Popcorn Kernels: Runners-Up

In my quest for Oscar nominees, I’ve come across a couple flicks that didn’t quite manage to snag the coveted Best Picture slot. Here are my mini-reviews. These are their stories.

The Danish Girl

Year: 2015

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In 1920’s Denmark, celebrated painter Einar Wegener begins to transition into a woman (Lili Elbe), becoming a transgender pioneer while attempting to maintain a relationship with his wife Gerda. Incidentally, it’s almost impossible to pick the right pronoun when somebody is transitioning mid-sentence. Somebody should get on that.

Tom Hooper is the arthouse counterpart to Tobe Hooper. Both men with dubiously inconsistent directing prowess, they’ve managed to stumble their way into wide acclaim and the occasional masterpiece. While Tobe might be more of a household name thanks to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, Tom has earned himself a ludicrously high number of Oscar nominations. It’s up to you to decide which fate is better. So here we have The Danish Girl, his follow-up to The King’s Speech and Les Misérables, and the Oscarbaitiest film of his career to date, which is saying something.

Let me tell you right off the bat, the man’s direction is quite distinctly one of the worst things about the film, which is actually pretty decent, all things considered. Stagey and far too focused on geometry rather than human emotion, Hooper’s work stifles the film while keeping the audience at arm’s length. He frames people behind objects to an almost obnoxious degree, as though deliberately baiting viewers to call him out. It’s a load of distracting nonsense that obscures what could be a fun, lush melodrama. 

The material is already so far from reality (based on a book that’s a fictional account of the lives of Lili and Gerda, it is two planes removed from the truth, which is more interesting but light-years less angsty) that a truly wonderful over-the-top weepy could have been born from The Danish Girl. However, as it stands, the film is just a dry vehicle for two incredibly strong performances. If you think of stars Eddie Redmayne an Alicia Vikander (fresh from her starmaking turn in Ex Machina) as a work of art, the film itself is just a particularly ostentatious frame in which they are being displayed.

As far as the co-stars have terrific, bristling chemistry together, their individual performances are even better. Eddie Redmayne really is a triumph here, playing a real person rather than a dramatic type. There is one moment early on in the movie where his breath catches nervously upon being discovered. It’s a microscopic moment, but it took my breath away. Even more notable for her subtlety, Vikander holds her own, frequently hoisting the movie on her back and carrying it single-handedly across the finish line. For all that Redmayne is spectacular, Vikander is steadfast and never flickers. This is partially the script and partially her performance, but The Danish Girl is primarily her story and for good reason.

There are many better films that The Danish Girl could have been, but at least the one that it is has some incredible elements. And Amber Heard doesn’t have enough scenes to be a distraction, even though her skill has much improved in the decade since All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Thank goodness for small favors. So really, the movie succeeds in spite of Hooper and there’s absolutely no question why The Danish Girl is leading the Oscar acting categories yet notably absent from Best Picture.

Rating: 6/10

Joy

Year: 2015

Director: David O. Russell

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper 

Run Time: 2 hours 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A young woman puts her life’s savings on the line to pursue her dream: inventing things that improve the lives of others and selling them on QVC.

I’ve been compromised. After avoiding the twee-looking ensemble exploits of David O. Russell’s two previous Oscar-nominated films, I finally caved and watched Joy. Although it’s more of a Jennifer Lawrence showcase than anything, it’s nevertheless the third of a decreasingly prestigious bunch. We don’t have much time, so let’s get into it.

For the first half of its run time, Joy is – let’s be frank – uncompromisingly messy. A nervous attempt at evoking the fairy tale charm of Amélie, it’s too clammy and self-serious to pull off that live action cartoon feeling. This section is filled to the brim with broad characterizations, meta narration, and metaphors so clunky that you couldn’t even sell them for scrap. One in particular, a deranged and obvious cicada metaphor that treats the insects like metamorphosing butterflies, is actually rejected by the film itself in a line explicitly decrying its presence.

Even the technical aspects come crumbling down around Joy’s first act. The pacing goes haywire, leaping through scenes at a breakneck speed, the young actress playing Joy’s daughter (oh yeah, Jennifer Lawrence’s character is both named Joy and a mother of two – roll with me, here) seems to be actively attempting to tank her scenes with a dizzy, blank-faced performance, and there’s a flubbed line reading that somehow managed to avoid getting excised despite being in glaring need of another take. It’s amateurish at best, hopelessly pandering at worst.

The film finally pulls itself together with the introduction of Bradley Cooper’s character, who gets an entrance that treats him like an actual king. With all the fanfare his appearance gets, you’d think that Joy had resurrected Elvis. It’s deeply mystifying, but Cooper does a terrific job injecting the proceedings with raw, unfiltered life, finally giving Lawrence something concrete to play off. Up to this point, she’s been performing in a vacuum and she finally gets to blossom, giving her role an anxious, immediate humanity.

