OSCAR RACE: Best Supporting Actor

Continuing my analysis of the Oscar race (or as I call it, I need to get a life), it’s time to focus on the supporting acting categories.  One would think that supporting categories, whether male or female, would be much more difficult to predict and in one way they are.  While there is only one, maybe two, leads in a film (per gender), every film is crowded with supporting since, by deduction, if you’re not one of the two leads, you only have one alternative—supporting.   At the same time, like most categories, the possible nominations actually, and perhaps surprisingly, tend to settle rather fast to usually little more than six, or on rare occasions, seven possibilities.

I’ll start with the Best Supporting Actor category or as I and a friend of mine call it, the Don Ameche Award, named after the win by that actor for his role in Cocoon, not so much for his acting skill (which was often considered a joke by critics and film aficionados, though he did get better as he aged, like fine wine and cheese), but as a career award (like James Coburn, Christopher Plummer, Jack Palance, Sean Connery, Martin Landau, Alan Alda).  At the same time, I’m being facetious.  This doesn’t happen as often as one might think, and most of these performances were very deserving.  But I believe someone once did a study and discovered that supporting actor winners on average were older than supporting actress winners.  In the supporting actor category, it helps to have paid your dues more than in the distaff side, where voters (mostly male) tend to like their winners young and up and coming (even to the point of being a bit too Humbert Humbert in their choices, perhaps?).

At any rate, the dust has started to settle and it looks as if the list is becoming fairly clear.   At the same time, predictions are a bit hampered here by some of the films not having opened yet, so the performances in those movies are still somewhat unknown quantities.

Alan Arkin for Argo to win.  This now seems pretty settled and it would take a lot to unseat his position.   He’s already won his career award for Little Miss Sunshine, but that probably won’t cause him any problems this time around.  It’s a tremendous performance, a masterpiece of comic timing, in a very popular movie.   At the same time, Argo may have peaked a bit too soon and I may be speaking a bit too early. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master.  The Master went totally over my head (and apparently, based on audience reaction, I’m not the only one).  Everything about The Master is a bit iffy when it comes to nominations just because it didn’t connect with viewers, including Oscars voters.  But everyone is still saying that Hoffman is a shoo in (some think he may even win, but I don’t see it yet).  A lot may depend on the campaign, since the movie has disappeared and may take a little doing to get people to remember it even opened this year (critics’ awards may help here).

Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln.  He steals every scene he’s in and somehow breaths life into the somewhat stilted dialog.  Lincoln is coming along as a major contender against Argo for best picture with a success at the box office that exceeded expectations (Argo may now have peaked too soon), and Daniel Day-Lewis is almost certain to win best actor, which could give Jones’ nomination a boost.

Robert de Niro for Silver Linings Playbook.  It has now opened, been reviewed, is doing very well at the box office and no one has stopped saying de Niro is going to get a nom, so it seems that he will be included.

Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained.  This is an unknown quantity as the movie hasn’t opened yet (apparently a story about a slave rescued by a bounty hunter with said slave now out to get revenge against the white men who abducted his wife is seen as the perfect choice for a Christmas opening).  What helps is that DiCaprio is a leading actor doing a supporting role, and this is always a plus when going for a nomination (and sometimes you win—Robin Williams and Renee Zellweger).   But until the movie opens, it’s hard to say.  This has caused some problems for Christoph Waltz.  The talk is he has been pushed to go for Best Actor (an unlikely nom at best), possibly to give DiCaprio a better chance.  But that’s mere speculation based on information I don’t really have, so do with it what you will.

Also possible is Dwight Henry, so deserving for Beasts of the Southern Wild, but it’s a very crowded category and he may get squeezed out; Russell Crowe for Les Miserables, too unknown a quantity right now; Matthew McConaughey for Magic Mike, and in a weaker year he might have a chance since he’s done so many movies this year and has worked hard to broaden himself as an actor, which translates as really paid your dues (which the voters like), but it looks like he won’t make it; anybody else from Argo—very doubtful. 

THE SESSIONS

I think that if someone is disabled, they should at least have the decency of being bitter and angry.  But I guess that Mark O’Brien, the central character in writer/director’s Ben Lewin’s movie The Sessions, didn’t get the memo.   Mark, crippled by polio as a child and unable to breathe on his own for long periods of time, has, what some might term, a rather positive attitude toward life, attending college and becoming self-supporting as a writer.   He never reaches the highs (or, perhaps more accurately, the lows) of Annie singing Tomorrow or the Von Trapp kids singing Do Re Mi.  In fact, one of the funniest lines here is when Mark is asked if he believes in God and he says he has to, that life would be unbearable if he couldn’t blame someone for all the awful things that happen.  But Mark has somehow managed to achieve an equilibrium about life that I doubt I’d be able to achieve in similar circumstances.

But there is one aspect of his life he has yet to explore.  Now, one of the rules for screenwriters is that if you are going to write a story in a familiar genre, then you need to find a new perspective, a new twist, to justify the foray.  And Lewin has more than learned that lesson.   The Sessions is basically a story about a man losing his virginity.   So we’ve had the horny teenage film (boy, have we had the horny teenager film) and we’ve had the middle aged man going all the way film (The 40 Year Old what’s his name).  So what’s left?  The man encased in an iron lung losing his virginity film, of course.  I mean, it’s so obvious, the only thing surprising is that someone hasn’t thought of it before.

John Hawkes plays O’Brien with a constant wistful look in his eyes.  But no matter how sad he is, Hawkes has this quality in his performance that won’t let you feel sorry for his character.  And you find yourself doing exactly what everybody else in the movie does: you fall for him, you fall for him hard.  And he has an advantage that many of us don’t—he is able to write love poems (taking a note apparently from Robin Williams’ teacher in The Dead Poet’s Society who told his students that the only reason one writes poetry is to woo women—though I always wondered how that applied to Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman).

Helen Hunt plays Cheryl, the sex surrogate who is called in like Dudley Do Right to help O’Brien achieve his goal, and it’s a perfect, if somewhat standard, roll for her, a character who starts off cold and distant, not able to share her emotions, finding herself forced to come out of herself (the Katherine Hepburn type part).   William H. Macy takes time out from his over the top, hedonist of Shameless to play a down to earth, practical priest who can only enjoy his hedonism second hand.  The previews make one think he’s going to be a caricature; but in reality, he brings a very relaxed and every day quality to his performance.

