Tag Archives: michael keaton

Entertainment, Screen

Kenosha native Mark Ruffalo delivers Oscar-worthy performance in acclaimed ‘Spotlight’

Leave a comment

Is there any better team player in movies than Mark Ruffalo?

Whether running in a pack of superheroes, wrestlers or journalists, Ruffalo has a rare ability to slide seamlessly into an ensemble while nevertheless standing out for his talent in doing so. A year after the Kenosha, Wisconsin, native received an Academy Award nomination for his supporting performance as Olympic wrestler David Schutlz in Foxcatcher, the actor is again expected to be Oscar nominated for his key role as a dogged Boston Globe reporter in the newspaper procedural Spotlight.

“I’ve been at the right place at the right time for these two movies, and been able to disappear into the beauty of an ensemble, to serve something that’s bigger than any one particularly individual,” says Ruffalo. “They say something at a moment when the culture’s ready to hear it. A movie, if it speaks to people, it bubbles out of the culture and lands at a moment when we’re ready to have a discussion.”

Ruffalo, one of the movie industry’s most outspoken advocates for environmental (and other) causes, rarely turns down a conversation. (He began a recent interview eagerly imploring a reporter: “Talk to me!”) He has regularly poured his considerable energy into both political activism (most notably hydraulic fracturing) and passionate, striving characters, from the bipolar but exuberant father of Infinitely Polar Bear to his redemption-seeking music executive in Begin Again. He does enthusiasm well, on screen and off.

“I see a lot of light on the horizon. I call it ‘the sunlight revolution’ and it isn’t just about renewable energy,” says Ruffalo. “It’s about enlightening and bringing to light the wrongs of the past. Everywhere I look, I see this inquiry happening. I think people are conscious. I think people are sick of it. They want righteousness. They want to know that’s there’s justice in the world, and they tend to move toward that when given the choice.”

Spotlight, which expanded to theaters nationwide this weekend, dovetails with that mission. The film, directed by Tom McCarthy, is about the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting by the Boston Globe’s team of investigative reporters — named Spotlight — that uncovered the widespread sex abuse of Catholic Church priests and subsequent efforts to cover up abuse cases.

The cast, including Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Rachel McAdams and Stanley Tucci, is uniformly excellent. And the film, one of the year’s most acclaimed, has been hailed for its verisimilitude in depicting the step-by-step digging of investigative journalism. Ruffalo, 47, plays Spotlight reporter Mike Rezendes.

“These are the people we want to celebrate. These are the people that deserve our admiration,” says Ruffalo. “You can’t have a free world without journalism, and it takes resources.”

To prepare for the role, Ruffalo spent time with Rezendes, observing him at work in the Globe newsroom and getting to know him at his home.

“As I told him, I said, ‘You found out things about me I didn’t want to know,’ says Rezendes. “He worked very hard and he got it.”

Rezendes, whom Ruffalo calls “a master” at his craft, continues to report on sex abuse and the church.

“The Catholic Church has taken some steps in the right direction, which I don’t think it would have taken were it not for us. But it has a ways to go,” says Rezendes.

Ruffalo, his movie-star counterpart, is more emphatic.

“I hope it’s a chance for the church to put people like Cardinal Law in jail,” says Ruffalo, who was raised Catholic. “That guy shouldn’t be living in a palace in the Vatican. He should just be in jail.”

Ruffalo, of course, is continuing his duties as a member (Bruce Banner/The Hulk) of the The Avengers, the last of which was the summer’s box-office behemoth Age of Ultron. He’ll be a part of a planned Thor sequel, and co-stars in next year’s magic caper Now You See Me 2.

But Ruffalo, who’s married with three children, is often busiest off-set. Earlier this month, he gathered other stars in Beverly Hills to protest Gov. Jerry Brown’s use of fracking in California.

“We live in this special time where you can’t hide anything anymore,” says Ruffalo. “All of the past wrongs are going to come to light.”

Entertainment, Screen

Oscars: Who will win … and who should win

Leave a comment

Ahead of Sunday’s 87th Academy Awards, Associated Press film writers Jake Coyle and Lindsey Bahr share their predictions for a ceremony that could be a nail biter.

