"'Look, teacher,' the New York Times reported a child shrilling as the Twin Towers were becoming pyres: 'the birds are on fire.' Here was a sweet, infantile rationalization for an uncommon sight: human beings who had hesitated too long between the alternatives of jumping to their deaths or being burned alive, and who were thus jumping and burning." – Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22
Directed by Stephen Daldry, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is perhaps the most controversial of the nine films nominated for this year's Oscar for Best Picture. I'm not sure it's best-of material; the young hero's emotional outbursts could have been toned down, and the last 10 minutes drift into syrupy Pay It Forward territory. But overall this is a very powerful film. I disagree with those who maintain it has somehow exploited our national tragedy. Like Pan's Labyrinth, it's a whimsical tale with a very dark heart, showing an imaginative child dealing with unimaginable horror.
From its opening moments, the movie confronts that horror head on. We see a man with a familiar face (it's Tom Hanks) falling from the World Trade Center. My initial reaction was, "You can't show that!" But then I realized what the movie was doing. That terrifying shot isn't meant to be taken literally; we're in the headspace of Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), the movie's preteen hero. This is Oskar imagining the fate of his father, who was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
I'll grant that it's a risky proposition, but I don't see why this is an invalid or inappropriate subject to tackle. A lot of kids must have gone through the same kinds of emotions Oskar goes through in the days, months and years following 9/11. He refers to the day his father was killed as "the worst day," and is bewildered by the idea that "you can be killed by people who don't even know you." Putting us in his shoes is an easy way to give the audience's tear ducts a good workout, but do the filmmakers overreach or have him do or say anything that a gifted, intelligent little boy wouldn't in the wake of catastrophic loss? I don't think so.
The movie has been adapted from the bestseller by Jonathan Safran Foer. I've read none of his books and only one of his short stories, "The Sixth Borough," which I highly recommend you read and which I gather from Wikipedia is part of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He's accused in some circles of making twee bullshit, but I think I'd enjoy most of his writing. I end up admiring most artists (like Wes Anderson) who have that charge leveled against them, if for no other reason than the sheer breadth of their creative resources. Foer's creativity is evident in Oskar's narration (having flipped through it, I know many of the lines in the film are taken directly from the novel), like when he talks about everyone swallowing microphones so we can listen to each other's heartbeats. And you can't say Foer doesn't know how to build a dramatic centerpiece; the secrets Oskar is hiding about the voicemails his father left on "the worst day" are absolutely devastating.
As mentioned earlier, Oskar can be a bit shrill at times, but I think that's more the director's fault than the actor who's playing him. Horn gives a performance that's extremely loud but incredibly convincing. 2011 was apparently beat-up-on-Tom Hanks year, which is unfortunate and unfair. The movie he starred in and directed last year, Larry Crowne, is about the sweetest, most harmless thing I can think of. I agree that his post-Cast Away filmography is spotty, but he's consistently made thoughtful choices; by no means has he sunk to the I'll-do-anything level of latter day Robert De Niro. This story needs an Everyman to give us the full weight of the 9/11 atrocities, and who better than Hanks? Best Supporting Actor nominee Max Von Sydow does fine work as an elderly man who befriends Oskar, though I find it amusing that this extraordinary Swedish actor, who possesses one of the most unforgettable accents in all of movies, has earned his second Oscar nomination for playing a mute. (Eleven Ingmar Bergman movies and only two nominations? Sheesh!) Maybe the filmmakers have successfully manipulated me, or maybe I'm just a sucker for movies that invite me on a tour of New York City. But I think Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is pretty underrated. It shouldn't (and won't) win Best Picture, but it's worth two hours of your time.
With just a few days left before Oscar's big night, I've decided to review two nominees for Best Picture that I haven't blogged about yet: The Artist and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. A quick recap of what I think about the other nominees: Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life and War Horse all made my best of the year list. The Descendants is arguably the year's most overrated film; with Sideways and now this, director Alexander Payne seems to be making movies that appeal primarily to middle-aged movie critics. And while I wouldn't mind seeing Viola Davis or even Octavia Spencer take home the gold, I found The Help to be a problematic portrait of the civil rights era; you can read about said problems in my review.
