Reel Madness: 'The Blind Side' and 'Up in the Air'

Before I start this second installment about the 2009 best picture nominations I want to point out that these aren't ranked in any order; I just did 'A Serious Man' and 'An Education' first because I wanted to get them out of the way. So today I've got two movies that surprised me in different ways that are linked by how I intend to watch them in the future.

A lot of hoopla has surrounded Sandra Bullock’s performance in ‘The Blind Side’ and as a result the movie got a huge push when nominations were being announced; the fact that it held its own against the onslaught of ‘New Moon’ definitely didn’t tarnish its reputation. I really didn’t want to like this movie but it’s far too well-made for its own good and therefore owns up to the hype. The only previous movie I’ve seen by director John Lee Hancock was the troubled through production but excellent in final execution ‘The Alamo’ and that was enough to make me want him to have a hit. Here, he’s made a very engaging film here to the point where essentially any question or issue you could have with its premise is firmly answered with no sleight-of-hand at all. The story of Michael Oher and Leigh Anne Tuohy is touching and intelligent in a way that even got good word from my crab-ass of a brother. Everyone does a fine job and none of the drama is oversold so it’s a lot more quaint then you would expect. The thought that it’s very easy for a wealthy white family to change a poor black kid’s life is directly acknowledged in the film and that’s a degree of self-awareness I’ve never seen in a family drama. Every challenge you could put forth in criticizing the nature of the movie is acknowledged and it’s intelligent enough to make those reasons work. 

In that way, it’s a little sad because I don’t think it would have managed a nomination if not for the 10 slots. Without the praise for Bullock’s performance, the movie’s reviews mostly relegate it to average marks while accusing it of embodying a lot of the qualities that it was smart enough to avoid. Yes it can be a little syrupy but this is the kind of material that is going to seem that way at least slightly no matter how well made it is. Besides that, it’s not like that kind of content is foreign to the Oscars; ‘The Hurricane’ while excellent, falls into it and let’s not forget ‘Ordinary People’ no matter how much we want to. Still, no matter how much I liked it, I don’t know if it was worth a best picture nomination. Without the extra slots this year, this probably wouldn’t have rated, which makes it one of the “audience favorite” choices. It’s definitely worth seeing and is better than this kind of movie normally is, so everyone should reward its quality. I don’t know how often I may see it in the future but it’s not something I would mind watching again. Good for Hancock and company for making an interesting, uplifting film that’s smart enough to not fall into the laziness that so many others of its type always do. It’s a difficult movie to write about because it’s good qualities are so rare and fragile you don’t want to spoil them by crushing them under a microscope slide; still it’s worth your time and earned it’s praise no matter how half-hearted it seems outside of Bullock’s performance.

I was looking forward to ‘Up in the Air’ a lot, perhaps the most of any of the acclaimed pictures from 2009. It’s been sometime since then and I’m still not entirely sure what it is I think of the movie. The hook is great: A man who’s never had to hold onto anything in his life learns to appreciate the connections you can make with other people while defending the nature of his job. Clooney’s character is Ryan Bingham a man who fires people for a living as a professional corporate downsizer. His unique philosophies, both about how his job needs to be as well as about how he thinks of personal relationships, are both put to the test by him being assigned to travel with Natalie Keener. Played by Anna Kendrick, she’s attempting to change Clooney’s job forever by making it a process done over the internet rather than in person. This opposes Bingham’s love of flying as part of his job as well as challenging how he interprets his unpopular occupation. 

In order to make the sequences of characters being fired feel more realistic, Jason Reitman sought out people who had gone through the experience; as a result the movie gets a little detached from the main character. After we see the major players for the last time, there’s an extended sequence of real men and women describe how they managed to move on from being “let go”. It’s wonderful that Reitman was so moved by these people’s stories but it seems to cheat the actual film of much its emotional heavy lifting. After all, this is about Bingham and not the people he’s fired, no matter how much they factor into the change in his feelings. These interviews bookend a similar set of scenes where the same people discuss their reactions to having been fired, talking of how their family and friends helped them endure through the troubled times. We see Clooney reach out to both and by the end of the film he’s developed one meaningful friendship after meeting his family for the first time in years. That we only see the beginning of these relationships seems a little strange in light of the character keeping his job; as a result I felt a little more distant from him then where I was at the midway point of the film. Seeing all the documentary footage of the downsized is strange because we see their closure but not Ryan Bingham’s. Perhaps that is the point; without spoiling a major plot point, maybe the thought that we see Bingham start on that journey is meant as a counterpoint to all the trips we’ve seen him go on and discuss beforehand. It’s a weird juxtaposition but it may congeal better for me in future viewings. The initial viewing, those interviews took me a bit out of the movie which was hardly their intent to be sure. 

