Lisa Marie’s 16 Worst Films of 2020

Posted on January 27, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, it’s nearly February so I guess it’s time for me to start listing my picks for the best and the worst of 2020.

It’s pretty much a tradition here at the Shattered Lens that I always end up running behind as far as posting these lists are concerned. I always think that I’m going to have everything ready to go during the first week of January but then I realize that there’s still a host of movies that I need to see before I can, in good conscience, post any sort of list. In fact, as I sit here writing this post, I’m watching some films that could very well make it onto my best of 2020 list.

Of course, the list below is not my best of 2020 list. Instead, below, you’ll find my picks for the 16 worst films of 2020. Why 16 films? Because Lisa doesn’t do odd numbers!

It probably won’t be a surprise you to see some of these films on the list. For instance, I don’t think anyone will be shocked to see The Grudge or After We Collided mentioned. However, I imagine that some people will be surprised to see The Trial of the Chicago 7 on the list. What can I say? The more I thought about it, the more it represented everything that I dislike about mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. The fact that it’s probably going to be a major Oscar contender made it even more important to list it. I’m sure there’s a lot of critics, for instance, who wish they had found room for Green Book when they were compiling their 2018 lists.

In the end, of course, this list is my opinion. You’re free to agree or disagree. That’s the wonderful thing about having an opinion.

(Also be sure to check out my picks for 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010!)

And now, the list:

16. John Henry (dir by Will Forbes) — I actually feel kind of bad for listing this silly B-movie as one of the worst of 2020 but it was just so slowly paced and thematically muddled that I really didn’t have a choice.

15. The Binge (dir by Jeremy Garelick) — Doing The Purge with drugs and alcohol as opposed to murder is actually a pretty cool idea so this movie has no excuse for being so dull. There is one fun dance number that livens things up, which is why The Binge is listed at number 15 as opposed to number 3.

14. Once Upon A Time In London (dir by Simon Rumley) — London has a rich and exciting history when it comes to organized crime but you wouldn’t know that from watching this dull film.

13. Valley Girl (dir by Rachel Lee Goldenberg) — This remake was a boring jukebox musical that featured 30 year-old high school students and unimaginative use of a host of 80s songs. (A girl at the beach says that she just wants to have fun. Can you guess what song the cast started singing?)

12. Ava (dir by Tate Taylor) — Jessica Chastain’s an assassin and …. *yawn.* Tate Taylor was exactly the wrong director to be expected to do anything interesting with this story.

11. Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island (dir by Jeff Wadlow) — My fantasy would be for a better film. Boom! Roasted! (Actually, I bet I’m the thousandth blogger to have said that.)

10. The Grudge (dir by Nicolas Pesce) — Eh. Who cares?

9. Artemis Fowl (dir by Kenneth Branagh) — This was a confusing movie that mixed the least interesting parts of the Harry Potter franchise with the least interesting bits of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

8. The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson (dir by Daniel Farrands) — I actually defended The Haunting of Sharon Tate but this semi-follow up was just too distasteful. What was the deal with Nicole being dragged across the ceiling? Both Mena Suvari and Nick Stahl deserve better. So does director Daniel Farrands, for that matter.

7. The Dalton Gang (dir by Christopher Forbes) — Never has the old west looked so cheap.

6. After We Collided (dir by Roger Kumble) — This was marginally better than the first After but that’s not saying much. The total lack of chemistry between the two romantic leads makes it difficult to care about whether or not they ever end up together. The cloying cameo from writer Anna Todd (“What have you written?” “Oh, this and that,”) almost made me throw a shoe at my TV.

5. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (dir by Aaron Sorkin) — I liked Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance and the scene where Bobby Seale gets gagged in court was powerful and disturbing. Otherwise, this movie represented Hollywood at its most vapid.

4. Sergio (dir by Greg Barker) — This was a muddled and poorly acted commercial for the United Nations.

3. A Fall From Grace (dir Tyler Perry) — Tyler Perry’s beard was the best thing about this movie.

2. The Last Thing He Wanted (dir by Dee Rees) — This was the first bad film that I saw in 2020 and it’s remained here, near the bottom of the list, for 12 months. This movie was a muddle mess that thought it had more to say than it did. It did feature a good performance from Willem DaFoe, which saved it from being the worst film of the year. Instead, that honor goes to….

