30 Day Movie Challenge Part I

I actually decided to do the 30 day movie challenge on my Facebook instead of my blog, but I thought I could use this blog to give some more elaborated thoughts on the entries. I'll break it down into three posts, each containing 10 entries. Obviously, Part 1 will be covering numbers 1 through 10.

The 30 Day Movie Challenge is a picture-based project, so all of these will be accompanied by the same pictures I've posted on Facebook. And... here we go.

Day 1: The best movie you saw in the last year.

My Choice: Adaptation (2002)

I was surprised by how few options I had to choose from for day 1. To find my favorite, I went to Rotten Tomatoes and sifted through all of my 10/10 ratings, looking for any I'd rated within the past 365 days. I only found five or six, including United 93, Black Swan, and Children of Men. In the end, I went with Adaptation because of how wonderfully original it was. It's a story based on writer Charlie Kaufman's attempt to adapt a novel written about flowers of all things into a film. The meta-film elements are mindblowing and Nic Cage's performance as a pair of twins is amazing. And don't forget that great "how did I get here" scene. It's just an objectively amazing film.

Day 2: Your favorite foreign film.

My Choice: Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

This was the easiest of my choices so far. Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favorite films of all time. I love the story, about a girl who creates a fantastical escape from her life during the Spanish Civil War. I love the effects, from the faun to the fairies to the Pale Man. I even love that it is in Spanish, because I think it is one of the most beautiful languages. It is, in short, a flawless movie, and one that I'll never tire of rewatching.

Day 3: Your favorite horror movie.

My Choice: The Thing (1982)

I'm not big on horror films in general, and I'm definitely not big on 1980s cinema, but I absolutely love The Thing. It evokes feelings of isolation and claustrophobia that has been imitated by many horror films that followed it. Kurt Russell plays himself like he always did, but this is one of those times that it worked. And don't even get me started on the effects. Sure, they're dated if you try to scale them based on our 2011 CGI-based standards, but even if you think they are dated, they are still very creepy. Just watching that dog's face peel back like a banana is almost enough for me to have put The Thing here.

Day 4: A movie that makes you sad.

My Choice: Toy Story 3 (2010)

I'm not sure if any movie has ever made me more sad than those two heartbreaking scenes at the end of Toy Story 3. You know the ones I mean: the one from my screenshot and the final scene. I got teary-eyed multiple times during both of these scenes and anyone who didn't is a robot. It wasn't just the halfhearted feeling that the toys might not get out alive for once, either. Toy Story 3 captured the essence of people like me who grew up with Woody and Buzz and are now at that age where toys aren't for us anymore. It's hard to capture that feeling of reminiscence, especially in a cartoon about toys, but Toy Story 3 did it.

Day 5: Your favorite love story in a movie.

My Choice: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Eternal Sunshine plays to us romantics who want to believe that true love is this deep psychological bond between two people that you can't deny just because you had a bad day. After the couple in Sunshine erase their memories, they end up falling back in love again. It's very sweet to me. This isn't even mentioning the fun ride through Barish's memories, from childhood to when he first meets Clementine. This is another of my favorite films of all time, and no matter how many times I see it, I always get emotional during that final memory they share.

Day 6: Your favorite made-for-TV movie.

My Choice: The Langoliers (1995)

I can't say that I'm well-versed in made-for-TV movies, but I'd say that 90% of those I've seen were Stephen King adaptations. There's It, Rose Red, and of course The Stand, but for my money I'll always prefer The Langoliers. It's not a better film than the others I've mentioned; if anything, it's the worst of the four. It just reminds me of my childhood, because me and my brother would watch this movie every time it came on TV. The actual langoliers themselves were pretty scary to me as a child, even though they look very silly in retrospect. Honestly, I wouldn't even really recommend this movie to anybody (it's 3 hours long, for one thing), but I'll always love it for my own reasons.

Day 7: Your favorite plot twist or ending in a movie.

