THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FRAUD IN THE WORLD

(July 11, 2009)

I was (sort of) watching The Mummy last night.   No, not the original Karl Freund gothic expressionistic near-masterpiece, but the Stephen Sommers directed, Brendan Fraser blockbuster from 1999.  The sort of aside is because it was on and I was watching it in pieces as I was working.  I remember when I first saw it in the theatre, all I could think was how poorly it was done.  Sure, the special effects were cool (if you’re into such things) and that girl, who I had never seen before, was so freakin’ hot (I have since fallen in love with pretty much anything Rachel Weisz does!) but that was about it.

The starnge thing now is as I was watching it (piecemeal as it were) I took particular notice to some of the shots and it suddenly struck me at how amazing some of these shots were.   It was almost as if Sommers, who is far from your typical auteur, had actually studied classic american horror films and this was an homage to them.  There are not only shots that remind one of the German Impressionist-inspired origina, but also of the shadowy camerplay that Jacques Tournier was doing in his Val Lewton-produced films of the forties.   I was seriously taken aback.   Could this obvious studio man be the real thing?

Sure, if one were to take the film as camp (and it is considered an action-comedy motion picture!) then it works on most levels - even Fraser’s bad overacting.   I’m still not saying this was a great film by any means (and anyway, I would have to sit down and watch it beginning to end to decide that) but I do see things in Sommers’ directing (and his Van Helsing started out with a brilliantly shot homage to Whale’s Frankenstein) that make me think, if he were to break out of the blockbuster mode (still making big money pictures, just putting a little more of an edge to them) he could find himself as a well-respected filmmaker in league with other Hollywood cash cows such as Chris Nolan, Sam Raimi or even Michael Mann.

But then again, his next film is the disastrous looking G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, so who the Hell knows.

(July 10, 2009)

As everyone was getting up to leave the midnight preview screening of Sacha Baron Cohen’s ribald splaying, slaying (and sometimes laying!) attack on the typically ugly American that is his well-intended, and well-deserved victim(s), I overheard one young woman’s exclamated complaint.   “That was mean”, she exclaimed, “just plain mean.”

My question now is, just who exactly is this movie so mean to?   Is it mean to the ignorant rednecks who are carrying signs around that read “God Hates Fags”?   Is it mean to the holier-than-thou preacher trying to convert Brüno away from the “evils of homosexuality”?   Is it mean to the parents in the film who are willing to allow their children to humiliate themselves in the most heinous manner just so they can vicariously live their unsung dreams of stardom through them?   Is it mean to the celebrity-obsessed, reality TV culture who only care about what is hot and happening right now, which the film mocks with such brazen disdain?

Is it mean to those ignorant rednecks again, this time chanting “Straight Pride” and throwing anything they can throw at Cohen and his costar as they rip each others clothes off in a rabid lust in front of them during the pièce de résistance set piece staged at a mixed martial arts venue in the wilds of Red State Arkansas?   Is it mean to Libertarian congressman, and former presidential candidate Ron Paul (called RuPaul by Cohen’s Brüno) when he is somehow lured into a hotel room and nearly sexually assaulted by the thong-wearing Cohen/Brüno?

Okay, maybe the Ron Paul escapade was a bit mean, but overall I would have to say that one gets just what one deserves here.   Whether these encounters, all done in the same guerrilla filmmaking style as Cohen and director Larry Charles had done in their visceral Borat, are real or staged (a little bit of both I believe) their intended targets are well within the range of deserved ridicule or even downright mockery.   Mean?   Perhaps, but in no way does it come as undeserving.

More on Brüno, like its über-over-the-top shenanigans and my amazement at how the full monty Brüno managed to get an R rating, as well as the calming down of the needless pre-release nail-biting throughout the Gay community (it’s pro-gay guys, stop worrying!) when I post my review later this weekend.

(July 8, 2009)

Last week I picked my choices for the 10 best films of the first half of the year.   On second thinking some choices, I have added Jim Jarmusch’s film, The Limits of Control to the list (thereby knocking Goodbye Solo off the list).   I went back and rethought the film and realized I liked it a lot more than I first thought.  I also adjusted Watchmen, moving it up a few slots from its original tenth place.   I have had some detracters on that choice but I believe it to be a deconstructionist’s delight.   Watchmen is to the superhero movie what Todd Haynes’ I’m Not THere was to the biopic.

Anyway, that said, here is my new revised Top 10 list for the year (so far)

1) The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)

2) Hunger (Steve McQueen)

3) The Class (Laurent Cantet)

4) Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi)

5) Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone)

6) The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh)

7) Watchmen (Zack Snyder)

8) Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden)

9) The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)

10) Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)

Extending my list to a Top 12

(in order to incorporate all the films I would put in that elusive ‘great’ category)

11) Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani)

12) Public Enemies (Michael Mann)

I really do think this has been a good year in cinema so far (contrary to many of my fellow critics’ beliefs) and there are bound to be more great films in the second half.  That is usually when the better stuff comes out (for the most part).  I am guessing that when New Year’s Day comes around, only the top 4 are sure to still be on my list.   Last year at this time only 3 of my eventual Top 10 had been released.   In 2007, the number was 5.   In 2006, just 3.   So with that said, there is a good chance this list will look pretty different come year’s end.   But considering I can easily see 7 films as worthy of year end accolades, this must be a good year so far.    Who knows what the second half will bring.  We’ll see.

