Pennies for My Thoughts

The Best in Music: 2011

2011-12-26T00:17:00.001-07:00

I'm going to spoil it for you: yeah, M83 and Bon Iver are on here. But they deserve it. It's universally acknowledged that they put out some great music this year. However, you're also going to see a host of other names that are unlikely to crop up on similar lists. I know what I like, and it ain't always what your snotty online music 'zine of choice likes. Read on ...

Overall, 2011 was a very good year for music. In fact, its only real problem was that it had the unenviable task of following 2010, which was an outstanding year for music. I think my biggest nagging problem was its distinct lack of an album that just felt like an unequivocal home run. When I heard Ashbury Heights' Take Cair Paramour last year, I knew immediately it would be the best album of the year. This year, that moment never came. My #1 album always felt like it could be nudged out of place at the last minute. Not that it isn't a fantastic album, mind. Everything I'm about to go over, albumwise and songwise, is tremendous. It's just that 2011 is the first year I can remember when I didn't have that Moment. (I did have such an epiphany for my #1 song, though. We'll get to that.)

Even so, the year held its own. There were tons of songs and records and concerts that are likely to go down in the annals of personal history for each and every one of us, and as such it's hard not to call 2011 a success. A year spent in transition, absolutely, but a good one nonetheless.

Before we begin celebrating, however, let us first have a moment of silence. 2011 cruelly relegated many artists to the musical graveyard. A special R.I.P. to a handful of personal favorites: Pure Reason Revolution, Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade, Innerpartysystem, R.E.M., Lou Reed and Metallica's good taste -- you will be dearly missed. May we see you all reunite someday.

And now for the fun stuff. Let's kick off the festivities with ...

The Most Overrated Artist of 2011: James Blake, whose supposedly groundbreaking debut sounds to me like little more than auto-tuned lounge music.

The Most Underrated Artist of 2011: The Rosebuds have been excelling at pop songcraft from the depths of obscurity for the better part of a decade.

Musical Crushes of 2011
Chloe Alper (formerly of Pure Reason Revolution)
Mark Foster (center, of Foster the People)

Favorite Music Videos of 2011
Battles, "My Machines"

Beirut, "Santa Fe"

Cut Copy, "Blink and You'll Miss a Revolution"

Fleet Foxes, "The Shrine/An Argument"

Foster the People, "Call It What You Want"

The National, "Conversation 16"

Tyler, the Creator, "Yonkers"

Top 5 Concerts of 2011
This year I had the pleasure of attending eighteen shows and one three-day festival (which, for obvious reasons, can't be ranked). These were the best.

05. Yeasayer @ The Music Box (Hollywood, CA)
04. M83 @ The Music Box (Hollywood, CA)
03. VNV Nation @ House of Blues (San Diego, CA)
02. The Rosebuds @ Santa Fe Brewing Company (Santa Fe, NM)
01. Arcade Fire @ Ukrainian Cultural Center (Los Angeles, CA)

Once again, this list does not geographically discriminate. Albuquerque feels left out, though, so I'll give an honorable mention to Interpol @ Sunshine Theater. Great show; it deserves it.

The Best Albums of 2011
Honorable Mention:
The Antlers, Burst Apart
Taking tips in equal part from Radiohead, The Cure, and Talk Talk, Burst Apart is a lean and muscular reinvention of the funereal dirges that haunted their 2009 breakthrough Hospice. It rocks harder, the melodies are stronger, the ambition is more varied, and the overall product is superior. [YouTube: "Parentheses"]

Cold Cave, Cherish the Light Years
I'll always have a special affinity for post-punk (you know, the likes of Joy Division, New Order, Wire, The Cure, and so on), which is why there will always be a place on my shelf for bands like Cold Cave. Without changing one thing, this record sounds like it could have been made in 1982. Before you go ripping on it for that, stop to consider that that's exactly the point. [YouTube: "Confetti"]

Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues
2011 was, without a doubt, the year for American beard-folk revival. But if it's all going to be this good, then why the hell not? Fleet Foxes' sophomore album is a huge, sprawling affair with big songs and little songs and in-between songs, all immaculately composed and produced. I have endless respect for someone who can create something both monolithic and deeply personal, and that's exactly what Robin Pecknold has done. [YouTube: "Helplessness Blues"]

Other Lives, Tamer Animals
More American beard-folk for youse, although I like this one better. It's darker and richer and affects me more. Where Fleet Foxes woo me with their technical skill, Other Lives do it by rigging their somber ballads to produce small but powerful bursts of emotion. It's an understated triumph, not revealing its secrets all at once, slowly sinking in. [YouTube: "For 12"]

Panda Bear, Tomboy
I'll be the first to publicly scorn Animal Collective if given half a chance, but something about Panda Bear's solo work tends to click with me. If Person Pitch was a sunny, drugged-out beach party, then this is the ensuing psychedelic ritual at the bottom of the sea. It's darker, moodier, trippier, and much less welcoming, but there's still something alluring about it. [YouTube: "Slow Motion"]

Sepalcure, Sepalcure
Think of it as a sunlit Burial with a less singular style and a dancier, more mainstream (or at least mainstream electronic) sound and you've got a highly enjoyable record that doesn't try to be anything it isn't, but still manages to mix many of the best aspects of dance music in 2011 into a neat, fun little package. [YouTube: "Pencil Pimp"]

TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Light
If you were hoping for another "Wolf Like Me," I think you've always been doomed to disappointment. This, the band's highly underrated fourth album, finds them settling down and mellowing out and producing some of their prettiest, most contented music to date. Sure, it won't shake your world, but you already have their other albums for that. [YouTube: "Will Do"]

The Top 11:
11. VNV Nation, Automatic
Now here's an album that brings me nothing but joy. For a decade, VNV Nation -- amidst a nonstop string of some of the best live shows you will ever see -- have struggled to release another album as good as 1999's Empires. Some are better than others, all are dreadfully inconsistent. Automatic still doesn't quite reach that high water mark, but it's by far their best effort: a bright, optimistic (no, seriously!) set of songs so strong I didn't think they could still pull it off. But here we are. And fuck, did I mention they kick ass live?
[YouTube: "Space & Time"]

10. Pnau, Soft Universe
As it turns out, all Pnau had to do to make the best record of their career was sell out completely. The best moments of their enjoyable but patchy 2007 self-titled ("With You Forever," "Embrace") were straight-up pop, and as if they had read my mind for an attack strategy (as well as taking tips from none other than Elton John), those tracks serve as the blueprints for their entire fourth album. The result comes off very, very well. Soft Universe is immediate, catchy, polished, and tight. Nick Littlemore steps into the frontman/lead vocalist position with an ease that makes you wonder why he hadn't before, and the songcraft is uniformly the strongest of his career. It's the perfect kind of summer album: one where everyone is likely to find their own favorites, but no one can deny they're having a great time.
[YouTube: "Solid Ground"]

09. Moonface, Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped
In a way, Spencer Krug's hilariously and accurately titled solo LP hits me in the same way I imagine it hit him as he was making it: as a necessary, if more than a little bit melancholy, ode to growth and change. Having sadly left behind both Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown, he uses the opportunity, through one of the most unique and focused musical conceits in years, to confront some demons. It is by far the darkest work of his career, and in many ways the most inaccessible. His lyrics have always been challenging, off-kilter, and unquestionably among the very best out there, but here, still cloaked in metaphor, they feel decidedly and restlessly personal. This is a Krug album for Krug devotees; very few are going to find an in here if they haven't already. People often speak of "concept albums." Here's one: a man writes his most personal songs to date and sets them to an odd but endearing array of outdated 80s organ sounds. The artistry can't be denied; the enjoyability is up to you. [YouTube: "Fast Peter"]

08. Radical Face, The Family Tree: The Roots
The best I can tell, Ben Cooper's sole songwriting agenda consists of grabbing onto your heartstrings and yanking them so hard you tear up involuntarily. On The Roots, the first of a supposed Family Tree trilogy that is scheduled to be continued next year, he does a pretty damn good job. This is the epitome of old, sad bastard music. It's also gorgeous, earnest, and very very compelling. The ostensible concept of these three albums is to tell the multi-generational story of a fictional family, starting in the 1800s and working to the present. This by itself is ambitious enough, but Cooper has challenged himself to render these songs with only the instrumentation available during the timeframe in which his narrative is set. As such, this, his 1800s album, is recorded entirely on acoustic instruments: guitars, pianos, accordions, and so forth. Whether he updates the sound as he continues his odyssey remains to be seen (I'm sort of hoping for the third album to be an Electric President-esque wash of melancholy synth-pop songs, but that's just me), but if the ensuing two volumes are as good as the first, we're headed straight for a modern masterpiece. [YouTube: "Black Eyes"]

07. M83, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
I love M83, and you do too, so let's get the elephant out of the room and clear up any misconceptions: he has never made a fully consistent album. Each has been very good, but they all have their rough spots. Hurry Up, We're Dreaming is no different, but it makes up for this shortcoming with its sheer, beauteous sprawl. The album's the thing here. While it does contain several of Anthony Gonzalez's finest songs, it is specifically designed and sequenced to be listened to as a whole. It's this approach that ultimately makes it his defining achievement, as well as the perfect soundtrack to an exuberant night in the city. There is so much to love here, and everything is so obviously in exactly the place Gonzalez wanted it to be, that it's virtually impossible not to become immersed. Its sweeping, epic scope is irresistible. Joy radiates from every synth line, all earthly problems seem to vanish, and the world takes on a warm glow that does not dissipate until the final notes have faded out. When we're old and grumpy and looking back on the music of our youth that made us feel happy, we'll think of M83. We'll throw this on and live it out and feel young again. How many albums do you know that can do that? [Soundcloud: "Reunion"]

06. The Rosebuds, Loud Planes Fly Low
If half of pop music is about love and attraction, it stands to reason that the other half should be about love's sometimes inevitable dark side. We've all heard tons of break-up songs. Enough to not faze us anymore. But, see, Loud Planes Fly Low isn’t like most break-up music, and so it works on different terms. Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp have spent the better part of the past decade as man and wife, churning out excellent and woefully underrated music. Somewhere in there, since the release of 2008's Life Like, their marriage fell apart. They could have disbanded. They could have done a lot of things. And yet, against all odds, here is an album of astonishing bravery and poise. This is moody, thoughtful, introspective music that never points fingers and, honestly, comes across as quite hopeful. The two acknowledge that their romantic ties have dissolved, but there’s a strong, uplifting sense that they will be able to successfully turn that page in their lives and continue as friends and bandmates. Where most would be content to sulk, the Rosebuds have taken their rocky emotions and challenged themselves to make something both inspiring and mature. It’s a hell of a feat, and they pull it off. [YouTube: "Come Visit Me"]

05. Innerpartysystem, Never Be Content
Innerpartysystem's final release is an intriguing breed of album (or EP, whichever; at 36 minutes, it's as long as many proper LPs): the kind with myriad noticeable flaws, yet nothing whatsoever that I would change. Call it an unconditional love. Never Be Content is a dramatic, tightly constructed overview of everything this band could do, as well as a tantalizing hint at where they might have gone had they not chosen to call it a day. A shift from their past work is immediately apparent: "And Together" announces from the gate that this will be a more overtly dance-oriented affair, and from there the record rollercoasters through six tracks of ups, downs, bumps, pivots, and loops. If the jarring, taken-on-its-own-terms first half seems a bit rough, hold out: the final three tracks are so incredible that they cast light back on the first three, allowing the entirety of the record to come together in a way that's both challenging and elegantly cohesive. Sound effects recall prior compositions, lyrics cross-reference themes, songs gang up to create a shattering sense of unity. The band might chide me for ignorning their advice, but even with its imperfections, this is exhilarating. I'm content. [YouTube: "Out of Touch"]

04. Foster the People, Torches
I could write a dozen pretentious things about Foster the People, from their lightning-fast rocket to fame to this album's awesome Where the Wild Things Are-style cover art to how preternaturally good-looking all of them are while still maintaining more than a modicum of musical talent, but the fact of the matter is that Torches, their auspicious debut, ranks so highly on this list because it is simply the best pop album I heard all year. Nothing more, nothing less. And I don't mean that as a pejorative. We all crave a good pop album now and again, and a pop album is exactly what it is: ten radio-ready synth-pop songs, all winners, with some (not to get ahead of myself) among the best any band had to offer up in the last twelve months. When this first dropped in May, I scarfed it up like the tasty early-summer treat that it was and readily came back for more. Well folks, it's winter, about as far removed as one can get from the sunny fire most of these songs were forged in, and I still can't get enough. I don't see the charm wearing off anytime soon. [YouTube: "Waste"]

03. Bon Iver, Bon Iver, Bon Iver
Has this analogy been used before? Probably, but I thought of it too, and it's a good one: if Bon Iver's universally acclaimed debut For Emma, Forever Ago was (quite literally) the sound of a man sitting in a secluded cabin in the snowy dead of winter, his follow-up finds him in the thaw of spring venturing back into the real world. Where For Emma was cold and insular and monochrome, Bon Iver is painted in a rich, vibrant palette that breathes new life into each of its painstakingly crafted vignettes. In keeping with its themes of nature and geography, I like to imagine the album as a leisurely trip down a leafy, coiling river, each song a separate place or landmark along the way. As a journey, it is unparalleled. The reason for Bon Iver's near-mainstream success is as simple and pure and straightforward as most of the songs on this record: Justin Vernon is just damn good at what he does, and most people have the good sense to know a stroke of genius when they hear it. [YouTube: "Holocene"]

02. The Decemberists, The King Is Dead
This is probably the smartest album The Decemberists could have made. Regardless of what you thought of it, it is undeniable that they put a portion of their fanbase at arm's length with their divisive, Zeppelinesque hard-rock opera The Hazards of Love. Some loved it, others considered it a bewildering misstep (I'm somewhere in between). The King Is Dead finds Colin Meloy taking about three or four steps back, re-entering territory I think most everyone can agree upon. Gone, at least for now, are the lengthy suites and thematic song cycles, and in their place, a concise assortment of catchy, emotive, well-written, well-performed American folk songs. It's the most straightforward and approachable record the band has ever made. It's also perhaps the most unpretentiously enjoyable, a quality which has allowed it to move many, many copies and finally give them the bona fide breakthrough they deserve. So who cares if they're not breaking any new ground? In the end, The King Is Dead provides me with one of the greatest pleasures that music can give, and one that jaded music snobs like me always seem to forget is possible: the simple joy of hearing another great album by one of your favorite bands. [YouTube: "Rox in the Box"]

01. Cut Copy, Zonoscope
It has been almost four years, so I think I can stake this claim without too much second-guessing: Cut Copy's 2008 release In Ghost Colours is, to date, my all-time favorite electronic album. From stem to stern, it is a flawless masterpiece. Creating a worthy successor must have been an stressful task indeed, so instead of trying to re-capture the high points of that record (who could?), the band has smartly opted to move in a new, if still recognizable, direction. As such, Zonoscope is a very different record: looser, more experimental, less geared toward packing dancefloors, spurred on by the variety of sounds and song structures they can weave into their already vibrant tapestry. The expansion suits them well. They don't always hit it out of the park like they did on In Ghost Colours, but the numerous highlights easily stand among the band's best material, while the rest still rises miles above the generic product that plagues so much of this genre. To wit: Zonoscope is not another perfect album, but it is an immensely satisfying one that cements Cut Copy at the forefront of electronic pop music. To have one #1 album is a hell of a feat. To have two in a row, well, that's a prestige reserved for giants. Bring on #3, guys; I know you have it in you. [SoundCloud: "Take Me Over"]

The Best Songs of 2011
Honorable Mention:
The Antlers, "Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out"
Binge drinking meets sexual frustration in The Antlers' most immediate and accessible song to date, a paranoid and electrifying spiral into hell that sounds nothing like the band we knew two years ago. [YouTube]

Burial, "Street Halo"
With special shout-outs to its two phenomenal b-sides, "NYC" and "Stolen Dog." Burial's first proper solo release since 2007's game-changing Untrue is a shrewd update of his signature sound that incorporates elements of house into his spooky ambient textures and skittering rhythms. Though more streamlined, the feeling remains the same: a perfect evocation of the unsettling isolation of nighttime. [YouTube]

Coldplay, "Hurts Like Heaven"
I wrote in 2008 when I put "Viva La Vida" on my Top Ten (I stand by it, motherfuckers) that Coldplay would never record a better song. It's still true. This is the next best thing: an anti-"Viva La Vida," brazen, energetic, sunny, and upbeat. That it's by Coldplay doesn't keep it from being good. [YouTube]

The Decemberists, "Down by the Water"
It's hard to pick a favorite from The King Is Dead. I'm not even sure I have one, so I'm falling back on this, the excellent harmonica-driven lead single that harkens back to early-80s R.E.M. in the best possible way. [YouTube]

Example, "Changed the Way You Kiss Me"
This, a concise and tuneful electro-pop track with a conspicuous hip-hop and dubstep influence, was a #1 hit in Example's native Britain. It failed to chart stateside. You tell me what's wrong with that. [YouTube]

Fleet Foxes, "Blue Spotted Tail"
Robin Pecknold went super ambitious to craft his band's excellent sophomore album only to have its most affecting moment be its simplest: a soft, brief, acoustic meditation on that all-encompassing question, "What's the meaning of it all?" [YouTube]

M83, "Midnight City"
The only thing greater than the massive hype surrounding this song is the song itself. Chalk it up to Anthony Gonzalez's tremendous ability to write a hook. There wasn't a more instantly recognizable track this year. Listen to it once, come back to it any amount of time of time later. Days, weeks, months, whatever. It'll take you two seconds to realize, "Oh! It's 'Midnight City'!" When Gonzalez wails, "The city is my church!" I still get chills. An instant classic. [YouTube]

Pure Reason Revolution, "Tempest"
The swan song from one of my favorite artists. Lots of bands broke up this year, but none broke my heart as much as this one. A gorgeous and fitting goodbye. [YouTube]

Radiohead, "The Butcher"
There was, if you were paying close attention, exactly one song this year that showed that Radiohead is still worth a damn. So of course they gave it b-side status on a vinyl-only single. Thanks, guys. [YouTube]

The Whip, "Best Friend"
A late-year contender that swooped in at the last minute and showed me once again how much I enjoy the electropop genre when it's done right. At this point in my life, it could well be the type of music I enjoy most unreservedly; my musical best friend, one might say. I'm okay with that. [YouTube]

The Top 11:
11. Wolf Gang, "Lions in Cages"
Few songs this year better filled the seemingly obligatory role of anthemic indie pop song than this little morsel, the lead track off Wolf Gang's solidly enjoyable debut. Though lyrically dark, the music is catchy, upbeat, and memorable, with the sort of chorus you'll find yourself absent-mindedly humming as you're carting through the supermarket. The sound is big and important, and Max McElligott sells every note with his strong vocal delivery, winding the song up into a low-key victory. I am sure this is not the best song he can write, but it's a hell of a start, and I'll be one of many onboard to see what he tries next. [YouTube]

10. Silversun Pickups, "Seasick"
Brian Aubert's secret is that he smolders beautifully. Always stopping short of exploding outright, he conveys seething tension that never quite boils over. Where most can only communicate rage, Aubert's restraint allows Silversun Pickups the luxury of a sexy dangerousness that's just as apparent as ever on their newest single. It's nothing less than ear candy for those of us who believe that this sexy dangerousness makes for some seriously invigorating music. [YouTube]

09. Innerpartysystem, "Not Getting Any Better"
It's hard work writing a lengthy song that merits its runtime. Far too many veer off course and become boring or tiresome. "Not Getting Any Better" is the ideal antidote: a song that starts modestly, then spends every second of its eight minutes building in exactly the direction I want it to. This is Innerpartysystem in microcosm: the one track that evenhandedly shows they could write both pop songs and dancefloor monsters and emerge doubly fulfilled. From the careful melodies of the vocal sections to the eventual dance breakout, and the slow-burning synthesized strings that link them together, this is an underrated band at the top of their game. Maybe they thought they weren't getting any better; I beg to differ. [YouTube]

08. Other Lives, "Tamer Animals"
I was a champion of Other Lives' debut in 2009, but for all its lovely piano ballads and mournful melodies in self-referencing keys, it lacked a standout that was able to worm its way into my heart. The title track from their superior sophomore album rectifies any and all problems. This is a lush and cloudy affair, every bit as beautiful as it is subtly defeating. Make no mistake: this is not the soundtrack to your next hipster bake sale. This is quiet, secluded music, for when you're feeling down and just need some time to stop and sort everything out. We all have those days. Winona Ryder said it best in Heathers: "If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn't be a human being; you'd be a game show host." Other Lives understand this. They've got your back. [YouTube]

07. Destroyer, "Bay of Pigs (Detail)"
The thing about this song that makes it work so beautifully is that, at least as far as I know, it's the best possible version of what it is. In other words, when I say "drunk poet rambling for eleven minutes over guitars and ambient synths," neither you nor I nor anyone could find a better exemplar than Destroyer's "Bay of Pigs." I have been hating on Dan Bejar for years, and almost always with just cause, but this song proves that artists a person doesn't especially like can still strike gold if the time is right. I don't question its magnificence. Bejar's lyrics are crisp and pointed and beautiful, while the atmospherics he chooses to accompany them are ideally suited to the sort of foggy, intoxicated, deeply nostalgic nighttime stroll that the words evoke. And if this all just sounds oh so pretentious, he rewards you for your patience: the final portion is the clearest and catchiest music he has written, allowing the song to culminate exactly where it should -- in the stratosphere. So thank you, Dan. I am the last person I ever thought would put a song of yours on a top 10 (or 11) list, but this one deserves it. It's marvelous. [YouTube]

06. Radical Face, "Ghost Towns"
I'm still an English major at heart. I love words and stories and am trained to instinctively read symbolism into anything that will let me. I could write entire theses on "Ghost Towns," a heartbreaking song about a drifter whose inner monologue seems to double as a metaphor for the entire human condition. True, Ben Cooper is singing as a fictional character within the narrative framework of his album, but this character is so achingly universal that anyone who crosses his path is likely to relate to him. "I've seen more places than I can name, and over time they all start to look the same. But it ain't the truth we chase. No, it's the promise of a better place. But all this time I've been chasing down a lie, and I know it for what it is, but it beats the alternatives, so I'll take the lie," he sings, and lest you have a heart of stone, I challenge you not to feel something. When the coup de grâce comes in the form of a mournful accordion solo, you'll hardly know what came over you, but you'll know it moved you and you'll realize how powerful it was. [YouTube]

05. The Good Natured, "Wolves"
I am a man of simple but discerning taste. Sometimes all it takes to quench my musical thirst is a good, solid slice of electropop. Few were able to do it better this year than up-and-comers The Good Natured do on "Wolves." Think Witching Hour-era Ladytron with more drive and less flourish, sacrificing not one bit of the former's melodic prowess (the last 45 seconds feature a beautiful, and frankly unexpected, vocal coda that takes the song to another level). It's just about as immediate and engaging as this type of music gets, with enough hooks to keep you tethered and enough pure satisfaction to make you rush back to that replay button again and again. [YouTube]

04. Guillemots, "Walk the River"
I thought Guillemots were a flash in the pan. I never thought they'd match their brilliant "Trains to Brazil" (the only song I've ever heard that satisfyingly, and for that matter perfectly, addresses terrorism on a personal level), but here, trading universality and worldliness for an uncomfortable level of intimacy, they have. "Walk the River" may not be the better song, but it hits me harder. A lyrical masterwork, it better describes my day-to-day feelings at this point in my life than anything else I've heard. Most artists struggle for entire careers to pen a turn of phrase that can take my breath away. Here, in this very song, Guillemots do it twice. [YouTube]

03. Bon Iver, "Michicant"
I'll tell it to you straight: I wept the first time I heard this song. Not torrentially, but there were tears in my eyes. Who's to say why? Maybe, on some level, I related to Justin Vernon's impressionistic lyrics about youth, or maybe -- what with its harmonies and lullaby-ish vocal melody -- it really was just that beautiful. I have listened to it countless times since and, although the tears don't always come, the feeling is always there. And while much has been said already about this song's canny use of a bicycle bell, I have to agree: it is likely the most perfectly implemented use of that sound that I know of. [YouTube]

02. Cut Copy, "Need You Now"
A tour de force of build-and-release. Having shown the world about twelve times over on In Ghost Colours that they can write a perfect pop song, Cut Copy try their hand at something decidedly less immediate: a slowly percolating anthem that starts off modest and low-key, only to finish with fireworks and confetti and party streamers. It's a testament to their craft that it's impossible to pinpoint any one moment where the build backshifts into release, but somewhere along the way you'll realize you're flying where just minutes ago you were grounded, chugging away towards an unknown destination. The feeling is beautiful, cathartic, and just about the best thing I could have possibly asked for from this band. And I ask for a lot from this band. I hate giving nods to Pitchfork, 'cause they're a bunch of wankers, but they hit the nail on the head: "Need You Now" is the perfect side A, track one; an ideal kickstart to just about any album, mix, party, or life event it may be soundtrack to. It's rare for a band to shoot for the stars and actually make it. It's even rarer for them to keep going once they've gotten there. [SoundCloud]

01. Foster the People, "Helena Beat"
This is it, I think. It's the first weekend of my last undergrad spring break and I am standing, beerless and by myself, in a tiny bar in Santa Fe, NM, with about thirty drunk, mostly inattentive people, listening to an L.A. band no one has ever heard of (Foster the People? The hell kinda name is that?) play "Helena Beat." This is the best song of 2011. Corazón has now closed its doors and Foster the People have since become one of the most popular bands in the country, but despite these radical changes, I firmly keep to my assertion. There wasn't a better song this year. There couldn't have been. What "Helena Beat" does, it does perfectly. Whatever it is that makes this song so mindbogglingly great, it has satisfied all of my requirements for an entire genre. That's a big fucking deal. But I know, definitively, it isn't any one thing. The voice, the melodies, the appealingly processed instrumentation, the gradual build to that glorious final thirty seconds -- these all coalesce into one of the most satisfying four and a half minutes I have ever spent listening to pop music. "Helena Beat" wasn't the hit, wasn't the song that put this band on the map and made everyone turn their heads, but it should have been. [YouTube]

And that's it, folks! As always, comments about my ridiculously questionable taste are always welcome and encouraged. See you all in 2012!

the rosebuds @ santa fe brewing company

2011-06-28T23:29:00.001-07:00

Other Lives: I could have listened to these guys play all night. It was obvious the crowd (all thirty people or whatever), most of whom obviously had never even heard of these guys, were duly impressed.

Setlist:
As I Lay My Head Down
Dark Horse
For 12
Tamer Animals
Dust Bowl III
Landforms
Old Statues
Weather

The Rosebuds: Before the show started, there were a pair of setlists just sitting on a table. No one was around and nobody seemed to care, so I took one. It ruined the surprise factor, but so what? Badass.

Setlist:
Go Ahead
Limitless Arms
Second Bird of Paradise
Cemetery Lawn
Leaves Do Fall
Come Visit Me
Waiting for You
Woods
Life Like
Cover Ears
Boxcar
Nice Fox

Overall, absolutely amazing. During "Nice Fox," the band actually exited the stage and came down into the (again, very small) audience and proceeded to coach us through an acoustic sing-along. It was the most intimate moment I have ever had at a show. There were so few of us and we were all just standing right next to the band and singing with them and having a great time. It was ... really something special.

last.fm survey!

2010-11-21T19:38:00.001-07:00

1. How did you get into 29?
Artist: M83
Answer: This was back in the days when I actually gave a shit about Pitchfork. Saturdays=Youth had just come out, so I checked that out. The rest is history.

2. What was the first song you ever heard by 22?
Artist: The Morning Benders
I'm sure it was "Excuses." I also have a huge crush on this band, collectively.

3. How many albums by 13 do you own?
Artist: The Beatles
Oh, god. Of course it had to be The Beatles. HANG ON. ... It looks like 26 on CD. I'm not driving across town to count my dad's vinyls.

4. What is your favorite song by 5?
Artist: The National
It's "Lemonworld." Although "Fake Empire" is pretty much perfect, too.

5. What is your favorite song by 15?
Artist: Gorillaz
They're arguably the best mainstream singles band of the past decade, but ... oh, who the hell am I kidding? "Clint Eastwood."

6. Is there a song by 6 that makes you happy?
Artist: tie between Sunset Rubdown and Arcade Fire
As far as SR goes, "The Mending of the Gown" is the single greatest live song I have ever seen performed. This has held true on more than one occasion. As far as Arcade Fire ... man, happy really isn't what they do. I may have to abstain.

7. What is your favorite song by 10?
Artist: Sufjan Stevens
"Casimir Pulaski Day." It is the best, most beautiful, and ultimately most devastating song about losing a loved one I have ever heard.

8. What is a good memory you have involving 30?
I have no #30. Therefore, good memories are more or less hard to come by.

9. Is there a song by 19 that makes you happy?
Artist: Pink Floyd
Happy in the traditional sense? Probably none. But any given track off Animals still makes me quiver with joy.

10. How many times have you seen 26 live?
Artist: The Radio Dept.
Thaaaat would be none.

11. What is the first song you heard by 23?
Artist: AFI
Very, very easy question. Flashbulb memory from 2001. "Days of the Phoenix."

12. What is your favorite album by 11?
Artist: Wolf Parade
Apologies to the Queen Mary.

13. Who is your favorite member of 1?
Artist: Pure Reason Revolution
I know full well that Jon Courtney is the creative genius and frontman of this band, but man, Chloe Alper fuckin' rocks it.

14. Have you ever seen 14 live?
Artist: The Moody Blues
Indeed. Three times! They rock hard for a bunch of dinosaurs.

15. What is a good memory involving 27?
Artist: The Rosebuds
I think just being introduced to them (via Night of the Furies) by my friend back in '07, and slowly coming to realize that that particular album is one of the best things I've ever heard.

16. What is your favorite song by 16?
Artist: Frightened Rabbit
"The Modern Leper." I take my self-loathing very seriously.

17. What is your favorite album by 18?
Artist: Of Montreal
Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? There's not even any competition.

18. What is your favorite song by 21?
Artist: Crystal Castles
... yeah, seriously, how can you not say their version of "Not in Love" with Robert Smith? That would've been one of the best songs of pretty much any year it could've chosen to come out in.

19. What is the first song you heard by 25?
Artist: Janelle Monae
I don't remember exactly. It was probably "Cold War."

20. What is your favorite album by 2?
Artist: Ashbury Heights
Take Cair Paramour. Like, duh.

21. What is your favorite song by 3?
Artist: The Cure
God DAMMIT. Fuck this question. How the hell can I possibly determine? Fuck it, let's just say "Fascination Street" and get it over with. But there are like seventeen others.

22. What is your favorite song by 8?
Artist: Silversun Pickups
"Future Foe Scenarios." Always has been, always will be.

23. How many times have you seen 17 live?
Artist: Yeasayer
None. But that's not going to stop it from happening. I wanna see a show where the same band can somehow manage to play "2080" and "Mondegreen" in the same set and have it work.

24. What is the worst song by 12?
Artist: Apoptygma Berzerk
Ohhh, they've had some clunkers along the way. Probably any one of the unmemorable tracks from Rocket Science, which was, like, 80% of that album.

25. What was the first song you heard by 28?
Artist: Radiohead
I may. Be paranoid. But not an. Android.

26. What is your favorite album by 7?
NO #7. OH NO. I have two bands tied at #6 and one at #8. I'll give you my favorite albums from all of them instead.
Arcade Fire: Funeral
Sunset Rubdown: Random Spirit Lover
Silversun Pickups: Carnavas

27. What is your favorite song by 24?
Artist: Scissor Sisters
Is it in my genes that I always had to like this band, or did I CHOOSE to like this band (and Jake Shears, who is hot)? LET THE DEBATE BEGIN. "Sex and Violence."

28. Is there a song by 9 that makes you happy?
Artist: Foals
"Balloons." It's, like, if I were ever going to have a hipster barbecue, that'd be my music of choice.

29. What is your favorite album by 4?
Artist: Brand New
The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. It's pretty much my #2 album of all-time.

30. How many albums do you own by 20?
Artist: Modest Mouse
Uh, all of them, I think. All of their studio albums, anyway (plus Building Nothing Out of Something, which is awesome and might as well be).

of montreal @ sunshine theater

2010-11-01T23:43:00.003-07:00

Setlist:
Black Lion Massacre
Coquet Coquette
The Party's Crashing Us
Suffer for Fashion
Our Riotous Defects
Like a Tourist
Sex Karma
Girl Named Hello
Plastis Wafer
St. Exquisite's Confessions
Gronlandic Edit
You Do Mutilate?
Hydra Fancies
She's a Rejecter
Casualty of You
Around the Way
Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse
For Our Elegant Caste
A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger

Encore:
Michael Jackson Medley (Thriller/Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'/PYT)

Overall: Holy shit! A REALLY GREAT SHOW at the Sunshine? It CAN be done!

silversun pickups @ the fillmore

2010-07-27T16:14:00.002-07:00

Setlist:
Growing Old Is Getting Old
Well Thought Out Twinkles
Sort Of
There's No Secrets This Year
The Royal We
Little Lover's So Polite
It's Nice to Know You Work Alone
Future Foe Scenarios
Kissing Families
Catch and Release
Panic Switch
Lazy Eye

Encore:
Substitution
Three Seed
Common Reactor

What they played was one hell of a setlist. Granted, they only have two albums and an EP out there, but their selections were excellent. "Three Seed," one of my favorites from Carnavas, was an especially lovely addition.

...but they didn't play "Rusted Wheel," which is even more of a favorite from Carnavas. Even so, this is the only major complaint I can make about the set. The two songs from Swoon they didn't play ("Draining" and "Surrounded") are inessential, and the Carnavas tracks were well chosen. It might have been nice to hear "Comeback Kid" from the EP, but they did do "Kissing Families," so I'm callin' it good.

The highlight was undoubtedly the one-two punch of "Panic Switch" and "Lazy Eye" at the end of the set. Though they were plenty animated before this, it felt like they saved the bulk of their energy for those two songs. They were incredible. And why not? Those are probably their two most famous tracks, so it's fitting they should be performed with gusto.

The low point, even though I love love love the song, was "Catch and Release." It's one of the best songs off Swoon, but in a concert setting it just kind of trips up the momentum a bit. Again, as far as the slow songs go, "Three Seed" fared much better.

Brian Aubert has one of the most amazing voices in rock music (he goes from fragile and timid-sounding to ferocious screaming with nary an ounce of hesitation), and he has an extremely endearing stage presence. He just seems like he's a very, very friendly guy, and his comments and anecdotes were hilarious (the bit about playing "The Royal We" at Monolith in 2008 and not having memorized the lyrics yet, leading to him singing something like "la la da da la la THE ROYAL WE!", was especially entertaining).

The whole band looks like they're having a whole ton of fun at what they're doing, and that makes them compulsively watchable (in addition to the fact that, ya know, they're playing tremendous music). It also brought to my attention just how good of a guitarist Aubert is. He rattles off some pretty ridiculous riffs while he's singing and makes it look effortless.

The crowd was very interesting. They were perhaps the least physically animated crowd I have ever been in (I mean, we were standing still), but they were unbelievably receptive towards the band. We're talking like super enthusiastic screaming and applause almost constantly. Brian screams? Crowd goes wild. Nikki sings? Crowd goes wild. Chris does his (freakin' awesome) drum solo at the beginning of "Common Reactor"? Crowd. Etc. But it was awesome, too, and the band was obviously very flattered by it. "We've played in Denver before," Brian said to us. "But never like this."

