1. Breaking Bad (AMC)

Full List

1. Breaking Bad (AMC)
2. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (FX)
3. Damages (FX)
4. Archer (FX)
5. Caprica (SyFy)
6. Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Cartoon Network/Adult Swim)
7. Doctor Who (BBC)
8. Lost (ABC)
9. Dexter (Showtime)
10. Party Down (Starz)
11. Justified (FX)
12. Fringe (Fox)
13. Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO)
14. True Blood (HBO)
15. Code Geass: R2 (uh, the Internet)
16. Venture Brothers (Cartoon Network/Adult Swim)
17. 24 (FOX)
18. Chuck (NBC)
19. Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood (Cartoon Network/Adult Swim)
20. Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! (Cartoon Network/Adult Swim)
21. The IT Crowd (BBC)
22. Mad Men (AMC)
23. Smallville (CW)
24. Vampire Diaries (CW)
25. Human Target (FOX)

long winded thoughts…

1. Breaking Bad season 3–
   Season one of “Breaking Bad” set the tone for the series but did little else. This was a show that was not only cut in half due to a crippling writer’s strike but lacked elegance and narrative refinement. Season two needs to be recognized for taking a decent cult show and elevating it into something of a critical breakthrough. An uncompromising drama that could be poignant yet totally irreverent and wacky. Season three however is when a lot more of us started thinking about “Breaking Bad” not in terms of how good it is but, rather, how much better it is than everything else. While season two brought a crucial element of gritty and goofy storytelling to the forefront this season managed to do that but with a more artful purpose. 
   Basically “Breaking Bad” is about the corrupt soul of Walter White (Bryan Cranston). It is about the disease that exists not only within him but the one he puts out into the world. Building on that simple theme season three loads up on awesome like it’s going out of style. The season began with aftermath of that fateful, “Lost”-ish season two ending where, as an indirect result of Walter’s corruption, a plane almost magically up and crashed over his goddamned house. Freaky. And it gets even more freaky. From Walter acting all crazy during school speeches and principal meetings (is his tumor back?) to getting fired and taking over an industrial sized meth lab to trying to win back a wife that clearly hates him to that pesky fly that turned Walter into a full blown caricature of Wiley E. Coyote, caused him to go into a full lockdown for an entire episode (the best of the series in my opinion) to the surprise car attack to the final twisted reversal of power… more seemed to be going on this season than in the previous two combined! As the bald meth cooker would say ” its not quantity, it’s quality.” It’s a good thing, then, that “Breaking Bad” has both locked up. 
   “Breaking Bad” is so full of  irony (dramatic, tragic and just plain funny) that it gives Shakespeare a run for his money. What started out a dying High School science teacher’s (almost) noble goal to provide for his poor family by cooking Meth on the side with a former student of his (Aaron Paul, yo) turned into a saga of greed that, three years later, obscures all moral lines to a point of tortured allegiance. We side with Walter but at a cost. Walter’s Godfather-like arc manages to feel epic even as the show wisely remains as myopic and focused and as ever. During season three ”Breaking Bad” fully began to trust in its strange brew of a formula, its characters and its sense of the strange and surreal and is poised to become the best thing on television next year too.
2. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (season 5)–
   Not just the funniest show on television but the funniest show since “Arrested Development!” By sticking to a simple formula where every episodes starts with”the gang…” followed by some ridiculous plot that is guaranteed to end in anarchy (and maybe some rape), everything about “Sunny,” from the dialogue to the plotting, is forced and unnatural. But in a good way; sometimes comedy needs to be stylized, laid on thick then forced down our throats. This show challenges the viewer and even challenges norms (bothcultural and within television itself) but rarely comes off as being contrived and never takes itself too seriously or, for that matter, seriously at all. Unlike most comedies shows “Sunny” gets better with every passing year. All five personalities that exist in this bar-set shows (a long, long way from “Cheers”) have been perfected to an essence of ”Stooge”-like stupidity and the storylines move with such enjoyable momentum that I always find myself amazed that a half hour just passed. I could make the case that the fifth season of this sharp but never serious show is not only funny in its own right but brilliantly set its sights on various cultural issues such as racism, alcoholism, the economy, gas shortages, the mortgage crisis, lawyers, skinny jeans, obsessed sports fans, straight male break-ups, um, ass hole cyclists who hog the road, abortion, glamor muscles, homeless people, homeless wrestlers played by Roddy Roddy Piper and of course cat mittens. As it gets meaner and meaner, “Sunny” attains a level of blissful savagery that nothing on television matches. As a final indication of how awesome “IASIP” is, if you hear someone say “Phili” the chances are very good they’re talking about this show and not the city.
3.  Damages (season 3)–
   On the surface, this season of “Damages” was not sexy or thrilling or easy to sell to people who didn’t already know how great it was (which is about three people). For a season three show on the bubble, opting for quiet and often reflective drama punctuated by moments of deep seeded anger and raw violence proved to be a big gamble that failed on one really big hand (FX canceled it) but succeeded in almost every other aspect. This slow but dense season took all the time in the world to get going but in its final episodes paid off with more emphatic drama, top notch acting (Close, Byrneand Martin Short all earned their Emmy nods) and smart but never glib writing than anything else out there and that includes movies. What’s most amazing is how all the story threads and characters (from all three seasons!!!) are either wrapped up, resolved, destroyed or come together in a way that left me breathless. There’s so much more to this shows than lawyers that to even call it a “lawyer show” seems wildly unfair yet totally appropriate. I don’t care how un-cool it is to like “Damages,” it’s a classic and anyone not watching it is missing the best drama on TV.
4. Archer (season 1)–
   Picking up where the perverse animated action comedy “Frisky Dingo” left off (which, sadly, never let back on), Matt Reed has created another wildly inappropriate masterpiece. It’s hard to describe a Reed show to a non-Reed fan. It’s irreverent. It’s funny. It’s sick. It’s mean. It’s goofy. It’s arrogant. It’s even full of action… that usually ends very badly for everybody but the sociopathic lead character. As voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, secret agent Archer is the biggest douche bag on earth. And the most lovable one too. He is sex crazed, lazy, rude, insensitive, plagued with major Oedipal mother issues (try not to laugh when he gets half a boner after his mother’s life is threatened–”the other half really wanted you to live” he said) and has given himself a license to kill. AND an unlimited budget. Archer almost always saves the day but almost never on purpose. Archer’s self interest, self preservation and self centeredness is a thing of horrific beauty. This is the best animated show on Television right now.
5. Caprica (season 1)–
   What a debut! Go ahead and call it boring but this is real sci-fi or, as Roman DeBeers on “Party Down” would say, ”hard sci-fi.” ’Star Trek”/”Battlestar” vet Ronald Moore’s (how’s that for nerd cred?) new show on the Syfy Channel is the stuff of pure cyberpunk storytelling full of noir heroes/antiheroes, ambiguous corporations, virtual reality nightmares, pagan cults, sexual Epicureanism and the dualistic hope/fear that technology can makes us more than human but at the same time reduce us to our savage cores. Advertised as a prequel series to “Battlestar,” “Caprica” distinguishes itself from its predecessor in almost every way possible. First off, instead of space, the show dives us into cyberspace. The show is set in a deceptive utopia (aren’t they all) and follows many charactersbut is, at its core, about two men struggling with loss. One (Eric Stoltz) is the most powerful man in the country (an ass-holier version of Bill Gates) and the other is a detective (Esai Morales). Both lose their children in a terrorist attack (curse you, one-true-God-ers!) and turn to the dark side. Oh, and there’s robots!
   This show is not for the adventure seeking or, for that matter, the low-end of the “Battlestar Galactica” fan base that just want to see stuff blow up. While we all know the robots will eventually nuke the frack out of Caprica, this show of the same name posits the fascinating notion that Capricawasdestroying itself well before that apocalyptic end point. It also opens some really gritty philosophical questions relating to human memories. If a person’s essence can be downloaded, are they real? Do they have a soul? The show plays with such notions as Stoltz’s “dead” daughter exists as memories that inhabit the clunky form of a Cylon prototype while Morales’ equally dead daughter (Bill Adama’s sister  by the way) becomes the Neo of Caprica’s virtual world. As much as I would love to blab on I’ll just say that an ambiguous and smart sci-fi show like this is real treasure because it usually never makes it out of the novel stage. ”Caprica” is for viewers who prefer something like ”Blade Runner” to “Star Wars.” Both are great in their own way but we tend to get way more of one than the other and I hope “Caprica” gets a fair shake even though I fear it won’t make it past season 1.5 which is set to air in January. Long live the new flesh.
6.  Aqua Teen Hunger Force(season apple chin fur neck tie)–
