-shaped frame. Presented as such, Jenny almost literally casts herself in the leading role of a romantic melodrama, where Jack awaits her as the ultimate Prince Charming, holding the keys to another life.

Crisis in masculinity isn’t even part of the equation anymore. This is going to be a movie about self-projection, about imagined lives, shifting perspectives and the collapsing present. The deliberate soap-opera framing of Jenny’s section, featuring lots of talking heads and over-the-shoulder shots that are atypical for bravura filmmaker De Palma, feels all the more fitting when isolated from parallel storylines.

For over 22 minutes, the focus of the re-cut stays on Jenny—not unlike the way De Palma put the spotlight on Angie Dickinson in the first half hour of Dressed to Kill. We watch Jenny fall in love with old flame Jack, feel the pain of her dilemma, fool around, wake up the next morning in the wrong bed, hurry back home, die, and wake up all over again. Meanwhile, her husband Carter is nothing more than a figure in the background. Then something unexpected puts an end to the romance and a string of flashbacks shows us that there’s more to Carter’s personality than we thought. Much, much more…

Problems and solutions

Of course, I didn’t have access to footage left on the cutting room floor. After a few disastrous test screenings, De Palma felt compelled to make drastic cuts in Jenny’s story for the theatrical release to work. A leaked second draft of the screenplay – entitled Father’s Day at that point – reveals deeper layers of complexity in the form of a quickie in the changing room, additional flashbacks (including Carter’s marriage proposal to Jenny), Jack doing a private investigation following Jenny’s disappearance, and a vengeful Jenny attacking Carter at the playground using twin carriages as bait. Fortunately, most of these missing elements had already been scrapped or rewritten by the time of shooting and none of them are crucial to the plot.

One transition in the re-cut proved particularly tricky. To make up for a lack of coverage, I deployed a technique De Palma repeatedly relies on in the second draft of his screenplay: repetition. By quickly playing back a key moment earlier in the film, the viewer is reminded of where the upcoming scene fits in the overall chronology. To soften the transition, I lifted an establishing shot from the epilogue.

Does it work?

Whether De Palma was right to regret the theatrical cut or my attempt to approach his original vision improves on it— that’s for you to decide. To my eyes, however, the re-cut plays spectacularly well. While it’s heartbreaking to think of deleted scenes that will never see the light of day, it’s very well possible that the cuts that were made to improve the chronological version have made a tighter re-cut possible, easier to digest than the first time around.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the average filmgoer agrees. Since the release of Raising Cain, the language of cinema has continued to evolve. Elliptical head scratchers such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Memento (2000) and 21 Grams (2003) broke with classical continuity and were all the more successful for it. There’s a chance that a new generation of non-linear features has primed today’s audiences for the wild experiments De Palma had in mind earlier. Perhaps it’s high time, then, to unleash Raising Cain in its most uncompromising form.

Special thanks to Laurent Vachaud, Geoff Beran and James M. Moran

For a limited time the complete Raising Cain Re-cut can be seen right here (for critical and educational purposes only).

Raising Cain Re-cut from Press Play Video Blog on Vimeo.

Peet Gelderblom is a freelance director/editor/motion-designer from the Netherlands. He drew the weekly webcomic Directorama for Slant’s The House Next Door and Smallformat magazine. Between 2004 and 2008, he was the founding editor of 24LiesASecond, a now-defunct platform for provocative film criticism with an underdog bite, for which he wrote a number of essays. For commercial assignments he’s represented by In Case of Fire/Firestarter, Amsterdam. A selection of his work can be found on his personal website Directorama, where he also keeps a blog.

OSCARS REVISITED, 1981: ATLANTIC CITY

[EDITOR'S NOTE: In a yearly feature titled "Oscars Revisited," Press Play takes a look back at the Academy Awards race from earlier eras. Our inaugural series focuses on the five Best Picture nominees from calendar year 1981: Reds, Atlantic City, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Chariots of Fire.]

