Best Director

Review: Michael Keaton Pecks at Fame in ‘Birdman’

October 22, 2014 By Thelma 1 Comment

Winging it in the Cartoon Jungle

Welcome back, Michael Keaton.

Whether you remember him as the guy who threw away the Batman franchise before comic books were king, or the comic genius of Beetlejuice, Keaton is the crazy spinning center of Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Birdman, which closed the 52nd Annual New York Film Festival and exited Venice with massive buzz that may be tough to sustain.

Keaton plays aging Hollywood has-been Riggan Thomson – see him remove his toupee to reveal a hairline that would politely be termed receding. The [oxymoron alert] self-absorbed actor is staging a Broadway comeback in his own pretentious adaptation of Raymond Carver short stories that Thomson also produced, directed and in which he stars. Thomson’s haunted by his past – he even hears voices – when he played a hooded, flying character named Birdman, with a very close resemblance to the Caped Crusader.

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is wholly intentional.

The premise gives the Mexico-born Inarritu (Babel) the chance to poke fun at the Hollywood blockbuster machine – digs are made at Robert Downey Jr. and other thespians-turned-superheroes for fat paychecks. Additionally, it creates a swirling backstage story of intrigue, infidelity and decadence with a dash of Latin American magic realism.

Up in the Air, Senior Birdmen

Inarritu’s direction is fluid and dynamic, the dialog alternately funny and barbed, and Antonio Sanchez’s score jazzy and unexpected. The heat rises when Edward Norton enters the scene as the egomaniacal Broadway actor Mike Shiner, a last-minute replacement for Thomson’s injured co-star. The stage is set for a battle of super-charged egos played out in front of a full house. This inspires a fantastic scene where Shiner gets drunk on stage and humiliates Thomson. And, in another, Thomson gets locked out at the stage door and returns via the audience, clad only in his tighty whities and wet toupee to deliver his best line reading ever.

Norton and Keaton have a bright ensemble dancing around them: Emma Stone as Thomson’s world-weary fresh-out-of-rehab daughter; Naomi Watts as the play’s sexy but insecure female lead and Shiner’s doormat; and a relatively subdued Zach Galifianakis as Thomson’s lawyer/co-producer/enabler.

While I love all the smoke and mirrors, and Keaton’s herculean Oscar-bait comeback beside Norton’s ripping supporting performance, by the third act, I began losing traction. By the time Thomson throws a tear-down-his-dressing-room tantrum, along with a gratuitous girl-on-girl kiss, I began to wonder what was the there there? Where is this going and why?

As I found in Inarritu’s Babel, and then Biutiful, there is a brilliant talent hindered by an ‘I’m better than Hollywood’ smugness. He is, that’s true, but I want Inarritu to deliver all the way, to break every mold, to really take wing. He almost did this time.

Bad Jobs of the Academy Rich & Famous: David O. Russell, Waiter to Martin Scorsese

February 2, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

David O. Russell, Waiters Guild of America winner? Not something you’ll be hearing soon. But among the many jobs the Oscar-nominated writer-director had before he sold his first feature was working as a Manhattan waiter and bartender.

At the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Outstanding Director Tribute last Friday, a gleeful Russell told a full house – including a screaming baby and a patron with a cough Russell compared to a cat with a fur ball – about his non-illustrious past.

Russell confessed that he waited on fellow nominee Martin Scorsese at the “Goodfellas” premier at the Museum of Modern Art. He told the established director “what I really want to do is what you are doing.” Scorsese responded: “I’ll have a vodka.”

When asked by SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling about the rigors of the Awards Season – especially in light of riding last year’s contender “Silver Lining Playbook” as well as this year’s “American Hustle” – the former waiter with blue-collar New Jersey roots wasn’t prey to self-pity. “You should love it, or you shouldn’t be in the business,” Russell said.

Russell has yet to win an Oscar himself despite three nominations for Best Director, but he still has an impressive track record. His last three films have garnered twenty-five Oscar nominations. That has netted three wins: one each for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo for “The Fighter,” and one last year for Jennifer Lawrence.

Q&A: Mads Mikkelsen confronts child abuse in ‘The Hunt’

July 15, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Sexy Danish star Mads Mikkelson, 47, bit into international fame this year: he had the title role in NBC TV’s hit “Hannibal,” and literally lost his head in the Oscar-nominated historical romance “A Royal Affair.”

