Sarah D. Bunting – Page 3 – Press Play Video Blog

OSCARS DEATH RACE: IN DARKNESS

[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.]

Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz) is a sewer inspector in Nazi-occupied Lvov; he's also a thief, robbing abandoned houses to provide for his family, and he and his partner Szczepek (Krzysztof Skonieczny) hide the spoils in the watery catacombs beneath the city. One day in 1942, the burglars run into another group in the sewers: Jewish families who have dug down through the floor of an apartment in the ghetto, knowing that going literally underground is their only chance to survive. Socha agrees to help them, but only a dozen of them, and only for $500 a week.

Directed by Agnieska Holland (Europa Europa) and based on a true story, In Darkness gets right into the action — Socha and Szczepek busted in the act by a pair of Nazi Youth — and though Holland skillfully alternates quiet moments and anxiety, the claustrophobic mucky sewer and the clean cold daylight above, the tension stays constant throughout. (I had to pee when I arrived at the theater; the movie is two and a half hours; I didn't move until the credits, except to squirm at plot twists.) It isn't just the dozen Jews in an impossibly precarious situation, but Socha's marriage and the lives of himself, his partner, and his family; whenever you start to relax, the band of refugees has to relocate, or Socha is compelled to stop buying them food, or Mundek (Benno Furmann) breaks into a work camp to try to find the stubborn sister of the woman he semi-secretly loves.

The tension derives from the larger situation, of course, but also from the way it's filmed. When you're in the sewers, it's dark, and you can't see much; the violent deportation of the ghetto's other occupants is merely heard from below, which makes it harder to bear. (Also heard, and seen, continuously: sewer rats. The children in the group eventually make pets out of them, but if this is something you're sensitive to, be warned.) And the final rainstorm sequence is filmed and edited flawlessly. The submerged screams, the belongings floating by, the deafening water are an impressive build to the ending, but also nearly intolerable.

In Darkness is also expert at letting all the characters be who they are — sometimes they're horndogs. Sometimes they're brats. Sometimes they're unexpectedly, or tragically, generous. Some of them are all these things; the script isn't afraid to make some of the refugees straight-up jerks, to let Socha ruin good moments, to let his wife (the excellent Kinga Preis) leave him and then come back to him and yell and laugh and be complicated in her love for him. A child almost blows the set-up, then catches her snap immediately and turns things around. It's not easy to avoid reverting to two dimensions of good and evil in a life-during-wartime drama, especially not one about that particular war; In Darkness is as much about the life as the wartime, putting the people ahead of the situation, and that lets the situation come through more clearly and with more texture (harder to watch, too, but that's baseball).

It's a truly well built story, frustrating and thrilling, controlled but not rigid. I don't think it wins its category, but it's very fine work.

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. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: MONSIEUR LAZHAR

A teacher dies tragically, leaving her eleven- and twelve-year-old students variously bereft, disoriented, and determined not to react. Days later, Bachir Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag) — an émigré from Algeria with years of teaching experience who's trying to put a calamity of his own behind him — presents himself as a replacement. His classroom style is different from what the kids have gotten used to; he prefers orderly rows of desks to the "team-building" semi-circle, and the school's administrator (Danielle Proulx) has to tell him that he can't just casually whap a misbehaving boy upside the head.

Monsieur Lazhar points out gaps and failures like this throughout: the casually classist comments of parents who both expect the school to act in loco parentis and resent its attempts to do so; the compulsory English lessons when the kids can't conjugate in French yet (the film is from Quebec); the emphasis on fun, color, and camaraderie in the classroom when rules prohibit teachers from physically touching students in any way. The script doesn't lecture us on the topics, though, or get all Dead Poets Society about good vs. evil, or end in the victory (or ingenious compromise) you might expect from the subject matter. Whether it's observing the educational system, Lazhar's friendship with a fellow teacher, or the bond he forms with one of his students, the precocious and direct Alice (Sophie Nelisse), the story acknowledges that solutions don't always exist. We all just bumble forward as best we can manage, finding a way to live without information we think we need. (Speaking of which, if this is all seeming rather vague, I apologize. The plot isn't exactly spoilable, but the details will function better if you discover them for yourself.)

