After having threads devoted to each year of the previous decade, now seems a good time to look back at the overall decade and see what was the best (and the worst).
I’ve got to admit that overall I found the previous decade of films less than inspiring. Sure, there were plenty of good, solid, enjoyable films but there were surprisingly few imo that were truly exceptional pieces of cinema. I don’t think there’s a single film I’ve seen that I would regard as a classic.
As a result, I’ve defined my ‘best of’ list as those I considered to be A-Grade films which I’d define as very high-quality films. But I don’t consider any of them to be flawless, 5 out of 5 films imo (although ‘Good Night… and Good Luck’ probably is closest to that)
A-Grade films (in no particular order) – Good Night and Good Luck (probably the best made film of the decade imo), Michael Clayton, The Queen, The Lives of Others, Brokeback Mountain, Kinsey, About Schmidt, About a Boy, Auto Focus, Gosford Park, Ghost World, High Fidelity, A Single Man, Children of Men
Worst – Righteous Kill, The Oh in Ohio, What Planet Are You from?, Scary Movie (it was a particularly dismal decade for comedy), Mission Impossible 2 (couldn’t watch it all the way through), Thir13en Ghosts
Most Overrated – An Inconvenient Truth, Superbad, Kill Bill, Wonder Boys, Meet The Parents, Spiderman 2
Most Overlooked/Underrated – Auto Focus, The Assasination of Richard Nixon
Back in 2007 ‘Paris, je t’aime’ – a series of short films on various topics with the subtext being a tribute to the city of Paris – was released to a generally successful reception. As I stated when it was reviewed on here, despite it being inevitably a mixed bag I enjoyed it overall, especially the Alexander Payne directed final segment.
Therefore I was quite hopeful about this 2009 New York-based followup which had pretty much the same structure, although there were less short films and they tended to be longer in length.
Alas, while there were some enjoyable segments in this film, I wasn’t greatly enthused by it and it was definitely a step down in quality. Even the better segments had a ‘seen it all before’ feel and there was nothing here that had the resonance of Payne’s segment from the Paris film.
Watching this film led me to think: what makes a good 10 minute (or less) film? Almost more important as to what should be in such a format is what shouldn’t be in it. One of the biggest traps for a filmmaker (especially if they’re used to making feature-length films, which most of these directors are) is to try to do too much in a short space of time. A classic example of this is the Mira Nair segment about the romantic attraction between two characters which can’t be consummated because they’re from vastly different backgrounds. It’s initially enjoyable but then it overreaches itself by attempting a deep emotional pathos that would’ve only worked if we’d known the characters in much more detail; as a result instead of the ending being affecting it feels forced and corny.
One of the better segments is directed by Allen Hughes and shows two people (Bradley Cooper and Drea De Metteo) grappling with the pleasures and doubts about whether to continue on a relationship after a one-night stand. It’s nothing startling but it’s shot and edited with intensity so that it’s quite an absorbing piece. Also enjoyable is Joshua Marston’s piece about an elderly married couple that is also not particularly fresh but thanks to the professionalism of the veteran leads (Eli Wallach and an unrecognizable Cloris Leachman), is quite charming.
Yvan Attal’s two segments are also enjoyable, and they provide the best acting seen in the film. Ethan Hawke is energetic and amusing as he tries to chat up a rather bemused woman after they share a cigarette, only to get a shock at the end. In the second segment Robin Wright Penn and Chris Cooper also impress when she tries to pick him up (again after sharing a cigarette), or does she?
Unfortunately, too many of the shorts are either painless timewasters or tedious. An example of the former would be the Shunji Iwai short about a developing romance between a composer (Orlando Bloom) and personal assistant (Christiana Ricci) which is pleasant enough but you’ve almost totally forgotten it existed by the end of the movie.
An example of the latter is Shekhar Kupar’s effort (written by the late Anthony Minghella) which despite having the talents of Julie Christie and (briefly) John Hurt, has an incomprehensible story and is a total waste of time. Slow, pretentious and vague, it lasts around 10 minutes and feels like it goes for 2 hours.
