12/02/2007: "2007 Movie Round Up"

Hi All,

Well, I've watched a lot---a plethora, if you will---of movies this year and I thought I'd spare a post to talk about the ones I enjoyed most, why I did, some of those that let me down somewhat, and maybe one or two I thought were particularly, skull-crushingly bad. So, let's get going with my Top 11 (I tried to whittle it down to ten, but no go; instead I amalgamated two into one) movies of 2007, ranked in order of appreciation:

11. Smokin' Aces. Why did I like this flick? Well, I suppose I was in the mood for it at the time, and hell, it gives you just what the trailer promises: a bunch of stylized action all over the place for about 90 or so minutes. Although I have to admit, my tolerance for stylized violence seems to finally be on the ebb: the trailer for HITMAN with the helicopter hovering in midair cut with massive quantities of bullet casings falling to earth---which previously may've given me a semi---now fills me with apathy. I liked Alicia Keys in this, and I especially like Ryan Reynolds who I think can probably do a lot of stuff, acting-wise, but so far he's been stuck in goofy roles. I think he's become "the OTHER Canadian actor Ryan" (after Gosling), and while he may not have Gosling's chops, he's pretty damn good.

10. Hot Fuzz. Not as good as Shawn of the Dead, a little long, but a damn good, funny, knowing movie. I loved Timothy Dalton in this---that last scene with the minature church spire: hilarious. These guys are good at melding honest-to-god gory horror (there are some brutal scenes in this, honestly, though they are cut just a little quicker than your typical horror film: about a half-second less time lingering on the goriness, which somehow eases it back from outright horror) and humor.

9. Gobe Baby Gone. I got no problem with Ben Affleck. I went to IMDB with the intent of showing people all the good movies he's been in but you just couldn't remember ... unfortunately that was a wash. He's really done himself a disservice with some of those roles. Jeez. www.imdb.com/name/nm0000255 Still, I like him. Maybe it's just because everyone hammers him so hard. And I liked this flick. His brother, Casey, is a damn good actor and for my (nonexistent) money Michelle Monaghan is one of the best young-ish actresses in Hollywood (loved her in KISS, KISS, BANG BANG, which if you haven't seen yet you should go soak your head in shame). Didn't do well in the theaters---the Affleck curse continues---but hopefully will have a long and happy live in DVD.

8. 28 Weeks Later. Good zombie flick. The opening sequence is truly gripping; one of the better chase scenes I've seen in awhile. It gets somewhat video-gamey towards the end---those night-vision goggle sequences felt like I could've been playing Resident Evil---but overall well done. I like Robert Carlysle---probably best known for his portrayal of Begbie in TRAINSPOTTING, or to some one of the naked dudes in THE FULL MONTY---a whole lot.

7. The Lookout. A small-budget but terribly well-written and acted movie that came out to not a lot of fanfare early this year. Stars Joseph Gordon Leavitt, the kid from THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN, who has quietly but relentlessly been turning himself into a fantastic actor. It's a heist movie with a twist and with a big dollop of heart. Reminiscent in its way of Memento, insofar as the main character is concerned. Also with Jeff Daniels, who is fantastic.

6. Sunshine. Danny Boyle directed and Alex Garland wrote this great sci-fi thriller starring Cillian Murphy. I had to catch it at the arthouse theater downtown because it wasn't given any sort of wide rollout here. Why that is, I'm not sure. Premise: the sun is dying and a small group of researchers is sent on a mission to reignite it. I'll admit that at the end it gets a little loopy---it feels like the end's got some knuckleheaded producer's sticky fingerprints all over it---but overall, great. Strange to say, but it's not often you consider how powerful the sun is. Really, the most powerful physical force we have contact with in our lives. This movie makes you feel that acutely.

5. Eastern Promises. David Cronenberg's last, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, I felt to be overrated. Not that it was at all bad, but I guess I saw it after all the accolades it had thrown its' way and I thought to myself, 'Where's this coming from?' Like the performance of John Hurt: it was good, sure, but really, was it anything to get overly amped about? I think it was a matter of some people in the movie biz thinking it was about time Cronenberg got some props so they larded it on; which I think is true, the guy does deserve props, but maybe it was overdone. Anyway, this one I'd heard less about and I feel to be superior. Watch it for the sauna scene if nothing else; only Cronenburg could pull it off.

