La Vie En Rose

Firstly, a word about order. I love many of these films equally, in different ways. For example, I love Spaceballs, and have watched it at least 15 times. I've only viewed this next pick, La Vie En Rose, twice, probably because its content is at times so difficult to stomach. But just because La Vie En Rose is more serious, and, perhaps more noble in it's intentions does not make it a "better" film. The two pictures have totally different purposes; and at said purposes, they both succeed wonderfully. So ultimately, many of these films on my list aren't per se "better" than others, but I've no choice but to separate them, unless I want the biggest tie in the history of Best Lists. So try not to get too bogged down in the minutae of which film is which number. Find one that suits your mood and pop it in. Oh, and btdubs, adding a new feature called "Singular Scene", that will summarize a specific moment from the film that stands out to me the most. Also, thanks to all who commented, verbally, electronically, or psychically, on the first post. Please continue, so that my mad Jew love for you will grow.

FILM #99
LA VIE EN ROSE


The 25: The tale of France's most revered performer gets an excitingly unconventional screen adaptation that features the most stunning breakout turn in decades.

La Vie En Rose, about legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf, is not a biopic. It couldn't care less about facts, dates, even the verifiable historical accuracy of the events that occurred. Instead, it aims to take us inside the fevered mind of a dying woman looking back on her life, recalling it in a messy, breathless barrage of highs and lows. Miraculously, it succeeds. This isn't the first movie to employ the "life flashing before our leading characters eyes" conceit, but it's the first to get it almost entirely right. I've obviously never died (unless I am in fact reincarnated, in which case I sincerely apologize to my previous manifestations), but I don't think it's a stretch to say that, when we look back on our time here, replay it all in our mind, it won't take on the form of a Big Movie. The memories will probably fly to us at random, interrupt each other, even indirectly comment on each other, take on such a vivid, strange reality that we will feel both like we're re-living and analyzing them under a looking-glass until, God willing, we reach some kind of conclusion about the point of it all. Director Olivier Dahan apparently agrees with me, and captures this disorienting process by scrapping any kind of linear plot and throwing us headfirst into a seemingly random assembly of pivotal moments in this woman's life. Edith is abandoned with a cadre of prostitutes. She has a brush with blindness. She sings on a street. She witnesses a circus. She learns to pray. She gets drunk. She falls in love. She is a drug-addled elder. She is a young woman at a tense voice lesson where she learns to sing "words, not sounds." She is collapsed at a dressing room table in a sweaty heap, shaking with stage fright. She is onstage for the first time, where music pours out of her like a bittersweet honey. But through it all, she is Edith Piaf, the woman of hunched stature, sad, olive-green eyes, and a singing voice that rings out like a mournful, beautiful church bell of longing and loss. This is all thanks to the actress who plays her, Marion Cotillard, who totally captures the public image of the woman while leaving room for her own personal interpretation of the songstress. She nails the little details, yes-Edith's strange hand tics, her deep, open-mouthed breaths between notes, her weird waddle of a walk. But she also conveys the constant shifting feelings of a woman in a passionate love-hate affair with a life that seems to give and take from her in equal measure. All this, and she never really seems to be trying. And to think people were actually surprised when she won the Oscar! All the other performance and technical aspects of the film are top-notch, but it's Cotillard's work that propels it, guiding it smoothly past a few rough, unfortunate brushes with silly melodrama. This is not an easy movie to watch. It lays out, with more squeamish detail than we're used to, the amoral life of the artist. But it's an exhilarating opportunity to watch two geniuses at work; Dahan, the co-writer and director who dreamed up this so-mad-it's-brilliant approach to the material, and Cotillard, who brought it all to life. Together, they create an astonishing portrait of a woman desperately sorting through the jumbled puzzle pieces of her existence, until, towards the end of it, she finally takes a stab at life's meaning in a quietly touching, very telling exchange with a young reporter:
"Reporter: What is your advice to a woman?
Edith: Love.
Reporter: To a young girl?
Edith: Love.
Reporter: To a child?
Edith:.....Love."

