What information to reveal, when?

In watching Christopher Smith's movie Triangle on Saturday, there were (appropriately) three instances when I was inspired to reveal information about the film that maybe I shouldn't have. One was before the film and two were during. Two also (not the same two) were instances where I actually revealed the info, and in one instance I kept my mouth shut.

But let me start by telling you a thing or two about this film, which worked very well for me despite the fact that a close scrutiny of its narrative structure might uncover all sorts of logical flaws.

A group of six friends (three men, three women) leave a Florida harbor on a beautiful morning for a day of sailing. Included in these friends is a woman (Melissa George) who seems a bit shell-shocked, like she can't exactly remember the events leading up to this moment in time. As they get out on the water, some unusual changes in the weather -- which seem localized to exactly where they are on the water -- portend ominous things to come.

Which is all I really want to say about it until I've given you a spoiler warning. Here it is: Mild spoilers to follow, but only about the kind of movie it is, not about actual things that happen in the plot. So in other words, you won't be too disappointed if you keep reading, and it shouldn't affect your enjoyment -- especially if you realize that the triangle of the title is the Bermuda Triangle, where weird things are always afoot.

1.

Triangle had come up for discussion in the Flickchart group on Facebook sometime in the past year. The larger theme of the discussion was: mind-bender movies you may not have seen, which may or may not have to do with time travel. Also discussed were Timecrimes and Primer, the former of which I love and the latter of which I most certainly do not love.

It's rare enough these days that my wife and I watch movies together -- two a week at most -- that I feel like I need to sell each suggestion to her in order for her to agree to it. I probably don't; in fact, she loves not knowing anything about a particular film before she sees it. But when I've got a movie I want to watch, I immediately start planning out the sales pitch, to make the movie seem more enticing to her. So in this case I explained that the movie had come up in a discussion of Timecrimes and Primer.

My wife didn't balk at the information, or tell me she wished I hadn't revealed it. But as we started watching, I wished I hadn't revealed it. Knowing that other people had compared this movie to two time travel movies, I was immediately second guessing everything I saw on screen, instead of being lulled into a false sense of the movie's straightforwardness by what seemed like an ordinary boating trip on a beautiful Florida day. In fact, before the movie started, I hadn't even known that Triangle referred to the Bermuda Triangle. So if I hadn't known there was going to be a supernatural element at play, I mightn't have suspected anything from this innocent beginning.

Of course, I had to know something was up because I knew it was a thriller/horror. Clearly this was not going to be a movie about people taking a pleasant sail and then returning home unscathed.

So how much is too much? You need some information to get you in the door. Without movie websites telling you things like "People who liked this also liked this," you might not even know a particular movie existed. In fact, that may have been how those who recommended Triangle to me learned about it in the first place. Maybe they saw Timecrimes, and then Triangle was recommended as a similar movie. (Note: If you are worried that I have spoiled Triangle for you in some way, worry not -- calling it similar to Timecrimes and Primer is in many ways a red herring, and the very specific thing it has in common with Timecrimes is not what you would expect at all.)

My wife, who didn't like the movie as much as I did, didn't scold me one bit for telling her that it was similar to these other movies. She didn't say it affected her expectations, or anything like that; in fact, she didn't mention this advanced knowledge whatsoever. She did, however, scold me about yet again taking her out of a movie by identifying one of the actors as someone who once appeared in something else.

2.

See, one of the compulsive things I do that pisses my wife off the most is to point out actors on screen as the movie is going. "Hey, it's so-and-so." Or "Hey, that's the guy who was in such-and-such."

Objectively, it's an annoying habit. I will own that. But certain viewing companions -- my wife not being one of them -- would actually benefit from something like this. If they are like me, they get something out of recognizing that this actor appeared in that other movie, and they want to know about it at the time so they can appreciate it. If they are like me, they like figuring out the way the cinematic universe fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, how many degrees people are removed from each other, and the twists and turns in people's careers.

My wife, however, represents the much more sizable majority of viewers who want to get lost in the movie, and see that person only as a character. The nerve.

