The Trim Bin #63

- I can't make up my mind about the new trailer for Sweeney Todd. The trailer looks gorgeous, Tim Burton's trademark style is certainly on display, and Johnny Depp apparently can sing. But there's too little singing on display here to be sure - it's a case of the studio trying to fool teens into seeing a musical. And I'm not sure about Burton's aforementioned style - his recent movies are too often on cruise control, and I'm not sure Sleepy Hollow-esque opulence is right for a musical that practically demands a stark approach. Either way, I'll be there on Christmas - as far as year-end Oscar-bid musicals go, it sure beats Dreamgirls (imagine what Burton could have done with that).

- So it turns out I'm in The Game Plan for about three seconds. The Rock's running one way, I'm headed the other way. I'll post a screencap when it hits DVD, because under no circumstances should any of you ever see The Game Plan.

- Over at Final Girl, Stacie Ponder is writing about the films that made her Willies List (so wonderful to see Ed's idea take off like it has) . Her recent post on Magic includes the tv spot that sent many a child of 1978 into convulsive sobs. It's funny - Magic is an interesting, occasionally creepy character study, but that commercial is way more terrifying.

- I was recently singled out at a party and accused of not loving (truly loving) Troll 2. Well, sorry. As an act of penance, here's a picture of my friend Jess and her boyfriend Nick being interviewed at a Troll 2 screening in NYC (third picture down). I must say, I do admire their commitment to Nilbog.

- Greg at Dreamscape is spending the month looking at mostly lesser-known titles in a series he's dubbed The October Ordeal.

- Doug at Nihon Musings, also getting into the Halloween spirit, lists Seven Amazing Character Deaths in Anime.

- Don't forget about The House Next Door's Close-Up Blog-a-Thon, which starts Friday (details here).

- On a personal note: Luna loves Superman. She becomes completely transfixed whenever Superman Returns is on TV, and giggles and squeals whenever Supes is in action. It's important to me that I not force my interests upon her, so it warms my geeky heart to find out Luna's a chip off the old block. Luna, have I got a movie to show you:

Halloween Trailerfest #9 & 10: Science Fiction Double Feature!

I love this:



But I love this more:

Halloween Trailerfest #8: Cropsy!

This one is Final Girl's Film Club pick for October. Edgar Wright has definitely seen this one.

Halloween Trailerfest #7: Goblin!

Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?

That Aliens is as much a product of its decade as its predecessor is evident in far more than just Paul Reiser's perm. Replacing the genre-bending Alien's Agatha Christie-inspired structure with all-out war not only pushes James Cameron's film squarely into the action genre (of which it is one of the definitive examples), it also turns Aliens into a competely different philosophical beast. Sharing with Ridley Scott's film a distrust of corporations, it's also a more direct descendant of Star Wars - it's a slick, populist combat picture that leaves us exhilarated where its predecessor left us drained. When Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) asks early on "We're going to kill it, right?", the question echoes Rambo's "Sir, do we get to win this time?" from the previous year's megahit Rambo: First Blood Part II (co-written by Cameron). And like Rambo, Aliens is a post-Vietnam attempt to revise nation's painful recent history, finding victory in an unwinnable war. Such fantasies were popular in the 80's, and appear to be making a resurgence now (witness the popularity of Ron Paul), and Cameron cannily exploits this need for catharsis. Aliens is one of the best movies of its kind, perfectly crafted and completely entertaining from beginning to end; if I love it a little bit less than Alien, it is because I find its motives suspect.

Aliens begins with the discovery of Ripley 57 years after the start of her cryogenic sleep, giving us a protagonist that is literally and spiritually adrift. At the film's core is the transformation of this woman, stripped of the world she knew and, consequently her identity, redefining herself in the crucible of violence and battle. Survival in Alien meant escape, here it means battle, and Ripley is transformed from Scott's liberated, resourceful warrior woman into one of Cameron's trademark gun-toting Überbitches. I'm of two minds about how Cameron treats his female protagonists; it's certainly a kick to see strong women celebrated (Titanic's sappier moments are largely forgiven by me thanks to the scenes of a buff, axe wielding Kate Winslet), but Cameron also defines strength in narrow terms. Early on, Ripley impresses the Marines she is accompanying on a rescue mission to LV-426 (the barren planet seen in the first film) by operating a power-lifter; bookended by her climatic battle with the queen alien, the two scenes are the first and last in a series of Ripley proving her strength to the skeptical soldiers (and, perhaps, to a skeptical audience). I admire Cameron's mostly successful attempt at creating a forward-thinking action movie, except that I already knew Ripley was strong and I don't need her to be talented with military hardware to belive this. Where the first, weapon-free film was driven by a kind of vaginal horror, Aliens is preoccupied with weapons and, thus, becomes about Ripley growing a dick. At worst this feels hamhanded; at best (which is, to say, for most of its running time), it's like Robert Heinlen's Starship Troopers as directed by Hélène Cixious.

None of this, however, changes the fact that Aliens is one of the most entertaining movies of all time, a perfect example of what Hitchcock called "pure film." While Cameron's films are celebrated and derided for their technical sound and fury (underscored here by an effective if indelicate James Horner score), what distinguishes him from other technically sophisticated peers like John McTiernan and Tony Scott is his appreciation of silence. The largely action-free first hour of Aliens, mostly devoted to Ripley and the Marine's search of the seemingly abandoned LV-426, has an ominous, deliberate pace that, just as it is about to demand our boredom and frustration, snares us with a shocking variation on Alien's chestburster scene. The trick of any sequel is to both meet and subvert an audience's expectations, and by adapting the first film's universe to his own style, Cameron's film manages to keep us off-balance even as he delivers what we've paid to see. My aesthetic and philosophical preferences aside, I far prefer Aliens to a retread where eight new crew members go through a carbon copy of the original - luckily, the four entries in the series (Aliens vs. Predator doesn't count) have been a training ground for emerging directors posessing their own singular vision, something that distinguishes the series from other franchises (consider the cynicism of that term).

The heart of Aliens is the relationship between Ripley and Newt (Carrie Henn), an orphaned little girl resourceful enough to have survived for several weeks on LV-426. Ripley's prolonged climatic rescue of Newt from the queen (masterfully realized by Stan Winston and his crew) is complely gripping, as Cameron and Weaver have succeeded in creating a very real emotional in these the characters, each experiencing a total, existential loss resulting in a poignant mother/daughter bond. Cameron comes closest to aping Scott's concerns in pitting his warrior woman against a monster defined by her reproductive status - it's a battle between Amazons and breeders for the future of our children, and it's awesome. On the other hand, in a development that jibes sharply from Scott's film, Ripley learns to cast aside her fears and embrace technology in the form of a sensitive 80s man android named Bishop (Lance Henriksen). While both films are critical of Weyland-Yutani, the company determined to capitalize on the alien, Aliens ignores the relationship between the android and his creator, as if to say "Yeah, Lockheed Martin is evil, but the F-22 raptor is sooo bitchin'."

In juxtaposing the mother/daughter relationship against its relative corporate conformity, Aliens reveals itself as surprisingly domestic. And strangely enough, this works in the film's favor; while some ambiguity is sacrificed, there is an undeniable cathartic joy in watching a gang of wisecracking Marines (Bill Paxton's Hudson, like a buff, male Veronica Cartwright, is the biggest standout) blow away a hive of very nasty xenomorphs. And, best of all, Cameron never sacrifices intelligence or character in the process. Aliens is a landmark film, a redefinition of action tropes that has often been imitated but rarely equalled in style or substance. It's so good, in fact, that not even Paul Reiser and his perm can sink it.

Halloween Trailerfest #6: Esteban!