The movie is witty and touching and laugh out loud funny.  The directing, though a little flat perhaps, doesn’t get in the way and gets the job done.  There is one oddity that should be mentioned.  For a movie that preaches sexual freedom and that one should be comfortable with one’s body and nudity, Lewin is actually a prude and a bit of a hypocrite.  He has no problem showing the women in full frontal, but when it comes to the men, he uses a metaphorical fig leaf in the form of a very, very, very carefully placed mirror.   In the end, it makes one wonder who’s really the more uncomfortable with sex, O’Brien or Lewin?

FLIGHT

Flight, the new film from writer John Gatins and director Robert Zemeckis, has an incredible set piece near the beginning of the movie in which a pilot (Denzel Washington) is forced to crash land a plane in nightmare conditions by making it roll 360 degrees (flying upside down for awhile) and coming down on a field near a church about ready to do some Sunday go to meeting baptisms.  It’s an amazing technical feat (and not just the landing, but the filming as well) and it’s an exhilarating start.  When this section is over, the movie sets up an equally incredible enigma: Whip, the pilot, was drunk and had cocaine in his system when he performed this unbelievable stunt; but that wasn’t the cause of the crash.  And Whip’s handling of the landing was something that ten other pilots couldn’t have done sober.  So the whole movie seems more than ready to tackle issues and questions brought up by this fascinating conundrum.

And then the movie becomes…something else, something else entirely, and something that has nothing to do with either the crash landing or what sort of punishment should be given to a pilot who is able to make a miraculous landing (Gatins’ words, not mine) while drunk.   It actually becomes a rather routine, formulaic The Lost Weekend, The Days of Wine and Roses, When a Man Loves a Woman, Clean and Sober (fill in with your favorite film in the genre) story about an alcoholic.

Six people died in the crash and a huge number of people were seriously injured.  But is this their story or is the story about the crash and what it means?  No.  Believe it or not, all of this is chopped liver.  All of this is a macguffin, because the only reason for any of this, the only purpose for all these deaths, the only purpose of the crash, the only reason for all this destruction is so that Whip will start going to AA.

I’m not kidding.  I am totally serious.  And to back up this idea, there’s a ton of talk about God in the movie and whether everything is preordained or has a purpose, whether everything that happens is just part of an overall plan.  To be fair, all this mention of God at times tends to be a bit metaphorical in that whenever the big guy’s name is mentioned, He’s a stand in for all the unforeseen and uncontrollable things that happen in life, as when destruction from a hurricane is an “act of God”.   But still.

And it’s not that the movie is without its positive aspects.   But oddly enough, it’s not when the film focuses on Whip’s journey, but when it focuses on the issues related to the crash that the movie really comes to life.  Both Don Cheadle, as a long suffering lawyer, and Peter Gerety, as the owner of the airline, stand out as the few who really seem to understand what is really going on and that the meaning of the crash is the crash and that Whip’s journey is actually a hindrance and just getting in the way of the real issues.  When Gerety tells everybody off, I thought, finally, someone who really gets what it’s all about. 

Washington is fine as Whip, but he’s always a lot more fun when he’s playing anti-heroes like here, people you would not want to meet in a darkened alleyway.  Melissa Leo also makes her mark at the end because, like Cheadle and Gerety, she’s in a different movie.  The low point, though, has to be John Goodman as Whip’s connection.  Goodman is one of our finest character actors, but here, as in Argo and some other recent films, he’s been reduced to playing, well, John Goodman roles, and he deserves better.

In all fairness, I should point out that many in the audience around me were deeply moved.  But I just couldn’t join in.   For me, if truth be told, I was bit offended.  Here I thought that Leibnitz and the philosophy of “the best of all possible worlds” ended with Voltaire’s ruthless satire Candide.   But apparently not.  No matter how awful things are, no matter how many people die, no matter how much destruction there is, it’s okay, because there’s always a silver lining.   People can die, but their death has meaning because it helped someone enter a recovery program.  Really. 

BEYOND THE HILLS, CAESER MUST DIE and CLANDESTINE CHILDHOOD

Three movies that are each countries’ entry in the foreign film category for the Academy Awards.

The Romanians obviously have issues when it comes to their health care system.   First, it was the powerful The Death of Mister Lazarescu wherein an elderly gentleman is shunted from one pompous doctor to another all the while trying to find someone who will take him seriously.  And now we have Beyond the Hills, the new film from writer/director Cristian Mungui, in which a doctor releases a young woman, who is showing uncontrollable fits and outrageous behavior of the mental illness genre, back into the hands of the priest and nuns who first brought her in because the doctor thinks they are more likely to be able to help her than he can (and cue Tubular Bells).  And when tragedy strikes, a doctor blames the Priest, who is then arrested. 

However, the health care profession is not really the central theme here.  Beyond the Hills is based on a true incident involving an exorcism which is more the centerpiece.   Voichita, the very lonely and often severely depressed aforementioned young woman, looks up her ex-girlfriend Alina who is now staying at a monastery cum nunnery run by the aforementioned priest (this nunnery is an interesting establishment unto itself in that it’s quite Medieval and not when it comes to religious belief, but in that the woman are joining not so much because they have a spiritual calling, but because they can’t find work or a husband).  Voichita wants Alina to leave and join her in Germany as they had always planned while growing up in an orphanage together.   Alina refuses, having found peace at the nunnery; but soon after, Voichita starts acting like Linda Blair and no one knows what to do.

Mungui came to prominence after giving us 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, the devastating must see film about abortion and its illegality under Communist rule in Romania.  Beyond the Hills may not have quite the same tension as 4 Months…, at least in the beginning, which is a bit leisurely to say the least.   But once Voichita starts spiraling out of control and they decide to do an exorcism because they know of no other way to save her, there is no turning back.   It’s a riveting, dark and even devastating piece of filmmaking.

