2013 Muriels: Other Stuff We Loved, Part 4 (Miscellany)

Best Director: Shane Carruth, Upstream Color

"There's no question when you watch Upstream Color that you're watching a Shane Carruth film. It's kind of staggering how one guy can craft a recognizable aesthetic in the space of two features; part of that is the willingness to cross-pollinate genre stories with deeply-felt human emotions and imperatives, but there's more than the willingness to take big narrative chances. The problem with giving Carruth the proper amount of respect as director is that how exactly does one define where his work as cinematographer, writer, or editor ends in the assembling of his films. But there's never a sense of imbalance - when you watch Upstream Color, there are points where it stops being a film you're watching and becomes a relationship that you're having.

The predominant beauty (and there are several) of the film is the way in which its stories unfold across multiple means of experience. One could watch it with no sound, or listen to it with no image, and still you would understand what is occurring, but those two perceptions wouldn't be the same. They would both be correct, though. Carruth has assembled a film of many pathways and means of access (survivor trauma, religious allegory, the beginning of a cult, the end of a cult, conspiracy theory) that still manages to instill hope for humanity and the capacity for love, as all of its paths lead to a place of hope.

If it had done nothing else, Upstream Color would be laudable for bypassing the foolish battle/spectacle-fixated remake hell that Dune is trapped in up Hollywood way and finding its own way to be a Dune film - a multifaceted analysis of the introduction of a vermiform that produces a psychoactive compound into an ecosystem and how that substance alters the social and economic structures of the humans around it, ultimately transforming entire subsets of humanity. Primer let the world know that there was a new voice in Science Fiction worthy of being heard, and now it seems there's no genre Carruth can't find his way into, and through. Hopefully, it won't be as long before the next one." -- Jason Shawhan



Best Cinematography: Only God Forgives

"Filmed on location, in and around the red-light district of Bangkok, Only God Forgives is, appropriately enough, bathed in both the color red and sin. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and shot by his frequent cinematographer Larry Smith (Bronson, Fear X), the film is a graphically violent, conversationally minimalist story of reluctant vengeance and desires both repressed and surrendered to. The film practically bleeds as brain matter and squalor become indistinguishable from aggressively art-directed brothels, motels and underground boxing clubs - the kind of places with hallways that seem to stretch on into infinity and where even the wallpaper seems menacing. Smith famously got his big break serving as Kubrick’s “Lighting Cameraman” on Eyes Wide Shut and, as in that film, Only God Forgives encourages you to view it as a malevolent waking dream where logic quickly gives way to a pervading sense of dread.

But rather than merely being stylistically distinct (and as divisive as the film is, it’s almost impossible not to have strong feelings about it, one way or the other), the cinematography of Only God Forgives establishes a visual language which acts as a guide to how to appreciate the film. The film’s confrontational compositions serve to manage expectations, establishing from the outset that the film has little interest in giving in to the wishes of the viewer.

For all the talk of the color red, the film actually employs an alternating hot and cold visual scheme, often competing for space within the same frame. A viscera-stirring tableau of mutilated bodies, shot through a searing, scarlet-colored filter, isolated from dispassionate police officer and angel of death Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) who silently looks on from the doorway, his body backlit by a neon blue light. Emasculated would-be protagonist Julian (Ryan Gosling), enveloped in crimson, remains unable to touch the woman he longs for, his fingers halted by a shimmering sapphire curtain. Time and again, hellfire and neutrality collide as wants and needs slam into a misplaced sense of duty.

Only God Forgives is nothing but provocations (a murdered child prostitute, a vicious cycle of revenge and counter-retaliation, Kristin Scott Thomas making disparaging comments about the size of her grown son’s genitals, etc.) that the film actively deflates at every turn. Vengeance is treated as an obligation, something you’re goaded into by a cumbersome code of honor or the shrill harpy you call a mother. And the aesthetics of the film follow suit. No matter how many limbs are sliced off or punches are thrown, the film saps all the vicarious thrills from its genre trappings, leaving only the emptiness and ugliness of the acts themselves. Full of languid zooms and an overwhelming stillness, Only God Forgives offers no visual escape from the heinous behavior of its characters, allowing every pungent line of dialogue or penetrated body to linger onscreen seemingly without end. Love it or hate it (with the vocal majority clearly falling into the camp of the latter), the cinematography is inseparable from the appeal of the film itself." -- Andrew Dignan



Best Screenplay: Dan Sallitt, The Unspeakable Act

""Yolanda's really nice." It's an immeasurably painful statement spoken by 17-year-old Jackie Kimball (Tallie Medel) in the early moments of Dan Sallit's The Unspeakable Act. The teenager has just spent a lovely evening with her older brother Matthew's (Sky Hirschkron) new bubbly blonde girlfriend and can't hide her disdain any longer. Why is she so upset at what should be a happy moment? Because of her own complicated and unsettling emotional feelings that are better left unspoken. The subtext-heavy sequence that follows represents the beauty of a subtle screenplay that often uses blips of silence in between dialogue to explore the many hidden desires of these characters. Despite the potential for salaciousness in a narrative about feelings of incest, Sallit never veers toward a melodramatic endgame, instead staying true to the quiet rhythms of a singular coming-of-age tale both lived-in and vibrant with possibility." -- Glenn Heath



Best Cinematic Breakthrough: Lake Bell

"The Breakthrough category can tend to get a bit simplistic. You've generally got two types of candidates. On one hand, there's the person who came out of nowhere (or nearly nowhere) and is suddenly prominent. These are usually actors who get a breakthrough in the traditional sense. Lupita Nyong'o comes to mind this year. On the other hand, you've got people who added a role to their resume. The actor who becomes a director. The writer who becomes a director. The cinematographer who becomes a director. Mostly, people who become directors.

