2008 in Review - The Best

Just before I'm completely irrelevant, here's my ten favorite movies from last year (including a couple that are technically 2007 titles, but whatevs).

First, my ten runners-up (#s 11-20):

20. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
19. Be Kind Rewind
18. Encounters at the End of the World
17. Wall-E
16. Ballast
15. Wendy and Lucy
14. Stuck
13. Burn After Reading
12. Tropic Thunder
11. Let the Right One In

And the rest:

10. The Dark Knight. I think it might be a little bit of a mistake to read too deeply into this film as a profound statement on/ investigation of the ethics of a police state or the modern post-9/11 world, because the movie works a hell of a lot better as a finely-crafted state-of-the-art Hollywood blockbuster than as anything else.

9. Waltz with Bashir. The year's great dream/nightmare film, looking back on an intensely personal chapter in the life of the filmmaker (and his nation) in messy, unresolved, but stylish and honest terms.

8. Standard Operating Procedure. My favorite Errol Morris movie in a decade, this one peels back the layers of the Abu Ghraib media spectacle to reveal something deeper and more troubling - along with our own complicity.

7. The Band's Visit. A simple but profound cross-cultural fable, the kind of movie with a tagline that makes you want to barf ("Sometimes getting lost is the best way to find yourself") but in this case the filmmaking actually earns the right to it.

6. The Wrestler. Mickey Rourke gave my favorite performance of the year in this simple, scathing, heartfelt story of a man just trying to get by. Nice to see Darren Aronofsky reinvent himself as a filmmaker.

5. Happy-Go-Lucky. Mike Leigh's movies are always deeper than they look, this time framing a philosophical question about how one should lead their life within a quirky comedic character study.

4. The Class. No film this year had higher stakes - the clash at the center of this movie is for the minds of a classroom full of rowdy multiethnic French kids, to educate them and keep them engaged, as illustrated in the heartbreaking scene at the end of the movie where one girl tells her teacher she doesn't want to wind up at the bottom of society's ladder. The most human, inspirational movie of the year.

3. Synecdoche, New York. If The Class is about nurturing the possibilities of tomorrow, Synecdoche is about strangling the possibilities of today, something that we watch Caden Cotard do over decades of artistic yearning and personal failure - but with humor and pathos as only Charlie Kaufman can manage.

2. Man on Wire. A perfectly rendered caper movie, the artistic crime of the century, exuberantly rendered.

1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. A nail-biting suspense movie, a scathing political indictment, the movie with the most frightening scene of the year (the final apocalyptic journey) and some of the driest was-that-even-a-joke moments (the lights getting turned on in the boyfriend's room). This movie had it all.

(Happy New Movie Year!)

The International (2009)

I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Filmmakers are always looking for real-life stories to draw on for material, and liberal filmmakers are always looking for abuses of the system to make movies about that'll get their audiences riled up in rightous indignation, and liberal filmmakers who also have commercial instincts are going to look for ways to make socially relevant material digestible and entertaining. So I'm not surprised that a world-class filmmaker like Tom Tykwer would decide to make a movie about the political and social abuses of global finance, and I'm not surprised that he and his collaborators would decide to do it within the framework of a global espionage thriller. And I'm not really surprised that it resulted in a well-meaning, half-baked movie that feels like the bastard spawn of Robert Ludlum and Naomi Wolf.

It's a handsome movie, shot in and around great locations in Berlin, Milan, and New York, but it barely has a pulse; Clive Owen is on autopilot and Naomi Watts barely registers (to be fair, her character has next to nothing to do besides tag along with Owen and get yelled at by The Chief). The movie's centerpiece, a shoot-out at the Guggenheim, is fun, but even it defies logic (spoiler alert!) as Owen, trying to open the veil of secrecy around a powerful bank, tries to arrest their key assassin - and immediately the bank's henchmen launch an insane gun battle in one of the most famous museums in the world? Way to maintain a low profile, guys. And then the scene ends on a note of total confusion as Owen strolls out unscathed - I must have missed something. Of course, that's after a prominent Italian politician delivers a line something along the lines of "I'll tell you everything I know about this powerful and evil bank - but pardon me while I take a hatless ride through Dealey Plaza first."

