Top 10: 1999

1. Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
2. Magnolia (Anderson)
3. American Beauty (Mendes)
4. Being John Malkovich (Jonze)
5. The Straight Story (Lynch)
6. Fight Club (Fincher)
7. The Iron Giant (Bird)
8. Election (Payne)
9. Bringing Out the Dead (Scorsese)
10. Boys Don't Cry (Peirce)

I think, really, the Jolly Roger is the appropriate course of action.

In the past three years, Joel and Ethan Coen have given us three completely unpredictable movies, each drastically different from the last. The existentalist thriller No Country For Old Men was followed by the misanthropic slapstick of Burn After Reading, the latter as much an absurdist companion to the former as The Big Lebowski is to Fargo. Both films (along with their 2004 misfire The Ladykillers) suggested that the Coens had adapted a more cynical worldview; it's hard to imagine the Coens of today directing the scene in Raising Arizona where Ed breaks up with Hi without ironic Kubrickian distance. If their newest movie, A Serious Man, combines the comic and somber elements of their previous two films, it's also, surprisingly, their most personal movie in years. Set in Minnesota (their home state) in 1970 (when the Coens were teens), A Serious Man is at once their bleakest and most sincere film yet.

A prologue relates a Jewish folktale about a dybbuk, a roaming demon who takes the form of a dead person, before cutting to 1970 and 13-year-old Danny Gopnik (Aaron Wolff) listening to Jefferson Airplane through an earbud in his Hebrew School class. It is Danny's dad Larry (Michael Stuhlbarg) for whom the truth is found to be lies; a math professor and a strictly rational man who admits he doesn't really understand Schrodinger's cat, Larry's world is rocked when his wife (Sari Lennick) announces that she is leaving him for Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), a widower regarded in the community as a "serious man." Sy's attempts to console Larry through his own betrayal, as well as false allegations from a student (David Kang) and Larry's brother, who stays on Larry's couch and alternates his time between draining a cyst and working on an all-encompassing probability model called The Mentaculous, as well as other assorted peripheral lunacies, have spun Larry into an existential crisis. We're encouraged to both laugh at Larry's spiralling misfortune and recognize it as our own; it's telling that the Coens admitted Larry was partly inspired by their father, even as they also confess they loved coming up with new ways to torture Larry.

Larry's plight has been frequently compared by critics to Job, although the Coens have pointed out that it's Larry's rational assumptions, rather than his faith, that are being challenged. But there's no question that Larry's story is deeply rooted in Jewish philosophy and humor; if Barton Fink is a horror movie about anti-Semitism, A Serious Man is the Coens' most reflective look at their religion. When Larry asks two rabbis for spiritual counsel, the first pontificates about the wonder of parking lots while the second shares a long parable that only serves to further confuse Larry; the rabbis are the latet in a long line of authority figures sitting behind big desks that the Coens regard warily. At the same time, they're among our most morally serious filmmakers - their films demonstrate over and over that crime doesn't pay. As Matt Zoller Seitz pointed out, the Coens have a pragmatic approach to morality - to do good brings "freedom from fear of loneliness and the nagging suspicion your existence is meaningless" (or, as a rabbi in the film puts it, "A sign from Hashem? Don't know. Helping others? Couldn't hurt"). But Larry's fate doesn't seem connected to his actions. He faces constant challenges to his assumptions about the way the world works, from the sexy neighbor (Amy Landecker) who sunbathes nude and asks Larry if he enjoys "the new freedoms" to the Columbia House representative who insists Larry purchased Santana's Abraxas (Stuhlbarg is hilarious as a man in a constant state of freefall). More so even than No Country For Old Men, A Serious Man wrestles with the seeming arbitrariness of existence - it's equal parts hilarious and deeply unsettling.

As with most of the Coens' films, A Serious Man recreates an extremely specific time and place in meticulous detail. Here, Minnesota in 1970 is populated by stage and character actors we have few, if any, prior associations with; the characters feel as if they're born directly from the Coens' memories of their adolescence. Melamed is a particular standout, his sonorous tones the perfect voice for a well-respected man who urges others to do the right thing even as the "right thing" frequently lines up with his own self-interest. If Sy Ableman embodies the contradictions of early-70s suburbia - equal parts amoral and beholden to tradition - they Danny points towards an uncertain future. Presumably the Coens' stand-in, Danny is inarticulate and constantly stoned, his small-scale problems upstaged, finally, by a growing awareness of the chaotic world around him. What finally connects A Serious Man to the previous two films is an ending that refuses to wrap up the inexplicable, and a wary respect for things that cannot be dreamt up in our philosophy.

Top 10: 1989

1. Do the Right Thing (Lee)
2. Heathers (Lehmann)
3. Say Anything (Crowe)
4. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Greenaway)
5. Batman (Burton)
6. Casualties of War (DePalma)
7. The 'Burbs (Dante)
8. Sex, lies and videotape (Soderbergh)
9. Drugstore Cowboy (Van Sant)
10. Mystery Train (Jarmusch)

Top 10: 1979

1. Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
2. Alien (Scott)
3. Nosferatu (Herzog)
4. All That Jazz (Fosse)
5. Manhattan (Allen)
6. Stalker (Tarkovsky)
7. Being There (Ashby)
8. Tess (Polanski)
9. The Muppet Movie (Frawley)
10. Rock 'n' Roll High School (Arkush)

The Professor was hot.

So says one of the bored high schoolers of Dazed and Confused in reference to the island-bound administrator of SLIFR's Thanksgiving/Christmas movie quiz, which I'm turning in just a bit before MLK day. Four years out of college and I'm still terrible with due dates. If you haven't already, check out the quiz and the rest of Dennis' always-excellent blog.

1)Second-favorite Coen Brothers movie.

Miller’s Crossing

2) Movie seen only on home format that you would pay to see on the biggest movie screen possible? (Question submitted by Peter Nellhaus)

Alien, mostly because I’ve missed several opportunities to see it on the big screen.

3) Japan or France? (Question submitted by Bob Westal)

Not sure how to choose between nations, except to say that I feel a stronger personal affinity with the New Wave filmmakers than Kurosawa and Ozu.

4) Favorite moment/line from a western.

Julie Christie drifting into an opium haze at the end of McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

5) Of all the arts the movies draw upon to become what they are, which is the most important, or the one you value most?

Photography aside, I believe that a film, like music, should ideally be the result of a collaboration between various elements for a cumulative emotional effect.

6) Most misunderstood movie of the 2000s (The Naughties?).

I skipped Birth during its theatrical release due to the mostly dismissive reviews, which now seem like a puerile and reductive response to such a complex and delicate film.

7) Name a filmmaker/actor/actress/film you once unashamedly loved who has fallen furthest in your esteem.

I was a huge Kevin Spacey fan during his ‘90’s hot streak, from Glengarry Glen Ross to American Beauty; he’s only made one movie since that I really liked. I still hope he’ll turn it around, though.

8) Herbert Lom or Patrick Magee?

Magee

9) Which is your least favorite David Lynch film (Submitted by Tony Dayoub)

I like/love them all to some degree; I guess Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is my “least” favorite, though mixed with the erratic and silly bits are some of Lynch’s best moments.

10) Gordon Willis or Conrad Hall? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)

A tie, but if I have to choose, Gordon Willis.

11) Second favorite Don Siegel movie.

The Beguiled

12) Last movie you saw on DVD/Blu-ray? In theaters?

On Blu-ray, Inglourious Basterds – even better the second time. In theaters, The Fantastic Mr. Fox – a little slight after The Darjeeling Limited, but undeniably charming.

13) Which DVD in your private collection screams hardest to be replaced by a Blu-ray? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)

Easily Lawrence of Arabia.

14) Eddie Deezen or Christopher Mintz-Plasse?

McLovin’. What, no Screech?

15) Actor/actress who you feel automatically elevates whatever project they are in, or whom you would watch in virtually anything.

Kate Winslet can make a turdburger like The Reader compelling.

