|
|
|
A Year in Film: 2013 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 Essays/Reviews | Alphabetical Index 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. |
| 6-15 | An
American Tail (1986)  |
I honestly couldn't tell you how long it's been since I last saw An American Tail, but I can tell you that it's been long enough that I had forgotten just how dark and nightmarish some parts of the film were. The early sections, in which a Russian village is sacked and burned, is a harrowing scene, and Bluth's use of cats as the malevolent, destructive forces nicely puts the audience in the place of the victims of such violence - that violence, of course, being pogroms carried out against Jewish settlements. Indeed, the film is so clearly about the Jewish immigrant experience that you can't help but wonder why Bluth never makes the case explicitly (apart from cowardice as it relates to box office receipts, of course) instead of using dozens of implications and clues as the movie unfolds. As for the movie, it's fun, if surprisingly dark, fare that manages to pack in a lot of history in its depiction of New York City and immigrant culture, all whole crafting an engaging adventure. The songs are generally solid and catchy, the humor used well, and the characters fun, so it all works better than it really has any right to. That being said, there are definitely some pretty big flaws: an ending that goes on too long, a lead whose non-singing voice ends up more painful than cute, a story that wanders a little too much at points, and so on. But on the whole, it holds up better than I worried it would, and from the looks on my children's faces, it seems to have made some fans of a whole new generation now. |
| 6-13 | The
Killer (1989)  |
It's hard to look at The Killer and not simply describe it as "the John Woo-iest John Woo film ever made." Slow motion drama, operatic music, dramatic doves, two handed gunplay, dangerous men bonding in masculine ways, rampant deaths and explosions, emotional moments that are cranked up to their utmost - all of them are here and then some, just as you've come to expect from Woo when he's at the top of his game. But the fact that The Killer is really the first true fusion of all of these elements in this form gives it a freshness and vitality that some of Woo's later films don't quite have. Moreover, while there's no denying the melodramatic aspects of The Killer (especially with regards to the slowly blinding singer), there's also no denying that Woo somehow makes it all work, largely through the fact that he approaches it all without a hint of irony or condescension. Instead, Woo plays it all straight, and finds his best moments in the emotional extremes, turning what could have been just another action movie into something operatic and poetic, in its own violent way. The Killer is probably the purest expression of what John Woo loves in a film, and given that I'm right there with him on a lot of this stuff, it should be no surprise that I loved this movie, from the opening church meeting to the death-dealing finale. It's a film that's earned a legendary status, and while I thought nothing could match the action sequences of Hard Boiled, The Killer does so by making it all somehow more focused and personal. |
| 6-13 | Iron
Man 3 (2013)  |
My enthusiasm for the Marvel comic book movies faded pretty quickly after the first Iron Man; no matter how much I enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, the movies seemed duller and duller, and the interest in a "shared universe" monumentally off-putting and uninteresting. (My pretty middling reaction to The Avengers didn't really change my mind on any of that.) But when it was announced that Iron Man 3 was being handed over to Shane Black, well, you had my interest back. Giving a Marvel comic book film to an honest-to-god writer/director with his own voice and style (to say nothing of a mini Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang reunion) was a good way to get me back into the movies, and Iron Man 3 delivered and then some. There's a lot that I loved about this movie, but let's just start with the fact that for the first time in forever, Iron Man 3 doesn't seem to exist solely as an advertisement for future movies; indeed, with the exception of some nods to Tony Stark's backstory, Iron Man 3 is pretty much a stand-alone film, and that's a massive relief. Then there's the way that the film spends the vast majority of its running time without ever putting Stark in the Iron Man armor, instead focusing on the character, his personality and flaws, and his intellectual prowess. It makes for a far richer and more involving superhero film, one that's less about men in powerful suits hitting each other and more about a man confronting his own legacy. And none of that even touches on the brilliant way that the Mandarin plays into the story, which would deserve its own paragraph if it didn't spoil such a fantastic reveal. Suffice to say, Black takes a problematic, racist caricature and does something brilliant with it, using it to explore American fears and xenophobia. By the time you toss in fascinating subtext (it's no coincidence that the movie revolves around wounded armed forces members doing suicide bombing missions), fantastic dialogue, great performances, and some dazzling setpieces (including a jaw-dropping climax that's a joy of action choreography), and you've got a truly satisfying superhero film. Sure, there are some weak points (with many of them revolving around the film's other villain, whose only really interesting aspects are brought by way of Guy Pearce's talent), but those are minor marks against the film's overwhelming successes. I may not be a big fan of the "shared universe" idea, but if Marvel can start putting out interesting, exciting, and engaging movies like this, I'll be far more excited for their work from here on out. |
| 6-12 | Magic
Mike (2012) |
Despite it being pigeonholed as "that male stripper movie," there's a lot more going on in Magic Mike than such a simplistic summary would suggest - a fact which goes without saying to any fan of Steven Soderbergh, who's pretty much incapable of making an uninteresting film. In some ways, Magic Mike plays out like the more studio-friendly version of Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, which was a film about a young woman who hires herself out to give young men a "girlfriend" to be with (as opposed to just a lover). Like Girlfriend Experience, Magic Mike is inexorably linked to the declining economy, a fact which comes out most strongly in a quietly devastating scene set in a bank office. But Magic Mike is more character study than social commentary, orbiting around a male stripper who took the job for easy money but finds himself unable to break free from the life. There's a high potential for cliches in a story like that, but Magic Mike mostly holds them off until the final act, where drugs and addiction come into play almost exactly as you'd expect them to in a story like this. Until then, though, Magic Mike is a fascinating glimpse into a very different world, and as usual, Soderbergh makes the smallest details into the most fascinating moments, from the sewing of costumes to the discussion of props. Even when the film starts to feel a little more disposable at the end, Soderbergh's keen visual style keeps everything richer than it would otherwise be, and keeps the film interesting when it probably doesn't deserve to be. I can't argue that Magic Mike feels a little less rich than most Soderbergh movies, but even the weakest of his efforts have plenty to offer, from outstanding performances across the board to masterful editing to a magnificent focus on details. So what if it's about male strippers? That doesn't make it much less entertaining, well-made, or interesting to watch. |
| 6-12 | This
is the End (2013) |
The trailers for This is the End marketed it as a celebrity-filled disaster movie - something along the lines of The Poseidon Adventure, but with Seth Rogen and his friends filling the cast. But it turns out that This is the End is a lot darker, a lot stranger, a lot more violent, and a lot more interesting than you might expect from those commercials. That's not to say that it's not funny; I laughed consistently and constantly throughout This is the End, and there's not a cast member who didn't crack me up over and over again. But just focusing on the humor means missing out on everything else This is the End brings to the table, including a blending of horror and comedy that recalls nothing so much as Shaun of the Dead. More than that, screenwriters Rogen and Evan Goldberg bring the same emotional richness and thematic depth to the table that they brought to movies like Superbad. From a Jewish kid's unease with Christian apocalyptic imagery to a nasty look at Hollywood culture to the changing relationships between friends as time passes, This is the End finds enough to chew on that it more than gives the film some depth beyond just "celebrities hanging out and dying". But in the end, it's a comedy, and it's going to be judged by how funny it is. For me, it's absolutely hilarious; to be fair, though, your enjoyment will hinge greatly on how much you enjoy Rogen and his friends playing off of each other, as well as how willing you are to follow the movie as it gets darker and darker in tone. All I can say, though, is that there's something fantastic about seeing a mainstream movie that's as nuts and gutsy as this one is, and I had a blast with the whole thing. |
| 6-12 | The
Campaign (2012) |
With the modern state of politics, it wouldn't be hard to make a vicious, trenchant satire about the shallowness of it all; however, that's not really the movie The Campaign wants to be, no matter how much it offers some (fairly shallow) comments about campaign finance reform and features thinly veiled caricatures of the Koch brothers. No, The Campaign is more about broad, silly comedy, and sometimes, that's more than enough. Mind you, it certainly doesn't hurt that the film is largely content to let Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis merely bounce off of each other, and their comic sensibilities and improv skills are more than capable of carrying the film even when it loses its interest in its main story. It's not a surprise that The Campaign is a little sloppy - Ferrell's last few films have been helmed by Adam McKay, who manages to bring a great visual style and a tightness to bear that Campaign director Jay Roach just isn't capable of (or interested in, based off of his other word). But even with that sloppiness, The Campaign delivers plenty of laughs, especially when it comes to Ferrell's increasingly desperate and insane campaign ads (which seem less and less far fetched with each passing year). So, no, The Campaign isn't as no-holds-barred and as vicious as I kind of wished it was, but as a comedy? Yeah, on that front, it works just fine. |
| 6-11 | Game
of Thrones: Season 3 (2013) |
This is probably going to put me in a minority, but I spent a lot of the third season of Game of Thrones frustrated with the show I was watching. Gone was the series that so elegantly interwove its characters and storylines in rich, thematic ways; in its place was a program that found itself desperately overstuffed with characters and bouncing around so much that the rich character depth that drew me in was almost nowhere to be found. The show had a lot to do, and a lot of groundwork to lay, but it ended up doing so in such a rushed fashion that many of the episodes felt like nothing so much as plot-filling. It's to Thrones's credit, then, that it ended so well that I found myself sucked back into the world firmly and strongly, and was more eager for season 4 than I would ever have expected. It probably helps things that the season finale was so well-done, and so character-driven, that it righted a lot of the wrongs I felt held the rest of the season back. Of course, that finale had the advantage of following the season's major "moment," which did a number of things well - not the least of which is (I have to selfishly note) paring down the number of characters the show had to juggle (and losing at least one of the least interesting actors on the show, I have to honestly say). That's not to say that season 3 was a complete waste. There were great moments scattered throughout, many of which were thanks to the outstanding cast, who never fail to bring their A-game, no matter what's going on. (As much as I love Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, can anyone really deny that Charles Dance has to go down as this season's MVP as icy, commanding Tywin Lannister?) From Jamie Lannister's gut-wrenching monologue about his nickname to the collapse of the Night's Watch to Arya Stark's explosion of rage in the finale, Thrones was at its best when it could set the plotting aside and let its characters breathe. With the fabled Red Wedding (and a lot of necessary groundwork) out of the way, the series seems on the right path to start focusing on its characters and their interactions and relationships again, and I'm eager to see where we go from here - after a season that felt like a lot of heavy lifting, it feels like the show is ready to let the characters dictate the story again, and not rely on the necessities of an author's hand. |
| 6-11 | The
Croods (2013) |
In a lot of ways, The Croods is just another disposable kids movie, one that you probably won't remember for all that long after you've seen it. Its message is pretty generic (it boils down to, "Don't be afraid of living life"), the characters pretty much the archetypes you've seen in lots of other films (the overprotective father, the rebellious daughter, the dopey son, the "crazy" grandmother), and so on. And yet, none of that changes the fact that I had a lot of fun watching The Croods, which may be generic, but does everything it's trying to do and does it all very well. The action is engaging, the humor effective, the emotional beats solidly constructed, and the visual style absolutely gorgeous. (Having giant of cinematography Roger Deakins as a visual consultant on the film doesn't hurt that.) More than that, The Croods dodges smirking "adult" humor and double entendres, and instead basically feels like a big-budget...well, cartoon. So, no, The Croods probably won't go down as a milestone or a new childhood classic. But it's a lot of fun, made my kids laugh almost continuously, and pretty much accomplishes everything it sets out to do. And it's a shame that that doesn't count for more sometimes. |
| 6-1 | Furious
6 (2013) |
The only movie in the Fast and Furious series that I'd seen prior to seeing Furious 6 was Fast Five, but given that Fast Five a) is generally said to be the best of the films, and b) is high on my ranking as "Most Awesomely Entertaining Things I've Seen," there was no way I wanted to miss out on seeing Furious 6 in theaters if I could. (And yes, the official title seems to be Fast & Furious 6, but the title card said Furious 6, and that's a way better title, so I'm sticking with it.) And while it's not quite the gleeful gem that Fast Five was, I still had a blast watching Furious 6, beginning to end. So much of what makes the movie great is the ensemble casting; as much as I love Dwayne Johnson (who still is my favorite part of the movie), Furious 6 works best when its just letting its characters bounce off of each other, from the banter between Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson to the bemused expression that's constantly on Sung Kang's face. And since Furious 6 still borrows heavily from the heist film template (though it's more on the "preventing" side than the "carrying it out" side of things), that means a lot of the film is dedicated to setting things up, and that's when the cast gets its best time to shine. Of course, this being a Fast and Furious film, you have to have some vehicular mayhem, and thanks to director Justin Lin, you get a wide array of physics-defying, crowd-pleasing anarchy that left me equal parts entertained, in awe, and cracking up. There comes a point near the end of the film where a tank gets involved in the proceedings, but here's the thing - that's not even the film's climax. No, the climax is far more jaw-droppingly constructed and insane. I had a blast with Furious 6; there's something wonderful about a series that knows what it is and does it this well, all while taking itself just seriously enough and spending plenty of time laughing at itself and with itself. No, it may not be quite as wonderful as Fast Five, but it's still one of the most enjoyable times I've had in a theater in a long time. |
| 5-31 | Bad
Taste (1987)  |
There's no mistaking that Bad Taste is a debut film, made on a shoestring budget and shot on weekends. The pacing is really uneven (to put it mildly), the acting a little unpolished, the story a little rambling. And yet, I can't deny that I really enjoyed Bad Taste a lot - a hell of a lot more than I enjoyed director Peter Jackson's next film, Meet the Feebles. At its core, Bad Taste is sort of an alien invasion story, revolving around a small "force" of men who are battling against these invaders, but that makes the whole thing sound a lot more focused than it really is. Really, Bad Taste kind of glides along from scene to scene, loosely tying it all together with the alien invasion story, but spending equal amounts of time with a scammer who ends up at the wrong house, a hero who just won't stay dead, and a rescue attempt that ends up uncovering exactly what our invaders are up to. And with all this going on, there's still a lot of dead air going on...and then, every time you're starting to get a little frustrated with the whole thing, Jackson will toss in something so clever, so anarchic, so funny, or so unique that you can't help but get sucked back in. You can clearly see Jackson working with a lot of the same tonal juxtapositions that would come together beautifully in Braindead, just a few years away; there's a ghoulish sense of splattery dark comedy running through the whole thing, as well as a demented imagination that sees how to string together effects in unique and entertaining ways. Yes, his camerawork is a little needlessly showy; yes, the whole thing has way too much exposition and could do with about 20 minutes of trimming. But the high points are pretty numerous, and most of them are so good that I left pretty happy with the whole thing. It's funny, splattery, and just a lot of fun to watch, all of which makes it worth a watch (to say nothing of being head and shoulders above Meet the Feebles). |
