Lincoln

Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis working together on a film about one of the greatest Americans that ever lived?  Yeah, that sounds like a prestige picture.  Lincoln boasts not only (arguably) the best director and (unarguably) the best actor working in Hollywood right now, but one of the greatest supporting casts ever assembled for a simple (read: not epic) film.  Of the ten top-billed actors on Lincoln's IMDb page, there are a total of 16 Oscar nominations (with 6 wins) and 28 Golden Globe nominations (with 5 wins); only Bruce McGill has not been nominated for an Oscar or Globe.  If you wanted acting credibility, you got it in spades with Lincoln.  But does the movie live up to its pedigree?

Lincoln is a tad deceiving as a title; this isn't so much a biopic as it is a chronicle of President Abraham Lincoln's (Daniel Day-Lewis) struggle to get the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution passed while simultaneously ending the Civil War, the bloodiest war Earth had seen up to that point.  For those of you who are not history buffs (America, I'm looking at you), the 13th Amendment made slavery illegal in the United States.  Sure, Lincoln had freed all the slaves with his Emancipation Proclamation, but the legal grounds by which he did so were shaky, at best.  Lincoln wanted to ensure that his actions had some sort of long-lasting effect that would not be overturned in a court of appeals.  It's a pretty cool thing to be the guy who freed the slaves, but nobody wants to be the guy who freed the slaves only long enough for them to bleed in battle for him. 

Even a great hat can't distract from that, Mr. President

Unfortunately, his window of opportunity was closing fast.  The Confederacy was weakening.  It was only a matter of time before they were completely defeated.  But once the Confederate states rejoined the Union, the chances of passing an anti-slavery amendment would be nil.  Not only would there be pro-slavery Southerners voting, but much of the support for anti-slavery legislation was garnered from the belief that repealing slavery would end the war faster; with the war over, racism would win the day.  That left Lincoln with one chance.  Assuming everyone in his political party would vote for him (which was a stretch), the 13th Amendment was still a few votes shy of passing --- but there were several men in the opposing party that had lost their elections and were just waiting to be replaced.  If Lincoln's men could convince enough of these lame ducks --- and his own party --- to vote for the amendment, history could be made.  And, as luck would have it, there was one more date available for a Congressional vote before all the peace hits the fan!

"What will it take to get your vote?  A threesome is not off the table."

The acting in Lincoln is, not surprisingly, excellent.  Daniel Day-Lewis is THE thespian stud of our times, and he brought his A-game here.  Day-Lewis went against the traditional interpretation of the character by making him slouch, feel old, and speak with a soft tone, but he also managed to demand all of the attention in every scene he was in.  As luck would have it, that is practically every single scene in the film.  I think some of my favorite moments were the scenes where he relied on nonverbals.  This is a fairly talky character, so having the quiet moments as highlights is just a testament to Day-Lewis' acting prowess.

Example: right here, Lincoln was this close to killing everyone in a 30 foot radius

Leading the exemplary supporting cast was Tommy Lee Jones, who played a perennially cranky character.  Shock!  I love it when Jones gets a role that lends itself to his acerbic delivery, and this is easily one of his best.

Sally Field played Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln, who is known historically for being a bit crazy.  Field managed that well enough, but I didn't think her role was anything special.

Buck up, Sally.  Sulking is not attractive in any time period.

Despite that, Field did a lot with the part and was surprisingly magnetic onscreen.  David Strathairn was good as the eternally exasperated William "I Heart Alaska" Seward.  He didn't really have much room to grow as a character, but served well as a mouthpiece to the logistics Lincoln was facing.  James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson played the three men tasked with drumming up support among the opposition; all three are fine actors, but I would have preferred it if Spader wasn't the one doing most of the work here.

Spader, realizing that this role has nothing to do with deviant sex acts

Hal Holbrook was fine as an obstacle for Lincoln to overcome, although I think this role was a little underdeveloped.  Speaking of which, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was a waste of space as Lincoln's eldest son.  One of these days, JGL will play a big role in a big movie --- it's inevitable, given his talent and the people he works with --- but the whiny, over-privileged son of the president is not that role.

"What if I tried pouting more?"