On a more general level, the film errs in the amount of interaction and overlapping between characters from different segments. It may seem like a cute idea but only if it’s effectively done and too often here it feels like filler.
The biggest problem with this film isn’t the uneven quality of the shorts (which is to be expected) but it lacks real intensity and purpose. It’s almost as if most of the people involved thought this would be a nice concept to be part of but didn’t have much passion or desire to make something really worthwhile. As a result, when the end of the film did arrive at the cinema screening I was at there was almost a collective feeling of “that’s it?”
Despite ‘New York, I Love You’ being a disappointment, I’m a fan of the concept and look forward to the next instalment to be set in Shanghai due for release next year. Hopefully, it will be a step up in quality from this effort.
Part ten of our discussion on the films of the 00’s, this time focusing on 2009.
1) Best of 2009?
2) Worst of 2009?
3) Most underrated?
4) Most underseen?
5) Most overrated?
6) Best performance(s) of the year?
7) Best single scene/sequence of the year?
8) One thing you could change about any single film in 2009 (Example: different cast, different director, different style, different release date, different studio).
9) Most memorable (good or bad) theatergoing experience of the year?
10) Most influential film/performance/style/director?
Obviously feel free to answer only the questions you’re interested in or to write/respond to something else entirely.
Predict the #1 film for the weekend of December 4-6, 2009. The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.
Bonus 1
Will Armored earn over or under 7 million for the weekend?
Bonus 2
Will Transylmania crack seven figures for the weekend?
Bonus 3 (TBD)
Will Everybody’s Fine beat Armored and Brothers at the box-office?
The Road is a painfully bleak look at a world (or at least northeast USA) some 9 or 10 years after a widespread disaster. We are not privy to the actual details of what went down (I have not seen 2012 but I doubt the bombastic Mayan apocalypse was this movie’s precursor) but enough waste was laid to kill most nonhuman life by the time the viewer arrives on the wintry scene.
Have a (decade old) Coke and a smile!
A man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are heading south, but we don’t know what they hope to find when they get there – if ‘south’ can be described as a destination. Perhaps warmth or remnants of civilized society exist somewhere closer to the equator. Armed with a couple backpacks, a stuffed animal, one gun and two bullets the father instructs his son on how to end them both should the worst happen. So very early on we are shown that every man is for himself in this ‘new’ world and we sense immediate danger and despair lurking all around - our two familiars scurry to hide in a forest as a group of men pass by on a truck and we very quickly find out why the man trusts no one. The helplessness and hopelessness on display is suffocating. Only the young boy has retained his innocence and some optimism. He wants to see the good in everyone no matter what his father says.
“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.” – Mohandas Gandhi
Hillsong United started out as a band playing music for their local church (Hillsong) in the youth ministry (also called United) in the late 1990s. As their talents matured and the songs caught on they made a commitment to release an album every year “as long as God keeps bringing us songs.” Their popularity continued to extend beyond their home in Sydney, Australia and reached the far corners of the Earth. In 2005 they embarked on a 2-1/2-year world tour (not contiguously) that took them to places they had only heard of and opened their eyes to things they had only read about. They decided to document their journeys and this movie (as well as last year’s double-album and the continuing movement at www.i-heart.org) is the result. I’m almost positive they set out to make a concert DVD & CD project but along the way it turns out everyone was more touched and changed than they originally thought possible.
The purpose of the film is summed up fairly well in the final trailer by United frontman (if you can call him that) Joel Houston when he realizes that the streets the band travels down to get to the concert venues are likely to be unchanged by what happens inside the venue itself. “Maybe we’re missing the point,” he laments.
If you would allow me, for just a moment, to speak on something I bring up not to be a firestarter, not to throw tinder on a smoldering set of pine needles nestled somewhere deep in the San Fernando Valley, but rather to ask, to foment discussion and out of a true sense of “Why?”: How have these films become the critical and commercial success they have? Are they popular because of their pedigree? Their director, stars, filming location/backstory, etc.? Are they looked-upon as they are because everyone everywhere decides you must look on them with reverence simply because everyone else tells you to?