Halloween Trailerfest #5: BRAAAINS!

Halloween Trailerfest #4: Raincoat!

I first saw this in ideal circumstances - at the Harvard Film Archive on a grey August night. But even on the tiniest of screens, it loses none of its hypnotic, devastating power.

Halloween Trailerfest #3: Power glove!

I actually have this one in 35mm.

Halloween Trailerfest #2: McDowell!

Top 10: Vampires

The enduring appeal of the bloodsucking ponce has never been better articulated than by Bela Lugosi himself (as played by Martin Landau). "The pure horror," Lugosi explains, "it both repels and attracts them. Because in their collective unconsciousness, they have the agony of childbirth. The blood. The blood is horror. Take my word for it. You want to score with a young lady, you take her to see Dracula." With that in mind, here's a list that was unusually hard to create (in the interest of diversity, I've limited myself to one Dracula and one Orlok).


1. Count Orlok (Max Schreck), Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens "Schreck" is the German word for "fright," and while this would have been a great pseudonym for the actor who first embodied Dracula (sporting his own pseudonym), it's a hundred times more awesome that Schreck was the dude's real name. Proof, in my mind, that Schreck was born to play the tortured, feral count - it's more than a performance, its one of the definitive images in horror. Klaus Kinski gave the role a palpable sadness, and Willem Dafoe turned it into sharp satire, but it's Schreck that really earns his surname.


2. Dracula (Gary Oldman), Bram Stoker's Dracula Coppola's version of Dracula is uneven and famously features a particuarly terrible Keanu Reeves performance. Still, it's my favorite Dracula, thanks to its visual opulence and the magnificent titular performance. Bela Lugosi is the most iconic, Christopher Lee is the scariest, and Frank Langella is the permiest. But Oldman is amazing here, his Dracula ranging from warrior to feeble old man to bummed Goth dude without ever becoming jarring or incoherent - this Dracula is a multilayered monster, driven equally by satanic instinct and human desire, and the Count has never been so compelling. Plus, gotta love purple-tinted shades.


3. Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve), The Hunger She's a pianist, she seduces Susan Sarandon, she's into Bauhaus, and she's trapped David Bowie in a coffin in her attic. Case closed.


4. Martin Madahas (John Amplas), Martin Possibly the creepiest vampire listed here, Martin is a vampire who can appear in sunlight, has no particular superpowers, and lacks fangs (a razorblade does the trick). Director George A. Romero never quite tells you whether the teenage-looking Martin is crazy or if he is, somehow, an 84-year-old bloodsucker, and Amplas' deadpan performance enhances the film's effectieve ambiguity. The monster here is competely unremarkable, which makes the bloodletting all the more unsettling.


5. Severen (Bill Paxton), Near Dark The coolest in a movie filled with cool vampires, Severen looks badass in leather, even more badass with a blistering sunburn, and gives the coolest possible delivery of the line "Finger-lickin' good."


6. Countess Elisabeth Nodosheen (Ingrid Pitt), Countess Dracula It's one thing to have large breasts. It's another to have large breasts that look nifty when covered in blood. Pitt, in a semifictional Elizabeth Bathory biopic, achieves the latter. And for some reason, I really respect this fact.


7. Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon), Fright Night Dandridge, who moves in next door to a horror-loving teen, is walking subtext. An impeccably dressed, sexually ambiguous 80's archetype, Dandridge flirts with the hero's mother, seduces his closeted friend, and nearly turns his girlfriend to the dark side before they've ever knocked boots. Fright Night, for all its laughs, has always felt weirdly dark and nihilistic, and a lot of this is thanks to Sarandon, cheerfully embodying a fanged corruptor of the youth and imparting an important message to the film's young audience: fear yuppies.


8. Ralphie Glick (Ronnie Scribner), Salem's Lot Typically I don't like to lump in TV movies with features. But I'll make an exception, as the above scene scared the bejesus out of the eight-year-old me and gave me nightmares for a week.


9. Max (Edward Herrmann), The Lost Boys Every time I come home to my wife watching Herrmann as the wealthy, doddering grandfather on Gilmore Girls, I can only think about the predictable but still excellent reveal at the end of Joel Schumacher's only watchable movie. Plus, Max's subsequent destruction, set to "La Cucaracha," is endlessly rewatchable (I have a friend who made The Lost Boys his first DVD purchase just so he could watch the ending in 5.1 surround).


10. Space Girl (Mathilda May), Lifeforce Because any list of the best vampires is incomplete without at least one naked space vampire.

Halloween Trailerfest #1: Meteor shit!

I'll be posting one spooky trailer every day for the month of October. First up, a movie that always just misses my top 100. I love it so.

31 Films for Halloween

Halloween is by far my favorite holiday. I went trick-or-treating way beyond the appropriate age, and I can't wait to put a confused Luna in a pumpkin costume. Most of all, I love the excuse to watch a mind-numbing amount of horror movies - it's largely through horror that I fell in love with cinema, the genre by design liberating filmmakers to follow their most imaginative, stylish and unrestrained instincts. So I was thrilled when Ed Hardy, Jr. of Shoot the Projectionist invited me to participate in his survey of the 31 greatest horror films. Sure, I'd been overlooked for the Online Film Community and Satyajit Ray lists, but no matter - this is the one I've been waiting for (and you can participate too, if you like - head over to Ed's blog for details).

The first question, of course, is what defines a horror movie. For me, a film crosses into the realm of horror when it bypasses our intellectual concerns to touch our primal, irrational fears. This does not mean that a movie must feature ghosts or goblins to qualify as horror; horror is a genre, like comedy or porn, defined not by what the film's content but by what it does to us. It's horror if you jump, it's good horror if you scream, and it's great horror if you can't stop thinking about what it is that made you scream. Here are 31 movies (in chronological order) that go for the jugular:

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

Black Sunday (1960)

Peeping Tom (1960)

Psycho (1960)

The Birds (1963)

The Haunting (1963)

Onibaba (1964)

Repulsion (1965)

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Don't Look Now (1973)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Jaws (1975)

Carrie (1976)

Suspiria (1977)

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Halloween (1978)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Alien (1979)

Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979)

Inferno (1980)

The Shining (1980)

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Creepshow (1982)

The Thing (1982)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The Fly (1986)

Evil Dead 2 (1987)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Session 9 (2001)

Also, since we're temporarily away from home and our computer, the title card series is taking a break for the month - instead, look for a series of horror-themed top tens and other Halloween goodies. Look out - the boogeyman is coming!

Anybody ever tell you you look dead, man?

Alien is the rare horror film that terrifies from its opening credits, its title fading in like a cryptogram over a tracking shot depicting a remote, ominous corner of space that could be the scariest prog rock record art never used. While Star Wars opens with bombast, Alien, with its brilliant Jerry Goldsmith score almost inaudible on the soundtrack, opts for an eerily elusive note. And while Ridley Scott's genre-bending masterpiece was greenlit in the wake of the massive success of the earlier film, its universe is not populated by explosive interstellar dogfights and smart-alecky robots. A direct descendant of 2001's creepy zero-gravity homicide, Alien gives us space as the ultimate old dark house, an existential void where monsters lurk, waiting to be discovered. I wanted to be an astronaut until I saw Alien.