I liked that about the film, that it understood this and that it let the audience figure it out. It stuck with me, the ending that leaves things unsaid, the courtly reserve of Lazhar that wavers but doesn't break, the connections made or sought. The acting is uniformly good and natural; Emilien Neron as Simon is overmatched in a couple of scenes, but he's asked to play a reveal that may not fit in the first place, and on the whole, the kids (and Proulx) seem like they could be in a documentary.

I don't think Monsieur Lazhar wins its category, but it's a good movie. It trusts you.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2

I haven't had much to do with the Harry Potter series; maybe one of these days I'll get around to reading the books, but to date, I've seen the films nominated for Oscars during the Death Races, and that's about it. …Wait, I saw the first film on a plane and liked it fine.

So, I don't have the same relationship to the story — or to bidding it farewell — that you might if you've read all the books and seen all the filmed installments, but the last chapter functions pretty well as both story and goodbye. The last hour lags a little, but I could live with that, because of how much it had to wrap up and put away (but the ultimate fight scene between Harry and Voldemort, played with the usual gusto by Ralph Fiennes, seemed like stalling after a while; in the end, it's two guys pointing very emphatically at each other).

But the pacing overall picked up a good deal from Deathly Hallows Part 1, and the effects looked great too — they seem to have matured along with the hero. The ride on the dragon and subsequent crash into the water, and the paintings on the walls of Hogwards scrambling to get the hell out of Dodge, looked like legends, one scary, one funny.

I make jokes about Harry Potter and the Compleat Roster of British Actors, but 1) it's not really a joke, and 2) Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Ciaran Hinds, and the rest make the HP tales seem important, but not self-important. A well-turned final chapter in a cultural moment.

No real idea about the movie's chances in the effects categories, although it could win Makeup.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

I had to watch the second Transformers for a previous Death Race iteration, so I thought I knew what to expect — i.e., not much, but perhaps a faint hope that the formidable Julie White would return as Sam Witwicky's mom.

She did, and she's accompanied by a host of other heavy-hitting actors, as well as fight-sequence upgrades; this may be one of the few franchises that's improving with each outing. John Turturro is back, along with his character's manservant Dutch (Alan Tudyk), and they're both having a ball; ditto John Malkovich as Witwicky's intense, Teddy-KGB-ish boss and Frances McDormand as the head of the NSA. My notes have something about how the casting kinda puts the "Oscars Death" in the Oscars Death Race, but while the script isn't Faulkner, it isn't terrible — or at least the actors keep the pacing on track.

The plot isn't much, of course — the Autobots and the Decepticons race to re-activate a technology that spent years buried on the moon, a good guy is actually a bad guy, can Earth be saved, etc. Leonard Nimoy plays the compromised Prime, Sentinel, and the man came dressed to play…if by "play," you mean "yell."

But the point of Transformers: Dark of the Moon isn't an acting master class, obvs, although it's courteous of Bay to include one. It's the crunchy beatings, and these work significantly better than those in Revenge of the Fallen — apparently, the production worked out a clearer color scheme for the 'bots in both car and 'bot form so it's easier to keep track of who's who in a punch-fest. It can still get a bit muddled, but it's better. And while the movie is much too long, it alternates kablam sequences with humor that usually succeeds: characters spluttering lines like "I don't care about your exotic milk, I care about respect!" while "You Light Up My Life" plays in an elevator; making Patrick Dempsey's skeezy character even more hateful by having him use the word "liaise." And I didn't mind the old Megan Fox, but Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, whose previous experience is as a model, is likable and a real pro at dashing through rubble in high heels. (Also, speaking of 'bots, does "Rosie Huntington-Whiteley" sound like it came out of the British Name Gener-A-Tron 5000 or what?)

I had fun watching it, despite several pieces of questionable taste (the skull that rolls into the foreground after a Decepticon crashes onto a civilian car; Dutch's…whole thing) and significant denial vis-à-vis Shia LaBeouf's crying ability. Even the flashback to the Kennedy White House is so over the top, it's kind of awesome — not least because the actor looks like Peter Noone strapped a loaf of sourdough to his head. …As you do.

