martin scorsese's SHUTTER ISLAND (2010)

it's fortunately not the case that Shutter Island is a disappointment of a film -- it's a good time, and one of the best mainstream psychological thrillers i've seen in a while -- but there certainly is a level of disappointment that Scorsese's pulp dalliance didn't pay off in the ways I'd hoped. the mood and design of the film are terrific, and the way it bounds between unsettling encounters, rarely returning to a character it doesn't have to, is a wonderful way to keep us from our bearings, and Leo from his. but no matter how novel the journey is, Marty seems hamstrung by the very specific place he needs to end up, and all the things that endpoint dictates to the rest of the narrative. there's a constrained feeling to Shutter Island extending quite beyond its (often over-obvious) visual themes of isolation and imprisonment, and it's hard to tell if Scorsese's self-conscious paean to Hitchcockian psycho-noir is at fault or merely a sly tarp thrown over material he didn't really know what to do with. friends complained that the twist was telegraphed, and in the early scenes i felt i was bound to agree, but over time i found myself guessing around and not quite nailing it, so i don't think that's a failing of the film. but i do understand why they were otherwise so faint in their praise: it's a tense time at the movies, but there wasn't any reason for us not to expect something more.

michael haneke's THE WHITE RIBBON (2009)

(click to read via METRO PULSE)

woody allen's EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU (1996)

in regards to Woody Allen i've gone, over time, from fanboydom to apologism and now to distanced respect for his middling work and disdain for the lesser stuff, of which there seems to be more every year. Everyone Says I Love You is one of those in the middle; in some respects it is one of the stronger pieces of that period in his career (the "Miramax years", I suppose, from Bullets Over Broadway right up to Sweet And Lowdown, the best film he's made in two decades) because it pleases with much less effort than the works surrounding it, and lacks the (mostly) unwelcome cynicism that's defined so many of his films since then. Most directors in love with How Things Used To Be seem to find themselves drawn towards making a musical just for the hell of it, and Everyone Says I Love You is successful in that it keeps a quietly goofy enough tone to pull it off, a tone that helps the rest of the film get by between numbers. the story is corny and partially recycled (listening in on therapy sessions? at least wait ten years before cribbing your own plots) and Natasha Lyonne's narration, filled with affected stammers read directly from the page, consistently cripples the experience. but the here-and-there cleverness of the musical conceit (Natalie Portman's sobbing her way into an Alda-aborted "I'm Through With Love" is one of the funniest gags in the film) really does make the whole thing worthwhile, and Allen & Goldie Hawn's dance by the river gets me every time. it's not one of his best films by any measure, but it's one of the few lesser ones i don't ever mind revisiting.

post-vacation roundup

i took a vacation, and it was the worst thing ever. i happened to watch a few movies; only the last two were really of my own initiative.

Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail, or at least most of it. crammed with useless characters, full of emotional inconsistencies, and technologically dated to a degree approaching unwatchability, as if it needed any help.

Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia. (yes, i watched two Nora Ephron movies in a row.) there's a good reason this movie boosted Julia Child book sales and left Julie Powell's sales pretty well alone: the sequences following Child through her formative years are fascinating and enjoyable (Meryl Streep & Stanley Tucci are pretty wonderful) but the present-day stuff -- again a little uncareful, if slyer, about tech stuff, but i suppose that's the story, and the audience -- is corny and uninteresting.

Paul Greengrass' The Bourne Ultimatum, which still kicks miles of ass even edited up and filled with commercial breaks. i can't say which i prefer of Greengrass' Bourne movies (Doug Liman's first one is super-fun, but not on the same level) but the tight narrative focus of this one, full as it is with baller action sequences, may give it the edge.

Scott Cooper's Crazy Heart, which is everything it needs to be as a showcase for Jeff Bridges, who will win an Oscar as a result. a fine little film, and a refreshingly un-showy debut for Cooper.

