The American President
American President, The (1995)
★★★ / ★★★★
Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas), president of the United States, was up for a possible re-election within a year’s time. His team (Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox) believed that by passing a bill, vaguely designed to reduce crime, there was a great chance that he could win another term. But when he met Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening), hired to get the president’s attention toward a bill aimed to protect the environment, he was swept by her radiance, intelligence, and fearlessness to speak what was on her mind. Senator Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss), the leading conservative figure who had shown interest in running for presidency, took advantage of the budding romance and started to question the president’s character and accused Sydney of being a radical because of a picture taken thirteen years ago. Written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Rob Reiner, “The American President” was a romantic comedy for adults. While the material milked the obvious, like the first few scenes designed to paint the president as not only an amiable person in the work place but also an active figure in his daughter’s life, it was highly entertaining because of the smart dialogue and wonderful performances. In romance pictures, I always look the moment when one or both persons realize that they just might be falling for each other. There was a wonderful scene in the Oval Office when Bening scrambled to find the words to express how embarrassed she was for insulting the president. As she attempted to clean up her verbal vomit, Douglas gave her a specific look, which lasted for about half a second, that meant she was the one for him. As for Bening, I’m used to seeing her in intense performances so it was nice to watch her let her hair down and smile from ear to ear. She was completely captivating as a smart and strong woman who was rendered defenseless by the president’s charm. She could have played her character as a typical ditz throughout the film but as the couple got more comfortable with each other, we saw how passionate and serious she was about her work. As the events turned for the worse, reflected by rainy weather, scenes shot at night and bad poll results, the issue of public versus private space came into focus. While Andrew and Sydney were a great match romantically, there was growing tension between them politically. We even start to think that maybe it was good idea for them to not be together for a while. It gives me great annoyance when I read reviews claiming that the movie was terrible because it was nothing but liberal propaganda. They completely missed the point. The romance was supposed to be the foreground and the politics the background. It might have been Capra-esque in scope of how the government really worked, but there was confidence in its execution and we invested in the couple to make it through the end. Sometimes that’s just exactly what we need.
If I Picked the Winners for Oscar 2011
Achievement in Directing
[ ] Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan)
[ ] David O. Russell (The Fighter)
[ ] Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech)
[x] David Fincher (The Social Network)
[ ] Joel and Ethan Coen (True Grit)
Adapted Screenplay
[ ] 127 Hours (Simon Beaufoy and Danny Boyle)
[x] The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin)
[ ] Toy Story 3 (Michael Arndt, story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich)
[ ] True Grit (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
[ ] Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik and Anne Rossellini)
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
[ ] Christian Bale (The Fighter)
[ ] John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone)
[ ] Jeremy Renner (The Town)
[ ] Mark Ruffalo (The Kids are All Right)
[x] Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech)
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
[ ] Javier Bardem (Biutiful)
[ ] Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)
[x] Colin Firth (The King’s Speech)
[ ] James Franco (127 Hours)
[ ] Jeff Bridges (True Grit)
Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
[ ] How to Train Your Dragon
[ ] The Illusionist
[x] Toy Story 3
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
[ ] Amy Adams (The Fighter)
[ ] Helena Bonham Carter (The King’s Speech)
[ ] Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
[x] Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
[ ] Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
[x] Annette Bening (The Kids are All Right)
[ ] Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole)
[ ] Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone)
[ ] Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
[ ] Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine)
Achievement in Cinematography
[ ] Black Swan (Matthew Libatique)
[x] Inception (Wally Pfister)
[ ] The King’s Speech (Danny Cohen)
[ ] The Social Network (Jeff Cronenweth)
[ ] True Grit (Roger Deakins)
[ ] Achievement in Costume Design
[ ] Alice in Wonderland (Colleen Atwood)
[ ] I Am Love (Antonella Cannarozzi)
[ ] The King’s Speech (Jenny Beaven)
[ ] The Tempest (Sandy Powell)
[ ] True Grit (Mary Zophres)
Original Screenplay
[ ] Another Year (Mike Leigh)
[ ] The Fighter (Paul Attanasio, Lewis Colich, Eric Johnson, Scott Silverand Paul Tamasy)
[x] Inception (Christopher Nolan)
[ ] The Kids are All Right (Stuart Blumberg and Lisa Cholodenko)
[ ] The King’s Speech (David Seidler)
Best Motion Picture of the Year
[ ] Black Swan
[ ] The Fighter
[x] Inception
[ ] The Kids are All Right
[ ] The King’s Speech
[ ] The Social Network