Ultimately, The International is done in by its own self-importance, its leaden feeling of carrying the burdens of the world on its shoulders, but with no real sense of complexity or novelty, which is odd for a movie from the director of such weird, offbeat films as Run Lola Run and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Better luck next time.

5/10

Charles Darwin's 200th Birthday

Before the date passes, I wanted to give a little shout-out to the man who (with Mendel) basically invented modern biology as we know it.

Before Darwin, biology was classification, of species of plants and animals into different categories, the curious creations of unknowable forces. After Darwin, biology was a science, an interconnected system of predators and prey, habitats and ecosystems operating under a consistent set of rules. He was a great innovator and greatly contributed to the advancement of human knowledge.

What's frustrating, of course, is that so many people are still irrationally opposed to Darwin's ideas, mostly without really understanding them. You don't see people lined up in opposition to Nicolas Copernicus for removing the Earth from the center of the universe, or Freud for exposing the complex workings of the irrational brain, but because Darwin's ideas don't correspond to the anthropocentric notions that so many believe in, people still blame him for everything from moral decline to the Holocaust. But the great movement of humanity and science over the last thousand years or so has been the gradual acceptance and understanding of reality, and I believe that over time, the arc of history leans towards knowledge. Which is why Darwin should be celebrated, this year as always.

Also, who knew that on the same day in 1809, in a wealthy home in England and in a log cabin in Kentucky, two of the most controversial figures of the 19th century were born? Weird coincidence.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

(Catching up on titles that I haven't covered in the last few months).

This one strikes me as a good example of a film that knows the words, but not the music, of its source material. Director Sam Mendes has made a very highly-crafted film - gorgeous cinematography from Roger Deakins, pretty good score from Thomas Newman, and the best performances I've seen from either Leonardo DiCaprio or Kate Winslet in years.

The movie is entertaining and handsome, but it's also a little bit like a butterfly under glass. In making the translation from book to screen, the story's basic story elements are all faithfully reproduced and literalized, but nothing has been added in the process, only taken away. Gone are the internal monologues (angry, self-deceiving) from Frank Wheeler that made up so much of the real guts of the Yates book, the bitter tone, the subtexts of theatricality and inter-spousal manipulation. Most importantly, the movie lacks the context of Frank and April Wheeler's younger days, the sense of freedom and possibility that, in the novel, makes their later decisions to compromise all the more painful. What's on screen is the skeleton of the plot, animated by the Oscar-pedigree craft on display, the basic 'what-happens-next' of storytelling. It works, but there's not a lot left over to chew on afterward - it's semi-pre-digested Oscarbait.

It makes me think that director Sam Mendes probably didn't really have much of a vision for making the source material his own, beyond just plopping the book on-screen as is, which is in keeping with the other films in his career. Road to Perdition and Jarhead were both similarly glossy, tasteful films without much pulse or resonance (although I'll at least give Jarhead credit for having an dreamy sort of eerieness to it - but it still rests in the shadow of Full Metal Jacket). And more and more I think that the success of American Beauty, the one Mendes film I'll still stand up for - rests on the Alan Ball screenplay, which, while sometimes messy and sometimes corny, still has a sense of humor and pathos - of unembalmed life - not found in any of the Mendes movies since.

Still, Revolutionary Road is enjoyable enough for an acting showcase. Quick confession: I finished reading the book very shortly before going to see the movie, and I'm sure that's impacted my opinion of the film - but I think that it's just helped me understand the elements missing from the film, which would have felt lacking no matter what.

6/10

2008 in Review - The Worst

Okay, so I think I've finally seen just about all of the movies I needed to catch up on for some good, serious list-making. And I also intend to actually write some reviews of the major releases from the last year over the course of this next month, to try and get some real content up here. But first, before we get to the good, the bad: my list of the Ten Worst Movies of 2008.

