Gif Review: 12 Years a Slave

Full disclosure: Though I've heard excellent things about both, I've never seen Hunger or Shame, director Steve McQueen's pre-12 Years a Slave flicks. They're on my list… but so are a ton of other movies. Like E.T.. All the movies I watch, and I've still somehow hit 29 without seeing E.T.. I know, I know.

What I'm trying to say is that if I had seen Hunger or Shame I probably wouldn't have gone into 12 Years a Slave expecting something Oscar bait-y. On the surface, 12 Years look at a lot like The Butler: Critically acclaimed director. Similar subjects (slavery vs post-slavery racism and the civil rights movement). A cameopalooza of famous actors popping up everywhere.

And I hated The Butler, because it didn't leave me feeling anything except vague irritation at Forest Whitaker's career. A Martin Luther King scene here. An Obama scene there. But put it all together and it's all a bunch of empty platitudes with a feel-good bent to make it palatable for inclusion in the "movies your grandmother who hasn't been to a theater since 2010 will like" category.

But 12 Years a Slave was not that. Oh boy howdy, was it not. "Palatable" is the last word I'd use to describe it. And I mean that in a good way.

12 Years is a brutal movie to watch. It fixes its lens on the horrors of slavery and forces its audience not to look away. There's a scene, for example, when the main character Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man sold into slavery, gets hanged, but his feet are touching the ground, so he's still being choked but he's not going to die anytime soon. And McQueen stays on that shot for minutes. By the end of it you're like.

This movie lets no one off the hook. In that whole ginormous cast there are only two decent white dudes, and the only one with a major role is Canadian. You hear that, American north? Just because there weren't plantations in you doesn't mean you have a claim to virtue. Slavery wasn't just the South. It was an institution. A national shame. With its equal-opportunity awfulness, 12 Years is basically:

There's a shot of the building where Northrup's being held before getting shipped down South that absolutely punches you in the gut, because we see that he's being held right outside the Capitol building.

Is 12 Years a Slave a subtle movie?

Does it tend a bit toward the torture porn-y at times?

For the most part the tendency toward the simplistically gruesome was saved by wonderful performances. Ejiofor added nuance to the role that wasn't in the script and against all odds kept the occasional hackneyed line of dialogue ("I don't want to survive! I want to live!") from being wince-inducingly corny.

If he doesn't get an Oscar nomination I'm going to riot. Yes, all by myself. I don't care. I will clone myself and then riot.

Michael Fassbender was great as the capital-E Evil slave owner Epps. Benedict Cumberbatch was also good as the lower case-e evil slave owner Ford.

I love what was done with Ford's character, by the way. Yeah, he's a relatively nice dude because he listens to his slaves sometimes gives them presents when they're good. But he's still a slave owner who sees the wrongs around them and goes LALALALALALA because he benefits from the misfortune of others. He'd rather give Northrup to Epps than punish the psychotic overseer who has it in for him. He suspects Northrup's a free man, but he'd rather not think about it. He still sees slaves as property; he just treats his toys better than other people do.

The only time when I really felt the movie fall down was with Brad Pitt's character. Remember how I said the movie's tendency toward unsubtlety was saved by great performances? Yeah, not here. Pitt plays a guy who, basically, shows up for an extended cameo and saves Northrup from slavery. He's the only white guy in the movie who speaks out against slavery, and he does so to Epps' face, straight up telling this evil bastard that he's an evil bastard and he's bad and he should feel bad. I couldn't pinpoint anything specifically bad about Pitt's performance, but it has a distinct air of "Hello, I am hunky Brad Pitt and I am here to save you, Chiwetel Ejiofor."

Other actors, even the ones with a few scenes, generally managed to disappear into their characters. Brad Pitt was just Brad Pitt.

(Also, I'm not saying that Pitt was cast as one of two decent white guys because he was one of the movie's producers. But… well, he was one of the movie's producers. And he played one of the two decent white guys. Make of that what you will.)

But other than that bit of clunkiness, the movie was great. It makes The Butler look like a damn Hallmark card. Final verdict: Four of of five dancing aliens.

