500 Days Of Summer

There are very few phrases that will almost always make me avoid a film at all cost. "Torture porn," "based on the hit Broadway musical," "tearjerker" and "starring Paris Hilton" are all certainly among them, along with "romantic comedy." Outside of Annie Hall (and some of Allen's other films if they can be accurately described as such), I can never think of a rom-com that I actually enjoy, which is why it felt so strange to actually be excited by the trailer for 500 Days Of Summer. A romantic comedy that actually looks funny? And smart? And doesn't feature Mathew Mcconaughey or Katherine Heigl? Holy shit. Add in the extremely positive buzz and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanael as the leads and it became one of my most anticipated films of the summer, so when I found out that I could get free tickets to an advance screening, I jumped at the chance. Thankfully, it met every expectation.
The Annie Hall comment above was no accident, and it's not just the highly literate, fully formed characters, the sense of humor and the repeated references to the films of Ingmar Bergman. While this film is not as insightful when it comes to relationships as Allen's masterpiece, it is the closest any film this generation has come. Tom (Gordon-Levitt) is a writer at a greeting card company, and he believes very strongly in love, fate and finding "the one," which the narrator says was caused by "listening to too much depressing British music and a complete misinterpretation of The Graduate." Summer (Deschanael) is the new receptionist at the office, and she believes that love does not exist, likening it to Santa Clause. On day 1, Tom sees her, and falls immediately head-over-heels, but this isn't where the film begins. First-time director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber jump around through the 500 days of the title, showing us all of the ups and downs of their relationship, usually in just the right spot. They open around day 300, right after Tom and Summer break up, as Tom's two best friends and his little sister, who is shown to be a far more emotionally mature person than he, try to console him. We see their relationship begin, and even though she always insists that they are just friends, Tom falls in love. This is juxtaposed with post-breakup Tom falling into a pit of depression, trying to find a reason for their breakup, quitting his job and blaming our societal issues with love on "greeting cards, pop songs and the movies." Around day 30, they first have sex, which is followed by a rather amusing, semi-surreal song-and-dance number. After quitting his job, Tom goes to the movies, which, in what is by far the film's best sequence, leads to shot-for-shot homages to the final scene in Persona and the first chess-scene in The Seventh Seal, with Tom and Summer taking the various roles. Later, after meeting at a mutual friend's wedding, for the first time since their break-up, Summer invites Tom to a party at her house, and we see it in split-screen, one side showing what Tom wants to happen and the other showing us reality. Throughout the film, they discuss art, music, film, architecture and every other thing that people hide behind, but they can never really come together and discuss what is happening to them and the state of their relationship, because Tom is right, the conveniences of modernity do stop us from being able to really open up, and unless two people are absolutely perfect for each other, that will not change.
500 Days of Summer is the best American film I've seen this year, but it does have one or two flaws. The first act is one of the most consistently hilarious half-hours I've seen in a film, so, as the second act begins to settle into serious-mode, it slows down a bit. The film manages to avoid most of the Sundance-cliches. It is quirky, but, for the most part, this adds to our love of the characters and is not just for the sake of being quirky. The one exception may be Tom's little sister. Her scenes are pretty amusing, but it almost always feels very forced and contrived when an adult character talks to a child for relationship advice. In all honesty, those are my only complaints. Webb generally avoids the visual flair and lets the characters be the centers of attention, and they are great characters. Both actors give career-best performances (at least from what I've seen from them, which, in Deschanel's case, does not include her widely acclaimed work in David Gordon Green's All The Real Girls) It is impossible not to fall in love with Summer, and not just because she's played by the equally impossible not-to-love Deschanel. She is just an incredibly fun and refreshing presence, plus she loves The Beatles' underrated "Octopus Garden," which had been stuck in my head all week. Tom is the center of this film, and Gordon-Levitt does a great job of humanizing a character that, in the hands of a lesser actor, probably would have come off as just depressing, and maybe kind of creepy. The film's use of music must also be mentioned. It is full of clips from and references to bands that I love, including The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pixies, Belle and Sebastian, The Smiths, Feist, Spoon and Wolfmother. All of this, plus the intelligent and humorous script adds up to what will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the year's best films. 500 Days Of Summer, more than anything else, is a very modern, very great Woody Allen film, and that should be enough to get you to see it when it comes out.
Rating (out of ****): ****

Almanac Of Fall

There's something kind of strange about going through a filmmaker's work in reverse. It allows you to see the evolution of their style, what they thought worked and what failed. While not entirely intentional, this is basically what I've been doing with Bela Tarr, ever since I first saw Werckmeister Harmonies last year, which is now my favorite film (I only saw 2007's wonderful Man From London a few weeks ago, but that was because it wasn't released here until then). In fact, after watching his vastly underseen (even in the realm of Tarr, whose films are all vastly underseen) 1982 film Almanac of Fall this afternoon, I'm confident that I can now call him my favorite filmmaker. Period. Almanac is an interesting film, forming the bridge between his supposedly realist earlier films (remember, I haven't seen them), and the more difficult, allegorical films to come. It's also the only color feature I've seen from him, and his skill with the full color palate nearly reaches his abilities with black and white. The political allegory and Tarkovsky-esque camera work of his later films is here, but in a younger form, and his other influences, especially Bergman and Antonioni (and, maybe, to a much lesser extent Fellini) are more obvious in this film than in his subsequent works.
The entire film takes place in one large, dilapidated mansion. The outside world is barely shown, only intruding for two brief moments of violence. There are only five characters, and the entire film consists of their interactions. The house is owned by Hedi, a woman of about 60 and her 30 year old son Janos. There is also Hedi's nurse, Anna, who lives with her lover, Miklos. Miklos has recently invited his poor friend Tibor, a teacher to move in as well. The five of them spend the two-hour run-time manipulating and hurting each other, all of them trying to gain money and power over the others, all blaming the others for their problems. Hedi and Anna need each other, but they are always competing, and neither is comfortable with the other. Janos wants Anna, but is far too lazy to accomplish anything. Miklos is an angry man, abusing Anna and manipulating Hedi against the others. Tibor owes money to an undisclosed figure, who sends two men in to beat him. This is shown from the floor's point of view, as the entire sequence (of course done in one virtuoso shot) is shown happening on top of a glass pane. Eventually Tibur pawns Hedi's valuable gold bracelet, which further pulls everyone apart, and eventually breaks up the group, who demand a sacrificial lamb before they can return to their twisted normalcy.
It must be made clear that this is an unpleasant film. The characters cruelty and actions would seem at home in something by Von Trier, whose debut feature had been released the previous year. This has turned off many critics (many may be an overstatement given the film's obscurity, but that is unimportant), but it is necessary. The chamber-play setup as well as some of the character actions, especially the manipulative relationship between Hedi and Anna, shows Bergman's influence on Tarr. The expressive and always changing color palate was created entirely with artificial light and reminded me a bit of Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits, but this may be a stretch. The loneliness of the characters, as well as their isolation within the frame as the film uses more wide-shots in the second half, recall Antonioni. Some have seen the film as a critique of the family in general, and the isolation of the characters, especially during the requisite dance scene at the end (if you've seen another Tarr film, you know what I'm talking about) does support this, but there is more to it.
The main themes of the film (as well as the pervasive long-takes) are what I've come to expect from Tarr. The characters are all unable to accept responsibility for their actions. Tibur blames his financial woes on the situation around him, even though he was the one who borrowed from a shady character in the first place. Janos blames his lack of work on alcohol, not on his own inherent laziness. Miklos seems to blame his problems on Anna, but in reality, he's just not a good person. Anna sleeps with all three men, but says that society is at fault for any problems that it may cause. Through all of this, Tarr is saying that man is always responsible for his own actions, but, with the events at the end of the film, he is saying that human nature always calls for a scapegoat, even when the problems are everyone's fault. Given the strong political undertones of his later films, this could be interpreted as him (correctly) predicting that, while at the time people blamed communism for their problems, they would eventually blame capitalism, and the cycle would go on, with people only shifting the blame and not actually doing anything for themselves. There are a lot of long takes in this film, with each conversation usually being made up of only one or two shots, but Tarr does no rely on them as heavily as he would later. The camera work here is interesting in a different way, as Tarr and his cinematographers shoot from every angle and distance imaginable, as a way of saying that the actions of the characters, and therefore humanity, may not make any real, logical sense no matter how one looks at them. I would not put Almanac Of Fall on quite the same level as Werckmeister or Satantango, but I think I would rank it third among the master's films, which means that you really should see it as soon as possible.
Rating (out of ****): ****

Tokyo!

