What’s Good: Nolan is one of the few masters the cinema has left. His films are beautiful puzzles. Flaws are secondary to the ambition, clarity and intense, German-like origination of his vision. However one chooses to look at this movie it is a landmark science fiction film that we will be talking about for years. What’s Not: However garishly constructed, when you dissected or deconstruct some Nolan films you often are left feeling empty handed and betrayed. ”Memento” was that kind of film and in a lot of ways so is “Inception.” The screenplay is one of the biggest assets and flaws. DiCaprio is miscast as usual. The action is unnecessary and illogical (can’t believe I said that). And while I have a lot more bad things to say about it than good, I like the movie, I’m just not going to pretend it’s an all around masterpiece.
Note: Given the nature of “Inception” I thought it best to write about it with my gut and heart more than my head. The second after watching I was moved to get whatever I had to say down as quickly as possible but not to over think it’s “meanings” because doing so might lead to levels of madness of DiCaprian proportions. My reaction is obviously going to change for the better or worse after have some time to sleep on it (though I wish I could sleep in it as well) but know that I’m writing all this immediately after seeing the movie. I’m posting this three and a half to four hours after STARTING, not finishing, the movie and that’s give or take the time it took for all those IMAX trailers, driving home and feeding my hungry dogs that were waiting for me in the dark when I got home. Whatever the following response is, it may be more unrefined and impulsive than usual but, really, not much more than my usual crap I’m capable of. Given that at this moment the film is ranked on the IMDB as the third best film ever made there’s (you gotta love IMDB users) a lot of knee jerk(off) reactions are around even though none of us really know how it will hold up. The drive to talk about this film is just that powerful and just that’s welcome given the sad dearth of thought (un)provoking summer movies.
I have a feeling that the more someone likes “Inception,” the more in denial they are about how much they like “Inception.” It’s as great and technical and expertly crafted as a film can be. It is also as hollow and empty –but beautifully so– as one of Esher’s stair cases leading to nowhere. That it looks hypnotically fabulous on its way there counts for something or, in this film’s case, everything. Like one of Esher’s playful works, this film is aware of itself and made to be looked at as such. There is a scene where the mark/dreamer is told by the protagonist that he’s in a dream. His dream in fact and that he is being told this so that he can be taken further and deeper down into various levels of this overarching dream. Noland is doing to us what he has in the previous films of what I would call his head-trip trilogy. In “Memento” his character broke all sorts of fourth walls to guide us into his fractured and, as it turns out, literally fleeting attention span. As he ran from his reality, we were brought closer and closer to it and while it seemed to signify so much at the beginning, it all evaporated after we revisited it and applied the film’s own logic to its plot. The entirety of “The Prestige,” Nolan’s best film to date, was built as a cinematic magic trick that the audience was brought in to participate in because a magic trick cannot exist without someone there to be (willingly) tricked. That film worked perfectly because when you take the pieces apart you get something substantial–a timeless parable about human obsession and the thin line between magic and science in our world. And with “Inception” Christopher Nolan takes our hands once again, using his firmest and most aggressively forceful grip to date, and plunges us in a very mediated journey into the world of dream espionage (which is a lot cooler than calling it dream stealing). It’s a bit “Matrix,” a bit “Open Your Eyes”/”Vanilla Sky” a bit of a Joss Whedon dream episode and a whole heap of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” Also substantial is the amount of in-dream shooting and clunky metaphors pertaining to our unconscious mind where people literally lock up their secrets. The film is strangely lacking in surrealism but, given the plot and even tagline “the dream is real,” it’s very refreshing that the director didn’t resort to any nonsensical dream related Dali-esq “randomness.” The dreams of “Inception” have weight and a consistent internal reality that the film, whatever its flaws are, benefits from sticking to all the way to the end. The final, open to interpretation shot existing as a fun little existential joke that only Nolan is capable of ending his film with.
What I admire is all the work that went into it. And who wouldn’t? To watch it unfold is to enjoy the power of any well thought out and choreographed cinematic achievements. It’s as if the impossible has happened, Kubrick merged with Fellini! What I do not admire is also very clear cut. While the craft is there and at the top of its form, this movie’s basic plot is just not very interesting and it spends a lot of time masking that with fantastic sights and constantly juggled Rube Goldbergian machinations. It’s a flashy and well made hurricane of a movie, but to what end? What are we left with? When the layers are taken apart we are stuck with a very thin story that has almost no reason for existing on its own terms. It’s about a man who is not very interesting that has lost something that was not very interesting or original to begin with! He does everything he can to get “it” back and I kept waiting to get to the heart of what that is exactly and once I did was not impressed. The thinness of the story brings with it of course very thin character motivations as well and, worst of all, a very thin excuse to have people shooting guns at well dressed cyphers, existing as a built in security measure (an dream defense army whose job is to protect their host’s mind). The action scenes where characters shoot at each other feels off. Pondering “what is real” is of course nothing new and feels even more shallow in a college philosophy class kind of way this time around then it did when “Matrix” came out. The plot I will not waste my time describing because, first, this is not the kind of film you get people to see by explaining it and second, well, as I said: what plot? There’s lots of talk of getting “information” and beyond lazy MacGuffins featuring hard to crack safes with hard to locate combinations and hard to care about documents within these mind-lockers. Such heavy handed icons never break free to signify anything other than themselves and I was never once pleased to find out what “vital information” any given characters was hiding. Perhaps that’s a deliberate way to impress upon us how, in real dreams, feelings are always more profound and lingering than the minute details. But that would assume that the film has much feeling or emotion. As is, the details are unclear and the emotions lack even definition.
I could talk about the beautiful, near non-stop music soundscape that Han Zimmer has created. This is amazing work by a seasoned composer that is able to lull us in with dreamy orchestral synths that guide without ever bringing us to the surface as, say, John William’s did with “A.I.” The editing is also first rate. It has that elliptical, metronome like construction that “The Prestige” used so well to its advantage. All the cuts are in service of the story’s vision rather than providing us with visual indulgences and I think that’s an important distinction to make. Same goes for the special effects. When characters float around and buildings topple into themselves, there’s a reason for it. Not a reason that is particularly engaging but a reason none the less. The way the film is put together, first in Nolan’s mind, second in the always brilliant Wally Pfister’s visual mapping and finally in Lee Smith’s cluttered but somehow coherent cutting room. These combine to form a effect worth treasuring and a big reason to come back again and again to this special world. The cast, in true human fashion, introduce flaws to Nolan’s otherwise perfect technical construct. He’s like Kubrick in the sense that humans always taint the notion of film in its pure form.
The film is has a pair of great actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and an underused Michael Caine. There are also competent but sometimes overrated performers such as Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and Marion Cotillard. There are even WTF casting choices that rival Eric Roberts in “Dark Knight;” Tom “where have you been” Berenger and Levitt’s “Brick” co-star Lukas Haas appear. Oh and, yeah, Leonardo DiCaprio. Except for Leo, nobody really does a bad job. The characters, however, are all as distant and faceless and as mechanically driven as all those unconscious/subconscious Mr. Smiths running around people’s dream worlds trying to seek out the foreign body. Nothing about these characters except for that persistent dream stalker played by Cotillard, the beautiful Freddy Kruger of this dream worlds (she acts as a much needed wild card that comes in and disrupts the dream team’s “plan” in very cool ways) stand out in any way that inspires or evokes much feeling or depth. I didn’t not really like these characters but that’s only because I did not know them! Or their highly specialized jobs for that matter. They may be the “best” at what they do but I was always are left having to take the film’s word for it because what each character’s job is, such as a “dream architect” that could learn her job and be the best in the world at it after about a half day of unconscious training, makes no sense but at least the film doesn’t dwell because what good would come out of that? Even after spending two and a half hours with these people I didn’t come close to having any sort of organic connection with them or what they do. When Levitt pecks Page on the lips it was the only moment of genuine human involvement and while I liked it a lot it also seemed like an after thought, and a tease of one at that.
Also integrated awkwardly is a pivotal snow-set section of the film which is not only narratively bland and unclear but represents the only instance where the technical aspects let the film down (stark but dull visuals and hurried editing make it hard to get a fix on anything that’s going on in the snow–it was like a level out of “Moder Warfare 2″). The actors are given very simple performance tools and very challenging physical demands to play with and while few bring much to their characters beyond exactly what is required of them, at least they don’t take away from them either. Except for DiCaprio. As usual he is out of league and unable to draw me in to his reality. He is unconvincing and uninteresting. Another actor, Christian Bale for example (I know, I know, you don’t have to say it, I’m too much of a Bale fan), could have finessed the part up a bit, adding perhaps small touches of humanity and some wry humor to go along with all that overwrought intensity. DiCaprio, who is always so wound up in his movies (and always so damn obvious about his turmoil), fails to hold the dream at large together because he is always so glacially sober which, again, is ironic given the fluid subject we’re dealing with. The character is just a drab fellow that is never fun or energetic on screen. He’s a total drag. To his credit, Leo was having a good year after a somewhat similar turn in a far more (as performances, and perhaps films, go) successful mind bending “Shutter Island.” Both movies exist to takes us into the corridors of this actor’s crumbling psyche, failing to realize of course that there’s just not that much in there to get lost in.
What’s Good: Noah Baumbach manages to make his most dramatic film also his funniest. He just gets better and better. And speaking of better, this is one of the year’s best. What’s Not:People who don’t “get” Greenberg. Actually I can understand why this film would turn people off. Museum crashing Stiller fans need not apply because this is not the kind of Stiller comedy you may be expecting. Also, while I usually hate hearing from critics (in any way and about petty much anything) I included the AO Scott review of ”Greeberg” from recently dead At the Movies show because Scott is one of the few critics to give “Greenberg” the credit it deserves.
“Greenberg” is out! Usually DVD/Blu-ray releases don’t interest me but this bit of news is an event and a reason to celebrate. I haven’t been very into movies this year for the simple reason that none of them are really worth writing about. Actually I’ve just been really lazy when it comes to writing, talking about movies, going out to movies or for that matter leaving my apartment. But, still, on top of that is the fact that movies have been sucking. Hard. Except for “Greenberg.” Seven months into the year and “Greenberg” is still the best thing out. I usually hold that personal info close to the vest so as to give my year end top ten some heat //term used ironically// but this year is so uneventful that I must appreciate the one great film of 2010 because I may not get another chance to do so after “The Last Airbender” gives me a brain aneurysm and kills me right where I sit.
From “Greenberg” to this month’s solid but not particularly earth shattering ”Cyrus,” man-baby movies are very in right now. These are movies about or featuring men so selfish and entitled that the world must meet their every selfish demand or feel their totally powerless wrath. More often than not, in a movie like “Step Brothers” or “Cyrus,” men literally act like babies (to comic effect) and have a whole lot of mommy issues whereas in a film like “Greenberg” it’s more a part of the behavioral makeup of the character. Somehow we are able to like such characters played by top man baby actors John C. Riley, Ben Stiller and of course the biggest man baby of them all, perhaps even the inventor of modern man babyisms, Will Ferrell who, to his credit, seems to be channeling the classic literary man baby progenitor Ignatius from “A Confederacy of Dunces.” This character type rings true for a lot of reasons, the topmost of which might be that male adults these days are indeed trapped in an infantilized, womb like haze of me-me-me self entitlement. Which brings me to the film at hand. “Greenberg” provides the most incisive, biting, funny and most dramatic treatment of this popular new cultural trope.
It’s kinda sad when you see a deliberately unlikable character and think to yourself that it could be you in ten years if you don’t stop what you’re doing right now and get some therapy. Greenberg is a character that has given up on life and success and happiness yet still desperately wants attention, validation and credit. He’s a walking conflict. This is a character that hates growing older while at the same time also hates the young and energetic. When his ever patient best friend played by Rhys Ifans exhaustively rehashes that Oscar Wilde line about youth being wasted on the young Greenberg feels that’s not cynical enough and fires back with “I’d go one step further. I’d go: Life is wasted on… people.” With great zeal he then adds, rhetorically perhaps, that ”I’m strangely ‘on’ tonight” while the dinner party looks at him without an ounce of agreement. I have used that line many times in the months since “Greenberg” has come out. Capturing the self loathing vibe and sour humor of Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach’s ”Greenburg” speaks to the misanthrope in me, perhaps us, and is honest enough to admit that we may all have a little Greenberg lurking inside of use.
That alone would make the film rather hard to tolerate so Baumbach balances his broken compass of a character with a 25-year-old babysitter played by “Mumblecore” (hate that term) princess Greta Gerwig. In this wonderful performance, a much needed base to Greenberg’s acid, Gerwig plays a family babysitter who is helping Greenberg watch over his brother’s killer pad and sick dog in L.A. while he’s out of town. Of course she ends up babysitting the mentally ill or perhaps mentally eccentric Greenberg, falling in a very depressing sorta love in the process. Even here the writers (this time Noah teams up with “Margot at the Wedding” star Jennifer Jason Leigh) do not fall back on the conventions we’d expect with these types of movies. The easy thing would be to give her the Helen Hunt in ”As Good as it Gets” treatment, positioning her as the patron saint of patient women who put up with ass-holes for no clear reason. She’s also is not some sort of bombshell that would not normally fall for this guy except for in movie world (she’s cute, Greenberg, muses, but only if you had to work with her in a all day, every day sort of way), nor is she terribly witty in that annoying indie movie way. She’s normal and yet what she does makes sense because the writers take the time to develop the character and explore her psychology. Not enough good things could be said of this performance.
Noah Baumbach is one of the best filmmakers around because he’s not out to sell us one his cleverness and not out to drone on about how much life sucks. His films contain all the humor of his collaborations with Wes Anderson but fare better for my money because he sits down and actually attempts to deal with and engage his audience in some sort of unspoken dialogue with these characters. And sometimes, as in a film like this, “dealing” with a character does not mean fixing them and hoping for that happy off-screen ending, either, which is to be applauded. Baumbach characters in this movie, while funny, are all grounded and match their respective intelligence levels. While plagued with psychological troubles Greenberg is not a ”Shine”-like savant or brilliant anti-social writer and his friends are just normal people who happened to grow up a little faster than Greenberg. While suburb and often underrated I always felt his characters in “The Squid and the Whale” and to a lesser extent “Margot,” especially the children, talked in a very stylized intellectual manner. Which is fine because so are many if not most of Allen’s characters. However it’s that kind of closed-off writing style that, outside of the Allen-verse, is impossible to sustain without coming off as a bit of a pretentious prick (Hal Hartley, Diablo Cody, etc. al.). Not Baumbach and definitely not “Greenberg.”
“Greenberg” also happens to be Baumbach’s most skilled work as a filmmaker. The pacing and visuals doing a good job at keeping up with the story and writing. Shots of a solitary Greenberg or visual metaphors like a hose spewing water and spinning around in a pool attain a poetic quietness that help sell the film’s somber but not sad tone. Even the awkward (an obligatory facet of comedies these days) or dramatic moments are scaled back to avoid “Meet the Parents” sized exaggerations and, on the other side of the Ben Siller spectrum, cheep melodramatic storytelling shortcuts like the drama filled but somehow hollow attempted suicide scene in “Royal Tenenbaums”–a scene I don’t like in a movie I do… depending on what mood I’m in (I have a weird love/hate relationship with that movie that even I don’t understand).
Ben Siller should be commended for acting in a “real” movie. How considerate of him. Stiller does a fine and nuanced job here but those words lack proper weight and I understand that saying so is about as useful as say Adam Sandler is good in all of “Punch Drunk Love” and small parts of “Funny People.” It also does me no good to state that now that he’s made his money he should stick with quality directors like Wes Anderson, Noah B and, strangely enough, himself because they all seem to be the only ones giving his career longevity. I guess I’d add Neil LaBute to that list well as he was fantastic in “Your Friends and Neighbors. Stiller’s willingness to dive into this troubled man and ability to render him vulnerable but not in a cheap or sentimental way results in his very best performance to date. We have a really unlikable guy to contend with here and are often are left wondering why people would even bother meeting him a second time after receiving a mean (but delightful on the other side of the screen) diatribe. Yet for all his miserable ways the film is not mocking Greenberg or laughing at him or studying him under a microscope. Gerwig sums the enigma of Greenberg up best when she tells him, simply, that ”mean people treat people mean.” Grade: A
What’s Good: Lots of fan service, which, for a film like this, is all that matters. One of those rare reboots that updates the formula as much as it pays tribute to the original. What’s Not: Waiting for the next Predator film.
“Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.”
You have to understand, fans of “Predator” movies are not like other fans. We don’t expect greatness, we don’t even expect good-ness. Unlike bitter and whiny fanboys of other franchises (ahem, “Star Wars”) “Predator” fans have the remarkable ability to be content with what we get, which is not often and not often that good so when we get a “Predator” film, any predator film, we also know enough not to complain (too much) because we’re getting a Predator film! Our expectations are always low but spirited despite knowing that this franchise maynever (a) surpass the first “Predator,” and (b) yield a full on mainstream success. As jungle planet movies go, this ain’t Pandora and thank the sci-fi Gods for that! Realistically, Fox is doing us a huge favor whenever they throw us a predator shaped bone so imagine my surprise when something I don’t expect or even need to be any good is actually good. Unnecessary but thank you very much for that.
Maybe I shouldn’t speak for “us fans” because, honestly, I’ve never meet a real Predator fans in person so the “we” in question is more of a projection of “me.” So from myside of things, “Predators” is everything a Predator film should be and actually a little bit more. This new high stakes jungle adventure is both a fantastic tribute to the classic John McTiernan film right down to the musical score that is basically a re-composition of the original (John Debney by way of Alan Silvestri), but it’s also a sturdy and competent reboot of a franchise long dead or as H.P. Lovecraft would call it, a “dead but dreaming” state. This film, R-rated and proud of it, comes off as being written by people who actually respect what the first film was about (human nature more than alien nature) and understand what the series needs to thrive in films to come if indeed there are any. “2 Fast 2 Predators” is my title suggestion for the next “Predator” which I hope gets made sooner rather than the standard one “Predator” per every twenty or so years. Included in this third (or fifth if you count b0th “Alien vs. Predator” films which most fans don’t or won’t or maybe just can’t) are key aspects like a slow and steady build-up which is an essential and I should think rather obvious ingredient that, somehow, most”Predator” films missed. Various hunter/hunted and predator/prey themes are also very strong, so strong that the cold protagonist even quotes that bear of a hunter Earnest Hemingway–that’s where the above quote comes from. Awesome weapons, seedy humans that die off one by one, stealth kills, gruesome Mortal Kombat-esq kills (no kidding: a Predator yanks a dude’s skull and spinal chord, Scorpion-style), fearsome non-Predator creatures (that’s a new one!), well timed explosions, booby traps, alien ships and while I could go on I will settle by stating that everything is calibrated just right. There is a build up to be sure as the Predator doesn’t rear it’s ”one ugly motherfucker” head for a while, but the story never drags. Like the Predators themselves, the film is quick and over before you know what hits you. The film even adds to the always mysterious mythology/methodology of these tribal creatures by including different species within the Predator kingdom of creatures. I took a perverse pleasure in learning from this film that even Predators can be racist.
The film just kicks ass. All kinds of ass. If you ever wanted to see a samurai sword wielding Yakuza tussle with a Predator, this film has that! If you ever wanted to see a Predator get a shiv in the chest and called a “space faggot” from a surly inmate, this film has that too! And for anyone thought that Aliens fighting Predators was just about the coolest thing ever, this film offers up a sight that may just be cooler: Predator vs. Predator! I’m gushing but I can’t help it, it’s that awesome. I may be embellishing as to how good this movie actually is but I have no problem blaming that on timing and the lack of a single worthwhile summer film this year.
This film understands that a big budget does not make a “Predator” film better or worse. Similar to the “Pitch Black”/”Chronicles of Riddick” schism where more is not anywhere close to better, this film gets back to the basics. Tension and atmosphere, if done right, do not necessarily need to cost a lot or be over thought and while I am usually very reluctant to give Robert Rodriguez credit for much of anything except for ”Desperado” I’ll concede that his down and dirty filmmaking philosophy works very well on this type of project. But this is not a RR film, director Nimrod Antel (Kontrol, Vacancy) may not be a great or stylish director but he clearly understands how to use atmosphere.
“Predators” is set on a prison planet where people are dropped from the sky while Predators lie in wait. That simple hook (and I’m not spoiling because the trailers give that away–which sucks but that’s the world we live in) gives the plot a perverse sense of hopeless pessimism that even the first “Predator” did not have. Even if you are able to defeat the enemy at hand you’re still stuck on the planet which is one giant big game reserve. Also, killing a Predator, as we learn from a deranged and seasoned vet who has been on the planet for “ten seasons,” will only cause more to come because apparently they dig the challenge. Dutch had it easy because he was able to GET TO THE CHAPPA by getting the hell out of Dodge or Central America as it were. Not so much this time as the setting is literally an amusement part for the world’s most demented race of “higher beings.” Advanced Lobster men with dreadlocks who have somehow figured out the whole interstellar travel thing and yet look, and act, no more evolved than the main portion at a Red Lobster. To contradict myself for a sec, while watching I actually thought about the nature of these Predator “monsters” and a part of me, a small part, could almost makes a case for them not being monsters. He or she (though nobody’s ever seen a female Predator as far as I know; maybe they’re huge nags and that’s why the men go halfway around the universe to distract themselves with the hunt of primitive human bipeds) is a hunter and a warrior and follows what appears to be a strict set of codes and customs. They may be violent but at least they have honor. Humans… not so much. I mentioned a samurai fight: in this scene, the bad ass Predator could easily shoot the sword wielding ninja with his three red light missile contraption a la Indiana Jones in that funny “Raiders” scene but, no, he steps up and uses his hand knife. And they fight. To the death. In tall grass. And it’s awesome! There is a dignity to that gesture and I appreciate the hell out of it. Yes, the “monster” wants to kill humans but they are not innocent or unarmed humans. Predators don’t want it to be easy and that separates these aliens from other movie aliens.
I’ve saved the cast for last. Not without reason. They serve the plot well but unlike Predator 1 or 2, no great personalities emerge. The cast offers a very strange range in styles and personalities. You know something’s off when Adrian Brody is cast as the Arnold of the movie. He speaks like Clint Eastwood (minus the humor) and carries a very large gun. It feels like a joke at first (the dude is no sexual tyrannosaur) but the character grows on you even if it’s no where close to how Arnold or Danny Glover did. There’s also the always welcome Rodriguez favorite, Danny Trejo, as a Mexican gangster (or something), a Russian military thug who gets to use Jessie the Body’s chain gun, a convict played by Walter Goggins (so good at playing a sleaze in The Shield, Justified and now Predator), an African death squad guy, the Mr. Eco of the group, played by Mahershalalhashbaz Ali(as opposed to Majdkajfksjkfdajskjfaskdfaskljfdk Ali) and, of course, the obligatory “Predator” movie staple of casting a hot Latin co-lead (Alice Braga, who made “Blindness” better and “I Am Legend” worse). Topher Grace, the one “non warrior” of the group, appears as a out-of-place doctor and Lawrence Fishburn even pops in to offer a few great surprises that I won’t spoil except to say his intro is brilliant. The film has a timeless set-up where a bunch of strangers wake up in an unknown place for an unknown reason. That kind of story has been done before (“Saw,” “Identity,” every other “Twilight Zone” episode and even Agatha Christie) with the only difference being that the characters in this story wake up while free falling towards the ground. With guns! And a parachute that may or may not work.
