Oscar predictions!

I’m starting to grow a little tired of guessing who will be nominated for the Academy Awards because it’s gotten a lot easier to find out what all of the professional pundits think, and my decisions are always heavily influenced by them. Guys like Dave Karger of Entertainment Weekly and Tom O’Neil (my hero) over at Gold Derby have access to actual voters, and I really don’t. So it’s not exactly smart on my part to ignore their ideas.

It’s also foolish to think just with my own head and heart. The nominations are not always about who best deserves these accolades; sometimes it’s about who has had a long and unrewarded career—who’s due. And other political factors can come into play as well.

The format I use for my nomination predictions is the same one I've used for the past decade or so. I attempt to predict who will be nominated in the "big" categories: Picture, Director and the four acting categories. I predict the five nominees and provide two alternates that I think could sneak in. I give myself a point for each one I get right and a half-point for alternates. This used to total 40 points, but now it will total 45 because of the expansion of the Best Picture race to 10 nominees. Then, I tack on what I call "The 10," which is a list of 10 random nominees from any of the other categories I feel certain will be nominated.

Check back here soon to see how I did. The nominations are only nine hours away!

BEST PICTURE

Like last year, there are essentially five films that are truly competing for this award and then five others who will be lucky to consider themselves nominees in this category but have a much smaller chance of winning. Everyone believes this is already whittled down to a two-horse race between THE SOCIAL NETWORK and THE KING’S SPEECH. I think it’s a little dangerous not to include a few more films at the top as well, though I admit that these two are the front-runners.

My picks: 127 Hours, Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, The Social Network, The Town, Toy Story 3, True Grit
My alternates: Winter’s Bone, The Ghost Writer
Second guessing myself: Winter’s Bone has been on most lists for a long time now, and it’s a good movie. But I’m letting my heart get the better of me here because 127 Hours is a GREAT movie, and I think Boyle, a recent Best Picture and Director winner, should have more friends in the voting block. There’d be room for both if I didn’t think that The Town now feels likely, too.

BEST DIRECTOR

My picks: Daren Aronofsky (Black Swan), David Fincher (The Social Network), Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech), Christopher Nolan (Inception), David O. Russell (The Fighter)
My alternates: Joel and Ethan Coen (True Grit) and Danny Boyle (127 Hours)
Second guessing myself: I’m feeling confident about this category, as this basically lines up with the DGA nods and they tend to not vary by more than one nomination. After seeing True Grit, I feel like it’s a fantastic film that is not very Coen-y, and it will probably score in the screenplay and acting categories, along with technical nods. This lets Russell in for stepping into a project that was already in the works and doing a good job with it. I have NO doubts about any of the other nominees.

BEST ACTOR

My picks: Javier Bardem (Biutiful), Jeff Bridges (True Grit), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), James Franco (127 Hours)
My alternates: Robert Duvall (Get Low), Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter)
Second guessing myself: Duvall would replace Bardem, but I feel confident about the other choices. Wahlberg would be swept in with the other acting nominees from his film, and that could very easily happen and would not be shameful, as he gives the most understated performance of all of those listed here. The name I’m nervous about not including is Ryan Gosling for Blue Valentine. But I think Michelle Williams has a better chance than he does, though he’s a fantastic actor. I wouldn’t mind being wrong about leaving him off my list completely. I also thought about Aaron Eckhart for Rabbit Hole, but not everyone loved his work in that film as much as I did.

BEST ACTRESS

My picks: Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right), Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
My alternates: Julianne Moore (The Kids Are All Right), Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine)
Second guessing myself: Steinfeld has been on everyone’s supporting list all season, but that is a lead performance and my gut tells me we’ll in for the surprise we got when Kate Winslet was nominated in lead instead of supporting for The Reader (which she won). I’m putting Steinfeld as a supporting actress nominee, too, just in case. So I’m essentially throwing away one slot by double-booking her. This keeps me from adding in Leslie Manville for Another Year, a much-talked-about performance that I have not seen and also one that I’ve seen on a few supporting lists. And what about Hilary Swank? I’m nervous not having her on here, though I think she’s a long shot.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