In my next post I'll let you know what I think about Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. This time I'll be reviewing Michel Hazanavicius' silent romantic dramedy, The Artist. This is the year's frontrunner, and after finally seeing it I have no idea why. (Okay, I have a hunch; I'll get to that in a minute.) People I respect really love this film, and that combined with its reputation makes me want to revisit it to see if I can figure out what all the fuss was about. My impression right now is that this is a very minor film. It tells a story that's been told before (and with a lot more wit than Hazanavicius can muster).
Best Actor nominee Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, a movie star whose refusal to make the leap from silent pictures to talkies leads to his ruin. George's downfall is contrasted with the rise of Peppy Miller (Supporting Actress nominee Berenice Bejo), a dancer whose killer moves send her shooting to the top in the earliest days of talkies. Djujardin and Bejo are both faultless, and indeed the movie is splendidly cast across the board. It was particularly nice to see Joel Murray (from One Crazy Summer) and Penelope Ann Miller, even though she appears in a thankless role. Hazanavicius has chosen performers with very expressive faces, so that the beats in each scene are always clear without the actors reading any lines.
That's not to say the movie doesn't have any dialogue. It crops up sporadically in the form of intertitles, providing what is perhaps the film's most moving moment: When a despondent George says of his beloved doggy/co-star, "If only he could talk." As the intertitles indicate, The Artist plays by the rules of an earlier era of filmmaking, which explains why there's not a whole lot of cutting in the dance and action scenes. Forced to think in strictly visual terms, Hazanavicius comes up with some real beauties. I'm especially fond of the scene where George and Peppy meet on a stairway; he's on the way down while she's on the way up, which is nice way of showing what's going on in the story.
Still, for a movie that's often described as a nonstop charmer, I found much of The Artist to be depressing. George spends much of the time moping around and pining for his glory days. I think the reason the film has failed to ignite at the box office has less to do with its silent method and more to do with Hazanavicius' failure to give us an endearing hero to root for. The story of the washed-up showbiz figure has been told countless times before – and in much more engaging fashion. Just look at the average Krusty the Klown episode of The Simpsons (especially "Krusty Gets Kancelled" and "The Last Temptation of Krust"), or Tim Burton's treatment of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood.
Burton’s Ed Wood shames this movie on all levels: as comedy, as period piece, as an emotional human story. Most of all, it shames The Artist on a technical level. Burton’s mid-‘90s masterpiece was a loving, visually impeccable tribute to Z-grade genre filmmaking. Hazanavicius doesn’t approach his material with the same sort of seriousness or panache. For example, he shot The Artist in color and converted it to black-and-white in post. When he employs silent movie techniques, it’s like he’s winking at the audience, as if to say, “Look at this cute thing we’re doing.” The entire movie is like Uggie the dog: It’s being cute for a gag.
So why is this featherweight film considered a lock for Best Picture? The answer starts with Harvey and ends with Weinstein. Back in the '90s, the movie mogul mastered the art of Oscar campaigning, so that whatever prestige picture Miramax had just released became, in the minds of voters, the crossword puzzle answer to, "What was the best film of the year?" I'll love him forever for championing filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Anthony Minghella, but Harvey seems to be up to his old tricks again. The Artist is not without its charms, but if it wins big on Sunday night it'll go down as the most eye-rolling choice since Paul Haggis' Crash.
Best fight (between wizards): Harry Potter vs. Lord Voldemort, HP7: Part 2 Best fight (between Muggles): Steve vs. Burke, The Mechanic Best villain: Lord Naritsugu, 13 Assassins
Best family film:Winnie the Pooh Best soundtrack:Drive Best duet: Annie and Helen sing "That's What Friends Are For" in Bridesmaids
Best original song: "Life's a Happy Song" by Bret McKenzie, The Muppets Most overrated film:The Descendants Most underrated film:30 Minutes or Less
Harry Knowles award (for most juvenile film):Sucker Punch Best reboot:X-Men: First Class Best female performance: Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia
Best male performance: Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes Best documentary:Into the Abyss Best Christian-themed movie:Soul Surfer
Christopher Hitchens award (for skepticism):Paul Best product placement:POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold Best 3D: Hugo
Best opening credits sequence:The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Best sex: Ellen Page and Rainn Wilson, Super Most generous nude scene: Nicky Whelan, Hall Pass
Most deserving of a wider audience:Terri Grand Guignol award (for graphic violence):I Saw the Devil Worst career turn: Indie darling David Gordon Green directs big-budget schlock (Your Highness, The Sitter)
Most likable character: Ned Rochlin, Our Idiot Brother Least likable character: Abin Cooper, Red State Most unexpected dinner guest: The Monkey Ghost, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Cutest couple: Mélanie Laurent and Ewan McGregor, Beginners Most annoying couple: Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin, Like Crazy Best ending: The West Memphis Three are freed after 18 years and 78 days behind bars in Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
I should mention that I haven't seen one of the frontrunners in this year's Oscar race, the acclaimed silent comedy The Artist. Other movies I'm still looking forward to seeing: Coriolanus, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Shame, A Dangerous Method and Margaret. If you'd like to read longer write-ups on some of the films mentioned here, please click on the words in blue.
