Movies of the Year

The Best Films of 2011

2012-01-02T04:55:00.000-08:00

I saw more films in a theater this year and any since I've kept track. All told in 2011 I saw 114 films in a theater, but a large number of them were repertory screenings. Below are some of the ones that were not. They are not ranked, and are listed alphabetically. As ridiculous and arbitrary as the list is, it seems even more ridiculous and arbitrary to put them in a ranked order. So there you are, there may be additions as I see some of the films that I didn't have a chance to during the year.

The Best Films of 2011

This exceedingly brilliant film by Athina Rachel Tsangari builds on the detached style last year's Dogtooth (whose directer appears in this film), and spins off into a strange kind of love story. Absurd at every turn, filled front to back with striking, original images, you could very well call the film relentlessly idle. Scenes of great emotion are played out in long takes, where actors act like animals, grab their crotches and walk down the street, or discuss the band Suicide. It's one of the most original films of the year, and one of the best by far.

Mike Mills' story of love and loss, in several forms, is strikingly personal not just in autobiographical details, but in the intimate way he explores characters' relationships, those between a gay, dying father and his young, depressed son, a man and a dog, a man and woman who doesn't speak. I largely admired Mills' first film Thumbsucker, but this is huge leap forward. The film often breaks so its lead character can narrate a brief history, familial or otherwise, and ends up having more to say about gay rights, dying in America, and art than most films have to say about anything.

Richard Press' incredible documentary about The New York Times street photographer and semi-unwitting fashion taste maker Bill Cunningham is fascinating and hilarious, and also serves as a kind of portrait of life in New York for an artist and the loud, lavish, eccentric people he's photographed and known over the past fifty years. Part portrait, part elegy for a dying New York, it's the finest non-fiction film I saw all year.

A frightening, realistic portrait of infection from one of the best, most process-obsessed filmmakers working today. Steven Soderbergh, working as his own Cinematographer, exploits the limitations of the RED camera it was shot on, using the flatness of the image to draw focus to surfaces, bringing into consciousness the germ-phobic, nagging ideas of the film. Seeing the film in a theater made the experience even more palpable, as every cough was a reminder that if it were to happen, this is how it would happen.

Miranda July's second film is a searching, at some times dark, but endlessly inventive film about unhappiness. There are hallmarks here that detractors could point to as "the problems with her work," the film is narrated by a cat, a man can stop time, and there's a sentient t-shirt, but none of that feels artificial in the film. It's a better film than her debut, which I was enormously fond of, and July and co-star Hamish Linklater effectively create two distinct sides of the same person in their characters. If, when one makes a movie, every single character has a bit of its maker, then this is the most direct representation of that. A man and a woman with the same haircut, ambition, and ultimately desires explode off one another. A scene in the film where July reunites with the aforementioned t-shirt, set to a Beach House song, is one the very best pieces of film I saw all year.

A stylish, engrossing mystery that, while interesting in and of itself, is second to the fascinating investigation and the two characters who carry it out. So interesting are the two leads (Rooney Mara's performance is my favorite in any film this year) that you can't help but be anxious throughout the first half of the film for the moment when their stories merge. David Fincher handles brutal scenes with such tact and yet also allows them to be as upsetting as they should be. That he achieves this without ever exploiting the performers and that the film isn't a tough watch is a credit to Fincher's skills as a director. It's clever, quick and completely entertaining.

Joe Wright's fourth film is a return to form, but also an expansion of talents. Having previously made one of my favorite films from a few years ago, Atonement, Wright had seemed to settle into a comfortable spot of making Oscar-baity type fare and filling it with his own personal style. That trend ends here. Although film retains Wright's panache with the camera, music (the film has a great score by The Chemical Brothers), use of color and editing, it drops any of the "this is important" pretense from the proceedings. It spirals off into weird digressions, but it's also singularly focused on its title character's forward motion. It's a fantastic film, and one that gets away with more modern-day fairytale nonsense than just about any other.

An expensive, 3D family film about the death and rebirth of film by one of the world's greatest living directors. That proposition alone is enough to make exciting, but actually seeing the film and particularly its stunning last third is one of the most pure, enjoyable moments I had in a movie theater all year. Martin Scrosese's recreations of Melies films are astounding, in 3D or otherwise. The film's message about preservation is obviously one close to Scorsese's heart, and it impossible to imagine anyone else making a film so enamored with the magic and history of the movies.

Kenneth Lonergan's long in the making opus is an imperfect masterpiece. A movie that at 2 1/2 hours feels truncated, it's a thrilling, original work. Calling it a coming of age story seems reductive given its massive scope and nuanced exploration of guilt, but it is nonetheless one of the most complex portraits of young personhood I've ever seen. It's a stunning film that, though it was shot six years ago, feels vital and fresh.

This bare, quiet, understated Western is only Kelly Reichardt's fourth feature film, and that fact is a testament to her artistic reach and ambition. After two brilliant, observational films set in contemporary Oregon, Reichardt and writer Jon Raymond dip back into history, while bringing the same penchant for small moments and sharply observed (sparse) dialogue. It's one of the most beautiful movies of the year, and one of the most affecting.

Like Lars von Trier's last film, Antichrist, this one is focused on the depression of a young woman. It's massive, odd, and ultimately great. If it's not as emotionally piercing as some of von Trier's best work, it is one of his most gorgeous, accessible films. What von Trier is asking you to engage in and accept (the end of the world) is tough, but he rewards you by making that horrible, anxiety causing thing a gorgeous piece of art that wears its allusions and hopelessness on its sleeve.

Woody Allen's fine comedy of time-travel and wish fulfillment is among his best. Shot gorgeously in the title city, filled with a great American and French cast, it's one of the lightest films Allen has made, unabashedly Romantic. It's pure pleasure.

This expansive film by Todd Haynes is the second to be made from James M. Cain's novel, and it's far and away the best. Part feminist exploration of the life of a woman in the 1940s, part tawdry sexual psychodrama, Haynes finds a unique tone, one where melodrama and naturalism are side by side. Aided by Kate Winslet's great performance, Ed Lachman's Saul Leiter-influenced cinematography, Carter Burwell's plaintive score, and Haynes' and Jon Raymond's script, Haynes has made the most endlessly watchable six hour film of the year.

Steve Mcqueen's drama of sex addiction, sibling frustration and the emptiness of the modern world is aesthetically bold and uncompromisingly dark. It is wise both about its characters, but also about addiction, attraction, and the ways in which various forms of abuse can affect both the abused and abuser.

The second film by Jeff Nichols is a striking portrait of mania, centered on a committed performance by Michael Shannon. It's unpredictable and absolutely enthralling, stunningly well acted and crafted.

In what is perhaps Terrence Malick's least-narrative driven film, Malick attempts to encompass the totality of human life into one meandering, nostalgic, emotional film. It may be Malick's least accessible film, but I think it portrays childhood, and the feeling of growing up and the changes that occur internally better than any other film I've seen, and the scenes of family and death and creation and destruction are relatable to anyone. It's gorgeous and moving and truly epic and the best film of the year.

Bela Tarr's dazzling, allegorical, rough film is the first of his I've seen. I'm still in awe months after I've seen it. It's such a masterwork, such an unclassifiable, indescribable piece of filmmaking that it seems inappropriate to take it on any other terms buts its own. Every element of the film from the score, to the sound, to the movement of the camera, to the light in the spaces, to the actors who don't seem like actors, to the few words spoken all fit together so soundly that to emphasize one element over another seems anathema to the whole creation of this brilliant, unique film.

Unseen: Mysteries of Lisbon, House of Pleasures, The Adventures of Tintin, A Separation, Immortals, ~~Carnage~~.

Special consideration to: Spike Jonze's Scenes From The Suburbs and Mourir Auprès de Toi, Josh and Benny Safdie's John's Gone, and Louis Garrel's Petit Tailleur, all wonderful shorts.

Secondary Subset of The Best:

Aurora - A startling, intense film from Cristi Puiu, who also stars in a great performance.

Belle Épine - A quietly stunning debut film from Rebecca Zlotowski, single-mindedly following the travails of a young girl who has recently lost her mother. With shades of Maurice Pialat, albeit a more feminine, complex take. The film is anchored by a subdued performance by Léa Seydoux, who is just as hurt and impulsive as she was in the great La Bell Personne, but conveys it in such a different way.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams - Werner Herzog's meditative 3D exploration of the Chauvet Caves, playful and thoughtful in turn, one of the best uses of the format thus far.

Cold Weather - Aaron Katz's immensely likeable detective story bucks the trend of so many low-budget films and actually gives a damn about the way it looks, feels and sounds.

A Dangerous Method - David Cronenberg's film about Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and a difficult patient. It's reserved, especially for Cronenberg, but it's a well acted piece of drama.

The Descendants - My favorite of Alexander Payne's films thus far, not as cynical as his past work, and even more emotionally dense.

Film Socialisme - A maddening film from Godard to be sure, but also one exhiliratingly free from any obligation towards the audience. If all Godard is offering is images, then I'll take the film at that.

The Guard - John Michael McDonagh's debut is charming and hilarious, featuring a great performance from Brendan Gleeson.

Le Havre - Aki Kaurismaki's comedy fantasy that embraces Hollywood conventions while taking serious very real social issues. Hard not to love.

J. Edgar - Strong biopic of an obsessive, paranoid, closeted figure. If it embellishes a little it can be forgiven for making the portrait a compelling one.

Martha Marcy May Marlene - A very strong debut film from Sean Durkin, unexpected in the way it reveals things about its lead character.

Moneyball - A fine drama from Bennet Miller, has little to do with baseball and more to do with the willingness to try new things with the determination that they're going to work out.

The Skin I Live In - A wild, lurid melodrama from one of the masters.

Tabloid - Errol Morris' funny, provocative documentary, his best in years.

Tinker Tailor Solider Spy - A strange collective unconscious masterwork where nothing makes sense and doesn't have to.

Urbanized - The third in Gary Hustwit's design trilogy tackles nothing less than the way we live our lives. Like Hustwit's previous two films, it's one that actually makes you change the way you look at the world.

We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lynne Ramsay returns to filmmaking and makes one of the most interior, strange films I've seen. Not coincidentally a hard film to talk about, it's experience that's worth having.

Weekend - Andrew Haigh's lovely day long romance between two men is finely observed and exceptional.

The Worst of the Year

Drive - An empty, formless, violent endorsement of everything that's wrong with movie-fan culture. Everything about the film is contemptible.

Certified Copy - I've never responded to Kiarostami before and this film is no different. Endlessly circling around dull conversation and a bullshit secret. I don't care about his characters enough to care who they are to one another, and his basic disregard for language of cinema doesn't help any.

The Hangover: Part II - It seems impossible to make a movie full of funny people and not have a single laugh in it, but alas...

The Debt - It seems impossible to make a movie full of great actors and not have a single good scene in it, but alas...

Your Highness - A massive disappointment.

Other favorites included: Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist, Joe Cornish's Attack The Block, Paul Fieg's Bridesmaids, Miguel Arteta's comedy Cedar Rapids, Rodman Flender's Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, Jonathan Levine's 50/50, Vera Farmiga's Higher Ground, Claude Chabrol's Inspector Bellamy, Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre, Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, James Bobin's The Muppets, Lee Chang-dong's moving Poetry, Francois Ozon's Potiche, James Marsh's Project Nim, Gore Verbinski's Rango, David Gordon Green's The Sitter, James Gunn's Super, JJ Abrams' Super 8, the quality musician documentary The Swell Season, Azazel Jacobs' Terri, the wonderful A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas, and Todd McCarthy's Win Win.

Best Music of 2011

2011-12-07T22:30:00.000-08:00

Albums and Songs I actually listened to and liked a lot that came out in 2011, and other musical things.

This is not an unnecessarily comprehensive list, it is an honest sampling of the music I liked and played most often. Writing about music when you know as little as I do is a stupid, stupid thing. This is merely a means of sharing stuff I like. So. Yeah.

1. Holy Ghost! - Holy Ghost!

My favorite album of the year is one that seems to have been largely overlooked. It's a great record indebted to the past (70s underground disco, 80s commercial pop music), but it doesn't sound, like so many bands mired in trendy synth revivalism, like an approximation of something better. It sounds like itself, which is an accomplishment. This is, essentially, dance music, but it's dance music written written in a pop structure that doesn't sacrifice any of the organic, analog sounds that make other DFA acts (LCD Soundsystem, The Juan Maclean) so distinctive. The album's centerpiece, "Jam For Jerry," is a beautiful tribute to their friend, the late drummer Jerry Fuchs. Lyrically it's sad and confused and full of regret, but musically it's almost joyous. It's just about as thoughtful and personal as a pop song can be. It's the high point of an album which is wall to wall with great music.

Holy Ghost! - Jam for Jerry

2. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

This is The Great American Folk album I didn't know I wanted. Building on the harmonizing heavy first album, this one relies more on Pecknold's great lyric-writing. It's as soul searching a record as came out this year, and one that also completely owns up to its own self-obsession, naivete, and youth. It's gorgeous, constantly shifting folk music.

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

3 & 4. Toro y Moi - Underneath the Pine/Freaking Out

Last year I wrote about Toro y Moi's first album that he's likely to "get better as he gets older." This was not entirely correct, because his first album is very good, but since that album he's put out a full length and an EP, along with a number of singles, and he's gotten better. Underneath the Pine is a stellar, cohesive album that builds on the sound he created on the first one by adding more live instrumentation. Freaking Out is a brilliant sampling of a completely different style of songs, executed masterfully.

Video Spotlight!

Toro y Moi - Still Sound

Toro y Moi - I Can Get Love

5. Twin Sister - In Heaven

In Heaven is clearly not the record that a lot of people (at least those who review music of this kind) wanted it to be. Unlike their two fantastic EPs, it's not full of diversions and sudden genre changes. It is, however, thoroughly singular. It's filled with Twin Sister songs, and really, really good ones at that. They're one of the most exciting bands to emerge in the past few years and I think they're one that will be around for some time.

Twin Sister - Bad Street

6. Memoryhouse - The Years

The re-recorded EP maintains the mood of the original records, while pushing the haziness even further. You'd be hard pressed to recognize the Jon Brion sample in "Lately" now as quickly, as Abeele has added layers to the more stripped down songs, while simultaneously bringing forth Denise Nouvion's voice. A great, promising major label debut.

Memoryhouse - Lately

7. Zola Jesus - Conatus

Perhaps less sonically diverse as her previous EPs, Conatus is still an incredibly strong work. As dark as some of the music can be, Danilova's voice is always a strong presence and its strength provides the record with uplift.

Zola Jesus - Seekir

8. Tennis - Cape Dory

A solid debut record that does away with much of the fashionable lo-fi sound of their EP, filled with good songs. There's something that's easy to ignore about musicians playing in sturdy structures, but when it's done this well it's bliss.

Tennis - Pigeon

9. Yacht - Shangri-La

Yacht's fourth record (its second as a duo) is a great, often beautiful, often very danceable concept record. Focusing (like some of their last record) on the idea of an afterlife, they seem to come to conclusion that they'd rather make a paradise here on earth. The record culminates with the gorgeous title track, containing probably my favorite sentiment in a song all year: "When the rapture comes/If you don't mind/I'll be waiting down here and sweating."