The SINGULAR SCENE: Crushed by the death of her lover, Edith barrels down a hallway, sobbing uncontrollably, until, in a devastating moment of magical realism, the hall turns into a stage, and our heroine lets her grief out in song.

*Fanfare* Introducing the Heavenly Hundred!

"Making a top 100 list is what separates movie lovers from bona fide cinemaniacs."

I saw this on the back of some sprawling lead-weight of a coffee table book at Barnes and Noble yesterday. Whoever wrote it probably intended it as a simple, vaguely humorous statement. I took it as a challenge. I can make a top hundred too, bitch. And so, on this final day of my second Winter Break (I refuse to call this "Spring Break"-open your damn windows, people), I begin:

THE HEAVENLY HUNDRED-The Best Films Ever Created, As Selected by An Adolescent Jew Who Truly Loves the Art Form. Intimately.

Five Questions You're Asking (If, in fact, you care)

1. Shouldn't you wait till you're older to do this?-Shouldn't I do this before I go off to college, get married, have a kid, get a job, get divorced, and die alone/with a trusty trio of dogs as my only compadres? While I have time, youthful energy, a low bullshit tolerance, and all of my film-crazed soul to pour into this, might as well git'r'done.
2. How often are we gonna have to put up with your damn blabbering?-Once a week, at some point during the weekend, I'll post a new film. A film a week for 100 weeks-this'll take over a year. I hope you'll stay along for the ride.
3. What makes a "great film"?-I like movies with purpose, even if the purpose is just flat-out entertainment. When a picture doesn't know what its trying to do-is it a slasher flick or a social commentary? A fancy-free shoot-'em-up or a tragic drama that just happens to contain violent outbursts?-it tends to show up there on the screen like a metaphorical wardrobe malfunction. I live for those great moments when every facet of a production comes together to create pure magic-the finale of Goodfellas or the "I'm Easy" scene in Nashville. But ultimately, as Roger Ebert said, great films are defined by something intangible between the frames-golden threads of strange, invisible magic that draw all the beautiful pieces together into an indelible whole.
4. What is the "25"?-In Robert Altman's dark-as-night comedy The Player, a screenwriter refuses to acknowledge a film's greatness unless it can be summed up, or "sold" in twenty-five words or less. So, to prove the infinite badassery of these works, I'll follow his rule.
5. Will you get started already?-Sure. But one last thing. If you've seen the film, if you agree, disagree, want me dead, want to have a moviefilm festival, want me extradited, WHATEVER-please comment. In addition to fulfilling my constant need to broaden my cultural horizons and further solidifying my inability to shut up, I would love to spread my movie love among my readers, like the best virus ever.
SO, HERE WE GO. I'll always introduce these posts with "HH", so you know what they are....



Film #100: SPACEBALLS

THE 25: Yiddish jokes in space, flying Winnebagos, and other classic comic conceits from a maestro of madness.

