Time and time again, we hear that actresses have it much harder when it comes to finding good parts in Hollywood. It’s true, as year after year I usually have to scrounge to find truly stand-out actresses. This year, for whatever reason, it was not difficult at all. Funny enough, some big names like Penelope Cruz, Marisa Tomei and Angelina Jolie are not included on this list… because I didn’t think they were worthy.
Here is a list of the best leading and supporting actresses in 2008, ranked in order:
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Streep is all but expected to turn in Oscar-worthy performances, though we can forgive her for Mamma Mia and only hope she struck up a revenue sharing deal for that film. Playing an ultra conservative, fiercely authoritative nun in Doubt, she is wonderfully wicked in this play adaptation. Her scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman is downright mesmerizing, and as great of an actor as Hoffman is, you know who will win the battle.
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married Hathaway turns in a career-defining performance as an alcholic who, fresh out of rehab, has arrived to create chaos at her sister’s wedding. The movie is depressing and Hathaway’s character is the main contributor, as she time and time again makes every scene as painful as possible. She, in many ways, is like the serious, realistic and more damaged version of Michael Scott from “The Office,” and should be commended for it.
Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road Winslet is required to show up on lists such as this one, and she does not disappoint in 2008. Her performance as a depressed housewife and mother in the 1950’s is tragic. While she isn’t my #1 pick, I would be quite content if she took home the Oscar this year – and in fact would be quite surprised if she didn’t.
Amy Adams, Doubt Adams is hot, but she’s also an excellent actress. People may not have noticed, but she’s starting to rack up a respectable career in just the few years since she sneaked into the spotlight, and her performance as an innocent, naive nun proves just how strong of an actress she really is. Even though Streep chews scenery in every scene she’s in, Adams holds her own and establishes herself as the perfect counterbalance to the stronger-willed character.
Melissa Leo, Frozen River Frozen River is a good movie, but it’d be a forgettable B-grade drama-thriller without the performance of Melissa Leo. Leo plays desperate and tough at the same time, and never for a second do we question her motives for engaging in illegal, risky behavior. Everything about her is perfect in this movie – too bad she has such stiff competition.
Viola Davis, Doubt
Viola Davis only has one scene in the entire movie, but boy is it a doozey. While neither Adams’ or Hoffman’s characters can stand up to Streep’s, Davis’ puts the head nun in her place with a tear-jerking and downright disturbing speech that essentially condones pedophilia when it comes to her own son. That’s messed up, but brilliant.
Frances McDormand, Burn After Reading McDormand is one of the best actresses working today; she can do drama, comedy and anything in between – or often at the same time. As a gym employee who is desperately trying to save up for cosmetic surgery, McDormand delivers a stellar performance, even when matched against the likes of Brad Pitt and George Clooney, both of whom tend to steal the spotlight.
Gwenyth Paltrow, Iron Man
Everyone has been praising director Jon Favreau and actor Robert Downey Jr. for making Iron Man the massive blockbuster that it is, but Gwenyth Paltrow who, in what could have been a thankless and forgettable role, made her character anything but. She has great chemistry with Downey Jr. and looks as hot as ever.
Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married Anne Hathaway is the one everyone’s talking about in regards to Rachel Getting Married, but her on-screen sister – the title character, no less – is nearly as good. Though not nearly as frustrating or depressing as Hathaway’s character – and thus not nearly as noticeable – DeWitt manages to portray the more reasonable sister with just as many flaws and issues as her alcoholic sibling.
Kate Winslet, The Reader I didn’t really like Winslet’s performance when I first saw The Reader – and I am not a huge fan of the movie itself – but she has grown on me. After all, when you think about how unlikable, flawed and ugly she is in this movie, you realize that with just a touch of makeup this actress transformed herself into an enigma of a character, one whom the main character cherishes and loves, yet who others despise for the atrocities she committed.
Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Dark Knight The praise has been all about Heath Ledger, and if people play it safe they mention Morgan Freeman, Christian Bale and Michael Caine. Still, Gyllenhaal turns in a great supporting performance here. I’m one of the few who didn’t mind Katie Holmes in the original, but when you watch one film right after the other – like I did the other night – you realize what an upgrade director Christopher Nolan pulled off when replacing one with the other. Gyllenhaal’s final scene is as emotional as it is due to the actress’s ability to reveal to the audience her sudden, momentary shock that everything is not going to end happily.
Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona Interestingly, when people think of this movie, their minds immediately go to Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz making out. Mine does, too, but it also goes to the third actress who, in fact, plays the main character. Rebecca Hall, the least-known name in the entire movie, was hardly marketed at all, but not only is she prettier than Johansson and Cruz (a very, very hard feat), she also delivers a compelling performance.