If you can explain to me why these films are what they are and the reason they are that way, then please, by all means, let me know. But do not just throw in simple explanations like: “You’re retarded, that’s why you don’t get it.” (And please don’t use retarded as a pejorative. It’s juvenile and really insensitive.)
So with no further adieu, I give you Part 1 of the list of movies that I just. don’t. get.
First-and-absolutely-foremost on my list is that bloated carcass of an “epic”:
1. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
Lawrence of Arabia
Okay. I know what you are all going to say. I know the backlash this will engender and I know I must be out of my mind. But I’m being completely honest when I say I Just. Don’t. Get. It. This is a bloated 3-hour mass of men riding camels through the desert. I tried recently to watch this again and, once again, I saw the same thing. So what is it? The cinematography? Then say that. Is it the direction? Then say that. Is it the acting? All this seems to me is a director at the height of his power making the movie he wanted to make…and everyone drinking the Kool-Aid of an obvious master.
2. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
No Country For Old Men
Okay. I’ll give you Fargo. Probably more-so, Raising Arizona. Hell, I even loved Hudsucker Proxy for what it was. But this movie? With a script that was probably thirty pages of actual screenplay that goes nowhere but back around on itself and a thumb-its-nose-at-convention ending, I think this is a great example of critics getting together and asserting their will for a pair of filmmakers who are well-liked and who can influence academy voters and decided they would make a campaign to elevate a decent movie that is simply a generic heist thriller polished with the wry approach of two masters-of-the-game. Even more criminal than how Kevin Costner and Dances with Wolves took the Oscar from Goodfellas was the idea that this movie could beat There Will Be Blood and the upstart Paul Thomas Anderson. “Okay, Coens, you have Tommy Lee Jones as a sheriff? Javier Bardem in a bowl cut? A suitcase of money? Josh Brolin finally coming into his own? And what do you have, Paul? Daniel-Day? With a Noah Cross voice? And a really good oil derrick scene? Here’s a cinematography Oscar.”
Just when I think I’ve found my favorite early works, another comes along to take its rightful place at the top of the food chain.
First, is Burton’s stop-motion masterpiece, VINCENT.
This is a strikingly-shot and handsomely-written film spoken in a verse-style that appears to be an autobiographical script of what one would surmise Mr. Burton grew up wanting to be.
The young man involved describes how he grew up wanting to be Vincent Price and how he has different ideas of things he wants to do compared, I assume, to what the status quo says to do.
Enough from me. Enjoy this, the first Tim Burton film. A true masterpiece of lighting, animation and writing.
“You’re not Vincent Price, you’re Vincent Malloy. You’re not tormented or insane, you’re just a young boy.”
Why this has not become a legendary children’s story, I don’t know.
**Interesting fact: Burton’s girlfriend, an executive at Disney, produced this.
The next I could only find in three parts:
His first major foray into directing, with big names and production values, but still an early film, was FRANKENWEENIE.
Filled again, with stark blacks and whites and harsh shafts of light in a world that, rather than seemingly shot on a backlot, seems to exist perfectly in that Leave It To Beaver world where if you visited the backlot, you would think you were intruding on a neighborhood you shouldn’t be disturbing.
This is, once again, a masterpiece of the psychological underpinning of what it takes to be a child in a world that shows how random terrible things can happen…and what some children think they may be able to do to reverse the awful fates that befall some things.
No doubt, Burton just wondered what it would be like to bring back a dead dog, but he added so much more depth to that simple idea.
Dare I say, I feel, after viewing these two films, Burton has fallen far off his initial brilliance as he made his way through the studio system. What types of movies could this man have made had he stayed independent?
My love of Batman aside, that movie now seems like a large wart of a blemish on his career, a steam-rolled contract hit fostered by those two wunderkind of the Sony system who, it seems, fooled everyone in a town where what you can say and get means more than what you can do. But who am I to question men who make so much money in a very profitable business.