Oh god. You've given up on this already. You were looking for a philosophical picture, a classic, something moving, controversial, groundbreaking. Instead, my first pick is a film where a principal character is called Pizza the Hut and penis jokes are stretched (no pun intended) to truly epic proportions. It's made by Mel Brooks, one of the most successful Jews out there. He's trafficks almost entirely in comedic pictures, but there's something unique about his approach. Most comedies contain simple stories that serve as structural clotheslines on which to string a handful of Big LOL-Worthy Set-Pieces-think the dance scene in The Proposal. In Spaceballs, we hardly pause for story-it plays like a succession of set-ups and punchlines that just happen to unfold in a linear, plot-esque fashion. Mel Brooks is like that drunkard who throws a million darts at the board in hopes that a couple will stick, except said darts are actually jokes. Spaceballs just happens to be the film in which an unusually large amount of them hit bullseye. If there is a "plot", it's something about a Hitler-stached politican (Brooks himself) and the nebbishy, fetish-mad mastermind Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) teaming up to capture a wealthy runaway-bride princess (Daphne Zuniga) as fodder for a blackmail scheme, and the roguish duo of man-boy (Bill Pullman) and dog-man (John Candy) who protect her.
But it's all an excuse to explore the mad, mad, mad, mad world Brooks has created, an absurdist universe where oxygen is sold in soda cans and princes are named after medicinal products. We meet Yogurt (again, Brooks), a pawn-shop Yoda who's too busy making merchandising for the movie we're watching ("Spaceballs the lunchbox! Spaceballs the flamethrower!") to be of much help to our protagonist, a robot (Joan Rivers!) equipped with a "virgin alarm" and a love of dishy galactic gossip, and a military crony who's actually named Major Asshole. As you can see, the puns are everywhere here-some will inspire chuckles, some outright snort-laughs, some indifference-in a movie where every frame is filled with gags, a few are bound to either escape us or not quite tickle us, if not just because our funny bone hurts from being tickled so incessantly for so long. But the one character whose every line inspires roaring belly-laughter from every audience is Dark Helmet-Moranis makes him into a sweaty, kvetching mess of a manboy-it's as if one of those geeks who dresses up as a stormtrooper for Halloween (okay, I've done it) was actually handed the keys to an empire. Even when his face is hidden by his helmet (a hysterical sight gag in itself), you can sense still his mouth-breathing, bug-eyed wonkiness. Everyone who sees the film has a different favorite Moranis moment-personally, I giggle like a litylr girl when his literal-mindedness causes him to "comb the desert"-with giant hair-grooming utensils of course. By now, I've described this film in enough detail that you know whether or not its for you. If you're a cynic looking for higher humor, reading this was a waste of your time. So terribly sorry. The rest of you go to the DVD store, and, in an age of Meet the Spartans, be reminded what REAL cinematic silliness looks and feels like.

rEVIEW: The Ghost Writer

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rEVIEW: The Ghost Writer

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REVIEW: The Ghost Writer

If talent could be used as bail, possible criminal/definite genius Roman Polanski would be set for life. In honor of the man's boundless artistic achievements, I refuse to devote any more space to an examination of his personal life. However, before I start the review of his latest, The Ghost Writer, let me state that Chinatown, the last mystery film Polanski directed, is easily one of my favorite films of all time. Every facet of that masterwork-from the dialogue to the story structure to the visual language-has irrevocably influenced the way I write about and view films, among other things. So this one had lots of hype to live up to...


I can happily report it pretty much does. The Ghost Writer is an instant classic, a tour de force of slow-build suspense and social commentary. It's the story of The Ghost (Ewan McGregor), a fledgling writer who holes up in a compound with ex-British-prime minster Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) and his secretary Amelia (Kim Cattrall) to help the former PM with his memoirs. Before long, The Ghost's research leads him down a darker-than-expected path, and things start to go horribly wrong...I won't say anymore, especially because this film contains a whopper of a final twist on par with that Holy Grail of Gotcha Endings, The Usual Suspects. Let's talk instead about Polanski's brilliant approach to the material. The film seems, at first, deceptively simple. As The Ghost settles into his job, we get a series of small, austere scenes establishing life at the compound-the cook make prepares some sandwiches, Lang walks about talking (sometimes agitatedly) on his cell phone, security guards pace about, running a little drill every now and then. You're conscious, even frustrated at the lack of tension until you realize what the director is doing-putting us in the characters shoes. By outlining, in tasteful, telling brushstrokes, the details of this strange, isolated life, Polanski is letting the drabness and claustrophobia of it seep into our bones. I always have believed people draw energy, negative or positive, from their surroundings. Wonder why some mechanics are grumpy? They spend their days surrounded by agitated or puzzled folks, stuck in hot, smelly garages-they're encircled by unhappiness, so it's how they feel. By this same logic, the compound turns these people as strange and stormy as their habitat. Now that Polanski's established every thread of this intricate rug, it's time to pull it out-soon, this quartet is caught up in an emotional hurricane of old secrets and shaky allegiances, but film's transition from character study to thriller is so subtle that you don't notice it until you check your pulse-its sped up a few notches. The film's middle section is a marvelous maze of withering gazes, haunting conversations, and red herrings. Still, just you wait-it's the 3rd act where the film really shines. As the Ghost uncovers more and more shocking evidence, Polanski shortens the shot lengths, Alexandre Desplat amps up his beautifully brooding score, and we race towards a classic finale of volcanic revelations, coming so fast and in such great number that you've got to catch your breath to keep up with the sheer crackpot brilliance of it all. I don't feel the need to talk much about the actors. Polanski always gets great performances out of his cast, and this picture is no exception; what we have hear is a flawless ensemble. However, special props to Pierce Brosnan, taking the role of a lifetime and running with it, sinking all of his considerable charisma and energy into the part. And God bless Olivia Williams, whose fearless work here ought to finally earn one of my favorite actresses the attention she deserves. From its opening shot, an audience grabber if I ever saw one, to its chilling, wordless final tableau, The Ghost Writer draws it's gut-punching power from the high-chemistry cast in front of the camera, and the balls-out genius behind it. This doesn't top Chinatown. I doubt if anything ever will. But it's a film that, along with a select few others, deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as that flawless classic. A.