   “ATHF” saw a much welcomed resurgence in quality and to some degree did that by going back to basics. And by basics I mean random-ass shiz. The season’s meta friendly premiere episode was a gooey love letter to fans ejaculated out of Master Shake’s mighty phallic straw. That is his own super power after all. And it only got better from there culminating in a 100th episode celebration that is very much in keeping with the vibe of the show. I’ll just quote the synopsis “Shake tries to collect syndication money for completing the 100th episode. The Aqua Teens are forced to start a new series of episodes after they are threatened by the “100″ monster.” Perfect. Nothing else needs to be said really.
7. Doctor Who (series 6)–
   Matt Smith is a bit of a creep. It doesn’t help that Smith, the tenth incarnation of The Doctor just replaced the best incarnation of the Doctor of all time played by, well, he whom I shall not name for I can’t bear the thought of him not being the Doctor. The upside to a lesser Doctor though is, first, THEY ARE ALL LESSER after all and, second, Smith actually got a lot better as the 13 episode season progressed and the lack of expectation is what freed the show up, allowing it to do its own thing in it’s own way. Smith’s Doctor grows on you through a playful mix of youthful mania, razor sharp intellect, scatter brained actions and, to counteract that, a touch of exhaustion and tiredness (he is 900 years old after all). The Doctor was not the only thing to improve. The overall plotting reached new heights. The show runner this season is of course Steven Moffat who I would argue is real genus behind the show all these years (Russell T. Davies is a huge wanker at times). Moffat scaled the scope down a notch while brilliantly adding more complexities and was wise to do so because in the past the series keep trying to one up itself and only tripping over its grandiose gestures in the process.
   This season is more about ideas and characters (Amy Pond and her boyfriend are awesome companions) and even science. Erm, just try to forget the embarrassing Churchill/Dalek episode and underground Lizard people two parter when factoring in that compliment. Another cool aspect to this “new” “Who” is that we are given more implicit insights into the Doctor’s intelligence and problem solving abilities–when he uses the Tardis (which feels like a character at this point), for instance, he explains how and why he’s using it and it almost makes sense! Even the historical episodes proved to be a win for the show as it engages in far more than the usual self amusement “hey, look, it’s so-and-so, aren’t we clever.” Film director Richard Curtis wrote one of the series best historical episodes, a heartwarming van Gogh centered plot that playfully twists are notion of history and uses art to do so. It’s also a very touching episode. Oh, and the final episodes, a true past/present/future time travel juggling act, have more fun with the oddities of time travel than any other episode to date. I won’t spoil the fun except to say we finally begin to understand what it must be like to move through and change the nature of time. And it’s madness! As good as the show became, the best thing this season of “Who” did is ease my fears that the show could not go on without David Tennant. Ah!!!!!!!, see, he’s not even he who I shall not name anymore!
8. Lost (season 6)–
   I had not been this excited/scared about a show ending since the good old days of “Buffy” season 7–full reactions/favorite episodes HERE. By the time ”Lost” ended for good though I, like many, had… mixed feelings. The show ultimately played it safe and even sentimental (the all-religion church is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen; strangely enough, “Lost” has always been the most spiritual show with the least spiritual fan-base) but playing it safe also means not totally sucking and, thankfully, the show was able to ensure its legacy. Six was a good but far from great season that wasted a lot of time on unessential and/or underdeveloped plots (the temple episodes and  ”Across the Sea” are among the series’ worst ideas) and characters (more agonizing Kate episodes, the mythology wrecking ball that is Zoe, and what was the point of Ilana?) only to scramble in the last quarter of the season to resolve/reconcile the complex mythology surrounding the stuff we actually care about. Still, I think when it ended we all learned the lesson that it’s not about the answers but the journey and, frankly, I’m kinda burned out on decoding ”Lost.” Teaching me to let go was the best gift this show could have given me after so many years. Leading up to this final season, seasons four and five were not just great but a perfect blend/execution/evolution of sci-fi, drama and mystery (it was my number one show last year) and I was sad to see the final season stop way short of that level of twisty genre sophistication. Still, I give season six credit because, again, I feel it kept the legacy intact without blowing it apart in a Jughead-like fashion. In The End this is a show that finally earned the right to be mentioned in the same breath as “Twin Peaks,” “X-Files” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and regardless of how much or little you or I liked/disliked its final moments, season six had a big part to play in sealing “Lost’s” legacy. A show like this.
9. Dexter (season 4)–The most improved show of the year! I ranked “Dexter” season 3 and the early parts of season 4 quite low last year. And for good reason: it was not very good. Well, when season 4 finished I thought to myself ”wow.” Then thought ”Wowey, wow, wow, wow!” All my issues withdomestic Dexter (both the character and show) being dragged down and tamed by the “normal life” (children, wife, baby seats, BBQs ugh) was addressed with a blood curdling vengeance. With the prospect of a darker, angrier and single(er) Dexter Morgan (the great Michael C. Hall) I want season 5 to air so bad I can smell the blood. The season long arc of serial killer John Lighgow that Dexter clings on to (probably due to daddy issues) is far and away the series’ best long-form plot to date and even manages to surpass that little Ice Truck Killer incident. Lithgow gave what was the best performance of the year while reminding me in the process of his killer De Palma performances of the 80s and 90s. replaced.
10. Party Down (season 1 and 2)–
    While it just bit the dust I have a feeling that history will be kinder to “Party Down” than almost any comedy on TV right now. While aesthetically similar to “The Office”, “Party Down” does what that show does not. It’s funny. Consistently so. It knows exactly how to utilize awkward-social-situation-at-work humor without constantly having to show-off at how clever it is to its audience. More reasons to love this show are, #1, it’s waaaaaaaaay better than any network sitcom shot in a similar style and that includes the overrated Emmy winner “Modern Family.” Reason #2: lead by Adam Scott and Ken Marino this is an ensemble show without a single weak link (even Megan Mullally, taking over for Jane Lynch, is a total gem of a character). Reason #3: if 80s movies taught us anything it’s that drug use in comedies is actually funny. Reason #4: this is a show about a work (a catering service) where no work gets down and that reminds me of “NewsRadio”; being reminded of “NewsRadio” is always a good thing. Reason # 5: Never has nerd rage been as vividly captured on film as by Martin Starr in this show. His use of the term “hard sci-fi” has become a running gag with me. For instance, is someone mentions “Avatar” I can now shoot back with a dismissive “Avatar sucks…. I’m all about HARD sci-fi.” As the embittered writer, Starr (“Freaks and Geeks,” “Adventureland”) was without a doubt the most entertaining character on television last season. He will be missed. So will this show.
11. Justified (season 1)–
    Every week a U.S. Marshal played by Timothy Olyphant (reunited withhis ”Deadwood” cowboy hat) tracks down a criminal, chats with them, gets shot at and throws them in jail (or a morgue).  His interactions withcriminals, more than his colleagues girlfriend, is what makes the show special. What’s so remarkable is how vividly these criminals are written and how cool the protagonist is. He respects them, you see, more than he does himself in a lot of ways. When faced with ambiguities, and there are a lot, he just smiles, keeps his opinions to himself and presses on. He is a classic western hero in that sense. The answer to how show runner Graham Yost pulls this all this off is simple: his show is adapted from an Elmore Leonard story and as we all know (or not), Leonard is the best dialogue writer on earth. Not just that but the writing team lead by Yost retains Leondard’s unique voice that is funny, humanizing and, while utilizing many cop conventions, is never conventional in its approach or execution. So, yeah, for those reasons as well as Walter Goggins as a born again criminal, ”Justified” is the coolest show on TV. It also gets points for revitalizing the Western on Television, something that has not happened since “Firefly.”
12. Fringe (Season 2)–
    After I finished “Lost” I wiped my tears and cleaned up the apartment I destroyed out non-denominational church season six rage. Two minutes later I missed the hell out of “Lost” and not too long after that I scrambled to find a new sci-fi mythology-ish type show to fill the void or as I like to call it the cork in the middle of my island. Hum, there’s that “Fringe” show that looks almost good and rips off “X-Files” so okay, why not, game on. So I the watched two full seasons of “Fringe” this summer and… the show sucks. But its a delightfully fun suck that sucks in more ways that one: it sucked up my time! First off, the flaws prevent it from ever really taking off above many of the above and shows I’m listing. “Fringe” is a slave to its formula. The show is full of annoyingly predictable plot beats: a death or murder that’s paranormal in nature, then some small talk, them some detective work followed by thirty seconds of character development and/or banter (if we’re lucky, usually it’s only a few seconds), then action, then Michael Giacchino’s recycled “Alias” music, and finally a brisk resolution that usually ends with “and he did it with the power of his mind!” The character speaking that line is the best version of a modern of a mad scientist that we’ll ever get (John Noble) and he makes “Fringe” worth watching every week. You never know what he’s going to do even though you kinda always know what the show is. Noble’s son is played by Joshua Jackson who is also good but in a stoically charming, measured delivery Pacey from “Dawson’s Creek” sort of way. As for the lead character played by Anna Torv… well, she’s no Skully. She’s down right square in fact and posses so little charm and charisma that she practically vanishes before our eyes every time she’s on screen. But Torv’s blandness has a side effect in that it allows the two best characters on the show to feel all the more quirky and interesting. The episode titled “Peter” in which we finally get to see into Walter’s past tragedy involving his sick son and eventual dimension hopping betrayal of, well, himself (Walternate he is called, hehe) remains a highlight of television in 2010 and proves that this show is best when it doesn’t follow a formula. Even as it’s stuck in the fun-suck mode though “Fringe” is nothing less than the best procedural on TV (not saying much) because it’s comes up withgenuinely fun ways of mashing up the mystery formula with paranormal science.
