LES MISERABLES Film Official Reviews — Page 4

OK, but prestige awards movies don't always mean major bucks, and the relative lack of female-driven big bucks movies is hardly anything new. It still doesn't explain the buzz bout this being a weak year for leading women.

Not to mention it would not be surprising if Silver Linings Playbook or Zero Dark Thirty are hits, right? To be added to the bigtime girl power of Hunger Games and Twilight. Sure, less blockbuster than those movies, but hey big pulp movies like those are generally not awards fodder.

Updated On: 12/9/12 at 11:50 AM

Nothing is "wrong" with anything. There just hasn't been a lead actress performance that galvanized the critics like some past years.

I mean, can you mention a lead female role that has everyone talking about it in terms of winning an Oscar like Daniel Day Lewis or Anne Hathaway?

Chastain, Cotillard, and Lawrence have all been mentioned, but not with the same level of excitement that the other category's contenders have.

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Updated On: 12/9/12 at 12:02 PM

Yes! It's 100% about marketing, henrik.

That's what I trying to get across. There are a lot of amazing lead actress performances but for whatever reason the Hollywood machine hasn't latched onto one particular role this year.

That's where I'm coming from when I mention "buzz". I don't mean there was a lack of strong female characters on display this year.

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David Edelstein from New York Magazine seems to have hated it (and again, heavily criticizes the source material, pointing to one of the worst lines of dialogue in the show: "I'm Javert/Do not forget my name"):

The tasteless bombardment that is Les Misérables would, under most circumstances, send audiences screaming from the theater, but the film is going to be a monster hit and award winner, and not entirely unjustly. After 30 or so of its 157 minutes, you build up a tolerance for those it’s-alive-alive-alive! close-ups and begin to admire the ­gumption—along with the novelty of being worked over by such a big, shameless Broadway musical without having to pay Broadway prices. The authors (there are four credited screenwriters) have pared down Victor Hugo’s great wallow of a novel to its dumb, pious moral (Christian forgiveness always wins, though you might not live to break out the Champagne), but the show has been audience-tested for decades and defiantly holds the screen, much like its French revolutionaries at the barricades.
Hugo’s hero, Jean Valjean, is played by Hugh Jackman, who is shockingly emaciated in his first scenes as a prisoner—I mistook him for Ron Moody’s Fagin. Jackman is, of course, an old hand at musicals and looks great when allowed to grow his Wolverine sideburns. He can play Valjean’s unwavering goodness without being a simp. But he’d have come off better if he hadn’t been forced to sing at the tippy-top of his register—and higher. On the other hand, no transposition would have helped Russell Crowe as the lawman Javert, Valjean’s unyielding antagonist: His voice is tight and comes from the head, the sound of a foghorn ending in a wheeze. But he stands and delivers his ­numbers—I can’t believe I’m using this adverb—manfully, and I salute him. It can’t have been easy for an untrained singer to handle Claude-Michel Schönberg’s awful recitativo, which does not—unlike Schönberg’s near namesake, Schoenberg—have the excuse of being purposefully atonal. “And I’m Javert?/?Do not forget my name!” would have crumpled a lesser man on the spot.
David Edelstein's Review

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Growl, where in the hell have you been?

Excuses are like (_o_)'s...

Dave Poland:

"I am not a moron. I can deal with building the factual reality in my head when the style of the film decides against being literal. But that is what is so much the failure of Les Misérables… it wants it both ways. It wants to be profoundly intimate, suffering in extreme close-up, the singing-on-the-set choice (the endless hype about which has turned it from “choice” to “stunt), and shooting almost completely in singles and tight doubles. Edit. Edit. Edit.

But the material is HUGE and EPIC and MELODRAMATIC.

So the effect of director Tom Hooper’s is like looking at Mount Everest through the wrong side of the binoculars."

http://moviecitynews.com/2012/12/review-les-miserables/

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Maybe it is because I live in new york and go to a lot of screenings but Jennifer Lawerence and Jessica Chastain are getting phenomenal buzz. Chastain is winning awards left and right.

I remember this same thing happened recently to "Dreamgirls" and to "Nine," where film critics pointed out major flaws in plot and dialogue from the original source material.

It's hard for Broadway fans to realize their beloved stage show is being criticized and raked over the coals in some cases as much as the film itself, particularly when the complaints are aimed at the original stage songs, dialogue, and plot construction.

EDIT: I have to say this about "Zero Dark Thirty," the latest critics' darling. If it's anything like The Hurt Locker, I will hate it. I think that movie is the single dullest Best Picture winner in history, and that's going all the way back to the early talkies. It's redundant and lets the "importance" of the subject matter pass for good storytelling and filmmaking.

If Kathryn Bigelow strikes again with that approach, count me out, big-time.

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Updated On: 12/11/12 at 09:08 AM

Arguably, you can summarize Edelstein's review as "it wasn't my thing, here's why, but I think it's going to be a huge soppy hit anyway". Arguably. :P

I think Lisa Schwarzbaum is spot on and is being quite generous in giving it a”C”.
Just got back from a screening at the DGA and have to say the film is pretty awful.
Tom Hooper seems to have directed his actors to project their dialogue/songs to the third mezzanine of Radio City Music Hall while holding the camera twelve inches from their face.

Schwarzbaum also gave Battleship a B+. Just sayin'.

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