The trailer for Tokyo! asks us the film's essential question: "Do we shape cities, or do cities shape us?" The three parts of the film, each by a different director, all answer the question in their own way. The three sections all take place in a very modern Tokyo and, aside from the aforementioned question, deal with transformation, anarchy and rebirth, respectively. The first (and best) segment is "Interior Design," directed by Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine fame. The second, Merde, is directed by Leos Carax, who also made Lovers On The Bridge and Pola X. The final segment, Shaking Tokyo, was created by Bong Joon-ho, most famous for The Host. I think I have to rate the films on their own, but as an overall experience, Tokyo is a must-see. Everything comes together to form a beautiful portrait of the city, and a far more authentic one than the type allowed by an anthology like Paris je t'aime.
Gondry's opening segment, Interior Design, is about a young couple who move to Tokyo for their careers. The husband is an aspiring filmmaker, but his work is extremely dense and comically overwrought (the sequences of his film that we do see are probably the funniest moments in the film), and it only plays in a porn theater. His wife is even less assured. She can't find work and she loses the car. They are staying with a friend, but she wants to get rid of them, even though it's impossible to find suitable housing. The husband seems happy, and people are seeing his film. Eventually, the wife begins to disappear in the city, between the walls. Then she turns into a chair. I'm sorry if that's a bit spoilery, but I rarely get to write "then she turns into a chair." It vaguely reminds me of my last paper on The Metamorphosis. This film shows a more restrained Gondry than normal (yes, even with the chair thing). His wild, innovative visuals made Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind an instant classic, but they didn't work as well on or The Science Of Sleep or Be Kind Rewind. Until the end, this is simply a very good looking film (although not the best looking of the three). Even the effects showing her transformation aren't the focus. Interior Design is the lightest of the three films, and it makes a great introduction to the tone of the film and to the city itself.
Leos Carax's Merde is the strangest part of Tokyo by a fairly large margin (yes, that includes the chair thing and the robot pizza man in the third one). I haven't seen any of Carax's other work. I assume they don't all concentrate on sewer-people running around cities terrorizing people. You probably couldn't maintain a respected career on that premise. Merde opens with a fantastic tracking shot showing the main character (eventually named Merde) running down the sidewalk and just generally bothering people. He pushes them, steals their money and cigarettes, eats their flowers and just generally makes them uncomfortable. He is hideous and mumbling in an incoherent language. Next we see him running through the sewers where he finds some grenades, which lead to another fantastic sequence. After this, the film goes down a bit in terms of quality. A lawyer who looks exactly like him and speaks the language flies in from France to represent him at his eventual trial, and the rest of the segment deals with his trial and sentencing while the rest of the country riots in his support and defense. Some of these moments have a rather unpleasant feel to them. I can't think of a good way to describe them aside from that, but they just felt a bit off. The word that it is tagged with is anarchy, but I think it deals more with language barriers, Japanese nationalism and parodying Godzilla (especially in the opening and closing moments). The Godzilla stuff probably works best, but overall it's still a fun time, just not so much in the second half.
The final segment, Bong Joon-ho's Shaking Tokyo, is far less funny than the others, but is also the best looking of the three. I have not seen Bong's extremely successful film The Host, but his 2003 film Memories of Murder is one of the best procedurals I've ever seen (it's better than the very similar Zodiac) and helped kick off what has been a brilliant decade for Korean cinema. The film is about a Hikkomori (a type of shut-in that has become a large issue in recent years in Japan) who has not left his home in ten years. His father sends him money and he subsists off of delivery food, especially pizza. One day, as his pizza is being delivered, an earthquake strikes, and the beautiful delivery girl falls unconscious. He tries to help her without contact, but eventually he sees a tattoo of a power button (like on an X-box) that says coma. He presses it and she wakes up and observes the odd perfection of his OCD-like collections of pizza boxes. This causes her to become a shut-in as well. The man decides that he has to find her and ventures outside for the first time in years. When he gets outside, he discovers that everyone else has gone inside. The only thing he sees is a pizza-delivery robot. After another quake, everyone runs outside and he finds her, and another button makes her stay. This segment is about rebirth. The story is the most conventional, but it's simply a beautiful film. Every shot is well-framed and carefully considered, creating a fascinating beauty in the clutter of the man's home.
So, do we shape cities, or do they shape us? Well, Interior Design, seems to come down on them shaping us. The characters change (in many ways) when they get to Tokyo, and the wife is "shaped" into something completely different. Merde's lead character certainly shapes his city. A cult forms around him and parts of Tokyo descend into anarchy. Shaking Tokyo is somewhere in between. Hikkomoris are a trend in Tokyo, and the stresses of the city are probably to blame, but the man certainly shapes the world around him. I think that's why it was shown last, even though the tonal shift seems a bit off when they go from two comedies to a drama. Overall, while it may not be completely consistent, Tokyo! is a wonderful look at the city and the people that make it.
Rating (out of ****) ***1/2

Hunger

It's been a pretty decent couple of years for Ireland in film. First came the palm d'or winner The Wind That Shakes The Barley (a very good film, although it was the only English language film I've ever needed subtitles for), the the delightful musical Once and now, the best of the three, Steve McQueen's Hunger. This is the story of Bobby Sands and the hunger strike he organized at HM prison Maze in order to get IRA members treated as political prisoners. This is a brutal, uncompromising look at the strike, its causes and its effects. McQueen (I can't believe this is his real name) is a well-known, award-winning visual artist making his feature film debut here. The fact that the director is an actual artist is something you should keep in mind during this film. The framing on nearly every shot is clearly the work of a meticulous worker (while he doesn't take this to Kubrickesque levels, there are a couple shots, especially in the hallways of the prison that remind me of Kubrick). Playing Sands is Michael Fassbender, who has had a few small roles in the past, but nothing of this magnitude.
As the film opens, we see a man look into a mirror and wash off his bloody knuckles. We don't know who he is at the time, but we later find out that he is a guard at the prison. He isn't a terrible guy, but we see him do bad things. His final scene is one of the most disturbing I've seen in recent years, but that doesn't come for a while. After we see him go through his day, a new prisoner comes in and refuses to wear his uniform. He is marked as insubordinate, and is forced to strip naked (this movie is not at all shy about nudity) before putting on a blanket (it was part of an ongoing protest). He gets to his cell and discovers that his cellmate had been smearing his shit on the walls as part of another ongoing protest. He doesn't seem to mind, and eventually joins in, but soon the guards come to wash them off. This is where we first meet Bobby. They drag him, kicking and screaming, from his cell, cut his hair and make him into a bloody mess. Even though he is the main character, this doesn't happen until thirty minutes into the film, although nearly no dialogue had been spoken through that point. Next, we get a virtuoso sequence in which, following a small riot, the guards march the prisoners out, send them through a gauntlet of baton-wielding riot police and then have them cavity searched, on-by-one, by a guy who never takes off his gloves. A large part of this is done in one take. Bobby is brutally beaten for not allowing the guards to search him, and we see the psychological effects of this on the guard who is forced to hit him. We don't really sympathize, but it's something. Next, after another moment of shocking violence, we get the film's centerpiece. Bobby has decided to organize a hunger strike, but unlike failed ones of the past, he organizes it so that they will die if their demands aren't met. Bobby lays all of this out in a seventeen minute conversation with a priest played by Liam Cunningham. What makes this conversation so notable is that the entire 17 minutes is done in a single take where the camera never moves. This is supposedly the longest single take in any feature film. After this, we flash to a few weeks later, and we see Bobby whithering down. There is little dialogue near the end, but the physical transformation is tremendous. Fassbender does a fantastic job of expressing every little emotion and pain that he must go through. We know from the outset that Bobby dies, but the brutality of the whole thing is shocking. Did he really accomplish anything? Was he a martyr or a rabble-rouser just trying to start a civil war?
I don't know Bela Tarr's viewing habits, but if he watched this film I'm sure he was proud. The master of the long take's old joke that the 12 minute reel is a form of censorship seems to have been disproved (I'm not entirely sure how they did it). The 17 minute conversation, despite simply being a static camera focused on two men is one of the most charged and tense in recent years. it speaks mainly to the immense talents of the two actors, but also to the film around it. Before this take, there had been very little dialogue. In fact, I'd say at least 75% of the dialogue in the 90 minute film comes in this one take. It's so new and unexpected that we get dragged in and we never leave. The conversation switches between comic statements on the nature of the priesthood to questions of the morality of Bobby's actions with ease, and we completely buy it. Fassbender and Cunningham lived together for weeks, rehearsing 15-20 times a day, to be able to get everything just right, and its worth it.
Like The Wind That Shakes The Barley, this film may be a little to obvious in its politics. The use of Margret Thatcher sound-clips may be a bit over the top, but that film's biggest failing was its complete lack of humanization of the British. here' we know that the guard at the beginning probably isn't a bad guy, and the guard who beats Sands is distraught over it. It isn't much, but acknowledging the humanity of the other side is an important step to avoid seeming to flat and one-sided. The film's final moments have also drawn some criticism, with some saying that the final moments make him too much of a Christ-like figure, but that was set up from the beginning (his long hair and beard at the beginning are very reminiscent of The Passion), so I don't really mind. This film sets up McQueen as a filmmaker to watch and will hopefully draw attention to the issues in Ireland. Whatever side you're on, they aren't finished yet.
Rating (Out of ****): ****

