The Ignorant Bliss of Sun and Moon

Shot in a quality not a step up from your standard digital camera, THE IGNORANT BLISS OF SUN AND MOON is a simple, direct idea, a statement in the form of a short film that, just as simply as it is made, is simply, good. The film follows a man who could easily be homeless, but, as we see later, in fact has a home. But he's the kind of person who's just a step away from homelessness: an alcoholic, screaming-at-the-heavens loser who gets into peoples shit and annoys, but who, as a person, evokes some sympathy. Like many a loser, the man begins to look for answers or hope from a greater power. In this film, its the sun and the moon, or, metaphorically, the overseers of his misery. Expecting such powers to understand, he seeks guidance, and upon rediscovering an old lottery ticket, buddhist-bullshit about letting your life be what it may be is sent down by the sun & moon's wisdom. But Hyams' protagonist is no idiot, and ends up winning thousands of dollars as he scratches the ticket. Like Hyams' other films, there's a strong sense of sympathy that follows his melancholy protagonist, which meshes well with the narration and wisdom of the sun and moon. But also apparent in Hyams' work is a gross reality, which rears its head when the man disregards supposed wisdom and experiences reality and specificity.

3/5 Stars

Village of the Damned

John Carpenter's film that most resembles a Stephen King story (which is no coincidence considering King's Under the Dome book which has an opening almost identical to this film), VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is a totally weirdo film that is vitally weird. It opens with an introduction of the village people, typically (of Carpenter) intrusive and wonderfully direct. Thus, by the time a citywide epidemic that puts everyone to sleep for hours and impregnates a dozen or so of the town's women comes about, who everyone in town is and how they're going to react, is perfectly justified and sensible. Cynically-arrived government officials headed by Kirstie Alley's Dr. Susan Verner guide the townspeople through the sudden pregnancies, which all of the women go through with after consulting with their husbands, and ending with a tent of crying, screeching women giving birth as they clutch the hands of their husbands. Carpenter has an astounding flair for setting up townspeople as real people, and its a moving moment to watch a usually publicly paraded about event that ends in the private act of giving birth as a private act of quasi-rape ending in a publicly paraded about mass-birthing. Soon after the children become cognizant beings though, terrible things start to happen, and Alan Chaffee (Christopher Reeve), the town doctor and our protagonist in the film, experiences the horror himself when his wife jumps off a cliff near their house. The children grow up into hyper-intelligent, feared look-alikes with platinum hair and dialogue that feels like they've come from another planet, even though A. They have and B. They still grew up around "regular" humans. But the children become a weird force in the town, coming to be known as people who are not to be trifled with (even by their parents). The rejection of this known evil essentially destroys the entire town and everyone in it, horrifically, with only a few who escape absolute destruction. It's a minor Carpenter film with some flaws, but it's a pretty good film because it commits to its vision of evil as something burgeoning out of a communal township, and ending in their eradication.

3/5 Stars

Up

Revisiting UP purely on the basis of its ranking as one of the best PIXAR films, original ideas about the film's weaknesses and likeness to WALL-E were intensified. Like WALL-E, UP begins in wordless, light-music assisted quasi-montage, establishing the protagonist of the film, the cantankerous old Mr. Fredricksen (Ed Anser), as a man who's only grown into the stereotypical 'get off my lawn' archetype. Showing the young Carl as an adventurous but soft-spoken loner, we witness a typical but heartbreaking relationship that he develops with Ellie, a rambunctious neighbor who eventually becomes his wife, after their connection over a blimp named "The Spirit of Adventure", led by a famous explorer who found a wild animal in South America's Paradise Falls. As adults, the Fredricksen's dream of one day saving up the money to make it to Paradise Falls is incessantly interrupted by "life". This is not, however, a clichéd weakness, but, in the vein of many American films, embracing of clichés as something that is, however overused, extremely apparent in many people's lives. Thus, the "life happens" conceit is in fact, the strength of the film, embodied in the wordless sequence that so closely resembles WALL-E's opening. Now alone and wasting away, Mr. Fredricksen's house is threatened by industrialism and vague, sunglass-wearing suits who spy on his house. Finally rejecting society, Fredricksen departs for Paradise Falls with a million balloons that propel his house into the sky. The sequence is breathtaking, and further sets up Fredricksen in a complicated situation. In one sense that the film projects, Fredricksen's departure is a welcome liberation, but it is still mired by his selfishness. Once he discovers a boy scout named Russell clinging to his porch, this is shaken up, and the rest of the film that is good continues this idea, bringing Fredricksen to care for Russell. But then the rest of the film that is bad happens, and, like in WALL-E, silliness trumps storytelling. The film eases us into Paradise Falls, which the duo eventually crash into from out of the clouds: first introducing the mythical creature that was alluded to in the opening sequence: a vibrantly colored, tall, prehistoric bird which becomes attracted to Russell and his chocolate candy bars. Fourth to enter the troupe though, is a talking dog named Doug, who dons Fredricksen as his master, and occasionally becomes distracted by squirrels. But the film downgrades itself, eventually resulting in a Star Wars Rogue Leader spoof with more talking dogs driving airplanes. This silliness would be alright in small doses, but it envelops the entire tail-end of the film, and the eight minute, gorgeous opening sequence has to share its poignancy with dogs with fly airplanes and talk. It's a weak denigration, and feels cheap and lame in its untrustworthiness of children, by thinking that they'll need to be entertained by some silly dogs.

