All My Friends: Millennium Mambo, Take 3: Mike Hassler

For something like three years, Mike Hassler and I suffered working for the same horrible company, which is where we met and where my first impressions of him were from another co-worker who informed me that Mike really liked the movie Electra. Thankfully, I soon learned that his admiration for the Daredevil spin-off was neither a fluke nor indicative of his taste on a larger scale (thankfully). Shortly afterward, we would spend most of our time on the clock creating a real-time commentary for the Sister Act saga, throwing themed music nights (the soundtrack night/weekend was the highlight of which), making up elaborately perverse fantasy lives for the motley crew of customers we had to encounter every week and occasionally convincing one another to take home DVDs we wouldn't give a second look (sometimes out of curiosity, other times out of malice, often just to fuck with one another). Mike occasionally updates his blog Heteroerotica with film and music write-ups (and, yes, he was the one who chose his Amy Winehouse Halloween costume photo). Thanks, Mike.

On Film: I like to think I hit middle ground -- not too snobby, but people can point fingers. I haven’t had the time to watch or rewatch all that I would like to, but I’m happy enough with my list. I know I’ve forgotten things, and I’m positive I’ve jumbled the order so many times that they’re probably not in any particular order outside of the first few. Congrats to Greengrass for making it twice. [Editors note: Quentin Tarantino only made the list twice due to Mike including a 1999 film in the 25th spot.]

01. Oldboy, 2003, d. Park Chan-wook, South Korea
02. The Piano Teacher [La pianiste], 2001, d. Michael Haneke, Austria/France/Germany/Poland
03. Hedwig and the Angry Inch, 2001, d. John Cameron Mitchell, USA
04. The Squid and the Whale, 2005, d. Noah Baumbach, USA
05. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [Le scaphandre et le papillon], d. Julian Schnabel, France/USA
06. The Shape of Things, 2003, d. Neil LaBute, USA/France/UK
07. Fat Girl [À ma sœur!], 2001, d. Catherine Breillat, France/Italy
08. The Beat My Heart Skipped [De battre mon cœur s'est arrêté], 2005, d. Jacques Audiard, France
09. Inside [À l'intérieur], 2007, d. Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury, France
10. Rachel Getting Married, 2008, d. Jonathan Demme, USA
11. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies [OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d'espions], 2006, d. Michel Hazanavicius, France
12. Once, 2006, d. John Carney, Ireland
13. Bloody Sunday, 2002, d. Paul Greengrass, Ireland/UK
14. A Bittersweet Life, 2005, d. Kim Ji-woon, South Korea
15. Inglourious Basterds, 2009, d. Quentin Tarantino, USA/Germany
16. The Incredibles, 2004, d. Brad Bird, USA
17. Chopper, 2000, d. Andrew Dominik, Australia
18. Murder on a Sunday Morning [Un couple idéal], 2001, d. Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, France/USA
19. Ip Man, 2008, d. Wilson Yip, Hong Kong
20. Love Exposure, 2008, d. Sion Sono, Japan
21. House of Sand and Fog, 2003, d. Vadim Perelman, USA
22. Mulholland Drive, 2001, d. David Lynch, France/USA
23. There Will Be Blood, 2007, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA
24. The Bourne Supremacy, 2004, d. Paul Greengrass, USA/Germany
25. Grindhouse, 2007, d. Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth


On Music: Likewise here, I'm positive I've missed things, but decided to go with what I believe have had the most spins.

01. Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007)
02. Kings of Leon - Youth and Young Manhood (2003)
03. Lupe Fiasco - The Cool (2007)
04. Portishead - Third (2008)
05. Clipse - Lord Willin’ (2002)
06. Muse - Origin of Symmetry (2001)
07. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black (2006)
08. Coldplay - X & Y (2005)
09. PJ Harvey - Uh Huh Her (2004)
10. Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R (2000)
11. Thrice - Vheissu (2005)
12. The Damnwells - Air Stereo (2006)
13. Kanye West - College Dropout (2004)
14. Espers - II (2006)
15. Sigur Rós - Takk... (2005)
16. Louis XIV - The Best Little Secrets Are Kept (2005)
17. Doves - Lost Souls (2000)
18. Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple (2008)
19. The Strokes - Room on Fire (2003)
20. Iron and Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days (2004)
21. Ray LaMontagne - Trouble (2004)
22. The Roots - Rising Down (2008)
23. Interpol - Turn On the Bright Lights (2002)
24. The Darkness - Permission to Land (2003)
25. Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe (2009)

The Most Wonderful Newspaper Article Of Our Age

In my line of work, I have to read a lot of newspaper articles. Seriously, a lot. Many of them are vicious and unpleasant right-wing shrieks of terror as the world slowly disassembles their medieval belief systems. The likes of Peter Hitchens, Amanda Platell, Charles Moore, Melanie Phillips, Richard Littlejohn, Kelvin McKenzie, Leo McKinstry, and many many more yank handfuls of hair from their scalps in an effort to out-selfish each other, demonising everything and everyone that would look vaguely out-of-place in a 1950s Somerset country house. Reading their nauseating bilewords smeared across the page like a mental skidmark has been one of the more upsetting things I have had to do in this life, and tends to make me forget that not all Fleet Street pundits are Mannequins of Lazy-Thinking Evil.