I may be slow on the uptake, but believe me, by now I know that my wife doesn't countenance such interruptions. Especially since she gave me a pretty definitive tongue-lashing (with a half smile, of course) on the subject recently. However, Triangle represented what I considered to be an exception to the rule -- and I want to see if you agree with me.

One of the three men aboard the sailboat in Triangle is an actor named Henry Nixon. There is nothing exceptional about Mr. Nixon -- his is the smallest of the three male roles, and though he performs more than capably in the movie, no one is specifically going to remember him from his work in this film.

Except, there is one thing exceptional about him to us: We've met him.

Nixon is an Australian, like both Triangle's lead (Melissa George) and my wife. And not just any Australian, but an Australian who appeared in the movie Noise, which was directed by my wife's good friend Matthew Saville. Noise appeared at Sundance in 2007, and as such, so did Henry Nixon and my wife and me. Considering the despicable character he plays in Noise, we were glad to see that Henry (I think we can call him that) is a really affable guy without an ounce of ego about him. We spent the better part of an evening with him while we were there.

Because of this connection, I thought my wife would want to know the very moment I identified who he was, which came probably 30 minutes into the film. I figured she would want to know that this was a person we had met and liked, as that would allow her to see his performance through a slightly different lens. It was time sensitive, and even though she warned me as I was doing it, I overrode her warnings for what I thought was her own good.

Turns out, she still didn't want to know. When we discussed it afterward, she told me I could have just waited until the movie was over. But according to my thinking, she would have by then missed her opportunity to watch this guy as he was doing his thing. If she hadn't known she needed to pay special attention to him, she might have had a hard time going back and considering his performance in retrospect.

Okay, well, now I know for the next time we see a movie featuring someone we know.

3.

The third thing is kind of a silly thing, and this is the thing I did not mention to my wife.

At some point in the second act of the movie, I noticed that there had been an inordinate number of shots of Melissa George turning dramatically toward the camera. I think you can imagine what I'm talking about: You start on the back of her head, then she turns around and faces the camera, either to display a look of horror or to deliver a weighty line of dialogue.

I started to notice it so much that I almost thought it was worth pointing out. That way, if this shot then happened a half-dozen more times, we could laugh about it.

There were two main reasons I didn't: 1) I had already been scolded about the Henry Nixon incident; 2) I was enjoying this movie, and didn't want it to become the subject of ridicule.

However, let's say I did want it to become the subject of ridicule. Wouldn't I want to get everybody on the same page, so we could all have a fun time ridiculing it? That might turn the experience from a dull one to one we might remember years from now.

I think of when my wife and I watched Crazy Heart with another couple. Unbeknownst to each other for the first half of the movie, we were all suffering through the viewing, finding falsehood upon falsehood, one unintentionally hilarious moment after another. Then, fortuitously, someone ventured a snide remark, and everyone else chimed in with an equal passion for how little they were enjoying the film. This opened the flood gates, and allowed us to openly crack wise about the movie. I remember laughing and laughing and ultimately having a very fun time -- which doesn't make me feel any more fondly about the movie, only the experience of watching it.

But it can be a risk to take the movie into the MST3K realm. First off, you have to read the room. You have to pick up on the shifting bodies, the sighs, the mild scoffs, to be sure that others are in agreement. Then you've got to pick just the right moment to point out something absurd in the film, and see if your vocal interruption is welcomed or rebuffed.

With Triangle, I didn't want to take it to the level of ridicule, because I was really enjoying the movie. My wife might have actually taken it and ran with it, since she didn't get as much out of the movie as I did. But I didn't want the numerous shots of Melissa George doing a 180 to be our defining memory of the film.

So I did something that I can, surprisingly, do when I want to:

I kept my trap shut.

Career achievement

This is the fourth entry in a week of Oscar-themed posts.

As I have written about before -- back in January for one film, several times this week for the other -- I was not a big fan of either Crazy Heart or The Blind Side.

But when Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock win their Oscars this weekend, I will still celebrate it as an acknowledgement of their years of fine service to the movie industry.

