I'm still convinced that biopics win Oscars a little too blindly because people tend to confuse not only good acting with a good impression but, even more inaccurately, they mistake an important life with an important film, but in recent years I'm less grumpy about these cinematic biographies. W this year was good and Milk was even better. Innovative, good-looking, and sharp, these films are breaking from the mold because (according to me) they are trying to prove a point, and that point is, of course, that Ray is a stupid film.*

So, I liked Milk, which is about the political career of "first openly gay elected official" Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978 (no spoiler). I liked it a lot, in fact, as I think I've mentioned. Gus Van Sant does his normal interesting directing thing and Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, James Franco, and Emile Hirsch do their normal interesting acting thing. Sean Penn is Milk, and he grins his way aptly through multiple political defeats in San Francisco before finally landing the position of city supervisor.

The film is half about him, half about the gay movement across the nation and how 1970s America was slowly being awakened to the fact that homosexuality isn't going anywhere. It's cleverly topical, since the fight against Proposition 6 - the big ballot issue in California in 1978 that wanted to repeal a law that prohibited employment discrimination based on sexuality - was echoed this year with the fight against Proposition 8 - you know, the one about gay marriage. The difference of course is that Prop 6 was defeated, partly due to Harvey Milk's tireless work, and thirty years later Prop 8 passed. It's a little dispiriting at first glance to think that we are going backwards in what seemed like a consistently progressive journey towards granting other taxpaying Americans basic civil rights. However, what Milk accomplished in less than eight years of political activism is nothing less than inspiring. Of course, a 200-minute film can't help but make it look a little easy. There's no way we can really appreciate years of work in a couple of montages. I don't mean to say that Van Sant leaves out the parts where Milk's personal relationships, privacy, and, of course, old age, are sacrificed for the good of the cause. On the contrary, it's not lost on us that for all of his relentless optimism and perseverence, Harvey Milk the man suffered a great deal. This is all tied into the gay struggle, which Milk himself very consciously represents. If he has to give up his longterm partner, it's nothing compared to the persecution homosexuals have borne over the years.

In conclusion of the first part of this review, Milk is much more compelling and much less formulaic than most other biopics of this decade, and also uh it was neat how crazy old Dan White (Brolin) is always hanging out on the edge of the frame. And also James Franco was well-costumed. AND SOMETIMES NOT COSTUMED???

Anyway, I'm rushing through all of this fascinating stuff that you'll find out yourself when you go see this film (which you most definitely should) because I want to talk about what I didn't like. Namely, there is one woman in the entire movie.

I understand that this is probably a pretty accurate representation of the active gay movement at the time, at least what the public saw of it. There's a reason why "lesbian" is the "L-word." It's more taboo, more threatening. If lesbianism doesn't exist purely as a voyeuristic/participatory fantasy for heterosexual men, then what...it's a relationship in which men aren't needed?? Like...at all?? Unacceptable! In a scene in which Emile Hirsch is rallying the troops by putting into practice a grassroots phone tree, the screen splits into increasing numbers of squares, each one occupied by a guy on the other end of the phone call, agreeing to get all the dudes together in Wichita or wherever he's living, and voila, the call has been heard across the U.S. Is it seriously possible that men were entirely responsible for bringing about the gay rights movement? I kept scanning faces in many of the crowd/march/riot scenes, and I'd catch one or two women in a sea of men. Every time someone mentions some sort of sad anecdote about a discriminated-against homosexual, it's always a man. "This gay male teacher could be teaching your child!" "This gay guy could be living in your neighborhood!" "Get every queen out on the streets and registered to vote!" "I'll be the first cocksucking politician!"**

Finally, the film does what it probably thinks fills its lesbian quota and introduces Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill), who strides into Milk's campaign office at his request and takes over management. Harvey good-naturedly chides the visibly uncomfortable guys who are confronted with this confident woman. I think she says a couple things like "Hi" or "I'm Anne" or "Here's an idea for your campaign," and within minutes, everyone is making jokes like "You have more balls than all of us put together!" or "Go talk to the papers, you'll sure scare them into submission!!"*** Anne asks the question, "Is there a place in this for us?" and no one really ever answers her. Maybe their reluctant acceptance of her is enough, they think. Look, you're here with us now, so don't push it.