Nineteen eighty-one was the last gasp of the independent spirit of the '70s American cinema movement. The previous year's Raging Bull and Heaven's Gate may have represented both the climax and glorious ruin of the previous epoch; the all-consuming onslaught of Spielbergism and Reaganism commenced the following summer with the paradigm-changing success of E.T. But in 1981 there still was a kind of film being made which was soon to disappear: a film designed for intelligent, upscale adult audiences willing to be entertained on a more sophisticated level. Warren Beatty could only have made Reds at this point in his career, and of all the films nominated for the 1981 Best Picture Oscar, it works best as '70s swan song, especially in its interpolated documentary portions of aging witnesses to the life of John Reed. Otherwise, Reds was an ambitious and impressively literate mounting of a Lean-like spectacle that, since it celebrated the aspirations and ultimately lost dreams of fervid young 1917 communists (and by allusion, the contemporary counterculture), was unrevivable and largely forgotten during the rest of a conservative decade. The other four contenders were a varied lot: Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, the year's pre-eminent popcorn smash; Chariots of Fire, a solidly produced British tradition-of-quality prestige yawner that was given some emotional texture by a stirring Vangelis score (as played on the opening credits over a pan of euphoric runners); On Golden Pond, a turgid sentimental spectacle of aging veterans Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda working together for the first time and co-starring with Fonda's daughter Jane; and Louis Malle's Atlantic City. Malle's film was the least pretentious and assuming of the bunch, yet also the most movie-movie-ish (even moreso than the mechanical Raiders). It is also the nominee whose reputation has grown the most over time.

Atlantic City was a French-Canadian co-production and the second film Malle made in America. Most visibly, however, it provided a splendid vehicle for Burt Lancaster at the peak of his twilight period, and it would surely have gotten him the Best Actor if not for unavoidable auld lang syne spectacle of the never-before-awarded Henry Fonda, then languishing on his deathbed, being brought the award by his co-starring daughter. Indeed, Lancaster's avuncular presence and assured performance anchors the film. As more than one observer noted, it was a rare chance for the actor to essay in America the type of roles he was previously finding only in Europe.

Made more in the spirit of the American New Wave than the French, Atlantic City is a whimsical sigh not only for the crumbling New Jersey city of the past but a certain mode of filmmaking that was entering its twilight. Still, one has only to compare it to its obvious predecessor, Bob Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), in which a deserted, wintertime Atlantic City becomes a brilliant metaphor for an America stripped bare after the shock of Vietnam, to see how a certain element of upbeat sentimentality has watered down potentially pungent material. David Thomson has suggested that if the film had been French, Malle might not have been so kind to his characters. Indeed the melancholy mise-en-scene of an Atlantic City on the chopping block and on the verge of corporate renovation is at odds with the feel-good narrative trajectory of its whimsical losers and loners all getting their share of an ecomomic, emotional and romantic redemption before the final credit roll. As Andrew Sarris wrote,"Atlantic City is a wonderfully sleazy dance across the boardwalk of Atlantic City, through the interlocking destinies of characters caught in the spell of Monopoly money fluttering in and out of their lives."

The film's iconic image is the European-scented scene of Sally (Susan Sarandon) cleaning herself with Lemon wedges by an open window, serenaded by classical music and gazed at across the way by a furtive Lou (Burt Lancaster). Sarandon was never more beautiful and sensual than in 1980, with her distinctively large eyes and ample bosom (well-exploited by Malle, both here and in his previous film Pretty Baby). She plays a worker at an oyster bar (hence, the ritualized lemon cleansings) who is also training to be a dealer in the casinos. Michel Piccoli is likely Malle's stand-in as a wizened Frenchman tutoring her in the rules of the game as well as the Gallic language itself. She's visited by her ex-husband, a ratty drug dealer who's happened upon an illicit wad of cocaine, and his pregnant hippie girlfriend, Chrissie (also Sally's sister). Lou lives next door. He's an aging numbers runner who "worked for the people who worked for the people". He spends his time nursing Grace (Kate Reid), his lover from way back who came to town, took third place in a Betty Grable lookalike contest, married a mobster and stayed. Grace's bedroom is as gratuitously overdecorated as one of the boudoirs in Pretty Baby's New Orleans brothel.

