At this time, I like to inventory my favorite films and performances from this year's movies. I do this despite the fact that it's for no one's benefit but my own, because I'm a huge nerd. I thought I'd post it here so at least something will be done with it. But I'm more interested in what you have to say: what you liked this year, what stood out, any agreements or disagreements with my selections. Let me know.
So here we go, with no particular order, organization or coherency:
Favorite Films of the Year: No Country for Old Men and I'm Not There
It may have seemed inconceivable after glimpsing their respective career trajectories a few years ago that it would be Todd Haynes, director of the scrupulously authentic, unsneering and unwinking Douglas Sirk melodrama simulacrum Far From Heaven, who would make one of the boldest, most casually avant-garde art projects of the year; while the Coen Brothers, the genre-bending scamps who have made a career out of continually forging a reservoir of quirky cinema pastiches into their own distinct style and who had rarely helmed a sincere scene without some trace of ironic smirk behind it, who would deliver one of the purest, most sarcasm-sapped and elegantly sparse epics of the year. But they have, and to compare their films in any sense beyond acknowledging each picture's greatness is difficult, as a side-by-side observation leaves one with the vague uncertainty that they belong even to the same medium.
Todd Haynes' pulls off the miraculous feat in I'm Not There of employing a cinematic device - using multiple actors of various genders and races to play distinct aspects of Bob Dylan's life - that initially sounds gimmicky and pretentious feel entirely, by film's end, like the only possibly way this story could have been told. Haynes reconfigures the counterculture cries of "Judas!" at Dylan's electric turn as a line tracing of the Italian neo-realists' backlash against Fellini's move towards carnivalized expressionism via extended references to 8 1/2. An aggressive anti-biopic in which we never once hear the words "Bob Dylan" spoken, I'm Not There shares an odd affinity with the John C. Reilly parody Walk Hard in how keenly each is aware of the fact that for the seemingly astronomical differences between the lives of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, the rigid structural demands of the musical biopic leaves the viewer of Ray, Walk the Line and too many others feeling as though they may as well have been about the same person.
Yet for all its legitimate pedigree as a pop PoMo piece that both perpetuates and deconstructs the Dylan mythology, I'm Not There is by far one of the most entertaining and imminently watchable thinkfilms you'll ever see. "You never know what the past has in store for you," one version of Haynes' Dylan proxies, at once exasperating and engaging, remarks; "It took me a long time to get this young," says another. Haynes' dialogue is rife with references to history's tyranny over the future and vice versa; the film at its heart is about precisely that Herculean struggle against this seeming inevitability. Just as we gather the individual courage to take a step away from both our immutable past and our presumed destiny, we find someone ready and eager to remind us of our supposed obligations to both.
If nothing else, I'm Not There's Old West-inspired fragments featuring Richard Gere as a Dylan surrogate going by the name 'Billy the Kid' shares with the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men a penchant for those sparse, stoic westerns for which the word 'meditative' was invented. But No Country trades fleeting allusions for sustained, persistent and unyielding impassivity.
With a triad of taciturn leads, Joel and Ethan unfurl a sprawling landscape whose expansiveness complements and echos the dour reticence that runs through their cast from hero to anti-hero to villain. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the land strips away the very idea of concepts like hero and virtue, since despite the bubbling themes of greed and evil, it's clear from the first frame that No Country could hardly be further from a morality tale.
In fact, elements of simple morality have been predominantly sapped from the film; this is not however to say the movie is nihilistic. Indeed, the countryside's dearth of traditional principles and actionable moral code is perhaps its primary preoccupation. The question is not what has happened to these values, as No Country's conscience - if there is one - represented by Tommy Lee Jones' impassive Texas sheriff wonders, but whether they ever truly existed.
Honorable mention to Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a film coming in squarely at the intersection of Haynes' consideration of the world's aggressive need for icon building and the Coens' interest in recreating a somber, wide-open and bygone Western American landscape.
With its heart and its style firmly planted in the Hollywood New Wave, Assassination recalls the majestic magic hour lensing and languid tone of vintage Terence Malick. But more intriguing is the interest all three films share in recasting our cycle of celebrity worship and annihilation as an Old West myth of the outlaw and his apprehension: the hounding reporter/Mr. Jones figure looking to ensnare and constrain the emerging Dylan is imagined in later life as the curmudgeonly Pat Garrett still gunning for Dylan's withdrawn Billy the Kid. In Assassination, Robert Ford's obsession is presented as a kind of compulsive fame fixation, the adolescent Ford meekly collecting dime store James Brothers novels before his idolization leads down the inevitable path of disaffection and bloodshed. In the world of these films, the celebrity is outlaw and the outlaw celebrity, and for a rapt public, the only means of satiating our sick collective fascination for such miscreants is in our hypocritical attempt to reign them in, if not by a character assassination than by an actual one.
More favorite from the past year:
The King of Kong (Seth Gordon).
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Julian Schnabel's true story is of former Elle editor Jean Bauby's 'locked-in syndrome' following a stroke, the only parts of him left working his imagination, his memory, and his left eye, and the book he would eventually write about his experience using an intricate and rigorous system of blinks to dictate it. Schnabel's direction, making extended use of innovative first-person storytelling, elevates the affecting tale far beyond potential Lifetime movie-of-the-week mawkishness.