(July 6, 2009)

A few opening remarks on Michael Mann’s latest film, the Johnny Depp as John Dillinger as the Vampire Lestat rock star of depression era bankrobbers biopic, Public Enemies.

First off, let me get this out of the way.  I believe Michael Mann to be one of the best American filmmakers working today.  Hands down.  An auteur able to keep up with the likes of P.T. Anderson, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, Kelly Reichardt, Darren Aronofsky, Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino.   Perhaps even with David Lynch on a really really good day.

With that said, perhaps I went into Public Enemies with quite the overzealous mindset.   A mindset that ultimately led to my initial disappointment when first leaving the theatre.   Perhaps I was expecting the next coming of Howard Hawks or William Wellman and their classic gangster films.   Perhaps I was hoping for something akin to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde.   Maybe I was looking for another in a series of aggressive yet allusive (and oft-overlooked) mini-masterpieces such as Collateral and Miami Vice.   Perhaps I just wanted that aforementioned “one of the best” filmmakers working today.   Perhaps I was just overwhelmed.

What I got was just that.   Or at least as close as one can hope for.   Full of allusions to its cinematic predecessors, especially Bonnie & Clyde, and acting as ode to the genre’s history (the inevitable final shootout in front of the Biograph theater, though based on the real ending to Dillinger’s reign, is dripping in cinematic homage) Mann’s new gangster film, complete with the snarkiest of bravura performances by that rockstar-in-a-fedora, Johnny Depp, though less than I expected is still nonetheless the most frantic yet wistful shoot-em-ups ever put on film - or in this case on digital video.

To clear my somewhat biolar opening salvo up a wee bit, what at first glance I wasn’t sure about, is now, without doubt, one of my favorite films of 2009.   Hands down.

More in my review which will be forthcoming on this very site…

(July 2, 2009)

Now that 2009 has come to an abrupt center (today is the exact middle of the year - and my birthday to boot) it is time to look back at the first half that was.

So far 2009 has gotten off to a better start than 2008.   Sure, last year may have had stellar films such as Charlie Kauffman’s directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, Desplechin’s gorgeous A Christmas Tale, Wendy Reichardt’s neo-neorealist Wendy and Lucy and Soderbergh’s two-part Che biopic extraordinaire, but none of those would open until later in the year.  Not even The Dark Knight had opened yet.   Of my eventual five favourite films of the year, only Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light, which I had originally seen at the 2007 NYFF, had made an appearance at this point in 2008.

As of today, July 2nd (the exact middle of the year) there sits no less than six films that I could see being on my eventual best of 2009 list come New Year’s Day.   With the almost inevitable influx of quality films that inundate us at the end of each year (and I do NOT mean the crush of usually tepid, middlebrow, mediocrities that are considered Oscar hopefuls!) this could all mean one of three things.   1.  2009 will be one of the best years in cinema in a very long time.   2. The second half of the year is going to suck big time.  or 3. I’m getting soft in my old age and am not as critical as I used to be.

I am hoping for 1 but fearful of 2.  As for 3, I am only turning 42 today so I don’t think I’ve lost my edge all that much.   If anything I am a different kind of critical now than I was at 20 or 30.   Seriously though, this has been a pretty good first half, and several films have really really moved me (I’ll mention them below) but even with all that in mind, it still seems like that one GREAT movie - the one that gleams at the top of my annual best of lists like a shiny new whatchyamacallit - has yet to make its appearance.   I have an inkling it will be around by the end.

As for the best of the first half of 2009, here they are:

1) The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)

2) Hunger (Steve McQueen)

3) The Class (Laurent Cantet)

4) Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi)

5) Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone)

6) The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh)

7) Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden)

8) Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)

9) Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani)

10) Watchmen (Zack Snyder)

Seriously, this is more than a respectable year-end Top Ten List!  I would be proud to show this list to the world.   Even that mealy-mouth crotch pheasant Ben Lyons couldn’t argue with me!  Okay he probably would (especially considering Transformers didn’t make my list) but he’s a fucking idiot so who cares.

If the second half of the year is even half as good as the first half - and we have yet to see Inglourious Basterds, The Box, Shutter Island, A Serious Man, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Nine or 9 (?) - then we are in for the best year in cinema in nearly a decade.   Now if only we could stop Michael Bay from killing again.

I finally got to see Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker last night and I can say, without fear of sounding like a gushing fanboy who just got lucky in the wee hours of the morning, it is THE BEST FILM OF 2009!!

Whether it sits atop my best of list come New Years Day I cannot say, but for right now, this powerfully tense Iraq War drama is the best film I have seen since seeing Soderbergh’s Che last year.   I guess this means, foreign arthouse snob that I have so often been accused of being, I like American movies after all.   If The Hurt Locker does top my list this year it will be the fourth year in a row (Inland Empire, There Will Be Blood & Che before it) that an American film has topped said list.  Take that naysayers!

With all that said, on Thursday (my birthday incidentally) to celebrate the exact middle of the year, I will compile and post my list of the Best Films of 2009 - Part I.   In other words, the best films of the first half of the year.   With that said, I will sign off.

btw - My review of The Hurt Locker (as well as Public Enemies, Tony Manero & The Girlfriend Experience) will be posted at The Cinematheque.   Links to said reviews will be posted here so you can check them out - and you know you want to.