TOP 10 FILMS OF 2013

Happy 2015 everyone!

For posterity's sake (is that the right phrase).  Here's a list I came up with a year ago, with the idea that I would plan a little writing for 2014.  Alas, not much happened.  Will be trying to post essays of the top of 2014 when time allows.

10.  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - Dir: Joss Whedon

9.  IRON MAN 3 - Dir:  Shane Black / THOR:  THE DARK WORLD - Dir:  Alan Taylor

8.  MODEST RECEPTION - Dir: Mani Haghighi

7.  NO - Dir:  Pablo Larrain

6.  LIFE OF PI - Dir:  Ang Lee

5.  DJANGO UNCHAINED - Dir:  Quentin Tarantino

4.  NEBRASKA - Dir:  Alexander Payne

3.  12 YEARS A SLAVE - Dir:  Steve McQueen

2.  THE ACT OF KILLING - Dir:  Joshua Oppenheimer

1.  GRAVITY - Dir:  Alfonso Cuaron

CATCHING UP 

This is going to be one of the saddest posts around, as a representation about my general neglect for my idealistic mission to focus my writing through personalized film criticism.  But consider this a way for me to clear the air and start fresh with whatever I'd like to do regarding this form of expression.

My last top ten film essay was over my #2 selection Win Win, and that was actually recalling my top 10 of the PREVIOUS YEAR.  I have a whole set of top ten films seen in 2012 that I haven't shared yet.

Needless to say, my #1 film seen in 2011.

SUPER 8

A seamless blend of modern sci fi suspense and the cleaner fantasy of the 80s film adventures (like E.T.) that really hit the sweet spot.

Plenty of time to think about a long form essay on that movie (especially since I need to see it a second time to reevaulate).

Now, the top 10 of 2012.

#10  GENERATION ME

Seen at the San Antonio film festival, a real low-budget honest film.  Not perfect, but the characters are so organic and funny, just hanging around Austin,  that it feels very close.  I become facebook friends with the filmmaker afterwards and have been following the production of her next film through her posts, creating a really unique connection with a filmmaker that makes me admire indie films even more. 

#9  KILLER JOE

First time ever seeing a film adaption of a play I had previously seen in a theater.  Completely engaging to see how the different mediums translated, and the choices made by the writer and director to enhance the plot for the moving pictures medium.

#8 MOURNING

Seen at the art museum as part of their Global Lens series.  Iranian films always feel a little different and expose you to new cultures and emotional sensitivities.  Almost always shaken by the movies from that country and impressed with their style, and this film is no exception.

#7  THE MASTER

Challenging to understand what Paul Thomas Anderson was going for here, but it just makes me want to see it again.  Great intense performances throughout.

#6  THE AVENGERS

A invigorating and tight adventure.  Every hero gets some powerful screen time and interesting interactions with other characters.  So much fun that I just will immediately go to see any marvel movie from now on.

#5  SKYFALL

Action franchises continued to completely exceed expectations.  Beautiful settings, disturbing dark undertones, all grounded in the patience punched plotting you would expect from 007 movies.

#4  CABIN IN THE WOODS 

 Completely sublime movie watching experience.  Subversive and full on inside jokes.  Had to be careful not to let my inner film snob take control.. it's a scary and entertaining movie on its own.  But I had this great feeling that I was enjoying the movie even more because I "got it" in a deeper way than someone who would blindly cash out for a first weekend showing of Saw 7 or Final Destination 6 without looking for something more clever beyond the familiar gore.

#3 TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

Gary Oldman gives such a bone dry performance that the level headedness he adopts in the most intense situations of global consequences provides more suspense that 1000 explosions.  The tone of percolating betrayal and sinisterism is maintained throughout the movie through direction, plotting, and acting.

#2  MOONRISE KINGDOM  

Wes Anderson writer/director in a pure form that is still evolving. Exciting, quirky, touching.  Hard to not make it #1.

#1  LOOPER 

Rian Johnson's film debut from a few years ago was so fascinating and fully realized in form and style, that I was secretly hoping that as a filmmaker he would continue to grow and inspire.  Looper is INTELLIGENT science fiction with such a full atmosphere that was completely satisfying.  Yeah, it's a genre picture but if Johnson can dump this much care into an original idea... not tied to some comic book or other franchise... I'm ready to follow him wherever.

