Every once in awhile, I'll seek out these types of headlines. This one, as recently as last year, asked, Is the Pixar Brand Failing?
The article - written in the months before Up was released - goes on to quote a lot of stuff about metrics and how inflation is artificially raising the purported box office tallies. Specifically, it targets Wall-E and Ratatouille as indicative of this supposed "failing". But Wall-E cost $180M to make and domestically made $224M - a nice profit. Worldwide it made $533M. And when I look at the worldwide box office for Ratatouille ... look, I just don't understand how a movie that makes over half a billion dollars can be seen as a flop/bomb/failure.
The article quotes a New York Times story that stated, "Richard Greenfield of Pali Research downgraded Disney shares to sell last month, citing a poor outlook for Up as a reason." And once again, this happens because short-sighted bean counters didn't see the potential. Up ended up making nearly $300M domestically and $727M globally, making it the studio's second biggest hit after Finding Nemo. It went on to be the second animated film ever nominated for Best Picture. Pixar's brand is definitely failing.
This weekend, Toy Story 3 garnered $109 million dollars. In literally four days. It's Pixar's biggest opening weekend ever, shooting past that of The Incredibles at $70,467,623. It becomes the eleventh Pixar film - out of eleven - to open at #1 at the box office. No Pixar film has made less than $160M, and the film that did that was A Bug's Life, which had the second-lowest budget of any Pixar feature and was released in 1998, when $160M was still considered a staggering blockbuster. Every Pixar film has been a critical and commercial success. Even its weakest film, Cars, received generally positive reviews, and has generated the studio's biggest merchandising revenue stream - as of last year, over $3M in merch alone. There's a reason why Cars 2 is currently in production.
I'm not sure where the almost rabid desire to see Pixar fail comes from. Professional jealousy? Good old schadenfreude? There was a big to-do this week about "the only two reviewers who hate Toy Story 3," which has received almost universal praise elsewhere. The "reviewers" - I'd hate to call them critics and demean the profession - didn't seem to have really seen the movie. One of them states boldly that, because real branded toys are used in the film, it's not a movie, it's an advertisement. The other one doesn't really discuss the film at all, focusing more on the MPAA rating and the budget.
So it seems that the people who are determined to see this studio take one in the chin are looking at the metrics, the budgets, the ratings, the inflation, the business. In all this, people seem to forget what drives people to Pixar movies: a good story that happens to be unique and universal at the same time. Good writing, good directing, good acting. That's it. That's all. It's simple and it's stupid, but that's the formula. Make a good movie and people will come see it. Maybe it doesn't work out that way for every film - a lot of deserving movies fail and a lot of crap succeeds - but it works for Pixar, and it keeps working for them.
$109 million in a single weekend. Is Pixar's brand failing? What do you think?
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Sex In the City II
There's a reason why Sex In the City 2 is like Grease 2, but we'll get to that in a minute. The real shocker of Sex in the City 2 isn't that it's overlong and borderline atrocious, it's that it's leagues better than the first film. I'm not sure if this fact should shock or dismay, but mostly it just fills me with dull ambivalence.
The first question has to be: is the movie bad? The answer? I'm not sure. It's not good, that much is obvious. But there are good parts, and that's what's most infuriating.
No. No, wait, I take that back. Most infuriating is that Sex in the City 2 features, as its main character, an unlikable shrew of a woman with whom we are all supposed to relate. This shouldn't be hard, I think. I recall relating to her (mostly) on the TV show. Despite her expensive tastes, she seemed somehow earthy and interesting. A little self-involved, perhaps, but still a formidable main character with whom the audience's sympathies could easily lie.
In Sex In the City 2, Carrie is at turns shrill and unbearable, unreasonable and ridiculous. And she wears this one hat that could almost literally house a small, poor family. Her marriage problems almost border on existential, and in a better movie, that angle could have been played up. Every time she says she enjoys something, even slightly, her husband (Mr. Big) chooses to escalate those enjoyments to an unreasonable point. She likes a couch and he makes it his nest. She likes an old movie on TV, he installs a TV in their bedroom. She takes two days off from him to go write in her old apartment, he institutes it as a weekly occurrence. It's not that these aren't valid concerns a wife might have every right to complain about. Instead, she nags that they don't go out every single night, and eat take-out once in awhile. And she doesn't do it in a way that elicits any sort of sympathy, either: she's like a demanding, cartoon shrew.
The other women fare a little better. Miranda's new boss is a sexist (though the utter lack of any other women in her entire office seems suspect), Samantha's fighting off menopause, and Charlotte is finding out that motherhood is not all about baking cupcakes in vintage clothing. (Roger Ebert makes a note about that in his review; after some thought, I think Charlotte wearing a vintage dress making cupcakes actually fits for the character, trying to literally have it all at once.) These all seem like realistic, albeit heightened, problems - all of which are far, far more interesting than Carrie's. To be fair, though, a time-lapse video of plaster hardening would be far more interesting than Carrie's problems.
When, via some plot mechanations, the girls fly off to Abu Dhabi to "go someplace rich," things really start to skid off the rails. (1) New York City, for these women, IS someplace rich. There's lip service paid to the sagging economy, but it's one of those "show, don't tell" moments authors learn to avoid in, say, 5th grade Comp. (2) This is when the movie decides it has a Theme, and that Theme is Women Are Oppressed the World Over. It's not a bad theme, as themes go, and in a better movie with some smart handling, it can absolutely work. In this movie, womens' consciousness is awakened with the subtlety of a jackhammer on asphalt. During one otherwise okay moment where Our Girls sing "I Am Women" at karaoke, a number of Abu Dhabi women watching in the crowd seem to have a spiritual awakening. Oh wait, they seem to be thinking, those American women are right. I AM woman! It's pandering and insulting, not just to women, but all moviegoers.
(Oh, and speaking of insults to moviegoers: a cardinal rule in filmmaking is that you never, NEVER show clips of better movies in your crappy movie. It's why you don't see anyone watching Citizen Kane in Leprechaun 4. SITC2 has the audacity to not only show bits of It Happened One Night, but also rip off one of its central gags. Does it work? Eh, sort of. But mostly we're reminded that It Happened One Night won the Top 5 Oscars, and that we're still watching Sex In the City 2.)
