The statues are all distributed, the corks are all popped, and now it is time to talk about the 82nd Academy Awards in the past tense. We’ll get to who won, but first off I’d like to talk about who lost: the viewing audience. This has to be one of the worst awards broadcasts in recent memory. Overlong and underwhelming, the only thing interesting in the show was actually finding out who won, which is weird because that often takes a backseat to the rest of the spectacle.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were charming, albeit neutered, hosts. They farmed the opening number out to Neil Patrick Harris, which was predictably fine, but it seemed like a complete redux of his bouts as Tony and Emmy host. On paper it sounds poignant, but in practice it felt stale. I long for the days when Billy Crystal would superimpose himself into the top nominated films. I can understand the new hosts wanting to move forward with an original spin, only this felt like a step backwards. Read on...

Early in Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart, we see Bad Blake, the middle aged country music star played by Jeff Bridges, doubled over a trash can puking his guts up. It is heartbreaking, until Blake reaches into the void to retrieve his sunglasses, wiping the mucus off as he picks them up. In a manner that only Mr. Bridges can conjure up, the move comes off as charming, witty almost. Bad Blake is a drunk in need of a wakeup call. but if not for the brilliant nuance Bridges brings to the role Crazy Heart would be an after school special, shown at SADD meetings across the country to keep kids off the bottle. Read on...

“Beeswax” director Andrew Bujalski getting a trim. Photo by Cheree Franco. Courtesy of The Cinema Guild.

Earlier this week I had the good pleasure of sitting down and chatting with director Andrew Bujalski about his new film, Beeswax. A very humble and quiet person, you’d never expect this kindly character to survive the rigors and torments of the filmmaking process. However, if you are familiar with his previous two films, Funny Ha Ha from 2002 and Mutual Appreciation from 2005, and especially in this new film which opens today, it would become immediately clear that this bespectacled, anxious young man is the perfect candidate to make movies that deal with such emotional introspection. In other words, it is the burden of filmmaking that creates his most evocative work.

I was immediately struck by how quickly our conversation would turn from discussing the characters in his films to talking about himself. It would seem that Bujalski and his creative work are woven together. Beeswax is a story of two twin sisters living in Austin, Texas, one of whom is the co-owner of a vintage clothing store. Jeannie, the wheel-chair bound (hardly bound is more like it) twin who runs the shop, learns early on that there is the possibility of a lawsuit coming from her business partner, Amanda, a close friend who has drifted away towards her fiancée.

Does this legal dispute come from something in real life? Something close to you?

It comes from fears that I have. What’s the nightmare version of a daydream? Knock wood, I’ve never been involved in a lawsuit like that. Every time I’ve ever signed a document, I get this terrible anxiety about it because if you look at the language of a contract, it’s not the way that human beings commuicate with one another. It’s written in this other language which is designed…You know, I just watched Nashville again recently and there’s a line where the Hal Phillip Walker trucker is driving around Nashville and he says “The Lord’s job is to do one of two things: to clarify and…” the only word that is coming to mind now is obfuscate. What’s the other word that means obfuscate? Anyway…

I keep hearing the the phrase “legal thriller” being applied to this film.

I’ll cop to responsibility on that. Read on...

Guest poster Sunrise Tippeconnie is a filmmaker currently living in Oklahoma City. He is an old friend of the candler blog who also dabbles in film criticism and history. You can read more of his work in Sooner Cinema: Oklahoma Goes to the Movies. We hope to see more of Sunrise on the candler blog in the future.

There are three questions that immediately come up about this picture. 1. Is it a “passing of the torch” film? 2. Is it film a masterpiece? 3. Is it funny?

Let’s answer the last question first. Funny People is exactly what the title suggests, it is about people, and not about being funny. To be direct, the film is funny but it is definitely not a [traditional] comedy. In fact the concept of the film being a comedy (specifically a crossbreed of two subgenres: the Adam Sandler and the Judd Apatow comedy) is a complex idea that reaches into anthropologic study in the vein of the Hal Ashby’s Being There. Sandler’s character George Simmons finds out in one of the first (and almost rushed) scenes at blank range that he has cancer. Comedy and death immediately call up another analysis of a comedic master: Chaplin in Monsiuer Verdoux (and we all know how the audience loved that film, despite it’s ranking as a masterpiece). Read on...

The Ugly Truth is a romantic comedy that is meant to be a vehicle for Katherine Heigl’s comedic talents. Unfortunately, she is grossly upstagesd by Gerard Butler’s deft skill in the laughs department. Instead of driving this pony, she is more often (literally) the butt of every joke. The film follows Heigl as Abby, an uptight control freak television producer, who meets her match in Mr. Butler as Mike, a misogynistic slob who lands a position on her show. Believe it or not, this boring redux of every other rom com you’ve ever seen is actually an attempt at a smarter kind of comedy. Going out on a limb, the film keeps the dirt in to earn an R rating, rendering this a raunchy sex-comedy tailor made for proper ladies. We know that boys will go see R-rated romps, but will women? Yes, but they’re going to need something a little more substantial than The Ugly Truth.