2ND TIME AROUND - INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

[spoiler abound]

I was hoping to start a new type of blog entry a long time ago about what new things I experienced upon seeing a movie for the 2nd time.  But I'm starting that now. 

I'm so overwhelmed by the opportunity to see such a wide range of movies  that it is hard to prioritize what I will see for a second time.  Fortunately I have somewhat formalized the second viewing movie selection process.  If a film is one of my top 10 of the year, then I make a point to see it again sometime.  Even limiting things to that 10 each year is difficult.  Not only do my various year-end lists accumulate to dozens of movies over each year (this blog has top tens going back to 2008), but when I see a movie that second time, I pick up so much nuance and complexities that I start questioning why I don't watch every movie I like a second time!

Case in point... Inglourious Basterds!  I wasn't too INSANELY thrilled with it the first time around, but now I am ashamed for being even the slightest bit disappointed.  Quentin Tarantino's scripts are deceptively multi-layered, and I believe the thrill with seeing a NEW TARANTINO MOVIE as it first comes out is such a rush that you are kind of hyped up the whole time.  Then as the filmmaker start to play some little tricks on you with expectations and pacing it becomes a little harder to appreciate.  But that's what the best films and filmmakers do, raise questions and give you some twists that stay with you as you leave the theater.

But after finally watching it a second time, and with Django Unchained fresh on my mind, I am appreciating this a whole lot more.

I might make this a multi-parter but the most intriguing dimension about Basterds experience #2 was the commentary on myth-making and the medium in which those myths are made.  I think a somewhat distracting aspect of Basterds the first time around was, with all the epic dimensions of World War II and Nazi philosophy, that there were so many scenes discussing movies and the detailed setup of the climatic scene in the cinema at the conclusion of the movie.  Now, on second thought, it is almost the perfect setting to understand what the movie is doing on a grand scale with all the characters and scenes.  This is because of the ability of movies and cinematic propaganda, in the wrong hands, to manipulate emotions in volatile situations to alter the reality that the masses believe in.

There is this fascinating commentary throughout the movie on the mix between the myths created by the enemy on each side of this epic conflict and the actual reality in which they behave. 

In the opening scene, Colonel Landa is pretty much 99% sure as soon as he walks into the dairy farmer's house that he is hiding Jews, and he uses his incredible evil charms and performance to use the reputation of the Nazi regime's viciousness to get the farmer to break down and confess to his crime without a single bit of physical torture.   

In turn, it is often more important that the legend of the Basterds spreads among the Nazi soldiers, then if that ragtag group is necessarily successful, tactically, in defeating the Germans.  When fake Hitler tells the only survivor of the attack in the ditch from the film's second major scene to not utter a word to anyone and his experience, he understands that as the legend of the Basterds grows-- of the 'Bear Jew", of the scalp collecting, of the inhumanity of this group as they seek vengance-- it will be a logistical distraction to the nervous rank and file as the war continues.

In this regard, the scene around the showing of the Nazi propaganda film at Shoshanna's cinema is very fitting, while not as subtle.  The young soldier is incredibly shaken by the cinematic depiction of his bravery, because he was actually there and  had the memories of killing all those people, while the audience uses the movie to build up their own emotions and belief in the courage of their regime.  The cinematic myth and the actual memories are too much to deal with, so the soldier wants to find comfort in his own mythology of unrequited love and decided to escape with a visit to the projection room where Shoshanna is making the final plans for the mass extermination of the theater-goers.   The soldier, after being clearly rejected for the last time, can no longer act like the smitten young man he pretended to be and succumbs to his uniform and image, becoming just as brutal and angry as any other Nazi.  Good and evil, predator and prey, are now more clearly black and white, when it comes to what the powerful can do to the weak. Or is it that cut and dry?  Because after Shoshanna shoots the young soldier, she looks at the filmed depiction of him suffering during Nation's Pride, and is manipulated into having just too much empathy for that character on screen.  She then gets close enough to the young Nazi shot on the flow, not quite yet incapacitated, to bring upon her demise.