Mikkelsen saved the best for last with Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Hunt” (opening Friday), a devastating Danish drama for which he won best actor honors at Cannes in 2012. He plays a divorced schoolteacher who becomes a pariah in his small town when his best friend’s kindergartner accuses him of abuse.

Audiences exit the theater embroiled in debates about child abuse and society and divided in their reactions to what they saw on the screen: but no one is divided on Mikkelsen’s understated performance. He is a major star.

Did this trifecta of successes on big and small screen surprise you?

I never planned a career. I’ve tried to avoid it. I’ve just been meeting these fantastic directors who’ve offered me a variation of different parts and different films. And now it’s landed here.

In “The Hunt,” you play an ordinary man changed by extraordinary circumstances and local hysteria.

Lucas is a traditional average of a Scandinavian man, what Vinterberg called a “castrated man.” The man that believes in society will take care of the problems and that we are civilized people and we will behave civilized through any problems we might face.

And then Lucas finds himself accused of the unthinkable – and his social position crumbles.

Yes. In this crisis, it turns out to be so much more complicated than he thought it would be. He’s divorced. He used to work at a school and the school closed. Now he’s working in a kindergarten and he’s trying to get his feet back on the ground. And he has a teenage son. And he’s doing pretty well. He’s climbed up the ladder again.

And then there is that kiss in the kindergarten, where his best friend’s daughter plants her lips on his.

It’s not a grownup love. But it’s the girl’s fascination with this person, her father’s friend, her teacher. After she kisses him, he does the right thing. She should know that she shouldn’t kiss him on the mouth. But she didn’t. I mean we’re living in Scandinavia. [Read more…]

Yahoo! Movies: Joaquin is crazy in Toronto – on screen in “The Master”

September 22, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Joaquin Phoenix in “The Master” (The Weinstein Company)

Is Joaquin Phoenix crazy? Since I don’t plan to dine with him here in Toronto, I think that question is beside the point. At the premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” last night at the Princess of Wales Theater on King Street, Phoenix received adulation for a performance that was already getting buzz out of Telluride. Clean-shaven, formally dressed, eager to please, he held his right arm protectively around the waist of a young bottle-blond identified only as “Heather.”‘ Nearby, The Weinstein Company’s Harvey Weinstein held court with the expansion of personality that comes from having the gut feeling that “The Master” will be part of the awards conversation and is also “high art” in a Hollywood sense.

As for Phoenix, despite the fact that the screening was an hour late and it would be polite to say that the audience was testy, he was a man behaving Sunday-school best, bad boy issues shelved and beard shaved. He’s playing the off-screen role of penitent Oscar-nominee and Oscar-seeker — not crazy man on a vendetta to slay his own career. The screening began and Phoenix sat with Heather in the orchestra seats alongside co-star Amy Adams. If the screening of a 70mm print of “The Master” had begun on time, there’s no saying how much star power would have ascended to the stage before or after. However, the lateness of the night (delayed by the appearance of Canadian mega-star Ryan Gosling at the earlier premiere of “The Place Beyond the Pines” and adoring throngs) meant that director Anderson was very, very brief in his opening remarks and the stars never took the stage. [Read more…]

Oscar’s Angels: Best Director Roundtable 2012

October 23, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Alexander Payne,George Clooney,The Descendants

Payne: director most likely to be confused with a high school chem teacher

Let’s turn our gimlet eyes to the directorial achievements of 2011. Here’s my post of the day with the field as I see it to start.

The top five are:

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Steven Spielberg, War Horse

David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Michael Hazanavicius, The Artist

Stephen Daldry, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Other directorial contenders: Bennett Miller, Moneyball; Clint Eastwood, J. Edgar; Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life; Tomas Alfredson, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Martin Scorsese, Hugo; Oren Moverman, Rampart; and George Clooney, The Ides of March.

Full disclosure: of the top five men in the race, I’ve only seen two of the movies. Oops: no women on list! To be fair, we could include two possible dark mare contenders: Lynne Ramsay for We Need to Talk About Kevin and Phyllida Lloyd for The Iron Lady.

Susan Wloszczyna: I’m not feeling it for the ladies in the directing category this year. Ramsay is more of a Spirit award possibility. As for Phyllida Lloyd, she might be a whiz at staging operas, but never has such a hugely successful film been quite so ineptly directed as Mamma Mia! And I say this as someone who will drop everything to watch Meryl Streep leap on that bed whenever it comes on cable.

