I saw a number of fine films in 2011. Here, I talk about the great ones and what I thank them for.
Beginners, for Christopher Plummer’s exuberance as a recently-out elderly gay man; for Ewan McGregor’s hopeful melancholia as his perpetual bachelor son, and for this exchange between them: “HAL: Well, let’s say that since you were little, you always dreamed of getting a lion. And you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait but the lion doesn’t come. And along comes a giraffe. You can be alone, or you can be with the giraffe. OLIVER: I’d wait for the lion.”
The Tree of Life, for having more questions than answers; for the depicting the creation of the cosmos; for daring us to believe; for the Job references; and for this quote: “The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by.”
Midnight in Paris, for delighting my English major self; for getting Woody back on track; for Corey Stoll’s Hemingway adapting the writer’s writing style for speech perfectly; for your light and warmhearted touch; and for teaching me about the temporal.
Martha Marcy May Marlene, for making me feel the quietly terrifying atmosphere Elizabeth Olsen’s dazed cult escapee feels; and for a talented Olsen sister.
The Descendants, for Alexander Payne’s surefire writing and style, for tween actors who can actually act, and for George Clooney’s on-camera talents once again trumping his off-camera smugness.
Win Win & 50/50, for putting Paul Giamatti and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the lead, and for finding comedy in the tragic and lessons in our own shortcomings.
The Muppets & The Artist, for your unabashed optimism and anachronistic humor, which modern cynics won’t like but need anyway.
X-Men: First Class, for being a first-class reboot/prequel/whatever you are; for Michael Fassbender’s and James McAvoy’s anchoring your greater meaning with gravitas and bravado.
Meek’s Cutoff, for letting Michelle Williams disappear; and for your unforgiving stare into the mysterious soul of the American West.
Attack the Block, for knowing exactly what you are and never straying from that; for employing kids who can actually act; and for surprising me for the better.
Warrior, for Nick Nolte’s Paddy Conlon giving an otherwise conventional sports story some achingly real meaning.
[Note: I still need to see Certified Copy, A Separation, Take Shelter, and Barney’s Version, among other films, but this is where the list stands currently.]
Sometimes we as moviegoers have to let movies affect us in ways we cannot explain or control. One of those ways is through music. Whether it is an epic orchestral theme or a lone piano suite, music in the movies can make the difference in how I respond to the story. Listening to a CD of movie themes got me thinking about my favorite movie moments that were made better because of their music. There are many such moments, but here are a few that stand out.
Cast Away: Saying farewell to Wilson
When Chuck (Tom Hanks) finally leaves the island four years after crash-landing there, he is mistakenly separated from his beloved anthropomorphized volleyball but can’t retrieve him. There is no music for the entire film until that time, about 50 minutes in. So when the soft strings finally come in, we feel the catharsis the same as Chuck as he paddles away. The theme itself, by Forrest Gump and Back to the Future composer Alan Silvestri, is so tender and affecting.
WALL-E: Eva and WALL-E’s space dance
I’m glad Pixar has basically locked down Thomas Newman for their film scores, because every one he does is magical, including The Green Mile, American Beauty, The Shawshank Redemption, and Finding Nemo. In a film full of cute moments between the robotic protagonists, the impromptu, extinguisher-propelled ballet may be the cutest.
Lord of theRings: The wholetrilogy
I’d argue the LOTR score is the most necessary and perfect ever. Howard Shore’s compositions are practically supporting characters in themselves. There are many stand-out moments in that trilogy for me, but there are two that would not have worked without a musical backing:
The first is in Fellowship of the Ring after Gandalf falls into the Mines of Moria as the fellowship looks on helplessly. It is a shocking and grievous moment, but the lone mournful soprano voice over the somber choir does not overwhelm it. It allows us to rest on the sadness if just for a moment.
The second is in Return of the King in one of the many endings, after Aragorn becomes the new king and the four hobbits bow to him. He stops them and says, in recognition of their sacrifices, that they bow to no one. Then the whole crowd bows down to them and the main theme of the trilogy swells one last time, representing the grandest end of an epic adventure.
Once: The breakup song
Once has quickly become my favorite film “musical” more so than real musicals because the music interweaves with the story so seamlessly without the awkward transitions between dialogue and song. In a movie with so many good moments, I still have to choose the scene when the Guy plays the song “Lies” while watching home video of him and his ex-girlfriend. He is still heartbroken, and the song backs him up in that.
The Truman Show: The end
The piano-heavy score by Philip Glass and Burkhard Dallwitz mixes classical standards with original compositions, adding whimsy and sophistication to Peter Weir’s allegorical tale. The best moment, though, comes at the end when Truman finally hits the wall, literally and metaphorically. It is a culmination of everything Truman has been through and we as the viewers wait in anticipation for how he handles the moment. It’s as good an ending as I’ve ever seen in any movie.
Remember the Titans: The final game
The music throughout the movie builds little by little, but it isn’t until the final game when the orchestra is at full-blast. Trevor Rabin’s score builds with the tension of the final game, but the moment I always remember is when Coaches Boone and Yost exchange congratulations at the end of the game and hold up the ball together. It is a triumphant moment for the team and for the music.
For a college class in winter 2008-09, we had to make a “zine” on a topic of our choice. Mine was called The Movies: Take Two. It aimed to “take a different look” at all things movie-related using crowd-sourced haikus, six-word summaries, and some of my own comparative film analyses to cast some of my favorite flicks in different lights. Usually zines are handcrafted to look purposely shoddy, but since I’m not very crafty I decided to make mine in Adobe InDesign. I still tried to create the haphazard look, but keep it clean at the same time.
I’ll post the other pages some other time, but today as part of The Simba Life’s weeklong fête of Back to the Future Week, I’m sharing the part of the zine that honored the 1985 classic, albeit in an unorthodox way. Enjoy my reverently rendered irreverence.
To celebrate Back to the FutureWeek, I’m posting a story I wrote for my school paper in 2008 about my hopeless devotion to the time-bending trilogy.
If I were asked to name what I think are the greatest films of all time, I might throw out a few high-brow titles like Rear Window or Casablanca or Taxi Driver. But if I had to name my favorite film, one that makes me love movies and makes me love being alive, it would be Back to the Future.
