Where You Been?

I've been sick?

Okay, it's lame to leave my blog lying fallow like this for so long. Even if no one reads it. There are a few recent posts on other sites that link to here, so I might as well send you back where you came from? Anyway, here are some things I've posted over the past, er, decade:

Here's my Best of 2008 at Charlotte Viewpoint. Here's my Review of Steven Soderbergh’s CHE and my 2009 Best of Tribeca from the same site.

And here's my Best of the Decade list.

And my Best of 2009 from the All Movie Guide blog.

I'll be back soon to write um, addenda to those last two, and maybe I'll write something about David Cronenberg's SHIVERS, too, the last movie I watched, and a great one.

New Trends in Independent Cinema

You've all heard about "mumblecore" and mumblecore (no quotation marks) and mumble-core and the mumble-corps (good one, J. Hoberman), but here is some up-and-coming stuff you might want to be the first on your block to talk about.

Jumbo-core: This is just like mumblecore, but with obese people.

Jumble-core: Antisocial young folks compete to finish puzzles in the daily paper.

Mumbly-core: Romantically fumbling twentysomethings inadvertently cut off each other's fingers.

Fumble-core: Post-collegiate pals ill-advisedly join a fantasy football league.

Grundel-core: It's insane, this guy's taint. Probably the next step for Joe Swanberg.

Grendel-core: Ill-at-ease part-time grad students try to impress each other by discussing Beowulf.

Dumbo-core: Socially inept young adults sit around and talk about which Brooklyn neighborhoods they would live in if only they could afford it.

Rumble-core: Rival gangs of white middle-class twentysomethings clash on the street. Voices are raised.

Stempel-core: Overeducated vicenarians cheat on a nationally televised game show.

Core-core: At the cusp of a delayed adulthood, affluent caucasian kids (and one Asian) sit around eating apples.

Bumble-core: Like mumblecore, but with more buzz.

Is this thing on?

Sorry.

Well, whatever you want to call it, I've only seen what's available on video. I want to make it down to the IFC Center while they are having their "New Talkies" series, especially for Hannah Takes the Stairs and Quiet City, but finishing my MA and finding a job are a higher priority the next couple weeks. (Hmmn. I sound like one of "them.") I adore the two Bujalski films. (I think I mentioned them somewhere else on this blog.) I'm less thrilled with Kissing on the Mouth and The Puffy Chair, but I do dig all the naturalism and I am eager to see more of it.

Dick Cheney comes clean about Iraq

I got this video from moveon.org:



So you knew all this 13 years ago? Can we stop calling outright boldfaced lies "mistakes" or "errors in judgment?"

Gay Man Women-Haters' Club

A sensitive type like me goes into a film like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry expecting to find fault. I was prepared to find the type of gay stereotypes portrayed here by David Spade (mercifully briefly) and Nick Swardson. I was unsurprised when the gruff, macho, angry firefighter played by Ving Rhames turned into a Chaka Khan-singing, mincing exhibitionist after coming out of the closet. I was only a little bit surprised that Chuck (Adam Sandler) and Larry (Kevin James) never found themselves in a situation where it was necessary to demonstrate any physical affection for one another. I mean, that would be gross, right? I’m not exactly shocked that the film tries to have it both ways, mocking gays throughout and then preaching a message of tolerance at the end.

I was surprised by some things, though, and not pleasantly. I haven’t read anything about the crude way the film objectifies women, and there are even some critics who don’t see fit to mention the key role that Rob Schneider plays in the film. I think I’ve figured out the social hierarchy the film presents, so let me break it down for you.

-Straight men (except the ones who devote their lives to homophobia, as opposed to practicing it casually like our heroes, and except Steve Buscemi, for some reason)
-Gay men (ridiculous, but mostly in an amusing way. What can you do?)
-White women (The pretty ones are vapid sex objects. The unattractive ones (Rachel Dratch, Mary Pat Gleason) are ridiculous for wanting to be sex objects. Sometimes one is so damn hot that they transcend mere sex object status and become one’s primary sex object.)
-Asian women (sex objects)
-Asian men (of such low status that even Rob Schneider needs the addition of a funny wig and huge Coke bottle glasses to convey just how ludicrous they are)

Now, as critics, maybe we’re not paying attention. Maybe we’re scouring the film so conscientiously for signs of homophobia that we don’t notice the way women are portrayed. But in hindsight, the film is more repugnant in its treatment of women than in its (still somewhat troublesome) portrayal of gay men.

First off, we have the twins, Darla and Donna (portrayed by Rebecca and Jessica O’Donahue). Outer borough types, and easily duped by Chuck (apparently, despite the fact that he’s played by Adam Sandler, some kind of amazing lothario), who cheats on one with the other, and then uses their competitive nature to trick them into kissing each other for the amusement of his firefighter pals.

Then there are the Hooters girls. These women are apparently a stable of women that Chuck keeps around. For some reason, they are all Asian. They are giggling, squealing morons, not much smarter than household pets. Chuck shows Larry (Kevin James) how he can trick them all into bending over for his scopophilic pleasure.

Then there’s “Doctor Honey,” called such because when the hospitalized Chuck calls her “honey,” she corrects him, demanding to be addressed as “Doctor.” Finally, a woman with some self-esteem, who is not charmed by Chuck’s good looks (?) and his boorish manner. I did think to myself, I admit, that she looked more like a porn star than a doctor, and later realized that she is played by Chandra West, who actually plays a porn star on the HBO series, John from Cincinnati. So that may explain my confusion on that point. In any case, Dr. Honey stands up to Chuck’s piggishness in the hospital, and the next time we see her, she’s dressed up in fetish gear, in Chuck’s bedroom with the Hooters girls. So, haw haw, stupid women thinking that they will ever be respected or treated as equals when it’s guys like Chuck who really know how to treat them. I was less than amused. Was there a way to treat Dr. Honey’s apparent self-respect as something other than a cheap joke? I guess the important thing was to establish that Chuck is a pimp.

And then there’s Alex, the lawyer played by the smokin’ hot Jessica Biel. Biel is undeniably attractive and a likeable presence, but she hasn’t shown such great judgment to date in choosing her roles. Because Chuck is pretending to be gay when he meets Alex, she doesn’t get to experience the full impact of his charm. He surreptitiously ogles her; she mistakes him for a nice guy. Their relationship never really progresses much beyond that point. Even while pretending to be gay, Chuck’s masculine charm is apparently so overwhelming that she finds herself attracted to him. He adores her, but it’s never clear that this attraction is substantially different from that he feels for his twins and his Hooters girls. She’s just hotter than they are.

Meanwhile, that Rob Schneider character had me wondering what Guy Aoki is doing these days. (And if you haven’t seen Jesus is Magic, you should.) I mean, Mickey Rooney’s clownish “yellow-face’ performance as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is offensive, but at least the film’s many defenders can point out that it was made over forty years ago. Hasn’t our culture progressed past this type of thing yet? How does Rob Schneider get on his high horse about Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitism and then turn around and play a degrading role like this? It makes me wonder how firm he is in his commitment never to work for Gibson. Heh.