1. Let Them All Talk (dir by Steven Soderbergh) — This mind-numbingly dull film from Steven Soderbergh seems to be determined to troll everyone who has ever said that they’d watch Meryl Streep in anything.

Coming up tomorrow: my favorite songs of 2020!

TSL Looks Back at 2020:

The Films of 2020: Ava (dir by Tate Taylor)

Posted on December 25, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ava tells story of Ava Faulkner (Jessica Chastain), who has a troubled past, a turbulent present, and an uncertain future.

As we learn via a series of still frames during the film’s opening credits, Ava was the valedictorian of her high school class but her bright future was derailed by her own alcoholism. She killed two of her friends while driving drunk and, presumably to avoid prison, she instead went into the army. In the army, she was noted for being an efficient killer while, at the same time, being a bit unstable. She has issues with authority. Well, don’t we all? When she got out of the army, she was recruited by Duke (John Malkovich), who taught her how to be an international assassin!

Unfortunately, since Ava screwed up her last mission and has gotten into the habit of talking to her targets before she kills them, Simon (Colin Farrell) wants her dead. Simon also used to be a student of Duke’s but now he is Duke’s boss or something. It’s all a bit vague and, to be honest, I found myself spending way too much time trying to figure out the corporate structure of whatever group it was that everyone was supposedly working for. Apparently, Duke works for Simon but Simon still has to get Duke’s permission before trying to kill Ava or, failing that, try to kill Duke so that Duke won’t complain about it. Duke spends a lot of time fishing and Simon spends a lot of time with his adorable family. I liked Simon’s house.

Anyway, Ava has returned to Boston, where she’s trying to reconnect with her family. It turns out that teenage Ava discovered that her father was cheating on her mom and that’s what set Ava on her downward spiral. Mom (Geena Davis) is now a hypercritical semi-recluse. Meanwhile, Ava’s sister, Judy (Jess Wexler), is a singer in a band and she’s engaged to Michael (Common, who, for some reason, keeps getting cast in all of these extremely wimpy roles), who just happens to be Ava’s ex-boyfriend. And Michael is a gambling addict who owes a ton of money to Toni (Joan Chen). It’s hinted that Toni and Ava also have a past but then again, everyone in the film has a past with Ava. It’s get a little bit difficult to keep track of it all.

Ava gets off to a bad start by making us sit through one of Ava’s jobs. She kills an accountant but first she asks him a lot questions about why anyone would want him dead because apparently, she’s an ethical assassin. The scene goes on forever and it features Jessica Chastain trying to speak with an Arkansas accent. Things picked up a bit during the opening credits, which was largely made up of still frames from Ava’s past. However, once the credits ended and the film’s actual story got started, things quickly went back downhill.

The main problem with Ava is one of sensibility. Both Jessica Chastain and director Tate Taylor have totally the wrong sensibility for a film like this. Ava is essentially a work of pulp fiction but Chastain takes herself far too seriously to actually bring a sense of fun to the title role. Meanwhile, Tate Taylor directs as if he’s never had a single subversive thought in his life. (In Taylor’s defense, he was a last minute replacement for the film’s original director, Matthew Newton.) Ava is a film that cries out for a star like Gina Carano and a director like John Stockwell, people who have no hesitation about totally digging in and embracing the silliness of it all. Instead, we get Chastain and Taylor trying to give us a semi-realistic look at a woman battling her addictions and trying make peace with her past. Malkovich, Farrell, and Chen all seem to get the fact that Ava should be a fun B-movie, unfortunately, Taylor and Chastain apparently didn’t get the memo. (Of course, Chastain produced the film so maybe it was her co-stars who didn’t get the memo. Who knows?)

Ava commits the sin of taking itself too seriously. Check out John Stockwell’s In The Blood or Phillip Noyce’s Salt instead.

Lisa Reviews The Premiere Episode Of Filthy Rich

Posted on September 21, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have to admit that I have a sneaky admiration for network television.

I mean, on the one hand, the networks are dying. After decades of dominating America’s free time, network television was pushed aside first by cable and now by streaming services. It’s been a long time since anyone looked to the big four networks in search of ground-breaking entertainment. (Don’t even get me started on the CW.) In many ways, the networks feel like relics of a bygone era. Why structure your life around staying at home on a certain night so that you can catch whatever’s on NBC, ABC, CBS, or Fox when you can just DVR it or watch it online at your own convenience?

