The Devil's Double ('11 Lee Tamahori)

A sadistic but engaging Muslim leader takes an instantaneous liking to a soft-spoken outsider. They usher them into their inner sanctum, lavish them with gifts, riches and a taste of a better life they could only dream of. They treat their new friend as a toy, becoming intensely possessive towards them and act like a violent, petulant child when their dancing marionette tries to cut free of their strings.

That’s the premise of The Devil’s Double, but it could just as easily refer to the 2006 film, The Last King of Scotland which won Forest Whitaker a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. In some respects, Dominic Cooper’s performance in The Devil’s Double eclipses Whitaker’s; degree of difficulty aside, you’d be hard pressed to find a performer on screen *more* than Cooper is here.

A gimmick in the best sense of the word, British actor Cooper (An Education) plays both Uday Hussein, entitled party boy and eldest child of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and Latif, Uday’s reluctant double, employed to make pesky public appearances and draw assassins fire while the real McCoy is off getting laid and doing mountains of coke. Forced into servitude by fear and threats against his family, Latif watches on in ever mounting horror as Uday uses his autonomy to rape, torture and murder all the while grinning like the world is his own private sandbox.

Like Whitaker, Cooper makes a three course meal of the part, masking his sociopathic behavior behind a giggle and a twinkle in his eye. Uday is all id; shrieking about his hatred of Jews and Kuwaitis in one moment and in the next standing in the middle of the street loudly proclaiming his love for a part of the female anatomy using a word that’s best not spoken in polite company. The character is defined by a lack of barriers and absence of self-control. Whether gutting an associate of his father for embarrassing him or forcing his party guests to strip naked for his amusement, Uday remains a remorseless monster yet easily recognizable as the spoiled rich kid who grew up never hearing the word “no.” It’s a fantastically hammy performance by Cooper and every time Uday is on screen The Devil’s Double possesses a live-wire quality, as though we’re watching someone live out their wildest Scarface-inspired dreams.

The problem with The Devil’s Double though, as it was with The Last King of Scotland, is that this isn’t the story of the charismatic despot (or in the case of this film, son of a despot) but rather that of the decent but unmemorable commoner who serves as our window into the madness. And here’s where praise for Cooper gets tricky: as fascinating as his performance as Uday is, that’s how much of an onscreen wet blanket Latif is. Working from an overly literal script by Michael Thomas, director Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors) and Cooper depict Latif as a saint, passively judging his hedonistic doppelgänger while (almost) never succumbing to the temptations of unchecked power and wealth. In mistaking Uday and Latif for opposite sides of the same character, the film robs both creations of dimension and subcutaneous desire. It’s as though the filmmakers don’t trust the viewers to differentiate between the behavior of the two men without creating a complete and total contrast.

Which is unfortunate as The Devil’s Double is at its best when it attempts to blur the line between Uday and Latif as the increasingly unreliable former cedes more of his responsibilities to the latter. We see Latif practicing hate rhetoric in the mirror and rallying the Republican Guard more convincingly than Uday ever could (as one perceptive on-onlooker points out, the real Uday would have been drunk and foaming at the mouth). Uday uses Latif as the ultimate form of self-love; a version of himself that he can hug and party with. After Latif’s hand is crippled in an ambush, a panicked Uday rushes to the hospital and berates the surgeon to save his double’s digits… but only so he himself won’t need to lose a finger to continue perpetuating his ruse.

Taking a break from big studio work for hire, Tamahori’s stages Uday’s life like the world’s greatest party that’s in constant danger of being interrupted by a shoot-out. Often set to a gaudy 80’s pop music (one sequence staged to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” calls to mind, appropriately enough, DePalma’s Body Double), The Devil’s Double relishes in carnal excess, whether its Ludivine Sagnier grinding on the dance floor for Latif’s (and our) benefit or the ease in which a carving knife disembowels a man, there’s an unblinking amorality to its depiction of Uday’s lifestyle as sex, drugs and violence all begin to bleed together.

Yet the fluidity of morality only goes so far, hitting a brick wall whenever it deals with Latif’s short-lived internal struggle between right and wrong. Rarely taking action against his captor, the character is instead a modern day Bartleby, the Scrivener, sitting in a chair politely refusing to murder on Uday’s behalf. Eventually the film falls into a predictable rhythm of Latif attempting to break free of Uday’s grasps, only to be thwarted and reluctantly roped back into the fray. Uday rapes and pillages while Latif looks on in the role of the stern taskmaster, remaining above the fray without providing any counteraction. Ultimately, the two Coopers serve as a perfect metaphor for the film itself: half exhilarating, half finger wagging.

The Devil’s Double opens in limited release on July 29th.

Playing Cops and Robbers: Ben Affleck's The Town

Note: This article addresses specific plot points in the film, The Town.

I first saw The Town back in April as part of an unpaid test screening and, partially out of indifference but mostly because of the vaguely threatening non-disclosure agreement I was forced to sign, didn't have much to say about it. It struck me as a facile but harmless genre film; the latest attempt from film producer/financier Graham King to reposition working class Boston as a modern day equivalent of gangland Chicago or the wild west (The Town is King's third "crime picture" in four years set in Boston following The Departed and Edge of Darkness from earlier this year). Mostly what stood out for me was how ineffective co-writer-director-star Ben Affleck was in the lead role of Doug McRay, a lovable lug of a bank robber who lives a straight and narrow existence where he's insulated (for maximum audience sympathy) from most of the dirty business that's usually associated with being a career criminal. Over the past decade, Affleck has receded from dramatic leading roles, focusing more on attention grabbing supporting performances in films like Hollywoodland and Extract and directing his younger brother Casey to some of the best reviews of his career in Gone Baby Gone. As far as I was concerned, The Town was a reminder of how little Affleck the romantic leading man was missed.

A few months go by and, frankly, I'd forgotten about the film. But when it was selected to play both the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals I became both confused and a little intrigued, especially once this workmanlike procedural became a huge word of mouth hit. Having personally seen films take shape and improve during the test screening process I was curious to see how the filmmakers had worked around and repaired what I saw were some fairly glaring problems with the film.

I skipped the film's theatrical release, but with The Town due out on Blu-ray and DVD later this month (and with unemployment giving me an unwanted abundance of free time) I thought I'd take another look at the film to see whether I'd missed the boat the first time or whether this is simply the latest example of people automatically equating "dropping your r's" and colorful profanity with gritty authenticity.

By the way it's the second one.

Slightly longer than the version I originally saw--with additional scenes between Affleck and Blake Lively as Doug's would-be baby mama as well as a final shot which only further cements comparisons to The Shawshank Redemption--the finished version of The Town still suffers from the same fundamental problem at its center which is that it isn't remotely believable. I don't believe that these characters (any of them, really) exist in this world, which is problematic when the film seems to pride itself on glamorizing the violent, clan-like behavior of Irish criminals in Boston as though it were lifting the lid off of America's best kept secret. The film seems to be caught in a time warp, torn between two worlds, one of which only existed in the imagination of fiction writers forty years ago. The film depicts modern day (as in 2010) Charlestown as the bank robbery capital of the world; a place where no one bats an eye at one four-man crew knocking over a bank, an armored car and a fucking baseball stadium in the span of a few weeks, leaving a trail of burnt-out cars and bullet-punctured guards and police officers. It's merely business as usual, like the Sox bullpen blowing a late lead or Mayor Menino getting tongue-tied.

What motivates these guys to risk decades in prison and a bullet in the head? Money obviously although it's unclear to what end. The Town is built around three armed robbery sequences, which for convenient dramatic purposes take place in the first, second, and third acts. In the first of these robberies Doug and his crew successfully make off with $90,000 a man.
Essentially little boys still in their mid to late thirties, Doug and his cohorts (which includes Jeremy Renner as Gem, a variation on the wild man, "Johnny Boy" role DeNiro personified in Mean Streets) get lit up, eat fast food, go to the strip club and then return to their rundown houses and crappy jobs while dreaming of their next score. Doug, who is in recovery and therefor the only one with an eye towards a future outside "the life," begins romantically pursuing Rebecca Hall's Claire, the bank manager they took hostage who never saw the masked Doug's face during the robbery.