There are a few laughs in the film, and there are bit parts from people far too talented for this like the aforementioned Rhames, along with Rob Corddry and Robert Smigel, but in the end, it was more depressing than entertaining.

Edit: In surfing the internets during my "research" for this story, I found out that Rob Schneider's mother is actually Filipino, so maybe that makes his portrayal of a Japanese man less offensive somehow? Anyone?

Here are some photos of him, as a baby, as a Mexican, and as a hot chick. You decide.

One more thing I had to add here: Dan Ackroyd might, and Sandler might, but NYC firefighters, in general, do not love Rudy Giuliani, nor should they. Nor should anyone who actually lived or worked here during his mad reign. He's as venal and opportunistic and dishonest as they come, and he'd make a fine successor to GWB, but I thought we were sick of that crap.

"Did you order a pizza?"

-My favorite line from William Friedkin's Bug, which I saw earlier tonight at the Museum of the Moving Image, and liked quite a bit. I can't understand how the normally astute Stephanie Zacharek found the film so unbearably self-serious. While an intense and not altogether enjoyable experience, I thought the film was darkly funny. That whole exchange where Peter (Michael Shannon) emphatically asks Agnes (Ashley Judd), "What don't you know?" was amusing in a dreadful, doomed way, as I think was intended.

Also, I was unfairly dismissive of Rise: Blood Hunter. There were a couple of moments, between Avid-farts, that amused/surprised me, along with the relative heartlessness of the lead character. Still...

Tribeca Part 4: Korean Gangsters

Things did get better at Tribeca, before they got worse again.

Before I go into that, in response to ‘heckler blog,’ who’s apparently created an account just to comment here (perhaps he should have named himself ‘blog heckler’), I have to reiterate that I realize my story about Jamie Kennedy and Pablo is hearsay. However, in the little time I’ve known Pablo, he has proven himself a very trustworthy person. He acknowledged that the crowd seemed to be against him. No surprise, really; there might have been some Jamie Kennedy fans at the premiere of his new film, and they might not be the type of people who are predisposed to listen to someone who speaks very good English (but with a foreign accent) criticize their hero. I have absolutely no reason to doubt his account of what happened.

That said, I think you might be right about me being a nerd. So that stung a little.

Anyway, the two best films of the few I managed to see at Tribeca were Michael Kang’s West 32nd and Yoo Ha’s A Dirty Carnival, which has already achieved some success in South Korea.

Both are follow-ups to films that I liked a lot. West 32nd is Kang’s second feature. His debut was the humane but brutally honest coming-of-age comedy, The Motel. A Dirty Carnival follows Yoo’s well-executed political/social drama, Once Upon a Time in High School.

I was slightly disappointed in West 32nd, not so much because of the film’s shortcomings, but because in many ways it is a standard, if culturally specific, gangster film, and with my enthusiasm for The Motel, I was expecting even more. It’s a solidly entertaining drama about a driven young attorney, John Kim
(John Cho of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle), who, in his efforts to help the family of a Korean teenager who’s been arrested for murder, immerses himself in the shady underworld of Manhattan’s Koreatown, with the untrustworthy, volatile low-level gangster, Mike Juhn (a noteworthy debut from Jun Sung Kim), as his guide.

John’s beneficence is motivated in part by his attraction to Lila Lee (Grace Park, whom fellow nerds will recognize from Battlestar Galactica, handling a challengingly complex role with aplomb), the older sister of the murder suspect.

Naturally, things spiral out of control, and John, unable to turn away from the case, finds himself increasingly wrapped up in Mike’s chaotic world.

Kang writes multilayered, believable characters, directs his actors with skill, handles the violence reasonably well (including a chopstick assault lifted from Takeshi Kitano’s Fireworks), keeps things moving forward despite an incident-laden plot, and his film has a strong sense of place, and of community, from the room salons of Chelsea to the Korean neighborhoods of Flushing, Queens. But I didn’t find the story quite as convincing as the characters or the setting.

A Dirty Carnival is also a standard gangster story in some ways, but Yoo Ha writes and directs it with such power and energy that it transcends any genre limitations. This is the gangster saga at its pinnacle.

In an amazingly magnetic performance (I almost think you can tell how good he is, and how well shot the film is, from the screenshots posted here), Jo In-Seong plays Byung-du, a low-level gangster with money troubles who finds brutality and murder the only way to ingratiate himself to a mob boss (Jeon Ho-jin) and get ahead.

He turns out to be quite good at it, but naturally, there are complications in his rise to the top. Aside from his dangerous gangster rivals, Byung-du has to contend with a
manipulative old school friend, Min-ho (Min Nam-gung), a desperate aspiring filmmaker. Min-ho wants to make a gangster movie, and he needs Byung-du’s help to make it gritty and believable.

Min-ho ingratiates himself by re-introducing Byung-du to his old high school crush, Hyun-ju (Lee Bo-yeong).

The fascinatingly detailed and fluid relationships between the characters, combined with the strong visuals, the magnificently choreographed chaos of the fight scenes, and Yoo’s intricate but believable plot, held me rapt throughout its 141 minute running time. This is a special film, and Yoo may now be in the same class with the immensely talented Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host)

If I’m up to it, I may come back later and write something about the last film I saw at Tribeca, Rise: Blood Hunter, yet another Avid-fart (term © Vern) -laden saga of a vampire who hunts her own kind, this one distinguished by the surprisingly frequent appearance of the bare boobs of Lucy Liu’s body double.

Or maybe that says it all.

Tribeca Part 3: Nobel Son better Lookout

The first movie I saw at Tribeca this year was Nobel Son, and despite the presence of a fairly strong cast, including Alan Rickman, Mary Steenburgen, and Bill Pullman, it was an inauspicious start.

Rickman plays Eli Michaelson, an insufferable egomaniacal lout of a college professor whose head just swells bigger when he learns he’s won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Eli cheats on his wife Sarah (Steenburgen) and looks down on his son, Barkley (Bryan Greenberg) because Barkley is studying anthropology, more specifically cannibalism. The femme fatale, a poetess who calls herself City Hall (Eliza Dushku), seduces Barkley, who soon finds himself kidnapped by self-proclaimed autodidact Thaddeus (Shawn Hatosy).

If this already sounds a bit overstuffed, believe me I haven’t begun to scratch the surface. I didn’t even mention that Sarah is a brilliant forensic psychiatrist or that Danny DeVito plays the obsessive compulsive who rents the upstairs room. It’s not really clear why this particular family would need to rent out the spare room, but then there’s an awful lot here that doesn’t make sense. The kidnapping plot and the subsequent revenge plot are of the type that rely on a vast multitude of unlikely coincidences to work, and yet somehow they pretty much all come together.

It’s all presented with a surfeit of annoyingly gratuitous vertiginous camerawork and rapid-fire editing (including split screen). Director Randall Miller, who co-wrote the film with his wife, Jody Savin, also edited the film himself, and the model for the shooting and editing appears to be Tony Scott. I get a headache just writing that name, so I wasn’t impressed with how convincingly Miller copies his style.

