Movie Box Review

Moving on...

As we all know, last night was the Rise Of the Planet Of the Black-and-White Silent French People.  For some of us, this was not good news.  But there's always next year!  Which means this year.  So let's see what's on the horizon for the 2012 Academy Awards:

Harvey Weinstein seems to control the Academy like Angela Lansbury (or, more appropriately, Meryl Streep in the remake) after telling The Manchurian Candidate to play a little solitaire, making him the appropriate place to start.  The Weinstein Company will no doubt acquire some more titles as the year goes by (the company bought THE ARTIST shortly before Cannes last year), but here's his slate for now:

DJANGO UNCHAINED (currently slated to open Christmas Day, although dates so far out are always subject to change):  The return of Mr. Quentin Tarantino, good-luck charm of WeinsteinCorp.  Tarantino's never won--those who think the snub of last year's THE SOCIAL NETWORK was something new should look up 1994, the year FORREST GUMP swept away PULP FICTION--so could this be his year?  It combines the incendiary American topics of race and violence in a story about an escaped slave who gets vengeance on his vicious master, which means that even with a fabulous cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kurt Russell, Harvey has his work cut out for him.

Also potentially controversial--and the film least likely to get Tom Cruise's vote--is THE MASTER (currently unscheduled), the latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson, who's as brilliant as any filmmaker in the world today.  Anderson has danced with Oscar for THERE WILL BE BLOOD, but only Daniel Day-Lewis collected the gold.  Master is widely rumored to be a thinly-veiled saga about the rise of Scientology, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as the "L. Ron Hubbard" character, Joaquin Phoenix as his subordinate, and Amy Adams in the female lead.  In the universe of Hollywood, this subject matter is about as daring as it gets.

THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (November 21) seems on first glance to be more of a performance-award play, but who knows?  It's David O. Russell's follow-up to THE FIGHTER, about a teacher back in his real life after 4 years in a mental institution, and the stellar cast includes Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro, Jennifer Lawrence and past nominee Jacki Weaver.

The thriller COGAN'S TRADE (September 21) also seems on its face to be a less likely candidate.  However, it shouldn't be dismissed too quickly:  the film reunites Brad Pitt with his nothing-if-not-serious ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES director Andrew Dominik, and the opening date suggests the picture is aiming to premiere at one or more of the fall film festivals like Venice or Toronto.

There are, of course, other studios in the game besides Harvey Weinstein's, although few are as invested in the Oscar hunt.  Here are some of their likely candidates:

THE GREAT GATSBY (Warners - Christmas Day):  When they talk about "Oscar bait," this is what they mean.  Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of the classic stars Leonardo DiCaprio (again), Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire... and it's in 3D.

ARGO (Warners - September 14):  Another likely film festival premiere, from director Ben Affleck, whose THE TOWN had him on plenty of Oscar shortlists.  This one adds a political dimension, with a real-life story about an attempt to free Americans from Iran.

TWYLIGHT ZONES (Paramount - October 19):  David Chase?  You've heard of him?  Did a little show called The Sopranos?  His big-screen directing debut, which is also his first post-Sopranos piece of work, is an Oscar candidate by definition.

ANNA KARENINA (Focus - September 7):  Tolstoy may not quite be the level of big name as David Chase, but still.  An all-star group of filmmakers including director Joe Wright, screenwriter Tom Stoppard, and actors Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Kelly McDonald and Downton Abbey's beloved Michelle Dockery present that novel that was in Oprah's Book Club.

LES MISERABLES (Universal - December 7):  Thinking of big-time adaptations... KING'S SPEECH Oscar-winner Tom Hooper directs Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter and similarly classy folk in the giant musical of the year.

BIN LADEN:  DEAD OR ALIVE (Sony - December 21):  Kathryn Bigelow's follow-up to THE HURT LOCKER is a thriller with a terrific ensemble cast that includes Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Kyle Chandler, Nina Arianda and Edgar Ramirez.

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE (Warners - September 28): Clint, in another valedictory role, is always an Oscar possibilty.  He didn't direct this one, so maybe not a Best Picture favorite, but on paper his part as a baseball scout on the road for the last time could get him into the running for a long-awaited Best Actor nod.

NERO FIDDLED (Sony Classics - June 22):  Can Woody Allen double down on his MIDNIGHT IN PARIS bonanza with another foreign-set (Rome, this time) ensemble comedy?  Probably not, but no one saw Midnight coming, either.

THIS IS FORTY (Universal - December 21):  Another comedy auteur, this time Judd Apatow, with a lengthy comic-dramatic story about the sister and brother-in-law (Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann) of Katherine Heigl's character from KNOCKED UP.  No, don't look for Heigl to make an appearance (or, more surprisingly, Seth Rogen).

THE LIFE OF PI (20th - December 21):  It's taken a long time for Yann Martel's classy best-seller to get to the screen, but Ang Lee has finally done the job.

THE HOBBIT PART I  (Warners - December 14):  The last time Peter Jackson directed those little guys, it worked out pretty well.

It's a little unexpected that of all the films Clint Eastwood has directed, his new biography J. EDGAR most resembles The Bridges of Madison County.  Measured and mournful, the film, which opened the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles last night and opens nationwide next week, provides a superficial account of American politics over 50 years while favoring the story of an agonized love that dared not speak its name.