Despite being a violent thug, we're meant to accept that Doug is deep down a good guy because his stalking of Claire is disguised as chivalry and he makes self effacing jokes to defuse the emotional trauma he unwittingly caused her during the robbery ("I like to have a good cry at the nail salon" is just one of and by no means the worst of several groaners worked into the screenplay by Affleck and co-writers Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard). He may throw a fuck into Lively's Krista character from time to time, but his love for Claire is exactly the sort of motivation he needs to move away from a place and its people that do nothing but bring him down.

Yet time and again we see Doug being dragged back for the proverbial one last job, in large part due to a long unpaid debt owed to Gem that's teased out long past the point anyone remembers or cares why these two knuckleheads are friends. Gem, like the other two guys on the crew, is dramatically short-shifted; a simpleton mook who wants nothing more than to prevent Doug from ever abandoning him. We have no idea what he does with his money or when it will ever be enough for a guy living in the same house he grew up in without any aspirations of leaving it or his low-rent neighborhood behind. In other words, this character serves no purpose beyond making sure the Affleck character has to keep participating in violent and reckless shoot-outs and car chases and the audiences gets what it paid its $15 for.

Gem isn't the only character Doug is indebted to though. The story takes a brief detour for Doug to visit his lifer father in prison played by Chris Cooper in a one-scene cameo. Doug's followed in his old man's footsteps and Cooper's character is not only meant to serve as a cautionary tale for Doug, but also to further humanize him by alluding to the tragic circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Doug's mother when he was only six.

As an aside, I should take this opportunity to mention that the accent work in The Town is atrocious, particularly in the scene between Affleck and Cooper. This is all the more surprising as both actors are either former or current longtime Massachusetts residents and are clearly putting on hammy, affected "Southie" accents. The film should serve as a reminder to actors that not everyone who lives in Boston sounds like Diamond Joe Quimby.

But the missing mom story isn't merely to lend gravity to the Doug character, but rather to establish that behind every petty stick up man is a lip smacking, truly *evil* mastermind (in the instance, one played by Pete Postlethwaite who gets to de-thorn rose stems while projecting quiet menace) we can project our collective hatred upon. Postlethwaite's Fergie is not only indirectly responsible for Doug's mom killing herself but he threatens to kill Claire unless Doug agrees to rob Fenway Park in broad daylight. In a set piece which manages to be effective in the moment while still something of a missed opportunity, Doug and his crew get into a machine gun shootout in the bowels of an empty Fenway with Boston police officers that allows Affleck to live out every teenage boy's dream of staring in their own version of Heat.

Tasked with bringing this crew down is the bored-looking John Hamm's Agent Frawley (on paper, the film has a dream cast yet every performances, with the exception of Lively's, comes across as sleepy or apathetic) who gets to deliver "bad ass" speeches about personally hooking Doug up to a lethal injection machine for a Federal murder charge (the federal government's only executed three people in the last forty years, but nevermind). But for all his glowering and tough talk, he's as inept as a keystone kop. Constantly one step behind the meticulous Doug, we get a glimpse of this character's sharpened instincts at a crucial point late in the film: with Claire under FBI surveillance, in the hopes she'll convince Doug to come by her apartment where the Feds are waiting, Frawley literally stands behind her in front of a *giant* bay window, never considering that Doug (or for that matter anyone with working eyes) might see him from a safe distance away.

The screenplay for The Town has a lot on its mind, as it tries to reconcile generations of criminal behavior and the effect it has on young men born into it as well as dramatizing the changing face of Charlestown. The film was adapted from the novel Book of Thieves by Chuck Hogan and there's a rumored four hour cut of the film which may see the light of day eventually; it's likely either of these outlets treats these issues with more insight than the lip service they receive here. Overlong at more than two hours, the film is indifferently plotted, spinning its wheels between its crackerjack bank robberies without ever getting beneath the surface of a group of guys who turned to crime because it's all they knew. Nor does film have anything compelling to say about the emotional toll being the significant other of a bank robber can take on a person. The script is clunky and unsubtle, shoehorning plot devices and psuedo-profound lines of dialogue which grind the story to a halt for no reason other than the implicit promise that they'll be relevant later on in the film. The film especially suffers in comparison to Peter Yates' great Boston bank robber film of the early 70's, The Friends of Eddie Coyle which depicted the life of a criminal as a lonely game of musical chairs, only when the music stops you either end up dead or in jail.

No, Affleck's real agenda here seems to be in making a Michael Mann-style crime epic for the under-40 set (the earlier version of the film featured a scene where Doug zoned out in front of a television where the aforementioned Heat played, an instance of gilding the lilly that was wisely cut). But The Town lacks the breadth, style and attention to detail found within Mann's best films. Affleck the filmmaker can't bring himself to sympathize with the Frawley character to make him a worthy opponent and the relationship between Claire and Doug remains disappointing on the surface, as though being a violent criminal who kidnapped you at gunpoint is a "meet cute" that can be smoothed over by an earnest apology and a diamond necklace. For all its overtures to authenticity (which extends to casting pock-faced locals and the production reportedly embedding itself in the world of real criminals and drug addicts), the film feels like a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers.

Which brings me back to me original point: believability. Between The Town and Gone Baby Gone, Affleck has seemingly anointed himself the preeminent dramatist of white, working class South Boston. Yet there's always been something disingenuous about the routine, particularly if you recognize Affleck as a well-off middle class kid from an affluent suburb, posturing because he supposedly speaks the language. Of the two films, I actually enjoyed Gone Baby Gone as, for whatever its flaws, it captured some of the sadness and quiet desperation of being unable to escape one's situation. But Affleck strikes me as an artist desperately in search of street cred and seemingly unwilling to leave behind the safety net he created when he co-wrote Good Will Hunting back in the mid 90's. Anyone who's ever heard Affleck speak or read an interview with him, particularly about politics or filmmaking, can attest that he's an incredibly intelligent, self deprecating guy a million miles away from the sensitive lunkhead he plays here. I'm interested to see whatever he directs next but more than anything I wish he'd stop performing this Southie minstrel show of his. It's time to take his talents to one of the other 49 states.

The Runaways

I guess I'll be the one to ask the question: why The Runaways? Why an entire film dedicated to the short-lived exploits of a band that barely charted in this country thirty five years ago, has had arguable lasting appeal (readers under the age of 30, name a song by the band other than "Cherry Bomb," and no cheating) and minimal influence on our current music landscape when digging out an old episode of Behind the Music would more than suffice. Both Blondie and The Go-Go's were performing during the same period in history, wrote more memorable songs and, if VH1 is to be believed, generated far more R-rated drama and in-fighting, so what exactly is the appeal here of a group of pubescent, unsupervised girls getting high, playing loud music and occasionally have sex with each other and whatever roadie or fan that gets pulled into their gravitational pull of teenage debauchery? Geeze, I just don't see it.

The Runaways the film, like The Runaways the band, is a calculated grasp at the forbidden fruit of teenage female sexuality hiding behind a flimsy fig leaf of feminism. Dramatized here as literally plucked from a crowded club because she had the right look to front an all female band, Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) seemingly ascends to the level of rock goddess before it's established whether she can carry a tune. Such is the appeal of a 15-year-old who looks like Bardot meets Bowie with no hang-ups about writhing on stage in a corset and stockings. After first laying eyes on Currie, Michael Shannon's suitably creepy record producer Kim Fowley screams "jail fucking bait!" and it's not hard to imagine the producers of The Runaways thinking the same thing as they lined up a murderer's row of barely and not-at-all legal starlets to appear in the film.

Fanning, a spookily-self aware performer from an unfathomably young age, made headlines a few years back after appearing in Hounddog, a little-scene independent film where her character was raped on screen. But the real coming out party is The Runaways where the actress, only now old enough to drive as of this writing, gets to strut, growl, grind and have PG-13-safe make-out sessions. Currie, spit up and chewed out before she was old enough to legally buy cigarettes, seems less born of parents than of rock and roll cliches. Never shown as being moved by the music and often annoyed by the attention lavished on her by the media, Currie's just as driven to escape humdrum suburbia as she is to sob for the return of life at home with her supportive older sister and sick father. The character is aimless, lost in her own story, and Fanning is helpless to find purpose behind those wide and sad coked-out eyes.

