August Appreciation: Emma Stone

This weekend, strong word of mouth has brought popular book adaptation The Help to rise to the #1 spot at the box office this weekend ahead of the well-reviewed blockbuster Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which had just barely beaten it the weekend before. It's a comparable story to the box office success of The Blind Side in 2009 and puts the likes of Julie & Julia or Eat Pray Love, to which The Help had been previously compared to, in the proverbial dust. Sandra Bullock's continuing reign as America's sweetheart and the star power that comes therein had been said to anchor the success of The Blind Side and, likewise, I think Emma Stone's name can be safely thrown into the "star" category.

While The Help might have had more, well, help, from seasoned character actors like Viola Davis or Octavia Spencer, there is no confusion that the center role belongs to Emma Stone and she has once again opened a movie at which she is the center of to breakthrough success to the surprise of the industry matching her achievement last year with Easy A after also having been involved with the ensemble of the moderately successful Crazy Stupid Love (although my main complaint with the film would probably be that there simply isn't enough of her, especially compared to the irritable child and his creepy babysitter).

Netflix has recently made the film Paper Man available for instant viewing which, though not as strong as the likes of Easy A or The Help on the strength of its own merit, can summon up one aspect of Emma's appeal and how she's skyrocketing to the top of the A-list of Hollywood. Paper Man was an underseen and critically mauled indie dramedy in the vein of a Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry film that had first made critics single-out praise for Emma shortly before she burst on the more mainstream scene with Easy A. In the film, she embodied a persona and character of a strong-willed independently-minded but-still-sensitive-enough-to-yearn-for-some-affection character even more strongly than she had in Easy A and The Help. But it's this character that she plays so well, so precisely, with such sympathy and ability to relate that defines her screen presence in a way that can only hearken back to the most classic of Hollywood stars from the golden era and is the stuff legends are made from. While only being 22.

Yes, well, in Paper Man it was more for her desire to fill a fatherless void that she finds in Jeff Daniels while in Easy A it was a more for a boy who would finally perhaps want to take her out on a real date and aiming for romance instead of just having the opportunity to tell people that they banged her. So it's not like she's playing the same role over and over again, she's finding great roles that suit her strengths in a diverse selection that still manages to show off her versatility. In The Help, she plays a strong-willed independently-minded journalist in the rougher context of 60s-era Mississippi who still wants a sense of normalcy and a good man to like her for who she is just as anyone else would want. And she stands out in an ensemble of Julliard-trained and Tony award winning actresses with her memories of being raised by an old family maid whom her ailing mother (just another layer of psychological complexity that Stone attaches on her character with surprisingly seamlessness that still matched a lighter tone to the film) fires while Stone's character has been away at school. Upon learning the circumstances of that firing, Stone has a killer scene and very easily the best delivered line among the intimidating cast of actors.

Not even mentioning how easily she seemed to slip into the period and carry a believable southern drawl, one would think something of this genre might not suit her talents as much as, say, the indie scene street cred of Paper Man or the hip teen comedy genre of Easy A that proves to be such MTV Movie Award and Teen Choice Award bait, or even the romantic comedy genre of Crazy Stupid Love or Friends With Benefits or even the gross-out comedies like Superbad or The House Bunny. And she only continues to further prove her strengths as an actress, her bankability as a star and her emotional versatility as an artist by choosing her star path so instinctively, so against the grain of conventional wisdom, always subverting expectations for her. While any young bombshell in Hollywood trying to breakthrough big time would die/dye to have blonde hair, the naturally blonde Stone prefers to color her hair red. Many actresses aim for the more passively written female roles in major testosterone filled blockbusters while Emma fights for the female ensembles and comedies (like most of the films mentioned so far) and has even had the privilege of hosting Saturday Night Live to impressive results. But even these comedies, particularly those that have proven to be her three defining roles thus far (Paper Man, Easy A and The Help) she has imbued her generally upbeat characters with a sense of heartwrenching dramatic notes that she hits to home runs with standout line readings. Whether it be "so I swam back..." and the rest of that monologue from Paper Man to "I kind of hate me too" from Easy A to "you broke her heart" from The Help, she consistently seems to be wooing and proving herself more and more with each film and each year in the business while critics and bloggers this summer were expecting her star to grow while even underestimating the potential success of The Help.

Suddenly she seems to have dug a very impressive niche for herself when it's announced that, suddenly, she's gonna be apart of the rebooted Spider-Man franchise. People are blindsided at first but figure ultimately that she'd be perfect for Mary Jane. No no no, she's going back to her blonde roots for Gwen Stacey. She already opened the $8 million budgeted Easy A to over twice that number in it's opening weekend finishing at close to $60 million and opened The Help to, first, match and then even exceed an installment of Planet of the Apes as opposed to many female-opened comedies of the past few years like Love & Other Drugs, One Day, Morning Glory, Life As We Know It, Killers, The Switch etc. etc. by actresses thought to be much more established than the young Emma with, I believe, The Amazing Spider-Man only to be a guaranteed (and for her probably the biggest) box office success in her already impressive hand of cards.

She has the natural talent that had caught the eyes of Hollywood ever since the likes of Superbad, The House Bunny and Zombieland and has the charisma and proven success, especially after this Summer, that should negate any argument of "overexposure" as if her stardom is being forced on the moviegoing public. She's not being rammed down anyone's throats, she's getting there completely on the merit of her own natural talent and is increasingly getting loved by as many people as are willing to give her a chance and paying to see the films centered around her. Read more!