My Choice: Mulholland Drive (2001)

Yeah, I kind of cheated on this one. Technically, the ending of Mulholland Drive is a twist, but then again, the entire movie is a twist. It's one of the weirdest, most disjointed films I've ever seen, and trying to put everything together in your mind is half of the entertainment of the film. What makes this ending so great to me is that right before it happened, I thought I had finally figured out the story and was getting comfortable just watching it unfold. But then the twist happened, and everything I thought I had figured out suddenly made no sense again. It sounds a bit frustrating, but I loved it.

Day 8: A movie that you've seen countless times.

My Choice: A Christmas Story (1983)

Anyone my age who grew up in the United States has probably seen A Christmas Story at least once. Most people, including me, see it multiple times every year on Christmas. The TV channel TBS is to blame for this, as they host a 24 hour marathon of the movie. My family is also to blame, because they think since it is a Christmas movie, we need to watch it every Christmas. Don't get me wrong: I do enjoy A Christmas Story and watching it every once in a while would be fine, but seeing it everywhere I go during Christmas is a little draining.

Day 9: A movie that reminds you of someone.

My Choice: 500 Days of Summer (2009)

I originally saw 500 Days of Summer during a tough stretch of my life, and I felt an immediately strong connection to the story. It seemed to be a mirror image of my entire relationship with my only long-term girlfriend, from the great beginnings to the retrospectively bad endings. Every time I watch this movie, I am reminded of that ex-girlfriend, which makes it a little hard to watch. 500 Days of Summer is a great movie regardless of my emotional connection to it, though, which is why it's my favorite movie of the entire year of 2009.

Day 10: A movie that makes you happy.

My Choice: Elf (2003)

The only reason I've ever even seen Elf is because I was on a date with this girl and she really wanted to see it. To me it looked pretty childish; I was also in that teen angst stage of life where anything cute (like Christmas) was lame. Whatever the excuse was, I should get in touch with that girl and thank her for dragging me to such an amazing and hilarious movie. Elf works not only as a Christmas movie, but as a comedy in general. During that tough phase of my life I talked about earlier, I would watch this movie daily to cheer myself up, and it usually worked. Few movies can make me smile like Elf can.

Parts II and III coming soon!

Ricochet Reviews: Barney's Version

And now I'm tentatively caught up on reviewing all the films I've seen this year! It's taken almost two weeks, but I've done it, and it feels damn good.

Barney's Version

Director: Richard J. Lewis (debut film)

Starring: Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver

On Blu-Ray + DVD: June 28, 2011

Barney's Version suffers from a film malady called "expedited biopic syndrome", a term I made up as I typed this sentence. What I mean by that ridiculous phrase is that the separate parts of Barney's Version are superb, with great humor, great acting, and some interesting ideas. The problem is that when the film is looked at as a whole, the story goes by very fast in favor of one or two key scenes, and this expedited storytelling hinders the overall effectiveness of the film. Mainly because of this, Barney's Version is a film that, although they may like it, many people will have a problem connecting with.

"Expedited biopic syndrome" isn't a problem exclusive to Barney's Version. Many biopics suffer mightily because of the same lack of cohesion and emotion that should make those more focal scenes feel so important. A few that come to mind are The World According to Garp, Bird, and Born on the Fourth of July. It is logically a more salient problem with fictional biopics like Barney. In biopics based on real people, we can fill in the details ourselves sometimes with what we already know, but in fictional biopics, we know nothing about these people, meaning that the filmmakers must delve even deeper into their characters to make us care about them. This is probably why this expedition of plot occurs so often in biopics: they are already, on average, the longest films of any genre (Barney's Version, even with its lack of development, clocks in at 2 hours, 12 minutes), and filmmakers are probably afraid of losing some moviegoers because of this length.

All that is only loosely related to the main subject of this film review, but I felt like I needed to define my new term if I was going to use it. In terms of Barney's Version, many of the smaller details and plot points that would make Barney's story believable are simply missing. For example, Barney's second wife (played by Minnie Driver) is shown from the onset of their relationship until their divorce in the span of perhaps 15 minutes. In that time span, we are supposed to understand how little Barney cares for her, how he has pushed her away, how this has affected her, and how she would react (by having sex with Barney's best friend, Boogie). Linked to this is the entire character of Boogie, who is characterized as a womanizer but only mentions one sexual encounter before having sex with Barney's wife. None of these significant pieces of the story are explained enough, and they come off as only silly instead of poignant or distressing. This is only one example, but the movie is riddled with instances like these.