[ ] 127 Hours
[ ] Toy Story 3
[ ] True Grit
[ ] Winter’s Bone
Mother and Child
Mother and Child (2009)
★★★★ / ★★★★
“Mother and Child,” written and directed by Rodrigo García, followed three women concerning their stories about having a child and sometimes having the giving up the child. Karen (Annette Bening) gave up her daughter for adoption when she was fourteen years old. Over the years, still single and now embittered, the relationship between Karen and her ailing mother became unbearably awkward. They lived together but they rarely said a word to each other. Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), the child Karen gave up for adoption, was now a successful lawyer. Despite having a great career and being independent, she wasn’t happy because deep inside she had feelings of not being wanted so she constantly felt the need to prove herself. Lucy (Kerry Washington) and her husband had been trying to conceive for years but to no avail. With the help of Sister Joanne (Cherry Jones), they tried to adopt a baby. The film was driven by exceptional performances. I loved the way the characters had an unpredictable way of deflecting and accepting certain comments that might be construed as snide by an outside party especially when the issue of adoption was brought up. The three leading characters were explored during their sensitive tipping points. The way they responded to the challenges presented to them (or the ones they created for themselves for a chance to self-sabotage) did not feel like a Lifetime movie or an after school special that involved learning a lesson or finding a comfortable place. I appreciated the fact that the picture placed more importance in examining their inner demons and what made the characters so broken that they seemed irreparable. Furthermore, it avoided typicalities in plot. The story was not driven by a syrupy mother-daughter reunion. Instead, the characters spent the majority of the time fighting their own battles. Even though they weren’t necessarily people who we could along with upon first meeting, like Karen who demanded too much from everyone, we couldn’t help but root for them to find some sort of happiness because we could relate to them in some way. My mom was adopted. Every time I asked her about being adopted, she would directly answer my questions whether they be about how she was brought up by her adoptive parents, when she found out about the fact, and if she ever attempted to find her biological parents but, no matter how much she tried to hide it (sometimes with a smile), I could still feel a small amount of sadness in her responses. To some extent, I could relate to the women in this film because I wanted to know my bloodline and possibly the family and many personalities I never got a chance to meet. I could only imagine how it must be like if I was the one given up for adoption. “Mother and Child” looked the issue in the eye and brought up intelligent and mature questions. It’s a gem.
Being Julia
Being Julia (2004)
★★★ / ★★★★
Julia Lambert (played brilliantly by Annette Bening) was a great theater actress. She was so great, she could not stop acting even though she was not on strage. Most people around her saw her life as nothing but glamorous and fans craved to be around her either for the fame, money, or to advance their careers. This made her bitter and depressed; not even her husband (Jeremy Irons) was sensitive enough to realize that she was overworked and on the verge of breakdown. So when she met a significantly younger American admirer (Shaun Evans) who seemed to genuinely care for her, she decided to take a risk and allowed herself to fall in love with him. I thought the movie took its time to build the rage inside of Julia and it only really started to pay off toward its halfway point. Furthermore, the appearance of Julia’s dead mentor (Michael Gambon) was a big distraction for me, especially when the film did not establish their relationship prior. Although I have to say that the second half was very engaging because we eventually saw who the characters really were and their true intentions. Despite Julia’s sometimes tiresome histrionics, I came to understand why she was angry. Everyone believed that she was on the top of her game but at the end of the day she was the one looking at herself in the mirror and noticing her age show and health deteriorate. She did not know how to deal with the fear of becoming considered as past her prime and lacking a genuine support system did not help her increasingly desperate situation. The only true person in her life was her son (Tom Sturridge–quickly becoming one of my favorite actors) but he was always away. I was in love with the scene when he knocked on her mother’s door, found her crying, and made the decision to share something really personal with her–something that even I am not sure I can share with my parents no matter how close we are. The implications in that scene were rewarding because they were open to interpretation. That scene was special because the look and feel of that scene was a nice contrast to the scenes involving the lies and deceit of showbiz. The last few scenes impressed me because it truly encapsulated Julia’s perspective–the theater was when she felt home and and the real world was just an acting class. It was so bittersweet and I finally saw how strong she was even though she could turn on and off her tears at the drop of a hat. “Being Julia,” based on the novel “Theatre” by W. Somerset Maugham and directed by István Szabó, sometimes felt elegantly cold but it was eventually able to open up and show its warmth. It had strong performances especially by Bening and Sturridge and I wished that the two had more scenes that explored the crucial mother-son relationship.
