In touch with the actual ScarJo

No, you aren't doing a double take -- the title of this post is intentionally playing off the title of the final post I wrote on my trip to Japan.

That's because while in that post, I was spiritually communing with Scarlett Johansson's character from Lost in Translation, but in this post, I am in touch with what the actual ScarJo is doing these days.

And that is ... directing movies?

I don't know why I should be surprised by that. Her instincts as an actor show she has an understanding of storytelling through film, so the next logical step would be directing. 

Eleanor the Great, which was the first of two movies I watched on the plane back from Tokyo (My Dead Friend Zoe does not get its own post), is actually Johansson's third effort as a director. The first two are quite different: something called American Express Unstaged: Ellie Goulding in 2015, and a 2009 short called These Vagabond Shoes. 

Eleanor the Great is also different, in that it's different from what we might expect Johansson might direct, if we had any preconceived notions of that. We might assume she'd follow in the footsteps of a director who had brought her one of her more iconic roles, maybe even make a Sofia Coppola-type film if Lost in Translation still felt like a defining text for her all these years later. 

Instead, she's following in the footsteps of another actor-turned-director, Sarah Polley.

Polley's Away From Her was what came to mind for me as I watched Eleanor the Great. Both films were made by young actresses about elderly women, and both surprised with that choice because it would not seem to be any outgrowth of their own lived experience. I guess the difference is that Polley was really young when she made Away From Her, only 27, while ScarJo has now crossed (gasp!) into her forties, only just. (She's 41.)

Indeed the general subject matter is not the only surprising thing about Eleanor the Great, the June Squibb-led film that deals with a 94-year-old woman who has just lost her best friend, with whom she'd been living for more than a decade. (Squibb is actually two years older than that, now 96, though the movie did come out last year.) It's the specific deception Eleanor gets involved in that's quite the controversial matter, though I won't tell you what that is -- it would be a bit like telling you the central controversy of The Drama, and just about as controversial. 

In any case, I'm pleased to say that Johansson proves herself quite capable on this side of the camera, though not to the level Polley achieved with Away From Her. This is a more mainstream, conventional movie, even with the controversial topic I'm not talking about now. 

So yes I'm back now, and was pretty useless the first few days, as that cold I told you about in my last post didn't get any better. I can tell you it was a lot of fun rolling my bags through multiple airports, stopping every minute or so to sneeze or blow my nose, and just hoping that no busybody airport worker would see me and ask me if I should really be flying. (My cover story for having a runny nose and watery eyes was that I was emotional over saying farewell to a loved one.) I didn't get stopped, but that didn't make the redeye from Tokyo to Brisbane, and then another flight to Melbourne, any less miserable.

In touch with my inner ScarJo

When I mentioned Lost in Translation in a post last week, I likened myself to Bill Murray's Bob Harris arriving bleary eyed in Tokyo, even though I counted four major differences between Bob and me.

I probably should have likened myself to Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte -- no last name, just Charlotte -- because that was the character whose Japanese explorations mine have most resembled.

Okay you have to set aside the age thing, the gender thing, and the one of the most beautiful women in the world thing. Or maybe ScarJo's appeal is more abstract than pure beauty. 

Otherwise, though, it works, in one particular way:

Like Charlotte, I was along for the ride on this trip, while my spouse worked, leaving me to consume Japanese culture on my own for four solo days.

The first three of these were in Kyoto, where my wife was attending a games conference. So I saw her at night. No need for me to find a fellow lonesome traveller with whom to wile away my evening hours. 

The last was in Tokyo, and that was mostly designed that way because my wife had been on the go for two solid weeks, first on a walking trip with her friends, then at the games conference, then as part of our two days in Hakone, in between the two cities, where you can get some of your best views of Mt. Fuji. She needed a solo/hotel day on Wednesday, where she was not beholden to anyone, which was not a great sacrifice for her because this was actually her second time in Tokyo on the trip. So I had another day of solo exploration that day.

I didn't consciously pattern any of these explorations on things Charlotte would have or did do. She would never go to the top of the Tokyo Skytree, for example, and I don't think a sumo show would have made her top 20 options in either Tokyo or Kyoto, the latter being a city she did visit on a one-day solo trip, the internet reminded me.

But I did find myself solo visiting a temple, not either of the ones she visited but rather the Senso-ji temple in Asukasa, not far from the aforementioned Tokyo Skytree. And though this place is overrun with tourists, I did find myself alone in a small temple off to the side, trying consciously, like Charlotte did, to "feel something."

For Charlotte, her not feeling something is a sense of lamentable spiritual emptiness for her, but also gets jumbled up with the crisis she's having about her two-year marriage to the low-key lout John, played by Giovanni Ribisi. She feels she'd potentially be capable of getting herself in the necessary mindset to have a spiritual experience in this temple, and when she can't, it brings her to tears.

Me? I kind of feel like I'm on fast forward on these trips, if I lump this in with the whirlwind Europe trip last year. I'm collecting experiences as quickly as I can, and not marinating in them. So while I did feel a bit of hushed awe in this sacred space, imagining those who had prayed there over the years, I was never going to actually have an experience that changed my perspective on my life or the universe. I'm not super spiritual anyway, and also, I'm not secretly regretting my marriage. So I collected this brief experience and moved on to the next thing. Which was the twice aforementioned Tokyo Skytree, a 634-meter structure that is Japan's tallest, and probably as opposite to that temple as can be.

One final similarity with Charlotte? We both had medical troubles on our trip, though for me this is a bit of a stretch.

Bob had to take Charlotte to the hospital for a fractured toe. Me? I got the sniffles.

They started with a dry throat, bad night of sleep on Wednesday and zombified me a bit during the day on Thursday, which still managed to be another 25,000 step day -- 24,803 to be exact. And that bad sleep finally gave me some of the feeling of the insomniacs from the movie, even if it wasn't due to jet lag.

And my sniffles did, unfortunately, cut a bit into my enjoyment of the Tokyo Hyatt, our last Lost in Translation tourist stop on Thursday night. (We did the Shibuya Crossing earlier that day.)

By the time we found the place (we had to circle the building) and got two different elevators to the 52nd floor (one of which only went to 51), I had already gone through almost all of the tissues I'd stuffed into my pocket before leaving our hotel, also in Shinjuku. It was feeling very much like a box that needed to be ticked at this point.

But you know what? The experience soon seduced us. 