As I said, this is not a great film but it ends up being great by simply offering something that’s missing. Fun, non pretentious summer action and sci-fi thrills. That was once common but a precious commodity in the era of CGI kids movies, superfluous 3D action films (effin “Clash of the Titans,” “Last Airbender”!!!) and Kathryn Higel movies. The summer movie, as we knew it, is dead. ”Predators” recalls a time when B-grade sci-fi were not only found on syfy channel late at night. In fact, films like this were once an event and for however brief a moment in time, there are once more.
Best of Decade(s) Mega List: Since movies this year have been, to put things kindly, underwhelming (its days like this I’m glad I’m not a real writer because there’s nothing worth writing about), and summer’s not going to be much better for the second year in a row (all nerds like me have to look forward is, what, Inception and Scott Pilgrim–okay, Predators too but don’t tell anyone I said that), there really is no better time than now to look back. I began with just wanting to name my favorite films from the past decades of cinema leading up to the 2000-2009 but, of course, that turned into a longer, more bloated and memory testing endeavor. As objective as all this may be, not to mention arbitrary (does a film released in 1991 belong more to the 90s culture or 80s?), doing this still gives me a fantastic sense of the movies within their proper history setting which is often the best way to look at them because so many once-great films may not hold up well today but still should be given credit for the era they did come out in. But lists like this are organic and change/evolve/devolve/etc within the viewer perception. We should not be ashamed to admit that how we feel about a given film, or in this case a list of films, is not really “how we feel about them” but, rather, how we feel about them at a specific time. That being said a list like this is never final; with any luck it will grow along with the viewer.
Here’s the real reason I’m doing this list. Over the coming weeks/months I’m going to get my Double Zero decade list on but before I do that I wanted to, for my own sake (because at this point in my life who else would I be doing this for?), start with past before moving to the most recent past. Now that I’ve gotten this list foreplay out of the way I can get into the real fun stuff by diving into 00′s lists covering the “best” music, best songs, video games, books, anime and of course movies of our most recently past decade, thus finally being able to let the last ten years go by putting it to bed in the graveyard of “best of” lists. Maybe then I will be more inspired to write about current movies. The future may be now but I’m not quite ready to live in it, and who can blame me; have you been to the theater lately?
Pre 1920s
A Trip to the Moon (George Meles)
Broken Blossoms (Griffith)
Caberia (Pastrone)
Intolerance (Griffith)
Les Vampires (Feuillade–the first vampire movie?)
The Outlaw and His Wife (Sjöström)
Take Your Pick of Lumiere Brother films
Leaves from Satan’s Book (Dreyer)
Fantomas (Feuillade)
Birth of a Nation (Griffith)
J’Accuse (Gance)
The Circus (Chaplin)
Oyster Princess (Lubitsch)
Random Thoughts: As important as Griffith’s role as the person that changed, but really invented, the film narrative and use of the frame as well as even establishing the rules of film pacing, what Meles did with the medium was actually greater or at the very least more lovable: he did all that the super literal Griffith did but added the essential ingredient of imagination to the mix. I should say that while I very much enjoy films made in this era, it’s almost not fair to call them “films” in the way we use the term today. It’s more like pre or proto film which is not to dismiss the work of this crucial era but, rather, to allow it to exist as its own art form and not be compared to films that have the advantage of building on a previous conventions. Should we compare the aesthetic quality of cave paintings to Rembrandt? Hell no, even though both can be amazing in their own way. I have friends who hate when I say that but I find that separating this era really allows these films to understood better.
1920s
The Last Laugh (FW Murnau)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
Metropolis (Lang)
Sunrise (Murnau)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene)
Nosferatu (Murnau)
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel/Dali)
The Crowd (Vidor)
Man with the Movie Camera (Vertov)
Sherlock Jr. (Keaton)
Nanook of the North (Flaherty)
Dr. Mabuse (Lang)
Der Golum (Wegener)
Faust (Murnau)
Strike (Eisenstein)
The Marked Ones (Dreyer)
October (Eisenstein)
Napoleon (Gance)
Häxan (Christensen)
Top Filmmakers of the 20s Era:FW Murnau, Eisenstein Performance of the decade: Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc. Easily the best close-up performer in the history of cinema! Also, Keaton in The General because it goes far, far beyond just acting. Most Overrated Film: Chaplin’s The Kid. Also, The Jazz Singer Random Thoughts: The dismissively titled “seventh art” took everything that worked from the earliest greats and added its own polish and professionalism. The silent film was absolutely perfected in this era which was, of course, on the cusp of so much change. But I take a certain comfort in this decade’s output as it cuts through the BS of so many films after. There ‘s an innocence and wonder that the 30s contained that just kinda went away. More than anything these films are a joy to look at; a simplistic way of putting it but is there any better way to describe the rapid visual poetry of Potemkin, the stark close-ups of Dreyer’s Joan of Arc and endlessly cool looking comic set-ups of just about any Keaton film? While comedies and science fiction came into their own Murnau, in particular, took film to the next level with his flawless titles Last Laugh (he moved the camera and broke the fourth wall before anybody), Sunrise, Faust and Nosferatu, none of which are like the other, all of which are perfect. Amazingly, Murnau works account for almost half this list! Dude Rocks
1930s
M (Fritz Lang)
Modern Times (Chaplin)
Zero for Conduct (Vigo)
The Rules of the Game (Renoir)
Alexander Nevinski (Eisenstein)
King Kong (Cooper)
Angels with Dirty Faces (Curtiz)
Frankenstein/The Bride of Frankenstein (Whale)
City Lights (Chaplin)
Stagecoach (Ford)
Fury (Lang)
The Thin Man (Van Dyke)
The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)
Greed (Stroheim)
Bringing Up Baby (Hawks)
Freaks (Browning)
The Blue Angel (Sternberg)
Pepe le Moko (Duvivier)
Snow White (Disney)
Gunga Din (Stevens)
Lost Horizon (Capra)
Top Filmmakers of the 20s Era:Chaplin and Fritz Lang Performance of the Decade: Chaplin in Modern Times. Peter Lorre in M. Most Overrated Films:Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes To Washington andThe Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup. Not a fan of Capra/not a fan of (in Sean Connery voice…) the Marx brothers. I’m a huge dick because of this apparently. Random Thoughts: Also known as the awkward decade. A transitional era in every way, but that’s what makes its films so unique. When else could something like M have been released? Who needs sound when you have a figure like Chaplin taking cinema to its most exuberant heights. While sound certainly is preferred by almost anybody, this new technology kind of ruined a lot of the films of the period. Hollywood and elsewhere didn’t quite know what to do with it but that’s also what made some of the films of the era so exciting.
1940s
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles) Citizen Kane (Welles) Citizen Kane (Welles) …more Citizen Kane (Welles)
His Girl Friday (Hawks)
Stray Dog (Kurosawa)
Bicycle Thieves (DeSica)
Double Indemnity (Wilder)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles)
The Woman in the Window (Lang)
Shadow of a Doubt (Hichcock)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hammer)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (Huston)
Rebecca (Hitchcock)
Sullivan’s Travels (Sturges)
The Third Man (Reed)
Fantasia (Disney)
Out of the Past (Tourneur)
Rope (Hitchcock)
The Red Shoes (P&P)
Late Spring (Ozu)
Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau)
Naked City (Dassin)
Laura (Preminger)
Lady from Shanghai (Welles)
Key Largo (Huston)
The Great Dictator (Chaplin)
Red River (Hawks)
Casablanca (Curtiz)
Notorious (Hitchcck)
The Big Sleep (Hawks)
Detour (Ulmer)
The Stranger (Welles)
Pursued (Walsh)
Meshes in the Afternoon (Deren)
White Heat (Walsh)
Mildred Pierce (Curtiz)
Lifeboat (Hitchcock)
Gilda (Vidor)
The Razor’s Edge (Goulding)
Ball of Fire (Hawks)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett)
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton)
The Lost Weekend (Wilder)
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor)
Dumbo (Sharpsteen)
The Lady Eve (Sturges)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Mankiewicz)
Gentleman’s Agreement (Kazan)
The Wolfman (Waggner)
Miracle on 34th Street (Seaton)
The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellman)
Palm Beach Story (Sturges)
Top Filmmakers of the 40s Era:Orson Welles and Howard Hawks. And you got to give it up to Preston Sturges flawlessly prolific 1940s run that includes classics like Unfaithfully Yours, Miracle at Morgan’s Creek, Lady Eve, Christmas In July, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (that odd Harold Loyd sequel to The Freshman), Palm Beach Story and, oh nothing, just Sullivan’s Travels. 13 films in 8 years. 13!!!! There is no filmmaker in the past or present that could ever match that run. Sturges put so much into his work during these ten short years that, when he tapped out after 1948, nobody could really blame the guy. Performance of the decade:Joseph Cotton in Citizen Kane/Magnificent Ambersons/Shadow of a Doubt. Cotton is one of my all time favorite actors and it’s sad how little respect he gets these days or even at the time.His partner in crime is of course Orson Welles and his role inCitizen Kane is every bit as towering as Welles the director. And how aboutAlec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets? Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity proved that nobody reads Wilder dialogue better than Freddy Mac which is no easy task–sorry Jack Lemon, you’re good too. Most Overrated Films:Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life(no hate mail please). Random Thoughts: The best decade for not just comedies but film in general? As much as I love the run the late 90s had, Yes, there’s no question that this was the true golden age of film. More than that this was the period when films became FILMS. American, European and Asian films all blossomed with such astounding growth and aesthetic maturity that, to watch the films from today’s time, is sobering to see how little the fundamentals have changed since the 40s. Only 2001 in the 60s, Pulp Fiction in the 90s and a few noteworthy art films have changed the core paradigm of what cinema is in any way worth noting. This is also the decade that genres sorted themselves out and established rules they still use to this day: dramas, comedies, noir and realism all came into their own as distinct modes of storytelling/filmmaking. I can never say enough good things about this era.
1950s–
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
Rashomon (Kurosawa)
Mr. Arkadin (Welles)
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder)
Singing in the Rain (Kelly/Doen)
Night of the Hunger (Laughton)
In a Lonely Place (Ray)
Touch of Evil (Welles)
High Noon (Zinnemann)
Godzilla (Honda)
The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
The Big Heat (Fritz Lang)
A Place in the Sun (Stevens)
The Ten Commandments (De Mille)
Pickup on South Street (Fuller)
Rear Window (Hitchcock)
Eyes Without a Face (Franju)
Gun Crazy (Lewis)
North by Northwest (Hitchcock)
The Caine Mutiny (Dmytryk)
Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich)
The Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa)
Leave her to Heaven (Stahl)
Umberto D (DeSica)
The Trouble with Harry (Hichcock)
Orpheus (Cocteau)
Hiroshma Mon Amour (Resnais)
All About Eve (Mankiewicz)
The African Queen (Huston)
Shadows (Cassavetes)
Winchester ’73 (Mann)
La Strada (Fellini)
Tokyo Story (Ozu)
Written in the Wind (Sirk)
Rififi (Dassin)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
Some Like it Hot (Wilder)
Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock)
A Face in the Crowd (Kazin)
The River (Renoir)
Sansho the Baliff (Mizoguchi)
The World of Apu (Ray)
Breathless (Godard)
The Searchers (Ford)
Dark City (Dieterie)
Written on the Wind (Sirk)
Top Filmmakers of the 50s Era:Hitchcock and Wilder. Performance of the decade: Toshirô Mifune in Rashomon. Humphrey Bogart gave his best performance in In a Lonely Place. Most Overrated Films: I love Hawks but Rio Bravo is grotesquely overrated (count me on team High Noon).Rey’s Rebel Without a Caus always strikes nothing but false notes; every time I watch it is painful.I’m also not a fan of 90% of Kazan’s blockheaded work, On the Waterfront is so blunt and preachy I literally can’t sit through it any more (and I’ve seen it twice). And I can’t forget Giant. And though it’s not by any means bad, I will never understand how Seven Samauri became people favorite Kurosawa film. Random Thoughts: Clearly, the 50s belonged to Hitchcock. And thank the movie gods for that too because, despite color kicking ass, this period of time saw movies at their most safe and bland. Not Hitch, though, whose films added bite and intensity and proved single handedly how the movies could capture (and twist) our emotions.
1960s
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leoni)
High and Low (Kurosawa)
Planet of the Apes (Schaffner)
Becket (Glenville)
Underworld USA (Fuller)
The Shop on Main Street (Kadar and Klos)
8½ (Fellini)
Night of the Living Dead (Romero)
Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill)
Yojimbo/Sanjuro (Kurosawa)
For a Few Dollars More (Leoni)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leoni)
The Graduate (Nichols)
I Am Cuba (Kalatozishvili)
Lolita (Kubrick)Contempt (Godard)
Z (Garvas)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski)
Closley Watched Trains (Menzel)
Take the Money and Run (Allen)
Zulu (Enfield)
Point Blank (Boorman)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
A Man for All Seasons (Zinnemann)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda)
From Russia With Love (Young)
Shock Corridor (Fuller)
La Jetée (Marker)
Psycho (Hitchcock)
Belle de Jour (Bunuel)
The Trial (Welles)
Persona (Bergman)
Playtime (Tati)
The Producers (Brooks)
Manchurnian Canidate (Frankenheimer)
Quartermass and the Pitt (Baker)
Satyricon (Fellini)
Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
Blow-Up (Antonoioni)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (Aldrich)
If… (Anderson)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (Ford)
The Apartment
Peeping Tom (Powell)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – (Demy)
Top Filmmakers of the 60s Era:Kubrick and Leoni Performance of the decade: Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Peter O’Tool in Beckett. Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove and Lolita. Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Cliff Robertson in Underworld USA. Most Overrated Films:Lots. Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Tom Jones, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Charade. Random Thoughts: The 60s means something different to so many people. For some its the European Renaissance. For most its the birth of New Hollywood (ushered in with Bonnie and Clyde). For me… it’s Kubrick, Clint, and Apes. While I prefer the classic (30-40s) and modern (90s-00s) era to the 60s-80s looking at this list makes it hard to deny that this decade had a good run.
1970s
The Duellists and Alien (both by Ridley Scott and no I can’t choose just one)
The Man Who Would Be King (Huston)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
Jaws (tried to keep Spielberg off the list but… it’s Jaws!)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah)
The Conversation (also tried to keep all Coppola off the list but, damn, this movie is perfect!)
Carnal Knowledge (Nichols)
Aguirre Wrath of God (Herzog)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam/Jones)
Walkabout (Roeg)
Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma)
Rolling Thunder (Flynn, written by Schrader)
I, Claudius (miniseries, Wise)
Network (Lumet)
Eraser Head (Lynch)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog)
The Passenger (Antonioni)
The Fury (De Palma)
Real Life (A Brooks)
A Boy and His Dog (Jones)
Amarcord (Fellini)
Love and Death (Allen)
Hardcore (Schrader)
The Castle of Cagliostro (Miyazaki)
Silent Running (Trumbull)
Traveling Players (Angelopulos)
Chinatown (Polanski)
The Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel)
Red Beard (Kurosawa)
Solaris (Tarkovsky)
Fat City (Huston) “Did I get knocked out?” “No! You won!”
Star Wars (Lucas)
Manhattan (Allen)
A Clockwork Orange (overrated but still amazing, Kubrick)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir)
Being There (Ashby)
Day for Night (Truffaut)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
Time After Time (Meyer)
The Spy Who Loved Me (Gilbert)
The Godfather II (Coppola)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
Phantasm (Coscarelli)
Pale Rider (Eastwood)
Halloween (Carpenter)
The Yakuza (Pollack)
Zardoz (Boorman) “Zardoz is pleased.”
Assault on Precinct 13 (Carpenter)
Two Lane Blacktop (Hellman)
The Last Wave (Weir)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Top Filmmakers of the 70s Era: Woody Allen. The rest were all high or something during these years. Performance of the Decade: Sigourney Weaver in Alien. William Holden and Ned Betty in Network. Michael Caine and Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King. Jack Nicholson was the straightest (and best) he’s ever been in The Passenger and Carnal Knowledge. Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver. And I’ve never seen a performance quite like the one Susan Tyrrell in Huston’s Fat city. People should study what she does in that movie. Most Overrated Films: The Godfather (“the best film ever” or a slightly above average mob movie hijacked/ruined by Brando, the most overrated actor of all time???), The Deer Hunter, Rocky, Coco’s Nest, The Sting and, as non best picture winners go American Graffiti, Nashville, Mean Streets and 1900. Random Thoughts: You can have your Coppolas and Scorseses because Ridley Scott made the best two best films of this era and I don’t care what culture-hogging baby boomers say to the contrary. Woody Allen pretty much made the rest. This was an odd and ugly decade in terms of aesthetics. Even some of the “best” films like Holy Grail and Jaws look foggy and dull. A part of me wishes that 70s and 80s films were made in glorious black and white because at least they would hold up better. Though no color filter could make the hair and glasses of the time look better. This of course is a personal opinion that not many share (because, again, baby boomers have convinced everyone that their generation is the best ever, for all time, the end) and to defuse being called an idiot I’m not saying the “classics” of this era aren’t classics on par with the greats of any other decade… only that there does seem to be more overrated titles that people won’t shut up about. What’s funny is that I didn’t even realize that until looking at all the notable works to come out in this much (too) celebrated period of cinema. On a bit of a controversial note (as if saying the 70s is overrated isn’t) I’m choosing The Duellists as the top film over Scott’s own seminal late 70′s masterwork Alien. It is one of the most rare and rewarding and unseen gems that the cinema has to offer and more similar to Kubrick’s equally brilliant Barry Lyndon than people realize. See it!
The Top 100 Films of the 1980s
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen)
Brazil (Gilliam)
Die Hard (McTiernan)
Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior (Miller)
They Live (Carpenter)
Evil Dead 2 (Raimi)
Aliens (Cameron)
The Empire Strikes Back (Lucas, I mean Kirshner)
Blade Runner (Scott)
Amadeus (Forman)
Ran (Kurosawa)
Predator (McTiernan)
Raiders of the Lost Arc (Spielberg–argh, made the list again)
Adventures of Barron Munchausen (Gillian)
The Decalogue (Kieslowski)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Schrader)
My Dinner With Andre (Malle)
The Thing (Carpenter)
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)
Body Double (De Palma)
Conan the Barbarian (Millius)
Day of the Dead (Romero)
Zelig (Allen)
Down By Law (Jarmusch)
Return of the Jedi (Marquand)
The Big Blue (Besson)
Re-animator (Gordon)
Stalker (Tarkovsky)
Akira (Okomo)
Spaceballs (Brooks)
Lethal Weapon 2 (Donner)
Ferris Buller’s Day Off (Hughes)
My Beautiful Launderet (Frears)
My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki)
Fitzcarraldo and Burden of Dreams (Herzog/Blank)
Purple Rose of Cairo (Allen)
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (Burton)
Hanna and Her Sisters (Allen)
Videodrome (Cronenberg)
Beetlejuice (Burton)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
Back to the Future part II (Zemeckis)
After Hours (Scorsese)
Robocop (Verhoeven)
Blow Out (De Palma)
House of Games (Mamet)
Landscape In The Mist (Angelopulos)
Broadcast News (Brooks)
Blue Velvet (Lynch)
Dead Calm (Noyce)
Dead Ringers (Cronenberg)
Escape from New York (Carpenter)
A Fish Called Wanda (Crichton)
The Untouchables (DePalma)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Zemeckis)
Stardust Memories (Allen)
The Right Stuff (Kauffman)
Ghotbusters (Reitman)
Down and Out in Beverly Hills (Mazursky)
Angel Heart (Parker)
This is Spinal Tap (Reiner)
The Name of the Rose (Annaud)
Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (Kurosawa)
Sex, Lies and Videotape (Soderbergh)
Better off Dead (Holland)
Radio Days (Allen)
The Falls (Greenaway)
Mephisto (Szabo)
Dressed to Kill (De Palma)
A Zed & Two Naughts (Peter Greenaway)
A Passage to India (Lean)
Night of the Comet (Eberhradt)
Labyrinth (Henson)
Never Ending Story (Petersen)
Tapeheads (Fishman)
Legend (Scott)
Do the Right Thing (Lee)
Monsiur Hire (Leconte)
the first half of Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick)
Repo Man (Cox)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar)
Highlander (Mulcahy)
Das Boot (Petrsen)
Romancing the Stone (Zemeckis)
Body Heat (Kasdan)
Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter)
The Terminator (Cameron)
The Bounty (Donaldson)
The Quiet Earth (Murphy)
Bloodsport (Arnold)
Henry V (Branagh)
Meet the Feebles (Jackson)
Driving Miss Daisy (Beresford)
The Little Mermaid (Clements)
Salvador (Stone)
Princess Bride (Reiner)
Gates of Heaven (Morris)
Mona Lisa (Jordan)
The Abyss (Cameron)
2010: The Year We Make Contact (Hyams)
Young Sherlock Holmes (Livingston)
Explorers (Dante)
Alien Nation (Baker)
Hellraiser (Barker)
Top Filmmakers of the 80s Era:Woody Allen Performance of the Decade: Because it’s an action movie Bruce Willis gave the best performance in the decade in a little terrorist killing movie called Die Hard. At first that sounds out of place but, watch it again and study what Willis does here. Willis gives the kind of performance people find easy to overlook but he defined the everyman action her, adding equal parts humor, humanity and ass kicking to John McClane. The combo of Hulce/Abraham in Amadeus created one of the most vivid and tangled relationships in history (I’m a sucker for movie characters who love and hate each other to a point of obsession; see also, my placement of The Duallests). Jeremy Irons and his twin Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers. And for the second decade in a row Sigourney Weaver brought heart and soul to the hard core action movie Aliens, proving, along with Willis, that action movies can be about so much more than action. Also amazing: Kurt Russellin The Thing and Escape from New York, Michael Douglas in Wall Street and Romancing the Stone, Tim Curry in Legend (so cool, so evil), HarrisonFordin Blade Runner and Empire, Harry Dean Stanton in Repo Man. And Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead 2 because no actor went through as much hell and came out so charming. Most Overrated Films:Scarface, the worst film ever made made by one of the best directors ever born. Also, Spielberg’s beloved E.T. is a rank, annoying, shrill, gooey, sentimental, stupid sci-fi feel good movie staring a dumb looking alien with a heart of, what, light bulbs? It’s what I hate about movies in general. People my age love it, and hate me for not. Also, despite seeing this movie four times, I’m still not and might not ever be as down with Ragging Bull as other film lovers seem to be. Perhaps it will grow on me like Blue Velvet, a film I really didn’t care for until the third viewing when I approached it as more of a self aware mystery suburban noir and was able to loved it from this new perspective. Honestly, though, a lot of 80s movies are overrated. When it comes to the 80s we are all in some way blinded by nostalgia. Random Thoughts: The the most schizophrenic and aesthetically jacked up (and not always in a bad way) decade of cinema, the decade I was born in (coincidence?), was thankfully balanced by the timeless bravado of Woody Allen’s filmmaking, foreign films, sci-fi, horror, b-movies and great John Carpenter flicks. While Allen is more known for his 70s output, I found the mature, Bergman-ish Allen of the 80s to have hit his stride. I am grateful to Allen for cutting through the excessive style of the time (big hair, ugly glasses, neon) because, in America, his films actually hold up beyond the time period which is not something a lot of American 80s “classics” could say. At the same time, though, I don’t think any decade in history had more purely fun films at the top of the list–Hollywood wasn’t quite Hollywood till the 80s kicked in. I mean, in what other decade would a film like Die Hard or Predator or They Live top any sort of list? None. The 80s are an enigma, I love the era as much as I hate it.
The Top 150+ films of the 1990s
Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarentino)
Topsy-Turvy (Leigh) “Thank…yoooou…veeeeery…much.”
