Downton Abbey

Jim Carter as the butler leads the servant staff (L), while

Hugh Bonneville as the Earl heads the family (R)

Brian Percival and Brian Kelly, directed four episodes each; several others directed two episodes.

Season One: 2010 (10*)
Golden Globe and Emmy Awards, best tv mini-series or movie
During the reign of England’s King Edward, estates of the wealthy aristocrats grew to their ultimate in wealth and power. By the first decade of the 20th century, there were 100 estates that owned over half the land in England. Their wealth came from owning huge amounts of land, then collecting rents from all those who lived on, farmed, or hunted on their land. The patriarch of the estate was usually given the title of Duke, Earl, or Marquis, and the property was always passed on to eldest male heirs, and by law, never to women. If there was no male son, the nearest other male relative became the heir, often cousins.

However, as all things pass over time, this class structure was about to change forever. Cheaper shipping allowed the importation of less costly agricultural products from India and the Americas, and the great estates were in decline, along with the manors or castles of the aristocratic families. The upper class still tried to maintain their lifestyles for as long as possible, or at least the appearance of luxury, which required large staffs of servants. The head cook had her assistant and kitchen maids; the head housekeeper had a staff of housekeeping maids; while the butler was the overall head of the staff, and there were also valets, and the lowest of the male order inside the house, the footmen. Outside the manor were also the gamekeepers and wardens, garden staff, and stables of horses to maintain.

All this cost a lot of money, and without the income from the land, many aristocrats sought new wealth from America. The generally accepted practice was to get a wealthy American heiress, usually the daughter of industrialists or bankers, to marry a titled estate owner, and thus gain a title to provide some hitherto unavailable social status in America, while providing the money to keep the estate going.

This is the setting of the story of one such manor, called Downton Abbey, headed by Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, in this work of fiction beginning in the year 1910, created and written by Julian Fellowes. Other works before have explored this system, notably the PBS series Upstairs, Downstairs and Brideshead Revisited, which actually starts after the era is past but whose story is told as a flashback to a time decades before. Upstairs failed to involve me, I found it boring and passionless.

Brideshead, from the novel by Evelyn Waugh, easily hooked me, largely with it’s terrific cast, which made an international star out of lead actor Jeremy Irons, and included Laurence Olivier, who won an Emmy for his performance as the patriarch, and Clare Bloom as his estranged wife, as well as excellent supporting performances from Julian Glover and the two actors who played the children of Olivier, Anthony Andrews and Diana Quick. This is a 'must-see' epic for fans of literature brought to the screen, and runs eleven hours overall.

Downton Abbey is worthy of all the praise and awards it’s receiving. Unlike the two previously mentioned mini-series, Downton is infused with a warmth unseen in previous stories. Fellowes has managed to capture the feel of Charles Dickens literature, with the wit and humor of Jane Austen. When the first telephone is being installed in the manor, the Dowager Countess (the granny of the family), brilliantly played by Oscar-winner Maggie Smith, remarks, “first electricity, now telephones; I feel as if I’m living in an H.G. Wells novel”.

The story begins with the news of the sinking of the Titanic, and the loss of the hand-picked heirs of Downton, both cousins of the Earl, who has only three daughters and thus no rightful heir of his own. Next in line is a third cousin, who is presently a lawyer in a mid-level corporate legal firm in Manchester – hardly an aristocrat, and someone not especially thrilled at the prospect of changing his lifestyle.

Veteran actor Hugh Bonneville, with

96 titles to his credit, has the role of

a lifetime as the Earl, Robert Crawley

We are swept into the life of the manor in the first five minutes, by following servants awakening and rushing off to their stations with some excellent camerawork that follows people from in front in unbroken shots until the camera turns to follow a different person. From then on you should be hooked on the story.

We see the arrival in the beginning of the new valet, Mr. Bates (brilliant, understated performance by Brendan Coyle) a man crippled from the Boer War, but who has been placed in his new position for being a friend of the earl from the war days, thus bypassing those inside the house who wanted to move up in rank. We are also introduced to the new heir, who meets a different form of disdain, seen as an outsider by the more traditional aristocrats, yet welcome by the younger set, represented by the earl’s three daughters, each single, with the elder two (Mary and Edith) competing as the first across the marriage line. The youngest (Sybil) is more political than social, interested in women getting the vote and finding careers, and uninterested in the traditional woman’s role of wife and socialite.

You know as you watch the dates progress toward 1914 that a world war is coming, so that adds an element of tension to the entire story, which is light on action, but deep in psychological complexity and subtle currents of social change.

British drama doesn’t get any better than this, it’s the ultimate Masterpiece Theater production, expertly filmed and acted. The cast is led by Brendan Coyle as the valet, Mr. Bates. The earl, Robert Crawley is played by Hugh Bonneville, who has a dignified sense of justice. His wife is an American, Elizabeth McGovern (one of the weaker actors), married for her money, needed to keep the estate going. Her money must remain with the estate, else Downton Abbey will not be able to continue.

The eldest daughter Mary, is played by a stern, almost cold-hearted Michelle Dockery. Her conniving, backstabbing younger sister Edith is portrayed as an envious wretch by Laura Carmichael. The youngest daughter, my favorite character, is played by the stunning Jessica Browne Findlay, a former ballerina, and the character with the most spunk.

The Earl's daughters, Ladies Edith, Mary, and Sybil

However, the acting kudos are being stolen by the veteran Maggie Smith, as the traditional and snobbish Dowager Countess, Violet Crawley, who is given the lion’s share of great lines. Dan Stevens is passable as the selected heir-to-be, Matthew Crawley, who has trouble fitting into the role of an aristocrat, largely because he’s never been trained to be an elitist, and would rather fend for himself and fulfill some useful career. Veteran actor Jim Carter also shines as the resolute and dignified butler, Mr. Carson, who feels responsible for maintaining a professional staff that can perpetuate this way of life as perhaps Britains contribution to civilization for as long as possible.