And yet, the networks carry on. In the middle of the Streaming Revolution, the networks continue to insist that they’re at the forefront of American culture. “Look,” they say, “We have football! We have the awards shows! We have game shows hosted by formerly funny comedians! We have the smarmiest late night talk shows host around! We have the nightly news!” There’s something oddly touching about the refusal of the networks to admit that they’re no longer particularly relevant. They’re like Charles Foster Kane, isolated away in Xanadu and insisting that he’s still as powerful and important as he’s always been.

I guess that’s why I’m always fascinated by the start of a new television season. That never-say-die spirit just appeals to me and I always imagine a bunch of network executives saying, at the start of each season, “This time, we’re going to show Netflix and HBO how it’s done!” With the Emmys now over and done with, the 2020-2021 network television season has begun. For me, It’s always interesting to see which shows become a surprise hit and which shows end up getting cancelled after just three weeks. Oddly enough, the previous television season brought us no real hits and only a few dramatic cancellations. That’s the first time I can remember anything like that happening. It was strange.

This new season is also going to be strange because, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, production on a lot of shows were halted. Of the few new dramas and sitcoms that are scheduled for this season, the majority of them are starting in October. Even once the season does get started in earnest, most nights are going to be dominated by celebrity-themed games shows and reality competition programming. That said, I remain an optimist. Surely, there will be at least one good new drama or sitcom on network television this season, right?

Well, it probably won’t be Filthy Rich.

Filthy Rich, which premiered on Fox on Monday night, is the latest primetime soap opera. It’s a show about a wealthy Southern family that owns a Christian television network. When the patriarch of the family is killed in a plane crash, it leads to all of his bastard children coming out of the woodwork so that they can get their inheritance and blah blah blah. It’s meant to be campy and over-the-top and satirical but, judging from the pilot, it just tries too hard. Kim Cattrall plays the scheming matriarch and her erratic southern accent serves to remind that us that Kim Cattrall doesn’t exactly have the greatest range as an actress. Meanwhile, none of the children are really that interesting and even the big, ornately decorated mansion seems rather dull. It’s all a bit too calculated to be genuinely subversive.

With its portrait of scheming rich people and Christian hypocrites, Filthy Rich feels like the edgiest show of 1999. Unfortunately, it’s airing in 2020 and, at this point, we’ve all seen enough Ryan Murphy productions to be able to guess every single thing happens in the pilot for Filthy Rich. (Admittedly, Filthy Rich is not actually a Ryan Murphy production. Instead, it was developed by the director of The Help, Tate Taylor.) There’s not a single surprise to be found. The show seems to think that it’s blowing our minds but, at this point, it takes more than a supporting character smoking weed to be shocking. What would have made Filthy Rich better? It probably would have helped if it had aired on HBO or maybe even FX. Instead, it’s a primetime network show that tries hard to convince us that it’s edgy when it’s actually totally mundane.

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine Filthy Rich surviving against Dancing With The Stars and The Voice so hopefully, everyone involved will move on to better things.

Playing Catch-Up With The Films of 2019: Ma (dir by Tate Taylor)

Posted on December 25, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, Ma! I had such high hopes for you!

When I first saw the trailer, I assumed that Ma would be kind of a silly horror film where Octavia Spencer plays a woman who buys beer for a bunch of teenagers and then develops an unhealthy obsession with them and then freaks out when all the teenagers are like, “We don’t want to spend all of our time hanging out with a 50 year-old.” I thought it would be a nicely simple little film and I was looking forward to it because Octavia Spencer is a great actress who, far too often, gets typecast as everyone’s surrogate maternal figure. I really wanted a chance to see her just go crazy on film.

And, make no mistake about it, Spencer does get to go crazy in Ma and that’s fun to watch but the film itself gets weighed down by a plot that’s a hundred times more complicated than it needs to be. It turns out that Ma isn’t just someone who is a little bit too clingy for her own good. No, instead, Ma has got an elaborate scheme going so that she can get revenge on the children of the people who humiliated her in high school and …. well, who cares? I mean, this is a good example of a film that could have been a lot of fun except for the fact that someone decided to try to make a statement.

