This is the 4th (count em) time that I have endeavoured to rank my films of the year. Unlike each of the last 3, I actually feel qualified to do it justice this year. That is because I went to the cinema 76 times this year, and have the tickets to prove it. Now, basically, I like the films that I like and I never repeat myself. So, considering the number of absolutely shite films I've seen this year, I can't imagine that I forgot any of the good ones. Hence this list, condensed and considered, is a measure of quality that I'm very happy with. So here's what's in store.
I have compiled a list (then checked it twice) of my top 10 films of the year. All of the films on the list are here on merit, my merit. Essentially, like all good critics, I like the films that I like and I never repeat myself, which means that I have included only 1 comedy, 4 mood pieces, 1 foreign language film, 2 films that are largely dialogue-free and 11 total films in my top ten. As a gambling man, I would envisage that you, you there, reading this might have seen 1 or 2 of the films on the list. The title of the film contains a link to the trailer on the youtube, should you want to see what the fuss is for yourself.
To bump up the word count [it's over 9,000], I have included 3 paragraphs each film, but then try to hit you with some knowledge. Each film comes with a Filmschool 101 note, on something which stood out for me about the film. Film should make you think, give your mind a work out, make you break a mental sweat. The amount of effort that goes on to tell the story not only by the actions and dialogue but the mise-en-scene, the length of takes or the use of sound and colour all go into telling the story. In recognition of that, I'll just be writing a small bit on the more critical aspects of the film. All of these films are entertaining, but they are also affecting and well made, because that's what I think film should be. If you come out of a film and think, "so what", then you've just cursed that film with the worst critique you can hand down. If nothing else, none of these films are boring (well, two of them kind of are).
In addition please find attached below each piece a quick note on the Huu-wat? moment of the film. This is the moment that kind of comes out of nowhere, or indeed just makes overtly explicit something that had been implicit to the effect that all you can do it erupt into giddiness. I think every movie should have one, and this list comes jam-packed (apart from the boring one/two). For the greatest Huu-wat? of all time, consult number 7 on the list.
So without further ado, here is My Year in Criticism. That's the films other people liked that I hated.
Rise of The Planet of The Apes: First of all, there are too many prepositions in that title. I understand that this film is based on a ridiculous pitch (Alzheimer's quasi-cure makes supersmart apes), but even if you buy into the central conceit, or even if you don't, there is far too much bullshit in this film to make me care. For a start, and this turned Vince Mancini into a giddy little girl, there are no apes in this movie. I mean, the whole point, as far as I could tell, is that we need to give a shit about these apes, but there aren't any. And then the fake ones are turned into Wisenheimers, who have human concepts like freedom and pants, and renege on all of their apiness in favour of standing upright. Essentially, it should be called Planet of the Humans, because there's nothing even remotely ape-like about any of them. AND THEN, I mean, there's the Alzheimer's cure, which works for a period, then remisses. But there's a solid foundation there. For some reason the company decides that the drug's short-comings are the ape's fault and orders the work to be destroyed, along with the apes! Why would the president of a medicine company do that? Doesn't he like money? And another thing, why is the ape sanctuary run by the world's greatest ape-hater, non-scientist Brian Cox? This movie exists somewhere between Stephen King City, where the prison guards are worse than the convicts in the cells, and Vegetarian Island, where everyone who works with animals is cruel to them. FUCK OFF! In real life, the ape sanctuary would be run by kindly zoologists, zoo-keepers and Zooey Deschanel. I can take the talking fake, human-played apes, but I draw the line at unlikely ape sanctuary owners.
Bridesmaids: Like The Hangover but with women. Now. First of all, when did The Hangover become a measure of comedic quality? I didn't particularly like it. Anyway, what Bridesmaids did was took a whole load of male characters and cast females in the parts. There is vomit. There is poo-poo. There is a character, Megan or Jackie or Dave or whatever her name was, who was clearly written for Zach Galifianakis. The only believable female character in the movie is the one on the plane who tries to freak everyone out ("I had a dream the plane crashed. You were in it" - hi mum). The thing about it is that, as a man I was clearly not part of this movie's target audience - and that's perfectly fine. It may have been a great film, but coming at it from an objective point of view it just seemed completely stark-raving mad. The lead character is, and I don't say this lightly, a complete and utter bitch. I hated her. She just destroyed everything she touched, and did so because she liked the attention. That is why she's single; she's a complete arsehole. And as far as I could tell, we were supposed to hate Rose Byrne's character just because she was pretty and organised. How stereotypical. You know it was written by a woman? It was.
Tree of Life: It was a mood piece, so why didn't I like it? Well, my biggest problem was I found it to be the most self-indulgent piece of onanism I've ever seen. And I like Vincent Gallo's movies. What Malick did with this film was to miss the entire point of existentialism. He actually asks the questions himself in a disembodied voice. The imagery he uses puts the mundane in "mundane beauty". Imagine that American Beauty had been a 90-minute version of the scene with the plastic bag floating around. This is the movie. It also features Jessica Chastain. I couldn't write a post about movies in 2011 with mentioning Jessica Chastain. She was in 7 movies that came out this year, ranging from Take Shelter (which just missed the top 10) to The Help which I wouldn't watch unless someone paid me. Thing is, she's pretty awful. She's a less talented, less pretty version of Bryce Dallas Howard. Thing is, they're basically the same age and look similar-ish. They're actually both in The Help, which probably opened some sort of temporal tear in the space-time continuum.
To the list!
11/Out of Competition: Kill List
Kill List is one of the more frustrating films you'll have probably not have seen this year. That's because for the first 92 and a half minutes of its 95 minute run-time you'll be on the edge of your seat. You'll have a racing mind and eyes glued to the screen. Then. Then. The last minute addition to the list appears, the Hunchback, and you'll know what's coming. But, as Ceelo Green would ask, Why?
It must be said that the ending, unfortunately, makes perfect sense. It is the only way to answer the myriad of questions raised throughout the movie. Jay and Gal are hit men, living off the scraps of a deal gone wrong (someway that's not explained) in Kiev. Then Jay's hot-tub breaks and they go back into the game for one last contract. A staple, sure, but this is no ordinary deal, as a blood pact is involved with the delegators of the list. Even more staple, I know, but with largely improvised dialogue creating a warm repartee between the two leads and Jay teeming with a simmering, largely unrestrained menace, this is no ordinary pair of ex-military guns for hire. That Jay's secretary is his wife just adds to the strangeness of it all, as does Gal's doll-like witch of a girlfriend ("let's just say I had to shave my pubes afterwards").
So into their murky world Jay and Gal go. But why do the victims thank Jay before he kills them? What is on the DVDs that cause Jay to bring out MC Hammer and, indeed, later veer off list? How can no one else see the infection in Jay's hand? Well. It'll all make sense in the end. But... Do you want it to? Is it like a magic trick, where you want to be deceived? Either way, the jarring sprint finish certainly makes a lot more sense on second viewing. But just because it makes sense doesn't mean it's not very very out of place with the tone of all that has gone before it.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about prosthetics. This movie was made for £500,000, and has the best prosthetic effects I've seen in years. A hand-wound bleeds even under the tap. A hammer ruins one guy's entire weekend, even though we hear him talk without cutting away. It's remarkable. The thing is that having such explicit violence, the kind that makes you go "oww" just watching, has a strong negative effect on our perception of the characters. There is two things of note in Kill List: first is that Jay, who practically bursts with violence all the way through, and Gal, who doesn't, have such a charming and easy blokiness that we need to go fully into their violent world to question our role as an audience. Why are we watching such violent men? They perform for money. Notions of enjoying their company are highly questionable when we see Jay go nuts over and over, no matter how good their chemistry is in peace time. As jarring as the ending is, how can we say we are surprised? How could we not see what Jay is? The clues are all there, up on screen, explicit and uncensored. The second is why did this violence court no controversy? I read several reviews of Kill List, none of which mentioned just how vicious this movie could get. I'll come back to this for Drive, but there's a clear contrast between audience expectations: Drive stars Baby Goose and Cary Mulligan, and was heavily promoted, so the audience was warned (Empire called it "ultra-violent", it is absolutely not). The audience would find Drive, the Saturday-night-shifting-in-the-back-row-crowd. Kill List would have to find the audience, one that roots out genre or indie films. That audience largely is used to the unexpected, explicit and confrontational, so the reviewers didn't bother mentioning the violence. Think about it.
Huu-wat?: The Hunchback. Turned my entire universe on its head and ruined the film. But then again... did it?
10. Somewhere
This is the boring one. Nothing happens in Somewhere. It's very much the opposite of Lost in Translation (her worst film), in that LiT was about a wife tagging along with her husband while this is about the famous husband. Only he's not anyone's husband, he's just famous. And that's the movie. A famous guy, living in a hotel, being a celebrity.