Okay, so here's how this film is like Grease 2: smack dab in the middle of the movie is a scene that belongs in a better movie. Charlotte and Miranda are talking about motherhood. It's a scene they have to themselves. In it, they're bonding about why motherhood is harder than it seems to be, and why it's okay to admit it. The women in this scene seem real. They also seem like friends with a long, storied history. Better: the scene is well-written, with a silly confession drinking-game gag that fits in. The actors even seem to step up their game, knowing that they finally have something fun and interesting and real to work with. Then Samantha gets arrested for causing a boner and the film shrieks back into suck territory.
The main message I took away from this movie is that you can solve equal rights issues worldwide with (a) shaky puns, (b), a steady supply of haute couture, and (c) being over-privileged. I also learned that the best way to relax is by putting on your most expensive clothes and sitting sideways on an uncomfortable couch and flipping through a magazine so far away from your face that reading it is likely impossible. I am woman!
The first question has to be: is the movie bad? The answer? I'm not sure. It's not good, that much is obvious. But there are good parts, and that's what's most infuriating.
No. No, wait, I take that back. Most infuriating is that Sex in the City 2 features, as its main character, an unlikable shrew of a woman with whom we are all supposed to relate. This shouldn't be hard, I think. I recall relating to her (mostly) on the TV show. Despite her expensive tastes, she seemed somehow earthy and interesting. A little self-involved, perhaps, but still a formidable main character with whom the audience's sympathies could easily lie.
In Sex In the City 2, Carrie is at turns shrill and unbearable, unreasonable and ridiculous. And she wears this one hat that could almost literally house a small, poor family. Her marriage problems almost border on existential, and in a better movie, that angle could have been played up. Every time she says she enjoys something, even slightly, her husband (Mr. Big) chooses to escalate those enjoyments to an unreasonable point. She likes a couch and he makes it his nest. She likes an old movie on TV, he installs a TV in their bedroom. She takes two days off from him to go write in her old apartment, he institutes it as a weekly occurrence. It's not that these aren't valid concerns a wife might have every right to complain about. Instead, she nags that they don't go out every single night, and eat take-out once in awhile. And she doesn't do it in a way that elicits any sort of sympathy, either: she's like a demanding, cartoon shrew.
The other women fare a little better. Miranda's new boss is a sexist (though the utter lack of any other women in her entire office seems suspect), Samantha's fighting off menopause, and Charlotte is finding out that motherhood is not all about baking cupcakes in vintage clothing. (Roger Ebert makes a note about that in his review; after some thought, I think Charlotte wearing a vintage dress making cupcakes actually fits for the character, trying to literally have it all at once.) These all seem like realistic, albeit heightened, problems - all of which are far, far more interesting than Carrie's. To be fair, though, a time-lapse video of plaster hardening would be far more interesting than Carrie's problems.
When, via some plot mechanations, the girls fly off to Abu Dhabi to "go someplace rich," things really start to skid off the rails. (1) New York City, for these women, IS someplace rich. There's lip service paid to the sagging economy, but it's one of those "show, don't tell" moments authors learn to avoid in, say, 5th grade Comp. (2) This is when the movie decides it has a Theme, and that Theme is Women Are Oppressed the World Over. It's not a bad theme, as themes go, and in a better movie with some smart handling, it can absolutely work. In this movie, womens' consciousness is awakened with the subtlety of a jackhammer on asphalt. During one otherwise okay moment where Our Girls sing "I Am Women" at karaoke, a number of Abu Dhabi women watching in the crowd seem to have a spiritual awakening. Oh wait, they seem to be thinking, those American women are right. I AM woman! It's pandering and insulting, not just to women, but all moviegoers.
(Oh, and speaking of insults to moviegoers: a cardinal rule in filmmaking is that you never, NEVER show clips of better movies in your crappy movie. It's why you don't see anyone watching Citizen Kane in Leprechaun 4. SITC2 has the audacity to not only show bits of It Happened One Night, but also rip off one of its central gags. Does it work? Eh, sort of. But mostly we're reminded that It Happened One Night won the Top 5 Oscars, and that we're still watching Sex In the City 2.)
Okay, so here's how this film is like Grease 2: smack dab in the middle of the movie is a scene that belongs in a better movie. Charlotte and Miranda are talking about motherhood. It's a scene they have to themselves. In it, they're bonding about why motherhood is harder than it seems to be, and why it's okay to admit it. The women in this scene seem real. They also seem like friends with a long, storied history. Better: the scene is well-written, with a silly confession drinking-game gag that fits in. The actors even seem to step up their game, knowing that they finally have something fun and interesting and real to work with. Then Samantha gets arrested for causing a boner and the film shrieks back into suck territory.
The main message I took away from this movie is that you can solve equal rights issues worldwide with (a) shaky puns, (b), a steady supply of haute couture, and (c) being over-privileged. I also learned that the best way to relax is by putting on your most expensive clothes and sitting sideways on an uncomfortable couch and flipping through a magazine so far away from your face that reading it is likely impossible. I am woman!
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Iron Man 2: A Ridiculous Review
Okay, so I just got back from Iron Man 2 with Shawn. As I stated on the Twitters, the early reviews were ranging from, “What a terrific film, balanced by action and intense character work,” to, “it’s like Hitler came to life and started raping babies.” I will seriously never understand the entitlement aspect to fanboys, and the concept that if a film isn’t exactly their vision, they have been betrayed and let down and I’m never reading comics again and I’m taking my ball and going home. I mean, seriously? Daredevil was a mediocre film but I got through it somehow.
Anyway, in your Kev’s humble opinion, Iron Man 2 is not only a wonderful film, it’s the best of the year. It’s got a few new characters, but it never feels overcrowded. We get deeper into Tony Stark’s neuroses, and his way of using his image as a shield to hide behind. Somehow, Gwyneth Paltrow is appealing, and Scarlet Johanssen kicks a bunch of ass, and there’s a lot more of John Favreu on the screen. This is never bad, though I would have preferred shirtlessness. Plus, Mickey Rourke is a believable bad guy, and the action sequences are delightfully actiony, and there’s exposition but it never goes on forever, and Samuel L. Jackson is Nick Furying just enough, and it’s all awesome. Just awesome!
