2013: The Year in Film: "Inside Llewyn Davis" Review

Note: WAY late, guys. But I'm going to make an honest effort to review every film I've seen as of late, AND I'd like to get current over the next month or so. So yes, this film and a number of films I'll be reviewing over the next few weeks are already out on DVD, but I'd like to review them nonetheless. Additionally, as I saw this film in 2013, it will continue to bear the "2013" title, as will the other films I embarrassingly saw in 2013 and have yet to review in May, 2014. So bear with me.

If you put together a list of best/most important modern American directors, the Coen Brothers are pretty damn close to the top of that list.  Their films have run the gamut from absurdist comedy to violent crime caper, and any pair of filmmakers who could count works as diverse as "No Country For Old Men", "The Big Lebowski", "Raising Arizona", "Fargo" and "O Brother Where Art Thou" are surely people to keep your eye on. Their last film, an update on the John Wayne classic "True Grit" featuring a nearly unrecognizable Jeff Bridges in the John Wayne role was a tour de force and one of the more underrated and under appreciated films of the last 5 years or so. (It got subsumed in "King's Speech" madness) However, despite their obvious brilliance, the Coen's have never been filmmakers to subject themselves to industry or audience expectations, and are just as happy to make a mad cap comedy (say, "Burn After Reading") or understated character study/biblical allegory ("A Serious Man") as they are to make the type of serious drama that traditionally dominates awards season.

Enter: "Inside Llewyn Davis", a film that centers on the New York City folk music scene of the early 1960's, and the titular Llewyn Davis, a talented but ornery struggling musician barely eking out a meager living and relying on the generosity of friends as he tries to find success and deals with the recent loss of his songwriting partner.

The Good: Rarely, if ever, have a seen a more true to life depiction of the tortured artistic soul that seems just as likely to create depressed melancholy as it does genius. This isn't an uplifting or inspiring tale of success against unlikely odds or a rise to stardom, it's a portrait of a person, a time, and a place that's important mainly for its very ordinariness. Oscar Isaac's (to this point, a rather minor actor with a career full of supporting performances - but a lead role in the new Star Wars film and this one could signal a coming breakout) performance is, in a word, stunning. The understated charm, musical chops, and sarcastic bitterness masking as humor is the kind of quiet, muted performance that is unlikely (and didn't!) to gain attention from the academy, but it's exactly this kind of performance that makes a film timeless. There are Llewn Davis' playing drop in gigs and open mics in every city in the country, and their trail of bitterness and failure is infinitely more likely to be the outcome than is stardom.  The rest of the cast is solid as well, with Justin Timberlake (who's actually a pretty good actor, you guys) and the always solid Carey Mulligan standing out, with Coen staple John Goodman contributing a memorable and bombastic extended cameo as well. Visually, the film is stunning and a bit disarming, choosing a muted palate of drab colors and dull lighting to give the film a cold and smoky feel that seems to complement the understated folk soundtrack perfectly. Of course, this being a Coen bros. film, there's the trademark dark and absurdist humor that plays out both situationally and via dialogue. When it wants to be, this is a very funny film.


The Bad: if anything, this film is TOO muted and TOO slow for its own good. It's like a lazy winter Sunday encapsulated into film. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but it explains why the film escaped the notice of many when it came time for year-end accolades. While I ultimately was a fan of the narrative (or lack thereof), I can see why the film had its detractors.

Ultimately, if you're a Coen bros. fan, a musician, someone who knows or is interested in either musicians or folk music, or a fan of muted and occasionally very funny character pieces, you could do much, much worse than checking out the Coens' latest, one of the more underappreciated films of 2013.

8.5/10.

2013: The Year in Film: "The Dallas Buyer's Club" Review

HIV/AIDs remains a huge health crisis internationally, and a big one here in the United States as well, but by and large, it's become a manageable condition, if monitored and treated properly. It's easy to forget that when the disease was first identified in the early and mid 1980's, it was mysterious, misunderstood, un-treatable, and usually fatal in an extremely short period.  In many circles, it was seen as a disease limited to the gay community, which fed into and inflamed fears, misconceptions and pre-existing biases already surrounding that community.  Study of the disease was extremely limited, treatment was even less so, and the hopes for survival for someone infected with HIV were low to say the least. Add to this equation the inflexible bureaucracy that is the FDA, and there wasn't much hope for someone infected with HIV in the 1980's. In response to the slow progress of the medical community in treating this disease, HIV positive individuals sought other avenues for treatment of their disease, seeking out experimental drugs and treatments that were being tested worldwide. As a way to escape the watchful eye of FDA regulators and law enforcement, these people formed "buyers clubs" as a way to distribute their drugs, where each person paid a membership fee and was given drugs as part of their membership, rather than paying directly for the drugs themselves.

Ron Woodruff was a Texas cowboy, party animal and electrician who, after years of drug use and having sex with anyone who was willing, found himself diagnosed with HIV. He was given only a short time to live, and in his desperation at a lack of options, he began seeking out alternative treatments via medical journals and foreign doctors. After realizing that there was a market for these drugs, he started a "buyer's club" to distribute the drugs among other desperate HIV positive individuals.

The Good: This is a fascinating story that I truly knew nothing about, and the film does a solid job of telling the tale without appearing overly preachy. (as many "message" films are want to do) The portrayal of the mid-80's is solid, but the true draw here are the performances, especially McConaughey in the lead and Jared Leto as transgender woman Rayon. McConaughey is on a real role lately, and his performance in this one is probably the best one of his career. He transformed himself physically, losing a ton of weight to portray the AIDs-afflicted Ron Woodruff, and even if his transformation from masculine homophobe to HIV medicine crusader is a bit cliche, it's still a richly drawn role given real depth and pathos by an actor at the top of his game. Jared Leto also throws himself into the character of Rayon, and his character is at turns funny, charming and utterly convincing. This particular version of the Odd Couple really highlights the human face of the epidemic.



The Bad: Jen Garner's character is pretty damn pointless. She's a doctor who works at the hospital where Woodruff is first diagnosed and she ends up sympathetic to the club and hangs out with the characters... but she doesn't do anything else. Did the film think we needed a quasi romantic lead? I'm still not certain exactly what she's doing. Additionally, in its focus on Woodruff, the rest of the characters lag behind. It would have been interesting to see more of Rayon's motivations, for instance, and maybe get to know the Dallas HIV+ community a little better as well. Woodruff's transition from macho man and homophobe to man of the people seems a BIT too abrupt to be true, but McConaughey's performance helps gloss over these shortcomings.

In all, a pretty damn strong and fascinating film. I don't know that I recall an actor being as red-hot as McConaughey is right now. Between this, Mud, Wolf of Wall Street and True Detective, he's come a long way from romantic lead in awful rom-coms. This one is definitely worth a watch, even if it falls short of the best films of the year.

8/10