April 2012 Recap

11 Features
John Carter (2012) ****
Demon Messenger (2012) **
Seven Samurai (1954) ****
Cabin in the Woods (2011) ***
Garden of Evil (1954) **
Bedlam (1946) ***
Sergeants 3 (1962) **
Battleship Potemkin (1925) ****
Broadway Danny Rose (1984) ***
Young Adult (2011) ***
Kill List (2011) ***

TV
BSG
Robin Hood
DuckTales
Girls

Lazy Afternoon - Watching DuckTales

Brandon needs a new eyeglasses Rx

I wore my "go out and have a good time late Saturday night" "glasses" when I saw Cabin in the Woods. I was excited to have a good time. Chris and Jeff will tell you that I was excited to see it and that I practically twisted their arms so that they'd come along. I went in mostly blind. I had read part of something linked to on Mubi and part of Jeff Overstreet's review before I realized that I couldn't read anything without encountering a lot of spoilers.

 "I think John liked watching this movie but had a change of heart and I won’t tell you what I am suspecting is the thorn in his side to avoid WWIII."

I'm really not trying to be the contrarian here. I gave my initial reactions. Things only started to get "contrary" when you questioned the word "hipster." Then, I had fun, but now I'm done having fun because I now know that I have to put a smiley face after every sentence I write. :)

Nothing would please me more than to be able to join the rest of Film Club in saying "Whoohoo for Whedon!" Nevertheless, I came out of the movie with lots of problems. There is plenty to admire, sure, but as I thought things through, both in the parking lot with Jeff and Chris, and then back home, I realized that, even though I'm on the fence, I'm leaning toward the negative side of the fence.

For one thing, I didn't laugh nearly as much as you. I didn't think that the film was all that funny. Sure, I chuckled half a dozen times. I smiled here and there. That's hardly the guffaw fest that you describe. I don't doubt that you found it all so funny. I didn't.

"I can’t fault a film for being clever and perhaps drawing attention to its creators." That's fine. You can't. I can.

"I’m still struggling with the whole “walked away unchanged” complaint. I would argue that most films don’t “change” us but perhaps remind us or fortify our predisposed sentiments."

I've already addressed this on FB:

Sorry, guys. I've had trouble sleeping lately. So, I'm here and I'm rambling. Brandon's right to question "change" talk. But, it's also true that every piece of media we ingest changes us. I am not the same person I was before I watched Cabin in the Woods. Before, I was a person who hadn't seen Cabin in the Woods. Now, I'm magically changed into a person who has seen Cabin in the Woods. The act of seeing Cabin in the Woods has at least changed me in that small way. As Jason noted, Cabin will now affect the way he views future horror movies and will make him re-evaluate older horror movies. Cabin now influences how we feel about future Whedon projects. Etc. So, what of my stupid criticism that the audience leaves unchanged? I suppose that I did just mean that the movie sweeps us up in spectacle and gives the Ted laugher a good time. As much yapping as we've gotten out of Cabin, there's not much left to chew on. I'm not laying awake at night thinking about the ending of Cabin. I'm laying awake at night wondering who called Brandon a hipster once and hurt his feelings. But, maybe it has changed me. Maybe I am now prepared to laugh in the abyss as I roll another joint. I'm just rambling. This probably isn't coherent. I remain... Nonplussed.

Or this. When I watch a good or even just a decent western, I get up afterwards and think (even if don't articulate this), "Damn. I'm lazy. I need to be a better man." And incrementally maybe I do become a better man or at least I know that I should be. When I watch a "college kids getting killed" movie, I think, "It seems like there's nothing I can do to prevent getting senselessly slaughtered. I should go get high and get laid." But, Randolph Scott wouldn't get killed by some senseless oaf. He'd do something about it. Even if it proves futile in some situations, I'd rather set up camp with the "do something about it" folks. One movie encourages us, however subtly, to get up and "change" ourselves and our environment. The other movie discourages us, however subtly, from doing much of anything. Maybe. And the standard disclaimer is: I'm not writing off all horror, just this particular popular strain of horror.

In case it's not clear, I do mostly agree with your criticism of the way I phrased "walk away unchanged." I wasn't expecting anyone to turn into a butterfly after seeing Cabin. My point was actually the same as yours, that Cabin reinforces certain "predisposed sentiments" of its audience.

Westerns may reinforce certain "predisposed sentiments" that I have toward honor and sacrifice, but they also challenge "predisposed sentiments" that I have toward being lazy and watching too many movies. You could probably make a case that Cabin offers more to chew on than "stoner thrills," but it seems like you're just as happy to call it a nice ride.

 Those FB posts brought about Jason's "Horror is like a Roller Coaster" apologetic. I still don't like roller coasters. And I still (mostly) don't like Cabin in the Woods.

You write that the "punch line isn't as good as the setup." I agree, except that I was disappointed by the setup, too. Most of the action in the movie felt hollow and perfunctory (Whedon/Goddard attempt to dodge this criticism through the script's insistence on the characters following a script and all of the other "meta" stuff going on) and I was really bored, waiting for a big payoff to justify the time I'd just spent watching just another "kids in the woods" horror movie (with a minor sf twist), but instead I get a rushed, hectic showdown that ends in lots of fireworks and Ryan Gosling's hand. It's like Whedon/Goddard felt that if they rushed us with enough "awesome," we'd just be wowed into acceptance of all that has just occurred.

I'm probably done with Cabin now. I've got to get ready to write about Cabin's 1925 predecessor, Battleship Potemkin.

Response to Jason

There be spoilers.

Jason, you win this time.

I stand by my response, but I can't argue with yours.

You make good point after good point about why this movie works as it is and how it fits within the genre you love.

Well done.

On to a little bit of nitty-gritty...

"Aren't meaningless deaths a part of horror's general worldview?"

Sure. And maybe this simple fact is why I have such a hard time connecting with this sort of material. We can and should flesh this out further some time in the future. Maybe I'll try another mini horror marathon this year and catch up on some of your recent favorites. Maybe not. :)

My Piranha mention probably seemed like it was out of left field. I was only comparing the fact that we have an audience surrogate that survives that allows us to enjoy characters getting their punishment doled out to them while audience transgressions are winked at. It's more pronounced in Piranha, but I tried to point out that something similar happens in Cabin.

me: "those...who think that this cliched horror...is ridiculously boring don't care much for commentary"

Yeah, I'm just not all that interested in the "college kids getting murdered in the woods" scenario. I can't think of a single movie in which this plot has interested me, but maybe there are several of them out there that I just haven't seen.

"If I were invested on an emotional level, I doubt I'd watch much horror. It would be far too upsetting."

That's one of my primary complaints against horror. It is rarely upsetting. It's all surface thrills. Heads rolling doesn't do it for me. Watch In the Company of Men. :) That's a "horror film" that I can get behind.

I haven't read Silence, but I read an Endo novel called Deep River. Did you know that Scorcese is adapting Silence for the screen?

"He proposed a contstruct that tied together in one mythology all the horror films that have ever come before it. I can't think of any horror film I've seen before that attempts that."

After I wrote out my review, I started reading lots of other reviews (I had skimmed a few before the movie before realizing that they were all leaning toward the spoilerific or at least warning about spoilers, which is a spoiler all its own). A.O. Scott mirrors your thoughts here, but frames things a bit less positively:

There is a scholarly, nerdy, completist sensibility at work here that is impressive until it becomes exhausting. Not content to toss off just any horror movie, Mr. Goddard and Mr. Whedon have taken it upon themselves to make every horror movie. I, and they, mean this literally, but to say more would be to reveal too much and spoil the fun. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what the movie does in the end.

Continued Cabin Spoilers

I don't know, Chris. I found it refreshing that Marty refused to play the utilitarian situational ethics game. Shooting your innocent friend in the head, even to save the world, is not okay. It's just not. You're not actively causing the destruction of the world by. You are actively murdering someone. Marty opts out of the game because the rules suck.

I don't think that Marty necessarily wants the world to end with him. I think that he doesn't want it to continue under the conditions that have been outlined for him. There's not much point in saving a people that gets by by ritually murdering its own. There's not much point in saving humanity when humanity has become inhuman.

Anyhow, it was time for mankind to move aside and Make Way For Goslings.

Elder Gods Don't Need a Punchline

THIS POST IS ONE BIG SPOILFEST FOR CABIN IN THE WOODS.

Thanks, Jeff, for starting off the Cabin talk. I've been playing up disliking the film, but the truth is probably that I'm closer to ambivalence than any sort of active disgust. I'm having a hard time mustering up the energy to write anything at all.

I'll also admit that I haven't seen most of the horror films from the last decade (or any decade). In the abstract, I'm a huge horror fan. Once we get into specific films, though, it turns out that I hate most of them. This is also the case with RomComs. These two genres hold such promise yet are also the most constantly flubbed up.

I can't "just enjoy" losers being hacked apart in the same way that I can just enjoy a silly swashbuckling adventure romance. I don't think that John Carter will hold up as anything more than a solid 3-star entertainment. I'll look back on it fondly the way that I look at Willow or Star Wars, but I won't really care all that much if I pop the DVD in. I might have it on in the background while writing a blog post about something else. But, it's still a marvelous entertainment. The message/moral may be simple (fight for a cause, get the girl), but those simple things resonate with me in a way that clever hipster horror doesn't and can't.

Like Adrienne, I want my horror to mean something. Otherwise, watching simulated deaths, no matter how ingeniously executed (pun!), is a waste of time.

Horror films want to be transgressive, but they often just reinforce comfortable smugness. Cabin doesn't fail here. Its target audience is smart hipsters who fancy themselves as seeing deeper than others and being more clever. They're Buffy fans, after all; of course they know what's what. Is it no surprise, then, that the hero of the film is finally identified as the one who questioned appearances and dug deeper? That he's the only one who refuses to compromise his principles for some nebulous greater good? The film really is no different than Piranha 3D at this point or any number of recent films that I haven't seen, but nonetheless feel safe generalizing about.

Transgressions must be punished in these types of horror films, but the audience gets a pass. We get to enjoy others being punished while we sit safe and smug and identify with the folks getting away. We squirm a little, but walk away unchanged.

