Scariest Characters in Cinema #18 - Francis Dolarhyde

A common trait of the performances on this list is a stillness, a confident quietness that underlines the villain's sinister authority. This is definitely true of Tom Noonan's performance as Francis Dolarhyde in Manhunter, Michael Mann's adaptation of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon (the first and still the best of Harris' books featuring Hannibal Lecter). From his introduction to a captive soon-to-be-victim ("Well, here I am."), Noonan dominates the frame, both thanks to his large, imposing figure and the calm, methodical nature he uses to suggest the character's icy remove from humanity. Even when Dolarhyde is absent from the screen during FBI profiler Will Graham's (William Peterson) search for the man known as the "Tooth Fairy" by his pursuers because of the bite marks he has left on his victims (two families thus far), we feel his presence due to the elusive quality he brings to the character.

While films and TV shows often try to understand the mind of a killer - TV's "Dexter," for instance, has provided us with the title character's inner monologue for six seasons - and Harris provides a good deal of Dolarhyde's background in the book, Mann chooses to pare our understanding of the character down to the essentials. We know Dolarhyde has a corrected cleft palate, and can infer how this may have contributed to his emotional detachment from others. And we know, thanks to his stylish apartment, that for a serial killer he has outstanding taste in interior decoration (this says less about him being a serial killer than it does about him being a character in a Michael Mann movie). Other than that, he's an unknowable force to us, a mysterious Other that may well be the embodiment of the William Blake painting "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in The Sun," which Dolarhyde idolizes and emulates - the devil as a creature of perfect strength and purpose. When Dolarhyde flirts with an actual relationship with Reba (Joan Allen), a blind co-worker, Noonan does an amazing job with such a verbally inexpressive character, suggesting Dolarhyde's desire to connect but also the constant rage he can't suppress. He's reminiscent of Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, isolated in his monstrousness.

He's the perfect counterpoint for Graham, who has warily left retirement to find Dolarhyde, disturbed by his uncanny ability to think like a monster. And also by Lecter (Brian Cox), who was caught by Graham and who, in Mann's film, is not the charismatic, darkly funny Lecter played by Anthony Hopkins; here, he's a reptile in a vivarium, and his contempt for all humankind (not just the rude and distasteful) is palpable. The good and bad guys share a brilliant understanding of their work process and a greater difficulty relating to others. This is a common theme in Mann's work, and it is evident in the methodical distance of Mann's filmmaking style (I used to regard this as a problem, now I see it as honest self-reflection on the director's part). While the 2002 film Red Dragon boasts an excellent cast, it's a hamhanded, clumsily staged film that never comes close to Manhunter's visual brilliance and thematic depth (director Brett Ratner was dismissive of Mann in interviews when the movie was released, though a couple of shots are lifted directly from the earlier film). And Noonan has played many other memorably creepy characters over the years, including (appropriately) Frankenstein's monster in the following year's The Monster Squad, the mysterious Mr. Ullman in The House of the Devil and, hilariously, Caden Cotard's lifelong stalker and imitator Sammy Barnathan in Synecdoche, New York. And thanks to Noonan and Mann, "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" has never been the same.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #19 - The Pale Man

Of all the amazing monsters and strange creatures born from the imagination of Guillermo del Toro, the Pale Man is the most frightening. Although Pan's Labyrinth is more of a dark fantasy than a horror film, we meet del Toro's scariest creation during 12-year-old Ofelia's quest to complete three tasks the titular faun has assigned her to prove she is the reincarnation of the princess of the underworld. She is sent to retrieve a dagger from the lair of the Pale Man, a tall, gaunt figure with drooping white skin, sharp teeth, and clawlike fingers. Most disturbing are his eyeless, featureless face and the eyes that are set, instead, in the palms of his hands. When Ofelia disregards one of the faun's instructions and plucks a grape from the Pale Man's banquet spread, he gets pretty pissed about it. He wakes up, bites the heads off two fairies who were helping Ofelia and stalks her down the long hallway to her exit; Ofelia barely escapes.

The Pale Man's appearance only takes up about five minutes of running time, but he's unforgettable. On one level, he's a great metaphor for the decadence of fascist Spain during WWII, the movie's setting. On the other hand, he works because HE BITES THE HEADS OFF OF FAIRIES, he has a horrible, unnatural howl and, when he raises his hands to his face to see, the image has a perfectly uncanny quality. He's like a Fuseli painting brought to life, the horribly perfect end result of some strange alternate thread of evolution. And he's not going to share his grapes; he's saving them for later.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #20 - Eli

Once I referred to the movie Let the Right One In as a sweet movie, and the person I was talking to said, "I wouldn't say it was sweet." Well, I said sweet and I meant it - Let the Right One In captures in aching detail the feeling of being a weird, lonely kid who, for the first time, thinks he's found someone who understands him. Based on the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist and set in a small town in 1980s Sweden, the film is about 12-year-old Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), who secretly acts out violent revenge fantasies against the schoolyard bullies who are cruel to him in the way that only kids can be. Oskar begins a tentative friendship with Eli (Lina Leandersson), a mysterious girl who lives in his apartment building, only comes out at night and isn't bothered by standing barefoot in the snow. Eli at first tells Oskar they cannot be friends, but eventually they start to form a peculiar sort of bond. She encourages Oskar to stand up for himself, and he helps her to have more fun being a kid. Which she's not, of course - she's a vampire who feeds on the locals, she's hundreds of years old and, as she informs Oskar, she's not even really a girl. None of this matters in the long run to Oskar, of course. Love is blind, particularly first love.

