Spring Breakers (2013), directed by Harmony Korine

If there’s one film out there right now that’s dividing audiences and kicking up a fuss it’s Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine’s twisted, dark little tale of youthful debauchery, violence and narcissism.  It’s being accused of being sexist, dangerous, perverted, worthless, inane and immoral.

But there are others calling it the most relevant, and potentially best, film of the year so far. I agree with the latter.

Anyone going into Spring Breakers expecting some titillating romp will, or at least should be, terribly disappointed. Yes, as so many reviewers have pointed out, there is a lot of bare flesh, a lot of drinks and drugs, slow-motion breasts filling the screen, a lot of Girls Gone Wild-type debauchery…but none of it plays as something we, the audience, should be enjoying on a surface level.

Anyone who sees the movie and still believes it to be a romp, or an intended romp, well, we see media and the world through very different eyes.

What Korine has accomplished is to make a deliciously insidious art film masquerading as mainstream exploitation. Through his sense of visuals, keen editing, music, narrative structure and the overall tone of the film, Korine has taken a facet of modern youth culture, namely that of narcissistic excess, and explored and exposed its dark, empty, vacuous core.

I find the culture Spring Breakers depicts fascinating. There’s the whole movement of hip-hop going on right now which revels in the unapproachable, in the weird, in the rejection of morals, in seemingly purposeful dismissal of anything resembling accessible.

(And yes, I say this as a white, out of the loop Canadian, so bear with me. But in any case I’m talking about A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar, Kitty Pryde…Those types of acts.)

At first this music is extremely off-putting and deadening. There’s an anger about it, a complete rejection of cultural norms, that is confrontational and almost nightmarish. It’s not outwardly, instantly “enjoyable” to listen to. But it’s also completely captivating because it’s something new, it’s art and culture adapting to be relevant. It’s rejection of all that is culturally and morally holy is its way of carving out something new, something “real.”

Youth music has always intended to scare the parents. Now it’s just getting a heck of a lot darker.

My point is that Spring Breakers taps into this vein. Its very form is subversive and intentionally disorienting. The narrative jumps through time and events, images are distorted, repeated, slowed down, all set to dubstep downbeats, working to disengage the viewer from any enjoyment of the film as a linear narrative. It takes modern technology-driven culture to its extreme and in doing so exposes its lifeless core. It’s a beautiful exercise in confrontational art.

But this is all accomplished with perspective and intent and I don’t believe Spring Breakers is ever trying to be “cool.” For those saying the film has no morals, I think they’re way off the mark.

The two most fleshed-out protagonists abandon spring break because they can’t take its moral decay. The two characters who revel in it are described from the beginning as being cold, dead inside. The film itself is far less interested in those characters and never portrays them as admirable or “cool.” It plays them as scary, I would argue, as people no one would want to be friends with.

And James Franco, in top form, plays a horrendous, vile character, who is portrayed as such.

The film is morally ambiguous, at worst, which is not the same as morally corrupt. And I would argue its morals, its intention, its “message” is quite clear: this lifestyle is a dead end. It’s not feminism. It’s not titillation. It’s not hedonism as sexual liberation. There is no celebration of spring break in this movie. It’s more than rebellion without a cause, it’s rebellion without a conscious.

It’s a depiction, not a endorsement, of a culture in decay, a youth numbed by technology, powered by money not earned, dismissing any and all societal norms and seeking identity through a perverted sense of morality.

How anyone could see this brilliant, deceptive film as anything other than that is beyond me.

Spring Breakers is in cinemas now.

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), directed by Sam Raimi

Let’s be clear here, I didn’t see the The Wizard of Oz until I was probably 17 at least, so I have no magical childhood bond with the film that makes me tear up whenever I hear “Over the Rainbow.” I tear up at “Over the Rainbow” because it’s a beautiful, sad song. No relation to the movie.

That being said as I waited for the movie to start, in all its IMAX 3D glory, I did feel a certain amount of childlike wonder rising up in me, just waiting to escape through my tear ducts. Sadly, Raimi, Franco and everyone else involved never tried to capitalize on that. They took a different yellow brick road.

Oz the Great and Powerful is at times splendid to look at and at other times delightful to watch, but for most the most part it’s, well, dull. For all its old school technicolour and new school 3D wonder, Oz is bogged down by pacing issues, an overly complicated plot and an unnecessarily long running time.

I wanted to like it, I really did. I had my popcorn entertainment enjoying hat on and everything. And at first I did. I enjoyed the opening black-and-white section, the switch to colour, the first dazzling 3D visions of the land of Oz. And then the story happened. And the actors.

I hate to tell them how to do their job, but this film needed to be simplified the hell up. You have the characters questing here and then questing there, with I don’t know how much time spent on various preparations for various events, and conversation after conversation on good and bad and all these witches falling in love with this obviously dishonest con-man.

