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Year in the Life

2011 looks to be another drop in box office performance but I thought an exceptional year in great films was released. The quality was high, enough I can't keep up. The trailers reflected the strength of this year, with shining examples such as Melancholia, Shame, Brighton Rock, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Super 8, and just this last week, Prometheus, The Hobbit, and the Dark Knight Rises. But the award for best trailer has to be The Tree of Life. This gorgeous two minutes summed up the infinite space this film resides with beautiful images coinciding with the voiceovers of Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt asking our eternal questions. Like the greatest trailers, expectations lived up to the movie.

Personally, it was a long year for me, but the movies helped make it shorter. Follows is a log of what I saw at the movies and, mostly, at home.

Let Me In - Respectful Americanized remake of the excellent Scandinavian vampire tale.

Afterschool - Learned about this from Mike D'Angelo's Scenic Routes blog about life and death in a boarding prep school. The movie had a chilling style unshakeable while watching.

Two Lane Blacktop - Finally got around to watching Criterion's release of this seventies road movie. Who knew James Taylor could act. Memorable ending.

The Night of the Hunter - Beautiful scary fairy tale. Best Shelley Winters movie ever made.

Heaven Can Wait - Read somewhere this should replace It's a Wonderful Life as a holiday classic. No it shouldn't.

Nowhere Boy - Biopics usually don't excite me, and especially rock ones, but was interested in this telling of young John Lennon because the director was artist Sam Taylor Wood. Nicely done.

The American - Quiet thriller and character study by George Clooney as an assassin hiding out in rural Italy. Anton Corbijn's patient direction was a joy.

Greenberg - Why I still hate Ben Stiller, but Greta Gerwig shines. Transfixed by ten seconds of her dancing alone to the Beatles's "Honey Pie".

Last Train to Munich - Who knew about the Phony War?

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - Amazing surprise. Full of youth, energy and new styles of filmmaking. Just great.

The Hangover - Stayed away from this fratboy mystery for too long. Worth the binge for a nice recovery.

The Honeymoon Killers - The B-movie title hides this AA-movie that is a masterpiece of American cinema. Makes Bonnie and Clyde the overrated textbook it is.

Never Let Me Go - This has a dedicated following, but I couldn't find the path.

A Film Unfinished - A young Jewish woman looks direct into the camera of her captor's filming and says with her eyes for the audience to notice the horror around her. It's the first time I've ever seen that in a B-roll from the Holocaust. Not the suffering, but the awareness of the nightmare happening. Like she was a time traveller reporting from the present. This is a must see doc about filmmaking, war, memory, lies, and loss.

Stranger Than Paradise - Never saw this independent landmark. Now I know why it's legend. Wonderful original.

Ashes and Diamonds - I've been discovering Polish cinema and this tragedy about a pivotal point in its history is profound.

The Illusionist - Beautiful story about age and youth.

Somewhere - Sofia Coppola's best movie to date. An abstract portrait of a man at the edge of his life driving in circles in his Ferrari.

Hereafter - Heard this was aimless. Found this ghost story on target.

Cedar Rapids - Heard this was on target. Found it aimless.

Rango - Looked great, story slight.

Surrogates - B-movie surprise.

The Adjustment Bureau - B-movie bust.

The Kids Are Allright - The movie isn't.

Submarine - Should've stayed underwater.

Bridesmaids - Surprising was the realistic portrait of a woman down on her luck. Sympathetic comedy. One of the best this year.

Bellflower - Evan Glodell's amazing first feature. A new look and energy worth catching, but can't be bottled up.

Metropia - Unique animation about dystopian future that was strong on atmosphere, less on story. Left a creepy feeling, the good kind.

Touching the Void - The best movie I've seen portraying expat life in Tokyo with amazing cinematography. Story goes loose at the end, but a thrilling ride nevertheless.

Hanna - Action trying to be art. Bad attempt.

The Talented Mr. Ripley - Hadn't seen since it first came out. Still a nightmare about trying not to get caught. Damon is divine.

The Future - Miranda July's second movie is not hipster angst but a sincere meditation about existence and struggle to reconcile the end. A fave of mine this year.

Whip it - Fun girl power.

Restrepo - Best doc I've seen about current Americans at war. One of the filmmakers died in combat after.

Troll Hunter - Funny Scandinavian safari.

A Christmas Carol - Agree with Dave Kehr, one of the best versions I've seen in a new style.

Timer - This is one of best, most thought provoking movies about human attraction I've ever seen. More amazing is it wraps it in the romcom/chick flick. Emma Caulfield is brilliant. Rent it.

Fish Tank - British drama on the dole. My first and still best look at Michael Fassbender.

Melancholia - Lars von Trier's best movie about depression and the end of the world. Beautiful downer.

Attack the Block - Alien invasion version of Shaun of the Dead. British comic wit.

The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo - Procedural story, but shows Fincher is at the top of his game. Rooney Mara is a tsunami coming.

Enough. Let me get out of here and see some more before 2011 runs out.

Happy new year.

Note: Updated for my instant watch habits for the past year.