On to some of what Jeff liked:

"Definitely commenting on how horror films can become rote or over-processed to the point of being pure formula."

Yet Cabin celebrates this formula by framing it as an ancient play-acting pre-ritual-sacrifice ritual. As somehow essential in satiating demonic appetites (like Jason's) [yes, that's a joke, Jason, unbunch your panties already]. Those of us who think that this cliched horror movie set-up/scenario is ridiculously boring don't much care for commentary on it. I love some "formulas" (about a dozen oater plots spring to mind). This isn't one of them.

"I loved the introduction of the Japanese footage"

Maybe the only things worse than modern American horror films are Japanese horror films. I admit that these parodies were funny.

"The multiple screen shot where we see all the various monsters torturing the employees of the company."

I wanted to like the whole "batshit crazy" ending. I didn't. Maybe because everything was rushed. There's a flurry of monstrous violence, but no real stakes. I didn't care about any of those employees and, as I've already stated, I don't really care about "interesting kills" apart from a greater context. (and, please, let me remind everyone that I'm a fan of Breaking Bad, which has an astonishingly high number of "interesting kills" that never fail to delight).

"Merman"

Yup. Sure. I won't argue.

I won't really comment on your dislikes. That'd be too easy to just agree with you.

In the end, I never connected emotionally with the film and that's a big deal. I didn't care about any of the characters and the action felt clever and contrived instead of a lived reality (which is important even in fantasies). John Carter struggles with his identity. Even if we know that he is fated to be the Hero, he seems like a real person with a real personality. The Fool and The Virgin do what Whedon tells them to do. They are not so much creations/characters as they are automatons at the service of that most ancient of evil horrors, the clever screenwriter drawing attention to the man behind the curtain instead of the drama on stage.

Ryan Gosling's Cabin in the Woods

No. I don't have anything written yet. This is just a test to make sure that Ben is getting an email. Ben, did you go see John Carter the other afternoon?

Top Ten RomComs

Because I'm feeling more contrary than usual...

1) Adventureland
2) Adventureland
3) Adventureland
4) Adventureland
5) Adventureland
6) Adventureland
7) Adventureland
8) Adventureland
9) Adventureland
10) Adventureland

I love this movie so much that I don't care what you haters think.

I'm the real deal standing up for the genre in the face of manifold corruptions. RomComs, I AM YOUR CHAMPION!!!!!!!!!

Bryan Cranston's 2012

How did I forget to mention that Bryan Cranston has a great cameo in John Carter? He's onscreen for less than 10 minutes, but he's as awesome as ever the whole time!

He's in a few projects being released this year. The one I'm most excited about is probably Ben Affleck's Argo. I'm a fan of Affleck as director and have unreasonably high hopes for Argo.

That movie is not coming out until September or October.

In the meantime, here's my list of Ten Most Anticipated Summer Movies, Listed by Release Date...

Sound of My Voice (2011)
I liked Another Earth enough that I'm excited about Brit Marling's involvement in this.

Bernie (2011)
Linklater is back! I may be one of the few people that thinks this looks great.

The Avengers
It's the Avengers, stupid. It's Joss Whedon, stupid. Of course I'm going to see this.

Men in Black III
I'll probably wait for a DVD release, but I am foolishly optimistic about this one.

Moonrise Kingdom
I'm ready to give Wes another chance.

Brave
It's Pixar. I'll take the girls. 'Nuff said.

Beasts of the Southern Wild
I followed some of the Sundance buzz on this one. I'm interested.

The Amazing Spider-Man
It's Spidey. I was never a big fan of the last three films (and probably like the third the most, which I know is the minority fool's position), but I liked them enough. I don't have high hopes here, but it's Spidey.

The Dark Knight Rises
You guys know I feel lukewarm toward Nolan. It doesn't matter. I can't resist the hype.

The Wettest County
I'm on the fence with this one, but Hillcoat made a decent Western. I think he's definitely capable of making a decent gangster film.

That's it for the Summer. I won't worry about the Fall just yet.

In other news, well, there is no other news. I've been watching BSG Season 4 and Justified Season 2. I may or may not write up something about one or the other.

No movies watched since John Carter. As a matter of fact, John Carter might just last me the whole year long. Or maybe I'll see it again. I'm sure something artsy-fartsy from 2012 will lumber along eventually this year and steal its #1 space, but I'm enjoying thinking of it as the BEST FILM OF 2012 right now.

Planetary Romance

I was born in '79. Many of my favorite movies were the obvious ones that a little geek of the time would gravitate towards. Empire Strikes Back. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Willow. Labyrinth. The Neverending Story. Return to Oz. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Back to the Future. For a while there, "sense of wonder" reigned at the box office and certainly reigned in this child's heart. Roguish adventure was in fashion and the stakes were always high.

These things do seem to go in and out of fashion. Dwan and Fairbanks in the 20s. Curtiz and Flynn in the 30s and 40s. The steady stream of matinee idols. Many that I'm surely neglecting. Ford and Lucas and Spielberg and Zemeckis and even Ron Howard all peddled in adventurous wonder in the 80s. It might just be me being a grouch, but I feel like we had a long dry spell of wonder through much of the 90s and into the 00s. What was there was either ploddingly overwrought (the LotR movies) or too ironically self-aware (anything with Brendan Fraser in it) or maybe a bit too stylish and cool (Hellboy, many of the Marvel movies).

Last year, that all changed with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Once again, I felt like a little boy, mouth agape. And so I feel after spending time on Mars with John Carter.

I went into this knowing that it had received mixed reviews, but not having read much about it. I hope that I'm not raising expectations too high here. Nevertheless, I confess that I was giddy leaving the theatre.

I can't rave enough about how smart this script is, about how lovely the visuals (and effects) are, about how just right the actors are, about how confidently Stanton pulls it all together.

I know that I'm being vague here. I don't want to spoil specifics. What really made the movie for me was how many "apes on horses storming the Golden Gate bridge" moments there were. You'll either smile ear to ear like I did or you'll groan and roll your eyes. I hope that you won't mock the sincerity of Stanton's wondrous worldbuilding.

J.J. Abrams may be posturing as Spielberg's heir. That's all it is: posturing. The real deal has arrived and his name is Andrew Stanton.

I'm really excited about any future Stanton live-action projects. Unfortunately, we probably won't see any Mars sequels.

What's sad is that Disney had such little faith in this film. Why are we not flooded with Thark action figures? Where's my John Carter t-shirt? Where's my super-sized John Carter Burger King collectible cup? Where's my Dejah Thoris Halloween costume?

I'll leave you with the thought of me in that Dejah Thoris Halloween costume.

It's all good.

Brandon,

I just don't feel the need to defend myself. With the exception of To Catch a Thief, I am a huge fan of each film on my list. I ranked them in the order in which I'd like to re-watch them. The order in which I am most fond of them at this moment. It's long been known that I appreciate Mr. and Mrs. Smith more than you do. Maybe, though, we haven't hashed out our Suspicion differences. Suspicion is a masterfully uncomfortable film, subverting RomCom expectations with a startlingly suspenseful genre mash-up. I don't understand what's not to like. Defend yourself, back at you, you rotten scoundrel. As you acknowledge, I thoroughly love all of those other films. What's your beef? That I prefer early Hitch to later Hitch? They're all good. You know this. Quit your whining.

In the mood for love

I don't have the energy right now to make up a new strictly RomCom list.

Instead, here's my "romantic love top ten - hesitant explorations toward a dignified sexuality" list from almost three years ago.

1) A Woman Under the Influence
2) Samurai Rebellion
3) The New World
4) Mr. and Mrs. Smith
5) Solaris
6) The Fisher King
7) An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
8) Roman Holiday
9) The Hustler
10) Minnie and Moskowitz

"It’s not a perfect list, but those are the movies that quickly and easily came to mind. Without defending each choice, I’ll just say that I recommend each of these films for what they have to teach us about love."

Ranking Hitch

Every single Hitchcock film I've ever seen, ranked roughly in order of preference...

1) The Lady Vanishes
2) Rope
3) Mr. and Mrs. Smith
4) Suspicion
5) Blackmail
6) Strangers on a Train
7) I Confess
8) The 39 Steps
9) Foreign Correspondent
10) Dial M For Murder
11) Psycho
12) North by Northwest
13) The Trouble With Harry
14) To Catch a Thief

1962: For Brandon

A list of all of the films I've seen from 1962, ranked in order of preference...

1) Cleo From 5 to 7
2) The Trial of Joan of Arc
3) Ivan's Childhood
4) Lonely Are the Brave
5) The Manchurian Candidate
6) Lawrence of Arabia
7) Jules and Jim
8) Knife in the Water
9) Long Day's Journey Into Night
10) How the West Was Won
11) State Fair
12) Trial and Error

On Rating Films

Jeff, I doubt that your standards are lower. I do think that it's possible that you haven't defined your system well enough.

My ratings scale is pretty simple and totally subjective.
* Hated It
** Didn't Like It
*** Liked It
**** Really Liked It
***** Loved It

More specifically...
* Never Want to See It Again
** Could Be Convinced to Give This Another Chance
*** Enjoyed This Thoroughly, But No Rush to See It Ever Again
**** A Favorite. I'd Like to Revisit This Often
***** A Masterpiece That I Don't Want to Live Without. I Regret That I Don't Re-watch This Often

* is for dreck and special offenders
** is for all those Midnights in Paris out there.
*** is a respectable rating. It's my seal of approval. Recommended.
**** means that I Highly Recommend this film
***** means Essential. These movies are my core collection of necessary titles. Narrow Margin. Roman Holiday. I don't want to spoil future "essentials" posts, but you can bet that Tarkovsky will show up eventually. Those films that have somehow changed the way I view the world or expressed an idea that I cherish in such a perfect way. I'm unlikely to rate a film this high the first time I see it, but it's possible. Love in the Afternoon might be *****, but I need to watch it again. Recent ***** movies would be Cold Weather, Meek's Cutoff, The Mill and the Cross, Take Shelter, and True Grit. Five ***** films is a lot in two years. I'd place each of these against the very best of the past.

