SO Random

via: The Film Experience

First Look: Brave

Entertainment Weekly has a first look at Pixar's latest flick, the mystical Scottish fairy tale Brave. It's been on my radar for several years now, since it was The Bear and the Bow. Never a studio to rest on its laurels (well, aside from the so-so Cars and its presumably so-so sequel), this one sounds like a neat change of pace and an interesting twist on the familiar Disney fairy tale template.

The film is Pixar's first with a female co-director (The Prince of Egypt's Brenda Chapman), first foray into the fairy tale and, realistically, their first with a strong female character. The case has been made for Eve, but (a) she's a non-sexual entity, a robot, and (b) Wall·E is the real star of the show, even if Eve is the heroic no-nonsense type. In Brave, Kelly Macdonald (Trainspotting, No Country for Old Men, the under-seen gem Merry Gentleman) will voice Merida, a tomboy princess who embarks on a journey to right a (currently vague) wrong.

I've been a fan of Macdonald's ever since No Country for Old Men. Interestingly, she tends to get cast as either Scottish or Irish a lot (she's also great in HBO's Boardwalk Empire), even though she did a bang-up job with an American accent for the Coen brothers. To me, her performance as Carla Jean, the only character with an actual arc, was deserving of Oscar recognition.

Here, Macdonald replaces Reese Witherspoon, which is a welcome switch even if it means she's once again been type-casted. Witherspoon isn't a bad actress, per se, but it's hard to think of her as a warrior princess. Macdonald, however, has the chops to pull it off.

'Trump has what it takes'

Who's ready for tea?

Again, I try to separate my work from my extracurriculars as much as possible, but I thought I'd share an article I put some degree of effort into. Whatever your own views of the Tea Party may be, it's easy to understand why many adherents get defensive when it comes to their coverage in the media. As with many subjects that become fodder for the big, bad media machine, things get simplified for the masses and, through that process, various factions and issues get conflated and come to be identified as one and the same. I tried, at very least, to be fair.

Photo credit: Richard Holden.

First Look: Carnage

Empire Magazine has posted a first look at Carnage, Roman Polanski's next film and an adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Yasmina Reza play about a meeting between two sets of parents that devolves into a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf-style shit storm. I'm usually not into these types of melodramas, but the cast is populated with fantastic actors who aren't known for over-doing it. Plus, the play (adapted from the original French by Reza and Polanski) is supposed to be quite funny in a biting, backhanded way.

In it, Jodie Foster and the perpetually under-rated John C. Reilly play Penelope and Michael, the more provincial of the two couples. Based on the Wikipedia plot synopsis (and assuming the film sticks to the original play despite changing a few of the names), Michael is an upwardly-mobile wholesaler and Penelope is a writer. Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan (Christoph Waltz), meanwhile, are more comfortable flouting their wealth and power. Alan is a cell phone-addicted attorney and Nancy's made a career of managing her husband's wealth.

I tend to run hot and cold with Polanski, both as a person and a filmmaker. I can relate to his troubles (Holocaust survivor, the Tate murder), but can't excuse his very selfish, short-sighted behavior, both in 1977 and today. Likewise, he's made some of my favorite films (Chinatown, Knife in the Water, Rosemary's Baby), yet some of the films that have garnered him enormous praise leave me completely cold. Cinematography and art direction aside, I didn't get all the love for the merely serviceable thriller The Ghost Writer. And cult-favorites Repulsion and Cul-de-sac are a little too self-aware to be anything other than documents of their time.

These days, I get the impression that Polanski is just happy to still be working and striving to make the best films he can. The inflated ego that was the root of his troubles has evaporated with age (I hope anyway). With this cast and more workmanlike Polanski, I've developed high hopes for Carnage. Maybe they'll pay off.

More Explosions in the Sky

Explosions in the Sky, who have been and always will be awesome in my book, have a new album coming out. And, like all the cool bands these days, they are passing out free samples. Admittedly, the tune being shared, called "Trembling Hands" isn't playing in the same emotional sandbox as their other albums have, but there's enough there to pique my interest.

If you've yet to be initiated, give their last album, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, or their soundtrack for the show Friday Night Lights, a spin. Utterly beautiful stuff.

Richard Leacock, 1921-2011

Richard Leacock, the British cameraman and documentarian behind some of the most influential films of the last century, including Louisiana Story, Monterey Pop and the JFK/Humphrey showdown Primary, has died. He's one of those people who've made a lasting impact on our culture, as a key purveyor of cinéma vérité or "fly on the wall" cinema, but never developed a strong following or recognizable name. His camera work was simple and clean, focused on the characters and their surroundings as they were. That's not to say his films aren't beautifully framed, but he was a great at capturing the beauty and significance of ordinary and extraordinary lives.

Louisiana Story, which was directed by Robert J. Flaherty (of Nanook of the North), is one of my favorite films, period. Leacock's camera goes into the heart of the bayou and out onto oil derricks, to places that few films documentary or feature (Story straddles that line) have gone before or since. Some of the shots he achieves with just a handful of actors, an outboard and a camera have to be seen to be believed. It's available on Netflix Instant, so if you've never heard of it (or Leacock), please check it out.

Obviously, there's also the sad news of Elizabeth Taylor's passing, but I don't feel the same connection to her work. I don't doubt her potency as a star and her skill as an actress, but for me Taylor is still most closely tied to the awful perfumes she hocked and her photo-ops at pal Michael Jackson's creepy Neverland Ranch. But now is as good a time as any to revisit her more substantial work.

Pigeon-toed Orange Peel

For some reason, YouTube uncoolly prohibits embedding of this awesome clip from the 1968 Don Siegel-Clint Eastwood flick Coogan's Bluff. But do yourself a favor and check it out anyway. And while you're at it, go see the movie, too. It's one of the films from that era, together with Our Man Flint and Cactus Flower, that becomes hip by its sheer insistence on not being hip.

