The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

13 Oscar nominations. 13? THIRTEEN????

How is that possible?

Admittedly, some of these are deserved but others are most assuredly not. This is complete Oscar bait stuff - an adaptation of an F Scott Fitzgerald short story, it is lengthy, weighty and expensive. It runs the gamut of emotions - or at least tried to elicit these from the watching masses - tears, laughter, joy - you're supposed to fall in love Benjamin and Daisy and 1920s and 30s America. I genuinely had a sinking feeling within 30 seconds - I realised quickly that this was another Forest Gump/Big Fish style shaggy dog story, and that is historically not a type of film I've enjoyed at all. I'm afraid I didn't enjoy this either.

Nominations that are completely deserved:

Make-up & Special F/X - the only reason to stay with this interminable thing is to see whether the make-up crew and the special f/x department can make Brad Pitt look 20 again. Well, as it turns out, they can - and very convincing it is too. Kudos to them for that - have a well deserved Oscar nomination.

Best Score - Alexandre Desplat is a very talented composer and, while not his best work, it is of sufficient quality to merit awards notice. I probably wouldn't have had it in my top 5, but it would not have been a million miles away.

Art Direction - Probably just about deserved, although a win would be a real stretch when you have The Fall and Hellboy II: The Golden Army released in the same year.

Nominations that are probably undeserved but that I can handle:

Best Actor - Brad Pitt is not a particularly strong actor. The guy is incredibly good looking and I think this helps mask any deficiencies in charisma and screen presence. He is never the most nuanced of actors, and his only previous Oscar notice came for an exaggerated, tic-riddled mental patient where nuance went out the window. Well, to give him his dues, this is probably the best thing he has ever done - there's a subtlety and restraint (and he's not so restrained his comatose a la Jesse James) to his performance that makes it worth noticing and in many other years a nomination would have been deserved. Just not in a year when Rourke, Penn, Langella, DiCaprio and Jenkins gave far superior work though.

Cinematography - Seen better, seen worse. Presumably people remember the ballet scene where Daisy is silhouetted. At the time I was watching this I actually thought, maybe this could have been lit a little better. And in any case, The Fall is clearly the best cinematography of the year by something like a zillion miles.

Nominations that are completely undeserved but not catastrophically bad:

Costumes - Bleh. Who cares. Why is this even a category? Only 20% of the films made are even competing for this award. As if would ever go to something contemporary like American Beauty or The Departed or Crash (all of which won Best Pic.) They always lavish attention on period pieces and let's be honest, when was the last time you came out of a film and thought - "great costumes!"

Best Supporting Actress - What did Taraji P. Henson do that was noteworthy? Anything? Anything at all?

Astonishingly unfair, undeserved and embarrassing nominations that border on clinical insanity:

Best Picture: I detest pictures that for some reason decide they need to bookend and punctuate a story with a pointless modern day setting. Think Titanic or Saving Private Ryan. What's the point? It is always the weakest aspect of the film and serves no purpose. This one is punctuated by a masturbatory, death-bed, hurricane Katrina setting. I see no point to this other than to get Cate Blanchett and Oscar nom for playing a 90 year old and even that didn't work. And if there was some symbolic relevance to setting it the day before Katrina, then clearly it wasn't necessary since the original short was written in 1921, and I dare say was a much finer piece of work than this.

Best Editing - What editing? I dread to think how long the first cut ran but if this is a well edited film then I look like a 20 year old Brad Pitt. If it had been half the length, maybe there would have been an enjoyable film there, but at 166 minutes it is at least an hour too long. Any editor with balls would have told Fincher the whole Katrina thing was getting canned anyway.

Best Adapted Screenplay: - Take a novella and bloat it so immensely, you make Forest Gump look like a live action short. The aforementioned modern day setting is indulgent and completely ruinous.

Best Director - I am actually a huge David Fincher fan but this is so self-indulgent I cannot believe this is the guy that directed Se7en, The Game and Zodiac. Very disappointing stuff from someone I greatly admire. Even his previous misses like Panic Room and, dare I say, Fight Club, had a huge amount of directorial verve and originality. This is just Forest Gump lite.

