2012 IN CINEMA: HALFTIME

The year is half over, and earlier on Twitter a bunch of film critics and other assorted riffraff were posting their lists of the best of the year so far. I'm a good little lemming, so I'll join in the fun, even though for a variety of reasons this enterprise is more just for fun than any kind of lasting meaning. Then again, what the fuck do best-of-year lists mean even with a complete year? Eh? Riddle me that. Now that everyone's in a nice warm and fuzzy “morbidly questioning the purpose of existence” type mood, let's proceed:


Top 10 Movies I Haven't Seen Yet:

Money's been tight, and even if not for that, there are only so many hours in a day. Thus, without comment—

1—The Avengers (yep, still)
2—Moonrise Kingdom
3—Rowdy Rathore
4—Damsels In Distress
5—The Deep Blue Sea (the Terence Davies one, wiseasses, not the shark one)
6—Goon
7—Take This Waltz
8—From Rome With Love (I don't care if everyone says it's meh, Woody's Woody)
9—Kahaani
10—Bernie

Perils of being exclusively on the SF beat for Tor.com, and only being able to get into whatever else I can randomly hustle a screening for. Then again, less than a year ago I couldn't get into any screenings at all, so I should just shaddap.


The Shit List:

Though this has been a pretty good year for movies so far, there have been some real stinkeroodies here and there as well. Like the following (from godawful to disappointing in ascending order):

1—The Divide—Hateful, misanthropic, nihilistic garbage, and it lasted fucking eons.

2—Jesus Henry Christ—This pile of shit, I saw at Tribeca in '11, but as it (for some unfathomable reason) got theatrical release this year, and because I never talked about how terrible it was last year, here goes: this movie fucking sucks. It's a soulless, cynical attempt at twee quirk, that simply alienates through its rote horseshit attempts to be hip. Still, Michael Sheen's good in it, because Michael Sheen is always good, but that's literally the only thing in this movie that doesn't suck. The director openly admitting in the Q&A that he only made this picture (based on a short he'd already made and didn't really feel like revisiting) because his agent told him he could make money made the whole joyless experience make sense. Better luck next time, homes. Try doing what you feel instead of chasing a greenback dollar.

3—The Raven—Brainless horseshit. Would have made Poe turn over in his grave if he wasn't still too smacked out to move.

4—Gone—Amanda Seyfried's great, and the movie's not bad until the climax, at which point it abruptly ceases to make logical sense and faceplants, leading to a retroactive feeling of nothing in the whole movie having had any point.

5—Safe House—Denzel's Denzel, and it's not like this is any dumber than any ten other action pictures I'll happily rewatch, but holy balls is the editing bad.

6—John Carter—Conditional; I actually want to watch this one again, but the first time through was a little rough.

7—Prometheus—Partially brilliant, partially whatever the diametric opposite of brilliant is. Eminently frustrating as a result.

And, now, with no further ado, counting down from 10, my favorites (as opposed strictly to best) of 2012 so far. Due to where my head has been at and the way release calendars tend to go, the following overwhelmingly favors ownage pictures, but a) does that surprise you at all and b) whaddaya want from me, 2012's been a good year for ownage:

10—(tie) Men In Black 3/The Hunger Games—Both pictures had their problems (The Hunger Games' all that wobblydeewobblydee handheld camera, Men Black 3's cringe-inducing Chinese “jokes”) but overall two blockbusters that did their damn job.

8—Haywire—Gina Carano fucking owns.

7—Eddie, The Sleepwalking Cannibal—Hasn't been released theatrically in the US yet, but when it does, look the fuck out. Canadian somnambucannibal horror comedy is going to be the new mumblecore, just you fucking watch.

6—Lockout—SPACE JAIL MOTHERFUCKERS SPACE JAIL SPACE JAIL SPACE JAIL!!!

5—The Raid: Redemption—Wall-to-wall fucking ownage, of highly inventive variety (weaponized refrigerators, fluorescent light bulbs to the jugular), but more than that, the single greatest action movie premise ever: “The bad guys are in a fucking building, and we need to go to that building and fucking kill every single one of them.” It's kinda like a bunch of dudes were sitting around Indonesia chewing qat and smoking angel dust while watching Die Hard and being like “Yeah, those guys're pussies.” This and Space Jail are the two movies on this list I'm most likely to buy on DVD and watch until they disintegrate.

4—The Grey—Less an ownage picture and more an existential meditation on the futility of testicles as survival tools, and less a big dumb thing about a bunch of dudes getting eaten by wolves than a really goddamn good movie. It's the best thing Joe Carnahan's ever done by quite a bit (Narc comes closest, but good as it was it was still nowhere near this), and neck-and-neck with Taken for “best late-period Liam Neeson ownage picture,” no mean feat these days now with Liam Neeson's ascension to godhood.