Again based on a true story, sort of, the Italian film Caesar Must Die grew out of a program for prisoners in which they perform a play.  Here, William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.  I must be honest.  I have no idea what the Taviani brothers (Paola and Vittorio of Padre padrone fame) are trying to do here.  It’s not a documentary.  It’s obvious that what is being filmed takes place after the production has had its last curtain call, everything is so carefully staged (in a very forced and unbelievable way most of the time), and the rehearsal process is not remotely realistic (even the scripts they use are in screenplay format, not Shakespearian play format).  We never get to know the prisoners or find out what any of this means to them or if it affects them in any way.  There doesn’t seem to be a moral to the story (except that criminals can be good actors, I suppose, though many would think that’s just being redundant).  We don’t even get the joy of Shakespeare’s dialog.  He’s actually listed as one of the writers for the movie along with the Tavianis, but I call shenanigans on that.   The excerpts from the play are not translated into Elizabethan verse, but into some sort of bastardized, everyday patois (even Et tu, Brute is subtitled into something like, And you, too, Brutus?).  The only really interesting aspect of the script for me is the locations the actors choose to “rehearse” (and I mean those end quotes with all sincerity) certain scenes (which, of course, in the context here, would not have been chosen by the prisoners, but by the Tavianis).  It might have been interesting to see Julius Caesar staged in a prison in which the convicts’ relationships were reflected by the play, or even to see a straightforward production of the play.  But alas, ‘twas not to be.  Many people loved it.  I was totally lost.

And again based on a true story, or at least inspired by true events in the director Benjamin Avila’s life, the Argentine film Clandestine Childhood opens with an amazing scene of a young boy witnessing a shoot out involving his parents that turns into panels from a graphic novel.  It’s an assault on the senses that one doesn’t soon forget.   If only the rest of the movie astounded us with as much originality and vibrancy.  But this technique is only used a couple more times in the course of the movie and instead the story jumps a few years and a slightly older boy is reunited with said parents in Argentina after growing up in Cuba where his parents had earlier fled and recently returned from so they could continue working against the government.  At this point, it all turns into a rather standard, coming of age, first love film, one that you’ve seen a million times before.  It’s sweet and effecting at times, but not that much more.  What’s surprising is how little tension is added to the central characters flailing for a girlfriend by the background situation he finds himself trapped in.  I suppose one could be somewhat comforted in the idea that life goes on even under totalitarian regimes, but I’m afraid that wasn’t enough for me.  In the end, a formulaic story is a formulaic story, no matter what form of government runs the country.  And in the end, rather than being deeply moved I found myself asking, what were these parents thinking smuggling their kids back into Argentina with death camping out on their doorstep?   Easy for me to say, I suppose, sitting here typing as I am without much danger of being imprisoned for life for political thought, but still, the thought did occur to me.

THE ANGEL'S SHARE

The Angel’s Share, the new movie written by Paul Laverty and directed by Ken Loach, is kitchen sink meets Ealing comedy meets The Asphalt Jungle.  I’ve been told that’s a bit of a mash up, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it.   The mood is as whimsical as the kilts everyone wears for a disguise (something may sound off there, but trust me, it works).   The structure is all over the place and would kill a cat (the real plot doesn’t start until almost halfway into the movie).   And the accents would drive ‘enry ‘iggins to drink (Loach often uses subtitles, but manages to make do this time round sans texting).  But in the end, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

Loach is one of the leading filmmakers that focuses on the working class and the underprivileged.  He’s always shown a great deal of empathy for people who don’t have a lot of options and this movie is no different, though perhaps a bit more light hearted and feel good than usual.  The story revolves around Robbie (played by first timer Paul Brannigan who gives a first rate performance) who narrowly avoids jail after severely beating up a young man.   His girlfriend is pregnant and he wants to turn his life around, but he can’t get a job, his girlfriend’s father wants him out of his daughter’s life, and he’s made an enemy of his victim’s brothers who want to do some serious bodily damage to him in turn.   As punishment for his crime, he joins a group of characters (with the emphasis on “quite a cast of”) to do community service. 

His possible salvation comes in the form of whiskey and if you want to make jokes about the Scottish and their love of a wee bit of drink, it’s not what you think.  But how this all leads to Robbie discovering he has an expert’s nose for sniffing out quality spirits and a plan to steal a few bottles from a keg of whiskey so old that it gets sold for 1.2 millions pounds at auction, is something you’ll have to find out for yourself.   And don’t worry about whether you can get behind a group of criminals who are adding theft to their legal resume; one of the cleverest aspects of the screenplay is that you find it impossible to really tsk, tsk these people because anyone who would pay that much for whiskey not only can easily survive without a bottle or two, he actually deserves to be taken. 

THE OSCAR RACE: Best Actress, Part Duex

My analysis of the Best Actress Oscar Race, part duex.

My previous entry was a general analysis of the race when it came to Best Actress.  For this entry, let’s go directly to my list:

Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook right now has the lead to win even though the movie hasn’t opened yet.  At the same time, I hesitate to be definite here since the movie is still an unknown quantity.  But her nomination seems assured.  Probably what helps is that she has proven herself as an actress by getting a nomination for a small, independent film (Winter’s Bone), but also an actress that can make a ton of money (The Hunger Games), a double whammy.

Quvenzhane Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild.  This has been settled law for some time.  Not only did this eight year old munchkin give a marvelous performance, the movie is likely to get a Best Picture nom, a possible Best Director, a possible Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay nom.  And it’s still in the theaters.  I also can’t imagine any voter, no matter how Scrooge McDuck they are, who would want to give this fairy tale an unhappy ending.

Emmanuelle Riva for Amour.  This is also supposed to be almost a sure thing.  Though the Academy is more loathe to give career awards and noms to women than to men, Riva has been around since another amour film, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), one of the great films of all time.   Amour was also suppose to get a nomination for co-lead Jean-Louis Trintignant, but as the movies with strong male leads started pouring in, that was that.  Amour is suppose to be Michael Haneke’s most accessible film and is in the lead to win in the best Foreign Language category and may even get a Best Picture, Director and Screenplay nom.

Marion Cotillard for Rust and Bone.  A Hollywood favorite since winning the Oscar for La Vie en Rose, she is supposed to give a knock out performance.   The filmmaker Jacques Audiard is also responsible for such films as A Prophet and The Beat that My Heart Skipped and is fast becoming one of France’s leading directors.   However, this is still an unknown quantity.

Helen Mirren for Hitchcock.  It doesn’t really matter where she decides to run, this is the category that will most likely get her.  A superb performance helped by a strong possibility that her co-lead, Anthony Hopkins will also receive one.

Other possibilities:  Naomi Watts for The Impossible is getting some buzz, but it may be too little too late.  Keira Knightley in Anna Karanina just opened, but it didn’t get very good reviews and is not exciting anyone.  And Helen Hunt in The Sessions will probably get a supporting actress nom.

