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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Top 10: 2000

1. Almost Famous (Crowe)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong)
3. American Psycho (Harron)
4. Wonder Boys (Hanson)
5. Traffic (Soderbergh)
6. The Virgin Suicides (Coppola)
7. Dancer in the Dark (Von Trier)
8. Memento (Nolan)
9. High Fidelity (Frears)
10. Best in Show (Guest)

Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!

This year's roster of Best Director nominees includes three of the "Rebels on the Backlot," the filmmakers profiled in Sharon Waxman's book of the same name who emerged in the past 20 years and helped blur the line between independent and studio filmmaking. It's exciting to see the mavericks of my formative years of movie love - filmmakers like David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky - celebrated by mainstream Hollywood for making films that speak to wide audiences even as they retain their directors' distinctive voices. Among them is David O. Russell, the director of The Fighter, who has bounced back from the never-completed comedy Nailed to make a boxing movie that, in a subgenre riddled with cliches, is surprisingly affecting. Equal parts Rocky and Truffaut, with a pitch-perfect sense of character and location, The Fighter is the rare crowd-pleasing sports movie that never talks down to its audience.

Based on the true story of Mickey Ward, a junior welterweight from Lowell, Massachusetts, The Fighter begins with Mickey (Mark Wahlberg) struggling in the ring and stuck in the shadow of his half-brother and sparring partner, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). A former pro welterweight who became addicted to crack, Dicky’s old glories, along with his domineering mother Alice’s (Melissa Leo) mismanagement of his career, lead to Ward’s retreat from boxing. As Mickey is inspired by new girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) to take control of his life in and out of the ring, The Fighter escapes familiar territory largely thanks to the film’s excellent use of Lowell as a location. Russell blends strong character work with a carefully observed portrait of the film’s working-class neighborhoods; the verisimilitude goes so far as to have Ward’s real-life trainer Mickey O’Keefe play himself. The film follows these characters and their city with a close-up, character driven visual style (influenced by the French New Wave) that brings to mind the handheld approach of The Wrestler (Aronofsky was originally going to direct The Fighter and retains an executive producer credit). What separates The Fighter from The Wrestler and most other sports movies is the light comic touch Russell brings to the material, presenting Dicky and the rest of Mickey’s family with a lightness that avoids the story’s potential for melodrama and shows a profound sense of respect for Mickey, his family and his hometown.

At the heart of the film is the relationship between Mickey and Dicky, and both actors are terrific. Interesting that it took playing a crackhead for Bale to lighten up; he captures the likeable, slightly naïve charm of the real Dicky. Wahlberg (who shepherded Ward’s story to the screen) hasn’t received as much praise as Bale, but he’s just as good as the slightly introverted Mickey; surrounded by bigger, louder characters, he demonstrates why listening is the most important tool an actor has. It would be clear to any director that the brothers’ relationship drives the film; what Russell brings to The Fighter that other directors might overlook is the importance the women in Mickey’s life. Alice at first seems monstrous, but Leo’s performance gradually reveals the great love she has for her sons, even if she puts it in the wrong places (Jack McGee is also great, and hilarious, as Mickey's henpecked dad). The veritable Greek chorus of Mickey’s many sisters are hilarious and completely believable. And Amy Adams is great as Charlene - turns out she’s as good at playing earthy and self-reliant as she is at playing princesses, and the scenes between her and Wahlberg are surprisingly sexy. It’s the three-dimensional portrait of Mickey’s complicated family that makes The Fighter work; when the inevitable climatic fight arrives, the victory belongs to the whole family. Russell has long specialized in examinations of dysfunctional families; it’s nice to see the director arriving at an honest, fully earned portrait of a family coming together.

Having started making movies in the 1980s, the Coen brothers are a sort of spiritual link between the maverick directors of the ‘70s and the new bunch. They’ve also found themselves being accepted into the mainstream in recent years; their newest film, True Grit, is their first unqualified blockbuster (as well as the first smash hit western in decades). Based on the Charles Portis novel previously adapted into the movie that won John Wayne the Oscar, True Grit finds the Coens bringing their unique sensibility to the story of 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), who hires grizzled U.S. Marshal Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the dim-witted crook who killed her dad. Watching the original on AMC a few weeks ago, I was struck by how close the two films are, almost scene-for-scene, and yet the movies feel completely different - it’s a fascinating reminder that what matters most is not the story itself but how it is told. Whereas director Henry Hathaway staged True Grit as a sun-drenched adventure yarn, the Coens have made a rouge-edged, unsparing and thrillingly alive western, with a Cogburn that speaks in a often-indecipherable growl and finds his heroism almost accidentally (frankly, Bridges mops the floor with the Duke).