The Runaways attempts to balance Currie's vacantness with bandmate and beating heart of the band Joan Jett (Kristin Stewart in an ink black mullet and bored expression) who resents the perception that the band is a gimmick act and wants to rock just as hard as the boys do. Visually, Stewart perfectly resembles a young Jett, returning to her pre-Twilight form as sexually androgynous and snarly lipped. Yet the actress remains, as ever, a passive and indifferent performer, suitably aping the guitar licks but little of the rebel spirit. The film is framed as a star-crossed romance between Currie and Jett, even ending with Jett's cover of "Crimson and Clover" as the duo make-up long distance after years of resentment, yet it seems unwilling to fully commit to their sapphist tryst as anything more substantial than teenage puppy love.

The disconnect between Joan's "I Love Rock and Roll" ideals and Cherie's cover girl ennui would make for an interesting take on the material. So, for that matter would be the way female musicians are marginalized by the male-driven media, placing their sexuality before their talent. The film toes the line of exploring the creepy cultural fixation on sexualizing young women before their time, a ticking clock of obsession that seems to expire the second a woman becomes of legal age, yet it curiously depicts most of the band's screaming fans as young women, flying in the face of Fowley's titillation battle plan for rock domination.

Instead writer-director Floria Sigismondi (a first-time filmmaker but a music video mainstay for decades) forgoes a point altogether, trotting out every music biopic chestnut, from drugged-out hazes, to band squabbling, to splashing unattributed headlines and magazine covers across the screen to assure us, the dubious viewers, that this sonically limited act did, at one point, matter. Most egregious of all, the film commits the same sin it's theoretically criticizing, focusing on Currie and Jett at the expense of the rest of the band, denying them characters, secondary personality traits or even perfunctory title cards at the end of the film to explain what happened to them after the band broke up.

Watching The Runaways, I was reminded of another, better musical biopic, 2007's Control about the late singer Ian Curtis of Joy Division. Control never presumes Curtis' or the band's influence or importance, nor reduces them to a series of on the nose sound bites and "oh, so that's how that song was written" moments. It had genuine pride and respect for the process of making music and the tormented artists who made it, and lets that speak for itself. It lacked the cynicism that permeates The Runaways which does as much to promote the talent of the band as a beer commercial featuring their songs would and treats its cast as underage pin-ups. As the film was co-produced by Jett and adapted from Currie's memoir, it has the odd side-effect of an artist proving their naysayers correct. Congratulations ladies: you can be as much of a soulless marketing tool as men!

The Best of 2009

2009, was in many respects, a year of disappointment, both personally and globally. Right around the time the post-election hangover kicked you realized that your job was probably no longer secure (assuming you were lucky enough to still have one), our country was still mired in two wars and the only one who seemed to be happy were the CEO's of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns who used your tax dollars to buy another gold toilet for their yachts. It's only appropriate then that film in 2009 reflected that anxiety; it was though even a trip to the movies served as a reminder of just how scary it was outside.

Nowhere was this more evident than in Jason Reitman's Up in the Air which featured George Clooney as a corporate axe-man, criss-crossing the country, firing people while offering a pithy pat on the back to those going home to families that depend upon them. Only along the way does he comes to realize his insular, lone wolf existence (dedicated to the asinine, yet strangely relatable, goal of attaining 10 million frequent-flyer miles) is merely a shell game put in place to prevent him from establishing any real emotional attachments. It's a testament to Reitman and Clooney (who's never been better) that not only is the film dazzling, old Hollywood-style entertainment filled with beautiful people being charming, but also one of the great existential crisis movie of our time. How, in a world where it's become easier than ever to stay connected, is it we've become more self-contained and shut-off from our fellow man?

Of course the economic crisis had a funny way of rearing its head in the most unexpected of places. Sam Raimi's low-tech, comedy-horror-extravaganza Drag Me to Hell not only satiated the long held demand for a fourth Evil Dead film but gave audiences the perverse pleasure of watching a pretty, young (but cravenly opportunistic) loan officer (Allison Lohman) spit up gobs of black bile, be tossed around by a decrepit old crone and have large chunks of her hair torn from her head after kicking an old gypsy woman out of her home. The film finds Raimi at his most impish, teasing out scares and playing the audience like a harp; you won't know whether to shriek or giggle but that's pretty much the point. Of course, no film was more terrifying than Chris Smith's Collapse a doomsday documentary that makes an Inconvenient Truth look like a bedtime story. Essentially a ninety minute long sit down interview with former police officer turned reporter, Michael Ruppert, the film explains the concept of "peak oil" and that an economy built upon it (like for example, our own) is doomed to topple much sooner than later. It's the sort of film where you find yourself praying that Ruppert is a crackpot simply because the alternative may cause you to lose sleep. Or buy a gun.

The war in Iraq may have lost space on the front page this year to the economy but it finally became the subject of a great film. Two of them actually. Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker has already been feted by most major critics groups so I'll simply add that the film remains one of the most intensely visceral films I've ever seen and features a star making performance from Jeremy Renner. Iraq is never explicitly mentioned in Armando Iannucci's In the Loop (an adaptation of the BBC series "The Thick of It") but that's about the only thing that isn't said in an explicit fashion. Showing the maneuvering and scrambling on both sides of the pond in the days leading up to a US invasion of Iraq, the film wields verbal dexterity and creative profanity like a saber, depicting both sides of the war debate as opportunistic fumblers and slimy schemers. The whole film plays like a 1930's screwball farce, only everyone's talking about cunts, scrotums and lubricated horse cocks.

The two best character studies of the year were both films about immature Jewish men confused by love (and no, I'm not talking about A Serious Man, although I was pretty fond of that film as well). James Gray's Two Lovers starred Joaquin Phoenix in the performance of the year as a thirty-something Brighton Beach man torn between the excitement and passion inspired in him by a beautiful fair-haired temptress (Gwenyth Paltrow, reminding people that, before she was a blogger and Chris Martin's wife, she was a hell of an actress) and the security of a plain-looking (by Hollywood standards anyway) Jewish woman from the neighborhood, achingly played by Vinessa Shaw. Bracingly perceptive in depicting arrested development and the behavior of fickle young men, Two Lovers had the misfortune of being known as the film Phoenix was promoting when he had a public meltdown/decided he wanted to pull a Borat-like media stunt. A box office misfire as a result, time should be much kinder to it. However, the most misunderstood film of the year is Judd Apatow's Funny People which seemed to alienate star Adam Sandler's fan base of frat boys and meatheads as well as most critics who failed to recognize what a revelation the film was from both its star and director. Calling to mind both James L. Brooks and Eric Rohmer (only with dick and fart jokes), the film is a turbulent and overlong yet wonderfully human story of a man who, when faced with death, goes through the motions of change but never actually does becomes a better person.

Speaking of death, how we carry on in the wake of losing a loved one (and what we do with what they leave behind) was a surprising reoccurring motif this year. The French film Summer Hours, from prolific by wildly inconsistent filmmaker Oliver Assayas, shows the way three siblings react to the sale of their family estate after the passing of their mother. Attuned to the way we project memories and sentimental value onto the keepsakes and possessions of our childhood, the film finds deep reservoirs of understated sadness as the liquidation of assets and relocation of heirlooms feels as tragic as the death of a parent. Less understated (at least in my experience) in its sadness is the animated film Up from Pixar and director Peter Doctor.
Ostensibly the story of an old man and a little boy who fly off to South America in a house hoisted by thousands of balloons, the film has the capacity to reduce me to a sobbing mess (several times throughout) every time it addresses the death of square-jawed curmudgeon Carl Fredricksen's wife, Ellie, initially dramatized in a much lauded musical interlude depicting their lives together, from courtship to her death. It's a curious jumping off point for a kid's film about high adventure and talking dogs but it's essential to keep the film emotionally (..erm...) grounded and a reminder that we often can't begin our new lives until we let go of our old ones. But lest all this death stuff get too heavy, we'll always have Bobcat Goldthwait (yes the guy with the dumb voice from the Police Academy movies). Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad was marketed as the latest sickly sweet comedy from Robin Williams, but don't believe it. Working a pitch black comedic vein, World's Greatest Dad explored the way the dead are canonized by those left behind, often rewriting history and riding roughshod over who they really were to bolster the living's own sense of self worth. It's the rare comedy that would have us find humor in suicide notes and tragedy in masturbation mishaps.