Scriptwriter John Guare neatly bisects Atlantic City into an intriguing character study-cum-low level mob flick. The second half kicks into gear with the machinations of a good TV potboiler when B-movie thugs come to claim what's theirs, knifing Sally's ex, tearing through her and Chrissie's apartment, and threatening Lou and Sally. Eventually Lou gets the chance to behave like the old-time gangsters he once admired and shoots them both, giving his life the spurious meaning it lacked. Sally gets the spoils of the drug money's larger portion and heads off to a new life in Florida. The film ends with Lou and Kate striding proudly on the gleaming boardwalk while in the background, the wrecking ball of time continues on its inevitable path of destruction and change.

Atlantic City's narrative texture and freewheeling romanticism have earned it a place as one of the most beloved American films of its period, but what struck me on my most recent viewing was how much it resembled a colorful, Jonathan Demme-esque survey of tacky Americana. A late '70s sign extolling the era's ecominic boosterism ("Atlantic City-Back on the Map Again") fronts the dillapidated exterior of Sally and Lou's crumbling apartment complex; Lou takes Grace's yapping toy dog to the "Pet-tique"; Robert Goulet and a tiny couplet of showgirls incongrously entertain at the hospital where Sally identifies her ex's body; the funeral parlor has 'We Understand' affixed under its name; the local news reports have a tacky authenticity. Sally leaves A.C. listening to "Sunrise Semester" on her car radio. The end credits music mimics a car radio shuttling down the dial, with different recordings from different eras evoking what Atlantic City once was and the city in transition that it had become.

Outside of France, Malle as a director was apparently only as good as his collaborators. Atlantic City is easily his best American film, although Pretty Baby and My Dinner With Andre (1981) aren't too far behind. He was the most commercial and calculated of the New Wave subset, better than a Phillippe De Broca but nowhere near a Truffaut. Prior to Atlantic City he made a mark with two films of unusual provocation, Murmur of the Heat (1971) and Pretty Baby, which take indulgently European, non-judgemental attitudes toward incest and child prostution respectively. Over time, Pretty Baby, a movie that made a star of Brooke Shields and that was once ubiquitous on cable, has become as seemingly untouchable as Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo (1977). Atlantic City is refreshingly free of such hooks. Crackers (1984) and Alamo Bay (1985) were two aborted exercises before he returned to his home country to make his best film, the autobiographical Au Revoir, Les Enfants (1987). He died in 1995, but not before leaving behind two other exquisite entertainments, May Fools (1992), which looked back to the Paris of the '60s, and his final film, the American production Vanya On 42nd St. (1994).

Atlantic City won uniform raves. Both Sarris and Pauline Kael were enthusiastic, with Kael typically effusive: "When you leave the theater you may feel light-headed, as if there were no problems in the world that couldn't be solved." As for Burt, Kael thought "if this was a stage performance, the audience would probably give him a standing ovation." Sarris wrote that Atlantic City was "a cinematic tone poem, sifted with classical grace through modernistic sensibilities." Vincent Canby called Lou "…one of Mr. Lancaster's most remarkable creations, a complex mixture of the mangy and magnificent." Newsweek liked Sarandon, calling her "touching and funny," and Sarris wrote that Sarandon provided "a creative mix of shrewdness, vulnerability and sensuality." Independently financed by Canadians, the film was picked up by Paramount who opened it in April. Despite the critical drumbeat, Atlantic City failed to do business and mostly played in the larger cities. My first memory of seeing the film was with my dad (a former exhibitor who was teaching film at the time) at one of the local shopping mall theaters. The house was empty but I do remember the line for the film next door, Friday The 13th Part II, reaching way into the back recesses of the mall. I remember my dad saying that if most of those waiting for the slasher flick would actually try Atlantic City they'd be surprised and have a good time. Perhaps some of them would, but even then, at the age of thirteen I knew that Malle's film was a genre film for more sophisticated and cultivated tastes. As incarnated by Burt Lancaster's world-weary loser seeking and being granted redemption, Atlantic City was a romance best appreciated by those who've experienced the better part of life, and the movies therein.