This week, thanks to a link from, of all people, The Internet Commenter Formerly Known As Moriarty, I have found my favourite piece of UK journalism of the decade. Anne Billson, novelist and Buffy fan, has said the unsayable about the British film industry; it is in a terminal state, and the causes have been there all along.

I agree with so much of what she wrote that I could just copy and paste the whole thing here and just finish off this post with multiple exclamation points of joy, especially with her catty single-sentence drubbing of Mike Leigh. I love it so much I'll pretend I don't mind that she didn't give some praise to John Boorman, who made one of the most visually innovative movies of all time (as well as three of the battiest and most lovable), though I suspect she's more concerned with the recent crop of British film directors. Of all the targets she hit, this in particular struck me as a salient point:

I once heard a British film director say in an interview that he wasn't interested in telling a story visually (why were you directing a bloody film then?), and it's clear he's not the only one. Historically, Britain has produced more world-class writers than painters, and words tend to be valued far above visual imagery, if only because reading and listening apparently require more effort than looking, and so are deemed to be worthier pursuits.

Later on Billson mentions the UK directors who emulate shots from American directors for no other reason than that they liked that shot, not because it is the right shot for the scene. It's funny that she mentions Atonement earlier in the piece. Though there were some shots there that were admirable, the big setpiece single take shot of the Dunkirk evacuation is one of the most overrated shots of the past few years. I take my hat off to Joe Wright for managing the logistical nightmare of it, but what was the point of it? On a narrative level it was meaningless, even though a lot of extraneous information was handed to us.


While I understand that Wright was making a visual reference to the Dunkirk passage in McEwan's novel, it still looked stupid, with the characters wandering around the beach in circles in order to show everything off while Dario Marianelli's music did a lot of the heavy lifting. Compare that to single takes like the nightclub scene in Goodfellas, or the opening long takes from The Player, or Snake Eyes, or The Bonfire of the Vanities. Story happens in those scenes. We discover things about the characters. In Atonement, we're just checking out a beach.

This is not to say there are no British directors who have an amazing eye. Sadly, they're often not lauded in the UK and their careers stall. My favourite British style-genius of the past decade, Lynne Ramsay, created two distinctive and brilliant films, almost got to adapt The Lovely Bones, and then disappeared to work on un-named projects. Garth Jennings has spent so long making Son of Rambow made and promoted that he doesn't even seem to have anything else in the pipeline. Michael Winterbottom once made movies I couldn't wait to see, though that has sadly changed over time. Peter Greenaway buggered off to the Netherlands a while back and his movies retreated to the kind of Matthew-Barney-esque obscurity they always should have had, that weird successful period back in the 80s notwithstanding. We're still waiting for the next movie by the wonderful Pawel Pawlikowski. Terence Malick is now more prolific than he is, shockingly enough.


Many other UK directors who understand what to do with a camera (to varying degrees) have hopped over to America as soon as they could; Paul Greengrass, Martin Campbell, Edgar Wright, Roger Michell, Mike Newell, Stephen Frears, Kevin MacDonald, Pete Travis, etc. etc. The other conspicuous style-addict in British cinema, who won an Best Director Oscar this year and whose name I'm sick of reading everywhere, is probably going to spend some time in Hollywood making worthy films for a while. In fact, the only British director who wants to keep filming in the UK is Neil Marshall, bless him. His next film, Centurion, already sounds unmissable.


Still, I'm surprised Billson doesn't mention the Scott Brothers, as they are surely two of the most influential directors of the past twenty years even if they have made movies that many people consider beneath contempt. Their style has been adapted and ripped-off more than almost any other filmmakers around; surely that's something the patriotic UK film buff can be pleased about. That said, I can understand why she doesn't mention other style-heavy filmmakers from the same background (i.e. advertising), such as Alan Parker and Adrian Lyne, who barely have a good film between them.