Rickman is still pretty fun to watch, and Dushku is way too talented to be playing such a ridiculous role. I liked her character, but it soon became clear that I was responding to the actress’s energy, and by the end, I had no idea who she was playing. Greenberg was also fine, but he has one long heavy scene with Hatosy in which Barkley undergoes some kind of sudden and unmotivated personality change. The writing is flashy, like the directing, but sloppy.

I also saw The Lookout this week, with Pablo. Not at Tribeca, obviously, but this was a much stronger example of the caper film.

Pablo didn't care for it, but I thought it was very smart entertainment. Great performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, and Matthew Goode, a sharp script by Scott Frank, who also directed. He keeps things fairly simple and clean, and lets the twists and turns of the plot and our growing attachment to the characters drive the suspense. Isla Fisher plays the requisite seductress in this one, and I thought she was solid. She’s not necessarily a better actress than Dushku, but the script presented her as a real person, rather than some convenient construct whose personality shifts around to suit a convoluted plot.

Tribeca Part 2: The Heckler of Heckler

Before I even got down to Tribeca, I heard from Pablo about an incident that had taken place during a screening of Heckler, Michael Addis’s documentary, which features Jamie Kennedy. Pablo apparently got into an argument with Kennedy during the Q&A after the film, and it turned somewhat ugly. If you happen to read Portuguese, I recommend that you check out Pablo’s blog and read his account. I’ll summarize here for those who don’t.

The film starts out as an illuminating documentary about heckling, featuring talented comics like David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Eugene Mirman, Rosanne, Paul F. Thompkins, and Judah Friedlander talking about their experiences with hecklers, and including some classic footage of comics responding to hecklers, including an amazing clip of Bill Hicks flipping out, and a reenactment of Michael Richards’ recent onstage meltdown. Kennedy is the film’s onscreen “host,” and he describes his own encounters, and confronts some of his own hecklers on camera.

Unfortunately, about twenty minutes into the film, Addis and Kennedy pull a switcheroo, shifting the focus of their complaints from hecklers to film critics. The next hour or so consists mainly of Kennedy whining about the scathing reviews
he’s received and commiserating with fellow “victims” like Carrot Top, Tom Green, Joel Schumacher, Eli Roth, George Lucas, and filmmaker/pugilist Uwe Boll, the atrocious German videogame-adapting filmmaker (Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead) who infamously challenged critics to step into the boxing ring with him. The filmmakers clearly take great pleasure in showing Boll beating up various online critics. Who would have thought that they would be such poor fighters?

Kennedy also confronts some of his harsher critics, a few of whom do seem to have a sadistic streak. But Kennedy may be the only individual who takes what these relative lightweights have to say seriously.

When the show was over, Pablo told the filmmakers that he was entertained, but confronted them about changing the subject of their film in midstream, and about the quality of the critics they interviewed, implying that they were trying to stack the deck against film criticism by interviewing incompetent practitioners. Addis seemed ready for a thoughtful discussion of the issues Pablo raised, but the thin-skinned Kennedy was not hearing it. He got very defensive, and at one point began making fun of Pablo’s accent, which Pablo did not take lightly.

After the Q&A, Pablo continued to speak to Addis outside the theater, reiterating that he enjoyed the film. For his part, Addis was so receptive to Pablo’s criticism that he suggested he might try to add interviews with two of the esteemed critics Pablo mentioned, Manny Farber and Pauline Kael. Pablo, sensing what a coup these interviews would be, suggested that Addis also try to track down James Agee. At this point, Kennedy approached Pablo again, and apologized repeatedly for mocking him during the Q&A. Pablo graciously accepted his apology, and walked out with Kennedy in pursuit, still apologizing.

(Pablo, if you’d like to correct or add anything to this account, please let me know.)

I didn’t see the film until the press screening a couple of days later, and I pretty much agreed with Pablo’s assessment that the film was very watchable, but disappointing in shifting its focus from insight into the mindset of hecklers and the comedians who suffer them to whining about bad reviews and championing the likes of Schumacher and Boll.

However hostile they may be, however painful it may be to read what they have to say, critics are not the same as hecklers. Hecklers clearly want to be part of the show. They may hurt the performer’s feelings, but they are distinguished by their disruption of the show itself, for both performer and audience. Unless you’re
watching movies with Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, there’s no analogous experience with film critics. As for me, I have never gotten up in front of the screen during the movie to proclaim whether or not I liked it. Most critics don’t. Though I do remember hearing about how Joel Siegel made a big show of denouncing Clerks 2 when he walked out on the movie, I don’t really consider him a representative of film critics as a class.

I’ll be back later with more Tribeca coverage. Thank you for your patience.

The Trials of Tribeca (Part 1)

Tribeca is so damn big and sprawling, even if they did show fewer films this year, that one person’s experience of it can be completely different from another’s.

I certainly know that my Tribeca 2007 was vastly different from that of Pablo Villaça, the renowned Brazilian film critic, because he was sleeping on my futon throughout the event. (In fact, it almost seemed as though he slept through the event, but that’s another story.)

I have been interning at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, and back in February, my bosses there asked me to spread the word about an event they were holding there: The Moving Image Institute.

The Institute, co-sponsored by The New York Times, was intended as an educational forum for film writers and editors from smaller markets, and I contacted various organizations to encourage people to apply. I posted a notice on the message board of the group I belong to, the Online Film Critics Society. My fellow OFCS member Pablo applied, and got in.

The Institute was providing participants with press accreditation for Tribeca, which took place immediately after the five day event. A few days after learning that he’d been accepted, Pablo posted a message saying that he needed a place to stay in New York during Tribeca.


Now, I had never met Pablo, and judging from his posts on the OFCS board, he seemed like a bit of a nutjob, but then again, they all do. They are online film critics, after all.

In any case, my little hovel on the Upper East Side is not really big enough for two people, and it’s filthy for some reason, and the walls are unconscionably thin, and I have loud inconsiderate neighbors.

So, naturally, I offered to let Pablo—a total stranger, an online film critic, and a Brazilian to boot—stay in my apartment during Tribeca. I presented it as a possible last resort, but naturally there were no other resorts pending.

Considering the odds against my ever taking Pablo up on his kind offer to reciprocate the next time I visit Belo Horizonte,

it was pretty much a selfless act of human kindness, and one which I increasingly regretted as the days counted down to the Institute.

I feel the need to be somewhat discreet about my experience of the Institute. I volunteered to “help out” during the event, but being a freelance film critic myself, I was hoping to be able to sit in on more of the panels and discussions than I did. Ah well. Such is life. Maybe I’ll apply the next time they do it. The kids got to meet Martin Scorsese, Thelma Schoonmaker, Frederick Elmes, and other luminaries. I hear it was good.

I jokingly wished that I could join a panel with some big-time critics, to offer some perspective. I’ve been writing for over a decade now, I think I’m a pretty good critic, and I’m fairly certain that I’ll never make a living at it. Boo hoo.