A sci-fi/horror hybrid revolving around a seemingly unstoppable extraterrestrial monster, Dan O'Bannon's screenplay is a direct descendent of 50's B-movies like The Thing From Another World and It! The Terror From Beyond Space, and is often derided as such. Putting anti-genre pretensions aside, Alien stands out from its predecessors in a number of ways, the first being its remarkable use of silence. The quiet journey of the space freighter Nostromo (its Conrad reference a none-too-subtle corporate jab) is suddenly interrupted by the electronic squak of the intercepted SOS message that wakes the film's blue-collar protagonists from their cryogenic slumber and propels them towards their doom. Scott's elegant tracking shots mirror the seeming precision of the craft and underline the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology (personified by an on-board computer named Mother that, alas, does not sing "Daisy"). As the crew of the Nostromo stumbles upon, is invaded and picked off by titular beast, Alien is propelled not only by a fear of the monster but of the machine, and the film blurs these distinctions in interesting ways.

As Ash (Ian Holm), the film's on-board robot says of the alien, "I admire its purity. A survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality." But just as Ash represents something terribly wrong about the fusion of the organic and the artificial, the alien is a horrible marriage of animal instinct and mechanical precision, its acid blood and second mouth making it appear more manufactured than born. H.R. Giger's designs for the monster, and particularly his even more sexually charged Necronomicon, depict a life cycle carried out with impeccable symmetry but, as Ash indicates, absent of any humanity, at once perfect and totally monstrous. Scott repeatedly disguises the full-grown alien in plain sight amidst the Nostromo's nooks and crannies; it is as if the craft itself is a traitor against its crew. When Ash is revealed to be precisely that, his strange near-rape of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and subsequent breakdown are the result of a computer's inability to understand or express the human desire it sees all around. While any discussion of Alien will inevitably include a use of the term "vagina dentata," the alien's sexualized design is more than a rape metaphor - it's a perversion of the healthy carnality that Scott will repeatedly idealize in his ouevre (unsurprising that, on the most recent DVD release, Scott cites Francis Bacon as an influence). The classic demise of poor Kane (John Hurt) is shocking not just for its gore but as a distortion of childbirth, the screaming and viscera both reminiscent of the real thing and a corruption of femininity (another of Scott's ideals). It's a moment of physical but also psychic violence, its power amplified by Hurt's confused anguish and the palpable disorientation of the crew. If ever there was a moment in cinema that defines chaos, this is it.

Indeed, while Alien's design team is frequently and rightly praised, the cast is even more important to the film's success. There are eight actors in the film (including Bolaji Badejo in the rubber suit), and they make up a perfect ensemble, their early casual interplay as authentic as the best of Altman. Rather than overhwelming with exposition, the actors convey worlds about the characters' backgrounds, camaraderie and power struggles. Each represents a distinctly human opposition to the alien, whether it's Captain Dallas' (Tom Skerrit) cool logic, Lambert's (Veronica Cartwright) vulnerability or the pragmatism of Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), whose friendship becomes more oddly endearing with each successive viewing. The film celebrates these average characters for their respective strengths, yet none ar saved from the monster. Only Ripley, hard-headed and at first unlikable for her stubborn adherence to the rules, outwits the alien thanks to her resourcefulness and superior survival instinct. Ironically, this places her closer to Ash's ideal of a survivor; what separates Ripley from the machine and the creature is her humanity. Weaver is remarkable in the film's last reel, conveying with little dialogue an almost paralyzing fear and the inner strength needed to prevail (plus, she's a cat lover). Ripley is never a stock damsel in distress; sporting only undies in the film's last minutes, she projects a completely self-posessed sexuality that even the nastiest of monsters is unable to penetrate. As she blasts the alien into space, the film turns suddenly triumphant - it is the triumph of humanity, a restoration in the form of one nubile panty-clad warrior. Score one for Earth.

Released in 1979, Alien is very much a film of its decade - cynical towards corporate thinking, distrustful of authority, very much in favor of sex, drugs and rock and roll. As the series progresses, both its hero and its monster will change and evolve to suit the ideas of each film's zeitgeist. And while I love its sequels to varying degrees (and plan to discuss them in the weeks to come), it's the original that retains an iconic perfection. Alien is a singular concept, rich with subtext and masterfully executed. I admire its purity.

Friday Title Card #32

The Trim Bin #61

- Is anyone else deeply conflicted over the Death Proof DVD? I could never get enough Stuntman Mike, but I can't get over the cynicism of chopping them in half in advance of an inevitable double feature release (plus, no HD). Also, my initial enthusiasm about an extended cut faded when Alex Jackson referred to it as "worse than the Star Wars special editions." For those who have seen it, is this truth or hyperbole? Should I accept a compromised version of the best movie I've seen so far this year in a presentation that completely misses the point? Or is this a job for Netflix?

- We recently moved to a new, cozy hillside apartment, and we decided to switch from cable to satellite. The occasional static is well worth the variety of hi-def, OAR movie channels (also the show Weeds, which is contrived but still pretty hilarious). But the channel I've really developed an unhealthy addiction to is Monsters HD, which specializes in favorite and forgotten monster, slasher and classic horror movies in razor-sharp 1080i. If you're stuck with Time Warner or some other similarly faceless, clunky cable provider, know this: until you've seen Sleepaway Camp in HD, you just haven't lived.

- Speaking of monsters, the trailer for Frank Darabont's film version of Stephen King's short story The Mist is online, and I must say that it really surprised me. The casting looks pitch-perfect (particularly Marcia Gay Harden as the bible-thumping Mrs. Carmody) and the look of the film is surprisingly stark (especially coming from the director of The Green Mile). Plus, I love the use of Clint Mansell's score for The Fountain. After the surprisingly okay 1408, the prospect of the first good, genuinely creepy Stephen King adaptation in years is terrific. My irrational fear of Toby Jones aside, I can't wait for this one.

- Edward Copeland recently posted The Satyajit Ray Memorial Anything-But-Definitive List of Non-English Language Films, a survey designed to exclude The Shawshank Redemption and American History X. 174 film buffs submitted their choices, and the result is a fine and (despite the title) comprehensive selection of world cinema, complete with pretty pictures.

- Finally (courtesy of Nerve), just because it's Friday, here's the greatest thing you'll ever see:

Friday Title Card #31

One of many great films that didn't quite make the list.

My Top 101 (2007 Edition)

I've never gotten the point of making a distinction between a "best" and "favorite" movies list. My favorite movies are the best ones I've ever seen, that's why I love them so. Of course, the pleasure of making and sharing such a list is to find out what it (perhaps unwittingly) reveals about oneself. For instance, if Miller's Crossing ranks above Barton Fink this year, it's not because it's suddenly the superior movie - the movies don't change, but we do (this same process of rediscovery is one of the best things about film writing on the internet). So the changes this year are made up of films I'd never seen, films that landed closer to the heart than they had before (Tokyo Story is very different when you're a parent), and films I just plain overlooked last year (how the hell did I forget Touch of Evil?).

The goal every time I revise my list is to create a sort of representative collage of what cinema is to me at this moment. Glancing at the list, I know that I dig monsters, cowboys, ambiguity, sex, aliens and Freedonia. And I sure have a hard-on for the 1970's. Making the list is more and more like Sophie's Choice every year - I've seen at least 150-200 movies I'd consider perfect, and an alternate list of the next 101 would possibly make an interesting side project. But I'll remain disciplined for now; here are my 101 favorite best movies.

1. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
2. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
3. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
5. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
6. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
7. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
8. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
9. Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
10. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)

11. Kill Bill vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino, 2004)
12. Kill Bill vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003)
13. My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991)
14. Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
15. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
16. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1975)
17. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
18. The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
19. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)
20. El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)

21. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
22. Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Werner Herzog, 1979)
23. Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)
24. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006)
25. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
26. Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
27. The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
28. Inferno (Dario Argento, 1980)
29. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
30. Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut, 1962)

31. Fargo (Joel Coen, 1996)
32. Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
33. Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
34. The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
35. The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)
36. Aguirre the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
37. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
38. Dead Man (Joel Coen, 1996)
39. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
40. Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978)

41. Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
42. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
43. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
44. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
45. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
46. Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
47. Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox, 1986)
48. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
49. The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
50. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

51. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)
52. The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
53. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
54. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
55. Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
56. Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
57. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
58. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
59. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
60. The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

61. Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
62. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
63. City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
64. American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999)
65. The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977)
66. Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981)
67. Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)
68. Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984)
69. Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)
70. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

71. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
72. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
73. Orphee (Jean Cocteau, 1949)
74. Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986)
75. Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)
76. Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
77. Black Moon (Louis Malle, 1975)
78. Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)
79. Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)
80. Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)

81. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
82. Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)
83. Miller's Crossing (Joel Coen, 1990)
84. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)
85. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
86. Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma, 1974)
87. Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)
88. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
89. The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky, 2006)
90. Y tu mama tambien (Alfonso Cuaron, 2001)

91. Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)
92. Ed Wood (Tim Burton, 1994)
93. M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
94. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
95. Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971)
96. The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998)
97. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)
98. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
99. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
100. Popeye (Robert Altman, 1980)
101. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

Gratuitious Nudity #4

Diego Luna, Maribel Verdú and Gael García Bernal, Y tu mama tambien (2001)

I'm Big Joe Grizzley.

One of the most telling moments in the Rob Zombie canon is the scene in The Devil's Rejects where a grizzled, hypermasculine lawman threatens to beat the snot out of a geeky, trivia-spouting movie critic. Zombie invites us to laugh with the sheriff as he attacks the movie geek, even though he clearly identifies with the latter. This masochism is a trait shared by many die-hard horror fans - those of us who were more likely to spend a summer day reading the newest Fangoria than playing sports or whatever - and it also explains why Zombie prefers to make his monsters the protagonists of his films. Note, for instance, that the cast of Halloween, Zombie's remake of the John Carpenter classic, is filled with famous cinematic killers, as if they'd assembled to pay tribute to iconic slasher Michael Myers. Zombie portrays Myers as a pasty young metalhead who grows up to be a hulking, unstoppable killing machine. It's a huge departure from the original's conception of a blank embodiment of pure nothingness; the resulting tension accounts for the film's worst moments as well as its best ones, but Halloween is never less than fascinating.

The brief backstory Carpenter gave us fills the film's first half, as we're introduced to Michael Myers as a young boy quietly torturing animals in his bedroom as his pole-dancing mom (Sherri Moon Zombie) and bullying stepdad (William Forsythe, just a tad overstated) scream at each other downstairs. Before long, mom is talking to Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell, having a blast) about Michael's puppy-killing activities, which Loomis warns are a sign of "much bigger problems." But it's too late - Michael soon kill half of his family, leaving mom and his beloved baby sister alive. These early scenes, and Michael's subsequent institutionalization under Loomis' care, are sleazily effective; while Zombie cites traditional characteristics of serial killers, the soundtrack, performances and excellent cinematography by Phil Parmet give the film a heightened reality, threatening to veer into camp before hitting us with some spookily well-realized moments of sudden, brutal violence.

In Halloween's most gleefully sick moment, Zombie cuts between mom at work and a dejected young Michael Myers sitting alone with nobody to take him trick-or-treating, scored to Nazareth's "Love Hurts" - it's not supposed to make us empathize with the killer so much as briefly occupy his deeply deranged state of mind. Zombie adapts an agnostic perspective where Carpenter is almost religious, yet both directors at the same conclusion, the idea of evil as something incomprehensible that we attempt to contain on Halloween (and with scary movies) by infantilizing our fears. While Zombie couldn't be more stylistically different from Carpenter, they share an innate understanding of the elements of the genre, namely a romantic concept of horror as a eulogy for all things lost (note the repeated menstrual imagery). In its own way, Zombie's Halloween is as much a postmodern exploration of its predecessor as Gus Van Sant's Psycho. So if you hated Psycho, take that as a warning. But I, for one, admire Zombie's attempt to make Michael Myers representative of more than action figures and cell phone ringtones, and as dramatically different as Halloween 2007 is, it ultimately honors the original far more than another generic retread.

Halloween does stumble in its second half, as Michael escapes from the institution (easily the film's worst scene, although it's redeemed minutes later by an awesome Ken Foree cameo) and stalks his now-grown baby sister and her friends on Halloween night. Here, Zombie mimics scenes and even borrows dialogue from the original, which only serves to remind us of what a perfect film the original is. I began to miss Carpenter's austere compositions and elegant tracking shots, his labyrinthine conception of suburbia. This wouldn't matter as much if Zombie had stuck with the tone and style established in the first half; instead, he can't seem to decide between paying homage or making the material his own. The rushed approach also shortchanges the characters; although Scout Tyler-Compton (in the role that made Jamie Lee Curtis famous) is cute as a button, she and her costars aren't give much of a chance to make an impression (although it's strange to watch the Shape kill a topless, bloodied Danielle Harris).

Ultimately, Halloween sort of falls apart in a series of blaring music cues, property destruction, and bizarre references to Blade Runner. Still, in incorporating the brother-sister twist from Halloween II with a resonance that even Carpenter wasn't able to pull off, Zombie does give his film an unexpected psychological resonance. Halloween 2007 isn't the travesty it's been made out to be - it's a fascinating experiment, not entirely sucessful, but one that takes its boogeyman very seriously. I can't guarantee that you won't hate it, but it's a hell of a lot better than Halloween 6.

You can find more Myers-related goodness over at Final Girl's Film Club.

Friday Title Card #30

Like a man dick?

An early highlight of Superbad, an extended montage of a child's drawings of penises, pretty much tells you everything about the heart and soul of the film. A geekier Y tu mama tambien, it's a movie that correctly depicts two teenage boys' desparate quest to get laid as a sublimated expression of their profound love for one another. While the look and soundtrack of Superbad are meant to evoke raunchy teen sex comedies of the 70s and 80s, it's written with a wit and insight that few of its predecessors match. This is a movie where a bomb-riding weiner isn't just funny - it has purpose.

Co-screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg began writing Superbad when they were teens, and I'm sure many aspiring filmmakers wrote a script along these lines with their friends when they were kids (I know I did). The protagonists, Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera), are clearly autobiographical, and the film sweetly hinges on their mutual affection. The plot, such as it is, revolves around Seth and Evan's misguided attempts to procure liquor in the hopes of impressing the objects of their unrequited affection before they graduate. It's a well-worn scenario made fresh by the screenplay's emotional honesty - Seth and Evan are headed to different colleges in the fall, and their horniness is complicated by the unspoken fear that actual relationships will shatter their idyllic routine of getting drunk on stolen beer and watching Vagtastic.com. It's while discussing porn early on that Seth describes the sight of vagina not being penetrated by a penis as "not for me," and Superbad mines many laughs from its protagonists' fear of that unknown quantity and retreat into the comfort zone of dick jokes, all the while nudging them into the realm of adulthood. Director Evan Mottola finds the perfect tone for the film, filthy but never leering, and aids his young stars in delivering surprisingly nuanced performances - Hill adds an effective layer of insecurity to the horny fat guy archetype, while Cera, at 19 already a master of deadpan, plays Evan as a nice guy at war with his own libido.