The first season has everyone’s appetite whetted for season two, currently airing on PBS, but I wait for the dvd release so I can view the entire season in one sitting. Season one is seven episodes, just shy of seven hours and worth every minute.

This has won 13 awards to date out of 45 nominations, including six Emmys and a Golden Globe, with seven of those awards going to creator and author Julian Fellowes. This has an extremely high rating of 9.0 by just 11,000 fans at IMDB; if it were a film, it would be tied with The Godfather at #2 there, only bettered by Shawshank Redemption's rating of 9.1. It is now one of just 40 perfect 10's I've given on this blog.

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Meek's Cutoff

Kelly Reichardt, 2010 (8.6*)
Independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt makes sparse and esoteric films that will appeal to the more artistic and discerning cinephile rather than the average cinemaniac. This is not your typical western.

In this western taking place in 1845, a small wagon train of three families on their way to farm in Oregon has hired a mountain man named Meek (Bruce Greenwood) as their guide. Promising them a shortcut to a pass in the Cascade mountains, the group basically becomes lost in the high, arid eastern Oregon desert. With their water running out and food low, the group becomes increasingly split over which direction to proceed, whether to continue trusting their guide or simply head north toward the Columbia River.

Along the way they begin to see a lone Native American almost stalking them. Fulfilling their stereotypical paranoia, some men go capture him and bring him back. Meek especially seems to keep inferring they are little more than animals, and are much better dead, and the living are much safer with them gone. However, deferring to the women, especially a gun-toting and headstrong Michelle Williams, the men decide to keep him alive, but tied up as their prisoner.

Now the group has another dilemna – can this wilderness survivor help them survive? For a western, this is a pretty existential story, from Jonathan Raymond, who often pens Reichardt’s films – and who has also used the name Slats Grobnik. Yo, Slats!

This story won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s still a beautifully shot western, subtle and tasteful, with ethereal and sparingly used music by Jeff Grace . The cast is perfect, they all even look like dirty, smelly western pioneers, even veterans Bruce Greenwood and Will Patton.

Director Kelly Reichardt

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In a Better World

Susanne Bier, Denmark, 2010 (8.6*)
Best Foreign Language Film (AA, GG)

Bier finally got a well-deserved Oscar® for foreign language film for this one about a doctor who shares his time between a refugee hospital in Africa and his family life in Denmark. Bier excels at paring away the surface of complex psychogical relationshiops between family members. Her earlier films After the Wedding,  (2006), which also had a Danish man volunteering to help the needy (in that case orphans in Mumbai, India), and Brothers (2004, about a husband that goes missing in the Afghanistan war and whose brother begins to take his place at home) were excellent works of art about intra-family relationships and self-discovery. I thought both deserved this long overdue award for her.

In this story, the horrors of Africa are at least partially offset by finding romance back in Denmark, when Anton, played by Mikael Persbrandt, newly separated, becomes interested in the divorced mother of one of his son’s schoolmates. The two boys become good friends first, when Anton’s son, new at school, comes to the aid of a boy targeted by bullies.

The film starts slowly but subtly escalates into some unforseeen territory, especially the story involving the boys. A little schoolyard bullying is just a prelude to more dramatic events. The adults in Bier’s films often have their lives shaped and affected by their children, and their own plans and designs become secondary to the immediate reality of being involved in the lives of others through being a parent. In most of her stories, the well-being of the group as a whole outweighs the desires of the individuals.

These are intelligent adult dramas in which there are no pat answers or typically ‘Hollywood’ solutions, which often means that two people agree they are in love then all the other problems magically disappear, film over. Bier is arguably the best woman director in the world right now (ok, I’ll say top three with India’s Deepa Mehta and Mira Nair), and her films never provide easy outs to complex stories, but rather require huge emotional commitment on the part of her characters to face life’s challenges head on.

In a Better World won 5 awards out of 13 nominations, not as many as her earlier films. For those who haven’t seen her work, I’d start with Brothers (13 awards), and the original not the U.S. remake, and then After the Wedding (9 awards), which I think is a masterpiece.

Susanne Bier

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The Way Back

Peter Weir, 2010 (8.2*)
This incredible story begins with "In 1945, three men came out of the wilderness after a 4,000 mile walk from Siberia - this film is dedicated to the memory of these men."

Based on a memoir by Slavomir Rawicz called "The Long Walk", which depicted his escape from a Siberian gulag and subsequent 4000-mile walk to freedom in India. This popular adventure became a bestseller, selling over 500,000 copies. Credited with inspiring explorers, one survival expert recreated the same hike himself and served as a technical advisor on this film. However, the BBC unearthed records in 2006 (including some written by Rawicz himself) that showed he had been released by the USSR in 1942, while another former Polish soldier, Witold Glinski, claimed in 2009 that the book was really an account of his own escape. ("I walked 4000 miles!" - "No, I did!")

Whatever the facts, the film depicts a tribute to the survival instinct of man, a harrowing wilderness adventure trek across Siberia, Lake Baikal, Mongolia, Tibet, and finally emerging in the Indian Himilayas.