Ten Best of '09:(*)
1. Up in the Air (Jason Reitman)
2. Two Lovers (James Gray)
3. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
4. In the Loop (Armando Iannucci)
5. Funny People (Judd Apatow)
6. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
7. Collapse (Chris Smith)
8. Up (Peter Doctor)
9. World's Greatest Dad (Bobcat Goldthwait)
10. Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi)

Honorable Mention:
The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson)
Revanche (Götz Spielmann)
A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
Sugar (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)
In the Electric Mist (Bertrand Tavernier)
Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)

(*) In the two weeks between writing this article and it's eventual posting, I finally saw the documentary The Cove from filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and my mind was suitably blown. If I were less lazy I'd rewrite this whole thing to incorporate the film into my top 10 but in addition to being a pain in the ass that's not in the spirit of reflecting my mindset at the end of 2009. Needless to say, in addition to the films written about at length here, you should definitely check out The Cove as well.

A Serious Man (09 Coens B+)

Republished at Gone Cinema Poaching.

Set in the mid 60's in a closely-knit, Jewish community in Minnesota, A Serious Man, the new film from Joel and Ethan Coen is being called their most nakedly personal film ("...their smart-alecky nihilism feels authentic rather than arch — you understand, maybe for the first time, where they are coming from" deduces A.O. Scott of the New York Times), a scenario bolstered by the filmmakers claim that the movie was inspired by their own experiences growing up in the Midwest. I'm not sure I'm buying it though. Like the "inspired by true events" title card placed in front of their last Minnesota-set film, the comparatively propulsive Fargo, I wouldn't put it past the puckish directors to be pulling another one over on us.

Here we have a film about the search for larger meaning, or more directly, straight-up answers in the face of the unexplainable. Why are we beset with miseries? Why is life so hard? Are there larger implications to the signs and symbols we see every day?

Yet for all the probing, the film resolutely withholds answers or flat out mocks the idea that anyone, even the most learned or devout, actually is within flailing distance of them. It's as though the Coens know we'll never stop looking for meaning or clues to unlock their own occasionally impenetrable work, with A Serious Man serving as a good natured raspberry to those foolish enough to lead the charge and do anything but "embrace the mystery."

Or is it misery? The actual quote is delivered by a disgruntled Korean student in clipped English to beleaguered physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) after half-heartedly denying his role in a bribe for grades scheme. Larry isn't sure he comprehends the expression and neither did I, but if it is indeed an auditory mistake, it's an understandable one. Over the course of a few weeks leading up to his son's Bar Mitzvah, we find Larry standing in for Job, as misfortune is rained down upon him.

A decent man (which could have served as an alternate title to the film) besieged by temptation in the form of the aforementioned bribe and the lonely housewife next door who sunbathes in the nude (photographed in a long, unblinking shot that somehow saps the image of all eroticism), Larry stays the path, searching out celestial answers to all that ails him. And does he have troubles: His wife is leaving him for the touchy-feely Sy Ableman (the unctuous Fred Melamend in a performance that would be legendary were he given but a bit more screen time) forcing him to stay at the oft-repeated Jolly Roger motel and someone has been trying to put the hex on his tenure application by sending anonymous, character-disparaging letters to the administration. His repulsive brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is an emotional and financial drain (it can't be a coincidence the character spends the entire film literally sucking pus from a cyst on the back of his neck) and his kids have little use for him beyond pilfering money from his wallet or nagging him to fix the TV antenna.

It's a life of a thousand, small indignities and Larry's desperate to find out why must they all happen to him. But getting a straight answer isn't in the cards as he jumps from rabbi to rabbi in search of guidance that's either useless, oblique or dangled just out of reach.

The film more or less follows suit: placing you in the same, always questioning, unable to locate your bearing, position as Larry. A Serious Man feels like a continuation of the famously divisive, final scene of No Country for Old Men, where we're left dangling in the wind as to what it all means. If No Country prided itself on concluding with an anti-climax, here's a film which scene by scene, nay beat by beat, is about deflating expectations often after much flurry and fluster.

In the film's best sequence, we see an extended anecdote about a Jewish dentist who discovers a message in Hebrew on the back of a patient's teeth and the great lengths he goes to to uncover their meaning. Employing every trick and knack in their playbook, the Coens breathlessly assemble the sequence like a comedian delivering a well-polished routine, stretching out its resolution to a near exasperating breaking point. To reveal any more would defeat the purpose of the scene but in a nutshell it serves to not only extrapolate the themes of the film but to serve as a reminder that often when it comes to faith, we really are in it for ourselves.

After I saw the film I knew I liked it but had a hard time pinpointing why and how much. I had trouble shaking my disorientation, as though my head were swimming and I was walking on an icy sidewalk. In the moment, A Serious Man often feels disconnected, like a bunch of assembled pieces operating separate from everything else around them. Characters and plot points are abruptly pushed off screen to make room for new ones which are no more likely to get their propers. It really does at times feel like one thing after another.

Yet appropriately, after some quiet reflection, the films intentions feel more clear to me. The experience not necessarily understood but certainly appreciated. A Serious Man handles largish ideas such as a divine plan, guilt and the idea of the Jews as, if not God's chosen people, than certainly one of his favorite targets ("just because the boss is wrong doesn't mean he's not the boss") and places them within a mundane, suburban context. The characters aren't motivated by greed or delusions of grandeur (which often go hand-in-hand in Coen brothers films). These events are merely brought upon them simply by existing (in a motif which skirts the line of being a Gump-ism, the film uses the Columbia Record Club as a metaphor for life: you do nothing and it keeps coming every month).

The film is both incredibly off-putting and enveloping. It keeps you at arm's length with its reliance on ellipses in lieu of actual resolution, yet ultimately it feels empathetic to the fact that we are all searching. And while A Serious Man might argue we're never going to find what we're looking for, at least it concedes we're all on the same road.

The Best of '08

Disclaimer: as of this writing I have still not seen a handful of titles which could theoretically factor into a 10 Best List. A small sampling of these titles includes Ballast, Doubt, Frozen River and I've Loved You So Long. Should I see any of these in a timely fashion I will incorporate them into this list. That, however, would not take place in a timely fashion.

1. Wall*E (Andrew Stanton)

If 2008 truly was a cinematic wasteland then perhaps it's appropriate that its savior was a hopeless romantic running through mountains of trash, and no, I'm not talking about Slumdog Millionaire. Destined to be marginalized by history as merely a great animated film or simply yet another masterpiece from Pixar (is that a yawn I hear?), Wall*E is not only the most entertaining film I've seen all year (full disclosure I've already watched the film 4 times in the month since I bought the dvd) but the most stubbornly cinematic, creating breathtaking imagery out of ones and zeroes mostly devoid of dialogue, human characters and cookie cutter, Disney-plotting all while crafting a completely original and terrifyingly plausible sci-fi parable for our wasteful times. More than that though, the film is the most swoon-worthy romance of the year; a film keenly aware of the transformative power of intimacy and how the heart (even one made of circuit boards and microchips) can flutter simply by having someone hold your hand.

2. The Class (Laurent Cantent)

It's so simple it's almost deceptive. Present one teacher, instructing a class of combative teenagers over the course of a school year and nothing else. No ostentatious subplots involving the teacher's love life or rousing speeches or montages showing students prepping for the big exam. No Coolio either. Instead we get a war of attrition between one good intentioned but flawed man (François Bégaudeau, essentially playing himself and working from a script based on his own book) and a classroom filled with hormonal, bored Parisian youths who view school as a weigh-station on the road to adulthood. A battle for the minds of the youth of tomorrow writ small and clearly one that's being lost, The Class is both depressing in its perception and yet encouraging just for letting you know there are teachers like Bégaudeau's Mr. Marin who are still trying in the face of crushing institutional constraints and a world that seemingly doesn't care.

3. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)

Is this the first cinematic ambassador of the Obama administration? Observant, inclusive, slyly funny and at times utterly heartbreaking, Rachel Getting Married is a renascence from director Jonathan Demme. His hand-held cameras omnipresently capture every unmistakably human moment over the course of an emotional weekend while Jenny Lumet's screenplay possesses a rare gift for illustrating equal parts compassion and personal weakness without ever feeling forced. Featuring music and dance, casual multi-culturalism, larger than life guests (performed by the year's best ensemble cast), Rachel Getting Married is the sort of wedding you only wish you attended.

4. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)

How appropriate that a film about confronting pre-conceived notions about a person is the one I dragged my feet on seeing for months because it sounded lousy. Featuring the performance of the year by Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky is often achingly funny in showing us a woman who's a perpetual bundle of nervous energy (think Gervais' David Brent from the BBC "The Office" only less self-agrandizing) whose positive outlook on life serves not only as a security blanket but truly an act of defiance against a caustic and indifferent world. Hilariously pitted against Eddie Marden's perpetually irate driving instructor, these scenes provide not just a foil for Hawkins' Poppy, but also a true test of her conscience. The film only deepens exactly when you expect it to falter.

5. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (Kurt Kuenne)

The feel bad film of the year and hands down the best documentary of same. A first person journey of self-discovery that finds its narrator experiencing each horrifying new development in much the same manner that we the audience do, this is a film that will send waves of rage pulsing through your body. Unfolding like a Dennis Lehane novel, Dear Zachary plumbs the trenches of human evil (if at all possible, avoid reading *anything* which describes the events depicted in this film prior to seeing it) yet somehow finds unlikely heroes to celebrate, shining through from the darkest of places.

6. In Bruges (Martin McDonagh)

What an awesomely vulgar, wonderful little film. Seemingly cobbled together from all the most annoying parts of mid 90's indie films, In Bruges is an inexplicable joy, coasting on the charms of perfectly matched stars Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell and, with all due respect to the late Heath Ledger, Ralph Fiennes who gives the most mesmerizing sociopathic performance of the year. Never going where you expect it to and overflowing with bracingly funny (and did I mention vulgar?) dialogue, In Bruges may soon replace The Ice Harvest as the film I put on when I stumble home drunk from the bar and want to watch people even worse behaved than myself.

7. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)

The most divisive film of the year, Synecdoche, New York is a film by and for writers: a snake swallowing its own tail for two hours, attuned to the self-destructive habit of obsessive meddling and self-examening at the expense of fruition and life experience (he says while tapping away at 2am on a Friday, half written screenplay sitting a few feet away on his desk). Difficult to sit through at times, the film is however one that lends itself to countless interpretations and will hopefully reward repeat viewings, formally audacious and uncomfortably perceptive, the film announces Kaufman as a natural filmmaker.

8. The Promotion (Steven Conrad)

No one saw this film, but I feel confident it will find an audience and love down the road. A comedy of manners and class warfare where the smaller the stakes are the more vicious the fight is, the film continues on the promise of Conrad's screenplay for The Weatherman (another small gem that was largely overlooked) in writing genuinely funny characters grappling with day to day problems like paying a mortgage, negotiating office politics and keeping a relationship together. Is it any wonder the film made less than half a million dollars in its theatrical run?

9. The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy)

Like The Promotion, this is another small gem of a film. Unlike The Promotion people went to see this one. God Bless McCarthy for giving this part to Richard Jenkins, a longtime character actor best know as playing the dead patriarch on "Six Feet Under." Understated and inward, registering change in a glacier-like crawl (something even the great Clint can't do in the superficially similar Gran Torino) The Visitor is a gentle, proudly liberal film about accepting change and opening your heart to new people and experiences. Every bit as good as Jenkins (and way less likely to be awarded for it) is Hiam Abbas as the mother of an illegal immigrant who also unexpectedly finds change and hopefulness welling up inside of her.

10. Milk (Gus Van Sant)

Is Milk a great film or merely a good one that feels especially relevant and vital during these sad, close-minded times? Ultimately we'll never know but one can't shake the feeling that this is exactly the film we need right now and that it's as entertaining and light on its feet and well constructed makes it almost too good to be true. Formulaic and old fashion in the best sense, The film allows Sean Penn to give the most impressive performance of his career in the role of slain gay leader Harvey Milk; a warm, strong willed, persuasive man of the people who understood the importance (and power) of working within the system. Van Sant's film pulses with real anger and affection for outsiders everywhere but remains, importantly, inclusive of those whose stomachs were turned by Brokeback Mountain (the film cleverly front-loads most of the man on man action instead of teasing it out; force your straight viewers to confront their prejudices then move past them). An awards contender that actually deserves to be one.

The Worst of '08

Disclaimer:

I'm not a paid critic which means I don't have to go see every film that comes out. Therefore there are dozens of, no doubt, terrible films that come out every year that I will never see. I also tend to be of the mind that the average person probably can tell that What Happens in Vegas and Beverly Hills Chihuahua will most likely be shit without an assist from me whereas some otherwise sane individuals might actually recommend American Teen or Cloverfield so I'm glad to help out where I can in that respect.

1. American Teen (Nanette Burstein)

Shame on this film. Shame on Nanette Burstein, who once upon a time was a real documentary filmmaker, for turning this opportunity to create a Wiseman-like study of middle American youth into a demographic-pandeirng would-be-episode of "The Hills." Shame on its subjects, most of whom played up the worst aspects of their personalities to fit some pre-conceived notion of themselves (are we supposed to be shocked that the cunty rich girl has suffered tragedy in her life? Or that the wacky, artsy girl is likely an undiagnosed manic?) Shame on the kids' parents for allowing their children to exploit themselves in such a manner. Shame on the Sundance Film Festival for programming the film in its coveted documentary category without putting an asterisk next to the title. Shame on those in the critical community for failing to recognize (or is it simply failing to care?) that the film was merely one re-staged, ADRed, rejiggered, or flat-out fabricated sequence after another. The only people who shouldn't be ashamed are the American people who stayed away from this one in droves.

2. The Entire First Person Genre: Colverfield, Diary of the Dead, Memorial Day, Afterschool, etc...

You know what's really *not* that interesting? Films that are enthralled with the idea of the way we obsessively chronicle our lives in this, the era of YouTube. Providing enough meta-ass licking to annoy even Charlie Kaufman, 2008 gave us Cloverfield, a shaky-cam sham that was all sizzle and no steak filled with grating yuppies who wouldn't put down the down camera even whilst scaling the side of a building, fighting off giant spider monsters or watching their loved ones die horrifically. In the same vein is George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead where we find the filmmaker returning to the zombie franchise he created with a painfully shallow (and not to mention butt ugly) yawn about what happens when obnoxious film students are on the run from the undead. Limit these to one a decade, please George? Arguably more irritating are the art films that have turned this particular form of naval gazing into an excuse to beat the audience into submission either with the latest didactic on Iraq (as in the case of the as yet unreleased Memorial Day which unspooled at CineVegas) or to take clumsy swipes at an entire generation, like NY Film Fest favorite Afterschool which plays like Haneke only with intentionally lousy compositions and an unearned cynicism. So toxic is this particular trend in filmmaking that it spawned the two worst "South Park" episodes in history.

3. The Happening (M. Night Shayamalan)

This one began its life as a page-turner of a screenplay, which transcended its dopey premise through tense writing and a genuine appreciation of the idea that the uncertainty of what comes next is often more important then anything occurring in the present. Perhaps this means M. Night Shayamalan should consider a career as a novelist. A monument to ineptitude behind the camera, The Happening is tonally clumsy, dreadfully paced and altogether unscary. More distressingly, it features career-worst performances from Mark Wahlberg and the usually luminous Zoey Deschanel.

4. Hancock (Peter Berg)

You won't believe Will Smith can fly. Featuring the worst special effects this side of a Troma film (and those don't cost tens of millions of dollars), Hancock's wise-cracking, alcoholic superhero was beaten to the punch by several months by Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man and the filmmakers gutted their own premise of having us root for Big Willy style run off with another man's wife by roping her into a dopey super-heroine subplot that seemed to be making itself up as it went along.

