But that ending…damn I love that ending…executed perfectly by Affleck the director and little brother Casey who has a heart shattering moment with his girlfriend (Monaghan) where the two just don’t see eye to eye on an issue. Watch the way Monaghan poignantly pleas with her partner, stating her case through tears…then watch how Affleck rigidly sticks to his guns despite the pleas from the woman he loves. This is a bigger issue for him than what your significant other wants you to do…this is about what is morally right, and this wrestling with morality isn’t as cut and dry as most Hollywood dramas would have you think.
Mira Nair's film based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri is beautiful to look at, but I am afraid it is nothing more than that. I wasn't particularly moved by the film, although I was certain I was seeing something worth investing my emotions in. However, a lot of it just seemed very formulaic and sitcomy. I liked the performances and I liked the early relationship of Gogol (Kal Penn) and his father, and the story about how is parents came from Calcutta to New York City. To me that was the most interesting part of the story, the first hour or so really works, but it falls apart in the third act when Gogol (going by Nick, since he doesn't want to be called by , what he thinks, is a weird first name anymore) seperates from his likeable and understanding girlfriend, and marries an Indian woman in order to make his mother happy. This dynamic is interesting at first as we get some profound commentary on the roles of women in Indian culture, and how Gogol just thinks that his mother would want him to marry "one of their own" as his aunt puts it.
I wish they would have abandoned the relationships problems between Gogol and his new Indian wife and would have explored the deeper emotions and problems that Gogol's mother has with him so easily falling into tradition, when he was so hell-bent on breaking free from it (something she wishes she could have done). To me, the mother is the most interesting character in the film, she is marginalized by her husband (who is compassionate, but upon leaving India for New York City, repeats the mantra to friends and family that "she'll get used to the city") and expected to be nothing more than an Indian woman. Sadly, the story marginalizes her by the end of the film, and where there really could have been an epiphany between mother and son; they opt to have that moment for the not so shocking scene in the car between Gogol and his father, which reveals the origins of Gogol's name.
It's too hit and miss in the third act, and a lot of the emotional oomph is predictable. However, it is still worth seeing for that first hour and the cinematography is beautiful as the great Frederick Elms (he shot one of my favorite films of the 90's The Ice Storm) shoots the film in a washed out almost black and white look and distracts you long enough in the third act to where you are too busy noticing the beautiful filmmaking, to realize you are watching an ending (to an otherwise good movie) with about as much emotional power as a Lifetime movie.
The Bourne Ultimatum
Breach
Billy Ray's film is a clinic in how to make a smart political thriller. Much like Michael Clayton (my pick for the fourth best film this year, had I seen this at the time I made my list, I would have made them both #4, as they share so many elements), Breach is in the tradition of such great thrillers as The Falcon and the Snowman and 3 Days of the Condor. It excels in the basic understanding that the audience is smart enough to enjoy a thriller that is thrilling based on character development, crisis of conscience, deception, and guilt that just build and builds until a conclusion that is not only a satisfying payoff, but also ambiguous and frustrating in the same way that the tete-a-tete at the end of Zodiac is.
The film is about the accounts of Eric O'Neil, an ambitious FBIer looking to make agent. He is assigned the seemingly boring duty of being watch dog over a perverted, religious, soon-to-be retired Agent, Robert Philip Hanssen. O'Neil (played by the surprisingly good Ryan Phillippe) thinks it's a junk job, a waste of his talents. Watching for perverted mannerisms is not his cup of tea. Hanssen (the criminally underappreciated Chris Cooper) is pushed into a small office while the FBI higher-ups investigate him (O'Neil thinks they are just investigating Hanssen for his unpopular personal online hobby), but in fact he is being marginalized so that he may not have access to the files he once did, you know, seeing how he was selling them to the Soviets and all.
The film tells us that this was the greatest breach in the history of American security. There is a moment when they strip down Hanssen's car and the things they find are pretty incredible. But the film succeeds because they don't look to villainize Hanssen (he did a good job of that himself) rather, Ray and Cooper make a smart decision to portray the troubled traitor as a complex character; deeply religious and devout not to just his God, but his family as well. He is like a grand inquisitor, always sizing people up and never quite sure of a situation, but he isn't paranoid. He looks normal, like any other suit in the organization, a drone if you will, driving his Ford Taurus, he is hardly recognizable. It is in this portrayal of Hanssen, that the film is most intriguing.
