Lost, but NewYearsward!

Lost, but Homeward is back! And I'll get some extra updates in between still, so there's non-stop LbHing around here! But as such, this means I gotta keep up the pace and get things done, so let's head towards movie talk in a quick, elegant fashion.

Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. With American Hustle around, I feel like... now we're talking. This is more like it. It may only share peripheral themes with that movie, but you know. Two movies about façades, both pretty excessive and lavish... but this one feels justifiedly so. This one's excessive and lavish as shit, and it's got a strong, magnetic enough attitude to carry it all out convincingly. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jordan Belfort, a man who rose to infamy after getting involved in some pretty shady stock market crap. He partied, got high, fucked around in a bubble of his own creation. I could go on about the themes here, of how by keeping the audience in the dark about the financial fine prints of their deeds the movie's actually better, especially since that's the point of the film -- they're making themselves rich from your own ignorance; ... but I think that I'll skip that in favor of talking about the man himself. Leo.

"Leo's so thirsty for an Oscar", the running joke as of late. I think his thirst reached its apex by the time The Aviator was released, but his penchant for gravitas hasn't fallen ever since. Anything beats the late 90s romantic dramas, I assume. Since the 2000s, he's been with an insane cavalcade of prestige directors, yet his roles have very much remained in the realm of "serious, tormented guy", save for a couple of exceptions. And also since the 2000s, Leo's associated himself with Martin Scorsese, forging a professional relationship that's proven to be just as productive as the one he had with DeNiro when he rose to fame. So it's been a few movies now, the dude's getting a tad stocky. He's good yet he hasn't found that one role yet, the one that didn't scream "Oscar pls" so transparently. Or maybe he did, with Quentin Tarantino.

I think it's a great thing that Wolf of Wall Street was released after Django Unchained, because if you thought that that was the most out-there, batshit insane Leo will ever be... oh you just wait. That movie was just an opening act. Here, this main event... it's a three-hour fuckfest of are-you-kidding-mes and what-is-that-evens, and I'm not even talking about the sights and smells of his expensive, wasteful parties. Leo DiCaprio's so, so surprisingly great at comedy, here. Charming you up and down, doing all sort of physical gags and scenes -- there's this one scene, all done in one shot, that... oh my god. I can't even tell you. The motions and the context of everything is so, so great. And the way he pulls it off, just the stuff you'd say "yeah he earns an Oscar for this". The Best Actor race's as usual, is ultra busy, but if one of them's falling off, Leo should get in there for sure. I'm so, so rooting for a nod, and maybe even a win for him for this... portfolio-esque showcase.

And the rest of the ensemble's great, too! Jonah Hill's scummy, all-talk-no-action handmade exec, Jon Bernthal's loyal streetsmart gangster, ... and for as little as they show up, Matthew McConaughey and Jean Dujardin are also impeccable here. Although, if I had a caveat, or a negative thing to say about it... it would be regarding its length. Three hours, for as fun as they were, is still too much. At times it drags on a frentic monotony, and you can surely do without so much insistence on partying. One of my favorite film critics said that this is a movie that could've been either shorter of a mini-series. I agree with him -- as it is, it's not a bad product, but it's a workout session of a movie. If your movie theater isn't equipped with proper air conditioning, you'll be feeling wearysome after three hours. Mic and all, it's like a Leo DiCaprio concert you're attending, and you're jumping up and down for three hours. It'll be tiring, but fun. Go check it out as soon as possible.

Well surely there must be a good artwork for Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, right? It's been very well received, it's heading to the Oscars pretty strong, and... nope. Well, this one drawing of the director will do, I guess. So... what else is there to say about it. It's as good as unflinching as you've read and heard it is. It's painful to sit through, but in a good way, because while last year Django Unchained and Lincoln glossed over the subject with fun and stoic, inspirational moods respectively, it's important to remember that slavery... well, happened. People were treated as goods, they could be bought, sold, borrowed, stolen, torn apart, they had no rights whatsoever. And for as much as I'd like to use the past tense here, actual, straight-up slavery's still going on in some places of the world. So to have a movie detailing the process of becoming a slave and living as one wasn't just important, but, you know. Needed. Like bitter medicine.

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a born-free black man from Saratoga, NY, who earns a living for his family as a construction worker and as a violin player. However, two men wanting him to join their circus gig as a musician drug him, and have him kidnapped to the southern states. He's assigned the identity of a runaway slave, and from there, it's.. 12 years a slave, as the title suggests. It's based on Solomon Northup's memoirs, and from what I've been able to gather, for the most part is a rather truthful adaptation. It's so cold, so crude and so... explicit, you end up shell-shocked afterwards. I've heard a complain about the movie that it doesn't feel like the character's gone through 12 years -- maybe that's a problem on the editing side of things, or the makeup to make him age slightly to look 12 years older, but in the end, even if it was 1 year a slave you'd be horrified regardless.

