michael haneke's FUNNY GAMES (2007)

it's hard to shake the feeling that writing about (or indeed even thinking too hard about) Funny Games is in and of itself a bit of a trap; from Haneke's point of view, nose-thumbing intellectual dissonance seems the funniest game of all. but it's still fascinating, and its contradictions are central to that even as they perhaps hold the audience at arm's length from the heart of the matter; we're given a spry, stern lecture on screen violence and traumatic-miserablism-as-entertainment, wrapped up in a slick, tense box unequivocally and unapologetically learned in the finer points of both. Haneke, of course, knows this, and isn't afraid to let us know that he knows, but as compelling as his film is (for all of these reasons and more) there's a smugness to the whole thing that undermines the sincerity of its ideas long before its textual clashes have the chance, and in that regard Haneke and his Funny Games are unsuccessful - such games are a lot more fun when the dealer doesn't show his hand.

sergio leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)

Leone is one of the embarrassing gaps in my film knowledge, but i've seen the light that is Once Upon The Time In The West, and i'm ready to devour the rest. i don't know if i'm unequal to the task of writing on it or just too lazy to embark on what would take pages to describe, but the short version is that West is grand and brilliant in a way that few films are, and lacks not one bit of the confidence inherent in those qualities. it's been a long time since a film shoehorned itself into a shortlist of my all-time favorites, but Once Upon A Time In The West just strolled in like it owned the place.

bruce timm's BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM (1993)

i'm the first to put Batman: The Animated Series forth as the most faithful, accomplished superhero cartoon in memory (and up there with the best cartoons period) but its bigscreen foray doesn't completely live up to its legacy; Timm & co don't seem comfortable flexing their storytelling muscles at "feature" length, and even though the flashback structure provides passable padding, the story isn't sufficiently engaging (and, more critically, the action sequences aren't nearly numerous or spectacular enough) to make too much of an impression.

richard kelly's SOUTHLAND TALES (2006)

"evacuate the atrium, move to the rear of the mega-zeppelin."
- Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (as Boxer Santoros), delivering the best line of his storied career

finally released on DVD after years of tweaking and an embarrassingly minor theatrical run, Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales is the story of a dimwitted porn star, an amnesiac conservative actor, an alternative energy baron, the head of a national surveillance agency, a ice-cream truck driving arms dealer, bong-huffing neo-Marxist extortionists, a southern senator, a soldier slinging a drug called Liquid Karma, and two suspiciously identical policemen, among many others. an attempted summary of the film’s story would turn into a list twice as long, as full of tangents and halfbaked notions as genuine plot points. Southland Tales is a movie of Ideas, and it wants you to know that. it’s cerebral, but also deadly silly and stupid.

more than anything, though, the key descriptor for Kelly’s follow-up to his much-loved, much-puzzled-over Donnie Darko is audacity. for the first twenty minutes, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the whole thing’s just a big joke, as a scarred-up Iraq veteran (Justin Timberlake) introduces us to a present-day post-apocalypse California, our primary players, and leagues of paranoiac backstory set to a series of glossy, over-designed effects. considering Kelly cut forty minutes out of the film following a positively disastrous Cannes screening, it’s hard to begrudge him the unfortunate Band-Aid of awkward exposition, but the scope of what he introduces, the obviously non-chewable bites he takes right off the bat, still leave you primed for the biggest cinematic goof since Freddy Got Fingered. (or at the very least Lady In The Water…that one was a joke, right?) and for an hour afterwards, it just plods forward without particular drive or interest.

then a funny thing happens: everything starts falling together. not in the way Kelly probably envisioned as this bloated clown originally emerged from his word processor, mind you, but falling together nonetheless. throughout Southland Tales’ running time it pretends pathetically to the thrones of Vonnegut, Robert Altman and Philip K Dick, but when it’s honest with itself there’s really quite a lot to be said for the film as a sort of slick, maximalist heir to Repo Man. it’s a shaggy dog story full of metaphysical lunacy and infuriatingly dense storytelling, with none of the patient, melancholy character work that make Donnie Darko so beguiling. but whether it deserves it or not, it redeems itself in small ways amid the mess, and ends up working unexpectedly well on its own terms, which is all you can really ask of it. it’s not hard to see why so many have tossed Southland Tales aside as a disaster, but the curious shouldn’t be dissuaded.

(from the KNOXVILLE VOICE)

robert wise's THE HAUNTING (1963)

it's all too true that they don't make 'em like they used to, just as it's true that Robert Wise managed to make this one like they wouldn't for years to come. The Haunting drags a little towards the beginning, sure, and could use more showing and less telling where Eleanor is concerned, but there's no denying the film's creepy power over the audience, just as there's no underestimating the presence of mind in Wise's craft; though the genre today scrapes by on a much lower brow, horror's hacks and heroes are all still taking cues from The Haunting's accomplishments.