It's nominated in tech categories, and could win Visual Effects — Bay's team knows how to give CGI physical heft in a way some of the other nominees don't — but I suspect Hugo takes that. The film itself was a solid 150 minutes of AC when it came out but needn't be bothered with now.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: RANGO

The trailer for Rango made the movie look unappealing, and I didn't have high hopes when I threw it in the DVD player. Oops: it's awesome.

Rango himself (voiced by Johnny Depp) is a pet chameleon with writer/director aspirations who finds himself marooned in the Mojave. Thirsty, hot, lectured by other fauna and preyed on by a hawk, Rango gets a ride from a petit-mal-prone lizard named Beans, into a town called Dirt; after a chase/misunderstanding involving vending-machine licorice (…I know!), he's made Dirt's sheriff by the Mayor (Ned Beatty), a turtle who has secret plans to annex all the local natural resources, by whatever means necessary.

In addition to that commentary on the haves and have-nots of the global fresh-water supply, Rango also furnishes a nod to Depp's role as Hunter S. Thompson; a send-up of acting workshops in the opening sequence; several stunning animated chases, beautiful nighttime scenes, and a gift for capturing textures, liquids, and light on glass; and verbal and visual gags for kids of all ages. The bird with the prosthetic limb made of a wiffleball is one of my favorites, as well as the fly backstroking in the cactus juice, but I rewound the cemetery sequence three times just to catch all the headstones. (Sheriffs in Dirt, you see, don't tend to live very long. "Sheriff Jurgen / 'OOPS.'" "Sheriff Tucker / Hold My Beer And Watch This." "Sheriff Amos / Thurs – Sat RIP." And towards the back of the graveyard, one reading, "He's Dead Jim." Love it.)

The voice acting is great across the board — Depp's plaintive "T.O., T.O., just a sec" prior to a duel is a highlight — and the hat-tips to other works cracked me up too. The Greek-chorus mariachi birds reminded me of the orchestra bus in Mel Brooks's High Anxiety, and the soundtrack repeatedly refers to Carter Burwell's yodeling runs on Raising Arizona's.

Characters announce, "We're experiencing a paradigm shift!"; minutes later, hundreds of beetles gather to carry an exhausted Rango, Godspell-style. It's funny and pretty and there's something going on in every frame. The last half hour is perhaps too contemplative and atmospheric, but it's nice to look at and I didn't mind.

I liked A Cat in Paris a lot and I wouldn't mind it winning, but Rango is firing on all six cylinders, and should win Best Animated Feature.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Supporting Actor

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is watching 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. She has completed the category for Best Supporting Actor and now surveys the competition. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Not much of a race here, I'd say; one guy's had it sewn up for months now. Doesn't mean we can't discuss it, though.

The nominees

Kenneth Branagh (My Week With Marilyn): At first, I didn't really get this nomination, but Branagh is forced to play some on-the-nose and lechy character beats and he does it like a pro. While wearing lipstick. He won't win anyway, so, fine.

Jonah Hill (Moneyball): I still don't get this nomination. Understand: it's perfectly fine. It's a good performance. …And? Again, I like Jonah Hill, but this is not the best anything. Jonah Hill does what he does, the same way he does, and he's taking the spot from someone else. More on that later.

Nick Nolte (Warrior): The only guy who has any shot at taking the statue from Plummer at this point, Nolte gives a nice, steady performance in Warrior, and he has to fight the script to do it in a few spots. That said, I think it might be a hair overrated, but I have no issue with the nom, and wouldn't be mad at a win either.

Christopher Plummer (Beginners): The presumptive heir, and I'm fine with it. I wish it had come in a better story, but the performance did a lot to redeem a movie that was mostly tiresome.

Max von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close): Ditto, and the degree of difficulty here is probably higher than Plummer's given the cutesy crap von Sydow has to work with. But that can bring out some highlights sometimes; a few of the looks The Renter gives Oskar have whole novels in them.