3—Magic Mike—On top of all the praise I rained on it like so many $1 bills, it's also a clear-eyed look at the precariousness of the American economy at present.

2—The Cabin In The Woods—So clever. So much fun.

1—Sleepless Night—And, my favorite of the year thus far. What, you thought I wasn't going to love a French gangster movie that inflects its essentially naturalistic presentation with surreal elements to create a dream-like effect and a sense of neither beginning nor ending but always existing? Child please.

So here we are at halftime. The second half of the year holds even more glories. Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Dark Knight Rises, Holy Motors, Ek Tha Tiger, Joker, Looper, Django Unchained, The Master, whatever the fuck Terry Malick's new picture is called, that David Russell picture that basically looks like I cast it while fapping, and a zillion other things I can't even think of at the moment. AND . . . Taken 2. As Robert Carradine said in Revenge of the Nerds, “It's gonna be a great year . . . HEHHHH HEHHH HEHHH!!!”

THE TOP 11 OF 2011

Now that we've given out the Fuckos, it's time to get serious and unveil the top 11 movies of the year. SERIOUS. This was a pretty good movie year, as it shook out, a far cry from the dread at the beginning of the year about there being more sequels/remakes/reboots this year than any other year in history. Problem is, a lot of the better pictures weren't as widely seen, including at least two—both of which discussed below—tragically under-seen movies that are virtually certain to become a lot of people's all-time favorites once they hit DVD. Such is the way of the world, though.

Before we get to the list proper, I want to mention a couple also-rans that didn't make the final cut but that are good and things you should watch. These are pictures that had been in my top 11 before I caught up on all the year-end releases, and would have stayed there if the year-end stuff hadn't been so good (which it was.) Without any further ado, let us salute . . .


Source Code (dir. Duncan Jones)

A very solid SF thriller, with Jake Gyllenhaal puttin' in solid work as a guy who gradually realizes the reason he was the perfect candidate for the military's SF-nal goings-on is for kind of not-so-good reasons (put it this way, his previous career as an Air Force pilot is pretty much toast.) Michelle Monaghan continues her career as one of the most quietly solid leading ladies in the business, Vera Farmiga gets to wear a military uniform and be emotionally repressed (meeeoowwww . . .) and Jeffrey Wright smokes a pipe and wears bow-ties and stuff and was part of one of 2011's more interesting trends: Evil White Guys In Suits who are either not white or not guys (someone find Aisha Tyler and cast her in something as the main sinister executive in something so we can have our first EWGIS who is neither white nor male), which I think is an affirmation of the American way. Someday anyone, regardless of race, gender, or anything else will be able to put on a suit and be evil.

Anyway, Source Code's tight. Don't let anyone tell you the ending's stupid, it's awesome. It just leans on the fiction half of “science fiction” a bit. Duncan Jones is David Bowie's kid. He's SF royalty from birth. He gets to make the endings of his pictures as weird as he fucking likes.


Midnight In Paris (dir. Woody Allen)

I thoroughly enjoyed this. It was a wonderful experience. Everything about it was perfect except for Rachel McAdams being such a psychopath, and even that wasn't exactly a deal-breaker, it just meant this fell out of the top 11. I really love that Woody took the whole over-romanticized Left Bank Paris 20s thing and made it look and sound as awesome as he possibly could . . . but still remind us that it wasn't real. Owen Wilson was better than he'd been in forever, and his balance of wide-eyed innocence and enthusiasm with intelligence and believability as a screenwriter (since, if you'll remember the early Wes Anderson days, he was). And all the “real” people were awesome, with Hemingway leading the pack as he should, though my favorite scene in the whole picture is when Owen Wilson sits down with Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, and Man Ray and tells them he's a time traveler and they're all like “Absolutely” like it ain't no thing, like he told them he was an apothecary. Surrealists are good like that.


Warrior (dir. Gavin O'Connor)

An engrossing blend of old-fashioned sports movie and character study, it's got great performances top to bottom and outstanding fight scenes, with Tom Hardy particularly convincing as an MMA savant. It's a little long, though it doesn't feel particularly long, and it's so well done it's kind of a shock that it did such godawful business. Only kind of, because Tom Hardy isn't a star (yet), and Joel Edgerton isn't a star (yet), and the way the picture was marketed was like, “Come see Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton!” and civilians were like, “Who?” This is all about to change, though. Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton will be stars, they just made this movie five years too early. And once that happens, it sets up this conversation:

Civilian A: Holy shit, did you know Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton did a movie together before they were famous?
Civilian B: Really? What's it about?
Civilian A: Mixed martial arts. They beat the shit out of guys!
Civilian B: Whoa, fuck, how have I never heard of this? Let's watch it!

