Umney's Alley - A Year in Film

A Year in Film: 2008

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What follows are my OCD attempts to list and rate every movie I watch in any given year. (I've done the same for my year's reading in the book log.) Given that I watch some relatively obscure films, I've set it up so that the film title links to the IMDb page for the film so you can get more information easily.

Starting in 2009, I began assigning out star ratings (out of five stars) to films I've watched. Five stars is equivalent to an A, 4½ to an A-/B+, four to a B, and so on.

12-31	The Darjeeling Limited	Much like watching Life Aquatic, Darjeeling made me wish Anderson would start writing movies with Owen Wilson again, as nothing has really come close to comparing to the one-two punch of Rushmore and Tenenbaums. That being said, I'm also reminded of why I keep coming back to Anderson films. There's no doubt that Anderson is a bit of an OCD filmmaker - from his elaborately choreographed shots to his obsessive background details, I would definitely imagine that Anderson saw a lot of himself in Francis's laminated itineraries here. But it's those details that really stick with you and work in his films, and Darjeeling is no exception. The movie itself is picaresque to the point of being meandering, and it ultimately just...sort of ends. But it's filled with great moments and some wonderful scenes, and Anderson's wonderful visuals. Flaws and all, I really enjoyed it; it just doesn't measure up to his best work.
12-30	Hotel Chevalier	Given that Anderson's short film was intended as the first chapter in The Darjeeling Limited, something I planned on watching today but wasn't able to, I find it hard to review this. On its own, it has a lot of what I like about Anderson - his understatement, the way he lets characters exist outside of the frame, the way he suggests without stating. But even so, the whole thing feels slight - like a first chapter of a longer tale. And, of course, it is...so I guess I have to see the whole thing to judge.
12-30	Bedazzled (1967)	A solidly fun, if slight, comedy about a man who sells his soul to get close to a woman. I've never seen the remake, but what knowledge I have of it seems that the comedy derives more from the situations, whereas this Bedazzled really works because of Moore and especially Cook, whose rapport and timing really sell things. That's not to say the situations aren't frequently hilarious - the sequence involving nuns just has me cracking up - but it's a low-key, quite humor that really worked for me. Cook, in particular, is marvelous, bringing charisma, charm, and humor to his portrayal of a somewhat washed-up and petty Satan. Honestly, I could have watched a whole movie of the conversations between the wishes and would have been just fine, but either way, I was quite satisfied with this.
12-26	Slumdog Millionaire	A wonderful little romantic fantasy of sorts from Danny Boyle, who brought you such family friendly fare as 28 Days Later and Trainspotting. Yes, that's a glib point - honestly, Slumdog is far more reminiscent of Boyle's own Millions, another story about money and a magical world. Honestly, I liked Millions more for its childlike innocence and more overt magical realism, but that doesn't say much bad about Slumdog, which brings some unexpected darkness and power about a life of poverty in India when you least expect it. Sure, the story's formula at its core, but that doesn't make it any less compellingly acted and told, and it doesn't make any of the scenes less effective. My only point that I'll make is the fact that this is getting a Best Picture push says less about Slumdog than it says about how weak 2008 has been. There's certainly nothing wrong with it, and I enjoyed almost everything about it; that being said, it's solidly good, but never quite great in any sense of the world. Still, very worth seeing.
12-16	Dark City	The film club pick this week, and one of my all-time favorite sci-fi pictures. I don't remember the last time I saw this, so I had that dread that maybe it wasn't as good as I remembered. No, it wasn't - it was better. With its rich visual style, its sense of dread and horror, its engrossing story, and its fascinating view on what makes us tick, Dark City is one of those movies that reminds me why I love films. It's a shame, then, that so many of my kids seemed iffy on it - to them, it was a pale imitation of The Matrix. Look, I enjoyed The Matrix - heck, I'm one of the few defenders of Reloaded (but not Revolutions) - but it kills me that Dark City, which plays with somewhat similar ideas in a more stylish, more intelligent, more thoughtful, and more compelling way - and did it first, dammit - is now lost forever in the shadow of that film. If you haven't seen Dark City, do yourself a favor and go check it out. You won't be sorry.
12-12	Joshua	I'll apparently be in a minority in this one, as Joshua seems to be building up a decent cult that acclaims it as an intelligent and thoughtful horror film. I went in hoping for that, but came out having seen a movie that a) isn't scary, b) isn't all that thoughtful, and c) isn't all that interesting. There's a great horror movie waiting to be made about the unease and tension that comes along with a newborn, and for a bit, Joshua seems like it might be that movie, but you soon realize that the movie doesn't really have much interesting going on under the hood, and as the plot spins into greater and greater absurdity, I found myself wishing I'd watched something else entirely.
12-12	Sunshine	I regret not seeing Sunshine in theaters, but seeing it in HD may be the next best thing, as I got to really appreciate the stunning beauty and visuals that Boyle brought to the film. Ultimately, Sunshine is a pretty standard space thriller, but it's executed with such a strong visual style, told with such intelligence, and deals with so many complex themes - nothing less than the divine - that the whole becomes much more than the sum of the parts. It's an intense experience, and one that comes across as a much better movie than I think it really is. That sounds like I'm criticizing it, which I'm not; I'm merely saying that this is Ebert's movie rule ("A movie is not about what it is about; it's about how it goes about it") in action. Sunshine is a minor masterpiece of mood, setting, and style, resulting in a hell of a ride.
12-10	JCVD	I can't say that I've seen a lot of Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, but I still feel safe in saying that this is probably the best film he's made, and it's all thanks to his performance. On surface, JCVD is just a generic heist story, but with the injection of Van Damme into the film, the movie becomes a savvy piece of self-criticism, and the results are pretty galvanizing. Funny and self-deprecating, JCVD ups the ante by pushing Van Damme into some dark psychological places, and allowing some real emotion out there on the screen. The result is uneven - for instance, the much celebrated monologue is a hell of a scene, but it really killed the flow for me - but I still really enjoyed it, flaws and all. It's nice to see an actor turn a vicious look on themselves, and doing so with the humor, class, and genuine sense of entertainment that JCVD provides makes it well worth checking out.
12-7	The Road Warrior	A classic post-apocalyptic action film whose lasting impact and influence isn't hard to understand. It basically plays out like a Western version of a Kurosawa film - the lone and selfish warrior who finds a group needing assistance - but, as Ebert likes to say, it's not what The Road Warrior is about so much as it's how it goes about it. The climactic car chase and battle is justly famous, and pretty intense, but it's the devastated world that lingers in the mind and really sticks with you. I had never seen this before, so I don't have much to compare it to, but the Blu-Ray is a really gorgeous copy of the film, and was probably the best way to jump into it. It's a lot of fun, and holds up very well.
12-5	The Lost Boys	Scheduling this as the midnight movie the same week as Let the Right One In debuted? A bad, bad idea. I never liked The Lost Boys hugely, but watching it again really reminded me just what an artificial, contrived, desperately commercial film it is. Really, it's not much better than Anne Rice's preening, hyper-sexualized vampires, in many ways; although The Lost Boys is a little more willing to look at the horror aspects of vampires, it mainly does so in laughably bad and silly ways. Maybe I'm just not the audience for this anymore, or maybe it's the heavy layers of 80s cheese. Or maybe it's just the blatant pandering to demographics that kills it. Whatever the case, I had a good time joking about it with my friend Ryan, but sure as hell didn't like watching the movie.
12-4	Blade Runner	Film club selection for the week. Watching movies with my film club is an interesting experience; half of me is enthralled in the film, while the other half is acutely aware of the students, and trying to monitor their reactions and feelings. Honestly, I was a little surprised by the positive reactions when it finished, as I genuinely couldn't get much of a read off of them during the film. The discussion afterward was one of the best yet, and really got into not just the issues of the film but also the nature of the movie itself, and whether its slow pace is a crippling factor or not. As for my own reaction, I enjoyed it less than seeing it on the big screen earlier this year; I think that, when you see it on the big screen, the often glacial pacing is less apparent because you can get lost in Scott's amazing world. In the end, I love the issues and ideas of Blade Runner, and adore its style, but the pacing really can be trying at times - even if it is intentionally so.
11-30	The Life and Times of Tim	Especially by HBO original series standards, this seems to have been neglected on almost every level. And that's a shame, because it's absolutely hilarious, and measures up nicely to just about any other HBO comedy series. Imagine Curb Your Enthusiasm with a more likable main character and a greater sense of absurdity and you'd come close to capturing the spirit of The Life and Times of Tim, but even that description doesn't do justice to the beautifully building humor and gleeful sense of chaotic absurdity it brings to the table. I hope this did well; I really enjoyed it, and I'd hate to see it die after only one season.
11-30	Paths of Glory	One of Kubrick's best films plays this weekend at the Belcourt in a pristine print. What a joy - although using that word around this film may paint a misleading picture. Bitter, cynical, and uncompromising, this is probably the crown jewel of the first half of Kubrick's career, and it's fascinating to see the man coming into his own as a director. From the long sweeping trench shots to the epic battle scenes, from the brutality of war to that haunting ending, Paths of Glory is a career-defining film, one whose raw emotional impact has never lessened over the years. A rage against the evils of war and yet the nobility of soldiers, Paths is must-see viewing for any serious student of film - it's spectacularly filmed, but its real power lies in the tale it tells, one whose power to enrage hasn't lessened at all.
11-29	Let the Right One In	Saying that this is the among the best vampire movies I've ever seen doesn't really say much; as a genre, vampire movies have never done much for me. So I'll say, rather, that this ranks among the best films of the horror genre, not solely for its incredibly eerie and unsettling atmosphere, but for the way that it's so heavily steeped in fundamentally human drama, weaving a story that's rich with pathos, humor, and love, even as the frequently horrific events unfold. I'm somewhat dying to go see it again, which is a rare thing for me, but it's rare to find a horror film this rich and effective. With beautiful direction, spectacular use of sound, and a story whose details keep offering up more depth and thoughtfulness, Let the Right One In is a film that will be discussed in horror annals for a long time - and deservedly so. If you get the chance, go see it - I can't recommend it enough.
11-26	Synecdoche, New York	Sprawling and unwieldy, even a few days later I'm not sure if Synecdoche was a jumbled mess or a piece of incisive genius, though I suspect the truth lies somewhere between the two. And yet, for all its flaws, most notably taking far too long in clearing its throat and really launching into its premise, even days later I can't stop thinking about the movie and all it tried to do. Few movies I've ever seen are this ambitious, taking on creativity, the meaning of life, our own purpose in the world, the nature of death, and more, all in a surreal and bizarre narrative that I don't think I could begin to explain...and to have it all become so frequently powerful and moving is just icing on the cake. It will probably be a film I admire more than enjoy, but any film this ambitious that mostly succeeds...well, I'm all for it, and it's a mark of this one's impact that I find myself still thinking so deeply about it so long after I've seen it.
11-25	Breaking Bad	A stunner of a show from AMC that has me so hooked that I'm still up at midnight after finishing up the first season. The premise sounds gimmicky/goofy - a high school chemistry teacher who finds out that he's dying decides to manufacture meth to provide for his family - but the execution is anything but, delving headlong into murky moral waters, avoiding the easy answers and cheap comedy in favor of something far more complex, unsettling, and powerful. There's suspense sequences that the Coen brothers would love, and throwaway moments of an absolutely devastating power. And, striding through the middle of it all is Bryan Cranston. Best known until now for his performance as Malcolm's dad, Cranston brings Walter to life, complete with flaws, emotions, sadness, and all the pathos needed to make this from cheap drama to gripping American tragedy - or is it? Avoiding easy answers, going places I didn't expected, Breaking Bad blew me away, and you bet your ass I'm on board for season two whenever it starts. If you think HBO's got the monopoly on great television, go out and watch these seven episodes now.
11-21	Troll 2	I have a limited tolerance for the "so bad it's good" train of thought regarding movies; like my friend Ryan says, "a shitty movie is a shitty movie." True, sometimes you get something so inept that it takes on its own weird charm, like Plan 9. But, most of the time, you get something like Troll 2, which is really without any redeeming merits whatsoever. A failure on every imaginable level - script, acting, effects, sound, even editing, for God's sake- Troll 2 has a reputation as the "best worst movie ever," but it's really just plain awful. I can't say strongly enough how bad it is, and not in a fun way. It's just plain dreck.
11-20	The Maltese Falcon	Third film club meeting, and our first truly classic film. How was it received? Well, overall; the kids loved the dialogue, and the after-film discussion was richly rewarding, with the kids taking on some of the themes and bleakness of noir in interesting ways. Had I to do it again, I might take my friend Ryan's advice and do Double Indemnity, or take my own second choice (The Big Sleep), but I think as an intro to noir, it's hard to do better than Falcon, with its rich rogue's gallery and iconic Bogart performance. Given that I'm pairing it with a neo-noir (Blade Runner), I wanted to go as fundamental as possible, and how do you go with a more legendary noir than The Maltese Falcon? Funny, quick, sharp, nasty, and involving, it's a film that holds up over the years almost flawlessly.
11-16	Barry Lyndon	Of the films we think of as "Kubrick films" - with that cold detachment, that supreme control, those stunning visuals that Kubrick perfected in the second half of his career - it seems like Barry Lyndon is the neglected one of the batch. Watching it on the big screen reminds me just what a crime that is. Filled with stunning visuals and amazing lighting choices (Kubrick managed to film the candlelight scenes with no additional lighting), Lyndon is first and foremost a period piece, but in many ways, it's a refreshing antidote to the polished, mannered, clean period pieces that we're so used to seeing. Rather than the charming rogues that Hollywood tries to fill the period with, Lyndon is filled with cynics, criminals, and humans who push our sympathy to the limit and then some. Kubrick unleashes a devastating price in the film's second half, as even a villain's one act of kindness is repaid with evil. It's a savagely ironic film, and far better than its relatively neglected reputation would suggest.
11-14	A Clockwork Orange	Watching this on the big screen, I'm reminded that it seems like A Clockwork Orange is destined to be lumped in forever with films like Fight Club and Donnie Darko - films that collect a cult following, but often for the wrong reasons. Clockwork is that to an extreme; it boggles the mind how anyone can take the film as an endorsement of Alex's actions - isn't it obvious that we're in a subjective point of view, viewing the world through Alex's eyes, so of course he's the hero here? Stepping away from his mind, his actions would be repellent and horrific, but Kubrick assumed we were smart enough to see that. Apparently a lot of people aren't, sadly, and they take the film as an example of glorification of violence. Myself? I admire it now more than when I first saw it, but for different reasons. It's not just the fully-realized and surreal dystopian future, and it's not the dense and ambivalent look at justice, vengeance and the way we approach both. More than that, it's the way Kubrick that took a book that was essentially a functional fable and created a complex, layered tale that keeps offering up more to discuss the deeper you get. Don't let the annoying fanbase ruin it for you; it's a classic that gets more complicated the more you discuss it and look into it.
11-10	Scotland, PA	As part of my English IV class's study of Macbeth, and I forgot how much I really liked this movie, and how completely hilarious it often is. There are parts that don't entirely work - the suspicions cast on Banco only really work as a leftover from the play, for instance - but so many other sections are so inspired that it's hard to complain. From Walken's vegetarian Macduff to Tierney's crumbling Lady Macbeth, the performances are wonderful, and the sense of fun and affection for the play that permeates the whole enterprise makes watching it a treat. And, you know, some of the updates are legitimately great - the movie's take on Lady Macbeth's bloody hands is a minor stroke of genius. As a movie, it's good, not great, but as an accompaniment to the play and a comedy, it's a lot of fun.
11-8	Rachel Getting Married	Demme's latest movie is marketed like a wacky female comedy, but plays out as a powerhouse drama/comedy, mixing a slew of elements - wedding drama, family crises, addiction, and more - into something far more than the sum of its parts. The whole cast excels in what's obviously a movie with a lot of improv, but this is Hathaway's movie, all the way; the talent she's displayed in the past in no way prepares you for her absolutely devastating performance here, and her somewhat wholesome image to date makes her painful, flawed character here all the more effective. There's no doubt that the film could be trimmed a little bit, and occasionally meanders, but with such vibrant and wholly realized characters, and such a compelling tale, it's hard to complain. One of the best dramas of the year, and one of the year's best performances here, thanks to Hathaway.
11-6	Plan 9 From Outer Space	Second film club movie, and the crowd about doubled. I was a little nervous - I have a low tolerance for "so bad it's good" movies in general, and while Plan 9 surpasses most of those, it still can either be a lot of fun or just dull. Luckily, we had a good crowd, and the kids had a ton of fun watching it, joking along with it, and generally having a good time. As for myself, I remembered just how hilarious parts of it were, and just how incredibly inept the whole thing is. Next time is a legitimate classic - The Maltese Falcon - so we'll have to see how the kids react to something legitimately stunning.
11-2	Fear and Desire	Thanks to the Belcourt, I got a chance to see Stanley Kubrick's extremely rare first film projected on a big screen, and, well...let's just say that Kubrick was right to suppress it. The vast majority of problems come from the script, which is alternately hilariously redundant and insanely pretentious, most notably in the long voiceovers which go far beyond any normal definition of incomprehensible. As for the direction...Kubrick likened the movie to a kid playing with crayons, and I think that's a good way to look at it - it's a director experimenting with different things, and seeing what works. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them don't work, in any way...but there are glimpses here and there of a vision beginning to emerge. I can't recommend it in any way, but as a Kubrick fan and a film buff, I don't regret watching it at all, just for the experience.
11-2	The Shining	Seeing the classic horror film on a big screen is a complete joy, allowing you to immerse yourself in Kubrick's malevolent, frightening world. What really works about The Shining is the way so much of it gets under your skin, working its way into your brain. The bartender scenes with their bizarre lighting, the unsettling glimpses of the hotel's true face underneath, that surreal bathroom dialogue, and Nicholson's balls-to-the-wall but effective performance. Watching it is watching a master at work, and Kubrick's tightly controlled universe unsettles and unnerves in a way few movies I've ever seen have pulled off.
11-1	Zack and Miri Make a Porno	There are so many reasons to get irritated at Kevin Smith - his self-aggrandizing, his occasionally self-congratulatory dialogue - that it's nice to see that some talent and heart is really starting to show through in his movies. With Jersey Girl and Clerks II, Smith started to show that he could bring true, genuine emotion to his trademark raunchy humor, but it's rare to find it as successfully done as it is here. Unabashedly an adult movie, Zack and Miri manages to create likable characters, a genuinely funny sensibility, and a great love story that puts so many other "romantic comedies" to shame. It's definitely not for the easily offended, but, hey, the title tells you that. What I'll tell you is that it's funny, often hilarious, and surprisingly sweet. and even well-filmed, which is a nice thing to see Smith doing.
11-1	Sukiyaki Western Django	There's a lot of complaints you can make about Takeshi Miike, but making a dull film is almost never one of them, and this certainly doesn't disappoint there. A batshit-insane mashup of spaghetti westerns, anime, action films, and badly dubbed samurai films, Sukiyaki Western Django often doesn't make a damned bit of sense, and frequently just meanders off into pure insanity. But, oh, Lord, is it ever a fun time. To be fair, it sometimes stretches a little thin between bursts, but the bursts more than make up for any flaws. It's not a great movie, but it's certainly unique and entertaining, and I had a great time watching it. Just don't expect anything remotely close to normalcy.
10-31	The Rocky Horror Picture Show	Midnight movie with full crowd participation. Honestly, I had put this off for years, thanks to some irritating friends in college who were overly obsessed with it, but I have to admit that I had a fun time. Yeah, I still think the movie's pretty awful (and not always a fun awful - the last act is just plain dull), but there's something about seeing a movie with an affectionate crowd that really just makes for a fun experience. I've been told that I need to go another time, that the one I went to wasn't very good, but I had a fun time with it, and regret it a lot less than I thought I might. A fun experience, far more than I expected.
10-26	Rosemary's Baby	I had memories of enjoying this the last time I saw it, which made a rewatch, even on the big screen, a pretty major disappointment. There are still aspects that I like, most notably Gordon's affably deranged "little old lady" part, and the pure black comedy of the last ten minutes. But what I last time shrugged away as the fault of being too familiar with the source material this time just felt like sluggish filmmaking to the point of tedium. I think the lack of ambiguity (as opposed to Repulsion) really kills this; everything's so spelled out that the journey just seems to take far too long to get to an obvious conclusion, and the unease just doesn't work thanks to the lack of a credible threat. A huge letdown, considering how much I remember enjoying it and how much other Polanski I've started to enjoy.
