LINCOLN.

Keep in mind while reading this review that historical dramas aren't really my cup of tea. But I saw it because, well... it's Spielberg, DDL, and full of Oscar buzz. And I was honestly a little intrigued in seeing how Lincoln's life was handled. Most notably, I mainly wanted to see how his death was handled. The film follows Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) in the last few months of his life, but mainly in the month he strongly pushed to have the 13th Amendment (abolish slavery) ratified in the U.S. Constitution. During this time he struggles with his marriage as his wife, Mary Todd (Sally Field), continues to struggle with the passing of their son three years prior while their eldest, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) demands to fight in the Civil War.

First, the positive. Daniel Day-Lewis was phenomenal in this film. I never once saw DDL. This was Abraham Lincoln surrounded by more modern-day actors in a film. If he wins the Lead Actor Oscar (and I believe he will), he deserves it. Hands down best performance of the year. And the other acting was pretty top notch, too. Tommy Lee Jones was awfully entertaining in the film, though he was honestly only playing Tommy Lee Jones. Still, it was a solid performance. Sally Field does incredibly well here, as well. And while Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a solid job, I felt his role was rather unimportant to the overall film. It added almost nothing except maybe one scene of drama between Lincoln and Mary Todd. He's barely in the movie as it is, and his whole fight to be a soldier pretty much amounts to nothing.

Unfortunately, the film is a bit overlong and quite slow in parts. If one of two things was happening the film was golden. First, if at any time Lincoln was telling a story (which he does quite often), I was totally entranced. He was totally captivating to listen to, and his stories were very entertaining and often humorous. Second, if Tommy Lee Jones was on screen (and usually yelling at or insulting somebody). If either of those things were happening, I was really digging the film. However, there are plenty of times when neither of these things are happening. And it felt like by the time we were maybe an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie, and I realized I still had over an hour left, I was dying. The story moved so slowly, particularly within that first half of the film.

Moving into some spoiler(?) territory, I was incredibly disappointed with the ending. I held out for two and a half hours just to see how the whole assassination and John Wilkes Booth thing was done. And what happens? A freakin' fake-out and you only end up hearing about it happening. How do you do a Lincoln biopic and not even show the shooting? And even worse than that, they pretend like they're going to show you but then you realize what they just did.

Besides that, though, this is almost assuredly going to win a ton of awards. Does it deserve them? Some of them, sure. Daniel Day-Lewis deserves an Oscar for this performance. And maybe another one here or there. But I don't think it deserves the sweep that is most likely going to happen. It's an incredibly well-made film. A brilliantly acted film. A superbly written film in its dialogue. It's just not my type of film. It was entertaining in parts, but too long and slow for my liking. And it was far more a film about passing the 13th Amendment than it was about Lincoln himself (there were entire chunks of the film without Lincoln in them). So for a score that looks at my entertainment over its own quality...

I Am McLovin!

NINE.

As a fan of musicals (I was raised with them and come from a pretty big musical family), I knew I was going to see this. It also didn't hurt that it was fully of people (both behind and in front of the camera) who either won or were nominated for an Oscar. But then reviews started coming out, a lot of them stating that the film was somewhere between pretty good and great, and most leaning toward merely "pretty good." I suppose this is the part where I usually do my plot description, but that's really the film's primary fault: there really isn't one. If I had to try, I'd say it's the following: a famous filmmaker, Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), is having a bit of writer's block for his upcoming film. So he tries to just get away from his crew (including Judi Dench) whilst cheating on his wife (Marion Cotillard) with Carla (Penelope Cruz). There's also a reporter for an American fashion magazine (Kate Hudson), visions of his dead mother (Sophia Loren), as well as daydreams about a prostitute from his childhood (Fergie). All the while trying to figure out a script to be able to give to his leading lady and muse (Nicole Kidman).

Basically, it's more of a character study than anything. And if you couldn't figure it out on your own, over half the songs constantly repeat the name "Guido," making sure you understand this is all about him. And I don't mean this as a bad thing... I suppose one of the movie's main themes is Guido's selfishness and possible narcissism and how it affects everyone around him.

But really, there is absolutely no real plot to carry the movie, and I think that's where it suffers the most. Well that and the fact that about a third of the songs are kinda boring. I had a couple friends at the movie, too, and one of them had the complete polar opposite opinion in one regard. But as she tends to have worse taste in films, I'll go ahead and say I'm probably right in this case (and the fact that most of the reviews out there share the same thought as me). And the opinion? (Mine:) Kate Hudson's performance wasn't the greatest in the film, while Fergie blew them all out of the water (My friend: But Fergie just sat in a chair, and Kate Hudson danced around! Me: *le sigh*). Fergie had the best and most memorable scene in the film, the best choreographed number, the best edited scene, and the best song (which I suppose is why they used it in the trailer). It's just unfortunate that all the songs weren't at that same level. I'm not saying that was the only good song, though. No, there were a lot of good songs, and a lot of the songs were filmed really well. I just mean that that one was the best (in my humble opinion).

