Film Review: Nebraska (2013)

Thanks to its stark black-and-white visuals, there isn't a huge difference between the geography of the Midwest and the lines etched into Woody Grant's (Bruce Dern) face. Both evoke a quiet, consuming sadness that permeates every aspect of Alexander Payne's Nebraska, a sweetly melancholic comedy-drama in which Woody travels to Lincoln, Nebraska with his son David (Will Forte) in order to collect a million dollar prize that he believes he has won. The question of whether or not he has actually won is not a terribly important part of Nebraska; it's pretty clear to David, his brother (Bob Odenkirk) and their mother (June Squibb) that Woody hasn't won anything, and that the 'prize' is just a ploy to get people to order magazines. What is important is Woody's insistence on going to Lincoln regardless of what everyone says. Whether his desire comes from genuine belief or just senility is never entirely clear.  Again: it doesn't really matter. What matters is that it gets David and Woody in a car together, and how spending time with each other reveals and affects their relationship.

Film Review: 12 Years a Slave (2013)

When I first watched 12 Years a Slave back in November, I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I felt like I couldn't write about it. It wasn't merely that it was good, but I found the story of Solomon Northup so moving that I couldn't really put my thoughts into any cogent order. Despite that, I had no qualms putting it in my Top 20 of the year, and was pleased to see how much success the film enjoyed both critically and commercially.

Oscar Predictions 2014: The Major Awards

After running through the Technical Awards yesterday, today it's time to take a long hard look at the big awards, the ones that tend to get the most play in the press and can add a couple million more on to a film's box office tally. (And help to immortalise a film as a work of art or whatever.) First let's take a moment to remember those we've lost this past year.

Okay. In the words of God, let's get on with it.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 50 - Top Ten Musical Moments in Non-Musical Films

In what may be our most weirdly specific Top Ten yet, this episode finds Joe Gastineau and myself talking about musical moments in films which are not themselves musicals. Yeah, it's odd, but go with us on this one; it's a fun and interesting one.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Oscar Predictions 2014: The Technical Awards

At this point, it's pretty clear to me that the Oscars are largely meaningless to everyone except the nominees. For them, they represent the respect of their peers and greater opportunities for future work, be it in more acclaimed films or taking big paycheques for terrible superhero movies. For everyone else they're a chance to see who wore what best and to act as a reference guide for what were considered the best films of a given year, as chosen by a consensus of a relatively small, self-important group.

However, just because they don't really mean anything doesn't mean we can't have a bit of fun with them. As I have every year for the past few years, I have endeavoured to predict which films will win in each and every category. Some of these guesses are more educated than others, based either on how the awards season has played out so far, how the Academy has voted historically, or just based on what I think has the best chance of winning. It's a method that has worked fairly well in the past (apart from last year which, to use a technical term, was an absolute shit sandwich for me) and I'm hoping that it will prove itself again, or that I'll be so utterly incorrect that I can excoriate myself in my round-up on Monday.

As in previous years I've divided the various categories into the Technical Awards, which you can see below, and the Major Awards, which will run tomorrow. That's enough waffling; just because the ceremony will be super long doesn't mean this article should. Read on if you want to see what I, with my very patchy record on the subject, think will win on March 2nd.

Film Review: The Lego Movie (2014)

Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt) is a thoroughly average construction worker. Actually, average doesn't go far enough: Emmitt is consistently and thoroughly generic. He looks like everyone else in the city of Brickburg; he watches the same TV program that they do (a sitcom whose title and sole line of dialogue is "Where Are My Pants?"); he loves the one song that they play on the radio, a relentless perky electro-pop hit called "Everything is Awesome." Despite his adherence to following the instructions for living laid out by President Business (Will Ferrell), Emmet suspects that everything isn't awesome, and that maybe there's more to life than going to and from work. When he stumbles across a beautiful Master Builder named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and a mystery block called The Piece of Resistance, Emmet is thrust into the middle of a desperate struggle to defeat President Business' plan to use a super weapon called the Kragle to destroy the world. The rebels become convinced that Emmet is the legendary Special destined to save the world. The only problem is that there is nothing remarkable about him. Like, at all.

Hipsters and Slackers: A Conversation About Girls and Spaced

The cast of Girls: Allison Williams (left), Jemima Kirke, Lena Dunham and Zosia Mamet.

Over its first three seasons, the HBO comedy Girls, created by and starring Lena Dunham, has quickly established itself as one of the most discussed shows on television. While Girls' combination of hip references, self-reflection and a frank, honest approach to relationships both physical and emotional have set it apart, it's not a wholly unprecedented work. As a snapshot of a particular brand of aimless wandering and pondering, one most readily associated with people in their twenties who are trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives, it shares a number of key similarities, in terms of its plots, character types and general milieu, with the seminal British sitcom Spaced. Like Girls, Spaced - written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes (née Stevenson) and directed by Edgar Wright - was about an aimless bunch of twenty-somethings which explored this same crucial age, albeit from a more pop-culture addled perspective, over two seasons which aired from 1999 to 2001.

