Top 10: 2007

2007 was a great year for film, perhaps the finest in my lifetime. To find a year as rich in its cinemtic offerings, one would have to go back to 1980, which saw the release of The Shining, Raging Bull, Bad Timing, Kagemusha, Dressed to Kill, The Empire Strikes Back and Popeye, among many others. It was also the year of Heaven's Gate and the end of that fabled period in American cinema that saw a wealth of classics made with uncompromising personal vision. In a year that saw the studios in a similar state of flux, the artists were again running the show; indeed, my top 10 is loaded with challenging, complex films that, somehow, managed to escape through the system. There was the inevitable junkheap of disposable fodder, but as the year progressed, the movies kept getting better. For a while I feared I'd gone soft like Ebert (but without the understandable excuse of a new lease on life) as I handed out As left and right, but no - the movies were just that good to us this year.

The movies became more challenging, even defiantly so, with abrupt shifts in tone and style and endings that confounded our need for resolution. Even popcorn films worked on levels more complex and intellectually engaging than usual, with children's movies, teen sex comedies and microbudgeted musicals demonstrating an atypical grasp of subtext and character development. The films were once again daring, ambitious and dizzying in scope, with an almost absurd surplus of flawed but visionary works and flat-out masterpieces - any of my top five could be a strong number one in a different year, and while I don't believe in ties, an alternate top 10 made up of films not included would still be a strong representation of the year. Even the okay movies were more okay than usual; as far as male-driven corporate intrigue movies go, Michael Clayton blows anything by John Grisham out of the water, and Juno had more genuine heart than most films in the indie-quirk mold. When they were good they were really good; when they were great, they were unforgettable.

If the best films of 2006 captured that year's sense of resignation, 2007 was infused with - well, optimism isn't the right word, but the hope that comes with seeing things as they are (the resurgence of Westerns partly explained by their matter-of-fact romance). Michael Powell once explained the popularity of The Red Shoes as, after a decade of being told to die for ideology, a call to live and die for art. The films below answer that call, and do so brilliantly.

1. There Will Be Blood To compare Paul Thomas Anderson's strange, sprawling oil epic to its filmic ancestors (I'll see your Kubrick and Malick and raise you a Cimino) overlooks the ways that Anderson transcends imitation to give us a film that is defiantly singular. Anderson gives us a western landscape that takes on the otherness of an alien planet, concentrates the entire violent history of the 20th century in a unbearably tense, decades-long confrontation between an oilman and a faith healer, and has at its center a performance by Daniel Day-Lewis that is (no hyperbole) one for the ages. I'm still struggling to articulate my feelings about There Will Be Blood, particularly its demented final reel, a glimpse into the darkest recesses of human nature that haunts long after the film's end. You have to see this movie.

2. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford I can't wait for February 5, when Andrew Dominik's elegaic western hits DVD and begins its inevitable journey towards rediscovery and eventual canonization. At once a sun-dappled tone poem and a hugely entertaining Western, it's a film for both fans and haters of the genre, its stunning images and nobly pathetic central character investing each moment with a stunningly observed melancholy.

3. No Country for Old Men Watching this movie several times at work, it occured to me that, with its understated, handsome style, it could have just as easily been directed by Clint Eastwood at his best as by the Coens. I say this not to echo the common claim that their Cormac McCarthy adaptation announces their newfound maturity - they were always old souls, even when they were goofing off - but to highlight the understatement and economy they bring to every frame of the film. It's an approach that befits their trio of laconic main characters, and grounds the film's apocalyptic vision with a sharp, unsentimental eye.

4. Zodiac As detail-oriented and obsessive as its protagonists, Zodiac is a procedural that revels in the minutia, loose ends and even the tedium of the search for a killer - or, by extension, an answer. Fincher introduces new, existential concerns into his work while grounding the film in a restrained, unobtrusive but totally snazzy visual and narrative strategy. Stay away if you hate ambiguity (as AMPAS apparently does), but for everyone else, Zodiac is a fascinatingly creepy and elusive whodunit.

5. I'm Not There Perhaps the greatest example on this list of pure film, a kaleidoscopic biopic whose impact lies entirely in its mesmerizing images. Other rock movies dutifully catalog the iconic moments of their subject's life and times; I'm Not There blows them to smitheeens and reassembles them into something beautifully elusive.

6. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street A near-perfect translation of Sondheim's masterpiece to the screen, aided immeasurably by performances that find just the right note and a director expanding his Goth fetishes and Hammer love to new, chilling areas. If only Dreamgirls had this much arterial spray.

7 . Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix An unproven director takes over the wizard franchise with the most difficult-to-adapt of the books (until the last one) and gives us only the second Harry Potter film that can stand on its own terms. Filled with moments of visual inspiration and sacrificing none of the book's emotional heft, it's imaginative in a way that too few kids' movies are. Bonus points for Imelda Staunton's deliciously hateful Professor Umbridge.

8. Grindhouse I thought long and hard about whether to rank Planet Terror and Death Proof together or separately (in which case Tarantino's film would have ranked quite a bit higher). Ultimately, it just feels wrong, as the thrill of Grindhouse, no matter what your preference, is the overall experience (to those catching up on DVD - sorry, you missed it). A feast for cinema lovers - how do you explain to the non-cinephile why a title card can be funny? - its also the purest, most uncomplicated fun I've had in years. Sidenote: Death Proof seems way less popular with men (who largely hate Tarantino's apparently reductive sexual politics) than with women (my friends, my wife, even my mom all cheered on the film's vengeful denouement), but everyone loves Stuntman Mike.

9. The Darjeeling Limited Wes Anderson's India-set travelogue sees his typically meticulous visual style expand to include a lightness of feeling and a subtle social consciousness. Beautifully photographed and featuring Anderson's strongest soundtrack yet, the film also benefits immeasurably from its prologue, the heartbreaking mini-masterpiece Hotel Chevalier.

10. Ratatouille Thank God for Brad Bird. In a time when so much children's entertainment is pandering and even offensive, Bird releases cartoons that honor children's emotions and intelligence. The message of his beautiful Ratatouille is a powerful one not only for children but also their parents, reminding with the lightest thouch how no life is absent of meaning or the potential for beauty. Anyone can cook, indeed - and after a year like this past one, I can't wait to see what's on the menu for 2008.

I kind of like getting blasted out of my skin.

My favorite Bob Dylan album is a toss-up between Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks; ask me for my favorite on a particularly perverse day, however, and I might say Self Portrait, Dylan's critically reviled 1970 attempt to torpedo his own iconic status. It's virtually unlistenable, perhaps intentionally so, but on a conceptual level it's fascinating, serving as a sort of Rosetta stone for Dylan. At the center of the album (and all of Dylan's music) is the paradox of the artist who will do anything, even self-destruct, to conceal his true self - a self that, no matter how metaphors the artist uses to bury it, remains totally naked and self-evident to anyone listening. This paradox is also at the heart of I'm Not There - that is, if it's even accurate to say that Todd Haynes' radical biopic has any center at all. As shape-shifting and elusive as its subject, Haynes' film (once subtitled Suppositions on a Film Concerning Bob Dylan) doesn't just sidestep the conventions of the subgenre, it completely demolishes them. What emerges is a representational, almost abstract interpretation of Dylan's life and work in which biographical details, lyrics, names and cultural artifacts are woven into a complex tapestry. If this sounds like a dry intellectual exercise, it is; that said, the more times I've seen the film, the more its metatextual structure reveals unexpected pleasures. You don't have to be an expert in Foucault for I'm Not There to rock your socks off.

