Silly Hats Only

We Need to Talk About Kevin ("Gee, ya think?")

2011-12-23T16:32:00.002-05:00

Of all the complaints I’ve read about We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ramsay’s first film in nearly a decade, the most interesting to me is the idea that the film doesn’t work because Kevin (played by Ezra Miller as a teenager) is a monster more or less from the time the doctor cut his umbilical cord. And you know what? Those folks aren’t wrong- a film in which a mother looks back at the fleeting, subtle signs that her kid is going to end up shooting up his school does (on paper, anyway) sound more compelling than one in which a child reveals his evil from the get-go and seems inevitably careening toward cataclysmic violence.

Yet I don’t think that Ramsay wants to examine the genesis of a killer, so much as she wants to explore how inadequate the vast majority of us are when confronted with unfiltered evil.

Click here for full review.

Screener grubbing 2011

2011-12-23T16:31:00.001-05:00

I’m a busy guy. After all, I’ve got a wife and kids, I’m working full-time, and I take college classes to boot. So while I try to carve out time for movies I want to see, there are always a few that slip through the cracks. Therefore, as in previous years, I’ve decided to make a list of the movies I want to see most, in the hope that some Good Samaritan out there might help me see what I really want to see before the Muriels deadline at the end of January.

Note: some of the movies I’ve listed are scheduled to come to Columbus, while others are or will be available to me to view at home before the deadline. Titles that are italicized are ones I probably won’t be able to see- at least, not without help.

1. A Separation (Farhadi)
Usually, the movies I look forward to most are known quantities, more often than not coming from established filmmakers. So it seems a little odd that the movie I feel most compelled to watch before the Muriels deadline is from a director whose work is unfamiliar to me. However, based on the raves for A Separation since it first premiered at last year’s Berlinale, I’m willing to make an exception to my usual M.O. In recent years I’ve become more selective of critics whose opinions I really trust, so while it’s impressive that Farhadi’s film was at the top of Roger Ebert’s best-of-2011 list and placed prominently on the lists of both EW critics, that means less to me than the love it’s getting from Mike D’Angelo, who’s the exact opposite of a critical “easy lay.” Yet D’Angelo has rated the film higher than any new release since The Man Who Wasn’t There fully a decade ago. Good enough for me.

2. Margaret (Lonergan)
Speaking of a decade ago, remember when Kenneth Lonergan was an exciting new directorial voice, poised to take American cinema by storm in the wake of his You Can Count on Me success? Then Margaret happened- a movie that was caught up in litigation for five years before trickling into the most cursory of releases, a cautionary tale for up-and-coming filmmakers who would dare to think big within the Hollywood system. But while the groundswell of online support for Margaret is heartening, in the end a film must succeed on its own merits, and judging by all the evidence, it’s the sort of ambitious, underloved work that’s usually right up my alley. I’m just hoping I can check this out sooner rather than later.

3. George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Scorsese)
There are quite a few notable documentaries still on my cinephile dance card before the movie years wraps up (see #6 below), but the one I’m most curious to see is this one. Being both a Scorsese fan and a Harrison fan of long standing, I really want to check out what the master filmmaker has to say about the most spiritual- and in many ways, the most complicated- of the Beatles.

4. A Dangerous Method (Cronenberg) [coming 27 Jan to Columbus]
I wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of Eastern Promises, but when Cronenberg’s on, he’s pretty great. And considering I dig a lot of his more cerebral works, I’m hoping this is in the tradition of Dead Ringers and Spider.

5. Aurora (Puiu) [available 10 Jan on DVD]
Puiu’s bitterly cold comedy The Death of Mr. Lazarescu made my top 10 back in 2006, so I’ve waited a while for this, his follow-up, and felt terrible that I had to miss its single screening at the Wex. No matter- the upcoming DVD release should help me rectify this.

6 (tie). Into the Abyss (Herzog)
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (Berlinger/Sinofsky)
Two documentaries about the complexities of the American justice system, from two (okay, three) gifted filmmakers. Reviews for Into the Abyss haven’t been stellar, but Herzog’s always compelling, and I’m curious about his take on the death penalty. And while the West Memphis Three were freed just a few months ago, I believe the third Paradise Lost documentary should present a fitting coda both to the case and to this great and noble documentary series.

I’ve listed the other movies in my to-see list below, in alphabetical order. As before, titles that I don’t think I’ll have a means to see prior to the Muriels deadline are italicized, so if anyone out there can hook me up with a copy, that would be awesome:

The Artist (Hazanavicius) [coming 13 Jan to Columbus]
Carnage (Polanski) [coming 20 Jan to Columbus]
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Fincher) [now in theatres]
House of Pleasures (Bonello) [coming 2 Feb to Columbus; also available on SundanceNow]
The Interrupters (James)
Moneyball (Miller) [now in theatres]
My Joy (Loznitsa)
Mysteries of Lisbon (Ruiz) [now on DVD]
Pina (Wenders)
Shame (McQueen)
The Skin I Live In (Almodovar)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Alfredson) [coming 13 Jan to Columbus]
Tuesday, After Christmas (Muntean) [coming 27 Dec to DVD]

Thanks!

New Content Alert

2011-11-21T18:46:00.002-05:00

So hey, look! I actually wrote some new reviews for the blog. If I only I liked the movies, that would be even more awesome! Anyway, here goes:

Breaking Dawn- "If you need the book to explain the movie, then the filmmakers have dropped the ball."

Happy Feet Two- "What was once endearingly off-kilter now feels focus-grouped to death."

The Return of the Curse of the Incredible Two-Headed Marathon

2011-10-15T00:07:00.001-04:00

In my younger days, I wasn’t much of a horror-movie fan. Having come fairly late to my movie love compared to some cinephiles out there, I made it a point to gobble up canonical classics in the course of my cinematic education. But in the process of doing so, I missed out on a lot of genre favorites, especially in the more populist genres such as Westerns and particularly horror films.

Consequently, it comes as something of a surprise to discover that this year represents my tenth trip to Columbus’ annual horror marathon, which in its present incarnation is known as the Incredible Two-Headed Marathon. And while the younger me might not have considered this his idea of a good time, I can confirm that it’s a blast, so much so that I’ve started taking my wife with me. Having missed a lot of the classics, the marathon affords me the chance to enjoy them for the first time on the big screen.

But the fun of the marathon goes beyond the movies themselves, as any marathoid will tell you. Naturally, some of the movies go over better with a crowd than others (one of my first marathons included Don’t Look Now, which isn’t exactly a crowd pleaser but is certainly more welcoming than Irreversible, which played two years ago). Beyond that, however, there are the selections from co-host Bruce Bartoo’s vast library of vintage trailers, the short films, the costume and scream contests, the de rigeur audience participation, and of course the experience of holing oneself up in a movie theatre for twenty-four hours, healthy diet and proper hygiene be damned.

Over the past decades, many a movie lover and armchair pundit has bemoaned the diluting of the “audience experience” as a part of going to movies. Whether it’s discussing the increasing ease of getting top-quality presentation in the comfort of one’s own home or bitching about those damn kids and their yelling and cell phone usage during the show, going to the movies has, for most people, lost a lot of the magic it once had. But to those people, I’ll just say this: if you want a communal moviegoing experience, the Marathon delivers.

This year’s lineup, roughly in order:

Bruce and co-host Joe Neff always begin with an oldie-but-goodie, and horror doesn’t get much older than this year’s lead-off hitter, 1919’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It’s great, of course, but what makes this even more exciting is that it’ll be accompanied by a new score performed by Columbus favorite Sue Harshe.

My introduction to the cycle of Roger Corman’s big-screen Poe adaptations came two years ago at the marathon when I saw the gorgeous Nic Roeg-lensed Masque of the Red Death. This year brings another Corman/Poe film, The Pit and the Pendulum, which doubles as a tribute to horror icon Vincent Price, who stars in the film and would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year.

Ti West’s House of the Devil was one of the better horror films of the past decade, more for the slow-burn style of the first two-thirds rather than the relatively prosaic payoff. Still, it’ll be nice to see this one with a crowd.

Another one that should benefit from the Marathon experience is Bride of Frankenstein, still one of the hallmarks of the genre. Most of the time, Golden Age Hollywood horror feels a bit slow and stodgy for this crowd, but what sets Bride is that the laughs don’t feel out of place since it’s actually supposed to be funny and bizarre. Also, Ang hasn’t seen this yet, so it’ll be fun to introduce her to it.

Meanwhile, the one I’m probably looking forward to most here is Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein, which I’ve somehow missed out on so far. I know very little about the particulars of this, except that it has something of a reputation…

And speaking of reputation, few horror films nowadays are as notorious as A Serbian Film, which has its Columbus theatrical premiere at this year’s marathon. Neither Ang nor I are big fans of so-called “extreme” horror movies (for example, I didn’t cotton to Martyrs, which played here last year), so we might duck out during this to check on the dogs and grab a bite to eat instead.

This year’s other premiere is Midnight Son, which I actually hadn’t heard of until it was announced as part of the lineup. Ang is a big fan of vampire movies, and I’m also curious to see what wrinkles this one has on this well-tilled ground. I for one am hoping this is more Martin than Twilight (sorry hon).

It just wouldn’t be a horror marathon without a gonzo Asian thriller on the bill. Bruce and Joe set the bar high last year with House, and this year’s inclusion is the allegedly strange and “ultra-rare” Goke: Bodysnatcher From Hell. How can you go wrong with a title like that, he asked with a hopeful smirk on his face.

Along with Pit and the Pendulum and Flesh For Frankenstein, the third movie I’m most looking forward to at the marathon is The Hitcher. This is another one of those I haven’t seen yet, but I’m a fan of Rutger Hauer in steel-eyed baddie mode, so this should be right up my alley.

Giallo films have generally been hit-and-miss with me, but I’m willing to give The Beyond a shot this year. I’ve yet to really enjoy a Lucio Fulci film, but what the hell, right?

Bruce and Joe have announced James Gunn’s slugfest Slither for some previous marathons, but somehow it’s always been one of those that gets cut when the marathon is running behind. Still, it’s a lot of fun for those with strong stomachs for gross-out gags and should be fun with the marathon audience- provided it doesn’t get cut, that is.

The final film on this year’s marathon schedule is the original Hellraiser. This one, unlike a lot of eighties horror favorites, is one I’ve actually seen. I’m not a huge fan of this, but admittedly I haven’t seen it in years, and I’m perfectly willing to give it another chance, if I make it through everything else first.

The Incredible Two-Headed Marathon takes place at the Grandview Theatre, beginning at noon on Saturday and running through noon-ish on Sunday. Tickets are $40 at the door. For more information, check out the web site.

"Sherlock Holmes was a pimp!"

2011-10-04T17:36:00.001-04:00

Cold Weather is a treasure because it’s not ashamed to be modest of scale. To the contrary, writer/director/editor Aaron Katz relishes in the very smallness of his movie, and the movie is all the more pleasurable for it. Everything about the movie feels modest, beginning with the ambitions of its protagonist Doug (Cris Lankenau), a twentysomething who’s recently dropped out of college but might, y’know, go back, like, eventually. For now, he’s content to shack up with his slightly more career-minded big sister Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn), work nights at the local ice factory, and hang out when he’s off the clock.

Click here for the full review.

Movies of My Life #5: My Senior English Project

2011-08-18T19:59:00.001-04:00

A few months ago, I received an invite via Facebook to my 15-year high school reunion. I’ve never harbored much nostalgia for my high school days- I wasn’t a popular guy, partly because I wasn’t popular but also because I was, quite frankly, a bit of an asshole to anyone outside my strange little circle of friends. Still, I’m curious as to how the event will go for me, not least because I’m genuinely curious to find out of I changed that much in the last decade and a half.

Like many people, I don’t think I’ve retained a lot of what I learned in high school, at least not to the point where I can readily summon up the knowledge that once came almost instantly. In hindsight, it seems like my biggest takeaway from high school was that it was a key time in the formation of my tastes, especially in terms of how I think about movies. I first started getting really serious about cinema during my junior and senior years, which feel comfortably in the aftermath of Pulp Fiction, which served as a gateway drug for many a budding cinephile back in the day.

So, when my AP English class was tasked with penning and presenting a project to be completed during senior year, I took the opportunity to delve into cinema history. I remember justifying the project to my teacher by positioning cinema as the logical successor to novels in the realm of popular narrative entertainment, but in fact this was mostly an excuse to educate myself in the films of yesteryear. Because I hadn’t seen most of the canonical classics, I had to comb through lots of books and web sites in search of the ideal selection. Then throughout the year, I watched all of the films (on VHS, of course), then assessed each of them in terms of their cultural impact and their cinematic and “literary” merits.

In order to help narrow down the list, I set myself some limitations:

1. Only English-language films. Since one of my goals was to analyze the films’ impact on the cultural climate, I thought it would be easier to limit myself to movies that were made primarily for English-speaking audiences. With a handful of exceptions, the movies I chose were pretty well-known, and the ones that weren’t had a specific reason for being chosen. More on this later.

2. No films made after 1986. Why 1986? Because I was presenting the project to the class in 1996, and I thought it was best to have at least a decade’s distance in order to gauge the film’s long-lasting legacy rather than catching the tail end of its contemporary buzz. Because of this, I missed out on a handful of golden greats, most egregiously Do the Right Thing and the movie that helped inspire the project in the first place, Pulp Fiction.

3. No more than two films per director. I mean, sure- I could have loaded down the list with Hitchcock, Kubrick, Chaplin, and so on, but I wanted to get some diversity in the selection while at the same time recognizing how major these guys really were.

4. No animated films. Of course, this was back when “animated classics” were almost exclusively old-school Disney (to give you some perspective, Toy Story was released in November of my senior year). However, my principal justification for this rule was that I didn’t feel that cel-and-ink moviemaking should be judged alongside live-action works, due to the differences in how they were made. Whether I still feel that way is a subject for another post entirely.

5. No documentaries, for much the same reasons I decided against including animated films.

Anyway, here’s my original senior project list of movies:

The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)
City Lights (1931, Chaplin)
Gone With the Wind (1939, Fleming)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Casablanca (1942, Curtiz)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Welles)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, Huston)
The Third Man (1949, Reed)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, Lean)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
Psycho (1960, Hitchcock)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962, Frankenheimer)
Dr. Strangelove (1964, Kubrick)
Blowup (1966, Antonioni)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
The Godfather (1972, Coppola)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982, Spielberg)
Platoon (1986, Stone)

OK, so a lot of these choices are pretty obvious. But all in all, I think I kept things fairly eclectic, especially considering how much I still had to learn.

But like so many tinkerer types, I just can’t seem to leave anything alone. So with fifteen years and thousands more movies under my belt, I’ve decided to revisit the list, separating the worthy titles from the ones that can be pared away, and replacing them with movies that I think broaden the scope of the list even more.

First, I’ve decided to tighten my two-films-per-director rule, forcing myself to choose only a single work per filmmaker, thereby representing some of the greats I neglected last time, either due to space issues or simple ignorance of their greatness. But which to choose? For Welles, it was easy- considering the type of list this is, how are you not gonna go with Kane? Likewise, with Kubrick and Lean, I felt like 2001 and Lawrence were more representative not only of their makers’ styles but of the ambitions that helped to make them great. Vertigo, more than Psycho, represents a kind of Rosetta Stone for Hitchcock. And finally, despite the enduring popularity of Gone With the Wind, I find that it doesn’t hold up as well as The Wizard of Oz, which remains one of those movies that everyone knows even today- no mean feat after more than seven decades.

So what else would I cut? The easiest choice would be the most recent film on the list, Platoon, an inclusion which dates my list more than any other. After all, in the mid-nineties, Stone was one of the most inescapable figures on the cinematic scene- up there with Spielberg and Scorsese, certainly- and his cachet was so strong that even a steaming load of speculative bullshit like Nixon won raves from critics all over the world. Today, Stone has largely been unmasked as a charlatan, and Platoon has been overshadowed by more skillful works of art about Vietnam, in particular Coppola’s far superior Apocalypse Now.

And if I’m bringing Apocalypse on board, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut out The Godfather, alas. While Godfather remains more popular and influential in popular culture, Apocalypse is the better work of art, and a rare case in which directorial indulgence and borderline madness actually worked to produce a masterpiece.

As for two of my other original choices, City Lights and E.T., I’d switch them out in favor of two different films by their makers. For my new Chaplin film, I’d go with Modern Times, which keeps Chaplin’s sentimental streak but amps up the satirical streak, making it a key mid-point film in his career as he transitioned from silents to talkies. For Spielberg, I’d be inclined to pick Jaws to fill the horror-film gap left by Psycho, along with taking over the seventies blockbuster role left by the loss of The Godfather.

The final two movies I’d jettison- Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Manchurian Candidate- simply don’t feel as indispensible now as they did back in high school. In my research at the time, I got the impression that John Huston was one of the canonical masters of the cinema, but the intervening years have shown me that, as great as he was, he wasn’t quite on the level of some of the folks who didn’t end up making the cut. Likewise, The Manchurian Candidate, while certainly a great film, isn’t quite major enough to justify keeping it on the list when any number of stone-cold classics have been sidelined.

As for the keepers, I feel like most of them are fairly self-explanatory. You can’t make a list like this without Kane, Casablanca, The Third Man, and Singin’ in the Rain. Additionally, films by John Ford, Buster Keaton, Martin Scorsese, and Billy Wilder should be represented in the mix. And while Chinatown’s entry would be justified by its screenplay alone, it also stands both as a superlative homage to classic detective noir and a vehicle for one of the most singular stars in cinema, Jack Nicholson.

Finally, there’s Blowup, a quirky selection that I’ve decided to keep. The primary reason I originally chose this was because I wanted to spotlight the increasing presence foreign filmmaking had on the cinematic scene in the second half of the 20th century. Many of the biggest names in world cinema (Godard, Bergman, Bunuel, Fellini, Kurosawa, et al) have avoided working in English for the most part if not entirely. Others, such as Polanski came to America and proceeded to make films within the system, although he was able to keep plenty of his sensibility in his English-language films. By contract, Blowup essentially finds Antonioni translating his signature style into English, with little discernible difference aside from the language and setting. As such, it’s a fascinating case, and combined with the fact that it remains a masterpiece and an essential time capsule of 60s-era swinging London, it deserves to be here.

So where does the list stand now? I decided to keep fourteen of the original titles:

The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Casablanca (1942, Curtiz)
The Third Man (1949, Reed)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean)
Blowup (1966, Antonioni)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)

… and so far, I’ve added the following:

Modern Times (1936, Chaplin)
Jaws (1975, Spielberg)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Coppola)

This leaves us eight spots. To begin with, let’s trade one hugely popular but ideologically prickly Civil War epic (Gone With the Wind) for another- Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Sure, its racial politics are regrettable, to put it politely, but its influence is unmistakable.

While we’re at it, why not another silent film? Of my original 25, only two films were from the silent era (City Lights was a borderline pick at that), and both of them were comedies. The Birth of a Nation broadened the possibilities for cinema as a storytelling form, but it only hinted at how expressionistic the medium could be. To better spotlight this, I would choose Murnau’s Sunrise, one of the most beautiful films ever made, and one that to my eyes best represents the poetry of which the silent film form was capable just before spoken dialogue came along to change everything.

Moving forward in time, there were several filmmakers I overlooked the first time who have since become favorites, and I would want to see their work represented on this list- namely Robert Altman, Michael Powell, and Howard Hawks. Altman has cast such a long shadow over the last four decades of American cinema that he should be included here, and I think the obvious choice would be Nashville, which would also give the list another film with a political bent. Of all the Powell’s classics, the one that I think suits the project best is A Matter of Life and Death, which would double as a replacement of Bridge on the River Kwai as the WW2 selection while injecting some magical realism into the proceedings.

Hawks is the toughest call. The guy made plenty of masterpieces across genres, to the point where it’s hard to say which is his most representative. Rio Bravo would be a hell of a choice, as would Only Angels Have Wings, but my choice would be The Big Sleep, which in addition to offering many of the usual Hawksian pleasures is also a classic detective noir to serve as a point of comparison with the already-selected Chinatown.

Which leaves me with three more choices. The first of these would be Bonnie and Clyde, which I’ve chosen to represent the transitional period that Hollywood faced at the fall of the Production Code. Director Arthur Penn polarized critics infusing the popular crooks-on-the-run genre with shocking violence that hadn’t previously been possible in a high-profile release. This made the film a flashpoint between older audiences who dismissed it as exploitation and younger ones who saw it as a sign of the grittiness that would take over Hollywood movies for the next decade.

With two choices to go, I find myself having to evaluate my reasons behind this project. Then and now, one of the deciding factors was whether a film said something significant about the times in which it was made. And while it’s debatable whether this is the case with, say, Sunrise, I think it’s applicable to most of the movies I’ve chosen. It also, I think applies to Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night!, which even today stands as the pinnacle of rock’n’roll musicals. While rock was probably the most dominant force in Western media in the second half of the 1900s, there’s precious little of it on my list. Lester’s use of cinema vérité techniques to liven up the musical genre is also a factor in my decision, although not so much as the fact that it stars the biggest band the world has ever known at a time when they were in the process of changing popular culture forever.

But while I’m pondering what made me take on the project on the first place, I also find myself thinking over why I’m revisiting it now. Fifteen years down the line, I could look back at my old list like I look back on so many aspects of my youth, with amusement and slight derision at how young and foolish I was. But what good would that do? If I feel nostalgic for this particular part of my life, it’s because I know that it set me on a steady course as a movie lover, laying a strong foundation for my cinematic education. So with this in mind, my final selection is David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, which remains one of the most acclaimed and singular American films of the last quarter century. If nothing else, consider this my gift to the high-school me, whose mind surely would have been blown.

Here’s the New List:
The Birth of a Nation (1915, Griffith)
The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)
Sunrise (1927, Murnau)
Modern Times (1936, Chaplin)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Casablanca (1942, Curtiz)
The Big Sleep (1946, Hawks)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Powell and Pressburger)
The Third Man (1949, Reed)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean)
A Hard Day’s Night! (1964, Lester)
Blowup (1966, Antonioni)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Penn)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
Jaws (1975, Spielberg)
Nashville (1975, Altman)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Coppola)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)
Blue Velvet (1986, Lynch)

No school like the old school, huh?

2011-07-05T19:35:00.003-04:00

Remember the retro Muriels I did earlier this year? Sure you do. In the interest of creating some new content a little bit at a time while finishing up the planning of my upcoming wedding, I've decided to keep doing that further back into the past. So beginning today until I am no longer able to keep this going, I'll be posting old-timey Muriels nominations over at my newly-created blog Throwback Muriels. Enjoy!

"Jamie want big boom."

2011-05-31T18:13:00.001-04:00

I haven’t had cable for years, so I’ve been missing out on lot of the better shows on television. That’s why Netflix Watch Instantly is fun- it doesn’t have everything by a long shot, but it’s got plenty to occupy the folks here in my house. One of our favorite Netflix offerings is the Discovery Channel hit MythBusters, which is fun but also semi-educational and, for the most part, family friendly. In other words, perfect for watching at the end of a long day of work and/or school.

Sadly, I recently happened upon the news that many of the episodes that Netflix currently streams will no longer be available as of this Monday. The list of episodes being given the axe includes some of our favorites, including “Salsa Escape,” “Cooling a Six-Pack,” “Cell Phone Destroys Gas Station” (the source of the above quote), “Blind Driving,” and beloved specials about pirates, James Bond, and the gang’s two-episode trip to Alaska.

But to my eyes, the biggest loss is “Alcatraz Escape.” If a MythBusters newbie asked me what would be a good place to start, “Alcatraz Escape” would be the one I’d recommend. For my money, it’s the perfect combination of the ingredients that make MythBusters work- a well-known history-based myth coupled with a healthy amount of education speculation, and spiced up with ingenuity and some derring-do. It’s not quite my favorite (that honor would go to the thankfully still-available “NASA Moon Landing”), but it’s a lot of fun.

So if you’ve ever been curious to get into MythBusters, I suggest you get moving, because after this weekend, many of the show’s best-known episodes won’t be available to stream anymore. And for those who want to watch their favorites one more time before they’re gone, here’s the complete list of episodes getting the heave-ho:

Exploding Toilet
Cell Phone Destroys Gas Station
Barrel of Bricks
Penny Drop
Buried Alive
Lighting Strikes/Tongue Piercings
Alcatraz Escape
Chicken Gun
Breakstep Bridge
Buried in Concrete
Ancient Death Ray
Boom Lift Catapult
Salsa Escape (Big Blasts Collection)
Exploding Port-a-Potty (Big Blasts Collection)
Is Yawning Contagious?
Cooling a Six-Pack
Son of a Gun
Shop ‘Til You Drop Special
Mythbusters Revealed
Hollywood on Trial
Breaking Glass
Killer Brace Position
Border Slingshot
Helium Football
Bullets Fired Up
Exploding Pants (Big Blasts Collection)
Crimes and Myth-Demeanors
Whirlpool
Diet Coke and Mentos
Earthquake Machine
Deadly Straw
Air Cylinder Rocket (Big Blasts Collection)
Exploding Lighter (Big Blasts Collection)
Firearms Folklore
Anti-Gravity Device
Holiday Special
Hindenburg Mystery
Pirate Special
Underwater Car Escape
Grenades and Guns (Big Blasts Collection)
Exploding Water Heater (Big Blasts Collection)
Confederate Steam Gun (Big Blasts Collection)
James Bond, Part 1 and 2 (Big Blasts Collection)
Alaska Special 1 and 2
Exploding Steak
Blind Driving
Ninjas 2
Alcohol Myths
Motorcycle Flip
Coffin Punch
End With a Bang
Banana Slip, Double Dip

Oh, and if anyone can point me to a site that lists other Watch Instantly titles Netflix is adding or cutting, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Summer 2011: Mini-preview

2011-05-12T00:27:00.001-04:00

You know, I really used to look forward to the summer movie season. If nothing else, the coming of May would always herald the biggest, loudest, most spectacular movies of the year- pure cinematic candy to gorge on when escaping the assaultive sun. Sadly, as I’ve gotten older I’ve lost a lot of this sense of fun. It’s not just that I’ve gotten more mature as a moviegoer either. I’m still just as capable of enjoying a well-crafted blockbuster as the next guy, provided it delivers the thrills and doesn’t kill too many brain cells. But what really took away that summer movie magic was when the studios started releasing summer-worthy titles year ‘round. Once Hollywood began putting out a big e-ticket every month or so, summer began to feel less like a special time at the movies.

That said, there are at least a handful of intriguing titles coming to multiplexes this summer. Please notice that I’m talking about multiplexes here. Like many cinephiles I’m looking forward to the release of the Errol Morris’ latest doc, Tabloid, along with the goodies new and classic coming to the Wexner Center over the summer. But all five of my anticipated titles listed below should be coming to a theatre near you, no matter where you are, by the time the kids go back to school in the fall. We’ll begin, of course, with my #1 most anticipated movie of the summer, and proceed in (roughly) descending order of anticipation.