Best of 2011, so far:

Here we are. It's August, and as the summer season winds to a close we find ourselves headed towards festival season as the New York Film Festival announced their lineup this week. Last year I was able to see greats there like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Another Year, Poetry and Certified Copy with a few duds thrown in like Of Gods and Men and Aurora. More or less, however, that's when my figures by which to evaluate the "best of the year" begin to take shape. I'm still ruminating on what to catch there, although I do expect A Separation, The Artist and This Is Not a Film to all at least be the definites. I do think, though, that 2011 has been a fairly solid year so far already, and I want to use this post as a place to provide some of what I feel are the highlights thus far.



I'll start with Beginners by Mike Mills which, though well responded to, was a charming little surprise for me. Christopher Plummer may well take home an Oscar this year for playing an elderly man who comes out as gay immediately upon the death of his long-time wife and spends the short remainder of his own life trying to live the gay lifestyle deprived of him for so long. Ewan McGregor plays his son who narrates this story, who steals the show as an artist living with the pressures of his commercial work getting in the way of his desire for further expression, the sympathetic memories of his mother absent of a true husband all her adult life and keeping a girlfriend as lonely and pained as he is. His performance grounds the film in a no-nonsense realism and simplicity that balls up all these humane layers and throws it at you straight. It's fine work from all the actors involved with the help of a substantive, relatable, mature and honest script.



This summer has largely been dubbed the summer of R-rated comedies. I'm not really sure why but I guess there's been a lot of fairly successful ones released, but none quite reach the level of towering achievement as the Kristen Wiig vehicle Bridesmaids. Parts of it are equally as funny as they are painfully sad as they are harmless fun as they are simply compelling. Co-writer Kristen Wiig seemed to write herself a character that brilliantly displays her versatility in shining form, necessary for her to get past her reputation of little more than successful caricature-artist on Saturday Night Live. Her character is someone suffering through a hole of bad economic times, crushed dreams and romantic loneliness that there seems to be no foreseeable way out of. It drowns her with a deflated sense of self that's easily irritated with any further fear, envy, heartbreak or inadequacy that becomes all but guaranteed when her childhood friend asks her to be her maid of honor at her wedding. It's a tour de force of comedic performing with a better acted ensemble than, say, last year's The Fighter, more timely and resonant with the economic atmosphere than Up in the Air, more successful gross-out humor than either Hangover and funnier than any film since the last SNL star-penned script of Mean Girls by Tina Fey. It's brazenly fearless in how much emotionality Wiig throws into the story, utterly ruthless in how long she'll subject the audience to long awkward moments that are funny but leave you feeling as hopeless as necessary to connect with her central character's woes throughout the film — central to both its hilarity and its sadness.



I did a review of Paddy Considine's directorial debut Tyrannosaur a little while ago, but what's especially worth mentioning with the film now is it as a performance vehicle. To me, there seems to be no films on the horizon for the rest of the year that will be as jam packed with such a plethora of mindblowing performances. Considine in his directing and both Marsan and Mullan in their performances bring an uncanny ability to bring horrifying empathy to monsters and other monstrosities. Mullan, in particular, does wonders with so little; never falling into traps of going over the top to cheaply capitalize on melodramatic emotion nor does he underplay with an illusion of depth. What sums up how impressive his performance is can be pointed to the fact that his showiest and shoutiest moments are still shaded with many nuanced layers of subtlety and complexities that very few other actors — even those as well seasoned and as advanced in ability as Mullan — are capable of pulling off. Olivia Colman plays antithetical to the entire film and ultimately reveals a profound darkness in her purity and grace. In my opinion, she has less to do overall than Mullan but still matches him in plenty of scenes — including her "big scene," which I would bet money will remain to be the single most well acted scene of this year when everything else is all said and done.



I've already talked earlier this year on this blog about how beautiful I felt Bal is, and it remains to this day strong enough in my mind to be a worthy runner-up to talk about the best of this year, and I at least don't see it leaving a top 3 by the end of it. The cinematography is truthfully as beautiful as any film I believe that you'll ever see and encompasses everything great cinematography should be; it's beautiful but unobtrusive, it adds a layer of perspective to the storytelling and isn't just there to look pretty (looking at you, Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford!). And the child performance by Bora Altas at the center of it remains, in my mind, the best child performance period since Mohammad Ramezani in The Color of Paradise.



I don't think I've gotten the opportunity yet this Summer to muse on Terrence Malick's long awaited Tree of Life on this blog. To be honest, I was kind of dreading it. And I do find it very difficult to discuss, or to write about, or just to verbalize in any other way. Partly because the film is hardly wordy. It's not too rooted or concerned with plot. To its credit, it is ultimately cinematic. It is ultimately a story that could have only been told through Malick's imagery. It's themes and messages and "meanings" could only be told through the emotional interaction one has with the images on screen. It's not inherently a better form of cinema, but to me an undoubtedly purer one that's of the utmost difficulty. It's life and love and dreams and loss and sadness and greatness and family and grace and coming of age and coming to terms. It is as humane a film as you'll ever see, and Robert De Niro's jury at Cannes assured it status in the larger realm of film history, as well as the FIPRESCI group of critics naming it the best film of the past year, that it is the most important movie you'll see this year. Whether it's the best movie you'll see this year? Obviously that's up for you to decide. It's not a matter of "getting it" or "not getting it" or being purposefully pompous and pretentious versus intellectual vapidity, it's simply a matter of whether you emotionally connect with it or not. For me, I did. I let the images wash over me in what seemed to me as one of the grandest sensory visual experiences I've ever had in a cinema; and whether or not you'd like the film I would recommend the theatrical experience to anyone who possibly can make their way there. To me, it's the finest film of the year so far and will be tough to knock off the top spot. Read more!