College really does a number on your brain. In what other setting could one convince oneself that two hours of sleep is enough? That showering with shoes on is natural? That the term "sexiled" is actually a part of the English language? But for me, college's most quantifiable effect thus far is this; as far as hunting down and viewing hard to find cine-gems, it's left me in a bit of a bind. It's not just the lack of transportation in a city where the nearest art-house is half an hour away; it's that I'm not sure I'd flock to indie cinema even if I did have my car with me. Taking in a French drama after whizzing through a thirty-minute multiple choice Lord of the Flies test? Piece of cake. But, after spending three migraine-inducing hours writing six pages on Kantian ethical theory, which would you choose, Mysteries of Lisbon or The Muppets? That explains why this is not my last post of 2011 but instead my first of 2012. I've spent the last three weeks trying to catch up on this year's releases, and, though I still have a few more I'd like to see, the buck's gotta stop somewhere. Final verdict: release for Decepticon-filled release, it's one of the weakest of the recent movie years. But, as always, there were diamonds-in-the-rough for those willing to look, a few hidden in plain popcorn-movie sight. What follows is a celebration of a year that failed to produce any Monolithic Classics, but that was, in retrospect, rife with innovation and ambition.
Here's my oldest annual tradition, one I dedicate to everyone who's taken in my cyber-rants once, twice, or a hundred times during the past year, and most especially to those who ranted back--who checked out my favorite movies and told me what they thought, who democratically disagreed with my political bitchery, and pretended, time and again, that they had never heard of this Adele singer-woman. Frankly my dears, you gave a damn. And I love you all for it. My usual New Year's wish, straight from Barbra's flawless lips: "May all your storms be weathered, and all that's good get better!"
Without further ado...
THE ANNUAL CINEMA EXTRAVAGANZA THAT I EAGERLY AWAIT ALL YEAR INSTEAD OF DOING SOMETHING ATTRACTIVE, PRODUCTIVE, OR SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BYAAAAAAA!!!
Runner-Up: Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol
Brad Bird makes Road Runner flicks at full length; whether for kids or grown-ups, his pictures are hearty, sustained middle fingers flipped in the face of logic, history and physics. Damned if I don't love him for it. His MI installment, perhaps the best in a series of unflagging quality, vibrates with an addictive whiz-kid audacity, bursting with ingenuous action scenes--the prison break, the already-iconic Dubai jump--that serve the story while also delivering a break-the-fourth-wall, "watch us pull this off!" kick. Here's the glorious antithesis of this young decade's many Bourne copycats, a film that jumps headfirst into absurdity with arms wide open and electric spider-gloves switched on.
10. The Ides of March
It's not exactly a great power-corrupts flick--A Face in the Crowd, All the King's Men, and a thousand others have that covered. What George Clooney's dizzying political drama does capture quite well is the ins and outs of the campaign itself, the singular, demoralizing burden of days spent doing stump speeches and nights spent holed up in lonely hotel rooms. To me, the heart of the picture is the scene where Clooney's presidential candidate sweet-talks his wife, not with the endearing dotage of a husband but with the oily aplomb of a politician. Like many other scenes in this movie, it's powerfully acted, shot with an angular austerity that'd make Sidney Lumet blush, and laced with a haunting, cautionary message: if you believe too hard in what you sell, you'll become it.
9. 13 Assassins
Starting with seppuku and only gaining visceral velocity from there, this is yet another work of feverish ingenuity from Takashi Miike, a gonzo genius of a Japanese filmmaker who dabbles in children's fables and Tarantinian slice 'em ups with equal frequency. This well-crafted, white-knuckle story of samurai revenge is also a fascinating examination of a warrior's fatalistic worldview. It's got flaming animals, rooftop battles, and rolling heads, but in the end you're left with a surprisingly potent moral statement. This year's best thinking man's action film, and also one of the stronger foreign flicks to hit American screens in the past twelve months.
