Argo

Argo
Warner Bros. Pictures, GK Studios, 2012
Directed by Ben Affleck
Starring: Ben Affleck, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Bryan Cranston
A-

The first 15 minutes of, Argo, Ben Affleck’s latest film, depict a militant mob of Iranian extremists storming the gates of the United States embassy in Tehran. The scenes build with explosive intensity: embassy workers burning and shredding sensitive documents in a furious race against time, windows shattering and doors breaking down as the mob closes in, response crews shooting smoke grenades into the unruly masses in an attempt to neutralize the situation. Affleck stages the set-piece with the same breathless pace and meticulous attention to detail that marked the opening heist in his 2010 thriller The Town, effortlessly providing a hook for a historical film that never once crosses into textbook-reciting territory. That the scenes manage to build such riveting action is rendered even more impressive by the fact that the film’s star and major supporting players don’t even enter the picture until later. This introduction is all about the set-up: about the rising tension in Iran, about the hostage situation within the embassy and, most notably, about the six hostages that sneak out a back exit and disappear.

When it reaches the CIA that the six escapees are hiding out with a friendly Canadian ambassador (a reliably solid Victor Garber), extraction specialist Tony Mendez (Affleck) and his supervisor Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston) hatch a rescue mission revolving around a fake science fiction film. With the help of a CIA-connected make-up artist (John Goodman) and a charismatic Hollywood producer (Alan Arkin), Mendez builds an elaborate cover scheme around a bogus science fiction epic (the titular Argo) and an even-more bogus “location scouting trip.” The idea is that the six in-limbo ambassadors will pose as Mendez’s (Canadian) film crew as he scouts Iranian locales for possible film settings. After they have all played the charade for a few days, they will get on an airplane, fly back to the United States and be home free: needless to say, things don’t play out quite so simply.

Affleck, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter for Good Will Hunting has been on somewhat of a role lately, kicking off his directorial career with a pair of Boston-centered crime dramas (Gone Baby Gone and the aforementioned The Town) that gained both critical acclaim and audience approval. But Argo branches away from Affleck’s “Southie” stomping grounds, following its globe-trotting narrative and vast ensemble cast with the sweep of classic thrillers. Affleck drives the production with a craftsman’s eye for detail, adopting authentic costumes and a grainy, 70s-esque cinematography technique that recalls the work of all-time-great directors like Frances Ford Coppola, Roman Polanski and Sydney Pollack. He also takes the lead role, bringing the same kind of internalized conflict, drive and intensity that marked his leading turn in The Town. It’s not a showy performance, but it is a subtle and nuanced one, a showcase of an actor/director who, even when he casts himself as the hero, is still willing to let his supporting cast steal the show. It was that directorial mentality that helped net Jeremy Renner a Best Supporting Actor nomination in 2010 (also for The Town) and part of the reason that Argo is receiving such widespread critical acclaim.

Affleck’s trend of drawing terrific performances from his actors continues here, with a slate of known and unknown commodities coalescing to form the year’s strongest ensemble. The noisiest and showiest role goes to Oscar winner Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine), who embodies loud-mouthed, profane and hilarious Hollywood producer Lester Siegel with aplomb (“If I’m going to make a fake movie, it’s going to be a fake hit!” he exclaims early on), but equally fun is John Goodman, channeling his career-best work from the cult classic The Big Lebowski into the role of celebrated make-up artist John Chambers. The two get to spend most of their screen-time playing off one another and their onscreen relationship is one of the film’s greatest strengths, a gleeful, endlessly rewarding storyline that serves as a perfect foil to the tense central plot.

But while Arkin is getting the majority of the Oscar buzz, the best-in-show here is Bryan Cranston, whose commanding passion and emotional energy anchor the film’s third act. Those who have seen Cranston light up the small screen in AMC’s Breaking Bad (a show for which he won three consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards) know that he is one of the best actors working today and will doubtlessly enjoy watching him play a role more in the “good guy” corner here. And while Arkin and Goodman get the lion’s share of the film’s one-liners, Cranston gets arguably the definitive one (“This is the best bad idea we’ve got,” he dryly remarks to a superior in the State Department). The rest of the cast is filled out by lesser-known talents, actors and actresses who step into the roles of the ambassadors and bring appropriate gravity, fear and restlessness to their situation…all as the walls begin to close in. Each scene the six of them share with Affleck feels entirely organic.