Yacht - Utopia

10. The Rapture - In The Grace of Your Love

Speaking of The Rapture, their third record is a complicated, sometimes jumbled mess, but more often than not its a return to form, and an expansion of their sound. It's a devotional record (when I saw them live they played with a Bible on one of the amps), but because though the devotional aspect is so specific, the record is really about love in all forms. Dance music is frequently about love, and some of the best disco records have had a spiritual bend to them. Even if I don't share their devotion, I can't help but be caught up in the spirit of their love.

The Rapture - How Deep Is Your Love?

Other albums I enjoyed, listed alphabetically by artist:

Asobi Seksu - Fluorescence

Song: Asobi Seksu - Trails

Childish Gambino - EP/Camp

Song: Childish Gambino - Not Going Back

Song: Childish Gambino - Bonfire

The Drums - Portamento

Song: The Drums - Money

Eleanor Friedberger - Last Summer

Video Spotlight!
Song: Eleanor Friedberger - Roosevelt Island

Jay-Z and Kanye West - Watch the Throne

Video Spotlight!Song: Jay-Z and Kanye West - Otis

The Lonely Island - Turtleneck & Chain

Video Spotlight!Song: The Lonely Island - Shy Ronnie 2: Ronnie & Clyde

M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

Song: M83 - Raconte-Moi Une Histoire

John Maus - We Must Become The Pitiless Censors of Ourselves

Song: John Maus - Believer

Radiohead - The King of Limbs

Video Spotlight!Song: Radiohead - Lotus Flower

St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

Video Spotlight!Song: St. Vincent - Cruel

Tom Waits - Bad as Me

Song: Tom Waits - Chicago

The Weeknd - House of Balloons/Thursday

Song: The Weeknd - House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls

Song: The Weeknd - Rolling Stone

Other songs I enjoyed, listed alphabetically by artist:

Adele - Rolling in the Deep (Jamie XX Shuffle)

Beyonce - Love on Top

The Chemical Brothers - Hanna's Theme (Vocal Version)

The Crystal Ark - Touch

Cults - Go Outside

Factory Floor - Two Different Ways

Gem Club - Twins

Gunnar Bjerk - Back Then

Holy Ghost! - I Wanted To Tell Her (Ministry Cover)

Video Spotlight!James Blake - The Wilhem Scream

The Juan Maclean - Everybody Get Close

Video Spotlight!King Krule (née Zoo Kid) - Out Getting Ribs

Video Spotlight!Lana Del Rey - Videogames

LCD Soundsystem - Live Alone (Franz Ferdinand Cover)

The Strokes - Under Cover of Darkness

Toro y Moi - I Will Talk To You

Video Spotlight!Tyler the Creator - Yonkers

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Ffunny Ffrends

To see live videos from many artists on this list, you can go here, live photos will be up there later.

Outrun

2011-06-19T20:59:00.000-07:00

Outrun is a short film written and directed by Nicholas Tinsley. It stars Angela Sprinkle as Maggie, a young woman who has just lost a loved one, and follows her over the course of three days as she is haunted by the memories of the deceased. The film also features Andrew Strenk, Adam Stephenson, Claudia Di Biccari and Dianne Bischoff. It was shot in seven days, the bulk of which occurred in March 2010 in Glenview and Chicago, Illinois.

31 minutes

Color

HD - Panasonic HVX

1.78:1

English

This is my short film Outrun. I made it last year and it’s the biggest thing I’ve done yet. It is very much a first film in a lot of ways, but there are things in it I like.

Here's what critic are saying: "Written and directed by Nicholas Tinsley, this short film deals with a young woman emotionally unmoored after the recent death of a loved one. It’s good stuff… well written, features some solid naturalistic acting (particularly from lead Angela Sprinkle), and the soundtrack is emotionally resonant. So open a bottle of wine, lower the lights, and get it rolling."

Thanks for watching.

IMDb

The Best Films of 2010

2011-01-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

This was a rich year for films both new and old. All told I saw 97 films theatrically, some more than a few times. There was the restoration of Metropolis, and the repertory findings at Chicago's Doc Films. The great under-released American Independents, and The Chicago International Film Festival's offering of a variety of foreign and domestic discoveries. It even seemed that the multiplexes were offering an increasing percentage of films worthy mention. Because of this, it feels ridiculous to rank the films I loved the most this year. It always does, sure, but for some reason this year especially. I could, if forced, come up with some arbitrary order, but the thing that all of these films have in common with one another is that they've stayed in my memory since I saw them. They're all stylistically inventive and have an excitement in them about the possibilities of the form. They all provoke, they're all personal works, and as such they all have a lot at stake. I've continued to find new reasons praise them all, and like children I feel it's wrong to choose a favorite. And so, in alphabetical order, with minimal, repetitious comment, my favorite films of 2010.

Note: There are still a number of films I haven't been able to see yet that would possibly make it into this grouping. As such, there may be additions in the coming weeks. Long after anyone has looked at this.

The Best Films of 2010

A stunning psycho-sexual melodrama. The promise of a great visual filmmaker like Aronofsky making a ballet movie is met here and it joins the ranks as one of the finest of that genre.

Derek Cianfrance's long gestating portrait of the dissolution of a marriage. It's unsparing, scarily well acted and one of the most fascinating films of this young decade.

One of the more overlooked films of the year is also one of the best. Bradley Rust Gray's simple, engaging observation of a college break spent at home and the relationship between two old friends who could be more than that, it's one of the most accurate portraits of young adult life I've seen on screen. Beautifully shot in a style inspired by the work of Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

I've written about Noah Baumbach's work and his fifth film on this blog before, and my esteem for it has only grown. So filled with nuance and odd details and observations that make it very re-watchable and real.

A complete surprise of a film that bowled me over last summer. There's a line out that it's the "greatest Visconti film Visconti never made" and that holds some truth. It harkens back to European Art Cinema of the 1960s, and is Emersonian in its divide between the natural world and the cultured. Nevermind that Swinton produced and learned Italian and Russian for the role, her performance is lived, not acted. Easily the most beautiful film of the year, it's also the most emotional and moving. It's a big, ambitious risk of a film, and one that paid off immeasurably.

Mark Romanek's delicate, romantic, achingly sad adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's rumination on mortality. Uses a Sci-Fi conceit as a means to explore questions of existence. Beautifully done.

Edgar Wright's great, visually inventive love story/musical/comic book movie. Incredibly detailed, and very funny, the adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's comic series expands on the world of the books and creates its own. It has a tremendous cast, it's filled with great music and it's unlike anything else out this year.

The finest horror film that's been made in decades, and Scorsese's finest since The Aviator. Wall-to-wall great performances, indelible, horrific images and a great use of music.

An extremely well written, fictionalized account of the creation of Facebook is really about the tear that can occur when friendship and ambition get in each other's way. Sorkin's screenplay frames it as a classical story and Fincher meets the material with a classical eye. A portrait of a very specific moment in time made universal.

Sofia Coppola's fourth feature film is radical, and maybe the finest motion picture of the year. It says great things within its silences, and her collaboration with Harris Savides (the second film of his on this list) brings about new aesthetic daring in her work.

Special Mention: Spike Jonze's I'm Here, one of a few short films this year that came into being through sponsorship. It's one of the best films of the year, and it has much in common with Never Let Me Go. The film is available to watch online for free here.

The following list of films are, again, in alphabetical order except where otherwise noted.

Secondary Subset of The Best:

The American - Anton Corbijn's foray into the lone assassin genre is quiet and suspenseful. Almost works as a slightly less arty remake of Jarmusch's The Limits of Control.

Carlos - Olivier Assayas' episodic portrait of a failed revolutionary that serves more as a look at identity in geopolitical terrorism than as a straight biopic.

Daddy Longlegs - The Brothers Safdie made a brutally honest, unrelenting film about a chaotic character played brilliantly by Ronald Bronstein. It has immense respect for the medium and it's gripping and interesting even as its lead does unspeakable things.

Exit Through The Gift Shop - Banksy's funny, thoughtful, inventive exploration of the street art world.

Hereafter - The best Eastwood since 2006's Letters From Iwo Jima, it's audacious, searching and ultimately very moving.

The Illusionist - The wonderful animated adaptation of an unproduced screenplay by Jacques Tati. Sylvain Chomet and his animators capture the physicality of Tati, but make the film their own. Gorgeous, unsentimental, and very funny.

Making Plans for Lena - A strong follow-up to last year's La Belle Personne (which I think is a masterpiece and is still unavailable on Region 1 DVD). It set the course for his challenging Man at Bath and features a great lead performance from Chiarra Mastroianni.

Mystery Team - A great self-produced comedy from internet sketch collective Derek Comedy. Funnier than 99% of studio releases.

Night Catches Us - A film that unfortunately got lost in the shuffle. It's a strong debut from Tanya Hamilton, and though it suffers slightly from over thought, it has more to say than most films that have come out this year. A film about politics that's actually political.

Ondine - A beautiful and flawed fairy tale from Niel Jordan, shot by Christopher Doyle.

Soul Kitchen - The maker of one of the more oppressively sad films in recent memory, The Edge of Heaven, made one of the funniest, lightest comedies of the year. Akin's formal strength elevates the film.

Wild Grass - An absolutely indescribable piece of insanity from Alain Resnais that some how stays pleasant without making the least bit of sense.

Festival Favorites (ordered by preference):

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - Apitchatpong Weerasethakul's Palme d'Or winner is a brilliant last attempt to capture his disappearing homeland. More still than his previous work, it shares that works skill. It feels monumental even as it's unfolding.

Tuesday, After Christmas - Another leap forward for the Romanian New-Wave. Radu Muntean's adultery drama is intelligent and observant.

Man at Bath - A stylistic leap for Christophe Honore, though maybe a leap sideways. Divided between handy-cam footage shot in New York during the press for the US release of Making Plans For Lena, melding fiction and reality, and a sexual drama happening back home in France, it's a gutsy film though it feels like a transitional one.

Cold Weather - Aaron Katz's fine detective comedy, well shot on the RED, subdued and involving.

Worst films of the year (in order from most horrible to least contemptible):

Dinner for Schmucks - An excruciating misfire on every level, filmed in the most staid sitcom style. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.

The Town - Riddled with sentimentality and cliche. Not even a handful of the best English-speaking actors in the world and one of the greatest living cinematographers can save it.

Winter's Bone - A muddled piece of Southern Gothic cliche, inexplicably embraced by critics and festivals around the world.

Kick-Ass - The polar opposite of Scott Pilgrim. Unfunny, poorly staged and deeply unpleasant.

How Do You Know - Makes It's Complicated look brilliant by comparison. Devoid of any connection to real people, or the world as it has ever existed.

Piranha 3-D - A blown opportunity for an exploitation classic. Has all the promise of a diverting piece of trash, and none of the fun.

Machete - Machete is mashitty.

Rabbit Hole - An immature tale of grief, uninteresting to look at and listen to. Belies the promise John Cameron Mitchell showed in Shortbus.

Other Films I Saw and Really Enjoyed Include: Antonio Campos' great debut feature Afterschool, Mike Leigh's study of the bourgeoisie Another Year, Andrew Bujalski's nicely paced story of sisterliness Beeswax, Frederick Wiseman's great Boxing Gym, the Duplass Brothers' mainstream debut Cyrus, Mia Hansen-Løve's haunting The Father of My Children, David O. Russel's imperfect The Fighter, Chris Morris' Jihadi romp Four Lions, Andre Techine's fine morality play The Girl On The Train, Roman Polanski's (unfinished?) thriller The Ghost Writer, the cock and bull story I Love You Phillip Morris, Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix's grand statement on celebrity that's much better than you'd think it would be I'm Still Here, Michael Winterbottom's creepy exploration of a sociopath The Killer Inside Me, the charming Let It Rain, the Beckettesque The Living Wake, the quietly stunning Lourdes, the very funny MacGruber, the also funny The Other Guys, Michel Gondry's funny and moving portrait of his grandmother The Thorn in the Heart, the fine French prison drama A Prophet, a deeply flawed but dazzling rock drama The Runaways, the fine adult comedy Tamara Drewe, the Coen Brothers' amiable Western True Grit, Claire Denis' gripping White Material, Woody Allen's fine morality play You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, and Miguel Arteta's flawed but smart and funny Youth in Revolt.

Moments Not In Time: 2010

2010-12-17T21:52:00.000-08:00

Inspired by the annual "Moments Out of Time" series at MSN, some of my own that didn't make their list.

Roger dumping cereal into a toilet in "Greenberg"

Michael Cera's aside justification for not wanting to hit the only female evil-ex in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World": "They're soft..."

The female prisoner drinking from an invisible cup in "Shutter Island"

Ivy and Al sheepishly prodding a baby pigeon in "The Exploding Girl"

The greatest band in the world (in the movie), The Clash at Demonhead, performing Metric's "Black Sheep" in "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World"

The constant numbers and 'x's placed throughout the production design, costumes, and dialogue of "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World"

The shocking shots of Barbara Hershey sleeping in "Black Swan"

A moment between a mother and daughter, one, at the end of "I Am Love"

Tilda Swinton falling in love with a man through a meal in "I Am Love"

The opening shots of Milan covered in snow in "I Am Love"

Roger staring at the dead possum in the pool, feeling his mortality while the young people around him laugh in "Greenberg"

Kathy, now older, listening to the title song she listened to as a child in "Never Let Me Go"

A young man ready to fight, ten years too late to participate in a revolution, fights anyway in "Night Catches Us"

Best Music of 2010

2010-11-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

1. LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening

What might be the last record by LCD Soundsystem is fittingly grand. It's the best record of the year, and seeing them play live a few times this year were the best shows I saw. The album ends with a song called "Home," which is appropriate since it's the most oft-repeated word in their entire catalogue, but also because that sense of desire for something you've lost pervades the whole record, if not James Murphy's whole career. If this is the end, I can't think of a better send off.

2. Spoon - Transference

The most reductive they've ever allowed their sound to be, it would be off putting if the songs weren't so consistently good. This is among the strongest stuff they've ever recorded.

3. Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

Forgiveness is as good an idea as any to promote, and as a theme it syncs perfectly with their aesthetic. It's one of their best, most focused albums.

4. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

The first time I've warmed to any of their albums as a whole. It's a great record, personal but very large in scope. Works just as well in a stadium as it does in a bedroom.

5. Hot Chip - One Life Stand

Another great Hot Chip album, a more diverse sound. Harmonizing, honest emotion, weird synth sounds. I like it a lot.

6. Jónsi - Go

A brighter, happier version of Sigur Rós. Beautiful. Also worth seeking out is Dean Deblois' film of the acoustic version of the record, Go Quiet.

7. She & Him - Volume Two

An incredibly well produced, well performed record. The particulars of Deschanel's other career don't need to enter into the picture to appreciate it at all except that her other career surely informs her vocal performances which are, without exception, confident and emotional. It's an improvement over their very good first record, and goes well beyond pastiche.

8. MGMT - Congratulations

A record that I took a while to warm to, but when I did it was hard not to recognize the greatness. If it sounds a bit like a post-graduate study on the psychedelic, it can be forgiven by the enthusiasm in the songwriting and the dense production. Beyond that it's very enjoyable to listen to.

9. Sleigh Bells - Treats

A grower. I didn't like the EP, then I did. I didn't like this, then I did. They leave something to be desired live, and I wonder how long they can sustain as a band but for now it's great, loud, dumb pop music.

10. Gold Panda - Lucky Shiner

This came out of nowhere for me. It sounds like something I would have loved in High School. That sounds like a back-handed compliment or an insult, but it's an irresistibly charming record.