But as it turns out, there was little need for my input. From what I heard, the speakers were all pretty cynical about the state of the independent film business, of repertory exhibition, and about the future of film journalism and criticism, or at least the dismal prospects for making a living at it. Dennis Lim, the great former film editor at what is now jokingly referred to as the Village Voice, now works at the museum, and from what I heard, offered his own less-than-sanguine take on the subject.

What’s clear is that the independent film business and film criticism are mutually dependent, to some extent. I think reviews have an impact on the box office for every film, even such so-called “critic-proof” films as Spider-Man 3. They’re much more important to lame-ass “prestige” releases like Crash and Brokeback Mountain. But they’re crucial to smaller independent and foreign releases.


While I was in the room, one of the speakers at the Institute, Nadja Tennstedt of Milestone Films, read a snippet of a Janet Maslin’s Times review of Charles Burnett’s brilliant Killer of Sheep from 1978, when it was shown at the Whitney Museum. Nothing against Maslin, but her dismissive review seriously hurt any possibility that the film might get a wider theatrical release, and that had a deleterious effect on the talented young filmmaker’s career.



On the other side of the spectrum, I recently watched the documentary, Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, wherein John Carpenter describes how Halloween was widely dismissed by critics on its release, until the Village Voice published a serious, positive review, and the film began to gain some critical traction. Did that help the film's box office? Probably not too much--it was already going to be a hit--but in the end, film criticism isn't supposed to be about the box office, is it? The film's increasing critical cache inspired an expansion of the discussion that film criticism at its best is supposed to help foster.



(I was watching the documentary in preparation for the upcoming horror series at the museum. There’s nothing about it on the website yet, but keep checking; it should be special. In the meantime, be sure and make it over there for the Sam Fuller retrospective and a special screening of Johnny To’s Exiled.)

My point is essentially that smaller films need critics.

Hey, I’m a critic.

I write synopses and reviews for All Movie Guide (see link on the right), which a lot of filmgoers use as a resource when deciding what to see. They get about ten million page hits per month, which from what I understand is a lot. On top of that, they sell content to other sites, including the New York Times website. The Times doesn’t cover every film that shows in New York, and AMG fills in the gaps online.

I’ve been covering the Tribeca Film Festival since the first one in 2002, and I’ve reviewed many smaller films that didn’t get as much coverage as the big premieres.

I mention all this because I am a whiny little bitch.

Before the festival started, Pablo sent me an email because he wasn’t sure about the level of press pass he’d been issued. The festival told him his pass would grant one admission to press screenings and public screenings. He was worried that meant that he could only attend one screening. I told him, yeah, dude, pick the ONE film you want to see from the 200+ titles in the festival that you’re staying in New York an extra ten days to cover. Then I explained that I was joking. He’d been worried, and I enjoyed mocking his less than 100% perfect (though pretty damn good) command of English. Probably because at that point he hadn’t moved in yet, and I was nervous, and got a little passive-aggressive toward him. That’s okay. I later made it up to him by talking endlessly about Xuxa once he moved in. For those of you that don’t know, please click on that link to see Brazil’s favorite entertainer. Pablo claimed that he was not a fan, but I don’t believe him. They all love her. With that be-lipped spacecraft and those seductive underage backup singers, how could he not love her? You’ll be wanting to see more.


In any case, I met Pablo during the Institute. (Aside from a strange incident involving an allergic reaction to carpeting, he seemed normal enough. I was still fairly nervous about living with him for ten days, though.) I was thinking it would be appropriate to spend some time with him during the festival, show him the wonders of Tribeca. After perusing the schedule a bit, however, I realized that very little of the Tribeca Film Festival was actually taking place in Tribeca. Screenings were in the East Village, Kip’s Bay, Chelsea…there were even a couple in Queens at the museum.

I was trying to figure out what films I could see. I am finishing up the semester at school now, trying to meet deadlines for papers, working in the office up at Fordham, and at the internship, so I wasn’t going to be able to see as much as I have in the past. Then I took a closer look at my pass, and realized that, unlike Pablo, I would have to request tickets in advance to get into public screenings. So I was mostly limited to two days of press screenings and whatever public screenings they had tickets for on the two weekends when I could attend. I wasn’t very happy about that, especially as it quickly became clear that I wouldn’t find out whether or not I was getting into the public screenings until the day of the show, and that I wouldn’t be able to get into much. For every day that I had requested tickets (always selecting backup shows if my first choice was not available), I got a long list of titles for which the press office had received nothing. No tickets for press. Which seemed to defeat the purpose. I understand that they have to sell a lot of $18 (!) tickets to cover the costs of the festival, but it might have been in everyone’s best interest (or at least that of the filmmakers) to let the press in. Even the small-time internet press, like me.

So, Pablo turned out to be a great houseguest. Very considerate, and a funny guy, too. I was jealous, though, because he went to see a lot of films (mostly at the festival), and I only got into a few shows.

So here I am, whining. I’ll tell you all about the films I saw if you give me a day or two…

Note: I've posted a couple of Pablo's photos here. I stole them from his blog; I hope he doesn't mind!

Josh Wolf and Internet Journalism

Josh Wolf, a longtime video blogger, has been in federal prison since August 1, 2006. This is the longest that an American journalist has ever been imprisoned for refusing to comply with a subpeona.

Wolf ran afoul of the feds after he posted footage of an anti-G8 rally in San Francisco to www.joshwolf.net. The feds subpoenaed Wolf and demanded he turn over all of his footage, claiming that there might be a criminal act (the burning of an SFPD police car) captured in the footage. Wolf insists that he did not tape the criminal behavior, and feels that the turning over the tapes would betray the activists he shot at the event.

Asked if bloggers like Wolf should be granted the same protections as mainstream journalists, Wolf’s lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes, told Time Magazine (August 3, 2006), "All newsgatherers are theoretically protected by the federal and state First Amendment. In the context of free speech and newsgathering, all journalists are working for a democratic society whose very existence depends upon the free flow of information without government intrusion. Any attempt to draw a distinction is divisive."

The division Fuentes warns of seems to be one that too many journalists, perhaps threatened by the increasing popularity of internet news sites, and the seemingly moribund prospects for print journalism, are happy to embrace. In an article published in the New Yorker just days after Wolf’s imprisonment, (August 7, 2006) snarkily entitled “Amateur Hour,” Nicholas Lehmann scours the internet in search of crap, and unsurprisingly finds several examples of unimpressive online journalism. Bloggers may have certain disadvantages in terms of access, but to my view, Lehmann willfully overlooks the genuine advantages the internet has displayed in disseminating useful information.

“Short of an intensified cold war or some other cultural and political muzzle on dissent, we can expect a critical culture to continue as a voice in journalism and as a market for its products.”
-Michael Schudson, Discovering the News, p. 193

When Schudson was writing his classic book on modern journalism and the notion of “objectivity,” the “residue of reform” (93)—of the cynicism-inspired advocacy journalism of the Vietnam era—was still apparent in the journalism of the day.
Since then, the major news media have been completely taken over by multinational conglomerates. Stories that present these multinational corporations, their business partners, or their advertisers in an unflattering light are routinely suppressed, and there’s a subsequent chilling effect on mainstream reporters.

