Princess Mononoke

As a truly epic film, Hayao Miyazaki's PRINCESS MONONOKE has the advantage of immersing you within its world. Slowly establishing itself with demons, honor, warrior clans, and a few key characters, the film, which is almost two and a half hours long convinces its audience of a world where the old fights the new. It's the death of the spirit world, and the budding of the iron age. A wild boar runs into town, turned into a demon after being shot with an iron bullet. It is killed by Ashitaka, the most promising warrior in the village, but he is also cursed from touching the beast. As the curse takes over his body, Ashitaka searches the lands for the Forest Spirit who could replenish his life. Ashitaka stumbles across a war between the samurai, a clan of iron-makers, and the forest beasts. Among the forest beasts is Princess Mononoke, a human girl raised by wolves. This is key to Miyazaki's storytelling techniques, for he implants a human within a world that is supposed to be purely beasts, and beasts who hate humans at that. But by merging two supposedly differing groups, Miyazaki shows a universality that's only supported by every filmic decision he makes in his films. A final battle shows a mistake of the humans potentially costing the forest and their own iron-town. PRINCESS MONONOKE is just as beautifully furnished a movie as any other Miyazaki film, but here, things are on an epic scale, a grander scale that works.

★★★★ out of Five Stars

Essential Killing

I must admit that the first time I saw ESSENTIAL KILLING, I was a little bit unimpressed by the end of it. But that's the thing about ideas, they have to grow in your own mind before you fully understand them, and that's the point of Jerzy Skolomowski's haunting film. Starring Vincent Gallo in a wordless, essentially one-man performance as a probable terrorist who is captured by the U.S. Government in an unnamed arab country, and then stored and tortured in Turkey. Turkey, the polar opposite to the sandy deserts of the earlier country. The terrorist escapes though, after a crash in the snow. He runs, taking a gun and killing a couple of his captors, and fleeing to the woods. This is the political statement though, the will of this man to survive, and doing so in a land completely foreign to him, injured, and without any food. In one of two of the film's completely breathtaking sequences, he eats some berries and gets really high, another experience that is completely contrary to his earlier form of life.

But this is survivalism, and as he becomes an animal, he becomes reactionary, killing, eating, running, surviving. While high, he hallucinates about his life in the Middle East, which is handled with something only describable as grace. Then there's another sequence I'd liken to the scene in FRANKENSTEIN, where a dejected monster comes in from the cold and is nurtured to an extent that is cut off based upon the implicitness of the invited.

★★★★ out of Five

The Castle of Cagliostro

THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO was the first film ever made by the now highly regarded Hayao Miyazaki. In subtle ways, CAGLIOSTRO is obviously a Miyazaki films: the castle itself, the disregard to physics, etc. However, at first glance, a film about a French thief would seem very unlike the director. But, having been in charge of the Lupin the 3rd television serial prior to making the film about the thief, it was an issue that Miyazaki was familiar with, and, in translating it to a full length film, fleshed out anything that could have been minor into a Spielberg paced action film. It's weird, filled with foul language, guns, and allusions, but it's also one of the most entertaining adventure movies I've ever seen, a ton of fun and without some of the more focused efforts that are often slightly misguided that populate Miyazaki's later films.

★★★★★ out of Five

The Great Garrick

James Whale was a great film director, making most of his masterpieces in the 1930's, when he had a great control over his material. Especially in his film, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Whale exhibited a great sense of modernity, implanting certain themes that, had they been overt, would have gotten him thrown out of Hollywood. His horror films are great, and, in the case of THE INVISIBLE MAN, pretty effective in whatever way he wants them to be. With THE GREAT GARRICK, though, Whale shows a sense of modernity through comedy. Loosely based off of a real actor known as the Great Garrick in old-era England, the story is about a pretentious stage actor named Garrick, who, with his crony, travels to the theater house in Paris. The Parisians have erroneously heard that Garrick made a speech about them, saying that he plans to "teach them how to act". Deeply offended, the similarly pretentious Paris actors decide to rent out an entire hotel where Garrick is due to stay between his departure from England and his arrival in Paris. Each one of them playing a different part, and completely making up the hotel staff and residents, the actors plan to scare Garrick out of France as mad Frenchman. Little do the French know however, but an old man who loves Garrick's acting, rides on horseback to warn him. What follows is the exploits at the hotel, and Garrick having a one-up on the Paris actors. What is more entertaining though, is that Whale has sided with the man who is pretentious because he is deserving of it, instead of the Paris actors who aren't very good actors, but who act arrogantly anyway.