Ross Freedman grew up in film, having a father who taught movies and surrounded his life with film. Ross has graduated from the Schuler School of Professional Art and has spent most of his life doing freelance and professional artwork, but his main interest is movies. He resides in Baltimore and has contributed film pieces to other publications.

OSCARS REVISITED, 1981: REDS

At 3.5 hours, it was the last Hollywood movie to be made that required an intermission. It cost Paramount roughly $91 million ($33 million in 1981 money). And it focused mostly on American communists and anarchists in the shadow of World War I, as viewed from the perspective of super-red American journo John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World. In retrospect, it’s not shocking that a film like Reds was never made again. It’s shocking that at some point in American history, such a film was ever made.

Chalk it up to the power of Warren Beatty. Coasting on the success of such mega-hits as Shampoo – which he’d produced and starred in – and Heaven Can Wait – which he’d starred in, produced and co-directed – he was ready to make the ultimate “one for me.” And what a one it was. He’d been fascinated with the journalist since the mid-60s, and, with his typical slow burn, had started filming interviews with old-time lefty heavy hitters like feminist author Rebecca West, playwright Arthur Miller and ACLU founder Roger Nash Baldwin as far back as 1970 on the off chance that he'd gain funding to make a film about Reed and his comrades. Somehow he convinced Paramount of the feasibility of the project – though soon after signing on the dotted line they reportedly offered him $1 million to not make it – and it not only scored the brother four Oscar nods and one actual statue, but made $41 million, which was a highly respectable box office return for the time.

For all the hoopla it garnered in 1981 – it also nailed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and Maureen Stapleton much-deserved Academy Awards – the film has since largely disappeared out of the public consciousness. In fact, it was only released on DVD in 2006, at which point Beatty finally consented to publicly discuss the film for the first time. (At a New York Film Festival screening I attended that year, he could scarcely shut up on the subject, although he mostly decried his funding difficulties.) But does it hold up?

Yes and no. I confess I’m most partial to Reds for the miracle of its very existence, for the fact that it managed to put the mishigas of 1910s trade unions and two warring factions of the American communist party on a big screen for all the world to see, for how it breathed life into such increasingly obscure characters as anarchist Emma Goldman (Stapleton) and American Communist Party founder Louis Fraina (a wonderfully slim Paul Sorvino exhaling great gales of Italian). And in general, the performances are wonderful. As Reed’s editor, Gene Hackman fumes with a half-grin; he should add a rider to all his contracts that ensures he gets to bellow “Dammit” at least four times, as he does here. And Reds may be the last instance in which Jack Nicholson truly disappeared into a different character. As playwright Eugene O’Neill, he radiates a booze-soaked unhappiness that is as subtly sinister, as uncharacteristically passive-aggressive, as his more recent performances are predictably bombastic.

At the film’s center lives the fraught romance between Reed (Beatty) and socialite writer Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton); Beatty had to maintain that aspect of the sweeping historical epic tradition, after all. I’d never really grokked Keaton’s much-touted beauty before. Above the high lace collars of that era, though, her grey eyes widen and narrow with a sensuality that’s hard to deny, and she speaks with none of the stammering affectations that muck up so many of her performances. But because the star-crossed lovers proclaimed a “free love” relationship – an eternally naïve concept if there ever were one, and one destined to appeal to well-known lothario Beatty – scene after scene sounds the soap operatic notes of their off-and-on relationship, including some gratingly if convincingly moony love scenes (Keaton and Beatty were reportedly involved off screen) and some awfully wooden dialogue (“I'm just living in your margins! No one takes me seriously!” “Well, what are you serious about?”). In general, dialogue has never been Beatty’s strong suit; everyone tends to rat-a-tat-tat in bumperstickese here (except for him; the man is a hopeless mumbler). There’s something charming about all that ideological jargon, though. So earnest. So unfashionable, at least until recently.

