Sydney Film Festival 2013: round-up reviews

I've been doing Sydney Film Festival fairly cautiously in previous years - a movie or two each time - but this year I decided to see six movies in seven days. It didn't seem like an enormous undertaking while making the bookings - friends of mine did eight, nine, even ten in similar time periods - but of course I came down sick the weekend screenings started and of course work was going through a busy period. 

Despite the sniffles and the eventual fatigue I enjoyed myself anyway! And I also managed to double the amount of movies I've seen this year in one fell swoop. :) 

So here be some quick thoughts. 

Stoker (2013, d. Chan-wook Park)

India's (Mia Wasikowska) beloved father dies on her 18th birthday, and in the wake of this tragedy her long-lost uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) comes home to charm India's barely grieving widow of a mother (Nicole Kidman) and unsettle India. 

The creepiness of the film was unnerving at the time of watching but this one really grew on me. While on first watch it seemed to show its hand too early, making Charlie's backstory and his connection with India too obvious and over-the-top; but in all honesty I was surprised by the ending, and the more I think about it, the more the whole movie works for me as a whole, the meticulous construction of mise en scene and plot and atmosphere. 

I'd warn that while I've heard it's not as violent as Park's other movies, it's not without its horrors. But it's all so elegantly stylish, taking its gothic elements and drenching them with sunlit days and shadowy nights, and an almost anachronistic opulence in the setting of this amazing, lonely house. Mia Wasikowska is wonderful as always, Nicole Kidman is great too, and as Alison and I discussed afterwards, Matthew Goode continues to work that niche of 'good-looking yet creepy' like a pro. 

Blancanieves (2012, d. Pablo Berger)

A Spanish black-and-white retelling of Snow White as a silent film where Carmencita (Sofia Oria, as adult) takes on her dead father's profession as a bullfighter when she runs away after her evil stepmother (Maribel Verdu) schemes to have her killed. 

What a great concept! What a beautiful lead actress! What an attractive throwback to old film! And yet - this is slight, so very slight, and maybe a little too faithful to the original fairy tale. Even with its inventions and new locales, it just unfolds without much tension or feeling until an unexpectedly bitter, but tender, ending. And I really liked the ending for diverting from the expected. But the fact it doesn't fit in tone and direction with the rest of the movie just serves to make the rest of it more disappointing. 

The Look of Love (2013, d. Michael Winterbottom)

Steve Coogan plays Paul Raymond, the King of Soho" who built an empire starting with the UK's first strip club and popular soft-porn magazines. The film is interesting from a salacious, recent history point of view, with a good eye for the changing fashions and attitudes towards sex throughout time, from the conservative 50s to a high point with the swinging 60s and 70s and then in decline during the bleaker, more hardcore 80s. 

But overall it's a bog standard biopic with a fairly loose story arc. The real drama is in the story of his daughter Debbie, a lost little rich girl, groomed to take over for her father, without the steel in his soul, the ability to cut and run. Imogen Poots is really lovely in this role. Actually, all the women are quite interesting in this and the actresses are great - Anna Friel as Raymond's first wife who loses him to other women once his empire starts to grow, and Tamsin Egerton, leggy and gorgeous, as his long-time girlfriend who's a big part of that growing success. But the constant parade of female nudity with more than a dash of tired "ooh-er" naughtiness remains unexamined throughout the film and that gets kind of depressing by the end. 

I was really looking forward to this reunion of director Michael Winterbottom and Coogan, but this is the least of their collaborations for me; it could've been so much more.

Stories We Tell (2012, d. Sarah Polley)

It hurts me to say this as a Sarah Polley fan, but this was probably my least favourite of the films I saw at the festival. It's not bad, per se, but it doesn't pull off what it promises - a look at how we tell the stories of our personal histories, how our pasts are shaped by the storytellers, our futures shaped by things of the past. 

And the thing is, Polley does have a really interesting story to tell, and comes up with what appears to be an interesting way of telling it through this documentary. She discovers as a teen, after her mother's death, that the man she has always thought of as her father is not her biological dad. But when she goes searching for the man who everyone believes to be her bio father, she accidentally stumbles across an unexpected truth. 

The film itself is really ambitious. It layers interviews with her two dads, her siblings and friends of her parents with archival footage of her mother (herself an actress) and a rereading of her father's elegant memoir of the events.  There are also re-enactments by actors of stories from their shared family history, embedded as super 8 home movies.

But that's part of its downfall - it appears to reach for too much and doesn't quite know which avenues to explore, how to focus on what it wants to say. Plus Polley is just too close to the subject to be ruthless in paring it back. So in the end, it's more than a little messy and doesn't know where to end. Barely 90 minutes, it really dragged in the last third, when the beats of the film kept making me think/wish it was finishing, but the "story" would keep going, becoming looser and looser with each thread Polley chased. 

Dragon Girls (2012, d. Inigo Westmeier)

Probably my favourite film of the festival. I was really moved by this and it resonated a lot with me even as I felt at the same time that I was watching lives so removed from mine. But the film captured and conveyed so strongly a sense of the "idealised Chinese person", this unattainable perfection of body and moxie and nationalism that I recognise from my parents, embedded into their upbringing and values, which has trickled down to me in dribs and drabs. 

The documentary focuses particularly on three girls (ages 9 to 16) with somewhat varied experiences of the Shaolin Tagou Kung Fu School in the Henan province of China. The little girls are so great before the camera, often wise beyond their years and able to withstand so much internal and external pressure and hardship; so much so that I did feel somewhat manipulated by the possible clever construction of the story. And yet, I can't get a lot of this movie out of my head, and I really want to find a copy of this to show this to my parents as well to see what they think. 

The Bling Ring (2013, d. Sofia Coppola)

A thinly-fictionalised account of the teens who robbed the homes of celebrity Hollywood during a period in 2008-09. This was another very light, sort of formless movie that was easy to watch but ultimately felt very empty. 

It's at times really beautiful and striking - the silent robbery at Audrina Patridge's box of a house, filmed from a distance with the lights of Hollywood twinkling in the distance lasted long in my mind after other details about the movie faded. And as you'd expect from Coppola, the film is great at capturing aimless, teenage energy in music and look and mood.

But the thing is, the real story is fascinating, and left me wanting to know more, an itch that went unscratched by this film. I read The Bling Ring - Nancy Jo Sales' book expanded from her Vanity Fair feature on the subject - after seeing the movie and felt it much more satisfied my desire to dig and dig deeper behind these kids and what might have led to them dream up and actually, casually, carelessly go through with this string of robberies. 

The thing is, the movie had access to and seemingly works from similar sources of truth so it's inability or unwillingness to say anything made me frustrated the more I thought about it afterwards. It's not helped by some miscasting - Israel Broussard as Marc, our 'everyman' character entrance to the story, Leslie Mann as Nicki's airhead "cool" mom - that even stronger performances (Katie Chang, Emma Watson) couldn't quite save for me. 

Les Misérables (2012, d. Tom Hooper)

Unpopular opinion time...