10-25	Saw V	I've defended the Saw series for a while now, mainly because a) they're trashy fun and b) I've always really enjoyed the way that they've constructed a surprisingly tight and complex continuity across what should be a quick series of cash-ins. That being said, there are certain things you expect from a Saw movie, and sadly, V fails on most of them. While a couple of the traps are pretty fascinating, the usually interesting moral component of them feels lacking and absent, and for a series so known for its twist endings to pass off "plot" as "twist" (particularly plot so obvious from early on) is colossally disappointing. I still enjoy the dense continuity, and I thought the flashbacks were kind of interesting, but it's pretty much a failure, and not even enjoyable in the trashy way I've liked the others.
10-23	Freaks	First film with my film club, and I'd forgotten some things about it, chiefly how meandering it gets at points, and how funny the subplot about the conjoined twins is. What I hadn't forgotten, though, was how intense and effective the climax was; I was genuinely concerned that I had remembered it as being better than it was, but I was more than satisfied watching it again. A great piece of exploitation horror that has a raw and unsettling impact that's not as easy to shrug off as you might think.
10-19	Repulsion	On the big screen, and while the print wasn't pristine, it was infinitely superior to the wretched DVD. It also made me far more acutely aware of the way Polanski plays with space, shifting the size of things in unexpected ways. I remain pretty stunned by this; it's a masterful psychological thriller that immerses you in a deeply disturbed psyche. I got into an interesting discussion afterward as to whether it was a misogynistic film, and it's definitely a valid question, but even if it is, the talent on display makes it a remarkable achievement. Well worth seeing on the big screen.
10-17	Eagle Eye	For all the flak and heckling this seems to be getting, I quite enjoyed it. Sure, there's some suspension of disbelief around the main concept, but I feel like the movie follows its own internal logic pretty well, and delivers a pretty entertaining thrill ride along the way, even managing to play with some Big Ideas in a surprisingly skilled way. No, it's nothing brilliant, and a lot of it does stretch imagination, but I didn't mind it; it seemed like WarGames by way of a 70s paranoia thriller, and I'm a sucker for the latter. Maybe my standards are just low, but I had a good time watching it, and don't really get all the hate. (And, on an unrelated note: I never recognized the voice, so when I found it who it was, I was a little shocked - I really didn't think it sounded anything like her. Odd.)
10-16	Tropic Thunder	FINALLY got around to seeing this just before it left theaters, and I quite enjoyed it, though not as much as the summer's other big comedy-action hybrid, Pineapple Express. That being said, as a movie fan, this is pretty hilarious, and it's tailor-made to appeal to Hollywood insiders, most notably a rather infamous foul-mouthed surreal cameo that I quite enjoyed. Downey once again demonstrates how lucky we are to have him back in form, and while Stiller still is not the world's most versatile actor, I'm reminded how funny he is behind the camera, creating some hilarious running gags and some truly hysterical characters (Nolte stole the show for me). Well worth seeing, especially if you're a movie person.
10-16	Blindness	Having finished the book about a week back, I wanted to check this out before it left theaters. Given all the bad reviews and critical reaction, I went in with a little bit of dread, but I was actually really impressed with this. There's no doubt that it's a fairly bleak, cryptic work, but a lot of the complaints I've read from critics seemed as applicable to the original book as to the movie - and, given that I liked the book, I don't share a lot of those complaints. What Meirelles brings to the film is a fascinating visual style that enhances the disorientation of suddenly finding yourself blind, and a great vision of just how hellish Saramago's landscape became. It's definitely not for all tastes (trust me, parts of this make Lord of the Flies look cheerful), but as a fascinating view of a world in panic and of human inability to connect, it does a remarkably strong job.
10-16	Scanners	A decent enough sci-fi/horror/adventure hybrid that would probably be forgotten today if not a) for that infamous exploding head and b) for being an early Cronenberg work. It's lacking a lot of the polish and intriguing ideas that Cronenberg's best work had, and the whole thing feels a little like everyone is just going through the motions. (In fact, it really feels like a cheap movie version of some culty sci-fi book series, even though it's not.) Combine that with a lead who feels like a bad Judge Reinhold knock-off (and just imagine how bad that must be) and you have a movie that really doesn't merit a cult audience, but is worth checking out if you're a Cronenberg completist.
10-16	Foxy Brown	Foxy Brown may be more culty and popular than Coffy, but honestly, I didn't like it nearly as much. There's definitely a few more iconic moments - gun in the afro! - and it's a little more action-driven, but it's missing some of the nice character moments and plot progression that made me like Coffy so much. I wonder if some of that wasn't due to a last minute script change; apparently Foxy was originally a sequel to Coffy, but was changed at the last minute for fear of hurting box office. The result definitely feels a little scabbed over in places. It's a lot of fun, but I definitely recommend Coffy over this.
10-15	Coffy	Classic piece of blaxploitation made so by Pam Grier's fantastic screen presence. Coffy pulls a neat trick by not only embracing black culture but also making its protagonist a woman - not a asexualized version like Ripley in the Alien movies, but an all-out, sexualized, independent woman, and Pam Grier plays it to the max. Combine Grier's sexy, violent presence with some great shoot-outs, an interesting anti-drug message, and some great supporting roles (most notably, the inimitable Sid Haig as a Russian (?) thug), and you have a really great piece of entertainment that seems sadly forgotten.
10-15	C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America	In spinning his alternate history arising after the South's victory in the Civil War, Willmott makes some valid points, but they're drowned out by his own sense of cleverness and superiority. The actual technical aspects of this - it's presented as a television broadcast of a British documentary, complete with commercials - are well done, and I like the way that Willmott uses so much real-life aspects to give realism to the film. Those same real-life aspects, though, are also what ultimately made the film irritating and grating to me, and washed away the good aspects. Too often, Willmott goes with the oh-so-clever link to "our" time, forcing his interesting alternate world into a meeting with ours to make the audience laugh knowingly. The result just seems too in love with its own wit to be tolerable, which is a shame, because there are some great moments and ideas here about race and the way we deal with it as a nation; it's just addressed here in a way that's far too simplistic and facile to do the issue as much justice as it needs.
10-14	A Night at the Opera	Not the best Marx brothers film - nothing really can match the sustained anarchy and insanity of Duck Soup - but still a complete riot with too many great scenes to list. The movie definitely suffers from a tad too much plot at points, and the long musical section in the middle kills the momentum pretty badly. But balance that against Groucho's brilliant verbal play and Harpo's incredible silent comedy, to say nothing of that famous stateroom scene or the bizarre police investigation of Groucho's hotel room. Wonderfully hilarious; I'm a sucker for the Marx brothers' brand of absurdity, and it was definitely the mood lifter I needed after The Seventh Seal's dense hopelessness.
10-14	The Seventh Seal	The Seventh Seal has such a forbidding reputation that it's almost intimidating to sit and watch it. Is there a movie more symbolic of dense, symbolic art cinema? So it's almost a shock when you finally watch it and find something so accessible, so fundamentally human, and - in parts - so funny. The remarkable tale of a knight who returns home from the Crusades to find his homeland ravaged by plague, Bergman's film grapples with major, massive issues no less than the existence of God, faith, and more, and yet does so while spinning a fascinating, wonderful story. Unsurprisingly, Ebert does a much better job discussing this film than I ever could, but my opinion is much the same: despite all the parodies, despite the reputation, it remains an engaging, thought-provoking, powerful, incredible film so, so much less pretentious and dry than I dreaded.
10-13	The Fortune Cookie	It may be the weakest Wilder film I've seen to date, but saying that would sound like I'm calling it bad, which I'm not; it's still a fantastic film - it's just got some small pacing issues and an ending that doesn't entirely ring true with the viciously dark and cynical tone of the rest of the film. That being said, those quibbles are both minor at best, and totally redeemed by Matthau's Oscar-winning performance. Although, it must be said, he's basically just playing Walter Matthau...but when the performance is this funny, this wonderful, that seems like a harsh complaint. Almost as cynical in some ways as Ace in the Hole, The Fortune Cookie is buoyed by the wonderful play between Lemmon and Matthau, who began their on-screen partnership here. And what a joy it is to watch them together.
10-13	Some Like It Hot	Another one of those movies you fear might be overshadowed by its reputation, but comes out even better than you hoped for. I adore Lemmon, of course, and his part here is completely hilarious, but Curtis really steals the movie with an uncanny Cary Grant impersonation and so many deadpan deliveries that I lost count. Of course, there's also the stellar dialogue, the brilliant gags, the smart writing, and the incredible sexiness of Marilyn Monroe, whose difficult on-set behavior was totally worth it for her presence in the film. Funny, smart, gleefully sarcastic, Some Like It Hot is every bit as good as you've heard it was. Another home run for Wilder, who I have yet to see a bad film by.
10-12	The Manchurian Candidate (1962)	I remember liking the remake quite a bit, but it doesn't even compare to the original, which I finally got to see, and on the big screen to boot. Everyone knows, and rightfully so, what a masterful piece of paranoia filmmaking this is; after all. combine a great story with Frankenheimer's fascinating direction (most notably in a stunning dream sequence of sorts near the beginning of the film) and you have a superb film. But what no one talks about is the dark, dark humor and satire in the film, the way it swings for everyone and takes no prisoners; I loved the attack on McCarthy, even in the midst of the Cold War. (The best bit, to me: a brilliant use of a ketchup bottle.) It's really a fantastic film, mixing great acting (Sinatra's never been better; Lansbury is chilling), a twisty and effective tale, outstanding and unique direction, and coming up with something that succeeds far beyond anything I expected it to. It's all I had heard and then some.
10-8	How to Lose Friends and Alienate People	A pretty bad film ruined mostly by an inability to decide what it wants to be. Is it a wacky screwball comedy? Is it a romance? Is it a satire of fame and the famous? A father-son story? Or is it some uneasy mix of all of those, doing none successfully and resulting in a massive mess? Sadly, it's the latter; despite the best efforts of an overqualified cast (especially Bridges, who is far too good for the film) and a few scattered laughs (the best revolves around a movie trailer), this is mostly just long, dull, and tedious in the worst way.
9-26	The Warriors	By any objective standards, this is pretty much a horrible film. The acting is so far over the top that I think they may have looped back to bottom, the story is difficult to discern, and the sense of any sort of visual coherence in terms of keeping the viewer oriented...man, just forget it. That being said, seeing this as a midnight movie with a really enthusiastic and wildly participating crowd, who enjoyed the movie as the camp-fest that it is and loved it all the more for its flaws...it was definitely the way to see it. I don't know that I'd enjoy it as much without that sort of crowd, but maybe I'll try some day. For now, I'll be happy with a mediocre movie, but a great movie-going experience.
9-26	City Lights	Widely regarded as Chaplin's best work, I finally got the chance not only to see this, but to see it on the big screen. I really liked it, but I don't think it's my favorite Chaplin; still, I can definitely understand those who do. As with all Chaplin, the gags are hilarious, but it's the sentiment that both surprises and even touches you; I defy anyone to watch the final scene and not be moved in the least. It's a wonderful film, with some brilliant gags (the appearance of the elephant killed me) and a sweetly moving story.
9-19	Midnight Cowboy	A remarkable film that was almost entirely not what I expected, but that I liked nonetheless, mostly because of the fantastic performances by Hoffman and Voight. I think that Ebert makes some good points in classifying the film as good but flawed; I don't entirely agree with him, but I think he definitely points out a few problems with the film. And yet, I still found a lot to admire in the film, from its wonderful capturing of the Times Square atmosphere to that quietly devastating final scene, from the homosexual undercurrent (handled far more interestingly and subtly than I might have expected) to the painful portrait of poverty. There are some mis-steps (I agree with Ebert about the violent scene being out of character), but what I expected was borderline pornography; what I got instead was a powerful and draining character study about two friends in a difficult time.
9-16	Burn After Reading	Just like you might expect from the Coens, the brothers follow up their Oscar-winning No Country with something entirely different. Yet, there are some thematic connections; once again, the Coens dabble with the idea of the pointlessness of it all, the way that the universe seems to have a grim sense of humor. In Burn, though, it's all played with a grim, blacker-than-black sense of humor, and if dark comedy is your thing, you'll love it. Me? I thought it was hilarious, with great performances by the whole cast (Simmons and Pitt were my favorites, though). Not for all tastes, and it's not in the upper tier of the Coens' work. Still, it's hilarious, and even the weakest Coens work - and this most assuredly is not that - is head and shoulders above almost anything else out there. A gleefully dark comedy, a mockingly bleak spy thriller, a screwball comedy...it's all of this and more, and it works in ways that only filmmakers as talented and capable as the Coens could pull off.
9-15	The Red Balloon	A beloved classic, despite its short running time, and it's not hard to understand why, as it's rare to find a movie with this much pure joy and love in every frame. The story of a friendship between a little boy and a large red balloon, the movie is sweet, funny, touching, and magical in every sense of the world, and I can't imagine watching it and not getting this wonderful sense of the childlike wonder we all used to have. Don't let the French origin intimidate you; this is all but silent, and it's the kind of film that I can't imagine anyone not enjoying and treasuring in its own little way.
9-14	Once	What a wonderful, magical little movie. I don't want to write too much about it, not because I couldn't, but because some movies should just be experienced, not dissected. Simply put, it's one of the most romantic movies I've ever seen, and pure magic, from opening to closing. Any fan of musicals, any fan of films, or anyone who's been in love will find something to love here. I can't praise it enough.
9-13	The Invasion	A deeply frustrating movie, mainly because you can see a good to great suspense and horror film trying desperately to escape. Unfortunately, the much ballyhooed studio editing is really evident throughout, and the end result is a smattering of great, unsettling scenes with little to no coherent plot to string them together. It reminds me of when I wrote stories in high school, and was so obsessed with my finales that I'd skip the setup, not realizing that it's the setup that makes the endings work. Anyways, it's like they set out to disprove the old adage about a great movie being made up of three great scenes and no bad ones; this has plenty of great scenes, and none that are too bad, but it feels like there's a lot of missing film, and the result feels disjointed and baffling, with a slew of promising ideas and themes that go nowhere. A frustrating and kind of depressing movie to glimpse what might have been - doubtful the original will ever see the light of day, but I'd like to see it.
9-12	Y Tu Mamá También	A simple plot description - two young men go on a road trip with an older woman - might indicate that you've seen this movie a hundred times before. In the broadest of terms, maybe, but by and large, you really haven't. Y Tu... is a movie that lives in the details, from the narrator's wonderful asides (one of many clear homages to Jules and Jim, which also shares a similar story in many ways) to the way Cuaron frames so many shots that manage to tell multiple stories at a time. Most wonderful of all is the way that the film takes its three characters and makes genuine people out of them, even Luisa, whose older woman role is the stuff of adolescent fantasy, and yet here feels like a genuine, fascinating person with real needs, desires, and personality. It's a really wonderful movie that far surpasses the limitations of the "sexy road trip" movie, and really affected me deeply at several moments throughout. Really, I'm just kind of mad that I waited so long to see it.
9-11	Live Free or Die Hard	Maybe it's the benefit of lowered expectations, or maybe it's favorable comparisons with another long-delayed fourth part (Indiana Jones), but I had a lot of fun with this. Unlike the execrable Crystal Skulls, it genuinely feels here like everyone's having a good time, especially Willis, who brings a much needed sense of humor to his character and genuinely makes his part a joy to watch. And, yes, I'm sure there's probably just as much CGI here as in Indy, but it doesn't feel as bad, and while the setpieces have definitely moved away from the claustrophobic genius of the original Die Hard, there's still an ingenuity to them that's fun. It's not a great movie, but it's certainly fun enough, and I don't regret watching it; it certainly does more credit to its series than Lucas and Spielberg did.
9-10	Death and the Maiden	The first act of this is a bit of a chore, but once things really start rolling with Weaver's re-arrival, the film becomes a gripping thriller that plays with a lot of fascinating issues. I definitely agree with the general consensus that Kingsley is the strongest point of the film and Weaver the weakest, but I think the film succeeds more for its subtext and the way Polanski has such a firm grip on the power dynamics, claustrophobia, and historical pain of the situation, expanding a personal drama into something far more global and thoughtful. It's a tense little morality play, and watching it spiral out into something more and more complex is a rewarding experience.
9-8	Balls of Fury	A tepid comedy that's far more miss than hit. The best thing about Will Ferrell comedies is Ferrell himself, who brings a genuinely funny comic sensibility to them; this plays out like a Will Ferrell comedy without that one major asset, and the result is labored, forced, and by and large painfully unfunny. There are a couple of moments here and there that elicited a chuckle, but mostly I was just glad when it was over.
9-7	The Night of the Hunter	A chilling and unique thriller that's far too neglected, despite so many incredible elements. Mitchum's iconic role as the villainous "preacher" of course is the main legacy of the film, and rightfully so; his performance is a stunning one, oozing menace and evil all while keeping it carefully hidden and reserved. But there's so, so much more here, including some absolutely incredible images that give the film a haunting, nightmarish quality (my favorite involves a shot at the bottom of a lake), and help create a fairy-tale in the true Grimm sense of the word feel to the movie. It's really a great thriller, and it's a shame that Laughton never made any movies; there's a unique feel to this that really is sticking with me in a way that not enough movies do anymore.
9-7	Pineapple Express	Take some of the great 80s action-comedy hybrids, mix them with an indie pedigree in the form of director David Gordon Green, and add in some pot humor, and you get Pineapple Express, a likable and frequently hilarious action comedy that manages to be genuinely funny and exciting at the same time. The film works on the strong lead performances; of course Rogen is fun, but it's Franco's show to steal, and does he ever pull it off, making his character a gleeful mix of drug-addled humor and eager-to-please-puppy. Toss in some great supporting bits (my favorite would have to be Craig Robinson's perpetually put-upon thug) and you have a great action movie that manages to be hilarious throughout. Is it the best of the Apatow-gang movies? No - the ending climax gets a little too actiony for its own good, and the dramatic parts don't quite work as well as they need to - but it's certainly a fun one, and a great summer movie, and it's all worth it for Franco's spectacular role.
9-5	What Is It?	See my thoughts entry for details on this.
9-3	Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans	I went into this expecting more of a story, and I think that's definitely not the way to look at this; the story is simplistic, intentionally so; it resembles more a fable or an archetype than a true plot. But from a technical and visual point of view, the film is a marvel. Without voices or much in the way of sound, Murnau does an incredible job giving the camera a voice and a perspective, and it's a magical viewing that really wouldn't be equaled for a long time, thanks to technological limitations. Whatever the downfalls of the story, the emotional and breathtaking visuals more than make up for it, and result in one of the most magnificent silent films I've ever seen, as what results is more art than classic film.
9-2	Steamboat Bill, Jr.	Classic Buster Keaton comedy that not only reminds me of how much I like the little Keaton I've seen, but really makes me want to go find some more. The plot's simple - a college wimp reunites with his steamboat captain father and tries to impress both him and a local girl - but it's hardly the point, and trust me, there's nothing here you don't expect. No, this is all about Keaton's physical genius, and that wonderful, hilariously stoic face. I enjoyed the whole thing, but the finale, in which a cyclone hits the town, is some seriously jaw-dropping stuff, and it's a wonder Keaton wasn't killed in that famous house stunt. It's a great silent comedy, and a lot of fun, no matter how you look at it.
9-1	Jules and Jim	The complicated story of two friends and the woman they both love as they pair off and change through the years. The movie starts with a burst of carousel music, and the first half has that carnival atmosphere to it - it's fun, enjoyable, laid-back, and just seems to take whatever comes along. It almost surprised me how attached I'd become to the characters by the film the story became something more complicated; I found myself realizing that I liked the movie much more than I thought I did, and was far more involved than I realized. At its core, it's a tale of friendship and love, but it's done so well and with such attention to character that it's no wonder it's become a classic.