★★★★ out of Five

Hall Pass

Especially if you've been watching any comedies from the 90's, HALL PASS just serves as a bigger disappointment that the comedic filmmaker duo, The Farrelly Brothers, have lost their touch. Completely realized in HALL PASS, this is a film that so often thinks its being funny, and if the scenes were, then later fragments that place old events to new events, titlecards with the music from "Law and Order", and abrupt endings would compliment it. But, because every scene is HALL PASS is crass, boring, or obvious, none of these flairs do anything. Perhaps if they directed someone else's really funny script, they could still make a good movie, but the days of THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and KINGPIN have flown away. Instead, HALL PASS take one insanely fake and impossible situation, and thinks it's funny to lather it in another fake and impossible situation. If one of these were even halfway real, then they might have a funny film. Consider a scene where the two boys (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudekis) inexplicably and conveniently get lost while on a house tour with their wives. Everyone else goes into the family's panic room, a soundproof, concealed room with video/sound of the entire house. Inside the panic room, the stunned house owners see and hear Wilson and Sudekis make a bunch of crass jokes about their wives and the house owners themselves. After three minutes of this, they're thrown out, and their wives end up unconvincingly giving them both hall passes (a week off of marriage). But we've already seen from the earlier scene that an unconvincing premise is just handled with another unconvincing punch-line, and the whole film acts in this dull, scattershot way.

★ out of Five

Dangerous Game

Here's a film that's surely difficult, but ultimately extremely awarding. It's a raw toned, film within a film that focuses on the obsession of a director who pushes his actors to an extreme. Everyone here is pretty despicable, but they each act in ways that seem inevitable or even right, as if a past action is still haunting them, making them each defensive in different ways. What's great here, aside from the aesthetics, are the performances, which are so intense and so continually improving.
★★★ out of Five Stars

On the Academy Awards and Spirit

Tomorrow night the Academy Awards will be on. I always loved the broadcast, getting to see movies that I liked and movies that I thought I could like winning or being nominated. Now, however, I pretty much know how the awards will end up, based off of the essential pre-season of the Oscars that spells out what will win. This makes the awards lose some of their luster, and for the past couple of years and, without a doubt, tomorrow, I'll be watching the show to see a couple of filmic tributes that populate the program, giving movies a sense of importance, which is rightfully set. I would love to see the radiant Rooney Mara win in Best Actress, the calm brilliance of Gary Oldman rewarded in Best Actor, but that's not going to happen. In fact, the only award that I feel like I will be 100% behind is Best Cinematography, which will go to a not-so-great movie, but to a pretty damn great cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki for THE TREE OF LIFE. The Oscars hold no great appeal, then, to the strongest of cinephiles who've seen all those prediction graphs from GoldDerby.com and the streak of awards Octavia Spencer's been winning that means her Best Supporting Actress win is a lock. Furthermore, a lot of the films nominated aren't even that great, or even very good. Take, for example, the despicable piece of shit, EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE. Even the film that will win Best Picture, THE ARTIST, isn't that highly regarded among critics. For the layman, the awards also don't hold much appeal, because they either haven't seen most of the films, or don't know anything about many of them. There is, however, a sense of surprise that comes from being the layman, which is perhaps a better experience than a weathered cinephile will have tomorrow. Tonight, however, is another kind of award show that I think is becoming more popular and fun than the show that's for nobody but the guys who voted: the Oscars. These are the Independent Spirit Awards on IFC. Coming into the award show tonight, I have no idea who will win, but every category is filled with people I'd love to see get some recognition. Even the Spirit Awards are becoming a little worse over time as it gains popularity and tries to broaden its films, but it's still the best damn award show around. Here are some people I'd love to see win, and why:

Best Feature & Best Director: Although THE ARTIST and Michel Hazanavicius will probably take this award home anyway (a reason why the Indie Spirit Awards are on a decline), seeing the wonderful TAKE SHELTER and Jeff Nichols or the film that was ultimately snubbed, DRIVE and Nicholas Winding Refn take the prize would be a pleasure.