2.5/5 Stars (Uneven--Good)

Revisions: The Best Films of 2010 and 2011, and a note on what's good in 2012

I made my Best of 2010 and Best of 2011 lists right at the end of those years. It was rash, but it also reflected my visceral reactions to those films, and, in fact, the blog used to have "visceral" in its title. I've changed that philosophy/approach though, and I no longer write and post reviews right after seeing a film, but rather, wait weeks until considering them. There are around twelve films I've seen that I haven't written about on here as of now, and I think it's a worthier approach to let films settle in your mind. I'd already posted a revision of my original Best of 2010 list, which was very different not only from perspective and acquired knowledge, but from plainly having seen more films. There's a worthiness in revising these lists, for I think that time gives you a really good sense of what was actually the best. Those films that have stayed in my mind best are thus, best. Without further ado...

2010


1. Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl

Modernity back in 2010 seemed to me to be THE SOCIAL NETWORK, which eloquently and vividly painted the beginnings of Facebook. But now, Manoel de Oliveira's ECCENTRICITIES seems to be the better portrait. Despite Oliveira's age of over 100, the film exhibits a rustic setting populated by universal obsessions, and there was no bolder or truer or more real a film than this.

2. The Social Network

I still admire David Fincher's SOCIAL NETWORK for its cinematography and dialogue, which are two of the more showy bits of masterful filmmaking on display, but I now value it more for establishing an extremely specific world centered around specific people, rooting itself in detail and setting up individual scenes that build operatically. It's Fincher's showmanship all on display, and he plays with our minds wonderfully.

3. The Girl on the Train

I didn't like André Téchiné's film right after I saw it, but I couldn't escape from it, and its ideas, which haunted me for months and months to the point where I realized the film was a masterpiece. Vividly complex and brutal, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN is one of the most profoundly constructed statements about race I've ever seen.

4. White Material

I love Claire Denis' WHITE MATERIAL not for its tinkering with narrative or its gorgeous shots (although, that probably helped), but for its bold statement about our perception of ourselves. The boy in the film who cuts his hair and joins the rebels is a fascinating character because he sees no difference between his homeland and the homeland of the blacks. It's a fascinating study of what assimilation and implantation does to people.

5. Survival of the Dead

It's probably the most dubiously ranked film on here, but SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD is a great film, delving into a psychological weirdness and obsessions that persevere despite a zombie apocalypse. It's Romero's grandest and best DEAD movie, combining exploding heads with sad reminiscences on the dead, all culminating to a feud that leaves us with a shocking, beautiful final shot.

6. Winter's Bone

Jennifer Lawrence has gone mainstream since 2010, but WINTER'S BONE shows what a great actress she is, and also reminds us of John Hawkes, who hasn't given any reason for us to forget about him with CONTAGION and MARTHA in the following year. But Debra Granik's film is meandering but tonally decided upon, and it makes for an entertaining, backwoods gothic drama.

7. Black Swan

Drowning itself in clichés, but using those clichés smartly and sarcastically, the grandiose BLACK SWAN was so great because it was all one big contradiction of inner-pain and the artist's dilemmas against the swoons of the dance floor.

8. The Ghost Writer

The calmest film of 2010, Roman Polanski's THE GHOST WRITER builds like an old thriller, not with incessant gunfights but with slow, shocking revelations and a powerful ending. It's gorgeously shot and succinctly constructed.