But that’s not the main reason I loved this movie. No, I loved this movie because it’s so Disney I had like seven nerdgasms in my seat. And not obvious Disney. Not anything that will distract anyone who hates or doesn’t know Disney. But for Disnerds, you guys, this is a treasure trove. There’s a whole thing about the Stark Expo ’74, which is a near-exact replica of Disney’s pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in ’64. There’s a video showing Tony Stark’s Dad and he looks exactly like Walt Disney doing his promotional videos. And biggest of all? There’s a song associated with the expo that plays early in the movie and then again over the credits. I whispered to Shawn, “This is like a re-write of ‘A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow,’ which was in Horizons and the Carousel of Progress.” Then the song credits rolled and I actually shouted in the theater. “SHAWN IT WAS WRITTEN BY RICHARD SHERMAN! WHO WROTE ‘A GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW’! AND ALSO ‘IT’S A SMALL WORLD’!”
He looked at me. “You know, I know who the Sherman Brothers are.”
Me, wide-eyed. “You do?!”
“Dude, I bought you that CD for Christmas!”
You know, I know a lot of people were crazy nervous when Disney bought Marvel, but if this is the direction? If they’re going to do things cleverly and interestingly without being obvious and stupid, I am on board. I am so excited about this movie. I want to see it again, right now! OMG and then there was a post-credits thing! SERIOUSLY STAY FOR AFTER THE CREDITS, especially you, Dave P. ESPECIALLY YOU!
OMG there was also a Spaceship Earth! YOU GUYS WAY TOO MUCH SQUEE!!!
Okay, better.
EPCOT!
Seriously, better now.
Anyway, in your Kev’s humble opinion, Iron Man 2 is not only a wonderful film, it’s the best of the year. It’s got a few new characters, but it never feels overcrowded. We get deeper into Tony Stark’s neuroses, and his way of using his image as a shield to hide behind. Somehow, Gwyneth Paltrow is appealing, and Scarlet Johanssen kicks a bunch of ass, and there’s a lot more of John Favreu on the screen. This is never bad, though I would have preferred shirtlessness. Plus, Mickey Rourke is a believable bad guy, and the action sequences are delightfully actiony, and there’s exposition but it never goes on forever, and Samuel L. Jackson is Nick Furying just enough, and it’s all awesome. Just awesome!
But that’s not the main reason I loved this movie. No, I loved this movie because it’s so Disney I had like seven nerdgasms in my seat. And not obvious Disney. Not anything that will distract anyone who hates or doesn’t know Disney. But for Disnerds, you guys, this is a treasure trove. There’s a whole thing about the Stark Expo ’74, which is a near-exact replica of Disney’s pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in ’64. There’s a video showing Tony Stark’s Dad and he looks exactly like Walt Disney doing his promotional videos. And biggest of all? There’s a song associated with the expo that plays early in the movie and then again over the credits. I whispered to Shawn, “This is like a re-write of ‘A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow,’ which was in Horizons and the Carousel of Progress.” Then the song credits rolled and I actually shouted in the theater. “SHAWN IT WAS WRITTEN BY RICHARD SHERMAN! WHO WROTE ‘A GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW’! AND ALSO ‘IT’S A SMALL WORLD’!”
He looked at me. “You know, I know who the Sherman Brothers are.”
Me, wide-eyed. “You do?!”
“Dude, I bought you that CD for Christmas!”
You know, I know a lot of people were crazy nervous when Disney bought Marvel, but if this is the direction? If they’re going to do things cleverly and interestingly without being obvious and stupid, I am on board. I am so excited about this movie. I want to see it again, right now! OMG and then there was a post-credits thing! SERIOUSLY STAY FOR AFTER THE CREDITS, especially you, Dave P. ESPECIALLY YOU!
OMG there was also a Spaceship Earth! YOU GUYS WAY TOO MUCH SQUEE!!!
Okay, better.
EPCOT!
Seriously, better now.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Princess and the Blog
Thank God for Twitter. Until just before lunch, I had forgotten The Princess and the Frog had come out on DVD today. My temp job is right near one of those maxi-mini-malls, with two big anchor stores and a bunch of depressing eateries and closet stores that lurch gaspingly toward significance and never quite make it. Happily for me, the two anchor stores were Best Buy and Target, which meant the inherent glee of comparison shopping and coming out three dollars ahead by going an extra twenty feet to Target. Which, by the by, also has a Starbucks inside of it, rendering this temp position not nearly as desolately located as I’d assumed.
But getting back to the purchase itself, let’s talk a moment about The Princess and the Frog. This was the film that was supposed to usher in the Third Disney Renaissance; its return to hand-drawn animation, a musical structure, and an emphasis on Princess Tiana being the first African-American Disney Princess were supposed to do for the Animation division what The Little Mermaid did in 1989. (Some insist the second Renaissance began earlier, with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, making the modern-era corollary Bolt, the first Disney film under the purview of Pixar creative chief John Lasseter.)
The reality didn’t play out exactly as Disney hoped. It was critically lauded – Time magazine voted it the best film of the year – and the box office seemed promising. In its opening weekend, it debuted at #1 at the box office and became the highest-grossing animated film ever released in December. It went on to gross $104,000,000 domestically, which would have been seen as a blockbuster as recently as three years ago, but now seemed disappointing in an era where success seems to begin at $200M. A less dubious detraction was that the budget of the film was almost exactly its gross, meaning that – domestically, at least – the film only broke even. However, accounting for worldwide totals, the film actually came out well ahead, grossing $247M globally.
Even so, Disney saw this movie as a failure – perhaps because so much had been riding on it. Many factors were blamed, but what seems to have unfortunately gained traction is the notion that the film wasn’t universal enough – i.e., didn’t cater to boys. Now, despite the successes of the Pirates of the Caribbean films – and their cross-gender appeal – and the classic roster of characters and films, the Disney Princess brand is one of Disney’s primary moneymakers. It’s so prevalent that they are devoting an entirely new section of Fantasyland in Disney World to them. But theme park and merchandising successes don’t necessarily translate into feature film successes, at least in Disney’s way of thinking.
Therefore, Disney has decided to be proactive with its next film, the long-gestating and highly anticipated film Rapunzel. The film uses breakthrough computer animation, differentiating it from other CGI films by basing its palate on classic paintings. Disney fans have been drooling about the project for over a decade, but now, because of the slightly disappointing returns on The Princess and the Frog, are changing the name … to Tangled.
I think this is a short-sighted decision, especially since the name Rapunzel has such a resonance to it and Tangled is a past-tense verb that just sort of lays there. Maybe it’s meant to evoke Enchanted? Plus, despite names like Snow White and Beauty & the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Cinderella, those films managed to appeal to everyone. It just rankles me that Disney is willing to trade on its legacy of fairy-tale films by changing the name to something so bland.