These elements within the movie are fascinating themselves, but then there is the whole experience of the movie Inglourious Basterds itself, as it comes to the modern viewer and how he comes to terms with this movie and the real history of Nazi Germany.  Because, in fact, this movie is emotional propaganda for anyone who wants to believe, at least temporarily, in the fantasy that what went down in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s wasn't as epically horrendous and destructive, to Jews and Gentiles alike, as it actually was in reality. 

There was actual criticism that this movie was rather callous towards the actual Jewish persecution at the time.  By dehumanizing the Basterds through their brutal actions it does take them down to the Nazi's level, in many degrees.  No doubt war was hell for both sides in the actual war, and creating this amorality definitely makes it hard to condemn one side as completely evil.  It is definitely NOT a movie for young people to be INTRODUCED to the history of the time (God help us if teenagers slack off at history class in high school but lap this stuff up).  But this thematic thread of the cinemas power to create myths and emotional comfort applies to what contemporary viewers bring to this movie as well.  We don't want the Nazis to 'win' either, and Tarantino plays with that emotion by not only making the Nazi's lose, but making most of them all die in most extreme, ridiculously violent and painful way possible.  I'm not sure if we are supposed to feel bad about feeling elated when this happens, but if you know enough about the actual Holocaust (or the seige of Leningrad, and so much more) you hold a dark comfort as this movie makes at least a fictional version of the most horrible people in history get held accountable for what they 'did'.  

Which brings me to the conclude by discussing the confusing journey of Colonel Hans Landa, brilliantly performed by actor Christoph Waltz in a way that makes it so we will very likely never understand everything that motivated this character.  I think, upon my first viewing 3.5 years ago, this character's switch, prior to the cinema massacre, threw me off, but now I understand it a lot better.  I think the strength of that first scene (and our expectations fully realized of what Tarantino plus Nazi plus brilliant actor could do) set up a belief that this person is an unshakeable, brilliant, and completely loyal SS officer.  Fast forward 4 years later, and he is still as intimidating as ever, but perhaps a little exhausted in holding onto a myth in his regime's superiority and very clearly tired of his once-proud nickname of the "Jew-Hunter". 

Colonel Landa's charms don't seem to be completely in service of the Jew-hunting cause.  As with most of his violent characters (Jules in Pulp Fiction, Bill, Ordell in Jackie Brown) Tarantino wants to make you personally like his most disturbing characters so that you are filled with a mix of satisfaction and dissapointment when they are threatened.  The nuance of Landa doesn't stay hidden for very long, as he shows "mercy" on Shoshanna, and lets her run away even after he has her in his gun sights.  Small comfort after he just supervised the murder of her entire family, but also suggests he is more interested in his own grand feelings of being powerful than exterminating every 'rat' he finds.

It's not entirely clear how dirty his hands get as he presumably performs additional high-level security tasks for the Nazis over the years, but my second viewing almost convinces me that his strangling of the spy actress Von Hammersmark was his breaking point.  Rather than another culmination of a tension-filled interogation to weed-out another hidden traitor, you can see Landa visibly shaken by the level he has to go to take care of this problem.  All his personality and sophisticated manner in which he does his job is finally thrown out the window when he has to take care of a problem by removing life from this world with his bare hands.  You think that his methodical way in which he rounds up Brad Pitt is suggesting he is moving on with business as usual, but he now wants to act in his own self-interest and use the Basterds to betray his regime and leave the "Jew-Hunter" moniker once and for all, while also wiping the slate clean on all his past actions.  In Tarantino's perfect use of ambiguity in dialogue, Landa doesn't offer a clear answer to Lt. Aldo Raine on the welfare of  Von Hammersmark, suggesting that the poised colonel was starting to believe this was one killing too many in service of a regime that he no longer believed in.

Once you take on the identity of a group with a reputation, however, you can't just switch alliances through your actions alone.  It turns out, in the incredible final scene, that Lt. Aldo Raine was the character most fixated and confident in who the enemy was, come hell or high water.  Colonel Landa might have made a deal that saved lives, betrayed his country, but he will always be a Nazi.  I'm sure many Jews who thought they were good patriotic Germans were branded, literally and figuratively, despite of their actions.  It was something they couldn't take off, regardless of what kind of profession they had or what kind of life they lived.  Thoroughly beating the Nazis at their own game had to mean not only beating them tactically but thinking of the enemy as savage subhumans.  Lt. Raine  callously projects that mission as the movie's final statement. 