A silly overstatement, right? Not in the least. I first saw Back to the Future in middle school. Since then it has become my comfort movie. Everyone has one. Everyone has a movie they watch because it reminds them of their childhood or makes them feel happy. My sister watches Seven Brides for Seven Brothers because it got her through the grieving process after our grandma died. I watch Back to the Future because, like all those classic Disney movies, it reminds me of the goodness of my youth. Plus, it is simply a good movie.
You don’t realize it the first few times you watch it, but Back to the Future is an incredibly well-written movie. There are so many subtle things you don’t notice until you reach the BTTF-nerd status as I have. For instance, the mall is named “Twin Pines Mall” in the beginning. Then, after Marty, played by Michael J. Fox, comes back from the future, it is named “Lone Pine Mall.” This is because he ran over one of the two pine trees in Mr. Peabody’s front yard. (Remember when I mentioned the nerd status? I wasn’t kidding.)
The writing, especially the dialogue, is exceptionally smart, given that the movie was a big-budget blockbuster when it was released in 1985. The Doc Brown character, played by Christopher Lloyd, has many of the funniest one-liners as the eccentric scientist from the 1950s. He wonders what Marty’s strange suit is and Marty tells him it’s a radiation suit. He responds, “A radiation suit? Of course! Because of all the fallout from the atomic wars.” Later, Marty says his catchphrase “This is heavy” again and Doc wonders why: “There’s that word again: ‘heavy.’ Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth’s gravitational pull?”
The acting, as well, is spot-on. But did you know that Michael J. Fox was not originally cast as Marty? Eric Stoltz, who played the drug dealer in Pulp Fiction, was cast first and even filmed a few scenes, but the director Robert Zemeckis fired him (thank God) once Fox found room in his filming schedule for his popular sitcom Family Ties. Christopher Lloyd as Doc and Crispin Glover as George McFly were perfectly peculiar in their roles and Tom Wilson as Biff Tannen created one of the all-time greatest movie bullies.
But any movie can have clever writing and good casting. What makes me love it so? Honestly, I don’t know. The original music score is wildly fun and the 1950s sets are great bits of nostalgia, but they are just parts of the whole. It just has that X-factor that won’t let me forget how much I love to sit in a darkened room and watch a story unfold. This particular story just happens to zip around the space-time continuum with a slightly insecure, “Johnny B. Goode”-playing teenager and his lovably loquacious scientist friend.
If I can’t explain why I love the Back to the Future trilogy so much, I can simply show you. In addition to the posters from all three movies hanging on my wall, I have three different DeLorean die-cast, 1:18 scale model cars (one from each movie) and a pen and a key chain I bought from Universal Studios after taking the now-defunct BTTF ride. Yet my nerdness runs deeper: I also have a copy of the letter Marty writes to Doc which I made myself in junior high pinned to my bulletin board at home. Yeah, that’s right.
But the most amazing experience I’ve had with Back to the Future had nothing to do with the movie itself. When I was in eighth grade, my dad met a guy who owned a real DeLorean and asked him to dress up like Doc Brown, crazy wig and all, and cruise down my street and into my driveway. He leaped out of the car and yelled, “Chad, you’ve got to come back with me! Back to the future!” I jumped in the car and we drove around the city like crazy time-travelers. It was an otherworldly experience. (I now realize I never thanked my dad for. Thanks, Dad!)
To me, Back to the Future represents the incredible power of cinema. I feel like I take in the world through my senses when I watch it. I know that sounds crazy, but I can’t describe it any other way. I know that every one of us has a book or a movie or a song that has an invisible hold on our hearts and souls. Mine just happens to rock along to “Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Is this the real life? / Is this just fantasy? / Caught in a landslide / No escape from reality / Open your eyes / Look up to the skies / And see. —“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen
A few summers ago I was in Guatemala with my sister, staying with an older married couple near the Pacific coast. Over lunch one day they asked me what traits I desired in a future spouse. They asked about height, hair color, personality, etc. and I told them what I liked. That’s all great, said Alvira, the wife and homemaker, “But remember, don’t look for the ideal girl; look for the real girl.”
This dichotomy of ideal versus real stuck with me. We all have things in our lives we wish were real but are actually illusions. Think about your favorite movies, books, or TV shows. Don’t you wish you could live in those worlds? You can, for a time, but eventually the story ends and the illusion fades away.
But what if we tried to hold on to these ideals, these stories we tell ourselves, because they’re beautiful or inspiring, even though they’re ultimately temporal? This is a question both Gil from Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011) and Richard from Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles (2009) struggle with in their encounters with the ephemeral.
Neither Richard nor Gil are satisfied. Gil (Owen Wilson) is a self-described “hack” Hollywood screenwriter who vacations in Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. A neurotic and a romantic, he’s stuck between his obligations to the lifestyle Inez wishes to keep up and his newly kindled desire to finish his long-dormant passion project – a novel about a man who works in a nostalgia shop specializing in memorabilia from 1920s Paris.
Here, as they say, comes the turn. In a twist of fate, Gil arrives at a bar, circa 1928, filled with rowdy patrons resplendent in classic Twenties dress. He bumps into a Zelda Fitzgerald and her husband Scott. Cole Porter croons from the piano. He later meets a broody writer named Ernest Hemingway, who after learning Gil is a writer, offers to give his manuscript to Gertrude Stein. For some reason, he’s come face to face with all of his literary idols.
Meanwhile, in late-1930s New York, Richard (Zac Efron), a bored high-school student, meets by chance the famous theater wunderkind Orson Welles. Welles needs a ukulele player for his oft-delayed production of Julius Caesar at the Mercury Theater and finds Richard suitable for the show, which is supposed to open in days.
Like Gil, Richard soon finds himself in another world, performing beside the larger-than-life and mercurial Orson Welles, who runs rehearsals pell-mell yet commands great respect from his colleagues in spite of his massive ego. Richard grows close to Sonja (Claire Danes), Welles’ hard-to-get secretary, and soon considers her his lover. For Richard this is the ideal life: performing on stage far away from his boring family and school.
Gil, too, grows close to a woman in his otherworld. Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a beautiful fashion designer, shares his romanticism and validates Gil’s desires more than Inez ever did. He falls hard for Adriana just as he falls further away from Inez.
But sooner or later, the illusion evaporates. Sonja, ambitious above all else, sleeps with Welles the night before the opening. Too jealous for his own good, Richard castigates the thin-skinned Welles, who in turn fires Richard. They make nice before the show and perform it splendidly, but Richard later learns Orson “just wanted his opening,” so Richard’s out for good.
