Muriel Award Sidebar: Other Stuff We Loved, Pt. 1 (Actors)
“When Joaquin Phoenix began promoting Two Lovers last winter adorned in a shaggy beard and a Johnny Cash-like black suit and sunglasses, speculation began that it was either an elaborate practical joke or a sad reminder of the toll the lifestyle of an intense method actor can have on a performer. In light of the work Phoenix does in the film—which, as of this writing is still being called the young actor’s farewell performance—I wouldn’t be surprised if it were both. A small, deeply personal gem of carefully observed behavior and arrested development, Two Lovers, and specifically Phoenix’s performance as Leonard, a suicidal thirty-something Jewish man living in his parent’s home, is an exercise in duality.
Two Lovers pulses with raw, sometimes difficult to endure emotions as we watch a man unwittingly tearing down a life that’s been predestined for him (marry a woman like your mother, inherit the family business, settle down in the neighborhood) in pursuit of fleeting escape no matter how destructive that may be. Those two options, two different lives to be lived, are personified in two women who inspire lust and possibility in Leonard as Phoenix, alternating between aching vulnerability and impish fickleness, navigates between the two.
Displaying tendencies that border on autistic, Leonard maneuvers through the film with his heart first, steering him first towards the nurturing but plain Sandra (Vinessa Shaw, far from plain to mine eyes, but that’s a different matter) and the exotic but turbulent Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow, doing career-best work). Phoenix plays Leonard like a little boy in a man’s body, all slumped shoulders, huffy responses and timid assertions. Once engaged and scarred at being jilted on the way to the altar, Leonard has regressed (both in geography and psychology) to the young man who sulked in his childhood bedroom and spied on the pretty girls across the way.
The marvel of Phoenix’s performance is the way he shifts from playful to morose, impulsive to measured often over the course of just a single scene: The way he makes a fool of himself with an impromptu freestyle rap to impress Michelle and her friends, and then moments late proves to be a wholly convincing break dancer; the way he looks upon Sandra’s proclamation of wanting to take care of him as a death sentence and how he jumps to life at the idea of rescuing Michelle from her latest self-imposed predicament; the sad way he relents to Michelle’s request to trace something on her arm with his finger as she falls asleep, using the moment to proclaim his love for her without spoken words. The film and Phoenix understands the way men of a certain age use women as a means of escape from something they can’t outrun in themselves.
Leonard is repelled by the mundanity of a stable life with a doting wife and a secure career and is instead enticed by the idea of a pretty flake who flatters his aspirations of being an artist. It’s hard not to see the parallels between Phoenix and the character and to not view his (if we’re to take it at face value) retirement from acting as the result of a man at odds between the safety of the everyday and the excitement of the unknown. Just as Leonard, regretfully returns to Sandra after Michelle abandons him, one can only hope that Phoenix will find his way back to screens after some time chasing windmills. If not, at least he’s gone out on a (very) high note.” - Andrew Dignan
“Mr. Peter Capaldi’s character Malcolm Tucker in Armando Iannucci’s memorably crass In the Loop can certainly be called “political” (he does, after all, work for the British Prime Minister) and, in his own mind, is always “correct” (in that everyone else that disagrees with him is an idiot) … though to put those words together and suggest that he is “politically correct” is about as accurate as calling Tiger Woods a “practicing Buddhist” or Megan Fox a “devoted actress.” For the picture’s duration he is on an unstoppable tear: his brow is permanently wrinkled, his mouth is constantly emitting correctives, his blood pressure has reached - and surpasses - its critical levels. Instead of dropping over dead, his indignation keeps him buzzing - he doesn’t need drugs, he is a drug … and one with nasty side effects for those that come into contact with him.