Now this is always a tricky list, first because a lot of people think that the end of the year should be about celebrating the good instead of rehashing the bad; and there's a point there, but I feel like the bad has to be properly acknowledged in order to truly be able to appreciate the good.

Also, a lot of "worst lists" are more about big Hollywood blockbusters that were disappointing or overblown, and as much as I thought the likes of Hancock or The Incredible Hulk were dumb or confused, they still had elements (scenes, performances, etc.) that I enjoyed or appreciated.

No, for me, below 'dumb' on the movie-rating scale is 'annoying' and below that is 'offensive' - but below that is 'boring', and below that, at the very bottom of the barrel, is 'all of the above', and those are the titles on this list.

Also, I never saw such movies as The Hottie and the Nottie, The Spirit, Meet the Spartans, The Love Guru, Saw V, and many more. So first, in alphabetical order, the runners-up, titles that I disliked, but weren't too bad:

Baby Mama - Lame and condescending, Tina Fey should know better.
Body of Lies - I'm less and less a fan of the brothers Scott, and their all-style, no-substance movies, every day - especially when they try to make 'relevant' movies about the War on Terror that only show how clueless they are.
The Foot Fist Way - Only redeemeed by an excellent performance from Danny McBride, this was the most amateurish, unpleasant comedy of the year.
Get Smart - Lame, and I'm learning to not expect good things from Steve Carell.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - Speaks for itself, but at least it had Yeti.
Repo! The Genetic Opera - It has good cinematography, I swear.
Slumdog Millionaire - Offensive if for no other reason than because it wants to shove a soft, don't-worry-be-happy fatalism down our throats as an excuse for the crushing poverty on display.
The Tale of Despereaux - Pretty images in a big mess of a story.
Transsiberian - The most curiously tedious thriller of the year.
The Visitor - A big droopy diaper of liberal guilt, presented without nuance or complexity, partially redeemed by a good Richard Jenkins performance.

And now, the real dregs:

10. The Fall - A lot of people fell in love with this fantasy from Tarsem "Don't use my last name" Singh, but I saw it as an imcomplete vision, a familiar story relying on a few extravagant costumes and locations to tide us over - I'll take The Princess Bride, or even Tideland, over this. As an example of this movie's creative vision, the above is a coat worn by a character named 'Charles Darwin'.

9. Cassandra's Dream - Luckily for Woody Allen, his best movie in about a decade came quickly enough for everyone to forget about this, his worst movie in - well, ever, rehashing the same ideas from Match Point, which were already rehashed from Crimes and Misdemeanors, and with the stiffest, most stilted performances I've ever seen from Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell (and that includes Star Wars movies).

8. Twilight - Cultural regression away from the days of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with the female protagonist back in the role of submissive object for other, stronger forces to attack or protect, while she lays back, enjoying being the center of attention. The movie felt like the world's most tedious TV pilot.

7. Rambo - A huge lump of melted wax (Stallone) doesn't care about helping rebels in Burma until a bunch of white missionaries get in trouble, including a pretty blonde one - then shit starts to fly!

6. The Happening - Oh, The Happening, oh, sweet, sweet, The Happening. This movie is an exception to my 'boring' rule, because it goes all the way through and comes out the other side to become watchable again, like a clown car wreck. No other movie all year had as many "what they fuck were they thinking" moments, from the ludicrous dialogue ("We can't just stand here as uninvolved observers!") to the insane, needless violence (two kids blown away by shotguns!) to the terrible performances (Mark Wahlberg, clearly given no direction; Zooey Deschanel, gamely attempting hand gestures and strange facial reactions to fill in for dialogue that had never been written) to the batshit scene of a man pestering lions to eat his rubbery CGI arms - recorded on video and then uploaded to Youtube.