So the Boxing Day movie for this year was the new Tom Hooper directed version of Les Misérables. Some of you have asked what I think of it, and some of you unfortunate souls who saw it with me already heard this rant, so I apologise in advance.

That said, I stand by my opinion that this a bad movie. It's still a fantastic musical, but it is a bad film.

Seriously, Tom Hooper confirms for me with this movie that he is completely undeserving of that Oscar. The direction is DIRE. It's stolid, heavy-handed, unimaginative and ridiculously literal. 

Though the religious aspect is obviously a big part of the story with the key themes of mercy and grace, of justice and repentance, Hooper again goes for entirely unsubtle visual reminders on top of the lyrics and story, hammering home the Christ-parallels for Valjean, and he didn't seem to meet a cross he didn't want to shoe-horn in. 

And the whole thing, despite the roller-coaster vista shots, and the many changes of time and place, still feels frustratingly static, with performers moving awkwardly around sets while singing their key songs (e.g. Valjean singing What Have I Done while pacing the chapel, Javert singing Stars while standing figuratively and literally on the edge of the fakest looking Paris ever, Marius singing Empty Chairs and Empty Tables, etc etc). The camera does nothing but twirl around them and up their noses while they sing, and the pace slows to the a crawl. It's perfectly standard for the stage show, but it begs the question: why bother translating it to film if you're not going to use that to your advantage at all?

So that the movie succeeds as a piece of entertainment at all is in spite of Hooper's work, is because there's still some fantastic performances, and the story and music itself remain wonderfully involving and moving. 

Anne Hathaway stood out the most for me; she does her best with a rushed sequence of Fantine's fall from grace, and I Dreamed a Dream is so heartrendingly good, from her singing to her huge, sad eyes, the way she can subtly convey the change from bitter reminiscence to dead-eyed present within the performance...it was probably the most emotionally true moment of the film. 

Hugh Jackman is great too as Valjean, though I expected as much, and I was also pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Eddie Redmayne as Marius, both acting-wise and vocally. Most of the others in the main cast are good, if not outstanding: Amanda Seyfriend makes a beautiful Cosette and her clear, high voice works for the character; Samantha Barks sings Eponine a little more stagey than the others but is fine; Aaron Tveit is a suitably stern and a little fanatical as the idealistic Enjolras; Helena Bonham Carter was better than I thought she would be 'cos much as I love her she's not a great singer, but the part of Madame Thenardier calls more for comic timing than singing ability, and she got great laughs from the audience. 

While Sacha Baron Cohen couldn't quite match her as Thenardier and was given some incredibly broad humour to carry, he was not the worst performer - that title would fall to Russell Crowe, who clearly struggled vocally with the demanding role of Javert. His higher register was noticeably weak, verging on nasal, and he didn't have the vibrato which meant a lot of his lines were clipped and lost their power. And he didn't give his actual performance a lot of colour either, so overall it was just plain that he was out of his depth with this. 

In the end, I couldn't hate this movie because of my love for the musical, and I don't regret the 3hr+ sitting. But I spent more time thinking about what was wrong with it, and snorting about the literalism and the anvil-ly emotionalism, than actually being carried along with it. And my impression on coming out of the theatre was not 'what a beautiful, grand and uplifting end!', but rather 'Tom Hooper, you hack'.

In Time (2011, d. Andrew Niccol)

So last year, I saw In Time and was horrimazed at what an absolute mess this movie was on just about every level possible. This belated post is to try and explain why, from a bunch of stream-of-consciousness notes (rants) I made at the time. 

Be warned: I'm just going to go ahead and spoil the whole movie for you. One, it's not possible to talk about the crazy badness of this film without discussing the details, and two, hopefully after reading this you'll not want to see it for yourself. Unless you happen to like complete trainwrecks, in which case I recommend you rent it for cheap, then down a few drinks beforehand if you don't want to be going "...what the - did they just - but that didn't make sense - really?!" every couple of minutes.

So you know you’re in for something awful with the first line - the first time (chortle) there’s a portentous use of the word ‘time' (and there will be many of these) - when we start with Justin Timberlake staring pensively (i.e. blankly) out a window. 

Oh JT. Such a great musician. Such a terrible actor. The king of literal choreography goes all out in his first starring role but is shown to be lacking within minutes of the start. In his face off against Matt Bomer, a quiet one-to-one scene in an abandoned warehouse, Bomer manages to convey more with one look in his pretty blue eyes than JT can even try with his whole body. 

In fact, Matt Bomer comes off best in this whole movie because he looks utterly gorgeous, he's only in this travesty for 5 minutes, and his last scene doesn't involve flinging his dying body into JT's arms so he can weep horribly and scream “NOOOOOO” dramatically to the sky (sorry Olivia Wilde). Vincent Kartheiser comes a close second, well cast and doing his best with the poor material as the cold, rich bastard dad of Amanda Seyfried's character. Of course, when one of your villains is the most logical, intelligent and relatable person in the whole movie, you have problems...oh, and what problems they are!

Apart from JT being so wooden and unconvincing as an actor, Seyfried looks like she’s here only to pick up a pay check in a bad wig. But that might not be all her fault - she's been given absolutely nothing to do as her character, Sylvia, is entirely underwritten as the clichéd sheltered rich girl longing for some excitement in life. When excitement supposedly comes in the form of being Stockholm’d into a Bonnie-and-Clyde lite relationship, it's unfortunate JT and Amanda having zero chemistry. The relationship comes out of nowhere except for the fact it’s scripted and it’s literally laughable - when they mechanically move into place to kiss for the first time, the only thing I could do was giggle incredulously, as did the two rows of people behind me in the cinema. Even more unfortunately, JT has more chemistry with Olivia Wilde, who plays his mother. 

Wait, there’s more! On top of the bad acting, there's odd choppy editing, really terrible lines (poor Cillian Murphy - completely wasted as a character whose incomprehensible motivations waver all over the place - has to utter inane gems such as “I'm a timekeeper...I keep time”), the egregious mis- and overuse of the word time ALL OF THE TIME, and some completely random characters for god knows what reason. Alex Pettyfer as the only British gangster in an Ohio ghetto in a ridiculous and unnecessary subplot - why not? Johnny Galecki, hopelessly miscast as an unbelievable 25-year-old alcoholic - hey, this cast can't look uniformly hot! 

But even more than these sins, this movie hurt me most, deep in my soul, because there was absolutely no internal logic or consistency. Niccol (the Australian writer and director) blow his wad trying to set up and exposit this complex world of rules using time as currency, and then flies in the face of it all in just about every scene and plot twist. Firstly, the monetary system itself. Four minutes for a cup of coffee! Loans of a month at 30% interest! People living literally day to day! Dear sir - no economy could ever run like that .And then supposedly, the solution Will and Sylvia come up with to right all wrongs is to steal 1 million years from Sylvia’s dad (which just made me lol and think of “one miiiiiiillion dollars”). And again, Vincent Kartheiser is the only one who’s smart enough to point out that um, what good's that going to do for the larger population? 