Grade: D

Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading is not a good film. Despite being directed by the Oscar winning Coen brothers. Despite starring 3 Oscar winning actors in Clooney, Swinton and McDormund. Despite starring Oscar nominated actors in Malkovich and Pitt, Burn After Reading is not a good film.

This is ill-conceived, badly executed and a complete waste of everyone's considerable talents. You almost wonder whether the Coens decided to see if they could dupe audiences into liking something so awful. It plays as if they wrote it on the back of a napkin in a bar one evening - possibly whilst drunkenly celebrating last year's deserved Oscar success. No idea is dismissed as too stupid. No joke is seen as too unfunny. No plot thread is left tied up. What we have is a mish-mash of semi-formed ideas all thrown together with the unifying theme of isn't it funny when these great actors play idiots. Well, frankly, no it isn't.

I have no problem with their "lighter" stuff. After last year's outstanding No Country for Old Men, it was only right that they change pace dramatically, and they've had proven success with this sort of thing. O Brother went down very well, so did The Big Lebowski. For me their most successful foray into light comedy was the grossly under appreciated Intolerable Cruelty. It had a genuine wit throughout with wonderful set ups, charming performances, hilarious visual gags and terrific one liners. Everything in fact lacking in Burn After Reading.

This may get a pass or even a recommendation based on the talent involved but don't be fooled by anyone that tells you this is anything better than average. For my money it is significantly worse. The Coens have followed up their very best film with their very worst*. A real shame.

C-


*Worth pointing out I've seen all their films except The Ladykillers which got slated so may in fact be worse than this. If I'm completely honest I also probably just preferred Fargo to No Country for Old Men.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Oh, how long I waited to see this, in eager anticipation for well over a year. So, the question is...was it worth the wait?

The story focuses on the final year of the life of one of America's most infamous, and most controversial, figures, Jesse James before...well, the title kind of tells you the rest. James, depending on who you speak to, was a cold-blooded murderer, a bandit, a philanthropist, a madman, a Robin Hood type character who took from the rich and gave to the poor and an American hero. All these aspects - and many more besides - are captured by the film and by Brad Pitt's outstanding performance in the titular role.

It is difficult to know where to begin with this. Pitt and Casey Affleck (Robert Ford) are both outstanding and deliver 10/10 list-busting performances. For me, Pitt just edges it and that is not in any way a criticism of Affleck, or of the other cast members, to whom I'll return. What's most impressive about Pitt's performance is the gravitas and the depth he lends to the character. James stalks every scene with his aura and charisma. They say you can tell when a great person enters a room and the atmosphere changes and somehow this effect (which I can genuinely believe the historical James possessed) is captured on film. The tension, and James' presence in every room, is palpable and only increases as James becomes more and more unstable, paranoid, and neurotic as the film drifts on. That's a real testament to Pitt, but also to the ensemble cast who are obviously vital in capturing so difficult an essence to bottle. All are excellent, though a particular mention in dispatches must go to the underrated Paul Schneider (as the philandering Dick Liddil) and, especially, to Sam Shepard who plays Frank James, Jesse's almost equally notorious older brother. Sadly, the elder James disappears to early and Schneider is underused. Parts of this actually feel like the Thin Red Line in the way characters flow in and out of the movie as naturally as the light lays on the tips of the Missouri corn on the prairies depicted in the film's most beautiful moments.

Which brings me on to the cinematography. It has to be seen to be believed. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a beautiful film, with its harrowing depictions of wide open, sun-kissed, beauty entwined with bleak, snowy, landscapes that foreshadow James' darkening mood and his ever-shrinking world. Utterly stunning in the way that it encapsulates everything the film seems to be about. Roger Deakins has deservedly been nominated for best cinematography. Will he win? Well, after Saving Private Ryan won in 1999 ahead of the Thin Red Line, I lost what little remaining faith I had in the Oscars to reward quality film making. It would be a crime if Deakins didn't win. Casey Affleck has also been nominated for Best Supporting Actor and would be a worthy winner.

Another excellent thing about this film is that at least the first hour and a half disappears without any kind of plot whatsoever. It's all about life and the characters who make it up. Only half way in does a recognisable plot (as such) begin to develop and that is a huge positive as you are free, during the first part of the film, to invest in the deep and layered characters being presented to you on screen.

