Oscars 2012: Worst Dressed and Meh (Mostly Meh Though)

This year nobody seemed to make a total fool out of themselves which is a surprise. Then again, the Oscars had never been this safe and predictable in terms of winner which makes the fashion all the more understandable. To kick things off in the meh department we have Miss Angelina Jolie, whose leg seems to have taken on a life of its own in the aftermath of this preposterous look. While we all can agree that she's a beautiful woman, her leg pose was stupid because it made everyone laugh while she thought she was being Jessica Rabbit in terms of sexiness. Perhaps if the leg hadn't been poking out of a boring velvet Atelier Versace, we might've been a bit more impressed by it.

Bérénice Bejo's  Elie Saab is not bad by any means, but the color washes her out in such a way, that not even her fiery hair can spark any life in it.

Jesus Christ, enough with the nude color Kristen Wiig! This J. Mendle might be beautiful but it feels like she's worn it to every awards show she's been to.

This Marchesa is a tricky thing. On one side the combination of colors is quite striking and the beading is quite the handcraft, but it makes poor SaBu look at least twenty years older and twenty pounds heavier. The unflattering mid-section makes it seem as if she just had too much ice cream and wants to conceal her new belly. The lack of drama upstairs (meaning the natural makeup) in this case work against her, because we keep being drawn to the strange ice claws around her waist. Overall this one's a mess.

Melissa Leo is a mess one more time. This time she went for a too informal Reem Acra that slightly recall this ensemble worn by Natalie Portman last year. Portman was pregnant at the time, which explains the fact that she was going for a shapeless look. Leo has no excuse.

Wouldn't Jane Fonda have looked great in this Valentino Couture gown? It's totally up her alley and she's only like 60 years older than Shailene Woodley...

Oy, most people are in love with Viola Davis and think saying something unflattering about her is either being a racist, an idiot or the most insensitive person alive, but not even they will be able to deny that she chose a very bad time to get rid of her wigs. We get it, she's proud of her heritage but the wigs were so beautiful that I'm sure no one really knew they were fake. This new hair gives her a Dennis Rodman look that's beyond unflattering, mostly because she's always pairing it up with dresses that are way too tight in the boob department. The color in this Vera Wang isn't doing anything for her really.

Oh J. Lo, you A-list hoochie. This Zuhair Murad dress is what Octavia Spencer was wearing but unlike what the pattern did for her, it does nothing for Lopez who looks like a hooker from space. The holes on her arms are inexplicable and give the dress a cheap look. Did she run out of fabric?

What do you think of these ladies? Anyone here you would promote to best?

Look What You've Done Kate...

The Fighter ***½

Director: David O. Russell

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo

Jack McGee, Mickey O'Keefe

If Rocky had been co-directed by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, it would've looked something like The Fighter. The energetic film, based on the life of welterweight fighter "Irish" Micky Ward (Wahlberg), borrows heavily from the cinematic style of those auteurs while preserving the dark humor that has characterized David O Russell's filmography.

The film concentrates on the rise to fame of Micky, who had to overcome the shadow cast by his oldest brother and trainer Dicky Eklund (Bale), a former boxer who succumbed to crack addiction.

The Fighter follows an established formula (does life come in formulas or are they heightened for dramatic purposes?) as Micky realizes the only chance he has of becoming "someone" is getting past his, well...past.
He falls for bartender Charlene (Adams), who helps him see things from a new perspective and slowly helps him to cut loose from Dicky's unhealthy drag as well as his mother7manager Alice's (Leo) excessive power over him.

What makes this film seem exciting in a way, is its screenplay, which more than delivering inspirational conventions, actually creates characters worth watching. This, combined with the dazzling performances delivered by the cast makes for a real treat.

Wahlberg, once again completely underrated (not only by other characters but by the script) moves through the film like an accessory. We mostly see him through others and in the film's centerpiece he literally has to solve his life in a boxing ring.