(Tate Taylor previously directed Spencer in The Help and if you think that there’s little in The Help that would suggest that the future director of Ma had an affinity for or understanding of the horror genre, you’re right.)

Octavia Spencer is obviously having a lot of fun with the role of Ma but the film, for some reason, spends a lot of time following a host of other characters, none of whom are as interesting. It all come down to yet another Saw-style torture chamber and that sort of thing really hasn’t been interesting for a while. In the end, Ma is a missed opportunity.

Oh well.

2016 In Review: Lisa Picks The 16 Worst Films of 2016!

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, here’s the time that I know we’ve all been waiting for! It’s time for me to reveal my picks for the 16 worst films of 2016!

(Why 2016? Because Lisa doesn’t do odd numbers!)

Now, I should make clear that these are my picks. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other writers here at Through The Shattered Lens. In fact, I know that a few of them most definitely do not!

What type of year was 2016? It was a pretty bad one. There weren’t many memorable films released but there was a lot of mediocrity and disappointment. Do you know why 2016 was so bad? I think it’s because, if you add up 2 plus 1 plus 6, you end up with 9, an odd number. For that same reason, 2017 is going to be much better. If you add up 2 plus 1 plus 7, you end up with 10, which is an even number that can be cleanly divided.

So fear not! 2017 is going to be a great year!

For now, however, here are my picks for the 16 worst films of 2016!

16. The Girl on the Train (dir by Tate Taylor)

15. The Fifth Wave (dir by J Blakeson)

14. Alice Through the Looking Glass (dir by James Bobin)

13. Jane Got A Gun (dir by Gavin O’Connor)

12. Mother’s Day (dir by Garry Marshall)

11. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (dir by Burr Steers)

10. The Sea of Trees (dir by Gus Van Sant)

9. Money Monster (dir by Jodie Foster)

8. Me Before You (dir by Thea Sharrock)

7. Independence Day: Resurgence (dir by Roland Emmerich)

6. Zoolander 2 (dir by Ben Stiller)

5. The Purge: Election Year (dir by James DeMonaco)

4. Paradox (dir by Michael Hurst)

3. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (dir by Zack Snyder)

2. Yoga Hosers (dir by Kevin Smith)

And finally, the worst film of 2016 … drum roll please ….

HARDCORE HENRY! (dir by Ilya Naishuller)

Seriously, Hardcore Henry is one of the few films that I have ever had to walk out on. I literally got physically ill while watching the film, largely due to the nonstop shaky cam. Seriously — when your film’s selling point is a technique that literally induces nausea, you’re going to have some problems. Now, before anyone leaves any angry comments, I did make it a point to go back and watch the rest of Hardcore Henry before making out this list. Not only does Hardcore Henry feature a nausea-inducing gimmick but it’s also a rather uninspired and dull action film.

(Feel free to also check out my picks for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015!)

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and let us know! And if you disagree, please let me know what movie you think was worse than Hardcore Henry!

Tomorrow, I will be posting my 10 favorite songs of 2016!

Previous Entries In The Best of 2016:

Film Review: The Girl On The Train (dir by Tate Taylor)

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before I get around to talking about The Girl On The Train, I’m going to tell you a little story about myself.

A few years ago, I used to make a point of riding the DART train. (DART stands for Dallas Area Rapid Transit. Large sections of Upstream Color were filmed on a DART train.) Every weekend, instead of driving out to the Dallas Angelika or the Dallas Museum of Art and contributing to climate change or whatever it was that I was supposedly doing whenever I drove my car, I would hop on the train. It was a little inconvenient but I was saving the world. Or something.

It was about a 30 minute ride from my local DART Station to downtown Dallas and I have to admit that I actually used to enjoy it. I would always look out the window and watch as Dallas passed by. I got to know all of the buildings and houses on the route pretty well. Thanks to riding the DART train, I discovered that there’s a house on Forrest Lane that’s been boarded up for five years and counting. Near Spring Creek, there’s a two-story house that I wouldn’t mind owning. It’s a two-story glass house and it has a really nice deck that looks out over the creek. I would always look at those houses and, in my mind, I would make up lurid stories about the people who lived there. For a while, it was great fun.