Made in USA

Has any other director ever had a burst of creativity like Jean-Luc Godard in the sixties? Starting with Breathless, moving through Vivre Sa Vie, Bande a Part, Alphaville (his masterpiece in my opinion), Contempt, Masculin Feminin and ending with Week End (with eight or nine other films mixed in there for good measure), this burst of creativity forever changed cinema across the world. A film from that period which has always been lost in the shuffle is 1966's Made in USA. It was never released in America because Godard never paid for the rights to adapt the book it was based on, he just did it, and, due to the subsequent legal action, Made in USA never came to the USA. Thankfully, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts decided to include it in their ongoing series on Godard in the 60's and I was able to go. I hope this means the legal issues have been resolved and Criterion can get their hands on this, because this is a film that deserves a wider audience. It is just as deserving of high praise as any other film on that list.

Godard's muse/wife Anna Karina plays Paula Nelson, who travels to Atlantic City (which, for the sake of this film, is in France) to visit her lover Richard, only to discover that he has died under mysterious circumstances. She runs into an old associate of theirs named Typhus, who she quickly knocks out and dumps in his own room, which allows her to meet his nephew David, who is a very strange writer, and his Japanese fiance. As she investigates Richard's death, the police discover that someone has killed Typhus, and things begin to spin out of control. I'm going to stop the plot description here because it would be utterly pointless to go on. Like The Big Sleep, which was a heavy influence on this film, the plot becomes too much to actually explain. I know it is a political thriller has something to to with communism, but that's pretty irrelevant aside from the fact that, at this point, Godard sure loved his communism. They never really explain why most of the things that happen happen, so you're best off just going along for the ride.

Godard was famous for saying that all he needed to make a movie was "a girl and a gun." Karina is the perfect girl for him. Taking on a rather Bogart-esque role, she looks perfect in the requisite trench-coat and the wear and tear of starring in so many films in such a short period of time gives her the perfect look for someone in her line of work, whatever that may be. She also delivers the film's best line "we were in a political movie-Walt Disney with blood" with a perfect amount of irony and anger in her voice. As that line implies, this film is almost comically self-aware, although it stops before it hits pure comedy, which would just seem out of place in a Godard film. The other aspects you'd expect are also there. We get characters named after American pop-culture icons (two henchmen named Richard Nixon and Robert MacNamara), wonderfully jarring mid-scene edits and tons of guns and trench coats. Although, in some ways it is different from the traditional Godard-fare. It was only his third color feature, and the cinematography from Raoul Coutard, who worked on many of Goadard's films is just fantastic.

There is a fascinating paradox inherent to this work. Godard spends much of the film decrying the spread of western culture, calling advertising a form of fascism, but he is obsessed with that same culture. Would he exist without American gangsters? I'm not sure. It may not even matter, but it is something to think about. Hopefully you'll think about it while watching this film.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Coraline

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the recent proliferation of 3D films. I think many of the films using it are too gimmicky and use it to make up for lack of a story. Henry Selick's Coraline thankfully manages to avoid this. Selick, who was previously best known as the answer to the trivia question, "who really directed The Nightmare Before Christmas?" does a good job of adapting the popular Neil Gaiman novella, and he uses the power of 3D technology to perfection, creating what is bound to be remembered one of the most beautiful films of the year. Selick and his team combined the stop-motion animation of Nightmare and Corpse Bride with some CGI to create two very unique worlds. The film is not perfect, but it is probably the best 3D film in recent years.
In the beginning, a young girl named Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) moves into a very boring new house that is filled with intriguing characters. There is Wyborn, a young boy who follows her around with his cat, two retired actresses who read her fortune and a crazed Russian who trains mice for a circus (voiced by Ian Mcshane). After fighting with her parents, Coraline finds a small door that leads into a parallel version of her world. In it, her parents are extremely nice, the actresses are still beautiful, Wyborn doesn't stalk her and the Russian is completely sane. Most importantly, everything appears to be magical. The garden in this world is probably the most visually stunning part of the film, and everything just pops out wonderfully in 3D. However, she soon realizes that all of it is a trap, and her "other mother" intends to keep her there forever. After escaping back to the real world, she finds out that her "other mother" has kidnapped her real parents, and she must go back and save them, along with the souls of other children that she had kidnapped. This if the film's weakest point. It plays out like a mission from a cheap video game, and the suspense never really works.

It's difficult to look at this film and not compare it to Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. Aside from the obvious use of stop-motion, they tell similar stories of looking for happiness in alternate worlds. Coraline lacks the pure magic of those two, although it may be even more aesthetically pleasing. I guess it may be the fault of the original story, but the end is pretty weak, and it really offers nothing new. Still, with absolutely nothing in the pipeline until the long-awaited release of Watchmen next month, Coraline should be good enough to hold you over.

Rating (out of ****): ***

Wendy and Lucy

My next post was going to be my top twenty of 2008, but then I discovered that Kelly Reichardt's new minimalist film Wendy and Lucy opened in Boston for one week, and I decided that I should try to see as many of last year's highly acclaimed films as possible before I made any list. This film can, at least in terms of plot, be compared to Sean Penn's Into The Wild. Unlike that film, Wendy and Lucy does not seek to create a martyr for our times out of it's lead. Into The Wild did succeed, but that was because of the supporting characters and the performance of Emile Hirsch. Wendy and Lucy succeeds because we're not asked to bow to it's main character and because of the performance of Michelle Williams. Williams plays Wendy Carroll, a young woman driving from Indiana to Alaska with her beloved dog Lucy in search of work and a new start. We never learn much about her life before we see her, just a quick conversation with her brother-in-law. As the film picks up, Wendy and Lucy walk through the woods, taking a break from their long journey, only to meet a group of similar lost souls. Later that night, she stops her car in a Walgreen's parking lot and in the morning, after being woken up by a kind security guard, she finds that it won't start. The mechanic is closed, so she decides to go pick up some food for Lucy. Running low on cash, she has to steal and is caught by a self-righteous grocery store employee. It becomes clear that he is an evangelical Christian, and with his warped, evil view of religion, he convinces his manager that he must call the cops. When she is released, she runs back to the store where she'd tied up Lucy and discovers that the dog is gone. Despite help from the pound, she can't seem to find her, and she discovers that her car repairs will cost much more than expected. One night, while sleeping in the woods, a man comes to her and talks about the people he's killed. He doesn't do anything, and in all likelihood, he may be lying, but it helps clarify her situation. As her economic situation falls deeper into despair, Wendy realizes that she has lost control, and no longer has any idea what she must do, before coming to an extraordinarily difficult decision regarding her future.

