The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button Review

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Movie Review

What would you do if you were born old and progressively getting younger? Go to see adult movies when you're seven, apply for a free bus pass at age ten and dazzle school teachers with the depths of your knowledge at age sixty? Well, David Fincher's latest offering explores exactly this territory, telling the story of a man growing younger in appearance as he ages. It’s an interesting proposition, one that's taken years to get to the screen, but does the finished product reflect this effort? The answer is a yes, but without an accompanying vigorous nod.

Benjamin Button is born on the day that World War I ended, to a family in New Orleans. His mother dies in childbirth and when his father finds out that he's sired the wrinkliest heir in Christendom he abandons his son on a nearby doorstep. The child is taken in by Queenie, a young black woman running a local nursing home, who decides to raise him partly because she can't have children of her own.

Act one takes its time getting out of the starting blocks. The backwards-aging baby is expositioned to death given that it’s presumably what most audience members have paid to see. The initial clunkiness straightens itself out though once Benjamin settles into his daily routine at the retirement home.

The heavy use of special effects distracts from an otherwise fine performance from Pitt. He comes into his own once released from all the computer generated trickery and chose well in downplaying Benjamin, letting his unusual life events and the multitudinous effects take centre stage.

The idea of following one man's extraordinary life felt a little Forrest Gump-y, which made sense when I found out that both screenplays were written by the same screenwriter; Eric Roth. The film does feel a bit like Gump a deux at times, but it's ultimately saved by its well thought out and engaging structure. In addition to aging backwards, events in Benjamin's life play themselves out in reverse. So, he grows up in an old folks home, has an affair with a married woman in his (chronological) twenties and becomes a free spirited traveller, tooling around on a motorbike in later life.

The movie has been nominated for 13 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Pitt. I personally feel that the highest award that will be picked up will be Best Supporting Actress for Taraji Henderson who played Queenie. See my other Oscar picks here

Although not as enjoyable as Zodiac, Fincher's last movie, this is still a recommend for me. The schmaltz gets a little out of control at times (in particular look out for scenes involving a hummingbird), but this grave to cradle epic stands up well if you discount hype and Oscar buzz.

7.5/10

Milk Movie Review

Milk

Movie Review

Milk is a truly infuriating film. I hate it with an intensity which I normally reserve for jazz and all things jazz related. That said, it is one of the best movies I have seen in the last twelve months and I think that, come Oscar night, Sean Penn will be walking away with a Best Actor statuette for his portrayal of the titular Harvey Milk.

My hatred of Milk is reserved not for the film itself but for the practices which it depicts. I had no idea how recently and how cruelly gay people were marginalized in America. I was aware walking in of the current state of affairs, but the magnitude of discrimination depicted in this movie was eye opening.

The film follows Gay Rights Activist and Politician Harvey Milk as he struggles to become the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US, and his later attempts to put in place and protect ground breaking equality legislation aimed at giving equal rights to gay people.

America's human rights record isn't squeaky clean, and it was tarnished long before the recent torture/interrogation technique semantics silliness. Eugenics, the ideology which stated that the human race could achieve greater purity through selective breeding, was in vogue in the early twentieth century. In 1907 Woodrow Wilson helped pass legislation in Indiana calling for the compulsory sterilisation of certain individuals and in 1927, just twelve years before the outbreak of World War II the US Supreme Court, in perhaps its most reprehensible decision, decided to uphold a Virginia law mandating the sterilisation of state mental institute patients. The bigotry depicted in Milk is more subtle and sly than anything that had gone before it, making it all the more insidious. How do you successfully argue with an opponent who assumes, through smiling lips, that God is on their side?

Sean Penn is captivating as Milk. Van Sant makes his character a gay every man. Early in the film, Harvey explains to his lover (James Franco) that he's forty and hasn't done anything worthwhile with his life yet, a sentiment which many would no doubt echo. This immediately and solidly puts the viewer in Milk's shoes, streaking the character and his actions with enduring empathy.