On top of that, in the post-9/11 environment of warmongering patriotic fervor (perhaps beyond any sort of “cultural and political muzzle on dissent” that Schudson could have imagined), the media have also been cowed by a secretive and hostile Bush administration. The recent PBS Frontline series, “News Wars,” offers accounts of the way the administration has intimidated journalists into toeing their line. The administration manipulated the mainstream media so effectively that in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, they were able, essentially, to anonymously plant stories in the New York Times (through the auspices of Judith Miller), which Dick Cheney could then authoritatively refer to on the Sunday talk shows while making his case for war.
So it’s important to consider the independence that the mainstream media gives up in exchange for access. No one in the White House press pool wants to be made an example of like Helen Thomas, who asked a few too many tough questions before it was fashionable to do so (i.e. before Katrina opened things up a bit) and was moved to the back of the line.

Bloggers, in most cases, don’t have to worry about pleasing corporate masters or losing access they never had in the first place, so they can be a truly independent and critical voice.

One can complain about their lack of accountability, but I don’t perceive a high degree of accountability on the part of the mainstream media either. After all, Judith Miller, in the aforementioned Frontline series, excuses her tremendously damaging water-carrying for the Bush administration by bemoaning the fact that “a reporter is only as good as her sources.”

Venues like Josh Wolf’s site provide a look at the growing discontent in America that the networks and newspapers repeatedly marginalize or ignore. These alternate views are every bit as valid as the middle-of-the-road consumerist values the media typically take for granted.

In addition to being more independent than the mainstream media, the internet also excels at providing a context for the news. Not only can one find links to reportage from different parts of the world (often differing tremendously in its depth and point-of-view from the American press), but one can find sources like www.downingstreetmemo.com which offers a detailed, carefully sourced timeline of events leading up to the current quagmire in Iraq. This is the sort of service that the mainstream media, with its focus on sensation, is disinclined to provide with any regularity.

As Paul H. Weaver, the author of News and the Culture of Lying, has pointed out, the typical form of a news story “incorporates its own bias…toward ‘events’ rather than processes.” This reinforces our culture’s propensity toward historical amnesia. Data of extreme relevance to the current state of affairs, including our government’s former support of the Muhajadeen and of Saddam Hussein, are glossed over in the service of brevity and “newsworthiness.” Online, one can find much more background on today’s news.

It’s clear to me that bloggers and internet journalists provide a legitimate and valuable news service. They may not be responsible to anyone but themselves and their viewers, but they are held to the same legal standard for truthfulness as “professional” journalists. They are culpable for libel just like their mainstream media counterparts, so there doesn’t seem to be a valid reason why they shouldn’t be granted the same legal protections. Josh Wolf may or may not have videotaped an illegal act. He is most definitely a journalist, and if we want to preserve the remnants of our free press, we have to begin by defending the legitimacy of his work.

"Do you just never wanna get laid again?": Tribeca Part Whatever

So, like I was saying, subject matter. I am always looking for films that deal honestly and insightfully with issues of race and class in America, like Crash, if that film had anything honest or insightful to say about race and class in America. I mean, if provocation was sufficient, than White Man's Burden and Soul Man would be important films.

The Architect, which played at Tribeca, intrigued me because the synopsis in the festival catalogue made it seem like it was about an architect (Anthony LaPaglia) who had designed a housing project in Chicago, and a resident/activist (Viola Davis) who was trying to have the buildings--now a haven for drug dealers--torn down. Having read There Are No Children Here, Alex Kotlowitz's excellent nonfiction book about a family living in Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green, and being a fan of Bernard Rose's underrated Candyman, which took place at a fictionalized version of Cabrini Green, I had a lot of curiosity about how detailed the film would be in its depiction of project life, and how incisive it would be in confronting the culpability of well-meaning, well-to-do white liberals in the suffering of poor black people.

Well, filmmaker Matt Tauber has taken the opportunity to make yet another film in a long, storied tradition, about the suffering of well-meaning, well-to-do white liberals. The Architect is not so much about a poor black woman who is so desperate to change her family's surroundings that she petitions the government to destroy her home, and comes into conflict with the arrogant man who had some very progressive ideas in mind when he originally designed that home. It's a little bit about that. But it's much more about the architect himself and his midlife crisis and his kooky wife (Isabella Rossellini), and his sexually confused and vulnerable teenage children. So, it's kind of a bait-and-switch, and by the standards of your typical "rich people and their problems" flick, it still doesn't have much to offer. The film is based on a play by Scottish playwright David Greig, and I suspect that the original play has nothing at all to do with race or America, and it hasn't been sufficiently adapted to address its new setting. Why would you want to adapt this story to Chicago only to gloss over all of the racial issues involved, focusing on the poor architect and his familial woes? The answer escapes me.

Tribeca Part 2: "Every day is a gift, but does it have to be socks?"

Again, I have to mention that I know it's bad form to complain about movies that one is lucky enough to be able to see for free. And I feel especially bad about bitching out a fluffy little bunny of a documentary like When Fried Eggs Fly. In a perfect world, I would never have seen it. Tribeca has this little screening library where press people can go and watch DVDs or tapes from a select library. I had about 75 minutes to kill between screenings, so I figured it would be a good time to watch the aforementioned Maquilopolis, but for some reason that screener wasn't available. They tell me that you can't take the screeners out, but then that screener is still somehow out, so maybe it's just us lowly Franklin Pass people that can't take them out. Anyway, the only other film I have time for is this doc about a music teacher at Manhattan's PS 3 who gets 150 or so kids, their parents, and the other teachers to compose, perform, and record a little pop ditty about the environment. This story would be perfectly good fodder for a six minute human interest piece on the local news, but as a feature documentary at a major film festival, it just does not cut it. Nothing against this hard-working teacher or his adorable and ever-so-talented brood, but this is fairly dull stuff, and only one of the kids is given enough screen time to differentiate himself in any substantial way. Spellbound it ain't. But then, I despised Paper Clips, but that got a distribution deal and the old perfume-soaked hags at the video store seem to like it enough. I mean, I like kids, generally, and they're all stars, in their own way. Maybe the kids I know, like my wonderful nieces and nephews, and Josh and Alex, and Brielle and Neo, and little Shmemma have just raised my standards too high, but I figure if I would rather spend an hour with those brats, the flick ain't working.

On my previous visit to that screening room, I'd watched the doc Rosie Perez made with Liz Garbus, Yo soy Boricua, pa'que tu lo sepas! and that was a much more worthwhile use of my time. It's essentially Perez's celebration of her heritage, and, in addition to a very warm, personal point-of-view, it contains a wealth of fascinating and often troubling historical data about the island of which I knew very little. It's always nice to actually learn something from a documentary, particularly when it's presented with passion and vigor. What I mean is, there's a lot of names and dates, but it's never dry because the whole thing is infused with Perez's electric personality. Of course, if you're one of those people that cringes at the sound of her voice, this film is probably not for you. Oh, and go fuck yourself!