(The following artists' names are in bold, with the title of their release-if there is one-in parenthesis next to their name.)
Much of the rest of these are bands I'm probably more familiar with a small section of their work than their albums as a collective, but I also enjoyed (in some order at first and then not as much): The follow-up EP by a great live band, Twin Sister (Color Your Life), the excellent EP by DFA act Holy Ghost! (Static on the Wire), the slightly disappointing but still very good album by The Walkmen (Lisbon), the all over the place, but great in stretches album from Yeasayer (Odd Blood), the very enjoyable to listen to and see performed live stuff by The Morning Benders (Big Echo), longtime DFA DJ, first time origina...tor Shit Robot (From The Cradle To The Rave), the highly-influenced-by-Joy Division record from The Drums (The Drums), the disparate, hard to gather releases of Memoryhouse, the ridiculously catchy Swedish pop thing that Robyn (Body Talk) does, the promising EP by Tennis (Boston), I came around to portions of the much derided album by M.I.A. (Maya), the broody beer drinking thing of The National (High Violet), the egomanical, but still kinda good thing that Kanye West (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy) does, the soft spoken, folky British thing that Laura Marling (I Speak Because I Can) does, the consistent output of Rufus Wainwright (All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu), the consistent output of The Roots (How I Got Over), the sure-to-improve-as-they-get-older music of Toro y Moi (Causers of This), the she's-better-in-a-live-setting-than-on-a-record recording by Nellie McKay (Home Sweet Mobile Home), the-never-as-good-as-the-first-EP of Amiina (Puzzle), the thing I'm sure I would have liked them a lot if I listened to it more of Joanna Newsom (Have One On Me) and Owen Pallett (Heartland).

I also enjoyed the various live recordings offered throughout the year, including those of LCD Soundsystem (London Sessions), LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip (Live at Alexandra Palace), Phoenix (Live in Sydney), and Arcade Fire (Live at Madison Square Garden Broadcast on YouTube).

I've assembled a number of live performances by some of the artists mentioned over here.

As always, there a lot of holes in these things, and like most people I do not solely listen to new music. The top ten represent heavy rotators for me, the rest are largely things I did not listen to a great deal, but when I did, I enjoyed. There is a playlist below with a song from every artist mentioned.

Things other people seem like but I don't get: Drake, Best Coast, Florence and the Machine, Of Montreal, Sufjan Stevens, Maximum Balloon, Chromeo.

Night Catches Us: Always Black, No Longer Panthers

2010-09-02T22:29:00.001-07:00

Tanya Hamilton's debut feature Night Catches Us stars Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington, two of my favorite working actors. They're also actors who are frequently underutilized in the films they're in. Mackie has of course been getting some great roles the past few years with Half Nelson and The Hurt Locker, but they're rarely leads in the films they're in. The film takes place in Philadelphia in 1976. Mackie and Washington are ex-Black Panthers, and Mackie has just returned from a sort of forced exile from the neighborhood after he allegedly snitched on another Panther 4 years prior. The film is very adept at connecting the politics of the time (after the Civil Rights movement, before black urban culture became mainstream) to the personal story of these characters whose lives are so well observed and filled with detail. The Roots provide a lot of the music for the film (a lot of it from their excellent new album How I Got Over), which mixes period music with more modern sounding hip hop that's greatly indebted to 70s Soul and R&B, and Black Thought even shows up in a supporting role. There's a great subplot involving a neighborhood kid increasingly frustrated by the police and angry that he missed out on the cultural revolution that people 5 or 10 years older than him participated in, slowly devolving into a militant is very strong and one of the best things in the movie. Newcomer Amir Cheatom handles the role with intensity and focus. If enough people see this, I think you could easily call it a star making role.

I like the film a great deal, and it's ultimately very powerful, but it has a characteristic I find typical of films that were developed through the Sundance Institute (which this film was in 2000, it took 9 years to get it made), which is that a lot of the rough edges of the script seem to have been smoothed over in the development process. For example, the script was original called Stringbean and Marcus. Marcus is Anthony Mackie's character, and Stringbean was presumably Kerry Washington's. In the finished film, her character's name is Patricia, but he calls her Patty, something that she's displeased by. That would make more sense if he called her Stringbean, but that's the kind of thing that can get taken out when you go through the Sundance Lab. I felt similarly about a film called Sin Nombre from last year that went through the Lab. Like that film though, I'd definitely like to see what writer and director Tanya Hamilton does next, because at the very least this film shows a lot of promise.

Recurrence is the Movie: The Films of Noah Baumbach

2010-05-28T03:30:00.000-07:00

The following is a list of recurrent themes and details in the three most recent films by Noah Baumbach. There are spoilers for all three films.

-The Family Pet as a driving force in the story

The Squid and the Whale, the family cat's oscillation between the divorced parents' residencies causes the two characters to keep meeting, keep talking, providing a look at the dynamic, reasons for the divorce, reasons they were a couple in the first place. The cat running out of the house at the end of the film is what causes Bernard to run outside, possibly inducing the heart attack he suffers.

Margot at the Wedding, the family dog Wizard disappears near the begging of the second act, which causes fights both familial and neighborly, its return ends the second act.

Greenberg The Greenberg family dog Mahler is the most central role for a pet in Baumbach's films, is important for humanizing Roger, and brings he and Florence, his love interest, back together over and over again even when complications in the relationship arise.

-The name Greenberg

Walt's girlfriend Sophie Greenberg (Halley Feiffer) in The Squid and the Whale, Roger Greenberg in Greenberg

-A dead animal in a pool

Margot at the Wedding Claude sees a dead mouse at the bottom of the pool after he falls in

Greenberg The party stops as 20 somethings gather around a dead animal, the young people are playful, laugh about it, Roger is freaked out, can't look at it. The young people are callous and unknowing of their own mortality. Roger is obsessed and terrified by aging and death, and the confrontation with the animal's corpse is a strong physicalization of those fears.

-Karen Dalton

The vagabond songstress accompanies Margot at the Wedding's closing credits crawl, and she is mentioned explicitly in Greenberg when Roger puts it on a mix for Florence.

-Childlike, sexual, anal obsessed profanity

The Squid and the Whale Frank's father-aping outbursts "Suck my dick, ass man!"

Margot at the Wedding Claude shouting at his mother "You shit in your shoes and then you fuck them!"

Greenberg Roger shouting at his best friend "Sit on my dick asshole!"

-Masturbation

The Squid and the Whale Frank's burgeoning, supremely confused sexuality is manifested in his public masturbation, and spreading of semen around school.

Margot at the Wedding Margot upon arriving at her childhood home masturbates in her bed, Claude tells his mother near the end of the film that he masturbated in their hotel room after everyone went to sleep.

-The actress Halley Feiffer as an object of lust, agent of sexual discovery

The Squid and the Whale Walt's first real girlfriend, first sexual experience

Margot at the Wedding Claude stares at her chest, is aroused by contact with her. Malcom gazes at her, kisses her, cheating on his fiance.

-Small objects getting lodged in orifices, staying there for most of the film

The Squid and the Whale Early in the film Frank shoves a cashew up his nose, late in the film it comes out.

Margot at the Wedding Early in the film Margot gets a fly stuck inside her ear. Near the end she is still struggling to get it out.

-Last minute decisions as ends for the film

The Squid and the Whale Walt dashes out of the hospital to go confront the titular exhibit and confront his fears.

Margot at the Wedding Margot decides to chase after, wave down, and get on the bus she just put her son on.

Greenberg Roger has a panic attack in the back of his niece's car on the way to the airport and Australia, decides to get out to go take care of Florence, stop running.

-Characters not being able to swim/water as baptism

The Squid and the Whale Walt dips his head in a pond in Central Park, recalls fond memories of bath time with his Mother.

Margot at the Wedding Claude (deliberately?) falls into the pool, not knowing how to swim.

Greenberg Roger slowly enters his brother's pool, doggy paddling across with great difficulty.

-Singing

The Squid and the Whale Walt at the talent show, the stolen song.

Margot at the Wedding Claude sings Blondie into a tape recorder in private.

Greenberg Florence sings at an open mic night.

-The name Ivan

Ivan the Tennis Pro in The Squid and the Whale, the title character's former best friend in Greenberg.

-Personifying animals

Baumbach's New Yorker short story Mouse au Vin contains this line "I thought Louis was me today. Mice are so weird. They’re like humans in rodent costumes." In Greenberg Florence says she sometimes thinks the dog Mahler is really a "human in a dog costume."

Greenberg: Thoughts on Screen

2010-04-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

Noah Baumbach is a filmmaker who repeats. I loved The Squid and the Whale and became obsessed with it a few months ago (as I tend to with certain films when I'm writing), and decided that it's basically a perfect movie, even the shots where you see 2000s cars in the '80s setting go into making it great, but that's another discussion. So anyway, I was very eagerly anticipating this new film from Baumbach even though it looked stylistically, and tonally, completely different than anything Baumbach has done, either in his first two 90s post-collegiate intellectual ennui films (Kicking & Screaming, Mr. Jealousy), his two harsh familial drama, rebound, mid-00s films (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) or his co-writing work with Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Fantastic Mr. Fox). From the trailer I was worried it seemed to contain none of the visual style Baumbach had started with The Squid and the Whale and refined with Margot at the Wedding, but even more than that I was worried by Baumbach's sudden fondness for my most hated "filmmaker," Joe Swanberg, who I will summarize for those unfamiliar as the Uwe Boll of no-budget cinema. Not only had Baumbach produced Swanberg's latest nopus (does that work?), he'd cast one of Swanberg's mainstays Greta Gerwig in a central role. I liked Gerwig in her small role in The House of the Devil, but her connection to Swanberg still soured me on her as a performer. From the trailer the film also seemed like it might be slipping into the Nancy Meyers territory of films about wealthy people with made up problems.

Having now actually seen the film (twice) and not just guessing based on advertising, I can say quite happily that none of those concerns come to pass. The film is different in many ways than Baumbach's previous films but it's also a logical evolution. Visually, it has a very striking resemblance to 1970s American cinema, like that of Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Sidney Lumet, and Peter Yates. Even more so than in Margot at the Wedding (where Baumbach first worked with Greenberg cinematographer Harris Savides), this film visually evokes a long passed period in mainstream American cinema. A period where even in the hokiest of studio genre pictures like Capricorn One, you'd find a competently shot film that has respect for the widescreen frame and knew how to use it to good effect. And unlike so many filmmakers working in a superficially similar milieu who evoke those names of the 1970s American auteurs, Baumbach's film evokes it in content, as well as form. From the frames, to the lighting, down to the way the film is processed, everything visual is rooted in an organic, utterly natural ideology. The same goes for the music from LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, which sounds reminiscent of solo Paul McCartney or the Leonard Cohen songs in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and the structure of the story, which is rooted in character and moments and diverting expectations. Baumbach is also able to resist the temptation so many filmmakers who chase that look and feeling fall into, to remove your characters story from the present and its technology and politics and pop culture. Baumbach embraces the time in which the film was made and doesn't shy away from referring to the world in a way that most people do every day.

The performances all around are so rich and full of nuance that it's hard to focus on one standout. Ben Stiller gives his best performance since Chas Tenenbaum as the title role, and makes such bold choices that I fear some audiences may be put off by it. Stiller has always been attracted to characters who don't pander to audience sympathies, even in his most outlandish comic roles, he almost never begs for the audience to like him, and in his best work he doesn't seem to care. Look back at Zoolander, an incredibly flawed film, but one with a central character who is so stupid, so ignorant, that any viewer with a 5th grade education has no choice but to feel superior to him. In most protagonists there are faults, how else are we to care for a person, but there are also redeeming character traits. They're kind, or their funny, even if they're pricks they find redemption. Stiller, it seems, is interested in pushing the audiences tolerance. In the films he's directed, his characters redemption comes at the last possible moment, and is almost immediately revoked. Tugg Speedman in Tropic Thunder is still a self involved, stupid prick at the end of the movie. Chas Tenenbaum is still disassociated from his family. Even as a public personality, Stiller has always given off the air that he doesn't really care what you think. It's not until this role that that tendency has been explored to such complex and engaging results. Stiller's Roger Greenberg is a misanthropic, self involved, delusional wreck. But we care about him because we can see immediately that he is so confused and lacks such basic skill for accurate introspection, that you know he can't even help himself. When he says horrible things, or shouts profanities, or is insensitive in social situations, you know it's because of this crippling problem. We also care about him because he's an exaggerated version of something that is within every thinking person, criticism, dissatisfaction, and a guard we put up to protect ourselves from pain. If we strike the first blow, it won't hurt as much as it would if we were struck first. For Greenberg, vulnerability is something that doesn't fit into his purview of life. Greenberg is so critical of people who lack self awareness, but of course he in fact has no self awareness himself. He's a walking contradiction of a human being, and it's the unraveling of his persona that partially makes the film's almost plotless nature so fascinating. For Baumbch, this is a character who has bounced around his films from the beginning in various forms, most fully in The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding. Greenberg's invention is a direct combination of Frank, Walt, and Bernard from The Squid and the Whale and Margot from his follow-up film. What Ben Stiller brings to it is incalculable. His performance is so dense and psychologically complex that I felt for the very first time I was seeing something honest from him. Beyond their blind-spots, Stiller's characters always seem to contain an element of distancing irony. But there are passages in Greenberg where you completely forgot you're watching one of the biggest movie stars in the world, because you're not. You're watching a fully formed person inhabiting a space with no regards for an audience, a story, or even a camera.

It is also Greenberg's interaction with Greta Gerwig's character Florence that makes the films aimless, searching narrative so compelling. While one may argue that Greenberg is almost a stock Baumbachian character, Florence is something he's never attempted before. Florence is at heart a good person. She doesn't connive or scheme, she's almost accommodating to a fault. She's a sweet young girl who's main goal it seems is to be happy. She works as a personal assistant to Greenberg's brother, but serves the role of a nanny to the family, and even in this work she finds joy hiking with the family dog, Mahler, interacting with the Greenberg children, picking up groceries for the family. On weekends she sings at open mic nights, not because she's trying to build a career, but because it makes her happy. She goes home with a guy she meets at a gallery party a friend invited her to, because, she says, it felt good. Florence the purest of Baumbach's characters, not saddled with the education, therapy talk, or neurosis of his protagonists in the past. So when we see this decent young women so taken with this misanthropic middle aged man, we're curious and intrigued and we're allowed to view their non-romance as an interaction between people, rather than a sporting event where the audience is forced to take sides, for or against. In life, it is more complicated in that, and so it is too in Baumbach's film. Gerwig's performance is so adept at taking a character who in less assured hands could end up a low-rent Manic Pixie Dream Girl and turn her into a real person. There's an unawareness of the camera in Gerwig that I can only assume comes from her extensive work in no-budget, improvised films wherein she was likely filmed up close for long periods of time. She's used to a camera being there in situations most actresses wouldn't allow. There's a scene in Swanberg's awful Hannah Takes the Stairs where Gerwig rubs the real residue of a towel off of her nipples. Though the scene has no place in the film, and serves no dramatic purpose, it illustrates Gerwig's ability to play every scene as real, to be open to showing the realities of mundanity. It's a quality she brings to every scene in the film, whether it's her driving for long stretches, or walking the dog, or hiking with a friend, she's not concerned with looking "good" so much as she is with being truthful. It's a style of performance you don't see in films often, and when you begin to realize how much of a character Gerwig has built, the performance becomes even more impressive, and it's even more apparent how central it is to Greenberg's success. That frankness is something Swanberg exploited to mostly prurient excess, but what Baumbach does is incorporate it into scenes that would otherwise be meaningless. Those opening shots of the film, with Florence driving around Los Angeles, hold our interest because it feels like we're watching someone living, and we're allowed to drop in and observe for a moment before the "story" starts. It's fascinating, it's unique, and it's damn fine film.