But it's been a long time since someone has as convincingly done both as well as Lake Bell did this year with her debut feature In a World…, a film she wrote, directed, produced, and starred in. I'm assuming she also cooked lunch for the crew and picked people up at the airport. The film itself is a solid 3 star movie. It's not going to win the Golden Muriel. But it announces Bell as a very interesting director, someone who could easily grow into a damned good one. The lazy comparison is Sarah Polley.

But perhaps what most impressed me about In a World… is the calculation on Bell's part to essentially write herself a role that showed off her unique vocal talents in a way that felt essential to the story. In a sense, this is one of the best acting reels ever made. Like all great independent films, Bell started with an inventory of what she had freely available to her and made a film that maximized it. And in doing so, she not only announced herself as a writer/director to watch, but also an actor with range far beyond…well…several Ashton Kutcher movies I've never seen. If she never acts again, she's got a career as a director. If she never directs again, she just got herself a lot more acting gigs." -- Lucas McNelly



Best Ensemble Performance: Inside Llewyn Davis

"Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis is remarkable for the way it brings the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early ‘60s to life — or, rather, a dream of that life. It’s synthesized from old album covers and photos in old issues of Time and Life and the dreams and fantasies they’ve inspired even in people like me, who don’t usually think of Kennedy-era coffee-house folk as one of the cultural milieus that are most central to our lives. It would make a great double bill with Paul Mazursky’s Next Stop. Greenwich Village (1975), which was set in much the same place and era, but a couple of streets over, where the aspiring actors hung out.

And, as with Mazursky’s movie, what pumps the blood into the Coens' perfect, snow-capped recreations of an earlier bohemia are the actors, who manage to suggest many different variations on the possible types trying to achieve creative fulfillment in, or make a buck off, this scene. Carey Mulligan as the waifish pressure cooker Jean, Justin Timberlake as the pure, sensitive artistic soul about to blunder into novelty commercial success, Adam Driver as the self-styled urban cowboy Al Cody, Max Casella as the good-natured exploiter of the folk balladeers Pappi, Ethan Phillips and Robin Bartlett as the academic couple sweetly inviting their folkie friends to let a little of their cool authenticity to rub off on their dinner parties, John Goodman as a dazzlingly hostile blowhard jazzman and Garrett Hedlund as his rough trade chauffeur all seem to deserve a movie of their own, and as the polished apple of an agent who patiently listens to Llewyn’s heartfelt audition and tells him, “I don’t see a lot of money in it,” F. Murray Abraham practically deserves his own miniseries.

Probably they all get exactly as much screen time as they have coming to them; when the Coens’ instincts are working perfectly, they know how to give you just enough of every character to leave you wanting more. And Oscar Isaac does as well as anybody ever has at making you feel grudging respect for an artist while helping you to understand why he will never, ever, get what he wants. All these people coming together is what really makes for life lived on the screen." -- Phil Dyess-Nugent

2013 Muriels: Other Stuff We Loved, Part 3 (More Actors)

"In All Is Lost, Robert Redford put on what is truly a one-man show. His is the only face seen through the entirety of the film. Not just any actor could be up to the challenge presented by J.C. Chandor’s great, highly cinematic tale of survival and tenacity, but Redford brings with him decades of confidence and charisma, things necessary to pull the audience along in a nearly wordless performance that, ironically, speaks volumes. You can know everything about what this man is going through just by looking at his face. In the beginning, it’s rather placid, as we can infer that he is a very experienced sailor, and the damage to his boat at the start of the film is worrisome but not necessarily catastrophic. He sets about fixing it with the mildly-annoyed resolve that many of us would fix a flat tire on a solo road trip. Only as the film progresses, and the situation becomes more and more dire, do worry, fear and, finally, resignation, creep into his weather-worn visage, and Redford remains riveting throughout, even with almost no dialogue (his most memorable line is a very well-earned “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”)

We are given almost zero information on this nameless sailor, billed simply as “Our Man,” and while some see this as a flaw, I see it as incredibly freeing for the audience. I like to imagine that he’s an old hippie, maybe a veteran, who takes to the sea (alone, pointedly) as a refuge from a failed personal life. At least one marriage that ended badly, probably a couple of kids and grandkids that he tries, awkwardly, to keep in touch with. Is Virginia Jean an ex-lover? The one who got away? Most of this I put together though the spare hints given us in the heartrending, resigned letter read to us through narration at the film’s beginning, but most of it I’m just running with. The great thing about it is that you can choose to think about these things or not. For exposition or shoehorned-in character detail would have felt extraneous in a story this simple. It is about survival and the human hunger for it in the most desperate of situations, and if there’s anything more universal than that, I can’t think of it. “Our Man” is everyone and no one, all at once. He is us." -- Jason Alley



"When it comes to measuring the power of Zhang Ziyi's performance in The Grandmaster, for me, it all comes down to that haunting expression of loss in her final scenes with Ip Man.

