Bang!

Robert here.

75 years ago today John Dillinger was shot dead. And it seems like just as long since Public Enemies has been in the headlines. The Summer movie season giveth and the Summer movie season taketh away.... and fast!

Personally I thought the movie suffered from being far too short. I know it was almost two and a half hours, but it was two and a half hours of plot, plot, plot, plot. A few scenes of character development could have given all that plot some context. It would have been nice to have felt something when Dillinger was killed or understand why exactly he and Billie were in love (as my fiancee said, "he's cool and she's pretty... what more do you need to know?").

At the time of Public Enemies' release, we were all a-buzz with the news of Oscar's 10 Best Picture expansion and the film's middling to mixed reviews hardly seemed like they could derail it. But now that the movie is already a distant memory, are its Oscar chances as dead as Dillinger?

Tues Top Ten: Best of Year (Thus Far)

We're not technically halfway through the year (oops. missed that opportunity) but let's say January releases don't really count. That's not a stretch to say. If the year ended today here's what my top ten would like like (alpha order) with the Best Picture nominees in red. This isn't really the warm up to TFE's awards (unless the remainder of the year is hugely disappointing) it's more like lacing up your gym shoes before heading out to the warm-up. We hope.


Top Ten as of July 14th
larval stage

• (500) Days of Summer
• Coraline
• Duplicity
• Hunger
  
• The Hurt Locker
• Moon
  
• Julia
• Prodigal Sons
• Star Trek
  
• Up

I bent my usual roles (no documentaries -- since the goals are so different than regular feature films. How does one compare?) because I love Prodigal Sons so very much and want to keep reminding you about it before it premieres. This is the last "best of year (thus far)" post you'll get before the awards in January. Here's everything I've seen thus far. The three films I most regret missing and shall try to catch up with are Sin Nombre, Drag Me to Hell and Summer Hours.

And now the acting categories... my preferences NOT how Oscar might view them. That's an important distinction (Hunger for instance is not eligible at the Oscars this year due to a one week run in LA last year). Obviously the heavyweight Oscar hopefuls have not yet entered the room. Hollywood saves them for the holidays.

Best Actress

• Amy Adams, Sunshine Cleaning
• Emily Blunt, Sunshine Cleaning
• Zooey Deschanel, (500) Days of Summer
• Michelle Pfeiffer, Chéri
• Tilda Swinton, Julia

Only one of these women (Pfeiffer) can be expected to see awards season traction. But unless Chéri gets a significant Golden Globe or DVD boost, we might not have seen any of the eventual nominees yet.

Best Supporting Actress

• Patricia Clarkson, Whatever Works
• Marion Cotillard, Public Enemies
• Alicia Delmore, Humpday
  
• Carrie Preston, That Evening Sun / Duplicity
  
• Kristin Scott Thomas, Confessions of a Shopaholic

This category is a wasteland thus far. That's not to knock these performances but they're mostly minor pleasures: Clarkson is typically strong but the character is a caricature. Cotillard handles the big emotional scenes very well but can't make sense of the nonsensical screenplay (in regards to her character Billie) and the voice is wrong. Etcetera. Silver lining: I will be watching Carrie Preston's career closely. Those are two very different performances and both detours from her Arlene character in True Blood. Well done.

Best Actor

• Michael Fassbender, Hunger
• Hal Holbrook, That Evening Sun
• Joseph Gordon Levitt, (500) Days of Summer
• Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
  
• Sam Rockwell, Moon

In case you're wondering, the only 2009 man with an actual shot at Oscar's shortlist so far (Johnny Depp, Public Enemies) would be my runner up here (give or take Ciarán Hands in The Eclipse). I liked what Depp was doing as John Dillinger but I needed him to do more of it. If someone decides to release Holbrook's vehicle, That Evening Sun, there's a chance he could be in the Oscar race, too, playing a defiant old codger who knows his time is winding down. It's not a grossly sentimental work (thank you!) but it definitely has an emotional current that the Academy could get pulled along with given the proper campaign and release.

Best Supporting Actor

• Jim Broadbent, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
  
• Paul Giamatti, Duplicity
• Anthony Mackie, The Hurt Locker
• Ray McKinnon, That Evening Sun
• Tom Wilkinson, Duplicity

And just for fun a few craft categories...

Best Art Direction

• Laura Fox, (500) Days of Summer
• Alan McDonald, Chéri
• Henry Selick, Coraline
• new Stuart Craig, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (eek. I forgot this the first time through. sorry)
  
• Alex McDowell, Watchmen
• Ricky Nierva, Up
  

Best Cinematography

• Dairus Khondji, Chéri
• Barry Ackroyd, The Hurt Locker
• Sean Bobbitt, Hunger
• Yorick Le Saux, Julia
• Dante Spinotti, Public Enemies

Best Costume Design

• Colleen Atwood, Public Enemies
• Consolata Boyle, Chéri
• Hope Hanafin, (500) Days of Summer
• April Napier, Julia
• Michael Kaplan, Star Trek

Best Original Score

• Bruno Coulais, Coraline
• Alexandre Desplat, Chéri
• Jordan Lehning, Make-Out With Violence
• Clint Mansell, Moon
• Michael Giacchino, Up
  

What are your favorite filmthings of the year thus far ?
Talk me into loving something else or something more. Do you expect your favorites will be washed away by the greatness of the fall / winter movies?

Public Enemies

BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!

RAT-A-TAT-TAT

Christian Bale actually shoots my (guilty pleasure) Channing Tatum down early on in Public Enemies but I've totally forgiven him because I'm so pleased that he didn't shout at the camera with crazy eyes this time. I was getting so tired of that. My second favorite scene in the movie is totally his lone scene with Johnny Depp through the bars of a jail cell, both men subtly trying to come out on top of the verbal smackdown. Bale is totally intense in the scene without once doing his "LOOK HOW INTENSE I AM!" thing. Well played Bale, well played.

