Les Miserables

I know that I'm not the best writer in the world. I wish I had more time to spend on writing reviews on here. Basically, I get 15 minute breaks at work and that's all the time I get. But I like writing and movies and so this blog is totally for me. If a few people stumble upon my reviwes, then that's fine too. Sometimes, when I write a review about a really great movie, I wish I was a better writer so I could properly convey certain things about the brilliance of said movie. But, I wish this was even more true when I want to write a review of a movie I hated. Because I wish I had the time, energy and talent to let everyone know why I hated Les Miserables so damn much.

I've never seen the stage musical of Les Mis, but I am a fan of musicals in general. In fact, besides horror movies, there probably isn't a genre of film I love more, guilty pleasures and all. I will make excuses for badly done horror movies and musicals more than any other type of film. Rock of Ages came out earlier this year, a musical that was average, at best. But no matter how bad that movie was, it is, at the very least, infinitely more fun than the borefest that is Les Mis. Maybe it has something to do with director Tom Hooper. This is two films I've seen him direct now, and both I absolutely hated while the rest of the world praised them to no ends. The first was 2010's Oscar winning The King's Speech which I found just as dreadful as this, and which took the Best Picture Oscar away from the greatest film of the last decade - The Social Network. I really did try to like Les Mis, which is basically the story of a bunch of poverty stricken prostitutes and slaves, trying to better themselves through a lot of songs. Like, A LOT of songs. Boring song after boring song after boring song. AND THEY ALL SOUND THE SAME!!! Eventually, we get to the real story, about the beginning of the French Revolution and the plot keeps fast forwarding years at a time so we can meet new characters and THEY could sing boring songs that sound like the boring songs the other characters just sang. And all of this is done with the use of incredibly annoying, disconcerting extreme close ups that literally made me want to scream at the top of my lungs.

And while I want to give this movie an F so, so badly, I can't do it. I can't do it because there are two, and exactly two good things about Les Mis. There are two good performances, and these two women get to sing the only two good songs in the entire play of seemingly 60 some songs (THAT ALL SOUND THE SAME) and then they die. The first is Anne Hathaway. She plays factory worker / single mom turned down on her luck prostitute Fantine. Fantine is about twenty mintues into the movie and only sticks around for about twenty minutes which is just enough time to cry and grovel and nail I Dreamed a Dream and then die, leaving the audience wanting more. (Although, she does show up as some sort of angel / ghost near the end which sort of ruins her performance for me, almost, although it's not her fault. I imagine it was the filmmakers way of saying, 'Hey, remember she was in this movie for 10 minutes what seems like 6 hours ago. Remember how good she was so give her an Oscar.') I'm not sure she is going to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress but if Jennifer Hudson can win it essentially for killing it singing And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going, then Hathaway has a shot. After Fantine's death, we have to suffer through a lot more crap - terrible singing from Russell Crowe, swoony doe eyes from Amanda Seyfried, Helena Bonham Cater and her newest weirdo character (SIDE NOTE: If she ever wants to impress me again the way she impressed me in Fight Club, she's going to need to play some boring suburban housewife who drives an SUV and wears Cardigans and walks her dog and shops at Target), and Aaron Tveit who is too talented to be stuck playing "Guy in Red Jacket" and really should have played Marius, and Eddie Redmayne's bizarre handsomeness, etc. etc. Then finally we come to the second great performance, one I think I even prefered over Hathaway. Samantha Barks plays Eponine, a young girl who loves a boy who loves someone else, and she is fantastic as the girl who is a friend, sure, but maybe unloveable to the only boy who matters. She sings the single best song in the movie - On My Own and nails it, walking in the rain, whispering "I love him." She's perfection. And then she dies too and we are stuck with more boring songs (THAT ALL SOUND THE SAME) and more annoying close ups and more opulence that, I guess, is supposed to make us think the movie is epic when really it's just all too much.

There might be a good movie in here somewhere, but Les Mis needs a better director, and a better editor in order to find it. Mostly I just found the entire thing dreadful. And the worst thing about the whole thing is that after it was over, people in the theater STOOD UP AND CLAPPED! I had been imagining ways to fake a seizure or something in order to get the hell out of there, and people were giving it a standing ovation! It completely blew my mind, which is possibly why I've been so angry about this movie for the last few days.

I told myself I was going to be a less snarky, nicer person starting in 2013, but I guess I'm not off to a good start.