Throughout much of the rest of Wong Kar-Wai's recent martial-arts biopic, Zhang - who plays Gong Er, the daughter of aging Wing Chun master Gong Yutian, who taps Ip Man (Tony Leung) to be his heir in southern China - carries herself with a steely demeanor that suggests ruthlessly single-minded resolve. This quality comes especially to the fore during the second half of the film, which focuses much screen time on her quest for revenge after her father is killed by Ma San, the northern heir who eventually become a collaborator with the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s. Not that the actress we remember from such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and 2046 (2005) is completely absent here; in the film’s early stages, Wong makes canny use of Zhang’s cherubic face to suggest a naive innocence on her part that, as the film goes on, is about to lead her astray in life.

Though Ip Man was the spur for The Grandmaster, furthering the small cottage industry of Ip Man-related Hong Kong films kicked off by Wilson Yip’s Donnie Yen-starring Ip Man (2008), Wong Kar-Wai’s film gradually reveals itself to be not so much about the legendary Wing Chun martial artist as it is about Gong Er and how her life stacks up to the far-seeing vision that Ip Man represents. In contrast to Ip Man - who, throughout his life, demonstrates a flexibility regarding not only the passing of time but also adaption to the social changes that inevitably come along with it - Gong Er remains firmly rooted in traditional codes of honor, a mindset that is on one level admirable and on another deeply tragic. When Ma San kills her father, Gong Er proceeds to throw everything — her chance at a family, her knowledge of the now-forgotten “64 hands” technique — away in order to focus solely on, as she says, “avenging her family’s honor”...but what does her stab at nobility get her in the end? A moment’s satisfaction that leads her to lasting bodily harm and, ultimately, a deep lack of fulfillment in her life, a gaping maw of emptiness that she tries to fill in with the help of opium smoke.

Though Wong has Gong Er articulate some of this verbally in her final scenes with Ip Man, really, all one needs to see is Zhang Ziyi’s hauntingly weary expression to feel that sense of undying regret in your bones. That face, previously so full of curiosity and purpose, now looks fatigued, hollowed out, soulless. For all the high-flying fireworks of its major action set pieces and extravagant visual beauties on display, the most purely, directly affecting images in all of The Grandmaster turn out to be simple close-ups of Zhang Ziyi contemplating the life she could have lived - the fuller life she will never have." -- Kenji Fujishima



"Nicole Holofcener’s script for Enough Said is pretty damn harsh on James Gandolfini. Almost every word of dialog aimed at him is a cruel observation on his weight, habits, career, or character. Even his name is a hit below the belt: Albert - as in Fat Albert. The very conceit of Enough Said (a woman secretly befriends the ex-wife of her new lover to better understand what she’s getting into) is designed to expose his every flaw. From the way he eats guacamole to his sexual clumsiness, his boring job or his complete disinterest in bedside furniture, the script is constantly bullying the poor slob. Gandolfini heroically defends Albert from the onslaught by bringing a sturdy grace and sincere warmth to the role. He makes Albert so totally human by exposing the entire emotional spectrum through seemingly-simple eyebrow furrows, grins, grimaces and slouches. Gandolfini makes it impossible not to fall in love with the guy right along with Eva, even if he has too many toothbrushes and doesn’t know how to whisper.

Albert is in his early fifties, and at this age he is who he is. He doesn’t need to grow. He is grown. After discovering Julia Louis-Dreyfus has knowingly befriended his ex-wife, Gandolfini looks to her and says “I know this sounds corny, but you broke my heart. And I’m too old for that shit.” Gandolfini has shown he can explode with rage on The Sopranos, and he brilliantly vocalized defensive insecurity in Where the Wild Things Are. But here, he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t even cry. He speaks the words with bitter acceptance, and they’re absolutely devastating. This is the same third-act confrontation seen in so many rom-coms, but it works because the moment has been earned emotionally. Enough Said is one of the rare rom-coms that actually is genuinely romantic and comedic. Gandolfini makes Albert’s self-effacing “dad” humor unique through his wry delivery and a tendency to laugh at his jokes more than anyone else. After refusing him a first kiss, Eva tries to ease the blow by saying she likes his big “paddle” hands. Albert replies with a mischievous smile, “Thanks. I like your ass.”

Gandolfini, along with a luminous Louis-Dreyfus, elevate yet another story of a pretty woman falling for a slovenly guy into an honest and humane exploration on the meaning and purpose of relationships. As the two sit on the porch in the final scene, Albert tells Eva he finally bought the new night tables she had nagged him about. She lights up, thinking he’s become less of a slob, and exclaims “Really!” Gandolfini’s proud smile gives away the joke before he’s able to reply. “No. No I didn’t,” he flatly states. The two laugh, and the moment is so beautiful and perfect it almost elicits tears. Then the screen fades to black, the credits read “To Jim,” and the tears come after all." -- Kevin Cecil



"Though Brie Larson made memorable appearances in two higher-profile 2013 films - Don Jon and The Spectacular Now - it was her complex and moving lead performance as a twenty-something counselor at an evaluation center for troubled teens in the acclaimed indie Short Term 12 that promises to alter her career in the best way imaginable. Short Term 12, arguably the most emotionally potent independent film of the year, chronicles the lives and struggles of Larson's Grace and co-counselor and lover Mason (played by John Gallagher) as they try to find some definition and contentment amidst the despair that envelops them. The film disavows cliche by showcasing a natural spontaneity, a personal approach to character that gives this work of fiction a compelling cinema-verite feel. Larson's inner productive self takes her many miles away from movie-star posturing and much closer to the 'lived in' nature of a real-life character seen in a documentary. Hence, the romantic scenes seem to flow from that genuine lived-in experience as opposed to fictional replication.

