By Aaron 12/24/2007

I went into this movie fearing that my most anticipated movie of the Oscar season would be a disappointment as all of my previous ones had (Spider-Man 3, etcetera). Thankfully, I was wrong about that, very wrong, as Juno stormed into my top 5 movies of the year, putting up some serious contention for my forthcoming, Movies of 2007 list. I apologize in advance if I ruin any humorous lines for you, but I think most of them were in the preview, and I try to keep the quotes to a minimum.

  The movie picks up when Juno (a phenomenal Ellen Page), a 16-year old Mid-Western highschooler, decides out of boredom or curiosity, to have sex with her friend Bleeker (Michael Cera). She isn’t really looking for this to be anything more than a whim, she doesn’t plan on being truly “sexually active” as they say often in the movie. Unfortunately the next scene shows Juno going through pregnancy test after pregnancy test daring that pink plus sign to lie. After a hilariously depressing trip to the local abortion clinic, she decides, with some help from her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) to browse for prospective adoptive parents in the local Pennysaver. This is how Juno finds the seemingly perfect, affluent couple Mark (Jason Bateman) – a cool-guy-with-a-guitar, who instantly wins Juno over, and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) – a hyper organized woman desperate to be a mother. The movie avoids clichés like annoyingly unsupportive parents, pesky siblings; hotter friends who try to seduce the protagonist’s love interest, and other weak high school-ish movie dogma. What is left is a great movie that most were quick to call the feminist version of Knocked Up, but what I call, it’s own great movie. Maybe Knocked Up is the watered down, male version of Juno!

  Ellen Page was simply amazing. Ebert heaped plenty of praise on her, and the movie, naming it his favorite of the year and calling her performance flawless. Pretty tough for me to beat that, or do it nearly as eloquently as he did, especially because he said he had the luxury of watching the movie THREE TIMES. But here goes. Page’s timing is ridiculous. It is almost unfair how sharp she is – not just her character – but you can tell she is a sharp, intelligent actor by the way she executes a complicated script. In the hands of her X3 contemporary Anna Paquin (a great actress in her own right, wasn’t she nominated for an actor when she was way young??? Am I reaching), the movie could have flopped. Instead, Page’s delivery is right on absolutely every time, and her attitude, mannerisms, and intonation are completely in-step with her character. She also looks pretty great. Sure, she’s in a “fat suit she can’t take off” but she looks damn good. Especially when she’s not pregnant. But really, her performance should be enough – capturing the humor, the deep emotional feeling and (trying not to laugh) the chemistry with Michael Cera.

  Michael Cera is no slouch in the movie either, as he has perfected the art of the awkward, shy high school boy. As Paulie, the high schools track “star,” he is perfect, hilariously awkward, yet touching. It is so obvious to everyone (except, perhaps, Juno) that he loves Juno and he does it so well. He also has one of the movie’s best lines, which actually holds true of the movie itself: “You’re so cool and you don’t even have try/Actually I try really hard.” The movie knows it is smart, sharp, and cool, and it tries really hard, perhaps unlike Paulie (come on, besides love-crossed Juno, the guy is not “cool,” maybe sweet), the movie succeeds. My only regret about Cera’s amazing performance is that the movie is just another nail in Cera’s typecast-coffin that he can only play awkward high school boys. He just better be thankful he looks so young, and probably play that age for a while.

Now I talked about the two main characters, but the supporting cast is awesome too, and exhibits just as much comic punch and timing as the others, albeit in smaller doses. Rainn Wilson is great in his one scene (I can’t wait for the DVD – I bet he has more scenes that were cut). Allison Janey plays Juno’s step mom (can anyone remember her from her funny obsessive counselor from The New Guy?) with gusto and gets some great lines, and establishes a great, realistic, mother-daughter relationship. J.K. Simmons steps out J. Jonah Jameson’s suits and into everyday people clothes to play Juno’s down to earth father who is pleasantly supportive and understanding where most Hollywood parents would be punishing and annoying (thank Diablo Cody for letting us escape another movie about kids rebelling against their parents). Olivia Thirlby’s Leah is a great best friend, giving me hope that not ALL high school girls are conniving schemers plotting the destruction of their female peers. She also looks great, that helps. Jennifer Garner finally gets a role where her I-have-no-personality-disease is a blessing instead of a curse, and manages to pull off the average (acting, not looking) suburban woman. Jason Bateman is great here, playing more off of timing than on the lines he actually gets to deliver. He also pulls off some tricky scenes that walk a fine line between funny-awkward and the alternative. Plus, his wannabe-rocker attitude is pretty much how I picture the guy is in real life (isn’t that essentially what Michael Bluth is? Yeah, you’re right, not really…). While I did say each of these characters is funny and real in their own right, they all benefit from some great scenes with Juno – Cera has a few, Janey has the scene at the ultrasound office, Simmons his pep talk, and they both have the great scene when Juno tells them she’s pregnant. Garner has an incredibly emotional scene when she runs into Page when the pregnancy is far along, while Bateman has some tense scenes when the two share their common interests – music and movie tastes.