16) Fight Club -- yes or no?

It doesn’t seem as deep as it did when I was 16, but yes.

17) Teresa Wright or Olivia De Havilland?

Olivia De Havilland

18) Favorite moment/line from a film noir.

Harry Lime’s introduction in The Third Man

19) Best (or worst) death scene involving an obvious dummy substituting for a human or any other unsuccessful special effect(s)—see the wonderful blog Destructible Man for inspiration.

The only scene that comes to mind right now is the little boy’s skull getting crushed (obviously a melon) in The Toxic Avenger.

20) What's the least you've spent on a film and still regretted it? (Submitted by Lucas McNelly)

I was paid $75 to work on The Game Plan and it was still painful to sit through.

21) Van Johnson or Van Heflin?

Meh.

22) Favorite Alan Rudolph film.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

23) Name a documentary that you believe more people should see.

I tend to not like documentaries that people “should” see, especially if they end with a list of things you should do. But if you haven’t seen Gates of Heaven, you should.

24) In deference to this quiz’s professor, name a favorite film which revolves around someone becoming stranded.

E.T.

25) Is there a moment when your knowledge of film, or lack thereof, caused you an unusual degree of embarrassment and/or humiliation? If so, please share.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people who know I’m into movies treat me like a walking IMDb, quizzing me on release years and who directed what. I usually shrug it off, but I did get pretty tired of being known as “Kevin Bacon guy” in high school.

26) Ann Sheridan or Geraldine Fitzgerald? (Submitted by Larry Aydlette)

Geraldine Fitzgerald

27) Do you or any of your family members physically resemble movie actors or other notable figures in the film world? If so, who?

When I was a little kid, my mom looked uncannily like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens – and honestly, if my mom were in Ripley’s situation, I have no doubt she’d get the job done.

28) Is there a movie you have purposely avoided seeing? If so, why?

I’d avoided both Salo and Cannibal Holocaust until about a year ago. The former was not quite what I expected, the latter was just what I expected.

29) Movie with the most palpable or otherwise effective wintry atmosphere or ambience.

Thank you for reminding me that it’s about time for my annual winter double feature of The Shining and The Thing.

30) Gerrit Graham or Jeffrey Jones?Jeffrey Jones. Who else could believably play Emperor Joseph, Ed Rooney and the Dark Overlord? I hope we see more of him again soon (quoth the Mattress Man – “You think you can be a pervert and not pay for it?”)

31) The best cinematic antidote to a cultural stereotype (sexual, political, regional, whatever).

Walter and The Dude. One’s a neocon, the other’s an aging radical, but they put aside their differences for bowling and the things that really matter.

32) Second favorite John Wayne movie.

Rio Bravo

33) Favorite movie car chase.

It’s an obvious answer, but every time I watch The French Connection, I’m convinced someone is really going to get hurt this time.

34) In the spirit of His Girl Friday, propose a gender-switched remake of a classic or not-so-classic film. (Submitted by Patrick Robbins)

In the Company of Women

35) Barbara Rhoades or Barbara Feldon?

Barbara Feldon

36) Favorite Andre De Toth movie.

House of Wax

37) If you could take one filmmaker's entire body of work and erase it from all time and memory, as if it had never happened, whose oeuvre would it be? (Submitted by Tom Sutpen)

My first thought, obviously, was Michael Bay, but I sort of wouldn’t want to erase The Rock. So let’s go with Gary Marshall.

38) Name a film you actively hated when you first encountered it, only to see it again later in life and fall in love with it.

Barry Lyndon. It was the one Kubrick film that was too misanthropic for me, but when I had to watch it again for an assignment, I realized that it does indeed have a heart.

39) Max Ophuls or Marcel Ophuls? (Submitted by Tom Sutpen)

Max Ophuls

40) In which club would you most want an active membership, the Delta Tau Chi fraternity, the Cutters or the Warriors? And which member would you most resemble, either physically or in personality?

The Deltas. And these days I’m starting to look like D-Day.

41) Your favorite movie cliché.

The spy or assassin or Chigurh walking calmly away from a car or building as it suddenly blows up.

42) Vincente Minnelli or Stanley Donen? (Submitted by Bob Westal)

Vincente Minelli

43) Favorite Christmas-themed horror movie or sequence.

As much as I love A Christmas Story, wouldn’t it be great if another channel ran 24 hours of Black Christmas as counterprogramming every year?

44) Favorite moment of self- or selfless sacrifice in a movie.

The moment in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when MacMurphy looks towards the open window and his chance for escape, then wordlessly decides to finish what he’s started.

45) If you were the cinematic Spanish Inquisition, which movie cult (or cult movie) would you decimate? (Submitted by Bob Westal)

Apologies to all my friends and loved ones who love this movie, but I fucking hate The Boondock Saints.

46) Caroline Munro or Veronica Carlson?

Caroline Munro

47) Favorite eye-patch wearing director. (Submitted by Patty Cozzalio)

I was going to say Sam Peckinpah, but a quick Google image search reminded me that he did not, in fact, wear an eye patch. It feels right, though, doesn’t it?

48) Favorite ambiguous movie ending. (Original somewhat ambiguous submission---“Something about ambiguous movie endings!”-- by Jim Emerson, who may have some inspiration of his own to offer you.)

Zodiac

49) In giving thanks for the movies this year, what are you most thankful for?

The “Cat People” scene in Inglourious Basterds – for reasons far too abstract to explain here, it will always feel like 2009 to me.

50) George Kennedy or Alan North? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)

George Kennedy

That was my favorite arm!

One example of how much Where the Wild Things Are gets right (especially given the many ways it could have gone terribly wrong) is the casting of newcomer Max Records as Max. The hypothetical one-liner-and-fart-joke-filled adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic book we’ve thankfully avoided would surely have starred a cloying, groin-kicking little snot. But director Spike Jonze has wisely chosen a Max who is capable of acting as the film’s emotional center – while Records is an agreeably goofy kid, he shares with the best child actors the ability to be completely open. Early in the film, Max starts a snowball fight with his older sister Claire (Pepita Emmerichs) and her older friends, who play too rough and smash Max's snow fort; the fear and hurt on Max's tear-streaked face are more authentic then we're used to seeing in a children's film. This is no small accomplishment, as it's harder than it seems to make a film that truly captures feelings that most of us have tried to forget - like E.T., The 400 Blows and the handful of other great films about childhood it joins, Where the Wild Things Are loves kids too much to patronize them.

As in Sendak's book, Max is a mischief-making kid prone to roaring at his mom (Catherine Keener), but Jonze and co-screenwriter Dave Eggers add more details to Max's life. Here, Max's dad (who we never meet) has been out of the picture for a while, and his mom struggles to balance her career and personal life with her family. Max is worried about his mom, about his sister and her new, strange friends, and about the sun, which - his science teacher recently informed him - will someday die out (the teacher is quite possibly the worst elementary school teacher ever). These opening scenes are brief but crucial; when Max acts out while mom is entertaining a date (Mark Ruffalo), Keener does an excellent job of showing her obvious love and concern for her son against her need to be a grown-up for even one night. The playful inventiveness Jonze demonstrated in his music video work had previously been balanced against the sardonic mind games of Charlie Kaufman's screenplays for the director's first two features, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Here, Jonze reveals surprising sensitivity and compassion for his young protagonist; it's clear now that the impish sense of humor found in everything from Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet" video to the Jonze-produced Jackass stems from a filmmaker who hasn't forgotten what it was like to be a kid.