Who shouldn't be here: Jonah Hill. Could also live without Branagh.

Who should be here, but isn't: The role maybe isn't big enough, but I think Dench picked up hardware for being onscreen eight minutes or something like that, right? So: John Goodman. He has one scene in The Artist that is gorgeous. I'd like to see him get more credit for playing serious (he had a few scenes with Darlene on Roseanne just nailed "baffled dad of thundercloud adolescent girl").

And where's Kevin Spacey? Part of what drove me so nuts about Margin Call is that, when Spacey was onscreen, I bought it…and then something inconsistent or poorly researched would happen and I'd be disappointed all over again. (Ditto Tucci, just as good in a smaller role.) I think we're finally out of the dark tunnel of "Spacey = Leading Man," and it's nice to see him doing his thing again.

Who should win: You know what, the hell with it: von Sydow. Again, no issue with Plummer, but when I think about it, I'm more impressed with this one.

Who will win: Plummer's BAFTA is the end of that, pretty much. You could bet Nolte if you're feeling frisky.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the Race for Best Actress

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is watching 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. She has completed the category for Best Actress and now surveys the competition. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

The BAFTAs complicated this assessment somewhat, but at least we can predict with a reasonable degree of confidence who isn't going to win. And now, the firm of Streep Davis & Others, LLC…

The nominees

Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs): Well, we know Close has looking apprehensive down pat; it's what she spends the bulk of the movie doing. It's a pity, in a way, because she's obviously close (…sorry) to the material and she spent years and years trying to make the project happen, but she didn't have enough distance on it, I don't think; the film is overworked, and so is this performance.

Viola Davis (The Help): The early leader until Streep snagged the BAFTA, Davis makes the movie around her performance seem better than it is by association — more thoughtful, more credible. She's really good. Could still win if voters decide it's the only one The Help should be getting (and I would agree there).

Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo): I enjoyed her, but I might have enjoyed almost anyone; I'm not sure how much of the performance was the character. Good work; no shot.

Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady): Streep is extremely good, and she's playing some wet toilet paper in that role. Until the BAFTA, I considered the nomination her award, a thanks for yeoman service, but she's probably going to win. Hated the movie, liked the work, fine with me.

Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn): Technically accurate but not terribly interesting portrayal of a figure I already found not terribly interesting.

Who shouldn't be here: I would have preferred to see Williams nominated for Meek's Cutoff instead. It's not surprising that movie threw a shutout nominations-wise, though I loved it, but that would likely have been its shot. Close's character is grating, but the performance itself is fine. I don't really take issue with these.

Who should be here, but isn't: Elizabeth Olsen for Martha Marcy May Marlene, maybe, but I don't feel super-strongly about it.

Who should win: Slight edge to Davis.

Who will win: Slight edge to Streep.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: CHICO AND RITA

I wish I had seen what other reviewers did in Chico & Rita. The word "dazzling" keeps coming up, but I was not dazzled. …Well, not by the film, whose plot is the old "boy meets girl / girl gets in naked catfight with other girl / boy wins girl back / girl leaves for New York / boy gets deported" tale of star-crossed musicians in a bygone era.

The music is amazing, though, and Chico & Rita might have worked better without Chico and Rita, or at least without their overly adagio romantic ups and downs. Something more collagey, vignettes of '40s Cuba and the '50s jazz scene in New York, the various other bits and cross-sections the animation does well — the vintage fonts, and a sequence where Chico follows Rita's bus — that would work better for the true heart of the story, the music and the songs. Instead, it uses a traditional romantic arc it doesn't need, that isn't served very well by the characters as written; Chico is ineffectual, mostly, and the darker currents hinted at in Rita's offscreen existence never get explored, so she comes off as kind of a bitch. (The pair's voice acting, by Eman Xor Oña and Limara Meneses respectively, is fine.)

The soundtrack is great, the sound design is great; the animation is imperfect, but in an improvisational way that works for the subject matter. The love story and its attendant subplots merely pull focus and slow things down.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: W.E.