8. The Muppets
Kids will roll in the aisles at the sight of the fart shoes and gawk at the Selena Gomez cameo, but its adults who'll get the most out of Jason Segel and James Bobin's love letter to Jim Henson's TV series, which was in itself a love letter to the primitive pizzazz of the American variety show. It would've been easy for the filmmakers to drench the Muppets in cheap irony, to use their analog simplicity as the butt of some Shrek-esque joke, but instead, the picture wisely stands back and lets their trademark blend of subversiveness and sentimentality speak for itself. Any movie that can sneak in a snippet of "Fuck You" in a child-friendly manner and then seconds later trot out a rehashed, hand-me-a-hanky version of "The Rainbow Connection" is one that does our favorite frog proud.
7. Super 8
This movie's detractors miss the big picture. As JJ Abrams sends Joe and his home movie crew into battle against a vicious extraterrestrial, he's doing more than paying cheap homage to his idol, Steven Spielberg; he's crafting a full-throated paean to the power of kid-pix on the modern imagination.The courage and cunning of these sci-fi addict tweens is stirring, sure, but it's their tender embrace of all things supernatural, magical, and just plain crazy that arms them to deal with events that seem to dislocate the very backbone of reality, be it the presence of a UFO or the death of a loved one. Kudos also to the child actors, who deserves the greatest of all child actor compliments; to be treated as fledgling artists, not kiddie commodities.
6. Bill Cunningham New York
On the surface, it's a short, sweet documentary about an old man who takes pictures of people who wear strange clothes. But as this film takes stock of Bill's life in impressionistic snippets, as we follow him on the fashion beat and his fight to save his Carnegie Hall apartment and into the recesses of a past that's equal parts grit and glamour, this eighty-year old reporter emerges as a remarkable portrait of human resilience. To watch him ride his rickety bike through the streets of New York is to witness a moving portrait of an analog man living it up in the digital age.
5. Midnight In Paris
It's Allen in a minor key, but the tune still swings. Yes, the modern day scenes are more than a little insipid, and the proceedings runneth over with what Richard Corliss calls Allen's "tendency to pass Draconian judgement on characters the audience is not supposed to like". But the Paris scenes--ah, Paree!--are simply some of the best he's ever directed. When Woody loves something, wraps his arms around it flaws and all, you feel his compassion in your bones in a way you simply don't with any other filmmaker. As Owen Wilson's Gil hobnobs with the great expats of the 20's and 30's (The Fitzgeralds, Dahli, Bunuel) and chases after Cotillard's luminescent Adriana, he's awash in the glow of ecstatic nostalgia, gently seducing us into a soft-focus revery of streetlights and wine glasses and cigarette smoke and elusive promises and electrifying creativity while slowly, carefully pulling the rug out from under us. He immerses us in the dream, then pokes holes in it, then reminds us, with his typical menschy sagacity, that we need it all the same. The Woodman, apparently a life-long lover of magic, has pulled off a commendable trick.
4. Beginners
Movies about gay people are just about as rare as movies about old people. God bless Mike Mills for helming a gently probing, contagiously warm-hearted picture about both. Christopher Plummer's touching work as a newly widowed, newly out septuaganerian has been winning well deserved kudos, but it's important to remember that he's simply one brushstroke in an appreciably messy portrait of men and women, young and old, reinventing themselves from stray pieces of past and hazy glimpses of future. To watch Mills' generosity, his clear-eyed interest in and steadily engrossing development of even the smallest characters, is to witness the emergence of a cinematic voice that's a refreshing break from the frigid solipsism of the current indie scene.
3. The Tree of Life
Think of Terence Malick's latest philosophical cine-treatise as a traditional, plot-oriented movie, and you're screwed; this isn't a story so much as a conversation between a man and his God. Humanity (via the disembodied voices of the cast) asks a question, and God answers, not by way of some booming narration, but with a gorgeously rendered image, be it of a fight between Brad Pitt's taskmaster father and his sons, or a snippet of the first life on Earth. Of course, there can be no definitive conclusion to such a conversation, and so Malick's attempt to punctuate his picture with the definitive Sean Penn sequence fails miserably, to such a degree that it almost hampers a great deal of what came before. But, if you're willing to acknowledge the agonizing flaws of the final half-hour, rewire your brain to this hermit-director's spacey specifications, and dive in, you will be rewarded, not just with powerful performances, not just with rhapsodic, hugely enveloping visual symphonies of light and shadow not seen since the days of Kubrick himself, but with a renewed passion for the little glories of the everyday. Often a great movie, occasionally an awful one, always a fascinating one.
2. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
In a recent interview with Time, David Fincher stated that "I think civilization is an agreement, and once in a while you're going to run into people who didn't get the memo." It's these very people that Fincher has chronicled for over a decade now, and from the first bars of "Immigrant Song" on, it's abundantly clear that he's not content with simply adapting the saga of Lisbeth Salander--he's using Stieg Larsson's blockbuster as a template with which to explore the thematic preoccupations that have defined his entire career; the nature of violence, the impact of technology on day-to-day society, and the actions of the mentally unstable. For all its tempestuous sex and vicious bloodletting, this is ultimately a mood piece, and the mood is one of sexual frustration and despair. Larsson's sprawling tale of Nazis, misogynists, and hackers is not exactly bursting with emotion, but Fincher mines a staggering cathartic power from these characters' chronic detachment. Shot with a cold, distinctly European angularity and underscored by Trent Reznor's chilly electro-tones, the picture taps into these peoples sickly self-loathing and makes it viral; you don't just want these characters to break free of it, you want out of it yourself, which makes the picture's bloodbath finale both deeply disturbing and wholly satisfying. At the center of it all is Rooney Mara, giving the breakout performance of the year as a woman who's such a good detective because she excludes herself from the society she so acutely understands. Complimented by a terse, slyly witty Daniel Craig, she rides to stardom astride that already-iconic motorcycle, propelled by a burst of creative energy from one of our most strikingly original auteurs.
And number one...
1. Hugo
Yes, it's geared at children, but I continue to scratch my remaining stubble when I hear someone call this picture "cute". What's "cute" about a story of two sociopaths coping with loss and grappling with the meaning of art? Then again, part of Hugo's genius is its surface simplicity. It unleashes a whirling wonder cabinet of meaningful ideas, but you're so high on its wizardly beauty that the details don't sink in until long after you've left the theatre. Equally baffling is the general shock that greeted Martin Scorsese's decision to make a kid friendly movie. Even in his bloodiest of gangster pictures, you could sense his childish delight in the particulars of light and motion-sometimes, you can almost hear him; "Why not do it all in one take?!" "Hey, let's intercut all five of these scenes!" Here, this intoxicating sense of daring is present from that first shot of Paris, a shot that seems to say "Hey. I know movies are windows into other worlds, but...howsabout we break the window?" With his use of 3D and CGI, Marty's out to capture the primitive power of those very first Lumiere brothers movies, the ones where people were so awed by the image of an oncoming train that they literally jumped out of their seats in awed fear. Through the sustained alchemy of technique and galvanizing passion, he succeeds. The whole story takes place within a couple of blocks, but they're rendered with such quixotic verve that they're more beautifully foreign than anything on Pandora. How generous this world is!! What majesty it contains! Each location is more dazzling than the last, and each denizen of this wonder city from Asa Butterfield's wounded, compulsively inventive title character to Richard Griffiths' gruff newspaperman, is a joy to behold; you wish these people would take over your world, if only for a little while. Best of all, Scorsese's confident enough in his vision to let it unfold deliberately; he makes time to linger on the sound of music in an earthy cafe, or on the knowing glance of Christopher Lee's bookseller. A lesser filmmaker would cut these scenes down to achieve a "child appropriate" running time, but Scorsese, wise as ever, knows this world is wondrous and true enough to hold their attention. At heart, kids crave immersion, escape, fantasy, a sense of the world turned upside down so that might better see how it really is right-side up. They want Dorothy exploring the Emerald city, not Beverly Hills Chihuahua. To show someone this movie at a young age is nothing short of a good deed.