It's like no one understands maths in this world!

And yet, more stupid events occur - like Will and Sylvia robbing a timelender with a smash and grab. You mean no other criminal element in the ‘ghetto’ has ever thought to do the same thing? And then Will and Sylvia able to do this extraordinary crime five more times without getting caught by either the non-existent guards at these timelenders or the cops? Not to mention Will keeps hiding out at the same places within blocks of his crimes, over and over again, and yet the police don’t find them for ages. And when they do finally catch up with Will AT HIS OWN DAMN APARTMENT they park right out in the street so Will and Sylvia can see them coming and have enough time to get dressed and escape out the back – which no cops had covered. Because there's only three cops in this universe. 

Also, while the rich people all have bodyguards, they must really suck because Will manages to hide himself in a pack of them without detection. And when he reveals himself, the other 9 armed guards give up without a fight, and none of them raise any alarms when their wealthy employer is kidnapped and taken hostage. Uh. 

And don’t even get me started on the ARM WRESTLING. That's right, in order to expound on Will’s sob/back story, JT and Pettyfer have the world's most boring and ridiculous confrontation where they arm wrestle TO DEATH. Then there’s the other stupid death scene, with Cillian Murphy killed by the most stupid deus ex machina ever (and yes, once again, it involved impossible time shenanigans). So Will, earlier in the movie, manages to make his 2 hours from capture last from night to day and across several "timezones", overtaking even Sylvia’s clock, but somehow Cillian dies because his character forgets to top up his per diem at just the right moment after surviving 50 years of policing. Riiiiiiiiiight.

I could go on but let me summarise: this movie's not just bad, it's lazy and careless and a waste of some real talents. I mean, Oscar nominated cinematographers! Oscar winning costume designers! The writer of Gattaca and The Truman Show! A really attractive cast, with some fantastic talent (plus JT). And yet, the sum of its products is this fiasco that is so terrible that ripping it to shreds kept Al and I amused for hours afterwards.

Oscar time!

Time and my body are conspiring against me. I wanted to do a full prediction post with commentary but I'm so tired right now that this will have to do.

Best Picture
• Black Swan
• The Fighter
• Inception
• The Kids Are All Right
• The King’s Speech
• 127 Hours
• The Social Network
• Toy Story 3
• True Grit
• Winter’s Bone

I managed to see 7 of these this year! This is my best effort ever in collecting Oscar movies before the big day. \o/

I would put Inception and The King’s Speech at the bottom of my list. I just found TKS handsome and pleasant, but I came out of that movie and I had nothing to say about it, nothing to mull over. Whereas Inception *did* give me something to think about afterwards, but all my thinking came to the conclusion that it had been an intricately constructed house of cards, and once you find one thing to tug from the bottom, the whole thing collapses in a heap. That said, it’s an ambitious mess that was interesting enough while I was watching it in the cinemas.

Despite the fact I couldn’t hear 5/8ths of what Jeff Bridges said, I enjoyed True Grit. It’s beautifully shot (Roger Deakins FTW!), with dialogue that just crackles, and it’s funny and sobering in turns.

The Kids Are All Right is low key and really good, perfectly encapsulating for me that Larkin poem: They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you. It seems so effortlessly made but what materials it’s made of – great performances (all three of the main actresses – Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mia Wasikowska - are great and Mark Ruffalo works that charm of his to great advantage to the role), and the script has a great ear for the at times loving, at times tense, human rhythms of people who’ve known and loved and worn each other down for many many years.

Even now I don’t really know how I feel and what I think about Black Swan. I was engrossed watching it but I don’t think I could really say I enjoyed it and ever want to see it again. But I admire it for the crazy balls-to-the-wall OTTness of it all, the way it commits to this gorgeous gothic sensibility in everything – character, story, look and performances – and it really works.

I just loved Toy Story 3 - it’s a great balance of funny, nostalgic, eye-poppingly beautiful, sweet and reflective. And when I walked out of the cinema, feeling exhilarated, the first movie I could compare it to was Inglourious Basterds. Both take on themes of death and morality (admittedly with vastly different approaches for different comedic effect) and both are steeped in filmic history, clearly made by film lovers for film lovers. This is clear from the lovingly crafted visual and textual references (particularly to B-movie Westerns) in both movies, and the sense of great filmmaking in the care taken with the action set pieces, structure, a really clear sense of story, beautiful mise-en-scene, witty scripts and memorable characters (particularly complex, menacing and yet almost likeable villains).

But in the end, even though I know TKS probably has this in the bag, I'm still going to say The Social Network.

Prediction: The Social Network

Actor in a Leading Role
• Javier Bardem in “Biutiful”
• Jeff Bridges in “True Grit”
• Jesse Eisenberg in “The Social Network”
• Colin Firth in “The King’s Speech”
• James Franco in “127 Hours”

Jeff Bridges is good in True Grit, but this nomination owes as much to good will from last year’s win as his performance. Javier Barden can count the nomination as the honour. Similarly, Jesse Eisenberg and James Franco are nominated to recognise their well-lauded performances but as two young first nominees in this field, they have little chance.

The award is really Colin Firth’s to lose, with the power of The King’s Speech juggernaut behind him. Despite my ambivalence about The King’s Speech as a film, he did give a good performance as the stuttering would-be king, revealing the man – loving husband and father, struggling with not just his own fears but the fears of a nation - under a stiff upper lip borne out of a cold upbringing and the burden of duty. And also, he deserved it for last year’s wonderful performance in A Single Man

Prediction: Colin Firth

Actor in a Supporting Role
• Christian Bale in “The Fighter”
• John Hawkes in “Winter’s Bone”
• Jeremy Renner in “The Town”
• Mark Ruffalo in “The Kids Are All Right”
• Geoffrey Rush in “The King’s Speech”

It’s been called as a two-horse race between Geoffrey Rush and Christian Bale; Rush has The King Speech’s possible sweep behind him, while Bale has won the bulk of the awards in this category over the season. I feel like I should turn in my Aussie card for saying this, but Geoffrey Rush is considered such a consistently good actor that it seems hard to see his performance in TKS as something to single out. (See his complaints about this status as a bona fide Aussie acting superstar here.) Where as Bale, despite bad press over the last year in his personal life and *that* tirade, has garnered a great deal of praise for another showy and difficult role.

Prediction: Christian Bale

Actress in a Leading Role
• Annette Bening in “The Kids Are All Right”
• Nicole Kidman in “Rabbit Hole”
• Jennifer Lawrence in “Winter’s Bone”
• Natalie Portman in “Black Swan”
• Michelle Williams in “Blue Valentine”

First things first: Hailee Steinfield belongs in this category *grumble*

Anyway. I actually enjoyed Julianne Moore and Mia Wasikowska’s performances in The Kids Are All Right more than Annette Bening’s (and I like the Bening normally). I haven’t seen any of the others apart from Natalie Portman in Black Swan but she was captivating – in nearly every single frame of the movie, sometimes duplicated, always creepy and terrified and terrifying and committed. She and Bening have split nearly all the awards between them so it’s really down to the two of them and I think Portman might just have it.