Magnolia (Anderson)
Fight Club (David Fincher)
JFK (Stone)
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
Deconstructing Harry (Allen)
Heat (Mann)
A Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami)
Babe (Miller/Noonan)
Out of Sight (Soderbergh)
Hamlet (Branagh)
The Game (Fincher)
Strange Days (Bigelow)
The Remains of the Day (Merchant)
Nixon (Stone)
Being John Malkovich (Jonze)
Naked Lunch (Cronenberg)
Dark City (Proyas)
Boogie Nights (Anderson)
Starship Troopers (Verhoeven)
Contact (Zemeckis)
Barton Fink (Coen bros)
The Insider (Mann)
Three Colors Trilogy (Kieslowski)
The Limey (Soderbergh)
The Ninth Gate (Polanski)
Demon Night (Dickerson)
Red Rock West (Dahl)
The Thin Red Line (Malick)
Kiki’s Delivery Service (Miyazaki)
Delicatessen (Jeunet)
The Fisher King (Gilliam)
Hearts of Darkness (Bahr)
Unforgiven (Eastwood)
Sweet and Lowdown (Allen)
Dead Again (Branagh)
The Big Lebowski (Coen brothers)
Dracula (Coppola)
Clockers (Lee)
Naked (Leigh)
Aladdin (Clements and Musker)
The Zero Effect (Kasdan)
Total Recall (Verhoeven)
The Shawshank Redemption (see, I can like sentimental–Darabont)
Ulysses Gaze (Angelopoulos)
The Stolen Children (Amelio)
Natural Born Killers (Stone)
Chungking Express (Kar-Wai)
Three Kings (Russell)
The Player (Altman)
The Talented Mr. Ripley (Minghella)
The Arrival (Twohy)
After Dark, My Sweet (Foley)
Bullets Over Broadway (Allen)
Man Bites Dog (Belvaus)
Crash (Cronenberg)
Jacob’s Ladder (Lyne)
Jerry and Tom (Rubniuk)
Quick Change (Bill Murry. Yes, Bill Murry directed it)
Smoke (Wang)
White Hunter Black Heart (Eastwood)
Rushmore (Anderson)
Groundhog Day (Ramis)
Twin Peaks Movie Pilot (Lynch)
Waterworld (Reynolds/Costner)
Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers (Park)
The Hunt for Red October (McTiernan)
As Good as it Gets (Brooks)
Memoirs of an Invisible Man (Carpenter)
The Cook, The Thief (Greenaway)
Secrets and Lies (Leigh)
Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki)
Grosse Point Blank (Armitage)
Close-Up (Kiarostami)
Looking for Richard (Pacino)
Leon: The Professional (Besson)
The Truman Show (Weir)
Get Shorty (Sonnenfeld)
Before Sunrise (Linklater)
Reversal of Fortuine (Schroder)
The City of Lost Children (Jeunet)
Kingpin (Farelly bros)
L.A. Confidential (Hanson)
Toy Story (Lassiter)
Jackie Brown (Tarantino)
Miller’s Crossing (Coen Bros)
Buffalo ’66 (Gallo)
The Assignment (Duguay)
Flirting with Disaster (Russell)
The Last Boyscout (Tony Scott)
Fresh (Yakin)
The Long Kiss Goodnight (Harlin)
Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino)
Escape from L.A. (Carpenter)
Ghost Dog (Jarmush)
Alien: Resurrection (Jeunet)
Breaking the Waves (von Trier)
Until the End of the World (Wenders)
Exotica (Egoyan)
Harley Davidson and the Marbrol Man (Wincer)
Tremors (Underwood)
Screamers (Duguay)
Hudson Hawk (Lehmann)
Goldeneye (Campbell)
In the Mouth of Madness (Carpenter)
Short Cuts (Altman)
Snake Eyes (De Palma)
Fearless (Weir)
Blade (Norrington)
The Red Violin (Girard)
Mission: Impossible (De Palma)
Jesus’ Son (Maclean)
Mystery Science Theater 3000 the Movie (Mallon)
Diggstown (Ritchie)
Tombstone (Costamos)
The Usual Suspects (Singer)
Hurlyburly (Drazan)
Night Falls on Manhattan (Lumet)
Ghost in the Shell (Oshii)
The Last Seduction (Dahl)
Waiting for Guffman (Guest)
Underground (Kusturica)
Fargo (Coen Brothers)
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (Radomski)
Se7en (Fincher)
GATTACA (Niccol)
Die Hard With a Vengeance (McTiernan)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Selick)
The Road to Wellville (Parker)
Homicide (Mamet)
Malcolm X (Lee)
Fallen Angels (Kar Wai)
Holy Smoke (Campion)
Sneakers (Robinson)
True Lies (Cameron)
The Thirteenth Floor (Rusnak)
Happy Together (Kar Wai)
Judge Dredd (shaddapp, it’s underrated)
The Matrix (Wachowski bros)
The Last Action Hero (McTiernan) “Look!… Elephant.”
The English Patient (Minghella)
The Rock (Bay, yes Michael Bay–he was bound to make at least one good movie)
Schindler’s List (Spielberg)
Farewell My Concubine (Kaige)
187 (Reynolds)
The Age of Innocence (Scorsese)
Tommy Boy (Segal)
The Ice Storm (Lee)
Austin Powers (Roach)
Face/Off (Woo)
Vampires (Carpenter)
Cronos (Del Toro)
Lord of Illusions (Barker)
Godzilla 2000 (Okawara)
Trainspotting (Boyle)
The Lion King (Allers/Minkoff)
254. Titanic (Cameron)
341. American Beauty (Mendes)
801. Goodfellas (Scorsese)
Top Filmmakers of the 90s Era: QT did not just make films in the nineties, he defined the nineties. Also Oliver Stone went deep in his modernist experimental period in the 90s, destroying Hollywood conventions and getting people talking, really talking, about films. He opened up new forms of cinematic communication through yet people held that against him. I don’t know how such a forward, free thinking filmmaker can be marginalized by audiences and the institution itself. Such a shame. Then there’s David Fincher, a filmmaker that reinventing darkness in modern cinema (Se7en, The Game, and Fight Club), something that had not been done since noir’s black and white heyday. Performance of the Decade: Topping the list is Samantha Morton as a mute in love with a non-stop talker in Woody Allen Sweet and Lowdown–whatever acting may be, Morton figured it out and did so without the need to utter a single word of dialogue. Garry Oldman in Dracula. Tom Cruse in Magnolia. Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. David Thewlis in Naked. Phillip Baker Hall in Anderson’s Hard Eight. JT Walsh, RIP for his body of character actor work in the 90s. Ron Liebman gave the most underrated performance of the decade in Night Fall on Manhattan, a performance that could teach Al Pacino a thing or two about good over reaction as opposed to, uhhhhhh, Al Pacino acting. Elias Koteas in Crash. Most Overrated Films: My ten picks for overrated/bad 90s films reads like most people’s favorites but here it goes…
1. Forrest Gump (Zemeckis)–I don’t like preachy films and I don’t like sentimental films that go for easy heart tugs–this film is both. I also never understood the overwhelming respect these films earned… 2. Life is Beautiful (That babbling idiot that nobody remembers) 3. Romeo + Juliet (Luhrman) 4.Wild at Heart (Lynch) 5. Run Lola Run (Twyker) 6. Batman Returns (Burton)–F-Tim Burton 7. Braveheart (Gibson) 8. Casino (Scorsese) 9. Jurassic Park (Spielberg) 10. Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, second half only) 11. Dances with Wolves (Costner) 12. Mrs Doubtfire (Columbus)
Random Thoughts: Full disclosure: I’m a 90s boy. The 90s is the decade of the auteur. This era gave birth to Tarentino, Fincher, Soderbergh, both Andersons (Wes and PT), Linklater (to a lesser degree), John Dalh and a few more. Could you name half as many from this last decade? Tarentino’s Pulp Fiction is an achievement beyond what most people realize. No film changed the style and rules of the medium more than Citizen Kane. Fact. But no film since Kane came close to doing so again until Pulp came along. The film changed the medium through storytelling devices, through its use of postmodern homages and, most notably, through writing. Characters never talked like that before, but always talk like that after Pulp. It’s one of the best films ever made but, on a personal note, its also my personal favorite. The other personal favorite (the only film that might actually surpass Pulp) is Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy, a good movie by most people’s standards, the best by mine. I can’t quite explain its allure, either. I’m not even a Gilbert and Sullivan fan but I am a Leigh fan and the (funny/dramatic/realistic/staged) tone he and his cast achieve is achievement of such morbidly beautiful harmony. Topsy-Turvy puts a smile on my face, it makes me happy to be alive, it makes me love movies. Through making this list I also was delighted to see how Kurosawa managed to make decade defining masterworks in the 1940s (Stray Dog), the 1950s (Rashomon), the 1960s (High and Low), 80s (Ran), and, yes, even in the 90s! His “Dreams” never get enough credit. For some reason Kurosawa seemed to sleep his way through the entire decade of the 70s but in his defense 1975′s Dersu Uzala is really high on my Netflix queue so maybe that will become an exception to this odd dry spell (was this around the time he attempted suicide? because that could explain it). The only other director that comes close (and is still going!) to bridging more than half a century of cinema is Woody Allen who’s impressive output began in 60s, eased into the 70s, reached its peek in the 80s, made a come-back in the 90s and of course continued all that good stuff into 2000s as well. Good god, man, how is that possible?! Even if you’re not a fan you have to respect that.
2000s–??? So far I have the best films of the decade nailed down, just not the order. Now I can work on that. Until that happens in a few weeks, who knows, maybe something that I haven’t seen yet will make the list.
Directors With the Most Appearances On the List
I put 12Woody Allen films on the list! Best director ever or am I just a weird fanboy?
Akira Kurosawa scored no less than 9 films.
John Carpenter also with 9… holy crap, that’s more than…
Alfred Hitchcock made no less than 8 films but that number could have easily been more.
Stanley Kubrick made the list 8 times. Given how non prolific this director is that’s impressive.
Orson Wells7 of his films made the list. Amazing considering how few films he made. Or should I say: was allowed to make.
Brian DePalma made the list 7 times. Even his “bad” films like Snake Eyes are great! Like Carpenter, De Palma is one of the unsung masters of the medium.
Howard Hawks has 5 films on this list. Gotta respect Haws (despite my feelings toward Rio Bravo).
FW Murnau made the list 4 times. 4 times in a single decade! That sets the single decade record.
John Huston, the most underrated well known studio director of all time has 5 on the list and that’s not enough.
Ridley Scott with 4 on the list.
David Cronenberg, one of the all time greats with that magic number 4.
Hayo Miyazaki with 4 on the list.
Peter Weir, out of nowhere, with 4.
Robert Zemeckis, a director I didn’t even know I liked (and am still not quite sure), managed to get 4 on the list. He can now be forgiven for making Forrest Gump.
Tarkovsky with 3. but only because I haven’t seen The Mirror yet and can’t find Nostalghia, like, anywhere.
Quentin Tarantino has 3 films but that was just from the 90s. One happened to be the best of the decade. If I factor in his shockingly consistent 00s run that number would be bumped up to 7. By 2020 he may be tied with Woody Allen.
Lost Seasons Ranked Season 4–Perfect for a lot of reasons. The first is that season 4 is when Lost finally became a true sci-fi show and it’s flashbacks, er, forwards (trying to get back to the Island!) became something other than filler content. The drama of getting back actually enhanced the Island reality, which is something season 1-3′s flashbacks never quite did. This is the season where the mythology of the show finally catches up with the stories it tells. Everything comes together. Season 1–I can’t think of any great show that started this great. Usually it takes a few seasons for a show to get really good. Lost was great right out of the can. Such a good start in fact that the show had nowhere to go but down for a few seasons after. Season 5–Mindbending and unlike every other network show on TV that year or most any year, smart and challenging. Season 6–A bit of a come down from the great time travel arc but season 6 had a lot of good writing and a strong backbone thanks to the episode where we finally find out what Jacob was protecting. That the iffy sideways stuff actually amounted to something is a relief. Season 3–The show still couldn’t find its footing in most of the season 3 episodes but you can clearly see itself working its way to something resembling a good show. A transitional season if anything. It tried and even gave us a lot of cool moments (the Desmond episode, Charley at his most doomed and interesting and the classic “we have to go back” moment). Season 2–A few good episodes punctuate way too much time in the Hatch and way too much time on pointless back stories of characters we know already. Not a total waste, at least we got Eko this season only to have him killed off way too soon.
Best Lost Episodes:
Walkabout (Locke)–This is “Lost” at its best. Most of the great season one episodes were written by David Furry (Buffy). He never showed up for a season two, instead writing for 24′s best season (five).
Ab Aeterno (Jacob/Man in Black/Richard)–It shouldn’t have worked. It did. I would argue that this episode is the most important in the entire series. It sets everything up, past and present. Just about perfect. So much heart and soul here too. Works better as a series finale than the actual finale!
Almost every episode in Season 4, especially The Shape of things to Come (Ben), one of the best Ben episodes of all time (which is saying something).Who wrote it, you ask? None other than Brian K Vaughn (Y: The Last Man) and Drew Goddard (Buffy) which is like total nerdgasm time.
Pilotparts 1 and 2–Abrams had pretty much nothing to do with this show except for kicking it off. He still gets way to much credit for this show but in a way it might not even exist had the pilot not been this good and the pilot (of the Oceaninic flight) not been that bad. It was as good as any movie released that year.
The Other 48 Days–This tail section survivors episode contained a whole seasons worth of material play out in one packed episode. Ironically, that “season” is better than the season it’s actually in! Also great because the show got to experiment with its structure and formula in a big way. Not only did it feature a new cast but it was a non flashback episode or, more accurately, a non flash on Earth episode.
The three big Desmond-centric episodes went on to define what people really love about the show. A trippy sci-fi show that also has the capacity to be a touching love story. The Constant (considered by many to be the best ever Lost episode), Flashes Before Your Eyes and Happily Ever After.
Through the Looking Glass (Jack)–Great because it pretty much ended the two season “Lost sucks” streak.
The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham (Locke)–Poor, poor Locke/great, great, episode.
The Man Behind the Curtain (Ben)–Ben kicks all kinds of ass in this episode. His dad gets it, the Dharma twits get it and even lost gets a bullet. Wow, go Ben! It’s really the kind of episode where a character makes a show worth watching, which, given its placement in season 3 was a godsend. It’s also the first Jacob episode.
Expose (ugh)–Nickey and Paulo’s famous episode. One of the most disliked episodes of lost ever. I loved it for it’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-esq behind the scenes antics and cleverness. Seeing so many of the classic events on the island through new eyes proved to be a fresh and unique way to tell a story in Lost. People gave and still give the characters crap but that’s the entire point of this episode! It’s an episode that seemed to have been made just for the haters… that ended up being hated. I loved it though and, yes, I hated N&P as much as anyone.
Worst Lost Episodes:
Across the Sea. If Walkabout captures everything about Lost that is good and pure and mysterious then the late season 6 episode AtS turned out to be the antithesis, the anti-episode, the Man in Black to Walkabout’s Jacob, the worst Lost episode ever. Since the first Jacob/MiB back story episode easily ranks amongbest of Lost (it’s my number 2), it’s quite surprising that the second turned out so overwhelmingly bad. In what could have been a great experimental episode unlike anything we’ve ever seen before turned into an entire episode about Jacob and his brother’s messed up mommy issues and trips the glowing cave of magic. Horrible, unnecessary, redundant. And stupid, let’s not forget stupid. It was also a waste of time, valuable time, valuable time that could have been spent on just about anything else, and given all the lingering questions we were left with, that time could have done the legacy of Lost a lot of good. Worse than all that though is the fact that the episode demystified Jacob and the Island itself! A 40-minute flashback episode of Hurley stuck in a bank with Vincent the dog a la Family Guy wouldn’t have been better (but not by much).
How about Born to Run? How about Left Behind? How about Eggtown? What do they have in common? Kate. That goddamn Kate ruined almost everything she touched. The answer to What Kate Did (a bad season 1 ep) and What Kate Does (a worse season 6 ep) is and will always be I DON’T CARE.
That Jack tattoo episode called Stranger in a Strange Land–most Jack episodes were lame but none were this lame.
Season 2
Jin and Sun episodes (…and Found, House of the Rising Sun etc)–Jin was an interesting character that kept getting sucked into Sun’s dull family drama. Her dad’s rich and EVIL. They don’t love each other. They love each other. They have kids. The run from dad. They get separated. They go back to the island. They die. The End. It all seems so pointless.
Ten Best Lost Characters
1. John Locke 1. Ben Linus (Ben and Locke, Locke and Ben, Lost would not be Lost without either) 3. Daniel Faraday (such an underrated character) 4. Sommabitch Sawyer 5. Miles 6. Hurley 7. Frank Lapidus (a personal favorite. another great season 4 character!) 8. Desmond 9. Mr. Eko (so cool… so dead) 10. Smoke Monster/UnLocke/MiB 11. Richard Alpert 12. Juliet (she should have been the Kate of the show) 13. Jacob (would have been a lot higher if “Across the Sea” hadn’t made me hate him)
Worst Lost Characters
1. Kate 2. Kate 3. Kate 4. Claire 5. “WALT!” (why did the Others want him again?) 6. Jacob’s Mom 7. Sun 8. Shannon 9. Aaron (not the character or actor obviously but the fact that the character, like Walt, had so little meaning in the end) 10. Bernard’s wife, I never even bothered to learn her name. 11. Kate
Until I wrote out this list I had not realized how few good female characters this show actually had. Not one in my top ten favorite and six in my ten least favorite. Odd. The only thing more odd is Jack. While he’s technically the main character (it begins and ends with him after all) I don’t think the lead of a show has ever been this unessential. He doesn’t hurt the show, he just inhabits it like a know-it-all squatter. We tolerated him but never really liked him. Followed his journey but never really lost ourselves in it in the same way we did for Locke and Ben. Poor Matthiew Fox, I don’t think it was his fault either. The show just didn’t know how to write for him. While I found myself actually liking Jack for the first time in the latter half of the last season it was definitley too late for him. The ship had sailed so to speak.
The final “Lost” episode ever, ever, ever (everrrrrhhhh-nooooooo, it can’t end, what am I going to do with myself?!) didn’t go off with a season 5 sized nuclear bang but a warm and gentle and somewhat confusing glow. Contrary to what I had read from “Lost” Gods Cruse and Lindoff, warnings of a “Sopranos” style reaction where 50% of fans would “hate” the final episode, the last thing I expected ”The End” to do is played it safe. Though I’m grateful the “Lost” team handeled their “End” with a lot of hurried care and caution, the first thing it does do is play it safe by relying on cosmic magic to answer the unanswerable (scheesh, I’ll never get religious people). The episode is not hateable but it’s also not extraordinary. It ends with dignity but not clarity as unanswered plot details linger but do so in a way that invites thought and discussion rather than frustration. Anyone still watching “Lost” at this point and still expecting “answers” is to be pitied because this show will provide no more answers than God himself speaking into our ears and I think that’s the whole point. We must allow for a certain amount of mystery because a world with out that is not worth living in. The shows knows this but viewers didn’t and as such both became slaves to the tyranny of logic and narrative symmetry. Let go people, it’s about the process. It’s about the questions. It’s not and will never be about the whys because, as Jacob’s lover/mother put it, “Every question I answer will simply lead to another question.” That’s a perfect mantra for the show.
Season six of “Lost” tried very hard to canonized itself into a new science fiction based religion (the “Star Wars” of television). Yet it pushes its dogma on us even though the religious mechanics (magical water, glowing caves of wonder, the twinkly promise of an afterlife etc.) comes off as blunt more than something truly profound. It’s still a worthwhile effort because divine intervention might be the only explanation left for a show as convoluted as this. Why did such and such happen? Uh, God and magic. That being said this uber “spiritual” (in the words of the writers) season of “Lost” is mostly agreeable but numbing and not particularly challenging or philosophically earth shattering. The final episode follows those traits. So, yes, ”The End” is passable; “good” by virtue of the fact that it was not a horrible F-you to it’s fans. If anything it’s very loving and accepting and even emotionally involving (tell me you didn’t feel something when Vincent joint Jack at the very end) and I can’t hate something so noble even if it’s also grandiose. That, plus, Jeff Fathey, the pilot, didn’t die! Yeah, the episode provides a lot of fan service with coo (if not always meaningful) cameos and fresh new concepts such as the awesome actuality of the sideways verse. This may not be the earned ending I or anyone had hoped for but it’s a nice one and I’ll settle for that.
The critical side of me however was left disappointed at how poorly the episode was put together but that’s to be expected as series finales are usually rushed and aesthetically all over the place. Still, the “Lost” team had three years to plan this “End” and they settled on a non-denominational Fellini-style church shindig? Really?! The new sets were boring and just plain goofy (more Disney theme park ride than an ecstatic religious experience), the big apocalyptic storm was murky, dark and uneventful while the “sinking” island involved nothing more than camera shaking and characters going all season 5 time shift wobbly on us. Also, the editing didn’t flow well and the writing may have done it’s job at getting a lot of information across to us but even at two plus hours it felt rushed and didn’t set the bar higher as the great episodes of “Lost” have done in the past. Sure I feel like the show needed more time to really sort its mythology out but, again, it had to end somewhere. As I sit here pondering somewhat trivial, episode specific question such as Where is the plane going and how exactly does that destinion relate to the sideways existence? What’s with the corny collective mental church creation and why are certain island characters there while others are not? Why did Ben not join the others (not Others mind you but others) in the church? Does that mean he won’t die, or that he’s suck in limbo for his sins or could that even imply that he’s the new and necessary dark half to Hurley or another Alpert type of helper? Is Smokey really dead? If so why does the island need to be protected? And why would any God be dumb enough to keep the totality of the universe together with a literal cork in the ground etc. There is of course less-trivial/more-nagging series-wide questions about Aaron’s specialness, Dharm true role on the island (just for research?) and why can’t women give birth on the island? I have to say don’t mind the prospect of spending eternity with these lingering issues because they are interesting rather than maddening “Twin Peeks” or “Battlestar Galactica” sized questions that were made specifically to torment and haunt its fans to their graves.
Less than a day later I honestly have no idea what the reception of this ending will be but after Now I’ve gotten this stream of consciousness vomit off my chest I might actually enjoy finally checking out where fans go with the show now that it’s finally, finally, FINALLY over. No more speculation (which I’ve never, EVER been into). Like it or not the end we get gives us a lot to chew on but, come on admit it, the geek in me (in us) is still hoping for a “Lost” spin-off years down the line starring Hurley and Ben. As fans go I’m pretty sure there will be a few types now that the (black) smoke has cleared. Flashback people, flash forward people and flash sideways people. Most will choose the flashbacks because it defines the essence of the characters but I found that to be mostly filler and extraneous information that could/should be answered ON THE ISLAND and, as such, will always be more fond of the flash forwards because it’s the stuff of pure sci-fi ambition and the first time the show excelled at turning its wild metaphysics into a pure and even thoughtful form of entertainment. Few if any will end up being sideways people but this alternate reality season was not a total loss in my opinion. It was cool if tricky how this season’s sideways reality turned into what people thought the island itself was from the beginning: a purgatorial place where lost souls gather before they move on to the (now literal) light. When the bomb went off in season 5, sideways is where everyone ended up to finish things up in their own way. Or is it? Either way the show got to keep the “they’re all dead” aspect of that long favored end point theory but does so in such a way that it gets to exist as one aspect rather than the whole; the other being the island itself as the hub of existence sealed by a literal cork being guarded by a fat man who talks to dead people. Jesus, that sounds silly and makes no sense. And that’s why I love ”Lost.” Episode Grade: B Season Six Grade: B+ Series Grade: A(There was Twin Peeks, there was X-Files, there was Buffy and now there is was Lost, a show that has finally earned the right to join that club)
What’s Good: Great sense of style, character and pacing. And with dialogue this good who needs a story? I was surprised at how much I liked this movie. Not better than the first, not even close, but a solid effort. What’s Not: Matt Fraction didn’t write this movie. Stupid third act. Race track sequence very lame (lets just say it’s no Afghan cave). Also… Pepper Potts nagging. I just hope a third ”Iron Man” does not come out before the “Avengers” movie because I don’t want to see it rushed.