9-1	Sansho the Bailiff	Unbelievably depressing movie that manages to find a poetry and power that I wasn't entirely expecting, especially since it does so without compromising its brutally dark view of the world. The first hour is pretty rough, but as the film progresses, and you can see the whole thing as one piece (especially the destination), it comes into more focus, and the structure of the whole thing becomes more obvious and potent. And, man, that final scene. It's far from a happy movie, but as a tale of mercy, kindness, and the difficulty of maintaining one's self in a horrific world, it's a beautiful fairy tale in its own way, and it resonated with me in ways that I never really expected.
8-31	On the Waterfront	Justly acclaimed classic that becomes a little distasteful as you start realizing what it's all really about. First, the good: the story, about a man who tries to justify his conscience while struggling against a corrupt union, is a great tale, all building up to a fantastic ending (well, apart from one aspect which felt a little too forced for me). And, yes, Brando is every bit as good as it's been said, bringing a powerfully natural and moving performance to the movie, one that single-handedly raises it from being simply a good film to a great one. But knowing Kazan's past, the film's too easy to read as a justification for his dealings with HUAC, and by most accounts it's what he meant it as. Comparing speaking up against a corrupt union that kills with naming names in a federal witchhunt is a borderline offensive comparison, and reading the movie on that level becomes a far less rewarding experience. So, ignore the past, and watch it for what it is; on its own merits, it's a great film.
8-30	Wet Hot American Summer	A goofy, amiable spoof movie that focuses on, of all things, 80s camp movies. The area its parodying is ridiculously small, but the movie's likable spirit and frequently hilarious gags more than make up for, you know, a lack of anything resembling a plot and a few segments that could have used trimming (i.e., anything involving the Black Hole of Comedy that is Molly Shannon). Christopher Meloni was by far my favorite thing about the movie; his bizarre conversation with...well, you know if you've seen it...killed me. Sprinkle in some brilliant spoof montages, magnificent throwaway lines, and a willingness to do just about anything for a laugh, and you've got an endearing film more enjoyable than it probably should be.
8-30	High and Low	Two movies for the price of one, as Kurosawa fuses a complex moral drama onto a detailed crime investigation, creating something that adds up to far more than the sum of its parts. The story of a kidnapping that goes not quite according to plan, High and Low becomes not only a tense, gripping police procedural, but also an examination of class, of drug addiction, and an intricate morality drama, all while maintaining a rapid pace and a strong need to know what happens next. It's a superb film, all culminating in a final scene that closes the film on a grimly perfect note. It may be one of Kurosawa's less acclaimed films, but it definitely doesn't deserve to be; in fact, in some ways, it only re-affirms how truly great of a director Kurosawa was, and displays that there was far more to him than the man who made great samurai films.
8-30	The Great Dictator	I cannot believe that Charlie Chaplin got away with making this movie when he did, but I'm so glad that he did. A bizarre mix of Chaplin's physical comedy and vicious political satire, The Great Dictator is a roundhouse punch to Hitler and Mussolini, devoted to mocking them as much as possible and making them look as ridiculous as children. Chaplin says that if he had known the realities of the Holocaust, he wouldn't have made the movie, and while I understand his sentiment, I disagree; I think events like that make the movie even more important, and converts a genius batch of silliness into a little political bomb. All of that analysis aside, the movie is hilarious; Chaplin's physical genius is renowned, but the verbal jokes in this, his first sound movie, score again and again, and there are just too many great scenes to count. It's a fantastic film through and through; even the closing speech, while definitely overlong, is still moving and effective on its own merits, even though it may not fit the movie around it very well.
8-28	One Day in September	A compelling and haunting documentary about the Munich Olympics hostage situation in the 70s. I definitely had a few issues with this, most notably the use of Hollywood-style action music under the news footage; there's definitely something quease-inducing about trying to make a horrific tragedy more "exciting". And yes, the movie could have done a little more around the incident, especially the aftermath, where a pretty massive point about the German government's actions towards its prisoners is almost treated like an afterthought. And yet, that being said, the movie itself is gripping and devastating, allowing the viewer to see the myriad facets of incompetence and ineptitude that led to all of those deaths. More than that, though, is the impact of the final few shots, all about revenge, violence, and the celebration of death, that tell the tale too well of how cyclical all this violence truly was. It's a grim reminder of the horrors of the situation, and makes for a fitting postscript to such a dark chapter of human history.
8-27	Onibaba	On the surface, Onibaba plays out as a horrific morality tale, as a war widow and her mother-in-law survive in a battle-torn Japan by killing wandering samurai, stealing their weapons, and selling them. That is, until one of their neighbors returns... The results are a mix of horror and adult drama, but the more you dig into the film and pick it apart, the more layers and psychological complexity it takes on, revealing allusions to everything from World War II and the atomic bomb droppings to the devastating effects of war on a populace to human sexuality and our fear on it. Even apart from all the fascinating layers of interpretation, the movie is visually gorgeous, with some truly unsettling scenes, but it's the hidden depths that have kept it recurring in my thoughts for a couple of days now.
8-26	Kontroll	An odd, endearing film set in the subways of Hungary, and it's about...well, that's a great question. Filled with any number of bizarre plot threads, from a bear-suit-clad female passenger to a prank-pulling freeloader, from a parkour-esque race to a murderous masked figure, Kontroll feels a bit anarchic, especially as many of these threads never quite go towards expected destinations, or often any destination at all. And yet, the whole thing works, and it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch. The sense of humor is bleak but hilarious, the "action" sequences (for lack of a better word) are thrilling, and the sense of composition and style are evident in every frame. Not everything works entirely, but it's a film that Samuel Goldwyn would be proud of; it's full of great scenes, and no bad ones, and somehow the total adds up to far more than the sum of the parts. A cool little underground movie that's well worth the time to track down and enjoy.
8-25	Requiem	An odd drama that's about the same situation that inspired the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I've not seen that movie, but I feel certain that it's not much like Requiem, which grounds itself so deeply in reality that there's a serious question of whether there really is any "possession" at all. In fact, if you didn't know where this was heading, the gradual progression of things would probably shock you. The result is a drama that works as a portrait of a sheltered young girl who may be cracking up from her upbringing, may have convinced herself of this possession, or may really be possessed. But the film avoids judgment, simply depicting, and it works well as a psychological drama, culminating in a quietly powerful final shot that works beautifully with the caption that follows it.
8-24	Generation Kill	A fantastic miniseries from HBO that immerses you in the world of the Marine First Recon division, who were on the front lines in the invasion of Iraq. Just like they did on The Wire, the creators of Kill recreate perfectly the meandering, acerbic dialogue of their new world, making the reader adjust into these new rhythms and slang terms. And, again like The Wire, they do a magnificent job both extolling those who are doing their best in this world, mocking those who are failing, and raging against a system which is failing everyone involved. The end result is frequently hilarious, profoundly moving, exciting as hell, and a draining, powerful experience that ranks among the best things I've seen on television. All the way through the seven episodes until the final (brilliant) sequence, Generation Kill becomes the first fictional work to seriously take on the Iraq conflict and to succeed. It'll be hard to top by anything that comes along.
8-24	Tell No One	A great reviews on this one are kind of baffling me, and I can't help but feel that it's a little bit of snootiness afoot; honestly, if this were in English and had an American cast, it would be viewed as a perfectly serviceable, unremarkable thriller like The General's Daughter and its ilk, and quickly forgotten about. Instead, it seems to have attracted a lot of praise, and as an avid thriller watcher, I'm a little baffled. Sure, the premise is great, but the characters are wafer-thin, the plot points to be filled a little obvious, and the movie needs to be about thirty minutes longer (a rare feat indeed!) for the final revelations to really have the impact that the movie seems to want them to. It's not that it's an actively bad film, but it's really only passable; look beyond the language barriers and you'll find a pretty generic movie.
8-17	Pickup on South Street	Beautifully tight little piece of film noir with a great anti-hero who manages to be cold and callous, even by noir standards. I'm actually surprised that a movie about a man who doesn't care about his country, and who's sympathetic to informers, could get made in the McCarthy era, but I think that's part of what makes it so great. The final showdown is fantastic, and Widmark makes a great reluctant hero (well, of sorts). Special marks, though, for Ritter's Moe, who is just a great, great original character, and who all but walks away with the movie. A nice little dose of subversion plus a noir equals a solid film.
8-16	Dazed and Confused	Midnight movie at the Belcourt. I liked this even more the second time, so much so that I'm loathe to write about it too much. I think it just works for me, on some kind of subconscious level. I'm too young to have been in high school in the 70s, but part of what makes the movie work so well is the way that it pretty much could be about any high school class, in any year. Here's my experience in a nutshell: I drove home finding every song on my iPod that I could find that we used to play when we drove around on the interstate at night between movies and Waffle House. Nostalgia-city, baby.
8-10	The Testament of Dr. Mabuse	Watching it right after seeing Dark Knight may influence this review, but I think that there are actually a lot of parallels between the two films. Like Knight, Mabuse is a superb crime thriller that uses its running time to not only tell a great story, but to take on weightier ideas about evil and how dangerous ideas can truly be. Lang, naturally, claimed that the film was a thinly veiled metaphor for Nazism, but the film works outside of that framework, too, tapping into something universal. Again, like Knight, it takes on the weakness of human nature, and how easily shaken we are from our morality. And, in another interesting parallel, both films feature villains who are primarily agents of chaos, who want to expose people for the cold beings that they may truly be. I don't want to stretch the argument too far, and I definitely don't want to sell short the considerable virtues of Mabuse: a great story, some truly unsettling scenes, fascinating ideas, and one of the most modern and experimental "classic" films I've seen, especially considering it came ten years before Kane.
8-9	The Dark Knight (IMAX)	With the wife, who had not seen it yet. The film more than holds up on a second run-through, with much of the time maintaining the tension and unease from a first viewing, even knowing how it will play out. A second watch also reveals just how tightly constructed the whole thing is, with every scene having a significance and a payoff later. I still think its reputation has gotten a little overblown, but I don't deny that it's the best comic book movie I've ever seen, and while it's not the best film of the year (much less the best EVER), it's definitely among the best things I've seen this year, and I think it'll be ranked as one of the great action movies of all time, if only for the way it treats its audience as intelligent people, and uses the basic framework of a crime story to grapple with complex and thoughtful ideas about escalation, fear, human nature, and more.
8-6	Proof (1991)	An interesting Australian character study that eventually becomes a complicated discussion of trust and doubt, and one that pays off in interesting ways. Weaving is really great here as a man, blind since birth, who uses his camera to test the people around him, unable to truly trust and believe in anyone he knows. The film details the complicated relationship between Weaving and his housekeeper, who's madly in love with him, and how the entrance into their lives of a young waiter (played superbly by a young Russell Crowe) changes things. It's really a nicely done, character-driven story, but it also raises all sorts of interesting ideas and thoughts about what exactly trust can mean, and how it drives us. Well worth checking out - it's a nice piece of drama that's offbeat enough to be unique.
8-5	The Element of Crime	I decided to rewatch this now that I'm more familiar with Von Trier's work, just to see if I felt any differently about it. Weirdly, it seems even more foreign now that I've seen more of his work, because in many ways, it's the exact opposite of everything else I've seen. While most of Von Trier's work has a strong (and brutally depressing) narrative and minimal to no visual style, Element has an incredible, surreal, sepia-drenched visual style but a narrative that's been done to death (the thin line between cops and criminals). The story is perfectly passable, and it definitely goes a little further than many of the movies of its type, but it's really about the stunning visuals, and it's a shame in some ways that Von Trier moved to the Dogme movement, because we lost a really great visual eye. (Not that he doesn't have his descendants - look at Element and tell me that Jeunet's stuff, especially Delicatessen, doesn't derive heavily from it.) As a crime thriller, Element is a tad above average, but as an exercise in style, it's pretty remarkable.
8-4	The Kid	A sweetly funny piece by Chaplin that works a little harder on the emotional side of things than the other Chaplin pieces I've seen. The physical comedy is still rich and funny, but the story - about a young abandoned orphan adopted by The Tramp - is oddly touching, and Chaplin does a nice job managing to convey some points about poverty while never feeling too overbearing. My only real gripe is the rushed ending, which kind of comes out of nowhere; still, the movie as a whole is fun, with a great performance by the kid.
8-3	High Plains Drifter	I have to admit that, in general, a run of the mill Western is really not my thing. I can sit through hundreds of mediocre horror films, but a generic Western just bores me. (Now, an exceptional Western still works - see Unforgiven, The Proposition, etc.) So I was a little reluctant to sit down to a Clint Eastwood Western where a man with no name comes into a town with criminals coming back for revenge. Haven't I seen this a ton of times? And yet, you haven't, as High Plains Drifter begins to unfold in some unexpected ways, revealing motives that might not be as clear cut as you thought, all culminating in a spectacular finale, both visually and viscerally. It's an unusual Western for many reasons, from the black humor to the revisionist tone, and it works far more effectively than I expected to. And, man, did I ever love that climax. Well worth seeing, especially if you know nothing about it.
8-3	In My Skin	There's a quote on the case for this that basically describes it as a cross between Polanski's Repulsion and the works of David Cronenberg, and that's a pretty stellar description. As with Repulsion, the movie is about the slow mental breakdown of a woman, and takes its time watching her madness descend onto her. However, like Cronenberg's work, the film is fixated on the body, and our horror in dealing with it. The plot? A young woman cuts herself badly while at a party, but fails to realize it. Fascinated by this apparent disconnect between her mind and her body, she starts to test that boundary. What results is an hour and a half of some of the most horrifically intense scenes I've seen, as Esther begins to stretch her skin...and then cut...and then...well, you'll see. It's not for all tastes, but much like the family in The Seventh Continent, watching this person rebel against their existence and their mundane life makes for a powerful, if unsettling, experience.
8-2	The Seventh Continent	Michael Haneke's ridiculously assured debut may lack some of the overt violence of his later work (Funny Games), but in many ways, it's a far more unsettling and affecting film. With a series of moments, Haneke opens the film sketching out the daily routine of a middle class family, and as we begin to wonder if the whole film will be this tedious, we begin to see that the characters are wondering the same thing about their own lives. Haneke is a master of the slow burn, but he may never match the tension and pace of this, his first film; by the time the tension breaks, my unease and discomfort felt like they couldn't grow anymore. Trust me: they can. Relentlessly depressing and horrifying, The Seventh Continent is an unforgettable experience, as a family lashes back against their empty lives the only way they know how. A hard watch, but a powerful experience.
7-31	Ace in the Hole	In which Billy Wilder brings the same sunny optimism to the media that he brought to Hollywood in Sunset Blvd. - in other words, none at all. It's probably the most vicious and cynical Wilder film I've seen, and when your career includes Stalag 17, Double Indemnity, and Sunset Blvd., that's a hell of an accomplishment. Kirk Douglas stars as a washed-up reporter who finds a chance for a new career when he stumbles across a man trapped in a cave-in. The resulting media coverage spins wildly out of control, turning a man's life into a (literal, almost) circus. What makes Ace so remarkable isn't just the way it's bracing and brutal; it's the fact that no one gets off the hook here - not the media, naturally, but also not the public. The only innocents in the movie may be the man himself and the doctor, and certainly not Douglas. With crackling dialogue that would fit right in with any noir and a plot that packs a devastating emotional punch, it may be the best movie Wilder did, and that's a monumental accomplishment. It feels just as relevant today as it ever did, and sadly, I don't see it becoming any less so as time passes. Like Network, another incredible film about the media, it becomes more and more prescient with each passing day.
7-30	Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse	Watching Hearts of Darkness, a making-of documentary about Apocalypse Now, I found my already massive respect for Apocalypse Now growing even more. The fact that any movie came out of this process, much less something so brilliant, is an incredible achievement. Filming her husband's journey through the movie, Eleanor Coppola ended up documenting one of the most disastrous, chaotic filmmaking processes imaginable, with sets destroyed by storms, stars being replaced and/or having heart attacks, scripts thrown away, and the director on the verge of a nervous breakdown and suicide. What results, however, is a sense that there may have been no other way to make this film, and that so much of this resonates deeply with the finished product. Not just the greatest "making of" documentary ever, Hearts of Darkness is also a must see for any film fan, as it takes you through an incredible film shoot that ends up saying as much about the people involved as the film itself. Absolutely riveting and incredible viewing.
7-30	The X-Files: I Want to Believe	I think hearing all the mixed and negative reviews might have really helped my perception of this movie; that, or maybe it's just not as bad as people are making it out to be. Either way, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this. That's not to say that there aren't flaws and missteps; there's quite a few of both, and a few really major ones. That being said, the movie felt like a nice return to some of the "monster of the week" episodes, and while it might not have been a great one, the way it integrated bigger ideas and themes made me more than satisfied. Add to that the way that the film chose to revisit the characters a long time after the show ended, showing how time had changed them, and how much I loved these characters for so long, and I left a pretty satisfied fanboy. No, it's not flawless, and there are some serious leaps of logic and likelihood, but the story was nicely intriguing, and seeing these characters again after so long was a nice treat. You might not like it as much (or maybe at all) if you're not already a fan, but for me? It might have been just a "long episode," as so many have complained, but I think that's what I liked about it.
7-29	Benny's Video	A strange, vicious movie from Michael Haneke, who has a reputation for putting the audience through the wringer. Playing with a lot of the same ideas he would put to somewhat better use in Caché, Haneke tells the story of a boy named Benny, a video freak with doting parents. Haneke spins a nasty little web here, following Benny into a shocking act and then watching the repercussions from a cold distance. There's a lot of ideas at play here, and even though the film could use a little more focus, the sheer volume of ideas and the supremely controlled execution kept me fascinated all the way to the intriguing ending. Haneke's definitely a little strident with his points, but the execution of them is so memorable and powerful that it's hard not to admire his cinematic skills.
7-29	Bicycle Thieves	A quietly devastating tale of a man struggling to support his family in post-war Italy. The story is so simple that it borders on being a parable or allegory: a struggling father is finally offered a job, for which he needs his bicycle. When the bike is stolen, the man goes on a quest to get it back. But the film surpasses the story itself, becoming a hard look at life in economically devastated Italy, at the true life of poverty, and on the bond between fathers and sons. The details throughout resonate, and there are so many haunting scenes throughout - the looks between the two boys at dinner, the long shot of the towers of pawned merchandise - that the movie really is heartbreaking. (And that says nothing of the justly famous ending.) It's a beautiful film that really moved me by telling a recognizably human story that's far more universal than its setting might suggest.
7-29	Notes on a Scandal	Far more interesting and psychologically complex than I expected it to be, Scandal takes the story of a young teacher's fling with a student and studies it through the eyes of a seasoned pro who hides some much darker aspects of her own life. Dench is really fantastic here; her narration serves to create some great dramatic tension between her outwardly sweet appearance and her vicious worldview, and as the film progresses, her character continually evolves into something else. It's really a strong film, with typically great performances from Blanchett and Nighy, but in the end, the film manages to study its characters well, all while crafting a tight little net. It's much nastier and more vicious than I expected, and in some ways, a lot more darkly funny.
7-28	12 Angry Men (1957)	The second time this summer (the first being Rear Window) that I've seen a classic that didn't just live up to all the hype and reputation; it surpassed it and then some. There's no doubt that there may be some contrivances at the story level of 12 Angry Men, but that hardly matters; this is first and foremost a showcase for phenomenal acting and thoughtful ideas. Locked into an increasingly claustrophobic jury chamber (for some fascinating reading, check out some discussion of how Lumet changed his lenses to make the film tighter and tighter as it progresses), the story watches 12 men fight, argue, discuss, and ultimately decide the fate of one man charged with murder. A brilliant set of performances, a fascinating look at justice, a tense drama...it's all of these and more, and it's a film that more than deserves its classic status. I was absolutely blown away by it.
7-27	The French Connection	A classic police drama that's far more realistic and grounded than so many police films of the time, especially ones so renowned for their action. The spectacular car chase really overshadows what's a superb film, and one that's a lot more ambivalent about its characters and heroes than so many action films are. More than that, the film really is far more carefully paced and staged than so many police films, with a lot of slow stakeouts, painstaking surveillance, and more. Now, no one is arguing that the car chase isn't stellar - it definitely is, and more than lives up to the hype. But with its nuanced portrayal of New York City, complex, deeply flawed protagonists, and an ambivalent, honest look at the policing methods of the time, the film is far better than even its good reputation would lead you to expect. Still relevant today, all these years later.