Review: Blue Caprice

Director Alexandre Moors doesn't play around. For Blue Caprice, his first feature, he chose a, shall we say, heavy subject: The Beltway sniper attacks of 2002, specifically the relationship between shooters John Allen Muhammad (Isaiah Washington) and Lee Boyd Malvo (Tequan Richmond). In the hands of a lesser director the story of these two men could've come out as an awful, a hackneyed, offensive Lifetime-style movie, or worse.

And yet Moors has crafted a psychological study that's terrifying and engrossing, an analysis of paranoia and power that keeps a steady, unwavering eye on its subjects without going out of its way to condemn them.  After all, their crimes do that enough. Moors focuses on their time together before the shooting spree, Muhammad's megalomania and Malvo's desperate need for a father figure. You're unable to look away as Muhammad trains his young charge in how to be a sniper and as Malvo grows increasingly emotionally dependent on the man with whom he will come to kill ten unarmed civilians.

Blue Caprice is a movie that sticks with you, in large part because of the brilliant acting of Washington and Richmond. Special props go out to Richmond, who plays a largely inscrutable character with barely any lines, and yet he's mesmerizing. And his biggest role to date has been on General Hospital, for Christ's sakes! Someone needs to get this kid away from the soaps. He deserves better roles. Joey Lauren Adams and Tim Blake Nelson also turn in great performances as a couple that serves as Muhammad and Malvo's only real tie to the outside world.

Everything about this movie works perfectly to craft a stunning portrait of insanity. The acting, the cinematography, the structure—we know from the beginning what Muhammad and Malvo will go on to do, but we don't see it until the very end—and especially the music. Like the movie as a whole, it's jarring and offputting, capturing your attention and never failing to put you on edge.

Gif Review: Riddick

In which Rebecca has some things to say and some gifs to post about Riddick's treatment of its sole female character.

The Grandmaster: A Weinstein-Cut Wong Kar-Wai Film Is (Much, Much) Better Than No Wong Kar-Wai Film At All

I was a bit anxious going into The Grandmaster, the first film in five years by legendary Chinese director Wong Kar Wai. The source of my anxiety was neither its director, whose films I love, nor its subject matter. In fact, the latter increased my excitement exponentially. See, the subject of The Grandmaster is Ip Man, the legendary martial arts teacher and mentor to Bruce Lee who's been brought to the silver screen in several straightforward kick-'em-up (see, shoot 'em up, but with martial arts... oh, fine, it's dumb) movies. But now Wong Kar Wai, King of the Art House, is going to fix Ip Man in his contemplative, visually arresting crosshairs? Wong Kar Wai is doing a martial arts movie?! This I had to see.

The reason for my worry is that the film is being released in the US by the Weinstein Company. There's a good reason Harvey Weinstein's called "Harvey Scissorhands"—the American version of The Grandmaster is missing several scenes from the Chinese cut, and other scenes have been altered. The result, I kept seeing on my news feed, was a film that is not only a "butchered masterpiece," but "boring" to boot.

Wong Kar Wai films always walk a delicate line: They're movies where nothing much happens, at least not the sorts of things you see in traditional Hollywood movies. Take In the Mood for Love, for exmaple. It follows a man and a woman whose respective spouses are cheating on them with each other. The protagonists grow closer and closer over the course of the movie, but there are no declarations of love. No dramatic pursuits through the rain. Hell, they don't even kiss. It's a quiet, evenly paced movie where the characters never really explain what they're going through emotionally, to each other or to the audience. And yet the movie never loses your attention; you ache for the characters and what they're going through.

Part of that is how Wong Kar Wai structures his movies, flitting back and forth between different places, times, and characters in a way that's complicated but feels absolutely natural. Also responsible are his stunning visual style and brilliant actors, key among them frequent collaborator Tony Leung, who stars in In the Mood for Love and The Grandmaster. The result is something that's emotionally and visually captivating, like you're being carried along on a current of wonderful filmmaking, surrounded by beauty on all sides for you to look at as you float along.

It's all very carefully put together. So, needless to say, if you mess with a Wong Kar-Wai film you run the very real risk of turning a masterpiece into a boring, pointless mess.