If my favorite film of last year, Inception, was a movie about movies disguised as an exploration of dreams, Hugo is the opposite; an ode to the cinema that's really a thank you letter to the imagination. As Hugo copes with the loss of his father, and Ben Kingsley's real-life filmmaker Georges Melies copes with the loss of his career, they are drawn together by Georges granddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), whose radiant love of art ultimately proves contagious, pulling them out of their torpor. In the movies, they find an expansion of possibilities in lives that are increasingly narrow; Georges hocks his wares in a cramped train-station shop and Hugo toils away inside an old clock, but as they discover or, in Georges case, rediscover, the power of the cinema, they gain entry to fantastical worlds that nourish their sense of freedom and renew their desire to live. It's easy to miss it, but underneath the steady current of crackpot kiddie ingenuity, Scorsese has crafted a passionate and cogent defense of his art, of two men who find their dreams revived by fresh fantasies, fantasies that we still need today in the midst of our increasingly bleak public reality. None of this would work if the performers didn't sell the hell out of it. Kingsley is heartwrenching, Butterfield is possessed of an instinct far beyond his years, and Grace Moretz resembles nothing less than a young Emma Watson in the way she channels girlish charm and razor-sharp intelligence all at once. It's a team effort, but Scorsese leads this charge into a magical unreality. Like a gentle giant, he has bent the shape of our world, altered its rules, if only for a few hours, and done it in a way that's entertaining and ceaselessly moving. Like all great motion pictures, its immensely satisfying at the most basic level, but there's multitudes buried just under the surface for those willing to look. As Kingsley's Georges (and, by extension, Scorsese), invites us to "Come dream with me!", I couldn't help but think of EE Cummings' immortal line; "There's a hell of a good universe next door/Let's go."
Odds and Ends:
Kudos to:
Brad Pitt-
Not since James Dean has a matinee idol also proved such a fiercely talented dramatic thespian. For almost a decade, his performances have been filtered through the prism of Brad Pitt, King of the Hollywood Hunks--whether playing a vampire or Achilles or even Tyler Durden, you always sense beneath the strength of his work a boyish yearning, a scrappy, unyielding desire to be taking seriously. But the years have brought wisdom, and his performances have acquired an ease and confidence clear and true as water; he slides into the souls of the people he plays. As a stern father of two, he grounds The Tree of Life's metaphysical questing with an earthy realism so engrossing that at time you can almost feel him breathing on you. If that was his warm-up swing, Moneyball is his glorious grand-slam. His Billy Beane is a pile-driver of a man, powered by fierce intelligence, crackling charisma, and an all-encompassing sense of purposelessness. Pitt makes it all hit home, but you never get the sense that he's capital-A Acting. I cannot will a world where this man does not win this year's Best Actor Oscar.
Alan Rickman-
Even on the page, Severus Snape was JK Rowling's most thrillingly complex, achingly alive character, but I doubt Jo could've imagined the places Alan Rickman would take this most ambiguous--and ultimately, tragic--of fictional creations. The now iconic diction and carefully.punctuated.just.like.this speech are good for a laugh, but now that this lovelorn husk of a man's saga has been writ from beginning to end, it's clear that Rickman's stone-faced frigidity and laconic loathsomeness aren't just smartly articulated scene-stealers, they're windows into a shattered soul. Here is a man who has felt in excess, one who has tasted love, succumbed to sorrow, and broken under the weight of one betrayal too many; drained of feeling, he whittles himself down to his most basic duty, which is at once a daily burden and a sacred signifier of purpose. From sneery snippets of dialogue, gone-in-a-flash expressions, and a singularly devastating backstory, Rickman has fashioned not just a man of Shakespearean heft, but the greatest franchise character since Darth Vader. Accio, awards.
Paul Giamatti-
Snubbed for major awards and overlooked by most mainstream moviegoers, Paul Giamatti may very well be American cinema's ultimate underdog. Here he is again, doing fine work as a high school wrestling coach in Tom McCarthy's heartfelt high-school wrestling dramedy Win Win. His basset hound tenderness has ripened with old age, but his work as a middle-class, ninety-ninety percent father going under also showcases an out-of-left-field fierceness; he's a gentle soul, but he won't be going gently into that good night.
