The best movies of 2015

1. Mad Max: Fury Road: Remember when the trailers made this look like it was going to be the coolest thing ever? And then it came out on May 15th, and it actually was the coolest thing ever? What a lovely day!

2. It Follows: Indie director David Robert Mitchell follows up The Myth of the American Sleepover with another sensitive, curiously timeless portrait of suburban teens, except this time it's in the context of a remarkably poised and ferocious horror movie. After sleeping with the wrong guy, a college student (Maika Monroe) finds herself hunted by a relentless, shape-shifting killer. More than just a clever allegory, it's an instant genre classic. The spooky, stylized score by Disasterpeace was easily the year's coolest.

3. The Hateful Eight: Quentin Tarantino's 8th feature film divided critics and fans alike, but for my money it's the auteur's greatest achievement since Kill Bill. Just as Kill Bill was a pastiche of samurai films (Vol. 1) and spaghetti westerns (Vol. 2), The Hateful Eight is really two or even three movies in one. First, Tarantino touches down in John Ford country, then we're drawn into a tense locked-room murder mystery, which gives way to... well, something entirely sadistic. The change-up left many an unsuspecting viewer feeling betrayed, but I think it's the source of the film's bleak power. Shocking and howlingly funny in the best Tarantino fashion, it's a strikingly pessimistic piece of work that's obviously not for everyone. Even if it's not your cup of poisoned coffee, you've gotta love the cast Tarantino has assembled to play some of his most vivid characters ever.

4. Love & Mercy:

                                 

5. Ex Machina: Alex Garland published a generation defining novel (The Beach) in his twenties, wrote a groundbreaking fast-zombie movie (28 Days Later) in his early thirties, and now he's written and directed a mind-blowing A.I. thriller (Ex Machina) in his forties. I think it's safe to say this guy has my dream career.

6. Spotlight: Tom McCarthy's quietly devastating drama is not only about the Boston Globe reporters who exposed rampant child sex abuse by Catholic priests; it's also about how our entire society failed to put a stop to it. Such acting heavyweights as Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams do more than right by the story's real-life investigative heroes. If Fury Road isn't "respectable" enough to win, then this absolutely deserves to beat The Revenant in the Oscar race for best picture.

7. Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Considering all of the hype surrounding this project, director J.J. Abrams has pulled off the near miraculous: a spectacularly good Star Wars movie, with fresh-faced heroes and a memorable villain (not to mention Leia, Luke and Han) in a rip-roaring adventure story. To the fans who complained Abrams outright stole scenes from the holy trilogy, I offer the following rebuttal. Yes, I was often reminded of episodes IV, V and VI while watching The Force Awakens, especially near the end when a beloved character gets killed off. You know what I was never reminded of? This:

8. Bone Tomahawk: The Hateful Eight wasn't the only horror western starring Kurt Russell to be released in 2015. "Barely released" in the case of Bone Tomahawk, but no matter: this thrilling mash-up from first-time director S. Craig Zahler will find its audience in due course. Working from Zahler's literate screenplay, Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins and Matthew Fox brought true grit to the members of a rescue party who walk willingly into hell on earth. Imagine The Searchers crossed with The Green Inferno and you're not far off.

9. Brooklyn / Room (tie): What do these two Oscar nominees for best picture have in common? You mean, besides a bucket of my tears? ;) Well, for starters, each offers a textbook case of how to adapt a book to the screen. With a radiant lead performance by Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan (those eyes^ were the the best special effect the movies had to offer this year), Brooklyn is both a compassionate Irish immigrant story and a valentine to an earlier era of New York City a la A Bronx Tale. With its child's-eye POV, Room is a profound subjective experience from the very beginning ("Good morning, sink"). As the film's indomitable mother-son duo, Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay got me caught up in the emotional lives of their characters in a way no other movie this year could.

10. The Big Short: How did Adam McKay, the guy behind Anchorman and Step Brothers, make one of the year's best and most important movies? He assembled an A-list cast (including Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell, all of whom are clearly having a field day). Also, he approached the 2008 collapse of the world economy the same way one of the masters of cinema approached mutually assured destruction...