Larson's performance (this writer feels it's the best of the year - ahead of Adele Exarchopoulos, Cate Blanchett, Greta Gerwig and others), is wholly unpretentious and never draws attention to itself. There is a layer of introspection that makes it obvious enough earlier on that she's harboring some secrets, but these matters never intrude on the honesty that defines her; in fact, her life mirrors the kids she is caring for. Larson's Grace is compassionate but firm, and like the very best in her profession she goes above and beyond." -- Sam Juliano



"When I first saw Nick Frost in The World’s End, it was pretty disorienting. Anyone familiar with his previous collaborations with Edgar Wright knows Frost’s knack for playing a certain kind of endearing, pop culture-savvy man-child as seen in Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. So when he turned up in The World’s End as a sharply dressed, bespectacled attorney, it set me back on my heels more than a little bit. At first glance, the role fit him like a cheap, off-the-rack suit.

Yet Frost doesn’t just make the role work, he makes it positively sing. Like all his films with Wright, The World’s End is essentially a platonic love story between Frost and Pegg. But while Andy (Frost) is devoted to his old pal Gary "The King" (Pegg), he’s more than a little fed up as well. The reason the part works so well is that Andy’s feelings toward Gary aren’t just about anger and frustration - Frost also injects more than a little disappointment, not toward Gary (Andy’s long past being disappointed with his ne’er-do-well friend), but toward himself for being taken in by Gary’s bullshit yet again. If you’ve ever cared about someone who’s constitutionally incapable of letting you do so, you know the feeling well, and Frost portrays it as well as I’ve seen in a movie setting.

Eventually, some elements of the familiar Frost characters come to the fore, particularly in the fight scenes in which he employs his large frame in a formidable, bruising way a la John Goodman. But even after he loosens up a bit, he nonetheless remains Gary’s - and the movie’s - voice of conscience. It would come across as moralistic but for the sense of shared history between Andy and Gary that comes through in the performance. His feelings toward his friend are hard-earned, and the concerns he voices spring not from a safe critical distance but from years of pain. He makes Andy the kind of friend that every Gary needs, the kind who isn’t afraid to call him out but who will stand by him when things go downhill, in spite of everything.

I’ve always enjoyed Frost in the past, but his performance in The World’s End is on a level I’ve never seen from him before. For the first time, I see serious potential for him as a character actor, and I can’t wait to see what he does next." -- Paul Clark



"Horror movies about ancient, villainous covens of witches aren’t supposed to break your heart. But then, in a genre often overwhelmed by the dehumanizing methods of creative splatter and the reduction of the human experience to that of a sack of meat waiting to be ruptured, it’s always an unexpected thrill to see a film gamble and use the shape of horror to get at uncomfortable realities of being alive in the world. As such, Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem isn’t your typical horror film; like many of the best films in the genre, it forgoes ear-shredding stings and Saturday-matinee yock-shocks for a creeping, crushing sense of the inevitability of death. Less a thrill ride than a funeral dirge, Zombie spins suffocating supernatural disquiet out of the slow process of a woman giving in to her worst impulses, yet the whole enterprise would collapse were it not anchored, in a revelatory performance, by his wife and longtime collaborator Sherri Moon Zombie. She’s done good work for her husband before, but it’s generally been within the confines of lively yet one-note caricatures, whether as the coquettish psycho Baby in The Devil’s Rejects or Michael Myers’ saintly mother in Halloween. Lords gives her a shot at playing a fully-formed human being, and she tears into it with aplomb.

It’s perfectly modulated work. Whether shooting high-energy shit with her coworkers on the freewheeling radio show her character Heidi hosts, chummily-yet-tersely rebuffing the awkward advances of her friend/cohost Whitey (Jeffery Daniel Phillips in a terrific supporting turn) or solemnly sitting through an AA meeting, Heidi seems like someone who’s had troubles but has finally pulled it all together; this, then, makes watching her slide into the double-boiled bog of witchery and addiction all the tougher. (When Bruce Davison’s avuncular Salem historian claims, “Witchcraft is nothing but a psychotic state of belief brought on by a delusional state of mind,” the forethinking impulse is to chuckle, as indeed Heidi does, but Lords is ambiguous enough to leave open the possibility.) As Heidi gradually spirals away from her life and all who care for her into the graces of three overly-hospitable witches in waiting, Sherri Moon nails the sense of wavering, the confusion, the helplessness and halting terror at that helplessness, and finally the surrendering numbness that comes with either a relapse into the familiar lonely shelter of substance abuse or a demonic possession centuries in the offing. Losing control is just that no matter the circumstances, and when Heidi offers a final, choked sotto voce, “Bye,” to Whitey before capitulating to her ultimate destiny, it’s as raw and wrenching a gesture as any ever seen in horror. That the resultant orgy of decadence and blasphemy still allows the character to go out on a note of peaceful grace, playing with her beloved dog, is remarkable. It’s nevertheless the end earned by Sherri Moon’s equally remarkable performance." -- Steve Carlson

2013 Muriels: Best Lead Performance (Male)

Here it is, folks - the closest race of the year. How much of a photo finish was this? We initially were ready to crown the second-place finisher as the victor before a standard double-check revealed that we goofed and misallocated a couple points. Heart-in-mouth squeaker, this one.

Third place:



Joaquin Phoenix, Her [146 points / 24 votes]

Second place:



Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street [191 points / 29 votes]

And your winner...