From the moment I saw the trailer I’ll admit that my heart sank. Robert Downey Jr. with his shoe polish facial hair, eye liner and frizzy due, looked more like an 80s porn star than a modern superhero. The trailer also showed him going to more parties than fights. What’s with that? Then there’s the whole matter of Col. Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle) who, while not quite looking like a porn star (though he did in “Boogie Nights”), also didn’t look like Terrance Howard. Also featured in the trailer was Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) looked as bland as ever and it was hard to forget Whiplash (Mickey Rourke) looking like chewed up and spat out supervillain crap–a joke villain out of “Kick Ass” more than the most high profile comic book movie in two years. 2s are hard to get right because of how much we expect. That being the case I didn’t expect much and, as I often foolishly do, declared that ”Iron Man 2″ would suck (last time I did that: “Avatar”), something that friends and Metacritic only confirmed. Well the only thing all that proved was (a) that the trailer was not any good and (b) that I was dead wrong.
The first “Iron Man” was better than everyone thought it would be while the second lands somewhere in the region of what most people thought the first would be. I disagree. This franchise is as relevant and exciting as it ever was because it favors its interesting characters as much as its high quality action. Playboy Industrialist Tony Stark is of course a great character being played by an even better actor. Unlike last year’s Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine), Downey Jr. finds the right, dare I say “perfect,” balance of cocky and cool to imbue his larger than life character. We root for him even though he doesn’t need our help because he’s rooting for himself louder than we ever could. Some of that’s posturing of course as Tony’s underlying flaws are actually insecurities. ’Iron Man 2″ accomplishes the very difficult task of transitioning this character from the heroic origins of his first venture to a genuinely fleshed out figure that has evolved quite a bit. Right off the bat the film does not turn into the trite alcohol after-school-Iron-Man-special that many expected–I’m glad it didn’t as I prefer Stark to be a happy, William Powell in ”Thin Man’ type of drunk rather than a Nick Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas’ one. Rather, the film does some a lot more challenging by making Tony a ticking time bomb. That’s interesting to me because normal Tony is a ticking time bomb while a Tony that knows he’s dying is a total party! I mean that literally, he throws a party and shoots his laser at guests. In this film, even more than the first, we understand why Tony doesn’t so much like being a hero but needs to be one because he’s protecting (and literally shielding) himself as much as he is protecting us. Unlike a lot of tedious movie superheros like Spider-Man (my favorite whipping boy, by the way), the reason for his reckless actions has as much to do with thrill seeking as it does duty and personal fulfillment. The added psychological element (daddy issues) adds another fascinating layer upon the Stark mythos, especially when that dad is played by John Slattery in full whiskey drinking, Camel puffing ”Mad Men” mode.
The problem, if there must be a problem, is simple; the script by Justin Theroux of all people. Theroux, or JT as I call him in my personal life, could be called awesome. He not only starred in “Mulhollad Dr.” and “Inland Empire” (earning so much indie cred that I’ll let his “Charley’s Angels 2′ appearance slide). He also co-wrote ”Tropic Thunder,” another great Downey Jr. movie. His script, while competent and full of great dialogue (“I have successfully privatized world peace” Tony tell the Government before flashing a peace sign), doesn’t stir the soul the way the first “Iron Man” did. The nerd in me knows that such a problem would have been solved by hiring Matt Fraction who, after his work on the brilliant “Invincible Iron Man” comic series, has a better handle on the Iron Man universe than anyone alive. But studios hardly ever hire comic book writers so on those grounds the story we’re stuck with is still good and I can say that because the film passes the test of being strong even when Iron Man is not on screen! For instance, people may not be talking about Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash as they would many great superhero villains but for my money he really overcomes how stupid he looks. And speaking of looks, if you look at it a certain way this character is an Eastern mirror of Tony Stark. He’s got father issues (his dad worked with Stark Sr.), he’s as brilliant as he is eccentric, he drinks too much and he commands technology to accommodate some sort of insane personal drive for attention and validation. I found myself understanding his motivations and if I must tell the truth was actually won over by Rourke’s heavy Russian accent which is funny, but even more importantly, not distracting when it’s not funny. After teaming up with a sleazy war-mongering Government politician (the best actor of last year: Sam Rockwell) the Russian has one demand: ”VEEERS MIE BEIRD!.” “You’re what?” “My BIERRRD! IE VANT MEI BEIRD!” ”Oh, okay here’s your bird.” “DAT’S NUT MEI BEIRD!!!” He’s saying he wants his bird by the way, and it’s one of many great touches. Also included to the roster of actors playing characters who should have sucked is Samuel L Jackson in the thankfully beefed up role of Nick Fury. Fury in particular works nicely within the Iron Man universe as a ball busting mentor or sorts that manages to out-cool Tony. “I got my eye on you,” the one eyed Fury says before shooting a patented Sam Jackson glare in Tony direction. There’s only one actor in existence that could do that and lets just say Faverau hired that one actor.
Unlike the new (and, okay, better) “Batman” franchise I could see how and why so many got the feeling that this film comes up short. It’s not the “Dark Knight” of ”Iron Man” movies and it’s foolish to expect so much of it–or anything for that matter. Everyone was so eager to make an “Iron Man” movie and, in turn, everyone else was so eager to see an “Iron Man” movie that the specifics and quality of that “Iron Man” follow-up that everyone wanted, and wanted as soon as possible, shouldn’t be taken for granted. This movie could have easily just filled in the blanks but instead supplies fans with necessary storytelling. The plot explores the aforementioned whip toting, Vodka drinking, toothpick sucking, bird lovin Russian genus thug and throws in the plot-line of Tony being made “sick” by the same thing keeping him alive and manages the time to chases those two whoppers with a more standard Government going after one of its superhero storyline. I am still sick of the superhero on the run plot device but “Iron Man 2″ at least gets creative with that trope. After destroying his home in a drunken fight with Rhodes, Tony is forced to up his game, save is name and his life and none of that would have happened if the Government wasn’t a total dick to him. When the ask to give his technology in the interest of public safety Tony fires back with a great line that goes to the heart of what the character’s about: “I am Iron Man. The suit and I are one” he tells a Senator played by a smirking Garry Shandling of all people. That he allows Rhodes and the Government to steal one his suits and create “a war machine” is ideologically problematic and inconsistent but, then again, so is Tony Stark.
Actor/director Jon Favreau may never be considered a “great” director but he gets the job done and knows exactly what this franchise needs at this point in its cycle. Being as funny as he is (“Made,” a film he starred in, wrote and directed is even better than “Swingers”) he never takes things too serious, which could have really hurt this movie. In terms of style and subject matter Favreau doesn’t overdo it but even if he did he gets credit for not being Brett Ratner. The scenes of flight and combat are not as exhilarating as in the first but they are snappier and streamlined in many places. We even get a better sense of the people underneath the machines when the film cuts to Jarvis’ POV.
I had a chance to re-watch the first “Iron Man” again and I’m glad I did. It occurred to me how special that movie is. There’s one big action set piece in the first act and a bigger one in the last. The middle chunk is easy to dismiss but it’s actually the best part. It’s about Tony figuring out who Tony Stark is as a man, how he thinks and what he wants to do with his gifts. That he’s not a complete ass kissing do-gooder is why he’s so interesting. When he ended that film with the self-actualizing statement “I am Iron Man” it felt like one big mission accomplished on everyone’s part. That rare origin story that actually earns it’s badge or shiny suit as it were because it took the time to develop all the necessary aspects without giving into the demands of the typically and retardedly fast paced summer movie. More than about action the film is about an imperfect man that strives for perfection through science, engineering and big brass balls. Literally half of the first “Iron Man” is just one big gear head construction project that we all got to sit in on.
“IR2″ wisely follows the first film’s action/looooong set-up/action formula without loosing track of the heart of its character. I give this sequel credit for also not artificially cramming in a pointless action scene in the middle potion of the film. The sequel also gets to revisit the usual superhero who-am-I? questions without feeling redundant as “Spider-Man 2″ was when it basically just remade the first film by making Parker loose his powers only to be forced to re-learn them. Now, successfully following the original does not come without a few hiccups. Namely, the first film’s third act was not its strongest even though The Tony vs. The Dude (protegee vs mentor) showdown holds up surprisingly well if you watch it today. The third act of “Iron Man 2″ does not come out of nowhere (at least we see Whiplash and Hammer cooking up their evil plays) but it might as well have because it’s not inspired at all. Once again Iron Man must fight a larger and stronger version of Iron Man™ with the only difference here being that he has Rhodes, an ally in an Iron Man suit joining him to face-off against Whiplash in, uh, another, bigger Iron Man suit… with LIGHT SABER WHIPS! And not only does Iron Man and Iron Man fight Iron-er Man, but they also face an army of Iron ManRobots modeled after the Army, Navy, Marines and whatever. Watch out for those Navy robots on dry land, Tony! These scenes are literally one big cluster-F if you ask me but not so horrible when you really stop to consider the lack of alternatives available. Should Tony’s Iron Man fight a human? No, too easy. Should he throw down against a monster? Nah, that wouldn’t fit with this series’ semi-realistic style; this isn’t “Hellboy” after all. Should he fight his inner demons? Doesn’t he do that already? So what’s left other than hot and steamy mech on mech action? I don’t know but then again I’m no writer. Lucky for us Justin Theroux is. Well, kinda. Grade: B+
I’ve run out of good things to say about 2009 so after catching up on the bad things I am, after all these many months, finally ready to close the door on last year.
1.Lovely Bones (Peter Jakson)
A film so misguided and ill-conceived that it essentially undid all the greatness Peter Jackson was able to accomplish with his masterful, decade defining “Lord of the Rings” series. I didn’t think it possible but this movie surpassed Jackson’s God awful ”King Kong” fuckery. With “Bones,” Jackson takes an adaption about a dead girl “solving” her own murder. This could have been cool if only the filmmaker didn’t Spielbergize it to a point of nauseating candy coated proportions. The shallow as a grave and bare “Bones” film fails as a gritty mystery because characters sit around and mope rather than engage in any sort of investigation and the movie fails just as hard as a “What Dreams May Come” type of fantasy because characters sit around in a magical candy land and just sort of stair off into space. In the latter scenes, the film does little more than showcase its heavenly effects. The film not only gets the admittedly tricky tone surrounding dual realities connected by love (rolles eyes) all wrong but lays the schmaltz on so thick that it forgets (or fails) to give the viewer a proper sense of logic, purpose, reason, causality or motivation. Obviously this kind of story that requires the viewer to take a leap of faith and while I went into it with a total sense of openness, I found it impossible to do so because this forced, heavy handed and dramatically inept film doesn’t meet us half way or provide any reason for why we should take that leap. This may be the most passive mystery ever made! Like its main character, “Bones” is as dead as disco and yet also like her it never shuts the fuck up or gets real for even a second. ”We’re in heaven…. yaaaaaay” a fellow lost soul tells our wonderstruck heroine. If this is heaven then I’d rather be in hell. (full review)
2. Away We Go (Sam Mendes) “I can’t believe you told your mother about my tilted uterus.” “I didn’t know your tilted uterus was a secret.” ”Yes, my tilted uterus is a secret.” Wonderful. Okay then… two married, or dating (I don’t even remember) and self-described “fuck-ups”/non-self-described douche bags decide to travel around the country to “find themselves.” The two attention sponges played by a pregnant Maya Ruldoph and, um, a bearded John Krasinski get so much out of life and suck so much more out of it. And us! Their journey is a draining affair full of trite sentiments, forced indie music cuts, tacky humor and phony drama. Every line and plot action is performed in a precious, whispery aren’t we funny/cute/profound way that instantly activated my gag reflexes. The ponderous dramedy (directed by the overrated Sam Mendes with a screenplay by David Eggers of all people!) enables the 30-something angstaholics to a point of complicity. It’s not presenting their story but selling it and rubbing it in our faces. While this isn’t technically the “worst” movie of the year it is certainly the most annoying and definitely the most insincere hipster message movie since “Rachael Getting Married” and “Garden State” before it. A movie made for all those preening monkeys who grew up being told how important they are. (full review)
3. The Blind Side (John Lee Hancock) “I never had one before,” “What, a room of your own?” “No……… a bed.” “The Blind Side” is not only biggest turd of the year but after a shameful best picture nomination/best actress win it’s the most unjustly celebrated turd of the year. This Republican wanking, pseudo inspirational sports drama has me convinced that people in general are way too easily inspired. Its ”based on a true story” (but not really) views on small towns, sports and race relations is archaic and down right creepy. After watching ”The Blind Side,” for instance, I learned that all white people are rich, that all black people need help from said all white people and that all black people are either on drugs or sell drugs. The film is that blank and white (no pun intended) about the world it exists in and the people that inhabit that world. The (indirect? unintended?) racial condescension gets even creepier with its curious depiction of white saints treating its resident sad, black and perpetually moping lug of character (Quinton Aaron in a horrible performance of startling one dimensionality) as if he has no agency or power to help himself. Rather, he must be directly controlled, shaped, pitied, educated and generally ”fixed.” The firecracker Football Mom played by the untalented-as-ever Sandra Bullock determines that “that poor Michael is like a fly in milk at that place.” This giant sized teen, compared to an animal (or insect as it were) is literally turned into a pet project by her. And by the film as well which is as lazy as they get. The shrill and irritating Bullock (and her shrill and irritating family) seems to be thinking, “hey, this boy’s black and big so lets put a football in his hands” as if that’s all a person like this can offer the world. Oh, but don’t worry, the film also allows it’s black character to be a bit racist. Apparently white folk, with their books and food and, oh wow look at that, beds, are “weird.” I can almost see his point. As bad as things get, black and white Amreica come together at the end thanks to football, the prospect of money and of course Jesus. “You’re changing that boy’s life,” Bullock is told by an ego stroking cronies. ”No……………………………… HE’S Changing ours” she responds in a line that illustrates the trite nature of the screenplay. Bravo assholes, like the movie “Crash” (another racist classic starring America’s Most loved Nazi lover) the one thing this sub-TV movie manages to do when it comes to racial relations is make me dislike all races involved.
4. G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra (Steven Sommers) Worst “Hollywood” movie of the year. In fact, as soulless, disjointed and jagged as almost anything Michael Bay has ever done. Ironically, 2009 was the year Bay actually made a halfway good movie–literally, though, only about half of “Transformers 2″ could qualify as being watchable but that’s a full 50% more than “G.I. Joe.” Everything about this film is awkward and stiff and, that being said, you won’t be surprised to learn that director Steven Sommers also made “Van Helsing.” Well, he managed to top himself! Star of tomorrow (and that’s really true than kill me now) and expert non-actor/male stripper Channing Tatum sucked harder here than his after hours activities at his previous job. And if it’s possible Marlon Waynes’ “that’s whack!” token black side-kicked sucked even harder. Did anyone survive unscathed? Yeah actually, Joseph Gordon Levit plays such an over-the-top, Darth Vader-ish heavy that he gave what’s either the worst performance of the year or some just sort of a brilliantly self aware “bad” performance on par with Marlon Brando in “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” Bill Murray in ”Charlie’s Angels” and Robert De Niro in “Rocky and Bullwinkle.
5. Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama) Yes, I like “Juno.” No, I don’t like Diablo Cody. Her name at this point in her “career” is a punchline and the joke was this shitty shitty film she wrote. This teen horror movie tries sooooo hard and goes sooooo nowhere that it makes “New Moon” look like a Bergman movie.
6. Up in the Air (Jason Reitman) Speaking of “Juno,” did I mention how much I dislike Jason Reitman? For putting George Clooney in a rare bad movie he can never be forgiven. I’m serious: Steve Gagen and I are still not on speaking terms after “Syriana.” The film tries to be socially relevant and comes off socially inept. Any film with this amount of insincere sincerity is almost guaranteed to land a spot on my top ten. To make matters worse this film also tries to be funny and comes off cloying. It tries to be dramatic and comes off… the rails. I’m shocked that it managed to be both popular and respected. (full review)
7. Paper Heart (Nicholas Jasenovec) This nugget of indulgent indie hipster bullshit was saved but the bigger and stinkier piece of indie hipster bullshit that was “Away we Go.”
8. Taking Woodstock(Ang Lee) Ang Lee is such a hard director to figure out. He’s capable of mighty feats of technical skill like “Crouching Tiger…”, gritty American dramas like “The Ice Storm” and rich period melodramas like “Brokeback Mountain,” and ”Ride with the Devil.” He’s also really good at fucking good things up. The stylized “Hulk” and noir “Lust, Caution” are both virtually unwatchable. “Taking Woodstock” belongs in that second category of Ang Lee movies. It’s not just bad but his opus of fuck-ups. It’s hard to watch but at the same time hard to stop watching because it’s so not cool.
9. Brothers(Jim Sheridan) “The Hurt Locker.” “The Messenger.” For a genre that has no good movies to its name, Iraq War 2 movies gave us two good ones in 2009! The rarest of streaks was cut short by Hacky McHacksalot’s (aka Jim Sheridan) ”Brothers.” This is not so much a bad movie as it is a really boring and biteless one. It plays it safe and plays it contrived. At the heart of the film’s problems is a miscast Toby Maguire who stars as a hardened (really?) soldier taken hostage while his wife paints her new kitchen with his boner hiding brother. THEN HE COMES HOME! The terrorists should have done us all a favor and not given him back.
10. Fireproof(Alex Kendrick) HahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHahahahahahahahahahahahaha …(gasp)…ha. Married characters haven’t been this annoying since “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” But at least that film had action and guns and shit. This one has fire fighters and Jesus.
11. Up(Pete Doctor) Clear your mind and pretend you know nothing of Pixar or “Up” and just listen for a second. So there’s an old guy and his wife dies that bums him all out so he, well, he gets a bunch of balloons and, um, attaches them to his house and the house floats up and up and up in the air and, whoops, there’s a chubby Asian Boy Scout in the house too and so… uh, the house floats to an exotic land and almost lands but doesn’t quite land and the two jump off and find a rare bird that like chocolate and the three go on to meet an other old guy who has a blimp and hunts said exotic chocolate eating birds and, oh, he also has an army of talking dogs. THAT GOT AN OSCAR NOMINATION. THAT GOT TONS OF CRITICAL RESPECT. THAT MADE A LOT OF MONEY. PEOPLE LOVE THAT MOVIE.
12. Miss March (someone directed this?) Gave it a shot because it made AV Club’s number #1 worst movie of the year. Now I wish I was shot.
13. Julie & Julia(Norah Ephron) Only the Julie part makes the list. Amy Adams as an aspiring chef/nagger is hard to stomach. Here I was all ready to watch a movie about a historic figure and instead got one about a self obsessed blogger that leaches off a historic figure and screams at her husband for not being supportive enough. The effect this had was strange because the better Meryl Streep is in this movie (and she’s good), the more I ended up disliked it because it’s not really her movie at all. New rule: the only time Amy Adams should be allowed to be in a movie with Meryl Streep she better be playing a nun.
14. I Can Do Bad All By Myself(Tyler Perry) So can Tyler Perry. I’m so sick of Perry’s that I’m not going to even bother watching his movies at this point, I’ll just put them on this list with the total confidence that they belong on it. Why are people so afraid to call Perry out on his hackiness?
15. The Burning Plain (Guillermo Arrigaga) From the writer of the films “21 Grams” and “Babel” comes a film just as bad as “21 Grams” and “Babel.” Here’s the lesson and it’s a lesson worth learning. When a bad film is pointlessly rearranged, it becomes an even worse film.
16. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Gavin Hood) Almost had me missing the glory days of Brett Ratner. (full review)
17. Hanna Montana: The Movie(Peter Chelsom) I’m not admitting to watching this movie. I’m only admitting that I didn’t like it. Draw your own connections if you must.
18. Mutant Chronicles(Simon Hunter) Mutants, mutants never change. You would think a movie with Ron Pearlman, Thomas Jane and a shit load of mutants AND the apocalypse AND a giant hole in the earth where the mutants came from would be really cool. This movie is not really cool. It’s really stupid.
19. Year One (Harold Ramis) No… more…
20. Land of the Lost (Brad Silbering) …bad comedies!
Not Quite On The List but Not Quite Off The List:New Moon (dir. Chris Weitz) Proof of how hard it is to mess up a story about vampires. This film is not bad but it’s such a lazy, you’re-going-to-pay-to-see-regardless-of-quality sequel that one has to admire the almost total lack of effort that went into the making of it. And this is coming from the director of the beautifully crafted (and underrated) “Golden Compass.” I can’t blame Chris Weitz though because he was clearly rushed by a studio that doesn’t give a blood sucking shit about quality. Summit is milking this bloated cow till it runs dry and they are wise to do so because they know that a few years from now it’s not going to hold up and that millions of girls of all ages are going to wake up out of this daze they’ve been in these last few years, hate themselves, then probably move on to a worse fad. “New Moon” is lightweight and very dumb but harmlessly so. The amazing thing about this series, book and movie, is how it attracts haters as much as it does fans. I love watching non-fans or as I like to call them “normal people” get all worked up about the creepy social message this series upholds. Girls apparently can’t function without an abusive man in their life. The message is rancid and the across-the-board performances (except the dad, who is always cool somehow) do not help things either. Bella, played by a pouty Kristen Stewart, is such an infuriating twit that I found myself dreaming of Buffy coming to town and kicking the brooding shit out of her (then, of course… lesbian sex). Buffy was into an vampire asshole too but she MOVED ON. Bella is such a needy creature that I don’t think independence is possible for her. Ah, it’s just so fun to snark on this movie! This is a movie instantly ready for Rifftrax. Had the above commentary been released in theaters it might have out grossed the actual movie.
Worst Lines of the Year:
A character gets stabbed. “My tit,” she whispers. ”No…………your heart” her friend tells her. Jennifer’s Body, keeping it real. A very profound and subtle statement Diablo, you are a true feminist.
“You’re changing that boy’s life,” “No……………………………… HE’S changing ours.” Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side.
“You’re lime green jell-o and you can’t even admit it to yourself.” Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body.
“I SEE YOOOOOOOOUUUUU,” Sam Worthington in Avatar.
“You’re my only reason to stay alive……..if that’s what I am.” Edward in New Moon
“I can’t believe you told your mother about my tilted uterus!” Maya Ruldoph in Away We Go.
“Every second I am with you is about restraint… and you’re too fragile.” Edward (again) in New Moon.
“You can’t trust vampires… trust me.” Edward (again, again) in New Moon
“Bella, you give me everything just by… breathing” Edward (uh huh, again) in New Moon
“We’re in………………. HHHHHEEEEEEAAAAAVVVVEEEENNNNN! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!” Some stupid dead kid in Lovely Bones.
“You never leave your partner! Especially in a fire!” Kirk Cameron, as a fireman, in Fireproof using a fantastic fire metaphor for his marriage. What a dick.
Top Ten Suprisingly Non-Bad “Bad” Movies
The Box–destined to be either cult classic or a film people try their best to forget.
Crank: High Voltage
Knowing
Taken
Pandorum
Gentlemen Broncos
Push
Gamer and Law Abiding Citizen(Two three star Butler movies brings up the grand total of watchable Butler movies to three. He still sucks though.)