REVIEWS: SHUTTER ISLAND, A PROPHET

A PROPHET
Sometimes I wonder if critics around a movie just because they can--as a ritualistic display of artier-than-thou snootiness. It was the case with last years meandering A Christmas Tale and to a greater degree with this years brutal slog of a gangster film called A Prophet. Told in short, shaky-cam vignettes, mostly urgently whispered two-person conversations punctuated by bursts of ugly violence, the film relays the story of Malik (Tahar Rahim), a young Arab prisoner who, through sheer opportunistic chutzpah, manages to climb to the top of the Corsican crime scene despite rarely leaving his cell. It's a damn good plot, and as Malik orchestrates his rise, director Jacques Audiard makes sure to include plenty of dime-a-dozen crime movie details-the bullet-riddled bodies, the cheap hookers, the copious drug use-but leaves out what makes sinful sagas like Goodfellas and The Godfather great-humanity. We don't like Malik, which is okay. We didn't like Daniel Plainview. We damn sure didn't like Anton Chigurh. But those antiheroes were people-human beings who, despite their string of sadistic acts, paused for intriguing moments of pity, self-examination, even regret. No such attempt is made to make Malik into a three-dimensional human. He's simply a blank-faced bad boy who does bad things with no remorse, and in return receives good things, none of which produce any sort of reaction from him either. Critics have hailed Audiard's decision to make Malik an "enigma"-I say the director's decision to rob his lead of any personality renders his film inert and, yes, endless. There is one saving grace here-Niels Arestrup. As one of the many crime kingpins Malik knocks down on his way to the top, Arestrup's voice is filled with gravelly authority, his eyes alight with the impassioned dignity of a wounded animal. But even his presence works against the film-I kept thinking how I'd much rather see a movie about this man. I can't fault Audiard and co. for their ambition, but I think if they'd tried a tad less harder to make a modern masterpiece, they just might've churned one out. C-.

SHUTTER ISLAND
Scorsese's gone all Kubrick on us. The moody spirit of the late Shining director hangs like a foreboding raincloud overShutter Island, an enjoyably preposterous, impressively directed piece of slow-build paranoia-mongering that's more white-knuckle fun than a film set in an insane asylum has any right to be. You've seen the previews, you know the plot-Leo Dicaprio and Mark Ruffalo are Boston marshals (sorry, "mahshals"), sent to the titular institution-a treatment center for the criminally insane-to hunt for a missing patient. That's the Twitter-friendly version. Our heroes soon get caught up in a complicated web of conspiracy theories involving concentration camps, lobotomies, hallucinogens, and the very nature of the human mind. Yeah, yeah, the far-flung story's like something out of a 1950's shlock pic, but thanks to Scorsese, it transcends its campy roots. He's firing on all cylinders here, using every trick in the filmmaking book-playing with time and space, color and focus, light and sound-to set our blood racing. He's always understood better than anyone else how the movies move-how to take the rhythm of the soundtrack and the movement of the camera and synchronize them for the desired effect. Thanks to the indefatigable, highly skilled man at the helm of this flick, Shutter Island comes off as a series of thoroughly enjoyable suspense setpieces. At the center of it all is DiCaprio, whose presence elevates the film from merely "good" to "very good". This is the kind of work Oscars are made for. The performance is stunning in its emotional nakedness; not since Chinatown has it been such a pleasure watching a tight-wound character come gloriously, messily undone on screen. But even DiCaprio can't rescue the film from its third-act, which, sinks under the weight of far too much telling and very little showing, as well as a tacked-on, "deep" coda that wasn't needed to begin with. Still, to see a genius like Scorsese at the height of his considerable powers is a helluva springtime treat-even if its only for 2/3rds of the picture. B+