This is how Warrior is going to become a lot of people's favorite movie soon. By 2014, Bill Simmons will have written a column about this picture and lots of people like him who love Rocky and The Karate Kid and pictures like that are going to see this and be like “Wow, this is like that except the acting is better!” This only very recently fell out of my top 11, and I very well may start pretending that it didn't in a couple years once it develops its huge civilian cult following.


Hugo (dir. Martin Scorsese)

Almost. This one is almost one for the ages. If only it wasn't for that goddamn script . . . I mean, everything else is there, all the visual razzle-dazzle money can buy, Martin Scorsese directing his heart out, and by his heart I mean his whole heart, and yet . . . it's just short. And it's all the writing's fault. Literally everything else you can possibly ask for is all right there. Sigh.


Since cinema isn't just things screened in movie theaters, a couple other things warrant mentioning. HBO's Game of Thrones overcame a rocky start establishing tone and so forth to become a terrifically entertaining potboiler with a great cliffhanger ending. Very much looking forward to season 2. The long-awaited L.A. Noire was a little shaky, but I've played through the main story three times now, so clearly there's some there there. And then there was Sucker Punch, which although a movie wasn't really a movie, more like some strange and imperfect entity with its foot caught in the door between cinema and gaming, a tragically misunderstood attempt by Zack Snyder to make a pro-feminist statement, but whose ambition slightly exceeded his grasp as an artist, and whose good intentions were not helped by the feverish, hallucinatory action sequences. It deserved a bit more credit than most critics gave it, though I'll freely admit my initial review of the picture graded it on the curve for ambition.


Enough for the also-rans. Let's get to the list itself. The top 11 movies of 2011, as determined by the crack staff of one crackhead (rhetorical, not literal variety) here at Movies By Bowes™ are . . .


11—Rise of the Planet of the Apes: dir. Rupert Wyatt

Some of the above-listed also-rans were works of greater artistry than this, which had the distinction of being the best movie of the genus summer blockbuster this year. And there are certainly problems here and there: Freida Pinto's character is a bit flat (and not done any favors by Ms. Pinto's limited thesping skills) and Tom “Draco Malfoy” Felton is kind of ridiculous (though it's immensely satisfying when he gets owned.) But let's look at the last word in that parenthetical aside (parenthetical asides are a big part of what we do here at Movies By Bowes™): “owned.” This is a word I realize I've been throwing around a lot of late, and lest anyone get the idea that I'm just humping Zodiac Motherfucker's leg, the reason I conjugate the verb “to own” to describe decisive and violent victories physical, aesthetic, and moral is because the word has both a visually and aurally morphological perfection in describing what I'm trying to get at. The opening vowel rolls right into the consonant cluster quickly and smoothly, and the field of study, “ownage” has that extra soft crunch at the end that has a similar perfection of form. (Ed. Note: told y'all motherfuckers I was a serious intellectual. AND WHAT?)

That bit of unnecessary justification aside, the reason we're kicking this discussion off with this picture right here is that Rise was emblematic in a lot of ways of the year in cinema: a lot better than you thought it was going to be, and balancing thought-provoking content with wildly entertaining form. And if you've been following these pages since the summer, you know how I feel about Caesar, the leader of the revolution and the great fictional hero of the American Left. They should award Caesar a special Oscar and spend forty-five minutes of the fucking telecast having Cornel West interview Naomi Klein about how fucking rad Caesar is and have Rachel Maddow present the fucking thing in a bespoke tux. I'm serious.


10—Drive: dir. Nicolas (The Long And) Winding Refn

While we're on the subject of ownage in cinema, Drive was the year's most traditional contribution to the genre. I have very fond memories of the experience of seeing this, as this was the very movie that motivated me to figure out how to get invitations to press screenings (turned out they were delighted to have such a garrulously erudite gentleman such as my good self, but ya never know til ya try), and enabled me, hilariously, to pretend to be all cool and get the Self-Styled Siren in (she was very polite about my being such a n00b at the film writing game). I'll probably remember the screening longer than I will the movie, honestly.

That's not to say Drive isn't good. It's on this list, after all. The first hour and thirty five minutes of this picture contain some of the finest ownage yet lensed. The Long And Winding Refn knows how to direct a fucking movie, beyond any measure of doubt, and Baby Goose is goddamn tremendous in this. Christina Hendricks' ass stops clocks. Carey Mulligan was even good, even though her character doesn't have much to do, as her character is the archetypal noir “good girl in a bad situation” just like the rest of the movie, on paper, is boilerplate noir given life by the robust talents of the director, crew, and cast (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman as mobster brothers? Genius, especially Brooks).