13. Curb Your Enthusiasm (season 7)–
    Look, this show is good enough to be ranked much, much higher on this list (at least up in the top ten if not top five) but after so many years I wanted to give some other shows a chance. The “Seinfeld” reunion was a near perfect season long story arc (it ranks up there with the Larry death and “Producers” season). I am amazed at how this comedy show has not even come close to wearing out its welcome. Every season is as fresh and funny as the last. Not even “Seinfeld” achieved that!
14. True Blood (season 3)–
    This show is about the only thing keeping Vampires cool these days. Season three is almost over and half of it hasn’t as good as what I’ve come to expect from this deliberately trashy vampire show. The other half is brilliant trash. Sometimes I love the anything-goes feel of “True Blood” more than the given episode I may be watching. The camp, the sex, the goofy writing and of course the series the regulars are all decent but dodgy plotting (Merlot’s dog fighting family, that werewolf guy and his skank, Lafayette and Jesus romance plot etc.) in the early episodes and too many boring  new characters brought this season down to a low even season two didn’t reach. And let’s face it, Bill and Sookie have become TV’s most predictable couple. For three seasons the two interspecies lovers have been stuck in a mindless triple-B pattern of bickering, banging and being apart. Over and over. And over. It’s really time for Sookie and Eric to give it a go because couples that hate each other are way hotter than whatever Bill and “Sukkkaaaaa” are into. Also, they are the new Buffy/Spike after all. But, yeah, ”Blood” redeemed itself big time in the season’s later episodes, proving it was still capable of offering up genuine surprises. Most of that is thanks to biggest bad ass-eist big bad of of all time, The King, played by character actor Dennis O’Hare. What happens when an infinitely powerful –and very gay– 3,000-year-old vampire snaps? “Blood” has an answer for that and it’s a really good one.
15. Code Geass: R2 (season 1)–
    “Code Geass” was a great mech/messiah show because the human element was never lost amidst all the super cool (and strange) tactical robot battles. It’s sci-fi allthe way with a story about a British Empire taking over the world and a band of Japanese rebels lead by a powerful teen fighting back. While this kind of lingering post-war Japanese revisionist (future) history is hardly original, it kept the story alive with its imagination and use of action. R2, a second season/series of sorts improves almost everything that was great about the first series of episodes. It’s got enough tension, action, freaky Japanese sex stuff to keep Anime fanswell fed and the plot has showed a surprising increase in complexity and depth. It dosen’t hurtthat the series also borrowed from the best of “Death Note” (the #1 Anime show of all time) to tell its story about a bombastic protagonist (student by day, blah, blah, blah by night) slowly growing mad with power while balancing the burdens of the world on his shoulders.
16. Venture Brothers (season 4)–
    GO TEAM VENTURE! “Venture Brothers” is really the most ambitious show on Cartoon Network. While I love all the postmodern head games that shows like “Aqua Teen,” “Robot Chicken” and “Metalocolypse” throw at us, “Venture” is so consistent in its storytelling bravado and so consistently funny to boot that it will go down as one of the greats. Yes, I’m ranking this show way too low this year but I do not do so out of any decrease in quality but purely because I am sad to admit that I missed most season 4 episodes when they aired. As usual Cartoon Network is asleep at the wheel when it comes to releasing DVD/Blu-Ray sets. Grr.
17. 24 (season 8)–
    The ups and downs in the life of poor Jack Bauer continue… for the last time. After a strong seventh season (gotta love the African terrorists that scuba dive their way into the White House) the show is going out on a down note but, once again, I’ve only seen about half the season and if I know anything about ”24″ it’s that even though I kinda know what it’s going to do, I NEVER know how well it’s going to do what its going to do. At any rate “24″ was smart to shift the setting to D.C. and New York in its final two seasons. And a special mention should go out to Keefer Sutherland who, year after year, doggidlychased after bad guys without ever appearing tired with the role. A man of action and regret, the barking Jack Bauer was often stuck on one note but, damn, what a great note to be stuck on. It’s just sad that the end of “Lost” stole so much thunder from the end of “24.” Across all mediums “24″ was able to carve out a remarkable benchmark for the action genre. It’s influence can even be felt in action movies. May the clank sound of “24′s” digital clock never be silenced.
18. Chuck (season 3)–
    Season three sucked compared to one and two. Like, a major step down but I’m not sure if I can blame that on the Super Chuck plotlines which are usually exciting and as a bonus give Neo Chuck more to do than squeal in wimpy horror. Still, I kinda like the Chuck that couldn’t fight. Hell, I even liked the not-so-popular Brandon Routh. So why is this the worst season to date? To be honest I think it’s fatigue from the dragged out sexual tension between Chuck and Agent Walker. Is this show not aware of the “Moonlighting” curse? And am I the only one that wishes ”Chuck” bring back the unfairly shafted (literally) Kristen Kreuk? Now that I got that out of the way, yes, I LOVE CHUCK. Despite a lot of action it is by far the most fun and innocent show on television and I can’t wait to see Chuck vs. Season 4!
19. Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood (season 1)–
    Nowhere near the golden era of FMA but a solid and fascinating anime show that reenvisions the previous series had it not diverged from the Manga. It’s such a rare thing too. A show that’s a remake of itself! Is it necessary? No. Am I glad to be treated to new(ish) episode from one of my favorite animated series of all time? Hell yeah! If only more Anime shows did the same.
20. Tim and Eric Awesome Show (season 4)
    Great Job!
21. The IT Crowd (season 3)–
    Have you tried restarting your computer?
22. Mad Men (season 3)–
    Yeah, okay, I suck for not liking “Mad Men” more. Whatever. While season three is wonderfully crafted it is wonderfully crafted (acting, cinematography, production design etc.) in a way that is predictiable and a bit dull. Hum, that makes no sense but for some reason I think this is a show that has never really added anything to the near perfect first season. Same thing happened to “Six Feet Under.” So why am I still watching every episode? It’s like porn for smart people and while I am not smart I do love porn! There were many great moments like the final break-up in Don’s professional and personal life but also so much wasteful pretentions and indulgences that go nowhere. As an update, season four is looking to be, surprise, good but not earth shattering or worthy of all the gushing.
23. Smallville (season 9!)–
    I’ll admit to missing the hell out of the show’s Doomsday season. That was among the best of the best of 2008/2009 television and I was not ashamed to admit that at the time, ranking the show as high as number 3 on my list last year. This season… was not. Not even close. “Smallville” has always been a hit or miss affair and it’s neo-Zod plot (he’s a clone, I think… I don’t even care to be honest) is decent but far from original as armies, alliances, frenemieswith Clark have all been done and done better in the past. The writing and season long plotting was very, very, VERY weak in a lot of places but the season performed the mini miracle of not making Clark and Lois a boring couple like the ones above (“Chuck,” “True Blood”). That’s especially amazing considering how irritating Lois has been all these years. Filler episodes in this series have always ranged between the bad and the unwatchable (good god, did they really make a haunted hotel episode this season?) but what disappointed me was that the usually strong key episodes (usually occurring during the opening of the season, sweeps an final episodes) were lacking the power that I have come to rely on. I’m still a fan and, even better than that, an optimistic fan. I have a really good feeling about the final “Smallville” season coming up but the beauty of this show is that even if it’s not very good, it’s still worth watching.
24. Vampire Diaries (season 1)–
    At times better than “True Blood.” At other times worse than “Twilight.” This is one of the few instances where being the second best vampire show on TV isn’t a bad thing.
25. Human Target (season 1)–
    For some reason action shows that don’t involve Jack Bauer don’t get much attention on mainstream television. Human Target looks to change that. Here’s hoping season two finds an audience.
26. I Watch Too Much TV I Need To Get A  Life (season 1)
    Not a show. Just talking about myself.