REVIEW: ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Tim Burton and Lewis Carroll are two LSD addled peas in a pod, each the nutty Master of All Things Macabre for their respective generations. So you'd think Burton's adaptation of Caroll's magnum opus would pan out wonderfully onscreen, right? Somehow, wrong. In telling the world famous, darkly comic tale of Alice (Mia Wasikowka's) journey down a rabbit hole and into a lopsided alternate universe (I won't provide a synopsis, you know the rest), Burton and his cast and crew occasionally strike brilliant notes, but thanks to some key missteps this one's mostly discordant noise. Disney tries to kiddify things, attempting to impart morals and purpose into a story that lacks both. Oh well, I expected that. There's a weird, jarringly adult subplot about Alice's brother-in-law, but its brief enough that I suppose I could ignore it if necessary. But the real nail in the coffin here is a huge conceptual mistake was glaringly apparent to me from the film's opening scenes. Alice, normally a child of about eight or nine, is aged about ten years here, on the cusp of adulthood. This film finds her returning to Wonderland-Underland, as it's called here-for a second visit, not out of curiosity, but to flee the life of sexual frustration and societal pressure that she's stuck with back home in stone-faced 19th century England. I don't know who came up with this idea. Was it Burton? Or screenwriter Linda Woolverton? Either way, it's a stupefyingly dumb clunker of a choice that damn near becomes the pictures Achilles heel. Alice is not just a character whose seeing the world through a strange new looking-glass-she's our looking glass, whose wonderment and dread become ours precisely because this is all new to her-her childlike delight allows us to absorb the story with the rapt attention and excitement of youth. Here, however, she's an agitated teen who isn't any happier about being in Underland than she was about being on Earth. Despite all the techno-wonders Burton and co. surround her with-and, make no mistake, the film looks great, an explosion of gothic, surreal splendor rendered in a panoply of eye-pleasing colors-she's constantly whining about how the place is just a bad dream, one from which she can't wait to wake up. Oh, what fun! We're discovering a brave new world with a tour guide who...couldn't care less. It's like going on vacation with that one relative who bitches about everything from the hotel room to the waiting lines-who cares what the destination is? The journey's not gonna be much fun when you take an albatross like that along. Soon, Alice's exaggerated mopiness gets grating, then infuriating, and, finally, escalates to the level where I whispered "Shut up!" under my breath, as if to will her into silence. Perhaps this approach might have worked best in a sequel to this film (Caroll tried said approach in his sequel to the book), when we, like Alice, had already gotten to know the world. As it is, this is our first go 'round, and because she's jaded, so are we. But now I'M getting jaded, so let's talk about some of the pluses here-and there are a few. First and foremost are the delightful trio of actors you've seen on all the posters-Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, and Helena Bonham Carter. Depp's Mad Hatter is a lisping, accent-juggling delight. The man's always been a little loony, but here it's as if he's been freed from any tethers of human normalcy-when he delivers the famous quote about the raven and the writing-desk, you chuckle because it's actually the sanest thing he's said thus far. Hathaway's White Queen exudes imperial majesty and a surprising twinge of maternal warmth. But Bonham Carter gets best in show-her evil monarch is the ultimate Queen Bitch, dishing out verbal lashings with an icy, poker-faced abandon that inspires great big audience belly-laughs even as it condemns onscreen characters to the most dismal of fates. Also worth mentioning are the special effects-the CGI animals are so flesh-and-bone realistic that they make those Narnian beavers look like sock puppets, and Bonham Carter's massive cranium is a massive technical achievement. Danny Elfman's score, creepy and choir-heavy, lends the right touch of eerie beauty to DP Darius Wolski's sweeping shots of Burton's ingeniously designed locales. But just as you're getting into the awe of it all, along comes that bitchy Alice girl to pout and pout and pout, until ultimately you just long to be back in your own world. Carroll enthusiasts and Burton lovers should check it out on DVD (the 3D adds next to nothing here). The rest of you can do without. C+