There is hope, though, starting today. In one of his lecture specials, Kevin Smith referred to theatrical films as “ads for the DVD.” Maybe that will happen here. The Princess and the Frog is a film that will play very well in homes – especially since they’re pushing the Blu-Ray sets (which are the only sets on which you can get special features, another bit of angersome news for those of us without Blu-Ray players). With its release so close to a holiday partially known for gift-giving, this could still take off.
Look, do I have a personal stake in whether a Third Disney Renaissance happens? Sort of. The Princess and the Frog was a damn good movie, and Atlantis and Treasure Planet were not. I’d love it if this kind of creativity and forward-thinking were rewarded in the market, so we can continue to get good, quality projects like this.
But getting back to the purchase itself, let’s talk a moment about The Princess and the Frog. This was the film that was supposed to usher in the Third Disney Renaissance; its return to hand-drawn animation, a musical structure, and an emphasis on Princess Tiana being the first African-American Disney Princess were supposed to do for the Animation division what The Little Mermaid did in 1989. (Some insist the second Renaissance began earlier, with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, making the modern-era corollary Bolt, the first Disney film under the purview of Pixar creative chief John Lasseter.)
The reality didn’t play out exactly as Disney hoped. It was critically lauded – Time magazine voted it the best film of the year – and the box office seemed promising. In its opening weekend, it debuted at #1 at the box office and became the highest-grossing animated film ever released in December. It went on to gross $104,000,000 domestically, which would have been seen as a blockbuster as recently as three years ago, but now seemed disappointing in an era where success seems to begin at $200M. A less dubious detraction was that the budget of the film was almost exactly its gross, meaning that – domestically, at least – the film only broke even. However, accounting for worldwide totals, the film actually came out well ahead, grossing $247M globally.
Even so, Disney saw this movie as a failure – perhaps because so much had been riding on it. Many factors were blamed, but what seems to have unfortunately gained traction is the notion that the film wasn’t universal enough – i.e., didn’t cater to boys. Now, despite the successes of the Pirates of the Caribbean films – and their cross-gender appeal – and the classic roster of characters and films, the Disney Princess brand is one of Disney’s primary moneymakers. It’s so prevalent that they are devoting an entirely new section of Fantasyland in Disney World to them. But theme park and merchandising successes don’t necessarily translate into feature film successes, at least in Disney’s way of thinking.
Therefore, Disney has decided to be proactive with its next film, the long-gestating and highly anticipated film Rapunzel. The film uses breakthrough computer animation, differentiating it from other CGI films by basing its palate on classic paintings. Disney fans have been drooling about the project for over a decade, but now, because of the slightly disappointing returns on The Princess and the Frog, are changing the name … to Tangled.
I think this is a short-sighted decision, especially since the name Rapunzel has such a resonance to it and Tangled is a past-tense verb that just sort of lays there. Maybe it’s meant to evoke Enchanted? Plus, despite names like Snow White and Beauty & the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Cinderella, those films managed to appeal to everyone. It just rankles me that Disney is willing to trade on its legacy of fairy-tale films by changing the name to something so bland.
There is hope, though, starting today. In one of his lecture specials, Kevin Smith referred to theatrical films as “ads for the DVD.” Maybe that will happen here. The Princess and the Frog is a film that will play very well in homes – especially since they’re pushing the Blu-Ray sets (which are the only sets on which you can get special features, another bit of angersome news for those of us without Blu-Ray players). With its release so close to a holiday partially known for gift-giving, this could still take off.
Look, do I have a personal stake in whether a Third Disney Renaissance happens? Sort of. The Princess and the Frog was a damn good movie, and Atlantis and Treasure Planet were not. I’d love it if this kind of creativity and forward-thinking were rewarded in the market, so we can continue to get good, quality projects like this.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Foot Loose and Fancy-Free: Quentin Tarantino's Curious Fondness
On the set of her eponymous show, Tyra Banks abruptly leans back, throws her legs in the air, and promptly drops her feet in Quentin Tarantino’s lap. She explains that when she’d heard the director was going to be on her show, she had a pedicure done at once. “I was actually going to say,” Tarantino laughs, “is this on my account?” But when she tells him that she’s going to utilize his foot obsession to help her judge a model contest, Tarantino defends himself: “You don’t have to say obsession … I have a fondness.”
But what a fondness! Infamous screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus felt it interesting enough to mention in his memoir, Hollywood Animal. A recent New York article, commenting on a photo shoot in which Tarantino is photographed fondling Diane Kruger’s feet, shouted, “Okay, Okay, Quentin Tarantino Has a Foot Fetish, We Get it!” But is that all it is? A prurient preoccupation with feet, a kink Tarantino is helpless to throw onscreen in a combination of titillation, explanation, and popularization? Perhaps not. The Village Voice, eschewing the shock and exasperation that generally comes bundled with a discussion of Tarantino’s quirk, explored it a little more deeply: “It's not just that he's a foot fetishist, but that he takes what he cares about—personal, quirky stuff—and transforms it into art.”
Directors are famous for their motifs, and Tarantino is no exception. His fascinations – genre films, off-kilter sequencing, and 70s culture among them – define and occasionally pigeonhole him. Just as each of these directorial choices come to shape the movies he makes, so too does his fondness for feet. No mere fetish writ large, Tarantino’s examination of the toes and soles of his actresses is far more interesting.
Pulp Fiction launches right into things, as gangsters Vincent and Jules famously discuss whether giving a man’s wife a foot rub is cause for defenestration. The message is clear right off: whether throwing Tony Rocky Horror out of a window for touching Marcellus Wallace’s wife Mia’s feet was justified is not really the issue; the issue is whether touching a woman’s feet equals sex. Later, the film does its best to convince us that it is: when Mia Wallace first appears, we see her dancing barefoot to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”. The finale of this sequence lingers on a close-up of Mia’s toes sunk seductively into a deep-pile carpet. Mia is beautiful and her dance is seductive, but it is this image that underlines the scene – the job of the audience is to understand that the soles of her feet are meant to be as erotic as seeing her naked.