Best First Feature: MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is the best film in the category, and it sure as hell deserves it. Less popular than DRIVE, but just as blasphemously snubbed, seeing this terrific film win something would make the night, and the entire awards season.

Best First Screenplay: Patrick deWitt winning for TERRI, a film that has only gotten better and better for me over time, even to the point where I think I'll put it on my revised Best of 2011 list, would be a joy.

Best Male Lead: This is tricky. If Jean Dujardin loses in an upset to George Clooney tomorrow, I'll be kicking myself for sort of hoping he loses this one. I would predict that he'll win it, but I would hope that it goes to anyone else in the category, who are all wholly deserving of it. Especially Woody Harrleson or Michael Shannon.

Best Supporting Male: Albert Brooks was the favorite to win Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars, and then he wasn't even nominated in the biggest snub in recent history. Seeing him win here would be so appropriate for the Indie Spirits, although, if John Hawkes took it home, I'd be just as happy.

Best Documentary: Easy one. THE INTERRUPTERS, which was snubbed by the Academy because it didn't meet some bullshit requirement, just how they snubbed the same director's HOOP DREAMS in the mid-90's, which is now considered one of the best documentaries ever made.

Best International Film: Any of these (SHAME, MELANCHOLIA, A SEPARATION) would be great, they are all films that were highly acclaimed but didn't make it to the Oscar stage because they tackled an unattractive subject.

Best Supporting Female: My preference here has to go towards Shailene Woodley, who I found so grating in the commercials for THE DESCENDANTS, and then practically stole the film away from George Clooney (cough, overrated performance). Also, I am in a desperate, begging desire for film awards to go to the young actresses. The agism that is so prevalent in the Oscars, and always hints to end, never does. If a young woman gives a great performance, give it to her.

Best Female Lead: This is the reason I'll watch the show tonight. I wanted Elizabeth Olsen to win this award in the Oscar category, I predicted that it was a year for young actresses at the Oscars after Natalie Portman broke everybody in last year, and then Meryl Streep did a bad impersonation of a boring woman, and Glenn Close dressed in drag, and only Rooney Mara got in (who has been questioningly left out at the Indie Spirits). But Olsen is a great actress, and I see her career going far. But she's been hit with the bad luck of MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE not getting any attention, which thus made her performance not get any attention. I think her career is destined to be a struggle, starring is SILENT HOUSE was certainly a gamble, and we'll see if it pays off, but I need to see this performance get the attention it deserves. I even sort of expect her to win in this category, but the Indie Spirits are odd, so I won't totally commit to it.

Chronicle

What saddens me about CHRONICLE is that they needed someone else there in the editing room. Not where the actual film-editing takes place, but where the director needed someone whispering in his ear where he's going too far, isn't going far enough, when something is working. For, the first hour and a half or so of CHRONICLE is a great movie, a low-burner placidity and small town sensibility driven into the concept of telekinesis. Taking tedium, and altering it with the acquired telekinesis does little but add a gloss on some fine storytelling. It's clear that the writer-director twenty year olds understand a certain aspect of how teenaged boys talk to each other, dream, and grow angry in the 21st century, and through glossed-up scenes of special effects, they exclusively tap into that aspect. Then it all falls apart, like a mess, like CARRIE (a film to which it is most similar in theme and in downfall). For CHRONICLE falls into a trap of what it should be, and not what it is, replacing real emotions and actions and ideas for what is, sadly, tragically, a cliché. A disappointment, and a shame, but I'm not totally downtrodden, for I can just imagine what these filmmakers could do next time.