This kind of film needs to exist. Coppola herself has said that the measured and relaxed tone of the film (there's a lot of shots that go on for a long time despite nothing much appearing happen) is an overt cue to you to watch a little closer. It's the perfect opposite of the likes of Transformers or even, I think, The King's Speech, where the whole film is trying to bring gravitas and importance to a big event, which when it happens, is as lame and damp a squib as you'll ever come across. Somewhere doesn't pretend to be anything beyond what it is, being a gentle observation of the other side of movies. If you take the time, there is a quite lovely story about a father and daughter learning how to be a part of each other's life. Just because it is subtle doesn't mean it's not there.
The reason why Somewhere works is everyone in it is eminently watchable. Dorff is really good as Johnny Marco, who could really be anyone in front of the camera in the other 10 movies on the list. He's largely apathetic and directionless, and there's an air of sadness about it all, until his daughter Cleo arrives and spends some time with him, bringing a gentle joy to his life. There's nothing much profound about their relationship, and its effect on Marco is kind of vague (he moves out of the Marmont at the end but he's presumably still a movie star). Cleo, also doesn't appear to move in with him or anything. Somewhere is happy enough to go through this without battering you in the face with some harsh monologues where the kid drops knowledge bombs all over the adults, nor does Marco turn into Professor Self-Reflection to deliver some fist-pumping speech at the end. It just takes its time to show a subtle slice of life. If David Attenborough had narrated it everyone would get it on DVD for Christmas.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about direction. Camera movements and the length of takes, without ever needing to see what the story is about or anything in the narrative, tells you exactly what kind of film you are watching. I mentioned the difference between this and Transformers. Transformers is cut together from about 1,000,000 different takes and shots, not just in terms of action scenes but even dialogue scenes are cut terribly complexly. Action movies generally are cut together with lots of cross cuts, which speed up the pace of the visual narrative. In non-action movies, frequent cuts are often used to show duplicity, or represent fractures in the narrative. By letting the camera run, firstly the tempo of the film slows considerably and, more importantly, there is less room to hide. There is enough time to take everything in, whether good or bad. Oddly, invisible edits are now increasingly being used to make scenes appear longer, such as in Children of Men. That's because the length of a take draws the audience in, as every cut is like an advertisement to blink, and makes explicit the fact that you're watching a movie. By letting the camera run, you get drawn in, whether you realise it or not. This is one of the main reasons why I enjoyed number 3 on the list so much; it is an action movie shot with an indie sense of patience.
Huu-wat: It's not really that kind of movie, but the scene where they put that latex mask on Johnny Marco's head is pretty funny.
This is the boring one. Nothing happens in Somewhere. It's very much the opposite of Lost in Translation (her worst film), in that LiT was about a wife tagging along with her husband while this is about the famous husband. Only he's not anyone's husband, he's just famous. And that's the movie. A famous guy, living in a hotel, being a celebrity.
This kind of film needs to exist. Coppola herself has said that the measured and relaxed tone of the film (there's a lot of shots that go on for a long time despite nothing much appearing happen) is an overt cue to you to watch a little closer. It's the perfect opposite of the likes of Transformers or even, I think, The King's Speech, where the whole film is trying to bring gravitas and importance to a big event, which when it happens, is as lame and damp a squib as you'll ever come across. Somewhere doesn't pretend to be anything beyond what it is, being a gentle observation of the other side of movies. If you take the time, there is a quite lovely story about a father and daughter learning how to be a part of each other's life. Just because it is subtle doesn't mean it's not there.
The reason why Somewhere works is everyone in it is eminently watchable. Dorff is really good as Johnny Marco, who could really be anyone in front of the camera in the other 10 movies on the list. He's largely apathetic and directionless, and there's an air of sadness about it all, until his daughter Cleo arrives and spends some time with him, bringing a gentle joy to his life. There's nothing much profound about their relationship, and its effect on Marco is kind of vague (he moves out of the Marmont at the end but he's presumably still a movie star). Cleo, also doesn't appear to move in with him or anything. Somewhere is happy enough to go through this without battering you in the face with some harsh monologues where the kid drops knowledge bombs all over the adults, nor does Marco turn into Professor Self-Reflection to deliver some fist-pumping speech at the end. It just takes its time to show a subtle slice of life. If David Attenborough had narrated it everyone would get it on DVD for Christmas.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about direction. Camera movements and the length of takes, without ever needing to see what the story is about or anything in the narrative, tells you exactly what kind of film you are watching. I mentioned the difference between this and Transformers. Transformers is cut together from about 1,000,000 different takes and shots, not just in terms of action scenes but even dialogue scenes are cut terribly complexly. Action movies generally are cut together with lots of cross cuts, which speed up the pace of the visual narrative. In non-action movies, frequent cuts are often used to show duplicity, or represent fractures in the narrative. By letting the camera run, firstly the tempo of the film slows considerably and, more importantly, there is less room to hide. There is enough time to take everything in, whether good or bad. Oddly, invisible edits are now increasingly being used to make scenes appear longer, such as in Children of Men. That's because the length of a take draws the audience in, as every cut is like an advertisement to blink, and makes explicit the fact that you're watching a movie. By letting the camera run, you get drawn in, whether you realise it or not. This is one of the main reasons why I enjoyed number 3 on the list so much; it is an action movie shot with an indie sense of patience.
Huu-wat: It's not really that kind of movie, but the scene where they put that latex mask on Johnny Marco's head is pretty funny.
9. 13 Assassins
Takashi Miike, Japanese director of such charming family fare as Ichi the Killer (opening titles written in real human sperm, and it gets worse from there) and Visitor Q (it opens with child-initiated incest and then gets worse from there), and director of 87 movies in the last 20 years, had a go at making a pg-16 feudal Japanese Shogunate war epic. It is both the most Miike and least Miike film I've ever seen.
The first... 40 odd minutes is a talky political movie, with elderly folk hero Shinzaemon gathering together a small band of ronin to fight the good fight against Lord Naritsugu, the mentalist brother of the Shogun, who will be moving to the shogunate to become Minister for Ruining Christmas. To underline this, there's a lot of scenes of Naristugu being a big bastard and a lot of Shinzaemon saying things like, "Sometimes I wonder at the team I have assembled here". Shinzaemon and his pals talk about honour and duty. Naritsugu uses live families for archery practice and wanders through massacres uttering bored reposts on the futility of life. He is so nasty he could be from a Miike movie, and a lot of it is genuinely upsetting. Then the assembled team embarks upon its epic quest. And woah Nelly, look out below. Did that hurt Mike? Is anyone still reading?
The rest of the movie is a big lads-own adventure, with Shinzaemon and his pal Kuranaga leading the 12 ronin and 1 feral thief through the forests to the point of ambush, where they turn a town into a death-trap in anticipation of the arrival of Naritsugu and his 70 guards. He arrives with 200 guards instead and the last half an hour is little more than explosions and the cutting off of heads. And it is AMAZING! Logic takes a bath, but I'd be amazed if several stuntmen didn't actually die during the making of this. The action is incredible, largely because it's so silly, but there's so many wince inducing moments that you won't know which end is up. Considering that Miike is best known for his violence, he's in his element with a film that's largely one extended fight scene. Remarkably it's only 16s or something, despite the fact that it features more onscreen bloodshed than a Christmas episode of Eastenders.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about subtitles. There is a common complaint that you have to read a foreign language film rather than watch it. I can abide that. A lot of the time, particularly, and I understand how racist this will sound, with Spanish films there will be mountains of text at the bottom of the screen because they speak so fast. Also, while translation is about more than turning words in one language into words in another language, there is a certain amount of cultural adaptation that can be made at the studio's request which can seriously alter the meaning of the dialogue. Låt den Rätte Komma In had new English subs for its American release that were shite compared to the original English subs in the Swedish DVD release (it is actually like watching a different, better movie with the original subs). Another good example of this is La Haine, a tough, racially charged French banlieue movie, which is so full of creole that the subs are frequently updated so that the slang is in the freshest English equivalents (the latest .srt file I found had "swag" in it). There is a scene where the characters talk about Asterix, but the subs, for a US audience at least, in the scene refer to Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Ridiculous. In 13 Assassins, Naristugu is a total bastard, but one thing the subs don't pick up is the contempt he displays for everyone else through the language he uses. While there is only one way to say "you" in English, there are several ways of saying it in Japanese, and how you say it says a lot about how highly or lowly you regard your addressee. There is no easy way to translate that, and the subs here don't try to. What I mean to say is that I understand people being wary of foreign language film, largely because I always feel that I am getting a vague approximation of the whole tale. It's also difficult to take in the whole imagery when you're focusing on the bottom of the screen, and it is often more difficult to track a narrative in text than through audio, particularly when there is a lot of exposition. It can work the other way too though, like in The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, a film I lost track of after about 10 minutes and gave up on anything beyond staring at the ridiculously pretty actress.