Funny People(Well funny until the lame third act where I found myself hoping Adam Sandler would get cancer again and stop making out with his boring ex wife. Hum, third act problems, where have I see that before, who directed this movie again?)
Bandslam–a lot of cheese here but ”Bandslam” is still one of the best High School/music movies around.
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans–as Michael Sheen vampire movies go, better than “New Moon.”
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Worst Directing
Peter Jackson’s Lovely Bones
Stephen Sommers’ G.I. Joe
Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad…
Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body
Sam Mendes’ Away We Go
Worst Performances
Worst of the Worst: Channing Tatum in ”G.I. Joe.” Picture a Ken doll that sounds like Markey Mark from the 90s… and add zero acting ability, personality and charisma and you have an idea of Channing’s first big splash in the industry. Really, it’s more of a dribble though. Tatum is so bad that he transformed G.I. Joe from one of the worst films ever made to one of the worst films ever made EVER.
Megan Fox, Jennifer’s Body and Transformers 2 Head overruled other head on that vote.
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air How did this false performance earned Oscar nomination I will never understand)
Sam Worthington, Avatar/Terminator Salvation Sam Worthington can’t ruin every movie this year too, can he? Can he?! Oh shit, he gonna isn’t he!
Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side She seems nice, let’s give her an Oscar.
Sandra Bullock’s annoying fucking son (Jay Head… yes that’s his real name) in The Blind Side A special place in hell is reserved for this little shit.
Sandra Bullock’s 300 lb pet project (Quinton Aaron) in The Blind Side. The master of one expression and one expression only. Here it is folks.
Ms. mopes-alot Stewart in New Moon The most mentally crippled character in “literary” history successfully parlayed her mind numbing into the cinema thanks to Kristen Stewart’s perpetually off-putting, sad sack mumbling sappy stupid performance. Toby, we need you to play someone who is very dull and not quite in touch with his emotions. Toby: …………………I can do that.
Tyler Perry in EVERYTHING This year he had the distinction of sucking in not just his own movies (he did, what, six last year?) but Star Trek too!
Robert Pattenson in New Moon
Marlyn Waynes, “G.I. Joe.” Dude, you’re not funny.
Michael Gambon in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Getting better just as he got, um, dead. And that getting better accounts for why he’s so low on this list cuz Gambon (normally a great actor) as Dumbledore is usually way higher.
Vin Diesel in Fast and Furious This character went from charming in a very campy way in the first THE Fast and THE Furious to macho desperation in Fast and Furious.
Maggie Grace in Taken Maggie Grace (from Lost) is young and hot and a girl yet after watching this movie in which she plays a bubbly teen that gets kidnapped it is as if she has never been all three of these things. Okay only two, she’s still hot.
Liv Shriver in X-Men: Origins The normally good Shriver takes all the teeth out of Sabertooth’s character. He’s just dull. I never thought I would miss the wrestler that played Sabertooth almost ten years ago but… here we are.
Chris Pine in Star Trek. Capt. Kirk as a frat boy douchbag.
Michael Jackson in This is It Oh, he wasn’t acting. Then what was he doing exactly?
Leslie Mann in Funny People Ruined so many comedies that Mann has now earned the right to be called the Mia Farrow of this generation.
Morgan Freeman in Invictus Oh, come on people he was horrible in this tepid movie. I love Freeman, but this is not a good performance, it’s him talking slow, going on walks and staring off into a rugby field.
Most Overrated Film of the Year: Avatar, followed very closely by Up. Avatar is the better movie (I still stand by my B-) but it’s shallow conventions and down right annoying moments get more and more apparent with every viewing. Up, however, was annoyign from the beginning and never looked back.
2008′s Worst Films(because I didn’t do one last year for some reason)
Rachael Getting Married Audience Getting Fucked.
Paranoid Park Gus Van Sant at his art houseiast worst. Meandering tone poem about blank teenagers that has all the feel and personality of an indie wax museum of people, places and events I would never want to see, go to or experience. GVS tries to pass the blankness as thoughtful reticence of youth but it’s really just bad, pardon non, pardon natural acting crippled by enabling directing. I love when the director meanders (Last Days and Gerry are modern classics) but with this film he wanders off the edge.
Slumdog Millionaire The most overrated film of 2008 and the most overrated Best Picture winner since “Crash.” Almost every note the film hits is false. Cinematography, screenplay, music, acting and Danny Boyle’s lame use of style for the sake of style are all grating. I thought it would take a few years for this Oscar winning film to be forgotten but we’re pretty much at that point now. I don’t know if you got the memo but it’s officially not cool to say you like this film.
Zach and Muri Make a Porno Another year another bad Kevin Smith movie. Kevin Smith: please go away. Not going anywhere, are you? Oh, you still have fans, good for you! Okay then just roll out Cop Out 2 and Clerks 3 and, fuck it, how about a Mallrats sequel. Smith is novelty director and the novelty wore off, oh, I’d say about fifteen years ago.
The Reader To be honest I forgot why I hated this film so much in 2008 but rather than watching this prestige POS again I’m just going to go with my gut. Pretentious: yeah. Profound: no.
Righteous Kill and 88 Minutes These two 2008 films from John Avnet are so bad that users in the wasteland that is the IMDB message boards are calling for his death. Ouch, but, gotta say… not completely out of line.
Punisher: War Zone Hey, not all comic book movies in 2008 were happening. Some were just bad (Hulk 2-ish) and some, like Punisher, were just the worst. Just about the only thing this Punisher was able to kill effectively was any chance that they’ll ever make another Punisher movie again.
Speed Racer Speed Racer is a beautiful film. Speed Racer is a horrible beatuiful film.
Sex and the City To quote Jack Nicholson: SHUT UP!!!!!!!!! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!
Leatherheads Clooney, what happened? To build upon my “Up in the Air” mini-rant: For directing George Clooney in a rare bad movie, George Clooney can never be forgiven.
and let’s not forget…
Seven Pounds, Quantum of Solace, The Eye, Prince Caspian, The Mummy 3, Mirrors, The Bank Job, the second half of Wall-E, Get Smart, Harold and Kumar 2, Mamma Mia, Saw V and no doubt if I had been brave enough to watch The Love Guru and Fool’s Gold both would probably be on this list.
What’s Good: I haven’t read the graphic novel but I have a feeling it hasn’t been tampered with by the studio which is always a good thing. The irreverent humor rocks! So do Big Daddy and Hit Girl! Bravo to Nick Cage for finally being in a halfway decent superhero film. While I can see him playing a comic book villain Nick Cage knows he’s too old for tights and thus picked the perfect role. He is forgiven for Ghost Rider. What’s Not: Roger Ebert. I love the guy but he’s got to shut up about two things: video games and “Kick Ass.” The non-superhero sequences involving Dave/Kick Ass are not particularly interesting. “Spider-Man”-esq scenes dealing with girls, family life and school don’t work even though I can understand why they are included.
“Kick Ass.” It sure does. And does, and does and does some more. This is one of the most unusual “parody” superhero films ever made. With titles like “Sky High,” “Mystery Men,” and “The Incredibles” dominating this sub genre it was, until last week, hard to imagine anything other than kid friendly superhero comedies. After “Kick Ass” it’s now hard to imagine going back to those tepid kid films. “Kick Ass” does not hold its punches in service of the comedy aspect. In fact that only makes it punch harder. It’s the “Fight Club” of superhero movies in that respect. Don’t get me wrong, the violence in this movie is funny but it is also mean and jarring. The tone is all over the place as well. It’s a funny teen comedy where kids slip and fall on the bad guy when trying to save lost cats. It is a half baked critique on hero worship in the Internet era where, for instance, Kick Ass’s kitten saving/bad guy stomping antics end up on My Space (people still use that?). On the other hand it’s also a lame and corny “Spider-Man” type of “will the hot popular girl like the nerd” High School film. And finally, how do I put this, the kind of movie where someone is thrown into a giant microwave and cooked. The effect of all of the above is overwhelming at times but in a way that I have to admire because while real Superhero movies only go so far with action and moral conduct ”Kick Ass” found a way to go farther while still somewhat keeping you in the movie and, most importantly, liking its characters.
The hero kicks the story off by telling the viewer about his average teen life. “With no power comes no responsibility” he tells us, riffing on Spidey’s bombastic style. The kid is played by a soft spoken, easily bruiseabe Aaron Johnson who goes on to illustrate his lack of talents, skills and strength. Inspired by the comic books he reads he becomes a not quite super hero called Kick Ass for the hell of it and after very little time “crime fighting” his self aware heroics inspires others. But not necessarley in a good way because he inspires people who are far from well adjusted. The film might be saying that the superheros, if looked at objectively, are actually pretty off balance. That’s when/why the film gets interesting. “Real” superhero Big Daddy, played by Nick Cage (Adam West era Batman meets The Punisher meets, um, Nick Cage), and his daughter Mindy aka Hit-Girl are the movie’s real crime fighters. We are introduced to the two memorable anti-heroes on a father daughter weekend activity that involves Big Daddy testing out a new bulletproof vest on his daughter. Standing on opposite sides of the screen he shoots her right in the chest. Being only 11 she practically flies off the screen, landing with an emphatic oomph. If you’re not laughing at the act of a grown man shooting his daughter then you WILL NOT like “Kick Ass” because that’s one of the lighter scenes. This film is hardcore but I really have to say that it is not without heart.
While the non-hero hero is doing his own thing (which mostly consists of having people laugh at how stupid he looks before beating him up) Big Daddy and Hit Girl exist in their own separate superhero movie. A much darker one and a much better one. Kick Ass just wants to play around on the streets of New York while the other two are serious about their hobby. Dead serious. Seriously, they’re sadistic and their quest to stop and punish a drug king pin (Mark Strong in that rare bad guy role–yeah right) is a long and bloody one that’s more “Kill Bill” pot boiler than “Spider-Man” foot cozie. The murderous father-daughter duo don’t so much fight crime as they torture it and I really have to say that Hit Girl, played by the young actress Chloe Moretz, steals the show then proceeds to rip it to shreds. This tiny psychopath is a great movie character because she runs counter to almost every side-kick-kid trope ever. There’s a deeply ironic undercurrent to Hit Girl but there’s also a genuine and emotionally engaging character here that is equal parts lovable and scary. Seeing this tiny purple blur fly around the screen, impaling drug dealers leaves you, and the out of his element Kick Ass, speechless. I can’t speak for Kick Ass but the lack of speech on my side of things relates to my usual dislike of child actors/characters in movies. I’m going on record by saying that this is one of those cases where a precocious child actually makes an action movie better! Not only that but the same precocious child that made “(500) Days of Summer” worse! I don’t think that has ever happened before. Okay so maybe it has, but it’s not often and Moretz is in the same league as Newt from “Aliens” and Natalie Portman in “Leon/The Professional.”
“Kick Ass” is directed by Brit Mathew Vaughn who has managed to combine the no-nonsense grittiness of his breakout “Layer Cake” with the subversive fantasy of his underrated “Stardust.” This project is a good step forward for the director who wisely balances the film’s style so that it never takes away from the story or calls attention to itself which it could have easily done given the hip and geeky subject matter. Just look at the Edgar Wright’s “Scot Pilgrim Vs. the World” trailer for an example of an opposite but hopefully equally enjoyable approach. You might remember that Vaughn was initially slated to directed “X-Men 3″ (the one Brett Ratner ruined) and I’m glad he knew enough about his comic book sensibilities to stay away from mainstream conventions. At the same time though this movie adaptation tends to be very conventional at times. Many scenes involving the teenagers don’t quite work as intended (they’re not always very funny and not always as interesting as they should be) and the animated cell comic narrative device within the movie falls a bit flat. I’m not going to let those minor flaws that affect my overall enjoyment of “Kick Ass” however because in a way it needs to have a conventional backbone for the very reason that when it breaks those conventions it comes as a shock. And if this film proves anything it’s that it knows how to shock. Grade: B+
Sure the “motion” part of motion pictures is the selling point but I’ve always been a fan of single movie images. These moments in time or as Roland Barthes would say, “shadow[s] of the frozen moment,” remind us that movies can provide us with 24 works of art every second. Even bad movies can stumble into moments of visual greatness, quick as they may last (see my “Public Enemies” shot at #10)! Powerful images have a way of freeing themselves of the tyranny of the whole. They exist on their own artistic terms yet never get enough credit…
1. A Serious Man D.P. Roger Deakins I also have an obsession with the absolute first thing we see in a movie and the last. They are, after all, the alpha and omega of a story’s universe yet far too often filmmakers take these impressions for granted. Not the Coen Brothers. No final image was better last year than “A Serious Man.” The main character’s son is listening to music on once confiscated radio at school just as he’s about to finally pay that bully back (long story… but a good one). Suddenly, out of nowhere, a tornado hits. Random but also… not because the moment is juxtaposed with the boy’s father learning of his fate across town. This absolute final shot gives me chills. It’s an absolutely perfect cut-to-black moment. The shot is visually atypical of the rest of the movie (therefore not really a spoiler shot) but hammers home the notion of divine intervention, God’s wrath and… Jefferson Airplane.
2. Two Lovers D.P: Joaquin Baca-Asay “Two Lovers” was the second new film I saw in 2009 and it certainly stuck around, ranking as my number two film overall. Once again a movie with Two in it’s title ranks as number two. Grey is clearly a great visual filmmaker and I’m sure he would be quick to credit his cinematographer. While many of the extended two-shots (another two!) in this movie such as this or this or, yikes, even this (shameless self promotion) resonated, I fell in love with the above shot the second I saw it. Phoenix’s look is priceless. I said to myself that it’s so powerful and quirky that I had to find some way to talk about it. What’s great about how this shot comes off is the isolation in Phoenix’s character’s world. We not only can see but also feel how out of his element the charater is. That piece of art looming above his head (which was on location when Grey and co. got there) is perfect because adds a splash of strange humor.
3. Thirst D.P Chung-hoon Chung Speaking of strange humor. This show kept me thinking about the notion of what it means for a vampire to reach the absolute bottom of the barrel and a priest laid out on the floor and sucking blood from the IV of a man in a coma is pretty much there. Well, maybe not quite–Brad Pitt sucking on a dead rat in “Interview with the Vampire” might lower but that’s up for debate. The way he lays down implies a feeling that this man is far, far away from being human at this point. He’s a monster but in the most non monster-y way possible and between this and “The Host,” Korean filmmakers have nailed the realism of horror. I also love cinematography involving that white roomthe the two vampires make for themselves to mimic day and a shot and the end with the empty shoes which I won’t get into for obviosu reasons. But, really, nothing spells out the film’s quirky and dark tone than what you’re seeing. Plus, it’s kinda funny.
4. Antichrist D.P. Anthony Dod Mantle Hard to find a shot in this movie that isn’t striking. I’m even transfixed even when von Trier and Mantle zoom in on a plant in a jar of water. The one I settled on is not only a great shot but chilling in an undefined archetypal sort of way. The poetic visuals of a completely ruined human being laying alongside animals (known here as three beggars) in a cabin is iconic and will not be soon forgotten. To hammer home how much Lars von Trier and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle have shifted we really should consider the meta-sparse visuals of “Dogville” side-by-side with the hyper stylized “Antichrist” to see two polar opposite aesthetic approaches executed in equally effective ways; hard core function in one and harder core form in the latter. Filth, flesh and nature is what “Antichrist” is all about. And all are combined in this shot which, to me (and what do I know?), is like a neoclassical painting (horrible things are happening to beautifully naked people) come to life. Compare it to this, that or one of my favorites Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David and you may agree… or you may not (I know jack about art after all) or it just may confirm how much of a creepy ass hole Lars von Trier is.
5. White Ribbon D.P. Christian Berger Perfectly captures the eerie, off-balance tone of the movie in a way you can’t quite put your finger on but that’s reverberating through your body. A visually imposing and hypocritical authority blocks out the foreground while sheepish followers stand in the middle. One of the few innocent people in the whole movie meanwhile gets punished and relegated to the back. Life suck. This image says all that yet comes off so natural and unplanned. It just knocks me out every time I look at it. Something’s not right here. Something is very, very wrong. And beautiful.
6. You, The Living D.P. Gustav Danielsson The camera never moves and the editor never cuts. Images, then, have a way of lingering in this wonderful movie. This shot is the one most loaded with meaning, humor and horror. Roy Anderrson’s sensibilities are fascinating. Slow, depressing and morbid. In this scene a dinner party is huddled in a corner (no explanation for this… as if one is needed in an Anderrson film) as a man attempts to do that old trick of pulling the dinner cloth from a table. Anderrson’s interpretation of this age old gag is not just funny (all the shit falls…) but surreal (…to reveal a giant swastika on the table!!!). He’s also making a comment on Sweden’s hidden pro Nazi past. By the way, the guy pulling the cloth gets arrested (perhaps for revealing such a past) and, in the next vignette, convicted by a panel of beer swigging judges to be sent to death.
7. The Road D.P. Javier Aguirresarobe As epic as it is bleak. This vast shot conveys depth, death (all plant life in this movie looks like that) and man’s small and fleeting place in this post civilization world. For the overall look I picked Aguirresarobe as the best cinematography of the year and this shot is at the top of the reasons why.
8. Inglourious Basterds D.P. Robert Richardson A classic movie shot. There are many great shots in this movie but this is the iconic moment. And it’s official: a new generation of film lovers finally got their Rambo moment!
9. Moon D.P. Gary Shaw The decay of flesh juxtaposed with the corporate coldness of space and science. Note: The image looks crappy because I didn’t grab this directly from the movie. I don’t have a way of doing a screen caps on blu-ray–and if you don’t see Moon on blu-ray you’re missing something.
10. Public Enemies D.P. Dante Spinotti Christian Bale aims, shoots and fires. Michael Mann’s film may have missed the mark but this shot sure didn’t. Mann and the always great Dante Spinotti have a keen eye for cool shots (literally) and that’s probably because doc inspired handheld style allows for more experimentation and unplanned composition. This one, though, was very planned and it’s easily the film’s most memorable moment. And by that I simply mean that it’s one of the few things from this movie I haven’t purged from my memory banks.
Guilty Pleasure Shot: Knowing D.P.Simon Duggan What you’re looking at is balls. Total balls. Sometimes the goal of science fiction is to transport us to a different place. A place we never could have expected when we started the film. Knowing’s final shot is a thing a of audacious beauty. So full of hope, symbolism and painterly beauty that it turned many off. It feel the moment is earned and contains more ecstatic religious power than any Mel Gibson movie I’ve suffered through. It also managed to blow the socks off of “Battlestar Glatica’s” strangely similar but far more literal “new earth” ending concepts. With this, director Alex Proyas continues his streak of perfect final shots; “Dark City’s” pier closer is dear to me and “I, Robot’s” robo-Jesus final moment never gets enough credit so I will include it.
Best Poster Art AKA poster art most likely to be displayed in my dingy apartment
…wow. wow, wow, wow. This is the most rich and evocative poster I’ve come across in a long time. I want this but may never get a print because it’s a limited edition deal. The poster is by David D’Andrea was made for Fantastic Fest.
…should have been the main poster for Basterds.
…the humans only angle is just brilliant marketing. And it doesn’t even say the movie’s name. Looks cool too.
…another Antichrist poster. I could see someone hating this poster design but I really grabbed me. Especially when I think about how these scissors are used in the movie. When I look at this I think the alternate title should be “There Will Be Blood.” Hum, I think that one’s taken though.
…usually Paul Giamatti movie posters are bad but this one gives off a cool “Being John Malkovich” vibe. Well, that and “Men in Black” (‘member that alien inside the head… aw, never mind). This is such an interesting poster I’m surprised nobody saw the movie. I’m including myself in that large group.
…yup, that about sums the movie up. That poor, poor priest. I particularly love how the human figures are positioned in such a way that implies the infinite loop of misery these two immortals sinners will be engaged in. Not just misery though, lust too. The look on Kang-ho Song’s face says it all.
Worst Poster…
Extract. Someone got paid to come up with this? Really? Is this a joke? Sadly… yes. There are no redeeming qualities to this poster. It’s tacky and nowhere close to being clever which is ironic because the film’s pretty good in a cult comedy sort of way. It’s almost as if someone at the studio wanted to sabotage Judge’s film. And it worked. That the film is funny is the biggest tragedy of all.
Runner Up: Ghost of Girlfriend’s Past
Screams out, in every way possible, WE’RE NOT EVEN TRYING. WE GIVE UP.
Best Trailer
Fitting that the film with the best shot of the year also has the best trailer to go along with it. Now why didn’t this make my top ten again? I starting to freak out at the idea and may never let myself forget that I relegated “A Serious Man” to #12. Even so, I said it from day one that “A Serious Man’s” trailer is the most visually exciting and artful mainstream movie trailer ever made! It’s rapid fire editing and use of sound is absolutely perfect. It’s so good I’m surprised it didn’t convince the usual multiplex philistine to see, gasp, a Coen Brothers period movie. The rhythmic flow in the clip below does not represent the style and flow of the film itself (thank god) but it exists as a work of art in its own right which, some could argue, is the point of a well made trailer.
Worst Trailer#1: After Last Season BEHOLD………………
Worst Trailer#2: The Boys are Back Ever seen a trailer and made a audible sound of dejection? Something like EWICK or awwwaghh? Well this was a total ewick/awwwaghh!!! moment for me. And here I though the Brits (esp Clive Owen) were above bein so trite. Still not sure if the trailer is bad or just has the misfortune of trying to get people to see a worse movie. Since I would rather die than sit through this sappy crap I’ll just assume it’s both.
Trailer I had to see so much I got sick of:Duplicity and Shutter Island. When you see dozens upon dozens of moves in the theater in 2009 you don’t exactly expect variety in the trailers but to see the same two every time is agony. I sat through the two trailers so much I had to be creative or risk losing my mind. Ironically both movies were decent but I almost didn’t watch them.
Okay, I’m almost ready to let go of 2009. Just one more list to go and that’s the worst movies of the year.
Alessandro Camon and Oren Moveman’s The Messenger (a better story than Hurt Locker!)
Duncan Jones and Nate Parker, Moon
Woody Allen, Whatever Works (oh, shut up, the writing in that shit is tight)
Favorite Performances
Sam Rockwell in Moon–one of the best one-man-performance movies ever. No other actor put as much in a role as Rockwell did. He not in the movie, he is the movie. Rockwell needs his due.
Charlotte Gainsburrow and Willem Dafoe in Antichrist
Kang-ho SonginThirst–Easily my favorite international actor. The best vampire performance since Willem Dafoe in “Shadow of the Vampire.”
Viggo Mortensen inThe Road–History of Violence, Eastern Promises, The Road. Wow.
Cristoph Waltz in Inglorous Basterds
Peter Capaldi in In the Loop–”Climbing the mountain of conflict”? You sounded like a Nazi Julie Andrews!”
Melenie Lorrent in Inglorous Basterds–Nobody could have seen either Lorrent (or Waltz) coming. While he stole the show, the movie belonged to her.
Joaquin Phoenix in Two Lovers
Jeremy Renner in Hurt Locker
Tilda Swinton in Julia
Colin Firth in A Single Man–This is what happens when a great actor finally gets a great role.
Woody Harrelsonin The Messenger and Zombieland–Great fun in Zombieland, great sad in Messenger. Harrlson plays crocked eyed wild in both but his crying scene in the later is one of the best dude crying scene in recent memory.
Jason Cope in District 9–If only the movie was as good as the performance.
Samantha Mortonin The Messenger–One of the best actresses working. What baffles me is how few talked about how good she was in this film.
Bill Murry in Zombieland and Limits of Control–Most leading performance did not contain as much brilliance as Murray’s five or so minute scenes in these two movies.
