Waffles

I'm not ready to write about Inglourious Basterds. I need to see it again. I still won't be ready.

It is the best film of the year so far, but I'm seriously conflicted about it.

"For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed...A double minded man is unstable in all his ways."

As usual, David Bordwell's commentary is among the best. The following quote is perceptive and striking and makes me want to hunt down a copy of the Carroll essay right now.

Several years ago the film theorist Noël Carroll speculated that the Movie Brats of the 1970s sought to create a shared culture of media savvy that would replace the traditional culture based on religion, classical mythology, and official history. For the baby boomers, knowledge of the Christian Bible and iconography of American history would be replaced by deep familiarity with movies, pop music, and TV. This secular sacred would bind the audience in a new set of traditions. On this path, Scorsese, Spielberg, and Lucas didn’t go as far as Tarantino has. In his films every situation or character name or line of dialogue feels like a citation, a link in a web of pop-culture associations. (Aldo Raine = Aldo Ray = Bruce Willis, whom Tarantino once compared to Aldo Ray.) The only other filmmaker I know who has achieved this supersaturated cross-referencing is Godard, another exponent of the vivid-moments model (though he uses it to create a more fragmentary whole). Tarantino is the most visible evidence of what Carroll called “The future of allusion.”

Not writing about the film now means that I may never write about it, but while I leave you hanging I can at least point to another Tarantino clip - an introduction to There Will Be Blood, one of my favorite movies of all time. Toward the end, Tarantino explains how Blood was a direct influence on Basterds.

Hotel

Right now, I'm being paid to surf the Internet at a comfortable hotel in Rochester, NY. I've enjoyed spending hours indulging my every searching whim, while also reminding myself how good it is that I don't have Internet access at home any longer.

Following up on my ramblings about the shortage of great SF films, here's Tarantino examining what makes Sunshine such a good but terribly-flawed-not-great film

Have You Seen The Thing?

Nothing that I write about The Thing is as interesting as this page about Thing related merchandise: The Thing's Monstrous Merchandise.

The Thing was a bit of a letdown after Dawn of the Dead, but that's only saying that it was good, not great.

The sense of dread and mistrust achieved is praiseworthy and surely the most horrifying aspect of the film, but this same aspect suffered from my utter confidence in Kurt Russel's ability to handle any crisis. Honestly, Russel is a bit too much of an action hero here.

The special effects are great. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the late 70s through the 80s were the greatest period of cinematic special effects that we've yet seen. CGI will continue to improve, but I'll still prefer rubber monsters.

The Thing is more impressive as a smart science fiction film (with John W. Campbell, Jr. source material!) than as horror (but, then again, I'm still trying to figure out what horror is). Smart movie SF is still a rarity. I don't think I'm being that controversial when I suggest that film SF is decades behind print SF. There have been lots of decent to good SF films (I love Moon from this year) and these films, like The Thing, need to be championed for what they are, but there have been very few genuine masterpieces as of yet.

Work.

Seeing Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm with a crowd of folks who were all equally excited helped confirm that cinema usher is indeed my dream job.

After watching Lawrence, I started thinking about parallels with Soderbergh's Che. The two characters seemed more similar to me than I would have ever, apart from these cinematic representations, previously thought. It might border on cinematic sacrilege for me to write it, but Soderbergh's film is at least as good as Lean's epic. I'd love to spend a day watching them both together. What a double feature!

The 39 Steps is still a lot of fun and I was glad to have the chance to see a good 35mm print after the terrible DVD projection at Bundy earlier in the year. I only wish that Abby could have been with me again.

Tulpan is one of the biggest disappointments of the year so far. It received nearly universal praise, but I was indifferent. I loved the depictions of yurt life, but I was turned off by the earnest ethnic cuteness. If Americans weren't so hesitant about foreign films with subtitles, Tulpan could be the same kind of hit as something like My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

A Decade

General Disclaimer: I put these lists together fairly quickly and thoughtlessly. It was hard making any kind of reasonable lists when I haven’t seen the films in question in several years. I know that I’ve changed a lot since I’ve seen them. I’m sure that I’ve missed a few films that I’ve seen that may deserve to be here and I know that I didn‘t see a lot of films during the last decade. I’m equally sure that most of the titles below aren’t really the best movies that came out in a given year, but there’s something about each of them that I liked. I only have vague impressions of some of them. Others, I remember clearly.

There’s only a small handful that I really love and treasure.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how opinions can change. I still love Adventureland and I‘ll stick up for it if anyone knocks it, but each time I’ve watched it I’ve picked out more problems that I have with the story and the script - contrivances and gods from machines and all that.

I insist on the right to change my mind.

That said, here are some pathetic attempts at yearly lists, 2000 through 2007.

For the sake of making this a full ten years, I’m going to reprint here my 1999 list and my 2008 list at the end of the post. It also makes me feel better to have all of this crap bookended by two lists that I feel more confident about.

1999

Top Ten Films of 1999

1. Julien Donkey-Boy
2. Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
3. The Straight Story
4. Magnolia
5. Three Kings
6. Princess Mononoke
7. The Iron Giant
8. Toy Story 2
9. The Talented Mr. Ripley
10. Bringing Out the Dead


2000

2000 was a continuation of 1999 for me. I’m pretty sure that the first half of 2000 mostly consisted of 1999 films, either movies finally in wide release available in the cinemas of Buffalo/Rochester/LI or on VHS/DVD.

[Aside: I was a fairly early adopter of DVDs in 1997, but I didn’t fully give up on VHS until a few years later, getting rid of the bulk of my VHS collection in 2001, then slowly weeding out the remaining VHS over the last few years. The format and the picture/audio quality was never what bothered me, though it was nice to upgrade. It was the damnable persistence of pan and scan that fostered the hate that I have for VHS. The immediate and (almost) consistent practice of preserving a film’s aspect ratio on DVD was what initially drew me to the format and I’m still happy with the format. I don’t know why pan and scan was dropped or whether or not it would have died just as well if VHS had stayed around, but I’m glad that it’s mostly a fact of the past now. As far as new technology goes, maybe eventually I’ll break down and buy a Blu-Ray player or whatever else is new in 10 years, but I’m happy enough for now.]

I saw about half as many 2000 releases as I did 1999 releases. Sill, I saw a lot of movies in 2000.

Meet the Parents is funny. X-Men signaled the rebirth of enjoyable superhero films. I like Erin Brockovich more than I like Traffic. I hate Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Charlie’s Angels features a great Crispin Glover performance. I liked Rugrats in Paris. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, like Inspector Gadget before it and Speed Racer after it, was much more enjoyable than it had any right to be. O Brother Where Art Thou? is one of my least favorite Coen films, but I won’t deny its charms. All the Pretty Horses isn’t quite what it should have been. Boiler Room is small, but slick. Nurse Betty is interesting seen in the light of In the Company of Men. LaBute is still someone to watch, which reminds me that I need to get around to seeing Lakeview Terrace. I watched The Perfect Storm just because John C. Reilly was in it. Gladiator is still overrated. Frequency is silly, but sweet. High Fidelity was a disappointment. Mission Impossible 2 was the worst movie of the year.

The second half of 2000 found me “studying” in London. Despite the required minimum 12 credits, my real education was on the streets interacting with other malcontents. And at the cinema. I regret now that I didn’t keep any sort of film journal because I can’t remember most of what I saw there and I have nothing to jog my memory. After thinking about it for a while, I can remember the following then current releases: Julien Donkey-Boy (x3), Dancer in the Dark (x2), Ratcatcher, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Nurse Betty, Animal Factory, and Stagecoach. I know that I saw so much more, especially older films, at BFI and other places, but my memory fails me. In the end, the best thing that I took from London was a board game, one of my favorites - Bladder. (click on the link - it’ll take you to the first board game review that I wrote for BGG)

Finally….

I don’t think I’ve seen any of these films again within the last 5-9 years so ranking them now is a difficult if not somewhat stupid task.