Gil has a different kind of clash. Adriana doesn’t share his love of the 1920s because it’s her present. “It’s dull,” she says. She much prefers La Belle Époque, Paris’ Victorian era of the 1890s. This triggers Gil’s light-bulb moment: everyone thinks the past era was better than his or her present. Another character in Midnight in Paris calls it “Golden Age thinking.”
So whether out of naiveté or misplaced optimism, they finally awake from their dreams. Yet even in their dreams, both men had brushes with reality. For Richard, it was Greta, a girl he meet-cutes in a music store. For Gil, it was Gabrielle, a flea market vendor selling Cole Porter LPs. They talk briefly each time about music and art, but the thing about these women compared to the ones in their fantasies is that they’re real. Gabrielle isn’t the stunner of Gil’s dreams like Adriana was; she’s flesh and blood. She may not inspire great works of art with her beauty, but she loves walking in the rain just like Gil does. Greta doesn’t work in a grandiose theater production like Sonja; she’s a struggling writer who connects with Richard away from the spotlight.
Gil and Richard never had a chance at their dream women because they didn’t actually exist. They may have been real for a time, but only for a time. That’s the problem with illusions; they don’t last forever. A connection with real life – with Gabrielle and with Greta – made them realize that.
The ideal is temporary, but fools you into thinking you can have it all and keep it that way. The real, conversely, is tangible, yet can fool you into thinking life is dull because it isn’t always enchanting. We find fulfillment in the ideal because it lets us escape from an undesirable present. But Gil realizes eventually that “the present is a little unsatisfying because life is a little unsatisfying.” No illusion will ever change that.
This isn’t a depressing thought. In fact, it can set you free. To paraphrase the wise old thief from The Italian Job, you can either let the illusion enhance your life or define it. Don’t let it be the latter.
So we need not shatter our illusions completely. At their best, illusions are simply stories that can inspire, inform, and reveal beauty to us in many ways. When we let these stories enhance our lives rather than define them, real, amazing things can happen.
At the end of Welles, Richard, a little blue after losing his dream job, the illusion shattered, meets Greta at the museum again. Her short story is being published, and Richard is finally clear-eyed about his life.
“It’s an exciting time,” Greta says, “because it feels like…”
Can’t say that I’m a big fan of the results of this new poll from The Telegraph, in which voters named Forrest Gump the greatest movie character of all time, with James Bond, Scarlett O’Hara, Hannibal Lecter, and Indiana Jones filling out the top five.
While I know some lists are entirely unserious affairs, the fact that Bond, O’Hara, Hannibal the Cannibal, and the Raider of the Lost Ark were beat out by, let’s be honest, an anodyne dolt who is not in the least bit as interesting as any of the other runners-up is confusing and a little disheartening.
Great movie characters aren’t colorless, Rorschach-like stand-ins who just let their circumstances and events of the day passively happen to them – however memorable or pivotal the events – as is the case with Forrest Gump. Great movie characters have color, and they make their own life happen. They go out a risk life and limb to find the Ark of the Covenant, to sail a house with balloons to South America, to fight crime while web-slinging through the streets of New York.
Great characters do something. Forrest does stuff, sure. But, man, is he boring while he does it.
Let’s be clear: I love Forrest Gump. I don’t have to love the character to love everything else about that film. And I guess it says something about the enduring appeal of the film that Gump can show up on a poll like this almost two decades later. But do I think he’ll be on the same poll over 70 years after the film’s release, like Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With The Wind is?
Living in a warm climate during the Christmas season is good and bad. On one hand, you can walk around in shorts and a t-shirt while your northern friends brave harsh winds and icy roads just to get to their mailbox. But on the other hand, it’s just not Christmas without the cold.
As a lifelong Midwesterner, I love the traditions of Christmas. My family has many of the well-known Hallmark moments of the holidays. My house and halls were always decked with green and ruby red Christmas lights and decorations. I always cut down the balsam fir evergreen with my family at a local tree farm and dragged it through the snow to the car, strapping it to the hood and bringing it home to bedazzle with ornaments new and old. We always – always – watch It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve with the fireplace roaring and the popcorn popping. And, yes, I even love the Midwestern cold that suffuses all of these things.
But like the winter cold, these things happen every year, no matter what. When we vacationed in Florida over Christmas one year, we knew we wouldn’t have the cold or the tree, but we still brought our copy of It’s a Wonderful Life to keep tradition alive. And that’s what Christmas is often about: keeping tradition alive in spite of the circumstances.
In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer uses the Exodus story to illustrate the idea of holiness and tradition, which are two concepts at the very center of Christmas. Tozer explains how the Israelites, having lived for four hundred years in Egypt surrounded by all kinds of idolatry, had forgotten the very idea of God’s holiness. To correct this, Tozer writes, “God began at the bottom. He localized Himself in the cloud and fire and later when the tabernacle had been built He dwelt between holy and unholy. There were holy days, holy vessels, holy garments. By these means Israel learned that God is holy.”
‘God is holy.’ That is the simple thought that permeates the Advent season. And so when I decorate my evergreen tree and listen to ancient hymns in church and watch a movie with my family and walk through the falling snow, I know that it is not these things in and of themselves that remind me of the reason for the season; it’s the warmth of God’s holiness.
“Let us believe,” Tozer concludes, “that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.” Our traditions, like the Israelites’ cloud and fire, are best when they reveal God at His simplest and at His holiest.
How great was the epic Western opening sequence? (It was actually a recreation of the original film’s opener.) I couldn’t stop smiling throughout this movie. It does a remarkable job of marrying old characters with new challenges. But the reason this is the best of the year is its ending. Andy decides to give away his toys (and, in essence, his adolescence) as he enters adulthood, leading to the most emotional and bittersweet goodbyes I can remember in film. So long, Woody, Buzz and Co. Here’s hoping the Academy wises up and awards Best Picture to the best film of 2010.
Black Swan
I sat in the theater, watching the credits roll, wondering what in the name of Natalie Portman just happened. What was the most stressful movie-going experience for me was also the most fascinating. Credit goes to director Darren Aronofsky, for creating the film’s unique vision and suffocating atmosphere, and to Portman, who finally shows how far she can go to achieve greatness as the conflicted ballerina. Who says ballet isn’t interesting?