Ejiofor's witness and victim of several unspoken atrocities, to which he does his best to keep his hopes and fortitude up. He's smart, but does his best to not be too smart in such an environment -- and thus, by being quiet, he also acts remarkably great as an avatar for the audience, since the movie also deals a lot with slaves that were born as such, and never had a life outside of it. Michael Fassbender's his second owner, a rageful religious fanatic who believes his actions aren't only appropiate, but biblically right. That puts Lupita Nyong'o and Sarah Paulson against each other -- the former's a slave whom Fassbender favors and personally abuses; and the latter's Fassbender's wife, who's jealous and wary of the attention's Nyong'o's getting from him. Paulson goes to such fucking lengths to make the life of Nyong'o impossible just to make Fassbender's impossible by proxy, and... man, the way things escalate, to such a graphically industrial degree... it's just the fuel of nightmares. It's hell on Earth.

If I have anything to complain about the movie is... its score. Don't get me wrong, it's great and all, but it borrows way too heavily from Inception. Hans Zimmer scored both films, and for 12, he uses a remixed, rearranged version of Inception's "Time" piece -- the track playing when all the participants wake up from the dream, and individually leave the airport, and then Leo DiCaprio sees his children and leaves us with the mother of all unresolved endings. The thing is that this version of "Time" shows up so often that it became jarring to me. My mind escaped to the Inception's last shot whenever it showed up -- but I don't want to be a douchebag here, either: if you haven't seen Inception, you're not going to bother. You're not going to bother even if everything you remember about Inception's score is the BRAWWWWMM that was all the rage back in 2010. But I own the Inception soundtrack, I've listened it to death, and it gave me a bit of a Pavlovian effect whenever it played. It's not you, it's me.

I don't want to be the prick that talks about the Oscars nonstop (because I am, honestly), but hey. If this movie's going to win the Oscar, super-fine by me. It's such an authoral work, so grim and brutal that it offsets the playfulness of the last three winners while still being darker than No Country for Old Men, The Departed, and The Hurt Locker -- There Will Be Blood could be a similar feat of human degradation, but that didn't win, so let's make amends here. But failing that, here's hoping Gravity wins, then. Check it out.

Jean-Marc Vallée's Dallas Buyers Club. Much like the two other movies I've reviewed so far here, this one is also based on true events. It tells the story of Ron Woodroof, played by Matthew McConaughey, a man who in order to fight against AIDS goes through whatever legal loophole to acquire, smuggle and distribute pharmaceutical drugs that the FDA hasn't approved yet.

Well, that's the gist of it, really, when it comes down to the movie itself. Ron gets AIDS, goes through denial, and later rejection from his own friends, which fuels him to seek ways to get the drugs he hears they're good for him. But as his situation actually worsens, he decides to look outside the box and finds alternative drugs elsewhere (not the US). Realizing the profit potential of smuggling the drugs, he reluctantly joins forces with Rayon (played by Jared Leto), a transvestite also is afflicted by AIDS, so he'd be able to reach an actual audience. And from there, things shape up.

It's not like I have a lot to talk about the movie itself. I really liked it, but I feel that I'd be spoiling it if I were to go further from this. So let's talk about the performances -- McConaughey and Leto are terrific. They take their bodies to the limit to look as weakened by AIDS as possible. It gets scary at times. But then, there's also their chemistry together. They're so much fun, being so opposite to each other. Ron's a redneck, trailer trash homophobe, and Rayon's straight up a woman born as a man. Saying he's "so out there" is one thing, but then there's his sincere feminity and playfulness to it. Both are characters that could've easily fallen into stereotypes, but since they have something as dire as AIDS in common, they allow themselves to influence each other and cooperate to stay alive.

And their professional relationship grows on you. They bicker and fight, but it's really heartwarming to see them as friends in the end, albeit it where by the urgency of AIDS or not. By the way, I gotta be the Oscar prick again -- if there's a "lock" at the acting races, it's Jared Leto for Best Supporting Actor. If the 30 Second To Mars guy doesn't win, there will be e-riots. The same can be said about McConaughey, but as I mentioned, things are a lot busier over there at the leading actor race.

What else is there to say about it? Thematically speaking, it's not the deepest of films, but it's one with a beating, emotional heart, and a great, great accompanying film to something like How To Survive a Plague. If anything, if there's a theme here, is that under dangers greater than ourselves, we must find unity and cooperation to stay alive, despite our differences. I just wish U2's "One" played somewhere in this movie, because that's also a song about this whole thing, too. It's a song about tolerance. It's a song inspired by gay men confronting their parents as they reveal them they're HIV+. Again, check it out! But if you still want your U2-in-film fix, well...

Justin Chadwick's Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Ok, last "true story" film I'll feature today, I promise. And look, if I didn't have a whole lot to say about Dallas Buyers Club, regardless how much I liked it, I feel like I have less to say about this one. It's just the story of Mandela. His rise to notoriety, his time in jail, his long awaited release, the times surrounding his election, and that's pretty much it. It's performed quite well, Idris Elba and Naomie Harris feel very passionate on the subject and the man himself, but storywise I don't feel as much. It's biopic 101.

