Dane Benko

Manhattan Digest’s 2014 Oscar Chat

Manhattan Digest film reviewers Peter Foy and Dane Benko discuss the major categories of this year’s Oscar nominations.

Oscar, Manhattan, Manhattan Digest — “Should we talk about Animated Feature?” “YES! I love cartoons!”

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

PF: Well, the Best Animated Feature Film category has always interested me, as some of my picks for best film of the year were actually the winners in that category

DB: And this year has surprising selections.

PF: Yeah, no Pixar!

DB: And The Croods, for some reason. Frankly three of them only have a chance, Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises, Frozen, and Ernest & Celestine.

PF: Yeah, and I regret to say I had not heard of Ernest & Celestine till the announcement.

DB: Right, me either… I don’t think it’s going to win, but the nomination itself is a huge honor for it.

PF: Still, it seems to be that Miyazaki is an almost sure-bet.

DB: Yeah, Frozen has perhaps a chance because of the surprising amount of audience fondness of it, but frankly Miyazaki is too big of a name, regardless of the fact he’s won before (for Spirited Away).

PF: Yeah, it’s just the film is being hyped as his “farewell masterpiece,” so that alone should edge it towards the Academy’s favor. I wanted to see Frozen, but somehow it eluded me amidst the bustle of Oscar Season.

DB: Yeah, my Facebook feed is alive with talk about how awesome the songs are, and I was surprisingly engaged by the trailer, but this is the only time I’ve looked at the Animated section and felt at a loss as to where my year of movie watching went, precisely. And why the Croods?

PF: Yeah, that does seem an odd choice. Especially as Monsters University did receive decent critical recognition for a sequel, while it seemed like both audiences and critics were lukewarm towards The Croods. Hey, maybe they were persuaded to nominate it just to have a dark horse in there.

DB: In the end, last year’s Oscar win for Pixar seemed a little shoed in, so all in all I’m glad to see different options this year (even though I’m a die-hard Pixar fanboy), but I don’t think Despicable Me 2 or The Croods really replace that slot. Ernest & Celestine would be the most interesting win, but it’s already reaped a major award just by being featured. Frozen could be a surprise hit but only because audiences were surprisingly keen on it. But this year goes to Miyazaki

PF: I would agree, and I’m also totally for it. I feel that Miyazaki really has earned his coveted title as being perhaps the most celebrated animator of our generation, and has really made the medium an art form

Not only has he used animation to tell fantasy stories that appeal to all ages, but does them with a sense for wonderment and joy that most directors (including live-action ones) couldn’t even hope to capture.

I would call him the Walt Disney of Japan, but in all honesty I think he’s even greater than that.

DB: I still am not 100% sure he’s finished in the world of animation, the last few movies he’s made grumblings about being his last, but since he seems to want this one to underline his ouevre, I respect that.

PF: Yeah, I don’t know if this will really be his last film. He had said that about Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away also. But giving his age, and the acclaim and anticipation that this film is already receiving, then I feel it only builds to it’s stature for us to envision this as being his last work. Kind of like with Jay-z’s The Black Album! Same standard!

DB: But why The Croods?

Best Actress in a Supporting Roll — Showdown: Lawrence or Nyong’o?

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:

DB: Scrolling up, how do you feel about the Supporting Actress nominees? I always have a difficult time with the actors segments., but it’s the actors that bring in the viewers, as the Oscars is really a celebrity showcase.

PF: Yes, very much so. I’m happy with the Supporting Actress nominations for the most part. I’m glad that they nominated Sally Hawkins, as I felt she gave a really strong and careful performance in Blue Jasmine, and I felt that some people didn’t acknowledge it due to Cate Blanchett’s lead.

DB: Sally Hawkins and June Squibb are the interesting ones. I… don’t see Jennifer Lawrence winning again. I love Jennifer Lawrence. She’s awesome. And she won last year. And I think the Academy thinks the same way I think about that.

PF: Yeah, Jennifer Lawrence was great though… and if the Academy wants to make history they may let her win as if she did win the best supporting role again this year, she would be the youngest actress to do so

DB: If the Academy Awards wants to make history (more on this when we discuss Best Picture), they’ll pick Lupita Nyong’o, which I wouldn’t be surprised to see. She did an amazing job in 12 Years a Slave, and 12 Years a Slave is pretty much a showcase of Oscar-quality talent. She may even be my pick.