| 5-27 | High
Plains Drifter (1973) |
At first, High Plains Drifter seems to be just another variation on Eastwood's work in The Man with No Name series. A stranger comes into a small town which seems to resent his presence and be covering up a dark secret; over the course of the film, Eastwood begins playing the town for his own purposes and uncovering the evil they've been hiding. But even in the earliest moments, as Eastwood suddenly appears in the midst of some heat shimmers and the score creates uneasy notes, there's something peculiarly off-kilter about High Plains Drifter, and that feeling of unease never really goes away until the film's astonishing and spectacular climax. High Plains Drifter was only Clint Eastwood's second turn behind the camera, but his relative lack of experience never shows; Drifter feels like the work of a seasoned veteran, especially as it navigates a tone that's constantly shifting between unease, comedy, tension, violence, and mystery. More than that, Eastwood brings a strong visual sensibility to the storytelling, especially in that aforementioned climax, where night's shadows, some interesting paint choices, and flickering flames create a wholly unsettling effect that's perfectly in keeping with the film's final revelations. I can't deny that there's something more magnificent and epic in Leone's work with Eastwood, but High Plains Drifter has a way of sticking with me in exciting ways, partially because it looks and feels like few other Westerns. No, it's not the first revisionist Western, but it's one of the most unique, and it uses Eastwood's presence and history to fantastic effect. If you've somehow never seen this one, you owe it to yourself to do so; as Westerns go, it's one of my absolute favorites. |
| 5-24 | The
Dorm that Dripped Blood (1981)  |
I try to always find something good to say about a movie I watched, but I'll be damned if The Dorm that Dripped Blood doesn't make that a difficult task. The plotting is nonsensical, the acting terrible, the sound mixing incomprehensible, the kills remarkably dull, the special effects bad, the script terrible...on and on it goes. I can't even complement the music, since much of it is directly lifted from other, better movies (including large chunks of music from The Shining that seem to have been just dropped in without so much as a "by your leave"). Even the ending, which seems to please a lot of people, is ineptly executed in such a way that it loses anything close to impact. One of the worst movies I've suffered through in years - avoid at all costs. |
| 5-24 | Romeo
and Juliet (1968) |
There's no reason that Romeo and Juliet should age as well as it does. Even setting aside the time in which it was filmed, it's a Shakespearean film adaptation played straight, complete with tights, dramatic music, unapologetic Shakespearean dialogue, and so forth. And yet, watching it again with my students only reinforces just how well-made and involving a film it really is. Once again, my students started off wanting to hate the movie, but as it played on, their jokes got fewer and fewer, their complaints slacked off, and their interest notably increased. And by the time it all finished, I heard more than one of them say to their friends, "You know, that was actually pretty good." I don't have much new to say about Romeo and Juliet that I didn't say on my first watch; the casting is still strong, the visuals lush, the acting strong, and so forth. But having watched it with students twice now, it's kind of a joy to see how a well-made film, no matter what its subject matter, can somehow erase more than 40 years of time and work every bit as well as it did when it was first released. |
| 5-14 | The
Royal Tenenbaums (2001) |
After the relative intimacy of Rushmore, Wes Anderson massively expanded his scope for his followup, The Royal Tenenbaums, focusing on a large family of "geniuses" that have drifted apart over the years, and their attempts to reconcile themselves towards each other and their own pasts. And yet, for all the widened scope, The Royal Tenenbaums is unmistakably a Wes Anderson film from the earliest frame all the way to the slowed-down final shot. Constantly present are the frames packed with exquisite detail, the dryly witty dialogue, the controlled performance, the characters who are both larger than life and still recognizably human underneath it all. But for all the quirks, there's no escaping the rich and deep heart that beats within Tenenbaums and its cast of characters. From Hackman (in fine form) as the estranged father attempting to make up for his past sins to the pained loneliness of the Tenenbaum children to their mother's effort to strike up a new relationship, there's not a character in Tenenbaums that doesn't end up touching your heart in one way or another. (For me, it's Ben Stiller's voice crack near the end that always destroys me; that or the line by the narrator after Hackman says it's been the best time of his life.) I'm always going to prefer Rushmore ever so slightly; there's something about its scaled back focus and its perfect acting that makes it magical to me. But Tenenbaums is an absolute joy to watch, and has to rank among Anderson's best work to date. It's everything he does well - his humor, his rich environments, his odd characters, his unironic heart - and all done in a sweeping, almost epic style that flies through dozens of characters and gives them all the time they deserve. |
| 5-9 | Madagascar:
Escape 2 Africa (2008) |
One of the great "joys" of standardized testing week is getting to have classes that are extended beyond all reason and with no set end time. Today, for instance, I ended up in my small classroom with 20 freshmen for what ended up being just over 4 hours. How do you let that time pass? I did something I never do: I let them bring a movie and watch it while I half watched it, half caught up on grading. I'd seen the first and third Madagascar films, but somehow never got around to seeing the second one; now that I've seen it, I can say that I wasn't missing too much. That's not to say that Escape 2 Africa isn't entertaining enough; it embraces its silliness and anarchy in fun ways, and the huge comedic talent in the voice cast can't help but make for some great moments (really, not enough movies have Alec Baldwin as an evil, sneering lion). As for the plot...well, it's not as gleefully weird and inventive as the third one; it's more just a series of small personal crises that all more or less happen at the same time. Really, it's a movie that's more interested in its gags and silliness than it is in telling a story, and I'm really okay with that, especially when that means I get more of the goofiness associated with the caper-happy penguins. And on a day when I'm already stressed from testing, sometimes that's enough. |
| 5-5 | Oblivion
(2013) |
Based off first impressions, it seems like we enter Oblivion after the story is mostly over. The war with alien invaders has been fought and won, the Earth destroyed, and humanity mostly departed. All we have left is a small crew of two people left to watch over the machines that are making energy to keep our new planet going. But there are cracks, even early on, and before long Oblivion begins to open up in unexpected ways, turning the story on its head a few times before becoming a very different kind of post-apocalyptic tale than we first thought it was. It's a fun story to watch unfold, and if it becomes a little more generic as it approaches its climax, well, that happens; besides, the plot, while satisfying, isn't what should draw you to Oblivion. Nor will it be the acting, although everyone is adequate to good here; Cruise's character is given some interesting places to go as the movie goes along, and while Freeman isn't given quite as much to do, the movie makes the most of his presence. No, what you're going to come away from Oblivion remembering is the astonishing world it's set in. I haven't seen director Joseph Kosinski's first film, Tron: Legacy, but most reviews seemed to say that it was amazing visual work held back by a terrible script. Here, the script is much more solid, but Kosinski's work isn't just amazing; it's an absolute revelation to watch. Oblivion is a movie set in a world long gone, and many of its best scenes are about nothing more than observing what once was, be that trips through abandoned gift shops, long looks down at what remains of the oceans, motorcycle rides through naval graveyards, or any number of other astonishing vistas. It's those visuals that keep the film going even through some weaker areas or some overly long exposition - well, the visuals and the intelligent, well-crafted nods to science-fiction films great and terrible. If you take Oblivion solely on its plot elements, it's an interesting B-movie; once you add in the amazing visuals, however, it becomes a fantastic piece of popcorn cinema, one whose world has a way of coming to life even when the story doesn't quite deserve it. |
| 5-4 | Upstream
Color (2013) |
Almost a decade ago, writer-director Shane Carruth made a film about time travel called Primer, whose modest budget belied its intelligent (and bewildering) script and strong storytelling skills. Since then, those of who who loved Primer have been waiting to see what Carruth would do next, and now we finally have our answer. While Primer became notorious for its labyrinthine plot, Upstream Color is far more straightforward (in a sense), but that in no way makes it less dense, complex, rich, or rewarding. Like Primer, Upstream Color works within a very loose sort of science-fiction, here revolving around a young woman who has to deal with the aftermath of an attack by a man who controls her mind for days at a time. As she falls into a relationship with a man who may have suffered a similar attack, the new couple finds themselves struggling with their own memories, their sense of themselves, and a connection that they don't quite understand. What's remarkable about Upstream Color, though, is how little any of that gives you a sense of what this movie is going to be like. Carruth's visual eye is astonishing, immersing you in a visually lush world that constantly runs the risk of overpowering our characters - and rightfully so, given the nature of their pasts. Whether following the path of a parasite in a bloodstream, watching livestock on a farm, or simply observing a relationship, Carruth's cinematography is absolutely incredible, and it turns Upstream Color into an unforgettable experience. As if that's not enough, there's the beautiful editing that trusts the viewer to follow the story through implications, acting, and implied moments. (The review at The AV Club compares the film to the famous love scene from Soderbergh's Out of Sight, a comparison that wonderfully captures the feel of Upstream Color.) If none of this quite manages to explain to you what Upstream Color is or how it goes about it, that may be because it's a wholly unique and masterful piece of filmmaking, one that stands alone by looking and feeling like nothing else I've seen. Primer announced Carruth as a major talent to watch, but Upstream Color is a quantum leap forward, a story that keeps Primer's intellectual prowess while bringing an astonishing emotional impact to bear, along with a visual style that Primer in no way prepared me for. And the end result is a powerful, hypnotic film that's left me thinking about it since I saw it, and eager to see it again just to lose myself in its pleasures one more time. |
| 5-4 | Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)  |
I was never a huge fan of the earliest entries in the Harry Potter film series, but I was hoping that some distance from the books (and my initial reactions to the film) would help me see them more charitably. Sadly, that's not really the case; while I appreciated some of the set design elements a lot more this go-around, I still feel like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone feels like nothing so much as a glorified Book on Tape, where every scene from the book is dutifully recreated without much effort to create a cohesive world. Every effect is underlined by music and camera zooms, every scene is packed with CGI that hasn't held up well, and there's a real sense that lots of this could have been cut down. (Seriously, the fact that this movie - a children's movie made out of a children's book - is two-and-a-half hours is kind of absurd.) And yet, the cast does a great job, and every time director Chris Columbus risks losing his grip and turning it all into a live-action cartoon, the solid performances across the board - yes, especially by the three leads, who I have under-rated as the years have passed - manage to keep it all together. Rickman is, of course, a blast as Snape, but Coltrane brings a lot of humor and heart to the film's early going, when it needs it most, and the rest of the school's faculty brings their A-game wonderfully. I still don't think Sorcerer's Stone is that good of a film, but I have to concede that the casting works wonders here, and helps the film overcome the blandness and over-reliance on spectacle that Columbus brings to the table. (And yes, my children loved it. So at least someone in the house isn't heartless like me.) |
| 5-2 | The
Americans: Season 1 (2013) |
Set in the 1980s, in the height of Cold War tensions, The Americans details the life of a couple recruited to infiltrate an enemy's culture. They have a fake marriage (which has led to real children who are unaware of their parents' double lives), fake jobs, and a life that has them questioning their devotion to each other and their homeland. The swerve? The couple is a pair of Russian agent infiltrating America, which places the audience in the unique position of sympathizing with the enemy. The Americans is a lot of things, and what's miraculous is just how well it does most of them. You want a spy show? The spy tricks here are a blast, from a low-tech way to break a tail to dead drops to informants and more. You want a period piece? The Americans plunges you into the 1980s, committing so deeply that it never lets its characters be aware of what's to come (which makes episodes about Reagan's shooting or the SDI all the more riveting). You want a relationship drama? Watch as The Americans turns this fake marriage into something far more complex and riveting, as these characters are forced to examine their own faked feelings to see if they've become genuine or not. And as if none of this is enough for you, try taking on Russian agents who have been turned by the FBI, an FBI agent whose job is beginning to peel back his innermost self, and more. My only real frustration with this debut season of the show was the on-again, off-again nature of the marriage at the show's core; about halfway through the season, it felt as if every episode was a reversal of the status quo, to the point where the predictability began to get wearying. But just at the right time, that pattern too broke, leaving me excited about where this show goes from here. Like the best cable series today, The Americans is packed full of moral complexity, riveting suspense, strong character work, and some dynamite filmmaking. And if this is where the show starts, I can't wait to see where we go from here. |
| 4-30 | Plan
9 from Outer Space (1959) |
What with moving into testing season, approaching graduation, and trying to wrap up the school year, my Film Club students asked that the next movie we watch be a fun one. And what better fun experience than subjecting them to one of the most notoriously awful films ever made, Plan 9 from Outer Space? For many of the kids, Plan 9 was the first time they had seen a movie that was truly terrible - not just mediocre or forgettable, but truly incompetent and disastrous. And they loved it. The thing about Plan 9 (and its spiritual cousin The Room) is that it's just so wonderfully sincere and excited that it's hard to ever really hate it. Of course it's not good - of course the effects are terrible, and the acting bad, and the sets cheap, and the dialogue awful - of course all that's true. But this isn't some generic monster movie or a big-budget action movie; instead, this is clearly a personal project, one that even has a pretty idealistic message at its core (one that can't help but remind you of The Day the Earth Stood Still) and a genuine love of movie-making that permeates every awful frame. No, Plan 9 isn't a "good" movie in any way. And I don't even buy the whole "so bad it's good" thing; this is just plain bad. But it's got an enthusiasm and a charm that's hard not to love, even while it does everything completely wrong. And for my kids, it was the perfect antidote to the stresses of exam time. |
| 4-27 | Street
Trash (1987) |
A thrown-together student film project that's infamous as a cult film, Street Trash has a pretty big reputation in certain circles. And having finally seen it after all this time, it's not hard to see why. Yes, the budget is pretty low; yes, the audio is sometimes unlistenable; yes, the plotting never really makes any sense whatsoever. But what's on screen can be incredibly fun, incredibly funny, and really entertaining, and that all goes a long way. The story, such as it is, revolves around a community of homeless people living near a junkyard in New York City; without attempting to explain too much, suffice to say that some of them end up melting, some of them have to play games of Keep Away for their penises, and some of them are crazy Vietnam veterans who attack people. Street Trash is more of a collection of pieces than a coherent whole, but those pieces are pretty entertaining and pretty damn fun, and there's something kind of great about seeing a film made in the Reagan era that advocates the radical idea that homeless people are people too. Of course, some of them are psychos, and some of them are drunks, and some of them are thieves who steal everything they can from grocery stores...oh, yeah, and some of them anger Mafia men by stealing their drunk women for sex. Make no mistake, there are some dark and weird undercurrents running through Street Trash, including rape, murder, dismemberment, and even necrophilia to top it all off. But it all ends up adding to the solid B-movie atmosphere of the whole thing, and it's hard to get too worked up over any of it, since it feels like the movie is mostly made up as it goes along - and when it's thrown together with this amount of creativity and spark, I'm okay with that. |