Also, going back through the past decade has been humbling as I recognize how totally ignorant I was (and to an extent still remain) of world cinema. I saw a small smattering of things, but missed out on much more. I have a decent (but still weak) grasp on international cinema maybe up until the ‘70s, but then I just don’t know what is going on up until the present. It’s not that I was hostile to foreign film. I definitely wasn’t hostile, but I was clueless. Being clueless, I didn’t seek anything out. Unfortunately, foreign film distribution is so poor in this country that if small and foreign films aren’t actively and specifically sought after, then they’re easy to miss, either because they never played in your area to begin with or because you’ve never read, seen, or heard anything about them and they’re only playing for a week or so in your town. Easy to miss. I do think that Rosenbaum’s Movie Wars is a good read in this regard, examining why movie distribution sucks. I’ve enjoyed reading Film Comment and Cinema Scope since about mid-2007. Starting to read those magazines, following a few blogs (especially David Hudson, wherever he’s at), and meeting Brandon in January ‘08 all worked together to fuel an obsession that I had let lapse and atrophy for nearly a decade, but, also and most importantly opened me back up to an entire world of film, enveloped in but broader than any national boundaries.

Okay…

Top Ten Films of 2000

1. Dancer in the Dark
2. George Washington
3. The Big Kahuna
4. Shadow of the Vampire
5. Cast Away
6. Wonder Boys
7. Space Cowboys
8. The Tao of Steve
9. Unbreakable
10. Chicken Run


2001

Spring semester 2001 was my final year of college. All of my time was taken up courting my beautiful bride-to-be and trying to fake my way through student teaching (ultimately receiving a 4.0, what a joke). My preferred media of choice at the time was “Old-Time Radio,” especially the Science Fiction shows. Specifically the two ‘X’ shows: X Minus One, Dimension X. I may have been the only college kid in 2001 hosting Baby Snooks parties, but I’d hold those parties up and above any Frat bash. In May, I participated in a “Mayterm” trip to Paris as a last desperate attempt to finish my language requirement, the only thing holding me back from graduating. I was miserable in Paris, but Paris wasn’t miserable. I went to a few movies, the most memorable being several nights at an Elia Kazan retrospective. I still haven’t seen America, American again since (it could possibly be my favorite Kazan picture), but Panic in the Streets was a fun discovery and A Face in the Crowd has since grown to be one of my favorites which I like to revisit.

Over the summer, I moved up to Whitney Point, NY in preparation for married life. I don’t remember going to any movies. We were married October 6th and went on a honeymoon for a week or so. We went to the NESFA clubhouse, but no movies. I don’t remember many movies for the rest of the year and I don’t even think we had a television set up in our apartment for a while. I know that I didn’t have one in the apartment on September 11th. I listened to everything happening via NPR and other radio stations and didn’t see any footage of the attacks until several years later.

I only count 23 2001 releases that I’ve seen and I don’t care for most of them. A Beautiful Mind is okay. Hannibal might have been scary. I don’t remember. Enemy at the Gates I only just watched this year. Spy Kids was a little bit fun. Blow blew. The Mummy Returns was dumb. Shrek is outrageously overrated. Fast and the Furious irritated me at a moderate pace. Planet of the Apes was a nice try. The first Harry Potter put me to sleep. The Royal Tannenbaums is everything I dislike about Wes Anderson, but good for him. Ali is the weakest Mann film that I’ve seen. LoTR:FoTR proved to be much worse than I had feared. Despite some incredible effects (even these are sometimes too showy as CGI), the story adaptation is hack work, operating on the level of a bad television drama. I Am Sam was better than everyone gives it credit for. Memento pissed me off with its “cleverness.” I liked Black Hawk Down, but don‘t remember it well enough to justify listing it below. I really can’t remember whether or not I saw Spirited Away. I feel like I have, but I can’t remember anything about it except for some weird light creatures who were maybe from Mononoke? I don’t know.

2001 was the beginning of my decline as a moviegoing geek. I can’t even make a top ten.

Top Ten Films of 2001

1. In the Mood for Love
2. A. I.
3. Waking Life
4. Monsters, Inc.
5. The Man Who Wasn’t There
6. Donnie Darko
7.
8.
9.
10.


2002

I only saw about half a dozen more 2002 releases than 2001.

Blade II was bad. Star Wars II was bad. The Two Towers was bad. Men in Black II worked enough for me to proclaim it the best sequel of the year. Spiderman did a lot to cement Marvel’s ascendancy, but I liked it less than others. Bourne Identity felt fresh and new. So did Road to Perdition, a film I’d like to revisit. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was big and fat and Greek. 8 Mile was better than I thought it would be. Insomnia is great, but I don’t remember it well enough. Bowling for Columbine has its moments, including the moments when I stopped trusting Moore. Catch Me if You Can was fun. The Pianist wasn’t. Star Trek Nemesis made me happy the same way every Star Trek film makes me happy. I saw a clip of Panic Room on television the other night and realized now what I missed last year when I saw it for the first time. That little girl is Kristen Stewart. Lastly, I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for The Rookie.

Note: I have problems with every single film on the list below. I enjoyed them all, but in no way could I unequivocally and wholeheartedly recommend each one in the way that I could do so for my 2008 list. To a certain extent, this note applies to each of the lists from the last ten years. I say that I enjoy them, but I think that I might hate some of them, too. I don’t know. I’m just making lists and these movies were better than others. I have a feeling that there were plenty of better films in 2002 that I missed out on. Anyhow, there’s at least a little something to praise in each of the titles below.

Top Ten Films of 2002

1. Minority Report
2. Solaris
3. Signs
4. Changing Lanes
5. Punch Drunk Love
6. Gangs of New York
7. Love Liza
8. Reign of Fire
9. Adaptation
10. We Were Soldiers


2003

Titles seen increased by about half a dozen again this year, up to 32, though still not even that close to half as many as that high mark, 1999.

I’m not going to waste any time except to say that 2003 seems like it was a good year even though I still missed a lot of the more critically acclaimed films. At least, I feel positive about the movies below. Here’s a top ten.

Top Ten Films of 2003

1. School of Rock
2. Owning Mahowny
3. Northfork
4. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
5. Elf
6. Gods and Generals
7. Finding Nemo
8. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
9. Holes
10. Open Range

Honorable Mentions: 28 Days Later, Luther, Mystic River, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Winged Migration

Most overrated: In America

Singled out for hate: The Hulk


2004

I count 24 releases seen from 2004. In the fall of 2004, I started library school. It took another degree to forcefully make me recognize that I’m not cut out for a professional work environment. I do like to watch movies. 2004 was an okay year, though I know that I missed a lot.

Top Ten Films of 2004

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. The Incredibles
3. The Five Obstructions
4. The Passion of the Christ
5. Undertow
6. Collateral
7. Million Dollar Baby
8. The Terminal
9. Saw
10. Primer

Honorable Mentions: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Supersize Me

Most overrated: Spiderman 2

Singled out for hate: Sideways


2005

In 2005, I had a growing family, I was working full-time, and I was going to school full-time. I was hanging out a lot at Don’s Atomic Comics and doing plenty of comics related projects for school. Needless to say, I saw less films. I saw only 17 films released in 2005. No matter, because 2005 was the year that Malick gave us his masterpiece. Brandon, I’m looking forward to reading more about what you thought about 2005 because I mostly missed it. Looking back, it doesn’t seem like I missed all that much, but I’m willing to change my mind about that.

Top Ten Films of 2005

1. The New World
2. Grizzly Man
3. Serenity
4. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
5. Kung Fu Hustle
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Honorable Mentions: Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, MirrorMask, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Syriana

Most overrated: Batman Begins

Singled out for hate: Fantastic Four


2006

2006 marks the all-time low of only 13 films seen from that year. And I saw the majority of them after 2006. Late 2005 was when I discovered BoardGameGeek. In early 2006, I was meeting regularly with a group in Buffalo. I wasn’t going to see movies. At home, Abby and I were watching television shows mostly, going on a Buffy binge late in the year after moving down to the Binghamton area, watching all 8 seasons in about 8 months or less. Someone might argue that 2006 was a great year for movies, but I just can’t see it from where I’m standing.