★★ out of Five

Higher Ground

I could mention the story of HIGHER GROUND, but it isn't that which captivated me about the film. Sure, the film takes religion seriously, or, at least, considers how much importance it has in some people's lives. But what's at the center of HIGHER GROUND is the story of a life, the life of its protagonist, Corinne. Directing herself as Corinne, but also directing her younger sister Taissa as the younger Corinne, Vera Farmiga creates a wonderful character. In nothing but MEEK'S CUTOFF has there been a story of a woman who considers life and acts in real ways. There's no expected archetypes here, but actions that make sense given their beginnings. There's also no heroism in Corinne, but we like her even when she messes up. But the strength of the film lies in how her life is considered, how she's played wonderfully by Taisaa Farmiga, and how her tale is truly epic. Don't all of us consider our own lives to be the most epic thing we'll ever experience? This is how Corinne is handled. For, her decisions become ones that will determine her entire life, and will determine who she is as a person. A great film.

★★★★ out of Five

The Grey

After the commercials touted THE GREY as another winter-released don't fuck with Liam Neeson movie, the slow paced, essentially depressing tone of Joe Carnahan's film could only come as a surprise. There's an intensity to Neeson here similar to that which he showed in last year's UNKNOWN and the film that started the Neeson-craze: TAKEN, but in THE GREY the intensity doesn't come from Neeson acting like a badass because he can, but because he has no choice but to put up that front. Crashing in the middle of nowhere with a few other roughnecks, Neeson's John Ottway quickly establishes himself as the man in charge. It seems to make sense as the survivors become aware of spectrally appearing wolves that  pick them all off one by one, for Ottway was a killer of these wolves in his life before the crash. But Ottway discovers his gun has been rendered useless after the crash, but he takes control of the situation anyway, handing out a couple of suggestions that seem good at the time, but doesn't really ever save anyone's life. What is apparent in THE GREY though is something other than a "wolves eat people one by one" kind of structure that's so prevalent in horror films. We don't declare most horror movies as existential because we know the structure, but for a film like THE GREY, we sort of expect Ottway and his crew to make it out alive. Instead, Ottway knows that he will die, and how he faces this is the strength of the film, which, for me, rose out of the lurid, oil rig lights, glaring wolf eyes, and searing rivers. There's a great style here because there's an attempt at showing something "real": how you're probably fucked if you crash around a bunch of fucking wolves, and a, perhaps unintentional, fantasy that comes out of those images. It could be wolves or it could be something else, but what matters here is that a group of men have to come to terms with the fact that they will die.

★★★★ out of Five

The Best Films of 2011 (and a reflection upon those of 2010)

My form for this quasi-journal site has changed recently. Partly because I don't get to see every film that comes out in a year (I was prompted to revise my "Best of 2010" list, 6 months into 2011). I think I'll do that again this year: revise the Best Films of 2011 list. But still, after a year is over it seems appropriate to reminisce about it in this form. But, since I started this mostly in 2010, I might just look back over that year. Since my "Revised" list, I have seen even more films from 2010. Another consideration is that a year doesn't really go into full filmic swing until late, there are a couple of treasures in the beginning, some cool shit in the summer, and then the really anticipated, oscar-bait stuff reaches us at the end of a year. But it just hasn't been possible to keep up. I've had to intentionally skip a few films I really wanted to see, but those films aren't all out on DVD until at least late February. But, perhaps in order for the me who's writing the revised Best of 2011 list to have something to look back on, my list for the Best Films of 2011:

1. Certified Copy

Of course, at the top of my list is Abbas Kiarostami's CERTIFIED COPY. My introduction to the director's work, CERTIFIED COPY blew me away. Just look at the image I chose for it, the normal act of two people driving rendered into three different planes of view. The location reflected on the windshield, the words the two are speaking, what each is doing in their own world. It's a great film, and incorporates so many different aspects of art giving a critique of it, but also an example of it.