When you think about a biopic, what does come to mind? A lenghty, decade-spanning story of someone inspiring, going through his high and lows, but ultimately, becoming something greater than he ever hoped. You have your poetic moments, lit by the most orange sunset ever, and your defeats, paletted by hues of grayish blue, looking distant at things. You have a choir stepping in, chanting when the moment needs it the most, and in the end... you get photographs, to show how real everything was. I sound like a jerk here, since there are some truly good biopics out there and these tropes aren't really bad by themselves, but then again, I didn't get much freshness from this movie either. It's an okay film, but it never elevates itself from being The Nelson Mandela Film we've been waiting for so long. It just comes across as the prequel to Invictus by how narratively bland it is, and Idris Elba's take on Mandela isn't that far away from Morgan Freeman's acceptable imitation, either. Not really layered, but still decent enough to not be a mere cartooning of mannerisms.

If anything, I sort of liked how eclectic its score was. It went from native rhythms, to jazz and blues, to a more traditional orchestral score, to U2. As a dedicated U2logist, what do I think of "Ordinary Love"? It's a fine song with a catchy chorus, but much like the movie it was made for, it also comes across as sort of bland -- something I also felt from their last album, "No Line on the Horizon". It's not strong enough to be particularly memorable or be sung passionatedly, regardless of how much Bono said "Mandela's the true frontman of U2", or something like that in one of his latests rockstarnesses. It's a 3.5 out of 5 song. Still, big U2 fan here, so I'm hoping it'll be nominated for the Oscar -- alongside Coldplay's "Atlas" tune for The Hunger Fire: Catching Fire, no less.

And here we end up. Talking about the Oscars, and my favorite bands. Not the most memorable film to stay on topic, honestly. Moving on.

Spike Jonze's Her. The famed music video director, who in the 2000s turned out to be one of the freshest, most unpredictable filmmakers of his generation, stays true to form some ten-n-somethin' years later. I wouldn't know when this movie's ambiented in -- it suggests the future, but I'd like to think it's the present we'd have if Nikola Tesla had been taken seriously back in the day. Everything's so powerfully wireless that it could very well be. But for the sake of convienence, let's say it's the near future. Theodore, played by one surprisingly mellow Joaquin Phoenix, is a writer who makes a living writing letters for people who can't find the words or the emotional capacities in themselves to write them. However, he's also melancholic and blue himself, having gone through a blunt and still unfinished break up with his wife. He finds out that they're releasing this brand new operative system which can infer and react to feelings and events much like a normal person would. So he boots it up, the OS calls herself Samantha, and is played by Scarlett Johannson, and they form a relationship as she gets to know Theodore better and yearns to be able to physically reciprocate his feelings.

I think it presents a very interesting debate on artificial intelligence and the Turing Test, but, you know. I kinda missed the technobabble here. I know the idea is to blur the line between man and machine to make it look like Samantha's a self-aware being, much like Theodore naturally is, but... still, I could never actually tell myself "this is a computer", because she didn't acted like one, precisely. It's hard to put on words, but what I'm trying to say here is more than feeling like a reflection on human-machine interactions, ... I just felt like it was a Skype romance at best, and maybe that's because we barely see Theodore do anything with his computer. Maybe if he had Amy Adams' job (videogame designer), his interactions with Samantha would be deeper, but as it is, I don't feel like it's something as unique as its premise makes it sound. It's rom-commy.

But it's an original, clever concept to say the least. And despite all its hipsterisms, it's superbly designed. OK FINAL OSCAR PRICK HERE: If this doesn't get a best production design nomination, I'll start an e-riot myself. The Academy already dropped the ball superhard on Moonrise Kingdom, I don't think I could endure another betrayal after that. Still on the production side of things, Arcade Fire's score's lovely and melancholic, willfully reassuring the good times and the uncertainty of things to come. But as a whole, it's a movie I'd like to walk through more than I'd like to sit through. Its sets and costume designs are all so lovely and uniquely vibrant, but the plot itself is what I'm not so fond of. Not that I hate it or anything, but I feel that, like most hipsters out there, it's pretentious. But it's earnest and sincere enough to overcome vanity issues. I just wish that it focused a lot more on the strictly computer end of things. Like, how does Samantha work. I think it's cloud-based, but then again, the movie itself throws some hints that maybe it's not cloud-based. What's the purpose of having this OS, from a functional point of view? Who is the target demographic? All that sort of things which would make me understand its setting a lot better. Things that could ground Samantha further than just being a voice in a computer/clamshell portable thing that Theodore carries around.

I sort of recommend it.

And that's it for now! Stay healthy, and remember, January 18th the webcomic is back at dA! Best of luck!