Todd Phillips' The Hangover. Phillips has always been the fratty, less keen older brother of last decade's semi-alt-comedy stirrings, and though this may be his best movie (i was particularly glad to see him use Zach Galifianakis to a warranted but unexpected extent) it's still too broad and too flawed. (what's with the abrupt, completely superfluous pop music cues anyway? studio meddling, or just the depths of taste?)

Jacques Tati's Mr. Hulot's Holiday, the kickoff of a Tati retrospective at Chicago's Gene Siskel Film Center. the least edgy of the Hulot movies but still a wonder of a gentle comedy; Tati's patience in the setup and execution of most of the film's gags is just breathtaking, and excuses that there are 80% more mild giggles than full-on laughs.

Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, at the wonderful Music Box theater. one of my favorite books as a child, and the most purely enjoyable film i saw last year. Anderson's shtick had seemingly run out of steam, but apparently all he needed to do was bounce it to another medium...being cutesy is no crime when you're making a cartoon about a fox. "divide that by nine, please!"

kathryn bigelow's THE HURT LOCKER (2009)

there's been a lot of talk since people started making movies about the Iraq war that people don't want to go watch movies about the Iraq war, but Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker -- called "a Platoon for the Iraq war" by ex-hubby Jim Cameron, which is perhaps a more smartly observed line than anything in Avatar -- is a pretty definitive refutation, no matter how underseen it remains. most films made thus far about the war were obviously done so from a place of political anger, and directed (consciously or not) at those who feel the same; while Bigelow's does stoop to the occasional potshot/groaner (one of the film's not-inconsiderable flaws) it's still quite clear her aim is to make an honest-to-god war film like we haven't seen in some time.

but that's not to say we've necessarily seen anything quite like this, and not just because we skipped all those other Iraq movies. The Hurt Locker is an action film and a war film, but plays like neither where it really counts; in choosing to focus on a small team of soldiers tasked with the disposal of live improvised explosives -- among the most unknowable enemies in a land chock full of them, and almost certainly the most devastating --  Bigelow (and writer Scott Boal, who despite strong work is more to fault for the film's problems) has found a top-notch scenario for visceral suspense, and makes the most of it. several of the setpieces play out for two or three times as long as a less tasteful, less sure filmmaker would think to let them, and each takes a jagged trajectory, ratcheting up the tension at irregular intervals, sometimes ending thirty seconds before we know they're over, sometimes ending three minutes after we think we're sure.

what fills the gaps between these scenes is much more uneven, and even corny toward the end, attempting a character study of the sort of solider that relishes his scrapes with death above all other earthly pleasures (including Evangeline Lilly!) but not really having the point of view to say anything compelling about it. Jeremy Renner is terrific in the role, but, like the film itself, always best from beneath his explosives suit.

scott teems' THAT EVENING SUN (2010)

(click to read via METRO PULSE)

ten favorite movies, 2000-2009

A to Z:

Michael Bay's BAD BOYS II (2003)

Kinji Fukasaku's BATTLE ROYALE (2000)

Fernando Meirelles' CITY OF GOD (2002)

Michel Gondry's ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

Brad Bird's THE INCREDIBLES (2004)

Tony Kaye's LAKE OF FIRE (2006)

Peter Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS: 
TEH WHOLE SHEBANG (2001-2003)

Edgar Wright's SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004)

James Gunn's SLITHER (2006)

Paul Thomas Anderson's THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007)

apologies, I was going to draft little mini-writeups of all of these but I've already written about several of them here (linked in such cases, as they were in the previous posts, at the film's title) and the rest I haven't seen recently enough to do anything but run my mouth. 

stray defenses: 

• Bad Boys II is the Last Great Action Flick, and the only Great film M. Bay will ever make
• Shaun is funnier but Slither is sharper, and criminally overlooked
• Lake Of Fire may be, in its own way, the best nonfiction film I've ever seen
• and Incredibles is the best Pixar film, because it just is

and stray stats, because i think they're interesting:

