Rainbow Girl.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for Mildred Pierce, one of the reasons why TV is seriously threatening cinema in terms of artistic value.

You Won't Forget About Pearce.

Today I had an epiphany.

While trying to find a truly striking screenshot of Memento, I realized I might have discovered the reason why I'm not a fan of Christopher Nolan...

*drum roll*

The man doesn't make memorable images.

*awaits booing*

But let me explain myself...Nolan is usually compared to Stanley Kubrick in terms of formalism and technical mastery, but truly, where Kubrick was a master at creating indelible images (almost all of his films have at least one truly iconic shot) Nolan has never achieved this.

Before the bashing begins, give this a thought.

What's really memorable about his films? In The Dark Knight it was Heath Ledger's larger-than-life performance, Inception was all about the cool factor and Memento, well, Memento was all about the mind fucks.

One can say that Nolan is much more of a cerebral filmmaker; his movies work because of the ideas behind them, not particularly because he knows how to execute said ideas in an aesthetically pleasing way. And by this I don't mean I'm expecting him to deliver three-strip Technicolor features or hire Wong Kar-wai as a visual consultant, because that's not really his thing. It's just that he's so worried about making a smart impression on people that he truly forgets that movies can be beautiful and smart.

He doesn't have to be the ugly chick who quotes Nietzsche and never puts out to preserve her dignity, he can be the big boobed blonde that surprises you because of her intellect.

Sure, his movie might've won an Oscar for cinematography this year, but that was actually a breakthrough for AMPAS. Usually they reward the prettiest movie; this year they remembered that cinematography is also about camera movement and technical mastery. Nolan's movies sure have that, but they rush so fast that their stream of consciousness like shots, make it tough, if not impossible to be haunted by any of them.

P.S: my favorite shot of Memento is this one...

...because if I was as hot as Guy Pearce I'd also take pictures of myself and be all like "who me?" whenever I found myself looking at them and sighing about how pretty I was.

This post is part of Nat's unforgettable "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series.

The King's Speech *½

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter

Guy Pearce, Eve Best, Michael Gambon, Timothy Spall

Jennifer Ehle, Claire Bloom, Derek Jacobi

It seems that for as long as there have been movies, that's how long their need to convince us they're just like us, has existed.

Why have most movies lost the need to revel in their own cinematic-ness? Why such a need to make us identify with them?

If you're looking for answers to those questions you might as well stay away from The King's Speech, a film so secure about its heart-tugging contrived maneuvers, that it dares to pretend it's a story about the every man when in fact it's a piece of ideological brainwash that reinforces the notion that the people watching it are precisely the exact opposite of what they're watching onscreen.

The film basically deals with King George VI's struggle with stuttering. We see him shame his father (Gambon), be bullied by his brother (Pearce), be nurtured by his wife (Carter) and eventually be cured by magical Australian Lionel Logue (Rush) before delivering the speech that, according to the movie, mattered more during WWII than the tons of lives lost afterwards.
The film is handsomely made but it's slightly offensive to think that more thought was put on the details in Helena Bonham Carter's hats, than in the way the film relishes in its somewhat fascist ideology.

With each new scene we see how more and more it's buying its own love for royalty and its seemingly "human" approach (awww it's tiny Queen Elizabeth!) is nothing more than a reaffirmation for the film's condescending look at the world that surrounds it.
As Hooper and company fail to find anything to question about the characters, these become puppets at the command of a modern fairy tale that pretends to exalt humanity when all it does is trivialize war in the face of royal adversity.

Sure, the king's achievement was notable and a triumph on its own, and sure, the fact that the people around him congratulate him on his success and seem to forget about the larger reality outside Buckingham Palace is quite normal, what's baffling is that the film fails to question these things.

It comes as no surprise that the film's best performance and its biggest asset comes in the shape of Eve Best as crown wrecker socialite Wallis Simpson; it's through her that we get the only glimpse of seeing what lied beyond the crown, beyond the obligations and especially beyond the facade.

If it wasn't for her we'd be stuck with a bunch of people who use their status as means to demean other- when Queen Elizabeth pokes fun at commoners who feel surprised to meet her, it's not really cute, it's disturbing- and as much as the film tries to make Lionel and the King achieve some sort of Becket like synergy, not such relationship is truly ever formed.

We are presented with a portrait of a group of gorgeously lit saints whose own personal troubles amounted to more drama than the Blitz and while some might get a kick out of watching the intimate lives of royals, their lives here are so restrained by public relations that this doesn't even serve as royalty porn, its purpose was never to allow us into their lives but to perpetuate the sort of ideology that can pass patronizing as back patting.