In Dreams
In Dreams (1999)
★★★ / ★★★★
The movie started off with a breathtaking tour of a town submerged in water that Claire (Annette Bening) saw in her dreams. She also had dreams of a little girl who was kidnapped by a man (Robert Downey Jr.) who lived in a place full of apples. Obsessed with the details of her dreams because they came true before, her own daughter was eventually kidnapped and she had to find a way to get to the man who kidnapped her child while trying to persuade her husband (Aidan Quinn) and psychiatrist (Stephen Rea) that her dreams were real. Even though the movie asked its audiences to take a leap of faith time and again about visions eventually becoming reality and strange coincidences, I could not help but get really into the story because of the way Bening invested in her character. I mean the following as a compliment but she made a very convincing crazy person when she eventually was sent to a mental hospital. I was entertained with how some scenes were supposed to be scary or haunting but they had strong hints of comedy and even tragedy. I liked that quality because although I knew where the story was going, it still managed to surprise in small ways so I did not lose interest. Neil Jordan fascinates me as a director because of the masterful way he balances elements of surrealism and realism. I noticed he would play with the extremes but there would come a point when it became difficult to discern what was real or what was fantasy. In other movies, I am usually aware of the intermediates of the extremes. What I was not very excited about, however, was how useless some of the characters were which negatively impacted the movie’s middle portion. I saw the cops and the psychiatrist as mere distractions or hindrances instead of figures that genuinely tried to help the main character. It was one of those horror movie clichés that just did not work and I grew frustrated with the material because I knew that the director was more than capable of doing something completely different with his characters like in one of his films called “The Butcher Boy.” Since the movie was based on the novel “Doll’s Eyes” by Bari Wood, perhaps Jordan was just trying to remain loyal to the book. Nevertheless, when adapting a novel to film, there should always be an artistic leeway in which the writers could tweak certain aspects in order to avoid the obvious. Upon its release, “In Dreams” did not receive good reviews which I thought was understandable because it tried to do something different in terms of not everything making complete sense in the end. I thought it worked because we don’t necessarily understand our dreams at times and I believe Jordan was deliberate in leaving certain strands unsolved.
The Kids Are All Right
Kids Are All Right, The (2010)
★★★ / ★★★★
The kids (Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson) of a lesbian couple, Nic and Jules (Annette Bening, Julianne Moore), tried to search for Paul, their biological father (Mark Ruffalo), in hopes of finding more about where they came from. The situation did not sit well with Nic because she felt like she would slowly lose her family. On the other hand, Jules felt a little attraction toward Paul. It is too easy to label this as a “lesbian movie” because of the parents but the film is really more about family dynamics and how it changed when a new factor was added in the equation. I thought it was realistic in portraying the ups and downs of being in an imperfect family but the lessons that were learned or not learned did not feel like it something out of an after school special. The material wasn’t afraid to let the characters make mistakes and live with those mistakes until they couldn’t hold onto their secrets any longer. I enjoyed the way it framed parenting, that most of the time there is no “good” parenting or “bad” parenting but just a couple of adults trying to do their best to make their specific situation work. Bening and Moore were a joy to watch. Even though they kept their performances relatively simple, they were able to deliver the big emotions at the perfect small moments. I really felt like they’ve been together for many years so the way they got under each other’s skin and the way they would mend the wounds from the verbal daggers they threw at each other felt painfully realistic. I also loved the scenes when they would just talk about their past because they were able to paint vivid images in my head. I wish the picture had more scenes of them just talking to each other at home or having a nice dinner date in the city instead of the scenes with the son and his friend that did not amount to anything substantial. The side story about the daughter about to head off to college was a bit underdeveloped as well. However, the picture was consistently strong whenever Moore and Bening were on screen which was the majority of the time. I’ve heard some concerns from the lesbian community involving the film portraying lesbians as way too uptight. I think it’s an unnecessary concern because the lesbians are specific only to this movie and it does not make any generalizations about all lesbians in the world. It’s a story about a family’s bond and it should left as such. Written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, “The Kids Are All Right” told its story involving the difficulties of transitioning with wit, focus, and brevity. It had a nice mix of charming characters and it had a good sense of balance with its comedic and dramatic elements which most audiences will likely enjoy.