7-25	Ikiru	Far from his usual films about honor, crime, and violence, Ikiru is Kurosawa's most profoundly human story, one which left me deeply moved by the time it was finished. The film opens with the X-ray of the chest of a petty bureaucrat, and a narrator informs us that, unbeknownst to the man, he is dying of stomach cancer. What's sad, though, according to the film, is that it doesn't matter, because he's never really been alive. The film follows the man through a quest for meaning and purpose, which sounds like heady stuff, and it is, but Kurosawa makes it a deeply personal and human film, not an abstract series of concepts and dialogues. The ideas here are complex, but the film is deeply rooted in human relationships and characters, grounding the film and giving it a more potent effect. It's funny, sad, deeply cynical, slightly optimistic, and more, and it's the rare film that has a lot to say about the human condition while never feeling manipulative, forced, or simplistic. The film's final third is masterful, as Kurosawa changes the film into something else entirely, one that allows him to grapple with material even more complex, culminating in a pitch-perfect coda and a beautiful last shot. It really is a masterpiece on every level, and the rare film that surpasses all cultural and social boundaries to become something truly universal.
7-24	Detour	B-movie pulp noir that manages to craft a thrilling story and work as a taut little thriller despite minimal to no budget, flawed directing, and a DVD print that looks like it's a copy of a copy of a bootleg. The story is classic pulp crime stuff : a piano playing schmuck is hitchhiking his way across the country and finds himself in an increasingly bad situation. To be sure, the end result is flawed - even at 67 minutes, there's some obvious signs of padding in the film, and the lack of budget shows through pretty hard. But, somehow, they don't overshadow all the ways in which the film works. From a tightly woven plot to a pitch-perfect femme fatale, from the crackling hard-boiled dialogue to the darkly ironic ending, this is the kind of B-movie that really defined how great a B-movie could be. It's a great piece of noir that more than holds its own against so many bigger and better made films.
7-23	Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson	An entertaining but not very illuminating documentary on the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. There's not a lot of new information here if you know much of anything about Thompson; pretty much this traces his career from Hell's Angels through his fall from grace (here symbolized by the "Rumble in the Jungle" debacle), but if you're a newcomer or just a casual fan, you'll find a lot of history here. For me, the film was worth seeing for all of the footage of Thompson, as well as the reminiscing of all of his friends - who but Thompson could bring together Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, and a Hell's Angel in tribute to a man they all respected? The film's not without flaws - it loses its way pretty badly during the overly long discussion of the 72 election, focusing too much on the campaign and not enough on Thompson, and the film itself could have been a little more unconventional, like its subject - but as a tribute to the man, and a memorial to his life, it's pretty satisfying.
7-23	Get Carter (1971)	An icy cold piece of revenge noir from Britain. Michael Caine plays the titular Carter, a British criminal who returns to his hometown after the suspicious death of his brother. Caine's performance is what elevates the film to a minor masterpiece; Carter is vicious and brutal, an icy bastard with little use for just about everyone, with the apparent exception of his niece (even his brother, who drives his revenge, hardly seems to garner much affection from Caine). And yet, there are depths and shadows to Carter's character that add a complex depth to the character, giving the film a morally grim undercurrent that only gets darker and darker as the film progresses. The plot is as complicated as it needs to be, and the action (so to speak) is doled out sparsely but effectively. It really is a gem of revenge noir, and I shudder to think how the American remake might have turned out.
7-21	The Tenant	A strange, not entirely successful Polanski film that rounds out his "apartment horror trilogy." Like the other two films (Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby), the film is about a man who may (or may not) be driven totally insane during his stay in an apartment. Repulsion made incredible use of a psychological point of view, while Rosemary did a superb job of bringing in a quiet dread that could never quite be placed. The Tenant attempts to mix both of these, and sometimes, in the film's best moments, it works - the shots of the bathroom, for instance, or a bizarre and unsettling dream (?) about an incident in the courtyard. The film drags a bit, though, and while I tend to like ambiguity in my films, this one goes a bit too far, bordering on the incomprehensible. There were sections I liked a lot, and it's clear that Polanski knew how to film some unsettling sequences, but it's overlong and meandering, and the great bits don't outweigh the weaknesses for me.
7-20	The Call of Cthulhu	In 2005, a group of H.P. Lovecraft fans pulled together 50,000 dollars and made this 45 minute film version of one of Lovecraft's most famous stories. In a pretty brilliant move, they decided to shoot the whole thing in the style of a 1920s silent film (one with some heavy German expressionist influence), aping everything from the acting to the intertitles. The end result is a little easier to admire than love, but it's still pretty great, especially if you're a Lovecraft fan like me. The movie's a little long, even at 45 minutes, and the acting is definitely a little over the top, but both of these things could be chalked up to Lovecraft's melodramatic prose and/or the silent film style. By and large, though, the whole thing shines with the obvious love and determination that these guys put into it, and there are some brilliant moments, including a surreal series of dreams and a pretty fantastic last ten minutes or so. It's definitely not flawless, but when you consider how great it looks and how little it cost, and how well it captures that dread and unease of Lovecraft, it's more than worth tracking down, flaws and all.
7-18	Pixar Short Films Collection - Volume 1	A fun collection of all the Pixar shorts up through Ratatouille. What's remarkable about these is to see how visually stunning the work was, even back in the early 80s; their work really was head and shoulders above what I remembered computers being capable of back then. Of course, it's also interesting to see Pixar's storytelling skills grow by leaps and bounds; while every short works well, there's no doubt that they get more and more assured with each successive short. It's a lot of fun for any fan of the studio, as you can see a lot of their same talent in shorter form. Light but fun entertainment.
7-18	The Dark Knight (IMAX)	All I hoped for and then some. A masterful blend of crime drama, morality play, and superhero movie, The Dark Knight brings a thoughtful maturity to the comic book movie, meditating on the very nature of the genre and what really defines a hero. What begins with a flurry of incredible action becomes, by the end, a haunting and powerful tragedy, one all the more effective because of the intelligence in its handling. There's not a false note in the film; the casting is stellar throughout, with Caine once again providing a heart and soul to the film, and Eckhart providing a fascinating meditation on conscience and justice. But, of course, it's Ledger who's getting noticed, and rightfully so; his Joker is the definitive version of the character, mixing madness, psychotic behavior, and a pitch black sense of humor into an unforgettable performance that encapsulates the character: utterly alien, nightmarishly dark, and completely without boundaries. What results from the clash between the three leads - Batman, the Joker, and Harvey Dent - becomes a deeply complex tragedy, a complicated musing on heroism, and a fascinating treatise on morality and human nature. It surpasses the boundaries of the genre, surpasses Begins, and it's a hell of a film. It's intense as anything, and while it's definitely PG-13, it pushes that rating pretty hard. Don't expect Adam West here; this is a crime film, through and through, and one that's very aware of what it needs to be about. A special note about the IMAX: a good portion of the film was actually shot with IMAX cameras, including the spectacular opening sequence; this means that a significant portion of the film fills the entire IMAX screen, and will be cropped for regular. Trust me; it's worth the extra money for the IMAX.
7-17	The Breakfast Club	It's a minor miracle how timeless so many John Hughes films have ended up being; as emblematic as they are of the 80s, you would expect them to age far worse than they have. Much of the credit for that, I think, is the way that Hughes wrote about characters, not eras. The Breakfast Club is a prime example; it's clear that he's playing with archetypes that will be relevant no matter what era you're in, but it's the way that he brings depth, emotion, and humor to the whole exercise that makes it come to life so beautifully. This was my first time seeing the movie uncut (i.e., not on TBS or TNT), and it's a wonderful experience. I'm sure all of use can see parts of ourselves in any of the characters, but it's still a joy to see a writer who not only remembers what it was like to be in high school, but captures it so well without being condescending or overly sentimental.
7-16	The Bad Sleep Well	A pitch-black piece of Japanese noir from Kurosawa, and its excellence is all the more surprising considering how overlooked it tends to be amongst all of his other works. With echoes of Hamlet throughout, the film is about a man seeking revenge against the leaders of two corporations for the murder of one of their own. What follows concerns itself with the cost of revenge, guilt, the danger of love, and more, and it all plays out with beautiful cinematography in the background. I've read complaints about the ending, and while you could argue that the way it plays out is handled a little anti-climactically, I loved the ending enough to like it anyways. As always, Mifune is superb, but the whole cast here is excellent, with Fujiwara's performance as Wada a real standout. It's a shame that it's not better known, because this is a great piece of noir, and a solid moral thriller.
7-15	The Third Man	One of those all-too-rare films where everything works, from the flawless score to the stunningly beautiful black and white photography. The story concerns an American who comes to Vienna in the aftermath of the war to stay with his friend Harry Lime...who, he discovers, died very recently. What follows is a fantastic piece of noir, filled with shifting morality, a nicely curvy plot, great performances, solid action, and a perfect ending. The entire cast is great, but it's Welles who gets all the attention, and rightfully so. Although his part is small, from his stunning entrance to a brilliant speech on a ferris wheel, Welles is magnetic in every scene in which he appears. I really can't recommend this enough to any serious film fan; it's a perfect piece of noir, a great collection of acting, and a stunning use of black and white. It's just a perfect film in almost every way.
7-15	Repulsion	A surreal, nightmarish piece from Polanski that definitely demonstrates his adroit grip on psychological horror. Deneuve plays a mousy, sexually repressed young woman who locks herself in an apartment and proceeds to slowly, horribly go mad. The closest thing I can compare this to is Eraserhead, although it's not as surreal as that film; this is grounded firmly in Deneuve's psyche, and that subjective viewpoint subjects the reader to terrors both rational and irrational, making us question our reality as much as she does. It's a hard film to shake, and some of the sequences (the reaching hands, for one) rank as some of the most unsettling things I've seen. A unique and deeply disturbing film.
7-14	Wanted	A big, goofy, dumb action movie that's quite entertaining while being about as deep and thoughtful as a postcard. I can't say that there's anything really especially interesting or complex, not even compared to the pseudo-philosophical underpinnings of The Matrix - in the end, it feels like the male-power dynamic of Fight Club without the reflection, intelligence, and self-criticism that FC had - but I also can't say that its ridiculously over-the-top silliness wasn't wonderfully entertaining and fun. In the ratings system of my friend Ryan, this would probably be a "bad movie that I like anyway" - after all, how could I not love a movie where people are flipping cars over each other so they can shoot through the sunroofs? If you like the absurdly over-the-top action of movies like Shoot 'Em Up, then I definitely think you'll get a kick out of this. (To be fair, this is nowhere near as awesome as Shoot 'Em Up was.) Turn off your brain, and just have some fun.
7-11	The Big Lebowski	At LebowskiFest. Still love the movie, still seeing new things and hearing lines I've missed (this time: Goodman telling Buscemi that they're "choppering in some help"). As for the crowd this year...definitely the worst crowd we've had to date, in terms of their interest in the movie and the overall experience. What I've loved about seeing the movie at LF is the sense of a communal experience, of a lot of people who just love the movie getting together and enjoying it. This? This felt like some people who really loved the movie stuck in the middle of a lot of people who just came to party and didn't give a crap. Sigh.
7-10	If....	A strange, surreal film about a group of students in a British private school who begin to chafe under the tight rule of the authority above them. What follows is equal parts fantasy and reality, metaphor and archetype, humor and horror, and the piece don't always gel perfectly. Oddly, that incongruity makes the film stronger, not weaker - I don't understand why, but the jarring clashes make the film a stronger, more effective experience, all the way through to the controversial ending. Whether you look at it as a call for anarchy or a microcosm of society's upheavals in the 1960s, If.... leaves an impression on the viewer, one that's not always easy to shake. The more I think about it, the more I like it, but it's definitely not something for all tastes.
7-9	F For Fake	I don't even know how to begin to describe or classify this, other than to say that it was an absolute treat. In his last completed film, Welles basically made a cinematic essay on fakery, art forgery, magic, the role of art. experts, and cinema, not to mention himself. In doing this, he threw together real footage, archival footage, interviews, re-enactments, dinner conversations, and an absolutely breathtaking display of editing, which all results in something that looks and feels like nothing I've ever really seen. The best description I can give is that you spend an hour and a half with Welles, who tries to tell you his opinions of all of this, following the threads and jumping from topic to topic, taking time for philosophical interludes, and playfully toying with the audience. The result is a love letter to filmmaking, and a must-see for any true film fan. It's playful, it's funny, it's daring, it's clever, it's moving, and it's beautifully filmed...just do yourself a favor and see it if you haven't. If you've never been able to see what made Welles so great, this ought to give you some strong evidence.
7-9	The Thing	A minor suspense/horror masterpiece. Even as far back as Assault on Precinct 13, Carpenter was a master of taking simple characters and sticking them in a closed space, and playing with the group dynamics. However, those dynamics are pushed to fascinating extremes in The Thing. Most of the reviews I read commented on the gore and violence, which seems odd to me. Yes, they're there, and there's no doubt that they're effective and unsettling. But they're not what makes the film great. What really makes this is the psychology and the mind games, the way Carpenter keeps the viewer uneasy by making us literally unable to believe our own eyes. It's what elevates the film from a simple creature feature to a tense, unnerving, brilliant horror film that really creates a sense of unrelieved tension and pressure, all the way to the flawless ending.
7-8	The Painted Veil	For the first section of this, I really was dreading that this would be a stereotypically dry and dull period piece. However, about thirty minutes or so in, the polite manners and proper forms are put aside, and what emerges is a far more interesting relationship between Norton and Watts, one more nasty and vicious than I expected. The movie never really gets above the level of "pretty good," largely because it never really delves far enough into either of its main characters far enough, especially Norton's deeply flawed but compelling husband. That being said, it's an interesting historical story that hasn't been often told, and the acting across the board is strong, especially Toby Jones in a brief but memorable part. It's not a great movie, but as period pieces go, it's better than I expected.
7-8	Flags of Our Fathers	This could have been a great film, but it has to settle for being merely good. Eastwood's direction is solidly done, mixing the timelines well and doing a great job in the war scenes. More to the point, the concept of the film - exploring the realities behind the famous Iwo Jima picture, and digging into our concepts of heroism and bravery - is a great one, and Eastwood and the story doing a great job of revising history while never feeling disrespectful. So what kills it? In a name, Paul Haggis. Bringing the same lack of subtlety that he brought to Crash, Haggis adds in a modern-day framework with multiple narrators who repeatedly explain the point and meaning of the film, assuming that we as an audience might be too dumb to get it. It happens over and over again, and especially when combined with the way that the third act of the film drags on a bit too long, the film becomes heavy-handed. Which is a shame, because there's a great film here - it's just obscured by all the words.
7-7	The Animation Show 4	The latest series of the popular touring anthology was overall pretty solid, with almost all hits and no complete failures - at worst, there were a couple that were mediocre. But with some of the high points being as good as they were, it's hard to complain too much. Here's some highlights I've found on YouTube - definitely click the link to watch them in high quality. None of them are more than a couple of minutes, so check some out: Jeu - One of the most visually fascinating and compelling entries. People spontaneously burst into applause when it finished. I don't blame them. Western Spaghetti - In which common household objects are used to simulate cooking. Really inventive and clever usage of objects. Paintballing - In which two forces face off on the paintball field. I cannot explain why this one cracked me up so much, but I had tears rolling down my face by the end. Operator - A man calls the operator looking for...well, just watch it and see. The question he has to ask is priceless. Burning Safari - Probably the most popular short of the set, this concerns a little set of robots that go on safari. Really well done. Blind Spot - Imagine a Pixar short gone horribly, violently wrong. Morbidly hilarious.
7-7	Wings	I completely understand why Wings won the Best Picture award in 1927. Its battle sequences are fairly stunning, even to a modern viewer, and the aviation scenes are equally well done. From a technical perspective, it's a marvel of a film, and it holds up well. The problem, though, is that there's no real substance to it. It really says nothing about war in any way, and its depiction of the toll of war is laughable at best, at least as seen through our two main characters' eyes. The story is serviceable at best, but really, it's fairly tedious to a modern viewer. Again, technically, it's very well done, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bored for much of its running time.
7-7	All That Jazz	It's hard to know where to begin attempting to describe this. Essentially, it's Bob Fosse making a musical fictionalized biography of himself, and it's equal parts egomaniacal and self-loathing. But, more than that, it's alive in a way that not enough movies are. Roy Scheider is brilliant throughout, playing Fosse's avatar as a terrible human being who's all too aware of his flaws. Filled with some spectacular musical numbers, including a tightly edited opening and a show-stopping finale, and peppered with Scheider's conversations with an angel of Death, it's hard to explain this, because it's pretty different from just about anything I've seen. But I'll be damned if it doesn't work, and it presents a complex self-portrait of a deeply flawed but somehow likable human being.
7-1	This Sporting Life	It's probably a good thing that I'm leaving for New Orleans tomorrow and taking a break from movie watching, because I'm kind of feeling like I'm running out of things to say about what I watched. I liked this quite a bit, honestly, but I'm at a bit of a loss of what to write. The name "kitchen sink realism" fits the movie well; it's a bleak piece about a man who joins a rugby team and hopes to rise above his current, miserable life. As you might imagine, it doesn't quite work out that way. Harris gives a great performance, and there are some unforgettable scenes, including a dinner date scene that reminded me a lot of a similar scene in The Wire, and used to similar effect. I'll say that I felt like one final development was a bit much for the movie, but I think it fit thematically. It's a superb drama, but you'll need something with a bit of hope to wash it down afterward.
6-30	Stalag 17	Knowing that the story concerned the hunt for a German spy in a POW camp in WWII, I wasn't really prepared for how frequently hilarious this movie was, to say nothing of the fascinating moral complexity of it all. Then I saw that Billy Wilder directed it, and it all made a lot of sense. What a spectacular film. It works on every level it attempts, from broad comedy to paranoia piece, from taut thriller to drama about life in POW camps. But, as is the usual for Wilder, it's filled with fully realized characters who truly come to life. Holden gets all the acclaim, and rightfully so, but like my other movie of the day, The Dirty Dozen, this is an ensemble piece all the way.
6-30	The Dirty Dozen	It's kind of rare to find an anti-establishment military movie - after all, the two concepts are kind of polar opposites. And yet, The Dirty Dozen succeeds, and does so in spades. It's funny, likable, thrilling, and even gripping, in spite of the extreme running time. Mostly, that has to be chalked up to the stellar cast, who all play their parts superbly; Marvin as the Major and Bronson of course steal the show, but it's very much an ensemble movie, and everyone acquits themselves well. Add to that the nicely hard edges of the characters and some great action and you have a classic that's better than it should be - it's a B-movie that surpasses the genre and becomes something more enduring.
6-28	Breakfast at Tiffany's	A sweet, endearing romance that's a testament to great performances. Without the great work by Hepburn especially, but really the entire cast, this would have some serious issues. On a purely story level, Holly's a fairly horrible person who's hard to care about, Paul is pretty much a blank slate, Doc is a generic stereotype, and the whole movie would slide into condescending, offensive territory early in and never recover. (Thanks to Mickey Rooney's jaw-dropping "yellow-face" performance, some parts remain so.) I think the fact that the novel was written by Capote, a society queen of sorts, shows...and yet, thanks to Hepburn and the rest of the cast, the characters become sympathetic, and the romance something you can invest in. I think the acting makes the movie better than it deserves to be; it's not a bad film, but it's one made so enduring thanks to the cast.
6-27	WALL•E	The short version: what a wondrous, magical, magnificent film. Easily the best film Pixar has ever done, and the best film of the year so far. For the longer (spoiler-free) version, go check out the long review I wrote.
6-27	The Good Shepherd	Apparently I'm in a very small minority, but I really liked and admired this film. I've always been fascinated by intelligence work, and I loved the realistic, low-key, quiet approach this took to the whole enterprise, losing itself in the minutiae and details that make such a job so interesting, all while never losing focus on the human cost of it all. I can see that it might need some judicious trimming here and there, but all in all, I found its portrayal of the cost of a life built of suspicion and distrust to be a compelling one. The performances are great throughout, and Damon plays his blank slate of his character well, bringing depth to the silences he's so comfortable in. If you're interested in intelligence work, and want something a little more realistic, I'd say this is the film for you.