The marketing for I'm Not There centered around the seeming stunt casting of six actors playing Bob Dylan. But the film itself is deeper than Solondz-esque gimmickry, revolving around not only six different actors but six different characters embodying or suggesting different aspects of Dylan's multifaceted persona. We're first introduced to Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin), a 12-year-old black guitarist who sings songs about unionization in 1959 before being advised to live his own time. This advice leads directly to earnest folk singer Jack Rollins (Christian Bale); who is followed onstage by leather-clad provocateur Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett). There is also Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger), an actor who once played Rollins, and Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Wishaw), who is seen only in an interview (or perhaps a deposition). And then there is Billy the Kid (Richard Gere), who we'll get back to in a minute. Taken on their own, any of these segments would make a fascinating interpretation of Dylan's life in miniature, their respective protagonists brushing up against moments both iconic and rumored. Taken as a whole, Haynes' dense, challenging narrative (co-written by Oren Moverman) portrays Dylan in a manner worthy of the singer's Cubist method - as Dylan himself once explained (and is quoted in the film), "You've got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room, and there's very little you can't imagine not happening."

The of such a fragmentary approach is total, self-indulgent disaster that would make Renaldo and Clara look like Walk the Line. That the film's risks succeed so admirably is largely thanks to the cast, who breathe life into Haynes' signifiers. The best is Cate Blanchett, admittedly given an advantage as she's playing Dylan in his folk-killing, wine-swigging, chain-smoking, condescending asshole phase (possibly the coolest anyone has ever been, ever). But Blanchett's Jude Quinn, like her Katharine Hepburn, is more than an uncanny impersonation, finding previously unexplored shades of vulnerability, even fatalism in Dylan's Don't Look Back-era swagger, and the gender-bending casting is a nod to Dylan's androgynous appeal. Less iconic but also wonderful are Bale as the wide-eyed but increasingly world-weary young folkie, and Ledger, evoking Blood on the Tracks as a performer in existential crisis during the breakup of his marriage to wide-eyed Claire (Charlotte Gainsburg, heartbreaking here playing, as Bale did in Velvet Goldmine, our doorway into the narrative).

The performances are held together by Haynes' bold representational approach, which anyone who has seen Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Far From Heaven or the way underrated Velvet Goldmine will recognize immediately. Here, his semiotic games are looser and more playful than in the past - beyond intellectualizing his subject, Haynes' grasp of synchronicity creates an experience not unlike getting lost in a favorite album. When Haynes opens a certain performance of "Maggie's Farm" with Jude and the band opening fire on the audience, no matter what you think about Dylan going electric (I think Pete Seeger is a tool), you can't help but be delighted at the film's structural and aesthetic abandon. The entire movie is similarly dizzying, with not only cameos for the decade's other iconic figures - I'm partial to David Cross as Allan Ginsburg - but a cascade of images and ideas taken from a host of other cinematic and pop cultural sources (brought to life with astounding verisimilitude by DP Edward Lachman). There's the cinema verite of Don't Look Back and the talking-head approach of No Direction Home, but also loving nods to Fellini, Richard Lester, The Graduate and many more cultural touchstones. This goes deeper than nostalgia, deeper than a cynical greatest-hits collection for baby boomers; the cumulative effect is a singular portrait of the symbiotic relationship between the artist, his work and the zeitgeist into which they are born.

Haynes' most audacious move, the one I was sure would be totally ridiculous, is having Richard Gere play an aging Billy the Kid wandering through a beautiful, barren Western landscape existing in a completely different world from the film's. But, more than a loving Peckinpah homage, the Billy the Kid sequences are remarkably moving; returning to them again and again when I think about the film, their seeming inscrutability comes into focus. Gere's Billy is Dylan as pure embodiment of his music - separated from politics, from anything contemporary, his symbols become representative of nothing except the greater chain of human experience, truly existing out of time and, therefore, eternal. An elegy for artists made immortal by the work they leave beind (how sad, how perfect, that the lyrics of its title song could be referring to its costar's untimely passing), I'm Not There is a triumph of art for art's sake and a leading witness in the trial of infinity.

Heath Ledger (1979-2008)

The saddest thing is, he was just starting to reveal what he was capable of. There's Brokeback Mountain, of course, in which his remarkable subtlety carried a devastating emotional impact. Just today I was going to write about Todd Haynes' wonderful I'm Not There, which owes much of its joy to his Dylan on the verge of marital and spiritual collapse. These performances promised so much - now all we have is a few more performances and the constant question of what could have come next.

Now come the People cover stories, the pointless moralizing (don't do drugs, kids), the forced comparisons to James Dean for an actor who deserves to be defined on his own terms, and a daughter who will learn about her dad through the movies he made. Heath Ledger was 28. This is so fucking sad.

Goddamn, dude, you're such an asshole!

Juno starts with an evasive depiction of teen sexuality that flirts with Pretty Baby-esque provocation and ends with a cutesy-poo tableau of arrested development. In the line from point A to point B, one can find everything both insightful and maddening about Diablo Cody's screenwriting debut. The story of a smart-alecky 16-year-old dealing with an unplanned pregnancy is told with a geniunely original voice that too often sacrifices its believable, sympathetic portrait of its characters for easy laughs and creaky, formulaic sitcom cliches. If this sounds like a pan, I must stress that, in some ways, Juno lives up to its hype - it's well-acted, handsomely shot and, in the end, genuinely moving. In other words, its a pretty good character study that could have been a classic were it not in love, more than anything else, with its own pseudo-indie preciousness.

At first, Juno (Ellen Page) reminds of a watered-down Enid Coleslaw, all hipster sarcasm and outsider posturing. What gradually emerges, however, is an identifiable portrait of adolescent uncertainty - when Juno tells her father "I don't know what kind of girl I am," the truth is not in the statement itself but in the self-conscious motivations behind it. Juno is a character who rarely says what's on her mind, her sexual aggression and broader sense of yearning revealing itself through her impeccable taste in raw, primal rock and ultraviolent horror (even if she is foolish enough to declare 2000 Maniacs "better than Suspiria"). She's so believable, in fact, that the moments of unbelievability that might be less glaring in the teen programmer they belong in clash uncomfortably with the very specific world Cody has created. While I can believe that Juno would bypass abortion in favor of surrogate parents Mark and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), I need more than a montage of clicking pens and a Planned Parenthood staffed by dead-eyed hos (though I love Emily Perkins) to convince me of this. Similarly, when Juno makes a pivotal decision in the film's final third, I could not believe it, particularly since everything we've learned about Juno, her family and the surrogates seem to be pointing towards several different, more complicated but richer resolutions. This is symptomatic of the film's overall tendency towards wearing its protagonist's nonconformity like a badge while hedging towards the least provocative or difficult outcome. Nowhere is this more evident than in the much commented-upon disconnect between Juno's professed musical heroes and the film's bloodless, oh-so-hip soundtrack - you won't actually hear any Patti Smith in the film, but if you like Kimya Dawson, you're in luck.

I hesitate to place too much blame at Cody's feet - most of these are fairly standard beginner mistakes, and I suspect she's got some great films ahead of her. More suspect is director Jason Reitman, who emphasizes Juno's accessible quirkiness over its sharper edges. Reitman's a gifted visual storyteller, but the unnecessary moment in Thank You For Smoking where we see the guilt on Aaron Eckhart's face and know that, actually, he feels really bad about all this is echoed throughout Juno. Were the characters given more room to breathe, the film might resonate more deeply - instead, Reitman's eagerness to please results in a crowd-pleaser that could have been something deeper and more honest. Still, it's hard to complain too loudly with a cast - particularly Allison Janney as Juno's patient stepmom and Jason Bateman finding insight in a completely unbelievable character - that glosses over most of the rough patches. At the heart of the film are Page, whose work as Juno registers on levels that neither Reitman or Cody seem able to anticipate, and Michael Cera, again demonstrating his mastery of mumbled asides as Juno's tic-tac-scarfing babydaddy. There's a perfect, heartbreaking kind of confusion in their scenes together that the film is unable to support - beneath the quirk is the disturbing suggestion that Juno and Bleeker will grow up to be Mark and Vanessa, but the film itself seems either unaware or uninterested in its underlying melancholy.