| 4-27 | Pain
& Gain (2013) |
I've read numerous reviews of Pain & Gain that invoke the great film Fargo, and it's not hard to see why - both are films that find the black comedy at the heart of human greed and cruelty, that make a study out of the way money can come to mean everything in the world, and also never forget just how colossally foolish, pathetic, and really stupid people can be. (And that doesn't even mention a scene near the film's end that echoes Fargo so closely that denying inspiration would be absurd.) And yet, I feel like many of the same reviewers couldn't be more wrong when they comment on how "dumb" the movie is, or that director Michael Bay isn't aware of the idiocy or shallowness of his characters, or that he doesn't intend any of the satirical elements on display here. Pain & Gain is the true (a fact that the movie has to remind us of a few times) story of three bodybuilders in 1990's Miami who, out of an obsession with the American Dream, decide to kidnap a man and steal his movies. Bay isn't a director known for his subtlety, but his flashy, garish style fits the tone he's going for perfectly, especially as he loses himself in the world of these shallow, insipid men who are obsessed with looking good and looking right above everything else. Bay pitches Pain & Gain as a black comedy, and thanks to a slew of solid performances, it's often riotously funny - while Mackie and Wahlberg are both great, it's Dwayne Johnson who steals the film with his amazingly dumb, somewhat good-hearted ex-con. Even if it wasn't as funny as it was, Pain & Gain works as a viciously cynical take on the American Dream, from the way the main characters misinterpret every movie they love to the obsession with the suburban life and fitting in, even if you're insanely jacked and obscenely rich. Part morality tale, part pitch-black comedy, part horrifying crime movie, and part indictment of a shallow life, Pain & Gain is a lot smarter than people are giving it credit for being, and a HELL of a lot more entertaining. |
| 4-26 | The
Shining (1980) ("Front to Back" screening)  |
One of the theories presented in Room 237 is the idea that "The Shining is a film best viewed forwards and backwards," an idea that's taken to extremes when one man screens the film by using a unique double exposure: one of the film running forward, and one of it running backward from the end. It sounds like a fairly insane idea, and yet the clips showed as part of Room 237 were oddly effective and arresting in ways I didn't anticipate. And so, as a follow up to Room 237, the Belcourt screened The Shining in this most unique method. What resulted was far more interesting and compelling than I originally expected it to be, even as I admit that it's not a version I plan on watching again any time soon. There's something truly ominous about overlaying Nicholson's innocent job interview with his crazed stalking of his son, or of Danny's first visions with the mayhem that comes later in the film. And that doesn't even touch on some astonishing moments, including the overlapping of Jack and Grady's conversation with the first appearance of the twins, or a stunning moment when the blood splattered merges with Nicholson's face to create a nightmare image. Was it intended to be shown like this? Not at all. But as an experiment, it's a surprisingly effective one - when you have a film that feels as haunted and ominous as this one, the blurring of the past and present seems beautifully appropriate, and can make one of the scariest films ever made even more unsettling. |
| 4-26 | Room
237 (2012) |
I've long been aware of the theories and speculation about Stanley Kubrick's film version of The Shining (my favorite is the analysis of the hotel's impossible geometry, which is impossible to ignore once it's brought to your attention). Room 237 isn't necessarily interested in exploring any of the theories it presents in depth, though; rather, it simply makes an effort to show how these very different people approach the same film and come away with wildly differing theories. And let's emphasize the word "wild" there - from discussion of Native American genocide to a belief that Kubrick faked the moon landing, the theories here run the gamut from plausible to absolutely insane. But really, Room 237 isn't particularly interested in whether the theories are true; it's mainly just fascinated in the analysis that goes on. And over the course of the film's running time, you'll look at baking soda cans, blurry Minotaur-like silhouettes, doubled footage, and more. It won't all convince you - nor should it - but it's a fascinating way of exploring film analysis. As a documentary, it works well enough; there's a little over-reliance on cheap jokes using footage, and there's a sense of smugness that sometimes detracts from the speakers. But those are kind of minor points, especially when the raw material is so compelling and fascinating - and yes, so often insane. |
| 4-21 | The
Lords of Salem (2012) |
All I knew about The Lords of Salem going in was that it was the new movie from Rob Zombie; based off of his earlier films, I thought that gave me a pretty good idea what I was in for. But Salem finds Zombie pushing himself out of his comfort zones. Gone are the white trash characters, the constant streams of profanity, the brutal and gory violence. And in their place is something far stranger, more surreal, and more nightmarish. The plot of The Lords of Salem is deceptively simple: a DJ (Sheri Moon Zombie, who gives a far more interesting performance than she has in the past) receives a strange album from a group called The Lords of Salem, and in the wake of hearing it, her reality starts to...change...in unsettling ways. What follows from there is hard to explain, but suffice to say that The Lords of Salem ends up feeling like a fusion of The Shining, Rosemary's Baby (to say nothing of Polanski's other apartment films), the horrifying visuals of the Coffin Joe films, and a David Lynch film. And like you might expect from such a comparison, the resulting film can be uneven. Much of the film is taken up by surreal, disturbing visual images, and it turns out that Zombie has a knack for those things; by the end of The Lords of Salem, my nerves were pretty well fried, and I was creeped out in a way that movies don't often do to me. Even so, I'll admit that there are more than a few moments that fall flat or don't work, and there's a whole plotline about a local author that pretty much serves as nothing but exposition dumping. But really, what I came away from The Lords of Salem remembering was the images I saw. From a subtly haunted hallway to a mostly abandoned apartment, from a truly horrifying birth to plunges into the lair of some demonic creature, Salem serves up pretty straight nightmare fuel, and does so with intensity, an unnerving music score, and an astonishing visual eye. I can't really fault people who don't like it - it's the kind of film that either works for you or not - but speaking for myself, I left the theater deeply unnerved, deeply creeped out, and deeply chilled by the things I'd seen. And for me, that's plenty to put this one down as a success. |
| 4-20 | Charade
(1963) |
As much as I love Charade (and I do, very much), I kind of agree with my friend Ryan, who argued against the claim that it's "the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made" with this simple phrase: "Everyone is having too much fun." And he's right. Hitchcock made suspense films that kept the danger and tension building, while Charade is all about having fun - from great one-liners to the gleefully twisty plot to the charming performances, it's a movie that delights in itself. Nothing about that is bad, by the way; in fact, much of what I love about Charade is that very sense of glee and fun that permeates every frame. From Walter Matthau's grouchy CIA bureaucrat to Cary Grant's dapper, charming mystery man, from George Kennedy's sneering menace to James Coburn's cocky swagger, not an actor or actress misses the chance to fill their scene with memorable moments and a sense of pure fun. And that doesn't even get into Audrey Hepburn, who manages to simultaneously be charming, witty, worried, catty, romantic, intelligent, and just plain wonderful. Add into all of those performances a really complicated and constantly twisting plot that still satisfies after numerous watches and you have a classic that remains entertaining even after several watches. No, it may not be Hitchcock, but when what you have is this much fun and this entertaining, who cares? |
| 4-14 | Evil
Dead (2013) |
The worst thing a remake can possibly do is try to mimic the original too closely. That's a danger in any situation, but perhaps more so in the case of something like Evil Dead, where the original is so beloved and so hard to recapture. How can you possibly hope to bring back the low-budget, high-energy charm of the original when you're working with a huge budget and a different director, with a very different sensibility? Answer: you can't. And so, the people behind the new Evil Dead made a very wise choice: to take the original and make it their own. What that ends up meaning is taking the ideas of the original - an isolated cabin, a demonic text, malevolent and twisted spirits, lots of violence - and filtering it through a sensibility closer to the new wave of French horror than to the original film. And the end result is pretty damn fun, if amazingly violent. I'm aware that the MPAA required some cuts to keep the film from earning an NC-17, but having seen the film, I can't imagine what's left to cut - nor, honestly, can I imagine how the MPAA justified giving this an R rating. (And don't even get me started on the hypocrisy it takes to give this an R but rate anything involving sexuality with an NC-17...but that's another rant.) This is a pretty brutal, take no prisoners piece of horror, and while I don't know that I was ever truly scared, I was always pretty "entertained," and spent a lot of my time wincing and recoiling from what I was watching. More than that, I was always pretty thrilled with just how well executed the whole thing was, from a sequence that made masterful (and horrifying) use of sound design to a finale that left my jaw dropped a little. And, it doesn't hurt that the whole thing is beautifully shot - there's one moment in the climax that could be framed and hung up, if your house was sufficiently disturbing. Evil Dead is everything it should have been - part loving tribute to the original (and if you love the original, you owe it to yourself to wait through the credits - trust me on this one), part extreme horror, part gorefest, and part just plain good horror film. I had a blast with this one, and that's something I was pleasantly surprised to find. |
| 4-9 | Chungking
Express (1994) |
Before we began Chungking Express, I warned my Film Club students that this was a movie in which plot was far from the most important aspect. Instead, I said, this was a prime example of the late (sigh) Roger Ebert's cardinal rule of films: A movie is not about what it is about; it is about how it goes about it. In other words, Chungking Express isn't about the pair of couples that fill its running time; it's about how director Wong Kar-Wai tells their story, using pop music, voiceovers both poetic and funny, stolen glances at lunch counters, conversations that say much more than the words themselves might suggest, and camera work that's stylish, kinetic, and beautifully intimate. In other words, it's pure cinema, a story that makes the most of what you can do on a screen to tell a simple romance tale, and the end result is absolutely exhilarating and joyful. It's no surprise that Quentin Tarantino loves this movie so much; like his movies do, it throws in pop culture, human observations, great performances, and perfect soundtrack choices all into a blender, and what it takes out makes a simple romance story into a complete experience that you can get lost in. The big knock on the film, of course, is that it's style over substance, but splitting the two apart here might be impossible to do; the style is the story, and the story is the style. That's why, for instance, the film so abruptly jumps to another couple halfway through; that emotional arc is complete, and the film is following its human connections to continue the emotional experience. If you need a movie that's "about" something, I suppose Chungking Express isn't going to do much for you. But if you love movies that can plunge you into a whole different world - here, the world of lovestruck people in Hong Kong in 1995 - and can give yourself over to the hands of a master, Chungking Express is the kind of movie that leaves you remembering why you fell in love with the movies in the first place. (Oh, and the Film Club kids? They absolutely loved this one - and for rural students in the South to fall in love with a Hong Kong director...well, I'm feeling kind of proud of myself.) |
| 4-2 | Justified:
Season 4 (2013) |
This time around, the showrunners behind Justified decided to approach their season differently, eschewing their previous pattern of a "big bad" for the season in favor of a more loosely connected story tied together by a mysterious figure named Drew Thompson, the surprising interest of the Detroit Mafia, and Boyd's efforts to expand his growing criminal empire. What resulted may not have always fit together as well as you might have liked - the season opening preacher storyline felt sadly underused, and I'm not quite as satisfied with the finale as I wish I was - but by the end of it all, it became clear that this is a show that does just fine making it up as it goes. Even if the rest of the season was a bust - and it most assuredly was not - you could chalk this one up as a win simple for the "Decoy," a dynamite episode that pulled all of the season's threads together into one of the best hours the show has produced in its four-year run so far. And beyond that, this season gave us Mike O'Malley's oddly charismatic, unsettling turn as Detroit man Nicky Augustine, Patton Oswalt as the surprisingly reliable Constable Bob, and some of the best storylines ever given to Raylan's partners Tim and Rachel. But this, as always, is primarily Timothy Olyphant's show, and his performance has been outstanding this season, especially as he's had to find darker and darker places for Raylan to go to. Like I said, I'm still not sure some of the season worked as well as I wish it did - mainly, I'm not sure Boyd ever fit into the season all that well, which makes me a little sad - but the highs, as usual, far outweigh the lows. It's still a great, entertaining, exciting, funny show that gets richer and more complex each season, and I hope we have a ways to go before we have to leave it behind. |
| 3-30 | Oz
the Great and Powerful (2013) |
It probably helped that I went into Oz the Great and Powerful with such low expectations, but I ended up thinking that it wasn't nearly as dire and dreadful as I expected it to be. I've got little use for prequels or adult re-imaginings of classic fairy tales, so Oz wasn't really looking that promising to begin with; once you add into that the fact that it looked like another big-budget CGI orgy, and I was ready to discount the thing as a whole. But that neglected to take into account the cast and crew, all of whom manage to make Oz more enjoyable than it probably has any right to be. There's James Franco, who turns his Oz from a charming hero to a selfish jerk, a choice that adds a necessary bit of edge to the story. There's the trio of female performances, none of whom are given enough to do, but in the capable hands of Rachel Wiesz, Mila Kunis, and Michelle Williams, all three roles become better acted and richer just through their skills. And then there's director Sam Raimi, who manages to punch through all of the layers of CGI and Hollywood homogeneity to add in some signature anarchic touches, from whirling cameras to deadly point-of-view shots to a nice little bit of monster work that's right out of the Evil Dead films. Oz isn't all that great as a movie; it falls victim to the usual prequel woes of feeling the need to pack itself with references and nods to the original (that it can't compare to), too much of the plotting and character work is weak, and the overflow of CGI visuals gets a bit wearying at times. But there's some fun to be had here, and the finale feels perfect for Raimi, as it celebrates ingenuity and low-tech effects in favor of easy solutions - a fitting message from the man who so often revels in his low budgets. I wouldn't rush out to see Oz or anything, but if you go, you might have more fun than you expect, and that's always a pleasant surprise to find. |
| 3-29 | I
Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957)  |
You can probably guess this from the title, but I Was a Teenage Frankenstein is pretty much just another B-movie monster film that probably deserved a good episode of Mystery Science Theater (assuming, that is, it didn't get one in the first place). The plot's a little darker than you might expect from the title - it's about a mad scientist who wants to re-animate dead tissue, of course (and in a move to make Mel Brooks proud, he's a descendant of the original Dr. Frankenstein), but here, he's a little more willing to take matters into his own hands to get the pieces he needs. It's all a little cheesy, more than a little melodramatic, and surprisingly gory (more than you'd expect, anyway) in points. That, of course, means it's all fun to watch and to enjoy, but it won't really stick with you, nor is it really all that "good," especially with its completely abrupt and silly ending. Still, it's fun enough. |
| 3-29 | Dirty
Mary Crazy Larry (1974)  |