But while the brothers’ offbeat sense of humor is definitely present in the film (few other filmmakers would have included the “bear doctor” scene), its lack of ironic distance makes it a departure for the filmmakers. It’s not an anti-western in the No Country For Old Men vein; while it has a wry sense of humor about Cogburn and Texas Ranger Laboeuf’s (Matt Damon) macho posturing, it’s also driven by a very real romantic admiration for true heroism. Snobs have branded the film a sell-out for the Coens, but this stems from the common incorrect reading of their films as misanthropic – from Norville Barnes to Marge Gunderson, the Coens have always been on the side of the good guys, even when (like Tommy Lee Jones’ Sheriff Bell) they prove outmatched. If anything, it represents the directors growing more diverse; as skilled as they are at being smartasses, it’s exciting to witness them go straight for the heart. They succeed largely thanks to Bridges and Damon, and especially Steinfeld, who is astonishingly assured as the strong, self-reliant Mattie. It’s a greatly entertaining adventure, beautifully shot by Roger Deakins (as if I needed to tell you that), and, in its final minutes, it reveals itself as unexpectedly heartwarming. After the socks to the gut that were their last several endings, it’s just as bracing to find the brothers arriving at a moment of grace; if that doesn’t represent growth in an artist, I don't know what does.

Top 10: 1990

1. Goodfellas (Scorsese)
2. Miller's Crossing (Coen)

3. Wild at Heart (Lynch)

4. Edward Scissorhands (Burton)

5. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (McNaughton)

6. The Witches (Roeg)

7. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Almodovar)

8. Total Recall (Verhoeven)

9. Cry-Baby (Waters)

10. Gremlins 2 (Dante)

There were also a lot of terrible movies released in 1990. Ghost Dad, Problem Child, Spaced Invaders, Rocky V...oy...

Top 10: 1980

One of the best years in film ever. A list of eleven through twenty would be as strong as many years' top tens. Also, I realized it's the only year that my three favorite directors all released a new movie.

1. The Shining (Kubrick)
2. Raging Bull (Scorsese)

3. The Elephant Man (Lynch)

4. The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner)

5. Inferno (Argento)
6. Popeye (Altman)

7. Bad Timing (Roeg)

8. Dressed to Kill (De Palma)

9. Kagemusha (Kurosawa)

10. The Fog (Carpenter)

Statham, Scorsese, Svenson

The latest movie quiz at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule (courtesy of Professor Hubert Farnsworth, pictured above) is the first I've been able to participate in for a while. Thanks, Professor (and Dennis) for managing to keep the movie quiz - which has become a sort of staple of SLIFR - so much fun for so long.

1) Best Movie of 2010

With a few outliers remaining to be seen, at this point it looks like I'm going to have to follow the herd and go with The Social Network.

2) Second-favorite Roman Polanski Movie

Repulsion

3) Jason Statham or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

The Rock is a likeable enough guy, but Statham has Snatch and the knowing homoeroticism between himself and Stallone in The Expendables that carries on the proud tradition of Tango and Cash. I'll go with Statham even though my girlfriend would probably leave me for him.

4) Favorite movie that could be classified as a genre hybrid

Alien

5) How important is foreknowledge of a film’s production history? Should it factor into one’s reaction to a film?

A movie has to be considered in the context of the time and place that produced it, but direct behind-the-scenes info seems peripheral to the movie's success or failure.

6) William Powell & Myrna Loy or Cary Grant & Irene Dunne

Cary Grant & Irene Dunne

7) Best Actor of 2010

Jeff Bridges, True Grit

8) Most important lesson learned from the past decade of watching movies

Despite the conventional wisdom that dumb is the safest commercial bet, most people really do want to see a good story told smartly when they go to the movies. It's just harder to sell smart than stupid.

9) Last movie seen (DVD/Blu-ray/theater)

On Blu-Ray, Natural Born Killers - so very 90s, but still effective as sensory overload, particuarly in hi-def. In theatres, Blue Valentine - painful to watch but brilliantly acted and beautifully shot.