Underscoring the themes is the film's subplot, so hilarious that it nearly upstages the rest of the story, involving Evan and Seth's even nerdier acquaintance Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who carries a fake ID bearing the already-infamous pseudonym "McLovin." Almost busted for attempting to buy booze, Fogell ends up riding with two hard-drinking, Yoda-quoting cops (Rogen and Bill Hader) as they tackle drunks, destroy public property and try to educate the young man in the ways of women, all in the name of making cops seem cool. The cops essentially a cautionary tale for the protagonists should they fail to grow up, which gives them some of the film's most wonderfully absurd moments ("I call this the upwards spiral!"). And Mintz-Plasse is a real discovery, totally natural as he grows to embody the McLovin persona - he has the ability to make a throwaway line like "I've got a boner" completely hysterical. Best of all, it's the rare kind of film where one can laugh at boner jokes without hating oneself - lowbrow in a very knowing way, Superbad is hilariously dumb in a way that only very smart people can achieve. When Hill compares his sexual track record to the filmography of Orson Welles, I can't help but applaud not only the smart-alecky reference but the fact that the filmmakers are rewarding their smartest audience members at a time when most comedies aim squarely at the lowest common denominator.

The film ends on an interesting note, with the protagonists left to reevaluate their perception of women, to perhaps grow a little (this would resonate deeper if the film told us anything about its female characters, but still). The Judd Apatow canon seems largely aimed at speaking to overgrown adolescents, gently letting them that growing up isn't such a scary prospect. If, philosophically, I prefer Lindsey Weir getting on a VW bus and leaving town, that probably says more about me than it does the film, and we'll see how I feel in ten years. Still, my heart warms at the thought of 17-year-old boys sneaking into Superbad in the hopes of seeing boobies and perhaps learning a thing or two in the process. At the very least, I learned that, since McLovin is already taken as an alias, Muhammad is probably the next best thing.

Friday Title Card #29

Fuck you, batteries.

The joy of a musical - that is, a good musical, not a bloated Broadway adaptation made not out of passion but for the commercial viability of a familiar property - is discovering the moments when a song reveals emotions that words alone cannot reach. Such a moment occurs early in Once, as a street musician and a woman he's just met (we never learn their names) are hanging around in a music store. He invites her to accompany him on a song he's been working on, and as she joins him on piano, the song's achingly romantic message overwhelms them and us. Once, which follows these characters over the course of a week as they write and record a few songs while an unspoken romance grows between them, is a minor masterpiece of understated feeling. Delicate and insightful where too many musicals are bombastic and obvious, Once is capable of transporting both lovers and haters of the genre with its devastating love story.

Once introduces us to a struggling songwriter (Glen Hansard) who works in his dad's vacuum repair shop and spends his time off singing Van Morrison songs for loose change on the streets of Dublin. One night, while performing one of his own songs, he meets a young Czech woman (Markéta Irglová) who likes his song; the guy is leaving for London in a week to try patching things up with his ex-girlfriend, and she agrees to help him write and record a few songs before he goes. That's about all there is for plot in Once, which is built on the moments where the guy and girl get to know each other. As they work together, it becomes clear they're made for each other. The guy is the type to refer to himself as a cynic, sweetly oblivious to how wrong he is; the girl has a daughter at home and a husband in another country, and is far too serious-minded to realize the obvious. While this story has been told before, from Brief Encounter to Lost in Translation (likely its most direct influence), Once becomes completely unique in its study of two characters who cannot quite fully connect for precisely the reasons that they are perfect for each other. First-time feature director John Carney (formerly a member, like his lead actor, of the band The Frames) has a remarkable talent for revealing worlds about his characters in a moment; he's brave enough, for instance, to have a character deliver the most important line in the film in Czech.

Almost as impressive as the story itself is the way that Carney uses digital video to tell it. Until recently, I was dubious about DV, as most directors who used it raved about its functional ease without commenting much on its aesthetic qualities (mumblecore is commendable in theory, but I have yet to see a DIY film I like). But after last year's Inland Empire and now Once, the possibilites of digital have been blown wide open. In Once, the low-tech images have an intimate quality that matches the story of homegrown artists perfectly. Every shot is beautifully composed in a way I haven't seen in DV before.I was inspired not only by the story but by the filmmaking itself - it's a film that leaves one energized by possibility. There's a confidence in every moment that reminds of how imagination and vision are infinitely more valuable than a huge budget. I'm not always quick to buy into the romance of independent cinema, but Once fulfills this promise better than any film in a long time.

Once isn't a perfect movie - I agree with Todd VanDerWiff, who writes that "While the songs are good, the film requires us to believe that they’re so good that they simply cause everyone around Hansard to realize what an untapped genius he is." Still, its hard to complain about a film with this much soul, particularly since its imperfections become part of its charm. There are few films that contain as much pure warmth as Once; that it's a pretty great movie is all the better.

Tilting at Windmills

It must be weird to be Damian Arlyn right now.

Since so much has been written in the past week about what Mr. Arlyn has come to represent, it might be helpful to begin by talking about who he is (thank you, Google). Damian Arlyn is a 31-year-old resident of Corvallis, Oregon. The manager of DVD World by day, Mr. Arlyn also participates in theatrical productions at the Corvallis Community Theatre (you can read about the recent Arlyn-directed production of Dracula here). Damian is also a born-again Christian who explains on his MySpace page that he decided not to include Jesus on his list of heroes because "the term 'hero' doesn't even begin to describe the place he holds in my life" (as his list of heroes includes both Martin Luther and Denzel Washington, I'd have to agree with his decision). It seems clear that Damian is a sincere, serious-minded man with a genuine love for cinema.

Damian, as many of you know, also has a blog. And last week, in the middle of his ambitious, entertaining "31 Days of Spielberg" project, he became the subject of some very serious accusations. Damian addressed those charges in his blog, and you can read what he had to say for himself here. I believe Damian is genuinely sorry for his mistake, but as of this writing, it seemed that he didn't really understand what people were so angry about. Damian never expected to be famous, and now, he explains, "I never anticipated this project would bring me into contact with actual published authors who have written on Spielberg, even if it's not under the best of circumstances." I understand how Damian feels, and not just because I, too, take a lot of crap for defending Spielberg. I never expected my writing here to be read by anyone other than a few friends, and I'm grateful for my readers and the ideas you share here. In return, I feel a responsibility to give you reading material that is passionate, well-written (to the best of my abilities), and, of course, accurate. And while I like Damian and his writing, I'm troubled by this:

"However, I am not doing--nor have I ever done--this for praise, for esteem, for glory, for fame and certainly not for money. One thing I have never lost sight of is that in the big scheme of things, I am a nobody. I am a thirty-one-year-old video store clerk who lives in Corvallis, Oregon. I make little more than minumim wage a year and I happen to love movies. I never intended for this blog to be anything more than an expression of one little guy's passion and affection for cinema. Thus, I began this 'Spielberg' project because I admire Spielberg and his films and I wanted to share that admiration with other people and maybe--just maybe--even spark a little bit of discussion on him because I personally don't think that enough can ever be said about this great artist."

To use his own term, Damian is the little guy. You can find the little guy across the blogosphere, in colleges, and in any formal or informal film discussion. The little guy uses his relative insignificance to paint himself in favorable terms. The little guy might apologize for having tastes that are way more offbeat or obscure than yours. Or, as in this case, the little guy is just one more incarnation of the little boy who hangs out in the projection booth in Cinema Paradiso. The little guy is a silent apostle of the cinema, unknowlingly engaging in his own form of self-mythologizing behavior. And the moment Damian allows himself to become the little guy, however genuine his intentions may be, he loses all sense of personal accountability.

That said, I'm quite sure that Damian feels a bit differently about it this week. Because Damian is no longer just a thirty-one-year-old video store clerk from Corvalis; he's a living symbol for the divide between print and internet film writing and the question of how journalistic standards differ or remain the same between different mediums. And just as Damian's self-image tells us much about his actions, the same is true of his most rabid detractors, many of whom showed up before scandal broke to anonymously inform Damian that he is a terrible writer. Most telling of all, to me, is the public sermon on Mr. Arlyn performed by D.K. Holm, who dismisses Damian's writing as "pretty much like every other blog in the world" and connects his downfall to something larger:

There is another kind, that is more pervasive and insidious and nearly invisible. That’s the group-think that sweeps across the nation as certain reviews and reviewers set the tone and limit the terms of response to a film."