Like those other films, it has some interesting ideas about what the hippie scene was like. Those happen to include evil bohemians, fluorescent neon dance floors and naked, body-painted dancers who slide into Clint Eastwood's arms from roof-mounted zip lines. I'm sure Clint got a kick out of that.

A roadmap to the world of sci-fi

A fascinating graphic tracing the evolution of science fiction has cropped up via one of my favorite blogs, Strange Maps. Throughout my life I've gone through phases with specific sci-fi authors (Poe, Wells, Lovecraft, Bradbury), but never really with the genre as a whole. This map, however, does a fascinating job placing some of the familiar names and classic works in their cultural context. Through its Jules Verne-ish tentacles, it traces the separate threads of art, mythology, philosophy and science and how developments in each played into the growth of the literature (and, as a consequence, film as well). You could spend an hour or more poring over the map and still find interesting new avenues and intersections. If nothing else, it provides a cheat sheet of necessary reading.

Never Too Late: Things We Lost in the Fire

Watching Things We Lost in the Fire, I was confident that the screenplay had been adapted from a novel or a play, or possibly a foreign film (its director is Susanne Bier, the Danish auteur behind Brothers and this year’s Foreign Oscar winner In a Better World). It’s not that the film itself is literary or stagey, starched by its devotion to some exterior source material. The cinematography is actually quite striking and the sets are fluid and deliberately assembled. The simple fact is that few movies get made like this anymore. It’s a very simple film whose sole concern is its characters, in the same vein as classics like The Best Years of Our Lives or Friendly Persuasion or The Sundowners.

The film is so observant of its characters, so focused on the beats and nuances of human life, so assured that the story it’s telling is the right one, that it doesn’t seem possible that it could be an “original” idea. In truth, Things We Lost in the Fire is a spec script from Allan Loeb, an unknown at the time the film was made in 2007 who is now just about everywhere. (Everywhere, unfortunately, includes such clunkers as 21, The Switch, The Dilemma and the Adam Sandler vehicle Just Go with It. His descent into schlock is inexplicable, but at least he’s working.)



Recently widowed by a sudden, violent act, Audrey Burke (Halle Berry) invites her husband Brian’s (David Duchovny) heroin-addict childhood friend Jerry (Benicio Del Toro) into her home. Once he’s there, the pair walk a delicate tightrope. Audrey is uncomfortable with how easily Jerry assimilates into the family, including her two young children, Harper and Dory. Jerry is uncomfortable with the burgeoning sexual attraction between he and Audrey and with the instability that’s a byproduct of Audrey’s grief (in one scene, she asks him what shooting heroin is like, telling him she wants to “escape”).

The overarching plot is actually a bit thin, but like a good novel the devil is in the details. Loeb and Bier reward attentive viewers by meting out insights into the characters. The screenplay is interested in the little white lies characters tell themselves and others. To get Jerry into her home, Audrey tells him she has a mortgage to pay and his eventual rent payments will make that easier to bear. We later find out that her deceased husband has left his family comfortably well-off. Meanwhile, Brian co-opted one of Jerry’s sage pieces of advice and Jerry has co-opted Brian’s two kids as his own, interestingly to avoid a romantic advance.

Supporting characters are similarly well-drawn. John Carroll Lynch (the creepy squirrel-keeper in Zodiac) plays an affable neighbor, quietly hating his domineering wife. Alison Lohman (Drag Me to Hell) is a former addict who has gotten her shit together and hopes to help Jerry do the same, although she has some ulterior motives herself. Audrey’s family, including Omar Benson Miller (Spike Lee’s gentle giant in Miracle at St. Anna) and Paula Newsome (a familiar face but unknown name from various TV shows), are at once supportive and stifling.

Also important are the complex issues that are, just like life, left to drift away from the character’s grasps. The film doesn’t try to answer all the questions for us and doesn’t apologize for not doing so, either.



The most important character arc is Audrey’s and Halle Berry does a magnificent job as a woman blindsided by grief but holding it together for her children. In quiet moments with Jerry, away from the prying eyes of family and neighbors and her own children, she reveals the turmoil roiling underneath. Finally, after it’s clear that her children are progressing through their own grief, Audrey breaks down. But even then Berry doesn’t over-do it. Her performance is wrenching but never melodramatic.



Del Toro gets the showier role in the film, but he exercises a similar restraint. Every step of the way, his character is confused about his place in his adoptive family. He takes pains not to overstep his bounds, and yet he still crosses them. Later, when the audience is let in on the physical pains he goes through withdrawing from heroin, Del Toro's suffering is very real. I’ve never witnessed the process myself, thankfully, but it seems like a good approximation. He’s enthralling and yet not a sideshow.

It’s unfortunate that Things We Lost in the Fire didn’t get the attention it richly deserved back in 2007, when it was dumped into theaters with little fanfare. Since then, Bier has gone back to her native Denmark and made award-winning films, content to avoid the Hollywood system that tossed her a bone and then kicked her back to the curb. Halle Berry took a long hiatus and gave the Oscars another go with the multiple-personality drama Frankie & Alice. I haven’t seen it, but it seems like a move made out of desperation. Del Toro spent a year in the jungle with Steven Soderbergh on Che and picked up a kudos from Cannes for his effort, although little else. The Wolfman, his first real attempt at a blockbuster, blew up in his face last year. The next place to you can see the work of Allan Loeb, who showed such promise here, will be So Undercover, a Miley Cyrus sorority comedy. Angels cry.

Three of them should be a lot farther in their (Hollywood) careers given the tour de force that is Things We Lost in the Fire. Alas, they only get a thumbs up from me, nearly four years after the fact.

Starry, starry Midnight in Paris

The teaser poster for Woody Allen's latest European vacation project, Midnight in Paris, has arrived and it steals from the best. Although the reference material, Vincent Van Gogh's iconic 1889 painting "The Starry Night," is less than inspired, it's a beautiful, evocative poster.

I've had a feeling since the first time I read about the fully formed project that this might be one of Woody's keepers. It's been a few years (and a few duds) since his last, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and a long time since a certified Grade-A classic (for me, that's 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors, followed by 1987's criminally under-rated Radio Days).