There’s been a lot of talk about Franco in relation to this film. Lot of haters. People feel he goes to far with a grinning, ironic, wink-wink type performance, that he seems to be doing his performance art type gig again, a la the Oscars.

I stick up for Franco at every opportunity. I think he’s a talented, interesting actor who refuses to be pigeonholed to a “type,” who takes risks and tries hard. Despite this, I have always said he looks out of place in mainstream Hollywood type roles. I’m thinking the Spider-Man films, Annapolis, The Great Raid, that type of fair (I don’t count Rise of the Planet of the Apes because he was excellent in that).

I have to somewhat agree with the critics here, but I don’t think it’s all Franco’s fault. He plays the con-man side of Oz well, in a sort of over-the-top, stage performance kind of way, which I thought suited the early parts of the film. I mean, it’s supposed to be a children’s film after all, right? He found that tone, and it’s somewhat fun.

But it’s later on, when the role calls for real emotion, that Franco starts looking out of place.

Really though, the role hardly calls for any real emotion in the first place, and that’s why it doesn’t work. You spend the whole film and really, right up to the end, thinking this guy is a totally weasel. I wasn’t exactly convinced by the ending that he still wasn’t. So he’s not what I would call a likeable character in the first place.

Which I think was a weird choice. If I don’t care about Oz because he’s, let’s face it, a total jerk, why would I get wrapped up in his quest?

And it’s like that for all the characters. None of the witches had much to offer aside from drawing definitive lines of good and evil. Michelle Williams pleasantly smiling while looking like she’s high on antidepressants didn’t exactly endear her to me. Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz were perfectly OK, but I wanted more. I wanted crazy, over-the-top performances that you can’t help but love. I wanted “and your little dog too” type of fair.

The only character I truly enjoyed was the monkey. Seriously. Zach Braff did a great voiceover and that little fellow was cute as heck. If there’s a sequel, more monkey please.

I think the true test for this movie would be to see it with a six-year-old and see their reaction. It probably wouldn’t be the same as a child’s watching the original in 1939, what with all the iStuff stimulation, but if this magical world and story works for them, then that’s really the sign of success.

But I’m not six and the movie mostly bored me. So there you go.

Oz the Great and Powerful is in cinemas now. Even in Kansas, I bet.

Dead Man Down (2013), directed by Niels Arden Oplev

With one of the best trailers I’ve seen this year (although, what’s with this Dragon Tattoo, female cover of 1970s classic rock tunes motif?), a stellar cast and a chance for the director of the Swedish GWTDT to make a breakthrough into English language films, I went into Dead Man Down with high hopes.

How many reviews do I start like this? I guess I should stop getting my hopes up.

Listen, obviously I’m going to get into how the movie disappointed me, but for a change of pace let’s talk first about what this failed movie did right.

I wasn’t wrong about most of the cast. Colin Farrell is quiet and gloomy and rather good. Noomi Rapace is generally excellent, but I must say (despite my search for the positive), her character’s extreme mood swings do come off a little comical. There was a round of laughter in the cinema when, while on an innocent-seeming date, all of a sudden starts yelling at Farrell to kill a man.

As is often the case, the clear scene stealer here is Dominic Cooper. All I can say is somebody give this man another leading role because my God does he have screen presence. Sure it’s a cheesy role, as a suspenders-wearing, heavily NY accented hood. But even in such a minor part, Cooper manages to show more charisma then the rest of the cast combined.

So there’s that.

Some of the movie works rather well. The strangers across the courtyard team up for revenge plot has a solid foundation. I like the general slow-burning tone of the film, even if it’s not used to full advantage.

Where the film gets into trouble is in the execution and the script. Call me old fashioned, but I think the best approach for a revenge film is simplicity. Somebody kills Charles Bronson’s family, he gets a gun and then takes out the bad guys one by one. I watched Point Blank for the first time this weekend. Great revenge film. Lee Marvin gets screwed over by his crime partners, so he takes them out one by one.

Simple.

Here we have two revenge plots, fine, but we also have two or three characters investigating the revenge plots, while another mostly revolves his revenge around petty, confusing harassment. So there’s a bit of a whodunit, but you know whodunit so you don’t care. And there’s kind of a love story, but one half of it (at least) is so messed up it’s hard to take her seriously, so it’s hard to care about that.

And then the revenge plots are so intricate and confusing that they’re hard to care about.

Then we make a switch to all-out Raid-style action film for the last section when the original revenge plot fails and it’s time for guns to blaze. In another film the sequence may have worked (the truck part was thrilling, to be fair) but here, with all this dreary Euro buildup, it seems out of place and lazy.