Many reviews have discussed the film's political message about the plight of the marginalized people in today's society, but it's moral message is far more important. Outside of Wendy, there are only two good characters in this film, the woman at the dog pound (who is really just doing her job) and the security guard who helps her when he can, and even his flaws appear at the end. The religious grocery store worker, the cops, the mechanic and the insane man who speaks to Wendy may occasionally do her or someone else a favor, but they are not good people. The real question of this film is what do we owe each other as human beings? The film's answer is that we should give what we can. Even the difficult decision that Wendy must make at the end fits into this answer.

The film's strongest point is Michelle Williams' inexplicably snubbed performance as Wendy. She appears in nearly every frame of this eighty minute film, and her performance is the dominant feature of all of them. Wendy is not street smart, and she does not completely understand the world around her, and Williams perfectly captures that idea. A film portraying the outsiders in our modern world just works better if shot in a more natural minimalist style, which made Reichardt, who also directed the critically acclaimed Old Joy a perfect director for this piece. Instead of the sweeping vista's we'd normally expect from this sort of film, we get smaller shots of the real west, of the people who inhabit it and the emptiness around them. If the film has one flaw, it's that the story itself really isn't that great. The film gets by on style and character, but it has a rather standard story that we've all seen before. This alone could leave some people feeling underwhelmed, but they should not feel that way. Wendy and Lucy may not be the classic that some are calling it, but it is one of the better films of 2008.

Rating (out of ****): ***1/2

Waltz With Bashir

As a preface to this review, I should probably note that I am a non-practicing Jew who has spent a decent amount of time in Israel and has many friends currently in the Israeli army. I say this because these facts made it very difficult to simply review Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir on an intellectual level. This was one of the most emotional movie-going experiences I've ever had. This animated documentary (I'll get to that later) is one of the most highly acclaimed films in Israeli history, and was one of my most anticipated films of 2008. It has already won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and is the front-runner for the Oscar in that category as well as a dark horse in the best animated feature category (although I'd be shocked if anything actually beat Wall-E). When I first heard that this was an animated documentary, I really didn't know what to think. It just sounded like too much of a contradiction, unless you count an animated educational film as a documentary. Waltz With Bashir has advertised itself as the first feature-length animated documentary, and, given the way it is filmed, I agree with that label. The film is centered around a series of interviews and discussions between Folman and others who were with him in the 1982 war with Lebanon. These sequences were first filmed in a studio, and then the animators drew them separately (it was not rotoscoped, like Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly, which is where they animate over the actual image). Then their interviews lead to a story of flashbacks and hallucinations about the war. At first I didn't realize how these could be considered part of a documentary, but I realized that they are no different from the reenactments in The Thin Blue Line, except in that they use a separate medium.
As the film opens, Folman sits in a bar with an old friend from the war who explains a recurring dream in which he is chased down the street by 26 angry dogs. In Lebanon, they knew he couldn't kill humans, so his commanders made him kill the guard dogs instead, and he sees this recurrent nightmare as his punishment. After this interviews, Folman realizes that he doesn't remember a thing about the war except for one hypnotic flashback where he and two others wake up in the ocean and walk into Beirut, only to see a large crowd fleeing the Sabra and Shatila massacres, in which a large group of Christian Lebanese entered two Palestinian refugee camps and slaughtered the refugees while the Israeli guards just stood by, paralyzed by the chain of command. Folman goes to interview one of the men who was in the dream (he can't remember the other), and, through interviews with him and various others who were there in that time, he begins to put together what happened. Through this, we get a series of fascinating, interconnected vignettes about the war and its effect on people. The only one of these that doesn't work perfectly involves Folman working a VCR so his colonel can watch porn; however this is soon followed by the best scene in the film. As they entered Beirut following the assassination of Lebanese leader Bachir Gemayel (pronounced Bashir), Folman's company faced heavy enemy fire. After a few minutes, his commander knew that they needed to cross the street, so he grabbed a heavy machine gun and walked out, shooting into the air, performing a crazed Waltz amid the gunfire and posters of the fallen leader. Near the end of the film, there is an abrupt switch from animation to archival footage. This scene, aside from showing the true effects of war in far greater detail, perfectly uses the dreamlike imagery of animation to contrast the real, and reminds us of the line between dream, memory and fact.

I really can not express my admiration for this film enough. Every little detail was alternatively fascinating and heartbreaking. The animation was both dreamlike and beautiful, perfectly capturing the feel and the themes of the film. The score, which won composer Max Richter best composer at the European film awards, is occasionally overbearing, but otherwise perfect, especially during the main hallucinatory sequence. Folman is a perfect guide for this journey, always allowing the story to come out on it's own, and the interviewees, from his friends to the reporters to the military higher-ups at the end, all give us the exact piece of the puzzle that we need from them. My emotional connection to the people and places in the film certainly helped my personal reaction to the story. I can't deny that, but this is an important film, especially now, and it is something that everyone should see. Waltz with Bashir really is one of the best and most innovative films of 2008.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Oscar Predictions

Ok, the Globes are (thankfully) over, I've seen most of the perspective nominees (I'm just waiting on Waltz with Bashir and maybe Revolutionary Road, I refuse to see The Reader) and most of the award shows have announced their nominees, so it's time for my Oscar picks. First will be my dream ballot, then my actual predictions

Best Picture:
Hope:
Synecdoche, New York
The Wrestler
The Dark Knight
the Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Rachel Getting Married
Actual:
Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Knight
Benjamin Button
Milk
The Wrestler
Most people have Frost/Nixon making it over The Wrestler. I just can't believe that they'd nominate two films as needlessly mediocre as Slumdog and Frost/Nixon, and while Slumdog was unquestionably the lesser film, it also has much more hype. The Wrestler was the best reviewed non-documentary of the year.

Best Actor:
Hope:
Mickey Rourke The Wrestler
Sean Penn Milk
Phillip Seymour Hoffman Synecdoche, New York
Brendan Gleeson In Bruges
Sam Rockwell Snow Angels
Actual:
Sean Penn
Mickey Rourke
Brad Pitt Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frank Langella Frost/Nixon
Clint Eastwood Gran Torino
Dicaprio is the dark horse, but I doubt he'll get it. The academy is far too stupid to actually honor Synecdoche, and they've already forgotten In Bruges and Snow Angels. Langella and Eastwood were fine, so I'm not really complaining.

Best Actress:
Hope (honestly, I haven't seen that many films with female leads this year, so I'm just basing this on actresses I like):
Anne Hathaway Rachel Getting Married
Sally Hawkins Happy-Go-Lucky
Kate Winslet Revolutionary Road
Rebecca Hall Vicky Christina Barcelona
Cate Blanchett The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Actual:
Hathaway
Hawkins
Winslet
Hall
Merryl Streep Doubt
I don't know much about this category. Streep gets the nod over Blanchett because she's Streep.

Best Director:
Wish:
Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche, New York
David Fincher The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Chris Nolan The Dark Knight
Darren Aronofsky The Wrestler
Jonathon Demme Rachel Getting Married
Actual:
David Fincher
Chris Nolan
Danny Boyle Slumdog Millionaire
Ron Howard Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant Milk
I think the directors of the five best films deserve the nominations (all five films had great visuals in their own way). Ron Howard is a bad director. People don't seem to understand this. Danny Boyle is a good director. Slumdog is his worst film. Even fewer people seem to understand this. I have no problem with Van Sant getting the nomination. Milk was a very well-directed film.