The story follows seven men who escape from a Siberian gulag consisting of foreign workers who were jailed by Stalin while working in Russia, and the typical assortment of lifetime criminals, led by Colin Farrell, who carries a knife, and a tattoo of Lenin and Stalin on his chest. He escapes with an international group led by American Mr. Smith (Ed Harris), Pole Janusz (Jim Sturgess), a Swede, Russian, and a Hungarian (or was it Romanian?) They are followed by a young Polish teen, who eventually joins the group, played by Saorise Ronan (who celebrated her 16th birthday on the set). Of her talents, Weir said "She was born with a particular acting talent that can't be learned".

The film perhaps loses it's emotional intensity along the way and becomes a slow walk to inevitability, so in that regard it's not as artistic as most of Weir's better efforts, such as Fearless, Witness, and Picnic at Hanging Rock. In spite of that, it's an adventure that needs to be told, and if true, one of the most amazing feats in human history. Similar stories have been documented as many prisoners spend years returning home after wars, many walking as far at 8-10,000 miles, so this story is not that unbelievable.

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Of Gods and Men

Xavier Beauvois, France, 2010 (9.4*)
Grand Jury Prize, Cannes
Beautifully filmed, gripping story of a small group of French Trappist monks who run a local hospital in the mountains of Algeria, who treat hundreds of poor local villagers a week, mostly children. Suddenly, Islamic fundamentalists start executing foreigners in the region, including one Algerian teen not wearing a veil in public.

The government wants to send the military to guard the small monastery, but their leader, Brother Christian, well protrayed by Lambert Wilson, who displays an even temperament and firm resolve fueled by inner faith, refuses to sanction the proximity of weapons to their sanctuary. My favorite actor in the cast is the veteran Michael Lonsdale (the French patriarch who helped the Isaelis find terrorists in Munich), who is the real doctor for the clinic, and who lived much of his life in the secular world, so he can see events unfolding without a clouded perspective.

In the face of increasing threat from extremists, the brothers must decide to follow their calling and service to their faith, or face the reality of the modern world and continue their mission elsewhere, either back in France or a safer country in Africa.

This is a recounting of real events, which adds more weight to all decisions involved, the characters are all real people. Beautifully filmed in a dramatic mountain setting with awe-inspiring vistas; you can understand why they chose to build a monastery at this location. It's rare that a film about faith and religion can also successfully deal with real issues like this film. This one of the best films about faith ever made, and is a work of rare cinematic art.

Winner of five awards out of 11 nominations, including the Grand Jury Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes.

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127 Hours

Danny Boyle, 2010 (8.8*)
This is a true story of hiker-climber-biker-canyoneer Aron Ralston's solo trek into the Blue John Canyon section of Canyonlands in southeastern Utah, some of the most remote canyon terrain in the U.S., not made a national park until 1964, when re-discovered in modern times by Secretary of State Stu Udall during a helicopter flight.

Ralston is excellently played by Oscar-nominee James Franco, who captures the youthful exhuberance of a child at heart, mixed with an older man's previous wilderness experience - he was actually a volunteer wilderness rescue expert and part-time canyon guide and knows this area well.

I've been in this exact part of the country (and Joshua Tree outside L.A.), and we did a lot of what we called bouldering, or climbing rocks without any equipment, but we never took the chances that Ralston did. About half an hour into the film, Ralston meets some lost ladies (one of whom is one of film goddess Kate Mara, Transsiberian) and shows them both their intended trail, and a hidden underground pool by dropping about 30 feet through a crevice from above (which is shot with some excellent cinematography).

After saying goodbye to his new friends, Ralston is climbing alone when he dislodges a loose boulder at the top of a crevice, which causes him to fall into it and the boulder lands just the right way to pin his right hand and arm to the side of the narrow crevice.

He's now trapped in the bottom, about fifty feet below sky, but he does have his video camera, and his daypack with water and a little food. Of course, the title of the films implies how many hours he remains trapped, you should know that much. But since he has a video recorder, we would know his story whether he survived or not. He certainly thinks he's doomed, and records final goodbyes for his mom and friends.

I went into this with some trepidation about the film's pace and creativity, but the on location terrain in southeast Utah that I've been in myself (Arches Nat Park and Canyonlands are two of my favorite in the U.S.) was the hook for me. I've been there many times, at various ages - it's a desert paradise on earth, one all climbers and hikers should visit, and re-visit.

Boyle has a way to make any film engrossing - I enjoyed Shallow Grave, Millions, Trainspotting, and Slumdog Millionaire, the latter a best picture winner and all definitely worth seeing. I thought Shallow Grave was a perfect parody of Hitchcock suspense thrillers, with three robbers trying to both hide the unspent loot and live together, two guys and a girl, a formula that you know spells disaster.

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The Illusionist (2010)

aka L'illusioniste
Sylvain Chomet, 2010, UK-France (8.0*)
#873 on our 2011 update of Top Ranked 1000 Films (all polls)
This is not to be confused with the real action film about a magician played by Edward Norton - this Illusionist is another hand-animated feature from Chomet, creator of the wonderful Triplets of Belleville, which emulated 50's Disney animated features in Chomet's own wonderfully warped style. In a documentary on the dvd, Chomet talks about the influence of those films on his early development as an animation artist, so he still renders these without computer animation, so these are made up of about 129,000 individual drawings for a 90 minute film, or 1440 per minute (24 p/sec x 60 sec), and of course, usually only the characters themselves move over a fixed background, which allow for much more detail in the animated 'set' since it won't be moving.

This film is actually a touching and poignant story from an unfilmed screenplay of French filmmaker and mime comic Jacques Tati. Like Triplets of Belleville and a Tati film, it has almost no dialog. Chomet has created a lead character that resembles Tati, so he's obviously animated this film to look like a film of Tati's. In this, Tati's character is a run-of-the-mill magician who plays near empty vaudeville venues.