Huu-wat? A bit nasty this but there's a bit at the beginning which is designed to justify all the upcoming bloodshed in the audience's mind. One of Naritsugu's victims, a woman who he treated as a possession, is brought to be interviewed by Shinzaemon. She has no arms or legs, or tongue. Her escort tells her story, until Shinzaemon addresses her directly and she writes her responses using a calligraphy brush in her mouth, while moaning extraordinarily. Genuinely upsetting. Not sure why she was naked though (Hi Takashi).
Takashi Miike, Japanese director of such charming family fare as Ichi the Killer (opening titles written in real human sperm, and it gets worse from there) and Visitor Q (it opens with child-initiated incest and then gets worse from there), and director of 87 movies in the last 20 years, had a go at making a pg-16 feudal Japanese Shogunate war epic. It is both the most Miike and least Miike film I've ever seen.
The first... 40 odd minutes is a talky political movie, with elderly folk hero Shinzaemon gathering together a small band of ronin to fight the good fight against Lord Naritsugu, the mentalist brother of the Shogun, who will be moving to the shogunate to become Minister for Ruining Christmas. To underline this, there's a lot of scenes of Naristugu being a big bastard and a lot of Shinzaemon saying things like, "Sometimes I wonder at the team I have assembled here". Shinzaemon and his pals talk about honour and duty. Naritsugu uses live families for archery practice and wanders through massacres uttering bored reposts on the futility of life. He is so nasty he could be from a Miike movie, and a lot of it is genuinely upsetting. Then the assembled team embarks upon its epic quest. And woah Nelly, look out below. Did that hurt Mike? Is anyone still reading?
The rest of the movie is a big lads-own adventure, with Shinzaemon and his pal Kuranaga leading the 12 ronin and 1 feral thief through the forests to the point of ambush, where they turn a town into a death-trap in anticipation of the arrival of Naritsugu and his 70 guards. He arrives with 200 guards instead and the last half an hour is little more than explosions and the cutting off of heads. And it is AMAZING! Logic takes a bath, but I'd be amazed if several stuntmen didn't actually die during the making of this. The action is incredible, largely because it's so silly, but there's so many wince inducing moments that you won't know which end is up. Considering that Miike is best known for his violence, he's in his element with a film that's largely one extended fight scene. Remarkably it's only 16s or something, despite the fact that it features more onscreen bloodshed than a Christmas episode of Eastenders.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about subtitles. There is a common complaint that you have to read a foreign language film rather than watch it. I can abide that. A lot of the time, particularly, and I understand how racist this will sound, with Spanish films there will be mountains of text at the bottom of the screen because they speak so fast. Also, while translation is about more than turning words in one language into words in another language, there is a certain amount of cultural adaptation that can be made at the studio's request which can seriously alter the meaning of the dialogue. Låt den Rätte Komma In had new English subs for its American release that were shite compared to the original English subs in the Swedish DVD release (it is actually like watching a different, better movie with the original subs). Another good example of this is La Haine, a tough, racially charged French banlieue movie, which is so full of creole that the subs are frequently updated so that the slang is in the freshest English equivalents (the latest .srt file I found had "swag" in it). There is a scene where the characters talk about Asterix, but the subs, for a US audience at least, in the scene refer to Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Ridiculous. In 13 Assassins, Naristugu is a total bastard, but one thing the subs don't pick up is the contempt he displays for everyone else through the language he uses. While there is only one way to say "you" in English, there are several ways of saying it in Japanese, and how you say it says a lot about how highly or lowly you regard your addressee. There is no easy way to translate that, and the subs here don't try to. What I mean to say is that I understand people being wary of foreign language film, largely because I always feel that I am getting a vague approximation of the whole tale. It's also difficult to take in the whole imagery when you're focusing on the bottom of the screen, and it is often more difficult to track a narrative in text than through audio, particularly when there is a lot of exposition. It can work the other way too though, like in The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, a film I lost track of after about 10 minutes and gave up on anything beyond staring at the ridiculously pretty actress.
Huu-wat? A bit nasty this but there's a bit at the beginning which is designed to justify all the upcoming bloodshed in the audience's mind. One of Naritsugu's victims, a woman who he treated as a possession, is brought to be interviewed by Shinzaemon. She has no arms or legs, or tongue. Her escort tells her story, until Shinzaemon addresses her directly and she writes her responses using a calligraphy brush in her mouth, while moaning extraordinarily. Genuinely upsetting. Not sure why she was naked though (Hi Takashi).
8. Beginners
Ah, look at it there. Beginners is Mike Mill's second film ( I think), and his first was a big pile of self-indulgent wank (Thumbsucker). Beginners is even more personal than Thumbsucker was, being about a man, Oliver, played by my favourite actor Ewan McGregor, considering his relationship with his dying father, a man who revealed he was gay the whole time after his wife, Oliver's mother, dies. It's kind of heart-breaking, but it's also heart-warming. It has heart, essentially.
And it's a very heartfelt and hearty movie, and more than a touch sentimental. However, everyone in it is so loveable that you'll probably be too busy mopping up your mascara to notice. I seriously regret chopping those onions while I was watching it. The meet-cute between Oliver and Anna is so lovely that you sort of have to demand that they end up together and stay together forever ever. But will they? So what if she can't talk, didn't you hear that touch-tone telephone? Damn their beautiful eyes.
It's probably a very silly film. Christopher Plummer is a kindly old gay gent, who drops pearls of glistening knowledge (huh?) all over Oliver's mind-tongue (ssh), despite, it must be said, doing so with the life-long regret of a man who survived a prolonged, loveless lie to himself. Oliver's mother seemed to have also accepted her situation, emerging as some sort of frigid artiste, hence Oliver being a cautious, self-destructive lonely bear. He eventually learns to get over himself, and that's the movie. It's pretty sad in parts, considering the subject matter, but if it doesn't leave you looking for your own George Sand then you and I are very different people.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about screenwriting. I love to read scripts, to see just how much of the film is recreated from the page. When a director also writes the piece, oftentimes it is as though he/she has already seen the film in his/her head before beginning. The Beginners script actually surprised me because the dialogue between the characters seemed so realistic that I though much of it would be improvised. But no, it's actually all there on the page. Even Oliver's annoying colleagues, who I assumed were cast because they are somebody's cousins playing themselves, even just repeated their lines from the page. You may hear about guys like Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet, about whom the old adage is that they have "a good ear for dialogue". They don't; they have a good ear for speeches and proselytizing (nothing wrong with that); realistic dialogue, like you might have with your friends is the hard part. Mills does that here.
Huu-wat? It's not that kind of movie. But there's a couple of bits involving Andy that'll make you cringe.
Ah, look at it there. Beginners is Mike Mill's second film ( I think), and his first was a big pile of self-indulgent wank (Thumbsucker). Beginners is even more personal than Thumbsucker was, being about a man, Oliver, played by my favourite actor Ewan McGregor, considering his relationship with his dying father, a man who revealed he was gay the whole time after his wife, Oliver's mother, dies. It's kind of heart-breaking, but it's also heart-warming. It has heart, essentially.
And it's a very heartfelt and hearty movie, and more than a touch sentimental. However, everyone in it is so loveable that you'll probably be too busy mopping up your mascara to notice. I seriously regret chopping those onions while I was watching it. The meet-cute between Oliver and Anna is so lovely that you sort of have to demand that they end up together and stay together forever ever. But will they? So what if she can't talk, didn't you hear that touch-tone telephone? Damn their beautiful eyes.
It's probably a very silly film. Christopher Plummer is a kindly old gay gent, who drops pearls of glistening knowledge (huh?) all over Oliver's mind-tongue (ssh), despite, it must be said, doing so with the life-long regret of a man who survived a prolonged, loveless lie to himself. Oliver's mother seemed to have also accepted her situation, emerging as some sort of frigid artiste, hence Oliver being a cautious, self-destructive lonely bear. He eventually learns to get over himself, and that's the movie. It's pretty sad in parts, considering the subject matter, but if it doesn't leave you looking for your own George Sand then you and I are very different people.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about screenwriting. I love to read scripts, to see just how much of the film is recreated from the page. When a director also writes the piece, oftentimes it is as though he/she has already seen the film in his/her head before beginning. The Beginners script actually surprised me because the dialogue between the characters seemed so realistic that I though much of it would be improvised. But no, it's actually all there on the page. Even Oliver's annoying colleagues, who I assumed were cast because they are somebody's cousins playing themselves, even just repeated their lines from the page. You may hear about guys like Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet, about whom the old adage is that they have "a good ear for dialogue". They don't; they have a good ear for speeches and proselytizing (nothing wrong with that); realistic dialogue, like you might have with your friends is the hard part. Mills does that here.
Huu-wat? It's not that kind of movie. But there's a couple of bits involving Andy that'll make you cringe.