However beyond the huge biceps and quiet gracefulness lies a man with a harsh inner struggle. It's rare for movies to suggest families can have any sort of bad influence over people (heck, they are even romanticized in The Godfather!) which is why here it comes as surprise to see that even for a minute Wahlberg's character has to cope with choosing between family and self. It's probably not easy and the actor makes it seem like the most natural thing ever.
Bale once more recurs to his chamaleonic abilities and transforms into Dicky. The actor carries over his aggressive charm and makes this man someone who's both intensely attractive and unintentionally dangerous. His scenes with Wahlberg are amazing, as they have created a chemistry that makes us understand the bond that exists between them.

When Dicky finally realizes he might be hurting his younger brother, he doesn't do it with an intense action, he simply turns his back on him and walks away, as if telling him it's alright to move on.

The brothers' different personalities are expressed by Russell beautifully using cinema. Through most of the film we see HBO cameras following Dicky around as they make a documentary about him, on the other side we see that Micky takes Charlene to see a movie he doesn't particularly have any interest in for their first date.

Therefore while Dicky thinks he's made to be in movies, Micky uses them to hide, thinking perhaps they're more powerful than him.
The movie he sees is Belle Epoque (which he pronounces "belly epocue") and in this scene we see Amy Adams shine in completely unexpected ways. Playing a character unlike anyone we've seen her play before the actress achieves new heights and delivers a truly scene stealing performance.

She makes Charlene someone who may not have the class but certainly has the attitude. A conflicted bartender who dropped out of college, it's refreshing to see her find a new chance at happiness by being in love.
The actress delivers her lines with a defying mix of insecurity and bitchiness which makes her all the more fascinating to watch.

Leo is also terrific as the possessive mother. She expresses love for her kids in the only way she can: by making them feel still attached to her. Her Medea-like qualities are hilariously heightened by Russell through the use of her seven daughters who follow her around like a bitter Greek choir full of spinsters. When they confront Charlene in one scene their collective utterance of "skank" is brilliant.
It's ironic perhaps that the actual fight scenes in the movie don't hold a candle to the more intimate moments outside the gyms and auditoriums.
While the fighting sequences are done with superb technical mastery, the humanity felt outside the ring is what makes The Fighter feel like a champ.

Uninspired By True Events.

Watching Conviction you just know it's the kind of "inspired by true events" movie that will end with a picture of the real people and a corny song. You do not expect this from 127 Hours though.

Yet both do it and with the same degree of corny smugness as the other, the one difference is that while one feels just redundant for it, the other does it to teach us a metaphysical lesson of sorts and loses whatever credibility it had before. Care to guess which is which?

In Conviction Hilary Swank plays Betty Anne Waters, an unemployed single mom who decides to become a lawyer to get her brother Kenny (Rockwell) out of jail. Kenny was accused of murdering a woman and according to his sister he's innocent. We follow her through her hard years of school as she deals with working at a bar, raising her sons and maintaining that thick Massachusetts accent for as long as she can.
This is one of those movies in which you know how everything will go: the villains are scary (Leo gives a one note performance as an evil cop), the good guys are practically angels (Swank is missing but a halo from her "hard working but tastefully dressed" look) and someone always comes along and makes the movie seem much, much better than it has any right to be. In this case it's both Rockwell who gives another of his crazy cowboy performances and Lewis, who in a mere two scenes pretty much owns the film. The movie is directed efficiently, if not truly memorably by Goldwyn who seems to put more attention to his characters than to any stylistic flourishes yet in the end the movie fails gigantically because it doesn't make Betty someone we are dying to know more of.

Have you ever noticed how watching a Hilary Swank movie, you know it's a Hilary Swank movie? Not because she takes over the screen with her inescapable charm or magnetic screen presence but because every other character always seems to bow to her's.

Watching talented actors the likes of Driver, Rockwell and Lewis gaze teary eyed at Swank as if they were in the presence of something divine lacks the impact it would have if they were staring at Julia Roberts. Swank, unlike Julia, isn't capable of killing the "sanctify me" glare the supporting players emit. With a big movie star, their shine is so bright that they make scenes like these work, with Swank you just know she has a hand for picking screenplays and/or casting herself in films she produced.