2013 Muriels: Other Stuff We Loved, Part 2 (Actors)

"Often, the acting that is most heralded goes to those who go all out playing anti-heroes or villains, searching their soul to show us turmoil inside their characters. But what about playing genuine human kindness and decency? How does one create a compelling character out of that? Like many, I was skeptical of This Is Martin Bonner’s premise on paper (“A rehabilitation counselor and a former convict strike an unlikely friendship-“ zzzz) and then blown away by how writer-director Chad Hartigan brought a patient observance to his narrative, examining what it means for a person to show real good will toward another. But none of this could exist without Paul Eenhoorn’s central performance as the title character, a quiet man who doesn’t necessarily leave his shell but creates a tension between what he thinks and what he says. His voice changes little and his gestures are never particularly expressive, but they are never monotonous; instead of grand movements, Eenhorn creates a cheery disposition using his face, the kind of face that looks like he’s been working in movies for four decades without you ever noticing him. To bolster this tension, Eenhoorn uses something else: the pause. We learn less from what he is doing than how he reacts - witness the slight changes in his eyes as his friend explains his predicament or the spaces and careful choices of when to speak while on the phone with his daughter. His is a quiet confidence he uses to stay level during any moment where things could go south. After being thrown around by circumstance, Bonner now wishes for control, and slowly and surely he finally achieves it; his return in the climatic scene represents both a gesture of good will and his own small, poignant redemption. Eenhoorn’s performance is neither showy nor unaffected in the Bresson school of “models;” it’s simply genuine. This is expressed no better than in the moment he finally lets loose, jamming along to an 8-track by his former band Kopyright (for both the character and the actor). There is finally no surface — only joy." -- Peter Labuza



"Xavier Dolan’s films only occasionally rise above the level of pastiche. To watch I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats or Laurence Anyways (I haven’t yet seen Tom at the Farm) is to spend an hour or two sampling from the still-only-24-year-old’s favorite movies, music, and photographs. That’s a harsh critique, I know, but not an all-together damning one. Dolan is beginning to develop a voice, and already there are hints in his work that it will become something more than just a middlebrow, big-screen instantiation of mashup aesthetics. (Remember when we used to just explain this away as “postmodernism”?) Laurence Anyways is an impressive film and a marked improvement over his earlier work, both in terms of scale and execution. The two main characters, Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) and Fred (Suzanne Clément), exist outside of the self-contained, semi-autobiographical universe of I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats, and Dolan’s move into grand melodrama is both logical (he’s inserted himself, whether we like it or not, into the Sirk-Fassbinder line of queer cinema) and ambitious (I wasn’t expecting a three-hour film so soon).

The challenge when assessing a performance like Clément’s is that Dolan tends to use actors as cogs in the haphazard machinery of his images. As he swings from influence to influence — from Godard to Almodóvar to Alan Ball to MTV-era David Fincher and so on - his characters tend to get lost in the shuffle. Too often they’re forced to adopt new personae for each new visual context and, as a result, it all becomes a bit schizophrenic. Of all of Dolan’s lead performers, Poupaud suffers the most for this, I think. Even after several viewings of Laurence Anyways, I still don’t have a deep sense of Laurence’s psychology. I think I know what Dolan intended, I think I understand the character as he exists on the page, but Poupaud, a fine actor, wanders a bit. I put the blame for this squarely on Dolan, who loses control of the material at key moments. In the frenetic, all-secrets-revealed confrontation between Laurence and Fred, for example, Poupaud simply stares at Clément and then walks away. It’s a screenwriter’s cheat. Dolan settles for ambiguity instead of writing that necessary, difficult, and revealing next line. It reads as a failure of imagination — as if Dolan couldn’t fully understand Laurence in that moment and wanted to get out of the scene as quickly as possible. Problem is, it leaves Poupaud dangling on the hook.

All of which makes Clément’s accomplishment even more impressive. Fred is also an underwritten character with by-the-book motivations, and yet Clément’s performance is so charged, she throws the entire film out of balance. Most viewers, I assume, would describe Laurence Anyways as a film about a man whose decision to come out as a transvestite affects every area of his professional and personal life, most importantly his relationship with Fred. In fact, it’s a film about a woman who has the tragic misfortune of loving the wrong man. Dolan captures this beautifully in one of the film’s publicity stills. It’s a closeup of Fred’s and Laurence’s first embrace when they reunite after being separated for several years. Clément is at the center of the frame, her face buried in Poupaud’s neck. His head is turned away from the camera, so all of our attention is drawn to Clément’s red hair and to her eyes, which are closed. That image is melodrama reduced to its essence. Even Sirk would have approved.

Whether that shift — from this being a film about Laurence to a film about Fred — was intentional or not, I don’t know, but it happens pretty quickly. The first glimpse we get of conflict in their relationship is a scene in a car, when Laurence becomes annoyed by Fred’s spontaneous decision to change their dinner plans and accuses her of driving drunk. Clément powers through with the same silly excitement she had before but there’s a new tension in her jaw. It’s a subtle gesture that communicates palpably the sense that this was not the first time his words had cut her. Later, after a showy scene in which Fred screams at a waitress for patronizing Laurence (this is the clip we would have seen on the Oscars had Clément been nominated), she returns to her apartment, runs a bath, and then suddenly, willfully shuts off the pain. Clément is arresting and heartbreaking in that moment. She turns Fred’s stoicism into a practiced effort, as if she has done this a hundred times before. In the process, Clément embodies Fred’s emotional life and gives her a past.

