A Short Dossier on Fay Grim

I should have added to yesterday's post about the best lead actresses of 2007 that I wrote this full review of Fay Grim, my most recent screening of all the films covered in that entry. I suppose that Parker Posey's performance is the most surprising inclusion in my semifinalist derby, but she's measured, creative, and wonderful in an essentially baffling part. The film, if not quite as good as she is, is also an unexpected peach, and I didn't even like Henry Fool.

The Leading Ladies of 2007

Happy '08! I hope everyone had a great New Year's Day, my favorite day in the entire year to play it cool, keep things close to home, hang out on the futon and on the phone—and hence, no blogging yesterday. But, there will be copious entries soon enough, with end-of-year best lists to compile, and a major birthday to celebrate. (And no, I'm not talking about Todd's 47th today, though I should be — bon anniversaire, mon cher!)

Moviewise, I've got two heavy hitters blowing into the Windy City this weekend—critical darling There Will Be Blood and well-reviewed documentary The Price of Sugar, an Oscar semifinalist. Basically, I'm waiting on these titles and Persepolis (opening on Jan. 11), plus some last-minute rentals like Offside and The Namesake, before my theatrical survey of 2007 will be complete enough to draft my annual Honorees. Errant 11th-hour releases like The Great Debaters, The Kite Runner, and the is-it-out-or-not? Grace Is Gone also have outside shots in at least one category, but they're a tad less pressing.

So what does every movie on my Still To Be Seen itinerary have in common? Not a single one of them has a female lead... well, give or take Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You and little Dakota Blue Richards in The Golden Compass, neither of whom looks remotely prepossessing in the trailers, and I'll probably pass on both movies anyway. All of which makes Best Actress (and isn't this fortuitous?) the one category for which I can already posit a semifinalist list. And what a list it is! Anybody here would have qualified for my final five in '01, '03, or '05, and given how many of them are solid Oscar hopefuls, I'm expecting an Academy shortlist that trounces last year's admirable derby of Cruz, Dench, Mirren, Streep, and Winslet. Here are the fourteen glorious contenders:

JULIETTE BINOCHE in Flight of the Red Balloon
NIKKI BLONSKY in Hairspray
JULIE CHRISTIE in Away from Her
MARION COTILLARD in La Vie en rose
KATE DICKIE in Red Road
CATHERINE FROT in The Page Turner
ANGELINA JOLIE in A Mighty Heart
LAURA LINNEY in Jindabyne
LAURA LINNEY in The Savages
ANAMARIA MARINCA in 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
ELLEN PAGE in Juno
PARKER POSEY in Broken English
PARKER POSEY in Fay Grim
TANG WEI in Lust, Caution

If that list isn't stupendous enough, consider that I've already elected against work as strong as Nina Hoss' in Yella, Amy Adams' in Enchanted, Marina Hands' in Lady Chatterley, Ashley Judd's in Bug, Luisa Williams' in Day Night Day Night, Julie Delpy's in 2 Days in Paris, Christina Ricci's in Black Snake Moan, Mirjana Karanović's in Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, and Amber Tamblyn and Tilda Swinton's muted but interesting pas-de-deux in Stephanie Daley.

Other people would have advocated for Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding, but I just didn't find much modulation or depth in her admirably sour exterior; or Keira Knightley in Atonement, but her vocal work drove me batty and she didn't find a way into the character that I felt or believed, though the script is certainly not her friend in pursuing that venture; or Isabelle Huppert in Private Property, refreshingly casual and direct as a discontented mother but abandoned by the script before she's broached any deeper territory; or Jodie Foster in The Brave One, nailing Erica's tough carapace but pretending to be in a smarter movie than she's in (plus she takes that unsalvageable ending even further over the top than it's already going); or Halle Berry in Things We Lost in the Fire, who mostly shows how much better she'd be in Monster's Ball now than she was six years ago, with an artfully restrained and shaded but still rather limited performance; or the much-beloved Carice van Houten in Black Book, but I found her to be more of a pose-striker and an agreeable, flexible participant in Verhoeven's flamboyant mise-en-scène than a particularly whipsmart or engaging performer. (She also, for all of her virtues, made Ellis/Rachel a bit of a wash as a spy: how many sidelong fretful glances and nervous fingers and anxious over-the-shoulder looks is a disguised Jewish spy at war with the Nazis really supposed to allow herself? Tang Wei knew better than this little minx.)