Tree of Life (May)

Come on, like you didn’t see this one coming. Back when this was slated to come out in ’09, it topped my most-anticipated list of that year, and the intervening two years have only increased my eagerness to see this. Terence Malick has yet to falter in my eyes, and this project, which he first began writing in the 1970s, could be his most personal yet. There will always be the contingent of vocal Malick-haters, but they can suck it. In a time when there’s precious little excitement left at the multiplex, Tree of Life is my idea of an Event Movie.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (July)

I have yet to be truly bowled over by a big-screen Potter adaptation, but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t looking forward to this. Part of the reason is because last fall’s installment was one of my favorites of the series to date, doing a bang-up job of condensing the original story while setting up this final entry. And with so much ground yet to cover before the series has wrapped, this one has the potential to be pretty ambitious. I predict this’ll be the top-grossing movie of the summer- and perhaps one of its most satisfying entertainments.

Super 8 (June)

With his first two features as a director, JJ Abrams has proven himself to be a canny assimilator of popular culture. Now with his third film, he offers his take on the eighties-era Spielberg adventure, with a group of small-town kids coming face-to-face with something… strange. This may be the iffiest film on my list, but the trailer is awfully impressive, and Abrams looks to be sure-handed in his re-imagining of Spielberg-esque Americana.

Captain America: The First Avenger (July)

Speaking of Americana, am I the only one who’s looking forward to this more than any other comic-book flick of the summer? I hope not, because while X-Men: First Class looks to be yet another attempt to milk a seemingly dry franchise and Thor doesn’t seem too compelling to me, Captain America is the kind of throwback superhero yarn that could serve as a corrective to heaviness that’s become increasingly prevalent in the genre. And I couldn’t think of a filmmaker better suited to this than Joe Johnston, whose underloved The Rocketeer was another infectious adventure about the straight-arrow good guy. With luck, Captain America will give him the franchise he deserved to get two decades ago.

Kung Fu Panda 2 (May)

What’s that, you say? Pixar has a new movie coming out this summer? Well yes, but that Pixar movie is Cars 2, and as much as I’d like to stand out from the crowd, I can’t help but join the chorus that calls the original Cars the least of Pixar’s films thus far. Meanwhile, Kung Fu Panda is Dreamworks’ best animated film to date, a thoroughly unpretentious action comedy that showcases Jack Black’s best star turn since School of Rock. So while I’m still curious to see what else Pixar can do with the Cars gang, deep down I’m really looking forward to laughing along with Po and the Furious Five. Just as long as it doesn’t get too schmaltzy, I expect that I’ll be laughing a lot, and sometimes when you’re watching a big summer movie, that’s really all you need.

"Grim it up"?!?!?!?

2011-05-10T00:18:00.001-04:00

After reading this, I’m pretty much done with Jeff Wells. I can handle his super-sounds-of-the-70s taste in movie and alpha-male posturing, and hell, I find his comically thin skin as amusing as anyone. But after reading his comments about child abuse I don’t think I can take any more. To tell abused and neglected children to “grim it up” in response to poor parenting is insensitive at best and dangerous at worst. I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who didn’t abuse me, but I know plenty of people who weren’t so fortunate, and I know from experience that the suffering adults inflict on children causes lifelong wounds, both physical and psychological. I came of age in a time when the idea of physical punishment of kids was being seriously called into question, and I wholeheartedly agree with nearly every child psychologist today that hitting your children does far more harm than good. Likewise, to willfully cause pain to someone you live is, to me anyway, fairly unthinkable.

But what really gets me is his remark that he “can tell you stories about my own messed-up childhood that’ll tear your heart out.” Oh, so you had a terrible childhood and you turned out OK, so that means every kid should be able to do it? I call foul on that remark. If you made it out fine, then bully for you. However, most children don’t have the temperament or the inner strength to suck it up when things get bad for them, especially when the bad stuff is coming at the hands of the person they look to first for help and guidance in life. For him to downplay the cost of child abuse so casually is, to my eyes, a glaring lack of the sort of empathy I abhor in others. If you can’t extend your heart to someone who’s suffering- particularly if you suffered from the same sort of pain- I don’t have much use for you in my life.

White Elephant 2011 Super-Post!

2011-04-01T18:37:00.012-04:00

Right back where (or at least when) it belongs, it’s the 5th Annual White Elephant Blogathon! The brainchild of Lucid Screening’s Ben Lim, who has since moved on to work for the good folks at The Criterion Collection (www.criterion.com), White Elephant has quickly become a yearly tradition for the blogosphere’s most fearless and foolhardy souls. In case you’re new to the whole White Elephant thing, here are the rules as laid down by Ben back in ’07:

1) Submit the title of a movie that you want someone else to review (preferably something available via Netflix).
2) Review the movie that you get assigned and post the review on April 1.
3) Have fun!

This year’s crop of movies is more eclectic than it’s ever been, with some notorious garbage, some cult favorites and curiosities, and even a handful of legitimate classics in the bunch, although there will no doubt be some debate over which movies fall under which category.

So instead of playing a prank that could jeopardize your job or land you in hot water with your significant other, celebrate April Fool’s Day by checking out this year’s White Elephant reviews.

I'll be updating this list over the next few days, so check back throughout the weekend to sample the goodness the White Elephant has to offer this year.

Now, without further ado, this year's White Elephant lineup!

Simon Abrams hangs with Ice-T in Surviving the Game!

Jim Bach tackles Southland Tales!

Kent Beeson witnesses the epic battle of the ‘Stache vs. the Tongue in Runaway!

Josh Bell gets stung by Scorpion Thunderbolt!

Andrew Bemis goes running with The Devils!

Christianne Benedict gets tangled up in Exte: Hair Extensions!

Steven Carlson shudders at the touch of Myra Breckinridge!

I go back- wayyyyyyyyyy back- in time with Caveman!

KC Costanzo tears the cover off Unmasking the Idol!

Dennis Cozzalio argues for (or against) The Life of David Gale!

Jose Cruz goes pro with Amateur!

Andy Fernandez orders up Le Boucher!

Jaime Grijalba recibe ordenado por El Cardenal! (note: in Spanish)

Ivan Lerner gets into Big Trouble!

Matt Lynch walks the plank with Cutthroat Island!

Michael May recounts The Legend of Boggy Creek!

Ripley McCoy does the bedpan two-step with Patch Adams!

Victor J. Morton IS Cool As Ice!

Joe Neff powers up with Electric Dragon 80000V!

Cole Roulain gets Three O’Clock High!

Caroline Shapiro looks into Feeding Boys, Ayaya!

Stacia investigates the mysteries of Deadlier Than the Male!

Philip Tatler takes on Triumph of the Will!

Patrick Williamson says Welcome Home, Soldier Boys!

Bryce Wilson cracks open the Diary of a Cannibal!

White Elephant Blogathon 2011: My Review of Caveman (Carl Gottlieb, 1981)

2011-04-01T10:50:00.000-04:00

When I learned that I would be reviewing Caveman this year’s White Elephant Blogathon, I was relieved to draw a movie that I could actually watch with my fiancée and kid, unlike so many movies I’ve reviewed in the past. Yet at the same time, I was a little conflicted about the movie itself. I knew that I had seen it as a child, but I was hard-pressed to remember much about it, aside from the phrase “zug-zug,” which seems to be Caveman’s best-known bit. Moreover, I was a little uneasy about reviewing a movie of such modest ambition, since while it would be an easy sit, there isn’t a whole lot of meat on the movie to which one can apply critical insight, much less write something of interest to more than a handful of people.

Caveman, directed by Carl Gottlieb, is a lowbrow comedy, and it aspires to be nothing more than that. There’s a well-worn critical adage that it’s impossible to debate comedy and eroticism, since one’s tastes for both are subjective. This goes double for a movie like Caveman. While one can appreciate some forms of comedy without necessarily finding them funny- hell, Jacques Tati’s films are so intricately engineered that one is too busy marveling at the direction to laugh- the truth is that a movie like Caveman has little to offer but guffaws. So in the end, if Caveman is funny to you, it works, and if it’s not, it doesn’t. What can I say? It worked for me.

Much of this is because it’s so unashamedly silly. From beginning to end, Caveman takes the low road comedy-wise, but the tone is so good-naturedly goofy that it’s infectious. Leading man Ringo Starr has little to do but mug for the camera, but he does it well and lets his hangdog charm do the rest. And the rest of the cast is just as committed, especially Dennis Quaid as Starr’s none-too-bright sidekick, who ends up taking even more abuse than the hero.

Of course, your mileage may vary depending on your taste for slapstick and barn-door-broad gags. Caveman is full of gags aimed at the average grade-school-aged boy, which may be why it’s becoming one of my son’s favorites. It’s the kind of movie in which the heroes, having just discovered fire, fend off an enemy by burning his butt. It contains multiple appearances by a most clever dinosaur who not only howls at the moon at night but also crows like a rooster at dawn. And would you be surprised if I told you that there’s a scene in which Starr, Quaid, and company track through a big pile of dinosaur poop? I didn’t think so.

Then again, Caveman is so sincere about its desire to little more than silly fun that it’s aged surprisingly well. I recently bemoaned to a friend of mine that silliness is in short supply in contemporary comedies, which are so set on being smart and hip that they can’t quite commit to the jokes. Compare Caveman to 2009’s misbegotten Year One and you’ll see the difference- while Year One is just as full of lowbrow gags and egregious contractions of history as Caveman (if not more so), it never musters up the nerve to go all the way with its comedy, and consequently feels less like a movie than a tossed-off sketch by the Apatow Company All-Stars. At least when Caveman unleashes a dumb joke- which, let’s face it, is pretty frequently- you get the sense than it means it.

Now, I don’t want to oversell the merits of Caveman. It’s not a great movie, and much of my affection for it comes from how much it feels like the product of a bygone era in comedy. But I’ll be honest- it’s a hard movie to dislike. For one thing, it lacks many of the more mean-spirited impulses that usually characterize slapstick. As a result, the movie is surprisingly gentle in tone, making it (with a few minor exceptions) pretty solid family viewing, complete with a fun impromptu musical number around a campfire. Also, the stop-motion dinosaurs are a lot of fun- strangely, the unsophisticated animation gives them more character than a more technically proficient rendering, allowing them to come off less as photorealistic dinos than overgrown house pets. And somehow, thirty years ago, Gottlieb got away with making a “dumb” comedy in which 99% of the dialogue was delivered in a nonsensical invented language, and without subtitles to boot. Is there any way this could happen in today’s Hollywood climate? Not a chance.

2010 Muriels Wrap-up!

2011-03-11T20:33:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to post links to the Muriels announcements this year. So instead, for the benefit of those who haven’t been keeping up, I’m going to include all the winners in one convenient wrap-up post, complete with links to the almost uniformly awesome write-ups penned by the voters. Here’s the list, with the winners listed alongside my personal ballot and a handful of my thoughts. And if you want to check out all of this year’s Muriel goodies, I encourage you to slide on over to the Muriels blog or check out the full results at the Muriels Web site.

Anyway, the list:

Best Film:
Muriel’s top 10:
1. The Social Network
2. True Grit
3 (tie). Dogtooth and Toy Story 3
5 (tie). The Ghost Writer and Winter’s Bone
7. Carlos
8. Exit Through the Gift Shop
9. Black Swan
10. Mother

My top 10:
1. Dogtooth
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop
3. The Social Network
4. Winter’s Bone
5. Another Year
6. Inception
7. The Ghost Writer
8. Somewhere
9. Carlos
10. Everyone Else

Unless you’re the Skandies (or if you’re less awesome, the Oscars), the dominance of Social Network was pretty predictable. But as always, I’m impressed by the diversity of our choices here. Sure, there are a handful of Oscar-nominated films, but be fair- at least they’re good Oscar nominees instead of the requisite tepid middlebrow stuff. Seeing as how we’re junkies for all things Coen and Pixar, it wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine True Grit and Toy Story 3 figuring prominently in this year’s Muriels. But who could have predicted that Dogtooth would go over this well with our crowd? Not only did Lanthimos’ masterpiece go toe to toe with three of this year’s most acclaimed wide releases- it also turned out to be the highest-placing foreign-produced film in the five-year history of the Muriels. Good job, folks.

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Muriel’s top 5: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network; Edgar Ramirez, Carlos; Tahar Rahim, A Prophet; James Franco, 127 Hours; Jeff Bridges, True Grit
My top 5: Ramirez, Eisenberg, Rahim, Franco, Louis-do de Lencequesaing, The Father of My Children

Can’t complain about this top 5- Muriel’s top 4 match mine, albeit in a slightly different order, and I’m a Bridges fan of long standing. That said, how awesome would it have been if Ramirez pulled out the upset? It ended up being a surprisingly tight race, as you’ll be able to see by checking the Muriels site.

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Muriel’s top 5: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit; Natalie Portman, Black Swan; Kim Hye-ja, Mother; Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone; Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine
My top 5: Sylvie Testud, Lourdes; Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Vincere; Lawrence; Ruth Sheen, Another Year; Birgit Minichmayr, Everyone Else

Good job Muriel buds realizing that True Grit is Mattie’s story, and therefore that Steinfeld is the daggum lead in the movie. Seeing Kim placing in the top 5, along with the diversity in the best picture and actor categories, makes me wonder if 2010 wasn’t the year of the foreign film… at least in Muriels land.

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Muriel’s top 5: John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone; Christian Bale, The Fighter; Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech; Andrew Garfield, The Social Network; Matt Damon, True Grit
My top 5: Hawkes; Garfield; Niels Arestrup, A Prophet; Armie Hammer, The Social Network; Pierce Brosnan, The Ghost Writer

So… not a close race. But Hawkes is so great in Winter’s Bone that I don’t mind. But wait… only four other people voted for Armie Hammer? Seriously? That just doesn’t compute with me.

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Muriel’s top 5: Greta Gerwig, Greenberg; Olivia Williams, The Ghost Writer; Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom; Aggeliki Papoulia, Dogtooth; Amy Adams, The Fighter
My top 5: Williams; Dale Dickey, Winter’s Bone; Papoulia; Kathryn Hahn, How Do You Know; Elle Fanning, Somewhere

Gerwig wasn’t on my ballot- and frankly, I would’ve considered her a lead in Greenberg- but this is the kind of off-the-wall surprise I always hope for from the Muriels, not unlike Tilda Swinton and Antichrist taking home Best Actress and Cinematography, respectively, last year. Additionally, a second look at my ballot leads me to wonder if I didn’t underrate Hahn, whose warm and funny performance in How Do You Know grows in my memory along with the film itself.

Best Direction:
Muriel’s top 5: David Fincher, The Social Network; Olivier Assayas, Carlos; Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit; Yorgos Lanthimos, Dogtooth; Bong Joon-ho, Mother
My top 5: Lanthimos; Fincher; Banksy, Exit Through the Gift Shop; Mike Leigh, Another Year; Debra Granik, Winter’s Bone

I would just like to give a nice shout-out to Sony Pictures Classics, who distributed Another Year like it was, oh I dunno, Take Me Home Tonight, dropping it in theatres just after Oscar nominations came out, and a scant two days before Muriels ballots were due. With a cannier release pattern, Leigh’s film could have gained some critical traction a la Winter’s Bone, as well as connecting with Leigh’s usual audiences in arthouses everywhere. It’s sad to see a film like this, that everyone seems to care about except for those in charge of distributing the damn thing.

Best Screenplay:
Muriel’s top 5: The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin); True Grit (Joel and Ethan Coen); Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou); Inception (Christopher Nolan); Carlos (Olivier Assayas and Dan Franck)
My top 5: The Social Network; Dogtooth; Carlos; Inception; The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski and Robert Harris)

Again, can’t argue with this.

Best Cinematography:
Muriel’s top 5: True Grit (Roger Deakins); Shutter Island (Robert Richardson); The Social Network (Jeff Cronenweth); Inception (Wally Pfister); Black Swan (Matthew Libatique)
My top 5: Let Me In (Greig Fraser); The Social Network; Valhalla Rising (Morten Søborg); Never Let Me Go (Adam Kimmel); Shutter Island

Even if the Academy doesn’t recognize Deakins, Muriel sure the hell does.

Best Editing:
Muriel’s top 5: The Social Network; Inception; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Shutter Island; Black Swan
My top 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Exit Through the Gift Shop; Inception; The Social Network; Dogtooth

New category this year, and these choices are all fairly solid in my opinion.

Best Music:
Muriel’s top 5: The Social Network; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Inception; Tron: Legacy; True Grit
My top 5: Never Let Me Go; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; The Social Network; Tron: Legacy; Soul Kitchen

This is always a bit of a strange one, since for me it’s not about which movie has the best music so much as which one uses it most effectively. For my money, my top two choices are easily the best of 2010, although it says something that the Tron Legacy score is on regular rotation on my iPod.

Best Cinematic Moment:
Muriel’s top 10:
1. Staring into the inferno - Toy Story 3
2. “Burning for You” - Let Me In
3. Nina Sayers is… the Black Swan - Black Swan
4. Anniversary dance - Dogtooth
5. Zero-gravity fight - Inception
6. Opening breakup - The Social Network
7. Facemash - The Social Network
8. Ending - The Ghost Writer
9. Opening credits - Enter the Void
10. Blackie’s midnight ride - True Grit

My top 10:
1. Bedside proposal, takes 1 and 2 - How Do You Know
2. Henley Royal Regatta - The Social Network
3. Opening credits - Enter the Void
4. Sex Bob-omb vs. the Katayanagi Twins - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
5. Initiation killing - A Prophet
6. “Burning for You” - Let Me In
7. Cat with a hammer - Dogtooth
8. “Is this our time?” - Winter’s Bone
9. Tale of the Three Brothers - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
10. Carlos stops the party - Carlos

This is always a lot of fun, although it can be tough to narrow it down to ten. It’s such a competitive category that my favorite never seems to crack the top 10, and that was the case again this year. Was it that everyone skipped How Do You Know due to the disappointing reviews? As I’ve said before, I expect time will be very kind to Brooks’ film. Oh well- at least the centerpiece scene of Let Me In ended up at a strong #2.

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Muriel’s top 5: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit; Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone; Banksy, Exit Through the Gift Shop; Chloe Grace Moretz, Kick-Ass/Let Me In; Yorgos Lanthimos, Dogtooth
My top 5: Lanthimos; Edgar Ramirez, Carlos; Banksy; Lawrence; Tahar Rahim, A Prophet

This category is always all over the map, and not always in a good way. But it’s hard to knock our choice of winner, who landed just outside my personal top 5. And hey, Lanthimos!

Best Body of Work:
Muriel’s top 5: Leonardo DiCaprio; Mark Ruffalo; Manoel de Oliveira; Chloe Grace Moretz; Andrew Garfield
My top 5: Garfield; DiCaprio; Oliveira; Ruffalo; Ewan McGregor

Looking at our winner, you’d think DiCaprio had strong showings for both of his 2010 performances in the Best Male Lead category, but no- five votes for Shutter Island, none at all for Inception. It was just one of those wonky categories, on in which a teenaged actress could find herself placing alongside a filmmaker roughly six times her age (seriously, the dude just keeps crankin’ ‘em out. I hope I can even make it to 102, much less be as productive as he is).

Best Ensemble Performance:
Muriel’s top 5: The Social Network; True Grit; The Kids Are All Right; Carlos; Another Year
My top 5: Dogtooth; The Social Network; Winter’s Bone; Another Year; How Do You Know

A handful of Muriel favorites show up here again, but this is the only appearance of Kids Are All Right in the top 5 in any category, unless you count Ruffalo’s silver medal in Body of Work. Makes sense- I didn’t love the movie as a whole, but the cast was pretty solid.

Best Web-Based Film Criticism:
Muriel’s top 5: The AV Club; The Man Who Viewed Too Much; Slant; MUBI; Roger Ebert
My top 5: The AV Club; The Man Who Viewed Too Much; MUBI; Vern; The Academic Hack

Hey look- I wrote this one up. Check it out!

10th Anniversary Award for Best Film, 2000:
Muriel’s top 5: In the Mood for Love (Wong); Memento (Nolan); Yi Yi (Yang); Requiem for a Dream (Aronofsky); Dancer in the Dark (von Trier)
My top 5: La Commune [Paris, 1871] (Watkins); Songs From the Second Floor (Andersson); Code Unknown (Haneke); Yi Yi; Eureka (Aoyama)

25th Anniversary Award for Best Film, 1985:
Muriel’s top 5: Brazil (Gilliam); Ran (Kurosawa); After Hours (Scorsese); Back to the Future (Zemeckis); Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (Burton)
My top 5: Come and See (Klimov); Back to the Future; Brazil; Ran; After Hours

50th Anniversary Award for Best Film, 1960:
Muriel’s top 5 6: Psycho (Hitchcock); The Apartment (Wilder); Breathless (Godard); Peeping Tom (Powell); L’Avventura (Antonioni); La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
My top 5: Les Bonnes Femmes (Chabrol); Peeping Tom; The Apartment; L’Avventura; Psycho

Something I enjoy doing is predicting a year in advance what movies will take the anniversary awards the following year. This year was pretty easy, and I went three-for-three. Psycho was a particularly obvious choice, considering that he’s taken this category for the third straight year now. This makes next year that much trickier, since he didn’t release a movie in 1961. As such I’m predicting that David Lynch takes both 2001 and 1986, and that Yojimbo edges out Jules and Jim for 1961.

Special award: Best Film of the 1950s:
Muriel’s top 10:
1. Vertigo (Hitchcock)
2. Rear Window (Hitchcock)
3. The Searchers (Ford)
4. The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
5. Touch of Evil (Welles)
6. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
7. Sunset Boulevard (Wilder)
8. Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly/Donen)
9. Rashomon (Kurosawa)
10. Night of the Hunter (Laughton)

My top 10:
1. Orpheus (Cocteau)
2. The 400 Blows
3. The Seven Samurai
4. M. Hulot’s Holiday (Tati)
5. Vertigo
6. Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick)
7. Singin’ in the Rain
8. Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)
9. Rio Bravo (Hawks)
10. Ordet (Dreyer)

After last year’s best-of-the-00s categories, Steve decided it would be a good idea to continue doing special awards on a year basis. I know several of the voters who complained how tough of a choice it was to narrow down this category to 10, so rich a filmgoing period was the 1950s. And yet… there’s Hitchcock again, in both the first and second spots. Then again, considering the dude pretty much owned the decade (with special mention for Messrs. Kurosawa, Wilder, and Ray), that’s not a bad thing.

Lost: The Poll

2011-03-10T20:16:00.002-05:00

I've been really swamped lately, which means that something had to give. Hence, no content for almost a month now. It's nothing personal, but with so few worthwhile movies out right now and so much else going on in my life, I just don't have the energy to write as much as I'd like to. At the end of a long day, I'd just as soon watch something. In the past, this would have been a movie, but in recent months Angela and I have gotten hooked on watching Lost, which we can stream through Netflix. As of now we're almost done with season 3, and while it's sort of bumpy going on occasion, it's also compulsively watchable. So for all you Lost fans out there, here's a poll I made for your enjoyment, which will hopefully stir up discussion until such time as I can rustle up new content.

Why only the survivors, you ask? Because at this point I can't begin to get a reading on many of the Others, not to mention the supporting characters who appear in flashbacks and such. Besides, considering how many characters have appeared on Lost, can you really blame me for keeping the number down?

So which of the characters listed below are your favorites? You can choose up to three. And yes, I've included Vincent for all you dog lovers out there.