Prediction: Natalie Portman

Actress in a Supporting Role
• Amy Adams in “The Fighter”
• Helena Bonham Carter in “The King’s Speech”
• Melissa Leo in “The Fighter”
• Hailee Steinfeld in “True Grit”
• Jacki Weaver in “Animal Kingdom”

This sounds like a really strong field – apart from Helena Bonham Carter. It pains me to say this because I love HBC, but her role in TKS amounted to little but looking demure and supportive and lovely in period costume. And she’s better than that, and done more, and deserved this honour more for many other roles (though if you have to pick one, please watch The Wings of the Dove and tell me if it and she doesn’t break your heart by the end because it will mean you are made of STONE). So I’m glad she’s being recognized, and I hope this means she gets roles apart from Burton movies once in a while, but I don’t want her to win.

Sentimentally, I want Jacki Weaver to win – for the Aussie connection, for the fact that she has been great in Australian tv and film for so long and it’s lovely to see her get wider recognition. But I know that it would be quite hard with three other strong performances by better-known actresses or in more widely seen movies.

While Hailee Steinfeld is great in True Grit, let me call back to the category fraud – she’s in her movie more than Jeff Bridges, for goodness sake, and he’s in the Best Actor category. Bah. Also she’s only 14 and I still feel it’s a bit of a career hazard to win an Oscar so super young. So it’s down to the two actresses from the Fighter. I’m calling it for Melissa Leo because she’s had the stronger season coming in, she came close two years ago (for Best Actress) with Frozen River, and I’d be willing to bet that Amy Adams will have several more chances to win an Oscar in her years ahead.

Prediction: Melissa Leo

Directing
• “Black Swan” Darren Aronofsky
• “The Fighter” David O. Russell
• “The King’s Speech” Tom Hooper
• “The Social Network” David Fincher
• “True Grit” Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

This is TOUGH.

I'd sooner give it to anyone but Hooper in the category, for the films they’ve been nominated and body of work.

Prediction: David Fincher

Music (Original Song)
• “Coming Home” from “Country Strong” Music and Lyric by Tom Douglas, Troy Verges and Hillary Lindsey
• “I See the Light” from “Tangled” Music by Alan Menken Lyric by Glenn Slater
• “If I Rise” from “127 Hours” Music by A.R. Rahman Lyric by Dido and Rollo Armstrong
• “We Belong Together” from “Toy Story 3″ Music and Lyric by Randy Newman

Wow, I did not expect some of these nominees. And I expected at least one song from Burlesque in here.

Prediction: I See the Light, unless people decide that Alan Menken doesn’t *really* need 9 Oscars. I’d be happy to see it go to Randy Newman also.

Short Film (Animated)
• “Day & Night” Teddy Newton
• “The Gruffalo” Jakob Schuh and Max Lang
• “Let’s Pollute” Geefwee Boedoe
• “The Lost Thing” Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann
• “Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary)” Bastien Dubois

Aussie pride (and the fact I love his books) says Yay Shaun Tan! But I've seen clips of all the nominees and 'Madagascar, carnet de voyage' is really beautiful.

Prediction: Madagascar, carnet de voyage

Writing (Adapted Screenplay):
• “127 Hours” Screenplay by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy
• “The Social Network” Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin
• “Toy Story 3” Screenplay by Michael Arndt; Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich
• “True Grit” Written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
• “Winter’s Bone” Adapted for the screen by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini

This one's a no brainer.

prediction: The Social Network (Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin)

Writing (Original Screenplay):
• “Another Year” Written by Mike Leigh
• “The Fighter” Screenplay by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson;
Story by Keith Dorrington & Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson
• “Inception” Written by Christopher Nolan
• “The Kids Are All Right” Written by Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg
• “The King’s Speech” Screenplay by David Seidler

Hard category to pick – all films with a lot of critical praise. It’s almost certainly King’s Speech, because I’ve read that Seidler has been extremely personable in the Oscar campaign and has a great and personal story behind how this movie finally made it to screen.

Wish: Another Year, which was so beautifully quiet or The Kids Are All Right; both have a similar ability to convey a natural rhythm in dialogue and story to draw out complex human relationships and bring out characters.

Prediction: The King’s Speech

And some quick miscellaneous predictions to round it off:

Animated Feature Film: Toy Story 3
Music (Original Score): The Social Network (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross)
Best Foreign Film: In a Better World
Best Achievement in Cinematography: True Grit (Roger Deakin)
Best Achievement in Film Editing: Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, The Social Network (more Aussies, yay!)

past nomination posts:
82nd Oscars predictions
80th Oscars Oscars predictions (on The Stirrer)

Howl / Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

Howl (2010, d. Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman)



Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

I saw these two films on back-to-back nights, and it worked out to be a seredipitously well-matched pair. Both are films about art: what is art, and who gets to decide whether it is so? Who is the arbiter of this mysterious quality that makes art admirable: is it the artist, the cultured audience, or the man on the street?

Both purport to be based on real stories, ostensibly centring around a 'real life personage', an artist (arguably). In Howl, which is composed of overlapping layers of transcripts - a poetry reading of Howl, an interview with the poet, court proceedings - we are given a glimpse of Allen Ginsberg in the period just after the 1955 publishing of his seminal work. In Exit Through the Gift Shop, we are introduced to Thierry Guetta, a French-American man who becomes a LA art personality through his connections with well-known street artists, including Banksy.

The men draw us in, but the stories are really about their works and the arguments over the legitimacy of their work as art. Howl is challenged as an 'obscene' work in the US courts in 1957, though Ginsberg himself is not on trial but his publisher instead. The case hinges on the use of obscene words; the prosecution takes to asking if certain words - cock, balls, blown and so on - are 'necessary' to the poem, if it reduces the artistic merit by being so crude. The issue debated in the court case is really whether art only qualifies as worthwhile if it is morally uplifting. Howl is also derided as illegitimate for its free form jazz rhythms, for not having conventional form and thus, lacking function.

Howl the film approaches this all with a lovely sincerity. It believes in Howl the poem being art, as an true expression of emotion, both of Ginsberg's personal feelings, and that of the human condition. The film is part factual logic - the recreation of the court case with its facts and expert opinions and the final judgement - and part poetic expressiveness, through the double rereadings of the poem; Ginsberg (as ably portrayed by James Franco) performing Howl for the first time in a cramped room full of friends and fans, and a second recitation married with Eric Drooker's illustrations brought to life in simple but fluid animation. It is not a biopic about Ginsberg, choosing only to focus on a sliver of time, with short flashbacks to give historical background to relevant periods of Ginsberg's life. We are introduced to some central characters to Ginsberg's personal life and artistic growth: his institutionalised mother, good friends and fellow Beat poets Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, his partner Peter Orlovsky and the beleagered publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but we never hear them speak. The words that matter are Ginsberg's, and the words that matter most are the words of Howl the poem. I think it's a particularly fine film because of this narrow focus; it's very satsifying in its passion about the poem and in its defence of it as literature.

