ABOUT THAT TOP TEN . . .
I concluded my debut post with a top ten for the ten year span starting the morning we woke up and realized Y2K hadn’t happened and ending tomorrow night at midnight. Like any top ten list based on subjective criteria, it’s arbitrary, holes can be poked in it, and ultimately it doesn’t mean much. It’s not a list of the ten movies I enjoyed the most over the past ten years—if it was, Casino Royale and The Room would have been in the top three. And if it was a list of top ten experiences of a movie, that time I watched 24 Hour Party People when I was so high my eyeballs were vibrating would be near the top of the list. It’s a list of the ten movies I think are the best of what I saw.
There are some patterns in the list. All but one—The Departed—of the movies on my list were written or co-written by their directors. Most of them were fairly popular, or at least widely discussed critically; I don’t have any cred insofar as obscure shit no one else saw. Most of them won at least one Oscar, as per that last point. If my top ten is any insight into my perspective as a moviegoer I suppose it reveals a college-educated, middle-class white guy in his early 30s who likes movies and doesn’t have much of a problem with Hollywood. Which is (shockingly!) accurate. So, enough analysis of the list, more about the movies on it (10-6 today, 5-1 tomorrow):
(10) Criminal (dir. Gregory Jacobs)—2004
This is a remake of an Argentinian movie called Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens), but I prefer this one. Nueve Reinas didn’t really grab me, maybe because of the mood I was in when I saw it, maybe because the pacing was a little erratic. Criminal, though, moves fairly well, and it hits me below the belt; I’ve always loved movies and books about crime and criminals, and this one waves its title in my face.
It’s one of those narratives one can only summarize so far without spoilers, so suffice to say it’s about a young con man played by Diego Luna who makes a rookie mistake scamming a casino, and is arrested by John C. Reilly, who appears to be a cop, but after hauling Diego out in cuffs, John C. explains that he’s a veteran con man, and offers to show Diego some basics. They pull a couple small-scale cons, then suddenly John C.’s sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal (they presumably take after different parents) calls him to the hotel where she works, where an old colleague has a very large job, which John C. agrees to help him with in exchange for a usurious cut of the eventual take.
This is where the twists and spoilers start, so we’ll leave the narrative be and focus on Criminal’s other virtues. Gregory Jacobs, directing his first feature, co-wrote the script with a pseudonymous Steven Soderbergh (for whom Jacobs is frequently first assistant director and occasionally co-producer), and keeps things moving briskly, never overdoing either the direction or the script. The cast is excellent—it might be John C. Reilly’s best performance, and he’s been one of the best character actors around for a long time. He and Diego Luna interact well, with the upper hand changing hands constantly and subtly. The supporting cast, especially Maggie G and Peter Mullan as a mysterious Scottish media baron, is excellent as well.
Putting Criminal at #10 on the list meant having to bump a number of movies I really liked over the past ten years—Traffic, Mulholland Dr., Far From Heaven, The Station Agent, Sideways, Brokeback Mountain, Zodiac, I’m Not There, The Visitor, Inglourious Basterds, and several others. I’m sure good arguments can be made for each of those movies in terms of superiority, narrative scope, et cetera. But this is a list being compiled by someone who’s a sucker for minimalism, crime fiction, and a good plot twist. So there you go.
(9) No Country For Old Men (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)—2007
Enough has been written about this one already that I don’t need to pile on much more. Some brief thoughts (and spoilers for any Johnny Come-Latelys who haven’t Netflixed it yet):
--It’s better than Fargo.
--Fargo, while overrated, was still really, really good.
--Where the fuck did Josh Brolin come from? Seriously, he brings it.
--Once Josh Brolin gets killed, it kinda falls apart (which is why I only have it at #9), but not really; I come down on the “it’s awesome” side of the controversial ending, the “it sucks” people need to listen closer to what Tommy Lee Jones is saying there.
--Josh Brolin’s late bloom into awesome reminds me: Tommy Lee Jones is another one who was around for a long time, kicking around, not really living up to his potential, until he walks into frame in The Fugitive, says “My, my, my. What. A. Mess,” as if the train wreck was his career and proceeds to own shit for the rest of the movie, which by extension is his career. I could go on all day about The Fugitive, and may at some point.