Eli is a sympathetic character, but she's also very monstrous and frightening. While we mostly see her as a beautiful young girl, director Tomas Alfredson perfectly times brief glimpses of the monster inside Eli. Her voice and face distort themselves subtly, only for moments, and we're reminded that Eli is primarily driven by her insatiable hunger. In Eli's human helper, a sad-eyed man in his fifties named Hakan (Per Ragnar), we are given ominous hints of what will happen to Oskar if he sticks with Eli. It's difficult to determine how much Eli is depending on Oskar to survive and how much she truly cares for him, but their relationship is a perfect metaphor for young love as a result - they boy's getting used, and he loves her for it. The title, taken from a Morrissey song, refers to the rule that vampires need to be invited into your home, and it's also an important word of caution to anyone falling in love. Besides, Eli is there for Oskar when it matters (those of you who have seen the movie know exactly what scene I'm thinking of). Matt Reeves' remake Let Me In is worthy transplant of the original to the American idiom, with strong performances and a stunning sequence set to Blue Oyster Cult. But Alfredson's original is one of the best films of the past decade, a movie that becomes deeper, more moving and more chilling every time I see it.

Also, it's like a thousand times better than Twilight.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #21 - The Tall Man

Phantasm is one of the best examples of the virtues of independent filmmaking, particularly with genre films. It involves a scary morgue, killer dwarves, interdimensional travel, Dune references and smooth jams - somehow, all of these strange elements, which would have never survived the development process of the studio system, work together beautifully. Its many endearing idiosyncrasies feel like they have sprung whole from the mind of writer/director Don Coscarelli, who began with the goal of scaring the pants off audiences and, in the process, created one of the most unique ongoing mythologies in horror cinema. Even when the Phantasm sequels become a bit too silly (the shotgun-wielding 10-year-old in Phantasm III, for instance) they're never generic retreads; each film legitimately continues and expands the universe developed in the first film. They're so stubbornly rooted in 1979, like the movie adaptation of the greatest stoner rock album cover ever, that I can't help but kind of love them.

Phantasm is best known, of course, for two things - the deadly flying silver spheres that deliver impromptu lobotomies to their victims and Angus Scrimm as the Tall Man, the mysterious mortician that has diabolical plans involving the aformentioned killer dwarves and parallel universes. The 6'4" Scrimm wore platform shoes to further emphasize the Tall Man's imposing figure; his disproportionate size, especially in contrast to the first film's adolescent protagonist (A. Michael Baldwin) emphasizes the way Coscarelli cleverly plays on children's fear of authority figures (Phantasm is the perfect horror movie for 10-year-olds). It's a nearly dialogue free-performance, and Scrimm's is a physical performance worthy of Max Schreck. He stalks through Phantasm's surreal universe like he owns the place - which, actually, he sort of does.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #22 - Asami Yamazaki

I debated whether or not to include Audition on this list. It's a film I don't have a lot of affection for, one of a particular brand of horror films that have cropped up over the last ten or so years that emphasize pain and degradation over imagination and atmosphere. The common categorization of "torture porn" isn't totally accurate, as some of the films that could be called torture porn (especially Eli Roth's Hostel movies) do possess a certain twisted humor and affection for the genre. It's more the breed of misanthropic horror that is only about endurance, proving to your friends how much disturbing shit you can take (sort of the cinematic equivalent of Warheads). It's worse when horror fans attempt to defend these movies on a subtextual level - while horror is often rich with social commentary, in these films it feels like a pretense to justify an empty experience.

I have no doubt that, in Audition, director Takashi Miike meant for the torture middle-aged widow Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) endures at the hands of the mysterious, sadistic Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), to be some form of comeuppance for his earlier objectification of the woman in his search for a new wife. But I think it's also fair to say that Shigeharu's punishment far outweighs his crime, which makes it hard to take Audition seriously as a commentary on gender politics. While it's suggested that Asami may be damaged by traumatic experiences in her youth, none of it really explains where the movie ends up. She's just a crazy bitch - I won't accuse Miike of flat-out misogyny, but if he is truly concerned about sexism in contemporary Japan, Audition is a weird way to show it.

On the other hand, I can't deny that it's a very frightening, effective movie. The last 20 minutes are almost impossible to watch, at one point teasing us with the possibility of an exit before plunging us back into the nightmare. Miike, whose other films mostly seem like the work of a hyperactive, antisocial 9-year-old scribbling grotesque revenge fantasies in his Trapper Keeper, demonstrates a surprising mastery of sustained tension here. I admire the banality of the first 30 minutes, gradually developing a sense that something is deeply wrong, until the brilliant "bag scene." Shiina is beautiful, which makes for a disturbing contrast with her sadism - I still get chills when I think of her softly chanting "kiri kiri kiri" (a Japanese onomatopoeia for "pain"). And she's creepiest at the very end, after so much ugliness, as she clearly still adores poor Shigeharu. Ain't love grand?

Scariest Characters in Cinema #23 - John Doe

The coolest thing Kevin Spacey has ever done - 15-year-old spoiler alert! - was to insist that he be uncredited in the (amazing) opening titles of Seven and kept out of the trailers and marketing materials. As John Doe, the serial killer with a Biblical agenda that Detectives Mills and Somerset (Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) are hunting, Spacey is barely seen or heard for the first three-quarters of the movie. When he enters the movie, covered in blood and calmly introducing himself to his pursuers ("Detectiiiive!"), it serves as much more than a "Hey, that's Kevin Spacey!" moment. For most of the movie we've seen the evidence of his grisly mission to cleanse his city of sinners, details of his brilliant, exacting and methodical nature (this is also our proper introduction to director David Fincher's flair for darkness [thematic and literal] and procedure-oriented drama). When he introduces himself to Mills and Somerset, our attention shifts from the grisly investigation to dread at how John Doe's surrender fits into his plan.

