Four Good Movies and a Waste of 115 Minutes

You always get the best movies in the fall, because Oscar voters have a very short memory. I’ve had a very good run of films of late:

Man of the Year – 3/10 – A miserable, lifeless, unfunny film and a waste of Laura Linney’s talents. I had high hopes, having really enjoyed director Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog. Instead, we get a shoddy, two-hour lousy combination of The West Wing and Sneakers, complete with left wing elitism and smugness.

The Prestige – 7.5/10 – Rival magicians wage a lifelong war against each other in this smartly-directed period film. In his follow-up to the enjoyable Batman Begins and Insomnia, director Christopher Nolan continues to demonstrate a strong visual style. The cast is generally very good, though once again Scarlett Johansson is wooden (if nice to look at). It’s a tad predictable in the end, but I definitely enjoyed it more than the other magic movie of the summer, The Illusionist.

Babel – 9/10 – I’m a sucker for loose narrative, slightly abstracted, path-of-the-butterfly-connections films like Magnolia or Crash. So, I really enjoyed Babel, which is less heavy-handed than either of those other films. The performances are excellent (Cate Blanchett is such a fine actress), the cinematography feels fresh and the plots are blissfully unpredictable. It’s one major flaw is that it’s relentless and relentlessly serious. Truly great movies give you a chance to laugh and catch your breath along the way. That said, I really, really enjoyed Babel.

Shortbus – 7/10 – Explicit sex! There’s Sook Yin Lee’s hoohah! Sorry, just had to get that out of the way. This is the third mainstream film I’ve seen with the graphic sex, and it’s way better than the other two (Lie With Me and 9 Songs). That said, it’s no masterpiece. It’s kind of like Rent–a bunch of hetero-, homo- and trisexual New Yorkers seek meaning and connection in the big city–if you replace the songs with sex. I must credit the BC Film Classification board, who made a very rational decision in giving this film an R rating. The best part of the movie was these beautiful claymation-esque animation of the Manhattan skyline.

The Last King of Scotland – 8.5/10 – Forest Whitaker’s Idi Amin penetrates every scene of this film–even those he doesn’t appear in. We watch this movie through the lens of Uganda’s history (and more recent events in neighhbouring Rwanda). The film’s plot isn’t particularly remarkable, but I do like the moral ambiguity that’s so present in the movie. Whitaker’s performance is probably the best I’ve seen this year, and he ought to be a lock for an Oscar.