Thinking back I’m not sure why I was so keen for an English language movie from Arden Oplev. Really, I didn’t care much for his GWTDT either, finding it sloppy and uneven.

Which is exactly what’s wrong with Dead Man Down. I love a good revenge flick, but this ain’t it.

Dead Man Down is in cinemas now.

21 & Over (2013), directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore

All I asked for going into 21 & Over was your basic outrageous comedy that would make me laugh and not piss me off. That’s really it.

But alas…

I would say 21 & Over is the low point for recent comedy but with The Hangover Part II still lingering like a bad…well, you know, and The Hangover Part III coming out in May I would hate to play favourites. Oh and the trailer for Scary Movie 5 might win that title alone, never mind the full movie.

The biggest problem with 21 & Over is that it simply isn’t funny. Why? Well, for one thing the epic night of drinking plot is wearing thin. The Hangover was a great comedy when it came out, but this is yet another re-creation failing to capture the spark of the original.

Also, is anything truly outrageous anymore? Gross-out and foul comedy used to be hilarious because it flew in the face of stuffy bourgeois society and our parent’s parent’s politics. Now that counterculture has been so firmly devoured by mainstream culture, what used to be delightfully ludicrous is now pointlessly crass. Watching a man throw up in slow motion doesn’t “stick it” to anyone’s precious sensibilities. Our parents watched people throw up in movies when they were growing up. Let’s find something new, kids.

Another thing (and here’s where comedy diehards and bros tune out) is lazy humour based on gender and ethnic stereotypes is really getting old. Comedy is at its best when it’s progressive and challenging the norms. That’s shocking, outrageous comedy. But now, in 2013, when you have a character whose interactions with every other character is based purely on their ethnic background, your film seems simple and outdated.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone is a target: Latinos, Chinese, Serbians, women, homosexuals, Jews. It’s an equal opportunity type of stereotyping. And then film seems to poke fun at itself when the white characters say their feelings are hurt after a joke about white people, but that does nothing. It’s still asking us to laugh at this tired, old schtick throughout the entire film. One tiny piece of wit saves no face.

Actually you know what, I’m going to go out on a rare limb for me and say I enjoyed the more serious moments of this film than I did the comedy. Usually I think trying to have “meaning” or a tidy, loose-string tying ending ruins these type of comedies (Wedding Crashers, Old School, etc.), but in this case the only time the movie ever actually elicited any sort of reaction out of me was during some of the heart-to-hearts between old friends who are falling apart.

Then again, that’s not really a compliment. What I’m trying to say is the movie is so unfunny that I even preferred the dreck, sentimental bits. The only alternatives are a man peeing on people at a bar and jokes about how jocks are secretly gay.

And I know, I read these types of reviews before I see a comedy too and think ‘the bitter, old critic just doesn’t know how to take a joke,’ but for serious guys, this is a terrible movie. It’s not funny. Don’t go see it.

21 & Over is in cinemas now. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Snitch (2013), directed by Ric Roman Waugh

Dark Skies (2013), directed by Scott Stewart

In the spirit of my recently implemented Tueday doubleheader nights at the cinema, I caught up with a couple of the big openings from last weekend.

And was I in for a night of lingering disappointment, let me tell you. But not without some highlights.

First up was Snitch, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s first real attempt at “serious acting.”

Side note: Two of the trailers before this Rock movie were other Rock movies coming out shortly, the new G.I. Joe flick and the new Fast and Furious flick. At least Snitch isn’t a franchise Johnson has just been plugged into.

Snitch is something of a failure as the morality-based issue film that it tries to be, but it works rather well as an old-school one-man-against-a-bunch-of-badies low-key action film. Actually on that level it works surprisingly well.

There’s a number of reasons for that. For one thing, despite his physique and movie star status Johnson is rather good as the everyman caught in a bad situation. He plays it well. There’s a great scene early in the film where he tries to set-up some corner drug dealers and ends up getting his ass kicked. Not only is it refreshing to see The Rock get his ass kicked, it’s also enjoyable to see how well Johnson plays a vulnerable character. Turns out the man can act.

The film also works well as a believable, down-to-earth action movie. There’s no outrageous action sequences. At no point does Johnson hang from a helicopter or drive a car into a blimp or whatever. But there is a whole load of tension building to an excellent car versus semi chase sequence that is thrilling as hell while never seeming overblown or outrageous. It’s even filmed well, which is like finding the Rosetta Stone this day and age.

Where the film gets into trouble is as it tries to mean something. When Charles Bronson took out a bunch of street hoods in Death Wish you yelled “F-yeah Charles Bronson” because you hate criminals too and everybody is happy. In this film we’re supposed to be angry about minimum mandatory sentences for first time drug offenses, but I don’t see how getting the audience to root for Johnson taking out a bunch of hardcore drug dealers is supposed to garner sympathy for this.

