Paranormal Activity 3 is the third installation in a film franchise that up to now I’ve really enjoyed. I’ve previously reviewed Paranormal Activity and Paranormal Activity 2 on pretty positive notes. Like The Blair Witch Project, which scared the crap out of my friends and I in the 90′s, the Paranormal Activity series has been pretty pioneering in its creation of thrills and chills.
The third installation, however, makes it clear that the premise has worn itself absolutely thin.
It struck me, after unintentionally watching two very similar films, to do a themed review. I’m calling this Summer Films in Small Spaces; these are two excellent movies to watch this summer—popcorn thrillers—dealing with very small, cramped, and confined spaces.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to reviewing all of this year’s Oscar picks even though Maria and I were able to get through watching most of them. Still, since we’ve seen lots, I can at least make some predictions and ruminations about this year’s awards. I’ll skip categories that I haven’t seen enough of the films to weigh in on.
Best Actor in a Leading Role
Colin Firth for The King’s Speech
Maria and I were never able to see Bitiful, which the always brilliant Javier Bardem is nominated for, but we’ve heard that he was really good. Still, I’d find it very hard to believe that his performance was better than Colin Firth in The King’s Speech. Firth absolutely lived his role as the stammering reluctant King of England. Firth became the awkward, nervous, bleary-eyed King George using his entire body, in scenes that made me cringe. I loved even the way he carried himself, so unsure, so scared of everything. Throughout the film too, I thought his transformation was subtle and believable.
Compared to Jeff Bridges in True Grit—who was hilarious but fairly run-of-the-mill—and Jesse Eisenberg—who was pretty one-dimensional—Firth is the clear stand-out choice. His character was complex, incredibly complex, and his interpretation is absolutely brilliant.
Best Actress in a Leading Role
Natalie Portman in Black Swan
I admit I’m at a bit of a disadvantage in this category having only seen Black Swan and Winter’s Bone. I’ll tell you what though, if Portman doesn’t win I would be incredibly surprised. Portman’s otherworldly transformation as the lead dancer in her company’s production of Swan Lake has to be the best performance by an actress for 2010. Her madness was subtle. Her take on the character was very simple, but I think that just lent to an even more frightening performance: she appeared, on the surface, to be a simple character but then layer upon layer begin to, literally, peel away. I think this will be Portman’s year when she takes the stage and when her career moves up to that next level.
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Geoffrey Rush in The King’s Speech
If Geoffrey Rush doesn’t win for Best Supporting Actor then it better be John Hawkes for his role in Winter’s Bone.
Let’s start with Hawkes. In his role Teardrop, the emotionally unpredictable Uncle to a girl searching for her father, Hawkes is pretty stellar. He’s scary, but believable. He’s complicated but like all of the actors in Winter’s Bone, he makes it seem real like he isn’t acting at all, like you’re almost watching a documentary—a very good one.
However, absolutely hands down, Geoffrey Rush needs to take this award. If Colin Firth’s stuttering King is an unforgettable performance then so is Rush’s pull-no-punches speech therapist Lionel Logel. Rush is nothing short of hilarious through virtue of being so confident in himself and so clever. It’s a brilliant juxtaposition: Rush playing a headstrong, self-assured common man against Firth’s nervous, stammering monarch.
Best Cinematography
Black Swan
In my opinion, this is perhaps the hardest category to call this year because there are three pretty predominant front-runners.
First is Inception. For all those naysayers, Inception was, visually, a pretty stunning film. There were lots of interesting things done with the camera to create a cohesive, yet absolutely mind-bending movie. Think of the action scenes, that whole upside-down segment, etc. It’s definitely in the running.
The King’s Speech is also nominated and if you weren’t paying pretty close attention you might’ve missed it but this film has some stellar camera work. Framing Colin Firth in a super wide angle against the crumbling wall of Geoffrey Rush’s office. Or filming Rush, rising from his chair, his face taking up the whole frame, looming over Firth with an absolutely palpable sense of authority and confidence.
Finally, there’s Black Swan, and this is the film I’m going to pick as the winner. When I reviewed this film I made a bit about how great I thought the camera was, following Natalie Portman around so closely and so controlled it only added to the sense that Portman’s life was constricted, constrained, and enhanced her madness. I loved it, and I think it worked well enough to deserve an Oscar.
Best Editing
The Social Network
I don’t think editing needs to be wildly impressive to win an award, I think it needs to be good and in the case of The Social Network, it was really well done. The movie was edited to keep the pace as a good clip, to unwind the story with perfect timing and the multiple storylines told around the different lawsuits, if you’ve seen the film, were done really well. The way it was written, this was a film that could’ve easily fallen apart without a good editor but obviously it had one and I think it’ll easily win in this category.
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Social Network
The only other contender in this category, in my opinion, is Winter’s Bone which could also easily win. In both cases, the dialogue is pretty outstanding but I think The Social Network is the more likely to take the prize. Aaron Sorkin is simply the dialogue master and his screenplay was so fast and furious, so clever and complicated, that it made the film that much more enjoyable to watch.
Best Original Screenplay
Inception
Easily, folks, easily. It’s a pretty brilliant concept for a film even if it was robbed from Total Recall. No other contenders.
Best Picture
The Social Network
In my mind, in this heavyweight category, the one that matters the most, there are two contenders: The King’s Speech and The Social Network. Both films are about really interesting, niche subjects: the inventor of Facebook and the stammering King of England. Both are character-driven dramas with really interesting lead characters, really snappy dialogue, and both are really well acted.
In my opinion, The King’s Speech has far more compelling characters. Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth stand heads and shoulders above The Social Network’s Jesse Eisenberg. But The Social Network has a quicker pace to it, it feels slightly better put together. While The King’s Speech feels a bit weighty and dragging, at times, The Social Network never slowed down. I liked that about The Social Network, and I think, despite the better character performances in The King’s Speech, it’s overall feel and pacing might see it lose to The Social Network.