They know what those of us making this pilgrimage are looking for. There's a Lost in Translation cocktail which we ordered, and which was delicious, but what really capped it was that they had a lounge singer and small jazz band on hand:

(I thought I might as well just throw in all the photos.)

The songs they performed that I recognized were "The Look of Love," "Dancing Cheek to Cheek," "Natural Woman," "What a Wonderful World" and "Sway."

So yes we did linger a bit, and ultimately had two cocktails, in part because of the $33 cover charge per person (3,300 yen). So yeah, they know why we're there and what we'll pay, which was ultimately around $180. Oh well. But they gave us a good show, too, and more than that, a memory.

Even crazier? We arrived at the right time, apparently, as we were able to sit down right away. Not the case for the poor bastards in the queue when we left.

And tonight we leave the country, back to Melbourne after eight memorable days for me, and nearly three weeks for my wife.

What the hell is ScarJo doing in a lame-ass Jurassic World movie?

Take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt.

There have been six movies in the Jurassic franchise -- or, three movies each in two separate Jurassic franchises, if you prefer -- and I have seen each one of them in the theater.

You can't say this for Pixar, as you discovered from my most recent post. You can't say this for James Bond, and of course you can't because I wasn't born when some of them came out, but I'm talking about even the recent ones. You can't say this for Mission: Impossible. You can't say this for a lot of series with a large quantity of movies in them.

And you won't be able to say this for the Jurassic movies anytime soon, because we already have plans to go see Jurassic World: Rebirth next week in the theater with our kids, during their school holidays. (By the way, does anyone have any concerns that there will now be more Jurassic World movies than there were Jurassic Park movies? Do we have to change the way we think about the whole franchise, or the two franchises in comparison to each other?)

But notwithstanding my own demonstrated sense of loyalty, I still think I can say that the Jurassic movies, generally speaking, are lame, and that I am ashamed at myself for continuing to think big-screen dinosaurs are going to knock my socks off like they've only done two times before.

If you want the God's honest truth, the one of these six movies I've enjoyed the most was the original Jurassic World. When I saw Jurassic Park in 1993, yes, I was wowed by the dinosaurs, but I left the movie feeling a little less toward it than I hoped and expected I would. The other four were mediocre to bad.

So I do believe I can say:

What the hell is Scarlett Johansson doing here?

Scarlett Johansson is an actress I respect unconditionally. She will probably never win an Oscar, but she always makes good choices and she always shows up, even in movies that ultimately proved not to be so good. In most cases -- maybe not all, but most -- they were still good choices that happened to turn bad.

Jurassic World: Rebirth is not a good choice.

Could it be a good movie? Sure it could. A lot of people out there seem to like director Gareth Edwards more than I do. He's helmed a Godzilla movie and a Star Wars movie. In many respects, he's the right man for the job.

But it's still a seventh movie in a series in which far more pedestrian actors than Scarlett Johansson had been plying their time.

Before I get the hate mail -- do people still send mail? -- I should rush to say that I don't find the trio from the original film, that being Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, to be pedestrian. Maybe none of them are out-and-out stars, but they are all compelling presences, and Jurassic Park would not be what it is without Goldblum inexplicably going around with his shirt off.

But when you move to the second trilogy, then you've got Chris Pratt, and Chris Pratt's charm has long since worn off, if you ask me. 

Maybe I'm letting some of the Hillsong Church stuff rub off on my perception of him on screen, and maybe that's not fair. But by year 15 or so of us knowing Pratt, and year 10 or so of him being a genuine movie star, we've all gotten one too many plucky animated characters and dumb heroes with their vacant charm to really find him fresh anymore.

Pratt's primary co-star in those movies was Bryce Dallas Howard, who I do like, but who I find to be an actress who has gotten a toe in the door through nepotism and then found just enough charm to keep that door open, though not enough to really earn my respect.

I respect the hell out of Scarlett Johansson. I do not respect this choice. No way she should be taking Pratt's and Howard's sloppy seconds.

But you know what else just happened to Scarlett Johansson? And by "just" I mean in November?

She turned 40. And I think, as much as it pains me to say it, that milestone may have pushed her into "career maintenance mode."

Johansson has such a hold on our affections, and still our prurient desires, that it may be hard to believe she's about to see a major change in the types of roles for which she can be/should be cast. But Hollywood rarely makes exceptions. Women over 40 have it tough.

I'm hoping that I'll go to see Jurassic World: Rebirth next week and it'll be incredibly fun, and that it'll seem like another win for ScarJo.

I'm worried, though, that it will not, and that our days of having Scarlett Johansson top our marquees may be dwindling. 

Performers and directors of the decade

Do I really need to do two follow-up posts to my best of the decade post?

Duh.

But this is the last, I promise.

As I was going through my list of 87 movies identified for further reconsideration for my best of the decade (82 of which I ultimately watched), I noticed both actors and directors appearing multiple times across the films. That naturally got the wheels spinning for me to honor them separately, hence this post.

I won't write an additional post this time explaining how I did it, but will give you a little bit on that right here.

For starters, I want to explain that this is not some be-all, end-all examination of who were the "best" actors or actresses (or directors) this past decade. That kind of thing might involve tallying Oscar nominations and the like, and that might be an interesting separate exercise, but that's not what I'm doing today. The honors in this post are based only on which movies I liked the best, so they ignore what I might have thought were great performances in mediocre movies. It seemed like the most effective way to filter and manage a post like this, while also keeping it very subjective to my own tastes.

And yet, there is also a non-subjective element to it. Unlike my "three who had a good year" segments in my year-end wrap-up posts, the methodology I'm using does not allow me to choose one person over another based on more nebulous, slippery criteria. I'm going by sheer number of appearances in my favorite films here, with a little wiggle room based on ties and factors like whether the person's work contributed significantly to my affection for the film. So if a dominant percentage of the actors who recurred in my favorite films are of a particular racial composition -- er, white -- then that isn't the result of a specific choice made by me in January of 2020. It's what the numbers bore out over time. And, I suppose, the cumulative effect of a number of small, individual choices. Hey, what can I say, I watched what I watched and I loved what I loved.

I'll also say that either actors or directors who did good work in 2019 are slightly disadvantaged by my system. If 2019 were a year in the middle of the decade rather than at the end, I'd have longer to figure out if those films were going to endure with me, and I would have reconsidered more of them, possibly even some that landed outside my top ten. I think that's just kind of inevitable with years at the end of the decade. Sorry 2019.