Much of the film is set up as a series of Socratic dialogues between Mills, who believes in his ability to do good in the world, and his older, more jaded partner, who believes that the world is beyond helping. When John Doe, in the back of a squad car on the way to uncover his final victims (claims) joins the conversation, he's terrifying because he clearly believes his murders are making the world a better place - he's the dark reflection of Somerset's cynicism and Mills' self-righteousness. For a murderous psychopath, he's pretty perceptive. Spacey is soft-spoken and centered (I love his delivery, when Somerset discovers a dead dog, of the line "I didn't do that"), and as he turns the tables on the detectives in horrible fashion, his obvious pleasure at the plan he's executed not only provokes Mills' wrath but ours too. The still-shocking ending (which Brad Pitt insisted in his contract not be changed by the studio) continues to disturb not just because of what's in the box but because of what it tells us about how we act upon our own morality. I'd do exactly what Mills does, and I'm not entirely comfortable with that knowledge, which is exactly as John Doe would want it.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #24 - Mystery Man

While the films of David Lynch mostly defy genre classification, they're often as unnerving as any horror film. And Lynch's dark imagination has given us many memorable monsters - Frank Booth, Henry Spencer's baby, the monster behind Winky's - that seem as if they emerged straight from his and our collective unconscious. The scariest is the Robert Blake as the "mystery man" (as he is credited) who approaches Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) at a party in Lost Highway and informs him they've met before. Blake serves as the creepy center of one of Lynch's most elusive films, present in both storylines/universes and serving as - what? A conscience? A manifestation of Fred/auto mechanic Pete Dayton's guilt? The devil? I can't definitively put a word to what the mystery man is, which - as is often the case with Lynch's films and characters - makes him even more disturbing. We may not be able to diagram an explanation for everything that happens in Lost Highway with any certainty, but the feeling that the film is proceeding with a self-contained logic controlled by forces beyond our understanding - and the mystery man is certainly one of these - is what makes it such a disconcerting experience.

Beyond that, the mystery man is creepy because of his Kabuki makeup and lack of eyebrows, and because of Robert Blake's gravelly laugh, and because he might be at your house right now (call him). And while there's no doubt that the real-life murder of Blake's wife makes the character even more disturbing in retrospect, he's still creepy as hell even if one isn't aware of the real-life parallel between Blake and Fred Madison. There's a moment when the mystery man stalks through Lynchian darkness as he approaches Fred, camera in hand. With his other, he reaches towards Fred, laughing. Even though I know he won't touch Fred, it never fails to make me flinch.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #25 - Count Orlok

Of all the many iconic cinematic incarnations of Dracula, from Bela Lugosi to Christopher Lee to Gary Oldman, the best and most frightening remains the original, unauthorized version, Count Orlok (Max Schreck). In F.W. Murnau's silent classic Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (a Symphony of Terror), Schreck portrays the count not as a seductive aristocrat but as a ravenous animal. With his unnaturally pale skin, clawlike hands and rodentlike teeth, he's a pitiful but nevertheless frightening creature motivated only by his hunger. The look of the character remains iconic, but the movie also remains effective 90 years later due to Schreck's eerie screen presence - Orlok's unnatural stillness, stooped posture, weirdly fluid movement and his joyless, purposeful expression as he feeds on humans make for a believably cursed and insatiable monster.

In Werner Herzog's 1979 remake of the film, Klaus Kinski gives Orlok a sort of poetic loneliness that is very affecting, and Herzog's film is in many ways the better one. And Willem Dafoe's Schreck-as-Orlok performance in the pseudo-making-of film Shadow of the Vampire is a hoot. But it remains Schreck, lurking in the corridors of his castle of the Carpathian mountains, that lingers most strongly in our memory. Aided by Murnau's masterful interplay of light and shadow, Schreck's performance is one of the key foundations for every movie monster that followed.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #26 - Reverend Harry Powell

I never knew before reading up on The Night of the Hunter today that the book's author Davis Grub was inspired by Harry Powers, a real-life serial killer who was hanged in 1932 for the murders of two women and three children. Powers was suspected of killing up to fifty other women; of his murders, he is reported to have said, "It beat any cat house I was ever in." Powers' fictional counterpart, the Reverend Harry Powell, is just as cold-blooded. A predator who uses religion to conceal his evil nature, Powell marries, then kills the widow of a recently executed robber (Shelly Winters) in order to get closer to the woman's two kids, John and Pearl (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce), believing they know where their dad hid his loot. In the dreamlike South of Charles Laughton's film (the only one he ever directed), Powell is a snake in the grass, a devil worthy of Milton, his charm and eloquence turning on a dime into terrifying cruelty.

Mitchum is the perfect choice for Harry Powell; as the story goes, Laughton explained the character to Mitchum as "a diabolical shit," and Mitchum responded "Present!" As with his Max Cady in the original Cape Fear, Mitchum is suave, strong and able to insinuate through the force of his presence that he is capable of terrible things. He's the perfect wolf in sheep's clothing, as he's described by Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), an elderly women who runs a home for orphaned and abandoned children and provides sanctuary for John and Pearl. Cooper is the light to Powell's darkness in a confrontation of Biblical proportions, and it's interesting that once Powell is drawn into the light of Cooper's home, he seems less frightening, almost ridiculous. That said, I've never quite bought the cozy Christmastime denouement and Gish's monologue about the strength of the innocents. It's hard to believe that Powell is truly vanquished, that the wolf in sheep's clothing isn't merely waiting for a new disguise.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #27 - Severen

Any member of the family of bloodsucking rebels from Near Dark could have just as easily occupied this space. It's a movie that grew on me over the years, and as good as The Hurt Locker was, I still think this is Kathryn Bigelow's best movie. A sort of romantic vampire western, Near Dark has stood the test of time thanks to its stunning atmosphere and a strong ensemble that, guided by Bigelow's understated directorial hand, is at once fearsome, believable and totally badass. Lance Henriksen as grizzled paterfamilias Jesse, Jeanette Goldstein as matriarch Diamondback and Joshua Miller as the perpetually childlike Homer are all spooky and effective in different ways.