4. 300. I'm not sure it really belongs this high up, but it is solidly in the top-10. People want to hammer it for being nothing but a collage of action montages, sure, fine; and I'll admit that its flaws start to become evident upon second viewings: I saw it again this summer on DVD and was shocked at some of the silly dialogue and the heart-tugging bits that totally fail because they're not really set up properly. But hey, I liked this flick. Pure adrenaline. I like the audacity to meld reality and fantasy and purely as a visual spectable, it's eye-popping.

3. Knocked Up / Superbad. Both great films out of the Apatow factory. Both similar in that they take things to extreme but there's always a beating heart in each of them, a gentleness or goodwill or indefinable something that makes them, the characters or I guess just the mood, lovable. Katherine Heigl is great and I love Paul Rudd in anything he does. Seth Rogen I'm less sure on---he may be better off behind the camera, writing, than in front of it doing what he does; check his IMDb in a few years and he might have an Affleck-like record going on. And Jonah Hill, who somewhat unsurprisingly plays a fictional Seth Rogan in Superbad ... a lot of people felt he was a little too shrill, a little too over-the-top. I don't know. I mean, he's the gawky-looking fat guy---what's he supposed to do? Although granted, Chris Farley played the gawky fat guy in a different, and probably more lovable way, and a way that, had he not died, would've had longevity. Jonah Hill's version, maybe not. Then again, who can say? Either way, Hill and Rogen are talented and will have fine careers in one way or another. The whole Apatow crew will be a wrecking ball for the next 5 years in Hollywood at least, and should they fade from there, well, they'll have made their marks.

2. Grindhouse. What can I say? Some people hated this. Hated the idea, hated the execution, hated the hubris lurking behind the conception in the first place. A lot of thinking has been done to figure out why it did so poorly: too long, poorly marketed, so on. It was long, yes, but as I knew that going in it didn't hamper my enjoyment. Poorly marketed? I guess, but since I knew it was coming a year before it showed up I guess that angle is lost on me. But again, I'm a nerd. There is a certain hubris to the movie, especially Tarantino's film: to totally erase the cast and start all over halfway through the film is hugely hubristic, I guess. And though I love Tarantino's dialogue it was a talky-ass film. But taken as a whole, with the hilarious trailers, Rodriguez's PLANET TERROR, all the cameo appearances or the career-dead actors these directors always get delight in resuscitating, the campy over-the-top violence like the Tarantino death scene in the first film and the car accident in the second or the eventual "Rosario-Dawson-shoe-as-coffin-nail" death of Stuntman Mike to finish it off (even the wacky gore of Eli Roth's THANKSGIVING trailer) ... all of it is the work of people who have such love for their material and are such indelibly themselves as directors that, well, I couldn't help but love it. They have my number, both those guys, and they've had it for years. I loved it.

1. Michael Clayton. By far and away the best movie I saw in 2007. And it came out of fucking NOWHERE, at least as far as my interest was concerned. Went to it with zero expectations, came out amazed. Best flick since CRASH, at least insofar as my in-theater enjoyment was concerned. Starts with a bravura voice-over---delivered by Tom Wilkinson, who was just extraordinary in this film---that, to me, was starting the whole film on a tightrope: such an immense chunk of dialogue, spoken in a rising tone of paranoia (I mean, I tried to figure how long it would've been on the written page, and I came up with between 2-3 pages) that you're either hooked or you're not and man, I was hooked. Hooked hard. And listen, Clooney---who I like and regard highly though whose staggering appeal I never truly got---is great in this. I finally understood something of his allure. Loved this flick.

Now, how about a few that let me down. These are ones I enjoyed but not as much as I'd hoped to:

1. The Simpsons. Not that I disliked it, not at all, just that overall it gave me about as many laughs as a regular vintage episode would've. And it ran 3 times as long. Still, saw it in a crowded theater with a lot of Simpson's fanatics, so still a good time.

2. American Gangster. A case of heightened expectations? I'm not sure. Good, yes. Always get a strong performance out of those two leads and Ridley Scott is one of the most versatile and reliable directors out there. Just didn't eventualize the way I'd have hoped it to.