I just think that you have to distinguish between films you may be enthusiastic about now (my ****) and your real ultimate favorites (my *****). Otherwise, maybe you need a ****** category.

It's a nice, slow day at work today.

The Dry Season

I haven't much cared about film the past couple of weeks. Cinefest must have burned me out.

I didn't like Blood of a Poet. The "poetry" here is ham-fisted and stretched thin. Bleh.

I didn't like Trouble in Paradise. Honestly, I got distracted while watching it and started playing games on my iPhone. I don't care. I didn't see or hear anything that demanded my attention.

I've been falling asleep and not finishing Smallville episodes. Clark is still a whiny jerk and every other character is more interesting than he is.

I did enjoy sitting through Anatomy of a Murder on TCM the other morning while sitting in a hospital for work. I missed the last ten minutes, though, so I don't know whether the panties made a difference or not. It made me feel like I was getting punk'd by a Brandon Cut of the film. [update: Chris and Jeff filled me in]

The Paleface is one of my favorite Keaton shorts. I'm glad that the Howard bros liked it.

I agree with previous comments about The Trial of Joan of Arc. Especially Jeff's comments about the smoke in/through the cross. It's obvious, but I'll state it here anyhow, that Bresson is making the strong visual suggestion that Joan's suffering/death is now being united to the suffering and death of her Savior, becoming an acceptable Ascension Offering and rising to the heavens.

As expected, I fell asleep during The Narrow Margin. I should have put on a pot of coffee instead of busting out the Ruthless Rye. Ah well, y'all know how I feel about this one. It's a tight little piece of work. I'm sorry that the speakers sucked. I do think that the sound design is one of the greatest elements here.

Chris suggested we end the night with Homer the Heretic. Good call.

After the auto adventure, I couldn't get back to sleep so I finished the rest of the Season 4 disc 1. I watched part of disc 2 last night.

Treehouse of Horror III is uneven in the same way that so many of these Halloween episodes are. The zombie portion is a lot of fun, but the rest is forgettable. I loved the beginning nod to Hitch, but the party stories and the Kong homage were both stupid.

Star Trek XII: So Very Tired is probably my most anticipated film of 2012.

Scwarz does seem to be the writer I enjoy the most.

Really sick of Smallville, I've returned to BSG and watched the first four episodes of Season 4. Things are tense. I'm sensitive to spoilers here, so you guys get nothing, even though there's lots to discuss.

I'm thinking about a Breaking Bad marathon, re-watching every episode at least one more time before season 5 arrives.

There has been one true gem in the past month, Rohmer's Love in the Afternoon. What a fantastic way to end the Moral Tales!

I'm most interested in a crazy dream sequence that happens fairly early in the film. The protagonist daydreams of a magic amulet that gives him control over the hearts and minds of all of the women in Paris. This is Rohmer's purest expression of what comics artist Jeffrey Brown has so aptly named "Every Girl is the End of the World For Me," the overwhelming fact of modern urban and suburban life that each time we go out we see hundreds/thousands of attractive strangers of the opposite sex each day. How do our hearts navigate such a sea of anonymity and the little contacts each day, the fleeting smile of a passerby or the brushing finger of a sales clerk?

Love in the Afternoon is "about" adultery. A married man has an affair. As usual, Rohmer doesn't preach, but he does instruct as he explores communication and miscommunication, fidelity and infidelity.

I'd like to discuss the end, but I'll avoid spoilers until at least someone else in the group tackles Love in the Afternoon. Jeff? Chris? Ben?

I changed my mind:


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What I didn't fully think through until reading an email from a friend is the way that Rohmer uses time in the film (and, of course, Tarkovsksy aptly noted that cinema is "sculpting in time"). The husband carves out a piece of time (the afternoon) in which to be unfaithful (everything short of sexual intercourse) to his wife. To "spoil" the ending, the husband in the end resists/flees immorality and returns to his wife IN THE AFTERNOON. He redeems the time which he had previously set aside for estrangement. A slice of time which had been named loneliness and lust is renamed LOVE.
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I wrote all of the above about a week ago. I haven't watched anything but TV since. A couple of episodes of BSG. A couple of episodes of Justified. An episode of Robin Hood. Nothing really worth writing about.

I'm in that "contemplating quitting the blog" kind of funk. No, I'm not going to. No, this isn't a cry for help. I'm just being honest that I haven't been really excited about Film Club lately. Even Brandon's return hasn't been able to break the funk yet.

I am going to re-watch Breaking Bad. Screw Film Club. Breaking Bad Club is back.

March 2012 Recap

23 Features
Border Incident (1949) **
Lonely Are the Brave (1962) ***
Open Range (2003) **
The Little Minister (1934) **
Claire's Knee (1970) ****
The Secret World of Arrietty (2010) ****
Bad Company (1931) ***
The Forbidden Trail (1923) ****
Red Salute (1935) ****
The Street of Forgotten Men (1925) ***
Laughter (1930) ***
Laddie (1940) ****
Partners Three (1919) ***
Get Your Man (1927) ****
Mr. Fix-It (1918) ****
Hail the Woman (1921) ***
Once in a Lifetime (1932) ****
Blood of a Poet (1932) **
Trouble in Paradise (1932) **
Anatomy of a Murder (1959) ***
The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) ****
The Narrow Margin (1952) *****
Love in the Afternoon (1970) ****

20 Shorts
Football 40 Years Ago (1931) ***
Hello Out There (1949) ***
Wife Trouble (1928) ****
Bell Boy 13 (1923) ***
Matchmaking Mama (1928) ****
Helen of Four Gates (1920) **
N.Y., N.Y. (1957) ***
Crashing Hollywood (1931) ***
His New Lid (1910) ***
Classmates (1914) ***
Tillie's Tomato Surprise (1915) ***
Just Nuts (1915) ***
A Deep Sea Panic (1924) ***
Away From the Steerage (1921) ***
No Children (1928) ***
The Janitor (1919) **
The Pest (1922) ****
Their First Execution (1913) ***
One a Minute (1921) ***
The Paleface (1922) *****

TV
Smallville Season 6
BSG Season 4
Justified Season 2
The Simpsons Season 4
Robin Hood

The 'It' Blog

Cinefest 32 Day 3

Saturday means 35mm goodness at the Palace Theatre.

No Children (1928) started the day off right with its tale of parents trying to smuggle their children into a "no children allowed" hotel by passing them off as dummies! ***

The Janitor (1919) isn't really anarchic enough to live up to its premise of a Bolshevik secret society attempting to bomb the rival Doves of Peace. **

The Pest (1922) is a pleasant early Stan Laurel short. There's a really great moment in which Stan dons a dog costume to get past a guard dog only to be chased by the local dog catchers! ****

Their First Execution (1913) is good if a little obvious. The execution scene relies too heavily on a man making really goofy faces. Fortunately, the man makes really great goofy faces. ***

Get Your Man (1927) only survives in an incomplete print, but what survives is fantastic! It's completely obvious why Clara Bow was the top box office draw of her time. She radiates charm here and plays her role just right. ****

Mr. Fix-it (1918) proves that my interest in Clara Bow is purely academic ;) If Clara Bow radiates charm, then Douglas Fairbanks is a freakin' charm supernova! The man puts all other men to shame. ****

The films after lunch were each solid, but none of them reached the heights set by the above two dazzlers.

Hail the Woman (1921) crosses the "message movie" line in its preachiness at times, but it earns its emotions in the end. All I'll say is that my eyes weren't quite dry when all was said and done. ***

One a Minute (1921) is a lighthearted snake oil success story. ***

Once in a Lifetime (1932) is an interesting film in the tradition of Hollywood films about Hollywood. It's specifically an early satirical look at the transition from silence to sound. ****

I'm obviously not too motivated to write at length about any of these considering that you guys are probably mostly skimming these posts and will likely never see any of these films. If you do, I'm willing to talk.

I might eventually write more about Bow and Fairbanks, especially as I catch up on more of their films.

That's it. I returned home after the Palace screenings so I won't be seeing tonight's films or tomorrow's films.

I might have another post soon reflecting on the experience as a whole.

Right now, my eyes are tired.

Agrarian Apologetic Cinema

Cinefest 32 Day 2

I slept through my wake-up alarm this morning and got a late start, missing the first two shorts of the day.

I did make it over to the fest in time for...

His New Lid (1910) is a humorous little short about a man buying a new hat. Losing his new hat causes some grief for his loved ones. ***

Classmates (1914) is an enjoyable love triangle dilemma that leads rivals to military school, then adventures in the Amazon. ***

Laughter (1930) is firmly in the love and laughter vs. money and comfort line of affair movies. There are some fantastic moments in this, notably a scene in which two lovers break into a house and wear the bear rugs they find. That scene is as fantastic at portraying careless joy as just about anything else I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I can't get behind this film. The love vs. money theme is simplified and adultery in service of feelings is lauded as a virtue. ***

I was in a bum mood after Laughter. Even fried chicken for lunch couldn't bring me out of my funk.

Luckily, the first afternoon film succeeded in lifting my spirits.

Laddie (1940) is full of homespun pleasures. A meddling little sister is the source of much delight here. It's hard not to enjoy seeing a good little girl whose biggest flaw is that she loves her family too much. It's a fact that this little girl steals every scene she's in. The rest of the cast, though, holds their own. Just a delight from start to finish. ****

Tillie's Tomato Surprise (1915) was the film I had been most looking forward to for the title alone. It's got a few good laughs. It was a disappointment only because I had unfair expectations for it. ***

Partners Three (1919) was a nice surprise. The second half of the film especially holds up well with its desert photography and well-earned character camaraderie. ***

Just Nuts (1915) is a funny plotless short. A bunch of guys run around swapping girls and bopping each other over the head. Good stuff. ***

A Deep Sea Panic (1924) has the funniest dog moments I've ever seen in a film. It's all around funny. ***

Astray From the Steerage (1921) continued the afternoon funny. The comedy here centers on immigration and prohibition, two comedy goldmines! ***

I skipped the 5:00 feature and then skipped the rest of the night. I've discovered that I'm not quite up to the task of this sort of non-stop marathon movie watching. My eyes needed a break. I walked around the carousel mall for a couple of hours, bought some comics, ate some food, resisted the temptation to see John Carter, went back to the dealers' room one last time, then came back to the hotel and read a little. Now I'm writing this while half-watching Grimm (it's not so good) and thinking about sleeping.