Later, in what is arguably Pulp Fiction’s most famous sequence, Mia bullies Vincent into entering (and winning) the Jack Rabbit Slim’s twist contest. It’s no mistake that while Vincent remains in socks, Mia – now aggressive – dances barefoot once again. It is here that we first get a glimpse of feet symbolizing something more than sex for Tarantino. Mia stripping her shoes off is an act of power here – seductive, yes, but in the service of winning her the trophy she wants. During the twist contest, we are allowed only one close-up of her gyrating feet. Any more, Tarantino seems to say, would be to rob the sequence of its power, degenerating it to something like pornography.
Of course, pornography is very much on the roster in From Dusk Till Dawn. Though not directed by Tarantino, it was written by him and stars him, and offers and intriguing evolutionary step in this aspect of Tarantino’s development. In one scene, Salma Hayek, as erotic dancer Satanico Pandemonium, moves seductively across a table toward Tarantino’s Richie Gecko. Bikini-clad and wearing a writhing snake around her shoulders, Pandemonium lifts her foot to Gecko’s face, pouring alcohol down her thigh and inviting Gecko to lap it off her toes. That Pandemonium is revealed to be a vampire recontextualizes this scene, echoing Jonathan Harker’s seduction by Dracula’s concubines. The theme of consumption mixed with sexuality is key in vampire stories, and it is no mistake that later, Pandemonium drinks more literally from Richie Gecko, transforming him into a vampire. This classic horror movie trope of sex (in this case, toe-sucking instead of intercourse) leading to death will be explored in far more detail in Tarantino’s later Death Proof.
The image of alcohol and feet re-emerges in Jackie Brown, a movie concerned above all things with age. When Bridget Fonda’s Melanie first appears, several shots focus on the soles of her bare feet, prettied up with toe rings; as it is later suggested that she is “past her prime,” the toe rings – along with her skimpy outfits and garish fake tan – serve to accentuate her desire to cling to her youth. The first close-ups of her feet frame them next to a glass of alcohol sipped intermittently by Robert DeNiro’s Louis Gara – seen here grizzled and old. The proximity of girlish feet next to this man’s alcohol underlines their drab Lolita relationship, and serves as foreshadowing to its violent conclusion. Whereas Salma Hayek’s bare foot – dripping with alcohol – symbolized her power over Tarantino’s character, here the power dynamic is reversed. Following a brief and blunt sex scene (recalling – and perhaps exploiting – DeNiro’s boudoir scene with Jodie Foster’s child prostitute in Taxi Driver) DeNiro’s character shoots Fonda in broad daylight.
In these early Tarantino films, his focus on feet is almost purely sexual, though suggesting themes of more symbolic importance. Sex is either presaged or entirely subverted by the fetishization of feet. However, by the time of Kill Bill, the focus shifts. Early on, Uma Thurman’s Bride character awakens from a coma partially paralyzed. Before she can embark on her “roaring rampage of revenge,” she first has to get her feet moving. A close-up of Thurman’s bare feet fill the screen as she commands herself to “wiggle her big toe.” Epic importance is attached to this moment; this is the Bride’s first major act of independence since being shot in the head by Bill years prior. In this context, a woman’s feet are as much symbolic of her power and strength as her swordplay; it is important that Lucy Liu’s character removes her shoes before her climactic battle with the Bride.
In Kill Bill, Volume 2, we again see The Bride’s feet in flashback, before her later violent retribution. During her talk with David Carradine’s Bill – before his attempt on her life – we see her in sandals, the tops and sides of her feet exposed. Bill appears in loafers, and there are several shots of both pairs of feet approaching one another. The dynamic here is clear: Bill has caught The Bride unaware, putting him in control … though his control is not total. Though he shoots her, she lives; it may not be that much of a stretch to suggest that her covered soles are a symbol of things even Bill is not allowed to see.
Death Proof, Tarantino’s half of the Grindhouse experiment, pushes all of the director’s interests to the extreme. Here, his love of dialogue that has no bearing on the plot or story of the film at times detracts from the momentum, and his interest in subplots as epic as his plots can be trying. His interest in feet, too, is explored to unprecedented degrees. Tarantino has described Death Proof as a slasher film, and in slasher films, the killer tends to target teenagers who have dared to have premarital sex. Death Proof follows that logic with a Tarantino twist: instead of sex, we are privy to long, sensual shots of young women’s feet.
The film opens with a bright shot of feet crossed at the ankle resting on a dashboard; this is meant to be as sexual (and iconic) an image as a scantily-clad woman writhing on the hood of a car. Our first glimpse of one of the film’s sexy leads, Sydney Poitier, is of her walking barefoot through her apartment, with many shots tracking her at foot level. Later, she appears with her feet dangling off a porch during a rainstorm, the water sluicing sensually between her toes, bringing to mind similar scenes of skinny-dipping in earlier slasher movies. Immediately before she is murdered, we see Poitier’s foot dangling out of the window of a car: bare feet equal sex, and sex equals death.
In the second segment of Death Proof, a sleeping Rosario Dawson is spotted by the slasher-killer Stuntman Mike; her feet, too, are dangling out a car’s window. While she dozes, Stuntman Mike runs a finger over the heels of her feet. This act is the height of repugnance, meant to imply attempted rape. Stuntman Mike’s twisted mentality sees this accidental sensuality as reason to murder. It is no accident that, later, Dawson and her friends take their revenge on Stuntman Mike by stomping him to death. The shoe, truly, is on the other foot.
Inglourious Basterds is a tricky, intricately plotted foreign film hiding inside a brash Tarantino genre-bender. Over the course of the film, we learn that Diane Kruger’s actress Bridget von Hammersmark is working as a double agent for the Americans within the Nazi ranks. During a climactic scene, she is nearly killed and just manages to escape with her life. Christopher Waltz’s Hans Landa, a brutal Nazi officer who has uncovered her high-heel shoe amidst the wreckage she escaped, tracks her down, and in an unbearably tense perversion of the Cinderella story, matches the shoe to her foot. One foot is already broken, symbolic of her sudden diminished usefulness; her other, exposed by Landa, literally and figuratively explicates where her loyalties lie. Far from being a sexual symbol – though there is an element to dark sexuality in this scene, as there was in the similar scene in Death Proof – here, Diane Kruger’s bare foot reveals her secrets and makes her vulnerable. Her feet broken and exposed, von Hammersmark is powerless.
However Tarantino’s “quirky, personal stuff” first emerged onscreen, it is obvious that his passion for feet has become far more interesting than kink or fetish. As symbols of sexuality, of power, of vulnerability, his actresses’ feet are as versatile as any other signature at Tarantino’s disposal. One can’t but be intrigued as to what his next step will be.