Not quite this season but had to mention: Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles–
I have to mention ”Terminator: SCC” because this is the year I finally finished the series and because I ranked it wayyyyyyy too low last year, having only seen a few season two episodes. If it came out this year it would have been the number one or two ranked show. Season two in its entirety is (…or, ugh, was) brilliant in an unexpected way and in a way that’s hard to figure out in terms of how could a show so middling turn out so heart wrenching tragic and action packed. I never could have guessed how good season two of this sadly canceled show would be. Yeah, it surpasses the first season sure but here’s the amazing thing: season two of this show is better than any “Terminator” movie! I’ve never truly connected with or loved the “Terminator” mythology until I finished the last season of this show which, along with “Party Down” is now officially the most tragically cut short series since “Firefly.” “I love you, John” is the final line of the show and couldn’t have said it better myself.

Most Improved in 2009/2010: Dexter
Most Un-Improved in 2009/2010:Smallville and Mad Men (the last time these two shows will ever be compared by anyone, anywhere)
Best New Show: Archer, Caprica and Party Down. Don’t make me pick just one. So many good new shows!  
Show I Could Not Bring Myself To Watch That Might Be Good: Dollhouse. I’m the biggest Joss fan in the world but I have avoided this show. I knew it was going to fail and I knew it would not be anywhere close to his former glory. Maybe I’m wrong.
Show I Can’t Believe I Have No Interest In Given How Big Of A Nerd I Am: V
Best Talk Show: The Charley Rose Show
Best Reality Show: Hoarders, Mythbusters and Man vs. Food
Best Ensemble Cast: Damages followed very closely by Lost and Party Down. 
Most Likable Actor in the Most Meh Show: Nathan Fillion in Castle.
Most Underrated Character: Chris Bauer (Det. Bellefleur) in True Blood.
Most Overrated Sitcom: Modern Family. I saw the first five episodes. So-so. Not sure how a show with very broad and “edgy” family humor won a best writing and best comedy Emmy. This show has tricked a lot of people into watching a freaking family comedy. It may be mildly amusing but it’s still a family comedy. It’s no “Arrested Development” that’s for sure.  
Best Miniseries: Torchwood: Children of Earth.
Best Network: FX. Damages, Archer, It’s Always Sunny, Sons of Anarchy and Justified. You can’t beat that line up! Even though FX passed on Damages it’s the best network around and that’s not going to change next season (the new show “Terriers” looks great!).
Best Show of Next Season: I’m calling it… Walking Dead. It’s the best graphic novel around and there’s no way the show’s not going to be good.

Best Individual Episodes:

1. Lost, “Ab Aeterno” (the most important episode of Lost ever. It remains the best TV retcon episode ever.)
2. Breaking Bad, “Fly”
3. Archer “Honeypot” (the gay episode)
4. Dexter “The Getaway” (season finale)
5. Fringe, “Peter”
6. Aqua Teen Hunger Force, “Rabbit Redux”
7. It’s Always Sunny, “Paddy’s Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens”
8. Justified, “Pilot”
9. Doctor Who, “Vincent and the Doctor”
10. Party Down, (tie) “Nick DiCintio’s Orgy Night” and “Guttenberg’s Birthday”
11. Damages, “The Next One’s Gonna Go in Your Throat”
12. Torchwood, “Children of Earth” (didn’t include above b/c it’s not a full season).
13. Lost, “The Candidate”
14. Lost “Happily Ever After”
15. And of course the final two Doctor Who episodes.

The Worst Shows of 2009/2010:

1. Family Guy–I watch FG from time to time and am always surprised at how much it sucks. The 150th episode finds Brian and Stewey trapped in a bank and… yeah, that’s about as funny as it gets. This show sucks. It was once good. A long, long time ago. It is now bad. Very bad. The worst show on TV bad. I hate Family Guy!
2. American Idol
3. Entourage
4. The Jay Leno Show (late night and primetime)
5. Jersey Shore
6. The Office
7. Two and a Half Men
8. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
9. Grey’s Anatomy
10. The Hills
11. Treme

Top TV Performances:

1. John Lithgow, Dexter
2. Terry O’Quinn, Lost
3. John “I have an erection” Noble, Fringe
4. Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
5. Glenn Close, Damages
6. John Hamm, Mad Men
7. Martin Starr, Party Down
8. Denis O’Hare (The King!), True Blood
9. Danny DeVito, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
10. Martin Short, Damages
11. Michael C. Hall, Dexter
12. H. Jon Benjman, Archer (voice performance)
13. Timothy Olyphant, Justified
14. Michael Emmerson, Lost
15. Eric Stoltz, Caprica
16. Dana Snyder, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Squidbillies (voice)
17. Jared Harris, Mad Men
18. Elizabeth Moss, Mad Men
19. Nestor Carbonel, Lost
20. Alexander Skarsgård, True Blood (not a great actor, just really cool)
21. Megan Mallally, Party Down
22. Chris Bauer (Det. Bellefleur), True Blood
23. Ken Marino, Party Down
24. (real life) Cow, Fringe
25. Jesus, this list is a sausage fest.

Worst TV Performances:

• Allison Janney as Zoe on Lost. More of a bad character than a bad performance. Still, never has a on-off character appearance come this close to ruining an entire show.
• Evangeline Lilly on Lost
• That Eggs guy form season two of True Blood.
• Reality show actors–and, yes, they are all actors!
• Julie Benz on Dexter (never been happier to see a loved one offed. Now about those kids…)
• Blake Lively on Gossip Girl (can’t wait to see her suck at movies too! still, though, those boobs get an A++)

Shows I’ve Ranked #1 From the Last 10 Years:

• (2000) Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 4/5
• (2001) Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 6
• (2002) Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 7
• (2003) Angel season 5
• (2004) Arrested Development season 1
• (2005) Battlestar Galactica season 2.5
• (2006) Aqua Teen Hunger Force season 5
• (2007) Frisky Dingo season 2
• (2008) Lost season 5
• (2009/20010) B     R      E     A     K     I     N     G               B     A     D

Why Damages Should Have Won The Emmy For Best Drama: While watching the last episode of “Damages” it occurred to me that there has never been and may never will be again a lawyer show like “Damages.” It is, at its core, a show more about relationships than lawyers. It is also a brilliantly crafted thriller, yes, but more than that it’s all about tightly knit and wound and sometimes even choking connections lawyers make with themselves, with their lovers and with their clients. With a clenched intensity ”Damages” has the and ability to move past lawyer movie/show tropes and expose the people of this profession in the most illuminating and dramatically interesting ways possible. Sure, a unique lawyer movie such as Sidney Lumet’s “Night Falls on Manhattan” or TV show like “Murder One” and of course the original (and only good version of…) “Law & Order” are examples of the best this genre has to offer but I feel this is a genre that has never been as good as we’ve made it out to be. Until now.