Goodnight comrades.

Lonesome Coyotes, Suffering Centipedes, and More!

Cinefest 32 Day 1

Football 40 Years Ago (1931) is a pleasant enough short that started things off on a light note. Glenn "Pop" Warner gives us a cheeky demonstration of football styles old and new (for 1931). The wigs and fake moustaches are perfect. ***

Hello Out There (1949) is a late James Whale short based on a one-act play by William Saroyan. It feels like a one-act play. The dialogue and emotions are heightened. All of the action takes place in one room. It's no end of talky. The visuals, though, are pure Whale. ***

Wife Trouble (1928) is a deliciously funny short about a businessman working on his wife's birthday. He's forgotten to buy his wife a gift. Luckily, the lingerie saleswoman appears at the office and models possible gifts. The wife arrives at the office. Hijinks ensue. ****

Bell Boy 13 (1923) is an uneven comedy about a young man trying to marry without his (guardian) uncle's approval. There are some great moments, including a riotous "Bolshevik" uprising in a hotel. ***

Bad Company (1931) was directed by Tay Garnett, a man I know nothing about except that he directed one of my favorite surprises from last year, Trade Winds. Bad Company builds its story slowly, starting with a treacly romance, followed by some almost Dick Tracy level gangsterisms, finished spectacularly in an unexpectedly violent showdown. ***

Lunch was a couple of granola bars, a glass of water, and an hour in the dealers' room.

I skipped Ray Faiola's Trailer Mania Show IV after lunch. I probably shouldn't have skipped it, but I did.

Matchmaking Mamma (1928) had the hands-down funniest moments of the day. The whole thing is available on YouTube. Go find it there and weep over what you are missing at Cinefest. ****

The Forbidden Trail (1923) is a surprisingly enjoyable Western. I was waffling over it, ready to damn it with faint praise by calling it serviceable, then the wild, exciting ending happened. The hero rushes the villain as the villain is firing a rifle at him. A powder cellar explodes. The villain is tied up by another bad guy and left in a house set on fire. The hero and the villain engage in a sword fight (the hero wielding a fire poker against the villain's sword). The bad guy that set the house on fire steals the girl, some horses, and a wagon and flees. The hero rescues the girl. The wagon and the bad guy tumble off of a cliff into a river, but the man survives and continues to flee in a found canoe. The hero rides his horse down the side of a steep cliff (!) into the river (!) and wrestles the bad man out of the canoe and beats him into submission! Seriously over-the-top action fun! ****

Helen of Four Gates (1920) is a ridiculously stupid melodrama. **

Red Salute (1935) is the surprise hit of the day for me. Featuring just another one of Jeffrey's crushes, the compelling Barbara Stanwyk, the film is a madcap Red Scare Romance. It's got the standard hate-each-other-until-we-love-each-other RomCom formula. This would also be pure Americanism jingoism propaganda if it weren't for the fact that the soldier character gets away with crazy crimes that would have any man court-martialed. Maybe this is all part of the whole good ol' boy mentality, winking at our own sins while condemning others. I don't know. I only know that I enjoyed the zaniness here. ****

N.Y., N.Y. (1957) is an abstract appreciation of NYC. Purely visual delights. ***

Crashing Hollywood (1931) is a bit of a dud, but the moment of a fake Buster Keaton kicking a fake Charlie Chaplin in the face is worth the entire short running time. ***

Howard Hughes Multicolor Demonstration Reel was just something to sit through. Interesting biplane footage.

The Street of Forgotten Men (1925) is a look at bowery life, focusing on one huckster's struggle to rise above as he raises a dead prostitute's daughter. I was too tired to properly appreciate this. The fake blind man vs. fake one-armed man fistfight may have been the highlight. The ending jerked half a fake tear out of me. ***

That's it. I'm calling it a day. More tomorrow.

Looking for love...

In all the wrong places.

When I find Jeff, he shoves my face in.

Not really.

We're both absolutely united in our love for Rohmer.

And it feels good.

I've got nothing to add. Except to say that Romance of Astrea and Celadon is the beautiful culmination of everything that Rohmer had previously hinted toward (I speak as one still mostly ignorant).

I forgot in my previous post to mention that I took the family to see Arrietty today at the Cinema Saver. It was just as good a second time. A peaceful film that rewards repeated relaxed engagement.

One of the best films of 2010. :)

Jeff's post is much better than mine.

He beat me to the post by 3 minutes and he wrote a lot more about Claire's Knee than I did.

Bravo!

Your last paragraph is exactly right and is what I was trying to get at in my Cassavetes comparison.

I would only quibble a bit with the following from your post: "Claire’s knee is a barrier, a test for Jerome. If he can touch the knee and go no further then he has overcome his youthful desire and is ready for his new adult life with his fiancee."

I agree that this is how Jerome views the situation. I'm not so sure (and I'm not certain that this is how you're viewing the situation) that this is how Rohmer wants us to feel about the situation. Giving in to the "quest for the knee" is exactly the sort of thing that betrays the fact that Jerome has not gotten past his "youthful desire." As evidenced by his dastardly follow through, he's still the same heartless bastard. To truly have overcome his Don Juanishness, he would have had to reject the game altogether. Instead, he is self-righteous in how he views the rightness, the properness, of his actions. He never doubts that touching that knee was a true moment of revelation for him in his progress as an adult.

Jerome only passes the "test" because he's set the limits of the test. That's easy enough for any of us. A real "pass" would have been denying himself the knee.

I'll definitely write more later if you want to keep this up.

The Bee's Knees

Today is the day that I finally got in my early morning viewing of Claire's Knee. I can sympathize with Jeff. I love Rohmer almost unconditionally. I've seen seven of his films and they're each one perfect. The thing is, his films are really difficult to write about. There's no way to credibly do so without interacting with the contents of the many conversations throughout. I'll just point out that the males in Rohmer's Moral Tales often draw a moral conclusion by the end of the film that is altogether different than the moral of the film itself. Jerome in Claire's Knee thinks that he has learned a lesson (and he has), but it's not (I don't think) the lesson that the viewer gets. Then again, against the series title, Rohmer isn't ever interested in straight preaching. In my mind, he's closest to Cassavetes (though with wildly different sensibilities) in honestly presenting his characters relating to one another in broken ways. Both of these great directors are only always interested in love. Anyhow, we don't get a straight lesson a la Aesop. We get a character drawing a conclusion and we're left to draw our own conclusions.

Other unfinished business...

I was disappointed that no one mentioned Open Range during the 2003 talk, so I re-watched it. It's only so-so. It's twice as long as it should be, long on atmosphere and generally bloated.

Smallville has been good to us lately. The Metropolis Green Arrow stuff has some promise; I'm waiting for some sort of JLA-lite moment to happen before the season is over.

The Little Minister had a few good moments but it, too, went on for far too long. I might have been a bit more sympathetic if it hadn't been Katharine Hepburn as the manic pixie girl. I can't stand Katharine Hepburn.

Woody

Lonely are the haters.

I know you guys have been missing my rambles, so here goes...

As expected, this "classic movie nerd" will now join the chorus of praise coming out of the blogs of Brandon and Jeffrey.

Lonely Are the Brave is The Big Sky meets Faces meets Rambo. I could unpack that, probably, but mostly I'm just trying to be as ridiculous as the rest of y'all.

1962 is the date engraved on the tombstone of the Western. I'm hoping to watch Ride the High Country and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence sometime soon. I'll be just fine if I never watch How the West Was Won ever again, but I probably ought to give it another chance. What I know about Liberty Valence and High Country, though, suggests the same sad recognition of the passing of what has come before.

Of course, that tombstone is marking an empty grave. Someone stole the body. I think I saw Aaron Katz running off with it last.

So, Lonely Are the Brave.

Yes, count me among those who saw the end coming from the beginning (not specifically HOW, but I knew he had to die chasing freedom). While I sympathize with Jason's concerns, I don't really agree that the ending is a downer. The film would not make the same point if Douglas rides off into the sunset. The Cowboy has been killed by Modernity. There can be no happy retirement. There are no margaritas on the gulf coast. There can be no treacly nostalgia.

Jerry Bondi: Jack, I'm going to tell you something. The world that you and Paul live in doesn't exist. Maybe it never did... out there is the real world. And it's got real borders and real fences, real laws and real trouble. And you either go by the rules or you lose. You lose everything.
Jack Burns: You can always keep something.

No one has mentioned yet that the film is based on a novel by Edward Abbey. I haven't read anything by him, but I've got friends who love his books. It's worth mentioning, at least, that much of the anarchic character of Jack Burns must be traceable to this source material.

I don't remember much about my early life and not much about my early education. I do remember my kindergarten teacher teaching us the subversive lyrics to Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

I'm a big fan of personal property. [and despise land taxes as something evil; a claim by the state to be the true owner of the land; if you don't think this is what land taxes mean, well, just try to stop paying them for a few years and see how long you can stay on "your own" land]. But, the above lyrics still deeply resonate. There's an instinctual understanding that a fence or a sign means nothing. Fences do not make good neighbors. They make good fences.

I found the immigration sub-plot an interesting addition to this theme. Jack's friend Paul is imprisoned for aiding illegal immigrants. Surely this has a lot to do with fences and borders as well as the way that Jack lives his life. Are we really going to fault men for crossing an imaginary construct?

It's a week in jail for assaulting a one-armed man. It's a year in jail for assaulting a man with a star pinned to his chest.

I won't go into a rant about the prison system now.

What is interesting here is that the West once was the frontier. Society hadn't caught up yet. I touched on this a bit last year when I wrote about True Grit. As the West is tamed and the fences come up and the laws (both necessary and sometimes ridiculous) are established, there is a reining in of the lawlessness (not necessarily a good or bad thing) that had once prevailed.

This is (at least one aspect of) what Lonely Are the Brave is "about".