My picks: Christian Bale (The Fighter), Andrew Garfield (The Social Network), Jeremy Renner (The Town), Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right), Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech)
My alternates: Matt Damon (True Grit), Michael Douglas (Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps)
Second guessing myself: I’m confident about this category. Douglas would be a sympathy vote for his recent cancer battle and the fact that he’s reprising a character over 20 years later that won an Oscar already. I wonder if Sam Rockwell has a chance for Conviction. Or maybe Pete Postlethwaite for The Town, in light of his recent death. The only other name that I wish I had room for here is John Fawkes for Winter’s Bone. I’m more nervous about omitting his name than any of these others.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

My picks: Amy Adams (The Fighter), Helena Bonham Carter (The King’s Speech), Mila Kunis (Black Swan), Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Jackie Weaver (Animal Kingdom)
My alternates: Dianne Wiest (Rabbit Hole), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
Second guessing myself: Steinfeld was once a lock for me here but now I am wondering if there won’t be a best actress surprise with her. I’m feeling like she will be nominated in one spot or the other, so I’m either getting a point for her or a half-point. Kunis is the shaky choice for me; I could see her being swapped out for Barbara Hershey from the same film. Short of Leslie Manville showing up here, I think just about any other name not already listed here would be the shocker of the day.

THE TEN

I will be shocked if I got any of these wrong…

1. Art Direction: ALICE IN WONDERLAND
2. Costume Design: ALICE IN WONDERLAND
3. Visual Effects: INCEPTION
4. Original Score: Alexander Desplat (The King’s Speech)
5. Original Screenplay: David Seidler (The King’s Speech)
6. Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)
7. Animated Feature: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON
8. Animated Feature: TOY STORY 3
9. Cinematography: Wally Pfister (Inception)
10. Documentary Feature: WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Despicable Me (2010)

Having been a Disney devotee my whole life, I realized after watching DESPICABLE ME that 2010 might have been the year that finally broke me of my animation elitism. I was not a fan of the Shrek or Ice Age movies, and barring the occasional exceptions (such as “Happy Feet” and “Monster House”), I tended to dismiss most animated films that were not Disney or Pixar films. I had no rational reason to do so, of course; many of the Disney studio’s recent films (“Bolt,” “Meet the Robinsons”) were sub-par and certainly not as good as some of the animation happening outside of the mouse house.

This year, Disney hit the jackpot twice for me. Their Pixar entry, “Toy Story 3,” ranks among their best, and that’s saying a lot considering their unprecedented consistency of quality. But their traditional animation branch also returned to form with “Tangled,” which exceeded my expectations. And a non-Disney animated film, “How to Train Your Dragon,” was one of my favorite films of the year. How could there be four fantastic animated films this year?

Somehow, there were. DESPICABLE ME has sweetness and sass, not to mention all-star vocal talent. It’s the story of Gru, voiced by Steve Carrell. He’s an aging and out-of-practice super-villain, who has the ability to make people’s lives miserable in town, but he no longer seems able to pull off a significant heist or act of crime. His partner, Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand), creates weapons such as farting guns and robot cookies, and his “minions,” hundreds of mumbling yellow capsules in overalls and goggles who come in both one and two-eyed varieties, are too loveable to be sinister, as hard as they try to please Gru.

Gru’s villainous reputation is overshadowed by Vector (Jason Segal), a punky young upstart who managed to steal the pyramid of Gisa. So when Gru goes to the Evil Bank for a loan to finance his plan to steal the moon, he is told that unless he first hijacks a shrink ray gun to prove his worthiness, his request for money will be denied. Gru’s plan to steal the ray ends up including the use of three little orphan girls who travel door-to-door selling cookies for Miss Hattie (Kristin Wiig), the surprisingly evil orphanage matron. Gru adopts the girls and does everything in his power to keep them at arm’s length, planning to dump them off once he’s done with them. And while it’s predictable that he will grow attached to them and that the film will end with him softening his heart, the sequence of events to get there is entertaining and fresh.