10) Most appropriate punishment for director Tom Six

I suspect Six is a sadomasochist, so I'm not sure what kind of punishment he wouldn't enjoy. Perhaps to be met with indifferent shrugs?

11) Best under-the-radar movie almost no one else has had the chance to see

Black Moon, Louis Malle's 1975 post-apocalyptic retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Still unavailable on R1 DVD (it would be perfect for Criterion).

12) Sheree North or Angie Dickinson

Angie Dickinson

13) Favorite nakedly autobiographical movie

All That Jazz

14) Movie which best evokes a specific real-life place

I agree with Anonymous - the 42nd Street I've visited in my lifetime is nothing like the one in Taxi Driver, but thanks to Scorsese I feel like I've been there too.

15) Best Director of 2010

David Fincher, The Social Network
16) Second-favorite Farrelly Brothers Movie

There's Something About Mary
17) Favorite holiday movie

My new favorite is Elf.

18) Best Actress of 2010

Natalie Portman, Black Swan

19) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson

My my my my Mitchell!

20) Of those notable figures in the world of the movies who died in 2010, name the one you’ll miss the most

Dennis Hopper

21) Think of a movie with a notable musical score and describe what it might feel like without that accompaniment.

Without Cavalleria Rusticana, Raging Bull would be even bleaker than it already is.

22) Best Screenplay of 2010

The Social Network

23) Movie You Feel Most Evangelistic About Right Now

Synecdoche, New York. I could talk someone's ear off about everything I think and feel for hours or I can just pop that movie in the DVD player and spare us both a lot of time.

24) Worst/funniest movie accent ever

Thandee Newton as an alien in W.

25) Best Cinematography of 2010

Shutter Island

26) Olivia Wilde or Gemma Arterton

Olivia Wilde

27) Name the three best movies you saw for the first time in 2010 (Thanks, Larry!)

Fearless, Modern Romance, Zoolander

28) Best romantic movie couple of 2010

Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig, Greenberg. They're so obviously, uncomfortably wrong for each other, and yet they're probably meant to be together.

29) Favorite shock/surprise ending

Brazil

30) Best cinematic reason to have stayed home and read a book in 2010

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010). I actually fell asleep in the theatre (IRONY).

31) Movies in 2011 could make me much happier if they’d only ______________

retire the orange/blue trend in color timing.

Top 10: 1970

1. El Topo (Jodorowsky)
2. The Conformist (Bertolucci)
3. Performance (Roeg)
4. Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson)
5. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Meyer)
6. Brewster McCloud (Altman)
7. Catch-22 (Nichols)
8. Husbands (Cassavetes)
9. The Wild Child (Truffaut)
10. Gimme Shelter (Maysles/Maysles/Zwerin)

What happened to my sweet girl?

The commercial success of Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is kind of astonishing, not just because sexually explicit films usually scare audiences away but because it's the most thematically slippery mainstream hit in recent memory. A dizzying collision of high and low art, that owes an equal debt to Powell, Polanski, Argento and Verhoeven, Black Swan flirts with camp even as it reaches for transcendence. The film's mixture of close-up character study, literally black-and-white archetypes, overt symbolic archetypes, horror movie tropes and kinky sex should be a complete mess, and yet Black Swan is the most wildly entertaining movie of the year. I can list all the elements and influences that the film draws from, but ultimately I can't explain quite why the damn thing works. What a thrill that an an American film in 2010 should be so pleasurably elusive.

It's that indefinable spark of pure creation that eludes Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a dancer with a prestigious ballet company in New York. The hardest-working dancer in the company, Nina is given a big break when she's cast as the Swan Queen in the company's production of Swan Lake. A driven perfectionist, Nina is perfect for the role but struggles with director Thomas' (Vincent Cassel) insistence that she also play the seductive Black Swan. Nina, who lives with her controlling, emotionally unstable mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), is a deeply repressed, fragile innocent who cannot "let go," as Tomas repeatedly demands of her. To Tomas, a virile, possibly dangerous man who Nina is smitten with, to "let go" means getting off - ceding technical perfection to emotional release as one does during sexual climax. But Thomas' rather narrow concept of letting go does not anticipate how deeply Nina has buried so much of herself; as Nina begins to let go, her world begins to spiral dangerously out of control.

