BEST OF 2010: NUMBER 7

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

This will seem like a very half glass half empty kind of recap, and I'll just say that I consider this spot in the countdown the cutoff... the top 6 films coming soon really excel in beautiful unique ways and have very few faults. This comes close, but... let's say if The Social Network was a Facebook friend... I wouldn't be taking EVERY opportunity to "Like" its status updates.

Isn't that clever?

Anyway, if the awards season momentum means anything it sounds like The Social Network is set to take a lot of prestigious awards. I can even predict that the voters for the Oscar Best Picture, out of a collective ability to not appear too stodgy and very current, could very well vote this to be the Best Picture of the Year.

No doubt it is a sharp picture, very smoothly paced, and has just the right dark touches to have a tone that is a little more contemporary than regular Oscar fare. In fact, with the exception of the director of the King's Speech, all the other Oscar best Director nominees cut their teeth on some of the boldest, coolest cult pictures of the last 15-20 years (Fight Club, Requiem for a Dream, Three Kings, Fargo) and it's great to see these filmmakers as a team be nominated together.

But as I outlined in my original review, there was an element missing in The Social Network, and if it wins a lot of big film awards, the parallels with another Oscar winner from a few years ago, A Beautiful Mind, will become even stronger, and it won't be a welcome comparison. As I remember, shortly after A Beautiful Mind became obvious Oscar bait, it was revealed that much of the storyline of mentally troubled economist John Nash was made up. Not only that, but revealing and true aspects of his life were left out for the sake of creating more drama and sympathy. Did this selective fictionalizing take away from the powerful portrayal of mental illness or the great performances? Not really... but it also creates a picture that just exists on the surface. If there is a lot of truth missed in what is presented as a powerful personal drama of an actual living person, than I have trouble understanding its relevance. In the end, A Beautiful Mind was put together in such a beautiful (and apolitical) package and moved in such grand gestures that it was an obvious Best Picture of the year winner, in similar fashion to other beautifully made but inconsequential winners like the English Patient and Shakespeare in Love.

So of course something based on true events can be highly fictionalized if it creates a better movie. However, in the case of the very relevant, very current, and very ubiquitous world of Facebook, if you are going to exaggerate the characters and dramatize events, you have to make the movie about something more deeper, thematically, than the legal battles of these people whose characterizations are to some degree fabricated. Except for some some fleeting moments, and two excellent scenes opening and ending the movie, there was little insight into how facebook shapes social interactions, what it means to have a whole generation wired to communicate this way, or even any types of broader analysis of the rapid expansion of various tech bubbles and Internet fads. Without enough of those elements (which are compelling to me, personally) all we're left with in The Social Network is a movie that mostly spends time with greedy young eccentrics battling eachother in boardrooms and flashbacks for millions and millions of dollars. How relevant that reductive experience is to me, just as how engaged I am in A Beautiful Mind, depends on how much I believe the "facts" of the story. And recent stories have revealed that Mr. Mark Zuckerberg isn't really that much of a jerk. Maybe all of his minions are doing damage control behind the scenes to improve his image, but I could be forgiving of fictionalized "true" events if the movie relied a little bit less on spending specific personal moments with these characters to tell a story.

All in all, this movie took a different direction that I expected, but was still solid and engaging in its own way. The final thought I have... will it make me feel old or mainstream or both if Trent Reznor wins and accepts an Oscar for Best Dramatic Score?

For the Record Tuesday

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2009)

Not a great adaptation of a pretty good literary blockbuster. More later, in between countdown posts, maybe.

