Some Came Running

Good grief

A perhaps shocking admission awaits you in this week's Topics/Questions/Exercises, only at The Auteurs'.

Because 100 is a nice, round number...

...and because my best-of-the-decade list of 70 slighted (inevitably, I insist) at least two dozen other worthy works, if not more, I hereby consider my readers' suggestions, and my own memory lapses, and give you thirty more outstanding motion pictures of the last decade.

Many of you might have intuited that, secreted somewhere within this list and the last, is my 10 best of 2009. You would be correct, but I will be posting that separately anyway. 

Adventureland (Greg Mottola, 2009) Finally, an American coming-of-age comedy that wasn't rote, smug, or evasive but rather finely detailed and artful. Reviewed here.

All The Real Girls (David Gordon Green, 2003) I've come to love this film for many reasons, not the least of which being that it appears to have scared the living shit out of Anthony Lane. 

The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, 2007) A visionary immersion.

Autofocus (Paul Schrader, 2002) A beautifully detached perspective on deeply repellent behavior indulged by desperate characters who can never quite understand how emotionally underdeveloped they are. Funsy!

Children of Men (Alfonso Caurón, 2006) A convincingly imagined dystopia and filmmaking that's both staggeringly virtuosic and emotionally involving. All this and early King Crimson on the soundtrack. 

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) For its scale, its action, its convincing grafting of a noir (rather than a pop-surreal) sensibility onto a superhero picture. Best experienced in IMAX, I have to say.

The Death of Mr. Lazerescu (Critsti Puiu, 2005) My favorite of the new Romanian films, mordant and hilarious and then more mordant.

The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005) Pretty much a perfectly calibrated scare-a-thon, something not to be deplored  in this day and age.

Flags Of Our Fathers (Clint Eastwood, 2006) My preferred film in Eastwood's ambitious World War II diptych.

Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2007) Boy, were my expectations low for this. As a result, the film's lyrical brilliance, coming in from an entirely unexpected angle, blew me away.

George Washington (David Gordon Green, 2000, pictured) Just beautiful. And troubling, and heartbreaking. But mostly beautiful—visionary widescreen imagery right outta the box, very impressive.

 

Gomorra (Matteo Garrone, 2008) This ultimate deglamorization of Mob rule gets stronger with every viewing. 

Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006) No, it doesn't hold together in quite the same way as Mulholland does, but it's incredibly vivid and disquieting and—there's no other way of putting this—fucked up. Maybe his most despair-filled picture since Eraserhead.

Kill Bill 1 &2 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003/2004) Cheating, I know. Won't be the last time.

Heaven and Hell

 

Or, to be more accurate, Heaven's town hall/courthouse and Hell's outer office. From Powell and Pressburger's 1946 A Matter Of Life And Death and Ernst Lubitsch's 1943 Heaven Can Wait, respectively. Such whimsy and imagination, no? Tomorrow I'm seeing The Lovely Bones, directed by Peter Jackson from his and Fran Walsh's and Phillipa Boyens's script, from Alice Sebold's novel. The picture's been getting some critical stick for its own depiction of heaven, but I'm looking forward to making up my own mind. Was I more excited about the prospect of this picture when Lynne Ramsay was set to direct it? I cannot tell a lie: yes. But I am a long-time admirer of Jackson's and am eager to take in his vision.

I will also be conducting an interview with Jackson, soon, for The Auteurs', and I won't be asking my own stupid questions: I'll be asking the best of questions that readers have suggested on a forum that you yourself can access by going here, if you're interested, and a registered member, which you definitely should be. Don't leave questions on THIS thread, please. Instead, why not discuss your own favorite cinematic depictions of heaven, and hell, thus far?

His hair was perfect...

Were we just talking about the fact that every film critic has a blind spot or ten? Yes, in the context of my 70-best-of-the-decade list, which still awaits it promised addendum. WELL. One of my several blind spots is in the category of the Spanish horror film despite the noble attempts of the likes of, say, Video Watchdog to acquaint me with its riches. This is why I'm sheepish when approaching the untimely death of Spanish horror maestro Paul Naschy, in Madrid on the last day of November, at the age of 75.   I knew of the actor/writer/director, but despite the efforts of VW's Tim Lucas and other articulate cultists I was never really able to get a hook into his work. My friend Joseph Failla made more of a go of it than I did, and he sent me these observations earlier:

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Jacinto Molina aka Paul Naschy, today at 75 from pancreatic cancer. Spanish horror films were always something of an acquired taste for me. For some reason, I didn't take to them as naturally as the ones coming from Italy. But over time and their new found availability on dvd, I learned to appreciate Naschy and his work (he also played Dracula, a mummy and a hunchback) as if I knew them all my life. It was however the Hombre Lobo series (I'm very fond of WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN / WEREWOLF SHADOW) which at first seemed so silly, and then later, lead me to watching as many Spanish horror films as I could. 