Top Ten Films of 2006

1. A Scanner Darkly
2. The Proposition
3. Joyeux Noel
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Honorable Mentions: Lady in the Water, X-Men: The Last Stand

Most Overrated: Babel

Singled out for hate: Apocalypto


2007

2007 marked my return to seriously caring about film and, to a lesser extent, film culture. Mid-year, I started reading Film Comment and Cinema Scope. I’m still not entirely sure why. I saw the magazines there on the shelf at Barnes and Noble and I remembered that good films exist. I wasn’t gaming as much as I had been in Buffalo and what gaming I was doing wasn’t satisfying. I was burned out on theology and ecclesiology and didn’t want to debate any more. My girls were beginning education and I would argue that film needed to be a part of their education. All things considered, I was ready to return to the cinema. And 2007 was a great year.

Major contenders that I haven’t seen, but would like to: Away From Her, The Assassination of Jess James by the Coward Robert Ford, Colossal Youth, Grindhouse, The Host, Into Great Silence, Lake of Fire, Southland Tales

Cute: The Astronaut Farmer, The Martian Child

I liked more than others, but won‘t press the issue: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Spiderman 3

Had minor moments that justified their existence, but I could forget them: I Am Legend, 3:10 to Yuma, Ghost Rider, 1408

Critical darlings that I mostly disliked: I’m Not There, Juno, The Savages, Sweeny Todd

Honorable Mentions: Breach, Control, Enchanted, Offside, Once, Michael Clayton, Zodiac

Top Ten Films of 2007

1. There Will Be Blood
2. No Country For Old Men
3. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
4. Ratatouille
5. The Simpsons Movie
6. Gone Baby Gone
7. Reign Over Me
8. Sunshine
9. Stardust
10. The Darjeeling Limited


2008

And then came 2008. I know that it’s probably mostly a matter of perspective, but I believe that 2008, in general, was a better year than all of those other years combined.

Top Ten Films of 2008

1. Mister Lonely
2. Still Life
3. The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
4. Ashes of Time Redux
5. Wall-E
6. Funny Games
7. Appaloosa
8. La France
9. In Bruges
10. Iron Man

I already want to tweak this list some since I made it last month, but I won’t. All I’d really be doing is rearranging and switching in some films from the #11 honorable mention slot. Oh well.

That’s ten years of my life as a moviegoer.

5 minutes at the library

Brandon, it was a relief to read your Moon review and to know that you liked it. I felt fairly confident that you would, but I was also prepared to exchange blows if it came to that. Fred, you need to see it. And Fred, I was a jerk and never got around to it, but Thank You for posting your A Choice of Gods piece. I'll be sure to call you to score the film once my producer gives me the clearance saying that we have the fifty million dollar budget to go ahead with the project.

I'm sad to say that I haven't made it to Basterds yet, but I still intend to see it. It's too long for me to see it before work, the times haven't been right for me to see it after work, and now that I've been doing the Cornell thing I don't have time to see other movies on my days off (at least not without Abby killing me for being a bozo absentee husband). Grizzly Man is a great movie. Starting at the end of this week, I'm going to begin posting my top ten lists for the last 10 years. I've got them all mostly done and am ready to share.

As a note to myself, I want to congratulate myself on writing at least one sentence about EVERY SINGLE MOVIE that I've seen in 2009 (with the ever-present exception of the half a dozen or so films that I've recently watched and am behind on writing about). The only things missing here are television shows (mostly Lost), short films (lots of WB cartoons and quite a few silent shorts from a Kino collection), and various things that I only get to watch bits and pieces of at work, including es of TCM, baseball games, the evening news, and bad stand-up. There's too much visual media to keep up with, but I've been faithful to writing about each feature film. Hooray for me.

All of this just to say that I'm glad that I haven't given up on this blog despite my long period of library-only Internet access. It's brought me some enjoyment and made me, sometimes, clarify my thoughts more than I would have otherwise.

I was going to wait until I'd seen Inglourious Basterds, but I don't want to wait any more.

Here is my off-the-top-of-my-head-post-bad-summer-movie-pre-fall-art-film-season-top-five-of-2009-so-far-list.

1) Moon
2) Summer Hours
3&4) Ponyo/Up
5) Drag Me to Hell

Honorable Mentions (or numbers 6 and 7 out of 5): Adventureland, Public Enemies

Funny how? Some more quick thoughts.

I wish that I could pinpoint what it is about Scorcese's films that keep me at a distance. I can't figure it out. Goodfellas is what it is, an elephant in the room, but I've never been a big fan. Joe Pesci (and the character written for him) is the best part of the movie. Otherwise, I guess that I can value the film for showcasing "wiseguy" glamour, the sole driving force behind America's gangster fetishism. The gangster life is about self-interest. Henry is a gangster because it's a life with benefits, but he's quick to dump the lifestyle when it doesn't benefit him any longer. Henry rats on his "friends" to save himself, but he's clear-headed enough to readily admit to missing the lifestyle he's leaving behind. There is no moral conversion, only self-interest to the end.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is pretty clearly a revenge-themed exploitation picture, so, by all accounts, Tarantino has succeeded admirably in making exactly what he set out to make, trimming away all excess and giving us nothing but pure revenge exacted. I'm sorry that I don't care. It's too bad that Tarantino sets the bar so low for himself, but he seems to be having a grand old time wallowing in the muck. Tarantino knows more about bad 1970s films than I know about anything. I respect that. I just can't share his enthusiasm.

I watched Adventureland for a 4th time now that it's out on DVD. It still holds up, but I know that I'm now done with the movie, having mostly exhausted what it has to offer. I love the perfect evocation of time and place and friendship and community that Mottola conjures throughout, but I think that there are problems with the story; each element falling too neatly into place to further a plot, creating a deterministic atmosphere at times instead of a spontaneous lived one. Then again, I don't know if Mottola expected anyone to be watching the film four times in four months and thinking about it so much. There's nothing in Adventureland that has any exact correlation to anything from my youth, but the tone is so right that watching the movie felt like hanging out with old friends.

Last night, I had the incredible joy of taking my daughter to work with me. The work being my volunteer usher job at Cornell! We watched Up for a second time and I can say that I was completely enthralled, enjoying it much more this second viewing. It's definitely one of the best films of the year so far.

Clean was further proof to me that Olivier Assayas is someone to watch, though I suppose that now I need to watch Demonlover or Boarding Gate to discover Assayas' exploitative streak. Clean features a good script and great performances that seem to come alive effortlessly through Assayas's direction. I especially loved the Nick Nolte character and his grizzled grace. Maggie Cheung could be one of the greatest female actors of recent memory. At least, her work with Wong and Assayas hint at the possibility. The musicians featured in the movie also seem to be here organically, in a much more realistic feeling way than Rachel Getting Married's wedding jam from last year. Anyhow, good stuff worth checking out.

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.

Dawn of the Dead is the best zombie movie that I’ve ever seen!

That’s not saying much since the only other zombie film that I can remember seeing (I don’t count 28 Days Later or I am Legend as real zombie films) is Romero’s first zombie film, The Night of the Living Dead, which is also quite good.

Dawn is a sequel to Night, exploring some of the wider implications of what a zombie infested world would look like. That last sentence might sound ridiculous, but I don’t think so. The hungry Undead may seem like a stupid starting point for any film, easily sliding into schlock, but Romero mostly plays it straight, working in a plausible science fantasy context. One only needs to be willing to suspend disbelief and accept the film’s basic premise.

When hell is full, the dead will walk the earth.