As far as Oscar talk is concerned, with a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a tremendously consistent box office performance, Argo is currently the Best Picture frontrunner, and it’s not at all hard to figure out why. Not only is the film strong across all filmmaking benchmarks (from acting, to directing, to craft categories like Cinematography and Costume Design), it also offers the same kind of tribute to Hollywood that made The Artist such an unstoppable force last year. The way the film lovingly (and often, hilariously) portrays the moviemaking process is nothing short of infectious, injecting the film’s serious subject matter with a lighthearted tilt, and making it difficult to envision anything resonating more consistently with Academy audiences this year. Will Argo win Best Picture? And will the guy who starred in such critical and commercial disasters as Gigli and Surviving Christmas walk away from the 85th annual Academy Awards with a Best Director Oscar in hand? Only time will tell, and a lot of things could certainly change between now and the Feb. 25 ceremony, but as of right now, both of those things seem exceedingly likely. I, for one, could hardly be more pleased.

NO GUTS, NO GLORY: FINAL OSCAR PREDICTIONS

For all the excitement and buzz leading up to nomination day, it seems like the remainder of this year's Oscar season has passed without many surprises or, for that matter, a whole lot of fanfare. Those two things may be connected, at least for me, since the predictable nature of this year's awards season has left little to nothing to talk about, and has left me, for the second year in a row, a little bit bored by the proceedings. Maybe it's the absence of so many of my favorite films from the race this year, or maybe it's the fact that my favorite performances were snubbed in almost every acting category. Either way, the season will reach its climactic moment this Sunday evening, with the 84th annual Academy Awards, and despite how dull the season has been, I will most certainly be tuning in. For that reason, have decided to lay out all of my predictions for the night right here. The interesting thing is that, looking through the nominees, there's a lot of categories that are tricky to predict this year, it's just that none of them are the ones most people pay a lot of attention to.

And the nominees are...

Best Picture:

The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

I've thought a few times that this year's best picture slate is one of the most boring I've ever seen in the category, but in this case, boring doesn't necessarily equal bad, since I enjoyed each and every one of these films for what they brought to the table. That said, when the Academy increased the size of the Best Picture category two years ago, it was in hopes that it would broaden the variety of the nominees: the Academy hoped it would allow for everything from small art house films, to Oscar baiting features, to comedies, to animated films, all the way to well made, widely loved blockbuster films. The last two years, I think that idea generally worked: we saw summer favorites sneak in that never would have had a chance otherwise (Inception, District 9), we saw Pixar finally earn the nominations they should have gotten for the first Toy Story film (Toy Story 3, Up), we saw a huge box office drama (The Blind Side), and some smaller art house gems (Winter's Bone, An Education) that would have been swept aside in years of five. The quality of all of these films can be debated, as can how deserving or undeserving of the accolade they were, but the Academy had gotten its wish, and the variety was there. This year, its right back to the way things used to be: I've heard the "I haven't seen any of these movies!" argument from a lot of different people, and to me, despite the fact that I don't really think any of these films are obscure in the least, is a failure of the expanded category. I'd rather they just nominated five and eliminated the pretense that any of the extra nominees could ever win.

And again, that's not to say that I don't like these films, since Hugo, The Artist and Moneyball would all be among my list of the year's best, and everything else here was more than worthwhile. I even loved War Horse, which many people thought was just paint-by-numbers Spielberg! It's just that, for the most part, the films that I liked the most, the ones that made me think, the ones that stayed with me for the longest after I saw them, are not here. That's fine, since I certainly can't expect every year to be like 2009 (where my top three were all legitimate contenders), and since I never really expected a few of them (Like Crazy, We Bought a Zoo, The Lincoln Lawyer, Source Code, Crazy Stupid Love) to get anywhere near a Best Picture nomination, and the others (Drive, The Ides of March, Warrior, Beginners, Margin Call) got at least some level of awards attention, I suppose I'll get over the disappointment. Ultimately though, it really doesn't make any difference, since not even Hugo, with its 11 nominations and vast critical acclaim, is any match for the silent film time capsule that is The Artist.

Will win: The Artist (alt: Hugo)
Should win: Hugo
Should have been here: The Ides of March

Best Director:

Michel Hazanvicius, The Artist
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

The argument in movie-buff circles is that Malick should win, since his film is an enormously ambitious technical achievement and his entire cast give terrific performances. My personal choice (of these nominees, at least) would be Scorsese, for making his best and most beautiful film in decades, but neither auteur will be able to weather the massive adoration that the Academy has for The Artist, and much like last year, a less experienced director will take the prize for a film that just charmed the Academy. As for the other two nominees (Woody Allen, an old favorite at this point, and Thomas Payne, whose film began the season as one of the frontrunners but lost steam along the way), they're just happy to be here.