For Americans in this decade have once again become a people inured to wartime, as they were in the 1910s. More, a recent Pew Research Center poll states that for the first time more people under 30 view socialism positively than view capitalism positively, a statistic certainly borne out by the insurgence of Occupy Wall Streeters, though that movement has yet to fully identify its objectives. Instead, OWS is slowly building with equal parts whimsy and will – not unlike Reds itself, whose relevance has thus finally been resurrected.

Herein lies a film – a movie, really – that builds glacially and with an elephantine grace, that lingers a deliciously long time on conversations held in the velvet-draped saloons and drafty wooden halls and plum-colored parlors of the time, and then breaks out with a sudden lightness in a revelation of mass communion and political comedy. In the tradition of all the very best American endeavors, the messiness of this film’s big aims proves most integral to its success. Boosted by its terrific visuals (all dusty refracted sunlight and lonely crowds of faces) and an original Stephen Sondheim score, Reds is a big sincere sprawl whose tragedy and ever-widening vistas will, somewhat inexplicably, always gladden the heart.

Lisa Rosman has reviewed film for Marie Claire, Time Out New York, Salon, LA Weekly, Us Weekly, Premiere and Flavorpill.com, where she was film editor for five years. She has also commentated for the Oxygen Channel, TNT, the IFC and NY1. You can follow Lisa on twitter here.

Rotterdam Dispatch #2: One Stand-out Drives Through the Competition

This is the first of (hopefully) several dispatches from Press Play Editor Kevin B. Lee at the Rotterdam Film Festival. A full festival wrap-up with highlights will appear at RogerEbert.com.

In my previous Rotterdam dispatch I employed a ten minute drill to sift through the competition lineup for the five titles with the most potential. A draconian measure to be sure, and judging by how most of the select few played out, a not entirely successful one either. Only two of the five films I continued watching lived up to their intriguing openings.

The most accomplished is L, writer-director Babis Makridis’s first feature, which premiered at Sundance and by appearances fits snugly within the Greek posse who brought us Dogtooth, Attenberg and ALPS. These films amount to a bona fide Greek micro-movement that deserves its own nomenclature: Athenscore? The Haos School (named after queen bee Athina Rachel Tsangari’s production company responsible for the first three films)? L plays as if that gang had made a parody of Drive to mock Ryan Gosling’s car-obsessed chivalry. Here, a nameless chauffeur is so in love with his job that he practically lives in his car, each night fanatically reciting the silly instructions of his narcoleptic boss, only to have his boss betray him by hiring a smarter replacement. Employing the same writer and cinematographer of Dogtooth, the dogtoothmarks are everywhere: deadpan performances, flat compositions and a predilection for teasing out the casual cruelty and absurd power plays behind language and social relations.

At the same time L is the most overtly comic of the bunch, both in script and style, with confrontational close ups out of Segio Leone by way of Napoleon Dynamite, and a lovably hubristic protagonist a la Ron Jeremy or Ricky Bobby that could have been played by Will Ferrell on downers. (The driver’s motorbike riding buddy even looks like John C. Reilly). The film has an Anchorman-like plasticity in its free associational riffs on an automotive scenario: after the driver’s firing, he falls in with a rogue motorbike gang who detest cars so much that when they come upon a roadside hit and run victim, they declare "even the ambulance that is arriving any minute is dangerous because it is a car." Sometimes the deliberately inane dialogues get too cute for their own good, and the jury is still out on the ending, though its obstinate commitment to its own strange music cannot be denied.

The other film that holds its own from start to finish is Voice of My Father, a relaxed, beautifully composed Turkish film about an ethnic Kurd who visits his mother and discovers tape recordings made by the father he barely knew, who worked and died in Saudi Arabia. Deeply personal (based on the family of co-director Zeynel Doğan and scripted by co-director Orhan Eskiköy), it uses the voice recordings to haunting effect, triggering hypnotic scenes that flood the present moment with nostalgic pain. Less successful at lyrical docu-realism is In April the Following Year, There Was a Fire. After a playfully Apichatpong-esque opening sequence, the film lapses into a rather straight homecoming narrative of slow ethnographic long takes, the lingua franca of international art cinema. Similarly, Vasily Sigarev’s Living much abandons its most intriguing element, a bloody nosed man with a bicycle, electing to ping pong between separate half-baked domestic dramas of diminishing interest. Huang Ji’s Egg and Stone is perhaps too intent on swaddling its alienated rural teenage girl protagonist in feminist symbology, even indulging in doting close ups of her menstrual fluids. But what close-ups! Cinematographer Ryuji Otsuka (who also produced and edited) boasts some of the most extraordinary HD lensing in recent memory, doing exciting things with shallow focus and texturing of surfaces (including aforementioned menstrual fluids).