And please don’t get angry, but after these films, Burton strikes me as the dark version of Steven Spielberg, making pitch-prefect representations of the dark side of suburbia, what kids think of when they think about what they wouldn’t want to tell anyone.
All of that aside, this is a great movie, a sign of a brilliant talent, and a very enjoyable watch, with an ending that brings child and adult together in the implication of Burton saying that no one is immune to child’s impulses.
Volume 2 of this series now focuses on two of Scorsese’s early short films.
The first is:
What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
This was a Scorsese short film that seemed to fall between his first film, Vesuvius VI (which I couldn’t find, and which is apparently, amazingly, a Roman Epic inspired by 77 Sunset Strip. Man…I want to see that) and It’s Not Just You, Murray!, about an aging mobster, which seems to be available on an anthology entitled Early Works.
In this short, you can find the energy and style that would color his later films. There are some really-well-done camera shots, like at 3:18, an awesome dolly around an illuminated face.
The second short, made in 1967, arguably his most popular and well-known, is the short entitled The Big Shave or Viet-’67.
This is apparently an allegory on the Vietnam war how Scorsese saw it at the time. I was a bit trepadatious about how much praise I’ve heard about this short, but it’s surprisingly well-made and really rather affecting, given the idea of what Scorsese was obviously going for, given the alternate title.
It’s a very simple short, and pretty powerful. With an economy of place and some great music, we watch a man enter the bathroom and…shave. What happens at the end is where it gets pretty powerful and intense.
One thing that sticks out to me, pretty greatly, is how well-edited the two shorts happen to be. Operating at a pretty high level for being so early.
So I thought I would try something new here and do a series of posts on the early, early works of directors I admire and who I think have made major contributions to the medium of filmmaking.
For the inaugural post I thought I would shed light on a really early work of a major Hollywood director, Quentin Tarantino.
From the YouTube Synopsis by username World2008rain:
“My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987) is an unfinished black and white independent film by Craig Hamann and Quentin Tarantino, while they were working at the now shuttered Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California. The project started in 1984, when Hamann wrote a short 30-40 page script about a young man who continually tries to do something nice for his friend’s birthday, only to have his efforts backfire. Tarantino became attached to the project as co-writer and director, and he and Hamann expanded the short script into an 80 page script. On an estimated budget of $5,000, they shot the film on 16mm over the course of the next four years. Hamann and Tarantino starred in the film, along with several video store and acting class buddies, and worked on the crew, which included fellow Video Archives employees Rand Vossler and Roger Avary. The film is the most overtly comic that Tarantino has made. Tarantino himself referred to it as like a “Jerry Lewis movie”. The original cut was about 70 minutes long but due to a fire only 36 minutes of the film survived. The 36 minute cut has been shown at several film festivals. It has never been officially released.”
A few thoughts:
1.) Listen closely in the first part and you’ll hear the name of a familiar radio station.
2.) The man who comes out of the bathroom in part 2 is, apparently, one of the police with the German Shepherd in the bathroom in Reservoir Dogs.
3.) Starting at 4:50 of the second part there is a rather ambitious and pretty brilliant shot that is one take and involves no cuts and what I can only assume is a dolly or some sort of rig that allowed him to get the shot he got. An early hint that this man really knew what he was doing. Awesome.
4.) Funny. There’s a reference to Aldo Raine in part 3 at the 5:00 minute mark.
5.) What was the whole subplot with the African-American? Big question mark.
6.) Part 3 has a great what seems like a 360-degree pan of a bedroom and the posters on the walls glancing over the woman on the bed and ending on Tarantino at the 9:08 mark.
7.) The commenters say a lot of this script was recycled or re-purposed for True Romance. Would have to watch the two together to say with any certainty.
8.) A strong use of music is present in this film.
Give your thoughts. Would be interested to know what you all think.
Be careful, there is quite a bit of objectionable material herein. You have been forewarned.