What I suppose I'm saying is, without the Naschy films to encourage me, I don't know how long it would have taken myself to discover items like, Amando de Ossorio's BLIND DEAD series, Vicente Aranda's THE BLOOD SPLATTERED BRIDE, Jorge Grau's LET SLEEPING CORPES LIE or Claudio Guerin Hill's A BELL FROM HELL. Of course today with the wonderful contributions from Guillermo del Toro, I've the highest regard for the genre. 

I'll be paying my respects to the "Lon Chaney of Spain" this weekend with a viewing of FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR (MARK OF THE WOLF MAN), an incredibly confusing title for Naschy's debut as cursed werewolf, Waldemar Daninsky. That's something I'm sure I've spoken about to Sam Sherman, but I can't recall why he settled on that particular title, I'll just have to listen to the commentary.

I probably ought to do the same as Joe, if I can. The thing about cinephilia is that you never stop discovering. 

Helen high water

I know, I know; it appears that SCR is devolving—some would call it evolving, actually—into a kind of tony cheesecake site, but I assure you, it's all just a coincidence and the next image to post on this blog is sure to be something with less potential prurient interest. But in case you were wondering (and I have to say I really think you were), yes, that is young Helen Mirren above, younger even than in Powell's Age of Consent, doing a bit of faux-burlesque in the extraordinary object known as Herostratus, the subject of today's Foreign Region DVD Report, at The Auteurs'.

Manny on "Earth"

The lovely folks at The Auteurs' Notebook are hosting a wonderful series of pieces commemorating the publication of the splendid volume of Manny Farber's film writings, Farber on Film. Regular followers of this blog know that I've been doing a retrospective series examining Farber's "best films" of 1951; this week, I move the series over to The Auteurs' to look at a pick that's become an immortal classic, Robert Wise's wonderful The Day The Earth Stood Still, theremin-laden score by Bernard Herrmann. The piece is here. And by all means do check out the other pieces in the Farber category, including David Phelps's wickedly brilliant "Outside-In" and appreciations of the critic by Library of America editor and spellbinding film writer Geoffrey O'Brien, and the all-time great Phillip Lopate. Very nice company to find myself in, I have to say. 

In moderately related news, I am compelled to report that whenever I do a Google Image search on The Day The Earth Stood Still, the image reproduced at right is invariably the fourth in the top row on the very first page. I had long thought that the 2008 remake of Earth was a completely unjustified travesty, but I understand now that it very well may have been of some moderate usefulness after all. Just goes to show, I suppose.

Department of inadvertent revelations, #1

"This is very setup," says [Jess] Weixler, comparing the style of The Lie to her work on [Joe] Swanberg's recent Alexander the Last while sharing a cigarette with Leonard. "It's not so much 'Let's just shoot and see what we get' but 'We have this scene here, and this needs to happen.' It's really broken down, so when we go in we are covering like a real movie."

—From the article "The Little Lie That Could Ad-Lib," Mark Olsen, The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 2009

Text and subtext in Eastwood's "Invictus"

So. Variety's Todd McCarthy and Newsweek's David Ansen have gone ahead and ignored a studio-imposed embargo and reviewed Clint Eastwood's Invictus, which opens in less than two weeks. This breach of etiquette—perpetrated by old-media types, who were supposed to be good for such courtesies, yet!—of course has much of the film blogosphere in a huff, and Jeffrey Wells has gone and posted something like four different sort-of considerations of Invictus in the wake of said breach. 

One of which is called "Leadership" and quotes the musings of some schmuck on The Huffington Post who has also said "feh" to the embargo and who "points out," as they say, some correspondences between the Nelson Mandela administration ins South Africa and that of...wait for it...Barack Obama in the United States. I will not linger long on this schmuck's magnificent two-handed grasp of both the spurious and the obvious. I only point this out to note that these musings move Wells to reproduce two bits of the Invictus script, by Anthony Peckham. One has a Mandela aide chiding him for "risking political capital," on account of rugby, yet. Mandela replies: "The day I am afraid to do that is the day I am no longer fit to lead." Another script swatch has Mandela declaring, "[I]n this instance the people are wrong. And it is my job as their elected reader to make them see that."

These little bites inspire a Wells commenter who dubs himself "Arturobandini2" to sputter: "Jesus, is that dialogue actually in the movie? That's a much worse indicator of quality than any review that's slipped out. Screenwriting 101 teaches you that subtext is NEVER EVER spelled out in the dialogue." 