Rounding out the cast, Lee Pace was solid in the strawman role of "that really racist guy."  This is the first time I have seen Pace play an unlikable character, and he did so reasonably well.

Lincoln was the result of director Steven Spielberg teaming up with Tony Kushner, king of the difficult-subject-screenplay.  With regards to the direction, Spielberg nailed all the technical aspects.  Design, costumes, filling the cast with nary a bad actor, etc. --- Spielberg is too big of a director to accept anything but the best in these regards.  While he has never been the strongest director in terms of cinematography, Spielberg still managed to snag several memorable shots of an American icon.

He also handled the actors quite well.  Having a great cast obviously helps with that, but Day-Lewis, Jones, and Field were all deserving of their award nominations, and Spielberg was ultimately responsible for that. 

I think Kushner did a solid job with the plot and the dialogue.  Both Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) had some fantastic lines, and transforming this political issue into an interesting story was an impressive feat.  Lincoln is missing something, though.  I want to say that it is something immaterial, like "heart," but I can do better than that.  This is a smart script, no doubt.  It is just not an emotional one.  American culture has reached a point where racism is justly vilified.  It definitely still exists, but racists are generally acknowledged as assholes, as they should be. 

"Amend that.  It should read 'total fucking assholes'"

This might have been a brave film as late as 1975, but in 2012, the subject matter isn't compelling enough on its own.  This needed an emotional anchor to twist the audience's stomach in knots while we waited for the inevitable, and that was lacking.  There were some attempts.  Thaddeus Stevens' change of policy was intriguing, but underdeveloped.  Abraham and Mary Todd shared a scene where they got to bare their souls, but it wasn't nearly enough to warm an otherwise cold story.

"You act like a little culture will kill you!"

The fault is not Kushner's alone, of course.  Lincoln has been Spielberg's baby for years, and he managed to put out a smart, well-acted and -directed film without that crucial element that makes you cry at the end.

I was expecting a lot from Lincoln, and only got most of what I hoped for.  This is technically a better film that Spielberg's last effort, War Horse, but that movie drew me in, despite my objections.  Lincoln is more cerebral, but leaves emotions at the door, and that turned out to ultimately be a mistake.  Even without something tugging at my heartstrings, it is hard to dismiss Daniel Day-Lewis reinventing an American icon.  With all the good and the not-quite-bad, Lincoln gets

Brian's Best and Worst of 2012

This is not an end-of-the-year list.  I forfeited that right when I didn't make this at the end of 2012.  I never get the chance to see all the biggest movies of the year in time for the end of the year anyway, so I am continuing my annual tradition of posting my own "best of" just before the Oscars.  That is not because the Oscars (don't call them Academy Awards this year!) are the end-all, be-all of movie awards.  They're just the biggest, and nothing good ever comes out in January or February, so it's okay to still focus on the previous year's releases.

I'm not a Top Ten sorta guy, though.  These are just my personal and highly subjective choices for the best and worst of the year.

What was considered for this list? Obviously, the movies of 2012 that I have already reviewed up to this point.  I do cram in a lot of movies right before the Oscars, too, and am suffering a backlog of recent reviews.  Here's what I watched before coming out with this list:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Alex Cross.  The Amazing Spider-Man.  Amour.  Argo.  ATM.  The Avengers.  Battleship.  Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  The Bourne Legacy.  Brave.  The Cabin in the Woods.  Coriolanus.  The Dark Knight Rises.  The Devil Inside.  Django Unchained.  Dredd.  Drew Peterson: Untouchable.  The Expendables 2.  FDR: American Badass.  Flight.  The FP.  Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.  Goon.  The Grey.  Haywire.  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  The Hunger Games.  Iron Sky.  John Carter.  Lawless.  Les Miserables.  Life of Pi.  Lincoln.  Lockout.  Looper.  Moonrise Kingdom.  Nazis at the Center of the Earth.  Prometheus.  The Raven.  Red Tails.  Resident Evil: Retribution.  Seven Psychopaths.  Silent House.  Silver Linings Playbook.  Skyfall.  Total Recall (2012).  Underworld: Awakening.  V/H/S.  The Woman in Black.  Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Bit Character
While Michael Fassbender's charming/bad-ass turn in Haywire shouldn't be ignored --- he would make a good 007 if we were in the market for a new one --- nothing amused me as much as Jason Schwartzman in Moonrise Kingdom.  A lot of actors (okay, maybe not Bill Murray) merely play "dry" when working with Wes Anderson, but Schwartzman embraces the dry humor with just enough excitement to make him stand out, even in the most star-studded cast.