Supporting actor:
Wish:
Heath Ledger The Dark Knight
Emile Hirsch Milk
Javier Bardem Vicky Christina Barcelona
Robert Downey Jr. Tropic Thunder
Ralph Fiennes In Bruges
Actual:
Ledger
Brolin Milk
Fiennes The Reader
Phillip Seymour Hoffman Doubt
Javier Bardem Vicky Christina Barcelona
I refuse to see any films that can be described as manipulative dreck about the holocaust, so I haven't seen The Reader, but I do love Fiennes, and his performance in In Bruges was wonderful. Doubt just wasn't that good, so I'd rather see Hoffman's spot go to Downey, who gave the year's funniest supporting performance. They may be marketing Bardem as a lead actor, but he was great. Ledger should win.

Best supporting actress:
Wish:
Penelope Cruz Vicky Christina Barcelona
Amy Adams Doubt
Samantha Morton Synecdoche, New York
Marissa Tomei The Wrestler
Rosemarie Dewitt Rachel Getting Married
Actual:
Cruz
Tomei
Kate Winslett The Reader
Taraji P. Henson The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Viola Davis Doubt
I'm in the minority on this, but I thought Amy Adams gave the best performance in Doubt, and essentially saved the film from absolute mediocrity. Things that make me angry: 1. The lack of any love for Synecdoche

Original Screenplay:
Wish:
Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche, New York
Robert D. Siegel The Wrestler
Jenny Lumet Rachel Getting Married
Andrew Stanton Wall-E
Martin McDonagh In Bruges
Actual:
Lumet
Stanton
Black
Woody Allen Vicky Christina Barcelona
The Coen Brothers Burn After Reading
Why can't anyone recognize the brilliance of Synecdoche? Burn After Reading was great, but not really Oscar-worthy. I'd be perfectly ok if Allen was nominated.

Adapted Screenplay
Wish:
Eric Roth Benjamin Button
Jonathon Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer The Dark Knight
John Ajvide Lindqvist Let The Right One In
David Gordon Green Snow Angels
Dan Gilroy, Tarsem The Fall
Actual:
Roth
Nolans and Goyer
Simon Beaufoy Slumdog
Peter Morgan Frost/Nixon
John Patrick Shanley Doubt
The Fall really didn't have a great screenplay, but there weren't that many films I liked this year from adapted screenplay, namely the final three films listed here.

Dream major nominee count:

Synecdoche: 5

The Wrestler: 5

Rachel Getting Married: 5

Benjamin Button: 4

Dark Knight: 4

Milk: 3

In Bruges: 3

Vicky Christina Barceona: 3

Snow Angels: 2

Happy-Go-Lucky: 1

Revolutionary Road: 1

Tropic Thunder: 1

Doubt: 1

Let The Right One In: 1

The Fall: 1

Wall-E: 1

I'll pick winners after the actual nominations come out

The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky's films have always had a polarizing effect on audiences. Personally, I have at least sort of enjoyed all of his films. Pi is kind of a mess, but it was interesting enough to keep me watching, Requiem for a Dream is one of the most perfectly disturbing films of all time (can anyone give a legitimate explanation for Ellen Burstyn losing best actress to Julia Roberts?), and The Fountain, aside from some mediocre acting, is a pretty good film. All of those films are highly stylized and do occasionally rely too heavily on different camera and editing tricks to get the point across. When I finally saw the preview for his latest film, The Wrestler, I was shocked. The film looks like it was shot on a handheld camera (just like Rachel Getting Married) and uses none of the stylistic tricks of Aronofsky's earlier work. This film simply relies on a great story, good, simple (at least for Aronofsky) direction and one of the great screen performances in recent years from Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson.

As the film opens, the camera stays behind Rourke as he sits in the changing room after a match. He walks out and the camera follows him, almost afraid to show his battered face to the crowd. The other wrestlers and the devoted fans all treat the Ram as a hero, and his opponents are honored to lose to him. His promoter gets him to agree to fight a rematch of his most famous bout, against a wrestler called the Ayatollah, at an upcoming convention, and Randy, now relegated to weekend fights in high school gyms and rec centers, sees it as his shot at a comeback. That night he goes to a strip club to see his one friend not involved in the wrestling industry, a dancer named Cassidy, played by Marissa Tomei. She is nearly Randy's age, and she can also sense that her days in this career are coming to an end. During the days he works, unloading boxes at a grocery store. After a brutal match involving barbed wire and a staple gun, Randy has a heart attack, and his doctors tell him that he must quit wrestling. He tries to leave the ring, pursue Cassidy and reconnect with his teenage daughter (played by Evan Rachel Wood), but nothing works out. Despite their obvious connection, Cassidy has a thing against dating customers, and his daughter hates him, deservedly so, for never being there and ruining her life. Even when he has a shot with her, he forgets to go, and she decides that they will never see each other again. Randy realizes that his life is in the ring, and he reschedules the rematch. The final shots of The Ram giving it all for the crowd in what he knows may be his final match are among the most intense and heartbreaking in any film this year.
Without Rourke, this film would have been nothing. If you have read any reviews of The Wrestler, you have heard enough of how Rourke's career path perfectly follows Randy's. The audience's knowledge of Rourke's life, going from Hollywood heartthrob to broken down boxer to resurrected star, adds to the depth and reality of the performance. The Ram's final speech to the crowd, where he talks about how he has always done this for them, feels more real than any other moment in film this year. If the Oscars were actually based on artistic merit and not politicking, Rourke would already have his trophy. As it stands, he is the leader in a race with Sean Penn for Milk and Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, which I plan on seeing later this week. Since the academy will no doubt ignore Phillip Seymour Hoffman's work in the criminally underrated Synecdoche, New York, the other nominees will probably be Brad Pitt for his great work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and either Clint Eastwood, Leonardo Dicaprio or Richard Jenkins. I can say with full certainty that Rourke's performance is the best of the bunch. outside of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and maybe Hoffman in Synecdoche (the two performances are very different but essentially equal in my mind) it is probably the strongest leading role over the last few years. Tomei also got a golden globe nomination, and I think her work was strong enough to earn her a best supporting actress nomination later this month. Finally, just as a matter of note, any film that can make me forget how much I hate Guns 'n Roses, even if it's just for a few minutes, must be a great film, and that certainly describes The Wrestler.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Man on Wire

My choice for favorite documentary of 2008 (to be fair, I haven't seen that many documentaries in 2008) appears to be coming down to two of the year's best reviewed films, Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End of the World and James Marsh's Man on Wire, which currently stands at a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the best reviewed film in the history of the sight. Unless you count the animated Waltz With Bashir, which doesn't open anywhere near me for a few weeks, as a documentary (some do, some don't, I'll wait until I see it to decide), these two are set to form a very solid top two. What I find so interesting about this is that the subject of Man on Wire, high-wire artist Phillipe Petit, seems like someone from an Herzog documentary. He may not be as insane of Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man), and his actions would feel out of place in Herzog's world, but his obsession fits in perfectly. After seeing an article on the construction of the world trade center, Petit, who had already walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, knew what he had to do, and his singular obsession began to grow.

Using Thin Blue Line-like reconstructions, archival footage (the film's strongest part) and interviews with Petit and his huge supporting crew, we see him begin his obsession, find the friends and enablers necessary to pull off a job so huge and, finally, we see the heist-like trip to the roof and mid-morning journey across the chasm separating the two iconic buildings. Part of what makes the story so interesting is the fact that it feels like a heist film. Nearly every element of a classic heist film appears as part of their plan (Petit is a fan of the genre). What made this specific heist so appealing to Petit (and the public) was that he managed to do something this exciting and entertaining without the possibility of hurting anyone except himself (unless you count his one friend who was deported). It was an entirely self-sacrificing action which fulfilled his own needs while providing an entirely new and original entertainment for the masses. There was no "why?' to his actions, no real reason, he just knew that it had to be done.