Will it help girl power-wise that Lisbeth Salander will soon be the Harry Potter of literary-inspired action femmes? The anti-social hacker with the pitbull personality is a perfect heroine for our Apple worshiping age. Maybe a win for Fincher is a win for womankind?

I do have an inkling that Woody might sneak into this category, with Daldry maybe sitting it out this time.

THELMA: I’m skeptical about Fincher being able to keep the girl in The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo on center stage, Susan, but we’ll see. Right now, it seems like a bit of the not-so-old and old-boy’s club. Of that group, I favor Payne and Hazanavicius but that’s my anti-serious-Spielberg bias poking through.

SUSAN; I am willing to put money on Payne now. But much hinges on the public’s reception to The Descendants. Somehow I think they will warm to this Clooney more than they did the Up in the Air George.

THELMA: I agree. Although, the degree to which Jason Reitman apparently hurt that movie’s chances on the long red carpet from Toronto to the Kodak Theater is hard to estimate. What do you think, Melissa?

Melissa Silverstein: This is one of the times of year I hate because we hardly ever get to talk about women. I know we are all waiting to see The Iron Lady but Lynne Ramsey did a spectacular job with We Need To Talk About Kevin. The problem with that film is that it is so hard to swallow that it won’t get much of a push beyond star Tilda Swinton, which is most deserved.

Two young women made great movies that won’t get too much Oscar notice. Maryam Keshavarz wrote and directed Circumstance and Dee Rees wrote and directed Pariah. I think that Pariah could get Indie Spirit nominations and it is so good but about a topic that doesn’t necessarily interest Oscar voters: a young African American woman coming to terms with her sexuality.

I’m still waiting to see Phyllida Lloyd’s work in The Iron Lady before I write her off. I saw her show, Mary Stuart, and thought it was beyond impressive. I think we should give her the benefit of the doubt even though people didn’t like Mamma Mia! Remember it has made over half a billion dollars at the box office. That is more than most Meryl Streep movies.

THELMA: More than any of the ones she earned an Oscar or a nomination for that’s for sure! You have a point about box office and Mamma Mia. And also that this year it looks like some female directors will end up in the Indie Spirit or Gotham’s Awards. Which male directors do you favor in the race, Melissa?

MELISSA: I haven’t seen a lot of the films yet so I am not the best person to pick but I think that the front runner is Alexander Payne. I am also interested to see what The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo looks like and whether David Fincher could get it with a movie that is a hard R and has a lot of violence. I never count him out. I also think that Bennett Miller from Moneyball and George Clooney for Ides of March could get some traction.

Sasha Stone: I can’t count out Fincher. For me the only lock is Alexander Payne for The Descendants. But it’s always tricky to predict anything until it’s been reviewed by the major critics, which this film hasn’t. It has Todd McCarthy in its favor, so that looks like a good sign.

Of those that HAVE been reviewed, you have two – Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris and you have Bennett Miller for Moneyball – stellar reviews for both. The third director to consider is Terrence Malick. I could see the directors picking him even if the film misses a Best Pic nod. His movie is just so large in scope it’s hard to imagine it not getting one.

Of those who have yet to present themselves, we have:
David Fincher
Steven Spielberg
Stephen Daldry
Cameron Crowe
Jason Reitman
Tomas Alfredson

I really don’t know how to choose between these. This is genuinely a case of having to wait and see. We have to sit on our hands and wait. It’s not easy but there is simply no way to know.

Do I think any women will break through? No. When the Academy decided to not do ten Best Picture nominees they basically fucked women once again. We will not see a year like last where two Best Pic nominees were written and directed by women. We’ll see more like five directors and five to seven Best Pictures.

None of those five will be women. Unless The Iron Lady is really all that.

Where you’ll see women pop up will be in the screenplay category if at all.

THELMA: I hate to sit on my hands, but I understand the impulse in this case. The season is going to start to roll very fast as the NYFCC, of which I’m a member, voted this past week to do our awards balloting on November 28th. That’s going to move up the pace of screenings — and, possibly, reviews. But, considering the rapturous reviews and reception, I just don’t think the heretofore relatively unknown French director Michel Hazanavicius, promoted by Harvey Weinstein, will be overlooked in this category.

As for women directors, I can only hope that more filter up in the next few years, especially if we Oscar’s Angels are in gatekeeper positions and swing the doors wide open.

And here’s my deepest, darkest fear: that Spielberg, with two movies premiering on the same week in December – War Horse and The Adventures of Tin Tin – will become a double slam dunk for the honors. Talk about a dog-and-pony show!