But it's always Severen that I think of the most when I think of Near Dark. Bill Paxton plays the hotheaded member of the family with a cocky swagger, a perpetual shit-eating grin and an all-around don't-give-a-fuck attitude. Severen is afraid of nothing and capable of anything, a self-assured predator, unfazed even when he's missing half his face. In an age of moody, self-pitying vampires who are more interested in romancing teenage waifs in the Pacific Northwest than in feasting on the living, it's kind of refreshing to watch a vampire who enjoys being a vampire as much as Severen does. And when all hell breaks loose in the film's classic barroom slaughter scene, Severen stays cool, delivering an absolutely perfect reading of the line "Finger lickin' good!" For this and so many other reasons, Bill Paxton has definitely earned a pinball machine made in his honor.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #28 - Decker

One of three movies on this list based on the work of Clive Barker, Nightbreed is about a young man named Boone (Craig Sheffer) who (after being framed for murder) discovers Midian, an underground city populated by an eclectic community of monsters and supernatural beings. Directed by Barker and based on his excellent novel Cabal, Nightbreed was famously meddled with by its producers, and the movie definitely feels compromised (a two-and-a-half-hour cut was screened at a Horrorhound Weekend in Indianapolis last year). Yet it retains the strength of Barker's imagination and feels like a precursor to the films of Guillermo del Toro - as with many of del Toro's films, Nightbreed has a lot of sympathy for its monsters.

It's the human characters that are truly monstrous, particularly Dr. Phillip Decker (David Cronenberg), Boone's therapist, who frames Boone for the murders that he, in fact, committed. Casting Cronenberg as a murderous sociopath was a brilliant choice; the coolly rational director is different from most horror filmmakers in that he has little interest in the supernatural. No characters from Cronenberg movies appear on this list, because the horrors in his movies are rarely personified - the monsters in a Cronenberg film are things like disease, insanity and death. Cronenberg's soft-spoken, well-mannered presence is the perfect exterior for a character who uses reason to conceal unspeakable evil. And Decker's mask, faceless except for button eyes and a zipper mouth, never fails to creep me out.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #29 - ? (red hood)

It's hard to explain the character pictured (barely) in this slide without spoiling everything that makes Don't Look Now such a haunting and memorable film. The film is about John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie), a married couple staying in Venice following the accidental death of their young daughter Christine. They meet a blind woman (Hilary Mason) who claims to be clairvoyant and calmly informs Laura that she can see Christine. The subtle accumulation of visual clues and juxtapositions director Nicolas Roeg, in his signature fragmented editing style, uses to keep us off-balance for most of the film come together with devastating clarity when this character appears.

I first saw Don't Look Now eight years ago at the Harvard Film Archives. I was completely absorbed by the film - the way Venice is at once beautiful and threatening, the tender and realistic portrait of a marriage, the frankness of the sex scene (which was uncommon even 30 years later), and the escalating sense of dread that makes sense when this character turns and...it would be wrong to say anything else. If you've never seen Don't Look Now, check it out.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #30 - Samara Morgan

A horror movie doesn't need to be great cinema to be effective. The Ring, the Gore Verbinski-directed remake of Hideo Nakata's Ringu, suffers from gaping plot holes and characters who make very annoying decisions. And yet it works, thanks to its ominous atmosphere, surreal imagery and the monster at the heart of the story, a dead 10-year-old girl named Samara Morgan (Daveigh Chase). Samara's spectral projections are captured on videotape by some dudes, carrying a terrible curse that the ghost notifies the cursed about via telephone. Wackiness ensues.

You know the premise, and it's a fairly silly one, but one which Ringu made believably eerie. Nakata's film is probably the better one, but I must admit that it's the remake that gives me the willies. I love the chilling moment when Naomi Watts' clairvoyant, frustratingly cryptic son (David Dorfman) asks, "Why did you help her?" And, thanks to Rick Baker's outstanding effects work, Verbinski's attention to details like the water seeping menacingly from a TV and actor Martin Henderson's convincingly terrified performance, Samara's entrance remains one of horror cinema's most memorably creepy payoffs.

Scariest Characters in Cinema #31 - Hans Beckert

Fritz Lang's M is a masterpiece of suggestion. A story about a manhunt for a child murderer, Lang's film never shows us any details of the murders. Instead, haunting symbolic images - a stray ball, a balloon caught between telephone lines - leave us to imagine the worst. And we don't get a full look at killer Hans Beckert until halfway through the movie - his threatening presence as he stalks his prey is intimated by shadows, glimpses of a shoulder and his creepy, persistent whistling of Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King." Creating as much menace through his absence from the frame as with his presence, Beckert is a very unsettling cinematic phantom that proves there's truth to the cliche that what we don't see can be as frightening as what we do see.

Much of M is focused on the process of police, civilians and the criminal underground working to catch the killer, and today's procedural dramas, from Zodiac to the many CSIs and Law and Orders, owe a debt to Lang. When the vigilante mob catches up to Beckert, his mock trial presents a cynical view of our collective thirst for vengeance. As M was made during the rise of Nazi Germany (Lang would flee for France a few years later before ending up in Hollywood), the film's distrust of mob mentality is hardly surprising. As Beckert pleads his case to his "court," claiming that he cannot change his nature, the character becomes more human and more frightening for his pathetic submission to his terrible nature.

Peter Lorre is fantastic as Beckert; the childlike eyes and high-pitched voice that would serve him well in films like Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon and, later, Roger Corman's Poe adaptations are used to chilling effect here. When his gaze is fixed on a child, Lorre is able to communicate volumes about the monster beneath his deceptively benign surface and the unspeakable urges that drive him. And though Grieg has become a huge cliche in horror movie trailers, it has never been as effective.