Performing in Edinburgh, Scotland, he meets a young woman who is entralled by his tricks, and the two become close platonic friends; they explore the city together, and she eventually moves in with him.

Without giving anything away, I'll say that this is an adult story, with very little that would appeal to children, so right away that limits the market severely for animated features. This one doesn't even have the hilarity of Triplets of Belleville, which, though admittedly adult, still had Bruno the dog and a bicycle racer and other characters all ages could appreciate.

This is a valid effort by Chomet to give homage to Tati, and especially to his unfilmed story. I was quite touched by this story, and found it to be almost as unexpected and unpredictable as Triplets (but not quite, it's missing the same sparkle). For fans of Tati and Chomet, all will enjoy this, but it won't be one for the masses, only for the more discerning cinephiles.

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Unstoppable

Tony Scott, 2010 (8.2*)
This is another non-stop action film with very little else to offer, but it does what it intends very well, with expert editing and Oscar®-nominated sound. Based on a true story, a half mile long train in northern Pennsylvania carrying 8 cars of a deadly flammable glue chemical becomes a runaway thanks to some boneheaded railyard employees who violate two or three major safety rules within a couple of minutes. It manages to escape the railyard unmanned with the throttle open, and is suddenly an unscheduled train on the main track barreling towards Scranton and a dangerously slow elevated curve.

Denzel Washington is a veteran train engineer and Chris Pine is a conductor in training who have just brought a load from a zinc plant onto the same main line. After narrowly avoiding the runaway head on, they decide to help rein in the runaway train. Probably the only lulls in the steamrolling narrative are when they try to allow these two to get to know each other with banal chatter about each others personal lives while they're chasing down the train from behind.

The story's realism is heightened by the constant jumping back and forth, via phones and radios, with railyard operation head Connie, played by Rosario Dawson (Sin City, Clerks II), and the corporate VP of operations, Mr. Galvin, perfectly played by Kevin Dunn. Connie is trying to weigh all options, while Galvin and the other corporate suits are always weighing their potential actions vs. the overall cost to the corporation in millions and the potential ramifications on the stock's price and market cap.

In a way, the editing and venue shifts done in almost real time reminded me of Paul Greengrass's excellent narrative of 9/11, United 93, which concentrated on the jet brought down by passengers in western Pennsylvania, but which also jumped around from air traffic controllers to NORAD to the hijackers to give the viewers a great sense of all the activity involved in a major crisis of this nature, as various officials in different locations all respond to the public threat. (NORAD was trying to get permission from the President on 9/11 to SHOOT DOWN all other airliners suspected of being hijacked, but couldn't reach him as he was in the air and incommunicado for over half an hour)

Nominated for Best Action Film by the Broadcast Film Critics, which is where it belonged, it lost to Inception, which is a better film, albeit not a realistic one like this is. This story was documented live on tv from several helicopters so it was filmed pretty accurately. Don't expect a lot but action entertainment and you won't be disappointed.

Tony Scott (photo left), brother of director Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down, Blade Runner), is known this type of film, his others being Top Gun, True Romance, Man on Fire, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, and the remake of Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.

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Restrepo

Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, 2010 (9.0*)
Memorial Day War-a-thon film #21
Documentary that follows The Men of Battle Company 2nd of the 503rd Infantry Regiment 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, in Afghanistan's deadly Korangal Valley, as they work out of firebase they call Outpost Restrepo, after a fallen comrade, medic Juan Restrepo.

If you're interested about how contemporary American soldiers look in daily combat, this is as good a film as you'll get, shot with superb cinematography, as risk of the filmmakers themselves being shot. (Director Tim Hetherington was in fact killed while filming in Libya in March of this year).

The film is simply a journal, following the platoon with little narrative structure other than their building OP Restrepo, the 15-man outpost on a hill overlooking the entire enemy valley - and a patrol into the civilian population called Operation Rock Avalanche, during which the troops came under heavy fire. Through face-to-face interviews with the soldiers, we can see what this has done to their psyches, and many of the soldiers are just out of high school.

4 awards, including Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, out of 12 nominations, including an Oscar® nomination for documentary (Inside Job won). Tim Hetherington also won a Pulitzer Prize for a 2007 photo of the soldiers resting at Restrepo.

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Marwencol

Jeff Malmberg, 2010 (8.3*)
Marwencol is a documentary about the fantasy world of Mark Hogancamp. After leaving his local bar one night, Mark is beaten into a brain-damaging coma by five teenagers outside in the parking log. After coming out of his coma, he is on Medicaid and "the money runs out", so they tell him he is released, and is sent home with only partial brain functions. He has to relearn how to walk, eat, write, and think, with the help of his mother and friends. (He's divorced and was living alone)

In order for some spiritual as well as physical therapy, to help his shaking hands, Mark thinks he needs a hobby, so he builds a 1/6th scale World War II-era town in his backyard, which he dubs Marwencol.  Mark populates the with hobby dolls representing his friends and family and creates life-like photographs detailing the town's many relationships and dramas. Setting up scenarios like a miniature movie set, to illustrate an ongoing story (see photo at bottom), and then photographing the action helps Mark to recover coordination heal his psyche - he's still afraid of the outside world, now it represents possible danger. He only goes to work one day a week at a local restaurant-bar, and doesn't drink since the attack.