More than 30 years in the making, Terrence Malick’s 140-minute marvel is a one-of-a-kind mix of the epic and the intimate. The opening 40 minutes are as mind-blowing as anything in a Michael Bay disaster movie, showing us the formation of the universe, the Paleolithic Era and a meteor hurtling toward the earth. The remaining 100 minutes are as vivid as anything in the childhood memoirs of Tobias Wolff and A.E. Hotchner, telling the simple story of a postwar American family, the O’Briens. It's a movie of staggering ambition and strangeness. An angel hovers around the action, just barely visible in the frame. A chair moves of its own accord. Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) flies around the yard at one point, and later we see her encased in a glass coffin in the woods, like Snow White. The camera pauses to notice things other movies wouldn’t, like a boy’s shadow dancing on the front doorstep. Big Questions are posed. (Chief among them: Why do bad things happen to good people?) Many viewers seemed perplexed as to what Malick was doing here, mingling the finite with the infinite. My take: By showing us man’s place in the cosmos, he reveals nothing less than the miracle of being alive.
2. Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen's first bona fide hit in ages invites the viewer on a magical mystery tour, as an American screenwriter named Gil (Owen Wilson) is whisked back in time to the Jazz Age. Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody and Corey Stoll give giggle-inducing performances as some of the famous artists Gil meets. A sly and very funny celebration of la vie boheme, Midnight in Paris is pure wish fulfillment.
3. War Horse
I was less than enamored by Tintin, the first Steven Spielberg movie since Amistad to make me fall asleep. In contrast, War Horse is among the director's finest achievements, a stirring homage to the sweeping Technicolor vistas and unabashed sentimentality of filmmaker John Ford. I once saw Ford's How Green Was My Valley in glorious 35mm. This rivaled that experience.
4. 13 Assassins
It's John Wayne meets John Wayne Gacy as 13 samurai are forced to confront the sadistic Lord Matsudaira. The final 45-minute battle is pretty much the coolest thing I've seen since "Showdown at House of Blue Leaves."
Exhilarating, over-the-top, ultra-violent thrillers by Joe Wright (Hanna) and Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive). Hanna is a dark urban fairy tale like Running Scared (2006). Drive is a pastiche of American crime films from the '70s and early '80s, with formidable performances by Ryan Gosling and Albert Brooks.
6. Rango
Just like Fantastic Mr. Fox gave a creative boost to Wes Anderson, director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) seems to have been reinvigorated by switching from live-action to animation. The nonstop references to everything from The Wizard of Oz to Chinatown to the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone are a movie lover's dream.
7. Crazy, Stupid, Love.
I just couldn't stop smiling. The silly backyard brawl didn't quite work for me, but almost everything else did: the Mr. Miyagi scenes between Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell, the wry teenager who's determined to show his babysitter that she's the one, the hilarious reenactment of the scene in Dirty Dancing where Patrick Swayze catches Jennifer Grey. If he weren't up against Woody Allen, I'd say Dan Fogelman had written the year's most charming screenplay. An unoriginal but sparkling romantic comedy, with the perfect final shot.
8. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy / Warrior
Tom Hardy, an actor with the looks and charisma of Dean and the ferocity of a young De Niro, gives a standout performance in both of these films. Tinker is a wintry, exceptionally smart adaptation of John Le Carre's classic spy novel. Warrior is a meat-headed UFC movie that builds to an overwhelming emotional climax. Like Hardy himself, they're an ideal mix of coolness and warmth, brains and brawn.