This needs to be a mass-produced Halloween costume

Worst Supporting Actress
There were some pretty good possibilities in this category in 2012.  Catherine Dent was noticeably bad in the noticeably bad Drew Peterson: Untouchable.  Perhaps one of the lovely ladies from Battleship?  No, I'm going to have to go with Bingbing Li in Resident Evil: Retribution.  She was so bad that all of her dialogue was redubbed.  In a Resident Evil movie, a franchise famous for not giving a crap about acting or coherence.  Ouch.

But hey, she can do...this.  That's something.

Best Supporting Actress
Look, I know that Anne Hathaway is going to win everything for Les Miserables.  And maybe she should; she was good in a I'm-singing-at-the-camera sort of way.  That's not my style, though.  That's why my favorite this year was Judi Dench in Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  It's been a while since I've seen Dench play anything but a cold-hearted bureaucrat, and it was a pleasure to watch her in a warm, relatable role.  Definitely the best part of a quality ensemble cast.

Promo for M: Lost in Delhi

Worst Supporting Actor
This was a tough one.  I seriously hated a lot of supporting actors this year.  50% of the enormous cast from V/H/S were annoying douchebags.  The Ionut Grama was annoying in the truly awful The Devil Inside.  And how about Frank Grillo as the jackass who bitches about everything and fixes nothing in The Grey?  All are compelling choices, but I have to go with someone who has been irritating me for most of the year: Rafe Spall as the world's stupidest biologist in Prometheus.

You see a creepy alien and you smile and get close?  Death is too good for you, sir.

Best Supporting Actor
There were a lot of supporting actor roles that I loved from the past year: Javier Bardem in Skyfall, Sam Rockwell in Seven Psychopaths, Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises, Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln, CGI Hulk from The Avengers, Michael Fassbender in Prometheus, etc.  The runner-up is definitely Fran Kranz as the best stoner in movie history in Cabin in the Woods.  As good as all those guys were this year, I can't overlook just how much I enjoyed Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained.  Is the role similar to his character from Inglorious Basterds?  To an extent, although I would argue switching the good/bad dynamic makes it different enough.  I just can't get over Waltz speaking Tarantino's dialogue, though --- they're so damn good together!

You're welcome.  Next round's on you.

Worst Actress
I'm going to go with the tough-as-nails Gina Coreno in Haywire for this one.  What makes her worse than any of the lead actresses wearing tight leather and shooting stuff this year?  Coreno had some amazing fight scenes in Haywire, but the movie didn't work because she gave an awful performance, even with the benefit of a good director.  If she was even halfway competent, she would have been on my shortlist for Best Actress.  THAT's how bad she is.

Example: I'm pretty sure this scene was supposed to be all dialogue

Best Actress
This one was easy.  Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games Silver Linings Playbook.  She carried that movie, and she wasn't even the main character.  She was funny, had levels and development, and showed some heart?  Come on!  What's not to love?  Besides, what are the other choices this year?  Jessica Chastain?  Ugh.  Pass.  This is the second time I've given this completely nonexistent and useless award to Lawrence, and it's getting to the point where I might actually watch movies because I have faith in the starring actress.  That's a big deal.

I like the scenes where Bradley Cooper is blurred best

Worst Actor
For as many bad movies as I watched this year, there were not many lead acting roles that I absolutely hated.  Sure, Rob Lowe was hilariously bad in his SNL-sketch-gone-horribly-wrong portrayal of a Chicagoan in Drew Peterson: Untouchable, but at least Lowe outperformed the material.  Taylor Kitsch --- who isn't really a bad actor --- played a role that emphasized all of his shortcomings in Battleship.  When your character is frequently described as being smart or talented, you should probably not come off as a complete moron, even when defeating board game-obsessed aliens.

