More favorites

Here’s some other films I saw in 2006 for the first time and loved although they are older releases. Of the nine, only one is American and it was made in 1963. As I said in yesterday’s post regarding the great Mexican trifecta in 2006—American directors need to make better films!

Laputa: Castle In the Sky (Japan, 1986)—I watched this brilliant Hayao Miyazaki anime film two times in 2006. One word review: magical. This has all the Miyazaki staples—flying contraptions, good v. evil, kids on adventures and just so many other elements. This might be my favorite Miyazaki film and that’s saying something considering his past.

Charade (USA, 1963)—Completely beguiling film with star studded cast: Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and Walter Matthau. Paris looks romantic and beautiful as this delivers twists and turns and is a joy from the first frame to the last. Perfect.

City of God (Brazil, 2002)—This is an intense coming of age film set in Rio De Janeiro where childhood friends take alternate paths as they grow up. Violent, vibrant and energetic as all get out, City of God puts an interesting spin on the crime film with its setting and characters.

The Bird People In China (2003, Japan)—This was a surprise from gonzo Japanese director Takeshi Miike. BPIC is a bit of a madcap comedy early on in a remote village in China that then slows into a meditative, lush look at rural life. Tender, beautiful, funny and a welcome departure for Miike.

Tony Takitani (Japan, 2004)—Enjoyable, brief, dreamlike film based on a short story by Haruki Murakami (read his stuff!) about a man who spends most of his life alone until he meets a special woman w/ an odd addiction. Quirky and hypnotic look at longing and loneliness.

Hands Off the Loot (France, 1954)—I was absolutely blown away by this ’54 French gangster film from director Jacques Becker. I’m stunned I never saw it, as it’s one of the best gangster films I’ve ever seen! What I love about is it is subtle and understated as it follows the weary struggle of an aging gangster trying to save his partner and loot in the Paris underworld. Amazing!

Schultze Gets the Blues (Germany, 2003)—Sweet as heck film about a laid off German worker who loves the polka and playing his accordion. One night Schultze hears zydeco music on the radio and his world is turned upside down. Schultze is a man of few words but he’s so honest and innocent, just like this film.

Best of Youth (2004, Italy)—I’ll save the best for last. This is a nearly six hour epic family drama that traces the lives of two brothers as they go from youth to middle age. This covers every facet of life—love, marriage, fatherhood, heartbreak, political history etc. The last hour+ is flat out magical and even after 6 hours I didn’t want it to end.

Tops in '06

Okay, February is over and I haven’t written my top ten for 2006! That’s not good. So, here goes. These are in alphabetical order—although if I had to pick a top film, it would be either Babel or Pan’s Labrynth.

Babel—Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 3rd film is another non-linear downer but I was mesmerized from the get go. No one is making more emotionally ambitious films than this talented Mexican filmmaker. This has multiple stories bouncing back and forth, most of them heartbreaking.

Borat—Anything that makes me laugh this much has to be among my favorites. I have been a fan for years and years and this didn’t disappoint. Cohen is absolutely fearless and carries the torch for Andy Kaufman style hi-jinks.

Children of Men—Dystopian future world where women can’t have babies and England is a police state? Count me in! Another Mexican filmmaker here—American directors better step up to the plate.

Pan’s Labrynth—3rd Mexican film. I saw this months ago and I’m still haunted by it. It’s got this dual story line set in fascist Spain and in a young girl’s fantasy world and both are as vivid creations as you’ll see all year. I wish Guillermo Del Toro would stick to this kind of stuff rather than the comic book adaptations like Hellboy.

Stranger Than Fiction—I really enjoyed this comedy/drama that has a guy who starts to hear a voice and it changes his life. It’s funny, quirky, romantic and smart. What more do you want from a film like this?

The Departed—Although this is a bit convoluted (not nearly as much as the Hong Kong original), this is the Martin Scorsese that I love: criminals, murder, gritty violence, cops, f-words, etc. Great cast, great ending, great filmmaker who still loves movies and it shows every time out.

The Descent—This film with a group of athletic women going down in a remote cave, getting lost and then encountering some nasties my favorite horror film of the year. It turns into a friggin’ bloodbath and I loved it for that.

The Fountain—Highly pretentious, ambitious, nonsensical, visually dazzling, wildly romantic film that I loved (and wanted to hate) but sometimes damn it, I just want to see an American director who has the guts to make such an out there picture. This had no chance to be a hit but it’s got some thrilling filmmaking in it so I forgive the ponderous elements.