7. Essential Killing
A near dialogue-free, Vinny Gallo mood-piece shot by a Polish in the wilderness using Irish Film Board money. Do you need to know any more? I've always enjoyed the work of Vinny G, I know he might be the kind of man who sells Kinder Egg capsules of his own jizz for $1m on the internet (in fact there's no might be about that), but he makes his own movies in a way few others would dare. He usually writes, directs, stars, shoots, scores and edits his own film (contrast that with Beat Takeshi who is exhalted for doing less than that). Few would even have the stamina to consider doing all that. This time he is just acting, but he didn't exactly give himself the week off, no. He's only amazing.
We start in the desert, where an Arab(?)/Persian(?) man (Gallo) is hiding from an American GI. Now. Here's where it gets complicated (yes, at the start). Gallo picks up an RPG and blows the guy to smithereens. The title would suggest that it was an essential killing, but would most men have done the same? Is he actually the kind of person that the GIs are there to find? It's never explained, but it's pretty clear from his ninja moves that there's more to Gallo than a beard and robes. After killing the soldier he is taken to an extraordinary rendition country and is tortured, water-boarded and tested. Then, being transported to Poland, he escapes into the frozen forestland when his truck turns over.
Jersey Skolimovski has an eye for a landscape. While Gallo is the only person on screen, nature is his adversary and also his only hope for survival. Thankfully it doesn't go all The Edge or Deliverance, because this isn't an American movie. Instead, Gallo has to survive, and does so without missing a beat, using his head as well as his +1 melee ability. His foraging in what is presumably a totally alien landscape (he's from the desert remember) is ingenious, particularly stripping the bark from a tree to eat the ants beneath. His mind goes a bit as he begins to freeze, but it's never anything less than brave and thrilling, especially when that scene happens.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about sound design. This film is largely dialogue free, and what dialogue there is comes in the form of unsubtitled generic foreign tongues, leaving us as alienated as Vinny G. Nobody has a conversation, let's say. However, it isn't a silent movie, far from it, some of the sound design in the forest, with the crunch of the snow and the whistling energy of the wind freezing in the air, is superb. The dogs and helicopters that come to get him are morphed into something gigantic in their menace, simply by the fact that there is no score or dialogue to distract from it. Dogs can be scary, man. Another thing is that Gallo does not utter a single word during the entire film, yet we still get full senses of his exhaustion, relief, satisfaction (you'll know) and fear, not only from his body language but from incidental noises. Silent film it's not.
Huu-wat? That scene. That scene. It comes out of nowhere (although it is the culmination of a natural progression), but when it happens you'll be giddier than a schoolgirl. Hint:
A near dialogue-free, Vinny Gallo mood-piece shot by a Polish in the wilderness using Irish Film Board money. Do you need to know any more? I've always enjoyed the work of Vinny G, I know he might be the kind of man who sells Kinder Egg capsules of his own jizz for $1m on the internet (in fact there's no might be about that), but he makes his own movies in a way few others would dare. He usually writes, directs, stars, shoots, scores and edits his own film (contrast that with Beat Takeshi who is exhalted for doing less than that). Few would even have the stamina to consider doing all that. This time he is just acting, but he didn't exactly give himself the week off, no. He's only amazing.
We start in the desert, where an Arab(?)/Persian(?) man (Gallo) is hiding from an American GI. Now. Here's where it gets complicated (yes, at the start). Gallo picks up an RPG and blows the guy to smithereens. The title would suggest that it was an essential killing, but would most men have done the same? Is he actually the kind of person that the GIs are there to find? It's never explained, but it's pretty clear from his ninja moves that there's more to Gallo than a beard and robes. After killing the soldier he is taken to an extraordinary rendition country and is tortured, water-boarded and tested. Then, being transported to Poland, he escapes into the frozen forestland when his truck turns over.
Jersey Skolimovski has an eye for a landscape. While Gallo is the only person on screen, nature is his adversary and also his only hope for survival. Thankfully it doesn't go all The Edge or Deliverance, because this isn't an American movie. Instead, Gallo has to survive, and does so without missing a beat, using his head as well as his +1 melee ability. His foraging in what is presumably a totally alien landscape (he's from the desert remember) is ingenious, particularly stripping the bark from a tree to eat the ants beneath. His mind goes a bit as he begins to freeze, but it's never anything less than brave and thrilling, especially when that scene happens.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about sound design. This film is largely dialogue free, and what dialogue there is comes in the form of unsubtitled generic foreign tongues, leaving us as alienated as Vinny G. Nobody has a conversation, let's say. However, it isn't a silent movie, far from it, some of the sound design in the forest, with the crunch of the snow and the whistling energy of the wind freezing in the air, is superb. The dogs and helicopters that come to get him are morphed into something gigantic in their menace, simply by the fact that there is no score or dialogue to distract from it. Dogs can be scary, man. Another thing is that Gallo does not utter a single word during the entire film, yet we still get full senses of his exhaustion, relief, satisfaction (you'll know) and fear, not only from his body language but from incidental noises. Silent film it's not.
Huu-wat? That scene. That scene. It comes out of nowhere (although it is the culmination of a natural progression), but when it happens you'll be giddier than a schoolgirl. Hint:
6. The Adjustment Bureau
When I got home from this movie I twote: "I picked a hell of a day to quit believing in true love". Despite being one of Niall McNamara's more used phrases (spec. "true love called...". That's the whole phrase), evidence of true love is pretty specious at best. In motion pictures, it doesn't happen. That's why most romanic films, even the best one, Punch Drunk Love, finishes just as the couple get together. It's all downhill from there, if they ever get to a point on the hill from whence they could fall. That sound you hear is the deafening thud of cynicism.
Ah but The Adjustment Bureau. Look at it there, with its hat on. What a lovely film this is. The best way to describe it is as "nice". I've often been told that I'm "nice" as a precursor to being rejected, so I know just how underrated a commodity "niceness" is. But this film, if nothing else, is nice.
It's about true love. Nothing more complicated or fleeting a notion than that. Matt Damon, who I don't rate (he nearly ruined Francois Pienaar fo' Gid's sike) but he's great in this, as politician who would be president, er, David Norris, were it not for him falling on his silly heart sword and ruining not only his own life, but the life of should be beau Elsie Sellas, played sweetly by Emily Blunt (as herself basically). But as this is a Philip K. Dick adaptation (or moreso reinterpretation), all is not as it seems. Men in hats gently conduct the flow of events that give direction to life. Norris and Sellas should only meet once, fleetingly, in a men's restroom (yes) and never see one another again. Only one of the hatmen spills kauphie on himself and Norris gets on Sellas' bus. They try to get together. Norris rebels against fate for 90 minutes. Roger Sterling in a hat tries to stop them.
Why it works is just HOW LOVELY IT IS, DIDN'T YOU HEAR? All romantic movies, as Paton Oswald of all people noted, are structured around the premise that the audience has a keenly vested interest in whether or not the two principals fuck one another. Here, you will demand that they do, and that you have a front row seat (and my boy Neil takin notes etc.). Everything, from the tales of fate, the decisions and their consequences are laced up and swung into your face, making it bizarrely real, especially for a movie where time-stopping bureaucratic angels read magic iPads on the bus. That's because it addresses real concerns and scenarios that you'll have had run through your head, about what ifs, and if onlys. Norris faces those questions of fate literally. And you'll never want to see two people take the Lincoln tunnel more.
When I got home from this movie I twote: "I picked a hell of a day to quit believing in true love". Despite being one of Niall McNamara's more used phrases (spec. "true love called...". That's the whole phrase), evidence of true love is pretty specious at best. In motion pictures, it doesn't happen. That's why most romanic films, even the best one, Punch Drunk Love, finishes just as the couple get together. It's all downhill from there, if they ever get to a point on the hill from whence they could fall. That sound you hear is the deafening thud of cynicism.
Ah but The Adjustment Bureau. Look at it there, with its hat on. What a lovely film this is. The best way to describe it is as "nice". I've often been told that I'm "nice" as a precursor to being rejected, so I know just how underrated a commodity "niceness" is. But this film, if nothing else, is nice.
It's about true love. Nothing more complicated or fleeting a notion than that. Matt Damon, who I don't rate (he nearly ruined Francois Pienaar fo' Gid's sike) but he's great in this, as politician who would be president, er, David Norris, were it not for him falling on his silly heart sword and ruining not only his own life, but the life of should be beau Elsie Sellas, played sweetly by Emily Blunt (as herself basically). But as this is a Philip K. Dick adaptation (or moreso reinterpretation), all is not as it seems. Men in hats gently conduct the flow of events that give direction to life. Norris and Sellas should only meet once, fleetingly, in a men's restroom (yes) and never see one another again. Only one of the hatmen spills kauphie on himself and Norris gets on Sellas' bus. They try to get together. Norris rebels against fate for 90 minutes. Roger Sterling in a hat tries to stop them.