PF: Yes, that’s true. She gave a very gripping performance, and her performances in the film’s most harrowing scenes were simply astonishing. She might be my pick as well, as any actress would need to go to intense places to deliver in a movie like that. I can’t comment on Julia Roberts as I haven’t seen August: Osage County

DB: I haven’t either. Fact is I’d be surprised if it wins many, or any, awards. I actually have the suspicion that the movie itself is different from the trailer, as the trailer seemed to highlight the reprehensible character Meryl Streep plays.

PF: Yeah, it’s not uncommon for trailers to be misleading these days.

DB: The movie clearly operates on that basis of ensemble performance. This is one reason why it would be sort of interesting to have an ensemble cast section for Oscars. But people’s reactions to it seem to be along the lines of, “I’m jealous of the dead character.”

PF: Ha, well if one film legitimizes the necessity for an inclusion of that category then it’s American Hustle, a film I think we will be discussing quite a bit of…

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:

DB: I sort of want to head this one off by saying, I like Jonah Hill and all, and I loved This is the End, but his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street seemed more like he was acting out a sketch about being in a Martin Scorsese movie, than him actually acting in a movie directed by Scorsese. I’d even, in this list, eagerly give him the award for This is the End, because he played off himself perfectly, really subverting his own celebrity. I think Barkhad Abdi and Jared Leto seem like good contenders to add diversity to the list, but this really seems to be a showdown between Cooper and Fassbender.

PF: Yeah, I don’t think Jonah Hill has a chance. Barkhad Abdi is a fantastic actor though, and was just as strong a screen presence in Captain Phillips as Tom Hanks. Jared Leto might also get my honor for “best comeback performance” of the year, but yeah, it looks like it’s a showdown between Cooper and Fassbender, and I think the Academy is likely to tip in Fassbender’s favor.

Best Actor in a Leading Role — “Who’d win in a fight between PT Anderson and Thomas Pynchon?” “Okay let’s focus man.”

BEST ACTOR IN A LEAD ROLE:

PF: I actually was having a conversation with someone that Tom Hanks was snubbed a leading actor nomination the other day.

DB: Oh? I don’t know, hasn’t Tom Hanks sort of proven his Academy chops?

PF: Yeah, and in actuality I don’t think his performance was quite as remarkable as the other 5 gents that the Academy nominated this year. Although the climax to Captain Philips shows that there’s still plenty of range for the veteran actor

DB: The Best Actor category seems like one of the most competitive. It’s not surprising that many good roles were lost in the shuffle. I honestly have about as good a chance predicting this one as a Magic 8 Ball.

PF: Yeah, I know that feeling. I can tell you I’m rooting for Matthew McConaughey though. In fact I wanted to see him nominated for Killer Joe last year

DB: Yeah, I can see that. The Academy has this really bad habit of awarding talent the year after the movie they deserved to win for. It seems a lot of people feel Leonardo DiCaprio is overdue for an Oscar. I throw my support behind Chiwetel Ejiofor.

PF: Yeah, as 12 Years a Slave really is a star making performance for him. Getting back to snubs… I still think they could of fit Joaquin Phoenix in there…

DB: Oh man…

PF: …as I felt he deserved to win last year for his incredibly unique and volcanic performance in The Master.

DB: It was ridiculous. I didn’t even see Phoenix the person in Her. I certainly saw Phoenix in The Master, and still thought he was powerful. Oh and by the way, as a terrible Pynchon fan, I can’t wait to see him in Inherent Vice. He’ll rock Doc Sportello. But believe me, we’ll get to discussing Her in a bit!

PF: Ha! I can’t wait to see Inherent Vice!

DB: Maybe that’s why Phoenix wasn’t put up for this year. Next year is being prepped for a long anticipated Pynchon adaptation Oscar streak.

PF: If he wins next year, then I’ll be completely ecstatic about it! Back to the best acting nominees though…What do you think about Christian Bale getting another nod? I feel he might have another good chance to win, just cause it’s a role so different from what he’s played before, and he once again perfects it

DB: My opinion on Bale is best described by the scene in Rescue Dawn where he eats maggots with a …. maggot-eating grin: Dude chews scenery in a way I adore, but I wouldn’t give him an award. I feel like I’m more on a rollercoaster than watching a performance. I’d almost feel like giving him the golden man for American Hustle would be more boring than his performance deserves. But I’m not one of the voters, so what do I know?