For a film based on a true story with an obvious ending to succeed, it must make us forget what we know and truly care about how that ending came about. Milk was able to do it perfectly, and Man on Wire succeeds just as well. Petit is constantly interviewed throughout the film, and we are fully aware of the fact that he survived, so the heist-like tension that Marsh creates is necessary to keep the audience involved. The reenactments are very well done, and the interviews with Petit and his gang are equally fascinating, providing necessary quick insights into the psyche of a man who would do this, but I wish there had been a bit more archival footage, especially of the walk itself.

While it is clearly on everyone's mind for the entire film, the events of 9/11 are never explicitly mentioned. In an interview with the BBC, Marsh said "What Philippe did was incredibly beautiful...It would be unfair and wrong to infect his story with any mention, discussion or imagery of the Towers being destroyed." At first, I didn't quite agree, but I think this was the right choice. While hearing Petit's thoughts on the attacks would have added a different kind of emotional depth, I think the film is much more poignant as is. Man on Wire serves as a beautiful study of one man's obsession with the towers, and it reminds us of what we lost without forcing anything upon us, which is how this amazing story had to be told.

Rating (out of ****): ****

The Day The Earth Stood Still

I don't really want to write a full review of Scott Derrickson's remake of Robert Wise's 1951 film The Day The Earth Stood Still. They clearly didn't put a full effort into this film, so I won't put one into the review. You all know the story. Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), an alien ambasador, comes to earth with his robot Gort, and they try to get the humans to stop their destructive ways (nuclear weapons in the original, global warming here). He meets a widow and her young stepson (Jennifer Connelly and Jaden Smith), who try to help him escape from various government figures-both good and bad (Kathy Bates, Kyle Chandler and Jon Hamm among others), and with the help of an eccentric professor (John Cleese), try to convince Klaatu to not kill all humans.

The original film was one of the most interesting and relevant sci-fi films of the 50s, and it relied on tension and character instead of action. This version stays interesting and exciting for about 25 minutes, and then it decends into standard sci-fi cliche. Reeves gives his usual emotionless performance, but, like in the first Matrix movie and A Scanner Darkly, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Klaatu would benefit from a better actor, but Reeves isn't awful. Connelly tries her best with the awful dialogue she's given, and makes it work when possible. Cleese and Hamm (of TV's Mad Men) are both very good in limited roles, but Bates is clearly phoning it in. Jaden Smith may not be a bad young actor, but he plays the exact same stunningly annoying role as Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds. The effects are terrible, the dialogue is weak and the visuals are bland and uninspired. The original story could work very well as a remake, but this is clearly Fox trying to make a quick buck with a lazy, usless effort.

See this ^ instead

Rating (out of ****) *1/2

Doubt

Every once in a while, I'll see a movie poster, and, without knowing anything about the film itself, I know that I will see it. This was the case with John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. The names Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams on their own are usually enough to get me to see a movie (although even Streep couldn't get me to see The Devil Wears Prada or Mama Mia). I would watch the three of them standing in a white room talking for two hours and I'd probably be entertained. After I saw the poster for Doubt, I looked up the play it is based on, and I got even more excited. Rapid fire dialogue and criticism of religion are generally things that I like. Combined with the actors, it seemed like the recipe for a sure-thing best picture contender. Unfortunately, something went sort of wrong.

The film takes place in the Bronx in 1964. Father Flynn (Hoffman) is the new priest at the St. Nicholas parish and school in the Bronx. He begins with a sermon on Doubt, and how in uncertain times, it can bring us together. This message resonates with Donald Miller, an alter-boy and the school's first black student. His teacher, Sister James (Adams), an innocent, kind young woman, tries her hardest to care for him and the rest of the class, a group she truly loves. In contrast is the school's tradition-minded principal, Sister Aloysius (Streep). She disapproves of the priest's new, kind attitude toward the students, and immediately suspects the worst when Sister James comes to her with worries about the relationship between Father Flynn and Donald. After a failed confrontation, Sister James begins to doubt her suspicions for their lack of evidence, but Sister Aloysius goes on and calls in Donald's mother, played by Viola Davis. During their confrontation, Aloysius learns more about Donald and begins to understand his situation. Afterwords, she confronts Flynn one final time.

Talking about this film, the first thing one must bring up is the acting. All four leads have been nominated for Golden Globes and Viola Davis already won best breakthrough performance from the National Board of Review. Davis, despite only having ten minutes of screen time, deserves all the praise she gets. In her scene, she goes through every possible emotion and more than holds her own with Streep. Just like last year's Charlie Wilson's War, Adams and Hoffman rescue a mediocre film and bring to an acceptable level of quality. Amy Adams portrays her character's innocence with such heartbreaking intensity the she would have my vote for best supporting actress if I had a ballot. I have never seen Phillip Seymour Hoffman give a bad performance, and, after this fall's combination of Doubt and Synecdoche, New York, I don't think I ever will. Oddly enough, Streep, the best actress of her generation, is the weak link in the cast. It's not a bad performance by any means, it is simply average. She's intense when called for, and her accent is OK, but there is nothing to make it rise above the rest of her work or the other performances in this film. Maybe she is the victim of high expectations, but her past performances have all lived up to the hype. The performances are not the film's problem. Shanley may be a great playwright, but he has only directed one film before this, the awful 1990 Tom Hanks film Joe Versus The Volcano, and this film suffers from an inexperience hand. The cinematography from Coen Brothers regular Roger Deakins is fine, but the score from Howard Shore fails, and the pacing never feels quite right. The original play only had four characters and was almost all dialogue. The extra focus put on the kids and the heavy-handed use of weather metaphors, neither of which was in the original (which, may I remind you, I haven't seen), and they are two of the weak points here. Still, this is not a bad film, as the dialogue (except for the final scene) is pretty good, and the performances from Davis, Adams and Hoffman are great, but it is a disapointment.

Rating (out of ****): ***

Paris, Texas

There are times where I watch a film, think about it for a night, realize that it is one of the greatest things I've ever seen, and I have to watch it again the next day just to make sure. I think the last time it happened was when I saw Antonioni's L'Eclise. Before I saw Wim Wenders' 1984 film Paris, Texas, I had high hopes; it sounded interesting, the reviews were great and I'm a sucker for a good road movie. Wenders has always been placed on the same level as Herzog (my favorite director) and Fassbinder (who I'm sadly unfamiliar with), and, after finally having seen his supposed masterpiece, I can agree, because I had to watch it again this afternoon after being stunned by it last night. Paris, Texas tells the simple story of Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), a man we first see wandering through the Texas desert. Eventually, he collapses in a bar, and the German doctor treating him (someone else who appears to be lost in this world), calls his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell). Walt comes to get the initially mute Travis and fly him back to LA, but that falls through and they have to drive. The scenes between the two brothers are among the strongest in the film. Stanton's brilliant performance and the beautiful photography elevate these scenes to a level of pure genius. When they get back to Walt's family in LA, including his wife Anne (Aurore Clement) and Travis's son, Hunter (Hunter Carson, in one of the greatest child performances of all time), Travis seems out of place. His wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski) left Hunter there right after Travis left, and she then disappeared. After some great scenes of reconciliation, Travis and Hunter drive to Houston, where they know Jane has been living. Travis finds her dancing in a club where she can't see the patrons, she can just talk to him. The final twenty minutes may be some of the most heartbreaking stuff ever put to film, as Travis and Jane try to understand each other and confess their sins.