Sadly for the UK, Ridley and Tony Scott stayed away while their films became more interesting (Tony Scott had a run of fun action movies in the early 90s, and Ridley makes a lot of flat but ambitious films I feel compelled to see, such as Kingdom of Heaven and Black Hawk Down), and Alan Parker came back to run the UK Film Council. Disastrous. It would have been the worst of all worlds if Adrian Lyne had made anything in the last seven years. I will never forgive him for his disastrous adaptation of Lolita, which remains one of the five worst films of the decade. Yes, worse than Fatal Attraction, Nine and a Half Weeks, and Indecent Proposal glommed together into a big lump of misogynistic Silly Putty, and then bounced off our eyeballs for over two hours. The man is a menace to society.

Why am I dragging up all of this bile? Because last week I saw possibly my favourite British movie of the last ten years, and what's most horrible is that I don't think Billson would like it, primarily because it's not that visual. More on that tomorrow...

ETA: And by "tomorrow" I of course meant two days from now...

Coming (or Not Coming) in 2009: Part 2

Part two of my posts looking at the films that should show up at the major film festivals in 2009 focuses on the rest of Europe. I'm the first to admit my francophile bias in reducing over thirty countries to the same space I devoted to France. Again, feel free to check my previous posts about the Berlinale, where I've already mentioned new films from Lukas Moodysson, Sally Potter, Costa-Gavras, Stephen Frears, Hans-Christian Schmid and Theo Angelopoulos.

There are several reasons to be excited for Pedro Almodóvar's latest film Los abrazos rotos [Broken Embraces]. For starters, the two-time Oscar winner has been on a hot streak ever since All About My Mother [Todo sobre mi madre]. Then, you've got Penélope Cruz, whose turn in the director's Volver changed my ambivalence about her into absolute adoration, and she's playing two roles! And if that weren't enough, Rossy de Palma is back in her first film with the director in fourteen years. Rounding out the rest of the cast is Lola Dueñas (who played Cruz's sister in Volver), Chus Lampreave (a constant in Almodóvar's films), Ángela Molina (That Obscure Object of Desire [Cet obscur objet du désir]) and Lluís Homar (Bad Education [La mala educación]). Broken Embraces hits theatres in Spain on 18 March, followed by a very likely showing at Cannes in May (Volver previously won a collective Best Actress prize) and a US release from Sony Pictures Classics beginning in November.

After reportedly being fired from directing The Lovely Bones (now being done by Peter Jackson), it looks like Lynne Ramsay's next project is to be an adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel We Need to Talk About Kevin. There's talk around the Internet that her script is fabulous, and though I've found little information about the project as a whole, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that the film will be ready sometime this year. It's been seven years since Morvern Callar...

Andrew Grant posted earlier this week that one-third of Lars von Trier's latest Antichrist, a horror film which stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, will screen at Berlinale for distributors (likely American ones as the film has distribution already in just about every European country). The earliest release date I have for the film is 19 August in France through Les Films du Losange.

After that disastrous Funny Games remake, Michael Haneke has returned to Austria for Das weiße Band [The White Tape or the Teacher's Tale]. Originally intended as another collaboration with late actor Ulrich Mühe, the film now stars Susanne Lothar who was in the director's The Castle [Das Schloß], Funny Games and The Piano Teacher [La pianiste] and Ulrich Tukur (The Lives of Others [Das Leben der Anderen], Amen.). Les Films du Losange will release the film in France on 21 October; no word yet on a US release.

Werner Herzog will follow up his first Oscar nomination (for Encounters at the End of the World) with Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which according to the director has nothing to do with the Abel Ferrara film. The IMDb reports the film is in post-production, but I have no information further than that. It stars Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Fairuza Balk, Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dourif and Xzibit.

I can't seem to find a lot about Béla Tarr's latest film (reportedly his last) A Torinói ló [The Turin Horse]. I'll post more when I come across it.

It seems to be up in the air whether Paul Verhoeven's The Winter Queen, the project he was doing with Milla Jovovich that was put on hold when she got pregnant, is still going to be made. There's also a lot of talk about Verhoeven directing the sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair (the remake). I hope we found out soon what he's up to.

Paul Greengrass' new film Green Zone re-teams the director with Matt Damon, although there's still talks about another Bourne film in the works. Green Zone will be released by Universal later this year, likely around the holiday season; Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs, Brendan Gleeson and Greg Kinnear also star.

Ken Loach's Looking for Eric will be released on 12 June in the UK from Icon. The film is about footy player Eric Cantona, who plays himself. Look for it to possibly debut at Cannes, as Loach won the Palme d'Or in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

A new thriller by director Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch [Nattevagten], Just Another Love Story [Kærlighed på film]) entitled Fri os dra det onde, which loosely translates to Deliver Us from Evil in English, will be out in Denmark on 29 March. No word on a release outside of its native country yet.