Because regardless about my “real world” opinion on this issue, by the end of the movie I was firmly in the pro-justice, anti-drug dealer camp. So the last blurb about how unfair stiff sentences are didn’t exactly make my blood boil. All I thought is that if they keep Omar and Juan Obregon off the street then God bless them.

But if you can look past that, Snitch is a solid, well made thriller that’s actually highly enjoyable. Also Barry Pepper is in it. I always feel the need to point that out.

Dark Skies could have been a solid sci-fi/horror movie if again it wasn’t for some weird politics going on. Unfortunately that aspect is far harder to overlook with this one.

The movie is about a family that starts having strange things happen to them in their house. Familiar? Things bump in the night. Somehow their kitchen gets reorganized in a less-than-helpful way. The kid starts acting weird. Dad sets up video cameras to record everything going on in the house. Familiar?

The film is also from the same producers as Insidious and Sinister, so you know from the start how this is going to go down. Things will get creepy, they’ll escalate and then there will be a big, likely disappointing, finale. But those films, especially Sinister, were actually quite good. Dark Skies is less than great.

Dark Skies throws a slight curveball by having aliens in the mix. I liked the sci-fi aspect as something different. I also thought Keri Russell and Josh Hamilton were great leads. There are genuine scares in the film. I believe it has the basic elements of a potentially highly entertaining scare show.

But then it gets all weirdly right wing, family values, judgmental on us and totally lost me. Spoilers upcoming.

The finale of the film involves the family having to do their utmost to stay together as a family unit. On the Fourth of July. While Stars and Stripes Forever or something like that is playing on the TV. After buying a shotgun and boarding up the windows. And then what’s the reason that doesn’t work and a kid gets abducted? Because he watched a few minutes of a crappy porno earlier in the film.

I mean, if I’m going to get abducted I’m at least going to watch porn with good production values and better music. Just saying.

So while the buildup has some punch, the payoff falls completely flat because it’s ridiculous and preachy and, let’s just say it, a little xenophobic. I mean, I know these aren’t pleasant Mexicans just hoping for a little landscaping work, but the whole tone of the last act reeks of “board up yer windows and get yer guns cause them aliens are coming.”

You could have this payoff and not end up with this tone, but the whole Fourth of July thing sets an undeniable agenda. And it’s one that I’m not comfortable with.

And then the kid gets abducted because he watched pornography once. Just had to reiterate that. I hope it sounds as ridiculous to you as it does to me. Let’s hope that’s not the aliens’ overall agenda or else the entire population of North America might soon find themselves abducted. Think about that the next time you logon. I guess one group of told-you-sos might remain. Maybe the makers of this film.

So two films that hit unfortunate road blocks, but I think Snitch at least made it through with only a misdemeanor ticket. It shouldn’t have to do any time, but I guess you never know with these mandatory minimums. Damn government. But Dark Skies deserves the slammer for tricking us into swallowing its us-versus-them, Holier-than-thou high-ground finale. For shame.

Snitch and Dark Skies are in cinemas now.

(Above is the reaction no one had to the 85th Annual Academy Awards)

Well, as usual, I managed to correctly guess all of the major categories for this year’s Oscars. I mean, Christopher Waltz? Can you say obvious. Ang Lee? Geez, take a chance Academy! Tarantino? Borrrring.

None of this is true. Out of the 11 categories I predicted I was right for seven of them. I think that’s a C- in Canadian universities. My parents would not be proud.

Here’s the full list of winners.

Were the surprises good ones though? Well, not really. Argo was clearly going to win Best Picture and I was never happy with that idea. For three years running now merely competent films have been awarded the top prize (The King’s Speech and The Artist being the other two films I’m referring to).

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Argo as a well-made distraction (as I did Speech and Artist), but shouldn’t we ask for more out of the BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR?

Even if you’re going to pick the Oscar bait movie, shouldn’t you pick the best one, which was Lincoln?

The first big surprise of the night was Christopher Waltz winning Best Supporting Actor for Django Unchained. Undeserved? No, I don’t think so. He was fabulous in the movie. But he won only three years ago for a similar role in Inglorious Basterds and it would have been nice to spread the love.

Still, it’s hard to hold a grudge against a man that charming.

Django Unchained took another surprise win for Quentin Tarantino’s screenplay. Again, not undeserved, but I believe Zero Dark Thirty should have been honoured here. It’s also a strange day when Quentin Tarantino winning an Oscar feels like a soft choice. Not sure how I feel about that. Turn, turn, turn and all that I suppose.

Ang Lee won his second ever Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi, and good on him. I was rooting for Spielberg, but thought each equally deserved the honour. Pi is an exquisitely beautiful and well directed film.