3. No Country For Old Men. I love the Cohens. I thought everyone involved in this one, acting-wise, was solid as hell. Javier Bardem gets most of the credit from critics, but Josh Brolin was excellent. His wife, Kelly McDonald, ditto. Woody Harrelson, again ditto. I guess the problem I have goes back to the book and the book's author, Cormac McCarthy. Now he's one of my favorite writers and his reputation is pretty much, to my mind, unimpeachable. But with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN he did something different. It was a literary book, yes, but also commercial---as commercial as that man can get. And I think critics, both book and film, want to accord this book/film with heightened meaning that just, to my mind, isn't there. I mean it's there in McCarthy's ouvre, his work as sum total---but in NCFOM? No, I don't think so. This idea that the Bardem character, Chigurgh, is a signifier of a new kind of violence, a token of a new ungovernable way of mankind ... doesn't wash with me. He's a psycho killer with a perverse code of behavior. We've seen that a thousand times in a thousand different manifestations. It's no more subtle or profound an interpretation than any other psycho---maybe a bit better-done, being who wrote it, but overall and in its antecedents, no. Not to my mind. And I think there's this sort of wilful blindness on the part of critics, seeing as it's McCarthy, to ascribe some deeper profundity to this book, this film, simply because who's behind it. McCarthy couldn't just write a crime caper, could he? Well, yes, I'm sure he could. To my reading, he did. Same way Mailer wrote TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE. And so I guess I was bothered ... not by the movie, but the critical reception. Not that everyone's letting McCarthy off the hook, but more like they wilfully dispute the evidence presented on the page and foist some heightened meaning on everything, which McCarthy may or may not have intended. I don't know. What's so bad about a well-written crime caper? Why does it all have to aspire to some huge and grandiose meaning? Can the structure of either the book or film, or it's characters, truly support that weight? In this case I don't think so. THE ROAD, yes. BLOOD MERIDIAN, yes. NCFOM? No.

And, okay, I'll spare a few paragraphs for my most hated movie of the year.

1. HALLOWEEN. Rob Zombie is a talented guy. Schizophrenically so, the more I see of his work, but yes. And he's on the biggest downwards spiral I can think of.

HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES was good. It was creepy-crawly, crazy, get-under-your-skin weird (and I don't think it needs stating that it takes a whole hell of a lot to get under my skin). If I didn't know Rob Zombie from his music, you wouldn't have had a hard time convincing me it was directed by a pack of escaped mental patients. But there was an energy to it, a freneticism, a ballsiness, as well as a technical accumen that I really dug. It was grimy and good.

Then came THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, about a group of serial killers on the roam which included a lot of half-assed sermonizing of "the world's an inherently evil place and we're only the righteous manifestation of that evil" variety that may as well have drooled off the pen of a 14-year-old bubblegum goth, plus a lot of gratuitous knife-licking by Bill Mosely and a farcical ending: a carful of these loons (who'd spent the movie raping and torturing and killing innocent people and now, for some reason, we were supposed to care about them?) driving into a police roadblock, a hail of bullets and their own demise to the strains of "Freebird." Painful to watch, this scene, only because you knew Zombie looked at it like a BUTCH CASSIDY AND SUNDANCE KID ending except nobody gave a fart in a windstorm if these characters (one of whom, Sheri Moon Zombie, is the worst working actress today, evidenced by the fact she works when her husband is behind the camera: www.imdb.com/name/nm0600667 ) died. I watched with the sort of pain one writer feels for another writer to see the other's aims so fully squandered by his own gross and somewhat arrogant miscalculations.

Then comes HALLOWEEN. What else can be said? Apparently it was dogged by controversy all through its production. The opening dialogue between Michael's parents---the awful Moon-Zombie and the always-overacting William Forsythe (who can, to his credit, be good, as in THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD)---where father tells mother he's going to, ahem, "Skull-fuck her head" and she makes that chirping-bird gesture with her hand, as if to say, "Blah-blah-blah." Who reacts to someone telling them they're going to skull-fuck their head (is there a more beastly act on earth?) by giving the chirpy-bird hand signal? Talk about your underwhelming reactions. It's not even the actors' fault: Rob Zombie wrote this ridiculous mess, so the blame's squarely on him. Or everyone's fault for cashing their paychecks.

It gets worse. It's just so silly. Like the scene where Michael Myers is ties his dozing father---completely ENCASES him---to his barca lounger using duct tape then slit his throat. How did he manage that? Or the scene where the weasely, brine-shrimp-proportioned mental ward guard sneaks into the asylum in the dead of night, unarmed (!), opens 7-foot Mike Myers' cell and attempts to rape a woman there (!!) all the while taunting behemoth masked Myers (!!!) until, totally unpredicatably, Mike grabs the 110-pound wet rag of a guard and marries his head to the tile wall. Then he escapes. Why not just leave the insane asylum unlocked and let Mike wander off, Rob Zombie? That acttually makes more sense.

My typing hands are tired.

All best, Craig.