Still, it’s a very tough call… and we’ll have to see.
Black Swan is an exercise in imagination and patience; a lesson in ambition and jealousy.
First thing, don’t watch Black Swan if you’d like to feel good by the end. Watch Black Swan if you’re in the mood for a fair share of nightmares and a queasy kind of uneasy feeling at the end of the film. What I’m saying is that it’s a pretty hard pill to swallow.
Black Swan follows a young ballerina, played expertly by Natalie Portman, whose ambition is to be the lead dancer in her company’s adaptation of Swan Lake. That said, it isn’t a ballet movie. Black Swan is a kind of character study. Throughout the course of the film we follow around Portman’s character, almost in a kind of reality TV style, as her ambition drives her deeper and deeper into her role in the ballet, and as it drives her to become more and more mistrustful, jealous and, of course, stark-raving mad.
During the emotional roller coaster that was the Intervention marathon Maria and I watched last night someone slipped in a trailer for the new movie Devil, out in theatres in a couple of weeks. It was a short trailer, I wasn’t even really paying attention, but we did both pause and take note when the name “M. Night Shyamalan” whipped across the screen.
Shyamalan is one of my favourite writers/directors working today and so, since I follow him pretty closely, I was totally surprised to find that he had a new film coming out. Well, not exactly. As it turns out, Shyamalan was involved in the film only as far as the story concept goes. He came up with the idea, but that’s about it. Still, I like the way he thinks and all of his films in the past, as far as I’m concerned, have had really interesting stories at the heart of them so I’m excited for Devil. But let me tell you why I’m a bit frustrated too.
The concept behind devil—the concept that Shyamalan came up with—is that a bunch of people are stuck in an elevator on their way to work. One by one, they begin dying, and someone in that elevator is responsible for killing them, one of them is the devil himself.
It sounds like an interesting concept, but of course Shyamalan is going to get some flack. Sometimes I wonder if he isn’t the (amateur) movie critics whipping boy..
As soon as trailers for Devil trickled out of the production house the press dug up that same tired old line, “It might be a good movie, but I bet it has a twist ending.”
Ah, the good old twist ending. That style of film-making and story-telling that M. Night Shyamalan is infamous for. Well, the press say, he better work hard to dig himself out of that whole, he better finally make a movie without a twist ending.
And I roll my eyes clear out of my head.
Now I don’t want to confuse being a Shyamalan fan with being a fanboy, a fanatic, or an apologist. I am none of those things but I am tired of hearing the poor guy get flack for widely help misconceptions and poorly-researched assertions.
It is incorrect to say that all M. Night Shyamalan films have twist endings. It’s incorrect to say that he really needs to redeem himself from that plot device and come up with something new.
A quick look at his film-making resume from the past ten or so years is revealing:
- The Sixth Sense (Twist; he’s dead)
- Stuart Little (No Twist; we knew he was a mouse all along)
- Unbreakable (Small twist; you’re a superhero and he’s your nemesis)
- Signs (No Twist; we knew they were aliens)
- The Village (Twist; it’s the 21st century, better buy a new wardrobe)
- Lady in the Water (No Twist)
- The Happening (No Twist)
- The Last Airbender (No Twist)
Basing our conclusions on actual research (i.e., I looked at a list of films he’s made) it’s clear that less than half of his movies feature twist endings. But why does he still receive so much negative attention over it? Why does he have to redeem himself with a film like Devil?
As far as I’m concerned Shyamalan does a great twist ending, he’s a clever writer and director, but it isn’t the only thing he can do. He’s proven himself as a competent film-maker time and time again. While I didn’t see The Last Airbender (I think it’s a film for kids) both The Happening (an intentionally-crafted B-movie) and Lady in the Water (a fairytale) were pulled off very well. And no twists.
From what I’ve seen so far Devil looks like it’ll be a pretty good film. It’s a cool concept. But all the buzz on whether or not we’ll be in for a big twist in the end is just foolishness. Although for a film about the devil, wouldn’t it be perfectly fitting? 
I’ll tell you why I loved Inception.
Sitting in the theatre, Inception is an absolutely mind-throttling movie. It makes you think, harder then you may have ever thought before, to try and piece together it’s complicated puzzle of a plot line. But—and this is the brilliance of Christopher Nolan—it isn’t too complicated that you grow frustrated or bored with it (although it does run a bit long). It’s deep, and gets deeper, as layer is heaped upon layer. It’s a great thinking movie, and a great action movie. Like The Dark Knight, another gem from Nolan, Inception’s action is intelligent, interesting and innovative. Nolan isn’t satisfied with stock footage, he pushes the limits of an action film, and it works.
But what’s really got me sold on Inception is the feeling that I had after I left the theatre. I felt inspired. I felt creative. And I think it’s a direct result of the film.
See, Inception absolutely pushes the limits of the creative imagination. Watching Inception I’m not allowed to take the role of passive observer, instead I’m pulled in and completely engaged with the film, the characters, and the whole world that Nolan’s created. It’s an absolute imagination-stretching film and when I left the theatre, my imagination continued to race, continued to create, the odometer in my brain kept on clicking. I think that’s a hallmark of an incredible movie: not that it’s so good that you talk about it for days after, but that it’s so creative and imaginative, that you keep creating—keep imagining—even after it’s done. Truly, if there’s ever a cure for writer’s block it’s Inception and in an industry full of creative films, I think that says a lot.
I may get some flack for saying this but please read the whole review, and maybe you’ll understand: The Lovely Bones, the latest offering from famed director Peter Jackson, is one-half a good movie. The other half I could’ve done without.