A far more successful collaboration between writer/director and star is Margot at the Wedding, a portrait of a woman incapable of not wreaking emotional havoc wherever she goes. As Margot, a woman attending her sister Pauline's (Jennifer Jason Leigh, typically brilliant) wedding to unsuccessful writer Malcolm (Jack Black), Nicole Kidman creates a portrait of an emotional train wreck cursed with a wounding sense of honesty which she attempts to drown with drugs and writerly affectations. Diluted by Kidman's star status is the fact that she's one of the most intelligent, compelling actors working today - her performance is as clear-eyed and unsparing as her similarly underestimated work in films like Eyes Wide Shut and especially Birth. Noah Baumbach's screenplay, coupled with his understated direction (aided hugely by Harris Savides' underlit cinematography, which suggests one endless stoned afternoon) reveals worlds about his characters and their inability to quell their obsessions with their endless intellectualizing. It's not a flattering portrait of the life of the mind, but despite her off-putting qualities and near-abusive treatment of her son (Zane Pais), Margot emerges as sympathetic - when a spurned lover (Ciaran Hinds) confronts Margot about her hypocrisy using her own blunt approach at a public reading, her abrupt deterioration is heartbreaking.

Where Juno practically fetishizes its protagonist's pretensions, Baumbach dissects his characters' intellectual elitism with surgical precision, revealing them as no more than the sum of the fears and urges they struggle to repress (or, at least place in ironic quotation marks, as Margot says of Malcolm's "funny" mustache). It's funny, but not in the bittersweet way The Squid and the Whale was funny - the laughs here are nervous, a way of distancing ourselves from the emotional horrorshow onscreen. It's no surprise, then, that Margot was largely dismissed when it played at the cinema where I work (one theatregoer left a comment in our book saying that "we do not need other people's problems," while another simply said "Margot's Wedding sucks!"), while Juno has been playing to packed audiences every night. It's easy to understand a character who is unusual like we think we are, but harder to enjoy a character whose flaws mirror ones we dare not admit, let alone laugh at in mixed company.

My Dinner with the Thin White Duke

Piper at Lazy Eye Theatre has tagged me with a meme titled My Dinner With Blank, the rules of which are as follows:

1. Pick a single person past or present who works in the film industry you would like to have dinner with. And tell us why you chose this person.

2. Set the table for your dinner. What would you eat? Would it be in a home or at a restaurant? And what would you wear? Feel free to elaborate on the details.

3. List five thoughtful questions you would ask this person during dinner.

4. When all is said and done, select six bloggers to pass this Meme along to.

5. Link back to Lazy Eye Theatre, so people know the mastermind behind this Meme.

Here goes:

First, let's disqualify dead people, because if I was having dinner with a dead person, famous or not, my enjoyment of the evening would be hampered by the distracting knowledge that my dinner guest is fucking dead. Truth is, any answer to this question is going to be totally arbitrary, as there are a lot of people who I'd be equally happy to be dinner with. Fame isn't the deciding factor - of the famous people I've met, the only ones that have really given me a chill are those whose work I truly respect. With that in mind, I'll invite David Bowie. Does David Bowie count? He's a very good actor, you know. Yes, I believe it would have to be David Bowie.

We'd dine in Berlin, the site of Bowie's most fruitful creative period. I could list an elaborate bratwurst-centric three-course meal here, but you usually order for yourself at a restaurant, don't you? Maybe we wouldn't eat anything; maybe we'd just do a whole lot of cocaine instead (not that I've ever touched the stuff, but when you're dining with Bowie, y'know...).

As for five questions, this is dinner, not an interview. First, if I was coked-up in Berlin with Jareth the Goblin King, I don't know that I'd have anything intelligent to ask. Second, to come prepared with questions would be presumptuous and rude, and would likely ruin the chance of any real insight into Bowie's life or work. As Bowie himself once said, "I don't find it interesting to talk about what I did with my cock in the 1970s." So I would probably just ask him what he did with his cock in the 1970s, and let the conversation progress from there.

Tagged:

Jack at The Cabinet of Dr. Criddle

Greg at Dreamscape

Paul at Silly Hats Only

Allen at Septenary

Doug at Nihon Musings

Milena at Mirrored Lines

Title Card #43

Top 10: 1997

1. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
2. Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino)
3. L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson)
4. Kundun (Martin Scorsese)
5. The Ice Storm (Ang Lee)

6. Crash (David Cronenberg)
7. Waiting for Guffman (Christopher Guest)
8. Lost Highway (David Lynch)
9. Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai)
10. Titanic (James Cameron)

Sssss!

The following is my contribution to this month's Film Club over at Final Girl.

The great horror films of the 1970's share an elemental approach to the genre, the liberation of film content resulting in a horror cinema stripped to its barest archetypal terms. Suspiria, Dario Argento's first foray into pure horror, is at once the most beautiful and merciless work of the decade. A near-perfect fusion of art and splatter, Suspiria creates a nightmarish world held together by its own surreal language of alchemic signifiers, its hallucinatory images and sounds colliding together on a searing red canvas. It's less a triumph of style over substance than one of those rare moments when style is substance. Argento's horrifying images are more than a triumph of gross-out - at his best, it's as if he's projecting his (and our) deepest, most primal fears directly under the screen. In short, Suspiria gets under your skin.

Over darkness and simple white credits, a narrator informs us that "Suzy Banyon decided to perfect her ballet studies in the most famous school of dance in Europe. She chose the celebrated Tanzakademie of Freiburg. One day at 9am, she left Kennedy Airport, New York, and arrived in Germany at 10:40 local time." The matter-of-fact delivery of objective information (times, dates, places) is undercut by the roar of Goblin's unforgettably creepy score; Argento is immediately subverting the veracity of his own narrative, creating a disconnect between what we are hearing and what we are seeing that is unmistakably dreamlike. Enter Suzy (Jessica Harper), a wide-eyed young woman who steps into this alternate reality - one where a sliding door can take on unknown menace, where strange figures appear for a moment in the corner of one's eye - like a fairytale heroine. Harper's beautiful porcelain features are perfect for the character, who floats through the film as though she herself were dreaming. There's fear in her performance, but also a sort of recognition, a dreamlike sense of inevitablity as she gradually deciphers the symbols around her to defeat the dual maternal figures (Alida Valli and Joan Bennet) conspiring to keep her asleep. Argento originally imagined his characters as young teens, and Suspiria can be read as the horror of adolescence, the gradual realization and experience of things whispered-about by adults in control of one's life. Suzy's dream is a journey deeper and deeper into interiors climaxing in the confrontation of the invisible (and therefore universal) matriarch of the coven; couple this with the relative insignificance of men in the film and the contributions of Argento's then-girlfriend Daria Nicolodi, and it's hard not to see Suspiria as Dario Argento getting in touch with his feminine side.



But the thing is - and please don't take this as an excuse - any interpretation of Suspiria will fail to convey its power as a pure immersive sensory experience. Watching the film for the first time, one is overcome by a feeling of vulnerability - the shot of an escaped student (Eva Axen) standing in a window, the room providing the only light in a vast expanse of shadows, violates our illusions of safety in such an unnerving way that the subsequent, rightfully famous murder setpiece ends, our repulsion also carries a sense of relief at having survived the inevitable. The risk of dealing with the inexplicable is that, with one misstep, the whole film becomes self-indulgent and meaningless; what shines through in Suspiria's best moments (my favorite is Suzy's strange encounter with the old woman and child in a hallway) is the sense of a story unfolding according to its own unknown but precise, exacting logic. Much of this can be attributed to the stunning, Disney-on-acid palette Argento and DP Luciano Tovoli employ, creating a garish distortion of reality that, once experienced, shakes one's perception of the relationship between image and meaning in everyday life. While Argento is frequently referred to as a "Master of Horror" or other such gorehound nonsense, he's rarely acknowledged as a master surrealist. A shame, as there are images in Suspiria that, if placed on a museum wall, would rest comfortably next to Magritte.