Let me get this out of the way first: yes, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry has some absolutely knockout driving stunts and chase scenes throughout. There's a great visceral feel to all of them, a real sense of danger and chaos at times, and there's a final chase scene that changes the formula in a way that left my jaw hanging open at some of the stunts and visuals that resulted. So, yeah, that part is great. But in just about every other way, Dirty Mary feels like a pale retread of some of the great road movies of the 1970s. Movies like Vanishing Point and Two Lane Blacktop (to say nothing of their predecessor, Easy Rider) felt as though there was a philosophical worldview intermingling with the road experience, and that resulted in films that felt almost more like an existential meditation than any sort of conventional narrative. Dirty Mary plays around with some moments that feel like they belong in those movies, but it doesn't want to do any of the hard work to earn those moments. Instead, it gives its driving heroes a flimsy motivation that makes them less sympathetic, adds in a female lead whose manic nature makes her more annoying than endearing, and tacks on an ending that feels cheaply ironic, at odds with the film before it, and completely unearned. Of course, if what you're interested in is the cars and the stunts, have a blast. But as a movie, it's shallow and unengaging. |
| 3-29 | The
Lost Weekend (1945) |
In the great tradition of movies about addiction, The Lost Weekend tends to loom pretty large, and that's understandable - between Ray Milland's solid performance and Billy Wilder's typically strong direction, The Lost Weekend feels a little more like a movie and a little less like a sermon than many other addiction films (say, Days of Wine and Roses, which finds Lemmon and Remick pitching for the rafters, sometimes a little too much). But even so, for all the strong scenes here, this ultimately is a story you've seen several times over, and there's not a huge amount that really lets The Lost Weekend stand out from the pack. Yes, Milland gives a great performance, straddling the line between self-pity and rage that drives his character's alcoholism; yes, Wilder delivers some incredible scenes, including a DT scene that I was genuinely shocked by at one point. But in general terms, it's a movie about an alcoholic who keeps slipping up, keeps driving away those around him who are trying to help him, and ultimately ends up holding himself together with the love of a good woman. And that's a movie I've seen plenty of times. I think, really, if The Lost Weekend weren't a Wilder movie, I don't know that I would be as nonplussed by it, but I do tend to expect more from Wilder, and this isn't up there with the best work he's put out. Still, far from bad, but not quite as great as its reputation might lead you to believe. |
| 3-28 | The
Borrower (1991)  |
For crimes against his people, an alien being is forced to de-evolve into a human being an exiled to the "primitive" planet of Earth. Unfortunately, that kind of process isn't all that stable, and his body has a way of coming apart at the most inopportune times - especially the head. That's not a bad premise for a horror film, and there are a couple of (very) scattered moments when The Borrower fulfills that premise, most notably a sequence involving the most unlikely of replacement heads that I absolutely loved. But those moments are few and far between, and the movie is mainly filled with "wacky" moments with the alien trying to mimic human culture or a storyline about the two least interesting detectives ever put on the screen. What's more, even the monster moments end up getting awfully repetitive: the monster wanders around, its head explodes, it gets a new head, repeat as needed with little variation. And the detective story is no better - there's full scenes that are nothing but recapping events that we've already seen, and others about a roving criminal who's out to get his revenge on our "heroes" that offer scattered moments of interest that collapse quickly. And it all manages to come to an appropriately anti-climactic ending that feels less like they finished the film and more like they just ran out of money. In short, it's a bad, bad movie that doesn't have much to offer beyond a couple of scattered moments that only serve to remind you that this should all be a much, much better movie. |
| 3-24 | The
Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) |
I'll admit that I went into The Incredible Shrinking Man with fairly low expectations. I expected it to be fun, sure, but not all that good - given the whole premise, I figured that I was in for a bit of a cheesy B-movie. And while there's no doubt that there's some B-movie elements here, what I found myself loving was the sheer effort and ingenuity of the effects work throughout the film. Sure, there are a few green screen/rear projection elements that don't work quite as well as you might like. But for every one of those, there's a dozen moments filled with massive props designed to trick your sense of scale, or split screen filming using different sets that make the protagonist look smaller, or a great setpiece that uses a combination of effects to really create this rich, tiny world. As a movie, there's really not that much to The Incredible Shrinking Man; it's about a guy, and he shrinks, and he has some adventures, and then it all ends incredibly abruptly, as though everyone forgot to write an ending. But man, some of those adventures - the dollhouse cat battle, the spider battle, the efforts to traverse the basement - are just so phenomenally exciting and inventive that it's hard not to love the movie. Sure, the ending falls flat, and sure, the characterization isn't so wonderful. But try not to be dazzled by how great, inventive, and charming the effects are, or how riveting some of the sequences are. What a blast of a movie. |
| 3-24 | Stoker
(2013) |
It would be really easy to compare Stoker to a very specific Alfred Hitchcock film, but to do so might be to give away some of the twists and turns that come along in the film. (A hint, for those who've seen Stoker - what exactly is the name and relation of the new relative who comes along? Sound familiar?) And so, I'll simply say that Stoker is a nasty, twisted piece of psychological drama, one that finds an adolescent girl reeling from the death of her beloved father and dealing with her unusual relationship with a long-lost relative who comes to town. To say too much more would be to spoil the fun; suffice to say, Stoker is everything you might expect from the English debut of Chan-wook Park, the director behind Oldboy and the rest of the "vengeance trilogy" - which is to say, it's twisted, jaw-droppingly stylish, and absolutely riveting from first frame to last. Mia Wasikowska is going to get a lot of attention for this one, and rightfully so; her performance is a remarkable one, taking us slowly inside the shell of this hardened exterior and bringing us along as her character faces up to some of her more hidden aspects. And Matthew Goode is absolutely riveting here as well; as the new man in the family's life, he's chilling and yet utterly fascinating, leaving you both frightened of him as well as understanding exactly why so many are fascinated by him. But really, this is Park's film, and his style is magnificent here, drawing you into the Stokers' world slowly and inexorably, and tightening the screws through his use of shadows, editing, lighting, and every other trick in the book. The end result is one of the most visually satisfying and psychologically riveting thrillers I've seen in a while, and one whose nasty edges left me shocked, riveted, and wanting more. |
| 3-21 | The
Sugarland Express (1974) |
An early effort from director Steven Spielberg, The Sugarland Express is the story of a couple who, after a remarkably low-key jailbreak, tries to go retrieve their son from the foster parents who have adopted him - oh, and they do this after hijacking a police car, complete with officer. What follows is an odd mix of comedic road movie, Bonnie and Clyde-type crime spree, and 70s drama, and that's a blend that shouldn't really work. And yet, when you have someone like Spielberg behind the camera, somehow it all seems to come together pretty satisfyingly. That's not to say that Sugarland ranks among the master's all-time great movies. This is still definitely the work of an apprentice, and while there's a lot of talent on display, there are some signs of struggle along the way, most notably when it comes to rapid changes in tone. Spielberg is assisted, though, by a trio of great lead performances that all manage to completely bring their characters to life in all of their contradictions, keeping the movie lighter and sweeter in tone than you might expect (and definitely sweeter and lighter than the true story on which it's all based). Sugarland isn't a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, and even here, you can see the raw talent and skill that Spielberg brought to the screen. But give the man a decade, when he's turning out films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T., and it becomes apparent that his talent and ability was just starting to grow in this early (though entertaining) work. |
| 3-21 | Beginners
(2010) |
Beginners is really two very different stories - one that's outstanding, and one that's more disappointing, given how good the rest of the film is. The weaker part of the film revolves around the budding relationship between a French actress and a young cartoonist still grieving for his recently deceased father. At its worst, this relationship ends up feeling like something out of a bad Wes Anderson knock-off, full of quirky moments and twee emotions. And that's a shame, because when the movie focuses on its other story, it's a beautiful, moving film. That other story is about the cartoonist's father, who came out at gay in his late 70's, after the death of his wife. With Christopher Plummer turning in a nuanced, rich performance as the father and Ewan MacGregor doing some of his best work as the son dealing with these revelations, Beginners becomes a thoughtful story of a man finally becoming himself late in life, as well as dealing with the questions of what the rest of his life meant if it was based on a deception - if, in fact, it was a deception at all. And director Mike Mills ably juggles his story, jumping through different timelines and using a slew of cinematic tricks to follow the emotional arc of the story at all times. To be sure, the young romance between MacGregor and the French actress isn't incredibly awful, but it's certainly much more generic and disposable than the rest of the film around it. But given the quality of Plummer's story - and Plummer's performance, which gives his character astonishing complexity and humanity - is so wonderful and moving that it more than makes up for the film's missteps. (It's not surprising, really, that the father's story is based on Mills' own father, who similarly came out near the end of his life.) It's that story - the story of accepting yourself and learning to deal with the sacrifices we all make in our lives - that makes Beginners, at its best moments, such a touching, beautiful piece of work. |
| 3-21 | The
New World (2005) |
I really, really enjoyed the first hour or so of The New World, which details the coming to America of English settlers and their first encounters with a local tribe - an encounter which gradually gives way to the story of Pocahontas (though she's never explicitly named as such). For that first hour, Malick eschews his normal (melodramatic and overly florid) voiceovers and simply lets the story tell itself, watching as these people explore the astonishing undeveloped lands of the country as they try to understand these utterly foreign people they've met. But then, that beautiful first hour slowly gives way to a more typical Malick film, with characters walking around and staring at the sky as pretentious narration covers their worlds. Look, I admit that I'm being a little unfairly dismissive here; I can't deny that The New World is just as beautiful as any Malick film, and that at its best moments, it completely immerses you in this long lost world, creating it in a way I haven't seen. And when Malick lets his actors simply act through their presence, they tell beautiful stories effortlessly, conveying their emotions so wonderfully that the words aren't necessary. But I've now seen every Malick film, and I end up feeling the same way when I finish every single one of them: they're beautiful, but the writing is overwrought and grates on me, and I end up feeling like there's a beautiful film that I would love buried somewhere in a morass of lingering shots and smothering narration. Whether it's the creation sequences in Tree of Life or the first encounters of The New World, I can't deny that Malick can tell a visual story astonishingly well. But I wish someone would stop him from burying it all in his maudlin, overbearing emotion that robs his films of their nuance and turns them into pretentious absurdities. Maybe one day I'll see one of his films that truly connects with me, but until then, I'm stuck wishing I liked them more than I really do. |
| 3-20 | Tombstone
(1993) |
Tombstone is one of those films that seems massively popular among a lot of people, but somehow or another I've never really gone out of my way to see it - a fact that's probably at least somewhat due to the fact that it's been largely forgotten by most serious cinephiles I know. And now that I've seen it, I think I understand both why it's so popular in some circles and completely forgotten in others. Tombstone is a solid Western; it's got a fantastic cast, some exciting scenes, and just a generally strong storytelling sense. And sure, there are some great scenes in here - the OK Corral is treated with all the respect you'd expect and then some, and Val Kilmer's scenery-chewing performance is an absolute blast, reminding me of how Johnny Depp would later steal every scene of the original Pirates of the Caribbean. But for all the things Tombstone does well, it doesn't do any of those things particularly exceptionally; instead, it's pretty content to succeed solidly but never exceedingly. And what that gives you is a solid movie that ends up feeling pretty unremarkable in just about every way, and doesn't end up really sticking with you in any meaningful way. No, there's nothing really wrong with it, and I can see why so many people like it. But when I could watch something like Unforgiven, or Stagecoach, or Leone films, or Liberty Valance, why would I settle for solid when I could have exceptional? |
| 3-20 | Fast
Five (2011) |
I've never seen any of the Fast and Furious films, but after hearing again and again how much fun this one was, and how little you needed to know about the other movies, I finally gave in and watched it...and I'm so, so glad I did. I have no doubt that there's some complicated backstory I'm unaware of by jumping in here (to say nothing of the massively complex timeline that's going on in the series), but none of that really matters - not when you're dealing with a film that jettisons much of that to focus on telling a pure heist story with fast cars, gleefully excessive action, and insane amounts of destruction. Fast Five establishes its interest in realism within the first few minutes, as a sports car somehow forces a massive bus into spinning end over end down the road, but that's nothing compared to the film's final act, which lays waste to much of Rio de Janeiro by using two cars and the most unlikely of accessories in the process. Director Justin Lin (of the solid Asian-American indie film Better Luck Tomorrow) handles the action beautifully, allowing the viewer to follow every shift and swerve while still keeping the pacing insanely fast throughout, and allowing things to escalate perfectly while never ignoring the film's inherent silliness. In fact, one of my favorite things about Fast Five is just how seriously it takes itself - which is to say, not at all. The entire cast plays their roles to the hilt, whether that means silently staring and sweating or acting for the rafters, or even just sitting there trading insults and repartee. (And what a treat it is to see such a diverse cast used without comment! How often do you ever see movies with this array of racial backgrounds, all headed by an Asian director, and still managing to be this financially successful?) But more important, Fast Five is just really, really fun throughout. When I went in, I worried about what seemed like an excessive running time; by the time it ended, I realized I would have watched plenty more without even thinking about it. I may not feel the need to go back earlier into the series, but Fast Five has sold me on the films to come; if they can be half as entertaining, exciting, thrilling, and just plain fun as this is, I'm on board as long as I need to be. |
| 3-20 | Lenny (1974) |
I've still yet to really watch much of Lenny Bruce's work; apart from the material performed here by Dustin Hoffman and the material in the documentary Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, I've never seen any of Bruce's work. And yet, I'm aware of his reputation and his importance, as well as his slow decline as he became more and more obsessed with his ongoing trials and legal issues. All of which is really just prologue to me saying that I can't really judge how accurate Lenny is as a biography, or how strong Hoffman's performance is (though, when you read about him memorizing entire monologues verbatim, including the pauses and laughs, you tend to assume good things). But as a film, this is spectacular work, as I'm starting to expect from Bob Fosse, who really seems to have a gift for filmmaking beyond that of so many directors. Between the beautiful black and white cinematography, the interviews with the characters that bracket the story, and the "performance" by Hoffman interspersed throughout the film, Lenny feels not like a generic biopic, but like pure cinema, told beautifully and powerfully. More than that, Fosse has a way of capturing both the highs and the lows of people's lives and doing so with uncommon power - look, for example, at the contrasting shots of Lenny's new house when he first buys it versus near the film's end, or his "in-control" performance versus the disastrous one late in the film (filmed in one astonishing continuous take). In short, it's a biopic that focuses on being cinema first, a biography second, and in doing so kept me absolutely riveted. You add to that Hoffman's galvanizing performance (whether it's accurate or not, it's absolutely magnetic) and a dynamite supporting cast and you have the rare biopic that's essential cinema, not just for fans of the artist but for fans of cinema. |
| 3-19 | Papillon
(1973) |