For a film that deals so much with communication, it's a shame that The King's Speech muffles the audience's voice so much.

Crush of the Week.

With his short but effective role in The King's Speech and his outstanding turn in Animal Kingdom, he proves he's one of the most underrated working actors.

Animal Kingdom ***

Director: David Michôd

Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce

Jacki Weaver, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton, James Frecheville

Dan Wyllie, Laura Wheelwright, Justin Rosniak

Films that deal with crime either have a tendency to romanticize it or moralize it. It's surprising to see a movie that does neither and even more than that, actually takes a look at it from an "objective" point of view.

Animal Kingdom is a chilling family drama that just happens to have elements of crime in it. The film begins with the death of Jay's (Frecheville) mother. As if he'd been expecting this to happen at any moment, after the paramedics take his mom, he pragmatically grabs the phone and calls his grandma Janine (Weaver) to let her know he needs a place to stay.
He moves in with her and his uncles: armed robber Pope (Mendelsohn), drug dealer Craig (Stapleton) and soon-to-be criminal Darren (Ford).

Considering his mom dies from a heroin overdose and she'd tried to keep him away from her family, we understand that Jay has been raised under a different code of ethics and writer/director Michôd's first great step is establishing that we can not judge Jay or any of the other characters for that matter.

They all exist in a world where keeping the family together, regardless of their criminal activities, is more important than adjusting to societal rules.

Of course this means that they will clash with the rest of the world and as Jay explains "crooks always come undone, always". Things begin to spiral out of control when a group of detectives led by officer Leckie (Pearce) try to get Jay on their side in helping them stop his family, soon the young man find himself in the middle of a battle between law and family (not precisely right and wrong).

Coolly shot by cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, who doesn't let his camera intrude, Animal Kingdom becomes a documentary of sorts as we merely observe these people act as their nature moves them to and this is ultimately what the film is about: people being driven merely by their instincts.

Frecheville's Jay serves as an ambiguous guide through this maze seeing how it's easy to deem him as too passive and be annoyed by him; however, taking a closer look we realize that he's not just an accessory, he's giving a simple but effective performance of someone under a lot of stress, channeling it in the only way he can.

In a way we see Jay develop something that resembles Stockholm Syndrome, as he becomes settled in his new life with his family. The double life we see him lead when he hangs out with his girlfriend (Wheelwright) gives the film a strange, surreal tone.

The rest of the cast is impressive with Mendelsohn creating a man who could represent some symbol of evil yet instead just chooses to be someone who's taken very bad decisions in life and is merely striving for survival.

Edgerton is strangely moving as their friend Barry Brown, while Stapleton delivers a heartbreaking performance, especially towards the end of the movie. However, it's Jacki Weaver who remains with you long after the film has ended.

Her Janine is someone who has adapted to a lifestyle that will help her provide for her boys. "I've been around a long time" she declares with a sweet smile when an accomplice is surprised by the reach of her influence. The way in which Weaver delivers her lines makes for a beautiful complex, given that, as with most of the film we don't know whether she's being psychotic or just "being".

However beyond the sometimes heartless actions and lovable "sweeties", we can see an entire history of pain in her eyes. Perhaps at one time she was just like Jay, being swallowed by a world she couldn't understand but had to be a part of to be with the people she loved.

"There are certain things you don't tell girls about" says family lawyer (Wyllie) to a confused Jay and in Janine's sensitive acknowledgement we know that this never really applied for her, at one moment she just had to make a choice. Weaver makes it impossible for us to believe that someone would just be born this way.

The British Are Awarding!

If you thought only American E! presenters made asses of themselves in front of celebrities, you will be happy, or not, to learn that the Brits are just as ridiculous.
Interviewing nominees and presenters attending the BAFTAs they have been on a roll of insane questions, dumb remarks and royal madness (they're gaga over Prince William).


Presenter "How was it to play gay? It was your first time".
Colin Firth "No it wasn't" he proceeds to say all the gay characters he's played, including "Mamma Mia" which even I'd forgotten about, " [Playing gay] is fairly routine for me now".
Presenter "How was it to take your kit off after more than twenty years?"
Colin changes subject.
Presenter "Does your wife prefer you do love scenes with women or men?"



The radiant Kate Winslet in Stella McCartney was utterly refreshing even when the guy asked her if she was jealous of "Avatar"'s success hahaha.
She charmingly replied that she was thrilled she wouldn't have to answer questions about being in "the highest grossing film of all time" anymore.


"You're obviously pregnant, right?"
- Presenter to an obviously pregnant Anne Marie Duff


"You were only in the movie for like ten minutes."
- Presenter baffled about Guy Pearce's appearance.