Will win: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist (alt: Scorsese)
Should win: Scorsese
Should be here: Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive

Best Actor:

Demián Bichir, A Better Life

George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

One of the most solid categories of the night is still missing many of the best performances I saw last year (or in the case of Michael Fassbender, that I still haven't seen), but Actor is usually so crowded that any oversights can and should be forgiven. Clooney and Pitt give a pair of their best and most nuanced performances to date; Pitt, especially, is perfect for his role, and Clooney does a terrific job with some tricky emotional confusion inherent in his character, but both will likely be going home empty handed yet again, as it's Dujardin's strongly physical and decidedly unforgettable work as a washed up silent film star that will likely prevail. That said, Clooney has been a major player all season, making this category the one of the big eight that's most ripe for an upset, but if I've learned one thing, it's not to doubt the SAG, who handed their award to Dujardin earlier this month. Oldman (finally earning his first Oscar nomination for his wonderfully understated work in Tinker) and Bichir (I haven't seen his film yet) are the also-rans.


Will win: Jean Dujardin, The Artist (alt: George Clooney)
Should win: Brad Pitt, Moneyball
Should be here: Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March OR Kevin Spacey, Margin Call

Best Actress:

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Once again, the Best Actress category this year boiled down to a battle between Meryl Streep (who delivers a typically great performance in a lukewarm film) and the actress who ultimately ends up beating her to the Oscar. This year the latter role will be filled by Viola Davis, who gives what is definitely one of my favorite performances of the year in The Help (at the head of a killer ensemble cast, no less). Many have argued on Mara's behalf, due to the alarmingly transformative nature of her work, but the nomination is her award, and Davis is a perfectly worthy winner. As for snubs, I continue to get sad when I look at this category and don't see Felicity Jones, who I still maintain gave the best performance of the year in Like Crazy.


Will win: Viola Davis, The Help (alt: Meryl Streep)
Should win: Viola Davis
Should have been here: Felicity Jones, Like Crazy

Best Supporting Actor:

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Maxwell von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

One of the biggest surprises of the season took place in this category on Oscar nomination morning, when Maxwell von Sydow scored a nomination for his memorable work in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. The other four nominees had pretty much remained constants all season, with the fifth slot thought by many to belong to Albert Brooks for his terrific, against-type performance as a mob boss in Drive. If I had to trade one of these gentlemen out for Brooks, it would certainly be Hill, who gives an okay performance, but one that in no way compares to the other four. As for the winner, this award belongs to the long overdue Christopher Plummer, who will take home this lone key trophy for the underrated Beginners. He's certainly the most deserving here, but Nolte is one of my favorite nominations of the night: a nuanced and moving performance in a film that never got enough credit.


Will win: Christopher Plummer, Beginners (alt: Maxwell von Sydow)

Should win: Christopher Plummer
Should have been here: Albert Brooks, Drive OR Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life

Best Supporting Actress:

Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help

The Help will gets its Oscar recognition in the areas that it deserves it the most, via domination in the female acting categories. Spencer has this as locked up as any award all night, and since it's the first Oscar handed out, we should all be able to have 100% on our predictions, if only for a few minutes. Chastain got a nomination for a year of unbelievable work, but it's arguably for the wrong film (her performance in The Tree of Life would have been my first choice), and Bejo is splendid in The Artist, but this is one category where the Academy will not be swayed by their love for her film.

Will win: Octavia Spencer, The Help (alt: Berenice Bejo)
Should win: Octavia Spencer
Should have been here: Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Best Adapted Screenplay:

The Descendants
Hugo
The Ides of March
Moneyball
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Another great category, with The Ides of March rightfully sneaking in (even if this is the only nomination it managed, and with the other films encompassing some of the best last year had to offer. You can count Ides out right away, sadly, since this is its only nomination. Same goes for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which is a feat for how much source material it had to condense alone, but ultimately, I think the book was too big for the movie the screenplay formed, and I expect that Academy members will be as split on it as I am. Hugo is the darkest of horses, a solid screenplay (and a very good adaptation) for a film that's far more notable in other areas. That means the battle will play out between The Descendants and Moneyball, and since both are well liked films with precursor writing awards under their belts, it's a tough call between them. My guess? Taking Clooney's likely loss into account, the Academy will turn to award the film here, the only other area it really can. That said, this race reminds me eerily of another Adapted Screenplay category: 2009, where another Clooney vehicle (Up in the Air) was considered locked, right up until the moment it that wasn't and Precious took the prize (a horrible decision, but notable nonetheless).