(Unfortunately, it eventually stopped being fun but that’s a story that will have to wait for whenever I finally get around to reviewing Ms. 45…)

As I watched The Girl On The Train, I started to think about those times on the DART train. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that every story that I came up with while sitting on my DART train was a hundred times more interesting than anything that happened in The Girl On The Train.

Emily Blunt stars as Rachel Watson. Rachel is an alcoholic. She got divorced from Tom (Justin Theroux) after she discovered that Tom was having an affair with their real estate agent, Anna Boyd (Rebecca Ferguson). Tom and Anna are now married and have a baby. Rachel, meanwhile, is a blackout drunk who has been unemployed for a year. She spends her time on a train, drinking and ride back and forth between Connecticut and New York.

Every night, the train stops near Rachel’s old house. Rachel looks out the window and she stares at her former home. Occasionally, she sees Tom and Anna celebrating their new life. Rachel also finds herself obsessing on the house next door. Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett) lives at the house and works as Tom and Anna’s nanny. As Rachel discovers from looking out the train’s window, Megan is cheating on her husband with a mysterious, bearded man (Edgar Ramirez).

(Rachel has a really good view from her window seat. Admittedly, I’m notoriously near-sighted so I might not be the best judge, but I could never actually see what was happening inside any of the houses that I stared at. Rachel, however, must have super vision. Maybe she was Supergirl before she turned into an alcoholic. Who knows?)

One day, a drunk-off-her-ass Rachel forces her way off of the train and stumbles towards her former home. She thinks that she sees Anna jogging and chases after her. “Whore!” Rachel yells before passing out. When Rachel regains consciousness, she can’t remember anything that happened. But she has vague memories of being involved in some sort of struggle…

Eventually, Rachel learns that Megan is missing and presumed murdered. Even worse, Rachel is the number one suspect. The main detective (who is somewhat inevitably played by Allison Janney) suspects that Rachel mistook Megan for Anna. It turns out that Rachel has a history of erratic behavior. She even tried to kidnap Tom and Anna’s baby! Seriously, lock Rachel up!

Trying to figure out what happened and clear her name, Rachel approaches Megan’s husband, Scott (Luke Evans) and pretends to be a friend of Megan’s. It turns out that Scott was an abusive husband. Soon, he’s both confiding in Rachel and encouraging her to start drinking again. Rachel starts spending more and more time with Scott and it becomes obvious that she’s trying to live the life that she once imagined that Megan and Scott had. There’s an interesting subtext to both Rachel’s obsession with Megan and her attempt to start a new relationship with Scott but it’s never really explored. Instead, it’s brought up and then abandoned a few scenes later.

In fact, as a film, The Girl On The Train never really explores anything. (It only grudgingly hints at the complexity of the book on which it was based.) As opposed to similar films like Gone Girl or Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, there’s not much depth or insight to The Girl On The Train. I’ve read some reviews that have complained that The Girl On The Train is “melodramatic” or “trashy,” but, if that were the case, it would at least be a fun movie to watch. This is one of those films that thinks it’s a lot deeper than it actually is.

The Girl On The Train was probably doomed as soon as Tate Taylor was hired to direct it. Taylor previously directed both The Help and a musical biopic called Get On Up. Tate Taylor is one of those directors who goes out of his way not to challenge his audience (The Help is one of the most positive films about systemic racism that I’ve ever seen) but The Girl On The Train needed a director with more of a subversive edge. The Girl On The Train needed a director who would embrace the film’s pulpy sensibility as opposed to one who would go out of his way to sand away the story’s rough edges and create an inoffensive and bland product that would be perfect for mass consumption.

And then you’ve got the film’s cast, which is full of talented performers who all seem to be uniquely uninspired by the material that they have to work with. Emily Blunt did such good work in Looper and Sicario so why is she so boring here? Why does Justin Theroux seem to be eagerly awaiting the end of the movie? Why are both Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson reduced to playing characters who feel as if they’ve sprung out of a misogynist’s daydream? What is Edgar Ramirez even doing in the movie? Or Lisa Kudrow? Or Laura Prepon? Why is it that every world-weary female authority figure has to be played by Allison Janney? Why? Why? Why!?

So, I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed with The Girl On The Train. I think I would have been more entertained if I had just hopped on the DART train and let my imagination do the rest of the work.