PF: Bruce Dern is another likely contender. Either for an Oscar, or a lifetime achievement award. As you said all five of the nominees gave career highlights this year, but, who knows, maybe the average age of academy voters will dictate them voting for the oldest nominee in the bunch.

Best Actress in a Lead Role — “I could get into, like, Amy Adams is the only Millennial in the group or something, but they also are a broad demographic of ages.” “Yeah they’re quite diverse for rich white people.”

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE:

DB: Let’s start talking about Best Actress! No in all seriousness, this is one of the better line-ups of actresses in my memory, being that women are finally not always secondary characters in their own stories anymore.

PF: Yes, very much, although I feel that Brie Larsson was snubbed for her performance in Short Term 12

DB: Oh really? I… I don’t know what that is.

PF: It’s just it was a little-seen independent film with an arthouse veneer. So yeah, it’s not exactly the type of movie that would attract Oscar voters. I felt she just gave such a complex and hard-edged performance for that film.

DB: Well, you certainly caught me off-guard. I was gonna mention that Melissa McCarthy should have been nominated for The Heat. I am absolutely serious, she’s the Lou Costello of our generation.

PF: Yeah I didn’t see The Heat, but I thought she should have been nominated for Bridesmaids.

DB: But since Sandra Bullock got nominated instead for Gravity, that’s about the only segue I had to this otherwise eclectic mix of characters. Like Best Actor, I don’t even know where to start here.

PF: I feel Cate Blanchett might be the most likely contender

DB: Yeah Blue Jasmine was something else. I never thought Blanchett would top her performance in Coffee and Cigarettes. And of course there she only had a segment. Now she had to hold up a movie.

PF: Yeah, she gets serious props from me as she was able to balance the humor of her character against the distraught nature of her as well. What an ending too? It was rather disturbing I found.

DB: Actually now that you use that word, pretty much all the actresses this year had disturbing roles.

Bullock’s was the most lighthearted, and it was about the grief of losing a child! Or maybe Meryl Streep’s because we were supposed to laugh at her character?

PF: Yeah, that’s true. Although there aren’t many years when an actress gets nominated cause of how “happy” their performance was. Well for me Brie Larsson’s performance outshone the rest.

DB: Right. So we’re agreed. Brie Larsson should have won, and, uh… we have no clue who will win. But we can agree that all of these actresses do a fine job at making you feel sad.

PF: Yep! Exactly!

BEST PICTURE:

PF: Moving onto best picture now!

DB: Well alright then. To cut to the chase, I can’t help but feel this comes down to 12 Years a Slave versus Her. The rest of the movies are great.

PF: Really, I don’t think Her has much of a chance of winning. To be honest I wouldn’t have been surprised had it not even been nominated

DB: It’s been pretty much universally embraced by critics and audiences alike. And as a separate, specific feature, it’s good up and down and through and through. Good design, good performance, good acting, good editing, and a story that seems to be hitting close to an area big on people’s minds.

Plus Megan Ellison is about as celebrity as producers get.

PF: Yeah, but it’s not exactly an Oscar-type of movie. While it is a film about contemporary relationships, it’s also a high-concept sci-fi film that also seems aimed at indie-rock fans.

I think the two most likely picks for best picture are American Hustle and 12 Years a Slave. The former just comes off to me as this year’s Argo

DB: Yeah but that might be why it loses…

PF: Yeah, I thought about that as well, but it also seems hard for The Academy to resist it.

DB: 12 Years a Slave seems like a good pick because in a weird way we’re overdue for the sober social consciousness film. It also fits the Academy’s MO.

PF: Yeah, although I do notice that the Academy does still tend to like film’s that have a little bit of levity to them. Which 12 Years a Slave certainly does not have

DB: Well in theory, the purpose of these awards are to argue for artfulness of film. 12 Years a Slave is an important film whether you enjoyed it or not. So that sort of sets it to demand people’s, including Academy voters’, attentions.