Rise of the Transforming Penguins: Part II - What I Saw On My Summer Vacation

This summer went by far too quickly. That isn't a complaint; actually, it was the best summer I can remember. After a hectic couple of years, I was finally able to relax and have a lot of fun with my family. This is why I missed writing more about summer movies as they were released; of course, it didn't help that the movies themselves were such a blur. Both the good and bad movies arrived, received a ton of press, and were on their way to the Wal-Mart bargain bin in a few weeks, replaced by the next big thing. Even the record-breaking final Harry Potter movie was gone from most of the local multiplexes by Labor Day. What little there was to say about the summer blockbusters had already been said many times over by the time I got a chance to see them. Now that things have slowed down and before the fall movie season kicks into high gear, I'll try to recap my impressions of the summer.

In May, my girlfriend Jen and I ventured to the Milford Drive-In for the one-two sucker punch of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Thor. On Stranger Tides was the worst kind of blockbuster sequel, a completely soulless machine desperately trying to keep alive a series that ran out of interesting ideas two movies ago. The previous sequels were equally pointless, but they were at least mildly interesting thanks to director Gore Verbinski's knack for appropriately epic images and grandiose setpieces. Thanks to Oscar-nominated hack Rob Marshall, On Stranger Tides looks and feels like a half-assed TV show, just like his other movies (it's stunning that this guy is a huge Bob Fosse fan). The plot is instantly forgettable and the "humor" rests entirely on the mistaken notion that Johnny Depp is inherently hilarious as Captain Jack Sparrow - in order for the character to work, he needs a real movie to subvert, not a 140-minute sketch designed to worship him. It was painful that On Stranger Tides made a billion dollars, and worse that so many of my friends gave it a pass solely because of their affection for Depp. Stop being enablers, guys.

Thor wasn't nearly as bad, but I was sort of baffled about its glowing reviews. It's half epic CGI-loaded kitschfest - Flash Gordon without the irony - and half fish-out-of-water comedy that worked better in Star Trek IV. Director Kenneth Branagh could have made this work - most of his movies, good or not, are kind of campy. But it also has to set up the Avengers movie, meaning it stops in its tracks for lots of dull exposition about SHIELD (it's good to be Clark Gregg right now). Honestly, Jen slept through most of it and I nodded off for a good portion of the middle. It was still a fun night - it was the drive-in, after all - but it's not a good sign when the tall evergreens behind the screen become more compelling to look at than the feature.

As far as comic book movies go, X-Men: First Class was much more successful. The biggest surprise of the Matthew Vaughn-helmed prequel was how much fun it is - even at their best, X-Men and X2 had a weighty self-importance (or a self-important weightiness?) that kept me from completely loving them. The dumbed-down X3 certainly wasn't preferable, but First Class is fueled by a healthy appreciation for pulp, from the sick reveal of Nazi villain Kevin Bacon's office to the snazzy retro production design to the appropriation of the Cuban Missile Crisis as the backdrop for a mutant origin story. The cast is strong, particularly Michael Fassbender as a young, angry Magneto on his way to becoming the mutant freedom fighter played by Ian McKellan. There's a cameo that ranks among the all-time best. And how can I not love a movie where (SPOILER) Kevin Bacon can absorb energy? (END SPOILER)

One of the movies I was most looking forward to was Super 8, J.J. Abrams' homage to Spielberg's '70s/'80s aesthetic. The trailer promised a throwback to the magic of E.T., Close Encounters and Joe Dante's Explorers. And it hits that sweet spot in the relationship between young protagonist Joe (Joel Courtney) and his dad (Kyle Chandler) as they struggle with the loss of Joe's mother, and in Joe and his friends' quest to finish their no-budget zombie movie. The relationships between the kids are handled sensitively and believably, and it made me nostalgic for my childhood friends and our own earnest attempts to realize our dreams. The movie's not quite the classic it wants to be, mostly because the extraterrestrial aspects of the story never quite cohere with the kids' emotional journey (as E.T. does so beautifully). But it's still a lot of fun, and the scene where Joe and the girl he's smitten with (Elle Fanning) run lines for the zombie movie takes on unexpected emotional resonance.

Probably the biggest shock of the summer is that Transformers: Dark of the Moon wasn't completely terrible. The limitation of the 3D cameras force Michael Bay to tone down his ADD-spectacular editing style and design actual shots with a purpose. The result is some surprisingly striking images and one of the few 3D movies to justify the extra dimension (the others being Avatar and Piranha). Of course, the movie's still coked-up, obnoxious, crass and frequently stupid. But Bay traded the previous movie's Minstrelbots for a bronzed John Malkovich, so on the whole it's an improvement. Now let us never speak of it again.

Then there's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II (or, as one local theatre's marquee called it, Harry Potter 2), which I heard more than one person my age describe as the defining movie experience of our generation. The midnight screening I attended certainly felt like geek Woodstock, and it was exciting to have that collective experience with a rapt audience. It's been hard to write about the Harry Potter series without repeating myself because the movies are so consistent - well-crafted prose with occasional moments of poetry (The Prisoner of Azkaban , Order of the Phoenix and the Nick Cave scene in Deathly Hallows: Part I remain the highlights). I was happy they left in Mrs. Weasley's best line, and genuinely moved by Snape's memories and Harry's meeting with the spirits of his family and teachers (both book and film series can be read as a gradual acceptance of the inevitable loss of all of our mentors). It may not be the defining movie of my generation, but it's easy to see why the boy wizard's speaks to grown-ups as much as kids.

If there's one thing that was disappointing this summer, it was the relative lack of solid counter-programming. There was The Tree of Life, a movie I've already argued about and will write about in greater detail once I can wrap my head around it. And Midnight in Paris, which I sadly missed. And Bridesmaids (which I wrote about here) was of course fantastic (I haven't seen The Hangover: Part II, and I hope it's better than I've heard). I thought One Day would be a nice, light romantic alternative, but it was surprisingly crappy. The biggest problem is Dexter (Jim Sturgess), the prick who is best friends with Emma (Anne Hathaway). As they engage in a 20-year will-they-or-won't-they, Dexter proved to be such a repugnant character, so completely devoid of any attractive or redeeming qualities, that I couldn't figure out why Emma would want to spend 15 minutes with the guy, let alone spending decades of her life pining for him. Hathaway's all-around loveliness can't save One Day from the couple's lack of chemistry, a gimmicky structure that thinks it's more clever than it is and a painfully cliched ending that renders the whole movie nihilistic (and not in a good way). Oh well, at least I have Hathaway as Catwoman to look forward to.