  Besides all that good stuff, I really got into the music. I have to brag that I was on the Kimya Dawson train before the movie because one of my friends pushed her CD, Remember That I Love You, into my hands over the summer. I was glad that Kimya’s songs were not overused (there were plenty of other lo-fi acts too), and that the songs they did use were so perfect. So many of the themes and plotlines seem to be captured perfectly in Kimya’s chorus of: “and even then we'll start again and just pretend that nothing ever happened.” Plenty of Moldy Peaches too, and their song, Anyone Else But You, provides a great ending that left me incredibly satisfied. If you don’t listen to some of these acts, and you liked them in the movie, or didn’t notice them because they were such a perfect fit, PLEASE check them out, they are GREAT.

This is a postscript that I went back and inserted here, but I just realized I almost published the review without commenting on Diablo Cody’s job. Umm, GREAT JOB. I mean, for a first time scriptwriter, this was AMAZING. Her script was hilarious, intelligent, AND told a great story. I don’t even expect to get all three of those out of veteran comedy writers. But she set the bar high, and I’m expecting a damn good follow up. On that note, the director, Jason Reitman does a great job, bringing the same great camera work and great color that he had in Thank You For Smoking to a great follow up. Perhaps SOME of the credit for the great comedic timing goes to Reitman, who did the same in Smoking. So the same goes for you Reitman, I’m expecting a great follow up here.

  Now it wouldn’t be a review if I didn’t have SOME things that bothered me. So I’ll pause the lovefest for a second and throw a few things out there. First, the movie seemed TOO smart at times. While I loved it – the wit and the fast retorts, sometimes, when EVERY character had that same sharp wit and great timing, I started wishing life was really that funny. But it isn’t. But as a movie, who cares – I started taking it in stride, and by the end of the movie, I was totally immersed in that world anyway and I was loving the wit. Second, one of my friends brought up a valid observation. The constant music was different. Actually, he said it in many different words that were more like: there was too much music. Me, I loved that because I loved the music, knew most of it beforehand and felt it fit right in with the movie. But I can see his point, when a few important dramatic scenes had some pretty loud lyrics coming at you. If any movie deserves a perfect ten, I think this movie does – it lived up to my expectations and then some, I had a lot of fun, left the movie in that warm afterglow of complete cinematic satisfaction, so I have no qualms about giving this a 10/10 saltystix. One last thing – I just checked this, but this film pulled off a PG13 rating, and I just have to ask, WHY WEREN’T ALL TEEN COMEDY MOVIES THIS GREAT!? Damn you Hollywood, thank you Diablo Cody.

Could “Avatar” Win Best Picture?

By Brett Hogan

 

Last week, the trailer for James Cameron’s sci-fi experiment “Avatar” debuted. While initially unimpressed with the teaser, I began to wonder: Could this film win best picture? 

 

Buzz has been generating for this movie for years. Years. The technology to make this movie didn’t exist when Cameron conceived it, so he invented it. When is the last time you heard of a director spearheading the invention of anything? The casting started in 2005. Most movies these days, even epics, are done in half that time. I could go on. 

 

The most important thing to take away from all of this is that people are saying this will be the future of movies. Now, I don’t agree with the idea that CGI will become more prevalent than it already is. But I do believe that this will set the bar miles higher for sci-fi. I mean, that is what Titanic did. And that won some awards if memory serves.

 

I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, how can you even suggest that a film like this will win Best Picture when the initial trailer was nothing better than visual stimulation? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, the Academy has expanded Best Picture to ten films. This doesn’t guarantee anything other than improved chances for most films on the cusp.

 

Second, after last year’s Oscars debacle, which saw the best film of the year, “The Dark Knight,” not only get shafted in awards but nominations as well, the Academy is pulling out all the stops to appease those with the loudest voices in the film industry, the fanboys. Now, the Academy probably didn’t lose anything because of that other than some viewers of the award show. Perhaps if people are again outraged with the winners or nominees, the heads of the Academy would lose their jobs. So this is all about the Academy protecting itself, which is not so outrageous.  

 

 

Third, there is an economic motive here. I’ve heard this film will cost $190 million, not counting the R&D costs associated with Cameron’s inventions or the cost of getting 3-D cameras into every theater in the country. The Academy will do everything in its power to get people into the seats and make this the next “Titanic” or “The Dark Knight.” But the Academy doesn’t have much power, besides nominating and awarding, so they will slap the “Nominated for Best Picture” moniker onto every commercial and print ad to get the people who didn’t believe the critics to relent and see this movie.

 

Of course, all of this is pure conjecture, and no revolutionary film (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc.) has ever won the Best Picture category because it changed the game. Except maybe Titanic. But still, could this movie actually win? My answer is no but a nomination is certain and who knows what could happen from there. We’ll know more come February 2010.