5. Zack and Miri Make a Porno (Kevin Smith)

Even casting real actors (and talented ones at that) can't save Smith's latest faux naughty peon to male insecurity and gentle Red State values poking through a haze of gay and scat jokes. Smith is almost 40-years-old and has now directed 8 films without showing any signs of growth either as a filmmaker or a human being.

6. Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov)

Nearly a decade after Fight Club bombed spectacularly, costing dozens of people at Fox their jobs in its wake, this thing comes along presenting a dumbed down version of the same ethos and a variation on the same special effect for two hours, and it becomes the surprise hit of the summer. Simply possessing an attitude is not the same thing has having something to say.

7. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg)

Who knew it was the directorial brilliance of Danny Leiner that made the first film work? Bringing back almost the entire cast and original writers (who served as this films co-directors) of the latter-day, stoner classic Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, the sequel falls on its face both as a political satire and a comedy. More curiously the film ended up playing like an icky right wing apologia (how else to explain our heroes bonding with Dubbya over their shared love of weed?) after beginning with oral rape at Gitmo gags.

8. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Scott Derrickson)

This is the film where Keanu Reeves' alien comes to Earth to destroy all those pesky humans because they're ruining the planet only to change his mind because he watches Jennifer Connelly hug her step-son played by Will Smith's kid, Jayden, and decides "you humans are alright after all." Additional demerits for wasting Jon Hamm's first post-"Mad Men" role on an expendable, exposition-spouting fount.

9. Cocaine Cowboys II: Hustlin' with the Godmother (Billy Corben)

Another awful documentary of questionable value. A sequel in name only to Bill Corben's sprawling 2006 account of the South American to US drug trade, Cocaine Cowboys II focuses on the anecdotal life of sycophant and former drug trafficker Charles Cosby who rose to fame by having an affair with a Columbian narcotics baroness. Short on analysis but long on Cosby's bragging, the film is like spending two hours with one of the groupies who used to fuck Mick Jagger.

10. Jumper (Doug Liman)

Let's not kid ourselves. This is no worse than Doug Liman's last film, the nauseating Mr. & Mrs. Smith: it just doesn't have two of the biggest movie stars in the world to distract us from the hackery. An incoherent jumble of undigested ideas and wasted exotic locals, the only upside to this film is it probably puts to bed the notion of Hayden Christensen, leading man.

What I've Seen October 2008

Once upon a time I used to blog about films all the time. But then I got fat and lazy and started having sex again and I pretty much threw my blog out the window so I could follow less noble pursuits. Well I’ve been feeling the itch lately and on top of everything else I’ve got AFI in a few weeks and I’d like to try and document the experience as I used to back in the good old days. So here I am, exercising my writing muscles.

These represent some of the more stream of conscious writing I’ve done but they certainly get the point across whether I fall on the “yay” or “nay” side of a film. This may be a rolling entry where I continue to add new titles or it may be the latest in a long-line of “one-off’s.” Either way, enjoy.

Changeling (2008 Clint Eastwood C) As has become Eastwood’s tradition with recent films, we get the studio logo at the head of the film in old fashion black and white, one would imagine harkening back to an earlier era of filmmaking where 70-something Clint might feel himself more at home. Who knew it would serve as a nifty metaphor for his distressingly limited world view? Essentially a Lars von Trier film without the irony or meta-context, here we get (a woefully miscast) Angelina Jolie in the Bjork-like role of the long-suffering woman crushed by a cruel, indifferent system while a host of TV actors including Jeffrey Donnovan using a distracting brogue, are trotted out as callous oppressors. Eastwood’s painting with a very wide brush here, never calling into question our heroine’s sanity, while simply presenting the LAPD as corrupt and lazy with no motivation beyond self-preservation. I mean was there nothing more to the entire scandal than a desire not to be publicly embarrassed? Actually the word “simple” seems the most apt adjective to employ here. Cheers for the wronged woman! Hisses for the evil institutions! Jolie murmurs and caterwauls her way to awards attention (she’s working from the Sean Penn playbook of parental suffering), Amy Ryan reprises a variation of the foul-mouthed hard-living working class character from Gone Baby Gone, John Malkovich is once again unable to disguise his Walken-like weirdness in a relatively normal character, and on it goes. To be honest, I’m not even sure what Eastwood is trying for here. Guess I’ll just have to look forward to Gran Torino.

Synecdoche, New York (2008 Charlie Kaufman B+) I understand the hatred towards this film but I think it’s misplaced. Complaints that it’s merely Kaufman chasing a rabbit up his own asshole are, frankly, several films too late. A couple days removed and I’ve already doodled out a handful of theories about the film: Is it a celebration of collaboration, with Hoffman’s ever-expanding merry troop following him blindly for decades, going to a place where their performances end up merging, superseding and defining their actual lives? Or is it an indictment of endless self-analysis from Hope Davis’ Lynchian in her omnipresence shrink to characters literally being able to stand back and look at how others would perform their lives (and in the most on the nose allusion, the film’s unending curiosity with human’s examining their own excrement)? Or for that matter is it anything more than a Buñuel -like head trip, creating small worlds within the confines of its own ellipses, never really pausing to explain itself or ground the film in an easy to place logic? I guess the point is that it doesn’t matter what reading you take (although I personally prefer the cautionary tale second one) because the journey is so surprising and lovingly melancholy. There’s elements of Southland Tales-type hubris on display but Kaufman admirably seems to have both hands on the wheel at all times even when the road we’re on is windy and opaque. This isn’t to say every gambit pays off; not by a long shot. Everything relating to Hoffman’s daughter is utterly baffling (and not helped by the curious casting of the nearly 40-year-old Robin Weigert), Kaufman’s patented preciousness (including a house that’s perennially on fire) can be a bit, um, suffocating. There’s also an inherent redundancy to the premise which can be patience trying (by my unofficial count there are four “real” funerals and an equal amount of staged ones). Still, I find myself returning to the film in my mind repeatedly, which I really could never say for Kaufman’s more widely accepted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Bonus: Emily Watson as Samantha Morton is perhaps the single funniest joke of the year.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008 Danny Boyle B) I’m prefacing this by saying that I’m overrating this, but only as it applies to my own scale. Most people will (and already do) like this a whole lot more than I did, which considering my disproportionate admiration for late-period Boyle (I’m even a pretty big Sunshine apologist) surprises no one more than myself. Which is a long convoluted way of saying that if I wasn’t such a Boyle fanboy I’d really nail this for being the facile and morally sanitized City of God (by way of Dickens) rip-off that it is. The star here is the setting (as it was in City) and Boyle’s joyous direction. When the film is divorced from its own dopey, high-concept premise it’s energetic and vital, casting a light on what still remains an under-documented third world culture. The film’s characters never really transcend their roles as ciphers (which isn’t to say the performances are bad by any means) so they’re often only as transcendent as the story they’re intertwined in. So, in summation, stuff with kids working as urchins for Fagin-like figure (complete with involuntary maiming) is riveting. Stuff with now adult characters working under the thumb of hazily defined mob boss plays like a bad FX show. Plus, as alluded to earlier, I’m not overly impressed with Simon Beaufoy’s gimmicky screenplay which makes the adorable mistake of confusing contrivance with destiny (then again Shyamalan’s been doing the same thing for the past decade and he comes from the same part of the world as this film, so maybe it’s a cultural thing). I’m willing to forgive how every question our hero is asked dovetails into a vignette explaining how he knew the answer but does it always have to come together in such a quaint and tidy bow? Eminently worth seeing though for the naturalistic child performances, Boyle’s zippy direction (there’s a fantastic early chase sequence through the streets of Bombay that puts to shame incoherent gibberish like the Bourne sequels) and Anthony Dod Mantle’s gorgeous photography which explodes in Technicolor hues of yellow, brown, read and green. It’s unfortunate that Pineapple Express co-opted M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” this summer as the film features a heck of a sequence cut to it, the effect of which is mostly lost due to over-familiarity. Also, I hate to be “that guy,” but would it have killed them to just subtitle the whole thing?