Running away from home, Max sails to a distant island populated by the titular beasts; led by the destructive Carol (James Gandolfini), the wild things embody feelings Max is unable to articulate. This could have been a painfully self-conscious device, but Jonze and Eggers smartly allow the characters to shift and blur roles - moody K.W. (Lauren Ambrose), with her strange new owl friends Bob and Terry, seems to stand in for Max's sister until she assumes a more maternal role. Gandolfini, in particular, is perfectly cast, his oddly cuddly voice giving way to Tony Soprano's petulant rage as Carol, initally Max's surrogate, turns on his new "king" for his inability to eradicate sadness from their kingdom. Jonze is smart not to make said kingdom a CGI-fest - filmed in Australia, the movie places its Henson studios-created (and digitally tweaked) wild things in a world that feels wholly created out of Max's imagination as he hides in the woods (hence the visits from a dog and a raccoon). K.K. Barrett's production design and cinematographer Lance Acord's brilliant use of available light make us believe in an imagined world, once majestic but now slowly falling apart. Carol's anxiety over the island's desert and things that turn to dust is mirrored in the deterioration of his and K.W.'s friendship - a scene where K.W. lies on the ground, waiting for Carol to step on her face, is a brutal representation of how a child might perceive the breakdown of his parents' marriage. Some reviews complained that not much happens in the film, but as it's the story of a boy realizing that, even in his fantasies, he cannot make everything better, I'd say that a great deal happens.

It's true that this is strong stuff, and Where the Wild Things Are never shies away from its darker implications, from Carol's brutal assault of his rational friend Douglas (Chris Cooper) to the realization that Max has been preceded by many "kings" who were summarily eaten, to the subtle suggestion that Max has experienced serious abuse. There is also the movie's coda, which show in a few wordless images how nothing between a parent and child ever changes, and how this is both a good and sad thing. But the beauty of the film lies in the way that it doesn't pander to kids, expressing serious themes in a direct, perceptible way that honors its young audiences' capacity for introspection and creativity. There were multiple complaints when the film was released that it was dark and weird and boring, and even some of the positive reviews noted that it's not "for everyone." I agree - Where the Wild Things Are is the perfect movie for kids sensitive enough to need it and cool enough to get it.

Where I've been.

I've always been reluctant to talk about my personal life in great detail here, as I don't think it's very interesting. However, my absence from the blog has been long enough, and enough people have politely checked in to see how I've been doing (thanks, guys) that I thought I'd explain a little bit. I'm not at the place yet where I can offer much perspective on everything, but I'll do my best to fill in the broad details.

He enters the stall. The red head is leaning against the wall smoking her cigarette. She shoots him one quick seductive smile. He moves towards her.

MAX
You are so-

She cuts him off by placing her cigarette into his mouth.

RED HEAD
Don’t you ever just shut the fuck up?

He pitches the cigarette in the toilet and goes for a kiss. She forcefully puts her hand over his mouth stopping him.

RED HEAD
Don’t kiss me. If you kiss me on the lips - we’re done. And if we stop before I’ve come, I’ll kick your fucking ass.

- Excerpt from "BANG" screenplay

In the spring my wife, Jessica, became close with a filmmaker whose work I'd been a fan of (it wouldn't be fair of me to be more specific, but search around the internet for a few minutes and you can figure it out) and who'd offered to help with the marketing for Black Light. They announced a plan to make a porn film called BANG, the plot of which concerned a young man who, upon breaking up with his girlfriend, sleeps with seven different women in one night before reuniting with his girlfriend the next morning and having sex with her in a motel. Having just made a movie that is both erotic and very sympathetic to the experiences of sex workers, I wasn't automatically opposed to the idea on moral grounds. Jessica is a very talented and intelligent writer who has always struggled to find her voice, and it was good to see her enthusiastic about something. But I did have some concerns about the script, both as a product of Moth Films and on a personal level - frankly, the idea of sleeping with multiple people as a way of fixing one's relationship brushed up against issues we'd dealt with in our relationship, and I wondered aloud if the script was pure fantasy or if it represented her real views about sex and relationships. I felt like my concerns were reasonable, but she increasingly felt like I was holding her back from becoming her true self. She also talked a great deal about her friend, how she'd finally met someone who truly understood her, and started shutting me out both figuratively and literally, spending six hours at a time chatting on Facebook with the bedroom door closed. I became jealous, and when I expressed this I was told that I was being crazy and paranoid. Communication continued to deteriorate until the end of June, when I offered a choice between counseling or separation; she chose separation.

I spent two weeks at a friend's house to give Jessica some space to work out her plans; when I reached a point where I felt like I was beginning to let go of the situation and would be able to coexist without constant tension, I called to tell her that I'd be coming back to the apartment so I could spend more time with the kids. She agreed to this; that night, I arrived to find her, the kids and their things gone. She'd told people that I'd threatened her and the children and she needed to make a quick escape. She's told people close to me a lot of things, and while there's no question I was far from perfect in the relationship - when backed into a corner I was sometimes sarcastic, passive-aggressive and verbally cutting - she'd basically made me out to be a drug-addled, promiscuous Chris Brown. Which I'm not. I don't know why she felt the need to leave the way she did, but I was left with a trashed apartment, my kids gone without being able to say goodbye. So yeah, I wasn't doing so great in July.

"I don't hate you. I do pity you. After all the lectures you gave me about ego not being able to see ego and being emotionally open and stuff.... You already have all the answers you need to be a better person (not moral, I mean happier, healthier, more confident, and more successful) you just need to put them together." - letter from a friend

Things got better when I started seeing my kids again the next weekend, but I was completely blindsided by the end of the relationship, not to mention the dramatic way it ended, and I didn't really know how to put things back together. Honestly, some of the most theraputic moments during those first weeks were the craziest, like the night my friend Bella Vendetta took me to a dive bar in Deerfield, put an enormous amount of tequila in my system (I don't drink often) and told me "I'm glad you're not with her. I like you more this way" before taking me on a Hunter S. Thompson-esque joyride that ended with us watching Waiting to Exhale in her apartment. Then there were the nights spent up all night in my new friend Amanda's loft, where we smoked and listened to T Rex on vinyl and drew pictures as I thought to myself, "This is exactly what I should be doing right now." I had always assumed that, if my marriage ended, people would see me as a failure; I never expected people would care about me enough to take care of me, and in the midst of the chaos I found a new appreciation for the small good things.

My relationship to movies was strange during this period, which is what made it difficult to write. As I've gotten better I've realized just how serious my depression, which I've downplayed in my own mind as "me being dramatic" for years, had become. Looking back on some of my reviews over the past few years, like this one and this one and definitely this one, I realize that I was struggling to articulate what was going on inside my head as much as I was describing the movies. As Jessica and I left Synecdoche, New York I told her the film was frighteningly close to how I experience things; she replied, "Wow, you're really sad." I could have told you at the time, of course, that I related to the film on a conceptual level, but I could not have told you that Caden Cotard's deteriorating marriage to Adele Lack was frighteningly close to my own. So yeah, I personalize the movies I see - I think it's self-soothing, my own unconscious form of cognitive therapy.

"It's these greeting cards, Sir, these cards, these movies, these pop songs. They're responsible for all the lies, the heartache, everything! We're responsible!" - from 500 Days of Summer

But when Jessica left and I found myself going to the movies alone, I became dependent on them, to the point where I had nothing interesting to say about them. When I saw Public Enemies I was preoccupied with Dillinger's relationship with a beautiful brunette who is always out of reach (because I obviously have so much in common with John Dillinger). I couldn't focus on Harry Potter because of my complete contempt for the stupid little romances of the Hogwarts kids - don't they know that these young romances never last? And I checked out of Away We Go, which I worked on, after about ten minutes, because those insufferably happy hipsters were making me want to vomit (though I did see, at the real change, that I made it into the movie). And of course, there was my movie - which happens to be a heartfelt romance that ends on a defiant affirmation of the redemptive possibilities of love against all odds - to finish and premiere. I felt like I was being made to tap dance while gunslingers fired at my heels. The movie was well-receieved, and finishing it helped me get back in touch with my own feelings about love independent of my marriage. However, more than one person did point out that happy endings like the one at the end of Black Light don't happen in real life very often. Yeah, thanks for that.