BEST PICTURE

COYLE:

Will Win: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman comes home to roost despite the landmark accomplishment of Boyhood. As a celebration of showbiz, it’s the Shakespeare in Love of its time.

Should Win: Boyhood marries film and time in a uniquely powerful way, but it’s also worth making a case for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, the most relentlessly fun and inventive film of the year.

Should Have Been a Contender: Interstellar. Christopher Nolan’s epic is unloved, but it’s a glorious sci-fi soup that would have added some big-budget dazzle to the Oscars. I mean, it’s got a fourth dimension.

BAHR:

Will Win: While Birdman‘s formal ambitions and extraordinary ensemble cast are impressive, the earnest 12-year experiment that spawned a compelling film in Boyhood is just too good a narrative to ignore.

Should Win: Boyhood, but not because of dedication. A lot of people toil for years on their dream projects. Boyhood is a great and deeply humane film that celebrates the ordinariness of the everyday and is destined to be a classic.

Should Have Been a Contender: In ten years we’ll look back on Interstellar’s near-absence from this year’s Academy Awards as a grave cinematic injustice. At least Nolan is in good company. 2001: A Space Odyssey was shut out of the best picture race too.

___

BEST ACTOR

BAHR:

Will Win: In one of the most hotly contested categories of the entire race, it wouldn’t be surprising if the academy went with the comparatively elder statesmen Michael Keaton for the comeback performance of a lifetime. Redmayne will get another shot.

Should Win: Keaton. We shouldn’t really care about the artistic endeavors of a past his prime megalomaniac, but Keaton was able to make Riggan Thomson at turns sympathetic, wholly unlikable and desperately sad.

Should Have Been a Contender: There are so many great performances that would have warranted a nomination here, including David Oyelowo for his powerful and studied take on Martin Luther King, Jr in Selma and Oscar Isaac’s determined entrepreneur in A Most Violent Year.

COYLE:

Will Win: Redmayne. The freckled one appears to be the favorite for his technically impressive performance.

Should Win: Keaton. Redmayne is a talented young actor, but he’s a little precious for a physicist. Keaton has been an electric live-wire for decades.

Should Have Been a Contender: The performance of the year was Timothy Spall’s J.M.W. Turner in Mr. Turner. If the Oscars were judged on grunting ability (and shouldn’t they be?), he’d win in a cakewalk.

___

BEST ACTRESS

COYLE:

Will Win: Julianne Moore, Still Alice. A great actress overdue for an Oscar, although the film is … forgettable.

Should Win: Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night. The French actress deserved nods for both this unadorned performance and for the unfairly overlooked The Immigrant.

Should Have Been a Contender: Tilda Swinton, Only Lovers Left Alive. In Jim Jarmusch’s bitingly funny vampire tale, she’s captivating just walking down a Tangier street. One of cinema’s most exotic creatures.

BAHR:

Will Win: Five-time nominee Moore is long overdue for an Oscar and her nuanced portrayal of an accomplished woman deteriorating at the hands of early onset Alzheimer’s in an otherwise mediocre movie is her golden ticket.

Should Win: Moore for any other performance? But if we have to count this year’s contenders: Felicity Jones. The Theory of Everything is Jane Hawking’s story and Jones’ self-possessed take on a woman in an incredibly difficult situation has been upstaged by the flashier performance in the film.

Should Have Been a Contender: Comedian Jenny Slate showed great depth, humor and empathy in the perfectly realized Obvious Child, a film so enjoyable and of its time that older guard institutions probably didn’t know what to do with it.

___

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

BAHR:

Will Win: J.K. Simmons’ maniacal jazz instructor in Whiplash has been the top choice since the film premiered at Sundance over a year ago.

Should Win: Simmons, and it’ll be extremely disappointing if he doesn’t lose it at the Oscar orchestra when they try to play him off.

Should Have Been a Contender: Tony Revolori was barely even in the conversation for his magnetic, loyal lobby boy Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Wes Anderson’s stylish aesthetic seems to blind people to the fact that there truly compelling and emotional performances beneath the Popsicle-colored environs.

COYLE:

Will Win: Simmons so blows away all other candidates, it’s not even close. Get out of his class!

Should Win: Simmons. A career character actor takes a well-deserved bow.