Perhaps the creepiest aspect of Suspiria is that evil is never personified. We're given glimpses - a pair of eyes, Argento's trademark gloved hands, animals and inarticulate henchmen possessed - but what lingers is the sense of something unseen but always present. A simple scene between Suzy and her friend (Stefania Casini) becomes almost unbearably tense simply by the presence of the camera looming overhead. The camera often takes on the perspective of the villian, but in the absence of a singular villain, whose perspective are we taking here? It's as if the camera itself - and, by extension, Argento - is possessed, driven to show us our fears with merciless precision. The film itself is an act of exorcism for Argento, but though Suzy escapes, there is the ineffable sense of a horror that continues to exist outside of the frame. Of course, Suspiria does have a pair of sisters...

Title Card #42

Top 10: 1987

1. Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders)
2. Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick)
3. Raising Arizona (Joel Coen)
4. Robocop (Paul Verhoeven)
5. Evil Dead 2 (Sam Raimi)
6. Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg)

7. The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci)
8. Planes Trains and Automobiles (John Hughes)

9. The Untouchables (Brian De Palma)
10. Opera (Dario Argento)

You sir, you sir, how about a shave?

I'll never forget the feeling of seeing Edward Scissorhands at the age of six on a huge screen at Showcase Cinemas in Lawrence, MA. While my fellow first graders couldn't stop quoting Home Alone, Tim Burton's holiday Goth fantasia opened my mind to concepts I didn't yet have the words for - expressionism, surrealism, representation - and, through my identification with Burton's misfit protagonist (played to heartbreaking perfection by Johnny Depp), made such a strong emotional impact on my developing understanding of cinema that movies with talking dogs and profane, crotch-punching kids no longer did the trick. It's one of the defining films of my cinematic experience, which makes the presence of one glaring, ugly misstep - Edward's vicious murder of the jock antagonist and Burton's soft-pedaling of the scene - all the more painful. The older I get, the harder it is to look past the fairytale Columbine, introduced but never properly explored, that festers in an otherwise beautiful film like roaches in Jeffrey Beaumont's lawn.

Burton's best work has honestly addressed this underlying sense of misanthrophy - think of the sympathetic monsters in the underestimated Batman Returns, the lovingly constructed family of social deviants in Ed Wood, the entirety of Mars Attacks. But in recent years, Burton's maddeningly uneven outpout has undergone a gradual but unmistakable mainstreaming, perhaps spurred on by the commodification of his once-distinct cinematic voice (thanks to Hot Topic, anyone can be misunderstood for $16.99). This softening of Burton's rough edges culminated in the awkward father-son reuinion at the end of the disappointing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that reduced the entire psychological landscape of Burton's movies to lame, Dr. Phil-esque "daddy issues" that also felt like a cynical jab at the far richer father-son relationship of his previous film, Big Fish. So it was with great trepidation that I approached Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a seemingly perfect match of director to material (Stephen Sondheim's grand guignol masterpiece), for fear that the result would be well-crafted, obvious and predictable (particulary since star Johnny Depp, perhaps the most talented actor of his generation, has been bordering on self-parody lately). I must report with great pleasure that Sweeney Todd far surpassed my expectations - it's almost exactly the film that I'd always hoped it would be, a marvellously dark and vicious adaptation that retains the musical's narrative and thematic complexity while also benefiting not only from Burton's style (in full Bava-worship mode here) but also his obvious affinity for his murderous protagonist. It's ruthless, unsparing and a bold return to form.

From the controversial omission of the musical's opener "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," Burton strips away the theatrical conventions of the show - for a Broadway adaptation the film is remarkably intimate, located entirely in the vengeful barber's shop, the festering pie shop of his devoted accomplice Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) and the funereal streets of 19th-century London. This choice is jarring at first for fans of the musical (I'd always imagined the ballad performed by a chorus of dead-eyed ghouls in a series of sharp, Fosse-esque cuts), but it ultimately highlights how Sweeney's greatness has little to do with elaborate staging or classically trained baritones. As the wronged barber plots his revenge against the corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), the film becomes a particularly bloody penny dreadful that never condescends the story's pulpier aspects, honoring its underlying weight. The musical (much like David Lynch's The Elephant Man, released the following year) comments on the industrial revolution's dehumanizing impact on western society through the microcosm of one character's personal transformation, Sweeney's contempt for humanity growing in proportion to the profitability of his crimes (shades of Hot Topic?). With this in mind, the monochromatic visual design and the muted, vampiric performances make perfect sense - these characters belong to a world that might collapse before they can destroy each other. By the time Sweeney declares all of humanity deserving of death in "Epiphany" (the musical's high point), I wasn't thinking about the lyrics snipped or the plot points condensed - I was completely absorbed.

A funny thing about Johnny Depp's performance: sampling the soundtrack on iTunes before seeing the film, I worried about Depp's apparently flat singing, and I still have little desire to own the soundtrack. But married to the performance, Depp's, low-key approach (reminiscent of early Bowie) works wonderfully. My fear that Depp would turn Benjamin Barker into a caricature is unfounded; Depp internalizes the character's torment in a surpisisingly understated performance, communicating volumes with a glance and reminding us of his extraordinary ability to create characters that have a larger-than-life quality while never sacrificing their humanity. But my favorite performance was Carter's - her Mrs. Lovett isn't the crowd-pleasing, demented old ham made indelible by Angela Lansbury (again, what works on stage and on film are two different things). The delusional optimism of Mrs. Lovett's dreams of wealth and prosperity are betrayed by the muted defeat in her voice; for all the film's bloodletting, its creepiest (and funniest) moment is a montage of happy seaside tableaux, Mrs. Lovett's banal dreams punctured by Sweeney's constant gloom. They're aided by Alan Rickman as the ghoulish, self-loathing Judge (Rickman's fantastic, even if he's the worst singer in the movie), Sacha Baron Cohen as the street mountebank Pirelli, and Jayne Wiesener and Jamie Campbell Bower as the sweet young lovers whose seemingly negligible role in the plot is, I think, frequently misunderstood. And Ed Sanders as young Toby is a real standout; the role is traditionally played by adults out of neccessity, and having a real child in the role adds a new, disturbing layer to the experience.

The film is, naturally, a visual marvel. Burton and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski find a number of inventive ways to distort and refract Depp's face as Sweeney's descent into madness progresses. The production design by Dante Ferretti is typically sumptuous even as it creates a feeling of isolation and despair reminiscent of Burton's Gotham City. Of course, Burton is always a master of creating these baroque cinematic worlds - the wonderful surprise of Sweeney Todd is that what could have been an emotionally inert triumph of design feels insistently, angrily alive. Burton's fetishes, from the Argento-red blood to the overripe bosoms bound in Victorian/S&M garb, are on display here, with an unapologetic glee unseen in years. Burton's films are frequently described as "dark," a misleading qualifier as most of his films are only superficially dark, his outsider posturing masking a puppylike need to please. Sweeney Todd is deeply, unapologetically dark, and the result is revelatory; it's a movie that makes you feel so bad you can't help but sing.

Title Card #41

(Title edited to accomodate the occasional Friday when real life intercedes.)

Top 10: 1977

1. Eraserhead (David Lynch)

2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg)
3. The American Friend (Wim Wenders)

4. Stroszek (Werner Herzog)

5. 3 Women (Robert Altman)

6. Suspiria (Dario Argento)

7. Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
8. Star Wars (George Lucas)

9. Martin (George A. Romero)
10. The Kentucky Fried Movie (John Landis)

Where are the savory snacks?

I really, really love Hotel Chevalier. The 15-minute companion piece to The Darjeeling Limited is a breathtaking change of pace for Wes Anderson, his miniaturist vision stripped of his usual sprawling narratives and confined to one fleeting encounter between ex-lovers in a suite in the titular hotel. Each line of dialogue is razor-sharp, each shot perfectly selected, and though we're given little exposition about Jack (Jason Schwartzman), his ex (Natalie Portman) and their relationship, we understand everything by the film's end - her restless, chaotic nature (I'm officially a Natalie Portman fan), his contrived persona an attempt to avoid real feeling, and their inability to be less than completely emotionally naked around each other. It's a miniature masterpiece, sexy, sad and perfect, and it signals a new level of maturity from Anderson (not that his previous work is immature - this is a common misconception). This same energy can be found in The Darjeeling Limited, a meandering (by design), occasionally frustrating but ultimately joyous film.