• I suppose I agree with my list that Guillermo Del Toro (with three films) was the filmmaker of the decade. Peter Jackson teeeeeechnically has three films in my top ten, but they're counted as one, and then The Lovely Bones was just awful.
• 2002 was quantitatively the best movie year of the aughts, with nine -- Adaptation, City Of God, Punch-Drunk Love, Spellbound, Blade II, Blody Sunday, Dirty Pretty Things, Talk To Her and The Two Towers -- out of 53. (I split LotR and Kill Bill up into parts for fairness on this one.)
• Qualitatively is harder to say. I'd tie crowd-pleaser city 2004 (Kill Bill, Spider-man 2, Eternal Sunshine, The Incredibles, Mean Girls, Shaun Of The Dead and...well, Primer) with 2007, which of its six gave me two of my favorite cinema experiences (Grindhouse and King Of Kong) and then saw There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men battle it out in a wonderfully heavy awards season.
• Worst movie year turns out to be 2009 -- big ol' goose egg, there -- but I suppose it's hard to add fresher stuff to lists like this, and I'd wager at least Where The Wild Things Are and Crank: High Voltage would shimmy their way in if I ever came back to this.

thanks for reading! see you in ten years!


#11-#50, alphabetically:
Part One: Adaptation through Dirty Pretty Things
Part Two: The Fog Of War through The Man Who Wasn't There
Part Three: Mean Girls through Spider-man 2
Part Four: Spirited Away through Zodiac

favorite films 2000-2009 (part four)

Spirited Away through Zodiac, after the jump.

favorite films 2000-2009 (part three)

Mean Girls through Spider-Man 2, after the jump.

favorite films 2000-2009 (part two)

Fog Of War through The Man Who Wasn't There, after the jump.

peter jackson's THE LOVELY BONES (2009)

(click to read via METRO PULSE)

scott sanders' BLACK DYNAMITE (2009)

it's tempting to underrate Black Dynamite because it is in one sense little more than a canny pastiche, painstakingly and to great effect re-creating the 'tude and 'sthetic of 70s soul cinema but necessarily sidestepping originality and even (depending on how you define it) sincerity. it is both impossibly straight-faced and a series of sly winks, and as its reputation builds it will be referred to by people who throw words around as a parody, or a spoof; it's neither of those things, but the mistake is understandable. Black Dynamite is indulgent novelty, and there's no getting around that.

but that doesn't stop it from being one of the year's funniest, most entertaining movies, and almost parenthetically one of its best. the core is Michael Jai White, who co-wrote the screenplay and stars as its titular badasssss, a Vietnam vet, ex-CIA, occasionally nunchuck-wielding soul brother whose quest to avenge his brother's murder pits him against drug dealers, cops, junkie orphans ("I will shake this poisonous shit out of your little smacked-up body if I have to!" "Black Dynamite stop, we've tried that, nothing works"), pimps and the Fiendish Dr. Wu on his way to fight The Man himself. it would probably be a big silly mess if White (and his script!) weren't so pitch-perfect, in both his hard-assed, super-cool demeanor (he does not so much imitate Blaxsploitation heroes as create the Last Great one) and his considerable kung-fu excellence.

but it's Sanders that really sells it: from the film's uproarious, awkwardly propulsive tone to the framing, texture and "production gaffes" (one scene sees a character bitch-slap another in mid-fight, at which point the slapee dejectedly breaks character and is replaced frames later by a different actor) he has made a film that would pass flawlessly for the sort of films it mimics were it not just a liiiiiiittle too smart for its own good. (Sanders is an encouraging new force in the dire world of black cinema, not matter how much Black Dynamite's ingrained (pop)cultural politics may seem to trivialize it.) it is above all else an example of how to goof on something dear to you: with wit, definitive knowledge and zero self-consciousness. despite a criminally minor theatrical run, Black Dynamite is an unmistakable success, and doesn't have long to cool its heels in obscurity.

my favorite films of the decade (part one)

i made this list for elsewhere and it'd be silly not to validate my time ever-so-slightly by reposting it here. the first four posts will be my eleventh through fiftieth favorite films (ten in each post) alphabetically, the last will be my top ten, also alphabetically. if you have a sure single favorite film of the decade, that sucks for you, you did not see enough movies.