All of this could have made for a legitimately fun movie, except for the fact that M. Night Shyamalan clearly means for us to take the whole thing seriously as a profound and horrifying post-9/11 vision of a world gone mad, and his mammoth ego (and those who feed it) are what ultimately makes this one of the worst of the year.

5. Cloverfield - See above, although with fewer moments of delight to penetrate the dismal pretentiousness. I love the idea of a modern Godzilla tearing up a post-9/11 city - but you've gotta put people in the monster's path that I'm not eager to see eaten or stomped. One of the most insecure movies of the year for all of its forceful demands that we love these banal, self-centered youngsters. This movie is an insult.

4. 10,000 B.C. - Again, a movie that, in theory, could have been good, like a modern-day Quest for Fire-meets-Apocalypto-meets-The Egyptian - but instead we get filthy, dreadlocked Hollywood hotties chasing each other until they run into some Stargate aliens (not kidding).

3. Savage Grace - Sorry, John. Another movie that might have been interesting, but stuck with a meandering, focusless script, this degenerates into simple celebrity gossip-sploitation. This was shot in Spain, but for all the scenic vistas we get, it could have just as easily been Studio City.

2. Mirrors - At least director Alexandre Aja's previous films, High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes, showed a command of kineticism and action to make up for the total inability to come up with anything for the actors to do - here, even that redemption is lost. And seriously, is there anyone who isn't already schizophrenic that's afraid of a frigging mirror?!

1. Prom Night - A little of everything: retrograde teen sexual politics, tired horror-movie cliches, actors given nothing to do, utter tedium.

Whoops

Watch the whole thing.

It's terrible, but it's wonderful.

UPDATE 2/5/09: Thanks, Youtube, for the goddamn spoiler. This is best appreciated when it takes you by total surprise.

Two Youtube Tidbits

First of all, if only there was some way to end our energy crisis by harnessing Rod Blagojevich's colossal, self-denying ego:


My favorite moment, at about 1:05, is when Blagojevich pretends that he's just another victim of unemployment.

Then there's this, which is just amusing:

Octuplets born in Bellflower

This is the best story so far that I've seen about the birth, yesterday, of eight babies to an unidentified mother in a Los Angeles suburb.

When you have that many babies, it should really be labelled as a litter. And there are few things that I would want to label as a 'perversion of science' but along with extreme plastic surgery, this is one of them. There's a reason why some species have large multiple births and humans don't: baby spiders and sea turtles are a lot easier for predators to eat than toddlers, and the human brain requires a lot of protection and attention to develop properly over our protracted childhoods. Having this many babies will almost certainly lower each individual child's health and standard of living for the rest of their lives.

Both of my parents came from large families (7 siblings on Mom's side, 9 or 10 - I forget - on Dad's) but at least those kids weren't getting orthodontics and going through puberty and applying to college all at the exact same time. Since this many births is almost certainly the result of fertility drugs, I can't help but think of it as a selfish decision on the part of the parents.

UPDATE 1/30/09:
It gets worse - this idiot already has six children. Fuck.

The Muriels are Coming

I've been lucky enough (it certainly wasn't based on my prolific output) to be invited to participate in this year's Muriel Awards, which are organized by Paul Clark to honor the year's best films and filmmakers, by the most knowledgeable and opinionated people around: amateur movie bloggers (okay, there are some professionals in there too).

Among the awards given out are the 50th/25th/10th Anniversary Awards, for the best films released in 1958, 1983, and 1998 (based on New York release dates). Since those lists don't involve my frantically catching-up on 2008 titles before the deadline, here are my top-five lists for those respective years.

UPDATE 2/5/09:
Lists slightly revised to accomodate the actual rules of the Muriels - the movies are organized by actual release dates, not U.S. dates, so I'm removing Fanny and Alexander from my 1983 list since it's a 1982 film.