If Papillon were about 30 minutes shorter, I probably would have ended up liking it a lot more than I did. The story of two men who become friends while imprisoned on Devil's Island and their efforts to escape, Papillon is surprisingly brutal and honest about the toll prison can take on a man. This isn't The Shawshank Redemption, which ends up feeling more optimistic than you might expect; this is a stark, brutal look at how these men lived and survived over the course of their lives, and with some solid direction and great lead performances by Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, you truly feel how much these men age over the course of it all. But two and a half hours makes for a lengthy film, and there's plenty of fat that could be trimmed out of Papillon without missing much. There's a point about two hours in where it felt like the film was coming to an end, but rather than sitting there anxious about what would happen next, I just got irritated that there was so much more to come on a story that seemed like it should be over. It's not as though the film is bad, by any means; it's just that it doesn't feel like it justifies its length well enough, and by the end, it doesn't really end so much as it just suddenly stops telling a story. More to the point, I'm not quite sure what the point of it all is; while Shawshank may end up feeling more optimistic and less "realistic," it also managed to craft things into a story with a very human core; by contrast, Papillon feels more like the story of survival that everyone involved told simply because there was a movie to make. I liked the whole thing fine, I suppose, but I definitely wouldn't rush out to watch it again, and I definitely feel like it's got a better reputation than it really merits. |
| 3-19 | Miami
Blues (1990) |
Miami Blues has so much going for it - an amazing premise, Alec Baldwin tearing up the screen, more than a few brilliant scenes - that it's all the more frustrating that the film is so maddeningly uneven. That fantastic premise: a dangerous, violent thief (Baldwin) comes to Miami and ends up with a gun and a stolen badge, and finds himself "playing cop" in ways that seem to surprise even him. That's a pretty great hook for a film, and Baldwin uses his manic, somewhat terrifying presence to maximum effect in those scenes, whether it's interrupting a drug deal, involving himself in a convenience store robbery, or any number of interventions that are equal parts helpful and selfish, depending on the moments you see. Mixed in with all of this is a young prostitute that Baldwin gets involved with and her desire to have the "normal" life, as well as a police detective whose badge is giving Baldwin all of the authority he needs. That's a lot of strong elements, and at the film's best moments, they come together perfectly, creating this fantastic, caustic neo-noir that's as much an attack on "normal" life as it is a celebration of crime (ideas that director George Armitage would play with again - and more successfully - when he made Grosse Pointe Blank). But for every great scene, there's another where the comedy is embarrassingly broad, the soundtrack wildly out of tune with the movie, the dialogue off-key, or the characters actions inappropriate (especially Baldwin, whose mania makes his actions often somewhat random feeling). It's a film that I wanted to like more than I did, and it seems like the kind of film that deserves a remake with a more experienced director, or simply someone more capable of handling its ever-shifting tones. As it is, it just never stays together enough to really work as a whole, and it ends up feeling like it's just all over the map. But man, are there some great bits to be had here. |
| 3-19 | The
Italian Job (1969) |
With me such a big fan of heist movies, the fact that I've somehow never seen The Italian Job is kind of insane; luckily, it's a film that more than lives up to its reputation, albeit in a very different way than I expected. It's not that The Italian Job is the tightest heist film ever made, or the most plausible, or even the most stylish, though it doesn't fall down too badly on any of those fronts. What it may be, though, is one of the most sheerly entertaining and fun heist movies, with barely a scene that doesn't pack every inch of the frame with charm, fun, wit, and inventive moments. Of course, it doesn't ever hurt to have Michael Caine in your film, and he brings every bit of his charm and swagger to bear here, eschewing the menace and iciness he brought in Get Carter for a man who clearly loves his job and loves the thrill of the pursuit. As with any good heist film, you spend lots of time in the planning stages, packing the film with memorable character turns and great moments. And it all builds up to a dazzling, dizzying car chase in packed Italian streets, led by three Mini Coopers doing things that are probably not recommended in the owner's manual. To be sure, there are big chunks of this final chase that don't make much sense, or require so much suspension of disbelief as to be absurd. But outweighing those problems is the sense of fun and energy that the whole chase has; really, I ended up noticing the problems, but not caring at all. And then there's the justly famous ending - a great "Lady and the Tiger" moment that's no less great if you know it's coming. There may be "better" heist films out there, but there aren't many that are this entertaining and fun throughout; really, it's not hard at all to see how this one has become so beloved over the years, and I'm completely in agreement with the praise. |
| 3-18 | The
Empire Strikes Back (1980) |
My son ended up sick on his first day back to school after his spring break, so I decided to make his sick day a little better by watching Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back with him for the first time. He's seen at least the first two prequels (meaning he already knew the legendary Vader reveal at the end of Empire), and given his current obsession with the Lego Star Wars game on his DS, you couldn't ask for better timing for his first viewing. As for me, it's been years since I really sat and watched the original trilogy, and what occurred to me as I watched them was just how fun they are compared to the prequels. There's been plenty written about what the prequels do wrong - the way they overexplain every bit of the mythology, the way they actually manage to weaken the original movies by retconning so many origins into absurdity, the bad writing - but to me, the biggest single difference is just how much fun everyone is having in these original movies. Look at Han Solo and his charming cockiness; look at Skywalker's excitement at getting off of his farm; listen to the genuinely funny dialogue between so many characters. In the prequels, almost every bit of dialogue is slow, ponderous, and weighted with import; here, the characters are given room to breathe, and it makes all the difference in the world. And if you doubt that, try watching the movie with a six-year-old; even in the darkest moments of Empire, try to deny the excitement and thrills that these movies still bring, all these years later. It's not as though Star Wars and Empire are going to change the way you look at the world; what they do, though, is to create a dazzling and thrilling adventure series packed with imaginative creatures, astonishing visuals, exciting battles, and characters who come to life thanks to some fun performances that haven't been weighed down with unneeded destinies and expository dialogue. And if you can step away from their absurdly long shadow of fandom, and appreciate them for what they are, it's hard not to get swept up in the excitement of the whole thing all over again. |
| 3-18 | Star
Wars (1977) |
|
| 3-16 | Oldboy
(2003) |
There's so, so much you could say about Oldboy. You could rave about the dazzling style of almost every single shot. You could spend your time looking at the intricate plotting, which ends up creating a film both about revenge and its cost, all while building a complex, riveting thriller that never lets up. You could discuss any number of incredible setpieces, from the knockout opening moments to the justly legendary hammer fight. But in the end, it's the fact that Oldboy does all of this - and does it all so brilliantly - that makes it such a phenomenal experience to watch. I've seen Oldboy a couple of times before now, which left me free to savor the way that director Chan-Wook Park gradually builds the plotting piece by piece, waiting to deploy his shocks for maximum impact. Moreover, Park expertly weaves in and out of his film's darkness, scattering in dark humor and character building as needed to keep the darkness from getting crushing until the proper moments. Oldboy, to me, is best viewed in almost operatic terms; almost every aspect of the film is amplified and escalated for maximum impact, and the film's dramatic score only seems to underline those operatic comparisons. But that's a wise decision for a revenge tale, especially one in which two men are willing to go to such lengths to get revenge on each other - and what staggering lengths they are. Oldboy is pure cinema, and I mean that in the best possible sense of the word; it's a film that makes the absolute most of the cinema's capabilities, and uses it all to construct a narrative that's dazzling, horrifying, riveting, and astonishing, and leaves you drained, even if you've seen it before. In other words, it's every bit the masterpiece it's held up as being, and it more than holds up to repeat viewings. |
| 3-15 | Meet
the Feebles (1989)
|
It's not too often that I come out of a movie not knowing what to make of it at all, but Meet the Feebles can go down on that narrow list of absolutely befuddling cinematic experiences alongside movies like Hausu that left me unable to figure out how to rate what I'd seen. On the other hand, while I might not have known what to make of Hausu, I left that first screening knowing that I absolutely loved every minute of it...and that's definitely not the reaction I had to Meet the Feebles. It's not as though I hated the movie, either; to say that would be to ignore the multiple times that I laughed out loud, or sometimes just cracked up. But it's definitely not good in any real sense, either; there's little to the film except a perverse, gross-out version of Sesame Street that can't pass up a chance to work in bodily fluids, sexual behavior, profanity, or violence in some way, all without much real sense of purpose than pure anarchy. There are points where that approach works on its own terms (there's a long Vietnam flashback that absolutely cracked me up), but there's just as many sections that just make you feel like you need to leave and go take a shower. Is it any good? Um, not really...but it's funny at points, and certainly consistent in its mentality. And you kind of have to admire the insanity of it all...but that doesn't mean I want to watch it again. I honestly don't know really what I thought of it. It was certainly a hell of a thing, one way or the other. And a day later, I'm still wondering if I somehow fell asleep and dreamed half of it. But somehow, I think it really exists - and the fact that it's the same man who created the Lord of the Rings films only makes it all the stranger. |
| 3-14 | Leviathan
(2012)
|
I can't deny that Leviathan accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do - my question, though, is whether its goal ends up being all that interesting to accomplish in the first place. Leviathan is a documentary about deep sea fishermen, and what makes it so unique is the fact that it's almost entirely filmed from point of view shots of the fishermen themselves. There's no narration, no explanatory title cards, no plot to speak of; instead, Leviathan sets out to create a sort of impressionistic portrait of what it's like to live on a ship like this for weeks at a time. And make no mistake, this method results in a wholly unique kind of film, one entirely composed of sensory impressions - vivid images that left my jaw hanging open, aural cascades that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. But for every moment like that, there are others that end up feeling like tedium. Do I need a multi-minute shot of a fisherman watching TV and slowly falling asleep? And as much as some of the nighttime footage is impressive, much of it ends up looking like little more than color and darkness, leaving me wondering what, exactly, I was supposed to be looking at. (It doesn't help that the film opens at night, meaning it was a good ten minutes before I could figure out what anything I was watching was supposed to be.) Leviathan is a remarkable experience, and there's no doubt that it's exactly the film the filmmakers set out to make: a film devoid of any traditional narrative, one more about the experience of being on the ocean in these boats and the sights and sounds you would experience there. But I'm not sure that goal makes for a really interesting film, in the end, and even less sure that the film justifies even its relatively brief (89 minute) running time. I don't regret seeing Leviathan - it's a unique experience, and I admire that - but neither do I really find myself recommending it as much more than a curiosity. |
| 3-14 | Rise
of the Guardians (2012)
|
One of the great joys of animation is the ability to create worlds unlike anything you've ever seen before. That's one of the reasons I love sitting down to a new Pixar film, or a Miyazaki film that I've never seen before; there's a sense that you're going to see something wholly new and wondrous, and that you'll be able to lose yourself in that new world completely. And Rise of the Guardians has potential for such worlds - after all, it's a movie that explores the hidden worlds of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman, to say nothing of the nightmares ruled over by Pitch (the Boogeyman). Add to that the involvement of Guillermo Del Toro, whose films are absolutely packed with marvels, and you could forgive me for expecting something new from Rise of the Guardians. Instead, what I got was utterly generic and disposable, with hardly an image or idea that I hadn't seen done before, and done better elsewhere. The Tooth Fairy's realm doesn't seem all that different from Pitch's, Santa's base of operations has been done better elsewhere, and the Easter Bunny's home ends up being little more than a field. As for Sandman, he's given some great moments of animation, but he ends up feeling like a wasted opportunity more than anything else. It's not as though Rise of the Guardians is really bad in any way; the story is engaging enough, and the mythology it's playing with is interesting (if never developed as much as I wish it was). And from my son's expression and conversations afterward, it's clear he loved the adventure and scope of it all. But I ended up feeling pretty uninvolved with the whole thing; for all its scope and ideas, it ends up being completely forgettable and disposable, and when you have the world as your playground in an animated film, that's deeply disappointing. |
| 3-5 | Dark
City (1998) |
Part film noir, part horror film, part philosophical treatise, part comic book action movie - classifying Dark City into one simple category is an incredibly challenging task. But that ambition and fearlessness is part of what's made the film such a modern science-fiction classic, in my mind, and what's let it hold up so well 15 years after its release. Dark City opens with an amnesiac who finds himself hunted by the police for a series of murders, but its the intimidating and horrific men in long black coats who are also after him who seem more dangerous - and that's before everyone in the city starts to fall asleep. To say too much more would be to give away the complex and mind-bending plot of Dark City; suffice to say, here's a movie that covered some of the same ground The Matrix did, but did it first, did it better, and left you pondering a lot more deeply about the world and what makes us human. You can't really talk about Dark City without talking about the jaw-dropping visual style director Alex Proyas brings to the table; from German expressionism to pure noir, his city is a fascinating and astonishing creation, and you find yourself absorbed into his world partially out of amazement about how beautifully composed it all is. But what really lingers about Dark City is its complexity and its thoughtfulness. By the end, the film manages to raise questions about human nature and what makes us the people we are - questions with no easy answer, but the film grapples with them anyway. To be sure, the film becomes a little comic book-y towards the end, especially in an apocalyptic final battle that feels a little simple for the film that preceded it. But that in no ay dulls the wonder that this film brings to the table; even now, fifteen years later, I still remember the feeling of shock and slow comprehension at some of the film's reveals, and they've lost none of their power all this time later. Watching the film with my film club students was a joy; listening to them react to the film's shocks and discuss its themes and ideas reminded me of just how much this film can get into your head and linger there, and that's testament enough to its greatness in my book. Now, if only we could get a big screen revival of it... |
| 3-3 | To
Kill a Mockingbird (1962) |
Watching To Kill a Mockingbird with a little more distance from the book, I found myself more easily appreciating and marveling at just how magnificent of a film adaptation it really is. To be sure, To Kill a Mockingbird has to abridge some of the text it's working from, for a variety of reasons (for length, of course, but also for subject matter and content). More notably, the film adds scenes that are only implied in the original text, expanding the film beyond Scout's limited perspective and adding scenes that she wouldn't be present for otherwise. But almost every choice is a wise one, and the spirit of the book comes through flawlessly, from its portrait of small town life to its rich cast of characters to its commentary on race relations. I say "almost" because the more I see the film, the more the ultimate fate of Tom Robinson bothers me; it's softened to the point of changing it completely in the film, and the takeaway from the film's version is far, far different than I think the book suggests, so much so that it somewhat sours that moment for me. But there's so much else that the film gets perfectly, magically right, from the confrontation outside the jail to the response to Atticus's leaving the courtroom, both of which hit me hard every time I see the movie. And while Gregory Peck is flawless as Atticus, you can't say enough good about the young cast of the film, who bring life, humor, and energy to their roles, changing them into rich characters simply through their presence. It's the rare adaptation that does its book proud, and it does so by adapting the book to make a solid film, rather than trying to do too much and fail in the process. |