"I'm getting in touch with my inner perv. If I came across a pair of moist granny panties in the laundry room, I would likely take a whiff. If when taking out the trash I noticed a couple fucking in their brightly lit apartment, I would likely creep up to the window & watch with lustful eyes. Definitely with a hand in my pants." - from Jessica's new blog

In August, Jessica and I had lunch, and we apologized to each other and things seemed to be getting better. It was around this point that I saw Inglorious Basterds, which was a perfect movie that I needed in so many ways, and which I had nothing more intelligent to say than "Movie awesome. Nazi scary." I'd started to think things were getting back on an even keel, that I was starting to adjust to this new life, until last week, when she called to announce that she was giving me the kids and did not want to see them again. She said that she was a bad person that nobody could care about and refused to elaborate, except to say that she was getting help. A few days later I got a call from her mother; nobody had heard from her in a few days, she wasn't at her apartment or answering her phone. She's staying with her filmmaker friend now, and there's no real way to preface this part - they're making foot porn together (again, search around and you'll find it). I'm still processing this part, but writing it all out like this helps. After the initial shock passed, I looked at her new blog again. I didn't feel jealous or insecure or any of the things I expected to feel; I felt sad, and concerned for her, and hoping this is just a step towards getting her to the place she needs to go to feel like herself, which she's struggled with for so long. I left a comment poking fun at her, not in a mean way but in the way we used to be when things were good, when we could gently call out each other's bullshit and remind each other how well each of us knew the other. And it finally felt like I was truly saying goodbye.

Now I'm focusing on the good changes which have come about as a result of these past few months and which, honestly, might not have happened if I was still married. The kids are with my parents now, and once I've sorted out daycare and other details, they'll be with me; I'm intimidated by the thought of being a single dad and a little afraid my life will become a bad Steve Martin comedy, but I've missed them terribly and I'm happy they're coming back. I'm moving my camera and notebook into Amanda's studio tonight - it's my first office space and I'm taking my first small steps towards making movies for a living. I've made new friends, and my relationships with the friends who've been there all along are stronger than ever. One of the best decisions I've made stemmed from the desire to turn my negative feelings about the situation into something positive; in September I wrote the filmmaker's ex-wife (they split shortly after Jess and I) a short note explaining that I was going through the same thing and that it had helped me a great deal at the beginning of being alone to have people to talk to. We became friends and, in pleasant and unexpected way, we hit it off. Her name is Annabelle. I couldn't have found a better person to share the very intimidating experience of taking the first tentative steps back towards romance. Whatever happens, I know I've made a lifelong friend; I think we both need that security right now. And no, our motive was not revenge, and yes, it is weird to be seeing your ex's lover's ex. I'm learning that a little weirdness can be a good thing.

There are still days where I don't want to get out of bed, where I feel like everything is basically meaningless and not worth the effort. But most days, I feel like everything is possible, that this has all happened for a reason. It's been a fucked-up year, but it's getting better. And I think I'm ready to start writing about movies again; I certainly have a lot to say about the amazing, beautiful Where the Wild Things Are, especially now that I'm Catherine Keener (not Synecdoche Keener - oh, synchronicities!). So if you're still around, thanks for checking in. I've missed you.

"Thank you for being the best friend I've ever had. No matter what turmoils we've experienced and conflict, we always find our way back into each other's arms. Thank you with every shred and ounce of my body. We are truly blessed. My heart is good and better than ever. I think I might be(don't get your hopes up) finally growing up. I love you with all of my heart and thank you for really being a great friend." - an e-mail from Jess, some years ago

Kubrick, Hargenson, Goulet

I realized today that, while in the middle of completing my movie, I completely forgot about the most recent quiz at SLIFR. I'm hoping the esteemed Professor Snape will accept the movie as extra credit to make up for my tardiness; unfortunately, he's not known for his leniency.

1) Second-favorite Stanley Kubrick film.

2001

2) Most significant/important/interesting trend in movies over the past decade, for good or evil.

The most interesting to me is the trend of movies that mix romance and sci-fi to explore love from a metaphysical point of view. These include A.I., Solaris, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Birth and The Fountain.

3) Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood) or Buffalo Bill Cody (Paul Newman)?

Buffalo Bill

4) Best Film of 1949.

The Third Man

5) Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) or Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore)?

Joseph Tura

6) Has the hand-held shaky-cam directorial style become a visual cliché?

Seeing as most of my film is hand-held, I sure hope not! Actually, it has become a visual cliche, though I still think it's a valid way to shoot a film. They key, I think, is not to purposefully shake the camera but to try to hold it as still as possible, which better recreates the sensation of seeing through our own eyes.

7) What was the first foreign-language film you ever saw?

Dubbed Godzilla and Pippi Longstalking movies aside, I think it was Ran.

8) Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) or Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre)?

Mr. Moto, but I'm not a big fan of either.

9) Favorite World War II drama (1950-1970).

The Bridge on the River Kwai

10) Favorite animal movie star.

Philip Marlowe's nitpicky cat in The Long Goodbye.

11) Who or whatever is to blame, name an irresponsible moment in cinema.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a lovely film that I can't bring myself to buy because of Mr. Yunioshi.

12) Best Film of 1969.

Satyricon

13) Name the last movie you saw theatrically, and also on DVD or Blu-ray.

In theatres, Halloween II - some interesting ideas sandwiched between a whole lot of ridiculousness, but I won't count Rob Zombie out yet. On DVD, Woyzeck.

14) Second-favorite Robert Altman film.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

15) What is your favorite independent outlet for reading about movies, either online or in print?

Glenn Kenny's blog is indispensible, and becoming an independent outlet has made his writing far more eclectic and entertaining.

16) Who wins? Angela Mao or Meiko Kaji? (Thanks, Peter!)

I must admit that I'm not familiar with Meiko Kaji - looking at her IMDb page, it's time to get familiar.

17) Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) or Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly)?

Olive Neal. Rarrr.

18) Favorite movie that features a carnival setting or sequence.

The Elephant Man

19) Best use of high-definition video on the big screen to date.

I loved the inky blacks and sharp contrasts of Public Enemies (though it's worth noting that even Michael Mann and David Fincher, easily the best directors working in HD right now, still rely on celluloid for some scenes).

20) Favorite movie that is equal parts genre film and a deconstruction or consideration of that same genre.

Kill Bill

21) Best Film of 1979.

Apocalypse Now. Great year.

22) Most realistic and/or sincere depiction of small-town life in the movies.

The opening scenes of A History of Violence did a great job of evoking average, peaceful small-town days to the point where I could almost smell the autumn leaves, making the rest of the movie much more disturbing.

23) Best horror movie creature (non-giant division).

The chestburster.

24) Second-favorite Francis Ford Coppola film.

The Godfather Part II

25) Name a one-off movie that could have produced a franchise you would have wanted to see.

Still waiting for Buckaroo Banzai vs. The World Crime League.

26) Favorite sequence from a Brian De Palma film.

The buildup to the bloody baptism in Carrie. I love how De Palma prolongs the inevitable to the point of frustration, the slow motion coupled with Pino Donaggio's score toying with both our empathy for Carrie and our desire to see the prank played out. I love how Sue's attempt to stop it is thwarted by the gym teacher who assumes Sue is there to hurt Carrie - one of many examples in De Palma of terrible things happening as the result of miscommunication. And the close-up of Chris Hargensen licking her cherry-red lips, turned on by her sadistic plan, is probably my favorite shot in the De Palma canon.

27) Favorite moment in three-strip Technicolor.

From Vertigo: Judy emerging from the hotel bathroom, bathed in green light and reborn as Madeliene, as Bernard Herrmann's score swells on the soundtrack.

28) Favorite Alan Smithee film. (Thanks, Peter!)

Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes (Smithee was co-director)

29) Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) or Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau)?

Buttermaker, no contest. I always thought Crash Davis was a douchebag.

30) Best post-Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen film.

I have a soft spot for Sweet and Lowdown.

31) Best Film of 1999.

In a year almost as competetive as 1979, Eyes Wide Shut

32) Favorite movie tag line.

"Man is the warmest place to hide."