There is a lot of humor and subtle satire amidst the horror, but Romero never loses his way by veering into Exploitation or Camp. He walks a fine line between the two, ultimately making what I can’t help but think is a genuinely moving, lyrical film. It’s not Days of Heaven by any means, but there is a poetic rhythm in much of the visual imagery and in the film’s relatively slow pacing, allowing characters to reveal themselves properly, all in good time. The story, as silly as it could have been, is firmly grounded in real human persons with recognizable human emotions.

My favorite scene is almost an aside, a brief look at some “good ol’ boys” enjoying the hell out of zombie hunting. Zombie infestation as Redneck wet dream rings hilariously true, but Romero shows us this in a really respectful manner. It’s a compliment of sorts to country boys to portray them as not only capable of dealing with any manner of vermin, but to be able to blissfully enjoy themselves while citified folk are running scared, trying to make existential sense of the situation, and generally being eaten alive.

The mall setting obviously allows for lots of little jabs at consumer culture, but I think that even here Romero is subtle and tastefully refrained instead of wild and bombastic in his critiques.

The most beautiful shot is of two of our heroes, “Flyboy” and Francine, in bed after having a rare date at one of the mall’s restaurants. The scene in the restaurant shows us two people trying to enjoy something normal after experiencing so much trauma. The shot immediately following this scene is a long shot of the couple in bed, him laying down on his side, sleeping, and her, sitting up and staring blankly. What can safely be assumed to be a post-coital moment is revealed as a moment of spiritual devastation rather than something exultant and hopeful, reminding me most of Haneke’s The Seventh Continent. It’s hard not to be an acting nihilist when the dead are walking the earth.

The film ends on a note of hesitant hope even though the likely conclusion should the story continue for another hour is that the helicopter runs out of gas and our remaining two protagonists are eaten alive by zombies wherever they land. The ending is perfect, but slightly marred by a strange “action hero” style sequence involving one of the characters deciding not to leave on the helicopter only to change his mind, fight off a dozen zombies, then reach the helicopter at the very last minute. The music (generally good throughout) is here like something straight out of the A-Team and it just feels odd. I’m not sure what to make of this last 5 minutes or so.

Dawn of the Dead really caught me by surprise. Now I’m really looking forward to the next four movies in this mini-horror-movie-marathon. Thank you Allos for getting me started along this trail of dead and undead.

1999

By 1999, I was pretty solidly a cinema addict. Spring 1999 was the semester I took Art & History of Film with Murph, easily the best class I've ever taken. I was "forced" to watch about 40 classic films, a few of which I'd seen already, most of which I hadn't. I had access to the entire Houghton film library and watched plenty of other classics on my own time. I discovered Tarkovsky! Herzog! Kurosawa! So many other international masters. In 1999, I was also surrounded by other cinephiles. Ben Gallman was religiously taping films off of TCM. Joseph Lewis! Nicholas Ray! Raoul Walsh! Dan Krawiec was encouraging me to geek out with top 10 lists. 1999 is the last year that I remember making a top ten list before this year.

1999 was the culmination of my previous 20 years of loving movies passionately, but mostly ignorantly. I learned just how stupid I was and that felt liberating. I wasn't a know-it-all anymore; I was a little baby soaking up new knowledge.

As a child, my parents took my younger sister and I out to the cinema nearly every week. Sunday afternoons were glorious as they were filled with moving images and buckets of popcorn. Looking back now, I realize how lucky I was and how formative all of those trips were, whether I remember all of the individual movies or not.

Through high school and college, I continued to go to the movies almost weekly, except that, more often than not, I was going with my buddies instead of my parents.

By 1999, I was in the habit of watching a LOT of movies. I count that I saw over 80 films from 1999, the large majority of which I saw in a theater somewhere in 1999 and the rest almost immediately upon release to VHS/DVD.

I'm stressing all of this because 1999 also marked an end of sorts. 2000 was when I lived in London and I was usually watching at least 1 or 2 films a week at various cinemas, but, looking back now, I've forgotten most of what I've seen there and it turns out that I didn't actually see all that much that was released in 2000. After 2000, I entered a sort of Cinema Dark Age in which I watched much less of what was new and current. Getting married and having children slowed me down, but I was also less than thrilled by what was coming out at the time. Netflix wasn't around yet and it was difficult to find good foreign or Independent films in Binghamton at the time and I insist that most of what was available at the Multiplexes was pretty bad. As I make lists for the last decade, it will quickly become apparent that I'm not all that big a fan of the last decade.

But, there was 1999. What a year.

We got Stanley Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, perverse in its way, but obviously important as the work of one of our masters. David Fincher raised the bar for himself with Fight Club. The combination of Jonze/Kaufman was unveiled as an original creative force of nature with Being John Malkovich. Michael Mann was confirmed as a major Hollywood talent with The Insider. Spike Lee evoked a specific time and place with Summer of Sam while Woody Allen playfully dabbled in a sort of faux-biopic in Sweet and Lowdown. Sam Mendes made us look in the mirror with American Beauty, overrated but important at the time. We also got new movies from Lasse Hallstrom, Neil Jordan, James Mangold, Milos Forman, Frank Darabont, Norman Jewison, Alexander Payne, M. Night Shyamalan, Tim Burton, and David Mamet. I liked some of these films. I hated others. None of them made their way into my illustrious top ten.

1999 was a strange year for science fiction. Virtual reality was the hot topic with eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, and The Matrix all taking a stab at profundity, all falling a bit short. I suppose that The Matrix has won out of the three as it found its way into mainstream pop consciousness.

One of my favorite movie memories of 1999 was going to see a double feature with Yams. American Pie signaled the rise of raunch that was to come, turning me right off, but Inspector Gadget turned out to be quite unexpectedly enjoyable, crafted in the same spirit of fun that made Speed Racer such a delightful surprise as well. This night with Yams was infamous for being the occasion of our stupidest giggle fit. EDEDI HRUPYM!!!!!

I didn't like Run Lola Run, but thinking about it reminds me that Troeller was still alive at the time. He was one of my major movie influences, giving me a love of John Huston, introducing me to the Coen Brothers, and generally challenging me to stop being such an idiot.

Animation had a good year in 1999. There are 3 titles in my top 10, but besides those there was also Disney's decently tame Tarzan and the indecently perverse South Park, scathing in its satire and ferociously catchy in its musical numbers.

1999 was an unusual year for me in that I saw the release of two film adaptations of two of my favorite novels. Neither succeeds in being a great adaptation or a great movie, but each has its own charms. Breakfast of Champions is a madcap farce with a great cast, but it's so zany that it's nearly unwatchable. Jesus' Son earns some of its better moments, but fails in forcing the stories together into a single straight narrative.

Boys Don't Cry was one of my favorite movies of the year at the time, making this boy cry like a little baby. I haven't seen it since. Maybe it's unfair that I'm shoving it off to an honorable mention status, but, looking back, I think that I can honestly say that I enjoyed all of these other movies in my list below more.

Arlington Road and Stigmata are two "guilty pleasures" from 1999, both of which I enjoy far more than either probably deserves.

Twin Falls Idaho marked the debut of two of the sweetest filmmakers I can think of, the Polish brothers. I love everything I've seen of theirs with Northfork definitely being their masterpiece so far.

Galaxy Quest is just a lot of fun and dead-on in its spoofing of both "Sci-Fi" media and its strange fandom.

I've still left off a lot of films that were important in some way or another, but I'll let them go. It's time for a Top 10.

1999

1. Julien Donkey-Boy (Harmony Korine)
2. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch)
3. The Straight Story (David Lynch)
4. Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson)
5. Three Kings (David O. Russell)
6. Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki)
7. The Iron Giant (Brad Bird)
8. Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter)
9. The Talented Mr. Ripley (Anthony Minghella)
10. Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorcese)

Enough said.

Quickies

I'm so far behind on posting here.