If truth be told, there is much more than this to recommend this film but it must be seen to be truly and fully appreciated. It's brilliant. I could have watched on for much longer in the company of these characters and the performers who depict them so brilliantly. An true example of master craftsmen, director, actors, cinematographer, musicians (and many more), at the top of their game and working in harmony to create a spellbinding and sublime whole. If you haven't already (and if you can find a cinema that's showing it) go and see this.

A+

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

"When James was around clocks slowed, sounds amplified, rain straightened."


The world's fascination with outlaws is a little bit of a mystery. If anyone these days notched up multiple killings in the same way Jack the Ripper, Ned Kelly, or Jesse James did, they'd be rightly vilified. However if you did it in the late 19th century, you were regarded with anything from respect to outright adulation.

Jesse James has been portrayed 35 times on film as well as countless other times on the small screen. Actors such as Robert Wagner, Tyrone Power and Robert Duvall have taken on the role of America's most fabled outlaw. Brad Pitt turns his hand at this larger than life character to cinemas for the 36th time in Andrew Dominik's second film as director.

Pitt's Jesse James is as the end of his career and both tied to, and tired of, his celebrity status. The Assassination... begins with Jesse and his brother Frank, attempting their very last heist on a railroad in Blue Cut. Their regular gang all killed or captured, the James brothers have recruited a local gang of misfits. During the heist, James has to be pulled off of a postal worker who he attacks not because he has crossed him, nor opposes him, but because he is frustrated by the lack of money in the train's safe; it's the first sign of James losing control. His emotional stability descends throughout the film. He sets upon a young boy. He cries for no reason. He struggles with paranoia.

Unable to trust even his most loyal of friends, James ditches practically everyone that has known him and allows just two men, the Ford brothers, to ride alongside him. The elder brother (Sam Rockwell) is someone James has known for years. His younger brother, Robert (Casey Affleck), is new to the scene but knows more about James, or at least the legend of Jesse James, than anyone. Having idolised him since he was a young boy reading dime novels, Ford realises his dream in living alongside his hero.

Dominik's film follows the path taken by these three men towards a denouement that we know is inevitable from the title of the film, but this is about how we get there, and, more importantly, with who. In a year that already featured as many character driven pieces as the last 4 years combined, we have yet another that confidently and unapolegetically dispenses with a sophisticated or elaborate plot, instead focusing on characterisation.

Pitt's James is probably the best performance of his career, but can't quite stack up to many of the great performances we have seen this year. It also cannot stack up to a brilliant turn by Casey Affleck in a role that will lead to a plethora of scripts landing on his agent's doorstep. I've seen Affleck in throwaway roles in the American Pie and Ocean's etc films and that very small role in Good Will Hunting. He played a teen in that film, and, 10 years on manages to get away with playing a teen again. At 32 he looks much younger and totally passes for an immature 19 year old. The one substantial performance of his I've caught was in The Last Kiss, and I have to say it wasn't an enjoyable one.

I kid you not when I say I had to turn the subtitles on every time Affleck spoke. It was an absurdly hushed and inarticulate delivery and one that made me question his ability. However here any inarticulateness is absolutely perfect in capturing a character who openly admits in the first scene of the film that he creates an awful impression on everyone he meets. Ford is almost impossibly mumbling and nervous. Frank James (Sam Shepherd) announces after meeting Ford for the first time that he gives him the willies and not to be within earshot of him for the rest of the evening.

It is a joy to watch Affleck's performance as the strength is that his is not an overtly affected one, rather like Pitt's delivery in Twelve Monkeys for instance. His mannerisms and anxiety are more subtle. There's also a charater arc here that is convincing and substantial. He totally convinces and certainly finds himself on the shortlist for year end awards consideration.

I've read that Dominik's first cut ran at 4 hours long. The cinema release runs 2 hours 40 minutes. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is forced. Dominik's screenplay is an adaptation of the 1983 novel by Ron Hansen, one that was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Indeed the screenplay is extremely literary, in the very best sense of the word. Much of what we learn about James is delivered in Hugh Ross' narration, with wonderfully poetic passages, that ensure that this device, which is rarely used well, and often completely ruinous to a film, actually adds to the quality of this picture. The first line in this review is an example and this is, I believe, amongst the best narration committed to screen, although I'm sure many will see even this as a distraction or perhaps even a sign that the story wasn't being told through the characters themselves. Whilst that may be a criticism of narration in general, I don't feel it's fair to use that here.

