I'm not sure Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in There Will Be Blood represents the best acting of 2007 (as various critics' groups have declared), but it certainly represents the most acting of the past year.
Certainly, Day-Lewis is one of our finest thespians, as witnessed by his Oscar-winning turn in My Left Foot and his more subtle (and woefully underrated) work in both The Last of the Mohicans and The Age of Innocence. But his performance here as Daniel Plainview, a prospector who strikes it rich in turn-of-the-century California, basically comes across as Bill the Butcher (his character in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York) turned up a couple of notches. It's an entertaining dervish of a performance, to be sure, but as I watched him howl and growl and carry on, I was reminded of Rod Steiger during the hammy stage of his career -- not exactly the most pleasant of memories as far as cinematic visions are concerned.
Then again, Day-Lewis' oversized turn is right in line with Paul Thomas Anderson's oversized ambitions in creating a modern-day masterpiece, a movie so audacious that it flagrantly apes Citizen Kane during its final half-hour and recalls The Treasure of the Sierra Madre at regular intervals. That so many critics are indeed calling this an instant classic isn't surprising, but if the No Country for Old Men vs. There Will Be Blood grudge match continues to gain traction (think also Beatles vs. Rolling Stones, Star Wars vs. Lord of the Rings, and boxers vs. briefs), then I'm afraid I'll have to pledge my allegiance to the Coen Brothers' equally brutal, equally risky but ultimately more satisfying drama. Anderson's latest film isn't even up to the standards of what I consider his real masterpiece, the dizzying, dazzling Boogie Nights, though there's enough here to please hardcore cineastes as well as more adventurous moviegoers.
Based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! the movie opens with an excellent 12-minute sequence with no dialogue -- perhaps a nod to Erich von Stroheim's silent milestone, Greed, also about the destructive power of accumulated wealth? During this sequence, we're introduced to Plainview, a determined prospector who over time strikes it rich and becomes one of the nation's most powerful oilmen. Plainview has an adopted son in young H.W. (Dillon Freasier), who ends up going deaf after sitting next to an oil rig that explodes as it brings up black riches from beneath the surface. Plainview tries to be an acceptable parent to the boy, but he's hardly a social creature, intolerant of those around him and not one to extend trust or affection easily. His greatest adversary as he tries to milk the land dry is Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), an unctuous preacher who's as much the conniving showman as Daniel Plainview.
There Will Be Blood, therefore, attempts to work on two plateaus: a story about the feud between Plainview and Eli that doubles as the battle between bald capitalism and insincere spirituality (in that respect, the movie could be set today), and a more personal tale involving Plainview and his adopted boy. That the former plotline is more interesting than the latter throws the film off balance, a flaw accentuated by the fact that no attempt to understand or explain Plainview leaves the film with a hollow center that separates it from the likes of Citizen Kane and Sierra Madre (wherein we still cared about their protagonists even after they took leave of their senses).
Still, the picture is a beauty to behold (Oscar nods for technical achievements should breed like rabbits), and there are individual sequences so staggering that a second viewing will hardly be a chore. But those planning to check it out should be sure to bring an umbrella, Rocky Horror Picture Show-style, just in case Day-Lewis' juicy lip-smacking manages to break through that fourth wall.
HOW INTERESTING that 2007 produced two pictures about Alzheimer's that approached the subject from diametrically opposite points. (It's also interesting that these two movies, both involving caregivers, were written and directed by women, usually deemed the primary caregivers in our society.) Sarah Polley's Away From Her was about a man who dearly loved his wife and was devastated as the disease created an unbreachable gap between them. Tamara Jenkins' The Savages (finally reaching town) is about siblings who dislike their dad and are upset that circumstances dictate they be responsible for his well-being.
Away From Her was a straightforward drama, but The Savages is a black comedy that frequently goes down like the most bitter coffee imaginable. That edge places us at a greater distance from its protagonists than Away From Her, which embraced us with its warmth and more open displays of empathy. The Savages produces an emotional reaction as well, but audiences have to work harder at feeling it by embracing its nakedly flawed characters at their most damaged and during their most prickly moments.
Philip Bosco plays the father figure around which the action stirs: Found smearing his own excrement on the bathroom walls of his Arizona residence, he's eventually placed into the hands of his distant -- both geographically and emotionally -- offspring, Jon and Wendy Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney). Jon's a college professor in Buffalo, while Wendy's an aspiring writer in New York City; neither one has the time nor the inclination to take care of the old man -- more so since by all accounts he made their childhoods miserable -- but they do their best to find him suitable lodging in an "assisted living" facility. But Wendy's definition of suitable is different than Jon's, and the siblings end up squabbling about his living arrangements, a discussion that opens up a can of worms regarding their relationships not only with their father but with each other.
