Movie smorgasbord - American Beauty, Sophie's Choice, American Hustle

It's a good thing that movies have no caloric value or I would be in huge trouble. It has been seven days and over 15 movies so far. These weren't puff pieces, either, so I hope my reviews do them justice, especially because I liked these movies.

12/18/13 American Beauty, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, 1999

Let me start this one off this way: prior to watching American Beauty I marked it as 'not interested' on my Netflix, meaning, please do not show this movie to me ever again. After watching it, it is now rated with 4 stars (5 stars is saved for movies that make me cry). So, the list giveth and the list taketh away, and it finally giveth. When this movie came out there was nothing about it that intrigued me, and even for the first 45 minutes or so, I didn't want to like it and was writing the review in my head that was funny and sarcastic, and then damn it all, I started to like it. I think I was being too literal or something, but then Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) took a turn and then it all clicked into place. Lester Burnham is suffering through what seems to be a terrible midlife crisis or slump that is not helped by his control-freak wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening) or his distant and morose daughter, Jane (Thora Birch). Spacey plays Burnham in a way that is hard to describe, but it works and I found myself cheering for him to do something outrageous, and then I cheered when he didn't and showed humanity to some of the other characters. The disdain between Lester and Carolyn is palpable. The dynamic of the Burnhams is changed when their new neighbors move in and the son, Ricky develops an infatuation with Jane (Ricky sells pot and makes videos). Ricky's dad, played by Chris Cooper, is a retired Marine Corps colonel who is very strict, domineering and homophobic; needless to say, expect some conflict. The performances of some of the main characters verges on caricature, but not too far, and once I figured that out (sorry if I'm a little slow), that's when it started to get funny; there were moments when it seemed like a Coen brothers movie. There is a lot going on in this movie, so much that Wikipedia has sections on the symbolism, etc. and I did not quite see the end coming the way it did, and you'll just have to watch it for yourself. If you have not seen it, I definitely recommend it (if you start watching and are like, um, no, give it to at least the one hour mark, if you're not convinced, then turn it off, you're hopeless). 

12/18/13 Murder on a Sunday Morning, Best Feature Documentary, 2001

Murder on a Sunday Morning follows the case of Jacksonville, Florida versus Brenton Butler for the murder of a tourist. Brenton was fifteen at the time, and his two attorneys are featured as they lay out their strategy for his defense, their counter-arguments to the evidence provided by the sheriff's department and the prosecution. The passion of his two public defenders, Ann Finnell and Patrick McGuinness, and their work to disprove the prosecution's case. It is interesting to watch them walk through their theories and then put them to the test in the examination and cross-examination of the witnesses. There is no attempt to show both sides of the story or get the prosecution's perspective, this is clearly a film that is focused on Brenton and his defense. We don't get a lot of time with Brenton himself because he is incarcerated during the filming, but we get glimpses of his family and his extended support system. There is a lot right with the way the justice system is supposed to work in this country, and Finnell and McGuinness represent that and those who may not have a voice. It's not quite two hours long and I think it's worth watching (I had apparently watched it several years ago, but didn't remember enough of it to write a review from memory, so if I can watch it twice, you can watch it once). Think of it as food for your brain during this holiday season.

12/21/13 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, 1975 AFI, #33

Some of you may remember that a couple of weeks ago I tried to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest but was foiled by a faulty disk. But, you can't get an hour into a movie and then just give up, so I rearranged my Netflix queue and bumped it to the top of the list. Jack Nicholson (Best Actor) stars as RP McMurphy ("Mac"), a criminal who has been sent to a mental hospital for his anti-social behavior. McMurphy meets doctor and head nurse, Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher who won Best Actress), and they are not all that amused by his antics and attempts to liven up the ward. The other patients are somewhat amused by McMurphy's questioning of authority, but a little nervous by his flaunting of the rules. Mac builds special bonds with two patients, Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif, who may be familiar to newer audiences from his role as the Doctor in Deadwood) who stutters and is painfully shy; and "Chief" (Will Sampson) an American Indian whom everyone believes to be deaf and mute, but Mac persists in talking with him and engaging him in his plots. The whole cast is terrific to watch, including Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd as two of the patients. We learn through one scene that most of the patients are voluntary committals, compared to Mac who has been sent for observation to determine his future sentence and location. Nurse Ratched is played so subtly and controlled by Louise Fletcher, especially in comparison to the raving and energetic performance by Nicholson. It's a great juxtaposition of two characters, and 'the establishment' versus 'the counter-culture/anti-authoritarian movement'. There are some comedic moments, but overall I would say it's a drama, and the ending is bittersweet. I have not been a Jack Nicholson fan (meaning I don't run out to movies just because Jack Nicholson is in it) and I think he sometimes plays the same character, and that could be just in later movies, but here, he is spot on. I hope Hollywood is not dumb enough to try and re-make this movie when they run out of ideas in the near future, because the actor who is unlucky enough to play Mac is setting himself up for almost sure failure. Nurse Ratched is a frequently referenced character, especially when someone is authoritarian, controlling and unfeeling, but I wonder how many people have seen the movie. Well, now I have. Not only did One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest win the five major categories at the Oscars, it is also number 33 on the American Film Institute's 100 Best Films and it is on the National Film Registry's list of films that should be preserved. If that doesn't make you run out to rent this movie, then we probably shouldn't see each other anymore.

