VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA was on my radar for a long time before I finally watched it the other day; having finally seen it, I regret the delay.  Woody Allen's latest is a great little picture about love, romance, culture and sex.  About that last part - for a movie that was hyped out of Cannes predominantly on the presence of red-hot sapphic action between Scarjo and PeeCruz, there's a shocking lack of sex in the film.  What's there works and works well, but still.  Art-house hype machine, you've deceived me yet again.  Anyway, review.  Plot and characters, right?  

Two college grads, the titular Vicky and Cristina (Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson), are vacationing in Barcelona when artist/Lothario Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) offers to take them away for a weekend of sightseeing, fine dining, local music and red hot bedroom action.  Throw his batshit-crazy ex-wife (Oscar-nominated Penelope Cruz*) into the mix and you've got a sexy recipe for disaster... or a recipe for sexy disaster.  

The cast is all around terrific.  Hall in particular was fantastic as the Woody Allen-type character, seemingly very comfortable with Woody's trademark nervous sarcasm coming out of her mouth.  Miss Scarj, who I've grown less and less interested in over the years, acquitted herself nicely in the less-interesting Cristina role.  Outshining them both are their Spanish co-stars.  Bardem makes you (almost) forget his roaring rampage of shoe-checking in Texas with effortless charm and surprising sincerity, while Cruz's Maria Elana is convincingly unstable.  Their scenes together are the best in the whole picture.

Despite its stellar cast, VCB manages to remain a small picture in scope and feeling and is the better for it.  Woody seems more interested in the characters than actually involved with them.  VCB easily could've been a devastating emotional drama, but instead the grand emotional moments are played subdued and the audience is left feeling at arm's length from the whole affair - this is a good thing.  The movie is thoughtful and curious it is about relationships - not to show to us, but to explore with us.  It isn't your typical romantic drama/comedy (thank gods for that), but it is a typical Woody Allen romance.        

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is now available on DVD.

*Pronounced "Peen-ah-low-p Cr-uh-zz"

OSCAR SNUB! Where's DARK KNIGHT'S nomination for "Super Best Picture of All Time" ?!

(That, by the way, is the last of the snark I'll throw Batman's way.  Today.  In this post.*)

It's that time of a year again, when movie geeks like yours truly gather round excitedly and debate which of their favorites from the last year got snubbed, robbed or treated right, and when the rest of America wonders where their favorite movies are on the list at all.  Flash-forward two months, when The People accept the Academy's choices as cannon and people like me rip their hair out.  ANYWAY.  My thoughts on the nominations that interest me, and my stunning indifference (expressed through silence) about those that don't.  

BEST PICTURE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

No surprises here.  I've seen all but THE READER, and unless that thing knocks me on my ass, SLUMDOG is certainly the best of these five.  (My thoughts on these four coming soon, I swear).

BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Stephen Daldry, The Reader
Gus Van Sant, Milk

Much the same.  Ron Howard more than adequately Ron Howards his way through the paint-by-numbers FROST/NIXON, just as Gus Van Sant could've been asleep at the helm and still made a decent movie out of MILK's formulaic script (he was fact awake, and made a pretty good movie out of it).  Despite my love of Fincher, my affection for BENJAMIN BUTTON has dwindled since I saw it and, more importantly, since I've thought about it.  That said, Fincher tricked me into thinking that BUTTON'S a great movie - it's not - and that's a work of directing wizardry.  Still, though, Danny Boyle should take this one home.

Best Actor - Mickey Roarke in THE WRESTLER.  That's all, let's go home.

Best Actress - What the shit?  Somehow I haven't seen ANY of the films with a best actress nomination.  I gots to get on that.

While Best Supporting Actor will undoubtedly go to Heath Ledger (who creepily died a year ago today), I gotta love the Academy for nominating Robert Downey, Jr. for TROPIC THUNDER.  His performance was a fucking trip in the movie, sure, but the nomination is more of a recognition of how awesome he was in '08 - and how sad it is the guy won't ever get nominated for IRON MAN.  That's right, I said it.  Discuss.

Best Original Screenplay - Fucking aye right, IN BRUGES!  I was so afraid this movie was going to get forgotten come Oscar time, especially in a category like this one where it really deserves.  Good job, Oscars.  