I am getting ahead of myself, though. The overall story of Barney's Version is definitely interesting and fun. Barney is a TV director who has a tendency to marry women he doesn't love. This is true until he meets Miriam (Pike) at his wedding to another woman. The rest of the film follows Barney's pursuit of Miriam, their partnership, and their dissolution. Interwoven in this story are two subplots: a detective who is convinced that Barney murdered someone, and Barney's relationship with his father (Hoffman). This last subplot was definitely the most interesting portion of the entire film for me. Then again, I have a tendency to relate strongly with father-sibling stories in general. Regardless, the plot kept me engaged throughout, even if I was wanting more (but we won't get into that again).

The acting in Barney's Version is unequivocally great from everyone involved, though. Paul Giamatti's Barney is one of the best performances I've seen recently and he was one of the few winners at last year's Golden Globes who actually deserved their award. Giamatti is almost completely responsible for the emotionally rich and complex character of Barney since, as previously stated, much of the plot that should establish this is missing. His performance during the last, most interesting 30 minutes of the film is devastating. Dustin Hoffman also gives the best performance I've seen from him in over a decade. I've just recently started seeing most of Hoffman's great films (I've seen The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Lenny, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Rain Man all in the last year), and although Barney's Version doesn't compare overall to any of these, Hoffman's performance was reminiscent in all the right ways of his early amazing filmography. Minnie Driver and Rosamund Pike also give good performances, though their characters are really just sieves for us to see different sides of Barney.

Barney's Version is an interesting, funny, and incomplete film. As a biopic, it doesn't work too well, as most of Barney's thoughts and motivations are left unexplained. It works just fine, though, if you try not to assign it a label and just let the film be what it is: a story about a man's love life, held together by a few strong scenes and even stronger performances from the cast. You'll probably like Barney's Version; just don't expect to love it.

Ricochet Reviews: The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life

Director: Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line, The New World, Days of Heaven)

Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken, Jessica Chastain

Currently In Theaters

Where do I start in a review of The Tree of Life? For that matter, what could a review of The Tree of Life even describe? The film is basically plotless and abstract, and the underlying meaning of the film may very well be different for everyone who sees it. The only sure things I can say about The Tree of Life are this: it is an amazing film, it is the most unique film I've ever seen, and it may be the most personal film of all time, though in a remarkably odd way. I'll explain all three of these statements, but I'm not really sure how much of it will make sense, so bear with me.

Let's start with the negatives, because this is going to be the most poorly structured review I've written so far, so why not. The Tree of Life is very confusing, and even after coming to the conclusion that I adored it, I still don't understand large sections of the film. Markedly unrelated scenes are snapped together throughout the film and, at times, it is almost impossible to follow what's happened. This is more of a byproduct of abstraction that makes this film so beautiful than an actual negative, but many people will be turned off by how confusing it is. Another small critique is the role of the third brother. The relationship between two of the brothers in this film is extremely fleshed out while a third brother is seen wandering around in the background with almost no dialogue throughout the movie. I am almost certain that this was Malick's intent, and it's more of a question than a critique, but I feel like any review needs to mention negatives, so there you go.

Having stated my poor excuse for negatives, I have to say that the vast majority of the moviegoing crowd need to stay far away from The Tree of Life. When I say that the film has no plot, that isn't a hyperbole: the film is plotless. The Tree of Life's goal is to bring out our emotions and memories, not tell us a story, and the things happening on the screen are just a foundation to evoke those emotions. Because of its plotless nature, a large number of people will absolutely hate it. During my showing, at least fifteen people walked out; at the showing one of my friends attended, five or six people left. I've personally never seen someone actually walk out of a movie before this one, but I can definitely understand why they did. Like I've said: The Tree of Life isn't for everyone.

