Oscar Nominated Short Films 2012
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Friday 2/10/2012 with my wife and our friend Gosia at the Tower Theatre in Fresno

For the seventh year in a row this year, Fresno Filmworks brought the Oscar nominated short films to the big screen here in the Central Valley. I’m thankful each month for the good job Filmworks does to screen independent movies here, in a region without an indie moviehouse. But I’m particularly thankful each year for the chance to see the Oscar shorts. There’s a lot of incredible filmmaking going on in the world, and the short form really shows off a filmmaking team’s ability to capture a simple idea in a way that captivates. It’s super tough to pack so much meaning into every line, every shot. The Oscar shorts, to me, are always impressive in their concision and their vision.

The 2012 live action nominees delivered a lot of laughs but with serious undertones. My favorite was “Tuba Atlantic,” a Norwegian film directed by Hallvar Witzø. The movie told the story of Oskar, a dying fisherman trying to make peace with his estranged brother, and his interactions with Inger, an “Angel of Death” that the local Jesus club sends to keep Oskar company in his final days. The movie was beautifully shot, its touches of magic realism were inspiring, and it left me with a profound sense of loss while also making me laugh and laugh. A great little film.

The 2012 animation nominees also took on serious topics but delivered them with comedic punch lines. My favorite was “A Morning Stroll,” a British film directed by Grant Orchard. The movie told the story of an archetypal New Yorker and an unusual neighbor–a plucky little chicken. I won’t give away too much more about the movie because it relies on the element of surprise. But this trailer will give you a glimpse of their interactions. The film left me absolutely delighted– and isn’t that what movies are supposed to do?

“The Artist”
Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Sunday 1/29/2012 with my wife at the Sierra Vista in Clovis

It’s rare for me to walk out of a movie theater feeling truly inspired by a film. But after seeing this year’s Golden Globe winner for best picture, “The Artist,” I felt like a million bucks.

“The Artist” is a gorgeously shot silent film that contrasts the declining days of an accomplished silent film star with the rise of a young actress at the dawn of the talkies. Actor Jean Dujardin plays the lead with such magnetism and grace that it’s easy to see why critics call him the French George Clooney. Argentine actress Bérénice Bejo absolutely glows as the character Peppy Miller, the film’s delightful heroine. The duo of Dujardin and Bejo cast a charming spell over the entire film. Director Michel Hazanavicius cast Dujardin as his star in the OSS 117 spy movie spoofs, and he is married to Bejo. That closeness to his principle actors and his incredible attention to cinematic detail yields a magical movie.

My wife may have summed up “The Artist” best. She said that she liked the film because it felt so real. She doesn’t know a lot about silent movies, but the ones she has seen have always been so upbeat and over-the-top happy. We just don’t know about silent movies that had underlying themes of loss, depression, and suicide. That’s what makes this movie so great, she said. It’s true to the glory of the silent film era, but it also feels modern and truly authentic.

“Shame”
Directed by: Steve McQueen
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Saturday 1/21/2012 with my wife at the Regal Manchester in Fresno

It’s not every day that an art-house film rated NC-17 plays at a major multiplex in Fresno, California. In fact, in the 10+ years of my adult life that I’ve lived in this town, I cannot remember going to see a single one. That changed for me recently when the critical darling “Shame” made a one-week Central Valley run, just ahead of the Academy Award nominations being released. The film didn’t end up earning any Oscar nods, but the buzz was enough to give a handful of people here a chance to see it. After reading a glowing review by local tough-cookie movie critic Donald Munro of The Fresno Bee, my wife and I decided to see it.

“Shame” is directed by British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen— not to be confused with the late American actor of the same name, whom I remember best from his turn in “The Blob.” McQueen delivers a bleak script for star Michael Fassbender, who unflinchingly plays a protagonist that’s addicted to sex and also addicted to self-hate. Most critics call Fassbender’s performance a powerful, honest achievement. But I couldn’t help but feel there was some missing ingredient.

My wife said that some films do a great job of plopping us down into the lives of their characters without any context, and we can understand them by the performances or the writing alone. For “Shame,” however, it didn’t feel to me like this was the case. The epiphanies didn’t add up, and I couldn’t understand the motivations of the characters to do some of the ugly things they were doing to themselves. I’m glad that we saw the movie, but I can’t say that I liked it. Without a hint of backstory or feeling, “Shame” felt gratuitously ugly.

“Somewhere”
Directed by: Sofia Coppola
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Monday 1/02/2012 with my wife at home

A lot of American movie lovers will never forgive Sofia Coppola for her acting debut as Mary Corleone in the ill-fated “Godfather III” sequel. That film came out in 1990, but I didn’t see it until more than 15 years later. By then, I had already fallen in love with Coppola for her languid and hazy directorial debut, “The Virgin Suicides,” and for her gorgeously ambiguous second film, “Lost in Translation,” which starred one of my favorite actors of all time, Bill Murray, in a role that he should’ve won an Academy Award for. (The Oscar instead went to Sean “Is That My Daughter In There?” Penn for his overwrought role in the overwrought “Mystic River.”)

Twenty years after her Mary Corleone days, Coppola in 2010 delivered “Somewhere,” a minimalist and slow-paced film that gives an unsentimental snapshot of the life of a B-list actor. I’d never really thought of Stephen Dorff as a leading man, instead relegating him to his Deacon Frost moment in “Blade” or in many other straight-to-video type movies. But I think his real-life background places Dorff in exactly the kind of prolific-but-nowhere place that Coppola aims to access. In every description of “Somewhere” that exists on the Internet, writers describe the film as a meditation on celebrity ennui. Dorff plays the fictional Johnny Marco so perfectly that he absolutely personifies ennui– right down to his blank enjoyment of two pole-dancing twins awkwardly gyrating their same old moves while an old Foo Fighters hit blares like molasses out of a boombox. It doesn’t get any more listless than that, and Coppola serves it cold.

“Beginners”
Directed by: Mike Mills
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Saturday 12/31/2011 with my wife at home

In the mid- to late 1990s, I went through a serious Ewan McGregor phase. Most people think of him as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels. I’ve never seen those, and I don’t want to. Instead, I always think of Ewan McGregor as the hooligan in “Trainspotting,” as the naive love interest in “Brassed Off,” or as the karaoke crooner in “A Life Less Ordinary.” His early movies will always be my favorites, because he was growing up as a young actor at the same time I was growing up as a young indie film watcher.

McGregor plays a grieving son and awkward boyfriend quite beautifully in “Beginners,” a quirky and heartbreaking movie that co-stars Christopher Plummer and Mélanie Laurent. In a series of snapshot flashbacks, McGregor’s character deals with the death of his gay father in the present day, mixed with the lifelong fallout of watching his parents play their roles for 40 years in a sexless marriage. The film is directed by Mike Mills — who made striking music videos for the early work of Air and Blonde Redhead, among others — as an uncomfortable meditation on getting older, understanding family secrets, and forging your way in adult relationships. McGregor is just a couple years older than I am, and it felt to me like watching an older sibling take a difficult, real step toward a future that’s just starting.