9. Young Adult
Imagine a love story told entirely from the perspective of a home-wrecking hussy. That's the risky proposition put forth by director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, the creative team that brought us Juno. This biting comedy skews so heavily towards the POV of a grown-up mean girl that you might not realize what kind of person she is until halfway through the movie, when one of her former classmates refers to her as a "psycho prom queen bitch." Wearing that crown with an admirable lack of vanity, Charlize Theron once again makes the most of a meaty, unflattering role. A wonderfully cast Patton Oswalt matches her scene for scene as an endearing uber-nerd who, like the movie's alcoholic anti-heroine, has never quite gotten over high school.
10. Poetry
I considered saving this spot for I Saw the Devil, directed by Jee-woon Kim, who seems to be trying to outdo Chan-wook Park (Oldboy) in the depravity department. But I have to go with my heart and profess my love for Poetry, a far subtler but very dark South Korean drama from Chang-dong Lee, the acclaimed director of Secret Sunshine. It's about a sixty-something woman who, while in the early stages of Alzheimer's, discovers her grandson is guilty of raping a classmate and, in effect, causing the girl to take her own life. The ending is an absolute knockout – a glimpse at what the film adaptation of The Lovely Bones could have been.
Honorable mentions
Hugo I Saw the Devil Melancholia Moneyball The Myth of the American Sleepover Rise of the Planet of the Apes The Rum Diary Take Shelter Terri Weekend
Guilty pleasures
Chillerama (segment "Wadzilla") Fright Night Immortals Kaboom Tucker and Dale vs Evil
The best thing that can be said about Kevin Smith’s Red State is that it’s better than Blue State, a lame romantic comedy with Breckin Meyer and Anna Paquin that came out after the 2004 election. Blue State was about a young Democrat who moved to Canada after George W. Bush won reelection. Smith’s audacious, ultra-violent new movie has a similarly political bent, but it doesn’t quite deliver the goods on the level of horror. Plus, he’s arguably covered the same material before with more rewarding results. I think his fans should see it but this is ultimately an admirable failure on Smith’s part.
I knew surprisingly little going in, only that this was being billed as Smith’s first no-bones-about-it horror movie, and that it was at least partially inspired by Fred Phelps and his vilely homophobic Westboro Baptist Church. I was eager to see the director branch out and to get his take on Phelps. As a grad student at KU, I would sometimes see members of Phelps’ church protesting outside the student union, and to me they almost seemed to fit the trashy, willfully ignorant caricature of red-state America. If anybody deserved to be cast as the villains in a horror movie, it was these people.
The opening scenes certainly feel like a horror film. Smith has reimagined The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the Craigslist era, as three high school boys (Michael Angarano, Nicholas Braun and Kyle Gallner) follow an online invitation for group sex, only to fall into the clutches of the murderous Five Points Church. The boys’ efforts to escape and the ensuing showdown between members of the church and ATF agents take up a full hour of the picture.
When I realized the second half of the movie would be a long shoot-out, I was titillated but also a little apprehensive. Smith is famous for his sloppy approach to editing and coverage, and sure enough Red State is often visually incoherent; there are some shots where members of the Five Points Church appear to be inadvertently shooting at each other. This is the same lazy approach to stunts and action that Smith brought to his sell-out Hollywood picture, the aptly titled Cop Out. What the violence in Red State has going for it is an unusually high celebrity body count, which brought to mind the shocking cameos in Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning Hurt Locker – though comparisons to Bigelow’s genius filmmaking end there. Smith showed far more flair and imagination with the carnage perpetrated by Bartleby (Ben Affleck) and Loki (Matt Damon) in Dogma.
I’d hoped Red State would be more like Dogma, which is by far Smith’s most ambitious screenplay to date. With that movie, he showed a strong point of view towards religion and brought an incisive moral order to the material. For all the promise and provocative nature of Red State, which depicts a fundamentalist church that executes gays, the movie is surprisingly random and meaningless. Smith seems to have nothing more on his mind than shock value, and the fact that he teases us with an apocalyptic climax only to quickly backpedal away from it is an unforgivable sin.