6-26	The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp	It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes this such a great film. Is it the way it makes its almost two-hour running time fly by, never seeming to have filler or to go to slowly? Is it the way it introduces Candy as a caricature, and then imbues him with such depth, humanity, and humor to make him an unforgettable and wonderful character? Is it the way that it brings an uncommon intelligence and compassion to its depiction of war, remaining as patriotic as you would expect from a WWII film while still hating the concept of war itself? It's all of this and more. Honestly, I knew next to nothing about this when I sat down to watch it; by the time I finished it, I knew I had seen one of the all-time great films. Just spectacular.
6-25	Shane	From a pure plot perspective, this one pretty much lives to be pure archetypes: the lone hero who arrives to save the day, the evil villains who will stop at nothing...and yet, despite the way the broad strokes feel generic, the movie itself feels anything but. There's interesting conversation. Shane himself remains mysterious and aloof, but not cold, like The Man With No Name. The villains, save for Palance's ominous presence, are complexly drawn, doing everything they can to avoid violence. It's a movie that consciously constructs a modern American myth, and yet works as drama too, letting its characters be far more realistic than the mythic film needs, making it all the better. I was a little wary of it before watching it, but it really is a great film, albeit for different reasons than I expected. (Also, I can't recommend enough Ebert's Great Movie article; it's a fascinating analysis of the film, and brings up a number of subtexts and themes that make the film even richer.)
6-25	Meet John Doe	It's kind of funny that Capra's name is almost synonymous with uplifting, optimistic films about how one great person can inspire change, and yet we forget about the deep, dark pockets of cynicism that really anchor his films. It's this cynicism that really makes his films work, and separates them from drek like Pay It Forward. Although the ending of this one doesn't quite work entirely, I can't help but love it; it's inspirational in some ways, all the while never remaining oblivious to the many ways in which this probably would fall apart. Cooper, of course, is great in it, and the story plays out convincingly, never feeling as contrived or as forced as you might think. Apart from some issues with the ending, it's a wonderful and inspirational film that manages to work in realism while never feeling two-dimensional about it; in other words, it's optimistic cynicism for us all.
6-24	Marnie	While Marnie is kind of a treat for Hitchcock fans with the way it packs in so many of his favorite motifs and themes - icy blondes, obsession, pop psychology, female sexuality - the themes pack the film so much that it kind of hurts the overall impact. There's only one suspense piece here (admittedly, it's a great one), and the story depends so much on a simplistic Freudian interpretation of events that it all seems more than a little far-fetched. That's not to say it's not interesting, but it's more interesting as an analysis of the man behind the camera than for anything that happens in the movie itself.
6-24	Rebecca	I feel like a lot of what I want to say was already said, and better, in this review, but I'll attempt some points here anyways. While this is lacking some of the typical suspense pieces you expect from a Hitchcock film, it more than makes up for it with the psychological complexity and darkness it brings to the screen - a complexity that really arises here for the first time in the master's career. Olivier brings some serious darkness to the role, something that would become a recurring motif for Hitch, along with the portrait of obsession that this film draws. It really is an incredible piece of work; it's filmed like a gothic horror movie, but this one is all about the rich and fascinating subtext, great acting, and compelling story.
6-23	The Boys from Brazil	It could be that I'm being a little hard on this because I knew where it was going, but I don't think that's the worst thing about this. I think a good deal of what makes this so tedious is the fact that it's paced like a drama, but wants to be a thriller, and thus takes a long, long time to get anywhere. The performances are pure cheese, with Peck pitching for the rafters, and bringing some (unintentional? intentional?) humor out of it with a couple of lines ("I am a doctor, idiot!"), but all in all, it was pretty interminable and dull.
6-23	Black Rain	A perfectly passable but completely forgettable 80s action movie. Although the idea to set it mostly in Japan adds a little novelty here and there, the movie doesn't really do anything with it, and the script is little more than a pile of one cliche on top of the next. Scott, of course, does a great job shooting action scenes, but when the results feel this pointless, who really cares? There's nothing really bad about it, but that certainly doesn't make it any good, if that makes any sense.
6-22	Infamous	It's been too long since I saw Capote to be able to compare this to that film (both are about Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood), but on its own terms, this is a well-done telling of Capote's story. This one does a better job of showing the social scene that Capote traveled in, and makes much more explicitly clear the relationship between Perry and Truman. Jones, as I'd heard, is excellent as Capote, moving beyond a pale imitation into a flesh-and-blood portrayal of the man, and the supporting cast is quite good. It's all in all a good version of the story, and one that got overlooked due to coming out in the wake of Hoffman's superb performance in Capote.
6-21	Running With Scissors	I try not to compare books to movies, but there are times, like this one, where it simply can't be avoided. What made the book Running with Scissors work was the distance and the buffering that Burroughs provided. An objective look at his circumstances would have resulted in horror and disbelief; Burroughs' narration gave the book a dark and vicious sense of humor, and also the voice of hindsight, that of a man who can see where he came from and put it all into some sort of philosophy. The movie lacks this narration or distance, and in creating an objective version of events, creates nothing really short of a horrific nightmare. This might have worked, except that they apparently wanted to maintain the comedic feel of the book. The result? A movie in which the vast majority of the actors pitching for the rafters (save for Baldwin and Cox, both of whom play their parts with an excellent reserve), creating some horrible camp. It's a dreadful adaptation of the book, one that fails on almost every level, but it's instructive on the inherent difficulties in adapting such a book.
6-20	Repo Man	Big screen, midnight movie. The first time I saw this, I felt like I must have missed some points along the way, simply because it never quite made sense. Now I realize that I didn't miss anything; some parts just don't make any sense. That sounds like a complaint, but it isn't. Repo Man works precisely because it doesn't all make sense; it's wonderfully original, and completely, endearingly weird, and it gives the whole thing a bizarre and wonderful sense of life that's lacking from so many movies. It has "cult movie" written all over it, but it's a movie that deserves that following; it's filled with memorable characters, great dialogue, and a bizarre story that works, as long as...well, to quote the movie: "People get so hung up on specifics, they miss out on seeing the whole thing."
6-16	Ocean's Thirteen	The Ocean's series has become one of the more enjoyable ones in recent years, coasting on the seemingly limitless charisma and sense of fun that its massively overqualified and talented cast brings to the table, and Thirteen is no different. Moving back towards the tight plotting and con games of Eleven, but scattering in some of the laid back fun of Twelve (my favorite secondary storyline: Casey Affleck and the Mexican factory), Thirteen is pretty much a blast all the way through. It's filled with winks and nods at classic movies, loads and loads of charisma, and a slick plot that works in all sorts of unexpected ways. It's a great heist/con movie, and it's really just a lot of pure, likable fun.
6-16	Topkapi	While it's not Rififi (made by the same director), that's an awfully high standard to put something up to, especially when it's as fun and entertaining as this is. While Rififi used its heist to drive a tense, noir-fueled plot, Topkapi is the heist film as slight, engaging fun; it's all about over-the-top characters, a ridiculously complex plot, evading the authorities, and watching the masters work. It's a lot of fun, and it's all held together by Ustinov, who gives the audience a surrogate while becoming a fun character in his own right. Well worth watching, especially if you're any fan at all of heist films.
6-15	Stage Fright	By and large, this is far from my favorite Hitchcock movie. The focus kind of meanders, and the characters aren't really gripping enough to keep you involved with them (it doesn't help that we're two or three characters removed from the main action). There are some nice moments here and there, mostly courtesy of Sim in a great supporting role as the father, but it's mostly a forgettable piece of work...until the last ten minutes, which may be one of the most surprising Hitchcock endings I've seen. I can't recommend the film overall, which is definitely a little dull, but I really did like the ending a lot.
6-15	The Public Eye	About ten years ago, a good friend of mine talked about how much she loved this movie, and I just now got around to watching it. Shame it took me so long. What a great little movie, driven by a great performance by Pesci, who plays a man that documents life around him through his camera. The plot's interesting, of course, as is the nice evocation of the 40s, but it's Pesci's character who really makes the film work, filling it with little nuances and shades of character that bring some nice depth to the movie. Objectively, it's probably nothing really special, but I really liked it for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on. It's a great little gem that seems to have slipped through the cracks of time.
6-13	Seconds	A strange, oddly unsettling thriller about a man who is given a second chance at life. To say more would ruin the fun; suffice to say that was springs from here is equal parts drama, psychological exploration, and borderline horror. Frankenheimer uses some off-kilter filming devices (fisheye lenses, SnorriCam, skewed angles) to great effect, giving the whole movie an off-center and uncomfortable feeling that permeates even the quietest of scenes. Although it loses its way during a wine festival, the movie is otherwise a small masterpiece, with a masterful ending that definitely plays into the paranoia of the movie. It's a fascinating film about the prisons we make for ourselves and how we create our own lives; it's hopeless and bleak, but it's a great piece of filmmaking, and a worthy entry in the paranoid film genre.
6-12	The Philadelphia Story	A pair of outstanding Hepburn/Cukor films that not only lived up to their reputation and then some, but cracked me up pretty hard as well. I'd be hard pressed to find a fault with either of these - how I miss the days when romantic comedies were this well-acted, with such intelligent and genuinely witty dialogue, and played around with issues that felt like something substantial, not just fluff? If pressed, I might have to pick Rib as my favorite of the two - the battle of the sexes feels incredibly modern, and I liked the way the story kept defying my expectations in so many ways. Add to that the outstanding dialogue, the interesting social issue (which makes a nice inverse to How to Murder Your Wife), and some great small touches (like the very obviously gay neighbor - more so than I've seen ever in a film this old) all added up to be an instant classic in my book. Of course, Philadelphia is every bit its equal, with a cast to die for - Hepburn, Grant, and Stewart? Count me in. And rarely has Stewart been this funny - his drunken scene was absolutely stunning. Again, loved the repartee, loved the intelligent and fully realized characters, loved the way it dealt with issues of class...but those same issues made the movie feel a little dated in some ways, and I have to say that while the ending the movie gave was the right one, I wasn't thrilled about the resolution for Stewart, which seemed a tad problematic. Still, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone, and I loved both films tremendously; the tiny flaws I've mentioned do nothing to take away from their greatness and sheer entertainment value.
6-12	Adam's Rib
6-11	Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired	An illuminating and compelling documentary about a major film figure and the central scandal of his life. The movie focuses on the statutory rape case, while simultaneously exploring Polanski's life leading up to the case. The background information paints a portrait of a man horribly, horribly damaged by life; his statements following the death of his wife and unborn child are the words of a man who has been through more pain than I could imagine. To the film's credit, it doesn't use these events to excuse Polanski so much as understand him, and the film does a good job of separating Polanski's crime, which is inexcusable, and the trial, which was a charade headed by a judge more interested in his own publicity than any sort of justice. There's a little lack of focus that keeps this from being a masterpiece, but it does an excellent job of discussing Polanski and laying out the farce that was his trial in clear, compelling ways.
6-11	The Fearless Vampire Killers	An odd blend of Hammer-style horror and broad comedy that works more often than not, even though it's not really very scary or funny. I can't really explain it, but I stayed pretty entertained through this whole thing; it's got loads of atmosphere, and a few really outstanding scenes (the use of the mirror in the climax was brilliant). And, man, did I love that ending. It's not quite sure what it wants to be, but I think I liked that about it; it's fun to see something that doesn't pigeonhole itself into any one thing, but does them all pretty well, all while looking gorgeous and staying a lot of fun.
6-10	Torn Curtain	Overlong and a little bloated, but there are some strong sequences here and there that remind us that Hitchcock is indeed behind the camera. The most notable is a battle in a cottage, which brings up the classic Hitchcock idea of how messy and difficult a process death is. The plot is too simple to sustain the entire runtime, and the ending feels more than a little anticlimactic, but it's a diverting enough ride for the most part, and a few great scenes along the way keep things moving. Nothing essential, but it's not awful, either.
6-10	Shadow of a Doubt	A strong work from Hitchcock that goes to far darker places than I expected, mainly thanks to Cotton's chilling performance. His monologues are outstanding, both in the writing and the delivery, and its his performance as a girl's uncle who may or may not be hiding a dark secret that really drives this film. The plot is both simple and complex - the actions of the plot aren't complicated, but the way it affects the characters most certainly is. It's really a great effort from the master, one more driven by psychology than his usual suspense.
6-9	How to Murder Your Wife	Yes, it may be pretty hopelessly dated or sexist in some ways, but maybe it's no more dated than the acts of 95% of all standup comedians? The movie, if you don't know, is about a very confirmed bachelor who ends up getting married, and how it ruins his life. There's nothing especially fresh or groundbreaking here. The jokes all boil down to your standard marriage complaints. So why does it generally work, and why did I laugh so much? The casting is great, the dialogue funny...and, more than anything, it's got Jack Lemmon, one of my all-time favorites, who just has funny bones. The ending strains credulity beyond the breaking point, even for a silly comedy, but it's funny and entertaining enough that I still would recommend it. Just don't go expecting anything really "new" here.
6-9	Harvey	A sweet, funny movie about a man and his 6 foot tall rabbit. I wish the movie had played up the ambiguity a little more; by the end, there's a pretty definitive answer to the question, and in some ways, I felt like it lessened the movie somewhat. That being said, the movie's still a joy to watch, if only for Stewart. I've always loved Jimmy Stewart, but one of the reasons is the depth he can convey; even in a sweet, kind persona like this one, there are hints of something much deeper and more heartbreaking, and it makes Dowd a really great character. The whole thing is pretty wonderfully funny, and it's just a great watch.
6-7	The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian	It's definitely head and shoulders above the first in the series, but it's got a long way to go before it becomes a really great series. First and foremost, it's at least 30 minutes too long, and by the end, I was just tired of the movie. It didn't help that the pacing was just bizarre; this is a movie that interrupts its climatic battle for a conversation in the woods. In general, though, the biggest problem is this: In striving to meet the epic scale of LotR, the Narnia movies lose any sense of character or depth, and that really hurts the films drastically - the books had a much more intimate scale, and were the better for it. I say all this, but it's far from incompetently made, and there are moments here and there that just work - to name just one, Eddie Izzard's Reepicheep pretty much walks away with the movie, and cracked me up throughout. The more you like the books, the more you'll like this, I think; me? It was decent enough, but it's pretty generic and forgettable, which is not what I think the people who made it were really going for.
6-6	Fight Club	It's been a long, long time since I saw this, and time has a funny effect on it. For one thing, it more clearly emphasizes some of the flaws in the film - it's overlong, it fails to really bring any emotional investment in the story, and the ending muddles a lot of the film's message (or lack thereof). By the same token, some aspects of the film - the viciously funny black comedy, the anarchic "anything goes" spirit, the effort to stretch the boundaries of film - are even better than I recalled. All in all, warts and all, I still loved the film; it's a muddled mess, but I admire its anarchic middle finger towards the very establishment that birthed it, and as muddled as they may be, it has more ideas in any frame than some movies manage in their entire runtimes. It's flawed, to be sure, but that doesn't make it any less of a gem and a unique experience.
6-6	Brief Encounter	For all the hype and acclaim it gets, I was almost surprised that, in the end, this is a simple love story between two adults. I loved this for the light touches, for the way that the actors manage to say so much with simple body language, but the ubiquitous and overbearing narration really hurt the movie, in my opinion. Losing the narration (or, at the very least, cutting it down drastically - I hate to cut it all, if only because you would lose that beautiful sequence of her dreams while she's on the train) would have left me loving it; as it was, it's a beautiful love story, and I really liked the ending. But the narration really just explains too much and goes on too long, and hurt my appreciation of the film.
6-6	The Thing from Another World	Classic old sci-fi/horror blend that overall works a lot better than I expected it to. There are some moments that verge on camp, and the makeup is less than convincing, but the film does a pretty solid job of creating a confined environment and keeping the proceedings moving at a tense clip. I'm more interested in seeing Carpenter's version than ever, and I know that he took this in new directions, but this does a nice job working with essentially a pulp sci-fi story and turning it into something a little more sinister, populated with decent characters and some nice setpieces.
6-5	Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation	When we first saw the trailer for this, my friend Ryan and I wondered if we were going to be in for a long evening. It looked like goofy fun, but it sure looked like it might get old a little while in. We went anyways, and I'm so glad we did. Yes, it's basically a shot for shot remake with no budget, but the whole thing is done out of such love and enthusiasm that it's hard not to get caught up in the joy of the whole thing. It would make a perfect double feature with Son of Rambow in terms of a love letter to the joy of movies; whether we were laughing at it or with it, we had a great time, and loved every goofy, endearing second of it. If it ever comes near you, I can't say enough what a great time you'll have with it.
6-4	The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)	One of the famous sayings around Hollywood is that a great movie has to have "three good scenes, and no bad ones". That more or less applies here, in a film that has several spellbinding sequences, but as a whole feels a little long and meandering. Hitchcock takes his time setting up his characters, which does give the whole affair a greater emotional heft, but there are sections of the film that just feel a little too long, particularly the sightseeing in Morocco. That being said, it's hard to complain about a film that features the brilliant sequence in the Albert Hall, which wrings every possible drop of tension out of the proceedings. Again, it's not in the top tier of the work that Hitchcock did, but it's definitely the work of a "seasoned professional," as the master himself put it.
6-4	The 39 Steps	A fun early piece of entertainment from Hitchcock. It's obviously not as good as his later work, but it also doesn't match up to Sabotage at all. The whole thing is a lot of fun, to be sure, but there's never any real weight to the proceedings; it feels like an extended series of spy games rather than bringing any real tension. That being said, the dialogue is nice, and plot intriguing, and the MacGuffin's reveal was a genuine surprise to me. It's certainly not among the best of Hitch's work, but it's a lot of fun to watch.
6-3	Sabotage	An early work from Hitchcock that surprised me with its quality. It's a little meandering in points, and the opening scenes feel a little like they're stretching to fill time, but when the plot really gets going, Hitchcock's command of pacing and suspense are already on display this early in his career, and this one is no exception - in fact, in some ways, this is the most daring of any of his films, for reasons that will be clear when you see it; it definitely goes places that none of his films went before. There are some brilliant point of view shots from our female lead that play some interesting mind games, and there's that ending that plays so perfectly into Hitch's pet themes. It's really an outstanding early piece from the master; what flaws it has are more than outweighed by its successes.
6-3	Rear Window	There's always a fear when you're late to seeing a classic that it won't live up to the hype, that you'll see that it's good, but not quite get into it the way you hoped you might. Man, that was NOT the case here at all. I was worried that this would suffer with too much familiarity, thanks to all the spoofs and satires, but this holds up incredibly well, remaining suspenseful and tense even today. Hitchcock's direction is absurdly great, as he creates a full world simply out of one man's window, but it's the care he takes to establish a wide variety of characters that really make this work - well, that, and the fact that no one does a suspense scene like Hitch, and the finale of this one is absolutely spectacular. It's all I hoped it would be and more, and it's probably my favorite Hitchcock to date.
6-2	Modern Times	I remember seeing Chaplin's classic as a kid, but I didn't remember almost anything about it. Watching it again reminded me not only how funny parts of it were as a kid, but how timeless Chaplin's greatest work really is. With a subversive subtext, a sweet love story, and Chaplin's knack for physical gags, the whole thing is a mayhem-filled joy, and what makes it stand out so much is the way that it doesn't feel dated at all. The sense of loss amongst all those machines, the frustration of people unemployed, the pros and cons of unions...all of it is still around today, and then some. But enough of that - enjoy this for what it is, not what it's about. What is it? Nothing more complicated than a great series of carefully choreographed comic routines that had me grinning the whole time.
6-2	Scream Blacula Scream	A pair of blaxploitation classics that both fail to live up to their reputation and exceed it, rather paradoxically. They fail because, as vampire films, they're pretty lackluster, and while they both focus squarely on black culture, they don't quite have the same gritty feeling you get from the opening reel of Shaft (particularly Scream, which trades an interesting NYC environment for a generic Deep South Voodoo scene). On the other hand, they're both incredibly fun, with some well-written dialogue, some scenes that (whether intentionally or not) provide some great laughs, and most notably, a performance that's really too good for the movies by William Marshall, who brings near-Shakespearian level line readings to...well, Blacula. I got a real kick out of watching them; as vampire films, they don't entirely work, but as dramas and as just pure fun, they're hard to go wrong with.