1958:
1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
2. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
3. Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati)
4. I Bury the Living (Albert Band)
5. Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle)

1983:
1. Videodrome (David Cronenberg)
2. Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio)
3. The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)
4. A Christmas Story (Bob Clark)
5. The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman)

1998:
1. The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)
2. Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg)
3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam)
4. The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)
5. Rushmore (Wes Anderson)

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976) & Black Fist (1975)

This was my most recent double feature at the New Beverly theater, partially chosen in honor of Barack Obama's inauguration as the first black (and/or bi-racial) President.

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde gives us Bernie Casey (Under Siege, Revenge of the Nerds) as Dr. Henry Pride, a devoted scientist who researches experimental liver transplant techniques and volunteers at an inner-city clinic during his free time. He seems to be living the perfect life, but as one of his patient tells him via clumsy exposition, he almost seems to be more white man than black man (In the same scene, he tells a female patient, 'Your hepatitis is almost gone!' making it clear to the audience what occupation this patient works in).

While experimenting, Dr. Pride finds a serum that turns normal brown rats into hyper-vicious white rats, and then (of course) proceeds to take the serum himself, transforming into a powdered, made-up version of himself that every other character in the movie insists looks like a white man.

In reality he looks more like one of the zombies from The Omega Man, but who really cares? The movie proceeds to follow the standard Jekyll-and-Hyde formula as Dr. Pride lives his double life - upright and noble by day, frequenting the bars and prostitutes of South Central Los Angeles by night. Finally, it all ends with a King Kong-esque finale at the Watts Towers (literally - Casey climbs up them until he's shot down). It's not much of a movie, padded out with overlong scenes of Casey transforming and grimacing and moaning and so on, but it's at least passably entertaining for those who've seen Blacula and were left hungry for more.

Next was Black Fist, also known as Black Streetfighter. The biggest thing that I got out of this movie was the bizarre notion that, in the mid-70s, promoters could get huge multi-ethnic audiences of all ages to show up in junkyards to watch bare-knuckle street fights, no holds barred, in which at any moment a competitor might get tossed directly into you. The presence of so many middle-aged ladies and white couples in these scenes was highly amusing to me.

Otherwise, it's your standard action-revenge-template movie, in which Leroy Fisk involves himself in the corrupt street-fighting world and can only escape through extreme violence. Dabney Coleman shows up as a corrupt cop and steals just about every scene that he's in until being frozen in a meat-locker. Philip Michael Hall, of Miami Vice fame, is also in this movie playing two different characters, a loveable crackhead and a hapless informant.

Overall it's a much sloppier movie than Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, but it's also less padded out, which means that we get a higher degree of hysteria and bloodlust. My two favorite moments of it come here - zoom forward to 4:10 for a scene of amazing overacting between Hall and the junkie girlfriend of a mob boss; and for this dialogue tidbit between a henchman and a crimelord (here at 4:00, but unfortunately split in two on Youtube):

"Mr. Ingo? Logan will not bother you any more. I wasted him for you. And I did it in a very sophisticated manner. I tricked him! I wined him, I dined him. I took him to a disco, we were having a lot of fun! Then I killed him."

Neither of these movies is good, per se, but both are amusing enough to be watchable, and Black Fist is marginally better by virtue of having more energy and narrative surprises.

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde: 3/10
Black Fist: 4/10

Nominations Aftermath

Okay, so there were some surprises. I underestimated the Academy's preference for WWII/Nazi-centered films, which partially accounts for The Reader getting nominations for Best Picture and Director. I disliked Stephen Daldry's last film (The Hours) and based on middling reviews, I've been ignoring The Reader, so now I guess I need to go see it.

Everybody figured The Dark Knight would get a Best Picture nomination, and we were all surprised, but I'm also glad that the throngs of rabid nerds who were expecting the Academy to validate their latest fetish object have been denied. That said, I think The Dark Knight is better than any of the three nominated films that I've seen, which means that, unusually, there isn't a single nominated film this year that I'm strongly in favor of, as has been the case in ever year for this last decade.

Otherwise, nominations that made me happy:

Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke for Best Actor (tough call here - but since Penn already has an Oscar, I'm rooting for Rourke).