So director was pretty straightforward, as each film has only one of them, or at most two. (Okay, okay, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has three.) I put the 87 films in a spreadsheet, slapped the director's name(s) next to each, and sorted by the second column, thereby figuring out who appeared the most. Done and done. As there were only seven directors who had more than one film appear, I had to go outside the 87 in support of the director who appeared as a third honorable mention, but that seemed fair.

Actors were a bit more tricky. I also used a spreadsheet, and I went through the films listing every actor who was either of note or who had any likelihood of appearing in another of my films. For example, I didn't get too hung up on the cast of Tanna (though I did list the two leads) because I knew it was just academic to include them. This meant that some actors got credit for only a very small role in some of their films, but I did my best to account for that as well in breaking ties. In the end, I identified 278 (!) different actors across the 87 films, 240 of whom appeared in only one film.

Tedious. Exhaustive. That's me.

It may go without saying, but if it doesn't, I'll say it now. I didn't penalize anyone for appearing in/making bad films. You could have spent the entire decade making shithouse movies, but if you made two or three that I really loved, you were in. I did decide to mention the moves that may have detracted from their clean records, as you will see, and may have used them once or twice to break a tie. But I was by no means consistent about that.

Okay! Here we go.

Actresses of the decade

1. Emily Blunt 
Considered from the 87: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Looper (2012), Sicario (2015), Your Sister's Sister (2012)
It was easy enough to award Blunt the accompanying art to this post, as she was the only performer to appear in four films from the original list of 87*. (See all the way at the bottom of this post for explanation of asterisk.) In a weird and surprising phenomenon, though, none of those films appeared in either my top 25 or my honorable mentions. Your Sister's Sister, my #2 of 2012, came closest. That does nothing to tarnish the way Blunt announced herself this decade, becoming one of the most capable A-list stars who you also never worried about in terms of her craft. She mostly played tough, as we would expect from female characters written really carefully nowadays, but I may have found the vulnerability she displayed in Sister to be some of her most affecting work this decade. I find it hard to believe that this talented actress has never earned an Oscar nomination (she was robbed for Sicario), and I hope to see that change in the coming years. Interestingly, her "imperial period" (to borrow a phrase usually reserved for music artists) occurred entirely within a four year span from 2012 to 2015, when all four of the above movies were released. But that's not to say she didn't do good work elsewhere in the decade, as you will see below.
Other notable works this decade: The Five-Year Engagement (2012) (really liked it), Mary Poppins Returns (2018) (liked it), A Quiet Place (2018) (really liked it)
Possible detractors: The Girl on the Train (2016) (didn't like it), Into the Woods (2014) (hated it)

2. Zoe Kazan
Considered from the 87: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), Meek's Cutoff (2011), Ruby Sparks (2012)
It may be surprising to see Kazan on this list, especially at #2, but she makes it on quality rather than quantity. Kazan was not in a lot of movies this decade compared to some of her peers -- she also spent some time writing -- but whenever she did appear on screen, she was great. I'm glad to have this opportunity to throw some love to my #1 of 2012, which was the only #1 I left off my top 25 (it was an honorable mention). As both writer and star of Ruby Sparks, Kazan is perhaps more responsible than anyone else for the success of that movie, a sly attack on the lazy screenwriting trope of the manic pixie dream girl. Contrary to what you might think, that was not a role she herself played very often, as her two other choices I considered are oddly similar, both involving characters on long and fateful wagon train trips across country. She may have been a part of the ensemble in Meek's Cutoff, but she carried the brunt of the effectiveness of the best segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which I was also sorry I could not give any more love before now.
Other notable works this decade: The Big Sick (2017) (liked it), What If (2013) (really liked it)
Possible detractors: The Pretty One (2013) (didn't like it)

3. Scarlett Johansson
Considered for the 87: Isle of Dogs (2018), Under the Skin (2014)
In the end, I really only considered one film where Johansson plays a major role, Under the Skin, in which she is pretty much the entire thing. Her role in Isle of Dogs, kind of a random choice to consider as it was only my #15 of 2018, couldn't really be said to move the needle in that giant ensemble cast. But that doesn't tell the true story of Johansson's decade, one in which I twice named her as one of three "who had a good year" (let's forget the once she was named to "three who had a bad year"). Scarlett Johansson was all over this decade, doing increasingly interesting and increasingly more realistic work as the 2010s went on. We always knew she could play a fembot -- that's pretty much the role in Under the Skin -- but her Oscar nomination for Marriage Story was based purely on her ability to portray an actual person. So when looking to why Scarlett Johansson makes this list, we may have to look more to the films down below this text than those above it.
Other notable works this decade: Avengers: Endgame (2019) (loved it), Captain America: Civil War (2016) (loved it), Her (2013) (really liked it), Jojo Rabbit (2019) (loved it), Marriage Story (2019) (really liked it)
Possible detractors: Ghost in the Shell (2017) (didn't like it), Rough Night (2017) (didn't like it)

4. Nicole Kidman
Considered from the 87: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Rabbit Hole (2010)
I may have really fallen in love with the acting skills of Nicole Kidman last decade, after following the rest of the world and pretty much snubbing her for the first 10-15 years of her career. But she came on strong at the start of the 2010s by giving perhaps my favorite naturalistic performance of the decade in Rabbit Hole. That didn't mean she couldn't still groove to the kind of weirdness she found with Stanley Kubrick in Eyes Wide Shut or with Jonathan Glazer in Birth. She teamed up with Yorgos Lanthimos for The Killing of a Sacred Deer and played a perfect type of sultry ice princess (if you'll go with me on that possibility) who isn't quite knowable. Kidman likes to work so her choices haven't always worked for me (Just Go With It, anyone?), but she has continued raising the bar throughout the decade, perhaps most notably in places I have yet to see her (Big Little Lies). My kinship with her is such that I feel defensive on her behalf when people snipe at her about plastic surgery or whatever other things they think she's guilty of. If Kidman really is worried about her age, she needn't be. At 52, she still looks great, but that doesn't matter, because those skills translate at any age.
Other notable works from decade: The Beguiled (2017) (loved it), The Family Fang (2015) (really liked it), Lion (2016) (loved it), The Paperboy (2012) (liked it)
Possible detractors: Just Go With It (2011) (didn't like it)

5. Jennifer Lawrence 
Considered from the 87: mother! (2017), Winter's Bone (2010)

It’s hard to believe that Jennifer Lawrence is someone we have known for only ten years, as her entire known career falls within this past decade. Winter’s Bone may not have actually been her first professional work, but it was the first time most people had ever seen her – unless you watched (ahem) The Bill Engvall Show. She went on to be nominated for four Oscars over the course of the next decade, winning one. Lawrence’s toughness and girl-next-door authenticity were both on display in Winter’s Bone, but my favorite performance she gave this decade might be the one where she had her bearings the least. Darren Aronofsky’s mother! subjects her to nearly von Trierian levels of sadism in a story about how a young bride’s life is falling apart after her famous older husband starts losing interest in her, which is only one of a kajillion interpretations of the film. There’s no other way to interpret the performance of Lawrence than brilliant as she looks on in horror at the social contract exploding around her, and her house becoming the site of nothing less than biblical apocalypse. It’s sad to me that Lawrence has taken a step back from the spotlight as I am interested every time I see her name attached to a project. 