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet). Yes, I know you didn't see it. That's okay. But mark the name Jason Kohn; we will be seeing it again, and we will all be better off for that.
Into the Wild (Sean Penn)
The Iranian New Wave may be just past its prime, but films like Offside show that the country's cinema is without a doubt still among the most exciting in the world. Jafar Panahi's film, about a group of die-hard female soccer fans who disguise themselves as men to watch Iran's World Cup-qualifying match against Bahrain, is a 'comedy' whose humor is rooted not so much in that central scheme as in the real-life absurdity - women being banned from sporting events in Iran - which would bring about such actions.
Inland Empire - Who else but David Lynch could make a surrealist avant-garde Polish horror film and STILL have it end with an elaborate sixties girl group song and dance number?
Wristcutters: A Love Story
Away From Her is an accomplished and touching film for anyone to have made; that it is the first feature from 27 year old actress Sarah Polley (My Life Without Me, Go) makes it all the more impressive, considering how empathetically and delicately it handles the themes of aging, loss and identity. Polley recalls Bergman in her approach and Ozu in her pastoral tone, creating a welcome reminder that emotions need not be extreme to run deep. This was perhaps the best directed film of the year.
Some of my favorite performances of the year:
Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl: Or: Ryan Gosling single-handedly saves another indie quirk-fest from drowning in its own high concept conceit.
Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men
Irfan Khan and Tabu in The Namesake (Mira Nair)
Max Von Sydow in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Max Von Sydow is still alive! And still acting! And still damned, scary good at it!
Chris Cooper in Breach (Billy Ray)
Christopher Walken in Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro)
Ellen Page in Juno (Jason Reitman): Page joins a cast of standouts including J.K. Simmons, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner and Michael Cera (doing some of the most ambitious head sweatband work since Luke Wilson in The Royal Tenenbaums) that succeed in channeling the script, a maddeningly over-polished, suffocatingly ironic collection of hipster catch-phrases, into performances that resemble real human beings.
Hal Holbrook in Into the Wild
Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman in The Darjeeling Limited
My caveat: there are a handful of contenders I either haven't gotten to yet or that haven't been released, including The Savages, Persepolis and There Will Be Blood, so things may be added or amended to the above list.
What say you?
PS - I don't forese renewing my account, so this will likely be my last blog. It's been good talking to everybody. Happy holidays to all.
So here we go, with no particular order, organization or coherency:
Favorite Films of the Year: No Country for Old Men and I'm Not There
It may have seemed inconceivable after glimpsing their respective career trajectories a few years ago that it would be Todd Haynes, director of the scrupulously authentic, unsneering and unwinking Douglas Sirk melodrama simulacrum Far From Heaven, who would make one of the boldest, most casually avant-garde art projects of the year; while the Coen Brothers, the genre-bending scamps who have made a career out of continually forging a reservoir of quirky cinema pastiches into their own distinct style and who had rarely helmed a sincere scene without some trace of ironic smirk behind it, who would deliver one of the purest, most sarcasm-sapped and elegantly sparse epics of the year. But they have, and to compare their films in any sense beyond acknowledging each picture's greatness is difficult, as a side-by-side observation leaves one with the vague uncertainty that they belong even to the same medium.
Todd Haynes' pulls off the miraculous feat in I'm Not There of employing a cinematic device - using multiple actors of various genders and races to play distinct aspects of Bob Dylan's life - that initially sounds gimmicky and pretentious feel entirely, by film's end, like the only possibly way this story could have been told. Haynes reconfigures the counterculture cries of "Judas!" at Dylan's electric turn as a line tracing of the Italian neo-realists' backlash against Fellini's move towards carnivalized expressionism via extended references to 8 1/2. An aggressive anti-biopic in which we never once hear the words "Bob Dylan" spoken, I'm Not There shares an odd affinity with the John C. Reilly parody Walk Hard in how keenly each is aware of the fact that for the seemingly astronomical differences between the lives of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, the rigid structural demands of the musical biopic leaves the viewer of Ray, Walk the Line and too many others feeling as though they may as well have been about the same person.
Yet for all its legitimate pedigree as a pop PoMo piece that both perpetuates and deconstructs the Dylan mythology, I'm Not There is by far one of the most entertaining and imminently watchable thinkfilms you'll ever see. "You never know what the past has in store for you," one version of Haynes' Dylan proxies, at once exasperating and engaging, remarks; "It took me a long time to get this young," says another. Haynes' dialogue is rife with references to history's tyranny over the future and vice versa; the film at its heart is about precisely that Herculean struggle against this seeming inevitability. Just as we gather the individual courage to take a step away from both our immutable past and our presumed destiny, we find someone ready and eager to remind us of our supposed obligations to both.
If nothing else, I'm Not There's Old West-inspired fragments featuring Richard Gere as a Dylan surrogate going by the name 'Billy the Kid' shares with the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men a penchant for those sparse, stoic westerns for which the word 'meditative' was invented. But No Country trades fleeting allusions for sustained, persistent and unyielding impassivity.