The Women
Women, The (2008)
★★ / ★★★★
I was really excited when I first saw the preview for this movie but that all excitement was taken away after I read a plethora of bad reviews upon its release. However, I still wanted to watch it because of the four lead actresses: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith. Reading those egregious reviews actually helped because if I had seen this film with high expectations, I think I would’ve been more disappointed. Even though this film offers nothing new to subgenre of women’s relationships and point of views, it had some good ideas but they were never fully explored. One of the things that I liked most about the film was Ryan’s relationship with her daughter (played by India Ennenga) and friends. However, I feel like Benning was on screen a lot more which is unfortunate because Messing and Smith’s storylines are much more light-hearted and comedic. Still, Benning’s storyline was essential to the story; a woman and her career is important to any feminist projects. Since this movie is about two hours, I felt like Diane English, the director, had more than enough time to focus on each friend. The fact that there was no men that could be found in this film may sound unbelievable but I actually didn’t mind it that much. I completely accepted the fact that this film wanted to focus on women’s issues. There are myriads of films that focus on men (despite women’s apperances in the background) so why shouldn’t there be a film that tries to turn that whole idea around? A lot of people make a big deal about this whole “not having men in the movie” idea but when women are invisible in moving pictures, it is often ignored or is considered as a norm. However, what I disliked most about this film was when it tried to be funny. I hated it when the soundtrack would be heard whenever something “funny” happens. To me, it suggests that filmmakers are afraid that the audiences may not understand that something amusing is going on so they constantly need to add that “This is funny!” cue. That lack of confidence is a big negative on my book, especially when this film took a long time to get made. Instead of being inspired to take risks, it ultimately succumbed to the genre’s conventions.
The Signal, American Beauty, One Missed Call
Signal, The
[ 1 star out of 4 ]
The beginning was engaging because it was actually terrifying: a city gone crazy because of some mysterious signal eminating from telephones, television, and radio without any means of escape. I felt like I was right there with the heroine when everyone started to kill each other. However, after thirty minutes, it quickly went downhill because it couldn’t find its footing regarding its tone. The middle portion was labyrinthine because of two things: the violence being used as a form of amusement and the way that the filmmakers would play with the audiences’ perception. Regarding the former, I’m a fan of dark humour but this film had gone too far. At first it was funny but it quickly became downright degrading and borderline torture porn. If they had stayed with minimal violence and blood just for laughs (about five to ten minutes), it would have been okay. As for the latter, I don’t think it’s a good idea to explicitly trick the audience again and again and again because they eventually feel cheated and give up trying to put everything together. This is completely different from twist endings because twist endings involve one complete pay-off. Tricks, on the other hand, is presenting something false as real and switching them around miltiple times until the audiences get sick of it because it’s so confusing. Unfortunately, this movie is a big example of the latter and it just fell apart. It’s too bad because it has such a great premise. Instead of going straight for the horror, it delved into comedy. Instead of making the whole apocalypse as a global issue, it chose to be more personal and claustrophobic. I cannot recommend this to anyone because it is incredibly frustrating to watch.
American Beauty
[ 3 stars out of 4 ]
I understand why some people could be a bit put off by this film. At first glance, it may seem like nothing much happens, but when one really looks into it, it’s like watching the inside mechanisms of a volcano about to erupt and causing unimaginable destruction. This definitely reminded me of “Desperate Housewives” in its finest dark humour. When characters are miserable, it’s so funny because of the way they react to the seemingly smallest disturbances of their perfect lives. Kevin Spacey is incendiary in this film because he’s able to capture a suburban father who is sick of his family and his own self-image. Annette Bening is so entertaining to watch, especially during her freak-outs (which ironically are her most human scenes) when things do not go the way she expects them to. Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, and Mena Suvari did exceptional work as teenagers on the borderline of rebellion; they hide behind physical beauty, art, or yearning for acceptance. I love the ongoing theme of outside appearances because it’s so applicable to our every day lives. The film takes note that point of view is crucial, especially if one sees or hears something on the outside, without fully examining the inner workings. This theme happens with the characters’ inner thoughts and observable actions… which could also be seen inside and outside the home. This film is extremely multi-layered and will definitely reward those who are willing to watch more than once.
One Missed Call (2008)
[ 1 star out of 4 ]
This was really hard to sit through because nothing made sense. I rarely say that about movies but this one felt like it was filmed for three days. I felt like the filmmakers didn’t even try to make a good movie. The visual effects were corny, the thrills were not present, and the characters were thick. The film immediately jumped to the scares, which was not an effective move because the audiences were not yet invested in the characters. In order words, it was hard to care. I usually like Shannyn Sossamon but even she couldn’t carry this picture. I keep picking my brain to come up with one good thing about the movie but I can’t recall one. I was bored from beginning to end; half-way through, I wanted to do something else (and I did while the movie was on). I just wish that Americans would stop remaking Japanese horror movies and come up with their own. This is really an embarrassment of the horror genre. I want to forget about it, but so darn bad. Stay away from this picture as far as you possibly can. It’s a waste of time.