Speaking of creative control, remember how once upon a time Danny Boyle was one of the most surprising working filmmakers? Each of his films felt like something completely new and exciting. From the creepy terror of 28 Days Later to the joyful cuteness of Millions and of course the addictive Trainspotting, his career seemed to scream "prolificness".

After going unintentionally mainstream with Slumdog Millionaire he seems to have compromised his vision and turned it into something that resembles conformity. Such is the case in 127 Hours where Boyle shows us the events that led mountain climber Aron Ralston (Franco) to amputate his own arm after getting trapped in a canyon.
And by saying he shows us, it's really because he makes a show out of everything, 127 Hours think it's being introspective and deep when it's mostly being obvious and overtly didactic. At the beginning of the film we see how Aron barely misses his Swiss Army knife when packing for his trip and from the position of the camera and the angle we know that this knife will play a part later on. Of course it does and like the knife, Boyle uses flashbacks and characters to put together a puppet show about how sad Ralston's life was before the accident and how amazing he must've felt after being reborn (no spoilers here considering we learn the film is an adaptation from a book by Aron).

Boyle uses complicated techniques to try and inject some energy into the proceedings but the truth is that this time he tries too hard to express stylistic freedom displayed through conventional methods. When his split screens should be recalling triptychs and art history, all they really do is make us think the editor is just showing off his new software and for all of the metaphysical ramblings he makes Aron say, all we're stuck with is ninety minutes of Boyle interpreting the whole "light at the end of the tunnel" people are supposed to see before they die.

After the film sends us home floating in a cloud of positivity (the Dido meets Enya theme song is arid and cliché) we might not be thinking too much about Aron and the rock but wondering if that Oscar fell upon Boyle and is keeping his true talent trapped?

Grades: Conviction ** 127 Hours **

Frozen River **

Director: Courtney Hunt
Cast: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham
Charlie McDermott, James Reilly, Michael O'Keefe

There is something disturbingly didactic in the way Courtney Hunt's debut feature film approaches its story and audience.
Dealing with issues deemed important by the so called independent movement, the results are nothing if selfconscious.
Melissa Leo plays Ray Eddy, a desperate woman with two children (McDermott and Reilly) desperate to make ends meet in order to pay for her new trailer and stuff the stockings for Christmas.
Her husband has disappeared, which isn't a first as we learn and has taken with him most of their savings (giving the story the first of several of its dramatic inconsistencies).
"Luckily" Ray meets Lila (Upham), a bitter Mohawk woman who smuggles illegal immigrants through the Canadian border (specifically through the title river which is an unchecked point).
Reluctantly they form a team, Ray has the car, Lila has the people to smuggle, they both have the need and from here Hunt does her best to deliver a film that touches the human spirit while making an important social denounce.
But what "Frozen River" has in its intentions it completely lacks in execution. It exploits its indie-ness and turns it into a selling point; watch how the gritty realism and rawness it aims for comes off merely looking stagey and cheap.
Hunt doesn't really fare better in her screenplay which boasts facile symbolism and works around coincidences that only help turn the wheels of her plot.
It's obvious that a writer's job is to put action into motion, but not if the viewer is fully aware of why everything is happening in such and such way.
The story's proximity to the Christmas holidays isn't accidental, it's supposed to make us feel worse about the characters, but how can we when the same screenplay is also terribly condescending to the racial minorities it thinks it's protecting.
Ray is essentially a racist who at one point believes two Arabic looking people she's smuggling are "the kind that blows things up" and there is nothing wrong with this, since it makes for a far more ambiguous dramatic arch, but Hunt throws in an unexpected element set to change Ray and make her more human.
What it does is turn her into the white savior who has a chance at redemption if she proves how much she's willing to sacrifice as a mother.
Instead of wondering what makes people like Ray commit crimes, Hunt settles for an afterschool special about illegal immigration and how to be good to them.
It's good that Leo turns in such a good performance, even if she knows she's at the service of such a lazy plot, she makes Ray's suffering become evident on a skin level.
Yes she's practically a single mother and yes she's doing her best to look after her kids, but what Leo gets away with is making us root for someone who's not only a racist, but also a criminal.
Nothing else in the film lives up to her performance.