Fortunately, the director has a trump card. Viewers are probably most familiar with Michael Parks for his performance as Texas Ranger Earl McGraw in From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill and Grindhouse. Smith has given Parks one of the best roles of his life as Abin Cooper, the deranged leader of the Five Points Church. Terrifying, theatrical and often hilarious despite the bile that spews from his mouth, Cooper puts on quite a show, and so does Parks. Red State is at its strongest when Parks is at his funniest, which may be as good a sign as any that Smith should get back to what he does best now that he’s tried his hand at horror.
Shortly after Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life won the Palme d'Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, I had an amusing conversation with one of my Christian friends. The buzz coming out of Cannes was that Malick had delivered an overtly Christian film, and if there's one filmmaker who could make a true believer out of me, it's the legendary, decidedly non-prolific creator of Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World. I basically worship his films, and so my friend told me that if I ever text him “Praise Jesus” or something, then he’ll know the reason why.
The Tree of Life didn't convert me to Christianity, but it reaffirmed my faith in Malick. It's an apotheosis of the themes and filmmaking style he's been developing over the last dozen years or so, the movie he's been building up to since The Thin Red Line, his triumphant, Academy Award-nominated return to the cinema after a 20-year absence. The Thin Red Line is my favorite movie of all time; The Tree of Life is merely one of my favorites. It’s Malick’s most experimental film to date, but I think viewers will find a lot to relate to; it certainly had a profound impact on me.
I'd been waiting almost three years for this to come out, and I'm such a self-conscious person that when I finally sat down to watch it all I could think was, "OMG, I can't believe I'm watching it!" I’ve seen it twice now, and during both viewings I was reminded of Peter Biskind’s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which discusses Malick's childhood in Waco as the eldest of three brothers and the guilt he felt when one of his siblings – a gifted musician – committed suicide. All of this is included in the film, showing three boys – Jack (Hunter McCracken, who as the eldest is playing Malick's surrogate), R.L. (Laramie Epler) and Steve (Tye Sheridan) – growing up in Texas in the 1950s, though the cause of R.L.'s death is never explained. I couldn’t help thinking of Easy Riders whenever Sean Penn appeared as the adult Jack in the film’s sorrowful contemporary scenes, which for me represent the guilt Malick still feels over the death of his younger brother.
"Tell us a story from before we can remember." – R.L., The Tree of Life
As you may have heard, the movie isn't just about Malick's beginnings; it's also about the beginnings of all life on earth. R.L.'s death tests the faith of his mother, Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain), and the questions she has for God ("Where were you?" "Why did you take my son?") are answered with a sequence of overpowering beauty that depicts the formation of the universe, from the big bang to a meteor strike that wipes out the dinosaurs. This sequence lasts about 20 minutes and is only a small sample of what Malick has in store for us in his forthcoming Voyage of Time project, which causes me to wonder whether the director has made it his mission in life to make my head explode.
The Tree of Life isn’t the first origin story Malick has told. The New World is a breathtaking vision of the origins of America, specifically the founding of Jamestown. The characters in his movies are constantly asking questions about the origins of people. “Who are you, whom I so faintly hear? Who urge me ever on,” Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) asks near the beginning of The New World. In The Tree of Life, the young Jack exhibits the same kind of curiosity about God and the meaning of life: “Are you watching me? I want to know what you are. I want to see what you see.” The poetic use of narration in Malick’s films never ceases to enthrall me, but I can see how it could be ridiculed; if his movies were more popular, they could be the subject of a hilarious Saturday Night Live skit.
Some fans have accused Malick of overreaching with this new film, claiming he’s stopped asking questions about God and started giving answers pulled straight out of scripture. When Linda (Linda Manz) in Days of Heaven says “the people who have been good they’re gonna go to heaven and escape all that fire,” you don’t feel you’re being preached to, just like you don’t feel that way when Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) says “the author of all things watches over me” in the Coen Brothers’ True Grit; both lines accurately reflect the time and place in which the characters live. I guess what some fans are saying is that Malick has closed the gap between his personal beliefs (or what they assume to be his beliefs) and those of his characters. After two viewings, I don’t have strong feelings on the subject. As a skeptic/agnostic, I certainly don’t feel alienated by the film, any more than I feel alienated when I look at paintings from the Sistine Chapel.