Philip Ridley (The Reflecting Skin, The Passion of Darkly Noon) returns to the screen this year with Heartless, which stars Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), Clémence Poésy (In Bruges), Timothy Spall, Eddie Marsan (Happy-Go-Lucky), Noel Clarke (Kidulthood) and Luke Treadaway (Brothers of the Head). In Interview Magazine, he said he hopes to screen the film at Cannes this year.

Andrea Arnold's second feature film, after Red Road, is called Fish Tank, co-produced by Kees Kasander who has worked with Peter Greenaway for most of his career. Fish Tank stars Michael Fassbender (Hunger) and Harry Treadaway (the other brother in Brothers of the Head) and will likely make its debut at Cannes. Artificial Eye holds the UK rights.

Speaking of Arnold, the second installment of the Advance Party film series, entitled Rounding Up Donkeys, will be released sometime this year. Kate Dickie and Martin Compston are the only cast members listed on the IMDb. Rounding Up Donkeys will be the feature debut for Morag McKinnon, whose short Birthday appears on Cinema 16's British Short Films DVD.

Isabel Coixet's latest Map of the Sounds of Tokyo stars Rinko Kikuchi and Sergi López and should be out sometime later this year.

A 18 December release is set for Alejandro Amenábar's new film Agora, a big-budget historical epic set in Egypt and starring Rachel Weisz. Agora, a Spanish/American co-production, will be Amenábar's first film since winning the Oscar for The Sea Inside [Mar adentro]. The film should be out in Spain sometime in September.

After seeing Mother of Tears, how could you not be excited for Dario Argento's new film? No dates have been set for Giallo, which suffered numerous cast changes after Asia Argento, Vincent Gallo (who was not too pleased to be working alongside Ms. Argento) and Ray Liotta, but it is currently in post-production. Adrien Brody and Emmanuelle Seigner star.

Danis Tanovic, the Oscar-winning director of No Man's Land, directs his first English-language film, entitled Triage. Colin Farrell, Christopher Lee, Paz Vega, Kelly Reilly and Juliet Stevenson star. Canal Plus will release the film in France later this year and no word on a US release.

Colin Farrell will also star in Neil Jordan's latest Ondine, which also stars Stephen Rea. The fantasy film about a mermaid has no release date set.

Nikita Mikhalkov is currently working on a sequel to Burnt by the Sun, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1995 as well as the Grand Prix at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. I don't know anything further.

The new film from Dagur Kári (Noi, the Albino), The Good Heart, will reunite Brian Cox with Paul Dano, who previously starred together in Michael Cuesta's L.I.E., alongside Isild Le Besco.

Lech Majewski (Garden of Earthly Delights) is currently filming The Mill and the Cross with Charlotte Rampling, Michael York and Rutger Hauer. We'll see if it's finished in time for the fall fests.

The latest film from Julio Medem (Sex and Lucía [Lucía y el sexo]) Habitación en Roma [Room in Rome] will be a variation on Matías Bize's En la cama, according to Variety. The English-language film will star Elena Anaya, Najwa Nimri, Enrico Lo Verso (Hannibal) and newcomer Natasha Yarovenko. Anaya and Nimri both co-starred in Lucía.

And finally, in my French post, I neglected to mention Cédric Kahn's new film Regrets which stars Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Yvan Attal. Mars Distribution will be releasing it in France on 8 April.

A Large List Of Movies I Enjoyed This Year (Updated With Canyon's Picks So It's Even Larger!)

Happy New Year, denizens of the internet! The holiday season is over, unhappy workers are returning to their nasty offices, and I'm cleaning the house. But, before I get into the rest of it, here is an absurdly long list that has missed off a million things either because we've not seen certain films that stand a good chance of getting on here (Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Tekkon Kinkreet, Rescue Dawn, etc.), and because I'm forgetful. There was a supporting actor performance this year that I loved but I can't remember who it was now. That's as annoying as later remembering that I wanted to give music of the year shout-outs to Tenacious D's Master Exploder (song of the decade) and Steven Seagal's album Mojo Priest (not the hilarious hubristic disaster people expected it to be; I actually quite like it).

Anyway, here is as complete a list as I can make. Note that the worst film winner is not yet decided. Over the next few days I intend to decide who should win this coveted prize with a Worst Film of 2007 Face/Off special! So stay tuned. Also, I'm hoping that at some point Canyon will include her best and worsts of the year. I'm not 100% sure what her list will look like, though I get the feeling it will be fairly different. I look forward to reading it.