To me, though, The Tree of Life is a stunning piece of film, not only for its uniqueness but also for its technical aspects. Just like the only other Malick film I've seen so far (The Thin Red Line), The Tree of Life is gorgeous to watch. Every single shot in this movie is beautiful, from the closeups of raging waterfalls to the scenes of childhood memories. These childhood scenes are shot from a child's perspective, with the camera held at around knee's height. This created a very odd nostalgic effect in me as my mind began to recall those early years when I was around that height and how much different the world looked then. And don't even get me started on the evolution scenes. The combination of the singing choir with shots of galaxies and nebulae makes for perhaps the most intense images I've ever seen on film. The acting is also amazing. All of the child actors perform their roles wonderfully, as does Jessica Chastain in an almost completely mute role. Brad Pitt also churns out his best performance to date in a role that strongly reminded me of my own father.

But now we're veering into why The Tree of Life is the most personal film I've ever seen: within all of this confusing imagery and beautiful technique, the film was able to make me recall thoughts and memories that have not entered my mind in years. Most of these were centered around either my father or my brother. When I was growing up, my father raised us in nearly an identical way as the father in this film. He had very strict rules and, at least during my early childhood, my brother and I were afraid of him. The Tree of Life reminded me throughout of this relationship with my father. However, most of the catharsis that I experienced during this film was reserved for the scenes focusing on the two brothers. I was constantly remembering things that we did as children and the way I treated him as a child. There's a specific montage-like sequence that shows the very early years of the two brothers, and that one actually brought out some tears in me. It's very hard to explain such a subjective experience to someone who hasn't lived my life, but I am confident that anyone who approaches this film with a similar open and emotional mindset will be moved in some way by this movie. I also have to quickly mention that the evolution scenes brought out certain emotions in me that I honestly still don't understand, but I had to wipe my eyes during them as well.

Like I stated earlier, I have no idea if that mass of text calling itself a review that precedes this paragraph is even readable, but everything I've written here is what I felt after seeing The Tree of Life. This film is utterly unique and very hard to describe to someone who hasn't seen it. It's a beautiful film both visually and emotionally, and it's a film that will have you thinking about it for a very long time. The Tree of Life is probably the best film I've seen since There Will Be Blood, and it will very likely be my favorite movie of 2011.

Ricochet Reviews: happythankyoumoreplease

happythankyoumoreplease

Director: Josh Radnor (debut film)

Starring: Josh Radnor, Malin Akerman, Zoe Kazan

On Blu-Ray + DVD: June 21, 2011


happythankyoumoreplease is pretentious in all the wrong ways. It thinks it is clever, but it's really not. It thinks that it has an insightful and heartfelt story to tell us, but it doesn't really. It thinks that it puts off a cool, atmospheric vibe, but the only feelings I had after watching the movie were about how emotionally distant the entire movie felt.

happythankyou is a story divided into three fairly separate, interspliced pieces. One part of the film focuses on the relationship between a writer, Sam (Radnor), and a young orphan that gets lost on a subway. It is obvious that the boy hates his foster home, so Sam just lets him live with him for a while. Later on, Sam meets a girl named Mississippi (Kate Mara) who he forms a contract with to have what they call a "three night stand" in which Mississippi agrees to live with Sam for a three day period immediately after they meet. The second part of the film is about Annie (Akerman), a girl with alopecia (complete hairlessness) who has serious body issues. Annie goes through a generic romance story in which she hooks up with an ex-boyfriend while she ignores the guy right in front of her who really loves her. The third part of the film is about Mary Catherine (Kazan) and her long-term boyfriend as they go through an amalgam of relationship problems, including relocation issues, boredom, and pregnancy.

The main problem with that storyline, other than logic (really? you're not going to report this missing child to the police), is something I will unfairly refer to as Crash syndrome. Crash is a much better film, but it suffered from having so many different, loosely related stories going on at the same time. happythankyou does this too, and this decision means that none of the characters Radnor introduces us to really get fleshed out. If he had decided to focus his script on any one of these storylines (especially the first one), the film could have told us so much more about these characters and subsequently been much better overall. As it is, though, happythankyou suffers deeply from a lack of development.