Embracing the Melodrama #57: Winter’s Bone (dir by Debra Granik)

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I can still remember what it felt like, back in 2010, as I stepped out of the theater where I had just watched Winter’s Bone. I had just spent 100 minutes engrossed in that film’s world and it was somewhat jarring to suddenly find myself back in my world. The air around me was still. The clear sky above me seemed to be a totally new shade of blue. The sounds of passing cars and overheard conversations echoed in my head. When I walked, I felt as if I was moving at a different, dreamier pace than everyone else, as if I was still only partially back in my world.

That’s the type of film that Winter’s Bone is. It’s a film about life on the fringes, a portrait of a very real part of America that a lot of people don’t even realize exists. It’s a film that sticks with you and dares you to try to forget the people who it has introduced you to and the stories that it tells.

Winter’s Bone takes place in the Ozarks, a society and world that is dominated by meth and secrets. Speaking as someone who still has family who live on the outskirts of the world depicted here, I can say that Winter’s Bone gets both the big picture and the little details right. Everything from the unbreakable cycle of poverty to the defiant resilience of the people is depicted just as it is. Make no mistake about it — the people in Winter’s Bone may not have much but they do have their pride. It’s portrayed best in the scene where meth head Teardrop (John Hawkes) glares down the county sheriff (Garret Dillahunt), letting him know that, regardless of who is wearing the uniform, this is Teardrop’s world.

Teardrop is the uncle of 17 year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), who is considering joining the army once she graduates from high school but, for now, spends all of her time taking care of her mentally ill mother and her two younger siblings. Her father, who is one of the county’s best meth cooks, was recently arrested and has a court date approaching. However, he has apparently skipped bail and disappeared. When Ree is told that, unless her father shows up for his court date, she and her family will lose their house, Ree sets out to try to find him.

Ree, however, knows that her father would never have jumped bail and she also knows that there’s no way he died in a meth lab fire, as some people are claiming. She knows that her father has been murdered but, unlike Teardrop, Ree has no interest in getting revenge. She just wants to find his body so she can prove that he’s dead and her family can keep their home. Unfortunately, even this brings Ree into conflict with the local crime boss.

Taking place on a blasted landscape of dilapidated farms, rusty pickups, and the burned ruins of abandoned meth labs, Winter’s Bone is an unusually powerful piece of Southern gothic. It’s also a film that — unlike a lot of other acclaimed movies — actually gets better with repeat viewings. When you first see it, you’re overwhelmed by the film’s bleakness. When it ends, you’re not sure if you should be happy or sad. The second time, however, you can better appreciate the skill with which director Debra Granik tells her story, the way she frames Ree against the landscape as if Ree was the lone hero in a classic western and how the scenes where Ree searches for her father in a swamp are full of shadows and menace. The third time, you can better appreciate the performances of characters actors like John Hawkes, Garret Dillahunt, and especially Dale Dickey. The fourth time, you no longer have any doubts. Winter’s Bone is one of the best films that you’ve ever seen.

And, through it all, Jennifer Lawrence is there and reminding you why she became a star in the first place. She may have won her Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook and she may be best known for being the face of The Hunger Games franchise but Winter’s Bone remains Jennifer Lawrence’s best and bravest performance. Without a hint of vanity or reluctance, Lawrence portrays Ree as a resilient and unsentimental survivor and you can’t help but cheer her on as she refuses to back down to any authority, legal or otherwise. By the end of the film, you know that Ree is probably as trapped as anyone but you can’t help but hope that she’ll somehow find something better.

If you haven’t seen Winter’s Bone, you need to.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night: The Help (dir. by Tate Taylor)

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I actually watched several things last night, including the season premieres of The Bachelor and Intervention. However, neither one of those is an Oscar contender. The Help is, so I decided I better take the time to watch the film via OnDemand.

Why Was I Watching It?

I wasn’t planning on seeing this movie when it first originally opened in theaters because, just based on the trailer, it looked like it would be your typical, terribly self-congratulatory mainstream films. I’ve seen far too many films that promote the same old stereotypes in the name of progress and tolerance, as if good intentions can make up for bad filmmaking. But, so many of my girlfriends came to me raving about how much they loved this film and then my Aunt Kate just about disinherited me when I told her I hadn’t seen the movie (or read the book that it’s based on) and eventually I realized that I had to see the film. Add to that, chances are that this film is going to be an Oscar contender.