There are some brilliant choices and touches of flair in this unique take on a time-warn genre. However, those brilliant choices and touches, for me, sadly, didn’t live up to the idea of what I thought this film would deliver, especially given it’s high festival marks.
First, I will say that, as independent films go, this is a crackerjack of conceit and execution. Confine your characters to one place, put them in a tense situation, heighten the tension and suspense by never showing the horrors we keep hearing (save for one really well done scene) and let us watch a great actor at work and we’ll be riveted for the time it takes to finish the story.
Bravo to the filmmakers and writer for showing us just enough of these characters to make them believable and to make us care and then good job to the director for stepping back and simply letting the camera wash over the made-for-film face of the lead actor, Stephen McHattie. Why hadn’t I known about this Canadian actor sooner? My loss, because he is simply amazing.
I don’t like to give away any of the story in my reviews. Suffice to say, it takes one simple click and not much typing to figure out what you need to know and I, for one, love to go into a movie I know nothing about knowing nothing.
That said, something has inflicted the people of Pontypool with a deadly virus that turns them into the type of Zombie you’ve never witnessed before. The conceit is handled brilliantly and it’s a shame the filmmakers didn’t have more money to explore the idea a bit further than they did.
A few things I didnt understand:
1. The characters’ complete inability to simply not speak. Why not just write things down? (They eventually do, but, come on. You see the horror first-hand. SHUT UP!)
2. The way characters simply appear, sometimes nearly out-of-nowhere.
3. Please, please, please do a remake and show more of what happens in the run-up to the virus destroying its host. This is something we’ve never seen before and it’s really a great idea. Make the doctor(who was a great character) more of the movie so we can see more of what’s happening.
Things I LOVED:
1. The lead actor and his character. Eric Bogosian and Talk Radio pale in the light of this genius.
2. The young woman and her turn. She was great, had a good backstory and then…she loses it. Sad and scary and tense and very-well-handled. (If slightly not handled fully enough).
3. The humor and the pathos mixed together. This guy is sad and finished with life. But they still laugh, they still cry and he still thumbs his nose at the man. Brilliant.
4. The entire last third. The movie goes from tense to awesome to funny to crackerjack zombie flick. Thank you.
If it seems I liked this movie more than I let on, I did. I’m just not sure where to put the ending and what the writer was trying to say. I felt it took something away from the horror of it and made it…dare I say…political. Confused me somewhat and would have liked a different reason for what ultimately happened.
I’m no ‘Trekkie’ by any stretch but I’ve seen enough episodes/movies of the original Star Trek series (and of ‘The Next Generation’ series/movies for that matter) to see its appeal and its weaknesses. At its best, Star Trek provides sophisticated entertainment not through action or gadgetry but through ideas; it dealt with complex moral and personal issues with significant intelligence and perception. The best episodes of Star Trek often linger in one’s memory.
On the other hand it was often schematic and pat in its story and character construction so that it lacked spontaneity and felt a bit lifeless (especially The Next Generation). And virtually all attempts at humour have been corny and dire.
Therefore as a mild fan I was probably in a good a position as any to judge how this film rates on its own terms and as a Star Trek film. Would it carry on the best qualities of the Star Trek series while adding a genuine liveliness to the proceedings, or in its attempt to expand its audience would it ‘dumb down’ with ideas replaced by mindless action? Unfortunately, the latter is the case.
The film’s basic plotline showcases the origins of the assembling of the crew (the characters from the original show) of the USS Enterprise and how James T Kirk (Chris Pine) becomes captain. Mixed in with this is a threat to not only the Enterprise, but the planet Earth from a renegade Romulan force led by Nero (Eric Bana).
The film started off promisingly with a nice pre-title sequence showing the birth of Kirk just as his father sacrifices his life to save hundreds of lives; it had the right balance of action and emotion.