In the end, mother and son are reunited. The question remains, is Hunter better off this way? In LA, he was with a successful family that gave him complete support, but here is mother is a stripper, and the film implies that she is a prostitute on the side. I don't know if it really matters. I think Wenders just wants them to be happy in his version of America. This is not Stroszek. There is no direct criticism of the American dream; Wenders seems more fascinated with America than anything else. Ry Cooder's stunning score brings back memories of the old west, and the constant focus on billboards and other signs appears to be more out of interest than disgust. I don't know how well I've described it, but Paris, Texas is one of the greatest films ever made.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Milk

I am admittedly unfamiliar with the work of Gus Van Sant. Good Will Hunting was pretty good, and Last Days was interesting, but not really my thing. I haven't seen Elephant or My Own Private Idaho, two films that many seem to consider his best. Going into his latest film, Milk, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I knew the story, and I knew its ending. Even if you don't know, archival footage five minutes into the film tells you that San Fransisco city supervisor Harvey Milk and mayor Moscone were killed by former supervisor Dan White. What separates Milk from most biopics is not some new form of storytelling like last year's masterful I'm Not There; Milk simply just does the formula better than almost any other biopic I've ever seen. It opens with archival footage of gay rights activists in the sixties, and then we get out framing device, Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), around the time of his death, recording his thoughts on tape only to be played upon his assassination. The actual narrative begins in New York in 1970. Milk, still working in an insurance office, meets Scott Smith (James Franco) on the street, they fall in love and decide to leave New York and go to San Fransisco. Once they arrive, Harvey begins to get involved in the gay rights movement. He realizes that having an elected official would be the only way their growing community will get the rights they deserve. Christening himself the "mayor of Castro street," Harvey begins to drum up support, and while he loses his first two elections (and Scott in the process), he begins to build a team, including young activist Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch). He finally wins in 1977, and makes quick friends with everyone on the board except Dan White (Josh Brolin). During his early time in office, he meets Jack Lira (Diego Luna), a lover who he enjoys for simplicity and ease. After passing a gay rights bill in San Fransisco, Harvey and his team meet strong opposition from anti-gay activist Anita Bryant and various politicians in his quest to stop prop 6, which would have taken away gay rights across the state (sound familiar?). After their victory (which is still marred by tragedy), White resigns from the board, and, after he is informed that he cannot get his job back, takes matters into his own hands, resulting in tragedy.

To be honest, I wasn't that excited about this film based on the trailers. It looked like Penn would continue his recent streak of overacting in every role, and I thought it would be too formulaic for its own good. I was wrong. Penn gives the best performance of his career, never going too far over the top and always hitting the perfect notes. Franco and Brolin are also great (in fact, Brolin somehow won best actor from the national board of review), but Emile Hirsch gives the best supporting performance in the film, exuding a near perfect level of energy as Jones, who is still one of the leaders of the gay rights movement. The only weak performance comes from Luna, who lacks anything resembling subtlety (although, thinking about it now, that may have been the point). The film looks fantastic, although the use of archival footage grows a bit stale by the end, and the score, which mostly relies on opera (Harvey's favorite) perfectly conveys the emotion of the film.

Before I saw the movie, I wanted to avoid talking about its relevance in my review. We all know that California passed prop 8 last month and Harvey's final message of hope will seem familiar to any American viewers, but there's more to Milk than that. This isn't just a film about gay rights. Harvey Milk was about more than that, he fought for everyone's rights because he just wanted to help people. He even tried to help Dan White (although, that may have been because he thought White was gay). Here, we see the universal fights for human rights and acceptance. That is what makes Dustin Lance Black's script so great. Sure, the film concentrates on gay rights, but every minority can feel their pain and revel in their triumph, and that's what this film is, an absolute triumph.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Slumdog Millionaire

Danny Boyle is a special talent behind the camera. He has created the greatest drug movie of all time (Trainspotting) the second best horror film of this decade (28 Days Later) and one of the better, albeit still heavily flawed, modern sci-fi films (Sunshine). His latest movie, Slumdog Millionaire, has been riding a wave of festival buzz and Oscar talk (and it will most certainly receive that "little movie that could" nomination that went to both Juno and Little Miss Sunshine), and I was really excited to see it. Slumdog tells the story of Jamal, a Mumbai street kid who grows up to get on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Nobody believes that he could actually know the answers, so, after his first night on the show, which takes him all the way up to the final question, the police take him in and interrogate him to discover his method of cheating. He begins to tell them his life story, relating each question to specific events from his orphan youth. After the death of their mother in a religious riot, Jamal and his brother Salim meet up with a girl named Latika and eventually wind up in an absurdly corrupt orphanage. After escape and separation, Jamal spends the rest of his life trying to find Latika, while Salim transforms in a way frighteningly reminiscent of Lil' Ze from City of God. Of course Jamal's story wins the cops over, and he goes back on the show to try to find Latika again. It ends relatively happily and there's a dance number over the credits as some sort of homage to traditional Bollywood.
I can say that it ends happily because you know going in exactly what will happen. Like all inspirational films, you know that the character will reach their true goal in the end. In fact, after ten minutes, you should be able to guess the final question. I can't criticize the film for that. Unfortunately, I can criticize it for a few other things. Boyle's camera tries to capture the energy behind modern India (essentially the opposite of Wes Anderson's superior The Darjeeling Limited). This works perfectly about half the time. The color scheme is beautiful, and there are some truly stunning shots (a sequence involving young Jamal and Salim on a train stand out the most in my mind), but the constant motion does get annoying (although not quite at the level of a certain recent blockbuster). It also feels like nearly half the film is shot at either an odd angle or in slow motion, two techniques that rarely work here. Some of the music choices were also rather questionable. I would have much preferred them to just use Indian music all the way through, but one or two of the western songs actually work rather well (the use of M.I.A's "Paper Planes" perfectly complements the aforementioned train sequence, but the use of a remix about five minutes later fails). The rest of the western and techno music feels overbearing and takes away from the intended feel of the scene. The performances from the actors playing the three leads (and each had to be played by three actors at three separate ages) were very good, but some of the supporting performances completely fail, especially those playing the gangster characters.
Their "Millionaire" set really does look exactly like ours

Despite all of this, I still must recomend the film. It may not deserve the Oscar talk, but it's still something fun and different. The story is heart warming and occasionally pretty funny, the actors are great and, for the most part, it looks wonderful. It also has some good, albeit somewhat basic, Indian class commentary. Its always nice to see a great director take a bunch of relative unknowns (Anil Kapoor, who plays the gameshow host, is the only really well-known actor in the film, but even that is just in India), and make a good film out of it. I was also fascinated by the aspect of Boyle taking this very American story, moving it to India, and then basing it entirely around what was originally a British television show. It's something that could only be done in this modern world.
Rating (out of ****): ***

Edit: You know what, its been about a month since I saw the film. Upon much further review and a rewatch, I've decided that I gave it far too much credit. The acting is bad, the story is not as fun as I originally gave it credit for, the end is unbearable and, while the structure is interesting, it limits any opportunity to get to know the other characters.

New Rating (out of ****): **

Let The Right One In

This November, two non-traditional vampire movies will be released in America. They will both deal with teenagers (or preteens) learning to deal with the world around them, and they are both based on bestsellers. One is a masterpiece that goes far beyond almost any other vampire film ever made, the other is sure to be one of the year's worst films. I'll give you a hint, the name of the second one rhymes with "highlight." Is it really fair of me to judge Twilight, based on the bestselling young adult novel, so harshly without having seen it and only having been able to read ten pages of the book? Yes, because those were the worst ten pages of any book I've ever read. What will make it seem even worse if I'm forced to actually sit through it is the brilliance of that other vampire movie, Let The Right One In. This Swedish film may be the best vampire movie since Herzog's Nosferatu. Although this is a vampire film, it's much closer in feel to Pan's Labyrinth than anything else. While this doesn't reach the exact same level as Del Toro's masterpiece, it is still must-see cinema.

As the film opens, we see Oskar, a twelve year old boy living in the suburbs of Stockholm with his mother. He is an awkward child and faces constant bullying from an incredibly cruel group of children at his school. One night, while sitting in the courtyard outside of his apartment, he meets Eli, a girl who has just moved in and appears to be his age. As soon as she moves in, people around town begin to die in violent attacks. The first attacks were perpetrated by her handler, the much older Hakan, but he eventually fails, and Eli is forced to attack others for sustenance. As the film goes on, Oskar eventually realises what is going on, but he's OK with it. He's falling for Eli, even though she's not technically a girl, and happens to be well over twelve years old. She teaches Oskar to defend himself, and he does so in a scene that heavily reminded me of David Gordon Green's Snow Angels. The citizens of the town realize what's going on, and after numerous deaths, they close in on Eli. The end of the films features a scene of shocking, somewhat macabre violence, as Eli decides what really matters.