Besides The Tree of Life and Bridesmaids, the two best movies of the season were both late-summer surprises. After the brutal disappointment of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake, I tried not to get too excited for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I had nothing to worry about, as the Rupert Wyatt-directed prequel is everything I wanted it to be and more. James Franco stars as a terrible scientist who injects apes with genius genes in order to find a cure for Alzheimer's, completely fails at finding a cure and creates awful consequences for humanity in the process. As his pal Cesar, a super-smart chimp whose cruel mistreatment by humans motivates him to organize the ape uprising, Andy Serkis gives his best motion capture performance yet. The effects wizards at WETA do an outstanding job of making Cesar and his fellow revolutionaries believable characters. But what's terrific about the movie is that the effects and action setpieces are completely at the service of the story. The movie has a solid screenplay that intelligently engages with the "oppressed minority" subtext that made the original movies so great. By the end of the movie, you're actively rooting for the apes to beat the bejesus out of the humans; in an age of empty CGI spectacle, it's startling to be this moved by completely artificial characters. Here's hoping for a sequel - Viva la Revolucion!

I was also uncertain about Fright Night - I'm very fond of the original, and the remake's trailer was very iffy. Luckily, writer Marti Noxon and director Craig Gillespie remain expand upon the themes that made the original so memorable. Here, vampire-next-door Jerry Dandridge (Colin Farrell) is a sexy, charismatic threat to teenage nerd Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin). It's no coincidence that Charlie is a virgin; Jerry, who threatens to seduce and corrupt Charlie's out-of-his-league girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots), would be Charlie's worst nightmare even if he wasn't a vampire. The movie understands the anxieties of geeky teenage boys all too well; Jerry's monologue about his girlfriend's "scent" is one of Ferrell's and best moments; he's sleazy and horny and clearly having a ball throughout the movie. The script is clever, David Tennant (the former Doctor Who) is hilarious as a Criss Angel-esque "dark magician," the desert atmosphere of the Las Vegas setting is very effective and there are a handful of great "Boo!" moments. Fright Night died quickly at the box office, so here's hoping it eventually finds the audience it deserves.



The most fun I've had at the movies this year, hands down, have been the times Jen and I have taken the kids with us. Luna and Tom's first trip to the movies was in July, to see Winnie the Pooh, and it was the perfect choice. It's a wonderful throwback to the classic Disney shorts, and Tom sat, popcorn in hand, eyes glued to the screen the entire time. Luna was just as interested with the theatre itself, and spent much of the movie checking out the vast, cavernous auditorium. Their second trip was a bargain matinee of Mr. Popper's Penguins, and while they weren't as into that one, Tom is now very interested in penguins - Happy Feet has joined the daily rotation with other favorites like Fantastic Mr. Fox, Toy Story, Spider-Man and Tron: Legacy (both kids are fascinated at the concept of travelling INSIDE the computer).

Luna's tastes are a bit more sophisticated - she asks me to save episodes of Louie and Curb Your Enthusiasm to watch with her. But she's not too mature to enjoy childish things - my best memories of the summer are the time spent at the playground, the awed look on their faces when Toot and Puddle visited the local library, our first trip to the beach and the near-religious experience Luna had at her first carnival. And when we recently took them to see The Lion King, they were both riveted. Everything I love about movies can be summed up in the moment, as the lights came up, when Luna exclaimed, "That was great!"

Shoshanna, Serena, Lulu

I'm finally turning in my answers, right at the tail end of summer, for the most recent movie quiz at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, this one administered by one Professor Ed Avery. I have yet to see Bigger Than Life, but I'm looking forward to it. All I know is that it involves James Mason scolding children, and that's enough for me.

1) Depending on your mood, your favorite or least-loved movie cliché.

In horror movies, the fake-out scare followed three beats later by the real thing. I love or hate it depending on the execution and my mood.

2) Regardless of whether or not you eventually caught up with it, which film classic have you lied about seeing in the past?

I'm a terrible liar, so I don't bother.

3) Roland Young or Edward Everett Horton?

Roland Young

4) Second favorite Frank Tashlin movie

The Girl Can't Help It

5) Clockwork Orange-- yes or no?

Yes, definitely.

6) Best/favorite use of gender dysphoria in a horror film (Ariel Schudson)

My first thought was The Silence of the Lambs, but as Hannibal Lecter explains, Jame Gumb isn't actually a transsexual. So let's go with Dressed to Kill.

7) Melanie Laurent or Blake Lively?

How can I not go with Melanie Laurent?

8) Best movie of 2011 (so far…)

The Tree of Life. Overwhelming, challenging, sometimes frustrating, beautiful and ultimately awe-inspiring.

9) Favorite screen performer with a noticeable facial deformity (Peg Aloi)

Michael Berryman

10) Lars von Trier: shithead or misunderstood comic savant? (Dean Treadway)

I wouldn't say "savant," but I thought the "Hitler" press conference was hilarious. He just kept digging himself deeper and deeper.

11) Timothy Carey or Henry Silva?

Henry Silva

12) Low-profile writer who deserves more attention from critics and /or audiences

Although Albert Brooks is certainly well-known, his work as a writer/director deserves the same attention given to Woody Allen. Modern Romance and Lost in America, in particular, are perfect screenplays.

13) Movie most recently viewed theatrically, and on DVD, Blu-ray or streaming

Theatrically: Fright Night. It's a blast, and worthy of the original. On DVD: Fiddler on the Roof. Way more entertaining than I remembered (though I last saw it when I was about five years old).