I don't really know what the plot is (I'm guessing a breezy romance romp), but the film is composed of some of the nicest, warmest, most charming actors on the planet: Kathy Bates (ok, so sometimes she's a psychopath, ala Misery, but what about About Schmidt?), Rachel McAdams (Ms. Bay Breeze from Red Eye), Michael Sheen (the unloveable Brit from 30 Rock) and Owen Wilson (goofy in everything). Adrien Brody and Marion Cotillard are admittedly pretty aloof screen presences, but you need to balance all the golden sunshine, don't you?

And, finally, the title had me sold from the get-go. Full of mystery of cosmopolitan hijinx.

Check out the full poster at Awards Daily, who are apparently not so high on the starry night theme.

Whole Lotta Tree of Life

Collider, via the crafty Russian (don't they manage to get everything?) site Kinopoisk, has a selection of some of the 70 Tree of Life stills that surfaced today. The images have mysteriously vanished from Kinopoisk, so if you're interested in getting a sneak peak of Terrence Malick's new film, you should probably act fast.

Moreso than Malick, it's cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men, The New World) that has me eagerly awaiting this one. The man is a master with light and, from these stills, he clearly hasn't lost his touch. There's a very distinct Edward Hopper-feel to the stills, particularly the one above, that I like. Even though Hopper was painting for a good five or so decades, his work always feels like the '50s to me. I'd relish the film that finally takes advantage of that association (even if it's only me that makes it).

3D for the masses?

First, a programming note. Internet difficulties have prevented me from posting most of this week. Take note: Verizon tech support (like most tech support) sucks.

I wanted to pass along this article I stumbled across about two Estonian brothers who've developed a relatively inexpensive 3-D camera system. By inexpensive, we're talking about $88,000 USD. You won't be filming Timmy's birthday party in 3-D anytime soon, but when you compare it to the tens of millions James Cameron sank into his Avatar technology, it's impressive.

No reliable word on the image quality yet, but I imagine this could open 3D up to indie filmmakers, which could be a very good or bad thing depending on your view of the technology. In my eyes, some films lend themselves to 3D and some don't. There's no justifiable reason (except financially) to retroactively 3D-ify a film like Clash of the Titans or splurge on a third dimension for a concert film or run-of-the-mill comedy. But it would've been interesting to see a film like Enter the Void with that extra dimension.

To no one's surprise, James Cameron is reportedly the first buyer of one of these 3D-in-one-camera set-ups and Werner Herzog already used the technology (rented) for Cave of Forgotten Dreams, his 3D documentary of the Chauvet caves in southern France.

Ten Films to Watch in 2011

This is about the time each year when a film buff's dance card begins to fill up with the hum of most anticipated-this, awards contender-that. Hype aside, here are some of the films I'm keeping an eye on, and think you should, too. Inevitably some will disappoint and others will shine for posterity. The fun is in predicting which ones are which.

I purposefully avoided the films that are already well-anticipated. There's no need for me to join in the chorus trumpeting Terence Malick's long-awaited Tree of Life. Similarly, it's unnecessary for me to go through the latest from Cronenberg (the Jung/Freud face-off A Dangerous Method), Fincher (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remake), Scorsese (the kid-friendly epic Hugo Cabret) and the double-dips from Soderbergh (Contagion and Haywire) and Spielberg (Tintin and War Horse). Never mind that I just did, but here's the off-the-radar films I'm looking forward to in 2011:

The Assassin (Taiwan, dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien)

The Taiwanese director has been a regular at Cannes and has consistently produced films that are at once epic and intimate (A City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster). His latest follows a female assassin who was kidnapped as a child and trained to kill ruthlessly. Even though the hit[wo]man-in-existential-crisis genre has worn out its welcome somewhat, I'm a sucker for a good one and this one might be it.

The Deep Blue Sea (U.K., dir. Terence Davies)

Based on a 1952 British play, The Deep Blue Sea stars Rachel Weisz as the suicidal wife of an alcoholic former R.A.F. pilot who strikes up a friendship with another social outcast. The plot sounds a bit stuffy (it was previously adapted as a 1955 Vivien Leigh-Kenneth More film), but Weisz is an actress who always bring a natural warmth to her roles. She's made a few clunkers recently, particularly The Lovely Bones, but she's a welcome screen presence.

Detachment (U.S., dir. Tony Kaye)

Tony Kaye has had a rough time of it since 1998's American History X, a heartwrenching film about broken families and intolerance and a personal favorite. Films were held up in legal battles, found new directors or simply didn't get much attention. The plot for this one — a chronicle of teachers and administrators' struggles in an inner-city school — doesn't inspire much confidence. But the director and the cast, including Adrien Brody, Bryan Cranston, Marcia Gay Harden and Mad Men's Christina Hendricks, do.

Melancholia (Denmark, dir. Lars von Trier)

No slight against her as an actress, but the presence of Kirsten Dunst is the only thing that gives me pause about this one. It’s probably a function of her affinity toward difficult, niche audience films (Marie Antoinette, How to Lose Friends, All Good Things), but they always seem to have troubled productions that delay release for several years. This one, from self-conscious provocateur Lars von Trier (the abominable Antichrist), takes a ground-level view of a When Worlds Collide-style apocalypse. Seems right up Trier’s alley. As long as there’s no genital mutilation or self-martyrdom, I’m up for it.

Now (U.S., dir. Andrew Niccol)

Since producing his sci-fi masterpiece Gattaca, Niccol has had a slew of long-gestating, problematic or just plain failed productions. S1m0ne and Lord of War had a lot of good qualities, but both felt undercooked. His Salvatore Dali biopic never got off the ground and he’s been attached to every project imaginable, including a non-Twilight Stephanie Meyer adaptation. With a very young cast, including Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake, he seems to be shooting for Meyer’s audience. But the plot — about a future where everyone is immortal and time is traded as currency — is fascinating.