The award show itself is slightly controversial. And that’s sarcasm. My Twitter feed has been going ballistic since the ceremony started yesterday and hasn’t let up.

People are up in arms over Seth MacFarlane’s hosting, calling his schtick sexist, reductive and, worst of all to him I’m sure, lazy and humourless.

I don’t disagree with all that, but what did you expect? I actually liked the moment near the beginning when he made it look as though he was going to do a standard hosting gig, and then got all MacFarlane-ie all of a sudden with Shatner showing up. I stuck up for him then.

And then he did a song about boobs. Even that I didn’t think was terrible at the time, again given what the Academy was obviously going for.

I think it was the overall tone of the show and the fact that MacFarlane couldn’t do anything BUT schoolyard humour jokes that ruined his hosting. If all he had done was the boob song it would have been a one chuckle, ‘oh that Seth MacFarlane’ type moment, but he went on and on, what with the flu joke, and the Rhianna joke, and the Kardashian joke, and the Aniston stripper joke etc. etc.

By the end we had heard so many jokes about women needing to look good or existing as sexual objects for men (never mind jokes about Jews, Latinos, etc.) it just got…boring, never mind offensive. If he had put the slightest bit of wit or interesting context to any of these jokes they might have gained some traction and we might have been able to forgive him. But they were all crude, simple, lazy one-liners, intended only to get the “I can’t believe he said that!” reaction.

Some would argue the parasitic intolerance found in many of the Best Picture nominees had already set up a night celebrating “the other.” Arabs in Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, the use of the “n-word” in Django, the lack of African-American characters in Lincoln, the inherent white man’s guilt tone of Beasts of the Southern Wild, the depiction of mental illness in Silver Linings Playbook.

While I don’t agree with all of those points of view, I think they all have some arguments and I’m wondering if we need to look deeper, into ourselves and the industry, to see where the nastiness MacFarlane so exemplified has its roots.

I’m going to stick up for him and the organizers of the show in this one way: at least they tried. Billy Crystal was embarrassingly old fashioned and dull last year as the host and proved that things need to change. I’m the only person in the world it seems who at least thought Anne Hathaway and James Franco brought something fresh, even if it didn’t always work. I like these attempts at freshening up the awards.

They haven’t found the right formula yet, but at least they’re looking.

So what I’m saying is I liked MacFarlane better than 2012 Crystal, but not as much as Hathaway and Franco. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment to any of those people.

One thing I would like to say is that I had to take a break from Twitter during the middle of the broadcast (lost my internet access), and I was sort of glad. While I’m no innocent here, I’ve been becoming less and less enamored of Twitter. I still think it has many great uses, and I will continue to use it, but the black-and-white view of EVERYTHING it breeds does get to me.

Every award handed out last night was either the worst thing to ever happen to mankind or the most apt recognition of a movie in the history of film. Every joke MacFarlane made was either the lamest, stupidest thing ever uttered by a human or…actually no one disagreed with that.

The negativity is getting to me. I know nastiness breeds nastiness, and people had valid reasons to be upset with MacFarlane’s jokes, but we all, myself included, need to settle down sometimes and try to find something positive to focus on, or talk to one another like human beings. Because while reading all our Tweets it’s sometimes hard to see that we all love movies and love talking about movies.

And I assume we do. Maybe we should try to show it a little more. Call me a softy if you like.

So let’s all watch this, the most delightful Oscar-related clip from last night: Jennifer Lawrence meets Jack Nicholson.

Until next year…

Well moviegoers, it’s that time of year again. The big one. All the marbles. Tea in China. That kind of thing.

Every year I feel the need to justify my love of the Oscars, but it really just boils down to having fun with it. Will Argo winning Best Picture really mean that it’s a better film than all the other nominees, or indeed a whole whack of films not nominated? Of course not. But it sure is fun to get mad about it and share your righteous indignation with all the other movie nerds out there.

Which I’ll be doing via Twitter, so follow me at @CineFileBlog and we can dish and bitch together. It’ll be great.

I grew up watching the Academy Awards, awaiting them with hysteria, making my predictions and feeling entirely vindicated when I was right, utterly crushed when I was wrong (Shakespeare in Love, really?). I still do it, maybe with a little more perspective, but with the same pleasure.

So here we are, this year’s event. Following is a list of my predictions for the main awards, along with my view on what and who should win, and what and who should have been nominated. Again, all in the name of fun.

I hope you feel the same about it. And away we go…

Best Picture

What will win: Argo. Lincoln seemed like a lock heading into the new year, but Argo has been winning ‘em all ever since then. Out of the nine nominated films I think this is one of the weaker choices (I found it entertaining but shallow), but they never asked me, so it will win.