9. Inception

It's a shame that INCEPTION garnered such a following, but that's what it was asking for in its classically large-scale effects, action, and music. That following has made it sort of over-mentioned, and thus, minimized to pop-culture. In fact, though, the film is just a ton of fun, posing simplistic questions on top of adventurous, quasi-emotional scenes.

10. Vengeance

VENGEANCE introduced me to Johnnie To, and what an introduction. The boxes acting as shields for mercenaries in the last stand should be essential viewing for any action fan, or anyone who thinks the weekly action movies are any good.

11. Shutter Island

Despite the critical blahs this Scorsese movie got, it was one of his best received among audiences, and for good reason. The plot and its reveal got out pretty early, and was dubbed obvious, but that was never the point of this thrilling noir movie, but a reveal that was supported by actual substance. It's occasionally moving, and lacquered in darkness.

12. The American

Another film that took strengths of 70's thrillers, Anton Corbijn's film is oppressively minimalist, but that only makes its payoffs all the better.

13. The Secret in Their Eyes

It's basically a straightforward story of betrayal, corruption, and buried secrets, but it's done extremely, classically well, spans decades, and is always believable in the stakes, acting, and reveals.

14. Never Let Me Go

It's melancholy and vast, the master-shot being an old ship laying in the sand, but surrounded by grand ideas surrounding inevitable death. It transposes the elderly's problems of watching their friends die off to a youth problem, and the energy that usually comes with youthful characters is dialed down.

15. Somewhere

Sofia Coppola's slow approach has garnered a lot of hate, but I see it as patient filmmaking, showing us an idea and then allowing us to think about that idea as obsessively as her enigmatic characters. Thus, we embody the same sort of stagnation and obsessing as the characters we're watching on screen.

16. Tiny Furniture

Lena Dunham's created the best new show on television, and only second to the brilliant "Breaking Bad" overall. But TINY FURNITURE is more intensely personal than "Girls", casting her own family members in the film but exhibiting the same consciousness as her HBO show.

17. Catfish

It's seminal, but it's also one of the best mysteries I've ever seen, building tension because everyone's heard so much about the danger of the internet, that when the group of filmmaker friends arrive at Megan Faccio's door, we're truly scared that some terrible shit might go down. The film presents something sad that is exclusively of-our-time.

18. Welcome to the Rileys

(tied w/) The Yellow Handkerchief

This duo of Kristen Stewart films exhibits the actress in her two best films. She's been criminally underrated by haters of the TWILIGHT series who feel like that hatred should extend to everyone involved with that trash. But these two films show what a great actress Stewart is: both showing her wearing vividly colored vans, in danger, and damaged. They're not perfect films but they're very good ones, with Stewart at the center.

19. Leaves of Grass

LEAVES OF GRASS builds toward singular outcomes at the end of scenes, but then turns everything up on its head, tricking you. Examples: Edward Norton gives a speech, a student comes into his office, takes off her shirt, he gets fired. Edward Norton gets shot in the chest with a crossbow twice. But Norton's one of the better young male actors, and this is a good vessel for him.

2011


1. House of Tolerance

HOUSE OF TOLERANCE trumped my longtime favorite, CERTIFIED COPY, by its sheer boldness, whether that was exhibited in rock music in a turn of the century brothel, a woman crying tears of cum, or the ambition evident in every frame. It's a stunning, beautiful, devastating film.

2. Certified Copy

A film that, unlike most of the 2011 picks, was all about realism. With perfect performances in multiple languages, the depths and mysteries surrounding Binoche and Schimel are riveting in their authenticity.

3. Martha Marcy May Marlene

(tied w/) Tuesday, After Christmas

Two great films, neither of which I could decide was better than the other. The first, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE draws you in with long takes, eerie, darkly toned colors, and a breathtakingly great performance by Elizabeth Olsen. The other film, TUESDAY, AFTER CHRISTMAS similarly draws you in with long takes, but, contrary to MARTHA, realism, and, once again, great performances. Maria Popistasu is the standout here, but so is Radu Muntean's direction, which is clear and straightforward, which only makes the revelations all the more powerful.

4. The Skin I Live In

Pedro Almódóvar's best film, THE SKIN I LIVE IN is, at first glance, a complete departure for the director, but in fact, it's an intensification of all of his other ideas in one Hitchcockian yarn.

5. 13 Assassins

Takashi Miike's 13 ASSASSINS is one of the best action films ever made, starting with an hour long build-up establishing a pure-evil villain, and then ending with an hour long battle scene: epic and creative.

6. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

It's slow and haunting, mesmerizing you as its ideas seep into your consciousness. It considers death, but, grandly, it considers life, class, and memory.

7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Meticulously detailed, David Fincher's films have become typically great, and this one, propelled by Rooney Mara, is laughably unreal, but takes its fake-world so seriously that it works.

8. The Princess of Montpensier

I make special mention of Bertrand Tavernier's (an underrated director if ever there was one) film because it convinced me of actual suffering within the aristocratic life. The film is devastating and classically dramatized with actions at the beginning of the film prompting actions at the end.

9. Drive

Nicholas Winding Refn's DRIVE is another thriller that takes the steady, slow pacing of the thrillers of old and transposes it to a modern world. But Refn never lets us forget that he's repurposing our commercialized world, embodied in a shot of Gosling's Driver in a mask, backlit by the searing blue of a ROSS DRESS FOR LESS sign.

10. Meek's Cutoff

Reichardt is becoming a very interesting director, and here her composition is slow, but all the more devastating for it. Essentially a "what could go wrong" story, its filled with small moments of exciting revelations.

11. The Strange Case of Angelica

Working with the same cinematographer of ECCENTRICITIES, Manoel de Oliveira's crafted another brief, simple, melancholy story that feels truly timeless despite being placed in the modern age. Further, though, this film feels like time or fate was interrupted, or set off the rails, only to be eased back into place.

12. Higher Ground

By making her film about an subject that rarely receives serious consideration past blind belief, Vera Farmiga's directorial debut also found itself a breezy pacing that perfectly meshed with the film's tone throughout.

13. Shame

Problematic, yes, but the film is about someone who believes his life is as dire as it appears on film, and thus, we're experiencing all of his grandiosity and self-importance, rather than being told that he's important.

14. Essential Killing

Beautifully horrific, wordless, and evoking James Whale's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, with a central performance by Vincent Gallo that puts to shame all other male performances of the year.

15. A Dangerous Method

Sad and apocalyptic, David Cronenberg's film not only transposed our current apocalyptic (or economy collapsing) frettings to the early 20th century, and fills it with premonitions, obsessions, and personal histories, all under the guise of psychoanalysis and attempting to find reason in madness (literally).

16. Melancholia

Beautifully photographed and well-acted, the first half plays like James Joyce's short story, "The Dead", while the second plays like Von Trier's own sequel to that tale.

17. I Saw The Devil

Brutally violent but arty and incessant in its two and a half hour running time, it's one of the most thrilling movies in years.

18. Hugo

The point was to make something harmless, and Scorsese does so in spades, bringing life to Melies and SAFETY LAST. That's its flaw: harmlessness, but it's probably the best example of good entertainment for the whole year.

19. A Better Life

It raises serious questions and has a constant sense of urgency, ending in a poignant scene of perseverance.