Poetry (South Korea, dir. Lee Chang-dong)

If the reviews out of last year’s Cannes Film Festival are to be believed, Poetry should be as richly textured as Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine, which finally made it stateside last year. Lee, a novelist and former South Korean Minister of Culture and Tourism, just has a way with heartbroken characters. He doesn’t coddle them or his audience, but the compassion just oozes off the screen. In this one, a lonely old woman rediscovers beauty through poetry.

Retreat (U.S./U.K., dir. Carl Tibbets)

Info about first-time director Carl Tibbets and co-writer Janice Hallett is hard to come by, but the cast and plot description for Retreat are tantalizing. Cillian Murphy and Thandie Newton play a couple who escape to an remote island to patch up their failing relationship. With the sudden arrival of a lone soldier, Jamie Bell, they learn news of a pandemic that’s threatening the rest of humanity. Sounds like an episode of "The Twilight Zone" or "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," but I like that. The cast, all three promising actors with apparently very lazy agents, should make for a good time.

Shame (U.K., dir. Steve McQueen)

Hunger was one of the best films I saw in 2009 and probably one of the best ever made. It's a sparse film that lays all of its cards out on the table one by one. It's subtle and unpretentious and has a lot to offer the patient viewer. I'm trying to temper my expectations for McQueen's sophomore film, about a freewheeling bachelor (Michael Fassbender) whose wayward sister (Carey Mulligan) comes to live with him. Haven't had much luck with that.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (U.K./France, dir. Tomas Alfredson)

This latest adaptation of John le Carré's Cold War spy novel replaces Alec Guinness with the perpetually under-utilized Gary Oldman. Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and Ciarán Hinds, meanwhile, are on hand in supporting roles. To top it all off, Let the Right One In author-director Tomas Alfredson is in the director's chair. I'm not as big a spy-fan as I am a hitman-fan, but this has the makings of an awesome film.

We Need to Talk about Kevin (U.K., dir. Lynne Ramsay)

She hasn't gotten nearly as much attention from audiences, or critics for that matter, as she should, but Lynne Ramsay is already among the modern maestros of film. Ratcatcher was a cruel and beautiful look at death and poverty through the eyes of a young boy. Morvern Callar, meanwhile, defies an easy description. It's been nine years since those films, which is an awfully long time to wait. Hopefully this one, about the mother (played by Tilda Swinton) of a teenaged mass murderer, will break through despite similarly difficult subject matter.

All of the seizures

Not to rag on what is a pretty neat video or to imply that only Gaspar Noé is allowed to do the strobe typography thing, but Hype Williams owes the guy at least half his pay check for this one. Also, it's not included in the Daily Motion version, but I think the seizure disclaimer on Vevo is kind of awesome... and helpful.

Herzog back in the Subarctic

Here's something I've heard nothing about previously, but it looks potentially awesome. As if Werner Herzog didn't have enough on his plate this year with a 3D cave documentary, he's narrated and re-edited a Russian doc about several hunters in the Taiga, or remote tundra and boreal forests of the Subarctic. For Happy People, he slashes Dmitry Vasyukov's original four-hour TV documentary down to 96 minutes and writes his own voice over. Admittedly, it reads like something of a bitch-slap to the original director, but it's not all that surprising coming from Herzog (of Grizzly Man and the similarly awesome Encounters at the End of the World). Besides, he's the best at narration. I could listen to him ramble all day. In fact, I might even pay him to narrate my life for a few days. Or not.

The Return of Chen Zhen

Apple has posted the U.S. trailer for Legend of the Fist, Donnie Yen's first go at the Chen Zhen character. For background, the fictional martial artist has been around since 1972 (!!!) and has been played by the likes of Bruce Lee and Jet Li. This one actually looks pretty good and the trailer packs in the action. It comes to our shores April 22 (probably in limited release).

Uncle Boonmee welcomes you to an "odd and beautiful world"

The N.Y. Times has an exclusive video clip and an A.O. Scott review of Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul's upcoming Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. I generally don't give too much creedence to individual reviews, but Scott does a beautiful job of capturing the (presumed) magical realism of the film. More than even the trailer, which I previously posted, his review has me psyched to see the film.

Blunt comments and Libyan crackpots

Reuters has an interesting analysis of the most likely countries to experience an uprising similar to those that have effectively ousted the despotic regimes of Egypt and Tunisia, and is threatening to unseat Libyan crackpot Muammar Gaddafi. I've been following the situation pretty closely and I honestly have little to add to the discussion. My only observation is how ineffectual the U.S. and the "developed" world itself has been in the whole affair. We're sending aid to the opposition and making "blunt comments" about the dictators, but what were we doing 5, 10, 20 years ago? Revolutions can only originate from within a country, true; but we certainly had no business propping up or tolerating some of these dictators for as long as we did.

All about the Elba

Lately, I've been playing catch up with some of the "meh" movies that I skipped last year. It's a common thing this time of year, when the most interesting Oscar bait has already been seen and the new releases include such gems as Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son. Because there's nothing funnier than a family of cross-dressers and a 13-year-old documenting his life story.

One such leftover is Takers, which is actually a pretty cool flick. And not just because of the familiar blue and orange color scheme and the Rat Pack fedoras. Of course, the PG-13 rating means some pretty awkward tip-toeing around sensitive topics, such as drug addiction, and bloodless gun battles. The script is a little daft, too, with logic very often thrown to the wind.

What it does have is Idris fuckin' Elba.

I'm honestly not sure what else he has to do to get his own action series, a la Jason Statham's Transporter. So far, he's played post-apocalyptic nanny (28 Weeks Later), put up with biblical mumbo jumbo (The Reaping), occupied the same room as Denzel Washington for 30 seconds (American Gangster) and played a character named "Mumbles" (RocknRolla). At least he got to play it cool with crazy Beyonce and crazy Ali Larter in the "meh" Obsessed.

Is there no justice in the world? How is Stringer Bell not kicking ass and pulling in seven figures?