Role Models (2008 David Wain B+) This is being compared to Judd Apatow, which really isn’t very fair. As far as I’m concerned Wain has been making me laugh for just as long (and with more regularity than) Apatow has and Rudd and Banks were in Wet Hot American Summer long before 40-Year-Old Virgin. As sell-out projects go, this might be without peer in melding formulaic high concept comedy (Wain and his co-writers came to the project late in development) with more scatological almost dada-inspired digression and grotesque characterizations. Sure, I could point out that once the plot kicks in you can anticipate every single dramatic beat about twenty minutes in advance and it all more or less ends up exactly where you would expect it to (complete with lessons learned and hugs). And yeah, the advertising for the film seems to highlight every dopey comedic set-piece and bit of broad physical comedy, but there’s a very good reason for that: everything else in the film is way too vulgar, angry or inside to ever put in a commercial. You’ve got Paul Rudd putting on a master class of passive annoyance and casual misanthropy. Snark has never been wielded with more laser specific precision which does wonders in cutting through much of the third act hokum that’s par for the course. And really, what more needs to be said about Jane Lynch who as a recovering coke addict turned community leader cheerfully over shares an increasingly horrifying back-story of degradation (there’s also a bit of business involving a hot dog bagel that’s so juvenile I feel like my driver’s license should be revoked for laughing at it). Plus, unlike Apatow, Wain can appreciate the comedic value of female nudity as well as male. I’m truly stunned something this acidic and angry even got greenlit. I suppose the best thing I can say for the film is I found myself annoyed at the density of jokes prevented me from hearing every third joke over my own laughter. Also, is Seann William Scott turning into a strong comedic actor or is he just blessed with exceptional taste in material (see also: The Promotion)? Who knew there was so much intentional comedic value in KISS?

AFI Schedule

Thanks to my good buddy Landon, I’ll be attending the AFI Film Fest this November for the sixth consecutive year, starting (for me anyway) on Halloween. I’m often critical of this particular festival as they seem to routinely squander both their standing as the most prestigious film festival in Los Angeles (FIND’s LA Film Fest has become a joke) as well as the scheduling coup of being the last major film festival of the calendar year. They’ve made a few changes over the years to be more in lock-step with the rest of the festival circuit, namely creating a Midnight Madness forum (this year rechristened “Alt Cinema”), lowered the price of their galas to an acceptable $25 a pop and scaling back on the number of American independent films which, in my experience, are often picked over after having failed to make a splash at Sundance, SxSW and Tribeca.

But this year I really have to take my hat off to the selection committee. In essence, they’ve created a year end Whitman’s Sampler, encapsulating the best titles from Sundance, Cannes, Toronto and NYFF giving those of us on the west coast a chance to catch up with many of the international titles journalists have been going nuts over for months. In fact, I’m so pleased about the job they’ve done cherry picking titles that I’m not going to bitch that they’ve split venues between the Arclight (which has served as the festival’s one-stop-shopping center for better part of the past decade) and the Mann’s Chinese complex at Hollywood and Highland.

I’m going to try and update this on my phone during my festival downtime (wifi signal permitting) so check back for regular updates. Also I’ve included all the leftover pieces that came in the box at the bottom of the page in case anyone sees a title that they think I absolutely should make a point of seeing.

And now in the highly imitable style of Mike D’Angelo, I present.

AFI Fest October 30 – November 9
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Friday October 31

Deadgirl (Marcel Sarmiento & Gadi Harel, USA): C- The appeal here is largely built around how gapingly offensive the premise is, when in actuality this is less morally appalling than it is inept at every level. Essentially this is River’s Edge reconceived as a zombie movie, with our loner protagonists inviting all their male friends to come sexually violate a re-animated corpse strapped to a gurney inside an abandoned asylum. But Sarmiento & Harel never land on the right tone, creating a situation that’s toxic to begin with (the two leads seem to have modeled their performances after 1950’s greasers film with a little Dylan & Eric thrown in for flavor) and descending from there, never fully selling its own premise from a situational or character standpoint. As a treatise on sexual politics it lags behind even this past winter’s forgettable Teeth and while it tows the line of Cronenbergian body violation, it ultimately lacks the conviction (or perhaps the special effects budget) to really go where sick young men’s minds will take things.

Saturday Nov 1

Revanche (Götz Spielmann, Austria): B+ Boy is this a hard film to qualify. From a strictly plot standpoint (and this most assuredly is not a film whose strength is derived from its plot) it’s essentially a Coen Brother’ special, with a get-rich scheme that’s destined to go horrifically and the aftermath of which can only lead to more bloodshed (I don’t speak German but even I can deduce what the title means). And the thing is, at no point will you be really surprised where the film arrives as everything is telegraphed by the 50-minute mark. No, the real intangible here is how fully lived in and emotionally sound every choice in the film is and how the consequences of every action taken are explored. In a perverse way it almost reminds me of Crash where we have a bunch of people bumping against one another through sheer contrivance but instead of knee-jerk histrionics and manufactured drama we have desperate people slowly coming to terms with the world they’ve created and their helplessness at escaping it. I’m really failing to convey the film’s loveliness but I take comfort that Mike D’Angelo more or less flailed about as well, although his enthusiasm for the film was enough to get me in the theater. If I can accomplish that as well then mission accomplished.

Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA): B Another bullocks to the plot film, great. I wasn’t a fan of Reichardt’s Old Joy which was a little too minimalist for me. This at least has the benefit of external conflict even if it moves to the same aimless rhythms of the earlier film. Having familiarized myself with the premise going in, I was relieved to discover it’s not the exercise in miserablism I’d feared would be, in large part due to Michelle Williams defiantly pragmatic performance and an understated gem of a turn by stunt coordinator turned “where the hell did *he* come from?” character actor Wally Dalton as a sympathetic security guard. It’s also worth noting that as a lifelong dog owner there’s probably no way I wasn’t going to tear up at that ending but that shouldn’t take anything away from the long slow build that earns the moment.

Che (Steven Soderbergh, France/Spain): B

Sunday Nov 2

The Class (Laurent Cantet, France): A

Hunger (Steve McQueen, UK): B


Monday Nov 3

Time Crimes (Nacho Vigalondo, Spain): C+


Tuesday Nov 4

I didn't end up seeing anything. Mid-fest break required as the night's would get much longer and booze-fueled from here on out.

Wednesday Nov 5

Before the Fall (F Javier Gutiérrez, Spain): C-


Thursday Nov 6

Idiots and Angels (Bill Plympton, USA): B-

Two Lovers (James Gray, USA): A

The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, USA): B

Friday Nov 7

Sugar (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, USA): B+

Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel/France/Germany): C-

Afterschool (Antonio Campos, USA): D+ This once announces itself early and often: a theme spending 2 hours in search of a film. Essentially, in case you didn’t know, a generation raised on internet porn and Al Quaeda beheading videos is likely to grow up disaffected and emotionally disconnected from genuine human experience becoming little glass-eyed monsters who regard the death of a couple classmates with the same level of muted interest as hallways slap fight or a viral video of a kitty playing the piano. Campos, who at 24 is bold enough to create a film around this idea, complete with Youtube-ready off-center compositions while at the same time is just immature enough to not realize he’s shot his load in the first 10 minutes and proceeds to beat the same drum with little variance. The film’s payoff is so poorly telegraphed I simply assumed it was accepted fact only to be confronted with shock-cut flashbacks in the closing moments. The film has its fans (or rather one very vocal one) but frankly I’d be amazed if it ever escapes the festival circuit.