Quickly, here are a bunch of movies that I've seen lately...

Sans Soleil is another marvelous Chris Marker film, on the same Criterion disc as La Jetee. Basically, Marker's formula seems to be: Memory=Cinema=Time Travel. Each memory creates its own legend. Cinema allows us to preserve memories, creating a sort of time travel. I thought about this a lot while watching I Confess. Montgomery Clift and Karl Malden seemed so ALIVE. And in a sense they still are through the preservation of the movie.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is the worst movie I've seen so far this year. Ebert has trashed it properly. I don't want to waste any more words on it.

The Incredible Petrified World is only marginally a Science Fiction film (and it would be easy to knock its faults as a less than B-movie budget picture), but the way in which everything is played out is more solidly SF than all of the Transformers and Knowings that we've been stuck with recently. To think that men would act slowly and rationally while caught up in an impossible adventure!

I watched Left For Dead because I was interested in this newfangled Horror/Western hybrid that seems to be growing in popularity. It's not the thought that counts, though, and Left For Dead is hampered by a really dumb story and bad acting.

Gremlins is movie magic, either in spite of or because of its silliness. After watching it, I've been listening to a commentary with Dante, one of the producers and the special effects guy. Even the commentary is a lot more fun than most other movies. The only problem is that my daughter Annie saw the case to Gremlins and now every day bugs me to let her watch "SCARY MONSTER WITH GLASSES."

Visioneers really bummed me out. It's got a great near-future SF premise, but is burdened by a simplified "follow your dreams" message. Unfortunately, follow your dreams equates to leaving your family. Visioneers contains some of the best images I've seen in a movie all year, but it ends on a note of false hope, leaving me in a foul mood instead of a happy one.

The Roaring Twenties is such a great film. I haven't made up a ganster film list yet because I realized that I've seen so few of the "classics." You know you've got me beat, Brandon, in terms of the sheer quantity of older American movies that you've seen. Anyhow, watching Cagney and Bogart together is pure cinematic bliss.

It Happened One Night is another classic that I was long overdue in seeing. I'm nostalgic for days in which I never lived, when I feel that every American popular Romantic Comedy had whip-smart scripts like this one. I know that the 30's had more than its fair share of bad movies, too, but at least it had great ones. I can hardly think of any contemporary Romantic Comedies that could stand beside a gem like It Happened One Night.

Timecrimes receives an 'A' for effort. It starts with mystery and the suspense keeps building. Unfortunately, the action quickly devolves into an obvious (and ridiculous) time travel conundrum that only makes sense on the surface. Still, I was impressed (because, really, who has made a time travel story work? This one comes close) and I'm looking forward to the director's future efforts.

Funny People isn't all that funny (unless you can laugh at endless variations on dick jokes) and its people aren't all that personable. I think that it tries to be honest, but things resolve too neatly in the end.

Ponyo is so good that my oldest daughter Mildred saw it twice, once with her mother, aunt, and sister Annika, and once yesterday with me. This is the first Miyazaki film in a while aimed at a much younger audience than films like Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away and I'd say that it works perfectly for the 10 and under crowd all the while pleasing an old grouch like myself. HAM!!!

More to come soon.

Top Ten 2008, Final Answer (for now)

I'm sorry, Brandon, but from where I'm standing 2008 knocked the snot out of 2007.

Here goes:

1. Mister Lonely
2. Still Life
3. The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
4. Ashes of Time Redux
5. Wall-E
6. Funny Games
7. Appaloosa
8. La France
9. In Bruges
10. Iron Man

1 made me break down and love the world anew. 2, 3, and 4 reminded me how precious Love is. 5 is unarguably delightful. I insist on 6. I may be too gracious toward 7, overreacting against a largely lukewarm critical response, but my enjoyment of the film as one of the best Westerns of the past couple decades or so still stands. The music of 8 still haunts me to the point that I should just look up the lyrics and learn them already and start singing in French all day. 9 and 10 are just so watchable that I can't not include them.

Now I'm going to cheat. 2008 was so good that I'm going to include two honorable mention spots, #11 and #12, both including 10 movies each, all of which I thought were good to great, listed in alphabetical order. Any of the movies in the #11 slot could easily slip in and out of the Top Ten (and many of them were already there earlier in the year before other favorites came along). #12 contains movies that I enjoyed a great deal, but had some glaring flaw or two that kept me from outright gushing over the films. Besides my 11 and 12 categories, there are still several films from 2008 that were critical darlings that other people liked and I either didn't like them as much or I just haven't seen them yet. What's amazing is that there's very little overlap between mine and Brandon's lists (we only share 2 entries), but we both thought that we saw some great movies. I respect each one of his choices (I haven't seen 2 of them: Reprise or Benjamin Button) and most of them are somewhere here on my honorables lists. I still need to watch The Dark Knight again. I know I've been unfair toward it.

#11 Che, A Christmas Tale, Encounters at the End of the World, The Fall, The Flight of the Red Balloon, Gran Torino, Happy-Go-Lucky, JCVD, Synechdoche, NY, W.

#12 Burn After Reading, Cassandra's Dream, Hellboy II, My Blueberry Nights, Redbelt, Shotgun Stories, Speed Racer, Tell No One, Waltz With Bashier, Wendy and Lucy

As a word of warning, I'll echo Brandon: "Of course this is all bullshit, I’ll want to change my mind immediately after I post this."

Priestcraft

I've only disliked one Hitchcock film (To Catch a Thief) among the dozen or so that I've seen. I Confess is no exception. It might even be my new favorite (though that happens just about as often as every time I see a new Hitchcock film). The plot is classic "wrong man" Hitchcock. A priest hears a confession of murder and is then framed for that exact same murder by the man who confessed.

What struck me was the same thing that is constantly present in the Michael Connolly novels that I've been reading all year. When someone comes under investigation, they are guilty. All the time. Guilty. Those under suspicion and investigation are often cleared of the charges against them related to the specific crime being investigated and the true criminal is finally caught. That is true. But, along the way, there is other guilt, unrelated but real, and it is exposed, brought to light. No one is spared. In I Confess, this exposure benefits all involved, because open pain and humiliation trumps secret sin.

I've knocked flashbacks in the past (no pun intended), but I love them here. Hitchcock goes for a highly stylized, trashy silent romanticism that conveys perfectly a specific sort of feminine point of view exemplified by Anne Baxter's character. The cinematography is gorgeous all around, the acting is perfect and the score is great. Hitchcock can do no wrong.

#370

La jetée is unlike anything I had ever seen before. The closest thing that I can compare it to is Reading Rainbow, but imagine that instead of a single page being narrated, dozens of pages are narrated at a time.

At heart, it is as much love as time travel tale, but centered in questions of Time and Love in the same way that Ashes of Time is, a totally different film in every other regard. It's interesting to watch some of the special features on the Criterion disc explaining the film's debt to Vertigo, one of the many Hitchcock films I still haven't seen. These connections highlight both Marker's obsessiveness and the time traveler's obsessiveness.

La jetée is easily one of the best SF films I've ever seen. My only regret is that I didn't get a chance to see it before having seen 12 Monkeys. Some of the shock and even some of the images were diminished through my familiarity with 12 Monkeys, which is a shame, because 12 Monkeys is obviously the weaker film. I do need to revisit it and see if I still love it. Anyhow, I've known for 14 years that I've needed to see La jetée. Talk about procrastination. I'm glad I've now seen it and look forward to seeing more Marker films.

If you're willing to endure even less than less than ideal viewing circumstances, the whole thing can be found on Youtube (embedded here!):

Summer is almost over.

Summer Hours is every bit as good as Brandon said it was. I'll only add that the ending, both in the museum and in the following house party, is absolutely perfect. The movie hit me a little harder than it might have done otherwise, considering that we are currently in the process of buying the house that Abigail's grandfather was born in. There have been particularly painful events occur and I'm only receiving this house because someone else was cheated out of it. It was good to watch the siblings of Summer Hours deal with one another gracefully despite tensions and major differences. Land may be worth fighting for, but family is worth sacrificing for.