The Fillmore needs to get some goddamn ventilation. It was fucking TOASTING in there. "Is it hot in here?" Aubert asked us part-way through the set, smiling. Oh god yes.

The opening bands were The Henry Clay People and Against Me! Both were unusual in that their stage presence was much, much more interesting than their actual music. The Henry Clay People may or may not be the drunkest band I've ever seen, but they certainly acted the drunkest (especially the rambling singer and the guitarist who kept trying to get close with his bandmates, and ended up kicking over the keyboard). Against Me! were energetic, and I probably would have liked them more had I been familiar with their stuff. A couple songs sounded good, though. I'll do some digging.

So yeah. Overall: really awesome night.

Halftime Report: 2010

2010-07-01T18:09:00.004-07:00

God, this year is getting away from me fast. It really does not feel like 2010 should be half over already, but there you have it. As is my annual tradition, it's time to revisit some of my favorite new music from the past six months, as well as briefly look forward to some Stuff of Promise that might crop up between now and December 31.

Ten favorite songs of the year so far, five favorite albums. Let's do it!

The Songs:
10. Owen Pallett, "Lewis Takes off His Shirt"
Owen Pallett, formerly known as Final Fantasy and also the man responsible for Arcade Fire's string arrangements, is a gay Canadian violinist who has recently discovered the joys of electronic pop. Let's be honest: this song sounds exactly like you'd expect it to. That it is also tremendous goes without saying.

9. The Golden Filter, "Frejya's Ghost"
If Perfume Tree made electropop, it would probably sound something like this. Now, if the world were a just place and people actually knew who the hell Perfume Tree was, this statement would carry a lot more weight. Suffice it to say, "Frejya's Ghost" is a gorgeous and even somewhat eerie foray into atmospheric disco, with an enchanting vocalist who makes her singing feel effortless.

8. Go Periscope, "Crush Me"
They're cute, too. See, I have no dignity.

7. Foals, "Black Gold"
The obligatory favorite track from the new Foals album. I know I'm "supposed" to give this award to "Miami" or "Spanish Sahara" (both fantastic songs in their own right, mind), but there's something about that "they buried the gold..." bridge that I just can't deny. So be it.

6. Gorillaz, "Stylo" and "Rhinestone Eyes"
I couldn't choose just one. But listen, you've got to understand my position: how did Damon Albarn's so-called "virtual hip-hop" side project (essentially just created as a lark about a decade ago while he tried to figure out what to do with Blur) become not only the best act in their field, but also one of the best singles bands of any discipline from the past decade? It blows my mind. And it's no small compliment when I say that these two tracks easily hold their own with the best stuff the band has recorded.

5. Yeasayer, "O.N.E."
I justify the absence of this song from my life until just recently by reminding myself that this is, indeed, the perfect Summer Anthem and that any prior exposure would have probably diminished said summery effect. Or something. Glorious retro-80s dance-pop; the last sixty seconds pretty much kill me every time.

4. De/Vision, "Flash of Life"
I'm running out of clever ways to say "this song is good." This song, my personal favorite from a very consistent and even album, is good. If you like synth-pop, there's a really good chance you'll enjoy this. If you don't, there's a really good chance you won't. That's pretty much as simple as I can make it.

3. Brighten, "Without You"
Y'know, I'm still not entirely sure why I like this so much, but maybe that's part of its charm. It's catchy and it's sweet and it makes me wish the nine thousand other bands that sound like this could be even a fraction as enjoyable.

2. The National, "Lemonworld"
The National's genius lies in the fact that they are masters of twenty-something everyman angst. Tons of artists whine about relationships and loneliness and sorrow, but few -- if any -- capture life's day-to-day ennui with the same poignance as Matt Berninger & co. "Lemonworld" is a song that feels like it could have been written about my life (the "this pricey stuff..." verse hits especially close to home), and while such an admission is not particularly flattering for me, it goes a hell of a long way to showing how deeply this music has moved me.

1. Wolf Parade, "Cloud Shadow on the Mountain"
As solid a #1 as there can be, Spencer Krug's surreal, frenetic jam may be his single finest track since 2007's "The Mending of the Gown." As usual, I don't have the slightest clue what the hell his (characteristically wonderful) lyrics are supposed to mean, but I can sleep soundly at night knowing my life would be woefully incomplete without them.

The Albums:
5. Wolf Parade, Expo 86
There's little doubt in my mind that, taken as a whole, Expo 86 is the weakest entry in the Wolf Parade canon thus far (but look what it's up against, eh?). Still, it's a textbook example of an album where the weak tracks ("Palm Road," "Two Men in New Tuxedos," and so forth) are vastly overshadowed by the best material: "Ghost Pressure" may well be the best song Dan Boeckner has ever written, while Spencer Krug's "Cloud Shadow on the Mountain" and "What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had to Go This Way)" are staggering additions his already inhuman resume. No, it's not an album I see myself listening to from start to finish very often, but its best moments stand with the band's strongest material. And that's high praise.

4. The National, High Violet
If their (still ridiculously good) 2007 breakthrough Boxer was the sound of The National proving that their signature brand of understated, moody indie-rock was compatible with the world at large, then High Violet shows the band capitalizing on those strengths and making their biggest, lushest collection of songs to date. It, like all National albums, took a few listens to grow on me, but now I'm firmly under its spell. I'd even hasten to say that it's the best record these guys have made.

3. De/Vision, Popgefahr
If Depeche Mode hadn't lost it after Violator, this is the kind of album I could imagine them making in 2010. Popgefahr is 45 minutes of slick, enjoyable, semi-darkwave synth-pop with a keen ear for melody and tons of danceability. So, uh, what more do you need, exactly?

2. Foals, Total Life Forever
Something happened to Foals. Their hipster barbecue-ready Antitodes was one of the funnest, most enjoyable albums of '08, but never in a million years would I have thought that that band was capable of making something like Total Life Forever. Play "Spanish Sahara" back to back with "Cassius" and you'll see what I mean: the bouncy, prickly math-rock that used to define their sound has been replaced by a dark, lush, restrained beauty. While they still allow themselves a little levity ("Miami" and "This Orient," while lyrically downbeat, are excellent pop singles), the overall growth and maturity on display are unmissable. The fact that no one saw it coming just adds to the thrill: it's the year's biggest surprise so far, and just a damn fine album.

1. Yeasayer, Odd Blood
The more I listen to this, the more I realize that I can't get enough of it. The whole 80s revivalism thing has been going on for years, but rarely with the creativity and exuberance that Yeasayer show here. While the vaguely Animal Collective-ish progressive elements help to keep the songs interesting, it's the overall quality of the songwriting that really makes the album soar. Of course "O.N.E." and "Madder Red" are essential listening, but even the dumb schlocky tracks like "Rome" and "Mondegreen" are immensely satisfying. Sure, Odd Blood may suffer from a little bit of an identity crisis, but against all odds I think it's actually better for it. Simply put, this is what synth-pop should sound like in the year 2010.

Honorable Mentions: Broken Social Scene (Forgiveness Rock Record), The Golden Filter (Voluspa), Gorillaz (Plastic Beach), Minus the Bear (Omni), The Radio Dept. (Clinging to a Scheme).

And, of course...
People Who Have Promised Us New Stuff in the Latter Half of 2010: Arcade Fire, Ashbury Heights, Interpol, Of Montreal, Panda Bear, Pure Reason Revolution, Radiohead(!).

See you in six months when I do this to myself for the entire year. It should be exciting, and it will happen sooner than you think. 'Til then!

Reading Log: Summer 2010

2010-06-04T23:13:00.003-07:00

Let the annual summer reading binge begin! Comments will be added here whenever I finish reading something. There's no concrete schedule or anything, but I'm hoping to put something in here about once a week or so. So stay tuned!

June 4:
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall (2007)
A fun and inventive, if somewhat restless, postmodern fantasy/horror novel that plays out like the natural combination of Danielewski's House of Leaves and Gaiman's Neverwhere. Hall's problem is that he, like the titular shark, bites off a little more than he can chew. In telling the story of Eric Sanderson, Hall effectively constructs an entire mythology which, despite being fascinating and clever, is never really detailed for the reader as much as it should be. The story runs as such: Sanderson awakes one morning, memory completely erased, only to discover that he is being preyed upon by an especially aggressive species of "purely conceptual fish" that swims through thought streams and feeds off memories and information. It's a gleefully enjoyable premise, and for the most part Hall runs with it (the House of Leaves-esque textual stylings are especially effective). He just lets the details and finer points of his creation get the better of him. Even so, the story is well told (even if the central romance does feel a bit strained in places -- one is left wishing Hall would have come up with a plotline as ingenious and original as his overall concept) and the ride is quick, snappy, amusing, and consistently intriguing. And it is the guy's first novel, after all. More than just cutting him some slack, I really want to give him a giant pat on the back for even attempting something so audacious and, frankly, relevant to the internet generation. So yeah: all nitpicks aside, it's good stuff. And Ian is just delightful. Grade: B+

vnv nation @ the launchpad

2010-04-11T00:33:00.001-07:00

I have seen these guys three times now. I can say with a fair degree of certainty that they are the best live band in existence. A VNV Nation show is not a concert; it is a life experience. I ... really. Words escape me. These guys are so amazing.

Setlist:
Pro Victoria
Tomorrow Never Comes
Testament
Dark Angel
Further
Sentinel
Chrome
Illusion
Standing
The Fathest Star
Nemesis

Encore 1:
Legion
Epicentre

Encore 2:
Beloved
Electronaut
Perpetual

What You Played: Was goddamn incredible. No, really. Look at that setlist. Plus the second encore included a completely impromptu decision to jam out and play "Electronaut," during which Ronan and Mark entered into some pretty intense keyboard dueling.

...But You Didn't Play: Anything from Praise the Fallen. C'mon, guys. You did "Honour" and "Solitary" last July. And I've still yet to hear you play "Joy." Also, I don't think you've ever once played "Where There Is Light," and you should rectify that. Other than that, bravo. REALLY.

The Opening Band: Was System Syn, and they were really really good. And they played a kickass EBM cover of R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion." VNV Nation is really good at the opening band game. Seriously: Imperative Reaction, Ayria, War Tapes, these guys. Not a bad one in the bunch.

The Launchpad: Is by far the best venue in Albuquerque and, despite employing the biggest douchebags on the planet as techies and bouncers, I'm immensely glad VNV played there again.

The Crowd: Was tremendous. Seriously. They told us we were the loudest audience they'd had on this tour.

Ronan Harris: Is the nicest man on the planet. As per usual, he signed posters and shook hands.

The Best Shit of My Life: Was before the first encore. The band had some sound monitor problems, so the tech guys had to run around in the dark and mess with the equipment. This obviously delayed the band from coming back and playing their encore. SO, Ronan explains the situation, tells us to bear with them, and suggests we sing "a Journey song or something." The crowd then proceeds to sing in unision an entire medley of Journey songs. It was beautiful.

Tonight: Was incredible. Thank you, Albuquerque, for reminding me that you really can play host to amazing shows. It's been over a year -- since February of '09 when I saw Streetlight Manifesto at, hey whaddaya know, The Launchpad -- that I've even been to a good one here, much less something like this.

... next for-sure show is Minus the Bear next month sometime. They're playing at the Sunshine (god I hate the Sunshine), but hey. At least they're playing here, right?

brand new @ the fillmore (setlist)

2010-01-31T19:18:00.002-07:00

Setlist: (complete and in order, because I'm awesome)
Soco Amaretto Lime
Sink
Gasoline
Bought a Bride
The Archers Bows Have Broken
Sowing Season
Sic Transit Gloria ... Glory Fades
The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows
Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't
Limousine (MS Rebridge)
You Won't Know
Degausser
You Stole
Vices
At the Bottom
Jesus
Welcome to Bangkok
Jude Law and a Semester Abroad
Seventy Times 7

No encore, though. So it goes.

Movie Roundup: 10/23/09

2009-10-23T18:33:00.007-07:00

Holy crap. I am never letting one of these posts get so out-of-hand again. I guess I misjudged myself: school doesn't cut down on actual movie watching; it just cuts down on the spare time in which I can write about them. I waited two months to post this; now I face the consequences. In the interests of time, I've cut down on the wordage for some of them, but that's all right: you, venerable and blessed reader, would probably be here all day otherwise. I wouldn't want that.

So. There are 31 movies here (an average of one movie every other day; I'm truly incurable). Lots of high scores, though, and very few low ones (and even an extremely rare 100). And of course, due to the fact that I'm taking a class on the Master, lots of Hitchcock as well.

As always: films previously unseen by me in bold italics, films I've seen before in orange. Let's do this.

The Scale
100-90: Blissful, orgasmic cinema. This is something extremely special.
89-80: An excellent, unmissable film. I probably own this (or will) and you should, too.
79-70: A very strong film well worth seeing.
69-60: This is good. It has some problems, but it's still an enjoyable piece of work.
59-50: The gray area. Certain things work about this, other things don't. It depends on mood and taste.
49-40: A mediocre or lackluster film. Not painful, but conspicuously flawed.
39-30: Plain bad. Don't go near this, please.
29-20: Incredibly terrible. Only worth a viewing if self-torture is desired.
19-0: Hooooo mama.

9 (Shane Acker, 2009) 62
If looks were everything, 9 would be one hell of a movie. The thing is beautiful: from its broad strokes to its minute details, every aspect of its (admittedly very eerie) animation style is just about perfect. I just wish the story had been ... well, a little more engaging.

The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935) 75
Probably the first Hitchcock film that's regarded as a bona fide classic, and it's easy to see why. It's entertaining, suspenseful, intriguing, and just a lot of fun to watch. Robert Donat is great as the film's droll protagonist, and everything here just seems to fit together really, really well.

2046 (Wong Kar-Wai, 2004) 44
Gorgeous. Well acted. Amazingly directed. Pretentious. Boring. Depressing. That's pretty much all you need to know about 2046, should you ever want to watch it. It's dense and complicated and, despite an abundance of eye-popping visuals, almost entirely dialogue-driven. And at the end of the day, especially with the lack of a satisfying emotional payoff, it's really just not worth it. I remember watching this few years ago and finding it really interesting. Upon revisiting it, it doesn't hold up nearly as well. There are plenty of strong ideas here (it's not a case of style over substance by any means; there's definitely a story, its episodic nature just fails to hold interest), but it doesn't seem quite like Wong Kar-Wai knows how to properly execute them. Still, pretty as hell. Those futuristic sequences are lovely eye candy.

Adventureland (Greg Mottola, 2009) 73
Wow, this is not the movie the trailers advertised. As I'm sure was the case with many other folks, I immediately dismissed this when I saw the preview last winter: it looked like yet another juvenile gross-out flick, albeit one set in an amusement park, and I wouldn't have been caught dead going to see it. And then when the movie actually came out it was met with some alarmingly positive reviews. Well hell, thought I, perhaps there is more to this. I never got a chance to catch it in the theaters, but now here it is on DVD, and you know what? It is a very good movie. Far from what I was expecting, this is a pretty straightforward romance flick. And while it definitely still falls under the umbrella of "comedy," it takes itself far more seriously than I would've imagined, and the result is a surprisingly strong emotional component to counterpoint the occasional laugh-out-loud moment (the "Rock Me Amadeus" thing really amused me, for some reason). While not as audacious or as clever as the more recent (500) Days of Summer, it shares a lot of its insight, and that alone should be enough of a recommendation. Adventureland was directed by Greg Mottola, the man also responsible for Superbad. While not as gaspingly hilarious as its predecessor, this is arguably the more mature product. It's smart, it's sweet, and it's absolutely nothing like you were led to believe.

The Big Lebowski (The Coen Brothers, 1998) 91
This has become such a cult film that I really don't have much to say about it anymore. Either you're in the camp who think it's self-indulgent and weird for its own sake and find that immensely irritating, or you're in the camp who think it's self-indulgent and weird for its own sake and realize that that's pretty much what's so damn brilliant about it. The movie's just fucking bizarre, almost to the extent that you have to watch it multiple times before you've assured yourself it's safe to laugh at, but each viewing just makes it funnier and funnier. Not the Coens' best (sorry to be a traditionalist, that honor still goes to Fargo), but certainly among their finest work, and one of my favorite comedies ever.

The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963) 60
Yeah, I know it's considered one of Hitchcock's classics, but especially now that I'm older (I first saw this when I was, like, ten) it just comes across as kind of silly to me. It's well made, as pretty much all of Hitchcock's films are, and there are a couple scenes that really stick with you (the iconic playground sequence, of course, comprises the best few moments in the film), but overall this is just a shadow of what the man was truly capable of producing. Add that to the fact that, unlike lots of people, I'm really not frightened of birds whatsoever, and you have an intriguing if flawed curiosity. Of course everyone should see it once, but it's certainly not among the Master's finest.

Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929) 57
Hitchcock's first talkie (and, indeed, the first talkie in Britain) is interesting from a historical setting (both in the way Hitchcock adapts to the changing medium, and in the way he comments on late-20s British society), but isn't quite as captivating plotwise as several of his other early films. The chase scene through the British Museum, for instance, becomes a bit tiresome. Not bad, though; just something that I'm sure the man could have done better.

Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) 92
I saw this at The Guild two days before Polanski got arrested in Switzerland. I feel strangely guilty, like my doing so upset something in the cosmos. But hey, whatever happens to the man himself, nothing can erase the fact that this stylish, edgy, bleak-as-all-hell film is just stone-cold brilliant (and stone-cold is, indeed, the right way to describe it).

Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975) 59
I don't know. I guess I'm just not cut out for this Argento fellow. I don't want to say the movies are bad, really, because they aren't. I just don't like them very much. Deep Red straddles an awkward line between absurd played-for-laughs humor (a tiny car with a sinking passenger seat) and moments of pointlessly excessive gore (a man's head -- unnecessarily, I might add -- gets run over and crushed by a car). Truthfully, I can understand the appeal; it just doesn't tickle my fancy all that much. At least the soundtrack is bangin'.

Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) 70
A provocative, if not especially surprising portrait of race relations in late-80s Brooklyn (and, I'd be willing to wager, inner-city anywhere in 2009). I appreciate what Lee is doing here, and the cinematography in particular is out of this world (you can almost feel the heat and sweat pouring out of the screen), though I do feel as if more recent films like La Haine and City of God cover similar territory more successfully. Still, the cut it makes is a deep one and I don't think anyone's going to argue that it's a very important film. Also: the opening credits sequence is among the best I've ever seen.

The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) 96
An astoundingly wonderful film that just seems to get better and better, both as I age and it does. No movie has ever taken the boredom, confusion, and society-instilled claustrophobia of twentysomething masculinity and handled it as pitch-perfectly as it is handled here. That its final scene is one of the most excellent endings in all of cinema is merely one of the reasons that this one of the best movies ever made.

if.... (Lindsay Anderson, 1968) 61
Very, very, very weird (and utterly British) social commentary that doesn't really succeed at anything it tries to do, but somehow remains bizarrely captivating. It drifts freewheelingly between fantasy and reality (even though they're handled with exactly the same tone, I think it's pretty easy to tell which is which), switches randomly between B&W and color for no reason whatsoever, and fails to arrive at any kind of satisfying resolution (as mentioned before, I'm of the firm belief that the last five minutes exist solely within the imaginations of the three main characters). And yet, somehow, it's entirely watchable. I really can't explain it. Nonetheless, one indisputably good thing came out of it: this was the film that led Kubrick to cast Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (in which he gives one of the all-time great performances), so there you go.

Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006) DNE
In a sense, this is the film Lynch has been destined to make his whole career: a dense, thick, disturbing, utterly incoherent labyrinth of remarkably well-composed moments that winds on and on and on through an astonishing, WTF-worthy 179-minute runtime. I regard it fondly as an Experience, but assinging a numerical score to it is just as impossible as recommending it to anyone who isn't already really confident in their Lynch fandom. And if you aren't sure or haven't seen a Lynch film, dear god don't start here: Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet are much, much, much more user-friendly.

In the Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009) 83
Vicious, meanspirited political satire that is every bit as hilarious as it is nasty. It deftly combines the fly-on-the-wall atmosphere of something like The Office with the abject idiocy of Dr. Strangelove to form the best movie of its kind in years. Highly recommended.

I Sell the Dead (Glenn McQuaid, 2009) 55
A very uneven, but amusing and entertaining horror-comedy flick. McQuaid is far more interested in getting laughs than actually telling a story, so he throws in everything but the kitchen sink. Sometimes it works (the awesome vampire scene), sometimes it doesn't (yeah, okay, the so-called twist is really lame). On the whole, though, it delivers what is expected of it. It could be a whole lot better, but that's sort of beside the point.

Jacob's Ladder (Adrian Lyne, 1990) 47
An intriguing, well-directed, and even slightly creepy thriller that unfortunately suffers from a script that doesn't know how to handle these strengths. It isn't that the film is plagued by a lack of ideas -- on the contrary, there's practically an overabundance of them, and that's what makes it so damn hard for the script to reconcile all of them into a decent conclusion. Between war flashbacks, drug conspiracy, vivid hallucinations, and elaborate dream/reality confusion, there's a lot going on here; it's just a shame that the cleanest, tidiest interpretation of the ending (and thus the one I'm assuming is the "right" one) is actually the least satisfying. Oh well. While the film is unspooling, at least, it's captivating. I don't think there was a moment throughout when I wasn't engaged in Jacob's story and all of the bizarre, unsettling things that were happening to him. It's just ... ya know, when you get involved like that, you kind of wish the story would come full circle and really give you something to write home about. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, also in reference to wartime death: "So it goes."

The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938) 76
Clever, endlessly entertaining black comedy/political thriller hybrid about a woman who disappears mysteriously during a train ride and the younger pair who are determined to find her. So basically it's like Flightplan except not a festering piece of shit.

Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944) 49
A very, very dated World War II statement that never really rises above its central one-location conceit. I didn't really care for it the first time I watched it, but the second time it's just -- pardon the description -- totally dry, if only for the fact that there are no surprises left to be had. It's the sort of thing where you get everything there is to get the first time; re-watching it simply isn't a rewarding exercise.

The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1926) 63
Atmospheric, well orchestrated silent Hitchcock. It's very much a product of its time and can really only be watched for what it is (both a good thing and a bad thing), but it's easy to see based on its merits alone why Hitchcock found a name for himself really quickly.

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) 100
Still just about the closest to perfection that any film has ever come.

The five minutes of Gus Van Sant's Psycho I saw on TV a few weeks ago: -3
VINCE FUCKING VAUGHN?!

Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) 98
A lush, gorgeous, and utterly haunting experience that by all means deserves to be called one of the finest films ever made. It's definitely in my top ten, anyway.

[REC] (Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2007) 83
Almost certainly one of the finest horror films I have ever seen. At times almost unbearably tense and frequently genuinely frightening.

Scandal Sheet (Phil Karlson, 1952) 63
A fun, kind of nondescript but well-made film noir. Although it doesn't really give me any sort of incentive to revisit it, it entertains while it's unspooling, which means it does its job right.

Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) 79
Still fresh, clever, and funny after all these years.

Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943) 74
A uniformly nasty and often brilliant tale of familial suspicion that, unfortunately, suffers from an abrupt and overly Hollywood-ish ending that sort of robs the proceedings of its wicked edge. Still, the majority of it is excellent.

Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga, 2009) 90
A devastating, scary, and indelible meditation on gang violence and immigration that is still far and away one of the best new movies I have seen in years.

The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) 76
The premise itself hasn't aged especially well, but the cinematography is the stuff of legends. Harry Lime has arguably the best character introduction scene in film history. Also: it's really hard to go wrong Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. I mean, I'm just sayin', 'cause they were in that one other movie too.

The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988) 80
A potent and disturbing film that, for me at least, is far more unsettling than the average horror flick for the simple reason that it bypasses the irritating in-your-face tendency that characterizes many of the genre's entries and instead opts for a slow, deliberate pace that doesn't reveal its secrets all at once. To me, true horror comes not from being startled or presented with eerie elements of the supermatural, but with the implementation of frightening things that are utterly possible in everyday life; The Vanishing, especially with its two well developed main characters, is never anything less than believable. Although I gather I stand alone among the movie night crowd, I found it chilling and fascinating.

Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze, 2009) 37
They managed to take one of the sweetest, most heartwarming children's books of all-time and turn it into something equal parts dreary, depressing, and tedious. Good job, guys. At least, thanks probably entirely to Jonze, it looks great, but that's about it.

Zebraman (Takashi Miike, 2004) 65
Typical Miike weirdness (if the words "typical" and "Miike" ever belong in the same sentence, which I don't think they do). If we're using, say, Audition or Ichi the Killer as a baseline, it's definitely one of his lighter films: self-consciously stupid and unapologetically campy, but also highly entertaining (as most Miike tends to be). Far from his best, but he's just such a bizarre director that I don't even really think I care how good or bad it is. I'm just glad to have seen it.

Zombieland (Ruben Flesicher, 2009) 84
It doesn't happen nearly often enough, but every once in a while a comedy comes along that just gets it right. Zombieland is that movie. Words can scarcely describe how good it is: it's delightful, fun, upbeat, and flat-out hilarious. The trailers made it look good; the actual film is clearly one of 2009's best.

I'll be back. Sooner this time, I promise!

Movie Roundup: 8/21/09

2009-08-21T16:55:00.002-07:00

I promised I'd post one of these within a couple of days. And now, yay, I deliver on my promise! And not a second too soon: school starts Monday, which will of course drastically cut down on movie watching (except for the films of Alfred Hitchcock, on which I am taking a class). But for now, I've got a whole bunch of 'em for you. Same deal as always: previously seen movies in orange, movies new to me in white. Enjoy!

Eh, it's been a couple months. Let me bust this out again, just for reference:
The Scale
100-90: Blissful, orgasmic cinema. This is something extremely special.
89-80: An excellent, unmissable film. I probably own this (or will) and you should, too.
79-70: A very strong film well worth seeing.
69-60: This is good. It has some problems, but it's still an enjoyable piece of work.
59-50: The gray area. Certain things work about this, other things don't. It depends on mood and taste.
49-40: A mediocre or lackluster film. Not painful, but conspicuously flawed.
39-30: Plain bad. Don't go near this, please.
29-20: Incredibly terrible. Only worth a viewing if self-torture is desired.
19-0: Hooooo mama.

17 Again (Burr Steers, 2009) 54
In my defense, I didn't really watch this of my own volition. I was hanging out with a group of females and, in the interest of not spending five hours just trying to agree on something to watch, I settled back amenably and just let this one drift by me. It's an inoffensive but completely unspectacular fantasy-rom-com thing that, while mildly entertaining and amusing, can't help but call to mind the vastly superior Big and a slew of other films. Basically, the film just exists as an excuse for the ladies to gawk at Zac Efron (whom I am sure, true to the film's high capacity for realism, we all looked like when we were 17). It's his star vehicle, which I guess I'm cool with. It's just not a film aimed at my demographic. Still, not awful, and I'm sure it quite easily could have been. So that's something.

(500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009) 85
Now this is my kind of romantic comedy. Everything that can work about this does, and everything that shouldn't work is precisely what pushes the film out of standard-issue "relationship movie" fare into something much more effective and poignant. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch, really, to call this an anti-romantic comedy: you know within the first couple minutes that Tom and Summer aren't going to live happily ever after; the film all but spells it out. The journey, then, is seeing how they end up not being together, and for what reason, and what happens in the meantime. And if I've somehow made this sound dull and dry, nothing could be further from the truth. It's rich, warm, funny, clever, and creative, with characters I genuinely cared for and an insightful script that hardly ever hits a wrong note. Even the film's more self-conscious conceits, such as a nonlinear timeline or a practically winking-at-the-camera musical sequence, work beautifully in creating what is simply the sharpest and most honest movie of its kind to come along in quite some time. It may not be the sort of thing that will ever pack theaters, but it's one of those small films that's bound to give warm fuzzies to just about everyone who goes out of their way to catch it.

Barton Fink (The Coen Brothers, 1991) 64
Barton Fink is a very, very strange movie. It's strange even by Coen Brothers standards, which should mean something if you've ever seen one of their films. It's so strange, and certain events come so abruptly out of left-field, that while I was watching I was absolutely sure the film didn't work. Now, thinking back over it, I am not so convinced. I think it does work, albeit in a very unconventional and not entirely successful way. The film more or less follows the tried-and-true "writer's block" story for its first two thirds; insofar as this takes us, the movie is excellent. The Coens take dead aim at the movie industry and those who populate it: John Turturro is perfect as the tortured, struggling screenwriter, Michael Lerner is gleefully reprehensible as the studio exec, and John Mahoney is uncanny as the alcoholic trainwreck who is obviously supposed to be William Faulkner. It's when the film takes a sudden left turn in its final act that the story threatens to go off the rails. I'm not entirely sure what the Coens are getting at via this resolution, though I'm familiar enough with their output to be sure they did it for a very specific reason. Even so, it's confounding and at odds with everything that's come before it. Despite that flaw, though, it's still an interesting film. Though far from their best work (which was, of course, still yet to come), it's the work of two talented men with an offbeat agenda and an excitingly unusual way of looking at the world.

Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996) 61
All right. I have successfully collected the entire set. Having now seen all of Wes Anderson's movies to date, I can finally make the definitive claim I've been inching towards for ages: I just really don't like the guy all that much. His droll, self-consciously quirky films (the most popular of which are probably Rushmore and The Life Aquatic) seem to really strike a chord with some people, but I just find them smug and irritating. They're never bad, really (with the exception of Rushmore, which I find insufferable), and the judicious helping of (clearly influential) absurdist humor that defines each one is always good for a few laughs, but at the end of the day none of them really add up to much more than pointless excursions into self-aware peculiarity. Bottle Rocket, his first film and possibly his most solid, suffers all the same pitfalls. It tells a story that tries so desperately to be clever and peppers its every scene with so much smirking jokery that I almost wished I could've taken Anderson and Owen Wilson aside and told them, begged them, to just ... relax a bit. Don't try so damn hard to make something "different." The desperation shows, and it impacts what could've been a highly enjoyable, unique little comedy. It is still entertaining, but I also feel like it could have been a lot more than that. That's the feeling I get from all of Anderson's films, really. Maybe one of these days he'll get that feeling, too, and do something about it.

Bubba Ho-tep (Don Coscarelli, 2002) 68
I'm serious: if the idea of Elvis and a black JFK battling mummies in a nursing home doesn't strike you as the best thing ever, we can't be friends anymore. Because guess what: it is the best thing ever. This was, I believe, the first movie I ever saw at the Guild (back during its initial release in '02 or '03). I loved it then, and I still have a soft spot for it now. I mean, seriously, though. Bruce Campbell as Elvis. And a black JFK. Battling a mummy. How can you not be cool with that? This should be, like, the most popular movie ever made or something.

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009) 46
Again, the advance buzz baffles me. This has been heralded as "surprisingly original," "a novel creation," "ingenious and creative" -- the whole gamut. And not by people who don't know what they're talking about. This kind of talk gets a fella like me excited, see, and it makes me all the more disappointed when the damn thing turns out to be exactly like dozens upon dozens of movies I've seen before. This could have been something special: its mockumentary-style intro flirts with the kind of excitement and originality that, had the film sustained it, could've made this into an exceptional slice of sci-fi. Unfortunately, the clever stylistics go away as the story unfolds and we're left with what I found to be a very pedestrian shit-blows-up action movie. Far from being a captive audience, I spent much of the last hour rather bored. Even worse than that, the script pretty severely loses focus as the affair rolls on. What exactly gets resolved at the end? Who's the real hero here? How is the nutty Nigerian gun cult even necessary to the proceedings? And why, oh god, why does something as potentially intelligent as this feel the need to cop fighting machines from Transformers in order to get cheap thrills? So, I'm sorry. It seems like I'm a dissenting vote on this one, but I was far from impressed. There's nothing here that hasn't been done before a whole lot better, and it's just depressing to see something that could be thoughtful and poignant (obviously they're shooting for an apartheid allegory) streamline itself into a loud, handheld-ridden actionfest just to turn a buck.

Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, 1986) 72
It's very easy for me to see how someone could get really turned off by Jarmusch. He's definitely an acquired taste. Not only are his films very slow, but they also have an odd sense of humor and very rarely arrive at any sort of conventional resolution. Still, I don't know why, but I really like the guy. Every one of his films I have seen has wooed me in some way or other, and Down by Law is no exception. This is one of those movies where the experience is far more satisfying than any sort of synopsis. Really, all that happens is that three deadbeats get thrown in jail, hang out in jail for a while, and then escape to a bizarre deus ex machina, but nonetheless I still had a lot of fun watching it. Roberto Benigni, an almost complete unknown at the time, is a hoot as the ingratiatingly optimistic Italian tourist, and it's always interesting to see Tom Waits show up in a film, regardless of what it might be. So, yeah. I don't know. If you like Jarmusch, give this one a try. It's really entertaining. If you don't like Jarmusch, this isn't going to do anything to change your mind. And if you don't know Jarmusch, I'd rather you hit up Stranger Than Paradise first. But be sure to come back to this one. It's a goodie.

Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant, 1989) 87
A superb addiction drama. Gus Van Sant is an eclectic and fascinating filmmaker, and over his career he's traversed the very good (Milk, My Own Private Idaho), the all right (Elephant, Paranoid Park), and the just plain awful (Last Days, the Psycho remake). After years of digging, I have finally found the masterpiece I always knew he had in him. Who would've thought it'd turn out to be one of the first films he ever made? This is one of those godsend movies where everything falls beautifully into place: the very straightforward story, despite being nothing we haven't seen before, is never anything less than engrossing; the performances -- especially Matt Dillon's, which should have at least been nominated for an Oscar, if not awarded the trophy -- are tremendous; and the preaching and moralizing, which always inevitably creep into this sort of affair, are more or less nonexistent (which makes the proceedings all the more potent). It's grimly amusing when it needs to be, suitably tense when its situations call for it, breathtakingly poignant at all the right moments (there's a scene where Dillon is talking to a secretary about entering a methodone program that shows more truth and humanity over the course of two minutes than some entire films have), and just about as satisfying overall as it could possibly be. I loved this film.

Exotica (Atom Egoyan, 1994) 89
Holy shit. And here I was, absolutely sure I would not be seeing a more rewarding film than Drugstore Cowboy for months to come. That I had the pure luck of watching Exotica just a few hours later adds up to the single most satisfying movie-watching day in longer than I care to think about. This is an incredible achievement, more assured and affecting than I ever would have expected, even granted its barrage of glowing reviews. I've fallen prey to critical overhype plenty of times before, but this time the accolades are just fucking true. Exotica is a tour de force of human emotion, slithering deftly from isolation and loss to hopefulness, and back again. I can't even begin to express my scorn for the person who thought it'd be a good idea to market this as a sultry, sexy, erotic thriller. Despite occurring largely within the walls of a strip club, nothing could be further from the truth. This is a film about pain and suffering, about the richness and three-dimensionality of its characters; sex is the last thing on anyone's mind. The puzzle-like narrative is constructed somewhat out of linear order not as a means by which to fool or one-up the audience, but as a way to slowly develop its characters and shine light on the connections between them. As more and more details come into focus, the better we understand these people, and the better we're able to relate to them. It is not until the very last scene that the film has divulged everything, and even then it doesn't condescend to spell everything out; there's plenty of ambiguity and mystery left over, as well there should be. This is brilliant stuff: Egoyan's script is exhilaratingly unconventional, but impressively accomplished. The way he translates it to the screen shows the same caliber of talent. The cinematography is lush and dark and gorgeous, the performances he draws from his actors are top-notch, and the emotional impact of the film as a whole far surpasses anything I can reasonably put into words. It's a damn masterpiece. That's all there is to it.

Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) 75
You've got to understand that I'm a big Kubrick fan. I'm willing to defend the guy well past the point where many others would give up in frustation. That being said, I'll admit Eyes Wide Shut is far from his best film (it wouldn't even make my top five), but it's still a very solid and assured piece of filmmaking. There's also a certain air of finality about it that makes me not dissatisfied that it was his last film. Still, its flaws are very apparent: first of all, at 159 minutes, it's way damn too long. Even at his best, Kubrick was always deliberately paced (go back and revisit 2001 or The Shining -- you'll see what I mean), but rarely has his work seemed as unnecessarily protracted as it does in some of these scenes. Also: the story is appallingly thin. Taken one scene at a time, the film is positively mesmerizing. Taken as a whole, it really does not add up to much. So I suppose that's the secret to the enjoyment of the film: just lose yourself, and when it comes time to reflect on the film as a whole, simply regard it on a symbolic level rather than a literal one. Kubrick was a master stylist, and he creates a strange, surreal, potent atmosphere with Eyes Wide Shut that, frankly, I don't think could have been pulled off by anyone else. The very tripped-out gothic orgy scene in particular should go somewhere in the pantheon of cinematic brilliance, and for my money there are enough moments like this and enough of a sexually-charged undercurrent to make the film incredibly compelling despite all of its flaws. Whether or not you agree depends entirely on the amount of goodwill you're willing to grant its creator.

The Happiness of the Katakuris (Takashi Miike, 2001) 79
If not the best, it's really hard to argue that Takashi Miike is far and away the most fascinating of Japanese directors. Not only is the man capable of directing three or four features per year, but each one is so radically different that, were it not for his very distinctive fingerprints, it'd be difficult to guess they were the work of the same person. While I shy away from calling it the best of his films, I can say without hesitation that The Happiness of the Katakuris is most certainly the most flat-out entertaining (and, consequently, my favorite thus far). I can't remember the last time I laughed this hard at a film. It's beyond absurd -- things happen at random without any sort of logical progression, there are unexpected outbursts of song, anybody can (and often does) die at any minute, and nothing really makes terribly much sense. At all. And yet somehow the damn thing is kind of brilliant. It's anarchic in the same way The Ruling Class might have been 35 years ago: it knows it's hilarious, but it exists to amuse itself instead of amusing anybody else. In the wrong hands, this is disastrous (Mars Attacks! comes to mind). In Miike's, it's riveting. I can't really explain it. There's nothing about this movie that should be brilliant, but dammit -- that's just what it is. And what a far cry it is from, ya know, anything else the man has ever made. But I guess that's a good thing. I mean, I can't imagine there could ever be two movies quite like this one. The world might explode.

The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009) 68
To date, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is probably the most "critically acclaimed" movie of 2009. There's been nary a bad review to be found. I want to set the record straight, though. Is it a good film? Absolutely. Is it one of the greatest war movies ever made, as some have said? Well, lest we be so eager to discount the likes of Apocalypse Now and Schindler's List, not hardly. I think the reason why critics have gone so apeshit for it isn't because it really is some sort of masterpiece, but because -- like it or not -- it's still way better than the majority of the wannabe-didactic Iraqi bullshit Hollywood has been putting out. I'm as opposed to our actions in Iraq as anyone, but if I have to sit through one more sneering cinematic diatribe on the subject, I might just kill someone. The Hurt Locker, like an angel, avoids politics. It's a film not about the war, but about the smaller things that happen within it. When its action scenes get going, things get really tense really fast. This is the distinction between action in the blockbuster sense and action in the sense of something more satisfying; the difference between wanting to see shit blow up and, in this case, praying to god it doesn't. There are at least three or four edge-of-your-seat suspense sequences here, and it is to these that the film is anchored. Where it falters is in its unwillingness to properly develop its main character: the reckless, borderline psychotic Sgt. James is one of the most compelling protagonists in a good long while. Given the right motivation and backstory, this could be a zinger of a film. As the film presents him, though, he's merely an intriguing curiosity who serves to get the adrenaline pumping. And that's a shame. The good news is, there's plenty of adrenaline and tension to go around. If that's what you're in the mood for, step right up. I wanted a little bit more, but even in my mild dissatisfaction I can't deny that this is a very strong film.

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009) 94
Simply put, films like Inglourious Basterds are why I love movies. This is a virtuoso piece of filmmaking, overflowing with audacity, originality, and straight-up adrenaline. It is everything I could have wanted from it and more, and when it comes time to count down the best films of 2009, I have a really strong feeling about what's going to be #1. Not that I didn't expect this: when I see a film by Quentin Tarantino, I expect nothing less than a masterpiece. Of course there was the usual amount of trepidation about the film living up to expectations and so forth, but I quickly forgot about this as I settled back into the most immersive and satisfying moviegoing experience I've had in more time than I care to think about. It's rare to see a movie where everything clicks. It's even more of a treat when everything clicks in such a dazzling, invigorating sequence of events that you wish the film would never end. I've endured some interminable 90-minute films; Inglourious Basterds' 152 minutes almost seem nonexistent. The way Tarantino deliberately crafts his characters and skillfully builds his storyline is a testament to his mastery. The film never rushes anything, but it never feels drawn-out; it is entertaining from scene one (and scene one is, perhaps, the single finest scene from any film all year), funny when it needs to be, shocking and ruthlessly tense when the ever-escalating story calls for it, and never anything less than an absolute joy to behold. If Christoph Waltz is not given Oscar consideration for his performance as Hans Landa, the Academy needs to have their collective head examined. Likewise, if this film does not do tremendously well at the box office, the world at large just won't know what they're missing. Especially after enduring so many bad sequels and cheap retreads, everyone of a like mind needs to behold what Tarantino has accomplished here. It does the soul good.

In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute, 1997) 74
A fucking vicious piece of work, which is exactly what's so damn good about it. I'm always slightly irritated by potentially incisive films that self-consciously strive to be soft around the edges in order to make themselves more marketable. In the Company of Men is a film that doesn't care. It's nasty, hateful, brutal, and mean. And while it's the sort of thing that's more or less impossible to sit through without feeling some pretty intense discomfort, it's also sobering and refreshing. For all its meanspiritedness, one cannot accuse the film of being bad (LaBute definitely overuses the long shot, I think, but that's a total trifling nitpick). In hindsight, it's easy to see why this was the film that put Aaron Eckhart on the map: his character, more so than the vast majority of screen villains I have ever seen, embodies a natural, coldblooded evil that simply cannot be put into words. The performance is dynamic, and the shining center of what is overall an incredibly ballsy production. Even twelve years later, the film has absolutely zero potential for wide recognition, but all film buffs should do themselves a favor and check it out. It will never ever ever be referred to as a feel-good movie, but at the same time it's so nice to watch a film that not only has teeth so razor-sharp they draw blood, but one that actively enjoys doing so.

The Loved One (Tony Richardson, 1965) 70
In many ways, The Loved One unfolds like a 60s prototype of the kind of film Sacha Baron Cohen or Parker and Stone would make today. There's a good deal of gleefully wicked, razor-sharp satire here, but it's punctuated with an uncomfortable propensity to underpin everything with unnecessary gross-out gags. And no matter how funny the filmmakers might think these are, they can't help but undermine the sharper and more pointed material. For every pitch-perfect, spot-on scene like the one where the pet undertakers shoot the dead bird off in a rocket, there's an off-putting one like the disgusting and not even slightly amusing montage of the morbidly obese Mrs. Joyboy stuffing her face with food. Even so, I'd say the good handily outweighs the bad. It takes balls to even make a movie this irreverent, and even more balls to market it as "the film with something to offend everyone" (which ... yeah, it probably is). I'm sure as time goes by I'll come to forget the icky stuff and remember it fondly for what it, for the most part, is: a fearless, jet-black comedy about the funeral industry that is still more or less unique in its approach and, indeed, has more than its fair share of thrills to balance out the filmmakers' somewhat indulgent tendency to just go off the rails completely.

No Country for Old Men (The Coen Brothers, 2007) 90
I think I exhausted pretty much everything I have to say about this back when it came out a couple years ago (god, has it already been that long?), but it's still an exceptional film that holds up very, very well. It's unconventional as hell, too: how many movies can you think of that basically feature no soundtrack whatsoever and have three main characters that never meet any of the others face-to-face? I'd be hard-pressed to name even one more, for both. Anyway, this sucker cleaned up at the Oscars, and deservedly so. Bardem's chilling performance is on its way to becoming iconic, and the film as a whole can proudly stand as far and away the best western of the 2000s.

Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965) 59
This is sort of a hallmark of 1960s horror, and while it doesn't quite work for me, I must concede that it's an intriguing and cleverly conceived mood piece. I think my biggest problem is that, dammit, it just doesn't scare me. At all. In fact, if we're going on thrills alone, the movie is almost completely ineffectual. This wouldn't be as big of a deal for me if the film hadn't been built up as omg one of the scariest things ever (thanks, dad), but it was. I mean, sure, there are some eerie elements (the hands in the hallway, the highly symbolic cracks in the walls), but they're not frightening. They're just sort of evocative. So I'm left to admire the film based on technique alone. Luckily, Polanski knows exactly what he's doing. He creates an atmosphere nicely and knows how to skillfully build on it until the action reaches its logical breaking point. I just wish that breaking point were a bit more visceral. At least for me, anyway. God knows the film's plenty scary enough for some. I just wish I could be included, because it is a good film. It just happens to be one that also feels strangely incomplete.

Rocket Science (Jeffrey Blitz, 2007) 30
Rocket Science is a remarkably miserable movie. It is dreary to the fullest extent of its abilities, which are considerable. It also thinks it's funny, though by whose judgment I have no idea. This, a film ostensibly about high school debating, was recommended to me by a friend who knew that I spent many a weekend in high school competing at speech tournaments. In hindsight, I hope to God the recommendation didn't come because the main character reminded him of me. The so-called "hero" of this vapid ordeal has exactly zero likable qualities. He stutters, he's antisocial, he obviously has some pretty serious emotional problems (unless you count getting drunk and throwing a cello through someone's window as typical teenage behavior), and he's suitably lacking in any sort of personality. In other words, I couldn't have given a damn about him. He's not exactly the sort of guy who puts you on the edge of your seat rooting for him. The even worse news is, the film doesn't like him either. So for 100 minutes the kid gets pushed around, wrestles unsuccessfully with his personal demons, and ultimately ends up in a place arguably less desirable than he was when the film started. This is an underdog story; one might reasonably expect an arc with an ultimate triumph. Here, not so much. And when a comedy about a troubled teenager attempting to overcome his obstacles and emerge victorious accomplishes neither being amusing nor its story-based goals, I think it's safe to say the film as a whole is a complete failure. That it's also a wholly depressing experience is just an added bonus. At the very least, the film could've used more smartass, banjo-playing dry cleaner guy. He was at least somewhat interesting.

The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976) 38
An discomfitingly misguided film, not to mention ludicrous and slow as molasses. Roger Ebert hit the nail on the head: if The Tenant weren't a Roman Polanski film, it'd be laughed off as total garbage. Clearly he's trying to one-up himself here and outdo Repulsion; to say he fails miserably would be an understatement. Repulsion was not a bad film, but it felt like a somewhat undercooked one; still, it was forgivable. It was the work of a younger and less experienced director. The Tenant is the work of a man who had just finished making Chinatown, one of the greatest detective movies of all-time, and as such it's just plain embarrassing. I suppose this could've worked as a simple paranoia story. It would've been predictable, but with Polanski's talent for conjuring up atmospherics, it still might've been decent. But when the main character (played by Polanski himself, no less) starts to dress in drag and trip out and basically go down the rabbit hole, the movie effectively reaches the point of no return. The slowness of the narrative is frustrating up to that point, but when it chooses to reward us with that nonsense, it becomes flat-out tedious. And then there's the ending. Oh god, the ending. As if it weren't enough to see Polanski in drag and makeup hurl himself through a third-story window, you get to see him -- bruised and bloodied -- crawl up the stairs and do it again. If this were a smarter film, I'd suspect some sort of tongue-in-cheek parody at work. But no. This is just fucking stupid. And to think this has the audacity to call itself a horror film. What a riot. The only thing that's scary is that it got made in the first place. The rest of it's just morbidly fascinating, like watching a trainwreck. You know it's awful, but somehow it's just impossible to look away.

'Til next time, film fans. Au revoir.

Chris' Summer Mix 2009

2009-08-19T14:15:00.002-07:00

At the end of every summer, either as a birthday present or a going-back-to-school present or whatever, I make a mix. I used to make tons of mixes. I'd make 'em for any purpose or any person or any occasion. Over time, what with the advent of the playlist and me actually finding better things to do with my time, the golden Summer Mix has more or less become the only one I make every year (barring road trips or something that might call for it).

The criterion for song selection is very simple: it can be any song from any year, just so long as I like it and it reminds me in some way of the summer now gone. This usually results in an array of some of my most-played tracks from May to August, select songs by bands I have seen live, or songs that have just plain dropped into my life at particularly opportune times. In short, these are all songs that mean something to me and that, given enough time, I expect to be especially evocative of summer '09.

Are there any songs that got left out due to CD time constraints? Well, yeah. In a perfect world, CDs would be ~90 minutes long so that I could include Archive's "Controlling Crowds" and The Mae Shi's "R U Professional?" But so it goes. The 19 songs that made the cut are, I think, the "right" 19, so that's good enough for me.

It's also become frighteningly apparent to me just by glancing at last year's mix how much further down the synth slope I've fallen. With a few synthy exceptions (M83, Kleerup, Cut Copy), 2008's was a rock mix. But now, with a few rock exceptions (Sunset Rubdown, Brand New, dredg, and a couple others), 2009's is predominately a synth mix. The tastes, they are a-changin'.

Chris' Summer Mix 2009:
01. Junior Boys, "Double Shadow" [4:22]
02. Sunset Rubdown, "Silver Moons" [4:45]
03. Empire of the Sun, "Standing on the Shore" [4:24]
04. Bat for Lashes, "Daniel" [4:11]
05. The Presets, "This Boy's in Love" [4:12]
06. Brand New, "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows" [4:01]
07. Fischerspooner, "Never Win" [3:59]
08. Pure Reason Revolution, "Bullitts Dominae" [5:22]
09. dredg, "I Don't Know" [3:45]
10. Chromeo, "Fancy Footwork" [3:18]
11. Das Racist & Wallpaper, "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" [3:40]
12. Innerpartysystem, "The Way We Move" [3:27]
13. Rinôçérôse, "Panic Attack" [4:02]
14. Pnau, "With You Forever" [3:34]
15. The Kingsbury Manx, "Well, Whatever" [3:11]
16. Immaculate Machine, "Broken Ship" [3:33]
17. War Tapes, "She Lied" [3:22]
18. 23RAINYDAYS, "Monster" [4:42]
19. VNV Nation, "Where There Is Light" [6:20]
Total Time: 78:17

And of course it's horribly presumptuous of me to assume anyone might be interested in hearing this crap, but just in case, I've prepared a handy little .rar file that can be downloaded here. Trust me, it's worth it just for track #11 (and the way that, when listened to in sequence, it kind of awesomely transitions into #12).

It all just makes me wonder what 2010's mix will look like. For all I know, it could be nothing but Bavarian folk music. I'm known to frighten myself like that sometimes. Anyway. There we have it.

For what it's worth, a new Movie Roundup will arrive very shortly. Like, within a couple days. So stay tuned for that!

Movie Roundup: 7/14/09

2009-07-14T12:39:00.005-07:00

It's a long one this time. I guess that's what happens when you're on summer break and you go a month without posting. Same deal as always. Onward!

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi, 2009) 56
Unfortunately mismarketed as a "real-life Spinal Tap" (or, more to the point, lazily pigeonholed as such), Anvil! is well put-together but alarmingly dreary. It's all about expectations. I expected this -- like the film it's being played up against -- to be funny, entertaining, and incisive; instead, what I got was melancholy and sometimes flat-out depressing. I likewise expected there to be some sort of triumph in Anvil's never-say-die career history to make all the unpleasantries worth sitting through. There isn't. The film attempts to fabricate one (and it's disturbingly close to the ending of Spinal Tap), but it doesn't take much at all to blow a giant hole in it. It's just a big ol' fat cheat on the face of a documentary that is perhaps a bit too lifelike. I realize the ridiculousness of this criticism, but I can't think of any other way to put it. Watching Anvil! is a miserable experience. If I wanted to be reminded about how life is a harsh, cruel, difficult exercise in following fruitless dreams, I would've just, ya know, spent the evening living.

Attack the Gas Station! (Sang-Jin Kim, 1999) 74
This is every bit as ridiculous as I remembered it, and that's a very, very good thing. There's not really much to say about it; it's the sort of movie that seems to actively avoid discussion in favor of just being watched. So watch it. Just as long as you know exactly what you're signing up for before you watch it, I can't even begin to imagine how you might be disappointed. It's colorful, hilarious, absurd, bizarre, and fuckin' fun as hell.

Better Luck Tomorrow (Justin Lin, 2003) 78
There's a lot to be said for loving a movie unconditionally, for just unquestioningly accepting it for what it is. I know Better Luck Tomorrow is a very flawed film. Its flaws become more and more apparent to me every time I watch it. But you know what? I don't care. I love it. I think it's a great film. The best I can figure is that it appeals to some sort of unconscious impulse, because it's not usually my position (at all) to just overlook rather noticeable shortcomings. But rather than dwell on what it might not be, I prefer to admire the film for what it is: an affecting, well crafted high school drama that -- despite several plot developments that seriously stretch the bounds of believability -- seems to capture a particular teenage mindset surprisingly well. That's why I like it so much. Not because it's some tough, gritty, realistic teen crime saga, but because it works as a fantasy. It bottles the oft-unspoken desires of a generation of overachievers and plants them onscreen in a way that is watchable, entertaining, and stylish. Need I ask more of it?

Broken Wings (Nir Bergman, 2002) 63
I think this is one of those films that one has to look at in a certain way in order to appreciate. From a strictly narrative standpoint, it is surprisingly empty: characters talk, a central event occurs, characters talk some more, the central event resolves itself completely independently of any of said talking, movie ends. This doesn't exactly amount to a compelling storyline. So where the film does work is on an emotional plane. There's a good deal of socioeconomic and familial conflict at work here, and while I never got the feeling that the film ever actually solves any of it, I was also keenly aware that -- to use a cliche -- the journey is more important than the destination. Bergman wastes no time throwing his viewers into the lives of this family, and slowly we become involved enough to legitimately care about what happens to them. The film is perhaps a bit too short and the details a bit too underdeveloped to provide the full range of emotion I think Bergman is going for, but nonetheless I finished the film feeling uplifted and satisfied, and that makes Broken Wings something of a small victory.

The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson, 2009) 43
A very confused film. It has no clue what it wants to be. Comedy? Drama? Thriller? Mystery? Adventure? Romance? In its indecision it elects to be all of the above, but instead of emerging in the form of some genre-bending brilliance (the sort of thing I'd frankly have expected from the guy who made 2005's excellent 40s noir throwback Brick), it just winds up a confounding and muddled mess. And I hate that it does this to itself, because parts of it -- for instance, the majority of the droll, absurdly humorous bits -- work really well. But then whenever it starts to really get going with something, it pulls another card out of its sleeve and effectively shoots itself in the foot. By the time the film is over (roughly thirty minutes past the point where I thought it was going to end, and likely the place where it should have), it has twisted and turned and conned and crossed and double-crossed and genre-hopped and tone-shifted so many times that you just kind of want it to put itself out of its misery. And so it does, but unsatisfyingly. The Brothers Bloom is the very definition of a sophomore slump: a follow-up to a very successful, clever debut that tries way too hard to outdo its predecessor and ultimately just gets lost in its own pretensions. Rian Johnson is clearly a talented guy. He knows what he's doing. Hopefully by film #3 he'll have gotten his bearings together and will have the right stuff to knock us out again. I'm counting on it, anyway.

Clean, Shaven (Lodge Kerrigan, 1993) 55
I know why this has been called a great film. I see exactly what Kerrigan is trying to do. And now that I see this, it's time for him to move on and make a better movie. Its problem is that it plays out more like an art school exercise than it does a feature meant to be viewed by real people. Sure, as a psych student I can attest that it probably is the closest filmic representation of schizophrenia yet put onscreen, but that doesn't necessarily make it interesting. It just makes it very, very difficult. And I have nothing against difficult films. Some of the greatest movies ever made are notorious for being such. It's just that Clean, Shaven, much like schizophrenia itself, provides no in for the unafflicted. It's an isolated entity, cold and detached not necessarily by its own choosing but just by nature. That's what makes it so hard to warm up to. If all of the action is on the inside and we the viewers have no way of getting in there, what's left for us? An unsettling but ineffective curiosity. Oh well. Even still, I wish we'd watched this in my abnormal psych class instead of Diary of an Anorexic or whatever; this is much better.

Eternal Summer (Leste Chen, 2006) 83
God, this gets better and better the more I think about it. This is a beautiful, understated gem that is, I think, doomed to be misunderstood due to the way it's been marketed. Far from being exclusively the "gay film" the case makes it out to be, this is really more a poignant examination of human relationships, platonic, sexual, or otherwise. Sure, one of the protagonists is gay, but the other isn't. Therein lies a large portion of the film's conflict (which proves itself to have far more depth than one might expect from such a setup), but it also takes care to explore hugely credible themes of loneliness, longing, jealousy, and intimacy. Shane's reasons for doing what he does are entirely believable (though steeped in a certain melancholy desperation), while Jonathan's gradual realization of the impossibility of what he wants is very effective. Yes, the film does have its flaws, and it's certainly not for all tastes, but I found it both engaging and incredibly moving.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates, 2009) 85
I'm going to share my controversial opinion. I think the Harry Potter movies are incalculably better than the books. I've read all the books and seen all the movies thus far, and nothing is going to change my mind. Whereas the books are turgid, overlong, and occasionally dull, the films take Rowling's source material and condense it into something genuinely exciting. Half-Blood Prince is not just one of the crown jewels of the Harry Potter film canon (Azkaban is still probably my favorite, but this is a close second), but a great movie by any standards. By now, we've all been immersed in this universe long enough to not require introductions. Knowingly, the film plunges us straight into the action. With its typically arresting visuals (seriously, these are some of the best-looking movies ever made) and veritable who's-who of British actors (Jim Broadbent is excellent as Slughorn, and Alan Rickman continues his series-dominating role as Snape) in tow, the movie plows ahead breathlessly for its 153 minutes. Many other films would make this runtime seem interminable (scroll down to P), but if anything this film almost feels too short. But I think they've made the right cuts and applied the appropriate changes; the final product is lean and easily digested, without the ponderousness of the 600+ page novel to throw around. In short: this is dazzling mainstream entertainment. It hits all the right notes, it's compulsively and joyously watchable, and -- series placeholder or not -- it's one of the best films of the year.

Igby Goes Down (Burr Steers, 2002) 48
A dull, unexceptional, storyless tale of rich-kid angst. Those of us who have read The Catcher in the Rye have had all of this before, and infinitely better. At least Holden Caulfield is identifiable; Igby's just kind of a prick. More to the point, there's really no one at all in this film worth caring about. It's mildly funny throughout, but so what? It doesn't really have anything else going for it, and for what it's trying to do it really needs to. It's not a bad film, perce; it's just a startlingly mediocre and forgettable one. I mean, I watched this thing three days ago and I can't remember half of what happened. That can't be good.

La Femme Nikita (Luc Besson, 1990) 77
It's rare to see a film this flashy also have the appropriate amount of substance to back it up. For all its action movie stylings, La Femme Nikita is really just a glorified character piece. That it's successful in both regards makes it both highly entertaining and emotionally rewarding. What emerges is a very strong, assured piece of filmmaking. Besson has an appealing eye for aesthetics, and the visuals alone probably would have been enough for me to be decently satisfied by the film (the blue-tinted robbery scene that kickstarts the film is especially memorable), but it always goes one better and actually has something happening onscreen to complement the eye candy. The somewhat episodic story is deliberately paced, but engaging. I had no trouble whatsoever getting involved in Nikita's situation, in her actions and in her psychology. She's an appealing character given a very strong performance by a highly appealing actress. It's ... hell, it all just works. It's not an unqualified success, mind you. There are small gripes here and there, as there often are, but it's certainly not something I'd be bothered by watching again.

Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009) 70
Moon is not great science fiction, but it is a solid and entertaining piece of cinema. I think the reason why many have been led to call it great sci-fi is just the simple fact that films like this are very hard to come by these days. This isn't your standard-issue kinetic, things-blow-up-in-space action thriller. It's a character piece through and through, sometimes slow moving, but never dull for an instant. Comparisons to a certain Stanley Kubrick film are inevitable, but the similarities are only surface-level. As a film, this can proudly stand on its own, and that alone should be reason enough to see it. To discuss plot points would be to divulge spoilers, which of course it would be criminal for me to do, but suffice it to say that while Moon does not break any new ground conceptually, it deftly handles what it brings to the table. The clean, simple, well thought-out execution is refreshing. Also impressive, and indeed what likely makes the movie more than anything else, is Sam Rockwell's bravura performance. The man is dynamite here. It's a role that could easily lead to scenery chewing, but he handles his one-man show with a great deal of skill. His acting never calls attention to itself, and the overall effect of his work is extremely impressive. Still, I felt that something fundamental was missing; something that kept it from becoming the sci-fi classic that by all means it deserves to be. But that's nitpicking, really. It's a very good film, admirably ambitious, and I'm just glad it found its way to us.

O (Tim Blake Nelson, 2001) 63
A competent, if not particularly outstanding, contemporary adaptation of Othello (which, to be honest, was never my favorite Shakespeare anyway). For all its flashy modern embellishments, it's actually pretty faithful to its source material. As with all Shakespeare adaptations, this is both a strong point and an undoing. On the one hand, you know you're going to get a solid story; on the other, especially if you're familiar with the play, there are no surprises. Aside from the high school basketball conceit, O doesn't go out of its way to do anything new or different with the Bard's plotline. As a result, as soon as the setting is established, the film feels like it goes on autopilot. Still, the performances are good (the core three especially; even the normally wooden Josh Hartnett stands out here) and one has to give Tim Blake Nelson kudos for trying. It's just that, especially with the potential inherent in each and every one of Shakespeare's "major" plays for a brilliant adaptation, it's hard to not want a little bit more out of it.

The Princess and the Warrior (Tom Tykwer, 2000) 45
Okay. I get it now. Tom Tykwer is all about flash and pizazz. This is why Run Lola Run worked so well: it was 100% style. It didn't even try for that whole "substance" thing. On the flipside, this is why Perfume didn't work: it actually tried to tell a story -- a fucking weird one -- and it fell on its face, fucking weirdly. The Princess and the Warrior, despite being Tykwer's immediate follow-up to Lola, unfortunately bears more similarity to the latter film. It ain't just dumb, it's flat-out silly. The story it tries to tell is so contrived and so ham-fisted and so poorly handled that I'm led to wonder what exactly appealed to Tykwer about it in the first place. Scarcely anything clicks here: the movie's way too long, it's frustratingly slow paced, and there's something about it that's just off-putting on a visceral level (not to mention having one of the stupidest endings I've seen in a long while; without giving anything away, it's like Tykwer felt the need to grab his audience by the throat and scream, "D'YA GET IT?! THE SYMBOLISM?! HUH? WELL, DO YA? IT'S A METAPHOR! GET IT?! D'YA SEE THE METAPHOR?!" Yes, Tom. We get it). Not unpredictably, the successful things are the stylistic touches. The film's really well shot. Like, really. It just forgets that these things cease to matter if the story sucks.

Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009) 41
You just can't predict some things. Of all the boring-as-shit movies out there, I never would've expected a Johnny Depp movie about John Dillinger to be one of them. Simply put: Public Enemies takes a loooong time to go absolutely nowhere. It's unbelievably dull. Mann's technical prowess is impressive enough and Depp's acting is good enough that together they make this a difficult film to hate outright, but damned if I'm not very unimpressed and disappointed. The sad thing is, the film's got a lot going for it. It really does. They just forgot one key element: a script; something that dictates that things happen, and interestingly. Because all of the gripping parts are in the trailer. That's two minutes long. Public Enemies is 140 minutes long. What fills (or doesn't fill, depending) the remaining 138 ain't really worth the $10 you'd have to pay for it.

The Rutles (Eric Idle & Gary Weis, 1978) 70
Not having watched this in years and years, I was concerned that my younger viewing self had played up this film's quality a bit too much and that I'd be slightly disappointed upon revisiting it. I shouldn't have worried. Eric Idle's unfortunately underrated Beatles sendup is still amusing after all these years, though definitely more sly and clever than straight-up hilarious (not that there's anything wrong with this at all; it's just slightly different from what I remembered). One good thing that comes with age: I actually get all the references now (I'm pretty sure the humor inherent in the Brian Epstein-inspired Leggy Mountbatten would have been lost on 12-year-old Chris; just a guess), and I'm able to recognize all of the curious guest cameos (like wtf that really is Mick Jagger/Paul Simon/George Harrison, as well as half the original SNL cast). So yeah. Good stuff. And short! You can watch this twice instead of watching Public Enemies once!

Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1994) 66
A vicious, meanspirited little thriller. It works, though. You have to suspend a healthy amount of disbelief (without saying it's impossible or even implausible, I'm not entirely sure when the key event that leads to the conclusion could have happened), but once you let yourself go the film is entertaining enough to work on its own terms. It has a biting edge that may be just a little too dark for a lot of people, not to mention a cast of characters who are fundamentally despicable, but these things suit the material. The last thing a story like this calls for is a warm, cuddly treatment; Danny Boyle puts it on ice and lets it stay there. It's also an interesting historical curiosity: this was both the feature debut for the now Oscar-winning Boyle (it predates even his breakthrough Trainspotting by a couple of years), as well as one of the first screen appearances for Ewan McGregor. It's clear even from these humble beginnings that both men are quite talented, and it's fun to know where both ended up. Shallow Grave is quite a bit darker than anything I would've expected from such an early stage, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. Fun, you might even say, in the most macabre of senses.

This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984) 84
Eh, everyone's seen this. We all know how good it is. I don't think I need to say anything about it.

I'll try to do this a couple more times before school starts, just to avoid pile-up and all that stuff. Later!

Haltime Report: 2009

2009-07-01T12:57:00.002-07:00

I've said it a million times before, but it's worth repeating a million times more: 2009 is amazing. That's all there is to it. This is turning out to be a watershed year, especially in the wake of the very lackluster 2008 (with a few big exceptions, of course). I haven't seen enough movies to make any value judgments there, but quality of music is up by an unbelievable margin. Everyone is releasing stuff this year, and it's almost all really, really good. And the party's not over yet! Despite the influx of anticipated albums from January to June, we've still got several biggies to go.

Music Stuff We're Still Being Promised: AFI, Brand New, The Dodos, The Flaming Lips, Frightened Rabbit, Mew, Porcupine Tree, The Twilight Sad, Vampire Weekend. Honestly, this madness will never stop.

So, yeah. I'm pumped. There's as much awesome stuff to look forward to as there is to look back on.

Speaking of, let's do that. This is something of an annual tradition. Every year since 2005, I've been compiling a so-called Halftime Report to spotlight the very best in music and movies from the first half of the year. With the exception of songs (which get the full Top 10), I do half-size lists (seems appropriate, right?). It just feels better that way. So, without further ado ...

The Songs:
Yeesh, this was a hard list to make. I had to cut some really worthy songs, which made me feel bad (so if you see Franz's "No You Girls," or Other Lives' "E Minor," or even Doves' "Kingdom of Rust," give 'em a pat on the back for me, okay?), but here's as close as I could come at this point in time. Also, I adhere to the one-song-per-artist rule, or else this would be nothing but three bands over and over.

10. Telefon Tel Aviv, "The Birds"
If anyone knows of a song more elegantly beautiful released in the past six months, by all means indulge me. A positively enchanting slice of nocturnal electronica by a duo that met its end far too abruptly.

9. VNV Nation, "Where There Is Light"
This sort of encapsulates everything I like about these guys. Huge and epic-sounding, with a keen ear for melody and a passionate delivery. Time will tell if it's one of their best, but I think it might be.

8. Rinôçérôse, "Panic Attack"
Fun, unpretentious, bouncy electro-rock. It's catchy as hell, and one needs not feel bad about dancing around his or her bedroom to it. What more do you need?

7. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, "Young Adult Friction"
I love finding new bands. No one had even heard of these guys prior to Pitchfork's drooling review in early February, but by now we're all intimately familiar with this: a pop song so warm, well constructed, and likable that it almost feels like it's been a staple on our personal soundtracks forever.

6. Metric, "Gold Guns Girls"
Though I appreciate their meditative stuff as well, this is what Metric does best: amped-up, energetic, impossible-not-to-dance-to synth-rock. The "more and more..." coda basically kills me with its awesomeness each time.

5. Sunset Rubdown, "Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh!"
It's only because I made myself choose one. Anything else from the album might do just as well. Still, there is a certain something about this song that I can't deny, no matter how hard I try. Likely the most overtly melancholy thing Krug has ever written, and it's just great.

4. The Kingsbury Manx, "Well, Whatever"
The list's inevitable dark horse. Of the ten million indie pop songs getting tossed out there, who would've guessed this would be the one to really do it for me? Short, sweet, lovely.

3. Bat for Lashes, "Daniel"
"When the fires came the smell of cinders and rain perfumed almost everything: we laughed and laughed and laughed" is the most striking lyric so far this year, and -- regardless of how streamlined this is compared to the rest of Two Suns -- this is how indie dance-pop should be done.

2. Silversun Pickups, "Panic Switch"
Haters, begone. I don't care if they sound like another certain SP-initialed band, or if there's not an original bone in any one of the members' bodies. No matter how I look at it, I can't get past the fact that this is just a damn great rock song. The "waiting and fading and floating away" bridge is one of those sublime moments that reminds me just why I love music so much.

1. Pure Reason Revolution, "Deus Ex Machina"
A serious #1, and it won't be giving up that spot easily. A dark, aggressive, and uncannily literary excursion into almost EBM-ish industrial that sports melodies upon melodies, harmonies upon harmonies, and one brilliant idea after another for six intense, utterly danceable minutes.

The Albums:
Actually, it was significantly easier putting this list together. There have been tons of strong albums, but these five proudly stand above the rest.

5. Metric, Fantasies
The ostensible reason for this placement could be because I saw them play 8/10 of this in a mindblowing show that has to be seen to be believed, but I think the real reason is that it's just a damn fine pop record. Their best album.

4. The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love
I'll be the first to admit that I prefer the "melancholy indie-pop" Decemberists of not-so-old, but no one ever said going in a new direction was a bad thing. This is an admirably cohesive album, and what can I say? The crunchy, 70s-inspired hard rock sound looks good on them.

3. Silversun Pickups, Swoon
This is exactly the album I wanted them to release. There are a couple rough patches in the second half, but it gets placement on this list based on "Growing Old Is Getting Old" and "Panic Switch" alone.