Other notable works this decade: American Hustle (liked it), The Hunger Games (2012) (really liked it), Silver Linings Playbook (2012) (loved it), X-Men: First Class (2011) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Joy (2015) (didn't like it), X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) (hated it)

Honorable mentions

1. Rooney Mara

Considered from the 87: A Ghost Story (2017), The Social Network (2010)

Other notable works this decade: Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013) (liked it), Carol (2015) (liked it), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) (really liked it), Her (really liked it), Side Effects (2013) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Mary Magdalene (2018) (didn't like it), Pan (2015) (hated it)

2. Emma Stone

Considered from the 87: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), La La Land (2016)

Other notable works this decade: Battle of the Sexes (2017) (really liked it), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) (loved it), Easy A (2010) (really liked it), The Favourite (2018) (really liked it), The Help (2011) (liked it), Magic in the Moonlight (2014) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Aloha (2015) (didn't like it), Irrational Man (2015) (hated it), Movie 43 (2013) (hated it), Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) (didn't like it)

3. Kristen Wiig

Considered from the 87: mother! (2017), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), The Skeleton Twins (2014)

Other notable works this decade: Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013) (really liked it), Bridesmaids (2011) (loved it), Date Night (2010) (really liked it), The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) (loved it), Ghostbusters (2016) (liked it), Her (2013) (really liked it), How to Train Your Dragon (2010) (really liked it), The Martian (2015) (really liked it), Masterminds (2016) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Hateship, Loveship (2013) (didn't like it), Nasty Baby (2015) (hated it), Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) (didn't like it)  

Actors of the decade

1. Ethan Hawke
Considered from the 87: Before Midnight (2013), Boyhood (2014), First Reformed (2018)

It was a pretty straightforward choice to select Hawke as my #1 for the decade, as he appeared in three films I considered, all of which made either my top 25 or my honorable mentions. He has Richard Linklater to thank for two of those, and as you saw in yesterday’s post, Before Midnight was the “first alternate,” in other words, the last movie to get knocked out of my top 25. But as much as I appreciate the lived-in naturalism of the performances Hawke gives for Linklater, his collaborator for more than 20 years now, I think my favorite Hawke performance of the decade was the slightly more stylized one he gave for Paul Schrader in First Reformed. That’s not to say his portrayal of Ernst Toller is not naturalistic, but it’s a kind of heightened naturalism consistent with Schrader’s willingness to stray from realism when it suits him. I was really hoping Hawke would get Oscar nominated for that performance, which would have been only his third, but at least many other critics groups recognized his work. Hawke has been a consummate professional throughout his 35-year career and I know he’s always interested in breaking the boundaries of narrative cinema. It’s why I’m always interested in seeing his name attached to a new project. 

Other notable works this decade: Daybreakers (2010) (really liked it), Maggie's Plan (2015) (really liked it), Predestination (2014) (liked it), Sinister (2012) (really liked it), Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: The Purge (2013) (hated it), Regression (2017) (didn't like it)

2. James Franco

Considered from the 87: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), 127 Hours (2010), Spring Breakers (2013)

James Franco is not a good guy, but hey, I don’t make the rules. Okay, I do make the rules, but I’m happy to include Franco based on the way his performance dominated (in a good way) two of my favorite movies of the decade. You can’t imagine either 127 Hours or Spring Breakers with any other actor, not because another actor could not do it – okay, I don’t know that another actor could do Alien – but because he put such a stamp on those roles that they don’t deserve to be in anyone else’s hands. The thing that blows my mind most about Alien is not that he preens like a gangsta, it’s that he’s actually a scared little boy preening like a gangsta, which most actors would not have thought to bring to that role. 127 Hours features a guy who is scared in a different way and is nearly being driven out of his mind from hunger and exhaustion, which Franco expresses perfectly. He’s not hugely important one way or another to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs so that’s just gravy. The much-deserved shaming of Franco in the latter half of this decade was disappointing to me not because I feel an inherent warmth toward the man, but because it means that going forward, he won’t likely get the same opportunities to give us more performances like these. 

Other notable works this decade: Date Night (2010) (really liked it), The Disaster Artist (2017) (really liked it), Howl (2010) (really liked it), The Interview (2014) (loved it), Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) (loved it), This is the End (2013) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) (didn't like it), Why Him? (2016) (hated it)

3. Adam Driver 
Considered from the 87: BlacKkKlansman (2018), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Lincoln (2012), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Adam Driver may be the most interesting case on this whole list as he packed a decade’s worth of good performances into essentially a half-decade. Okay, Inside Llewyn Davis isn’t the second half of the decade, but I love his performance as Al Cody more in retrospect than I really recognized it at the time. (“Outer … SPACE!”) Speaking of outer space, it was when he emerged as Kylo Ren in 2015 that I started to appreciate the things that had eluded me about Driver when I first encountered him on Girls (the few episodes I watched). Three excellent turns as the unhinged spawn of Han and Leia really sold me on his innate skills that go well beyond his kind of mumblecore beginnings. This is the way Hayden Christensen wished he could have played Anakin Skywalker. Then my Driver lovefest was bolstered by his work with Spike Lee in BlacKkKlansman, in which he has to act the part of a guy who’s acting a part, which is no mean feat. At decade’s end I feel like I want Adam Driver to be in every new movie that gets made, and the rest of the world is catching up to me as he has now been nominated for Oscars in consecutive years.
Other notable works this decade: Frances Ha (2012) (loved it), J. Edgar (2011) (really liked it), Marriage Story (2019) (really liked it), Paterson (2016) (loved it), Silence (2016) (liked it), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) (really liked it), While We're Young (2014) (liked it)
Possible detractors: The Dead Don't Die (2019) (hated it), The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2019) (didn't like it)