However the film soon loses its way after that especially in its establishment of Kirk’s character which underlines the problems of the film. There’s no hint of the thoughtful persona with a fairly carefree manner being part of Starfleet for noble principles that was evident in the Kirk of the original series. All that’s left here is the carefree style; indeed he’s defined by being a cocky maverick with ‘attitude’. He’s totally insubstantial and seems more suited as one of the central characters in ‘Cloverfield’ (which director J.J. Abrams produced). As a result he’s a less than compelling character to follow.
Kirk’s flippant style is reflected by the film itself; his decision to go from a life of wastefulness to joining Starfleet is done so abruptly and superficially it’s treated as the equivalent of someone deciding to take up soccer on weekends.
There were some scenes that were so inane and lazy they were dispiriting to watch. In particular an early scene where a smug Kirk tries to pick up a disinterested woman in a bar with a brawl ensuing when her colleagues intervene. It’s a scene that’s been done a million times in the past and every tired cliché is dredged up for this version.
What is particularly regrettable is that virtually all the moral and ethical rigour that characterised the series at its best is absent here. Instead we get lots of action, most of it competently staged but without any substance or context it’s hard to care particularly much about it. Not that the narrative is particularly compelling anyway; it relies on more than one unlikely coincidence and the villain Nero is a one-note and unmemorable characterisation.
To be fair the film isn’t a total write-off and has some compensations. It’s watchable and reasonably slick, with a few nice performances. Simon Pegg and Anton Yelchin are enjoyable in their supporting roles of Scotty and Chekov respectively and Leonard Nimoy’s return as Spock provides some badly needed dramatic substance to the film.
But overall, this was a disappointing experience. Plotwise, it reminded me a fair bit of ‘Star Trek: First Contact’ which on all fronts was a far superior film. As for the overwhelmingly positive critical response it has got, I can only summarise that critics are easily pleased these days.
Sleep Dealer is a film that played the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, a prize that awards $30,000 dollars to an outstanding film at the festival dealing with science or nature or featuring a scientists or…naturalist, I guess you could say, as a main character.
Sleep Dealer - Directed by Alex Rivera
I will say without hesitation, that the screenwriting award is more than well-deserved and the themes it tackles are so fantastical yet prescient that the Sloan award is easily a no-brainer.
I often try to remember, back when a movie like Blade Runner was released, what it was like to look at the screen and see these fantastical images, images dealing with a robotic future in a wasteland of tv images and technology run amok and not have any present-day framework to connect any of it to what we’re living today.
Watching a fictional vision of the near-future now, however, is a completely different experience.
One is able to see a movie such as Sleep Dealer and afterward go to Google and pull up stories that, though in the framework of the movie were as fantastical as machines that can read our thoughts and then actually read a story where scientists have created a machine that can read our dreams. Just what type of paradigm shift is now happening?
A lot of science fiction movies proffer technologies within storylines that most likely will never be any more than fantastical fictional elements. For example, the 2004 independent film Primer and its treatise on time travel.
Sleep Dealer, however, manages, through its award-winning screenplay, to proffer a future with technology that eerily evokes modern possibilities and ties it into a, if not completely original and a bit clunky, thoroughly engaging and absorbing love story revolving around a devastating incident that the main character unwittingly causes.
The skill filmmaker Alex Rivera shows with this material goes a long way to helping the viewer look past the Captain Power-level special effects and the sometimes jagged editing to see a somewhat profound view of what our future and the future of the American work-force will look like not far from now. Add to that the filmmaker’s idea to give light to a problem most of the world faces with public/private water supplies, and one can’t look at what they’re seeing with anything but understated awe at how Rivera was able to say so much with so little.
If there is one thing that can be said for how much someone likes a film, it’s that I wish there had been more time devoted to each element of the movie. If this were a two hour film, and funded correctly, Rivera could speak on social issues using the genre of sci-fi far better than anything Inarritu has ever managed to accomplish with his esoteric, hollow dramas.
Someone please give this man the funding he needs for his already-mentioned sequel. I can’t wait to see what comes next from this first-rate international filmmaker and I’m glad I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to begin watching his films at the beginning of his career.