The film raises many moral questions, and they are the things that separate it from the standard vampire tale. After draining their blood, Eli clearly has two options. She could allow them to go on as a vampire, or she can kill them. We see what happens to one citizen who becomes a vampire, and Eli's preferred choice of murder seems to make a lot more sense. The people that die so that Eli may go on are all innocent. In fact, only one truly "bad" person dies in the movie. Is it really worth it? We know that Eli is a good person, but so are the townspeople. In the hands of a lesser director (something general audiences will get to see when the American remake, directed by Matt "Cloverfield" Reeves comes out next year), these questions would not have been nearly as interesting and the film would almost undoubtedly focused more on the violence than the characters. Thankfully, Tomas Alfredson shows a deft touch and balances all of the film's issues perfectly. There are probably a few too many lingering shots of snow-fall and nature (great in small amounts, but somewhat excessive here), but that is my only real complaint. The kids playing the leads give some of the best child-performances I've ever seen, the movie looks great, it's constantly exciting and by the end, I truly cared for the characters and their situation. This is the third best film of the year so far, and is my personal front runner for best foreign language film come January.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Quantum of Solace

It is probably important to note that I love the James Bond series. I'm pretty sure I've seen every one, and I know I have seen every one on opening night since 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies. I can't be certain what separates the good Bond films from the bad ones. I don't think it's the actor, as even Brosnan had Goldeneye, but after sitting through the train-wreck that is Quantum of Solace, I think it may be the director. Martin Campbell's Casino Royale is either the best or second best of all Bond films (it's hard to go go against Goldfinger). It was an exciting fresh start for the series and Daniel Craig was brilliant, but it still kept some of the moments that made us remember why we love the Bond films. Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace does nothing of the sort.

I'll start with the good parts: Daniel Craig proves that he is the best actor to ever play Bond (it's too early to say that he is the best Bond, just the best actor), and there are two pretty good action scenes (the finale, and a sequence involving Bond running away from Henchman at an opera). Unfortunately, there are more than two action sequences in this film, and the others are all downright incompetent. The worst example is probably the opening car chase, which could be one of the worst ever put to film. It isn't just a rather dull chase, but it's a dull chase that's edited quicker than a Bourne film; however, unlike a Bourne film, the short shots that we do get are not at all impressive. After that, we get what may be the worst Bond theme song yet. I'm going to blame this on Jack White, and unlike all of the other problems of the world I blame on this talentless hack, this song actually is his fault. Of course, the song isn't helped by the rather dull animation sequence that it's backing. Now, getting to the actual plot of the film, it opens an hour after Casino Royale, with Bond ending the chase and going to torture the mysterious Mr. White. He escapes, and another poorly shot chase ensues. Following some tagged bank notes, Bond goes to Haiti to find a contact, but, of course, winds up killing him, and trust me when I say this is a recurrent theme in this film. James Bond shouldn't kill everyone, even when he is motivated by revenge. It's what separates him from other action heroes. While in Haiti, Bond assumes the identity of that contact and discovers the plans of villain Dominic Greene, who plans on engineering a coup in Bolivia in order to take control of the nation's water supply, which is, as Roger Ebert points out, an incredibly stupid goal for a Bond villain. With the help of new Bond girl Camille Montes (played by the lovely Olga Kurylenko), he escapes via, you guessed it, another incompetent chase sequence. Bond follows Greene to Austria, and to a performance of the opera La Tosca. During the show, Bond taps into a conversation between Greene and other members of his mysterious organization Quantum (I'm actually very happy that they've utilized another SPECTRE type group). The films only really good chase scene follows, but even that is marred by needless, un-Bond-like civilian deaths. After this, M (once again played by Judy Dench) revokes Bond's papers, and he must rely on Mathis, the man who helped him in Casino Royal, to get him to Bolivia. I'll stop the summary here, as I'm pretty sure all of you already know whether or not you're going to see this film. All I'll say is that what follows in Bolivia includes a tribute to the most famous scene from Goldfinger, some more poorly shot action, the return of Jeffery Wright as Bond's CIA ally Felix Leiter, some heavy handed political commentary and a decent finale.

Craig and Kurylenko

Another important thing to note is the apparent increased role of Paul Haggis as a writer. On Casino Royale, he simply preformed some last minute touch-ups, but here is is the first credited writer. As someone who despises Haggis, I'm going to blame him for the lack of humor and the heavy-handedness. It's also come out that he turned in the final script two hours before the beginning of the writer's strike. I would have been happy if he had taken those two hours to write a single joke or pun that the Bond films are known for. Still, I've never really enjoyed a Marc Forster film, and if someone is barely able to put together a drama, they should not be given a $230 million action film. The film's failure probably belongs to both of them. Daniel Craig's performance alone keeps this film from falling into Moonraker or Die Another Day levels of bad, but Forster's complete inability to direct an action scene and Haggis's weak script do put this film near the bottom of my list of Bond films.

Rating (out of ****) *1/2

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Until now, I've avoided reviewing most of the older films I've watched, simply because I didn't think I'd be able to write anything new or particularly insightful about them. Honestly, does the internet really need another mediocre analysis of La Notte or Kieslowski's "Three Colors" trilogy? To be frank, I didn't think I'd write a review of Robert Weine's 1920 horror masterpiece, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, when I watched it the other day. It's among the most beloved and widely discussed silent films (with good reason), but I thought of something when I was done that will allow me to turn this into a good mix of review and rant. I'll start with the review. As the film opens, we see Francis, our protagonist, sitting in a park, preparing to tell his story to the other man sitting on his bench. This use of a framing device was unique at the time, and the film's legendary twist (which I will not divulge for those who have not had the opportunity to see it) would not work without it. Francis' story begins as his small village is visited by a traveling show featuring the mysterious Dr. Caligari and his somnambulist, Ceasar. Ceasar predicts the death of Francis' friend Alan, and, of course, his prediction comes true. The villagers become suspicious, and the woman that both Francis and Alan pined after appears to become the next target. I could go on, but it is a short film, and I don't want to give too much away. As many of you presumably already know, the film is best remembered for it's genius, German expressionism-influenced set design and it's innovative, still-shocking twist. The warped sets perfectly capture the madness of the characters and the situation, and they fill one of the most unique towns ever filmed. I want to avoid discussion of the twist, as I really don't want any of you to miss the pure shock of the film's final moments. This is one of the greatest horror films ever made, and I'd recomend it to anyone who loves film.

Now for the promised mini-rant. I understand that it is difficult to release silent films on DVD. The original prints have degraded and large sections may be missing (a la Metropolis until recent findings that will hopefully allow a fully restored version), but that isn't really the case with Caligari. In 1997, Image entertainment released a special edition (that I haven't seen) that allegedly has very high picture quality, plenty of interesting features and runs 76 minutes, which, at least according to IMDB, was the film's original runtime. Unfortunately, I do not have the Image edition, I have the Alpha Video edition. First, despite the box claiming that the film runs for 82 minutes, it was 66 minutes long, which means that I missed at least ten minutes of the film; because of this, I don't think I should give the film a real rating at the bottom of this review. At least most DVD's of Metropolis have title cards explaining what the viewer is missing. This DVD was released in 2002, which means that the picture quality should have been better than that of the Image version, unfortunately, this appears to be untrue. The quality of the image on this DVD was unbearable, and, at least according to various user reviews, far below the Image release. So what I'm tyring to say is this: DVD companies, please stop throwing out shit releases of great films to make a quick buck off of the poor film buffs of the world. I know you can't all be Criterion, but at least try to give a shit about quality. That's all.