The feat Mr. Capaldi pulls off - of turning blue language into verbal high art and of making a malevolent cur some kind of weirdly fascinating icon - is deceptively difficult for an actor. His Tucker is a complex and tragic figure: he cares about his job, he cares about his country and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly … yet he’s surrounded by fools. Tucker’s voice spews anger and indignation at bureaucratic nonsense and the ineptitude of the people we elect to not give a damn about us and not watch what they say in interviews (“Unforeseeable? Are you mad?”). He cannot deal with stupidity or slow-mindedness. He insults everyone regardless of age, gender, race, sexual preference: he’s an equal opportunity offender. He insults people before he gets to know them. He insults people he knows quite well. Wit, as Sigmund Freud wrote, is a safe expression of evil thoughts, and one can only imagine the harried world that comprises Tucker’s subconscious. He’s human … but barely.
The Malcolm Tucker figure is based loosely on Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s Director of Communications and Strategy. Campbell, after watching the film, said he didn’t find it that funny and thought the movie was “a cartoon,” preferring, quite curiously, the bits of the picture that had nothing to do with Tucker. Surely the swearing and bile didn’t … hit too close to home? It must have, at least a lil’ bit: Capaldi’s Minister of Spin is raw and formidable, the face not even a mother could love (or would admit to rearing). Extreme caricature or not, this firebrand is as memorable a character as the cinema’s managed to spit up in sometime: a treat to watch … on a screen, from a very safe distance. Our bosses and co-workers seem so much more amiable in comparison.” - Matt Lotti
“Were we all wrong about The Wicker Man? At the time of its release, Neil LaBute’s fiasco-ish update of the seventies cult favorite was treated by many as the pinnacle of onscreen Nicolas Cage craziness, what with him body-slamming schoolgirls and repeating the phrase “how’d it get BURNED???” like a mantra. Now, having seen Cage’s performance in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, I’m tempted to change my tune. True, this latest film has garnered Cage some of the best reviews of his career while the earlier one is of interest primarily to camp aficionados. But in retrospect, is it possible that The Wicker Man contains Cage’s unheralded great performance, to the point where every bit of his inspired strangeness actually pulls it further away from being a successful movie?
In contrast to The Wicker Man’s seemingly free-form wackiness, Bad Lieutenant manages to create a convincing framework for his craziness in the story of a cop driven to the end of his tether by drugs, the demands of his job, and the cesspool in which he lives. The New Orleans patrolled by Lt. McDonough (can it be a coincidence that Cage’s character has almost the same surname as he did in Raising Arizona?) is a post-Katrina wasteland in which only the trash remains, and the stench is driving him nuts. So instead of putting up a fight, he dives the filth and finds that he enjoys the wallow. Of course, Herzog has never been about delving into tortured psychoanalysis, but it’s all there if you know where to look.
However, it’s the character touches that Cage brings to the film that really make it work. I expect future YouTubers to cut together some pretty killer highlight reels from the actor’s classic bits here, but if they know what’s good for them they’ll keep their digital pruning shears off the brilliant centerpiece scene in which McDonough tries to pump a witness for information by disconnecting the oxygen tank of the old woman in her care. And even in the small moments - I still get a kick out of Cage’s little chuckle every time someone mentions a henchman called “G” - Cage’s inspirations are always spot-on.
In the years since he won his Oscar, Cage has all too often succumbed to Hollywood’s impulse to turn him into a conventional leading man, be it in action franchises like National Treasure or serious-minded vehicles like Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. But Cage’s most compelling gift has always been his live-wire unpredictability, and in his best performances he’s used this gift to find recesses of his characters that are out of the reach of most actors. We’ve seen it before, in movies from Vampire’s Kiss and Wild at Heart to Matchstick Men and Adaptation. But he’s never been as unpredictable - or as magnetic - as he is in Bad Lieutenant. So yeah, Cage is as nuts as ever. And thank goodness for that.” - Paul Clark
“When looking at this year’s Academy Award nominees for lead actor there seems to be one element that is noticeably absent – degree of difficulty. Jeremy Renner’s loose and intuitive portrayal of Staff Sergeant William James is the exception and, if my choices were limited to the five nominees, he would get my vote. However I can’t say I was particularly impressed with the well of courage it took for George Clooney to spout Clooney-isms, Colin Firth to don Tom Ford suits while shot in the most favorable light possible, Jeff Bridges to roll out of bed and sing the blues or Morgan Freeman to personify a very benign Mandela. All are talented actors, but those roles seem pale in comparison to Michael Fassbender’s decision to play Bobby Sands, an IRA prisoner who started a hunger strike that ultimately proved fatal, for visual artist turned first-time director Steve McQueen in his film Hunger. Not only did the role require the physical transformation of a crash diet and a prisoner’s hair and beard, but it also took him deep into the mental conditions of a convicted terrorist in an enemy prison and the furthest reaches of human consciousness as he goes on a 66 day suicide crawl.