Meanwhile, Exit Through the Gift Shop begins just before the new millenium, as Guetta begins documenting the street art movement after filming his cousin in France, the mosaic artist 'Invader', for kicks. After he finally makes contact with the elusive and now infamous Banksy, who admits Guetta into the inner workings of his art process, Guetta is first challenged by Banksy to turn his years of footage into a street art documentary - which we are led to believe is an abject failure due to Guetta's lack of talent - and then to hold his own art show. Guetta is then painted as an art monster of sorts, with Banksy his remorseful Frankenstein, as Guetta becomes a 'star' with his derivative pop/street art mashups and proclivity for hype, an unfortunate triumph of style over substance.

But it's all very tongue-in-cheek, to the point of insincerity. Exit Through the Gift Shop, as a piece of art itself, adheres strictly to the documentary film form, but its tone is arch, the intention satire. Banksy, or a shadowy figure purporting to be Banksy, bemoans the instant, seemingly undeserved success of Guetta - or rather his alter ego Mr Brainwash - as one who hasn't paid his dues to the gruelling process of artistry, who has piggybacked on the art and talent and hard work of others, who's in it for the money and the fame. It seems that Banksy is positioning himself - and other street artists - in opposition, as the artists' establishment; and this, then, is the true driving force behind the film. Exit ... is not about Guetta, Exit... is about Banksy and his attempt to outsmart his critics.

All art is commercial to some extent, and in a remix culture, is there any true originality in art? 'Invader' takes the cultural familiarity of the Space Invader monsters and positions them in unexpected, mundane contexts; Shepard Fairey takes Andre the Giant's mug and plasters it across the world in endless repetition. How are these men any more artists than Guetta? How is Banksy, with his talent for provocative statements to attract media attention and commodification, any less a 'sell-out' than Mr Brainwash? The film is both irritatingly smug on this point as it is endlessly fascinating and interested in teasing out these ideas of artistic (and the artist's) superiority; slyly contesting the right of the establishment to be the arbiter of what is art, all while challenging our ability (as supposed man on the street) to understand and judge this issue.

As the film progresses, as we're led to believe that Guetta is more than a deluded by harmless man with a camera but rather a monster of Banksy's unintentional making. But I think the true monster is this movie, and Banksy is unabashedly proud of his deliberate creation because he gets to show how clever he is. He says, in the film, "art is a bit of a joke". His 'former spokesperson' muses on Guetta's meteoric rise on the same theme, saying, "The joke's on...I don't know who the joke's on. Maybe there is no joke." That's disingenuous. There is a joke, and it's not the art or whether we're laughing at Guetta or the rueful Banksy during the film. The movie is a critical success, and making good money for an indie film; and so, the joke is really on us, the audience, as Banksy laughs it up all the way to cultural and artist supreriority AND to the bank.

Exit Through the Gift Shop may be an entertaining and thought-provoking film, but for all that it's hard to like. I much preferred Howl, and its warm way of championing contentious art. Howl is a flawed but lovingly crafted small gem; Exit Through the Gift Shop is a flashy diamond that can't shake the fact it's a lump of coal at heart.

Oscars predictions 2010

I was hoping to do a week of Oscar posts, reviewing nominated movies I'd seen, but time has totally gotten away from me. And since RL has intervened, I'm not even going to be able to watch the Oscar telecast. *sigh*

So briefly, my predictions/hopes:

Best Picture

* “Avatar”
* “The Blind Side”
* “District 9”
* “An Education”
* “The Hurt Locker”
* “Inglourious Basterds”
* “Precious: Based on the Novel‘Push' by Sapphire”
* “A Serious Man”
* “Up”
* “Up in the Air”

A return to 10 nominees in this race after a break of 60+ years. I've seen only half of these (An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Up and Up in the Air) and if it were all about my tastes Inglourious Basterds would win almost everything because it just blew me away. I will say that of the five I saw, I only disliked Up in the Air and felt it didn't deserve all the acclaim it received early in the season, though both the actresses in it were great, and a cut above the rest of the material (including the screenplay, the direction, and the lead performance from George Clooney). However, the buzz has all been about the seemingly two horse race between Cameron's Avatar and Bigelow's The Hurt Locker.

wish: Inglourious Basterds
prediction: The Hurt Locker

Actor in a Leading Role

* Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart”
* George Clooney in “Up in the Air”
* Colin Firth in “A Single Man”
* Morgan Freeman in “Invictus”
* Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker”

Like I said, Clooney was overrated in Up in the Air; he gave a much better performance, I felt, in Fantastic Mr Fox. I thought Colin Firth was so good as a restrained, repressed, grieving professor in A Single Man. Jeremy Renner was also great as the adrenaline seeking US Army soldier in the Hurt Locker, making a loose cannon of a character likeable and somewhat understandable in the circumstances. Morgan Freeman is lucky to be nominated (Invictus was lucky to be remembered at nomination time, really), but the momentum of the race has been with Jeff Bridges most of the way through awards season. It's his award to lose.

wish: Colin Firth, A Single Man
prediction: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Actor in a Supporting Role

* Matt Damon in “Invictus”
* Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger”
* Christopher Plummer in “The Last Station”
* Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones”
* Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds”

If Christoph Waltz doesn't win this it will be a truly immense upset. And I want him to win all the way - who didn't come out of IB both appalled and strangely attracted to him?

wish/prediction: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Actress in a Leading Role

* Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side”
* Helen Mirren in “The Last Station”
* Carey Mulligan in “An Education”
* Gabourey Sidibe in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
* Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”

I only saw one of these performances (Carey Mulligan in An Education) and while I thought Mulligan was great in the role, I don't know if it's strong enough to take down three other very strong, much more highly rated performances in this category (Helen Mirren was a surprise nomination, and the movie has little buzz).

wish: Meryl Streep
prediction: Streep or Sandra Bullock (it's still too hard to call!)

Actress in a Supporting Role

* Penélope Cruz in “Nine”
* Vera Farmiga in “Up in the Air”
* Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Crazy Heart”
* Anna Kendrick in “Up in the Air”
* Mo’Nique in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”

Both Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick were very good in Up in the Air, bringing depth to thinly characterised female characters, making them complex emotionally in just small gestures and looks. Maggie Gyllenhaal had not made a showing the awards season at all before this Oscar nomination, and has little chance. Penelope Cruz was also, some say surprisingly, nominated over co-star Marion Cotillard, the other actress to get critical acclaim from a movie that mostly bombed; and she's playing a variation on a character that has already netted her past Academy success, so she's not likely to win here. But the one with the most acclaim, and the one who has swept most of the awards in this category over the awards season, has been Mo'Nique.

wish: Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
prediction: Mo'Nique, Precious

Animated Feature Film

* “Coraline” Henry Selick
* “Fantastic Mr. Fox” Wes Anderson
* “The Princess and the Frog” John Musker and Ron Clements
* “The Secret of Kells” Tomm Moore
* “Up” Pete Docter