The Proposition—An Australian western that goes all Peckinpah and Biblical on us thanks to Nick Cave and cohorts. This has more flies per character than you are likely to see in a film. Violent, gritty and takes no prisoners. We need more westerns!

United 93—White knuckle gripping and very well made as the story juggles every conceivable element from the doomed 9/11 flight.

Yi Yi

Yi Yi (2000) is Taiwanese director Edward Yang's seventh film, but his first to be released in the U.S., so unless you are able to attend a decent film festival, watching this on DVD will be your first chance to see one of his movies. And what a great movie Yi Yi (A One and A Two) is. The film is a subtle, profound, simple work of beauty that I loved!

Almost three hours long, Yi Yi attempts to capture every conceivable moment of living in a Taipei family: weddings, funerals, births, loves, loss, romance, murder and suicide. Every joy and pain of being a human being is woven into the narrative and casts a magical spell in its slow, steady pace by Yang.

Yi Yi tells the story of a single middle class family in Taipei by using multigenerational stories to show all facets of life. There is a curious and precocious 8 year-old boy named Yang Yang, a quiet high school daughter named Ting Ting and the father, NJ, is suffering from a mid life crisis. The story weaves mainly around these three and Yi Yi captures the complications of being in a family in a complete arc.

This is filmmaking at its most heartfelt and honest and I can't stress strongly enough how good Yi Yi is. In this day and age of wham bam visuals and rapid fire editing, Yi Yi has a patience that is refreshing and should be done in more movies. There should be a revolt against the cut-cut-cut short attention span idea of filmmaking!!! Why is it that so many Asian directors understand this and so many directors from other countries do not? Yang uses many effective long takes that make it possible to really get into the characters hearts and minds.

I said Yi Yi has a slowness to it but it is not slow. The three hours go by in a blaze because it is so engrossing and well done. Yi Yi isn’t in a hurry, it just goes onward, as life does. Yang won best director at Cannes for Yi Yi and it was well deserved. Yi Yi will make you love, cry, feel, laugh, and think as you watch it and it is highly, highly recommended.

Videodrome

All I need to say about this is: David Cronenberg. If that makes you think that Videodrome (1982) will be something off the beaten path then you know what to expect. Cronenberg likes the strange and out-there in his films—Crash (not the Crash from a few years ago but the ‘90s Crash about car wrecks and sex!), Dead Ringers—among many others that will freak you out. Needless to say, I’m a fan.

Videodrome stars James Woods as a TV exec named Max who stumbles across a hardcore s/m satellite feed called Videodrome. The signal is so real that it might be a snuff film but he still wants it to air on his channel that shows a lot of soft-core porn. Max meets a woman named Nickie (Debbie Harry, in her first acting role) who is into s/m and who also sees the video and gets drawn into its dangerous world.

I don't want to say much on the plot, as it would spoil some of the twists or turns into weirdness that develop. I really enjoyed Videodrome as it excels as what is a fantasy/reality horror film but also pushes buttons regarding issues such as the power of TV in the world and how it is connected to sex and violence in our lives.

One of Cronenberg's main obsessions seems to be the application of technology in our daily existence. In Videodrome, technology is literally inserted into the human body where it forces total control over the person's life. In one of Cronenberg's most recent films, eXistenZ (1998), some of the same themes cropped up. Both films use startling images of technology, as it becomes a part of the human body. Those ideas creeping up today in this world of machines is not much of a surprise but to have them so graphically expressed in '82 by Cronenberg is downright chillingly visionary.

Videodrome is a bizarre mind bender with fantasy and reality merging in a world of thought control, technology, sex, violence, TV, paranoia and philosophical cults. Very recommended if you want to step out of the mainstream into the darkness of the wilds and let Cronenberg lead the way. Long live the new flesh!

Viva Mexico!

I need to see a few films before I compile my best of 2006, as I need to see The Queen, Letters From Iwo Jima and The Lives of Others. If you notice the high scores of three of the films I saw in January you might notice the connection of three of them—a Mexican director. Those films—Children of Men, Pan’s Labyrinth and Babel will all by going for spaces in the my top 10 of ’06.

I loved those three films so much it will be hard to rank them against each other. Maybe I should give the trio a tie for the top spot and say Mexico wins? Take what you think are the three best directors from each country in the world and compare them with Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Alfonso Cuaron and it will be a serious battle between what country wins. These gentlemen are making great, challenging works of art that can be thought of as best in the world after their last three films were released.