In Takers, he's not asked do a whole lot except be cool. And he has cool to spare. Even being surrounded by a decidedly uncool crew, including wife beater Chris Brown, Sinatra wannabe Hayden Christensen and shifty-eyed Michael Ealy, doesn't diminish it. Gunplay doesn't faze him. Neither does explosions. Or *spoiler* a backstabbing T.I. Not even a heist-foiling, drug addict sister (Without a Trace's Marianne Jean-Baptiste) throws him off his game.

Hollywood, you're on notice. Idris Elba needs a Steve McQueen-quality film, sans the poser entourage. Pronto.

Jane Russell, 1921-2011

Jane Russell, the buxom brunette who was plucked from doctor's office obscurity by Howard Hughes for the censor-provoking The Outlaw, died of respiratory failure today. She was 89.

In my mind, she wasn't a particularly good actress, but she was a more than adequate foil for Robert Mitchum in His Kind of Woman, one of my favorite not-quite noirs. (Too bad there aren't many good clips to choose from, but the one above is as good as any.) In that film, as well as two other early '50s noirs The Las Vegas Story and Macao (again with Mitchum), she held the camera's attention. Interestingly, Vincent Price showed up in two of those three (Woman and Vegas), as well.

There's an easy confidence to her performances that I have a feeling was all Russell. She is a big reason why these low-rent pictures are fun to watch. Her chemistry with Mitchum, in particular, is knowing and playful in ways that Bogie/Bacall could never be, given how doctored the scripts for those bigger budget flicks were.

Loretta Devine has a real dead love for Tyler Perry now

For Colored Girls is more interesting as an artistic statement than an actual work of art. For better or worse, Tyler Perry is the modern-day Douglas Sirk. He brings a very particular (read: peculiar) world view to every project, even, apparently, his adaptations. He perplexes film critics today, but I have a feeling that in 50 years he’ll have the same cult following that Sirk has posthumously enjoyed.

That said, how do I feel about Colored Girls? Remember that particular world view I was talking about? Even as a white twenty-something male, I can safely assume the black female experience is far removed from Perry’s conception of it. It’s not that anything that happens in his film is beyond belief. Iraq War veterans do abuse their wives and children; and they sometimes kill them, too. Promising young dancers do sometimes go to back-alley abortionists. And some black, male professionals do lead alternate lives “on the down low.”

It’s not that what happens in Perry’s film is so ridiculous. The problem is the way Perry stages his high drama and the pat catharsis he strives for. Everything that happens fits neatly inside his Southern Baptist sensibilities. Yes, all these bad things happen, but if the women can come together, stop being promiscuous, and take their own share of the blame, all will be good again. Finally, Perry’s daytime TV conception of city life and the “ghetto” is about as enlightened as a very special episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s.

All those issues aside, the impressive cast strives valiantly to breathe life into Perry’s stilted dialogue. The opportunity to see Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Phylicia Rashad and Kerry Washington — four of the most criminally under-utilized black actresses working today — shine in one film is golden. And, in a limited role as a broken down abortionist, Macy Gray packs a punch, too.

How could Perry produce such utter crap given such a talented cast? Short answer: He’s a true auteur. He couldn’t do it any other way.

Biutiful a frank exploration of death

Biutiful feels like the film director Alejandro González Iñárritu has been trying to make all along.

It's downbeat to the point of sending some film critics running for their medicine cabinets. It features carefully choreographed scenes in which the camera weaves amidst and above the Barcelona crowds. It's conscious of the intricate ways various cultures interact in our globalized economy. And it deals in the currency of intention and inadvertent consequence.

The film is Iñárritu's first without screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, as well as his first without a rigid, time-warping narrative structure. It's also his first masterpiece.

Uxbal (Javier Bardem) eeks out a living as a middle-man between illegal immigrants and nominally legitimate businessmen, putting Chinese to work on construction sites and overseeing a team Senegalese street vendors. On the side, he moonlights as a psychic for families of the recently deceased. His estranged wife Marambra (Maricel Álvarez) cycles in and out of his life, making promises to their two children, Ana and Mateo, that she lacks the ability or willpower to keep. She makes her problems — untreated bipolar disorder and alcoholism — Uxbal's.

And then Uxbal learns the groin pains he's ignored for months are the final signal flares of prostate cancer. As he worked to raise Ana and Mateo on his own and keep his various schemes running, the disease metastasized to his bones and liver. He has mere months to get his affairs in order.

Because it's Iñárritu, there are myriad subplots weaving their way through the film. Unlike his previous attempts, however, these threads all become relevant parts of the whole. They also ratchet up the tension for Uxbal, who valiantly fights through it. He has to reconcile himself to the same premature death that met his father. But mostly, he's scared for his children.

It would've been easy for Iñárritu to martyr Uxbal. He's done it to other characters in his films. Here, we watch as Uxbal does thoughtless and sometimes despicable things out of desperation and frustration. And Bardem goes at it full steam ahead, his face a perfect conduit for the anguish and fear and a million other emotions of a dying man. He does a fantastic job bringing the cause-and-effect nature of the script to life — Uxbal feels X, therefore he does Y — without it seeming robotic or simplistic. Álvarez, too, never fumbles with her tricky character. Marambra understands why her family's drawn away from her and she doesn't. She holds on for dear life.

Finally, Biutiful is a very human film. In his previous outings, particularly 21 Grams and Babel, Iñárritu's characters felt like rag dolls blown by the winds of cruel fate. The tragedies of Biutiful aren't the point of or reason for the film. They are simple facts of life. They instigate change. They force characters to grapple with their past and their future. The film earns its emotional pay-off the old fashioned way and the audience feels (or should feel) the full weight of what's transpired.

There are no BIG scenes in Biutiful, just a lot of little ones that metastasize in your brain through the film's 148 minutes. It left me devastated in a way no other film in recent memory has. Granted, I have a very personal connection to the the material, but it's possibly the most realistically affecting treatment of death committed to celluloid.