--Javier Bardem was all that, though I did murder five people who called me “friendo” at the time.
--The Coens’ Best Director and Best Picture wins were long overdue, but it kind of pisses me off that the Academy rewards people stepping outside their comfort zone instead of recognizing brilliance at a director or actor’s strong suit. Of course, I’m the asshole in the corner of the party spilling whiskey and bellowing that Miller’s Crossing should have swept the Oscars in 1990 (and forgetting about Goodfellas in the process).
--I remember someone asking me whether I liked No Country at the time and responding “Antonioni can go fuck himself, and so can John Ford,” which was overstating it a bit in retrospect, but it’s still a pretty damn good movie.
A closing note: I’ve still yet to manage to watch this one all the way through a second time, and I’m a compulsive rewatcher. Hence, #9.
(8) The Departed (dir. Martin Scorsese)—2006
Oh, The Depaaaaaaaaahted. Some of the accents sucked, yes. Jack seemed like he grew up in Boston’s Martian district. It’s almost an hour longer than Infernal Affairs, which was a terrific movie in its own right. All this is true. The Departed is still a really good movie.
Remakes are not, in and of themselves, bad, or even inherently lazy. At their best, when there’s more to the remake than merely recasting American stars in the leads to squeeze a buck or hundred million out of the multiplexes, it’s like a cover song. Or a revival of a play. In this case, screenwriter William Monahan had a story about the Boston underworld that fit within the framework of Infernal Affairs’ premise—a cop undercover in the Mob, a Mob mole undercover on the cops—to pose the question of what exactly is it that makes a good guy, or a bad guy. Or whether either good or bad really exists.
All of this could have been terribly ponderous with the wrong director running things. Or, in a different wrong director’s hands, it could have been a rote cops-and-robbers thing that dragged on forever. Mr. Scorsese couldn’t make a boring movie if he tried (which may very well have been the motivation behind Kundun, in which case he failed, it was pretty good), nor could he paint by numbers without setting fire to the canvas and slowly pushing the camera in on it with the Rolling Stones playing on the soundtrack.
Ultimately, The Departed will live on as one of the main pieces of ammunition in cynical Oscar watchers’ arsenal when they gripe about de facto lifetime achievement Oscars. Back in the dark days when we all wondered whether Scorsese was going to join the all-time Oscarless directors’ pantheon with Hitchcock and Kubrick, this used to really piss me off:
1976—Scorsese not nominated for Taxi Driver; John G. Avildsen wins for Rocky
1980—nominated for Raging Bull, Scorsese loses to Robert Redford for Ordinary People
1990—nominated for Goodfellas, Scorsese loses to Kevin Costner or Dances With Wolves
’76 isn’t that bad. Sure, Avildsen winning for Rocky is absurd and a symptom that “the people want to feel good when they walk out of a movie!” (though the kind of person who feels good about a movie based on the premise that Muhammad Ali needed to be taken down a peg is beneath contempt), but Sidney Lumet getting shafted for Network (which was years ahead of its time and a legit contender for Greatest of All Time discussion) was a bigger tragedy than a guy in his early 30s not getting nominated for a movie that was almost rated X.
It’s those 1980 and 1990 losses that burn my ass. Ordinary People is not a badly made movie. It’s got a good cast. It is, however, a good indicator of Redford’s future directorial efforts: looks nice, has all the polish money can buy, but there ain’t a whole lotta there there. Raging Bull is Raging Bull. Sure, it’s hard to watch, and it flopped at the box office (which has always been a factor with the Oscars). But it’s Raging Bull. Even if, for political reasons, you have to give Ordinary People Best Picture (which I understand, even if I don’t condone), Scorsese should have won Best Director for the fucking credit sequence alone.