The town has American, British, and German troops all using it as a sort of neutral-zone r-and-r. There are also some blonde babes there, because Mark's ex-wife was a blonde of Eastern European descent. Mark has his own character, and there are five SS 'bad guys' that bother everyone and threaten the town. The conflicts in his psyche are played out in all the good soldiers in Marwencol trying to avoid the threatening SS. At one point, the women join the resistance and take up arms as well. There's even a character representing General George Patton. (see jeep photo below)

When Mark and his photographs are discovered, a prestigious New York gallery sets up an art show as Mark's creation is deemed art, forcing him to choose between the safety of his fantasy life in Marwencol, and keeping it private, and the real world that he's avoided since the attack, and sharing his own created world.

You won't see many stories this odd and this interesting, especially in documentaries. The biography of Crumb, about the underground comic artist, comes to mind, as well as American Splendor, a docudrama about another comic artist, that blends animation with real action, and includes the real people in the film alongside their life actor counterparts, with whom they sometimes converse, and sometimes comment about to the director.

15 awards out of 17 nominations

See more at marwencol.com

Mark Hogancamp setting up a scene in

Marwencol before photographing it

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The Fighter

David O'Russell, 2010 (8.3*)
Another good boxing film, maybe not the best, but another, like Raging Bull (1980) and Cinderella Man (2005),  based on a true boxer's biography, in this case "Irish" Mickey Ward, and his brother Dicky, a former boxer himself who trains Mickey in their Lowell, Massachusetts boxing gym. Mark Wahlberg does a pretty good job as Mickey, and at least the boxing looks real in this one, unlike some other unmentionable boxing films.

Christian Bale turned in an outstanding performance as Dicky, and was rewarded with an Oscar® and 19 other awards. Melissa Leo also won an Oscar® (and numerous other awards) playing Mickey's aggressive, optimistic mother. The near documentary style works, as crackhead brother Dicky is also the subject of a cable documentary about crack addiction, shot here in 16mm to make it look like an older documentary. Amy Adams also turns in another good performance as Mickey's barmaid girlfriend (she'll get an Oscar® soon), who receives the ire of Mickey's family when he starts making his own career decisions. His sisters (five of em? it was hard to keep count, they were everywhere) are something to behold; it's like they were perpetually competing for "family's biggest hair".

Boxing films in a way are like westerns - they each usually feature a man-to-man showdown (with usually one 'good guy'), one with fists, the other with bullets. At least boxing has a time clock, a referee, judges, betting, and the gloves are padded; but, even so, it's not a sport for the squeamish. But, as Mike Tyson once said, "would your rather see me in the ring or in a dark alley outside a bar?"

The Fighter has now won 34 awards overall, 20 by Christian Bale, either for supporting actor or as part of the winning ensemble cast. Add this to the list of boxing films (like the two above) that are better than Rocky but didn't win best picture - some others are The Great White Hope (1970), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), and Rocco and His Brothers (1964) from Italian director Visconti, which had a direct influence on the style of Raging Bull.

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The King's Speech

Tom Hooper, 2010 (7.8*)
In spite of a stellar cast, and all the awards it's now won for best picture of 2010, this is primarily a boring, one-trick pony of a film with little real drama, since we already know the outcome (well, except for the history illiterates - this is basic World War Two history, everyone should know it by now).

Colin Firth plays Prince Albert (of England, naturally), who is being forced by his father, King George V, to give public addresses in spite of his public stutter (or is it stammer? he doesn't start a word over and over, he pauses and has a hard time continuing, so there are lengthy silences that try everyone's patience). His wife, Helena Bonham Carter, who earns perhaps the easiest Oscar® nomination of her career for supporting, seeks the help of a speech therapist, Geoffrey Rush (who also executive produced, and who also had an easy part for an Oscar® nomination), an emigre from Australia who had success with World War One battle victims, including those who lost their voice after gas attacks.

Rush proceeds to give the future King George VI a series of unorthodox speech lessons, which unfortunately comprise about 2/3 of this film. Jaw loosening babbling, rolling on the floor, screaming obscenities, other inane treatments. The other 1/3 is the more interesting - how his brother David (Guy Pearce, in perhaps the most interesting role in the film, but they waste the opportunity) first took the throne after George V's death, but then refused to give up an affair with a divored American woman and was forced to abdicate the throne, thus making Prince Albert the new King George.

The only real life in this film is when Michael Gambon is onscreen as the irascible old king, who yells at "Bertie", as the family calls him, "Out with it man! Like a good Englishman", as if berating and yelling at a stutterer will suddenly snap him out of it, like an army recruit at boot camp. Gambon plays the 'old school' style of monarch, the sword-bearing, duel-fighting type of soldier from un-mechanized centuries of war, and certain things royalty just didn't do, such as stutter, fail to bear whatever comes, fool around, or get divorced.

Well done technically, with an excellent, though pretty much untaxed cast (only Firth had to do much, and all he did was change his speech rhythms, and get slightly angry once or twice, but little else - a pretty easy Oscar if you ask me), this is only going to be interesting to history buffs, Anglophiles, and those who still think the motion picture academy chooses the best films for awards. It's obvious from this choice and Crash in 2006 that there's some behind the scenes wrangling going on, with favors called in, studio block voting and perhaps 'teams' formed, etc.. it's like any other politics, the winners aren't often based on merit, but how many votes that side can muster.

King's Speech won 47 awards out of 137 nominations, including four Oscars® (Picture, director, actor, screenplay). It's now ranked #103 on the IMDB top 250 (but well behind Inception at #6, Toy Story 3 at #33, and even lower than Black Swan at #73, to compare it with the other big films of 2010. Social Network is #190, but did win 84 awards, far and away the most of 2010).

Not a bad movie, just not a great one either, not worthy of this many awards in a season with better films: Inception (2010), Toy Story 3 (2011), Winter's Bone (2010), The Social Network (2010), Black Swan (2010), Inside Job (2010).