"Something you can't take off"... Brad Pitt's character says before he deforms the foreheads of the survivors of his attacks... that could easily mean something you can't switch off.  Because while movies and myths live past their makers and their impact is effected by the audience that hears them over time, there's nothing subtle about an evil symbol carved into your body.  Landa might have been loyal until that turnaround at the very end, but in an almost cartoonishly fixated way, Lt. Aldo Raine always thought of Nazis as monsters that had to be destroyed, regardless of what rank they are or how much humanity they demonstrated when under duress. Aldo Raine's branding is a brutal action in multiple ways given the context of the themes in this movie, in that it 'cuts' through the acts and deception everyone and everything is playing on eachother.  That person was a Nazi, and that's all that matters and all that will matter as these surviving characters live their future lives (presumably with a hat or heavy layers of forehead makeup).  Does it create even an ounce of sympathy for the Nazis in this movie universe?  I think it creates the potential for sympathy, but the film allows the observer to see the actions of Nazis mirrored through the Americanized actions of the Bastereds.  Then a viewer can question their own knowledge of history, their own past, and their own heritage, and reach their own conclusions.  Some of that questioning of who deserves sympathy will be enveloped in myths, images, and rhetoric.  It doesn't take away from what actually happened once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France, but Inglorious Basterds, while being a fun suspenseful movie on one surface, also portrays how contemporary audiences might approach a significant part of human history whose perception has been warped by time and artistic interpretation.

#2 FILM OF 2011

WIN WIN

It has now been many many months since I made my short list of favorite films in 2011.  I had planned to roll these writings out at a steady clip but sometimes it's very hard to find the inspiration to offer unique poetic thoughts on something so specific as a movie I saw.  As dozens of films are now wedged in my memory between this #2 film and the present, it is honestly hard to dissect it in detail.  But what I do remember about Win Win is that it wasn't a very complicated movie.  Like Young Adult (#4) it was just very honest, but the characters are even more believable and relatable that the narcissistic types in that other well-regarded movie. 

I remember reading criticism for Paul Giamatti's character in the movie Sideways as being too much like how a screenwriter sees themselves... a little too much navel gazing.  I could definitely see that... all one had to do to possibly channel that creative frustration of that character would be for any actor, writer, or director to just think about what they've been through and express themselves.  Still, Paul Giamatti, who has had a huge run of enduring likeable performances, was the perfect person for that part.

But this Paul-Giamatti type in Win-Win has him playing someone off that Hollywood-aspring grid... he's a Paul Giamatti type playing someone who could very well be a Paul-Giamatti type in real life.  Struggling, neurotic, a little sneaky, but loving, human honest, and warm.  The situation his character and his family is put through is powerful but in a wholesome family-oriented way.

So what makes this movie suprisingly not-dull as it follows these ordinary characters?  It's the flourishes of real drama, the levity of humorous moments integrated seamlessly into the plot, and the percolating emotional resonance that comes with the actors being very distinct to their styles while building a  relationship to the audience.  At some point these characters become your neighbors, and there's no alienation between what they are doing and how you might react if you were in their shoes.

Once again it is kind of a travesty that something like this didn't get any major award recognition despite being a solid movie.  But maybe that's the way it ought to be.  Because some movies aspire to be art and make a statement, while others just move you to a warmer place through honesty and character building.  I have a feeling that movies like Win Win, that tap into a modern relatable human condition, will be a little more timeless to many people than those prestige pictures which grab up all the honors.

NUMBER 3 FILM OF 2011

VIVA RIVA!

This was a selection from the 2011 Wisconsin Film Festival.  The quick description is African Film-Noir, and it might be a loose example of a 'Nollywood' which refers to the Nigeria-based film industry that puts out entertaining movies for the African masses (like Bollywood in India).  But this is set in Zaire so I can't say what connections this movie has to the main African hub of popular filmmaking. 