The irony is that D.K. Holm is Damian Arlyn's spiritual father, having made a living from the summary/trivia format he claims to abhor (the difference being that Holm is paid for his efforts). Damian Arlyn does not realize that he loves himself; D.K. Holm cannot admit that he hates himself. Arlyn's colleagues at The House Next Door have done a better job of more clearly stating their intentions, offering a brief explanation of why Arlyn was removed from their masthead and, like the jurors stepping away from the table in 12 Angry Men, expressing in relative silence what so many supporters and detractors in so many words have not quite been able to communicate.

So, yes, I do wonder what today was like for Damian Arlyn. To have found such massive support (the blogosphere's generosity being its finest quality) only, with one unfortunate error in judgement, to find himself at the center of a debate that is no longer about him. To have inadvertenly tapped such a deep well of buried resentment from elitists and populists alike. To stand behind the counter as angry customers demand their two dollars back because Pan's Labyrinth was in Spanish (and oh, those black bars!). Damian's silence is our loss, and when he's ready, I anxiously await his return. Because, after all, the world needs a passionate defense of The Terminal.

Friday Title Card #28

I had quite a normal childhood.

Roger Ebert has frequently stated that he rates films according to how well the filmmakers succeed at what they were aiming for. By Ebert's logic, Lukas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart is a smashing success. Moodysson has stated in interviews that he intended his film to be off-putting to audiences, and it's certainly quite repugnant. It's unfortunate for us, however, that Moodysson didn't aim higher, because while A Hole in My Heart is composed almost entirely of images sure to ruin one's appetite, it's never truly disturbing, shocking or even particularly interesting. It's a pointlessly gross and stupid film that tries to say something insightful about porn, television and spiritual decay but, to paraphrase This is Spinal Tap, only treads in a sea of retarded sexuality.

In a cramped apartment, Rickard (Thorsten Flinck) and Geko (Goran Marjanovic) are busy making an amateurish porn starring Geko and Tess (Sanna Brading), a dim-witted young woman with aspirations of starring on Big Brother. The three descend into increasingly grotesque, extreme scenarios while Rickard's teenage son Eric (Bjorn Almroth) sulks in his bedroom with his pet worms and grating industrial music. And that's pretty much it - for 100 or so minutes, Richard and Geko (and Moodysson) do countless degrading things to Tess, who flees at one point only to return bearing junk food for further degradation. I'm not at all against extreme content in cinema; in fact, I'm always excited to discover filmmakers who are willing to examine uncomfortable or grotesque material with a seriousness and purpose, and I appreciate it when a filmmaker doesn't feel the need to block our eyes as if we were children. But A Hole in My Heart is a film composed entirely of extremes, edited in a series of epileptic jump cuts punctuated by screeching noise, that becomes wearyingly monotonous within minutes. I'm currently writing a screenplay set in and around a strip club, and I was at first confused by my instinct to include several moments of the characters performing mundane, everyday tasks (sleeping, watching tv, etc.). As the script has progressed, it's clearer to me that, if my film is to work at all, it needs the contrast between the characters' manufactured sexual personae and their unobserved selves. There's no such contrast in A Hole in My Heart, and in the absence of any genuine attempt at emotional authenticity, the characters are merely vehicles for Moodysson's skeezy, hyperbolic moralism.

The most pathetic thing about A Hole in My Heart is its complete failure even to shock us. It's disgusting in a way that comes off as cheating - it's easy to cut to, say, a close-up of vaginal reconstructive surgery without warning or context and get a reaction from the audience. It's harder to give such images real power or consequence. Directors like Todd Solondz, David Lynch and Michael Haneke give us films infinitely more disturbing than A Hole in My Heart with only a fraction of the overtly shocking imagery. They have the insight and craft to disturb us with the implications of their images - it's the ideas in Happiness or Blue Velvet that make those films so unsettling, not just the quantity of nipples or viscera on display. The irony of Moodysson's use of the confessional style of reality TV is that, while it's meant as a comment on the emptiness of popular culture, his film has even less to say (at least Big Brother is sometimes inadvertently insightful). I really wanted to "get" A Hole in My Heart, to have the geek show I'd endured arrive at the apocalyptic moment of truth it had promised. But by the time the film arrived at the image of a character vomiting into another's mouth with Bach's St. Matthew Passion blaring on the soundtrack, I could only laugh with rage at the purest marriage of pretension and idiocy I've ever seen.

A few days before seeing A Hole in My Heart, I watched Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day. It was the first of her films I'd seen, and while I didn't like it, it was made with an assuredness of tone and style that made me want to check out more of her work. I never, ever want to see another Lukas Moodysson film. I don't care if Together and Fucking Amal are cute, or that Lilja 4-ever was on a bunch of top-10 lists. I think Lukas Moodysson is an ass. I think he hates movies and everything else I hold dear. The fact that he's both a Socialist and a Christian isn't an interesting idiosyncracy, it just helps explain how a film could be so demoralizing and preachy at the same time. A Hole in My Heart is the work of a complete fraud; to arrive after 100 minutes of nihilistic ugliness at a group hug is a sick, insulting joke, and while the film has mostly been panned, it's geniunely baffling to read Reverse Shot's Eric Hynes praise it as "achingly humane." According to the film's IMDb trivia page, Thorsten Flinck had to turn to drugs to make it through the film's more harrowing scenes. I only wish I'd had as much foresight.

Friday Title Card #27

Top 10: Voice-over

"IN A WORLD WHERE..."

Voice-over is often used to gloss over narrative problems or water a challenging film down in the name of accessibility (Blade Runner being the most notable example of the latter). But like any cinematic device, when placed in the hands of talented filmmakers, voice-over can be transformed from something familiar into something we've never quite seen (or heard before).


1. Days of Heaven Terrence Malick's four films have all employed voice-over to great effect, the disconnected thoughts of characters in The Thin Red Line and The New World enhancing those films' meditative tones, and Sissy Spacek's rambling, disconnected thoughts in Badlands achieve a sort of banal poetry. In Days of Heaven, Malick presents the tragic turn-of-the-century love story from the point of view of the protagonist's preteen sister. First-time film actress Linda Manz narrates in a flat, unaffected manner that perfectly compliments her character, who is inarticulate but perceptive about the lives of those far older than her. Malick has been criticized for emotionally distancing his audience from the story; in fact, the narrator's guileless, wide-eyed memories draw us directly into the film's devastatingly ephemeral heart.


2. A Clockwork Orange Stanley Kubrick once called this a "Who do you root for?" movie, and the director frequently used voice-over to confound his audience's expectations. The matter-of-fact, dryly statistical narrator in The Killing reduces the film's heist down to a shopping list of times, amounts, and other quantities, while the cruel storyteller of Barry Lyndon undercuts the characters' actions and dreams with savage irony (a device used in recent films like Dogville and Little Children). In both Lolita and A Clockwork Orange, the protagonists relate their stories with eloquence and wit, confusing our loyalties by causing us to sympathize with characters who do reprehensible things. A Clockwork Orange is particularly brilliant in this respect - Malcolm McDowell is charasmatic and strangely sexy as the young hooligan Alex, who recounts his evenings spent raping and pillaging with great gusto and his subsequent arrest and reconditioning with terrible sorrow. Kubrick asks us to sympathize with the devil in order to convey the film's philosophical message; the technique is no doubt manipulative, but it's also sickly hilarious and frequently imitated (see also: Trainspotting and American Psycho).