We're not lost, just finding our way

Fresh on the heels of one of the best movie posters to come along in a long while, Apple has an HD trailer for Kelly Reichardt's Oregon Trail drama Meek's Cutoff. Given Reichardt's track record (Wendy and Lucy, also with Michelle Williams), this one's probably thin on plot and high on atmosphere, but that's o.k. The trailer strikes some ominous notes, with Bruce Greenwood's Meek leading the wagon train into the desert and a pit of uncertainty. It looks handsomely shot and seems to have more on its mind than your typical latter-day western (i.e. it's more Assassination of Jesse James, less Appaloosa). Count me in.

Red Bandits

It's always difficult to judge a comedy based on its trailer since they tend to pack in the best punchlines (particularly the red band ones). Bad Teacher, however, looks pretty great. Phyllis Smith gets all the best laugh lines in this one. She's awesomely deadpan. I managed to compose myself pretty well, until this one:

Diaz: If I got a new pair of tits, he'd be all over me. But they're really expensive, you know, per tit.

Phyllis: Yeah, and you've got to get two of them.

Not ground-breaking humor, but it had me cracking up.

Oh, and the trailer for Paul, with Seth Rogen as a big-testacled fugitive alien, is also out. Meh. The editor clearly didn't strain him or herself cramming the laugh lines in. A bad trailer doesn't necessarily mean a bad movie, but this one didn't do anything for me.

The Movies Are Dead; Long Live the Movies!

Just in time to fill the annual movie "sky is falling" quota, GQ (ever the bastion for high culture) has published an article assaying the death of the movies. It's impressive for the author's ability to extract quotes from various industry luminaries, but on the whole it's just a warmed over helping of panic. At various points, Mark Harris points the finger at filmgoers, studio executives and, oddly, the burgeoning film industries in Italy and Japan, for the sorry state of summer tentpoles and the recent, alleged dearth of quality adult-oriented dramas.

But really, there is nothing new about any of the theories he presents (except for the Japanese kamikaze thing; never heard of that before).

I happen to agree that a lot of what passes for blockbuster is utter crap these days. A couple weeks ago, I tried to watch Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and gave up halfway through. I almost never do that. Even bad movies usually have some redeeming qualities, or bring a certain goofy gallows humor to the table. Not the Prince.

I'm not sure who gave Harris the idea that thriving overseas film industries are a bad thing, but if you're looking for the kinds of films Hollywood used to make, that's where you should be looking. Last year, seven of my top ten were foreign films and most of them share striking similarities to the American classics Harris seems to mourn. Animal Kingdom has been compared (somewhat daftly) to Goodfellas by critics. A Prophet pulls more than a few pages from the gangster flicks of the 1930's. Tokyo Sonata has a script that Frank Capra would be proud of. And Mother is, by my estimation, the only film that actually earns the "Hitchcockian" label that was foisted upon it by its marketing.

There's also the simple fact that American cinema doesn't actually need the defibillation that Harris feels compelled to give it (how noble of him). It's true: the studios dump a lot of crap on the market. But, then again, they always have. Even in this era of cinema-via-focus-group, it was largely the studios that produced the watershed year that was 2007. That year, American films dominated my personal top five (including Warner Bros.' The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Miramax/Paramount's No Country for Old Men, Pixar's Ratatouille, Paramount Vantage's There Will Be Blood and Paramount's Zodiac). And as the article begrudgingly points out, there've been some quality tentpoles (2008's Iron Man and The Dark Knight and last summer's Inception), too.

Honestly, I think any movie fan who can't find anything satisfactory out there is just lazy or stubborn, or both. It's a wide world out there — it's time to leave the familiar behind and go explore.

Best Picture Reimagined

As part of their annual awards shindig, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) commissioned artwork for its Best Film category (via In Contention). The results are all interesting representations of the films they commemorate. I'm fond of the Inception poster myself. Check out the whole lineup on their website.

Fatal Friendship in Born to Kill

This is a contribution to the For Love of Film (Noir) blogathon hosted by Ferdy on Film and Self-Styled Siren. Now in its second year, the blogathon aims to raise money for the Film Noir Foundation, which preserves the original nitrate prints of these classic films. Please consider donating to them if you can, as they do vital work.

A lot of ink has been spilled already about Claire Trevor's conniving psuedo-femme fatale, her masochistic obsession with psychopathic killer Lawrence Tierney and the class warfare that pervades Robert Wise's fantastic "Born to Kill." But more than the two scorching leads, I've always been struck by two noir regulars, Elisha Cook Jr. (Harry Jones in "The Big Sleep") and Esther Howard ("Detour," "Murder, My Sweet") in character roles.

Several classic noirs have touched upon the lengths people will go for friendship (Thelma Ritter's fantastic scene in Simon Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" springs to mind), but few have done it so effectively as "Born to Kill." Neither Cook nor Howard stray from their usual types, the mousy guy out of his depth and the brassy lush. But the script gives them excellent material to work with and their presence adds a depth that the plot may not have had otherwise.

As Mrs. Kraft, Howard is a hoot. She lives vicariously through her young, promiscuous landlord Laury Palmer. It's not clear how the two became such fast friends, but they're cut from the same cloth. You can imagine that Laury would eventually become Mrs. Kraft had she not met the business end of Tierney's knife.

But their relationship is about more than two kindred spirits coming together at different points on the same sad continuum of alcoholism. Even before Laury's murder, Kraft seems to have maternal instincts toward the younger woman, suggesting she "get some meat on her bones." Afterward, she hires an attorney and jaunts out to San Francisco to track down Laury's killer.

In one of my favorite scenes in the film, in which Kraft first meets Cook's Marty 'Mart' Waterman, Howard lays all her cards on the table. After sizing Waterman up for the loser he is ("I'm a bad boy," Cook intones. To this, Howard lets out a knowing cackle.), she tells all there is to know about where Kraft is coming from.

"I've reached the tail end of my life and all I had was Laury—Laury and the bottle. Well, there's nothing I can do for the bottle, but I'm sure not going to let Laury down."