The bitter, defensive tone that marred the otherwise wonderful The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is replaced here with a wiser, more clear-eyed perspective of its characters. Sad-eyed writer Jack, who is never without his iPod's worth of earnest background music, is like Anderson's own admission of his need to meticulously control every detail in every frame. What separates Anderson from too-precious imitators is his honesty; when Jack's suggestion of an ironic punctuation to an emotional moment is met with annoyance by his brothers Francis (Owen Wilson) and Peter (Adrien Brody), it's hard not to see the moment as Anderson's tongue-in-cheek apology for his own insular creative tendencies. India, then, has much the same meaning for Anderson as it does for the Whitman brothers, who take a cross-country trip abord the titular train a year after their father's death - Francis having carefully planned the trip to gurantee spiritual and emotional catharsis, Anderson seemingly imposing his auteurist tendencies on the culture. However, the film soon reveals itself to be a knowing take on this distinctly American form of patronization, the very idea that the country's exotic otherness exists for affluent westerners to take a vacation and have an epiphany. If Anderson's films are calculated, they never contain a moment of forced emotion - when the drugged-up, navel-gazing brothers finally have a real experience, it's a sudden, violent expression of the pain and vitality they've fought so carefully to keep at bay.

It's true that, when that moment itself arrives, it's in the form of a very literal metaphor; one of the common complaints with The Darjeeling Limited is its frequent literalism. It's a valid criticism, but it fails to take two things into account. The first is that the Whitmans are constantly stoned, and drug use consists primarily of being trapped in a series of vague metaphors while being completely oblivious to obvious ones - the fate of their father's baggage is almost laughably on-the-nose, but that's sort of the point. Also, more than any of his films thus far, the visual statements Anderson discovers here are quite beautiful. The shot of a businessman (Bill Murray) chasing after the departing train, the tracking shot, set to the Rolling Stones' "Play With Fire," of a universal tableaux, the stunning pair of match cuts bookending a flashback (the film's most devastating scene) - these moments are purple in the best way. Anderson is also aided by his claustrophobic, constantly shifting location, which forces him to be freer in his approach, more open to the unanticipated moments. This has the same effect on the actors - Schwartzman shows growth as an actor, Brody is surprisingly funny as a terrified dad-to-be, and Wilson is moving as the saddest of the brothers, a bruised, bandaged shell of a man who simply must have a spiritual experience before he implodes (wouldn't it be perverse not to mention the too-obvious parallels to - well, yeah).

There's a moment when the brothers are confronting their long-absent mother (Anjelica Huston), and she tells them they're talking to a person that doesn't exist. Anderson's films are filled with such ghosts - parents that loom larger than life in our memories, mundane childhood experiences that take on epic importance with the passing of time, all the remembered hurt and injustice of the past. The Darjeeling Limited, like all of Anderson's films, is about the exhumation and reenactment of these moments, though for the first time it feels like a sort of exorcism. It's way too early to dismiss Anderson, one of our few true auteurs, as a one-trick pony - the train's, like, just departing, man.

Friday Title Card #40

Chevalier. Fidelio. Ratatouille.

Just in time for the New Year, Dennis at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly rule presents us with the latest quiz (by one Bertram Potts) certain to encourage much cinematic and personal reflection. Head over to SLIFR to share your answers, peruse others', argue or celebrate. Here are my answers:

1) Your favorite opening shot

Boogie Nights. It's audacious, seductive, and arrogant in the best way.

2) Tuesday Weld or Mia Farrow?

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIS EYES?!"

3) Name a comedy you’re embarrassed to admit made you laugh

Around the tenth time I watched Heavyweights, I realized with horror that my laughter wasn't ironic.

4) Best Movie of 1947

Black Narcissus

5) Burt Reynolds was the Bandit. Jerry Reed was the Snowman. Paul LeMat was Spider. Candy Clark was Electra. What’s your movie handle?

Killer.

6) Robert Vaughn or David McCallum?

Both have strong jaws, but only one ambushed Superman with carcinogenic Kryptonite.

7) Most exotic/unusual place/location in which you've seen a movie

My wife and I saw The Darjeeling Limited at the Majestic in North Conway, NH. The theatre was in a cafe - we bought our tickets from a waitress, got snacks at the bar and discovered a 50-seat auditorium at the end of a long, winding red corridor.

8) Favorite Errol Morris movie

Gates of Heaven, because it's haunting and funny, and because without it, my answer to #17 wouldn't exist. But I must admit some difficulty embracing Morris since his petulant Oscar speech.

9) Best Movie of 1967

Bonnie and Clyde

10) Describe a profoundly (or not-so-profoundly) disturbing moment you’ve had courtesy of the movies

During the trailers before Juno, the entire audience laughed at and mocked the premise of the border-crossing drama Under the Same Moon. Ah, those wacky Mexicans - when will they learn?

11) Anne Francis or Julie Newmar?

Don't feel strongly one way or the other, but Forbidden Planet is pretty great.

12) Describe your favorite one sheet (include a link if possible)

The Alien one-sheet is so simple and suggestive, but even when I was a small child and knew nothing about the film, it (and the tagline) were genuinely unsettling.

13) Best Movie of 1987

Wings of Desire

14) Favorite movie about obsession

Looking at my 100 list, there are a startling amount of movies about obsession. But yeah, Vertigo is almost inarguably the ultimate statement on the subject.

15) Your ideal Christmas movie triple feature

Gremlins, Eyes Wide Shut and Black Christmas (the original - duh).

16) Montgomery Clift or James Dean?

James Dean, but they both kick Ryan Gosling's ass.

17) Favorite Les Blank Movie

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe

18) This past summer food critic Anton Ego made the following statement: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” Your thoughts?

I can't wait to show Ratatouille to my daughter.

19) The last movie you watched on DVD? In a theater?

On DVD, Two-Lane Blacktop, a movie I've been dying to see for a while that lived up to its reputation. The latter is Margot at the Wedding, a movie I liked a good deal more than most (I dig Harris Savides, and I'm sort of mean).

20) Best Movie of 2007

I have yet to see at least one film that I suspect will be high on this list (I'm referring, of course, to The Bucket List). As of now, it's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

21) Worst Movie of 2007

The Number 23 is the worst movie Joel Schumacher's ever made. Really think about that.

22) Describe the stages of your cinephilia

3-10 - Pure, unqualified adoration. Anything horror or sci-fi. Lots of Spielberg, Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam. Anything muppet. A complete lack of critical discernment (2001 is awesome, so is Hook).

10-12 - Onanism. Anxiety. Self-loathing. Movies that validate my pubescent existential crisis (Brazil, Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, Vertigo). Anything with boobs. Pulp Fiction is a potent gateway drug to a new way of looking at cinema.

13-15 - Loss of religion dovetails with the concept of cinema as transgression. Boogie Nights. A Clockwork Orange. Blue Velvet. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Anything with weiners. Anything that would piss off dad.

15-18 - Intro to world cinema - Herzog, Truffaut, Bergman, Argento. Expressionism. Anything with brains. A soft spot for earnest, overwrought emotionalism (American Beauty and Magnolia).

18-22 - College. Forgetting how to just watch a movie. Lots of posturing and one-upmanship. "Hey, you know what would be an awesome way to watch Tron?" Lynch, Altman, De Palma, Malick. I'm starting to get the hang of this.

Now - The blog. Liking what I like. "Hey, you know what would be an awesome way to watch Barry Lyndon?" Roeg, Bertolucci and Malle all touch a nerve. Romanticism. Uncertainty. Watching my daughter freak out with delight whenever Superman, Willy Wonka or robots are onscreen.

23) What is the one film you’ve had more difficulty than any other in convincing people to see or appreciate?