The third season of “Damages” took a long, long time to get interesting but that’s why cable shows are often so much better. Where else could a show spend 9 episodes setting everything up? This show is afforded the luxury to buld like a movie rather than a show that needs to worry about high ratings on every episode and, lets face it, “Damages” never needs to worry about how many people are watching because the answer is always the same. None, and that’s a shame. The show, along with it’s now iconic protagonist Patty Hughes (Emmy winner Glen Close), oozed tension and venom. Taking a page from “Law and Order’s” “ripped from the headlines” playbook and crossing it with “Murder One’s” season long arc dealing with a single case this season of “Damages,” about the legal/political/personal aftermath of Bernie Maddoff pnozi scheme where a disgraced family continues to hide all those billions they stole, came together in ways that no other show, lawyer or otherwise, has before it. There are so many sins of the past, shadowy discresions and time jumps at play at any given moment that “Damages” managed to give “Lost” a real run for its money.

Unlike “Lost” this series ended on a high note rather than a safe one. Season three did not simply resolve its own inherently great and un-contrived topical plot, but those of season one and two that I forgot about such as Ellen Parson’s (always underplayed by Rose Byrne) husband’s deathand Patty’s true relationship withEllen! Same goes for Timothy Olyphant’s character from season two (he has since moved over to FX’s great “Justified”). Even Ted Danson’s character got to reprise his once central role in a handful of great episodes. By the end, this show’s ability to weave together all the plot points of seasons past and present and, here’s the key, organically pay off these many threads and stories withlogic, intensity and a lot of dramatic schadenfreude is astounding. All the characters get, more or less, what they’ve deserved and thaks to a last minute renewal and network shift (DirectTV) they will live to go through it all again.

What’s Good: Hey, they made a Scott Pilgrim movie! And it didn’t totally suck! And I’m happy!  
What’s Not: A curious lack of chemistry between almost every character in the movie, especially the two leads. Not all the jokes work. A lot of stuff is crammed in and the story sometimes hurries along awkwardly.

It’s funny that the movie version of “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” tries to be more of a comic book than the actual comic book which was modest and minimalist in comparison. In the movie every punch is swung with a “woosh” and lands with a “boom,” every fall lands with a “thudddd,” every bass guitar chord resonates with a deep and profound “dddddd” and every boyfriend boss defeat yields a bounty of coins and flashing one ups. That this is director Joe Wright’s first comic book movie is a surprise, but not really considering his superlative “Shaun of the Dead” and even better “Hot Fuzz” felt like high energy comic books come to life. This movie is not as good as those two but, lets face it few, modern comedies are. The good news is that “Scott Pilgrim” is it’s just as enjoyable to watch and soak in from a manic visual standpoint. The film, about a loser in love, tries very hard to push the already outlandish premise of a boy fighting a girl’s seven evil exes to earn her love. And while a degree of wacky forcefulness is almost mandatory, many jokes, puns and visual gags misfire harder than one of Scott’s dates. That is not to say that even the lame jokes such as the rhyming of “bi-curious” with “bi-FURIOUS!!!” are likable even when missing the target by about a mile. A slightly less acceptable miscalculation is that the chemistry just isn’t anywhere to be found between the Super Mario power star crossed lovers Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) and Ramona Flowers played by the fittingly anime eyed Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a girl I too have had an insane crush on for years and if you don’t believe me just ask my (non) evil exes and they will tell you many sad stories of my rather odd obsession with this not very well known actress. Ahhhhhh, uh, where was I… flaws, yes, forget them, they don’t really matter. Despite its dark color pallet ”Pilgrim” is a vibrant love story/adventure that incorporates everything I love about almost everything other than movies including but not limited to music, comic books, video games and kicking the shit out of Canadian hipsters.

Earlier in the day I was lamenting the fact that more people were interested in the douchey, straight-to-DVD looking “Expendables” and self indulgent love fest “Eat, Prey, Poop.” After watching “Scott Pilgrim” I no longer tried to argue the point that more people should be into “Pilgrim.” It’s one of the most inside and esoteric video game homages ever put to film. Seriously, “Scott Pilgrim” is more of video game than the “Scott Pilgrim” video game, which is awesome by the way! I was shocked at how much the aesthetics of old school games informed this film right down to the pixelated Universal logo rocking an 8bit MIDI version of the Universal jingle. This influence is in the comic series but I was delighted to the degree at which the movie drapes itself in a feverishly kinetic embrace of all things video games. When Scott fights Ramona’s league of angry exes he does so in a way that can best be described as a Nintendoized version of “Kill Bill” meets “Kung Fu Hustle.” Anything is possible, including Scott pulling a fiery sword of love out of his heart. People who don’t know the Zelda save menu music –not the Zelda theme, mind you, because that would be too easy– might not get the full effect… so, yeah, “Eat, Prey Love” will make more money. A lot more! Fine. “Pilgrim” is a niche movie all the way and based on the audience’s (non) reaction to it, it is destined to live on as a cult movie and not much else.

Michael Cera’s shtick is getting old but, damn, the dude sure does look the part. Yet he lacks the chemistry that I mentioned as well as a certain wild and playful sense of manic-depressiveness that the original character possesses. Cera’s standoffish persona and cute/awkward verbal meanderings (not really an acting stretch for him) overcomes a lot and it’s cool to watch the actor add something, ANYTHING, new to his repertoire which is kicking ass. Seeing as how this is the last time we’ll ever get to see Cera do that, get it while you can. As a fan of the six volume comic series I always wondered who could play Scott and how his fights would be staged. Even if it’s not perfect it feels good to know those answers and I had a lot of fun watching this character (and movie) come to life. On the topic of fun: director Edgar Wright is still the most enjoyable comedy directors around. Maybe of all time. As with “Hot Fuzz” Edgar Wright does not just tell the story of a funny movie, he shows you one by incorporating all the cinematic tools at his disposal (while inventing some new ones) to serve the material. Particularly (and predictability) impressive is the rapid fire editing bridges between (and during, and after… and in the middle of) scenes and whiplash inducing cinematography that allows for anything to happen at anytime such as Scott being lifted and tossed through a wall by Superman’s (Brandon Routh) mental vegan powers (vegans can do, or at least think they can do anything, y’know) or tossed across the screen into a building by Capt. America (Chris Evans). This is the closest thing to a fully realized comic book movie since “Hulk,” except about 100x better and with 100% less daddy issues and mutant poodles. Oh, and Wright also adapted the script and did a decent if not entirely smooth job of combining everything that’s lovable and charming about the comic into the power-up film version. The end result is enormously entertaining but also kind of messy. But this really wouldn’t be a Scott Pilgrim story if messy didn’t factor into things. 
Grade: B+

What’s Good: Duvall’s beard. 
What’s Not: The rest of the movie.

“Get Low” opens with a stunning visual. A house burns bright in the middle of a dark and dusty landscape. Suddenly, from far away, a figure jumps out of a window on fire and runs past the camera. My god, I though, this could be another “There Will Be Blood.” That was the last time that thought ran through my head. It’s not that “Get Low” is bad, it’s just that it’s so content with being cute and coy and reverent that it ends up being little else. The “tall tale” set in an unspecific but long time ago past stars a scruffy Robert Duvall in a sort of book end version of the “benevolent falcon” Boo Radley he played so many years ago in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The film, not quite a western and not quite a period movie, is about this “crazy old man” and his quest to throw a living funeral for all the people who hate him. The film, by the way, thinks this little plot detail is a lot more clever than it actually is and to be honest it is really not enough to sustain a feature length film. Maybe it would have worked as a short. I don’t know and I don’t really care. For mysterious reasons that will, of course, be revealed in very calculated increments, this bearded old ghost has been a shut-in for nearly 40 years, toiling away in his log cabin with only a donkey to talk to. By the film’s end I would have killed to switch places with him or, hell, even his donkey.