The vocal talent in the film is stellar. In addition to the those already named here, the film features the voices of Julie Andrews, Jack McBrayer, Miranda Cosgrove and Will Arnett, just to name a few. A musical score and original songs by hip-hop producer Pharrell Williams ads a unique vibe to the film, and it works. And the minions? Well they are adorable.

DESPICABLE ME contains an ample amount of little visual homages to adult films, affording it the requisite amount of inside jokes for grown-ups without confusing the kids. There’s a hilarious nod to the horse head moment in “The Godfather,” for instance, as well as a sequence reminiscent of “Apollo 13.” And though in some ways the film steals liberally from “Up,” with a crabby old man making room in his heart for a child, its sentimentality is pure of heart and touching. You know exactly what’s going to happen by the end, but you get the ending you want. Any other ending would have been a disappointment.

I wouldn’t say that DESPICABLE ME was better than “Toy Story 3,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” or “Tangled,” but it’s at least amply good enough to be included in the same sentence with them, (which is good because I just put them all in the same sentence! Ha!). It was fun, funny, touching and sassy: the kind of animated film you could see yourself adding to your home collection and watching again with the kids.

3.0 out of 4

Buried (2010)

Though “127 Hours” had a much higher profile and an Oscar-caliber pedigree, it was not the only film released in 2010 that focused solely on one actor for the majority of its running time. BURIED, starring Ryan Reynolds, took that concept even further; Reynolds is the only actor to appear in the film. And his character is equally trapped, if not more so. The result is a film that probably falls more into the category of an experiment, and while it’s certainly too bleak to merit repeat viewings, it’s the kind of experiment that can satisfy true movie lovers.

Reynolds is Paul Conrad, a U.S. contractor working in Iraq. He is introduced to the audience in complete darkness through a series of grunts, scratches and coughs. We quickly discover, when he does, that Paul is trapped in a wood box—buried alive in a coffin. He is unaware of his specific location or the identity of his captors, and struggles to remain calm and maintain faith that he will be rescued.

A few of BURIED’s plot conventions seem a little too hard to believe at first. Chief among them is the existence of a fully-charged cell phone in the box with Paul that does not have perfect reception but still better reception than my phone has in the back aisles of a Target. He also has a Zippo lighter so he (and the audience) can see, and a writing utensil to jot down phone numbers on the roof of the box. I suspect that the whole cell phone thing will be too much for some viewers to accept as plausible, but this did not bother me. Many movies employ conventions that force their audiences to buy into sometimes unbelievable coincidences and situations, and I was able to suspend my disbelief here and simply accept the premise.

Director Rodrigo Cortes makes some gutsy and, I think, brilliant choices with BURIED. He does not show us a single shot outside the buried box. I definitely expected to see military personnel negotiating with the terrorists above ground and at least one scene of Paul’s despondent wife and child back home. But Cortes executes the film with more discipline than that, and it enhances BURIED’s excitement. In addition, the film’s only light sources are the glow from the cell phone screen and the light from the Zippo. Whenever one of those two sources isn’t active, the audience sees complete darkness, just as Paul does.

I read that there were seven different coffins used to film the claustrophobic interior shots of the box, and Cortes manages to squeeze enough variety out of the shots to keep the visuals interesting, which might sound crazy considering that for the film’s entire 95-minute running time, we’re simply looking at a panicked man in a box. There are a few moments, however, when perhaps Cortes did not trust himself or our attention spans enough, and in these moments, the camera takes a bird’s eye view of the coffin’s length from overhead. These shots throw the audience out of the believability of the visuals; I think they were a mistake. But this only happens a few times.

BURIED’s script is surprisingly engaging. All of Paul’s circumstances are revealed through his cell phone calls, including his home life and job situation. Calls made to the FBI and 911 are circumstantially cruel and, surprisingly, darkly comic. We’re reminded of just how hard it is to get good customer service on the phone, especially when we see Paul struggle to receive aid in the situation he’s in, which is far more life-and-death than anything we’ve ever experienced. Never has “I’m transferring your call…please hold” been more agonizing!