There’s more than one similarity between Milk and the epic Braveheart, if you can subsume the irony of putting the former next to the Mel Gibson directed latter. Both movies concern the exploits of men trying to free their people from oppression. Both protagonists are skilled and intellectual debaters, but are also aware that more direct action must sometimes be taken. In fact, the scenes involving hordes of gay men and women marching on city hall have the feel of the highland set piece battles placed in a more modern context.

Gus Van Sant's direction is structurally and visually stunning. The movie moves along at a fair clip and there are no stalls or fumbling transitions between the chapters in Milk's life. The actor's appear to have been chosen (ability aside) for their resemblance to their real life counterparts. There's a real sense of attention to detail and historic accuracy about the piece.

My two criticisms of the movie are James Franco and Josh Brolin's characters. Franco's performance is mature, but his character's arc is boring. The old "placing work ahead of relationships" storyline has been done to death and isn't given any special significance by the fact that it’s happening between two men. Brolin plays his character, fellow city supervisor Dan White, as though he is Milk's fiercest and most menacing rival, but the plot never places him in a position to present a tangible threat (ending aside). He just seems to amble his way from scene to scene like an angry child, his inclusion mandated by the fact that he plays a pivotal role at the movies end. Neither of these criticisms significantly hamper the film though, and I am sure they're in keeping with an accurate recounting of events.

The real danger once Milk is elected is posed by conservative groups spearheaded by Anita Bryant, attempting to push through anti-homosexual legislation. Bryant presents, through news footage, what is at the same time a chilling and infuriating antagonist. The wrong-headedness of her organisation makes the second act pulse. The fact that events in this film happened only five years before I was born made the vein in my left temple do similar.

Please go to see Milk, but if you do, make sure you're in a good mood beforehand. It costs a fortune to repair a projection screen that’s had a movie seat thrown through it.

8.5/10

Oscar Predictions 2009

Oscar Predictions 2009

I'm going to put on my turban, take on the role of Carnac the Magnificent and attempt to predict the outcome of the 81st Annual Academy Awards*. This is the first time I've tried this, and I'm willing to admit that I have not necessarily seen all the movies nominated, but I'm sure most of the people deciding the awards are in the same boat, so I'll press on.

There have been a good crop of Oscar contenders this past twelve months, but they all seem to be frontloaded to coincide with awards season. The rest of the year doesn't lay fallow as far as intellectual cinema is concerned, but it would be nice to see some spacing. I've been to the cinema at least once a week for the last six weeks, an average which will slip into sharp decline after this month.

I've decided to just attempt the big six awards and I'm looking for around 50% accuracy, so here goes.

BEST PICTURE

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

This is a hard one. I think The Reader can be dismissed straight away (mostly because its the only one I haven't seen), but the other four all have a chance.

Benjamin Button has managed 13 nominations, but I think it will struggle to capitalise on the night. It’s warmed over Forrest Gump, and besides, I'm still holding a grudge from when the latter movie beat Pulp Fiction to Best Picture in 1994, so it’s out.

Slumdog is the front-runner in this category, and it will probably win the award. However, this attempt at prognostication is more about what I think deserves to win rather than a distillation of bookies odds, so I'm dismissing it too.

I saw Milk this week. It’s harrowing, and brilliant, and it made me angry. I initially thought that Frost/Nixon would win, but this film has made me seriously rethink that. I'm sticking with Frost/Nixon though, as, overall I enjoyed it slightly more, although stranger things have happened than a tied Oscar.

Prediction: Frost/Nixon

BEST ACTOR

Richard Jenkins for The Visitor
Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn for Milk
Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler

When the nominations were announced, I was surprised to see Richard Jenkins in here. I saw The Visitor earlier in the year and had a hard time sitting still during most of the movie. I kept thinking to myself "ok, any second now it will get good" but it never did. It was just so slow and meandering. However, it was a message movie on immigration, so I suppose that may have been what garnered this nomination. The solid acting might not have hurt either.

I think the serious running is between the other four, so lets do some whittling. Brad Pitt is going to have to wait another few years for an Oscar, simple as that. Frank Langella was excellent as Tricky Dicky in Frost/Nixon, but something tells me he won't win. He brought a funny eccentricity to Nixon, but he didn't need to carry an entire movie in the way that the remaining two candidates did.