"Do you imagine your sufferings will be less because you loved goodness? Truth?" – Dead Japanese soldier, The Thin Red Line
In one of my favorite scenes in The Tree of Life, the boys go on a day trip into town with their mother. They imitate a drunk stumbling across the road, and are visibly shaken when they see a tall man suffering from a debilitating disease. “Can it happen to anyone?” R.L. asks his mother. Later, when a boy drowns in a public swimming pool, the young Jack prays to God: “Was he bad?”
I think this is one of the major breaking points for a lot of people when it comes to faith, the idea that God isn’t there for us when we need to him to be. (It was certainly a breaking point for me.) Early on in the film, we hear Mrs. O’Brien say in voiceover, “The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.” People might hear that and accuse Malick of being naïve, but his movies are a lot more skeptical than the quote implies. The three major characters in his films who have chosen the way of grace – Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) in The Thin Red Line, Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) in The New World and Mrs. O’Brien in The Tree of Life – are just as susceptible to pain, loss and suffering as anyone else onscreen. In fact, Malick can be very cruel to these characters.
The director doesn’t make it easy to choose the way of grace. Neither does real life, what with The Hangover Part II grossing more than half a billion dollars and The Tree of Life grossing less than $40 million. Prior to the scenes with the adult Jack, Malick had never shown us his view of contemporary life. It's fairly despairing. “The world has gone to the dogs,” Jack says in voiceover. “Greed is everywhere.” I was reminded of the English settlers in The New World chopping down every tree within half a mile to build their fort, walling themselves off from paradise. Four hundred years on, the descendants of those settlers seem about as far as possible from Pocahontas and the Algonquian-speaking Indians, who, as Captain Smith notes, had no words for lying, deceit, greed, envy, slander and forgiveness.
“Nobody’s perfect. There was never a perfect person around. You’ve just got half devil and half angel in you.” – Linda, Days of Heaven
Ever since Kit (Martin Sheen) and Holly (Sissy Spacek), the outlaw lovers in Badlands, ran away together and “hid in the wilderness down by a river in a grove of cottonwoods,” Malick’s movies have been filled with natural beauty. Trees, birds and other animals figure prominently, as if the director were saying, “These are just as important as the characters.” One of the most beautiful images in Days of Heaven is a time-lapse shot showing a plant sprouting from its seed and reaching towards sunlight. I thought of that shot during the lyrical series of scenes that follows the universe sequence in The Tree of Life, which depicts Jack’s growth from infancy to boyhood.
As the young Jack, newcomer McCracken delivers one of the most remarkable child performances since The Sixth Sense. His scenes were the ones I found most relatable. Jack desperately wants to be like his mom (“Mother. Make me good. Brave,” he whispers in voiceover), but he rebels against his stern, emotionally distant father (Brad Pitt). In the scenes where Jack steals a neighbor lady’s nightgown and ditches the evidence in a river, the movie captures the way you can feel like you're in a trance-like state when you’re a kid and you know you’re doing something wrong. In the middle of a scolding, Jack suddenly hugs his father – not to get out of being punished; it’s more like he’s trying to hold onto something he feels slipping away. All of this brought back vivid memories for me.
Late in the film, Mr. O’Brien reveals himself to be a man of regrets: “I'm nothing. Look at the glory around us; trees, birds. I lived in shame. I dishonored it all, and didn’t notice the glory. A foolish man.” This is the most transcendent aspect of Malick’s movies: they notice the glory. A pastoral flashback of Mrs. O’Brien resting her head on her father’s shoulder; the boys’ delight when they find out Mr. O’Brien has gone on a business trip; a magnificently choreographed playground scene, set to “Les Barricades Mysterieuses” by Couperin, with the camera slowly dollying into a sunset – I can’t tell you how much these moments mean to me. Who needs heaven when you’ve got Terrence Malick?
Nicolas Winding Refn's extraordinary Drive is the second major film to come out this month to turn the spectacle of men pulverizing men into cinematic poetry. The other one is Warrior, and despite the middling box office showing of that epic UFC battle-of-the-meatheads, I think it's going to become a sports classic. Drive has a similarly bright future. Its detractors can't be easily dismissed, but I'm an unapologetic champion of this film, which is easily the year's most violent and certainly one of the better crafted genre pics to come along in a good long while.