There is no turning back the clock. There is no hope in the romantic notion that the cowboy spirit will prevail. The conditions that created the cowboy spirit are gone. Once the last of these men dies off, there is no chance of this spirit being revived. Conditions have changed. A new animating spirit has arrived. Kirk Douglas had hoped that the film would be titled, "The Last Cowboy."

We are undoubtedly living in a post-cowboy world. I've had limited exposure to cowboy and rodeo culture. There is some continuity to the old ways, but everything has been transformed. As always, there is no way to "conserve" the old ways. The (Cowboy) Spirit is constantly putting to death and resurrecting and transforming life. Clinging to old ways may be romantic and nice, but it always gets you killed.

Paul is the character in this film who is put to death and resurrected. He understands that he can no longer enjoy life in the way that he once had. He must enjoy it in the way that he has now.

Jack, our stubborn hero, is unable to do this. This is his charm and this is weakness.

Jack recognizes the flaw in his character:

"'Cause I'm a loner clear down deep to my guts. Know what a loner is? He's a born cripple. He's a cripple because the only person he can live with is himself. It's his life, the way he wants to live. It's all for him. A guy like that, he'd kill a woman like you. Because he couldn't love you, not the way you are loved."

That's all I've got for now. Not bad, considering that I was tempted to write a quick sentence stating that I agreed with Brandon and Jeff and be done with it.

March, so far, has been another slow month. I've watched a couple of episodes of Smallville Season 6 (last night's episode introduced us to Oliver Queen!). Besides Lonely, the only other feature that I've watched is Anthony Mann's Border Incident. I should write about how it shares some themes with Lonely, but, honestly, I didn't like Border Incident enough to care. It comes across as preachy/didactic in its toughness in a way that Lonely never does. So far, these Mann titles have been hit or miss with me. Two O'Clock Courage and Desperate? YES! The Black Book and Border Incident? NO!

Bergman Talk

On The Seventh Seal and Through a Glass Darkly:
http://chasingpictures.blogspot.com/2010/01/out-of-love.html

On Winter Light and The Silence:
http://chasingpictures.blogspot.com/2010/01/words-in-foreign-language.html

Some follow-up:
http://chasingpictures.blogspot.com/2010/01/conversations-2010-2.html

February 2012 Recap

13 Features
The Narrow Margin (1952) *****
Ink (2009) **
The Gunfight at Dodge City (1959) ***
Buchanan Rides Alone (1958) ****
Return to Oz (1985) ****
The Thin Man (1934) ****
The Secret World of Arrietty (2010) ****
Exit Smiling (1926) ****
Port of Shadows (1938) ****
Roman Holiday (1953) *****
Two O'Clock Courage (1945) ****
Desperate (1947) ****
The Black Book (1949) **

TV
Smallville Season Five
Robin Hood
Wanted Dead or Alive
The Oscars

Girly Movie Catching Up Club.

I did finish Ink. I'm not going to write anything because I'm mostly in agreement with the haters. I refer you to Chris' posts.

I'll watch Brandon is Lonely later this week.

What's the next movie? I need to update my queue to get back on track. I'm ready for March Movie Madness!

My Essentials: Roman Holiday

It's hard to believe now that this soft romantic once maintained that he hated romantic comedies.

I was oh so ignorant.

About 15 years ago, I watched Roman Holiday. My hard cynicism was no match for the sneaky sincerity of this princess-meets-reporter joy ride. I was unprepared for a film that dared to explore real emotions in a real situation, laying the charm on heavy all while continuing to be real. Because in this tale, there is no escape from the drudgery of personal responsibility without consequences. There is a reluctant acceptance of the necessity of duty. And that was refreshing to this young man who had been lied to by so many foolish late 20th century romcoms.

I had never seen a romantic comedy that was this honest or, more importantly, this joyous. The romance that occurs is believable because we've seen the tangible joy involved in it.

I cry at the end of Roman Holiday. I try to hide it. It's still true. I blubber like a baby on the inside. Every time.

In the end, Roman Holiday is a brave movie. I admire its courage. Each time I see it, I am astonished that it ends the way it does.

Completely perfect and utterly essential.

A weekend to make up for a month

"Eat" may have been too strong of a word in describing the actions of my VHS player. "Chewed up and caught in its teeth" better describes what my VHS player did to Exit Smiling. After some careful extrication work, I was able to get the tape back where it should be. Then, I tried again. The worst that could happen was the same thing all over again. Fortunately, there was no further incident.

Exit Smiling uses dramatic irony just right. When our heroine saves the day at the last by using precisely those ambitions that she's been ridiculed for, she is never praised or rewarded. She's forgotten, unthanked, and left behind. There's a sweetness in this sadness, though, rooted in the unwavering positive attitude of our protagonist. She counts it all joy and so, by extension, must the audience.

Exit Smiling is thoroughly enjoyable in that "steady smile punctuated by guffaws" sort of way

Port of Shadows is enjoyable in a very different way. It is earthy and tough. Even the humor in it has a sharp edge.

Even so, there is a thematic connection between Smiling and Port. To paraphrase Port, that if we love life enough, maybe she'll love us back. Both protagonists make unselfish choices that end in personal loss. But, in the process of acting out these choices, they love and live brighter and louder and more truly than ever before. It is precisely in the moment of self-abegnation that these two are most fulfilled in their own selves.

In both films, it is the villainous characters who seek to fulfill their own selfish desires at the expense of others. It doesn't end well for these characters.

Spoilers for Port follow.

"It's horrible to love like Romeo when you look like Bluebeard!" may be my favorite line from Port of Shadows. The self-deception on display is epic. This man has a black heart, maybe blacker than Bluebeard's. Devoid of gratitude and convinced that it is his looks that make him unattractive, he is blind to his own moral failings as he expresses outrage at all others. When this man is killed in a fight over a girl, we do not shed any tears (though we may feel a twinge of sadness for this real character with complicated emotions and motivations).

When the protagonist dies nearly immediately afterward, we feel differently. The "simple twist of fate" that conspires against him is clear. Life may be a Bitch out to get him, but what's really clear here is that he's finally lived and loved worthily.

Mann-ic Month

It's fairly well-known that Anthony Mann had a good run of noir-ish 'b' pictures before making his masterpieces in the Western genre. Unfortunately, these pictures remain seldom seen. Fortunately, I had a chance to catch three of these mid-to-late-40s gems in the past few days.

Two O'Clock Courage could easily be described as 'screwball noir'. It's a murder mystery, cleverly developed in a unique way by having the main character start the film with amnesia. Much to his chagrin, this man with no memory finds himself the prime suspect in a murder investigation. After being nearly run over by an unusually attractive female cab driver, he is assisted by the same woman, quickly falling in love as the two navigate a world of mystery together. My brief synopsis doesn't do it justice. This film is a delight from start to finish.

Desperate is an example of the "screw your characters until it can't get any worse and then make it worse" genre. One bad event follows another. A good husband, married four months, takes on a delivery job to make some extra cash. Unknowingly, he's been drafted to help commit a crime. When he discovers what illegal activities he's been tricked into doing, he attempts to stop the activity instead of playing along. Things go bad from there. There's some nice character stuff here, but the real star is the atmosphere. It's thick, thick, thick with menace. Another joy from start to finish.

The Black Book is historical epic as noir, detailing the activity of a resistance group during the French "Reign of Terror". I hate to say that this one was a total disappointment. The history is simplistic. The character relationships are hard to care about. The dialogue is often goofy if not stupid. I'm not a fan. I'm not even a fan of the John Alton cinematography. No amount of prettily crafted shadows can save this stinker.

February Failures

I'm not meant to watch movies in February.

I watched Buchanan Rides Alone way back at the beginning of the month. The whole movie is pleasurable, but the ending shootout across a bridge is sublime.

Ink crashed my computer.

I watched Return to Oz in preparation for writing a "My Essentials" post only to discover that I no longer consider this childhood favorite essential. I have become a grumpy old man.

I love The Thin Man. I'm embarrassed to say that I watched it in fits and starts, bits and pieces, five to ten minutes at a time. I couldn't concentrate. You know I'm going through a funk if Powell and Loy can't keep my attention.

I've been uninterested in Smallville, even though the past few episodes have been better than the filler episodes that have been all too common lately.

Arrietty was a delight. So, there's that.

I tried watching Texas Killing Fields. I got twenty minutes in and decided that I didn't care about it and didn't want to put in any more effort. I stopped watching.

I watched a few episodes of the TV series Wanted Dead or Alive. It's decent. It's easy to forgive slight flaws when you've got so much packed into 25 minutes.

I'm off today and was all excited to attack a pile of TCM recordings on VHS that my mother sent to me. I got about twenty minutes into Exit Smiling, a silent comedy, and was really enjoying it. I pressed stop to leave the room to use the bathroom. Instead of just stopping, the VHS player ejected the tape and decided to eat part of the tape in the process. Now, I can't finish the movie and I'm afraid to put any other tapes in the machine. I'm reminded now of one more reason why I was so happy to leave VHS behind.

I haven't watched Lonely are the Brave. I've got no NWI. I'm tempted to cancel my disc plan, too. Port of Shadows is still sitting on the shelf unwatched.

The death of the Western

Like the rest of y'all, I'm looking forward to Brandon's reporting to us as he explores the 1960s. Maybe more than the rest of you, I'm interested in the Westerns he'll write about.

I just now finished watching The Gunfight at Dodge City. Directed by a "b" movie workman. Featuring a screenplay by one of the guys who cooked up the story for The Narrow Margin. The DP worked on B-pictures and settled in TV work. I'm not sure what sort of box office draw McCrea had in '59, but I doubt that he was at the top of the list at this time. All this to say, Gunfight is firmly a B oater. As such, it is, of course, thoroughly enjoyable.

More than this, though, I was struck by how self-aware the script is. This isn't quite some pop po-mo meta-Western. It's really not that at all. But, it does play with the genre in a self-conscious way. It suffers some as a talky picture. There's a lot of talk about what makes a man and what constitutes a position of authority and different types of people. There's a really obvious moment when the saloon mistress talks about the corrupt sheriff switching his hats from white to black depending on whom he's interacting with.