Why it works is just HOW LOVELY IT IS, DIDN'T YOU HEAR? All romantic movies, as Paton Oswald of all people noted, are structured around the premise that the audience has a keenly vested interest in whether or not the two principals fuck one another. Here, you will demand that they do, and that you have a front row seat (and my boy Neil takin notes etc.). Everything, from the tales of fate, the decisions and their consequences are laced up and swung into your face, making it bizarrely real, especially for a movie where time-stopping bureaucratic angels read magic iPads on the bus. That's because it addresses real concerns and scenarios that you'll have had run through your head, about what ifs, and if onlys. Norris faces those questions of fate literally. And you'll never want to see two people take the Lincoln tunnel more.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about religion. America is a very religious place. Censorship is undertaken by the Motion Picture Association of America, a far-right leaning organisation that, until the 1960s, used what was called the Hays Code to judge a film's certification. The Hays Code was a ridiculous Presbyterian moral standard that heavily favoured good-old fashioned bullshit like eating your greens and saying your prayers. It is an obvious point, but the flourishing of artistic film-making, director led, in the period 1969 (with Easy Riders and Bonnie and Clyde) to 1980 (when Heaven's Gate nearly ended Paramount) came directly after the abandoning of the Hays Code in favour of a more honest, artistic and open-minded practice (the Breen Code). Anyway, The Adjustment Bureau features heavily religious themes, with the hat-wearing love haters being messengers for an omnipotent higher-power called The Chairman. The main themes are predestination and free will. But, strangely, while being seemingly Protestant (isn't predetermination one of the two differences between Catholicism and Protestantism?) in outlook, it suggests that, rather than praying or whatever (performing X action to appease an omniscient god) if we stick to our guns we can effectively bully an all-mighty power into submission and mitigation. Neat. And if he was really omniscient, he'd have known not to try to keep them apart in the first place, no?
Huu-wat: There's no single huu-wat in this movie, but Terence Stamp appears in this after about an hour, having seemingly walked straight out of Othello or something. It's a bizarre performance, totally out of pitch with everything else, and it's such a legit theatre, absurdity of Ack-ting! performance that it's hard not to laugh.
5. The Guard
Martin McDonagh wrote and directed Oscar-winning short Six Shooter, about a black-and-white train ride (ok, I haven't seen it), before going on to make over-rated Al Swearengenian black-comedy In Bruges. John McDonagh, Martin's brother, made The Guard. While John's background is in legit theatre, they could basically be the same person, as The Guard is very similar to In Bruges. More importantly, it was also the only genuinely funny film in all of 2011.
The Guard is Brendan Gleeson, a bored Galway Sergent, spending his days dropping confiscated drugs and ordering escorts from Dublin. Boring. Then a big drug operation (that's actually three men, two of whom appear to be philosophy graduates) comes to town and somehow the FBI send a single agent over to brief the locals. It's all very unlikely and my reading of it suggests that it is all in Gleeson's head, because it is just so unlikely. But you won't care. Sergent Boyle is a pretty typical Irish gombeen-savant character and the people he encounters are just larger than life enough to be believable rural Irishmen.
It is very funny, and very Irish. It ticks all the boxes: swearing, IRA cowboys, British bad-guys, city-vs-country, Brendan Gleeson loving his ma. It could only be from here, and it doesn't have an original bone in its body. But it is funny so who cares. Gleeson's guard is spectacular. I never understood why Colm Meaney and Liam Neeson went on to have big overseas careers (especially the latter who these days seems to only play characters who exist as pictures of drawings of characters he has already played in the past), while Gleeson, the most watchable and natural screen presence this side of George Clooney, seemed content to remain the big fish in a shot glass, making silly Irish movies like Perrier's Bounty and Studs (or was I the only one who saw those?). Still, the reception this got overseas (as I said, as the only genuinely funny movie of the year, thanks for nothing Jason Sudekis), maybe Gleeson could be the new Jessica Chastain.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about awareness. Movies are an artform. Most people, myself included, do not understand art. Now. Himself a film critic, Patrick Kavanagh, the famous Irish poet and, latterly, bronze canal statue, once said that criticism involves putting yourself into the movie.
Reading a movie, as it is called, involves taking in the visual cues outside of the direct action, and reading into the motivations of the character etc. to better understand the whole story. By and large, doing this ruins the film as any form of entertainment, which is why I don't have too many popular movies on my list: popular movies exist as what David Foster Wallace called "entertainments", existing outside of art. Hollywood churns out movies that exist almost entirely on a textual basis, i.e. there is no subtext. That is a main bug-bear about Hollywood remakes of old movies and foreign language films, sequels and franchising of characters: they strip all subtly out of the experience. Just look at how Let Me In, not a bad movie on its own, pales in comparison to Låt den Rätte Komma In, despite being essentially the same story. I mean, the former strips the latter of its vaguely unsettling subtext, that Eli is grooming a new custodian, in favour of... is that love or something? Fuck off. Anyway, at the beginning of the Guard, Gleeson's bored country bobby confiscates some acid. He drops the acid and the title credit shows. We see him convulse and cry out in his fever-dream. I propose that everything that happens subsequently is actually that dream. Think about it: an FBI agent in Galway? The FBI letting the local 5-oh get involved (isn't Agent Johnson coming in and taking over the cue for the original case detective to hand in his badge and go rogue, despite Downtown getting on his ass, in order to solve the case? Yes it is)? Then a guard solves the case when nobody else can? A country guard? Think about it. Don't just accept that a movie is cartoony, think about why. I could be wrong, but it's subjective, and I have already convinced at least one girl that I had never met before that I'm on to something. And isn't that all that matters: influencing the thoughts of strangers?
Huu-wat? Sergent Boyle drops some acid and convulses in his sleep. Didn't you hear?
4. Super 8
Ah look at it there (I'll stop that now). Super 8 is just one flying bicycle crossing the moonlight or, more accurately, a mash-potato mountain away from being a remake of, indeed, most of Steven Spielberg's dramatically over-rated 70s/80s kids movies (and I fucking hate The Goonies). Indeed, it is so similar that it makes a massive mistake: it's sincere. Doesn't JJ Abrams know we live in Cynical Times? Why do you think they're remaking Spiderman: the old ones are too much fun. And how come Batman doesn't dance any more?
What a preposterous complaint to have. Every review of this movie is legally obligated to roll its eyes at how sincere this film is. But fuck off, it's so entertaining you'll be too busy not caring about critics to care. Basically, Joe is a kid from a Spielberg movie: his mother died tragically, his dad wants him to stop being a wimp and play football in the fall, he's in love with a girl both twice his age and height, and, god-damn you, all he wants to do is... the make-up for movies? Maybe his dad is right. If it needed to be more cliched, Joe also wears a locket around his neck with a picture of his dead mother in it. Oh, and the girl he likes is the daughter of the man who is convolutedly and inadvertently circuitously indirectly responsible for his mother's tragically unavoidably accidental death.
But then his band of utter loser friends, led by wimpy film-hero Martin and mini-Spielberg Charles (did I mention Spielberg produces), go to shoot a ridiculously elaborate night scene for their monster movie only to have an actual monster escape from a 10 minute train crash. The alien holes up in a water tower, stealing locals, until the feds show up and take the case out of the hands of the local 5-oh, especially country guard Kyle Chandler (football in the fall Dad). Yes it is comfortably a Blockbuster Movie, but it's just so well done that I wish there would be a sequel. That and the movie that the kids shoot plays over the end credits is the actual best film of the year.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about Blockbusters. Summer movies are a bunch of old bum. Transformers. Movies based on comic books. The Hangover cash-ins. Cynical Guardianista Batman (just one dance, please). Super 8 reminds me why these movies were popular to begin with. Abrams has done so well, to not only assemble a great cast of kids, but direct them into a coherent and substantial collective performance. That's not easy. Charles and Martin especially are great, and Joe holds everything together despite being one of those prototype American central characters who exist to ground the action rather than, like, do anything. The action in it, while sparse and entirely blood-less (I think that was a critic gripe too) is spectacular. Disney's lead-idiot Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of the studio for crying in a bucket, said in an interview that the studios are making more spectacle movies (the new term for blockbuster) because they are the only way to make money. In the same interview he mentions that spectacle movies are making less money. Duh, the market is becoming saturated with them, and the higher instances means lowering creative returns, if that is even possible in Hollywood in 2012. Making less, better movies would be the ideal business strategy. Super 8, people, that's the movie.
Huu-wat: The kids are being evacuated on a bus. The alien attacks it, and Martin loses his lunch. It's actually quite a scary movie at times, but the vomit made it funny.