This ability to express simultaneous and contradictory emotions is what sets Clément apart from other performers in Dolan’s films. She actively resists being just a bauble in his designs, in the same way — and I know this is a strange analogy — Timothy Carey brings a kinetic spontaneity to Kubrick’s otherwise meticulous Paths of Glory. (2013 Muriel winner Matthew McConaughey has a wonderful knack for this as well.) I especially like a moment when Fred drags (no pun intended) her sister into a wig shop, with the intention of surprising Laurence with a gift. The sister character exists in order to express out loud every frustration, doubt, and objection that Fred feels herself but is working so hard to suppress. “Our generation can take this!” Fred says, trying to convince herself it’s true. Clément is so charged by the competing emotions, she begins to bounce on her toes. For a brief second, she even slips out of the tight frame. It’s one of the rare moments in Laurence Anyways that expresses what should always be at the heart of this story: love, recklessness, and potential." -- Darren Hughes



"On a checklist for any new actor trying to make it big in The Business, I doubt "Scare the shit out of Tom Hanks" is on there. With his piercing stare, twitchy demeanor and too-gaunt-to-be-healthy visage, Barkhad Abdi does a meticulous job terrorizing not only Captain Richard Phillips (played by Tom Hanks) of the Maersk Alabama but also his crew and, honestly, the audience itself. When Abdi's character - the leader of the Somali hijackers that take over Hanks' vessel - says in fractured English nobody is going to be hurt as long as he gets his ransom, well ... you get the nagging feeling someone is going to be hurt.

Abdi - born in Mogadishu but presently living in the United States - was plucked out of Eric Henderson Land™ from his day job as a limo driver and placed opposite one of America's greatest actors: talk about a wild real-life turn-of-events. Abdi's character manages to be both human and hopelessly evil almost simultaneously, which is to be expected of someone born in one of the most godforsaken countries in the world and surrounded by corruption and poverty, trapped in a life where hijacking boats and robbing the rich is the best job available. To say he holds his own opposite the eminently professional Hanks is an understatement: hell, he steals the movie (and the cargo ship ... and the lifeboat) right from under him.

Abdi's ferocious portrayal of a hijacker has justifiably earned him nominations, attention and seats next to drunken actresses at prestigious award shows (Emma Thompson ... two is enough, my lady). The real-life pirate he played, Abduwali Muse, is not so fortunate, currently serving his 33-year sentence in federal prison in Indiana and expected to be released in 2038. The only thing Muse is the captain of is a tiny cell ... and maybe a sink. Abdi, on the other hand, should ride this wave as far as it takes him." -- Matthew Lotti



"A lot of stale hay has been made about Jennifer Lawrence being too young for the role of Rosalyn Rosenfeld in American Hustle, the suburban housewife who embodies perhaps the only clean through-line of conscience in a movie full of false identities, misdirected motivations and other moral curlicues. And perhaps if writer-director David O. Russell had positioned his knockabout comic-tragic take on Abscam entirely in the world of docudrama reality (“Some of this actually happened”) the detractors might (might) have a stronger point. But if much of Hustle’s emotional effect emanates from the period details that look stitch-perfect but also register a degree exaggerated for that extra frisson of verisimilitude, then I’d say the same leeway can be given to Lawrence, whose comic chops and brassy, no-holds-barred personality are either perfect for Russell’s conception of the film and the role or provided the template around which the role itself was conceived.

No doubt we are charmed by Rosalyn’s spunky, slightly trashy sexuality, her ability to cut through the layers of illusion and delusion around which her life, and certainly that of her husband’s, spins. Even her desperation to cling on to the world she knows gets us on her side. (“I don’t like change. It’s really hard for me.”) But Lawrence brings a fascinating mixture of pathos and unbridled fire to Rosalyn’s turbulent personality, her wobbly/confident sense of self that in turn fires Russell’s movie, whose energy falters and wanes in her absence. There’s probably no better scene in American Hustle, or maybe even in Jennifer Lawrence’s career so far, that exemplifies just how far she can run with her own wild impulses, combined with an awareness of just how infatuated audiences seem to be with her, than the grand kiss-off she delivers to Amy Adams, a moment quivering with rage and sex and comic audacity.

So she’s a little young for the role, age-wise. But in every other “wise” - talent, assurance, charm, nerve, timing - she’s exactly right. She embodies the spirit of Rosalyn perfectly, giving anyone inclined to obsess over her actual years plenty of rocket fuel to soar over reservations based on that knowledge. And when the performance is this good, who should even care? Jesse Royce Landis was only seven years older than Cary Grant when she played his mother in North by Northwest, and being only six years older than Dustin Hoffman was no impediment to Anne Bancroft’s convincing portrayal of Mrs. Robinson, a woman of entitlement and immense dissatisfaction who was an entire generation and world removed from Hoffman’s college-aged Benjamin Braddock. To this grand tradition of playing older, if not necessarily wiser, Jennifer Lawrence’s Rosalyn is certainly a worthy addition. I have no doubt that somewhere, on some astral plane where movies old and new are running on an endless cosmic loop, Barbara Stanwyck is watching her work, standing up, raising her arms and shouting, “You go, girl!”" -- Dennis Cozzalio



"I never thought I’d be praising the performance of “The Diceman” - that is, Andrew Dice Clay - in a motion picture, but then I never thought the former ‘80s shock comedian would be included in the cast of a Woody Allen film. But Allen’s films haven’t just been a haven for A-list stars over the years. I mean, sleazy ‘90s tabloid sensation Joey Buttafuoco had a cameo in Celebrity for Christ's sake! However, Clay’s appearance in last year’s Blue Jasmine was no fleeting cameo. Clay’s Auggie, the handyman ex-husband of Sally Hawkins, was a crucial character to the narrative, one that could be called the conscience of the film.