The Social Network
The director David Fincher jokingly calls his film “the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies.” On technical merits, it’s no Citizen Kane. But The Social Network understands its generation much better than any of Hughes’ movies did. You can’t get hung up on the facts because when viewed as an allegory of our time—the Age of Facebook—it’s brilliant and oddly epic. Here’s to seeing more of Jesse Eisenberg (and less of Justin Timberlake).
The Fighter
Mark Wahlberg beefs up, Amy Adams dresses down, and Christian Bale whacks out. And all three make this taut, unvarnished true story worth watching. Like many good sports films, The Fighter isn’t so much about the sport as it is about the competitor. Though Bale sticks out as the crack-addict brother, it’s Wahlberg who shines as the boxer with something to prove.
True Grit
The Coen Brothers’ first foray into the Western is in many ways the Brothers’ least typical. The trailer doesn’t let on how funny the film is. A lot of the humor derives from the characters’ antiquated diction and sharp tongue of 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld. But watch out for what is arguably the only time the Brothers Coen let sentiment sneak into their story’s end.
Inception
More amazing, I think, than Christopher Nolan’s mind-blow of a movie’s special effects and concept was how such a big summer feature was kept under wraps for so long. I really didn’t know what to expect until I saw it in theaters, and when I did I was hugely impressed by the mind-web Nolan spun. Not perfect by any means, Inception gives me hope for more smart, well-made summer films. (A fool’s hope?)
The Kids Are All Right
Gets the award for most pleasant surprise. Once you move beyond the novelty of the lesbian-mothers dynamic, The Kids Are All Right reveals itself as a compelling and endearingly odd family drama. Plus, you can’t go wrong with Annette Bening and Julianne Moore.
Save the Whales is so last century. Dolphins, according to the new Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, are what really need saving now.
The film profiles Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer who captured and trained the dolphins for the 1960s show Flipper. It was during that time when O’Barry realized the inherent cruelty of his job and what the dolphins went through as domesticated animals, so he set out on a lifelong crusade against dolphin hunting and keeping them in captivity.
There is one coastal town in Japan, we learn, that is notorious for herding dolphins into a secretive cove to capture them for use in the dolphin entertainment industry (SeaWorld, among other places) or simply to slaughter them to sell for meat. The fishermen who do this maintain a paranoid level of secrecy around the cove, making sure no one can see what actually goes on.
However, a team of divers and activists from the Oceanic Preservation Society teams up with O’Barry to sneak behind the iron curtain and expose the nefariousness once and for all. Using a kind of subterfuge the creators of Ocean’s Eleven would be proud of, they install small cameras in fake rocks and on the cliffs surrounding the cove to try to capture on film the merciless killing the small Japanese fishing town is so eager to disguise.
The Cove is a nail-biting thriller disguised as an environmental call-to-arms. The scenes of the team breaking into the cove, eluding guards and avoiding detection, are better than anything you’ve seen in any recent spy movie. The new information we learn, too, about how dolphin meat makes its way onto the market without consumers knowing it, and how Japan curries favor from other coastal nations in order to avoid controversy is fascinating.
The film is ultimately one-sided; you know who you’re supposed to root for. Yet once you’ve seen the footage of the actual slaughter, rooting for the dolphins becomes the easiest thing you can possibly do. It’s not for the faint of heart, but The Cove deserves to be seen.
The Lives of Others (2006) – A German film about a surveillance expert who spies on a playwright in Communist Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Lives of Others won the Best Foreign film at the Oscars and for good reason. Unbearably suspenseful and surprisingly moving, The Lives of Others shows that the best films don’t always come from Hollywood.
Memento (2000) – The woefully underrated and underused Guy Pearce stars as a detective who searches for his wife’s killer after losing his short-term memory. The film plays out in reverse, revealing the story piece by piece like a jigsaw puzzle. Gimmicky to some, the premise demands your attention the more you watch this masterfully chaotic film. Repeated viewings required.
WALL-E (2008) – Of all the post-apocalyptic films I’ve seen, WALL-E is by far the cutest. Two robots—a clunky trash-compactor and a sleek land-rover—meet by chance and fall in robot love? It’s a match made in Pixar heaven. From the skillfully rendered 20-minute wordless opening sequence to WALL-E and Eve’s beautiful ballet in space, WALL-E is animation at its best.
Once (2007) – Boy meets girl. The concept has been overdone, but in Once it’s taken back to basics with two Irish musicians who meet and make beautiful music together and become companions fighting against loneliness. A musical in the most unorthodox way, the deceptively simple songs anchor what is one of the most uplifting and honest love stories I’ve ever seen.
Unbreakable (2000) – Most people prefer writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 mega-hit The Sixth Sense but Unbreakable is surely the superior work, if only for its restrained pace and fascinating characters. Subtly structured in the classic comic book superhero frame, everything in the film from the color palette to the redemptive love story makes Unbreakable perhaps the most underrated film of the decade.
Zodiac (2007) – Paranoia and dread permeate this noir thriller from director David Finch about the Zodiac killer of 1970s San Francisco. Based on the book by a cartoonist who tried to solve the murders, Zodiac represents the best in boiler-plate drama with its slow-building tension, superb ensemble acting, and stunning camera work. There’s no happy ending, but there’s no film like it.
In America (2002) – An overlooked film from director Jim Sheridan, In America features an Irish family newly immigrated to New York City drudging through the trials and tribulations of living in near-poverty. Told through the 10-year-old daughter’s point of view, In America shows a family fighting against tragedy and heartache and sticking together throughout it all.
High Fidelity (2000) – John Cusask is Rob Gordon, music snob and man in crisis. After his latest relationship ends, Rob catalogs his five biggest break-ups and the music that guided him through them. Underscored by a top-notch soundtrack, High Fidelity spotlights the vulnerability that stews beneath masculine hubris. Bonus points for the Bruce Springsteen cameo.
Children of Men (2006) – In a not-so-far-fetched future, the terror-wracked world in Children of Men is in chaos after women become completely infertile. Clive Owen plays a world-weary has-been who reluctantly escorts the only pregnant girl on Earth to safety. Featuring groundbreaking cinematography, Children of Men manages to inspire a ray of hope in the darkest of places.
Almost Famous (2000) – A semiautobiographical work from writer-director Cameron Crowe, this 1970s coming of age tale of a teen rock writer who goes on the road with an up-and-coming rock band is funny and serious, nostalgic and brutally honest. Patrick Fugit shines as the boyish protagonist who enters a world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll and comes out the other end a new person.