33) Favorite B-movie western.

I used to love watching B-westerns with my grandfather, but I have to admit that the titles and movies are blurred together. For some reason, the only one I can distinctly remember right now is The Shakiest Gun in the West.

34) Overall, the author best served by movie adaptations of her or his work.

Both Mario Puzo and Peter Benchley were lucky to have their biggest hits immensely improved on film.

35) Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) or Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard)?

Susan Vance

36) Favorite musical cameo in a non-musical movie.

Robert Goulet serenading a distraught Susan Sarandon in Atlantic City.

37) Bruno (the character, if you haven’t seen the movie, or the film, if you have): subversive satire or purveyor of stereotyping?

I don't know if I'd go with subversive, but anything that creates gay panic in super-straight dudes is okay by me.

38) Five film folks, living or deceased, you would love to meet. (Thanks, Rick!)

I could name five hundred, of course, but if I had power over life and death to arrange a meeting, I'd love to have dinner with five wildly different directors and let the sparks fly. Let's go with Martin Scorsese, John Waters, Sam Peckinpah, Jean Cocteau and Dario Argento.

I write doodads because it's a doodad kind of town.

After Dorothy Parker's death in 1967, her ashes remained unclaimed, passing from one cabinet to another, for 17 years; how fitting an afterlife for a woman who once suggested "Excuse my dust" as her epitaph. A common criticism of Parker's poems is that they persistently return to the same themes: despair, insecurity, unrequited desire, failed romances and, almost always, death. Yet the appeal of Parker's work lies in the razor-sharp wit she brings to morbid self-interest - deceptively "light," her poems often cut to the bone. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle opens, in black and white, on a close-up of Parker's lips as she recites a poem; as Parker - played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, perfectly interpreting Parker's smokey, half-muttered speech patterns - speaks, the camera drifting from her lips to her eyes, the camera finds a tactile sensuality in the mordant humor of Parker's words. It's director Alan Rudolph's invitation to the blues; with a film set against the backdrop of the Algonquin Round Table and its revolving cast of artists and intellectuals, it would be more obvious to adapt a blithe, wisecracking tone. But Rudolph's decision to focus his film on the member of the Algonquin who would be most likely to disavow any club that would have her as a member gives his film surprising emotional heft.

Using Parker's own poetry and scenes from her later years as a framing device, Mrs. Parker takes place during the heyday of her reputation as the most savage wit among the Algonquins. The title's "vicious circle" could just as easily refer to Parker's own life, marked by a series of failed or stalled relationships to men like her abusive first husband Edward (Andrew McCarthy) and the charming but unfaithful playwright Charles MacArthur (Matthew Broderick). The breakup of this relationship, and the subsequent termination of their pregnancy, leads to Parker's first suicide attempt; it's remarkable to watch Leigh make an almost imperceptible shift from self-depricating jokes to the very real despair just beneath the surface. Leigh is just as astonishing in every scene, going beyond impersonation to embody Parker's tough, defiant spirit. As with many of Leigh's strongest performances, she seems completely unconcerned with whether the audience is on her side; this makes her a perfect match for Parker, who was her own harshest critic (we spy her, at one point, writing "Please God, let me write like a man") yet remained true to herself.

Rather than providing the endless exposition that would have been needed to introduce the members of the Algonquin Round Table to modern audiences (other than an awkward scene where the founders of the New Yorker fumble over the name for their new venture), Rudolph smartly allows the supporting cast - a who's who of up-and-coming '90s stars - to populate the film like familiar acquaintances. Rudolph, a protege of Robert Altman (who produced the film), has frequently adopted Altman's trademark use of overlapping dialogue. Sometimes, as with the disastrous adaptation of Breakfast of Champions, the result is a mess; here, however, it's a perfect fit. As the camera drifts through countless lunches and parties, characters verbally spar and one-up each other as they barely conceal their desperate desire to impress one another. The words themselves become a major character in the film, which at times plays like a eulogy for the lost art of conversation.

Words also take on an erotic carge in Parker's bittersweet, decades-long friendship with writer and humorist Robert Benchley (Campbell Scott). It is the relationship between Mrs. Parker and Mr. Benchley, as they affectionately call each other, that is at the heart of the film. Longtime writing partners and best friends, Parker and Benchley never quite say what they feel, largely because of Benchley's loyalty to his wife (Jennifer Beals), who can only view her husband's friendship and creative success in terms of the time he spends away from home (Beals and Leigh would reverse these roles in The Anniversary Party, with more sympathy for the jealous wife). Words tie Parker and Benchley together, yet they also use words to keep each other at arms' length - as Parker tells Benchley, "I'd kiss you, but I'm afraid it wouldn't come out right." It's in the unspoken moments, as we observe each character when the other isn't looking, that we realize the depth of Parker's affection for Benchley and the strength of his loyalty to her, and we realize that, for all her failed attempts at happiness, this friendship may have been the great love of Parker's life.

The relationship also serves to anchor the film; Rudolph could have been content to blithely romanticize his '20s-set cast of characters (it'd be easy with such fabulous costumes), but while the film celebrates the Algonquins, it stops short of idealizing them. Parker herself would eventually dismiss her friends as "a bunch of loudmouths," and a remarkable New Years-set sequence late in the film suggests that, as the party began to wind down, what remained for the partygoers was the need to be noticed. Parker saw this in herself - was painfully aware of all her human frailties - and all the booze, sex and sarcasm in the world couldn't finally dull her painful self-awareness. But she remained fiercely herself, even at the expense of happiness, and I think she would agree that an unsentimental, stubbornly sad and largely overlooked biopic is one that suits her best.

Black Light trailer

This isn't Dallas, it's Nashville!

It's challenging, when writing about Nashville, to avoid simply listing the seemingly endless parade of great scenes, characters, performances and moments that make the film one of the greatest and most entertaining of all time. Director Robert Altman, tongue firmly in cheek, gives us an early invitation to regard his sprawling vision of the country music scene and America circa 1975 as a sort of cinematic greatest hits record. From the K-Tel-inspired opening credits that serve as a commercial for the movie we're about to see, trumpeting the film's cavalcade of stars presented "through the magic of stereophonic sound and living-color picture right before your very eyes without commercial interruption,"Nashville wears its multilayered narrative (the various threads bringing together 24 principal characters) like a badge of honor. If it was merely an extended cinematic stunt, it would still be very entertaining, but what lingers after the film and expands upon each viewing is not its scale but its intimacy - Altman doesn't build his film out of grandiose statements, but instead carefully, precisely exposes the emotional truth of every single moment we observe, never hitting a false note. While many have tried to attach an overriding thesis statement to the film, to do so inevitably reduces the film's achievement as a rich and eclectic survey of human experience; seeing it in 35mm for the first time at the Brattle a few weeks ago, I realized how few films are as joyously alive.

Wim Wenders once wrote that Nashville is "about noise," and noise - indeed, various forms of communication - is one of the connective threads of the film. Nashville's many dramas play out in overlapping conversations in nightclubs, overheard telephone calls, dialogue carried over the intercoms of recording studios, and communication recorded (albums, newscasts, political diatribes played over loudspeakers) and distributed for mass consumption. Performance, both musical and political, is the dominant form of communication - the movie builds to a campaign rally for Hal Phillip Walker, who is heard but never seen. Walker's platform, which is based less on specific policy than on a general distrust of institutions and a promise to returned to imagined good old days, is not far removed from the populist tunes of the unctuous Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), who we meet as he's recording the Bicentennial-themed rabble-rouser "200 Years" (I always chuckle at the throwaway line "I saw action in Algiers"). Recent American history hangs heavy over Nashville (the scenes at the Grand Old Opry were filmed the day of Nixon's resignation), but aside from a a few carefully chosen references to Vietnam, the recession and the Kennedys, Altman avoids the kind of literal commentary he pokes fun at with Opal from the BBC (Geraldine Chaplin). A flaky reporter with dubious credentials, Opal wanders through the film pontificating about the symbolism of busyards, patronizingly telling a group of black musicians that "I know all about the problems in the south" and desperately trying to meet anyone famous. Opal, and many of the characters in the film - groupie L.A. Joan (Shelley Duvall), or limo driver Norman (David Arkin), or sweet, talentless aspiring singer Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) - want to be somebody or at least be near somebody. It's this culture where everybody is a fan, Altman suggests, that has blurred the lines between celebrity and politics both on- and offstage.

