OSCAR WEEK

Oscar, are you listening?

Salon writers and special guests weigh in on their favorite performances and movies of the year -- and the ones they couldn't stand.

Editor's note: Salon is offering special coverage leading up to the Oscars this Sunday.

Read more: Movies, Arts & Entertainment, Academy Awards, Oscar Week 2008

Feb. 19, 2008 |

Kathryn Harrison, author of "The Kiss" and, most recently, "Envy"
I love "Sweeney Todd." That a relentlessly bleak tragedy, without justice or hope of redemption, a sordid story of a serial killer and unwitting cannibalism, would be set to irresistibly catchy music and lyrics makes "Sweeney Todd" the only musical I love, probably for its subversive quality: It's a triumph of poor taste that somehow excuses what I find inherently ridiculous in the form. It was the first musical I saw performed onstage, with Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou in the leads, nearly 30 years ago, and though I tried to keep my enthusiasm in check, not wanting to be disappointed, I couldn't help but have high hopes for the film version's potentially brilliant match: Tim Burton directing Stephen Sondheim. But I never imagined -- how could I have imagined? -- it might turn out to be the masterpiece it is.

Immediately -- from the first frame -- I loved the sinister, seductive squalor of Dante Ferretti's sets of 19th-century London. As for Burton's mischievously noir sensibilities, his vision is sublimely matched to this material. And the lead performances were mesmerizing. From the moment in the first act that Johnny Depp sings a love song to his "friends" the straight razors, caressing them, I relinquished any reservations about his ability to carry the role of Todd, which requires him to plummet from righteous fury into madness. And Helena Bonham Carter's madcap Mrs. Lovett, her cheery lack of conscience, is the perfect foil for Depp's depressive, brooding Todd. Even the sepulchral makeup, the dead pallor accentuated by black shadowed eyes, makes Depp and Bonham Carter look strangely glamorous and elegant, not compromising but enhancing their good looks. The montage of Mrs. Lovett's completely daft fantasies of beach-front retirement with Todd is testimony to Burton's genius: He can transform sun-drenched scenes into darkness simply by virtue of tone. Somehow he's made a film that's gothic and savage and very funny, as well as desperately sad and pessimistic. And so wonderful to look at -- so astonishingly beautiful in its debasement.

Kevin Berger, Salon features editor
Here's how I felt after seeing "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead": sick, as in nauseated, as in, "I don't know why I ever pay attention to movie reviews." If this godawfully bleak melodrama, with no redeeming humanity or artistic catharsis, is the valediction with which 83-year-old director Sidney Lumet wants to exit the world, his final message is clearly, "Fuck you, and by the way, Eugene O'Neill was too cheery."

But I do want to say one thing, and that is, "Ladies and gentlemen: Philip Seymour Hoffman." What does it mean that the most riveting and frightening human being on the screen these days is a corpulent everyman who looks and sweats like the cook on a Denny's night shift? In this movie, as he persuades his pusillanimous younger brother, overacted by Ethan Hawke, to rob their parents' jewelry store, Hoffman is Falstaff and Iago and Macbeth rolled into one fantastic human specimen of mirth, malignity and desperation. Wearing a vertiginous orange business shirt and risible brown tie, he communicates all of this through perfectly timed smirks and squints, tiny laughs and sighs.

There is one long and brilliant scene, before the movie disintegrates into Freudian histrionics, when Hoffman steps as lightly as a deer, all the more remarkable for a fellow of his pasty girth, through the upscale apartment of his sylphic drug dealer, staring at the austere postmod furnishings for God knows what reason, his face and body speaking a silent language of razor tension and horrible things to come. I know he wasn't nominated for best actor. But who cares? On principle alone, I would give Hoffman an Oscar every year.

Anne Lamott, author, most recently, of "Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith"
I hated "Atonement." Everyone in the world besides me and my boyfriend seems to have fallen in love with it. We had to hide in the movie theater because we saw some friends approach at the end, with tears in their eyes and swoony looks on their faces -- so we pretended to reach for purses and coats below the seats.

I am so sick of Keira Knightley's lips that some days I can barely go on.

I am known to cover my eyes during violent or intense movies, but loved -- and watched -- almost all of "There Will Be Blood." Daniel Day-Lewis should get the Oscar for best performance. On the other hand, I saw perhaps 45 minutes of "No Country for Old Men" and had not only my eyes shut, but also my fingers in my ears, to block out the sound of Javier Bardem's footsteps. I got exactly one shot of the air gun.

There were so many great appearances by women: Julie Christie in "Away From Her," stunning, once in a lifetime. Laura Linney was fantastic in "The Savages," although I think probably about 38 people in the country saw it. I accidentally loved "Juno," and saw it twice. I loved Amy Ryan in "Gone Baby Gone," and feel as though a friend of mine got nominated, because I have loved her for years on "The Wire." I feel we are secretly very close friends, although I don't believe she knows this.

Cate Blanchett was unbelievably great in "I'm Not There." My favorite movies of the year were "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (boy, did that kick the shit out of all my excuses for writer's block); "Starting Out in the Evening," with the great Frank Langella, who should have been nominated for best actor; "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 days," truly a great movie, one for the ages. I loved "Into the Wild," despite its being too long by half an hour: That young man [Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless] was excellent and lovely, and my son and his friends were deeply moved and enlivened by it.

Well, who asked me? Oh, wait -- you did. So let me add one more quick thing: Philip Seymour Hoffman is our best male actor, period, and should win in every category, including animation and costume design. But "Charlie Wilson's War" left a bad taste in my mouth, that ridiculous paean to the destructive, benevolent force of American arms. We need this from Mike Nichols? I ask you.

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