Well, first, as it happens, yes, that dialogue is actually in the movie, and it plays fine, thank you. Just one more reason why you should never review a picture according to its script. Second, fuck "Screenwriting 101." It's one reason why so very many movies are so very bad. Thirdly, it ain't subtext. It's text. One of the reasons I admire Invictus so much is that it's really not a "sports movie." Indeed, up until the very final match, the rugby stuff here is treated largely as an afterthought; there's no will-they-make-it? fakery or pumping up of suspense. Invictus is a movie about political leadership, about the semiotics of sport and its relation to patriotism/national identity, and about the very canny benign manipulations of several men who understand how one step to some kind of real national unity can be achieved via a sports spectacle. It is absolutely correct for the character of Mandela to be an almost meticulously self-conscious leader, given his unprecedentedness as the head of South Africa's government, and the fact that he had grown into a figure of near-mythical stature well before he took that position. So the considerations that Peckham has his Mandela character overtly articulating are entirely apt. We understand what Mandela has in mind, and part of the joy of the film is watching it come together. The subtext, which is not explicitly spelled out deals with exactly why Mandela chooses to embrace this rugby team that dresses itself in the colors of the apartheid flag. And that's dealt with quite beautifully and movingly by Eastwood and lead actors Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, both of whom are outstanding. 

Okay, back to honoring that embargo. Although, as with last year's Gran Torino, part of me wants to save my further thoughts on this picture for after the opening, the better to hash it all out with you. 

Happy Thanksgiving...

...a holiday that, despite whatever the meanies at Big Hollywood would have you believe, is frequently enjoyed by counter-culture/"progressive"/leftie types, as the above screen cap from Arthur Penn's 1969 Alice's Restaurant testifies.

It's been an...interesting year, and it ain't over yet. For today let me extend my very best wishes to you, my readers, old and new, and to your families. As you may have noticed by this point, this blog is in no way a commercial venture, which to me makes the give and take that much more meaningful. I'm also gratified at the way the regulars stick around regardless of the strange tangents I sometimes go on.

So thanks. I'm consistently grateful for your time, your loyalty, and for your always smart and impassioned and sometimes challenging feedback. Have a great Thanksgiving, wherever you are. 

My Seventy Greatest Films Of The Decade

So, you don't wanna talk about Spencer Tracy or James Brown? Okay, fine, be that way. I see now that the crew over at Time Out New York has posted its Top 50 Movies of the Aughts, so now's the time, as Charlie Parker would put it, when I might as well counter with my own list, and create what some call "added value" by citing 20 more than 50, because why the hell not. 

I will try to be more aphoristic and less portentous than the TONY crew in my film assessment. I don't mean that as a slam against the TONY crew's summings-up. Believe me, I know what a drag it can be to write those 50-to-120 word capsules, particularly if you're trying to get across why the films "mattered" or were "important." It was, quite frankly, really tiresome to have to strike those poses back in the Premiere days. Now that I'm my own boss, my own capsules will be...well, whatever they will be. Another liberty I take is  in not ranking—who am I tallying up ballots against, anyway?—but rather listing the films in possibly imperfect alphabetical order. Shine sweet freedom, etc...

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001): A heartbreakingly fractured fairy tale. If you think its final 20 minutes constitute a happy ending, watch, and think, again.

Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002): The Charlie Kaufman-scripted upending of Hollywood convention isn't quite the coup-de-grace it's meant to be, but it still delivers a potent viral load of satirical venom.

The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004): The maestro's sweeping Hughes biography is a much-misunderstood study in obsession, and how failure never stops haunting success. The color manipulation is brilliant too.

Burn After Reading (The Coen Brothers, 2008): A really superb live-action cartoon. Reviewed here.

Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008): Pace, Steven, this was not a mistake. Not at all. Some thoughts on it here.

A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008, pictured): A superbly multi-faceted film that genuinely suggests where cinema can, and should, go in the next century. 

 

The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000): Women's oppression in Iran. A beautiful new manifestation of the neo-realist ethos. 

Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006): It took me a while to come around to this extraordinary film...and I'm glad I did. I walked out on it first...now I feel I could watch it three times a year, at least. The first key to appreciating it is to stop seeing Costa as some sort of, shall we say, "liberal." It's deeper, way deeper, than that...

The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2007): Well, yes, it is about the plaints of white people who are visiting India. And your point is? My initial thoughts here.

Demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2002, pictured): A perhaps alarmist portrait of capital in the cyber age. But a swift, effective kick in the balls in any event.

 

Éloge de l’amour (Jean-Luc Godard, 2001): Profoundly problematic Godard, yes. And no less great for that.