The thing resolves neatly in a standard street gunfight, but the unalloyed heroism of the moment is undercut by an unusual voiceover narration that repeats an important pre-credits monologue about killing men that the film starts with.

At another moment, McCrea's Bat Masterson gives a speech about his take on law enforcement being that "there's a law" and that it "will be enforced." Later, however, when the law is used maliciously against a friend, Masterson turns his back on enforcement in favor something right apart from and against the civil law.

I'm just pecking out impressions. I don't think that Gunfight is much more than an enjoyable (and in so many ways typical) standard Western film. I do find it interesting as a signpost on the road of the Western no longer believing in some of its tropes in an entirely unexamined way. Mann and Boetticher and old masters like Ford and Hawks were similarly challenging the foundations of the Western in a grander way. Peckinpah and Leone would eventually continue the dismantling through the 60s (even as dudes like Hathaway would stubbornly assert the old ways).

I'm not sure what I'm getting at. I'm rambling. I guess that I'm just agreeing with Brandon that something transitional was happening around '59-'60. Take a look at the 500 Westerns page. Look at the old masters still making Westerns in '59, then look at the lists from the following years. There's a sea change. How the West Was Won is the big bloated end of the old Western in '62. The new style and new themes had already been intimated throughout the 50s, but they explode in the 60s and 70s as the former "purer" unselfconscious ways fade away. By '69, the Western had completely died. Of course, I believe in resurrection. The Western was reborn and transformed even as it was dying. It lives strong now. There have been multiple deaths and resurrections since the 70s (just as there were in different ways pre-50s; transition to sound, maturing of themes, etc). Quantity may be lacking at this point in film history, but we've been blessed with quality. The Coens' True Grit is about as good as it gets. Meek's Cutoff is a tremendous achievement in transforming and maturing the genre in a direction that has never fully been explored. No film project has me more excited than thinking about Aaron Katz shooting a Western. The genre has died many times. It is alive and well in 2012.

End ramble.

My Essentials: The Narrow Margin

Brandon started his "essentials" posts a couple of years ago now (though he hasn't had any recently). It's about time I imitated his example.

The Narrow Margin is essential.

I admit to being predisposed to like it.

I lived right next to a train station for about half of my life.

I love train movies. The Lady Vanishes might be my favorite Hitchcock film. I'm the only one in CR5FC to defend Unstoppable. I'd love to get the chance to see James Benning's RR. I sometimes spend half an afternoon meditating on the idea of RR. I often dream of trains.

The train is the constant presence in Narrow Margin. The sound of it is always present. The narrow confines of the train naturally limit the action; the environment bottles up actualities until the pressure is unbearable. Within this space and this time, something MUST surely happen.

A gangster's widow is willing to testify in a court of law. Ruthless men are willing to kill her to prevent this. One policeman, Detective Seargent Walter Brown, is charged with stopping this from happening. He doesn't like the woman he's protecting. He doesn't like his situation.

Narrow Margin rides the noir rails right to the end. Characters are never quite what they seem. Black and white are all mixed up in shades of gray (or maybe Brown?). The world, unlike the train, goes off the rails at times.

Brown does what is right because it's right. Decidedly not because he likes it. It's often a character flaw (often a weakness for a woman) that gets noir men in trouble. Just as often, the strong noir men are strong because they've clung to a moral code even when it doesn't feel good and is not easy.

This widow doesn't seem to deserve kindness. Her existence and predicament are the cause of Brown's partner's death. A good man dies. A worthless woman lives.

Brown knows that it is his job to risk his life for the worst of the worst.

He knows that compromising his code to give up the worst, even to give them over to the natural conclusion of what their life has been, is worse than death. Given a task, a man must perform it with integrity.

So, the code is still black and white. There's often only a narrow margin between the two colors, but the distinction remains. The world in which this code is played out, however, is a wash of gray.

Finally, isn't Marie Windsor one of the greatest actresses ever?

Don't read anything else about this film. Avoid spoilers. Watch it because I told you to. Because out of all the movies out there, this one is... Essential.

January 2012 Recap

20 Features
Septien (2011) **
Bellflower (2011) *
Warrior (2011) **
The Muppets (2011) **
Another Earth (2011) ***
The Set-Up (1949) ****
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) ****
Moneyball (2011) ***
The Guard (2011) ****
The Mark of Zorro (1940) **
The Secret of Kells (2009) ****
Winchester '73 (1950) ****
Rhythm on the Range (1936) ****
Vampyr (1932) **
Rhythm on the River (1940) ***
L'Age d'Or (1930) ***
City Lights (1931) ****
The Mummy (1932) **
One Hour With You (1932) ****
Horse Feathers (1932) ****

3 Documentaries
Brother Born Again (2001) **
The Legend of Masty Huba (2010) ***
Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl (2011) ***

2 Shorts
Small Fry (2011) ***
The Red Balloon (1956) ****

TV
Justified Season 1
-"Veterans"
-"Fathers and Sons"
-"Bulletville"
Robin Hood
-"The Knight Who Came to Dinner"
-"The Wager"
-"The Prisoner"
-"A Village Wooing"
Smallville Season 4
-"Onyx"
-"Spirit"
-"Blank"
-"Ageless"
-"Forever"
-"Commencement"
Smallville Season 5
-"Arrival"
-"Mortal"
-"Hidden"
-"Aqua"
-"Thirst"
-"Exposed"
-"Splinter"
-"Solitude"
Battlestar Galactica
-"Razor"
The Golden Globes
The Story of Film 1-4

pathetic.

January's almost over.

There's not much to say.

One Hour With You is an enjoyable Lubitsch musical from '32. I should write more about it, but I probably won't.

Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl and The Legend of Masty Huba are two documentaries that I enjoyed, proving that I get along just fine with the genre.

Horse Feathers is through and through enjoyable. The world might be a better place if one-hundred-million-plus people all watched Horse Feathers at the same time this weekend instead of watching the Super Bowl.

I was going to get a flat bottom, but the girl at the boathouse didn't have one.

And more Smallville. Highlights have been a vampire sorority and Lois working as an undercover striptease dancer. Most episodes have about 30 minutes of ridiculous fluff mixed in with 10 solid minutes exploring the background mythology and advancing the show's core story. When it's good, it's great. When it's not good, it's ridiculous. I've lasted this long. I'm starting to doubt whether I can make it through five more seasons of this. The reason that I keep watching is because it's easy to do. By the time I'm ready to sit down and watch something, it's usually about 9:30pm and I'm ready for bed. It's easier to swallow 42 minutes of goofy Smallville and get some sense of completion instead of starting something 120 minutes and falling asleep (or, even worse, staying up and not getting enough sleep).

Sorry that this post is so pathetic. Hopefully, whatever movie Ben picks for February will inspire me to get back into a regular writing habit.

I plan on posting a January recap later today. I tried doing this a couple of years ago, but gave up after a few months. I'm hoping to keep up with it this year. It'll make year end review a lot easier. Also, I'll be giving star ratings. I know that you've all been waiting for this. It's a simple 5-star system. No half points. I stole it from Netflix/GoodReads. *=Hated it, **=Didn't Like It, ***=Liked It, ****=Really Liked It, *****=Loved It. Nice and lame and emotional. It should go without saying that this is in no way neat and tidy even though it may look that way.

Maybe he got too gay with the vestal virgins in the temple.

While I was sick, I watched two Bing Crosby pictures.

Rhythm on the Range is nearly perfect. It's a standard RomCom plot boiled to just the right temperature. I was at the height of being sick when I saw this and it was just what I needed. Seriously, my medical insurance should have covered the cost of this DVD.

Rhythm on the River is entirely pleasant, but nowhere near as delightful as Range. The ghostwritten lyrics/tunes plot couldn't be any more relevant in our age of abundant copywrongs.

Jeff may be happy that I dig Bunuel in '30.

L'Age d'Or is often funny so I can give it a pass. It's ten times more interesting and exciting than Vampyr. At least, it's funnier. This is only the second Bunuel film I've seen. Cross my fingers, I'm a fan.

I can also totally agree with Jeff's '31 pick.

City Lights is just as good as it always is. I love that Chaplin will hold on a gag long enough for it to not be funny, to the point that it's funnier.

Most recently...

I really wanted to like The Mummy. It's just fine. Okay, it's a huge disappointment. I only wish I'd seen it in early adolescence, the perfect time to enjoy a vestal virgin obsession. As it was, I admit to being more than a little bored.

We could be arguing about snow.

Jeff, I'm not feeling the Birth of a Nation comparisons. Sit down and watch the whole Griffith masterpiece with Chris and you'll know I'm right about that one.

Griffith makes racism fun. Dreyer makes vampires boring. I know who I'm siding with.

I'm being silly, but the point is that Griffith's film is emotionally engaging while Dreyer's isn't. I respect that this is entirely subjective. Here I stand.

I conceded that there were some interesting images in Vampyr. Sure. I also got sick of the gauzy cottony look pretty quick. I think that there are a few interesting things here. Enough to steal and use in a better movie. Not nearly enough to hang my hat on in this one.

"If you can't admit that VAMPYR is great merely for its "how" instead of its "what" then you need to call BIRTH OF A NATION a piece of trashy, low-brow garbage passed off as one of the greatest films ever made right now!"

BUT! It's precisely the "how" that I'm calling into question here. Specifically "how" Dreyer uses text in the film. This relates to the entire "how" of the visual structure of the film. I think that it breaks the flow, neatens things up, and renders the whole ridiculous. I think that Dreyer fails in his "how" by trying to tidy things up. I also think that the main actor is a doofus.

I'm starting to realize how great it is that the whole world, but especially Denmark, has moved past the 1930s.

Jeff's Round Rump.

I'll join the chorus singing Jeff's praises. Those 30s lists are tops.

I decided to stop diddling around and get serious like Jeff. I decided to start with his #1s from each year. I decided to start with my copy of Vampyr that I bought a couple of years ago at a Hollywood Video going out of business sale and have never watched.

What a stupid idea.

I went in with high expectations.

I'm trying to start most of these sentences with "I" to indicate how subjective this all is. I hope I'm getting through to you.

I disliked Vampyr.

I feel guilty. I feel like I should feel more guilty. I feel like I don't care.