Perhaps most disappointing – not for what it is, but for what it could have been – is Southwest, which as reported earlier, has the most jaw-dropping opening sequence among the competition films. This Brazilian magical realist fable charting the stages of a girl's life in and around an impoverished salt farm loses its momentum as it bulldozes its way towards a foregone “circle of life” conclusion; the sentimental soundtrack makes it feel like a Disney movie directed by Bela Tarr on Prozac. But Eduardo Nunes, clearly a very talented director, establishes himself as a strong visual storyteller, even if his dramatic instincts betray an inclination to go Hollywood over Cannes.

Another film that plays more like an impressive demo reel than a fully realized work is Park Hong-Min’s debut A Fish, which has the distinction of being the first 3D movie to compete for the Rotterdam Tiger Award. A man suspects that his missing wife may have become a shaman, but his search leads into a narrative hall of mirrors and his mental disintegration. Its Mullholland Dr.-inspired narrative rabbit hole feels more like film student precociousness lacking emotional investment, but the film is remarkable in exploiting the inherently disorienting qualities of 3D to evoke a state of perceptual distortion, further underscored by a distressed stereophonic soundscape. Like several Rotterdam films, it’s exciting less for what it is than for what it promises for the future.

Kevin B. Lee is editor-in-chief of IndieWire Press Play, and a contributor to Roger Ebert's Demanders and Fandor Keyframe. Follow him on Twitter.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: HELL AND BACK AGAIN

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Fearless Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is making it her mission to watch every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey the Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Sgt. Nathan Harris took a gunshot in the hip during an ambush in Afghanistan in 2009. Hell and Back Again tells you this without delay; Harris, back on U.S. soil and trying to rehab his way back to active duty, takes care of telling everyone else, compulsively — Wal-Mart greeters, prospective landlords, fellow Marines. He can't help it. His shattered leg has become his world, and his medications send him spinning away from other topics despite himself.

Hell and Back Again cuts back and forth between the present day and the ground operation that brought Harris to harm, between Harris's attempts to manage his pain and his civilian life and the platoon's attempts to manage the mission, and civilians, in Afghanistan. In the quieter moments, the film is too pointed in showing us that this isn't a war to be "won," and the overlapping style of the sound design — by J. Ralph, and I'm probably the only one who remembers that he did the song for that VW ad where the guy who looks like James Spader is late for a wedding and trapped behind a freight train — can feel gimmicky. We don't necessarily need an elbow to the ribs and a stage-whispered "PTSD"; we can see the man's face. And we can see his wife's face, reflecting Harris's intermittent disappearances into confusion and rage.

A gimmick will usually work at least once, though, and the layering of the sound of battle over the mild aggro of a complicated drive-through-menu order does create tension. The level of access to Harris's unit, and the extent of the footage (not least during firefights, during which I genuinely cannot conceive of NOT dropping the camera and sprinting to…let's say Germany), is remarkable. Also remarkable: Harris himself, a smart, tough, funny man, gentle at bedtime, boyishly romantic about his pistol, who looks a little like John Travolta and sounds a lot like Lucas Black. He looks like fun. He looks like hell.

It's a solid enough doc, but I'm not sure how this gets a seat at the table when Project Nim and The Interrupters didn't. What you think of its chances depends on how cynical you want to get about subject matter in the category as a determinant. More on that when I complete the category.