Nick Cagein Knowing and Bad Leutenent–A laughable actor in two laughably good films. Bad Lt. specifically figured out Cage in a way few films have.
Paul Schneider in Bright Star
Abbie Cornish in Bright Star ?
Mimi Kennedy in In the Loop
Jeffery Dean Morganin Watchmen
Cinematography
Javier Aguirresarobe, The Road
Anthony Dod Mantle, Antichrist (hereby forgiven for being the DP on Slumdog)
Bruno Delbonnel, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Joaquin Baca0-Asay, Two Lovers
Robert Richardson, Inglourious Basterds
Roger Deakins, A Serious Man
Best and/or Most Iconic Lines
“I can’t stand to see a woman bleed from the mouth. It reminds me of that Country and Western music which I cannot abide.” In the Loop
“Chaos reigns.” Antichrist
“Wait for the crème.” Inglorous Basterds
“You don’t speak Spanish, do you?” Limits of Control
“My name is Shosanna Dreyfus and THIS is the face of Jewish vengeance!” Inglorous Basterds
“I failed John Keats. I did not know until now how tightly he wound himself around my heart.” Bright Star(that line gets me every time)
“What are these fucking iguanas doing on my coffee table!” Bad Lieutenant
“I can’t say enough times, whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filch or provide, every temporary measure of grace, whatever works.” Whatever Works
“Goddamn it, Bill fucking Murray!” Zombieland
“His soul is dancing.” Bad Lieutenant
“Is Doc Miles gonna have to choke a bitch?” Crank: High Voltage
“Are you mad that you died at the end of Die Hard?” Funny People
And this one from A Serious Man…
Larry Gopnik: So, uh, what can I do for you? Clive Park: Uh, Dr. Gopnik, I believe the results of physics mid-term were unjust. Larry Gopnik: Uh-huh, how so? Clive Park: I received an unsatisfactory grade. In fact: F, the failing grade. Larry Gopnik: Uh, yes. You failed the mid-term. That’s accurate. Clive Park: Yes, but this is not just. I was unaware to be examined on the mathematics. Larry Gopnik: Well, you can’t do physics without mathematics, really, can you? Clive Park: If I receive failing grade I lose my scholarship, and feel shame. I understand the physics. I understand the dead cat. Larry Gopnik: You understand the dead cat? But… you… you can’t really understand the physics without understanding the math. The math tells how it really works. That’s the real thing; the stories I give you in class are just illustrative; they’re like, fables, say, to help give you a picture. An imperfect model. I mean – even I don’t understand the dead cat. The math is how it really works. Clive Park: Very difficult… very difficult… Larry Gopnik: Well, I… I’m sorry, but I… what do you propose? Clive Park: Passing grade. Larry Gopnik: No no, I… Clive Park: Or perhaps I can take the mid-term again. Now I know it covers mathematics. Larry Gopnik: Well, the other students wouldn’t like that, would they, if one student gets to retake the test till he gets a grade he likes? Clive Park: Secret test. Larry Gopnik: No, I’m afraid… Clive Park: Hush-hush. Larry Gopnik: No, that’s just not workable. I’m afraid we’ll just have to bite the bullet on this thing, Clive, and… Clive Park: Very troubling… very troubling…
Music
Clint Mansell, Moon (one of the best composers around)
Hanz Zimmer, Sherlock Holmes(Hanz is back!)
Christopher Young, Drag me to Hell
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, The Road
Joe Hisaishi, Ponyo
Abel Krozeniowski, A Single Man (see, it’s possible to sound like Phillip Glass w/o being as annoying as him)
Mike Patton, Crank: High Voltage
Michael Giacchino, Star Trek (much, much better than his Up score)
Editing
Mark Jakubowicz and Fernando Villena, Crank: High Voltage
Sally Menke, Inglourious Basterds
Anders Refn, Antichrist
Jon Gregory, The Road
Ant Boys (real name?) and Billy Sneddon, In the Loop
Best Set Piece Pretty much any sequence in Hurt Lucker. The bar scene in Basterds which is not even really a set piece… which is why it’s such a good set piece!
Best Nekkedness That girl in Jarmish’s Limits of Control that was naked for like the whole movie!
Liam Neeson from Taken vs. Jason Stathem from Crank I can’t, I can’t, it’s like choosing between my two (really buffy) kids. Okay, Chev wins the fight but only because he can’t really be killed.
Best Horror Antichrist, best of the year, which makes it two years in a row for the horror genre. Best Vampire Movie: Thirst Best Zombie Movie: Zombieland
Best Sci-fi The Box and Knowing
Funniest Movie In the Loop
Best TV Movie Caprica… long live the new/old flesh!
Best 3D Movie Still not Avatar so Coraline it is!
Best Ensemble Performance
Basterds–Pitt, Waltz, Lorrent etc.
Moon(not New Moon!)–Rockwell, Rockwell, Rockwell and Robot.
Bright Star–Cornish, Winshaw, Snyder, Fox.
Best Non-Human Performance
Kevin Spacey in Moon. Robot.
Jason Schwartzman in Fantastic Mr. Fox. Fox (better in clay than he was in flesh in Funny People)
Up‘s talking dog. Dog.
Jim Carrey in Christmas Carol. Um, human.
Dakota Fanning as Coraline.
Best Video Game Performance/Voice Acting
Nolan North in Uncharted 2
Mark Hamill in Batman Arkham Asylum
Cammy in Street Fighter IV(not good, just like looking at the booty)
Finally, check later in the week for the final installment if the best, before I get to the worst that is.
This film reminds me of Dante’s famous quote ”Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” about his fictional descent into hell. His character had it easy. In what became far and away the most original (and hated) movie of 2009, “Antichrist” established its own rules, created it’s own visual discourse and pissed off just about anyone who watched it in the process. This film divided to a point of anarchy, proving to me that some of the worst films of all time are, to others, some of the best and most interesting. It can be called a lot of things: the worst film of the year, torture porn, misogynistic, an art house version of “Saw,” “The Shining” on acid and even perhaps just a string of curse words. Okay, so I made all that up up but at the top of the list of things I would call “Antichrist” is the best film of the year.
Set in the aftermathof the accidental death of their child, “Antichrist” features just two characters (“He” and “She”) as they experience the stages of loss that include grief, pain and despair. In an effort to be “normal” again they head to the archetypal site of the fallow woman’s fears, the woods, a place in the middle of nowhere or, perhaps, middle of everywhere if you were to take the philosophical approach that these two characters are removing themselves from civilization to a cabin called Eden. This is a staggering and absurd work of dissonant visual poetry that pompously wages nothing less than the true nature of mankind and questions his/her place in “Eden.” The sinister beauty of nature certainly provokes strong emotions and the film’s heightened sense of formalism is a contentious matter of film geek debate. Some find the stylistic oddities unnerving and mean while other are inspired by the aggressively bold stance writer/director Lars vonTrier takes. Though the haters seem to outnumber the lovers by a large margin, the lovers love it by a larger margin. This is a film worth fighting over and while I feel the love I also understand where the hate comes from (this film is ridiculous) but at the same time hope that the anti-Antichristers understand that the film was made to provoke us into an feverish hatred of ourselves, others, the film we’re watching and most importantly the person behind the movie who wants us to hate all of the above. To hate it, in other words, is to validate its reason for existing. That alone does not make it any better but the goal here is to get past objective feelings of hate or love to arrive at some sort of truth in the object of art. That’s what “Antichrist” is all about and, really, that’s what movies are about.
Having never been a huge fan of Lars von Trier, this is the film where I feel he finally arrived director of tangible substance. In the past he effectively hid behind his own self-amused experiments and ironic melodramas but emphatically buries the “realism” of that pre and post-Dogme. “Antichrist” backs up its dark themes, subjects and symbols with a unique aesthetic approach that one can look at and debate until the end of cinema itself which can’t be too far off. I found this transcendentally down and dirty experience to be anything but cold, sexist or nihilistic as politically correct critics are quick to point out in an effort to discredit this movie. Another common slam is the (mis)reading that “Antichrist” is nothing more than a misogynistic battle of the sexes where the probing and rape-like intellect of man (Willem Dafoe–is there a better or more beautifully angular face in the movies today?) brutalizes the atavistic irrationality of woman (the bony perfection of Charlotte Gainsborough). Sure that’s one level of what’s going on but that is also a naive and reductionist reading that fails to take into account the notion that this is a film about artificial divisions that we make. Mankind’s arrogant assumption that “nature is Satan’s church” or that s/he is separate from or better than nature is what ultimately leads to the decay of what makes us human in the first place. Through the filter of horror of all things this film captures the existential pain of our banishment from Eden by returning us there and showing us how far we’ve fallen. In regards to gender issues as well as the man vs. nature theme, the film disavows dividing traits in it’s thesis that nature –the ugly side as well as the beautiful– is in man just as man is in woman (sometimes literally) and vice versa. To resist nature and to resist our nature is to kill it. The final, bleak summation that “chaos reigns” in the end makes the appropriately titled “Antichrist” the most disturbing film about the dark side of humanity ever made. Also the most howlingly ridiculous considering that bit of wisdom is coming from a talking fox that just ate its own tail.
2. Two Lovers Director: James Grey Continuing the trend of tortured relationships, “Two Lovers” boasts two separate dysfunctional romances for the price of one! This is a profound work from one of America’s greatest and most underrated filmmakers, James Grey. “Two Lovers” is at once classic filmmaking/storytelling that recalls the great romances of the 50s and 70s and yet totally fresh in its approach to the genre through its dark tones, heavy technical mastery (romances are never this well made) and uniquely neurotic outlook that adds layers of meaning to a story that features real adults and real complexities. Grey is a director that previously worked in one genre, crime, and did it well, but here shows his true colors as a hopeless and helpless romantic. It’s his best work to date and that’s saying something because 2008′s “We Own the Night” is one of the decade’s best. The film got swept under the rug thanks to the hobo looking Joaquin Phoenix’s bizarre antics but lets face it, the real problem was the general impossibility to market an American romantic film that doesn’t appeal to US Weekly readers. The title is pretty much exactly what the film is about but if neither of those “two lovers” are Sandra Bullock why should we care? Romance is a crippled genre that was able to stand on its own two legs for a brief moment before it was brushed aside. I would bet anything that “Two Lovers” will be discovered in the years to come because it has to. A film this good, this well made, this human and this touching can’t go unnoticed, it just can’t. From the performances (Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Vanessa Shaw), to the cinematography and right on down to the subtly brilliant sound design (rain, thunder and fish tanks!) that puts you in Leonard’s bipolar and love struck world, “Two Lovers” is the best genuine love story I’ve seen in years, maybe ever, and the best American movie of the year.
3. Inglourous Basterds Director: Quentin Tarentino Tarentinoowned the 90s and set himself loose on the 00s with, in the words of his Bible quoting character, “great vengeance and furious anger.” After he worked up the nerve to return to movies post “Jackie Brown” and got the revenge epic “Kill Bill” as well as that little road trip revenge movie (… that people don’t like to talk about) out of the system, QT turned to this inwardly epic WWII fantasy story about (but not really) a band of Nazi hunting Jews seeking, you guessed it, revenge. To call it a brilliant piece of filmmaking would not do it justice because, more than anything, it is a brave piece of filmmaking. Brilliant because of what it is and brave because of what it does or, rather, what it does not do. While the renegade basterds are a bat wielding force that “the Germans will talk about” and “fear,” “Inglourous Basterds” is not a typical “war movie” and it is not the revenge movie that “Kill Bill” or “Death Proof” are.
Forget about the fact that the film contains the unstoppable Basterds and not one but two separate (and simultaneous!) plots to overthrow Hitler (a brilliant plot detail by the way), all the pivotal moments contain nothing more than a few characters talking to each other at a table. From the masterful opening scene set in a farm to the subtle but hair raising strudel scene where the theater owning Jewish girl hiding in the farm is now being interviewed by her family’s killer to host Hitler movie night, to the tense (and wickedly extended to De Palma-size proportions) bar sequence to, finally, the moment of ultimate truth/truce where a discussion between the great Jew Hunter (Christoph Waltz) and lead basterd Brad rewrites the course of the modern (fake) history. Here’s the genus: more than guns, dynamite, the Jew Hunter’s choking hand or even Brad Pitt’s big ass knife that he uses to carve a swastikas on the foreheads of Germans so that they can forever bear the mark of their evil, Tarentino’s weapon of choice is the explosive power of celluloid and transformative nature of cultural and ideological discourse. In Tarentino’s universe, film itself is the catalysis that changes world events by literally transforming its audience. Film canisters set the world on fire while the theater holds us all trapped but riveted. Now there’s an alternate universe I would much rather live than the one we’re stuck in.
4.Thirst Director: Chan Wook Park Vampires are big and this film could care less. Similar to my number one film of 2008, this gorgeous anti-love story (another “Bad Romance” makes the list!) rewrites the vampire movie rules of narrativity, myth making and visual presentation. In a world dominated by brain dead “Twilight” fans, “Thirst” madeliving in a vampire-centric culture a little easier in 2009. It blazes on with a blatant disregard for fluffy vampire lore and sparkling heroes. Directed by Chan-wook Park (he of the Vengeance Trilogy fame), “Thirst” is a perverse morality tale about a priest, the always great Kang-ho Song, who gets infected by this “virus” while on a pilgrimage, becomes a religious icon in his country, looses faithin God, grows bored withthe prospect of eternal life, falls in love with a girl and infects her, creating a(nother) monster in the process. He spends the rest of the movie in a Russian-lit version of hell, which is before that literal hell he may soon face at the hands of an angry God he’s not even sure (or cares) exists anymore. Forget puffy shirts and Tom Cruise, this is what it means to be a vampire folks! This is not only a smart genre movie but one of the craftier explorations of religion and perdition I’ve ever come across. In other words “Thirst” is not something that could ever have been made in America.
5.In the Loop Director: Armando Iannucci What’s so good about “In the Loop?” Besides everything? Okay, how about dialogue that spews as much gold as it does bile “I can’t stand to see a woman bleed from the mouth. It reminds me of that Country & Western music which I cannot abide.” How about editing that is fast as it is funny–a mock doc without the winks. How about the f-star-star-star-ing pitch perfect performances by Tom “climb the mountain of conflict” Hollander, Mimi “mouth bleeder” Kennedy, Tony Soprano and the scene/movie stealing Peter Capald-fucking-i? Imagine “Dr. Strangelove’s” satire with the UK’s “The Office” style and some meta-doc “Tristram Shandy-isms” thrown in.
“Loop” captures the feeling of being a little fish in a big, nasty, oil covered pond full of sharks (republicans), leaches (the media) and toothless bottom feeders (liberals… AND the English). “Loop” mocks/attacks all sides, showing the absurdly pathetic situation British-era politicians and policymakers faced when trying to buddy up to Americans in the time just before an entire war was invented from thin air. The feeling that these people are running around trying to get in this “loop,” which is inhabited by idiots screaming at each other, is ridiculous because the loop is just that, an insulated circle with no on-ramps or pauses for logic, reason or public interest to enter. Unlike political comedies like “Charley Wilson’s War” or “Wag the Dog” this film never wavers in its realism and yet also never hammers you with it. Taking satire to a new level, “Loop” is fun, then funny then sad when you realize that the humor is not that far fetched.
6. The Road Director: James Hillcoat The following really needs bold lettering: THE ROAD IS UNDERRATED. This film is as plain spoken and beautiful as the Cormac McCarthy novel that spawned it. Maybe modesty is why so few noticed this exceptional and sadly overlooked 09 film. “The Road” is special because it takes a serious look at the fall of man. This is not an action or science fiction or even fantasy movie, it is simply the single most important work in the apocalypse genre. A film that does not demand to be taken seriously, but should. The world has moved on and what it has moved on to, in the words of McCarthy, “cannot be made right again.” The economy of “The Road” is something to be marveled at because everything we see fits into this barren world. The vegetation is withered and browning and when the corpse of trees fall to the we realize that the trees did not just die but they have been dead for a long long time and their fall. That feeling of nature inevitable last gasp carries over into ever aspect. The world is not dying it is dead and mankind’s last survivors, what few there are left, find themselves witness to Earth’s quietly dwindling epilogue. The film captures hopelessness in ways even the great book can’t quite offer because we are SEEING what had happened to the earth and what is happening to humanity. Viggo Mortensenplays a man withno name who exists to ensure the survival of a son with no name in a world where allowing the young an innocent to survive may ultimately be a curse more than a blessing. Yet he persists and isn’t that’s the whole point? His performance is… right. Possessing the perfect image of a Great Depression era face set in this even greater depression, every line in Viggo’s face and smudge of dirt on his skin is as well worn as it is weary. And when he speaks, it’s poignant but never pompous. “If he is not the word of God, God never spoke” the man says of his son, whom the father is simply trying to raise to be “good” in a place where such moral qualifiers have lost their meaning. That is if those words ever really had meaning because for all the “good” in man look where it got them.
7.TheHurt Locker Director: Kathryn Bigelow I never get tired of saying how much I hate Iraq war movies. I HATE IRAQ MOVIES. Ah, so refreshing, it just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? “The Hurt Locker,” a film that looked like just another Iraq 2 drama, single handily made me think twice before dismissing this genre. Then I saw “Brothers” and went back to hating it. Oh well. I saw the film over a year ago and, by now, everybody knows it. Sure this isn’t the “best” film of the year but whatever flaws there may be in the narrative structure are commendable if you consider this film’s jagged, nearly episodic sequences as an extension of the fragmented lead played so well by Jeremy Renner who should have won the Oscar (sorry Bridges). Renner’s Sgt. William James is one of the more interesting war characters I’ve ever come across because, as many have noted by now, he feeds off the discord rather than whines about it. We may not understand the war but after watching we do understand why he would want to go back. It’s a drug and the bombs James diffuses work as a handy metaphor for the male ego as well as the entire FUBAR situation we find ourselves in “over there.” What I respect most about “Hurt Locker” is its ability to takes us unto the sandy trenches and come out without a agenda or slant. It’s not anti or pro war, it’s just war. Even if you’re against this war “Hurt Locker” will endure beyond “Brothers” and “Stop Loss” and “Redacted” and “Greenzone” and all those shame on usdocumentaries because it removes itself from judgment and, thus, seems to have more integrity. The wonderful filmmaking by Bigelow (happy to say that I’ve been a fan since “Strange Days”) may be big and loud but the screenplay is contemplative, subtle and barley even there and the two styles make for a perfect marriage (unlike Bigelow and James Cameron hehe). After it’s big Oscar run K-Big should really make an Afghanistan-set sequel. She can even take her time making it because we’re going to be there for a while.
8. The Box Director: Richard Kelly If you ask me who the best new directors of the last decade is –or was– I would point to Richard Kelly as someone who should make the list. If you then laughed at me I would cite “Donnie Darko” then recommend you watch or rewatch “Southland Tales” and give his latest film, “The Box,” a shot. If you still laughed I would tell you to enjoy your Zach fucking Snyder films and walk away in total defeat. But, yeah, Richard Kelly………. Richard fucking Kelly. Three films in and I’m wondering why we don’t pay more attention to this mainstream cult filmmaker. In each meticulously made project, one thought always comes to me: “What……. is….. going on?” For some that’s why his film suck and for others it’s why they’re so good. Eschewing the modernist impulses of “Southland Tales,” a brilliant flop of a project that must of exhausted him, Kelly returns to intimate mystery while adding the assured bravado of a modern Hitchcock. This is like a Hollywood-er version of “MulhollandDr.” (mystery boxes!) and “Lost Highway” (suburban murders go down while creepy dudes visit your house with absurd proposals and deadpan whispers of ”I’m looking at youright now”) meets one of the twistier moral scenario seen in “The Twilight Zone” (push a button = someone dies = you get a million dollars). Equal to those stories, “The Box” evokes a striking end-of-the-world-ish sci-fi doom and gloom scenario that brilliantly ties the fate of the world to the morals of it’s inhabitants. ::Sigh:: when it comes to the end of the world plots people picked the bluntness of “2012″ over the strange subtle qualities of “The Box.” I could go on describing the movie but think back to “Darko” and ask yourself if any description would do the film justice? Like “Darko,” this film made no money and like “Darko,” it may find a small but loyal following willing to “walk into the light.”
9. White Ribbon Director: Michael Heneke You could watch “White Ribbon” and mistake it for a lost classic of the new wave German cinema made in the 60s through the 80s. Except it’s not lost, it’s modern and made by Michael Heneke, one of the world’s greatest pessimists; a director that, like von Trier, is not only unafraid to sow the seeds of discord but gleeful about doing so. The film, a brilliant anti-teutonic counterpart to “Inglourous Basterds,” offers a harsh de-glorification of pre-war Germany. As much of a nationalistic cautionary tale as it is an intimate drama, the specific theme or thesis of the disturbing film is left deliberately murky. Instead, Haneke offers more of a mood than a theme as the slowly unfolding events in this small town parable play out foreshadowing, of course, the torn, divided and ultimately ruined Germany that is to come. But that’s just the context. At the heart of things, this appropriately black-and-white film is a brooding mystery about sins of the father(s), who are careless and cruel, and the sins of their offspring. The little basterds in this film could hold their own against those in Heneke’s”Funny Games,” ”Cache” or just about any one of his creepy-kid movies. Containing very little plot in the traditional sense of the word, “White Ribbon” moves at a glaciers and is shot with deliberate distance and space. The approach allows for an atmosphere that builds and builds and builds and, by the end, festers into something really ugly. It is a truly wonderful piece of filmmaking that evokes the iciness of Bergman and social malefice of Aurthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”
10. Ponyo Director: Hayo Miyazaki “Ponyo” has a way of washing over you like a warm current in the dark sea of life. He may have done better but, really, that’s a relative notion when you’re dealing with Hayo Miyazaki. Miyazaki’s latest and hopefully not last children’s film is a treasure that captures a dreamlike wonder and innocence of childhood. ”Ponyo” does not tread new ground for both Miyazaki(this is a Japanese “Little Mermaid” after all) or ecological message movies (it’s more imaginative than “Avatar” though) but it makes up for its lack of innovation with a wealth of dedication to the craft of non-ironic storytelling. The reigning animation master’s brilliance is actually getting old so I can see why “Ponyo” slipped through the cracks because his brilliant “Howl’s Moving Castle” suffered a similar fate few years back and that film is as awesome as they come! Like a lot of the under performing films on this list, this modest little gem would rather endure than cash-in. Recalling the opening shots of this movie where a ocean full of strange and wonderful life co-exist in a soup of marvelous creature creations, Miyazaki sets the stage for a young marine girl’s strange and scary adventure on dry land. She wants to become human and, in turn, we feel human while watching her story. This movie gives its viewer a world that feels loved and fully inhabited. I saw a fair amount of animated films in 2009 and none came the slightest bit close to matching “Ponyo’s” charm. Especially Pixar’s “Up,” a film so forced you can practically feel the balloons popping under the stress. Ponyo’s” serene, sea-set pleasures are unassuming and unsoliciting of our affection. It exists in a natural state of wonder and cuteness.