Great Job, So-So Pics

Now that I've trashed Z, here are the 3 other films that I got to see as part of my summer ushering career...

Sunshine Cleaning only works because Amy Adams is so damned cute that just about anyone can watch her in just about anything. But cute doesn't immediately translate into emotionally compelling. The rewards of Sunshine Cleaning are few and far between and are often clouded by Quirk (a nasty atmospheric condition epidemic at Sundance).

Two sisters starting a career in crime scene cleaning sounds like a great premise for a movie. It is a great premise for a movie. This movie just doesn't follow through in examining the nitty-gritty and instead goes for quick surface gimmicks (a mother's suicide, a CB radio to heaven, a one-armed sales clerk). The only part that rang true was the one-armed guy not getting the girl, but instead used and taken advantage of all along the way. I wish that this angle would have been played up instead of having this supporting character presented as a goofball sidekick that loves the position he's been placed in. But we all know that one-armed guys are suckers. I mean, they only have one arm, right?

The Soloist could have been a much worse film than it is. It has its terrible moments, chiefly Jamie Foxx's character reciting the Lord's Prayer over a crane shot of the city's homeless engaged in their nightly activities. It's manipulative as all Hell and surely deserves a place there.

Besides some other moments like the above, The Soloist plays surprisingly fair and straight considering the subject matter. I've grown to really hate films that treat mental retardation and/or mental illness. It's not too often that anyone gets these things right. I also hate that the only subject that seems to matter is the Idiot Savant. Just Plain Idiot would be too hard to watch. We like our mentally ill to be safe and smart and transformable.

Despite sticking with the viewing-public safe genius story, The Soloist gets things right. There's no tacked-on happy ending. The moral (which is explained a little too forcefully) is one that I can agree with: More often than not, we can't fix broken lives and broken minds. The best we can do is suffer together. And that's enough.

Tokyo! is an anthology film, comprised of three shorts, directed by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon-Ho. The Gondry film was quite good despite (or maybe because of) ending in a fairly silly, magical way that is only vaguely hinted at with what comes before. The Carax film is madcap crazy. I now confess to having slept through the majority of Bong's film so I shouldn't really say anything more about it than that I let myself fall asleep. I'll stay awake through almost any movie in the theatre, but I was really tired and rudely gave up on the film. First Z and then this. A bad trend. Oh well.

I do hope that Tokyo! is the beginning of a new wave of short film anthology pictures, something which has a long and rich tradition, but has been neglected for quite a while.

#498

Z should be retitled Zzzzzzzzz's. It put me right to sleep.

The Deputy, a peace activist, is scheduled to give a lecture. He runs into some problems finding a place to speak and then is assassinated. The rest of the movie is a long procedural detailing the cover-up of the assassination and the lack of justice brought against anyone involved.

I've wanted to see the film ever since first reading Ebert's review a few years ago. Re-reading Ebert's review, I've found the key sentence:

It is a film of our time.

Z is very much about a specific political moment. These sorts of things still happen all the time across the earth, so, in that respect, Z is still relevant, but I think that Z is too tied to events in Greece and expresses such an indignant anger that it's difficult to divorce the film from its specific time and specific critique of a specific regime in a specific place.

I wish it were otherwise, but instead of being moved to anger, I was dreadfully bored and allowed myself a couple of nice short naps, waking up long enough to discover anew that there was still injustice in the world, not the least of which may be having to sit through Z all the way to the disappointing end.

Left Behind

Fred, it would be great if you're reading this. In a nice coincidence, after leaving your place, we found a used bookstore in Canandaigua where I found a copy of Simak's A Choice of Gods and, of course, I bought that copy and read it over the next two days. Good stuff. Thanks for the recommendation.

Brandon, I'm way behind on posting here due to having just had a lovely long vacation, but I'm at the library now and intend to write up more than a few posts today. I watched The Killing of a Chinese Bookie two days before your "stick 'em ups" post. You need to see it. It is now my #1 favorite non-2009 film that I've seen in 2009. I've started writing a longer essay about it which I hope to post here soon. I need to catch up on writing about other movies that I've seen, too. I wish that I had electricity at night just so that I could write, but, alas, I've got to do all of my writing/typing at the library. I've got notes, but it could take a while before I get around to writing something longer.

Also, I dug out my 5th edition copy of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and I'm now planning on watching all 1001 because, really, why not?

Giving up the profit motive.

It had to happen eventually. My time may not be as important as some others', but I do value it. That's why Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind is the first movie that I gave up on this year. I made it about 22 minutes.

Abigail has fond memories of her father stopping at every single roadside plaque that he'd come across, but her memories, if I remember correctly, are always of her and her siblings becoming furious at being forced into such a dreadfully boring activity.

I'm guilty, too, of stopping at many of these signposts. They are admittedly interesting at times, but I couldn't handle a feature film's worth of consecutive still images of stationary signs. It's an interesting idea, but makes for bad cinema. There may be a cumulative argument to these pictures, but I don't buy it. I want my 22 minutes back.


On the other hand, I enjoyed all 135 minutes that I sacrificed on the raceway of Speed Racer.

I was more than a little bit suspicious when (a small minority of) serious critics started calling Speed Racer one of the most important films of the year, gaining enough mentions (2) to earn a place on the iW Critics Poll '08, about 30 places behind the above mentioned execrable Profit Motive.

It IS visually inventive, but, more importantly, it is impossibly Fun. The plot is a simple and straightforward good guys vs. bad guys set-up, but everything is acted in a spirit of whimsy. "Maybe a nonja" had me rolling with laughter- easily one of the best lines of the past few years, perfectly delivered by an hilarious John Goodman. The "corporations are evil" plot may be undermined by the excessive commercialization inherent in a Speed Racer project, but no more or less so than Wall-E's similar message from last year. I'm not going to put Speed Racer on any "best of" lists, but I do greatly appreciate it for making me smile a whole lot, especially after having experienced an over-serious Whispering Wind.

Moon

If 2009 ended today, Moon would win the #1 slot for any list that I make for the year (just barely edging out Adventureland, which has held strong until this moment).

That's all I'll say about Moon. I knew nothing about it going in except for having seen the trailer (thanks, Brandon!). I had read no reviews and had little idea what it was about. I'm pretty sure that that's the best way to experience Moon, so I won't write any more because I can't write about it without spoiling it.

Waltzing with Bashir

Ari Folman is absolutely clear in his depictions of the atrociousness of war. This is well and good and there need to be stories set against those that blindly praise the heroism of war. For every Sgt. York, we need at least two Waltz with Bashir.

For all of the dreamlike qualities of Waltz, the emotions and the lesson/message are straightforward and obvious. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes only a blunt hammer to the skull will do.

In honor of recently viewing and enjoying Waltz with Bashir, here is my…

Top 10 “Blunt Hammer” War Films List.

10. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Gordon)
Here’s where I immediately declare my intention to cheat. I don’t think that too many people besides myself would be stupid enough to classify King of Kong as a war film, but from the opening frames, it insists that it is a war film set within a war universe. There are sides drawn and there are battles won and lost by each side. I have a special interest in games of all sorts and I believe that social and competitive gaming (mental or physical) brings out the best of what war can be and frames the contest in a non-violent setting. If only every military coup could be decided by chess match, or Donkey Kong.

9. The Thin Red Line (Malick)
The Thin Red Line is my least favorite Malick film. I’ve only seen it once when it first came out, so I know I haven’t given it a fair chance. Murph, my college “art and history of film” teacher, claimed that it is the "second best war film yet made- second only to Grand Illusion." (note to self: I also need to re-watch Grand Illusion)

8. Joyeux Noel (Carion)
In many ways, Joyeux Noel plays out just like any typical Hollywood war film, but a good script focused on its unusual subject matter steers it away from typical war film satisfactions. The story of a Christmas truce between enemy soldiers is moving. Watching the breakdown of hostilities and the subsequent inability to wage war brought me to tears.