4. Paul Dano
Considered from the 87: Looper (2012), Meek's Cutoff (2011), Ruby Sparks (2012)

If we went back to the start of the century, Paul Dano would be even higher than this, but he doesn’t get to count movies like The Girl Next Door and There Will Be Blood for this decade. That said, the films he does get to count are quite solid, and his power coupling with Zoe Kazan (I just looked, they’re still together!) gets its second entrant on this list. Paul Dano has been kind of John Cusack’s heir apparent as the “weird looking” everyman leading man, which is appropriate as he and Cusack played the same character in Love & Mercy, a film that I could have revisited by virtue of it landing at #4 for me in 2015, but decided to rule it out from the start. He used those traits to their fullest in Ruby Sparks, but his intense desperation has been present in all of his roles this decade, from Looper to Swiss Army Man (another top ten movie I pre-emptively ruled out) to Meek’s Cutoff. He’s pursued other interests the last few years, making his feature directing debut with a film I did not like, Wildlife. Here’s hoping he gets back to what he does best.

Other notable works this decade: Love & Mercy (2015) (loved it), Okja (2017) (really liked it), Prisoners (2013) (really liked it), Swiss Army Man (2016) (loved it), 12 Years a Slave (2013) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Cowboys & Aliens (2011) (hated it), Wildlife (2018) (as director) (didn't like it)

5. Chris Pine

Considered from the 87: Hell or High Water (2016), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Wonder Woman (2017)

Captain Kirk was the role that really put Chris Pine on the map at the end of last decade, but that isn’t even where he’s shone in this one. He really demonstrated the range of his abilities in performances both essentially Kirk-like (funny and charming, the way he is in Wonder Woman) and those that are pretty much the exact opposite of that (laconic and world-weary, the way he is in Hell or High Water). In fact, Pine is so good in Hell or High Water – though he’s not the only one – that I was kind of shocked when the movie couldn’t find its way into my top 25 of the decade, settling for an honorable mention. His role in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a lot more brief, and at first I kind of wished they’d given him Jake Johnson’s role until I saw how good Johnson was. The point is, at this point, I’ve decided beyond a shadow of a doubt who is the “best Chris” out of him, Hemsworth, Pratt and Evans. Just as he charmed the pants off of Gal Gadot, he’s charmed the pants off me, and that’s not even the only mode he has – not nearly.

Other notable works this decade: Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) (liked it), Star Trek Into Darkness (2012) (liked it), Z for Zachariah (2015) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Into the Woods (2014) (hated it), A Wrinkle in Time (2018) (didn't like it)

Honorable mentions

1. Oscar Isaac

Considered from the 87: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Other notable works this decade: Annihilation (2018) (really liked it), Drive (2011) (liked it), Ex Machina (2015) (loved it), A Most Violent Year (2014) (liked it), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: The Addams Family (2019) (didn't like it), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) (didn't like it)  

2. Javier Bardem

Considered from the 87: Everybody Knows (2018), mother! (2017)

Other notable works this decade: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) (liked it), Skyfall (2012) (liked it), To the Wonder (2013) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: The Counselor (2013) (didn't like it), The Last Face (2017) (hated it)

3. Mahershala Ali

Considered from the 87: Moonlight (2016), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Other notable works this decade: Green Book (2018) (liked it), Hidden Figures (2016) (liked it), The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) (liked it)

Possible detractors: Alita: Battle Angel (2019) (didn't like it)

Directors of the decade

1. Asghar Farhadi

Considered from the 87: Everybody Knows (2018), The Past (2013), A Separation (2011)

Farhadi easily wins the decade by being the only director who had three films that I considered for the decade’s best. What’s more, the fourth film he released this past decade – 2016’s The Salesman – won the best foreign language film Oscar, giving him two (along with A Separation). That I think this film is only mediocre is an indication of just how successful Farhadi has been. (Or maybe I’m still just mad at the movie for stealing the Oscar that rightfully belonged to Toni Erdmann.) When you consider that his 2009 film, About Elly, was also unearthed and made more generally available this decade, and that it is also a masterpiece, you have a truly staggering body of work to grapple with. Two other factors contribute to making these ten years all the more astonishing for Farhadi: 1) He’s an Iranian director, yet somehow avoided the type of government scrutiny that torpedoed fellow countryman Jafar Panahi, while still making films that seem pointed in their criticism of Iranian society; 2) He directed films in three different languages, those being Persian, French and Spanish. What a decade. 

Other works this decade: The Salesman (2016) (liked it)

2. Richard Linklater 

Considered from the 87: Before Midnight (2013), Boyhood (2014)

Linklater came within a hair of getting two films in my top 25, which would have made him one of only two directors to do that (see my #3), and only the third to do it in the history of these decade-end lists (Cameron Crowe had two in my top ten last decade, if you can believe it). But just because I decided Before Midnight was only my #26, it doesn’t take away from a decade of critical acclaim and exquisite invention for Linklater. It was impressive enough when he submitted his third entry in the best “aging along with the characters” series since Michael Apted’s Up movies. But then, as something of a surprise, the very next year he told everyone he’d been working on a movie for the past 12 years using the same four actors at different ages. Who does that? The answer is, the guy who last decade was experimenting with rotoscoping, which allowed him to put Waking Life on my last best of the decade list. Linklater has never been flashy with his technique (unless, of course, he’s using rotoscoping), but he has established himself as able to convey thoughtful humanism like few of his peers. He’s also great with nostalgia, as exemplified in one of the other movies below.

Other works this decade: Bernie (2011) (really liked it), Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) (really liked it), Last Flag Flying (2018) (haven't seen it), Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) (didn't like it)

3. Byron Howard 

Considered from the 87: Tangled (2010), Zootopia (2016)

Who? Exactly. And that explains why the only man to get two movies in my top 25 for the decade is only my third-best director for the decade (and why I haven't mentioned this feat in either of my previous decade-end posts). It's hard for most people, including myself, to understand exactly what role a director has in bringing an animated movie to the screen, since animation is one arena in which we don't typically think of the director as the primary auteur. In fact, the director rarely even has sole credit, and that was the case with Howard in each of his movies that made my top 25. But the fact remains that whether with Nathan Greno on Tangled or Rich Moore on Zootopia, Howard helped make two absolutely fantastic 2010s animated movies a reality. Did he tell the actors how to say their lines? Did he suggest how to "set up the camera"? To the first, probably yes; to the second, I have no idea. But without Byron Howard, I do know that it's a far less rich decade for animated movies. And hey, at the very least, we know he can hold a stuffed animal. 