Right now, pretty much anything. My generation is bombarded by hype and infotainment into complete indifference. If my friends would rather see Smoking Aces than The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, it's because the latter is an unknowable challenge while the former is reassuringly familiar. The movies become comfort food, a sensory snack with the same value as a video game or a viral video played on a cell phone. In such a climate, how can I convince anyone that cinema has the ability to be beautiful, even transcendent?

24) Gene Tierney or Rita Hayworth?

Rita Hayworth

25) The Japanese word wabi denotes simplicity and quietude, but it can also mean an accidental or happenstance element (or perhaps even a small flaw) which gives elegance and uniqueness to the whole. What film or moment from a film best represents wabi to you?

The dog crossing the path in the opening shot of Birth, unknowingly violating the images' symmetry and creating a pleasurable dissonance.

26) Favorite Documentary

Gates of Heaven again.

27) Favorite opening credit sequence

While I love elaborate, Saul Bass-style opening collages, I've always admired the plain yellow titles of McCabe and Mrs. Miller silently, craftily snaking in and out of the gloomy landscape like McCabe himself.

28) Is there a film that has influenced your lifestyle in a significant or notable way? If so, what was it and how did it do so?

Eyes Wide Shut not only changed the way I thought about film, it challenged my 15-year-old assumptions about relationships, fidelity and even identity. I think it had a strong effect on my friend Tara as well (happy birthday, Tara!), as she took a classmate to see it again the next night and was shocked when the girl complained of boredom. Truly a case of "Did you see the same movie I did?"

29) Glenn Ford or Dana Andrews?

Glenn Ford

30) Make a single prediction, cynical or hopeful, regarding the upcoming Academy Awards

In honor of No Country for Old Men, a Chuck Workman-edited montage of the greatest head shots in film history.

31) Best Actor of 2007

Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

32) Best Actress of 2007

Carice van Houten, Black Book

33) Best Director of 2007

Andrew Dominik

34) Best Screenplay of 2007

No Country for Old Men

35) Favorite single movie moment of 2007

Jason Schwartzman showing Natalie Portman the view from his suite in the Hotel Chevalier. It touched a nerve more deeply than any moment this year.

36) What’s your wish/hope for the movies in 2008?

For the happy surprises. The other day I saw Sweeney Todd, a movie I wasn't really dying to see, and I loved it - there's no better feeling than that. 2007 was a year of one movie after another exceeding my expectations; let's hope it's the start of something.

Friday Title Card #39

The Trim Bin #65

- Between the badass Drew Struzan poster above (please don't suck please don't suck please don't suck...) and this trailer (which, clearly, will not suck), 2008 looks to be 1989 all over again. But without the New Kids on the Block, so, y'know, better.

- Speaking of blockbusters, Vol. 1, No. 3 of the International Journal of Zizek Studies, titled "Zizek and Cinema," focuses on the Slovenian philosopher's film writing. It's must-read stuff, particuarly if this is your introduction to Zizek.

- I saw the terrific, underrated Two-Lane Blacktop for the first time, so it was a pleasure to find Kim Morgan's ode to the film waiting for me (she's right - it's a seriously sexy movie).

- I thought I was the only one!

- An interesting discussion is forming over at SLIFR with the debut of Andrew Blackwood's short film Slap, a film that has invited both praise and scorn. Alex Jackson hated it so much that he posted his own film over at the Film Freak Central blog, though Hieronymous Bosch's HECK shares more spiritual DNA with Slap than Mr. Jackson would probably care to admit. But as for the question "Who's more pretentious?," the answer is me.

- Happy holidays!

What business is it of yours where I'm from, friendo?

First, about the coin toss. Nearly every review of No Country for Old Men has discussed the method of judgement preferred by the fearfully principled killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Barden) as symbolic of some ancient morality, or a comment on the absence of a greater intercessory figure. These things are both true, but the metaphysical reading also sidesteps the coin's literal role as currency - as Chigurh reminds a frightened gas station attendant, it's just another coin. That the moral and philosophical quandaries of Cormac McCarthy's novel hinge on a narrative driven by money makes it a natural fit for the Coens. Their America is one where commerce is the immobile reality behind status, identity, ethics, culture, nearly everything - a country run by powerful men barking orders from behind large desks, where both the decent and the corrupt imagine the American dream as a large sum of found money (or, at least, a rug that really ties the room together). The Coens perpetually return to their pithy, deadpan reminder that crime does not pay while teasing our desire to witness the attendant chaos; No Country for Old Men, their best film in a decade, is their most honest and mature exploration of this endless cycle of man's fall, perdition and rebirth - it's the Coens at their bleakest and most humane.

A western that romanticizes the genre's poetics even as it demolishes them, No Country for Old Men gives us as its progatonists three distinct masculine archetypes. There is Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), the stoic everyman who, stumbling upon a violent crime scene and two million dollars in cash, acts as most of us would. There is Chigurh, Moss' pursuer, a villian of elemental violence who cuts a bloody path towards his prey with a dogged, businesslike precision. And there is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a man of old-fashioned integrity devoted to a moral code and, ultimately, the mourning of that code's percieved passing. All three actors do excellent work here - Brolin is able to convey with a glance or quick aside his character's inner turmoil, Jones finds new insight in what is, for him, familiar territory (my friend Rory pointed out that Jones played basically the same character in Man of the House). But it's Bardem's implacable killer who sticks with you long after the film is over, his pale, crooked visage worthy of Conrad Veidt as he pronounces Moss' (and our) impending doom, sotto voce, at once monstrous and chillingly logical - he's one of the great screen villains.

As Moss barely evades his pursuers, the Coens stage the action with a subtle mastery of filmmaking craft that reminds how comedy and suspense require the same understanding of perfect timing. Small details - the crinkle of a discarded cellophane wrapper, a plume of smoke on the horizon - take on the same power as moments of unflinching violence. The cinematography by Roger Deakins gives the film's western landscapes a stark, mythic grandeur (Deakins also shot the similarly elegaic The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). The Coens excel at this sort of thing, which is why, when they suddenly abandon the story's genre's trapping, the effect is unforgivably jarring for many (a large portion of the audience I saw the film with visibly turned on the film in its last third). I think this effect is entirely intentional, both in the McCarthy book and in the film, forced to examine both our own complacent expectations and, by extension, our own assumptions about our relationship to a country that, impossibly, claims protection from entropy.

But while the film is extremely faithful to its source, in its telling there is a slight but important difference in its emotional impact. Upon finishing McCarthy's book, I was drained, depressed, persuaded of the author's message of constant hopelessness. While the film does not compromise on the story's unrelenting darkness, a sort of dialogue between McCarthy and the Coens' unsentimental yet basically amiable outlook emerges, reminding of Sartre's summary of our relationship to God (whether he doesn't exist or is merely hidden, we've got to take care of ourselves). Consider the fate of Moss' wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald, heartbreakingly sweet), whose defeat in the book becomes a uniquely cinematic pardon, an acknowledgment of her refusal to participate in any of the story's masculine games (another recurring message of the Coens: listen to your wife). And Bell's sad resignation, so final and definitive in the book, lingers here like an open question. It's in his admission of defeat against the tides of change that, paradoxically, renders him immortal - an old man sailing towards the artifice of eternity.

Friday Title Card #38

Expiation!

Of all the meat-and-potatoes journeymen Stephen King prefers to adapt his work, Frank Darabont is the best. His previous King adaptations were smart, well-crafted crowd-pleasers, even if they suffered from the sort of bloat (particularly with The Green Mile) that came with Darabont's religious fidelity to King's books. But The Mist owes less to those films than to the Darabont-scripted A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and The Blob, B-movies that never pandered to their core audience even as they delivered the required buckets of viscera. King's novella was originally written in the 80's, and Darabont's film (CGI aside) could have been released in that heyday of Fangoria-endorsed creature features. The Mist is brooding and merciless, and, for all its very contemporary thematic concerns, works best as a proudly old-fashioned "Boo!" movie.