Will win: The Descendants (alt: Moneyball)
Should win: Moneyball
Should win: Drive

Best Original Screenplay:

The Artist
Bridesmaids
Margin Call
Midnight in Paris
A Separation

While the other screenplay category is one of my favorites of the night, this is undoubtedly the most interesting, pitting a foreign language film, a raunchy comedy, a silent film, and a intelligent and dialogue driven zeitgeist picture (all first time nominees) against the legendary Woody Allen (who has won this category twice and been nominated for it a record 15 times). General wisdom points to Allen for another win, and despite the fact that much of the film's acclaim has baffled me, a screenplay award would make a certain amount of sense, since it's time-traveling storyline and witty set pieces with famous literary figures mark it as the most "original" work in the category. The Margin Call nomination is particularly inspired, though clearly, the film has no chance for a win. The other contender is The Artist, which will have an uphill battle, seeing as most associate the word "screenplay" with "script" and "dialogue," but the Best Picture winner has also won a screenplay award for the past seven years, so that makes this another category to watch.


Will win: Midnight in Paris (alt: The Artist)
Should win: Margin Call
Should have been here: Beginners

The rest:

*Best Art Direction: Hugo (alt: The Artist)

Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life (alt: Hugo)

Best Costume Design: The Artist (alt: Jane Eyre)

*Best Film Editing: The Artist (alt: Hugo)

*Best Makeup: The Iron Lady (alt: Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Part II)

*Best Original Score: The Artist (alt: War Horse)

*Best Original Song: "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets (alt: the only other nominee...)

Best Sound Editing: Hugo (alt: War Horse )

Best Sound Mixing: Hugo (alt: War Horse)

*Best Visual Effects: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (alt: Hugo)

*Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation (alt: In Darkness)

*Best Animated Feature: Rango (alt: Puss in Boots)

Best Documentary Feature:  Hell & Back Again (alt: Undefeated)

Best Documentary Short: Saving Face (alt. The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom)

Best Short Film (Animated): The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (alt: La Luna)

Best Short Film (Live-Action): The Shore (alt: Tuba Atlantic)

*Categories I'm relatively sure of.

A few notes: Even if Hugo wins nothing else, it will get Art Direction, for being the most beautiful film in the race (the first shot of the Parisian vistas probably could have won it that award alone). Similarly, Best Cinematography often goes to the film that is the "prettiest" rather than the one with the best or most innovative photography, which this year is undoubtedly The Tree of Life. That film is divisive though, and Hugo isn't even the only other player, as The Artist could easily grab a win for its striking black and white photography. And then there's War Horse, which is a fantastically shot film with enormous scope and more than a couple of unforgettable images. I ultimately went for the one that struck me the most, and I think the "creation of the universe scene" from The Tree of Life will have a lot of passionate supporters that should carry it to a win here, but I've been wrong in less wide open categories before.

Costume design is similarly wide open, with four of the five nominees (The Artist, Hugo, Jane Eyre, and Anonymous) all having a fair shot. With all the doubt I have in that category, I just went with the Best Picture frontrunner, but if not The Artist, Jane Eyre's period setting bears similarity to a lot of previous winners, so that felt like a solid alternate. The Best Picture winner generally sails towards a win in Editing as well, so bet on The Artist there, and there are clearly no other players in Best Original Score, since rarely is a film as reliant on that aspect as The Artist is. Parts of The Iron Lady seemed like they were only made so that the makeup team could get an Oscar, and they will, even as Meryl Streep loses the award for the film's most definitive aspect. Best Original Song has become a complete joke, with only two nominees, but the category has belonged to The Muppets all season, with the only question ever being which song they'd nominate.

The sound categories very rarely split, but Hugo and War Horse both have a shot. I'll go with general wisdom, which says Hugo, but general wisdom also said Avatar two years ago, and that film ultimately lost to the war film (The Hurt Locker), so War Horse is an obvious threat. Visual effects, Animated Feature, and Foreign Language film feel like some of the safest bets of the night, while Best Documentary Feature is probably the biggest wild card. Even the hardcore Oscar pundits have no idea what will win that category, and arguments have been stated for each of the five films nominated. One of the Oscar blogs I read advised me to "just pick this one out of a hat," so that's what I did: fingers crossed. As for the short films, I personally have no clue. Sometimes it feels like those categories are there for the the sole purpose of wrecking my predictions, so I just went with what seemed to be the general consensus: again, fingers crossed.

