Other Stuff We Loved, Part 3: Miscellany

Before we begin the countdown, here's a few more things we wanted to talk about:



Direction: Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island

"A detective, haunted by his past and by the loss of the woman he loved, spirals into obsession and madness. An investigation, revealing layers of conspiracy that may or may not exist solely in the detective’s head. A director, not well-known for his empathy, turning a potentially silly psychological thriller into a heartbreaking fever dream via pure-cinema expressionism.

Sound familiar? When Vertigo very deservedly won our prize for best film of the 1950s, I doubt anyone was surprised, given its pedigree as a canonical masterpiece. But of course it wasn’t always so beloved, originally receiving plenty of criticism for being preposterous and overwrought. Last year, much similarly misguided criticism was leveled at Martin Scorsese’s masterful Shutter Island. Even a number of the film’s defenders seemed somehow apologetic: “Sure, it’s stupid, but...”

No hedging here: Shutter Island isn’t stupid. It certainly could have been, had it been adapted by a director who treated it as a straightforward trick film. Scorsese is not that director, and Shutter Island is not some trashy work-for-hire. It’s messy and deeply personal, exploring Scorsese’s pet themes of violence, self-destruction, and guilt. Teddy Daniels (Leonard DiCaprio), tortured by what he saw and did during World War II, accepts an assignment at a mental asylum in order to get closer to the man who set the apartment fire that killed Teddy’s wife.

In so doing, he discovers some pretty dark secrets, including the film’s ultimate twist, which should come as a surprise to practically no one. A lot of viewers got hung up on the twist’s predictability, missing that Scorsese isn’t remotely interested in surprising anyone. Teddy’s mental state doesn’t recode the movie; it IS the movie, from the first frame to the last. The bold, gorgeous cinematography, the sets and lighting, the deliberately phony rear projection, the carefully stylized performances -— they all evoke Teddy’s nightmare, his despair and self-harm absorbed and reflected by Scorsese’s style. The ending doesn’t pull the rug out from under the audience, it pulls it out from under Teddy, as he is forced to come to terms with what we’ve known all along. The film’s last line -— among the most humane, heartbreaking moments in Scorsese’s entire oeuvre —- grants Teddy a measure of grace as he heads off to the lighthouse that stands in for Vertigo’s bell tower, a tragic image of things lost, never to be recovered." - Matt Noller



Body of Work: Andrew Garfield

"While the ballots don’t reflect it, I’m sure some Muriels participants (myself included) were tempted to vote for Andrew Garfield for Best Cinematic Breakthrough, as that was certainly the narrative that Hollywood wanted to convey. There’s no doubt that 2010 was the year in which he became a household name -- or at least took the greatest leap of his career toward that status -- starring in two major motion pictures and getting cast as the next Spider-Man. But not only would labeling Garfield a sudden “breakthrough” do a disservice to his flooring prior performance in 2008’s Boy A, it would also discredit what an seasoned pro he’s already become.

In both The Social Network and Never Let Me Go, Garfield plays a good guy whose humanity is trounced upon by complex, towering organizations. One of said organizations has a face -- the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who arguably backstabbed Garfield’s Eduardo Saverin out of an executive role in the Internet’s third-largest company. Many have commented on The Social Network’s vaguely Rashomon-esque structure, which reflects all three sides of the Facebook legal debacle, and perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Garfield’s performance is how well it serves this. Regardless of the film’s factual accuracy, Garfield, like his co-stars, is true to his character in that he fleshes out every level of complexity inherent to the premise, thus working toward a work of the utmost artistic fidelity. Did Eduardo get screwed, or was he the uncreative benefactor of a huge settlement merely because he put up a meager business investment? Garfield creates such a human character that the viewer is able to clearly consider these core questions without distraction -- no small feat in a modern thought-piece like The Social Network.

In Never Let Me Go, the institution that Garfield’s Tommy is at odds with is, by contrast, faceless and ominous -- an alternate-reality 20th Century British government that produces clones to be harvested for organs, boosting the average age of “real” people over 100. It is an incredibly complex role in that Tommy, growing up at a boarding school full of fellow clones, was constantly told how to think, act, and feel... and yet, at the same time, the movie demands that the viewer recognize that he is a person, just like anyone else, and that his predetermined fate marks an injustice committed in the name of an immorally utilitarian ideal. Garfield is riveting as Tommy’s emotional instincts progressively overpower his conditioning, culminating to a third-act eruption that, in lesser hands, could have come across as melodramatic and phony. But Garfield propels Never Let Me Go into gut-churning tragedy, never losing sight of the preciousness and fragility of humanity. It is a stunning performance.

(It should be noted that Garfield also starred in the first of three Red Riding films, which I criminally missed. Given you probably didn’t see it either, I should note that the entire trilogy is now available for us to stream in HD on Netflix Instant Watch.)" - Danny Baldwin



Direction: Lee Unkrich, Toy Story 3

"The mere fact that director Lee Unkrich didn’t drop the ball on Toy Story 3 deserves credit. After all, trilogies are tough to pull off. The curse of diminishing returns have laid waste to godfathers, aliens, Jedis, spider-men and even supermen over the years.