It seems astonishing that Jeff Bridges has never won an Oscar, because he's always doing good work. He's one of those actors who can't be ruined by a bad director. I'm 36 years old, and for people in my generation, Bridges has been a constant in films we loved, in hits ranging from Tron to The Big Lebowski. But Bridges has also been exceptionally quirky, doing good work in movies that may not have been the most mainstream, which failed heroically when they did in fact fail.

Sandra Bullock is a relative newcomer compared to Bridges, but she's been around, as I was reminded recently in Entertainment Weekly, for 20 years as well. Can it really be that long? And though she's never been nominated for an Oscar, she has always been America's sweetheart, someone who seemed like she deserved to have a box office hit eventually. This year, she had two major ones, and what seemed like a tragically unusual career, in which she kept getting cast despite a notable lack of critical and popular hits, finally seems redeemed.

So when Jeff Bridges accepts his trophy this Sunday, I won't be thinking about Bad Blake and Crazy Heart. Instead, I'll be thinking about president Jackson Evans from The Contender and his shark-steak sandwich. I'll be thinking of Z, the retired surfing great who also happens to be a penguin, in the animated Surf's Up. I'll be thinking about Max Klein, the airplane crash survivor in Fearless. And of course I'll be thinking about The Dude.

And when Sandra Bullock accepts her trophy this Sunday, I won't be thinking about Leigh Anne Tuohy and The Blind Side. Instead, I'll be thinking about Gracie Heart from the surprisingly likeable Miss Congeniality movies, with her infectious snort laugh. I'll be thinking of Gwen Cummings, the lovable alcoholic from 28 Days. I'll be thinking of rigid magazine editor Margaret Tate from The Proposal, which I actually thought was pretty darn good. And of course I'll be thinking of Speed's Annie Porter, the commuter with the suspended license who saves an entire busload of Angelenos, which remains one of the most charming, most love-at-first-sight introductions of a new talent I have ever seen at the movies.

Congratulations, Jeff and Sandra. You've earned it.

A shortened screener season

On Monday, I bemoaned the fact that if you want to see movies released in December in time for your year-end list, you have to pay theatrical prices.

There's actually a second way: Go visit your friend who's in the Writers Guild, and cadge as many of his screeners as you can.

Last year was particularly fruitful in this regard, setting me up with some unrealistic hopes for this year. Not only did I watch Doubt with my friend Phil at his place, but I came away with The Wrestler, Burn After Reading and Changeling, all of which he'd already seen. I also took home Doubt so my wife could watch it, which meant I left the premises four screeners richer. Since sharing screeners is strictly prohibited -- you are actually supposed to destroy them after you watch them -- I have changed Phil's name to protect his identity, though they'll have to figure out my identity first if they want to get to him. (The Wrestler ended up being my favorite film of last year, making it only my second top-ranked film that I didn't see in the theater, the first since Run Lola Run in 1999.)

What happened last year, however, was a fortuitous set of circumstances made possible by the fact that I hung out with Phil a week before Christmas. It was soon enough after he started receiving his screeners that he wasn't yet ready to send them in bulk to his cinephile mother, but not so soon that he hadn't already gone through a good number of them, leaving some available to borrow.

But when you get together almost a month later on the calendar, and the cinematic care package to Phil's mother is just days away from being shipped, you have to adjust your expectations a bit. And so it was last night that I reverted to the conditions established in 2007, when I first watched one of Phil's screeners (The Savages) and then just went on my merry way. That's probably just as well, because I don't want my desire to see movies to outweigh my sense of propriety, and put Phil in a situation of stress. Loaning things to people is always a bit stressful -- not only do you have to worry about when you'll get them back, but you also have to worry about them coming back in one piece. (I should know -- he still has two favorite movies I loaned him, and he says they're packed away in boxes somewhere after their move.)

When it comes to screeners, "I'm just happy to be here," as ballplayers up from the minors are fond of saying. I'll take whatever I can get. And last night, whatever I can get was Scott Cooper's Crazy Heart, which has won kudos for Jeff Bridges' lead performance as a broken down country singer. Phil and his fiancee had not yet seen it, so my wife and I joined them on their couch for a viewing over Thai noodles.