What Was It About

In segregated Mississippi, aspiring writer Skeeter (Emma Stone) decides to write book about the life of the African-American maids and nannies who work for her best friends. After some initial difficulty, she wins the trust of two maids (Viola Davis and Octavia Spenser) and gets down to exposing the truth.

What Worked

First off, The Help is a perfect example of a well-made, entertaining mainstream film. I laughed at the funny parts, I cried at the sad parts, and I thoroughly enjoyed the film, even though it kinda fell apart during the 2nd hour. There’s a lot of very legitimate issues that you can raise about how the film portrays life in the segregated South but the film itself is entertaining and well-made.

It’s also one the best acted films of 2011 with Viola Davis, Octavia Spenser, and Emma Stone all giving great performances. Jessica Chastain is funny playing a clueless newlywed and Bryce Dallas Howard does a typically good job playing the type of bitchy Queen Bee that we’ve all know and have all secretly hoped would end up fat and divorced. I also thought Allison Janney, who plays Stone’s mother, gave an excellent and underrated performance.

This film was directed with a perfect eye for the details needed to make even the most minor of characters memorable. If nothing else, I enjoyed watching it just to see what everyone would be wearing from scene to scene.

The film’s first hour is probably as perfectly paced and tonally balanced as any film I’ve seen. However, things fall apart during the second hour (more on that below). Luckily, the film’s ending is powerful and partially redeems the film’s uneven tone.

What Didn’t Work

The film is moves along pretty well until the 2nd hour, at which point it smashed into a wall created by the inability of mainstream film to truly honestly deal with racism. At the start of the second hour, civil rights leader Medgar Evers is assassinated by a member of the Ku Klux Klan and I found myself waiting for some sort of expression of anger (or really, any emotion other than stoic suffering) on the part of “the help.” Instead, we get a scene where both Viola Davis and Emma Stone are watching Evers’s funeral together and both are impressed to see John F. Kennedy show up. In the next scene, Davis has put a picture of President Kennedy up on her wall next to a picture of Jesus. So, in other words, this film reacts to the murder of a black man but deifying a white man. After showing us a clue of violent reality, it’s as if the film can’t figure out how to balance out the ugly realities of racism with the film’s need to appeal to the widest possible audience. As a result, the next hour of the film feels rather disjointed and uneven. Even though the film partially redeems itself with one of the best endings of the year, it’s still hard not to feel as if we’re watching a feel good film about something nobody should feel all that good about.

Like a lot of mainstream films about racism, a good deal of this film centers on the friendship between blacks and a few white people who, magically, don’t appear to have a shred of prejudice within them despite the fact that they were raised in the same racist culture as every other white person in the film. As a result, the racism seen in the film doesn’t really seem like it’s an ingranied part of culture as much as it just seems like the result of a couple of bullies acting like jerks. As a result, despite its very good intentions, a film like The Help will often unintentionally minimize just what a struggle the fight for civil rights was and is.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

Needless to say, I totally related to Emma Stone’s character in this film.

Lessons Learned

It’s difficult to make a feel-good movie about racism.

Here Are The 2012 Critics’ Choice Movie Award Nominees

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, the Broadcast Film Critics Association announced their nominations for the 17th Annual Critics’ Choice Awards. The BFCA is the largest of the so-called “major” critics’ groups (and, interestingly enough, it’s also the newest and the least prestigious) and it has a fairly good track record of predicting the actual Oscar nominations. The awards themselves will be handed out on January 12th, 2012 in a self-important, kinda seedy ceremony that will be broadcast on VH-1.

