The Artist is a black-and-white silent film, presented in 4:3 aspect ratio, shot at 22 frames per second and then sped up to 24. It's a nice little homage to a very bygone era - Hollywood, 1927-1933 - and everything about it seems to wink at the audience. At an hour and forty minutes, it doesn't really outstay its welcome at all, and the central gimmick works just fine. The story is a self-referrential piece of meta-pandering if ever there was one. One of the biggest actor-directors of the silent film era refuses to adapt to the onset of the "talkies," even as the industry around him abandons silent film at the end of the 1920s, here in this silent film from 2011. Ultimately what The Artist does is pay homage to the era and the genre specifically by going as over-the-top as it can in pointing out all the quirks and gimmicks of the genre and the era. The entire production felt like an affectionate parody of sorts, and this absolutely felt like a case where a movie tried to have its cake and eat it, too. And frankly, it worked. There was nothing to really dislike about the movie. As long as you're on board with the idea of a modern day silent film, I can't imagine anyone disliking this thing. It's got mass appeal and gimmicky charm to it.
But "Best Picture?" Wow, is that a stretch. Actually, since The Artist was one of the least attention-demanding movies I've ever seen, I spent most of it muling over two key questions in my mind. One, are award-winning films predisposed to cynical reactions and "overrated" accusations? And, two, was 2011 the worst year in film in recent memory?
I'll tackle the first question first. In short, yes. As an exercise, while watching, I tried pretending that The Artist was a little-known film from the last decade that a few of my favorite critics had heralded as an underground success. When I did this, I was able to appreciate the idea of someone attempting to make a silent movie in 2011 just a little bit more, and I bought into the film's conceit a little more willingly. But as long as I was watching and thinking, "this was the best movie of 2011?" I just couldn't come close to agreeing. It's kind of fruitless to wonder if I'd have liked this one much more had I seen it before it was given the most prestigious award in film, but I know that I would have greeted it much more openly and without a callous "alright, this better blow me away" attitude.
Now, having said all that, I can't even come up with a 2011 movie that deserved "Best Picture" more, and frankly that's on the year as a whole for just failing to deliver. I asked above, "was 2011 the worst year in film in recent memory?" My answer is yes, and I'd invite anyone suggesting otherwise to show their work. I'll wrap this up by listing every movie I still recognize from 2011 just so you can all see where I'm coming from here. Starting in January, we had...
Season of the Witch - Another Nic Cage Razzie nominee
The Green Hornet - Seth Rogen, superhero
No Strings Attached - Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher bang each other like friends should
The Roommate - Ads for this one proved to me that Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester were different people
The Eagle - Channing Tatum in a low-budget Gladiator imitator
Just Go With It - This one had Adam Sandler hooking up with either Jennifer Aniston, Brooklyn Decker, or both of them
Cedar Rapids - Ed Helms and John C. Reilly in something I'd actually still like to see
Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son - Why?
I Am Number Four - My wife saw this one, which I just learned did not feature Amanda Seyfried
Drive Angry - The second month of the year brings us the second Nic Cage movie of the year
Hall Pass - A heavily marketed Jason Sudeikis dud
Rango - A fine animated film, I'm sure
Battle: Los Angeles - There was no need for Skyline in 2010, much less for this thing in 2011
Red Riding Hood - Initially I had interest, but this got universally panned
Mars Needs Moms - Disney is glad you've already forgotten this existed
The Lincoln Lawyer - Apparently McConaughey showed flashes of brilliance prior to the McConaissance
Paul - People liked Seth Rogen as an alien more than Seth Rogen as a superhero, but this didn't get nearly as much buzz as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz
Win Win - No idea what this was, but I recall a month's worth of Internet banner ads for it
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules - I saw the first one on a cross-country flight
Sucker Punch - An admirable face-plant of an effort from Zack Snyder
Insidious - Pretty sure the tagline here was "Insidious is insidious"
Arthur - God, Russell Brand is a hack
Your Highness - The cast seemed decent, but no one liked this
Rio - For real, was this or wasn't this an Angry Birds movie?
Scream 4 - If you had asked me yesterday when this movie came out I'd have gone with 2005
Atlas Shrugged: Part I - Even beyond the staunch libertarian values, this was allegedly total dog shit
Thor - The year's first summer blockbuster, a month into spring
Madea's Big Happy Family - Oh lewrd!
Water for Elephants - My mom started reading this book
Fast Five - That bank safe car chase...
