George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air is named Ryan Bingham.

George Clooney just got a Golden Globe nomination for that movie.

Ryan Bingham just got a Golden Globe nomination for writing a song in the Jeff Bridges movie Crazy Heart.

My head is spinning.

I watched four movies this weekend (a winter tradition), three in the theater and one at home, and they couldn’t have been more different from each other. I’m not sure if the four movies are in four separate quadrants, but they certainly wouldn’t feature on any double bill.

I already dealt with the Coens’ A Serious Man at length in an earlier post here. Here are the rest:

The Princess and the Frog
If hand-drawn Disney musicals were a significant part of your past, then this will make you optimistic for the next generation. It’s not in the same league ’90s Disney, but evokes a simpler time– like setting Cinderella in jazz age New Orleans.

One observation: this movie could have been made in any decade. It’s not like Shrek or Kung Fu Panda, where the style of the movie and currency of the jokes date it.

Up In the Air
Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You For Smoking) is now 3 for 3 in my book. Each of his movies is one of my favorites for the year in which they came out. Up In the Air is in the spirit of Juno— a caustic insight in to human nature. And in the spirit of Thank You for Smoking— a caustic insight in to what human beings will justify in the name of their corporation. And what corporations will justify, period. This movie rides on the back of great writing and direction and three strong performances– Clooney as the frequent flier Ryan Bingham, Vera Farmiga as a female version of Bingham and Anna Kendrick as an aspiring Bingham.

I also saw Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman, but I need some time to chew on that one before I write.

(If you’ve already seen the movie, you may want to scroll down to the spoiler zone.)

A Serious Man is the Coen brothers’ (Fargo, No Country For Old Men, The Big Lebowski) latest film, and it’s a lot of fun. It is a Jewish parable of sorts, with two Jewish parables contained within. It’s the story of Larry Gopnik in a Minneapolis suburb in what is most likely 1970 (there are clues). He teaches Heisenberg’s uncertaintly principle as his day job, and lives it at home.

“But I didn’t do anything,” he insists when the Columbia Record Company continues to ship and bill him a record every month. And that’s the story of his life. His marriage, his kids, his work life teeter on the verge of disaster.

But he didn’t do anything.

This is the kind of story I can imagine my grandmother telling me– without all the naughty bits, of course. But my grandmother’s version would have a punchline, or a pat ending. It would leave me with a lot of questions, but would at least leave me with one great takeaway line, a moral, some truthiness that I could live by or live with.

But the Coens don’t leave you with anything but questions. Maybe this is the difference between a Jewish parable and a Hindu one? I don’t know, I’m a goy.

This movie did make me think about two things about movies in general:

• How soon after watching a movie should you be able to comfortably answer the question “What did you think”?
• How much of that answer, if answered right away, depends on the ending?

With this movie, it took me a day or two and I’m still not sure I can honestly tell you what I think about the movie. I don’t know if it’s a 4-star or a 5-star movie. And the ending made it unsatisfying at the time– I walked out expecting at least one more scene– but that ending is what might push it from 4-star material to 5-star. It is a fantastic gamble.

Todd McCarthy in Variety said, “This is the kind of picture you get to make after you’ve won an Oscar.” I’m not sure that’s true. The Coens have been making movies like this before the academy paid them notice, but he may have a point about the cast. Before the Oscar, they would have needed a few big names in there– if only indie big names, like Coen favorites John Turturro or John Goodman or Steve Buscemi.

SPOILER ZONE
If you haven’t seen the movie, turn back now, for here there be dragons. Continue reading →

I don’t always like Clint Eastwood’s movies– the ones he directs. I leave with a feeling that there was less to the story than the weight it is being given. Of course, I have only seen a few (out of his 30+ features)– Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima and now Gran Torino.

Of which, I thought Mystic was okay, Midnight and Million Dollar were no good and Unforgiven took too much time to tell too little. But I loved Letters from Iwo Jima, it’s one of my favorites of all time.

I liked Gran Torino quite a bit. Most of all for Eastwood’s own performance, the gruff grizzly old widower who finds more in common with the Hmong family next door than with his own kin.

Also, Eastwood sings a song in the credits.

∞

Eastwood’s Invictus comes out this week, with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as the captain of the rugby team. Freeman as Mandela has been rumored for years, but as Ebert said this week, this rugby-themed Eastwood movie is not what I would have expected.

∞

Of course, my favorite movie where the main character is called Clint Eastwood is still Back to the Future III.

Ebert just pushed my expectations through the roof:

Watching “Avatar,” I felt sort of the same as when I saw “Star Wars” in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron‘s film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his “Titanic” was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.

“Avatar” is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeating viewings. It invents a new language, Na’vi, as “Lord of the Rings” did, although mercifully I doubt this one can be spoken by humans, even teenage humans. It creates new movie stars. It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation.

Next week can’t come soon enough.

P.S. Just saw The Princess and the Frog. Highly recommended. More later