BEST PICTURE
The Artist
The Descendants
Drive
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

BEST ACTOR
George Clooney – The Descendants
Leonardo DiCaprio – J. Edgar
Jean Dujardin – The Artist
Michael Fassbender – Shame
Ryan Gosling – Drive
Brad Pitt – Moneyball

BEST ACTRESS
Viola Davis – The Help
Elizabeth Olsen – Martha Marcy May Marlene
Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton – We Need to Talk About Kevin
Charlize Theron – Young Adult
Michelle Williams – My Week With Marilyn

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Kenneth Branagh – My Week With Marilyn
Albert Brooks – Drive
Nick Nolte – Warrior
Patton Oswalt – Young Adult
Christopher Plummer – Beginners
Sir Andrew Serkis – Rise of the Planet of the Apes

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Berenice Bejo – The Artist
Jessica Chastain – The Help
Melissa McCarthy – Bridesmaids
Carey Mulligan – Shame
Octavia Spencer – The Help
Shailene Woodley – The Descendants

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS
Asa Butterfield – Hugo
Elle Fanning – Super 8
Thomas Horn – Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Ezra Miller – We Need to Talk About Kevin
Saoirse Ronan – Hanna
Shailene Woodley – The Descendants

BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE
The Artist
Bridesmaids
The Descendants
The Help
The Ides of March

BEST DIRECTOR
Stephen Daldry – Extreme Loud & Incredibly Close
Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
Alexander Payne – The Descendants
Nicolas Winding Refn – Drive
Martin Scorsese – Hugo
Steven Spielberg – War Horse

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius
50/50 – Will Reiser
Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen
Win Win – Screenplay by Tom McCarthy, Story by Tom McCarthy & Joe Tiboni
Young Adult – Diablo Cody

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Descendants – Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – Eric Roth
The Help – Tate Taylor
Hugo – John Logan
Moneyball – Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, Story by Stan Chervin

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Artist – Guillaume Schiffman
Drive – Newton Thomas Sigel
Hugo – Robert Richardson
Tree of Life – Emmanuel Lubezki
War Horse – Janusz Kaminski

BEST ART DIRECTION
The Artist – Production Designer: Laurence Bennett, Art Director: Gregory S. Hooper
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 – Production Designer: Stuart Craig, Set Decorator: Stephenie McMillan
Hugo – Production Designer: Dante Ferretti, Set Decorator: Francesca Lo Schiavo
The Tree of Life – Production Designer: Jack Fisk, Art Director: David Crank
War Horse – Production Designer: Rick Carter, Set Decorator: Lee Sandales

BEST EDITING
The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius and Anne-Sophie Bion
Drive – Matthew Newman
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall
Hugo – Thelma Schoonmaker
War Horse – Michael Kahn

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
The Artist – Mark Bridges
The Help – Sharen Davis
Hugo – Sandy Powell
Jane Eyre – Michael O’Connor
My Week With Marilyn – Jill Taylor

BEST MAKEUP
Albert Nobbs
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
The Iron Lady
J. Edgar
My Week With Marilyn

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Hugo
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Super 8
The Tree of Life

BEST SOUND
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Hugo
Super 8
The Tree of Life
War Horse

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
The Adventures of Tintin
Arthur Christmas
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss in Boots
Rango

BEST ACTION MOVIE
Drive
Fast Five
Hanna
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Super 8

BEST COMEDY
Bridesmaids
Crazy, Stupid, Love
Horrible Bosses
Midnight in Paris
The Muppets

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
In Darkness
Le Havre
A Separation
The Skin I Live In
Where Do We Go Now

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Buck
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
George Harrison: Living in the Material World
Page One: Inside the New York Times
Project Nim
Undefeated

BEST SONG
“Hello Hello” – performed by Elton John and Lady Gaga/written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin – Gnomeo & Juliet
“Life’s a Happy Song” – performed by Jason Segel, Amy Adams and Walter/written by Bret McKenzie – The Muppets
“The Living Proof” – performed by Mary J. Blige/written by Mary J. Blige, Thomas Newman and Harvey Mason, Jr. – The Help
“Man or Muppet” – performed by Jason Segel and Walter/written by Bret McKenzie – The Muppets
“Pictures in My Head” – performed by Kermit and the Muppets/written by Jeannie Lurie, Aris Archontis and Chen Neeman – The Muppets

BEST SCORE
The Artist – Ludovic Bource
Drive – Cliff Martinez
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Hugo – Howard Shore
War Horse – John Williams

The BFCA has obviously made a lot of nominations and some of them are interesting but I have to be honest: the BFCA as an organization annoys me with how they’re always bragging about how big they are and how they’re so good at celebrating the conventional establishment wisdom. So, I’ll just say that its nice to see Hanna getting at least some sort of recognition (even if that recognition is kinda minor.)