The stripped down plot concerns a Hollywood stuntman (Ryan Gosling) who earns extra cash as a getaway driver. The sort of reticent, highly regimented criminal who eschews emotional commitments a la Robert De Niro's master thief in Heat, the nameless Driver seems to violate his own code when he befriends his beautiful neighbor (Carrie Mulligan) and her young son (Kaden Leos). These attachments lead to a series of fatal mishaps that put him on the bad side of two very scary men with mob connections, played by Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman.
Gosling has said Drive is his superhero movie, and if so it's one that definitively skips the origin story. Driver's background is so sketchily drawn that you begin to wonder about his credentials when he picks up a hammer and threatens to pound a nail in a goon's brain; how did the guy get so tough? The film's detractors point out that the plotting is too sparse and the characters are all one-dimensional, and indeed so little is explained that it's easy to poke holes through Hossein Amini's screenplay. For instance, why would the bad guy put himself in such a vulnerable situation at the climax? But no matter; Drive is the action thriller boiled down to its essence. By throwing out exposition almost entirely, Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising) is able to stage the film as a series of *encounters*, each more jaw-dropping than the last. Audiences will be agog during the opening chase in which Driver eludes the police, and later during a pawn shop heist that goes terribly awry. Is this a muscular piece of direction or what?
That's not to say originality is Refn's strong suit. This is essentially a 21st-century update of Thief. Like Michael Mann's brilliant neo-noir film debut, Drive draws it strengths from a charismatic lead performance, a pulse-pounding synthesizer score and ultra-stylish set pieces. Towering over it all is funnyman Brooks' astonishing performance as Bernie Rose, an incredibly evil man who has a very up-close-and-personal way of dispatching his enemies. There are a few scenes in Drive that I think will become notorious, and certainly one of those is the whole "is that a fork in my eye or are you just unhappy to see me?" scene. But the moment I found most chilling was when Bernie offers his hand and ends up slitting a man's wrist. What's most disturbing about that scene is the killer actually thinks he's being considerate; that's Bernie at his nicest. Drive isn't perfect, but it's the work of a director who's got talent to burn.
Terrence Malick's latest (his fifth movie in 38 years) is a WTF oddity in our souled-out culture. It's also one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Bring on the 6-hour cut!
2. Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen's most purely enjoyable picture since Bullets Over Broadway. A veritable feast for intellectuals (or, as in my case, would-be intellectuals).
3. Rango
I love the look, it's funny, and the film references are gangbusters (e.g., a ceiling fan standing in for the windmill at the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West).
4. 13 Assassins
Takashi Miike's samurai masterpiece features the villain of the year, an evil lord whose savagery will make your blood boil. The final 45-minute bloodbath rivals Gen. Washizu's death-by-a-thousand-arrows in Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood.
5. The Tempest
The New York Times recently published a piece asking how Julie Taymor would ever salvage her reputation after the whole Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark debacle. Not once does that article mention Taymor's latest film, a visual triumph that proves what a truly vital American artist she is.
6. Source Code
Most well executed sci-fi picture since Inception. Read my mini-review here.
7. Bridesmaids
Most I've laughed since Hot Tub Time Machine.
8. Paul
Seth Rogen as an alien plus the guys from Shaun of the Dead – it's a winning combination. Read my review here.
9. Rabbit Hole
Clueless adults, a teenager who expresses his view of the world through comic books, the accidental death of a child – Rabbit Hole reminded me of The Ice Storm, and that's the highest praise I can think of. John Cameron Mitchell directs Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart in extraordinary performances.
10. I Saw the Devil
I loved almost every minute of this ultraviolent Oldboy ripoff, which makes me a very sicky puppy indeed. Features the coolest shot-from-inside-the-car crash since Fight Club – or at least since Let Me In.
11. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Menagerie of bones, crystal formations, boy and wolf walking side by side – such lovely forgotten dreams in this eye-opening documentary about the world's oldest cave paintings. Directed and narrated in that unforgettable German accent by Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man).
12. Super 8
Son of Rambow meets District 9, with a touch of Spielbergian wonder for good measure. What's not to like? Bring Reese's Pieces.
13. Kaboom
The Rules of Attraction for a new generation. Read my review here.
14. Everything Must Go
Best PBR commercial I've seen since Blue Velvet!
15. Vanishing on 7th Street
Spooky, unpredictable homage to The Twilight Zone from genre pro Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist).