My other problem with this film is how hard it tries to be cool. This problem starts with the title. It is explained within the film and that does help a bit, but there's still no need for these words to be jammed together and, at least to me, it is annoying, especially when I keep seeing these red squiggly lines under happythankyou. There are also about 15 musical interludes in this 90 minute film. If anything even remotely emotional happens on screen, I can almost guarantee you that the next three minutes will be shots of people staring into space while some indie song plays its entire verse. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy a meaningful interlude, even when there are lots of them. Away We Go, one of my favorite films of 2009, uses the interlude concept heavily, too, but they followed honestly emotional scenes and were usually contained to scenes where the characters were going places. happythankyou just doesn't do it right.

Not that everything in the film is bad. Despite a lot of dialogue that suffers from this same "coolness" problem, these characters do have a good amount of interesting things to say, too. This specifically refers to the two Sams, Sam and Sam 2 (Tony Hale, and yes, he is called Sam 2). Sam provides the little amount of story backbone there is in happythankyou, and because of this, a lot of his lines are actually pertinent to the overall movie. Sam 2, on the other hand, is probably the only character in the entire movie who felt like they could actually exist in reality. Hale plays the role of a goofball well, and that's exactly what Sam 2 is. He's also what makes the date scene with Annie the best scene in the entire movie. The acting overall is actually pretty good, and if this cast had been working with a better script, I have a feeling they could've made a great film.

One last thing I have to mention is the closing lip syncing scene. This is more of a critique of films in general that do this, but happythankyou falls victim to it, too. This scene was easily the worst of the film and may have affected my retrospective opinion of the film overall, and it's all because of the terrible lip syncing. This is supposed to be a very important scene to establish a real connection between two of the characters, but it completely failed because I was too busy being annoyed by this lip syncing. Why do films do this? Is it really that hard to find a good actor who can also sing? Or a good actor who can also lip sync well? I know this is a small thing, but it really bothered me in this movie and I needed to vent on this point.

happythankyoumoreplease thinks that it is a touching, meaningful film. The musical interludes and scenes of people staring might give you the impression that it really is a touching, meaningful film. The problem is that it isn't touching or meaningful. The three-pronged storyline undercuts any emotion the film could've evoked by leaving the characters flat, and this vacuity of emotion eliminates any meaning the film was going for. The people involved give it their best, but in the end, happythankyoumoreplease is just not a very good movie.

Ricochet Reviews: I Saw The Devil

I Saw The Devil

Director: Ji-woon Kim (The Good, the Bad, the Weird, A Tale of Two Sisters)

Starring: Lee Byung-hun, Choi Min-sik

Language: Korean

On Blu-Ray + DVD: May 10, 2011

I wish that I Saw The Devil was a 30-45 minute short film. If it was, it would be flawless. However, it isn't, and it is a much lesser film because of this. Despite the film's good acting, decent story, and beautiful camera work, I Saw The Devil is too long and its story arc too silly for its own good.

I Saw The Devil opens with a murder. The film's antagonist, Kyung-chul (Choi), finds a woman in a broken down car on the side of the road. After feigning like he will assist her, he breaks into the car, bludgeons her senseless, takes her to his house, and disassembles her body. It is very gruesome, but it's a great setup for the film that follows. Devil is gruesome from beginning to end. There are rapes, cannibals, and even Saw-like booby traps. If you can't handle gore or extreme violence, you'd be best served to just stay away from Devil (and basically all Korean revenge flicks, for that matter). For me, though, the violence was earned, especially when the protagonist, Soo-hyun (Lee) gets in on the violence. You see, that woman from the first scene was Soo-hyun's fiancee, and after figuring out that Kyung-chul is the killer, he decides to exact some revenge. The gratuity of the violence makes you question whether you're actually cheering for Soo-hyun to succeed or if you're cheering for violence.

My problem with the story isn't that it is too violent. My problem is that this movie should've ended after, at the very most, an hour in. Right around that point in the film, Soo-hyun catches up to Kyung-chul and has the chance to exact his revenge. Instead, he lets him get away so that he can "track" him. This mistake by Soo-hyun causes a lot more people to die and doesn't really make much logical sense. I get the point of wanting him to suffer gruesomely for killing Soo-hyun's fiancee, but he could have just tied him to a chair or something similar and tortured him until he was tired. He actually lets Kyung-chul go multiple times, and it eventually got to the point where I was annoyed at what was happening on screen. A movie should almost never do this to me, especially when the annoyance isn't earned through character development or emotional attachment.