Just kidding, of course.

Say what you want about Rosie, but don't start talking shit about my girl Sarah Silverman, or there will be trouble. I know what you're thinking: This is another one of those pathetic online blog nerds who is hopelessly in love with Sarah Silverman just because she is so funny, and is kind of cute. Right?

Well, I don't really have a comeback for that one.

I try not to be obsessive about it. I think I find her so beguiling in part because she reminds me a bit of Lisa, but that doesn't detract from her enormous talent, which exists beyond my personal peccadilloes. Just like Mary Louise Parker is an amazing actress, regardless of whether or not she bears a passing resemblance to my aforementioned wayward soulmate.

In any case, enough of that crap. I was determined to see the atrociously titled I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, written and directed by Jeff Garlin of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" fame, partly because I find Garlin moderately amusing, but mainly because Silverman has a substantial role in it. So, I shouldn't have been too surprised that the film is moderately amusing, while Silverman is fucking awesome. There is a temptation here to lapse into even more embarrassing confessional mode, and I am having a hard time resisting it, but in the name of all that is holy, I shall. Or, I will just briefly mention that I liked that scene where Beth (Silverman) takes James (Garlin) along as she goes underwear shopping. I won't even say that I really liked it, and you between-lines readers can just chalk whatever you make of that up to your own twisted projections.

One problem I had with the film is the way it nearly constantly evokes "Curb." I'm not suggesting that Garlin is ripping Larry David off. I'm sure he shares a certain comic sensibility with David, and as the show is largely improvised, his own comic persona is obviously integral to the overall tone of CYE. But still. James's stand-up inflected conversations with his buddy Luca (David Pasquesi) as they search for a place to eat; his encounter with a guy in a pirate outfit (Joey Slotnick) promoting a hot dog stand who turns out to be a friend of his and whom he ends up filling in for, briefly; the coincidental run-ins with various eccentrics... It's all a bit too familiar, and because Garlin is a much more amiable sort than David, a lot of it comes off as CYE without the edge. For edge, we have Silverman's brazen sex and ice cream talk and her sweetly unhinged passive aggressiveness. James's relationship with Beth is the most interesting thing about the film. Garlin seems to strain to make James unattractive, what with him living with his mother, his food issues, his immense self-pity, but then he goes through lovely women at an alarming rate. I count three very attractive (thin, pretty, intelligent) love interests for James in the film, so it's hard to feel as sorry for him as he does for himself. I mean, maybe it's especially hard for me. Anyway, it's still worth seeing, from my disgruntled perspective. It's a decent first feature, and I was entertained, despite my reservations.

Okay, this isn't going as smoothly or as quickly as I'd hoped. I'm going to try to wrap the whole thing up tomorrow, I guess. So stay tuned?

Tribeca Part 1: "You've really never heard of a no-win situation? Vietnam? This?"

Well, Tribeca is over. I didn’t see any of the award winners, unfortunately. The Free Will, the Jonestown doc, Maquilapolis: City of Factories, loudQUIETloud (Pixies doc) , and The War Tapes were among those I meant to see, but just didn’t get to. I agree with Filmbrain about the size of the festival. If they showed half as many films, it would still be massive, and they could focus more on the quality of the films they present, weeding out some of the less interesting stuff. I only saw twelve films (cheating to include MI:3 and United 93, which I did not actually see as part of the fest), but two of those really had no business being in a major festival. If there are about 300 really good feature films out there right now, waiting to be shown, Tribeca either couldn’t get them, or made the wrong choices.

If they’d given me a fancier press pass, I would have been able to see more, but because I wasn’t guaranteed seating to any of the public screenings, I stuck mainly to the press screenings, and tried to choose the stuff I thought would interest me, based on subject matter, clips (if they were available online) and the creative people involved (which means mostly whether or not Sarah Silverman was in them).

Thankfully, I saw what I have to believe was the most important film of the festival, and certainly the best I saw. You know, that expertly made docudrama about the “real cost” of 9/11.

What? United 93? You’re joking, right?

No, I’m talking about The Road to Guantanamo.

My Tribeca was all about make-believe. We had:

-John Malkovich pretending to be Kubrick,
-Sabina Guzzanti pretending to be Berlusconi,
-Reed Fish pretending to be Zackary Adler, who pretended to show us a movie, when it was really a movie within a movie,
-Jeff Garlin pretending that no one would notice him pretending to be Larry David
-Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe doing a very good job of pretending that their Brothers of the Head was a documentary about the Bang Bang, a conjoined twins fronted 1970s rock band,
-Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro doing a somewhat poorer job of pretending that their purported documentary, American Cannibal, was a sly commentary on our national obsession with reality TV, and not just a cynical attempt to exploit that obsession.
-The US government pretending that three innocent British men were best buddies with Osama bin Laden and Mohammad Atta,
-Tom Cruise pretending to be Philip Seymour Hoffman,
-JJ Abrams pretending that it will take extremely complicated plot by a rogue agent to get us into another war in the Mideast,
-Paul Greengrass pretending that a well-executed partial simulation of the events of the morning of 9/11 is somehow important or useful.

United 93 was a gut-wrenching experience, as they say, and I found its real-time depiction of the nuts and bolts aspect of air traffic control and military decision-making on that morning fairly fascinating. Seeing it in real time is not the same as reading about it, and I did find myself wandering off and thinking about seven minutes of My Pet Goat, for some reason. So it was useful to me, in that limited sense. When it’s focus is on the actual plane and its passengers, it seems more like docudrama bullshit to me. Clearly, Greengrass knows that we will never know what those passengers said to each other or did on that morning. His solution is to avoid showing anyone saying or doing much of anything that might indicate that they had any type of individual personality. This might be respectful, but it’s certainly not insightful, and, unlike the earlier scenes in the control towers, it doesn’t really capture what was so irrevocably horrible about that day. Which is not to say that I wanted to relive those feelings I had, sitting up here with Lisa in what was then, thankfully, our apartment (by which I mean to say, I am glad that neither of us was alone that morning) watching the TV, horrified about all those people, and wondering what would become of our city and our world. But this film brought those feelings back to me with an immediacy that I did not expect. Which is not to say that a less capable filmmaker couldn’t have done the same damn thing, which is why I guess some people think of United 93 as exploitation, despite its virtues. And I have mixed feelings about it, but I guess I am leaning toward agreeing with them. The real time element makes the nuts-and-bolts element, which you could read about in a multitude of newspaper and magazine articles, more immediate, but the film's emotional impact--the trauma it evokes--is not justified by the information it imparts. Since the film doesn't put these events in the context of what's happened since, the sorrow and anger it brings up are not useful emotions.

The Road to Guantanamo inspires feelings just as powerful, but it is a much more "important" and "useful" film, providing a very detailed and convincing look at one aspect of our country's ongoing efforts to produce more terrorists. I think the film is great, and I want everyone to see it. I'm astounded that Michael Winterbottom can go from making Tristram Shandy to this, and can do both things so brilliantly. This is as good a time as any, I guess to plug earlier films of his, like Wonderland and I Want You, that you might have missed.