But, as you may recall if you saw it, the movie isn't an hour thirty-five. It's an hour forty. The ending of the picture is kind of a problem, in that it doesn't have one. That doesn't make the rest of the picture any less awesome. The Long And Winding Refn may value style over substance, but right up til the last couple minutes kind of fart Drive is proof that something that's been done before can be great if done really, really well. Style being good enough negates substantive shortcomings round these parts.


9—Moneyball: dir: Bennett Miller

Another example of an exercise in a well-worn genre—the sports movie—made great by terrific execution and the occasional novel twist. Michael Lewis' book about the 2002 Oakland A's pissed off every boring old fuck in Major League Baseball, as all revolutions do: it revealed that objective statistical analysis of what was actually going on in baseball games made all those boring old fucks look really, really dumb.

Of course, being right isn't enough. Being right with Brad Pitt playing the main character and giving one of the two best performances of his career (more on which in a bit), on the other hand, is. Jonah Hill is great as Brad Pitt's nerd-de-camp (peace to Neal Stephenson in Cryptonomicon), playing a composite of a couple guys who crunched a bunch of numbers and figured out that the most important determinants of a batter's success weren't what the old dudes thought. Armed with that knowledge (and, something the book and movie both obscure, three of the best starting pitchers in the league that year) the A's end up doing way better than everyone who wrote them off after losing two stars to richer teams ever dreamed.

But for real, though? It's a cool story and everything but the thing that really makes it fly is how awesome both Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill are. That, and the fact that Bennett Miller's attention to detail keeps any alienating lapses in verisimilitude from fucking things up. Oh, and the way the usual second-act home-run montage in baseball movies is now a huge dramatic thing about David Justice drawing a walk is fucking hilarious for baseball fans. But Brad Pitt's star power and the truly magnificent supporting performance Jonah Hill delivers make this a picture even non-fans can get down with, as evidenced by the hundreds of people I've heard say “I don't even like baseball and I fuckin' loved that.”


8—The Artist: dir. Michel Hazanavicius

Some people are turning against it because it's going to sweep the Oscars this year (Ed. Note: it's going to), but fuck that. The Artist is great. It's a classic “you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll laugh again, you'll cheer, and then you'll cry tears of joy at the beautifully sad ending” picture. Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo (especially the latter) are enchanting, and even though Hazanavicius whiffs by about a decade and a half on the recreation of silent-era movies (it'd be a bulls-eye 1946) he still gets the feel right, and that's the important thing. This is a picture that's meant to be felt, and even though I'm very much up in my head experientially, maybe it's knowing intellectually that I was supposed to feel it made me rationally decide to feel it or something. Who fucking knows. Who fucking cares, more on point. All I know is I really liked this one and all of you people being hipsters about The Artist being sappy can eat a dick. You can also go back and dig up old reviews of Mary Pickford movies and look at all the old shitheads sniffing about how she was less than perfect, and be advised that those very shitheads who were wrong about Mary Pickford look an awful lot like you all do now. Just saying.


7—A Dangerous Method: dir. David Cronenberg

I've covered this one fairly extensively already, with a lot attention to its immaculate design and historical relevance, as well as the performance Keira Knightley turns in. One thing I haven't really talked about is how awesome Viggo is as Sigmund Freud. He disappears behind the beard and the cigar, transforming himself, managing to convey not only the intelligence but the eccentricity and (most impressively) insecurity of Freud. Weirdly, this movie seems to have slipped through the awards season cracks, which is really unfortunate, but the four of us who saw it all know how good it was. This is one, when the Blu-Ray comes out, you're going to want to get up on it quick, but make sure no one's around who's going to judge you for drooling over the cinematography and design.


6—Shame: dir. Steve McQueen

More Fassbender. A whole lot more Fassbender. Another one that I don't have much to add to what I've already written about it except to say I think the fine folks at the MPAA overreacted a bit giving this an NC-17. Sure, we see Fassbender's Penis, enough to both establish Fassbender's Penis as the new standard-bearer now that Ewan McGregor's Penis is retired. But all kidding aside, there have been R-rated movies with more dick shots. The female nudity is well within the territory of the R rating. The one scene where you might have a case for the NC-17 is the one where, after the impotence scene, Fassbender has that hooker up against the window. Maybe he had too many thrusts or something, but that scene's hardly meant to titillate; if anything, you feel bad for Fassbender that he has to frantically reassure himself that his many splendored penis still works. Especially the way the hooker is just like, “You sad bastard” afterward. Though, if it transpires that the reason it got the NC-17 is That One Bit Where Gay Stuff Happens I'm going to use curse words, because that would be really stupid.