Evan Rachel Wood, The Wrestler Marisa Tomei has been getting all the attention when it comes to supporting performances, but maybe I was too focused on her incessant nudity throughout the film. No, my praise lands on Evan Rachel Wood, who once again delivers a strong, emotional performance as the estranged daughter of Mickey Rourke. She only has a few scenes, but those scenes are the most powerful of the movie.
The ladies of Sex and the City: The Movie OK, so I wouldn’t give any of these ladies Oscars, but they should be commended for bringing their TV counterparts to the big screen in a funny, sentimental and believable way. Thanks to the chemistry these women have with one another, Sex and the City catapulted female-oriented movies into arenas normally reserved for adrenaline -filled action flicks.
Nicole Kidman, Australia Kidman isn’t amazing in Australia, but she fits the part perfectly. Her performance in the first third of the movie is particularly memorable, as she plays a surprisingly funny, Scarlett O’Hara-esque Brit who doesn’t know the first thing about life down under. There’s a reason why she’s at the bottom of this list, but she still is worthy of recognition.
Every year, plenty of movies come and go with audiences ignoring them and/or critics bashing them. Many of these films deserve the fate bequeathed upon them, but there are others that leave the filmmakers scratching their heads or drinking away their sorrows in some lonely tavern only to wake up the next morning to find their clothes and money missing and a lingering memory of a sexy woman who wasn’t as sexy as she first appeared – or as womanly.
Below are 23 overlooked movies released in 2008. Some of these are box office duds and others are ones that the critics sunk their teeth into for no good reason. And there are even some blockbusters on this list that some people have refused to watch out of some sad, misguided preconception of the picture, franchise or actor involved. (more…)
Stefanie over at Endless Simmer sent me a link to a blog post on her site about the top 10 movie food moments of all time. It’s a clever way to take advantage of the upcoming Oscars show by a site that generally has nothing to do with movies.
I don’t necessarily agree with all the scenes mentioned in the list, but it’s fun to look at anyway.
Alternatively, I would have recommended the orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally and the puking scene in Stand By Me. However, I absolutely agree with their inclusion of the scene from Ratatouille.
Okay, to compare Battle for Terra to Delgo, the biggest box office flop of all time, is unfair. Unlike Delgo, Battle for Terra has a major distributor (Lionsgate), has pretty good special effects and, most importantly, a marketing campaign. I just received my first marketing pitch today.
Unfortunately, the Battle for Terra movie trailer leaves little to be desired. You can watch it here:
The movie is about an alien race that finds themselves the target of another race that wants to inhabit their planet: humans. The humans, who have been reduced to Battlestar Galactica-type numbers, are running out of options and, being the technologically advanced civilization, decide to invade. However, their invasion will amount to genocide – and not all of the humans are on board with the plan.
Battle for Terra does not look like a very good movie. The trailer is boring and lacks the life and enthusiasm that one would expect from a film like this. It’s an animated film, which it’s problematic: the movie seems way too serious to have the look and feel of a cartoon. If this had the visual effects of Final Fantasy, it would make more sense, but instead it appears to have family friendly graphics with a serious, adult plot. What parent would want to take their kid to this when they could wait until November to see Planet 51, a movie with a similar but much lighter premise (humans land on an alien planet).
Furthermore, it isn’t clear who the good guys here. The humans are on the verge of committing genocide, and from the trailer it looks like they carry through with their attack. While the aliens appear to be the protagonists, there are also humans that question the invasion. Basically, who do we root for?
On a basic level, the Battle for Terra movie trailer lacks the entertainment value that animated movies need to draw audiences into theaters. On a deeper level, the premise itself is problematic. Lionsgate doesn’t have any experience distributing a movie such as this, and one wonders why the film is being released wide on May 1st. Just wait a week for Star Trek, people.
I love a good movie as much as the next person. In fact, my favorite hobby hinges on the fact that there are good movies out there. But, as a self-proclaimed critic, the best movies for writing reviews are the bad ones. What can one say about Schindler’s List without going into a fluffy tirade of prose about how good it is, when the reader, for the most part, just wants to hear, “This movie rocks?” No, it’s the bad movies where the real meat is, where the reviewer can unlock his deepest, pent-up aggressions toward sloppy filmmaking and unleash, narrowing in on the direct causes that contributed to a picture’s downfall.
And in 2008, just like any year, there were a fair amount of movies that allowed me to play mean. At the same time, 2008 marks a continuing improvement on my part to avoid the movies I know are bad. One summer, way back when I was in high school, I went and saw just about every movie that came out – in theaters, no less – even if I knew they were going to be horrible. I was obsessed. I even backtracked to 1995 to see just about anything that had been released, just so that my database could be complete. When I could have been watching the classics of the century, I was instead watching some crappy movie from ‘97 that I knew was going to be bad.
