Tag Archives: Oscar Winner

The King’s Speech (2010)

Posted on December 31, 2010 | 2 comments


It seems that “Based on a True Story” is a qualifier used more and more these days.  This year alone contains the films 127 Hours, The Fighter, and The Social Network, which are all “based on…” to varying degrees.  It’s logical that dramatic reality is more compelling than dramatic fiction, and regardless of how truthfully one’s film follows that reality, people are going to respond to it.  The problem then comes when a filmmaker takes advantage of this fact and tells us a story that isn’t entirely worth telling, or a story more intriguing on paper than the screen.  It’s not black and white either, with films like The Social Network telling first-rate tales but taking huge liberties in order to do so.  Luckily, there are films like The King’s Speech, which don’t require any embroidery to astound us.  Films that have found the perfect historical confluence of event and characters and themes.  It’s the rarity of films like this that makes them so special, but in the case of The King’s Speech it’s also the quality of the yarn.  It is surely one of the best stories you’ve never heard.

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The Fighter (2010)

Posted on December 22, 2010 | Leave a comment

It seems that every year there’s a film like this.  A film that ends up feeling weighted more towards character portrayal than big picture.  A film with at least one performance almost guaranteed to bring home the Oscar.  Last year it was Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. Before that Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. Before that Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood.  The list goes on.  It’s not that David O. Russell‘s The Fighter is an incomplete film as much as it’s so entirely driven by its actors.  This based-on-a-true-story is clean and concise, and doesn’t require much sifting to get at a core comprised of an underdog vs. the world and the massive weight of his family.

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Black Swan (2010)

Posted on December 5, 2010 | 2 comments

Preparing for a Darren Aronofsky feature is sort of like preparing for a break up or a funeral.  That’s not to say that every last Aronofsky tale is a saga of desolation or exhausting melancholy, but when you look at the man’s filmography, one of the common elements is a darkness that permeates.  The difference, though, between his earlier works (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) and his more recent (The Fountain, The Wrestler), is a respect for subtlety.  In Requiem, Aronofsky thrust the grotesque into the faces of his audience with an almost mean-spirited bravado.  It’s a film that, despite its high quality, is simply too awful for repeated viewings.  Lately though, Aronofsky has coupled that signature bleakness with a real human beauty.  He has found a balance in his method, and with his last three films, The Fountain, The Wrestler and now Black Swan, he has shown the kind of forward momentum that ensures real longevity.

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Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Posted on May 5, 2010 | 2 comments

The American Film Institute lists Bonnie and Clyde at number 5 on their list of the top ten gangster films of all time, and 42 on their “100 Years…100 Movies” collection.  IMDb holds it at 218 on their top five hundred.  For the older film generation this will come as no surprise.  Bonnie and Clyde‘s release was loud and unforgettable, and represented a jump to the “New Hollywood.”  Violence and sex were no longer suggestions, and the previously established style of filmmaking was beginning to unravel.  In hindsight the film still distinguishes itself from it’s peers, along with The Graduate, a fellow Best Picture nominee from that year.  But the unfortunate truth of Bonnie and Clyde‘s place in modern day cinema is it’s senescence.  The film simply hasn’t aged well.  It’s legacy lives in it’s forward momentum, and less and less in it’s quality.  It glimpses at things to come, but is by no means an example of transitional perfection.  A brave film that comes from a time where progress was as significant as caliber.

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8½ (1963)

Posted on February 22, 2010 | Leave a comment

The characters of Federico Fellini‘s 8½ are obsessed with age.  Apart from the occasional young person who somehow finds their way into a scene and is simply too naive to know any better, or to care, the chief characters range in age from their late 30s to nearly bedridden and all of them are desperate to regain that which is lost.  The men all have mistresses far younger than they, the women make themselves up literally and with feigned indifference.  While this is not the point of 8½, it is significant to it.  This film is about the fear of commitment, both artistic and emotional.  Allowing age to run rampant in the way it does here, with barrages of the elderly ambling about in the sunlight (in a place so strongly resembling the afterlife it’s no wonder nothing gets done) and women whose usefulness runs out around the age of 55, suggests to the audience that time is fleeting and commitment is an anchor.  Freedom to pursue whatever you want comes at the cost of not being tied down.  To what?  Your producer, your crew, your cast, your friends, your wife, your mistress, your ideas, your ideals, yourself.

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