One Time, I Saw A Bad Film

2010-01-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

Jim Emerson's post "What do we mean by the 'worst' movies of 2009?" spurred me to write about the worst damn film I saw all last year, Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light. Below is an explanation for why I think it's the worst and what I mean by worst. I would include a photo, but I'd rather not have to look at one of Reygadas' images every time I come here. The following was written as a comment, so excuse the lack of structure and informality.

The worst film I saw last year was Carlos Reygadas' "Silent Light."

I'd been hearing about the film for over a year, heard Scorsese, heard Ebert, and I waited to see it on film at Facets Cinematheque months after I could have seen it on my computer. I spent the entire running time uncomfortable and angry at what was being projected in front of me. Somehow, some way, a lack of perspective or any kind of expression had been confused with a meditative masterpiece. The mere depiction of nature had been confused with an immersion. What I saw was a complete exploitation of poverty, an exploitation on migrant faces and the wear that came with them. Exploitation of these performers and of the landscape they occupied. Film its self is an exploitative medium, but if you have something to convey, something to put across through that exploitation, that makes it worth it. Here there is nothing, it is a film completely devoid of any redeeming facets. Even the supposed "beauty" of the cinematography, the handheld shots of children bathing outdoors, all exploitation, as generic and without purpose as any car commercial.

I enjoy a lot of directors whose films could be described as slow. I love Ozu, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming Liang, Hou Hsiao Hsien, I am not impervious to the charms of nature lovers like Terrence Malick, I enjoy a tale or two of the forgotten people, some De Sica here, some Bresson there. I enjoy films that look good, even slick. David Gordon Green and Tarsem are favorites, but this thing has nothing that all those directors films do, a perspective and a reason to exist.

The most maddening shot I saw last year was the one in Silent Light when Reygadas (or whomever) tracks from outside a dusty gravel parking lot into an open garage, adjusting the iris as he enters and then leaves the garage. You don't see that in other films. You know why? It's lazy and most directors, even the ones least concerned with continuity or traditional film language, avoid doing it in-shot. They cut, they figure something else out, either way it never ends up in their film. But Reygadas does it in his film because he doesn't care, and he expects you not to either. After all, we're talking about a guy whose idea of great cinema is watching an erect penis slowly become flaccid, a shot he included in his previous film (which had an ugly, sexist poster around the globe).

The part that makes me so crazy is that beyond exploiting these people to try and lend some semblance of importance to his meaningless film is the glomming on of religion, death and some kind of idiotic implication of magic and death denial, and cut to a shot of tree in front of a sunset and associate it with nature and we're out.

Terrible film, and for those reasons worse than the other nine awful films I saw this year including Explicit Ills, Gigantic, Amelia, New York, I Love You, The Marc Pease Experience, The Box, Night and Day, Brothers and Year One.

Best Films of 2009

2009-12-28T22:03:00.000-08:00

A pair of "children's films" and "documentaries" end up at either end of my top twenty-five this year. The top pair are both adaptations and expansions of beloved, slim children's literature by critically controversial directors popular with a younger cult of moviegoers, and the bottom pair a set of stylistically refined documentaries by revolutionaries in the medium. Spike Jonze's adaption of Maurice Sendak's book Where the Wild Things Are and Wes Anderson's adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox both stray somewhat from their source material, but out of them create new works of art, as distinctive and ready to be loved for as long as their print counterparts have been. The documentaries challenge the notion of what a documentary is. In Moore's Godardian essay film Capitalism: A Love Story he argues passionately that the American dream, the ideal that propelled this country from the second world war to the present is bringing about its collapse. Moore's films have always been eclectic, containing comedic stunts, stories of small town families and ironic use of archival footage, but never has Moore argued more passionately and urgently as he does here. This is also the first of Moore's films to be what his others have only obliquely been, a call to action. Conversely, Frederick Wiseman's La Danse contains less overt commentary on its subject. Wiseman refines the style he's maintained since his earliest work like High School, setting the camera down in a corner of a space and watching the events unfold. Earlier in his career, this was dubbed "direct cinema," but Wiseman wisely rebuffs at the term, because the very act of making a film and the act of editing that film is its self a commentary. Sure, there are long takes in this nearly three hour film, where there is no cutting occuring, but what Wiseman focuses on and when it appears in the film gives you all the commentary needed. Without a point of view, the running time would be interminable, but because Wiseman is so adept at sequencing events and capturing them in an intriguing way, the film is engaging, and when it wants to be, moving and funny. Most of all though, it's fascinating, and the same can be said for all of the films in my list, from the Coen brothers' masterpiece A Serious Man, to the Korean-American directed no-budget Rwandan film Munyurangabo, to Steven Soderbergh's pair of digital video experimentations. There was no shortage of great cinema from around the globe this year, you just had to find it.

Special consideration for Michael Haneke's masterpiece The White Ribbon and Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum.

Another 10 (in order):
Observe and Report
Rumba
The Messenger
Two Lovers
Face (Visage)
Fish Tank
Somers Town
Funny People
Taking Woodstock
Duplicity
The International

Also (in order): Air Doll, Bruno, Frontier of The Dawn, Police, Adjective, Still Walking, Summer Hours, Hunger, Goodbye Solo, The Beaches of Agnes, Revanche, The Road, Coco Before Chanel, Invictus, The Hangover, Big Fan, Mother, Sin Nombre, Everlasting Moments, Tell Them Anything You Want, A Christmas Carol, Drag Me To Hell, Adventureland, Crazy Heart, Julie & Julia, Up in the Air, Julia, Rudo y Cursi, Avatar, and Humpday.

Others (not in order): A Single Man, Mary and Max, 500 Days of Summer, Nymph, The Boat That Rocked, The Limits of Control, The Invention of Lying, Zombieland, Whip It, Knowing, Treeless Mountain, The Brothers Bloom, Coraline, Watchmen, Gommorah, Departures, Visioneers, Whatever Works, Cold Souls, An Education, and The Men Who Stare At Goats.

Ten Worst (in order): Silent Light, Explicit Ills, Gigantic, Amelia, New York, I Love You, The Marc Pease Experience, The Box, Night and Day, Brothers and Year One.

Biggest disappointments (not in order): The Limits of Control, The Invention of Lying, Thirst, and The Soloist.

NOT YET SEEN: ~~35 Shots of Rum~~, ~~The Headless Woman~~, ~~The White Ribbon~~, Of Time and the City, and ~~My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done~~.

Moments Not in Time

2009-12-18T15:14:00.000-08:00

Inspired by the annual "Moments Out of Time" series at MSN, some of my own that didn't make their list.

Max pops his head up in the tiny, beautiful city made by a moody monster in Where The Wild Things Are

Mr. Fox tells his wife Felicity that she looks like she's glowing, a cut and she actually is glowing, lit from within. "Maybe it's the lighting." Mr Fox says, in Fantastic Mr. Fox

In La Belle Personne, a brief recap of the past. Two boys in a bathroom, one grabs the other, sneaking behind a car after gym class for a clandestine kiss. Secrets revealed that unintentionally and indirectly set a tragedy into motion.

Shoshanna Dreyfus balks at a Nazi war hero, "In France we respect directors." in Inglourious Basterds

Colonel Hans Landa's eyes shift like an animal stalking its prey, noticing a figure move rapidly beneath the floor boards. "There!" in Inglourious Basterds

The Erotic Connoisseur reads his review of his q-tip heavy meeting with an escort named Chelsea, quoting Misty Beethoven, music comes in under and then the song kicks in "Everyone one's a critic..." in The Girlfriend Experience

On stage at the Paris Opera Ballet, Madea bathes herself in blood, two dead children lay. With the opportunity to get as close as anyone would want to, Frederick Wiseman's camera keeps its distance, respecting the raw emotion of the performer in La Danse

The shadows of a husband and wife dance together on the wall behind them as the husband and wife no longer can, in Rumba

"Do fish have dreams?" in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

A boy plays the piano, in Tokyo Sonata

The human Orchestra in Bright Star

The 847 area code switchover is a plot point in The Informant! (It is also my area code)

The introduction of non-diagetic music into the world of the Dardennes in Lorna's Silence

Lorna gleefully chases Claudy on his bicycle, then a sudden jump in time. Lorna's Silence

Sugar gets off a bus in New York, no strings attached in Sugar

A poet practices laying out the breadth of pain in his country for a wandering boy in Munyurangabo

The poet in Welles' Shakespeare's Julius Caesar disappears in a crowd and the audience gasps in Me and Orson Welles

Naturally, "chaos reigns" in Antichrist

A cgi-enhanced part of the male body faces the camera and yells "Bruno!" in Bruno

Two soldiers play war in a parking lot in The Messenger

A woman blacks out a window with tape, and we see every second of the process. 15 people walk out, from the screening I saw of Face (Visage)

"Let me do that again, I fucked up." Seth Rogen's accidentally brilliant narration in Observe and Report

Two tycoons paw at each other like blubbery whales in extreme slow-motion at the start of Duplicity

A young couple stops and listens to a discussion on the degradation of their city, and the movie does too, in Medicine for Melancholy

The complainer finally calls his audience out and commands them to do something, in Capitalism: A Love Story

A Less American List: The Best of the Rest of the World of the Decade

2009-12-05T00:31:00.000-08:00

Unintentionally, my previous list of films seemed to consist solely of English language films directed by white Americans, with very few exceptions. To be fair, America does make more movies than any other country, but because so much of the best of the past decade has come from outside the borders of this often questionable land, below is a consideration of some of the best films of the decade to come from the rest of the world. If it is brief, and without mention of many great filmmakers from around the globe, I'm aware and I restate that the same rules and conditions and warnings apply here, as they did in the previous post.
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Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Syndromes and a Century (2006)

Like Tsia Ming-Liang, Apichatpong Weerasethakul introduced the decade to a slower, more internally rhythmic cinema than had been seen ever before. With long, slow moving takes, sometimes on inanimate objects, unexplained allegorical images, and sparse dialogue with no connection to any kind of traditional plotting, "Joe" created some of the most quietly thrilling cinema of the decade. His masterpiece Syndromes and a Century is his most brilliant work. The film was censored and then banned in his homeland of Thailand, for what the Thai government saw as perverse content. But the film, with no nudity or violence, is not perverse, it is radical. It's a new cinema, and it's one that will take time to settle into favor.

See also: Tropical Malady (2004)

Christophe Honoré

Dans Paris (2006)

The spirit of the Nouvelle Vague is alive and well inside Christophe Honoré's 2006 film Dans Paris. Starring a charismatic, Jean-Pierre Léaud-esque Louis Garrel and a convincingly depressive Romain Duris as two brothers, one energetic and full of life, one depressive and suicidal, taking place during one day (save for flashbacks) near Christmas, the film is as playful as any since the dawn of the New Wave. Speeding up scenes, direct addresses to the camera, a spontaneous burst of song, all welcome and normal in the free-floating Paris story. These techniques would be used further in his next film Love Songs, a Umbrellas of Cherbourg-esque tragic love story, and to even chillier effect in his brilliant literary adaptation of high school melodrama, La Belle Personne. But this is not to say Honore has repeated himself, as it did with the new wave pioneers, the freedom to do anything in a film has focused and intensified his work, but none are as thrilling as the first strike of that freedom, Dans Paris.

See also: Love Songs (2007), La Belle Personne (2009)

Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Three Times (2006)

This triptych of love stories from Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien is equally the most grave and unforgiving, and the most beautiful and heart-swelling depiction of romance on film this decade. Ranging from a gorgeous, tenuous 1960s tale of affection without maturity, to a gorgeous, restrained 1910s tale of love blocked by societal standards, told entirely without dialogue, a piano score providing the only sound, to a gorgeous, if harsh modern day tale of love through separation, the interference of technology and the opening of morals. Did I mention it's well shot? This is what Hsiao-Hsien had been leading up to all decade, and his follow-up film brought that same approach to France, with equally beautiful results.

See also: Millenium Mambo (2001), Café Lumière (2003), The Electric Princess House (from Chacun Son Cinéma, 2007), Flight of the Red Balloon (2007)

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

L'Enfant (2005)

The new millennium saw the brothers Dardenne charged with following up their most critically acclaimed work, the Palme d'Or winning Rosetta. They did it by making a revenge film, The Son, but because it's a Dardenne film, none of the usual artifice of those films is included, and in the end there is no revenge that can be taken. They continued on this path for their 2005 film L'Enfant, marrying crime plots with the harsh reality of their circumstance. They introduced more artifice, but never sacrificed their following cameras, lack of scoring, and inability to ring a false note. Featuring a brilliantly callous performance from Jérémie Renier, L'Enfant earned the Dardennes their second Palme d'Or in just six years, and is the pinnacle of their powers this decade. Arguably the most influential film on American independent cinema. If their newest film Lorna's Silence, with it's use of music and occasionally locked down camera, is a harbinger for the Dardennes' next decade of work, it'll be quite a change. For now, we wait, and we follow.

See also: The Son (2002), Dans L'Obscurité (from Chacun Son Cinéma, 2007), Lorna's Silence (2009)

Wong Kar-Wai

In The Mood For Love (2002)

Wong Kar-Wai's elegiac platonic love story set in 1960s Hong Kong about two neighbors whose spouses are having an affair with one another. Developed through an arduously long shooting schedule and improvisation, this gorgeous film (shot mostly by Three Times cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bin), features some of the most indelible images of the decade. Smoke curling up towards an overhead light, one hand reaching over and grabbing the next in the darkened light of a taxicab, a woman descending into a noodle shop, her hair and hip-hugging cheongsam soaked from the rain, a metal noodle container in her hand, passing by a man with an unacknowledged secret between them. It's an intelligent, emotionally complex, and engaging tale of love and loss that is told without the aid of plot. The spiritual sequel and follow up to the film, 2046, is an interesting continuation of mood, if not an entirely successful one, or one that lands anywhere near this masterpiece. Though Kar-Wai ended the decade with his disappointing English-language debut My Blueberry Nights, that film has enough spark from his previous films to hold out hope that the maker of the best foreign film of the decade has another great one in him.

See also: 2046 (2004)

The Outlier(s)

Notre Musique, (2004) Jean-Luc Godard

After returning from the cold world of the Histoire(s) du Cinéma, Godard produced one of his best and most vital works of his post-Marxist career. This political, philosophical meditation on violence is split into Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. As affecting and demanding a work Godard has made, it was his lone bright spot in a mostly unproductive decade. Godard's next film will be his first on digital video. I guess things really are changing.

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The Best Foreign Films of the Decade:

1. In The Mood For Love (2000), written and directed by Wong Kar-Wai*

2. Three Times (2006), written by Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Chu T'ien-Wen, directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien

3. Syndromes and a Century (2006) written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

4. L'Enfant (2005), written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

5. Dans Paris (2006), written and directed by Christophe Honoré

*Kar-Wai's film would be somewhere in the middle of my other list, had I remembered it earlier.