Written by veterans Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith as well as newcomer Nicole Eastman, the script saves almost all of the good lines for Mr. Butler’s chauvinist pig. I can only imagine how they must have relished banging out lines like “Well thank your pussy for me” for the British beefcake. On the other hand, they handed Ms. Heigl the word “cock” and asked her to run with it. As the slick Mike dips behind a couch before Abby answers her door in her new My-Fair-Lady-ed skin, he calls her back at the last second, only to smack her ass for an uproarious laugh. He is the power broker here, he is the funny one. Read on...

As a blogger, I don’t actually have an office in which to conduct business and interviews. So when the opportunity arose to meet with multi-hyphenate John-Luke Montias, the first sport that came to mind was Central Park near the Upper West Side. Being the sport that he is, Mr. Montias trucked over to meet me. Waiting on the corner by a hot dog stand on a warm July day, I began to wonder if so serene a spot was proper for meeting a man whose film deals in sex-slavery, gangsterism, money laundering, and grand theft auto. Then I remembered, this is New York City; we’re all in the soup.

John-Luke studied acting at New York University. After school he did what he refers to as the whole actor-bartender thing: “I got tired of waiting for the phone to ring, I was working at a bar in Hell’s Kitchen that had some really crazy ass characters. I would hear a lot of crazy stories whether I wanted to or not. Then it dawned on me that this was a great opportunity, so I started writing.” That compilation of stories would eventually become the director’s first film, Bobby G Can’t Swim, but he admits that those stories still permeate his work. From listening to him, you can tell that his ears were well-chewed during his days serving drinks. Read on...

There are many kinds of war films. Those that celebrate the heroism of men and women who rise to the occasion and those that examine the absurd event that is conflict; those that glorify the gory action on the ground and those that question the human event in its bloodiest hour. The Hurt Locker manages, quite impressively, to check off all of the above and then some. It is a heart-stopping thriller set amidst the modern quagmire that is Baghdad that never lingers long enough to feel preachy yet manages to suspend you in moments of extreme tension for what seems like eternity. In other words, it’s a bad ass good time.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, probably most well known for the 1991 surf action film Point Break, decided to stem the intellectual deconstruction of the war in Iraq that has hampered most recent attempts to bring the conflict to the big screen. Instead, she has no bones about making a first rate action thriller. The opening scene alone, in which a radio controlled robot breaks just before it can detonate an IED, is worth the price of popcorn. If you can’t handle it straight away, leave the theater.

In need of a new Bomb Tech on their team, Sergeant JT Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge find themselves under the command of Staff Sergeant William James. James is a reckless cowboy who rarely lets the others in on his half-cocked plans as they traverse Iraq in search of bombs. The relationship that the three form is complicated to say the least. In Sanborn we find a rationalist who offers us a moral grounding. Eldridge is more complex, a man-child thrown into the war probably trying to prove his strength.

But the most interesting character is certainly Sergeant James, played with boyish bravado by Jeremy Renner. Acting as if he is an army of one, James always seems to come out in one piece no matter how stupid his plans seem to be. As soon as we feel we know him and understand his motivation, he goes and does something even crazier. Not quite a patriot nor a mercenary, his character slowly unravels and we begin to see an incredibly strong deconstruction of modern masculinity. I don’t want to get into the details because it is the little things in this movie that become shocking to you as it progresses.

Ms. Bigelow has done what many of Hollywood’s biggest guns have failed to do: make an interesting film about Iraq that people will actually watch. Steering clear of political statements, she has crafted a solid character study amidst the most important international issue our nation is embroiled in. It’s the Iraq movie we have been waiting for, but we hardly notice that fact as we wipe the sweat from our brow and stand up from the edge of our seat.

As my twitter followers may know, I dragged my bones to the IMAX at 2 am last Wednesday to check out Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It has taken me longer than usual to sit down and review the film mainly because the airwaves are clouded by so much of the same everywhere. In an effort to speed things along and get the candler blog back on track, I have decided to simply offer up my opinion on the film in short bullet points. Is this a cop out? Yes. Will you forgive me? I hope!

Is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen a good film?

In short, no. However, it is not the worst film ever. I would say it beats out X-Men Origins: Wolverine for overall watchability. The plot is almost non-existent and clunky at it’s most coherent points. Though the film may have generated an incredible amount of box office receipts, it does not stand out as a great action film to say the least. There are too many characters and the camera is always moving in a manner that makes it impossible to focus on anything. But don’t worry, there is a choice soundtrack to ground your auditory senses at least. Read on...