There are a half-dozen other characters in BURIED, all of them voices over the phone. The film’s villain is a terrorist voiced by Jose Luis Garcia Perez, and he is amply threatening. But the work of the film falls squarely on the shoulders (or in this case, back) of Reynolds, and BURIED proves to me that his talents are heretofore underappreciated. Like Brad Pitt before him, Reynolds is proving himself to be a legitimate acting force paralyzed by his status as eye-candy. It’s a shame, too, because he conveys the alternating panic, resolve, frustration and desperation of a man in Paul’s situation with a believability that never falters. I’m looking forward to the day when Reynolds gets his due, and I’ll look back on this film as one of the movies that got his serious acting career started.

As I said before, BURIED is a cinematic experiment, not a crowd-pleaser. But I think the world of movies has room for both. And watching a clever filmmaker attempt a unique and unconventional idea can be, for me at least, as engaging as watching a well-made but more conventional movie. For me, it’s a work firmly in the experimental exercises of Alfred Hitchcock, mining similar ground to films like “Lifeboat” and “Rope,” where Hitchcock played with the ability of keeping an audience engaged in a single-space location, a concept in direct opposition to the very definition of cinema and more in tandem with the stage.

I did not like how BURIED ended, but I also don’t know how else it could have ended while maintaining plausibility. I won’t spoil that ending, but I will say that it’s both realistic and highly unsatisfying. And strangely, that analysis seems fitting, as I really appreciated the film itself but couldn’t see myself watching it multiple times. At bare minimum, BURIED is worthy of study for any budding filmmaker. It shows that that a visceral script and one good actor might just be enough to pull off something engaging, even without a huge Hollywood budget.

3.5 out of 4

Get Low (2010)

Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek are two of the American cinema’s finest living actors, and that’s probably the best case to be made for watching GET LOW, a small and quiet film about an old man with secrets who plans his own funeral and wants to have that funeral while he’s alive to witness it. Bill Murray, no acting slouch himself, plays the funeral director hurting for business who takes on the unusual idea.

Felix Bush (Duvall) is a keep-off-my-property kind of hermit living in backwoods Tennessee in the 1930s. The film opens mysteriously with a man running from the scene of a fire. Is it Felix? We don’t know—at first. But what we do know early on is that Felix is a man with many secrets and few friends. He is feared and hated in town. This makes his idea to pay for and throw his own funeral while he’s still alive all the more of a head-scratcher. Who will work with him? Who would show up? And why would Felix choose to put himself through some potentially uncomfortable conversations?

It turns out that Buddy, a young apprentice to a local funeral director (played by Murray), is the guy willing to take on the job, with the blessing of that director, Frank Quinn. Quinn’s business is hurting, and a customer is a customer, however strange the request. Buddy takes Felix’s demands seriously. He publicizes the “party” on the local radio station and posts flyers all over town. But it remains to be seen if anyone will show up, until Felix pulls an unusual stunt. During a live radio interview, Felix tells listeners that there will be a lottery, and that a winning ticket will be drawn that awards the winner all of his land and property when he dies. It’s a big piece of land, too—quite a prize. Suddenly, the town is interested.

The turnout at Felix’s funeral is massive – one of those huge crowd scenes you see in folksy movies like this, usually set at a state fair. And if there’s a reason to see GET LOW, it’s for Duvall’s performance in this scene, where Felix delivers a painful and confessional speech to the stunned crowd, coming clean for past transgressions. It’s an acting master-class, and if Duvall scores another Oscar nomination for what is otherwise a fairly pedestrian film, it will be no surprise. It’s one of the best things he’s ever done, and this man has done some amazing work. But not since “The Apostle” have I seen anything from him like this.

GET LOW plays a charming and emotional film version of a folk tale. When it’s over, I felt glad that I went along for the ride but did not feel that I witnessed film greatness (Duvall’s work notwithstanding). And Spacek’s work as a woman from Felix’s past was also good, but nowhere as substantial and flashy as some of the supporting work from women in films in 2010. Director Aaron Schneider makes his feature film debut as a director here after working chiefly as a cinematographer, and GET LOW does play out like the work of a newbie looking for his voice. It’s a quiet little diamond in the rough, but nothing transcendent. And if nothing else, it places another memorable character and performance onto one of the most astounding resumes in Hollywood history.