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Inside Job

Charles Ferguson, 2010 (9.0*)
Best Documentary (AA)
This is probably the most important documentary made in our lifetime, as it covers the biggest financial crime ever committed which will have worldwide repercussions for decades to come. Actor Matt Damon narrates a story that is pure nightmare become reality, one that has touched most of the world by now in one way or another. (Many lost jobs, houses, life savings, pension plans - the rest will pay higher taxes and have higher inflation as a result)

Director, author, producer Charles Ferguson does a good job explaining exactly how this all happened, and won an Oscar® for documentary as a result. I for one am glad he included the repeal in 1999 by a Republican Congress of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which was put in place to prevent banks from taking unnecessary risks in order to prevent the exact scenario which took place within a decade after it's repeal. (me and many financial experts predicted this exact outcome over time - my friends called me a "doomsayer"; now they don't call me at all - they're probably broke; I pulled all my money out of the market in 2003) Every time you hear someone ask for "deregulation", remember that it's NEVER WORKED YET, so get ready to be fleeced again by con artists. (it was deregulation that caused strikes, riots, and death squads in Argentina; it was done as a condition for a loan from the World Bank, controlled by the U.S., which was, of course, to allow corporations to pillage Argentinians as a test)

This film shoud infuriate everyone. Hopefully, many people not currently in prison will be put there eventually, especially the fat cat execs at the superbanks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, etc.. One of these guys (Fuld at Bear Stearns?) pulled 246 million out of his company in "compensation" just before it went bankrupt. Good grief, this would bankrupt 99% of all companies in America. How could we NOT have gotten his money back? If this nation was any more spineless, we'd have to be reclassified as earthworms, and at about that level, for letting these crooks get away with pillaging the world's wealth for their own private benefit.

The most maddening part is that Obama hired many of the same criminals himself - perhaps they really work for the Corleones and Sopranos and everyone has a gun to their heads. That's the only possible explanation for this entire baffling chain of events, especially giving the same crooks even more money to throw into their private coffers.

This film will hopefully ignite a fire under someone here with BALLS - it's obvious that NO ONE in our government has any, and the populace is suffering as a result. This truly is a government "of, by, and for the corporation", as Jim Cramer on MadMoney termed it. We are living proof that "democracy" just plain doesn't work, due to the corruptable nature of humans, who will sell out to the highest bidder, in this case the corporations willing to pay them off in the guise of "campaign contributions", so it has the appearance of legitimacy.

How typical that NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, interviewed here, who tried to go after some of the crooks, was then painted with the "immoral" brush for using hookers, something the Wall Streeters did by the tens of thousands, according to one high price escort madame interviewed in this film. He paid a personal price while the crooks have gotten off scot free so far. If I were these guys, I'd not only leave the U.S. for good, but I'd hire a small army of bodyguards, as they won't be able to sleep safely anywhere in the world now that Al Quaeda and everyone else knows who they are.

Share this film with everyone you know!

Note: everyone should read journalist, and former corporate corruption investigator for the insurance industry, Greg Palast's eye-opening expose of U.S. corporations and politics "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy", about how all western politicians are controlled by big money who simply buys the favorable legislation they want, and who also control the media that refused to report or even print his findings. In England, the government ransacked his office and gave him death threats, likely due to pressure from the U.S. "Freedom of the press" and "free speech" are just expressions used by politicians - if they have to tell us that we have them, then we really don't, which is obvious to everyone by now. In fact, in the Smother Bros vs CBS trial, U.S. government lawyers testified for CBS, and said "freedom of speech is only for owners, it was never implied for individuals". That was news to nearly everyone who has read the Constitution.

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The Kids Are All Right

Lisa Cholodenko, 2010 (8.0*)
Best Musical or Comedy Film (GG)
So what's the deal with Julianne Moore and all the lesbian parts recently? ("not that there's anything wrong with that" - Seinfeld) She was naked and almost x-rated in Chloe, doing the naked girl-on-girl thing with doe-eyed Amanda Seyfried. Now, in Kids, she's the lesbian marriage partner of Annette Bening, and of course there's the obligatory makeout and simulated sex scenes.

Annette Bening steals this movie, and an Oscar® nomination for lead actress, in one of her best performances; she's the only one that doesn't seem to be acting, she's very natural. The others are just passable, including Oscar-nominee Mark Ruffalo (should be supporting not lead actor) as the sperm-donor dad for each of the women's children, one girl of 18 about to go off to college, and a son of 15, who wants to find his real genetic father.

What begins as an innocent tale of self-discovery gets serious when Moore and Ruffalo begin a lust-driven sexual affair. This sounds terrible, and is perhaps a little manipulative, but is really fairly engrossing thanks to the screenplay, the ensemble cast, and a terrific 'ready for cd' music soundtrack, with some unusual and surprisingly effective rock music.

Nominated for best picture of 2010, it's won just 3 awards out of 55 nominations so far, a couple were Golden Globes for best musical or comedy, and best actress in a comedy for Bening.

[Note: this was our 666th film review; I was gonna save it for 669, but figured no one would get it..]

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Toy Story 3

Lee Unkrich, 2010 (9.0*)Another winner in the ongoing series, this one's about when the kid, Andy, is finally old enough to go off to college, and what happens to the childhood collection of stuff in the room that is now being passed on to a younger sibling. We've all been through this at some point, losing countless millions in old baseball cards and Beatles memorabilia tossed out by moms (these two from personal experience!)