PRE-OSCAR RANTING (Post-Oscar Bitching to Follow)

Ladies and gents, the Oscars are upon us, where we honor....some of the best films of the year. Not the actual best, God forbid; my favorite film of 09, the surprisingly raw, incomparably visionary Where the Wild Things Are, was 100% shut out, and my second fav, the everything-old-is-new-again triumph An Education, hasn't even a decent shot at a win. But nonetheless, let's talk about who WILL win, and also, who should.

Best Picture:
WHO WILL WIN: There is some genuine possibility of an upset here. While many predict a Hurt Locker win, I'm going to truly go out on a limb and predict that the Academy's wonky new voting system (which has the viewers rank the films and then gives second-place movie a bit of a boost), will cause an upset-my final pick is Avatar, though Inglourious Basterds has a phenomenal shot, too.
WHO SHOULD: An Education. Having said that, I fell for Avatar no matter how hard I tried to apply my own brand of vitriol-glazed cynicism to it, and I wouldn't mind seeing it get some Best Picture love, either. Hurt Locker was riveting and commendably realistic, but its lack of emotional pull and bitchy campaign snafu have me rooting against it.

Best Actor:
WHO WILL WIN: I'd bet my car, my DVD collection, and all my autographed Playbills that Jeff Bridges will win for his work as a sad-sack, beer-bellied country singer in Crazy Heart.
WHO SHOULD WIN: George Clooney for Up In The Air. He tore this performance from his gut, really pushed himself; for the first time, we see the soulful human chinks in his suit of Slick-Rick movie star armor.

Best Actress
WHO WILL WIN: Lots of people predict a Sandra Bullock win (Why, God, why?) But, honestly (and I'm not just saying this because Streep's Julia Child was my favorite female performance in about five or six years), I think Streep's going to win. She hasn't in 30 years, and as she inches closer to ultimate retirement, and then to death, and then to becoming the Archangel of acting Heaven (hopefully they forgive her Mamma Mia!), Oscar's gonna want to give her one more golden statue.
WHO SHOULD WIN: The same as who will. Meryl drove the film, exuding a warm, red-blooded life force that's as infectious as it is unwavering and true.

Best Supporting Actor:
WHO WILL WIN: Christoph Waltz, for his catchphrase-usin', milk-lovin', foot-fetish bearin' Nazi madman in Tarantino's revenge epic Inglourious Basterds.
WHO SHOULD WIN: Same dude who will. This man doesn't just chew the scenery; he swallows it whole. A glouriously over-the-top, once-in-a-lifetime perf.

Best Supporting Actress:
WHO WILL WIN: Mo'nique, as a mad mother who hurls insults and utensils with equal monstrous aplomb, then shocks us by reveal a pathetic scrap of soul, inPrecious.
WHO SHOULD WIN: Mo'nique. Some of the best work of the last decade.

Best Director:
WILL WIN: Kathryn Bigelow; Don't get me started. She did a good job with a good action film. But so could about a hundred other directors. How about pick Spike Jonze, who visionary approach to Where the Wild Things Are gave the movie most of its oomph? Or JJ Abrams, whose Star Trek was such a blast? Oh, wait. You didn't even NOMINATE them. But Bigelow will win because a female victory in the category is a first. What a shame that the first Oscar or a female director is given to someone infinitely less deserving than, say, a Barbra Streisand, Jane Campion, or Nora Ephron.
SHOULD WIN: Meh. Like I said, the deserving ones were mostly snubbed. Hollywood's awesomest asshole, James Cameron, put over 15 years into the flawed but wildly involving Avatar. A for effort.

Best Animated Feature:
WILL AND SHOULD: UP. And Dug the Dog better make the acceptance spee-SQUIRREL!

So there you have it. Questions? Comments? Death threats?
Go right ahead.