PF: Yeah, and if we’re talking about craft, then the film is a shoe-in for best picture. I absolutely feel that 12 Years a Slave will win for best director. Steve McQueen really has established himself as such a visionary with only just three films.

DB: I feel like Gravity is misplaced in these two departments. Strictly speaking Cuaron is worthy of being considered for Best Director and the movie is astounding, but it is a technical showcase that should sweep whatever technical awards its up for. But it’s kind of the odd-man-out of the rest of the titles in the Best Picture category.

PF: Yeah, well they have one of those every year (i.e. Inception)

DB: I feel like American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street will cannibalize each-others votes as historical looks at decadence and power. 12 Years a Slave has the biggest chops and Her has the feverish word-of-mouth. Which makes them create an interesting sort of unintentional narrative about whether the award will go to the mistakes of our past, or the hopes of our future.

PF: I don’t think Wolf of Wall Street has much a chance of winning. But that’s fine, you can tell Scorsese didn’t make it to win an award

DB: I don’t think Scorsese made The Departed to win an award.

PF: Yeah, but he did make The Aviator to win one. I personally think he wouldn’t have done that movie had he won an Oscar at that point, and I do feel it’s one of his weakest films because of that

DB: I wouldn’t want to answer for him. My feeling is that Scorsese is a case in point that the Academy tends to award a filmmaker about a year or two after the point when people feel the filmmaker deserves it most. Which is why Leonardo DiCaprio is either getting an award this year or next.

PF: A very solid accusation. In fact bearing that in mind, then maybe Leo will indeed win this year as the he has said he’s going on hiatus from acting, so the academy may want to award him now before he takes off for a bit.

DB: I trust his hiatus about as much as I trust Soderbergh’s various retirements. Film people seem to be like that one guy on message forums that’s always announcing his departure from the community. The ones that make the loudest announcements are typically the ones that can’t quit. Heck, Phoenix’s hiatus was a performance in and of itself. Anyway, perhaps I am being too confident in Her. I just strongly feel it is the title that SHOULD win, though 12 Years a Slave is the title to beat.

PF: Yeah, well I didn’t mention it earlier, but I would of liked to see my favorite film of the year nominated (Before Midnight). Her and 12 Years a Slave are my favorites of the batch nominated and Her is what I feel should win, but 12 Years a Slave seems the more probable outcome.

MINOR AWARDS AND ERRATA:

PF: What do you think about how Inside Llewyn Davis didn’t receive any major nominations?

DB: Don’t feel it should have. Loved the movie, isn’t as caustic and daring as A Serious Man and the Coens already settled their score with No Country for Old Men. It still got cinematography award nomination, and it looks friggin’ beautiful. I actually really hope it wins that category.

PF: Yeah, I liked how the film looked like the cover of a folk album. Really evoked The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’s, but it wasn’t surprising to see it wasn’t nominated for best picture. But, I don’t think the Coens really care either way.

DB: It’s also up for sound mixing but that should go to Gravity. Full dynamic atmospheric subjective sound. Llewyn Davis’ audio award should be for Music. But those categories have to be original song or original score.

PF: Well, it will be interesting to see which movies win in the screenplay categories, as once again, this year saw so many great scripts. Although I’m not exactly sure why Before Midnight is up for best adapted screenplay…

DB: Yeah I was wondering that as well. I guess “Adapted from the characters by Linklater.”

PF: Yeah, probably just an excuse to put the film in that category, but hey, you hardly see sequels nominated for Oscars also.

DB: It would be kind of funny if the Adapted Screenplay went to 12 Years a Slave and the Original Screenplay went to Her. “We’ve adapted to the past, and now we’re originating the future!”

PF: Yeah I was thinking that myself. It could very well happen too, as Her demonstrated that Spike Jonze is a talented screenplay writer, in addition to being a fantastic director, and as you said, The Academy seems due to acknowledge a somber film about America’s darkest past.

Lone Survivor – Like An Inverse “300” | Movie Reviews

by Dane Benko

Read the Lone Survivor and other Movie Reviews at Manhattan Digest!

