"Alexander Payne’s films are like a snow globe. He takes a character leading out a peaceful existence in an idyllic setting and shakes things up. The shake-up usually takes the form of a life-altering event (death, failure, betrayal), and the ensuing snowstorm is a dramatic calamity where we watch the pieces settle back into place, culminating not in a big dramatic reveal, but with a return to the mundane routines of daily life.
The Descendants fits this mold quite nicely. George Clooney plays Matt King, a wealthy architect and landowner, who finds himself cuckolded by a wife he can’t quite confront (she is in a coma). Surrounding King’s moral dilemma are two equally troubling issues, both of which are unique to Payne’s typical brand of character study. King has two young daughters (both of whom are neglected and rapidly developing into a couple of fuck-ups) who are grieving their ailing mother, and he also has a swarm of greedy family members watching his every move as he presides over a monster of a real estate deal that concerns the sale of some ancestral land with which he was entrusted. The sale promises millions for each member of his extended family, and all are eager to find out what their piece of the pie will net them.
I refer to these final two elements – family and ancestry -- as unique amongst Payne’s filmography because both require a character to make a decision outside of his own self-interest. Unlike the straight-shooter teacher who is tired of playing by the rules in Election, the retired businessman whose lifelong partner passes on in About Schmidt or the misanthropic wine-snob whose failures in love and life come to boil on a weekend getaway in Sideways, Matt King is being crushed by the weight of issues much larger than himself. Even though he feels betrayed by his wife’s actions and wishes to drag her and her lover’s names through the mud, he has a duty to his children to stand by her side and see this thing through to the end -- for better and for worse, through sickness and through health, ‘til death do they part. King also has a duty to uphold the values of his ancestors. Would they approve of the venture capitalist urges driving this land deal? By selling off this land, would he be in a sense selling off his family history? His wife might not pull through, and if she dies, will he be able to hack it as a single parent? Was he ever a good parent to begin with? These giant issues are all kicking around in King’s head and the importance of leading a more selfless life begins to carry weight with him.
“Family seems like an archipelago. We are part of the same group, but we are still islands – separate and alone. And we’re slowly drifting apart” – Matt King
King’s internal moral dilemmas are given life through the brilliant performance of George Clooney. His struggles to honor the legacy of the deceased, set a good example for the living and uphold his commitments to the dying are communicated through a veritable master class of facial tics and well-timed glances. His gestures are so exaggerated and animated they bear comparison to classic Hollywood performers such as Cary Grant and Gary Cooper. Typically, it is the words that carry the weight in a Payne film, but in this case much of the emotion is internalized and repressed by King, and we are left to read the story on Clooney’s face. To say he pulls it off would be an understatement. He communicates pages of emotion without using a single word. Clooney’s performance makes a more mature filmmaker out of Payne, and in The Descendants, the image begins to resonate as much as the page. Take, for instance, the dozens of shots where Payne’s mise-en-scene strategically places a family relic or photo over Clooney’s shoulder, as if to give external life to the internal memories informing King’s every move. Clooney and Payne are using visual language in a way never present in either of their previous works which, for this writer, represents the highpoint of both their careers.
Eventually, the pieces may settle back into place for the final shot of the film -- as King and his children congregate on the couch as a family -- what could be more mundane than a night in front of the television? And while on the surface, this return to normality seems like a simple gesture signifying closure, there is a deeper message at play: no matter how far a family drifts apart, it can always be pulled back together. Living, dying, deceased, the family unit is ever changing, but the name, and the “group” it represents, is something larger than us all, and no amount of greed or betrayal could ever break that bond." - Adam Lemke
"It’s a cliché to say that effective child actors project a maturity beyond their years, but what Elle Fanning does in Super 8 is a layered variation on that familiar idea. It’s not so much that Fanning exhibits uncommon maturity but that she imbues Alice Dainard with the kind of weary resignation that comes from having to grow up much too quickly. Yet probably the most transcendent moments of Fanning’s performance come when Alice’s youthful enthusiasm shines through, when she can’t repress her goofy smile at the antics of the young movie-obsessed boys who’ve roped her into appearing in their homemade film.