What should win: Lincoln. I know, I know, this is an Oscar bait film, which I’m usually the first to speak out against (The King’s Speech? Really?) but it’s honestly the most finely crafted film of 2013, full of the spirit that makes movies great but also the subtlety, attention to detail and craftsmanship to make it the best film of the year.

What should have been nominated: Honestly, I thought this year’s nominations was the best group of films the Academy has recognized in some time. Most everything I wanted to see on the list, is. If I had to pick one more though, I would go with Flight, which I thought deserved more credit as an overall film than it received.

Best Actor

Who will win: Daniel Day-Lewis. There’s no way Lincoln will walk away empty handed and Day-Lewis as the beloved president was wonderful to watch. Not a bad choice at all.

Who should win: Denzel Washington. As much as I loved Lincoln and Day-Lewis nobody this year defied expectations or blew me away as much as Washington. You sometimes forget what a great actor he is, what with all the yelling, but in Flight he balances fragile and ballsy so well it truly is the best performance of the year.

Who should have been nominated: Suraj Sharma. No disrespect to Quvenzhane Wallis, but if any young actor deserved a nomination this year it’s Sharma. His role in Life of Pi was beyond demanding and it handled it with a shocking amount of talent and charm. Not to mention he did it all in a boat in front of a green screen, talking to an invisible tiger.

Best Actress

Who will win: Jennifer Lawrence. I honestly am not sure why, but Lawrence is riding the wave and sweeping the awards. She’s very good in Silver Linings Playbook but her performance is slight compared to the others here. But she’s charming, young, beautiful and a movie star. Hollywood loves her right now and will let that be known come Sunday night.

Who should win: Emmanuelle Riva. I would be thrilled if either Riva or Jessica Chastain won, but I would give it to Riva, for a performance beyond brave in Amour. To see an actor of her age give such a deep, challenging, completely exposed performance was something to behold.

Who should have been nominated: Rachel Weisz. The Deep Blue Sea is a beautiful movie and Weisz’s performance is one of the primary reasons. It’s a quiet, rich performance which perfectly matches the subdued emotions of the film. I like simmering performances, and this is a superb example.

Best Supporting Actor

Who will win: Tommy Lee Jones. There are no standouts in this category. De Niro was good, but only for modern De Niro. Waltz already won for similar schtick. So Jones seems like the frontrunner for a wonderful performance in Lincoln, even if he just kind of did his Jones thing as usual. Which I like, but you know…

Who should win: Philip Seymour Hoffman. I didn’t love The Master as much as many of my fellow critics did, but if anything stood out it was the performances, particularly Hoffman’s. A robust role, to be sure, full of bellowing and sly coercion, and all handled with the quiet ferocity that Hoffman does so well.

Who should have been nominated: Leonardo DiCaprio. He was the best thing about Django Unchained and I love to see over-the-top performances in this category, especially from people who don’t normally go in for that sort of thing. His performance as a menacing, barbarous slave owner was a exploitation cinema delight.

Best Supporting Actress

Who will win: Anne Hathaway. Most people did not like Les Miz. But most people did like Hathaway in it, myself included. In a truly poorly put together film Hathaway was the one element that worked completely. You can’t take your eyes off her. Her performance is intense and flamboyant and perfect for the material.

Who should win: Anne Hathaway. What do you know? I agree with this one. As much as I disliked Les Miz (and I did) I loved Hathaway in it. Her small performance is a truly great movie moment.

Who should have been nominated: Judi Dench. I actually think this category is a pretty good one. But I think Dench would have been a nice nomination, especially because Skyfall was so darn popular. She has been excellent in her turn as M and had a more substantial role this time around.

Best Director:

Who will win: Steven Spielberg. Some folks are saying Ang Lee will take it, but I think with Argo likely getting Best Picture the Academy will honour Lincoln in this category. And well deserved I think. Spielberg can be such a hack lately (War Horse, ugh) but he was in top form for Lincoln, showing a restraint I didn’t think he had in him.

Who should win: Steven Spielberg. Another agreement. For everything I said above and also his influence on cinema in general, Spielberg deserves this.

Who should have been nominated: Kathryn Bigelow. We all know it. This was the worst non-nomination of this year’s awards. The talent behind Zero Dark Thirty made the film a great one and Bigelow’s directorial touch was superb. That she managed to create a first rate procedural thriller and get an amazing performance out of Chastain shows true talent. Such a snub. And I mean, David O. Russell, really?

Other predictions:

Best Adapted Screenplay: Hard call. But I’m going to go with Tony Kushner for Lincoln, based on the source material and the stock of the writer.

Best Original Screenplay: Zero Dark Thirty. The academy knows this film deserves an award, and this will be it.

Best Foreign Language Film: Amour. If there was ever a lock, this is it.