3. Hanna
I've already mentioned this film, when I was supposed to be talking about other movies on the list. That's how good it is. You know those made-up American dictionaries that have pictures of the thing that best describes the word? In the future, there will be American dictionaries that will have a link to Hanna's IMDB page under the entry for "entertainment". It'll be a mixed-media dictionary.
Hanna is a typical young girl coming of age comicbook action adventure movie, directed by a guy famous for Jane Austin adaptations. And it is AMAZING. Regardless of who wins the best director Oscar in the second-most watched television event of the year, no director has so confidently stamped his own sensibilities on the written material behind a film this year. This film should be awful: Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is raised in the Russian wilderness by her assassin father (Eric Bana) to be the Ultimate Killing Machine/stilted little girl (Saoirse Ronan). When ready, she (Saoirse Ronan) is to go kill the woman (Cate Blanchett) who betrayed her father (Eric Bana). Stop me if you think that you heard this one before.
BUT YOU HAVEN'T. Because Joe Wright knows how to direct coming of age tales for girls, so that is given far more attention than most other directors would have given it. Where you'd expect Wright to struggle is with the action, but it is easily one of the most percussive action movies of the year. There is a long one-take scene where Bana gets off the train in Berlin (or wherever) and gets followed for a while by some suits before getting jumped by one of those movie gang groups which have about 10 guys that attack one at a time. The length of the take really sucks you in (or sucks you out, to the end of your seat) but the face punching hits all the right pressure points too (the bloodlust gland and anterior meat-shield collateral). That the scene is scored by The Chemical Brothers just makes it all the more bizarre. A languid action scene with a techno soundtrack. Oh, Joe, you're spoiling us.
The uniqueness of this movie is what sets it apart, the confidence of the direction is what holds it together. Wright gets uniformly fantastic performances from a vastly over-qualified cast, none of whom phone in perfunctory performances. Ronan, who I haven't seen enough of to rate, is fantastic, largely because Wright gives her every opportunity to be. I mean, the scene where she gets a hotel room in Morocco and encounters electricity, TV, photography, music, everything for the first time should be silly and familiar, like a guy travelling through time and staring dumb-founded at the date on a newspaper. Instead, her freak-out and flight-reaction are brought on by Wright overloading our senses too, pulsing the living, breathing room right into our popcorn-stuffed faces. The scene where Hanna talks to her first ever friend in the caravan would have been borderline paedo shit had almost anyone else directed it. In Wright's hands it's actually quite touching and lovely. Having a capable director with indie sensibilities regarding story and character should be the new norm for all action movies. In return, the next British period piece (what Tarantino calls "That Merchant/Ivory shit") should be directed by Michael Bay or Sylvester Stallone. It's only fair.
Ah look at it there (I'll stop that now). Super 8 is just one flying bicycle crossing the moonlight or, more accurately, a mash-potato mountain away from being a remake of, indeed, most of Steven Spielberg's dramatically over-rated 70s/80s kids movies (and I fucking hate The Goonies). Indeed, it is so similar that it makes a massive mistake: it's sincere. Doesn't JJ Abrams know we live in Cynical Times? Why do you think they're remaking Spiderman: the old ones are too much fun. And how come Batman doesn't dance any more?
What a preposterous complaint to have. Every review of this movie is legally obligated to roll its eyes at how sincere this film is. But fuck off, it's so entertaining you'll be too busy not caring about critics to care. Basically, Joe is a kid from a Spielberg movie: his mother died tragically, his dad wants him to stop being a wimp and play football in the fall, he's in love with a girl both twice his age and height, and, god-damn you, all he wants to do is... the make-up for movies? Maybe his dad is right. If it needed to be more cliched, Joe also wears a locket around his neck with a picture of his dead mother in it. Oh, and the girl he likes is the daughter of the man who is convolutedly and inadvertently circuitously indirectly responsible for his mother's tragically unavoidably accidental death.
But then his band of utter loser friends, led by wimpy film-hero Martin and mini-Spielberg Charles (did I mention Spielberg produces), go to shoot a ridiculously elaborate night scene for their monster movie only to have an actual monster escape from a 10 minute train crash. The alien holes up in a water tower, stealing locals, until the feds show up and take the case out of the hands of the local 5-oh, especially country guard Kyle Chandler (football in the fall Dad). Yes it is comfortably a Blockbuster Movie, but it's just so well done that I wish there would be a sequel. That and the movie that the kids shoot plays over the end credits is the actual best film of the year.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about Blockbusters. Summer movies are a bunch of old bum. Transformers. Movies based on comic books. The Hangover cash-ins. Cynical Guardianista Batman (just one dance, please). Super 8 reminds me why these movies were popular to begin with. Abrams has done so well, to not only assemble a great cast of kids, but direct them into a coherent and substantial collective performance. That's not easy. Charles and Martin especially are great, and Joe holds everything together despite being one of those prototype American central characters who exist to ground the action rather than, like, do anything. The action in it, while sparse and entirely blood-less (I think that was a critic gripe too) is spectacular. Disney's lead-idiot Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of the studio for crying in a bucket, said in an interview that the studios are making more spectacle movies (the new term for blockbuster) because they are the only way to make money. In the same interview he mentions that spectacle movies are making less money. Duh, the market is becoming saturated with them, and the higher instances means lowering creative returns, if that is even possible in Hollywood in 2012. Making less, better movies would be the ideal business strategy. Super 8, people, that's the movie.
Huu-wat: The kids are being evacuated on a bus. The alien attacks it, and Martin loses his lunch. It's actually quite a scary movie at times, but the vomit made it funny.
3. Hanna
I've already mentioned this film, when I was supposed to be talking about other movies on the list. That's how good it is. You know those made-up American dictionaries that have pictures of the thing that best describes the word? In the future, there will be American dictionaries that will have a link to Hanna's IMDB page under the entry for "entertainment". It'll be a mixed-media dictionary.
Hanna is a typical young girl coming of age comicbook action adventure movie, directed by a guy famous for Jane Austin adaptations. And it is AMAZING. Regardless of who wins the best director Oscar in the second-most watched television event of the year, no director has so confidently stamped his own sensibilities on the written material behind a film this year. This film should be awful: Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is raised in the Russian wilderness by her assassin father (Eric Bana) to be the Ultimate Killing Machine/stilted little girl (Saoirse Ronan). When ready, she (Saoirse Ronan) is to go kill the woman (Cate Blanchett) who betrayed her father (Eric Bana). Stop me if you think that you heard this one before.
BUT YOU HAVEN'T. Because Joe Wright knows how to direct coming of age tales for girls, so that is given far more attention than most other directors would have given it. Where you'd expect Wright to struggle is with the action, but it is easily one of the most percussive action movies of the year. There is a long one-take scene where Bana gets off the train in Berlin (or wherever) and gets followed for a while by some suits before getting jumped by one of those movie gang groups which have about 10 guys that attack one at a time. The length of the take really sucks you in (or sucks you out, to the end of your seat) but the face punching hits all the right pressure points too (the bloodlust gland and anterior meat-shield collateral). That the scene is scored by The Chemical Brothers just makes it all the more bizarre. A languid action scene with a techno soundtrack. Oh, Joe, you're spoiling us.
The uniqueness of this movie is what sets it apart, the confidence of the direction is what holds it together. Wright gets uniformly fantastic performances from a vastly over-qualified cast, none of whom phone in perfunctory performances. Ronan, who I haven't seen enough of to rate, is fantastic, largely because Wright gives her every opportunity to be. I mean, the scene where she gets a hotel room in Morocco and encounters electricity, TV, photography, music, everything for the first time should be silly and familiar, like a guy travelling through time and staring dumb-founded at the date on a newspaper. Instead, her freak-out and flight-reaction are brought on by Wright overloading our senses too, pulsing the living, breathing room right into our popcorn-stuffed faces. The scene where Hanna talks to her first ever friend in the caravan would have been borderline paedo shit had almost anyone else directed it. In Wright's hands it's actually quite touching and lovely. Having a capable director with indie sensibilities regarding story and character should be the new norm for all action movies. In return, the next British period piece (what Tarantino calls "That Merchant/Ivory shit") should be directed by Michael Bay or Sylvester Stallone. It's only fair.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about suspension of disbelief. One way that a movie can lose an audience is when its world isn't believable. Usually films are set in Movieland anyway, and are sold based on a ridiculous pitch that the audience buys into from the start simply by going to see it. I mean, like I said, Hanna is a coming of age child assassin movie. I'm sold, it's fine, I know it's not real. One of the reasons I didn't like Inception is that it's based on the premise that a bunch of guys collectively dream together in order to convince a perfectly innocent man that his dad did, in fact, love him so that big business can win and everyone else in the world will somehow conveniently forget that they used to think Leo Di Caprio killed his wife. I get it, it's fine. Then Nolan spent about 90 minutes trying to explain how the technology of dreaming together worked while managing to leave out everything you actually need to know (like how do they dream the machine they need to dream together into the dream?). Then he's all like, fuck that shit, and makes up a bunch of stuff ("remember when I said you kill yourself to wake up? Well now you go to purgatory for 1,000 years if you die, unless someone goes to get you (it'll just take a minute) at which point we'll have left you in agony for no reason for the whole movie, Saito") that EVERYONE BUT ME IGNORED SOMEHOW. Hanna doesn't make that mistake. Everyone is 100% committed, and that makes it believable when it's rarely anything less than unbelievable (yeah?). One area where Hanna should slip, is the characters' accents. Hanna is meant to have been raised by her German father in isolation in the Russian wilderness. So why is she clearly from Jo'berg? Bana himself, the aforementioned German dad, has the same accent as he had when playing a Frankfurt-born Israelite in Munich. Tom Hollander, who plays a suggested paedophile, does a better job of the German accent but slips into the fey, camp German accent that most people do when not doing the Reinier Wolfcastle edition. Blanchett, who is fucking awesome here, is meant to be a Texan (it's actually quite a good accent, but why didn't they just get an American?). But it doesn't matter. You won't care. You'll believe every word of it.