Joy’s newfound coherence and quality doesn’t make it an exquisite film – a series of obligatory and profoundly hollow melodrama beats see to that. But the film finally comes into its own, finishing off its lot with engaging pizzazz, even managing to make a QVC infomercial breathe with crackling energy. Here, the camera is actually awake, transforming its initial lunatic aspirations into a more straightforward and satisfying story.

All in all, Joy isn’t terribly recommendable, though it’s a light enough trifle that it’s not a trial to sit through. The vastly improved second half effectively cancels out the first half’s muddled tangle, resulting in a film that leaves exactly no impression. I’ll take this over a bad impression any day, but I can’t help but wish I got more out of it.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1107

Thinking Outside The Box

Year: 2010

Director: David O. Russell

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams

Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Thanks to Sergio’s ineffable commitment to attempting to make me a more culturally fluent person, I have finally seen a David O. Russell film. My firm resistance has been plied by a series of ice cream cones, not far enough to get me to watch Silver Linings Playbook, but with enough resolve to get me in front of the director’s 2010 effort, the “based on a true story” boxing flick, The Fighter.

Or, should I say, “boring” flick. Zing! OK, the fact that I actually liked the film diminishes the effect of this joke, but I had it locked and loaded and I couldn’t resist.

The film tells the true story of the rise of boxing champ Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), a down-on-his-luck boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts. He is tired of being a stepping stone for other, better boxers and longs to emerge from under the shadow of his older brother Dicky (Christian Bale), a careless tweaker who is still coasting on his knockout of Sugar Ray Leonard over a decade ago.

When Mickey gets together with the sexy, supportive bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), who encourages him to pursue training away from his current coach – Dicky – and his current manager – his mother Alice (Melissa Leo) – he struggles to choose between escaping his overbearing family who he believes might be crushing his last chance for a championship or staying with the people who have always loved him and stood by his side, albeit in their strange disjointed way.

I know which side I’d choose, but only because I honestly believe that Amy Adams could kick Christian Bale’s ass.

Usually, one’s enjoyment of this type of movie is entirely contingent on one’s appreciation of the sport at the center of it all. The reason for this is, with the exception of the modern masterpiece Cool Runnings, the vast majority of athletic competition films devote themselves to a pornishly detailed depiction of the intricacies of the game.

Yes, there are plots and characters, but they can only conjure fleeting emotions before being dragged back by the inevitable tide of dudes in shorts chucking balls at each other. It’s all very hetero-masculine and it’s utterly exhausting if you can’t muster enthusiasm for dudes in shorts chucking balls at each other.

Don’t get me wrong. Some of these films are terrific. And some of them are Space Jam. But I am not a part of their loud, nacho-swilling demographic. I bring this up because The Fighter spectacularly avoids these pitfalls, focusing almost exclusively on family drama and character study.

If you love sports and family dramas, you are a beautiful person and I envy your worldliness.

What is most surprising about The Fighter is that, sandwiched between the drama and the punching is a not inconsiderable vein of humor. This is largely provided by Micky’s mother and his sisters, a gaggle of loudmouthed Bostonians with hair like an SNL sketch about suburban moms. Without this, The Fighter would be a much flatter, more dour film. But as it stands, the humor elevates the film completely, allowing one to easily forget about its uninspiring technique, which only once aspires to do something new with the filmmaking tools at its disposal.

The moment I’m referring to is a doozy though, underscoring a frantic Dicky with the pounding of Micky’s boxing bag while he trains alone at a session that was supposed to be with the two of them. Beyond that, the filmmakers don’t attempt anything particularly ambitious (save for one moment that flirts with emphatic musicality and is soundly rejected), generally letting the dialogue and performances speak for themselves.

Luckily for everyone, this turns out to be enough. The Fighter is helmed by a quartet of admirable actors giving varied, but equally stable and committed performances. The best is probably Bale, who is up to his favorite trick of completely altering his body and wrecking his physique to inhabit Dicky’s body physically. But he doesn’t just stop there and coast, thankfully. His Dicky comes alive in a mélange of tics and infinitely shifting emotions, performed with the grace and precision of a master ballerina.

The other three performers don’t go the whole hog like Bale, but they show admirable verisimilitude in their willingness to perform in unflattering conditions, drenched in summer sweat, a picture of grubby “real America.” Melissa Leo shines as the film’s tonal switchboard, effortlessly balancing and rerouting the drama and humor in perfect proportions, Amy Adams plays against type, reveling in a character that’s rough-and-tumble, fiery, and aggressively loyal, and Mark Wahlberg is Mark Wahlberg.

Hi.

Wahlberg turns in an utterly adequate performance, as he rarely fails to do when allowed to use his native accent, but he just can’t compete with the high caliber talent that outshines his more fundamental acting style.

So that’s The Fighter in a nutshell. A sports film with unusual tendencies, solid talent, and unremarkable atmosphere. It doesn’t stand out amidst the roar of Oscarbait cinema, but neither does it sink into the much. It’s uniquely fun for a film of its stock (there’s a little nerd pun for ya, you’re welcome), and it’s worth a look, as long as you’re a fan of Amy Adams and punching.

TL;DR: The Fighter is a remarkably funny and rewarding sports film.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 906