Thoughts on the year so far in Movieland

OK, so I thought I’d start this off by looking at the year so far movie-wise now that we’re at the end of the award season. And I think the overall feeling has to be one of vague disappointment. The major contenders have come and gone, but very little actually sparkled. The Pursuit of Happyness, Bobby, Dreamgirls, The Good Shpherd, Letters From Iwo Jima, Apocalypto, Notes on a Scandal – there were all OK movies in their way, but nothing to rave about – a definite sense of could do better. I seem to have been one of the few who actually liked Babel, but would have to admit that it wasn’t up to the standards of Amores Perros or 21 Grams. A similar sense of underachievement pervades less award-friendly, more crowd-pleasing genre efforts like Ghost Rider or Music and Lyrics.

Africa
On the plus side, Africa has come out rather well (or badly, depending on your perspective) with The Last King of Scotland and Blood Diamond proving to be two of the most powerful and gripping films of the year to date. The former driven by such a wonderfully accurate performance from Forrest Whittaker (fully deserving of all the plaudits and awards that followed) that it quite distracts from a plot which is slightly hokey. It is probably marginally the better of the two, with Blood Diamond losing marks for turning a bit too Rambo-esque in the final act. However, I have one quibble – both films, as with every Hollywood film of Africa I can think of from The African Queen to Cry Freedom, felt the need to have a white hero to the story. When will Hollywood have the courage to make an African film with an African hero?

Oscars
This year’s Oscars for me had to rank amongst the most disappointing and just plain wrong for many years. Yes, on the merit of his career Martin Scorcese fully deserves an Oscar, but is The Departed really the best example of direction this year? Surely the work of Greengrass (United 93), del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) or Cuaron (the shamefully un-nominated Children of Men) were better examples of the art of direction. And best film? Yes The Departed was an entertaining movie, but it was somehow less than the sum of its parts and considerably inferior to its excellent Hong Kong original (Infernal Affairs). Is this the best Hollywood can offer an inferior copy of a far eastern film in a genre where it used to reign supreme? It managed to add length to the running time, whilst simultaneously losing character depth. Matt Damon’s character in particular suffered from a change in motivation which made his actions in the final act completely inexplicable and ridiculous (when I went to see it, the audience ended up laughing, and not in a good way, at the end).

And don’t even get me started on all those nominations for The Queen. Yes, Helen Mirren’s performance was a superb dramatic creation, but it was surrounded by and mismatched to a series of cheap and flabby caricatures at the expense of soft targets. Does the fact that this aspect of the film is so little remarked upon indicate that this is the way we actually see these public figures now? If they had been fictional characters, the criticism would have been of a shallow lack of realism – maybe we should be more critical of the images portrayed in the media. As such it felt like the film failed to really get to grips with the events of those weeks when the whole country seemed overcome with something – grief? Guilt? Insanity? – at the death of a woman they had been quite happy to see exploited and ridiculed in the press just weeks before.

But back at the Oscars, the acting awards at least were more deserved – Forrest Whittaker was richly deserving of his statuette, whilst it was great to see the ever-reliable Alan Arkin getting some recognition for the excellent Little Miss Sunshine. However, the all-conquering Whittaker-Mirren juggernaut did disguise the fact that this year, for once there was some real quality in the Best Actress field (more so than for the male counterparts) and the hype surrounding Dame Helen’s royal turn meant Judi Dench’s and Penelope Cruz’s equally impressive performances were largely overlooked. Ms. Cruz, of course, always being likely to miss out as academy voters seem incapable of judging the quality of an acting performance whilst reading subtitles. Which brings us to the criminality of Volver not even get a nom for Best Foreign Film and, having been nominated, Pan’s Labyrinth not winning. Meanwhile, back with the acting, Jennifer Hudson’s award was the end of a fairy-tale story, but was surely on the basis of her singing than her acting, which whilst good for a first outing, was not the equal of any of her fellow nominees.

Silver Linings
Well, good to get that off my chest. But amidst this sense of vague disappointment, let’s be thankful for the few rays of sunshine – the unrestrained fun and joy of Hot Fuzz and charmingly weird yet strangely moving The Science of Sleep – which have brightened the cinema screens so far this year. Here’s looking to the Summer of Three to raise my spirits – Bourne 3, Spidey 3, Pirates 3, Shrek 3 – surely at least one will not disappoint.