Like Repulsion and The Tenant, Black Swan is a film of interiors - from beginning to end, we rarely stray from Nina's fragmented point of view. The way that Aronofsky frames Nina's inner life is a fascinating extension of his previous films - the bold use of archetypal imagery of Pi and The Fountain married with the grittier, character-driven approach of The Wrestler. Aronofsky and DP Matthew Libatique relentlessly follow Portman's every move in the early scenes, the grainy 16mm images threaten to disappear right into Nina's mind at any moment. As the more hallucinatory elements of the film emerge, Aronofsky never shies away from following the black/white sexual dichotomy through to its logical end (one nice touch - the color pallette of the film, largely muted pinks and greys at the beginning, grows darker through the film). The result is bigger than life but not heavyhanded; Nina's perception merges with the elevated emotion of ballet in, its a way that does feel true to the creative experience.

Portman is stunning in the role, not just because she convinces as a professional ballerina but because she throws herself wholeheartedly into every moment of Nina's journey. In its own way, Black Swan derives as much of a charge from the parallels between Nina and Portman's public persona as The Wrestler did from Randy the Ram/Mickey Rourke. While Portman has always been a talented actress, there's a strong sense in much of her work ("Hotel Chevalier" aside) that she's quite inhibited in many ways, and she has confirmed as much in interviews. Here, as Nina begins her long descent, Portman's work is unflinching; not only is she fearless in scenes that would terrify just about any actor in their frankness, but she's also never been so completely emotionally exposed. The result is stunning - there are closeups of Portman that are worthy of Maria Falconetti. She's aided by a strong supporting cast - Cassel is wonderfully hammy, Hershey is frighteningly well-cast as Portman's mom, Winona Ryder kills in her few scenes as a bitter older dancer, and Mila Kunis is terrific as Lily, the sexually confident dancer who aims to take Nina's place (or so Nina believes). When the much talked-about sex scene between Portman and Kunis arrives, Aronofsky and his actresses have developed the tension between the two perfectly that it feels less like a hook-up than a collision. And though yes, it's a scene of two attractive young women having sex, it's at least as creepy as it is sexy, especially in light of what it ultimately reveals about Nina. The entire film is like that, seducing us into some very dark places.

So what, finally, is Black Swan really about? Aronofsky describes it as a movie about performance, a companion piece to The Wrestler, and it is most certainly that (though the final shot's callback to the earlier film's ending may be a bit too on-the-nose). But it doesn't quite fit, with its more horrific elements, next to The Company or All That Jazz as the real-life story of a dance company. At the same time, it's not quite a horror movie or, if it is, it defies our expectations of what happens in a horror movie. Is what Black Swan has to say about the creative process muddled by its pulpier thriller-movie tropes, or is it a thriller movie which its director is trying to elevate about its roots? Perhaps the answer lies in ballet itself, which strives for physical perfection and deeper meaning even as it embraces melodrama and emotional excess. Perhaps the world of ballet is the perfect setting for a director who, clever as he can be, is completely incapable of ironic detachment. In that sense this is a logical step forward for the director; he's blown my mind before, but this is the first time he's seduced me.

Top 100 (2011 Edition)

It's been a couple of years since the last time I updated my list of favorite movies, and I'm in a very different place in my life, both geographically and emotionally. For the most part, my life has changed for the better; I'm definitely a lot happier than I've been in a long time. I'm not sure if or how that has affected this list, which isn't drastically different than it was two and a half years ago.

Most of the people in my day-to-day life know me as a "movie expert" and kind of a snob, while compared to most of my internet cinephile friends and the writers I enjoy reading, my favorites seem awfully American and new. I'll admit that when I was younger, this made me feel a bit self-conscious; now I feel like maybe the final lesson for a movie lover, after amassing an eclectic knowledge of film spanning genres, decades and countries, is to embrace the fact that you just like the stuff you like.



1. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
2. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
3. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
5. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
6. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
7. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
8. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
9. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
10. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)



11. Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
12. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)
13. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
14. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
15. Kill Bill vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003)
16. Kill Bill vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2004)
17. Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
18. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)
19. Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978)
20. All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)



21. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
22. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
23. The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
24. Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
25. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
26. Fargo (Joel Coen, 1996)
27. The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
28. Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)
29. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
30. Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)



31. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)
32. The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
33. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
34. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006)
35. Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Werner Herzog, 1979)
36. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
37. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
38. Aguirre the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
39. The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
40. Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut, 1962)



41. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
42. The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)
43. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
44. Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981)
45. The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
46. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
47. 8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
48. Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
49. Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
50. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)


51. Lolita (stanley Kubrick, 1962)
52. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
53. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
54. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
55. Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
56. Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox, 1986)
57. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
58. Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
59. Last Tango in Paris (Bernard Bertolucci, 1972)
60. My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991)


61. Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)
62. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
63. Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beneiex, 1986)
64. Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
65. Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984)
66. Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
67. Inferno (Dario Argento, 1980)
68. The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
69. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
70. Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)



71. Y tu mama tambien (Alfonso Cuaron, 2001)
72. Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
73. El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
74. Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
75. Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)
76. The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977)
77. Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1996)
78. Orphee (Jean Cocteau, 1949)
79. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
80. The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky, 2006)


81. Belle de Jour (Luis Bunuel, 1967)
82. Miller's Crossing (Joel Coen, 1990)
83. Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)
84. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, 2007)
85. Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)
86. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)
87. No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
88. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
89. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
90. O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson, 1973)

91. Secretary (Steven Shainberg, 2002)
92. Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)
93. Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma, 1974)
94. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)
95. Ed Wood (Tim Burton, 1994)
96. The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998)
97. Creepshow (George A. Romero, 1982)
98. The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)
99. True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993)
100. Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004)

Nope, nothing wrong here.

This is an entry in Steve Carlson's Killer Animal Blogathon at Our Science is Too Tight.

When asked to name his favorite adaptation of his work, Stephen King frequently cites, alongside more prestigious films like Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption, 1983's Cujo, based on his book about a rabid St. Bernard terrorizing a Maine housewife and her 3-year-old son. Released at the start of a decade-long glut of movies of varying quality based on King's work (John Carpenter's Christine and David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone were released the same year), Cujo might seem like an arbitrary choice, especially over films by Cronenberg, De Palma and Kubrick. King seems to value Cujo for its lack of an auteur's signature, and for its simplicity, describing it (I'm paraphrasing as I can't find the quote) as a machine that batters the audience mercilessly. Indeed, Cujo is a well-done B movie that succeeds in its modest ambitions. And if that sounds patronizing, I don't mean it that way at all - sometimes I just want to watch a movie that will make me jump when it says "boo," and at this Cujo succeeds admirably.

Director Lewis Teague's version of King's fictional Maine hamlet Castle Rock is very much located in the wondrous 80's-cinema version of small-town life commonly known as Spielbergiana, and not just because E.T.'s Dee Wallace plays a mom in Cujo as well. The film opens with a bucolic scene of the happy, uninfected dog bounding after a rabbit, accompanied by Charles Bernstein's magical John Williams-esque score. When Cujo, poking his nose down a rabbit hole, is bitten by a rabid bat who'd been sleeping in an underground cave, Cujo establishes the same understanding of reality familiar from E.T. and Poltergeist - that magic and mystery, both good and evil, exist just underneath the surface of everyday life. The first half of King's book focuses on the troubled marriage of Donna and Vic Trenton (Wallace and Daniel Hugh-Kelly) and Donna's affair with local hunk Steve Kemp (Christopher Stone). The infidelity plot is given less time in the movie; while the book suggests (rather heavy-handedly) that Cujo is fated to teach this family a lesson, in the movie is just a random bad thing happening to basically good people. There's no moral lesson to be learned, just the reminder to appreciate family and the simple things in life because one never knows when one will be attacked by a killer dog.

The back story is also condensed, presumably, because the filmmakers are eager to get to the action. With Vic out of town on business, Donna and son Tad (Danny Pintauro) find themselves trapped in their stalled Pinto at the end of a very rural route. Cujo has already killed his owner, mechanic Joe Camber (Ed Lauter), and Donna has to find a way out of the situation before heatstroke and dehydration take her son's life. Teague and cinematographer Jan De Bont (who would later direct Speed and Twister) make excellent use of the claustrophobic setting, and they are aided greatly by the team of effects artists. While Cujo's analog effects aren't seamless, they're quite impressive considering they're pretty much a combination of hand puppets, a guy in a St. Bernard suit and several wet dogs; you more or less believe that Cujo is beating the hell out of Donna's Pinto. The most important elements for suspension of disbelief, however, are the performances; luckily, Pintauro is a believably frightened little boy and Wallace (as in E.T., The Howling and numerous other genre favorites), brings an emotional authenticity to the character that goes above and beyond the character as written. When Donna, caked in dirt, sweat and blood, fights back against Cujo to save her son, Wallace displays a kind of primal warrior mama ferocity that is surprisingly compelling.*