Alice’s starring role in that movie within the movie offers Fanning a chance to give a performance within a performance, showing how all of Alice’s pent-up emotions come through as she acts in the boys’ cheesy zombie production. The early scene of the train derailment that unleashes an alien on the main characters’ sleepy small town is notable for its spectacular special effects and sheer enormity, but just as notable is Fanning’s performance immediately preceding it, as Alice imbues a tearful farewell scene with far more pathos than the budding filmmakers ever could have imagined. Fanning allows Alice’s reading of the horror-movie dialogue to reveal the hurt that she’s carrying around with her constantly.
The best example of Fanning’s multi-faceted performance comes in a small moment as main character Joe (Joel Courtney), who of course has a huge crush on Alice, advises her on how to play a zombie. Clad in impressive ghoulish makeup that Joe has created, Alice seamlessly and unsettlingly slips into mindless zombie mode, coming closer and closer to the boy who craves her attention. It’s a moment of innocence and knowingness mixed together, the perfect representation of Fanning’s work and J.J. Abrams’ film as a whole." - Josh Bell
"Prior to Meek's Cutoff, rising indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt had never written characters with the explicit intent of providing an actor with a meaty showcase. That would go against her just-this-side-of-mumblecore dedication to patient "realism," usually translated as casual observation without heavy dramatic conflict —- lest she provoke (she'd say "manipulate") an exaggerated emotional response. At least, this is what I've always perceived to be the thought process behind her underplayed style and Meek's Cutoff, despite the fact that it's a stone masterpiece, pretty much keeps the trend going but for one exception: Bruce Greenwood.
No less lived-in than the countless other parts Reichardt's penned -— and to whose one-note limitations she's noticeably strained to adhere -— Greenwood is just too restless to reign in, his rowdy frontiersman presence invigorating every moment of Meek's Cutoff that he graces. As the eponymous Stephen Meek, guide to a wagon train crossing a vast desert expanse during the dog days of the Oregon Trail, he's bearded and wild-eyed and filled with stories about wrestling bears and scalping redskins. Whether these sordid tales are truths or elaborate fictions matters none to us even as they further spook his starving, exhausted clientele.
This is because Greenwood's monologues possess an incantatory quality, the words less important than the tempo and tone of their delivery, with the revving huskiness in his voice and his fireside (sometimes literally) immediacy suggestive of something mythic, a shared lineage with any number of larger-than-life personae born of the American Western. With squinting, inscrutable eyes set back in a shaggy, knotted gray mane and visage darkened by broad-brimmed hat, Greenwood's voice becomes his most expressive asset, and he strikes the perfect balance of comforting, old-pro wisdom and vague undercurrents of menace. He disappears so completely into the role of Stephen Meek that even those familiar with the well-regarded character actor's most recent work in the Star Trek reboot and Super 8 might not spot him.
But as camouflaged a performance as this is, it's also an unquestionably great one and a considerable asset for a film of quiet, languorous inaction. The conflict Reichardt's always allowed into her films in only the smallest doses springs from every fiber of Meek's being, antagonizing the self-sure morality of Michelle Williams' Emily and greatly testing the patience of the entire group with every dead-end his questionable guidance leads them to. Greenwood's nuanced work teeters between the jovial and the bloodthirsty, his unpredictable temperament itself amounting to all the tension Meek's Cutoff could ever need to transform its cloistered monotony into wratcheting suspense. Here's hoping Reichardt never stops casting him." - Sam C. Mac
"Simon Curtis’ My Week With Marilyn really doesn’t boast a great story – boy falls for a way-out-of-his-league girl while she struggles with fame – and in many ways it’s just another minor historical footnote (one that Colin Clark, the boy whose week it was, squeezed 2 books out of), but it becomes something special in the moments that its lead actress appears.
Glorified flirtations with celebrities are often TV movie fodder, and that’s what this film feels like for its first 10-15 minutes before Michelle Williams splashes onscreen as Marilyn Monroe in all her iconic bleached-blonde glory. Then the picture suddenly feels cinematic. Williams’ performance transcends so many standard cartoonish impressions of the sultry Monroe (think: Tina Louise as Ginger on Gilligan’s Island). The frailty, vulnerability and loneliness of Ms. Monroe bleeds through even the smallest moments of Williams’ work.