This alone would be enough of a subject to carry a feature, but Altman and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury (whose contributions to the film's form are underestimated) make room for relationships, sex, family, race, religion, love and death, subtly tying them together with the film's soundtrack, which articulates the beliefs the characters cling to and which drive them through the story. Altman's camera drifts from one story to another, seemingly omnipresent, but never, with few exceptions, taking the God's-eye perspective that Altman devotee P.T. Anderson employs in Magnolia. Our perspective remains squarely on the ground level, as Altman guides through the city, giving us room to make our own discoveries (it was only on this viewing, through a barely-audible line, that I realized Haven is a racist). Altman's approach is loose-limbed enough to make room for a character like Tricycle Man (Jeff Goldblum), who rides his three-wheeler, never talks, performs magic tricks and exists mostly as an absurdist punctuation mark. Gradually, however, as in the scene where Haven's brassy manager and (maybe) lover Lady Pearl (Barbara Baxley) chokes back tears as she reminisces about working for JFK and RFK, we realize that Altman has been subtly leading us towards this moment all along.

When Altman does use more overt juxtapositions, the effect is earned and often startling. For instance, I found upon this viewing that I hated Tom (Keith Carradine), the pretty-boy folk singer who uses his good looks and feigned sensitivity to seduce and destroy countless women, and I was disappointed in gospel singer Linnea (Lily Tomlin) for going to bed with him. Then Altman cut to the painful scene of Sueleen, coerced into stripping at a fundraiser for Walker in exchange for the promise of a chance to perform; as Sueleen is humiliated by a roomful of leering men (including Linnea's husband Delbert (Ned Beatty)), I understood how a piece of shit like Tom could represent an escape from Linnea (Tomlin is brilliant in the near-wordless post-coital scene, showing us that, for once, a woman has taken more from Tom than he's taken from her). It can be difficult to determine, due to Altman's famous improvisatory methods, whether a contrast like this was in the script from the start or if it was discovered in editing. But there are moments throughout the film that suggest Altman is more purposeful than he cares to admit - in the heartbreakingly quiet moment when Joan's uncle Mr. Green finds out that his wife has died as a happier scene plays out in the background, in the way (as Pauline Kael pointed out in her famous rave) that Haven's "For the Sake of the Children" illustrates Linnea's unspoken feelings and, most deftly, when fragile singer Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakely) collapes on an airport tarmac in a chilling bit of foreshadowing.

If Nashville has no narrative center, than Barbara Jean is certainly its heart. Recently released from a burn ward (we don't learn the cause) and prone to fainting and hysteria, Barbara Jean is the biggest talent in the movie - with a voice that moves audiences to tears, she's the star that everyone in the movie wants to be. Sadly, Barbara Jean wants to be Barbara Jean too - emotionally stunted from years onstage, told what to do at every moment by her controlling, emotionally abusive husband Barnett (Allen Garfield), Barbara Jean could slip away at any moment. When she loses herself, during a concert, in a rambling monologue about her childhood as the audience starts to boo (and as portions of the Brattle audience, sadly, laughed derisively), we can see how her self-perception and self-mythologizing have become tragically blurred. Even Barbara Jean, perhaps more than anyone else in the film, is captive to her beautiful and impossible ideals she is meant to embody.

The film's famous ending unites Barbara Jean with two characters who are just as lost - flighty aspiring singer Albequerque (Barbara Harris) and quiet drifter Kenny (David Hayward). The reasons for Kenny's actions are ambiguous (it occured to me this time that Kenny may not have planned to go to the Parthenon at all); what Altman is concerned with is the aftermath. What a surprise to discover that the seemingly insecure Haven has the courage of his convictions, or that Tom is one of the first to offer help. And when Albequerque takes the stage, revealing unexpected talent, we can see how the spotlight has been passed as she pacifies the confused masses. The implications of Nashville's ending, which finds a crowd immediately disregarding the violence they've just witnessed as they're distracted by a song, are extremely disturbing. But even as Altman has no illusions about human weaknesses, he's also humane and even sympathetic to our flaws. The film's final shot, which tilts up towards the God's-eye view Altman has avoided and finds only a gray sky, concedes that, while there's nothing to see about there, maybe we do all have to believe in something, and a song is just as good as anything else.

Play the game (7/2/09)

I don't want your cat, you dirty pork queen!

Star Trek opens in bold, attention-grabbing fashion, as we join the USS Kelvin in the middle of a deep-space attack by a Romulan ship. With the Kelvin's captain offed by a teral'n at the hands of revenge-seeking Romulan Nero (Eric Bana), first officer George Kirk (Chris Hernsworth) orders the evacuation of everyone on board, including his very pregnant wife Winona (Jennifer Morrison). As I realized I was about to witness the birth, mid-space battle, of one James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), I chuckled at what might be the most literal-minded moment in the recent trend of prequels that fill in our most iconic characters' backstories. I'd been suspicious of Star Trek since its first trailer for precisely this reason, but as the opening continued, a strange thing happened - cheesy as the idea of Kirk's interstellar delivery might seem, director J.J. Abrams isn't afraid to swing for the fences, mining more suspense and emotion out of such an unabashedly broad scene that I soon found myself on the edge of my seat. As the elder Kirk, on a collision course with the Romulans, hears his son's first cries trasmitted from another escape pod, I actually found myself getting misty-eyed (becoming a parent does that to you). For all the talk of Star Trek as a drastic reboot of the franchise, it (like almost all summer movies) is purely status quo. But it doesn't need to reinvent the wheel; in fact, it works as well as it does because it understands Star Trek's origins in Horatio Hornblower and a centuries-old tradition of ripping yarns, and it delivers on the promise of a rip-roaring adventure better than any incarnation of Star Trek since The Wrath of Kahn.

After too much time spent slogging through painfully dry Next Generation movies, it's a pleasure to be reunited with Kirk(Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto), here a Starfleet cadet and a Commander, at the start of a lifelong conflict between the mind and the dick that is, at this point, still adversarial. Pine and Quinto are both surprisingly believable as younger incarnations of their iconic characters, and the entire cast fits just as well (except Anton Yelchin - there's just something insufferably self-conscious about that kid). The script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (way better than average for these two) employs black holes and red matter to allow for changes in the Star Trek canon while still accomodating purists, as well as giving Nero a reason for his villainy and affording Leonard Nimoy, returning as Spock, a more active role in the story than a shoehorned-in cameo (if the rest of the movie sucked, the sight of Nimoy in another Star Trek would justify the entire thing). The hard science of the story is ridiculous, of course, if one knows anything about black holes and red matter, and since I like Star Trek most when it veers into pure speculative fiction, I sort of missed the nerdiness (I'm the guy that likes V'ger and parts of Star Trek V, so feel free to disregard my opinion). But this Star Trek succeeds where it counts - in the vision of a military operating as much on reason as force, the Hornblower-inspired focus on what is truly the measure of a man (possible answer: Bruce Greenwood), the childlike sense of wonder at the mysteries of space exploration, and the gratuitous scene of Kirk banging a sexy, green-skinned alien. Gene Roddenberry would be proud.