7. La France (Bozon)
I love the music, which is a good thing since the music provides the skeleton which the flesh of this picture hangs from. Almost makes me want to enlist, then desert.

6. Battleground (Wellman)
This is the only “traditional” war film of the list. Battleground celebrates bravery, heroism and self-sacrifice amidst the horrors of war. In working toward peace, it’s easy to forget that war often does bring out a certain kind of brotherly love among men that is hard to find elsewhere. Instead of pretending that it doesn’t exist, we should honor what is good and strive to cultivate similar virtues in the difficult practice of peace.

5. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Enrico)
This is a very specific examination of a very specific moment in a war - a hanging. What happens in the moment of a single man’s death is at least as important as the grand sweep of any war.

4. Ivan’s Childhood (Tarkovsky)
War, like Wu-Tang Clan, is for the children. War, like Wu-Tang Clan, ain't nothin' ta fuck wit'.

3. Shame (Bergman)
I’m not sure that it’s true that wars destroy relationships, but wars certainly stress them to the point at which if something’s going to break, it will probably break during the war. Bergman, as always, is unsparing.

2. Lessons of Darkness (Herzog)
Wars may end. The effects of wars remain.

1. Les Carabiniers (Godard)
Godard chronicles our absurdity. Probably the purest anti-war war film that I've ever seen. Coutard should be given a lot of credit for the film's cinematography, which is fairly unique to this film and serves the story so perfectly. I love the look of the film.

3 at night.

I liked Changeling. It’s good, not great, in the way that most Eastman pictures are. The story is solid and the writing is good. Angelina Jolie is good in her role, which is a relief since her character carries the weight of the movie, driving it all along. I don’t understand the haters.


I’ve never been a big fan of "action hero" movies, but I’ve seen enough of them to recognize JCVD as the wonderful act of deconstruction that it is. Jean-Claude Van Damme is a good sport and maybe even a good actor. His performance here is at least as good as Mickey Rourke’s in the Wrestler and means at least as much for his career. Screw Rourke. 2008 was Van Damme’s comeback year.


For my 30th birthday, I bought myself a copy of John Huston’s now 30-year-old adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s masterpiece, Wise Blood. The story has always meant a lot to me and this Huston adaptation has stuck in my mind since I first saw it, nearly 15 years ago. I’ve been thinking of William Troeller a lot lately. He always treated me as a Hazel Motes, spotting the mark of Jesus on me while I vehemently denied it. The film’s tone is an odd echo of its source material, highlighting the strangeness and farce of it all while grounding things firmly in a Christ-Haunted South of shucksters and suckers. Read Francine Prose's essay.

To Boldly Go... Where Everyone Has Gone Two Months Ago.

I finally caught up with Star Trek at the Cinema Saver and I'm glad I did. It's fun in the best summer movie way, but there's really not much substance. I let myself get caught up in the fun, but the movie's also as dumb as it is fun.

The time travel/alternate reality plot irritated me, but the performances and the care-free silliness of it all was enough to keep me in my seat. I'll probably rent it on DVD so that Abby can see it in some form (now that I've created a TNG junkie), but then I'll mostly forget it as the expensive disposable entertainment that it is.

That's about as excited as I can get for a Star Trek universe in which Amok Time never happens.

The Passion of Naked Irish Men

I don't know how many of the critics that hated The Passion of the Christ for its brutality are among the crowd praising Hunger. If there are any, shame on them.

Hunger is, at its most grueling moments, an unflinching look at some of the worst abuses against Irish political prisoners during the late 1970s to early 1980s. Shit on the walls, involuntary anal probing, raw scrubbing, old-fashioned head poundings. The images are there. The strangeness of this film, to me, is that I was never really emotionally impacted by those scenes. Neither was I moved by the images of Bobby Sands wasting away from hunger. There was a distance despite the immediacy presented.

That said, I was absolutely on the edge of my seat for the 15 or so minute shot of Sands consulting with his priest. It's a single long shot of the two sitting across from one another at a table, casually jesting, then getting down to the serious business of arguing the morality of a hunger strike. Exhilarating! When the cut finally comes to a close-up of Bobby's face, it's earned and the emotional impact of what he says next is real, worth more than every image that lead up to it.

In the end, I didn't care for Hunger. Maybe the detatchment was my fault and not the film's. Maybe it's because I'm ignorant of much of the historical context, but I just didn't care. Suicide by hunger strike just doesn't seem noble to me. I side with the priest and that's probably why I can't enjoy a celebration of Sands's "martyrdom."

Is our children learning? Am I learning?

Oliver Stone loves George W. Bush. I know. I was surprised, too.

I submit as evidence the film W. It is a generous and affectionate portrait of a unique individual. Bush is portrayed as a deeply flawed man, but he is never reviled. Maybe pitied; always loved. He is portrayed as arrogant, but tormented internally. Charming, but tongue-tied. Determined, but insecure. Smart, but naïve. Always sincere.

Stone’s Bush is complex. He is not a buffoon and he is not a personification of evil. He is a conflicted man who did the things he did and made the choices he made in good faith, not always for the right reasons, but for the reasons consistent with his own personal beliefs and worldview.

There are many funny scenes. Satirical to an extent, but never cynical. I was impressed by how tactful and respectful Stone is. The impersonations are all great and each actor seems to be giving his and her best. The personalities veer into caricature at times, but that even seems appropriate for a biopic examining current lives and events.

The music in the film is perfect, establishing an undercurrent of levity and humor. The music solidifies the tone of the film, working counterpoint to the images, often adding an additional subversive layer of commentary to the narrative. I’d argue that Stone does all of his criticizing with music while he’s telling a story that gives Bush more than a fair representation.

I do believe that the “real life” Bush ‘s administration was damaging to our country (though it’s arguable whether it was any more or less so than other recent administrations). I’m fairly certain that Oliver Stone believes this as well. What Oliver Stone has taught me here is to remember to be gracious toward every man, especially toward those who may least deserve it.

Go figure. I loved an Oliver Stone picture.

“Politics is not a library. It’s ass-kicking skull-crushing war and I’m losing.”

Summer Job

I thought that it was a wonderful coincidence that Adventureland screened twice my first night on the job. It holds up.

My Summer Schedule:
19th: Sunshine Cleaning and Z
26th: The Soloist and Tokyo!

I'm not sure yet whether I'll keep doing this in the Fall (Who am I kidding? This is the best job I've ever had with the best pay I've ever had. I can't quit!).

Lazy LI, and Lies That Tell the Truth

We had been on vacation for about a week. It was lazy and nice and included some films...

With my folks as babysitters, Abby and I were able to catch The Brothers Bloom. Like Brick before it, Bloom is formally impressive and inventive. Rian Johnson is one our more interesting young directors and he may grow up to be one of our best. Like some other US "indie" directors, I think that he's actually hurt by only filming his own scripts. I'm hoping that he'll soon try his hand at someone else's material.

The Brothers Bloom just doesn't work as a Con Man movie. Too many little twists left me unwilling to ever trust Johnson. And a confidence man needs to earn my trust. I liked the story and the characters and the complete unwillingness to engage in any sort of realism. But, the inventiveness and playfulness of the first half of the film just sort of dry up and disappear by the end and I walked away not caring.

It might not matter because Bloom doesn't feel like a Con movie. It's a story about storytelling disguised as a Con movie. But storytelling and confidence tricks are not the same thing, nor should they be.

Criminal, a film by Soderbergh's shadow man, Gregory Jacobs, is a Con movie from start to finish. There's not an ounce of fat on this lean little film. It reveals Brothers Bloom for the pretender that it is. Brothers Bloom's greatest Con on the audience is having had anyone believe that it was a Con movie. Criminal has no pretensions, but modest ones, and it succeeds with its advances even while they strain credibility. What it does share with Bloom is that it looks like all of the actors are having a lot of fun.