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Retro Muriels Bonus: Best of the Aughts

2011-02-16T06:50:00.000-05:00

Finally, as a last palate cleanser before this year's awards begin, here's my picks for the best of the last decade by category:

Best Picture:
The New World
Waking Life
Audition
8 Women
Dogville
There Will Be Blood
25th Hour
The Son
Synecdoche, New York
Beau Travail

Best Director:
Terrence Malick, The New World
Lars von Trier, Dogville
Takashi Miike, Audition
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Spike Lee, 25th Hour

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Emmanuelle Devos, Gilles’ Wife
Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
Carice Van Houten, Black Book
Charlotte Rampling, Under the Sand

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Olivier Gourmet, The Son
Damian Lewis, Keane
Sam Rockwell, Joshua
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Nick Nolte, Clean
Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York
Ray Winstone, The Proposition
Peter Sarsgaard, Shattered Glass

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Mia Kershner, The Black Dahlia
Hafsia Herzi, The Secret of the Grain
Juliette Binoche, Code Unknown
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Maria Bello, A History of Violence

Best Screenplay:
Synecdoche, New York
The Prestige
Primer
25th Hour
The Secret Lives of Dentists

Best Ensemble Performance:
8 Women
Dogville
Zodiac
Offside
Kings and Queen

Best Cinematography:
The New World (Emmanuel Lubezki)
Beau Travail (Agnès Godard)
Gerry (Harris Savides)
In the Mood for Love (Christopher Doyle and Mark-li Ping-bin)
Silent Light (Alexis Zabe)

Best Music:
25th Hour (Terence Blanchard)
There Will Be Blood (Jonny Greenwood)
Waking Life (Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra)
Birth (Alexandre Desplat)
WALL*E (Thomas Newman)

Best Cinematic Moment (unranked):
25th Hour – last temptation of Monty
Bus 174 – slow motion apprehension gone awry
Caché – “I just wanted you to be present”
Déjà vu – interchronological car chase
Oldboy – hammer time
Ratatouille – Ego’s flashback
Talk to Her – “Shrinking Lover”
We Own the Night – rainstorm ambush
Werckmeister Harmonies – cosmos (opening shot)
You, the Living – honeymoon fantasy
Young @ Heart – “Fix You”

Muriels Retro: 2009

2011-02-15T18:49:00.001-05:00

Best Picture:
Up
Lorna’s Silence
Inglourious Basterds
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Passing Strange
The Hurt Locker
Duplicity
Still Walking
Antichrist
35 Shots of Rum

Best Director:
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Lorna’s Silence
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Pete Docter, Up
Wes Anderson, Fantastic Mr. Fox
Hirokazu Kore-eda, Still Walking

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Tilda Swinton, Julia
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Antichrist
Arta Dobroshi, Lorna’s Silence
Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds
Maria Onetto, The Headless Woman

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Nicolas Cage, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Joaquin Phoenix, Two Lovers
Matt Damon, The Informant!
Michael Fassbender, Hunger
Michael Jai White, Black Dynamite

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Jeremie Renier, Lorna’s Silence
Jackie Earle Haley, Watchmen
Christian McKay, Me & Orson Welles
Michael Fassbender, Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Zoe Kazan, Me & Orson Welles
Ursula Strauss, Revanche
Edith Scob, Summer Hours
Kirin Kiki, Still Walking
Alycia Delmore, Humpday

Best Screenplay:
Duplicity
Lorna’s Silence
Up
Inglourious Basterds
Fantastic Mr. Fox

Best Ensemble Performance:
Passing Strange
Home
Still Walking
Duplicity
35 Shots of Rum

Best Cinematography:
Antichrist (Anthony Dod Mantle)
Tetro (Mihai Malamaire, Jr.)
Hunger (Sean Bobbitt)
Inglourious Basterds (Robert Richardson)
35 Shots of Rum (Agnès Godard)

Best Music:
Tetro (Osvaldo Golijov)
Up (Michael Giacchino)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Alexandre Desplat et al)
Coraline (Bruno Coulais)
The Informant! (Marvin Hamlisch)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Christoph Waltz (actor- Inglourious Basterds)
Michael Fassbender (actor- Hunger)
Michael Jai White (actor/writer- Black Dynamite)
Arta Dobroshi (actor- Lorna’s Silence)
Melanie Laurent (actor- Inglourious Basterds)

Best Body of Work:
Michael Fassbender (actor- Hunger, Inglourious Basterds)
Werner Herzog (director- Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done)
Jérémie Renier (actor- Lorna’s Silence, Summer Hours)
Agnès Godard (cinematographer- 35 Shots of Rum, Home)
Steven Soderbergh (director/editor/cinematographer- The Informant!, The Girlfriend Experience)

Best Cinematic Moment:
You, the Living – honeymoon fantasy
Up – scenes from a marriage
Lorna’s Silence – Claudy rides off into the sunset. CUT.
Inglourious Basterds – meeting in a fuckin’ basement
Antichrist – opening scene
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – nursing home shakedown
Duplicity – tarmac throwdown
Inglourious Basterds – Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France
Drag Me to Hell – parking garage fight
35 Shots of Rum – “Night Shift”

Muriels Retro: 2008

2011-02-14T18:48:00.000-05:00

Best Picture:
Synecdoche, New York
Silent Light
The Duchess of Langeais
The Class
In the City of Sylvia
Che
Rachel Getting Married
A Christmas Tale
Chicago 10
The Secret of the Grain

Best Director:
Carlos Reygadas, Silent Light
Jacques Rivette, The Duchess of Langeais
Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York
Jose Luis Guerin, In the City of Sylvia
Steven Soderbergh, Che

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Catherine Deneuve, A Christmas Tale
Naomi Watts, Funny Games
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Michael Shannon, Shotgun Stories
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Guillaume Depardieu, The Duchess of Langeais
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Synecdoche, New York
Benicio Del Toro, Che

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges
Brad Pitt, Burn After Reading
Bill Irwin, Rachel Getting Married
Roger Allam, Speed Racer

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Hafsia Herzi, The Secret of the Grain
Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married
Ann Savage, My Winnipeg
Samantha Morton, Synecdoche, New York
Jane Lynch, Role Models

Best Screenplay:
Synecdoche, New York
A Christmas Tale
Rachel Getting Married
The Duchess of Langeais
In Bruges

Best Ensemble Performance:
Rachel Getting Married
A Christmas Tale
The Class
Synecdoche, New York
In Bruges

Best Cinematography:
Silent Light (Alexis Zabe)
Paranoid Park (Christopher Doyle and Kathy Rain Li)
The Man From London (Fred Kelemen)
Che (Peter Andrews [Steven Soderbergh])
The Duchess of Langeais (William Lubtchansky)

Best Music:
WALL*E (Thomas Newman)
Speed Racer (Michael Giacchino)
Cassandra’s Dream (Philip Glass)
My Winnipeg (Jason Staczek et al)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Gary Yershon)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Hafsia Herzi (actor- The Secret of the Grain)
Charlie Kaufman (director- Synecdoche, New York)
Rosemarie DeWitt (actor- Rachel Getting Married)
Martin McDonagh (director/writer- In Bruges)
Danny McBride (actor- The Foot Fist Way)

Best Body of Work:
Darius Khondji (cinematographer- Funny Games, My Blueberry Nights, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait)
Michael Shannon (actor- Shotgun Stories, Revolutionary Road)
Roger Deakins (cinematographer- Revolutionary Road, Doubt; visual consultant- WALL*E)
Samantha Morton (actor- Synecdoche, New York, Mister Lonely)
Richard Jenkins (actor- Burn After Reading, The Visitor, Step Brothers)

Best Cinematic Moment:
Young @ Heart – “Fix You”
Kung Fu Panda – no charge for awesomeness
Woman on the Beach – diagram
Silent Light – bathing the children
In Bruges – tower showdown
Silent Light – sunrise
The Wrestler – Ram at the deli counter (first time)
JCVD – “Hard Times”
The Silence Before Bach – traveling player piano
XXY – sex surprise

Muriels Retro: 2007

2011-02-13T18:45:00.000-05:00

Best Picture:
There Will Be Blood
Zodiac
No Country for Old Men
Gone Baby Gone
Lake of Fire
The Host
Offside
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Joshua
Syndromes and a Century

Best Director:
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
David Fincher, Zodiac
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Bong Joon-ho, The Host
Jafar Panahi, Offside

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Carice Van Houten, Black Book
Nicole Kidman, Margot at the Wedding
Ashley Judd, Bug
Luisa Williams, Day Night Day Night
Ellen Page, Juno

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Sam Rockwell, Joshua
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Michael Shannon, Bug
Ulrich Mühe, The Lives of Others

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Mark Ruffalo, Zodiac
Kurt Russell, Grindhouse
Paul Dano, There Will Be Blood
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Peter O’Toole, Ratatouille

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There
Margo Martindale, Paris, Je T’Aime
Kelly Macdonald, No Country for Old Men
Kelli Garner, Lars and the Real Girl

Best Screenplay:
There Will Be Blood
Zodiac
No Country for Old Men
The Hunting Party
Ratatouille

Best Ensemble Performance:
Zodiac
Offside
No Country for Old Men
Hot Fuzz
I’m Not There

Best Cinematography:
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Roger Deakins)
There Will Be Blood (Robert Elswit)
Regular Lovers (William Lubtchansky)
Youth Without Youth (Mihai Malamaire Jr.)
Zodiac (Harris Savides)

Best Music:
There Will Be Blood (Jonny Greenwood)
Once (The Swell Season)
Ratatouille (Michael Giacchino)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Nick Cave and Warren Ellis)
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Michael Andrews, John C. Reilly, et al)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Carice Van Houten (actor- Black Book)
Jonny Greenwood (composer- There Will Be Blood)
Ben Affleck (director/writer- Gone Baby Gone)
Luisa Williams (actor- Day Night Day Night)
The Swell Season [Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova] (actors/composers- Once)

Best Body of Work:
Roger Deakins (cinematographer- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, In the Valley of Elah)
Josh Brolin (actor- No Country for Old Men, Grindhouse, American Gangster, In the Valley of Elah)
Casey Affleck (actor- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Gone Baby Gone, Ocean’s 13)
Robert Elswit (cinematographer- There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton)
Sam Rockwell (actor- Joshua, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)

Best Cinematic Moment:
We Own the Night – rainstorm ambush
Ratatouille – Ego’s flashback
Superbad – Seth’s secret shame
There Will Be Blood – baptism
The Host – Han River attack
There Will Be Blood – derrick explosion
Zodiac – Lake Beryessa
No Country for Old Men – showdown at Hotel Eagle
Grindhouse – Ship’s Mast
Offside – trip to the men’s room

Muriels Retro: 2006

2011-02-12T18:36:00.000-05:00

Best Picture:
The Prestige
Children of Men
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
The Departed
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
Brick
The Proposition
Duck Season
The Child

Best Director:
Alfonso Cuaron, Children of Men
Christopher Nolan, The Prestige
Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Michel Gondry, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
Cristi Puiu, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE
Gretchen Mol, The Notorious Bettie Page
Laura Smet, The Bridesmaid
Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Sandra Hüller, Requiem

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat: Cultural Learnings of American for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brick
Ion Fiscuteanu, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Hugh Jackman, The Fountain
Steve Coogan, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Nick Nolte, Clean
Ray Winstone, The Proposition
Michael Caine, The Prestige
Sacha Baron Cohen, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Mia Kershner, The Black Dahlia
Cloris Leachman, Beerfest
Eva Green, Casino Royale
Rebecca Hall, The Prestige
Maribel Verdu, Pan’s Labyrinth

Best Screenplay:
The Prestige
The Departed
Brick
Inside Man
The Proposition

Best Ensemble Performance:
The Departed
The Prestige
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
The Proposition
Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

Best Cinematography:
Miami Vice (Dion Beebe)
Children of Men (Emmanuel Lubezki)
The Proposition (Benoit Delhomme)
The Black Dahlia (Vilmos Zsigmond)
Three Times (Mark-li Ping-bin)

Best Music:
The Fountain (Clint Mansell)
The Proposition (Nick Cave and Warren Ellis)
Brick (Nathan Johnson)
Drawing Restraint 9 (Björk)
The Prestige (David Julyan)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Cristi Puiu (director/writer- The Death of Mr. Lazarescu)
Rian Johnson (director/writer- Brick)
Laura Smet (actor- The Bridesmaid)
Rebecca Hall (actor- The Prestige)
Sandra Hüller (actor- Requiem)

Best Body of Work:
Sacha Baron Cohen (actor- Borat, Talladega Nights)
Ray Winstone (actor- The Proposition, The Departed)
Hugh Jackman (actor- The Fountain, The Prestige, X-Men: The Last Stand, Scoop, Flushed Away)
Michael Caine (actor- The Prestige, Children of Men)
Clive Owen (actor- Children of Men, Inside Man)

Best Cinematic Moment:
Déjà vu – interchronological car chase
jackass number two – The Valentine
Children of Men – escaping the safe house
Children of Men – battle of Bexhill
Talladega Nights – enter Jean Girard
Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny – “Kickapoo”
A Prairie Home Companion – “Bad Jokes”
Borat – nude smackdown
A Scanner Darkly – Freck’s suicide
4 – opening shot

Muriels Retro: 2005

2011-02-11T18:32:00.000-05:00

Best Picture:
The New World
Kings and Queen
Innocence
Caché
A History of Violence
Tropical Malady
Keane
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Gilles’ Wife
The Matador

Best Director:
Terrence Malick, The New World
Arnaud Desplechin, Kings and Queen
Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Innocence
Michael Haneke, Caché
David Cronenberg, A History of Violence

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Emmanuelle Devos, Gilles’ Wife
Emmanuelle Devos, Kings and Queen
Sibel Kekilli, Head-On
Q’Orianka Kilcher, The New World
Naomi Watts, King Kong

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Damian Lewis, Keane
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Robert Downey Jr., Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Viggo Mortensen, A History of Violence
Choi Min-sik, Oldboy

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale
Mickey Rourke, Frank Miller’s Sin City
Bruno Ganz, Downfall
Oliver Platt, The Ice Harvest
Mathieu Amalric, Munich

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Maria Bello, A History of Violence
Robin Wright Penn, Nine Lives
Qiu Yuen, Kung Fu Hustle
Michelle Monaghan, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Magali Woch, Kings and Queen

Best Screenplay:
A History of Violence
Kings and Queen
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The Matador
The New World

Best Ensemble Performance:
Kings and Queen
A History of Violence
The New World
Games of Love and Chance
Nobody Knows

Best Cinematography:
The New World (Emmanuel Lubezki)
The Intruder (Agnès Godard)
Innocence (Benoit Debie)
2046 (Christopher Doyle)
Kings and Queen (Eric Gautier)

Best Music:
Tony Takitani (Ryuichi Sakamoto)
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Alexandre Desplat et al)
Gilles’ Wife (Vincent D’Hondt)
King Kong (Howard Shore)
Pride & Prejudice (Dario Marianelli)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Sibel Kekilli (actor- Head-On)
Lucile Hadzihalilovic (director/writer- Innocence)
Q’Orianka Kilcher (actor- The New World)
Michelle Monaghan (actor- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang)
Richard Shepard (director/writer- The Matador)

Best Body of Work:
Emmanuelle Devos (actor- Kings and Queen, Gilles’ Wife, The Beat My Heart Skipped)
Heath Ledger (actor- Brokeback Mountain, Lords of Dogtown, The Brothers Grimm, Casanova)
Werner Herzog (director- Grizzly Man, Wheel of Time, The White Diamond)
Mathieu Amalric (actor- Kings and Queen, Munich)
Joan Allen (actor- The Upside of Anger, Yes, Off the Map)

Best Cinematic Moment:
Caché – “I just wanted you to be present”
Oldboy – hammer time
The Devil’s Rejects – “Free Bird”
The New World – arrival of the English
Kings and Queen – a letter from dad
King Kong – Kong searches for Anne in NYC
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Harry under the bed
Kung Fu Hustle – the musicians
Domino – Jerry Springer
Last Days – “Death to Birth”

Muriels Retro: 2004

2011-02-10T18:30:00.000-05:00

Best Picture:
Dogville
Before Sunset
Kill Bill: vol. 2
Cowards Bend the Knee
The Five Obstructions
Primer
Birth
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Zatoichi

Best Director:
Lars von Trier, Dogville
Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill: vol. 2
Guy Maddin, Cowards Bend the Knee
Richard Linklater, Before Sunset
Jonathan Glazer, Birth

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Bryce Dallas Howard, The Village
Moon So-ri, Oasis
Julie Delpy, Before Sunset
Nicole Kidman, Dogville
Esther Gorinton, Since Otar Left…

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Red Lights
Paul Bettany, Dogville
Gael Garcia Bernal, Bad Education
Jeff Bridges, The Door in the Floor
Jim Carrey, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Mark Wahlberg, I [heart] Huckabees
Danny Huston, Birth
Jude Law, I [heart] Huckabees
David Carradine, Kill Bill: vol. 2
John Hurt, Dogville

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Coralie Revel, Secret Things
Maia Morgenstern, The Passion of the Christ
Eva Green, The Dreamers
Daryl Hannah, Kill Bill: vol. 2
Cate Blanchett, Coffee and Cigarettes

Best Screenplay:
Primer
Before Sunset
Dogville
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I [heart] Huckabees

Best Ensemble Performance:
Dogville
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Moolaadé
I [heart] Huckabees
Kill Bill: vol. 2

Best Cinematography:
Birth (Harris Savides)
Hero (Christopher Doyle)
Father and Son (Aleksandr Burov)
Collateral (Paul Cameron and Dion Beebe)
Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Best Music:
Birth (Alexandre Desplat)
The Incredibles (Michael Giacchino)
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Mark Mothersbaugh and Seu Jorgé)
Greendale (Neil Young)
Bad Education (Alberto Iglesias)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Shane Carruth (director/producer/actor/writer/composer/editor/production designer/sound designer- Primer)
Bryce Dallas Howard (actor- The Village)
Moon So-ri (actor- Oasis)
Coralie Revel (actor- Secret Things)
Eva Green (actor- The Dreamers)

Best Body of Work:
Lars von Trier (director/writer- Dogville, The Five Obstructions)
Cate Blanchett (actor- Coffee and Cigarettes, The Aviator, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou)
Jude Law (actor- I [heart] Huckabees, Closer, The Aviator, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Alfie, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events)
Jamie Foxx (actor- Collateral, Ray, Breakin’ All the Rules)
Nicole Kidman (actor- Dogville, Birth, The Stepford Wives)

Best Cinematic Moment:
Before Sunset – Celine’s apartment
Kill Bill: vol. 2 – the Bride vs. Elle Driver
Birth – not a funny matter
Dogville – Grace’s escape attempt
Gozu – reach out and touch someone
Enduring Love – balloon accident
Anchorman – biker incident
Notre Musique – Hell
The Incredibles – Elastigirl infiltrates Syndrome’s lair
Hero – attack on calligraphy school

Muriels Retro: 2003

2011-02-09T18:27:00.000-05:00

Best Picture:
The Son
Irreversible
Kill Bill: vol. 1
The Secret Lives of Dentists
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Spider
Bus 174
Stuck on You
Gerry
The Good Thief

Best Director:
Gaspar Noé, Irreversible
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, The Son
Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill: vol. 1
Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
David Cronenberg, Spider

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Monica Bellucci, Irreversible
Uma Thurman, Kill Bill: vol. 1
Oksana Akinshina, Lilja 4-Ever
Angela Bettis, May
Charlize Theron, Monster

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Olivier Gourmet, The Son
Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Nick Nolte, The Good Thief
Campbell Scott, The Secret Lives of Dentists
Matt Damon, Stuck on You

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Peter Sarsgaard, Shattered Glass
Brendan Gleeson, 28 Days Later
Albert Dupontel, Irreversible
Sean Astin, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Sonny Chiba, Kill Bill: vol. 1

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Shohreh Aghdashloo, House of Sand and Fog
Miranda Richardson, Spider
Catherine O’Hara, A Mighty Wind
Alison Lohman, Matchstick Men
Ellen DeGeneres, Finding Nemo

Best Screenplay:
The Secret Lives of Dentists
Kill Bill: vol. 1
Shattered Glass
The Son
Stuck on You

Best Ensemble Performance:
A Mighty Wind
The Secret Lives of Dentists
Kill Bill: vol. 1
Shattered Glass
The Good Thief

Best Cinematography:
Gerry (Harris Savides)
Spider (Peter Suschitzky)
Kill Bill: vol.1 (Robert Richardson)
City of God (Cesar Charlone)
Irreversible (Benoit Debie)

Best Music:
A Mighty Wind (Various)
The Triplets of Belleville (Benoit Charest)
The Fog of War (Philip Glass)
Spider (Howard Shore)
Kill Bill: vol. 1 (RZA et al)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Oksana Akinshina (actor- Lilja 4-Ever)
Angela Bettis (actor- May)
José Padilha (director- Bus 174)
Zooey Deschanel (actor- All the Real Girls)
Anna Kendrick (actor- Camp)

Best Body of Work:
Johnny Depp (actor- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Once Upon a Time in Mexico)
Harris Savides (cinematographer- Gerry, Elephant)
Matt Damon (actor- Stuck on You, Gerry)
Hope Davis (actor- The Secret Lives of Dentists, American Splendor)
Howard Shore (composer- Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Spider)

Best Cinematic Moment:
Bus 174 – slow motion apprehension gone awry
Gerry – rock marooned
Gerry – sunrise shuffle
Kill Bill: vol. 1 – the Bride vs. Go-Go Yubari
A Mighty Wind – “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow”
So Close – “Close to You” in the record store
The Son – Francis uses the air hose
Kill Bill: vol. 1 – the Bride meets the Man From Okinawa
The Secret Lives of Dentists – the flu spreads
Spellbound – “your word is… Darjeeling.”

Retro Muriels: 2002

2011-02-08T18:25:00.000-05:00

Best Picture:
8 Women
25th Hour
Songs From the Second Floor
Punch-Drunk Love
Russian Ark
Talk to Her
What Time Is It There?
Spirited Away
The Piano Teacher
Trouble Every Day

Best Director:
Spike Lee, 25th Hour
Francois Ozon, 8 Women
Roy Andersson, Songs From the Second Floor
Aleksandr Sokurov, Russian Ark
Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher
Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar
Sylvie Testud, Murderous Maids
Julianne Moore, Far From Heaven
Summer Phoenix, Esther Kahn

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Nicolas Cage, Adaptation.
Ryan Gosling, The Believer
Danny Huston, ivans xtc.
Sam Rockwell, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Edward Norton, 25th Hour

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York
Brian Cox, 25th Hour
Andy Serkis, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Dennis Quaid, Far From Heaven
Philip Seymour Hoffman, 25th Hour

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Isabelle Huppert, 8 Women
Meryl Streep, Adaptation.
Ronit Elkabetz, Late Marriage
Ludivine Sagnier, 8 Women
Emily Watson, Punch-Drunk Love

Best Screenplay:
25th Hour
Talk to Her
Y Tu Mama Tambien
8 Women
Adaptation.

Best Ensemble Performance:
8 Women
Monsoon Wedding
25th Hour
Far From Heaven
Talk to Her

Best Cinematography:
Far From Heaven (Edward Lachman)
Morvern Callar (Alwin Kuchler)
Punch-Drunk Love (Robert Elswit)
What Time Is It There? (Benoit Delhomme)
25th Hour (Rodrigo Prieto)

Best Music:
25th Hour (Terence Blanchard)
Far From Heaven (Elmer Bernstein)
Sex and Lucia (Alberto Iglesias)
Punch-Drunk Love (Jon Brion)
8 Women (Krishna Levy et al)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Ryan Gosling (actor- The Believer)
Ludivine Sagnier (actor- 8 Women)
Danny Huston (actor- ivans xtc.)
Summer Phoenix (actor- Esther Kahn)
Steve Coogan (actor- 24 Hour Party People)

Best Body of Work:
Isabelle Huppert (actor- The Piano Teacher, 8 Women, Merci Pour le Chocolat, Les Destinées)
Steven Soderbergh (director- Solaris, Full Frontal; executive producer- Far From Heaven, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Insomnia, Naqoyqatsi)
Alberto Iglesias (composer- Sex and Lucia, Talk to Her)
Edward Norton (actor- 25th Hour, Death to Smoochy, Red Dragon)
Ludivine Sagnier (actor- 8 Women, My Wife Is An Actress)

Best Cinematic Moment:
25th Hour – last temptation of Monty
Talk to Her – “Shrinking Lover”
8 Women – “Message Personnel”
Songs From the Second Floor – airport
Punch-Drunk Love – opening scene
Minority Report – spiders
The Fast Runner – punching heads
Femme Fatale – slow motion legs
Cherish – “Private Eyes”
Brotherhood of the Wolf – the world’s greatest dissolve

Retro Muriels: 2001

2011-02-07T18:23:00.001-05:00

Best Picture:
Waking Life
Audition
The Royal Tenenbaums
Code Unknown
Mulholland Dr.
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Eureka
Gosford Park
Werckmeister Harmonies
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

Best Director:
Takashi Miike, Audition
Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums
Richard Linklater, Waking Life
Michael Haneke, Code Unknown
David Lynch, Mulholland Dr.

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Charlotte Rampling, Under the Sand
Naomi Watts, Mulholland Dr.
Kim Dickens, Things Behind the Sun
Lina Endre, Faithless
Thora Birch, Ghost World

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom
Gene Hackman, The Royal Tenenbaums
Billy Bob Thornton, The Man Who Wasn’t There
Eric Bana, Chopper
Koji Yakusho, Eureka

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Tony Shalhoub, The Man Who Wasn’t There
Steve Buscemi, Ghost World
Jude Law, A.I.
Justin Theroux, Mulholland Dr.
Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Juliette Binoche, Code Unknown
Piper Perabo, Lost and Delirious
Marisa Tomei, In the Bedroom
Eihi Shiina, Audition
Mary McDonnell, Donnie Darko

Best Screenplay:
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Gosford Park
The Royal Tenenbaums
Donnie Darko
Memento

Best Ensemble Performance:
Gosford Park
Va Savoir
Together
The Man Who Wasn’t There
The Royal Tenenbaums

Best Cinematography:
In the Mood for Love (Christopher Doyle and Mark-li Ping-bin)
The Man Who Wasn’t There (Roger Deakins)
Werckmeister Harmonies (de Ranter/Gurban/Lanzensberger/Medvigy/Novak/Tregenza)
A.I. (Janusz Kaminski)
Code Unknown (Jürgen Jürges)

Best Music:
Waking Life (Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra)
Monsters, Inc. (Randy Newman)
A.I. (John Williams)
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Howard Shore)
The Man Who Wasn’t There (Carter Burwell)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Naomi Watts (actor- Mulholland Dr.)
Eric Bana (actor- Chopper)
John Cameron Mitchell (actor/director/writer- Hedwig and the Angry Inch)
Richard Kelly (director/writer- Donnie Darko)
Bob Sabiston (animator- Waking Life)

Best Body of Work:
Richard Linklater (director/writer- Waking Life, Tape)
Billy Bob Thornton (actor- The Man Who Wasn’t There, Monster’s Ball, Bandits)
Marisa Tomei (actor- In the Bedroom, Happy Accidents)
Juliette Binoche (actor- Code Unknown, The Widow of St. Pierre)
Ethan Hawke (actor- Tape, Waking Life, Training Day)

Best Cinematic Moment:
Werckmeister Harmonies – cosmos (opening scene)
Code Unknown – subway confrontation
Audition – the phone rings
Mulholland Dr. – “let’s play this one niiiiiiiiice and close”
Monsters, Inc. – doors chase
The Man Who Wasn’t There – tar macadam
Zoolander – gasoline fight
Mulholland Dr. – Castigliani bros.
Tuvalu – nude swim with fishbowl
The Pledge – Mickey Rourke

Retro Muriels: 2000

2011-02-06T18:20:00.001-05:00

Best Picture:
Beau Travail
Yi Yi
George Washington
Requiem For a Dream
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Before Night Falls
The House of Mirth
Humanité
Jesus’ Son
Wonder Boys

Best Director:
Claire Denis, Beau Travail
Edward Yang, Yi Yi
David Gordon Green, George Washington
Darren Aronofsky, Requiem For a Dream
Julian Schnabel, Before Night Falls

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Ellen Burstyn, Requiem For a Dream
Björk, Dancer in the Dark
Juliette Binoche, Alice and Martin
Gillian Anderson, The House of Mirth
Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls
Denis Lavant, Beau Travail
Billy Crudup, Jesus’ Son
Forest Whitaker, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Tom Hanks, Cast Away

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Issei Ogata, Yi Yi
Tim Blake Nelson, O Brother, Where Art Thou?
David Morse, Dancer in the Dark
Jack Black, High Fidelity
Robert Downey Jr., Wonder Boys

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Samantha Morton, Jesus’ Son
Jennifer Connelly, Requiem For a Dream
Catherine Deneuve, Dancer in the Dark
Jennifer Ehle, Sunshine
Frances McDormand, Wonder Boys

Best Screenplay:
Wonder Boys
You Can Count on Me
Yi Yi
Croupier
State and Main

Best Ensemble Performance:
Yi Yi
Best in Show
Wonder Boys
George Washington
Jesus’ Son

Best Cinematography:
Beau Travail (Agnès Godard)
The House of Mirth (Remi Adefarasin)
George Washington (Tim Orr)
Before Night Falls (Xavier Perez Grobet and Guillermo Rosas)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Roger Deakins)

Best Music:
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (RZA et al)
Requiem For a Dream (Clint Mansell)
Dancer in the Dark (Björk)
POLA X (Scott Walker)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Various)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
David Gordon Green (director/writer- George Washington)
Björk (actor/composer- Dancer in the Dark)
Jack Black (actor- High Fidelity)
Clive Owen (actor- Croupier)
Kate Hudson (actor- Almost Famous)

Best Body of Work:
Catherine Deneuve (actor- Dancer in the Dark, POLA X, Place Vendome, East-West)
Billy Crudup (actor- Jesus’ Son, Almost Famous, Waking the Dead)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (actor- State and Main, Almost Famous)
Robby Müller (cinematographer- Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Dancer in the Dark)
Frances McDormand (actor- Wonder Boys, Almost Famous)

Best Cinematic Moment:
Beau Travail – silent funeral
Beau Travail – “Rhythm of the Night”
The House of Mirth – estate/Mediterranean transition
The Wind Will Carry Us – in the barn
Jesus’ Son – “patient complains of knife in head”
Erin Brockovich – car accident
The Way of the Gun – surprise in the fountain
Dancer in the Dark – “I’ve Seen It All”
O Brother, Where Art Thou? – sirens
You Can Count on Me – “it’s a sin”

Retro Muriels: 1999

2011-02-05T18:19:00.001-05:00

Best Picture:
After Life
The War Zone
Three Kings
Topsy-Turvy
Bringing Out the Dead
Eyes Wide Shut
Show Me Love
Magnolia
The Iron Giant
Being John Malkovich

Best Director:
Hirokazu Kore-eda, After Life
Tim Roth, The War Zone
David O. Russell, Three Kings
Mike Leigh, Topsy-Turvy
Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Lara Belmont, The War Zone
Emilie Duquenne, Rosetta
Reese Witherspoon, Election
Hilary Swank, Boys Don’t Cry
Leila Hatami, Leila

Best Lead Performance, Male:
Sean Penn, Sweet and Lowdown
Jim Broadbent, Topsy-Turvy
Russell Crowe, The Insider
Richard Farnsworth, The Straight Story
Johnny Depp, Sleepy Hollow

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
John Malkovich, Being John Malkovich
John C. Reilly, Magnolia
Stephen Rea, The End of the Affair
Ray Winstone, The War Zone
Sydney Pollack, Eyes Wide Shut

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Sarah Polley, Go
Melora Walters, Magnolia
Samantha Morton, Sweet and Lowdown
Chloe Sevigny, Boys Don’t Cry
Nicole Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut

Best Screenplay:
Being John Malkovich
Show Me Love
The Lovers of the Arctic Circle
Autumn Tale
Magnolia

Best Ensemble Performance:
After Life
Topsy-Turvy
The War Zone
Magnolia
Eyes Wide Shut

Best Cinematography:
Snow Falling on Cedars (Robert Richardson)
The Straight Story (Freddie Francis)
Sleepy Hollow (Emmanuel Lubezki)
Eyes Wide Shut (Larry Smith)
The War Zone (Seamus McGarvey)

Best Music:
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (Trey Parker and Marc Shaiman)
Magnolia (Jon Brion and Aimee Mann)
The Red Violin (John Corigliano)
Ravenous (Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn)
The Straight Story (Angelo Badalamenti)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Charlie Kaufman (writer- Being John Malkovich)
Lara Belmont (actor- The War Zone)
Spike Jonze (director- Being John Malkovich)
Brad Bird (director- The Iron Giant)
Hilary Swank (actor- Boys Don’t Cry)

Best Body of Work:
Robert Richardson (cinematographer- Snow Falling on Cedars, Bringing Out the Dead, Mr. Death)
Julianne Moore (actor- The End of the Affair, Magnolia, A Ideal Husband, Cookie’s Fortune, A Map of the World)
Spike Jonze (director- Being John Malkovich, actor- Three Kings)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (actor- Magnolia, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Flawless)
Joan Cusack (actor- Arlington Road, Toy Story 2)

Best Cinematic Moment:
Magnolia – “Wise Up”
Being John Malkovich – Malkovich Malkovich
Magnolia – when it rains…
After Life – walking alone
Bringing Out the Dead – fireworks
The Iron Giant – “Super-mannnnnnnnnnn…”
Deep Blue Sea – monologue, interrupted
Eyes Wide Shut – “what is the password to the house?”
Topsy-Turvy – “corroborative”
I Stand Alone – “You Now Have 30 Seconds to Leave the Theatre”

Retro Muriels: 1998

2011-02-04T18:11:00.002-05:00

Note: I will be posting one retrospective ballot per day leading up to the beginning of the Muriels announcements on Sunday, February 16. Also, these are not my original ballots from these years, but rather were formulated over the last few weeks based on my more-or-less current feelings about the movies in question. In the case of the years in which the Muriels were taking place, these new ballots in no way negate my original ballots. These are strictly for fun and curiousity’s sake.