Early on in the film, I wondered about the Tipton Three, because the story they tell (the film is comprised of interviews with the former prisoners, reenactments, and news footage) of how they ended up in a Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan doesn't make much sense. But in the end, there's no evidence of anything other than their being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and evidence used to be the standard that we used before we put people in prison, let alone for years, and let alone while torturing them for information that they clearly did not have eg. "Where's Osama?"

It seems there are fewer and fewer of the Kool-Aid drinkers around these days (unless you look online) so maybe a lot of people will actually get to see this film, and will get an inkling of how far from our ideals our country has strayed.

While those two films both left me in a grim mood, hope was proffered at a screening of Ronit Avni's fine documentary, Encounter Point. One of the films subjects, Ali Abu Awwad, attended the screening, and spoke afterward. He is a Palestinian whose brother was killed by Israeli soldiers, and who was himself imprisoned for many years, along with other family members. Now a peace activist, Awwad approaches the notion of peace between Palestinians and Israelis from a very pragmatic and practical, as opposed to an idealistic or political point-of-view. He pointed out at the Q&A that communication is key, because peace itself represents something very different for Palestinians than for Israelis. For most Israelis, it essentially means that they can continue their lives as they have been, without having to worry about suicide bombing, while for Palestinians, it essentially means, as Awwad put it, that "we can begin to live." Selling the notion of statehood and peaceful coexistence to Palestinians is harder, because it's so much further removed from their current existence than it is for Israelis. He explains that many of them have no hope of peace, so their anger becomes destructive. But he and others are out there, talking to both Palestinians and Israelis of all political stripes, trying to shift the focus from the violence that the media obsesses over. And it seems to be working, slowly. He does win people over, and he makes a compelling case that this kind of grassroots activism is the only possible way to affect real change in the region.

I'll post some more about what I saw later today, or tomorrow.

Worn Out Joy

Hi, everyone. Sorry it's been so long. I am too busy to post anything lengthy right now, and my head is not right, but I just wanted to share this link to a New York Times profile of the wonderful filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, who made River of Grass, one of my favorite films of the 1990s, and more recently Old Joy, (please not to be confused with Oldboy) which I saw at this year's New Directors/New Films. I have been sick for a while, and didn't make too many of the screenings, and continue to feel awful about it, but this was a film that I knew I had to see. It is beautiful, and I hope that more people get a chance to see it. The profile is by Dennis Lim, who does a good job of capturing what the film is all about without revealing too much. Not that there is too much that could be revealed in mere words...

I want to say that I will try to make up for my lack of attendance at ND/NF by going to an overwhelming number of Tribeca screenings (they start this week) but Tribeca is such an odd and unwieldly beast of a fest, and there is such a good chance of screening one bad film after another for days on end that I don't know if I will muster the energy. Yes, it is probably bad form to complain about having to see a bunch of bad movies for free, but I do believe it is actually dangerous to my mental and physical health, both of which seem to be in decline lately. I'm much more looking forward to this summer's New York Asian Film Festival, and the surprise and excitement that will bring.

Another 2005 boo-boo.

Yeah, ok. This wouldn't have been my favorite movie of 2005, mainly because there's a lie at its core that I find disconcerting, to say the least, but it's my favorite Terrence Malick movie since Badlands, and I guess that's saying something. And it moved me, which is more than I could say for The Thin Red Line. Oh, silence your gasping, ye
acolytes. Malick's poesy and his stunning images, including the nature cutaways, feel far more organic to this tale of colonization than they did to his WWII drama. They jolted me right out of that movie, and made me all too aware of the "visionary" behind the camera. The New World works as cinema on many levels. It is a coherent and beautiful film, and Q’Orianka Kilcher was absolutely amazing. ("Still wearing that rabbit fur coat" above) If I were to vote on my best actress/breakthrough performance awards for the OFCS today, she would be right at the top of each category. It goes beyond the "ray-of-sunshine" naturalism that Seitz describes. This is a startlingly complex and nuanced performance. Her character changes radically through the story, she assimilates, and yet she retains her essence. There is not a false note in Kilcher's work here, amazing to consider how young she is. (I was trying to resist the urge to put in a defensive aside to Lisa here, but I guess it was too strong. I know how you think. Come now. I am a professional. Let me work here.)

Anyway, the film itself--despite my reservations about it, and how it depicts the growing conflict between Native Americans & colonists--definitely merits another one of my many, increasingly meaningless honorable mentions for 2005.

No sense closing the barn door once the genetically engineered killer cow has already left!

I almost laughed aloud hearing our president exhort us to avoid "creating human-animal hybrids" in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, but then on Thursday I saw Billy O'Brien's Isolation, which is going to be shown as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's "Film Comment Selects" series later this month (and eventually put into theaters by Lion's Gate) and damn if I didn't realize just the type of horror old GWB was talking about. It's actually a pretty good, icky, creepy, and efficient little shocker, with a lot of disturbing psycho-sexual undertones and just a smidgen too much mad scientist for my taste. I will probly review it for AMG, but here I just wanted to mention how very timely it is.

On another note, I had to change my blog template, because I could not stand the way the old one dealt with comments, they'll now come up in a pop-up window, so you don't have to scroll down to the bottom of a long post to read/add them.

The World's Last 2005 Top Ten Movies List

Ok, enough is enough. I am the slowest movie critic/blogger on earth coming up with this list. First I had to see Munich. Then I had to find photos for all the films. Because my pal Jason Jackowski (see link to the right) posted photos with his top ten list on his nascent blog. Knowing that some of my "regulars" (okay, "some" is a vague term--"one" would be a big enough percentage of my readership to merit consideration) don't know how to read, and like pretty pitchers, I decided that I had to post photos, too. So I will try. It might look dumb.

I am not going to waste time slamming Last Days, which I think represents Gus Van Sant's recent opportunistic "artiste" phase at its most venal and unnecessary, or even mentioning The Producers, even though my ears are still ringing, because most people, even those that somehow like them, seem to have forgotten about them, and rightly so. I mean, maybe the silly Golden Globes had Nathan Lane thinking he was going to get an Oscar nomination, but damn, that was one painful filmgoing experience.

I will mention, though, that this was a pretty awesome year for film. So there are a bunch of worthy movies that did not make my top ten list, but I do mention a lot of them in the honorable mentions section just below the list proper. This site is full of such innovative ideas, and now, with photos.

I considered making the list alphabetical, and for all intents and purposes, it really is alphabetical, except that it is not in the traditional order of the alphabet. What I mean is, any of the top three could have been #1 on a different day, and beyond the top three, the rankings are fairly arbitrary. The only bigtime prestige release that I failed to catch this year was The New World. Naturally I don't want to reveal too much about my biases, but from what I've heard, I would be surprised if it made this list...