Luckily, The Grandmaster did not suffer that fate.

I think I can see where the "boring" comes from. If you buy your ticket expecting a martial arts movie, you're likely going to be disappointed by all the thematically-based scenes that take place in between Ip Man and Gong Er's (Ziyi Zhang) intermittent bouts of ass-kicking. Don't get me wrong: The ass-kicking, when it happens, is fabulous. The man responsible for it is legendary fight choreographer Yuen Woo Ping, who's also behind Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Kill Bill and Matrix movies, Kung Fu Hustle, and many more. There's just no way the fight scenes aren't going to be amazing, and they are. But it's not like other martial arts movies, where every conflict the main character has inevitably leads to a fight scene where he achieves personal victory by hitting things. For all its martial arts pedigree, The Grandmaster is still very much a Wong Kar-Wai movie. You go in expecting that, and you'll be golden.

Granted, the influence of the Weinstein company is visible. You can tell that the character of Gong Er is hugely important to both Ip Man and the larger themes of the movie, and yet the US cut relegates her to the role of second fiddle, allowing her to pop up at certain times during Ip Man's life. According to according to Film.com's David Ehrlich, who wrote an an excellent piece on the differences between the US and Chinese versions, much of Gong Er's characterization was excised from the US cut for the sake of making it more like Ip Man: A Life. The character played by Chen Chang shows up for all of one scene, which struck me as weird when he's pretty high up in the credits. He has a larger presence in the Chinese version as well. The way each character is given an on-screen title noting who they are is another thing that's very conspicuously not Wong Kar-Wai's style.

For all that, the version of The Grandmaster you can see in theaters stateside is still stunning. It doesn't hurt that Wong Kar Wai was heavily involved in cutting it. The result is something I never wanted to end. So I guess it's good that there's a longer, reportedly better version for me to track down, huh?

My Reaction to Ben Affleck as the New Batman, In Gifs

At first I was like: "Ben Affleck as Batman? That's weird."

Because over the last few years he seems to have been making a concerted effort to transition from actor-very-few-people-take-seriously to director-that-lots-of-people-take-seriously. He's not the last person I would expect to jump into spandex for a high-profile popcorn movie role. That would be this guy:

But still, Affleck definitely doesn't fit the comic book movie casting rubric, a.k.a. an actor who's gained some attention for TV work

and/or a supporting

or guest role

in a popular film, but hasn't yet landed the lead in a major movie. Oh, and they're probably Australian or British.

The benefit of choosing a relative unknown is that the audience will have very few preconceived notions about the actor. Nobody really knew who Chris Hemsworth was before he was chosen, and now when they look at him, they see Thor. Ditto Henry Cavill and Superman. When people see Ben Affleck, they see... well, they see Ben Affleck. Or, judging by the Twitter response to his casting, they see:

The thing is, fucked up as WB/DC has been in regards to their superhero movies (y u no Wonder Woman?), they're not completely stupid. They knew the fan backlash would happen. They knew people would start screaming "Daredevil!" and "Gigli!"Weird as it may seem, the fact that Affleck is a counterintuitive choice makes me think there must be something about him, something about his approach to Batman, that made the casting people go

And look, I gave Zack Snyder a lot of shit for Man of Steel (review here). I stand by all of it. But the casting was not one of that movie's problems. From Cavill to Amy Adams to Michael Shannon to, in other movies, Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, and Lena Headey, dude (usually) knows talent when he sees it. He just doesn't tend to do much with it.

A common argument against Affleck's casting is that he pretty much only plays variations of himself. And yeah, that's valid. When I look at him, I see Bruce Wayne, but I don't see Batman at all.

But let's give the dude a shot. We're so used to seeing Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale's Batman, who's so intense and... well...

...that it's been easy for me, for one, to lose track of Batman as an occasional billionaire playboy who dresses up in black latex to sneak around at night fighting crime. Not that I'm saying Snyder will go all Tim Burton caricature-esque for his version, or even that he should. What I am saying is that we just don't know what his approach to the character will be. Affleck might be perfect for it. Let's wait and see, at least until the first trailer. For all we know we could be like:

And anyway, speaking personally, Batman vs Superman or Man of Steel 2 or whatever it ends up being called is a Zack Snyder movie, so I probably won't like it anyway.