Best Picture:
Buffalo ‘66
The Celebration
Rushmore
Love and Death on Long Island
Dark City
The Thin Red Line
Babe: Pig in the City
Mother and Son
Taste of Cherry
Bulworth

Best Director:
Vincent Gallo, Buffalo ‘66
Thomas Vinterberg, The Celebration
Terrence Malick, The Thin Red Line
Wes Anderson, Rushmore
Alex Proyas, Dark City

Best Lead Performance, Female:
Samantha Morton, Under the Skin
Kathy Burke, Nil by Mouth
Jennifer Lopez, Out of Sight
Fernanda Montenegro, Central Station
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth

Note: In making these ballots, I did my damnedest to concentrate solely on the individual achievements themselves, rather than what has happened in the intervening years. It wasn’t easy at times, but I think I pulled it off. To wit: my #3 in the above category. In the last decade or so, I have more or less given up on Ms. Lopez, a once-promising actress whose voracious desire for superstardom has torpedoed any talent she once displayed. Yet the awesomeness of her OUT OF SIGHT performance is, even today, pretty undeniable.

Best Lead Performance, Male:
John Hurt, Love and Death on Long Island
Nick Nolte, Affliction
Jeff Bridges, The Big Lebowski
Jason Schwartzman, Rushmore
Warren Beatty, Bulworth

Best Supporting Performance, Male:
Bill Murray, Rushmore
James Coburn, Affliction
Oliver Platt, Bulworth
Billy Bob Thornton, A Simple Plan
Benicio Del Toro, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Best Supporting Performance, Female:
Olivia Williams, Rushmore
Patricia Clarkson, High Art
Toni Collette, Velvet Goldmine
Kimberly Elise, Beloved
Kathy Bates, Primary Colors

Best Screenplay:
Love and Death on Long Island
Rushmore
The Spanish Prisoner
Henry Fool
The Celebration

Best Ensemble Performance:
The Celebration
Rushmore
Out of Sight
The Big Lebowski
Happiness

Best Cinematography:
The Thin Red Line (John Toll)
Great Expectations (Emmanuel Lubezki)
Bulworth (Vittorio Storaro)
The Big Lebowski (Roger Deakins)
Dark City (Dariusz Wolski)

Best Music:
Velvet Goldmine (Carter Burwell et al)
Gods and Monsters (Carter Burwell)
Rushmore (Mark Mothersbaugh et al)
Dark City (Trevor Jones)
The Thin Red Line (Hans Zimmer)

Best Cinematic Breakthrough:
Vincent Gallo (director- Buffalo ’66)
Samantha Morton (actor- Under the Skin)
Thomas Vinterberg (director- The Celebration)
Jason Schwartzman (actor- Rushmore)
Cate Blanchett (actor- Elizabeth)

Best Body of Work:
Carter Burwell (composer- Gods and Monsters, The Big Lebowski, The Spanish Prisoner, Velvet Goldmine)
Nick Nolte (actor- Affliction, The Thin Red Line)
Ben Gazzara (actor- Buffalo ’66, The Spanish Prisoner, The Big Lebowski, Happiness)
Oliver Platt (actor- Bulworth, The Imposters)
Edward Norton (actor- Rounders, American History X)

Best Cinematic Moment:
Funny Games – Be unkind, rewind
Buffalo ’66 – face to face with Scott Woods
Babe: Pig in the City – Flealick in paradise
Saving Private Ryan – death of Mellish
Rushmore – “A Quick One While He’s Away”
A Simple Plan – Lou’s confession
Velvet Goldmine – “Ballad of Maxwell Demon”
The Big Lebowski – “Gutterballs”
The Eel – bloody Yamashita turns himself in
Out of Sight – White Boy Bob on the stairs

The White Elephant Strikes Back

2011-01-27T21:20:00.003-05:00

Well, you asked for it! And if you didn’t, you should have, because after the success of last June’s White Elephant Blogathon- the fourth to date and the first held here at Silly Hats Only- it’s coming back once more. And this time, I’ll be running it on April Fool’s Day, as God and creator Ben Lim intended.

If you’ve participated in the past, you already know the drill. If you’re new to the White Elephant game, the rules are as follows:

1) Submit the title of a movie that you want someone else to review (preferably something available via Netflix).
2) Review the movie that you get assigned and post the review for your site/blog on April 1.
3) Have fun!

As always, this year promises a memorable cross-section of cinema’s widows and orphans- notorious stinkers (THE PEST, SWEPT AWAY), cult favorites (ISHTAR, CRIMES OF PASSION), so-bad-they’re-great classics (GYMKATA, PIECES), and movies that time almost forgot (ROCK’N’ROLL NIGHTMARE, ROLLER GATOR). And if history is any indication, there should be at least a handful of legitimately good movies thrown into the mix (SUMMER / THE GREEN RAY), but be warned- just because the person submitting a movie likes it doesn’t mean you will too (THE INTRUDER).

So if you’re interested in taking part this year- and really, why wouldn’t you?- please send your submission to me at lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com no later than February 15. And if you’d like to know more about the White Elephant Blogathon, feel free to e-Mail me about that as well.

See you all on April Fool’s Day!

Gritty Fighter

2011-01-03T22:44:00.006-05:00

So I finally managed to crank out a pair of multi-paragraph reviews for a change. Enjoy!

(click poster to link to review)

Screener Grubbing, 2010 Muriels Edition

2011-01-01T18:25:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone. Muriel season is about to kick off, which means I need to get caught up with a mess of 2010 releases before I feel good about submitting my ballot. So just like last year I’m asking you folks for help in getting this done. I’ve made a list of the movies I most want to see before the deadline (end of January, in case you’re wondering), and I’m listing them here in order of how much I want to see them. So if anyone reading this could point me toward a screener of any/all of the titles listed below, I would be much obliged (as in, I’d gladly pay for shipping). If you think you could help out in this area, shoot me an e-Mail at lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com. And thanks in advance for your help.

Anyway, here’s the list.

1. Another Year (Leigh) – I haven’t lovedlovedloved a new Leigh film since Topsy-Turvy, but still- it seems unconscionable to do a ballot without having seen this. If nothing else, it has a good chance of impacting the performance awards.

2. Hadewjich (Dumont) – Dumont doesn’t always make great movies, but he’s a visionary through and through, which means there’s always the potential for greatness.

3. The Illusionist (Chomet) – As a Tati fan, I’m really curious about this one. Chomet might go overboard on the whimsical touches, but still, it’s Tati.

4. Somewhere (Coppola) – like Another Year and several other titles listed here, the web sites for various Columbus theatres have this listed as “Coming Soon”, which doesn’t inspire confidence in a time when arthouse screens are likely to be tied up with Black Swan and The King’s Speech for the next month.

5. Amer (Cattet/Forzani) – this one actually has a booking in Columbus, but it’s only scheduled to show once on a Saturday afternoon, which conflicts with one of my classes (d’oh!). Word on this giallo homage is really strong, so I’m hoping to have a chance to watch this one way or another.

6. And Everything Is Going Fine (Soderbergh) – waiting on new Soderbergh movies might be a lot like waiting for the subway in NYC, but that doesn’t mean I want to miss anything he does.

7. Inspector Bellamy (Chabrol) – Chabrol passed on this year, and I just wouldn’t feel right letting his passing go by without giving his latest (last?) film a shot. Besides, A Girl Cut in Two was a serious contender two years ago.

8. Ne Change Rien (Costa) – see #2. Costa’s work has yet to grab me, but he’s clearly a major talent, so maybe this will be the one that finally wins me over. It’s booked at the Wex on February, which is after the deadline, so that option’s out.

9. Let Me In (Reeves) – missed this back in its short October release, mostly because I wasn’t a big Let the Right One In and the reviews for this remake didn’t inspire confidence. But since then some people I respect highly have made me reassess my initial impressions. Could I have overlooked something special?

10. Blue Valentine (Cianfrance) – See #4.

11. Rabbit Hole (Mitchell) – See #4.

And if you see anything else on my full need-to-see list that you would be willing to part with (temporarily at least), feel free to send me an e-Mail letting me know. Again, my e-Mail address is lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com. Thanks again.

My hasty, Dogtooth-heavy responses to Professor Hubert Farnsworth's Only Slightly Futuristic Holiday Movie Quiz

2010-12-29T21:52:00.018-05:00

(Note: Response to question 13 edited on 30 December.)

1) Best Movie of 2010

2010 has seen a good number of fine movies, but none shook me quite as much as Dogtooth. Yorgos Lanthimos’ second feature chronicles the strange goings-on in a home in which the parents have barricaded their children from the outside world for their entire lives. Increasing the isolation is the parents’ skewed educational (brainwashing?) techniques, which include misrepresenting the meanings of words referring to the world outside- “the sea” is used to refer to an armchair, for example. Dogtooth is hard to watch in spots, with both the children and some cats subjected to some brutal treatment. But it’s also wholly original, with equal parts absurdism and tragedy, and a skewed vision courtesy of its young filmmaker.

2) Second-favorite Roman Polanski Movie

Chilly, innocent-seeming blondes were long a hallmark of the thriller genre, not least in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. But while most of his predecessors turned their towheaded lovelies into victims, it took Polanski to explore the frightening possibilities of these characters in Repulsion. Part of the reason why it works is because Polanski took the time to define his protagonist in terms of her sexuality- after all, if we can’t see what Carol is protecting herself from, there’s really no story here. But just as important is Catherine Deneuve’s performance as Carol, the ice queen to end all ice queens. Fresh off her star-making role in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Deneuve took that role’s girlish sunniness and turned it on its proverbial ear, turning Carol into a blank slate that’s little more than pent-up sexual paranoia on the verge of exploding. As a star on the rise, it was risky for Deneuve to play a character this alienating, but she’s pretty perfect, and her performance announced that she was interested in more than simply being eye candy. Also, Polanski’s direction cooks, with even the most surreal moments generating real scares because they seem to spring from Carol’s troubled mind.

3) Jason Statham or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

The Rock’s charming as hell, but Statham is slightly more versatile, so in terms of star power it’s probably a draw. But I’m gonna have to go with Statham here, since The Rock has yet to make a movie as pleasurable as Statham’s Crank franchise. I love those crazy-ass movies.

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

It’s a slapstick comedy! It’s a Civil War movie! It’s Buster Keaton’s The General, and it’s awesome (as I’m sure you all knew already).

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

Ideally, a good movie should stand on its own, and it should be judged only by what happens between the opening logos and the end credits. However, this rarely happens in real life. Sometimes, it’s good to realize the hard work that went into the film. Consider older movies such as Metropolis or the works of Keaton and Chaplin, in which the directors achieved their effects not through computers but through some ingenious tricks. But in many other cases, there’s a fine line between having a knowledge of the story behind the making of a movie and letting that knowledge color one’s perception of the movie. For instance, it’s not useful for a viewer to let the real-life activities of an actor distort their appreciation of his performance or the character he plays- that’s gossip-rag garbage, and has no place in the movie-watching process. And this obsession some people have with movie’s budgets and box office performance is pretty annoying, I have to say. In the end, it comes back to the movie itself. Does it do what it sets out to do? If it does, that really ought to be enough.

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

Grant’s one of my favorites, and I love The Awful Truth. Still, it’s hard to argue with that famous Nick and Nora chemistry, so Powell and Loy win this.

7) Best Actor of 2010

Do I really need to choose between Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network and Edgar Ramirez in Carlos? Eisenberg, whose performances are usually best described as agreeably nebbishy, revealed a new side to his talent by playing Mark Zuckerberg as a tunnel-visionary, training his laser focus on his conception of Facebook and leaving everything else in his life in the dust. He never makes Zuckerberg likable exactly, but one can’t help but admiring him, as his tireless work for Facebook gives him a strange sort of integrity. Ramirez is equally impressive, giving a performance that spans half a dozen languages (including Arabic, which he learned for the role), and inhabiting the skin of Carlos from his early days as a hungry young revolutionary to his Sudanese exile, a bloated leftover from the Cold War. Ramirez inhabits nearly every frame of Carlos, and the film is damn near unimaginable without him.

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

If you’re not getting paid to see movies, you don’t need to see anything you don’t want to see. To feel obligated to see movies you could care less about leads to bitterness and disillusionment. Better to watch a dozen movies you’re legitimately interested in than a hundred that you think might be OK. In short, watch what you want to watch.

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

Last movie on DVD: Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, or as I’ve taken to calling it, Death by Whimsy. Jeunet’s flair for visually interesting set pieces is as strong as ever, but the story isn’t compelling and the characters are fairly dull, if quirky. After about half an hour, I was pretty much worn out, which I’m guessing wasn’t Jeunet’s goal.

Last movie in theatre: James L. Brooks’ How Do You Know. Why isn’t this getting more love? Sure, it’s “messy,” but where the film’s detractors see narrative digressions, I see a unique comic voice peeking through. Brooks is in love with the possibilities of long scenes, and although these don’t exactly move the story along, they work so well unto themselves that I hardly noticed. The hospital scene may be the best scene I’ve seen this past year.

10) Most appropriate punishment for director Tom Six

To be forced to direct- but not write- a big-budget Hollywood star vehicle. The guy knows how to direct a movie, but the attention-grabbing stunts have got to go. Let’s see what he can do with a particularly hands-on star who won’t let him get away with being provocative simply to drum up hype. I’m thinking a cookie-cutter romcom starring Sandra Bullock could do the trick. Failing that, what he deserves most is to be ignored until he gets this “Human Centipede” crap out of his system.

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

Jacques Rivette’s Out 1. With all the crap that’s out there on DVD, it’s shameful that this magnum opus by one of the masters of filmmaking hasn’t even gotten a VHS release. Come on, Criterion- get on this!

12) Sheree North or Angie Dickinson

Nothing against Sheree, but there’s only one Feathers, and Sheree ain’t it. Angie Dickinson in a walk.

13) Favorite nakedly autobiographical movie

Do I think that every scene of Buffalo ‘66 was taken from Vincent Gallo’s life? Of course not. I’m pretty sure Gallo never went to jail as punishment for a gambling debt. Yet the scenes involving his parents seethe with the pain of real-life experience. Gallo’s dad was a singer, and Ben Gazzara lip-synchs along with one of his old songs. And Gallo’s character’s strained-at-best relationship with his folks feels like it’s born of real wounds dating back to childhood. I don’t know if that’s the kind of answer you’re looking for, Professor, but it’s the answer you’re getting.

(added 30 December) Oh, OK... if you insist. The obvious answer here is 8 1/2, but I'd like to put in a good word for Passing Strange. Yeah, it's more of a performance film than a straight-up movie, but Spike Lee made the right choice not to adapt it for the screen, since the intimate theatre-in-the-round format works to the material's benefit. And the material is, in a word, awesome. Composer-narrator Stew mines a pivotal time in his life- his artistic awakening and extended sojourn in Amsterdam and Berlin- for genuine feeling as well as great theatre. Most surprisingly, he's able to take that most careworn crutch of the roman-a-clef, his relationship with his mother, and make it feel fresh and complex, by virtue of the complex and unresolved feelings it summons in him. Plus it's just entertaining as hell, from his spoofing of every terrible punk band that never made it out of the garage, to his hilarious toe-tapping American-in-Berlin ditty "The Black One." One of my favorite movies of 2009.

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

Paris after May ’68 is often depicted as an intellectual wonderland, and to be sure, all evidence points to the idea that it was a hotbed for thought and creativity. But where one finds genius one also finds those who aspire to it, even as they fall hopelessly short. So when I think of Parisian counterculture in the sixties and seventies, I think not of The Dreamers but rather of Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, which pulls back the curtain on the idealism of the time and reveals a world chock full of layabouts and bullshit artists. Of course, the heyday of the world couldn’t last forever, and it was curdling by the time Eustache made the film in 1973. But that he could be so clear-eyed about the shortcomings of the team even as it was still going on makes The Mother and the Whore both a great film and an invaluable warts-and-all portrait of a key period in modern French history, the last gasp of idealism before malaise set in once more.

15) Best Director of 2010

Yorgos Lanthimos, for Dogtooth. Too often, a young filmmaker seems beholden to his influences. But while Dogtooth feels superficially indebted to directors like Buñuel, Von Trier, and Haneke, Lanthimos has a vision all his own. Just as importantly, he takes some tricky material and handles it magnificently, achieving a perfect balance between absurdism, tragedy, and brutality. It’s a real achievement, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

16) Second-favorite Farrelly Brothers Movie

Well, my favorite is easily Stuck on You- a strong contender for the most under-loved movie of the past decade, not that you asked. As for my second-favorite, I’d probably have to go with Kingpin, which is the apex of the Farrellys’ scatological period. It helps that they chose a milieu that lends itself particularly well to sleaze- the world of professional bowling, which is gaudy and low-rent enough when it’s on the level, but attains a particularly downmarket flavor whenever hustling is involved. And the actors are nothing if not committed- you can almost smell the stale smoke on Woody Harrelson’s Roy Munson, and it’s nice to see Randy Quaid in his pre-wackjob phase. Then there’s the priceless Bill Murray as “Big Ern” McCracken. This wasn’t Murray’s last straight-up comedic performance, but it feels like the last time he really tried to sell the silly stuff before he shifted into deadpan territory. Good stuff, this one.

17) Favorite holiday movie

All-singing! All-dancing! All-vamping! All-killing! I’m probably alone on this, but I think 8 Women is pretty rockin’. That it takes place at Christmas is reason enough for me to choose it here.

18) Best Actress of 2010

Disabled roles have long been awards-season catnip, but no one would call Sylvie Testud’s performance in Lourdes Oscar-bait. For one thing, it was barely released in this country, so it wouldn’t stand a chance even if it was in the Academy’s wheelhouse. But more importantly, Testud’s performance is so subtle that it’s easy to overlook what a masterful acting job she does. Testud gives a very lived-in portrayal of a quadriplegic woman who decides to tag along with a tour group visiting the titular shrine, and so completely does she inhabit the character that the disability is merely one of the things that makes her so compelling. And so convincingly does she convey the predicament of a woman who is essentially in deep free from the neck down that it’s all the more astonishing when, following a miracle, she almost without thinking reaches out and touches something she never could have before. Testud is one of the most fascinating actresses currently working, and Lourdes offers ample evidence of her acting gifts.

19) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson

Haven’t we already had this question? Oh well. Don’t really have a strong opinion about this one, I have to say.

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

A world in which we have no more new Eric Rohmer films to look forward to seems almost unbearably sad.

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

Alfred Hitchcock shot Psycho with his TV crew, with the goal of making it look like it took place in the workaday world instead of the world of movies. For most of the movie, the only thing giving it an uneasy atmosphere is Bernard Herrmann’s score. Try to imagine Marion running away from Phoenix with no music behind her- much of the urgency would be gone, I dare say. And I’d guess that the famous shower scene wouldn’t be such an effective scare moment without the screeching strings- the visceral effect would be all but gone. But what would suffer most would probably be the post-killing scenes in which the seemingly innocent Norman is repeatedly questioned about the murder. In these scenes, Hitchcock cannily employed the same musical motifs in the earlier scenes involving Marion so that Norman feels like a victim. It’s a clever bit of misdirection that would be lost without the music behind it.

22) Best Screenplay of 2010

As I said above in question (5), I prefer to base my judgments of a movie on what happens between the opening logos and the closing credits. Because of this, I make it a point not to read the screenplays for the films, and consequently I don’t know how to best answer this question. Even something as basic as dialogue is a tough call. How much of what comes out of the characters’ mouth was on the page, and how much came out of shooting? Does the mood set by the film come from the screenplay or direction? How much of the story was constructed in the editing room? And what makes a “good” screenplay anyway? A good story? Good form and structure? Loads of research? Jesus, now my head hurts.

23) Movie You Feel Most Evangelistic About Right Now

Um… Dogtooth!

24) Worst/funniest movie accent ever

What in the hell was John Malkovich going for in Rounders? I mean, I get that Teddy KGB was supposed to be Russian. But while bizarre accents have been a tradition of comedies ever since the days of Peter Sellers, Rounders was intended to be a drama. Did it not occur to John Dahl that Malkovich’s sub-Boris Badenov routine would take everyone right out of the story?

As for deliberately funny accents, I’m a fan of Lambert Wilson’s “real” American and “fake” French accents in Alain Resnais’ Not on the Lips. The British/French Wilson is perfectly bilingual, which makes it all the funnier that his characters’ stumbling attempts at French sound like he’s reading of phonetically-translated cue cards. But just as funny is his chewed-on take on Middle American, which makes him sound like James Coburn with a lip full of Novocaine.

25) Best Cinematography of 2010

Most films that employ digital cinematography use the new medium as a replacement for old-school film. However, there are a handful of filmmakers that have figured out the unique possibilities for digital, and David Fincher is one of them. With The Social Network, Fincher and d.p. Jeff Cronenweth transformed a potentially dry subject- the founding of Facebook- and turned it into a visually startling work by employing technology as current as that upon which its protagonist created his online empire. Most impressive is how Fincher and Cronenweth take advantage of the sharpness of the Red camera to heighten the unique visual textures of the film’s various settings- the burnished halls of Harvard’s “final clubs,” the institutional light of the Facebook offices, the neon paradise of the nightclub where Zuckerberg conspires with Sean Parker, the bong smoke that weighs down the air in Facebook’s California house. Much of the time, it’s historical epics that hog the cinematography accolades, but The Social Network beats them all this year.

26) Olivia Wilde or Gemma Arterton

I don’t have a strong opinion about either one, honestly. Wilde’s face is more interesting, so she’s got the edge there. On the other hand, if I was still single I’d do my damnedest to snag the one-sheet for Tamara Drewe, featuring the memorable image of Arterton in tiny shorts. Then again, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so it’s not like I’m a huge fan. Of course, Wilde was on House, and my lady likes House, so I guess she has the edge.

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

I don’t get a chance to watch as many older movies as I’d like to, so my list won’t be quite as impressive as some. But instead of answering Dogtooth yet again, here are three oldies-but-goodies submitted for your approval: (1) Sam Fuller’s incendiary White Dog, which I wrote about in detail for the Killer Animal Blogathon, (2) Hou Hsiao-hsien’s epic City of Sadness, a lovely drama about sweeping historical changes in Taiwan, and (3) John Woo’s Hard Boiled, with its awesomely unhinged extended battle in a hospital.

28) Best romantic movie couple of 2010

Most poignant: Kathy and Tommy, Never Let Me Go. Most promising: Lisa and George, How Do You Know. Most toxic: Gitti and Chris, Everyone Else. Hottest: Nina and Nina’s version of Lily, Black Swan. Most tragic: Dom and Mal, Inception.

29) Favorite shock/surprise ending

”You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!”

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

It’s been almost eleven months since I saw this, but I still shudder a bit to think of the Jackie Chan kiddie vehicle The Spy Next Door. Late-period Chan has been fairly disheartening as a whole, I’d say- age has diminished his once-formidable athleticism to the point where he seems to be angling for the youth audience because he believes they’re the only ones who will still be impressed by his skills. But what makes the movie really egregious is that no one making it seemed to care. It’s as if the studio, producers, director, writers, actors, and everyone else down to the catering department figured that they only had to put in the least possible amount of effort in order to finish the movie and post a decent opening weekend on the road to a DVD release.