Favourite movies of the year:


1=: Zodiac - A perfect movie about an obsessive quest made by an obsessive perfectionist.
1=: Ratatouille - A perfect movie about a perfectionist and the obsessive quest for perfection.
2: The Bourne Ultimatum - Like being beaten up by a film. But in a good way. Best threequel ever, best action film of the decade.
3: Black Book - Moral quagmires, betrayal, sex, death, twists, violence, blonde women being mistreated by the world but keeping their dignity even when doused in shit. Hitchcock would have loved it.
4: Once - My favourite romantic movie in ooooh, aeons. Lovely soundtrack too.
5: The Darjeeling Limited - Wes Anderson triumphs again! Yeah, I said it.
6: Grindhouse - Sorry to say it, but only the full version gives you the full effect. Fuck you, Weinsteins.
7: Exiled - Johnnie To's gangster masterpiece. The most unpredictable film of the year (other than I'm Not There, but who knows what the hell Todd Haynes was thinking with that).
8: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - Possibly the best ensemble cast of the year, certainly the best photographed. Hypnotic brilliance.
9: Paprika - A feast for the eyes, and featuring a heroine that I want to see return in a billion sequels.
10: The King of Kong - Best documentary I've seen since the magnificent Capturing the Friedmans. No other documentary I've seen has made me so angry and so overjoyed. Who'd have thought real life could be this interesting?

Honourable mentions:


I Am Legend
Jindabyne
Hot Fuzz
Superbad
3:10 to Yuma

Honourable honourable mentions (there were a lot of good films out this year):

Gone Baby Gone
The Mist
Sunshine
Transformers
Black Snake Moan

Honourable honourable honourable mentions (I mean, seriously, a lot):

The Lives of Others
Beowulf
Charlie Wilson's War
Knocked Up
The Lookout

Favourite movies released in the US in 2006 but then released in the UK in 2007 and were good enough to get a mention here anyway:

The Fountain, Curse of the Golden Flower

Movies that are not getting included because I need to see them a couple more times before I know whether I was crazy about them or not:

No Country For Old Men, I'm Not There

Movie that I didn't want to like because the director is an asshole but damn it's a lot of fun:


Apocalypto

Worst movie:

To be decided between I Know Who Killed Me and D-War (Runners-up: Bubble Fiction Boom or Bust, Spider-Man 3, Southland Tales, The Reaping, Next)

Most pointless movie:

Ocean's Thirteen

Best actor:

Chris Cooper - Breach / Casey Affleck - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Gone Baby Gone (Runner-up: Will Smith - I Am Legend, Kurt Russell - Death Proof, Viggo Mortenson - Eastern Promises)

Best actress:


Laura Linney - Jindabyne (Runner-up: Gong Li - Curse of the Golden Flower, Carice Van Houten - Black Book, Marketa Irglova - Once)

Best supporting actor:

John Carroll Lynch - Zodiac (Runner-up: Chris Evans - Sunshine / Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Sam Rockwell - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang - Exiled) (ETA: OMG how could I forget! James Marsden's hilarious performance in Enchanted! Easily the best thing about the movie.)

Best Supporting Actress:

Robin Wright Penn - Beowulf (Runner-up: Marcia Gay Harden - The Mist, Amara Karan - The Darjeeling Limited, Sairse Ronan - Atonement)

Most entertaining performance in a bad movie:

Nicholas Cage - Ghost Rider

Worst actor:

Patrick Dempsey - Enchanted (Runner-up: Jason Behr - D-War)

Worst actress:

Lindsay Lohan - I Know Who Killed Me (Runner-up: Amanda Brooks - D-War, Claire Danes - Stardust)

Best hero:

Remy the Rat - Ratatouille (Runner-up: Rachel Stein - Black Book, Paprika - Paprika, McLovin - Superbad, King Leonidas - 300)

Best villain:


Anton Chigurh - No Country for Old Men (Runner-up: Billy Mitchell - The King of Kong, Stuntman Mike - Death Proof, Anton Grubitz - The Lives of Others, Mrs. Carmody - The Mist)

Worst hero:

Ghost Rider - Ghost Rider (Runner-up: Elizabeth Swann - Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Ethan Kendrick - D-War, "Jack" - D-War)

Worst villain:

Thomas Gabriel - Die Hard 4.0 (Runner-up: Venom - Spider-Man 3, Doctor Doom - Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Evil General - D-War)

Biggest badass of the year:

Zoe Bell - Death Proof

Best Director:

Brad Bird - Ratatouille (Runner up: Paul Greengrass - The Bourne Ultimatum, David Fincher - Zodiac)

Worst Director:

To be decided between Chris Sivertson - I Know Who Killed Me and Hyung-Rae Shim - D-War) (Runner-up: Mark Steven Johnson - Ghost Rider, Richard Kelly - Southland Tales, Lee Tamahori - Next)

"Stop perving, Grandad!" director of the year:

Mike Nichols - Charlie Wilson's War. We get it, Mike, Charlie Wilson was a big perv, but that doesn't excuse the leering shots of boobs and butts, nor does it even begin to explain why you cast Emily Blunt and then made her sit around in next to no clothes for five minutes and then not have her appear for the rest of the film. (Runner-up: Michael Bay - Tranformers. Megan Fox is not that hot, so please stop staring at her oiled midriff, kthx)

Best cinematographer:

Roger Deakins - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country For Old Men (Runner-up: Harris Savides - Zodiac, Robert Yeoman - The Darjeeling Limited)

Best sound design:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Runner-up: I Am Legend, Tranformers)

Best visual effects:

Transformers (Runner-up: The Fountain, Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End)

Most improved director:


Danny Boyle - Sunshine. I've always been frustrated by the lionisation of Boyle, whose movies feature pretty shots and no overall coherence or concept of how one shot has to link into another (Michael Bay gets accused of this yet I think he's much better at creating a whole movie than Boyle, and yes, I know that is considered heresy. Whatever!). Sunshine is the first film where he gets it totally right. The whole movie is an perfectly sustained audio-visual assault. He can be proud of it.

Runner-up: Len Wiseman - Die Hard 4.0. I've found Wiseman to be a hack with a bland visual style and little imagination, but even though Die Hard 4.0 shared the same monochrome look of his vampire movies, the action scenes featured some wonderfully imaginative moments, not counting the Jurassic Park 2 rip-off with the car in the elevator shaft. I was very pleasantly surprised. Still got a shit villain, though. Did Hans Gruber have no more brothers?

Most precipitous drop in directorial ability:

Sam Raimi - Spider-Man 3. Jaredan maintains Raimi purposely sabotaged the movie as a screw-you to Sony for making him include Venom, and I can't argue with him. I can't believe someone as talented and conscientious as Raimi could poop out something as dreadful as this. Let's hope he improves soon, as he's still top of the list of directors capable of pulling off The Hobbit.

Disappointment of the year:

Spider-Man 3 (Runner-up: Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End, Eastern Promises)

Most overrated film of the year:

Atonement. Stately, respectable, well-crafted, pretty. It's all of those. It's also empty, features some really dodgy acting, and makes no sense until the final twist comes into play. Then it's all very affecting, but for an hour, the movie is filled with head-scratchers and logical leaps. (Runner-up: 28 Weeks Later)

Most underrated film of the year:

Hot Fuzz. Has none of the respectable cachet of Atonement, but is possibly the most carefully crafted British film in decades. Repeat viewings unearth a wealth of detail and beautiful structure. If only critics loved Point Break and the films of Michael Bay the way they should, they would have appreciated its genius. (Runner-up: Curse of the Golden Flower)

Best comic adaptation of the year:

300. I don't even like it that much, but the competition (Spider-Man 3, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider) is pitiful. Persepolis is almost certainly going to be better, even though Marjane Satrapi is not really a comic writer/artist, more like a writer who draws the odd picture.

Best schadenfreude:

The Brothers Affleck prove to a sceptical world that they are awesome, to the massive happiness of myself.

Best comeback of the year:


Aaron Sorkin's screenplay for Charlie Wilson's War was his best in ages; smart, funny, irreverent, and only a bit pompous. It went a long way towards making up for Studio 60.

Best action scene of the year:

Jason Bourne vs. Desh - The Bourne Ultimatum (Runner-up: Autobots and humanity vs. Decepticons vs. a city - Transformers, motoring ladies vs. Stuntman Mike - Death Proof, Viggo's genitalia vs. hitmen - Eastern Promises)

Best non-action scene of the year:

Anton Ego eats a meal - Ratatouille (Runner-up: Cops interrogate John Carroll Lynch - Zodiac, every conversation between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Hot Fuzz)

Best musical moment of the year:

Marketa Irglova sings on her way back home - Once (Runner-up: Samuel L. Jackson sings Stack-O-Lee to a writhing sweaty mass of people - Black Snake Moan, Justin Timberlake lipsynchs to All These Things That I've Done by The Killers - Southland Tales)

Most WTF ending of the year:

The Mist - I cannot spoil it, and am still not sure whether I liked it or not, but I will say this: once seen, never ever forgotten.

Most bullshit death of the year:

Jazz going out like a punk in Transformers. Okay, so Megatron is five times taller, but still, that was not acceptable. (Runner-up: the various "tragic" moments at the end of Spider-Man 3)

Most wasted actors of the year:

Chow Yun Fat - Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End (Runner-up: Emily Blunt - Charlie Wilson's War, Thomas Haden Church - Spider-Man 3)

Biggest jerks of the Year:

The Weinsteins' decision to block the international release of Grindhouse may have been borne of their fears of financial ruin, but the dismissive attitude they have towards international audiences, and the lack of understanding they have of the movie itself (individually hardly anyone likes the films, but together they are perfect entertainment) is notable. Just remember, next time they push for a film to win an Oscar with their bully tactics, it's got nothing to do with championing the film. They're only in it for themselves.