Best Feature Documentary: Searching for Sugar Man. A crowd favourite, this will take it.

Best Animated Feature: Brave. I haven’t seen any of them, but the buzz says Brave.

Here’s a full list of nominations.

So there it is folks, I hope you enjoy the show. I’ll write a wrap-up afterwards. And join me on Twitter for trash talk. That’s all folks!

The 85th Annual Academy Awards are on Sunday, Feb. 24 on ABC at 4 pm PST.

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013), directed by John Moore

How so many people, with so much talent and credit to their names, could get together and spend all this time making a sequel of an established, fan-favourite action franchise, and end up with a movie as bad as A Good Day to Die Hard boggles the mind.

I mean, at no point did anyone speak up and ask “is this really the way we want to go with this one?”

A Good Day to Die Hard has to be one of the laziest, most incoherent, incompetent, insulting messes of a movie I have seen in some time.

Now, I’m a Die Hard fan but I’m not a die hard Die Hard fan, if you know what I mean. The first one is, naturally, one of my favourite action movies. I’m sure we can all agree on that. The sequels vary in quality, and I might be alone in believing the fourth one is the best. But that’s not saying much.

As they’ve come along they’ve generally decreased in quality as they’ve increased in scope and a reliance on modern action movie pitfalls. You can appreciate them as fun cheesy action movies but none of them touch the legitimate quality of the original. Kind of like Rambo.

And that’s OK, it is what it is, but this latest one, part five over here, fails terribly in even that department.

There are a number of reasons. Broken record time here, but one of the main reasons is the action sequences are so horribly incoherent and obviously CGI-riddled that they’re impossible to follow and the exact opposite of fun. The fun of outrageous stunts is, well, for one thing, understanding what’s happening, but also having that “I can’t believe they did that!” reaction as an audience member.

I don’t care if it’s stunt doubles and fancy camera work, having some textile sense that in some way what you are watching actually happened is essential to enjoying a stunt. A blurry John McClane avatar hanging off a video game-looking helicopter, all in two-second cuts so you can’t tell how crappy it all looks, just doesn’t do it for me.

I don’t want to get all “it’s not like it used to be” but I re-watched Terminator 2: Judgement Day this weekend, and damn yo, that’s how you stage action scenes. Tripods, proper choreography, sensible editing, real-world stunts, all used to drive the story line forward and develop characters.

Hell, an action movie can even give viewers a thought or two to chew on. Imagine that. Something beyond cliches and tropes we are just meant to observe, ingest and then forget about as we get back to senseless action scenes.

And this shaky camera thing has just gone too far. About one scene into the film we get McClane talking to another cop in cliched old-age cop dialogue. Whatever, I don’t expect David Mamet here, but can we at least see this exchange without feeling like I’m going to get seasick? Use a damn tripod already. Using handheld adds nothing to the scene and is a pathetic attempt to add “immediacy” and something, anything interesting to a crap scene.

Remember when craftsmanship meant something in an action film? When a filmmaker was expected to have a coherent story, characters you care about, building action leading to an emotional climax and then the technical prowess and cinematic ingenuity to pull it all together? Me too, but barely.

Can we please take A Good Day to Die Hard and use it as an example of the worst it can get? Can we all watch this and realize we’ve gone to far and it’s time to rethink how we approach action movies? As moviegoers, can we demand more than this and quit putting up with action scenes that only deliver a sense of action, as opposed to actual coherent activity? Can we demand dialogue and characters that actually appeal to audiences and are not just references to action movies of days done by?

I mean, let’s work at this a little folks, put a little effort into our movies.

Because we deserve better than this.

A Good Day to Die Hard is in cinemas now. Don’t go see it.

Side Effects (2013), directed by Steven Soderbergh

Dear Mr. Soderbergh,

I am writing to ask on behalf of my readers, my fellow filmgoers and the world at large that you not retire from filmmaking and continue your eclectic and delightful career.

Your latest and last film, Side Effects, reminded me once again why you are such an essential presence in our contemporary cinema. For one thing, at a very basic level, it seems as though most directors have forgotten how to tell a story and make it, you know, interesting. They think they have a decent story, with characters and a conflict of some sort, and that’s enough. They don’t understand that the real storytelling is in the medium, in the way the camera is used, in the editing and the music and the cinematography. They have forgotten what separates film from theatre.

You have never forgotten this. This is why Haywire is one of the best action movies we have seen in some time, and certainly the most thoughtful. It’s why Ocean’s Eleven is one of the best Hollywood popcorn movies of the modern era. It’s why Traffic is so much more than a story about the drug trade.