3. Taxi Driver Like A Clockwork Orange, the voice-over in Taxi Driver is meant to align us with a difficult character. But where Kubrick's aim was satire, Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader want us to understand Travis Bickle. As he prowls the city streets, seething with contempt for the decaying world around him, Robert DeNiro's narrative gives voice to fears, obsessions, and compulsions that, while extreme, are also all too recognizable. As Travis' inexpressive rage transforms into brutal violence, the scariest implication is that his madness is, somehow, our own.


4. Sunset Boulevard Has there ever been a filmmaker more joyously clever than Billy Wilder? Sunset Boulevard contains his wittiest device, the story of a murder recounted by the corpse. It's a concet that would prove popular - American Beauty, in particular, used it to wonderful effect - but in Sunset Boulevard, it's more than a plot device. Wilder's vision of Hollywood as a cemetary, a place where the long-forgotten dwell, is complimented by poor Joe Gillis' narration from beyond the grave. It's a perfectly acidic vision of the dark side of a city devoted to attaining cinematic immortality.


5. To Kill a Mockingbird The voice-over in Robert Mulligan's adaptation of Harper Lee's book has been frequently imitated over the years to lesser effect. The imitators attempt to mimic the unpretentious Southern charm of an adult Scout's memories of her youth, but they miss the eerier moments, the ghostly intimations of doom, and the bitter nature of an adult's memories of the moment she stepped into a world of absurd intolerance. There's nothing saccharine about the narrative - like the rest of the film, it's possessed with a hauntingly delicate soul that is ultimately heartbreaking.


6. Cries and Whispers One of Ingmar Bergman's best films, Cries and Whispers is bathed in red, a color that Bergman said he imagined the inside of the soul to be. And Cries and Whispers is a film composed of interiors, both literally and through the diary entries of the dying Agnes (Harriet Andersson). Agnes' memories of her life and her emotionally remote sisters are almost impossibly sad, laced with regret, confusion, and fear. All the more stunning that Cries and Whispers ends with Agnes' happiest memory, and Bergman, for once, grants his storyteller a moment of peace (for more on the ending, go here).



7. The Postman Always Rings Twice Film noir is littered with hapless schmoes who become putty in the hands of a smarter, more calculating woman. Never was this more perfectly realized than in the 1946 version of James M. Cain's novel. John Garfield's Frank recounts his torrid, deadly affair with Cora (Lana Turner) in a voice-over filled with uncertainty (Frank's most-used phrase is "I guess"), jealously and insecurity. It's not only good pulp, it's a sharp examination of the tortured male psyche.


8. The Royal Tenenbaums The narration in the story of a family of geniuses has the mannered, matter-of-fact style of a novel one might find in the young-adult section of the library (it's particularly reminiscent of Salinger, whose Franny and Zooey Wes Anderson owes a great debt to). Alec Baldwin's solemn, matter-of-fact delivery is a hilarious compliment to the film's deadpan tone and the eternal adolescence of the Tenenbaums.


9. The Big Lebowski The Coens often have a great deal of fun with voice-over, from Nicolas Cage's hayseed philosopher in Raising Arizona (Ebert panned the film for the narration, but I adore it) to Billy Bob Thorton's apology for his long-windedness ("They're paying me by the word") at the end of The Man Who Wasn't There. Best of all is The Big Lebowski, the story of a burnt-out bowling aficionado-turned-amateur detective as told by a folksy, sarsaparilla-swilling cowboy who may also be God. But there I go, ramblin' again...


10. Adaptation Like many of the films on this list, Adaptation does a fine job of using voice-over to illustrate its characters' unspoken fears and desires. But the moment that really sets Adaptation apart occurs when Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is attending one of Robert McKee's famous screenwriting seminars; as Kaufman excoriates himself in voiceover for looking for easy answers, his thoughts are interrupted by McKee (Brian Cox), who warns, "God help you if you ever use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you! That's flaccid, sloppy writing!" From that point on in the film, Kaufman's inner voice is silent.

Gratuitous Nudity #3

Christine Noonan and Malcolm McDowell, If... (1969)

The Trim Bin #60

- Damian Arlyn's 31 Days of Spielberg project is well underway over at Windmills of My Mind, and it's been a fascinating, discussion-provoking defense of Spielberg as a real auteur thus far. As an unabashed fan, I particularly enjoyed Arlyn's response to familiar criticisms in his article on E.T., a film that, more than any of my other favorites, I've had to defend on a number of occasions:

"I would never want to bully anybody into liking E.T. (nor would I ever say that someone is devoid of humanity or has “ice” in their veins because they feel nothing when watching it) but neither do I care for the implication that just because I am one of the millions of people who happen to be very moved by the film, that I am somehow a mindless sheep, a deluded fool not sophisticated enough to realize when he’s been “played like a piano” or whatever. To the people that might make this elitist claim, I tend to want to respond in kind with my own personal brand of elitism that asserts I would rather be a "foolish" believer, a sensitive soul, romantic at heart able to see the good in something than a hardened cynic blinded to the immense riches and rewards right in front of them if they would only have the humility and willingness to “open themselves up” to it. I do hope that for such individuals there is something (perhaps even a film) that brings them a comparable degree of joy, sadness and just general affirmation of what they hold dear. I hope there’s something in their lives that they cherish as much as I cherish E.T. because if so, they’re very lucky people."

- Rob Zombie's Halloween is almost upon us, and the newest trailer is wonderfully creepy. On the other hand, Zombie damns himself with some old quotes discovered by Stacie Ponder. Usually I have a pretty good sense of what I'll love or hate, but I have no idea how idea how I'll feel about Halloween, and I can't wait to find out.

- Siskel and Ebert's old reviews have found their way to the internet. For insight, watch their argument over Blue Velvet; for laughs, check out Siskel's faith in cinema shaken by She's Out of Control.

- Dual tributes to Bergman and Antonioni written by Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, respectively, remind that a great director is first and foremost a great fan (they also serve as a welcome antidote to Jonathan Rosenbaum's contrarian wankery).

- Finally, a grand piece of film writing: Walter Chaw's epic journey through the films of Patrick Swayze.

Friday Title Card #26

Scary German Guy is bitchin'!

I watched The Monster Squad endless times as a preschooler when it was in heavy rotation on HBO - in fact, when my wife mentioned to my mom that I'd picked up the long-overdue DVD release, there was a long silence before my mom responded, "I've seen that movie twenty goddamn times." I assume that The Monster Squad has little appeal for those who didn't first see it when they were between the ages of three and eleven. I don't mean this as a case of nostalgia, as I have enough distance from my earliest movie-watching experience to know that Harry and the Hendersons, for instance, is really quite bad. The Monster Squad, on the other hand, is one of those movies that requires a child's imagination to do some of the heavy lifting; rewatching it, I realized that what I had long remembered as a film of epic scope was actually a fairly low-budget 82-minute B-movie (although makeup effects artist Stan Winston and VFX head Richard Edlund do wonders with what they have). However, this only increased my affection for the film - its modesty is perhaps its greatest charm, its battle between a group of nerdy kids and cinema's most iconic monsters a jolt of smart, unpretentious fun that puts bloated studio product like Van Helsing to shame.