BEST OF 2010: NUMBER 8

NUMBER 8

IRON MAN 2

Here it is, the best "traditional blockbuster type movie" of 2010. There is an odd effect when I watch Robert Downey Jr. in anything. Let's see, I have recently viewed him in Tropic Thunder, Due Date, Sherlock Holmes, and this movie, and despite the flaws in these otherwise thoroughly enjoyable flicks, Downer Jr. carries the film by giving whatever role he has the respect that you might not think it deserves. Instead of a charismatic action hero, in the mold of say, a Bruce Willis, Downey has that charisma but also has a gravity and weariness to his performances. Instead of a brooding toughness in a performance that is motivated most primally to declare "I am the action star" around lots of explosions, special effects, and hot women, I see his Tony Stark as truly a person first and a comic book superhero second. Due Date isn't in my top 10 because despite its moments it was pretty formulaic, but it would be a movie close to intolerable if Robert Downey Jr. didn't bring some additional dimensions to a buddy comedy when numerous other movies have already had the character of the outraged neurotic mess that is saddled with a weirdo against his will.

Anyway, Downey doesn't carry Iron Man 2 all alone. There is of course the anticipation of where the movie will go after the final line of the first Iron Man, as well as the Mickey Rourke villian performance and all the pretty bells and whistles (yes, including the eye candy of Gweneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johannsen that I'm not about appreciating) All elements of a perfect action movie that hit the sweet spot in so many ways.

Sequels that are not disappointing are very few in number, but there has been an exciting recent trend of comic book movies really doing a lot better the second time around. Perhaps because more likely than not, a new Batman or Spiderman franchise is going to be guaranteed a smash, so they can devote a lot of time to what comic book geeks call the "origin story" in the first movie, where the characters take their time to fall from grace, stitch up their costumes and have about one big fight before the credits roll, with audiences still wanting more. But Iron Man 2 doesn't just make everything louder, hotter, and faster. It makes it smarter and more satisfying.

BEST OF 2010: NUMBER 9

Continuing...

#9

THE ART OF THE STEAL

The documentary I selected to watch at the 2010 Wisconsin Film Fest definitely changed the way I view art. I would like to think that art, whether it's paintings, literature, films, music, etc. create a form of escapism that by definition is consciously separated from more pragmatic pressures and commercialism. As The Art of the Steal demonstrates, however, art that was deliberately set aside for non-commercial exploitation can just as easily become a tool of marketing and business, with the right circumstances and patient, well-financed, opportunistic civic leaders. But that's not the only fascinating question this film brings up. Another is whether a person, by establishing ownership of creative masterworks, not only has the right to display those masterpieces in a way that he/she sees fit, but can also dictate how those works are displayed after they die. Barnes definitely is a sympathetic character compared to other wealthy eccentrics, and the care and philosophy behind the design and display of his original collection of famous paintings is something to be admired. But you can follow the slippery slope... what if an owner just buys things for their personal pleasure, and doesn't feel an obligation to share them with anybody, regardless of price? Shouldn't an outside force be willing to step in and create opportunities for others less wealthy to experience something culturally or creatively important?

It seems like I'm being very specific to the subject of the movie, but it was very compelling. Turning the concept of "art for arts sake" upside down has a lot of implications and questions whether even the most purely beautiful creations by artistic visionaries ultimatley end up having a real, concrete price in the end.

Break

A long postponement of the top 10 (maybe my order of movies will change by the time I start again?)... due to a family vacation. Instead of watching movies, we played a fun guess-the-movie game, when it was too cold and dark to enjoy the Florida beaches, so it wasn't a complete cinematic break.

The weekend before I left I did watch one movie...

BRONSON (2008)

This was available via Netflix instant, and came highly recommended from Ain't It Cools Harry Knowles. It was also a more recent film from the director of the Pusher trilogy, Nicolas Winding Refn, so I was excited, especially after the awesome opening credits. Hands down, no opening has pumped me up so quickly then those for the Pusher trilogy and Bronson. Start out with such a heart pumping, pounding beat of a title sequence, that focuses attention squarely on your characters, and it builds a lot of goodwill to follow whatever path the accompanying film takes.

Bronson is based on a true story of a notorious British prisoner that seems to have a primal reaction to incarceration, which is to beat the living crap out of everybody. Branching out from that base instinct is a very complex character and a great performance that seems to try to capture the expanded insanity that comes from extended solitary incarceration. Often times I thought I was viewing a portrayal of failed reprogramming that comes very close to A Clockwork Orange. It just got a little too stylized at times for me, with extending classical musical accompaniment to brutal scenes and a scenes that were a little too dragged out.