Best screw-you of the year:


Kurt Russell mouthing off against the Weinsteins at the Cannes Film Festival. Just like Snake Plissken would! Now go appear in a bunch of movies next year because you are so awesome, okay?

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Canyon's Mostly Redundant End-of-Year List

Though you might have caught on that Admiral Neck is very fond of end-of-year list-making, I myself am not. I do love reading other people's lists, I have to admit, and I appreciate the opportunity to step back, think about the year as a whole, and organize your thoughts. The problem for me is that I often don't feel there are ten movies made every year that I will remember and really love as time goes on (the same goes with books and music and tv shows -- most years will produce maybe three or four of each). With most movies I enjoy in a given year, "Oh yeah, that's a good movie" is the first thought that springs to mind when I think about them later -- not "Wow, what a haunting, life-changing masterpiece that was."

I get that it's probably the same for everybody, but I feel wrong memorializing merely good movies in a top-ten list when they probably won't matter much to me in the long run. I guess this is kind of unfair to the very good movies I leave off, but it's my list and I'll do what I want. Also, Admiral Neck and I have very similar tastes, so I mostly have the same movies on as he does, and I liked all the other movies he mentioned mostly as much as he did (except The Darjeeling Limited, because I have been burned by Wes Anderson too many times and refused to see what was by all accounts another dollhouse whimsy-fest). Okay, enough clearing-of-throat preamble: my seven favorite movies of the year (I could stretch this to ten, but I feel a bit wrong doing it, so I won't).

Top Seven

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford -- One of the most gorgeous movies I've ever seen (the visuals in the train-robbery scene will stay with me a long time); the comparisons to Terrence Malick are apt, but this film is no rip-off (as if that would even be a bad thing). The narration was moving and elegiac and wonderfully literary, the pace was perfect, many scenes were incredibly haunting (especially the fantastic ending), and Casey Affleck needs awards shoved between his tiny Chiclet teeth immediately.

Ratatouille -- I adore The Iron Giant but was disappointed with The Incredibles (apparently I was the only person on earth who was), but this movie had Admiral Neck and I sobbing like little babies. I would have cried more if we hadn't been in public. Gorgeous animation, wonderfully funny, with a turn by Peter O'Toole that made me choke up over a discourse on the role of critics. That's some writin', Brad Bird! And damn you, by the way, for making me cry more at your movies than even one of Joss Whedon's.

Zodiac -- Another one that stayed with me for weeks afterward. A meta-comment on obsession that was scary, funny, thought-provoking, and ended perfectly.

(Note: All three of the movies above are what I'd consider the haunting-masterpiece variety.)

I Am Legend -- Yeah, I said it. I think the movie was very unfairly derided as being a typical Will Smith flashy blockbuster, a sci-fi FX-extravaganza with no brain and no heart. (And it almost was -- Admiral Neck got hold of the original script, and it's absolutely terrible, and the kind of movie you can imagine would have been perfect for Michael Bay [he was previously attached to direct].) Instead, it's a quiet, thoughtful, incredibly moving meditation on isolation and loneliness, and the main character's slow descent into madness. I don't often agree with Salon's Stephanie Zacharek (though I love reading her reviews), but I think she was mostly on the mark about this one. I don't agree with the complaint I've often heard about the ending -- I think it flows very well with what came before, and while I think the God stuff and the very end were missteps, those aren't the moments that stayed with me. The shots of a deserted New York are incredible, the action set-pieces are brilliant, and I haven't been able to get some scenes out of my mind since I saw it. There might have even been more sobbing during this than during Ratatouille (though I blame Admiral Neck for being a big crier himself and dragging me down with him).

Once -- My favorite musical of the year (though who knows if Sweeney Todd would have bested it; that doesn't come out here till January, thanks distributors!!!!!). Wonderful performances, beautiful songs -- I went on about it earlier this year so won't belabor it, but it was absolutely lovely.

3:10 to Yuma -- The second-best Western of the year -- perhaps a bit too neatly wrapped up at the end, but that's kind of what I liked about the ending, that even though Russell Crowe's actions are seemingly out of character, they make perfect sense in the context of the movie. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but I loved the symmetry of it.

Grindhouse -- Planet Terror was a perfect spoof -- mocking grindhouse movies with hilarious accuracy but incredibly clever in its own right. Death Proof wasn't a grindhouse spoof by any stretch of the imagination -- it was more of a Tarantino movie badly filmed and scratched up -- but it was brilliant in its own right (people moaned about it, but would they really want two back-to-back straight spoofs?).