The most surprising in this group of three has to be del Toro for Pan’s Labyrinth. While I’ve enjoyed some of del Toro’s past films (Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone), nothing quite readied me for Pan’s Labyrinth and its blend of history, fantasy and brutality. Pan’s Labyrinth is breathtaking as you watch it but its most important quality is the fact you can’t stop yourself from thinking about it weeks after you’ve seen it. I know I haven’t as it creeps back into my mind from time to time.

The least surprising is Inarritu, and his latest partnership with writer Guillermo Arriaga, in Babel. I highly enjoyed Inarritu’s first two films, Amores Perros and 21 Grams, but the duo have gone all epic on us. Babel is set in multiple continents, has multiple story lines, uses multiple languages and has a non-linear framework that challenges you to think deeply about what you are witnessing. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to write that last part of the sentence about a director making films today. Babel maybe a lot of things, and you may either love it or hate it, but I found it gut wrenching, invigorating and highly artistic (pay attention to all the various film stocks/techniques Inarritu uses as he moves from setting to setting).

Children of Men is the kind of film that I’m an easy mark to enjoy. If it’s about a dystopian future world I’m gonna be into it. I’ve loved stories like this since I was a teenager and discovering science fiction. I was not expecting the film to be as good as it was as I watched incredulous from the middle of the theatre. Cuaron’s film is so controlled, grey, oppressive and dark as ideas, dialog and action fly by at such a pace that I am certain this will go down as one of the all-time dystopian films in a few years. It’s that good.

How to choose the best of these three thrillingly different and wonderful movies? Maybe I won’t be able to and I’ll declare Mexico and movie lovers the true winner? Viva Mexico!

January movies

Here's the list of movies I saw in January. I'm also including my rating for said film. I do a 1-5 rating, 1 being terrible and 5 being perfect. For the record, I don't generally give out a 5 the first time I see a really, really good movie. What may turn into a 5 after a couple of viewings usually starts off w/ a 4 or 4.5.

Vacas--1991--Spain--3.5
Georgy Girl--1966--England--3
The Devil Wears Prada--2006--USA--3
Black Peter--1963--Czech Republic--3
The Fireman's Ball--1967--Czech Republic--5!
Children of Men--2006--USA--4
Casino Royale--2006--USA--3.5
Seven Men From Now--1956--USA--3.5
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot--1974--USA--3.5
Streets of Fire--1984--USA--3
Good Morning, Night--2003--Italy--3
The Family Stone--2005--USA--2
The Curse of the Golden Flower--2006--China--3
Amelie--2000--France--5!
Pan's Labrynthe--2006--Mexico--4
Old Joy--2006--USA--3.5
Shadow Magic--2001--China--3.5
Undead--2003--Australia--3
The Last King of Scotland--2006--Scotland--3.5
Babel--2006--Mexico--4.5
Blue Velvet--1986--USA--5!
Volver--2006--Spain--3

Scarecrow Video part three

One last photo of me at Scarecrow...This time I'm standing in their massive foreign section. And when I say massive I mean massive, thousands and thousands of films and TV series from other countries. I think I'm holding up a film from Taiwan and Tsai Liang-Ming called The Wayward Cloud.

By the way, I was on day 26 of the Brothers of the Brush beard growing competition when this photo was taken--I'm now on day 52 and you should see this beard I'm growing.

Scarecrow Video part two

Since I posted about Scarecrow Video and how it's one of my favorite places on earth--here's a picture of me standing in its rows and rows of choices. I'm in the "director" section--every film in this section is arranged via director--there are maybe nearly 1,000 directors in this section! I'm holding up a multi-regionDVD from France and one of my favorite directors Tony Gatlif. Boy do I love this place.

Ice storm movie watching

The Tulsa area is in the midst of a massive ice storm. You know how the local media always have to ramp it up like we’re all about to die? Well, one channel is calling it “Ice Assault 2007”. I haven’t left my house or yard in more than two days (the photo is of my house taken a few minutes ago and that's 3 inches of ice on the ground, not snow). At least I have power and all the technologies connected to that. So, I’ve been dedicating “Ice Assault '07” to serious couch time and movies. Here’s what I’ve watched the past few days.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot: One of the last Clint Eastwood movies I’d never seen is this goofy heist 1974 film set in Montana as a group (Jeff Bridges also stars) attempt to rob an armored car vault they’d robbed a few years earlier. The film has a quirky vibe to it that is pure ‘70s—regular readers know I love ‘70s cinema. It’s manic, silly and a bit raw. Eastwood is almost too big to be in this as his “Clintness” nearly overwhelms whatever is taking place—either in the story or with other actors. Michael Cimino directed this and it has a lot of muscle cars blaring over highways and fields, a robbery, double crosses and a streak of goofy humor running through it.

