Many of the top nominees were in the running before anyone saw them, but Martin Scorsese's Hugo is a pleasant surprise. Like The Artist, this film delights as it explores the history of movies. Scorsese makes a compelling case for 3D, playing George Melies's utterly charming 2D movies within the three dimensions of Parisian hustle-bustle. Hugo makes technology seem wondrous again: Melies was a superbly innovative artist, inventing the rules of cinema as he went along, and he's given a sensitive rendering by Ben Kingsley.
Billy Beane was another rule-breaker that the movies got right. Moneyball has been recommended as not just a sports film, but that's the beauty of it: director Bennett Miller's film is fundamentally about the game. As he did in Capote, Miller knows how to pull a quietly moving performance from his leading man. Brad Pitt's done best with quirky, jittery character roles, but I think he's finally growing into a solid actor, emotionally understated here and in The Tree of Life. He locks into the homespun charisma and surface cool of rabble-rouser Billy Beane. And he's not the only pro up at bat: Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin's energetic script; the reliable Philip Seymour Hoffman; and a surprisingly vulnerable Chris Pratt.
The Iron Lady could take a lesson from Miller's guiding hand. The Margaret Thatcher story puts its weight on makeup (some of the best old-age work I've seen) and the ubiquitous Meryl Streep. The film's certainly not to be dismissed. Phyllida Lloyd tries a different approach to the biopic, focusing on the undocumented Thatcher, the woman off-stage who struggles not with self-induced addictions but with unavoidable dementia. It's a conversation starter--what does the strident prime minister do when she's losing her strength?--but Abi Morgan's script only presents her time in office as quick snippets in montages. The circumstances surrounding milestones like the Falkland Islands are glossed over, sending me to Wikipedia. Streep's up to the challenge, and she gives us some real bite when she can, but it feels like a film about any old woman.
50/50 is a more assured look at preparing for death. Will Reiser based his script on his own battle with cancer in his twenties, and he's cast the eminently likable Joseph Gordon-Levitt as his fictionalized self. Reiser and Jonathan Levine present his battle with good humor, including Seth Rogen's attempt to use his illness as an "in" with the ladies. The film is better at balancing comedy and seriousness than the similar The Big C, though Laura Linney in that show has a lifeforce that the characters here don't approach. The film is sweet and sad, never mawkish, and seldom surprising. Anna Kendrick is winning as a clumsy therapist-turned-love interest; we know where this is going.
The Help left me with a similar feeling: The movie avoids preachiness, but we sense that this Jackson, Mississippi was safer than the town people lived in. The forward-minded Skeeter (Emma Stone) wants to write a book from the perspective of the black maids and housekeepers, much to her less progressive friends' chagrin. Viola Davis owns this movie--her performance is the moral and emotional center of The Help. You see the exhaustion and loss Abilean has endured, but she also possesses the spark of change. She is proud and scared, torn between telling her story and facing the repercussions. If the film had dealt more with the after-effects of Skeeter's book, it might have found something deeper. But it's an interesting theory, nonetheless, that white women perpetuated domestic segregation, while their husbands stepped aside. The two black leads (Davis and Octavia Spencer) are the characters with the strongest voices (Skeeter, by contrast, is little more than a plot device), and we can only hope this film leads to more movie roles for them.
Looking for something truly unexpected? Rent Drive. The eeriely calm Ryan Gosling stars in this gruesome neo-noir as a stuntman/mechanic who, on the side, chauffers criminals to and from the scene of the crime. Director Nicolas Winding Refn cranks up the velocity as Gosling's driver gets mixed up in a botched robbery, trying to keep his head above water against hitmen played with loopy gusto by Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, and Ron Perlman. The shootouts and car chases feel genuinely dangerous and also ridiculous, thanks to the electronic beat and eighties synths on the soundtrack. It's as cruel as Blue Velvet, but we laugh more this time.
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