Cate Blanchett just won a well deserved Best Actress Oscar for her work in the title role, a deluded woman desperately trying to begin life anew. As it’s relayed in flashbacks, Blanchett’s corrupt investment banker hubby Alec Baldwin cheated on her and swindled countless people out of their money, among them Clay and Blanchett’s half-sister Hawkins who unwisely gave him their lottery winnings to invest. In the film’s present, Blanchett moves in with Hawkins in San Francisco, who has split from Clay. Clay’s has a key line, tailor made for the trailer, about the situation: “When your sister had all that money, she wanted nothing to do with you. Now that she’s broke, all of a sudden she’s movin’ in.”

Hawkins is now dating a mechanic (Bobby Cannavale), who Blanchett dismisses thinking he’s another version of Augie. She has a point - with his slick backed hair and arrogant swagger, Cannavale does indeed have the air of a younger model of “The Diceman.” (The Guardian’s John Patterson may have also had a point when he asked why is “Allen's San Francisco is so densely populated by goombah Noo Yawkers?”) Still, it’s a pungent contrast as Clay, with his gray-tinged receding hairline, has hardened from the eager and easily-impressed schlub that we see in flashbacks from a glitzy trip to Manhattan (Baldwin’s snake-eyed disdain for Clay in these scenes is delicious) into the blunt resentful guy that has aged way beyond tolerating Blanchett’s or his ex-wife’s bullshit any longer.

After a long chunk of the film that has to do with Blanchett taking up with Peter Sarsgaard's aspiring politician, Clay runs into our anti-heroine (?) on the streets of San Francisco as she shops for wedding rings with her new beau. Here, he has his character’s pivotal moment, in which he exposes her real background to Sarsgaard and even calls her out for her fake name: “Jeanette, Jasmine, whatever it is you call yourself these days.” He then goes on: “Some people, don’t put some things behind so easily,” then drags on his cigarette in what used to be a signature move but now means something quite different. Clay’s impact in this scene is significant enough to have Sarsgaard re-think his entire relationship with Blanchett.

Sure, Blanchett’s Jasmine (or Jeanette) can be seen as a total Blanche DuBois re-write, but when it comes to that final climatic confrontation, The Diceman’s streetwise laying it on the line transcends such Tennessee Williams-ish themes. That this kind of meaty might strengthening one of Allen's most substantial late films is coming from the guy whose most notable starring role was in the highly forgettable 1990 Renny Harlin action comedy The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is incredibly noteworthy indeed." -- Daniel Cook Johnson

2013 Muriels: Best Lead Performance (Female)

Every year, there's at least one winner I don't see coming at all. If you had asked me on December 31st who was going to win this category, I would have said Greta Gerwig without hesitation. And yet there she is, coming up short at fourth. Fourth! You crafty voters always find ways to keep me in suspense.

Third place:



Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine [143 points / 21 votes]

Second place:



Julie Delpy, Before Midnight [155 points / 25 votes]

And your winner...

2013 Muriels: Other Stuff We Loved, Pt. 1 (Ineligible Films)

Wanted to do something a little different to kick off the sidebar portion of our annual shenanigans, because every year there's a couple films that see voting action that, for one reason or another, are ineligible for consideration. Whether an issue with release dates, copyright dates or whether or not the film in question ever saw the inside of a theater, there's plenty of films out there that we can't vote for. Some of them, it turns out, are pretty good. Worth remembering, even. Here's a few of them.



""So I go shuffling out of life, just to hide in death awhile...and anyway I never lied." -Nick Cave-

If movies are their creators' brainchildren, The Consequences of Love is a cruel older sibling to The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino's most accomplished film to date. Like Beauty, Consequences is a character study in which classically-trained actor Toni Servillo plays a man trapped inside his head. In both films, Servillo's character has a vestigial romantic interest and a growing need to escape self-imposed exile. In fact, it's to Sorrentino's credit that he immediately abandons a subplot in Consequences wherein Servillo's Titta di Girolamo reveals that he's a heroin addict.

Still, because Sorrentino finds romance in solitude, The Consequences of Love is a one-man show. And in the moment that we meet Titta, he's on the verge of a major breakthrough. After years of losing himself in his menial work as a mob accountant, Titta realizes he can't stand his own company anymore. His isolation is no longer a blessing but a burden. And despite some whimsical, romance-fed notions of escape, Titta wants to die.

I used to think of The Consequences of Love as an update of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. Both stories are morbid fantasies about characters that, in a state of panic and extreme self-loathing, hope to find beauty outside themselves. More importantly, both stories are about older men that want to destroy themselves with a romantic flourish. Titta needs to believe his life makes sense, that he isn't just marking time in an Alpine hotel room. So he lies and tells himself that he has a friend halfway across the world that he's never seen, that he can steal money from his bosses. Titta doesn't need that money and knows he can't keep it. After a point, he realizes: he's going to rob the mob just because he can.

That's where Sorrentino's relatively callow interest lies: through deductive experience, Titta eventually realizes what he wants and why he wants it. Meaning: his daydream romance with Sofia (Olivia Magnani, Anna's granddaughter) teaches him that he wants to die a heroic death. So the film's title is, realistically, a feint. Titta's love for Sofia is so sublimated that she's only ever an idea to him. That chilly attitude is a uniquely Sorrentinian tic. He refuses to sentimentalize romance. Instead, he prefers romantics that don't care for material, earthy love. The same is true of the lead protagonist in The Great Beauty, and This Must Be the Place, and The Family Friend, too.