In any case, the NC-17 was probably the best thing that could have happened to this picture, because if it had gone out as an R it would have just been this thought-provoking little art picture about sexuality, empathy, and self-reflection. And it still would have been this good, except this bit here would be about how obscure the picture was, because you all wouldn't know it as the Michael Fassbender's Penis picture. I mean, yes, that is a silly way to refer to this picture, but it is big.


5—Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: dir. Tomas Alfredson

This was awesome. There's a lot of movie here, but if you pay attention it all makes sense; after about the fourth time they mention “Karla” you know who they're talking about, and that fucking great monologue Gary Oldman has about Karla clarifies things nicely. The cast is great. Benedict Cumberbatch deals with being the least-famous person in the movie the way the least-famous person in the movie is supposed to, by being really good. This has two of my favorite shots of the year, the Gary Oldman/David Dencik plane-taxiing-to-a-halt-behind-them shot and that tremendous Julio Iglesias-scored one at the end, pushing in on the one English guy who comes out of the whole mess on top (identity redacted cuz it's a bit of a spoiler), timed perfectly with the applause from the recording. The latter is a bit more stylized than the rest of the picture, but it's so good I don't care.


4—A Separation: dir. Asghar Farhadi

Say you mention a movie to someone (not always a civilian, though it will be most of the time) and they go “Oh, what's it about?” Some times you can describe it, with the odd interpolation of such and such an element being really cool, maybe a mention of a particularly memorable sequence, and the person you're talking to will be like “Oh, that sounds good, I'll check that out.” A Separation is the kind of picture you have to tell them “Just see it” because if you describe it it ends up sounding like one of those movies: it's almost all dialogue, which means it's almost all subtitles, and it's about the debilitating effects of totalitarianism on the family unit. I know, I can hear an orchestra of civilians snoring. That's why “Just see it” is the only way with this, because it's a knock-you-on-your-ass awesome movie with one of the most perfectly structured screenplays ever filmed and acting that's almost overwhelming it's so good (the director even managed to pull off nepotistic casting and get the best performance in the picture out of his own daughter, who plays the couple's daughter in the movie.)

Yeah, just see it.


3—The Descendants: dir. Alexander Payne

While we're talkin' about good screenplays, hooooooooly shit this one's good. I mean, the directing, acting, cinematography, and music are all great too but man there's some good writing in this picture. George Clooney's already been plenty good but this is the best performance of his career, playing a guy who's not cool, who's overwhelmed by the demands of suddenly being the only parent—in his own words, he was the “backup parent” to his now-comatose wife—as well as having the entire state of Hawaii waiting with bated breath on a decision he has to make about what's to be done with this massive bit of real estate his family owns and have a limited time to sell. The picture confronts a lot of difficult topics—mortality, race, family, masculinity—and doesn't take the easy way out with any of them. Just like this is Clooney's best performance, this might be Alexander Payne's best picture, and he's never directed a bad one.


2—The Tree of Life: dir. Terrence Malick

I still distrust a lot of people who toss Terrence Malick's named around, because there are a lot of people out there who want to seem smart, cultured, and serious, so they toss names of directors around when the topic of cinema comes up, and boom, mission accomplished. (On a related note, if I hear one more gratuitous reference to Rainer Werner Fassbinder I'm going to Hulk out and stomp a motherfucker.) As with most name-drop abuse, there's the unfortunate side effect of letting the frustration mislead one into forgetting that the reason why, when this game of name-drop telephone began, Terrence Malick's name was dropped so often is because he's a great filmmaker. The Tree of Life is a good reminder of that.

It's about the entire existence of everything everywhere, from the Big Bang,  to the formation of the Earth to existentially-concerned dinosaurs who stare off pensively into the distance (I fucking love that even the dinosaurs stare pensively into the distance in this picture) to the lives of one Midwestern family in the 1950s, to apocalypse, to the Afterlife. It puts just about every other picture described as “ambitious” to shame. And it realizes those ambitions as much as any picture directed by a mortal filmmaker can.

The thing I like the most about The Tree of Life is that, for all its breathtaking ambition and exquisite artistry, the characters of the family still resonate as fully realized human beings. This is rare in experimental filmmaking, where the star is the director and it's all about whatever statement the director is making. A lesser filmmaker would have rendered Brad Pitt's character as Stern One-Dimensional 50's Guy, Malick shows how that sternness is motivated by insecurity, fear, and the regretful acquiescence to perceived obligation. The kid character, loosely based on Malick himself, is no polished, burnished angel hero character; he's kind of a prick. That recognition of the complexity of life makes this picture a really special achievement. It also really moves, for such a complicated, unconventional Film (and it certainly is a “film”; if all “films” were this good I wouldn't be as uneasy with that word.)


