The Official Review Thread of 2013

ksrymy
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by ksrymy »

ITALIANO wrote:
ksrymy wrote:
To me, it just seems like all this backlash is coming from people who think, if they fight it hard enough, The Great Beauty will win.

.
Again :D

Ksrymy, I know that you are very young, and at your age it's easier to see things in black and white... But can't you just accept the simple fact that some here don't think that The Hunt is a "stellar" movie? It happens - there's no hidden agenda.
No, no, no. I am fully accepting that some people don't like it. I just want to defend it for its admirable qualities.

I'm simply noting that the people who disapprove of it are those who are also big fans of The Great Beauty.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by ITALIANO »

ksrymy wrote:
To me, it just seems like all this backlash is coming from people who think, if they fight it hard enough, The Great Beauty will win.

.
Again :D

Ksrymy, I know that you are very young, and at your age it's easier to see things in black and white... But can't you just accept the simple fact that some here don't think that The Hunt is a "stellar" movie? It happens - there's no hidden agenda.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by The Original BJ »

ksrymy wrote:The Hunt is a stellar picture though we've seen it a hundred times under different names.
I guess the latter portion of this sentence is what was kind of a deal-breaker for me. I wasn't necessarily bothered by the lack of innovation in the premise -- especially because, as you say, that little girl was really impressive, and I thought those early scenes involving her were handled very well -- but as the movie went on, I just kept waiting for it to bring any kind of new angle to the subject matter that I hadn't already seen before in countless other stories. But instead, it goes through a lot of wildly predictable beats, and then, near the ending, drums up some character reversals that feel like they literally come from nowhere, because they aren't grounded in any kind of understandable cause and effect. After the first act, the whole thing just felt so half-hearted to me, and I didn't find enough invention anywhere to come away with the feeling that it was a familiar story told smashingly well. To me, it mostly just felt like a familiar story.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by ksrymy »

I have to second everything FilmFan has said. The Hunt is a stellar picture though we've seen it a hundred times under different names. Everyone's focused on Mikkelsen's scenes, and, while he is superb, everyone seems to forget the young girl's interrogation scene which, I think, is the best part of the movie save for the divisive ending. Vinterberg could not have done better directing that child; she knows what she did was wrong, but she's not sure exactly what the wrongdoing was. It's probably the best child acting of the year that I've seen. Everything about the scene worked well too, notably the lighting.

To me, it just seems like all this backlash is coming from people who think, if they fight it hard enough, The Great Beauty will win.

Personally, I don't care which of the two films wins. I like The Hunt much better, but The Great Beauty shouldn't be docked entirely for its flaws because it is so damn ambitious.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by FilmFan720 »

I haven't gotten a chance to see The Great Beauty, so I am not going to argue whether The Hunt deserves to win the Oscar or whether The Great Beauty is a better film. I will argue, though, that The Hunt is a pretty damn good film that is very well made. The plot does seem very well-worn, and on the surface there aren't a lot of surprises if you have seen The Children's Hour or an episode of Law and Order: SVU. But I thought the film dug a little deeper than most similar tellings (and to call this a movie-of-the-week, as many have done, is not really giving the movie a chance), mostly in the way that it dealt with all sides of the incident. What I liked about the film is that it doesn't try to deify the central teacher. As a teacher (and one who works with young kids a lot of the time and who is constantly aware of how others could perceive me and the children) no one handles a single action in this movie right, including the teacher who goes about most everything post-accusation the wrong way. Is it a remarkably profound work of art? No. Does it take a familiar story and infuse it with an interesting take, with some remarkable performances (that little girl is phenomenal) and a really controlled hand directing it. Sometimes, there's nothing wrong with that.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by dws1982 »

I don't know. Since all the voters get DVDs and can vote on the category, it seems to me like a lot of voters may be lazy and just vote for the assumed frontrunner without actually watching all of the DVDs. And since they may remember The Great Beauty having won at the Golden Globes, they may go for it.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by OscarGuy »

The last couple of winners were undeniable. What gives me the suspicion that The Hunt will trump The Great Beauty isn't which film is better, but accessibility (as Italiano said). That The Hunt's story is familiar, though told with immediacy that may have more impact on the voters than The Great Beauty, which has been described as modern Fellini. Of course, Fellini is revered, so it's possible that similarity might encourage people to vote for it on a purely visceral level.

I've not seen either film, so I'm looking at it pragmatically, not based on quality. The critics were frequently more inclined to pick Great Beauty over The Hunt, but The Hunt was, as its title infers, still in the hunt throughout awards seasons, so it isn't as if the film wasn't thought of highly among critics.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by ITALIANO »

The most accessible movie will win. And The Hunt, let's face it, is more accessible than The Great Beauty.

Interestingly, both movies have a big, pivotal scene set in a church - during a sunday Mass in The Hunt, during a funeral in The Great Beauty. And one just has to compare these two scenes - not only the way they are shot, but also what they mean in the context of their respective movies, and the "percentage" of text and subtext in each of these scenes, to realize which is the better, subtler movie.

And yet, after all this... I will root for The Hunt. I have to - I've been to all Italian film internet boards predicting (against all the others) that the Danish movie will win, that I really risk of losing my face if this doesn't happen..! :)
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by Precious Doll »

It is my understanding that for the first time (and I may be stating incorrect information) the entire Academy membership will be receiving screeners of all 5 nominated foreign language films and will be eligible to vote in this category.

If this is the case, The Hunt is an assured winner.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by The Original BJ »

I'm still missing the other three Foreign Film nominees, but it would be simply groan-inducing for The Hunt to triumph over The Great Beauty.