Should Have Been a Contender: Much was rightly made of Jake Gyllenhaal’s creepy turn in Nightcrawler, but the film only works if it has the heart of Riz Ahmed’s trusty sidekick.

___

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

COYLE:

Will Win: Patricia Arquette is lock for Boyhood.

Should Win: Arquette. The best, most tender scene in Boyhood is when Arquette’s character, having raised her kids and watched their “series of milestones” unfold wonders what’s next for her. “I just thought there would be more,” she laments. It’s an unforgettable moment.

Should Have Been a Contender: Every year, countless performances from foreign films go unrewarded, but it feels like a genuine mistake that Agata Kulesza from the Polish film Ida didn’t win a nomination. As the bitter, hard-drinking judge Wanda, heavy with Polish history, she’s about as good as it gets.

BAHR:

Will Win: Funny that some of us once thought Arquette’s deeply felt portrayal of a mother and a woman coming into her own would go unnoticed by Academy. Now, the award’s in the bag.

Should Win: Arquette, and we should all be thrilled that a subtle performance in an original film is the undisputed front runner.

Should Have Been a Contender: Relative unknown Katherine Waterston elevated Inherent Vice‘s Shasta Fay Hepworth from arm-candy in distress to a woman who is at turns fully formed and a bewitching enigma – a tricky balancing act between two opposite ideas. It was a flawless melding of actress and role.

___

BEST DIRECTOR

BAHR:

Will Win: The formal ambitions that probably won’t be enough to secure a best picture win for Birdman will likely be acknowledged with a best director win for Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Should Win: The scrappy one-week-a-year shooting schedule and lack of a fully realized script might make Richard Linklater easier to overlook in this category, but that would be mistake.

Should Have Been a Contender: Inherent Vice is another one of those movies that is ahead of its time. Paul Thomas Anderson continues to reinvent himself with every picture and this hazy, evocative private eye yarn is both exquisite and underappreciated.

COYLE:

Will Win: Like best picture, this comes down to the showy elan of Inarritu’s Birdman against the patient humanism of Linklater. I suspect Birdman takes picture, leaving director to the Texan.

Should Win: It’s hard to match the brio of Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, the culmination of a trio of top-notch releases for the director following Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom.

Should Have Been a Contender: Was David Fincher’s examination of marriage in Gone Girl too dark for some academy members? Blood baths in beds will do that. What a shame; this was the most conversation-starting movie of the year, a gender warfare time-bomb.

___

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BAHR:

Will Win: With two co-written screenplay nominations to his name, the Academy has already flirted with Wes Anderson’s idiosyncratic dialogue and storytelling, and it looks like they’ll finally embrace it with a statue for the mainstream hit The Grand Budapest Hotel, which Anderson co-wrote with Hugo Guinness.

Should Win: Anderson is expert at juxtaposing whimsy with the extremely dark and cynical and the The Grand Budapest Hotel is exemplary of his (and Guinness’s) unique talent for creating compelling yet unconventional stories.

Should Have Been a Contender: J.C. Chandor’s elegant and controlled A Most Violent Year came and went without much fanfare, but this forgotten gem explores characters, motivations and moral ambiguities with a first-rate story.

COYLE:

Will Win: This is likely the biggest award the academy will bestow on the The Grand Budapest Hotel, which comes in with nine nods yet somehow not one for Ralph Fiennes.

Should Win: Anderson deserves it, but a case could also be made for Dan Gilroy’s wonderfully wacked out Nightcrawler.

Should Have Been a Contender: The thickly atmospheric A Most Violent Year turned the gangster movie on its head, situating itself not with crooks on the street, but with supposedly straight businessmen.

___

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

COYLE:

Will Win: Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (only “adapted” because he first made a Whiplash short) is taught and full of something great scripts have: snappy, quotable lines. It should be to the academy’s tempo.

Should Win: Paul Thomas Anderson (Inherent Vice) deserves a medal just for trying to adapt Thomas Pynchon and not losing his mind in the process.

Should Have Been a Contender: How did Gillian Flynn’s screenplay for Gone Girl not make it in here? A worldwide bestseller is turned into deliciously pulpy suburban noir: This is what this category is for.

BAHR:

Will Win: Chazelle’s pulsating Whiplash, presents a portrait of an artist on the edge of greatness like we’ve never seen before.