And yes, that means that my number one for the year is . . .


1—Attack The Block: dir. Joe Cornish

“Whagwan, fam? Is you fucking mad?” Well, sure, I'm nuts. I know putting this ahead of Tree Of Life and all the other stuff on this list looks like a troll move, and I certainly know a lot of people think people like me are over-hyping Attack The Block to the point of undercutting the advocacy. But listen. I'm not that guy pulling that “there's something wrong with you if you don't like this” bullshit that makes people hate film critics. I realize that ultimately one person's awe-inspiring exercise in genre multiplicity/simultaneity, dialogue stylized to the point of musicality, and wonderfully fresh variation on the classic hero's journey is another person's “I don't get it.” Such is the way of the world.

But holy fuck I love this movie. I love the warmth of the colors, the way the kids go from criminals to heroes, the music, “dem tings,” Nick Frost as the local weed dealer, Pest, Jodie Whittaker, the girls, Hi-Hatz's terrible fucking rap song, and Moses. Moses saved the planet. He's a hero. And he's why, if you ask me what the likelihood of Attack The Block becoming a cult classic in the years to come and making everyone forget no one went to see it when it first came out, the only possible response is “Allow it.”


That's my best of 2011. See y'all in 2012, my lovelies.

NOT ONE, BUT THREE, 2010 TOP TENS!

I considered not even doing a Top 10 this year, or doing something weird under the pretense that I was somehow above whoring for traffic. Please. I will wear heels with goldfish in them for more traffic. So, a Top 10 list it is. No such petty considerations as “not having seen everything” or “methadone-shaky critical credibility” are gonna stop this guy.

You know what? Fuck it, I'm going to do more than one Top 10 list. Let's start with . . .


Top 10 Pictures I Haven't Seen

True Grit
Fair Game
Biutiful
The King's Speech
Four Lions
Animal Kingdom
The Killer Inside Me
Blue Valentine
A Solitary Man

All of which I'm looking forward to for a variety of reasons. True Grit needs no introduction: I love the Coens, I love Jeff Bridges when he's got a good script and a real director, and I didn't like the original all that much (Duke was awesome, movie was half-assed), making it a prime candidate for a remake. Fair Game seems like a prime candidate for one of my periodic world-affairs nerd-outs, and a fine opportunity to smile at Naomi Watts for a couple hours; also, I like Doug Liman when he has an actual script.

Biutiful looks like it's going to be two-plus hours of misery wank, but Alejandro González Iñárritu makes me really want to sit through two-plus hours of misery wank. I watched Babel when I was coming down from a migraine and thought it was the tits (and no, not just because of Rinko Kikuchi's), so I'll give Biutiful a shot, aunque Guillermo Arriaga no escribió esta película. Nadie es perfecto.

The King's Speech is one of my soft spot pictures. I have this fatal weakness for diagrammatic feel-good English pictures about people overcoming adversity. It helps that most of them, take Billy Elliott for one shining awesome fucking example, are pretty good. And I like that this one's got a twist: the guy who needs to overcome adversity . . . is the king! Jolly good, cheerio, pip pip old chap. Of course, it's Colin Firth, and I'd watch Colin Firth read the letters to the editor from the Sunday Times. Anyway, all's I'm saying is, if you want me to defend my love of formulaic British feel good movies, all you're getting in response is a “fuck you” and maybe a “stop bothering me” if I'm feeling loquacious.

All I heard about Four Lions is that it's got serious balls and the director's crazy. That always gets my antennae perky. Animal Kingdom's Australian, say no more. The Killer Inside Me is Jim Thompson, Michael Winterbottom, and C-Fleck, which intrigues me, as all three of those motherfuckers were/are nuts. Blue Valentine made the four people who've seen it walk around stunned with smoke coming out their ears, which always intrigues me. And my mom told me to see A Solitary Man, and I'm a good son. (EDIT 1/1/11: Mom: "You made a mistake. It was Animal Kingdom I told you was good. I have Solitary Man on my queue, I haven't seen it yet." Whoops. Still want to see A Solitary Man, though.)


Top 10 Movies That Weren't Good Per Se (Or Even Actually Movies) But That I Still Liked

From Paris With Love
The Warrior's Way
Red
The Town
Heavy Rain
Lost
The Runaways
The A-Team
Tron: Legacy
Human Target

Again, not every movie on this list is good, and only seven of them are movies (and you can make a decent argument that some of the movies aren't even movies). But show me someone who only likes things that are good, and I'll show you a morally consistent tight-ass who has a lot less fun than I do.