Instead of asking debut director Tom Ford about his film the presenter chose to ask him how he felt releasing Colin Firth's feminine side...
Ford reminds her gay ain't feminine.
She blushes and asks him if he 's wearing himself.
In most dapper style he replies "I only wear myself."


The funniest thing I saw so far though was the fuss over Audrey Tautou.
When she was first spotted the female presenters gushed about how pretty she looked and how she obviously was wearing Chanel because "it would be insulting if she wasn't".
Audrey insulted them minutes later when she answered she was indeed wearing Lanvin.
They proceeded to call her fashion choice the "shocker of the night".

The Road **1/2

Director: John Hillcoat
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smith-McPhee, Charlize Theron
Robert Duvall, Molly Parker, Guy Pearce, Michael K. Williams

After an unexplained cataclysm almost destroyed the planet, a man (Mortensen) and his son (Smith-McPhee) try to survive among the last remains of humanity.
They have to hide from people who became cannibals, look for food and find a way to get to the Gulf Coast where they think they will be safe.
Along the way they encounter several characters and problematic situations that force them to analyze if staying alive is really worth the risks.
Their only weapon is a gun with two bullets which they planned to use on each other upon reaching an extreme case.
Trying hard to be more than an apocalyptic "Paper Moon" the plot worries less about the lead characters' surroundings than about their relationship and how familiar traditions like father/son dynamics might be the only things that survive doomsday.
We see as the boy tries hard to grasp the loss of a world he never knew (he was born days after the tragedy began) and how the father copes with the memory of his wife (Theron) and how she chose death over life in a decaying world.
"Each day is more gray than the day before" narrates Mortensen even if we the movie was shot in a muddy palette by Javier Aguirresarobe which gives it a sense of dirtiness which inevitably makes us think that this is done with the eventual intention of purification on director Hillcoat's part.
The movie suffers from serious tonal unbalance as it travels from road movie with thriller elements, to intimate drama without ever justifying its choices.
Its most distressing problem lies on how much it tries to be a book. The screenplay was adapted from Cormac McCarthy's award winning novel and even if you haven't read it, you know the characters and actions were extracted from a novel.
The too poetic narration for example creates a weird separation between how Mortensen's character sees the world and how he refers to it.
More than haunting verses, his storytelling hints of insanity. When these words are paired with golden flashbacks involving Theron the film drifts to a place that isn't justified emotionally by the characters but suggests two different movies were made and then pasted together.
It's good that Mortensen gives a performance with enough power to distract us from the screenplay's inconsistencies.
He gives this man a tragic soul and most of his work is done with his eyes that peek from behind a huge beard and dirt. The man doesn't need big lines to evoke loss, despair and his immense love for the child.
Smith-McPhee comes off a bit obnoxious at times, but his performance makes sense given that he clings to his father and demands him to teach him all he needs to know.
The scenes where they just eat together and share seemingly insignificant moments are the ones where the whole movie is at its best.
Sadly Hillcoat never explores elemental things like why they have fought to stay alive for so long in a world that obviously won't last long.
The repercussions of such existential questions could've sparked debates of hope and human pride, but in "The Road" they are just as mysterious as the planet's destruction.
"Whoever made humanity will not find humanity here" says an old man (played brilliantly by Duvall) and hard as it tries the same can be said about this too mechanical movie.

The Hurt Locker ****

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty
Christian Camargo, Evangeline Lilly, David Morse
Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes

