TNMC

Che:
Let me preface by acknowledging three things: I am a scholar of Steven Soderbergh, I realize not all of his films are successes, and I realize that many, many people will despise "Che." When I screened Soderbergh's latest, it was on a digital print that had a running length of roughly four hours (this version has been dubbed the "roadshow version" due to the fact that credits have been replaced with a printed program and that there is an overture and intermission) and for a film that focuses on what are probably considered mundane aspects of the subject of a biopic's life, this film will probably play as extremely boring and tedious. At the same time, Che Guevara has become such an icon (literally), that this film goes a long way in de-mystifying the life of a revolutionary. Basically, it's a lot of walking and meetings. The first half of the film depicts Che reminiscing about the Cuban Revolution on the eve of his address to the United Nations. Soderbergh, however, skirts bio-pic conventions by focusing more on Che's theory and method than his personal life and even goes so far to deny the audience the ability to take satisfaction in the Cuban Revolution, as the first half ends on Che's march to Havana and the second half picks up on his entrance into what will become the failure of his attempt at a revolution in Bolivia, minus the flashback structure of the first half. The film will strike some as bloated and cerebral, but this is where I found a great deal of satisfaction to be taken from it. I normally detest bio-pics (more on that below), but Soderbergh's revision of a stale genre and his gorgeous Malick-esque cinematography make for incredibly fruitful viewing.

Milk:
I HATE, HATE, HATE bio-pics. This genre was practically founded on Oscar baiting and has relegated the best actor/actress categories to best impressionist. I'm actually shocked that Frank Caliendo has yet to win one. With this predisposition noted, I found "Milk," like "Che," to provide a refreshing take on the genre. This is mainly done through director Gus Van Sant's use of documentary film footage intercut with D.P. Harris Savides's superb cinematography (the pair's work with reflections is masterful). In addition, Sean Penn's performance as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected public official, surprised me a great deal. Penn has been performing like Al Pacino lately, taking his emotions way over the top far too quickly but he actually shows a great deal of restraint here. The film had the added impact of feeling much more bittersweet after California's passage of Proposition 8 (which is a constitutional amendment which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman), but perhaps that makes it all the more relevant.

Revolutionary Road:
The suburban angst drama has become stale since the release of Sam Mendes' "American Beauty," which is why it puzzled me even more that he decided to make this stale adaptation. It's not that "Revolutionary Road" is poorly made, it's actually skillfully constructed, but the material of a married man and wife finding displeasure in the American dream (played here by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) has quickly become melodramatic. Moreover, Mendes uses many of same cinematic tools (characters framed within frames, red and blue define the house at times) he brought to "American Beauty" and it certainly doesn't help that Kate Winslet is playing a variation on her "Little Children" character. The best scenes involve the disjunction between verbal expression and action (like the breakfast scene that the film climaxes with) or the absurd comedy of this situation (the PhD who has been mentally broken by suburbia comes off like Heath Ledger's Joker, constantly trying to make disorder out of the facade of suburban order).

Frost/Nixon:
I find Ron Howard to be a hack director most of the time. "Apollo 13" aside, I struggle to find any work by him in the last ten years that was truly memorable ("A Beautiful Mind" is one of my least favorite movies of the decade). "Frost/Nixon," on the other hand, is quite good...I'm just unsure of how much of this is Ron Howard's contribution as both the play and the two leads have been ported over from Broadway. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, following the resignation of President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella), British talk-show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) solicited the President for a series of interviews in which he eventually pushed Nixon into apologizing to the American public and to take personal responsibility for Watergate. Sheen and Langella are amazing in their roles and Howard makes theatrical material cinematic but the real problem with this film is its objective: what purpose does it serve? It dramatizes the interviews, but why shouldn't we just watch the interviews for ourselves? Yes, the production context behind the interviews is interesting, as are Frost and Nixon's interactions off-screen (Nixon's drink and dial is quite powerful), but why bother taking a true event that has been documented so greatly via the media into a movie while only adding maybe 25% original material?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:

I held extremely high expectations of David Fincher's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and I walked away from the screening being only mildly disappointed. The problems with the film are mainly pacing (BB's early life takes up nearly 2/3rds of the film's two and a half-hour running length) and with the structure of the screenplay. Written by Eric Roth, I found a lot of parallels with his earlier adaptation of "Forrest Gump" (the feather has been replaced with a hummingbird) except for the fact that this film was rather amazing. The reason to see this film is obviously Brad Pitt's performance as Benjamin Button, a man who is born an 80 year old man who gradually ages into the body of an infant. I was stunned to hear director David Fincher discuss the film afterwards and disclose that Brad Pitt's actual body does not appear until the one-hour mark. Instead, Fincher performed motion capture on Pitt's face and composited it onto the body of one of four elderly gentleman and it is both seamless and an amazing blend of performance and technology. I highly recommend the film and assume Brad Pitt has an Oscar nomination ensured for his work here.

Gran Torino:

Having seen the trailer for "Gran Torino," I cracked a lot of jokes about it, fearing the worst. The footage made the film look to be "Dirty Harry: The Retirement Years" and while the film does indeed have a lot of fun with Clint Eastwood's earlier roles, his performance and the film are amongst the year's best (and far better than Eastwood's earlier effort this year, "Changeling"). The story follows Walter (Eastwood), a retired Korean War vet (who reminded me a lot of my late grandfather in a bittersweet way) who is culturally challenged. Faced with a rising Hmong population in his neighborhood, Walter greets their presence with unmasked hostility until he begins to get to know them. Now, this sounds rather conventional but Eastwood handles it in an extremely unconventional fashion as he allows Walter to retain his negative characteristics (his overt racism) while expanding his empathy for these kids and the results are incredibly refreshing. In a sense, Eastwood's role in the film reminded me of Fred Astaire in "The Band Wagon," a legend dealing with the icons of his life with contemplation, care, and with a slight smile.

My favorite films of 2008 thus far:

Che
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Gran Torino
Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Synecdoche, NY
Wall-E