For a while, attempts by filmmakers to make movies set in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars were hindered by attempts to recreate the form and narrative of Vietnam movies, in style if not outright theme. Add the fact that audiences initially didn’t want to see in cinemas what they were getting from 24 hour news channels, early Afghan/Iraq war films were met with about as much success as John Wayne’s poorly received attempt to turn Vietnam into a World War II movie in The Green Berets. With a new arena came new rules, new soldiers, and new stories, and it wasn’t really until The Hurt Locker focused on the arena itself that the unique soldiers and stories began to engage audience and critic discussion. Now that the new rules were established and a little time for the public to come to grips with the wars, subsequent works such as the miniseries Generation Kill and Kathryn Bigelow’s follow up Zero Dark Thirty could follow actual soldiers and agents involved.

Peter Berg comes in to challenge Bigelow’s near monopoly on tales from the new arena with Lone Survivor, the true story of a failed mission against Taliban leader Ahmad Shahd by four members of Navy SEAL Team 10 in the mountains of Afghanistan. It is not Peter Berg’s first look into the area, as he previously directed The Kingdom, which flopped. Having since continued with the meager Hancock and notorious flop Battleship, he returns to the topic of the wars in the Middle East with a tighter budget and narrower focus, which ends up serving him well. So well, in fact, that Lone Survivor is turning out to be a surprise hit, having taken in nearly as much in its first weekend as The Kingdom did in its entire run, with almost half the budget.

The movie starts with a low resolution montage of Navy SEAL training rendered like an abject perversion of a military recruitment video, where minds and bodies are stretched and strained instructors and drill sergeants demands that the soldiers will themselves beyond their limits. The point of this introduction seems almost subverted by the glossier second beginning of the movie, a bookend element where Marcus Luttrell returns by helicopter broken and battered and near death. An elegiac voice over about camaraderie and brotherhood begins, and then the movie switches into a third beginning and the story actually starts.

Mark Wahlberg plays Marcus Luttrell, the lone survivor and memoirist of the ill-fated Team 10 group. He’s accompanied by Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, and Ben Foster on a mission to kill Ahmad Shah, a Taliban combatant responsible for the deaths of dozens of American soldiers and the brutal execution of villagers he suspects of aiding Americans. Shah (Yousuf Asami) is laying low in a village in the mountains of Afghanistan, and it’s up to Team 10 to track him down.

First approach goes well, including visual identification of Shah. It’s everything else possible that goes wrong, in some mad mix of Murphy’s Law in the mountains. Rather than hiding with a few militants, Shah is discovered surrounded by some 200 armed men. Comms delay confirmation of their recon and eventually cut off altogether. And then a shepherding family accidentally steps across the team’s hiding place, and the entire mission is compromised.

This scene turns out to be one of the highlights of the movie. Luttrell and his men capture the family and debate whether they should compromise the mission and let them go, or kill them despite their innocence in order to keep everything under control. Their dilemma is inflated by a wary observation: if they kill the family, their faces will be plastered all over CNN as war criminals. If they let the family go, their decapitated heads will be all over Al Jazeera. This strange and semi-paranoid observation of media awareness in an otherwise clichéd morality tale. The soldiers can’t just act as warriors but also representatives.

They let the family go and know their fate is doomed. From there it only gets worse. The Taliban takes the offensive and the team goes on a desperate defensive retreat where every bit of damage they take decreases their chances of survival exponentially.

And they take a lot of damage.

Afghanistan is represented by the high desert and mountain ranges of New Mexico, using locations Berg initially seems to take unnecessarily lengthy interest in until the action explodes and it turns out the geography itself adds its own whips and cracks at the beleaguered combatants’ increasingly shredded bodies. The mountains come to be more than just a setting but an antagonist, throwing obstacles in the form of scraggly cliffs, sightline disrupting trees, and even some extra frag to aide the Taliban’s RPGs. Even the local flora and fauna seem to be against them.

Early establishing shots of high contrast and dried out rock faces are juxtaposed with quick shutter imposed jagged movement and harsh light to create a particularly biting quality to the violence. The confounding situations the soldiers seem to end up in are made even more chaotic by editing that jump cuts and even occasionally breaks the line of action (jumps to the other side of a soldier) over focus snaps and time-ramps. However, the qualities of these editing effects are held together by an impressionistic sound design.

The sound design, in fact, is one of Lone Survivor’s best aspects, recreating surges of adrenaline and moments of chaos, disorder, and confusion. Audio is helped along by an interesting score by Explosions in the Sky, a mostly fitting choice as the marching band tum-tutting quality of the drums works for the militaristic aspect while the reverbed trills and thrums of post-rock guitar bring in the anxiety.