The ending of Cujo deviates from King's book (spoilers ahead). While Tad finally dies of dehydration in the novel's closing pages, he is spared in the movie. While I normally hate it when downbeat endings in literature are made crowd-pleasing when brought to the screen, here I think it is the right choice. While horror stories, which are about upending life as we know it (as George Romero is fond of saying, "upsetting the apple cart"), are often more effective when they do not restore order in the end, Tad's death makes the events of the previous 300 pages meaningless, making it an uncharacteristically nihilistic book for King. The restoration of order at the end of the movie is more appropriate to the story; the movie freeze-frames at the moment the family reunites and all is well in Spielbergiana once again. Like the faulty red dye in Sharp Cereal, Cujo gives a good scare but nobody is really hurt.

*Sidenote: I coincidentally saw Dee Wallace at the Rock and Shock horror convention in Worcester this weekend; she was warm, friendly and endearingly eccentric. I particularly liked her story about being asked by Rob Zombie to voice one of three sexy she-devils in the animated The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. She told Zombie, "I'll only do it if I can be the one with the biggest tits."

You write your snide bullshit from a dark room because that's what the angry do.

"It's quite possible that I'm your third man girl
But it's a fact that I'm the seventh son
And right now you could care less about me
But soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done"

- The White Stripes, "Ball and Biscuit"

The already-famous opening scene of The Social Network is the most hilariously brutal cinematic breakup since Happiness, opening mid-conversation as Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) lectures his date, Erica (Rooney Mara) about the importance of joining a final club. Zuckerberg is a genius who apparently knows little to nothing about how to relate to women and possibly people in general. As he jumps several conversational tracks at once with little concern for having an actual conversation with poor Erica, it seems that either Mark is completely oblivious to his date as a separate person or, worse, his verbal gymnastics are a painfully misguided attempt to wow her with his intellectual prowess. Erica finally cannot take it anymore, and calmly eviscerates Mark's pretensions, informing him that "You're going to be successful, and rich. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a geek. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole." The ironic suggestion that the most popular social networking site in the world is the invention of a guy who cannot relate to others is at the heart of The Social Network, a film preoccupied with the paradoxical/symbiotic relationship between technology's rapidly evolving role in facilitating communication and my generation's growing tendency towards (preference for?) social isolation. For anyone who has recently found themselves in a room of flesh-and-blood people talking at length about things other people wrote on Facebook and had to repress the urge to scream, The Social Network is frighteningly prescient.

Aaron Sorkin's screenplay (based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Merzrich) jumps back and forth effortlessly between the rapid chain of events that led to the creation of Facebook and Zuckerberg testifying in two different lawsuits filed by classmates - twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Arnie Hammer), and Mark's best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), respectively. While the courtroom format is a familiar one (the Sorkin-penned A Few Good Men but one example), Sorkin and director David Fincher are less interested in deciding whether Zuckerberg truly stole Facebook from the Winklevi or broke his contract with Eduardo than in observing their brilliant but often inscrutable protagonist. Mark's bitter, post-breakup creation of Facemash - a Harvard variation of Hotornot.com - is crosscut with shots of implausibly attractive coeds literally bussed into a party hosted by one of the most exclusive final clubs at Harvard. It's the chip on his shoulder at having been rejected by women and the WASP elite that starts him on the path to Facebook and his destiny. Later, when co-founder Eduardo is focused on ways to monetize Facebook, Zuckerberg is preoccupied with protecting the site's "cool" status and everything that implies; while Mark is almost always the smartest person in the room, the motivations behind his billion-dollar creation are stunningly adolescent and regressive. Eisenberg is terrific as Zuckerberg, convincing as he coldly demonstrates his intellectual superiority while subtly hinting at the tremendous insecurity barely masked by Mark's smug facade.