6-2	Blacula
6-2	Cocaine Fiends	More drug-abuse scare films from the 30s, this one focusing on cocaine. Of all the scare films I've seen so, this one is probably the most grounded and plausible of all of them - of course, that's not saying much, and it leaves out how apparently people in the 30s were convinced that there were all sorts of headache powders you sniffed. Yeah, it veers into camp occasionally, but it plays it a lot more straight than, say, Reefer Madness or Marihuana, and the ending definitely reeks of someone trying to show off how many German expressionism films they saw. It's certainly not a great film, but it's one of the better examples of the genre that I've seen so far.
5-26	Spellbound (2002)	There is no reason that this film should be as entertaining and gripping as it is. Who knew there was such drama to be had in spelling bees? It's also the rare film that could stand to be longer; I would have liked to have spent more time with the kids before the big competition, but as it is, the movie does a good job letting us get to know them enough that we sense their personalities, their lives, and thus have more invested in the National Spelling Bee. It would make a good double feature with Wordplay, another film about word geeks that finds a lot more to explore in the topic than you would expect.
5-25	This Film Is Not Yet Rated	An outstanding pair of documentaries that explore our culture's bizarre relationship with (and fear of) sex, and the way it impacts our art and our society. Inside Deep Throat focuses on the history of the first truly mainstream porn film, exploring its history but also looking at everything that came about because of it: obscenity trials, jail terms, a Watergate informant, bankruptcy, the mob, and more. It's a great story, and it's well told, but it's the evocation of the period and the detail about what exactly happened that make this such a fascinating watch. By examining all of this, the film ends up making taking a complex look at the way we view sex, and makes a lot of interesting points. By contrast, This Film... focuses more on the rating system: its absurdly secret nature, its ridiculous and infuriating inconsistencies, and its amazingly conservative views on sex compared to its amazingly liberal views on violence. I'm already no fan of the MPAA, and this documentary doesn't do them any favors; although Kirby Dick is occasionally a little self-aggrandizing, he does a great job systematically proving each of his points, nowhere more effectively than with a montage of side-by-side shots from R and NC-17 movies, respectively, where it becomes clear that the only difference between the two is not staging, or nudity, but sexual orientation. Like Deep Throat, it has a lot to say about how our culture reacts to sex, but his one is far more focused on how it affects our movies. Both great documentaries, and both compelling viewing, even if they're for entirely different reasons.
5-25	Inside Deep Throat
5-24	John Adams	A sprawling, uneven, but gripping HBO miniseries about the life of one of the most overlooked Founding Fathers. As drama, there are some major flaws here; the series can go from riveting and powerful (the buildup and debate over independence) to fairly dull (the extended stay in Paris). But as history, it's pretty fascinating stuff, especially if you're interested in that kind of thing, and they do a great job taking the haloes off of everyone's head and exploring the Fathers as flawed, interesting human beings. The whole thing is a little overlong (all told, about 9 hours), and there are definitely some sections that weren't as involving as others. But for anyone interested in the history, the information and exploration of the period (done with some fine acting all around) really will overcome any of those weaknesses by a long shot.
5-24	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	Sitting in a bar after watching Son of Rambow, my friend Ryan argued that he has a keen sense of when a movie is made out of love, and when people are going through the motions. The biggest problem with Crystal Skull is that it's the latter kind of movie. For about the first twenty minutes, while there are a few flaws evident, there's a sense that maybe this will really work out, and that this will be everything we hoped. Then the main storyline kicks in, and everything falls apart. The script reeks of a slew of multiple drafts shoved together, the scale gets away from the characters, and ultimately the whole thing just feels like empty, bland adventure movie-making, rather than conveying the sense of fun and thrills that the originals managed to do. I don't even mind the new direction in the storyline; what I do mind is the loss of character-based adventure, a sense that the audience doesn't have to have even fundamentally obvious points explained to them, and just the sense of love that the original movies all had.
5-23	Son of Rambow	The story of two young boys growing up in the 1980s and their quest to film a sequel to First Blood in their backyards, Son of Rambow does what few films manage to do: take a completely standard, cliched plot (two unlikely friends overcome differences, learn a lesson, and find their friendship strengthened) and makes it one of the most enjoyable, charming, funny movies I've seen in a long time. It's all about the love for movie-making, and every frame of this just reeks of people who love what they're doing, and allow that love to show through. The gags are wonderfully staged, and while the plot is nothing standard, the characters are allowed to develop and hit all the right notes, making the story fresh simply by virtue of these people that we come to love. It's a complete joy of a film, and it's the kind of thing that anyone who really loves movies owes it to themselves to watch - it's an ode to the joys and power of cinema, and one with a lot of heart and humor behind it.
5-21	Reaper	One of the rare new television shows that has become must-see viewing for me, largely for the ridiculously charismatic and entertaining cast. The first half of the season was fun, but a bit repetitive, and the show risked turning into a generic and forgettable "monster of the week" show. However, as the season progressed, a few major arcs began to emerge, and the beginnings of a big mythology seem to be coming along. Add to that the great cast of friends, and the absolutely spectacularly entertaining, funny, threatening, scary, charming performance of Ray Wise as Satan, and you have one of my favorite new shows in years. Here's hoping it stays around for a lot longer than most of what I've liked.
5-17	King Corn	Agreeable, if slightly rambling and a little unfocused, documentary about corn and its impact on our economy, as well as its changing roles to farmers and consumers. The film takes a little too long to find its groove, spending a little too much time on our subjects' families, but once it actually begins focusing on the impact that corn's increasing ubiquity has had on our health, on the economy, and how it got to be that way, the film becomes more fascinating, albeit it more for the information than any really well-done filmmaking. It's certainly an interesting watch, and one that would make an interesting supplement to Super Size Me, but it's more successful for the information it imparts than any real effort or accomplishment by the people behind the scenes.
5-17	Marihuana	Old-school marijuana scare film from the 1930s. The whole thing is hilarious, on so many levels; it's obvious, for instance, that they felt the need to "construct" a marijuana plot to lead to scenes full of nubile young women splashing around in the ocean wearing not a thing, and it's pretty gleefully ironic to see the film hold up morality as a standard and then devolve into pure exploitation. None of this says anything about the plot, which has less to do with marijuana specifically and more to do with drugs as a corrupting influence that lead to death, pregnancy, crime, and more. It's all so over-the-top and absurd that you can't help but laugh at it; even if their intentions were pure (and I doubt that), the execution is pure fear-mongering, and makes this mainly enjoyable on a camp level.
5-11	Speed Racer (IMAX)	I never watched the cartoon, so I can't compare it to that, but I can say that on a pure entertainment level, I loved the whole thing. If you've seen the trailers, you know what to expect - colors so far beyond vibrant that they light up the screen, mind-bending physics-free racing with incredible tracks, a live-action version of cartoon worlds where everything is in focus...in other words, this is probably the closest thing to a live action cartoon you'll ever see. In some ways, the film combines the sheer energy and momentum of Moulin Rouge! with the intricate virtual world of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow...and yet, that doesn't really do justice to the light, fun tone of it all. It's just pure entertainment, beginning to end; the racing sequences are stellar, the story just complicated enough to make it fun, and the world unlike anything you've ever seen. As pure eye candy, it's an incredible achievement, and I can't recommend the gorgeous, massive IMAX version enough; nowhere else could you savor those colors and all the details that well. I know the reviews are terrible, but I gotta go against them on this one; it's a great little piece of summer entertainment, and one that kept me grinning like an idiot throughout.
5-3	Iron Man	One of the best comic book movies I've seen, and easily the most fun. This one probably falls right above Spiderman 2 and right below Batman Begins in terms of quality - it lacks some of the maturity and thoughtfulness of Begins, which transcended the boundaries of the genre, but as pure comic book movies go, it may be the best of the bunch. This is due to any number of factors, but the biggest may be the sterling work of the cast; Downey is a complete joy, and makes the movie single-handedly, but it's easy to overlook the essential contributions of Howard, Bridges, and especially Paltrow, who makes what could be a bland romantic interest into a character with some personality and charm. The action is sparing but extremely effective, the dialogue sharp and funny, the direction strong, the characters all rich and interesting, the story nicely contemporized...it's really just a complete blast, beginning to end, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who's up for it. Oh, and if you're a fan at all, you better stay past the credits.
5-1	Pretty in Pink	More fun from John Hughes. I didn't like this as much as Sixteen Candles - the ending didn't ring as true, for one thing, and it seemed more interested in plot than the wandering, entertaining Candles did. That being said, there's still a lot here to like, most notably Hughes' good grip on characters and dialogue. The characters are funny without being overly precious, and even the "wacky comic relief" of Potts feels organic and natural from her character. The cast all acquits themselves nicely, with Stanton once again showing how great of a character Hughes likes his fathers to be - in fact, it was that relationship that really fascinated me through this. The ending feels a bit forced (unsurprisingly, the result of test audiences), but not enough to ruin the movie, which I quite enjoyed a lot.
4-25	Pulp Fiction	One of the great movies of all time, on the big screen, with a never before seen print, and an enthusiastic crowd: it adds up to a fantastic night. It's been years since I watched this, and it may never have hit me before just how incredible QT's work is here - for a second film, this is ridiculously assured filmmaking. There's an old saying that a good movie should have "three good scenes, and no bad one", but Pulp Fiction is great scene after great scene, with almost no breaks. Much of what I could find to say about this has been said, but I do want to say that Jackson has rarely been better, and his quiet conversation with Roth near the film's end is extraordinary, and some of the best writing in the film. I feel like I have so much more to say about this, but I'll sum up with this: the characters are fleshed out and fascinating, the acting stellar throughout, the dialogue snappy and hilarious...it's a brilliant, exhilarating movie, and seeing it on the big screen only solidified its greatness.
4-25	Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay	I feel like I should apologize for liking this as much as I did, but I really can't bring myself to do it. To be sure, it's uneven, and there are some jokes that fall pretty flat (the long GW sequence chief among them), but the film as a whole is so likeable and funny that it's hard to find much to really hold against it. Like the first one, the way it toys with ethnic stereotypes and cliches is pretty damn funny, and though no one would accuse it of being subtle, it's telling that even a semi-stoner comedy is taking on political issues of the time. Penn and Cho remain charismatic and funny, and Harris continues the single most self-effacing cameo part in all of cinema, I think. It's dumb, sure, but there's a sneaky intelligence hiding in there, and it's pretty hilarious. I certainly enjoyed it quite a bit.
4-18	Eraserhead	It had been years since I saw this the first (and only) time, and I have to say that I appreciated it in a whole new way this time. Maybe it's the fact that I've come around to Lynch since the first time I saw it - knowing his style allows me to look past the surreal plot (or lack thereof?) and immerse myself in the waking nightmare he's created here. Maybe it's seeing it on the big screen, engulfed in his surreal soundscape. Or maybe it's just that I've grown since then, and seeing a story about a man, his "wife", and their...um...child has a different resonance with me. Whatever the case, I walked out of this loving it, but unsettled beyond words. The whole film feels like a nightmare you can't wake up from, and while Lynch's trademark humor is evident (a lot more than I remembered), by the time the film gets to its climax, you just want desperately to wake up. It's a hell of an experience, and it's unlike anything else I've ever seen.
4-16	Little Children	I'm surprised by how much I liked this, and I'm sure that's due in no small part to this being not as depressing as I expected. I thought this was going to be a bleak, dysfunctional family affair a la We Don't Live Here Anymore, and I was kind of dreading it. While Little Children isn't exactly a light comedy, there's a little more optimism and hope to it than I expected, and there's a couple of doses of some blacker than black humor that make it pretty easy to swallow. While the movie is about two main stories (an affair between two people and the reaction of the community to a sexual offender moving in) and their eventual intersection, it's one that's driven far more by characters than cheap melodrama or the need to have a "tragic" ending (think House of Sand and Fog for an example of the latter). The characters are nicely fleshed out throughout, and the ending strikes that perfect balance between an open resolution and neatly tying everything up, giving finality to the stories without ending too neatly. It's not for all tastes, but for those interested in a mature, thoughtful drama about relationships, love, lust, and even redemption, you could do far, far worse. Myself, I found it strangely affecting and exquisitely well-made and acted.
4-16	Fracture	There's too much "been there, done that" about this whole production to make this really worthwhile, despite the best efforts of a pretty solid cast. Oh, it's another movie where Hopkins plays an intelligent criminal getting the best of the authorities. Oh, it's another movie where a character makes a throwaway comment that gives the perfect solution. It's all pretty generic fare, and while some of the plot machinations are well done, there's nothing really memorable or outstanding here. Hopkins, Gosling, and Strathairn are all clearly having fun (especially Hopkins), but there's nothing here I'll remember in a day or so.
4-15	Dead Silence (2007)	In which the guys from Saw prove themselves to be perfectly capable of making a B-horror movie. There's nothing really remarkable here, but it's not nearly as bad as you might expect. There's a nice retro feel to a lot of the proceedings (starting with the old Universal logo), and it's nice to see a horror movie entirely without irony or clever winks to the audience. Sure, there's nothing really scary here, but the dolls are nicely used, and while some of the final twist is a little obvious, the level to which they pushed it...well, it's pretty memorable, in a grisly way. It's nothing really special, but I had fun watching it, and I wouldn't have too much bad to say about it; more than anything, it's just nothing special.
4-6	Shoot 'Em Up	So far over the top I think it may have looped back to the bottom, Shoot 'Em Up pretty much delivers just what the title promises: ludicrous shoot-outs done with style, humor, and wit, and held together by the barest smidgen of something resembling a plot. But, oh, lord, is it ever fun. The shootouts are cleverly staged, and it's clear that the whole thing is done with a bit of a wink. Owen and Giamatti are clearly having a blast with it, and the escalating ridiculousness makes the whole thing pretty hilarious. It's certainly not going to win any awards, but as action movies go, it's one of the more entertainingly goofy ones I've seen in a while, and it's nice to see an action movie that doesn't think it's something "important".
4-5	Solaris (1972)	It'll probably get me kicked out of some film fan club, but I really preferred Soderbergh's remake to this quite a bit. The first hour of this alone was enough to really hurt my appreciation of it; Tarkovsky takes 165 minutes to accomplish what Soderbergh does in 99, and I didn't feel like I got much extra out of the longer running time. I got the mood that he was going for, and the way he wanted to create this strange, dreamlike world, but it's a pretty ponderous first hour or so, and there are long sections that just feel bloated and excessive, like Tarkovsky's hammering in a point that could be easily created with less dialogue. I don't know. It reminds me a lot of Malick - like his films, I know that a lot of people like them, but what they find beautiful and profound I find slow and tedious.
3-30	In Treatment	When I first started on HBO's newest, I was curious, but not really optimistic. With new episodes every weeknight for nine weeks, a return to a therapy setting, and the recent dreariness that was Tell Me You Love Me, I was willing to check it out, but kind of assumed I'd be dropping out soon into it. Instead, I got really involved in this, and finished it feeling like it's one of HBO's best shows since its Golden Era of Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and so forth. The show has a great sense of what makes people tick, and the writers did a superb job of making the therapy sessions interesting and thoughtful, but never excessively downers. The show was an acting showcase, but Byrne carried it, bringing complexity and subtlety to a role that demanded a lot. It was a lot of time, but it was fascinating to see characterization so well done, and to find myself so involved in the lives and problems of these fictional characters, and to find it being handled adroitly, dodging the simplicity and dreariness I dreaded. It really is a strong show, and while I know not a lot of people watched it, I'd really recommend giving it a shot; it's not up to the standards of the Golden Era, but it's far above most television that you can find these days.
3-22	The Haunting (1963)	Absolutely top-notch classic horror film, and one that works on the mind in countless ways. Watching this compared to the execrable remake is instructive; with all the budget and special effects of the remake, there's not a thing about it that comes close to creating the sheer unnerving terror that this creates with nothing more than a rhythmic beating and a slightly turning doorknob. The special effects here are few, but the atmosphere is incredible, and I really can't remember the last time a film gave me the creeps this badly. Combine that with a superbly psychological story, one driven by a deeply flawed character, and you have a horror film for the ages. Every bit as good as its reputation suggested and then some.
3-21	Diary of the Dead	Understand, before you read this, that I'm a big fan of Romero's zombie movies. Hell, I'm one of the few who liked Land of the Dead. So understand how bitter I am at this movie. Diary of the Dead isn't just a bad movie by Romero standards; it's a utterly, completely, totally horrible movie by any standards. There are maybe three minutes of decent film in this. I don't mean good; I mean decent, like a Sci-Fi channel original movie. Those are the highlights. The rest is filled with terrible acting, a message beat into your head with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, telegraphed scares, dull action, horrible characters, painfully awful stabs at humor...the list goes on and on. The fact that people are saying anything good about it can only be chalked up to an unwillingness to let Romero go wrong. Me? I guess I'm glad he left the screening, because I would have hated to have to have gone up to the master of the genre and kick him in the nuts, but I was physically angry at him for wasting this time of my life. An awful, awful film by any standards, but coming from the master of zombie movies, it's a crime.
3-20	Sid & Nancy	An anarchic biopic that manages to not only capture the essence of its age but also of its subjects, Sid & Nancy isn't always an easy watch. By the end, the movie is pretty miserable, and it doesn't skimp on depicting the horrors of drug addiction like so many biopics do. But there's so much more to this - a ton of hilarious black humor, some rousing musical scenes, great performances by all involved, and some show-stopping scenes, like the famous "My Way" scene. It's a great biopic, one that really reflects the punk sensibilities of its focus. It's a little rough at times, and maybe a tad overlong, but it's head and shoulders above so many other generic musical biopics. (And, on a side note: I love the irony of Courtney Love being in a movie about a shrill loser who attaches herself to a musical icon and aids in his destruction.)
3-20	Kansas City	A slight, almost empty, work from Robert Altman that I nonetheless enjoyed greatly. The story here is almost nonexistent, and frequently loses track of itself, but Altman, as usual, brings such joy and fun to the screen that it's hard not to like it. The characters are fleshed out in little doses and afterthoughts, and there are long sections where little happens at all, save florid speeches and monologues, most notably by the oddly threatening Harry Belafonte. The whole film, essentially, is one of those jazz pieces that Altman keeps featuring, all about improv and talent. If you're game for that, you'll have fun losing yourself in Altman's world for a bit. It's not a masterpiece, but it's fun.
3-19	The Sweet Hereafter	A haunting, painful exploration of grief and anger that so often comes out in the aftermath of a tragedy. The film explores a town coping with the loss of 14 children in a bus accident, anchored by Ian Holm's character, a lawyer attempting to bring a suit on behalf of the families. The film jumps through time, but it never feels gimmicky; rather, it feels like it's exploring the emotional connections in the order they come, and following those. The film raises a lot of issues, but doesn't offer answers, and rightfully so; for times like this, there are no easy answers. The performances are all outstanding, with Holm bringing an incredible complexity and depth to his character, one that keeps revealing more and more as the film progresses. It's a tough watch, and it will stick with you, but it's a fascinating, powerful film.
3-19	Lost Highway	It's pure Lynch, which implies...well, a whole lot of things. Like his later Mulholland Drive, the best way to approach this one is as a dream version of reality, but one that never really appears in this film (as opposed to Mulholland). As a result, the film plays out more like a surreal nightmare than anything even close to a standard narrative, and it doesn't always work. But, man, when it works, it comes together brilliantly. No one makes an experience like Lynch, and there are parts of this that seared themselves into my brain as completely terrifying, most notably the brief part played by Robert Blake, whose work here is the stuff nightmares are made of. It's not for all tastes, but for those willing to put themselves in Lynch's hands for a while, it's a ride you're not likely to forget, even if you'll be trying to find the meaning in it for a long time afterward.
3-18	The Black Dahlia	On paper, there doesn't seem to be a more perfect match for the dark, violent world of James Ellroy's fiction than Brian De Palma, who's made a career of those same kind of movies. So why is this so painfully, horribly mediocre to outright awful? Is the the bad casting, ranging from Josh Hartnett's inability to bring depth to Hilary Swank's horrific miscasting as a wealthy, sophisticated sex kitten? Is it the fact that critical characters (most notably during the climax) show all the acting skills of a third rate soap opera? Is it the simplification of Ellroy's work, resulting in the loss of true darkness in the main characters? Is it the fact that it all feels too polished, not dark enough? I think it's all of that, and more. All I know is that I went from bored to more bored to laughing at how awful it got.