I'm not sure if the last two victors in this category were just too great and/or buzzed about to be denied, or if voters are showing an increased willingness to pick more bracing candidates here than they sometimes have.

That said, it's not like The Great Beauty is in any way a "difficult" movie -- it's gorgeous-looking, and full of very entertaining sequences, though, as Italiano suggests, there's something mysterious about it which wouldn't necessarily make it the first choice of someone looking for something more straightforward.

The one silver lining to a victory for The Hunt, I guess, would be the fact that Thomas Vinterberg isn't nobody (and not exactly the type of director who I ever imagined would be in serious Oscar contention, though, of course, it's for a far more traditional film than usual.)
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by ITALIANO »

Mister Tee wrote: why in the world are people so positive on The Hunt? )

The big question, which I also frequently ask myself - anytime, and it happens often especially on this board, I see The Hunt rated higher than The Great Beauty.

It would be easy to say that these people don't understand much about movies. Easy, and tempting - and only a few years ago it would have been my only answer. Now - I don't know, I guess it could be a bit unfair. It has probably to do with the fact that The Hunt is a very reassuring movie - not only, like you say, a movie which we have seen so often before, but, I'd say, a "parable" we have heard so often before (and for millennia) - the (very christian, Jesus-like) parable of the innocent man wrongly accused by a hostile society. In that sense it's so "classical", so - as Heksagon says - formulaic, that it proves familiar to so many viewers - yet at the same time the topic is "hot" and fashionable. Plus, it's undeniably "well-made" - traditionally well-made, but still well-made.

And I guess that sadly we aren't used to a certain kind of movies anymore. Even in Europe, not only in America (and actually I must say that some of the most intelligent things I've read on The Great Beauty have been written by Americans. But then my father years ago went on a conference tour in American universities and then told me that he had heard Fellini discussed by American colleagues much more profoundly - and much more affectionately - than it had happened to him in Italy). It's a general thing, I believe - inventiveness, surrealism, the willingness to go beyond just "telling a story" and even I'd say the much more simple, but rare today, joy of making cinema, of playing with images - things that for decades have been important aspects of movies as an art form - are looked at with suspicion nowadays, and often not understood at all. Too complicated, in a way. It's viewers who have become too lazy, of course.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by Heksagon »

I kind of agree with Tee on The Hunt, at least to some degree. I feel that overall, it's a good film, with good acting, good direction, well-written characters and plenty of good individual scenes that impressed me. But original, it isn't. The plot is very formulaic. And I hated the ending.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by Mister Tee »

I imagine there'll eventually be a thread for Foreign Language Film where this can be discussed, but I have to ask: why in the world are people so positive on The Hunt? I felt like I'd seen this movie a dozen times before -- the premise going back to The Children's Hour, of course, but it's also been used, with this particular set of details, in numerous forgotten TV movies. The progression is always the same: the false report surfaces, the town turns on the accused, wife/ex-wife/girlfriend makes trouble or deserts the hero, lots of scenes of ugly ostracism (and at least half the time I've seen that poor dog slaughtered). The only part of the film that had any novelty to it was when the son Marcus appeared and took up for his Dad so vociferously...and, I suppose, the ending, which reminded me a bit of the final moment in Doubt: suddenly trying to buy ambiguity that the story itself hadn't earned.

I think it's insulting to speak of this even in the same breath with something as inventive as The Great Beauty. (Other nominees as yet unseen by me)
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by anonymous1980 »

MUD
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepard, Jacob Lofland, Michael Shannon, Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson, Joe Don Baker, Paul Sparks.
Dir: Jeff Nichols.

A superb coming-of-age film about two boys who meet up with a wanted fugitive and decide to try and help him out. I have yet to see Take Shelter but based on this, I think Jeff Nichols is definitely a directorial talent to watch. This is an excellent piece of work. Matthew McConaughey is, of course, quite outstanding as the title character, the wanted fugitive. However, more attention should be given to Tye Sheridan who plays the more prominent boy. He anchors the film's emotional weight like a pro. It features some great cinematography too. Overall, I highly recommend it.

Grade: A-
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2013

Post by anonymous1980 »

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY
Cast: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn, Shirley McLaine, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn, Patton Oswalt, Adrian Martinez, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson.
Dir: Ben Stiller.

It's not a bad film. It's also far from a great film. Yes, I'm damning it with faint praise because that's what it is. Ben Stiller's latest directorial effort at first seems to wanna be a parody of quirky, life-affirming romantic dramedies with fantastical elements but it wants to have its cake and eat it too since it's also, at the same time, sincerely trying to be one. The result is something a half-baked mixture of both. The film has some nice moments and good performances. Supporting work from Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn and Patton Oswalt are first-rate. But all in all, this is probably Ben Stiller's weakest directorial effort since it, kind of not surprisingly, is almost free from the bite/edge of his previous works.

Grade: C+

MUSEUM HOURS
Cast: Mary Margaret O'Hara, Bobby Summer, Ela Pilpits.
Dir: Jem Cohen.

A Canadian woman goes to Vienna to visit her comatose cousin. While there, she visits the museum and strikes up a friendship with one of the guards. I'm actually surprised by how much I loved this film. In a way, it's almost like a travelogue (The film REALLY made me wanna visit Vienna) but it's far more complex than its simple premise suggests. I feel hesitant to recommend this to anyone who does not have any interest in the visual arts. But those that do will get a really immersive thought-provoking, yet oddly moving slice of life that juxtaposes the paintings in the museum. An excellent piece of work.

Grade: A-
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