Adaptation through Dirty Pretty Things, YouTube clipped all to death, after the jump.

werner herzog's THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009)

the one thing i feel like i can say about Herzog's Bad Lieutenant (besides that Nic Cage's hunched, manic performance is my very favorite in a career full of fifty awful performances and a handful of truly Great ones) is that it's the best full-concept gag since Antichrist; under the guise of a cop movie, Herzog presents us with a cartoon character study that goofily challenges our ingrained relationship to a cornered hero (or even a more run-of-the-mill antihero) with the odds stacked impossibly against him. in most cases these situations intend for us to wonder just how the protagonist is going to get out of this mess, and to pull for him every step of the way, while here we only wonder which particular hue of flames Bd. Lt. McDonach will end up going down in, and how many people he will end up taking with him. (hell, we are actively rooting for it to happen, because he deserves every one of a spectrum of horrible fates.) but Herzog sees nothing so boring as tragedy in this story -- it is not only a comedy, but one of the year's funniest -- and thumbs his nose at our spoiled expectations, ending the film with a conspicuously whiz-bang reverse house of cards as fearlessly, determinedly and downright gleefully amoral as anything i've seen in a long while. goddamn, what fun.

john hillcoat's THE ROAD (2009)

that The Road has been done for at least a year and a half now had me pretty worried about how it would turn out, but now that i've seen it i understand the delay says much more in its favor than against it. if i were a movie executive who approved financing for an Oprah-approved, bestselling post-apocalypse tale by one of our greatest living writers and then sat down in a screening room two years later and saw The Road, i wouldn't really know what to do either. (besides maybe go home and put a gun in my mouth.)

but the truth is that The Road would have been one of 2008's best films, and is certainly one of 2009's. (and looking at the rest of my year-end list, this is actually one of the most Oscar-y!) i'm embarrassed to say i haven't read Cormac McCarthy's book, and i imagine 90% of the film's strengths are to his credit alone; The Road is the smartest look at our planet's death rattle i've seen, credible to its core by avoiding the gimmick and contrivance that defines these films. there are roaming gangs, cannibals, and all that, but they are rooted in banal man-sized evil, which makes them unreasonably scarier. (my favorite villain is actually the oh-so-obvious one i haven't seen elsewhere: forests of decaying, collapsing trees.) but the man-sized goodness, and its tendency to waver, is what makes the difference; the Man comes from the world before but the Son has never known anything else, and how that defines their relationship is the most compelling thing about McCarthy's story. every moment of their life together is about basic survival, and so their relationship is reduced to a similarly elementary level, leaving the themes wide open. and since it's McCarthy, he takes this broadness as an opportunity to write in miniature.

but, again, i haven't read the book, so i feel foolish trying to talk about all that. but if Hillcoat wasn't brutally faithful to the material, i certainly wouldn't have guessed; The Road doesn't even pull its punches when it could get away with it, and Hillcoat brings a wonderfully lyrical tone that lets emotion assert itself without breaking up the bleak visuals and bleaker outlook.

i'll stop here. The Road is still affecting me a day later (moreso because i sat down to write about it) and i can't really do it justice, not at the moment. one of the best films of the year, no worse for wear after a year in the vault. why didn't this get more attention?

oh yeah because it's DEPRESSING AS ALL HELL

pete docter's MONSTERS, INC (2001)

before Ratatouille broke Pixar into a creative sprint, Monsters Inc was their most definitively original work, and that (along with Sully's still-breathtaking fur, jesus christ) keeps it fresh as the three before it start to show a touch of wear. but it also sits juuuust below Finding Nemo as their most classically accomplished screenplay: it's high-concept (in the best possible way) but doles out its information about the characters and their peculiar world in a completely seamless way, never talking down to the audience or daring for a moment to cease entertaining. (it pains me to think that the execrable Shrek movies -- flawed in all the ways this film is perfect -- will be forever tied to it.)

