One blog. Two opinions. One zillion films.

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Tam, K and I enjoyed Frozen River, a relatively light-hearted romp after watching you and the rest of the cast perform A Memory, A Monologue, a Rant and A Prayer. (Very strong and effective stuff. I just wish this and The Vagina Monologues were seen by the crowd that is least likely to see them, teenage boys.)

Frozen River is simple and unaffected, and we liked its naturalism. Because movies routinely show one enormous event per act, a smart filmmaker can use our expectations to create suspense. That’s what Courtney Hunt does here. A young boy with a propane torch, a car crossing a iced-over river, a desperate woman with a gun — we know what’s going to happen. Don’t we?

I also like the way winter is another authentic character — a cold, slushy, bitter, changing winter the way we know it in Jackson Hole. There are quibbles — is it 20 below or isn’t it? — but on the whole the snow is real snow, none of those digitized wafting snowflakes of recent fashion that I’m already tired of seeing. (I’m looking at you, The Reader and Benjy Button.)

That said, Melissa Leo’s on-the-money performance won’t win the Oscar. In fact, I’m changing my Meryl prediction to Kate. The Reader is yet another case where the Holocaust is used like steroids in the Oscar game. A so-so movie yet Kate Winslet’s subtle performance deserves praise — I gave her short shrift in my review. Winslet puts a haunting face on Hannah Arendt’s remarkable phrase that came out of her Nuremberg reporting: “the banality of evil.”

Winslet’s Hanna Schmitz was a guard for the SS, one of the millions of regular folk who went along with Hitler because that was the easy, “patriotic” thing to do. During her trial, Schmitz explains why she let nearly 200 Jews burn to death. They were prisoners, she said, and if she had tried to save them they would have escaped. Her job was to prevent their escape. Period. No redemption, no feeling, a monster because she’s just doing her job. Banal, evil. Winslet carries her character every inch of the way with a trace of deadness in her eyes and you have to wonder if she was born that way.

.Dav-

Yep, most of us are in the same rowboat this year. Flying blind.  Glad you scored Frozen River, and I know you’ll let me know what you think.

I know you won’t have the WASPs-being-boring-and-insipid problem!

Ok.  I’m picking my picks I feel particularly partial about picking:

*Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire

Best Actor: Mickey Rourke

Best Actress: It may be Streep, but I hope it’s Melissa Leo

( It’s the new austerity, as you once noted.  I think too many portrayals of famous men and women have won Best awards in recent years.  These two acting turns reverse that. )

*Best Directing: Danny Boyle/Slumdog

*Best Supporting Actor:  Heath Ledger. And this is tough, because I’ve enjoyed three other performances very much.  But I’m not deserting Heath now.  And he should have won for Brokeback.  -

Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis.

Best Original Screenplay:  I’ll pick Frozen River.

Best Screenplay Adaptation: Frost/Nixon

Best Visual Effects:  Iron Man

*Best Editing: Slumdog

Best Art Direction: I’ve never been sure what this means.  I’ll pick Dark Knight.

*Best Costume Design: The Duchess

Best Original Song: WAll-E

*Best Cinematography: Slumdog

1/2 *Best Original Score: Button  ( Doh!  I was right the first time! Slumdog!)

*Best Animated Film: WAll-E

Best Sound Editing: Dark Knight

1/2 *Best Makeup: Hellboy II: The Golden Army. ( Because Heath’s makeup was the only real stand out in Dark Knight, and Benjamin Button was just weird…maybe they’ll toss B.B. the bone, though.)

Tam

David,

I want to post something decent about Frozen River; this may not be the day to do that because my post Valentine’s fuzz brain, but here goes.

Frozen River may be my favorite movie.   Melissa Leo is my pick for Best Actress.  She blows all other competing performances away;  hers is not a performance.  She’s gone, baby, gone into her character, Ray Eddy.   To watch Frozen River is to forget you’re watching a movie and to feel you are in the middle of Ray’s desperate, gray upstate New York existence.  Up there, mud season never ends.   I haven’t seen Kate Winslet’s two films, and I don’t have to.  No way anyone beats Leo’s portrayal of a woman at the end of her rope, living in a broken down trailer with two boys and no way to put food on the table—dinner one night consists of popcorn and Tang–other than to begin smuggling aliens over the Canadian border.  To avoid the authorities and border crossings, she drives her charges across a frozen river.  Aliens are folded up and packed in the trunk of her Dodge Spirit.

Streep’s Bat Nun feels fake and stagey in comparison.   She may take the Oscar, but I hope not.

The movie depicts poor whites and Native Americans living in proximity, interacting, and there’s prejudice in both camps.   Ray’s gambler husband has deserted her and their two boys.   Ray needs to make a balloon payment on a new double-wide trailer; she doesn’t have the cash.  Through a series of incidents that come close to ending in violence, Ray becomes the smuggling partner of Lila (Misty Upham), a Mohawk woman whose poor vision keeps her from taking decent jobs, and whose baby is in the hands of her mother-in-law.   Upham’s performance is pitch perfect as well.  Upham hails from Kalispell, Montana.

This is a powerful film.  It deserves to take one Oscar, and I hope it wins more.  Frozen River doesn’t take sides–both women are gritty, both are trying to retain control over their lives.    I was completely immersed in the story; in these dire circumstances all the characters remain calm; they move to solve the impossible situations engulfing them.

An amazing debut for writer-director Courtney Hunt.

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David-

A film figuring in this year’s Oscar race is Frozen River; I’ll be watching that tonight, courtesy of  a friend who rented the DVD from Main Event.   Yes, Frozen River is now available at Main Event!

My friend says Melissa Leo’s performance is phenomenal.

At this writing I’m still not certain The Wrestler is coming to town before Oscar night.  If it doesn’t, that will be a bummer.

Tam