Trailer Review: Prometheus - Screaming Again in Space

A lot of hype has built up for director Ridley Scott returning to science fiction. It's not trivial. He's created two masterpieces of the genre: Blade Runner and Alien. It really is worth remembering how groundbreaking the original movie was. It introduced horror into outer space and pushed those genres from their B-movie gutter into A-movie status. As with Star Wars, the movie's special effects confirmed what audiences wanted. Moreover, its design dismantled the clean future of spaceships that was established with 2001. And the people traveling to the far reaches of the galaxy were like you and me. Truck drivers hauling ore across space. Interspace travel was done for a living and it was tough. One of the best unsung scenes from the movie was at the beginning when the crew has woken up from their cryogenic sleep and are sitting around a dining table hungry from the long flight. They're a bunch of greasy, burnt out labor complaining about being underpaid and looking forward to when their shift ends. Blue collar instead of uniforms with bars, it put a new demographic of people in space.

Enough, what's the trailer like? Ridley Scott hinted that his movie referenced the classic, but he was adamant it was a new story. Well, the trailer shows clearly this is a direct prequel to Alien. The movie follows the original plot. A ship descends into the storm ravaged planet and bubble-headed astronauts find a tomb where the famous eggs reside. There's an ancient human face at the center of the chamber looking close to statues from Easter Island. They take an egg back and the horror begins with a rush to get off the rock. But what really gives away this is a direct descendant, is the slow reveal of the the letters in the same typography as the source. We also see the original alien ship crash onto the surface, but, curiously no alien is ever shown. But we all know what one looks like.

This franchise has had more sequels than needed. The second, Aliens, can be argued to be just as good, but the later ones have cheapened the brand to silliness (now with Predators). So it looks like Ridley Scott is putting a new coat of paint as a restoration. Will this be a new classic? Can't wait to find out.

Opening June 8, 2012, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: The Hobbit - Another Quest

One of my favorite books when I was ten was Tolkien's "The Hobbit". An adventure about a little person with big feet who joins many dwarves and a wizard to take treasure from a great dragon. It was magical. It took fortitude to get through the sequel, "The Lord of the Rings", but the pleasure of reading was instilled forever.

Peter Jackson returns to direct the prequel to the greatest trilogy in movie history and the trailer touches the bases of that earlier saga. All the characters return: Gandalf, Bilbo and Gollum. All of this is nostalgic comfort to the legions of fans who saw and grew up with the original movies. So the trailer plays it safe.

But what's a gamble is the dwarves singing of the legend of the quest they're about to pursue. This is true to the book, and what is remarkable about Jackson and his crew is they're not afraid to present the unique charms of the text. Singing in a big budget movie. Not done. But their faith to the book was what was so rewarding in The Lord of the Rings. They took enormous risks to have talking trees, a falling demon battling a wizard to the ends of existence, and time out to show daily life in the Shire. "The Hobbit" has many risks beyond singing. A big one is animals and a dragon who talk. You don't want this to be Dr. Doolittle. But watching the dwarves join in a chant is what makes you want to return to Middle Earth. An unexpected journey well worth taking.

Opening December 14, 2012, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: The Dark Knight Rises - Gotham's Glorious End

Wow. That's pretty much all I can say. I've seen muddied photos of shooting on the final chapter in Christopher Nolan's Batman series, and the most worrisome sign was Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. Pictures of her in the catsuit didn't look pretty and bolstered the argument that she was miscast. She lacked a certain edge required.

But the best part of this trailer is Hathaway as Catwoman's real world alternate, Selina Kyle, in dancing embrace with tuxedoed Bruce Wayne. She whispers a threat to him that a storm is coming against the wealthy and the privileged that "live so large and leave so little for the rest of us." This sounds like revenge of the 99%. Hero defending the rich, villains fighting for the poor. Occupy Gotham. I was wrong. Her bite is razor sharp.

Other highlights: The masked villian Bane looks like a high-tech terrorist with his gas mask strapped over his bald head. There's a football game with a sprint to the end zone for a touchdown for life. The lovely Marion Cotillard is in it. And the batwing looks like the baddest transformer not even Michael Bay could blow up. Rises. More like soars.

Opening July 20, 2012, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: In the Land of Blood and Honey - Love when Everything is Breaking Apart

Popular actors directing their first movie is a warning to drive slowly. Only a few Hollywood stars ever pull off the transition successfully while most embarrassingly trip over themselves (John Travolta's Battlefield Earth). When I heard Angelina Jolie had written and directed a movie about the Bosnian War, I got worry (especially one with a long title). What a perfect PR stunt to glorify her charitable personality towards strife ridden corners of the globe. Those good intentions don't sound bad, but sneaking social causes into the movies can look like propaganda or one note messages two hours too long.

The first surprise watching the trailer for In the Land of Blood and Honey were the gritty fight scenes. The machine gun fire by soldiers scurrying around ruined cities begets imagery to larger wars of history than the commonly perceived guerrilla warfare in Bosnia. But the story moves on to a male Serb police officer who falls in love with a woman Muslim artist as their country gets torn apart along their ethnic backgrounds. The Muslims are being rounded up and executed, and the officer is fighting to protect her from the fatal end of ethnic cleansing happening around them.