Most of McQueen’s film is made up of images from your worst nightmares with very little talking to interrupt them. But in the dead center of the film comes the now infamous and astounding 17 minute scene composed mostly of a single, stationary shot in which Sands goes head to head with a hard-edged Irish priest about the merits of his protest. This scene, which the actors reportedly rehearsed as many as 15 times a day, shows Fassbender’s Bobby Sands to be a lucid, eloquent, Christ-like force of personality. The two start out by sharing cigarettes and mutual respect. When Sands reveals he was once a cross country runner the priest admits with a laugh, “Explains a lot about ya Bobby. Big engine on ya.” Later in the conversation, after Sands’ son is brought up as a final attempt to get him to reconsider the strike, the mood suddenly shifts. Sands gives the man a scornful look and a dismissive line about the very priest-like tactic of using sympathy as a means of coercion. After a pause Fassbender launches into an uninterrupted monologue remembering a trip he took through Ireland where he and a group of boys from Belfast found a foal with a broken leg that Sands decides he must put out of its misery despite immediate consequences. It is a sermon to a priest that leaves the man dead silent. All he can manage is, “I don’t think I’ll see you again Bobby.” Sands immediately counters, “There’s no need Dom.” And suddenly a look of realization comes across Fassbender’s face as his words have become action and there is no turning back. It’s at once tragic and revelatory.
Even if I was only given this scene to judge from Fassbender would still get my vote. But there is also a scene in which a visibly battered Sands meets his parents’ frightened concern with a simple line of forced sincerity, “I’m grand, Ma.” Another finds a peaceful Sands sitting alone in his cell, smoking a cigarette rolled with Bible papers while reading a miniature, smuggled note that he then burns in a small fire at his feet. Later, we watch as the prisoners are insulted with ridiculous outfits to meet their demand of civilian clothes instead of prison uniforms and Bobby’s mental process between receipt, the tapping of his bare feet on the cell floor and the violent eruption which sees him destroy everything in the four square room. Both give telling glimpses into the different sides of this character without a single word. It is the kind of acting that can’t be taught. It comes from hard work. There is nothing easy or glamorous about it, and hopefully it signals the beginning of a very promising career that includes roles that lead him somewhere close to this masterful level.” - Bryan Whitefield
“Watchmen is a strange beast: It’s a good film, but that’s almost solely due to the strength of the source material - Zack Snyder and company were so intent on recreating the look and feel of the graphic novel that they neglected to imprint any sort of distinct personality on it, rendering it in essence a three-hour Motion Comic. Leaving aside the question of whether or not we might actually want Snyder’s personality intruding into this particular narrative (the film falters whenever it ramps up the violence to geek-graphic levels), the overarching fidelity is impressive yet stultifying, leeching the film of life… expect when Rorshach is on screen. Jackie Earle Haley is not just a striking visual analogue for the character as conceived by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons - he climbs into the character, wears him like a mask, makes him feel alive and utterly REAL. To steal a phrase from Dana Gould, it would be easy to play Rorschach as having two emotions, rage and suppressed rage, but Haley is canny enough to allow us glimpses at the inner pain that rage sublimates. He nails the unshakeable belief in and the gnawing need to believe in his Manichean worldview and the confused agony when that world breaks down. (Few things in 2009 cinema are sadder or more effective than Haley’s first, choked, “Do it.”) Within this tornado of frustrated, imperfect simulacra, Haley is the violent spark of life, the part that gets it right.” - Steve Carlson