For the most part the movie manages to make the combat so harsh that it doesn’t look entertaining or fun. Luttrell’s book, however, is a homage to the sacrifices of his brothers in combat under duress of an extreme and hard to imagine circumstance, and Berg pays tribute to it with the bookended plot voice over that seems to contrast mightily with his otherwise sharp-edged movie. Thus, at various points the movie suffers a creep of sentimentality, especially as Explosions in the Sky covers David Bowie’s “Heroes” as a dirge. However, the strange opening montage manages to tie the two seemingly conflictual representations together: Luttrell and his men managed to get as far as they did due to extraordinary levels of willfulness and physical strength.

It’s interesting to note that at various points the soldiers call each other Spartans. Lone Survivor is like an inverse 300, where a small group of raiders end up besieged in a foreign land in gritty realism and surprising humanism instead of defending their own land in a cartoonish CG fantasia.

High Marks for Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

by Dane Benko

Viewer beware, you are entering into the lost land of imagination, after the warmth of Hollywood’s carefully placed and critically lauded hits have faded and you settle down to bed, intending to hit up the cineplexes over the next few weeks for a bit of catch-me-up before all those award shows hit, and upon scanning the listings, have the horrifying misfortune of seeing the new releases. It has arrived: January, Hollywood’s graveyard of zombie franchises.

And what better to start the toss off into lonely auditoriums than a new spin-off of the wildly successful Paranormal Activity series. The Marked Ones has all the warning signs of a train wreck: they’ve stopped numbering the iterations, the release was pushed back from the franchise’s annual holding space as the go-to Halloween movie, and except for a couple announced cameos, it’s dropping the lineage of the previous installments in favor of a brand new cast. You could almost say it was… marked… for failure?

Except I basically had all that written before I’d seen it. It’s actually a lot of fun, and if you’re getting tired seeing the giants of Hollywood clash over golden figurines, you might as well jump in for the ride.

Helmed by franchise writer Christopher Landon, The Marked Ones follows Jesse and Hector, two best buds recently graduated from high school, staving off boredom in their run-down apartment complex by toying around with the new camera Jesse’s received for graduation. Between smoking pot and pranking each other, the two manage to start poking their camera into places they don’t belong and end up finding a strange ritual they don’t understand performed by Anna, the old woman downstairs, who they quickly decide must be some bruja.

Which isn’t really enough to distract them from setting off fireworks and other shenanigans, until Carlos the school valedictorian shows up and offs the old lady in a spectacular manner while Jesse notices a strange mark appear on his wrist, not to mention suddenly acquires spectacular abilities of strength and levitation. Which is all well and good for his YouTube channel until strange noises start upsetting the electronics and his behavior starts to get weird.

Paranormal Activity The Marked Ones screenshot — “Yo Mr. White, what’d you do to my eye?” Oh wait, wrong Jesse.

From there it’s all exorcisms and shaky cam as Jesse and friends venture progressively deeper into lower levels of the bruja’s hellhole and even follow up on trying to find what caused Carlos to go loco. Ali Rey makes her appearance to provide tie-in and exposition, and the audience tries to tell the characters what not to do as they immediately proceed to do precisely that.

However what makes the movie really roll is the friendship between Hector, played by Jorge Diaz, and Jesse, the headlining Andrew Jacobs. As horror protagonists, they do predictably stupid things, but as Latino teenagers just trying to spend their last summer together and get laid, they’re those really goofy guys you know from that one party we don’t talk about.

Like how a good children’s movie will provide some references that will go over the head of the kiddos so that the adults can have a laugh, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones contains enough bumps, screeches, and scratches to keep the 14 year olds on edge while using the same elements of surprise and shock for some rather good slapstack pratfalls and screwball Spanglish. The found footage style lets the story jump cut and fast forward through all the boring stuff until Hector manages to get the neighborhood gangsters to pull out the big guns (literally) and it’s all Cholos versus Brujas in some empty plastic-and-dust mansion somewhere up in mapped but unmarked gringo territory.