This story can easily be taken from any World War II tragedy of Germans hiding Jews from the Holocaust. Certainly, ethnic cleansing was an update of that earlier vicious act on humanity. The production looks swift and unsentimental for a romantic story. The actors are handsome, but not Hollywood types. They look like locals which gives the movie a better reality. I don't know if all this fits together, but from the trailer, it looks like an old fashioned romance, swept up in a war, against the backdrop of a too easily forgotten tragedy. That's a lot to chew on for a first time writer/director, but in some ways, all that historical importance is a safe place to hide under. Sometimes too safe.

Opening December 23, 2011, Verdict: Wait for the Critics

Trailer Review: The Woman in Black - Haunting Harry Potter

It's nice to see the ghost story return after the fad of torture porn the last decade. Ghosts are harder to write about, because hauntings happen due to a past tragedy, therefore, the stories involve a mystery to solve instead of watching easy slashing. Paranormal Activity has ingeniously used the past to create sequels that further the investigation on video.

This trailer for The Woman in Black, with Daniel Radcliffe and Ciarán Hinds, pulls you in with its landscape of foggy moors and nineteenth century literary classicism. With a girl reciting a poem about a haunted house, it sounds like something read from Edgar Allan Poe. So much of these hauntings involve children. This one has three, instead of the Kubrickian twins standard for this genre. Could be a bad sign of over doing it, but there's enough flashes of originality to anticipate a good scare. Trailer's ending is a cliche, but still jumped me out of my seat.

Opening February 3, 2012, Verdict: Wait for the Critics

Trailer Review: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Soggy Search

Precocious kids and feel good is a dangerous combination for me. It combines annoyance with didactic sentimentality that makes me twitch and shut it off when watching a movie. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. The story is about a boy and his father who dies on 9/11 and his son discovers a key his father left and searches New York City to find out what it locks. The boy is described as having a gift for seeking out objects from the twentieth century, which doesn't seem that hard, since we're only ten years in the new one. He isn't a real nine-year old, but one of those gifted children that come from another planet giving words of wisdom which adults too clueless pray at their feet for knowledge.

I was already annoyed at this trailer introducing the kid, but the added saccharine of 9/11 gives it a false importance, and more important, feels dated. We've moved away from that event far enough to put together more sophisticated interpretations of what it means to us. The loss of family is a given.

Another surprise is the talent invested in this, with Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow, and Lydia Davis roped in. This type of macro style (Crash) is, fortunately, fading out and adds to this movie's outdatedness. I wonder if it was in development hell for a long time. Extremely wasted and incredibly bad.

Opening December 25, 2011, Verdict: Skip

Trailer Review: A Separation - Split Suspicions

Foreign films are an opportunity for the moviegoer to travel and see not just the scenery, but what the locals and culture are like on a small scale. Iran has been showing up in the movies more often. No One Knows About Persian Cats, Persopolis, and Kandahar are recent examples of a new wave coming from that country. A Separation is getting extra attention as one of the best from winning many film festival awards. Certainly, reviewing the trailer shows a film with much promise. Starting with a couple sitting next to each other and arguing for a divorce to an off-screen bureaucrat, the scene has a startling directness that hooks you into watching the rest of it. The couple return to living with their family. Nadir, the husband, cares for his ailing father who one day is found dead behind closed doors, and there's suspicions that Nadir or someone else in the household was the cause. A mystery and a drama on family and marriage, this film's look has the intimate force similar to films coming out of the Romanian new wave like 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days.

I think the pressures happening in Iran are fueling a creative groundswell. If you put the lid on boiling water, you're going to get a whistling kettle. For an American, these films are invaluable, giving a peek into what life is like for its citizens. But it also underscores that art comes from everywhere, even in places where self expression is limited.

Opening December 20, 2011, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: Albatross - Sad by the Seaside

I've spotted a rare bird in current movies: The British seaside drama. It has a long legacy. The ocean is always cinematic but the towns that rest along the coast of Britannia always have a sour rot that miss the sunny froth of the tropics. This summer's Brighton Rock showed how the working class and criminal underworld grow there. The North Atlantic hangs over these villages like gray clouds, always blocking the sunlight, its residents staying indoors.

But the current interest in this setting is for the coming of age story. Albatross looks like a mashup of My Summer of Love and Submarine where repressed and pouty teens try to survive against the cold weather of their souls. Emelia is an aspiring writer on the South Coast of England who works at a hotel and befriends one of the daughters, Beth, of an author who lives there. The Dad is a burned out writer who recognizes talent in Emelia and tutors her in her aspirations. Predictably, an affair starts and drowns Emelia from pursuing her dreams. This story has enough suds to clean the Atlantic.

I can't pretend this is any good, but there's something to the setting. This summer's flawed Submarine used the location to best effect with visual tricks to showcase its decaying beauty. The beaches are always empty and lost souls only go out to stare at the surf for ships on the horizon to take them away to find the boats all sunk.

Opening January 2, 2012, Verdict: Skip