A similar set of traditional values (minus the busty Orions) are at the heart of Up, the newest feature from Pixar (at this point, the most reliable name in Hollywood). The already-famous dialogue-free montage at the beginning of the film, which takes us through the entire lives of aspiring explorers Carl Frederickson (Ed Asner) and his wife Ellie - from youthful expectations through the disappointments reality brings, fond memories and, finally, Ellie's death - is one of Pixar's greatest achievements and, most likely, the most moving 10 minutes of any film this year. With only Michael Giacchino's lilting score as accompaniment, director Pete Docter and his team of animators create a definitive filmic portrait of what it is to find, go through life with and ultimately lose one's soulmate (two consecutive years that I've cried at a cartoon - thanks, Pixar!). The elderly Carl, adrift in a rapidly changing world, decides to honor his wife's unfulfilled wish - a retired balloon vendor, he uses his resources to fly their house to Paradise Falls, a (fictional) remote spot in South America. The sight of Carl's house taking off, sunlight suddenly refracting through thousands of balloons into a seemingly endless ocean of color, has a visual poetry worthy of Hayao Miyazaki - yet another example of Pixar's seemingly effortless ability to create definitive representations of our collective wonder.

I must admit that, once Carl and his stowaway - chubby and overeager 8-year-old Russell (Jordan Nagai) - get to South America, Up registers as an ever-so-slight disappointment. This is entirely due to Pixar's extremely high standards, as Up is still by far the best option for moviegoing families right now. But after the visionary Wall-E, I expected Carl and Russell to find more wondrous sights at Paradise Falls than a talking dog and a funny-looking bird. Don't get me wrong, the talking dog is hilarious; it's just that the film's second half feels sort of squarely domestic, something I also felt about Docter's mostly great Monsters Inc. (my daughter's favorite movie, so I could be very wrong about this). And when Carl meets his childhood hero, explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), only to find a villian, Up sort of drops the ball on the weightier implications of this kind of disillusionment. What does work beautifully is the relationship between Carl and the quietly lonely Russell, and what this slowly teaches Carl about his own life without Ellie. For a movie about an octegenarian, Up is a wonderful paean to the virtues of holding on to one's youth.

Released, in a delicious bit of fearful symmetry, the same weekend as Up, Drag Me to Hell is a gleefully sadistic compliment to Pixar's heavenly fantasy. The much-touted return to horror by director Sam Raimi was rejected by audiences who didn't realize that, like Raimi's Evil Dead movies, Drag Me to Hell is supposed to be funny. Alison Lohman occupies the role previously occupied by Bruce Campbell in Raimi's films, that of the perpetual ass of every supernatural joke. As Christine Brown, a sweet, mousy bank teller cursed by vengeful Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) after denying the old woman an extension on her mortgage, Lohman is subjected to a nonstop stream of shocks, nasty bodily fluids and the indignity of having many, many gross substances forced into her mouth as she finds a way to break the curse that will end with the Lamia, a vengeful satyr-like demon dragging her to you guessed it after three days. It's a pleasure to see Raimi, after only occassionally indulging his brattier directorial impulses in the Spider-Man movies, going truly old-school here: the insane camerawork, the Stooges-inspired humor (there's even an anvil gag!) and, most all, the willingness to rise below bad taste in the name of a scare or a laugh make Drag Me to Hell feel like the work of a young, eager-to-please filmmaker fresh off Evil Dead 2.

That's not to say that Drag Me to Hell is a time capsule from 1987, as it's a bit too CGI-heavy, alas, to feel completely analog. What is charmingly old-school is Raimi's morality - he gives us a seemingly decent protagonist who, at first, seems unfairly punished for a tough choice, then spends the rest of the movie subtly insinuating that Christine fully deserves to be dragged to Hell. I realize this is done in a tongue-in-cheek way (kitten!), but it's something of a revalation to find that Raimi (a conservative churchgoer who supported Bush in 2004) actually seems to believe in the black-and-white morality that other horror directors can only approach with ironic detachment. According to Raimi, we're all going to Hell if we don't shape up and learn to treat each other with some decency, and now it's clear that Raimi's best films work as well as they do because, no matter how wild they get, they're rooted in a very basic set of convictions. Strange to think of the guy who directed the tree rape scene in The Evil Dead as a right-wing auteur; stranger still that this actually makes me like him more. It helps, of course, that Drag Me to Hell is a blast from beginning to end, a gleefully sadistic spook show (aided by a kickass Christopher Young score) that arrives at an ending that left me in disbelief that Raimi actually got away with it. How exciting to think that, in the confines of the summer movie machine, there are filmmakers who manage to make the conventional feel radical.

One of these days you're gonna take a trip and never come back.

When B-movie director Al Adamson quit filmmaking in the 1980s to start a career in real estate, it may not have been as dramatic a career change as it would seem. While Adamson, like fellow low-budget directors Ed Wood and Roger Corman, was extremely prolific and worked in a wide variety of genres, his meat-and-potatoes exploitation movies show little of the passion for cinema that one can usually find in Wood's or Corman's films. But it's precisely this artlessness that gives Satan's Sadists an amoral charge; a drive-in hit in the same that Easy Rider was changing the way Hollywood regarded the youth market, it's not nearly as good as that film. But it's also a good deal less pretentious and, thanks to Adamson's eagerness to both cater to the counterculture and exploit anti-hippie attitudes, it's a good deal of crude, go-for-broke fun.

The title song informs us that the Sadists, led by the stoic Anchor (Russ Tamblyn), were "born mean," and the movie wastes no time convincing us of this. From the opening scene, as the Sadists intimidate a wholesome young couple necking in the woods and rape the girl, it's clear that we're in for 86 minutes of mayhem as the Sadists terrorize the good, decent normals they encounter. While Easy Rider was squarely on the side of the bikers and had nothing but contempt for blue-collar America, Adamson tries to have it both ways; audience members who would nod in approval at a line about how the world needs more decent young men could regard Satan's Sadists as a horror movie, while the heads in the audience could take it as an existential bummer.

Before killing a hostage, Anchor explains that, while he's got a lot of hate inside, there are a lot of kids out there who have nothing but love in their hearts getting thrown behind bars for smoking grass. The rest of Adamson's attempts at countercultural relevance are just as heavyhanded (the acidhead character is named Acid, for Pete's sake), and I don't think Adamson thought much about the generational divide beyond its profit potential - the trailer even tries to capitalize on interest in the Manson killings! Still, in some of the more brutal moments between the Sadists and their prey, Satan's Sadists captures the uneasy feelings Manson and Altamont inspired and foreshadows the equally crude but more intelligent Last House on the Left.

But whether or not Satan's Sadists works as social commentary, it's a great buds-n-suds movie - even if the references to Vietnam and the peace movement are window dressing for the mayhem, the blood is bright red, the sex is abundant (if frequently underlit) and the trippy imagery is a hoot. Plus, it probably served Russ Tamblyn as the perfect audition reel for Twin Peaks' Dr. Jacoby. I don't mean to sound dismissive of Satan's Sadists - it is what it is and doesn't make any apologies, which is sort of refreshing in a time when B-movies can be hard to distinguish from A-movies. In its willingness to shock its audience to provoke a response, Satan's Sadists aligns itself with the freaks; in his desire to entertain the whole audience, Adamson is a blue-collar filmmaker through and through.

You don't know where I've been!

When I was growing up, my family took an annual vacation to the White Mountains. As a kid, I didn't get the irony of taking a vacation without leaving the state - all I could think about was Story Land. Founded by a married couple in the 1950s, Story Land is a fairytale-themed amusement part that provided me with my annual dose of enchantment until I reached the age where I was too cool for such things (or, at least, felt obligated to feign indifference). One of the main charms of Story Land was that we knew exactly what to expect every summer; though Adventureland takes place in 1987, I wouldn't be surprised if the real Adventureland is much the same as it was 20 years ago (assuming it hasn't been bought by Six Flags). Adventureland doesn't have the same nostalgia for Adventureland that I have for Story Land - inspired by writer/director Greg Mottola's experiences working there as a teen, it uses the predictable attractions of the park to underscore the anxiety of its characters, who find themselves reluctantly on the verge of adulthood. That Mottola perfectly evokes not just 1987 or theme park culture but the moment we realize we don't know anything makes Adventureland one of the most finely observed movies about youth.