As O'Neil slowly begins to realize the "why" he must learn how to concentrate on the "who", as in who is Hanssen? Earlier in the film there is a crisis of conscience as O'Neil feels like the FBI is ragging on this guy for his immoral vices.
What I liked about the film was that Ray decides not to try and explain Hanssen, rather he paints a portrait of a man that felt disrespected and did something to show his superiors just how good of a spy he was.
Religion also plays a large role in the film. It is used not to cleanse, but rather to deceive, and one has to wonder if the last line of the film isn't a joke. Is there any sincerity in the prayers of Hanssen and O'Neil? It seems to me that they use the device as a means for deception, rather than any form of spiritual revelation.
This blurb has already gone on way too long, but there is so much to explicate with the religious themes in the film. Billy Ray is a talented director, his previous film, Shattered Glass, shares many similarities with this one. That film was also about deception (and it also got a surprisingly good performance from a bad actor, Hayden Christiansen), but it had a much more pathetic, yet likeable liar. It was at least understandable why Stephen Glass fabricated his stories. With Hanssen, there is no starting point in trying to understand why he did what he did. Much like the frustration felt in Zodiac, Breach also builds upon the audiences frustration that Hanssen keeps things so close to his chest, he never blows up and reveals his intentions, he never lets on why he gave so much information to what calls "that godless country."
However, the miracle of it all is that Cooper's brilliant performance and Ray's understanding of the material, having treaded similar ground already, is that (much like Stephen Glass) they turn Hanssen into a likeable enough person. By the end of the film, when he utters that last line to O'Neil, you can't help but be moved by this request from a man we have no business feeling sympathy for. It's one of the best films of 2007.
About two hours into Paul Thomas Anderson's new film, There Will Be Blood, I realized I was watching the work of a master. Right out of the gate I will admit my biases towards Anderson's films, only in his late 20's, the man has made two of the best films of the 90's and turned Adam Sandler into a good actor. I think his Magnolia is easily one of the ten best films of the 90's and is a director not at all unlike Martin Scorsese - not just because his style is reminiscent of the great American director - but because he draws inspiration from so many different filmmakers. Martin Scorsese advises young filmmakers that they should not shy away from seeing as many films as they can, rather, they should enrich their pallet, study the masters and improve upon your own ideas by emulating the best.
Plainview finds out about a major oil town (where the oil seeps through the dirt, combing the two major themes of the film: Greed and religion, more on that later) via a young drifter named Paul Sunday, who tells him that his father will sell their ranch, which would allow Plainview to build a pipeline to the ocean. Paul's brother Eli, a Jonathan Edwards type, fire and brimstone preacher, he welcomes Plainview, dismissing his greed as an opportunity to get a new church built as well as elevate his status even higher within the small community. We soon come to find that Plainview despises Eli (like everyone else) and in a crucial scene, tells Eli he may bless the Oil station before they break ground, but come time for the ceremony, he undermines Eli's male supremacy by naming the machine after Eli's abused sister and having her bless the site. After this, H.W. becomes injured in an accident and loses his hearing, thus forcing Plainview to become not only tolerant of his son, but compassionate towards him as well, and that just won't do as Plainview sends him away so that he can continue becoming the most wealthy oil man alive.
This is the set up for the major themes of Anderson's most interesting, even if not his best, film to date. Anderson's view of Religion and greed are not that much unlike Eric Von Stroheim's silent classic Greed. He is a director who has tackled themes of similar, however more fanciful, religious weight in Magnolia. Both of those films required actors to go over the top and become very operatic in their delivery of emotions that were real, even though they were surrounded by absurdity (frogs falling from the sky, or as in There Will Be Blood, the slaptastic baptism scene). Some have complained that the acting is too over the top for their liking and doesn't border on comical, rather Anderson gladly lets his characters become caricatures in spite of his heavily themed story of greed and Evangelical Christianity.
"I have a competition in me; I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I've built up my hatreds over the years little by little. I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I want to earn enough money I can get away from everyone. I can't keep doing this on my own, with these... people."
