Awards Bait Glut

It's easy to get behind when every major awards packaged film opens in the last couple of weeks of the year. Here are write-ups of three of them. One of which is already the a best picture frontrunner and critical salivation toy. The other two a mixed assortment of pleasures and limitations.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
I've always been a fan of Danny Boyle, from his mid-90s heyday of Trainspotting and Shallow Grave, thru his shape-shifting, genre-bending trifecta of 28 Days Later, Millions and Sunshine. So naturally I went into Slumdog Millionaire with high expectations. Ever since it's debut at the Toronto Film Festival, it has been so heavily drooled over, and that coupled with it's insane strangle hold over mostly every critics organization, I'm officially going to the that lone man in the corner with the confused look on his face. It's not that the film is a disaster-- not at all, like all of Boyle's previous films, there's an energy and kinetic feel, a movement that is enthralling. It's not that the story is bad-- it's not, it's different and for the most part compelling. (A boy raised in the slums of Dubai goes on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and is accused of cheating-- he tells his sad childhood tale to prove his innocence.) So what's my beef with Slumdog Millionaire? Well, it's not that what's on screen is bad, it's the overwhelming, nauseating hype attached to it. It's a simple, plainly acted, somewhat shallow Dickensian tale of poor boy making good. It's not the feel good movie of the year, of many have proclaimed-- 75% of it is actually quite depressing. It's not some globally enhancing tale-- it's just a decent film, not revelatory in the vital early films of Danny Boyle. I apologize to the masses of followers I've just offended. B

DOUBT
Based on the Pulitzer Prize (and just about everything else the theater world could bestow) winning play, Doubt is set in a 1960s Catholic School revolving around what may or may not have happened between a priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a young alter boy, who just happens to the first black child enrolled in school. The suspicion is strong enough for Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep,) and the acting fireworks begin. Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley (who wrote the original play), in the first film since the disastrous Joe Versus the Volcano. The other main characters are Sister James (Amy Adams), a nice girl nun, played in typical sunny Amy Adams fashion, and Mrs. Miller (Viola Davis), the mother of the boy in question, who in one scene shifts the story in ways I can't reveal. Doubt the movie is probably suffers from similar problems that most play to screen transfers probably do-- it's very talky and stagey, of which Shanley doesn't really help matters by liberalizing everything visually way too much-- it's doesn't rain outside, it pours. It's distracting, no matter how prettily photographed by master of the art Roger Deakins. I just felt like telling Mr. Shanley that this isn't necessary when you have an arsenal of major acting. Meryl Streep gives a fierce, surprising and monumental performance here-- her line readings are all perfectly timed and appropriately movie star, and yet she totally essays a time between old school piousness and new age political correctness. B+

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
Based on the acclaimed novel by Richard Yates of hopeless in the suburban America, Sam Mendes returns to the world of his first feature American Beauty, reuniting the stars of one of the most classic love stories ever, and plopping them in the middle of 1950s gloom. I'm speaking of Titanic, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, here playing married couple Frank and April Wheeler, fighting there way through ennui and depression while trying desperately to run away from the American Dream. It's a heavy movie-- literally the first five minutes features dramatic war of words. It's at once more mature and more distancing than American Beauty, where dark comedy eased what could have a complete downer. As in Doubt, Roger Deakins photographs pretty images of pristine suburban decay, but it's the majestic power of Kate Winslet that salvages Revolutionary Road-- not only elevating the film from its unease, but also elevating the performance of DiCaprio. B