Alternate Top 10
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Director: Werner Herzog
Another “Bad Lieutenant?!” Who would have though? Who could have? Herzog, only Herzog! It’s hard to describe this movie. I’ll try, but I’ll fail. This is not a remake and its not a sequel or a prequel to the 1990s film of the same name starring Harvey Keitel, Nicholas Cage’s “National Treasure” co-star. It is its ts own beast, a totally original re-envisioning (for lack of a better word) of a film nobody asked to be made in the first place. Having seen far too many lame remakes/reboots I feel this is exactly the kind of film that should be re-made! Besides, one doesn’t cash-in with “Bad Lieutenant” because… where’s the cash? The fact that this was made means it was made for a reason. I say that because Werner Herzog is behind it. For those who don’t know, and shame on you if you don’t, Herzog is a gritty auteur who happens to be one of the most fascinating directors working today because he has figured out a way to make films for himself as much as he makes them for Hollywood (“Rescue Dawn” was his last). As wired as cat in heat and as sleeplessly bug eyed as a lizard, the film stars Nicholas Cage as a dirty, drug addicted cop. Now, Cage playing a cop under totally “normal” circumstances would be an exercise in overacting theatrics (ahem, “Face/Off”) but add heavy drugs, severe back pain, corruption and sexual compulsion and you have a potential acting disaster on par with “Wicker Man,” another cop performance. Instead, the crazy of Cage and craz(ier) of Herzog cancel each other out, yielding something improbably good. The clips above and below are my gift to you and if they don’t make you want to see this movie then you might just be too well-adjusted to watch. Hunchback, wild eyed, screaming, and laughing through every scene, this is a remarkable collision of Cage’s tension and Herzog’screativity. They are so good together that there almost doesn’t even need to be a scrip. And there practically isn’t. The performance is exceptional because I laughed at it withthe awareness in the back of my mind that what I’m laughing at is not entirely a joke (it shares that quality with”Antichrist”); there’s something genuine going on here. Same with the film. It has an unmistakable 90s aesthetic in the way it is shot, the quality of the shoot and the pacing. Did Herzog do that to pay homage to the original? Who knows? All I do know is that Herzog’s quirky indulgences (tons random shots of reptiles for instance makes for a truly wacky, only-in-Herzoglandmetaphor for the kind of people we’re dealing with) make this the best cop movie since “Kiss, Kiss Bang, Bang.”
okay, two more clips (I just can’t get enough)
A Serious Man Director: Joel and Ethan Coen …yet not as serious as one would think given the subject matter. Jews in Michigan in the 1960s. You can imagine. Except you can’t because you don’t think like the Coens. I cannot recall laughing this much at such a depressing film. ”A Serious Man” is about an even-tempered professor (Michael Stuhlbarg, the discovery of the year) whose life goes from bad to worse to down right ridiculous. Things fall apart in every way possible to a point of near divine intervention–its almost as if God has chosen this man to fuck with. All this character can do is… react. To people, to chance and to his own steadily declining nerves. The film takes the narrative causality of one of the Coen’s beloved crime movies like “Blood Simple” or “No Country” where the protagonist makes a bad moral choice at the beginning of the film and then everything after goes wrong from him in the karmic and physical sense. The difference is there’s no crime here, just minuscule choices that people make that shifts the tides of their life. The cruel joke is that others seem impervious to the fickle hand of fate. Everyone except for the marvelously creepy guy (Fred Melamed) who steals his wife away in the most humorously condescending way possible; “let’s just step back, and defuse the situation. I find, sometimes, if I count to ten… one… two… three… faw… or silently… … … …” This is the Coen’smost philosophically fertile film to date, which is saying a lot coming off of “No Country For Old Men.” Like that movie, the unmoving and seemingly illogical hand of fate becomes crossed with, or perhaps tangled to, forces of randomness. All of which are energized with the mystical forces of cabala, Judaism and vintage Coen wit and mockery. They really should create their own Church at this point. I would totally join. I get the sense that this is one of those rare times where the Coen’s are not mocking their protagonist. They haven’t really liked one of their protagonists since “Fargo.” Okay, also The Dude because who doesn’t like The Dude. “A Serious Man” has been called the Coen’s most personal film to date and I would go one step beyond that to call it their most real film. Real is a much better word, too, because I’m not so sure the directors are capable of being “personal” because that would require a person. These filmmakers are clearly not of this earth. They are studying us and they are laughing at us. The irony is that within the alien community they’re still probably considered weird.
Summer Hours Director: Olivier Assayas How do you sum up a person’s life? One way is by looking at all the crap they left behind. “Summer Hours” does that but –unlike my choice of words– in the most eloquent way possible. It is a leisurely meditation on lives lived and lives in the living; the passing of an old era is not really a passing at all but a ghostly merging with the collective now. In the least sentimental way possible (thank god) the film is about a old woman with a rich history who passes on and leaves her house and art collection behind for relatives to pick over. There are three distinct acts. The film opens strongly with a bittersweet family get-together, spends its middle chunk detailing the organizational and financial and, oh yeah, emotional aftermath of death (I loved the scene where the kids pass through the house with appraisers, picking at these things of great value that spiritually mean nothing to them anymore) and ends, perfectly if I may say, with the children of the children having a party in the now empty estate. They are innocent and possess very little awareness of the shared connections. But it’s there, and we feel it. They will die too the film seems to be saying in the most optimistic way possible. This film is not mean or sad or funny or one of those bullshit “Big Chill” celebration of lifestories. It’s also not cold or overly analytical. Instead I would just say that it’s a very natural effort from Olivier Assayas (“Irma Vep,” “Demon Lover”), who, by not showing off for the first time, has made his best film yet.
Crank: High Voltage Director:Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor “Juice me!” That line, or some variation of it, is spoken often. Jason Stathem, the speaker, growls lines such as that like roidedout Energizer Bunny with a really good sense of humor. So, okay, this is a total indulgence pick on my part; every year I seem to stumble across a fantastic film that happens to be viewed as nothing more than shallow commercial entertainment. For most, though, calling “Crank 2″ “entertainment” in any capacity is a kind act as it was generally disliked/dismissed by critics and unamused audiences who didn’t quite know what to make of it. Like the character that fuels it’s cinematic combustion engine, this action/fantasy/comedy is a thing of pure energy. It is also the most wildly fetishistic, male body worshiping hyperbole since Arnold walked into “Terminator” as naked as a baby. It works as a very clever action parody that went over everyone’s head. Or not as it’s remains unclear if I see more in the series than others do or if others don’t see enough. Like his action predecessors, Stathemgets ripped beyond belief but unlike them he takes his battery charged and literally heartless body through a plot beyond belief, finding time for sex, drugs and a full fledged/full sized Godzilla style battle with the man that stole his heart. Not in the gay way either, his actual heart.
Anvil!: The Story of Anvil Director: Sacha Gervasi The best documentary I’ve seen since “Grizzly Man” (made by the above filmmaker). In the commentary for “Anvil!,” the director proudly stated that Michel Gondrygives this movie to his actors and demands they watch it. There is more truthin it, he tells them, than anything you could possibly script out. That’s such a good point that I’ll try my best to forget that he must have given his actors that advice on the set of “Green Hornet.” This film is like lightening caught in a bottle. It’s so perfect that I can’t believe it exists the way it does. Shots and scenarios play out with such a pitch-perfect blend of pathos and comedy that it feels like a modern retelling of “Spinal Tap” right down to quirky characters, long hair and Stonehenge imagery. But this is not a put-on for the exact reason Gondrysays, you just can’t make this shit up! There is a moment where the aging, stringy hair rockers (down on their luck Canadian metal rocking Jews) are on a European tour that includes stops at clubs with two people to promote an album that those two people probably didn’t even buy. The band shows up in their own grungy van and do a set only to find out that their gig check (probably for about $10 bucks) was taken away because they showed up late. The owner, instead, decides to pay them in borscht. As the lead singer known as Lips (a truly wonderful character person) screams his “fuck you, man” anthems at the shady owner, spit flying out of his mouth in the process, the rest of the band can be seen in the back of the shot slurping up the slop with a look of utter metal-head defeat on their faces. It’s hilarious, its heartbreaking, it’s “Anvil!” Rock on!
Knowing Director: Alex Proyas Another Nic Cage movie made the list?! Go ahead, laugh, I did too until I sat back and thought about the effect this movie had on me. Cage fires on all hammy cylinders in a Saturday night supernatural thriller that, on the surface, looks like just another Cage paycheck. And it is! Except sometimes Cage accidentally manages to cash-in on a good movie. This year he did so on two which may never happen again. “Knowing” is a powerful sci-fi fantasy that takes the end-of-the-world subgenre to one of the most interesting places I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen it all except for “Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell” which is totally on my Netflixqueue. Though his films are not well regarded outside of a Roger Ebert review, the underrated director of films like “I, Robot” and “Dark City,” Alex Proyas, is actually one of the best big budget directors around. Proyasis that rare sort of popular filmmaker that figured out how to make his films visually interesting while doing the same thing with his stories. The pacing is remarkably effective because when the number-fixated conspiracies get old, Proyas does what a film like “2012″ couldn’t, he changes direction so that suddenly we’re now watching a full on horror mystery and when that gets old Proyas goes all sci-fi on us. When that gets old… well, it doesn’t because the kind of sci-fi this film has to offer never gets old! Nobody would be blamed for not seeing this silly looking movie, many however will be rewarded for taking a chance on it.
You, The Living Director: Roy Anderrson Life sucks. It’s a miserable, meaningless void that signifies nothing other than our misfortune to be alive and stuck with each other. Lets laugh about it! “You, the Living” features a string of vaguely connected vignettes covering the most extraordinary quirky of topics and finding deadpan humor in the most random places. Swedish director Roy Anderrson is not just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, he links together one magnificent scenario after anotherin an effort to dispel misery while wallowing in it. The title lays out the tone perfectly. It’s YOU, the living, not US the living and with this the director seems to be channeling from somewhere beyond subjective human experiences. In this film you will find trombone jam sessions, tortured dogs, suicide, drunks, crying –lots of crying– sex withemaciated trombone players, death, traffic jams (a shout-out to his masterful “Songs From the Second Floor”), direct address monologues, a larger emphasis on nightmares than I expected, judges chugging beer and dishing out the electric chair during court, people crammed like sardines in tight places like bus stops and elevators, Nazi tabletops, and enough generally weird shit to put the entire Japanese entertainment industry to shame. The miracle is that by the end you will not feel depressed. Somehow, Anderrsonpulls it off. Scenes play out with great humor (most are set up like a joke, punch-line and all) and an even better sense of composition. Anderrson is a director of singular importance and originality. He masters his craft not through traditional narratives, sunny dispositions or any editing to speak of. His camera sits and watches while you watch characters watch you watching the watching camera. Sure time flies when you’re having fun but this film is living proof that it flies by a lot faster when you’re going “what the fuck?”
Bright Star Director: Jane Campion Here is penance for all the dark love stories I saw and loved in 2009 even though, if you think about it, “Bright Star” is just as dark if not darker than them. I put off watching “Bright Star” until the last minute. And can you blame me? It’s a movie about the late love/early death of poet John Keats madeby the director of “The Piano.” “Crank 2″ this is not. I’ll say it now and say it loud: I, along with so many others, were wrong to not want to see and embrace this beautiful movie. Possessing the same timeless qualities as Keats’ poetry, you could watch “Bright Star” fifty years from now and find yourself just as moved by it as if you saw it at the Cannes premiere. The film is about the ever so short relationship between the poor poet (the unwashed-as-always Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish, a rare beauty whose rounded features are impossible to look away from–not only am I in love but I totally got Ryan Phillipe’s back now). The film is also about the artistic process. Keats and his adorably acerbic writing partner Charles ArmitageBrown (an out of left field Paul Schneider who steals the movie with his alluring Scottish accent and stinging irony) sit around, discuss words and “ruminate” which is another way of saying doing nothing–poets were definitely the 19th century equivalent to being in a rock band. This is one of the best films ever made about an artist and “the woman who inspired him.” Campion is too smart to resort to biopic clichés (no constant reminders that this unsung figure is going to be famous one day), period movie blunders (either trying to over dramatize a famous relationship as “The Young Victoria” did or underplaying things to a point of suicidal boredom as Campionherself did with “Portrait of a Lady”) or romantic hyperbole (the agonizing trope of making the muse the primary creative agent a la “Copying Beethoven”). She’s also not out to make this pure yet short lived relationship something of a tragedy (though Keats is pretty emo even before “the sickness”). Campion’s skills as a storyteller first and filmmaker second really shine here. She knows when to hold a shot and when to cut, she knows when and what dialogue is appropriate and when silence accomplishes just a much.
Beaches of the Agnes Director: Agnes Varda “What is cinema?…. Light coming from somewhere.” I can’t think of a better documentary for French film lovers! If only every director made a film about themselves. If only every director were as interesting as Varda. Realizing, and wisely so, that objective “reality” is impossible, director Agnes Vardadoes something much better with this most personal of films. She reflects reality through the sandy mirrors of the cinema. Looking like the grandmum from “Triplets of Belleville” I watched this self-made reassemblageof the New Wave legend’s life with a unwavering smile. Like “Summer Hours,” this is a leisurely stroll through the corridors of someone’s life. In that sense, it’s not positioned to be some grand or pretentious statement but a much earned bout of super self reflective filmmaking that reminded me of Al Pacino’s documentary about the artistic process “Looking for Richard.” The abstract editing is particularly remarkable. When Varda says “the idea of fragmentation fascinates me” she intends to backs that up in this moving biography. Reenactments are staged to reflect various moments in Varda’s life, French history and, most importantly, French film history (the history of a nation is composed of the mired histories of individuals after all). This film’s depiction of history is so deliberately staged that the film effectively challenges fiction and non fiction conventions, two genres Vardahas worked in. I am usually distracted by this technique in documentaries but “Beaches” makes good use of its “theater” by simply calling attention to how artificial it can be much in the same way Fellini did with “8 1/2″ or some of his documentaries like “Roma.” By the end though Vardabecomes comfortable with being “my self” in front of the camera and this candidness is what really ends up making the film something special. With “Beaches” Vardareflects on the eternal nature of cinema by juxtaposing that magical quality with the fleeting nature of her own life. I never grew tired of her photography, her stories or her spirit. What a trippy self-tribute.
Moon Director: Duncan Jones “Moon” is visionary but a truly depressing feat of science fiction storytelling. Set in a space station, this one man show stars Sam Rockwell in a performance that put everything else to shame in 2009. Hell, even his robot companion, voiced by Kevin Spacey in his best performance since “The Usual Suspects,” outdoes most performances. “Moon” is a science fiction film for people who like the look, feel and doomed intimacy of something like “2001: A Space Odyssey” more than the hipster schlock of last year’s “Star Trek.” The one (crazy) man scenario also recalls the oddball charm of the sci-fi cult classics like “Silent Running” as well as, in the end, the surreal disturbances of Friedkin’s “Bug.” Yes, there was a time when science fiction experimented and took chances. Unlike it’s tragic Phantom of the Spacestationhero, “Moon” is free from corporate intervention and tampering. The best thing “Moon” does is reminds us that budgets don’t make for good sci-fi movies, ideas do. This is a film I admire, not one that I like, and not one that I find easy to write about so I’ll move on to one I do…
Special Mention…
Drag Me To Hell Director: Sam Raimi Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of Raimi, I’m just not a fan of Hollywood SAM RAIMI, the guy that directed those dreadful “Spider-Man” films. I derived practically no enjoyment out of his big budget escapades and that is strange principally because Raimi, at his core (and when he’s at his best) is one of the most purely enjoyable American filmmakers working today. I specify “America” because there’s nobody more fun to watch than Joe Wright. “Drag Me To Hell,” a fantastic horror comedy made in the goof-spook vein of “Evil Dead,” makes the list for that simple reason. It’s sense of fun is pure.
Still Walking Director: Hirokazu Koreeda “Still Walking” is about a family that reunites one weekend during a summer. This modest film by Hirokazu Koreeda (“Nobody Knows”), is very similar in plot, if not culture, to Assayas’ “Summer Hours.” It’s nonetheless a rewarding to see how two countries tackle a similar issue without resorting to melodrama. This wonderful little reflection on life, death and family history being passed down from one generation to another (to yet another: children) is told in the gloriously un-rushed sea set tradition of Yasujiro Ozu. Pretty much the only difference is that the returning son in this film will occasionally pick up his cell to receive a text message. Oh, and the story climates in an action packed denouement where a cranky old father, his unloved son and his unloved son’s loved step son, walk to the beach… for five minutes… in silence. God, I love these kinds of films. Issues from the past linger but don’t fester and are not always resolved. Bickering continues but never comes to a blow. Life moves on and sometimes people don’t/can’t/won’t change. Some lessons are learned, others are simply washed away by time while just a few are passed on such as sonss not making the same mistakes as their father. Here is a film not in a rush to say anything that ends up saying a whole lot.
Sherlock Holmes Director: I can’t believe I’m writing this but, yes, Guy Ritchie While it’s sad to see Holmes turned into an 1800s master of science “Iron Man” action hero, this modern retelling of the Holmes mythos managed to be both fun and daftly smart. It’s easy to make fun of Guy Ritchie at this point and hard to remember that, however arch and bullheaded he tends to be (Britain’s Michael Bay), he did make at least one good movie, “Snatch. Make that two good films! This time Ritchie doesn’t show off as much as he allows his character to show off for him. And he’s got the right man for the job. Robert Downey Jr. gives Holmes the Johnny Depp treatment and by that I mean he fully looses himself in this character, giving him a ton of idiosyncratic ticks and a real sense of obsession. As far from masterpiece theater as human can possibly be, Holmes a reclusive lout laying in filth and performing his OCD experiments on flies and dogs and himself until the “game is a foot” at which point he’s a scruffy, clue hunting hound dog. I particularly enjoyed how Ritchie is able to make Holmes an action hero but in such a way that’s somewhat true to his style. This is just the sort of take/update to the character that was needed to make him relevant again so quit your bitching and enjoy. The film, as well as Holmes, may be silly but he’s never dumb and the film actually values the mind over the muscle. When on the precipice of attack, for instance, the film freezes as Holmes internally calculates the best method of attack (figuring out the attacker is a drunk by the smell of booze on his breath, for instance, then applying a quick jab to his liver). After living in the great detective’s brain for a few moments the film will pop us back to real time as we see the chain of attacks Holmes laid out so neatly performed in an orgiastic flurry of intellect, sensuality and kinetic action. The film applies that same level of causality to Holmes’ power as a detective. A smudge of chalk on a shirt or speck of inc on an ear can basically sum up a character’s life story while something as small as a stain on a rat’s tail can lead Holmes to the source of his next clue. This happens a lot and Ritchie’s zippy style is quite good at visually representing Holmes’ methods with flash forwards/backs that almost match Edgar Wright (“Hot Fuzz,” “Shaun of the Dead”) in visual cleverness.
Taken Director: Pierre Morel Speaking of fun. This year’s “Gran Torino” ladies and gentlemen. There’s just something about watching grumpy old men kicking all kinds of ass that feels so damn satisfying these days. Liam Neeson, a retired CIA agent, is called back to “my old life” for a personal bout of vengeance and heads to Europe to kick the head in of every shit eating piece of Euro trash that may have had anything to do with his dumb ass bubbly daughter who dun got herself kidnapped and sold into white slavery like a bruised puppy. Hahahahaha!!!!!! This was one of the great guilty pleasures of the year for me right alongside KFC’s Kentucky Grilled Chicken except I don’t know which is more overcooked. Watching the angry American brnad his personal blend of Papa justice (not eye for an eye but eye for a head) upon the “bad guys” was a cathartic thrill as it arrived in an age where Americans are completely inept and powerless both abroad and in country. That the film is made by a Frenchmen and stars a giant elf of an Irishmen makes it an oddball role-playing inversion where the Euros get to imagine what it’s like being bossy, self-entitled Americans. You know what, they’re good at it. This twist gives the film an ever-so-subtle spin on the usual pro-American Hollywood hooey. But, really, I love “Taken” because, despite its total preposterousness, it ended up taken (haha) itself seriously. Maybe this is not a good thing but the film’s humorless sincerity combined with a “Death Wish” ideology reminded me of the good old days where bad asses like Arnold or Chuck (of the Bronson and/or Norris variety) would go into a room to save their daughter and not leave till the evil doers were rounded up, grounded up, and spit out and, hum, who are we forgetting, oh yeah, their daughters were sitting pretty atop their shoulders. God bless American violence.
Whatever Works Director: Woody Allen “Hollywood Ending,” “Melinda and Melinda,” “Anything Else” and last year’s under the radar “Whatever Works” are some of the least popular Woody Allen films of the decade and perhaps ever made. They also happen to be in on short list of the filmmaker’s most underrated works to date. Speaking of works, ”Whatever Works” finds Larry David doing more than just being Larry David. His persona here is Larry David by way of Woody Allen! Okay, not a huge leap but it’s a match made in non-Christian heaven. When it comes to Woody Allen I have taught myself not to listen to what other people, even Woody Allen fans, (especially Woody Allen fans) think about Woody Allen movies.
Dean Spanley Director: Toa Fraser “Dean Spanley” is really just about a father who has been estranged from his son. That alone would not be a reason to rank it here so I should elaborate. It’s about a father and son who are united by a friend named Dean (Sam Neill) who, as it seems, was a dog in a past life and will only talk about those “dog days” when under the influence of a rare wine previously reserved for Spanish royalty. Did I forget anything? Probably but at least I didn’t forget to put it on this list.
The Messenger Director: Oren Moverman This somber but simmering on the insidemodern war drama is about two messed up soldiers, Woody Harrilson and Sam Foster, who go around telling people their kids/husbands/baby mamma’s etc. have died in a stupid, pointless war. What a job. I like to think of “The Messenger” as “Up in the Air” for the non-retarded who hated “Up in the Air.” It tells you a story without making the characters into “gee, these are real Americans, lets sing their common praises.” It’s overwrought in a big way but not in a way I minded because the film is approaching tired material (soldier coming home from war, yada, yada, yada) witha sense of nobility a rare mood of outright anger at what’s going on overseas and here at home. “The Messenger” is great because it starts about these two men, one a former drunk (Woody Harrelson) and the other’s a current dick (Ben Foster), who don’t know each other but rather than being ALL about that, the film splinters off when Foster falls in love with one of his jobs, a single mom played by Samantha Morton. Once again the film avoids clichés here. Foster is good but the reay show stealer is Harrelson, who finds his most interesting character in years. His final scene is heartbreaking perfection and if there’s anyone other than Mr. Waltz I’d love to see get the Oscar this year it’s him. Plus he was in “Zombieland” so that’s pretty cool.
Pandorum Director: Christian Alvart This year saw an explosion of hot sci-fistories hit the scene. Very few were actually good. The first, “Pandorum,” is about two characters waking up in a space ship withno idea how they got there while other, the significantly more arty “Moon,” is about one person on a space station with no memory of his past. Both make the 09 list because they are amazing, visionary works but also to make a point. That point being that Hollywood is mainstreaming sci-fi to a point of generic dilution. These films take it back to its roots, one through grindhouse sci-fi nightmares and the other through art house dreams. The huge impact “Star Trek,” “District 9,” “Transformers 2″ and “Avatar” helped to give sci-fi its first genuine renaissance in years, decades maybe. I’m happy in a sense and sad in another. Happy for my favorite genre. Sad that my favorite genre is being watered down by clunky moralizing and obvious metaphors. “Pandorum” is not that kind of film. It’s a dark and unforgiving space horror movie (the survival horror video game “Dead Space” withelements of the cult movie “Event Horizon” and some of the better aspects of “Saw” thrown in) witha claustrophobic mise-en-scene that reminded me of “Alien” or, to a lesser degree “The Descent.” Best of all, and what makes this film worth seeing, is a final revelation that stands as one of sci-fi best genre twists of all time.
Adventureland Director: Greg Mottola “Superbad” mets “Wet Hot American Summer” except it doesn’t try as hard either. Plus the film throws in Kristen Stewart as a Jew and Martin Starr (“Freaks and Geeks”) as, um, an even bigger Jew. Score!