That had better be your agent on the phone

Best Actor
This was a rough year for outstanding lead actor roles.  Of the nine Best Picture Oscar nods, only three of the films had Best Actor nominations!  I think 2012 was far stronger in the Supporting Actor category than the Lead Actor one.  Yes, Denzel Washington was terrific in Flight.  But the character and actor I would choose to watch or listen to again would be Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln.  I've always liked Lincoln as a historical figure, but Day-Lewis was perfectly cunning and warm; he commanded the screen with a soft voice, stooped posture, and anecdotes where other actors would have gone in a completely different direction.  Making America's (arguably) most legendary President into a human again was rather impressive.

The President apparently disagrees.  Or smells a fart.

Best Director
This is less about who was the best and more about what directors I liked that didn't have huge flaws in their finished products. I love Quentin Tarantino, but Django Unchained needed a damn editor. Cabin in the Woods was great, but Drew Goddard managed to make a great horror movie that was missing scares.  Competence narrows down the field considerably.  While Ben Affleck did a great job with the humor and pacing of Argo, I'm going to go with Sam Mendes and Skyfall.  He made a James Bond movie that was actually a legitimate film!  I don't like it because I'm comparing it to Bond movies --- I like it because it's awesome!  This is the first time anyone has tried to make a James Bond flick with character development, good cinematography and very good acting, and he was still able to film some great action sequences.  Mendes' work is sorely underrated on Skyfall.  Any decent director can make a prestige picture look good; making a series known for corny action and one-liners into an actually good movie in far more difficult.

Worst Director
There are movies that never had a chance of being good, and then there are the blockbusters that failed, in large part due to their direction.  Peter Berg took a stupid concept and did a terrible job with it, and Battleship was the nauseating result.  Timur Bekmambetov did a decent job with his cast, but pieced together a soulless abomination that sucked harder than any Twilight movie: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  The absolute worst direction this year, though, had to be Rob Cohen's work in Alex Cross.  He made a police procedural that was less competent than a third-rate CSI knockoff AND the acting wasn't great AND the editing was occasionally incoherent.  Stick to Vin Diesel movies, Mr. Cohen.

Biggest Disappointment
There were a lot of choices this year, primarily with sequels and reboots, but the one that stuck to me was Prometheus.  It's not bad, but it is intentionally obtuse and refuses to deliver on anything that its shared universe with the Aliens franchise has to offer.  Again, it isn't awful, but I was expecting a hell of a lot more.

These guys?  Seriously --- fuck these guys.

Biggest Surprise 
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the year was me not noticing Joseph Gordon-Levitt's makeup while I was watching Looper, but as far as feature films go, Dredd is the winner.  It should have been bad.  It's a remake of a crappy movie, and it has a lead actor who specializes in not emoting.  And yet, Dredd managed to get its core concept just right.  I was hoping for a movie so-good-it's-bad, but ended up genuinely enjoying it.

...because this is totally sweet

Bottom 5 Movies
5. Iron Sky - How do you screw up a movie about Nazis living on the dark side of the Moon?  By assuming that the concept was funny enough to last for an entire movie.  This one had promise, but then dropped the ball when it tried to be clever, funny, or serious.  So, yeah, it sucks.

Above: my reaction

4. Battleship - I still have trouble understanding how this made it past the conceptual stage.  A board game about stealth transformed into an alien invasion action movie?  The guy who came up with that concept must have balls the size of Death Stars.  Battleship must have run an "obnoxious actors wanted" ad in Variety, too, because the supporting cast is about two peanuts shy of being 100% crap.

John Carter vs. Master Chief?

3. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - I like the source material and the director, and yet this turned out to be an unholy mess.  I am okay with the chocie to not play this concept for laughs.  I am not okay with it feeling like it was 2/3 exposition, 1/3 Abraham Lincoln running on top of a herd of stampeding animals.  Be funny or be darkly awesome.  Anything else is failure.

Get it?  The bad guy's using the horse as a pommel --- you know what?  Screw this movie.