MATT ZOLLER SEITZ RECAP: LUCK: If Wishes Were Horses …

Before we delve into HBO's Luck, I need to get some housekeeping out of the way. I wrote about it in a very general way for New York magazine, then asked to recap the first season for Vulture. Luck is a rare TV drama that benefits from wonky auteurist scrutiny, and that's how I'm going to approach it. I'm fascinated by series creator David Milch and have written extensively about his great western drama Deadwood for the Star-Ledger, The House Next Door, and Salon. I'm also an aficionado of the show's executive producer and pilot director, Michael Mann. In 2009 I wrote, edited, and narrated a series of video essays about Mann's film and TV work. As I recap each episode of Luck, I'll delve into Mann and Milch's creative histories and sensibilities. I might also break down scenes and sequences in detail and talk about why they succeed or fail. I'm not interested in the details of plot except as they relate to character and theme, and I tend to hop around in an episode's chronology rather than writing about events in a linear way.

One other thing you should know: HBO sent the whole first season of Luck to critics in December, so bear in mind that when you read my (and others') recaps, you're reading observations by people who already know how everything turns out. Beyond urging readers who might be on the fence about Luck to stick around through episode four, where things really start to come together, I'll try to avoid spoilers, and ask anybody out there who's seen future episodes to do the same. I plan to delete anything resembling a spoiler from the comments threads and ban anybody who makes a habit of posting them. Them's the rules.

And … we're off!

If you would like to read the rest of Matt's recap of Luck, click here.

A critic, journalist and filmmaker, Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for New York Magazine and the founder of Press Play.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: A CAT IN PARIS

At first I couldn't understand how A Cat In Paris had nabbed an Animated Feature nomination with animation this crude. In fact, at first I couldn't understand A Cat In Paris period. For reasons that don't bear explaining, I watched it without subtitles, and my French doesn't go much farther than cheeses, swears, and synonyms for "hurry up."

But after a few minutes, I realized that the animation isn't crude, exactly. It isn't realistic; an IMDb commenter remarked on the "incredibly tiny triangular feet which seem always to be drawn from the same angle no matter which way the rest of the body is pointing," which are rather distracting, especially on stairs, and the animation renders bare feet at an accurate size and shape…?

Yet the drawing is evocative enough to delineate the characters, and most of the plot. I picked up a word here and there in the dialogue, but primarily I got the story from looking at it.

Said plot (I…think; feel free to correct me in the comments) is more or less centered around the titular feline, Dino, who spends his days keeping a little girl, Zoé (Oriane Zani), company and bringing her tiny lizards he's caught; at night, the cat accompanies an art thief, Nico (the soothingly sexy voice of Bruno Salomone, who apparently plays in a parody band with The Artist's Jean Dujardin!), on his rounds. (This brought to mind that wonderful Samurai Jack sequence in which Jack apprehends a cat burglar and finds that the thief's sack is full of…actual cats.) Zoé's mother, Jeanne (Dominique Blanc), works all the time, and Zoé doesn't care for the heavily perfumed housekeeper she's often left with. Jeanne has her reasons; she's a detective who's trying to bring gangster Victor Costa (Jean Benguigui) to justice for, among other things, killing Zoé's father. Costa has also stolen a hoard of priceless artworks, and it's via all the stealing and re-stealing (and also the heavy perfume) that the characters eventually converge.

As I said, I don't entirely know the specifics, but I didn't need to. At just over an hour long, it gets you right into things, and while the rendering is sometimes off — everyone has giant pants and the aforementioned tiny feet, like Babe Ruth — the movie gets the bigger picture right every time. The vertiginous angles of the Parisian rooftops during the numerous chase sequences; the yappy-dog gag, paid off wonderfully thanks to a snowfall at the end of the film; the way Nico seems to wave like water through his scenes; and particularly the movements of the loyal cat and his frequent and judgmental cracking open of a single eye…it's suspenseful, clever in various workarounds, and at times breathtaking. Realism in animation is impressive, up to a point, but there are different kinds of accuracy, and I would rather see this kind, that understands the quality of light at sunrise, than a perfect shoe.

I haven't seen the other nominees in the category, but I have a feeling this will remain my favorite — and, like The Illusionist was last year for me, a hopeless horse to bet come Oscar night.