2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Two years in a row David Fincher has made two great films. I think he's on an ascension, one that he's been climbing ever since his first feature, ALIEN3. With DRAGON TATTOO, he's formed a specific expression of his Fincherian world: cruel, quick, gross and fueled by Coca-Cola, fast food, and cigarettes. Also to thank here is Rooney Mara, who turns in a performance that doesn't play Lisbeth Salander in conventional, actorly way, but plays her as if she exists in the world Fincher has created.

3. 13 Assassins

Counting as the second great introduction to the work of a master this year, Takashi Miike's 13 ASSASSINS is one of the greatest action films I've ever seen. Slowly building in an hour long first half, setting up a doubtlessly evil villain, and then exploding into an hour long, insane battle scene. Stunningly choreographed and handled, 13 ASSASSINS works like a piece of music, rising and falling and trying to make you recollect an earlier piece of its own brilliance.

4. Meek's Cutoff

MEEK'S CUTOFF changed the way I think about the western. A genre that has been more or less dying ever since the 1980's, Kelly Reichardt's film is slow and ruminative, expressing the same slow and tedious nature of the American West, within characters. People wait to respond to an earlier statement for hours, knowing that the time exists for it.

5. The Strange Case of Angelica

I didn't even like this film after first seeing it, but it has infected me like a ghostly virus ever since I did. Odd, sad, and creepy, the 102 year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira continues the same languorous, glossy colors which he allowed to come to fruition in ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLONDE-HAIRED GIRL. What STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA does though, is represent the idea that our desires might not all be allowed to come to light within the duration of our lives.

6. Hugo

Another film I was reluctant to like at first, but which grew on me. I couldn't get past that the film was only charming. But, actually, that's its strength. For a children's film, I think people (including myself) expected Scorsese to implant some sort of cynical lesson and impose it upon its unsuspecting child viewers. But what immaturity that would be for Scorsese! Instead, he forms a film that is only and purely charming. Even the portions purporting silent film come out of the pure idea that he thinks kids will like them.

7. Drive

I remember thinking about this film that it was so distinctly American, and then discovering that the director wasn't one. But that doesn't matter, all that does is reinforce that notion: for Nicolas Winding Refn, as a filmmaker has seen the way America has been purported on film, and then he's taken that notion to a wild, dreamlike, awing view in DRIVE.

8. I Saw the Devil

This was a year for shameless films, a notion that has become only more and more pervasive, especially since Darren Aronofsky's BLACK SWAN, which embraced clichés and exposed their underside. But I SAW THE DEVIL took this to an extreme, practically defining a needlessly grizzly film, and lighting it all with car interiors, greenhouse lights, and other manufactured lighting, as if we've all created the dreamy world we're living in.

9. Higher Ground

Another example of shamelessness, HIGHER GROUND takes religion to a head, which, despite appearing as a positive filmic device, is actually creepy when put to use. But Vera Farmiga as the older version of a girl who fucked too early commands the screen with a southern vision of duty and servitude, as if its all been conjured up by religion.

10. Contagion

CONTAGION took the issue of mortality, and long-overdue disaster and twisted it with the use of A-list actors and a blockbuster release. But this film about infection actually infected the audience with its attitude towards death, its inevitability, and its ugly nature. Kate Winslet doesn't die like a hero, but on the ground of a football stadium without a blanket.



Especially after having formulated this list, I can see that the films are each pretty obviously No. 1 or No. 9, in contrast to what I can imagine the Best of 2011 Revised will look like, where any film could be in the top 3. Of the films from 2011 that I haven't yet seen, there are a lot of them for which I have high, high expectations, and which fit my specific taste, a taste which I know pretty well by this time in my life and which encompasses young, endangered actresses, fantasy, and a sense that the world the film exists in could only be parallel to our own. Only CERTIFIED COPY, which happens to be my favorite film of 2011 seems to exist trenchantly within reality.

Here are films I have high hopes for:

Another Earth

The Artist

Bellflower

Cold Weather

The Color Wheel

A Dangerous Method

Essential Killing

Goodbye First Love

Le Havre

House of Pleasures

Into the Abyss

J. Edgar

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Melancholia

Mysteries of Lisbon

A Separation

The Sky Turns

Take Shelter

Target

Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives