For those of us who harbor extreme ambivalence toward the Academy Awards and all they stand for, the Oscar ceremony this coming Sunday is likely to be a pendulum swinging between severe annoyance and cautious excitement. The whole concept of the awards is both noble and preposterous, best epitomized by the people who blast the notion of ranking works of art until they win an award and are suddenly humbled and gracious in their acceptance of the statue they once considered meaningless. Many, including myself on most days, decry the Academy Awards as a vapid evening of excess and self congratulation, perpetuating the myth that Hollywood is doing good in the world, validating stars’ fragile egos, and dear god I hope my favorite movie/director/actor wins!
By now, especially after the recently aired finale on PBS, most people probably have some awareness of Downton Abbey. Chances are you saw a title of an article on Twitter or somewhere on the internet about some dumb British period drama called "Downtown Abbey." Then maybe you quickly forgot about its existence. Then perhaps you noticed the show receiving a bunch of awards from various groups and thought hey, that's that show I heard about, oh but it's Downton, not Downtown. And then perhaps you started to hear tons of people talking about it, from people you know personally, to Colin Quinn and Jerry Seinfeld on Seinfeld's web show. And all of a sudden you were like "Why is everyone crazy about this stupid show?"
Valentine’s season has a way of emphasizing the nice, sweet parts of romantic relationships and glosses over the dirty, sloppy bits. Maybe that’s part of the point, to take a break from how lonely and alienated most people feel and just revel in the possibility that someone could actually know us and still like us despite this fact. I suppose it’s worthwhile to have a day to acknowledge this. And there are plenty of movies that highlight the mushy feelings that come with love and romance, and good on them for expressing those feelings.
But since there is no day or movie season specifically designed to celebrate the awkwardness that accompanies most romantic encounters, and since it’s an unavoidable part of the experience of sex and romance that gets ignored during a season purporting to highlight this aspect of our lives, it seems like as good a time as any to offer an appreciation of the movies that depict how awkward and uncomfortable love can be at times. Specifically, during the most intimate of times.
Consensus is next to impossible when it comes to judging the quality of movies. Dissenting opinion is encouraged, usually for good reason, by the constant discussion on fan sites and in theater lobbies, and an opinion that goes against the grain will earn you a ton of attention. That being said, there is virtual consensus in the verdict for A Good Day to Die Hard, and that verdict is that it is baaaaad. So bad.
By definition, it seems, romantic comedies are synonymous with cheesy rubbish. And so, many of us (I don’t know what category “we” fall into but we know who we are and there are plenty of us) dread the types of movies that get released around Valentine’s Day. How did it get to be this way? In my estimation, it’s kind of like with any genre of storytelling when the rhythms and subjects of a certain style of story or movie become so popular that they grow tired and cliché. They probably began in the right place, and were tapping into some aspect of human experience that was relatable and emotionally satisfying, but are so overused and outdated that they’re dull at best and horribly irritating at worst.
With Valentine’s Day comes every movie websites lists of Best Movies About Love, Most Romantic Movies Ever, Best Movies To Watch On Valentine’s, and then of course the accompanying lists to balance all this out, like Best Movies For Singles On Valentine’s Day and the like. Mostly though, we get to read and hear about the same movies year after year. And it’s sweet, and these movies are fun enough and awaken certain emotions that are expressed in a healthy way so long as we recognize the artifice of the thing that’s arousing them. And sometimes we’ll get a few movies earning mention that are legitimately and wholly lovely and romantic and heartwarming.
There were so many unbelievably, mind-blowingly good documentaries from 2012 that I haven’t even seen all the titles that critics have been raving about from this past year. I’ve seen a lot though, and the fact that I haven’t even seen a good number that have been receiving award press reinforces to me that this was a big year for the documentary in particular as well as for movies in general.
If there’s a dark horse with a real chance in this year’s Oscar race, it might just be Silver Linings Playbook. Now everyone’s saying it’s going to be Argo because everyone loves Ben Affleck all of a sudden, or rather they always loved him and found all the hatred to be just SO UNFAIR and now that he has done things that aren’t absolutely terrible we’re therefore going to give him every award there is to give a person. There are some who contend that Lincoln is still the pick to beat because it has the most nominations, it has the Spielberg factor, it has the Daniel Day-Lewis thing, and it has the topical advocacy aspect that if only government acted this way Obama would be able to save the country like Honest Abe did way back when. Hollywood has a tendency for delusions of grandeur. The delusions portrayed in Silver Linings Playbook, though, are one of the many charms about the movie that help maintain its place in the awards conversations.
When you’re dealing with Quentin Tarantino, controversy sort of comes with the territory. All of his films have been met with a healthy dose of outrage and various pleas for the sake of the children and all that is holy etc. etc. Pulp Fiction glorified gangsters. Jackie Brown was racist. Kill Bill was indulgently violent. Inglourious Basterds enabled Holocaust denial. These are often used as conversation stoppers, ad hominem charges against a very vocal and visible and outspoken target that serve to justify a general dismissal of a body of work that is both undeniably alluring and formally difficult. That is to say, Tarantino’s movies are cool and complicated. His most recent film, Django Unchained, is no different.
After being speculated about for what felt like years, Netflix finally released its first original series House of Cards last week. It’s garnering tons of attention for a number of reasons. Perhaps the standout reason for its publicity is that it marks Netflix’s first foray into the realm of original programming, a big deal for a site that formerly dealt exclusively in streaming other movies and TV shows. In a way, it follows the same model as HBO, which began as a channel designed to play movies, as indicated by the name Home Box Office. It was later that it became the beacon of high quality original programming that other channels have only recently begun to emulate. Netflix now looks to follow a similar path, and many are looking to House of Cards as well as the return of Arrested Development as indicators of the level of quality television that Netflix will contribute to the current golden era of TV shows.