Melissa Leo for Best Actress - a good performance in a film I figured would be overlooked.

Josh Brolin and Robert Downey Jr. for Supporting Actor - neither will win, but both are terrific performances that the Academy could have easily snubbed.

Penelope Cruz and Marisa Tomei for Supporting Actress - Now that Tomei has gotten her third Oscar nomination, we can probably retire the idea that her My Cousin Vinny win was a mistake.

In Bruges and Happy-Go-Lucky for Best Original Screenplay.

Encounters at the End of the World and Man on Wire for Best Documentary.

Alexandre Desplat for Best Score, and Wally Pfister for Cinematography.

My biggest disappointments: no nominations for Sally Hawkins, Rosemarie DeWitt, or Bruce Springsteen.

As for my predictions, I got 33 right out of 45 predictions (73% right).

Oscar Predictions

It's so close to the announcement that the only real purpose of this will be to make me look wrong, but whatever:

BEST PICTURE:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire

These five have been locked in for a while. Possible upset: Doubt bumps out The Dark Knight.

BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight
Gus Van Sant, Milk

Another locked-in group. Possible upset: Clint Eastwood for Gran Torino.

BEST ACTOR
Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn, Milk
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

A lot of people are pulling for Richard Jenkins in The Visitor, but I just don't think he has the juice or starpower - if there's an upset it's Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary Road bumping out Brad Pitt.

BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road

Again, some people think Melissa Leo has a chance her, but I figure her reward is in the Indie Spirit Awards - but if she bumps someone, it'll be Blanchett. One upset I hope I don't see here: Angelina Jolie.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Josh Brolin, Milk
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

I'd love to see James Franco here for Pineapple Express, but it's more likely that he could bump out Shannon, for his Milk performance.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams, Doubt
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis, Doubt
Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

A big part of me doesn't really think that both Adams and Davis from Doubt will get nominations - Davis gives the stronger performance, but Adams has her budding starpower and cuteness (and a prior nomination) on her side. If either goes, it'll be Davis, ejected by Kate Winslet for The Reader. Some say Debra Winger could squeeze in here, but I find that unlikely as her role isn't showy enough, and she's not considered to be a real Hollywood insider with a lot of connections.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
David Hare, The Reader
Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon
Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
John Patrick Shanley, Doubt

The Dark Knight could pop up here and replace The Reader, but I don't see Academy voters voting so directly for comic book source material.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Dustin Lance Black, Milk
Jenny Lumet, Rachel Getting Married
Andrew Stanton, Wall-E
J. Michael Straczynski, Changeling

I figure that the Academy will want to toss Changeling something, somewhere, so why not this category. I'd love it if the Coens or Mike Leigh could squeeze in here, but neither seems likely.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Roger Deakins, Revolutionary Road
Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
Claudio Miranda, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Wally Pfister, The Dark Knight
Harris Savides, Milk

After this point I start to get bored - I haven't seen any of the films on the Foreign shortlist, and only three on the Documentary shortlist, so they get a big who-knows.

This Camera Covers the Waterfront

Finally, someone digs up video footage of the USAir emergency landing in the Hudson from last Thursday.

I'm actually surprised that there weren't any amateur or cell-phone video clips of this thing happening - I would have guessed that the noise of the flight coming down would have been pretty noticeable, and aren't New Yorkers attuned to that kind of event?

Hats off again to Captain Sullenberger and the crew of the plane and the rescue ships.

Blood Beach (1981)

I'm a fan of irrational, inexplicable, unresolved things happening in movies - mainstream American filmgoing gets so sedate and predictable that it's nice to have something bizarre happen every so often, and besides, isn't that the way life works? Which is all why I enjoyed the '80s horror movie Blood Beach, which I picked up thanks to the abrupt closing of a Video Hut in my neighborhood.