Should Win: Whiplash, even though it’s still a little baffling why it’s considered an adapted screenplay.

Should Have Been a Contender: Writing a novel and writing a screenplay are two very different skills and Gone Girl author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn somehow mastered both. Her brutal and necessary cuts and modifications helped steer the film to stand-alone greatness.

Read more: http://www.wjla.com/articles/2015/02/oscar-predictions-what-will-and-should-win-at-the-academy-awards-111623.html#ixzz3SNtISURq 

Entertainment, Screen

Review: Michael Keaton soars in bracing ‘Birdman’

Leave a comment

When we first see Michael Keaton in “Birdman,” Alejandro G. Inarritu’s bracingly inventive and accomplished new film about fame, relevance, self-worth and lots of other intense stuff, he’s sitting in his white undies, in the middle of a dressing room.

No, really in the middle. Like, in the air. He’s levitating.

Of course you think, “How’d he DO that?” Turns out that’s an apt metaphor, intentional or not, for Inarritu’s entire achievement here. Fast forward to film’s end, and we’ll bet the very same words will be on your lips: “How’d they DO that?”

Still, it’s best not to spend too much time thinking about the technical virtuosity of “Birdman,” most importantly how it creates the impression, thanks to master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, that it’s all one continuous shot. Remember Lubezki’s 13-minute opening in “Gravity”? Merely an appetizer, it turns out. But the best thing about his work here is that it serves the narrative so well, you hardly notice.

Keaton, in a wonderfully raw, dark and vulnerable performance, plays aging actor Riggan Thomson, who earned fame and wealth decades ago playing a superhero, Birdman. His fans want more; he’s moved on. (Any parallels here with Keaton, star of two “Batman” films a quarter-century ago, are purely intentional.)

In a bid to restore his sense of self-worth, and perhaps to exorcise the demon of Birdman _ a tall order, since, uh, the superhero still regularly speaks to him in his head _ Riggan’s putting on a show. It’s a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver tale, which Riggan himself has written, is starring in and directing. Your basic movie-star vanity project, only you get the sense Riggan’s very life — or at least his sanity — depends on it.

The fodder for industry jokes is endless. When a key actor is suddenly incapacitated, Riggan ponders possible replacements with his friend and attorney, Jake (Zach Galifianakis, exercising admirable comic restraint). Woody Harrelson? He’s doing the next “Hunger Games.” Robert Downey Jr.? Nah, “Avengers.” That other guy? He’s doing the prequel to the prequel.

Luck strikes like a thunderbolt when Mike Shiner (Edward Norton, superb) shows up to read for the part. Mike may be an entitled jerk, but he’s a bankable star. The scenes between Keaton and Norton as they rehearse, compete and occasionally brawl like testosterone-fueled youngsters are simply dynamite, two actors firing on all cylinders.

Then there’s Sam, Riggan’s daughter, fresh from rehab and working as Dad’s assistant. It’s fun to see Emma Stone play a more troubled, unstable character here; her eyeliner-rimmed eyes seem to contain both love and loathing for her father. Making things even more precarious, Sam’s embarking on a dangerous flirtation with Mike, who’s ostensibly the boyfriend of co-star Lesley (an excellent Naomi Watts).

The movie was filmed almost entirely inside Broadway’s St. James Theater, giving all these relationships an extremely claustrophobic feel, as must happen in real life with a theater company. (We also get a fascinating inside view of how a Broadway show operates.)

Looming over everything is opening night, when one particular theater critic will, with the strike of a pen, make or break the show: the acid-tongued Tabitha (Lindsay Duncan), who despises Riggan and his movie-star ilk for polluting the theater. “I will destroy your play,” she hisses to him, acknowledging that she doesn’t even plan to see it first. Not to overly defend critics, but let’s just say that this melodramatic plotline feels like a rare false note in the script.

Other flaws: Watts’ character seems to drop prematurely from view, as do some tantalizing relationships that we really wanted to know more about.

But there’s so much that IS there. “Birdman,” more than most, seems a film that deserves a second viewing, not only to admire the work of Keaton and his co-stars, but to delve into its many layers. And perhaps to pursue an answer to that question: “How’d they DO that?”

“Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” a 20th Century Fox release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America “for language throughout, some sexual content and brief violence.” Running time: 119 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.