From Paris With Love I've already yakked at length about both here and at Premiere, but the bottom line is that movie is fun. It takes time-dishonored action movie clichés and puts slight, subtle, intelligently conceived variations on them, kind of like the way a skilled guitar player can make an ordinary chord progression sound like something exciting and special. Which leads to another way to describe From Paris With Love. It's rock 'n' roll. And I like rock 'n' roll.

I covered both The Warrior's Way and Red for Tor.com; you can revisit those reviews if you like, or if not I'll say both were stylishly executed diversions, if lacking that feverish “let's do another line!” intensity of From Paris With Love. Jang Dong-Gun handles a sword almost as well as Helen Mirren does a machine gun, and if you know me you know movies with cool swordfights and Dame Helen Mirren firing machine guns get much love from yours truly.

The Town (aka The Fackin Tann) is a new entry in the pahk the cah at Hahvid Yahd subgenre of pictures where actors go up to Boston, get unflattering haircuts, and develop accents of the highest cartoonishness. B-Fleck did a fine job directing this picture, and the cast is awesome (Jon Hamm kicks mucho ass as the one guy in the movie without a Bahhhhhhhhstin accent; despite this, it's great fun to bellow “DAWN FACKIN DRAYPA!” whenever he does anything cool, which is frequently) but the script is dumb, and the whole thing with B-Fleck falling in love with Rebecca Hall teeters on the brink of full retard; wondering whether it'll tip or not is more suspenseful than whether B-Fleck and Jeremy Fackin Renner ah gonna fackin get away with the final fackin heist. Still, flaws aside, B-Fleck's here to stay as a director; I just hope he gets more/better help with the script next time.

And now, Heavy Rain, which isn't a movie, per se. But it kind of is. I don't have anything new to add to this, except regret that that La Marseillaise joke didn't work better.

Lost, too, not a movie, but that didn't stop me from yammering like a coked-up parrot about it back in May. Those couple months I spent with Lost were great fun, and concentrating the geek-out in a small period of time probably helped me enjoy it more than the people who suffered through the weeks between episodes only to find out “FUCK it's a fucking Kate episode.” I would be like “Ah, a Kate episode. Oh well.” I think its rewatchability was killed by the way in which it resolved, but that doesn't diminish the first time through one bit. It also makes it a good choice for a localized thing about “best of” a given year, as it was a much-enjoyed one-shot.

The Runaways was a weird movie. Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart were both really good in it, though their performances were a lot more committed to depth and totality than writer/director Floria Sigismondi's script and direction, both of which were concerned almost completely with surface. The Runaways were a singularity in pop music history, an all-girl rock band that charted at a time when that simply did not happen. The Runaways is one of many “rise to fame/crash and burn” music biopics, which is kind of sad, because it could have been more. Still, it's a watchable movie, and should get a lot of credit for avoiding major ickiness in re: 15-year-old Dakota Fanning doing coke and making out with chicks. Anyone looking to perv on that stuff will be disappointed, which is a credit to Sigismondi.

I won't defend The A-Team, partly because I don't remember anything about it except Sharlto Copley being awesome and Jon Hamm (again) showing up at the end as the villain for the sequel if there's going to be one. I really should watch Mad Men at some point, that guy rules.

Again, no defending Tron: Legacy. It was energetic. And Olivia Wilde, though painfully underused, sure is pretty. Empty-headed fun is a proud tradition in cinema. But, you know, not on a Ten Best list.

The not-so-good/not-a-movie list concludes with Fox TV series Human Target, which is pretty good, but not a movie. The story of enigmatic ex-assassin turned protector of the innocent Christopher Chance (Mark Valley), Human Target is well done on a modest scale, with pretty good action and an engaging supporting cast headed by Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley. It's an old-school TV show with a decent sense of the modern age, inasmuch as an old-school TV show needs to have such a thing. And, like most of the things on this list, it's something I enjoy very much but can't/won't defend.


And now, with no further ado . . . the TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2010 (that I've seen), in ascending order from 10 to 1:

Endhiran

Singing, dancing, SF, Indian Voltron Cobra, and Aishwarya Rai. This one's good for anyone with the capacity for joy in their lives. More here and here. This picture got me very excited about getting more into Indian movies, and while I'm still at the very early stages, I'm going to keep on it.