Don’t get me wrong- there are plenty of movies out there that feel like quick cash-grabs. But ever since I became a father, I’ve become especially annoyed by lousy movies aimed at kids. After all, children are full of imagination and creativity, two things that should always be encouraged. However, children are also highly susceptible to outside influences- to advertising and promotional tie-ins, to say nothing of peer pressure. So whenever Hollywood hard-sells shoddy goods like The Spy Next Door to children, it’s doing nothing less than grinding down a child’s creative impulses and destroying his ability to distinguish something really special from a run-of-the-mill time-waster (sadly, this is an ability many people find almost impossible to get back, if the ratings for Jersey Shore are any indication).

In short, not only should I have stayed home and read a book instead of seeing The Spy Next Door, but I should have stayed home with the offspring and read with him. At least then an extra precious little sliver of imagination in his brain might have survived a little longer.

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

… ”release Tree of Life already.” Which it looks like they’re planning to do, so I’m at a loss for a better answer. Let’s see… “movies in 2011 could make me much happier if they’d only make it easier for me to watch the best new releases with my lady without having to plan ahead, pay for a sitter, etc.” Yeah, I guess that works.

Check out Dennis’ original post and more responses right here.

A Very Criterion Christmas!

2010-12-26T22:49:00.008-05:00

Dig, if you will, this year's Christmas haul. Woohoo!

Hope you all got everything you wished for and more.

Sense and Sensuality

2010-12-22T19:47:00.001-05:00

Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love is nothing if not ambitious. In interviews, Guadagnino and his collaborator and leading lady Tilda Swinton have stated that they wanted to resurrect the old-school melodramas of Douglas Sirk, a genre that has fallen on hard times as critics have used the word “melodrama” as a club to beat down films that traffic in larger-than-life emotions over “realism.” And Guadagnino and Swinton have a solid starting point for their goal in their story of a privileged Russian-Italian woman (played by Swinton) who tumbles into an affair with her son’s best friend. Trouble is, Guadagnino can’t muster up the emotional highs required of his chosen genre. Swinton is fine- she’s completely convincing in two foreign languages and her alien presence makes it clear she doesn’t fit into the upper-class world into which she’s married. But in the end, the film lets her down, as Guadagnino allows external signifiers- weather changes to reflect tonal shifts, John Adams’ memorable but suffocating score- to signal what ought to spring organically from what’s happening in the characters’ lives. What’s more, Guadagnino aims to make I Am Love a feast for the senses, but aside from a key scene in which Swinton tucks into a prawn dish her lover-to-be has prepared for her, Guadagnino’s “sensual” images to little more than invite a reaction of “ooh, purty.” Which, I mean, yeah, but in more capable hands they could have been so much more. To imagine what a sensualist like Bernardo Bertolucci or even the Martin Scorsese who gave us the indelible image of a razor slicing through a clove of garlic is to weep a little at what I Am Love might have been. Rating: 5 out of 10.

If I Am Love invites audiences to taste its every dish and feel its every texture, then Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan have another sympathetic sensation in mind- pain. Much of the hype for 127 Hours has reckoned with its true-life premise, in which lone-wolf adventurer Aron Ralston got pinned between two rocks for more than five days and eventually freed himself by hacking off his trapped arm. On paper, the concept seems like it would lend itself to a spare, Gerry-style treatment in which the director maroons the audience with Ralston (played by James Franco), all the better to feel his isolation and appreciate what he does and doesn’t have to work with in the situation. Instead, Boyle amps up his filmmaking like a film student jacked up on Mountain Dew, employing jackhammer editing to cut between Ralston’s plight in the canyon and his memories and fantasies about the rest of his life. Sometimes, this tactic pays off, as when he ponders the little mistakes- not telling anyone where he was headed, leaving a bottle of Gatorade in his Jeep, forgetting his Swiss Army knife- that got him in his situation. But just as often, the cutaways are distractingly unsubtle, as Boyle and cowriter Simon Beaufoy hammer home the point that, yes, Even Aron Ralston Needs Other People. That said, James Franco is pretty brilliant here, and it’s easy to imagine a more minimalistic approach working in his capable, um, hands. And that “money scene”- ouch. (Especially the sound.) Rating: 6 out of 10.

Like The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky’s last film, Black Swan’s primary theme is the extent to which people will push themselves for their chosen art. In Black Swan, that art is ballet, and one of the most compelling aspects of the film is observing at close range how much of the grace of dance comes from forcing the body to bend in directions it simply wasn’t meant to go. But Black Swan also deals with the mental distresses that its heroine Nina (played by Natalie Portman), an up-and-coming dancer in the Metropolitan Ballet, faces when she takes on the bifurcated lead role on Swan Lake. As the troupe’s leader (Vincent Cassel) tells her, her impeccable porcelain style is ideal of the White Swan, but she has more trouble with the Black Swan’s heedless abandon, so he encourages her to let her darker side loose. One of the common threads in Aronofsky’s work is psychology manifesting itself physically, and true to form, Nina’s discovery of her own darker side leads to a bodily transformation into the Black Swan. Or does it? This does-she-or-doesn’t-she enigma is one of its least interesting aspects, not so much because of its ambiguous nature but because it feels like a lack of nerve on the film’s part. However, it must be said that this lack of nerve isn’t something shared by the film as a whole, as Aronofsky embraces the Grand Guignol style needed to really sell a story of this nature. And if much of Black Swan feels like pieces of other films- the dancer-swallowed-by-the-role storyline of The Red Shoes, the freakish imagery of Repulsion, the mother-daughter dynamic of The Piano Teacher- then at least Aronofsky chooses his influences wisely. Like the Met’s production of Swan Lake in the film, Black Swan takes classic influences and makes them fresh and exciting. Rating: 8 out of 10.

Of course, the credo of “everything old is new again” is one that’s shared by Tron: Legacy, an eye-popping sequel to the 1982 cult classic whose primary appeal seems to be to those who weren’t even alive when the original was released. This isn’t idle speculation either- I attended the screening with the Offspring, who’s almost ten years old, and as the credits rolled he proclaimed the movie one of his all-time favorites. I don’t agree with this assessment, mind you, since for one thing the movie’s exposition-heavy script doesn’t live up to the visuals. However, it’s easy to see why Tron: Legacy would hit a grade-school-aged boy’s sweet spot. For one thing, the action sequences are pretty killer- the Light-Cycle sequence honors the original film while upping the ante, as the cycles speed up and down ramps and even careen through the air, and they shatter when they collide. And that’s a mere warm-up for the climactic Light-Plane battle, which is pretty mind-blowing, all the more so because neophyte director Joseph Kosinski has a good feel for directing and cutting action sequences. But beyond the action (and of course the effects), Tron: Legacy is an instant grade-school classic for the way it incorporates enough “mythology” into its storyline to make the film feel weightier than the usual blockbuster fare, and for its female lead Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who’s beautiful but sexless, and who’s written as more of a best pal than a love interest. Alas, Tron: Legacy never hits the heights of a film like Speed Racer, which works so well because the Wachowskis were assured enough filmmakers to commit to the film’s flashy aesthetic, while Kosinski is still working his way to that point. What’s more, he doesn’t have the same flair for directing actors as he does with visuals, as the film’s performances are all over the map (Jeff Bridges’ aged Flynn is basically a Zen Dude, Garrett Hedlund’s Sam is a colorless rebel-hero, and Michael Sheen’s Bowie riff is fun but sort of stops the movie cold). Still, if Tron: Legacy doesn’t break new ground as narrative, it’s pretty exciting as pure spectacle, and if nothing else it uses IMAX 3D in a way that actually works instead of simply cashing in on the fad. Rating: 6 out of 10.

The courts of critical (46 on Metacritic) and public (#8 at the box office its opening weekend) opinion have already weighed in on James L. Brooks’ How Do You Know and found it largely wanting. However, I think I could be forgiven for wanting to say a few words in defense of this most welcome rarity, a big-budgeted romantic comedy with a genuinely unique voice. More specifically, instead of utilizing the narrative efficiency found in more films of the genre, Brooks focuses on the messiness of his characters lives and makes that the crux of his film. Naturally, the film’s premise- two people having their first date on the worst day of their lives- is straight out of high-concept hell. But Brooks takes his characters’ problems, and their resultant neuroses, seriously instead of making them cutesy or the subject of easy jokes (this in itself makes it a welcome corrective to Brooks’ misguided Spanglish, which contained two super-duper-perfect characters and one character-Tea Leoni’s- who was neurotic to the point of grotesquerie). Observe Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) as she struggles to find her way after being cut from the USA softball team, attempting to forge her own new identity instead of simply “settling down.” Or look at the way George (Paul Rudd), no doubt tired of his father’s (Jack Nicholson) manipulations, decides to let both his fate and that of his father hinge on the outcome of a meeting he’s scheduled with Lisa. Then there’s that wondrous scene in which a man we’ve never even met previously makes a spectacularly convoluted proposal to the woman he loves following the birth of their son (a front-runner for my favorite scene so far this year). By conventional standards, How Do You Know is an unholy mess, but to hell with conventional standards. It’s pretty magical- certainly Brooks’ best work since Broadcast News- and I suspect time will be extremely kind to it. Rating: 8 out of 10.

Finally, a couple of bite-sized assessments… Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture has won legions of admirers for its handmade feel and its portrayal of post-graduate malaise, but the subject matter isn’t nearly as interesting as Dunham seems to think it is, and she does nothing to elevate it aside from throwing in plenty of quirkiness. Inspired in bits (like the world’s worst hookup), but exhausting at feature length (4 out of 10)… Neil Jordan’s Ondine won’t win the director any new fans, but it’s an unassuming charmer. Some of the plot manipulations in the second hour are fairly creaky, but the photography is beautiful without feeling scenic, and Farrell continues to grow as an actor (6 out of 10).

A Parade of Sixes (and one Four)

2010-12-07T18:24:00.001-05:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I (David Yates)- by now, most moviegoers have formed a more or less ironclad opinion on the Potter franchise, and Deathly Hallows the First is not a movie that’s going to change people’s minds. But for those who’ve been following the series to date, this seventh installment provides a compelling contrast to the previous entries. A lot of this is due to Harry and the gang being removed from their usual setting- the film lacks the comfortable structure of a school year at Hogwarts, with the attendant classroom misadventures, relationship troubles, and everything else that implies. Here, Harry and his friends are no longer insulated from the magical world as a whole, and their having to make their own way leaves them far more vulnerable, thereby adding a new urgency to the film that wasn’t there previously. That said, like most of the other Potter movies, the filmmaking is more staunchly professional than inspired, and the storytelling, even with the necessary cuts to the source material, feels as dutiful and slavish as ever (also, I despair that of all the Potter directors, only Cuaron was able to locate the grey area between whimsical wondrous “good magic” and the sinister Dark Arts). Still, while it’s not great cinema, it’s one of the better entries in the Potter series, and sets up next year’s allegedly final installment pretty well. Rating: 6 out of 10.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (Zach Snyder)- If nothing else, Guardians deserves to be seen for its pure visual splendor- the geniuses at Animal Logic have created a richly detailed and immersive world for this film completely out of 1s and 0s, and Snyder’s visual bombast is surprisingly well-suited to animated fantasy. It’s sort of a pity then that the rest of the movie falls short of its images. Guardians’ screenplay comes off mostly as a standard-issue fantasy formula- only, you know, with owls- and consequently the storyline of the film contains precious few surprises. This wouldn’t be such a glaring issue for me if Ang and I weren’t currently reading the Ga’Hoole books with the Offspring, in which much of the story is focused on the workaday details of its characters’ lives- for example, young hero Soren and his friends attend classes after their arrival in the Ga’Hoole tree, but while Snyder treats these classes as snippets in a montage, author Kathryn Lasky takes time to lay out the content and context of their lessons (I’m a procedure guy, what can I say). Snyder, never a particularly deep thinker, also fails to wrap his mind around the ambiguity of the film’s battle scenes, in which the peace-loving intellectuals from Ga’Hoole fight to prevent the owls of St. Aggie’s from spreading their evil agenda throughout the world. Instead, his attention is solely on the choreography of battle, with all the slow motion and lingering shots that implies. And yeah, the battles are visually stunning- the whole movie is, really- but if Snyder would pay as much attention to his characters and their thoughts as he does to every feather and leaf, Guardians might be worthwhile as more than just eye candy. Rating: 6 out of 10.

The Square (Nash Edgerton)- the signature image of this Aussie neo-noir is the face of its protagonist, Raymond Yale (played by David Roberts). A middle-aged man in a dead-end marriage, Ray has a worn and weary-looking face, with deep lines framing a mouth that’s in a perpetual scowl, and a brow that only seems capable of expressing anxiety. But then, there’s little to express in The Square, set in a world of crooks and shady sorts that exists largely to be escaped. We’re in Coen brothers territory here, particularly the Coens of Blood Simple and No Country For Old Men, and Edgerton does a solid job setting the tone so that there’s little hope even before things start to get really, really bad (which of course they do). But while The Square is a solid genre piece, it’s rarely more than that, both because its tonal range is so narrow and because the screenplay is tragically short of the sort of vivid characterizations that distinguish the film’s influences. Consequently, The Square comes off less as a free-standing creation than as a demo reel for its maker. It’s an efficient machine, but it falls short when it comes to honest-to-goodness vision. Rating: 6 out of 10.

Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé)- of course, there’s plenty of vision to go around in Noé’s latest, a dazzling formal experiment in which we follow a man’s soul as its leaves his body after death. Much like in Irreversible, Noé makes extensive use of an ever-moving camera and invisible edits, and he shoots almost entirely from a first-person perspective, all the better for us to experience the protagonist’s “death trip” through his own eyes (so to speak). Noé has always been a bold filmmaker, and it’s this boldness that allows him to find transcendent moments in a narrative that otherwise might come off as morbid or maudlin. Trouble is, these transcendent moments are inextricably linked to ideas that are, to put it mildly, sort of dopey. The primary thematic inspiration for Enter the Void is the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but there are very few ideas on display here that aren’t expressed more artfully- and succinctly- in Revolver-era Beatles songs like “She Said She Said” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” (which was originally titled “The Void”, dontcha know). And while it’s admirable of Noé to sustain his formal experiment far longer than most directors would have, the truth is that at upwards of 2 ½ hours, Enter the Void wears pretty thin after a while. Still, no one is making movies like this nowadays, and if I have to sit through two-odd hours of tedium in order to experience a strange and magical image like two people making love while soft colored light wafts from their coupled genitalia, I’ll make the sacrifice. At least I’ll know I’m in the hands of someone who’s trying something new and different, and who isn’t afraid to fail big. Rating: 6 out of 10.

Chloe (Atom Egoyan)- That’s more than I can say for Egoyan, who back in the nineties was one of the world’s most acclaimed filmmakers before losing his way in this past decade. Nowadays, Egoyan appears to be following the Scorsese template of “one for me, one for them,” which isn’t a bad way to sustain a career as a filmmaker, but which doesn’t seem to be working for him. Even more than Where the Truth Lies, Chloe is a baldly commercial project- a remake of the forgettable French drama Nathalie…, with a screenplay written by someone else. For the first two-thirds, Chloe is sort of effective, as Amanda Seyfried’s titular prostitute spins yarns to suspicious wife Julianne Moore of her husband’s (Liam Neeson) infidelity, and Moore finds herself both angered and turned on by the revelations. It’s a fairly good idea for a movie, and I can imagine Egoyan making something really striking had he made a film entirely of the conversations between the two women. Unfortunately, Chloe is far too conventional for this, and after about an hour of humming along fairly serviceably, the film degenerates into Fatal Attraction territory, with Chloe falling hard for Moore’s character and doing everything she can to insinuate her way into her family’s life. Chloe is never a great movie, but it’s still disappointing to see the bottom fall out of it, especially considering that its maker should have known better. But hey, naked Seyfried is worth a rental, right? Rating: 4 out of 10.

Additionally, I’ve seen plenty of other movies lately that I haven’t had the chance to write about (sorry buds). Some brief thoughts… I’m sort of intimidated by the prospect of reviewing Olivier Assayas’ Carlos, mostly because there’s so much movie there, not to mention that compared to most movies of its sort it feels pretty free-form. It’ll take me at least a second viewing to suss out how I feel, but the filmmaking brilliance on display is undeniable [8 out of 10]… RED commits the grievous sin of assembling Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, and Brian Cox and giving them almost nothing to do that’s actually interesting. I mean, really- why should we care about Bruce Willis and Mary-Louise Parker’s childish flirtation when these four great actors should be running the show? [4 out of 10]… Soul Kitchen essentially takes every cliché of the ethnic crowd-pleaser genre (restaurant division) and livens them up with lots of style and panache, courtesy of director Fatih Akin. It’s nothing you haven’t tasted before, but it goes down easy. Soundtrack is pretty kickass too [6 out of 10]… there’s not much I can say about The Oath that the great Michael Sicinski hasn’t already said, but I was most interested here in how Poitras portrays Abu Jandal, the former Al-Qaeda operative-turned-taxi driver. He’s a wealth of contradictions, and I found him pretty fascinating [7 out of 10]… likewise, I’m fascinated by the complexities of the late Pat Tillman, and the best parts of Amir Bar-Lev’s The Tillman Story embrace these many sides. Sadly, the film itself isn’t so multifaceted, but it’s still a worthy portrait [7 out of 10]… having sat through my share of business courses in the last few years, I was somewhat less surprised by the revelations found in Inside Job than most audience members, but if you want a single-serving primer of what went wrong in our economy, this’ll do nicely [6 out of 10]… finally, jackass 3D is more of the same, and even if it never quite hits the high points of number two, it’s still entertaining as all hell [7 out of 10].

Last Days

2010-11-20T23:01:00.001-05:00

As you may recall, last fall Muriel had some health problems last fall after she contracted an infection in one of her eyes. Needless to say, it was a pretty difficult time for me, and back then I didn’t know if she would make it. Once I saw her condition, I knew I would have to get it taken out, but because of the pain she stopped eating almost completely, and I ended up having to take her to the veterinary hospital to get them to make her eat again. My most vivid memory of this was from the drive to the hospital. I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other petting Muriel in her box, and again and again I did my best to reassure her. I’ve always been the sort of person to talk to animals as if they could understand, and before we entered the hospital, I looked down at her and said, “I’m going to make sure you’re not in pain anymore. No matter what, I don’t want you to hurt.”

While I waited for the doctors to finish working on Muriel, I reconciled myself to the idea that she might not survive her illness. I even said “goodbye” to her before they took her back to the examination area, just in case. So when she started to eat again, putting back on enough weight that she could have the infected eye removed, I was naturally grateful. As you already know, she survived that surgery as well. After she recovered from the illness and became her ornery self again, we started joking around the house that she was indestructible.

Of course, this wasn’t true. Guinea pigs are small and fairly fragile creatures, and their life span averages roughly four years. When she fell ill again last weekend, it had been a little over four years since I first brought her home, and she had lived to a fairly good age for her species. And because guinea pigs are so delicate, I didn’t want to run the risk of putting her under the knife again. After all, we had fought off death together once already, and I didn’t want to risk tempting fate again. So instead, I decided to spend one last night with my Muriel, cradling her to my chest as I gave her water from her bottle. If I was really going to have to say goodbye, I wanted to do it at home, surrounded by the family (human and canine alike) who had grown to love her these past four years. And when she passed away in her sleep that night, I thought that was just about the best she could have gone, much better than I feared would happen when she was sick last year.

Goodbye, Muriel. Thank you for being part of my life.

Sad news

2010-11-13T09:35:00.003-05:00

Sad news for you Muriel lovers- our little girl, who graciously lent her name to everyone's favorite online movie awards, passed away during the night at the age of 4. I'll try to post some thoughts about her soon, but until then here's a link to an appreciation I wrote about her prior to the 2009 Muriels:

Click here to read my post about Muriel from 6 February 2010

Muriel has been there for me through a lot of changes in my life, and she will be greatly missed.

Tradition of Quality

2010-11-09T15:31:00.001-05:00

So as some of you regular readers may have noticed, I don’t have a great record of sticking to projects I set up for myself. To wit- almost four months after the final of this year’s World Cup, I still have yet to pen a review of my promised World Cup of Cinema-winning title, Carlos Saura’s Blood Wedding. Now, this isn’t entirely my fault- despite repeated attempts at writing something substantial about it, it’s just not a film that lends itself to being reviewed. After all, it’s basically rehearsal and performance footage of a flamenco ballet, which would most likely result in something that does little more than combined plot synopsis with historical context, much as a Wikipedia might. Not exactly scintillating criticism, you might agree.

Yet this isn’t exactly unprecedented in this history of the blog. After Screengrab cast me to the winds last year, I decided to keep myself regular by launching a project called Criterion Watching, which since June 2009 has had exactly two (2) installments. And the less said about my much-ballyhooed “Nobel Project,” in which I set myself the goal of reading something by every Nobel Literature laureate and reviewing it, the better.

Of course, if I was a cynical prick I’d say to hell with it and that I don’t owe my readers anything. But that’s not true. After all, a blog isn’t meant as a soapbox, nor is it a kind of one-sided communication a la Glenn Gould’s 1:0 performer-to-audience relationship. No, it’s an open line of communication between the host blogger (that’s me) and his readership, both the regulars and the folks who stumble upon the blog almost by accident. And because I value you folks, the last thing I would want to do is alienate you.

So I won’t go about setting myself any more long-term projects in the foreseeable future. After all, I’m a busy guy, and I’d prefer not to renege on any promises. Instead, I’ll make a promise that I’m fully prepared to keep. As a wholly amateur writer, I reserve the right to write about whatever I want, and nothing I don’t, and in return, I’ll do my level best to make every post worth your time. If I don’t think something I write is worthy, I won’t post it. Sure, this will no doubt mean that the content turnover will stay fairly low, but I can deal with that if it means I can keep it at a high level of quality. And in the long run, I think we’ll all be better off for it.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

~~ PBC

“None of you will go to America; none of you will be film stars.”

2010-10-20T17:58:00.001-04:00

“Everyone I know goes away in the end.” ~ Nine Inch Nails, “Hurt”

When asked recently about the essential difference between his original U.K. version of The Office and its American remake, series creator/star Ricky Gervais stated that while Americans are brought up to believe in their boundless potential for success, British children are more often reminded of their social standing and limitations. I expect that this difference has quite a bit to do with the chilly reception Mark Romanek’s delicate adaptation of Never Let Me Go has found on these shores. Like The Remains of the Day, the most notable big-screen Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation, Never Let Me Go is a story about people who have been born and raised for the express purpose of serving. It’s not necessarily a theme that resonates widely in a culture that values determination and grit, but it’s a more universal idea than most people would probably care to admit.

Click here for the (spoiler-y) full review.

If this picture doesn't make you scream... you're already dead. (edited 21 August)

2010-10-19T23:44:00.003-04:00

If there’s a theme for this year’s 2nd Annual Shock Around the Clock! 24-Hour Horror Marathon, it’s anniversaries. Fully half of the scheduled repertory schedule for this year’s marathon consists of movies that are celebrating some round-number anniversary or other. The biggie, at least in terms of historical import, is the centenary of Frankenstein on film.

Yes, Mary Shelley’s enduring horror story first appeared onscreen in 1910, the subject of a short film produced by Edison Studios, and Marathon gurus Joe Neff and Bruce Bartoo have booked the film for this year, along with the classic 1931 James Whale version. And while I personally prefer the 1935 follow-up Bride of Frankenstein- currently celebrating its 75th, come to think- I certainly won’t complain about this one playing instead. Beats the hell out of the Branagh/DeNiro version of the story- and the Sting version, for that matter.

However, Filmic Frankenstein’s impending birthday salutation from Willard Scott is far from the only big news at this year’s marathon. After all, there’s another horror masterpiece that’s turning 50. That’s right, folks- William Castle’s 13 Ghosts has its golden anniversary this year, and Bruce and Joe have booked a 35mm of the film, which will of course be shown in Castle’s patented ~~gimmick~~ cinematic breakthrough Illusion-O, to get the full ghostly effect. Should be fun.

Oh wait, you thought I was referring to another 50th Anniversary? Like, say, Psycho? Never fear, folks- the Marathon has booked Hitchcock’s masterful thriller/shower deterrent too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in 35mm, so that ought to be a treat.

Where there’s Hitchcock, you know that DePalma can’t be far behind. Not just any DePalma either, but rather DePalma’s most Psycho-esque film, Dressed to Kill. As an unapologetic DePalma fanboy, I believe Dressed is almost the equal of Psycho, so I’m excited to see it included on this program, especially if they’ve booked a nice clean print. Oh, who am I kidding- I’d watch this one projected through cheesecloth if need be.

Like Dressed to Kill, Dario “Monkey Bite!” Argento’s Inferno is turning 30 this year. I’ve only seen this one once, on a beaten-up VHS from the library, and I know enough about Argento to know that this antiquated format couldn’t come close to doing justice to his famed use of color and light. So seeing it on the big screen promises to be pretty eye-opening.

In addition to being a 25th Anniversary screening, this year’s marathon showing of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 also represents Joe and Bruce’s tribute to the late Dennis Hopper, who of course passed away this year. I for one plan on hitting the Grandview’s open bar, grabbing a drink (they sell Pabst Blue Ribbon, by the way) and raising a toast to Hopper, although I’d understand if you’d prefer using a nitrous inhaler for the same purpose. Hey, I’m not here to judge.

The last and perhaps most monumental marathon anniversary this year is the Platinum celebration of that eternal marathon favorite, Kevin S. O’Brien’s Night of the Living Bread cycle. For those who don’t know, O’Brien is a longtime Marathon attendee who decided to make a short spoof of Night of the Living Dead, and has since gone on to make several follow-up movies, all of which have become Marathon traditions. Bruce and Joe have hinted at special Bread-themed gifts for all attendees this year, so if you’re looking for a reason to come, there you are.

Of course, there are plenty of other goodies on the agenda beyond the requisite yeasty goodness. 1932’s Island of Lost Souls, featuring the dream pairing of Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi, will be making a rare 35mm screening here. That’s especially good news since the movie has yet to see an honest-to-goodness domestic DVD release. Personally, I’m eager to see this story done well in a way that doesn’t involve Marlon Brando playing piano duets with a little person.

And speaking of weirdness, word on the street is that Nobuhiko Kobayashi’s House is a classic head-scratcher. I wasn’t able to make it to the Wexner Center screening this past spring- I know, bad bad me- so I’m stoked that Joe and Bruce booked it for this event.

A few days ago, the one and only Vern wrote a characteristically whacked-out review of Slugs in which he impugned the titular creatures’ lack of scare potential. Well, I think this year’s Marathon would beg to differ, since they’ve booked a double feature of creepy-crawly chillers. First off, there’s the 2006’s super-gross Slither, featuring a veritable army of slugs that besiege a small town, and Michael Rooker as a local bigwig whose fate is particularly grisly.

The slightly more cerebral half of the pairing is David Cronenberg’s They Came From Within (aka Shivers), in which nasty, slug-like monsters infiltrate a high-rise apartment. This is another one I’m looking forward to seeing in 35mm, especially now that I know more about Cronenberg than I did the first time I saw it.