| 3-1 | The
Big Lebowski (1998) |
It's been too long since I last saw The Big Lebowski - almost four years, which is easily the longest I've ever gone between viewings of the film - and there's probably no better way to watch it than with a crowd that truly loves the movie and laughs long and hard along with the whole thing. There's always a fear that a favorite movie might start to lose its magic after repeated viewings - as much as I love The Room, that's a problem that's starting to creep in - but Lebowski holds up wonderfully, still making me laugh until I cry over and over again. It's ironic that I'm loving Lebowski so much the same week that I re-watched O Brother and complained about its lack of cohesion, given the way that Lebowski is really nothing if not a collection of loosely connected scenes, held together by something resembling an old film-noir Raymond Chandler mystery. But, god, those scenes are so, so funny, and they're filled with such amazing dialogue, perfect performances, and gleeful absurdity. More than that, though, there's an odd heart to the film, giving it a warmth and sense of fun that really makes it all work. The performances are universally excellent; of course, Jeff Bridges is amazing and perfect as The Dude, but Goodman is every bit his equal as the belligerent, screaming Walter, and the chemistry between the two helps you understand how two people who couldn't be more different could still be such close friends. And the rest of the cast is just as good - when else has John Turturro made such an impression in just a couple of minutes of screen time, or Sam Elliott gotten to bring so much to the screen just by being himself? Of course, trying to fit all these pieces together is a Herculean task; the first time you watch Lebowski, you may just leave it bewildered as to what any of it has to do with each other. But once you realize that the plot itself is just the MacGuffin used to hold the film together, and you lose yourself in the weird, wonderful world of it all, it's easy to get caught up in it all and just lose yourself in the amazing dialogue, wonderful characters, and perfect storytelling. I'd really be hard pressed to think of a movie that makes me laugh harder or leaves me happier than The Big Lebowski, and even though I've seen it so many times, it's lost none of its charm, humor, or brilliance over the years. |
| 2-27 | O
Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
|
I don't know that I've seen O Brother since its theatrical run, where the overblown love for the movie and its music had a way of drowning out the movie itself. Taken on its own, all these years later, O Brother doesn't really hold up with the best of the Coen brothers films - it's a little shaggy and piecemeal - but it's still very funny, very charming, very well filmed, and just generally solid work. I watched O Brother with my freshman English class as a companion piece to The Odyssey, and viewing the film through that lens has a way of bringing it into focus and making you appreciate just how densely the allusions to Homer's work are interwoven into the film. It's not just the obvious ones like the Cyclops or the Sirens; it's the old man disguises, and the angered gods, and the blind prophets, and so much more. Like The Odyssey, O Brother is more of a collection of incidents than a cohesive whole, and that keeps the film from really working as a whole. But when you've got every scene anchored by the Coens' hilarious dialogue (their love of elaborate and ornate language really hits a peak here), George Clooney's perfect charm and style, and Tim Blake Nelson bringing some incredible comic relief, all of those pieces end up really enjoyable, funny, and fun to watch, and that goes a long way. And, of course, no one films a scene like the Coen brothers, and O Brother has some knockouts - look, for instance, at the simultaneously hilarious and chilling Ku Klux Klan rally, or the amazing use of color throughout. O Brother won't ever be a top-tier Coen film for me, but even the weakest Coen efforts still tend to be head and shoulders above most movies, and O Brother definitely fits that description. |
| 2-23 | White
Zombie (1932)
|
If there's a genre that benefited more from the pre-Code era than horror, I'm not sure what it would be. Sure, you get some of those early talkie awkward pacing issues and sound pauses, but that's more than made up for by a sense that anything could happen. Here, you've got a sugar plantation owner who uses the reanimated dead (more or less) for his labor force, and who's willing to perform horrific rites for the right cost. Of course, the movie wouldn't be the movie without Bela Lugosi as the plantation owner, and while a lot of Lugosi's performance is his usual shtick (lots of staring at the camera), he still manages to bring a lot to the role, especially when he just relaxes into his sneering confidence instead of just being absurdly evil. The story itself is a fun one, following the various players as a new bride dies suddenly, only to be brought back as a love toy by a jealous neighbor. From there, you get into voodoo rituals, creepy gravesites, and local color aplenty. A lot of people seem to feel like White Zombie is pretty slow, and I guess I can see that, but I had a blast with the whole thing. It doesn't hurt that the whole movie is beautifully filmed, and there are so many shots, camera techniques, and beautiful framing work being used that you could enjoy the movie on that level alone. But add in a story that plays in the black arts while anchoring itself firmly in the characters, and let Lugosi bring a nice presence to the role, and you have a really fun horror movie that's earned its place in history. I went in expecting to come out appreciating it but not enjoying it; instead, I genuinely enjoyed White Zombie a lot, and if anything, I think it's a little under-rated in its pleasures. |
| 2-19 | Annie
Hall (1977) |
I picked Annie Hall for my film club students because they've been raving, as of late, about the movie (500) Days of Summer, so the choice seemed obvious; why not get another take on the same idea, only this time, it was the original? And the result was pretty satisfying; while a lot of Allen's jokes were lost on them, the discussion about how Annie Hall set the ground for later films (including Days) and how it still managed to be its own work, even all these years later, was a good one. More than that, though, it gave me another chance to watch Annie Hall, and that's always a great thing. As much as I love Allen's humor (and yes, I still laughed a lot, though it made me sad how much was over my students' heads), what really dazzles about Annie Hall is its sheer daring and playfulness. From breaking the fourth wall to interacting with its own flashbacks, from animated sequences to subtitled conversations, from broad comedy to painful emotion, Annie Hall refuses to stick within any sort of guidelines or boundaries, and the end result is a film that feels like nothing else, even almost 40 years (!) after it was made. Allen's joy and willingness to experiment is hard not to enjoy, and his confidence behind the camera is astonishing; even though he'd made films before, there's little in them to give you any sense of the dazzling skill and emotion that make Annie Hall so special and so moving. It's pure Woody Allen - there's no way you can picture anyone else making the film, not with as much of Woody's personality and soul comes through in every frame - but more than that, it's wonderfully human and honest about relationships, love, and how we move both into and out of love so often. It's a beautiful, amazing film, and the fact that it's laugh out loud funny throughout? That's just icing on the cake. |
| 2-18 | And
Everything Is Going Fine (2009)
|
Not too many people get the chance to deliver their own posthumous autobiography, but it seems appropriate that Spalding Gray would be one of the exceptions. After all, Gray was a man most famous for his intimate, revealing monologues about everything from his own life to his sexual hangups to his health problems. As compiled and directed by Steven Soderbergh, And Everything is Going Fine creates a final monologue for the late Gray, somehow managing to tell his life story through his monologues, interviews, home videos, and more. It's hard to watch Everything and not think of Gray's suicide, which hangs over the film without ever being mentioned; by telling the story solely through Gray's own words, there's no way of introducing the subject into the film, but awareness of Gray's death can't help but color so much of the film and Gray's thought processes. I can't say I know much of Gray's work (I think the only monologue I've seen in full was Gray's Anatomy), but Everything gives me a sense of the man, his work, and his amazing talent for storytelling that really leaves you dazzled by his work. It's left me feeling both like I know a little more about the man but also that I need to know so much more about his work; it's hard not to be in awe of his style and amazing skills, and it's easy to see why a storyteller like Soderbergh would be drawn to someone so open and expressive in his tales. |
| 2-18 | Five
Graves to Cairo (1943)
|
It baffles me that Five Graves to Cairo isn't better known, especially given the (much deserved) praise and acclaim that's given to so much of director Billy Wilder's other work. Five Graves to Cairo feels like Wilder's first effort at a spy/war film - an effort that would later bring us the masterful Stalag 17 - but Five Graves is still fantastic stuff, revolving around a stranded British soldier who finds himself masquerading as a waiter in a German occupied Egyptian hotel. And that's only the beginning of the setup, and doesn't even give you a clue about some of the numerous twists and turns that come along as Wilder turns the screws and keeps the suspense escalating and the alliances shifting. More than that, Wilder sets up the film as an intricate puzzle and game of wits, and delivers beautifully on both fronts, with the "answer" to the whole thing being both creative and completely fair. Oh, and the whole thing is packed with great dialogue - not just of the classic noir variety, but some great jokes, perfect one-liners, and dialogue with that acid-tinged flavor that Wilder does so well. I've read a few complaints about the film's conclusion and the way it feels more than a little propaganda-like, and I'll concede that point; at the same time, when the propaganda is this entertaining, this well done, and this much fun, I'm going to have a tough time complaining too much. It's a shame that Five Graves didn't get some of the big names in its cast that Wilder hoped for; you can't help but feel that the names would have given Five Graves a more widely known legacy. As it is, though, it's a blast of a film, and one that can hold its own against most of Wilder's work - and that's high praise indeed, given the quality of those films. |
| 2-15 | Wild
Zero (1999)
|
It's not like I wasn't aware that Wild Zero was going to be insane going into it. I mean, when you're going into a film about a Japanese punk rock band who ends up fighting zombies while being pursued by a woman-beating manager packing an insane number of weapons, it's not like I was expecting anything normal. But I certainly was expecting something a lot more fun than Wild Zero turned out to be. I'm not against chaotic films - I give you my deep and abiding love for the batshit insanity of Hausu - but Wild Zero is chaotic in an incompetent way that left me baffled as to who was who, what was going on, and what on earth any of it had to do with anything else. What's worse, the filmmaking is pretty horrifically bad, with shots that linger on for far, far too long, a show-offy visual style that just gets irritating, and zombie makeup that shows every penny of its $1 cost. That's not to say I didn't enjoy a few moments, but I feel like I was laughing at the film, and never with it. When you watch Hausu, you end up feeling like you're experiencing the movie exactly the way the director wants you to: overwhelmed, completely lost, and delirious with sensory overload. Here, it feels like a movie that just doesn't know anything about itself. It doesn't know its story, it doesn't know its characters, it doesn't know a plot, it doesn't know the layout of its sets, and it sure as hell doesn't know how to edit itself. It's a tedious, dull chore, no matter how awesome the premise may sound. |
| 2-15 | Amour
(2012) |
Whatever you might expect from a new Michael Haneke film, it's probably not likely that the words "tender" or "touching" might have entered into your mind. Over the course of his career, Haneke has made a career out of watching people at their darkest moments, whether that's the sins of the past that crop up in Cache or the secretive violence of The White Ribbon. And yet, despite that complete break in tone, Amour is unmistakably a Haneke film from its first frames. Haneke's style has always been that of a cold, dispassionate observer (something used to maximum effect in Cache), and he spends his time in Amour largely doing nothing but watching as an older man cares for his wife, whose health, mind, and body are rapidly failing in front of him. Amour holds few surprises for the viewer; the film opens with a scene in which the apartment door is broken down and the firemen discover the body of an elderly woman laid out on her bed. And yet, even knowing that death is coming - perhaps because of realizing that fact - Amour is haunting and deeply moving, a portrait of what it means to truly love someone. In a time when almost every romantic comedy seems to revolve around nothing more than sleeping with each other, Amour reflects on true devotion and love, the kind that's always implied in the "and bad" part of the wedding vows that follows "in good times". There is nothing romantic in having to change the diapers of the woman you love, of feeding her mashed up food, of sopping up accidents. And yet, even in Haneke's chilly eyes, the acts become even more beautiful and loving, made even more so by Haneke's refusal to add to the sentiment. There is no score, no dramatic swelling, no tearful reunion - only these two people, struggling to survive and take care of each other. And in that, Haneke changes from seeing the worst in people to finding their absolute best - even when that best means making the best of a terrible choice. Make no mistake: I'd be hard-pressed to call Amour uplifting, but it's far more beautiful and moving than you might expect from the premise, and far more human than almost any romantic comedy. |
| 2-2 | The
Apartment (1960) |
For some reason, I seem to always end up watching The Apartment in February, which is probably pretty great timing; if there's a more romantic, beautiful, thoughtful, perfect movie about love, sex, loss, and loneliness, I can't think of what it might be. The Apartment boasts a simple enough premise - in an attempt to make his way up the corporate ladder, a young insurance clerk starts letting his bosses borrow his apartment for their affairs and trysts - and uses it to explore everything from the depression that comes from being alone, to what it's like to be the "woman on the side" in an affair, to just how much you're willing to take to sell your soul. More than that, though, it does all of that while always making it about these characters in this story - a complex three-way love triangle that only becomes more painful as each character learns about the part others have to play. The Apartment is, of course, wonderfully and acidically funny - what else would you expect from Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder? But more than that, it's surprisingly dark and astonishingly affecting, especially in a sequence set on Christmas Eve that takes the film into territory that I still find surprising in its honesty. There are so many moments in The Apartment that I truly love to watch - Jack Lemmon's reaction upon seeing Shirley MacLaine's mirror, an Italian dinner made with a surprising strainer, MacLaine's monologue about the lies she tells to herself about dating a married man, that flawless, wonderful final line - that listing them all would be a fruitless effort. Instead, I find myself saying this: The Apartment is that rarest of things - a perfect, flawless film, and one of the rare romantic comedies that works on both sides of that description. |
| 2-2 | Wallace
& Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
|
My young daughter (age 3) has recently become entranced by Wallace and Gromit, a choice that I'm all about as a father, but sitting down with her to re-watch Curse of the Were-Rabbit only reminded me of how wonderfully funny, imaginative, charming, and just plain fun their movies really are. There's something about Claymation and the time it takes (the average amount of material covered in a day's work on Were-Rabbit? 3 seconds) that seems to bring out a love of detail and world-building in people, and Were-Rabbit has you covered on that front. There's not a frame or shot of the film that's not packed with jokes ranging from the juvenile to the literary, so much so that there are sections that all but demand a freeze-frame to take it all in. More than that, though, there's a love of astonishing Rube Goldberg-esque action that so often shows up in Wallace and Gromit films; to watch these films and see how much time they're willing to take to set up amazing payoffs is to see some truly inventive and astonishing storytelling at play. None of this, of course, would matter without a good story and good characters, but Were-Rabbit has both; of course, the film could be carried by Wallace, his inventions, and his loyal (silent) dog Gromit, but the movie fills out the cast with a slew of fun characters that give everyone plenty to bounce off of. And the story is charmingly low stakes; in an age where every kid's film is about saving the world or fighting evil, it's wonderful to have a film whose main conflict is about saving bunnies and vegetables. Were-Rabbit won't dethrone The Wrong Trousers as my favorite W&G work, but it's pretty high up there, and watching makes me wish that there was another film in the works, because I miss watching these characters at play in their goofy, bizarre universe. |