Other works this decade: None

4. Barry Jenkins

Considered from the 87: If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), Moonlight (2016)
I greatly regretted that I couldn’t summon more affection than I did for Moonlight. I placed it in my top ten for 2016, at #10, but I felt like there might have been films below it where my personal affection was slightly higher (sorry, Hello My Name is Doris). If the whole film remained at the high level of its first third, which showcased a director I’d never heard of (Barry Jenkins) and all that this “newcomer” possesses in terms of craft, it’d have been my #1 of that year. I did revisit Moonlight for this project to be sure I didn’t actually love it (I didn’t), but there was no artificial inflation when it came to If Beale Street Could Talk, which floored me the first time and then pushed me through the floor into the earth on the second. Here Jenkins’ skills were matched with a story that was overall more resonant with me, and it left me in a near-stupor state. Moonlight would have probably resonated with me just as much if it had kept its momentum from the Mahershala Ali-led first act, which only goes to show that not only can Barry Jenkins pick ‘em, he can film ‘em too. 

Other works this decade: None

5. Gaspar Noe

Considered from the 87: Climax (2018), Enter the Void (2010)

Gaspar Noe made three films this decade, two of which I saw twice, and I also twice watched his one movie from last decade, Irreversible. That means I was never long without the singular weirdness of this French filmmaker, who is known for putting his entire closing credits – often smashed at the screen in crazy fonts, and with strobe lights and industrial music – at the beginning of the film rather than the end. Each Noe film thereby introduces you to the fact that you’re in for a ride, and a ride is what you get. Not only is his subject matter always shocking – graphically sexual in nature when it is not graphically violent, and sometimes both at once – but he films it in a way you’ve literally never seen before. Most of Enter the Void is shot from above, from the angle of a wandering spirit flying over the city of Tokyo. In Love, you get a head-on view of a penis ejaculating. In Climax, the camera goes literally everywhere, in such a manner that the only way I could think to describe it in my review was that it seemed to be on a fishing rod dangling over its subjects. I’m not sure how Noe does what he does, but I love it. 

Other works this decade: Love (2015) (liked it)

Honorable mentions

1. Joel & Ethan Coen
Considered from the 87: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Other works this decade: Hail, Caesar! (2016) (didn't like it), True Grit (2010) (liked it)

2. Damien Chazelle
Considered from the 87: La La Land (2016), Whiplash (2014)
Other works this decade: First Man (2018) (really liked it)

3. Bong Joon-ho
Considered from the 87: Parasite (2019)
Other works this decade: Okja (2017) (really liked it), Snowpiercer (2013) (loved it)

Okay! That'll do.

Thanks for tuning in to a full week of year-end and decade-end writing. Tomorrow I will look forward to 2020 in a very explicit way by introducing you to what I'm going to be watching as a monthly series this year.

Oh, and here's that asterisk I promised you earlier:

* - I only belatedly noticed that Adam Driver also appeared in four of the 87 movies when I determined he had a small role in Lincoln. I had already written most of this post at that point, so I did not adjust my perspective mid-stream and allowed Blunt to keep the spotlight to herself. 

The fine line between Captain America and The Avengers

The following post contains very minor spoilers about Captain America: Civil War, not much more than what the trailers already show you.

Captain America: Civil War is, for all intents and purposes, an Avengers movie.

Except it's good.

Like, really good.

Which makes no sense.

Marvel Studios and Disney so tightly control the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and therefore the look and feel of their films, that when a director wants to bring his own vision to one of these movies, they just push him out. Bye bye, Edgar Wright. We want Ant-Man to be less interesting than you want it to be.

But for some reason, the Captain America movies have stayed above the fray. Civil War is no exception.

Which makes no sense.

These movies should be of a piece, yet the Captain America movies -- be they directed by Joe Johnston (the first movie) or the Russo brothers (the last two) -- are consistently superior products.

I'm sure someone could figure out why, but it's not going to be me.

As Joss Whedon has gone from Marvel golden boy to Marvel whipping boy, it's easy to just suggest that Johnston or the Russos are better directors than he is. But that's a pretty weird conclusion. None of those guys has the track record Whedon has, and just because his last Avengers movie was a stinker, it doesn't taint his previous output -- both for Marvel with the original Avengers, or in general as a writer/director/creator. Can we really say that these other guys "get" Marvel more than Whedon does?

And yet this is basically an Avengers movie. The Avengers are called out by name constantly in Civil War. Like Superman before them (about a month before them), they are culpable for wanton destruction and accused of being indifferent to the resulting loss of life. Just because the Hulk, Thor, Nick Fury and, um, Cobie Smulders are missing from this, it doesn't mean it's not really an Avengers movie. They've just replaced those guys with Spider-Man, Ant-Man, Black Panther and Bucky Barnes. (And who knew, by the way, that Captain America's movies would be so much about Bucky, well beyond The Winter Soldier and probably on into the next three or four installments?)

What I thought I would object to in this movie is the fact that everybody needs to be in it. As the paragraph above indicates, it's about the same amount of everyone as in the overstuffed Age of Ultron, but what seemed like it would make it worse is that they kept on adding new people. The introductions of Ant-Man and Spider-Man particularly had me worried. There wouldn't seem to be enough for everyone to do.

Yet Civil War somehow figures that out, too. Ant-Man and Spider-Man are both basically comic relief, and boy are they fun. They are used just the right amount, sprinkled in for flavor, rather than relied on heavily to bear out complete narrative arcs. (And there's one awesome Ant-Man thing that I don't think any of the trailers have spoiled yet.)

I'm wondering if we just find the Captain America brand name a surefire indicator of quality -- if, in fact, that's why this story contains the Captain America banner rather than the Avengers one. I mean, it's never too late for a series to curdle, but something about Captain America just continues to hum along at a creative peak. What's strangest about this is that the original, The First Avenger, was something I wasn't looking forward to in the slightest. I was worried this character would be terminally square, jingoistic in a completely unironic and probably painful way. The First Avenger figured to make me embarrassed about my country of citizenship. Instead, the three Captain America movies may well be my favorite three movies from the MCU.

I don't know that I should question it. Maybe I just need to accept it and move on.

Some other thoughts on Civil War ...

America first

If you're wondering how I've already seen this movie, well, I'm kind of wondering that too.