I love the Best Animated Feature category.  They should just be honest and call it the Best Pixar Film and not give it out on Pixar's off years.  All WALL-E.

If THE DARK KNIGHT wins Best Cinematography or Best Editing, I might shit.  With RAGE.  Read why.  

It's a shame that Oscar-baiter BENJAMIN BUTTON had such spectacular and seamless make-up effects, because it'll likely steal HELLBOY II's much-deserved (and only) nomination.  

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Alexandre Desplat 
Defiance, James Newton Howard 
Milk, Danny Elfman 
Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman 
WALL-E, Thomas Newman

Woah.  The one (other) category where DARK KNIGHT seemed to be a shoe-in was Best Original Score - and it got completely shut out.  BENJAMIN BUTTON, WALL-E and SLUMDOG all had terrific scores (with SLUMDOG's being my favorite), though I can't say that I remember much of any music from either MILK or DEFIANCE.  Really, one of the few categories where ol' Batman was truly deserving of all the hype and it gets no love?  Kinda sad.  

All in all, I'm more or less "meh" about the nominations this year.  I don't hold with some of the naysayers who call 08 a step down from the movie-stellar 07, but I just don't see the movies I loved reflected in the nominations enough to make me care.  However, I wasn't expecting too much in the way of nominations for them, either.  Net game, I just don't care this year.  Hey who wants to skip getting drinking watching the Oscars this year and instead get drunk doing something else?  

*Actually a  lie.

REVIEW: SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is a movie I can't believe anyone paid money to produce and distribute.  That was a compliment -  Charlie Kaufman's latest (and his first as director) is so aggressively intellectual and so completely unapologetic about it that I'm stunned any financiers or distributors had the stones to think it was commercially viable.  Thank gods they did, though, because the movie is unabashedly brilliant... I think.

The problem with trying to review a movie like SYNECDOCHE* is that, well, I don't quite get it.  Yet.  I hope yet - this film is so goddamn dense with characters, imagery and jarringly abstract narrative that it should take multiple viewings to get only the most rudimentary grip on what happens within.  And that's not even touching the thematic content.  The movie has a philosophical outlook that's either just barely optimistic or crushingly nihilistic (I'm leaning toward the former, though mostly because the latter would hurt my soul too much).  Kaufman's movie is a heady examination of some pretty profound themes, but he really makes you work to figure out what the hell he's trying to say.  Which I have not done yet.  Yet!   

In emphasizing what a colossal mindfuck SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is, I might be giving the impression that it's a cold movie for the intellect to ponder and dissect.  Not true - like Kaufman's other films, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the narrative headgames, but there is a gigantic heart at the center of this movie.  Actually, I take that back.  There's a gigantic heart that the center of his others, ETERNAL SUNSHINE especially; SYNECDOCHE has a raw nerve at its core and it hurts like a motherfucker.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character, a playwright, describes theater as like getting punched in the mouth, or love.  That hideous paraphrase clutters the point, which is that to him theater is the purest representation of emotional truth distilled to its highest potency.  That's not a bad description of emotion in the movie itself.  Every feeling is expressed in a razor-sharp, essential form.  Even if you don't know what's necessarily going on in the movie plot-wise, you'll feel what you're supposed to be feeling.  

There's an emotional gut punch in the last few scenes of the movie that I embarrassingly missed - I knew it was there but failed to connect because I was stuck trying to figure out the film's labyrinthine construction.  Not that SYNECDOCHE is a puzzle movie (it really isn't, despite being endlessly puzzling) but its willfully fluid boundaries between reality, fantasy and time make it easy to get lost in the plot's convolutions and miss out on the film's emotional journey.

I realize I haven't said much of what the movie's about.  Honestly, the plot isn't an easy one to summarize, nor is it one I'd want to.  This is the rare movie that never ceases to surprise and I'd hate to ruin that discovery for anyone interested in experiencing it.  Which should be everyone.  Let me be plain: I loved SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, even though I know I didn't quite get it.  If you enjoyed Kaufman's previous films, you owe it to yourself to witness his 12th-level intellect unfiltered onscreen for the first time.

*You can rest assured that every time I typed this word over the course of this review, I failed - not unlike how most of the people in line at the box office failed to pronounce it.  ZING!