It’s worth the price of admission as long as you allow your b-movies to be packaged in a brand name. The Paranormal Activity series has managed to keep a legitimate cult following from its beginnings as an actually independent breakout hit through its progressively commercial sequels (and prequel), and The Marked Ones indicates that the filmmakers are willing to expand the world and make it playful.

Journeying Inside Llewyn Davis

by Dane Benko

The trailer for the new Coen brothers movie was a surprisingly dry tease. With stilted, almost Mumblecore dialog in desaturated imagery over Bob Dylan’s folk chords, the trailer sold the movie as any other 20-something inspired indie flick. To frustrate the viewer further, it cuts to black before the audience even hears Llewyn’s first acoustic strum. Upon unwrapping, however, Inside Llewyn Davis proves to be a box stuffed full of the Coen brothers’ best working habits, complete with amusingly dysfunctional failures of characters, dialog that variously nips and bites, and for what it’s worth, the best folk soundtrack for a movie seen since… well, the Coen brothers’ other folk-inspired Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Inside Dave Van Ronk album cover — Take note of this cover.

Oscar Isaac takes up the role of a couch-surfing New York folk singer in 1961, who is also a physical amalgamation of early Bob Dylan and his colleague Dave Van Ronk (the latter comparison is revealed explicitly by the cover of Llewyn’s new solo album Inside Llewyn Davis, which remakes the cover of real life album Inside by Dave Van Ronk). The movie begins in media res with an answer to the cutaway of the trailer, by settling right in to a concert at The Gaslight in Greenwich Village (again, Van Ronk’s old haunting grounds). After a pleasant introductory song you get used to the smoky enchantment of the place, rendered by new(ish) Coen brother collaborator Bruno Delbonnel (Roger Deakins was busy shooting Skyfall, so the brothers hired the director of photography from their Paris, je t’aime short). Once the piece is over, however, events quickly turn brutal, as Llewyn apologizes for hitherto unknown drunken actions of the night before to his barkeep friend, and then gets kicked and beaten outside the bar.

It turns out that the beginning is a bookend device and the background to these events are strung out from there. Llewyn Davis is feckless at best: sleeping in an unending circle of his friends’ couches, dropping his equipment off hither tither, and trying to run away from either some crushing responsibility or inner demons, it only becomes clear later which. He’s the existential and dramatic counterpoint to a slapstick hero, his thoughts always one step behind his own actions, resulting in a cascade of negative consequences.

Within the first couple of scenes he loses his upscale professor friend’s cat and is chewed out by Jean (Carey Mulligan), girlfriend of Jim (Justin Timberlake) for possibly getting her pregnant. Situations never really settle from there. As Llewyn Davis traverses the lonely New York City landscape, staving off fatigue and rolling over his debt against time into higher interest rates, we get further insight into the nature of his base circumstances. It turns out that he’s being left behind as Jean’s and Jim’s careers start to blossom, the folk scene starts to crystallize, and Llewyn has to make a decision between finding work and dedicating himself to his art. Thus the odyssey starts, as Llewyn seeks a way to get cash from his agent, the cat back to the Gorfeins, and the attention of record executive Bud Grossman, not to mention come to terms with his defiantly hidden feelings for Jean. This journey will bounce him up and down Manhattan’s west sides and between New York and Chicago, while running him into a variety of Coenish characters such as John Goodman’s appearance as a batty and overweight jazz musician.

As a central character, Llewyn can sometimes be difficult to stomach. With an abrasive personality, caustic attitude, and a constantly burning frustration, he’s every deadbeat mooch you’ve ever been friends with, except slightly more parasitic. Nevertheless the Coens actually manage to not only provoke sympathy, but actually all out empathy for his character. For all his screw-ups he doesn’t have much of a choice, and ultimately his inner motivations come down to things and people he’s lost well before the movie started. The trip he takes doesn’t operate quite like a Hero’s Journey, but rather is the medium through which we gain insight into his past. Thus the movie elegantly lives up to its name.

Whether audiences will muster it will be a different question. Inside Llewyn Davis is inverse O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Where the latter is colorful and fun the former is drab and so dry it crackles. Where the O Brother sold its soundtrack, the soundtrack sells Llewyn Davis. And rather than adapting The Odyssey with folk music, Llewyn Davis structures folk music history around an odyssey. The result is the exact type of movie that excites critics but depresses audiences.

Dane Benko

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