So, it’s down to Rourke and Penn. On one perfectly manicured hand an actor portraying the first gay man ever to be elected to public office in the USA, and on the other scar infested hunk of flesh a man running around wearing tights. It’s a shame, because if both actors had given similar performances in neutral movies, I think Rourke would have edged it.

I'm going with Penn because, Academy bias aside, I think Milk deserves at least one award and because his performance is achingly fresh in my memory.

Prediction: Sean Penn

BEST ACTRESS

Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie for The Changeling
Melissa Leo for Frozen River
Meryl Streep for Doubt
Kate Winslet for The Reader

There are some heavyweights in this category, and it's also a complete guess on my part, since I have only seen The Changeling. In my opinion its even running between Streep, Jolie and Winslet, with the latter edging it due to her recent Golden Globes form.

Prediction: Kate Winslet

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Josh Brolin for Milk
Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt
Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon for Revolutionary Road

Continuing the trend of having one odd nomination per category, Robert Downey Jr. is in here for his performance in Tropic Thunder. Its not that he didn't do a great job, just that you don't see a lot of comedies nominated come Oscar time.

It pains me to say this, because I think it’s for all the wrong reasons, but I think Heath Ledger will win this one. Hollywood loves a good story, and what could be better than honouring a dead actor with a posthumous Oscar? It doesn't matter that action movies never usually win anything beyond Best Special Effects, just stick someone on stage to talk about how great he was, and you've got yourself a headline right there.

Prediction: Heath Ledger

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams for Doubt
Penelope Cruz for The Reader
Viola Davis for Doubt
Taraji P. Henson for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei for The Wrestler

This is another difficult to call category, because I haven't seen Doubt or the Reader.

Marisa Tomei already has one Oscar under her belt for - of all things - My Cousin Vinny. The rumour is that on Oscar night Jack Palance, who was presenting the award, read out the wrong name and the Academy didn't want to admit a mistake was made, so they let the result stand. Although proved false (see http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/tomei.asp), it’s certainly a plausible urban legend; MCV is a great film but, looking at the DVD case the other day, the words "Oscar winning" still seemed out of place. Tomei may need the same good fortune again, because I think Taraji Henderson is going to take the award for her role as Queenie, the mother of a wrinkly reverse baby.

Prediction: Taraji P. Henderson

BEST DIRECTOR

Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire
Stephen Daldry for The Reader
David Fincher for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard for Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant for Milk

This is the hardest category to predict because the outcome depends somewhat on whether this becomes the companion award to Best Picture. Straight away, and for no good reason, I'm ruling out Stephen Daldry and David Fincher. I don't want to keep cracking on about how there was nothing special in Benjamin Button, because if not compared to this swathe of Oscar nominees its an enjoyable film, just not particularly award-worthy.

Of the remaining three, I think that either Danny Boyle or Gus Van Sant should win. Both brought superb performances out of their casts, and there was an inventive use of camera in their movies. I'm going with Danny Boyle here. I don't think he'll go home empty handed on the night, and he did some special work on Slumdog which deserves a miniature golden man.

Prediction: Danny Boyle

I also want to predict Martin McDonagh winning Best Screenplay written for the Screen. In Bruges was perhaps the funniest film of 2008. I saw it on a trip to New York, and although some of the anti-American sentiment didn't go down too well, its hilarious from start to finish.

All this predicting makes you wonder how Nostradamus felt. All the while I was writing this I was constantly looking for statements with the potential to put egg on my face. Maybe I should have followed his lead and been vague to the point that nobody would know what my predictions were. "The Oscars, ah yes. There will be winners, but also losers. Some will be happy, some sad. I predict a deserving winner of Best Picture, but there will also be resentment in some corners, as they thought that another movie would win."

Hopefully, come the morning of 23rd February I can hold my head high, or level at least. Next year 60%.

* Do not place any bets using this guide as a template. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this guide. Reading this guide may cause you to become sterile.