So that's it: all that's left to do is to sit back, relax, and watch Billy Crystal redeem the Oscars from last year's James Franco-shaped trainwreck.

 Happy Oscars!

The Artist

 The Artist

Warner Bros. (France), 2011

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Starring: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, Jon Goodman

Four stars

Immediately after walking out of The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius' gloriously executed love letter to the silent era of cinema, the first thing I said was: "well, that's the Best Picture winner." It's not necessarily because it's the best film of the year (though a strong argument could be made for just that), but because of the emotions it evoked inside of me, feelings that felt remarkably similar to those I experienced with films like The King's Speech and Slumdog Millionaire. That's because The Artist is, among many other things, an absolute crowd-pleaser. As the credits rolled at the end of the film, the audience (an almost sold-out crowd) erupted with applause, a smile on every face in the theater, and those things, combined with the fact that there is no legitimate competitor, make it an almost surefire winner. And why not? The Artist is a gorgeously, lovingly made film: heartwarming, saddening, jarring and funny in all the right places, and wonderfully acted, meticulously directed and strong in every technical field. It is such an enjoyable and enrapturing experience, in fact, that audiences will forget it's a silent film at all.

I personally have spent little time with silent cinema, but after seeing The Artist, I had to ask myself why that was. In this day and age, I think it has become difficult for many of us to wrap our heads around a film whose narrative revolves more around its score and the facial expressions and body language of its actors than it does around scripted lines (though, of course, lines do pop up on the screen, when necessary), but this is the same day and age where many films emphasize style and special effects over story anyway. Perhaps that's why something like The Artist feels so new and refreshing, even though it is, in reality, a return to a very old way of doing things. But even still, I don't think The Artist will win Best Picture solely because of the "silent gimmick," but because it is such an entertaining and well made film, with a story truly worth telling. If there is a gimmick here, it's that Hazanavicius creates the film as a complete love letter to cinema history (just like Scorsese did with Hugo, or, to a lesser extent, like Nicolas Winding Refn did with Drive, both of which had silent elements about them).

 

The performances, across the board, are strong as well, from Jean Dujardin as George Valentin a silent movie star displaced by the "talkie film" revolution, to Jon Goodman as his colorful producer, to Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller, the young actress who becomes the face of "talkie" cinema, and in doing so, essentially replaces Valentin. Dujardin and Bejo share a palpable chemistry built almost entirely on body language and expression, and watching their relationship form and change throughout the film is a marvel. Both actors deserve Academy Award nominations for their work here, and each has a chance to win, which I wouldn't mind at all, as both are fantastic. And then there's the scene stealing dog (how great is that?), who is so remarkable well trained that he colors every scene he's in, both joyful and dire, with a comic charm that would be impossible to recreate outside of the silent genre. The film is a technical tour-de-force as well, from it's striking black and white cinematography (there are more than a few instantly memorable shots throughout this film), pitch perfect film editing, and surprisingly, some truly brilliant sound work. The Artist is obviously notable for its silent aspects, but it's also worth noting that the film makes some of the best use of sound I've seen all year. A dream sequence early on, where Valentin is consumed by an explosion of noise, symbolizing the changing of the guard, is one of the most breathtaking cinematic experiences of the year, and could easily go down as one of my favorite scenes of the decade. While the thought of a silent film receiving a sound editing mention at the Oscars seems a bit absurd, it's worth noting that I have rarely been more struck by the instance of noise in a film. 

 

When The Artist wins the Best Picture Oscar (and I would be willing to place money on it winning), I certainly hope it is not written off as "the silent film," because even though it will be the first film of that qualification to win the Oscar since Wings (the first Best Picture, back in 1927), it really is so much more than that. It's a feast of filmmaking and performance prowess that is nearly unequaled this year, a refreshing change of pace and, at its heart, a wonderful story with well drawn characters. While I'm not sure if I would want to call it the best film of the year myself (there is still so much I need to see!), The Artist is easily one of the most notable films, this year or any other in recent memory, and I won't mind watching it dominate on Oscar night, whether it has a sweep, of sorts (Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Film Editing, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Score and Make Up all seem to be possible/likely nominations, and it could win roughly half of those), or just walks away with a few prizes at the top. And if the world ends in December (damn you, Mayans!), I think it would be nicely fitting for the last Best Picture winner to be a return to the form of the first. Lolz.