One should not pay too close attention to reviews, because everyone has their own tastes and the more movies a critic watches, the more cynical he or she becomes. Nevertheless, there are movies that you don’t need a critic to tell you that they’re going to suck. And those are the movies I’m starting to weed out of my obsession, so I can focus on other important things, like my day job, friends, family and perhaps finding a girlfriend one of these days. (more…)
The 2009 Academy Awards debut next Sunday, and with it awards for all those short movies that no one has ever seen or heard about. One such live-action short nominated for an Oscar is New Boy, Ireland’s 11-minute entry written and directed by Steph Green.
I normally don’t review short films, yet at the same time, they are nice to review. Why? Because they’re short. On the flip side, having not seen a ton of short films in my life, it’s challenging to determine what benchmark to compare them to.
New Boy is a well made, sharp-looking drama about a nine-year old African boy who has just moved to Ireland and is undergoing his first day at class. He is immediately picked on by a couple of boys for no particular reason, and while it looks like he can hold his own, he knows that violence won’t solve the issue in the long run. As he deals with these bullies, he remembers his father back home.
New Boy is a fun little movie that works well both on a comedic and dramatic level. The actors involved, most of them kids, are quite good, including Olutunji Ebun-Cole in the lead role. To establish character bonds in a matter of a few minutes is most likely the most challenging part for a director, yet Green takes advantage of every second his reel is running. While the underlying theme is serious, Green entertains the audience with some rowdy children and a frustrated teacher (played brilliantly by Norma Sheahan) who is at her wit’s end to keep everyone in line. The little girl is also pretty funny.
Still, like I said before, I don’t have much of a benchmark to compare it to. The flashbacks to Joseph’s time in Africa are well done but don’t add a lot of value to the story. There’s clearly something there in terms of what happens to his father, but the current events and those flashbacks don’t sync as well as Green thinks they do. While Ebun-Cole does a good job, there’s not much to latch onto with his character, other than that he’s the new kid and something really bad happened back home. He is more of a vehicle to introduce us to all of the other characters, and yet this wasn’t the intention: both his past and present are meant to be the focus.
Is this too much to ask for in a short film? I don’t know. The movie looks great, is well written and is thoroughly entertaining. Asking for a more developed story may be too tall of an order, but another minute or two could have tied the flashbacks more appropriately into the story at hand.
Nevertheless, if you can spare 11 minutes, New Boy is a worthy picture.
The franchise that never dies has just financed an additional ten films with a three-day opening weekend slaughter of $42 million, leading a pack of other box office successes. The entertaining reboot of Friday the 13th, which went back to roots and offered fans and non-fans – like me – alike enough murders and thrills to meet or exceed expectations, and audiences responded favorably. (more…)
Chokearrives on DVD on Tuesday, February 17. Though the movie is from writer Chuck Palahnuik, who is best known for Fight Club, this movie isn’t anything that classic, and as such, fans may be disappointed. Nevertheless, for what it is, it works, offering some entertaining dark comedy about sex addicts and a delusional mother.
You can read my full Choke movie review here. As decent as the movie is, the DVD is nothing to scream about. While at first glance there are a lot of special features, most were made to make it look like the DVD is worth buying. Aside from some deleted scenes and one short featurette on the film’s casting, most of the bonus features are a complete waste of time. (more…)
I watched Twilight when it came to theaters. It was surprisingly pretty good, even though it was focused more on the hormones of a teenage girl than on anything more macro such as good versus evil or protagonist versus antagonist (though one would argue that the complexities of a woman cannot be topped).
Following that, I went on to read all four of the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. I had heard they were good, so I was willing to give them a chance. The first book was good and quite entertaining, as Bella attempted to discover what the mystery was behind Edward. The second book, however, was just OK.
New Moon, which is hastily being made into a movie this year, is not going to make much of a movie at all. The first half of the book is pretty good, as Bella starts up a quasi-relationship with Jacob, her soon-to-be-werewolf best friend. In reality, the book is just a retread of the first one, only with a werewolf in place of a vampire. Bella sure knows how to pick them, doesn’t she? It’s entertaining, but when it devolves into a race to save Edward from the Volturi, it takes a turn for the worse. Meyer ends the book with absolutely no action, and in fact there is only one suspenseful moment in the entire novel. How will this become a good movie? It’s hard to imagine.
Thankfully, Eclipse is a much-better book. Victoria, who has been lurking in the shadows since the first novel, amasses a vampire army to take down the Cullens and kill Bella. The result? A vampire vs. vampire vs. werewolf battle, which, if done right, should be amazing on the silver screen. Eclipse is exciting, smart and entertaining, and will make a perfect finish to the trilogy.