Which means, sorry Jessica Chastain.  You should probably start pushing for that supporting acting nom instead.

THE OSCAR RACE: Best Actress

It’s been awhile, but it’s time to return to my analysis of the Oscar race so far.  I’ve done Best Picture and Best Actor.  Now it’s time for the distaffs: Best Actress.  I’ll do this in two parts.

This year is what is known as a “weak year” for performances by women.  Now, it’s important to understand what the phrase means.  It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s an actual dearth of qualified performances by actresses.  Even in other years where the term “weak year” was used in this context, I had little problem coming up with more than enough candidates for my top five list, with overflow.  Of course, I tend to have end of the year lists made up of films that none of my friends have ever heard of (at least, that’s what they tell me). 

“Weak” here refers to the type of role that is considered the type that Oscar voters would consider worthy of a nomination.  That’s very vague.  Possibly even a tautology.  But generally speaking, performances in foreign films from countries that many Academy members never realized made films (unless the film broke out in some over the top way—or Cinema Francé as they’re more commonly known); very small indie films (unless there is a break out of some kind); and unknown names or newcomers (unless there is…, etc., etc.).  And this year, acne has had a better chance of breaking out than movies with female leads 

If this sounds somewhat misogynistic, you’re wrong.  It’s extremely misogynistic and just goes to show how shabbily actresses are treated by the filmmaking community ever since the studio system fell and the summer blockbusters became de rigueur.  Before this, more movies were made with female leads if, for no other reason, than that they were under contract and the studios couldn’t just let them sit around doing nothing.

And if you still don’t believe me, when was the last time you heard that it was a “weak” year for men.

There are two signs that suggest that this is a very “weak” year for actresses.   The first is that more actresses than usual are trying to decide whether they can move from pushing for a supporting nomination to pushing for a lead nomination.  These include Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty); Helen Mirren (Hitchcock); and Helen Hunt (Sessions).  In a strong year, all (except maybe Mirren) would probably vie in the supporting category where their large and important roles would have a better chance of getting a nom.  I understand that Chastain has already broken ranks and decided to go for the gold, which I think (as I will point out later), is quite possibly a misstep.

Note: Whether an actor ends up in supporting or lead categories doesn’t always have anything to do with whether that person is truly lead or supporting.  William H. Macy had more screen time than Frances McDormand in Fargo, but Macy was supporting and McDormand won the Oscar for Best Actress.  This happens more often than you might think.

Note 2: it doesn’t always work.  Kate Winslet pushed for lead for Revolutionary Road and supporting for The Reader.  The Academy shut out Revolutionary Road and put Winslet in the lead category for The Reader (though she was really supporting).  It all had a happy ending, though, as Winslet won that year.

Note 3: the Golden Globes make the choice of category for you.  There Winslet got a nom for Best Actress for Revolutionary Road and Best Supporting for The Reader.

The second reason you can tell this is a “weak” year is that an eight year old and two actresses from foreign language films are very likely to be nominated.  This will be the youngest nominee for best actress and the first time since 1977 (which, I believe, is the only time) when two people from foreign language films got nominated in the same year in the same acting category (Marie-Christine Barrault for Cousin cousine and Liv Ullman for Face to Face).   

Next entry: my list of nominees.

LINCOLN

The first thing I asked my friends when we left Lincoln, the new bio-pic of our Civil War president, written by Tony Kushner and directed by Steven Spielberg (together again after Munich, like Astaire and Rogers and Bogart and Bacall) is, “Why wasn’t Matthew McConaughey in the film; he’s been in every other movie this year, and every other actor in the world is in up there on the screen, so, what, he’s too good for Spielberg?”  One friend suggested he was actually cast as John Wilkes Booth, but his part got cut.  Another suggested they just couldn’t find a place for him to take off his shirt and bare his rear end.  I don’t know, but I think TMZ should look into it.

In the 1930’s through 1950’s, during the height of the studio system, Lincoln is what would have been called a prestige picture, something that places like Warner Bros. and Paramount would produce not to make money, but to convince the public they didn’t just make escapist fare and trash that only appealed to the lowest common denominator (while winning Academy Awards).   A prestige picture was made to earn the respect of the public and the critics (while winning Academy Awards).   They were made so that Darryl F. Zanuck could point to it and say, “See, I do know art when I see it” (while winning Academy Awards).  And if you’ve ever seen The Life of Emile Zola, Wilson, Gentlemen’s Agreement, Judgment at Nuremburg, you know what I’m talking about.  You don’t see this as much from studios anymore, quite possibly because they no longer want your respect, they just want your money.

I’m sorry.  I can’t say Lincoln is that good a movie.   It’s often entertaining.  The basic story is quite fascinating and an important piece of history.  The acting is first rate.  But it also has all the faults of a prestige picture, or the three S’s as I call them:  solemn, self important and self aware that it’s good for you, like, you know, castor oil.

Tony Kushner’s screenplay is, if truth be told, a disappointment for me and possibly even the chief culprit here.  Kushner is perhaps the greatest U.S. playwright today.  He provided a dark and exciting screenplay for Munich, but this time round the dialog often felt flat, expository and on the nose (and stagy—at one point, Abe and Mary have an over the top argument that is acted and shot in such a way that I expected the act one curtain to descend at any moment).  During the opening scene where Lincoln talks to two black soldiers and then two white soldiers, my heart sank.  And I wasn't heartened when Mary Todd Lincoln describes a dream that Lincoln had, that of his on a boat heading to a shore, and attributes it, in a manner I would call stretching to say the least, as being about the 13th Amendment (most people would describe is a dream about death and made me think that someone needs to get a more up to date book on dream interpretation).  Was it all going to be as clunky as this?

Well, no, not quite.  At the same time, there is also some marvelous stuff here, some true wit and fun scenes (especially when Kushner pushes for contemporary parallels like lobbyists or an hysterical scene when Tommy Lee Jones as  Thaddeus Stevens interacts with a Representative who is willing to change parties if it will save his job—sound familiar?).  And there’s a powerful scene when Lincoln, fed up with everyone telling him why they can’t get enough votes to pass Obamacare (oops, sorry, I mean the 13th Amendment), he pounds his desk in fury and tells them to stop excusing themselves, but just get the damn thing passed.  But at the same time, as the story focused more and more on finding the votes for the 13th Amendment, it also became more and more like Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1776, but without the songs (and ponytails, as my friend said, to which I said, but with the same bad wigs).   