Streets of Fire: I’ve been trying to see some Diane Lane films I’ve never seen and this one from ’84 not only has Lane but Bill Paxton (I’m a fan of his too) in a small role and the director is Walter Hill, who is another favorite. Hill, normally as lean and mean as you’ll see in a Hollywood director, gets to show a flashier side in this film. I couldn’t figure out if it was a period film in the ‘50s combined through an ‘80s blender or if this was in the future. I kind of think it’s set in the future because of the neon lit wet streets, leather outfits, atmospheric poverty and other little things on display was just a little over the top. Streets of Fire is like a 90 minutes video with Lane belting out songs with lots of quick cuts and stylized violence as local bad boy takes on a motorcycle gang. It’s kind of a frivolous film with some cheesy moments and bad dialogue that doesn’t really have much tension yet I liked it because it is so earnest in its genre sensibilities. I’m just a fan of Walter Hill movies and hadn’t seen him do something so atmospheric and splashy. Guilty pleasure.

Good Morning, Night: A few weeks ago I watched the epic Italian film The Best of Youth and was blown away by it. I also got a bit of a crush on Maya Sansa so I’m renting some of her films on Netflix. I’m not sure an Italian movie about radicals kidnapping and killing a hostage for political reasons is the kind of film to watch when you haven’t left the house for days because the city is entombed in ice—but that’s what I had from Netflix so I watched it. Sansa—still have a crush, it’s growing—while the movie is a somber piece of Italian drama that was good but not as good as it might have been had I not been cooped up in the house due to ice for days on end.

The Family Stone: To counter balance the earlier film I watched this sub-par family comedy that is as predictable as the day is long. I knew how this would end 10 minutes into it. Sarah Jessica Parker is among the cast and she’s film poison for me. Every scene she was in I was on the verge of cringing. Only recommended if you are in the midst of an “Ice Assault” and just watched a downer of an Italian film.

Ice Assault ’07 continues for another day as work was called off and I’m sure I’ll watch one or two more things today—I’m thinking of venturing out of the house for The Curse of the Golden Flower and am planning on watching The Treasure of Sierra Madre on the couch.

Children of Men

I don’t know what it is about anything that hints of the idea of “dystopia” that makes me enjoy it so much. 1984 and Brave New World are favorite books of mine. I travelled to Hungary and Poland in the mid 1990s just to see the myriad of concrete Soviet built complexes before cheery American chain restaurants were placed in front of them. I love the color gray. So, me loving the straight up dystopian film Children of Men (2006) should not be a surprise at all.

Children of Men is set in 2027 London and the world has gone mad. It’s a police state (what kind of dystopian film would it be without an oppressive police state?), women have mysteriously stopped giving birth for 18 years and the English government is hell-bent on imprisoning (or worse) all foreigners while striking fear into all that live there.

Of course there is a resistance movement to all this (one reason I love dystopian culture is there is always an underground group or someone rebelling against the powers that suppress them) and they are known as The Fishes. The Fishes plant bombs and fight for immigrants who are being penned like chattel in the name of “Homeland Security” (sound familiar?).

Clive Owen plays a worn down man who once was an activist who is drawn back into this world when his ex (Julianne Moore), who is now the head fish, contacts him about helping the group hide a young woman from the government. He has a price and is soon in the midst of a complicated scheme to get the woman on a rumor of a boat that might or might not be real.

Children of Men is the kind of science fiction movie I dream about seeing but rarely get to see—it’s that good. It’s got everything I want to see in a dystopian future: complete grayness, a lawless police state, extreme poverty and chaos, a feisty uprising swelling from the underground and the utter hopelessness that living in a society like this would generate. Doesn't that sound fun? Maybe it's just me.

Director Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien) has made a film that is as smart, nuanced and atmospheric as it is controlled. Cuaron never lets loose of the grip of the vision he’s trying to create in this future world. It’s an ugly place contaminated with ugly policies, where the people have lost all sense of involvement in what happens to them, from the government on down.

Children of Men is one of my favorites in 2006 and will be high on the list when I compile my top ten in a few weeks. It’s not only a great movie but one of the best piece of dystopian culture I’ve come across in years and years. Highly recommended.