Then again, even after having said all of these negative things about Devil's plot, I still enjoyed the film. After that first hour, this primarily has to do with how wonderfully the film is shot and acted. Between all the gore and violence, the film is full of picturesque imagery. Some personal favorites include the exterior shots from the opening scene, the scenes in the greenhouse when the two main characters first meet, and the scene in the taxi cab. Devil is also anchored by two good performances from the leads. Lee's Soo-hyun really feels like a man who has lost his way in life. Choi's Kyung-chul is the true star, though. He is a sadistic, devilish, unfeeling person driven by the simple urge to hunt, and his apathetic tone is portrayed superbly by Choi.

This is probably my shortest review so far. This might be because I've been writing an average of one movie review per day, but I don't think so. I think it is because of how much I zoned out during I Saw The Devil's unnecessary second half. As I previously stated, my annoyance didn't completely ruin the film, but it definitely turned what could have been one of my favorite films of the year into a mediocre movie that happens to include some great pieces. If you like revenge movies, I Saw The Devil is worth a look, but otherwise, I'd be cautious.

Ricochet Reviews: Super 8

Super 8

Director: J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Mission Impossible III)

Starring: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Riley Griffiths, Kyle Chandler

Currently In Theaters

I loved Super 8. It more than lives up to its promise to bring back the feel of the early Spielberg films, like E.T. and Close Encounters. More importantly, even without these homages to earlier movies, the film holds up as an exciting and engaging thrill ride that everyone in the family should enjoy.

Super 8 follows the story of a group of kids who are trying to make a zombie movie. They decide to film a scene at a train station and witness an accident that derails the train. Following this, odd things start to happen around town and a government quarantine and later evacuation is ordered. The pure frame of the story sounds very similar to Spielberg's Close Encounters, but the overall tone of the film is different. While Close Encounters was focused on the psychological impact that an alien encounter had on a few people, Super 8's primary focus is on the relationships between the group of kids as well as the romantic relationship between the two main kids, Joe (Courtney) and Alice (Fanning). So I guess you could say it's like a hybrid of Close Encounters and Stand By Me.

This is where we get into the main complaint I've heard from people who have seen Super 8: it is too derivative of other movies. I agree that it is very reminiscent of other films, especially 80's films, and yes, I have already compared it to three other movies in this review, but I feel like this is exactly what Abrams was going for. Super 8 reminds us of these films because Abrams wants us to feel this nostalgia, and, although it's certainly not integral to a positive experience with the film, this nostalgia greatly enhanced the film for me. I can understand the arguments of those who dislike it, but I loved the homages.

I also loved the relationships between the kids. Joe and Charles (Griffiths) really feel like best friends, and their complicated friendship made a lot of sense to me. I've had best friends over the years who dated girls that I liked, and I'm sure I've done the same to them. I've also done things I didn't want to do simply because my best friend asked me to, like when Joe lets Charles destroy his model train for the sake of his zombie movie. I liked that they focused mainly on just two of the boys instead of all four, too. In reality, best friends are the people that you hang out with not only in groups but also by yourselves, and because Super 8 showed us this dynamic, the best friend relationship felt more realistic than in most films. I also thought that Joe and Alice's romance was captured well. Their interactions reminded me of my first love; the way that we didn't know what we were doing and how everything just seemed to be okay when we were together. 

I can't justify a review of Super 8 without mentioning some criticisms, although most of them are minor and restricted to specific scenes. For example, Abrams's trademark lens flares make their valiant return here, and although they work (or at least aren't distracting) in most of the scenes, they are extremely overpowering during the train crash scene. The flares actually take up more of the screen during portions of the scene than what's actually happening does. This criticism wouldn't even be worth mentioning if that weren't one of the most crucial scenes in the entire film. Another problem I had with the film is that a lot of the secondary characters are stereotypical and flat. Alice's father is the stereotypical drunk, the pothead acts like a stereotypical pothead (although he did entertain me). There's far too many of these one-dimensional characters in a film like Super 8 that is otherwise nearly flawless.