It must also be admitted that Steven Spielberg’s direction rarely helps, but only seems to emphasize the artificiality of the proceedings, especially when he does things like have Lincoln roam a battlefield choked with dead bodies and all you think is, “how beautifully it’s all laid out”.   The story also goes a scene too long and undercuts what could have been a more haunting ending.  And the ending that is chosen doesn’t really work.  It’s understandable that Kushner and Spielberg didn’t want to go for the same old, same old, but their choice here probably wasn’t any better.

And, yes, in spite of everything that may be wrong here, it’s almost impossible not to get teary eyed when the amendment passes.     And it does make its goal: it has prestige coming out its whazoo.

And then there’s the acting.  Daniel Day-Lewis plays Honest Abe and he is quite remarkable, there can be little dispute here.  Tall, gangly and wearing the weight of the world on his shoulders (when he’s not wearing a shawl), he shuffles through the role as if he was to the White House born.  But it must be said that it’s Jones who steals the movie with some of the cleverest line readings of his career (not always easy with the somewhat stilted dialog often provided the actors here).   And other thespians like Sally Field and Joseph Gordon-Levitt more than earn their paycheck.

The remainder of the cast tends to hearken back to epics like The Greatest Story Ever Told, where you would go, “That’s Claude Raines, that’s Jose Ferrer, that’s Charlton Heston, that’s Shelly Winters” (well, if you’re my age, you would).  At the same time, it’s a little different here because you’re more likely going, “Hey, it’s that geek from Breaking Bad, it’s that lieutenant from Law & Order, it’s that mobster from Boardwalk Empire, it’s that British guy who hung himself in Mad Men, and who is that soldier in the opening, I know who that is, just give me a sec, OMG, that’s Lukas Haas”.    It’s easy to understand why so many known faces are in this epic.  Like the actors in The Greatest Story Ever Told, they probably thought that if they were in a movie of such religious fervor, it would insure them a place in the afterlife.   Of course, I don’t know what that portends for McConaughey, but not everybody can be one of the chosen, I suppose.

HITCHCOCK

Hitchcock the movie is something one might describe as having an identity crisis (which might be appropriate considering the subject matter).  It’s a few parts mid-life crisis; a few parts artist at a cross roads; a few parts sexual obsession; a few parts middle aged love story; a few parts homage.  In the end I’m not sure whether it holds together or whether everyone is so brilliant at their jobs, that they cover up the fact that it doesn’t really hold together.  I strongly suspect the latter, but I didn’t really care.  I was too thoroughly entertained to really worry about it.  Whatever else it is, Hitchcock is a ton of fun and I’m not talking about Sir Alfred himself.

The basic storyline revolves around the great (in size and stature) director desperate to do something fresh and challenging after the success of the very commercial and lightweight North by Northwest.  So, naturally, when his eyes land on a novel that everyone thinks is pure trash, what can he do but read it.  And it has all the elements he is looking for: serial murders, grave robbing, incest, Oedipus complex, transvestitism, and most important of all…the chance to be the first director to show a toilet in an American film.  And thus Psycho was born.

The title role is played by Anthony Hopkins.  Except for the girth, he really doesn’t particularly look like the man himself.  This was apparently a conscious decision.  When he was put in the makeup, the less like Hitchcock he seemed (that’s one of the odd things about art—the more realistic it is, the less realistic it is).  But when Hopkins opens his mouth and that stentorian voice carefully enunciates his lines in lugubrious wave after lugubrious wave, all you can see is Hitch.

Hopkins is supported by Queen Elizabeth II as Alma Reville (or Helen Mirren as she is more commonly known).  The rest of the case is basically name that impersonation with the more memorable being James D’Arcy as a slightly more than effeminate Anthony Hopkins and Scarlett Johansson as a perky, hey, look at me, I’m Janet Leigh.  Perhaps most surprising is Jessical Biel doing a very credible job as Vera Miles.  Meanwhile, Toni Collette wears glasses and Kurtwood Smith reprises his role from That 70’s Show by playing the head of the ratings board.

The extremely witty script is by John J. McLaughlin.  The extremely witty direction is by Sacha Gervasi (a bit far from Anvil: The Story of Anvil, perhaps—or perhaps not).  

SKYFALL

I suppose it’s come to the point where, when talking about a new James Bond movie, one feels compelled to start with rankings.  Well, Skyfall is not as good as Casino Royale, but it’s far better than Quantum of Solace. 

Now that that’s out of the way, whatever else Skyfall is, it’s very enjoyable and exciting, expertly acted  (with a sharp, little turn at the end by that old curmudgeon Albert Finney) and extremely well made.  You will be more than entertained.  At the same time, I also feel I should start out with a bit of deconstruction; so fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Obama may have been reelected POTUS, but Skyfall is definitely in the Romney camp.  It’s a movie that pits the old white guys against women and minorities.  Yes, I’m prepared for the ridicule and accusations of taking an escapist film a bit too seriously, but there was still for me a slight, uncomfortable tang of misogyny, homophobia and racism simmering somewhere slightly below the surface.  None of it on purpose, I’m sure, but I still maintain that it’s in the air, lingering around like an afterthought of perfume.

Skyfall is about a crisis at MI6, which at this point is run by M, played by stalwart Judy Dench.  She is the cold, distant mother who works outside the home and considers her job more important than her children.  In fact, she’s willing to sacrifice them Medea like to achieve her goals.  As a result, one (a tres amusing Javier Bardem, in equally tres amusing blond tresses that first made me think of Donald Trump and then wonder if the carpet matched the drapes) turns out to be gay and can’t handle the situation so he does what all gay men do when their mother turns against them—go mentally unstable and vow revenge (the Norman Bates route), while her other son (Daniel Craig, as stoically handsome and damned sexy as ever), grows up straight to do what every good hetero son does when caught in the same situation, bury his emotions deep within himself until he can’t create a meaningful relationship with anyone of the female persuasion (or as he’s more commonly known, James Bond).

Now the old white guys want to take MI6 back.  And M can find little support.  Even the token female on the inquiry board into M’s performance is a bitch and is more unforgiving of M than the men, with M’s only support coming from a condescending old white guy (Ralph Feinnes, not given a lot to do emotionally except for one scene where he finds himself rising to the occasion of a gun battle; but hey, it’s a paycheck).  But will the OWG’s win?  That’s the real question—not whether Craig will defeat Bardem, a conflict which is only there to distract the audience from the real apocalyptic issues facing the survival of the nation.