Black Book -- Straight up Verhoevenly goodness. In Dutch!

Best Coen brothers movie I've seen, but which still left me a bit cold: No Country for Old Men

Movie I thought I'd hate and, much to Admiral Neck's gloating joy, I really, really liked: The Bourne Ultimatum

Favorite bad movie: Ghost Rider, mostly because of the weird character quirks Nicolas Cage adds to his performance

Biggest disappointment: Eastern Promises (I loved History of Violence and consider it one of those elusive masterpieces, so it was a huge disappointment to find that this barely felt like a movie)

Movies I liked but am a bit ashamed to admit to: Music and Lyrics, Hairspray, Transformers (and potentially Dan in Real Life, as it's supposed to be a lot better than the mawkish trailer makes it seem)

Movies that would probably be on my list if they came out in the UK in %#$($# December like they should have: Walk Hard, There Will Be Blood, Juno, Sweeney Todd, Into the Wild, Away From Her, National Treasure 2: Book of Seeeeeecrets, No End in Sight

The Bourne Perfection

(Warning: Bourne spoilers ahead.)

This week the UK finally got a chance to see the final installment of the Bourne trilogy, and Orc hordes couldn't keep me from seeing it at the first available opportunity. If you're thinking of seeing it, and have access to the first two movies, I advise you make a big deal of it and watch those first, as Paul Greengrass and Tony Gilroy (along with Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi) have added several visual and narrative cues to make it all feel like a very intense 6 hour movie. That is, scenes from the first two movies that acted as payoffs now in fact seem like set ups for payoffs in this movie. Certainly the cleverly expanded role for Julia Stiles makes the viewer reappraise her character (and her ability as an actress. She does a lot here by doing what seems like very little).

Apologies for any spoilers, but it's hard to gush about the movie without giving something away. The final few moments of the film are immensely satisfying, with Bourne's story coming full circle at last with the revelation of the terrible act he committed in order to end his previous life as David Webb, and the passive act he makes to end "Bourne"'s life. His final mini-speech on the roof to his would-be killer is somewhat heartbreaking and moving; now that he has found a way to move on, perhaps now he has the chance to help others do the same. He's like the Spy Messiah, cleansing the souls of those who followed in his footsteps. That the movie ends the same way the first starts is not just clever storytelling, it's also a way to include that hoary old visual metaphor of immersion in water as rebirth and baptism in a way that makes it fresh. And, at the risk of sounding confrontational, I defy you not to feel the urge to cheer as Bourne springs back to life, with that Moby track bleeping away in the background. I know I did a pathetic little air-punch. What? WHAT?

At some point I'm sure I'll whitter on about how glad I am that storytelling trends are favouring the longform (TV as visual novel, film franchises that require the viewer to have knowledge of the previous installments instead of being able to drop in and out a la old skool Bond), but for now I will say that Bourne Ultimatum represents the best example I can remember of using the resources of the previous installments to create an emotional resonance. As has been noted elsewhere, Julia Stiles' scene in the bathroom, dying her hair in a deliberate echo of the scenes with Franka Potente in The Bourne Identity, worked beautifully.

Also pleasing was the final car chase that seemed about to reverse the outcome of the chase at the end of Supremacy, with Bourne trapped at the business end of an imminently crashing car in the same way as Karl Urban, only to prevail through his quick wits. Not only that, but it proves he is learning not to kill. His involvement in the chase is a consequence of him trying to get away, which may have also been the situation in Supremacy, but in that case he aggressively destroys Karl Urban's SUV and kills him. Here, he allows the chase to end in a crash (or is forced to; I couldn't tell as I was chewing my knuckles with terror), and then spares the life of his pursuer. By this point, he's no longer the assassin he was turned into, but a victim, albeit a victim who will break your bones if you mess with him.

The movie has been well received by the UK critics, but their bias against any kind of genre movies has come through. James Christopher of the Times, Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian, and Anthony Quinn of the Independent all seemed to love it but only gave four stars. I can imagine the use of the Guardian as a plot-point would irritate the other papers, but Bradshaw had no excuse. Funnily enough, he has fun pretending that all Guardian journalists are as tough and glamourous as Paddy Considine's character, which is in direct conflict with what I saw. Greengrass is obviously making fun of his own journalistic background, as well as the reputation of the Guardian. Considine is useless, ignoring Bourne's advice, continually getting himself into trouble, and seeing danger where there is none. Compared to all of the CIA agents, even the less capable ones, he looks like a hapless idiot. Plus, how does Considine elude capture? By hiding in an off-licence. Very nicely played, Mr. Greengrass.