On the page, it reads like lazy screenwriting, but it works wonderfully on screen. Interestingly enough, the most outwardly repulsive character is the only one with pure motives in the entire film. She has the self-awareness that comes with age. At the same time, she lacks the will to change herself, so she's looking for redemption by finding Laury's killer.

Cook's Mart is a thoroughly ambiguous character. The only thing the film reveals about his connection to Tierney's Sam Wild is that they'd lived together for five years and were roommates in Reno. Based on the amount of tail that Wild gets, wants to get, or induces into marriage, it's clear that the two weren't together in the Biblical sense. So, were they in prison? Were they running a con together? And what keeps them together now that Wild has married into wealth?

The film doesn't tell much of anything about their past, but the balance of power in the relationship was always with Wild. There's a strange dynamic here, in which Wild goes wild and Mart tries to talk him down and clean up the wreckage. He tries his damnedest to throw Kraft off the trail, and then unsuccessfully co-opts Wild's cold methods. Mart's willing to do just about anything for his friend.

Just like Mrs. Kraft, that dedication places Mart in harm's way. Despite being Wild's only true friend, Mart ends up in the psychopath's crosshairs. "You're crazy, Sam," Mart says, but it's no revelation. Mart knew it all along and still stood by his friend.

Instant Awesome: Still Bill

As a documentary, Still Bill is problematic at best, but as a catching-up with one of the best soul singers of the early '70s, the film (newly available on Netflix Instant) is golden. After a series of classic songs that crossed over into the mainstream ("Ain't No Sunshine," "Lean on Me," "Use Me") and prior to some latter-day cult hits ("Grandma's Hands" via Blackstreet's "No Diggity" and "Who Is He and What Is He to You" via Jackie Brown), Bill Withers bowed out of the music industry in 1985. He's held onto the mystique of the homegrown hit-maker ever since, never once capitalizing on the nostalgia he's left behind.

Not once during the course of Still Bill does Withers question his decision to leave the spotlight and focus on his family. He comes across as a down-to-earth guy, the kind of person that most people aspire to be. He's comfortable in his own skin, remaining cool in what must've been an incredibly awkward interview with Cornel West and Tavis Smiley. The two self-important jackasses ask him about "selling out." "We're all entrepreneurs," Withers responds, not taking their all-too-obvious bait.

Despite the documentary's heavy-handed attempts at easy emotion, you get a sense for the life Withers has lived and the events that shaped his outlook. He grew up in a West Virginia coal town and struggled with a stutter until he was in his 20's. It wasn't until he was 32 that he broke through as a musician. Without any professional training, he was an unlikely star and his fame brought some ridiculous propositions — one producer suggested he cover Elvis Presley's hokey "In the Ghetto."

Withers transcends the pat generalizations that his documentarians foist upon him at every turn. After the "selling out" crap, Withers side-steps more bunk about racism and still more B.S. about career regrets. Amid all the preconceived notions directors Damani Baker and Alex Vlack seem to have, Withers comes out with some gems of wisdom. "Do you know how unhappy you'd be if you thought you weren't (living) the right way?" He says early in the film. "I started out that way; I'm not going to end that way." Later, he says he told his children that on their way to wonderful, they'll pass through all right. "Stop and take a look around," he says. "Because that's where you may be staying." There's also some genuine emotion, such as moments where he joins his daughter in song and talks with young stutterers about his own childhood.

It's a shame Withers never continued churning out solid gold soul, and that he was saddled with a couple nincompoops for this latter-day documentary, but he isn't fazed. This film is worth a watch to see how cool cool really can be.

The Black Keys are Howlin' for You

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

From all indications, Thai director Apichatpong Joe's latest "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives," which took home last year's Palm d'Or at Cannes, defies easy explanation. But, from the trailer that popped up on iTunes, it looks like a beautiful, fascinating trip.

The Dark End of the Street

Aside from a few songs ("A Long December," "Mr. Jones") that formed the soundtrack of my middle school experience, I don't count myself as a Counting Crows fan. Mostly, I haven't paid them any attention. Even at the peak of their popularity, when I was about 12, I mistook their ubiquitous songs for the latest from the Gin Blossoms or Collective Soul.

All that said (methinks I protest too much), I thought it was worth passing along some acoustic recordings by Crows frontman Adam Duritz (via I Am Fuel). What grabbed my attention was his cover of "The Dark End of the Street," one of my favorite songs by the indomitable James Carr.

Duritz:
The Dark End Of The Street by CaptFantastic

Carr:

Widescreen Awards: The Winners

And here they are: my favorite performances and technical achievements of the year. Click on the images for the full-write ups. The nominees are presented in list format at the bottom of this post with a slightly amended (including one addition and one upgrade) Top 20 from the one I started out with.

The Top Twenty Films of 2010

20. "Cairo Time" (Canada, dir. Ruba Nadda)

19. "Black Swan" (USA, dir. Darren Aronofsky)

18. "Toy Story 3" (USA, dir. Lee Unkrich)

17. "Salt" (USA, dir. Phillip Noyce)

16. “The Fighter” (USA, dir. David O. Russell)

15. "Inception" (USA, dir. Christopher Nolan)

14. "The Chaser" (South Korea, dir. Na Hong-jin)

13. "Night Catches Us" (USA, dir. Tanya Hamilton)

12. "True Grit" (USA, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)

11. "Splice" (Canada, dir. Vincenzo Natali)

10. "I Am Love" (Italy, dir. Luca Guadagnino)

9. "Restrepo" (USA, dir. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger)

8. "Animal Kingdom" (Australia, dir. David Michôd)

7. "A Prophet" (France, dir. Jacques Audiard)

6. "That Evening Sun" (USA, dir. Scott Teems)

5. "Secret Sunshine" (South Korea, dir. Lee Chang-dong)

4. "Enter the Void" (France/Germany/Italy, dir. Gaspar Noé)

3. "Tokyo Sonata" (Japan, dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

2. "Mother" (South Korea, dir. Bong Joon-ho)

1. "The Social Network" (USA, dir. David Fincher)

