Jake Gittes

Yeah Lawrence of Arabia, Raging Bull, The Queen, The Social Network, Selma and The Imitation Game are all totally the same movie

James Gray is the only reason I'm curious about this.

One of the great films of the decade and tied for my favorite Refn with Valhalla Rising. Like Hanna from the same year, a brilliant reworking of fairy tale tropes into a subversive, stylized action film, in this case one that's additionally inspired by '80s pop culture and silent-lone-wolf films like Le Samourai and The Driver. Everything comes together beautifully, and the entire elevator scene is a stroke of genius that should be shown in film schools, it's one of the very few times I can remember when a movie literally took my breath away.

Perfect.

Because I'm not a fan of Ida (cinematography aside) I'd be amused if Leviathan won if only for all the "it was funded by America!" reactions.

That's his only film I like. Spectacular cinematography and a genuinely tense and affecting story before he went into full Important Artist mode.

Watched it for the first time in probably 4 or 5 years. Goddamn masterwork, especially directing, casting, cinematography and editing - what really jumped out at me this time was the sheer number of characters the film introduces and then makes us care about; even extras who only have a line or two make a lasting impression, and Dennis Haysbert's little side plot is heartbreaking all on its own taking up probably less than 10 minutes of screentime and 2 or 3 minutes of dialogue. "A Los Angeles Crime Saga" is what it is, from the very first shot to the very last (also one of the greatest closing shots in history). And to this day I haven't seen any city shot as richly and evocatively in any film as LA in Heat. The atmosphere of it is just overwhelming.

Aside from a scene or two there's so little cause for controversy in the movie it's almost funny. Had it come out in 2011 or earlier, it likely would have just come and gone without much noise. Even now most of the controversy is only there because some morons got publicly mad at it's "anti-Russian" message before they ever saw it, and others happily followed. The wins at Cannes and Golden Globes only added fuel to the fire.

Politics have nothing to do with it, you don't have to be liberal to see that there's nothing false or exaggerated in the movie's depiction of corrupt officials, judges and clergymen. Its problems are that it's paced like shit so it feels twice its length, everyone's acting is mediocre, and Zvyagintsev again spends the first half setting up an interesting conflict, then goes off the rails in the middle so the second half is all eye-rollingly obvious symbolism, people staring into space with intense facial expressions, and ludicrously contrived plotting. Apart from the cinematography and a few pointed jabs at the System it's pretty terrible. Also there's hardly any swearing in there.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans - F.W. Murnau, 1927 Man with a Movie Camera - Dziga Vertov, 1929 M - Fritz Lang, 1931 Citizen Kane - Orson Welles, 1941 Rashomon - Akira Kurosawa, 1950 Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 Last Year at Marienbad - Alain Resnais, 1961 Lawrence of Arabia - David Lean, 1962 Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live) - Jean-Luc Godard, 1962 Persona - Ingmar Bergman, 1966 Once Upon a Time in the West - Sergio Leone, 1968 Wake in Fright - Ted Kotcheff, 1971 Chinatown - Roman Polanski, 1974 The Mirror - Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975 Days of Heaven - Terrence Malick, 1978 Apocalypse Now - Francis Ford Coppola, 1979 The Shining - Stanley Kubrick, 1980 The Dead - John Huston, 1987 The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover - Peter Greenaway, 1989 Goodfellas - Martin Scorsese, 1990 Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarantino, 1994 Underground - Emir Kusturica, 1995 Breaking the Waves - Lars von Trier, 1996 Mulholland Drive - David Lynch, 2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Peter Jackson, 2001 And I'd like to be on the committee of course

Cool. How do we go about trilogies like say LOTR?

I don't think so. It looks like it'll make it to 80m before the Oscar night, and since it's not winning anything major, it'll die right after that. 90-95m tops. Still a great run anyway.

Stood?

Lubezki is a genius though, I was afraid the one-long-take thing would be distracting but it's probably the film's biggest asset not just because it's a great technical achievement but because it also makes it flow much better than the script and the direction (which is as loud and obnoxious as in Inarritu's previous films, just in a different way) would allow it otherwise.

That's the best explanation for anyone other than Keaton being such a non-entity (and I think Inarritu probably intended that), but then you have the moments where the film abandons Keaton's viewpoint and still doesn't give the other characters any depth. I don't really get the point of the two rooftop scenes - they are fine and well-acted, but if they are intended to make Norton's character a human being they only succeed in making him a bit less of a one-note caricature. And Stone's character might as well have been named Daddy Issues. Watts and Riseborough are pretty much transparent. Keaton is the only complex character in the movie and I suppose it's fitting because we are seeing most of the film through his eyes and he's so self-centered, but that doesn't give all the other great actors any more room to play. And it all ends awkwardly with Norton (and his sub-plot with Stone) just disappearing, Keaton and Riseborough's affair brought up once and never mentioned again, Riseborough and Watts kissing and nothing ever being mentioned about that again... yet we hear about 5 times that Norton can only get hard on stage. Man that screenplay is a mess.

Doubt it can be better than the Polanski version but I'm intrigued. Snowtown is apparently great, and Fassbender should do Macbeth justice. I'm less sure about Cotillard - much as I love her, I don't know if she can play truly evil - but if she pulls it off, then awesome.

It was never going to do 400, and it will pass Mockingjay. Moving on

It was OK.

My ballot: Needless to say I'm disappointed, though Serkis and Swinton and Fassbender and Kulesza and Lego and Under the Skin in Best Cinematography all getting in is pretty good I guess. Cotillard was nominated for the wrong movie and everyone should drop whatever the hell they're doing and go watch Enemy right now. Glad Leviathan isn't there. I was pulling for it before I saw it. I know it plays somewhat differently outside Russia but I couldn't believe how bad it was.

A prison drama that isn't far behind stuff like Chopper and A Prophet. Smart, brutal and funny, and feels just authentic enough. Jack O'Connell and Ben Mendelsohn completely own their roles.

Becomes a different movie pretty much every 30 minutes, and each of these movies is less interesting than the one that preceded it. I liked it in the end, but mostly thanks to the work of the lead actors, especially Don Motherfucking Johnson who really gives one of the coolest and best performances of 2014.

The penultimate scene took me out of the film in the way it was so clearly a writer's construct (no one would go skiing in such a dense fog unless a filmmaker needs them to), but besides that, this is an insightful, sharp and, most importantly, frequently hilarious deconstruction of a modern family unit, inflated male ego and expectations the society automatically puts on a man. It also largely avoids being condescending towards its characters or the viewer, which would have been an easy road to take. I've seen three of Ruben Ostlund's films now and I have to tip my hat to the guy, he's one of the few people that keep modern European art cinema genuinely interesting and provocative without alienating the viewer. These three minutes of male ego being inflated and then deflated is easily my favorite scene in the movie. Funny as hell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf7j27bS1V0

It's top 5 Jarmusch easily.

That and Mystery Train

Redmayne reminds me of Michael York, but with a less punchable face.