2. The Devil Inside - Possession horror movies are oftentimes terrible.  With the advent of the found-footage horror sub-genre, possession movies have gotten a little worse.  The Devil Inside has a lame concept, irrational characters, and poor direction; none of those earmark it for being hate-worthy.  What separates it from the pack is its ending.  This is the worst film ending I have seen since the director's cut of The Butterfly Effect.  I only wish The Devil Inside strangled Ashton Kutcher, too.

This for ninety minutes would have made for a better film

1. ATM - This is the single dumbest concept for a film I have seen in a long time --- and I watched FDR: American Badass and Nazis From the Center of the Earth this year.  There are no redeeming qualities with this film, and then it gave me a nosebleed by inferring that the villain --- who had the most unbelievably idiotic victims I have ever seen on film --- was some sort of criminal mastermind.  Crap...I'm bleeding out my eyes now, just thinking about it.

They're looking at the world's largest bottle of scotch, AKA what you need to get through this movie

Top 10 Movies:
10. Lincoln - I absolutely love Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones in this film.  My biggest concern was how it would handle the whole "vampire hunter" angle, but I think Spielberg addressed the issue subtly.

9. Seven Psychopaths - Not a perfect movie by any means, but I adore the dialogue and I thought the supporting cast was stellar.  There are not many scripts that give Sam Rockwell license to be as crazy as he can be, but he was so odd that Christopher Walken looked...well, not normal, but sane by comparison.

8. Looper - I was concerned when this movie was being advertised.  Not only did it have a weird time travel concept at its core, but it contended that the Future Mob had sole control over time travel.  Add that to the incomprehensible choice to cover Joseph Gordon-Levitt's face in silly putty to look absolutely nothing like a young Bruce Willis, and this looked like a movie destined for the "mock" pile.  Looper surprised me, though.  It made some interesting and tough choices with its characters and delivered a movie intriguing enough for me to stop focusing on JGL's makeup.

Clever fan poster found on the Looper tumblr

7. Beasts of the Southern Wild - When you take semi-Artsy direction and some of the rawest acting talent around, you run a chance of creating something truly special.  This was easily the Academy Award-nominated film that I connected to best on an emotional level, and I am so disassociated with these characters that I cannot believe I live in the same country where it was shot.  And the editing and post-production work needed to make 6 year-old Quvenzhané Wallis this great was beyond impressive.

6. Argo - It is difficult to make a movie about a historical event suspenseful.  It's almost as hard to pace it well.  Ben Affleck managed to do both, and he still balanced it with humor.

This guy says he was in Argo.  I don't recall, but it's an awesome pic

5. The Dark Knight Rises - A fitting end to Christopher Nolan's trilogy, this was everything needed to thematically bring Batman's story to a close.  Bane was not quite as classic as Heath Ledger's Joker, but Tom Hardy was good enough to make me forget about the Joker while I was watching --- and that is damn impressive.  If this had more Batman and less Bruce Wayne, it might have been perfect.  It will tide me over until the next reboot (I'm calling 2017 right now).

4. The Cabin in the Woods - This was such a fantastic homage to the horror genre that I can overlook the fact that it is not scary in the least bit.  A smart script that goes in directions that you would not guess from the promos and a great script make this a personal favorite.

This movie also finally gives stoners their own action hero

3. The Avengers - I'm a huge fan of the Marvel super hero movies, so the one where all the heroes team up and are directed by Joss Whedon, with a script he co-wrote?  Yeah, this was a no-brainer.  What makes it special, though, are the unexpectedly great moments, like when Hulk smashes Loki.  More of this, please.

Do you have this poster?  It was free w/purchase of the Blu-Ray.  FYI.

2. Skyfall - This is easily the best James Bond movie since Connery got bored with the role.  It has the best direction and cinematography of any Bond movie, and the best villain in decades.  This is the James Bond movie to show to people who (somehow) don't like James Bond.

Fan art poster taken from here

1. Django Unchained- Yes, it could have been better with thirty minutes less run-time, but Django scratched so many itches that this year's film crop failed to.  It was gory as hell, it had Tarantino's famously foul humor, and universally good acting.  There were a few movies about slavery in 2012, but this was the film that was fun to watch and I will come back to time and time again.  Bless your enormous chin (which houses your ego), Quentin Tarantino!

Sorry.  This was better than any Django posters I could find