James Badge Dale isn’t a household name. But he should be.

Over the past ten years, the young actor has played supporting roles in several major films and starred in one of the most acclaimed mini-series of the past decade. One of his first juicy roles occurred in 2003 when he played Chase Edmunds, a CTU agent working under the tutelage of Jack Bauer on “24.”

In 2010, Dale played a lead in the HBO mini-series, “The Pacific.” Since then, he has acted in “The Conspirator,” headlined a television program called “Rubicon” and starred alongside Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan in the critically-acclaimed film “Shame.”

His latest project, “The Grey,” finds Dale facing his own mortality alongside Oscar-nominee Liam Neeson. I recently had a chance to talk to Dale about his emotional scene in the new thriller, his work on “The Pacific” and the Oscar nomination that never arrived for Fassbender.

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A great actor is one who takes their role, researches it, studies that character’s story and puts themselves in that person’s shoes without holding anything back. A fantastic actor is all of the above, plays well with others, and takes direction and criticism with a grain of salt.

An Oscar-winning actor is all of the above and at some point in their life have had one hell of a year in movies. There were several intense and thrilling performances in film this year, and these actors are the most noteworthy.

1. Michael Fassbender — This year’s “It Man” headed into 2011 as basically an unknown. It wasn’t until his performance as Mr. Rochester in “Jane Eyre” that this fine performer popped up on my radar. Fassbender, 34, added a whole new depth to the brooding Rochester to a point where he didn’t come off as a complete creep, as co-star Mia Wasikowska is only 22 and looks even younger. In June, he hit box office glory by playing the young Magneto in “X-Men: First Class,” one of the greatest origin superhero movies I’ve ever seen. Now that award show season is here, Fassbender is getting buzz for both his roles in “A Dangerous Method,” where he plays psychiatrist Carl Jung, and for “Shame,” where he portrays a sex addict whose private life is interrupted by the indefinite stay of his sister, played by Carey Mulligan. With a year like this, let’s hope this promising actor gets more starring roles noteworthy of Oscar buzz. (more…)

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Vulture:

Scott teases the spaceships and caves filled with ominously gridded egg placement that you might expect from a movie that “shares DNA” with the Alien series, but there’s also waterfalls, dust storms, and a very intriguing plot hint: This team of spacemen (which includes Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, and Idris Elba) goes looking for the beginning of life itself, and instead finds something epic that will probably pick them off one by one[.]

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Paula Patton provides a convincing action heroine in the new film “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.” But Patton might not last 30 seconds – on screen or off – against the star of the upcoming “Haywire.

Gina Carano, a model-slash-actress-slash mixed martial artist, is the star of director Steven Soderbergh’s latest screen project.

“Haywire,” hitting theaters next month, casts Carano as a mysterious agent fighting back against those who double crossed her. Standard action movie bullet points, no doubt. But Carano’s off-screen scrapping lends the trailer a juicy kick, and the talented cast – including Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas – adds plenty of class to the proceedings.

Will Carano punch her way into action movie fans’ hearts? January is a dumping grounds for bad films, so “Haywire” should have precious little competition.

The rest may be up to Carano, whose delicate features clearly haven’t been rearranged too much in the ring.

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Late in the new movie “Shame,” the main character’s sister tells her brother that “we’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place.” That place — the people and the circumstances that made them who they are – is never discussed in the film. But the consequences of it are abundantly clear in this tale of a sex addict who begrudgingly lets his sister move into his home.

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Michael Fassbender, who surprised viewers earlier this year with portrayal of Magneto in “X-Men: First Class,” plays Brandon Sullivan. Brandon begins the story lying in bed, looking as alone and sad as he usually is. He’s addicted to sex in all forms. And he has no power to control that addiction. Even when x-rated images and videos are found on his work computer, he can’t seem to confront his own misdeeds. He’s okay letting his supervisor blame a lowly intern for the sickening images he gawks at during work.

Early on, Brandon’s sister Sissy, played by a captivating Carey Mulligan, arrives in town. She just suffered a bad break up and asks her brother if she can stay with him for a few days. Brandon reluctantly agrees, but he’s accustomed to a quiet life in his sparse apartment. He has female guests over, but they usually only stay a few hours at a time. Sissy’s presence abruptly throws his life off track.

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The sexual furies that roil the new movie “Shame” are poundingly, startlingly graphic for a mainstream release. (The picture is rated NC-17.)

The film’s protagonist, Brandon Sullivan, played with fearless commitment by Michael Fassbender, is an emotional zombie anonymously employed in a glass-and-steel cubical farm in high-rise Manhattan. Brandon drifts through his workdays in a fog of apathy. His consuming interest is an unending search for orgasm—with prostitutes, with nightly pickups, often with himself in office bathroom stalls and laptop porn sessions in his sterile midtown apartment. It’s not much of a life, but it’s all that this priapic automaton requires.

