and my favorite film of the year is…
This film is perfect. It is perfect in ways I didn’t know a film could be perfect. I was initially skeptical as to whether PT Anderson could dial down his virtuoso style to meet the requirements of an outdoorsy epic on par with the poetic verve of, say, Terrence Malick circa 1973′s “Badlands” or Robert Altman’s man vs. industry mechanics of “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.” I stand before you today with my doubts quelled. I also stand in an awestruck state of wonder over the fact that Anderson has managed to surpassed not only his auteur contemporaries (Fincher, Coens, Boyle, Tarantino and that other Anderson, Wes, all made fine films in 2007) but even those whom he pays homage to! As the titles “Dedicated to Robert Altman” rolled during the end credits I was tickled with the realization that I’ve never seen a film dedicated to a filmmaker that is better than anything by said filmmaker. Paul Thomas Anderson has made an(other) American classic. A film that will outlive us all.
What’s so special about “Zodiac” is that, contrary to its title, this is not a commercial thriller about an iconic killer. It’s a compulsive film about compulsive men tracking down an unseen compulsive killer. It’s a film about… paper trails for god’s sake! Unlike those trendy TV procedurals with their commercial breaks, neon lighting schemes and tidy conclusions, “Zodiac” is an consumptive experience that dares to depict the act of research as much as tension and, in doing so, comes alive with a curious intellectual zeal that practically spills over the edges of the film’s hermetically sealed container. From Jake Gyllenhaal’s boy scout reporter who devotes his entire life (and sanity) to sifting through files in an effort to solve an unsolvable puzzle to the sun drenched cinematography that crystallizes the passage of time as it blurs past these perpetually occupied characters (the picture above is actually Gyllenhaal after a lifetime of research!), every haunting second of this painstakingly stated film stayed with me. And not only stayed but grew throughout the entire year to become something of an understated legend. A miraculous drama that, unlike many of its kind, takes work and patience to realized just how special it is. This is not the film that proved to me that David Fincher is an American master –he proved that long ago– but it is the one that hinted at the greatness to come vis-à-vi the cinematic maturity at hand. To anyone that dismisses Fincher by calling him shallow, commercial or, ugh, “that guy who made ‘Fight Club’,” I now have an answer that will silence naysayers of past and present: see “Zodiac.”
This Korean film rounds out what I feel to be a virtual three way tie for the best film of the year. Most casual observers will only get about two words into the synopsis “A creature plunges from a bridge into the Han River…” before tuning out or reducing what they hear to “oh, something like ‘Cloverfield.’” But those who dared to read past those two little words, a creature, have found a film that contains priceless family moments (funny and heartbreaking at once), classic action set pieces, natural disaster absurdities that rival “Dr. Strangelove” in satiric message making, and a genre flick that shakes up the genre as it inverts the monster movie notion of “evil” by warping it to include the society that could created such a monster. What’s frustrating is how easy it is to fall back upon calling this a monster movie. Yeah, it’s that but show me a monster that also happens to star in the most politically charged, funny and scariest film ever made?
“Don’t explain the plot, if you do not understand the movie then you should not be here,” the film begins. Good advice, even if we’re told this by a death metal band of movie candies. Based on the nonsensical cult TV show that features a sociopathic milk shake, sagely box of frenchfries and stupid wad of meat, this origin story is the most surreal mainstream feature of the year–possibly ever. By mocking 3D CGI animation, our addiction to television, corporatized housing lofts and just about anything else on earth… ever… (including the Egyptian sphinx, a time traveling Abraham Lincoln and BDSM exercise equipment from the past that dances to the techno beat “I like your booty but I’m not gay”), the 2D(irty)”Aqua Teen” is a pop masterpiece that rejects conventional narrative methods by defining its own reality and logic base for the animated medium. It was not received well but it kind of had to be.
A crew of American and Japanese astronauts head to the sun to jump start it. Nothing goes as planed… including the film’s quality. So how could a premise that, at first glance, looks like the asteroid from the crappy “Armageddon” just crashed into the crappier “The Core” yield a deep-space masterpiece? Easy, Hillary Swank isn’t in it and Michael Bay didn’t direct it. Danny Boyle has, and his meticulous try at the sci-fi genre astounded my expectations. Not only in the sense that I realized that Danny Boyle had a single good film in him but in terms of “Sunshine’s” ability to negotiate the tricky genre line of being thrilling, horrific and particularly adept at espousing some real ideas about who we are as a race of people and where we’re heading–literally and figuratively. Art house sci-fi hasn’t been this grand since Soderbergh made “Solaris,” hasn’t been this grandiose since “2001: A Space Odyssey” and hasn’t had this edgy and well reasoned since, well, ever.
My goal is to buy the DVD and spend the rest of the year playing it in background in order to absorb the film’s mystical mojo. Really, there are hardly words adequate enough to describe what “Syndromes” does, how it does it, and why it does doing, um, whatever it does. My best shot is to assume that director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (“Tropical Malady”) is not out to convey any urgent or specific meanings. Instead, his effusive effort is after brightly lit tones and feelings that flow and drift like the wind he captures so eloquently. The first hour is set in a remote hospital nestled in the bosom of nature. The last retells the events of the first, but in a modern hospital. That may not make much sense but this is Weerasethakul after all and the bifurcated narrative technique works if you look at “Syndromes” as an open-ended visual poem about people coexisting with nature (these gorgeous nature vistas would make Terrence Malick weep), industry (in the best single shot of the year a Lynchian camera movement takes forever to track in on a vent that ominously spews smoke), each other and, ultimately, themselves.