The Monster Squad is one of those great 80's movies (Explorers and The Goonies are two other examples, with Stephen King's book It a masterpiece of the subgenre) that rewards young genre-loving geeks with the promise that their knowledge of aliens, pirates or vampires is preparation for an awfully big adventure. When we first meet Sean (Andre Gower), the leader of the titular gang of kids, he's wearing a homemade t-shirt that reads "Stephen King Rules" and getting chewed out by the school principal for drawing monsters in class. But director Fred Dekker and writer Shane Black know, as we do, that our formative years are better spent learning about Cthulhu than the Magna Carta. Sean's expertise pays off when Dracula arrives in his small suburban town (why is not really clear, except that he owns real estate there) and assembles Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and Gillman (so named for legal reasons) to carry out his evil plans. The plot involves an amulet, a vortex, and Van Helsing, and it occurs to me that nearly every movie would be improved with these three things (except, of course, Van Helsing). As the kids assemble in their treehouse to plan a once-in-a-century opportunity to stop Dracula and his cohorts, it becomes clear that this is a film borne out of Black and Dekker's (ho ho) childhood dreams and fears - it's a film where the monster in the closet is real, no matter what mom and dad say. As such, it is much more than a calculated attempt to repackage creaky franchises in a slick modern package; it's a labor of love, and goofy as it is, I can't help loving it.

While it's pretty clear that The Monster Squad owes a lot to The Goonies, it's also superior to that film in that, for a film aimed at kids, it's surpisingly rough-edged. Early in the film, schoolyard bullies taunting Fat Kid (Brent Chalem) actually call him a "faggot" - these aren't Disneyfied goons but realistic, nasty little shits. Later in the film, Fat Kid uses a shotgun to blow away one of the monsters; the moment isn't softened at all, the monster bleeding and crying out in a protracted death sort of astonishing in a PG-13. Contrast this with last year's Monster House, a good movie that just missed greatness with an end-credits denouement designed to reassure kids that all is well. The Monster Squad isn't afraid to raise the stakes; there's a genuine possibility that Wolfman could just rip these kids limb from limb, and we become unusually invested in their fates. This extends to the movie's schmaltzier elements - the reformed Frankenstein's monster (Tom Noonan) is one of a long line of 80's-movie ET-surrogates, but Noonan and 5-year-old Ashley Bank play their scenes together with enough authenticity that what could have been cloying elicits a genuine "awww."

The moment that really sets The Monster Squad apart involves Scary German Guy (Leonard Cimino) an elderly local expert on monsters who helps the kids in their mission. As the kids are leaving Scary German Guy's house, one comments that he doesn't seem very afraid of monsters, and Scary German Guy responds that (I'm paraphrasing) he knows there are enough real monsters to be afraid of. As Scary German Guy closes the door, Dekker cuts to a close-up of a concentration camp tattoo on his wrist. It's a real "Whaaa?!!" moment, but questionable taste aside, it gives the movie real weight. The Monster Squad is a celebration of outsiders - seeing a bunch of bookish, strange kids battling a particularly totalitarian Dracula, it gives hope to kids persecuted at school for the very qualities that may someday ennable them to make the world a better place. And just as important, it teaches us that Wolfman has, in fact, got nards.

Friday Title Card #25

Mightn't I be allowed to keep my horse?

I used to hate Barry Lyndon. I first saw the film when I was fourteen, soon after discovering the dizzying, almost narcotic rush of A Clockwork Orange (the perfect film for sharp-witted teens beginning to develop a distrust of authority), and I was blown away by the cinematography, which remains unparalleled. At the same time, I felt that Stanley Kubrick was using the film's painterly images to tell a rather humdrum story devoid of intrigue or emotional investment, and I resented Kubrick for what I read as a sick joke. I was wrong, but I was also right - Barry Lyndon is a perverse film, one that keeps its audience forever at a distance from its story, constantly undercuts even the slightest chance of suspense, and arrives at a conclusion that dismisses its characters' lives as competely meaningless and forgettable. Yet at the same time that it practically forces us towards indifference, Barry Lyndon unfolds with a sort of beautiful, epic splendor that contradicts the film's own claims of irrelevance. It's a maddening, unforgettable cinematic experience; of all my favorite films, I hate this one most.

Barry Lyndon opens in wide shot - this is not uncommon with Kubrick, but it is used for a drastically different effect. Consider the opening image of 2001, designed to overwhelm our senses; or The Shining, with its labyrinthine helicopter shots teasing our anticipatory sense of dread. But from its first image, which depicts the death of the protagonist's father in a duel, Barry Lyndon keeps us at a distance. Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott (with the help of a Zeiss lens originally used by NASA) create a period piece with an astounding sense of immediacy, the image of the opening duel composed with such astonishing depth and clarity that we feel present in the action. But rather than using the images to pull us in, Kubrick remains remote, a time traveller observing the alien behaviors and practices of 18th-century Europe. This gives each shot an oppressive weight, as though each moment were a slide examined through the microscope lens; this deterministic approach is perfect for a protagonist who remains almost totally passive in his own fate. We meet Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal) as a sullen, lovestruck youth and follow him across the continent as he wins and then loses everything through no fault or effort of his own.

Kubrick uses O'Neal's vacant screen presence brilliantly - Barry is a cipher who is able to deceive his way into wealth and status not through any particular talents of his own but out of sheer luck (indeed, the Thackeray novel upon which the film is based was originally titled The Luck of Barry Lyndon). The scene when Barry romances the wealthy, widowed Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) is a masterpiece of surfaces, both actors photographed like perfectly-made porcelain dolls similarly incapable of demonstrating actual emotion. The narrator (Michael Hordern) assures us they have fallen in love, a fact we might have otherwise missed; throughout, the narration dryly mocks these characters' half-realized aspirations and lays bare their actual motivations (in original editions of the book, occasional notes from the editor served the same purpose). These characters have no apparent inner selves, substituting manners for morals and objects for ideas. The meticulously recreated props and costumes, along with the striking period locations, supply not just the film's style but its meaning - Kubrick simultaneously fetishizes the art and culture of the period while attacking the shallow materialism of his characters. Kubrick's films are frequently about the struggle of the individual; here, the individual has receded into the background, upstaged by the tapestries. It's as sharp a comment about the present as it is the past.

The film builds deliberately, almost to the point of boredom - what would constitute a good 40 minutes' worth of action in other films stretches past the intermission here. We begin to wonder why Kubrick has forced us to endure this endless parade of images that make us feel nothing. It's actually a setup, and Kubrick snares us with the introduction of the adult Lord Bullingdon (Leon Vitali), Barry's stepson, who returns after a childhood of petty torments from his ineffectual stepdad to assert his rightful claim to his family's wealth. The moment when Bullingdon uses his smirking half-brother to interrupt a concert with a clomping pair of boots is a genuine shock; by destroying the sustained audiovisual symmetry, its as if violence has been done to the film itself. Kubrick presents our children as the only beings we must ultimately answer to - this is paralleled, devastatingly, with the death of Barry's own son after his fall from the horse that was the boy's birthday present. We do not see the fall happen at first; then, as the boy recounts it, Kubrick cuts suddenly, jarringly, to an image that represents everything we reach for and fail to attain. Dissonant noise replaces Schubert on the soundtrack for one moment, exposing the underlying chaos that we attempt to overrule by creating our own meaning. In this sense, Barry Lyndon is also a comment on the cinematic apparatus, which cannot help but recreate a reality that it was designed to reproduce.

Barry Lyndon, more than any of Kubrick's other films, invites the oft-repeated criticism of the director as a cold, calculating misanthrope, and it's certainly his chilliest film. However, while Kubrick's evaluation of humanity is unsparing, the film is almost religious in its search for meaning in the meaningless. Late in the film, Barry finally commits a selfless act, for which he is mercilessly punished. Kubrick has no sympathy for overdue introspection; his films attest to his understanding of existence as an ongoing practice that may eventually be perfected, and as the ending of 2001 demonstrated, he was capable of great hope. So while Barry Lyndon is far from Kubrick's cuddliest picture, it is nevertheless a perfect, dazzling example of the search for truth even in the most untruthful of worlds.