Okay, now that I’ve had my fun and left all my friends rolling their eyes at me, I do reiterate that Skyfall is enjoyable and exciting.  Sam Mendes, perhaps a long ways from American Beauty here, does a very commendable job as director, keeping all the various elements together, by hook and by crook if he has to.  The film opens with a riveting chase and fight scene choreographed to within an inch of Bob Fosse’s life, followed by a title sequence that would put Saul Bass to shame. 

After this, though it never gets boring, the story does slow a bit.  This is mainly for two reasons.  The first is that the writers, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan, keep bringing up some claptrap about the real crisis at MI6 being that the intelligence agency is stuck in the past and that the old must make way for the new (these scenes always felt forced and were never that convincing, especially since one can hardly imagine a more up to date and with the times organization than the computerized MI6 presented here).

And this emphasis seems a bit misplaced.  Much more interesting are the psychological make ups of Bardem and Craig’s characters, each of them given a traumatic past that is suppose to have made them what they are today.  But so little time is devoted to these much more complex aspects of the story, that these through lines don’t really have the emotional resonance one wished they would have had. 

The second reason for a slight tediousness here is that the story, at least at the beginning, feels a bit made up as it goes along.  The action sequences and look of the film tend to overpower character and clarity of plot, so that even if the set pieces are pretty neat, a little energy seeps out when one scene doesn’t clearly lead to the other.  In fact, one almost gets the idea that the writers were given a group of locations (wonderful, amazing, startling to the eye and other senses locations—a skyscraper overpowered by electronic billboards; an isolated pagoda styled casino that feels like it’s floating in air and is lit by a million candles; an abandoned building on a deserted island with an Ozymandias statue in its courtyard; Winston Churchill’s bunker sans cigars), and told to create a story around it.   One has to give them credit for doing as well as they did (though one could wish for a bit more wit) and as the story goes along and once Bardem’s fey villain is introduced, the story gets tighter and tighter and marking time is replaced by true excitement.  

The ending is a bit of a mixed message.  The old ways of hunting rifles and primitive knives win the day over the more modern weaponry of hand grenades and choppers (both of the flying and shooting kind).   But the symbol of Britain’s past, a huge, decaying monstrosity of a mansion in the middle of nowhere (or the English countryside as it’s more commonly known), is reduced to rubble.   So out with the old and in with the…old?

Because the final scenes say it all.  The gay man dies; the women are removed from their places of greatest skill (an expert female marksman is reduced to being a, wait for it…secretary—but, hey, even if she can’t type, at least she has a great figure for the men to ogle over); all racial minorities have been put in their place; and a typical father figure, as reserved, white and straight as 007 himself, takes over…all as the Founding Fathers intended, if the Founding Fathers had founded England, which they didn’t, but the principle’s the same.

CLOUD ATLAS

Cloud Atlas the movie stars Frank Griebe and John Toll as the Cinematographers; Huge Bateup and Uli Hanisch as the Production Designers; Rebecca Alleway and Peter Walpole as the Set Designers; Kym Barett and Pierre-Yves Gayraud as the Costume Designers; and a cast of thousands when it comes to Makeup and Art Direction.  There are also some actors involved, but they’re all pretty much chopped liver by the time the credits roll.

The movie, for those not on twitter and facebook, contains six story lines set in six different periods of time, including the future as well as the future future.  The basic themes seem to be that we’re all connected; everything that happens is cause and effect; and that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Kansas can cause a tsunami in Japan.  Except it’s not really. 

In fact, as the movie jumps from time period to time period and story to story (as a friend of a friend said, it’s the perfect movie for those with ADD), no one character or event in one time period has any affect on any character or event in another time period.   Or if they did, the writers (those V for Vendetta/Matrix welding Wachowski siblings, Lana and Andy, as well as Tom, Run Lola Run, Twyker, all of whom also directed) did a very good job of keeping it to themselves.   True, there are overlaps.  A book from one period, letters from another, a piece of middle brow music that people go gaga over for some unclear reason, all end up in another era.  But that’s not a connection.  That’s a coincidence.  And of the extremely forced variety.   Coincidence and connection are not the same thing, no matter how much new age mumbo jumbo you want to throw at it.  Or if it is, the filmmakers have a totally different understanding of butterflies and tsunamis that I do (which is more than quite possible).

In the end, there’s only one reason to have made this movie and that is the opportunity to do a tour de force thingy by creating six difference films in six different styles (Bladerunner, Brideshead Revisited/Merchant-Ivory, a 1970’s crime drama cum social ills action movie, etc.), all using the same set of actors.  And if the filmmakers had pulled that off, what an amazing film it would have been.

But alas, the only section that really hits its mark is the Bladerunner type story about replicants in a futuristic New Seoul.  This story has the best acting (Jim Sturgess and Doona Bae in the leads); it hits its emotional mark of doomed lovers on the run (a 22^nd Century take on They Live By Night); and the visual aspects of this section meld well and don’t overpower the human (well, replicant, but let’s not be petty) element.  For the other sections, the filmmakers can’t seem to get the styles or rhythms quite right with the story set further in the future almost impossible to follow.

And then there’s the acting.  The biggest names are Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon and Hallie Berry.  Sarandon isn’t given much to do.  Hallie Berry comes across well enough, especially in the 1970’s action film; all in all, her roles don’t require a great range (and there seem to be little difference in her ambitious investigative reporter and futuristic alien).  But (to paraphrase Pauline Kael in talking about Norma Shearer) oh, that Hanks.  Perhaps because he is so recognizable no matter what thickness of make up and prosthetics are slathered on, he felt the need to overplay every role to really remind people that he really isn’t who you think he is—but the further he tried to get away from himself, the closer he got.

The best performers come from the younger generation, like Sturgess and Bae as well as Ben Whishaw, the perpetually pouting English actor with the big hair.  They seem a bit more comfortable playing their wide range of roles (though the make up for Bae lets her down in the anti-slavery tract section).  And Hugo Weaving is a hoot in his Nurse Diesel/Ratchett turn, this time named Nurse Noakes (but he had a lot of practice in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert).