The notion of war always brings up intangible concepts of right & wrong, good & evil and, in the case of the American Iraq invasion, opposing political views.
But what of the people inside the battle? The soldiers for whom far is usually just a far away event. What happens to them when they suddenly find themselves in foreign lands, fighting people they can't even communicate with.
They have no time to sit down and analyze why what they're doing is wrong. They can't opt for peaceful views or no-violence policies because they might die if they do.
And no other film in recent history has made such keens observations on what it's like to be a soldier as Kathryn Bigelow's masterful "The Hurt Locker".
The film opens with a quote by New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges which states that "war is a drug".
Following this concept Bigelow throws us right into the action as members of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit try to deactivate a bomb in the middle of a Baghdad neighborhood.
The mission goes wrong and the leader is killed. Less than three minutes later we meet Sgt. William James (Renner) who comes as a replacement for the former unit leader.
Other members in his team include Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Mackie) and Spc. Owen Eldridge (Geraghty) who are in charge of covering James' perimeter while he works.
The movie then moves in vignettes-as opposed to following a story determined chronology-chronicling how many days are left for James in the unit.
Since there is no obvious leading point, the film's dramatic tension comes from within the untold stories of the characters, particularly the clashing tension between James and Sanborn who are extreme opposites.
James seems to get a rush out of his job and often jeopardizes the whole unit by taking avoidable risks. Sanborn on the other side reminds him "we're on a mission, my job is to protect you so we can go on other missions!".
It's fortunate that these characters are played extraordinarily by Mackie and Renner who anchor in the film, even stealing the spotlight from bigger stars (like Fiennes and Pearce who get limited roles) precisely by remaining completely grounded.
Renner has all the energy, and slight looks, of Daniel Craig; a tough, almost careless exterior tormented by everything he left behind in his home (a baby and wife played by Lilly).
He embodies the "drug is war" theme of the movie because he approaches every mission as if it resembled something like fun, imagine Slim Pickens in the "Dr. Strangelove" finale. He gets his "adrenaline fix", as a character tells him, by defying basic security measures and in his eyes we can see that he knows each time might very well be the last.
But besides the rough physique there is something moving about James; he befriends a young sales boy called Beckham (Christopher Sayegh), with whom he reveals a side of the paternal protectiveness he lacks with his fellow soldiers.
Or perhaps he's just looking for meaning to what he does, Renner is so effective you never know for sure what's inside his mind.
Mackie provides a remarkable stability; that he respects the rules doesn't mean he wish he didn't, when he threatens James by saying "I can figure out a redneck piece of trailer trash like you", it's impossible not to be overcome by his tranquil wrath.
Geraghty doesn't get much screen time but in his scenes he plays out the unsure soldier wonderfully. Pearce, Fiennes and particularly Morse shine in their bit roles.
Still this isn't a buddy/war movie since the characters never really achieve that movie-ness we're used to expect from the genre.
Bigelow does the whole dislike-disdain-bonding-reserved admiration thing without bells and whistles; these men know they might never get to see each other again every time they're on an assignment.
The entire film exudes this suspense element giving Bigelow an opportunity to build some magnificent setpieces aided by the marvelous camera of Barry Ackroyd who has a great eye for detail.
The editing, sound and visual design of the film understand what makes action sequences fascinating; the camera lingers, making us wish we could turn our eyes away and make us feel like we're right in the middle of the action.
Bigelow's explosions aren't cut in two second long edits, they force us to watch every little moment. One of the movie's most powerful scenes has James trying to remove a device from a suicide bomber, with two minutes before the timer goes off, the movie reaches levels of adrenaline Hollywood usually reserves for mediocre summer blockbusters.
Contrary to what one might expect Bigelow's movie, or Mark Boal's screenplay perhaps, is completely apolitical. Watching the film this neutrality comes off as looking slightly coward, but it's only after it has ended that it all makes sense.
Bigelow is not interested in taking sides, which is why her movie might appeal to war dissenters, who see the inhumanity in this hell, and also to supporters who will only see the patriotic way in which the soldiers do their job (might even serve as a recruiting method for those who detect the excitement of combat in it).
The director of course won't care what side the viewer is, her film is a historical document which like the greatest art is left to be deciphered by the beholder.

Death Defying Acts **

Director: Gillian Armstrong

Cast: Guy Pearce, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Saoirse Ronan, Timothy Spall

The year is 1926 and noted escape artist, magician and actor Harry Houdini (Pearce) is trying to debunk fake spiritualists and mediums.

He places the ultimate bet; a $10,000 cash prize for anyone who can tell him what his dead mother's last words were.

Mary McGarvie (Zeta-Jones) and her daughter Benji (Ronan) are con artists who have earned a reputation for their team act during which they make believe audience members they have made contact with their deceased loved ones.

When they learn about Houdini's challenge they find the perfect opportunity to get out of poverty, once the magician arrives to their hometown of Edinburgh the run into the one thing they weren't expecting as Houdini begins to fall for Mary.

With a plot that tries to cover as much fields as its subject did, the film fails at most of them more often than not.

It establishes itself as historical fiction, but assumes that just because it talks about a magician it can just go ahead and assume we'll all suspend our disbelief immediately.

While Pearce gives a rather good performance as Houdini, Zeta-Jones never really convinces us that she has the charm to knock the guy's socks off.

What makes this woman believe she's so good at fraud that she'll get Houdini too is something we never fully understand.

While the romantic subplot seems to be something used as a safety net in case everything else fails.

It could have also tried to exploit Harry's obsession with debunking mediums and what did his fixation on death had to do with how he approached his craft and even the possibility of love.

For a plot with so many possibilities it's ironic that everything ends up feeling so trapped.

The only thing that remotely apporaches magic here is the lovely Ronan, who pulls every card from under her sleeve and gives a rich, if sometimes obnoxiously mature, performance that within itself reminds us that a magician's biggest aid are his secrets.