And just let me say: I'm glad I didn't pay theatrical prices for this one. Especially since a theatrical viewing would have prevented the snide commentary we established upon realizing it wasn't working for any of us. You know, it's that moment when one person makes a snarky remark, and everyone else laughs a bit too heartily, relieved that the others are similarly displeased. Then you're home free.

Crazy Heart falls into a distinct category of films, of which we've seen quite a few over the last decade, in which a lead performance gets resoundingly praised, and either the performance or the praise itself dwarfs the rest of the movie. With many of these films, the actor in question ended up winning an Oscar. I'm thinking of films like Monster's Ball (Halle Berry), Monster (Charlize Theron) and Boys Don't Cry (Hilary Swank). Lest you think I can only think of examples involving actresses, The Wrestler might have been thought of as a movie like that if a) Mickey Rourke had won the Oscar like he should have, and b) the movie weren't half as good as it is.

Crazy Heart actually has a number of other surface similarities to The Wrestler -- past-his-prime performer tries to make an undignified buck or two while fighting health issues -- but there's no comparison between the two in terms of quality. Bridges' performance is not even all that good, or at least not compared to his own usually high standards. Whatever you think of Bridges -- a friend of mine alternately calls him "Old Mush Mouth" and "Old Marble Mouth" because of the way he tends to garble his dialogue -- there's no doubt that he usually presents as real, even when playing a fantastical character like his peace-loving military zen master in The Men Who Stare at Goats. So if you're using the standard of how good a performer is compared to that performer's usual work, then Bridges' work here is nothing special. In fact, he sometimes seems to be relying on some showy actorly crutches, one of which I described here in the specific context of smoking cigarettes. Not only does Bridges smoke ostentatiously in Crazy Heart, but he loves any opportunity to eat while speaking his lines, or leave his mouth agape, as both of these seem to him to penetrate to the core of his character. It's a pretty good performance, but any time you notice the tricks an actor is using to manipulate you, it's hard to un-notice them.

The biggest problem with Crazy Heart -- and this post was not meant to be an actual review of Crazy Heart, so I'll wrap up -- is that the narrative is surprisingly light on conflict. His supposed rival (played by Colin Farrel in an unusual casting choice) seems to be an eminently nice guy, and there are few consequences to the bad behavior by the aptly named Bad Blake. That was one of the primary sources of disbelief discussed during our running commentary, how things for this "sad sack" were not nearly as sad as they seemed like they were supposed to be. Add in a patently false performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal, in which she can't decide from scene to scene whether she loves or hates Blake (but without anything in the script dictating these emotional fluctuations), and you have a movie that left us laughing -- often at our own jokes and comments -- rather than feeling Blake's pain.

I say there was no cost to watching Crazy Heart, but I did pay for it slightly -- in personal guilt. I know Phil doesn't care if we watch his screeners with him, and probably would have let me borrow a couple of them had I gotten there a couple weeks earlier. And the four of us had been intending to get together for months, so it's not like this was an inorganic gathering that I'd forced on the schedule. However, I did make a joke in an email last week about this being the time of year I needed to "use him for his screeners," and the get-together did spring more or less directly out of that comment. We like them very much and wanted to see them anyway, but I didn't like my own motivations behind scheduling the gathering for when I did.

And so I did the noble thing, leaving on the table a chance to grab one additional screener. In discussing the titles they had seen and would soon be shipping to his mother -- some of which I'd seen, some of which struck me as golden opportunities sadly missed -- I noticed him mentioning the Coen brothers' A Serious Man. He said in this case his mother had actually recommended it to him, and later the screener arrived. I doubted he'd be sending it to her to watch again. So I probably could have left with it, had I asked.

But I let it go. My 2009 rankings will close without that particular title, and no one will be the wiser.

Besides, I have to keep hidden some of the inner workings of my film-obsessed mind, because there will be more screeners to watch at the end of 2010. (And I'm glad on a day like today that Phil never reads my blog.) I have to avoid suspicion when conveniently setting up a time to see Phil next December ...

... maybe a week or so before Christmas.