And it’s why Side Effects is a top-notch thriller and one of the best films of the year so far. It could easily have been a passable psychological thriller, even a decent neo-noir. What makes it both of those things and more, is your touch. It’s the dreamlike lighting and colours that add atmosphere and a sense of discomfort to the entire proceedings. It’s the pacing, the vignette-like sequences, the concise dialogue that forces the viewer to work to figure out just where your movie is going. It’s your talent that makes us care. It’s very rewarding as a viewer.

Listen, no one is perfect. Side Effects outstays its welcome and there is at least one too many twists at the end. It could have been tightened up. Watching Jude Law’s character crack the case is captivating, but by the end I doubt there were many who understood each twist and turn, and unlike a film like The Big Sleep, there’s not enough atmosphere to justify a senseless plot. Simple it up a bit, is all I’m saying. I like that you trust your audience to be intelligent, but we still like that sense of being effortlessly entertained.

But this just goes to prove why you should keep up with the filmmaking. You still have more to learn, more to offer. The greatest thing about your career has been the variety of your projects and your unwillingness to be categorized. Sure this has resulted in misses (I’m sorry Steven, but Full Frontal was terrible), but it has also ended up with some of the most interesting films out there, such as Bubble and The Girlfriend Experience, along with some of the most entertaining movies on our big screens, like Contagion or Magic Mike. And each, whether art house or multiplex fare, gave us something unique, something that looked and felt different from the other movies, and had your stamp on it.

It’s just a shame to lose that, is all I’m saying.

I’m sure you will enjoy painting. I’m also, despite not being a betting man, willing to put a few dollars down on seeing your name up on that big screen again someday. You’ll be back. And we will be the better for it.

Yours,

CineFile

Side Effects is in cinemas now.

Bullet to the Head (2013), directed by Walter Hill

There were a couple of reasons to get a little excited about Bullet to the Head. For one, it’s a 1980s-style action movie staring Sylvester Stallone. So, there’s that. And secondly, it marks the return of cult director Walter Hill, who hasn’t been seen in cinemas for a decade.

Exciting, right?

In David Edelstein’s review of Bullet to the Head he stated that films staring Sylvester Stallone are meant for Neanderthals. This was in a positive review.

Sly is an interesting character. He’s so maligned but has these moments of greatness, or at least canny, in his career that hold him above the rest of his like.

People, and not without reason, seem to forget that he came to fame by winning Oscars and delighting everyone with Rocky. I mean, come on. Rocky. Who doesn’t like Rocky?

Then he made so other humdrum movies and a couple more Rocky flicks, before starring in First Blood, starting the second franchise he would later exploit and destroy in the hopes of reinvigorating his career. Nonetheless, First Blood is a fantastic movie.

And then he made a bunch of action movies of varying degrees of quality such as Cobra, Tango and Cash, Cliffhanger etc. Mix in a few attempts at serious acting (namely Cop Land), a trip to the direct-to-video bottom of the barrel and then the career reviving gimmick of The Expendables, and you’ve got a pretty interesting career trajectory.

I grew up with a father that loved his movies, which evidently rubbed off on me to some extent as I routinely declare First Blood to be my favourite action movie. So I don’t know, I tend to root for the guy. He’s still the underdog, trying to keep his career above water anyway he can. And he usually wins.

All this being said, I found Bullet to the Head disappointing. And I wasn’t exactly expecting greatness.

Listen, it’s completely serviceable, but that’s it. It has some great moments like the ax fight. There are some enjoyable directorial flourishes from Hill that made the film better than it could have been. I actually enjoyed Sly’s performance in it, it’s not often you get to see him actually act these days.

But I think its main problem is that it’s not the 1980s anymore. The film isn’t a homage, it’s a reproduction. When Tarantino harkens back to an old style of filmmaking he brings new life to it, new ideas, he makes it his own and relevant. Here Hill has just made a film as though the last 25 odd years hadn’t happened.

While I respect the effort, the payoff is flat because, well, who cares about this type of film anymore? Going back and watching Black Rain or Death Wish 3 or Cobra is fun and enjoyable because the films were relevant for their time, they have an energy and authenticity to them. Sometimes they’re even great movies. Watching Bullet to the Head is a waste of time.

Here we get the usual plot that makes no sense, the complete objectification of women (every woman in this movie ends up, or starts out, nude), the excessive, narcissistic violence. And that can be fun with the right eye and flair, but Bullet to the Head is very rarely fun. Mostly it’s tedious.

If it hadn’t been for The Expendables, Bullet to the Head would be a direct-to-video release, no question. And while some DVR movies are enjoyable, they’re enjoyable as DVR movies, I’m sorry.

If they had done anything at all interesting or fresh I would have enjoyed Bullet to the Head. I wanted to enjoy it. I wanted to stick up for good old Sly. At times I did enjoy it. But I’m sorry Sly, it appears revenge has gotten old after all.

Bullet to the Head is in cinemas now.