| 2-1 | Groundhog
Day (1993)
|
It had been years since I last saw Groundhog Day, and in the early going, I couldn't help but wonder if my fond memories of the film were sadly mistaken. For the first act of the film, Groundhog Day is a pretty broad piece of comedy, one that allows Bill Murray to be an obnoxious jerk to everyone around him, and to mainly find the humor from his abrasive, cruelly funny verbal attacks. That can be funny, but it's hard to take for too long. Luckily, Groundhog Day has a lot more going on than that - in fact, what starts as a comedy about a man who can relive a day over and over, consequence-free, becomes something far more profound - a story about bettering yourself, about accepting your fate, about learning from your failures and changing who you are. That's not to say that Groundhog Day isn't still a comedy; indeed, there are enough hilarious moments in the film to make it the envy of dozens of other "comedies," and that's just counting Bill Murray's moments. But as funny as the movie is, you don't really walk out of Groundhog Day thinking about the dialogue; what you leave thinking about is the way that Murray's performance takes you into the world of a man who is forced through the emotional wringer, from anger to acceptance, from depression to bargaining, all as he strives to make the best of his bizarre, almost hellish predicament. By the end, Groundhog Day manages to become surprisingly profound and moving, as Murray deals with issues no less complex than the inevitability of death, the nature of God, and more. The fact that a movie can do all of this while still being, at its heart, a crowd-pleasing romantic comedy? That's a remarkable accomplishment, and one that speaks to the way that Groundhog Day has become more and more widely regarded as something truly special over the years. |
| 1-29 | American
Movie (1999)
|
At this point, I'm about the same age that Mark Borchardt was when American Movie was filmed, a fact that I kept thinking of as I rewatched this amazing documentary that can't help but make me happy whenever I watch it. In some ways, I'm doing a lot better than Mark was, of course; my marriage seems a lot more stable, I'm in a lot less debt, and my life feels a lot more consistently...well, good than Mark's often does. And yet, for all of that, I find myself inspired by Mark Borchardt, whose steadfast refusal to ever back down from his dreams makes him the most unlikely of examples. American Movie is, of course, incredibly hilarious throughout, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that much of my joy from the film comes from watching Mark and his gloriously fried friend Mike Schank make their way through various setbacks, breakdowns in communication, and the everyday stresses of life. (A long sequence involving an effort to record a single line of dialogue from Mark's elderly uncle is a setpiece that almost any scripted comedy film would die for.) But what makes American Movie so touching, inspirational, and ultimately great is the way that Mark not only stands up against every obstacle, but even seems to thrive on the whole thing. At one point, Mark drives into a wealthy neighborhood as a way of inspiring himself and reminding himself what he wants out of life - not just through his films, but in general. And the fact is, even as moment after moment goes wrong, even through long hours and stress, you never get the feeling that Mark's optimism ever flags. And it's hard not to be inspired by that kind of dedication, even while you're laughing at the chaos of it all. |
| 1-25 | Crumb
(1994) |
Given Robert Crumb's personality - iconoclastic, curmudgeonly, acutely sexual, and more - it's surprising that a documentary about him would be as touching, human, and ultimately moving as Crumb really is. And yet, from another perspective, it's less shocking; Terry Zwigoff, the film's director, was a longtime friend of Crumb's, which allows Crumb to feel more open with the film as well as giving the film the kind of access and knowledge that another director might never have created. For those who know little about Crumb's work, Crumb will give you a sense of why exactly the man is so iconic - there's ample evidence of his remarkable artistic talent and his unique way of filtering through the world through his own perceptions, and both will leave you wanting to look through more of his work. But there's far more to Crumb than just a cursory look at the cartoonist's career, and it's that aspect of Crumb that makes it such a remarkable, poignant film. Crumb opens up his life to Zwigoff and his cameras, and in doing so, gives you a window into his mind that no amount of talking could ever give you. By the time Crumb comes to an end, we've met Crumb's brothers and his mother, as well as getting to know his aggressive and sometimes violent father through the boys' memories, and it becomes obvious just how much Crumb's life is shaped by his family and the experiences of his childhood. More poignantly, it becomes obvious just how much Crumb's life has been changed by his artistic output and just how close he may have come to being a shut-in or in a mental hospital. It's a sweet, affectionate film that clearly loves Crumb but nonetheless embraces the difficulties of Crumb's art (and the disagreements that arise from it), that depicts his hard edges while still showing what makes him tick, and does all this while exploring the people and the family that made him who he was. It's a wonderful, beautiful little film that works even if you know little about Crumb's work; instead, this is a film that's far more universal and human than you might expect, and gives you a window into a truly fascinating life. |
| 1-25 | The
Exterminating Angel (1968)
|
I'd be lying if I said I had a handle on everything that's going on in The Exterminating Angel, which I think would please director Luis Buñuel greatly; it's a film that embraces its surrealism, whether that means disembodied hands attacking people or a room that prevents people from leaving. And yet, I really enjoyed the film greatly - it's such a fascinating, vicious piece of art that even when you're feeling overwhelmed by how odd it all is, you can't shake its hypnotic pull or its trenchant attack on the manners that keep us all "civilized". The premise is simple enough: a group of upper-class nobles enjoys a dinner party and the company, but when it comes time to leave...well, that turns out to be difficult. From there, things escalate in all kinds of ways, from armies being deployed to all kinds of murder, death, violence, and more. In some ways, it feels like a distant cousin to Salo (and its modern descendant Sex House), but it never gets quite as dark and nightmarish as that comparison might lead you to think. Instead, this is clearly Buñuel toying with his creations, viciously attacking the upper crust while still looking at the nastiest sides of human nature. More than that, though, it's also just playful through and through. Trying to find the logic here or the easy metaphor is a worthless task; instead, The Exterminating Angel works best as this bizarre, unexplainable scenario that's equal parts funny, horrifying, unsettling, vicious, and always fascinating. Like I said at the opening, I don't know that I can make sense of it all; at the same time, I absolutely loved it and all of its insanity and oddities. |
| 1-24 | Last
Resort: Season 1 (2012) |
I can't help but feel that Last Resort was a great show in search of a much better network, or at least one that didn't force the show to try to be everything for everyone. The central premise - an American nuclear submarine captain refuses to launch an unprovoked attack on Pakistan and sets himself up as a sort of peacekeeping authority - was a great one, and when the show focused on those aspects of the story, it was completely riveting stuff. It didn't hurt, of course, that the captain was played by the spectacular Andre Braugher, whose ability to give speeches and inspire people single-handedly raised the quality of any scene he was in, but the show was no slouch as it juggled geopolitical politics, internal conflict in the American government, weapons designers, and more. Had that been the sole focus of the show, it could have been something incredible...but this was a show on ABC, one paired with Grey's Anatomy and its ilk, and the show was forced to include romantic subplots that were poorly executed, gender battles that distracted from the bigger issues, and interpersonal drama that never felt like it added much to the series as a whole. Had all of those elements been done well, of course, it wouldn't have been so bad, but it never felt as though anyone involved with the show enjoyed these aspects any more than the rest of us were, and as a result the series would drag to a halt whenever they came into play. The result was a schizophrenic show that was clearly capable of being incredible television - for evidence, look no further than the extraordinary pilot, or the remarkably satisfying final ten minutes of the series - but was so obviously weighed down and wounded by being forced to do things it never intended to do. |
| 1-22 | Zero
Dark Thirty (2012)
|
In 2006, director Paul Greengrass released United 93, a docudrama about the hijacking and crashing of United Airlines flight 93 on September 11th. The film never gained a huge audience - for many, it was simply too close to the events for comfort - but the film sought to strip the hijacking of its political and emotional baggage and simply depict the events as they happened, focusing not on the historical weight of it all, but instead on the people who were there and died. Now we have Zero Dark Thirty, which seeks to do much the same thing for the hunt for Osama Bin Laden that ultimately led to his death. This is not an action-packed thriller, not a technologically driven spy thriller, and not some American "rah rah" propaganda. Rather, what Bigelow has done is try to wade through the commentaries, the perspectives, the political axes to grind, and the historical shading to get at the hunt and what we as a country were willing to do to get the man behind 9/11 - and, indeed, whether it was an essential goal at all. Zero Dark Thirty is, I would say, as apolitical as a film about these events can possibly be; while it depicts both incredible successes and devastating failures, and while the brutality ranges from the much-discussed torture scenes to the climactic, riveting raid, ultimately the film feels as though it's attempting to merely depict, never judge or bring its own perspective to the table. That, of course, has led to much debating as to whether the film endorses things like the waterboarding it depicts, a question which seems absurd to me; from my perspective, the torture is merely something we did, not necessarily something that worked. But it's to the film's credit that it evades easy answers; even in the final raid, the film neither whitewashes the violence nor demonizes the soldiers, instead attempting to depict the soldiers as consummate professionals who did what it took to achieve success. Zero Dark Thirty is riveting, fascinating stuff; while there's no doubt a certain appeal to the film simply in the fact that it tells a story few of us were aware of, that doesn't account for how rivetingly told and expertly paced this is, especially once you understand just how sprawling the material the film has to cover is. The film no doubt gains from its timing, but to handwave away Bigelow's storytelling abilities and the astonishing richness of the film is to ignore one of the finest examples of filmmaking of the year. |
| 1-20 | Pickpocket
(1959) |
There's something both fascinating and frustrating about the stripped-down nature of Robert Bresson's films. As always, Bresson makes films which eschew much of what we think of as traditional narrative, whether that be the inner thoughts of our characters or a traditionally progressing plot, instead choosing to have his characters entirely defined by their actions. At its best - I'm thinking here primarily of A Man Escaped - this works beautifully, allowing us to immerse ourselves in the lives of men who are consumed by their desire to escape so much so that their lives have little other meaning. Other times, though, it can be frustrating; for example, part of my inability to get into Diary of a Country Priest arose from my difficulty of empathizing with the empty shell of a main character, whose actions told me little about him. Pickpocket, for me, lies somewhere between the two; while the day-to-day thefts and pickpocketing of the title character are fascinating to watch, the main character remains so enigmatic and closed-off that getting much emotional heft out of the film becomes incredibly difficult to do. There's a love story of sorts at the core of Pickpocket, to say nothing of some allusions to Dostoyevsky, but ultimately, this is a story of a man making his quiet rebellion against the world - well, that, or his gradual self-destruction. I can't deny the power of Bresson's imagery or his ability to convey a story with so little in the way of dialogue or traditional techniques, but at the same time, I get frustrated at his characters being such solid shells that cannot be parsed. For some, that opens up the film to interpretation; for me, that makes them frustratingly closed off, and unable to really engage me the way I wish they did. |
| 1-20 | The
Squid and the Whale (2005)
|
I wasn't massively enamored with Noah Baumbach's debut feature, 1995's Kicking and Screaming; while I could understand what people liked about it and respected what Baumbach was trying to accomplish, I found the film's characters so unsympathetic and irritating that I had a hard time tolerating the film itself. So it's odd that I found myself admiring and liking The Squid and the Whale so much, given that, if anything, the characters here (at least those played by Jeff Daniels and Jesse Eisenberg) are more despicable and hateful than anyone in Kicking and Screaming. To be fair, though, much of the point of The Squid and the Whale is the way that Jeff Daniels' children have learned much from their father - not only their gifts with words and their talent at tennis, but also their casual cruelty, their bile at everyone in the world who doesn't measure up to their own perceived standards, their pure arrogance and sense that they know better than anyone else around them. As for the patriarch who's passed all of this on to his children, as played by Jeff Daniels, he's a fascinating mixture of arrogance and self-pity, brilliance and stupidity, fragile ego and social cruelty, and yet somehow - thanks mainly to Daniels' performance - he's more pitiable than detestable. The story, such as it is, is about the divorce that splits the family and finds the children taking sides, but really, that's a means to explore the complex relationships and feelings that connect these characters. Baumbach's characters are deeply flawed people, none of whom come off as saints; while Daniels is clearly a bastard, there's no shortage of emotional damage and destruction to be had here. And yet, for all of that, The Squid and the Whale feels genuinely empathetic to its characters, trying to document their pain and explain their actions as a reaction to the world in which they find themselves. It's a film that's not interested in resolutions so much as its fascinated by character arcs, and the way it traces these characters from pain to acceptance, from denial to embrace, makes for a compelling and moving film. I didn't really expect to like The Squid and the Whale, and I can't say that it's the kind of film I'm likely to just pop in for fun sometime. But it's a wonderfully made work, and its emotional beats and willingness to embrace its characters make it a painful, beautiful film. |
| 1-18 | Fringe:
Season 5 (2012)
|
And so, against all odds, Fringe comes to an end of its own volition, wrapping things up with a fifth season that once again shifts the definition of what the was about. Fringe was a show that always enjoyed reinventing itself, and in the fifth (final, abbreviated) season, the series dove into a post-apocalyptic future that found its heroes becoming the underground resistance and becoming almost exactly what they battled in the first season. It's an odd way to end the series; while it wraps up the Observer storyline that began back in season one, it never really brings much new to the table in terms of our leads, and the finale ultimately feels more like a conclusion for the season, not for the series. Even so, the final moments give us a sense of where our characters' lives progressed, and its short sojourn into the parallel universe, closure for those characters as well. It's an uneven finale for an uneven show; there are moments of absolute beauty, some heavy-handed conversations, and a sense of pacing and timing that makes it feel as though its all barely controlled chaos. In short, it's the show in a microcosm; warts and all, it was always ambitious, gutsy, and willing to put it all on the line even if it didn't always work. I may not agree with every twist and turn Fringe took over the years - I'm still not convinced that the timeline reset of season 4 paid off entirely, and season 5 ultimately feels more like an extended epilogue than an essential piece of the puzzle. But the show's highs always outweighed the lows, and even in an overstuffed finale that felt a little rushed, there were enough amazing moments - many of them orbiting around John Noble's tragic, pained Walter Bishop - that I finished it all very satisfied and glad I'd stuck with it over the years. Fringe may have sometimes wanted to stretch beyond its boundaries, but I loved its willingness to take chances and to follow its own goofy muse, whether that meant having Anna Torv imitate Leonard Nimoy for an arc or destroying society in an effort to prove the importance of emotions. And the fact that this low-rated show managed to get five seasons and end on its own terms? That's just icing on the cake. In short? I'm glad the show ended when it wanted to, rather than overstaying its welcome, but I can't help but feel that I'm going to miss its anarchic, weird spirit. |
| 1-17 | Family
Plot (1976)
|