Frost/Nixon Review

Frost/Nixon

Movie Review

I can just hear Horatio Caine set the scene; "Right, talk to me people, what have we got here? It looks like something big went down in this room. Two chairs facing each other, TV equipment. Send those drinking glasses to forensics for DNA and fingerprint analysis. Gentlemen, it looks like we're dealing with... an interview." Cue howling intro music. And here you have the problem with a film like Frost/Nixon; how does a director stop a dialogue heavy, action light event from descending into a yawn-inducing talking heads piece? If you're Ron Howard, it seems the answer is; with ease.

Frost/Nixon is based on the series of interviews between the two men shortly after Nixon had left the White House in disgrace. I say "based on" because, although the vast majority of events are factually accurate, Howard has tweaked the characters and scenario in a number of ways - including an imagined late night phone call between the Frost and Nixon - to heighten the drama. Hollywood loves a good story, and if there isn't one there to begin with they'll push a lever and twist a dial until one comes into focus. That's how it's always been.

This is the role that will make Michael Sheen a name actor. His Frost is scripted as a playboy, more suited to nailing women in bed than Nixon in an interview chair. His primary goal in taking on the interviews is restoring his reputation across the Atlantic. This perceived lack of credibility is mirrored in Sheen's characterisation. There's a Frost impression wrapped up in Alan Partridge mimicry; but it works, and well.

Frank Langella plays Nixon superbly. Langella manages to portray an overall sense of the man - his hunched over body language and social awkwardness - without descending into a jowel wobbling pastiche. His Nixon is a man who drove himself to the White House through pure determination, the same instinct which led to his downfall. His need for a sense of purpose, and to once again prove himself against a great opponent - which is what he tries to make of Frost - is what pushes him to accept the interviews. Langella's role is undoubtedly the most fun. He gets the best of both worlds; shuffling around as the Monty Burns to Sheen's Homer Simpson whilst also popping up to deliver the most comedic lines of the movie.

Final cast mention needs to go to the Frost support team. Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell and Matthew Macfadyen play the trio who helped the interviewer gather the goods on the ex-president. All excel, but Rockwell is sublime as the Nixon author James Reston Jr., whose sense of outrage at Frost's apparent indifference to the outcome of the interviews grows scene by scene.

Howard has crafted a vocal Rumble in the Jungle, so get your front row seat for my Best Movie 2009 Oscar pick before its theatrical run ends.

9/10

Slumdog Millionaire Review

Slumdog Millionaire

Movie Review

Classy, thought provoking movies are like award season timed-buses. You wait all year for one, then come winter a slew of them leave you wondering why cinema can't be this rich all year round. Based on the book Q & A by Vikas Swarup, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is perhaps the most hyped film of this awards season. Its been nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and is apparently "the feel good film of the decade" according to movie posters. I'm surprised that doctors haven't taken to prescribing it as a cure for the common cold. But, frenzy of hype aside, is it any good?

In culinary terms, the film is ostensibly a fairy tale, mixed with lashings of Oliver Twist and poured over piping hot India. Jamal, played by Dev Patel works in a call centre and is one question away from winning 20 million rupees on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? when the film opens. He's being savagely questioned by two policemen, who don't believe that a Slumdog could have made it that far without cheating. Most of the film involves him telling selected episodes from his life as an orphan in order to prove how he knew the answers.

These vignettes are entertaining and keep the film from becoming an extended advertisement for Millionaire. The sense a viewer gets of a sometimes overcrowded, squalid India is real, as is the danger which young Jamal and his brother encounter. The film bounces along like this for the first two acts, with Jamal moving nomadically around India, at times living, at times surviving. Like all good memories though, perceptions of the past are better than the present, and the film sags noticeably when it catches up to itself.

Danny Boyle certainly slots his camera into some unusual places. One more than one occasion I found myself twisting my neck while whispering "Wow, I've never seen it shot like that before". Even the unmade face of India which he shows is beautiful and colourful.

The cast are unobtrusive and portray the dog eat dog sense of growing up in a country of approximately one billion people. Anil Kapoor acquits himself admirably as the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? quizmaster; a highlight of the movie is listening to him say the word "rupees" at various times.

Boyle should win the Oscar for Best Director, but I think his Jamal Twist, despite being a good movie behind the extensive hype, is not destined to win the top prize.

7/10