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CINEMA SEEN - "Missing The Cut!" By William Margold By the time that you are reading this column I should have "almost" completed watching ALL of the nominated productions and performances that will be contending for the major honors when Oscars 2009 airs on ABC on Sunday evening, February 22. Thanks to the facility of Netflix, and the generosity as well as the fearlessness of various associates who provided numerous screeners (some of which foolishly threatened the sacrifice of favorite pets if it were discovered that they had been loaned out)---thereby precluding my having to spend precious time in dark little theaters catching up with elusive titles---the football free weekend preceding The Super Bowl was a blur of one film after another...resulting in the following page primarily consisting of a six-fingered fistful of performances by females who didn’t make the final cut. I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG---With very rare exceptions ("King of Hearts" and "Das Boat"), I have never enjoyed having to read movies. If this fact offends my effete brethren in the film reviewing community, then so be it...and they are all welcome to turn their pointed noses up whenever we are in the same auditoriums. And although it doesn’t take much effort to figure out what Kristin Scott Thomas is up to as she painfully etches a lady who is consumed by the guilt of being involved in the death of her son, I still found the suffering through the French and German transposed into sub-titles tedious and unrewarding. And with the exception of one outburst, Ms. Scott Thomas’ performance didn’t do very much for me--- (in any language)---and therefore I wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t nominated. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY---Talk about a film that needed sub-titles...this empty-headed English language throw away was so unintelligible that I almost wore out my rewind button trying to hear what un-nominated actress Sally Hawkins and her co-stars were muttering about under Mike Leigh’s meandering helming. Sally (as Poppy) is a bright-eyed, bushy tailed creature, who sees the sunny side of every storm cloud, and who, had she been around during The Blitz, would have probably thought how nice London looked by bomb-light. THE DUCHESS---Keira Knightley did not get nominated for her efforts in this pretty but genuinely pointless piece of historical ho-hummery about a lady who is unable to bear a son for the Duke of Devonshire, who is portrayed by Ralph Fiennes with just enough mannered evil that I was perversely content throughout the two hours that it took out of my life. Quite frankly though, it was the score that captured my interest more than the images, as I kept hearing the strains of the stuff that Rachel "Cider House Rules" and "The Legend of Bagger Vance") Portman has gloriously produced, and I delighted to discover that she had indeed created the music for this film as well. In fact, in honor of Ms. Portman, I wrote this column while the strains of her soaring "Cider House" score warmed my senses. NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH---Magnetically appealing to my journalistic ways, director Rod Lurie’s tale of a news writer Kate Beckinsale) who refuses to divulge her source when she outs a CIA agent (Vera Farmiga) is the tragically perfect example of a late December release that got buried in the BIG holiday film shuffle. Both actresses weren’t nominated...and both ladies are outstanding, with Ms. Beckinsale staunchly suffering with such supposedly protected by The First Amendment nobility, that I felt ashamed by the fact that I am proud to be an American, when what this country was based on is being eroded by fear-mongering politicians...every day! Many, many years ago, while cutting my journalistic teeth at Santa Monica College, I tumbled upon a student presidential race bribe scandal, and reported the story, but never gave up my source, much to what I thought was the enduring enmity of my advisor. However a few years later, when I encountered her while I was interning at The Santa Monica Outlook, she extended her hand, and said that my actions had made her proud. ELEGY---A searing and insightful look at an older man’s highly introspective (and frightened of failure) infatuation with a younger woman, the Isabel Coixet directed mini-masterpiece caught me off-guard, and hit home with quite a number of below the belt/acutely painful punches. Ben Kingsley, aging with pompous perfection, plays a professor who falls under the spell of his dangerously attractive student---the radiant Penelope Cruz, who should have been nominated for Best Actress here, but wound up getting a Best Supporting nom for her work in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"---which she might win for, because of her performance in this film. (Yes...it works that way...sometimes!) In fact "Elegy" which was adapted from Philip Roth’s novella "The Dying Animal" is so personal to me (my great love relationship was with a lovely lady who was a decade and a half younger than me, and I was afraid of losing her all through the five years that we were together)---that I just might track down the written work, and force myself to read it---an action that I find just about as much fun as dealing with sub-titles. end NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, February 5, 2009, issue. |