Viva Riva has a femme fatale, a charismatic anti-hero, multiple layers of eccentric villians, and a (minor spoiler) bleak ending.  It has that feel of a B-Movie... where it's best to just enjoy the ride and not think to hard on the amorality of it all.  For any fan of film noir it's a unique treat, because all those movie tropes are set in the weighty background of a chaotic impoverished African country.  In this environment, the desperation these characters get themselves into aren't just dramatic flourishes but a real possibility.  What might be thrown away as a genre picture actually becomes something more compelling.  Is this kind of violence and tragedy a purely escapist for of cinema for "NollyWood" viewers?  Is there an overall message involved?  Are Western viewers supposed to think of this in a more sociopolitical way?  All important questions, but in the meantime it is a really incredible version of a familiar story. 

The WIFF 2011 wasn't the best of the Wisconsin Film Festivals I attended, but this was a real treat.

BEST FILMS OF 2011: NUMBER 4

YOUNG ADULT

The film countdown that should have been completed months ago returns!  I think at the beginning of this fun I mentioned how there were some non-epic character-based dramas that resonated, and this is one of them.  I couldn't help but compare this to Juno, which won an Oscar for screenwriter Diablo Cody, who also wrote this film.  As sweet as Juno was... the rumblings in my head and among some critics were that as naturalistic as the dialogue was, teenagers didn't really talk like that.  For me, the move was a little bit of a cop out, to give an eccentric larger-than-life character her own little sayings and "isms"...  there was something warm and heartening about what Juno went through, but how is it original or challenging to layer on an adult sensibility to a juvenile character?

So I assumed after watching Young Adult that it would at least receive a screenwriting NOMINATION, because these characters talked in really authentic ways that fit in well and organically with the situation.  In addition, I was sure Charlize Theron was going to get at least an acting nomination as well.  She didn't have to get into layers of old-person makeup like in Monster to pull off a complete performance of a defeated woman.  But nothing for this sweet sad movie?  No matter... I don't need that kind of validation.  While it didn't get a lot of legitimate acclaim (and some of my facebook friends hated it too) the film has stuck with me.  So many great movies and filmmakers are very derivative... they are basically perfecting a genre movie and subverting it in a way that hits a sweet spot for me... and those are usually the ones I really like by the end of the year.  So I long for chances to give equal credit to the movies that have real characters, real performances, and believable situations, executed with the appropriate cinematic scope (minimal works just as much as maximal) that is suitable for the well-written material.  It's not a film that explodes... it percolates... but it was always engaging.  Of course, throwing Patton Oswalt in for good measure is a huge bonus, especially when this goofball gives his all to a dramatic role that you knew he was capable of.

This isn't the last of the character dramas that were really good last year.  I don't think I've spoiled anything yet.

TRON LEGACY (2010)

TRON:  LEGACY (2010)

Format:  Blu-Ray from my Uncle Jay

I've been in the middle of some unfair cinematic immersions this summer.  First I see a bunch of Avengers movies that were released a year apart in the course of a couple weeks in order to build up for the main event in theaters.  Then I watch these movies, made 28 years apart within a few weeks as well.  The suckers that watched the first movie sure had to wait a long time and grow up before this franchise was revisited! 

But I won't be mean... like I said before, the first one established a pretty distinct universe and imagery that was invigorating despite the low-budget effects (which weren't really a factor if you thing of the Tron universe as a different dimension with a visual logic all its own).  I also think of the wonderful effect it would have to see a completely high budget version of only what you could imagine back in 1982.  Tron 1 felt like it could really inspire imaginations because you only get a hint of what that computer universe is.  So I am a little jealous of the Tron-heads who were able to see a vision realized that they might have been thinking about during their entire adult lives.

And with enough space between films, this definitely does not suffer from sequel-itis.  A few reviews seemed to talk about how there was not enough action, that the big scenes were more of a homage and not central to anything important.  But those scenes were AMAZING to watch.  While technology might have restricted what action pieces could have been shown in the first one, it took a unique perspective to decide to add more darkness and an interesting storyline to the saga without using every technical gimmick in the book that was at their disposal.  Of course I would have love to seen more big battles in this uniquely realized polished computer world, but the exposition gave it a depth and seriousness that wasn't necessarily expected as a way to build off the first Tron.

OK, now, the lead actor playing Flynn's son was pretty wooden, and some of the cliche action-based dialogue seemed like it could fit right into Star Wars prequels, but the first one wasn't perfect either.  But TRON:  LEGACY gave new and old fans what they were looking for, with some surprising maturity as well.