Oscar night!
Jul. 18th, 2005 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matilda36Yesterday I ended up watching two films that in recent years made a lot of noise at the Oscars: Mystic River and The Aviator. I do not think I'll be watching again either of them, albeit for very different reasons.
Mystic River is a very good film and both Tim Robbins and Sean Penn well deserved their Oscars, (although i would like to see recognised the talents of Lawrence Fishbourne and of the ever growing Kevin Bacon) supported by a very strong ensemble. The directing is neat, simple, at the complete service of the actors, enabling them all to shine. Clint Eastwood is confirming himself more and more like John Huston's heir, both for their directing style and the kind of stories they like to tell and for their actor centered directing. I seem to remember they called Houston the Oscar maker, because the actors he directed often ended up winning Oscars (Bogart, and both Huston's father and daughter are good examples) and in the last two years Eastwood actors have cleaned the board, in the case of Mystic River well deservedly.
However it is a very harsh film, that leave you with a deep unease about the society in which we live. I found particularly stricking the ending, so full of children and so devoid of any hope of a better future for any of them.
I will not watch the Aviator again for the opposite reason. While Mystic River left me with a deep sense of unease in my guts, The Aviator sent me home empty. Scorsese, as usual worked a lot on the details of the historic setting, and simply let his stars to get on with it. Cate Blanchet is an incredibly annoying Katherine Hepburn, Kate Beckinsdale makes a cute Ava Gardner (the girl is developing in a fine actress, see also Underworld, Alan Alda is as usual very good in playing Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin is cornering the market in evil capitalist roles (Rutger Hauer in Batman Begins is good, but he is better at playing the psychotic European terrorist and lacks Baldwin coldheartedness), and Hughes devoted staff is very good at standing around in awe of this mixture of genius and madness. And now we arrive to the main problem with this film: Leonardo Di Caprio. I have always felt sorry for him. He was a young actor developing his skills, with a couple of difficult roles on his shoulders, when Titanic hit him. Titanic had on him the same effect the J-Lo had on Ben Affleck: they stopped being actors and became Megastars. Since Titanic, Di Caprio has taken difficult role after difficult role, in the hope to be recognised as the good actor he is. But with Howard Hughes he bites more than he can chew. He is ok in dealing with the young Hughes, the dreamer battling with the system and his own demons and winning against all odds, and approaches Hughes OCD with sensitivity, but he is simply to young and good looking to play the post accident Hughes. I know it's not his fault he is such an arian looking specimen, but he simply hasn't got the face to play a man in his fifties,living borderline and recovering from such a ravaging accident while changing the way society travels forever.
Mystic River is a very good film and both Tim Robbins and Sean Penn well deserved their Oscars, (although i would like to see recognised the talents of Lawrence Fishbourne and of the ever growing Kevin Bacon) supported by a very strong ensemble. The directing is neat, simple, at the complete service of the actors, enabling them all to shine. Clint Eastwood is confirming himself more and more like John Huston's heir, both for their directing style and the kind of stories they like to tell and for their actor centered directing. I seem to remember they called Houston the Oscar maker, because the actors he directed often ended up winning Oscars (Bogart, and both Huston's father and daughter are good examples) and in the last two years Eastwood actors have cleaned the board, in the case of Mystic River well deservedly.
However it is a very harsh film, that leave you with a deep unease about the society in which we live. I found particularly stricking the ending, so full of children and so devoid of any hope of a better future for any of them.
I will not watch the Aviator again for the opposite reason. While Mystic River left me with a deep sense of unease in my guts, The Aviator sent me home empty. Scorsese, as usual worked a lot on the details of the historic setting, and simply let his stars to get on with it. Cate Blanchet is an incredibly annoying Katherine Hepburn, Kate Beckinsdale makes a cute Ava Gardner (the girl is developing in a fine actress, see also Underworld, Alan Alda is as usual very good in playing Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin is cornering the market in evil capitalist roles (Rutger Hauer in Batman Begins is good, but he is better at playing the psychotic European terrorist and lacks Baldwin coldheartedness), and Hughes devoted staff is very good at standing around in awe of this mixture of genius and madness. And now we arrive to the main problem with this film: Leonardo Di Caprio. I have always felt sorry for him. He was a young actor developing his skills, with a couple of difficult roles on his shoulders, when Titanic hit him. Titanic had on him the same effect the J-Lo had on Ben Affleck: they stopped being actors and became Megastars. Since Titanic, Di Caprio has taken difficult role after difficult role, in the hope to be recognised as the good actor he is. But with Howard Hughes he bites more than he can chew. He is ok in dealing with the young Hughes, the dreamer battling with the system and his own demons and winning against all odds, and approaches Hughes OCD with sensitivity, but he is simply to young and good looking to play the post accident Hughes. I know it's not his fault he is such an arian looking specimen, but he simply hasn't got the face to play a man in his fifties,living borderline and recovering from such a ravaging accident while changing the way society travels forever.