But when I do inevitably dislike it, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it won't be because of Affleck. Dude might not have the best range, but he's still a good actor.

So screw it. Now that I've moved from

to

let's have a dance party

Fruitvale Station Will Kick You To The Ground And Make You Cry, And You'll Want To Thank It For Doing So

I had mixed emotions going into Fruitvale Station. It's gotten a lot of buzz—and I mean a lot—since it debuted at Sundance earlier this year, particularly focused on lead actor Michael B. Jordan. I've heard nothing but good things about it. Which concerned me, because what if my expectations are too high? It's not like I've never been disappointed by one of The Weinstein Company's adopted Oscar babies. For example: The King's Speech and Silver Linings Playbook. They're both OK movies, but they're in no way deserving of all the praise they got… the same sort of praise Fruitvale has been getting. What if this movie neither good, nor bad, but average? What if I'd enjoy it more if I mentally talked it down a bit before seeing it?

I needn't have worried. Fruitvale Station is every bit as good as they say it is.

Jordan plays Oscar Grant, a 22-year old man living in the Bay Area with his girlfriend and their young daughter. Oscar's had some trouble with the law in the past, but he's reformed himself. He's nice to strangers, animals, and his elders. His life's not easy, and it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to fall back into old habits, but he doesn't.

We get to know all this over a 24-hour period stretching from New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, 2009. It happens to be the last day of Oscar's life. (That's not a spoiler. The movie informs us of Oscar's fate first thing. Also, it's based on a true story, so it's not exactly a secret.)

The quality of Fruitvale Station creeps up on you, or at least it did on me. I wasn't feeling it at first because of the way it's very, very sure to let you know how great a guy Oscar is, almost to the point of establishing him as some sort of saint. One who used to be not-so-saintly, sure, but that just makes the conversion more admirable. One of the first scenes has Oscar texting his Mom right after midnight on her birthday because he's just that good a son, for goodness' sake. It was a bit heavy-handed.

But when Oscar's fate rushes to its inevitable end like a train to the eponymous Fruitvale Station, you realize that every moral, selfless thing you've seen Oscar do up to this point was absolutely necessary. Without it, the last third of the movie would not be the emotional gut-punch that it is. It's not just sad. It's gutting, which must've been a tough clhallenge for writer/director Ryan Coogler to pull off when the audience already knows exactly what's coming. I had to sit and stare at the screen during the credits just to give myself enough time to emotionally recover. It's a brilliantly made masterpiece of a movie, but boy it is rough.

Jordan's performance is also every bit as good as you might have heard it is. The movie skirts along the edge of over-the-top at times, but his nuanced performance never does. He keeps the movie grounded, just as his terror near the end is what really takes your heart, squeezes it in a medieval torture device, and hurls it over a cliff.

And since Fruitvale Station is based on a true story, let's add "putting your heart in a blender and pushing puree" to that list.

Is Fruitvale Station a subtle movie? Absolutely not. But the subject it tackles isn't a subtle one, and when it comes to police perpetuating violence against citizens based on their race… well, we don't exactly live in subtle times. Every single scene, every line, every shot Coogler put in the film heightens its emotion and hammers home its message, and it's a message that, particularly now, is worth hearing.

I've been known to stand up on a soapbox and yell about how much I dislike blatantly emotionally manipulative movies (*cough*GraveoftheFireflies*cough*), and maybe if I ever get up the nerve to watch Fruitvale Station again I won't like it so much. Something tells me I will, though. Because it doesn't use emotional manipulation as a crutch. It's 85 minutes of tightly paced, perfectly constructed emotional torment. It's only after you've sat through every horrible, brilliant second of it that you truly realize how good what you watched just is.

An Open Letter to Johnny Depp on the Subject Of Whitewashing

Hey, JD. Can I call you JD? I don't mean to come off as aggressive or anything. I'm sure you're a great guy. But I just have to ask...

...What the hell are you smoking, dude?