14) Favorite film noir villain

Noah Cross

15) Best thing about streaming movies?

The ease and availability of titles encourages people to be a little more adventurous in their movie-watching choices.

16) Fay Spain or France Nuyen? (Peter Nellhaus)

Fay Spain

17) Favorite Kirk Douglas movie that isn’t called Spartacus (Peter Nellhaus)

Paths of Glory

18) Favorite movie about cars

Two-Lane Blacktop

19) Audrey Totter or Marie Windsor?

Marie Windsor

20) Existing Stephen King movie adaptation that could use an remake/reboot/overhaul

It is one of the best books about childhood and the most terrifying book Stephen King ever wrote. The TV movie is creepy, the entire cast is strong and Tim Curry is of course outstanding as Pennywise. But it was limited by the restrictions of network TV, not just in content but in condensing some of the more esoteric aspects of the book's mythology. A three-hour movie or, perhaps better yet, an HBO miniseries that is more faithful to the book could be one of the all-time great horror movies. But the plans I've heard for a proposed remake (updating the timeline to present day, shooting for a PG-13) aren't very encouraging.

21) Low-profile director who deserves more attention from critics and/or audiences

Keith Gordon makes consistently interesting movies aimed at smart adult audiences that barely receive any attention. At least he's been busy in recent years directing episodes of Dexter.

22) What actor that you previously enjoyed has become distracting or a self-parody? (Adam Ross)

De Niro is the obvious answer, unfortunately.

23) Best place in the world to see a movie

The Brattle!

24) Charles McGraw or Sterling Hayden?

Sterling Hayden

25) Second favorite Yasujiro Ozu film

Floating Weeds

26) Most memorable horror movie father figure

Jack Torrance

27) Name a non-action-oriented movie that would be fun to see in Sensurround

Moulin Rouge

28) Chris Evans or Ryan Reynolds?

I worked as an extra on a Chris Evans movie, and he seemed like a pretty good guy. And he's great in Scott Pilgrim ("That's actually hilarious.")

29) Favorite relatively unknown supporting player, from either or both the classic and the modern era

Dick Miller

30) Real-life movie location you most recently visited or saw

The first one that comes to mind is the Whately Diner, which I used in Black Light and, I found out later, was also used extensively in In Dreams.

31) Second favorite Budd Boetticher movie

I'm ashamed to admit I have to pass on this one (see #2).

32) Mara Corday or Julie Adams?

Mara Corday

33) Favorite Universal-International western

Winchester '73

34) What's the biggest "gimmick" that's drawn you out to see a movie? (Sal Gomez)

Probably the time Images Cinema had a 3D Porn Night.

35) Favorite actress of the silent era

Louise Brooks

36) Best Eugene Pallette performance (Larry Aydlette)

Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood

37) Best/worst remake of the 21st century so far? (Dan Aloi)

Best: Solaris Worst: The Fog

38) What could multiplex owners do right now to improve the theatrical viewing experience for moviegoers? What could moviegoers do?

Owners: Take a cue from a good theatre chain like Cinemagic or Cinemark and make perfect presentation a priority (forgive the alliteration). Moviegoers can turn off their fucking phones.

Do you want a bite of my big bear sandwich? It's got meat and cheeses.

The marketing campaign for Bridesmaids successfully positioned it as "the female Hangover." While both are raunchy ensemble comedies revolving around wedding festivities, this is a misleading comparison. The humor of The Hangover was completely situational, stemming entirely from the "What happened last night?" premise. While Bridesmaids also has more than its share of sight gags, physical comedy and random humor, the laughs in Paul Feig's movie are much more character-driven. It works as well as it does because screenwriters Kristen Wiig (also the star, of course) and Annie Rummalo and director Paul Feig understand that, for all its broader jokes (which are very funny), the biggest and deepest laughs come from our sympathy/identification with struggling maid of honor Annie (Wiig) as she slowly unravels. Aided by a strong ensemble cast, Bridesmaids is the best comedy of discomfort in recent memory.

We're introduced to Annie as she's having awkward sex with boneheaded stud (Jon Hamm) with whom she's stuck in an unfulfilling "friends with benefits" relationship. Annie's boyfriend recently left her after the cake shop they ran together went out of business, and she's stuck in a rut. When her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) asks her to be her maid of honor, she is quickly overwhelmed by the job and increasingly upstaged by Lillian's wealthy new friend Helen (Rose Byrne). Watching Annie unravel over the course of planning the wedding leads to several raunchy setpieces, most famously the collective bout of explosive food poisoning the bridal party suffers while trying on dresses. But what distinguishes Bridesmaids are scenes like the one where Annie and Helen repeatedly one-up each other in giving the most heartfelt toast at the engagement party. Feig smartly allows moments like these to breathe, running past frustration into disbelief at the escalation of all-too-relatable embarrassing behavior. At its best, Bridesmaids recalls early Albert Brooks in its precise observation of people behaving poorly.

At the center of it is Wiig's performance - she's been one of the best things about SNL for years (along with Bill Hader), and she's given strong supporting performances in Walk Hard, Adventureland and several dozen other movies. As Annie, Wiig reveals that she's not just funny but also a solid actress, finding laughs in each scene while also convincingly playing the emotional truth behind the joke. When Annie watches Cast Away, sobbing as Wilson drifts out to sea, we laugh because most of us know how that moment feels (maybe not specifically Cast Away, but that's beside the point). Bridesmaids is funnier because we can relate to Annie and want to see her dig herself out of her hole. And Wiig also kills in the movie's broader moments - when a food poisoning-stricken Annie eats an almond to demonstrate that she feels fine, the blend of repulsion, nausea and denial on her face is priceless. The best comedians can be hilarious without ever saying a word, and Wiig is quickly becoming one of the best.