Despite all that, it’s still an emotionally gratifying experience that encourages us to not blindly hate an occupation that many interpret to exist solely for the suffering of others. That’s definitely something I can get behind and it makes me want to see this again soon so I can better sort out my thoughts on it. There are a lot of them there and I’m not sure how well they’re coming across even now. I can definitely get behind one thing: the person who designed the Cover Art for the DVD/Blu-Ray release should have just used the theatrical poster seen above. Instead they went with an uninspiring shot of Clooney and Vera Farmiga’s character that looks like generic 90’s Indie Romcom #27C.  

Blech.

That and I'm not sure how good "The Movie of the Year, the Movie of the Moment" is for praise as it makes the movie sound forgettable whereas I’m sure they were aiming at timeliness when they put it on there.

While 'The Blind Side' is hard for me to write about and 'Up in the Air' still needs some internal processing on my part, they're both definitely worth watching. There's no "Oscar shame" in these two being nominated, as when we look back years from now we won't be wondering just what the hell AMPAS was thinking at the time.

Reel Madness: 'A Serious Man' and 'An Education'

A month ago I finally got a chance to watch 'The Blind Side', my last holdout of this year's best picture nominees. This year was the first one enacting AAMPAS' new decision to have 10 nominees in the category, an attempt by the academy to be more inclusive of more genres. At least, according to them. My interpretation of it is that they're trying to make up for leaving out 'The Dark Knight' the year prior, in favor of nominating 'The Reader'.

Anyway, I was surprised by the quality of the choices overall. There's usually only one that I end up liking so I was surprised to see how well most of these turned out. I'm going to put down my thoughts on this, two at a time, because lord knows there's not enough Oscar talk in the world. Especially post-ceremony coverage. Why? Because I want to talk about the ones that made it in because of the new rules that were good as well as crab about the ones that would have made it in anyway because Oscar loves to avoid memorable choices (anyone remember 'Hope and Glory'? How about 'The Dresser'?)

This first part is going to be about the two nominees that I actually hated, mostly because I want to get them the hell out of the way.

Which brings me to 'A Serious Man'. It's a dead heat between it and 'An Education' for which movie I disliked more but I'm giving this one the edge because it's a comedy with no laughs. A dark comedy for that matter. What is a dark comedy with no laughs? I don't even know how to classify that properly. It's been a bumpy road for the Coen Bros. this decade, having some of their most unsuccessful movies since 'The Hudsucker Proxy' (Which is probably my second favorite movie they've done) as well as winning best picture for 'No Country for Old Men'. That success continued with the surprisingly high gross of 'Burn after Reading' a movie I still haven't watched in light of most everyone I've met not liking it. There's a lot of expectation on Joel and Ethan these days, though none from me as I pretty much despise 'No Country' as the pinnacle of deliberately impenetrable cinema. Maybe it's my problem with Cormac McCarthy. I don't know. Either way 'Serious' has a great cold opening that leads into a movie that spends an hour and a half telling you what every good worker in the service industry already knows: Life's a bitch.

We're supposed to find humor in just how awful the life of Larry Gopnik can get but, to me at least, there were no laughs to be found. Disasters heap upon him at the level of the most over-the-top student film about relationship problems and no matter what he does, it never gets better.  During the course of the film he commits acts both upright and reprehensible, with neither affecting whatever cosmic tribunal (the Coens I suppose) that decided his life should be should be so deliriously terrible.