But what a fondness! Infamous screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus felt it interesting enough to mention in his memoir, Hollywood Animal. A recent New York article, commenting on a photo shoot in which Tarantino is photographed fondling Diane Kruger’s feet, shouted, “Okay, Okay, Quentin Tarantino Has a Foot Fetish, We Get it!” But is that all it is? A prurient preoccupation with feet, a kink Tarantino is helpless to throw onscreen in a combination of titillation, explanation, and popularization? Perhaps not. The Village Voice, eschewing the shock and exasperation that generally comes bundled with a discussion of Tarantino’s quirk, explored it a little more deeply: “It's not just that he's a foot fetishist, but that he takes what he cares about—personal, quirky stuff—and transforms it into art.”
Directors are famous for their motifs, and Tarantino is no exception. His fascinations – genre films, off-kilter sequencing, and 70s culture among them – define and occasionally pigeonhole him. Just as each of these directorial choices come to shape the movies he makes, so too does his fondness for feet. No mere fetish writ large, Tarantino’s examination of the toes and soles of his actresses is far more interesting.
Pulp Fiction launches right into things, as gangsters Vincent and Jules famously discuss whether giving a man’s wife a foot rub is cause for defenestration. The message is clear right off: whether throwing Tony Rocky Horror out of a window for touching Marcellus Wallace’s wife Mia’s feet was justified is not really the issue; the issue is whether touching a woman’s feet equals sex. Later, the film does its best to convince us that it is: when Mia Wallace first appears, we see her dancing barefoot to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”. The finale of this sequence lingers on a close-up of Mia’s toes sunk seductively into a deep-pile carpet. Mia is beautiful and her dance is seductive, but it is this image that underlines the scene – the job of the audience is to understand that the soles of her feet are meant to be as erotic as seeing her naked.
Later, in what is arguably Pulp Fiction’s most famous sequence, Mia bullies Vincent into entering (and winning) the Jack Rabbit Slim’s twist contest. It’s no mistake that while Vincent remains in socks, Mia – now aggressive – dances barefoot once again. It is here that we first get a glimpse of feet symbolizing something more than sex for Tarantino. Mia stripping her shoes off is an act of power here – seductive, yes, but in the service of winning her the trophy she wants. During the twist contest, we are allowed only one close-up of her gyrating feet. Any more, Tarantino seems to say, would be to rob the sequence of its power, degenerating it to something like pornography.
Of course, pornography is very much on the roster in From Dusk Till Dawn. Though not directed by Tarantino, it was written by him and stars him, and offers and intriguing evolutionary step in this aspect of Tarantino’s development. In one scene, Salma Hayek, as erotic dancer Satanico Pandemonium, moves seductively across a table toward Tarantino’s Richie Gecko. Bikini-clad and wearing a writhing snake around her shoulders, Pandemonium lifts her foot to Gecko’s face, pouring alcohol down her thigh and inviting Gecko to lap it off her toes. That Pandemonium is revealed to be a vampire recontextualizes this scene, echoing Jonathan Harker’s seduction by Dracula’s concubines. The theme of consumption mixed with sexuality is key in vampire stories, and it is no mistake that later, Pandemonium drinks more literally from Richie Gecko, transforming him into a vampire. This classic horror movie trope of sex (in this case, toe-sucking instead of intercourse) leading to death will be explored in far more detail in Tarantino’s later Death Proof.
The image of alcohol and feet re-emerges in Jackie Brown, a movie concerned above all things with age. When Bridget Fonda’s Melanie first appears, several shots focus on the soles of her bare feet, prettied up with toe rings; as it is later suggested that she is “past her prime,” the toe rings – along with her skimpy outfits and garish fake tan – serve to accentuate her desire to cling to her youth. The first close-ups of her feet frame them next to a glass of alcohol sipped intermittently by Robert DeNiro’s Louis Gara – seen here grizzled and old. The proximity of girlish feet next to this man’s alcohol underlines their drab Lolita relationship, and serves as foreshadowing to its violent conclusion. Whereas Salma Hayek’s bare foot – dripping with alcohol – symbolized her power over Tarantino’s character, here the power dynamic is reversed. Following a brief and blunt sex scene (recalling – and perhaps exploiting – DeNiro’s boudoir scene with Jodie Foster’s child prostitute in Taxi Driver) DeNiro’s character shoots Fonda in broad daylight.
In these early Tarantino films, his focus on feet is almost purely sexual, though suggesting themes of more symbolic importance. Sex is either presaged or entirely subverted by the fetishization of feet. However, by the time of Kill Bill, the focus shifts. Early on, Uma Thurman’s Bride character awakens from a coma partially paralyzed. Before she can embark on her “roaring rampage of revenge,” she first has to get her feet moving. A close-up of Thurman’s bare feet fill the screen as she commands herself to “wiggle her big toe.” Epic importance is attached to this moment; this is the Bride’s first major act of independence since being shot in the head by Bill years prior. In this context, a woman’s feet are as much symbolic of her power and strength as her swordplay; it is important that Lucy Liu’s character removes her shoes before her climactic battle with the Bride.
In Kill Bill, Volume 2, we again see The Bride’s feet in flashback, before her later violent retribution. During her talk with David Carradine’s Bill – before his attempt on her life – we see her in sandals, the tops and sides of her feet exposed. Bill appears in loafers, and there are several shots of both pairs of feet approaching one another. The dynamic here is clear: Bill has caught The Bride unaware, putting him in control … though his control is not total. Though he shoots her, she lives; it may not be that much of a stretch to suggest that her covered soles are a symbol of things even Bill is not allowed to see.
Death Proof, Tarantino’s half of the Grindhouse experiment, pushes all of the director’s interests to the extreme. Here, his love of dialogue that has no bearing on the plot or story of the film at times detracts from the momentum, and his interest in subplots as epic as his plots can be trying. His interest in feet, too, is explored to unprecedented degrees. Tarantino has described Death Proof as a slasher film, and in slasher films, the killer tends to target teenagers who have dared to have premarital sex. Death Proof follows that logic with a Tarantino twist: instead of sex, we are privy to long, sensual shots of young women’s feet.