Blood Beach opens, simply enough, on a Venice beach with a Harbor Patrol officer swimming to work (apparently Venice was scuzzy enough twenty-plus years ago that a working-class guy could live right on the waterfront) and suddenly hearing a neighbor screaming because - well, because she's getting pulled down a sinkhole and disappears.

Now from here, the movie could go into any number of directions, but the filmmakers, probably unintentionally, chose the surrealist route; for the next hour, several other people, plus a dog, are going to be going about their business on the beach and then suddenly sucked under, or decapitated, or (in the case of an unfortunate beach rapist) castrated through mere contact with the sand. The police investigate, they dig up the beach, geologists take a look, and nobody finds anything: a complete blank, as if the mere particles of sand themselves are rebelling against humankind.

Of course, eventually some kind of rational explanation is required and the movie's main characters (the Harbor Patrol guy and his ex-girlfriend) for no particular reason find themselves investigating an old broken-down resort building, where they discover a bunch of rotting body parts and what looks like a nest of some kind, leading to a climax that involves a big, rubbery monster - but thankfully, the movie still resists a tidy explanation. Nowhere do the characters make sense of it all by referring to toxic waste or nuclear power plants or any other reason - it's just a big inexplicable, irrational monster out of an H.P. Lovecraft story, which I appreciated very much.

Of course, the human characters in this one are pretty vacant, with the exception of old pros John Saxon and Burt Young, and the movie is fairly dull in the down moments in between the sand attacks. Still, for creating a strange mood in an otherwise drab, realistic, scuzzy 1981 Venice, I enjoyed this one.

Here's a trailer that manages to give away major plot points, as if anyone cares:


5/10

Dead Snow (2009)

Not a movie I've seen, but a Norwegian Nazi-zombie film that's screening at this year's Sundance and which I hope to see sometime later down the road. Yeah, it's the umpteenth zombie-parody-pastiche that's been made, but this one looks pretty solidly made. Here's a clip:

Happy Holidays

And apologies for not posting more stuff, or more interesting stuff. One of my New Year's resolutions will be to try and get more stuff up on this damn thing more regularly - I mean, I am unemployed for the foreseeable future, so I should be able to, right?

In honor of the season, here's a tidbit of delightful sleaziness:


And here's a talking cat:


I hope everyone out there, whoever you are, is having a fun and productive holiday season.

Rant of the Day

Why is it that, no matter where I go or how much I pay, I can't get a good haircut? They always leave it too long in one part of my head or (and this makes less sense) cut it too short on another part of my head. Doesn't it make sense, from a business perspective, to leave it all a little long, so I have to come back sooner? Jesus, now I wander around looking like a special needs kid for a week until it grows out enough.

Life is tough.

(I've had worse, though. Like the time, four years ago, when I asked for the cut to be 'long on top, short on the sides' and the Armenian Supercuts worker started to just shave off the side of my head to give me the most extreme bowl-cut ever.)

The Twenty-five Best Non-New Movies I Saw This Year

I still have a lot of watching to do before I can come up with a Best of 2008 list, but I'm reasonably comfortable in putting together this list of the best old movies that I saw for the first time this year. I'm especially proud to say thank you to the people at the New Beverly, the Silent Theater, the American Cinematheque, and the UCLA Archives, where I saw a lot of these.

First, in chronological order, the runners-up, numbers 11-20:

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)
The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie, 1961)
Youth of the Beast (Seijun Suzuki, 1963)
The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967)
Don't Torture a Duckling (Lucio Fulci, 1972)
Horror Express (Eugenio Martin, 1973) (watch this from 7:00 to 7:20 please)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
The Human Tornado (Cliff Roquemore, 1976)

And the top ten, also in chronological order:

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933) On one level, Lang's film is a critique of the nascent Nazi party taking control of Germany around him, but on another, more fundamental level, it's simply an insane adventure film, with some of the great director's most amazing images and sequences. My favorite image is this mind-boggling bit of nightmare fodder here.