Apparently, Vampyr was considered a terrible mistake, the absolute low point, in Dreyer's career for decades. I agree with this assessment.

Unfortunately, recently, Vampyr has been critically rehabilitated and everyone loves the damned thing.

I think it's a mess.

There are some fantastic images and some interesting camera motion.

So what?

The narrative is lame. Lame. Lame. Lame.

The use of so much text is not some quaint throwback to the silent era. It's a weird crutch that delivers lots of information that that makes sense of the film which is otherwise senseless. A man delivers a book that says, "open if I die" (or something stupid like that), then the man dies and we get pages and pages of the book to read that let us know that we are dealing with a scary vampire. Seriously, Dreyer, you're really good at making images. Why so much text? The vampire story is stupid. Heck, I'd probably like the movie better if it made less sense and was just a series of dreamy images strung together. The text reveals the bald face of the stupid story.

I feel like I should log this thing on GoodReads instead of posting about it here.

Maybe I'm just angry at Dreyer for making something so trashy and low-brow and trying to pass it off as an art pic.

Some people say that this should just be enjoyed on the level of "mood" or "atmosphere." My problem is that I couldn't get into any mood or atmosphere. If I'd been in one of the original audiences, I would have had fun howling insults at the screen and laughing while throwing jujubes and popcorn.


"It is incomprehensible that Mr Dreyer has spent time, money and talent on this screenplay which is not worthy of the effort. (…) However, the generally macabre tone of the film makes it difficult for the acting to change the overall impression that we are here dealing with some fantastical nonsense […]. It is worth neither clapping nor hissing at."

Of course, I feel inadequate railing against all of you uber-film-nerds who really understand Dreyer and how special Vampyr is.

Next up: L'Age d'Or. I can't wait to smack Jeff around and tell him how wrong he is about that one. :)

Bleh. Being sick stinks.

After finishing a couple of errands, I plan on spending the rest of the day laying on a couch and watching movies. There are some perks to feeling bleh.

I wrote the following a couple of days ago, but never posted it...

I've fallen behind, I know. Blog fatigue, early winter edition, is setting in. I've also been grumpy and sick. We need something good to argue about.

Mark of Zorro, Mammoulian style, didn't really do anything for me. Give me Robin Hood any day.

Secret of Kells is a beautiful animated tale. It's the most striking animated feature I've seen in a while. I want to celebrate its innovation, but I'm sure that at least a dozen Japanese films did it all first.

---

Brother Born Again showcases everything I dislike about documentaries.

I'm going to reconcile with my brother. This is serious emotional territory. Why don't I film it to advance my career?

If my sister came at me with a movie camera, I'd punch her in the lens cap.

Who looks at their family life and thinks, "This situation I'm worrying about would be better if I documented it on film." I don't like people who think that way. I don't like MTV's The Real World or any of its devil spawn. I don't like these sorts of documentaries.

I know it's not Tuesday yet, but that was spoiler-free and I'm tired of sitting on the film. End rant.

---

I thought that the action in Smallville would pick up post-graduation, but things have been dull.

The BSG made-for-TV movie Razor was just okay. I'm looking forward to completing BSG in 2012, but I'm taking it slow.

---

I watched The Set-Up earlier this month and forgot to write about it. I love Manny Farber's review of this movie. Farber was a boxing fan and could smell out the phony parts. He also couldn't deny the power of Ryan's performance.

I watched Winchester '73 last night. Way back when, it was my first Anthony Mann film. It holds up even better than I remembered. I think that I might prefer Night Passage (same screenwriter, similar themes without the hokey Winchester thread, some of the same actors, different director), but Winchester delivers the goods. I've been sick the past few days and a good western was exactly what I needed to perk me up.

The virtue of vulgarity, or the other way around.

Chris is right about Moneyball. Its biggest failing is that it's only really good and not great. It does everything right that a Hollywood movie should do. It's smart and interesting and easy to watch. And then, when it's all over, you feel satisfied, but not in any lasting way. I'm starting to warm to Sorkin. The film's greatest strengths and weaknesses are found in the script. Sorkin's biggest flaw, as far as I can see, is that he'll often have characters deliver plot points instead of proper dialogue. This keeps things moving along briskly, but the characters are always in service of an Idea. Character doesn't matter as long as we get the point.

The Guard, on the other hand, offers an abundance of pleasures. And an abundance of Character. There is a "moral" or a "Big Idea" here, but it only finds expression in and through personality.

The film is a bit uneven and often, especially in the beginning, errs on the side of silliness. This would be a weakness if the silliness weren't so danged endearing. Okay, it's still definitely a weakness. Your enjoyment of this movie will probably depend on how much you're able to smile along at the winking.

The protagonist, the guard Boyle, is extremely likable. At least, I like him.

I had a fond, emotional response to this film.

Boyle goes about his job in a manner I can only respect, lightheartedly avoiding all the layers of bullshit (always present) while finishing the real work set before him, the important "relational" (what a stupid word, I just put Brandon to sleep again) parts; proving to others that the only way to take your work seriously is to take it all lightly. Get the work done and ignore the bureaucracy.

Brief indiscretion with a pair of prostitutes aside, Boyle is a fucking role model. I admire his work ethic.

(Pardon the sudden lapse in language. It is obligatory to drop at least one f-bomb in any review of any film written and/or directed by a McDonagh.)

The film also features the best philosophically-minded criminals since the Dude and Walter faced off with those Nihilists.

In so many ways, this is the same "unorthodox cop" genre movie that you've seen dozens of times before. It knowingly comments on that genre with a wink and a nod in several directions at once. Still, this isn't a deconstruction in the sense that Drive is. The Guard laughs at some of the genre constructions, but ultimately upholds them and especially values self-sacrificial Virtue.

Brendan Gleeson is fantastic as always.

Finally, I want to point out that the Calexico score is among the best of the year, if not THE best of the year.

I won't say any more. Watch it. I expect some of you to disagree with me. I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks.

There's a quieter moment in the film that marks the exact spot that I fell in love.

Here's a picture:


Killing Little Protestants. That's Funny.

Carrot Head

I started experimenting with my iPhone camera this afternoon. I made a short film about making carrot juice using my dad's homegrown carrots. Annie's the star of this one, though most of us make an appearance. I'm not completely happy with the editing, but it's good enough for the short time that I spent on it. I'm also not happy with the video. I didn't realize that shooting in portrait mode would box the frame so much with no way to undo this (or is there?).

But really, it's just a lame home movie.

Enjoy.

Oops.

I need to clarify just in case someone tries to "get" me for something that I wrote below.

A few years ago, I put La France on my 2008 list. My entire 2008 list is a mess of years. Still Life and La France and Romance of Astrea and Celadon and others. Half of my 2008 list consisted on non-2008 films.

Now, I know better and I consider La France a 2007 film. It's still one of the best films I saw in 2008, but it's a 2007 film.

Once I changed my dating system, I could finally agree with Brandon that 2007 was one of the unrivaled best years in recent film history.

Just because I was curious. I started looking at box office stats.

Meek's Cutoff
Weekend Gross
$920 (USA) (21 August 2011) (2 Screens)
$2,197 (USA) (14 August 2011) (4 Screens)
$4,224 (USA) (7 August 2011) (4 Screens)
$9,037 (USA) (31 July 2011) (7 Screens)
$6,796 (USA) (24 July 2011) (5 Screens)
$13,702 (USA) (17 July 2011) (13 Screens)
$9,063 (USA) (10 July 2011) (12 Screens)
$15,236 (USA) (26 June 2011) (17 Screens)
$42,121 (USA) (12 June 2011) (41 Screens)
$68,910 (USA) (5 June 2011) (45 Screens)
$84,416 (USA) (22 May 2011) (39 Screens)
$96,990 (USA) (15 May 2011) (30 Screens)
$61,337 (USA) (8 May 2011) (19 Screens)
$34,724 (USA) (1 May 2011) (11 Screens)
$35,791 (USA) (24 April 2011) (6 Screens)
$14,092 (USA) (17 April 2011) (2 Screens)
$20,042 (USA) (10 April 2011) (2 Screens)

So, at one point on one weekend, Meek's was playing on 45 screens in the US. That's the maximum that it ever played. That's really respectable for a film its size. A film like La France, by contrast, has no info listed on IMDB because it probably never played on more than one screen at a time in the US. Meek's Cutoff is a blockbuster compared to La France. Avatar, on the 3rd hand, peaked at 3,452 screens at one time in 2009. It earned $77,025,481 that weekend alone.

Avatar didn't hit any theatres in Russia until later in 2010, though, so it's probably a 2010 film, right? Also, I haven't seen it. And if I haven't seen it, then a film remains dateless. Yup, that's my new system. A film remains dateless until I watch it and then roll 4d6 to come up with an approximate date.

"when a film was released in the US"

Ben,

As I already suggested, "when a film was released in the US" is also contested. How many places does it have to play? For how long? Meek's Cutoff played in two different U.S. cities in 2010. It then got a "limited" release in 2011. How many cities did it play in then? Not too many. It never got a "wide" release. Some films don't even get a "limited" release beyond NY, LA, Chicago, and a few other places. We're sometimes, sometimes, lucky to see some of the rarer films play at Cornell months later. I remember being glad to see La France a few years ago. It played maybe 3 places in the entire U.S., showed at Cornell for 2 screenings, then didn't make it onto DVD for three years afterwards. It made it on my 2008 list, but no one else besides a handful of big city critics had seen it and even now that it's become available, it never got any kind of attention. No one besides Cinema Scope and the art film snobs in the big cities were talking about it. How do you date something like that? The Mill and the Cross falls here, too. It has been fortunate enough to get an immediate DVD release, but otherwise has had little to no attention and no real "release." If, instead of getting the DVD release, it suddenly got lots of attention and opened wide this month, would it then be a 2012 film?

Enough already. You guys already know my position without me repeating it in a variety of different ways. Bleh.

I don't care.

Really, I don't.

Make your lists however you'd like.

Your organizing principle can be that you have no organizing principle, only a nebulous notion of what you think came out this past year.