Like I said, I'm not under any delusion that this just might be the way things were. But I think the film has a responsibility to comment on that instead of add to it. It's a shame too, because otherwise, Milk would be a near-perfect flick. But go see for yourself. One tired old cliche of a flaw doesn't mean it didn't nail everything else.

*My new year's resolution for 2009 is to drop that grudge and move on with my life, you'll be happy to know.
**This one even goes farther and excludes even straight women (who, I presume, could also embrace that term and who, I know for a fact, were already politicians).
***This scene also bears an unfortunate resemblance to a fateful night when I had been dating my husband for a few months and met a bunch of his friends at a low key birthday dinner for him. I remember thinking "I'm being so quiet tonight, but surely I will be my old self when I've known them for awhile and am not so nervous. I hope they don't think I'm boring." And then his report to me on Monday is that his friends all said that they liked me and that I "sure was a spitfire." They meant it affectionately, but come on. I arrived at the restaurant bearing a lemon layer cake that I had made in Richmond and driven to NYC. Spitfire!? I might as well have left the party early to go tuck in Wally and the Beav.

1. W is not a comedy!
I sort of assumed this from the ads, but luckily someone warned me before I went. I mean, sometimes it's funny that he says "misunderestimated" and sometimes it's funny that Stone expects us to buy Josh Brolin (who is 40) as an 18 year old W, but for the most part, Stone's biopic about George Walker Bush is an elegantly made interpretation of the life and career of our forty-third president. It is not a satire, it is not not an expose, it simply shows us a man who tries really hard but can't seem to get what he wants. And most of the time, it seems like what he wants is the respect of older, smarter men than he, starting and ending with his father. It's hard for me to really believe that W is so commanding and...well, I guess "manly" is the right word...of a figure as Josh Brolin makes him out to be. But what do I know, I guess. I've certainly never had lunch with the President, and I've only been to one or two top secret White House war room meetings. All I see of his demeanor is a guy who gives terrible speeches and tends to look around him with an expression of bewildered amazement. So for that reason, it's difficult for me to really fully connect this character with the actual Bush. This Bush struggles with his cabinet, really listens to his wife, and genuinely believes that he wants the best for America.

Eight years after his election, we're in a privileged position as moviegoers. We know the irony behind the Mission Accomplished banner, and we know to keep our eye out for his speechwriters' grimaces at the word "nucular." But what might be hard for some people to swallow is how W wants us to simultaneously sympathize and ostracize. I wouldn't call this film non-partisan. It certainly wouldn't make a hardcore Bush supporter chuckle through his or her popcorn (although if Laura Bush isn't flattered by her own portrayal, she's less cool than Stone makes her out to be). However, Bush is often shown taking the wind out of the sails of the movie's true villain, Dick Cheney, and he cries out sincerely that although he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he really and truly wants to be the best American he can. And although this is certainly topical, being election season in an election year, I still wouldn't call this anti-Republican. If anything, it reflects a now widespread desire for change, which both Obama and McCain of course use to their advantage. McCain is even shown almost rolling his eyes during a speech W gives to the Senate. That's not quite Obama propaganda! But perhaps that's not this film's MO.

2. W and its cast members will win at least one Oscar!
You've heard of the Jamie Foxx Effect* (the higher probability that an actor has of winning Best Actor and a film has of being nominated for Best Picture due to his/her/its portrayal of a real person, thereby giving the Academy something concrete on which to base their assessment of their acting/representation). Well, bust my buttons, W is jam-packed with good impressions of famous people, especially unflattering impressions of people we love to hate. Richard Dreyfuss's Dick Cheney is alarming in its evil accuracy (and also in its confirmation that ol' Dreyfuss is getting old), and James Cromwell is spot on as George Herbert Walker Bush, a taller, sadder version of his son. Elizabeth Banks is cute, yet kinda boring as Laura Bush, who is cute, yet kinda boring, I guess. Brolin's Bush, as I mentioned already, comes across as too brash and swaggery instead of dumb and falling over things like I want him to be. Our Bush doesn't seem to have nearly as much energy as Brolin, but, again, that might be just a convenient opinion that my brain has formed. Either way, he'll win Best Actor, definitely, and James Cromwell will be nominated as Best Supporting Actor (or maybe Dreyfuss). The movie itself will be nominated for Best Picture, and Ellen Burstyn might just be nominated for Best Supporting Actress, because she's old and respected and wears that Barbara Bush wig well. These are my predictions, America. We'll see how it pans out.