It's the pursuit of "cool," that obscure object of desire, that leads Mark to Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), famous in geek circles as one of the founders of Napster. Timberlake is perfect as a Gen Y Mephistopheles, tantalizing Mark with talk of Facebook's billion-dollar potential - Parker is venal, paranoid and ultimately sort of sad, able to provide a Machiavellian path to the future but lacking in any understanding or interest in what, ultimately, the future means. Many have noted/complained that The Social Network doesn't seem very interested in Facebook itself, but I think it's Zuckerberg's relationship with Parker and the damage it does to one of his few ties with humanity that indirectly comments on our relationship with Facebook. Scrolling down my Facebook wall, I might encounter one friend's open letter to President Obama; below that, another friend posting pictures of her child being cute; below that, thinly veiled sexual banter between a friend and her new boyfriend; below that, a heated debate on whether simulated necrophilia is protected by the First Amendment; below that, Farmville. Facebook makes all of us performer and audience to everyone else we know, but it has no inherent meaning besides what we bring to it; it's banal and possibly nihilistic and, like any ubiquitious internet creation, its ultimate meaning is a mystery even as its role and influence in our lives grows every day (the entire course of my life has been drastically altered because of YouTube - I know of what I speak). So it's more than just a witty in-joke that Mark's internet alias is TylerDurden - Zuckerberg is perhaps the ultimate rebel without a clue and the embodiment of the clever, vacant core of Geek Chic.

Putting aside my Jonathan Edwards impression for one moment, whether The Social Network actually intends to raise any of the issues it has provoked in discussion of the film, it succeeds completely on the basis of being a wonderfully entertaining and engaging movie. Sorkin's typically sharp-witted writing has, in the hands of other directors, turned out stagey and unconvincing in the final product; Fincher, however, proves to be the ideal director for Sorkin, his penchant for visual symmetry and technical perfection matching Sorkin's own obsessive precision and rendering the whole thing less show-offy than a logical representation of their obsessive subject scored to a coldly perfect soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (perhaps it is, as Walter Chaw suggested, "an asshole movie about an asshole"). Fincher's exacting direction also results in excellent work from his cast of relative newcomers - Garfield is heartbreaking as the one nice guy in the movie, Hammer is hilarious and weirdly endearing (and there are two of him), and Mara is so terrific in her three short scenes that I'm ready to forgive her for that abysmal Nightmare on Elm Street remake. At its best, The Social Network suggests a 21st century version of a Billy Wilder/I.A.L. Diamond collaboration, films which were also very much of their zeitgeist yet captured something timeless. It's remarkable that the inevitable Facebook movie, which could and logically should have been instantly dated and completely ephemeral, could well prove to be one of the first classic movies of the new decade.

Battle of the Aughts: James Frazier on Burn After Reading

When I reviewed “Burn After Reading” upon release, I rewarded it a 3.5 out of 5. I wrote “‘Burn After Reading,’ the latest film from the Coen Brothers, is a dark comedy and spy farce that unfolds like a chemical reaction, its plot elements combining, mixing, then igniting briefly before fizzing out.” I got it right until that last part.

“Burn After Reading” is a quintessential example of those films that work like a stick of dynamite with a long fuse, sitting there gently for a while until they explode in utter brilliance. I’m willing to forgive myself (and anyone else) for not catching the genius the first time around; the Coen Brothers’ assemble a script whose characters are all unlikeable, narcissistic buffoons, cast them with A-list talent, and unleashes them into a labyrinthine plot that mixes pathetic infidelity, meaningless espionage, and one bizarre home-made masturbatory implement. It’s a version of what Roger Ebert deemed the Idiot Plot, only the Coens intended for their characters to be as moronic as possible. The brothers, off a career high from the enormous critical and commercial success of “No Country For Old Men,” exhibit a fearless willingness to tell the story they want to. Not many auteurs would employ Brad Pitt as a dimwitted gym trainer that meets a shockingly unceremonious demise halfway through their story, but it’s that kind of nerve that makes their work go beyond unconventional and into the realm of subversive.

Detractors are prone to accusing the film of existing without meaning to its action, themselves accidentally tapping into the theme: that life’s a mess, nothing adds up to much, and we can all play the role of the fool. The closing dialogue between two confounded CIA observers sums it up:

CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?
CIA Officer: I don't know, sir.
CIA Superior: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir.
CIA Superior: I'm fucked if I know what we did.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say
CIA Superior: Jesus Fucking Christ.