Grade: D

Ranking the Best Picture Nominees

The Oscars is a week from today and I couldn't be more excited. Later this week, I will make my predictions but for now I am going to rank the 10 best picture nominees, now that I have finally seen them all. Most of them I have reviewed before but a few I haven't, so a mini review will be included as a refresher. Also, the reviews are written the way I would rank them, from best to worst.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK - All that best picture of the year talk surrounding this film is NO JOKE. It's not just "that Facebook" movie. It's fresh, relevant, fast-paced, witty, clever, funny and a damn good movie, featuring the best ensemble of the year (all under 30!). David Fincher directs the hell out of the memorable script by Aaron Sorkin. Grade - A

BLACK SWAN - A beautiful and disturbing thriller set in the world of ballet, Black Swan is Darren Aronofsky's latest with Natalie Portman giving her best performance ever. Aronofsky is fearless presenting us a thrilling movie about the search for perfection in art. It's delightfully crazy and beautiful, intense and powerful. Grade - A

INCEPTION - The most radically original movie since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Inception is a wonderful mindf**k from Christopher Nolan, the man who brought us the brilliant mindf**k that was Memento a few years back. The cast, the story, the effects - everything about this movie is just plain incredible. Also, kudos for that epic hallway scene with Joseph Gordon-Levitt which is a blissfully long way from 3rd Rock from the Sun. Grade - A

THE FIGHTER - You know I can't stop talking about the acting powerhouse performance of Christian Bale (and if he gets upset by Geoffrey Rush, it will be a sin). But this whole movie is an amazing character study about the internal and external struggles to never give up. Sure, it's a boxing film (and the boxing sequences are intense and powerful) but it's also a slow burning character drama that gets inside the heads of these working class heroes. Grade - B+

127 HOURS - An infinitely better film than Danny Boyle's last offering (the overrated Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire), 127 Hours is an adrenaline rush that doesn't stop and doesn't quit. With a cast of virtually one man - the crazy talented James Franco - 127 Hours is the kind of movie that burrows into your brain and stays there for days. If it wasn't a true story, there's no way you would believe what this guy went through. Thanks to Franco's brilliant performance, this movie is one you won't want to miss. Grade - B+

TRUE GRIT - I have nothing but good things to say about the latest from the Coen Brothers. The cinematography is breathtaking. The performances are spectacular (especially that of Hailee Steinfeld who I am predicting to upset favorite Melissa Leo). It's a well shot, funny, thrilling, suspenseful Western delight. It's just that after leaving the theater, I was a little underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie immensely. It's a great, enjoyable film. It just didn't hit me and stay with me the way the previous films did. Grade - B

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT - Look, the movie was fine. It's got a solid script and some very good filmmaking, but it's really the performances that make it worth it. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore go toe-to-toe as lesbians in love who deal with their sperm donor (a delightful Mark Ruffalo) showing up and making himself part of their lives. It's a wonderful modern love story with starkly realized characters that you feel like you truly know. However, sometimes it's just a little too Lifetime movie of the week for me. Not that there is anything wrong with Lifetime movies. They just shouldn't be Best Picture nominees. (If you remember, I felt the same about Precious last year and I feel the way about the next movie...) Grade - B-

WINTER'S BONE - Another movie that feels way too much like a Lifetime movie to deserve a place in the Best Picture lineup. I'm not going to lie, the performances here are sensational. In fact, Jennifer Lawrence would be my first runner up to Best Actress winner (finger's crossed) Natalie Portman. She's only 20 now, (she was probably 18 when they filmed) and her performance is so subtle and nuanced, it's like a performance by someone twice her age and with twice her experience. John Hawkes nominated supporting turn is spell binding as well. The movie was just, well, kind of boring. Grade - C+

TOY STORY 3 - Okay, look, I'm not a big fan of animated movies. I'm not going to lie. The last animated movie I truly loved was Beauty and the Beast and that came out when I was something like 7. Since then, the ones I've seen haven't impressed me all that much and I try to stay away from them as much as possible. But I truly did give this movie a chance. It just all seemed a little too pretentious, winky, cheeky, look at how smart we are, to me. I'm fully admitting it's not my thing so take this with a grain of salt but I hated the damn movie until... that ending. That beautiful, sweet, sad, adorable ending which made the whole pile of shit worth it. This movie was a hard D going into those last ten minutes but those ten minutes made things so much better. Grade - C

THE KING'S SPEECH - It blows my mind that such a colossal bore of a movie is going to (probably, but hopefully not) beat The Social Network, one of the most exciting movies of the year, for Best Picture at the Oscars next week. The filmmaking was fine (a bit weird at times... what was with those creepy close ups at the end??). The performances were all very good (especially Firth who was excellent, although, methinks, not as good as Franco, and what the hell with them wasting the talents of Helena Bonham Carter??). There were parts of the movie that were interesting and funny and a little amusing. But all in all? Boring! Really, really, really boring! And pretentious! And, also, really what was with the way they reacted to him finally giving a speech without stuttering at the end?? Like he had cured f**king cancer or something? Geez. Grade - C-