James (Jesse Eisenberg) has just graduated from college and, desparately in need of money for grad schoool, gets a summer job at Adventureland. He's assigned to Games, where he meets Em (Kristen Stewart), a dark-haired NYU student who hasn't fully processed the death of her mother two years earlier. James, of course, promptly falls for Em, who has Hüsker Dü in her tape deck, can talk passionately about social injustic over whiskey and beer, knows how to make pot cookies and suggests reservoirs of unspoken feeling - in other words, a girl that any bookish, socially inept romantic might carry a torch for when they're James' age. Stewart and Eisenberg (essentially playing an older version of his character from The Squid and the Whale) have a believable chemistry, and Mottola - who previously excelled at eliciting strong performances from young actors in Superbad - smartly allows his film to be driven by moments like the one where James quietly studies Em's reactions as they listen to a mix tape he gave her as a gift, hoping that Lou Reed will tell her the things he can't quite articulate.

The film also avoids the standard "sensitive guy pursues unattainable girl" formula - James and Em kiss in the second reel, and both have factors that keep them not quite together. These includes James' virginity, which he insists he's keeping for the right woman (we get the feeling that he used to tell himself this, but it's become true), his flirtation with park hottie Lisa P (Margaria Levieva) - whose work shirt promises "RIDES" in contrast to Em's "GAMES" - and, especially, Em's secret affair with Connell (Ryan Reynolds), an older, married park mechanic. In a more generic version of Adventureland, Connell would be the villain, but Mottola makes the character more complex - he's an asshole who uses his charisma and his (total bullshit) story about having once toured with Lou Reed to sleep with younger girls, but he never antagonizes James and even seems to be encouraging his relationship with Em, and we gradually notice the character's total self-loathing. With Reynolds in the role, it's like the sad reality of Van Wilder, and it's to his credit that he seems to get the joke.

Mottola extends this same generosity to all his characters - even Lisa P grows beyond a slut caricature to reveal surprising sensitivity. The film's structure is loose enough to allow effectively understated moments like the one where we realize James' hyperintellectual friend Joel (Martin Starr) is carrying his own torch for Em. And then there's Bobby (Bill Hader) and Paulette (Kristen Wiig), who own the park and fell for one another through their shared dream - Wiig's offhanded delivery of the line "This is how we met" when Hader shows off his carny skills is priceless, and a scene involving a baseball bat made me laugh harder than anything so far this year except for Observe and Report (it's shaping up to be a good year for comedies). Even Frigo (Matt Bush), James' childhood bully, is given shades of depth beyond groin-punching jokes. And the subtle touch extends to the film's cinematography - utilizing a great deal of low-key and often solely available light, it not only makes for a great contrast between the neon-colored days at the park and the dimly lit nights spent hanging out in the middle of nowhere, but it gives the whole film an immediacy that takes you back to your own formative years. Adventureland sidesteps sentimentality completely and never stops to wax nostalgic about the best years of our lives; it earns its laughter and its romantic moments, and does so beautifully.

Play the game (5/14/09)

Last month: Popeye

How much did Arthur get paid to kill Merlin?

The work of director Jody Hill is a much-needed slap in the face to every half-assed comedy that promises "shock humor" while exploiting cultural stereotypes in the most safe, obvious way possible. In the low-budget martial arts comedy The Foot Fist Way and the HBO series Eastbound and Down, Hill and frequent collaborators Ben Best and Danny McBride skewer the regressive, hypermasculine attitudes that other comedies hold up as an ideal. Tae Kwon Do instructor Fred Simmons and burnt-out ace pitcher Kenny Powers (both played by McBride), in addition to being extremely funny, implicitly expose the narcissism and desparation of our Dane Cooks, Van Wilders and Blue Collar Comedy Tours. Observe and Report, Hill's first solo effort as a writer/director, has been condemned to live in the shadow of Paul Blart: Mall Cop; this is a shame because it's much funnier (in fact, it's one of the funniest movies of all time), but also because it, in its twisted way, it eviscerates the banal, soulless mall culture that Blart celebrates. It's the blackest, most subversive comedy to sneak through the studio system since Fight Club, and in the rare moments when I wasn't laughing, I was grinning from ear to ear at the thought that Hill got away with it.

Hill has stated the idea for Observe and Report began with "Taxi Driver as a comedy," and it's astonishing how fully he's followed through with the implications of that premise. His Travis is mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen), a mentally unstable schlub who takes his job extremely seriously. When a serial flasher (Randy Gambill) starts to prowl the mall parking lot, Ronnie becomes convinced that catching the pervert will prove himself superior to the detective (Ray Liotta) assigned to the case and win the affections of Brandi (Anna Faris), his dream girl, who works at a cosmetics counter. At first Ronnie seems like an affable variation on Seth Rogen's stoner-dude persona, but we quickly learn that Ronnie's macho self-delusions mask very real problems - his bipolar disorder, coupled with his extremely dysfunctional relationship with his alcoholic mom (Celia Weston), have made Ronnie a ticking time bomb who sublimates his violent impulses into his work. For Ronnie, who can't pass the psych exam to become a cop, guarding the mall and particularly Brandi are a way of fighting his own demons - it's the movie's great unspoken joke that Ronnie is able to correctly predict that the flasher will target Brandi because, under different circumstances, he'd do the same.

This is pitch-black material for a comedy, made darker by Hill's ability to mine laughs from the sad reality of Ronnie's life, and Rogen deserves a world of credit, when he could be coasting on the aforementioned stoner-dude persona, for playing an almost completely unlikable character. When a Middle Eastern kiosk worker (Aziz Ansari) being interrogated by Ronnie accuses him of racism, Ronnie responds that "It's not racism - you fit the profile," and the sad, hilarious thing is that Ronnie believes this. Ronnie, in his psychically vulnerable state, has completely bought into the reactionary, ultra-conservative concept of heroism; the irony is that, in the consumerist void he protects, he's actually the most likeable character because he at least believes in something. Brandi, the object of his affections, is the embodiment of everything ugly about mall culture - she's stupid, self-absorbed, mean and oblivious to the world around her - and Faris demonstrates again that she's the most talented actress around at playing idiots. A montage, during Brandi and Ronnie's hilariously painful date, of Brandi doing about a dozen shots (Faris punctuates each with pitch-perfect deliveries of Brandi making observations like "It burns so good") plays like Hill couldn't decide which of Faris' takes to use and instead decided to use them all. The joke of the sort-of date-rape scene that has some humorless people up in arms is that for Ronnie, a few minutes of thrusting into an indifferent, barely-conscious Brandi is the closest thing to romance he's ever experienced. As with last year's Burn After Reading, one can read the characters' respective self-delusion and narcissism as the root of all evils today - I don't know if Hill intended for Observe and Report to shoulder a sociopolitical reading, but it does give frightening credibility to Ronnie's fellow security guard Dennis (Michael Peña), who explains after a day-long drug binge that everything is meaningless.

And yet the brilliance of Observe and Report is that, unlike the "everyone is stupid but us" humor of South Park (still a great show) and Family Guy (definitely not), it doesn't exempt itself or its audience from its scrutiny. When Ronnie single-handedly beats the snot out of several gang members in a scene that may or may not be a delusion (and uncannily recalls a similar scene in Watchmen), the moment is exhilarating even though the violence is painfully real. And when he brutalizes a Cinnabon manager (Patton Oswalt) to defend the honor of kind, Jesus-loving barista Nell (Collette Wolfe), I found myself initially cheering Ronnie's actions before laughing at my own horrifying approval of his violent chivalry. By the time Ronnie finds himself in a prolonged Oldboy homage set to Queen's score for Flash Gordon, I no longer knew what was real or what only existed in Ronnie's head, but I found myself sort of rooting for him all the same. I'm not certain whether Observe and Report is aesthetically or morally defensible; all I know is, when the flasher plotline reaches its climax, I haven't laughed as hard since Walter Sobchak decided to teach little Larry Sellars a lesson.