Except… the series doesn’t end as a trilogy. It ends with Breaking Dawn, a shockingly disappointing finish that takes the characters in unwanted directions. Bella finally gets to screw Edward, but not until he’s convinced her to marry at a young age (is this meant to teach young girls a moral lesson? It’s not “don’t have sex until you’re married.” It’s “if you want to have sex, get married so you can have sex.”). Then she gets knocked up, and spends much of the rest of the book lying around on her death bed, so much so that Meyer has to shift the narrative to Jacob to progress the story. Ouch. Eventually, Bella becomes a vampire, and this is the best thing that happens to her: however, how can you top being immortal and wanting to eat other humans? Of course, Bella doesn’t get to suffer any of the consequences, as her father shrugs off her conversion with minimal conflict (that’s convenient) and she doesn’t have any of the urges a newborn vampire should have.
To cap it all off, Meyer sets up a gigantic battle between the Cullens and the Volturi, and then decides not to have a satisfying finale at all. Harry Potter, the Twilight series is not.
Essentially, the Twilight series is an entertaining series that doesn’t have a plot or much else. Unlike Harry Potter, which carefully and intelligently progresses its stories along to a massive, satisfying climax, Meyer seems more concerned about fitting her frustratingly annoying lead character into a childhood dream of immortality and endless love. The books aren’t bad, but they are overrated, and it’s sad that any young girl may idolize Bella. Bella is annoying, and her attempts to be selfless generally results in her being as selfish as possible. Driven by hormones and a silly, youthful love, she is willing to give up everything, including her family and friends, for her lover. That’s just pathetic.
The only reason I’m dwelling on the moral aspects of the story is because I’m disappointed by the general story arc of the books. They’re written by a woman for girls – and I am neither a woman nor a girl – so I understand that I’m not in the target audience. But when you write a story about vampires and werewolves and don’t follow through with such things… well, it’s embarrassing that this series is compared to Harry Potter.
Loyal readers should know that I’m an atheist. And as an atheist, I’m a big fan of Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous. It’s not that I think the movie is an incredible documentary that will convert believers – after all, believers wouldn’t come within ten feet of this movie – but it makes some pretty valid points… Most importantly, it makes the point that religion doesn’t make any sense. It never did, and it never will.
Religulous (read my Religulous movie review here) arrives on DVD next Tuesday, February 17, and with it a few bonus features including an audio commentary and a slew of deleted scenes. I haven’t listened to the audio commentary, but plan to: after all, Bill Maher should make for a good commentary. The deleted scenes are actually several deleted segments, each of which focus on a different set of people that were entirely removed from the movie. There are some funny moments found in these segments, though it’s understandable why they were removed from the final picture; some of them aren’t that entertaining, and the others are redundant when placed against existing scenes.
Unfortunately, the polygamist wives segment is surprisingly short; I would have liked to see more of them.
Complementing the deleted scenes are several “Bill Maher rants,” which feature the comedian speaking to the camera about why certain religious facets don’t make sense. Some variations are included in the movie itself, but there are several new segments that raise some good points.
All in all, I was a little disappointed to not find more deleted scenes on the disc; I would have imagined that a lot of good material was cut from existing segments (most notably at Jesus Land or whatever that place was called). Nevertheless, the Religulous DVD offers a decent set of features given the type of movie it is – I wouldn’t have expected much more.
For moderates or the downright non-believers, Religulous is a must-see. As entertaining as it is, it’s not worth purchasing – unless you plan to show it to a bunch of children to spread the truth.
Time and time again, we hear that actresses have it much harder when it comes to finding good parts in Hollywood. It’s true, as year after year I usually have to scrounge to find truly stand-out actresses. This year, for whatever reason, it was not difficult at all. Funny enough, some big names like Penelope Cruz, Marisa Tomei and Angelina Jolie are not included on this list… because I didn’t think they were worthy.
I love a good movie as much as the next person. In fact, my favorite hobby hinges on the fact that there are good movies out there. But, as a self-proclaimed critic, the best movies for writing reviews are the bad ones. What can one say about Schindler’s List without going into a fluffy tirade of prose about how good it is, when the reader, for the most part, just wants to hear, “This movie rocks?” No, it’s the bad movies where the real meat is, where the reviewer can unlock his deepest, pent-up aggressions toward sloppy filmmaking and unleash, narrowing in on the direct causes that contributed to a picture’s downfall.
The 2009 Academy Awards debut next Sunday, and with it awards for all those short movies that no one has ever seen or heard about. One such live-action short nominated for an Oscar is New Boy, Ireland’s 11-minute entry written and directed by Steph Green.
Choke 
I watched Twilight when it came to theaters. It was surprisingly pretty good, even though it was focused more on the hormones of a teenage girl than on anything more macro such as good versus evil or protagonist versus antagonist (though one would argue that the complexities of a woman cannot be topped).