Brothers: There Is No Coming Home

2009-12-04T20:40:00.000-08:00

A man goes to war, his wife is told he died, the man's brother swoops into to comfort the widow, and then the man who was thought to be dead comes home. A simple premise rife with complex emotional and dramatic possibilities. Susanne Bier must have thought so, because in 2004 she made a film about just that. Unfortunately, Jim Sheridan did too, and did so in a rather overwrought and boring film. In his cast are Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal, as the man, the wife and the brother, respectively. An energetic, frequently solid set of performers, but with an underwritten yet overwrought screenplay by David Benioff, and poor direction from Sheridan, they come up short trying to communicate the complexities of the story. And then there's poor Sam Shepard. Saddled with playing a cliche: the hard-drinking pa who's loves the one good son and hates the other for being a fuck up. He's cold, he's distant and when he learns of Maguire's death you almost expect him to say "the wrong kid died!" Calling the characters in the film as one dimensional as carboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.

There's also an element in the scenes between the three main cast members of children playing house. Natalie Portman, a fine actor when directed properly, doesn't have either the age or the look of a mother of two. It's no wonder she often plays childish or impish young women. Portman's strength seems to lay in her betrayal of her short stature in either political awareness, as in Amos Gitai's Free Zone, where she plays a would-be terrorist, or in sexual control, as in Mike Nichols' Closer. Here, Portman is supposed to be a cookie cutter cheerleader wife who's married her highschool sweetheart. It's poor casting, and it extends to unprepared Tobey Maguire in full on Robert DeNiro method mode, shouting "you fuck my wife?!" with unrestrained vocal gusto, but, most embarrasingly, a very restrained physical performance. In one of his freak out scenes, Maguire shouts "You know what I did with these hands?!" staring at them for a moment before softly slapping himself in the face and very feebly throwing everything off of a kitchen counter. It's amature and it's funny when it should be frightening. Gyllenhaal is charming and tries his hardest to show the pain and regret of choices in life, but beyond slapping on a neck tattoo, you never get the impression this is a guy who was just released from prison and has no future planned for himself.

Beyond the failure of the actors, the film loses any strain of credibility when it moves to Afghanistan. Through the middle of the film, we cut back and forth between scenes in the U.S. showing Gyllenhaal and Portman growing close and greiving, and scenes of Maguire and another solider being held capture. At one point Maguire flips out a camera phone to take some video of children by the side of the road. The footage on screen is shaky, zoom heavy 35mm footage tinted blue, supposedly representing what the camera phone is catching. Beyond the fact that camera phones only include digital zooms, jumping into a cropped version of whatever image the camera is pointed at, they're also incredibly low resolution. Fine, a technical error made for picture clarity, in a better film we'd forgive that. But just moments later, after their capture, an Afghan is video taping Maguire and the other soldier on a handicam, spinning around them in and lining their faces up in classic compositions. In this instance the footage is thankfully actually from the camera it purports to be. As for the compositions, fine, maybe the young terrorist is a film buff, but would any terrorist worth his salt shoot video showing the mountains and the plains around them when they intended to send the footage to media outlets and the Army? Would they really give their enemies their exact location on video? Didn't someone in the production stop them and question the authenticity of the scene?

There is an odd element to the film that is appealing though. Occasionally scenes will extend past their seemingly natural end point, allowing for what seems like spontaneous improvisation to finish them. These are more appealing and natural than anything else in the film, so too is the scene with a horribly underused Carrey Mulligan, which was reportedly entirely improvised. Perhaps it's in these scenes that the film more fully mirrors the original Danish film, if not in content then in tone.

Sheridan's one saving grace seems to be his ability to cull realistic performances from children. In this film, as in his film In America, they're from two little girls who are far more interesting and multifaceted than their parental counterparts. I think there's material for a good film here (I haven't seen the original Danish film this is a remake of, but perhaps it plays better in that), but it's all handled rather clumsily and is completely uninvolving. Coming Home, the film this most resembles, it is not. It's a shame, with an energetic young cast, the writer of the one best films of the decade, a brilliant cinematographer in Frederick Elmes, the usually reliable Thomas Newman providing the score and an acclaimed Danish film to work from, you'd think the results wouldn't be so flaccid and uninteresting.

The Old Horses and Young Bucks in the New Millenium and Other Bad Titles For This Post That Should Really Just Be Called: The Best Films of the Decade

2009-12-02T01:09:00.000-08:00

The following is a reflection on the past decade of film. Not everything is mentioned, and not every choice is explained (or at least explained well). My serious movie-going started in the middle of the decade, and thus I have not seen every or even most of the films that came out in the earlier half. This was mostly an excuse to go back and take a look at some of my favorite filmmakers of the decade. The filmmakers are presented in alphabetical order by first name, and the "outliers" list (films from directors whose work I do not think to be among the best of the decade, but who made a film I do consider to be so), is presented in no specific order. At the bottom of the post is a top ten by order of preference. As with all of these lists, the only goal is to encourage discussion. So, let's discuss.

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Charlie Kaufman

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Written about on this site several times, the most heart breaking elegy on love and loss and death and the creation of life. No film confronted the nature of existence so passionately, so fully, so engagingly. A masterwork by the best the screenwriter of the decade.

See also: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (writer, 2004), Adaptation. (writer, 2002)

Clint Eastwood

Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

At the beginning of the decade, Clint Eastwood turned 70. Since then, he's directed 9 films, the last of which is set to be released this December, he's got another one filming now, to be released in 2010, and that's a slow year for him. In both 2006 and 2008, Eastwood released two films in the same year, coming out just months from each other. The first couple were Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters From Iwo Jima, the latter of which I chose as the best film of that year. Those films covered two sides of the second world war, one from the perspective of U.S. soldiers, the other from Japanese. While the first film was a moving meditation on the ramifications of war on men, the second proved to be Eastwood's masterwork. Without ignoring the atrocities committed on either side, Eastwood makes you feel for "the enemy." Brilliant performances from the Japanese cast, stunning cinematography from Tom Stern, and a top-notch script by Iris Yamashita make for one of the most convincing anti-war films ever made, and one of the best of the decade.

See also: Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Gran Torino (2008), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Invictus (2009).

David Gordon Green

George Washington (2000), All The Real Girls (2003)

From the opening ten minutes of David Gordon Green's first feature George Washington, you become aware that you're in the presence of an artist, a great filmmaker. That the film holds that level of artistry through out is a testament to it's genius. Riffing on Terrence Malick, Green finds his own style, poetic, yes, but also bizarre and affecting. Filled with slow motion, slow cutting and slow people saying things that slowly creep on you and make you laugh and cry, sometimes simultaneously, Green immediately established himself as the most important filmmaker to arrive in the new decade. Green's second film All The Real Girls transferred that style to a Southern love story, maintaining the strangeness, and all the more moving because of it. If Green's subsequent films don't live up the moving punch of his first two, they've at the very least continued to surprise and find the odd corners of the human experience. Along with Wes Anderson, Green is the most distinctive and unique American filmmaker working today.

See also: Undertow (2004), Snow Angels (2008), Pineapple Express (2008)

Jim Jarmusch

Broken Flowers (2005)

Not the most prolific decade for the droll New York filmmaker, but it produced one of his best films*, 2005's Broken Flowers. Starring the ever fascinating Bill Murray in the tale of a Don Juan named Don Johnston (with a 't') who receives a letter in the mail from an old flame informing him that he has a 20 year old son. The hitch is that the letter is not signed, and there's no return address. Given Don's history with women, it takes a while to narrow down the field of possibilities. At insistence of his friend Winston (Jeffrey Wright), Don goes to visit the five women he thinks could have written the letter. Murray has never done less in a film, and yet it's one of his most engaging performances, at turns funny and almost always sad. The journey doesn't culminate in an answer to Don's questions, but as he learns he's not just searching for an answer to that question, but to the question of his life. What is his purpose? How can he find meaning? The ending is one of the best of the decade, and so to is the film.

*and his worst, 2009's The Limits of Control.

See also: Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Int. Trailer Night (from Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet, 2002)

Paul Thomas Anderson

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Finishing out the previous decade with the operatic Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson had a lot of work to do if he planned to top that big cast, big risk, three hour sprawling film of emotional turmoil, and so he didn't even try. Instead, Anderson focused on a smaller story, with fewer characters, a 90 minute comedy starring Adam Sandler. What resulted is Anderson's best film, a love story set around an emotionally stunted plunger salesman. As unexpected and strange as the rain of frogs was in Magnolia, Anderson somehow crafted even more strange and unexpected film. With montages of lush, colorful paintings, out of nowhere car crashes, cases of pudding, an abandoned harmonium, and a grudge with a mattress man, Anderson mirrors the emotional confusion of Sandler's Barry Egan in every frame of his film. That the film manages to be that and incredibly sweet at the same time is something of an insane juggling act, and something that it can be said quite assuredly only Paul Thomas Anderson could pull off.

The Box: Go On, Press The Button, No One Cares

2009-11-08T23:12:00.001-08:00

Brief, disorganized, overly harsh words on the film and its creator.

The third film from Donnie Darko and Southland Tales writer/director Richard Kelly, The Box, which was shot on the most reviled instrument in modern motion picture technology, the Panavision Genesis (if you enjoy blurry masses of ugly visual information, by all means make your film on that monstrosity), and it is the definitive confirmation of Kelly's absolute fraudulence as a filmmaker. Over his past three films, I've grown almost completely cool to the limited charms of Kelly (producer of I Hope They Fucking Serve Beer In Fucking Hell) who seems to me like a 12 year old who found his father's copy of Beyond Good and Evil and started writing overly complex in structure, woefully facile in concept screenplays that use terror and tragedy in the same way his pal Tucker Max uses the grotesqueries of homophobia, misogyny and racism to "shock" his audience. Some people take this as a cue to rally behind his films and say that they're getting at large issues and handling them in elegant and complex ways, but by his third film it's clear he's most interested in promoting himself, and his work, above all else.

By reusing the same themes and techniques film after film, the same stable of character actors, the same sort of stunt casting that his fans use as evidence of his eccentricity and brilliance, he's promoting the idea of Richard Kelly: Auteur, Genius, Brilliant, Misunderstood man behind-the-curtain. What he actually is is a juvenile purveyor of weak science-fiction with an adolescent obsession with space and astronauts, secret books and societies whose codes explain the chaos of the world and the overarching corruption of all government. This is not allegory or metaphor, it's a childish means of provoking an audience. In this instance, to this mind, the only thing it provoked was anger and boredom.

Past Few Weeks

2009-10-25T02:51:00.000-07:00

Video from September and October

A Serious Man: A Mensch in Peril

2009-10-02T23:51:00.000-07:00

I've long been cool on the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Their most lauded works, Fargo, Miller's Crossing, and Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men didn't impress me. Sure, the films were made competently, the writing was of a good standard, the films all looked good on a technical level, but none of them hit me emotionally. Even the film of theirs I'd found most enjoyable, Barton Fink, left me with nothing. What I did admire in their films were the performances, which often had moments of very quiet, subtle comedy, and I liked that so many of them were archetypes, through and through, from John Turturro's pretentious playwright in Barton Fink, to Tim Robbins' gee-whiz wunderkind and Jennifer Jason Leigh's acid-tongued Girl Friday in The Hudsucker Proxy, to Francis McDormand's mother/cop in Fargo, the characters were types and cartoons almost, but living, breathing ones. But what kept me cold from the Coen Brothers was their seeming lack of passion. I never felt anything while watching their films, and though films can do a great many things, moving an audience is one of the greatest and in my mind, most vital. I had also been somewhat unimpressed by the Coens most popular, devotee-making film The Big Lebowski. I saw it once, I found it mildly amusing and surprisingly sloppy. I saw it a second time, this time in a movie theater, and I liked it a little more but still wasn't crazy about it, and then a funny thing happen. The film had found a way into my mind, and I started to think about it, every element, and a new film seemed to emerge. I saw it again and suddenly the film opened up for me. The jokes were funny, the story compelling, the mise-en-scène (oh yeah, I'm pulling it out in paragraph one) deliriously brilliant. I had fallen in love with the film, and where repeat viewings of their other films only cemented my distaste for them, familiarity with The Big Lebowski made me appreciate the complexities and nuance of every scene. Though I was far from joining the cult of quoters and White Russian drinking attendees of the annual Lebowskifest, I had found an entree into two of modern cinema's most critically adored figures. But I don't just think it's me who was different, the Coens operate in that films (and their 2008 espionage satire Burn After Reading) in a different manner, allowing emotion or comedy to trump perfection. So many of their films feel so sterile to me, as if they are dispassionately saying, "Yes, this would be the most effect shot here, for this long, according to this guide to tension we purchased," and because of that they lacked air to feel, for the audience to project onto the screen any part of them selves.

I give this account of my history with the Coens as context for my thoughts on their new film A Serious Man, which opened in New York today and will open across the country in the following weeks. My immediate reaction upon seeing the film was that this is the Coen Brothers' masterpiece. Before I sat down in that screening room I wouldn't have considered that the Coen Brothers' were capable of making a masterpiece, and two hours later I had been moved, I had laughed, I had been shocked, and most of all I had become reverent of the Coens.

The following paragraph contains mild spoilers for A Serious Man.

The film opens with quote "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." The quote is from medieval French Rabbi Rashi, and the scene that follows it is a completely disconnected story of a ghost who comes to visit a poor family. This scene, spoken entirely in ~~Hebrew~~ Yiddish, shot in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, vignetted as if looking through a glass bottle, is an audacious masterstroke. I guarantee no other film owned by Universal Pictures opens with a ten minute scene in Hebrew about a ghost, particularly one as possibly confounding and head-scratching as this one. I will not attempt to explain the scene's inclusion, nor analyze it's substance, but I would point to the Rashi quote preceding it for clues as it's to it's necessary-ness. From there, after a brilliant opening credit sequence, we are thrust into the life of Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg), a middle-aged, Jewish, College Physics Professor in Minnesota. Larry is married and has two children, one just out of High School, the other on the eve of his Bar-Mitzvah. The film is set in the mid 1960s, pot is everywhere, and the music of Jefferson Airplane pipes into Larry's son's portable radio. From this introduction, we follow Larry through an increasing serious of misfortune: his wife wants to divorce, his brother sleeps on his couch, his possible tenure is in question, and he has a Korean-American student who is trying to bribe him for a better grade. Larry wants to be a serious man, a righteous man, he wants his family together, his job secure, and he wants to be happy. When these things star piling up on him, Larry is shocked, they seem to come out of nowhere. Larry visits a Rabbi, who tells him God is everywhere, even in the parking lot outside. He sees a second Rabbi, who tells him a story about a Dentist who discovered Hebrew lettering on the inside of a goyum's teeth. He tries to visit a third Rabbi, a calm, very old man who Larry sees sitting passively at his desk. Larry is told the Rabbi is busy. "He didn't look busy!" Larry is told that the Rabbi is thinking. What the Rabbi is actually doing may be explained by a scene late in the film, but spoiling that moment would serve no purpose in this review.

No more spoilers.

There is no way to give a sense of how this film feels other than seeing it yourself. I can explain the structure, and the cinematography, and the acting and the music, but it would give no clearer a picture. This film feels like no other I've seen. Events pile on, one after another, in a way it's a portrait of life being lived, shown in the most peculiarly realistic manner possible. What I can explicate is a few of the ideas in the film. What does it mean to be good? Is being good enough? How may we forgive one another of our foibles? Why would anyone think it's a good idea to stay at the Jolly Roger?