With a triad of taciturn leads, Joel and Ethan unfurl a sprawling landscape whose expansiveness complements and echos the dour reticence that runs through their cast from hero to anti-hero to villain. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the land strips away the very idea of concepts like hero and virtue, since despite the bubbling themes of greed and evil, it's clear from the first frame that No Country could hardly be further from a morality tale.
In fact, elements of simple morality have been predominantly sapped from the film; this is not however to say the movie is nihilistic. Indeed, the countryside's dearth of traditional principles and actionable moral code is perhaps its primary preoccupation. The question is not what has happened to these values, as No Country's conscience - if there is one - represented by Tommy Lee Jones' impassive Texas sheriff wonders, but whether they ever truly existed.
Honorable mention to Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a film coming in squarely at the intersection of Haynes' consideration of the world's aggressive need for icon building and the Coens' interest in recreating a somber, wide-open and bygone Western American landscape.
With its heart and its style firmly planted in the Hollywood New Wave, Assassination recalls the majestic magic hour lensing and languid tone of vintage Terence Malick. But more intriguing is the interest all three films share in recasting our cycle of celebrity worship and annihilation as an Old West myth of the outlaw and his apprehension: the hounding reporter/Mr. Jones figure looking to ensnare and constrain the emerging Dylan is imagined in later life as the curmudgeonly Pat Garrett still gunning for Dylan's withdrawn Billy the Kid. In Assassination, Robert Ford's obsession is presented as a kind of compulsive fame fixation, the adolescent Ford meekly collecting dime store James Brothers novels before his idolization leads down the inevitable path of disaffection and bloodshed. In the world of these films, the celebrity is outlaw and the outlaw celebrity, and for a rapt public, the only means of satiating our sick collective fascination for such miscreants is in our hypocritical attempt to reign them in, if not by a character assassination than by an actual one.
More favorite from the past year:
The King of Kong (Seth Gordon).
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Julian Schnabel's true story is of former Elle editor Jean Bauby's 'locked-in syndrome' following a stroke, the only parts of him left working his imagination, his memory, and his left eye, and the book he would eventually write about his experience using an intricate and rigorous system of blinks to dictate it. Schnabel's direction, making extended use of innovative first-person storytelling, elevates the affecting tale far beyond potential Lifetime movie-of-the-week mawkishness.
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet). Yes, I know you didn't see it. That's okay. But mark the name Jason Kohn; we will be seeing it again, and we will all be better off for that.
Into the Wild (Sean Penn)
The Iranian New Wave may be just past its prime, but films like Offside show that the country's cinema is without a doubt still among the most exciting in the world. Jafar Panahi's film, about a group of die-hard female soccer fans who disguise themselves as men to watch Iran's World Cup-qualifying match against Bahrain, is a 'comedy' whose humor is rooted not so much in that central scheme as in the real-life absurdity - women being banned from sporting events in Iran - which would bring about such actions.
Inland Empire - Who else but David Lynch could make a surrealist avant-garde Polish horror film and STILL have it end with an elaborate sixties girl group song and dance number?
Wristcutters: A Love Story
Away From Her is an accomplished and touching film for anyone to have made; that it is the first feature from 27 year old actress Sarah Polley (My Life Without Me, Go) makes it all the more impressive, considering how empathetically and delicately it handles the themes of aging, loss and identity. Polley recalls Bergman in her approach and Ozu in her pastoral tone, creating a welcome reminder that emotions need not be extreme to run deep. This was perhaps the best directed film of the year.
Some of my favorite performances of the year:
Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl: Or: Ryan Gosling single-handedly saves another indie quirk-fest from drowning in its own high concept conceit.
Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men
Irfan Khan and Tabu in The Namesake (Mira Nair)
Max Von Sydow in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Max Von Sydow is still alive! And still acting! And still damned, scary good at it!
Chris Cooper in Breach (Billy Ray)
Christopher Walken in Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro)
Ellen Page in Juno (Jason Reitman): Page joins a cast of standouts including J.K. Simmons, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner and Michael Cera (doing some of the most ambitious head sweatband work since Luke Wilson in The Royal Tenenbaums) that succeed in channeling the script, a maddeningly over-polished, suffocatingly ironic collection of hipster catch-phrases, into performances that resemble real human beings.
Hal Holbrook in Into the Wild
Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman in The Darjeeling Limited
My caveat: there are a handful of contenders I either haven't gotten to yet or that haven't been released, including The Savages, Persepolis and There Will Be Blood, so things may be added or amended to the above list.
What say you?
PS - I don't forese renewing my account, so this will likely be my last blog. It's been good talking to everybody. Happy holidays to all.
VIEW 19 of 19 COMMENTS
I read a few reviews going in that slagged it because the final act played for laughs (which, for the record, I think is a misunderstanding on the part of the reviewers) and I didn't really have a problem with that... I just wanted a better story. I wanted it to pick me up and leave me breathless and it just... didn't. It was kind of like Zodiac in that way. A+ for film making, B for storyline.