Alexander Payne + Clooney + Hawaii = The Descendants

There are times when you laugh or gasp in disbelief at what has just happened — an old man punches a teenager in the face; a young girl utters an outrageous obscenity; Mr. Clooney slips on a pair of boat shoes and runs, like an angry, flightless bird, to a neighbor’s house — and yet every moment of the movie feels utterly and unaffectedly true.

true american surrealism

george clooney runs in shoes!

lol

You know – angry, flightless birds always slip into their pairs of boat shoes.

i can just imagine how all those "funny" scenes play out (ok, maybe i'm remembering some from the trailer) and... no thanks.

"To call “The Descendants” perfect would be a kind of insult, a betrayal of its commitment to, and celebration of, human imperfection"

is it better than Citizen Kane?

Reitpayne movies are such critnip.

but but but "like an angry flightless bird" modifies "runs"

i'm excited for this cuz hawaii tho. edelstein's review seemed more trustworthy!

Its flaws are impossible to distinguish from its pleasures.

that should obviously be on the poster, solemnly intoned in the tv spot, etc.

You're all right to be hearing alarm bells, but I thought it split the diff between Election and About Schmidt.

That'd be 2.5/4.

I've only seen one Jason Reitman movie -- really, Juno was not mandatory -- vs all four of Payne's, but I'd say it's pretty insulting to lump him in with JS, even if About Schmidt was kinda loathsome.

JR, grrrr

a young girl utters an outrageous obscenity

We already had this movie and it was called Kick-Ass. Is this better than that?

creators of guilt-ridden slice of life angst starring inevitable Oscar nominees and Best Screenplay winners.

xpost No.

I would totally screw Matthew Lillard over George Clooney, btw

An angry, flightless Lillard in boat shoes is my kind of evolutionary move.

Stephanie Zacharek thinks this resembles Up in the Air way too closely.

That’s the thing about Payne: In pictures like Sideways and About Schmidt, he’s gotten away with the junkiest kind of sentimentality by packing deadpan gags around it, like ice around a dead fish.

Erudite white people suffering domestic strife in Hawaii. I wonder what Terry Gross will say?

― remy bean, Thursday, May 26, 2011 4:18 PM (5 months ago)

Mr. Clooney slips on a pair of boat shoes and runs, like an angry, flightless bird, to a neighbor’s house

you know how angry, flightless birds are always running to their neighbors' houses

oh hey domestic turkey next door can i borrow some worms? thanks i can't go fishing today on account of my awesome boat shoes that i don't want to get wet. thanks and * SQUAWK *

missing the "angry" imo but otherwise excellent

this is going to be this year's american beauty, huh?

i've had to sit through this preview on multiple occasions and each time i hate it a little bit more
that turning point where it goes from family weeper --> lol clooney music is the WORST

lol clooney music

yeah this is a subgenre already isn't it

if this is this year's "American Beauty" I will probably see it once, enjoy it, and then refuse to ever see it again after everyone I talk to online savagely rips it apart for fear of getting Gumped

have you seen Up in the Air? It's worse.

i said on the other thread that i've liked (softly) everything payne has done, but this line from hoberman's review gives me the big fear: Still, save for a reflexive response to the spectacle of “girlfriend in a coma” (ironically, the best scenes are the solos Clooney directs at comatose Hastie—moments that make clear what is otherwise implicit), it left me cold. The pathos is as unearned as the protagonist’s privilege.

I have not seen "Up in the Air"; that got savaged before I had the chance to see it.

yah, ditto

ppl shld stop making movies

The Dean from Community co-wrote this

i want to hear gr8080's take on this

Hey, Hugo has street urchins if that's what you like in a movie.

i'm looking forward to this, although i'm not raising my expectations too high.

payne has a streak of boring, especially lately, but he's a real good director i think.

i liked this! shailene woodley was really good i think, also she is really hot

I hope you're under 30

No, but luckily she is.

the triviality of this film is snowballing since I saw it 5 weeks ago

it was better than i thought it would be, though most of the humor didnt work imo

@ the time it made me want to go read my law school notes on the rule of perpetuities, which of course i absolutely did not do

I hope you're under 30

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 6, 2012 8:23 PM (44 minutes ago)

she's a year and a half younger than i am

go for it

i thought her character was the best part about the movie - her decency, and the way she supported her family, the whole thing seemed very loose and natural - not gonna win an oscar or anything but i thought it was a nice performace for the kid. had to be one of her first major film roles?

Didn't buy her as a wild child by scene #2, but I'll blame the script on that, not her.

yeah the contrast between her first scene and the rest of the movie was pretty odd, kind of surprised they didn't go back to that or even allude to it besides when she talked to her mom. that's not to say i didn't buy that someone who acted the way she did for 90% of the movie couldn't be more of a wild child in other parts of her life - she's only 17 and seemed less like an addict than just a girl with a wild side. "drugs" in clooney's dad-speak probably meant "weed"

This and Beginners are the worst movies of the year because they actually try to Say Something.

we disagree semiviolently on Beginners, but Shame & We Need to Kill Kevin Now fail at Saying Something much more foully than either of your suggestions.

ok wait now i remember. do you just mean it ends w/ a silent long take meant to make us wonder what the character(s) are thining? that's kind of tradition that goes back far beyond michael clayton though.

a.o. scott's incredibly enthusiastic review was really weird btw, and reads even weirder today.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/movies/descendants-with-george-clooney-review.html?pagewanted=all

To call “The Descendants” perfect would be a kind of insult, a betrayal of its commitment to, and celebration of, human imperfection. Its flaws are impossible to distinguish from its pleasures. For example: after what feels as if it should be the final scene, a poignant, quiet tableau of emotional resolution and apt visual beauty, Mr. Payne adds another, a prosaic coda to a flight of poetry. Without saying too much or spoiling the mood, I will say that I was grateful for this extra minute, a small gift at the end of a film that understands, in every way, how hard it can be to say goodbye.

i mean it's a kind of 400 blows gesture in a way.

I wish more movies simply ran out of film and were forced to freeze.

...on George Clooney in sockless boat shoes

"bogus" is a good word. A dubious honor for Clooney to star in two of the most meretricious Oscar films of the last twenty years.

There’s a scene at the end of the movie where they’re spreading the mother’s ashes in the ocean, and it gets broken up by a cruise and a bunch of drunk guys. That was shot, it was funny. But they didn’t want to cut away from that very poignant emotional closure.

You can't have humor interrupting very poignant emotional closure!

Still prefer both to Syriana.

DWH needs to reappreciate Kramer vs Kramer

someone get Sotosyn some friggin' boat shoes already

I'm wearing a pair with argyles.

I'm not saying Kramer Vs. Kramer is bad, Morbs. It's just nothing terribly special, and surely not the best film of 1979 any more than The Descendants has one of the very best screenplays of 2011 (hopefully you'll forgive my dubiousness towards the decisions of the esteemed Academy).

Morbs agrees, I think.

he liked Boat Shoes Vs. Boat Shoes more than a lot of us

Both end with the credits rolling over George Clooney as he stares thoughtfully into the middle distance

It's not the fact that they end with that kind of shot, but holding it for so long with the credits over it is something I can't remember seeing before MC

i considered barking a little in defense of kramer vs. kramer, yesterday. i remember it fondly, though i was only 12 at the time, but i decided that it's been too long for me to say with any certainty that i'd still like it. also, i thought there was a slight misogynist streak to the descendants, similar to what jonathan rosenbaum objected to in KvK.

I kinda think all the characters in The Descendants are equally miserable.

It's not the fact that they end with that kind of shot, but holding it for so long with the credits over it is something I can't remember seeing before MC

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, May 22, 2012 9:02 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'll agree that it works better in michael clayton.

I found this kind of a snore, tbh. However I really loved seeing Hawaii shown in a 'hey people live here' way. Honestly I enjoyed it more once I ignored the story and just watched it as a travel documentary, lol

Not bad--except for a couple of scenes near the end (Judy Greer's bedside scene), not as mawkish as I expected/feared.

However I really loved seeing Hawaii shown in a 'hey people live here' way.

I liked that too. Shailene Woodley and Robert Forster were good. And not to get sidetracked, but another demurral on Kramer vs. Kramer, which is really good, and might indeed be the best American film of 1979--I'd take it over Apocalypse Now and (easily) Being There, and maybe over Breaking Away too.

I saw this on DVD some years ago and I see I didn't bother to comment in here at the time.

My lasting, if vague, impression is that it might have been faithful to some archetypal Hawaiian story that rang true as a bell to the residents of Hawaii and it possibly held a mirror up to the islands such as has rarely been captured on film, but for a non-Hawaiian such as myself I recall it as insufficiently engaging or entertaining to allow me derive any real enjoyment from it. I recall all the main characters as coddled dullards with more money than sense, who stayed in character to the bitter end. Fascinating is not the word that springs to mind.

george clooney runs in shoes!

― occupy the A train (difficult listening hour)

If you think of this as a Flirting with Disaster-type road film mixed with a Terms of Endearment-type melodrama, the road film is better.

It has a good soundtrack.

i never did see this