Life’s hilarious like that, sometimes.

- James Frazier

Battle of the Aughts: Final Round

And the winner:

"[Children of Men] inspires genuine hope even in the bleakest of possible futures... Cuaron just made a huge leap from a great up-and-coming director to one of the most important voices in cinema today." - me

"Cuaron, like Kubrick in his later films, plunges the audience into the world of the film without pausing for exposition or character development, and it's a lot to handle on the first viewing. Heck, it's tempting just to groove on the film's visual design the first time around- with its production design combining crumbling cities with cutting edge technology and its cinematography which is both luminous and hardscrabble, this is the supreme technical achievement of last year. But as overwhelming an experience as Children of Men can be, it never once loses the audience, a credit to Owen's rock-solid presence and especially the visionary direction of Cuaron. In the end, Children of Men is a hopeful film, one in which life doesn't merely endure, but prevails." - Paul Clark

"A convincingly imagined dystopia and filmmaking that's both staggeringly virtuosic and emotionally involving. All this and early King Crimson on the soundtrack." - Glenn Kenny

"Cuaron fulfills the promise of futuristic fiction; characters do not wear strange costumes or visit the moon, and the cities are not plastic hallucinations, but look just like today, except tired and shabby. Here is certainly a world ending not with a bang but a whimper, and the film serves as a cautionary warning. The only thing we will have to fear in the future, we learn, is the past itself. Our past. Ourselves."
- Roger Ebert

"The miracle of Cuarón's films is that he presents the sanctity of our feelings for our children in ways as rugged, terrifying, and unsentimental as childhood. Children of Men is about a lot of things, including a sense of wonder in ourselves: how we're able to persevere in the face of our own mortality if we're just given (reminded of?) a cause worth fighting for." - Walter Chaw

Battle of the Aughts: Round 6

With his latest film having been killed by Scientology, maybe P.T. is due for a victory?

Punch-Drunk Love (11)

Kill Bill vol. 2 (8)

Children of Men (12)

Inglourious Basterds (6)

Battle of the Aughts: Round 5 - QT vs PT (milk vs. shakes)

Punch-Drunk Love (10)

Up (5)

Kill Bill vol. 2 (8)

The Royal Tenenbaums (5)

Children of Men (8)

WALL*E (5)

Inglourious Basterds (7)

There Will Be Blood (6)

Battle of the Aughts: Round 4

Sadly, this round's parings don't really inspire any clever titles (Ed Asner vs. Stephen Tobolowsky was considered but seemed like too much of a reach). However, the pairs of directors and, in one case, a much-loved studio that have made it thus far give hope for more cleverness in the future. Unless PT, QT and Pixar are due to get knocked down a peg or two...

Punch-Drunk Love (11)

Mulholland Drive (9)

Up (9)
Memento (7)



Kill Bill vol. 2 (9)
Spirited Away (7)



The Royal Tenenbaums (11)
Pan's Labyrinth (5)



Children of Men (12)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (3)





WALL*E/There Will Be Blood (tie - 8 each)



Inglourious Basterds (12)
Yi Yi (6)

Battle of the Aughts: Round 3 - Chihiro vs. Ofelia

9/10 Edit - By some misbegotten stroke of the delete button, two of the pairings seem to have been omitted. So if you haven't voted on Spirited Away/Pan's Labyrinth, Ratatouille/The Royal Tenenbaums or Jesse James/WALL*E, please do. My apologies to Messrs. Miyazaki, Del Toro, Bird, Anderson, Dominik and Stanton.

Punch-Drunk Love (10)
Dancer in the Dark (2)

Mulholland Drive (8)
Dogville (5)

Up (7)
No Country For Old Men (6)

Memento (7)
American Splendor (6)

Kill Bill vol. 2 (11)
I'm Not There (2)

Spirited Away/Pan's Labyrinth (tie - 2 each)

The Royal Tenenbaums (3)
Ratatouille (1)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford/WALL-E (tie - 2 each)

Children of Men (10)
25th Hour (2)

There Will Be Blood (8)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (5)

Inglourious Basterds (8)
28 Days Later (5)

Yi Yi (6)
Happy-Go-Lucky (2)