Williams has obviously meticulously studied Monroe’s canon, but I believe she’s infused some of her own life trajectory and observations of her peers into her portrayal. Sure, there’s her intense connection to the father of her one child – Heath Ledger, a star who also tragically died too young – but there’s a bit of such train wreck actresses as Lindsay Lohan in there too. Clark, portrayed by Eddie Redmayne, is way out of his depth in his lust for Monroe, at the same time that Monroe is out of her depth as an actress on a film set directed by Laurence Olivier (grandly played by Kenneth Branaugh). This is something we can feel in Williams as she nervously tries to do her job, yet still can’t quite grasp what’s expected of her.
Meryl Streep won the Best Actress Academy Award instead of Williams, and I was fine with that (even in the unremarkable The Iron Lady, Streep was pretty remarkable), but I had picked Williams when I made my Oscar predictions so I couldn’t help but be disappointed. No matter -- with such a mesmerizing turn, we are sure to be wowed again by her. Even if I can’t imagine being more wowed than by Williams channeling Monroe in the bangin’ musical dance number “Heatwave.” At least that’s one thing that Streep, no matter how many great performances she does and Oscars she gets, couldn’t ever pull off." - Daniel Johnson
"Every actor loves to play a villain, and why not? The chance to be unencumbered by restrictions of morality, subtlety or good taste is irresistible and has led to some of the most memorable of all movie characters, from Dracula to Khan Noonien Singh. The trick is to not play these characters as simple moustache-twirlers but as three-dimensional human beings who yet indulge in depravity.
In Kim Jee-Woon’s I Saw the Devil, Choi Min-Sik plays that most common modern cinematic villain -- the Cackling Serial Killer -- but with a twist. For much of the film (spoiler alert) he’s the victim of an elaborate revenge scheme by the fiancée of his most recent victim, a highly-trained security agent. Choi plays the part for all it’s worth, hitting the expected notes of gleeful sadism but also balancing his villainy with an unexpected amount of charm, intelligence, and even mundane schlubbiness. He’s the underdog in this particular game of cat-and-mouse, and Choi absorbs as much punishment as his character dishes out, limping and staggering bloodily through the film. Throughout this, he never allows the audience to settle into a comfortable relationship with him – the pain he endures is as real as the pain he inflicts, and his stubborn persistence against his victim/tormentor is simultaneously heroic and horrifying. It’s the sign of a great actor to be able to take such a flashy, larger-than-life role and imbue it with the small details of humanity while never letting go of the reptilian intelligence in his eyes." - Jeff McMahon
"When a performance or an actor gets called volcanic, generally it's a nod to the violent forcefulness of the skill on display. What Anna Paquin does in Margaret fits that definition, but she's also volcanic in a more elementary sense: Her character Lisa Cohen is prone to erupting without warning, spewing boiling-hot invective and laying waste to whomever should be in her path.
It's a hell of a high-wire act writer/director Kenneth Lonergan has set up for Paquin. The challenge: Dig down and find the truth, the intelligence, the sympathetic heart of this confused and overwhelmed teenage girl while all the while playing her as frazzled, nasty and unsympathetic as possible -- in other words, a genuine teenager. Paquin proves more than up to it. Her Lisa is a smart girl, more troubled than most (one doesn't witness a woman hit by abus and have her die in their arms and call it everyday angst) but still recognizably garden-variety in the battles she chooses to fight.
And fight she does. Her intelligence allows her an uncommon dexterity in verbal battles just as her irrationality allows her to change the terms of argument on the fly without skipping a beat. Margaret elevates snippy day-to-day discourse to the level of operatic power struggles as part of its grander aim, and why shouldn't it? Does the average teen not see the world as essentially a self-involved one-person war against all who would cause grief or harm, with every emotion pitched at a fever or not at all? It's a fragile, volatile world that's built here, a New York City of frayed nerves and the lingering stain of tragedy, and Paquin is terrific as its thrashing chaotic center, steely and exasperated when haranguing the police in one moment and breaking down over using a word incorrectly in the next. Her quixotic quest against the bus driver she wants held responsible for the accident mirrors her own internal struggle for something, anything, to make perfect sense for one brief moment. Paquin's asked to do a lot of emotional heavy lifting and never once does she falter or buckle under the pressure. She never falls off that wire." - Steve Carlson
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