Coraline and Fantastic Mr Fox are sharper, more daring animated films, with a very keen sense of its visual style. But I found Up so darling - like all the Pixar movies, it balances story, whimsy, humour and beauty in a way that can be appreciated at all ages. I loved the detail, in its look as well as in its ability to capture some of the tougher emotions in life.

wish: I'd be happy if either of the 3 I mentioned won
prediction: Up

Directing

* “Avatar” James Cameron
* “The Hurt Locker” Kathryn Bigelow
* “Inglourious Basterds” Quentin Tarantino
* “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Lee Daniels
* “Up in the Air” Jason Reitman

TARANTINO. Because IB is a film lover's film, directed with such skill that each episode stretches, building tension, until it's wonderfully AND terrifyingly resolved, while leading onto the next part in story and in action and in look. But like Best Picture, this has been seen mostly as a race between Cameron and Bigelow, and on that score, I'd say Bigelow all the way. The Hurt Locker is a well paced movie, and it looks and feels as realistic as the action it depicts, almost effortlessly, unintrusively setting the viewer inside this hitherto shadowy world of the soldiers at war in a hostile place.

wish: Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
prediction: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Foreign Language Film

* “Ajami” Israel
* “El Secreto de Sus Ojos” Argentina
* “The Milk of Sorrow” Peru
* “Un Prophète” France
* “The White Ribbon” Germany

I really want Un Prophete to win this, because it was such a good movie - exciting and interesting with a strange, dirty beauty. But I've heard that because of its gritty subject - it's about a guy trapped within racial conflicts, in prison, trying to escape the confines of this life - there's a chance the judges will go for a more conservative choice. Last year, the race seemed to be between two highly acclaimed features that had swept up all the awards before it; in the end the Oscar went to a lesser known Japanese film with a sentimental bent. So I've heard that this year, rather than the race between Un Prophete and The White Ribbon as it would seem from awards season, Argentina's 'El Secreto de Sus Ojos' might be the one to watch instead.

wish: Un Prophete, France
prediction: El Secreto de Sus Ojos, Argentina

Music (Original Score)

* “Avatar” James Horner
* “Fantastic Mr. Fox” Alexandre Desplat
* “The Hurt Locker” Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders
* “Sherlock Holmes” Hans Zimmer
* “Up” Michael Giacchino

prediction: Up, Michael Giacchino

Music (Original Song)

* “Almost There” from “The Princess and the Frog” Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
* “Down in New Orleans” from “The Princess and the Frog” Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
* “Loin de Paname” from “Paris 36” Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyric by Frank Thomas
* “Take It All” from “Nine” Music and Lyric by Maury Yeston
* “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart” Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Do you know, they're not having live performances of the Best Song this year! So it's unlikely we'll see Jeff Bridges performing The Weary Kind, or Marion Cotillard singing Take It All, not even in truncated, medley form. Bah.

prediction: The Weary Kind, Crazy Heart

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

* “District 9” Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
* “An Education” Screenplay by Nick Hornby
* “In the Loop” Screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
* “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher
* “Up in the Air” Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner

I came out of Up in the Air disappointed by its glib smooth surface, masquerading as some kind of emotional touchstone for a disenfranchised middle America, and the more I think about it, the more I think the problems lie in the screenplay. The original screenplay by Sheldon Turner, which is closer to the original book, is meant to be even worse. I just felt it was a clumsy attempt to try to give a soulless man a soul through trite and predictable storylines and words about family and relationships. I really really hope it doesn't win.

You can read the original Lynn Barber memoir that An Education is adapted from. I found Hornby's adapation to be smart, faithful to the general sentiment of the memoir, if sugarcoating some of the events a little.

But I believe the frontrunners to be the movies I haven't seen yet! So I am making this prediction without great confidence.

wish: An Education, Nick Hornby
prediction: District 9, Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell

Writing (Original Screenplay)

* “The Hurt Locker” Written by Mark Boal
* “Inglourious Basterds” Written by Quentin Tarantino
* “The Messenger” Written by Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman
* “A Serious Man” Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
* “Up” Screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy

I think the buzz (and the general momentum) behind The Hurt Locker could take it to a win in this category too, and it is an interesting look at the Iraqi conflict from a very US-centric but incredibly intimate view (Boal was a journalist embedded with a explosives disposal unit, which is the focus of the film). But I think there's support behind Tarantino in this category too, and it may be the one award it picks up as a consolation.

wish: Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino
prediction: Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino

I'm not going to bother with all the technical ones, but I hope Avatar doesn't dominate just because it's high tech, blah blah blah. And I really really want Bright Star to win the award for Costume Design, because it was just such a beautiful movie with some beautiful (and relevant to the story!) costuming, but it is up against the almight Sandy Powell for The Young Victoria, sigh.


related reading:

The Red Carpet Campaign: Inside the singular hysteria of the Academy Awards race

Excellent, absorbing article on the Oscars race and the strange ups and downs, and driving narratives, of the awards season. Reprinted this weekend in the Good Weekend magazine of the Sydney Morning Herald (but you can read it here for free!)

Five Acclaimed Directors Speak Directly

Fascinating LA Times round table with the nominated directors Bigelow, Cameron, Daniels, Reitman and Tarantino about their films, processes and experiences.

Keats Speaks

On Keats, language, the spoken word, and Bright Star.


past nomination posts:
Oscars predictions 2008 (on The Stirrer)

Movies of the Decade: 2009

Finally: my favourite movies for this year. I know I missed 2008, but that was because the movies I saw were rather middling; though Persepolis was beautiful if a little unevenly paced, and I really enjoyed the bubblegum-coloured Speed Racer, for all its flaws and the critical drubbing it received.

Just quickly, some Honourable Mentions for 2009: Where the Wild Things Are, Bright Star, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (see review), I Love You, Man

These were good movies, enjoyable movies; and the first two are probably the most beautiful movies I saw this year in terms of set direction and artistry. I think what kept them from being in my top 5 was that I didn't *feel* as strongly about these, or I didn't have as much to mull over when I left the theatre.

So what made the top five?

5. Whip It! (d. Drew Barrymore)

Sure it's flawed: mostly I noticed how staidly it was filmed, even the exciting roller derby scenes. But I could care less when something is this warm and fun to watch; I just wanted to give this movie a big hug at the end. I loved that it put women front and centre and made them all kinds of people but you could like them all, even the supposed 'bad' ones. It's got this infectious, happy energy to it, and it deserved a lot more love than it got.


4. An Education (d. Lone Scherfig)

Such bittersweet but hopeful movie. I didn't so much identify with Jenny than I remembered wanting to be a girl like her; someone school-smart and well-read, who wants to be cultured and sophisticated, who starts to think that academia may not the only way in life. But the movie, based on Lynn Barber's memoir, also shows how Jenny is maybe not as smart as she thinks she is, and that sophistication and culture doesn't always lead to that perfect life she dreams of. It's a gorgeous movie, from the romantic sojourn in Paris to all the 60s costuming, and filled with some fantastic performances: Carey Mulligan, of course, as Jenny who starts off the movie so young and idealistic and finishes with a wise, sadder look in her eyes; but also Rosamund Pike as a beautiful but rather dim friend of Jenny's older boyfriend who lends the film a comic charm.