The title, of course, refers to J. Edgar Hoover, the first and only head of what became the FBI from the post-World War I era until Nixon was in the White House.  Hoover (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) was legendary for his iron-willed control of his agency and, behind the scenes, for his "private files" that supposedly contained the dirt on every public figure in the country, which he used unmercifully to blackmail everyone from Presidents on down to bend to his every command.

Dustin Lance Black's script (he wrote Milk) has a loose flashback structure that jumps from the 1960s, when Hoover is dictating his memoirs to a variety of junior G-men (including, disconcertingly, Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl) while obsessing over the sex tape he's recorded of Martin Luther King, Jr. (he thinks its existence will compel King to turn down the Nobel Peace Prize he's just won), to the early part of his career, especially his pursuit of anarchists and Bolsheviks in the 1920s and the investigation of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in the 1930s.  Along the way he builds and protects his power base, constantly increasing the bureau's budget and autonomy.

The emotional focus of the story, however, becomes Hoover's close relationship with his mother (Judi Dench), and his savagely repressed homosexual feelings for his closest aide, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer).  In the film, at least, Tolson wants the two of them to have a full-fledged romance, but Hoover, while obsessed with Tolson and keeping him close till the end of his life, is--at least in part because of his mother's brutal rejection of the very suggestion that he could be gay--unable to reciprocate, and even forces himself into relationships with occasional women.  The result is emotional torture that goes on for decades.

J. Edgar is an extremely odd movie, sometimes powerful but not really successful.  It's hardly news that a swift pace isn't part of Eastwood's repertoire as a director--when his material has a pulpy drive, like Mystic River or Grand Torino, that deliberate pace can bring a crushingly effective fatalism to the storytelling.  His historical pageants like Changeling, Flags of Our Fathers and Invictus, however, often just feel slow, and that's the case here; even with a half-century of dramatic material to choose from, the pace is often glacial.

Eastwood is also famous for not favoring a great deal of script development--if he reads something he likes, he just films it, more or less as is.  In this case, Black's screenplay needed some more work.  Huge swaths of American history are summed up in bite-sized pellets with little or no explanation (you'll get a better idea of Hoover's role in the pursuit of Depression-era bank robbers by watching Billy Crudup as a young J. Edgar in Michael Mann's Public Enemies).  Although intellectually one can see how Hoover's use of massive, unchecked power against perceived threats ties into concerns about revenge and the justification for violence that have always fascinated Eastwood, as presented here they have little force or complexity. 

Hoover had to have been an immensely complicated man, both hero and monster, able to function at the highest levels of political strategy but also an uncomfortable outsider, but the figure portrayed in the film exists in a narrow band of ambition, repression and panic.  (While we see his obsession with King, there's no consideration of any feelings he may have had about race--it's all subordinated to Hoover conflating what he sees as King's aberrant sexual behavior to his dread of his own desires.)  All of this constricts DiCaprio's performance--it's hard to imagine him getting the Oscar for this role.  He ends up re-using mannerisms from his (better) Howard Hughes in The Aviator, and looking generally agonized.  Secondary characters are even thinner--to describe Naomi Watts's role as "loyal secretary" is to say absolutely everything there is about her character (there's an early scene where she expresses that she has her own ambitions, but we never learn anything else about her after that).  And although Hammer is the most human character in the story as Tolson, since he's the only one who gets to express his emotions, mostly all he does is cast despairing and disapproving glances in Hoover's direction.

Stylistically, J. Edgar almost looks and feels like an imitation of Eastwood's house style:  Tom Stern's photography drained to an almost monochromatic consistency; spare plinking piano keys for music; editing by Joel Cox and Gary Roach that is never in a rush.  The old-age make-up on DiCaprio is fairly successful, but Watts and Hammer look mummified.

In an era where Hollywood has almost abandoned the concept of serious adult biography, the fact that Eastwood is still out there making movies like J. Edgar is nothing but admirable, and the film's final act, in which Hoover wrestles both with his legacy and his (apparently) never-realized love for Tolson, is sometimes quite moving.  In the end, though, it doesn't come to much more than warmed-over Brokeback Mountain with a lot of prosthetics, and Hoover's monumental, unsettled place in American history merited more than that.

Deadline reports that Warners has set the release schedule for its 2 Oscar contenders.  Clint Eastwood's biography of FBI patriarch (and cross-dresser) J. EDGAR, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, is opening November 9 in a few big cities, with wide release on November 11; and EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE, the Stephen Daldry-directed 9/11 drama with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, begins limited release on Christmas Day.  Both are apparently bypassing the Fall film festival circuit.

Eastwood's film has no competition for the prestige audience when it opens--the other pictures that weekend are the 300 ripoff Immortals and Jack & Jill, which looks bad even for an Adam Sandler movie.  But the Hanks/Bullock film will be facing off against the thick of holiday season, sharing its weekend with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Cameron Crowe's We Bought A Zoo, and Angelina Jolie's In the Land of Blood and Honey, not to mention Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin and the new Mission:  Impossible.  

Let the games begin...