As I came out of the theater yesterday, I asked myself, "Wait, wasn't it the first weekend in May that Captain America and Batman v. Superman were fighting about back in 2014 or something? As far as I can tell, it's not May yet -- even here in Australia."

And indeed, when I got home, I checked IMDB, and the movie doesn't open for another eight days in the U.S.

No such delay here. A week and a day before its U.S. release -- which is really one more additional day because of the time difference -- Captain America has hit Australian theaters. Except they don't call them theaters here, or even theatres. They call them cinemas.

When it comes to movies and their release dates, Australia often taketh away. But sometimes, Australia giveth.

Imperfect teeth

There's a moment in Civil War when Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man tells Chris Evans' Captain America that sometimes he wishes he could punch him in his perfect teeth.

This was only a few minutes after I realized he couldn't say the same thing to Black Widow.

No, not just because heroes don't usually threaten to punch women in the mouth. Rather, because Scarlett Johansson's teeth are not perfect.

When she's on the phone with Steve Rogers following [a particular incident that I won't spoil here], the camera goes close on Johansson's mouth, and that bottom row of pearly whites is anything but straight. In fact, the teeth in ScarJo's front middle are actually trying to crowd each other out, one in particular protruding crookedly in front of the others.

Before you think I'm teeth-shaming Scarlett Johansson, I'll let you know why I'm bringing this up. It reminds us again why Johansson is awesome -- she's not perfect, but the combination of her appearance and her charisma often convinces us that she is.

In fact, in reality, she's just the girl next door with crooked teeth.

Okay, so that's being a bit disingenuous. She's a person of otherworldly beauty. But her beauty is not inaccessible, as you might think it were. There's a natural component to it, a regular component to it, nearly undetectable imperfections that ground her in our world. This despite the fact that someone actually made a "realistic" robot version of her. One with perfect teeth, I might add.

And sure, it could just be because she could never afford to take enough time off from acting to get braces. But I like to think that she just doesn't care. And that's cool.

A well-trained audience

People have figured out this Marvel thing by now.

Most of the time when you go to the movies, and the credits start to roll, you lose three-quarters of your audience right there. A hardy few will stay to look at the names of all the key grips and dolly grips, but most of them are gone -- to the bathroom, to the car, what have you.

Well, not in Marvel movies, at least not anymore. For a time, these people were leaving early and missing the now two extra sequences that appear -- one about a minute into the credits, and one after all the credits have rolled. But now everyone is hip to this. In my audience, we lost no more than ten percent, and even those who did leave, didn't do so until after the first installment of additional footage. The rest of us waited to the bitter end. It was really a rather unusual experience, a bunch of people looking at their phones with the lights up, still plastered to their seats.

And I'm proud to say I was able to figure out essentially what the final bit of footage would be. I won't tell you what it is, but I will say that I correctly guessed both characters that would appear in it and what the essential nature of their interaction would be.

Marvel may not contain all that many surprises these days, but Captain America continues to be the exception to that rule. He was the first avenger, and I'm increasingly convinced he's also the best.

Scarlett Johansson can't relate to human beings

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have written a story along these lines ... but I didn't steal the idea from anyone else either.

The idea being that Scarlett Johansson has become typecast as an alien.

Oh, not always a literal alien, but sometimes that too (Under the Skin). In her other two most recent roles -- if you ignore Captain America: The Winter Soldier, that is -- she plays someone (or something) alienated from humanity. (If I am not counting Captain America, I'm definitely not counting her bit part in Chef.)

Having finally caught up with Lucy on Sunday night, I see with clarity the nature of her recent trajectory as an actress. There's a line of dialogue in the movie about how the title character -- having overdosed on a new synthetic drug surgically implanted in her stomach, mule-style, which ruptures through its protective bag after a few swift kicks to the gut -- can no longer empathize with human beings. This is what happens, quite logically, when you are using in excess of 40% of your brain's capacity. (And counting.)

In Her, as a self-aware operating system, she's also involved in an evolution of her being that eventually leaves little old human being Theodore Twombley no real competition for her attentions. Not when there are thousands of other self-aware operating systems with whom she can commune, at a pace Theodore can't manage.

This observation is rather obvious, so let's take it to a place that's not so obvious: In a way, she is having the career that Angelina Jolie should be having.

I don't mean that Jolie deserves Johansson's career. I mean that it would be a much more symbolic career for her than it is for Johansson.

See, Jolie -- as a person, not an actress -- truly has evolved to the point where she seems like an alien. One might argue that this is the logical endpoint for any celebrity who is so unfathomably beautiful that she has entirely lost touch with the quotidian. She has been pedestalized within an inch of her own humanity. This bleeds over into her abilities as an actress, which are not insignificant. The upshot is that I can no longer believe her in any role she plays.

The same threat exists for ScarJo, as she is as worshipped by men as Jolie at her height, if not more so. Except Johansson is "keeping it real." She still seems like a regular person, almost consciously lampooning her own potential disconnect from the human race -- which is precisely the evidence that she remains a grounded human being.

Jolie could not do this. She labors under the misapprehension that she is still a "regular person," when indeed she is not. The role of Maleficent in this summer's eponymous movie is about as close as she has come to admitting there is something otherworldly about her. However, crucially, the movie that bears her character's name is so entirely fixated on humanizing the character, that instead of seeming like a knowing nod to her own public persona, it reveals the depth of her own failure to understand herself.

Johansson, on the other hand, has been actively inviting these roles of "other," these roles where she is so alienated from her origins that she is either robotic, or actually a robot. But, it's not fooling us. In each of the three films we're mentioning here, Johansson's characters' removal from the flesh is offset by at least one scene where we feel her humanity in excessive quantities. In Lucy, it's the opening, where she makes her fear of being killed by Chinese gangsters a physical force. I don't know that I've seen someone as afraid in a movie in 2014 as Johansson in the opening scenes of Lucy. In Under the Skin, it's an almost unbearable confusion and sadness when she starts to empathize with these humans she's come to dispassionately study. There's a fragility there that is also unequaled in 2014 films. And then of course Her, where Johansson actually won an award at the Venice Film Festival for breathing unmistakable life into artificial intelligence -- and just doing it with her voice.

I've already spent some time praising Johansson this year (see here), and at this point you may think I'm in danger of crossing over into idolatry of a woman who has never been praised for her actual talent until just the past year or two. But it's warranted. And that's the beauty of a blog -- when you've got something to say, just say it.