The film opens with a bright shot of feet crossed at the ankle resting on a dashboard; this is meant to be as sexual (and iconic) an image as a scantily-clad woman writhing on the hood of a car. Our first glimpse of one of the film’s sexy leads, Sydney Poitier, is of her walking barefoot through her apartment, with many shots tracking her at foot level. Later, she appears with her feet dangling off a porch during a rainstorm, the water sluicing sensually between her toes, bringing to mind similar scenes of skinny-dipping in earlier slasher movies. Immediately before she is murdered, we see Poitier’s foot dangling out of the window of a car: bare feet equal sex, and sex equals death.
In the second segment of Death Proof, a sleeping Rosario Dawson is spotted by the slasher-killer Stuntman Mike; her feet, too, are dangling out a car’s window. While she dozes, Stuntman Mike runs a finger over the heels of her feet. This act is the height of repugnance, meant to imply attempted rape. Stuntman Mike’s twisted mentality sees this accidental sensuality as reason to murder. It is no accident that, later, Dawson and her friends take their revenge on Stuntman Mike by stomping him to death. The shoe, truly, is on the other foot.
Inglourious Basterds is a tricky, intricately plotted foreign film hiding inside a brash Tarantino genre-bender. Over the course of the film, we learn that Diane Kruger’s actress Bridget von Hammersmark is working as a double agent for the Americans within the Nazi ranks. During a climactic scene, she is nearly killed and just manages to escape with her life. Christopher Waltz’s Hans Landa, a brutal Nazi officer who has uncovered her high-heel shoe amidst the wreckage she escaped, tracks her down, and in an unbearably tense perversion of the Cinderella story, matches the shoe to her foot. One foot is already broken, symbolic of her sudden diminished usefulness; her other, exposed by Landa, literally and figuratively explicates where her loyalties lie. Far from being a sexual symbol – though there is an element to dark sexuality in this scene, as there was in the similar scene in Death Proof – here, Diane Kruger’s bare foot reveals her secrets and makes her vulnerable. Her feet broken and exposed, von Hammersmark is powerless.
However Tarantino’s “quirky, personal stuff” first emerged onscreen, it is obvious that his passion for feet has become far more interesting than kink or fetish. As symbols of sexuality, of power, of vulnerability, his actresses’ feet are as versatile as any other signature at Tarantino’s disposal. One can’t but be intrigued as to what his next step will be.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Milk & Doubt
My obsession with Philip Seymour Hoffman knows no depths. Not only is he one of the greatest actors ever, he’s also stone-cold sexy. That strawberry-blond hair. Those searching, blazing eyes. The fact that he frequently appears in his underwear…
Okay, wait. I’ll get back to the point in a second. Hold on.
The POINT is that when I first saw ads for the upcoming film “Doubt,” I was all over it. A morally complex movie with religious overtones that may or may not have a gay subtext starring Meryl Streep and the sexiest man on the planet? I’m there!
Except then it was Christmas Day, and I realized (quite rationally, I think), that maybe “Doubt” wasn’t the best kind of film for that particular day off. We all remember last year’s “Sweeny Todd” debacle and how depressing that was. No, for this holiday, I would leave the choosing of the film up to my friend Mark, upon whom I forced the throat-slicing barber last Christmas. I knew he wouldn’t want to sit through a depressing period film that dealt, at least in part, with gay persecution.
He called me Christmas Day: “Let’s go see ‘Milk’!” So much for my theory.
Mark, his boyfriend Ben, and I all settled down in the back row of the theater to take in the story of Harvey Milk, the true story of California’s first openly gay elected official. I knew three things about the movie going into it: 1. I knew Harvey Milk was assassinated. 2. His killer used something called The Twinkie Defense – blaming his violent tendencies on junk food – to try to get off, and 3. That Sean Penn was likely to irritate me. I have liked Penn in the past, but my bafflement as to why people enjoyed “Mystic River” in general, and Penn’s hammy overacting in particular, has left a stain on my moviegoing psyche.
As such, I really had no interest in seeing this movie. It struck me as Important, and Necessary, and I usually delve into those waters when it’s Oscar season. As the credits began to roll, I wished for the relatively simple year when I went to go see the “King Kong” remake on Christmas.
And then … something changed. I was unprepared for the movie to explicate right at the beginning that Milk was shot. Having that information right up front should have bogged the film down, but instead it renders Milk’s assassination as a fact that we understand and absorb, so that we can better focus on the story.
It’s a terrific story, too, one with which I have only had a passing familiarity. I’ve never been a particularly political fellow, and growing up in the 90s with Barney Frank in Congress, it never really sunk in to me how important and revolutionary Harvey Milk was to gay rights. There’s a point early in the film when a gay man is killed and the cops, who seem to care, refer to the dead man’s companion as his “trick.” (Because cops know the lingo, see.) Milk explains that no, that was his lover of many years, not a trick. And the cops sort of shrug that off.
That resonated with me, as did the way Harvey Milk sort of stumbled into politics. He did it because to not do it was intolerable. Sometimes I forget what a damn struggle it has been – even in my lifetime – to simply be who you are if you happen to be gay. The movie takes on these issues but never gets lost in them. The story remains about the man more than the message, and as such never gets the chance to be preachy. Sean Penn, to my amazement and delight, disappears into his role. He’s so effective that at points it’s easy to forget his tragic end; the film is so oddly uplifting that the assassination seems almost beside the point. (The fact that it’s not comes crashing down in the final violent minutes of the movie, and by that point, you’re conditioned enough to be actually shocked.)
My friend Alonso has commanded that I now see the documentary, “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk,” which is now on my forefront of Things To Watch. I’ve never been all that into gay politics, but given the current state of political homophobia, maybe I should be.
Along the same lines of things you’re not supposed to discuss at dinner parties, we move from politics to religion. The Saturday after Christmas, I journeyed downtown, bought popcorn and a sodapop, and treated myself to “Doubt.” Based on the trailers, I was expecting a movie entirely centered around Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest character and his inappropriate dealings with an altar boy under his tutelage. Instead, what I got was a morally complex story that may or may not have to do with the priest and the boy at all.
At the heart of the movie is Meryl Streep as the Mother Superior of a school she rules with an uncompromising hand. She is used to being right, or at least she is used to being considered right. Her students and the teachers under her watch follow her rule unquestioningly, which she likes just fine. She might never admit that – she would explain that she is simply following her faith – but being right is at the core of her character. She is unused to being wrong, and unfamiliar with changing her stance once she takes one.