A poster of The Thing visible early on in the studio of poster artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) indicates the film's biggest influence. Like Carpenter's film, The Mist is a Hawksian narrative that traps a cross-section of residents of a small Maine town in a grocery store enveloped in the titular weather activity. Darabont succeeds in mounting tension both with the threat of mysterious, Lovecraftian creatures hiding in the mist, waiting to attack and in the conflicts between people in the store over real and perceived class and cultural differences. This is familiar genre territory, but the cast, largely made up of veteran character actors, succeeds in creating a fresh variation on old themes. A particular standout is Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Carmody, a zealous evangelical Christian who uses the crowd's fear to preach her apocalyptic message. King is fond of these broad portraits of the devout, and a less skilled actor could have easily reduced Mrs. Carmody to a hammy, one-dimensional caricature. But Harden delivers her doomsaying prophecies with quiet certainty, making the characte more human, more recognizable and more disturbing (especially if you've met women like her).

The emphasis of human conflict at the forefront of the drama gives The Mist an unusual seriousness, and it's hard not to draw analogies between the faith vs. reason conflict in the film and our own cultural divide. If there's a flaw with the film, it's that Darabont stacks the deck too far in favor of the lefties - a moment of action by a pragmatic grocer (Toby Jones) late in the story invited applause from the audience that felt uncomfortably close to the bloodlust experienced by the characters. Luckily, the ending (taken straight from the Twilight Zone playbook) makes this more complicated, forcing us to question our own reponse to the horror the sudden, violent paradigm shift we're a part of. The final moments play like the dark side of The Shawshank Redemption, depicting loss of hope as the ultimate, irreversible horror. It's heavyhanded stuff, but it works.

If I'm forgiving of The Mist's flaws, it's because I can't remember feeling so pleasurably creeped out by a movie in a long time. King's greatest strength has always been his unsparing, treament of the gory details (matched only by Lovecraft), and one of the biggest failures of most films adapted from his work is that they keep the genre conventions but never get sick enough. The monsters here (designed by Berni Wrightson!) live up to the book - they're truly otherworldly beasts that have seemingly emerged straight from the characters' (and my) nightmares. In other words, they're mean, nasty and disgusting, just the way monsters should be. King once wrote that "If I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud." Darabont goes for the gross-out, and he should be proud.

Friday Title Card #37

Top 10: 80s Fantasy

Even with its newfangled three-dimensional gimmickry, Beowulf is a drag. A pair of wonderfully strange, kinky performances from Crispin Glover and Angelina Jolie aside, Robert Zemeckis' film is a leaden affair, bogged down by Zemeckis' misguided allegiance to motion capture. The CG is so consistently plastic-fantastic that Zemeckis sacrifices texture, scale and depth in favor of instantly-dated kitsch - by the end, all I wanted was to look at a real sky, real faces, perhaps even a real nipple (or two).

The sad thing is, the script by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary could have made a hell of a movie were it made in a leaner, more practical fashion - in Ireland, say, on overcast days, with actors knee-deep in mud, blood and viscera. My hypothetical version of Beowulf would probably make about twelve dollars, but it would have more integrity. This got me thinking about the 1980s, that wonderful period in fantasy filmmaking, when the success of Star Wars led studios to throw enormous amounts of money at lavish, tremendousy geeky epics. These films took place in meticulously designed fantasy worlds built at places with fantastic names like Shepperton and Pinewood. They were usually earnest and self-important, and sometimes completely laughable. But for every Yor: The Hunter From the Future, there were a wealth of sword-and-sorcery tales that captured the imagination of many a young geek (present company included, of course). They were tangible in a way that most fantasy films today are mostly synthetic, and the list below could double as a primer for any of today's indoor kids who think that The Chronicles of Narnia is as good as it gets. It's not their fault.

1. Excalibur A serious retelling of the Arthurian legend, filled with blood, breasts and mayhem, that succeeds in making an oft-repeated story feel stunningly immediate. John (Zardoz) Boorman's greatest strength and failure is his willingless to show us the ridiculous with a straight face; the result is that the sword in the stone, the lady in the lake and other cliches that had already been brutalized by Monty Python suddenly felt relevant and even knowingly funny without falling into self-parody (largely thanks to Nicol Williamson's wry Merlin). It's a beautiful film, too, bathed in shadows and driven by Orff long before Carmina Burana became an action-movie cliche.

2. The Dark Crystal I'm only half-joking when I tell people that this movie is closer than any religion to my belief system. Directors Jim Henson and Frank Oz, along with artist Brian Froud, succeed in creating a world as fully realized as George Lucas', complete with a more developed philosophy - that it stars Muppets is all the more remarkable. Also, this movie scares the bejesus out of my wife.

3. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen Criticized unfairly for its massive budget and dumped upon its release, Terry Gilliam's lavish tall tale transported me and many other small children who discovered it, unheralded, on video or cable (it's amazing to me how many of my friends can extensively quote an unqualified flop). The Baron's fabrications and delusions become the basis for a wildly ambitious farce that literally journeys to the farthest reaches of heaven and earth. Plus, Gilliam gives Robin Williams a role (king of the moon) that he cannot possibly overact.

4. The Neverending Story Revisiting this as an adult, I was shocked at how dark it really is. The villian is nothingness, the conflict a race against the death of imagination in the face of childhood's end. It's a must-see for any kid who'd prefer to hide in a book than put away childish things. Fantasia, the film's imaginary world, retains its immersive beauty even as the effects date, demonstrating that photorealism is not nearly as important as artistry. Plus, Falcor is soooo cool.

5. The Princess Bride A satire of sorts, but one that retains an affection for the stories (and movies) it pokes fun at. Plus, no list of sword-and-sorcery movies is complete without one of the very best swordfights in cinema (isn't it weird that Mandy Patinkin was once briefly cool?)



6. Conan the Barbarian An unapologetic display of pure phallic might directed by the inspiration for John Goodman's character in The Big Lebowski (indeed, I imagine that Walter Sobchak's wet dreams are something like this). The Terminator is the better movie, but Arnold was never more Arnold than he is here. The tits are ripe, the decapitations are plentiful, Thulsa Doom is present and accounted for - few films make total idiocy feel so good. Also, Ron Cobb rules!


7. Labyrinth A little more kid-oriented than The Dark Crystal. But The Dark Crystal didn't have a spandex-clad, Goblin-ruling David Bowie (thus began my latency period).



8. Legend Strictly the Jerry Goldsmith-scored director's cut, not the choppy, incoherent theatrical version (though that Tangerine Dream score is pretty boss). Ridley Scott creates another world as fully realized as Blade Runner's future. It's embarassingly earnest at points, but is ultimately unforgettable thanks to Tim Curry's terrifying, sexy performance as Darkness (aided by Rob Bottin's excellent makeup work).


9. Dragonslayer The most direct ancestor of Beowulf, one that more enthusiastically embraces its unapologetic paganism. Made during Disney's attempt to change its kiddie-movie image, it's at points shockingly dark and gory - the baby dragons munching on a virgin is not only nightmare territory for youngsters, it also raises the stakes of the young hero's quest immeasurably. Deeply derivative of Star Wars, but in a good way.



10. Fire and Ice Frank Frazetta is the ultimate geek, and his jaw-droppingly insane illustrations come to life thanks to Ralph Bakshi's rotoscoping (a predecessor of mo-cap). And while the hand-drawn animation is often crude, particuarly compared to its 2007 incarnation, it has one thing that Zemeckis' film doesn't: balls.

Friday Title Card #36

Sorry, Morgan Freeman, I already ate.

Ah, synchronicity: five minutes after I stumbled upon the trailer for 21, I got a phone call asking if I wanted to do background work on this. I spent most of the day in Boston Common with Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken and William H. Macy (sporting an awesome Harry Caul-esque mustache). I even managed to make Morgan Freeman laugh (after staring coldly at me for several uncomfortable seconds) when he asked if he could have some of my imaginary prop take-out. With four or five different productions in Boston this fall and winter, it appears that all the talk about the city as a new filmmaking hub may be more than just fleeting hype. Time will tell, but right now, it feels great to be a film geek in New England.