Trading in the tension and horrors of Frenzy for con artists, labyrinthine plots, and master criminals, Family Plot finds Hitchcock ending his career on a light note, but one that's no less enjoyable for all of that. To explain too much of the plot would give away from of the enjoyment of seeing how it all comes together; suffice to say that it involves a fake psychic, a missing heir to a fortune, a pair of master kidnappers, a slew of diamonds, and an oddly unworn tombstone. Family Plot has a pretty middling reputation, but it's more fun than I expected, and more enjoyable as well. To be sure, Hitchcock has done stuff like this before, and done it a little better, but there's still a sense that he's absolutely in control of the film here, and fills it with intriguingly odd touches that make it work even when it shouldn't. From the private life of the kidnappers to an odd sort of car chase, Family Plot is still a suspense picture - it's just not in the way you'd expect. As Hitchcock comedy goes, I liked Trouble with Harry more, but the likeable performances and generally fun story make Family Plot an enjoyable watch. There's nothing essential here, but it's nice to know that Hitchcock's final film is still a fun one, and it ends on a note that feels like an appropriately odd final shot for the master's career. |
| 1-16 | Frenzy
(1972) |
Frenzy may have been Hitchcock's penultimate film, but if anything, it showed that the Master was every bit as good in his old age as he ever was. In some ways, Frenzy feels like an update to Psycho - like the earlier film, it follows a murderous psychopath driven by his psychosexual hangups, forces the viewers' sympathies back and forth between the victims and the killer, serves some incredible sequences of building tension, and offers up some truly unsettling performances. What makes Frenzy its own unique creature, though, is the way it adds in Hitchcock's "wrong man" trope into the mix, slowly creating a net around a man who may not deserve it, all while never tipping its hand about the noose it's weaving until it tightens around his neck. It's a masterful effort from the master of suspense, made all the more effective and chilling for how carefully it lays its seeds without ever tipping its hand. By the time the pieces are all in place, it's too late to do anything about them, and the film enters into a whole new territory. Then, of course, there are the murders themselves - explicit, horrifying, and brutal. There are those who feel that Hitchcock worked best under restrictions, but Frenzy seems to say otherwise - even with no apparent content restrictions, the film still manages to seem transgressive and boundary-pushing, creating one of the most disturbing murderers you may ever see. Once you add to that so many astonishing sequences (with a long drive in the back of the potato truck being every bit the equal of any setpiece the man ever created before), you have a film that's every bit as good as anything else Hitchcock ever made. It's unsettling, unnerving, disturbing, and deeply creepy, all while delivering some of Hitchcock's most audacious and fantastic camerawork (look at that long shot that goes down the stairs and into the street and the quietly heartbreaking impact it has, or the way Hitchcock allows the camera to be a roaming, judging eye as the characters exit the frame). In other words, it goes down as yet another masterpiece from a director who seemed to create them over and over again. |
| 1-13 | Psycho
(1960) |
It's been at least ten years since I last saw Psycho, and it's easy to forget just what an incredible experience the film really is. From the Saul Bass opening credits to the seedy hotel scene that kicks off the film, Psycho gives every impression of being Hitchcock's effort at a B-movie noir flick, and the first half of the film seems to underline that assumption, with its betrayals, theft, and moral darkness...and then the inhabitants of that noir run into a horror film, and all bets are off and rules are forfeit. It's a joy to watch Hitchcock at work in Psycho, as he misleads the viewer, follows false trails, underlines clues only to throw them away, and just generally delights in playing games with the audience by staying a few steps ahead of them. And it does all this while delivering a master class in building tension and shattering it beautifully. Yes, Psycho gives us Hitchcock at the top of his game in every technical way...but without Anthony Perkins, Psycho wouldn't be the classic that it is, period. As Norman Bates, Perkins brings a complex humanity to a role that might otherwise turn into something more absurd or pathetic; instead, in his hands, it becomes profoundly human and even touching. Look, for example, at the long conversation between Marion and Norman, in which you start to realize just how damaged and wounded Norman is...and then, just as you begin to feel pity, he shows a far more dangerous and unnerving side, all while never losing that boyish innocence he could carry so well. With Perkins' presence, Psycho is elevated from a technically dazzling B-movie to something richer and more complex, and the character of Norman becomes something far more fascinating than you might initially expect. Once you add to that Hitchcock delivering some of the best work of his career - look, for instance, at Arbogast's interrogation of Norman and his entry into the house, or at Norman's desperate attempt to protect Mother after her "temper tantrum" - you have a film that's far too easy to take for granted. It's accepted that Psycho is a masterpiece, but when you watch it again (especially if, like me, you're lucky enough to see it on the big screen), it's a film that will stagger you with its technique, tension, and horrors. |
| 1-13 | The
Trouble with Harry (1955)
|
With The Trouble with Harry, Alfred Hitchcock moved away from his usual suspense films and turned in a black comedy about a body that almost everyone feels that they might have had a hand in killing. The end result is a charming, low-key little film that gets a lot of mileage out of a dead body and the morbid business of hiding it from the law. Harry gives us the debut of Shirley MacLaine, who's every bit as charming and adorable as she would be five years later in The Apartment, and its her easy smile and ingratiating personality that really helps Harry to work; given that by the time we meet Harry, he's already dead, it really rests of MacLaine to make us feel okay about the death of a man, and she does an outstanding job of helping to understand why the world might be just fine without Harry in it. But the whole movie is held together by fun performances; for me, the standout would be Edmund Gwenn as Captain Wiles, an elderly sea captain whose running monologue to himself is the anchor for the film's first half. Ultimately, The Trouble with Harry is pretty disposable; it's more of a romantic comedy that happens to contain a dead body and a lot of worried people than a suspense film. But it made me laugh quite a bit, has some great performances, and shows that Hitchcock is just as good at pacing out comedic reveals as he is suspense setpieces. More than that, it showed that there was more to Hitchcock than suspense; his morbid humor comes through magnificently here, and his ability to turn the screws even in jesting really is hard to match. |
| 1-11 | Faster,
Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
|
A trio of busty women race cars, beat each other (and other busty women) up, and find themselves in a tough situation involving three men living on an isolated farm. That's about all the story there is for Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, a classic piece of exploitation that's a lot of fun, even if it's not all that "good" in any traditional sense. Apart from the cheap thrills, the best thing about Pussycat is its gloriously pulpy dialogue; after all, any movie that opens with a narrator intoning "Ladies and gentlemen - welcome to violence!" is automatically a win in my book, and the lines only get better from there. The plot is complicated, to put it mildly, but it's never really the focus of the film. Instead, Pussycat is about delivering style, cheap thrills, and fun, and it does all three pretty well. I think Meyer would deliver a better picture in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which embraced its own insanity in amazing ways, but it's not hard to see at all how Pussycat became the cult classic that it is. It's pure noir plus attractive women in tight clothes, lots of sex appeal and double (and single) entendres, violence, and fast cars. In short, it's everything you could want out of a movie and then some. |
| 1-8 | Fargo
(1996) |
I feel like I don't have much to say about Fargo that I didn't say already - and better - in my essay that I wrote on my last viewing. It's unquestionably a masterpiece, a brilliant blend of black comedy, crime caper, human tragedy, and study of violence, and it does all this with some of the most trenchant and accurate looks at human greed that have ever been used in a film. And just when you think it's all going to be too brutal and downbeat to take, in comes Marge Gunderson, one of the most upbeat, optimistic, morally centered characters in modern films, and a role that brings out Fargo's humanity and small hope for peace. It's still hilariously funny, brutally and nauseatingly violent, and absolutely compelling. And it's still filled with some of the finest acting the Coens have ever had in a film - which puts it high on the best acting ever captured on film. In short, it's a masterpiece, and I love it more every time I watch it. |
| 1-6 | Notorious
(1946) |
Like so many of Hitchcock's best films, it's hard to find new things to say about Notorious that haven't been said before, and better, by others. At the same time, it's a film that almost demands to have words written about it, as it executes everything it tries with style and creates something truly magnificent. At its core, Notorious is a film about a relationship between two deeply flawed people. The man of the relationship, played by Cary Grant, is a government agent who's almost incapable of truly trusting anyone, for obvious reasons - after all, that's how he stays alive - while Ingrid Bergman plays the daughter of a German spy who tries to lose herself in pleasure and hedonism, which makes trusting her all the more difficult. That's more than enough to drive the film, but once you turn Notorious into a complex spy thriller about how far people are willing to go - or are willing not to go - to serve their country, it becomes something far more complex and effective. The relationship becomes both desperate and vicious, as both people lash out against each other and themselves; the plot becomes as compelling for its emotional impact as for its suspense; and the suspense begins to spring naturally from the conflict between those two aspects. Of course, Hitchcock can bring so much more to the table, and does, including some incredible camerawork, outstanding setpieces, and enough narrative twists and turns to keep you completely immersed in the film. And as if all that's not enough, there's the phenomenal performance by Claude Rains, who turns what could have been just another villain role into something far more sympathetic, human, and ultimately understandable. It's just another master touch in Notorious, a film that manages to make a spy thriller into a romance, a romance into a thriller, and does both while letting its characters be as flawed as toxic as you can imaginable. None of it should work, but it does, and the result is among the finest films ever made. |
| 1-4 | Trapped
in the Closet: Ch. 1-22 (2005)
|
Trying to describe Trapped in the Closet to anyone who hasn't seen it is kind of an exercise in futility. What started as a five-song hip-hop cycle about a series of infidelities has mutated to a sprawling epic of sorts that involves everything from elderly couples who spy on people to well-hung stripper dwarves, stuttering pimps, and lesbian waitresses impregnated by ex-convicts. Somewhere along the way, it's clear that R. Kelly realized that Trapped in the Closet was more absurd than he intended it to be, and his being in on the joke sometimes makes Trapped in the Closet too self-aware to be funny; indeed, by the time you get to the end of these 22 chapters, it's starting to feel a little wearying, and even though there are a bunch of new chapters, I'm not as excited to watch them as I once was. That being said, I can't deny the sheer entertainment the series brings - where else can cherry allergies give away infidelities, or a random shooting be forgotten about two minutes later, or a relationship chart become so entangled with itself that it all but becomes a Mobius strip? More than that, though, I feel like I've seen Trapped in the Closet in its best possible environment now: as part of a midnight-movie singalong (no, nobody really sang that much), complete with a packed crowd and a preacher-led intro about the sins of creepin'. Trapped in the Closet certainly isn't all that good. But it's incredibly enjoyable, and there's so much insanity and weirdness on display that I kind of love it anyways. |
| 1-4 | Suspicion
(1941)
|
If it weren't for its terrible ending, Suspicion would probably be held in much higher regard than it is, both as a film on its own terms and as a Hitchcock film. Up until that point, Hitch tells a pretty entertaining story of a woman who marries an absolute scoundrel and begins to wonder just how desperate he might be to make money. As the cad, Cary Grant is having an absolute blast; there's always been a touch of unconcern to Grant's cockiness, and it's used to great effect here as Grant smiles and winks his way out of trouble even when he should be in a heap of it. And, as you'd expect from Hitchcock, there are some great sequences to be had here, including a long sequence that leaves you wondering if a supporting character is about to die and the world's most ominous glass of milk. But all of that falls apart in the closing minutes of the film, where Suspicion reveals itself to be less of a thriller and more of a study of a stressed mind. The problem with the ending isn't what it reveals; it's the fact that it doesn't fit any of the buildup to that point, and changes the nature of the film in a deeply unsatisfying way that's not supported by anything we've seen to that point. And that's a shame, because up until then, Suspicion really is a lot of fun. It's among Hitchcock's lighter films, but he handles that tone well, and Grant's charisma and style really make the whole thing a blast until the misfire of a finale. |
| 1-2 | Strangers
on a Train (1951)
|
Strangers on a Train has a quintessentially Hitchcock plot: two men meet on a train, and one proposes that they "swap" murders so as to confuse the question of motive. The other man thinks it's all a joke, but the first man is very, very serious - and very, very disturbed. What follows from there is a funhouse of suspicion, threatened murders, shadowy pursuits, and the constant threat that this barely controlled sociopath will finally lose his grip. That sociopath is played by Robert Walker in an incredible performance; in his able hands, Bruno is unsettling, unstable, and yet casually charismatic in his flirtatious relationship with our less than pure protagonist. Strangers isn't quite as complex as Hitchcock's best work, but as a pure thriller, it's incredibly gripping and involving, and offers up so many iconic scenes that it's hard not to regard it as a masterpiece. From an unsettlingly still figure in a tennis match audience to a fairground pursuit of a victim, from a dizzying carousel finale (complete with a stunt that's very real, and very dangerous) to Bruno's complicated, co-dependent relationship with his mother, Hitchcock serves up a great thriller with a villain who has to rank among the most compelling and intriguing ever captured on the big screen. No, Strangers may not have the fascinating layers of a Rear Window or a Vertigo, but it makes up for that by being a first-rate thriller whose plot tightens like a noose and whose scenes offer a real and palpable sense of tension that's inescapable. |
| 1-1 | Rear
Window (1954) |
Vertigo may be Hitchcock's "greatest" film, but I think there's an equal case to be made for Rear Window, a film that I only appreciate more and more with each new viewing - and given that I originally thought it was a masterpiece, that's high praise indeed. Confining himself almost entirely to the view that incapacitated photographer Jimmy Stewart has through his window, Hitchcock manages to tell multiple stories, often without a single line of dialogue. From a lonely middle-aged woman to a newlywed couple enjoying their honeymoon period, from a dancer fending off the wolves to a marriage that may have ended in murder, Hitchcock juggles all of his stories ably and incredibly, telling them all while never losing his focus on the symbolically impotent, voyeuristic Stewart and his obsession with the world outside his window. It's easy to get lost in the themes at play in Rear Window - the idea of cinema as voyeurism, the passive nature of a man who refuses to take an active role in the world, the loss of human compassion that often comes with the distancing of watching others - since they're so rich and integrated into the story. Indeed, I could write pages and pages about the way Hitchcock turns Stewart's window into a cinema screen itself, turning the audience into just another creepy watcher, and making the ultimate blurring of lines between Stewart's world and the world he's watching all the more chilling. But the great thing about Rear Window is that you can ignore all of that, if you want, and just get lost in the masterful suspense and tension that the master builds in every scene and every frame. Look at how he uses the invisible gaps between windows to maximum effect, or the way he plays with the way windows often let us see two sides of a story instead of just one; look at the climactic sequence, which still ranks among the best moments of any Hitchcock film; or, best of all, look at the "burglary" scenes...the list could go on and on. It's hard to find new things to say about Rear Window after all this time, but it's a film that makes you want to try, because watching it is such a joy, and it inspires so much thought and contemplation about the art of suspense filmmaking. It's one of the greatest films ever made, simply put, and seeing it on the big screen to kick off my year is a hell of a way to start watching movies in 2013. |
| e-mail me
at |
page updated: |