1) Save the Green Planet!
Yes, this South Korean whatsit is the weirdest, best film of the year. Its nonstop inventiveness and refreshing disregard for the traditional boundaries of genre are only a small part of its appeal. It is wacky, hilarious, disturbing, and horrifying by turns, and, as with my number 2 film, the story is rooted compellingly and truthfully in a resonant and painful recent history.

2) Memories of Murder
Ah, another dark, disturbing South Korean film that subverts genre cliches and finds inspiration in an oppressive recent history. It also directly addresses the failure of torture and ideology in ascertaining truth, so I would hope that us Americans in 2005/6 might find some meaning in it in relation to our own little world. Beyond that, it works like gangbusters as a straight up genre piece. It's the best thriller I've seen in years.


3) The Squid and the Whale
I've always admired Noah Baumbach's smart sense of humor and his skill with actors. Kicking & Screaming and Mr. Jealousy are both well worth watching. But this is the first time that those talents have come together with a strong, deeply personal story and a developing visual aesthetic to produce a cohesive, funny, and heartbreaking work documenting a family's breakdown with bracing emotional honesty. Forget the damn Oscars; this uniformly outstanding cast (even William Baldwin) deserve the highest praise.

4) The World
I'm not really a "cinema of quality" guy, but there are always exceptions, and I guess Jia Zhang-ke is one of them. He appeals to me, among other reasons, because he seems to expand his palette a bit with each film, and this is certainly his most lively and accessible film to date, encompassing comedy, drama, and spectacle, all with a all with a sharp and salient worldview. Unlike, say, Gus Van Sant, Jia always seems to have a precise grasp of the specific milieu he's portraying, along with a keen eye on where its denizens fit in the grand scheme of things.

5) Kung Fu Hustle
Whatever Ang Lee thinks, Stephen Chow is an artist, in much the same sense that Chaplin, Keaton, Jerry Lewis, and, for a brief moment in time, Jackie Chan were. This was the most flat-out fun I had in a movie theater this year, and it brings a lovingly constructed world to vivid life, with larger-than-life underdog heroes and slick villains, inventive and energetic visuals, and a good-natured sense of humor and morality.

6) Funny Ha Ha
As one might gather from my comments extolling the virtues of Noah Baumbach's early work, I am a sucker for talky, urbane romantic comedies in the vein of Nicole Holofcener's Walking and Talking, and this is one of those. Andrew Bujalski throws us into this low-key, awkwardly funny world of smart, quick-witted, but confused and conflicted twentysomethings who don't always have the best intentions, and don't always know how to say what they want heard, which is not always what they mean. The film features outstanding performances and offers insight without any forced or phony epiphanies.

7) A History of Violence
Like The Squid and the Whale, I guess Cronenberg's superbly enthralling thriller is too prickly to get past the middlebrow taste enforcers of the Academy. HOV is a superb, tightly constructed genre piece with a rich, fascinating subtext not easily parsed in a single viewing. It's easy enough to be mesmerized by the blood-drenched sardonically funny tale and the skill with which Cronenberg presents it, plumbing the depths of the dark heart of a seemingly simple, ordinary life. Kind of reminds me of Cache in many ways, though that excellent film has been sadly relegated to my honorable mentions by an embarrassing instance of fanboyishness. My own, natch.

8) Darwin's Nightmare
Even if they didn't honor Grizzly Man, I guess I have to give whatever coffee klatsch decides on the Academy's documentary nominations some credits for recognizing this brutally fascinating depiction of the desperate bottom end of the world economy, and the devastating environmental havoc that the worship of profit can wreak. It's not a pleasant moviegoing experience, but it offers a critical look at how the rest of the world pays for the comfort we in the West take for granted.

9) Turtles Can Fly
An intensely timely, clear-eyed, and tragic look at the effects of war on the defenseless, former Kiarostami assistant Bahman Ghobadi's third film is also funny, angry, emotionally honest, and profoundly humane. Soran Ebrahim and his young castmates bring Ghobadi's warzone tale to vivid life.



10) Serenity
What? Yeah, Serenity. So? Please pardon my defensiveness. I know there are a lot of people out there who think Joss Whedon is some kind of god. I swear I am not one of them. I mean, Buffy and Firefly are great, of course, but I've only seen about ten episodes of Angel, so you could hardly think that I'm of that ilk. I've had the chance to see this again since it came out on DVD, and I am decreasingly embarrassed with how much I like it. It's Whedon, so of course, girls kick ass. But there's so much more. There's witty banter, strong characters, a great villian (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the slyly subversive anti-authoritarian theme, and it looks great. If I'd never heard of Firefly, I have to believe that I would still find this a great sci-fi action flick. But I do feel kind of like I know these people, so it's a bit more than that.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Cache. Time of the Wolf made my top ten last year. This was a stronger year, and another film that I will have to see a couple more times before I decide if it's one for the ages or just exceptionally clever and pointed.

Head-On. Fatih Akin's twisted romance between two supremely screwed up Turks in Germany generates real emotional impact from the specificity of its cultural milieu.

Kamikaze Girls. Jason suffered from some kind of Japanese pop culture overload while watching this, but I found its cultural specificity (again) extremely refreshing, and it was probably the most pure fun I had after Kung Fu Hustle.

The Power of Nightmares. Why shouldn't our side have good propaganda?

Grizzly Man. Another great year for documentaries.

Munich.

War of the Worlds.

Mysterious Skin. I started with Gregg Araki back in 1992, with
The Living End, and this is the first film of his that I've really liked. It's harsh and disturbing, and it often threatens to slip into camp, but, thanks in part to an excellent cast, it never crosses that line, and it develops a genuine poignancy.

The Ice Harvest. Insanely underrated straight-up genre flick.

The Constant Gardener. Or, as Lisa calls it, "The Constipated Gardener." I go back and forth on this one, but today I like it, and I continue to have high hopes for Meirelles' career.

Junebug. Sharp, funny, and much more emotionally complex than I was expecting.

Pulse. Got inside my skull like no J-horror before it (or, technically, after it--Thanks, Miramax!). I like Kristen Bell, but I don't have high hopes for the remake matching the original's subtle creepiness.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic. Her five minutes in The Aristocrats was that movie's highlight, too. Her feature is a little uneven, but still a lot of thought-provoking, guffaw-inducing comedy.

Land of the Dead. Easily the best theatrical horror film/political allegory of the year, and might have made my top ten if I hadn't liked Joe Dante's Homecoming (from Showtime's Masters of Horror) even better.

2046 and Tropical Malady. These are both good films from directors whom I admire a lot, and maybe one day I will be far removed enough from my (perhaps unreasonable) expectations to appreciate them more.

In Her Shoes. Hands down the chick flick of the year, and one I didn't expect to like at all.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. While Oldboy and Lady Vengeance certainly have their moments, I pretty much feel like Park Chan-wook said everything he needed to say on the subject right out of the gate.

Also, I wanted to mention Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Holy Girl, My Summer of Love, Look at Me, Me and You and Everyone We Know, The Time We Killed, Breakfast on Pluto, Kings and Queen...

See, I told you it was a good year.