3-18	Au Revoir, Les Enfants	Really, I knew almost nothing about this when I set it up to record; I knew the name, and knew that it was well regarded. What I didn't expect was something so simple, and yet so powerful. The film is essentially the story of boys in a Catholic school in 1944, but the subtext and setting - France, the German authority, the Holocaust - all contribute to give the film a far more profoundly painful and powerful side that it never really brings to the forefront. And that's a good thing. We experience the film through the eyes of these children, understanding the world as they do, and when evil comes into their world, it's all the more shocking and painful because of their innocence. Understated but powerful, the film manages to say a lot while never lecturing the audience; by the time the film finishes, the pain that's haunted Malle to this day is all too evident. It's a beautiful film, and one that well deserves its reputation as a great movie.
3-17	Häxan	Far more modern and inventive than I might have expected from a movie made in 1922. This Swedish film about witchcraft is an odd mix of essay, documentary, and fiction, and while it's not perfect - some sections drag on a little long, and others never really quite make sense - it's memorable for all sorts of other reasons. The visual element is surprisingly inventive, with anything involving demons being pretty entertaining, and even pretty well done, even if it's so over the top as to be absurd. The film knows this, though - there's a quiet sense of humor to the whole thing, and I know that it's aware of its own goofiness. Adding to the modern feel, there's a willingness to toy with the audience a little bit, and a sense that there's actually a message that the film is trying to get across, one that, while admittedly a little simple, is still more liberal than you might expect. It's a pretty fascinating little artifact, one that more film fans should check out.
3-17	Far From Heaven	I'm actually surprised by how much I liked this; I fully expected this to be a chore, but I found myself completely involved and moved by this, far more than I planned on. Haynes's loving recreation of Sirk melodramas takes on issues that would have been ignored in the 50s - interracial romance and homosexuality - and basically makes a 50s melodrama out of them. The film should feel like a gimmick, but it doesn't, somehow; the characters come fully to life, and the film manages to make a point about the topics being covered while still feeling like a true melodrama driven by characters. The look of the film is gorgeous, and the effort spent to make every frame feel like Sirk is clearly evident. It really is a great film, one that uses the framework of melodrama to try something very different, and it pays off.
3-15	Beetlejuice	Watching this for the first time in a long time, it struck me that this is pretty deeply flawed. The characters never really develop beyond caricatures, and the script is pretty obviously a pile of rewrites that don't always make sense (why do the rules change for summoning Beetlejuice? Why do the couple suddenly want to live in peace?). So why is it still so well regarded? Because there are so many great scenes that we tend to forget the weaknesses. It may not make any sense, but with those wonderful afterlife scenes and a really great climax, as well as fun performances from everyone, especially Keaton, you walk away feeling like this is better than it was. It's a lot of fun, but as a movie, it has some serious, serious issues that are a lot more apparent to me now that I see it again.
3-14	Funny Games (2007)	(Note: I have never seen the original version of this, but I understand that this remake is basically shot for shot.) Now this is how you toy with an audience. Not for all tastes, Haneke's bizarre thriller is basically a torture porn film, but one with a huge amount of self-awareness, and one that pushes the boundaries of cinema to make the audience awfully aware of their own culpability in watching movies like this. What results is something that surpasses a generic thriller, and becomes a masterful piece of audience manipulation, culminating in a massively uncomfortable experience that raises a lot more questions than most will be prepared for. A lot of people will miss the point, but I'd love to watch this with a big group of people expecting another Saw or Hostel movie and get their reaction. It's the work of a master, and the ideas it raises are magnificently handled. (For a superb review of the film, although it might give a little too much away, click here.)
3-13	The Trials of Darryl Hunt	Watching this not long after I finished Grisham's superb non-fiction book The Innocent Man may have been a bad idea; currently, my faith in the judicial system is pretty horrifically low. Trials concerns itself with Darryl Hunt, a man charged in 1984 with a brutal rape/murder that he claims not to have committed; despite a pretty shabby case by any standards (one that literally caused the courtroom to break into laughter at one point), Hunt ended up convicted and in prison for 20 years. The advantage this has over Grisham's similar account of a different case is the visual element; watching Darryl and his attorneys age over this time only emphasizes just how much of Hunt's life was taken by this process, and how horrible this injustice truly was. It's hard to tell if what happens is the result of malevolence or incompetence, but it's hard not to walk away feeling that, whichever it was, neither one makes me feel much better.
3-13	In Bruges	I don't know who made the trailers for this, but I'd love to know what movie they saw, but it sure wasn't this one. Far from the slight action-comedy promised by the ads, this is a dark drama with black comedy sprinkled pretty liberally throughout. It goes to places far darker and sadder than I expected, and the action, though sparse, when it comes, it's grounded pretty heavily in the bloody reality of gunplay. With some superb characterization, outstanding acting from the three leads (you expect such good work from Gleeson and Fiennes, but Farrell is a treat - alternately completely hilarious and quietly heartbreaking), a complicated plot that pulls together in surprising ways, and incredibly strong direction and dialogue (albeit really profane dialogue), this is way, way better than I expected. Not just a good piece of entertainment, but a really great movie that deserves a lot more attention than it seems to have gotten. Don't let the trailers or the plot description fool you - this is a rich character piece that juggles drama, action, and comedy, and does it all perfectly.
3-13	The Bridge	A haunting documentary about those who choose to end their lives by leaping off of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, often complete with footage of their deaths (the filmmakers set up cameras and filmed the bridge from dawn to dusk for a year; they always called the bridge patrol as soon as they saw someone they thought might jump, and they say that they saved at least six lives this way). The film is draining, as one might expect, but it never feels exploitative; rather, it attempts to understand what drives a person to end their lives, and it interviews the grieving survivors in an effort to understand both the choice and the impact it had. It's a hard watch, not only for the footage, but for the sheer amount of emotional pain on display, but it draws a power from its attempt to understand these people who felt that no one really could understand them at all. For those who can handle it, it's an unforgettable film, and one that takes on an important subject we too often want to ignore.
3-12	Wild Strawberries	A fascinating story of a man looking back on his life and trying to put it all together. I'm not sure I fully "get" the movie, but it's fascinating to see something that plays so well with past and present, and one that has such a strong grasp of psychological issues. It's an interesting movie that's complex and thoughtful without feeling pretentious, something I was always worried about with Bergman. This is somehow the first of his I've seen; I'm looking forward to trying out more of them soon.
3-12	Amores Perros	I liked this more than 21 Grams or Babel, the director's other two films, but if that sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise, it should. There's a great kinetic and raw energy to this, but it soon becomes apparent that it's all style with no substance to it. The stories feel disconnected, the jumbled timeline pointless, and it all adds up to a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It's less pretentious than his later work, and parts are pretty slickly entertaining, but that's about the best I can really say about it. Ultimately, it just feels like am empty exercise in style for its own sake.
3-11	Nightwatch (1997)	There's loads of style to this, but the substance is so weak and insipid that there's no joy to be had here. How great of a horror movie/thriller should you be able to set in a hospital morgue after hours? And yet, tellingly, all the most unsettling moments of the film come before the terrible, terrible story really gets going. The killer is pretty insanely obvious, big chunks of the plot make little to no sense, the denouement is just...well, it's there. I'm curious to know how different the original Danish version is, but based off this, I don't have a huge need to go find out.
3-11	Trapped in the Closet (Chap. 1-22)	To quote Spinal Tap, "There's a thin line between clever and stupid." I can't decide if this is brilliant, moronic, or some incredible blend of the two, but I know that I watched the whole thing with my jaw open, laughing in incredulous disbelief. I mean, here's my four word phrase to sum this up: "sexually irresistible stripper midget". Is it self parody? Inspired rap opera? Self aware bad movie-making, or genius? I don't have any idea. But it's certainly unlike anything else I've ever seen, I'll give it that.
3-10	Batman: Mask of the Phantasm	I remember loving the Batman animated series growing up, and I had always been curious about this film, both as a one time fan and a curious adult. Would the series hold up? Surprisingly, yes. Simply on a visual level, the retro look of Gotham City combined with sleek, stripped down animation gives the world a film noir feel, something that nicely contributes to the mood. But it's the story and the characters that really hold up, as the film goes to far darker places than you would expect of a show that was nominally for children. With a fairly brutal fight, an intriguing (if not altogether surprising) villain, and some great showpieces, this holds up more than well, and any Batman fan ought to check it out.
3-9	The Wire	A superb ending to a great season, and a fitting ending to one of the best shows ever to grace the airwaves. Click here for a long, entirely spoiler-free review of the show.
3-9	Semi-Pro	A weirdly schizophrenic movie that tries to mush together two very different ideas, and ends up doing neither well enough to be successful. Half of the film is a typical Will Ferrell comedy, and while Ferrell remains pretty damned great, the film never really takes off. Why? Because the other half of the film plays as a straight inspirational sports drama, with an old-timer getting back into the game and a newcomer learning the value of teamwork. Neither aspect is that bad, but both hold the other back, and the whole film just feels very...I guess I'll stick with schizophrenic. It's not bad, just very odd. The last line is great, though.
3-8	Rope	A solidly executed thriller from the master, even if it's a little slight. To be sure, the long shots (about ten minutes each, and mostly edited together to look seamless) and the real-time unfolding give the whole proceedings a little of a gimmicky feel, but it's to Hitch's credit that the film surpasses that. Both of those are used to masterful effect in keeping the tension ratcheted up, whether it's through repeated exposure to the chest or simply stretching events out to their longest possible time (best sequence in the film: the maid slowly clearing off the chest to open it). I have some problems with the ending - I think Stewart lets himself off easy, and I can't decide if the film agrees or not. But it's a great concept for a film, and it's always a joy to watch Hitchcock doing what he does best.
3-6	Les Diaboliques	If I hadn't had the ending ruined for me accidentally about a month back, I can see that this would have been a tense, unsettling, creepy as hell experience. Instead, I was bored; that's not the fault of the movie, which is excellently constructed, but when you know the ending and the logic of the bizarre events, a lot of the enjoyment of the film is ruined for you. I'm really bummed; I can see that I would have loved this if I hadn't known the ending. As it was, I admired the craft, but was just bored through most of it. Sigh.
3-2	The Big Heat	A really great classic piece of noir to finish off the noir festival. What's fascinating about this, as with so much noir, isn't really the story. To be fair, the story is interesting, but what really grips about this is the dark undercurrents you see to everyone, including a hero who seems far less heroic than he thinks he is. This one goes to some nasty places, most notably in a scene with a coffeepot that shocked our whole audience into silence. It's good stuff, and a worthy climax to the festival.
3-1	Taxi Driver	Too much to say. It's been years since I saw this, and I guess I had forgotten what a masterpiece it is. A draining, powerful masterpiece. Read more here.
3-1	Mean Streets	Early but still completely satisfying work from Scorsese. It wasn't quite what I expected; I suppose, knowing that it was a gangster film, I expected something more plot-driven. Instead, what I got was closer to a slice-of-life film that happened to play out in a gangster neighborhood. Far from a disappointment, I loved the film; the warmth, sense of place, and strong sense of character that Scorsese brought to the film really make it come to life. It's a little clunky in parts, and it lacks the brilliance of Scorsese's later work, but that's a high standard to measure it up against. What Mean Streets offers is a great portrait of a time and a place, and of characters defined by guilt, faith, and their actions. Naturally, De Niro is fascinating, but this is really Keitel's film all the way, and his complex and flawed hero's journey makes for a great watch.
2-25	Blow Out	Two films with great potential that both left me ultimately unsatisfied. The common point of the films is a man who accidentally records evidence of a murder – in Blowup, it’s through photography, and in Blow Out, it’s a sound recorder. The best part of both films is the analysis of the recordings; the long, silent sequence in Blowup that consists of nothing more than a man looking from photograph to photograph is absolutely riveting, and it’s fascinating to watch the way the film lets you know everything he’s thinking while never saying a word. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is interminable, pretentious, and meandering to the point of tedium; I get that Antonioni was trying to capture the spirit of the times, but it’s frustrating to see such an engaging mystery (whose resolution, so to speak, I like quite a bit) lost amidst a tedious portrait of a time and character who never really engage me. (And the less said about the final sequence, the better; it reminded me more than anything of Jay Sherman’s student film in the under-rated show The Critic.) Similarly, Blow Out is best when it’s engaging in the analysis of the tape; unfortunately, the mystery here is so dumbed down than the analysis becomes annoyingly explicit for something that’s already quite obvious. The film is a mess, plot-wise, with characters who never convince, a conspiracy that seems pointless, and Nancy Allen as one of the most annoying, worst acted love interests I've seen in a long, long time. And that ending…it’s clear that De Palma thinks that he’s proposed some interesting moral question, but it’s an empty and pointless one that thinks it’s deep. Two deeply unsatisfying films made all the more frustrating by brushing against such a solid, fascinating concept.
2-25	Blowup
2-23	Point Blank	Extremely unsatisfying attempt to make a heady, trippy revenge film, but ultimately it all feels like self-conscious arty filmmaking that leaves everyone unsatisfied. For a bit at the beginning, this seemed like it was playing with some interesting ideas, but it turned out to just be playing, and nothing more. Rambling, pretentious, confusing, and ultimately frustrating, it's a failure not only as film noir, but on most other counts, from my viewpoint.
2-23	Chinatown	Maybe it was seeing it in the context of all these other film noir movies; maybe it was seeing it on the big screen. I don't know. But I walked away from Chinatown more convinced than ever of its greatness. I've always thought it was a good film, maybe even great, but this viewing solidified its place as one of the all-time great films. The plot is fascinating, but it's the strong character work and brilliant writing, as well as Polanski's more than solid direction, that truly elevate this. From Nicholson's wise but hardened PI to Huston's chilling paternal capitalist, the film creates unforgettable characters, and follows them to far, far darker places than the viewer expects. And, god, that ending. Brilliant in every way.
2-20	Double Indemnity	In some ways, it's a great flip side of the coin which also gave us The Big Sleep. While both films have incredible dialogue, phenomenal acting throughout, and beautiful visuals (with that standard noir accompaniment of shadows), Indemnity strips away the complex plot to about as pure and simple as it can be, and delivers every bit the film that Sleep does. The plot machinations are fascinating, but it's the darkness of the human soul that MacMurray and Stanwyck bring, and the great moral sensibility brought by Robinson, that fascinates. It's a film about relationships, sex, greed, and morality, and it's satisfying in pretty much every way imaginable. Absolutely flawless - a sleek, great thrill machine with far more complexity and depth than the genre demands.
2-20	Sunset Blvd.	While it may be stretching the idea of noir a little to count this as a film noir, there's definitely more noir about it than I remembered - the slick writer with the strong voice-over, his rather cavalier approach to morality...but, of course, that's not what makes the film great, and it's not what people remember about it. No, what people remember, and rightfully so, is the scathing portrait of Hollywood and the way it treats its stars, embodied perfectly by Gloria Swanson's unforgettable Norma Desmond. Swanson nails the part, bringing equal parts melodrama, self-pity, delusion, wounded pride, and pathos, all of which add up to create a character unlike almost any I've seen before. And none of this mentions Max, who I think ultimately comes out of the film as one of the most fascinating and complex characters, especially given his short amount of screen time. It's an incredible accomplishment, and to do it justice requires more room than I have here. Suffice to say it's a classic film which has aged perfectly, and is just as great now as it was then.
2-18	Tapeheads	A bizarre little movie that doesn't really work that well, but is still pretty entertaining. Cusack and Robbins have more than enough charisma to make the film watchable, but it never really attains the level of comedy I was hoping for. There are a couple of great moments (the girl fight and sobriety test) that show what level of insanity could have been, but in the end, it's just a cult movie that's enjoyable enough, but nothing really special.
2-18	George Washington	I've seen most of Green's work so far, and in the end, I think he may be one of those directors that I intellectually understand why people like him, but he doesn't work for me. He reminds me a lot here of Malick, another director I just can't get into, no matter how I try. Like Malick, Green does a beautiful job shooting this, and his writing is beautiful and poetic. But the shots linger too long, the characters not doing enough, and I find my attention drifting. There are moments I loved, and like I said, I think I know why people like it...but I certainly can't say that it worked for me, if that makes any sense.
2-17	The Big Sleep	Maltese Falcon may have been the first great noir, but it's hard to deny that The Big Sleep may be the high point of the genre. The plot is complicated to the point of absurdity (the famous story is that neither the producers, the screenwriters, or even Chandler himself know who killed one major character), but that hardly matters. This one is all about the style and the process, and it delivers both in spades. The dialogue has never been better; from someone who hates William Faulkner, all is forgiven just for the crackling one-liners in this one, and that brilliantly racy scene between Bogart and Bacall which is only nominally about racehorses. The sexual tension is thick through the whole movie, the plot fascinating, and Humphrey Bogart, as always, is the man. What else is there to say? It's one of the best noir films ever made, and one of the all-time great films, period.
2-15	Airplane!	This was made to be a midnight movie, and watching it when you're just a little punchy (and maybe a little drunk) is the perfect way to watch it. I've seen this over and over, and yet it never loses its comic genius; I still laugh as hard as I did the first time I saw it, if not more. There's gags I never noticed before (that mirror shot with Robert Stack is genius!), bits that only get funnier the more often I see them (I love the red zone conversation between the announcers at the film's opening)...it's just inspired lunacy and anarchy in the Marx Brothers vein, and it's aged perfectly. If you've never seen it, you're in for a treat.
2-15	The Maltese Falcon	The one that started the whole noir movement, and a legendary piece of filmmaking in its own right. There's so much perfection on screen - the stunning visuals, Bogart's legendary performance, a spectacular cast, flawless writing - that it's almost intimidating at times. The plot is intriguing, but as always with noir, it's the characters and their inner darkness that fascinates, and nobody does it better than Bogart, who made his heroes deeply flawed and not entirely heroic in a classic sense. Everyone has their favorite characters , but for me, it's Sydney Greenstreet who steals the show, making one of the most unusual villains I've seen in a film. So, so much to rave about here, but so little time; suffice to say, if you don't think this deserves its place in the film canon, clearly you haven't seen it.
2-15	The Long Kiss Goodnight	A big dumb action movie with a clever premise that never really comes to life. A lot of this has to be laid at the feet of Geena Davis; while she's convincing as the loving mother, the icy-cold killer part is what she needs to nail to make the film work, and she definitely fails to ever make that aspect of herself seem real and believable. Some decent action sequences and a typically fun performance from Samuel L. Jackson notwithstanding, this is a pretty generic and forgettable action movie that I'll remember nothing about in a few days.
2-14	Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane	More interesting as signs of what Carnahan would do later than anything intrinsically good about it, this is essentially a student film that's heavily, heavily inspired by Quentin Tarantino. Yes, this is one of those ubiquitous Pulp Fiction rip-offs that were everywhere in the late 90s, complete with long, "clever" dialogue, a twisty plot, classy criminals, and so forth. There's really nothing that unique or interesting here; Carnahan shows some talent, and the fact that this got him to where he could make films like Narc is definitely a good thing. But apart from a really unique and surprising MacGuffin at the end (and even that, while momentarily interesting, is nothing that memorable), there's nothing here you haven't seen dozens of times before.
2-13	Kiss Me Deadly	A pretty deeply flawed B-movie that's all atmosphere and snappy lines, and no real plot. The movie works for a while on some nice visuals and some sharp dialogue, but it becomes obvious really soon in that the plot in this one is an afterthought, even by noir standards. It takes forever to go anywhere, and the pacing is bizarre - far too long on simple conversations that progress the plot microscopically, but major revelations are almost ignored. But what's made this legendary is the final couple of minutes, which feels like they got a young David Lynch to come in and shoot it. It's an unsettling, deeply creepy ending that feels like it's from some other genre, and it definitely has a hell of an impact; it severely creeped me out. I can't recommend the film, but the ending is almost worth watching it for. It can't redeem the weakness of the rest, but it's a hell of an ending.