The Earrings of Madame De... (Max Ophuls, 1953) An amazing, lush dissection of the social power networks of love and lust.

Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954) Sansho is the bad guy in this movie, a corrupt local Japanese magistrate who causes an immense amount of heartbreak and tragedy for an aristocratic family caught up in the tragedy of war. A total heartbreaker.

Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962) Pasolini's best film that doesn't involve coprophagy, this features Anna Magnani at her most volcanic and powerful.

Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) This is probably the supreme masterpiece on this list, an expansive vision of the place of man in modern consumerist society - and incredibly funny at the same time.

The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967) A totally joyous, purely entertaining meta-musical filmed in glorious color with songs by Michel Legrand.

Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971) The best, most uncompromising Pakula movie I've seen, another modernist vision of society corrupted by money and techology, with an amazing performance from Jane Fonda.

Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog, 1972) This documentary about the lives of people who are both deaf and blind is all about the final scene, in which a profoundly isolated man, in the background of a shot, bumps into a tree and proceeds to spend a few minutes communing with the universe.

Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980) Yeah, this is an Italian exploitation movie, but don't rush to judgment based on that. It's also a brutal critique of colonialism and one of the most purely misanthropic movies ever made. This one goes all the way.

Rosetta (Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, 1999) It's easy to make a movie that critiques capitalism and modern life, not quite so easy to do so in a film centered on a mostly unlikeable female protagonist. The ending is absolutely astounding, a Polanski-esque black joke transformed into something transcendental.

And finally, the five most memorable bad movies I saw this year:

The Children (Max Kalmanowicz, 1980) A nuclear vapor leak causes all the children in a local town to become bloodthirsty zombies, only stoppable when the adults chop off their hands. An excerpt is here.

Mystics in Bali (H. Tjuy Djalil, 1981) In Indonesia, a young woman is researching tribal customs and she becomes the newest victim of the local witch, which means that at night, her head and internal organs lift off of her body to fly around and attack the local populace. See the best parts here.

Raw Force (Edward Murphy, 1982) Three guys from the Burbank Karate Club go on a cruise to east Asia and wind up battling a group of wicked monks and reanimated kung-fu zombies. Also featuring prostitutes, cannibalism, and jade smuggling.





The Carrier (Nathan J. White, 1988) I can't say enough about this movie, which feels like a completely personal, heartfelt expression of an utterly lunatic vision. A young man manages to infect his small town with a curious disease: anytime he touches an object, it becomes infected, and anytime someone else touches it, they start screaming and melting. Small animals can be used to detect the infection, resulting in an insane climactic scene in which two paranoid sects fight a battle for the local cats ("Cats or Death!" one tribal leader bellows) Seriously, look at this trailer and tell me it's not amazing.

Project: Metalbeast (Alessandro DeGaetano, 1995) Pretty bad, but this one involves a werewolf, frozen for decades by Barry Bostwick, which becomes the subject of a government experiment in 'metal skin' for defense purposes, which then results in (surprise) a werewolf with bullet-proof skin. What more do you need?

Stephen King's 2008 Top Ten List

As a big fan of Stephen King, it's always interesting for me to see what he thinks of the world of movies, he's a guy with very regular, everyman tastes that he expresses with great clarity and intelligence, even when I disagree with him, or when it looks like he just flat-out hasn't seen very many movies. Here's his list for this year, if you want all the specifics, but here's the simple top ten too:

1. The Dark Knight
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. Wall-E
4. Tropic Thunder
5. Funny Games
6. The Bank Job
7. Lakeview Terrace
8. The Ruins
9. Redbelt
10. Death Race

I haven't seen half of these - the only one that I know that I hate is the American Funny Games remake (nobody's perfect).

Bush's Shoe Attack

Hopefully this is the final punchline to the long, sad, debilitating joke that has been the Presidency of George W. Bush. I mean, it's kind of an appropriately ridiculous and humiliating way to end his term (although to the guy's credit, he has great reflexes and ducking ability). God, it'll be nice to have him finally gone.