The acting was outstanding, of course, with all these great actors and actresses. Though with all these great people in one movie, you can't have them all with big parts. There are tons of beautiful women in the movie, but only a couple of them are in the movie more than 5-10 minutes (these being Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard. Nicole Kidman comes in third, then Kate Hudson and Fergie). Judi Dench is also in it quite a bit, and she does really well with her role. Sophia Loren only seems to be there so the movie can go "Hey, look, we have Sophia *beepin'* Loren!" Will this one be another Oscar nom for Day-Lewis? Probably not, but he still did brilliantly as usual. And he was surprisingly funny. I wasn't expecting the amount of humor he brought to it.

Overall, the movie is gorgeous in every way possible. The cinematography is superb (and you wouldn't expect any less from the director of Chicago). The women are beautiful and scantily clad (and you wouldn't expect any less from the director of Chicago). The musical numbers are dream-like and fascinating (and you... OK, you get it). Good music, good acting, decent writing, poor plotting. In other words, it could have been better, but it was still pretty dang good.


A Keanu 'Whoa'

THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

This movie finally decided to come to my little town, so I went and saw it ASAP. I know I’m a little late into the game with this movie, but here I go anyway. I pray nobody decides to burn me alive over this review, because I’m not giving it a ‘perfect’ or ‘best film of the year’ like basically everybody else. Granted, it’ll be close, but not the best. Anywho, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I can get into the review. The movie is about Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his quest for Oil. He’s brought to a small California town by Paul Sunday (Paul Dano). There he stays, at first, with the Sunday family, including Paul’s brother, Eli (also Paul Dano). And he finds oil. That’s about the gist of it.

Just to get it out of the way first, the acting in this movie was phenomenal. I can totally see why Daniel Day-Lewis was nominated for an Oscar. The character of Daniel was breath-takingly acted. However, everybody gushes over Day-Lewis, but not many people focus on who I thought was the guy who stole every scene he was in, Paul Dano. He played his character(s) with such subtlety (at least when he wasn’t doing the preaching thing) that you just wanted to strangle him. It was that good. I actually realized that the parts I disliked most about the movie were the parts that Paul Dano weren’t in. And that brings us to the movie’s first strike.

There were some really confusing parts in this movie. Two parts strike me the most. First, the opening 10 minutes (AKA the stuff where nobody says a damn thing). The first 10 minutes bugged me for a few reasons. And no, it wasn’t because nothing was being said. I thought that was fine. It’s just I had a hard time understanding what the heck was going on. First he’s digging for silver, and then he’s hunting oil? Where was the transition? How did he go from one to the other? And why? If the point was the oil, then why start the movie with the silver mine? I just completely did not follow that. Another thing about the first 10 minutes was the music, but I’ll get to that in a moment. The second part of the movie that struck most to me was the entire chunk of the movie involving Daniel’s ‘brother’. Now it wasn’t his actual brother that bothered me. That was fine. I just mean the entire portion of the movie starting when he shows up and ending at the portion when he… goes away. Everything that happens during that period of time makes little sense, especially why Daniel’s son seemed to be so pissed off at his dad, and why he sets the cabin on fire. There were some other things in that part of the movie, but I can’t remember specifics. It just felt like that whole section brought the movie down a notch for me (and, coincidentally, this entire section was void of Paul Dano, as were the first 10 minutes. I smell conspiracy!).

Now I mentioned the music. Again, the music was great, for the most part, and was really fitting for most of the scenes. But there were two or three scenes in which the music felt so badly placed that it took me out of the movie. For instance, the first 10 minutes of the movie… nothing exciting is really happening, yet the movie is playing this really tense and scary music like you’d find in a killer-chasing-victim scene of a thriller. It was just completely out of place. And there were at least one or two other times in the movie this happened.

However, those are the only faults I found with the movie. Everything else was spectacular, from the acting to the visuals (Though I still maintain what I said for the LAMB posting that it’s great, but probably won’t win Art Direction. But what do I know?).

So now, for the first time using my new rating system, I give There Will Be Blood…

A Keanu 'Whoa'

(P.S. I drink your milkshake! I drink it up! *slurp* - If there were a ‘Best Line in a Movie’ Oscar, that would take it.)

(P.P.S. It took me a large chunk of the movie to realize it, but I realized that there were quite a few times when Daniel Day-Lewis' voice reminded me of Sean Connery.)