So let’s see- Whale, Hitchcock, Castle, DePalma, Argento, Cronenberg, Hooper- what other big-name horror directors could Bruce and Joe have shoehorned into this year’s lineup? Why not John Carpenter? This year’s Carpenter selection, Prince of Darkness, isn’t one of my favorite films of his, but it’s pretty fascinating in that he basically makes a horror movie out of little more than some menacing props, some colored-mist effects, and a cast that’s basically called upon to react to these two things. I’m curious to see how well this has aged.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a marathon without a handful of local premieres. So far, there have been some rumors floating around- A Serbian Film, Tuckers and Dale vs. Evil, the I Spit on Your Grave remake- but there’s only one title confirmed as yet. That would be the notoriously brutal French film Martyrs. Much like last year’s screening of Irreversible, this isn’t exactly a “premiere” since both films were already available on DVD by the time they played the Marathon. However, in both cases the Marathon screenings representing their first big-screen showing in Central Ohio. And like Irreversible, Martyrs promises to be polarizing in its violence, albeit in a way that’s slightly more palatable to genre fans.

All in all, this looks to be a Marathon to remember. I only wish Ang was able to come with me this weekend. Alas, she’s got some family business to attend to that supersedes her desire to accompany me. Although considering Martyrs’ rep, maybe that’s for the best.

The 2nd Annual Shock Around the Clock! 24-Hour Horror Marathon runs from noon on Saturday, October 23 through noon the next day. It will take place at the Grandview Theatre, located at 1247 Grandview Avenue, in Columbus. Ticket purchase information and more can be found at http://www.horrormarathon.com/. Hope to see you there!

Update! The Marathon powers that be have announced a second area premiere for this year's Marathon- the cult-ready Japanese exploitation flick RoboGeisha. Yeah, me neither, but having watched the trailer I'm guessing this will be... interesting. Hopefully it's more Lady Terminator than Arthur Golden, if you know what I mean. Here's the trailer:

Killer Animal Blogathon Entry / Criterion Watching #2: White Dog

2010-10-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

The overwhelming majority of titles that could be classified as “killer animal movies” fall squarely under the heading of B-movies. After all, for most people the phrase “killer animals” conjures up images of swarms of insects, jungle cats, or even giant bunnies on the loose, laying waste to human civilization. Hell, even the A-list movies in the lot- Jaws, most obviously- are still mostly about scaring the pants off the audience. I’m guessing that when Steve announced this Killer Animal Blogathon, his primary goal was to spotlight some of the genre’s more entertaining classics.

My selection is not one of these movies. Steve left the guidelines for the blogathon fairly vague, so while many people no doubt picked fun creature features, I decided to go the opposite direction. Not that there are many “serious” killer animal movies out there- in fact, I could only think of one. Then again, when many people hear about Sam Fuller’s White Dog, they mistake it for an especially sleazy entry into the genre. After all, it’s about a dog who kills African-Americans, so it’s got to be KKKujo, right? It was this same misconception that got White Dog withheld from American audiences by Paramount in the first place, and since then it’s gotten a bad reputation mitigated only slightly by the 2008 Criterion DVD release of the film. But then as now, White Dog is a major work by one of American cinema’s most incendiary talents, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

First, let’s just delve into that premise. Yes, this is a movie about a big white German shepherd that attacks and kills African-Americans, or as they still called them back in the early 1980s, “blacks.” But this white dog isn’t your garden variety killer animal. Unlike many killer-animal movies, White Dog never turns its titular character into a plot device who only turns up to maul someone then fade into the shadows until another victim comes calling. If anything, he’s the central character in the movie, around which all of the others revolve. Even when the dog is offscreen, he’s still the focus of the human characters’ lives and relationships with each other. At numerous points during the film, Fuller even adopts the dog’s point of view, in order to show us how he sees the world and to gauge the other characters through his eyes. In other movies, these shots might feel gimmicky, but here they enhance the film’s effect.

Likewise, Fuller allows us to gain further sympathy for the dog by focusing not on people who are against him but rather those who are most concerned. First, there’s Julie (former child star Kristy McNichol), a struggling actress who accidentally injures him with her car and takes him in before discovering his secret. Then there’s Carruthers (Burl Ives), who owns a company that provides animal performers for Hollywood. Finally, there’s Keys (Paul Winfield), the wild animal wrangler who takes it upon himself to re-educate the dog. All of these people care about the dog’s well-being in some way- Julie because she’s grown to love him, Carruthers because of his feelings about animals in general, and Keys (who is African-American) because he hates what has made the dog into a killer.

Julie is ostensibly the movie’s main human character, but Fuller is clearly most interested in and sympathetic to Keys. More than the other two, Keys recognizes that the dog is not to blame for his impulses to kill African-Americans. He speaks of the history of “white dogs”- how they were once used to track down freed slaves, then after the Civil War, escaped black prisoners (“but what about white prisoners?” Julie wisely asks). This dog’s urges are born from careful programming- early exposure to desperate African-Americans who have been paid by white racists to mistreat the animals- and based solely in fear and conditioned hatred. Keys knows that if he is to make the dog well again, he first needs to make the dog learn to trust him and his skin color. The film’s central scenes show Keys alone with the dog, allowing the dog to attack him (under pads, of course), never once retaliating. Once the dog begins to learn that Keys won’t hurt him, Keys begins to feed the dog in order to gain his trust.

Of course, it’s a long and difficult process toward rehabilitation, and at one point the dog escapes and kills an African-American man (Fuller removes any suspicion that White Dog is an exploitation film by avoiding showing both the killing and the aftermath). But even after this happens and even Julie and Carruthers want to put the dog down, Keys wants to cure the dog more than ever, motivated to score a victory against racism. In Romain Gary’s original novel, Keys acted on a need for revenge and re-trained the dog to kill whites, but Fuller wisely deviates from this and makes Keys’ motives more enlightened. The dog, by nature, is ruled by its programming, but humans are able to choose their actions.

And it’s this idea that makes White Dog more than just a killer-animal movie. By presenting us with an animal that isn’t governed by thought, Fuller asks us to consider our own deep-seated urges. After all, we like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, but much of how people self-identify is based in personal taste and bias. Some of these biases are natural and healthy, like what foods we like. Others are mostly harmless, such as the crazy-ass belief floating around nowadays that skinny waifs are somehow more attractive than curvy women (really, guys? Really?). But sometimes, these beliefs- be they religious, political, or social- can turn into a wedge and cause rifts in our society.

For example, look at the way the word “Muslim” is treated by many Americans as a dirty word. Of course, many of these same Americans know little about Islam other than that they bombed the World Trade Center and hate women and America, but that’s enough for them to be suspicious of and hateful to over one billion people worldwide. It doesn’t help that we’ve been bombarded by decades of nefarious big-screen terrorists and images of bearded, glowering men living in caves on the nightly news. But ultimately, it’s up to us whether we want to accept our often secondhand prejudices or come to terms with life’s complexities by using facts and reason. It’s only when we learn to consider their own thoughts and actions instead of accepting them at face value that we can move past our more hateful natures. And that’s what Fuller is saying with this movie- that if you can’t learn to see the world in anything more than simple black and white, you don’t have any more sense than… well, a white dog.

Footnote: I didn’t have room in my review for this, but after watching White Dog I couldn’t help but think back on my own experiences with racism, and more specifically my first experience with it. Back in grade school, I was looking at our class’ globe with one of my classmates when we started pointing out different countries. After a while, he spun the globe around to Africa, pointed at “Niger,” and said… I’m sure you can guess. After he did this, he started chuckling to itself, said it again, and looked at me like I was supposed to laugh too.

That evening, I asked my parents what the word meant, and I was sort of stunned at what they told me. By this time, I knew about different countries and races, but I couldn’t fathom the idea of prejudice based on skin color. For one thing, one of my best friends at the time was African-American, so the idea of looking down on someone for being darker-skinned sounded strange to me. Learning about racism at that age was a rude awakening for me. In fact, I’d say I grew up more that day than on any other day of my life, even more than when I learned the truth about Santa Claus. At least when I found out about Santa Claus, the explanation seemed logical. Whereas racism still doesn’t quite compute for me.

Oh, and I still can’t read the country name “Niger” without thinking of that jackass kid. Thanks a lot, buddy.

“A guy who makes a new chair doesn’t owe money to everyone who ever built a chair.”

2010-10-11T18:42:00.003-04:00

Nowadays, we’re told from childhood that we can do damn near anything, provided we’re willing to put forth the effort. And while that’s not entirely wrong, the truth is that some people have a much easier path to worldly success than others. To be born into money is a tremendous leg up for a child, since his family’s social and financial status allows them to use their money and connections to give their child an advantage over those who are less fortunate. And if David Fincher’s spellbinding The Social Network is any indication, the stratification is even more pronounced at the top. In the world envisioned by Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, the Harvard students we see aren’t content to accept that they’re the cream of the crop because they attend America’s most prestigious university- they need to further stratify their society, with the truly elite winning invitation to the school’s prestigious “final clubs” while the others find themselves on the outside, looking in.

Click here to read the full review.

“It was just so… normal!”

2010-10-05T23:42:00.002-04:00

You know, I think I’m pretty much done with Solondz. Happiness has its problems, particularly when Solondz feels the need to provoke, but it also makes some genuinely cogent points about the inability of its characters to relate to each other, or in some cases even try. For the most part, Storytelling and Palindromes kept the provocations while jettisoning the incisiveness, but I had some hope that Solondz might be able to pull it together for this sequel to Happiness. Alas, no such luck. Life During Wartime tones down the audience-baiting (to a point anyway), but doesn’t fill the gaps with anything interesting. It’s that rarest of creatures- a bland Todd Solondz movie.

Click here to read the full review.

In other blogalicious news...

2010-10-05T23:41:00.001-04:00

In case you hadn’t heard, a few months back the archive of posts at The Screengrab was removed from the Nerve.com website. Of course, Screengrab shut its doors over a year ago, but I had foolishly hoped that I’d continue to be able to steer folks to my semi-pro reviews and posts in their original context, comments and all. Alas, this wasn’t to be. I suppose Nerve was looking to save themselves some server space, which I guess I can understand. Still, it’s a little disorienting to find that an entire chapter in my life has been removed from the public record.

Anyway, I’m currently in the process of re-posting my long pieces from Screengrab to my “archive” blog My Hermes Handbag!, which had previously been used primarily to host the links to the original pieces. Naturally, this will take some time, but if you’re curious to see the longer stuff I’d write back when I was actually getting paid for it, check it out.

Getting My Priorities Straight

2010-09-30T23:17:00.001-04:00

As we reach the beginning of October, we’ve got a scant three months left in the year. And with a fall movie season that will no doubt be packed with big honkin’ Muriels contenders- this weekend alone sees the Columbus release of a new David Fincher movie, the Sundance favorite Catfish, and the winner of the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival- I can’t help but think of all the interesting movies I’ve already missed from this year. So I took a look at the list of Muriel-eligible movies from the year to date and was sort of dumbfounded by how much I couldn’t squeeze into my schedule over the past nine months.

Not all of these movies have made it to Columbus yet, so I’ve got an excuse for those. Likewise, not all of these movies hold the same level of interest for me, which is good since I don’t have remotely enough time to watch everything here. So I made the following lists to distinguish between the “must-sees” and the rest of the bunch.

Level 1 – Movies I’m set on seeing before the Muriels
Around a Small Mountain (Rivette) [playing 17-18 December at Wexner] – I didn’t fly to NYC to see Out 1 because I’m just a casual Rivette fan, after all
Enter the Void (Noe) [no Columbus release date scheduled] – someone pleasepleaseplease open this and book it on the biggest screen you’ve got
Greenberg (Baumbach) [now on DVD]
Mother (Bong) [now on DVD]
Red Riding Trilogy (Jarrold/Marsh/Tucker) [now on DVD] – these last three came out here during a spring which found me extremely busy
Never Let Me Go (Romanek) [scheduled to open 22 at Drexel] – reviews from TIFF weren’t great, but I dig the book and I’m curious how this will work onscreen
Soul Kitchen (Akin) [no Columbus release date scheduled] – should play OK at home, but I’d be happy to see it in any form
The Tillman Story (Bar-Lev) [no Columbus release date scheduled] – my most anticipated doc of the year, since I’m fascinated by the Tillman saga

Level 2 – Movies I hope to see, most likely for a specific reason
Bluebeard (Breillat) – between this and Sleeping Beauty, this looks like Breillat is in a strange new phase, and I’m eager to see what she’s up to
Chloe (Egoyan) – Egoyan’s sort of lost his way in recent years, but I refuse to give up on the guy, and if all else fails I can always skip ahead to the Moore/Seyfriend sex scene.
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “Inferno” (Bromberg/Medrea) – supposedly this is a nothing-special piece of cinema, but seeing Clouzot’s footage is pretty tempting
Hideaway (Ozon) – Ozon hasn’t squandered his 8 Women goodwill yet
I Am Love (Guadagnino) – I actually went to see this once, but the power went out in the theatre, so if nothing else I’d like to finish what I started; also, Tilda
Lourdes (Hausner) – supposedly contains a powerhouse Silvie Testud performance
The Oath (Poitras) – missed this doc a few months back, but I’ve heard lots of good things
The Secret of Kells (Moore) – the kid subjects me to all manner of big-budget ‘toons, so I’m always curious about new animation talent
The Square (Edgerton) – has been compared by many to Blood Simple; does it warrant the comparison?
Valhalla Rising (Refn) – I’m still searching for the proverbial “good Viking movie”, and this one could just fit the bill

Level 3 – Movies I’m curious about, but don’t necessarily need to see
Agora (Amenabar)
Ajami (Copti/Shani)
Animal Kingdom (Michod)
The Art of the Steal (Argott)
The Concert (Mihaileanu)
Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl (de Oliveira)
The Exploding Girl (Gray)
Fish Tank (Arnold)
I’m Still Here (C. Affleck)
The Killer Inside Me (Winterbottom)
Leaves of Grass (Nelson)
Lebanon (Maoz)
Looking for Eric (Loach)
Mesrine: Killer Instinct / Public Enemy No. 1 (Richet)
Micmacs (Jeunet)
Mid-August Lunch (di Gregorio)
The Milk of Sorrow (Llosa)
Neil Young Trunk Show (Demme)
Ondine (Jordan)
The Other Guys (McKay)
Smash His Camera (Gast)
Solitary Man (Koppleman/Levien)
Splice (Natali)
Spring Fever (Lou)
Sweetgrass (Barbash/Castaing-Taylor)
Trash Humpers (Korine)
Women Without Men (Neshat)
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Allen) – this one’s kind of sad, since he only directed one of my all-time favorite movies; however, his last decade of work and the lack of quality control he seems to have any more don’t exactly inspire confidence

Bear in mind that I’m only taking into account movies that have already come out in NYC, which means there should be plenty more movies added to these lists before the end of the year.

Like last year, I plan to contact some of the smaller distributors in an attempt to snag screeners for myself and my fellow Muriels voters. But while I certainly wanted to encourage anyone who wishes to assist me in seeing the movies that interest me, I mostly just wanted to post these lists as a way of getting some feedback from you folks. The Level 1 selections are pretty set in stone at this point, but if you think I’ve underestimated one of your favorites of the year, or if I’ve forgotten something altogether, please let me know. And if I’m interested in something that’s just plain terrible, then by all means let me know that as well.

Finally, if you’re curious, here’s my top 10 of the year to date:
1. Dogtooth (Lanthimos)
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
3. Winter’s Bone (Granik)
4. Inception (Nolan)
5. The Ghost Writer (Polanski)
6. Everyone Else (Ade)
7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Wright)
8. Toy Story 3 (Unkrich)
9. Father of My Children (Hansen-Løve)
10. A Prophet (Audiard)

“You need a Venn diagram for these people.”

2010-09-20T22:42:00.001-04:00

One of the biggest surprises of 2007 was the discovery of Ben Affleck as a serious filmmaker. Some would argue that much of the success of Affleck’s debut feature Gone Baby Gone was due to some fine acting and strong source material by Dennis Lehane, but Affleck was to be commended for eliciting those performances from his cast and finding the right tone and style for the material. Unfortunately, he can’t replicate this success with his follow-up film The Town. There are points in the film where he seems to be chasing after the same downbeat thriller vibe, but the magic never quite happens.

Click here for the full review.

Blog news of the week

2010-09-16T21:58:00.003-04:00

This morning, I received an e-Mail from one Claire Thomas of the Theatre Seat Store site. It seems that aside from its normal line of business of selling seats to aid in the comfy viewing of movies, the folks at the site have taken it upon themselves to spotlight some of their favorite movie-related sites. And somehow, yours truly was one of the bloggers they chose.

Needless to say, I was pretty flattered. I don’t write nearly as much as I once did- don’t have the time, alas- but I always hope that I’ll make at least a little impact on readers, both the ones I know and the ones who just stumble in and stick around a while. I think I’m in pretty good company too, considering that some of their other picks were perennial blog favorites like new At the Movies correspondent Kim Morgan, 2009 Muriels winner Glenn Kenny, and longtime buds Andrew Bemis and James Frazier.

Since I am really humbled about being honored like this, and because one can never have too much flair on one's blog, I’ve gone ahead and posted the banner at right. Thank you, Claire and the Theatre Seat Store powers that be. And thanks once again to all my readers out there.

Latest and greatest

2010-09-07T23:41:00.002-04:00

Not much to report here, except that I recently reviewed the whimsically confounding Wild Grass and the middle-of-the-road Melville wannabe The American.

But if it's something more significant you seek, check out Cinevistaramascope, where my pal Andrew Bemis is putting a poll to determine the best movie of the past decade. I'm a little dismayed to see the steep competition facing my beloved New World. At least 8 Women made it past the first round...

TIFF like a champion today!

2010-09-03T00:36:00.002-04:00

Well, September has arrived, and that could only mean one thing... the Toronto International Film Festival! (What, you thought I was talking about football?) And as usual, part of me wishes that I could return once more this year. I have other commitments that take precedence in my life right now, and even if I had enough money to cover a trip to Toronto there are a number of other vacations for my whole family that I would spend it on first. Nonetheless, my trip back in 2007 was great, and I have a feeling that someday, I’ll make it back again.

If you consider yourself serious about cinema, you owe it to yourself to go to TIFF at least once in your life. Whereas festivals like Cannes and Sundance seem to be staged primarily for critics and industry folk, Toronto places its emphasis on appealing to the audiences themselves, making it very user-friendly even for a first-timer. Still, a festival as large as Toronto can be daunting if you don’t know the lay of the land. So, if you’re going this year, or you’re thinking of going in the future, here are a few tips to make things easier on you:

1. Start planning early.

Going to TIFF isn’t cheap, so locking in your transportation and lodgings early in the game could save you money. This is especially true of area hotels, which get booked pretty solid the closer one gets to September. By taking care of your lodgings early on, you can find a hotel that suits your purposes and won’t drain your wallet, instead of having to settle either for something that costs more than you were hoping to pay or is cheap but subpar.

2. Know why you’re going.

With 300-plus films screening, there are plenty of options for all sorts of filmgoers. So if you’re heading to Toronto, it helps to know what your expectations are from the festivals. TIFF offers more than a dozen programs, from Gala screenings (ideal for star-gazers) to Wavelengths (for fans of avant-garde cinema) to Real to Reel (manna for documentary fans). By knowing what you want from Toronto, you can help to make it a little smaller.

3. Get familiar with the movies before you go.

Beginning in July, the TIFF web site begins to announce the films that are screening at the festival. By mid-August, all of the titles have been announced. So if you want to TIFF, use the official site as a resource to determine what you might want to see. When I went, I even went so far as to make a list of titles that were interesting, with a separate category for movies that intrigued me the most- the movies, you might say, that justified the trip. This may take some time, but when it comes time to schedule your screenings, your efforts will pay off.

4. Take advantage of ticket packages…

Package-holders sometimes have preference for buying tickets to screenings, especially those who buy packages to specific programmes. This is especially true if you want to attend the nightly Gala screenings, which sometimes require special Gala screening passes. And even if you have the option of paying cash at the box office, having a pass can be preferable if you decide to rush a screening or if someone wishes to exchange his ticket.

5. … But don’t bother with the Out of Town service.

I know that for some festival vets, this is going to sound controversial, but hear me out. For those who don’t know, the Out of Town service is the initial chance for non-Toronto residents to purchase tickets to screenings. The process entails receiving your registration packet (including your screening passes, registration forms, and program catalog) one day in late August, filling out your desired schedule overnight, and FedExing it to Canada the next day. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Except that it costs a rather galling $150 for the service. And even if you do everything you’re required to do, you’re still not guaranteed to get everything you want. To me, it doesn’t seem to be worth the price.

Instead, I recommend sketching out a screening schedule before you go up to Canada, then when you arrive, head to the ticket office with your schedule and your passes and buy tickets to as many of the movies you really want to see as you can. If you get locked out of some screenings- and this will probably happen in at least a couple of cases- don’t worry. By and large, the Festival doesn’t sell every seat in the theatre in advance. Every morning, the screening status for movies playing that particular day will be updated, and screenings that had been locked will suddenly find themselves with tickets available to those who don’t mind getting up early and making the trip to the ticket office. And if all else fails, there’s always the rush line (more on this later).

6. Hit town early.

This is especially important for first-timers. Toronto is a very friendly and easily navigable city, especially around the Festival. But like any large city, it can be a little imposing if you don’t know the territory, so plan on showing up a day beforehand and getting the lay of the land. Take the time to find all the screening venues, as well as with the subway that will be transporting you between them. This will prove valuable once the screenings begin, in that you’ll know more or less where you’re going and can concentrate on getting there. And if you have time left over, check out the city, which is lovely and offers plenty of fun even for those who aren’t going to the Festival.

7. Be flexible.

One of the biggest rookie mistakes one can make at Toronto is over-booking oneself. With so many movies to choose from, there’s a temptation to schedule as much as possible in the interest of not missing anything. But by locking yourself in to too many movies, you run the risk of overlooking something just as good or better. So when you arrive in town and head to buy your tickets, go ahead and fill up your few two or three days, but beyond that leave plenty of space in your itinerary. Then as the festival progresses, keep an ear out for buzzed-about titles. TIFF is filled with people who get excited about movies, so if you’re seated next to someone before a screening starts, go ahead and ask about what they’ve seen. Then if something sounds interesting, you can always try to buy a ticket the morning of the next screening, or even…

8. Rush, rush, rush.

For all the assurance you can get from knowing you’ve already gotten your ticket for a particular movie, there’s something about the rush lines that really encapsulates the TIFF experience like nothing else. The way it works is that people who don’t have a ticket to a particular screening can line up outside the theatre in the hope of getting in. Fifteen minutes before the screening starts, the wonderfully helpful festival volunteers will begin letting in people in the rush line, who are permitted to watch the movie in exchange for the cost of admission. So what is it about rush lines that’s sort of magical? Perhaps it’s that tense excitement about the movie, or about the festival experience as a whole, that motivates people to queue up without knowing for sure whether they’ll actually be able to see the movie. Some of my best conversations at the festival were had with complete strangers in rush lines, talking about what we’ve seen, what we were waiting for, and what we’ve heard about from others. And even if you don’t get in, you can always commiserate with your new rush-line pals afterwards, perhaps over dinner or drinks. When the hero of Fight Club referred to single-serving friends, he could have been talking about rush lines.

9. Beware the festival wall.

There are plenty of opportunities to have fun in Toronto, but avoid overdoing it. Seasoned TIFF-goers often talk of a “wall” that sets in around the fourth or fifth day of the fest. After several days filled with four, five, or even six screenings, coupled with having to scramble between different venues, one’s body begins to rebel. Suddenly, those 9 AM screenings aren’t looking so appealing anymore. This is the other reason why you shouldn’t fill up your schedule during the second half of the festival- sometimes it’s necessary to head back to the hotel for a quick nap so you can be alert for the movies you really want to see.

10. Don’t forget to eat.

The festival wall is pretty much inevitable, but it’s less of an issue if you keep to a regular schedule. Sleep sometimes needs to go by the wayside- after all, there’s a new John Carpenter film in Midnight Madness this year!- but that doesn’t mean you need to skip meals as well. Always grab breakfast in the morning, even if it’s just coffee and a bagel at one of the Tim Horton’s that has sprouted up on seemingly every corner. And don’t take all your lunches and dinners during screenings. Concession stand food isn’t the healthiest for you, nor is it always the tastiest option. Every day, try to do either lunch or dinner outside of a theatre setting as a way of decompressing. There are plenty of great restaurants in the festival area to try. Or if you’re pressed for time, there’s always the wide variety of Toronto hot dog carts. Trust me on this- unless you’re completely grossed out by either hot dogs or street vendors, you really owe it to yourself to sample Toronto’s street meat at least once. If those things aren’t famous, they damn well oughta be.

There are plenty of other tips I could give here- for example, avoid seeing movies at the festival if they’re due to be released within the next few weeks, since you’re basically paying three or four times as much for a movie you could just as easily see in the near future for theatre price. But I think the ten bits of advice I’ve given here cover most of the major aspects of the festival that would be of interest to first-timers. If anyone has anything else to add, feel free to use the comments section below. And for everyone who’s TIFFing this year, have a great time!

"No damn trespassing. Beware of mule."

2010-08-31T00:08:00.002-04:00

The history of movies is filled with hermits, but few have been as precisely drawn as Felix Bush, the protagonist of Get Low. Played by Robert Duvall, Felix is a cantankerous old coot- the word “old” would seem redundant but for the agreeable rhythm it brings to the phrase- who’s holed up in his cabin for the better part of four decades, with only a mule as company. One thing I appreciated about Get Low is that it doesn’t strive too hard to make Felix seem purer or more genuine than the more sophisticated townsfolk he meets throughout the film, or to turn him into some kind of backwoods philosopher. That’s not to say Felix doesn’t have wisdom of a sort, but it’s the kind of wisdom one gains through fending for oneself for a long period of time. Four decades alone hasn’t brought Felix any closer to figuring out the meaning of life, but they’ve given him plenty of time to perfect his recipe for rabbit stew.

Click here for the complete review.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #1

2010-08-22T22:12:00.000-04:00

Well, here we are, folks. This shouldn't be a surprise to any of you, but I'm grateful to all of you who've been reading. Thank you.

So many films have treated the natural segue from youthful idealism to the long-haul pragmatism of adulthood as a tragedy that it’s sort of amazing to see a movie that treats it as a simple fact of life. The marvel of The New World is twofold- that master director Terrence Malick sets this transition in the life of Pocahontas (played wonderfully by Q’Orianka Kilcher) against the backdrop of a land about to make the same leap, and that it does so without ever once insisting upon the point. Yet there’s so much more to love about The New World- the completeness with which its world is imagined (Jack Fisk’s magnificently hewn sets are breathtaking), the breathtaking cinematography (courtesy of Emmanuel Lubezki), and above all, the directorial command that Malick brings to the tale. And to think he’s already got another film on the way!