3. Thandie Newton should never ever be allowed to play Condoleezza Rice again!
Luckily, there's unlikely to be a sequel. Newton's Condie was so accurate as to be distracting. Although perhaps maybe my lack of intimate knowledge with the current administration is to blame again for this opinion, but it seemed like even the camera found Condie's every move hilarious. Her ingratiating tone, her deferential nods, the way in which she charges around in the woods on command...all of it seemed so constructed yet eerily accurate. It's just like if you had a really good, bearded impression of Sarah Palin. Part of me wants to look at it and laugh for hours, but the other part wants to look far, far away and pretend like none of this is actually happening.

*No you haven't, and it's because I made it up!!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I’ve said this time and time again, but this year I’m going to make some money off of it. In order to win an Academy Award for Best or Best Supporting Actor or Actress, you must be impersonating a real figure in a biopic about that figure. If you have the misfortune to star in a film that does not feature people doing impressions of real people, then your only recourse is to hope for either a year without a biopic Academy contender (good luck) or to hope that you are Russell Crowe*. That being said, I would like to propose a bet that Helen Mirren is not only nominated but takes away the Oscar for Best Actress in the 2007 Academy Awards.

I do not say this to gush. I liked the movie, and I thought she did a perfectly fine job, but my enthusiasm is only that I have finally found a film that both fits this weird proclivity of the Academy’s and also deserves the praise it will undoubtedly receive. I won’t repeat myself and relate the many films that have won ridiculous accolades undeservingly, simply because they reaffirm for us that we really enjoy the music/good works/art of some dead famous person.** But if biopics are the only way to get some Oscars around here, I am happy to say that The Queen is a good one, and I will feel no remorse when it sweeps the Awards.

The only obstacle facing director Stephen Frears at the Awards is that he artfully portrays well-known heads of state…in a different country. For instance, I’m assuming James Cromwell did a bang-up job as Prince Philip, but to be honest with you, I have, like, no idea what Prince Phillip is like. I actually had to remind myself who he was. So I’m hoping that just because we can easily look at Jamie Foxx and say “Gotcha. You’re being Ray Charles,” The Queen won’t arrive at our Halloween party and have to explain its clever costume, which doesn’t garner nearly as much attention as the undeserving but easily recognizable Sexy Dorothy.***

In sum, The Queen is a very, very interesting film that is probably a great take on what probably happened within the confines of the Royal Family after Princess Diana’s death. I’m blindly trusting Frears on the accuracy of this statement, not just because he knows more than I do, but because he includes actual footage of President Clinton. I hadn’t realized how much I missed him.

*Best Actor at Fooling People Into Thinking He’s a Good Actor, Which In Itself Is a Pretty Good Form of Acting, So It’s Hard Not to Respect Him
**Let me be clear, I'm in no way disrespecting Johnny Cash or Truman Capote or any of those guys, but just because we make a film about a great person doesn't mean that that film is automatically a good one.
***Or should I say, Foxxy Dorothy.

I’ve said this time and time again, but this year I’m going to make some money off of it. In order to win an Academy Award for Best or Best Supporting Actor or Actress, you must be impersonating a real figure in a biopic about that figure. If you have the misfortune to star in a film that does not feature people doing impressions of real people, then your only recourse is to hope for either a year without a biopic Academy contender (good luck) or to hope that you are Russell Crowe*. That being said, I would like to propose a bet that Helen Mirren is not only nominated but takes away the Oscar for Best Actress in the 2007 Academy Awards.

I do not say this to gush. I liked the movie, and I thought she did a perfectly fine job, but my enthusiasm is only that I have finally found a film that both fits this weird proclivity of the Academy’s and also deserves the praise it will undoubtedly receive. I won’t repeat myself and relate the many films that have won ridiculous accolades undeservingly, simply because they reaffirm for us that we really enjoy the music/good works/art of some dead famous person.** But if biopics are the only way to get some Oscars around here, I am happy to say that The Queen is a good one, and I will feel no remorse when it sweeps the Awards.

