Miscellaneous Movie Musings the Sequel

[innerSpaceman]

Two biopics. Both slice of professional life, one famous project each. One was surprisingly meh to me, the other nearly as surprisingly delightful.



I hate to say it, but Lincoln is a bit dry. It's an important film about an important piece of history. It's got fantastic performances throughout, most especially and obviously that of Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. Any time he was on screen, I was captivated and the film soared. But when he wasn't, it started to fall decidedly flat and get a bit tedious.

The problem, of course, is that the film concerns lobbying and political machinations behind attempts to pass the 13th Constitutional Amendment - banning slavery - through the raucous House of Representatives. If passing a bill through Congress sounds like it might be a challenge to make cinematically interesting, you'd be right. It's a bit of a chore, and it left me feeling that every movie about passing a bill through Congress should be a musical (*cough*1776*cough).

Later in the film, when passage of the Amendment looks in doubt, A. Lincoln gets more personally involved with the project and the film picks up tremendously. But it's a little too little too late, and Lincoln, the film, left me a little disappointed. (Mindful, though, that Lincoln, the character channeled by Daniel Day Lewis, left me enthralled.)


* * * * *


Hitchcock, on the other hand, is breezy, charming, funny, and a pure delight. Reportedly, the biopic takes liberties with history and with the personal lives of its protagonists, Alfred and his wife & collaborator, Alma - wonderfully portrayed by Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, during the making of Psycho. But it hardly matters. It's a really enjoyable romp through an interesting bit of film history, with some really interesting characters.

Sure, it's a lazy shortcut that Hitchcock's personal psychology is typically assumed to be starkly reflected in his own work. But Hitch himself worked hard to make "Alfred Hitchcock" a pop-culture character, and few directors have an ouvre that paints such a clear picture of obviously consistent personal obsessions.

The supporting cast is great, and the actors playing the actors from Psycho deliver a fine combination of imitation and inspiration. Hopkins appropriately leads the way with a performance that by definition requires such a strong reliance on impersonation.


I should also mention I enjoyed Hitchcock far more than I did The Girl - an HBO television production about Hitch's relationship with Tippi Hedron during the filming of The Birds and Marnie, that also debuted recently. Toby Jones doesn't fair nearly as well in tackling Hitchcock as does Hopkins, and The Girl is kind of creepy in portraying a slightly older Hitch as far more threatening and harassing.

Hitchcock is a bit more subtle with Hitch's dark side, often using the concepit of imagined scenes of the director communing with the spirit of Ed Gein, the serial killer who inspired Psycho, to hint at his own inner creepiness.


In both the cinema and cable TV movies about Hitchcock, a highlight is the director's personal and sadistic involvement with getting the most horrified reactions from his leading ladies when it counts. Fun, fun.

But there are too few delights in the TV movie, and a multitude of them in the movie movie, about the making of a movie ... and one of the best is seeing Hitch in the theater lobby while the shower scene plays for the opening night crowd. Priceless.


If you like slice-of-life biopics, both Lincoln and Hitchcock are worthy of your time. But if you've stomach only for one, I recommend it be Hitchcock.



Tellingly, Lincoln will take two-and-a-half hours of your time, Hitchcock barely more than 90 minutes.

[€uroMeinke]

For Thanksgiving we pulled out the Ice Storm to get in the Holiday Spirit. I was surprised by how much better the film seemed since my last viewing. Such a delightful morality tale about people's failure to communicate - and the whole Key Party sequence is worth the price of admission.

[Strangler Lewis]

ISM, next you'll be saying you don't like Shakespearean histories.

Remember, this was a Spielberg/Kushner thing. The film was not about passing the Thirteenth Amendment. It was about the horrors of the Holocaust and Israel's need to stand up to Hamas. It was also about the imminent universal legitimization of gay marriage. That's why the Congressman who accuses Stevens of caving on broad principle was played by a fairly flamboyant actor and why Stevens's quadroon housekeeper lover whom we saw him in bed with was played by a notorious lesbian.