2-13	In a Lonely Place	A really outstanding noir piece that derives its power from character-based drama, and not the plot. In fact, one of the film's few weaknesses is the way it resolves the main mystery hurriedly and almost as an afterthought; when we're that invested in it, it would be nice to see it play out. That being said, the movie is more about Bogart's complex and flawed Dixon Steele, and it's fascinating to watch the film follow him to some dark, dark places. The ending is pretty stunning, and really solidifies this as an outstanding work; it would have been interesting to see it play out the way it was originally written, though.
2-13	Reefer Madness	On his fantastic Cult Cinema Podcast, my friend Ryan did an episode about marijuana scare films. When he was discussing Reefer Madness, he said that it seemed like the people who made it had never known anyone who actually did marijuana, and didn't bother to do any research themselves; they just knew that kids liked it, and that it was bad. That seems like as reasonable a theory as any; after watching this, it's definitely clear that no one involved had any idea as to the reality of the drug. The result is one of the most nutzoid things I've ever watched, as teens get involved in high-speed jazz, hit and runs, murder, and (my favorite) PERMANENT AND INCURABLE INSANITY, all thanks to the demon weed. There's a ton of great moments - the piano player is everyone's favorite, but I couldn't stop laughing at the story of the kid who decided, under the influence of marijuana, to cut up his whole family with an ax, thus making him the most active stoner I have ever heard of. The film drags, even at an hour; there are way too many boring segments for it to be a bad-movie masterpiece, and it's sure as hell not good. But it's pretty entertaining in pieces, and well worth a watch, if only for the bizarre window into the mindset of 1930s drug policy.
2-13	Baghdad Hospital: Inside the Red Zone	A powerful glimpse into a world that I will never be able to enter - and after seeing this, I don't think I could. The film is shot by an Iraqi doctor, documenting the life inside a Baghdad emergency room and hospital. The film eschews politics (save for fury at its own politicians' inability to protect its citizens), choosing simply to show the state of the county...yet, more than simply showing the nightmarish cavalcade of injuries, fatalities, and horror, the film documents the pain, terror, and fury of Iraqi citizens caught in a civil war they want no part of. Segments of this are unforgettable and haunting, and the sheer number of times that killed children are being discussed is heartbreaking. An explosion of anger and bile from a wounded family at the end provides the final word on this film, which exposes, more than anything, the true cost and toll this war is taking on the people of Iraq. Not gory, not violent, but ultimately more powerful than almost anything I've seen about the Iraq war to date.
2-9	The Killing	Probably the first truly great work by Kubrick, but it's a rarity for him - a genre film. Naturally, it's a damned good one. It's not just that it's a great piece of noir, though it is; Hayden's dialogue crackles throughout, and the characters, particularly George's shrew wife, all ratchet up the darkness. No, it's that famous fractured chronology that really makes this so gripping; with the jumping back and forth through time, the heist becomes a layered masterpiece, as Kubrick uses the jumps to keep on piling up the tension. Yeah, The Killing may just be a heist picture, but it's a truly great one, and I really love the ending, which fits perfectly with the film while never feeling like a capitulation to the Hayes Code. Even better than I remembered it being, and I remembered it being damned good.
2-9	The Taking of Pelham One Two Three	Pure, unadulterated awesome. Somehow, I had never seen this before, and I finished it kicking myself for waiting so long. It's essentially just a really, really great caper movie, but one that somehow does everything just right. The casting is flawless throughout, and I'm not just saying that as a die-hard Matthau fan; he plays the detective role just right, meshing in perfectly with the movie's masterful blend of tension and cynical humor. Then again, the whole cast is great; everyone remembers Shaw as the ringleader, but Elizondo is perfect as the hothead of the gang, and there's not a hostage who doesn't register as a memorable character of some sort. And damned if the whole movie isn't hilarious; while the tension continually ratchets, there's a gleeful undercurrent of cynical, sardonic humor that elevates the movie to something special. And that doesn't even mention that brilliant last shot...what a great, great movie. (If I had a complaint, it would be that this doesn't really belong in the "film noir" fest; it's definitely more of an "asphalt noir". But who am I kidding - I'm just glad they showed it, so I could see it.)
2-6	The Long Goodbye	Even now, a few days later, I'm still torn on this one. To be sure, it's an unholy mess. The tone veers wildly all over the place, and the plot seems convoluted to the point of non-existence, even for a noir film. It's obvious that Altman was attempting a similar thing to what the Coens pulled off with Lebowski - an effort to both embrace and toy with the noir genre. The thing is, the whole film lacks focus; it feels like a lot of individual scenes, and not really a coherent whole. And yet...I really loved some of those pieces. Gould's Marlowe, while bizarre, is kind of fascinating. There are some interesting subplots, even though they don't go anywhere, and some of the acting is great (I thought Rydell's Augustine was superb and chilling, and I enjoyed Hayden's Hemingway variation). And there are a couple of jolting moments of violence so effectively done that their impact still sticks with me, even a couple of days later. I can't necessarily recommend it; it's meandering, often unsuccessful, and kind of doesn't know what it wants to be. And yet, I find myself thinking more and more about it, and liking it more and more. I don't know. It's certainly something.
2-3	Touch of Evil	Despite some flaws, this remains a superb piece of noir filmmaking, although it is to the noir films what Unforgiven is to Westerns. The plot is a little more self-reflective and a little sneakier than a lot of noir, but it's still the basic story of murder, greed, and very bad men. Welles does a hell of a job both behind and in front of the camera. The visuals throughout are stunning, with some magnificent long shots, including that famous opening one. As for his acting, he brings Quinlan to life in a larger-than-life (literally) performance that manages to rotate around everything typical about the noir genre. And, then, there's that last little revelation, which in some ways makes the whole thing even more cynical than we imagined. I've got some gripes - that hotel manager is completely distractingly bizarre - but it's a brilliant piece of work from Welles, by and large, and a nice requiem for the genre.
2-2	Out of the Past	A great noir piece played to perfection by its cast, most notably Robert Mitchum, who brings a weary resignation to the part that works perfectly. The plot, as per usual for the genre, is complicated - perhaps a little too complicated in the last act, which gets a little convoluted. But noir is, and always has been, about the mood, the characters, and that sense of borderline-nihilism, and this one has it in spades. Mitchum's character leaves an impression; he's a man who knows exactly what he's getting into, but does it anyways, whether it's trusting someone who shouldn't be trusted, or knowing that his attempt at a quiet life just won't work out. And, naturally, there's Kirk Douglas, who brings a real sense of menace when you least expect. Great piece, and a great kick-off for me to the noir fest.
2-1	Sixteen Candles	Much like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, this is a teen romp that has far more depth, complexity, and heart to it than one would first expect. It's more idealized and silly than Fast Times, but in some ways, it's more likeable, with truly wonderful characters who continually defy expectations. I honestly expected the "cruel bitch", the "jerk jock", the "sex-crazed nerd", but the movie continually surprised me, giving all of the characters more depth and personality than I expected. It's a real treat of a movie, one that deserves its reputation all these years later.
1-27	Breach	It's refreshing to see a spy movie that's about actual spy work; not guns and shootouts, but misdirection, bluffing, and psychological games, in many ways. Based on a true story, this is a gripping tale about the biggest spy case in American history, and it's all the more galvanizing for knowing that these are real people, and the stakes are very real as well. Knowing how it ends doesn't detract from it; it's all about the journey and the toll it takes on its lead characters. Philippe is decent, but it would have been great to see someone with a little more depth take the part; that's more than made up for by Cooper's typically strong role, bringing Hanssen to life with all his complexities, contradictions, and self-doubt intact. It's Cooper, in fact, who makes this such a great film; the direction is solid, the story fascinating, but it's Cooper who elevates it to another level.
1-26	Roger & Me	It's informative to go back to the film that put Moore on the map, and see his strengths and weaknesses present, even from this early work. Moore, as always, makes more of an essay than a documentary, and it has the same flaws as a lot of his film: his interviews too often feel like shooting fish in a barrel, and he often comes across as mocking those he claims to represent. But underneath it all, as with most of his work, is a serious issue, and one that he manages to depict well, even if it requires some digging. Moore's portrait of Flint is pretty unforgettable, and it raises a lot of questions about corporate responsibility and the personal effects of their decisions. Whether you agree or not, Moore's essay on behalf of his hometown is quietly heartbreaking, and far more affecting than I expected.
1-26	Ali G Indahouse	The biggest thing this has going against it is that it's not the show. Absent, then, is Cohen's brilliant improv skills, and that gleefully twisted sense of fun that comes out of his ambushing people. It's also missing, as a result, the smart skewering that's hidden underneath his dumb front. Ali G Indahouse really is just plain dumb. That's not to say that it's not funny; Cohen is hilarious throughout, and there are too many great lines and scenes for it to be a failure. It just doesn't work as well as Borat, mainly because it's gotten too far away from what makes the show so magnificent. But if you're up for a dumb, lowbrow kind of movie, you could do a lot worse; it's not brilliant, but I laughed pretty hard through it all.
1-26	The Diving Bell and the Butterfly	A remarkable film that not only tells a story, but thoroughly immerses the viewer into that experience. The film is a true story about a man which "locked in syndrome," where he is completely paralyzed from head to toe, save for his eyes; however, his mind and sense all work fine. Schnabel (the director) does an incredible job putting the film together; it's a visceral, strange experience, one that truly puts the viewer into the shoes of the subject. It sounds like it should be a depressing film, but it's not; rather, it's moving and powerful, and a testament to the power of life. Far from a generic disease of the week film or a simple "inspirational" film, Diving Bell is a beautiful work of art, one that truly uses every cinematic tool available to create a new and profoundly impacting experience.
1-21	Cloverfield	It's a great American monster movie, and I loved it as much for what it decided not to do as what it did. Gone are the tedious explanations, the ridiculous showdowns. In their place is a simple and intense survival story, as one group of friends attempt to save one of their own and stay alive. The tension is ratcheted up throughout to unbelievable levels, and there are too many great scenes to list here (my personal favorite: the tunnel). With solid effects, interesting characters, and a great sense of actual setting, it's a great monster movie, one whose gimmick really pays off, giving the story a sense of scale, not only of size, but also putting the events into relatable perspective. It's a lot of fun, and generally just a great monster movie - better, even, than the genre usually demands.
1-21	There Will Be Blood	An incredible achievement from PT Anderson, and one of the year's best films. Comparisons to Citizen Kane are obvious, if only from a thematic perspective - both films are about giants of industry, their spiritual emptiness, and their slow self-destruction. What makes Blood so spectacular? Is it Daniel Day-Lewis's spellbinding, terrifying portrayal of Plainview? Is it the duel of wills between he and Dano's man of faith? Is it Anderson's beautiful visuals, his long takes? Is it Greenwood's unsettling and effective score? Or is it that stunning last scene, which left my jaw wide? I think it's all of these and more - it's one of those films that could be deconstructed for years, and still not give up all its depth. The more I think on it, the more impressed I am by it all; it's a powerful film, both as a riveting character study and a vicious take on the fruits of capitalism, and more than that, it's a masterful work of cinema that stands head and shoulders above 99% of what's out there.
1-20	Wedding Crashers	A brilliant concept that gets eventually abandoned in favor of a generic romantic comedy. The first 30-45 minutes of this are hilarious, as Wilson and Vaughn crash the weddings, display their wedding knowledge, and generally just have a blast. The movie kind of falls apart as it gets more and more plot driven, and there are a lot of bizarre missteps, most notably the excessively dark antagonist. That being said, I still enjoyed it pretty well, mostly for Vaughn's unchecked id, running around causing havoc with that smart-ass grin of his. Even as the rest of the movie eventually falters into generic rom-com stuff, Vaughn really can't help but bring energy and humor whenever he's on screen.
1-20	Born on the Fourth of July	Only the second Stone film that I've actually liked (after Talk Radio, which I like more for Bogosian than Stone), but that sounds like I'm selling it short; this isn't just a good film for Stone, this is a masterpiece on its own. The movie captures the tone of the book perfectly, opening with blind-eyed patriotism, moving into the horrors of war and its aftermath so smoothly you barely even notice the transitions. The film captures Kovic's move from patriot to protestor magnificently, and along the way creates a compelling portrait of a country whose anger over an unjust war found itself focusing on an unjust target. Special note needs to be taken of Cruise's performance; with so many people dismissing him, it's easy to forget what an incredible actor he can be, and this is a spectacular acting job. It really is an excellent film in every way, and I was far more impressed than I expected to be.
1-19	The Pursuit of Happyness	I certainly didn't hate this, but it seems to have left me a lot more cold than it did a lot of people. I hate complaining about changes made to people's lives in biopics; no one serious about film should expect verisimilitude in "true" stories. But the changes here are really jarring and feel fake - even while watching, some of these moments (especially the stolen machines) just never felt genuine. As for the story itself...yes, it's inspiring, but it all feels too processed for me. Smith and his son both do a fine job, but just about every other character is flat and uninteresting, most notably Newton's wife, who would kill for a full one-dimension of her own. It seems to me that there's a fascinating story here, and you get glimpses of it here, but there's so much more that could have been done with this film. Instead, it's standard inspirational fare - not bad, but not really good by any means.
1-19	Stripes	Essentially a "snobs vs. slobs" comedy set in the military, Stripes definitely didn't live up to its reputation as a classic comedy for me. There were a couple of great moments, but mostly the movie just coasted by on the charisma and innately funny presence of Bill Murray, who just has "funny bones," to quote Ebert (I think). The final act feels incredibly arbitrary and tacked on, and the whole film just feels empty and not particularly memorable. It's not bad, but it's nothing of note, and I doubt I'll remember much about it within a week.
1-19	Fast Times at Ridgemont High	Although I'm aware that I've got the influence reversed, I can't help but be reminded of Dazed and Confused when I watch this, and I think that's a very good thing. Like that film. Fast Times doesn't feel the need to squeeze in a big plot, or add excessive drama; it just lets its characters be characters, and depicts their world with affection, sympathy, and understanding. There are some great lines throughout, although I think it says something about my life that of all the characters, the one I identified most with and enjoyed the most was Ray Walston's Mr. Hand (the idea of showing up to make the wasted time even is genius, and I want to do that to my students now). Far better than I expected, and really enjoyable in every way.
1-18	White Light/ Black Rain	A haunting and powerful documentary about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the aftermath of the bombings. It's a film that works despite itself; there's a painful lack of style or even a sense of what's interesting visually (the paintings by survivors get old quickly), but ultimately that doesn't matter. The stories told by the survivors are incredible, and will stick with you for a long, long time. The film creates a stunning impact by making sure we all know the true cost of these weapons, and by letting these survivors tell their stories and show their wounds, it more than does the job.
1-13	Atonement	Ignore the trailers, which make this look like a generic "prestige picture Oscar-grab" kind of film. The film may open that way, but it's only to set the stage for a transformation to something far more complex, dark, and compelling. A story of a young girl's mistake (or is it a lie?) and its far-reaching consequences, Atonement uses a first act that feels like so many classic prestige films as a way to give the audience a foundation that is ably pulled away from under its feet. The filmmaking throughout is outstanding, with a five minute tracking shot that is a masterpiece in of itself. The acting throughout is superb; although Knightly and McAvoy have gotten the acclaim, Saroise Roman as young Briony drives the film to excellence. The screenplay is masterfully crafted, the soundtrack surprising and inventive, and the ending is devastating perfection. I was far, far more impressed than I expected; walking out, I found that it's awfully hard to deny the film's excellence.
1-12	Proof	Given that this is based on the same man that inspired A Beautiful Mind, comparisons can't help but be made, and Proof wins easily. Far more nuanced and thoughtful, with a more interesting story, Proof is anchored by a stellar performance by Paltrow, who really makes Catherine a vulnerable, flawed character. The writing is mostly tight and most of the performances solid (the exception to both is Hope Davis, who can't do much with the flat and uninteresting sister character)...so why did I leave it feeling unsatisfied? Ultimately, Proof needs a little more focus; it can't ever seem to decide what it wants to be, and so you're left wondering what it's all about. I liked it in spite of that, mainly for Paltrow, the writing, and the story, but that lack of focus keeps it from being a complete success.
1-12	The Orphanage	Very much in the vein of The Sixth Sense and The Others, The Orphanage is a ghost story at heart, and like both of those films, its frights, chills, and impact all derive from the story, rather than letting cheap jump scares dictate the flow. The film maintains a quiet feel, only letting the horrors peek out occasionally, making their appearances all the more effective, including one of the most unsettling scenes since the Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth. The story is completely compelling, and the fact that it works so well gives the movie the emotional heft it needs to make the atmosphere truly effective. It's a solid piece of horror filmmaking, but more than that, it's a rich story about parents and children, and like The Sixth Sense and The Others, stretches far beyond the limits of the genre.
1-12	Nobody's Fool	A rich, rewarding film about fathers, sons, relationships, and more. The plot sounds like it should belong to a fountain of cliches: an old man who has avoided responsibility his whole life finds himself forced to confront his past and examine his life. And yet, the film never feels familiar, always feels vibrant, and its characters strong. No doubt some of this is due to the story, but the solid and understated direction and superb acting throughout really make this, most notably Newman - no surprise. Bringing humor, sadness, regret, an acid tongue, and pure life to his character, he makes the whole film work, and makes it into a really wonderful experience. The cast is great, the direction well done, and the story involving - it's just a really wonderful film in pretty much every way.
1-6	Blade Runner: The Final Cut	Do you remember when sci-fi could be heady, intelligent, philosophical work that was used not only to entertain, but to explore ourselves and our world? Remember when practical effects could be used for staggering effects the equal of or better than any CGI? Blade Runner's re-release is a reminder of everything that the genre used to be capable of and then some. The remastered print was stunning, and the big screen truly immerses you in Scott's stunning world, which remains a masterpiece even more than twenty years after its release. The story is fascinating, and definitely plays with many of the ideas that Dick did in the original novel, while going in completely different directions. A really stunning film that has not aged at all, and feels as though it could have been made yesterday.
1-5	Charlie Wilson's War	Far better than I expected, but still far from a "great" film. The film reminds me in some ways of Three Kings, with its deeply flawed and ultimately unheroic characters doing good things almost in spite of themselves, but it lacks Kings' stunning sense of depth and profound sadness. That doesn't hurt this, really, until the very end; until then, the humor is black and cynical enough to work without detracting from the film's admittedly fascinating story. As a cynic's view of politics, the film is perfect; Hanks and Roberts both play well against type, but Hoffman runs away with the film as an angry, brooding CIA operative whose tirades had tears running down my face from laughter. The ending, which could have propelled this into greatness, falls a bit flat; this is the rare film that could actually stand to be longer, and flesh out some of the things it tries to throw in at the end. It's still a great story, and it's a solid piece of entertainment by any means; it could just be better.
1-2	Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street	The longer I think on this, the more I really like it. I'll admit to having no familiarity with the original show; I've always wanted to see it, but never had the chance. That being said, I found myself completely involved in this, loving the music, enjoying the characters, and savoring Burton's atmosphere, for once (in far too long) more controlled and used to greater effect than simple wallowing. There are a couple of flaws, to be sure; there's a lot of humor that doesn't always escape the delivery, and Carter has some problems delivering the songs well. That being said, the parts are played well, with Cohen being a surprisingly great addition to the film whose quality I didn't expect. The film wasn't quite what I expected, but I'd like to see it again, knowing what I know now; as it stands, I like it more and more as I consider it. And the songs really are incredible throughout; that soundtrack may be a purchase soon.
1-1	An Inconvenient Truth	A really sobering and ultimately disturbing film about the very real threat of global warming. There's so much to take in here, and whatever failings this has as cinema (ultimately, this is a video of Al Gore making a PowerPoint presentation), it more than makes up for in fascinating and stunning research. The film is almost infuriating in many ways; it would be funny, if it weren't so horrible, that so many people have made a serious threat to the planet into a political issue. Ultimately, the things Gore is discussing are good things, even if it all were some ridiculous hoax, so why not listen? I really hate that our country has gotten to where intelligent, scientifically backed discussion is dismissed for being "liberal". If you're avoiding this for some reason like that, I won't try to convince you; I'll hand it over to someone who writes much better than I do, and let him explain.

e-mail me at
clydeumney@gmail.com

page updated:
September 29, 2009