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001) – While Return of the King proved a satisfying conclusion to a grand trilogy, Fellowship of the Ring remains the stand-out installment for its sweeping scope and emotional core. A game-changer in every way, everything from its breathtaking locales to the expertly created creatures makes Fellowship the new standard for the cinematic epic.
Brokeback Mountain (2005) – Sorry, Crash; Brokeback Mountain was the best film of 2005 and one of the best of the decade. Against stunning Western vistas and an elegant score, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger help turn the “gay cowboy movie” cliché into a tragic and somber requiem of a dream deferred. Forget the Joker; Ledger as Ennis del Mar is the best performance of his short career.
A History of Violence (2005) – The only think more enigmatic than the title is the film itself, a profound meditation on violence disguised as a family drama and gangster movie. Viggo Mortensen proves a wonderfully complex character struggling to maintain his identity in spite of himself, while Maria Bello plays the supportive wife stuck in the middle of it all.
Casino Royale (2006) – For the last few Bond movies, James Bond was a joke. But with Casino Royale, nobody’s laughing at him anymore. Daniel Craig, the best Bond ever, turned him back into a fist-wielding badass with class, and Eva Green’ Vesper Lynd proves a sultry Bond girl who won Bond’s heart against his better judgment. Add to that exciting chases and poker games and you’ve got a Bond movie worth watching.
Into Great Silence (2005) – This is a film nobody saw but should. A German documentary about the monks who live at the Blank Monastery in France, there is hardly any talking at all for the almost 3-hour run time; instead, we get to watch what the monks do every day, which is, for 6 days a week, live simple lives in complete silence. It’s an exercise in patience, but very rewarding and immensely gratifying to the soul.
The Best of the Rest
No Country for Old Men (2007), Finding Nemo (2003), Grizzly Man (2005), United 93 (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), Minority Report (2002), Stranger than Fiction (2006), Half Nelson (2006), Pan’s Labyrinth (2007), The Squid and the Whale (2007)
Published in the North Central Chronicle in September 2009.
Everyone has a favorite animated movie. I’m a Toy Story man myself. But no matter which film you prefer, it’s clear that our generation—the Millennials, born between 1983 and 2000—has been the most spoiled in history in terms of the animated films we’ve grown up watching.
The first phase of the most recent golden age of animation began unofficially in 1989 with The Little Mermaid. The film was Disney’s reentry into relevance after decades of forgettable material. It was a box-office smash, spawning merchandise like nobody’s business and charming young girls worldwide, making them Disney customers for life.
After The Little Mermaid came Beauty and the Beast in 1991 and Aladdin the next year—two more cash cows and critical darlings. Beauty and the Beast even earned a nomination for Best Picture, the only animated film to date to do so. From there we were awed by The Lion King and Pocahontas. The former remains the Lord of the Rings of kids’ movies with its epic scope and affecting story.
Perhaps the most appealing part of these movies is the music. The composer Alan Menken created the music for all of those films and all of it is fantastic. I marvel every time I listen to “A Whole New World” at how perfect a pop song it is. “Part of Your World” and “Kiss the Girl” and “I Just Can’t Wait to be King”—each song is so flawlessly constructed in melody and tone.
These songs compose the soundtrack of our lives, whether you admit it or not. The stories and characters are fun, sure, but when you’re driving with your friends, only a Disney song will get the whole car singing. In 40 years we’ll be singing these songs along with our kids as they discover these films for the first time, just as we watched Pinocchio and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs six decades after they were made and were nevertheless enchanted.
The release of The Lion King in 1995 was the apex of Disney domination. But that year also became the springboard for the second phase of the golden age of animation: the Pixar era.
I often think about how lucky I am to be growing up in the age of Pixar. Their films are renowned for their universal appeal, but there’s nothing like having watched Toy Story as an eight-year-old boy and being fascinated by the notion that all your toys could actually come alive. On the other hand, as an adult I’m equally entertained by the complexity of The Incredibles and the pure joy of WALL-E and the surprising tenderness of Up.
I’m also struck by how Pixar’s most recent projects—the triple whammy of Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up—showed something important. All three were predicted to fail to earn as much money as their most successful predecessors. Yet all three dominated the box office and won over audiences and critics with equal admiration. This proves the staying power of Pixar’s pictures lies not in the breadth of their merchandising but in their smart and sophisticated storytelling.
I’m not sure how long this gilded age will last. After all, not all the animated films of the last two decades were good (anyone remember The Road to El Dorado? Didn’t think so). But looking forward a few years may give us a few clues. Next summer Pixar will release Toy Story 3 and Disney will release The Princess and the Frog, which will be a return to the classic 2-D animation style and feature Disney’s first African-American princess. Those two films alone make me confident that this current age of awe-inspiring animation will take us to infinity and beyond.
Yeah, it’s good. Great, even. It’ll be another hit for Pixar, and deservedly so.
I thought making a movie about a rat in a kitchen would be a tough sell, but alas, they made Ratatouille.
Then came a largely dialogue-less movie about a robot stuck on a trash-riddled Earth in the future. Wall-E was the best movie of last year.
And now Up, a story about a lonely old man who travels to South America in his balloon-rigged house with a precocious boy. It’s at times funny, hilarious, exciting, and heart breaking in the most uplifting way.
Published in the North Central Chronicle on April 24, 2009.
Let’s pretend I’m a teenage girl and that you’re my best friend. I’ve just told you about this guy I started dating. He’s perfect in every way, I say. He stares at me while I sleep, he alienates me from my friends and, among other things, he drives a wedge between me and my single dad.
Wait…what?
Oh, you mean that those aren’t actually good things? Edward Cullen, the lead vampire from Twilight, does all of those things to Bella, the main character in the film, and yet women swoon over him. Why?
Let’s start with the superficial. The novel describes Edward as “impossibly beautiful,” his body as hard and cold as marble. He’s impossibly smart too: he plays and composes classical music and has two degrees from Harvard. And, like any good bad boy, he drives really, really nice cars really, really fast.
Bella goes on and on about how mysterious and seducing and perfect he is. But once they actually get together, she wholeheartedly submits herself to his every whim. The fact that Edward can read people’s minds (though not Bella’s for some reason-presumably because she doesn’t really have that much going on up there) shows that he is all about control. This becomes evident as the two grow closer;they become inseparable (though not in the cute way), and when a rival vampire clan jeopardizes Bella’s life, Edward tells her to abandon her sweet, thoughtful and lonely dad to skip town. Bella was indeed in danger, but Edward didn’t have to force her to blow off her dad.