"My idea of doing [Dr. Strangelove] as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny." – Stanley Kubrick

11. Wild Tales: I've never forgotten one of the standalone sequences (there are six total) of Damián Szifron's wild, Oscar-nominated dark comedy. A driver refuses to let another man pass him on an isolated mountain road. One of them flips the bird, and somehow this escalates to the point where we're looking at two charred skeletons under a bridge. Each sick-comic episode intensifies to such an insane degree that by the time we get to the finale at a wedding, we're left giggling nervously at the possibilities. Believe me, that sequence doesn't disappoint; it's the most hilariously awful wedding since Melancholia. Wild Tales reminded me of Amores Perros, another Spanish-language anthology film, which was directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Iñárritu went on to make 2014's best picture winner and this year's frontrunner, and I think we'll see similarly great things from Szifron in the years to come.

12. Creed: Sure, Rocky 7 followed a decades-old formula, but in the hands of the gifted young African-American filmmaker Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station), everything old was made fresh and rousing. As a fighter with a famous last name and the singer he courts outside of the ring, Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson formed what was arguably the film's most dynamic match-up.

13. Grandma: It sounds provocative on paper: an aging lesbian author helps her granddaughter find the money the teen needs for an abortion. Running a near-perfect 75 minutes, the movie handles its plot in a practical way, putting family ties front and center. Lily Tomlin (who hasn't been this wryly funny since Flirting with Disaster) has wonderful screen chemistry with Julia Garner (who played Joseph Gordon-Levitt's baby-doll girlfriend in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For). Written and directed with disarming emotional authenticity by Paul Weitz.

14. Tangerine: When Sin-Dee finds out her boyfriend/pimp has been cheating on her, she spends Christmas Eve looking for him and the cisgender girl he had an affair with. A gorgeous, energetic and hilaaarious West Hollywood comedy, Tangerine works up a level of pop music-powered excitement comparable to Run Lola Run. In the final scene, we realize we've been watching the year's most touching platonic love story.

15. The Visit: After a string of big-budget disasters, M. Night Shyamalan switched modes by teaming up with Blumhouse Productions and going low-budget horror. The result: his best movie in years and the creepiest grandparents since Weird Science. "Yahtzee!"

Runners-up: Crimson Peak, Unfriended, The Jinx, Mississippi Grind, Far from the Madding Crowd, Slow West, The End of the Tour, Goodnight Mommy, Maps to the Stars, Bridge of Spies, The Martian, Blackhat, The Duke of Burgundy, The Final Girls, World of Tomorrow, The Walk

Family films: Paddington, Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep Movie

Best Actor: Paul Dano, Love & Mercy

Best Actress: Lily Tomlin, Grandma

Supporting Actor: Walter Goggins, The Hateful Eight

Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina

A few other acting favorites: Teyonah Parris, tearing through Chi-Raq as the leader of a "no peace, no piece" movement; Jason Statham, who had great fun sending up his stern tough guy persona in Spy; Al Pacino, who gave a ridiculously entertaining late-career performance as a Neil Diamond-type singer in Danny Collins; Sean Harris, lowering the room temperature about 20 degrees every time he appears in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation; Bel Powley as a young cartoonist exploring her sexuality in the frank and honest The Diary of a Teenage Girl; in The Gift, Jason Bateman added the mean streak of a bully to the exasperated nice guy we're used to seeing him play; and, as much as I enjoyed Johnny Depp's Nosferatu take on Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, he was no match for Peter Sarsgaard, who was on a whole different level in his brief appearance as a sweaty, nervous, homicidal gangster.

That's entertainment! American Ultra, Knock Knock, San Andreas, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Jupiter Ascending, Terminator: Genesys, Krampus

Movies I haven't seen yet but want to: Carol, Son of Saul, 45 Years, Anomalisa, Mustang, The Look of Silence, Listen to Me Marlon

Teenage apocalypse redux

Back in the ‘90s, Gregg Araki directed the Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy. Filled with doomsday scenarios and showing exceptionally good taste in clothes and music, this unholy trinity (comprised of Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation and Nowhere) established Araki as an unpredictable gay filmmaker who refused to be pinned down by the conventions of New Queer Cinema. In 2004, he had a breakthrough with Mysterious Skin, a heartbreaking and startlingly gorgeous adaptation of Scott Heim’s novel. Some critics heralded Mysterious Skin as the dawn of a new, mature phase in Araki’s career, but the Japanese-American director continued to defy expectation. In 2007, he made the stoner comedy Smiley Face (featuring a seriously funny lead performance by Anna Faris). His new film, Kaboom, is basically Part 4 of his teenage apocalypse series. It’s a lot of fun to watch, even though there’s something a little irksome about a filmmaker who’s so clearly regressed.

Like The Doom Generation and Nowhere, Kaboom is 20% sex, 80% movie. Much of that sex involves two couples: College freshman Smith (Thomas Dekker) and his new fun buddy, London (a spectacularly exhibitionist performance by Juno Temple); and Smith’s BFF, Stella (Haley Bennett), and her girlfriend, Lorelei (Roxane Mesquida), who may or may not be a witch. Smith’s non-mating rituals include pining for his himbo-surfer roommate, Thor (Chris Zylka), and avoiding the members of a cult who like to wear animal masks.

The movie sometimes resembles This Is How the World Ends, an MTV pilot that Araki directed a decade ago. The heroes of both films confide in a lesbian BFF, and both are motivated by recurring dreams involving beautiful women. Given its title, This Is How the World Ends presumably would have developed an apocalyptic plot if it had lasted longer than a single, 30-minute episode, and Kaboom is very much about how the world ends. These similarities may explain why Araki has returned to familiar territory; he may have wanted to finish what he started with his failed MTV series.

Still, the movie definitely represents a step backward. Smith doesn't have the heart of Dark Smith and the other soulful teenage heroes played by James Duval in Totally F***ed, The Doom Generation and Nowhere. Kaboom also lacks the unforgettable imagery of those films – think of the surreal design of the bedrooms in Nowhere, or the Quickie Mart massacre in Doom Generation – and it closes on an inexcusably cheesy special-effects shot. Fans won’t be disappointed by the clever dialogue (“It’s a well-known fact that dreams are just your brain taking a dump at the end of the day; they don’t mean anything”) and the music (including Cut Copy, Ladytron and Explosions in the Sky), but they might get an uneasy sense of déjà vu.

The film has been called “the gay Donnie Darko,” a comparison that has a certain kind of symmetry. It’s hard to imagine Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult phenomenon without the Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy. (Kelly even acknowledges Araki’s influence by casting Duval in the role of Frank the Giant Bunny Rabbit.) But I doubt Kaboom will inspire endless debate about the intricacies of its plot in the same way that Darko did; the conspiracy surrounding Smith isn’t meant to be taken that seriously.

Oscar Picks, 2011

Best Picture

Should win: 127 Hours
Will win: The King's Speech

The King shall reign supreme, even though Aron Ralston's epic one-man journey moved me more.

Best Director

Should win: David Fincher, The Social Network
Will win: Fincher

Many of the directors who made me excited about watching movies this year (Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan, Derek Cianfrance) weren't nominated. Still, Fincher has been doing innovative work since the '80s, when he directed music videos for Aerosmith and Madonna. He deserves it.

Best Actor

Should win: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Will win: Colin Firth, The King's Speech

Mark Zuckerberg may not think we deserve his full attention, but Eisenberg certainly had mine for every second he was onscreen. Too bad Firth is a shoo-in.

Best Actress

Should win: Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine
Will Win: Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right

Please, God: Make the Academy voters come to their senses. Don't let them give anything to Black Swan or Natalie Portman. How about Michelle Williams, who gave an almost uncomfortably revealing performance in Derek Cianfrance's amazing Blue Valentine? If not, then how about Annette Bening, even though she was way better in Mother and Child? Thanks, pal.

Best Supporting Actor

Should win: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Will win: Bale

I love every performance in this category, but when Christian Bale is good – like, American Psycho good – he can't be beat. I'm still not 100% convinced he wasn't actually on crack during the filming of this movie.

Best Supporting Actress

Should win: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Will win: Steinfeld

The Academy wants to give something to the Coen Brothers' widely acclaimed Western, and Steinfeld presents the best opportunity. Her plucky, resourceful, deeply Protestant teenage avenger is one of the year's most riveting movie creations.

Best Original Screenplay

Should win: Mike Leigh, Another Year
Will win: Christopher Nolan, Inception

I think Nolan will pull a surprise upset, if only because the Academy wants all those fanboys to shut up about how he was robbed of directing noms this year and in 2008. But, forced to choose between Brits, I'll take Leigh over Nolan any day of the week.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Should win: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
Will win: Sorkin

He wrote the following, generation-defining line: "As if every thought that tumbled through your head was so clever it would be a crime for it not to be shared." I rest my case.

Best Animated Feature

Toy Story 3

Best Foreign Language Film

In a Better World

Best Documentary Feature

Restrepo

Best Film Editing

The Social Network

Best Cinematography

Inception

Best Visual Effects

Inception

Best Art Direction

The King's Speech

Best Costume Design

I Am Love

Best Makeup

The Wolfman (click here to read more about this category)

Best Original Score

Inception

Best Original Song

"If I Rise," 127 Hours

Best Makeup: "The Wolfman"

The night before they filmed the famous murder-suicide scene, Stanley Kubrick told Vincent D’Onofrio on the set of Full Metal Jacket: “Just remember, it has to be big. It has to be, like, Lon Chaney big.”

You’ll get a good idea of what Kubrick was talking about when you watch Chaney’s memorably anguished performance in The Wolf Man (1941). Here’s a horror movie so romantic, scary and well made it took Hollywood nearly 70 years to screw it up.

The Wolfman (2010) stars Benicio Del Toro, an actor who in previous films has proven himself a worthy successor to Chaney. His performances as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects, Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Jackie Boy in Sin City are so larger than life the screen can barely contain them. The director and screenwriters of Wolfman keep Del Toro on a very short leash. He spends most of his screen time either hidden behind makeup or delivering monosyllabic lines. The filming of this movie must have been a very frustrating experience for him.

Inexplicably written by two of Hollywood’s most talented scribes – Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) and David Self (Road to Perdition) – the script makes numerous alterations to the original film, none of them for the better. The girl the Wolf Man pursues is now the fiancée of his dead brother, a change that has exactly one effect: to make his character an insensitive douchebag. The new film also adds an origin story that’s no less absurd than, say, "The Honking" – the Futurama episode in which an evil “were-car” kills people because it has the left turn signal from Charles Manson’s VW.

The filmmakers have pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of making a werewolf movie with no subtext. In the original, the Wolf Man was a genuinely tragic figure, an essentially decent but aloof man who ignored the warnings of the villagers who told him “even a man who is pure in heart… may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms.” There’s real poignancy when Chaney says, “I can’t help myself.” The film uses the werewolf as a metaphor for “the good and evil in every man’s soul.”

Exactly what is this new Wolfman about? Beats me. The werewolf has given the horror genre some of its most thematically rich movies. Ginger Snaps is a brilliant werewolf movie that puts a terrifying spin on the adolescent “growth spurt”. Even a B-movie cheapie like I Was a Teenage Werewolf gives us something to think about, as Stephen King notes in his epic 1986 novel, It, when Richie Tozier goes to see it:

“…the kid who turned into the werewolf was full of anger and bad feelings. Richie found himself wondering if there were many people in the world hiding bad feelings like that.”

The Teenage Werewolf is Richie’s worst nightmare. I can’t imagine The Wolfman keeping Richie Tozier or anyone else up at night. It had the opposite effect on me: I fell asleep watching it at the theater.

The movie has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Makeup, thus proving once and for all that you don’t have to make a good film to qualify in one of the technical categories. Thanks to modern visual effects, we get to see the transformation of the Wolf Man in real time. But I actually prefer the use of dissolves in the original film; you don’t stop and think, “I’m looking at a special effect.” I’m rooting for Barney’s Version to win in this category, but Wolfman is the more obvious choice. Rick Baker has won six Oscars for Best Makeup, and I’m guessing he’ll be collecting his seventh.

Best Makeup: "The Way Back"

Peter Weir’s new World War II adventure movie, The Way Back, is being presented by National Geographic Entertainment. That seems appropriate, because the movie is loaded with awe-inspiring scenery. It has an all-star cast and an absorbing narrative, but it never fully engages our emotions.

Jim Sturgess, the gifted young British actor from Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, plays Janusz, a Polish prisoner of war who’s convicted of espionage and sentenced to 20 years hard labor in a Soviet camp. There, he meets an American named Mr. Smith (Ed Harris) and a Russian hood named Valka (Colin Ferrell). The men escape and make a seemingly impossible journey through the snows of Siberia, over the Himalayas and into India. Did I mention they walk the whole way?

The movie is pictorially riveting, especially the early scenes in the labor camp. The men huddle together in the mines and in cramped living spaces, their shaved heads glimmering in the dark. The movie loses some of its spark during the initial stretch of the journey. Most cinematic odysseys (like Cold Mountain and Into the Wild) rely on the introduction of new characters, but the escaped inmates in The Way Back are walking from, uh, Siberia. Not a lot of people to meet out there (or so I’ve heard).

The story finally comes to life again when the men meet Irena (Saoirse Ronan), a spirited teenage runaway. “Don’t you talk to each other?” Irena asks her less-than-loquacious comrades. “In the camps,” Mr. Smith answers, “you learn to speak as little as possible.” While that’s probably true, it doesn’t make for very compelling characters. The script tends to sacrifice drama on the altar of realism.

One of Australia’s most acclaimed filmmakers, Weir has made movies that have basically haunted me all my life (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Dead Poets Society, Fearless, The Truman Show). He failed to move me with this one. His previous effort, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, showed a similar flair for exacting verisimilitude. But it also gave us a captivating human drama to get caught up in, bringing Captain Jack Aubrey and his naturalist friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin, to vivid life.

Admittedly, I have a bias against these kinds of Westernized international pictures. They always feature nonsensical performances like the one by Colin Farrell, an Irish actor playing a Russian criminal speaking in broken English (“I know about survive – all my life”). There’s only so much slack you can give to a movie like this.

The movie’s sole Oscar nomination is for Best Makeup. Hair and makeup artists Edouard F. Henriques, Gregory Funk and Yolanda Toussieng do a remarkable job of showing us the physical effects of the journey, in the form of chapped lips, swollen feet and bruised faces. Henriques and Toussieng were nominated for Master and Commander but lost to The Return of the King. I think this year’s winner will also be a movie in the sci-fi & fantasy genre. I’ll discuss it in my next post.

Best Makeup: "Barney's Version"

This is the first in a series of posts about the 83rd Academy Awards; the winners will be announced Feb. 27.

In addition to my Oscar predictions, I thought it might be fun to review each of the nominees in a particular category. I’m too lazy to review all 10 Best Picture nominees (or all five Best Actor nominees, for that matter). That leaves Best Animated Feature and Best Makeup; each category honors three movies. Frankly, I’m too upset that Tangled didn’t get nominated to even look at Best Animated Feature, so Best Makeup it is.

An American Werewolf in London won the first Best Makeup Oscar in 1981. Since then, some extraordinary films have been honored: Peter Bogdanovich’s Mask, David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and Eddie Murphy’s Norbit. Okay, some are more extraordinary than others. Like costume designers and FX wizards, makeup artists can be like Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the G.I. Joe movie, spinning gold from lousy material.

The 2010 nominees for Best Makeup are (drum roll, please): Barney’s Version, The Way Back and The Wolfman. My personal favorite is Barney’s Version. It stars Paul Giamatti as Barney Panofsky, the producer of a ridiculous Canadian soap opera called Constable O’Malley of the North. The movie’s storyline spans 25 years, covering relationships with friends and family, as well as a drunken fight that may or may not have ended in Barney killing a guy.

Like nominees in previous years (Amadeus, A Beautiful Mind, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), this is one of those movies where actors age through cosmetics. We see Barney and friends when they were all young and beautiful and living in Rome, and later when he’s stricken with Alzheimer’s disease. Makeup supervisor Adrien Morot does a fantastic job; Giamatti’s transformation is especially convincing.

I’m rooting for Barney’s Version to win this year’s Academy Award for Best Makeup because it tells the best story, and Morot’s make-up work enriches the storytelling. Without cosmetic enhancement, the final scene between Barney and his dad (played to wry perfection by Dustin Hoffman) wouldn’t have quite the same impact. It’s one of the truest, funniest, most heartbreaking scenes I’ve seen in a movie theater in the past year.

I’ll review the other nominees for Best Makeup in my next two posts.

"Monsters"

Like District 9, Gareth Edwards’ Monsters is a monster movie that takes place several years after aliens have landed on Earth. District 9 had a budget of $30 million; Monsters cost a fraction of that ($500,000), but you wouldn’t know by looking at it. The movie is a masterpiece of economy filmmaking and a prime example of just how much a resourceful independent filmmaker can accomplish these days.

The movie takes place in a speculative near-future, when the entire northern part of Mexico has been quarantined and the U.S.-Mexico border has been sealed with a fortified wall to keep out extraterrestrial “creatures”. A war photographer (Scoot McNairy) is paid a hefty sum to escort a wealthy American expatriate (Whitney Able) from Central America back to the States. To complete the journey, they must travel through the Infected Zone, where alien behemoths that look like elephants crossed with squids roam freely.

Like Robert Rodriguez, Edwards is a multi-hyphenate filmmaker. Traveling with his two lead actors and a 5-man crew, he shot the movie himself in Costa Rica, Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. He filmed in flooded areas and disasters zones, including a neighborhood in Galveston, Texas, that had been destroyed by Hurricane Ike. Like the great documentarians, Edwards knows how to make the most of his surroundings. The landscape looks like it’s been ravaged by alien invaders, but no, the filmmakers simply shot on location in areas that suited their purposes.

Even more astonishing is what Edwards achieved during post-production. Using readily available computer programs like Photoshop and Adobe After Effects, he painted in helicopters, road signs, mountains and a towering border fence. In an amazing nighttime scene, a sea creature pulls a downed plane beneath the surface; the effects in that scene were accomplished in the director’s bathtub using a toy plane and a Mag-Lite. The design of the creatures is jaw-dropping. Whereas Steven Spielberg delayed showing the monster in Jaws because he thought the shark looked fake, Edwards shows the creatures right away, in a stunning roadside attack that opens the film. Monsters shows how far visuals effects technology has advanced in the 35 years since Spielberg’s creature-feature blockbuster.

Able and McNairy have good chemistry (they’re married in real life), but the real star is Edwards. No wonder why he’s been hired to direct the new big-budget reboot of Godzilla. His low-budget indie can be viewed as a straight monster movie or as an allegory for immigration and the devastating effects of natural disasters in the Third World’s most vulnerable areas. It’s no big surprise that the “monsters” to which the title refers turn out to be entirely human.

House of 1000 Remakes: "A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop"

I’m cheating a bit here because I said this series would be about horror remakes. The Coen Brothers haven’t made a horror movie yet, though their debut film, the twisted little caper Blood Simple, certainly has horror elements. Rumor has it their next film might be a horror movie. According to Ethan, “We’re working on a couple of scripts now, one of which it would be fair to call a full-on horror movie. Frances McDormand is the monster.” Take from that what you will.

Chinese director Zhang Yimou is a huge Coen Brothers fan, and I was stoked when he announced his intentions to remake Blood Simple. Zhang is responsible for some of the most beautiful films in world cinema over the last decade. Hero, House of Flying Daggers, The Curse of the Golden Flower – these movies are why God invented Blu-ray. He also gave us the spectacular opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the one that made Eric Cartman and Stephen Colbert so fearful of the Chinese.

Zhang’s new Blood Simple remake, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, is a notable oddity at best. The director claims the Coen Brothers wrote to him to say they enjoyed it, and I think they were being entirely too nice. It’s arguably his worst movie.

A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop tells the same basic story as Blood Simple, but it’s been transplanted from Texas to a small desert town in China. Even though the plot involves shocking domestic violence, Zhang directs in slapstick style. This makes for some jarring tone problems. The characters look and act like they belong in a wacky comedy, but Blood Simple is no O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Zhang’s choices have a tendency to sap the story of its inherent drama. Take the famous live burial from the original, quite possibly the most horrifying scene the Coens have ever directed. In the new film, the husband is shot dead before his grave is completely filled in with dirt. Where’s the fun in that?

My advice is to stick with Blood Simple. Zhang is a master director, and I’m sure he’ll knock The 13 Women of Nanjing (starring soon-to-be Oscar winner Christian Bale) out of the park. It's not like he’s the only great filmmaker who’s failed to live up to the original. The original Ladykillers is way better than the Coen Brothers’ Ladykillers.

"The Only Good Indian"

“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
–Gen. Philip Sheridan

This is going to be a rave review, so I should state from the outset that I know some of the filmmakers involved. The director, Kevin Willmott, taught a few film classes I took as a grad student at the University of Kansas. And the cinematographers, Matthew Jacobson and Jeremy Osbern, appeared on a radio show I used to host for KJHK-90.7 FM, which is only the greatest college radio station in the world.

At KU, Willmott teaches History of African-American Images in Film. His students learn the five major black stereotypes: the coon, the mulatto, the mammy, the tom and the buck. Taking the class is an eye-opening experience to say the least. The same could be said of Willmott’s new film, The Only Good Indian. It’s a terrific American Western, offering an unapologetically clear-eyed view of history and featuring very powerful performances.

Willmott has said he wanted to make the anti-Searchers. Appropriately enough, his film opens and closes with a shot lifted from John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece, showing a silhouetted figure through a doorway and framed against a background of endless prairie. The Only Good Indian and The Searchers tell similar stories, with a key difference: the roles of victim and aggressor have been reversed. In Willmott’s film, an Indian youth is kidnapped from his family by white Christians, and the boy’s quest to return home forms the basis of the story. The movie also brings to mind the 2002 Australian film Rabbit-Proof Fence, in which three Aboriginal girls are plucked from their homes.

In a remarkable screen debut, Winter Fox Frank stars as Charlie, a member of the Kansas Kickapoo Tribe who is abducted from his home and put on a train to Lawrence. There, he’s forced to attend a boarding school for Native American children. He’s prohibited from using his native language and made to dress like whites and say Christian prayers.

Charlie has no intention of giving up his heritage without a fight, so he’s subjected to daily beatings and made to eat soap for refusing to speak English. He manages to escape this terrifying ordeal, but not before snatching a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula off a shelf. Reading about Europeans “without heart or conscience, preying on the souls of those we love best,” Charlie naturally assumes his oppressors must be vampires.

The film co-stars Wes Studi (The Last of the Mohicans, Avatar) in the role of a lifetime. He plays Sam Franklin, a bounty hunter who captures Charlie and attempts to return him to the school. An assimilated Cherokee, Sam is the film’s most complex character. (A close second is Sheriff Henry McCoy, a veteran of the Indian wars who considers the schools even “crueler than anything I ever done.” He's played by J. Kenneth Campbell.)

In a very moving scene, Sam reveals how he’s rationalized the decimation of his people when he tells Charlie, “Their god is stronger than ours. And it’s just meant for them. It’s written in their book. They keep comin’ and comin’ and comin’ and they don’t stop until they get what they want. THAT’S the white man.” There’s a lot of humor in this role, too, which Studi plays beautifully. Sam wants to join the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, and plans to “out-white man the goddamn white man.”

Filmed in part at the Old Cowtown Museum of Wichita, the movie is an impressive recreation of the period. Willmott has said one of his goals as a filmmaker is to “stay Kansas,” and here he’s found a way to do that without compromising the material. CSA: The Confederate States of America, his other great revisionist movie, is a mockumentary in which the South wins the Civil War. He’s the rare independent filmmaker who has something to say, and I for one hope he’ll continue opening eyes inside and outside of the classroom.

The Only Good Indian is available to watch instantly on Netflix.

That's blasphemy...