Along with all the other belongings are the child's favorite toys - in this case, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), the dinosaur, Hamm the pig (John Ratzenburger), Jessie the cowgirl (Joan Cusack), the potato heads, and all the other toys from the first two films. The mom is pressuring all the kids to come up with toys to throw out, toys for the attic, and toys to be donated to a day care center. Of course, Andy's (John Morris) toys get mixed up with trash, and then end up at the daycare center, with hilarious results.

They've kept the story energized with some funny twists. My favorite is that Buzz Lightyear has a Spanish mode and when he is accidentally switched to Spanish we read his dialogue in subtitles, and he flits around like a flamenco dancer, so along with language his personality changes to a Spanish one.

This is another tear-jerking, crowd pleaser from Pixar, but it maintains the level of the first two, and forms a perfect complement for the trilogy. Winner of 19 awards so far, out of 41 nominations, and up for five upcoming Oscars® including best picture. #29 on the IMDB top 250.

Our review of the original Toy Story, from 1993, and it's sequel

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Animal Kingdom

David Michôd, Australia, 2010 (8.8*)
Sundance, Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema
Powerful story of a crime family in Melbourne, Australia is director David Michôd's first film. The incredibly complex script with terrific dialogue was re-written several times by Michod over a six year period before filming, and it shows.

The story involves J, a teenager played by newcomer James Frecheville just out of high school, whose mom overdoses in the first scene. With no alternatives, he goes to live with grandma Jacki Weaver, who turns in a mind-blowing performance. She is basically the leader of an organized gang of her four sons that does armed robberies, all uncles of J's and unsure how much to let him know.

What follows is J's introduction to the family trade, and their running battle with the Armed Robbery Squad of the city police, which is now operating beyond the law and performing their own hits on suspects without bothering for arrests. This is a chilling story reminiscent of L.A. Confidential, but a bit more realistic, being placed in an unspecified 80's time period, a time when Machod had moved to Melbourne and "was reading lots of true crime articles" which inspired this story (in an interview on the dvd). Veteran actor Guy Pearce (Memento, The Proposition, L.A. Confidential) plays a smooth police detective building evidence against the brothers, who thinks J may give up some information if bothered enough.

Jacki Weaver has 12 nominations for either lead or supporting actress so far for her incredible performance as the mother from hell, who supports her boys' life of crime, yet who is still loving and likeable. I hope she wins the Oscar® for supporting actress, she's simply unforgettable, and has likely turned in the performance of her long career. The film has already won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for World Cinema.
Check out all hers and the film's nominations here

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Despicable Me

Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud, 2010 (8.0*)
Another typical kids animation feature, not as good as the best ones (Finding Nemo, Wall-E), but better than some others (Up, Monsters Inc, Polar Express). This involves three very cute orphan girls and a Mr. Burns-like super criminal, Mr. Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), who adopts them on a trial basis as part of a scheme. The plot is actually science fiction, as various criminals want a 'shrinking-ray' device that reduces objects to a tiny portion allowing the fiendish to steal even one of the pyramids!

Of course, it's a preposterous story, with a obligatory chase sequence, and of course it's got the major cuteness-sentimentality factor going to make five-yr olds like it, but it does have a nicely warped sense of humor. As Mr. Gru goes into a secret bank, the sign reads "Bank of Evil - Formerly Lehman Bros"

The wonderful little yellow creatures you see in all the promotions for this film, the knee-high yellow thingies sometimes with two eyes, sometimes just one, are called Minions - of the rich criminal, basically personal servants. Steve Carell is just ok in the title role, it really needed someone more 'animated', pun intended.. like Robin Williams or Jim Carrey.

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The Social Network

David Fincher, 2010 (8.4*)
I love David Fincher but was not as impressed with Social Network as some of his other films, such as The Game, Fight Club, and Zodiac. Network is well-crafted, but these other films had an existential edge that put people in life or death situations.

Social Network only put people in lawsuit situations as the film was about a liar, a cheat, and a thief, played with little acting by Jesse Eisenberg, who is about as bland as a computer bytehead ought to be; and about a white collar criminal, who, rather than serving time, has been made a billionaire by this unscrupulous system. It's more enraging than entertaining, a sad statement on the current economic reality, that if you're willing to steal data, hack into proprietary computer systems (with immunity I might add), and cheat your partners, such as CFO Eduardo Saverin (effectively played by Andrew Garfield), then maybe you too can become an American billionaire and a folk hero. And who needs old friends, many new ones will flock to the money once you have it, especially the babes; and who cares why they're there - the important point is that they're hanging around.

All in all, this is not a very respectable businessman, or even a worthy human being. In the film, he has no friends for a good reason, he's pretty much a despicable egotist with obvious disdain for most others. The film even begins with a display of his egotism, which causes his current girlfriend, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) to break up. In spite he embarasses her in his blog online, which is really a slanderous offense, so I hope she later got some money from this all-American jerk.

This is how the founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg got his start: he hacked in and stole The Harvard Facebook, which was an online directory of university students with ID photos, very much like an online yearbook. He then had a 'rate the girls' contest with the photos of the female students, in which he paired two at a time on his blog site. His penalty when caught? Academic suspension for six months, which then gave him more free time to do more hacking and stealing. He then did the same to some other universities, committing a federal crime in each case. Where the heck was the FBI?

A couple of entrepreneurs, who row crew for Harvard, came up with the idea for a Facebook styled reference just for Harvard U. that he agreed to work on for them. Rather than show them anything, he kept stalling them while he created Facebook for himself. So there's the story in a nutshell; it's public knowledge, this film just adds a few personal confrontations and anecdotes, and is told is flashback style from some legal depositions for the lawsuits, as this immature kid created nothing but enemies. He had no real original ideas, just a few minor enhancements to existing networks, such as the 'relationship status' of the individual (whoopee..) and he didn't even create a unique name. This is very similar to simple online resume and job sites, all that was basically added was a message system like the 80's style bulletin boards. So, combine personal resumes with 80's level internet, and 'boom', instant success with very little work.