12/22/13 Sophie's Choice, Best Actress, 1982, AFI #91

I tried to watch Sophie's Choice a long time ago and could not get into it, it wasn't what I expected and it moved too slowly for me, so I gave up. The list has a way to bring things back around and that's what happened here. I tried to have a different mindset and let the movie unfold slowly, it was hard, I have to be honest; I think what made it hard was that I knew something was going to happen, and I wanted it to happen. In this case, anticipation was not my friend. Sophie's Choice is set in 1947, just two years after the end of World War II, and Stingo (Peter MacNicol) has relocated from the South to Brooklyn where he aspires to be a writer. He moves into a room in a large Victorian house and meets his new neighbors, Sophie Zawistowski (Meryl Streep), a Polish Catholic survivor of Auschwitz and her star-crossed lover, Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline), an American Jew with a troubled emotional and mental history. The story as it is told in 1947 is about the relationship and friendship of the trio as well as their conflicts. As Stingo learns more about Sophie, on whom he develops a crush, and her life in Poland, the story goes into flashbacks, and the truth about Sophie's past starts to reveal. Meryl Streep won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Sophie and solidified her reputation as a mistress of dialects and languages (many may not remember her role in the 1978 television miniseries Holocaust as James Woods' gentile wife - the whole series is powerful and I highly recommend it). Sophie and Nathan have a complicated and combustible relationship that is passionate one minute and then torn apart the next minute. Poor Stingo is caught in the middle and not sure exactly what is happening between his friends. The pieces start to come together over time as he learns about both Nathan and Sophie's past. It is a powerful movie and Streep is undeniably wonderful; Kline plays manic pretty well (this is a notch lower than his over-the-top performance in A Fish Called Wanda) and Peter MacNicol's character of Stingo and Jozef Sommer as the older Stingo and narrator, are sympathetic storytellers. The end of the movie was not totally unexpected and yet it kind of was.

12/22/13 American Hustle, not yet nominated, 2013

My friends and I made a date to see American Hustle when we saw the preview at Bad Grandpa (yeah, I know). Of course the clips they show were the laugh out loud moments (I mean, Bradly Cooper with his hair in curlers and Christian Bale in a bad combover). American Hustle is getting a lot of buzz for its interpretation (it's not a strict representation of the events) of the Abscam scandal of the late 1970s and early 1980s (another event I vaguely remember from the news as it happened) and for the acting of Bale, Cooper, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence. Bale and Adams are Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser and they are con artists. Bradley Cooper is Richie Di Maso, an FBI agent who has great career aspirations and he busts the two of them, and they kind of have to work for him. This is a little bit of The Sting mixed with Sopranos-lite. Jennifer Lawrence is Irving's wife who is a little on the wacky side. She and Amy Adams are going to be making good movies for a long time to come (probably not the prediction of the century, but I wanted it on record). Most of the story involves Di Maso's desire to make the bust of his career, which means getting politicians to fall for his scam; and that's where things get a little complicated. Jeremy Renner is Camden Mayor, Carmine Polito, the first target of the sting, and Elisabeth Rohm is his wife, Dolly (that's Elisabeth Rohm from Law and Order - I tell you this because we did not realize it until the movie was over and you should pay attention because she was really good). American Hustle was directed by David O. Russell, director of Silver Linings Playbook. The movie has some interesting twists and it behooves you to follow the bouncing ball; it is fun watching it unfold. The score is full of songs from the 1970s, some well known, others obscure, but you can't help dancing in your seat. I liked the movie a lot, but for some reason I can't say I loved it; it may have been the length, I couldn't feel my legs when it was over after 2 plus hours.