The only obstacle facing director Stephen Frears at the Awards is that he artfully portrays well-known heads of state…in a different country. For instance, I’m assuming James Cromwell did a bang-up job as Prince Philip, but to be honest with you, I have, like, no idea what Prince Phillip is like. I actually had to remind myself who he was. So I’m hoping that just because we can easily look at Jamie Foxx and say “Gotcha. You’re being Ray Charles,” The Queen won’t arrive at our Halloween party and have to explain its clever costume, which doesn’t garner nearly as much attention as the undeserving but easily recognizable Sexy Dorothy.***

In sum, The Queen is a very, very interesting film that is probably a great take on what probably happened within the confines of the Royal Family after Princess Diana’s death. I’m blindly trusting Frears on the accuracy of this statement, not just because he knows more than I do, but because he includes actual footage of President Clinton. I hadn’t realized how much I missed him.

*Best Actor at Fooling People Into Thinking He’s a Good Actor, Which In Itself Is a Pretty Good Form of Acting, So It’s Hard Not to Respect Him
**Let me be clear, I'm in no way disrespecting Johnny Cash or Truman Capote or any of those guys, but just because we make a film about a great person doesn't mean that that film is automatically a good one.
***Or should I say, Foxxy Dorothy.

I promise you that as soon as distance permits, I will get on that Pirates of the Caribbean thing, but for now, this is more on my mind.

Gods and Monsters is a biopic, sorta, about the last few weeks of legendary director James Whale (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man), who rocked Hollywood in the Thirties by subtlely exploring the theme of the horror monster and by blatantly exploring the theme of being “light in the loafers,” as they say.*

"Whale" on the set of Bride of Frankenstein.

This film won an Oscar for best screenplay (Bill Condon) and was nominated for a couple acting awards. Not surprisingly, the Academy misses the point a little. Gods and Monsters is a beautifully filmed and well edited – let me go out on a limb here – monster. The construction of the film is much more seamless than the consciously stitched-up Frankenstein monster, and did a lot of angling and focusing and fenagling to really drive the title’s theme home (you know, “I’m a god, you’re a monster, and it’s funny because I DIRECTED movies about monsters,” that sort of thing.) But it’s not the actual cinematics of the film itself that got any attention, unfortunately, it was the screenplay.

The image searches for pictures of this movie are very, very sad, considering how pretty the film is.

This is where I go into my “the Academy clearly consists of people who have never before seen a film and must be replenished with new Academicians every year” spiel. Either that or they honestly think that the more films a picture resembles, the better it must be. Or, and this might be the case, they just decided to be “into film” after watching a biography on A&E about M. Night Shyamalan**, and every time they can spot a theme in a film, they pump their fists in the air and yell, “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!!!” and pin a blue ribbon to the DVD case.

Basically, Gods and Monsters absolutely beats you over the head with the god/monster relationship. As if we couldn’t figure it out by the very title of the film, a reference to a line in Bride of Frankenstein. The Frankenstein films wrestle with the culpability of a monster who had no choice in its creation and whose repulsive differences can be instead attributed to the twisted ambitions of a creator trying to play God. The inversion causes Frankenstein (i.e. Doctor Frankenstein) to really be the monster, instead of the flatheaded screwneck we’re used to fearing. In fact, during the Frankenstein movies, Whale creates a really amazing amount of sympathy on the part of the viewer for Boris Karloff’s Monster. We find ourselves rooting for the poor misunderstood brute, whose very existence is pre-determined to be that of an outcast. The Monster’s infantile helplessness (not to mention taste for fine music) contrasts with the Dr. Frankenstein’s snooty, aristocratic background: money and power aren’t enough for him, he requires immortality.

From Frankenstein (1931). Who could hate that lovable mug??

So! James Whale’s creation of all of this puts him in the God position, and Clay Boone (Brendan Fraser), due to his over-the-top flatheaded, musclely, simple-nature, gets to be Frankenstein’s monster (his name’s Clay, get it? Like, for molding?), but in case you didn’t pick up on it yourself, he breaks it down for ya, actually saying, “I AM NOT YOUR MONSTER” while at the same time throttling poor old Whale. This follows some dreams Clay has of him assuming the roles of both Dr. Frankenstein and the monster. And that’s not all, the film closes on a long shot of Clay walking through the rain, stiffly and with his arms out. Guess what! We are all monsters, even if we’re gods, and probably vice versa. I don’t know. I’m through with it.