Saturday Nov 8

Playing Columbine (Danny Ledonne, USA): C+ The missing element here is critical distance. The title of the film refers to the low-tech computer game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! that was released onto the net a few years ago, serving to comment upon (or exploit depending upon your politics) the 1999 school shooting and the ensuing controversy that predictably followed it. Ledonne chronicles the firestorm of victims rights advocates and media pundits that attacked the game for turning tragedy into entertainment (we see brief glimpses of the game where, for example, you receive certain point values for shooting “Preppy Girl” or lighting propane tanks on fire) as well as the weak-willed gaming establishment that buckled to pressure to bury the game and yank it from media arts conventions. Of even more interest, the film draws the corollary between the game and other “too soon” works such as United 93 and games about the Catholic Church scandals and Darfur, making the case that experiencing these events in a first-person, user-controlled medium is a perfectly acceptable form of processing grief. So what’s the problem? Ledonne also happens to be the creator of the game itself, meaning the film often undermines its own point in failing to truly hold its subject’s feet to the fire regarding his motives. The ratio of subjects who praise Ledonne versus those who indict him is about 5 to 1, meaning the film essentially serves as a self-generated pat on the back to its filmmaker. We’re constantly aware of the artist’s motives and as such everything about the film is rendered suspect.

Adam Resurrected (Paul Schrader, Germany/Israel/USA): C-


Sunday Nov 9

As predicted I hit a wall on the last day of the festival. Nothing left scheduled that day appealed to me and the tickets to the world premiere of Defiance that had been promised to me were withheld until the last possible moment, making it impossible for me to attend. I also flaked out on a screening of Milk that I'm now regretting. Such is life...


Not Getting to This Time Around

24 City
3 Women
Achilles and the Tortoise
Acne
Agile, Mobile, Hostile: A Year with Andre Williams
Alone in Four Walls
Better Things
Birdsong
Blood Appears
A Boyfriend for My Wife
The Chaser
Chouga
Defiance^
The Desert Within
Dim Sum Funeral
Divizionz
Everlasting Moments
Finally, Lillian and Dan
Food Fight
Gachi Boy Wrestling With a Memory
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
A Good Day to be Black & Sexy
The Good, the Bad & the Weird
The Headless Woman
Hi My Name is Ryan
The Higher Force
I’m Gonna Explode
Imaginadores
Involuntary
The Juche Idea
Kassim the Dream
Kisses
Lake Tahoe
Last Chance Harvey^
The Last Days of Shishmaref
Lion’s Dean
Liverpool
Native Dancer
A Necessary Death
Niloofar
Nirvana
Not Quite Hollywood
Of All the Things
O’Horten
Paradise
Patrik, Age 1.5
Perfect Life
Pindorama – The True Story of the Seven Dwarves
Poundcake
Prodigal Sons
Proper Eyes
A Quiet Little Marriage
La Rabia
The Rest of the Night
Shakespeare and Victor Hugo’s Intimacies
Skin
Slumdog Millionaire^@
Summer Hours
Three Blind Mice
Tokyo Sonata
Truth in 24
Tulpan
Two-Legged Horse
Until the Light Takes Us
Visioneers
Waiting for Sancho
Wellness
Witch Hunt@
The World We Want
World’s Apart


^ Gala
@ Already Seen

Heath

I’ve got a couple blog pieces that have been percolating for a few days now that were put on a temporary hold. In part because of a nasty bug that’s apparently afflicted half of LA (it seemed to have arrived with our Monsoon Season) that had rendered me a coughing, shivering mess. This is now the third time since Labor day I’ve battled flu like symptoms, something I was especially gifted at staving off when I was in high school and college. I can only attribute this to my work habits and diet because who wants to consider the alternative.

Of course the other reason was me still stumbling towards some form of perspective on the sudden death of Heath Ledger. I’m not the type of person who goes weak in the knees over the death of a celebrity; I think the closest I’ve ever come was when Mark Sandman, lead singer of the rock band Morphine, dropped dead on stage, but that was a case where I’d actually met the guy. But this undeniably feels different. There’s a universal hurt going around as everyone tries to make sense of something that’s truly senseless to its core. This was the sort of “event” (if one could call it that) that you felt the need to share with as many people as you could as quickly as possible. This was a death that text messaging was invented for.

I feel ill-suited to eulogize the man, who at 28, was eerily close to my own age forcing an unwanted reality check upon me. I was never the champion of Brokeback Mountain that most were, and I recognize that that’s were the majority of the anguish people are feeling is coming from (it’s a glib analogy but remove that one title from the resume and the gulf between Ledger and the equally tragic and dead Brad Renfro is a lot smaller). Still, I had enormous respect for the actor whose attachment to a film guaranteed a performance that would jut out into unexpected angles. He turned a perfunctory supporting part in the largely irrelevant Lords of Dogtown into an unexplained Val Kilmer impersonation, investing every line with a flat So Cal divinity. He was like Spicoli without the quotation marks.

The first hints of what was to come were no doubt found in Monster’s Ball, a role that seemed like an aberration at the time but would lay the groundwork for the tormented outsiders the actor was drawn to over the next seven years. Ledger could have been a matinée idol on the basis of his looks, but like Leo DiCaprio, he went out of his way to distance himself from the Teen People crowd. Working with A-list directors like Ang Lee, Chris Nolan, Todd Haynes and Terry Gilliam, the latter with whom he was shooting a film at the time of his death, making it simply the latest in a long line of “cursed” projects for the filmmaker.

His last completed role is ultimately the one that would have garnered him the most attention on a global level, the coveted role of The Joker in Nolan’s sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Night. Upon learning of Ledger’s casting in the film there was a universal sigh of relief, as though it signaled that the franchise hadn’t suddenly lost its way by relying upon stunt casting. The film, which is due in July, was arguably the most anticipated film of the year before Ledger’s death; it will no doubt attain the extra level of infamy. I take it as a sign of personal growth on my part that upon learning of Heath’s passing my first thought was not to wonder about the status of the film, but rather to think of the actor’s young daughter,

In closing, I’m reprinting a tribute written by Sean Burns posted on his Myspace. Ordinarily I’d just hyperlink to it but I know a lot of people don’t have Myspace and it would be a shame if that limited anyone from reading it. Burns is a master at these things; it’s an uncanny gift calling upon a skill that’s not usually rewarded. No one does the poetic and the profane better. This will no doubt come across as more morbid than intended, but I’d be honored to get a send-up like this some day.

Here’s the man’s words:

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"It’s A Goddamned Shame...

So I've been in a weird, melancholy funk ever since I heard about Heath Ledger yesterday afternoon.

I've always found it strange and borderline inappropriate, having feelings like this when a celebrity dies – I mean, it's not like we were friends or anything. Lord knows I had a grand old time mocking the world's comically hysterical outpouring of grief over The Crocodile Hunter, only to turn around and do pretty much the same thing myself a few weeks later when Robert Altman died. (I know this means I'm hypocrite, but it also means I have good taste.)

The most maddening thing here is that Ledger was just, in the past couple years, really starting to come into his own as an actor, maybe a potential giant -- taking fascinating risks with his performances and choosing chancy projects. He seemed to have his head screwed on straight, at least career-wise, and I was already looking forward to seeing what he'd pull out for those upcoming Malick and Gilliam movies. (We won't even get into the pants-pissing squeals of fanboy delight that blurt out involuntarily every time I watch that fucking awesome DARK KNIGHT trailer.)

But at least we'll always have Ennis Del Mar. Although I've never been naïve enough to think that a movie can change the world, I still do believe that certain characters find their way into our hearts, and because of this special kind of empathy sometimes folks just might leave the theater looking at things a little bit differently.

Working at a cinema that showed BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN for months on end, I amassed tons of anecdotal evidence – guys joking uncomfortably on their way in, coming to see "the faggot cowboy movie," only to find themselves unexpectedly, profoundly, moved.

It's Ledger who made that happen -- communicating the exquisite, agonizing torment of a man who cannot allow himself to be who he really is, inarticulate and clenched, his few, carefully chosen words escaping in almost glottal burps.

It's a towering, anguished performance --one of this decade's finest by any yardstick-- and during the film's lengthy run I must admit I watched that closing scene at least two dozen times. Ennis' reaction to his daughter's engagement is fraught with unspoken sentiments and hidden communications. Upon each and every viewing I was captivated all over again by Ledger's careful use of his body language -- the roughneck, kutzy character's belated, strangely delicate ascension, at long last, into some sort of elusive peace.

It's a goddamned shame we've just been robbed of any more moments like that one. What a fucking waste."

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Alright, I got that out of my system. Back to being petty.