3. Star Trek (d. J.J. Abrams)

This was just rollicking fun. I heard so many times from friends this year that they loved it, when though they don't love Star Trek/science fiction; and also from people who were ardent ST/SF fans who also loved it to death. I didn't have so strong an opinion, except for wanting to yell "Science doesn't work like that!!" (though according to this, sometimes it can. Bits of it anyway. Bits that are not red matter). But the more I thought about the movie afterwards, the more I realised sometimes it's just enough to enjoy something without overthinking it to death, particularly if it's something upon which popular opinion and actual quality coincide happily for once.


2. The Class (d. Laurent Cantet)

Absorbing, naturalistic, almost documentary-like feature about a year in the class of a junior high school in the 20th in Paris. Based on the real life events documented in Francois Begaudeau's book on his own teaching experiences, the author plays Mr Marin, who teaches French to a class of 14/15 year olds, and tries to push them to be more engaged with learning and thinking in general, by challenging, and on occasions, mocking them, about their behaviours, attitudes and beliefs. In doing so, I couldn't help but be challenged the same way. I remember Amanda, Belinda and I having a rather heated discussion about race afterwards, feeling our ways toward understanding the society around us through the lens of this high school class.

But unlike many Hollywood movies about inspiring teachers, it's not some cut and dried heartwarming tale that ends in the salvation of a previously recalcitrant class. True to life, there are some children who blossom under this intense environment, and others who fall by the education wayside, the consequence of not one but many conflicting factors of class and race and societal pressures and personality.


1. Inglourious Basterds (d. Quentin Tarantino)

From the moment the last line was spoken I knew I agreed: this is Tarantino's masterpiece.

There's a lot of debate about IB out there on the internets, and even personally I had three email threads about it going on post-movie, in my eagerness to rehash and argue why I responded so positively to it. For starters, it's very funny, super thought provoking, and ridiculously film geeky in the very best of ways. There's just so much to mull about, from a moral angle, from a film history angle, from a history angle...it's amazing.

Each of the five parts is perfectly constructed, with the tension ratcheting slowly and terrifyingly and absorbingly until it's almost unberable, begging for a release, begging for the violence to give us relief, and then sicken ourselves all over again. I talked with some people who felt that IB goes too far in its ending, that it satisfies, and could be read as encouraging, an unacceptable bloodlust. I think IB is the ultimate revenge fantasy for a world that takes the holocaust to be the biggest moral infraction of the last century, but I also think that in the way Taratino does it, the film then questions us in return: now that we have an idea what that revenge would look like, do we still want it or feel the same way about it?

It still catches me in moments, after a few months; images still very clear in my head (like Shoshanna putting on her warpaint, reflected in the glass and in the poster and all around so beautifully) and thoughts still buzzing about its knotty ethical implications.

**

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this rambling little series on the movies that have made the most impact on me these last ten years! Here's to more fascinating, thought-provoking, beautiful, memorable films in the coming year...

Movies of the Decade: 2007
Movies of the Decade: 2006
Movies of the Decade: 2004-2005
Movies of the Decade: 2003
Movies of the Decade: 2002
Movies of the Decade: 2000-2001

Movies of the Decade: 2007

Last post before my top movies of this year! :)

Hot Fuzz (2007; d. Edgar Wright)

I was going to try and fit in a repeat viewing of this before writing it up, but alas it was not to be. This movie is hilarious; I saw it twice within the space of a week around Christmas two years ago, and it was as ridiculous and fresh and fantastic the second time around. I love that it's smart about the genres its parodies, but in a loving way.


Juno (2007; d. Jason Reitman)

In the years since it came out, this has been much maligned. Even when we went to see it, as the lights came back on I turned to the friends who saw it with me and said I liked it, only to have the other two make faces. But I've seen it again since then, and I still find it really lovely and charming. If you look past the rather obvious affectations ('honest to blog' is still a really irritating, nonsensical quip), it navigates an ethically tricky story with heart, not judging Juno for becoming pregnant, not judging her nor explaining in depth the choices she makes, just allowing her to be a confused but smart sixteen year old with some big decisions to make. Ellen Page is so good as Juno, letting her be prickly on the outside while always giving us glimpses of the softer girl inside. The rest of the supporting cast are great, particularly J.K. Simmons as Juno's dad, and Jennifer Garner as the uptight but desperately maternal Vanessa.


No Country for Old Men (2007; Joel and Ethan Coen)

Bleak and affecting, an old story told very well, and filmed beautifully. Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) takes $2million out of a drug deal gone wrong, and a scarily focussed killer (Javier Bardem) tracks him down for a form of justice. There are some immensely suspenseful moments in this, the pacing just-so for them maximum heart-in-mouth moments, and the killings, even as they decrease in violence, increase in meaning and heartache. Excellent supporting cast - Tommy Lee Jones plays his straightforward sheriff with just the right amount of bewilderment and wisdom as he contemplates a world more violent than he can patrol, and Kelly Macdonald really surprises as Moss' southern wife.


The Simpsons movie (2007; d. David Silverman)

I must admit that my first feeling upon leaving the theatre was relief; relief that the movie hadn't sucked. So my expectations were not high, going in. That said, this is really funny. Sure, the story doesn't always hold together, but then, do we really expect it too? And it manages to feel more than several episodes strung together. The jokes are a great mix of visual and verbal, with the kind of wittiness and sense of fun that the earlier series had.


Zodiac (2007; d. David Fincher)

A very tense movie that somehow sustains the subtle horror of the unsolved serial killer mystery throughout the whole movie, allowing the story to conveying the weary reality of chasing the unknown criminal to no, typical, satisfyingly pat end. Good performances all round, though Robert Downey Jnr. is the best thing in this movie (as he often is).

Movies of the Decade: 2006
Movies of the Decade: 2004-2005
Movies of the Decade: 2003
Movies of the Decade: 2002
Movies of the Decade: 2000-2001

Movies of the Decade: 2006

Happy Boxing Day aka yearly avoid-the-heat, watch-a-blockbuster movie day. :)

I went to see Sherlock Holmes, which I enjoyed in a brain-dead, in love with RDJ and Jude Law and Rachel McAdams kind of way.

And so we continue into movies I have also enjoyed, from 2006:

Little Miss Sunshine (2006; d. Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)

I know it's manipulative, but aren't all movies? It's a funny, bittersweet and very human tale, with some great characters, and it mostly manages to steer clear of mawkishness. Steve Carell is particularly good as the depressed, second most pre-eminent scholar of Proust. I watched the beauty pageant scene again recently, for a class on the sexualisation of pre-teens, and was struck again by how funny and uncomfortable little Olive's routine is, and how well that whole scene is constructed to make the audience laugh and squirm.


