Inside Llewyn Davis

on the last 15 minutes of the movie--I think there is the glass-half-full view that he was turning things around---the movie poster about the journey, the kind encounter with Jean and the "i love you", the apology and kindness to the Columbia professor couple. Then there is the glass-half-empty view that he is on a hamster wheel of bad decisions, meanness and burned bridges that he cannot, because of himself, get off of. And guys like that don't make it. Perhaps unless you are a talent for the ages....like the Dylan insert. The narrative device that the Coen Brothers employed put their character back on the hamster wheel. With the movie's last words was he saying goodbye to folk music, or goodbye to who he had become? Most likely it's neither. Or both. Regardless, the reason that this debate of meaning is possible is because these changes (if they exist) and shifts of perspective were done with great subtlety. 99% of movies tell us how to feel. Sitting here right now 1 hour after the movie I think this might be the Coen Brothers best. Certainly their most restrained. They even got a non-caricatured performance out of John Goodman.

The Wolf of Wall Street

I cannot figure out what Scorsese has done here. It is a Scorsese movie--the cinematic momentum, the banter, the what-makes-me-live-also-makes-me-die themes---but it is the most undisciplined Scorsese movie I can think of. Scenes that get lost in absurdity. The movie is long and is its subject’s match in gluttony and abuse of power. All I can think is that Scorsese recognized this and made a movie that is its subject--long, crazed, and so over the top that it makes us uncomfortable. An indulgent movie about indulgence. I’m probably giving it too much credit.

12 Years a Slave

By 12 years this is the best movie of the alotted Oscar Movies. and it is not even close. On the level of emotional and political art, I should qualify, as Gravity deserves technical merits.  where to start? the images are strong...the juxtaposition of the opening shot line-of-slaves image with the free-black-man in free atire; the churning of the paddle-boat wheel’s human purchasing machinery ; our main character literally tiptoeing for his life as the slave world moves on around him. Moving on and not considering what is really happening is what these characters have to do to survive. and this movie shows that off--ignore and you will live. This is a disturbing truth, and what our main character deals with the entire movie. Uncompromising, deliberate, forceful, unapologetic. The movie tells us that this was a horrible past, and that we need to see that, recognize that, and deal with that. But we also need to move on and liberate that. The final spoken lines of the movie, from Soloman Northup’s wife upon hearing her husband apologize for being 12 years a slave “there is nothing to forgive” tells us that we cannot account for the atrocities, the level of horror. We must acknowledge and learn from it, but then make peace. This movie can be that catharsis.