Runaway

Oh, Kanye. Kanye, Kanye, Kanye. The second I heard he directed a 35 minute video for his 9 minute single, I immediately said, “I need to see this.” And OH holy shit. He apparently worked closely with noted hip-hop video director Hype Williams on this, but really Runaway is like Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch showed up at Yeezy's place and said “What's good, baby, you want to split a five-strip between the three of us?” and gave Ye three tabs and a camera and watched as he staggered giggling out into the woods. The scene where Kanye gets pissed at the fancy dinner party because the snooty fucks are snickering about his half-phoenix/half-Victoria's Secret model girlfriend and Kanye stomps over to the piano and starts playing “Runaway” as all the ballerinas come in . . . well it's just as great as the description makes it sound. The movie was a great and thoroughly apt preview for Kanye's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, as it's just as beautifully crafted and duckfucking insane as the record.


Kick-Ass/Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Although these two pictures are quite different, I mention them together because of the comic book connection, and because both frequently made me go, “Wow, is this really happening . . .?” One main difference is that the titular protagonist of Kick-Ass assumes the mantle of comic book hero as a conscious choice, while Scott Pilgrim has it thrust upon him. Both are tales of dorks who achieve great things and end up with stunningly beautiful geek-friendly girlfriends. Despite that similarity, though, these two pictures are vastly different, similar only in their being fantastically entertaining in their own ways.

One thing I do have to say though, as awesome and capable of taking care of herself as Hit-Girl was (Chloe Moretz is ridiculously good in the role), when Mark Strong punches her in the face during the climactic boss fight, it bothered me. Sure she'd killed all his dudes. But she's a fuckin 10 year old girl, man.

(One final note, speaking of Mark Strong: seeing all those English guys, like Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng, playing NYC Italian mobsters was a lot of fun).


The Kids Are All Right

I'm a very big Lisa Cholodenko fan, and have been for years, and was thrilled when she finally put a new picture out (she's been directing TV for forever). I love the way she deals with sexuality, leaving politics out of the question and focusing on the way things actually are. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore's marriage is one of the best, richest, and most honest portrayals of a romantic relationship I've ever seen, and bonus points to Lisa C. for not turning Julianne Moore into a villain for banging Mark Ruffalo out of validation, instead treating her like a real person who made a mistake. Also, leaving it relatively ambiguous though guardedly optimistic about the future of the marriage at the end of the picture is a nice touch, and one of my favorite things about Lisa Cholodenko as a director: she leaves all the cheap melodramatic Hollywood shit at the door and says “All right, people, let's make an actual fucking movie.” God, I love her.


The American

Hey there, Anton Corbijn. Thanks very much for this picture. George Clooney as an aging, shadowy, tight-lipped guy who makes custom-built weapons for assassins and works for a Dutch guy who won a bet with Lance Henriksen to see who could be more of a leathery badass? Sure, I'm all in. Oh, and thanks as well for Irina Bjorklund, Thekla Reuten, and Violante Placido (che bellezza immortale e celestiale . . .)

Every single shot in this movie is so beautiful you feel it. The execution is beautiful, elegant, precise. Oh, and anyone who claims this picture is boring either needs a fucking brain transplant or got given a bootleg copy of The Limits of Control (which was similar in premise and did suck) by mistake.


Inception

I still stand by all this, with the addendum that it gets even better with repeated viewings. And watching it with headphones on is an exquisite experience if you're into sound. It's also a lot less confusing each revisit; if you pay attention, it's all laid right out for you right there. Bravo, Chris Nolan.

By the way, I know box office grosses don't necessarily mean anything, but it rules that this picture of all pictures has made $800+ million.


Black Swan

Again, I pretty much said all I needed to with this post. Jesus Christ, Natalie Portman was good in this. And remember, nearly everything from the first act break on is a metaphor.


The Social Network

No more need be said than this: a movie that not four months ago I thought of on a level with Ridley Scott's rumored adaptation of Monopoly, I know think is the best studio picture since . . . fuck, I don't know. Best in years. For a movie that's so heavily fictionalized, it has an amazing sense of this time and place, the modern age. More here.


And, finally, the #1 . . . drum roll . . .


Winter's Bone

Give Debra Granik what she needs. And get the fuck out of her way. She's one of the best directors in the world right now. And let's see what we can do about making sure Jennifer Lawrence doesn't have to do fucking comic book movies, shall we? I know Matthew “Kick-Ass” Vaughn is directing that X-Men thing she's in next, and he's awesome, but I don't want any fucking around with an actor this good. Jennifer Lawrence HAS IT. Give her roles where she can act. I know this is asking a lot (Gender equity? Crazy talk), but let's give it a try.


Well, that's it. Angry comments about shit I “forgot” are always welcome. Happy New Year, everyone!

TOP TEN--10 TO 6

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!