The issue I take with the film is that it seems the determination by Anderson to bring this story to a somewhat tidy (although bloody) ending doesn't keep the hypnotic charm of the rest of the film. It turns from a beautiful epic story of greed and Religion, and the audacity and bravado one must have to be at the top of both of those businesses (yes, it's safe to call Evangelical Christianity a business), yet he trades that gusto and that sheer madness the film had, steamrolling its way to an unnoticeable three hours, and trades it in for an unnecessary sardonic ending. The ending is almost a retread of the oil "baptism" of Eli in the field and the mocking "baptism" of Daniel in the church, it just seemed familiar, which is a shame, because so much of the film was alive and fresh. A film that for 2 hours and 30 minutes, was one of the best film experiences I have ever had. I just wish I could have bought that ending.
One of the better films of last year and a genuinely scary horror film. It's also a sad meditation (when it actually slows down for you to meditate on things) on the secrets a father keeps and the feeling of loss and isolation. The scene in the subway is one of the scariest I have seen. Great horror film.
Scott Frank is one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood (Out of Sight, Minority Report) and with his first time directing, The Lookout is one of the better thrillers of recent memory. Interested more in the psyche of its characters rather than on bank heists, shootouts, and car chases, it was one of the biggest surprises of last year. It reminded me just how talented he is, as it ranks among his best film and is an intelligent thriller with a tremendous eye and feel for pacing and a great ear for dialogue (just like Out of Sight and Minority Report.) Check it out.
The best film of the year is not at all unlike No Country For Old Men (my number two choice, but really these rankings are arbitrary) in that Zodiac is a dark and nihilistic film that offers no simple resolution, answers, or reason for death. It excels on a frustrating and ambiguous narrative idea: not knowing who the Zodiac killer is, and never being able to find out. Or rather the broader, more overarching, theme that death is not only prevalent, but also constant, nonnegotiable, and impervious to our desire to understand it (or in the case of Zodiac decoding it.)
The manhunt spans a decade – giving cinematographer Harris Savides the opportunity to paint the landscape in multiple shades of gray against changing backgrounds only adding to the theme of uncertainty and ambiguity as always spanning time and always present in our lives (even though things change, death does not) – it is an uncertainty that not only haunts the city, but those determined (Jake Gyllanhal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and Anthony Edwards) to solve the mystery of the Zodiac's cryptic letters, which taunted the newspapermen and police officers. The film’s dark, dreary look and plodding storyline are perfect for the type of story director David Fincher is trying to tell. The case could not have been exciting and even though Mark Ruffalo, who plays inspector David Toschi, was the inspiration for the Clint Eastwood film, Dirty Harry and Steve McQueen's character in Bullitt, at this point in his career he just looks tired; tired of all the death and the ambiguity of the case.
And that’s what Fincher, in his most (thankfully) subdued film gets across: the frustration. Not only our own anxiety and frustration watching the film, but also that of the entire Bay Area at the time. This is not an action packed fast paced thriller, but it is a slow procedural that is authentic in its sets, costumes, even the photography seems to be something out of a 1970’s crime drama. It is this excruciating attention to detail that turned some off to the film, but I was thankful that Fincher went this route. With a case that spans almost two decades, with a killer who has never been caught, you cannot speed up the process. The film had to be slow, methodical, and accurate in its portrayal of the facts and the real life characters that poured their lives into this case, but that doesn’t mean Zodiac isn't boring or unengaging.
Zodiac is a procedural unmatched by many. I mentioned JFK earlier which I think is still the best film of its kind, but Zodiac deserves a place right next to it (like 1a) and among other great procedurals like All the President’s Men and The Insider. That’s pretty good company.
The Coen Brothers are truly two of the greatest filmmakers of my generation. Virtually every film is a masterpiece and although they have their shortcomings with the narrative arc of some of their films, they are never boring. They understand film language (which is to say, visual literacy) and when they are at their best, they are reinventing the genre they are working in. Like Blood Simple and Fargo, and now perhaps their greatest achievement, No Country For Old Men, the reinvent the genre again and raise the bar to new heights.
Silence and anticipation are prevalent (and key) throughout the film as there are many scenes that unfold without the aide of cheesy suspense music or an explanation of what’s happening from one of the characters. The characters know when the other is nearby, and the execution of these scenes are worthy of Hitchcock. A perfect example of this is the scene in the motel room where Moss (Josh Brolin) sits and waits for Chigurh to come to him room. The lack of cutaway, the silence, and the anticipation is masterfully done, and when Moss calls downstairs to the front desk for help, no cutaway is needed; we just hear the phone ring and ring and ring.