In the end, Cloud Atlas is ambitious and often overpowering to look at.  But in execution, to be cruel and ruthlessly honest, it comes across more as the perfect choice for bad movie night where everyone can yell out comments as the scenes go by.  One suggestion: in the 1970’s film, when Hanks, coiffed in the typical top and sideburns of the day, and Berry go outside and Berry asks if it’s okay to smoke and Hanks says, I’m cool—yell out, not with that hairstyle, you’re not.

LAURENCE ANYWAYS

Near the beginning of the movie Laurence Anyways, the central character (appropriately enough called Laurence; isn’t it nice when that happens) who teaches literature, tells his students, to paraphrase, that Proust writes very long books in which almost nothing happens (which actually is very true), but that Proust’s prose covers up this fact (which actually is just as very true).  I think that something like this could also be said of Laurence Anyways, but not quite to the same success as A Remembrance of Things Past, I’m afraid.

Laurence Anyways is a visual stunner.  Exploding with pop colors reminiscent of the Crayola crayon mod world of the early sixties; sets crammed with hip, post modern retro furniture and props; and characters often stuffed into costumes of the over the top variety (though the Joan Crawford shoulders Laurence displays at the beginning and end may be a bit much even for being a bit much).  It’s all topped off with a camera style that jerks around in that roller coaster approach so popular now, often filming actors from behind, or blocked by something, or their faces partially cut off.  It’s like Frederico Fellinni at times (especially in a group of somewhat outrageous women who befriend Laurence), but without the badly dubbed sound.

The movie is directed by that French Canadian cinematic Doogie Houser, Xavier Dolan, whose first film, I Killed My mother, a somewhat autobiographical story about a boy and his mom (but quite different than Psycho, believe me), was a riveting coming of age story.  It’s only real fault was that Dolan was still in his nappies (well, a mere 18 years old) when he made it.  Talk about rubbing it in.

He next made Heartbeats, which was again a visual feast, but the story was a tad underwhelming.  It concerned a gay man and his bestest female friend who are both attracted to the same man, but don’t know if he’s homo or hetero.  If the plot sounds a bit familiar, that’s because the TV show Will & Grace had a similar story line.  The difference is that those two resolved the conflict in fifteen minutes.  Dolan took more than an hour and a half with a plot that never quite convinced.  Now with the addition of his new movie, I feel that, at least for me, Dolan is fast becoming more like Tim Burton, James Cameron and Terry Gilliam.   Their movies are ravishing to look at, even brilliantly directed perhaps, but a bit more than weak in the writing department.

I have two issues with the plot and structure of Dolan’s film.  The basic premise is that Laurence (purse-lipped Melvil Poupaud) and Fred (Suzanne Clement--yes, Fred is female, which is suppose to be ironic, I suppose) are deeply in love.  Then Laurence lobs the grenade: he’s actually a woman in a man’s body.

At this point, the focus of the story gets more and more wobbly as it can’t seem to settle on what it wants to be about.  Is it driven by the difficulties a person in Laurence’s situation goes through and the conflicts that come up in his life because of it, as more than half of the story seems to be?  Or is it driven by the plotline of a man and a woman deeply in love, but due to circumstances somewhat beyond their control, will always be some sort of metaphorical ships in the night and never end up together as the finale and the rest of the film suggests?

Because of this uncertainty, the movie feels like it’s constantly bouncing back and forth between these two ideas until it seriously flounders for energy in the second half.   At that point, to be honest, I was just waiting for it to be over.

Connected to this is that when it comes to the idea of whether love will conquer all and whether these two people will manage to work past their differences and create a life with each other, there is no suspense.  Their love is doomed.  Dooooooooomed.  And for a very obvious and simple reason: Fred cannot make herself into a lesbian.  Laurence can make himself into a woman because that’s what he’s always been.  He’s not changing, he’s becoming his true self.  But Fred can’t will herself to be attracted to someone of the same sex.  It just doesn’t work that way no matter how many tantrums Laurence throws in order to get Fred to.

But there is perhaps an even more serious issue that overshadows those aforementioned.  Have you ever been in a coffee shop or restaurant and there’s a couple near by who are just a little too loud, a little too boisterous?  They think they’re the most interesting people in the world whereas you, and everybody else in the place, would just wish they’d shut up?  That’s what Laurence and Fred are like to me.  In fact, when Laurence said he was going to become a woman, all I could think was, well, it’s a better choice than the drama queen you are now.

So not only is the relationship of these two somewhat immature people doomed from the start, I found I didn’t like them or find them interesting enough to want them to end up together.  In the end, the only actor who really makes her mark is Nathalie Baye, the wonderful French actress who plays Laurence’s long suffering mother.  Her quite approach to interpreting her character is a welcome relief from all the self-centered chaos Laurence brings with him.

THE HUNT

I can’t really say that The Hunt, the new Danish movie about a man accused of pedophilia that was not that country’s foreign language film entry in the Oscar race (that went to A Royal Affair), is particularly ambitious.  It doesn’t really bring anything new to the genre of films about child molesting except perhaps make you realize how really sad it is that enough movies have been made about the subject that we can actually give it its own genre and that we can actually now say that a film brings nothing new to the topic that myriads of other films haven’t already.  

At the same time, it definitely gets the job done and is never boring.  There are also some jarringly effective scenes of violence (a son defending his father; a confrontation at a grocery store; a painful interaction at Christmas Eve mass—we may think that Europe is fully secularized, but the more one sees movies and TV shows from over there, the more one realizes how important religion still is).   And an unnerving, in a way, conclusion that dramatizes how easily one can forget all the atrocities that a group of people have rendered unto you; the ending seems to suggest that time heals everything (well, for almost everybody) and that one can become friends again quite easily with people who have betrayed you as if nothing had ever happened (is that a happy ending or an unhappy one, I’m not quite sure).

But the movie also has one other thing going for it.  The lead is played by Mads Mikkelson, the alliterative leading man who is fast becoming an international star (he was La Chiffre in Casino Royale and also stars in A Royal Affair—you’d think he’d learn to share, by now).  I  don’t know what it is about him.  He’s not traditionally handsome.  His cheekbones are impossibly high and he has a perpetual look of Garboisc sadness with eyes that always seem to be watering in that Katherine Hepburn post Summertime way.  But still, he’s attractive and intriguing.  He’s Humphrey Bogart with lighter hair.   He’s also talented, which never hurts.