What makes me cringe more than the film’s lessons is the viewer response to them. We talk so much about how pornography and advertising and television are giving young girls unrealistic expectations about body image and relationships, but what about crazes for a novel that promotes the suppression of self-confidence and identity and creates a steamy hero out of a cold and brooding vampire?
My sisters are obsessed with the series; one so much so that she read one of the books in church, hiding it in the hymnal she was supposed to be using. And she’s not alone. Fan groups and forums have sprung up all over the place with readers confessing their undying love and unhealthy addiction for Edward and the vampire saga. On one such site called “Twilight Moms,” a poster admitted: “I have no desires to be part of the real world right now. Nothing I was doing before holds any interest to me.”
Granted, it’s not just vampire romance novels that can pull people in so seductively. But the fact that some women may expect, if only secretly, that their boyfriend or husband will start acting like Edward is alarming and wholly unfair. It’s like when a man expects his girlfriend or wife to perform like a porn star in bed. Pornography is not real sex, and Edward is not a real man.
I don’t want to completely destroy what many women see as an ideal man. It’s good for men to look out for what is best for their significant other. But I still struggle with the thought of trying to become someone like Edward Cullen, because he’s really not someone any man should want to be, or any woman should want to love.
A blogger at Salon.com summed up well the lesson being told to young men through the movie:
“Don’t be fun, thoughtful, quirky or smart if you want to get the girl. Be a d—. But be a d— who can stop cars with your bare hands. And look depressed. But be good looking while you’re depressed. And express your desire to be with the girl of your dreams but be vague about why you can’t be with her. Confuse her, make her crazy, change your moods by the hour and make sure your hair looks like Johnny Depp in the mid-90s.”
I don’t have two Harvard degrees or chiseled, marble-like features. I don’t drive sports cars or live in a mansion. I don’t have immortal life or superhuman strength. What does that mean for me? If I want to be in a relationship with a girl but I know that when she thinks of the “perfect man” she thinks of Edward Cullen, I lose. Because I am impossibly imperfect.
But who isn’t? That’s why unrealistic expectations, even if they are gleaned from fiction, are so destructive: they don’t allow us to be real, to be human.
But then, Edward Cullen isn’t human. He’s a vampire. So, ladies, dream away, I guess. But when you wake up, don’t tell me what you dreamt about. I have a feeling I will be sorely disappointed.
Being a kid today has got to be tough. Being a kid with an insatiable creative appetite and a slight case of obsessive compulsive disorder has got to be even tougher. That’s what Phoebe (played by 11-year-old Elle Fanning, Dakota’s younger sister) has to go through in Phoebe in Wonderland, the newest film from director Daniel Barnz.
The film establishes early Phoebe’s unassailable creativity. She’s the Tortured Artist—albeit a kid version—who is alienated from her classmates for being “different” and feels confined by her school’s suppressive methods. She is even put into therapy after her OCD goes a little too far, but again becomes restless within its confines. Her home life isn’t any easier; both parents are writers who, trying to get published, struggle to find time to connect with Phoebe and their other daughter, who becomes jealous of the attention Phoebe gets because of her tendency to lash out.
But then, a mysterious new drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson) is hired at her school and stages a production of Alice in Wonderland. Phoebe, her curiosity peaked by the teacher and the chance of living in the magical world of Wonderland for real, tries out and lands the lead over the other girls whose self entitlement contrasts clearly with Phoebe’s unassuming self confidence.
The drama teacher, rather than simply telling the young thespians what to do, lets them do it for themselves, thereby giving them the power they lack in the classroom. Phoebe thrives in this environment, letting her imagination run wild. She daydreams about dancing with characters from Alice in Wonderland, which eventually gets her into some trouble—the consequences of which lay the groundwork for the rest of the film.
This is Fanning’s first true role (she has played the younger version of her sister in a few movies and had a small part in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and she shines brightly in it. Her ability to look adorable while also transmitting a healthy dose of angst usually reserved for teenaged emo kids makes this film work. It doesn’t hurt that there is a strong supporting cast of adults around her: Bill Pullman and Felicity Huffman as the conflicted writer-parents create the environment in which Phoebe stews, and Patricia Clarkson offers the tender maternal love that Phoebe needs.
Phoebe in Wonderland could be a close sibling of Danny Boyle’s whimsical child-driven fable Millions. There are lessons to be learned by both the adults and the children, but it is ultimately the children—especially Phoebe—in this film who know how to live a life worth living; one led by imagination rather than inhibition.
…the most predictable Oscars ever. Every year it seems like the suspense is sucked out of the actual awards ceremony with the months of speculation and campaigning and Oscar ballots. This year, sadly, was even more predicable than previous ones because of the incessant and overrated Slumdog Millionaire cleaned house just as every one predicted it would.
I’ve been bitter since the nominations were announced in January because of the stunning omission of Wall-E from the Best Picture race. Logically, the best reviewed film of the year would at least be in the running for the category that supposedly recognizes the best film of the year. But instead, we’re forced to suffer through preening “issue” movies like Frost/Nixon and The Reader.
No one was talking about those movies this year. Even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, leading the pack with 13 nominations, was pretty much not a contender for the major awards.
I’ve written about the Academy’s bald-faced bias against animated movies here before, so I won’t wax on about that again. But this year’s Oscar ceremony, despite a great performance by Hugh Jackman, was not fun to watch because I knew that the best film wasn’t there.
Also, they must never do the “5 past nominees talk about this year’s nominees for 15 minutes” thing ever again. I liked having the narrative flow between the awards and such, but trim that dross out next year and the ceremony may actually be done in three hours.
Anyway, I’m so glad Slumdog Millionaire will finally go away. Maybe I’ll watch Wall-E again to cheer me up. Lord knows that robot has more going for him than anything else this year.
Published in the North Central Chronicle on January 30, 2009.
Let me count the ways…
1. You want normal people to like you, but you fail to acknowledge what people like.
In the past, you’ve been excused from this because most of the time the highest grossing film of year wasn’t worthy of awards. But this year is different. The Dark Knight and Wall-E dominated the box office and landed on many top 10 lists. What better combination can there be for awards season? The ratings for the awards ceremony have steadily decline to half the viewers since 1998; giving due props to the high quality popular films would have boosted viewership and proved that Hollywood isn’t always out of touch.
Instead, you’ve acknowledged films that barely anyone except film critics has seen. I know that most of the time, the smaller films are better than the box office winners so they deserve to win awards, but this was the year that broke that pattern. Instead of taking the chance to try something new, you stick with what works but isn’t very exciting.
2. Year after year the studios throw out mediocre Oscar bait like “The Reader” yet you still bite, hook, line, and sinker.
Ricky Gervais was right when told perennial nominee Kate Winslet at the Golden Globes, “I told you; do a Holocaust movie and the awards start coming.” Everybody knows which movies are being made simply because they have at least one ingredient in the magical formula guaranteed to clean up at the Oscars: angst, lots of yelling, Meryl Streep, or the Holocaust.
But I get it: it’s all about politics. The Reader got in because of the legendary influence of Hollywood heavyweight producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein (the same men who helped Shakespeare in Love upset Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture back in 1998). It’s not the quality of the film but the quality of the film’s PR that matters in the end. That is ultimately what is exacerbating the problem with how the Academy Awards are run, but I don’t foresee this changing any time soon.
3. You hate animated movies.
I don’t really know why. Maybe you’re afraid that nominating a film like Wall-E because you feel threatened by anything that doesn’t require overpaid humans to do the work. Or maybe you just don’t understand yet that animation is not a genre but simply another way to tell a story. Whatever the reason, you didn’t do animated films a favor by creating a separate category for them; you’re ghettoizing them. You’re saying animated movies do not equal real movies, even when the best reviewed film of the year is a great romantic science fiction adventure film that happens to be animated.
4. You never award people at the right time.
We’ve seen this countless times: an actor or actress or director winning for a film because it was viewed as more of a reward for their body of work rather than an award for that specific performance. Martin Scorsese winning in 2006 for The Departed is an example. Kate Winslet, the youngest actress to get six nominations, will probably win this year for The Reader because voters feel she is owed for having been snubbed before. This practice causes others who actually deserve to win, like Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky, to get robbed.
5. For being such a politically liberal town, you get really conservative during award season.
This, too, has a storied history. The so-so Crash won over the heavily favored, gay themed and superior picture Brokeback Mountain in 2005 because it was the safer pick. This year, The Reader, Frost/Nixon, and Slumdog Millionaire — historical or quasi-historical film with obvious messages — are up for the big awards instead of The Dark Knight and Wall-E, two films with powerful political and social commentary that liberals would ordinarily embrace in real life. For being the year for change, Hollywood has failed to change any of their award season habits.
In spite of my complaining, I still appreciate it when the Oscars showcase the art house pictures that don’t make hundreds of millions at the box office. There are a lot of well made films out there that wouldn’t be seen without the buzz that starts at the film festivals and carries them through awards season.
Still, the Academy needs to do a better job of rewarding art when it deserves it. The Reader doesn’t deserve it. In 10 years no one will remember it. Wall-E, however, will live on for a long time. It’s just a matter of whether the Academy wanted to live on with it. Apparently, they didn’t care that much.
Originally published in the North Central Chronicle on January 18, 2009, as part of a series called “Chad Picks Classic Flicks.”
An artist may not set out to create something that changes the world, but he just might do it by mistake. Marc Forster’s 2006 film Stranger Than Fiction is a movie about fate—or “the continuity of life and the inevitability of death” as one of its character puts it—and also the consequences of breaking continuity and challenging inevitability. Stranger Than Fiction subversively wrestles with these complicated ideas while maintaining the guise of a quirky Will Ferrell vehicle. That’s why I think it’s a modern classic.
There are really two stories going on in this movie that are hugely dependent upon each other. The core story is about author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) writing another in a series of acclaimed tragedies, but due to writer’s block she can’t figure out how to kill her main character, Harold Crick.
She has most of the story down though: Harold (Will Ferrell) is an IRS auditor living a painfully rigid and boring life. Everything in Harold’s world is simple, angular, and calculated. He can quickly compute complicated math problems in his head and count everything from the number of strokes he makes while brushing his teeth to the exact distance he is from his apartment. He has one friend that we know of, Dave, and his life is probably just as uninteresting as Harold’s. He follows this path with steadfast discipline until he meets Anna Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a beautiful bakery owner with a revolutionary’s bent, some unpaid back taxes, and a healthy scorn for the IRS and for Harold.
This is where a glitch in the universe adds a second dimension to the story: Once he meets Anna, Harold begins to hear Eiffel’s omniscient voice narrating his thoughts and actions as she writes them in her novel. First he is confused, then annoyed, and then scared after she says Harold awaits his “imminent death.” These two stories collide in Harold’s world, jarring him out of whack for the first time.
He tries to make sense of the voice in his head, visiting first a psychiatrist who brands him a schizophrenic, then a professor of literature (Dustin Hoffman) who decides that Harold is in fact a character in his own life story, and that he needs to figure out whether he is in a tragedy or a comedy. “In a tragedy, you die,” the professor says. “In a comedy, you get hitched.” Harold then sets off to discover this much, tallying in a notebook moments with Anna that constitute a “tragedy” or a “comedy.”
From there it’s an unlikely courtship where the auditor falls for the audited. The story is not meant to be realistic; rather, it is a fable set in a heightened reality. Filmed in Chicago, the director created that reality by discovering angles and perceptions a skilled photographer would see, rather than a tourist hitting the hot spots. The IRS office, Harold’s apartment, and even the streets themselves are white-washed, sterile, and modern.
Harold’s world is plain and starkly angular, whereas Anna’s is full of curves and colors. Harold gradually starts to stray from his straight and narrow path and finds liberation—this aided by his continuing quest to discover the source of the voice in his head and why he is on a path towards his death.
The screenwriter Zach Helm says the film is ultimately about saving lives. A bold statement, to be sure, but it’s nonetheless true. The story illustrates the need for saving people from the cold grip of uniformity by giving them something to live for. After their first very unpleasant encounter, Harold falls for Anna and she unintentionally saves his life by finally giving him something to live for. Inspired by his new emancipation, he goes to the movies, he buys a guitar, and he wears jeans for probably the first time in his life. He adds color to his life.
However, the angst created by Eiffel’s incessant voice in his head never really goes away, even after his liberation, and so his quest for understanding and peace continues until he discovers Eiffel and meets her face to face. It’s quite the moment.
