The Year in Movies So Far
Since I’ve been derelict in my blogging duties for several weeks, I thought I’d try to get back on track. To start out, I’m catching up with the major releases of January and February in this blog post — including the Oscar contenders, Fired Up!, He’s Just Not That Into You, Friday the 13th and the indie flick Wendy and Lucy.
OSCAR SEASON
After I confessed my disappointment with Slumdog Millionaire, several people expressed surprise. Its Best Picture nomination (and subsequent win), presented me with an opportunity to give it another shot. Tony and I went up to Columbus to meet a friend for the All-day Best Picture Showcase at the AMC Easton.
Though we skipped the torturous, three-hour mediocrity that is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, this 2nd viewing edged me into the pro-Slumdog camp. Though it’s just as painfully contrived, it felt less distant, more moving. I’ve still got problems with it, in other words, but now I’ll think of it with affection rather than indifference. (Milk and Frost/Nixon remained my favorites for the Oscar.) The showcase also gave me an opportunity to catch up with Stephen Daldry’s The Reader, which I’d neglected. I thought it was shockingly powerful. I just couldn’t believe this was the same guy who made The Hours!
Of the other Awards season releases, I enjoyed The Wrestler, though not to the extent many critics did. And Revolutionary Road blew me away, though I thought the overly simplistic last act failed to live up to its tremendous promise. Catch it if you can, though — Kate and Leo are just incredible.
FIRED UP!
How this hilarious teen comedy could’ve flopped, while He’s Just Not That Into You flourished — yeesh! (I pretty much hated Not That Into You. Lots of talented people in the service of an insipid, hateful movie.) Nine years after Bring it On, here is its male counterpart, though its focus on cheerleading is nonexistent. But there’s the same biting wit, the same joy in the performers. It’s not as smart, maybe, but I laughed through the whole thing. (On crocs: “You’re not an old lady gardening or a baby on the beach. Put some shoes on, you’re embarrassing yourself.”) Also, Nicholas D’Agosto is the hottest thing I’ve seen on a movie screen since DeMille’s burning bush in The Ten Commandments; he is pure sex.
WENDY AND LUCY
In the indie world, Wendy and Lucy opened last week at the Landmark Gateway in Columbus. Wendy is the first Kelly Reichardt film I’ve seen, since I was all of 10 when Rivers of Grass came out, and since then I’ve been busy catching up with such worthwhile entertainments as Friday the 13th and the 1976 King Kong. Reichardt’s wildly acclaimed Old Joy (2006), on the other hand, never landed a commerical release in the region (other than a one-time show at the Wexner), and has yet to make it to the top of my Netflix queue. (A random, first-ever email about its release status did lead to my involvement with the Little Art, however.) Anyway, back to Wendy and Lucy, with its beautifully observed moments, pitch-perfect restraint, and a dynamo performance by Michelle Williams.
It nevertheless falls flat.
Yet another in a growing line of movies about how difficult it is to live outside The System (most recently Revolutionary Road and The Wrestler, but in this case most obviously Into the Wild), Wendy gets tangled up in the movie’s immorally superior sense of entitlement, shoplifting even though she has $500+ and in spite of the fact that it puts her immediate goal (to get to Alaska) — and her beloved dog, Lucy — at high risk. The relationship between Wendy and the security guard played by Wally Dalton is genuinely affecting, but their final encounter rings false: Reichardt doesn’t stop to consider that even a working-class guy knows that $6 in clandestinely delivered charity raises more hopes than it’s worth, so determined is she to make her point, which conveys all the wisdom of “it’s the thought that counts.” These bold contrivances dilute the effect of Wendy’s struggle, and the climactic scene oddly vindicates the hard-line capitalist thinking of John Robinson’s cold-hearted grocery clerk (“If a person can’t afford dog food, that person shouldn’t have a dog.”), which had seemed in complete, diametric opposition to the movie’s reckless liberal sob-story affectations.
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