When a movie bombs, I like to go to Rotten Tomatoes, sort the reviews by "Rotten," and enjoy the show. Flops can bring out the best a critic (or her thesaurus) has to offer, the acidic synonyms and dismissive gut-punches she saves for when a movie is genuinely and thoroughly crap and not just misguided or inconsistent, and I like scorched-earth movie reviews for the wordsmithing — but also because I know that glorious tingle, that "I'm-a stomp this flat and make the deadline with two hours to spare" feeling.

W.E., drowning in the boot of a 13%-Fresh rating at present, isn't as hateful as I'd expected, but I still had fun scrolling down the reviews list, which is kind of like sighting down a line of golf pros at the driving range. "Relentlessly monotonous" — whock! "A pointless and pretentious oddity" — whock! "A sloppy, hubristic affair" — whock! "Vapid," "torpid," "abysmal" — whock whock whock!

The movie is pretty to look at (the nomination is for Costume Design), but it has a Julie and Julia problem. Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), unhappily married and underemployed in the present day, becomes obsessed with what she thinks of as the great love of King Edward and Wallis Simpson, and visits the Sotheby's auction of their effects every day. (She touches every goddamn item for sale, and later their love letters, without archival gloves or reproach from anyone. Just one of many minor errors that added up to a clueless script.) Her husband (Richard Coyle) is a twattily dismissive workaholic who later becomes abusive, and it's one of those straw-man bad film marriages in which you don't understand why these people even know each other. Coyle can't commit to the character — with good reason; the script gives him nothing but retrograde attitudes and Scotch-drinking to work with — while Cornish plays what she's given, a wan simp, rather too well.

The flashbacks work better, with fantastic set design, mouth-watering outfits, and a snappy performance by Andrea Riseborough as Wallis. The sequences in the past aren't good, quite; James D'Arcy as Edward is a bore, and it takes the film too long to get to the abdication. But it's better than the present-day material, in which the love of a blue-collar cutie (Oscar Isaac, very good in Drive and better than W.E. deserves) solves Wally's life.

The script dodges a few key issues (Edward and Wallis's Nazi sympathies are waved off with a too-flip "just rumors, guvnor"-type scene) while lingering over others that don't merit it, like the ludicrous IVF subplot. Other moments land like a sackful of cowbells — Wallis bugging out to the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant," for one. And of course the thoughtful, sweet, poetry-reading, piano-playing security guard has a $2 million loft in Williamsburg.

I sat there checking my watch and longing for other, better versions of W.E. — Guy Pearce playing his King's Speech version of Edward, a documentary about the famous couple, anything but yet another "poignant" close-up of Wally creepily sniffing another woman's table linens.

Madonna really knows how to shoot a $5,000 floor lamp, I'll give her that, but it's too long, it's tone-deaf…I basically paid $13.50 to watch a live-action catalog, and it's not even bad enough to merit an MST3K viewing.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

Not to crap on two Steven Spielberg movies in a row here, because I do enjoy his work sometimes. Alas: enh. The Adventures of Tintin's failure to land with me isn't entirely on the director; the source material seems like something I'd have loved as a child, but isn't something I knew before coming to the film, so I didn't get any reunion-y feelings, and motion capture may appeal to some, but is still creepy to me.

But the pacing probably is Spielberg's responsibility, and the movie plods. Chase scene; interstitial bit with Thomson and Thompson that fails to delight; fight scene; Thomson and Thompson; chase/fight; nonsense with dog; "joke" about Captain Haddock's alcoholism that's awkward instead of funny; lather, rinse, repeat. The 3D does nothing to help the story, which involves a flea-market ship Tintin purchases and a treasure lost at sea and which contains no suspense — we've been told repeatedly from the very beginning of the film that Tintin is a genius investigator (though not shown much evidence of this; he repeats things a lot, and actually seems somewhat slow), and it's clear he'll solve the…or prevail over the…whatever. The score tries to add tension, but John Williams is recycling runs and trills from Indiana Jones and the Imperial March. No idea how that nabs Williams a second nom in the category, but at least it didn't make me yell "shut UP, timpani!" like the other one did.

I've never even read the comics and I have to think they're a better bet than this clatter-fest.