Spanglish

This will be less a review and more of a rant. If you haven’t seen this, stop reading if you don’t want to know the ending as I’m going to throw in some *spoilers* in what follows.

I saw Spanglish in 2004 when it first came out and left the theatre frustrated and completely annoyed at what I’d just seen. I watched sections of it again the other night on TV and felt exactly the same! I hate this movie and I mean HATE it.

Why? Writer/director James L. Brooks spends 4/5 of the movie making us dislike the shrillish wife (Tea Leoni) to Adam Sandler’s likeable husband. She’s unlikable in every single way and to every person around her—to her daughter, husband, mother and hired help. Wife and husband have a disaster of a relationship and she’s a neurotic mess and that’s all we ever see of her.

Enter spunky Mexican maid (who is also beautiful) who shows everyone just how decent and giving and loving a mother is supposed to be to those around her. Naturally, Sandler’s husband and this woman (Paz Vega) have sparks and hint around at the “chemistry” that is between them.

The end comes and the wife is supposedly changed and nothing comes of the husband, and this obviously much better person, in the maid. It’s a massive romantic drama tease that pulls a fake out at the end that I don’t buy for one second. Keeping the husband and wife together after everything we’ve just seen is one of those magical Hollywood conversions that would last about one month in the real world.

What ticks me off about the film is how can Brooks expect us (the audience) to WANT to see the film end with Sandler and Leoni when the ENTIRE movie he’s set her up to be despicable and made a saint out of Vega? Plus, Vega and Sandler are actually good together on screen unlike Sandler and Leoni. It’s a disaster of a decision by Brooks and fills me with distaste and sort of makes me actually angry when the film ends.

Sandler’s character is a weakling in the film who has a hard time standing up for what he truly believes in or feels but to think at the end, he’ll continue to be under his manipulative, emotional game playing wife instead of being with this better woman is an awful way to end the story. But hey, it’s Brooks’ story and film, if he wants to go down unbelievable, paths, that’s up to him. It doesn’t mean I have to like it—in fact, in the case of Spanglish—I loathe it.

2006 totals!

It's that time again. I add up all the totals of the year I spent dedicated to watching movies and go public. I've been keeping these "stats" since 1998 so this was my 9th year of documenting my movie watching. Bow down with envy to my film geekdom!

2006 total: 216
Foreign movies: 53
Decade when movie I watched was made: 2000 and up (144), 1980-89 (23), 1970-79 (16), 1990-99 (15), 1960-69 (8), 1950-59 (5), 1930-39 (2), 1920-29 (1), 1940-49 (1)
Amount I saw IN a movie theatre v. at a house: 82
Best month: December (25)
Worst month: October (10)
Average movies seen per month: 18
Average movies seen per week: 4.15
Documentaries: 29
Black and white: 13
Midnight movies: 11
At the Drive-In: 1
Times I cried while watching a movie: 13
Cities I watched movies in: Tulsa, Okla. (189), Seattle, Wash. (13), Pryor Creek, Okla. (5), Norman, Okla., St. Louis, Mo., Santa Fe, NM (2), Claremore, Okla., Guymon, Okla., Oklahoma City, Okla., Siloam Springs, Ark., Trinidad, Colo. (1)
Country a movie was from: US and A! (163), France (15), England (13), Japan (7), Spain (4), Australia, South Korea (3), China, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy (2), Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Russia, Taiwan (1)
Who I watched the movie with: Alone (161), Brandi (13), Nancy (11), Cameron (8), Lillian (6), Rosemary, Sara, Shane (4), Donnie, Greg, Sherrill (2), Ashley, Barbara, Ellen, Gunter, Kelly, Kylie, Laura, Linda, Nicole, Paige, Sheri, Tim (1)

Movies on a jet

I have unearthed a wonderful invention when travelling cross-country on a jet: the portable DVD player! This marvelous new invention of technology turned a 3 and 1/2 hour flight into something that seemed to last about 45 minutes. And forget about being panic stricken by the bounce of turbulence—with headphones on and lost in the 9” screen, I didn’t notice a thing. Babies screaming awful sounds and other cabin noise bother you? That’s also lost on the viewer. Has anyone else discovered this incredible way to travel through the air? It’s a miracle I tell you.

As a parting gift to myself from Seattle and Scarecrow Video I rented two shortish films from one of my all-time favorite directors—Milos Forman—Black Peter and The Fireman’s Ball.