Some critics have argued that the film's raunchiness is actually sexist; as Karina Longworth put it, "Comedy of humiliation is one thing; a fat lady shitting in a sink is another." To this, I say baloney. It's Feig's willingness to allow the female characters to make complete asses of themselves that makes Bridesmaids far less sexist than the many romantic comedies that pander to self-perpetuating assumptions about what women want. Besides, it's the men that are completely marginalized in Bridesmaids; I smiled when I noticed Tim Heidecker as the groom, but I'm not sure he had a single line of dialogue in the entire movie. The men who do make an impression are Hamm (I love his super-serious delivery of the line "Cup my balls") and Chris O'Dowd as a kind cop who may be the perfect guy for Annie because he's willing to tell her the truth. That said, it's Wiig, Rudolph and the stable of bridesmaids who own this movie, the standout being Melissa McCarthy as the tough, stocky, perpetually horny Megan. When Megan, giving Annie a pep talk, explains that her tough exterior came from a lifetime of bullying, the scene both earns its pathos and makes a later scene involving Megan and some Subway sploshing even more hilarious. Bridesmaids walks a fine line between empathy and belly laughs, and does so beautifully; unlike a lot of "chick flicks," it earns its late-in-the-movie sing-along.

Satan is ever ready to seduce us with sensual delights.

This is my contribution to White Elephant 2011 at Silly Hats Only.

It's revealing to place Ken Russell's The Devils in context with two other highly controversial movies released in 1971, A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs. The shocking material in Kubrick's film was framed within a very cerebral movie-length dialogue about society and free will. Peckinpah employed the brutal rape scene in Straw Dogs to provoke audiences into considering man's savage nature. In The Devils, sex and violence are used to condemn organized religion and moral hypocrisy, yet the film (and I don't mean this as a criticism) doesn't really work as serious social commentary. Russell's film is more of a wet raspberry blown in the direction of God and the crimes committed in His name. Known best for his unapologetic directorial flamboyance, Russell is like Kubrick with a raging boner, and The Devils is like the scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex dreams of flogging Jesus Christ extended to feature length. Its images of nubile, bare-assed nuns writhing in delirious fits of sexual ecstasy and religious hysteria do not just aim to provoke, but to shock, arouse, disorient and completely overwhelm us.

Based on the book The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley and the play The Devils by John Whiting, the film is set in 17th century France, in the village of Loudon, which is under threat of demolition due to a plan by Cardinal Richelieu to eradicate such small villages to stop the rise of Protestantism. After the death of thevillage's governor, Father Grandier (Oliver Reed) has been placed in charge of Loudon and has organized the village to stop its destruction. But after Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave), who is obsessed with Grandier, reveals Grandier's sexual affairs to another priest (Murray Melvin), claiming that he has bewitched her, the baron (Dudley Sutton) tasked with destroying the town sends for Father Pierre Barre (Michael Gothard), an inquisitor and exorcist whose job it is to investigate whether Grandier has possessed the entire nunnery. Barre's interrogations amount more to brainwashing, as he compels the nuns through suggestion and bizarelly fetishistic rituals to believe that they are possessed. The subsequent scenes of the nuns tearing off their clothing and engaging in a variety of blasphemous acts is a potent statement of the danger of religion's repressive force - it is the power of the church's message of an ongoing war between good and evil that inspires' the nuns' depravity.

At the same time, Roger Ebert wasn't exactly wrong when he wrote in his review that "We are filled with righteous indignation as we bear witness to the violation of the helpless nuns, which is all the more horrendous because, as Russell fearlessly reveals, all the nuns, without exception were young and stacked." There's little question that Russell is getting off on having assembled so much explicit desecration of all things holy in every frame. There's a definite sense throughout The Devils of having gotten away with it; it's sort of endearing, in Mark Kermode's documentary about the film, to hear the middle-aged actresses recall the shoot with a giggly fondness for the naughty things they did when they were young. The Devils is as interesting a historical record as it is a story; it's inconceivable that a big-budget British-American co-production directed by an acclaimed English filmmaker would even remotely approach the level of disregard for good taste and mass appeal that Russell's film flaunts. Try to imagine Tom Hooper remaking Salo and you get the idea.

It's Russell's libidinous sensibility that drives the film's admittedly questionable but nevertheless potent thesis - that sexual repression is at the root of most violent conflict between humans. All of the historical figures depicted are homosexuals or sadists or rich weirdos. The deformed Sister Jeanne is fixated on Grandier, fantasizing about the priest as a bleeding Christ whose wounds she tenderly sucks off. Most potent is Father Barre - the intense, slightly androgynous Gothard (who could have played Alex in A Clockwork Orange had Malcolm McDowell not been available) seethes with madness as he compels the nuns to do increasingly strange things in the name of God. The bizarre exorcism climaxes, quite literally, with the infamous "rape of Christ" sequence, which was banned from the original release and only reappeared in Kermode's documentary a few years ago. The images of the nuns having their way with a large crucifix not only predate The Exorcist, they are a perfectly blunt, graphic and unforgettable representation of the possible dark underside of Christ's "marriage" to his followers.

My favorite thing about The Devils is the casting of Oliver Reed as the village's advocate for progressive thought and free love. A softer, more counterculturally oriented actor might have been a more obvious choice; instead, peace and love are embodied by a burly, hairy man's man who looks like he might bugger a lady without asking first if he's had a few too many. Grandier's persecution and martyrdom are tragic to Russell in that they represent the triumph of celibacy over full-bodied vulgar masculinity. Warner Brothers has famously cancelled the DVD release of The Devils repeatedly, odd given that they've released special editions of A Clockwork Orange and the director's cut of Natural Born Killers. WB's execs need to relax and embrace this significant footnote in the studio's storied history - that moment, 40 years ago, when nunsploitation briefly went mainstream.

Top 10: 2010

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