Something Borrowed - My wife read this book
The Beaver - Either Mel Gibson and a beaver puppet or Mel Gibson as a beaver puppet - either way, I'm still intrigued
Hobo with a Shotgun - Not even the first Grindhouse trailer to be made into an actual feature-length film
Bridesmaids - Everyone has seen this and no one dislikes it
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Sure, why not?
Midnight in Paris - I still have interest here, but, Woody Allen
The Hangover Part II - Honestly the exact same movie as the first go-round
Kung Fu Panda 2 - Didn't know this happened, but it makes perfect sense
The Tree of Life - Poignant, beautiful, and boring as fuck
X-Men: First Class - This was acclaimed
Super 8 - Plenty of hype, but no actual impact
Green Lantern - Just reviled
Mr. Popper's Penguins - Jim Carrey yuks it up with penguins
Bad Teacher - Cameron Diaz showing contempt for her job, or something
Cars 2 - The sequel nobody asked for to Pixar's weakest movie
Transformers: Dark of the Moon - This was just fucking horrible
Horrible Bosses - Yeah, sure, I'd see this
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 - The eighth and final film adaptation of the seven-book series
Winnie the Pooh - Positive reviews abound, but wasn't this already made in 1960 or so?
Captain America: The First Avenger - The second Avengers prequel in a three-month window
Friends with Benefits - Hold on, aside from Timberlake and Kunis, was this really any different from the aforementioned No Strings Attached?
Cowboys & Aliens - With that title, did they expect an audience?
Crazy, Stupid, Love - Fun enough!
The Smurfs - It seems like every year or two, one kids' movie is just way shittier than all the rest
The Change-Up - Who, specifically, asked for a Bateman-Reynolds body-switch comedy?
The Help - Black women enjoy social justice once white women get the ball rolling for them in this misguided feel-good racial piece most famous for a scene where Bryce Dallas Howard eats poop
Final Destination 5 - See: Scream 4
30 Minutes or Less - I'd still see this, but it seems like nobody else ever did
Our Idiot Brother - I bought this for my wife, who loves Paul Rudd, and she has never attempted to watch it
Apollo 18 - Moon monsters
Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star - Nick Swardson fared about as well here as Jason Sudeikis did in Hall Pass
Contagion - All of your favorite celebrities get sick and die in something I still wouldn't mind seeing
Warrior - My sister raves about this one
Drive - Oh hell yes
Dolphin Tale - So there's this dolphin with a prosthetic tail
Moneyball - The Oakland Athletics are 1-7 in playoff series under Billy Beane
50/50 - I saw half of this and can't remember if he had cancer or was faking having cancer
The Ides of March - George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, and Time magazine
Real Steel - Rock'em Sock'em Robots, the movie
The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) - Sweeney?
The Big Year - Jack Black, Steve Martin, and Owen Wilson go birdwatching
Footloose - Just over two years later, I had completely forgotten that they remade this
Paranormal Activity 3 - What a year for extending tired horror movie franchises, huh?
In Time - This has been sitting on our DVR for a while now
Puss in Boots - When Shrek is played out, you spin it off into this, I guess
The Rum Diary - Johnny Depp drinks a lot in Puerto Rico, is what I gathered and recall from the ads
Anonymous - That one about Shakespeare plagiarizing everything he ever wrote
Tower Heist - Cringe
A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas - I own both previous Harold & Kumar movies, and just now I am realizing that this one existed
J. Edgar - This was a Leo DiCaprio biopic of sorts, yeah?
Immortals - Looked like a poor man's 300, which wasn't exactly a rich man's movie
Jack and Jill - Oh, Adam Sandler
Melancholia - This is dark, bleak, and something I still need to see
The Descendants - I'm interested here, too
Happy Feet Two - Again, just no idea this happened
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 - My wife made me watch part of this somewhere for some reason and it was everything I thought it'd be and less
Hugo - It's in my backlog as I type this
The Muppets - I'm very interested
The Artist - Here we are
Shame - I'm intrigued, I'll admit, in this NC-17 movie about bad sexytimes
New Year's Eve - Not the last time they'd try to recreate Love Actually
The Sitter - Still-fat Jonah Hill looks after kids
Young Adult - Between Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt, this can't be bad
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked - The second sequel to 2007's version of The Smurfs
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - Consider me surprised that this was only the fourth Mission: Impossible movie
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - The American remake of a Swedish-language adaptation of a Swedish-language book
The Adventures of Tintin - Another forgettable inter-Middle-Earth project form Peter Jackson
We Bought a Zoo - Guys, Matt Damon bought a zoo
War Horse - I'm sure this was fine, like a big bowl of vanilla ice cream
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Plenty of acclaim, but the only review I read for this one was absolutely scathing
A Separation - That respected one from Iran about a failing marriage in an Islamic republic
The Iron Lady - Meryl Streep is Margaret Thatcher
That was exhaustive, but if you've read this far, I hope you can see my point. Yes, I was more glib and dismissive than I needed to be, but that's just B-minus effort after B-minus effort with a healthy dose of laughable F's. It was a year full of franchise fodder, sequels of sequels of sequels, and mild takes. I understand that's just kind of how Hollywood looks in any given year, but there's such a noticeable lack of groundbreaking, memorable, or otherwise beloved movies here.