2. Pure Reason Revolution, Amor Vincit Omnia
An exhilarating combination of prog-rock, industrial/electronica, and elements of metal with multi-part harmonies and complex arrangements. And what do they get for their ambition? A lukewarm reception and continued obscurity, because the world at large has decided it doesn't sound enough like their first album. Sigh.

1. Sunset Rubdown, Dragonslayer
By a landslide. By tightening his songwriting and widening his accessibility ever so slightly, Spencer Krug has made a record every bit as good as -- though fundamentally different from -- 2007's decade-defining Random Spirit Lover. So pretty much what I'm trying to say is, this album is really, really, really fucking excellent.

The Films:
For some reason, I haven't been to see as many movies this year. Who knows? I guess fewer have been grabbing my interest. Nonetheless, there's still some really good stuff out there waiting to be seen.

5. Up
At this point, I'm just leaving a space open on all of my lists for Pixar movies. They've earned it. Yeah, this is good; this is really good. But seriously, did any of us ever expect anything different?

4. Star Trek
Now, honestly. Did anyone expect this to be as good as it was? Really? The world at large, myself included, seemed to be preparing for a huge trainwreck -- an understandable sentiment. But what we got was thrilling mainstream cinema: a visually impressive, highly enjoyable reboot with great casting and a solid story. It even kinda sorta makes Star Trek cool again.

3. Duplicity
A complex, twisty little snake of a movie, but a fun one. It should be no surprise at this point that a film about con artists should naturally try to con its audience as well. This one succeeds. Oh: and Clive Owen is still the world's biggest badass.

2. Drag Me to Hell
This damn movie has no right to be as good as it is. No right. It's just a schlocky gross-out horror flick. But it's such a ridiculously well made, fun, and endlessly entertaining schlocky gross-out horror flick that I'm convinced Sam Raimi is some kind of warped genius. With all due respect to Spider-Man, it's good to have you back where you belong, Sam.

1. Sin Nombre
A devastating and deeply frightening film, but also a profound and beautiful one. For every moment of intense darkness, there's another that's equally hopeful. The result is a masterpiece: powerful, human, and damn near perfect.

And that's it! Only six months until I get to do this again! And yeah, I am going to attempt decade lists too. Holy crap.

Movie Roundup: 6/17/09

2009-06-17T18:02:00.002-07:00

Slightly delayed, but better late than never! Same format as always: Titles as Such imply a first viewing, while Orange Titles mean I'd seen the film before. And so on.

Just because this entry wasn't already going to be obscenely long, here's:
The Scale
100-90: Blissful, orgasmic cinema. This is something extremely special.
89-80: An excellent, unmissable film. I probably own this (or will) and you should, too.
79-70: A very strong film well worth seeing.
69-60: This is good. It has some problems, but it's still an enjoyable piece of work.
59-50: The gray area. Certain things work about this, other things don't. It depends on mood and taste.
49-40: A mediocre or lackluster film. Not painful, but conspicuously flawed.
39-30: Plain bad. Don't go near this, please.
29-20: Incredibly terrible. Only worth a viewing if self-torture is desired.
19-0: Hooooo mama.

Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951) 85
It's a talented director who can make a movie so nasty that its sting hurts just as much almost 60 years later. Of course, Billy Wilder was one of the greatest directors who ever lived, but even the other greats of his time weren't making movies as dark and vicious as this. The reason it works so well is because it's so damn unrelenting: Wilder takes perfect aim at his target and skewers it. In hindsight, it's not hard to see why this was unavailable on DVD until 2007. It's just way too meanspirited for most casual viewers. Still, it's an important film and a great one, and by all means it should have been available sooner. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a more pitch-perfect media/journalism satire than this, and would certainly find it difficult to pinpoint one as unforgiving and as topical.

The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) 83
One of my biggest movie credos is that a good film should never be watched just once. I saw The Apartment for the first time, I dunno, about a year ago. Its reputation builds it up to be a comedy, something which the re-teaming of Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon (fresh off Some Like It Hot) does nothing to dispel. So I was all geared up for a comedy. What I got was one hell of a depressing movie. It caught me completely off-guard. Sure, there were touches of much-needed humor to alleviate the darkness, but more often than not it was a bleak, cynical affair. My opinion of the film suffered as a result. As it turns out, the opportunity to go back and re-watch it with advance knowledge was exactly what was necessary for me to fall in love with it. Yes, everything I just said is still true, but what I failed to see before -- regardless of genre or tone -- is that it's a great film. All of its elements click into place flawlessly, and it emerges hugely satisfying. It's still a total downer, to be sure, but it's an extremely well-orchestrated downer. You have no idea how much that counts for.

Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986) 79
We've all seen Big Trouble in Little China, right? So I really don't need to discuss it in any sort of depth (as if such a thing were possible in the first place). It's just ... man, everything about this movie just makes me feel so damn happy to be alive: Kurt Russell's brilliantly awful one-liners and John Wayne impression, the floating eyeball and hairy beast, the neon escalators. It's one of the funnest movies of any kind ever made. I can't even imagine someone not getting into this. It's just so damn enjoyable.

Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) 55
There's a saying, too clever for its own good, that goes, "If you remember the 60s, you weren't there." Well, I don't remember the 60s either, but I missed being around for them by about 20 years. Still, regardless of whether or not my memory might have escaped me, films like this make me wish I had been there. It just looks like so damn much fun. Really, all Blowup amounts to is two hours of entertaining, but completely ridiculous nonsense. I get the feeling it's a classic not in spite of this, but because of it. Really, there's nothing even bordering on meaningful here. Right as you think a plot is finally about to emerge, the protagonist drops it immediately and instead rolls around on the floor with some anonymous chicks. A random succession of events takes place. Things just happen. By the time the film reaches its final scene, wherein a group of car-crusin' mimes invade a tennis court and pretend to play a game, nothing has been accomplished or resolved or even introduced. Things have just happened. And dammit, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't captivating in its own demented way. It's a total hodgepodge, but it's such a peculiar and trippy hodgepodge that it's hard to actually say anything bad about it. Whatever the point may be, one thing's for sure: it's an Experience, and anyone who's interested should step right up.

Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985) 86
Terry Gilliam is extremely hit-or-miss. For every film of his I love (this, Holy Grail, 12 Monkeys), there's another I actively despise (Fear and Loathing, Brothers Grimm, Tideland). His problem is his habit for overindulgence. Far too often he throws restraint to the wind and lets his work carry him away, often resulting in a jumbled and unpleasant mess. Brazil remains his best work not because it isn't overindulgent (it is -- OH GOD, it is), but because some divine presence manages to make Gilliam's "throw everything at the screen, see what sticks" approach come across as brilliant and visionary instead of merely frustrating. There's so much going on here that it's easy (and in some cases recommendable) to ignore the story and just let the torrent of visuals and crazy ideas wash you away. Still, even the convoluted plot starts to make sense after a few viewings (for instance, I finally got that there's no connection whatsoever between Jill and Tuttle; Lowry just assumes there is, and in acting on this assumption becomes more of a so-called "enemy of the state" than either of them), and the film as a whole never stops being delightful. I can definitely see how this could be considered an acquired taste, and it certainly has the potential to put off people who aren't willing to grant it the patience it demands (which is quite a bit), but nothing's going to change my bottom-line that this is just a fantastic film.

The City of Lost Children (Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1995) 79
Take what I said in my capsule for The Apartment about never watching good films only once, only substitute "weird" for "depressing." I watched The City of Lost Children once about three years ago, was taken aback by how beautiful its visuals were, and was left cold because it was just too damn weird for the mood I was in. Now I've come back to it. And having seen Jeunet and Caro's other collaboration, the equally bizarre and delightful (and maybe even slightly better) Delicatessen, I rewatched this fully prepared to embrace whatever strageness it might throw my way. Predictably, I found it to be quite excellent. I love being able to say things like "there's nothing else quite like it," and this much is obvious if you've ever seen the film. "Hallucinatory" and "surreal" don't even begin to describe the tripped-out otherworld created by this film, but this time it was a place I actually wanted to be. I became involved with the characters, was thrilled by how original the story was. It's still definitely not something for all tastes, but I'm glad I can finally say it's something for mine. I'm happy I finally listened to that voice in the back of my head telling me to give it another shot. It's awesome, and no fan of sci-fi or intriguing foreign films should go without seeing it.

Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi, 2009) 77
It's easy to get excited when a director manages to make a good film from an oft-abused formula. It really is. And this explains why Drag Me to Hell has gotten almost ridiculously hyperbolic reviews. All of us geeky film buffs are just happy to see a horror film that not only doesn't suck, but is actually rather excellent. Just don't let the 93% on RottenTomatoes usually reserved for Important Films trick you into believing it's something greater than what it is. Drag Me to Hell is a schlocky gross-out horror flick and nothing more. It just also happens to be a really fucking good one. I don't know what else to say about it, really. If you're a fan of the genre, you'll probably love it. If you're not, you probably won't. If you're like me and don't really swing one way or the other, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how clever, funny, icky, and sometimes flat-out exciting it can be. Bravo, Mr. Raimi. Bravo. You've just absolved yourself for Spider-Man 3.

The Experiment (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2001) 35
An extremely unpleasant film. I don't mean to imply it's unwatchable or it isn't well-made, but it's a hell of a chore to sit through. Look, I'm a psych student. I know about the Stanford Prison Experiment. I know about the procedure, the findings, how it very quickly got out of control, and so forth. I really don't need to sit through two torturous hours of a fictionalized, exaggerated version of the same set-up. This is especially true if it doesn't go anywhere. It just kind of haphazardly wallows in some of the darker pools of human depravity. It's unrelenting, grim, and predictable. The only way I can imagine deriving entertainment value out of this would be if the viewer is as sadistic as the film's sociopathic antagonist. And with the entertainment element factored out, the only way a film like this can get by is on message alone. When the credits finally rolled, I didn't feel enlightened. I didn't feel any grand revelation. I just felt sickened by the human condition. If that was the filmmakers' agenda (and, yeah, it probably was), then bravo, but I'd like them to know this much: I didn't have to watch their film to get that feeling. There are plenty of opportunities every day, and at least I'm off the couch for those.

Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977) 81
Lynch has gotta be the biggest love-him-or-hate-him affair in contemporary cinema. Those who love him (myself included) are guilty of a rabid, almost cultish following, while those who hate him will dismiss his work as pretentious bullshit without even the slightest hesitation. It's just the sort of material that provokes these kinds of reactions. Even though I'm enamored of what Lynch can accomplish, it's easy for me to see how he could seriously rub someone the wrong way. It was kind of fun in a perverse way watching Eraserhead (Lynch's first, and in some ways still his most challenging) for Movie Night and collecting responses: some admired it, some were bored to tears by it, some were terrified. None of these are unexpected. I love Eraserhead just because it's so unlike any other film in existence, but even I draw the line at saying I enjoy watching it. I doubt such a thing is possible. It merits appreciation, and from me it gets quite a lot of it. But it's still not the sort of thing I'd turn on just to kick back and watch something. There needs to be a purpose. Breaking it out for Movie Night to share with others was a good, strong purpose. Now I have no problem returning it to the shelf for a while.

Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960) 87
Oh man, this was exceptional. It's sort of my dream to stumble upon a lesser-known older film that is just as great as all of the world-famous classics of its era. Peeping Tom is such a film. It's not too much of a stretch to say that the reason why it's been shuffled under the rug all these years is because it was so ahead of its time. Released twenty, even ten, years later, this might've been seen as a masterpiece. Released in 1960, it was so reviled that it destroyed the career of its director. Why? Because it takes a troubling subject and fleshes it out so skillfully that it essentially removes the audience from its comfort zone whether they like it or not. It's hard to watch this and not get creeped out (the soft-spoken, understated, but chilling lead performance works wonders on this front). But at the same time, it's even harder to watch this and not get completely involved, which is of course the ironic point Powell is trying to make. Just as Mark enjoys watching what he has done, we're gripped with a similar fascination. Peeping Tom implicates its viewers. It makes them accomplices in what is happening onscreen. People back in 1960 did not like this at all, and there's a chance that it still might be seen as distasteful and ugly today. Me? I think it's absolutely brilliant, and likely one of the finest examples of psychological horror I have ever seen.

Pig Hunt (James Isaac, 2008) 63
The best thing that can be said about Pig Hunt is that it's a movie that understands itself. One does not go into a movie about a group of moronic city kids who go into the woods to hunt a two-ton pig expecting a profound story, or some life-altering revelation, or some shattering new take on modern cinema. No. One goes in expecting a big ol' dumbass horror flick with zero logic, campy dialogue, and tons of cheap humor. And the filmmakers get this. They have no pretensions. "Dumbass horror flick" is all Pig Hunt ever tries to be, and that's all Pig Hunt ever needs to be. And you know what? It's kind of awesome. Somehow the complete and utter absurdity of literally every damn thing in this movie does not bother me at all. It just works. It's incredibly entertaining, highly enjoyable, and actually very funny (sometimes even when it tries to be). Honestly, I could not have asked for more.

Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) 78
One of the all-time great movie comedies. I really don't have too much to say about this one, other than it holds up really well. I've seen this about six or seven times now and it's still consistently hilarious. It's not perfect: some of the jokes do fall flat, and others likewise wear thin with time, but this is the case with pretty much every comedy. Wilder knew what he was doing and he did it very, very well. And hats off to him to tackling such an edgy subject in an era when such things were most definitely not smiled upon.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring (Kim Ki-Duk, 2003) 80
Gorgeous. Breathtakingly gorgeous. Really, I can throw these words around, but you won't know until you see it. This, quite simply, has some of the most tremendous cinematography I've ever seen. Every single frame from this film is a composition that I wouldn't mind (and in fact, would like) hanging on my wall. Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk, the man behind the also-great 3-Iron and Time, is responsible for some of the most poignant and haunting films to come out of Asia this decade. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring, in addition to its stunning beauty, holds true to both of these qualities, and emerges as its director's best work (from what I've seen, at least). Its relatively dialogue-free story is quite simple, but very emotionally resonant. Though owing hugely to the Buddhist faith (something I admittedly know little about), there's a universality about the proceedings that makes its themes of sin and redemption really hit home. The story coupled with the visuals make for an awe-inspiring, immersive experience. This is what cinema can accomplish as a visual medium. This is what I call actually "seeing" a movie. So do yourself the favor of tracking it down. Even if the story doesn't grab you (it's deliberately paced, to say the least), I find it hard to believe anyone could be disappointed with the images Ki-Duk has managed to capture on film.

Up (Pete Docter, 2009) 72
I'll start by saying what everyone else starts by saying: holy shit, Pixar is amazing. I mean, they've gotta have the most sterling track record of any production company in film history by now. But let's not get too overexcited and start calling Up their best film ever, as some have (Ratatouille? WALL-E? Finding Nemo?). It's an excellent achievement, to be sure, and it comes highly recommended from yours truly; I just don't think it stands up to the creme de la creme of Pixar's output. Which isn't to say there's not some fantastic stuff here: for better or for worse, the film's best moments come during its first few minutes. So beautiful and emotional is the (mostly dialogue-free) prologue that the rest of the movie can't quite stand up to it (if it had, then yes: masterpiece. But sadly ...), but it certainly puts out a fighting effort nonetheless. The finished product is yet another film destined to win countless fans for generations to come: a great, funny, cute story that is entertaining for all ages and actually comes with a well thought-out emotional valence as well. In other words, yeah. It's just what Pixar does.

Oh look, we're at the end. Finally. Off to hit the couch and refill the viewing log. Later.

Movie Roundup: 5/26/09

2009-05-26T03:58:00.001-07:00

I told you it wouldn't be long. It's amazing how fast you get used to just sitting around all day not doing anything. Or rather, how "watching a movie" suddenly becomes "actually doing something," where before it was "not doing anything -- just watching a movie." Oh, summer. Anyway, a whole bunch of stuff I hadn't seen before this time around, most of it quite good (and one that is among the worst movies I have ever seen). Let's do this.

Also, just because I haven't posted it in a few months (and to dispel any ideas that a 57 somehow equates to an F), here's ...

The Scale
100-90: Blissful, orgasmic cinema. This is something extremely special.
89-80: An excellent, unmissable film. I probably own this (or will) and you should, too.
79-70: A very strong film well worth seeing.
69-60: This is good. It has some problems, but it's still an enjoyable piece of work.
59-50: The gray area. Certain things work about this, other things don't. It depends on mood and taste.
49-40: A mediocre or lackluster film. Not painful, but conspicuously flawed.
39-30: Plain bad. Don't go near this, please.
29-20: Incredibly terrible. Only worth a viewing if self-torture is desired.
19-0: Hooooo mama.

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) 68
Tell me if this doesn't sound like a recipe for success: the biggest movie star of all-time and his wife (Bogart and Bacall) in front of the camera, one of the best directors of the so-called "Hollywood era" (Hawks) behind it, working off a screenplay penned by one of the finest writers who ever lived (Faulkner), which was adapted from a novel by arguably the finest mystery novelist of his time (Chandler). By all accounts, the movie should be tremendous. It's become a huge classic, naturally, but is the movie as great as all that? Well, er, as much as it kills me to say it, not really. Let me explain: the film is notorious for having a convoluted plot. At one point during production, Bogart showed up on-set and asked who was responsible for one of the murders; neither Hawks nor Faulkner knew, so they called up Raymond Chandler, who admitted he had no clue either. In other words, the plot isn't just convoluted, it's damn near impenetrable. You can make sense out of it if you're patient enough and want to, but I can't imagine it'd be a very rewarding quest. So this is a ridiculously confusing film, and despite its many huge strengths, I have a hard time forgiving it for this (especially when so many other 40s noirs actually clear up their twisty plotlines). Still, it's a classic for a reason: Bogart and Bacall are wonderful, and they deliver that oh so deliciously crunchy noir dialogue like they were born with the script in their hands. They're excellent enough to make the whole thing work. Their off-screen chemistry becomes tangible onscreen, and they make for an endlessly beguiling couple. The rest you can throw out. Despite bazillions of characters with unclear motives doing all kinds of crazy things, the film is really all about its two stars. Watch it for them. If you glean anything else from the film, well, good for you. It's a fringe benefit to watching two of the greats doing what they do best.

The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) 77
A very, very sad movie. It's not at all what I expected: from the DVD case and, indeed, from the film's reputation, I was anticipating a highly-charged political thriller about surveillance and bugging. What I got, however, was a meditative, deliberately-paced character study about a very lonely man consumed with guilt about the immorality of his profession. Frankly, it's a better movie for it. In a performance that can only be described as stunning, Gene Hackman basically sells the film: Harry Caul is a complex, aching, utterly believable individual; the emotional valence of the entire story rests on his shoulders, and Hackman knocks it out of the park. Coppola's script is entirely in tune with Hackman's strengths, too: instead of placing the character in the middle of a dangerous situation like most other films would, it sets things up so that Harry Caul is the conflict. His psychology, not the titular conversation, is the main focus, and we delve so deeply into it that, by the film's excellent final minutes, we're not entirely sure what's real and what's fictional, what's fact and what's paranoia. It's a clever little setup, and in many ways it makes the proceedings even more tense. In a society driven by spying and surveillance, who can you trust? Can you even trust yourself? And even if you're just an impartial third party, are you still responsible for the ramifications of the information you're collecting? Coppola forces his audience to consider some very difficult questions, but -- like any skilled storyteller -- stops just short of answering them. Instead, he offers a quietly harrowing portrait of a man who is likewise unable to find these answers, and how it slowly but surely destroys him. Powerful stuff.

Crows Zero (Takashi Miike, 2007) 62
An electrifying, if sometimes muddled, adrenaline-shot of nihilism. There's something about the simplicity of this story that just appeals to some sort of masculine ideal. Quite simply, this is a film about no-holds-barred physical dominance that seems to take place in some stylish alternate universe where literally the only conflict is which high school punk can kick the most ass and take the most names. As such, it's basically just two hours of tough guys beating the shit out of each other in the hopes that they will become the ultimate badass. And it works. It's exhilarating. It's when the film tries to complicate matters with useless subplots (in no way is the brain aneurysm thing necessary at all) that it starts to lose its edge, sometimes feeling like a couple unrelated movies cobbled together (and unfortunately this happens a bit too much in the last 45 minutes or so). On the whole, though, it's a success: anyone with a passing familiarity with Japanese cinema knows that Miike is a dude who knows what he's doing, and the film exudes style and badass. Despite its almost nonstop violence, it's not hard to watch. It crackles on a special kind of energy that holds its thrills at a satisfying level throughout. And really, you've gotta admire a movie ballsy enough to deliver a moral, then turn right around and say, "But fuck it, let's rock."

The Edukators (Hans Weingartner, 2004) 78
A whole lot smarter than I would've given it credit for, and consequently a whole lot better. The problem with social commentary is its propensity to glorify one side of an argument while demonizing the other, but while The Edukators clearly allies with its trio of protagonists, it also does a very good job of humanizing the opposition. This is important, because despite having an interesting and creative storyline (a couple of young activists break into rich people's homes, but instead of stealing anything, they just rearrange furniture and leave cryptic notes as wake-up calls), this is very much a dialogue-driven film. Many of its most lucid, perceptive moments come during the scenes where the characters just sit around and talk to one another. Some might be tempted to call this verbose and preachy, but I found it fascinating. It delves maturely and honestly into socioeconomic topics that, frankly, are very rarely handled with such care, all the while developing a cast of characters I actually cared about (even Hardenberg, who is probably the most well-defined of the bunch). There are a few shortcomings here and there, but for the most part this is an excellent film. It's deliberately paced, but never boring, with an intriguing idea and a payoff that I found very satisfying. No, really: the final shot -- a simple note pinned to a wall -- is one that will stick with you for a while. I promise.

Imprint (Takashi Miike, 2006) 17
There is a fine line between scary and disgusting. Imprint is disgusting, in every sense of the word. While you're at it, add pointless, ludicrous, and hateful to that list. Miike is a talented filmmaker; I can only wonder what he could have possibly been getting at by making this. Originally intended for Showtime's "Masters of Horror" series, Miike's delightful 63-minute romp was banned from cable broadcast because it's, ya know, fucking disgusting and has no cinematic merit whatsoever. Any skill at all that went into the making of this (and there's unfortunately lots of evidence that some very good people worked on it; Miike's direction, for one, is in top form) is immediately nullified by how extremely unpleasant the damn thing is to sit through. I can't even see how this would entertain someone: it's got a graphic torture scene that rivals the infinitely better Audition (even though I still wasn't a fan) at its most sadistic, a meanspirited tone that is offputting in ways I find hard to describe, and a twist ending that amounts to the biggest "WHAT?!" I've had in a very, very, very long time. So, yeah. Even if you're like me and are currently on a Miike kick, do yourself a huge favor and actively avoid this. It's fucking terrible. See Ichi the Killer instead. Or Sukiyaki Western Django. Or even the above-reviewed Crows Zero. They may be just as bloody, but they all have something Imprint sorely lacks: anything whatsoever to justify its existence.

Layer Cake (Matthew Vaughn, 2004) 44
My credo with films like this: the resolution has to be satisfying enough to justify the heavy lifting it makes you do in order to get there. The thing with Layer Cake is, I didn't just dislike the ending. I actively hated it. The ending is so bad that it takes an okayish, if incredibly twisty and convoluted, drug/gangster movie and turns it completely against itself. To go into detail would be to divulge some pretty huge spoilers, so I'll avoid it as best I can, but let it be said that the final moments of this film are so pointless and misguided that it undermines everything that's come before it. "I went through that, and this is what the film gives me?" It's infuriating. This is not an "easy" film: there's a small army of characters, each taking part in a myriad of crisscrossing plotlines that often become difficult to keep up with. You have to pay close attention. Luckily, I was told before seeing this that scrutiny was necessary. So I watched it attentively, traced its coiling story back until it made sense, and tried to follow the best I could. And in general I appreciate a film that makes me do this: it keeps me on my feet, keeps me interested. And, to be honest, Layer Cake handles itself fairly well. You spend the entire movie feeling like it could turn out to be a decent, if minor, triumph. But then it flips you the bird, spits in your face, and goes on its merry way. And I have to wonder why. What good could the filmmakers possibly have seen in this conclusion? In essence, the film does the same thing to itself that it does to its protagonist: screws over something perfectly acceptable, and emerges irreparably damaged because of it. Huh.

Se7en (David Fincher, 1995) 96
It's a testament to Fincher's craft that I still feel an overwhelming sense of dread while watching the scenes leading up to the conclusion, despite being all too aware of what happens. I don't know how many times I've seen this, but it always unfailingly puts me on edge. Maybe it isn't "scary" in a typical horror sense, but it's unshakably disturbing in ways very few other films have ever managed to be. At least for me. Se7en is a film that crawls under my skin and stays there. It doesn't need to rely on cheap JUMP! moments or (east) buckets of blood: it instead gets by on creating one of the most oppressively gloomy atmospheres I can recall in film, racheting up the tension little by little, and delivering a gut-punch mostly unparalleled in mainstream film. Call it what you will; I think it's incredibly brilliant.

Star Trek (J.J. Abrams, 2009) 74
Well, holy crap. They did it right. I'll admit straight out that I'm not a Star Trek fan at all, but it's nonetheless in my blood and that makes me feel a certain amount of reverence. However, this movie manages to do something unthinkable and kind of miraculous: completely lift the nerd stigma that's plagued the franchise for decades while still being faithful to its roots and its characters. I don't know about you, but I liked the cast a lot: Chris Pine is an excellent Kirk, proving once and for all he's not just a Shatner look-alike; Zachary Quinto and John Cho are very good as Spock and Sulu, respectively; and no better actor in the world could've been chosen for Scotty than Simon Pegg. So it's an endearing ensemble. Also, perhaps a bit more expectedly, the movie's gorgeous: the budget went into the CGI, and it shows. Beautiful spacescapes and explosions take up a large portion of the film, and it's hard to take your eyes off of them. Most importantly, though, it's fun. It's incredibly solid popcorn escapism that's equally capable of entertaining, impressing, and surprising. And I bet the biggest surprise of all is that no one saw that coming. So yeah: it's awesome. Even if you do have to put up with Anton Yelchin's awful fake Russian accent.

Terminator Salvation (McG, 2009) 59
It's a perfectly acceptable action flick. There's nothing especially great about it, but there's nothing especially terrible either. It's just an action flick. If you want to see kinetic fight scenes, things blowing up, and fast-paced car chases without any other pretenses, look no further. I guess I'm just kind of spoiled by the James Cameron films: Terminator 2 is among the best sci-fi/action movies ever made, and while it's ridiculous to expect Terminator Salvation to even come close to that film's greatness, it's still all too obvious what can be accomplished with these characters and this story if one tries hard enough. Still, it misses by a long shot being the trainwreck that T3 was, and -- like I said -- it's got some cool explosions and CGI stuff. Plus, part of it was filmed right across the street from my house. This doesn't change how good the film is, of course, but it kinda makes me like it just a little bit more. I'm shallow like that.

All right, I'm off to return these and get a new stack. Rinse, repeat. 'Til next time!

Movie Roundup: 5/17/09

2009-05-17T18:52:00.002-07:00

Yup. It's been over a month again. April was an exceedingly busy month, though. And that early May finals rush is always a bitch, too. But I'm free now! I'm done! And I fully expect I'll be watching tons and tons of movies over the next three months, so naturally that means lots of Movie Roundup posts. Be excited!

But first I have to get all the watched-during-the-semester films out of my system, so let's do that, shall we?

Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000) 37
A big ol' bloody disappointment. I had really high hopes for this, but I found myself becoming more and more frustrated as those hopes were continually stepped on. From the beginning it certainly feels like it's going to be great, and maybe it could have been, but as soon as the Most Dangerous Game is underway the film slips into a monotonous (and frankly uninvolving) torrent of bloodshed that steadfastly refuses to end. And when it does end, it's murky to an extreme that I find difficult to reconcile with the clean-cut, in-your-face tone of the rest of the film. This is the sort of thing you expect to provide some sort of crushing coup de grace in its final frames. Instead, it takes that left toin at Albuquoikey and opts for a resolution that had me going, "Huh?" I think its problem is that it asks us to become interested in characters who, at least for my money, are never developed enough (I mean, god forbid it take time away from its grenade-wielding decapitated heads in order to actually construct a backstory). So we get unsatisfying snippets that hint at the sort of pathos required for this to work, but it never quite gets there (Kitano in particular needed to be fleshed out a whole lot more; as it is, he's just a creepy bastard, and confusingly so). And I understand that I'm criticizing a film ostensibly about senseless bloodshed for having too much senseless bloodshed, but the blood itself isn't my issue: it's just that I wanted more than that. I wanted a deeper insight into the senseless bloodshed. I liked the Lord of the Flies-esque "inherent savage brutality" theme as far as it took me, but I got the gist pretty quickly; after that, the film just didn't have anything else to offer aside from crotch-stabbing, blood-vomiting, and all sorts of other colorful ways to die. To wit: it's an intriguing idea for a film (even though, yeah, the central concept is a fairly contrived plot device that must be bought into in order for anything to work), well-made, and I can easily see why lots of people love it. I just had too many personal issues that got in the way of, er, enjoyment ... or whatever the proper word is.

Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008) 14
Look, I've seen some bad films in my time -- films I wouldn't touch again with a 10-foot pole if you paid me, but I reserve a special kind of hatred for Steven Soderbergh's bloated, dull, and damn near unwatchable Che. Let me preface this by saying my assessment has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Guevara himself, and absolutely everything to do with the way Soderbergh chooses to depict his life. If you take this film as your only source of information, Che Guevara will be nothing more to you than a man who sits around in various jungles and coughs a lot. There's no conflict here. There's no story. This movie is so damn boring I can't even begin to put it into words. This in itself is a cardinal sin: if you're going to make a movie about anything, at least have the decency to make it somewhat interesting. But it doesn't stop there, oh no. Not only is Che far more excruciatingly uninteresting than the vast majority of other films, indie or mainstream, it is also over four hours long. I did not know it was possible to make a four-hour feature film wherein nothing happens, but I have now seen the light (or the heart of an immense darkness, depending). Yeah, sure, maybe Benicio del Toro gives a good performance. Yeah, sure, maybe the movie is skillfully shot and assembled. Yeah, sure, maybe Matt Damon does have a brief Spanish-speaking cameo. I DON'T CARE (well, actually I kinda do about that last one). I could have watched my favorite movie two and a half times in the stretch it took me to get through this. On the bright side, there was an intermission. On the not-so-bright, the second half is significantly worse than the first. Considering the first is already a step or two below watching paint dry, I'd definitely beware those last two hours. You might slip into a coma. Though really, it'd probably be a hell of a lot more interesting.

The Devil's Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001) 66
Let's face it: if you make one of the best movies ever, it really doesn't matter how good the rest of your filmography is; everything else is going to seem like a bit of a letdown. Such is the sorry fate of Guillermo del Toro, whose The Devil's Backbone is a satisfying exercise in wartime ghostliness that nonetheless has absolutely nothing on his later triumph Pan's Labyrinth. Which isn't to say the two films have that much in common: aside from sharing a timeframe and dipping into themes of youthful isolation, they're very much distinct from one another and by all means should be experienced on their respective terms. It's just easy to point out what this film lacks that del Toro's later endeavor would eventually correct: the somewhat unexpectedly low chill factor, the absence of a particularly detestable villain, and a protagonist who is likable but never fully capable of being embraced emotionally. Still, it's very much a good film: the story is unusual and well told, and del Toro has a knack for peppering the proceedings with alluringly odd details (the undetonated warhead is, by all means, both badass and symbolic). In the end, though, it still feels like a well-placed stepping stone in the career of its maker than it does a definitive Statement: even though the journey itself can often be thrilling, it's really more about that final destination.

La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) 80
A gritty, powerful examination of violence and prejudice in the Parisian slums. One of the things that makes it work so well is its overarching sense of universality: although Vinz, Said, and Hubert are compelling individuals, one gets the feeling that this could have been an identical film even if it had focused on three completely different people. This, more than anything, speaks worlds about the hell these three young men inhabit. La Haine is at once a breath of fresh air and a sobering slap to the face: despite being stylish and technically proficient, it never glamorizes its brutality, and in opting for a character- rather than plot-driven structure (it's essentially a-day-in-the-life, following these guys around) it gives a scary and probably fairly accurate depiction of the sorts of things that happen in the projects on a day-to-day basis. Upon finishing it, it struck me as a film I want to see again very soon: not necessarily because I found it entertaining, but because of how artfully made it is, and how intricately detailed. I felt that, even having paid close attention, I hadn't gotten everything there was to get; that there are layers here, and repeated peeling back will only make the film stronger and more commendable. And even on the off chance that this isn't the case, what I got out of it the first time was tremendous enough just to make me want to see it again for the same experience.

Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008) 84
"Best. Vampire movie. Ever," reads the case, and while this may seem at first like your typically played-up DVD blurbage, it does beg a question I've found difficult to answer: is there a better one? I've been mining the recesses of my moviegoing memory for a solid example, but I'm honestly coming up blank. Let the Right One In does everything so well and hits all the right notes that it just may be the finest film of its kind that I have seen. Watching it a second time only made the overall impact stronger (and infinitely more depressing: what I considered a happy ending on my first viewing just destroyed me with melancholy on the second), a hint that -- like its main character -- it's definitely going to be one of those films with some serious staying power. Let me just bask in its glory for a while longer, before Matt Reeves (of Cloverfield fame) comes along and makes his English-language version. Talk about pissing on a perfectly good parade. Hey, I know. Let's remake Oldboy with Will Smith while we're at i--oh shit.

Made in U.S.A. (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966) 34
Again, I want to say I didn't "get it." That I'm just not smart enough to fully understand Godard's self-consciously quirky "artsiness." But you know what? Even if I did, I can't help but feel that Made in U.S.A. would still come across as a giant piece of crap. Sure, Godard can -- and, for the most part, does -- do anything he wants: whether it be giving his characters absurd names like Robert McNamara and Richard Nixon, setting his action in Atlantic City despite everything being in French, or just plain miring his audience down a self-described "murky case" that makes no sense whatsoever. What he forgets is that none of these necessarily make for interesting cinema. Despite some amusing moments here and there, I mostly found Made in U.S.A. tedious. Its mercifully short 85 minute runtime at points seemed torturously long (especially during the extended stretches where the film consisted of nothing but an abrasive tape recording of a political manifesto). But whatever. Maybe the film will find a loyal fanbase. For the first time in 43 years, this is finally getting a U.S. distribution. Normally I would be incensed at the injustice of this, but this is an exception. I can give you one solid reason why Made in U.S.A. should have stayed in France: it sucks.

Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004) TBD
We tried to watch this, but the rental copy was all scratched up, so it skipped like ten minutes of the movie. This is not the kind of movie where you want to miss anything, much less ten minutes. I liked what I saw, but I'm definitely going to have to see the whole thing in order to pass judgment. Stay tuned!

Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1999) 75
A flashy, stylish, hyperkinetic action film that exists for the sole purpose of being a flashy, stylish, hyperkinetic action film. There's basically no substance beneath its glimmering, immaculately produced surface, but the movie's just so damn nice to look at that it really doesn't matter. It's a lot of fun: not the sort of thing I'd ever turn to for any sort of "substantial viewing experience," but it's a staggering exercise in technique, and it's highly entertaining. For a movie whose only goal is to entertain, I'd say that's a success.

Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954) 95
If Seven Samurai had been the only film Akira Kurosawa ever made, I have no doubt the man would still be regarded as one of the finest directors who ever lived. Even with his almost inconceivably brilliant filmography, this remains his best work: a 207-minute epic of honor and humanity that is still just as jaw-dropping today as it must have been 55 years ago. Rewatching this not too long after having endured Che, it struck me just how phenomenally well Kurosawa handles his three and a half hours. A film should only ever be as long as it needs to be, and if 207 minutes seems excessive at first, just sit down and watch the film. You will not know where the time went. This never gets dull even for an instant: the characters, large and small, are all excellently developed (and, as with all Kurosawa films in which he appears, Toshiro Mifune steals every scene he's in), the story feels utterly natural and logical, and of course the compositions themselves are never less than beautiful (though the man was prodigiously talented in all aspects of his art, I've always felt Kurosawa's biggest asset was his visual style). And I could go on and on, but I won't. I can't do it justice. You just have to see it and experience it for yourself. It's a great film. One of the best. And it only gets better each time you watch it.

Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga, 2009) 91
One of the most affirming feelings for a movie buff is the awareness of having been exposed to something novel, to emerge from a theater knowing that you have just experienced greatness. Unfortunately, the more films one sees, the less often this occurs; but in the end it just serves to intensify the feeling when it does happen. Sin Nombre is one hell of a fine film. The last time I can remember leaving a theater with that same feeling in my gut was almost a year ago (and you know which film I'm talking about). It's about time I was reminded what it feels like. To the extent that the film is being marketed at all, which it isn't, I take issue with the approach: face-value synopses make this sound like a movie strictly about Latin American immigration to the United States. While this does constitute a large portion of the film, it is also among the most provocative, not to mention unflinching, meditations on the brutality of gang violence I have ever seen. But ultimately these two themes, which start out running parallel to each other, coil together in a way that makes them fundamentally inseparable. The ensuing story is satisfying on every level stories are capable of satisfying on. This is a dark, frightening, and forceful film, but it's also a hopeful one. There's beauty in nearly every shot, and despite the overwhelming grimness in which the proceedings are mired, it refuses not to take the good along with the bad. In addition to telling its story with a nearly flawless urgency, this quality also lends it a humanity that makes one's emotional investment in the characters all the more rewarding. The payoff, though rooted in an unmistakable inevitability, is profound and moving in ways I still have not found words for. Sin Nombre is a miraculous achievement: the directorial debut of an American filmmaker who no doubt has a long and fruitful career ahead of him, and for the moment by orders of magnitude the best film of 2009. I'll definitely let you know if I see a better one before December's over, but let's be realistic here: I wouldn't hold my breath.

Six-String Samurai (Lance Mungia, 1998) 53
I'd say it's maybe just a little too much of a good thing. It's all well and good that they set out to make an absurd, largely pointless comedy with random silly monsters and a bunch of crazy shit that isn't supposed to make sense. I'm totally cool with that. It's just ... you have to have enough of said crazy shit so that your story doesn't lose momentum. The first half of this film is fantastic: its hilarious, WTF-bomb-dropping approach worked so excellently for me that it was just about the most fun I'd had watching a film in forever. Unfortunately, though, instead of introducing new stuff as the story rolls on, it starts to recycle itself (oh, look, more crazy monsters, except these live in underground pipes, etc.), and in the end it just becomes kind of tiresome. Again: too much of a good thing. So it ends not with a bang, but a whimper. And that's a shame, really, because there's a lot of genuinely hilarious stuff here; I give it a middling score not because I disliked it, but because it bites off more than it can chew and ultimately never recovers. Which isn't to say you shouldn't see it. You'll have a lot of fun with it. Just don't expect greatness (or even consistency) from it.

Tenebre (Dario Argento, 1982) 57
There's a certain self-conscious ridiculousness surrounding this movie that I really got into. Whether or not Argento is actually taking himself seriously I don't know, but the film comes across as so completely campy and un-serious that it's hard not to find it just a little bit endearing. Plus, it has a bitchin' soundtrack that just screams 1982. So yeah: not great, but not terrible either. Fun. Unpretentious. Bloody. It's not scary in the slightest, of course, but I'm really not sure it's supposed to be. It's just, for all its murder and mayhem, a decent lightweight entertainment. Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

... and I'm off to a joyous, relatively stress-free (or less stressful, at least) summer of movie viewing and other such niceties. See you before you know it. Really. It won't be long this time.

Movie Roundup: 4/5/09

2009-04-05T20:18:00.007-07:00

Looking back to see when I posted my last Movie Roundup, I am frankly astonished that it has been over a month. See, I try to do these by blocks of ten or so films instead of following any particular timetable. I guess March was an especially light month, viewing-wise, but it was also a very busy month in lots of other ways, so I suppose all is forgiven. I am back. The Movie Roundup has returned, and the post is slightly longer than usual this time just to compensate for the delay.

Up, up, and away.

Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2002) 88
There is a novel by Italo Calvino called If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, wherein the reader almost immediately becomes aware that he or she is is the main character and that the book is, in fact, about a person attempting to read a novel by Italo Calvino called If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. Adaptation, the second of two (and hopefully not the last) brilliant Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman collaborations, plays with similar ideas of reality: it is fundamentally a movie about a screenplay that the viewer quickly discerns is the screenplay of the film they are watching. And despite the fictional (or at least semi-fictional -- I hope the guy isn't this neurotic in real life) Nicolas Cage-Kaufman's insecurities about writing something structurally solid and satisfying, there is literally not a single level that this film does not work perfectly on. It's one of the most airtight scripts I can think of, to the extent that it becomes a functional self-contained universe that keeps feeding into itself over and over (something which it's only too conscious of, see: Ouroboros). It's everything a movie ought to be, despite ultimately being nothing that Cage-Kaufman initially wants it to be ("I don't want to make it into some Hollywood thing"). It's a meditation on desire and hope and frustration, it's a biting satire of Hollywood, it's a super stylish exercise in cinematography and direction, it's a showcase for fine acting (Cage, Streep, and Cooper -- who won an Oscar for his role -- are all extraordinary), and -- yes -- it has one hell of a brilliant, original, thought-provoking screenplay. In other words, yeah, it's ridiculously good.

Casshern (Kazuaki Kiriya, 2004) 27
Apparently Kazuaki Kiriya has never heard of visual excess. It's important for a film to have a well defined visual style; necessary, one might even say. Like all components in filmmaking, though, there is a limit, and at that limit exists a line that should not be crossed. Casshern nonchalantly ignores that line early on and spends the next 117 dreary minutes becoming one of the most tedious, overdirected pieces of crap I have seen in a good long while. It's about time, too; rewatching all these favorites, I was starting to fall under some delusion of universal goodness. And of course it's not enough that Kiriya's D-grade video-game-on-acid aesthetic is so damn pervasive that it's impossible to tell what the hell is going on: no, we need an equally impenetrable story about war and genetic mutants to really seal the deal. The unfortunate thing is, there are some good ideas here. In the right hands, I have no doubt this could be a compelling sci-fi story. But Kiriya clearly has no damn clue how to handle any of this, and the result is a preachy, pretentious mess. I really wish I had not been born with the compulsion to follow movies out to their bitter end, because I would have loved to turn this off: by the end of the first hour, I was bored out of my mind; by 90 minutes, I was paying more attention to the timer on my DVD player than I was to the film; by two hours, I was just praying for quick and painless death. There are bad films, and then there are bad films. This fits comfortably into the latter category. Even in the realm of terrible films, though, you have to watch out for your blurbs. Maybe, as the case says, it is "better than both Matrix sequels put together." That still doesn't mean it's any good at all.

Duplicity (Tony Gilroy, 2009) 75
About a year and a half ago, Tony Gilroy -- in his then-directorial debut -- brought us a deliciously complex and twisty little thriller called Michael Clayton, which even in a bumper-crop year like 2007 was one of the best films around. If anything, his follow-up Duplicity ably demonstrates that the strengths of his previous effort were no fluke. This is, much like the Clooney vehicle, a structurally unusual but deadly intelligent film that is at once remarkably well written and possesses the power to keep its audience guessing up until the very end. We're still deeply enmeshed in the corporate world, although this time Gilroy treats the affair more like an extended Spy vs. Spy, thus making the goings-on even more playful and enjoyable. So yeah, clearly I liked the film a lot. I understand how the timeline and the barrage of plot twists/unexpected developments could become wearying for some, but I was able to adjust to Gilroy's speed without too much difficulty, and as a result I had a lot of fun. The interplay between his hero and heroine works really well, the central "secret" is just ludicrous enough to lend it some warped sense of credibility (an important aspect of the story, it turns out), and the pieces just seem to fit together into something both satisfying and clever. The year is young, so it's hard to tell how this will fare in the long run, but for right now one thing's for sure: in the typical spring doldrums, Duplicity is a welcome reprieve. That, and Clive Owen is infinitely more badass than George Clooney. Just sayin'.

Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001) 58
I did the appropriate backtracking. The one and only time I saw this, I was in 9th grade. So that's, like, 2003-2004 territory. Much has changed in the last five-to-six years. More, really, than my little freshman self could ever have comprehended. When I saw Ghost World then, I loved it; its bratty, anti-establishment snarkiness struck a note with the rebellious adolescent. Now, though, actually being in the post-high school position held by Enid and Rebecca, I found this kind of difficult to sit through. Its derisive sarcasm has, for the most part, ceased to be endearing; instead, its portrayal of directionlessness and alienation hits a little too close to home for me to be able to fully embrace it like I once did. Does this mean it's a bad film? No. It just means it's not a terribly pleasant one. Terry Zwigoff's world is uniformly pessimistic: despite the characters' efforts, nobody really wins, and malaise is more or less a constant in life. Maybe that's true, but in a film designed to make us laugh, it's not a message that goes down easily. Still, there are some good things: Steve Buscemi is always welcome in any film, and the presence of a pre-glamorized-to-death Scarlett Johansson occasionally makes the screen a little easier to look at. Maybe in another five-to-six years I'll be able to return to this and find greatness in it again. I certainly hope so. For right now, though, Chris The Ennui-Stricken College Student does not need to be reminded of these all-too-obvious aspects of his life.

Ichi the Killer (Takashi Miike, 2001) 67 [edited US version] / 72 [int'l version]
I'm still not entirely sure why I like this film so much. I mean, really. It's psychosexually perverse, graphically violent for no reason other than it can be, and lacking any especially strong storyline that might somehow justify the first two. By all accounts, I should not like it; in most cases, I wouldn't. But I do. A lot. So I return to my original assumption that Miike is somehow tapping into a subconscious, ideological impulse that -- by all accounts -- is probably better left alone. God knows, if I explored further, what I might find out about myself. And yet, as potentially objectionable as some of the film's content might be, I paradoxically find myself incensed that an edited version exists. The first time I saw this, I rented the original, uncut version; the second time, with friends, we picked up the "heavily cut" one. From memory, it seems to omit most of the really grotesque stuff (for instance, pouring boiling water on the guy who gets hung by the hooks) and even a couple fairly important nonviolent scenes. Not unexpectedly, the movie becomes noticeably inferior. Not by any significant amount or anything -- I mean, the gist is still there -- but even so, what's the point? In a movie that thrives on its nasty details, what purpose could it serve to cut anything out? It hardly becomes a squeaky-clean, family-friendly romp as a result. So just leave it alone. It was fine before. Too fine, actually. I'm still bothered by how fine it was. I'm going to go off and wrestle with this one some more. Or maybe watch something else to put it out of my mind. You talk amongst yourselves.

The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006) 85
I don't actually have too much to say about this one at the moment; I think the film, still immensely topical in 2009 despite its subtle yet highly symbolic (and historically accurate) choice to set itself in 1984, can largely speak for itself. It's an emotionally complex but narratively straightforward account of the Stasi's iron-fisted rule over East Germany, although taken down to a personal level that makes it both absorbing and effective. Though Dreyman and his girlfriend are the ones being spied on, the film's real rewards come from Captain Wiesler, whose gradual transformation makes up the film's backbone and gives it its powerful emotional center. While some may argue that the sudden series of flash-fowards at the end is tiresome, I'd contend that the film finds just about the perfect bittersweet note to end on. Overall, it's a fine example of how a film can get by on character and story alone. Despite a conspicuous lack of car chases, explosions, and special effects, it nonetheless manages to be more captivating, suspenseful, and rewarding by far than most movies that would gladly rely on them. That, my friends, is significant.

Man Bites Dog (Remy Belvaux/Andre Bonzel/Benoit Poelvoorde, 1992) 60
Here is a perfect example of why a film should not feel it is necessary to conform to a certain length: at around 60 minutes, Man Bites Dog would have been a brilliant achievement; at around 90, it loses its film grip and begins to grow tiresome. The central idea is an ingenious one: filmed in black and white on handheld cameras, it's a mockumentary of a film crew following the perfect subject: a serial killer. He is charming, charismatic, funny, and also extremely dangerous. The film strikes a brilliant chord in its first act by juxtaposing calm, collected scenes of pitch-black gallows humor with acts of shocking violence. As the crew continues to follow him around, they find themselves becoming more and more involved in his ghastly crimes until they ultimately become his effective henchmen. Like I said, this works amazingly for about an hour: there's one tremendous scene after another (the suburban house sequence is particularly potent), and it feels like the film is winding up for a knockout punch. Unfortunately, the filmmakers don't have an especially strong sense of how to end this, and the film's last third becomes a series of dead-ends that almost threaten to undo the whole affair (are the hospital or jail scenes necessary at all?). Still, shooting yourself in the foot doesn't mean the bullet was always there, and one still walks away from Man Bites Dog with a handful of compelling material. While I do feel that Michael Haneke does the whole media/audience-desensitized-to-violence thing much more effectively with Funny Games, these guys have still come up with a compelling prototype. With a few kinks ironed out, I know I'd be in love with it; as it is, it gets some strong admiration without fully getting a vote of confidence. That's just the way of these things sometimes.

Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004) 91
In a market saturated with formula vehicles and cookie-cutter retreads, I appreciate a film that is willing to take risks. Mysterious Skin is a film that takes a handful of really big ones and, for the most part, succeeds with every last one of them. It is an unflinching look at an extremely difficult subject; it does not candy-coat anything and it refuses to shy away from even the most troubling details (neither of which it should do; subtlety is not the way to handle this sort of material). And while unbelievably devastating, one cannot accuse it of being emotionally manipulative. It delivers its soul-shattering gut-punch not because the director has stacked the cards in favor of its incredibly powerful final scene, but because the story is so naturally trenchant and yet so honestly handled that it just ends up there. It earns that final scene. And if that isn't reason enough why this is a tremendous piece of work, here's another: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (still best known for "Third Rock from the Sun," despite having been in some really great films since then) gives a beyond-excellent performance as Neil, the film's protagonist. On the surface he comes across as nothing less than a heartless asshole, but Gordon-Levitt nails the nuances of the character so well that it's impossible to miss the deep-rooted suffering behind his hardened facade. It's wonderful work. But really, I want to shake hands with everyone involved in this. It's by no means an easy film, but it's a necessary and important one. It explores areas of the human condition that few would ever dare to touch. That it does so with such honesty and such overwhelming force makes it one of the finer cinematic achievements of recent years. (I suppose I do see the unfairness of simply describing it as "a film about child abuse," as I did with the movie night crowd, as it does go a hell of a lot deeper -- and darker -- than that. But my question to those folks would be, now that you've seen it, wouldn't you be disappointed if it hadn't? I know I would.)

Oldboy (Chan-Wook Park, 2005) 87
The first time I watched Oldboy was in context with the rest of Chan-Wook Park's "vengeance trilogy" (of which this is the finest entry by a long shot), which necessarily means that a lot of thematic and tonal similarities between the films were going to be taken for granted. A few weeks ago, upon rewatching this in isolation from its counterparts, it finally dawned on me just how grim this film truly is. In a viewing marathon filled to the brim with blood and revenge and mean-spirited violence, the impact of these sorts of things -- for better or for worse -- ends up going by the wayside. And while my first viewing of the film at the end of last semester certainly knocked the wind out of me, it was only this time that I was able to fully appreciate the twisted humanity it puts on display. And it's just twisted enough that I could easily imagine lots of people getting seriously turned off. But where the film might lose some people is exactly where I latch on. As with Mysterious Skin, I have a certain natural fondness for films that step outside of a well-defined comfort zone and tap into dark, almost unspeakable recesses of the human mind. The plot developments in Oldboy very quickly drift away from the expected "hard-edged badass" (of which there is plenty, of course, although most of it is in the film's first half) into much more unexpected, disturbing territory. But that's what makes this so special and keeps it from becoming "just another revenge flick" (that and the fact that it's a technical tour de force, but that's a topic for another day). The motivation, no matter how sick and depraved, has an unnerving verisimilitude; sometimes, in the real world, having a villian who's just a crazy, fucked-up son of a bitch is adequate enough for this kind of shit to go down. It's a trying film, to be sure, but never at the expense of entertainment or pathos. It takes you to dark places and shows you unpleasant things, but it's not so unkind as to deny you payback for your emotional investment. Again: this is excellent.

Party 7 (Katsuhito Ishii, 2000) 21
More fool me for thinking Casshern was going to be the worst film in this entry. Somehow, against all laws of nature and dictates of good taste, Party 7 manages the trick of not only being worse, but being significantly so. Things like this are to blame for Japanese culture unfairly getting stereotyped as a cracked-out hodgepodge of absurdist nonsense. Party 7 tries so hard to be quirky and unusual and goofy and funny and unique that it just ends up downright painful. I honestly can't think of another word for it. Usually I can adjust my inner tempo to self-conscious weirdness, no matter how forced, but this just gives me nothing whatsoever to grab onto. It's really more like two entirely separate films haphazardly glued together: the first is a dull "I stole money and I'm running away from gangsters" story with lifeless characters and no development; the second is one of the most appallingly weird things I have ever seen onscreen, and no, I do not mean that as a compliment (an aging peeping tom named Captain Banana, whose attire is a spacesuit and frog helmet, tries to get a twentysomething boy to put on a yellow jumpsuit in order to embrace his "inner peep" or some shit). These two continue alongside each other with no particular rhyme, reason, or sense of pacing, until the pointlessly over-the-top denouement inevitably brings them together and accomplishes nothing whatsoever. Surprised? Yeah, I wasn't either. Really, if I hadn't rented the damn thing, I probably would've burned it or something. But they'd fine me for that, and it wouldn't be worth it. I just want this movie out of my life forever. I'll start by finishing this review.

Scotland, Pa. (Billy Morrissette, 2001) 69
How's this for a hook: "1970s fast-food version of Macbeth with Christopher Walken as a vegetarian Macduff." If you're anything like me, this will have not only immediately migrated to the top of your must-see list, but you'll actually already be halfway to the video store (or Netflix queue, as the case may be). The good news is that it delivers on that promise, at least insofar as its conceit will allow. In the grand scheme of Macbeth adaptations, I'd say this is somewhere in between Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (a classic, of course) and that post-apocalyptic Mad Max-style version my 10th grade English teacher showed us (which is incredibly bizarre and I still have no idea where she found it, because I can't). Morrissette manages something that, truthfully, has been tried a bazillion times and many fail at: being decently faithful to the Bard while still putting a clever, entertaining spin on one of his stories. By all accounts, Scotland, Pa. could have gone off the rails at any time; it never does, though, and as a result it becomes something of a small delight to watch. It's dryly funny in the only way that's appropriate for this sort of thing, and of course Christopher Walken is always fun to watch ("You've really done a lot with the place. Of course, the last time I was here there was a dead body in the fryilator!" has just entered the Movie Quote Hall of Fame). Familiarity with Shakespeare's play isn't necessary, of course, but I imagine it's somewhat more fun if you are. Nonetheless, I find it hard to believe most people wouldn't be greatly entertained by this. It's a hoot.

Sukiyaki Western Django (Takashi Miike, 2007) 68
I must admit, half the fun of seeing this again was being with people who had not watched it yet. Let's face it: this is really the sort of movie you watch once, are amused by, and then move on with your life. There's nothing deep here, no hidden details or worldly food for thought that would require multiple viewings. It's supposed to be a self-conscious, ridiculous, wildly over-the top homage to everything, an endeavor it more or less succeeds at. But seeing it with people who don't quite know what to expect is a treat in and of itself: Sukiyaki Western Django is a movie that is so patently absurd that literally anything can happen at any moment, and gauging reactions can sometimes be as much fun as the lunacy that's transpiring onscreen. Does it hold up as a film? Yeah, sure. Like I said before, it does what it sets out to do. If you're making up your own rules it's hard to break any of them, and if one thing can be said about the film, it's that there's nothing else quite like it in the world. Maybe it's not an especially great film, but it's a fun one that I'd really have no trouble recommending. That alone puts it way ahead of a lot of other films, and those don't even have a heavily made-up Quentin Tarantino in a steam-powered wheelchair.

Versus (Ryûhei Kitamura, 2000) 59
I don't think words can accurately describe how ridiculous this film is. Is there anything this film doesn't have? It's a gun-wielding gangster samurai zombie movie set in a supernatural forest with immortals and reincarnated souls. Or something. Not that it matters. As fun as all this craziness is, though, the one thing I can't quite forgive it for is the small little flaw of making absolutely no goddamn sense whatsoever. I realize this isn't really the point, and that you're just supposed to watch it so you can see crazy shit happen and awesome fights and so forth, but think about how much better it would be if it had a story! It'd really be something! Oh well. I guess you can't have everything, and what the film does give is suitably badass if one is in the mood for this sort of thing. I can't deny that I was alternately amused and entertained for the film's entire duration (+20 WTF points for the scene where the crazy-haired guy just randomly hovers down from the sky), but at the end it still felt like there should have been more. Not that I wouldn't still recommend it to people. I probably would. It's that sort of thing. Hell, I'd even see it again. It's just ... what the fuck, just go watch it.

Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008) 53
In general, if I dislike a film I'm inclined to lay the blame on the filmmaker a long time before I even think of indicting myself (and I'm sure 99.9% of all moviegoers share this sentiment). Waltz With Bashir is an interesting film in many ways, not the least of which is that it turns my previous statement upon itself. No, I did not like it, but for once I feel like I'm the responsible party and that the good-intentioned Ari Folman really had nothing to do with it. I think my lukewarm reaction stems from my inability to form any sort of emotional attachment to what was happening onscreen. War is never easy and maybe I've just become desensitized to it, because the images here are undeniably potent without ever actually striking a chord or plucking a heartstring. They're just ... there. I feel like I should be profoundly moved by the film's final few minutes, which jarringly switch away from a gorgeous dreamlike animation very reminiscent of Linklater's Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly to present live-action images of crying women wandering the streets of a crumbling city, but I just wasn't. Instead of seeming like a poignant concluding note, it felt anticlimactic. We never got to the bottom of Folman's eerie dream sequence, nor did we ever have a chance to warm up to any of the individuals he interviewed for his quasi-documentary. But am I missing the boat in expecting these things? Did I just not go into the film in the right mindset? I don't know. I wish I did, because it feels like it could be a really great film. Instead, I can't really regard it as anything more than an underdeveloped, if visually stunning and incredibly humanistic, curiosity.

Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009) FV: 64 / SV: 70
I think I may be just about the only teenage/college-age male in the known universe who did not enjoy Zack Snyder's previous effort, the dull and pointless CGI splatterfest 300; likewise, I have a special distate for both the Wachowski brothers' grim and misguided take on V for Vendetta (another unpopular stance, I gather) and the ludicriously awful Sean Connery vehicle The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which I pray to god everyone hates). With both an unsureness of Snyder and a past history of seriously not-good Alan Moore adaptations, I naturally approached the film version of "graphic novel to beat all graphic novels" Watchmen with some trepidation. Imagine my relief when, after having watched it, it dawned on me that it not only didn't suck, but it was actually pretty okay. I wasn't head-over-heels in love with it, but that was all right. Contented, I spent a couple weeks being sure that "pretty okay" was more or less going to be my final verdict. As it turns out, much to my increased delight, this was not the case: a trip to Denver brought about a viewing in IMAX, and suddenly the film leaped from "pretty okay" to "quite good" (bigger is unquestionably better in a film that relies so heavily on visuals). I stand convinced now that a third viewing might even push the score higher. I'm still not gushingly in love with it (as many are), nor do I ever think I will be, but I can certainly accept that Snyder has taken on an unenviably difficult task and actually done pretty well by it. Only time will tell if this will go down as the "great art" some have proclaimed it to be (I'd certainly argue that it isn't), but for the time being it's an enjoyable popcorn flick. I'm happy with that. I mean, aren't you?

Whew. All right. I think that should do it for a few weeks, at least. 'Til then!

25 Cents of Music: 2009's First Quarter

2009-03-22T19:17:00.005-07:00

As an incurable music junkie, it pains me somewhat that this self-described "geeky media blog" has gone for such a long time without any direct musical discussion. Not that there's anything wrong whatsoever with movies (in fact, I'm going to go watch one after I post this), but sometimes it's good to be diplomatic and give some face time to other interested parties. It makes me feel more well-rounded in my rabid obsessions. (Just wait until summer when I have actual free time; I'll even be writing about books. I swear. I have an epic summer reading list. But I digress.)

So I decided to do something of an overview of 2009 so far. It's a quarter gone, believe it or not, and this saddens me because it's already aptly proven itself a hell of a lot better than 2008. In terms of everything. I don't want to jinx myself and have the next nine months be terrible, of course, but so far it's been quite good. The music scene in particular seems to have awoken from its yearlong siesta (after the party that was 2007, I'd be exhausted too; so it's understandable why it had to take a year off, but it's also nice that it's showing some initiative again). There's been great stuff from old favorites, great stuff from newbies and heretofore undiscovered bands, and the ever-lingering promise of more great stuff in the not-too-distant future from both aforementioned parties. It's been good.

Let's break this down.

I Find These Songs Especially Awesome:
These are the standouts among standouts thus far. As the year goes on, the list will undoubtedly grow. As it stands, it's a formidable start. My absolute favorite, which can always change at a moment's notice, is italicized.

Animal Collective, "My Girls"
Apoptygma Berzerk, "Asleep or Awake?"
Franz Ferdinand, "No You Girls"
Harlem Shakes, "Strictly Game"
The Juan MacLean, "The Simple Life"
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, "Young Adult Friction"
Pure Reason Revolution, "Deus Ex Machina"
Silversun Pickups, "Panic Switch"
Telefon Tel Aviv, "The Birds"
White Lies, "Death"

Specific Comments About Stuff:
Now with more specificity.

That's it. Hell has frozen over. The most irritating, overrated band in all of indie-rock has made an album I legitimately enjoy. But seriously, it's good stuff. I mean, is anyone really going to argue that "My Girls" is far and away the best track Animal Collective has ever produced? It's a hard song to dislike, and the good news is that if you like it the rest of the album basically sounds the same. It's sort of an amalgamation of the what-the-fuck nature-noisemaking of their early albums and the what-the-fuck "pop" songcraft of Strawberry Jam. The result mysteriously manages to factor out most of the "what the fuck" and leave us fortunate souls with a dreamy, unique, and mostly enjoyable electronic "mood" album. Which isn't to say I'm apeshit about it. It's still irritating and overrated (with all due disrespect to Pitchfork, that 9.6 is beyond fucking insane), but it's also pretty okay. To be honest, it's still not the kind of thing I can see myself listening to that often, but I do like it. And for these guys, that's a hell of a step forward.

I don't have anything interesting to say about Antony and the Johnsons, and neither does anyone else.

Apoptygma Berzerk is no longer the pulsing EBM/industrial/future-pop band I fell in love with back in high school. 2005's still very good You and Me Against the World openly suggested that they were headed in a more electro-rock direction, and now Rocket Science -- which comes across largely as an undercooked medley of You and Me leftovers -- confirms it. I guess I have a huge reserve of goodwill for these guys, though, because I'd still rather listen to this than a lot of other stuff. And Groth is still a talented songwriter: occasionally, something awesome like "Asleep or Awake?" slips in and really rocks out. Nothing matches the heights of, say, "In This Together" (one of their best songs, regardless of genre) or "Love to Blame," but it's not terrible or anything.

Burning Hearts do cutesy, female-voiced Scandinavian twee pop. It either works for you or it doesn't. It works for me.

I am convinced The Decemberists can do no wrong. Of course, I've been convinced of this since 2005, but their continuance of not doing any wrong really strengthens my argument. Their latest, the ultra-geeky The Hazards of Love, is immensely satisfying because (A) it's not like anything they've done before; (B) it's one the most ambitious and even slightly risky albums by anyone in some time (they are on a major label, remember, and this is uncommercial to the extent that it's nearly impossible to even separate the individual tracks from one another); and (C) it rocks really hard. Emphasis on (C). Even in a very musically generous year, this will be a highlight. Not that I ever expected anything else.

The chilling debut from Fever Ray amply proves which half of The Knife was primarily responsible for Silent Shout's indelible creepiness. In other words, yeah, it's good stuff.

Despite what the world at large might think, Franz Ferdinand haven't lost it. Just listen to "Ulysses" and tell me you don't get even a slight adrenaline rush when that synth storms on at about 0:40. Really?

Grizzly Bear, on their most recent "how the hell did this leak already?" Veckatimest, continue their trend of being mind-alteringly beautiful without actually being all that interesting.

The second half of Handsome Furs' Face Control is much better than the first. Either half of Plague Park is better than the second half of Face Control. Let's just hurry up and get another Wolf Parade album out, shall we?

By all accounts, it seems like Harlem Shakes are poised to inherit Tokyo Police Club's underappreciated-indie-punk torch from last year. Despite an even more irritating vocalist, I still like 'em.

I have a horrible feeling that The Juan MacLean's sophomore album The Future Will Come is going to be ignored simply because it's not LCD Soundsystem. Truth is, it's a very strong (and very fun) album that's probably the best example of pure "indie dance" in some time. The lengthy opening and closing tracks ("The Simple Life" and "Happy House") are well worth the price of admission alone, but some of the shorter tracks like "The Station" and "A New Bot" are also great.

I still find Junior Boys boring as hell. Someone needs to tell these guys to lay off the quaaludes or something, I swear, 'cause their approach to synth-pop/dance music (a necessarily upbeat style) has all the zealousness of a coma patient. 2006's "In the Morning" remains their only genuinely interesting song because, oh my god, it actually has a pulse.

Barracuda by Mexican synth-pop band Kinky is by a Mexican synth-pop band called Kinky and is entitled Barracuda. This is all you really need to know.

Apparently Late of the Pier's fun, highly enjoyable debut Fantasy Black Channel didn't actually get released in the U.S. until 2009, which just gives me another chance to go on about what a spiffy, clitoris-stimulating song "Broken" is.

Matt & Kim's Grand is pretty grand. My history with it goes something like this: I listened to it a couple times and found I liked it all right. Then I saw them live. Then I listened to it a couple more times and found I liked it quite a bit more than all right. Something about holding a musician's shoe can do that to you.

Metric's Fantasies is so much better than I thought it would be that I actually feel like I need to go back and listen to it some more before I can pass proper judgment. It's the least I can do for Emily Haines, who actually probably would've earned it based on that really awesome lake picture alone.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's self-titled has one of the best songs of 2009 thus far in "Young Adult Friction," and is largely devoid of interest for its remainder. A shame, 'cause that song is really good.

The Prodigy shouldn't have quit their day job (smacking their bitches up), because this new stuff isn't all that great. It's decent, I suppose, but The Fat of the Land was so much more than decent that it's hard not to feel a bit let down.

Pure Reason Revolution's Amor Vincit Omnia is an elegant 45-minute amalgamation of, like, every musical style I have ever been into. For this reason, it's going to be very hard to keep this one off my favorites for '09. The way they mesh prog-metal and industrial on song-of-the-year candidate "Deus Ex Machina" is incredible, and the last two minutes of "AVO" are so perfect that they make me feel like all the best parts of my life are just beginning.

Neither shoegaze nor Smashing Pumpkins is really "my thing" at all, so I find it intriguing that Silversun Pickups are fast becoming one of my big favorite bands. I discovered only last September that their debut Carnavas is really one hell of an album, and that "Future Foe Scenarios" is one of the best damn songs ever written (though, contrary to popular opinion, I find "Lazy Eye" to be one of their weaker songs). Their new single "Panic Switch" is so good that I expect their follow-up Swoon to be nothing less than one of the best albums of the year.

I am as head over heels in love with Spencer Krug as any man healthily ought to be, but Swan Lake just doesn't do it for me. Sorry. It's a two-album condition now, so I'm starting to doubt the "it's a fluke" assumption I've been leaning on since 2006.

If "The Birds" by Telefon Tel Aviv doesn't end up as the most beautiful song of 2009, I have a treat in store for me somewhere down the road. There's always something eerie about a musician dying before an album even gets released, and that eeriness hangs over Immolate Yourself in sheets. It's a sold album, though, and moody as hell, so I suppose it's a good swan song. More than anything, though, I would've liked to hear another one. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut: "So it goes."

White Lies sounds like Editors sounds like Interpol sounds like Joy Division, etc. etc. And you know what? I still find the style compelling. It's an uneven album, sure, but it's quite listenable.

Mmkay. That's it for right now. I feel like I've taken up enough of your time already. Wouldn't you agree?

Yeah. Thought so.

Movie Roundup: 3/1/09

2009-03-01T20:38:00.002-07:00

I'm back. Sooner than I thought I would be, actually. Getting sick really helps with movie-watching, as it turns out. The weekend I was ailing I quarantined myself at my house, curled up, and -- not feeling much like doing anything else (other than sleeping intermittently) -- watched a bunch of crap. It was quite fulfilling. And then, of course, there's the typical array of Movie Night fare and theatrical viewings and all that good stuff. Not as many ridiculously high ratings this time (this is a more standard distribution, I'd say), but still some really good stuff. Lezzgo.

Burn After Reading (The Coen Brothers, 2008) 73
Maybe the funniest thing about the Coen Brothers' uniformly hilarious Burn After Reading is how much of a flip-off it is to the world of "serious cinema." After cleaning the floor at the Oscars with No Country for Old Men (which may very well be their best film; it's been a while since I've watched Fargo, the current holder of that title, so I couldn't say for sure), I'm sure everyone expected them to try to one-up themselves with another serious Statement about the human condition in contemporary America. Instead, they gave us this delightfully irreverent political farce that, while obviously not up to the jaw-dropping standards of their best work, is just about as entertaining as one could hope for. The Coens have a knack for creating immensely memorable characters: from The Dude to Carl Showalter to Anton Chigurh, almost every one of their films seems to possess at least one singularly striking individual. Here, the terminally underrated Brad Pitt steals every scene he's in as uber-doofus Chad Feldheimer. It's the rare performance that, no doubt, is as much fun for the audience to watch as it was for the actor to embody. But to be honest, everyone looks like they're having a good time here. I think they realize that this film was never meant to change the world or even really "say" anything (other than the government is incompetent -- gee, what else is new?). It's just meant to be a fun, lighthearted trifle for the Coens as they gear up for another home run. I have no clue how long it'll be until that film hits us, but until then I'm pretty sure Burn After Reading will suit me just fine.

Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009) 39
An aggressively unpleasant film. Despite tirelessly searching for its entire runtime, there's just no fun in this thing for me. It's dark, oppressive, and off-putting (especially for a younger audience), but to what end? If you're going to have your main character endure such an ordeal, shouldn't she get something out of it? The film provides no evidence that little Coraline's life is going to be any different after this whole to-do than it was before. Her asshole, "you broke my favorite snowglobe" parents certainly haven't changed. So what could have, and should have, been a film about familial love and redemption and Wizard of Oz-style "there's no place like home"-ness inadvertently becomes a film about a neglected child who learns to appreciate that she's a neglected child. A lovely message, especially for the kiddos. Now in lifelike 3D, so they can almost touch the bitter reality! Despite being a harsh and unrewarding film, though, it's certainly a good-looking one: Selick's trademark stop-motion is as eerily effective as ever, and the aforementioned 3D -- to the extent that I even noticed it (it was much more subtle than a lot of other big-screen 3D fare) -- was well integrated, if inessential. But really, that's not going to win me over. Coraline is a dreary experience. Big-screen escapism is dependent on there being something worthwhile to escape to. If an ugly, dissatisfying story wherein the only compassionate character is a mangy, dead-looking alley cat is your idea of solid entertainment, be my guest. I should have stayed home. There's no place quite like it.

Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008) 81
It's something of a miracle that this film even exists. The vampire genre is so old, so worn out, and so cliched that I thought I never wanted to see another. But here's a film that effortlessly makes the vampire yarn seem fresh, exciting, and wonderful again. I honestly did not think it could be done. I think its biggest asset is its restraint: by not going for the throat (yes, pun intended) like many other films would, the story is allowed to unfold on its own terms and slowly and methodically engulf its viewers. And it's a story that works impressively well on a variety of levels: it's at once a movie about the pains of adolescence, a fledgling romance, and of course a girl-next-door with a dark and gory secret. How the film winds all of these elements up into a single package is delightful, and the directions it chooses to go in are as unexpected as they are satisfying. This is a dark film, yes, and creepy, but it's also surprisingly touching, sweet, and involving. I cared greatly about Oskar and Eli and hoped constantly that the film would lead them to a resolution both true to its tone and worthy of everything that had come before. It does, and watching them get there is one of the most pleasurable first-time viewings I've had in quite some time. I gather that the DVD will be released on March 10. I'll be there when it comes out.

Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) 92
Truly beautiful. I've never seen it so much as a relationship drama as I have a film about the life-affirming power of friendship in the face of loneliness and alienation. Because seriously, who cares if they slept with each other? Maybe they did, maybe they didn't; to dwell on the idea is to miss the true beauty of their relationship. Here are two people who manage against all odds to form a bond more powerful than most people will ever know. The ephemeral nature of their encounter is what makes the film so delightful and, at the same time, so sad: we know as well as they do that their friendship is confined to that hotel. They'll never see each other again. But the time they spend together is so genuine, so real, that it puts the vast majority of bored human interaction to shame. By all accounts, Bill Murray should've won an Oscar for this (damn you, Sean Penn -- Mystic River wasn't very good anyway). It's both his finest work ever and the best film he's ever been associated with. So few movies manage to be as mature, thoughtful, and full of insight as this one. While it does seem to become more wistful with each passing year, it also gets better every time I watch it.

Repo! The Genetic Opera (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2008) <(^.^<)
For which I respectfully suspend my own rating system in favor of the Kirby Dance. I feel vaguely unclean for having watched this again, but -- as I mentioned the first time -- I hardly feel guilty about it, and would indeed watch it a third time if given a particularly good (or even a particularly bad) reason to. I hate this film with such a passion that I might very well be in love with it, a difficult phenomenon to describe unless you have, in fact, seen the film for yourself. I don't really have too much to add to my original commentary, except (1) this is not something that should ever be watched without people around; (2) in a perfect world, "Drug Market" would be a Top 40 hit and played on FM radio every five minutes. Aside from that, my original review still stands. ... and have I mentioned that if you haven't seen this you really need to?

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (David Mirkin, 1997) 65
Believe it or not, I actually got this for my dad for Christmas, but had never actually watched it myself. Well, the weekend I was sick I figured, "What the hell?" and curled up and gave it a looksie. To my surprise (and perhaps chagrin), I enjoyed it quite a bit. I suppose general classification would call this a "chick flick," but not in the abject, toe-curling way that would apply to a dumb rom-com or some weepy loved-and-lost relationship drama. Instead, Romy and Michele -- unlike its two terminal airhead heroines -- is actually pretty intelligent, and there are plenty of solid laughs to be had along the way. The premise? Romy and Michele, two incurable ditzes, learn that their 10-year high school reunion is in two weeks and decide to "better" themselves in order to look prosperous and successful (including a hilarious, half-baked plan to lie to former classmates about having invented Post-It notes in the intervening years). It's predictable and formulaic, sure, but it's a lot of fun. Although the necessarily-happy conclusion does require you to suspend a somewhat uncomfortable amount of disbelief, the preceding 80 minutes or so are entertaining, well-written, and have some delightfully pointed and accurate things to say both about high school and about the ingenuine, phony nature of these so-called "reunions." And I enjoyed it for that. I know I'm not its target audience, but that just goes to show that some of these for-the-ladies movies really can satisfy just about everyone looking to have a good time, even the male counterparts. I mean, my dad and I both like it. That's gotta say something.

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) 77
Tons and tons of goodwill and high regard over the past few years have made this into something of a classic, and while I do have to agree that it's an impressively strong film, I also have a few reservations. Certainly, to call it Kubrick's best (as many have done) is to do a horrendous injustice to his 1964-1971 holy trinity, and perhaps some of his lesser-known films as well. Let's face it: as a haunted house/ghost story, the film is almost a complete failure; there are elements of it sprinked throughout, but they're too half-baked and sporadic to seem consequential at all. Aided by Jack Nicholson's iconic but nonetheless over-the-top performance, though, where the film really excels is in its depiction of madness. It's eerie, claustrophobic, and chilling. Almost all of the credit for this, really, goes to Kubrick. The Shining has a weak script. Sorry, but it does. The direction, however, is among the most flawless in history. Kubrick was a notorious perfectionist and he'd re-shoot scenes ad nauseum until he got exactly what he wanted. This film was in production for almost a year and a half and, I believe, used more miles of film stock than any other movie ever made. It shows, and it's kind of brilliant. The film is sparkling, pristine, and technically flawless. (Really, don't ever debate the talent of Stanley Kubrick with me. You may not like the films, but it's impossible to deny the man was a genius -- one of the best -- at what he did.) So, despite its weaknesses, The Shining is a compulsively watchable movie. It's just so damn well made that I have to admire it. Sure, Kubrick made better films, but none of them strike me as being as quintessentially a "director showcase" as this one. That, far more than the story itself, makes it a must-see.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989) 45
I suppose calling this the Japanese Eraserhead wouldn't be too far off the mark. While there is some semblance of a coherent narrative, it really plays second-banana to the fact that the director just wants to fuck you up bad. But David Lynch is an extremely skilled director, and he's capable of making brilliant films from elements that would be insufferable in anyone else's hands. So whereas Eraserhead is fucked up and weird and disturbing, it clicks with me. It works. Tetsuo, on the other hand, never rises above just being a series of surreal, hyperkinetic grotesqueries. Technically, the film is brilliant: the editing is virtuoso, to say the least. But the thing is, you get it rather quickly. I'd say that by the 30-minute mark at the very latest, you've seen what there is to see. Even though the film itself is a very brief 63 minutes, it still feels like it just goes on and on and on. There's no doubt Shinya Tsukamoto made the film he wanted to make (the ultra-stylish final product glistens with a sort of rough-edged, demented perfectionism), and the film does have its avid cult followers, but I can't really count myself among them. I am glad I saw it. It satisfied my curiosities. But it's not the sort of thing I think I'd ever need to return to.

Time (Kim Ki-Duk, 2006) 76
A haunting and poignant film from South Korea, which -- at least in terms of what gets international distribution -- seems to be a powerhouse for haunting and poignant films. Upon further consideration and the inevitable second viewing, I may even raise that 76, because there are a lot of intriguing ideas here that are handled very, very well. The general idea runs thusly: a jealous woman, afraid her boyfriend may be getting bored and tired of her, has plastic surgery to completely alter her facial appearance. Then, as the "new" woman, she begins a relationship with the same boyfriend, who of course does not realize that she is the same woman. The film refuses to shy away from the difficult ethical and emotional ramifications of this, and the result is both unsettling and provocative. Ki-Duk (whose, well, haunting and poignant 2004 film 3-Iron is also well worth seeing) is, if anything, a master of subtlety: he plays the whole affair very low-key, develops his two main characters enough to make them utterly believable, and then places them smack-dab in the middle of a moral puzzle that, by nature, has no easy answer. It's not light entertainment, to be sure, but it's the sort of thing that crawls under your skin and refuses to let go. For that alone I admire it, but it also has something even deeper to say about love and human attraction, and the way it says these things makes it something of a triumph. It's definitely worth tracking down; I know I want to see it again very soon.

Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996) 74
The one thing I don't understand about this film (or more specifically, I suppose, about the Irvine Welsh novel it's based on -- which I do own a copy of and I will read whenever I get a chance, i.e. summer) is what the hell the title means. Is it slang? Is there some implicit, symbolic meaning? Is it just a pleasant alternative to Junkies Gone Wild? If I ever meet Mr. Welsh, I'll have to ask him. Also, I didn't realize until this viewing that Welsh actually has a cameo, playing the dealer who gives Renton the suppositories at the beginning. But these are just details. The big picture remains the same: this is still a good, solid, entertaining movie. It's not a great one (if you want one of those, I urge you look no further than Boyle's recent Oscar winner), but for what it is I say it does quite well. You could definitely find much worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

Chris Vardeman will return. Not necessarily stirred, but at the very least, constantly shaken.

Chris Is a Nerd, Pt. 7,381: Post-Oscar Thoughts

2009-02-22T23:10:00.001-07:00

Overall, not a bad show. Hugh Jackman was a surprisingly strong host, it seemed like they did a good job expediting the "smaller" awards (sorry, I understand the significance, but I really couldn't care less about excellence in costume design), and the whole production seemed much more tastefully done than in past years. Also: thank god they decided to condense the Best Song nominees into a medley. I always hated sitting through those damn things.

One thing the Oscars can never seem to change, though, is how eminently predictable they are. Of the six categories I discussed a few weeks ago, I predicted five of the winners correctly. That's not too bad, honestly. Were I of age and in Vegas, I'd have probably made some money tonight. Not too much, though. The odds in favor of my predictions were probably pretty high.

Most importantly, however, I spent the evening in good company. A good time was had by all.

Let's break this down.

Best Picture:
Winner: Slumdog Millionaire
Prediction: Slumdog Millionaire
Comments: Let's face it: in recent years, the Academy has had a very good track record for rewarding the best film. Each of the last four years, the best film of the five nomimated has gone home with the statue: Crash in 2005, The Departed in 2006, No Country for Old Men in 2007, and now Slumdog Millionaire for 2008. And Slumdog WAS the best of the five films. You could argue with me, of course, but I imagine you'd be wrong.

Best Director:
Winner: Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
Prediction: Danny Boyle
Comments: Boyle's a very good director, he's responsible for a fantastic film, and by all accounts he deserved to win. He wasn't my personal preference (Fincher was), but he seems like a pretty nice dude and I'm glad he's finally gotten his chance to shine. It's been a long time coming.

Best Actor:
Winner: Sean Penn (Milk)
Prediction: Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
Comments: Or, Sean Penn Jacks the Award from the Underdog, Pt. 2: Oh My God, He Actually Deserved It This Time. (Sorry. I still think Bill Murray should've won back in '03.) I predicted Rourke with some confidence, but I can't honestly say this surprises me. Penn is a perennial favorite, he played a very politically important character, and he did an excellent job of it. Despite agreeing with everything he said, I do think his speech was a bit too soapbox-ish. But he's Sean Penn. He's Mr. Hollywood Humanitarian. So, eh, whatever. Milk is a better film than The Wrestler, Sean Penn did a better job than Mickey Rourke, so I'm happy.

Best Actress:
Winner: Kate Winslet (The Reader)
Prediction: Kate Winslet
Comments: I keep returning to Winslet's 2005 appearance on Extras where she, as a foul-mouthed version of herself playing a nun in a World War II drama, admitted to Ricky Gervais that she was only doing the Holocaust drama so she could win an Oscar. Funny, to say the least, but prophetic. I didn't see The Reader. I didn't have much desire to. Winslet's a fine actress and I'm glad she finally won, but this feels so much more like a "we should give it to her because she hasn't won" than a "she was so great in this particular film, so let's reward her." But hey, that's the way it goes sometimes.

Best Supporting Actor:
Winner: Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Prediction: Heath Ledger
Comments: Surprised?

Best Supporting Actress:
Winner: Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Prediction: Penelope Cruz
Comments: Good. I'm glad she snagged this one. For my money, she was better than everyone else she was up against. This was one of the few awards of the evening where there was breathing room for some of the other nominees, but ultimately the Academy decided to be predictable and award the frontrunner once again. Justice is served, at least in this case.

The best moment of the evening was when that one dude balanced the Oscar statue on his chin. That was badass. The worst moments were the ones where I had to look at Adrien Brody's hair. What the fuck.

'Til this time next year! Who knows what'll take home the awards for 2009? I don't yet, but I place my early bets on Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

Movie Roundup: 2/12/09

2009-02-12T21:37:00.003-07:00

... now with more ridiculously high scores than ever before!

School is terrible. I immediately classify anything that stands in the way of me watching lots and lots of movies as such, and school quite effortlessly succeeds in this endeavor. As a result, I have only managed to watch but nine films since the semester began. However, as can be seen from the almost uniformly high scores, I've at least made those nine films count. At least, in most cases. There are, as always, exceptions. The alphabet has, for dramatic effect, saved the juicy ones for last. Onward.

Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006) 86
Proof positive that good movies should never be watched only once. Before now, the only time I had seen Children of Men was during its theatrical run. I liked it, but it didn't register in my head as anything other than just a good, solid sci-fi film. Who knows what happened in the two intervening years, but upon rewatching this, I was floored. Absolutely fucking blown away. This was the same film, unquestionably, but somehow this time it was just better. So, so, so much better. First off, I don't remember it being this emotionally harrowing; I remember it being dark and bleak, but nowhere near as affecting. And second, everything you've heard about this film's cinematography is true; I just can't even comprehend how they pulled some of this shit off. Though there are several amazing sequences (the "egg-spitting scene," for lack of a better description, being one), the now-famous six-minute warzone take near the end of the film is one of the most impressive things I have ever seen. I'd say it has to be seen to be believed, but I've watched that scene by itself several times and I still don't believe it. Just like how I still don't believe I could have seen this the first time and not just gone apeshit for it. It's fuckin' amazing.

A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) 100
I've said it once before: there are exactly five films I've seen that I would give a perfect score. This is one of them. Stanley Kubrick was an inhumanly gifted filmmaker, and he's responsible for some of the greatest movies ever produced, but this is hands-down his greatest achievement. It's also his most notorious. Over the last four decades, the film has amassed almost as many detractors as it has avid supporters. And while the naysayers' points may be valid, I will defend this film to the ends of the earth and back. The one argument I will not buy, though, is that it's just an empty, excessive excuse to shock its audience. Kubrick's approach is very forceful, but to accuse him of doing it without a solid agenda completely undermines the fact that this film dishes up lots of provocative philosophical questions. There is quite a bit to chew on here. Alex is an evil, sadistic sociopath, but isn't what the "good, clean" society/government does to him even more evil and more sadistic? Is robbing a person of his free will not an even more cruel, violent act than anything Alex does for fun? Isn't the capacity for decision what makes a person truly human? This is just scratching the surface. These are not empty, easy questions. This is a film with something to say. Many find the way it says these things objectionable, but I assert that it has to be unrelenting to make the impact that it does. It's unquestionably one of the nastiest, most vicious and unforgiving movies ever made, and many will hate it for this reason, but I think it's all the better for it. And even stripped to its basics, it's still wonderful: it's a boldly original story very well-told, Malcolm McDowell gives one of film's great performances as little Alex, and Kubrick's talent for direction and cinematography is -- as always -- unparalleled (the calm, surreal, tripped-out way he filmed this creates an atmosphere quite unlike any other in film history). This is why I love film. Everything's here, and it's perfect.

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) 94
I've always been fascinated by how quick and skillful the Joker is for a man who supposedly has no plan. I imagine it would take some firepower indeed to blow up an entire hospital, but somehow the guy manages to rig it all up in under an hour. What a resourceful son of a bitch. In other news, this movie is still fucking fantastic. I have now seen this film four times. It has been out six and a half months. I almost never rewatch movies with that sort of frequency. Something about this one just compels me to. I live in constant fear of the day its follow-up inevitably gets released; even if Christopher "God" Nolan is onboard again, there's no way it's going to be anywhere near as good as this. I mean, how could it be? What sort of villain could ever compare to Heath Ledger's Joker? What sort of tragic story arc would ever measure up to the decline and fall of Harvey Dent? Nothing. Nolan may be divinity among directors, but some water is just too fickle to walk on. But you gotta admit, he brought it on himself. We love him oh so dearly for it, but -- as they say -- no good deed goes unpunished.

Fear(s) of the Dark (A Bunch of French Dudes, 2008) 71
A very cool, stylish collection of French animated shorts. The overarching concept, as I understand it, is to tap into and -- to a certain extent -- exploit some of our primal fears: creepy crawlies, mad scientists, swamp monsters, Republicans (is that redundant?). And while none of these films are genuinely scary or even a little bit creepy, they are all shades of Highly Entertaining and Satisfyingly Badass. My personal favorite is the final vignette, in which a man suspects he may be at the tender mercies of a murderous housewife, but truly all of these are quite cool in their own ways. The film falters a bit with its short, female-voiced interludes, but even so, these banal middle-class "fears" provide an interesting contrast to the darker and more legitimate affairs of the full-length stories. So, all in all, a very worthwhile venture. It's different (which is always a plus), it's not "French" in the pejorative film-snob sense of the word, and it's honestly a lot of fun. Definitely recommended.

The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) 99
Yep, it's still that good. I have this fear -- sometimes justified, sometimes not -- of rewatching favorite films and finding that something has been lost between viewings; that I don't care for it quite as much as I did before. In the end, with The Godfather, I probably never had anything to worry about. This is filmmaking at its finest. Very few films can purport to working flawlessly on every level, but it happens here: the gold-hued cinematography is gorgeous; Nino Rota's mournful music has become iconic; there's tons of both implicit and explicit symbolism; there's a tremendous message about the corruptive influence of money and power (the once-virtuous, "that's my family, Kay, not me" Michael Corleone is, in my view, one of the most tragic characters in all of cinema); and, for the more straightforward audiences who just want an entertaining story well-told, the one on display here is as nuanced, multifaceted, and air-tight as can be hoped for. The first time I ever saw this, I was wary. I was thinking there was no way it could ever stand up to its one-of-the-best-ever hype. It does. It is one of the best. Second only to The Shawshank Redemption, of course.

Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997) 82
I guess my own personal hero-worship of Mr. Tarantino leads me to overestimate how much other people like him. The group I watched this with, as a whole, did not seem to enjoy it quite as much as I expected. But hey, that's what makes for horse races. I love it. I'm giving it an 82, which -- despite how many high ratings I've been giving out lately (a misleading consequence of rewatching favorites and not watching new ones) -- is still a ridiculously good score. And it's really only my third-favorite Tarantino flick (Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill are, of course, firmly embedded in the uppermost tier of my rating scale, while the still-awesome Reservoir Dogs is in my opinion his weakest). Still, like it or not, this has got his fingerprints all over it. Despite being his only adapted screenplay to date, the film is still unmistakably his, and personal responses are no doubt going to hinge on that. It is long and it is deliberately paced, but for my money it never once stops being entertaining or enjoyable. So there we are.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tom Tykwer, 2006) 46
Tom Tykwer directed this. The man who made a name for himself with the kinetic, uber-hip, stylish Run Lola Run made this. Two more dissimilar films you will never see, to say the least. This is a movie that handles its weirdness much like many women handle their perfume: everyone knows a little dab will do ya, but in the end some erroneous idea about excess seems to take over in spite of it all. Some women, I swear to god, use half the bottle because they think each additional squirt will somehow make them that much more aromatic. Instead, it's just nauseating. Perfume, likewise, can't stop at being a dark, quirky serial killer yarn; it's so desperate to assert itself as "something different" that it feels compelled to keep piling the weirdness on until the whole thing just becomes ridiculous. By the time it got to its mass orgy/Christ figure/zombie flesh-eating payoff (oh, if I were only joking), I knew there was no way it was ever going to be able to recover itself. And that's a shame, because it starts off intriguingly, only to have its interest shift away from what happens in the plot in order to focus on the "what next?" element of its rather depraved downward spiral (and may I just say this spiral goes on and on and on -- at 147 minutes, I shit you not, the film's way too long). I'd be lying if I said it's not entertaining; it certainly is. It's ... captivating, to be sure. But it doesn't add up to much. It's just weird for weirdness' sake, and -- aside from Lynch and very few other exceptions -- I'm not really cool with that. Bonus points for casting Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman, though. Always good to see those guys.

Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) 93
The way I see it, Billy Wilder is just about the greatest director that no one knows about. Names like Kubrick and Hitchcock get thrown around constantly by all manner of film fans, hardcore and casual alike, but for some reason Wilder seems to get lost in the shuffle. The truth is, though, that from the mid-40s to the early 60s, the man basically just made one amazing film after another. However, none in my opinion are quite as amazing as Sunset Blvd., still one of the most profoundly unsettling films ever released by a major studio. Let's face it: Wilder had balls. Big ones. For when it was made, this was edgy stuff. It's still potent almost sixty years later. (The same thing struck me the first time I watched Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, and Some Like It Hot -- the man simply refused to play it safe, which no doubt is an integral part of his greatness.) The usual Movie Night crew was chuckling and commenting throughout, but it was easy for me to see that it wasn't so much genuine amusement as it was nervous energy. Despite preconceived notions about "old movies," this is not an "easy" film. It tackles some dark, disturbing subject matter with a frankness that makes it indelible. And with a strong script, brilliant performances (Gloria Swanson is ... beyond words as Norma Desmond), and top-notch direction, it's little wonder this has become one of the all-time greats. I respectfully agree.

Tokyo Gore Police (Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2008) 34
I'm not the kind of guy who loses his shit just because something is Japanese. I don't get people who do. Our Japanese friends, colorful as their culture may be, are just as capable of making a bad film as anyone else. To be honest, you kinda know what you're getting yourself into with a title like Tokyo Gore Police. It's a splatterfest, and its main goal is to showcase as many gruesome mutilations as its 110-minute runtime will allow. And I get that. I'm cool with that. I'm one of the least squeamish people you'll ever meet, so that's not my problem with it. My problem with it is that it's just a bad film. I suppose the ooey-gooey blood and gore is effective in some exaggerated way, but it looks fake. It looks like movie gore. To add to that, the story (highly trained police killer wants revenge for her father's murder) is pretty pedestrian and uninvolving, which in itself wouldn't be too much of a burden if the heroine wasn't so damn uninteresting. It's impossible to connect with her, especially when she's really not that sympathetic (she bloodbathes some random dude who feels her up on the subway). To round it out, poor continuity editing makes this seem more like an extended trippy dream sequence than a coherent story. But oh well. It definitely has promise (I like the general idea quite a bit: futuristic Tokyo, privatized police force with extreme crime-fighting strategies, and so on), but it doesn't focus that promise in a way I find satisfying. Audiences that just want to see people get gored and mutilated and hacked up and bloodied in ridiculously graphic ways will probably get into it; I wanted a little more emotion and a stronger plot to justify it. Or maybe there's just some cosmic law that states that a sane and ethical person is only allowed, based on moral principles, to like one film of this ilk. I found that film when I watched Miike's Ichi the Killer (which is just as grotesque and graphic, but has a certain something that the Tokyo Gore Police Club lacks). So just watch that one instead, yes?

'Til next time ... OUT!

The Annual Oscar Post

2009-01-23T20:03:00.003-07:00

Most red-blooded American males spend this time of year geeking out about the Super Bowl.

I don't give a fuck about the Super Bowl.

Instead, I the shameless movie geek redirect that energy to a markedly different sort of Sunday night programming: the Academy Awards. I admit that they're utterly trivial (while, clearly, a bunch of guys in tight pants tackling the shit out of each other over a piece of inflatable pigskin isn't), but I think they're fun. They recognize excellence in something I care deeply about, and that's all that matters to me. And even though there are about 9,000 other awards shows, as far as film goes, the Oscars are still singlehandedly the most prestigious. So that's exciting, right? Right.

So every year after nominees are announced, I do this here Oscar write-up. Well, the nominees were announced yesterday morning, so here we are. It's a pretty straightforward breakdown: I list the nominees, give my personal preference (Should Win), my prediction of the actual winner (Will Win -- and sometimes these even correspond to each other, oooh aaah), and then write a few short comments. It couldn't be simpler. Unless of course I just didn't do it, which would be much more practical.

Let's check it out.

Best Picture:
The Nominees: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire
Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Comments: All in all, a very strong lineup. Of these, The Reader is the only one I haven't seen (and I don't have much desire to), while the other four all very handily made my Top 10 List. They're all deserving in their own right. However, Slumdog Millionaire is the little engine that could. It's a juggernaut and it has near-universal support behind it (and, for what it's worth, it's also my personal favorite). If there's an upset, it'll be Benjamin Button (my second favorite, incidentally), but I don't see that happening.

Best Director:
The Nominees: Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), Stephen Daldry (The Reader), David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon), Gus Van Sant (Milk)
Should Win: David Fincher
Will Win: Danny Boyle
Comments: Again, it's a race between my two favorite films and, frankly, of those nominated, my two favorite directors (funny how that works out). The Academy has an irritating habit of rewarding the film itself over how well directed it is, which is why I predict Boyle's going to win, but it's not like he's undeserving: Slumdog IS a very stylish and expertly made film. However, Fincher's work on Benjamin Button is just better. It was just about the prettiest and best-directed film of 2008. Also, I'm a bit biased, just because I think Fincher's one of the best out there. And that is a bit of a monkeywrench: the Academy does tend to reward based on past achievements. So it's a race not just between Button and Slumdog, but also between Se7en/Fight Club and Trainspotting/28 Days Later. We'll see.

Best Actor:
The Nominees: Richard Jenkins (The Visitor), Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon), Sean Penn (Milk), Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
Should Win: Frank Langella
Will Win: Mickey Rourke
Comments: It's Rourke. Anyone wanna argue the point? It's a shame, too, because I honestly think Langella, Penn, and Pitt were all much better in their respective roles. Yeah, sure, Rourke was good, but it wasn't Oscar-caliber. They're just hopeless romantics looking for an underdog. They've found him. So tough luck, Mr. Langella. If it were me, your brilliant work as Richard Nixon would not go unrewarded. As it stands, well, to paraphrase Bogart: you'll always have Watergate.

Best Supporting Actor:
The Nominees: Josh Brolin (Milk), Robert Downey, Jr. (Tropic Thunder), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt), Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight), Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road)
Should Win: Heath Ledger
Will Win: Heath Ledger
Comments: Every year there's at least one sure thing. This is it. Ain't no way Ledger's losing. I'd bet every cent I own. (But some serious lulz @ Downey actually getting nominated for Tropic Thunder. Rock on, dude. Rock. On.)

Best Actress:
The Nominees: Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Angelina Jolie (Changeling), Melissa Leo (Frozen River), Meryl Streep (Doubt), Kate Winslet (The Reader)
Should Win: Anne Hathaway
Will Win: Kate Winslet
Comments: The biggest shocker here is that Winslet was nominated for The Reader and not Revolutionary Road. Regardless of which film, though, I still think her chances of winning are pretty damn good. She's been nominated six times now (which, for a 33-year-old, is beyond amazing), and it's just "her time" to win. If I were to choose, I'd go for Anne Hathaway's mindblowing work in Rachel Getting Married (my second-favorite performance of last year, after Mr. Ledger), but she's just a minor player. Being nominated is her reward; that's all she's gonna get.

Best Supporting Actress:
The Nominees: Amy Adams (Doubt), Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Viola Davis (Doubt), Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)
Should Win: Penelope Cruz
Will Win: Penelope Cruz
Comments: Although Kate Winslet cleaned up both lead and supporting categories at the Golden Globes, she was left out here, which levels the playing field again. So I'm back to my original prediction that Penelope Cruz is going to get her due for her standout work in That New Woody Allen Film. She should, too: she's dynamite in that part. If there's a dark horse waiting in the wings, it's Viola Davis. At this point, the buzz is such that it could go either way. But for right now I'll place my bets on Cruz. I may regret it later, but there we go.

... and of course there are a bazillion other categories, for which I could waste a hell of a lot more time writing about, but these are the big ones. We'll see how accurate my predictions are. At this point, I'm fairly confident about all of these, but the buzz over the course of the next month could prove me wrong. Still, Ledger and Rourke are in the bag, hands-down, and Winslet's not looking too bad, either.

Also: are you people really that surprised that The Dark Knight didn't get nominated for more of the big awards? Really? C'mon. Despite how good the film actually is, it's still a "superhero movie." Film snobs, unless they're unapologetic geeks like myself, don't go for that sort of thing. They get their rocks off watching Kate Winslet play a Nazi pedophile. There's been a lot of talk about how both the film itself and Mr. Nolan's direction have gotten snubbed, but frankly I'm not surprised at all. I would've been more surprised if they had gotten the nod. The film will get its due by means of Heath Ledger and some of the technical awards, but that's about it. So it goes. We all know how great the film is, though, so with that out of the way we can just sit back and watch the evening unfold as it will.

30 days! Or ... however long. I don't pay much attention to these things. I just know I'll be watching when it does happen.

Movie Roundup: 1/18/09

2009-01-18T01:35:00.001-07:00

I figured I should do this one more time before school swoops in and steals my soul again. I've spent the last (and final, sadly ... or is the promise of actually having something to do really so bad?) week or so of my break re-visiting some old favorites while discovering some, er, interesting new flicks. Same format as before, same scale, same everything. Just different movies. Which is great, 'cause I don't think I could handle The Spirit again just yet.

Forward.

American History X (Tony Kaye, 1998) 84
The movie that made Edward Norton a star, and deservedly so. His work here as a violent skinhead who gets a taste of his own medicine is nothing less than riveting. It's a prime example of a single performance (still Norton's best, by a long shot) elevating an already well-made film into the realms something much greater. The movie as a whole is likely the most brutal examination of racism I have encountered in a film (as much as I like Crash, this makes that one look like Sesame Street), and its impact is indelible. This is only my second time watching the film, but even after the first time I think I'd have had immense trouble forgetting the infamous "curb scene." It's among the nastiest, most mirthless acts of violence I've ever watched onscreen; it gives me chills just thinking about it. But that's a testament to how well done this is: it's sobering as hell and it tugs at the heartstrings unapologetically, but it never feels ingenuine. It's that believability that makes it such a forceful, potent piece of work. Factor Norton's should've-won-an-Oscar performance (he was nominated, but lost to Roberto Benigni) back in there and you have an unsettling film that's every bit as great as everyone says it is.

Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994/2008) 51
A gorgeous trainwreck. I realize the film probably deserves much lower than what I'm giving it, because it really is pretty awful, but I'm a sucker for visuals. I realize this is the cinematic equivalent of liking someone 'cause they're hott and leaving personality on the backburner, but sue me. I'm shallow. And regardless, I still hate this damn movie. Ashes of Time is well-shot to an extent that it actually makes the incoherence of the rest of the film even more frustrating. Why would Wong Kar-Wai waste such excellent cinematography on such a jumbled, indecipherable, and frankly disinteresting mess? And then, why would he feel the need to resurrect said mess to do a "redux" version? Given the assumption that his new "definitive" cut is an improvement, god help me if I ever have to sit through the original. According to IMDb, the original is seven minutes longer. You don't understand the weight of this. Time is a vacuum with this film. Seven Samurai feels shorter than this thing. An extra seven minutes might very well kill me. But hey, at least they'd be pretty.

The Big Lebowski (The Coen Brothers, 1998) 91
One of my all-time favorite comedies, if only for the fact that every single scene is some sort of absurd comic gem. One of the things about seeing it multiple times is that you learn to not expect it to be a smooth, coherent narrative in the traditional sense. Sure, there's a story, and for a comedy it's almost ridiculously twisty, but you can tell storytelling's not what the Coens are going for this time. They're just fucking around, and the result is that the story ends up riding shotgun to the randomness and absurdity that dominates the whole affair. This'll drive lots of people crazy (and the film does have its avid naysayers), especially if they don't know exactly what to expect, but I think what the Coens have whipped up here is brilliant. The thing is overflowing with memorable scenes, characters, and quotes ("I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man!"); you'll be surprised how often parts of it will come back to you in day-to-day life. It's wonderful, and it's one that gets better and better the more you watch it. I just love it.

Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) 87
"Ya know what happens to nosy fellas? Huh? No? Wanna guess?" Roman Polanski's Chinatown is almost unquestionably among the greatest of all detective films: it's one of those that has both become a milestone in film history, and one that I greatly enjoy on a personal level. Calling it Polanski's best work is a no-brainer, and citing it as Jack Nicholson's finest two hours probably isn't too far off the mark, either. Film noir is my favorite genre, and this is just about as complex and hard-freakin'-boiled as they come. It may elude the casual viewer at first just why the film is called Chinatown, but stick with it: it has one of the grimmest, most hardass (which is to say, ideal) endings I can remember on a film, and by the time the credits roll all will make sense. "Forget it, Jake; it's Chinatown" may be the most wrenching non-sequitur ever spoken on the silver screen, but man. The gut-punch it packs is something else. A great, great film.

Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977) 81
Fuckin' weird. David Lynch's debut film is much more a continuous stream of surrealist mindfuckery than it is a coherent narrative. To even attempt to describe it would be completely beside the point, and assigning a score to it is about as easy as achieving world peace. With our extant technologies, it's pretty much impossible. Acceptance of this one all hinges on whether or not you're a David Lynch fan. I am, so I give it a really high score, but I'm quite aware that most people ain't gonna be willing to put up with this nonsense. And though I can without hesitation call it brilliant, I too draw the line at calling it enjoyable. This is my second time, and it's still a remarkably uncomfortable experience. But I guess it's supposed to be. I admire it greatly, and even though I own it, it's not the sort of thing I'd ever bust out on a Saturday night and kick back to. I waited two and a half years between viewings #1 and #2. I think I can safely say I've filled my quota 'til June 2011.

The Hidden Fortress (Akira Kurosawa, 1958) 79
Er, how had I not seen this before? This is the film that George Lucas openly admits he took most of his ideas for Star Wars from, and while not a direct copy, it's very easy to see where he drew his inspiration. Truth be told, this is much more lightweight than the bulk of Kurosawa's work. His usual themes of humanity, redemption, and honor are present, but displayed under the guise of an adventure/comedy instead of a deeply moralistic samurai parable (Seven Samurai, Rashomon, etc.). Even still, it feels inherently Kurosawa, and like nearly all of his samurai collaborations with Toshiro Mifune, it's pretty much awesome. Honestly, this thing's just a lot of fun. Mifune's always a badass, the bumbling peasants are consistently amusing, the cinematography is great (but of course), and overall it's another gold star for one of the best-ever filmmakers. If there's one minor quibble I have, it's that the duel scene seems to go on for a really long time. Other than that, this is rockin'. And to think I got the Criterion disc used at Hastings for, like, $7 or something. Whatta steal.

Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006) 97
If "masterpiece" is a word I throw around too much, Pan's Labyrinth is the sort of film that makes me wish I didn't, because that's exactly what it is. Guillermo del Toro's estimably mature adult fantasy is among the extremely few near-flawless cinematic achievements of the decade (or ever, for that matter); I have now seen it a good five or six times and still cannot shake the effect it has on me. It gives me everything I could want from it: it's brutal, it's creepy, but more than anything it's profoundly sad. The scene where Ofelia imagines herself standing in her father's lavish court is one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen, especially given the context in which it happens. Not to mention the spine-chilling Pale Man scene, which must be the single most recognizable sequence from any film in a rrrrreally long time. But seriously, neither words nor a near-perfect score can do justice to how phenomenal this is. If you haven't seen it, go watch it this instant. If you have seen it, go watch it again. You'll be glad, I promise.

Repo! The Genetic Opera (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2008) 55
I see lots of movies. Quite a few. Enough to make me think I'm past the point of ever seeing another movie that'll have me gaping at the screen, thinking "WTF" for its entire duration. Repo! The Genetic Opera almost effortlessly convinces me I'm so fucking wrong about this. I have to qualify that 55: this is not a movie I could ever give a straight-up score to. It's not. It wouldn't work. I'm only taking a guess at this, but that final score appears to be an average: if I gave this an 85 for sheer entertainment value and a 25 for how good it really is, that'd just about even it out. This movie is terrible. It's so goddamn bad. But it's entertaining as shit. Go watch it, and I defy you to take your eyes off the screen for even a moment. You won't be able to. So, er, I really don't know what to say about this. It's an instant cult film, for sure (like many have said, it's like the lovechild of Rocky Horror and Sweeney Todd by way of Blade Runner ... and it's got Paris Hilton in it). Am I glad I saw it? Er, well, yeah. Would I watch it again? Er, well, yeah. So I guess, technically, that makes me part of its cult. But I really, really, really don't want to think that way. If you've seen this, you know what I mean.

Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008) 68
About ten years ago, Sam Mendes directed a little suburban relationship drama called American Beauty. Remember that one? Wasn't the happiest film ever, was it? Well, now he's gone and directed Revolutionary Road, another suburban relationship drama that successfully makes his prior Oscar-winner feel like a rollicking good time by comparison. Man, this is a harsh, harsh movie. I'm not going to deny it's very well done (the performances in particular are stellar, and I'm banking on Kate Winslet finally winning an Oscar for her work here), but it's nothing I would want to subject myself to ever again. You see it once, you get the point; you've seen what there is to see. You see it twice, you're really just engaging in masochistic behavior. By this token, Revolutionary Road falls into a curious class of film: one that if done well will be depressing, but one that if not done well will still be depressing. Thank god it's done well.

Seven Pounds (Gabriele Muccino, 2008) 47
Ick. Contrived, saccharine blah. It doesn't do anything you don't expect it to, and doesn't do any of these expected things interestingly (it attempts a nonlinear editing style to try to conceal the "big twist," even though we the not-stupid viewers basically have it figured out within 15 minutes). The only legitimate surprise is that it features what may in fact be the single most ridiculous scene involving a jellyfish I have ever watched. But you have to sit through, like, 95% of the movie before you get to that. Which is to say: not worth it.

All right. Three movie roundup posts under my belt. I think I've successfully convinced myself that I am, in fact, going to maintain this stupid thing like I said I would. (Ha, watch it die now. Though really, I like this format. I'll be keepin' it up. Though with school ... yeah. The updates'll be slower comin' and all that, but no worries. The day I stop watching/loving movies will be the day I die, and I don't anticipate that day for quite some time. And with that, I am outta here. Adios.)

Movie Roundup: 1/8/09

2009-01-08T14:16:00.003-07:00

Whoops. I hadn't meant to go so long in between updates. But here I am again, new year and all. Whee. Same deal as last time. The scale's still the same, the orange still means I had seen the film before, and so on. Let's go.

The Scale
90-100: Blissful, orgasmic cinema. This is something extremely special.
80-89: An excellent, unmissable film. I probably own this (or will) and you should, too.
70-79: A very strong film well worth seeing.
60-69: This is good. It has some problems, but it's still an enjoyable piece of work.
50-59: The gray area. Certain things work about this, other things don't. It depends on mood and taste.
40-49: A mediocre or lackluster film. There's nothing offensive about this, but it's just very uninspiring.
30-39: Plain bad. Don't go near this, please.
20-29: Incredibly terrible. Only worth a viewing if self-torture is desired.
0-19: Hooooo mama.

Better Luck Tomorrow (Justin Lin, 2002) 84
Wow, this was excellent. I saw it for the first time when I was in high school and remember liking it then, but I seriously wasn't prepared for how well it holds up. If anything, I liked it even more the second time. I finished it feeling shaken, nerves rattled. Even though it's all pretty understated and frequently very funny, there's something rather disturbing at work here, and it gives the film a darkness I find difficult to describe. Maybe it's because I can relate to the characters way too well: the "we have everything, so now what?" mindset was frighteningly relevant during high school. Not only is it easy for me to see their motivations for doing what they do, it seems inevitable that everything in this film should happen just the way it does happen. The damn thing just works really, really well; I'm incredibly grateful for it (and the things that might annoy people -- for instance, the complete lack of adult authority figures like parents, teachers, and police -- are the things I consider among its greatest assets). The blurb on the DVD case chooses the three best possible words: funny, sexy, scary. In equal measure. A great film and, given a few more viewings, a potential favorite. (If I'd seen this when it came out and you'd asked me, I would've said Justin Lin was an extremely promising filmmaker. As it turns out, he's responsible for the more recent Fast and the Furious movies. Sigh. I guess a man has to decide between making art and making a living, doesn't he?)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (Scott Derrickson, 2008) 32
I finally have a definitive answer: "Klaatu barada nikto" is, in fact, extraterrestrial for "really fucking bad remake." Words can hardly do justice to how atrocious this truly is. The only reason I'm springing for the 32 instead of anything lower is because John Cleese, no matter how small of a part, is a badass. But the rest of this is trash. Keanu Reeves gives a performance that probably would've been thrown out of a Keanu Reeves impersonation contest for being too wooden, Will Smith's offspring is constantly annoying, and Jennifer Connelly spends the entire time looking like she's wondering, "Wait a minute, I can actually act. What the HELL am I doing HERE?" Oh, and the story sucks. Nothing happens. Until the end, which isn't actually an ending because it doesn't resolve anything. Man, this was terrible.

Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, 2008) 72
All told, this was probably my 11th favorite film of 2008. In other words, this is the one that got screwed for inclusion on the illustrious best-list. So it goes. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's a very small film. That is, unlike Benjamin Button or Slumdog or any of the other late-year Oscar hopefuls, it seems to exist in its own self-contained universe. It doesn't have much to say about anything outside its bubble; it's strictly concerned with its characters. This isn't a bad thing, mind you; it just wants a bit for that all-encompassing "oooh, this is life!"-type universality that Fincher's film embodies. That being said, everything about the production is very good. I know the story is supposed to be open-ended and ambiguous about answering the central conflict, but in my mind at least there's very little "doubt" about which series of events actually occurred (and, to my way of thinking, the film works better this way). Just the way Shanley presents his characters (Streep in particular) really makes me opt strongly for one particular viewpoint. But hey, there are clues a-plenty for either interpretation. That's why it's called Doubt, you see. I could be wrong. But I don't think so. See it and decide for yourself. It's a good one.

Frost/Nixon (Ron Howard, 2008) 75
Yup, the central historical/political film of this particular Oscar season actually managed to make it onto my end-of-year Top 10 List. And if you scroll down to #6 in the next-most recent entry I posted here, you can read all about what I thought of it! (Except now you know the numerical score, too.)

Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002) 69
Let me take a moment to set the record straight on this one: Quentin Tarantino did not direct Hero. In fact, the man had nothing whatsoever to do with it. He was just the go-to guy who put up the money for its American distribution (which, no doubt, we all thank him and his pocketbook for; the US was actually among the last countries this thing ever got released in!). In reality, it was directed by Chinese filmmaker extraordinaire Zhang Yimou, who probably in large part because of this film is undoubtedly one of Asia's most famous living directors. And while I still prefer both of Yimou's more recent martial arts excursions (House of Flying Daggers and especially Curse of the Golden Flower), it's impossible to deny this is a very good film. Few men have a sharper eye for the visually arresting and downright beautiful than Yimou, and every last frame of this thing is something I wouldn't be ashamed to hang on my wall. The he-said/she-said narrative is a bit of a jumble and lacks any particular emotional resonance, but of course that's not really why you'd watch a film like this. It's purty, the fight scenes are awesome, and it holds up to repeat viewings. 'Nuff said.

Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944) 59
A clever idea, even if it does outstay its welcome a bit. See, there's only so much mileage you can get out of a trapped-on-a-lifeboat story (nevermind that Life of Pi is one of the best novels I have ever read), even when Hitchcock is captaining it. Somewhere in the middle, it feels like the film starts to repeat itself. It never becomes particularly tiresome or boring, as Hitch always has a few tricks up his sleeve, but it also had me wishing that things had been shaken up a bit more than they were. But it does still arrive smoothly at its very World War II message of "kill all the Germans" (or is that the message?), and not all is lost by the time the credits roll. (Also, this was apparently taken from a story written by John Steinbeck. Interesting. I guess he had a special fondness for the "slightly monotonous story about likable people drifting aimlessly in a vehicle" plot device.)

Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999) 63
Way back in the day (this must've been 2002 or early 2003, because I don't think I was even in high school yet), before I had seen many movies and was still young and impressionable, I saw Magnolia and pretty much thought it was the best thing ever. Oooohwow a super long movie with a crazy amount of characters and like seventeen intersecting storylines? The thing's gotta be a masterpiece. So it went. And now, older and more jaded, I sat down to watch it for a second time to see if it still holds up. Does it? Well, kinda. While by no means a bad film, it's definitely not the end-all cinematic miracle I seemed to think it was. For one thing, the length and scope of the deal masks the fact that each individual story is utterly flat. By putting them together, there is a sort of sweeping catharsis; separately, none of the stupid things really go anywhere. Also, paradoxically, the thing's too long. 188 minutes is a crazy epic length for any film, and unless you're Kurosawa or Coppola or something, that's just too long. By the end, the thing really starts to feel drawn-out. Still, it's one hell of an ambitious movie and it's hard not to give it credit for that. Anderson was only in his late 20s when he made the thing, and I'll be damned if I'm responsible for anything so impressive by the time I turn 30. Especially something with such a ballsy final act. Seriously, it rains frogs.

The Man Who Wasn't There (The Coen Brothers, 2001) 66
In which the Coen Brothers, whom I am convinced could successfully write and direct any genre of film, make the closest thing to straight-up 40s film noir that modern cinema has ever seen. Seriously, they've got this down to a science: the black-and-white cinematography, the atmosphere, the shadows, the dialogue; it's really something. In fact, it'd be just about perfect if the story didn't completely self-destruct by the end. For the first hour, the film feels like it's going to be incredible; Billy Bob Thornton is creepy, and the tension keeps getting built up quite skillfully. And then something happens. I don't know what. But the train derails, and it threatens to take the entire film with it. Luckily, a fair portion manages to stay on track and the film emerges overall as a strange but enjoyable anomaly. Few filmmakers would take it upon themselves to even make an homage to classic noir, much less construct a life-size replica of it. It just goes to show what the Coens are both capable of and willing to do. Predictably, it tanked at the box office. Oh well.

Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936) 67
Very old-school Hitchcock doesn't really work as an engaging suspense tale (it's clear he hadn't hit his stride just yet, although the signs are definitely there), but is nonetheless a skillfully made and entertaining piece of work. It also proves once again that the man had an incredibly bizarre sense of humor, as when a meeting between two criminals is halted so that they can stare into an aquarium tank and remark that a tortoise looks like it has a mustache. It's also unusually short, which I suppose was customary for the time (what with those pesky film stocks and all), so that doesn't allow it a whole lot of time to breathe or create any lasting mood, but that's all right. It's a fun movie. Despite its central plot points of bombing and death, it's light entertainment. It's enjoyable to watch. Though armed with the knowledge that Hitchcock would spend the next 25 years making films that were far superior, I still liked it quite a bit.

The Spirit (Frank Miller, 2008) 36
If Sin City ever met the old-school TV Batman by way of Re-Animator, the result would probably be something like The Spirit, Frank Miller's ludicrously misguided comic book adaptation. It's awful in the same way Richard Kelly's Southland Tales was awful: it thinks it's really awesome and ambitious, but it's really just a hilarious trainwreck. And I qualify my use of "hilarious": it's not that the movie itself is funny. It tries to be, but it isn't. It's the fact that it thinks it's funny that makes it so damn funny. There's a big difference. Samuel L. Jackson hitting Gabriel Macht over the head with a toilet and screaming "TOILETS ARE ALWAYS FUNNY!" by itself is not amusing. However, the fact that Miller even put it into the movie is goddamn hilarious. See what I'm getting at? The movie is a long series of one WTF after another. It's so bad it almost works. Almost. Did I mention it also thinks it's a hardboiled film noir? Well, it does. And that, much like just about everything else in this movie, is a bad move.

Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996) 74
In large part because Danny Boyle is currently riding the gravy train with, in my opinion, the single best film in theatrical release at the moment (Slumdog Millionaire), I decided to go back and bust out his breakthrough film Trainspotting for the first time in a couple years. It's largely as I remembered it: a fundamentally character-driven, storyless, but consistently entertaining black comedy about heroin addiction and the terminal low-lifes who suffer from it. If that makes it sound like I'm ripping on it, I'm not. That's just an honest description. I like it quite a bit. It's a fun, stylish flick that I feel illustrates a particular lifestyle pretty well without having to go to the heart-wrenching depths of, say, Requiem for a Dream (even the most disturbing scenes here, such as Renton's in-bedroom detox, have nothing on the last act of Aronofsky's film). Not to mention its soundtrack, studded with the likes of Lou Reed, New Order, and (especially) Underworld, is just plain awesome.

The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008) 63
Honestly, if the credits (and hype) hadn't told me that Darren "Pull Out All the Stops and Then Some" Aronofsky directed this, I would've had no clue. Compared to films like Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, this thing hardly seems directed at ALL. It's very minimal, but that's good. It's what the film calls for. There's really not too much to say about it: born loser one-trick pony spends 105 minutes realizing he's a born loser one-trick pony and that, no matter what the stakes, he has to stand by that trick. There's your whole movie, right there. For what it is, it works. It's a bit thin, but then it doesn't try to do all that much. The Oscar Hype Machine is working overtime for Mickey Rourke, whose sure-to-be-nominated performance is definitely the reason to see the film (at the end of the day, though, I still greatly prefer Sean Penn's work in Milk and Frank Langella's lauded turn in Frost/Nixon). That, and -- genre differences aside -- it's still a hell of a lot better than The Fountain. Just sayin'.

I'm enjoying these posts. I'm pretty sure you can expect them to keep happening. They're fun. Later.

The Year in Review, Part 3: The Top 10 Movies of 2008

2008-12-27T23:44:00.000-07:00

Overall, 2008 was a noticeable comedown in overall quality of movies. 2007, as it was with everything else, was by far the strongest year for film thus far this millennium. 2008 wasn't bad, per ce, but it was certainly lackluster by comparison. As usual, it was notably bottom heavy: 8 of the 10 films on the list were released more than halfway through the year, with an extra-large influx of goodness having come just in the last few weeks. With only a couple exceptions (you'll be able to tell what they are real fast), my list looks like everyone else's. So it goes. I guess that's the mark of a great film, eh? Onward.

Best Performances of the Year:
Much like the Academy Awards, I've gone ahead and broken this down into the four main categories. If you read this entire entry carefully, it's not too hard to surmise what my pick for the absolute best performance is. In any case, I expect all four of these individuals to be nominated for Oscars in their respective categories, and all but one (Anne Hathaway) to win.

Best Actor: Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon
Best Actress: Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Pre-2008 Movie Seen: Fernando Meirelles' brutal but brilliant City of God, as stylish and intriguing a trip through hell as you're ever likely to take. It's not an easy film, and it is -- in the words of my old roommate -- "messed up," but it's also very powerful and strangely hopeful. Required viewing, to be sure.

10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Or, Woody Allen realizes for the second time (Match Point was the first) that the secret to making a good film at this point in his career is to be as un-Woody Allen as possible. I think (I hope) he realizes the neurotic, whiny Woody Allen schtick is just worn out. It was brilliant 30 years ago; Annie Hall and Manhattan are fine movies. But not now. Woody's recent output has been rrrrreally scattershot. I still try to see them all, but I'm never quite sure what I'm getting into, and more often than not I end up disappointed. And that's why Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a breath of fresh air. It's actually a very good movie and, believe it or not, it seems like Old Man Woody actually has something to say on the subject of relationships. And he says it well. For once, Allen doesn't go for the jugular -- this is a very quiet, understated film, and it works all the better for it. The film's melancholy tone is given time to seep out and do its work on the viewer, making its final destination all the more affecting. Plus, most importantly, Woody keeps himself behind the camera and lets his cast of young, attractive people pull the weight for him. Javier Bardem, all charm and charisma, is about a million miles away from his sinister turn in No Country; Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson are very strong in the titular roles; and Penelope Cruz, for what little screen time she has, gives a dynamically forceful turn as Bardem's unstable ex. No, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is not Allen's best (or even close), and no, it's not going to change the world or anything. But it's a surprise. It's a smart, thoughtful, meditative film that goes in unexpected directions and satisfies at every turn. The individual's mileage may vary, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

9. WALL-E
In which Pixar continues to be god among animated features. This write-up is probably going to be pretty brief, though, just because I don't have anything especially insightful to say about it. It's a simple story very well-told, it's absolutely beautiful to look at (Blu-Ray and other such formats I'm not rich enough to invest in were made for this kind of thing), and it really is the kind of film everyone can enjoy. The G-rating usually causes me to cringe, to want to take an insulin shot (and several shots of other things) before even showing up. But WALL-E proves it's possible to make excellent entertainment without sugar-coating everything, and the result is by far the best family film of the year (except maybe Funny Games). Though, to be perfectly honest, I do prefer last year's Ratatouille. But that's nothing against this film. It's great. You should see it. Or have it on a double feature with that rat-chef flick. That's even better.

8. Burn After Reading
Is there anyone at this point who would doubt the Coen Brothers' very even-handed versatility? Just look at what they've accomplished just in the last ten years or so: wry police procedural (Fargo), absurdist comedy (The Big Lebowski), straight-up film noir (The Man Who Wasn't There), and suspense-soaked crime thriller (No Country for Old Men), among others. And all of these have worked extraordinarily well. So leave it to these chameleons to follow up their multiple Oscar-winning 2007 flick with another peculiar change in direction. Burn After Reading is, for lack of a better classification, political slapstick. It's very odd, but it's also kind of awesome. The film has a manic energy all its own, covering a wide range of often flat-out hilarious material in a surprisingly short amount of time. And while it does possess a preposterousness similar to that of The Big Lebowski, somehow it just feels different. And while I do prefer that film, Burn After Reading still has a higher laughs-per-minute ratio than just about anything else this year. And look at that cast, for god's sake: Clooney? Malkovich? Swinton? McDormand? Great. The real scene-stealer, though, is Brad Pitt, who's in full doofus mode and clearly enjoying every minute of it. And why wouldn't he? This is a highly entertaining film, very smartly scripted, with great performances and an overall tone quite unlike anything else you're likely to stumble across anytime soon. So chalk up another point for the Coens. Right about now, their resume is looking quite impressive indeed.

7. Choke
I ... I have no idea. I am by no means what you would call a Chuck Palahniuk fan. I didn't like Survivor or Diary, the two of his novels I actually managed to get through, and I take the unpopular stance that Fight Club is one of the best-directed bad movies in recent memory. Needless to say, I went into Choke not expecting much at all. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. This is a depraved, raunchy, wickedly funny movie that successfully held me captive for its entire runtime; I enjoyed every lurid minute of it. I can't even begin to guess why this worked so well for me. Certainly, I'm in the minority. The film received lukewarm reviews, failed to make a splash, and more or less disappeared without a sound. Maybe this is Palahniuk's best work, and the film just did a very good job of adapting it. Who knows? All I know is that I laughed, I was impressed by the actors (Sam Rockwell just looks sleazy, which is exactly that the role calls for, and Anjelica Huston -- who is always good -- continues her trend of, well, always being good), and I had a very good time. If that's what the film is going for, what else matters, really?

6. Frost/Nixon
This is a movie about an interview. That's all it's about. An interview. An ambitious British talk show host struggles for finances, then interviews an ex-president. That's your movie. It sounds like the most treacherously dull piece of crap you could ever imagine, doesn't it? While I don't doubt it very easily could've been, director Ron Howard -- in cahoots with the Almighty Himself or something -- actually manages to make this gripping as hell. I don't know how he did it. He doesn't do anything especially different or audacious; he shows us the events leading up to the interview, then shows us the main event. The end. This is why I'm convinced he's consorting with God. This should not work. It should put me to sleep. It's talky and political and leisurely paced, and Jesus H. Christ is it a fine movie. A lot of the magic is attributable to the two leads: first and foremost, Frank Langella is off the charts as Richard Nixon. While he doesn't bear much physical resemblance, his voice and mannerisms brilliantly remove the actor from the man onscreen; you look at him and you could swear you're watching Nixon himself. It's a hell of a fine job. The thing is, Michael Sheen is almost as good as the cocky, womanizing David Frost. It's his character, not Nixon, that the movie revolves around, and he does a commendable job of holding his own. In much the same way, the movie does a commendable job of holding its own against the backdrop of U.S. history. So urgently does it present its events, and with such import, that you immediately forget that the Frost/Nixon interviews are amusingly inconsequential. The movie treats them like they're going to change the course of America forever; of course they didn't, nor were they ever expected to, but what does it matter? It's exactly this approach that makes Frost/Nixon a great way to spend two hours.

5. Milk
Yeah it's a gay movie blah blah blah, and if that's all that concerns you, you've already missed the boat and started to piss me off. Where Milk truly excels is as an inspirational biopic about one man who was willing to fight for what he believed in. It's a strikingly universal idea, and Gus Van Sant (an interesting man with an even more interesting filmography; IMDb him sometime -- he's one of the very few staunchly art-house directors who has the power to go mainstream at will, and it's had curious results) manages to keep that scope whilst simultaneously making this into a deeply personal and involving affair. Of course, many accolades must go in Sean Penn's direction for his exuberant leading performance. Penn plays Harvey Milk as a cheerful but determined man, and it's easy to see how so many people would have supported him. And while anyone with even a passing knowledge of Harvey Milk's life knows the trajectory the movie must take, the film still manages to handle the events in ways that are fresh, honest, and emotional. And while the film is concerned with events that are over 30 years old, it's distressingly easy to connect it with things that are happening right now. If anything, this fact alone also makes Milk the proverbial "message movie." Here's a man who did what he thought was right and made great progress in doing it; he's a testament to our country's capacity to change and a sobering reminder of how much further we have to go. Is that such a weak message to "have" to sit through a so-called "gay movie" to get to? I sure as hell don't think so.

4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Roger Ebert, the man who -- since his health problems in 2006 -- has liked every movie that has been released, did not like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He said it wasn't realistic. Well, no shit, Sherlock. It's a fairy tale. That's like saying you don't like Citizen Kane because the character's an asshole. You're missing the point. What I'm trying to say is, the success of Benjamin Button seems to rest entirely on the shoulders of whether or not you're willing to play along with the central plot device. For me, this was one of the easiest and most welcome things to buy into; I'm all for creativity, and how many movies about a man who ages backwards can you think of? It was this concept that made me want to see the movie so badly in the first place. And guess what? It delivers on its promise and then some. Overall, this is the best film David Fincher has made in over a decade (since The Game, I'd say). I'm not the sort to get all emotional at movies, but the ending to this deeply touched me in a way I can scarcely put my finger on. Perhaps it's just the fact that, by looking at life through a very different lens than what we are used to, the film manages to reveal more truths about it than any of us care to admit. Or perhaps it's the collective forces of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett (previously seen together in Babel), two of the best working actors, who both turn in nomination-worthy performances. Or maybe it's even Fincher's perfectionist sense of eye-popping visuals, which transforms the ordeal into just about the best-looking movie of the year. Most likely, though, it's the combination of all of these things that makes this film so great. Lengthy, yes, but awe-inspiring in almost every way, Benjamin Button is the kind of film I wish I could see every time I go to the movies.

3. Funny Games
Without question, the biggest love-it-or-hate-it affair of the year. And it certainly goes out of its way to make the former option extremely difficult. In order to love it, you have to get it. In order to get it, you have to first be aware that there's something to get. And then you have to convince yourself that what you're getting is actually worth it. These are the not-so-fine lines that determine whether Funny Games is seen as the ugliest, most pointless film of the year, or one of the most trenchant commentaries on the mass media to come out in ages. From my experience, it seems to split people -- critics and viewers alike -- right down the middle. It's my #3 film of the year, so you know what I'm going to say about it. I think it's genius. So often what we get these days are half-baked, spineless indictments that think they're making a point but don't even come close. Funny Games, by contrast, has teeth. It draws blood and enjoys it. That it has the seemingly-forgotten sense to realize you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs (pun intended) is praiseworthy in and of itself. That it chooses to attack one of my most-hated film subgenres ("torture porn") is even moreso. Its secret is devilish and most effective: it not only wants to torture you as punishment for thinking you could enjoy this, but it makes you an accomplice to what's happening to the poor family onscreen. It intentionally makes the two sociopaths the most interesting and likable characters. It intentionally stacks the deck (sometimes really obviously) so that they always have the upper hand. It's not nice, it's not fair, it actively tries to piss you off, and it ultimately goes precisely where you always kinda figured it would. And like I said, this will infuriate lots and lots of people. Me? I think it's just about perfect. Maybe Michael Haneke is preaching to the choir: it certainly qualifies far more as "academic treatise" than "filmic entertainment," and it gave a ridiculously poor show at the box office (when I saw it during its one-week run, I was the only person who hadn't walked out by the end), but that doesn't really faze me. Just the fact that he had the insight and balls to put it out there is good enough for me. It's one for the ages.

2. Slumdog Millionaire
Sometimes it's hard not to be impressed by just how good a movie is. Slumdog Millionaire caught me completely by surprise. It's had strong buzz for a while now and I expected it to be good, but I wasn't anticipating how thoroughly it would transport me. It is a very, very likable film. And, unlike plenty of other titles on this list, it's also a legitimate feel-good movie. There's never really any question about how the story's going to turn out; for me, at least, it was obvious from the very beginning. The film's success is in the brilliant, captivating way it carries us to that ultimate destination. It sports a framing device unlike any other this year: our hero Jamal, an ordinary kid from the Mumbai slums, has made it onto the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and -- against all odds -- has made it all the way to the final round. The questions he is asked are intercut with flashbacks to his past, explaining both how he knows the answers and how he has come to be on the game show. It's a device that has potential to be horrendously contrived, but luckily the film never plays out that way. The questions simply feel like a natural extension of Jamal's life story, and as the game progresses, the further we are drawn into his past experiences. By the time the final question is rolls around, the film has engulfed its viewer so completely that one can't help but crack a big, dumb smile at how perfect that question is. Slumdog Millionaire is yet another radical change in direction for Danny Boyle, whose past successes include 28 Days Later and Trainspotting. If I may be so bold, this is handily his best work yet. Uplifting in ways that must be seen to be described, and thoroughly engaging in ways very few other films managed in 2008, this is an amazing film. In fact, it would've been an easy #1 if it hadn't been for, well ...

1. The Dark Knight
I try to give my due to the smaller indie films. Maybe you've heard of this one? It did decently well at the box office. And who would I be kidding if I didn't put this at #1? This is, without any hesitation whatsoever, the best film of the year. Perhaps the biggest compliment I can throw its way is that I have never thought of it as a "superhero movie" (a pejorative among movie snobs, for not entirely unjustified reasons). It is, inherently, but it doesn't stop there. More than anything else, The Dark Knight is a gritty, unforgiving crime drama. In most superhero films, there's always an underlying safety net; a feeling that, come what may, the stalwart hero will always energe on top. Not so here. Writer/director Christopher Nolan fills every frame with a liberal dose of moody, foreboding atmosphere, and by finally pitting his hero against a genuine villain, he creates a lingering sense of dread. And the film thrives on this dread, racheting the tension more and more until the stakes become higher and reside in a place more frighteningly human than most comic book movies would even dare to touch (compare this to Iron Man; see what I mean?). Truly, it would not be an exaggeration to call this the best superhero movie of all-time, or one of the very best sequels, or among the greatest of all summer blockbusters. Many have already, and I can only nod in agreement. There is also no doubt in my mind that Nolan is our greatest working filmmaker: Memento and The Prestige were already two of my all-time favorites; The Dark Knight, equipped with his ambitiously complex script (both in terms of story and emotion), makes three.

And where would any discussion of this film be without a nod to the actors? No film this year boasted more full-on star power, and the sum total of the ensemble's performances is nothing less than earth-shattering. However, I must give credit where credit is due. Maybe no one else has wants to fess up to it at this point, but when I first heard they had cast Heath Ledger as the Joker, I was like, "What? What are they thinking?" I thought he was a good actor, sure, but it did not seem like the right role for him. And I know I was not alone in this sentiment. Well, truly the last laugh was his. What the late, great Mr. Ledger has created is one of the most frightening villains in film history (the magic trick scene has become somewhat iconic). When he's onscreen, the movie's his. And indeed, more than anything else, his work is the reason why this film will go down in the history books. Very few actors have the luck (if it can be called such) to bow out with their best performance; Ledger has done so, and with gusto. His Joker is one of the all-time great performances, and even though he has moved on, I fully expect him to win an Academy Award for it. Not that everyone else isn't great, too. And not that everything about this movie, right down to the minor details, doesn't just work. Really, there's very little I can say about this that hasn't been said already. The Dark Knight is a tremendous achievement in every way, an instant classic, and certainly the most fully-realized mainstream film in a very, very long time. You can never tell when the zeitgeist is going to hit, when a film is actually going to threaten to dethrone the highest-grossing movie of all-time (theatrical re-release in January; it could happen). Well, ladies and gentle-men, we have a winner. And, for once, I can't think of a better candidate. But of course, you knew all this already.

The 5 Worst Films of 2008:
As always, I continue my tradition of equal opportunity single-out-ment. If I'm going to highlight the best, damned if I'm not going to give the flipside the same treatment.

5. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Look, I really liked White Castle. For what it was, it was great. What a buzzkill this was. In trying to do almost exactly the same thing as the first one, it becomes all the more noticeable that it misses each and every one of its targets. It's not funny, it's not entertaining, it's not redeeming in any appreciable way. It's just an embarrassment. Let's hope its creators, in all their infinite wisdom, have the good sense to let these characters go. I can't see a potential Harold and Kumar 3 as anything less than a travesty.

4. The Day the Earth Stood Still
Yeah, the earth and everything else. This is a stultifying bore of a movie. Recommended only for fans of badly-paced movies with terrible acting where nothing happens and there are no resolutions. Underwhelming special effects should also be included in there somewhere. Everyone else should probably stay away. Even you, John Cleese. Yes, you. What are you doing here? Get out.

3. The Happening
It's not a legitimate worst list without M. Night Shyamalan. No really, when he releases a film, I look forward to it because I know I no longer have to worry about filling a spot on this list. The good news? The Happening isn't as soul-suckingly atrocious as Lady in the Water. The bad news? It still fucking blows. Or, more to the point, Shyamalan does. I can't think of any other way the man still manages to get his projects financed.

2. Pineapple Express
How the hell did the Apatow powerhouse responsible for such hilarious comedies like Superbad and The 40-Year-Old Virgin fall this far so quickly? I thought their early-'08 offering Forgetting Sarah Marshall was merely okayish, but this was just plain terrible. And I know I'm in a minority. A lot of people I know really liked this, but honestly I cannot see why. It tries and fails at two different things: it wants to be a Harold and Kumar-esque stoner buddy movie, and it wants to be a Pulp Fiction-style gangster black comedy. Apparently these two are like oil and water. At least, the way this film handles them. Meanspiritedly violent in ways that'd make Quentin Tarantino blush, over-the-top for no apparent reason, completely lacking in anything that made me laugh or even chuckle, and completely devoid of any sort of purpose or entertainment value, I really despised this film. Maybe someone can offer me an explanation for why this works, 'cause I'm completely at a loss.

1. The X-Files: I Want to Believe
The question of "why?" was never better placed. And if I ever meet Chris Carter, that's what I'll ask him. I won't shake his hand. I won't commend him for creating the second-best TV show of the 90s (second only to Twin Peaks, naturally). I'll just ask him why. Why go through all the trouble of "resurrecting" such a fine show if you're not going to do anything with it? The worst thing about I Want to Believe is that it doesn't go anywhere. It's dull as dishwater. I never thought I could get so bored watching The X-Files, but here's proof it's entirely and utterly possible. It's not supernatural (which, gee, is kinda the point, wouldn't you say?), the central mystery isn't creative or captivating in the least, every aspect seems phoned-in or half-assed, and the entire production is just pointless. Maybe there were worse films this year. Maybe I even saw a few of them. But this is the one that offended me the most. Never invoke the name of one of the best TV series of all-time if you don't have something to prove. This has nothing to prove whatsoever, it takes its jolly time doing so, and it's a tedious chore to sit through. I want to believe Carter has enough sense to call it quits for good now. We'll see.

Last Year's List:
Again, this is very strong. While I still agree with pretty much all of the films present, I'd probably do some re-ordering. The top three are still secure, but Jesse James would get moved up to #4, The Lookout might get moved closer to the less-excellent end of the list, and so on. But these are still great, great films. I'd still heartily recommend checking all of them out.

10. Gone Baby Gone
9. Curse of the Golden Flower
8. Knocked Up and Superbad
7. The Lookout
6. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
5. Juno
4. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
3. The Lives of Others
2. No Country for Old Men
1. Pan's Labyrinth

And that's it! I'm done counting things down! Bring on 2009! I'm ready for it.

The Year in Review, Part 2: The Top 10 Albums of 2008

2008-12-26T11:53:00.001-07:00

I know a few days ago I praised 2008 for its individual tracks. And, indeed, it was a fairly impressive year on the song level. Where 2008 did drop the ball was with individual albums. It also had the unenviable task of following 2007, which was a ridiculously strong year in all media. By comparison, I'm unsure of how many items on the '08 list would even merit inclusion alongside the '07 highlights (the top two for sure; after that, I'd have to break each album down a bit more). But that just goes to show how unpredictable both the music scene and my personal taste can be. Which isn't to say the ten albums I've chosen are bad by any means. It's more to say that 2007 was so damn good that, if you haven't heard them, you should go back and check those out too.

Best Pre-2008 Album Heard: The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me by Brand New. As it turns out, Jesse Lacey's pitch-black meditation on life, death, and everything in between resonates with me far more than I could have ever expected. The first six songs (half the album, for god's sake) are the closest thing to a perfect stretch I've encountered in a long, long time, and the album as a whole is probably one of the twenty or so best I've ever heard (which, given how many I've heard, is astounding).