What I believe I respond to so much in this film is the emotional connection I had with the characters. The reason I had those connections is because this film feels personal. Based on pure biological fact, this is a personal film for the Coen Brothers. They grew up in the place and time the film takes place, they are both Jewish, their parents were both Professors, but it's unfair to attempt to link their personal lives with the lives of the characters in this film. However, the personal nature relates to the effectiveness directly, for once, there is feeling in their work. I have not just been told a story, I have been shown an emotional journey, and shared in it. This makes the film better, the funny parts funnier, and the film making more impressive.

Roger Deakins, the Coens' usual cinematographer, has never been better. The performances across the board are terrific, particularly from lead Michael Stuhlbarg, who creates a likable, put upon man, and has helped create an iconic character. Like the Coens other films, Larry is an archetype: a middle class, suburban, intellectual Jew, and by conforming (in some respects) to an archetype, they're able to explore a number situations where the audience must know how Larry feels, without having to explain those thoughts in narration or dialogue.

This is a film that rewards repeat viewings. It doesn't trip over itsself to explain things to the audience, sometimes it is purposefully ambiguous, extending to the ending of the film, one of the most surprising and masterful I have ever seen. The Coen Brothers can now count me in their camp of admirers. A Serious Man is a great film, and a masterpiece, and I couldn't be happier to say it.

Capitalism: A Love Story and Big Fan

2009-10-02T23:38:00.000-07:00

This is perhaps Michael Moore's best film, both in terms of message, and form. Moore's never really gotten much praise as a filmmaker because what he does is deceptively simple. Sure, there are the obvious touches, the sing-songy sarcastic narration, the feigned shock, the melodramatic use of music from other films and ironic use of songs, but what's hidden between those things is a very delicately weaved film. Moore's movies are episodic by nature, but he has a keen sense of when and where and how long those episodes should be and it creates a non-fiction film in which a narrative emerges. Maybe it's not a narrative in a story sense, but in an emotional and informative sense there is an arc to the film, and this one, more than any others, leaves the audience in a state of determination and will to action. I would argue that Moore is not a documentary filmmaker in as much as he's an essayist. Like any great essayist, he has complete control of his medium, his use of image and sound in place of text on a page, in presenting a thesis (In this case, Capitalism does not work), giving context for that thesis and then leveling reason after reason why that thesis is so. Of course it's more elegant in the film than that reductive analysis, but at their essence, that is what his films do. So the measure of his films is how persuasive they are and in what ways do they make you think about the subject (or subjects) explored in the film. It's in this regard that Capitalism: A Love Story is so successful, and I think it's one of the best movies of the year.

Written and directed by Robert Siegel, former editor of The Onion and screenwriter of The Wrestler, Big Fan, like Siegel's earlier film, explores a less glamorous part of sports culture. In this case a New York Giants fan named Paul (Patton Oswalt). Paul lives to love the Giants, and has little else in his life. The film is very well observed in the details of how Paul life is consumed by his fandom and how much he defines himself based on that fandom. There are great scenes of Paul writing and rehearsing the inane rants he gives on the local Sports Talk Radio Show he frequently calls into ("Hey, it's Paul from Staten Island..."), only pausing to let customers out of the parking garage he works in, sitting in a harshly lit booth pouring over notebook pages filled with cliche analysis and insults about the last or nearest game. Oswalt is great, as is Kevin Corrigan as his Giants co-fan and only friend. Siegel allows the film to be dark and sad in place of comedy, though the film is often very funny, and lets the characters go in realistic and decidedly noncommercial directions. However great many elements of the film are though, I feel like Siegel could have pushed it even further and gone darker and explored the notion of the obsessive fan who lives for nothing else even more. As it stands now the film is very good, but there's always a feeling that it could have been great.

All is love.

2009-09-29T21:40:00.001-07:00

Watch this space for thoughts on Spike Jonze's film of Where the Wild Things Are, coming tomorrow. In case anyone' is wondering, it's a masterpiece that is deeply emotionally complex, astounding in countless ways, and one of the great films about childhood. I feel no hesitation in saying it will become a classic. More than superlatives later.

The Informant!: Husking for the Truth!

2009-09-25T02:31:00.000-07:00

A middle aged man, paunchy but not fat, with a mustache, wearing glasses and a hairpiece walks into an office building in a slightly too big grey suite. "Hello" he greets secretaries and colleagues. The man walks into an office, shuts the door and closes the blinds. Then he sits. What those secretaries and colleagues don't know is that he's an informant (an Informant!) and that he's wearing a wire that will provide the FBI with evidence of a price-fixing scandal in the lysine business sure to cause waves across the world. This man has a secret. This man is going behind the back of his company to expose their illegal operations, in the eyes of the law this man is a hero. This man has a family, three children, two of the adopted as he was himself. This man has made a home for himself and a place in the world based on his whits and his hard work. This man is the best of America. This man is also a liar. A pathological one. And he's real.

Steven Soderbergh's latest film The Informant! stars Matt Damon as the titular tattler. Damon plays Mark Whitacre, bio-chemist and big wig at Archer Daniels Midland, out of Decatur, Illinois and the film tells the true (I swear!) story of Whitacre's unraveling during his co-operation with the FBI. The story is real, and is thus, out there, but the film's major joy comes from the way in which Sodbergh and Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, working from Kurt Eichenwald's book (Eichenwald's own story is worthy of a film), parcel out more and more information about Whitacre. One way in which they acheive a state of grand misdirection is by employing Damon as Whitacre as the narrator to the film. Immediately, the audience is engaged with Whitacre and grow to identify, and like him through his stream of conscious inner monologues and veneer of the good, family man setting out to right a wrong in his life. Doing what Mark Whitacre is doing as a man in his position is noble, but it's only one facet to his life. Others come fast and hard as the film progresses, and it's best that we find those things out as the other characters in the film do. I will say though, that I never expected the 847 area code change to be a plot point in a film.

Every frame in the film is Soderbergh's, and clearly, but it is Damon's brilliant performance that is the key to the movie's success. It's a credit to Damon's ability that seeing it a second time, knowing what we know (and don't know) at the end, that the film not only holds together but becomes a deeper, richer, funnier and more intriguing study of this guy (whoever he is) who, though we hear some of his thoughts, has an entire different world inside his head, as we all do, though his is constantly spinning, identity behind identity.

One of my favorite things in the entire movie is the way Soderbergh (operating his own Red One Digital Cinema camera) does the reoccurring tracking shots of Whitacre walking into his office. They have a jitteryness to them that reminds me of '70s movies when cameras became light enough to gun it on a dolly or a Steadicam, and there's a real sense of movement and the physical effects of that movement that give the shots an energy that adds to Whitacre's stream of conscious voice over and greeting of personnel. It's almost as if Whitacre is racing to his office to be alone again with his own mind, to attend to some mental business and then get into character as a rising corporate star, a spy, a family man, a criminal, a sane human being.

Jennifer's Body: Blood. Sucking.

2009-09-18T20:53:00.000-07:00

A young girl is lured into a van by a struggling emo band who thinks she's a virgin. They drive to a forest, and following satanic instructions they found on the internet, stab and bleed her as a sacrifice to Satan, in hopes that Satan will reward them with a career. Little do they know that the virgin they picked is anything but, and according to their satanic instructions, this means the girl will be given demonic powers and feast on flesh for the rest of her days. The entire idea isn't a bad one, there's feminist implications, room for interesting gore and dramatic weight from the dynamic between two friends where one is clearly the dominant force, but Karyn Kusama's Diablo Cody-penned Jennifer's Body squanders it on cheap jokes, sluggish pacing, limp writing and negative-adjective emo songs. The reason Cody's Juno worked is simple and clear now, Jason Reitman. With Reitman there to find the right way to film Cody's slang-filled script, it came off as genuine and evolved into a sweet, touching film. Jennifer obviously isn't going for sweet or touching, it's going for thrills and laughs and it fails on both accounts because Karyn Kusama is less adept at filmmaking than Reitman, and she squanders what little charm the screenplay has and the, for the most part, excellent cast she has at her disposal. Megan Fox is fine, she's not great, but she's far from the humorless stick with boobs that most people make her out to be. I've only seen her in one movie before this, Robert Weide's very funny How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, where she played a vacuous, vapid, vacuum of cocaine and praise hording young actress, perhaps a less image conscious version of herself. There, I thought she was perfect; she was as mean and heartlessly aloof as she was meant to be, but it's obvious her career has fallen into her lap not for her talent but for her looks. Having said that, she's perfect for the part, Jennifer is a mean, heartlessly aloof high school beauty, only this time she literally eats people alive. Given better direction and a more accomplished filmmaker, she could have been one of the classic horror queens, a grotesque, blood thirsty extrapolation of the high school bitch, but here she's given some dark eye shadow, unzips her sweatshirt and is morphed into a figure resembling the one on the poster of Pink Floyd's The Wall, then quickly shrouded in shadow to conceal the limited budget of the film. Amanda Seyfried, a very talented young actress, tries as she might to make the arc of her character work, but with glaringly obvious plot holes, and little of a character, she comes out empty handed. She's left screaming and scrunching her face without purpose or a safety net of a character. Likewise, cameos from Juno's J.K. Simmons and the ever reliable Amy Sedaris offer nothing but the thought of how disappointed the two must have been when they saw this final product vomited onto the screen. Without cohesive structure, intelligent writing and adept direction, it seems Jennifer could stand to learn a thing or two from Juno.

Together

2009-05-22T17:53:00.001-07:00

Roger Ebert on "Wolverine"

2009-04-29T21:06:00.001-07:00

Oh, the film is well-made. Gavin Hood, the director, made the great film "Tsotsi" (2005) and the damned good film "Rendition" (2007) before signing on here. Fat chance "Wolverine" fans will seek out those two. Why does a gifted director make a film none of his earlier admirers would much want to see? That's how you get to be a success in Hollywood. When you make a big box-office hit for mostly fanboys, you've hit the big time. Look at Justin Lin with "Fast & Furious."

Such films are assemblies of events. There is little dialogue, except for the snarling of threats, vows and laments, and the recitation of essential plot points. Nothing here about human nature. No personalities beyond those hauled in via typecasting. No lessons to learn. No joy to be experienced. Just mayhem, noise and pretty pictures. I have been powerfully impressed by film versions of Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Iron Man and the Iron Giant. I wouldn't even walk across the street to meet Wolverine.

But wait! -- you say. Doesn't "X-Men Origins" at least provide a learning experience for Logan about the origins of Wolverine? Hollow laugh. Because we know that the modern Wolverine has a form of amnesia, it cannot be a spoiler for me to reveal that at the end of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," he forgets everything that has happened in the film. Lucky man.

link

Beyond the immaculate writing, he brings up something that is so common, which is promising directors who seem to both sell out and lose their talent in the process.

Directors take note, Pineapple Express is how you "sell out."

The Soloist: Failing to Take Flight

2009-04-25T10:12:00.000-07:00

In 2005, I began to see advertised a new film adaptation of Jane Austen's classic Pride & Prejudice. From the advertisements, it appeared to be an unnecessary, perfunctory adaptation of a novel that had been adapted many a time for the screen, both silver and small, often times inelegantly, as with the clunky 1940 big-budget MGM adaptation ("You have too much PRIDE, sir!""And you, too much PREJUDICE!"). This new version appeared to be suffering from the same wrongheadedness, casting period-piece favorite Keira Knightley in the lead as the, ehem, prideful Elizabeth Bennet. I thought nothing of the film after seeing the advertisement, and forgot about it. Then the film opened in November of 2005, with strong reviews and praise for Knightley's performance. Out of curiosity, and strong optimism, I decided to see the film. What I saw, almost immediately, was a filmmaker interested in cinema. The film opens with a long tracking shot, taking us inside the Bennet household, in and out of rooms, through both the upstairs and downstairs worlds. It was a breathtaking introduction to a filmmaker I'd come to grow quite fond of over the next few years.

In that film, and his 2007 follow up Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name, the director Joe Wright carved out a place for himself as one of the pre-eminent directors in England. Here was a young, headstrong filmmaker who was willing to take chances both filmicly and thematically, chances that set him apart from his peers, and fellow "period film" purveyors. Wright was able to bring life to ideas, filling them with emotion and grandeur that never crossed over into being overwrought or mannered. He was able to draw performances from young actors not seen in any of their previous work, creating with Ms. Knightley two of the most classical, subtle, and moving female screen performances this decade has yet seen. He was able to playfully arrange actors in a frame, twisting them around one another, exploring screenspace in ways few filmmakers attempt to, and draw emotion from both his actors and his camera.

It was with this great regard and anticipation that I brought to Mr. Wright's third film, The Soloist, based again on a novel, this time the non-fiction novel of the same name by The Los Angeles Times' Steve Lopez. The film centers on Mr. Lopez (here played by Robert Downey Jr.) and his discovery of a mentally unstable former Julliard cellist, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), now living homeless on the streets of Los Angeles, and follows their subsequent friendship.

Wright directs the film from a screenplay by Susannah Grant, who chooses to structure the film around Lopez, who then brings the audience into Ayers world, a convention that has grown tiresome, as studios feel it necessary to lure in the audience with the stable, not coincidentally white character that they can hopefully identify with. It's a convention that's insulting in many ways, but also makes for a far less interesting film. This is, or it should be, a parallel story of two men forging a friendship, one providing attention and stability where there was none, and one providing a great skill at communicating through music. Part of the problem is that we cannot identify with Lopez because the screenplay, embellished by Mr. Downey's performance, saddles him with all kinds of tangetical problems, his industry is dying, he's divorced, and he's constantly being covered in urine, both his own and that of a coyote. I suppose this is to make us feel like both Ayers and Lopez have problems so their connection isn't just a one sided affair, but what Ayers suffers from is debilitating mental illness, whereas Lopez just comes off as a wealthy dick.

The other major problem with the film is the music, or should I say the lack there of. For a film about a friendship forged through music, we hear so very little of it, and even less from Ayers himself. After Lopez writes a column about Ayers, and mentions that the violin he plays only has two strings, a reader sends in a cello, and when Lopez presents it to Ayers, he hears for the first time the genius that Ayers has musically. On screen, we can see Lopez is feeling something, which we take, or would if it were written better, as something he hasn't done in quite some time because of the aforementioned "problems." While we can see Lopez experiencing the music through Downey's performance, the film robs the audience of that same experience, because not long after Ayers begins playing his Beethoven piece, an orchestra joins in, swelling the music to, well, a louder place, and Mr. Wright's camera swells too, craning up from the tunnel where Ayers sleeps and plays, to the sky, following CGI birds gliding over Los Angeles (get it, the music is soaring!), intercut with the pained expressions of Foxx and the tearing face of Downey. It's a disappointing moment because anyone whose ever delved into classical music at all knows that experiencing music like that played unadorned can be a transformative experience in and of itself. But because we're robbed of hearing that, and distracted by Wright's CGI bird visualizations, we don't share in Lopez's transformative experience, one that cements his bond to Ayers, making his being moved unrelatable, and thus fails to create the interest we should have in their connection.