TOP 10 FILMS OF 2010... HM and #10

TOP 10 FILMS OF 2010...

I'm ready to go.. but to be the obsessive movie geek I have to let out some ground rules of the movies that were available to be ranked.

These will be the top 10 films first viewed, by me, in movie theaters throughout 2010. It's very possible that some of the selections from the Wisconsin Film Festival might have been officially released in a previous year in the country of their origin, but they nonetheless count, because I'm seeing them with my eyes as a brand new movie in a theater.

Even with my limited means, I find it very difficult to keep this as a rule. You may recall, that I put an amazing Chinese epic called Red Cliff in my top 10 of last year, even though I watched in on a region-free DVD on my computer. This was due to it's only availability being a set of Chinese DVDs a friend lent to me. In fact, there was a theatrical version edited for United States release that apparently was really terrible, so this was the ideal version of Red Cliff to watch.

That being said, it's time to break the rule in some way, because as a very special honorable mention...

MOTHER

None other than the guru of film criticism, Roger Ebert, put this movie on his top 10 foreign films of 2010, even though I had saw it at home through Netflix Instant. Doing some digging it looked like it was released in its home country of Korea in 2009 but released in the U.S. in 2010. It was actually a selection at WIFF 2010, along with all of the director Bong Jon-Ho's other films. But I can't bring myself to judge it among the theatrical experiences I had during 2010... it seemed like I was already viewing it from my backcatalog of films I want to see.

In a perfect world, though, it would be very difficult not to make this my best film of 2010. This Korean director has continually upped the ante, after Memories of Murder, and the Host, to make hauntingly ambiguous endings that never seem like a cop-out. A murder mystery, a steadfast belief in innocence, and a mother and son that goes beyond anyone's casual comfort zone... the elements combine in ways totally unexpected, and conjure up feelings and emotions that I had no reference point for. Incredible movie.

NUMBER 10 (TIE):

CYRUS

HANDSOME HARRY

This will be the only tie, I swear, but these two movies ended up having some tremendously distinct qualities, while being balanced with some flaws that couldn't be completely excused. I couldn't recognize one over the other.

Cyrus' strengths were its acting and very natural dialogue. Unlike many high quality but grandiose movies, the small set of characters in Cyrus talked and reacted in ways that you could relate to if you were in that situation. Jonah Hill, beyond anything else I've seen, shows that he can take his persona to creepy (but not psychotic) lengths. So while it's refreshing to see these kind of human characters, it would have been better for the story to have a little more substance. I wouldn't want to see this movie right away for the second time, but I definitely would like to watch these characters and see what happens to them.

It's pretty much coincidental that these two movies are tied, but Handsome Harry might be contrastable to Cyrus in that the characters, with possibly the exception of the main protagonist, are actually very ill-defined. Cliched performances and general stereotypes of "men with troubled pasts" can be disengaging, and the secret that drives the story has been a topic of more prominent movies for many years. Perhaps I was too much in film festival mode to tolerate something remotely conventional, but then something interesting happened. The story, pacing, and structure became so perfectly composed that the meaning of these 'conventional' characters' actions shifted to something deeply emotional and sad. The main character was so confident and masculine that the slightest shift of perception into who he actually is created a ripple effect that reached its point in a devastating conclusion that truly expresses the incredible damage of keeping shame and pain bottled up tight for decades.

And the final report of the year...

The holiday season allowed me to do a significant chunk of movie watching, including the final new release of 2010. That makes the possible candidates for the 2010 Top Ten closed, with a top 10 list to come very shortly.

For now… here's what I saw in the past week.

TRUE GRIT (2010)

This was the one I wanted to see before the year got out, and my last two hours of available personal time for the year were put to good use, as I saw a 4:20 screening of this on Thursday at 12/30 before my day off. More about this later.

