The Golden Globe awards are this Sunday (!) and I still haven't seen any of the movies nominated for BEST PICTURE (DRAMA), so I will have to limit my critique to the TV nominations:Yea! "In Treatment" (HBO) got recognition for its fine supporting cast: Blair Underwood and the especially fine Melissa George (remember her in 'Alias'?). "John Adams" (HBO) got its requisite nods, but I predict the Foreign Press won't be so enamored of American History as the lame Emmy voters were; look for an upset by the cast of "Bernard & Doris" (also HBO). [I was wrong--ffg]. I'm also pulling for Laura Dern's dead-on hilarious take of Katherine Harris in "Recount" (HBO again).On the movie side, I can only predict one shoe-in (if there is any justice)
[and there is!--ffg] : Brit
Sally Hawkins in
"Happy Go Lucky"
(D: Mike Leigh)
She is brilliant in this gem of a movie. It is a character-study of a single personality-type: the relentless optimist. Leigh's genius is in proving that their lives are as deserving of exploration as anyone else. But 'Poppy' (Hawkins' character, appropriately an elementary school teacher) is no Candide: she recognizes the injustices, indifference, frustrations and anger that is ever-present in the society around her: she simply chooses not to let it affect her present mood or her long-term outlook on life. It sounds simple, but in Leigh's London -- populated by a dazzling array of 'kooks' -- it is a subversive triumph.
A couple of scenes are worth noting, for opposite reasons: 1) Poppy attends a beginner's Flamenco class with a co-worker, taught by a stern Spanish woman who is absolutely hilarious; 2) the one scene in the movie that doesn't work involves a deranged homeless man that is at once strained, unnecessary, and totally pointless (you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it). Cut that scene out and I'd rate this movie even higher in my Top Ten.
"Changeling"
(D: Clint Eastwood)
Angelina Jolie gets more ink as a real life Mom than she does as an actress, but her last two 'serious' roles proves that her real life has elevated her screen life to new heights. She was convincing as both wife and mother Marianne Pearl in the maligned "
A Mighty Heart" " last year, and she shows added depth as a single mother in this other true life story (based on actual events involving the L.A.P.D in the 1920s--is there no end to the seediness of that police department?).
One woman's struggle for justice against this corrupt (all-male, naturally) machine is courageous to the point of unbelievability, but it really happened! Eastwood is faithful
TO A FAULT to her ordeal: the scenes in the county mental hospital are straight out of
"The SnakePit" that
"Frances" was sent (the poor actresses playing the nurses act like there heart is not in it:
Where's Nurse Ratched when you need her?. And Eastwood insists on dragging the movie out until the last creaky turn of the wheel of justice, when a simple end-crawl would have sufficed.
I give him credit for his precise casting: the movie is filled with great faces from the 1920s, all creating a convincing milieu (notably, detectives
Jeffrey Donovan and
Michael Kelly, and bad-guy
Jason Butler Harner). Props to the character actors!!