The final moments of No Country are quite different as retired sheriff Ed Tom Bell (great name), played by Tommy Lee Jones, remembers a dream he had the night before. The dream is crucial to understanding the film, but just like the “coin flip” scene, the end of the film has been much discussed. What most struck me about it was looking Jones’ face. Here is an actor who as he has gotten older, has made many great choices (okay not Man of the House, but we all have to get paid) and is one of those actors that can say so much with his face. Knowing this, I just watched his facial expressions as he was telling his dream, and his face made me think that Jones was saying that if Ed Tom Bell were younger, and not such an “old timer” (as explained in the opening voice over narration) he may have been able to go all the way in the Chigurh manhunt, but here he is at his kitchen table with nothing to do, and the payoff to the dream (and the end of the film) is about as perfect as it gets.
David Cronenberg re-teams with Viggo Mortensen to create one of the darkest, most bleak, and yes, interesting movies about the criminal underwold, I will not say organized crime, because these Russian mobsters don't seem all that organized. Family members kill important people without consulting their father (the head of the family) and alliances are made behind peoples back. Booze is not stolen, but purchased cheap, but possibly it could have been purchased even cheaper, and when they get the booze, they don't sell it for profit, they drink it. These quirks and undercutting of the traditional mobster film make this one of the better films on the subject to come along since Miller's Crossing.
The typical themes are here for a Cronenberg film: the body as belonging to someone else, the decaying body, sex, violence, sex and violence together and many other of the classic Cronenberg touches that make this one of the best films of the year. It shares a common theme with the final two films on this list: the idea that life goes on beyond what we as audience members can see. An idea that brings no closure (and frustration for many) to the lives of these characters that we have invested in. By the end Nikolai is still immersed in the evil he has chosen.
Before I unveil my top three, here is a small list of films that I have seen previews for, but either haven’t been to Portland or Salem yet or I haven’t had the chance to get out there and see them. Also a small list of films that almost made the cut and were still some of my favorite films this year. Plus, I just wanted an excuse to put that creepy picture from The Orphanage (which looks like a really cool homage to Argento and other Italian horror films) on here. As fot the films that almost made the cut: I would gladly swap out any of those for any other five on my list.
At one point The Lookout was sitting pretty at number 5. But then a ton of good movies came out that frankly were fresher on my mind or held more weight that The Lookout. But like Michael Clayton, The Lookout is a near perfect genre film that decides to get into the psyche of the characters rather than rely on shoot 'em up action scenes. It's Scott Frank's first film directing (he also wrote) but he is an established screenwriter (Minority Report, Out of Sight) and wisely moves away from the cliches of the heist film and paints the genre in a new (but still gloomy noirish) light.
Classic in its execution, few films are as enjoyable and flawless in their exercise of the genre as Michael Clayton. George Clooney plays the title character that looks like he has been doing his job (a “janitor” for a big time company) for a little too long. Clooney looks dogged and tired and like he wants out of the business. He owes money for a failed restraint/bar experiment and you get the feeling that is the only reason why he is sticking around: the money. His ever-growing conscious and suspicions about his job are the only sings of moral responsibility in this corrupt and cold (suggested by the beautiful cinematography) business world. Also, Tilda Swinton is so good at being so loathsome.
If there was one film I was most looking forward to seeing this year it was definitely Atonement. Was this going to be a great film like I thought it could be? Or was this destined to be a butchered version of the Ian McEwan novel I have so much admiration for. I admit that my immediate reaction to the film was: yeah, that’s good. And I think I was disappointed in my own response to the film; I wanted to love it, and I didn’t. I was weary of the film, yes, but I was also counting down the days until I could see it for myself, and after all of that build up (mostly by me, and now by the Focus Films ad wizards pining for Awards) I feel like it’s not the film of the year I was hoping for, but it’s still an affective and beautiful looking picture.
So, I will just leave it to you to see for yourself. Trust me, it’s a film experience worth experiencing, and that is why it’s on my list. If Lynch can be this bold and have the balls to make this film, well then, I respect him for that. That is why you find this film at number eight, with little to no explanation as to why it’s here…in fact I am still trying to figure out those weird jack rabbit people in that room with the laugh track and the phone that just rings…yeah…onto the next film!