2.5 out of 4

Restrepo (2010)

Watching RESTREPO did not feel like watching a movie; it felt like watching—perhaps for the first time—what is really going on in Afghanistan with our military. We read in the news about embedded journalists and hear their stories when they come home. On occasion, we get a glimpse of reality when a reporter stands in front of an authentic background during a relatively safe moment to report from a war zone.

But RESTREPO is different because it was made in a war zone, and at the height of war. Journalist Sebastian Junger, a writer skilled at making external conflict visceral (as he did with books like “The Perfect Storm”), spent 15 months with a U.S. platoon in Afghanistan during the heaviest fire in the Korengal Valley, which at the time was referred to in the media as the “deadliest place on Earth.” Photographer Tim Hetherington was there with him, and the two capture a raw look at the work that goes into the ongoing daily military operations in the Middle East. They make it clear from the beginning that in this movie, when the audience sees a soldier firing a machine gun, it’s not an exciting part of a cool movie action sequence. Here, it’s true, ugly survival, not something the audience gets excited about.

I find it somewhat difficult to critique RESTREPO as a piece of filmmaking because I look at it more as a piece of journalism. To that end, the film is incredible. As mentioned earlier, there are numerous reports from places like Afghanistan, but this feels like the real deal when you watch it. Of course it is the real deal, but films like “The Hurt Locker” are praised by many for their realism, and RESTREPO makes those films seem a lot more constructed and manufactured.

The film is titled after an outpost created in the middle of a warzone and named after a private from the company who was among the first killed. Private Restrepo was a well-liked soldier, and the other men speak about him with the same hesitation and internal torture that they speak about any others among them who have been injured or worse.

RESTREPO shows glimpses of the soldiers’ down time but, more frequently, follows them in the hard work of doing everything from digging and creating Outpost Restrepo to weekly council meetings with local elders who are upset about what happened to their cows or why their sons were shot. The creation of "OP Restrepo" is considered the most important accomplishment of the men serving in the Korengal region, because it was created square in the middle of a war zone and served as a metaphorical middle finger to the Taliban; it frightened them.

The film intercuts this raw footage with debriefings from a half dozen of the men in the company; some of RESTREPO’s most compelling moments are those when, in interviews conducted after their deployment ended, the men are unable to cleanly articulate the events that transpired. They work hard to hold themselves together. Sometimes they even smile. But they are deeply affected. One soldier says it best: “I can only hope that I’ll learn how to process what happened to me better,” he says (and I’m paraphrasing). “Because I’m never going to forget that it happened.”

I did not perceive this film to be political in any manner. It was without an agenda, unless the agenda was simply to present a reality that’s been largely withheld from the American people. It seemed to me like even the men fighting were less about their political beliefs than they were about their desire to protect, honor and defend each other. More than political, this felt personal.

Junger and Hetherington clearly put themselves in harm’s way to deliver RESTREPO. Junger is certainly known for accepting life-threatening reporting challenges, but this one feels particularly threatening. The courage of the filmmakers is equal to the courage of the soldiers, and it feels to me like the duty of the film-going public to witness their reporting.

The closing minutes of RESTREPO are among the most powerful. In a silent sequence, the directors feature the faces of each of the men interviewed for the film. They stare silently into the camera, and their faces are held on screen for what seems like minutes. One can't help but see the pain in their eyes and wish for the opportunity to personally thank them for their sacrifices. It is a humbling montage.

I have watched many films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but most of them felt like films, and many had a political slant. RESTREPO is none of that. What it is, instead, is required viewing. And in a year that featured a number of films about tough, depressing subjects that were hard to watch, this one might be the hardest.