There is an abundance of “mystery” surrounding this figure and his dark, dark past that the film lays on very thick and with very little finesse. I hate the small town movie genera as a rule (and am rarely proven wrong) and this film indulges in almost every tired rural cliche in the book including a fight with a local bully, a old flame rekindled (Sissy Spacek), colorful locals that pop up when the script needs them to, a preacher, an honest young protégé (Lucas Black) that learns many valuable life lessons, a small town radio broadcast and of course a cranky man who is reformed by the wonders of community. The film milks its premise, or maybe just drags it along, but does little to deepen the character’s admittedly intriguing (on the surface) mythology. Instead, “Get Low” opts for exploring the man’s social connections which is the least interesting part of the movie. Now, Duvall is a good actor and this is a decent performance (aside from Duvall’s usual ticks that involve exaggerated emoting where the actor contorts his face while mumbling things like “oooohhhh-hehehe”) but it suffers from the film’s inability to gets its hand dirty with his psychology. Juicy lines like “They keep telling me to ask Jesus for forgiveness, I didn’t do anything to him” keep the film afloat and hint at the gravity that could have been but any glimmer of hope is ultimately dragged under by the corny sentiments of the director (Aaron Schneider) and writers who play it safe every chance they get.

Once Duvall’s character gets it in his head that he wants to “make right, ” which is very early on in its short but seemingly endless running time, the film begins its downward spiral into indie movie mediocrity, complete with bad music and stiff performances. Sure this is a nice and pleasant enough experience with a harmlessly stupid sense of humor and a big ol’ heart but, in a way, it’s also a waste of time. The reason being that the film draws everything out until its big finale where, in typical small town movie fashion, the town gets together for a moment of grand catharsis and transformation. Here, Duvall reveals his BIG SECRET, a contrivance that goes against the character’s personality and central motivation and does nothing to explain why he’s the way he, why the town hates/hated him and why he imprisoned himself in the first place. To say it’s an underwhelming revelation is an understatement–”Get Low” has a non-ending so cavernous that it almost eclipses “Inception!” That I have not yet mentioned Bill Murray as the shifty funeral home director is a testimony to how light weight this “Gothic mystery” is.
Grade: C-

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.

Grade: B

Has any of this made any sense?

“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.

Grade: B+

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

1. A Trip to the Moon (George Meles)
2. Broken Blossoms (Griffith)
3. Caberia (Pastrone)
4. Intolerance (Griffith)
5. Les Vampires (Feuillade–the first vampire movie?)
6. The Outlaw and His Wife (Sjöström)
7. Take Your Pick of Lumiere Brother films
8. Leaves from Satan’s Book (Dreyer)
9. Fantomas (Feuillade)
10. Birth of a Nation (Griffith)
11. J’Accuse (Gance)
12. The Circus (Chaplin)
13. 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

1. The Last Laugh (FW Murnau)
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
3. Metropolis (Lang)
4. Sunrise (Murnau)
5. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene)
6. Nosferatu (Murnau)
7. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
8. Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel/Dali)
9. The Crowd (Vidor)
10. Man with the Movie Camera (Vertov)
11. Sherlock Jr. (Keaton)
12. Nanook of the North (Flaherty)
13. Dr. Mabuse (Lang)
14. Der Golum (Wegener)
15. Faust (Murnau)
16. Strike (Eisenstein)
17. The Marked Ones (Dreyer)
18. October (Eisenstein)
19. Napoleon (Gance)
20. 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

1. M (Fritz Lang)
2. Modern Times (Chaplin)
3. Zero for Conduct (Vigo)
4. The Rules of the Game (Renoir)
5. Alexander Nevinski (Eisenstein)
6. King Kong (Cooper)
7. Angels with Dirty Faces (Curtiz)
8. Frankenstein/The Bride of Frankenstein (Whale)
9. City Lights (Chaplin)
10. Stagecoach (Ford)
11. Fury (Lang)
12. The Thin Man (Van Dyke)
13. The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)
14. Greed (Stroheim)
15. Bringing Up Baby (Hawks)
16. Freaks (Browning)
17. The Blue Angel (Sternberg)
18. Pepe le Moko (Duvivier)
19. Snow White (Disney)
20. Gunga Din (Stevens)
21. 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 and The 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

1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
   Citizen Kane (Welles)
   Citizen Kane (Welles)
   …more Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. His Girl Friday (Hawks)
3. Stray Dog (Kurosawa)
4. Bicycle Thieves (DeSica)
5. Double Indemnity (Wilder)
6. The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles)
7. The Woman in the Window (Lang)
8. Shadow of a Doubt (Hichcock)
9. Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hammer)
10. The Treasure of Sierra Madre (Huston)
11. Rebecca (Hitchcock)
12. Sullivan’s Travels (Sturges)
13. The Third Man (Reed)
14. Fantasia (Disney)
15. Out of the Past (Tourneur)
16. Rope (Hitchcock)
17. The Red Shoes (P&P)
18. Late Spring (Ozu)
19. Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau)
20. Naked City (Dassin)
21. Laura (Preminger)
22. Lady from Shanghai (Welles)
23. Key Largo (Huston)
24. The Great Dictator (Chaplin)
25. Red River (Hawks)
26. Casablanca (Curtiz)
27. Notorious (Hitchcck)
28. The Big Sleep (Hawks)
29. Detour (Ulmer)
30. The Stranger (Welles)
31. Pursued (Walsh)
32. Meshes in the Afternoon (Deren)
33. White Heat (Walsh)
34. Mildred Pierce (Curtiz)
35. Lifeboat (Hitchcock)
36. Gilda (Vidor)
37. The Razor’s Edge (Goulding)
38. Ball of Fire (Hawks)
39. The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett)
40. Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton)
41. The Lost Weekend (Wilder)
42. The Philadelphia Story (Cukor)
43. Dumbo (Sharpsteen)
44. The Lady Eve (Sturges)
45. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Mankiewicz)
46. Gentleman’s Agreement (Kazan)
47. The Wolfman (Waggner)
48. Miracle on 34th Street (Seaton)
49. The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellman)
50. 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 in Citizen Kane is every bit as towering as Welles the director. And how about Alec 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–

1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
2. Rashomon (Kurosawa)
3. Mr. Arkadin (Welles)
4. Sunset Boulevard (Wilder)
5. Singing in the Rain (Kelly/Doen)
6. Night of the Hunger (Laughton)
7. In a Lonely Place (Ray)
8. Touch of Evil (Welles)
9. High Noon (Zinnemann)
10. Godzilla (Honda)
11. The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
12. The Big Heat (Fritz Lang)
13. A Place in the Sun (Stevens)
14. The Ten Commandments (De Mille)
15. Pickup on South Street (Fuller)
16. Rear Window (Hitchcock)
17. Eyes Without a Face (Franju)
18. Gun Crazy (Lewis)
19. North by Northwest (Hitchcock)
20. The Caine Mutiny (Dmytryk)
21. Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean)
22. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel)
23. The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
24. Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich)
25. The Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa)
26. Leave her to Heaven (Stahl)
27. Umberto D (DeSica)
28. The Trouble with Harry (Hichcock)
29. Orpheus (Cocteau)
30. Hiroshma Mon Amour (Resnais)
31. All About Eve (Mankiewicz)
32. The African Queen (Huston)
33. Shadows (Cassavetes)
34. Winchester ’73 (Mann)
35. La Strada (Fellini)
36. Tokyo Story (Ozu)
37. Written in the Wind (Sirk)
38. Rififi (Dassin)
39. Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
40. Some Like it Hot (Wilder)
41. Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
42. Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock)
43. A Face in the Crowd (Kazin)
44. The River (Renoir)
45. Sansho the Baliff (Mizoguchi)
46. The World of Apu (Ray)
47. Breathless (Godard)
48. The Searchers (Ford)
49. Dark City (Dieterie)
50. 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

