Moneyball ( Bennett Miller, 2011- The United States)
Bennett Miller's sophomore feature is certainly not a
slump. The film is strong all around and Brad Pitt gives a great
performance as Billy Beane. Jonah Hill gives a good supporting
performance and in the few minutes of screen time he has, Philip Seymour
Hoffman shines. The script by Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian is strong,
but slightly flawed. The daughter character seems completely unnecessary
and annoying. The character might be a flaw of the screenplay or maybe a
product of poor final editing. Also, the film is overly sentimental, but
I'm not sure this is a negative because baseball itself is an overly
sentimental sport. Importantly, while he may not be getting the press of
Sorkin or Pitt, Miller directs the heck out of Moneyball and gives us a
good notion that he will remain a strong prestige based director.
Grade: B
The Dilemma (Ron Howard, 2011- The United States)
The Dilemma is an utter and complete disaster and easily the worst film I've seen of 2011. That being said, it is important to note that the movie may not be a failure for Ron Howard. Rumor is that he had little say in his direction which is indicative of Vince Vaughan's producing credits. Howard's recent films have flopped at the box office, with the exception of the Angels and Demons/ The Da Vinci Code franchise, and these failures led Universal to be much more stricter with Howard leading to rise of Vaughan's role in the film's production and direction.
The movie stars Vince Vaughan with Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly, Winona Wyder, Channing Tatum, and Queen Latifah in supporting roles. Vaughan, James, and Latifah are absolutely dreadful in their respective roles. Vaughan is again playing himself as a over-talkative moron. The editing and screenplay are both rather appalling as well. Supporting characters seem to pop up mid film and there is little explanation for their role in plot points. This could have been fixed with better editing. Also, a subplot of Vince Vaugahn's character going through gambling cold turkey is suddenly thrown into the movie and is rather uninteresting. The dialogue is a mess as some of it rests on gay jokes and sex. For example, one quote from the Queen Latifah's character is "I want to have sex with your words. I want to band you brain" and another is "That's why my lady wood is so strong". These quotes show the inability of the film to rely on actual humor or drama and instead rely on stupid dialogue and completely unlikeable characters. The movie was not funny at all, even though it tried to be. It wants to be a bromance at one point, a comedy at another, and a relationship drama the rest of the time.
Ron Howard should have walked out of this movie based. I'm not sure why he didn't. If he didn't like the way it was going and the need for Vaughan's cash backing, he should have left. Ultimately the film only made 48 million dollars in the US, and 69 million dollars worldwide. It cost 75 million dollars to make. Yet again Ron Howard has another box office failure. Maybe he should have stuck to his guns and directed a good movie (or a movie he wanted) instead of caving into studio pressure.
Grade: F
The Conspirator (Robert Redford, 2011- The United States)
Robert Redford's The Conspirator premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2010 to mildly positive reviews. It picked up a distributor thanks to its cast and director but it was not positioned to run for the Oscars and instead dropped into late Spring. This maneuvering quieted all of the buzz on the film and most prognosticators quickly wrote the film of its list. It finally was released earlier this year to again average reviews. All in all, The Conspirator is just that, average. Nothing in particular stands out about the film. It provides some insight into law, politics, and history, but even that isn't much. Redford, being the activist that he is, tries to compare the situation of Mary Surratt to the Guantanamo Bay precedings. These comparisons are apt and don't come across as too heavy handed.
The film also features a strong cast including Patricia Clarkson, James McAvoy, Tom Wilkinson, Evan Rachel Wood, among others. All are good in their roles, but none really stand out and none of the performances are too memorable. If I had to choose one however, Patricia Clarkson does gives some emotional gravitas to her character of Mary Surratt. The film somewhat reminded me of The Crucible because of its themes and its style, but The Crucible has something which sets it apart from this movie: great acting from Daniel Day-Lewis, Joan Allen, and Paul Scofield.
Grade: C+
Miral (Julian Schnabel, 2010- France, 2011- The United States)
In Miral, Julian Schnabel tries to present an unbiased view of the Palestinian situation in the Middle East. Ultimately he fails to do so because of poor editing and a bad screenplay. The plot takes twists and turns interesecting the lives of four women who are all very much connected, most being related to each other or having spent long periods of time with the others. There is no real main character, even though Miral, play by Frieda Pinto, is the title character. At the same time, the movie is not an ensemble work either. It opens with the line "My Name is Miral", but then progresses directly toward the character of Hind. Two other major charactes are introduced before we meet Miral. Instead, a flashback structure would have been much more efficient and may have created more emotion investment into the characters.
There are too many plot lines beside the four main women characters. The character of Miral is introduced about halfway into the film. After that there are too many random sidetracks and diversions that do no justice to the plot or character development. Some of these deviations are political or making some social comment. While they may not be overly offensive to the political situation, they are notably heavy handed and unnecessary to the film. These many plot lines also make the film overlong. With proper editing and better writing, Schnabel could have made a better film, but instead followed up The Diving Bell and the Butterfly with a wholly mediocre and poor effort.
Grade: C-
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