In The Hunt he plays Lucas, a kindergarten teacher.  His best friend’s daughter, also one of his students, makes a sexually suggestive comment about him in a fit of pique.  The accusation isn’t true. It’s a little unclear that she fully understands what she said.  But it’s too late.  Even when she tries to take it back, no one will let her.  And Lucas’ life quickly gets sucked into a dark hole.  And Mikkelson makes the most of the role winning the best actor award at Cannes. 

The movie was written by Thomas Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm with Vinterberg also directing. Vinterberg first burst onto the international scene with his explosive Dogma film Festen (The Celebration), a triumph that may turn out to be one of the most important films of the 1990’s due to Vinterberg’s groundbreaking use of digital filmmaking that is today being integrated into almost every area of the industry.    His movies continued exploring the darker side of Danish life.  In 2010, he and Lindholm also collaborated on the movie Submarino (no, it has nothing to do Marvel DC comics), a stark study of two brothers psychologically damaged and estranged over an incident that happened when they were little and who now reunite for their mother’s funeral.  I don’t know what it is about Scandinavian film.  Denmark is supposed to be the happiest country on earth, but you’d never know it from the movies they make.

As effective as The Hunt is, it also feels a bit like Vinterberg is marking time.  As was said, he doesn’t really bring anything new to the subject and thus the movie ends up being more of a first rate vehicle to show off Mikkelson’s talents.   If you want to see a really devastating film about a man falsely accused of molesting children, see Guilty, the true story of a man and his wife arrested for being part of a child slave ring.  Lucas’s ordeal was spring break in Cancun in comparison to the hero of Guilty. But until then, The Hunt will more than do.

KON-TIKI

Kon-Tiki, the new fictionalized version of Thor Heyerdahl’s legendary jaunt across the Pacific, is a stunningly beautiful movie to watch (cinematography by Geir Hartly Andreassen), and not just the astonishing shots of Heyerdahl’s raft at sea that feel straight out of a National Geographic special.  In the early scenes of Heyerdahl alone and overwhelmed by New York City, Andreassen films the place as a series of Edward Hopper paintings, a somewhat stylized view of the lonely Big Apple of the time.

But when it comes to the rest of the movie, well, it’s somewhat more of a mixed bag.  The dialog, especially at the beginning, is at times clunky and expository, and the characters are sufficient unto the story, but not to much else.  Pal Sverre Vlaheim Hagen, who plays Heyerdahl, is appropriately blond and Nordic and does what he does with the role.  To its credit, the screenplay, by Petter Skavlan (with Allan Scott as script consultant), does do something interesting here by suggesting quite often that Heyerdahl is more interested in glory and fame than in making an important anthropological discovery.   It not just makes him less sympathetic, but downright selfish and self-centered, which is an intriguing approach to take for a national hero.  And in the end, Heyerdahl does get his glory.  But he also gets a Dear John letter.  You don’t feel sorry for him.  You can’t.  He built his raft, as they say, and he had to sail on it.  

But then there’s that second act.  That’s always the difficulty in movies like this in which the outcome is known (spoiler alert, they make it).  How do you create suspense in a movie that is inherently suspenseless?   But here the story gets a lot of help from the directors, Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, as well as the writers.  Wisely playing down character arcs and personal conflicts and interactions (which, with rare exceptions, usually stop movies like this dead), the directors and writers instead startle us with breathtaking scenes of a shark attack; a hauntingly graceful whale shark; iridescent fish; and a pod of whales leisurely swimming by, all of it topped off by that standard of standards, a terrifying storm.  Whatever else it is, Kon-Tiki is an entertaining adventure story that will probably not disappoint.

However, there is one question I’ve always wondered about when it comes to Kon-Tiki.  The premise is that years ago, natives of Peru sailed their way to Polynesia.  Heyerdahl proved it could be done.  But as far as I can tell, he’s never answered “why” they did it.   Columbus was searching for India, but what in the world were the Peruvians thinking?

Note: Kon-Tiki is the Norwegian entry in the foreign language film category at the 2013 Oscars

QUARTET

One of the things I couldn’t stop thinking about while watching Dustin Hoffman’s (yeah, verily I say unto thee, that Dustin Hoffman) directorial debut Quartet, is that in England, when actors get older, they’re given showcases like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet, or are made head of MI6, but in the U.S., the women either retire or go to TV and the men are stuck with vehicles like The Bucket List and Little Fockers (I’m not sure which is worse, but I guess I’d rather be working than not).

Quartet is a depressingly uplifting feel good movie about a group of senior citizens who reside at a home (well, actually a magnificent mansion) for musicians and singers (especially, but not exclusively, of the classical variety).  The premise of the film, if one wants to even call it that, is that the home is having serious financial difficulties, and if they don’t raise enough money at an annual benefit, they may have to close. 

The screenwriter here, Ronald Harwood, whose written some interesting scripts in the past (The Pianist, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and some not so interesting ones (Australia), has fashioned a trifle of a film here (he wrote it as a vehicle for Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney, who both received Oscar noms for Harwood’s The Dresser, but Finney become ill and Billy Connolly took over his part).  There’s nothing much to the plot.  It’s almost insulting in a way.  Age old conflicts that are spoken of in terms of life and death are resolved in a matter of minutes.  And the central premise of the film, that of the home closing, never seriously drives the story and almost feels like an afterthought.  In fact, when the benefit is held, it’s sold out, but with such a small audience, no one will ever be able to convince me that the box office sales (even at Covent Garden prices, as Michael Gambon’s Elizabeth Taylor-caftan wearing drama queen director of the show claims they can charge) would remotely cover the electric bill for one month, let alone keep the whole place going for a year. 

But if Quartet is a soufflé, light and airy, that comes dangerously close to falling, it never does.  The movie may be a trifle, but the acting isn’t.  This is a wonderful collection of old (both literally and figuratively) pros like the aforementioned Gambon, as well as Maggie Smith, the diva (okay, type casting); Tom Courtenay (the stoic); and Connelly (the satyr).  All are expert, but most delightful has to be Pauline Collins, as the hysterical and heartbreaking ditzy life force who is starting to demonstrate the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and steals every scene she’s in.

Hoffman uses all his experience as an actor to grand effect.  He knows better than to get in anybody’s way and that his chief responsibility is to make sure the actors get to do what they do best—act.   Based on the resulting film, it was a very wise choice.