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The Good Fairy is a perfect example of how much smarter comedies could be 70 years ago. Directed by William Wyler with a script by Preston Sturges and a cast that could pull it all off. Sprinkle in some discussion about beards and you have everything that I could want in a movie. Honestly, everyone can keep their Hangover. I'm not interested. There's a scene in The Good Fairy in which our heroine sneaks into the movie theatre where she's working as an "usherette." The movie playing within the movie is hilarious. Abby and I were both laughing so hard that we stopped breathing properly and were keeping my parents awake wondering what was so funny that they could hear us through the floorboards (we were down in the basement).

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In the past 3 months, I've read 13 novels by Michael Connelly. I've been reading other things, too, but 2009 has definitely become the year of Connelly as far as I'm concerned. I'll be caught up with everything he's written pretty soon. One of his better non-Bosch books was Blood Work, a novel about an ex-FBI agent, Terry McCaleb, who had to stop working because of a heart condition. While recovering from a heart transplant, he's approached by a woman who wants him to investigate her sister's death. This woman knows that McCaleb has received her dead sister's heart. McCaleb can't say no. Things are always interesting and the twists that keep coming nearer to the end make for quite the thrilling read.

So, of course I was interested to know that Clint Eastwood had directed a screen adaptation of this novel. Now I've seen it and I think that it's good. It suffers for not being as good as the novel, but it is mostly faithful to its source and the changes that it does make are better for the purposes of the film. I grew to really like Jeff Daniels as Buddy. Daniels' take on the character is definitely faithful to the source, but it is also different than how I had imagined the character, not the least reason being that the character's story arc is so drastically changed in the film. Once I got used to the disconnect between my imagination and this interpretation, I found that I really loved Daniels' lovable earnest goofiness.

The best moment of the film comes from an editing decision made by Eastwood or someone else involved. Eastwood's character, McCaleb, has brought a box of donuts to a police station to share with a couple of detectives that he needs to talk to about a case. At one point in the conversation, McCaleb grabs a donut. Then, the friendlier police officer takes one. Then the not-so-friendly one takes a donut. There's silence as the three eat donuts and the camera holds the shot, lingering on them eating donuts long after there probably would have been a cut in any other modern police/action movie. Good stuff.

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I finally got to see A Scanner Darkly. While occasionally truly interesting and definitely the best of all Dick adaptations, it still fails gloriously alongside every other Dick adaptation. I do think that A Scanner Darkly succeeds in conveying the mental and spiritual disorientation of its protagonist fairly well, which is certainly something that can be difficult to convey in visual terms. Indeed, it's a common Dickian theme that is often lost in translation, but shines clearly here.

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I had Netflix on hold for the past couple of months, but I just reactivated my account. Portable DVD player viewing is less than ideal, but it's enough for me for now.

Public Enemas

I got carded at the box office. I could hardly believe it. It's the first time I've been asked for an ID in a theatre since the times when it was just barely legal for me to get into an R-rated film on opening night. Somehow I managed to sneak in this time, forced to think about how excited I would have been to see a new gangster movie when I was 10 or so. Good luck, I say, to all the youth buying tickets to Up and stealthily sneaking down the hall into Public Enemies. My sympathies are with you.

Public Enemies itself was a disappointment. It is a big movie, barely able to contain itself. What makes it strain at its seams is that it doesn't seem all that sure what it wants to be. There are several different visual styles at work. An almost Dogme-like minimalism and purity contrasts with grand polished studio images. I couldn't make out any discernible pattern, but maybe that's my failing, not the film's. I want to give it the benefit of the doubt for now. (I need to stress here that some of the best shots in the film are among the best images I've seen all year anywhere. When the movie's good, it's great). The music and sound design wavered from silence to silly to stupid, operating somewhere in between inspired and insipid. Some of the transitions seemed lazily inept instead of carefully constructed. And I always hate being talked down to. "What's she doing up there?" "She's still listening to the radio."

The acting is solid, but I need to hate on Christian Bale a little now. I don't understand what's happened to him or how or when or why. I think that he needs to step down and take on a small role. He's become somehow less than human in my mind as he plays over-the-top and larger-than-life characters. I couldn't help but think that his Purvis was another George W. Bush act. It's probably a holdover from The Dark Knight, but all of Bale's mannerisms now remind me of W. I only want to know if it's conscious on his part or not. Or is it all in my head?

It might seem like I didn't like Public Enemies. That's not true. I did like it, but I wanted to love it so much more. I can only express frustration at the moment. At least I'm already thinking about seeing it again.

For the BGG Film Guild

All-Time Top 10

I couldn’t do it. Even what I’ve come up with below is full of compromise and ignores so many films that I feel guilty leaving out.

But, in its limited way, this list below is a decent representation of what sort of filmgoer I am.

1. Stalker/Andrei Rublev/The Killers
Tarkovsky is the greatest. There is no one greater, living or dead. I’ve seen all of his films except for The Sacrifice, Nostalghia, and Voyage in Time (and a couple of his student films that are impossible to find). Stalker is my favorite film. It pleased me a great deal to read Jonathan’s comment above. Andrei Rublev is glorious in its celebration of life and art and spirit. Tarkovsky’s The Killers is probably the best screen adaptation of anything Hemingway that I’ve ever seen.

2. Return to Oz/The Empire Strikes Back/Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
I was born in 1979. These three films were the most beloved films of my childhood. I can’t approach them with anything other than familiarity and adoration. Say what you will about them, these films won’t leave me.

3. There Will Be Blood/Treasure of the Sierra Madre/Aguirre: The Wrath of God
I’ve seen several films multiple times at the theatre, but There Will Be Blood is the only film that demanded that I stay in the theatre for an immediate second viewing (with a third to follow a week later). I’ve read much of the criticism written against this film. Some of it is fair. A lot of it misinterprets the film and is just plain wrong. It’s one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen. After watching it, I thought about how much it reminded me of two of my favorite films, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Aguirre: The Wrath of God. It felt good to hear an interview with Anderson later in which he states that he had been watching the Huston film every night while making Blood.

4. Terror in a Texas Town/3:10 to Yuma/Rawhide
These might not be perfect Westerns or always high up in any official canon, but each has exactly what I want out of a Western. It should go without saying, but, yes, that’s the Delmer Daves 3:10 to Yuma.

5. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind/Pinocchio/Duck Amuck
I had the butchered Warriors of the Wind VHS version of Nausicaa when I was young. It’s been wonderful sharing movies with my children. Nausicaa has been my oldest (almost 7) daughter’s favorite movie for a couple of years now. Pinocchio was the most important Disney film for me as a child. Duck Amuck stands in for too many shorts to mention.

6. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge/Les Carabiniers/Ivan’s Childhood
Owl Creek Bridge is pretty perfect. Les Car is the greatest war movie I’ve ever seen and Ivan’s Childhood is here just as an excuse for me to list Tarkovsky here again.

7. The Hustler/On the Waterfront/Force of Evil
It seems like most of my favorite American films are about moral compromise.

8. Badlands/Days of Heaven/The New World.
Malick is our (America’s) greatest living filmmaker.

9. Samurai Rebellion/Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai/Throne of Blood
I’ve recently become more interested in samurai films, but I’m still very ignorant. (and I had to sneak a Jarmusch film in somewhere on this list)

10. Roman Holiday/Minnie and Moskowitz/The Good Fairy
Roman Holiday and Minnie and Moskowitz are my two favorite romantic comedies (yes, Cassavetes made a great romantic comedy!), a genre that is so full of bad movies that the good ones shine extra bright. The Good Fairy is the last romantic comedy I watched, so it gets a place here just for being the last movie to really make me smile and also gets to stand in for other zany screwball types.

That's it.