The above were at least runners-up. Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up, Vittoria Mezzogiorna in Love in the Time of Cholera, Markéta Irglová in Once, and Belén Rueda in The Orphanage never excited me all that much. Cate Blanchett was almost as bored as I was during Elizabeth: Full Throttle. Don't even get me started on Helena Bonham Carter, as blank and superficial in her acting of Sweeney Todd as she is patently deficient in her singing; or Molly Shannon in Year of the Dog, disappointingly inadequate to her movie's difficult tone and to all of her close-ups; or Keri Russell, exuding the same lockstep mediocrity and lack of real ideas or feelings as is the rest of Waitress; or Asia Argento, who won lots of fans at Cannes but broods her way through The Last Mistress in a series of increasingly dull grimaces and off-putting bits of naughty-bobcat improvs; or Marianne Faithfull in Irina Palm, well-buzzed on the festival circuit but pitifully stiff and inert in an underconceived part.

So, with all of that said: my list of 14 semi-champions will be whittled down to five later this week, as we kick off the 2007 Nick's Flick Picks Honorees. In truth, four of them are already locked for inclusion, four are confirmed also-rans, and the other six are competing for that fifth spot on the final list... so go ahead and state your cases for your favorites! Plus, we've got 19 other categories to sort through, and even more to say about actresses of the past as well as the present. But you'll have to stay tuned for those tidbits. Enjoy '08, vote Democratic, and keep coming back!

Picked Flick #62: Best in Show

Sometimes you see a movie in the theater and you like it okay, but you wouldn't consider seeing it twice, except that your friend hasn't seen it yet and you're happy to go along. For whatever reason, you like it better and laugh much harder than you did the first time. Then you actively anticipate the video or DVD release, more avidly than you are awaiting movies that you enjoyed or admired much more. Then you watch the movie repeatedly, incessantly—why does it keep getting funnier? In ten years, I've had this experience twice, the first time with Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, and then with Christopher Guest's Best in Show. How do you account for humor, even your own taste in it, your own laughter? I have no idea how I sat through my first screening of Mars Attacks! and only laughed once—and that because Sarah Jessica Parker's chihuahua wouldn't stop barking at Michael J. Fox over breakfast. I am, apparently, a groundling. Nor can I say anything illuminating or precise about why I roar through that movie now, why the simple, never-changing "ack ack" of the aliens is enough to set me off.

The case of Best in Show is even odder to me, because it doesn't, like Burton's film, require any stylistic acclimation, and its comedy emerges much more through conventional means like one-liners and parodic personalities than, as in the Burton, through camp reenactment and sustained eccentricity. I read my original review of Best in Show now and, though I still wonder about the film's allegiance to mockumentary and am well aware of the jokes that don't score, I can't figure out what the hell I was being so stingy about. I probably quote Best in Show more often than any other movie I've seen, save three or four, but you wouldn't know it from my frugal little write-up. But I don't think I was just being a stick-in-the-mud. I am not a flip-flopper, though I might occasionally be blind and deaf. I can't believe how many of my favorite moments I didn't fully appreciate or even notice until the third or fourth go-round, like when John Michael Higgins' Scott looks at Jane Lynch's desperately primped dog handler Christy Cummings and expertly sizes her up as looking "like a cocktail waitress on an oil rig," or Higgins and Michael McKean having the world's most politely submerged argument about over-packing a suitcase, or Catherine O'Hara's perplexed look at husband Eugene Levy when he tries to avert a credit-card disaster by paying with traveler's checks, even though they don't have any.

But most of what I love about the movie are the jokes I liked to begin with, which have proven uncannily memorable, and bizarrely applicable in more situations than you'd think, and wonderfully convivial, too, because everyone seems to love this movie. Jennifer Coolidge's ditzy deadpan is just as funny when she says something demented ("So I'm just waiting, until I get another message...from myself" or "Those act as flippers") as when she runs rough-shod over the feelings of her eventual lover, Christy, of whose privately owned, proudly assembled kennel she sharply reminisces, "It was a shitbox." On repeat viewings, you learn how to live with the extreme stress inducements of Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock, and you can simply enjoy their brilliance at ratcheting up the neurotic hysteria. The two words "Busy Bee" can make me lose it in public places, thinking about Posey's fearsome dressing-down of Ed Begley Jr.'s head concierge as well as the toy store employee, and of the wild swoops of her caftans when she erupts into one of her fits, and of how she alternates being pressure-cooked inside a mean helmet of hair and tying it back with a head scarf because even her hair drives her crazy. Fred Willard is more than inspired as the fatuous commentator at the dog show, but the more you watch, you further appreciate Jim Piddock's comparable knack at playing the slow burn of the affronted expert. Levy and O'Hara's couplehood isn't quite as rich as in A Mighty Wind, burdened as they are with that laborious business of her multiple ex-boyfriends, but I'll still watch O'Hara do anything, and her costume designs are terrific, and the sweetness in their rapport serves the movie eautifully. Improv comedians could learn quite a bit from this movie, including how not to flee from feeling.

Oh, and the best dog wins. Isn't that a peach? (Click here for the full list of Nick's Picked Flicks.)