That scene lies in stark contrast to the one transcendent moment of the film, when Lopez arranges for Ayers to sit in with him alone on the rehearsal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beautiful Walt Disney Concert Hall. As the orchestra begins its Beethoven piece, we literally go inside Ayers' mind as he listens, and in a Fantasia-esque touch, see colors, dancing to the music, onscreen for minutes. It's perhaps the most astonishing moment I've seen on screen this in several years, and it's juxtaposition with what surrounds it highlights what's so wrong with the rest of the film. It's the only moment in the film where Wright seems to be escaping the screenplay and getting at the feeling of the piece and allowing the audience to experience as the characters do, something he does more adeptly in his previous two films.

Though the screenplay is flawed, Wright is not blameless here. He trusts in the screenplay and while trying to make it fit, isn't suited to the material. Wright and Grant try to shoehorn all kinds of political relevance into the film as well, showing a montage featuring former President George W. Bush, Hurricane Katrina, has characters talk about the death of the newspaper industry, lamenting the massive homeless population in Los Angeles, and in one scene seems to be condemning Atheism, and in the next pointing out the futility of religion to the homeless population. The film tries to have it both ways like that in many respects, and it only clouds its message and separates us from the story, as with the flashbacks that run throughout the film that "explain" how Ayers got to be on the street. But these flashbacks don't illuminate anything about Ayers character or his headspace, they just provide Wright with a chance to film 1960s decor and costumes, and give Foxx a chance to show just how much range he has. Mr. Downey isn't right for the role as is written, and Catherine Keener, Stephen Root, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Tom Hollander and Nelsan Ellis are wasted in underwritten, undynamic roles.

There's no reason with a cast like this, a director like this, and the abundance of music the story calls for, for the film to be so often lifeless. Wright is a great director, and his first two films are among the best of the decade, particularly Atonement, which in that glutted year of so-called masterpieces, I thought was the standout of 2007. Here however, his material is weak, and with his first two films being derived from Jane Austen and Ian McEwan, it's not terribly surprising that when presented with an American newspaper writer as his source material, he doesn't quite connect with it. I hope that Wright returns to England and searches for the right material, because when he's at his best, unlike those fake birds, his films do indeed soar.

"Report" Report

2009-04-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

As a little addendum to my review "Observe and Report," specifically it's subtextual commentary on the modern hero-complex afflicted male, an interview writer/director Jody Hill did with New York Magazine where he speaks about just that.

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NY Mag: You've said the film was influenced by Scorsese's The King of Comedy.

Hill: On the set, and beforehand, we were constantly talking about The King of Comedy, and, in fact, Taxi Driver, Straw Dogs, Shampoo. The end was heavily inspired by the way King of Comedy and Taxi Driver end, where it's kind of a victory but it makes you wonder: Is it a dream? Is it really a victory? Is it just kind of weird? Like the whole thing is based in realism — and then you twist it at the end and it makes people feel weird.

NY Mag: Are you mocking Bush-era heroes with this one?

Hill: We wanted to tell a good story, but the themes that run through it hopefully just represent some type of bigger picture. It's certainly not a political film by any means, but I don't think it's a disposable comedy, either, where there's no greater subtext.

NY Mag: A film like King of Comedy was really responding to its time — the rise of celebrity.

Hill: Sure — and Taxi Driver is influenced by that postwar fallout. This is definitely influenced by its time.

NY Mag: Ronnie's like one of those Reaganite kids who grew up watching Red Dawn, waiting for his chance to defend the shopping mall against the Communists.

Hill: I definitely feel like Ronnie watched those movies and took them to heart. And we play with movie clichés, like sorta pseudo–Cameron Crowe, but twisted. I hope people feel themselves caught up in a Cameron Crowe moment, but the visuals are so fucked-up that it kind of produces a really uncomfortable feeling. Like, people applaud and then they stop: "Wait, what the fuck am I applauding? He just murdered somebody."

NY Mag: It's weird when he clobbers the Middle Eastern guy on the mall for no reason...

Hill: People love that. And it's not like he has a reason. People really like that. I don't know if I understand it, but maybe that speaks to like, your earlier question about the time.

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In some ways I feel this analogous to last year's "Funny Games" (which I wrote about here a few times) as far as audience expectation being subverted in favor of commentary on those expectations, and luckily with this one it'll have more of an audience to try that out on, though whether that gets through to more than just a few people we'll have to wait to see. It also helps that it's hilarious.

Observe and Report: The Modern Male Psyche

2009-04-07T03:48:00.000-07:00

In the first half of the year 2009, two major studios have released two comedies centered on characters whose occupation is a mall security guard. The first, released this past January, was "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," and the second, set to be released this Friday, is "Observe and Report." The first film starred Kevin James as the titular Paul Blart, a fat, oafish, bumbling man in a job which others look down at him for, but what he found to be a great source of pride. That film has become one of this years greatest financial successes, netting over one-hundred million dollars at the U.S. box office since it's opening at the beginning of the year. The second film, "Observe and Report," stars Seth Rogen as the fat, oafish head of mall security, a job which others look down on him for, but for which he finds as a great source of pride. You may ask yourself, is there a need for two movies so similar in premise? Much less two movies released mere months from one another? The answer to that is no, but while one is satisfied with being light, mediocre entertainment, the other has a greater task at hand.

"Observe and Report" is writer/director Jody Hill's second film, coming off the Sundance cult hit "The Foot Fist Way," and the HBO series "East Bound and Down." Both of Hill's earlier pieces dealt with failure, in "Foot Fist," the failure of a Tae Kwon Doe instructor with delusions of grandeur, and in "East Bound" the fall from grace of a superstar Major League pitcher. Each film in it's own way explored the chasm between their protagonists' self image and the way others perceived them. "Observe and Report" begins with that same theme, this time following a mall security guard, played by Seth Rogen, whose belief in the importance of his job and his ability to solve crime, he grossly overestimates. It is in this dark gray area where Hill begins to deconstruct the contemporary young-adult male psyche, one raised on video games, action movies, and raunchy comedies, like the very one that Rogen's Ronnie Barnhardt is in.

"Right now the world needs a fucking hero."

As the film opens, Ronnie is being called upon to investigate a flasher who has been exposing himself to women in the mall parking lot. Ronnie, a heavily medicated twenty-something with bi-polar disorder, snaps into action, assigning tasks to his group of underlings, and arrogantly dictating the terms of the investigation to his boss and the detective who's been assigned to the case, played by a craggy Ray Liotta. Having some sense of power and purpose, Ronnie immediately informs the make-up counter girl Brandi, played by Anna Faris, that there's a flasher on the loose, but assures her without prompting that he'll protect her. After Brandi becomes the next victim of the flasher, Ronnie inflates her panic and terror, and uses it to convince her to go on a date with him. Through grizzled voice-over, Ronnie talks about Brandi being the only thing worth saving, saying that he's the one who can protect her, protect the mall, and keep order in a chaotic, punishing world. Between these scenes of plot development, Hill places Ronnie's trips to a shooting range, and long, strange conversations with his alcoholic mother, played with stupor by Celia Weston, where Ronnie espouses the luck he's had with the flasher's sudden appearance, how it's given him a sense of duty, purpose, and drive.

Though the filmmakers might admit to it, Ronnie is every kid who went to see "The Dark Knight" and came out with it's sense of vigilante justice embedded into their minds. The kind of kid who spends hours shooting opponents in video games. Ronnie relates to the world like he himself is a caped crusader, operating in fantasy in lieu of actual experience, he is a few steps removed from reality. Ronnie's bi-polar disorder is merely a physicalization of that disconnect, one lived in by teenage boys locked in their rooms for hours on end absorbing online gaming, fantasy fiction and pop culture.

As with his previous work, Hill's interest lies in the complete immersion of his characters' in their delusions. For Ronnie, this happens when he decides to stop taking his bi-polar medication at a perceived high point. At this point in the film, Ronnie has gone through the tests to become a real cop, to work side by side with Liotta, and has quit his job at the mall, said farewell, and made plans for his new life and responsibility. When the plans go awry and he is rejected for the service, Ronnie's immersion in the fantasy like of hero-hood becomes complete. Unlike the levity this delusion would be treated with in most comedies, Ronnie's immersion is similar in depth and darkness to Travis Bickle's in "Taxi Driver," or Captain Willard's in "Apocalypse Now," and unlike any comedy I've seen, Ronnie's rage is not impotent but instead explodes in violent, effectively brutal ways. Ronnie's obsession with the flasher leads him to stalk to the mall, go undercover, and lose whatever shit he had in the first place. Hill's commentary is subtle, but at last he has created the perfect image of the delusional, arrogant personality that can develop as a result of the failure of the American dream. Perhaps we cannot be whatever we want to be, perhaps we can not will the world to our liking or impede on the rights of others without consequence. In Rogen's narration, Hill adds the self-aware meta touch of a character narrating a film in the way that character would want a movie about his life to be narrated, and even at one point includes Rogen screwing up, saying he'll "do that one again" in his normal voice, and then repeating the misread line in the same Batman-ish gravely voice.

Any expectation one may have going into "Observe and Report" is likely to be shattered, reshaped, and presented in a manner that is completely unexpected. How this film was produced by a major studio, at the budget it was, is anomaly that will be turned over in the years to come. Jody Hill, with the aid of his cast and his cinematographer Tim Orr, has made the most singularly unique, daring, political comedy I've seen. It may not have the heart of "Pineapple Express," but it's a work of such layered commentary and bizarre story turns, lines and performance. Yes, there were two mall cop movies released in 2009, but only one is as fresh and exciting as "Observe and Report."

November 4, 2008

2009-04-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

Synecdoche, New York: Making Sense of a Masterpiece

2009-02-26T00:37:00.000-08:00

This small piece of adoration appeared in an edited form on another site in a year end poll. The film will be released on DVD March 10th.

This is a mad fever-dream of a movie. Charlie Kaufman is able to simultaneously reflect and dissect life and of its stuff in an engaging, often funny, often heartbreaking fashion. It's a film so dense that on a third viewing connections are still being made, ones that you can soak in for days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes. A film you find yourself ebbing towards with a phrase, a look, a mood, or a song. "I'm just a little person, one person in a sea of many little people who are not aware of me." Bolstered by a cast of serious, precise performers, a melancholic but beautiful score by Jon Brion, and subtly masterful photography by Frederick Elmes, the film follows characters and their relationships to their absolute completion, all the while spinning back to comment on itself, ever reflective, and ever misunderstanding its own history. Kaufman has made an absolute portrait of life, so absolute because of its incompleteness. "I know you, you're the one I've waited for. Let's have some fun."

Best Movies of 2008

2009-01-31T22:37:00.000-08:00

Others: The Flight of the Red Balloon, The Wrestler, Happy-Go-Lucky, The Band's Visit, Paranoid Park, I've Loved You So Long, Ballast, A Christmas Tale, The Foot Fist Way, Rachel Getting Married, Shotgun Stories, The Class, In Bruges, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Encounters at the End of the World and My Winnipeg.

Also: Love Songs, Tropic Thunder, Ghost Town, Chop Shop, Doubt, Gran Torino, Burn After Reading, Waltz With Bashir, Frost/Nixon, Revolutionary Road, Slumdog Millionaire, My Blueberry Nights, Tell No One, Elegy, Transsiberian, Man on Wire, The Edge of Heaven, Momma's Man, Blindness, W., Frozen River, Standard Operating Procedure, Redbelt, The Promotion, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Shine a Light, and Married Life.

Worst: Hancock, The Rocker.

CIFF '08: A Christmas Tale

2008-10-25T23:48:00.000-07:00

Like his previous film Kings and Queen, Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël) is a fractured family drama, in this instance set around Christmas at the Vuillard house right after the family learns that the matriarch of the family, played by Catherine Deneuve, has been diagnosed with a degenerative type of cancer. The cancer can only be treated through injected bone marrow, and each member of the family is tested to see whether or not they match Deneuve's rare type, which brings them all together at their childhood home in the days leading up to Christmas. The sprawling family is largely made up of Desplechin regulars like Mathieu Almaric, as the Vuillard's troubled son, Emmanuelle Devos, as Almaric's lover, and Jean-Paul Roussillon, as the older husband of Deneuve. Desplechin divides the film into chapters, with title cards coming up with words like "reunion," and "farewell," but Desplechin's Christmas is hardly storybook-esque. As the film opens we learn that Almaric has been banished by his sister, played by Anne Consigny, after another in a serious of screw ups. Consigny's son just has just been discharged from a psych ward, after suffering a meltdown and coming at her with a knife. As such, the family dynamic is always based in some form of conflict. The numerous story and character threads are weaved by Desplechin in a mixture of film devices, from frequent irises in and out, to having the characters directly address the camera. With all of the family activity and emotional turbulence, Arnaud keeps Deneuve's wavering search for a marrow match as the through line of the film, and allows the rest to be as messy and untidy as life often is. What emerges from the confusion and film devices is the characters, bolstered by uniformly superb performances, including a strong turn from an increasingly reliable Chiara Mastroianni, Deneuve's real life daughter, playing the wife of one of Almaric's brothers, for whom another brother holds lingering romantic feelings. At the end of A Christmas Tale, we're left with an often funny, but ultimately sad story of a family moving in separate directions. It's due to the truth of the performances and great aplomb in the way in which Desplechin and co-writer Emmanuel Bourdieu' script unfolds that the story feels so organic to its characters. What makes the film so successful is that Desplechin and Bourdieu don't feel the need to tie up their Tale with a bow, but rather let its characters and various story threads remain messy and realistic, and that's the real gift.

CIFF '08: Synecdoche, New York

2008-10-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

As a writer, Charlie Kaufman has always been interested in exploring large concepts in his work, from identity in Being John Malkovich, to memory in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and directors Spike Jonze (Malkovich, Adaptation) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine, Human Nature) have helped thread those ideas into what essentially end up being love stories. Directing his own screenplay for the first time in Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman has rid himself of the love story, and has this time thread his characters and plot around his ideas. In this case those ideas include theater, death, illness, death, gender, marriage, art, death, and the color of stool. Picking up a visual aesthetic that combines Jonze's and Gondry's, and a score from Eternal Sunshine's Jon Brion, Kaufman tells the story of a theater director played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who, after receiving a genius grant from the MacCarther Foundation, attempts to stage an "honest," massive theater piece that "truly reflects who he is." Or maybe not. In a Q&A after the film, Kaufman said he attempted to write with dream logic, and though the film doesn't offer the pat conclusion that it was all a dream, it helps to explain the tone of the film and things that comprise Kaufman's mise en scene. One indicative example is Hoffman's assistant, played by Samantha Morton, who moves into a house that is constantly on fire, which her real estate agent explains drastically reduces the price. Other such oddities fill the film, but don't seem to be there just to be eccentric, but rather, as Kaufman said, exist to externally reflect the characters' state of mind. An abundance of characters play into the story, with a cast that includes Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Tom Noonan, Michelle Williams, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis, and Dianne Wiest. As with his previous films identity plays a large part, with characters playing one another in Hoffman's theater piece, and the line between real life and art are blurred, but the film never feels confusing. Nonetheless Synecdoche is a film that's almost impossible to explain after seeing it once, and unlike Malkovich, Adaptation, or Eternal Sunshine we're not offered any kind of traditional narrative conclusion, no strings are tied together, but it's as powerful a film I've seen in some time. A mad fever dream of a movie.