Huu-wat?: Hanna's first date. Check out the Spanish accent on that (Ay jus' wan'ed a keeeeesssss)
Bonus Huu-wat?: This bit: Shot Of The Year
2. Drive
The easiest film to put on the list. Drive is a largely dialogue-free existential mood piece with, what, 20pp of plot and a 100 minute run-time that was marketed as a stylish, violent, mob/gangster circuit-racing romantic thriller. Nice one, Hollywood. Hollywood has no idea what to do with movies like this, but I'm actually kind of glad is did reasonably well. It's probably the first mood-piece a lot of the Friday night, girls-about-town Ryan Gosling crowd would have seen. It's certainly a stretch from Bridesmaids.
Drive is very moody. It has a faintly ridiculous synth-pop soundtrack and a night-time, music-video hyper-stylized visual feel. Probably a solid 25 minutes of it is Ryan Gosling sitting there, motionless. But the reason why it doesn't feel like a big-screen Mad Men (boring!) is that it doesn't appear to try. It doesn't appear to care one way or the other. We can watch, if we want. It's one of the most subtle and considered films of the year, the sense of planning and rehearsal about everything, along with the chemistry, between both cast members internally, and director Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling, gives the movie the confidence and sense of solidarity that makes the whole thing believable.
Gosling is pretty good as The Driver. He does a good job of being a closet lunatic, and a reasonable job of being an out-of-the-closet lunatic. He brings a sense of menace that is somewhat mitigated against the fact that you suspect his secret special move is hugs. That of course, helps, when half of the movie is about his courtship with Casey Mulligan, who I found inexplicably attractive. Both the Driver and the movie itself are schizophrenic, as the courtship dissipates into a gangland run-and-gun movie in the second half. That the movie holds together is down to the direction. Refn, indeed is the real star of the show. He is best known for the Pusher trilogy, Danish hardcore underworld movies that I couldn't sit through because they were so miserable. The feel of the movie (i.e. the mood) is what it's all about. And the only word for this movie is cool.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about marketing. One of the odder aspects to the uniquely odd marketing for this film was that there was an emphasis on its violence. This seems odd, especially considering that it is far less violent than any big budget action movie. I have a feeling it comes back to audience expectation, like I mentioned back at Kill List. Drive has the occasional burst of cartoonish, hyper-stylized violence, but it is a Ryan Gosling movie: hugs and kisses are as physical as he usually gets. The thing is that Drive should in fact be far more violent than it is. This is especially true of the bit, shown in the trailer, when Driver kicks a guy's head in. I mean, he kicks his head right in, and you actually don't see a single frame of it. It conceals its violence rather well I thought, strange that it was an issue.
Huu-wat?: Bam! The old Fork-In-The-Eye ("Do you think it might work without the old fork-in-the-eye"? "There's always a first time".)
The easiest film to put on the list. Drive is a largely dialogue-free existential mood piece with, what, 20pp of plot and a 100 minute run-time that was marketed as a stylish, violent, mob/gangster circuit-racing romantic thriller. Nice one, Hollywood. Hollywood has no idea what to do with movies like this, but I'm actually kind of glad is did reasonably well. It's probably the first mood-piece a lot of the Friday night, girls-about-town Ryan Gosling crowd would have seen. It's certainly a stretch from Bridesmaids.
Drive is very moody. It has a faintly ridiculous synth-pop soundtrack and a night-time, music-video hyper-stylized visual feel. Probably a solid 25 minutes of it is Ryan Gosling sitting there, motionless. But the reason why it doesn't feel like a big-screen Mad Men (boring!) is that it doesn't appear to try. It doesn't appear to care one way or the other. We can watch, if we want. It's one of the most subtle and considered films of the year, the sense of planning and rehearsal about everything, along with the chemistry, between both cast members internally, and director Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling, gives the movie the confidence and sense of solidarity that makes the whole thing believable.
Gosling is pretty good as The Driver. He does a good job of being a closet lunatic, and a reasonable job of being an out-of-the-closet lunatic. He brings a sense of menace that is somewhat mitigated against the fact that you suspect his secret special move is hugs. That of course, helps, when half of the movie is about his courtship with Casey Mulligan, who I found inexplicably attractive. Both the Driver and the movie itself are schizophrenic, as the courtship dissipates into a gangland run-and-gun movie in the second half. That the movie holds together is down to the direction. Refn, indeed is the real star of the show. He is best known for the Pusher trilogy, Danish hardcore underworld movies that I couldn't sit through because they were so miserable. The feel of the movie (i.e. the mood) is what it's all about. And the only word for this movie is cool.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about marketing. One of the odder aspects to the uniquely odd marketing for this film was that there was an emphasis on its violence. This seems odd, especially considering that it is far less violent than any big budget action movie. I have a feeling it comes back to audience expectation, like I mentioned back at Kill List. Drive has the occasional burst of cartoonish, hyper-stylized violence, but it is a Ryan Gosling movie: hugs and kisses are as physical as he usually gets. The thing is that Drive should in fact be far more violent than it is. This is especially true of the bit, shown in the trailer, when Driver kicks a guy's head in. I mean, he kicks his head right in, and you actually don't see a single frame of it. It conceals its violence rather well I thought, strange that it was an issue.
Huu-wat?: Bam! The old Fork-In-The-Eye ("Do you think it might work without the old fork-in-the-eye"? "There's always a first time".)
1. We Need To Talk About Kevin
This was an easy choice. We Need To Talk About Kevin will haunt you for days. Very few films have the power to leave you feeling genuinely ill afterwards, but this manages it at a canter. The main reason it works is because it is so well made and entertaining that you'll be riveted. While it isn't exactly a happy movie, it is beyond interesting and controversial. There is no way you won't need to talk about We Need To Talk About Kevin.
Tilda Swinton's Eva Khatchadourian (solid Armenian name there, somewhere Sufjan Stevens nods in approval) is a free-spirited author who gets knocked up by lovely bear Franklin (John C Reilly) and the result is Kevin, a snarling, sneering little monster. Kevin is a remarkable creation, seemingly intelligently vindictive and vindictively intelligent from an early age, enjoying his mother's frustration at his reticence to play, his refusal to talk, his belligerence in potty training. He's a total prick. Eva, on the other hand, feeds the beast, by fighting fire with fire, literally hitting back and trading all kinds of barbs ("Mummers used to be happy until little Kevin came along"), standing beside a jackhammer to relieve the sound of his crying. Her role in what Kevin ultimately becomes (a narcissistic nihilist) is far from distant and indirect. Ezra Miller, as the eldest, ultimately explosive Kevin is chillingly effective, knowingly goading and aggressive in a way seemingly only Eva can see (why doesn't Franklin try to discipline him after Celia's "accident"?), but really Miller is old enough to understand. Rock Duer, as baby Kevin, is good, better than one would expect from a baby, but it's really Jesper Newell, as 7 year-old Kevin, who gains grudging admiration and control from Eva by binding her in a lie far more complex than you would expect from a 7 year old, who really steals the show. The kid is terrifying, evil and vindictive. Meanwhile, he also shows the only tender scene between mother and son, when he appears genuinely regretful at sicking on the floor. It also gives Eva a rarely taken opportunity to show actual maternal instincts.
The fact that we are seeing the events from her eyes, jumping back and forth in history as she tries to rebuild her shattered life reclusively in present, post-event, times while considering Kevin's childhood for signs of her influence, means we are not getting the whole story. There are plenty of points in the narrative that don't quite stand up, like the messages we hear on her phone. And why oh why would she have another child when she fully suspects that Kevin is a psychotic (and why does the daughter's name change from Lucy to Celia half-way through?)? Kevin is clearly not all nature, and not all nurture. It's all very interesting, and strong enough, with artful and affecting direction from Scotland's Lynn Ramsey. Poor little Celia will break your little heart.