Kristen Wiig-
The last time an SNL star tried to parlay their TV fame into cinematic success, we got MacGruber. But if that was a bomb, then Wiig's revelatory work in Bridesmaids is a firework. Whether fighting Rose Byrne for the microphone or doing battle with her own drunken instincts during a howler of an airplane flight, she nails every look and every line with a flittery agility that recalls, at its best, the work of Judy Holliday and even Audrey Hepburn; but, ever the wise actress, she spikes this frothy concoction of a woman with a very real post-modern bitterness, one that makes every laugh stick in your side, and one that brings this film to roaring life. Tina Fey opened the door; now Kristen has walked through it.
Chris Blauvelt-
Kelly Reichardt is a richly inventive American director who specializes in taking genre stories and stripping them down to their humanist core; Old Joy dissected the road flick, while Wendy and Lucy shattered the stereotypes of the human-meets-dog movie. With this year's Meek's Cutoff, she used the tale of three American families lost on the Oregon Trail to demythologize the western, pulling back the John Wayne curtain to reveal an wildless west of backbreaking work and diminishing returns. That this radical approach works is due to Michelle Williams' brave performance, and, of course, Reichardt's own direction, but the real genius here is cinematographer Chris Blauvelt, who shoots the picture with a merciless sparsity and poignant attention to detail; he makes every wave of a sunbonnet and lurch of a wagon count.
Howard Shore-
When Shore composed LOTR's ubiquitous "Fellowship Theme", people stopped and paid attention to a movie score as they hadn't since the days of the first Star Wars. What people haven't noticed is that Shore's been doing phenomenal work ever since. This year was a twofer; his delicate, starry-eyed score for Hugo was surpassed only by his vigorously moody, string-heavy work on A Dangerous Method. Two great scores with memorable themes and moving motifs, both in the same year; all in a day's work for cinema's greatest living composer
The Alexander Payne Award for Overrated Cinema:
Drive-
This is the movie that got sued for not being enough like Fast Five (I'm not kidding.) But its real crime here isn't fraud, it's theft; director Nicholas Windig Refn has been lauded all year for a "style" that cribs liberally from Tarantino and Mann and Cronenberg while adding little of its own. For all his neon backdrops and electronic Euro music, Refn can't disguise the fact that he's created a picture that condemns violence even as it fetishizes it, that brutalizes its characters and its audience so often that each act of bloodletting is less impactful than the previous one, and that marginalizes a great supporting cast with two main characters so underwritten that you're basically forgetting about them even while you watch them.
X-Men: First Class -
Lauded by my fellow Marvel fans, it struck me as one of the worst comic book pictures in a year full of comic book pictures. This is the film that takes the cool concept of retro superheroes and pushes it to the edge of camp. Packed with limp action scenes (oh cool, they're throwing a few missiles around), wasted characters (why bring Beast into this at all?) and some truly godawful dialogue ("Unfortunately...you killed my mother"), it's still not as bad as The Last Stand, but, then again, appendicitis wasn't as bad as The Last Stand. So this is how a franchise dies--to thunderous applause.
Trend of the Year: Animal Talk
If there was ever a year where a Best Performance By A Fluffy Four-Legger ought to be an Oscar category, this was it. We had Joey and Uggie, whose respective displays of loyalty were the best scenes in two good-but-not-quite-great movies (War Horse, The Artist). We had the hot mess known as Zookeeper. We had Happy Feet Two. We had Rango. Even Indieland wasn't safe: Mike Mills' Beginners let its dog dispense witty bits of commentary via subtitles, while Miranda July's maddeningly uneven The Future featured perhaps the Precocious Creature to End All Precocious Movie Creatures-Paw-Paw, a hipster kitty from hell who dispenses bits of wonky avant-garde wisdom in a voice that sounds like Marcel the Shell on muscle relaxants. They can think. They can sass. They can save their masters. Now let's get them working the camera!!