My full review of Public Enemies is up over at Towleroad. In addition to holding forth on Public Enemies (which I heartily recommend to some and not to others) my weekly column offers up new gay movie news and wraps up with the criminal cool of Bette Davis. So, go read it.

But back to PE...

I'm totally fascinated by the diverse opinions I've been hearing and reading. Rather improbably for a straightforward gangster story, it seems to be something of a rorschach test, people reacting to it in completely personal ways. How else to explain nearly exact opposite reactions such as 'this is a character study but the action doesn't work' vs. 'there is zero character development but the action scenes are well shot'.

It's for this very dichotomous reason that I don't subscribe to either of the Oscar race notions floating around out there: the pro 'The Oscar race has begun' or the con 'Dead on arrival. Look at the middling reviews!' It seems obvious to me that it's the type of picture that will need time to settle. I think that's a good thing. Too many movies are instantaneously celebrated or dismissed on their very first day in theaters (and sometimes before that). Christ, let them breathe a little.

But if you've seen it, do add your initial impression to the confusing dogpile. After all, gut reactions come before full digestion.
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'Txt Critic' Takes Aim at Public Enemies (Negative)

'Txt Critic', my frequent anonymous review donor, has apparently become drunk on his power to reach millions of Film Experience readers (shut up! Let me dream). He has abandoned his habit of one or two sentence text reviews of future releases. Now I'm getting full paragraphs by e-mail. I'll have to change his handle. Here he is on Michael Mann's summer drama Public Enemies.

Warning: He doesn't like it and doesn't mince words

Glossy, somewhat stylish, good production value and all that, but almost completely inert. I wasn't "bored," and it's not a complete and utter failure, but it's probably the least interesting movie Michael Mann's ever made. There is zero character definition. No one has an arc of any sort -- we learn NOTHING about any of the three central characters -- and the "action" isn't particularly compelling, at least not enough to compensate for the complete dearth of emotion or thematic complexity. It's the height of "this happened, and then this happened..." storytelling, without ever giving us a reason to care. There's a couple well-shot shootouts/carchases, but the movie's never EXCITING, and Johnny Depp, Marion Cotillard and Christian Bale are playing completely flat, undefined, static characters. Dillinger (Depp) robs banks. What do we learn about him over the course of the movie? He's nice and won't take civilians' money. That's all we get. Purvis (Bale) wants to catch Dillinger. Why is he so driven? We don't know. He's told right at the beginning of the movie by J. Edgar Hoover "catch Dillinger" and that's about it. He never grows "obsessive" or shows us what's lurking behind the curtain (i.e. making the character interesting) -- he just wants to catch Dillinger. There's no parallels between the two, they have no real back-and-forth, we aren't shown comparisons and contrasts.

We don't get a clue why Billie (Cotillard) and Dillinger care about each other, we just see them kiss occasionally. Depp gets one quick scene of humanity, Cotillard gets two, and boring Bale gets none -- there's a lot of hollow brooding and flat delivery here. I read some interview where Mann said he had Depp lay himself "bare emotionally" for this part or some such remark -- horseshit. This might be the laziest performance Depp's given in the last decade

Um, Ouch. And so hot on the heels of his birthday, too. Have you no heart?

Without the occasional cool music track and the clear, crisp, digital look of the film, we'd get almost no stamps of Mann. There might be some Mann apologists on this one, but I think response is going to be overwhelmingly muted, if not outright dismayed.

I asked him where he falls on the Mann-Fann spectrum and he claims he's generally a devotee. "I even like Ali and Miami Vice" he assures. Another confirmed Mann junkie, In Contention's Kris Tapley has already expressed a (very) positive reaction. Perhaps it'll be a divisive picture? I had thought we were looking at our earliest real Oscar contender but then Up happened. If Enemies does disappoint, we might not see any of the Oscar players that will pop Up's balloon (prepare yourself kids. If even WALL•E couldn't do it...) until October or November.

Public Enemies opens on Wednesday, July 1st.

Emily/Victoria and John/Johnny

Biography movies will never die! Run for cover.

The NY Post blog PopWrap gave me a little chortle titling this premiere photo to your left "Emily Blunt: Boob Watch". If you were Emily Blunt wouldn't you stare at it, too? She's delicious and knows it.

It seems like years ago when we first started talking about her star vehicle bio The Young Victoria -- oh, it was -- and now the film is opening in the UK tomorrow and has an official site and everything but still no news about a US release. Surely there's an audience here of some limited release size. Why no distributor? Julian Fellowes, the Gosford Park screenwriter, is certainly excited about it. He quipped to a crowd on the promotional circuit that he told his agent

“If I don’t write it, you die.”

Here's the trailer. It does look a little, hmmm, lightweight... even lighter than The Duchess so maybe it only has a costume design nomination in it (Hi, Sandy Powell!) but you never know. "Don't judge a movie by its trailer," Nathaniel shouts to no one in particular. Nathaniel even ignores him.



There's also a new trailer to Public Enemies which is also not entirely enticing though Michael Mann films are so reliant on sustained mood and machismotic* grit that trailers are tricky. It occurs to me watching this and writing that Oscar post yesterday that Johnny Depp, who gained enormous fame and fortune creating indelibly weird originals, has actually done more than his share of real life impersonations. John Dillinger, the famous gangster he plays in this film, is his sixth biographical portrayal. Seventh if you count Hunter S Thompson's fictional alter ego in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.



It seems odd that this film's stacked supporting cast o' names isn't featured more prominently in the trailer. For example: If you have Channing Tatum in your movie, why the hell aren't you bragging about it?

* I made that word up. Sorry, but it seemed appropriate.
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