4.0 out of 4

Rabbit Hole (2010)

The media tells the story that when a married couple experiences the death of a child, the marriage cannot withstand that grief, resulting in a divorce rate of somewhere near 70% for couples in this situation. That makes a lot of sense when you think about it, because each of us grieves a loss in our own way; it would be difficult for a couple to grieve together in the same way and keep that unity intact.

In reality, however, the divorce rate of couples who experience the death of a child is under 20%. For this and many other reasons, David Lindsay-Abaire’s play-and-now-movie, RABBIT HOLE, is a stunning, raw and real piece of theatre, a transparent look at marriage and grief as it really is, not how it’s portrayed in the media.

The film version of RABBIT HOLE stars Nicole Kidman as Becca and Aaron Eckhart as her husband, Howie. The are only eight months removed from the day when their 4-year-old son chased the family dog out of the yard and into the street, where he was stuck by a teenage driver and died.

Becca and Howie do what they are supposed to do in their attempts to deal with their soul-crushing despair. They attend group therapy sessions for couples who have lost children, but Becca is incensed by the “God thing” and freaked out by couples who have been attending meetings for close to a decade. Howie returns to work and old schedule, an attempt at normalcy. Becca tries to be happy for her wayward sister who is suddenly pregnant, and tries to stay quiet when her mother, bless her heart, offers her advice about how to deal with the grief.

But what is most evident is that Becca and Howie have their own very different ways of dealing with the loss of their son, and the conflict of RABBIT HOLE, which is beautifully staged by director John Cameron Mitchell and acted by Kidman and Eckhart, is that their individual needs are driving a wedge of distance and silence between them. Becca starts to take all of the pictures their son drew down from the fridge and launders his clothes to remove his smell from them. She bags them up and gives them away. Howie, on the other hand, doesn’t want to touch anything in the boy’s room. In the middle of the night, he’s fiddling with his iPhone or the old camcorder, rewatching video footage of a then-whole family. He keeps going to therapy even after Becca stops. In large part, their needs and desires are at complete odds with one another.

The conflict and interest escalates when Becca begins to follow the whereabouts of the teenager who struck their son. She ends up befriending him, though befriending is probably not the right word. Howie, meanwhile, befriends a woman from group therapy whose marriage goes the way of that fabled majority. That woman offers Howie the intimacy his wife says she can’t, but Howie will not accept it out of devotion to his partner-in-grief.

I cannot accurately express how moved I was when I first read Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play and then saw it performed at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in 2007. I was so stunned with not only the depth of this couple’s despair, but the undeniable honesty, humanity, and even humor the play possessed. So I was nervous about seeing the film version.

Fortunately, and probably because the playwright maintained possession of his own work for the screen adaptation, the film retains the bulk of the original play. Working in the new conventions of film, it takes some of the moments that were only conversations in the play—such as an incident where Becca lashes out at a mom in the grocery story who won’t buy her kid some fruit snacks—and literally presents them here. Those changes are to be expected, and most of them work okay.

There is something small lacking for me in this film version of RABBIT HOLE, though. And while I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first, I think I know what it is.

In the play, all of the action takes place in that house—the place where their son’s memory looms and where every item therein contains a memory of him. The conversations between characters in the play, such as the aforementioned example of Becca’s anger at a mom at the store, are told around the kitchen table in the play; the manner in which they are told serve to deepen our understanding of those characters almost more than actually witnessing the events do. The teen boy responsible for the accident shows up at their house in the play, not in a neutral park as he does here in the film (until the end, anyway). That, for me, adds another element of depth that isn’t duplicated here.

Staging the entire work inside the family house spoke volumes for how Becca is trapped after her son dies. Howie comes and goes, but she’s stuck there. It’s hard for a film to stay that visually static, and this one doesn’t even attempt to. That’s understandable, but it deflates the emotion a little bit. And for a while there, I worried that Mitchell and Lindsay-Abaire were going to take Howie too far down a different path from the original work, though I’m happy to say this doesn’t happen.