Look Both Ways (2006; d. Sarah Watts)

A lovely Australian movie about the difficult reconciliation of coping with death and loss while being alive. Over a summer weekend, a motley group of loosely related people - particularly Meryl, whose father has just died; and Nick, who's just learned he has cancer - deal with the emotions of losing lovers and parents, their own fear of death and loss, finding new people to care for, and so on. It sounds like a heavy mix, but it's actually quite a hopeful film, grounded in reality and well-rounded characters, that asks for some thought in processing the various relationships that are formed, held and broken. Also, the mood is broken up with some really beautiful animation work by the director, who illustrates Meryl's wild imaginative scenarios of death and shows Nick's own mirroring thoughts in photo collages.


Pan’s Labyrinth (2006; d. Guillermo del Toro)

I don't normally cry at the movies, but I was sobbing by the end of this movie. It's so wonderfully made and terrifyingly beautiful; the storytelling is excellent, and from the tears, you can guess that it had a great emotional impact on me. I came home and I could not stop talking about it with my family. But it's certainly not a movie for the fainthearted.


Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2006; d. Michael Winterbottom)

I declared this movie the best of the year immediately after I watched it, and while the other three in this post are strong contenders I don't know if any of them match this in sheer ludicrous, free-wheeling enjoyment. It's meant to be a film adaptation of a rambling 18th century English novel that has been dubbed "unfilmable" but it is also a film about the film of an adaptation of a rambling 18th century novel and it is actually a film about the film of a... Whatever it actually ends up being, it is very very funny and clever and knows just how to send up its pretentious roots. At one point, Steve Coogan, playing an actor named Steve Coogan, pompously announces, though he hasn't read the novel the film is based on, "This is a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post about."

And he's kind of right. You don't have to have read the novel either, and that's one of the running jokes of the film, that no one on set has actually read the 600+ pages of novel. While the set up is completely confusing, it makes complete sense on camera, and unfolds wonderfully on-screen as actors, directors, and actors playing directors, and actors playing themselves break the fourth wall to talk to the camera, while moving between scenes and sets and "real life", all with a funny, hyper-realistic script that flows naturally between all the different modes. This is a film for people who love film; there's plenty of inside jokes, I'm told there are even inside jokes inside inside jokes for those who are really obsessive about movies.

The cast is amazing. A veritable list of great British actors cross the screen doing good work no matter how big or small their part. In particular, Steve Coogan is great - he's such an vain, insecure man as 'the actor', but he also shows a softer side playing a new father, and it makes him endearingly human and thus likeable - plus he also has to play Tristram the narrator and Walter Shandy his father. But apart from the clever ideas, the great acting and the tamed chaos, there's also a lovely sense of the visual joke. See the picture I've posted? That's one of my favourite scenes of the movie.

As Steve Coogan is lowered head first, complete with his 18th century costume, into a big pink uterus model, he has an argument with the production assistant about how he is positioned.

"[Mark, the director] wants it to be as realistic as possible."

"He wants realism. Yeah. I'm a grown man, talking to the camera, in a womb."

Original post-movie reaction and review.


Movies of the Decade: 2004-2005
Movies of the Decade: 2003
Movies of the Decade: 2002
Movies of the Decade: 2000-2001

Movies of the Decade 2004-2005

Better late than never! We're at the halfway point. :)

Bad Education (2004; Pedro Almodovar)

This is a dark, complicated, lush, morally complex movie. It pitches you into three or four different time periods and timelines, where characters exist in all these different story arcs, but are not what they seem; somehow, he manages to draw these strands tighter and tighter around each other until they become one narrative...or do they? It's confusing and maddening and so gorgeously coloured and filmed (the presence of Gael Garcia Bernal, playing three characters, doesn't hurt!) that no matter the end the journey is totally engrossing and worth it.


The Incredibles (2004; d. Brad Bird)

I loved this take on the post-superhero experience in a family friendly redux of the Watchmen premise. Instead of darkness, Bird manages to milk a great deal of humour from the situation, but balances it with a pathos and an emotional complexity. It also smartly plays with the conventions of comic books and cartoons, in the script, the beautiful and thoughtful design of the film, and the gorgeous animation. It was my last film of 2004 and I couldn’t have capped the year off with a better movie.

Original post-movie reaction and review.


Mean Girls (2004; d. Mark Waters)

I saw this in a packed theatre full of teen girls, the target audience. They laughed and giggled at all the jokes, and there were a lot of the great script from Tina Fey, capturing the zeitgeist while using high school and teen movie clichés to skewer teen behaviour. In doing so it points out the damaged attitudes teen girls have each other and tries, in some small way, to fix things. Unfortunately, in our theatre, about three minutes after one of the characters says something about "don't call each other sluts and whores because it just makes it easier for guys to label you that way", a scuffle happened near the bottom of the theatre and a very clear female voice was heard to yell, "You slut!" But I appreciated the efforts of the film, the way it’s so very funny and quotable, and the very good performances by the cast as a whole (and Lindsay Lohan has never been as appealing and personable as she is in this role).


Mysterious Skin (2005; d. Gregg Araki)

As the last scene faded and the credits rolled, there was a complete silence in the theatre, a hush unlike the end of a multiplex popcorn film; whether it was from shock, or deep thought, or sadness - or even, as I felt, a mixture of all three - it was an eerie feeling. This was a deeply moving film about the loss of innocence. It was a very hard movie to watch at times, even when none of the actual abuse is actually depicted; the hardest part is watching two lost characters stumbling through adulthood, trying to make sense of a world that has already failed them and will again and again. But it’s darkly funny too, walking a fine line between the ridiculous and the pathetically profound, and a strange beauty in the horrific details (I can still see the shower of rainbow colored fruit loops that a young Neil gleefully delights in, that his abuser uses to reel him in). The movie adapts the books really well; for me, the ending of the book is one of the most beautifully written passages I‘ve ever read, and the movie comes close to matching the loveliness in the pathos, the beauty in its sadness. My first reaction, when I walked out of the theatre, was of how amazing this movie was, and how I never wanted to watch it again.

Original post-movie reaction and review.


Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005; d. Shane Black)

This is really funny, highly enjoyable neo-noir take on the buddy movie. Robert Downey Jr is so good as the nervy, fast-talking, no good anti-hero, Michelle Monaghan is so appealing as the ultimate girl-next-door, and there's great chemistry between all three leads. I love the construction of the style, the snappy narrative voice, the way the film hurtles back and forth along the timeline, the gloss of the Hollywood setting against the seedy happenings and people.


Kung Fu Hustle(2005; d. Stephen Chow)

I finally saw this last year, and I'm so glad I got to. It is so much fun; I laughed myself silly. It has a shambolic charm, using a well-worn forumlaic David v. Goliath story to hang its many bizarre, funny and wonderful flights of fancy. The restless referencing to old movies - Hollywood musicals of the 40s, classic kung fu pics of the 70s - is great and geeky. It's major failing is in a romantic subplot that is both boring, underwritten and infuriating (he makes her a one-dimensional, actually mute character!).


Movies of the Decade: 2003
Movies of the Decade: 2002
Movies of the Decade: 2000-2001