I still don't think The Artist was worthy of the "Best Picture" honor, but so little else here is, so, hey, whatever.
Wow... way to break down every major release of 2011. Clearly my favorite film (and one that I think was unfairly snubbed at the Oscars that year) is Drive. Your response "Oh, hell yes!" is quite appropriate for the quality of that film.
ReplyDeleteBut, I'll agree that 2011, in general, doesn't leap out at you as an amazing film year. Sony definitely contributed to it's debauchery with movies like Jack & Jill, Just Go With It, and Bucky Larson -- er, this could just be a Adam Sandler problem.
Interesting to see that Hugo came out this year as well considering, much like The Artist, it pays homage to that bygone era of Hollywood. Maybe this was just a year everyone got really nostalgic for no good reason at all.
I actually remember hearing Harvey Weinstein (exec producer for the film) traveling to all of LA's famous retirement homes for old film-business folks -- who are the majority of the voting members of the academy -- and pushed The Artist, hard. Could explain why it won, but, then again to your early point, what else really deserved it more? -- other than Drive.
Speaking of Drive, it did seem like a fairly good year for action films. Captain America, Thor, Fast Five, MI4, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Harry Potter, X-Men and Super 8. There were plenty of duds as well, but it's not the worst year in cinema history.
Looking over a few of your films listed, I'll comment on these:
The Green Hornet - So thought Gondry was going to make this something way more than what it eventually ended up being, which was a heaping pile of shit.
The Lincoln Lawyer - Fucking great movie -- anytime you see McConaughey playing a lawyer, it's pretty much guaranteed he's going to give a great performance.
Cars 2 - Pixar's worst movie? Let's hope so.
Crazy, Stupid, Love - One of the best rom-coms I've ever seen. Plus we get Gosling shirtless.
30 Minutes or Less - Got my hands on the script while Sony was producing it. Really didn't read like it would be fun.
The Smurfs - Sony's summer turd. I've caught scenes, and nothing looks good about it. The studio had a big screening week where they brought in impoverished kids from all over the city to see it for free with their families, so there was some good that came out of it.
Contagion - One of the freakiest movies I've ever seen. Wait till you see where the disease comes from.
Anonymous - This is the film that robbed all the power away from my first script ever about Christopher Marlowe killing and later masquerading as Shakespeare. Fuck you, Roland Emmerich! Just make Independence Day 2 already and retire.
Real Steel - Liked this a lot more than I probably should of. Excited for the sequel way more than I should be.
The Rum Diary - A terrible book. An even worse movie.
A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas - Was actually quite pleased about this tale of two friends finding each other again after years apart... and smoking weed.
The Descendants - Really don't like Alexander Payne. Haven't seen this for that reason.
Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star - The poster made me laugh... That's about it. (Still sporting a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.)
50/50 - He has cancer, but beats it. More importantly he loses a shitty girlfriend and gains a non-shitty girlfriend while Seth Rogen makes wisecracks and smokes weed in the background.
Shame - It's been a year after I've seen this, and I still don't know how to feel about it... other than Fassbender is hung.
Young Adult - Fucking great, great movie. Reitman and Cody team up again. There's nothing about this guy that I don't like.
We Bought a Zoo - Fuck you Cameron Crowe. You made me cry, again... on a plane.
Continued...
The Adventures of Tintin - I wanted to like this way more than I actually did. Will the two sequels change my mind on the series as a whole? Let's hope so.
ReplyDeleteWar Horse - Unlike in Tintin, you get your solid Spielberg delivered here. It's good, but I only need to see it once. Impressive he was able to make a whole movie where your main character is horse who actually emotes way more than I thought was possible.
*Side note: John Williams gets work down for two movies this year (Tintin and War Horse) and both scores are nominated for an Oscar, yet both lose to The Artist. Five Oscars just isn't enough for this genius.
Those are my two cents on this film year in review. Not a great year. Certainly not the worst.
I disliked Bridesmaids. So did Danielle.
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