Now, 1990. Dances With Wolves, oh Dances With Wolves. When I was 12 and I saw it on cable I was pretty impressed. But a lot of things impress 12 year olds. And, apparently, Oscar voters: “Oh, look, how meaningful! It’s about an issue! Oh, we’re such bad people for not caring about the Native Americans! Let’s show how much we care!” Now, if Costner hadn’t deleted the expository sequence about the time machine they sent a late-80s vintage politically correct liberal back in time with to assume the identity of John Dunbar, I might have bought it. Without that crucial bit of narrative, it remains one of the best examples extant of Hollywood jerking off to itself. And whose face took that sensitivity bukkake? Martin Scorsese’s. Goodfellas was the best movie of that year, and after the aforementioned Taxi Driver and Raging Bull snubs, it was a classic case of “we fucked him twice, let’s give him his reach-around this time.” But, alas. There was treacly sentiment and reductive liberalism to parade. The American Left doesn’t have cancer, it has diabetes. [Remaining ten pages of this political rant redacted, to be used if I ever get on the Huffington Post].
So, anyway, back to The Departed. Maybe it was his long-delayed reach-around. But if anyone deserved one, it was Scorsese. And there’s something to be said for a 151 minute movie that’s as re-watchable as The Departed (a few months ago when it was HBO all the time I watched it almost every time it was on).
(7) I’ve Loved You So Long (dir. Philippe Claudel)—2008
This is a real good one. Kristin Scott Thomas gets out of prison after a 15-year stretch and goes to stay with her sister and her family while re-adjusting to society. And that’s pretty much it. French novelist Philippe Claudel’s first film as a director unfolds like a novel. Kristin Scott Thomas’ character is revealed slowly, each revelation making her that much more vividly real. (Among the revelations is why she speaks French with an English accent). While there’s a mildly annoying tendency in independent/art-house/what-have-you cinema these days toward arbitrarily holding back information about character and plot in order to have a good end-of-second-act zinger, Claudel’s deliberate revelation of certain rather important details the circumstances behind Kristin Scott Thomas’ incarceration is not arbitrary at all. She, as a character, has put those circumstances behind her, and it’s only because of her sister’s (and the audience’s) need to understand that they’re even revealed at all. Elsa Zylberstein does a terrific job as the sister—in an American movie the sister who doesn’t approve of her convict sibling and is always harping at her and being self-righteous would have been torturous to watch, but in a French movie somehow she gets to be a real person. This is why we need French movies.
(6) Lost in Translation (dir. Sofia Coppola)—2003
Because Scarlett Johansson’s ass over the opening credits could end all war everywhere. Because when you feel lonely and far from home, staring out the window of a taxi with My Bloody Valentine playing just about sums it up. Because Bill Murray is, as GZA later dutifully reminded us in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, “Bill Motherfuckin’ Murray,” and in his career from Rushmore forward, he’s transcended his previous incarnation as “Bill Ghostbustin-ass Murray.” Because Scarlett Johansson’s ass . . . oh, wait, already covered that (even if those underwear didn’t . . . zing!)
Most importantly, because this movie was so good that until Marie Antoinette came out as such a head-scratcher, for a couple years there I stopped thinking of Sofia Coppola as the twit who fucked up Godfather III. This was big, for me. The first two Godfathers are holy to me. The third had potential; seriously, what other mountains were there for Michael Corleone to climb than the Vatican? And after seeing his rise to power, seeing his end would bring closure. So unlike some people I’ve spilled whiskey on talking about this over years, I saw a third Godfather as being potentially a good thing. However . . .
To be fair, Sofia Coppola is not the only problem with Godfather III. Her father was no longer the same guy he was when he made the first two. Robert Duvall was sorely missed. But Sofia’s miscasting was the biggest, and most noticeable flaw (a tradition going back to the beginning of the Godfather series; Diane Keaton was awful in the first two and seemed better in the third in comparison to Sofia). And, not being above the holding of long-standing, pointless, violently irrational grudges, I completely wrote Sofia Coppola off. Rich kid, dilettante, etc etc. Until Lost in Translation, which, a couple of batting-practice-fastball Japanese accent jokes aside, is an extremely well-observed character study, and captures the awkward, otherworldly sense of being very far from home perfectly. And with a dynamite soundtrack—Bill Murray’s drunk karaoke “More Than This” is still the gold standard of drunk karaoke (my own rendition of the Darkness’ “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” is disqualified because, although I’d had a drink or two at that point, I was still sober).
Tomorrow, lengthy digressive essays on #s 5-1!
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