This proves dangerous for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest character, whose entire being represents change. She doesn’t like him from the start, and as the film progresses, we wonder more and more whether Streep’s character is actually holding true to her convictions, or whether she simply cannot stand to be wrong.
The movie is full of strong performances. Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman are at the top of their game – I would be stunned if both didn’t garner Oscar nominations. But maybe it’s because the movie is based on a play that they seem to KNOW they’re at the top of their game. The performances are never over the top or Oscar-grubbing, but it often seemed to me that these were Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman delivering knockout performances. Whereas Amy Adams (in the role of a young nun who looks up to Streep’s character) and Viola Davis (playing the mother of the young boy in question, whose role is contained in a single, brilliant scene) never seem to be performing. They steal the movie with acting that never seems like acting, raising the movie up from An Oscar-Worthy Triumph to a watchable, engaging film that is still lingering with me. There’s some obvious stuff in it – light bulbs break and winds gust in at important moments, and the film’s final line seems awkward and too Broadway for a movie – but on a whole, “Doubt” impressed me almost as much as “Milk.”
If you’re a fan of quality films – or just seeing stuff before the Oscars are nominated so you can brag about being a Serious Film Buff – go see both of these movies. You won’t regret it.
Now, when’s that new “Wolverine” movie coming out?
Okay, wait. I’ll get back to the point in a second. Hold on.
The POINT is that when I first saw ads for the upcoming film “Doubt,” I was all over it. A morally complex movie with religious overtones that may or may not have a gay subtext starring Meryl Streep and the sexiest man on the planet? I’m there!
Except then it was Christmas Day, and I realized (quite rationally, I think), that maybe “Doubt” wasn’t the best kind of film for that particular day off. We all remember last year’s “Sweeny Todd” debacle and how depressing that was. No, for this holiday, I would leave the choosing of the film up to my friend Mark, upon whom I forced the throat-slicing barber last Christmas. I knew he wouldn’t want to sit through a depressing period film that dealt, at least in part, with gay persecution.
He called me Christmas Day: “Let’s go see ‘Milk’!” So much for my theory.
Mark, his boyfriend Ben, and I all settled down in the back row of the theater to take in the story of Harvey Milk, the true story of California’s first openly gay elected official. I knew three things about the movie going into it: 1. I knew Harvey Milk was assassinated. 2. His killer used something called The Twinkie Defense – blaming his violent tendencies on junk food – to try to get off, and 3. That Sean Penn was likely to irritate me. I have liked Penn in the past, but my bafflement as to why people enjoyed “Mystic River” in general, and Penn’s hammy overacting in particular, has left a stain on my moviegoing psyche.
As such, I really had no interest in seeing this movie. It struck me as Important, and Necessary, and I usually delve into those waters when it’s Oscar season. As the credits began to roll, I wished for the relatively simple year when I went to go see the “King Kong” remake on Christmas.
And then … something changed. I was unprepared for the movie to explicate right at the beginning that Milk was shot. Having that information right up front should have bogged the film down, but instead it renders Milk’s assassination as a fact that we understand and absorb, so that we can better focus on the story.
It’s a terrific story, too, one with which I have only had a passing familiarity. I’ve never been a particularly political fellow, and growing up in the 90s with Barney Frank in Congress, it never really sunk in to me how important and revolutionary Harvey Milk was to gay rights. There’s a point early in the film when a gay man is killed and the cops, who seem to care, refer to the dead man’s companion as his “trick.” (Because cops know the lingo, see.) Milk explains that no, that was his lover of many years, not a trick. And the cops sort of shrug that off.
That resonated with me, as did the way Harvey Milk sort of stumbled into politics. He did it because to not do it was intolerable. Sometimes I forget what a damn struggle it has been – even in my lifetime – to simply be who you are if you happen to be gay. The movie takes on these issues but never gets lost in them. The story remains about the man more than the message, and as such never gets the chance to be preachy. Sean Penn, to my amazement and delight, disappears into his role. He’s so effective that at points it’s easy to forget his tragic end; the film is so oddly uplifting that the assassination seems almost beside the point. (The fact that it’s not comes crashing down in the final violent minutes of the movie, and by that point, you’re conditioned enough to be actually shocked.)
My friend Alonso has commanded that I now see the documentary, “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk,” which is now on my forefront of Things To Watch. I’ve never been all that into gay politics, but given the current state of political homophobia, maybe I should be.
Along the same lines of things you’re not supposed to discuss at dinner parties, we move from politics to religion. The Saturday after Christmas, I journeyed downtown, bought popcorn and a sodapop, and treated myself to “Doubt.” Based on the trailers, I was expecting a movie entirely centered around Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest character and his inappropriate dealings with an altar boy under his tutelage. Instead, what I got was a morally complex story that may or may not have to do with the priest and the boy at all.
At the heart of the movie is Meryl Streep as the Mother Superior of a school she rules with an uncompromising hand. She is used to being right, or at least she is used to being considered right. Her students and the teachers under her watch follow her rule unquestioningly, which she likes just fine. She might never admit that – she would explain that she is simply following her faith – but being right is at the core of her character. She is unused to being wrong, and unfamiliar with changing her stance once she takes one.
This proves dangerous for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest character, whose entire being represents change. She doesn’t like him from the start, and as the film progresses, we wonder more and more whether Streep’s character is actually holding true to her convictions, or whether she simply cannot stand to be wrong.
The movie is full of strong performances. Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman are at the top of their game – I would be stunned if both didn’t garner Oscar nominations. But maybe it’s because the movie is based on a play that they seem to KNOW they’re at the top of their game. The performances are never over the top or Oscar-grubbing, but it often seemed to me that these were Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman delivering knockout performances. Whereas Amy Adams (in the role of a young nun who looks up to Streep’s character) and Viola Davis (playing the mother of the young boy in question, whose role is contained in a single, brilliant scene) never seem to be performing. They steal the movie with acting that never seems like acting, raising the movie up from An Oscar-Worthy Triumph to a watchable, engaging film that is still lingering with me. There’s some obvious stuff in it – light bulbs break and winds gust in at important moments, and the film’s final line seems awkward and too Broadway for a movie – but on a whole, “Doubt” impressed me almost as much as “Milk.”
If you’re a fan of quality films – or just seeing stuff before the Oscars are nominated so you can brag about being a Serious Film Buff – go see both of these movies. You won’t regret it.
Now, when’s that new “Wolverine” movie coming out?
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