Jenkins' screenplay is sometimes too smug for its own good -- her reverence for the elderly seems so sincere in many of the film's best passages that it's startling when she occasionally uses these folks for cheap comic effect -- but overall, The Savages is a keenly observed study offering believably bruised people making the best out of their rickety lives. As for the two leads, they're equally superb. Linney turns every one of Wendy's foibles and insecurities into a mountain that the character must scale before she can come to acceptance with herself, and the actress keeps us firmly in her corner. As for Hoffman, this is his third great performance of 2007 -- he's also aces in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and Charlie Wilson's War -- and thanks largely to a smashing sequence in which he describes the brutal realities of growing old, it's also his best.
The Savages sports a sharp-edged tone that might put some viewers off, but in Hoffman and Linney, it provides us with two of the premier performances of last year. That's a tough act to top.
AROUND THIS TIME last year, moviegoers were suffering through Because I Said So, a Diane Keaton vehicle so horrific that it barely got beat out by License to Wed for the top spot on my year-end 10 Worst list. Luckily, Keaton's new film, Mad Money, is much better, simply by virtue of the fact that I wasn't tempted to cram a gun muzzle into my mouth this time around.
That's not to say it couldn't have been better. Callie Khouri won a well-deserved Oscar for penning Thelma & Louise, and it would have been interesting to see what additional shadings she could have lent to the situations on display here. But for Mad Money, she only serves as director, leaving the writing assignment in the hands of Glenn Gers. The Anthony Hopkins-Ryan Gosling thriller Fracture (which Gers wrote) was a pleasant surprise last year, and Gers fares best in this latest picture when he focuses on the intricacies of the heist that our leading ladies intend to pull off. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Keaton stars as Bridget, an upper-middle-class wife reeling from that fact that her husband (Ted Danson, very good in his best role in ages) has lost his job and they're now in danger of losing their home. As a temporary solution, she takes a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank, where she soon devises an elaborate scheme to steal the worn-out bills marked for destruction. She enlists the aid of two co-workers, sensible single mom Nina (Queen Latifah) and vivacious party girl Jackie (Katie Holmes), and the trio set about pulling off the most unlikely of heists.
A remake of a 2001 British TV-movie called Hot Money (never shown in this country), Mad Money is a generally entertaining picture, even if it dabbles in implausibilities and often fails to get a firm grasp on its characters (for example, several scenes attempt to paint Holmes' Jackie as an utter dingbat when she clearly isn't). Are there better ways for film fans to spend their own money than using it on Mad Money? Certainly. But there are also worse ways. They could be renting Because I Said So.
27 DRESSES is the filmic equivalent of a baby: cute, pampered, craving attention, and somewhat smelly thanks to all the formula passing through it.
A rom-com that dutifully follows down the genre's preordained path rather than ever taking off on its own, this casts Knocked Up's Katherine Heigl as Jane, a perpetual bridesmaid who (as the title hints) has attended 27 weddings in that capacity. Jane feels that it's payback time from the gods -- that she should land her own man, her own wedding and her own bridesmaids -- and she's long been pining over her boss George (Edward Burns).
Unfortunately, George has never shown any interest outside of their close business relationship, and once her perky, irresponsible and blonde supermodel sister (The Heartbreak Kid's Malin Akerman) breezes into town, George is hopelessly smitten. Nice-girl Jane refuses to interfere, even though she knows her sister and her boss aren't right for each other, and she's frequently distracted by the unwanted advances of the cynical Kevin (James Marsden), who she knows to be a writer but doesn't realize that -- get this -- he's the one who writes the heartwarming newspaper wedding columns that she clips out with religious devotion.
Director Anne Fletcher and writer Aline Brosh McKenna (who had better luck adapting The Devil Wears Prada for the screen) offer a couple of modest examples of plot tweaking -- for example, George isn't the usual self-centered jerk of a boss but a genuinely nice guy -- and the actors are all pleasing, especially Judy Greer as Jane's sarcastic best friend (yes, the Lisa Kudrow role, only fresher). But for the most part, 27 Dresses is so clichéd that it even includes the standard (and grueling) scene in which our drunken leads persuade an entire bar of people to join them in singing along to a pop hit. In this case, the tune being played is Elton John's "Benny and the Jets," but a more apt selection would have been The Four Tops' "It's the Same Old Song."
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THERE WILL BE BLOOD
***
DIRECTED BY Paul Thomas Anderson
STARS Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
THE SAVAGES
***
DIRECTED BY Tamara Jenkins
STARS Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman
MAD MONEY
**1/2
DIRECTED BY Callie Khouri
STARS Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah
27 DRESSES
**
DIRECTED BY Anne Fletcher
STARS Katherine Heigl, James Marsden