Sorrentino makes Titta's callousness an amoral fact of life. He doesn't judge him for it, but rather makes the viewer identify with that theoretically alien perspective. We see Titta's world through arresting, beguiling long takes and tracking shots that take us to parts unknown, making every other conversation, every trip down the hallway, every small action feel big. The world according to Consequences of Love is cold, momentous, still, and very beautiful." -- Simon Abrams



"ABCD: Any Body Can Dance follows the (extremely) basic structure of movies like Step Up, Honey and Save the Last Dance but injects it with the beautifully guileless energy of Bollywood masala. Anchored by a terrific performance by Prabhudeva (in a rare acting role; he's better known as an ace choreographer and director of blockbuster action movies) as a disgraced dance teacher who has to lead a ragtag group of kids from the wrong side of the tracks against the elite dance academy that cast him out, ABCD hits all the steps just right and features a jaw-dropping central dance sequence wherein Prabhudeva wins a dance-off to save his students. If the key to a good dance movie is the dancing, ABCD more than qualifies." -- Danny Bowes



"What do you do with the fundamental fact of Liberace? He was one of the most successful popular entertainers of the 20th Century — ubiquitous on TV talk shows, variety shows, including his own specials and series, touring constantly, and selling upwards of 60 million records. When he died in 1987, his net worth was estimated at $115 million. And what did he do? He played the piano. With incredible speed and dexterity, while dressed in bejeweled outfits that could weigh 100 pounds or more.

Behind the Candelabra, the HBO feature directed by Steven Soderbergh and scripted by Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King, Living Out Loud) that premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and played theatrically in Europe and Australia, understands, appreciates, sympathizes and embodies the tensions and contradictions that are the essence of Liberace’s tragic fabulousness: acute self-awareness and myopic self-deception, kitschy artifice and raw emotion, public adulation and private alienation, calculation and altruistic generosity, desire and consumption, innocence and decadence, narcissism and insecurity (which are, in fact, one and the same)... it’s all here in a giddy champagne cocktail that delivers a bubbly buzz followed, as Dean Martin famously crooned, by “a kick in the head.”

He was born Władziu Valentino Liberace, but his friends called him “Lee.” As Mr. Showmanship (Michael Douglas — outlandish without being cartoonish) gives young veterinary worker Scott Thorson (Matt Damon — never better in a much more challenging part) a tour of his Palm Springs home, he describes the decor (in an off-handedly practiced way, as if he were a guide at the Liberace Museum) as “palatial kitsch,” a humblebrag that speaks to both its over-the-top opulence and its tongue-in-cheek tackiness. But like Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu, it is an expression of its owner-occupant’s soul, his palace, his fortress, his dungeon.

What we see is a man who blazes his own path, works unbelievably hard and is fabulously skilled, performing what he called “the Reader’s Digest versions” of the lite classics repertoire, like the three minute and 17 second abridged/condensed version of Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto. His core audience was old ladies who thought of him as the ideal son (or grandson) — a boy of great warmth, graciousness, charm, humor and talent who always demonstrated his abiding love for his mother. Somehow, this audience managed to accept that he was also a flagrant homosexual caricature and absolutely deny it at the same time.

It’s a dazzling achievement, and its peculiar, conflicted sensibility — a blend of camp and pathos — reminds me of Todd Haynes’ Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. What starts off feeling like satire evolves into melodrama and finally achieves a surprising poignancy." -- Jim Emerson



"Room 237 has met with derision from some film critics and cinephiles, mostly because it's perceived as equating what its cast of characters do - obsessively looking for details to support their single-minded and far-fetched theories about Kubrick's The Shining - with legitimate film criticism. I don't believe this was director Rodney Ascher's intention, and he wisely neither legitimizes nor ridicules his subjects' theories. These theories - that Kubrick intended his adaptation of Stephen King's book to be a metaphor for the Holocaust or the Native American genocide, or his admission that he helped fake the Apollo 11 moon landing - are a way into exploring how a deliberately elusive work of art can inspire this sort of obsessive scrutiny and, more broadly, how a movie or any work of art we become fixated on becomes a part of us.

What I most appreciated about Room 237 (which was ineligible for the Muriels due to a brief Oscar-qualifying run in New York in December 2012) is the way Ascher assembles and juxtaposes clips not only from The Shining but Kubrick's other films as well as seemingly-unrelated movies like Lamberto Bava's Demons. It not only reminded me favorably of the '80s horror-movie doc Terror in the Aisles, it also serves as a brilliant representation of how we think about and make connections between the movies we see. At one point, I remarked to my girlfriend, "This is what the inside of my brain looks like." I was only half-serious, but I suspect (hope?) I'm not the only one who tends to assemble clip montages or video essays in his head. Ascher certainly seems to, and his film illustrates this wonderfully. The Shining is my favorite movie, so there was little chance that I wouldn't find Room 237 at least a little interesting, but it should be a lot of fun for anyone who has ever found themselves a bit lost in a movie." -- Andrew Bemis

2013 Muriels: Best Director

We're out of blowouts at this point - all the remaining categories were nothing if not competitive. Indeed, this category looked for a while like it could swing towards any one of the top five. That our winner eventually pulled ahead is no reflection on the runners-up. (Seriously, look at that score grouping.)

Third place:



Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave [97 points / 15 votes]

Second place:



Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity [101 points / 16 votes]

And your winner...