For my part, when I make a list, I like to know what I'm doing. Quite simply, what does "2011" mean?

My system: Trust IMDB. IMDB gives a film a date based on the best information available establishing a film's first theatrical presentation regardless of location. I like this. Film culture is larger than American Film culture. I may not be able to see all of these films, but I recognize that they exist and that they were actually screened somewhere. I might not see a 2011 film until 2014. That doesn't make it a 2014 film.

Most critics follow the NY/LA system of the Academy. If a film was released and played a week in NY or LA, then it qualifies. One problem with this is that you get the Army of Shadows effect. A film from the 60s that never ever got a theatrical release in the U.S. now qualifies as a 2006 film because it played in the U.S. for the first time in 2006. More often, it's not this drastic, but it's often the case that films from the past few years are only just now getting to us to qualify.

Another problem is that NY and LA aren't really any more relevant to my movie-watching life here in the Binghamton area than Cannes or Berlin are relevant. All four of those cities are too far away for anything played there to matter (okay, I could drive to NY if I REALLY wanted to see something, but practically, this never happens).

The above is fine for critics in NY or LA, but what's a guy supposed to do in Binghamton, NY? Why follow the critics when most of those films never played anywhere close to here? Why not modify our personal lists to reflect only the films that opened within an hour's proximity to Binghamton?

Why not just rank every movie I saw this year regardless of what year it is from? I mean, they're all new to me, right?

I've already made these arguments plenty of times and more fully than I do here. I'm happy with my system. I think that it makes the most sense. I won't fault anyone for using any other system. I'll just pick on them a bit, all in good fun, and only to amuse myself and to continue the running film dating joke that has begun here.

Whenever I do "get on someone's case," it's only me being playful. I'd love for everyone to agree with me, but I'm not really getting upset or worked up over the fact that no one agrees with me.

I guess all I'm really fighting for is for everyone to pick a method, clearly describe what that method is, then stick to it. My method is best, but you can pick your own. :)

Is it arbitrary to rank films by year? Sure, but once we've decided to arbitrarily rank films by year, let's at least be clear about what we mean by a year.

All that said, you make really good points about time being the most necessary ingredient in proving a film's worth. I agree. Well said. No insults.

Restless, not listless.

Some responses

I'm going to stay out of the Woody Allen talk. I just haven't seen enough of his films to offer anything of worth to the conversation.

Chris, I'd check out The Kid with a Bike, but I'm not dying to do so. I've never seen a Dardennes film, but Aronofsky kinda killed them for me. After The Wrestler, I don't really want to see a Dardennes film.

You should definitely watch The Court Jester. Have you seen The Adventures of Robin Hood? You should watch that first.

I'm glad that you took down A Dangerous Method. I'm bored just thinking about that movie.

Lisa, more We Are Marshall posts, please. Not about We Are Marshall. I just mean more posts. If they're about We Are Marshall, that's a bonus.

Now, on to list talk....

Adrienne, there's been a lot of talk about the so-called "Jason Poole system," but we all know that that's the wimpy way. The Adrienne system, on the other hand, is perfectly valid and masculine through and through. Your mention of The Descendants is enough for me to not completely write the film off. I'm not a fan of Payne and I wasn't looking forward to this particular pain, but I'm willing to give it a chance with a relatively open mind. I've at least sort of warmed to the trailer after seeing it a couple of times.

Jeff's List

1) The Tree of Life
2) A Separation
3) Take Shelter
4) Le Havre
5) Drive
6) The Kid with a Bike
7) The Skin I Live In
8) The Mill and the Cross
9) Hugo
10) Meek's Cutoff

I still haven't seen A Separation, The Kid With a Bike, and The Skin I Live In. Meek's Cutoff is definitely a 2010 film. That leaves six films. Of those six films, each one of them appears on both of our lists. There's nothing to disagree with here and I won't quibble over placement.

Ben's List

1) Meek's Cutoff
2) Melancholia
3) The Tree of Life
4) Bombay Beach
5) The Skin I Live In
6) Trust
7) Another Earth
8) Circumstance
9) Black Death
10) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

How many times do I have to tell you guys that Meek's is a 2010 film? Otherwise, I've seen 'em all except for Bombay, Skin, Trust, Circumstance, and Tinker. Which is a lot I haven't seen. And, oh yeah, Black Death is also a 2010 film. Which leaves us with three titles. Tree of Life and Melancholia have become sort of fused in my mind. Those two films are both unique in the giganticness of their very personal visions. I'm with you in defending Another Earth against these neanderthals if it comes to that.

Jason's List

Wait a second, you didn't make a top ten list. I think I'll skip responding. I'm glad that you like The Way Back so much, but I'm not sure how it's possibly a 2011 film. It did get a theatrical release in the fall of 2010, but the studio just didn't know what to do with the thing, it played hardly anywhere, and disappeared. I'm looking forward to seeing Win Win. I don't know why I let that one slip through the cracks for so long. I'm a moderate fan of the director and the actors, so what am I waiting for?

Other than that, I'll say that, yes, I love Joyeaux Noel. I also greatly enjoyed Carion's more recent film, L'affaire Farewell.

Brandon's List

1) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
2) Certified Copy
3) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
4) Hugo
5) The Skin I Live In
6) Le Havre
7) Attack the Block
8) 13 Assassins
9) Take Shelter
10) A Dangerous Method

I put off my 2010 list for a long time because I never watched Certified Copy. Maybe it'll make it onto my 2012 list. I don't have much to comment on your list that I didn't already write. I'm glad that you put Attack the Block on there. That movie deserves all of the love and attention it can get.

That's all I've got in me for now.

2012 looks like it's going to be great. It's a shame that you guys will have all of those films on your 2013 lists.

The Best of a Decade: 2010 to 2019

I figure that if no one else can keep a film's release date straight, I might as well join the party and jumble my years all up. The following is a list of my favorite films so far from 2010 through 2019, listed in alphabetical order. Each one of these films is a five-star film in my book. I've decided to embrace this entire decade and start a list now. We'll see if these films hold up in 8 years. Right now, these are the films from the last two years that I absolutely adore.

Cold Weather

Meek's Cutoff

The Mill and the Cross

Take Shelter

True Grit

Most of those will come as no surprise. I've championed Cold Weather often in the past couple of months. My affection for Meek's Cutoff has been widely known. Mill and the Cross strikes the right non-narrative/narrative balance and is utterly unique. True Grit was raved about by me at the end of last year. Take Shelter might be the biggest surprise. I was initially disappointed, yes, but it has stayed with me in a way that no other film this year has. I think about it often and as I've said before, Chastain helped me reconcile with the ending.

So, those are the films I love. The ones that I cherish. Those happy few films that I could watch over and over again, would recommend heartily to all friends, and that I think will pass the test of time.

If that's not good enough for the lot of you, here is my updated (but still very much incomplete) 2010 list, followed by a preliminary 2011 list.

Top Ten 2010

10) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
9) Blue Valentine
8) Toy Story 3
7) Black Death
6) The Way Back
5) Small Town Murder Songs
4) Shutter Island
3) Cold Weather
2) Meek's Cutoff
1) True Grit

Top Ten 2011

10) Hugo
9) Another Earth
8) Melancholia
7) Drive
6) Tree of Life
5) Rise of the Planet of the Apes
4) The Guard
3) Le Havre
2) Take Shelter
1) The Mill and the Cross

I'm not really happy with this list. I'm just posting what I've got currently to get it out of the way and stop obsessing about it. I am happy and do feel strongly about my "Best of the Decade" list above. I refer all of you back to that list.

The Top Five of this 2011 list are the ones that I get really excited about. I get seriously enthusiastic. From six down, I find myself having a cold respect instead of a warm regard. I'll focus briefly on those first five...

I've got a Guard post coming soon, in which I celebrate the vulgarity of virtue. Rise of the Planet of the Apes just does everything that its type of movie should do. It does it so right. It does it well and it does it in 90 minutes. There is something so aesthetically CORRECT about an ape leading a cavalry charge on the Golden Gate Bridge. Le Havre was probably my favorite theatre-going experience of the year; the joy overflowed. Take Shelter met with some initial resistance in my callous heart. Maybe I wanted to distance myself from it and not give myself totally over. It won me in the end, which is amazing considering that the end is precisely what I got hung up on. The Mill and the Cross is an immersive experience film. Better than the hours I'd spend staring at paintings at the Met, Majewski successfully brings a painting alive; he walks us through a landscape of images, clarifying and sharing love without ever being didactic. A truly astonishing accomplishment. I stand astonished.

Finally, to make everyone happy. Here's me using the Jason Poole System:

2011, The Wimpy Way

All lists are in alphabetical order, unless otherwise noted.

Note: These are ALL of the 2011 films I've seen this year.

Best of the Best (meaning my favorites, not the objectively technically abstract "best"):
The Guard
Le Havre
The Mill and the Cross
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Take Shelter

Almost Made It (start the angry responses now):
Drive
Melancholia
The Tree of Life

On the Fence (all strong presences):
Another Earth
Attack the Block
Hugo
Moneyball
Winnie the Pooh

One Night Stands (don't expect any lasting relationship, but go ahead and call again):
The Adjustment Bureau
Cars 2
Contagion
Cowboys and Aliens
Real Steel
Source Code
Super 8

Meh - What's All the Fuss?
(Jason didn't have this category. I felt that there had to be something between "one night stands" and the "toilet." These are films that others liked that I was lukewarm toward.)
Deathly Hallows 2
Jane Eyre
Midnight in Paris
The Muppets
Warrior

These Belong In the Toilet (There are moments in each, however brief, that show promise; you still gotta flush that shit):
Bellflower
Septien
Your Highness

I Should Probably Give Another Chance Eventually Because I Treated It Unfairly:
Rango

Special Ranked Superhero Movie section (why are we ranking these and not the others; oh, the inconsistencies of the Jason Poole System!):
1. X-Men: First Class
2. Green Lantern
3. Thor

I Really Wanted to See These Films:
Blackthorn
Coriolanus
Hanna
J. Edgar
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
A Separation
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tyrannosaur
Win Win
I'm sure that there are others I'm forgetting.

Stick a fork in me. I'm done.