In many ways, We Need To Talk About Kevin is an amalgamation of all the good things in the other movies on this list: it is a well acted, confidently directed mood-piece with excellent child performers that can be read 100 different ways. You could probably see it 100 times and still find something new in it. It also never loses its power to affect (has the sound of a sprinkler ever been so menacingly ominous?). It's a movie that is impossible not to talk about. You need to see it, and we need to talk about We Need To Talk About Kevin.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about feelings. The whole tale is told from the mother's perspective. She is the one who feels guilty about what Kevin has done, even if she questions her role in the birth of the beast. But, the fact that we see events from her perspective skews everything in the movie. Kevin, for example, is sneering towards her and pleasant towards Franklin, despite the fact that he needs his mother more. However, it is his father who fosters his love of archery, which appears to be his only hobby. Franklin's role is peripheral. Kevin appears in white all the time, and frequently wears the same clothes as a semi-adult that he wore as a child. This film is actually dripping in colour, mostly in red, white and blue. The red is especially vibrant, as you would expect, in spite of the fact that there is no blood in the film. The blood Eva never sees haunts her in the form of red paint thrown on her porch, and the opening scene at the Buñol Tomatina couldn't be any more ominous. It starts messily and finishes messily. Isn't the mother always left to clear up the mess when the boys are gone? The thing is, what is her role, objectively? Her feud with Kevin was definitely reciprocated and far from Kevin's sole custody, even going back to childhood when they are bound into a lie by her cowardice and guilt. That Kevin seems to quietly admire her, like when he looks jealously at her picture in the bookshop window, could be Eva's way of justifying the fact that the games between them were ultimately her fault. However, she doesn't appear to feel sorry for any of it, and the film ends with what could appear to be her seemingly trying to goad Kevin into continuing the game. It's just such an interesting film.
This was an easy choice. We Need To Talk About Kevin will haunt you for days. Very few films have the power to leave you feeling genuinely ill afterwards, but this manages it at a canter. The main reason it works is because it is so well made and entertaining that you'll be riveted. While it isn't exactly a happy movie, it is beyond interesting and controversial. There is no way you won't need to talk about We Need To Talk About Kevin.
Tilda Swinton's Eva Khatchadourian (solid Armenian name there, somewhere Sufjan Stevens nods in approval) is a free-spirited author who gets knocked up by lovely bear Franklin (John C Reilly) and the result is Kevin, a snarling, sneering little monster. Kevin is a remarkable creation, seemingly intelligently vindictive and vindictively intelligent from an early age, enjoying his mother's frustration at his reticence to play, his refusal to talk, his belligerence in potty training. He's a total prick. Eva, on the other hand, feeds the beast, by fighting fire with fire, literally hitting back and trading all kinds of barbs ("Mummers used to be happy until little Kevin came along"), standing beside a jackhammer to relieve the sound of his crying. Her role in what Kevin ultimately becomes (a narcissistic nihilist) is far from distant and indirect. Ezra Miller, as the eldest, ultimately explosive Kevin is chillingly effective, knowingly goading and aggressive in a way seemingly only Eva can see (why doesn't Franklin try to discipline him after Celia's "accident"?), but really Miller is old enough to understand. Rock Duer, as baby Kevin, is good, better than one would expect from a baby, but it's really Jesper Newell, as 7 year-old Kevin, who gains grudging admiration and control from Eva by binding her in a lie far more complex than you would expect from a 7 year old, who really steals the show. The kid is terrifying, evil and vindictive. Meanwhile, he also shows the only tender scene between mother and son, when he appears genuinely regretful at sicking on the floor. It also gives Eva a rarely taken opportunity to show actual maternal instincts.
The fact that we are seeing the events from her eyes, jumping back and forth in history as she tries to rebuild her shattered life reclusively in present, post-event, times while considering Kevin's childhood for signs of her influence, means we are not getting the whole story. There are plenty of points in the narrative that don't quite stand up, like the messages we hear on her phone. And why oh why would she have another child when she fully suspects that Kevin is a psychotic (and why does the daughter's name change from Lucy to Celia half-way through?)? Kevin is clearly not all nature, and not all nurture. It's all very interesting, and strong enough, with artful and affecting direction from Scotland's Lynn Ramsey. Poor little Celia will break your little heart.
In many ways, We Need To Talk About Kevin is an amalgamation of all the good things in the other movies on this list: it is a well acted, confidently directed mood-piece with excellent child performers that can be read 100 different ways. You could probably see it 100 times and still find something new in it. It also never loses its power to affect (has the sound of a sprinkler ever been so menacingly ominous?). It's a movie that is impossible not to talk about. You need to see it, and we need to talk about We Need To Talk About Kevin.
Filmschool 101: We need to talk about feelings. The whole tale is told from the mother's perspective. She is the one who feels guilty about what Kevin has done, even if she questions her role in the birth of the beast. But, the fact that we see events from her perspective skews everything in the movie. Kevin, for example, is sneering towards her and pleasant towards Franklin, despite the fact that he needs his mother more. However, it is his father who fosters his love of archery, which appears to be his only hobby. Franklin's role is peripheral. Kevin appears in white all the time, and frequently wears the same clothes as a semi-adult that he wore as a child. This film is actually dripping in colour, mostly in red, white and blue. The red is especially vibrant, as you would expect, in spite of the fact that there is no blood in the film. The blood Eva never sees haunts her in the form of red paint thrown on her porch, and the opening scene at the Buñol Tomatina couldn't be any more ominous. It starts messily and finishes messily. Isn't the mother always left to clear up the mess when the boys are gone? The thing is, what is her role, objectively? Her feud with Kevin was definitely reciprocated and far from Kevin's sole custody, even going back to childhood when they are bound into a lie by her cowardice and guilt. That Kevin seems to quietly admire her, like when he looks jealously at her picture in the bookshop window, could be Eva's way of justifying the fact that the games between them were ultimately her fault. However, she doesn't appear to feel sorry for any of it, and the film ends with what could appear to be her seemingly trying to goad Kevin into continuing the game. It's just such an interesting film.
Huu-wat?: Mummers walks in on Kevin mid-wank. He turns, startled, then locks eyes with his own mother and continues. It says a lot about their relationship that she considers meeting the challenge before slamming the door a beat later. Ouch, my liberal sensibilities.
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2 comments:
A true tour de force of a blog post. I won't lie to you, Billy. I haven't seen a lot of the films on the list but I am now compelled to add them to the list.
Thanks for getting me into films. Thanks for getting me even more into films through the years.
SPOILERS:
a. Planet of the Humans really wasted Lithgow too. That was one of the issues I had with the film.
11. Kill List definitely warrants a second view as you prescribe but that ending.. that bloody ending.
I'm not even sure I can describe what I disliked about the ending and how it changed the viewing
experience. Kill List is definitely still recommended.
Your mention of Jay's jacuzzi being banjaxed kind of sounded like a Hot Tub Time Machine
crossover! It's not, though.
8. Beginners was beautiful. Plummer gave a fantastic performace. Had I known it was directed by the
same guy who made Thumbsucker I might have missed it but I am so glad I saw it! It's on my list of
DVDs to buy. Might be the only film from 2011 that will be in my DVD collection. Maybe that and Another Earth.
5. We Need To Talk About Sound Editing. No, just kidding. Even though the sound in The Guard
sometimes seemed like it was in the 70s it was OK. I hated the use of old-western style brass music. I
hated the shoe-horned literary references that was supposed to make the villains a little odder. But,
I did like Gleeson because it's impossible not to like him. I hadn't considered the acid trip explanation
for all the events but it's hard not to see it now.
4. The monster kind of looked shit but Super 8 was the only blockbuster I can think of in recent times
that was really fun to watch. Where did they get those kids from?? I was worried about Abrams
because of little things like Lost Season 3 and Star Trek but he played a blinder with this one. I
liked the inconsistency of it. The alien just wanted to get home but I’m pretty sure he offed lots of
townspeople as part of his escape. I thought the board full of missing dog posters was a really cool
shot. Was the other big blockbuster of 2011 Cowboys & Aliens? Possibly there were more than the
two of these but just look at how soulless Cowboys & Aliens was compared to Super 8!
2. I think Drive was the film I recommended most to people this year. It’s so flippin’ cool. Love the
music and love the story. Love The Driver looking after the kid. I think everyone was soaking for
Gosling by the end of 2k-lev and he seemed to be everywhere but he should try and do more Drives
and less Ides of Marches. That was a stinkbomb.
1. We Need To Talk About Kevin will haunt me forever.
There are two films that I would like to give an honourable mention and they were definitely among
my flaves of 2011:
Another Earth
Take Shelter
Did you see these ones?
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Did you see that with me??)
The Inbetweeners Movie
The Ides Of March
My Week With Marilyn
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