Ironically, in California to seek venture capital, he teams up with Napster (ie, stolen music) creator Sean Parker (an effectively obnoxious Justin Timberlake), who admits "everyone was suing us, so I just said 'fuck it' and declared bankruptcy." Yep, avoid all liability and punishment by just going bankrupt; what a clever system the lawyers have devised to protect guilty capitalists at the public's expense, as only corporate not personal wealth is at risk; you can keep whatever you managed to steal or get as 'compensation', and if the corporation is 'bankrupt', none of the guilty lose anything except a job, but someone else crooked will always hire a crook with experience. It's only fitting that these two should team up in Facebook's early success.

Fincher and the film will apparently win many awards this year, but I preferred the fight for survival in the austere crime film Winter's Bone, and the mind-blowing complexity of the sci-fi film Inception. However, this belongs in the short list of films worth seeing about capitalism, which includes Wall Street, Rogue Trader, Boiler Room, Executive Suite, The Hudsucker Proxy, Putney Swope, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Tucker: A Man and His Dream. Ironically, only Suite and Tucker were about anyone with any real ethics and original business ideas, the rest were about con artists, thieves, and manipulators.

Awards page at IMDB, it's up to 55 so far.. it's also #167 on the IMDB top 250 films..

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Winter's Bone

Debra Granik, 2010 (9.4*)
Grand Jury Award, Sundance
Excellent southern gothic story, being called 'film noir', about a teenage girl hunting for her dad, who has disappeared before a court appearance after putting up their Ozark mountain shack and land for a bail bond. Since he's a meth cooker, many feel that he's either fled to avoid prison, or has been fed to some pigs. The film hinges on the terrific breakthrough performance by Jennifer Lawrence, nominated for many acting awards this year.

Jennifer gives a touching performance as a girl, Rolly Dee, who has to take care of two younger siblings who don't get enough to eat. She teaches them how to survive without her, typical backwoods skills like hunting and cleaning squirrels for dinner. To complicate matters, her mother is now catatonic and is still at home. This is a rough life that is all too typical all over the south; in fact, this is so close to my Georgia mountain homeland that it's almost unbearable.

Terrific indie actor John Hawkes is perfect as her uncle, who provides the only real adult support that she gets. Even more memorable is actress Dale Dickey [photo rt] as a scary distant relative who warns her not to come around their place anymore, as many who visit the meth dealers domain don't leave.

Already a winner of 10 awards, with 27 nominations, including the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Winter's was directed and co-written by Debra Granik [photo lt], who has a wonderful touch with keeping the story and the actors understated, which adds to the realism and therefore the story's impact. In upcoming ceremonies, Winter's Bone is also nominated for 7 Indie Spirit awards, including best feature, director, actress, screenplay, supporting actor and actress - and 7 Satellite awards. It should receive some Oscar® nominations, if justice is served: picture, director, screenplay, actress for Lawrence, and supporting actress for Dickey. The film has a rating of 90/100 at Metacritic, which compiles critics ratings - this would place it in the all-time top 100. Lawrence is being compared to Streep, and Granik to Kathryn Bigelow.

Update: Winter's Bone received Oscar® nominations for best picture, actress (Lawrence), adapted screenplay, and supporting actor (Hawkes)

Young Jennifer Lawrence in a breakthrough performance

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Inception

Christopher Nolan, 2010 (9.2*)
If you take the paradoxical spacial anomalies of artist M.C. Escher and use that structure to construct a film narrative, you'll get an approximation of the complexity of the plot of Christopher Nolan's amazing science fiction film. Most of the action takes place in a dream state, which means that you get something based in reality, yet one which seems to have some small anomalies that trigger the uneasy feeling that something is not quite right.

Using the idea that the subconscious may be manipulated from this state, an idea they call 'inception', scientist Leonardo Dicaprio has built a small company that attempts corporate espionage for huge fees. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays his assistant, always there to help monitor the dream state, while ex-wife Marion Cotillard, who steals the acting kudos in this, usually shows up in Dicaprio’s sub-conscious state.

In a new assignment, he is hired by Ken Watanabe who has a business agenda involving the late Pete Postlethwaite (who recently died of cancer), plays a dying business tycoon who built a huge congomerate that he’s passing on to son Cillian Murphy. He enlists the aid of an architect, in this case student Ellen Page, to build a false world but one based on the reality of the particular subject's.

There are elements injected by Nolan that the non-scientist wouldn't consider, so this is a well-researched idea that gives reality to the subconscious world through some mind and space-bending special effects. Nolan has managed to create an imaginary world so close to reality that the subject is fooled into thinking he's in a real situation and responds to the manipulation.

The man who gave us the complex backward chronology of the murder mystery Memento has once again used a brain-scrambling narrative that will both intrigue and baffle many viewers. Nolan, who also gave us Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and the Sci-fi magic tale The Prestige, is proving to be able to stand apart from a legion of formulaic filmmakers in making us think while he keeps us riveted with action that threatens to propel his main character over the edge of a cliff at any moment.

Currently ranked #6 all-time on the IMDB 250, it's obvious that Inception has enough action to satisfy that lowest common-denominator of film fans, cloaked in an intellectual puzzle sophisticated enough to intrigue and pique the interest of those of us tired of the standard action formula film of good vs. evil with a fight to the death as a predictable climax. The film is up for four upcoming Golden Globe awards, and 11 Satellite awards, and will certainly be a contender for some Oscars® as well.

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