Black Peter (1963) is Forman’s first film and I’d never seen it but it wasn’t long before I was enjoying this low-key comedy about the confusions of youth as Peter heads to adulthood. Peter sort of glides along in a job he doesn’t like, wooing a girl he does like and has to sit through his dad ranting, raving and imparting wisdom from the apartment kitchen. I hate to be lectured but I loved listening to Peter’s dad pace back and forth unleashing these rants. Black Peter is a smart little film from Forman and just hints at things to come from him in the future.

I love Forman’s 1967 satire The Fireman’s Ball and have seen it twice before but decided to watch it again. This has one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever seen in the raucous attempt by the brigade to hold a beauty contest. The contest turns into absolute bedlam. As the scene approached I was curious if I’d find it humorous in this jet setting but suddenly found myself laughing hysterically and wondering if those around me thought I’d lost it. Didn’t care, I just kept laughing.

What amazes me about The Fireman’s Ball is the cast. This picture has the most amazing collection of faces and personalities in such a short (only 73 minutes) and intimate movie. Every single one of these actors is dead-on perfect as bumbling, dimwitted firemen who are clueless in pretty much all they do.

I love satire and this one got the movie banned from Soviet controlled Czech lands and sent Forman out of the country to make movies (which was good for us but I wonder what kind of films he’d made had he stayed home). There are subtle jabs and more pointed ones at anyone in authority during this era in Czech history. I love The Fireman’s Ball and it’s going in my Top 100 next time I update it. Highly recommended, as is the portable DVD player when travelling on jet planes.

Scarecrow Video

I'm flying to Seattle tonight for a visit and of course I'll be seeing movies while I'm there. One of my favorite places in the world happens to be Scarecrow Video. I just get a warm and tingly all over feeling when I walk through their doors. They've got upwards of 75,000 videos to rent, including thousands from other countries that take a special all-region DVD player to see. They've got a mammoth foreign section--you want to see films from Chile, Mongolia or Finland? Then Scarecrow is for you. Unreal horror, science fiction and anime collections too. But, my personal favorite thing about it is the massive section that is separated strictly by director! That completely appeals to my film geek DNA. I'll be taking in some of my favorite local theatres like the Harvard Exit, Neptune and Egyptian but I can promise you I'll spend hours over the next week just absorbing the sights and sounds of one the best places on planet earth...Scarecrow Video.

Five films I hated in 2006

I could have put more than this on a list of the films I hated in 2006 but I’ll whittle it down to a measly five. In no particular order here they are…the gloves are off!

The Pink Panther—This was flat out embarrassing for Steve Martin and everyone else in this miserably dull, unfunny and shameful remake of Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther films. Martin, utilizing a French accent and style of physical comedy that makes him seem borderline retarded, gives the most annoying performance of his career (I’m a fan of his actually). There is absolutely nothing of worth in this film (okay, Emily Mortimer, a perinial Top5 of mine is in this and I also like Kevin Kline but even this pair can't save the film) and should make anyone considering remakes of classic movies think long and hard about shooting themselves in the head to save us all the pain of having to watch another retread, inferior movie. Peter Sellers is rolling over in his grave as I write this.

Failure To Launch—Some things never change, another year, another bad, bad, bad Matthew McConaughey movie. I have to hand it to the guy—he’s consistent in his crapness. The pairing of McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker creates romantic tension of the likes of the possible pairing of Abe Vagoda and Britney Spears in a remake of Love Story (I know, unfair to poor Abe!). Translation: the duo has less than zero chemistry in this romantic comedy about a guy who doesn’t want to leave home. Plus, am I the only person that thinks Parker is wearing enough makeup to stock an entire city block and looks like a man in drag? Yet another reason to avoid this—Terry Bradshaw bares his pasty ass multiple times. Yes, multiple times.

Down In the Valley—Granted, I’ve seen a lot worse this year but I’m not sure I watched something that I loathed as much as this phony piece of trite with Edward Norton pretending to be a cowboy in the San Fernando Valley, Cali. The only thing I was rooting for during this was for it to be over as it is just a ridiculously over the top story that should have been left in some writer’s desk. Norton, a fine actor indeed, picked this as a "statement" role but by the end I was just laughing at this absurd waste of my time.

Poseiden—I reviewed this earlier in the year for CineRobot and I asked in the review, “Is it possible to see something so mediocre, so unrelenting in its average, aim for the lowest common denominator” goals? The answer in 2006 is no. This is as average as average can get. Poseiden is predictable, has no tension and is just another silly remake of a film that didn’t need to be redone. Enough is more than enough, Hollywood!