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leoni)
3. High and Low (Kurosawa)
4. Planet of the Apes (Schaffner)
5. Becket (Glenville)
6. Underworld USA (Fuller)
7. The Shop on Main Street (Kadar and Klos)
8. 8½ (Fellini)
9. Night of the Living Dead (Romero)
10. Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
11. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill)
12. Yojimbo/Sanjuro (Kurosawa)
13. For a Few Dollars More (Leoni)
14. Once Upon a Time in the West (Leoni)
    
15. The Graduate (Nichols)
16. I Am Cuba (Kalatozishvili)
17. Lolita (Kubrick)Contempt (Godard)
18. Z (Garvas)
19. Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
20. Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski)
21. Closley Watched Trains (Menzel)
22. Take the Money and Run (Allen)
23. Zulu (Enfield)
24. Point Blank (Boorman)
25. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
26. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
27. A Man for All Seasons (Zinnemann)
28. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
29. Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda)
30. From Russia With Love (Young)
31. Shock Corridor (Fuller)
32. La Jetée (Marker)
33. Psycho (Hitchcock)
34. Belle de Jour (Bunuel)
35. The Trial (Welles)
36. Persona (Bergman)
37. Playtime (Tati)
38. The Producers (Brooks)
39. Manchurnian Canidate (Frankenheimer)
40. Quartermass and the Pitt (Baker)
41. Satyricon (Fellini)
42. Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)
43. The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
44. Blow-Up (Antonoioni)
45. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (Aldrich)
46. If… (Anderson)
47. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (Ford)
48. The Apartment
49. Peeping Tom (Powell)
50. 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

1. The Duellists and Alien (both by Ridley Scott and no I can’t choose just one)
2. The Man Who Would Be King (Huston)
3. Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
4. Jaws (tried to keep Spielberg off the list but… it’s Jaws!)
5. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah)
6. The Conversation (also tried to keep all Coppola off the list but, damn, this movie is perfect!)
7. Carnal Knowledge (Nichols)
8. Aguirre Wrath of God  (Herzog)
9. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam/Jones)
10. Walkabout (Roeg)
11. Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma)
12. Rolling Thunder (Flynn, written by Schrader)
13. I, Claudius (miniseries, Wise)
14. Network (Lumet)
15. Eraser Head (Lynch)
16. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog)
17. The Passenger (Antonioni)
18. The Fury (De Palma)
19. Real Life (A Brooks)
20. A Boy and His Dog (Jones)
21. Amarcord (Fellini)
22. Love and Death (Allen)
23. Hardcore (Schrader)
24. The Castle of Cagliostro (Miyazaki)
25. Silent Running (Trumbull)
26. Traveling Players (Angelopulos)
27. Chinatown (Polanski)
28. The Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel)
29. Red Beard (Kurosawa)
30. Solaris (Tarkovsky)
31. Fat City (Huston) “Did I get knocked out?” “No! You won!”
32. Star Wars (Lucas)
33. Manhattan (Allen)
34. A Clockwork Orange (overrated but still amazing, Kubrick)
35. Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir)
36. Being There (Ashby)
37. Day for Night (Truffaut)
38. Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
39. Time After Time (Meyer)
40. The Spy Who Loved Me (Gilbert)
41. The Godfather II (Coppola)
42. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
43. Phantasm (Coscarelli)
44. Pale Rider (Eastwood)
45. Halloween (Carpenter)
46. The Yakuza (Pollack)
47. Zardoz (Boorman) “Zardoz is pleased.”
48. Assault on Precinct 13 (Carpenter)
49. Two Lane Blacktop (Hellman)
50. The Last Wave (Weir)
51. 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

1. Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen)
2. Brazil (Gilliam)
3. Die Hard (McTiernan)
   
4. Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior (Miller)
5. They Live (Carpenter)
6. Evil Dead 2 (Raimi)
7. Aliens (Cameron)
8. The Empire Strikes Back (Lucas, I mean Kirshner)
9. Blade Runner (Scott)
10. Amadeus (Forman)
11. Ran (Kurosawa)
12. Predator (McTiernan)
13. Raiders of the Lost Arc (Spielberg–argh, made the list again)
14. Adventures of Barron Munchausen (Gillian)
15. The Decalogue (Kieslowski)
16. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Schrader)
17. My Dinner With Andre (Malle)
18. The Thing (Carpenter)
19. Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)
20. Body Double (De Palma)
21. Conan the Barbarian (Millius)
22. Day of the Dead (Romero)
23. Zelig (Allen)
24. Down By Law (Jarmusch)
25. Return of the Jedi (Marquand)
26. The Big Blue (Besson)
27. Re-animator (Gordon)
28. Stalker (Tarkovsky)
29. Akira (Okomo)
30. Spaceballs (Brooks)
31. Lethal Weapon 2 (Donner)
32. Ferris Buller’s Day Off (Hughes)
33. My Beautiful Launderet (Frears)
34. My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki)
35. Fitzcarraldo and Burden of Dreams (Herzog/Blank)
36. Purple Rose of Cairo (Allen)
37. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (Burton)
38. Hanna and Her Sisters (Allen)
39. Videodrome (Cronenberg)
40. Beetlejuice (Burton)
41. The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
42. Back to the Future part II (Zemeckis)
43. After Hours (Scorsese)
44. Robocop (Verhoeven)
45. Blow Out (De Palma)
46. House of Games (Mamet)
47. Landscape In The Mist (Angelopulos)
48. Broadcast News (Brooks)
49. Blue Velvet (Lynch)
50. Dead Calm (Noyce)
51. Dead Ringers (Cronenberg)
52. Escape from New York (Carpenter)
53. A Fish Called Wanda (Crichton)
54. The Untouchables (DePalma)
55. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Zemeckis)
56. Stardust Memories (Allen)
57. The Right Stuff (Kauffman)
58. Ghotbusters (Reitman)
59. Down and Out in Beverly Hills (Mazursky)
60. Angel Heart (Parker)
61. This is Spinal Tap (Reiner)
62. The Name of the Rose (Annaud)
63. Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (Kurosawa)
64. Sex, Lies and Videotape (Soderbergh)
65. Better off Dead (Holland)
66. Radio Days (Allen)
67. The Falls (Greenaway)
68. Mephisto (Szabo)
69. Dressed to Kill (De Palma)
70. A Zed & Two Naughts (Peter Greenaway)
71. A Passage to India (Lean)
72. Night of the Comet (Eberhradt)
73. Labyrinth (Henson)
74. Never Ending Story (Petersen)
75. Tapeheads (Fishman)
76. Legend (Scott)
77. Do the Right Thing (Lee)
78. Monsiur Hire (Leconte)
79. the first half of Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick)
80. Repo Man (Cox)
81. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar)
82. Highlander (Mulcahy)
83. Das Boot (Petrsen)
84. Romancing the Stone (Zemeckis)
85. Body Heat (Kasdan)
86. Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter)
87. The Terminator (Cameron)
88. The Bounty (Donaldson)
89. The Quiet Earth (Murphy)
90. Bloodsport (Arnold)
91. Henry V (Branagh)
92. Meet the Feebles (Jackson)
93. Driving Miss Daisy (Beresford)
94. The Little Mermaid (Clements)
95. Salvador (Stone)
96. Princess Bride (Reiner)
97. Gates of Heaven (Morris)
98. Mona Lisa (Jordan)
99. The Abyss (Cameron)
100. 2010: The Year We Make Contact (Hyams)
101. Young Sherlock Holmes (Livingston)
102. Explorers (Dante)
103. Alien Nation (Baker)
104. 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 Russell in The Thing and Escape from New York, Michael Douglas in Wall Street and Romancing the Stone, Tim Curry in Legend (so cool, so evil), Harrison Ford in 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

1. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarentino)
2. Topsy-Turvy (Leigh) “Thank…yoooou…veeeeery…much.”
3. Magnolia (Anderson)
4. Fight Club (David Fincher)
5. JFK (Stone)
6. Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
7. Deconstructing Harry (Allen)
8. Heat (Mann)
9. A Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami)
10. Babe (Miller/Noonan)
11. Out of Sight (Soderbergh)
12. Hamlet (Branagh)
13. The Game (Fincher)
14. Strange Days (Bigelow)
15. The Remains of the Day (Merchant)
16. Nixon (Stone)
17. Being John Malkovich (Jonze)
18. Naked Lunch (Cronenberg)
19. Dark City (Proyas)
20. Boogie Nights (Anderson)
21. Starship Troopers (Verhoeven)
22. Contact (Zemeckis)
23. Barton Fink (Coen bros)
24. The Insider (Mann)
25. Three Colors Trilogy (Kieslowski)
26. The Limey (Soderbergh)
27. The Ninth Gate (Polanski)
28. Demon Night (Dickerson)
29. Red Rock West (Dahl)
30. The Thin Red Line (Malick)
31. Kiki’s Delivery Service (Miyazaki)
32. Delicatessen (Jeunet)
33. The Fisher King (Gilliam)
34. Hearts of Darkness (Bahr)
35. Unforgiven (Eastwood)
36. Sweet and Lowdown (Allen)
37. Dead Again (Branagh)
38. The Big Lebowski (Coen brothers)
39. Dracula (Coppola)
40. Clockers (Lee)
41. Naked (Leigh)
42. Aladdin (Clements and Musker)
43. The Zero Effect (Kasdan)
44. Total Recall (Verhoeven)
45. The Shawshank Redemption (see, I can like sentimental–Darabont)
46. Ulysses Gaze (Angelopoulos)
47. The Stolen Children (Amelio)
48. Natural Born Killers (Stone)
49. Chungking Express (Kar-Wai)
50. Three Kings (Russell)
51. The Player (Altman)
52. The Talented Mr. Ripley (Minghella)
53. The Arrival (Twohy)
54. After Dark, My Sweet (Foley)
55. Bullets Over Broadway (Allen)
56. Man Bites Dog (Belvaus)
57. Crash (Cronenberg)
58. Jacob’s Ladder (Lyne)
59. Jerry and Tom (Rubniuk)
60. Quick Change (Bill Murry. Yes, Bill Murry directed it)
61. Smoke (Wang)
62. White Hunter Black Heart (Eastwood)
63. Rushmore (Anderson)
64. Groundhog Day (Ramis)
65. Twin Peaks Movie Pilot (Lynch)
66. Waterworld (Reynolds/Costner)
67. Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers (Park)
68. The Hunt for Red October (McTiernan)
69. As Good as it Gets (Brooks)
70. Memoirs of an Invisible Man (Carpenter)
71. The Cook, The Thief (Greenaway)
72. Secrets and Lies (Leigh)
73. Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki)
74. Grosse Point Blank (Armitage)
75. Close-Up (Kiarostami)
76. Taylor of Panama (Borman)
77. Looking for Richard (Pacino)
78. Leon: The Professional (Besson)
79. The Truman Show (Weir)
80. Get Shorty (Sonnenfeld)
81. Before Sunrise (Linklater)
82. Reversal of Fortuine (Schroder)
83. The City of Lost Children (Jeunet)
84. Kingpin (Farelly bros)
85. L.A. Confidential (Hanson)
86. Jackie Brown (Tarantino)
87. Miller’s Crossing (Coen Bros)
88. Buffalo ’66 (Gallo)
89. The Assignment (Duguay)
90. Flirting with Disaster (Russell)
91. The Last Boyscout (Tony Scott)
92. Fresh (Yakin)
93. The Long Kiss Goodnight (Harlin)
94. Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino)
95. Escape from L.A. (Carpenter)
96. Toy Story (Lassiter)
97. Ghost Dog (Jarmush)
98. Alien: Resurrection (Jeunet)
99. Breaking the Waves (von Trier)
100. Until the End of the World (Wenders)
101. Exotica (Egoyan)
102. Harley Davidson and the Marbrol Man (Wincer)
103. Tremors (Underwood)
104. Screamers (Duguay)
105. Hudson Hawk (Lehmann)
106. Goldeneye (Campbell)
107. In the Mouth of Madness (Carpenter)
108. Short Cuts (Altman)
109. Snake Eyes (De Palma)
110. Fearless (Weir)
111. Blade (Norrington)
112. The Red Violin (Girard)
113. Mission: Impossible (De Palma)
114. Jesus’ Son (Maclean)
115. Mystery Science Theater 3000 the Movie (Mallon)
116. Diggstown (Ritchie)
117. Tombstone (Costamos)
118. The Usual Suspects (Singer)
119. Hurlyburly (Drazan)
120. Night Falls on Manhattan (Lumet)
121. Ghost in the Shell (Oshii)
122. The Last Seduction (Dahl)
123. Waiting for Guffman (Guest)
124. Underground (Kusturica)
125. Fargo (Coen Brothers)
126. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (Radomski)
127. Se7en (Fincher)
128. GATTACA (Niccol)
129. Die Hard With a Vengeance (McTiernan)
130. The Nightmare Before Christmas (Selick)
131. The Road to Wellville (Parker)
132. Homicide (Mamet)
133. Malcolm X (Lee)
134. Fallen Angels (Kar Wai)
135. Holy Smoke (Campion)
136. Sneakers (Robinson)
137. True Lies (Cameron)
138. The Thirteenth Floor (Rusnak)
139. Happy Together (Kar Wai)
140. Judge Dredd (shaddapp, it’s underrated)
141. The Matrix (Wachowski bros)
142. The Last Action Hero (McTiernan) “Look!… Elephant.”
143. The English Patient (Minghella)
144. The Rock (Bay, yes Michael Bay–he was bound to make at least one good movie)
145. Schindler’s List (Spielberg)
146. Farewell My Concubine (Kaige)
147. 187 (Reynolds)
148. The Age of Innocence (Scorsese)
149. Tommy Boy (Segal)
150. The Ice Storm (Lee)
151. Austin Powers (Roach)
152. Face/Off (Woo)
153. Vampires (Carpenter)
154. Cronos (Del Toro)
155. Lord of Illusions (Barker)
156. Godzilla 2000 (Okawara)
157. Trainspotting (Boyle)
158. 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

1. I put 12 Woody Allen films on the list! Best director ever or am I just a weird fanboy?
2. Akira Kurosawa scored no less than 9 films.
3. John Carpenter also with 9… holy crap, that’s more than…
4. Alfred Hitchcock made no less than 8 films but that number could have easily been more.
5. Stanley Kubrick made the list 8 times. Given how non prolific this director is that’s impressive.
6. Orson Wells 7 of his films made the list. Amazing considering how few films he made. Or should I say: was allowed to make.
7. 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.
8. Howard Hawks has 5 films on this list. Gotta respect Haws (despite my feelings toward Rio Bravo).
9. FW Murnau made the list 4 times. 4 times in a single decade! That sets the single decade record.
10. John Huston, the most underrated well known studio director of all time has 5 on the list and that’s not enough.
11. Ridley Scott with 4 on the list.
12. David Cronenberg, one of the all time greats with that magic number 4.
13. Hayo Miyazaki with 4 on the list.
14. Peter Weir, out of nowhere, with 4.
15. 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.
16. Tarkovsky with 3. but only because I haven’t seen The Mirror yet and can’t find Nostalghia, like, anywhere.
17. 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:

1. 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).
2. 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!
3. 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.
4. Pilot parts 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Through the Looking Glass (Jack)–Great because it pretty much ended the two season “Lost sucks” streak.
8. The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham (Locke)–Poor, poor Locke/great, great, episode.
9. 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.
10. 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:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. That Jack tattoo episode called Stranger in a Strange Land–most Jack episodes were lame but none were this lame.
4. Season 2
5. 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.  

wha, wha, what?!

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+