I keep bringing up nostalgia in this review, not just in film homages but in my personal memories, as well. Films that can evoke this kind of response in me are special, and Super 8 is one of those. It isn't a perfect film, and it may be too reminiscent of other movies for some people, but Super 8 is one of the best films of the year and a film worthy of anyone's time.

Ricochet Reviews: Biutiful

Since this is the first example review I've had so far, I figured that this was a good opportunity to explain why I'm counting Biutiful (one of the foreign film nominees of 2010) as a 2011 movie. I've decided to use a simple rule that I've seen a few others use: if I had absolutely no opportunity to see the movie before March, then I count it as a 2011 movie. For some other examples, all of the 2010 foreign film nominees except Dogtooth will count as movies of 2011 as well as Barney's Version, Uncle Boonmee, and Rubber. Anyways, I just thought I should mention that here.

Biutiful

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel)

Starring: Javier Bardem

Language: Spanish
On Blu-Ray + DVD: May 31, 2011

Well, Biutiful is my first foreign film from 2011, and it was a damn good one to start with. Though it may be a bit tedious for some (especially in the first hour), I thought Biutiful was a wonderfully depressing film containing one of the best acting performances I've seen in quite a while.

Biutiful's plot focuses on that anyone should be able to relate to: our own mortality. The main character, Uxbal (played by Javier Bardem), is diagnosed with terminal cancer and told that he does not have long to live. Following this, the film centers around Uxbal's attempts at coping with this news, from denial to depression and everything in between. Uxbal's journey roughly follows the five common stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) and their consequences on his family, his friends, and his job.

The theme of mortality is handled perfectly in Biutiful. I was constantly asking myself how I would handle that situation, and the things that Uxbal says and does actually make sense in the context of his life. We see him try to hide his illness from his children so as not to upset them, especially since he grew up without a father figure too. The relationship between Uxbal and his children is heartbreaking and there were two or three scenes that really touched me. Uxbal also tries to help out his employees with the time he has left, which makes sense once we see the emotional attachment he has with every single one of them. The film is bookended with a scene in the middle of the woods that relates to this theme of death, and, though I won't ruin the scene for you, it is deeply moving and beautifully shot. I absolutely loved how Inarritu handled this weighty issue.

I was also impressed with how many mysteries Inarritu was able to juxtapose within this story. One of Uxbal's businesses is paying off policemen for a gang of illegal immigrants so that they turn a blind eye to drug trafficking. The more interesting of his two jobs is helping hide and find work for a group of illegal Chinese immigrants. This subplot leads to both the most worthless and the most surprising parts of the film. I'll leave the surprise as a surprise, but there is a weird subplot involving two Chinese men who run a sweatshop and are homosexual lovers. One is happily married while the other is trying to break up that marriage. It's an interesting plot, but it has no impact at all on Uxbal and seems very out of place within this film.

My other big complaint about Biutiful is that the first hour is very dull. Other than finding out that Uxbal has terminal cancer, the rest of that hour is spent merely introducing all of the great elements that make the rest of the film so wonderful. I understand that you can't just leap into the conclusions of the plot without first explaining how you got there, but so much of the first hour is just Bardem walking around or looking at something. It obviously did not ruin the film for me; I just wish that it had been more interesting.

Speaking of Bardem, he puts forward a stunning performance as Uxbal that, in my opinion, should have won him the Best Actor Oscar from the list of nominees. His performance feels extremely personal; if you told me that he actually has terminal cancer, I'd almost believe you. Uxbal, in the hands of the wrong actor, could have been a flat, boring character, or, on the opposite end, a caricature of emotions; Bardem finds the perfect middle ground between these two. He displays outward emotions, like many men in real life, only when Uxbal is alone or under stress, but his facial expressions let us know that, even when he is composed, Uxbal could break down at any minute. Bardem was able to bring a sense of realness to Uxbal, and this performance is the only one I've seen this year that deserves any special mention. Hence this paragraph.

Biutiful is, well, a beautiful film. Bardem's performance as Uxbal is moving, as is the way Inarritu handled the theme of mortality. The first hour is overlong and, at times, boring, but maybe it had to be that way so that the rest of the film could be so great. It's not packed full of action, and it's in Spanish, but if you're willing to overlook these bad excuses, Biutiful is a film you need to see.