One thing that is absolutely wonderful in this filmed version of the play is the acting. I dare say that this is the finest work of Nicole Kidman’s career. Yes, she won an Oscar for disappearing under a prosthetic nose in “The Hours,” but here she is more vulnerable, raw, and even funny than I have ever seen her. I expect her to contend for the big awards for this performance, and it’s a bit of a shame that her work won’t be flashy enough in this year of outstanding work to earn her a second Oscar, but she’d be deserving.

She’s so unbelievably good in RABBIT HOLE, in fact, that it’d be easy to overlook Aaron Eckhart. I’ve even read a few reviews that said that he was bad and that Kidman blows him off the screen. I think that’s unfair, and not even accurate. In fact, the real tragedy is that Eckhart will get overlooked for what I feel is maybe his best work, too. Howie’s pain and journey are every bit as real as Becca’s; they’re just different. The two of them together are fantastic.

Equally fantastic is the always wonderful Dianne Wiest as Becca’s mother, who mines a little bit of her work in “Parenthood” here but is less of a pin cushion. As a mother who has lost a son herself, Wiest conveys the confusion of a woman who can’t understand that what happened to her doesn’t translate directly to what is happening to her daughter. Some of the best words of wisdom in the play come during a scene in this film version when Becca asks her mother when the grief goes away.

There is nothing special about Mitchell’s directing, but that is not a negative. Having been so flashy with his indie films “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “Shortbus,” one might have expected work with far less restraint than this. Most of his choices border on TV movie-ish, but he is right to leave the work to the actors, and directs their performances well.

There is absolutely no doubt that RABBIT HOLE is a sad, sad movie. It’s hard to watch, especially if you are a parent yourself. But it rings so true and is so wise. It is a moving story of the human spirit that doesn’t quite move you on film to the extent that it does on the stage, when those emotions are just that much more raw. But I’m thankful for having a film to remember this wonderful play by.

3.5 out of 4

Black Swan (2010)

The front-runner for this year’s “messy masterpiece” award is BLACK SWAN, auteur Darren Aronofsky’s ballet thriller starring a give-her-the-Oscar-now-dammit Natalie Portman as a stressed-out ballerina whose landing of the lead role in “Swan Lake” becomes both her career’s apex and her undoing. A film that I can only compare in terms of feeling to the way I felt after watching “There Will Be Blood” a few years ago, I think this is going to play itself out to be a rather polarizing film. I know of a few people who have seen it multiple times and have heralded it as a work of genius. I know others who found it so melodramatic and ridiculous that they couldn’t handle it.

So where am I on BLACK SWAN? It’s a testament to the ingenuity of Aronofsky, I think, that I’m not yet quite certain myself. That I would be struggling with what I saw so long after seeing it certainly means the film merits such debate and study. For many reasons, BLACK SWAN is a worthy entry in a very promising career of a modern auteur. And for many more reasons, it is a spectacular mess of a film, a one-tone shocker with a script that pays little attention to the need for some kind of reality as grounding.

Both the script and the visuals of BLACK SWAN are populated with clear symbolisms. Nina Sayers (Portman) is a replacement for a soon-to-retire ballerina, played by Winona Ryder. A new dancer, Lily (played by Mila Kunis), threatens to be a replacement for Nina. And then there’s Nina’s mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), who once danced herself and now uses her daughter as a sort of dancing avatar/replacement for her now-ended career.

Then there’s the color duality of black and white, a little obvious but simpatico with the story and the production of “Swan Lake” itself. Thomas Leroy, the egotistical man who is staging the ballet, messes with Nina to toughen her up but tells her flat out that while he buys her as the White Swan, he doesn’t see her pulling off the Black Swan alter-ego required of her in the ballet. Nina is all technical, a seeker of perfection in her performances unable to cut loose and simply feel.

Like many young woman seeking the unobtainable (perfection), Nina self-injures. As if the rigors of ballet weren’t punishment enough on her frail body, she rips her cuticles and scratches herself. This detail is a very real touch, but one of the last real details in the film before it gets all wacky. When Lily shows up, the story goes all “Single White Female.” Nina is threatened by her presence, convinced that Lily is going to take her role from her. This, too, is realistic in the world of performers. It’s the whole “All About Eve” thing, and it’s a story that’s been told before.