There. You can enjoy it more, now.

[Alex]

Hated pretty much everythign about The Hobbit. Seeing it in 48fps certainly didn't help it out (I thought it resulted in everything looking more fake, not more real and I never got used to it; but this is why I've never been interested in Bluray, the demo movies at the TV store look awful and cartoony and fake to me; wouldn't mind seeing it for something that isn't almost pure CGI).

There is 80 minutes, maybe, of move expanded to 170 minutes. All the worst excesses of the last half of the LOTR trilogy and King Kong without much in the way of narrative or character progression.

About halfway into the movie I actually got into my normal airplane seat sleeping posture and tried to go to sleep as a form of escape (I was in the middle of the row due to the 3D and couldn't tell if Lani was enjoying it). Didn't work for more than a couple minutes. Though I did manage to jump suddenly from Gandalf, Cate and Future Bad Guy having a talk in Rivendell to suddenly watching cartoons cling to Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Rock Bots.

So let me condemn this movie in the strongest way: I'd rather have to spend a weekend watching the Transformers trilogy over and over (and some of you may recall how much I hated each Transformers movie) than sit through half of this one again.

=====

Conversely, I'm surprised by how much I loved Lincoln. The opening scene is bad and the epilogue is Spielbergian glurge but I adored everything in between.

[innerSpaceman]

I really enjoyed Life of Pi.



I may not even bother seeing The Hobbit. Unless I'm suddenly in the mood for a three hour train wreck.

[flippyshark]

I enjoyed a fair chunk of The Hobbit, but big swaths of it washed past me as the late night wore on. I just don't like gimmicky action sequences, and there is no shortage of them here. Three movies out of this slender book was a bad decision, made for craven reasons. I really like Martin Freeman as Bilbo, though.

[Alex]

Saw Hitchcock. It was fine. Didn't much care for the gimmick of it and Hopkins' performance never stopped feeling like an impersonation to me.

Mirren was very good and she'll get a nomination simply for her 45 seconds of telling off Hitchcock.

Of interest to me was seeing Michael Stuhlbarg in minor parts in both Lincoln and Hitchcock. He jumped off the screen both times while not having much to do. He was good in A Serious Man (a film I didn't fall for like a lot of people did) a couple years ago.

I'd like to see more of him.

[innerSpaceman]

Ditto that. He's got a recurring role on Boardwalk Empire.

[alphabassettgrrl]

I rather enjoyed the Hobbit, though I let the pointless action sequences and the CGI unreasonable falling scenes wash past me. Couple of times I nearly burst out laughing at inappropriate times (my mind is a terrible place to watch movies).

This should probably have been one movie, maybe two at most. Three seems like he's pushing it, not to mention it shouldn't have been a three hour movie.

But it was fun, and fairly pretty, and the three hours went by only feeling like two.

[flippyshark]

Some thoughts on my viewing of Les Mis.

It was almost exactly what I expected, which is fine but never the best thing.

I am waaay too familiar with the score. I couldn't get caught up in it, because I was too busy cataloguing what was new, what was different, and so on.

I didn't mind the extended long takes in head-and-shoulders close-up as much as I feared I would.

Packed house. About two-thirds of the audience I saw it with applauded throughout, could be heard sniffling here and there, and gave a solid ovation at the end. But that other third? They HATED it!!! Quite a few walk-outs, and lots of post-movie comments such as "I was bored every effing millisecond!" and "Why didn't you tell me this was three hours of singing!?"

I think I will enjoy it more on a subsequent viewing, as I'll be more at ease with it. But I'm not in a hurry. (Alas, I'm a little burned out on the show, even though it is a long time major fave of mine.) I suspect I'll own it when it shows up on Blu-ray in a few months, and I'll be glad I have it, but it isn't going to be in heavy rotation.

Amanda Seyfried's warbly trill caused a lot of giggles.

Eddie Redmayne deserves award consideration as much as Anne Hathaway.

Overall, a marginal win, and I hope it grows on me a little more.