Watching this movie again reminded me of two other modern classics: Adaptation and The Truman Show. Both are stories set in a heightened reality, with men who are stuck in a groove and have the desire to get out of it but can’t. In the case of Adaptation, it is Nicolas Cage’s character’s self-loathing that prevents his personal liberation; in The Truman Show it is Truman’s own fears of the unknown and also the powerful external forces around him that try to keep him in the status quo.
I realized having watched it many times that Stranger Than Fiction is my favorite kind of movie. It’s funny, it’s touching, but it also makes you think. It’s uplifting and philosophical, artistic and quick-witted. The cast is oddly perfect: Will Ferrell plays Harold with beautiful restraint, and Maggie Gyllenhaal provides power and tenderness when needed. Marc Forster, the director, injects the same unique flair he did in his wonderful 2004 picture Finding Neverland.
It didn’t appear on many top 10 lists in 2006 (though I did name it as one of my favorite films of the 2000s), but I think Stranger Than Fiction will age well because of its timelessness and emotional appeal — that is, if Will Ferrell would stop phoning in such mindless ballyhoo like Semi-Pro. One can only hope.
On his blog LookingCloser.org, Christian film critic Jeffrey Overstreet lays out his reasons why Slumdog Millionaire didn’t tickle his fancy as it has for so many other people.
I was pleased to see that someone shares my sentiments, however unpopular they may be.
By far the boldest movie of the year. The wordless first half-hour is delectably good and a bit subversive too. The plot sags once the robots leave Earth, but it remains a beauty to behold. I was surprised at how emotionally invested I was in those cute little robots. It’s certainly a better love story than anything I’ve seen humans try to pull off in a long time.
2. Happy-Go-Lucky
Sally Hawkins plays Poppy, an indelibly optimistic teacher who finds the good in everything around her-her stolen bicycle, her siblings’ rivalry, and even her racist driving instructor. She talks a mile a minute but it’s never overbearing and she’s always funny. This purely happy indie makes the perfect antidote for the depressing year we’ve had.
3. Man on Wire
What a thrill it was to watch this movie. A documentary about French acrobat Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center, Man on Wire shows through dramatic reenactments how Petit and his crew snuck to the top of the towers and accomplished a daring feat unlike any other. It gave me something good to think about whenever I see pictures of the Twin Towers.
4. In Bruges
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play two hit men sent to the scenic Belgian city of Bruges to hide out after a murder. Farrell’s character hates Bruges, while Gleeson’s loves it. They’re the funniest hit men since Pulp Fiction. The movie blends humor, action, and tragedy perfectly. No one saw this February release when it came out, but you have to see it now.
5. Rachel Getting Married
A good ol’ dysfunctional family flick. Anne Hathaway plays Kym, a narcissistic addict who leaves rehab for the weekend to attend her sister’s wedding. Tensions rise to the surface as old wounds within the family are ripped open. The film honestly and perfectly shows the love/hate dynamic that binds every family together, for better or for worse.
6. Shotgun Stories
Roger Ebert recommended this unknown indie about two sets of half-brothers engage in a deadly civil war in rural Arkansas after their common father dies. The father’s first family, the one he abandoned, takes their hate for their father out on his other sons, and vice versa. It’s a quietly menacing yet ultimately uplifting story that rings true.
7. The Dark Knight
A blockbuster that actually earned its acclaim. Heath Ledger certainly deserves at least an Oscar nod for his role-the best villain in a long time. Repeated viewings revealed the film’s biggest flaw; without the Joker, The Dark Knight would be pretty standard superhero movie fare. Nevertheless, it’s a thrill to watch.
8. Tell No One
A great French thriller about a man who goes on the run after being wrongly accused of his wife’s murder. Simply yet beautifully shot, it seems like any other standard spy movie until the twist-fest of an ending, when things unfold little by little with new reveals one after another. But what won me was the incredible amount of heart and love underneath it all.
9. Encounters at the End of the World
A religious experience. The famed enigmatic German director Werner Herzog tops his last documentary (2005’s Grizzly Man) with this meditative look at Antarctica and the stories of those who brave the elements down South, from the iceberg geologists to the pinniped seals. It’s a beautiful and haunting ode to the great unknown.
10. Milk
Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to office in America in 1970s San Francisco. While it follows similar guidelines for the standard biopic, Milk is enthralling, educational, and very moving. It’s also very topical, with California having recently passed a ban on gay marriage. Sean Penn is deservedly bound for another Oscar nod.
Worst of the Year: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Remember when Indiana Jones and his crew were on the quest for the skulls and they were balancing on that gigantic plate in an underground cave? That scene was ripped-off from National Treasure: Book of Secrets. When you’re stealing from a movie that stole its entire style from the original Indiana Jones movies, you’ve got a problem. Add that to the laughable jungle chase scene and ridiculous “it was aliens!” ending and you’re left with a hideous shell of a movie.
Most Underrated Film: W.
While it didn’t make the impact Oliver Stone wish it had, W. manages to make some sense out of our soon-to-be-ex-President; his Oedipal complex, conversion to Christianity, and rational for going to war are all treated fairly and make Dubya a sympathetic character. The political junkie in me loved the parts about his presidency, but I also liked seeing an idea of what it was like growing up beneath the daunting shadow of his father. Here’s hoping for a sequel.
Most Overrated Film: Slumdog Millionaire
In Mumbai, India, a boy from the slums grows up and goes on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The film tells his life story through each of the questions he answers. I grew tired of that stagey and predictable framing device early on, and the film’s inexcusable glamorization of the Mumbai slums just wrecked this one for me. Speaking of predictable: guy chases childhood sweetheart? Please.
Guilty Pleasure: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
A pleasant early-in-the-year surprise. I loved the 1930s sets, costumes, and music. Amy Adams shines in any role she takes. The first 20 minutes-a rapid-fire slapstick comedy scenario-were highly engaging. The rest of the movie slows down and falls into a GreatGatsby groove, but it ends up with great depth and heart. Hopefully it will at least pick up a few nominations for costumes and set design, though it definitely deserves more.
Today is the day, the only day of the year, when I watch It’s A Wonderful Life. Watching the classic Christmas movie with a bowl of popcorn and a crackling fire on Christmas Eve has become perhaps the longest tradition with my family. Another tradition, getting up at 5 a.m. on Christmas morning and waiting for our parents to wake up, luckily has died out now that we’re all grown. But I suspect watching George Bailey on his “red letter day” will never get old.