The Benchwarmers—Let me quote from my very succinct review in Kinetoscope after I saw this on June 28, 2006: “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. But at least it only cost one dollar.” Everything, and I mean everything, you’d expect from a comedic vehicle starring Rob Schneider and David Spade. I’m not normally a guy who knocks a film with as many blows to the groin as sentences (groin pain: always funny) but I’d almost rather take a blow to the groin than to watch this again. Maybe even two blows to the groin?

Stranger Than Fiction

I somehow avoided the bombardment of Stranger Than Fiction’s trailer—it was on every two minutes for a few weeks—to make it into the theatre with no clue what happens in this movie. That’s kind of hard to do in this day and age of too many people giving too much of the story away in reviews/trailers. Can these critics just stop writing what happens in the movie for 3/4 of their reviews! Rehashing the plot for the bulk of the review is not good criticism and many professionals seem to do it all too often. It’s lazy and takes no skill to rehash a plot.

Now, let me discuss the plot of Stranger Than Fiction (ha!). Will Ferrell is a guy named Harold Crick who hears a voice in his head…is he crazy? Is it the narrator in a book narrating his life? Will what the narrator say what will happen to Crick in his life? There, that’s all you need to know about this comedy-drama to know enough of what goes on in the film. Why not let the rest of the story be a surprise? To me, there is nothing greater in a movie for events to happen that you didn’t see coming. It’s magical to not know.

I really liked Stranger Than Fiction. It’s funny, it has depth to it, the story has interesting things to say about topics such as the nature of writing, discovering how to live and to love and tax codes. Ferrell, who I’m hardly sold on as a dramatic actor, gives a performance that is part loopy, part serious. Word was this was in the vein of madcap screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)—it’s not. Kaufman is Kaufman and there’s only one Kaufman writing movies in Hollywood.

Maggie Gyllenhaal gives one of the most charming performances of her young career as a tattooed baker who has tax issues which results in the IRS agent Crick paying her a visit. It’s the kind of role a lesser actress would have done nothing with but she’s one of the finest actresses at the moment (when will I get to see Sherrybaby damnit?!). Gyllenhaal makes her screen time count every second she is on the screen and isn’t it amazing what talent can do to a character’s depth and appeal?

Director Marc Forster, whose career is littered with over hyped films such as Monster’s Ball (a film I really hated) and Finding Neverland, has made his most interesting film here. He doesn’t wallow in cheap, emotional ploys to tug at your heartstrings as he did in those films. Don’t get me wrong, he still wants you to like and be moved by his characters, but thankfully he reigns in the over the top maudlin crap he drowned the before mentioned films in.

Stranger Than Fiction is quirky, funny in a thinking kind of way, has some interesting things to say about the nature of writing, it’s romantic, has the enchanting Gyllenhaal and will likely make it onto my top ten of 2006. That sounds like a recommendation to me.

The Fountain

Darren Aronofsky, the director of The Fountain, is someone I’ve not really responded to in his first two films—Pi and Requiem For A Dream. I admit, he’s an audacious visual stylist that makes technically brilliant films, but I found his first two films lacking in various ways. Pi was too thinly conceived to work to the finish and Requiem For A Dream was too unrelenting and ended up one of the most dour, joyless films I’ve seen in years.

The Fountain, a film that was in production for about five years (it was actually scrapped by Warner Bros. a few years ago after they’d spent 20 million and saw they were going to throw about 80 more down the well, this is the cheaper version), is by far my favorite Aronofsky movie. If I went into the out-there plot you might see why about half of the 15 people at this late night screening walked out of the theatre. Their leaving just emboldened my enjoyment of this extremely artistic and idiosyncratic movie.

I’m not going to really go into the story, as it will just come off very convoluted and strange--which it is. The story spans about 1,000 years with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz playing a variety of characters. There’s conquistadors, Mayan jungle scenes, the search for the fountain of youth, science experiments on monkeys, an astronaut floating in a bubble in outer space who lives with a giant tree (yes, this is true), love and more love…and just a lot of other elements to make this the most “out there” mainstream release of the year.

The story is pretentious (it is Darren Aronofsky after all), confounding, complex and wildly romantic all at the same time! Aronofsky has never been a director to shy away from striking visuals and he stacks so many memorable images and ideas into The Fountain it’s hard to process the story as it shifts from Spanish Inquisition to 1,000 years in the future to what seems like now with the one element that links all the timelines--the search for immortality.