After my friend, fellow History graduate and fan of both Girls and Spaced, Lewis Davies (no relation) said that he wanted to do a critical comparison of the two shows, I jumped at the chance to discuss two shows that I love, albeit for slightly different reasons. You can find that conversation below and you can follow Lewis on Twitter.

Ed: So, Lewis, I guess the first question would be what do you consider to be the broad similarities between Girls and Spaced, other than that they're both shows about white twenty-somethings who arguably don't have any real problems?

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 49 - Cult Films

To coincide with the beginning of the second semester of The Five and Dime Picture Show movie strand at the University of Sheffield - which Joe co-curates - we're talking about Cult Films this week. What makes a film a "cult" film? Is it a certain set of aesthetic criteria or the type of audience it attracts? What sets a real cult film apart from manufactured cult films like Snakes of a Plane? Are all Kevin Smith fans terrible, terrible people? These are the sort of questions we address with a little help from Joe's fellow Five and Dimer Ryan Finnigan, whose writing can be found on [SIC] Blog.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Film Review: Her (2013)

Like many great works of science fiction, Spike Jonze's new movie Her uses its futuristic visions to examine very contemporary and human truths. In particular, it explores our changing relationship with technology, as well as the way in which technology is changing our relationships. The former theme takes the shape of the growing friendship, then gradual attraction, between Theodore Twombley (Joaquin Phoenix) and Samantha, the new Operating System he has installed on his phone (voiced with equal parts naïf-like wonder and breathless sensuality by Scarlett Johansson). It says a lot about the verisimilitude of their relationship that Theodore's name is the least credible part.

Why the Decision to Digitally Recreate Philip Seymour Hoffman for the Final Hunger Games Film is Understandable, But Still Unsettling

In addition to the many heartfelt tributes that have appeared in the wake of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's untimely death, not to mention the frankly unsettling way in which the news media has picked over the circumstances surrounding his death, one of the more callous questions that has been asked over the last few days, admittedly by people who should probably look up the meaning of the word "tact," has been, "What about the Hunger Games sequels? Won't someone please think of the Hunger Games sequels!"

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 48 - Philip Seymour Hoffman

Like so many others, the news of Philip Seymour Hoffman's death yesterday at the age of 46 shocked both myself and Joe. As two people who first got into film in a serious way in the mid-'90s and early '00s, we had great admiration and respect for the work of Mr. Hoffman, and wanted to pay our own small tribute to a man who could legitimately be described as one of the best actors of his generation.



In addition, I'd like to offer a few words of my own on one of my favourite performers.

The films he appeared in were not guaranteed to be good - though he had an exceptionally high batting average on that front - but you could safely bet that whatever percentage of time Philip Seymour Hoffman spent on screen would be more than worth your time. Whether he was a lead or co-lead in films like Synecdoche, New York, The Savages, Capote and The Master, or in his many supporting roles in likes of The Big Lebowski, Moneyball, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Happiness, or any of his collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson, he always brought humanity to everything he did, even when playing characters who were callous, vile or disturbing figures.

He so thoroughly embodied the essence of each character he played that it's entirely possible to forget how many films he was in. Not because the performances were unmemorable, but because you forgot that you were watching an actor, and instead felt that you were watching an actual person. I certainly found myself saying "Oh, yes, he was in that" multiple times when looking over his filmography, and it's a real testament to his ability to disappear into his roles that so many of them, however small, seem like they were played by someone else. He could shake off that big, bear-like demeanour and make you believe in the fantasy of performance better than almost anyone else.

The commitment he showed to every role he played gave him a genuinely chameleonic quality: he played both the creepy, lovelorn Scotty J. in Boogie Nights and the wryly suspicious and quietly menacing Freddie Miles in The Talented Mr. Ripley, but his attitude in both is so radically different that it's hard to believe it's the same man. He seemed to have no vanity or ego, and would find the heart of even the creepiest character, making them achingly human at even their darkest moments. He also seemed to have tremendous integrity, choosing to keep doing the small, interesting work he excelled in even after winning an Oscar for Capote and playing the best villain in the Mission: Impossible series, both of which could easily have allowed him to coast for years. Instead, he kept doing great work, which is the mark of a true craftsman.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was a rare talent; a soulful, insightful actor who took everything he did seriously, but was never leaden or dour. His performances felt alive and lived-in, and it's dreadful to realise that he won't be making bad films watchable, good films great, and great films classics for many more years.