Add that TS3 is a product of Pixar Studios: Home of Animation, Critical Acclaim and Guaranteed Profit. The roll that Pixar has been on over the last decade becomes more impressive with each added success story. However, as Cal Ripken, Jr. can attest, streaks don’t last forever. And trying to continue a streak with a story about a college-bound kid who values his childhood toys perhaps more than getting laid... well, let’s just say it was going to be challenging.

Facing these pressures, Unkrich was handed the keys to Pixar’s longest-running series. He responded by delivering the best film of the series. As veteran editor of the first two Toy Story installments, he understood how important it was to balance the film with humor and action against the utter despair felt by the toys. Heck, “despair” isn’t really strong enough, as the toys experience abandonment, betrayal, physical pain and, in the Cinematic Moment of the Year, the threat of incineration.

Pretty heady stuff for a G-rated family vehicle, but it works, thanks to a great script, and Unkrich’s vision and ability to coordinate animators, technicians and actors toward that vision. In the meantime, Unkrich and crew provide some of the most gut-wrenching and memorable sequences in recent film history. By the film’s fiery climax and subsequent killer denouement, I’d completely forgotten that Woody, Buzz and the bunch were only virtual representations of toys and not actual beings. I stopped being in awe of the visuals and became absorbed in the overwhelming fear, exhilaration and ultimate joy shared between characters and audience.

In closing, I commend Lee Unkrich for keeping the streak alive. I also thank him for giving me a funny dance sequence over the end credits to give me time to compose myself in front of my children." - Patrick Williamson



Breakthrough: Chloë Moretz

"There’s a lot of good to say about Chloë Moretz’s turn as Angie in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Actually, I’m just guessing, because I didn’t see it, but if her other releases this year are any indication, I’ll bet she stole a scene or two.
More memorably to Muriels voters, there’s her turn as Hit Girl in Kick-Ass, which will likely become the more popular of her two greater performances in 2010. It’s a splendid piece of acting, making the unlikeliest of individuals, a young contemporary American girl, into a superhero killer more Punisher than Elektra. Though I counted myself among the film’s detractors, Moretz’s performance is too striking to go unrecognized -- a devilishly complex piece of acting, infusing her cartoonish death machine with the bright-faced, bubbly girlishness we more commonly associate with our youth. Even as Matthew Vaughn’s film treats life wholly like meat to be fed into a grinder, Moretz manages to wind up the film’s unintentional protagonist, the character most deserving of our sympathy and attention.

Of course, that’s not all. Like another great performance by a child actress this year (Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit), Moretz finds fruit in tread ground as Let Me In’s vampire Abby. Here, Moretz has all sorts of jobs at once, as:

1. Playing an ancient entity trapped in a child’s body
2. Playing a monstrous aberration, consumed by hideous needs and impulses
3. Walking that cinematic high-wire of demanding empathy while her character brutalizes innocent victims

And wouldn’t you know it -- young Moretz pulls off all three. Whereas Hit Girl kills for fun and revenge, Abby feeds like an animal, and Moretz is the linchpin of the film’s tone, practically breathing down the neck of every scene, making an immortal creature equal parts pathetic, tragic, and dangerous. Her finest achievement with Abby is hard to spot, as she imbues the fiend with an insidious seductiveness -- a necessity when one needs to operate with a “keeper,” a tradition that has likely endured since long before the story takes place. She knows we’re not to root for or against Abby, but to pity her, even while we spot the physical and emotional ruin she wreaks.

So, in the past year she’s not only stole two films, but did so with dark, complex performances that suggest extraordinary wisdom for an actor of any age? If one can’t call such an explosive and memorable entrance onto the cinematic map a breakthrough, then you must not know the meaning of the word." - James Frazier

Cinematography: The Social Network



"Regardless of what you think about this year's critical darling, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network, it's difficult to argue it isn't an atmospheric and brooding picture. Fincher reunites with Seven cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth to capture the icy (both literally and figuratively) story about a True American Thief, Mark Zuckerberg, and his path to raking in more money than you or I or several countries would ever see in a lifetime.

Cronenweth's resume is not as impressive as I originally thought. He's been working for years, but it's been spotty: he's helped out technically-sound Mark Romanek on several music videos and shot Peyton Reed's sprightly Down with Love. The Social Network, I'm guessing, will make him an in-demand workhorse. I've been in a few dorm rooms (don't ask) and at a few parties (don't ask) and in a couple legal offices in my day (no, really ... don't ask), and none have ever seemed as wonderfully grim and moody as the locales captured by the well-regarded RED digital camera, which may not be exactly as 'sharp' as 35mm, but when you're making a movie about the alienating effects of modern technology, shouldn't you be using modern technology to reinforce that point?

When I first watched the film, via a cam-recorded bootleg (how apropos), I chalked up the seemingly dim interiors to the inferior quality of the copy. I made a point to revisit the movie once it came out on BluRay, and I was mightily impressed with the way Cronenweth captures the gray-ness of (what's supposed to pass for) Cambridge ... and even makes California look like it could use less cloud cover. This is not a tale about the warmth of person-to-person interaction: it's about the need for more IKEA lamps for the soul." - Matthew Lotti