As for 21, judging by the trailer, it looks like a decent teen flick, certainly more promising that Robert Luketic's previous output. As I wrote before, he really does know how to run a set, so I'm rooting for him to improve. There are two scenes I worked on that appear briefly at :30 and 2:15, but the emphasis (wisely from a marketing perspective) is on Vegas, sex and money over MIT and math. There are a few warning signs, to be fair - I don't think being better than average at addition is proof of mathematical genius, and the Doors cue is a stale choice. No matter what, though, I can say with absolute certainty that this is going to be way better than The Game Plan.

Gratuitous Nudity #6

Ewan McGregor, Velvet Goldmine (1998)

We rollin'!

A few weekends back, my wife and I decided to catch up on some of the movies that, in the months before and after the birth of our daughter, weren't worth the trip to the multiplex. After a quick trip to the local Redbox, we sat through three of the worst films of the year. Oddly enough, they were mostly bad in the same way - all three were self-important, toothless, and derivative of better films from the 1990s. As the sidebar to your right indicates, 2007 is shaping up to be a memorable year, with many very good films thus far (including a few masterpieces), and several more promising titles coming before the new year. I look forward to discussing them soon; but first, the schmutz.

Easily the worst of the bunch (and the only one we were certain would suck) is The Number 23, Joel Schumacher's feeble attempt to be David Lynch. Screeenwriter Fernley Phillips' steals shamelessly from Lynch's infinitely superior Lost Highway - not only do both movies feature a murderous saxophonist, they both revolve around actors portraying characters with seemingly dual identities. Any Lynchian ambiguity is rendered thuddingly literal with the device of the titular novel, given to dogcatcher Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) by his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen, wasted yet again). Sparrow is quickly wrapped up in the story of a detective (also Carrey) investigating the mystery of a number that has driven people mad with its synchronicities - as he gets deeper into the book, it appears that the story is meant to tell him something about his own life. None of this makes any sense, of course - Sparrow's search for the truth involves his family, his friends and Bud Cort before arriving at a thuddingly obvious conclusion.

Phillips and Schumacher emulate the Lynchian weirdness while abandoning the ambiguity and layered meanings that make Lynch's works so rich and emotionally cohesive even as his narratives become increasingly less representational. Strung together by its useless numerological conceit (π this is not), it's tabloid filmmaking that could only be enjoyed by audiences who prefer bullshit speculation to real inquiry into the nature of things (this is perhaps the line that divides good mysteries from lousy ones). Worse still is the idiotic, morally repugnant ending, one that cynically discards the questons it has attempted to raise in favor of a pat resoultion for its protagonist that defies all understanding of human nature. The Number 23 is so bad that it's alien, confirming that Joel Schumacher's films have become must-sees in that they just keep getting worse (he's become Uwe Boll with better lighting). And its biggest mystery is how Jim Carrey, a star who, with the right director, can do great, multilayered work, could have possibly thought this movie was the right departure from his comedic work. Did it even occur to him that he's playing a pet detective again? Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, indeed.

Not nearly as awful - just mediocre and boring - is Vacancy, a siege thriller that would have fit comfortably among the early-90's cycle of Silence of the Lambs ripoffs. The premise is faithful to the trailer, as a young married couple (Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale) recovering from the loss of a child check into a seedy roadside motel where they soon find themselves the prey of the A/V-savvy manager (Frank Whaley) and a gang of knife-wielding maniacs. The premise is enough for an effective, sophisticated thriller built around very prescient fears (surveillance, torture) or a stylish, unapologetically grimy slasher in the vein of High Tension; unfortunately, it's neither. While the trailer promised suspense, we are only given a series of blunt, obvious shocks as Vacancy becomes a hilarious example of Danny DeVito's aspiring writer's plot summary in Throw Momma From the Train ("one guy kills the other guy"). Not so bad if this film were a direct-to-video quickie, but director Nimrod Attal gives the film a horrible air of self-importance - even the credits are pretentious. With no character development to latch onto, we can only focus on the film's condescending attitude towards rural life (even I Spit on Your Grave was more honest) and its unlikable yuppie protagonists. Beckisale looks bored and Wilson looks uncomfortable; only Frank Whaley plays the material at the right pitch, acknowledging the film as the high-toned junk that it is.

Neither The Number 23 nor Vacancy made much of a dent at the box office; Transformers, on the other hand, is one of the highest-grossing movies of the year, proof that one can never underestimate the unstoppable combination of nostalgia and hipster detachment. The sudden acceptance of Michael Bay now that he's bracketing his misanthropic cock cheese in so-ironic quotation marks (one extra: "This is way cooler than Armageddon!") is definitive proof of my generation's soul-killing apathy. The script is a straight ripoff of the better and funnier Small Soldiers, minus the shrewd social commentary, and I spent most of the movie imagining how kickass a Joe Dante Transformers would have been. Young Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBouf, the biggest question mark of Indy 4) buys a car that is actually a robot from space, and the good robots fight bad robots while a lot of other stuff happens and Witwicky tries to titfuck a witless, dead-eyed trout (Megan Fox). It doesn't matter. It's hateful, materialistic crap, keeping the sales-pitch cynicism of the original cartoon minus the endearing kitsch. True, the writers try to bracket everything in wink-wink sarcasm, making this crap that knows it is crap. The effects are flawless but pointless, as Transformers is never remotely fun . Try to defend it as meant for kids and I'll ask you to recall the indefensible dreck we liked as kids; try to defend it as shut-your-brain-off fodder and I'll ask why I should shut my brain off; defend it at all and I'll remind you of the scene where a robot pisses on Barton Fink. The Number 23 and Vacancy are bad, but Transformers is actually dangerous, its massive success paving the way for another decade of Bay's Teutonic brand of anti-art. The biggest question, then, is who Michael Bay hates more - us or himself.

Friday Title Card #35

The Trim Bin #64

- A great YouTube find: Track 29, a 1988 thriller (for lack of a better term) directed by Nicolas Roeg, written by Dennis Potter and starring Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman and Christopher Lloyd. Long out-of-print in any format in the US, it's a strange, excessive film that, while far from perfect, deserves a look. Due to the ephemeral nature of YouTube, I recommend checking it out before it's gone.

- Ah, the Chaw. He's an angry, angry man, but when he sees something he likes, there's no better champion of cinema. For evidence of this, see his stunning review of American Gangster, I'm Not There and No Country For Old Men. An excerpt:

"I used to like to condense Modernism as the search for God that culminates in the discovery that God is a series of broken monuments and chaos and that Post-Modernism was therefore the gradual acceptance of God as a manufactured construct. Facile, but good in a pinch; apply it to Todd Haynes' fascinating I'm Not There and suddenly there's the thought that the film is an autopsy of film-as-history to this moment--an analysis of how the moving image has become in this century the only real way we access history as a people, as well as of how the image, eternally malleable within the image-maker, has now become malleable within a mainframe."

- What exactly is There Will Be Blood? Each trailer has improved on the last - the newest suggests a period piece that is equal parts western and horror film. It looks weird, dark as hell, and the last thing I expected from P.T. Anderson after the beautifully daffy Punch-Drunk Love. The early reviews have been rapturous, and if the movie lives up to this trailer (which I've been watching at least once a day), then Anderson may have outdone himself.

- I've been sort of busy these past few weeks, so I had to let a few fascinating blog-a-thons pass me by. Between the Queer Film Blog-a-Thon and the Kurosawa Blog-a-Thon, you should have plenty of reading material for the long weekend.

- Over at The House Next Door, Dan Callahan writes about Bibi Andersson's appearance at a screening of Persona at BAM. Best detail: Andersson's admission that she filmed her character's stunning confessional monologue while half-cocked.

- Happy Thanksgiving.

Friday Title Card #33