The English director, Steve McQueen (Hunger), tracks Brandon’s obsessive prowlings with a serene, long-take camera style and carefully controlled color design, cooling out the action with Glenn Gould’s elegant Bach variations. So the blunt full-frontal nudity and frenzied couplings are kept at arm’s length, and drained of erotic sensation. The picture has a flawless visual beauty, but it’s as arousing as a laboratory report.

Although Brandon admits that his longest romantic relationship lasted only four months, some women are drawn to his unapologetic predation.

Read the full review at Reason.com:

X-Men: First Class had virtually everything going against it in pre-production– series fatigue (it’s the fifth entry in Fox’s X-Men saga), none of the original actors in starring roles, 1960s period costumes–on paper, it seemed like the ultimate studio cash-in, only to be outdone by the inevitable X-Men in Space: Electric Space Boogaloo from Space (in 3D!). Fortunately, it’s nothing of the sort.

Despite many flaws common to the superhero genre, First Class is quite possibly the best film in the series, not because it’s chock full of impressive special effects and action, but because broiling beneath its main characters’ performances are ideas–not just any ideas, but the central political and philosophical questions of the film’s time period whose minutiae our modern pundits still grapple over. This is not so much a review as a jumping-off point for discussion, so beware of spoilers ahead.

First Class focuses on young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor X (James McAvoy), at this point known as Erik Lehnshnerr and Charles Xavier, framing their worldviews through their respective experiences of World War II. Magneto is a Holocaust survivor forced to watch his own mother gunned down by Sebastian Shaw (a scenery-chewing Kevin Bacon), while X, though British, lives untouched by the war in New York, comfortable and affluent. As such, Magneto manifests the deep cynicism of Europeans, who decades before the first world war prophesied that civilization would make war a thing of the past, and X embodies the optimism of his young, victorious, prosperous nation.

If the film has one fatal flaw, it’s that McAvoy’s Professor X is a monstrously one-dimensional good guy–perfectly empathetic, perfectly charismatic, perfectly humble. He’s given a few humanizing moments of triviality in the first act, but once the central conflict kicks in, he merely serves as the angelic foil to the deeply tormented, deeply human, and deeply moving Magneto. Michael Fassbender, best known for his brief turn in Inglourious Basterds, deserves an Oscar nomination for his work here. He takes charge of the role with intimidating physicality, harnessing intense emotions into subtle shifts in Magneto’s inevitable path to top-hat-and-cape-wearing, mustache-tweaking evil. Yes, though we know exactly where he’s going, Fassbender injects suspense into the actual mechanics of the transformation; we care about him, sitting mortified but silently cheering when he gets his moment of revenge. (more…)

There’s a special place in my heart for period pieces involving excessive swordplay. There’s a natural romance to films where men write sonnets with swords, debating with the edge of a blade. 

But such films can quickly slip down the bloody slope of excessive gore, as slicing becomes dicing and bloody forays overwhelm the storyline. “Centurion,” now in theatres and available on demand in the U.S., wades knee-deep through the valley of pointlessly disgusting detail, as less a sonnet and more an overload of cluttered synonyms that weigh down the poetry of what could be a good movie. 

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“Centurion” chronicles writer/director Neil Marshall’s theory behind the mystery of Rome’s lost Ninth Legion. In a final attempt to conquer Britain, the rugged Ninth marches into the heart of enemy territory to find the violent Pict tribe and destroy it. With Pict turncoat Etain (Olga Kurylenko) leading the way, the army falls into a trap and all but seven are slaughtered. After failing to rescue their captured general, the seven must fight their way back to Roman territory, even as the elements and the pursuing Picts target them one by one. 

It is a gritty survival tale infusing elements of bloody horror and unsubstantiated humanity. To fly it needed less of the former and a basis for the latter. 

The film’s cinematic style evolved over the course of the film. Initially Marshall’s team filmed battles with nice slower pans, showing a Roman fortress fall. But by the end, a series of half-second quick-cuts rendered the final skirmish unwatchable.  (more…)

There was not a great deal of drama surrounding this year’s British Academy of Film & Television Arts Awards, commonly known as the BAFTA Awards. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) is a movie with deep roots in the UK. Director Danny Boyle was born in Manchester, England, lead actor Dev Patel is the star of the popular British television series Skins, and the movie is a gigantic hit in the British Isles with an impressive $20.6M (US dollars) in box office for Pathe, since its release there on January 6.

BAFTA Winner Mickey Rourke

The two major uncertainties entering Sunday’s ceremony were whether Kate Winslet, twice-nominated for Best Actress, would split her own vote and miss out on her second BAFTA Award and who would prevail in the Sean Penn-Mickey Rourke battle for Best Actor. Aside from that, it seemed like a Slumdog sweep, and that’s exactly how it played out.

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