Prometheus

Propelled to the forefront of potential great summer entertainment by admittedly brilliant promos, PROMETHEUS arrived with a lot to live up to. Thought of in selective terms, Ridley Scott was similarly heralded for merely returning to the genre that made him famous. ALIEN is admittedly, a fucking masterpiece, and BLADE RUNNER has its charms, but past those two films, and especially in the 2000's, Scott hasn't had much to support the claim that he's a great director. What should have been a warning for what happened with PROMETHEUS: his previous film, ROBIN HOOD, was similarly paraded about in promos, which, like the PROMETHEUS ones, were stunningly gorgeous and textured, and showed the most exciting master-shots and score-swells. But ROBIN HOOD was overlong and under-loved (justifiably so), with a slew of forgettable fare like BODY OF LIES and KINGDOM OF HEAVEN going all the way back to his overrated oscar-winner bore: GLADIATOR. But 12 years of not even mainstream acclaim should have been another warning for what PROMETHEUS was to be, which is, to get to the point: a very pretty, very under-thought bore. Beginning with some Malick-reminiscent, hyper-digital, CGI shots of lakes and primordial earth, a long take brings us to a Lord Volemort-faced alien donning a jedi knight's robe, standing at the edge of a waterfall before ingesting some alien-goo and disintegrating into the water. Scott's beginning, followed by a group of scientists off to explore our genesis in space, is basically a rip-off of the beginning of the great sci-fi movie, 2001. Noomi Rapace, breathtaking future-tech, and a brilliant Michael Fassbender's android: David listening to opera and learning linguistics, breeze us through the following scenes, which all fit into a similarly soft and lulling tone, which, oddly, comes right after an alien exploding into a waterfall. Herein lies the fatal flaw of PROMETHEUS, which is that it has small sets of scenes that work well together, and then jarringly jolt into a very differently toned set of scenes. When Scott then pulls all of the puzzle pieces together, he's pulling together a million different tones, and we get a mess of goo similar to the opening scene's conceit. The film is, like ALIEN, strongly rooted in the thrills of aliens who are out to get the explorative scientists, but Scott has so many different set-ups or separated characters, that each death is catered to with special care. This would seem like a good approach to veil slasher-movie sensibilities, but in fact it undermines common sense: with too many storylines that are nullified with the deaths of they seek to set off. For example, there are around three different aliens in the film that off somebody, although they're all vaguely related, there's an agent that the android infects a scientist with, and yet another scientist who, after being apparently killed by an alien, comes back in zombified form to be offed with the arcs of a flameflower against the towering CGI mountains. When the jarring death scenes aren't pulling the film down, Scott fills empty space with trite storylines of corporate-greed which are nothing more than a rehash of that exact same greed he established in the original Alien film that made everything go wrong. But rather than have his prequel set up the companies desires and considerations about the alien civilization, they seem to have already been decided on exploiting everyone they can, which is more lazy than cynical. Similarly lazy is the grating Creation vs. Evolution debate, which is surfacy, clichéd, and weak, with revelations like: if the aliens created humans, who created the aliens acting as the endgames to conversations. Essentially, the films a big, lazy, failure with a few scenes that work well on their own, but then remind us that they're connected to a feature length story. Of especially good interest: an abortion scene with a, easy-bake oven-esque surgery machine. Past that, it's not much.

2/5 Stars

Carnival of Souls

A group of girls is run off the road on a crumbling bridge. The car is lost to the mud in the river, and as the townspeople surround the accident site, one of the girls rises up out of the water and onto the banks. Not much time is given for the girl, Mary (Candace Hilligoss) to gain her bearings, as she flees the whole traumatic event for Utah, working as the church's organist. But not long after she settles in, she starts to see the face of a man, unnamed with a pale face, maniacal smile, and black eyes. He follows her everywhere she goes: in her new apartment, in the window of her car, and prominently at a derelict carnival on the edge of town, to which she's strongly drawn. A few other creepy things start to happen, and Mary occasionally falls into bouts of ghostliness: unknown and unseen to the rest of the world, yet still walking among them. There's a cheap quality to CARNIVAL OF SOULS: it's too jumpily edited, and drowned in its obviousness and an incessantly playing score. But there's a redeeming quality to CARNIVAL OF SOULS in its atmospheric tension, and what's effective given the small budget. This is supported by the suspense created by the what the hell is happening to this girl in the earlier part of the film, but talents are all on exhibit in the final scenes, which all culminate to a wonderfully creepy climax in the carnival, complete with a great scene of the laughter of the dead irrespective of the pacing and chasing that's on screen.

★★★/5

Land of the Dead

In George A. Romero’s LAND OF THE DEAD, the zombies of his previous films have conquered most of the Earth, save for a few outposts, colonized by rich men who’ve converted old shopping malls and apartment towers into societies. The vision is fantastic: bars run by midgets pit zombie against zombie in a caged set, and teenagers get their pictures taken with the zombies on neck-chains in the background. A few border patrol men with the mentalities of the ones we have today jaunt into zombie-infested areas to kill them off, using fireworks to distract them as they plow them down with machine guns. The honcho of the apartment building, Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), deceives and betrays his men, but one of them, Cholo, revolts against him, stealing a militarized truck and threatening to blow Kaufman sky high unless he pays a ransom. Desperate, Kaufman enlists the help of a soldier who just wants to get away named Riley, and Riley commandeers a few friends and a hooker played by Asia Argento in order to stop Cholo. But at the same time of this goings on, the zombies have begun to gain the capacity to think, like apes they discover tools, then strategy, then even satire. They are led by an old zombified black convenience store man. He’s been frozen in the routine of adhering to his old habits: taking out the gas pump and inserting in into cars for eternity. But then he discovers tools, and is driven mad by Kaufman’s patrol raids. Romero’s satire here is simplistic, but the film’s a lot of fun, and the satire’s exemplified by that, and the dramatic stakes that are established.

★★★★/5