Perhaps though it does bring some slight negatives. Pitt's James never quite captures the iconic, "clock slowing" grandeur that is described to us. Whilst certainly good, perhaps even very good, it's not a performance that screams Oscar, nor in fact should even be considered for a nomination. Affleck out-acts Pitt in every scene they share and should receive any acting notices the film gets.

Other quibbles include a pointless turn by Mary Louise Parker as James' wife. Parker is a very talented actress, but is completely wasted here and her one reasonable scene towards the end doesn't work. At 160 minutes this is not necessarily too long - indeed it is not a tough sit at all and if trimmed would have felt rushed, however there are some moments that do drag ever so slightly.

But this is a very good film , featuring one very very good performance and stunning cinematography from the always brilliant Roger Deakins. Deakins is the director of photography of choice for the Coen Bros, for Sam Mendes and undoubtedly for many other who would jump at the chance of working with him, if only he wasn't so in demand. He delivers visuals that are as beautiful as anyone else working today and a career that boasts just 5 Oscar nominations, and zero wins, is bordering on travesty. He'll surely be nominated this year and must stand a good chance of winning.

Also notable is Nick Cave's score. Perhaps not quite astonishing enough to throw superlatives at, it is certainly very good and a wonderful composition.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is another fine entry into 2007's catalogue of great films. It demands to be seen on the big screen, so do so while you have the chance.

B+

Mr and Mrs Smith (2005)

I'm really not quite sure why I watched this. The first half an hour or so is quite enjoyable and watchable but the rest, well, the less said the better. Let me just get one thing straight right off. I have no hatred of, or vendetta against, action films. A well done action film can keep you glued to the edge of your seat. This didn't. The film concerns Mr (Brad Pitt) and Mrs (Angelina Jolie) Smith, two hired assassins neither of whom know the other is an hired assassin. A job goes wrong and they suddenly realise (shock horror) who the other one is.

The plot is laughable and the last 45 minutes or so of the film is spent running away from balaclava-clad bad dudes who want, for some reason, to kill poor old Mr and Mrs Smith just because they're married. Jesus, hitman companies have pretty exacting standards. Count me out, I'll be a spy. Arnie never had this much trouble in True Lies. The worst scene of all involves them beginning to shoot each other for no reason without even questioning whether or not they might actually want to kill their partner of many years. Then they suddenly stop trying to shoot each other with a like amount of questioning. It was at this point I lost faith, though I did persevere until the end. Oh yes, the end. Well, there isn't really one and the film ends very abruptly.

Pitt and Jolie sleepwalk their way through the film, there is no chemistry between them (quite surprising really), and the only good performance comes courtesy of the ever-dependable Vince Vaughn. Adam Brody is sadly far, far, too underused, which is a shame, as his character might actually have been vaguely interesting. At least it can go down as one of the very few 'egalitarian' films we've been harping on about on the site for over a month, it's just a shame it doesn't do such films many favours.

There are a few laughs to be had, but not many, and a few god scenes, but not many. It has very little to recommend it actually, despite a solid first half hour. Avoid.

D

I Can't Wait To See...

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford


A great cast (Brad Pitt, Zooey Deschanel, Paul Schneider, Sam Shepard, Ted Levine), a good director (Andrew Dominik, who helmed the impressive Chopper (B+)), interesting subject material (as this month's Empire comments, James is something of a cult hero in America, despite being a cold blooded killer), a superb title (!) and has already been heralded as 'genre bending'.
Whispers of "Malick" have surrounded the project for a while and, as I'm going to be waiting until 2009, at least, for the master's next film (his pet project, Tree of Life), this will have to do for now. Expect wistful, dreamy beauty amidst the violence and universal human themes (loyalty, betrayal, revenge, friendship). I'm very excited about this, I'm expecting it to feature prominently in my year end lists, despite rumours of a troubled production. Here's the trailer to tantalise you further...



Looks awesome. And Casey Affleck, who I haven't mentioned, looks to be an excellent piece of casting. Should be the kind of beautiful, ambiguous film to stay with you long after the curtain falls. I for, one, can't wait.