My Top 25 of the Aughts- An Addendum

2010-08-21T21:59:00.000-04:00

Before I announce my favorite film of the past decade (announcement scheduled for tomorrow), I'd like to share a few miscellaneous thoughts on the list I've made. First off, my list was compiled on the basis of international premiere rather than U.S. theatrical release, which eliminated a number of films that which bowed in the late 1990s but didn't make it here until 2000 or so. Andrew Bemis is currently compiling a poll of favorite films from the 2000s based on domestic release date, and I've submitted a list to him which, along with most of the top 10 I've listed here, also includes Audition and Beau Travail- both great films which didn't meet the requirements for this countdown, but which definitely deserve mention when talking about tbe best films I saw in the last ten years.

Additionally, when I made this list I decided to only include single films rather than franchises, so that eliminated such notable works as the Kill Bill saga and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. These have always been tricky cases as far as list-making is concerned, since both are essentially multi-part films rather than free-standing units. But whatever they are, they are nonetheless some of the seminal films of the last decade.

Finally, there's Dogtooth, a film that I saw well after I firmed up this top 25 list, but which in my eyes definitely deserves to join its ranks. Rather than trying to squeeze it into the list in media res, I've decided to leave it out for the time being, with the plan to add it in at a later date. The reasons for this are twofold. First, I didn't want to cause confusion in readers by making it look like I was juggling positions on this list while I was unveiling it. But more importantly, I honestly think it's the kind of movie that requires multiple viewings to really be appreciated. With one exception, I've watched every film on this list more than once, and each of them benefit from this process, along with a certain amount of time passing to allow the film's contents to turn over in my brain for a while. Once I get the chance to see Dogtooth again, I'm confident that it will assume a prominent position among my favorite films of the 2000s. But I'm willing to wait for this to happen.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #2

2010-08-20T22:06:00.003-04:00

There are actually full-length copies of this on YouTube, but Don Hertzfeldt doesn't really like this, so I'll respect his wishes by posting a section of the film he posted himself. If you dig this, you can buy the full DVD on the Bitter Films site.

Since the mid-nineties, Don Hertzfeldt has been the reigning prankster of American animation, hand-crafting little wonders like the Oscar-nominated Rejected. Yet there’s always been a wealth of ideas behind his work, and these ideas came to the fore most prominently in Everything Will Be OK, a meditation on mortality and circumstance that feels like the cartoon cousin to Raymond Carver. That’s not to say Hertzfeldt has lost his sense of humor- far from it- but that it’s become load-bearing, in the service of some surprisingly profound issues about life.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #3

2010-08-19T22:05:00.001-04:00

Holy. Holy. Holy.

To its many detractors, Richard Linklater’s Waking Life is little more than a glorified undergraduate bull session, gussied up with some computer animation. But to these eyes, the film is less about the particular (and often conflicting) ideas espoused by its gallery of characters than about capturing the liberating feeling of being able to give voice to such ideas, no matter how facile or misguided. And with the assistance of Bob Sabiston and his team of animators, Linklater has made a film that dances in time with the ideas it expresses.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #4

2010-08-18T22:02:00.001-04:00

Play 'em on, Isabelle!

This one is sure to be the most controversial pick on my list, with a handful of devoted fans and more than a few naysayers. But then, such is the nature of Francois Ozon’s hilarious, borderline experimental take on classical Hollywood melodramas. Unlike the acclaimed Far From Heaven, released the same year, 8 Women is a film that delights in doodling in the margins, finding room in its Agatha Christie-esque plot and silky Sirkian style for off-the-cuff musical numbers and intertextual allusions a-plenty. Oh, and that cast- if the names Deneuve, Huppert, Darrieux, Ardant, and Béart mean anything to you, you’re just the audience this film needs.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #5

2010-08-17T21:58:00.002-04:00

Ain't there one damn song who can make me... break down and cryyyyyyyyyyyyyy??

At a time when many filmmakers are pushing the boundaries of digital photo-realism, leave it to Lars Von Trier to go in the other direction. Dogville first provocation is to tell its tale on an undressed soundstage with chalk outlines in place of walls, but it’s by no means the last. More than ever, Dogville led its critics to decry its anti-American streak (and not without reason), yet while the characters’ treatment of Grace has distinct parallels in the American immigrant experience, it’s also a pointed parable for humanity’s need to subjugate others throughout history.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #6

2010-08-16T21:54:00.002-04:00

But first, this past weekend I took in an odd titles-themed double feature. Consequently, I've got new reviews of Dogtooth and Restrepo.

And now... Draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaainage!

“Anybody can make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money.” Few big-screen characters have exemplified Mr. Bernstein’s philosophy as Daniel Day-Lewis’ Plainview, the very embodiment of venal, soul-sucking greed. Those who’ve taken P.T. Anderson’s masterpiece There Will Be Blood as an allegory for the modern oil industry miss the point that, if it hadn’t been oil that made Plainview a bazillionaire, it’d been some other damn thing. Anderson’s film isn’t always pleasant or cheerful, but it’s uncompromising, and thanks to the director’s visual pyrotechnics and Day-Lewis’ volcanic performance, exciting as hell.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #7

2010-08-15T21:49:00.001-04:00

You were waiting for this one to show up? Funny you should say that...

The setting- a New York City still quaking from 9/11- got most of the press, but Spike Lee’s film would be a major work regardless of its time or place. As Monty (Edward Norton) readies himself for his upcoming jail sentence (for dealing drugs), he has to come to grips with the choices he’s made in life, while assessing his relationships with his friends, his girlfriend, and his family. It’s a lot for one film, but Lee has always been a bold filmmaker, and he never steps wrong. Was there a more heartrending sequence this decade than the final reel of 25th Hour, in which Monty’s dad (Brian Cox) lays out an alternate future for his son? Not for me, there wasn’t.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #8

2010-08-14T21:44:00.002-04:00

Son... Son... Son... here it comes...

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are often compared to Bresson, but let it not be said that they dwell in his shadow, as they’re currently riding one of the hottest streaks in world cinema. The Son is above all a fascinating character study about a fundamentally decent man who comes face to face with a boy who once did him an unspeakable wrong. There’s quite a bit of plot in The Son, but the Dardennes have the rare gift for making it spring directly from their characters, and with Olivier Gourmet (giving one of the decade’s best performances) in the lead role, they make their greatest film to date.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #9

2010-08-13T21:41:00.000-04:00

I'm just a little person...

Like Waking Life, Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut attempts to navigate the immensity of the human mind. But while Linklater’s film portrays the mind as a playground, in Kaufman’s film it’s a labyrinth. The anti-Synecdoche contingent has painted the film as little more than unpleasant navel-gazing, but I’ve seen few films that have such a profound grasp on the paths we take in life- our bodies break down, things start to repeat themselves, and we gradually cede control of our lives to others, but all the while we strive to make a change in the world. Synecdoche is a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s truly mind-enlarging.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #10

2010-08-12T21:37:00.000-04:00

As we hit the top ten, we come to what is probably the least-seen movie on this list. Incidentally, the blurbs that I'll be using from here on out were originally submitted by me for James Frazier's "You Aught to Know" poll this past spring. Anyway...

One of my greatest cinematic discoveries this past decade was the world of Peter Watkins, and his epic La Commune (Paris, 1871) is one of his finest works. La Commune tells the story of the Paris Commune, who briefly took over Paris before being overthrown by the government. But instead of making a straightforward period piece, Watkins presents the Commune’s story through the lens of two television networks, one presenting the Communards’ point of view, the other voicing that of the establishment. Paradoxically, this dueling-media device gives the story a greater immediacy than a conventional telling ever would, turning a safe history lesson into a rallying cry for dissent and activism in today’s world.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #11

2010-08-11T12:05:00.000-04:00

Kino!

This is one of two short films on this list, by the way. No prize for guessing the one still to come...

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #12

2010-08-10T11:57:00.001-04:00

But first, here's a link to my review of The Kids Are All Right.

OK, now mix yourself an Aqua Velva and check it out:

Also, of all the movies on this list, who would have thought that Zodiac would be perhaps the hardest one to find a suitable video for on YouTube?

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #13

2010-08-09T11:45:00.000-04:00

If not the absolute greatest movie of the last decade, then probably the most indescribable.

Here in the U.S., the phrase "commercial director" conjures up images of high-gloss hacks like Michael Bay and McG foisting their sell! sell! sell! mindsets on unsuspecting multiplex-goers. But Roy Andersson, acclaimed by Ingmar Bergman as the world's greatest commercial director, parlayed his gift for creating vivid scenes and brilliant vignettes into two great films this past decade, Songs From the Second Floor (above) and its lovely follow up, You the Living.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #14

2010-08-08T11:40:00.000-04:00

Are you watching closely?

To my eyes, Nolan's best to date, with his innate cleverness used in the service of both heady ideas and poignant emotions. As awesome as Memento, Inception and the Batman films are, this is Nolan's keeper.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #15

2010-08-07T21:47:00.002-04:00

Bust a move, Mathieu Amalric!

Okay, so this doesn't really capture the prickly verbosity that's a trademark of Desplechin's work. And the amazing Emmanuelle Devos is nowhere to be found here. But it's certainly less heavy than most of the showstopping bits in Kings and Queen, you must admit.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #16

2010-08-06T21:43:00.002-04:00

How awesome is this movie? Wes Anderson even got a great performance out of Luke Wilson, of all people.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #17

2010-08-05T21:38:00.000-04:00

Haneke has as good a decade as any filmmaker, beginning with this one, his masterpiece to date.

Sort of a shame that he closed the decade with the disappointing White Ribbon, which had all his usual didacticism but few of his usual interesting ideas. All the same, I would rather it have taken the Foreign Film Oscar than The Secret in Their Eyes.

My Top 25 of the Aughts: #18

2010-08-04T21:35:00.000-04:00

Shut-shut-shut-shut-shut up and watch!

By the way, this is the other filmmaker I've double-dipped. Which is pretty impressive when you consider that ol' PTA only made two movies in the last decade. The Master is gonna be so awesome...

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #19

2010-08-03T19:44:00.000-04:00

Due to explicitness, it was pretty much either this or the credits, and YouTube wouldn't let me embed the credits, so there ya go.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #20

2010-08-02T19:29:00.001-04:00

I can smell you!

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #21

2010-08-01T19:27:00.001-04:00

Nine years later...

Note: Linklater's one of two filmmakers I've included twice here. The other'll show up within the next few days.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #22

2010-07-31T19:24:00.000-04:00

Or 10% of the decade's most accomplished shot.

(Sorry, Alfonso Cuaron. Not sorry at all, Juan Jose Campanella.)

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #23

2010-07-30T19:22:00.002-04:00

Silencio!

(Sorry for the subs and poor quality, which you'll just have to deal with for some of these. This is an awesome scene that isn't as ubiquitous as some of the other famous ones in the movie, so I figured I'd post it here.)

Also, honestly in retrospect I feel a little bad that I've placed this one so low. Not so much because damn near everyone else is putting it at or near the top of their decade lists, but more because it contains more flat-out awesome scenes than any movie of the past decade. And this one isn't even the best- there's also Club Silencio, the audition, the Castigliane brothers meeting, the Winkies incident, the opening jitterbug, "something bit me BAD!", and even the little phone conversation that immediately precedes and set up this scene. And let's not forget the bedroom scene- "have you ever done this before?" "I... don't know!" But on balance, as awesome as these scenes are, I'm not sure they really build up very well. Of course, that's sort of the nature of the beast, since it's a pilot that Lynch later retrofit into a movie. But consider that none of the scenes I just rattled off without so much as a second thought- oh wait, I forgot "Sixteen Reasons"- come in its final third, and that as much as anything else is my reason why this isn't in the top 5.

My Top 25 of the Aughts, #24

2010-07-29T19:17:00.002-04:00

A one and a two...

(English subs available through the CC function, I guess)

My top 25 of the Aughts: The Countdown Begins!

2010-07-28T18:49:00.003-04:00

It's either too late or too early for me to make a list of my favorite films of the past decade- too late because it seems like everyone else has done that already, too early because I'm pretty sure I've missed at least one major title that would warrant inclusion here. However, in the interest of posting fresh content here I figured that now was as good a time as any to do this. So for the next few weeks, I'll be posting video of my top 25 films of the 2000s, beginning at the bottom and working up. We'll start off with one we all know by now- the only Best Picture Oscar-winner to make my list. Here goes, friendo:

R.I.P. Victoria

2010-07-27T22:41:00.000-04:00

When I brought Muriel home on Halloween 2006, it was because I needed a furry companion in my life. By contrast, I brought Victoria home so that Muriel would have a friend of her own. When I bought Victoria, I imagined that she and Muriel would get along swimmingly, chasing each other playfully around their shared cage and snuggling up next to each other when it time to sleep, which would essentially double the adorability factor of one of nature’s most adorable sights, a sleeping guinea pig. Well, that didn’t happen. From the beginning, the two new “friends” didn’t get along. I couldn’t put them together for more than a minute or so before some kind of dust-up would begin. As it turns out, this was because Victoria had her own friends that she brought with her- including the late Charlotte- to be born a month or so later.

Likewise, it took Victoria longer to get used to living with me. At the pet store, she was a sweetheart, even falling asleep in my hand while I held her. But after I brought her home, she became restless. She would take hours to fall asleep at night, and eventually I had to start putting a towel on top of her cage to help her fall asleep and turn on a fan so her late-night activity wouldn’t keep me awake. Also, there were a few instances when I was holding her that she actually jumped out of my hands and tried to run away. More than once I had to (carefully, of course) move around all my furniture in order to find her.

But eventually, she settled down. Having babies helped, I think. And once she did, I was better able to appreciate Victoria in terms of her own personality rather than as a would-be accessory for Muriel. It’s funny how guinea pigs, which seem to be little more than fur, squeak, and appetite, can fit so much personality into those tiny bodies. While Muriel was bright-eyed and ornery and Charlotte was curious, Victoria was always warm and affectionate. Of the three, Victoria was the one who enjoyed being held the most. Sometimes I would prop her front paws up on my finger and raise up her front end so that I could rub her belly, which was her favorite spot. Other times, I would simply lie her down on my chest and cradle her. Unlike Muriel and Charlotte, she wouldn’t try to jump off or poke her nose about, but simply relax in my hands.

Victoria and Charlotte were an inseparable team until Charlotte passed away earlier this year. But after Charlotte died, I began to notice Victoria open herself up more to the world. While she had previously been skittish around our dogs, she became more comfortable with them. And she even seemed to warm up to Muriel. I even began to notice her chomping on the bars of her cage when she was hungry, just like Muriel does.

Alas, that’s part of the past now, since Victoria passed on over the weekend. I buried her yesterday in our backyard under a tree, right next to her baby. It’s strange to think that a year ago I had three guinea pigs, and now I only have the one, and that one only has one eye. For the time being, I think that rather than buying a new guinea pig to replace the ones I’ve lost, I’ll content myself with Muriel. I have plenty of others to love in my life now, of both the human and furry variety. But as Angela eloquently put it, Victoria and Charlotte were there when I needed them, and for that I’ll always be grateful.

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."

2010-07-27T22:39:00.001-04:00

There’s a certain paradox to the notion of Christopher Nolan making a “dream-film.” Nolan’s work has always been distinguished by a Swiss-watch precision and intricacy, and this springs from his writer’s need to focus on those aspects of the film that are relevant to the story. But dreams, as most anyone can tell you, aren’t so coherent. Often, the content of dreams is born less out of specific situations in one’s life than from deep-seated desires and anxieties which manifest themselves in strange ways. As a result, Nolan’s multi-level dream narrative doesn’t come off as a dive into the unconscious so much as a complex multi-player video game, in which the participants join in with an ostensibly unified purpose but are at the mercy of their own skill sets, personalities, and limitations.

But if Inception isn’t really convincing as an according-to-Hoyle dream film, it thrills on just about every other front.

Click here for the full review.

Also, here's my review of Everyone Else.

Banner Weekend, continued

2010-07-22T07:33:00.000-04:00

In many ways, the Ozarks world of Winter’s Bone harbors a way of life that seems to have changed little since the Great Depression. Oh sure, the cars and clothes are newer, and the local underground industry has switched from moonshine to crystal meth. But the mentality feels mostly the same- fierce territoriality, a strained-at-best relationship to the Law, and tenuous blood ties that only hold up to the point where they stop being useful. It’s a pocket of America that feels like a distant planet compared to the contemporary suburban sprawl, to say nothing of the big city, and it’s the kind of place where those who hail from elsewhere thank the heavens that they weren’t born, and where those who were born there rarely manage to escape.

Click here for the full review.

Banner weekend

2010-07-19T22:59:00.003-04:00

After six and a half lean months of cinema here in Central Ohio, last weekend was jam-packed with goodness. Most visible was, of course, Inception, but this weekend also saw the local releases of such acclaimed titles as I Am Love, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Winter's Bone, and Father of My Children. Unfortunately, when you're as busy as I am, weekends like this force you to make choices. And believe me, it's tough. However, I decided to wait on Inception so that I could watch it with Ang, and instead I chose two of the most promising arthouse releases before they blew town altogether. As it turns out I made the right choice, since one is my favorite movie so far this year, and the other one's pretty damn good as well. My reviews of both can be found at the links below.

Click here for my review of The Father of My Children.

No, wait! Click here for my review of Exit Through the Gift Shop!

The Dark and Lonely Places

2010-07-12T20:32:00.001-04:00

An exciting announcement came this weekend from the hometown heroes at the Wexner Center for the Arts and their stalwart Film/Video Department. To wit: on October 22, the Wex will be hosting A.V. Club film editor, pug enthusiast, and all-around good dude Scott Tobias. Scott is set to introduce a screening of, and lead a discussion following, one of his- and my- favorite New Cult Canon titles, George Armitage’s Miami Blues. In addition to finally catching this great and sadly underloved proto-Tarantino dark crime comedy, this will also give me a chance to meet Scott and possibly even buy him a drink and swap funny pug stories, much to the dismay of those around us. Or not, who knows.

Anyway, this promises to be a sweet event, especially since it bookends a great week for the Wex that will also include a talk by one of this year’s Wexner Residency Award winners, the great graphic novelist Art Spiegelman.

So mark your calendars for Friday, October 22, at 7 PM, where you can catch an awesome movie introduced by one of the coolest critics out there. Hopefully I won’t waste too much of his time recommending future New Cult Canon titles, but I make no promises.

"Nice penis."

2010-07-12T20:30:00.002-04:00

Watching Cyrus, the latest from indie-world favorites the Duplass brothers, I was reminded of George Ratliff’s awesome Joshua, one of my favorite films of 2007. Not that the two movies were similar in look or feel, mind you, but both movies use popular genres to address anxieties that are fairly common. In Joshua, Ratliff tackled the worry faced by many fathers that the apple may fall disconcertingly far from the tree, while here the Duplasses take as their premise the anxiety faced by would-be stepfathers that they might not blend into their future families quite so smoothly as they had hoped. But the differences stop there, since Joshua is a sure-footed work from a filmmaker in full control, while Cyrus has been made by a pair of directing brothers who don’t seem to know where to progress from their promising idea.

Click here for the complete review.

Also, click here for my thoughts on Despicable Me.

Note on comments moderation

2010-07-11T12:42:00.003-04:00

Due to a rather annoying influx of spam on this and my other blogs of late, I'll be enabling comment moderation here. This means that if you post a comment here, it won't be available for viewing until I've had a chance to OK it. Sorry if this is a pain, but I'm just kind of sick of people I don't know leaving links to sites I couldn't care less about just to reel in web business. I'm committed to keeping Silly Hats Only non-commercial, and I just can't abide people trying to hijack the thread like this. Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience buds. I don't plan on deleting any posts other than obvious spam, and I might even allow one or two of those if they happen to be as amusing as this one.

World Cup of Cinema: The Championship Game!

2010-07-10T12:22:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow, FIFA and Silly Hats Only will proudly present the World Cup of Cinema Championship Game, in which will finally be decided which film I'll watch and review. The match will take place, as you know, between the following competitors:

The Netherlands (Soldier of Orange), and

Spain (Blood Wedding).

Now, that infamous psychic German octopus has predicted Spain to take this one, but I think the Netherlands could pull it off as well. They beat Brazil, after all, so anything's possible. Anyway, check out the game tomorrow at 2:30 PM Eastern.

Also, as a bonus, here's this month's Criterion hint, which took some time for me to figure out.

Once you know that those are gnus on the TV (as compared to bulls, yaks, or what have you) it seems so obvious...

"I kissed Bella. And she broke her hand... punching me in the face. It was a complete misunderstanding."

2010-07-07T23:02:00.002-04:00

Who is Bella Swan, really? I’m not talking about the role she plays in the Twilight saga. What I’m asking is who she is when she’s alone. Does she have any hobbies? Does she keep a journal, or doodle in a sketch pad, or enjoy going to hear live music? I only ask because there doesn’t seem to be much to her, at least not in the movies (I haven’t read the books, so I couldn’t make a judgment on that front). Hell, even the memorably antisocial Travis Bickle watched TV and went to porn theatres. To these eyes, Twilight heroine and lip-biting enthusiast Bella is perhaps the least compelling protagonist in a Hollywood blockbuster in many a moon.

Click here for the full review.

Please Give (part the second)

2010-07-06T22:11:00.002-04:00

And just so you can rest easy that I’m not just going to shill for myself around here (that was a one-time thing, I’m guessing), I’d like to throw a little love to my bud and fellow Muriels voter, Lucas McNelly. When he’s not participating in the Muriels festivities, Lucas is an independent filmmaker. A few years ago, I even reviewed one of his previous films, Gravida, for the blog.

Anyway, Lucas is currently preparing for his next project, entitled Up Country, which he pitches as a Hitchcock-meets-Malick thriller set in the woods of Maine. Most of Lucas’ previous projects were relatively intimate efforts, but Up Country is more ambitious. Consequently, it’s also more expensive, with more money required to rent and transport additional equipment as well as secure the use of the film’s location. All told, Lucas has budgeted Up Country at roughly $4,000.

Here’s where you folks come in. Over at the “crowd-funding” site Kickstarter, Lucas is currently soliciting backers for Up Country. The idea is that if you’d be interested in seeing this film come to fruition, you can pledge an amount of your choice (well, $1 minimum) for the cause. As with any good fundraiser, there are rewards in store for anyone who contributes. For example, anyone who pledges $5 or more will receive a “thank you” in the film’s credits. I’ve already contributed $25- which entitles me to a thank-you credit, plus a DVD and a downloadable copy of the film- but people can pledge up to $2,500, for which they’ll receive Executive Producer credit, a weekly fishing trip in Maine, and a treasure trove of swag. As further motivation, Lucas is has transcribed the Up Country screenplay into prose form, and will be posting a chapter with every $500 that is pledged.

However, there’s a catch. The deadline for Lucas to reach his goal of $4,000 is Friday, July 16. At that point, unless he’s hit his goal, the film isn’t going to happen due to the availability of his chosen location, and all the pledges will be refunded. But I know I don’t want that to happen. So check out the Up Country page on Kickstarter by clicking the widget I’ve embedded at the top of this post, and if you’re intrigued by what you find there please do your part to help a talented independent filmmaker keep working. And if you get a free DVD or fishing trip out of the deal, so much the better.

Please Give (part the first)

2010-07-06T22:09:00.001-04:00

As most of you already know, once upon a time I was actually a paid critic. Granted, I wasn’t rolling in the dough, but I was able to make a few extra bucks by writing about movies for The Screengrab. Then, a little over a year ago, the Screengrab’s corporate overlord’s decided to shutter the site and let go of its writing staff. Since then, the archived content has disappeared into the ether, and the writers who once toiled for the Screengrab have been scattered.

Since then, things have been different for me. As I said before, I didn’t make a whole lot of money with my writing- hell, it was merely a part-time job for me. However, I definitely felt the pinch financially once they let me go. The loss of my Screengrab income didn’t break me, but it certainly required me to scrape in order to enjoy some of the comforts I’d had before.

Eventually, I decided that I couldn’t afford to do without that second income, so I took a part-time job. However, between the part-time job, my current full-time job, and the college courses I’m taking, it’s all begun to wear me down. I’m getting fewer chances to spend time with Ang and the Offspring, and even when we do spend time together I’m often too weary to do much or anything. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to juggle these aspects of my life while maintaining a solid relationship with the Offspring. Oh sure- he understands where I go in the evenings and on weekends, but it’s just not the same for him when I’m gone.

Likewise, my writing output has suffered drastically since I started the second job. I’m sure you noticed that this blog was more or less dead for several months after the Muriels concluded this spring. I managed to liven things up with the White Elephant Blogathon, and since then I’ve tried to keep the content fresh. But I can’t say how long I’ll be able to keep this going, especially since classes started up again last week.

You get my point, and I’m sure you can see where this is headed. Now, I’m not going to ask you guys for money. I’m just glad that you enjoy my writing, and I’m grateful that you’ve stuck with me all this time. However, I just want to put it out there that I’m on the lookout for some freelance film critic work, and if anyone reading this knows of a site or publication that’s looking for paid content, I’m available. I’m not necessarily looking to make lots of money out of this- Screengrab only paid me $10 a post, after all- but if I could find someone who’d pay me a couple of hundred per month to write about movies that would be awesome.

For better or worse, I think that if you sift through the blog you'll find my writing speaks for itself. So if you’d like me to write for you, drop me a line. And for everyone else, thanks for reading, and I hope that you’ll soon be able to read me elsewhere as well.

World Cup of Cinema: The Final Four

2010-07-05T11:50:00.003-04:00

So I guess Argentina wasn't as formidable as I'd originally thought. Still, this is an interesting foursome going into the semifinals. There's a part of me that wants the Cup to go to someone who hasn't won yet- namely, Spain or Netherlands- although my affinity for underdogs has me rooting for Uruguay as well. Either way, now that Brazil is going things are looking far less assured for anyone.

Anyway, here are this week's matchups:

Tuesday, July 6
Netherlands (Soldier of Orange) vs. Uruguay (The Pope's Toilet)

Wednesday, July 7
Germany (In a Year of 13 Moons) vs. Spain (Blood Wedding)

As for the movies that are still in the hunt, I'm fairly happy with all of them. The ones that intrigue me most are the Fassbinder and Verhoeven films. Then again, Blood Wedding is probably the one that Ang is most likely to enjoy. And The Pope's Toilet should be entertaining as well. Not really a clunker in the bunch- thank goodness.

World Cup of Cinema - Upset!

2010-07-03T10:25:00.002-04:00

After today’s first World Cup quarterfinals, I’ve decided to change my World Cup of Cinema selection. Here’s my choice now:

Only kidding, folks. But still, with Brazil getting ousted long before anyone expected them to be, things just got a whole lot more interesting. Or at least they did unless you’re not into soccer, in which case you didn’t really care anyway.

But with Brazil out, it’s looking like South America’s spot in the final game is going to be much less assured. Argentina’s looking pretty strong, but anything can happen. Then of course there’s the possibility that everyone’s just going to throw the tourney in favor of Paraguay in order to make Paraguayan model/futbol fan Larisa Riquelme follow through on her promise to parade around in nothing but body paint if her country’s team takes home the Cup. But somehow I don’t see that happening.