A Serious Man Director: Tom Ford Ack! I forgot to include “A Serious Man” when I first made this list. Crippling third act problems aside, a few things save this unique film about the saddest gay man on earth. First, of course, Colin Firth in a touching and uniquely human performance. We see the world through this sad man’s eyes and it is as if we’re seeing it with new eyes thanks to Tom Ford’s vision. I wish more non-directors could get films like this made but I can see why they don’t as it takes a special kind of director to wrap up everything by the end. Still, Ford’s ability to experiment with cinematography and period movie conventions (not to mention out-Mad Menning ”Mad Men”) make this film hard to forget. Er, well, I kinda did forget it but I’m mad at myself.
The Good, The Bad, the Weird Director: Ji-woon Kim Some of the first, a little of the second a lot of the third. This is another oddball Korean release except it’s is not a horror film. Or a drama. The director’s previous films include “A Tale of Two Sisters” and “3 Extremes” which he co-directed with none other than Chan Park (who made my number four pick) and the genre(s) of choice here is Western screwball comedy. It’s not only the highest budgeted Korean film ever made but one of the most fun. This quirky Korean epic (a chow mein western?) about a hero a thief and a thug looking for treasure marked with a big X burned into a much sought after and McGuffinized map reminded me of the spirit of the American adventure in the days before stars and high concepts and CGI took a big dump on creativity.
The Fantastic Mr. Fox Director: Wes Anderson There’s a moment in this stop motion animated film where a recovering boy gets mad at his cousin from out of town visiting his family’s fox hole. The cousin cries and the boy (Anderson staple Jason Schwartzmen) comforts him by showing the crying fox his train set. The film cuts to the fox family’s shanty house (literally a hole in the ground) and in the background we see a real train, from the human world, passing by. It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. Wes Anderson is showing us his train set. Is Anderson capable of anything else? Visually, well yeah because this is his first animated film but at the same time “Fox” is as coyly self-examined as anything he’s done since “Rushmore.” Besides the hole non-human thing, “Fox” is basically just another Wes Anderson film in stop motion sheep’s clothing. Everything takes place on a 180 degree plane and every line of dialogue is wry and overly factual. While I’m tired of Anderson, this film renewed my fondness if only for a short period. I like how the film out-humanizes humans by making its universe of animals (even the ones who usually eat each other) respect each other and even band together to do one thing: “Survive,” the grinning Papa Fox voiced by George Clooney (in full Danny Ocean mode) says with such gravely coolness that his performance easily surpasses that whole “Up in the Air” embarrassment. The film also get points in my book for casting Jarvis Cocker as a thug by day and musician by night who is told “That’s just bad songwriting. You wrote a bad song, Petey!” by his land hording and Fox hating hood of a boss and, you know what, I think I just ranked this film on my list so I could include that line. I’ll just give co-writer Noah Baumbach credit for writing it and call it a day.
The Watchmen Director: Zach Snyder Hold up, hold up, this does not mean “Watchmen” is on my list. It just happens to be in my list, you see, hanging out like someone at a party that wasn’t invited and nobody’s is talking to.
worth mentioning…
Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
I Love You, Man (John Hamburg)
35 Shots of Rum (Clair Denis–might have gone higher if I got around to seeing it with English subtitles.)
24 City (Zhang Ke Jia)
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (David Yates)
Continuing my streak of missing at least one in the big category I got 7 out of 8 but I don’t feel bad because nobody could have predicted Precious winning screenplay. Plus it’s great to see Jason Reitman not get something for the first time in his life. Overall I got 17 out of 24 in my guessing which is down from my 19/24 tally last year. What killed me was Avatar’s losses in the sound department (sure Hurt Locker was better but, come on). Very boring show but it’s saying something that this is only the third time in a decade where a good film won Best Picture. No Country and Lord of the Rings were the only other two.
Best Picture
“Avatar”
“The Blind Side”
“District 9”
“An Education”
“The Hurt Locker” (saw the mistake. I’m NOT picking Blind Side to win. Changed at 5:04)
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Precious”
“A Serious Man”
“Up”
“Up in the Air”
Note: All final predictions to be locked in by Saturday night. I usually flip-flop at the last minute.
My Vote Would Go To, in this order: Inglourious Basterds, Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, District 9, Precious, Avatar, Up, An Education, Up in the Air, and Blind Side in the back, way waaaaay waaaaaaaaay in the back. Sadly, the only two with any shot here are Hurt Locker and Avatar. Funny how even with ten nominated films there are still very few surprises. I half think that spineless Oscar voters tend to vote not for what they think is the best but what has the best chance, or most hype. The problem is that Avatar has a lot of hype. In fact, it’s all hype. Still, Hurt Locker is a film that plays much better on DVD screeners. Without the novelty allure 3D Avatar’s many flaws become clear. Should Not Be Here: It’s a shame that Blind Side got a nomination. Not quite as bad as Blind Side but still should not have been nominated are Up, Up in the Air, An Education, District 9 and Avatar. Whew, that’s a lot. Robbed: Too numerous to count.
Directing (all predicted winners labeled with a red asterix)
* “Avatar” James Cameron ***“The Hurt Locker” Kathryn Bigelow * “Inglourious Basterds” Quentin Tarantino * “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Lee Daniels * “Up in the Air” Jason Reitman
My Vote Would Go To: Tarantino first, K-Big second, nobody third. QT is just too good to win a directing Oscar. I have this suspicion though that there might be a picture/director but if there is one it will probably be an Avatar Picture/Bigelow Director split so Bigelow is safe for now. Should Not Be Here:Reitman and Daniels. Robbed: James Grey (“Two Lovers”) was once again overlooked.
Actor in a Leading Role
*** Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart” * George Clooney in “Up in the Air” (and I usually love the Cloonster) * Colin Firth in “A Single Man” * Morgan Freeman in “Invictus” * Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker”
My Vote Would Go To:Tough one. Renner and Firth, two very different performances, are as good as they got last year. Bridges is also pretty damn cool in “Crazy Heart” (one of those bad movies/good performances deals) and when he wins I’ll be clapping. Should Not Be Here:Clooney. I love the Cloonster but he’s done better. Robbed:Viggo Mortensen in The Road. Kang Sung in Thirst. And call me crazy but Jason Statham was underrated in Crank: High Voltage.
Actress in a Leading Role
***Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side” * Helen Mirren in “The Last Station” * Carey Mulligan in “An Education” * Gabourey Sidibe in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” * Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”
My Vote Would Go To:Nobody could have done what Gabourey Sidibe did in “Precious.” I didn’t care for any of the other performances nominated but would be happy if Streep won. Should Not Be Here:Might as well have nominated Sandra Bullock for All About Steve cuz she’s such a good actress. Robbed: Maria Onetto in The Headless Woman. A more high profile snub was Melanie Laurent’s omission in this category. She should lock the doors and blow up the Kodak theater in retaliation.
Actor in a Supporting Role
* Matt Damon in “Invictus” * Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger” * Christopher Plummer in “The Last Station” * Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones” (first ever Oscar nom for someone doing a Dr. Evil impression lol) ***Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds”
My Vote Would Go To:Waltz. End of story. Would be happy if Plummer had more of a shot. Should Not Be Here: Damon. Boring performance in a boring movie. Robbed: Steven Lang, the heavy from Avatar. His character came to life while all the others put me to sleep.
Actress in a Supporting Role
* Penélope Cruz in “Nine” * Vera Farmiga in “Up in the Air” * Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Crazy Heart” * Anna Kendrick in “Up in the Air” *** Mo’Nique in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
My Vote Would Go To:Gyllenhaal was surprisingly good in this thankless performance. Should Not Be Here: Kendrick first. Her performances is all wrong for that movie. Cruz was also nothing special in “Nine.” Robbed: Samantha Morton, my favorite actress, did so much with so little in “The Messenger” that she should have an Oscar by now.
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
* “District 9” Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell * “An Education” Screenplay by Nick Hornby * “In the Loop” Screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche * “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher ***“Up in the Air” Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner
My Vote Would Go To: In the Loop is the only truly worthy script of the bunch because it actually adds something to the source material. Too bad it has no shot but that’s usually the case with this historically bankrupt category. Should Not Be Here: As usual the probable winner, Up in the Air, is the one film with no business even being nominated. An Education was also pretty bland but Hornby was once a pretty good author so it’s fun seeing him nominated as a screenwriter. Robbed: The Road managed to capture McCarthy’s prose better than “No Country for Old Men” did.
Writing (Original Screenplay)
***“The Hurt Locker” Written by Mark Boal * “Inglourious Basterds” Written by Quentin Tarantino * “The Messenger” Written by Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman * “A Serious Man” Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen * “Up” Screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy
My Vote Would Go To:Easy. Basterds. But I was totally won over with “Serious Man,” one of the Coen’s best scripts in years. I’m also a big fan of “The Messenger” and its writer who made the great “Jesus’ Son” a number of years ago. Should Not Be Here: Everything should be here except for the overrated/overwritten “Up.” Robbed: Robbed: Sure, a lot of good scripts were robbed but for the first time in years I like the Original Screenplay category for the most part. The sloppy, haphazard writing/plotting of Up is the only exception.
Animated Feature Film
* “Coraline” Henry Selick * “Fantastic Mr. Fox” Wes Anderson * “The Princess and the Frog” John Musker and Ron Clements * “The Secret of Kells” Tomm Moore ***“Up” Pete Docter
My Vote Would Go To:“Coraline” made me remember what I forgot, that Neil Gaimen is really good at making kids stories for adults. I also didn’t hate “Mr. Fox” as much as I thought. Should Not Be Here: I’m not going to say “Up” but… um, “Up.” Robbed: WHERE’s FUCKING PONYO, AHHHHHH FUCK YOU!
Cinematography
*** “Avatar” Mauro Fiore * “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” Bruno Delbonnel *“The Hurt Locker” Barry Ackroyd * “Inglourious Basterds” Robert Richardson * “The White Ribbon” Christian Berger
My Vote Would Go To:Potter, Ribbon then Basterds. Should Not Be Here: Funny how one of the best movies here, Hurt Locker, is the weakest in this category. Robbed: Robbed: White Ribbon. Oh, wait they actually bothered to watch that movie. Cool! How about The Road and Two Lovers. Or Serious Man. Or You, The Living. Lots of great Cinematography last year.
Art Direction
*** “Avatar” Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg; Set Decoration: Kim Sinclair * “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” Art Direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; Set Decoration: Caroline Smith * “Nine” Art Direction: John Myhre; Set Decoration: Gordon Sim * “Sherlock Holmes” Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer * “The Young Victoria” Art Direction: Patrice Vermette; Set Decoration: Maggie Gray
My Vote Would Go To: Holmes, the most unlikely underrated film of 09, looks fantastic. From the city streets to dirty alleys to that big ass boat to science labs up to no good to Holmes’ dark nest of OCD filth, this is the most amazing art direction undertaking since The Prestige. There’s just so much (besides Downey’s wonderful scenery chewing) going on within the frame. Should Not Be Here: Young Victoria. Looked fine but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Robbed: Watchmen captured the look of the comic perfectly. That’s way harder to pull off than Young Victoria.
Costume Design
* “Bright Star” Janet Patterson * “Coco before Chanel” Catherine Leterrier * “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” Monique Prudhomme * “Nine” Colleen Atwood *** “The Young Victoria” Sandy Powell
My Vote Would Go To: The Good Doctor just because it’s good to see a non period drama win this for once. Should Not Be Here: Period (yawn) dramas. Robbed: The tattered yarns of The Road. People seem to forget that great costumes are not always supposed to look good.
Documentary (Feature)
* “Burma VJ” Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller *** “The Cove” Nominees to be determined * “Food, Inc.” Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein * “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith * “Which Way Home” Rebecca Cammisa
My Vote Would Go To: Food Inc. Should Not Be Here: Haven’t seen enough and there’s a reason for that: dees dare some boring docs. Robbed: Anvil! The Story of a Doc Snubbed In Favor of Tedious 90s era Doc Noms.
Film Editing
* “Avatar” Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron * “District 9” Julian Clarke ***“The Hurt Locker” Bob Murawski and Chris Innis * “Inglourious Basterds” Sally Menke * “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Joe Klotz
My Vote Would Go To: Basterds! No question about it. The editing really helped set the many varying moods and transition between the many characters and plot actions. Should Not Be Here: The editing in Precious is too grandiose when it’s doesn’t have the standard cutting of a TV movie. Robbed: Antichrist, Two Lovers and The Box.
Foreign Language Film
* “Ajami” Israel * “El Secreto de Sus Ojos” Argentina * “The Milk of Sorrow” Peru ***“Un Prophète” France * “The White Ribbon” Germany
My Vote Would Go To: White Ribbon is a timeless movie. I have a feeling it’s not “social” (read PC) enough to win. The “inverted Scarface” Prophet’s got a lot of momentum but it’s not the top or even second movie most are picking to win, that would be Ribbon and something called El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secrets in Their Eyes) which must be good since so many people are including in (Update: just read the synopsis about a unsolved murder and it does indeed sounds cool). I hope I’m wrong about Prophet. Should Not Be Here: I don’t know, whatever. Not a good year for foreign films. Robbed: Thirst was hurt by the fact that it’s a vampire movie. Besides, the Academy really sucks when it comes to recognizing good (or any) Korean films. Fuck em’.
Makeup
* “Il Divo” Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano ***“Star Trek” Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow * “The Young Victoria” Jon Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore (huh?)
My Vote Would Go To: None. Makeup is a stupid category. Should Not Be Here:Young Victoria. Nothing special. Oh, it’s about Royality, I guess the makeup must be good. Stupid logic voters. Robbed: The Watchmen
Music (Original Score)
* “Avatar” James Horner * “Fantastic Mr. Fox” Alexandre Desplat * “The Hurt Locker” Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders * “Sherlock Holmes” Hans Zimmer ***“Up” Michael Giacchino
My Vote Would Go To: Hans Zimmer is so underrated. His Holmes score fits the movie, the tone and the time period perfectly. I love Desplat but honestly can’t remember any of his music from Fox. Same goes for the music of Hurt Locker, I can’t remember a thing about it. Should Not Be Here: James Horner recycled his old music (that wasn’t good to begin with!) to make Avatar even more annoying. Trumpets and tribal chants are sucide on the ears. Robbed: Once again Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (The Road, The Proposition a few years ago) were dissed in favor of more traditional scores.
Music (Original Song)
* “Almost There” from “The Princess and the Frog” Music and Lyric by Randy Newman * “Down in New Orleans” from “The Princess and the Frog” Music and Lyric by Randy Newman * “Loin de Paname” from “Paris 36” Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyric by Frank Thomas * “Take It All” from “Nine” Music and Lyric by Maury Yeston ***“The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart” Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett
My Vote Would Go To: NONE, all nominated songs suck. Okay, The Weary Kind wasn’t all out bad but it was the weakest song in the movie which really hurt it because it was supposed to be Bridges’ “comeback” song. Should Not Be Here: I can’t even remember the songs in Princess and the Frog. Robbed: Does “Bale Out” count? Totally should.
Visual Effects
***“Avatar” Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones * “District 9” Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken * “Star Trek” Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton
My Vote Would Go To: This is the one category that Avatar belongs. Should Not Be Here: It’s all good in da hood. Robbed: Harry Potter’s understated visuals. Oh, and how about Moon? You know, “good” visual effects do not have to ALWAYS be the most expensive visual effects. Sometimes, as in the case of Moon, it’s the way the effects are used that should be rewarded because it’s more creative. Oh, but what does creativity have to do with winning an Oscar these days?
***
The Usual Crap Nobody Cares About…
Short Film (Animated)
* “French Roast” Fabrice O. Joubert * “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty” Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell * “The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” Javier Recio Gracia * “Logorama” Nicolas Schmerkin * “A Matter of Loaf and Death” Nick Park (Can Park ever get enough Oscars? No. He is the anti-Pixar and I love him for that)
Documentary (Short Subject)
* “China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province” Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill * “The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner” Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher * “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant” Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert * “Music by Prudence” Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett * “Rabbit à la Berlin” Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra
Short Film (Live Action)
* “The Door” Juanita Wilson and James Flynn * “Instead of Abracadabra” Patrik Eklund and Mathias Fjellström * “Kavi” Gregg Helvey * “Miracle Fish” Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey * “The New Tenants” Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson
Sound Editing
* “Avatar” Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle * “The Hurt Locker” Paul N.J. Ottosson * “Inglourious Basterds” Wylie Stateman * “Star Trek” Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin * “Up” Michael Silvers and Tom Myers
Sound Mixing
* “Avatar” Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson * “The Hurt Locker” Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett * “Inglourious Basterds” Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti and Mark Ulano (wow, another sound nod for IG. Werid, cuz most of the film is very low key) * “Star Trek” Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin * “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson (no kidding, the sound is fantastic in this, um, less than fantastic film)
What’s Good:Scorsese’s best film since “Bringing Out the Dead.” A solid screenplay adaptation remains undaunted by an overbearing director and overwrought actor. I also like how this period movie does not contain the usual period music that Scorsese has a tendency to punish us with. Also, I must say that seeing actors Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer and Elias Koteas in a Martin Scorsese film for the first time is a real treat–see Marty, there are actually some good actors around who weren’t in “Titanic.” What’s Not:Even overrated directors and actors can make a good movie every now and again. Fake Peter Travis Blurb: More twists and turns than my small intestine. Martin Scorsese is the best director who ever walked the ear, I want to blow him, um, a kiss. This one’s a real grabber!
With “Shutter Island” Martin Scorsese’s influences coming from a number of different places and thankfully none of them have anything to do with organized crime. Let’s start with the period of movies in which this one is set, the early 50s. This is an insane asylum mystery with all the subtlety of, well, an insane asylum. Asking the much asked question: “it the patients who are crazy or the system that contains them?” the great Sam Fuller movie “Shock Corridor” came to my mind a lot but probably a dozen more came to Scorsese’s with Hitchcock, of course, begin a clear favorite. One influence that Scorsese couldn’t have foreseen or intended is a palpably empathetic horror aesthetic that plays out like a Hollywood version of the survival horror video game “Silent Hill” with a closely identified character walking down long corridors while people in straight jackets jump out to say “boo!” Another noticeable and random influence comes from the “dark” Spielberg epoch that gave us a ton of crappy films like “Saving Private Ryan” (both share a WWII theme), “Minority Report” (ditto, noir) with a commonality of dead children in all. Like Spielberg’s war and mystery works, “Shutter Island” is a big booming melodramatic murder mystery with vibrant colors penetrating the beautifully bleached cinematography. Unlike Spielberg though Scorsese it too smart to let emotion get the better of him or his characters. Instead, he allows emotion to consume them. The final big influence on Scorsese seems to be Scorsese himself, specifically the frantic “Cape Fear” Scorsese full of anger and pessimism and crazy people and big storms whose godly power puts pithy earthlings in their place until the story is told.
Scorsese seems to work better when he’s not making the kind of movie that he thinks we expect him to make. The god awful “Departed,” “Gangs of New York” and even (don’t hate me, but…) “Goodfellas” are examples of a smart director who is able to channel a lot of creative energy into films that are basically second-hand crime stories that add nothing to the genre except for a fun but ultimately empty sense of misplaced manic energy. “Shutter Island” is not that Scorsese. But that does not meant that it fits with the other Scorsese who stumbled upon his best work in years with “The Aviator” (which turns out to be not even that good in retrospect). Like the protagonist that haunts the shadowy, light flickery institutional corridors, this film exists in-between worlds without ever seeming to belong. Gotta love limbo.
The film features Leonardo DiCaprio in yet another one of his tightly wound performances. As a bonus he even reprises that silly Boston accent from “Depaaaaaaaateeeeeeed.” At least he’s not playing a South African again. Leo is an odd actor to assess because his selection in roles far surpasses his ability in said roles. After “Titanic” Leonardo became a huge name but even then few really thought he was super talented, especially when he followed “Titanic” up with “The Beach” (between those two, it’s no wonder he gets sea sick in “Shutter Island’s” opening scene). Then something happened. He made “Gangs of New York” with Scorsese. That’s all it took. Really?! People instantly started taking him seriously even though he did nothing to prove why we should. In fact, “Gangs” was proof of the opposite as even fans didn’t love him in that (it didn’t help that he was standing next to Daniel Day Lewis). In all of his subsequent films with Scorsese (or Ridley Scott or Woody Allen or Ed Zwick or Sam Mendes etc.) I never understood what either saw in each other because neither brings out the best in the other. This is the one of the most dull actor/director duos of all time, ranking just above the Stephen Sommers/Kevin J. O’Connor powerhouse that yield, to this day, gems like “The Mummy,” “Deep Rising” and “G.I. Joe.” My only guess is that Scorsese became blinded by the school girl allure of Leo (not Leonardo, just Leo) and thus wanted to forge him into his very own De Niro and, like a fluttery eyed ingénue, Leo, in turn, did his best to impress this “genus” and he was smart to do so. The fact remains that DiCpario finds himself miscast in, oh, just about every film he’s ever been in. Okay, “Catch Me if You Can” (Spielberg of course) and “Titanic” used the naughty/clean boy act right and “Shutter Island” might be lucky number three except that’s not a lucky number at all.
Putting the mystery of DiCaprio’s esteemed career aside, there are a lot of fun twists in this mystery, so much so that many people who saw it last weekend fully expected to see ghosts. And maybe they did. Either way, by the end we see how Leo’s performance actually makes a lot of sense given the context he is placed in which I won’t spoil. Aside from a lot of really embarrassing interrogation scenes (DiCaprio is never worse than when he projects disdain for another character), this is a “good” Leo performance if only because it’s the sort of overwrought, shaky-hand and intense-all-the-time performances that the film absolutely needed in order to work and is thus is able to work him into the narrative web rather than the other way around as is usually the case.
The story is not going to win any awards but this is not that kind of movie. Hum, come to think of it “The Departed” also was not intended to be but that didn’t stop people from heaping praise upon it as if it were the last time they were ever going to get to do so with Scorsese. Everything we see in this movie exists through the dark ringed eyes of the protagonist, a U.S. Marshal, and if you follow the logic of his encounter with this strange Island and it’s secret holding overseers (Ben Kingsley is particularly good as a very calm and modern Freudian psychiatrist that rejects the harsh old ways of treatment… or does he?) may be far fetched if you think about it but it holds up much better than it has any right to–or, at least, it holds up as much as one can say it holds up having seen it only once. The plot, about a man looking for lost things on this island (yes, I’m being deliberately vague), does a remarkable job at keeping us and it’s character in the moment (Laeta Kalogridis should be commended for adapting Dennis Lehane’s novel) without ever getting wearing out its welcome. Sure it strings us along but does it so well enough that we want to go along.
“Shutter Island” is particularly adept at reinventing itself at the end of ever act. Not only does the primary mystery get solved half way through but the final twist, an epic though not terribly original role reversal, is not only a whopper but a whopper that’s actually grounded in reality. Granted it’s a dour Lehanian reality, but still. It’s not great art, it’s just good pulp. If there is a flaw it is not that Scorsese is aiming low but that he’s so damn obvious about how low he’s aiming as if he wants points for not being high brow. But is he ever really high brow? Scorsese wants us to know with every twist and turn of the camera and every sharp musical chord that pounds away at our heads like one of Leo’s migraines, is that he’s in on the spooky fun.
“Shutter Island” is a good mystery movie if you can forget that Scorsese approaches it as such a deliberate mystery movie. In the fuck-with-your-head genre, it’s too forced to appreciate in the say way as a David Fincher mystery like “The Game” or Michael Heneke’s “Cache” but I’m not dumb enough to expect more from this project or director than either are capable of delivering. I would be foolish and even lying if I said the end product isn’t totally enjoyable while it’s unfolding. It’s a B-movie in every sense of the word including…
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