CIFF '08: Wendy and Lucy

2008-10-19T01:49:00.000-07:00

It's not often you find a film that demands an audience to decipher the nature of its characters. So subtle is the film in the way it draws you into its main character Wendy, played by a mesmerizing Michelle Williams, who writer-director Kelly Reichardt advised to give up bathing and make-up, in a film that gets in deep to the rhythms of its characters' lives. As the film begins we find Wendy and her dog Lucy in Oregon en route to Alaska, where Wendy hopes to find work. A transportation problem temporarily strands Wendy and Lucy, and armed with a few hundred dollars they're forced to sleep in her car in Oregon. In a painful and believable development, Lucy goes missing, and the rest of the film follows Wendy in her search for Lucy and the trouble she encounters staying in Oregon. Like Reichardt's previous film Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy is not showy in any way. We get a real sense of life being lived on screen through the combination of the performances and Reichardt's understated, observational aesthetic. All of the information we receive about Wendy is indirect, as in a scene after Lucy goes missing, Wendy calls her sister in Indiana who, without prompting, mentions that she doesn't have any money to lend Wendy. One line and Reichardt and Jonathan Raymond's script tells us so much about Wendy's past, and her relationship with her sister. We can draw these few suppositions about Wendy from the film, but beyond that we're left to watch this woman and decipher her emotions and state of mind. The film's success is due in large part Michelle Williams, and in the years since her flirtation with teen stardom, she's had an eclectic career in non-commercial film. Working with Wim Wenders, Todd Haynes, Ang Lee, Tom McCarthy, and others, Williams has turned in performances with progressive depth and skill. So quiet she is in this film, so immersed in this character that you don't for a second question the authenticity of her performance or her circumstances. There's little I can say that can express the tone of the film or the lack of forcedness and plotting, other than to say that the performances are excellent, the photography is splendid, and the film is pitch perfect and among the best I've seen this year.

CIFF '08: The Wrestler

2008-10-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

Darren Aronofsky is one of my favorite directors, and I've loved his last three films. This is a definite change of pace. Instead of his usual visual flourishes, he strips down his aesthetic, and simply follows the characters. Mickey Rourke is the movie, and through the almost Dardenne brothers like style, we get inside the mind of a man who can do one thing, do it great, but no longer has a place where can excell in that field, professional wrestling. Rourke has few friends, but he does have one person he seems to connect with, a stripper played by Marisa Tomei. As Rourke is sidelined for a time, he begins to try and reconnect with his daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood, at the urging of Tomei. This isn't a film you need to go into with any predeliction towards pro Wrestling, you can even hate it, and I don't think that'd detract from what a great movie it is and how special the performances are. I like Mickey Rourke, and I like even more now that his face is a big hunk of battered flesh. Even in a cartoonish role like Marv in Sin City, Rourke brings a sadness to his characters, a kind of big lug with a lot of inner conflict, that you rarely see in men of his build in movies. Tomei and Wood are equally as good in their scenes, balancing out Rourke's tragic hero. The music, much like the wrestling attire, is often cheesy, but it so fits the world of these characters, and what they listen to and like that any other choice would diminish the realism that this film thrives in. A small, human drama that's distincly American, and yet approached from an angle more traditionally seen in European films, The Wrestler is a clear departure for Aronofsky, but one that's not out of line with his creativity or his talent. At the Q&A after the film Aronofsky mentioned that he thought of his first three films as a loose trilogy, building up to 2006's The Fountain, and that he hopes he can continue to reinvent himself and surprise his audience. With The Wrestler, Aronofsky surprises his audience a great deal, and delights them even more.

Nobody Played

2008-03-29T01:52:00.000-07:00

So it seems the reaction to "Funny Games" has been...silence. The film's barely broken a million dollars (which is great for a Haneke film, but pretty poor considering it has a major star whose opened both "arthouse" and big horror films big before*), and is closing in most of the 250+ theatres it played in. Those who've seen it have said nothing (unless you count likely false accounts like this one). People like to be entertained, especially those in the horror crowd and the reaction in the theater I was in seemed like mostly indifference. I do wonder if it'd been pushed as hard as the films it condemns, or released in the number of theaters, would it have had any impact. If anything its taught me that a strong personal reaction is not a neccesary indication that others will give a shit.

Alright everybody, out of the theater.

*by comparison, Watts' last film "Eastern Promises opened at $547,092, playing in 15 theatres, and "Funny Games" opened to $3000 less, playing 286 theatres.

Not "Funny," Ha Ha

2008-03-14T04:19:00.000-07:00

So I'm trying something new on this blog, actual film writing.

I've been following a discussion at Jim Emerson's "Scanners" blog for the past couple of days about Michael Haneke's new remake of his 1997 film "Funny Games."

The first part of the discussion can be found here, but what made me write the response below was Mr. Emerson's review of the film, linked to here. I'll update as the discussion continues, and post any responses I get, and possibly use this as a place to continue the discussion if it loses steam over there.

Spoilers and angry rebuttal ahead

I'm kind of flabbergasted by your analysis, and particularly your utterly ridiculous comparisons between the movie and the Abu Ghraib photographs.

It's funny, a month or so ago a documentary called "Taxi to the Dark Side" came out, and I saw it. Sitting in the theater, I was horrified, angry, disgusted, and I came out shaken. I didn't need the film. I'd read about what was happening to the detainees, but I saw it anyway. It added to my understanding of the situation, and though its a tough, gruelling watch, I was glad I saw it. I'd liken that to seeing the 1997 "Funny Games" in some ways. I think both are vital, important, very different, but brilliant films. Do I love them? No. Insomuch as its hard to love something you never want to see again. Does that make them any less vital? Or powerful? Or great? I don't think so. I didn't love the despair and confusion and anger and all of the emotions that come with seeing detainees being forced to strip and masturbate, piled on one another being beaten. I didn't love seeing the atrophied legs of a dead detainee. But these things are happening, and denying them helps nothing.

Maybe its a stretch, but in a way, the things in Haneke's self-consciously filmy FILM are happening too. They happen in the multiplexes every January, and October when scores of teenagers scream for blood and mutilation while munching on popcorn. I don't know if you've been in an audience whose shouted for blood, but it's like you've been transported back to the Coloseeum. I myself don't love watching people being tortured, but clearly people do. The reason I'd willingly go to something like "Taxi" or 'Funny Games" is because theirs a point to witnessing these acts, and it's not entertainment. The films do exist, and Haneke's statement isn't mixed or hypocritical at all. He made one of those "torture porn" films, and instead of leading it to its "normal" conclusion, he steps outside of the film and comments. When one of the torturers asks the audience if they're on the family's side, I don't think that's a condemnation of the audience on Haneke's part, its a legitimate question. The normal expectation for this kind of movie is that the family will be tortured for a while, one or two might get killed off, but eventually they'll get some kind of redemption, and probably kill the two boys.That way the audience gets the fun of torture with a tidy, unambiguous ending that superficially evens the moral keel. That doesn't happen in Haneke's film, and so it either makes the audience realize or acknowledge that deriving glee from the torture in those films makes you complicit.

Granted, it's much easier NOT to pay attention to the media coverage of Iraq and Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib, and its much easier to do as you suggest and NOT see "Funny Games" and think about what Haneke is expressing. I mean, how dare Haneke be so obnoxious as to mirror the torture trend and comment on it, right? How obnoxious of Alex Gibney for documenting actual torture, right? They gave an Oscar to that sadist? Right...

Do you have the same complaints with Gibney, Mr. Emerson? Or how about the makers of "The Bridge?" Or, if you think its unfair comparing Haneke to a documentarian, do you have the same problems with Gavin Hood for "Rendition?" Or Neil Marshall for keeping those poor women in the cave in "The Descent?" Why is it not okay for Haneke to have message take over his film rather than character or story, but it is okay for Gibney, or Charles Ferguson, or Michael Moore to? Is the overt falsity in Haneke's film what makes it so abhorrent? You can argue that Haneke could have made his point more eloquently, or maybe made a documentary, but the bluntness in the film is the same bluntness you find in "Cache," which you admire, and the rest of his work. "Cache" is certainly more entertaining, and most definitely a better, more complex film. It'd be a stretch to call "Funny Games" entertainment, but is that all film can be? You might not love it, but does it really only achieve half a stars worth of its goal?

And here I thought the "Contrarian Blog-a-than" had been over for months...

The Best Films of 2007

2008-01-25T23:24:00.000-08:00

Joe Wright's second feature is a tour de force of directing, and storytelling. The film is divided into three sections, each featuring a different actor playing the central character, Briony. The first section is set at an idyllic English country home in the early 1940s. Wright manages to make this so idyllic and so incredibly beautiful (with the help of his brilliant cinematographer Seamus McGarvey), that when the turn in the first act comes, its shattering and heartbreaking. Once we're jolted out of this paradise, we find ourselves near the end of WWII, and there's a flashback sequence between the other two lead characters, Celia and Robbie, that rivals "Breif Encounter" as heartbreaking romantic melodrama. The third turn slams us into present day. Not much has been said of the film, and its greatness, but along this brilliantly executed story, based on Ian McEwan's novel, there's a 6 minute tracking shot, and some of the best filmmaking I've seen in years. Pride and Prejudice tipped Wright as soemone to watch, but with Atonement, he shoots to one of the best working today. This film is a masterpiece, and the best of the year.

Paul Thomas Anderson has previously speicalized in comic dramas that feature large ensemble casts and cross cutting between multiple stories. With There Will be Blood, he's made the most unique American film of the year, and perhaps one of the most unique of all time. It's a focused character study, mainly of two people, Daniel Plainview, a self-made oil tycoon and Eli Sunday, a self-made preacher. Its uniqueness has put some others off, specifically its ending, but its the right ending, and it's what makes the picture. With this film, Anderson steps up his already impecable game and creates a wholy unique work of art, a focused meditation on greed, religion, and commerce.
Jason Reitman's film so completely captures the world and the feeling of suburban teenagers in his coming of age comedy, with a script by Diablo Cody. Ellen Page and Michael Cera inhabit their roles so deftly that it'd be easy to say they aren't acting, but in Juno, Ellen Page has created one of the great film teenagers. She's a knowing, sarcastic character, and her performance, coupled with Cody's writing and Reitman's direction turn her into a funny, scared young woman coming to terms with her first brushes of adulthood. The pregnancy in the movie is just a location, and Reitman fills his film with equally rich portayals, notably with J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, who both bring weight and complexity to their roles as Juno's loving parents. Though it might not add anything to new to film language, Reitman's film is the most heart-warming and optomistic comedy of the year.
Like Blood, David Fincher's "Zodiac" is an instensley focused American film. Recreating the period setting not just in the art direction, but also the film style, Zodiac is one of the most tightly crafted films in recent decades. Remniscent of classic investigation movies of the 1970s, its a film that'll be obsessed over for years, and marks a bold new direction for high-definition digital filmmaking. A myriad number of actors take on the different personas of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' film that is just as much about movies and American culture as it is Dylan. Haynes uses Dylan as an entry point into Fellini, Godard, Altman, Billy the Kid, Woody Guthrie, and the very fiber of American history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Though its subjects are diverse, Dylan is very much there in his music, and in the various landmark events of his career and life that Haynes inteprets into various film styles and periods. Never for a moment is it dull, or confusing. It plays very much like listening to a Dylan song, you can try to sort it all out, and get no where, or you can go for the ride, and let it all mean what it means.

1. Atonement

2. There Will Be Blood

3. Juno

4. Zodiac

5. I'm Not There

6. Persepolis

7. Ratatouille

8. Dans Paris

9. Knocked Up

10. Once

The Other 10

The Darjeeling Limited, Across the Universe, Superbad, Eastern Promises, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Namesake, In the Valley of Elah, Starting Out in the Evening, Michael Clayton, Cassandra's Dream, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Death Proof (Grindhouse cut).

Other Reccomendations: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, No Country for Old Men, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Margot at the Wedding, Away From Her, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Romance & Cigarettes, Taxi to the Darkside, The Orphanage, American Gangster, Rendition, Hot Fuzz, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Sicko, No End In Sight, La Vie en Rose, Into the Wild, I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, Lars and the Real Girl, Lust, Caution, 12:08 East of Bucharest, Gone Baby Gone, The Savages, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, The Golden Compass, The Kite Runner, The Lookout, Interview, Delirious, 3:10 To Yuma, Control, The Hunting Party, Black Book, The Simpsons Movie, Bug, The Bourne Ultimatum, Paris, je t'aime, A Mighty Heart, This is England, 2 Days in Paris, Shoot 'Em Up, The Brave One, Hot Rod.

Best Revivals: Killer of Sheep, Blade Runner: The Final Cut.

Biggest Dissapointments: Youth Without Youth , Oceans 13, Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Best Documentaries: Taxi to the Darkside, Sicko, and No End in Sight.

Worst: Hannah Takes the Stairs, and Youth Without Youth.

Wes Anderson & Sofia Coppola consistency and some favorite close-ups

2007-10-22T00:14:00.000-07:00

The following series of images are a gallery of close-ups for Matt Zoller Seitz's "Close-Up Blog-a-thon." (Note: some of these are not close-ups in the strictest sense, but are shots that draw the viewer's focus to one point, often that of a face or an object.)

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In all five of Wes Anderson's features (and his short film Hotel Chevalier), he frequently cuts to extreme close-up insert shots of objects or text. Below are examples from his films of such instances where the details are made big. ~~Since The Darjeeling Limited is not yet on DVD, and the trailer has none of them, it's excluded.~~ It's now on dvd and I've added some examples from that film.

Bottle Rocket (Short-1994)

Bottle Rocket (Feature - 1996)

Rushmore (1998)

The Royal Tenenbaums (2002)

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

A twelve-person medium shot!

Hotel Chevalier (2007)

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

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Sofia Coppola's three features have all been about lonely women, and they all share one shot: a girl coming home from a party of some sort is seen inside a car from outside the car, looking out as the reflection on the window passes her by.

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Lost in Translation (2003)

Marie Antoinette (2006)

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and some of my other favorite close-ups (that were readily available.)

Birth (2004)

Breaking Away (1979)

Closer (2004)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

In the Mood for Love (2002)

Best of 2006

2006-12-19T22:36:00.000-08:00

The 10 Best Films of 2006

1. Letters From Iwo Jima
2. Children of Men
3. The Fountain
4. Three Times
5. Marie Antoinette
6. Half Nelson
7. Little Children
8. Pan's Labyrinth
9. Bubble
10. Little Miss Sunshine

The Other 15
A Prairie Home Companion
Babel
The Queen
Volver
The Departed
Monster House
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Shortbus
Syndromes and a Century
Time
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Miami Vice
Hard Candy
Army of Shadows
United 93
Stranger Than Fiction
Riding Alone For Thousands of Miles

Honorable Mentions:
L'Enfant, The Death of Mr. Lazerescu, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Strangers with Candy, The Good German, The History Boys, Flags of Our Fathers, The Great New Wonderful, Curse of the Golden Flower, Brick, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Notes on a Scandal, The Prestige, The Good Shepherd, The Painted Veil, Shut Up & Sing, The Pursuit of Happyness, Winter Passing, Flannel Pajamas, An Inconvenient Truth, Old Joy, Fast Food Nation, 10 Items or Less, Blood Diamond, Sherrybaby, and Happy Feet.

Worst: All The King's Men, and Running With Scissors

Movies of 2006

2006-11-29T22:19:00.000-08:00

I will use this space to discuss the films that I have seen that were first released theatrically in 2006. I will include near the end of the year, an innocuous, and pointlessly ordered list of the best films of the year, and perhaps like the English film programme "Film 2006," I will change the title of this blog when January comes around.