Also, at right I’ve posted a link to my 2010 ratings, in case you’re curious about what I’ve seen/haven’t seen/liked/haven’t liked so far this year. Warning: it’s pretty meager pickings so far. But as always, any help would be greatly appreciated. Hint hint.

World Cup of Cinema update: The Quarterfinals

2010-06-30T18:02:00.000-04:00

Well, that was interesting. Besides a disheartening loss by the USA (Manos: the Hands of Fate) against Ghana (Cobra Verde), the Round of 16 went more or less as expected, with all but one of the Group Winners (sorry, USA) advancing. For the curious, here’s how the quarterfinals are looking for this weekend:

July 2
Netherlands (Soldier of Orange) vs. Brazil (Elite Squad)
Uruguay (The Pope’s Toilet) vs. Ghana (Cobra Verde)

July 3
Argentina (The Official Story) vs. Germany (In a Year of 13 Moons)
Paraguay (Paraguayan Hammock) vs. Spain (Blood Wedding)

I must say, it’s been an impressive showing so far for the South American teams, with all five making the Round of 16 and four of those advancing to the quarterfinals. I don’t expect them all to win this weekend, but Brazil’s still the team to beat in this tournament, Argentina’s looking pretty tough, and Uruguay will get a chance avenge the USA’s honor against the Ghanaian squad. Also, should Paraguay pull off the upset against Spain, does anyone know where I might rustle up a copy of Paraguayan Hammock)? Thanks buds.

Open wide for some soccer!

2010-06-25T23:47:00.003-04:00

I passed Il Duce on the left-hand side last night, and scribbled down a few thoughts right over here.

Meanwhile, it’s World Cup time again, and right on schedule, the entire world has been seized by futbol fever. Well, the parts of the world that aren’t predisposed to hate a sport in which few points are scored and ties are commonplace. Seriously, folks- you’ll go nuts over American football, which alternates 45 seconds of boring waiting for 5 seconds of play, but you whine about a sport in which the ball stays in almost constant motion? What gives?

Anyway, now that the White Elephant is more or less over, it’s time to do something else that’s fun and seasonal here. And with the World Cup heating up (USA! USA!), I hit upon the idea- the World Cup of Cinema! Here’s how it works:

Heading into the Knockout Stages, I’ve made a list of all sixteen of the remaining nations, and then selected a movie to represent each nation. The criteria for selecting these were (1) the movie must have been filmed (in whole or in part) in the represented country, (2) it must be a film I have not seen, and (3) it must be available on DVD for obvious reasons.

Having chosen my sixteen films (see below), I will then wait to see how the tournament pans out. Following the championship game, I will watch the selected title from the winning country and review it for the site.

Sounds pretty easy, I think. It’s a little sad to see that France and Italy aren’t in the mix, since even if their teams are full of prima donnas and crybabies I would like to have an excuse to include one of the Rivette movies I can stream at MUBI and an early Antonioni film in the selection. Still, I like the diversity of this list, which makes me wish I had time to watch more than one, but my schedule being what it is… well, you know. Maybe in four years I’ll find the time for something more ambitious.

Anyway, the titles I’ve selected are:

Argentina (Group B winner) – The Official Story (1985, Luis Puenzo)

Puenzo’s film was one of the critical darlings of 1985, when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and garnered the Best Actress prize for star Norma Aleandro. It then took home the People’s Choice Award at Toronto that year, then won Best Foreign Film awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association, the Golden Globes, and finally the Oscars. And considering how strong the Argentine team is looking this year, it probably behooves me to pick something good.

Brazil (Group G winner) – Elite Squad (2009, Jose Padilha)

Padilha’s 2002 documentary Bus 174 was one of the finest “nonfiction” films of the past decade, so I’m curious to see what he can do with fiction. Elite Squad was a pretty controversial choice for the Golden Bear at the 2009 Berlinale, with some critics condemning the film as “fascist”. Still, I’m curious to see Padilha take on Brazil’s criminal culture again from a different angle than he explored so vividly in Bus 174.

Chile (Group H runner-up) – Machuca (2004, Andres Wood)

This was one of the few films I could find from Chile, aside from a handful (such as The Maid), which I’ve already seen. Still, the premise- the friendship of two boys set amidst the 1973 coup of Allende- could be promising, unless of course it’s sentimental mush. Could go either way, really.

England (Group C runner-up) – The Servant (1963, Joseph Losey)

Plenty of worthy titles from the UK, so I consulted the BFI’s list of greatest Brit films from a few years back. The two highest-ranked titles I haven’t seen- Kes and Brighton Rock aren’t Netflixable- but this one is, so there you go. This is one I’ve been meaning to watch for years, coming as it did smack dab in the middle of Losey’s most fruitful period, right between Victim and Accident.

Germany (Group D winner) – In a Year of 13 Moons (1978, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

I’ve been working my way through Fassbinder’s filmography over the years, but I’ve always heard that this one is pretty strong meat even by RWF standards, which may explain why I’ve avoided it thusfar. Still, it’s one of the most celebrated of his films, so it’s one I ought to watch sooner or later, so why not now?

Ghana (Group D runner-up) – Cobra Verde (1987, Werner Herzog)

Yeah, yeah- I know that Herzog is German, and Klaus Kinski is hardly even of this Earth. Still, do you know how hard it is to find a movie from Ghana? This one was partially filmed there, so that’s good enough for me. USA! USA!

Japan (Group E runner-up) – Tokyo Olympiad (1965, Kon Ichikawa)

Plenty of great Japanese films I still need to see, but this one seems the best fit for my purposes, considering that it’s a doc about a major international sporting event that happens every four years and all. Plus its rep is pretty stellar, with many critics comparing it to Olympia except more rooted in humanity and with a welcome absence of Nazis. Should be fun.

Mexico (Group A runner-up) – Solo con tu pareja (1991, Alfonso Cuaron)

I originally toyed with the idea of selecting a Santo movie, especially after hearing a coworker professing his love (or at least his childlike affection) for Mexican wrestling pictures. However, after seeing the limited selection of Santo classics on Netflix, I re-evaluated my choice. Fortunately, I’m a fan of Cuaron’s work, especially Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien, so I’m more than a little curious to see his debut effort. That it’s been released on a Criterion DVD just makes me wonder all the more why I’ve been dragging my feet. It’s not Santo, but I’ll take it.

Netherlands (Group E winner) – Soldier of Orange (1977, Paul Verhoeven)

Haven’t seen any Verhoeven films pre-The 4th Man, and of those this one seems the most promising. Like his later Black Book (which was pretty awesome in my opinion) this deals with the Dutch experience in World War II. Plus this being Verhoeven there should be plenty of violence and probably some tits as well. So yeah, awesome.

Paraguay (Group F winner) – Paraguayan Hammock (2006, Paz Encina)

This is the only film I’ve ever heard of from Paraguay, home of legal eyelash implants. It played at Cannes in 2006 where it won the FIPRESCI prize, and has since gotten positive notices elsewhere, placing at the top of Muriels voter Adam Lemke’s list of 2008’s best films. Also, it’s not on DVD, so if anyone can tell me where I might find this I’d greatly appreciate it.

Portugal (Group G runner-up) – In Vanda’s Room (2000, Pedro Costa)

I’m still kind of on the fence about Costa, but there’s no denying that he has a unique vision. This was one of the few of his films I missed at the Wex’s Costa retrospective a few years back, but now that it’s been released on DVD by Criterion I’m willing to give it a shot. Three hours though- yikes.

Slovakia (Group F runner-up) – Zelary (2003, Ondrej Trojan)

Zelary was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2003. However, it was originally submitted by the Czech Republic, not Slovakia. Still, it was filmed almost entirely in Slovakia, so I’ll take it.

South Korea (Group B runner-up) – A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, Kim Ji-woon)

The last decade has seen a surge in strong genre films from South Korea, and one of the most acclaimed is Kim’s atmospheric horror movie. The film was recently selected by Scott Tobias of the A.V. Club for his New Cult Canon column, and it was remade by Hollywood in 2009 as The Uninvited. And I figured that with all the arty stuff flying around I should throw at least a handful of genre movies into the mix, so this seemed a good decision.

Spain (Group H winner) – Blood Wedding (1981, Carlos Saura)

Saura is one of Spain’s best-known filmmakers, but aside from a few recent films and his classic Cria Cuervos, I’m woefully underversed in his work. Blood Wedding is the first and perhaps best-known of his so-called “Flamenco Trilogy,” and was released a few years back in a supposedly gorgeous Eclipse box set. Seems as good a place to delve deeper into Saura as any, methinks.

Uruguay (Group A winner) – The Pope’s Toilet (2007, Cesar Charlone / Enrique Fernandez)

This crowd-pleaser, co-directed by the Oscar-nominated cinematographer of City of God, played in both the 2007 Un Certain Regard and that year’s Toronto Film Festival, where it got largely positive reviews. It was also a Film Movement release. But honestly, it’s mostly here because it’s one of the few Uruguayan films available through Netflix, along with Whisky, which I’ve already seen.

And finally…

USA! USA! (Group C winner) – Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966, Harold P. Warren)

Back when wannabe auteur was paying off his cast and crew with “shares” in the film after he ran out of money, no one could possibly have imagined that Manos: The Hands of Fate would become, after a fashion, a pop-culture phenomenon. Ever since it was voted “worst movie ever” by the brain trust as MST3K, Manos has become a cult classic among aficionados of bad movies, much like Plan 9 From Outer Space before it and The Room after it. It currently sits at #8 on the IMDb’s Bottom 100, which means that should USA somehow survive a Knockout Stage that will potentially pit them against Brazil or the Netherlands (to say nothing of the other half the bracket), I’ll be able to watch and review this before Scott “Mr. Unwatchable” Von Doviak gets the chance. Woohoo! USA! USA!

Finally, here’s the matchups for the Round of 16, which begins this weekend:

Saturday, 26 July
Uruguay (The Pope’s Toilet) vs. South Korea (A Tale of Two Sisters)
USA! USA! (Manos: The Hands of Fate) vs. Ghana (Cobra Verde)

Sunday, 27 July
Germany (In a Year With 13 Moons) vs. England (The Servant)
Argentina (The Official Story) vs. Mexico (Solo con tu pareja)

Monday, 28 July
Netherlands (Soldier of Orange) vs. Slovakia (Zelary)
Brazil (Elite Squad) vs. Chile (Machuca)

Tuesday, 29 July
Paraguay (Paraguayan Hammock) vs. Japan (Tokyo Olympiad)
Spain (Blood Wedding) vs. Portugal (In Vanda’s Room)

So, who are you rooting for? Sound off in the comments.

"I'm not a girls' toy! Why does everyone keep saying I'm a girls' toy?"

2010-06-24T23:08:00.004-04:00

In the interest of avoiding any long dry spells like I had between the Muriels and the White Elephant this year, I recently decided to post a few thoughts on every movie I see. Which is a great idea in theory, but sometimes it’s hard to think of anything insightful to add to the conversation. I’ve found myself in this situation with two new releases, Toy Story 3 and Please Give (or as I like to call it, Please Give the Vultures What They Want So They’ll Stop Hovering Already). In the case of Please Give, etc., I think that Craig Kennedy over at Living in Cinema has said it pretty well, and all that’s left for me to add is that despite my misgivings about the movie, it did satisfy my Rebecca Hall thing, so it was worth it for that anyway. Rating: 5 out of 10.

With Toy Story 3, it’s a little trickier, since my inability to think of something insightful to write has less to do with my thoughts neatly dovetailing with those of other (better-known) critics than the fact that it more or less scratches the itches the other two Toy Story movies scratch. Even more than most successful third installments, Toy Story 3 traffics in the viewers’ nostalgia for- and familiarity with- the previous films, to the point where in the opening scene I got a smile on my face when I heard the line, “I’ve got my dog, with a built-in force field!”, knowing exactly what would happen next.

Click here for the full review.

Call it morning driving thru the sound and in and out the valley

2010-06-19T23:30:00.002-04:00

So far, there’s been a pretty great response all around to this year’s White Elephant Blogathon. And guess what, folks? It’s not over yet! Just today, I received notification from Muriels voter Philip Tatler that he’s resurrected his long-dormant blog for the purposes of posting a review of his White Elephant assignment, Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion. And not long after, Richard Gorelick of 75/50/25 linked me to his review of Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare. Click the links in the post below to check them out, and if you haven’t had time to read the other reviews yet, they’re all worth a look. So yeah, I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out so far, and if all goes well there will be at least a few more reviews before it’s all said and done. Why, it’s almost enough to make me forget all about those horrible drivers out there.

(Yes, this is going to be another rant about bad driving. Deal.)

Today’s targets are those people who haven’t quite figured out how to deal with those newfangled “roundabouts” that are popping up nowadays. Personally, I think they’re fairly easy to navigate. But try telling that to the guy who nearly plowed into the side of my car this morning trying to enter the roundabout. So for that guy, and all the other mental flyweights who sacrifice all common sense whenever they climb behind the wheel, here’s a short list I’ve compiled of roundabout rules:

1. Roundabouts are designed as a replacement for the conventional intersection. Rather than simply turning in the direction of his desired street, the motorist navigates around a small circle in a counterclockwise direction until he finds himself in a position to turn right on the desired street. Thankfully, I haven’t noticed anyone who hasn’t figured this out already. Still, it’s worth mentioning all the same.

2. The traffic that is already in the roundabout has the right of way. This means that if you’re waiting at the roundabout for an opening in traffic, you’re just gonna have to be patient and watch carefully for a real opening instead of speeding implusively into traffic in an attempt to create one. If you can’t handle that, then tough shit, because if you hit someone it’s your bloody fault.

3. That said, once you’re in the flow of traffic in the roundabout, you should do your level best to keep traffic moving. Naturally, if there’s a choice between applying the brakes and mowing somebody down, then by all means slow down or stop. But other than that, there’s no discernible reason (at least, not as far as I can imagine) to stop once you’ve entered the roundabout. Pull the car in, drive around, and drive out again. Pretty basic, I’d say.

4. Likewise, it behooves you (and everyone else around you) to slow the hell down once you’ve entered the roundabout. This means that roundabouts should not be taken at 45 MPH. Better to slow down a little and be careful than speed up and cause an accident that’ll slow you down even more, right?

5. Roundabouts have been around in Europe for years, and for some in America the sight of a roundabout conjures up images of motorists in Paris or Rome speeding around in a circle and jockeying for position like the famed chariot race in Ben-Hur. This shouldn’t happen. In my experience, most roundabouts have clearly marked lanes designed to feed drivers into different streets. These should be observed at all times, particularly during high-traffic hours. And yes, this means that if you miss your desired turn, you’ll just have to drive around again. I mean, it’s not called a “roundabout” for nothing after all.

So, what reason could I possibly have to write this post? Last night, someone damn near ran me off the road trying to make a right turn from the left-hand lane. Seriously- are roundabouts that bloody hard? I’d like to think that if one uses a little common sense (a precious commodity, I know) behind the wheel, and shows a little consideration for others on the road, a post like this won’t be necessary. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case, so I’ve done this for the benefit of those who require it. That goes double for you, dingbat teenager who rear-ended Ang a few months ago.

As for you other smart drivers out there, there’s no need to thank me. I like to think I’m doing the Lord’s work here. Consider it preemptive penance for the curse Victor put on me…

The Secret Greek Kid

2010-06-16T18:19:00.005-04:00

Hey guys. I recently updated the White Elephant Blogathon post below to reflect a handful of stragglers who showed up a bit late to the party. I’m still expecting a few more participants, so keep checking back in between now and the end of the week for more reviews.

Additionally, I just found out that Rufus de Rham, who was set to contribute to the White Elephant, was taken to the hospital a few days back. Shaka Shervington, Rufus’ bud at Paper Spaceships, has assured me that Rufus is going to be fine. Still, my thoughts go out to him, and I’m hoping for a speedy recovery.

Meanwhile, writing a review for the White Elephant has semi-reinvigorated my desire to review movies regularly. So while you’re here, check out my thoughts on the following recent releases:

White Elephants on Parade! (Last updated: 6/19/10)

2010-06-15T18:37:00.008-04:00

Well, the day has arrived, folks- the day of the 4th Annual White Elephant blogathon. And I’m happy to announce that this year’s blogathon is shaping up to be as good as it’s been in years past. I’m pretty relieved, truth be told- when I took this thing over, I wasn’t sure how well it would go, getting uprooted from its original home and taking place a good 2 ½ months after its usual April Fool’s Day street date. But thankfully, things worked out in the end. So I’d like to thank everyone who made this year’s White Elephant possible- to Keith Uhlich for helping to spread the word, and of course to Ben Lim for starting up this whole thing.

And a special thanks to everyone who contributed reviews this year. Considering some of the stink bombs that got submitted, I would have understood anyone who had second thoughts, but everyone has come through nicely. I had initially intended this year’s White Elephant as a way to keep Muriels voters active in the off-season, and although there are plenty of friends o’Muriel in the mix, this year’s White Elephant participants hail from throughout the cinephile blogosphere. There should be a number of names listed below that you’re already familiar with, along with plenty of others that you really ought to know. So do yourselves a favor and check out everyone’s review. I hope that you’ll find at least a handful of new writers worth reading.

And now, without further Apu… this year’s White Elephant Blogathon lineup!

Simon Abrams reviews The Pest!

Ali Arikan reviews The Survivors!

Kent M. Beeson reviews Ishtar!

Josh Bell reviews Dr. Doolittle: Million Dollar Mutts!

Brandon reviews Roller Gator!

The Dread Pirate Steven Carlson reviews Gymkata!

Paul Clark reviews Gorilla at Large!

KC Costanzo reviews Olga’s Girls!

Dennis Cozzalio reviews Mannequin 2: On the Move!

Chris Devlin reviews Strange Circus!

Andy Fernandez reviews Play Dirty!

Kenji Fujishima reviews Scream For Help!

Daniel Getahun takes a break from his newly wedded bliss to review Summer/The Green Ray!

Richard Gorelick reviews Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare!

Abigail Graber reviews The Gate!

Jaime Grijalba reviews The Suckling… in Spanish!

Ivan Lerner reviews Johnny Mnemonic!

Matt Lynch reviews Pieces!

Jeff McMahon reviews Guy Ritchie’s Swept Away!

Britt Parrott reviews Reptilian!

Michael Peterson reviews Taoism Drunkard!

Shaka Shervington reviews Attack of the 50-Foot Woman!

Philip Tatler reviews Crimes of Passion!

Patrick Williamson reviews Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze!

Finally, the review I’ve looking forward to most this year: Victor J. Morton, Rightwing Film Geek, reviews Claire Denis’ The Intruder. Honesty requires me to admit that I was the one who submitted this title. However, in keeping with the rules of the game, I selected The Intruder before I knew who would end up reviewing it, my reasons for choosing limited to its polarizing, love-it-or-hate-it nature. But when my random assignment process (too boring and complicated to discuss in the space) ended up giving the film to Victor, a Denis non-fan of long standing- the dude didn’t even like 35 Shots of Rum, and I thought everybody liked that one- I couldn’t help but smile and think, “think is gonna be gooooooooood.” And Victor’s succinct and decidedly vulgar response upon learning his assignment let me know that my gut feeling was right. Check it out here!

There are a few stragglers still out there, but they should be posting by tomorrow (right, guys?), so keep checking in here for all the White Elephant festivities! You’ve already got plenty to get you started. Enjoy!

Today's the day!

2010-06-15T00:16:00.002-04:00

It's White Elephant Blogathon day here at Silly Hats Only! I've posted my review below, and now I'm just waiting for the other reviews to roll in. Alas, I won't be able to update my blog when I'm at work, but I'll be back tonight with a list of participants and reviews once they begin to pop up online. See you later!

My review for the White Elephant Blogathon: Gorilla at Large (1954, Harmon Jones)

2010-06-15T00:01:00.000-04:00

I’ve long had a soft spot for old-fashioned “monster movies.” I’m a fan of King Kong in all his incarnations, and I always look forward to whatever Godzilla, Gamera, or Mothra adventure is booked for the annual 24-Hour Ohio Science Fiction Marathon. Granted, this genre has more than its share of lousy movies, since the idea of monsters terrorizing the populace doesn’t often invite filmmakers to create lasting art, Jaws and The Host notwithstanding. Still, I always feel a childlike glee at the thought of giant exotic beasties on the loose. So when I saw that my assigned title for this year’s White Elephant Blogathon was entitled Gorilla at Large, you can probably guess that I was pretty pumped.

But if the title itself summoned up images of a guy in a gorilla suit, the movie’s cast threw me for a loop. Many monster movies are chock full of has-beens and never-weres, but the cast for Gorilla at Large is impressive, especially for a 1954 release. It was top-lined by popular leading man Cameron Mitchell, with support from Lee J. Cobb (who would receive an Oscar nod for On the Waterfront later that year) and Rear Window baddie and future Perry Mason Raymond Burr. Plus there’s a small role for an up-and-comer named Lee Marvin, fresh off his memorably villainous turn in The Big Heat. And Gorilla’s leading lady was a Fox contract player who would go on to become a big-screen icon- Anne Bancroft.

So, you can imagine, I was eager to watch Gorilla at Large, but also a little confused. What kind of rampaging-primate thriller could attract a cast like that? As it turns out, Gorilla at Large isn’t quite what its title implies. Oh sure, a gorilla escapes its captivity during the course of the film, but for much of its duration the gorilla (named Goliath) is but another player in the drama. Instead of a full-blown monster movie, it’s a strange sort of hybrid, combining a creature feature with a murder mystery. It doesn’t quite satisfy in either respect, but it’s pretty charming all the same.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the movie is its visual style. For a relatively small-scale production, Gorilla at Large is pretty eye-catching, especially on the surprisingly good-looking Fox DVD release. Many of the film’s interiors look almost like something out of a Douglas Sirk melodrama (albeit one on a tight budget), while director Harmon Jones and director of photography Lloyd Ahern make good use of the colorful- and authentic- carnival setting. My favorite suspense scene in the film involves a pursuit inside a mirrored maze, and the scene wouldn’t work nearly as well without the seemingly endless reflections cast by the walls.

If only the rest of the film did so well at generating suspense, Gorilla at Large might have been a little classic. Alas, most of the movie is a relatively boilerplate whodunit, albeit one that’s been spiced up with a lumbering primate. I hate to say it, but I’ve become sort of burned out on old-school murder mysteries, and Gorilla at Large has almost nothing new to offer the formula aside from the gorilla. As with most undistinguished titles in the genre, figuring out the killer for oneself takes considerably less time than it takes the characters onscreen, and it soon becomes a matter of figuring out who wasn’t visible onscreen when the crimes took place and choosing the one who seems the least obvious. When a suspect is taken in by the police and all you can do is look at your watch and say, “okay, there’s still twenty minutes of movie left, so he can’t be the real killer,” you know there’s something the matter.

What’s more, once the true killer is revealed- I predicted this about ten minutes in, by the way- Harmon and his screenwriters find themselves with a perfect ending only to muck it up by not actually, y’know, stopping. If you’ve seen the movie, imagine how delicious and cold-blooded it might have been had the film stayed in the cellar during the climactic performance instead of cutting to the action onstage. In other words, once Joey (Mitchell) discovered the truth from Goliath’s trainer Kovacs (Peter Whitney), the film had closed on Kovacs’ line “[NAME REDACTED] has it coming,” followed only by the offscreen shrieks of terror. Maybe I’m strange like that, but I think it would’ve made Gorilla at Large a better movie.

Of course, cutting short the ending would also eliminate much of the promised gorilla-on-the-loose action. As I said before, Gorilla at Large doesn’t have much gorilla-based spectacle, which is kind of a mixed blessing. In my experience, gorillas don’t make very good monster-movie baddies unless they’re unnaturally large like King Kong and his ilk. Perhaps it’s because they’re fairly human-like, but gorillas are much better at being humorous or pathetic than they are at being scary. Still, Goliath is pretty engaging as far as man-in-suit gorillas go, and that’s largely a credit to George Barrows, the actor who manned said suit. Barrows specialized in playing apes throughout his career in Hollywood, including the inimitable Ro-Man from 1953’s notoriously awful Robot Monster, a title I nearly submitted for this year’s White Elephant until I thought of something better (or at least less toxic).

But with a cast like this one, Barrows hardly gives the film’s most notable performance. In fact, a number of Gorilla at Large’s performance outclass the material. Mitchell makes for a solid leading man, while Burr’s outsized grumpiness lends some gravity to the standard role of a husband with something to hide. Similarly, Cobb manages to put a unique spin on the character of the police investigator, giving him a hard and sometimes sarcastic edge that distinguishes him from any number of similar roles. Even Marvin manages to bring more to his part- a young policeman whose eagerness to please far outpaces his competence- than is required.

Best of all is Bancroft who, still in her early twenties, was already showing that she would become a formidable actress. Granted, a movie like Gorilla at Large wouldn’t seem to provide many chances to flex one’s acting muscles, but somehow Bancroft is able to create opportunities from what little she’s given. She brings surprising complexity to the Laverne, a skilled aerialist stuck in a dead-end life of playing second banana (ha ha) to a gorilla. From the role that was no doubt written as a femme fatale, Bancroft conveys the weariness and barely sublimated desperation of a woman who has more or less seen it all and nonetheless clings to the hope that she might still ride her skill to legitimate stardom. Bancroft gives far better than she gets in Gorilla at Large- one of the characteristics of a great actor. Truth in reporting also requires me to state that she’s incredibly sexy here, not simply because of the skimpy costumes she performs in, but the self-assurance that would become one of her trademarks as an actress.

In later years, Bancroft’s husband Mel Brooks would often rib her about Gorilla at Large on talk shows. But although the movie’s title and premise make it an easy target, it’s certainly no worse than any number of B movies from the era. And while it doesn’t quite succeed as a mystery or a killa-gorilla thrilla (sorry), it’s still worthwhile as a time capsule of the sort of movies Hollywood has forgotten how to make. Now that B-movies are getting A-budgets, blockbusters are continually trying to make the biggest and loudest spectacle of all. So it’s refreshing to see a movie with the modest charms of Gorilla at Large- a movie that only needed a handful of well-chosen actors and the sight of a man in a gorilla suit carrying around a young, scantily-clad Anne Bancroft to reel in audiences.

One more week!

2010-06-08T22:10:00.001-04:00

Just a reminder for all of you who are still reading that the 4th Annual White Elephant Blogathon will be a week from today, on Tuesday, June 15. I just finished reviewing my chosen film, and now I’m looking forward to what everyone else has to offer. We’ve got a great crop of writers and bloggers lined up, and this year’s White Elephant promises to do justice to the good thing Ben Lim started a little over three years ago.

In the spirit of the occasion, I’ve even created the White Elephant button that currently adorns my sidebar, and will hopefully pop up on at least a handful of others within the next week. Sorry if it looks cheesy- I don’t have much experience with graphic design, online or otherwise, and I didn’t want to impose on my bud Martin, who has graciously contributed banners for the Muriels for the past three years.

Anyway, don’t forget to come back next Tuesday for White Elephant #4. Should be fun- hope to see you here!