take the ending, as an example of Pixar's good taste. in another studio's film it would be a closing scene: a big hug, some sort of sappy, closure-stressing exchange of dialogue, big swell from the string section, quick punchline, cut to a montage of all the characters enjoying life, physical humor abounds, and ooohhhhhhwaitforit SMASH MOUTH AS THE CREDITS ROLL

here: one medium shot, one heart-crushingly wonderful word of off-screen dialogue, a facial expression, a tinkle from the score, cut to black.

but which one gets the Oscar? gah.

jason reitman's UP IN THE AIR (2009)

this is the prestige film of the season? how curious. Up In The Air is an entirely pleasant, appealing movie -- precisely the sort of thing upper-middlebrow families are lucky to gobble up after a long morning opening Christmas presents -- but seems most notable as a do-over for Jason Reitman and his tonally boneheaded debut Thank You For Smoking. this one finds a similar ugly-corner-of-the-zeitgeist angle (job losses here instead of lobbyists) but drops the glib, look-at-me-i'm-a-satire-please-look-at-me attitude in favor of...well, histrionics, but competent and mostly well-intentioned ones. George Clooney could carry this sort of movie asleep on a foldout couch by now, but he turns it up when he needs to, and the rest of the cast -- i'd like to single out Anna Kendrick, but can't think of any specific reason, because it's just that kind of flick -- keeps game company. (seeing as how the cast of Juno made everyone mistake a good screenplay for a great one, we can say at least of Reitman that he is good with his performers.)

but what are we supposed to make of the thing? first there is the profession of firing people: is Clooney, able to travel around firing strangers face to face while feeling by all means terrific about himself, better than Kendrick, who wants to tele-sack people but ends up reacting too strongly to the horror of it all? that's certainly the vibe we get at points, but Up In The Air doesn't own this conflict, or the more egregious one it unleashes in its third act when Our Boy does a big 180 just to tug the heartstrings. (Reitman pulls back from this reversal, almost arbitrarily, but the damage is done.) is it weird that something should be so incongruous yet so predictable? perhaps not, but it pretty definitively casts Up In The Air out of the company of the year's better films. a friend wondered what a smarter filmmaker like Alexander Payne might have made of this material, and i agree: it's an entertaining story, interesting and probably worth telling, but there is nothing special in what's been done.

guy ritchie's SHERLOCK HOLMES (2009)

good for Guy Ritchie, finally getting the comeback he sorely needed and probably deserved. it helps, of course, that Sherlock Holmes is somewhat of a predetermined -- premeditated may even be better in the comeback context -- success, mining one of Hollywood's oldest bankable IPs and co-headlined by two of its finest entertainment-minded actors, but it's also very fairly a Guy Ritchie movie, embracing (moreso toward the beginning) his penchant for both kinetic asides and dudes hitting other dudes really, really hard. what it doesn't do is let Ritchie wander off into his own stupid head: though the film plays a little long and is unfortunately lacking in genuine Dolye-ian Mystery, it's otherwise an exemplary bit of franchise kickoff, full of easygoing buddy humor, rousing action setpieces and careful design.

back again 2010

ok, so: this blog started three years ago as a new year's resolution, which i kept right up until i got distracted by getting married, then continued intermittently for a year afterward, and then i slowly/abruptly/whichever abandoned it. i've still been writing film reviews for knoxville's Metro Pulse (the films i've written about since my last post here are accessible below) but here's to a new year, and getting back into doing this as well.

first of all, the Metro Pulse year-end list, to which i contributed five entries: Where The Wild Things Are, Crank: High Voltage, Observe And Report, Big Fan and Moon. (for the record Drag Me To Hell, Anvil: The Story Of Anvil, District 9 and Fantastic Mr. Fox would round out the list, with positions shifting according to my mood. i'll leave Number Ten open for stragglers.)


the rest of my year in film writing: