Jmunney's Blog

The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program was established as part of the Allied Armies in 1943 to retrieve artwork stolen by the Nazis.  The Monuments Men, the movie about this program, showed me these retrieval efforts, but it did not make me feel these retrieval efforts.  That is not entirely true, as there were moments when I my heart responded to the film’s tugging.  But overall, the effect this movie left on me was noble, but flat.  The emotions were believable, but some of them felt a little rote.  There is one oddly pitched scene in which Bill Murray’s character, Richard Campbell, receives a recording of some family members singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which Bob Balaban’s character, Preston Savitz, plays for him, and it basically came out of nowhere.  Actually, Murray and Balaban’s whole dynamic is off.  They are supposed to be an antagonistic odd couple who eventually come around to be great friends, but I never got the sense that they didn’t love hanging out with each other, Balaban’s constantly bemused face notwithstanding.

Monuments Men does not fail completely.  Frank Stokes’ (George Clooney) speeches to FDR that bookend the film make a grand case for why this endeavor needed to be taken on and why it ought to be continued after the war’s end.  Essentially, the story itself is the selling point.  It is hard to screw up completely.  And with a cast this talented, it is unlikely that the result is going to be a complete waste of everyone’s time.  But this isn’t the best work of anyone involved.  I feel like Clooney works best as a director when he has a commanding lead performance and/or a strange story.  (Although I’m guessing a bit here, as I haven’t seen Good Night, and Good Luck. or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.)  Ultimately, it’s not like there was anything all that bad about The Monuments Men, just not enough that was good.  Like, I want to rip into it, but also, I don’t? B-

Meryl Streep’s three daughters in August: Osage County are played by Julia Roberts, Julianne Nicholson, and Juliette Lewis.  That is to say, I thought these three ladies were convincing as sisters.  Meryl and Julia have gotten the majority of the press out of all the actors, what with the Oscar nominations and being two of the most famous working American actresses.  They were fine, certainly.  The whole cast was perfectly decent, no question.  Meryl is Meryl, but this was far from her best performance.  But it was Nicholson – perhaps the least-known of the cast – who was the one who really worked for me as youngest daughter Ivy.  With this film and her role on the Showtime series Masters of Sex, she is having a bit of a moment.  With just about everyone else going loud and/or hysterical, she was able to play her part with a fascinating self-assuredness.  I would also like to call out Chris Cooper, who makes one of those speeches that really show off a character’s integrity, and it is the sort of thing that always gets me.

This movie kind of felt like it should have ended about halfway through, around the end of Sam Shepard’s funeral.  There certainly was time for the story to continue, but it didn’t feel like there was a whole lot of purpose to what remained.  Plus, the tone wasn’t exactly remaining consistent.  Also, its roots as a play were all too present.  At the end, Meryl is walking around her house, talking to nobody in particular, and it looks like the sort of thing you would see on a stage.  August: Osage County is competent, but it doesn’t have panache in all the right places. B-