As I mentioned, a lot of people walked out of this—including two loud, obnoxious people behind me so good riddance to them—and I think this is a very divisive little movie. Either it’s going to a work of visual and thought provoking art you get swept up in. Or, it will be a ridiculous, pompous mess that you will loathe. I’m in with the former on this one.

I was completely mesmerized by The Fountain from the very start. It's kind of a headrush of ideas, beautiful images, an interesting love story (or two, or three love stories) and will challenge the crap out of you as you watch it. And that is so refreshing to me in this day and age of market segmented filmmaking. With The Fountain, I'm not sure Aronofsky gave a damn and just made a crazy, all over the place film that will sparkle you if you are weak to this sort of magic.

Is anyone out there?

I know it's a bit annoying when people whine about comments and all...but I've written about 9 reviews in a row and not sure anyone has posted a thing...is this thing broken? Agree with me, debate me, tell me I'm crazy, I'll take anything in the comment box!

The Ballad of Cable Hogue

When you think Sam Peckinpah western, you might think of gritty characters, slow motion shoot-outs and lots of people dying. His most infamous western, The Wild Bunch, featured all of these elements in spades and is probably his most notorious and famous film. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) is a western but it’s one with a great deal of levity and is one of Peckinpah’s most pleasurable films to watch because it’s such a curveball.

Jason Robards plays Cable, a man left without water in the desert and left to die. He stumbles around in the heat and sun but luckily finds a freak water hole when he was about to give up. Cable stakes a claim to the land with the sole desire to wait for the two fellows who left him to die make their way to him, then he plans to kill them.

Cable goes to town some and meets the busty prostitute Hildy (Stella Stevens). I wouldn’t mention her bust line but when the pair meet Peckinpah does some really funny quick cuts over and over regarding her chest as Cable can’t get his mind on anything else (he has been out in the desert about to die after all!). Cable is in town to entice the local stagecoach line into funding his new town, Cable Springs, while he waits to exact revenge.

As I said, this was more a western-comedy from a director not known for lighter moments and I really enjoyed those elements in the movie. Robards gives a great, lively performance as Cable, he’s a ranting, randy character. Slim Pickens shows up to deliver a few one-liners and any western with Pickens is usually something worth watching.

The film even has some statements on the changing nature of the western frontier in it toward the end, which was a nice surprise, and it throws in a little romance before the final showdown too for a different kind of western from one of the genre’s most unique directors. The Ballad of Cable Hogue is not Peckinpah’s best film, but it is right up there with his most fun to watch. Great.

The Bicycle Thief

Sheer perfection. This is a perfect movie—perfectly conceived and executed—and is one of my favorite movies of all-time. I’ve seen it at least six times now and it never loses its ability to wring out the emotion as I watch it. The Bicycle Thief hurts so good.

Director Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 film is among the canon of the neo-realist movement in post-WWII Italian cinema. Neo-realism was a movement that attempted to toss away excess and to tell real stories with real human beings. These films attempt to address everyday moments of a normal person in a heartbreaking, moving and dramatic manner. “My purpose is to find the element of drama in daily situations” De Sica said regarding the storyline of The Bicycle Thief.

The film's story is set around the poverty and unemployment of a single family. Antonio is out of work. He gets a job to put up posters but needs his bicycle to do the job. To get the bike out of the pawn shop the family hocks their linens. On the first day of his job, the bike is stolen. Antonio and his son Bruno go on a search trying to find the bike that will put food on their table.

That’s the simple version of the story. The film has so many layers to it that each time I watch it another is peeled back for me to discover. Only the great movies can do that for you as a viewer. Sometimes I notice the father-son elements, sometimes I pay attention to the way poverty/ unemployment have a significant role in the film’s story. This time I really noticed the use of God/religion/psychics in the story and how it relates to Antonio’s plight.

Most of the time I just get swept up in the desperation of the father who knows the consequences for his job and his family if he doesn’t locate the bicycle. With the bicycle, they aren’t well off, but he won’t bury himself in the shame of unemployment and the struggle to survive that losing the bicycle will cause.

The Bicycle Thief, like other neo-realist films from this period, relies heavily on non-professional actors and extensive location shooting. This adds to the feeling of “realness” in what you see on screen. You see real alleys, churches, building stairwells, streets and apartments.

The Bicycle Thief has one of the most devastating endings in the history of cinema. I don’t care how many times I watch the film, I’m blown away and crushed for the rest of the day. That’s a good thing in my book. Any movie that takes you into another emotional state because you love the characters and the story so much is a complete success to me. In the case of The Bicycle Thief, it’s simply one of the best movies in the history of cinema.