A lot of the movie's comedy value is apparently expressed in that it's very keyed into Jewish culture, though where that shows up in the gag of a Jewish physics professor smoking a doobie I'm not sure. Maybe I should ask Danny. I wanted to forgive the Coens' for their last unfunny comedy I watched, 2005's 'The Ladykillers' remake, though I guess it's ironic that I got something that made me feel just as slighted as its main character. I'm dying to meet someone who liked this movie. Hell, I'm dying to meet someone's who's seen it. It exists in this weird little bubble where I can't recommend it to anybody because I didn't like it but I desperately want someone else to see it so I can at least get some other source of reflection on it. I've avoided reviews because they say things like "the kind of film you get to make once you've won an Oscar". What's that mean? I understand that the Coens' must have cared about making the movie as it's very good from a technical standpoint. The music and cinematography are excellent and there's little to complain about with any of the casting. It's just that the movie as a movie is joyless and unfunny outside of the first 5 minutes. I think a lot of the movie's praise comes from people being ashamed to admit that they just didn't get it. Rather than cop to that they give it a pass as being good while keeping as nebulous as possible in their reviews. It seems to have coasted on that praise all the way to the Oscars because the only other reason I can imagine it was picked was to balance out that there were 2 Sci-fi movies and a cartoon in the same category.

Or maybe I've just failed to recognize the movie's greatness. Either way I'm still looking forward to 'True Grit' later in the year despite disliking their last remake (though they claim 'Grit' is going to be closer to the book in that it follows Mattie Ross' viewpoint) and will likely look forward to other things by them in the future no matter how low their batting average gets in my mind. Not 'Astro City' though. Please please don't let them make Astro City.

'An Education' is next up, and it too started strong with an entertaining 10 minutes or so. After that though, it was pretty much completely downhill. When Jas relayed the summary of this to me I pretty much outlined every moment that I supposed would happen in the course of the movie, despite having only heard of it moments before when the nominations were announced. What's notable about that is it's based on someone's life story so you'd think it would've deviated at least a little.

In a word, it's about a British schoolgirl who falls in love with an older man before graduating from high school. There's a lot more to it than that but in fear of enticing people with the expectation of it being more interesting than it actually is, I won't continue. Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay and while I normally enjoy his writing, this project in particular is nothing special. It coasts on his name but there's very little to set it apart as truly outstanding; it's not bad by any means but it's not, in my opinion, worthy of the praise heaped on it. It's better than 'Serious' but I can't be sure if that comes from only a few of its characters being unlikable as opposed to all of them.  One thing they definitely had in common is they both featured protagonists that became steadily less likable as their run times went on which isn't a crime unto itself unless they also started out as uninteresting. In fact, main character Jenny Mellor is so unlikable by the end of the movie you end up feeling bitter towards the movie for allowing everyone to forgive her for being a heinous, insulting bitch and treating them like dirt. Her parents are amazing people, that much is clear and her teacher is a hero. By the end of the movie I'm pretty sure most of the characters could have immolated Jenny before throwing her off a cliff and they wouldn't be jailed in light of the Judge just hearing about how terrible the protagonist was.

It's strange in a way, the relationship between Jenny, her parents and her teacher make the film kind of a metaphor for the relationship between the Oscars, the film industry and the viewing public: they created it, we helped raise it and then there came a certain point where Oscar began to spit in our collective faces, telling us how what we were giving it wasn't good enough for its new, sophisticated desires. So it's going to run off to Cannes with some dashing but deceptive art film that doesn't turn out to be as memorable as it originally thought. Oh Oscar, I know you thought the bond between you and 'Shakespeare in Love' would last forever but you've moved on, haven't you? In some fashion you could look at this year's numerous nominees as something of an apology for threatening to never see us again so it could run off to Paris to be with 'Crash'. It still sneaks in a few things to show us how we weren't right about everything but we take it because we know it's the closest thing to an apology we're going to get. We still take them back no matter how many times it chooses to tell us how it's not wrong about 'Chicago' and we're just judging it because of its background.

So that's it for now; next time I'm going to cover two more of the movies though which ones I'm not sure yet. From now on things are a little more positive though I hope I've given someone out there some insight on these two, especially considering that they're the least watched of all the nominees. At least maybe someone else out there will have something to say to me about them, perhaps about what a troglodyte I am for not appreciating the dark comic witticisms of 'Serious' or the delicate treatment of a Teen girl at the crossroads of adulthood in 'Education'. Bring it I say, I’ve gone on for hours with people about how crazy I am for disliking 'No Country' so it's not like I dismiss other views on this sort of thing.