God, Monster, Monster, God, Panama Hat.

At the very least, Gods and Monsters is an enlightening film about Whale while going a little bit deeper into humanity’s core and all that, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Whale’s own work. But I guess it’s not trying to, and the film probably did a lot of good to moviegoing audiences who otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to any sort of exploration into these themes. I give the film four stars (it really is excellent to watch) and the guy who plays Karloff seventeen.

*You’ll hear about five hundred more euphemisms for homosexuality in the film. Also, the phrase “hard, arrogant pr*cks” coming out of Ian McKellan’s mouth is truly a delight.
**Does he go by M? Does he go by Night? Does he ever go away?

[Good Night, and Good Luck is a Cloonz-directed film that depicts Edward R. Murrow's determination to do his part as a TV journalist in the early 1950s to expose McCarthyism as a bad bad thing. It also throws several jabs in the direction of TV/radio entertainment as a whole, accusing it of pandering too much to the thrillseekers and escapists and not enlightening the masses as it could. Even though the masses wouldn't watch it if it weren't pandering to them. So, you know, not gonna happen. I digress, here we go.]

Reasons Good Night, and Good Luck is better than all other biopics in recent memory:

1. Edward Murrow’s Southern/troubled/blind/impoverished/abused childhood was not depicted.

2. The film does not require Murrow to overcome his guilt at being an innocent cause of his brother’s death. Did he even have a brother? Irrelevant!

3. In fact, we know nothing at all about his childhood. He could have been born in Oz to two grizzly bears and forced to do the laundry for the munchkins for all we know. Therefore, nothing about Murrow is neatly “explained” by something that happened in his past. This is dangerous, maybe, because obviously the people we’ve become are directly influenced by the events in our pasts. However, Clooney directs our focus to this man as he relates to this one segment of history, and that’s easier to digest while at the same time avoiding running the risk of telling us the exact same story with the exact same spin.

4. Murrow doesn’t have some unusual aspect about his physical or behavioral demeanor that requires some miraculous likeness to be achieved by an actor. Ever feel like we tend to confuse “good actor” with “good movie”? Don’t get me wrong, kudos should be awarded where kudos are deserved (so uh, kudos, Hoffman, Foxx, Phoenix, Hayek, etc), but it shouldn’t be the one criterion on which a good film is based. Know what I’m saying?

5. Nobody’s got a drug problem. They do seem to only be able to get oxygen through their lungs by sucking on cigarettes though.

6. Maybe because there’s no drug problem, the story doesn’t take any sort of Behind the Music turn. That is, there’s no Def Leppard-esque one-armed-drummer downfall that they have to fight back from, closing the film with a triumphant reunion tour at Folsom Prison featuring Quincy Jones and the governor of Georgia.

7. Maybe also because of #5 and #6, Clooney didn’t bow to the temptation to put some sweeping epilogue on the screen before the credits about how Murrow was the best journalist in the history of journalism, or how he singlehandedly brought down the forces of McCarthyism, or how he went on to win more awards than anybody in history. Not every famous person whose “life” is captured on film can be the absolute famousest and bestest, unless you believe the epilogues. In Good Night, and Good Luck, we’re allowed to draw our own conclusions about Murrow’s influence, and we don’t labor under the delusion that every single American man, woman, and child in the 50s was glued to his television show every week and discussing his accusations at the water cooler* the next morning. The events just sort of happen, and we can see how they help steer certain courses in our collective history; there’s no cheesy montage chronicling his out-of-control ascent to fame and fortune**.

And I’m not saying that the other movies aren’t well-done, it’s just embarrassing how predictable they are. And the more they’re alike, the less credible they are, and the less I believe that their celebrity subject is worth my awe. It’s not that surprising that Good Night, and Good Luck stood out so prominently from its peers. George Clooney usually turns whatever he touches straight into blisteringly hot, molten gold. However, this one was really and truly stunning, and you should get into it. Unless, of course, you just recently quit smoking. Sheesh.

*Did they have water coolers in the 50s? Milk coolers maybe. Malt coolers?

**As you can see, Ray really did a number on me.