TIME AFTER TIME (1979)

First it was listed on Ain’t It Cool News as a good time traveler flick, and then the expiration date for Netflix Instant got closer. Finally, I wanted to see Malcolm McDowell again in something. It was pretty good.

That being said, I have to agree with some archived reviews that said the direction was clumsy. The romance was not very believable, and while it was a unique diversion for a sci-fi movie, it felt like it was an easy way to play along with a human interest subplot to avoid expanding the much more interesting and dynamic implications of both H.G. Wells being in modern society and Jack the Ripper reeking havoc in a new world.

I also have to say that, after watching a beautifully shot San Francisco in The Conversation a month ago and now this, that it seems like a really beautiful City to visit.

CHE (PARTS 1 AND 2)

[Criterion 496] This was a viewing project. A film in two parts (over two hours each) on Che Guevara. Selected randomly from my Netflix list, this is also a Criterion release and I’m still making my way through the extras on the Blu-Ray. Sometimes I don’t like to read the reviews afterwards because they reveal faults in the film I simply couldn’t realize while watching it because of the initial inundation of senses that comes with watching a movie made by someone who has an obvious vision and is passionate about it. And sure, the reviews I read had a little bit of a point, but I don't think anyone with some sense of impatience is going to dismiss some of the plotting and pacing that director Steven Sodenbergh decided to go with. I will say, that I did really want to see the second part (I split the viewing over two days) after the style and performance of part 1 hooked me. Given that I didn't know much about Che despite his appearance on the dorm room posters of radical college students, it's a very strong epic movie that can compell my attention like this film series did. With additional contemplation, I have to say that this film is nearly perfect and very long... whether length is good or bad I can't really conclude one way or another.

TOP 10 OF 2010 .... TOP 10 OF 2010 ... COMING SOON!

Follow-up

Seven Samurai

[Criterion collection #2] I hate to be uptight and say that Netflix did not have a streaming widescreen version or a Blu-Ray available so I had to watch this epic 3 hour movie on a square screen. The horror, the horror, I know.

I’m trying to be of the mindset that these very old classic movies are something that I have to sit through, despite my contemporary tastes and attention span, just as a self-imposed requirement that I begin to have a foundation of cinematic understanding based on all the good epic movies that inspired so many future films. Just when I was getting antsy and thought I was sitting through a movie that was made for a different audience and time, Seven Samurai has the breadth and patience enough to give you some out of nowhere characterizations that get me paying attention once again. The whole farmers vs. warriors class dynamic created some very unique tensions. I think what puts me a little off are the battle scenes. While epic and important to the story, they also drag on for a while. I believe that’s my reaction to just being accustomed to that kind of dynamic epic violence being so easy to view in any number of filmed mediums. Back in 1954, I bet the movie-going audiences without televisions were willing to watch battles as long as possible on the big screen.

Diversion aside, this film’s length made it a struggle to watch, but no doubt was this an important and entertaining movie.

Irreversible

Probably close to the most disturbing and brutal movie I’ve ever seen. In regards to The Human Centipede, which might now be the runner-up in this category, there are inventive ways to shock and awe by depicting a horrible torture fantasy in the most realistic way possible. It’s quite another thing to portray something horrible that is realistically possible and structure a movie in the most incredibly jarring way, so the audience can’t really gain a comfortable distance from the movie because they are so incredibly disoriented that they can’t tell what’s going on, who the characters are, and what their motivations for acting in the most extreme way possible. I’m so glad (if you could call that an appropriate emotion allowed in this movie) that while I knew there was going to be a pivotal and brutal scene going in, I didn’t read the Wikipedia entry or any reviews further than that. What I experienced was a film whose very form, function, and style, allowed for the themes and story to hit you deeply, in ways that the most bloody, disgusting, straightforward horror film never could. I only think I’ll be watching Irreversible again for plot clarification, because there are parts I never want to see again unless I feel like showing a very trusted friend the absolute edge I’m willing to go when watching movies.