But then Lily starts trying to get chummy with Nina. And for a little while, Nina gives in. And once this happens, Nina goes off the deep end, and so does Aronofsky. The final 30 minutes of the film—the details of which I won’t spoil here—are batshit crazy. The film becomes a game of “which moments really happened and which were imagined,” which is a tactic far beneath a director of Aronofsky’s talents.

If BLACK SWAN does anything with undeniable brilliance, that would be its stunning sense of tone. Aronofsky establishes a sense of suspense right away, and that suspense is visceral. I can honestly say I thought I’d soil myself on numerous occasions, and damn-near screamed out loud more than once while watching it. Only the arm-chopping-off scene in “127 Hours” comes anywhere close to this level of intensity in a film this year. BLACK SWAN literally gets your heart rate up.

But while I can praise this intensity, I also feel a bit critical of it. So consistent is its tone—a sustained two hours of frightening suspense—that the film lacks levels. And worse, it begins to descend into horror film clichés, such as the lead actress quickly turning her head with a gasp after looking in a mirror to reveal who is or isn’t there, and spooky low-end notes on a piano to signify scary moments. I can’t say I saw many of the jumpy moments coming, and that’s a credit to the film. But I can say that many of the techniques used to shock bordered on campy.

One of the film’s biggest WTF devises is its use of CG graphics in a few key scenes toward the end of the film. They are clearly intended to be a part of Nina’s increasing hallucinations and instability, but they also, I think, turn BLACK SWAN into “The Fly.” I don’t want to spoil it by being more specific; if you see the film, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about immediately upon seeing it.

As mentioned before, Natalie Portman is stunning. I worry that not enough people will fully appreciate what she clearly had to do to prepare for and live in this role. She clearly lost weight – an already skinny girl reduced to a wisp of a thing here. And she also learned ballet dancing, which is no small feat. This in addition to the acting itself, which is intense and exceptional. She deserves, I think, every award that is currently heading her way. It’s the female acting performance of the year.

Matching her in intensity is the work of both Kunis and Hershey, and were this not such a damn strong year for female supporting performances, both would get Oscar nominations. That said, I suspect that one of them still will, and it will probably be Kunis, because she gets more screentime, freaks the audience out more, and does a lesbian love scene.

It should also be noticed that few critics are saying much about Vincent Cassel as the manipulative ballet director, but he is great here, too: seductive, sexy, charming and coldly controlling.

For all of the choices Aronofsky makes as a director with BLACK SWAN that drove me crazy, there are some that I think are brilliant. All of the film’s dance sequences are exquisitely shot with tight camera work that floats and spins as if the camera is dancing, too. While I sometimes dislike this kind of flashy intrusion, it is fitting and wonderful here. Aronofsky shot this film with handheld cameras just as he did his last picture, “The Wrestler,” and the similar choices he makes here with a camera that follows the subject closely and often from behind help to establish the director’s consistency in style. Some have criticized the similarities, but I think similarities between a director’s films are a good thing! They indicate that a director has an identity. We are now getting to the point where it is easy to identify what an Aronofsky film looks like and, quite possibly, what its themes are.

All of these compliments aside, I cannot fully forgive, much less wrap my brain around, the film’s final act. Like I said before, it’s simply nuts. It’s nuttier than Daniel Day-Lewis’ bowling scene at the end of “There Will Be Blood.” And while the chain of events maintains that ridiculous level of intensity, Aronofsky discards any desire for the audience to have some clearly-discernable reality to use as narrative grounding, to distinguish from Nina’s paranoid delusions. What happens works as a figment of her paranoia, but the lines blur and then, explode. Ultimately, I’m left feeling impressed by the film’s sustained sense of intensity more than I care about the characters.

BLACK SWAN is worthy of much praise, though I would probably stop short at any kinds of rewards for its daffy script. But no matter how ridiculous I thought this was, I doubt you can watch BLACK SWAN without at least admitting that it is shockingly riveting. It’s the kind of mess you don’t mind watching, and movies today could use a few more of those.

3.0 out of 4