“Grind”-what? Nah, for me, it’s all about “Death Proof.” To appreciate this blood on the asphalt thriller is to appreciate one of the greatest, most obsessive-minded filmmakers of our time throwing caution to the wind while at the same time not throwing caution to the road. Tarantino approaches the road trip revenge genre in a way only he could–by having chatty characters talk about road rage cinema in between close-ups of wiggling toes and records changing in seedy bars. “Death Proof” also gives us one of the most unusual villains of our time. Stunt Man Mike is a grizzled, stone cold –waring an “Icy Hot”– “Bullitt”-era fossil who eats nachos like a bear, quotes old TV westerns to apathetic teens, and is impotent in every way imaginable so must fulfill his sexual urges by killing women with speed and metal in his Freudian death trap. By the time Mike meets his match in the last act of the film, this heavy’s blubbering reaction to emasculating feminist behind-the-wheel rage is priceless and unlike anything Hollywood films are capable of. A real Grindhouse experience in other words.
Maybe you are. “Me? I can change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else. I don’t know who I am most of the time. You’ve got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room, there’s no telling what can happen.” No, this is not a line from David Lynch’s “Inland Empire,” it’s poetry from Todd Haynes new film “about” Bob Dylan. As the title indicates, this is a deconstructionist biopic in the sense that it’s a biopic about the impossibility of biopics. Of reducing ones existence/essence into an arch three-act structure. I love that! I also love that the film has the kinetic jingle of Haynes’ other prefab piece of music bricolage known as “Velvet Goldmine.” This time around, Dylan’s “famously clouded origins” are not cleared up but, instead, jumbled, rejumbled and blended into a frothy gumbo of non-fiction alphabet stew. In place of the triteness of inspirational music films like “Ray” or “Walk The Line” this musically inclined story chooses to challenge both the audience and the structuralist concept of Bob Dylan the person, the myth and the literal icon; “If you are ever told to look at yourself… never look” Dylan says in a maddening yet decisively clean moment of self-insight. The film, like people in general, is constantly in flux and growing; to reflect this, the character of Bob changes from Blanchett to Bale to Heath Ledger (rest in peace) to a young black kid playing Woody Guthrie to Richard Gere playing Billy the Kid and of course Larry The Cable Guy finally gets to play Marcel Proust. Okay, that last one is a joke but, still, anything is possible here. If you find yourself asking “why?” Haynes will only fire back with a swift “why not?” In other words: just go with it. The film is reckless, but it’s reckless for a reason. “You refuse feeling deeply about anything and it’s clear to anyone how entirely self conscious you are in everything you do” a reporter tells Dylan in a moment of clarity that, for me, sums up not only the headstrong artist, but the movie.
Cronenberg’s previous splashing in the crimson crime pool is one of my all-time favorites. This one… isn’t, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t come close and can’t be loved on its own terms. Annoyed by Italian mob movies, “Promises” surpasses everything that subgenre has put out. I call it the best mob film ever made not out of disrespect to the “Godfathers” and “Corky Romanos” of the world but… huh, I guess it is disrespect. This is not so much about the mob as it a contemporary rumination –as only Cronenberg could ruminate– on masculinity (love the gay subtext), tradition (love the Russian text), societal insularity and the cryptic, totally foreign atmosphere of this lifestyle as seen through the eyes of an innocent woman (Naomi Watts). When it comes to films about violence, Cronenberg once again hits the mood as perfectly as he would one of his characters. What’s more, Viggo Mortensen gives another masterfully understated performance as the silent, brooding driver of a vodka chugging Russian family. I’ll drink to that!
It’s about this fucking murdering maniac and it’s just way cool. -Howard Stern
Fate and chaos, humor and horror. Nothing simple can sum up “No Country for Old Men,” its message, or its directors. The film balances radically opposed philosophical themes of randomness and fate without the feeling of overwhelming irony that they tend to embrace. As a noir thriller, I still think about the moment when the bounty hunter (soon to be Oscar winner Javier Bardem) is at the hotel room door and all we see is the shadow cast by his feet until… crack, he kills the light. As a morality drama, John Brolin is embroilned in a gripping archetypal story of a man who stumbles upon money only to stumble head first into Murphy’s Law (everything that can go wrong, will) or, from this point on, Coen’s Law. And as a comedy the film is absurdly funny in surreal moments where the deadpan Jones reacts to awful sights or the elusive serial killer attempts to talk to humans. As a small town cop movie, Tommy Lee Jones’ section of the film may appear to be an out-of-place reconfiguration of “Fargo” (just substitute sand for snow), but this poignant section works on its own tragic level while on route to an vexing, morally rich conclusion where the Coens do everything possible to avoid a predictable stand off between the sheriff and killer, outlaw and killer, or outlaw and sheriff. The Coen’s instead opt for the most ambiguous ending in their ambiguous career. A dream. A dream that, I should note, is a long way off from the hopeful dream that ended their “Razing Arizona.”
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