As for Angelina Jolie, well ... let's see if making a movie about an Olympic athlete who survives a World War II plane crash and Japanese POW camps can give us a glimpse of her elusive cinematic humanity.

Second skins

On Monday, I did what in baseball terms would be called a "day-night doubleheader." I did in fact play two games -- movies, in this case -- but they weren't consecutive, as in a traditional doubleheader. Rather, they were separate admissions in the same venue, one held in the afternoon, one in the evening. There were not, however, any peanuts or crackerjacks involved.

I finally, at long last, caught Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin at 3:10, as part of an afternoon off to renew my passport at the U.S. consulate. It was cheap $6 Mondays at Cinema Nova, but in practical terms it was the most expensive movie I've probably ever seen, because as a contractor, I don't get paid for the time I don't work. So that was two hours of lost wages -- but having taken (and needed) the first two hours after lunch to do the consulate visit, it didn't seem to make sense to return to work for just two more hours. Especially when I could sneak in a trip to the movies.

Then I returned to Cinema Nova at 9:40 for Lenny Abrahamson's Frank. (I had hoped to see John Michael McDonagh's Calvary, but I was more or less too late for its 9:20 showing.) Two trips to the theater in one day would ordinarily be quite indulgent, but this also was taking advantage of a rare opportunity: borrowing the car from my father-in-law. If we didn't use the car to do things like take trips to the movies, what was the point of even borrowing it?

It wasn't until I didn't make it in to Calvary that I realized the resulting day-night doubleheader would be thematically appropriate. Both movies feature characters wearing disguises -- second skins, as it were. But they wear them for very different reasons.

Scarlett Johansson's extra-terrestrial in Under the Skin wears her disguise -- the skin of a near-dead woman of ill repute -- as a means of remaining hidden. In order to observe humanity for, well, whatever reason (it's never explained), she must look like one of them. She must wear this disguise to hide what she really is.

The title character in Frank is up to something a bit different. Sure, a psychiatrist would say that the reason he never takes off his mask is that he's hiding something about him -- a very essential part of him -- from the world. But Frank doesn't wear his disguise to hide who he really is. He wears it to become who he really is.

In both cases, however, the destruction of this costume could mean the end of who they are.

I wish I had more profound words about my theme, but instead I'll just say a couple words about each movie.

Additional substance to my ScarJo crush

I'm a heterosexual man. This means I find Scarlett Johansson attractive.

And yes, the knowledge that she appeared naked in Under the Skin certainly contributed to my interest in seeing it. Contributed only, though -- I am a massive fan of Glazer's film Birth (though I hate Sexy Beast -- go figure).

My affection for Ms. Johansson is more than skin deep, though -- as it were.

In fact, after a podcast I listened to recently, I kind of wonder if we're soul mates.

That podcast is The Dinner Party Download, and it's co-hosted by a guy I know. It's also been getting increasingly higher-profile guests over the three or fours years it's been in existence, probably none bigger than one Scarlett Johansson back on April 19th.

As I was listening to her talk to the other co-host, the one I don't know, I was disarmed by how down-to-earth she sounded, especially for someone who walks around knowing that she is commonly considered to be one of the sexiest celebrities in the world. She could totally get away with copping an attitude. Yet she sounds like someone who is modest and grounded and goofy. She loves to make a joke and offer a flirt. She is, pretty much, the girl next door.

But what made me fall in love with her, kind of, was her answer to a question that she herself volunteered. One nice aspect of the podcast is that the hosts ask the guests to tell them something that no one knows about them, which gives the guest the leeway to offer something as significant or as insignificant as they want, and have it be entirely on their terms.

Johansson apparently isn't afraid to court talk of her own romantic interests, because she offered to tell podcasts listeners about her own celebrity crush. "It would probably be Trent Reznor," she said. "That would be my 'meet him and faint,' I think."

She elaborated, "There's something about the bleeding soul that comes through -- this reluctance to do it, and then you do because you have to, because it's what you're good at and what feels good, but maybe it hurts at the same time."

Having already been seduced by this persona she delivered on the podcast, I sat up straight in my chair when she invoked the name of my favorite musician of all time. Just randomly out of nowhere.

If I didn't already know it, I realized that this is a person of substance -- and her recent role choices have confirmed that. All you have to do is look back on her filmography from the last, my goodness, five years I would say to see an actress making smart choices rather than just financial ones. Sure, she's a big part of the Marvel universe, and the paycheck can't hurt on that -- but those movies have also actually been received very well. Specifically, the string of Her, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Under the Skin shows a woman very deft at straddling two worlds -- the multiplex and the arthouse.

And this chick has got balls. You might peg her as a person who would shrink away from nudity, but Skin proves that she's willing to do whatever she needs to for her art -- including star in an inscrutable science fiction film that could have just as easily bombed as blown critics away. The fact that it did the later shows just how shrewd she is.

Acting without one's face

The one thing Johansson hasn't done yet is what Michael Fassbender does in Frank -- he takes a role that does not make any use whatsoever of his beautiful face.

If we were talking about challenging oneself above, we can kick that discussion into high gear when discussing what Fassbender is doing in this film. He's not only proving that he relies on far more than his good looks to get cast in films, but he's actually proving that you can give a good performance even when no one can see your face -- and when you actually describe your own facial expressions as one of the movie's running gags.

As the eccentric frontman of the band Soronprfbs (don't worry, the actual band members don't know how to pronounce it either), Frank wears his mask -- it's really more of a full head -- all the time. Even while he sleeps. Even while he showers. He eats through a straw, just so he won't have to let anyone know what he looks like.

Yet I really believe that the hype about Fassbender's performance is justified. There is something great about this performance, even though it is primarily composed of line readings and body movements.

I don't know precisely what it is, but there's something about how Fassbender carries the head that makes it sort of brilliant. There are a few moments when the character stares at another character, or an audience of people, or something that is temporarily overwhelming his ability to speak. And even though all you see is that unchanging, blank expression of the Frank head in the poster above, there's soul to that stare. There's something Fassbender's doing that not just any guy wearing a fake head could do. He's not just David Prowse walking around in a Darth Vader suit. He's also James Earl Jones, all rolled into one person.

And yes, he's proving that he doesn't need to be so handsome that it makes heterosexual males feel awkward to connect with us as viewers. He can just be a body, a voice, and the unblinking stare of a mask.

                                       ******************

Okay, I guess there was more thematic heft to my comparison of these two movies than I originally thought.