Best Director

Bong Joon-ho (Mother)

David Fincher (The Social Network)

Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo Sonata)

Gaspar Noé (Enter the Void)

Best Actor

Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)

Hal Holbrook (That Evening Sun)

Teruyuki Kagawa (Tokyo Sonata)

Tahar Rahim (A Prophet)

Édgar Ramírez (Carlos)

Best Actress

Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine)

Kim Hye-ja (Mother)

Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone)

Natalie Portman (Black Swan)

Tilda Swinton (I Am Love)

Best Supporting Actor

Neils Arestrup (A Prophet)

Christian Bale (The Fighter)

Michael Fassbender (Fish Tank)

John Hawkes (Winter's Bone)

Ray McKinnon (That Evening Sun)

Best Supporting Actress

Melissa Leo (The Fighter)

Carrie Preston (That Evening Sun)

Charlotte Rampling (Life During Wartime)

Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)

Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)

Best Ensemble Performance

Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, Ally Sheedy, Ciarán Hinds, Dylan Riley Snyder, Michael Lerner, Charlotte Rampling, Michael K. Williams, Paul Reubens, Rich Pecci (Life During Wartime)

Hal Holbrook, Raymond McKinnon, Carrie Preston, Mia Wasikowska, Walton Goggins, Barry Corbin, Dixie Carter (That Evening Sun)

Katie Jarvis, Kierston Wareing, Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Griffiths (Fish Tank)

Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyôko Koizumi, Yû Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki, Haruka Igawa and Kanji Tsuda (Tokyo Sonata)

Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Jamara Griffin, Wendell Pierce, Jamie Hector and Amari Cheatom (Night Catches Us)

Best Original Screenplay

Bong Joon-ho and Park Eun-kyo (Mother)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Max Mannix and Sachiko Tanaka (Tokyo Sonata)

David Michôd (Animal Kingdom)

Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor (Splice)

Todd Solondz (Life During Wartime)

Best Adapted Screenplay

Joel and Ethan Coen (True Grit)

Peter Craig, Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard (The Town)

John Curran (The Killer Inside Me)

Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)

Scott Teems (That Evening Sun)

Best Cinematography

Jeff Cronenweth (The Social Network)

Benoît Debie (Enter the Void)

Hong Kyeong-pyo (Mother)

Yorick Le Saux (I Am Love)

Martin Ruhe (The American)

Best Editing

Stuart Baird and John Gilroy (Salt)

Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall (The Social Network)

Marc Boucrot and Gaspar Noé (Enter the Void)

Lee Smith (Inception)

Juliette Welfling (A Prophet)

Best Art Direction

Roshelle Berliner and Matteo De Cosmo (Life During Wartime)

Thérèse DePrez, David Stein and Tora Peterson (Black Swan)

Guy Dyas, Frank Walsh and Larry Dias (Agora)

Jess Gonchor, Christina Ann Wilson and Nancy Haigh (True Grit)

Albrecht Konrad, David Scheunemann and Bernhard Henrich (The Ghost Writer)

Best Musical Score

John Adams (I Am Love)

Lee Byung-woo (Mother)

Clint Mansell (Black Swan)

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network)

Hans Zimmer (Inception)

Best Sound Design

~ Enter the Void

~ Inception

~ The Social Network

Best Visual Effects

~ Enter the Void
~ Inception
~ The Social Network

Widescreen Awards: Director

For the second time in his relatively short career, Bong Joon-ho has taken a familiar genre and crafted a masterpiece (the other being 2005's serial killer drama "Memories of Murder"). Everything that he could possibly get right with Mother, he gets right. He even makes watching spilled water creep across the floor suspenseful. Bong is successful at balancing all the ingredients of his Hitchcockian stew — including truly funny character detail and a heartbreaking mother-son relationship — together for one of the most satisfying and unsettling films of 2010.

More than any film this year, The Social Network feels like it was conceived as one perfect whole. That's due in no small part to David Fincher. Many of his films have been flawlessly executed. Here, you can sense Fincher's fingerprints over every inch of film stock (or megapixel); and that's a good thing. It's one thing to have ratatattat dialogue (courtesy Aaron Sorkin); it's another to translate that into good cinema. All the while, Fincher holds onto the human element inside his story. It's not just about the birth of a new social network, but the new generation of people supporting that network.

Before I Am Love, Luca Guadagnino was a virtual unknown. As best I can tell, none of his previous films and documentaries have received U.S. distribution. Therefore, it's impossible to tell what he brought to the table previously, but "I Am Love" feels like the opening scene in a long and fruitful career. It's so full of life and vitality, and Guadagnino manages to extract natural performances from his actors while surrounding them in a preternaturally beautiful world.

Known foremost for his horror films ("Cure," "Pulse" and 2006's chilling "Retribution"), Kiyoshi Kurosawa has created one of the warmest, most rewarding films of the year with Tokyo Sonata. He's out-Capra'd Capra, but his happy ending is modulated by all the confusion and suffering that came before it. It's the kind of morality tale that only a horror director could conjure. And it works mostly because of how real the family at its center feels. The performances are so uniformly good that, by the time the melodrama kicks into high gear, the audience is too invested to question the strangeness of the film's final act. Finally, Kurosawa gets extra points for the piano recital, which sums up the point of the story with no words.

Eight years after his reprehensible (but awe-inspiring) "Irreversible," Gaspar Noé has returned to do the same thing all over again. This time, however, he (thankfully) upped the humanity quotient. Noé is a cinematic wizard. With Enter the Void, he stretches the bounds of what's possible in film while telling a captivating story. The audience is thrown into the worlds of both the living and the dead; and, like its main character, the viewer has no road map.

Honorable mention to Lee Chang-dong for the subtle beauty and compassion of Secret Sunshine; David Michôd for assembling an unexpectedly complex crime family in Animal Kingdom; and Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger for putting their camera and their audience in the middle of the fight for Korengal Valley in Restrepo.

Tomorrow look for the Widescreen Awards wrap-up, with the winners announcement and links to some of the great films available on Netflix Instant.