10. The Dodos, Visiter
A best-of-year list is a festive occasion, so let's get the complaints over with first: this album is way too long. By a good quarter, actually. Length itself is never really an issue with me (there are other albums on this list that are just as long); it's the way an album chooses to carry that length that makes the difference. Nothing on Visiter qualifies as bad (or even not-good), but evidently this admittedly intriguing flavor of minimalist guitar-and-drums indie-rock starts to wear thin over the course of a solid hour. As cool as the music is, by the end I just don't feel much like listening to it anymore, and that is a bit of an issue. But this is the Top 10 list, right? I'm supposed to like this. So I'll start in with the good stuff.

In spite of these problems, Visiter is a very good album. If they had shaved about 15 minutes off the second half (take out a couple of the long 6-ish minute tracks like "God?" and "The Season" and save 'em for an EP or some such), it could very easily have been a great one. 'Cause when the album works, it really, really works. The first time I heard the opening four songs, I thought for sure I had stumbled onto some sort of modern masterpiece. The way "Walking" seamlessly transforms itself into "Red and Purple," comes down slightly for "Eyelids," then takes itself right back up again for "Fools" is nothing short of breathtaking. Likewise, at several points ("Joe's Waltz," "Jodi," and so forth), the rock-out factor becomes really impressive: soft, acoustic strumming systematically devolves into exhilarating, hypnotic noisemaking in the best possible way. And most importantly, it's really just an enjoyable album overall. The guys clearly have a good sense of humor, and the whole deal is a lot of fun. Length issues aside, I really have no qualms about it being here. It's kind of awesome.

9. Shearwater, Rook
I know I'm not alone when I ask, why the hell was Jonathan Meiburg not lead singer for Okkervil River? Seriously, the first time I listened to Rook, my thought was, "Oh hello, guy who can sing really goddamn well. Where the hell have you been?" Well, he's been singing backup for Will Sheff (see: Okkervil's "Lost Coastlines," one of the year's best tracks, actually), who's not a bad singer, but is certainly a different and noticeably inferior one. But now Meiburg's out on his own. He got out of the River, dried off, and is working full-time with his own outfit Shearwater. I think, at this point, that's definitely the best thing for him.

Rook was the band's breakthrough from total obscurity into only semi-obscurity (gotta love these escalating circles of indie hell; Dante would be proud), and its sweep is something to behold. So looming and grandiose is its presence (again, Meiburg's operatic, Scott Walker-ish croon does wonders), and so deeply affecting is its beauty (this is some pretty music, right here) that it's easy to forget it's actually a couple minutes shy of the 40-minute mark. It still has me scratching my head, even after 6+ months of listening to it. This thing just appeared one day without any buzz at all, got eaten up by the few who had the pleasure of being exposed to it, and then the band just disappeared off the face of the earth again. Oh well. Que sera, sera. Rook is an epic, but lovely sounding album, with an impressively confident atmosphere and a singer who, once again, I can't praise enough. Maybe more Okkervil and indie fans will discover this in hindsight. Until then, it remains a fine and highly valuable buried treasure.

8. The Gutter Twins, Saturnalia
Far and away the year's bleakest album. Of what I heard, anyway, and I heard a few. But for The Gutter Twins, that pervasive (and sometimes borderline oppressive) darkness is actually what makes the album instead of breaking it. Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan are veterans. They're leftovers from the grunge era who realize grunge is long gone, but still hold fast to their roots (though, to clarify, it's certainly much more "alternative rock" than it is straight-up grunge). As a result, Saturnalia sounds more like a product of 1992 than of 2008, but with more than a fair share of through-a-glass-darkly nostalgia. And much like its post-Katrina album cover (my favorite art of the year) might suggest, it is a big, brooding bastard of an album. Lyrics peppered with references to God, the Rapture, and mass destruction weave in and out of walls of thick, dense, but undeniably alluring atmosphere while Dulli (the mellifluous one) and Lanegan (the drunk, Tom Waits-ish one) alternately flood the microphone with voices that, while unconventional, seem perfectly suited to this sort of music.

In the end, it's the sort of thing you're either going to commit yourself to immediately or not want any of. Whereas I have a proclivity to dark, melodic, forceful music ("God's Children" was narrowly left off my best-songs list), others may be left cold by what is otherwise a harsh and unforgiving album. I've seen it go either way. Me? I think this is some fierce, powerful stuff. While I can't be too sure if these two will ever team up as The Gutter Twins again, I certainly hope so. I'd like to see what they can do.

7. Bound Stems, The Family Afloat
How such a thing could've been completely ignored by the indieverse is beyond me. It's been said several times that no particular new trend emerged in 2008, that bands were left more or less to create variations on pre-existing styles. All the more reason, then, why Bound Stems and their excellent sophomore album should have gotten their due. Their sound hangs somewhere between Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire, two of the best and most respected bands in the biz (not to mention two of my personal favorites), but they never come across as a cheap imitation. They show an intimidating array of musical ideas on The Family Afloat, all of which they easily and assuredly make their own.

Three-part album highlight "Taking Tips from the Gallery Gang," one of the most impressive and attention-getting album openers in some time, is evidence enough. By the time four and a half minutes are over, the band has already taken its listener through more interesting ideas than many full albums contain. The rest of the disc more or less follows suit. But for every ambitious, potentially challenging track like "Palace Flophouse and Grill" or "Sugar City Magic," there's a lovely, straightforward pop song like "Happens to Us All Otherwise" or "Winston" to balance it out. Sure, maybe not everything works, but so many things do work (and so well) that it's hard not to call The Family Afloat a triumph. If this is the sound of a band getting their bearings and working up to a masterpiece (and it really sounds like it), I cannot wait for their third album. Maybe then they'll get some recognition, too.

6. Luomo, Convivial
Sorry to keep crashing the party with references to this website, but I love Pitchfork. I didn't even know Luomo had a new album coming out, but they did. They gave it one of their highest ratings of the year (which it deserved), then proceeded to snub it completely on their end-of-year lists (which it didn't deserve). Either way, this reassures me of two things: (1) Pitchfork are assholes; (2) they're great for directing me to music I wouldn't have even known about. For anyone who has heard Luomo's overwhelmingly unwieldy 2000 album Vocalcity, this may come as a bit of a surprise, but Convivial is a pop album. Straight-up, no holds barred. It's also the best thing he's ever done. True to its title, Luomo assembles a small army of guest vocalists and proceeds to lead his listeners through a festive 65-minute labyrinth of house-inspired dance ditties that, while consistently clocking in at around 7 minutes, never seem to outstay their welcome. Of course, the distinction must be made: when I call this a "pop album," I'm using the term in the broadest sense. Luomo is definitively a producer of electronica, so that's where the focus is. That these grooves are also insanely catchy and accessible is a fringe benefit. My personal favorite is the dark and new romantic-esque "Love You All," but I'm sure you'll find your own favorite. Because, truly, there's quite a bit here to love. If only more people knew about it. (Gee, does that sound familiar?)

5. Foals, Antidotes
Rumor has it that the original mix of Foals' debut album was completed by TV on the Radio producer Dave Sitek, but the band -- upon hearing it -- found it too "avant-garde" and murky and decided to scrap it. It makes me wonder what that might've sounded like, because it really feels like the boys are going for the exact opposite in the album's "true" version: this is crisp, clean, crunchy sounding stuff. And I know it hasn't gotten the best reception from the indie community at large, but I really love it. It's got that same hyperrhythmic quality that made the Battles album so fascinating, but with a very strong ear for approachability. Basically, it all comes down to whether or not you dig the style. If you do, you're set. Antidotes is awesome. If you don't, you're going to have nothing but variations on said style crammed down your throat for 50 minutes. I can see how that might easily qualify as "not fun." It's not an album that's ever likely to receive accolades for its diversity, but that's all right. It doesn't have to. If you manage to work up a good sound, you should stick with it. From beginning to end, Antidotes is a fun foray into toe-tappin' math-rock. That's pretty much all there is to it. Except for the cover, of course, which might merit inclusion in some kind of Worst Album Art Ever contest. But that's something else entirely.

4. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
It took Dear Science and a bunch of hindsight to show me what has more or less been apparent for some time now: TV on the Radio is simply one of the finest bands of any sort making music today. I don't know why I failed to grasp this. I mean, I've liked them for a good couple years now, but somehow the pieces never added up. Check this out: they made "Wolf Like Me" (the very best song of 2006, and one of the best singles ever, in my opinion), Return to Cookie Mountain still stands as one of the strongest and most unique releases in years, Young Liars is one of the greatest EPs of the decade, and Desperate Youth is a startlingly confident first album. They've been asserting their awesomess for some time now. But it was Dear Science that really hit this band home for me. I'm not sure exactly why, but it probably has something to do with the fact that this album catches them in the act of doing what they do best: just being TV on the Radio.

While all said and done I still prefer the atmosphere-soaked Cookie Mountain, it's impossible to argue that this isn't a much freer, more accessible release. Throwing caution to the wind, the boys tackle funk, soul, gospel, electronica, and straight-up rawk in equal measure. In theory, this should be a total trainwreck, but that's just a testament to how damn good the band is: all of it works absurdly well, and all of it -- despite being miles apart stylistically -- sounds inherently like TV on the Radio (again, it's the type of album so diverse that no consensus can ever be made for best track; "Family Tree" gets my vote, but that's just personal taste). Indeed, they have successfully reached that much-sought but sparsely populated plateau of not only sounding different, but having a sound that is distinct and entirely attributable to them. That takes skill. And if that isn't reason enough to seek out Dear Science, here's another: it's one hell of an entertaining album.

3. The Rosebuds, Life Like
Every time I hear the Rosebuds I think of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction (my mind is an interesting place -- hear me out). Namely, the part where he's arguing with John Travolta and says, "What happened here was a miracle, and I want you to fucking acknowledge it!" Aside from the, like, three people I know who are into this band, I want the world to fucking acknowledge that The Rosebuds are one of the best damn indie pop bands on the planet and give them the dues they deserve. Last year's Night of the Furies was a masterpiece and a nearly impossible album to follow, but Life Like shows that husband-and-wife team Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp definitely have the chops to take on the challenge. It's not a better album, but it's certainly a different one.

In a strange sense, it feels almost like a step backwards: if 2005's Birds Make Good Neighbors was a traditional guitar-based album and Furies was all about dark, bubbly synth-pop, it stands to reason that Life Like -- with its combination of guitars and moody electronic elements -- should've been the bridge between those two albums rather than the follow-up. This is just an observation, mind you, and is not to the detriment of the music itself, which is -- for the most part -- excellent. Few bands out there have a better grasp on how to write dark, sumptuous pop songs, and Life Like is a veritable feast. "Bow to the Middle" is the obvious stand-out and a worthy successor to last year's equally poppy "Get Up Get Out," but most of the other tracks can certainly hold a candle to it as well. To The Rosebuds' credit, it's a very even album. It works well as a piece. And even if, as the liner notes explain, they never really meant to make the album (they had intended a hiatus, which -- sadly -- we'll probably get now), I'm so thankful that they did. I love these guys.

2. Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer
I know it's an overused expression, but it's well suited here: Wolf Parade's much-anticipated sophomore album is a grower. I'll be the first to admit that the first couple listens didn't do much for me. I was underwhelmed. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what I was expecting. Apologies to the Queen Mary (which I put at #1 back in 2005, for what it's worth) singlehandedly established this group of ambitious Canucks as one of the most able-bodied new outfits on the scene. Since then, Handsome Furs and Sunset Rubdown have shown a darker, more progressive side to the band's two principal songwriters. So it's fitting that At Mount Zoomer would sound like a great amalgamation. By taking the experimental tendencies of those two side projects and filtering them through Queen Mary's pop song sensibility, the band has created one of the most enigmatic and challenging albums of the year. But I am full proof that, in addition to this, it also hugely rewards patience. If it leaves you cold, stick with it. Things will click little by little.

For instance, how could I not have heard how awesome the build-up is between the woozy first half and the piano-stompin' second half of "An Animal in Your Care"? Or how, in the midst of all this dense progressivism, Dan Boeckner actually manages to throw in an unpretentious pop song ("The Grey Estates") without making it seem like the odd man out? The more listens you devote to this, the more you start to realize that literally just about everything seems to be in the right place. Much like their debut, Boeckner continues to be the Straightforward Rock Guy and Krug continues to be the I Do What I Want But That's Okay Because I'm Fucking Brilliant guy. They've just taken matters in a much darker, more ambitious direction. And while none of it sounds much like "I'll Believe in Anything" (still, like, the best song ever, by the way), that's perfectly all right by me. You had me at "FIRE IN THE HOLE!!"

1. Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours
Certainties. There are some things you just know. I first heard In Ghost Colours in late March, a long time before I heard any other album on this list. Yet somehow, even after that first listen, I knew it was going to be Album of the Year. It wasn't that I was so pessimistic for the outcome of the last three quarters; on the contrary, I'm always eminently hopeful that something's going to come along and knock my socks off. It's just that Cut Copy's marvelous sophomore album takes a style I have an inflexible attachment to (80s synth-pop) and does it so much justice that I simply found it near-impossible to believe another album could come along and speak to me as profoundly. What this trio of Aussies has accomplished with In Ghost Colours is so admirable it actually becomes difficult to describe. Rare is the album where I like every song; even rarer is the album where, if I didn't check myself, every song could potentially be a year-best candidate. This is such an album. The growth in songwriting chops Dan Whitford has shown since the band's good-not-great debut Bright Like Neon Love is almost inhuman. Sure, "Lights and Music" was the lucky track that made my list, but I honestly love "Hearts on Fire," "Feel the Love," "So Haunted," and "Strangers in the Wind" almost as much.

And not only does it act as a tremendous collection of songs, but the band sequences in short ambient linking tracks that also boost its effectiveness as a cohesive piece (many have criticized these as filler, but I disagree: listen to the cool, restrained way "Voices in Quartz" builds into "Hearts on Fire" and tell me the overall effect of that track wouldn't suffer without it). But, when you get right down to it, there's nothing about this album that I don't find dumbfoundingly brilliant. The production takes a style firmly rooted in the New Order/Cure 80s, updates it to sound thoroughly modern, and consequently creates something appealingly timeless. I fully predict this is will sound just as fresh in 2028 as it does in 2008. At least, I certainly hope so. In Ghost Colours is an astonishing pop record. By never making a false move and thrilling constantly, it's both the best of 2008 and one of the best electronic albums of the decade. Hell, I'd even say "ever." To both.

Last Year's List:
At a glance, I'm not really sure I'd change much of anything here. Maybe some minor re-ordering, but for the most part my opinion now is pretty consistent with what it was a year ago. I can't think of anything I left off or would want to add. It was just a great, great year for music.

10. Blonde Redhead, 23
9. Panda Bear, Person Pitch
8. The Shins, Wincing the Night Away
7. Radiohead, In Rainbows
6. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
5. Blaqk Audio, CexCells
4. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
3. Mew, Frengers
2. The Rosebuds, Night of the Furies
1. Sunset Rubdown, Random Spirit Lover

Looking Ahead: 2009 promises new albums from The Decemberists, Sunset Rubdown, Arcade Fire, Brand New, Silversun Pickups, Apoptygma Berzerk, Franz Ferdinand, and plenty of others. If any of these even approach their respective bands' best work, it's going to be a tremendous year indeed. I can't wait.

The Year in Review, Part 1: The Top 13 Songs of 2008

2008-12-22T21:14:00.002-07:00

Yeah, I know. I'm jumping the gun a bit this year (I usually only post my year-end lists in the days leading up to New Year's). But that's all right. My song-listening is pretty much at a stand-still and my list has definitely been given time to solidify. Besides, all the cool kids are doing it now. How can I resist?

I couldn't do a top 10 list this year. I played with the idea, did some creative re-ordering, but ultimately accepted defeat. I couldn't do it. Or rather, I couldn't just do 10. As it turns out, I had 13 favorite songs this year, and the extra three would've gotten pissed off if I hadn't included them. So I just extended the list into a baker's dozen. (I suppose if you're a true purist you can just truncate the list at 10 and pretend I didn't do all that extra work, but you'd be missing out on some great music, so I wouldn't recommend it.) Again, all the usual disclaimers apply: true ordering of favorites depends entirely on mood and yadda yadda, so this is a rough approximation of the order in which I prefer these. I am fairly confident in my top 5, though, so you can rest assured the pinnacle won't be contested too much in hindsight.

Overall, 2008 was another strong year for individual tracks. I'd say, by comparison, the 2007 list (provided at the bottom for nostalgia and cross-referencing) might be a little bit stronger, but 2007 was also a watershed year. In that regard, '08 definitely held its own. Lots of these songs have become huge personal favorites, and when you get right down to it, that's all I really care about. So, yeah, I'm pleased with the list. Definitely.

Best Pre-2008 Song Heard: "Future Foe Scenarios" by Silversun Pickups. Furious, intense, melodic, and just about everything I could want in a 5-minute song, this would've been right up there with the likes of "Wolf Like Me" on my Best of 2006 list, had I been fortunate enough to hear it upon its initial release.

And now, without further ago, my votes for The Cream of the Crop:

13. Earlimart, "Face Down in the Right Town"
All right, let's get the blatant indie sadsackery out of the way first. (Which isn't to say there won't be plenty of other golden opportunities for indie sadsacks as the list progresses, but this may be the most obvious inclusion.) To deconstruct: this is an indie-pop song. It's downbeat, melancholic, unhappy. It's not really a lot of fun to listen to. But man, it's pretty. But man, it has a nice melody. But man, if you yourself are feeling downbeat, melancholy, and/or unhappy, there are very few songs released this year that will better suit your mood (provided, of course, you like indie-pop; and if not, why not?). I'm especially fond of the crescendo it builds to: it starts off pretty soft-spoken, but slowly rises into a flurry of infectious prettiness: the piano/guitar/horn overdubs, the "doo-doo-doo" vocal melody, the steadfast rhythm. Trust me, it works. Really, really well. Earlimart is one of those bands that should've probably received more love than they got this year, so here's my small contribution. It's a great song.

12. Late of the Pier, "Broken"
If, in typical high school yearbook style, I were to hold Senior Superlatives for the songs on this list, Late of the Pier's "Broken" would almost undoubtedly be voted Most Unlikely to Be Here. It's the kid in your honors class you know really shouldn't be there, but is. You're always left to wonder how this came about, knowing cynically (but truthfully) that all it had to do was smile at the right times and get the people in high places over on its side, and the rest is history. That's really the story of "Broken" and its inclusion. Maybe it is the odd man out -- it has problems, to be sure -- but it works for me and I enjoy it. It's an upbeat, catchy piece of dance-punk with a great chorus and a lot of energy. And while it does sort of go off the deep end in its final thirty seconds with a glitchy, almost Burial/dubstep-ish outro, by that point it's too late for me to care. It might not be destined to become a classic, but I enjoy it a whole lot. Works for me.

11. Frightened Rabbit, "The Modern Leper"
Like Voxtrot's similarly self-deprecating "Kid Gloves" last year, Frightened Rabbit's explosive album opener is the sort of dour indie-rock song that I find myself relating to perhaps more than is healthy, but nonetheless love in spite of (or possibly because of) this fact. I've heard band referred to as "The Twilight Sad without all the noise" (whether affectionately or not for either band, I can't tell; I like 'em both), which I suppose is a workable description. They're both bunches of moody Scotsmen with very prominent accents, but they seem to derive their intensity from different places. Whereas Twilight's force comes from the sheer wall of sound they can emit from their guitars, Frightened Rabbit's anguish seems much more introspective. "The Modern Leper," while by definition a rocker, is clearly the product of some significant emotional turmoil, and I think it's this fact that lends it its uncanny force. There's more feeling bottled up in this one little song than there was on many full albums this year; as a result, "The Modern Leper" is both an exhausting experience and a very, very touching one.

10. British Sea Power, "Lights Out for Darker Skies"
Pitchfork's mocking rating of U.2 aside, there were very few bands in 2008 that did the whole "indie-mainstream crossover" thing better than British Sea Power. Sure, Do You Like Rock Music? (guilty as charged) was far from my favorite album of the year, and sure, the band isn't actually mainstream by any stretch of the imagination, but they sound like they could be. 2005's Open Season (which is a great album) was the sound of a tight band getting its bearings; Rock Music, then, finds them in full-blown arena-rock mode. The production is such that it's not difficult at all imagining the band playing these songs to entire stadiums filled with screaming fans. Its brightest moment is, curiously, "Lights Out for Darker Skies," an excellent two-part anthem that succeeds in both rocking (the first half) and wooing (the second). It maintains everything that was great about the band before while informing us that, yes, they really are ready to be propelled into the stratosphere.

9. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida"
Yup. You read that right. Coldplay. Uh-huh. You can laugh at me all you want, I really don't care. I'm not the biggest Coldplay fan in the world, but if there was ever a legitimate reason for the band's existence, this is it. Not only is it the best song they've written, it's the best song I can imagine them writing. Sometimes you can just never tell when something great will haphazardly slip into the mainstream. Not only is "Viva la Vida" a moving, tuneful exercise in heartstring-plucking, it's also one of the most popular songs of the year (but of course; it's Coldplay, after all). I can't even count how many times I heard this on the radio over the summer, but for once that doesn't bother me at all. It's slick, it's pretty, it's well written and well performed, it's memorable, and it's honestly quite excellent. At the end of the day, any of these things would likely place it head and shoulders above most other mainstream pop. By making "Viva la Vida" all of these things, they've also made it one of the year's very best four minutes. Bravo, guys. I honestly didn't know you had it in you.

8. dEUS, "The Architect"
"Ah, nevermind that space stuff; let's get down to earth!" intones the gruff vocal sample at the beginning of "The Architect," and nowhere on this list is that sentiment better applied. This song, one of 2008's greatest accidents (back in June, whilst downloading music just for the sake of finding something good, I stumbled across this track completely at random -- mission accomplished!), wastes absolutely no time proving that it is, in fact, more badass than you. But it's fun. Good god, it's fun. As you may have noticed or known from experience, most of my collection is comprised of what Jack Black in High Fidelity might call "old, sad bastard music." Songs like dEUS' charmingly uncharacteristic single provide a much-needed balancing-out. This four-minute shot of manic dance-punk energy is, from what I gather, their first foray into this kind of thing. They've already got it down: it's positively spilling over with hooks and genuine catchiness, and just begging you to get your ass out of that chair and dance it off a little bit. So, uh, what are you waiting for, exactly?

7. MGMT, "Time to Pretend"
I've said it on various occasions before and I'll say it again: the wait is over. About a year ago I was engaged in conversation with a co-worker and we were trying to figure out what song, if any, does for this generation what "Smells Like Teen Spirit" did for Gen X. The wait is over. The answer, I submit respectfully, is MGMT's wonderful "Time to Pretend." And much like "Teen Spirit," the song has almost singlehandedly propelled its respective band a hair's length away from the mainstream. A year ago: MGMT who? (Pronounced "the management," by the way. Don't make that mistake.) Today: oh yeah, I love those guys. It's hard not to. "Time to Pretend" encapsulates in four minutes all of today's helpless-romantic teen/twentysomething rock star dreams, but has the pensive insight to note that, in the end, "we're fated to pretend." It's one hell of a debut single, unexpectedly smart and perceptive in its subject matter, but also a bouncing good time musically (with more than a hint of melancholy, of course). Who cares if the rest of us are fated to pretend? These guys have already made it. For right now, that's definitely good enough.

6. Hercules and Love Affair, "Blind"
Imagine my surprise when Pitchfork, somewhat out of the blue, named this their #1 track of 2008. I can't say for certain because I don't remember past years too well, but I don't think their #1 song has ever even made my list, much less been a song I was absolutely positive would be included. "Blind" is, for lack of a better word, stunning. Yeah, sure, it's "gay disco," but so was "YMCA," and I don't hear you hatin' on that. The truth of the matter is, aside from just dismissing the song at face value, there aren't that many bad things that can be said about it. A couple years ago I got really turned off of Antony and the Johnsons because I couldn't stand the guy's voice; in one of the more unexpected 180-turns in my musical life, I'd be willing to say the reason why "Blind" is so excellent is because guest vocalist Antony Hegarty's singing is just so damn good. It's passionate, emotive, and tuneful. It's almost enough to make me wish The Johnsons had been a disco outfit to begin with. Either that, or Antony just teams up with H&LA producer Andy Butler and makes another two or three albums excactly like this. Because, man, it's good. You won't believe me until you hear it, of course, but it's something else.

5. Wolf Parade, "California Dreamer"
Spencer Krug can have my babies. I'm not ashamed to admit it at this point. This the fourth year in a row the man has gotten a song on this list. The fourth year in a row. Do you realize how crazy that is? No one out there is as restlessly productive, consistent, or flat-out amazing as this man. "California Dreamer," though inherently familar, doesn't feel like anything he's written before. While slyly namechecking The Mamas & the Papas' iconic 1965 hit, the song owes a much bigger debt both lyrically and musically to The Doors' "L.A. Woman": it's a dense, complex, but uncharacteristically accessible anthem that seamlessly blends Krug's effortless knack for amazing lyrical imagery ("I think I might have heard you on the radio, but the radio waves were like snow" may be the best single line from any song this year) with his keen ability to write affecting, haunted melodies. It was one of the few songs that grabbed me the first time I heard At Mount Zoomer; it still gets me every time.

4. Cut Copy, "Lights and Music"
Similar to the extremely even In Rainbows about 12-13 months ago, there never seemed to be any general consensus as to what the "best" track on Cut Copy's glorious In Ghost Colours is (and for the record, re Radiohead: "Reckoner"). Some prefer the straightforward dance of "Hearts on Fire," others the hard-edged but shimmering pop of "So Haunted." So it's not too hard for me to admit that, from the first time I listened to the album, I fell head-over-heels for "Lights and Music." It's an unconditional sort of thing. On an album where literally all of the other songs are objectively just as good, this is simply the one I liked the most. The song finds the band in the Depeche Mode phase of their album-long 80s pastiche, and it works so miraculously well that it's actually better than the majority of stuff the Mode recorded in their prime. It's also home to what may be the single most sublime sixty seconds in all of music this year: around 2:30, the first instance of the chorus dies out, the third verse comes in and slowly escalates (notice that added drumbeat around 2:47 -- great!) to an absolutely gorgeous Cure-esque guitar riff, before finally exploding into the chorus one more time. It's pure magic, the kind which I listen to so much other music just to get access to. The same, more or less, can be said both about the entire song and about the album as a whole.

3. Chris Walla, "St. Modesto"
2008 wasn't the best year for Ben Gibbard. Between the underwhelming Narrow Stairs and his recent proclamation that there will not, in fact, be another Postal Service album, things were already looking pretty grim musically. But to add insult to injury, Chris Walla -- indiedom's resident Boy Next Door -- had to go and release a solo album (Field Manual) that, frankly, is better than anything Gibbard has done in years. Not only that, but he had to stick "St. Modesto" on it, which -- yeah, I'll say it -- is actually better than anything that has ever appeared on a Death Cab album. No, really, I mean that. As much as I love some of the Cab's stuff, "St. Modesto" is one hell of a song. Walla's self-described tale of star-crossed meth addicts is really a very simple track: mid-tempo, moody, ethereal guitar-pop with some great, almost lullaby-ish vocals and evocative imagery (the San Francisco verse is incredible). It's not hard at all to be wooed by it, but it's also easy to expect more than the song is willing to give, and that's where many get lost. Walla isn't trying to change the world. He's not even trying to make a spark. He's just wants to make accessible, seemly pop music. That, my friends, is where "St. Modesto" truly excels.

2. Wolf Parade, "Kissing the Beehive"
Both Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner can write a damn good song. Between Sunset Rubdown, Handsome Furs, and Apologies to the Queen Mary, we knew this before 2008 even rolled around; it was apparent. What hadn't been tested was how well a Krug/Boeckner collaboration would work, and when it was announced that the last song on Wolf Parade's sophomore album was going to be co-written by the band's two frontmen, anticipation was naturally very high. Little did any of us realize that the result was going to be "Kissing the Beehive," a sprawling 11-minute epic that very easily ranks among the most impressive and intimidating achievements by a rock band this decade. Perhaps the most notable thing about it is just how well the two work together. Both come to the table with a wide variety of disparate ideas, but by either a miracle of co-operation or an instance of divine intervention, everything jells perfectly. The switching-off of vocal duties never gets distracting, the ever-changing melody always feels like it's moving in the right direction, and the combined wordplay of these two very literary dudes just works. It's also impeccably sequenced: starting off as a normal-sounding Wolf Parade track, it builds and builds and builds before exploding into an exhilarating instrumental coda that probably wouldn't have been out of place on an early-70s King Crimson album. And maybe I'm a man of simple pleasures, but I'm of the opinion that hearing Spencer Krug wail "FIRE IN THE HOLE!!" repeatedly is just about the best thing ever. So that, among other reasons, is why this is pretty much the most awesome song of all-time.

1. Electric President, "Ether"
This was never supposed to be my favorite song of the year. It wasn't. It was supposed to be just another decent song on just another okayish album that I downloaded illegally from some nameless torrent website. By all accounts, that Wolf Parade song should be in the top position where I am sure it was expected to be. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you just can't argue with your gut, and my gut tells me beyond a shadow of a doubt that "Ether" is my favorite song of 2008. And I'll tell you why. I'll be damned if this isn't the most pitch-perfect song about the inevitability of growing up I've ever heard. Perhaps it's a contexual thing. Maybe it has everything to do with the fact that I am at that critical point in my life where I'm finally forced to examine a future of adulthood and leave being a child -- the only thing I've ever known -- behind. Regardless of the reason, listening to this song has been a deeply moving experience for me.

Again, it condenses everything perfectly: there's a vague sense of mystery and excitement, but mostly it's wistful and unsure of itself. Its lyrics, when intelligible, faultlessly describe sensations I'm only too aware of feeling but can never find words for ("While we slept it off, all the money was lost / Now we can't stand up / Yeah, the blood in our guts just weighs us down. / We'll crawl along despite what goes wrong / 'Cause we're not that young / It takes more than your guns to scare us off now" -- it's impossible for me to say how goddamn perfect this is). And the music? Soft, dreamy, sad, relaxing, pretty, overcast, lovely. All of these words might be used to describe it, yet none of them seem to approach the final effect that listening to it has on me. It's a genuine dark horse: a song brilliant beyond words by an obscure band on an album that, frankly, doesn't come close to living up to the promise shown here. While I'm infinitely glad I found it, it also makes me wonder how many others I have missed. But that, I suppose, is a topic for another day. For the time being, I'll just switch this one on again.

Last Year's List:
Taken straight from the post I made last December. Twelve months on, I see some changes that'd have to be made (Stars' "The Night Starts Here," !!!'s "Myth Takes," and Streetlight Manifesto's "The Receiving End of It All" are all conspicuously absent, and I couldn't handle that were I making the list today), but overall this still hangs together very well. And that #1 song ... I'll be surprised if it doesn't make it into the Decade Top 10 a year from now. We'll see. It's a shoe-in for the Top 25, anyway. Seeing it performed in concert may well have been the best five minutes of my entire year.

10. Bloc Party, "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)"
9. Porcupine Tree, "Fear of a Blank Planet"
8. The Rosebuds, "Get Up Get Out"
7. Voxtrot, "Kid Gloves"
6. Arcade Fire, "Intervention"
5. Fujiya & Miyagi, "Ankle Injuries"
4. Of Montreal, "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal"
3. Mew, "Am I Wry? No"
2. Blaqk Audio, "Snuff on Digital"
1. Sunset Rubdown, "The Mending of the Gown"

Whew! See you folks next time!

Movie Roundup: 12/12/08

2008-12-12T16:02:00.001-07:00

I am horrible. I realize this. I said I was going to start writing in this blog again, and then just ... didn't. And I had no excuse, either, because when I said this, I was still on summer break. I had time. I couldn't play the "oh well school has made me so busy" card.

So here I am. It's mid-December already (holy shit, what?). I'm making an early New Year's resolution to actually maintain this thing. To actually post in it. We'll see if the third time's the charm, or I'm still just a horrible liar.

Instead of making up for lost time, I just decided to start from where I am now and go from there. I call this little module Movie Roundup, and -- especially over winter break, when I'll likely be doing quite a bit of viewing -- it's something I want to post every week or two. It's nothing special. Just little capsules of comments, observations, and so forth on the films I have watched in the duration. It's entirely self-explanatory.

So let's do it. These are all the films I've watched over the last week and a half or so. And now it's apparent to me why none of my homework ever gets done.

Also: if a title is in orange, it simply means I have seen the film before. No biggie.

A brief overview of ratings:
My numerical scores here are roughly equivalent to my star ratings on the Flixster Facebook thing. For instance, a five-star review on Flixster will not always (or often) equate to a 100 rating. In fact, only four or five films I've ever seen are likely to get a 100. With that in mind:
90-100: Blissful, orgasmic cinema. This is something extremely special.
80-89: An excellent, unmissable film. I probably own this (or will) and you should, too.
70-79: A very strong film well worth seeing.
60-69: This is good. It has some problems, but it's still an enjoyable piece of work.
50-59: The gray area. Certain things work about this, other things don't. It depends on mood and taste.
40-49: A mediocre or lackluster film. There's nothing offensive about this, but it's just very uninspiring.
30-39: Plain bad. Don't go near this, please.
20-29: Incredibly terrible. Only worth a viewing if self-torture is desired.
0-19: Hooooo mama.

Onward.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008) 82
I don't get it. I don't understand the already-huge backlash against this. This is a wonderful film, one that affected me profoundly on an emotional level that very few movies even get close to. For a long time, David Fincher has been one of the best directors out there; whether his films are good (Se7en, The Game) or not (Fight Club, Panic Room), they're always directed with a dizzying proficiency that puts most others to shame. Benjamin Button is no different -- from its first frame to its last, it's visually stunning in ways few other films this year have been. And the story itself is wonderful: it's NOT your run-of-the-mill Hollywood romance, and it's the implications of this unusualness that give it such an emotional potency. The acting, likewise, is stellar: Brad Pitt once again proves that he's one of the most underrated actors out there (the man can ACT, dammit!), while Cate Blanchett -- as is her custom -- is a superb counterpart. The majority of the film's heartstring-tugging rests on her shoulders, and in the film's final act, she's really something to behold. So all in all, I don't buy any of the complaints I've been hearing. It's not too long (it's 167 minutes; lengthy, sure, but I think it requires that length), the pacing isn't flawed (does it not match the goals of the story very well?), it doesn't have "too many morals" (wait, this is a complaint?). It's just a fine, fine piece of cinema. It's different, it's striking, it's entertaining, and it's moving. The amount of people who don't seem to see it this way is, to my way of thinking, the most "curious" thing about it.

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) 94
I just saw this for the third time and, once again, I can't pick any faults with it whatsoever. Christopher Nolan has given the world the most intelligent, fully realized blockbuster in more time than I care to think about. The story, far more complex and nuanced than the vast majority of mainstream films (and massive kudos for that), is excellent, and the sum total of the performances is greater than any other film of 2008. At this point, there's very little doubt in my mind that Heath Ledger will win a posthumous Academy Award. He gives one of the best screen performances of all-time and, dead or alive, I think the world sees that he needs to be recognized for it. I also see potential nominations (but not wins) for the film itself and for Nolan as director/screenwriter. We shall see. And I shall see it again (and again and again), especially upon its theatrical re-release in late January.

Lady Vengeance (Chan-Wook Park, 2006) 56
And so it ends, not with a bang but a whimper. My friend Alex said it best: "It seems like they made this as an excuse to be pretty." While this in itself is not a bad reason to make a film, and it certainly is good-looking, that pesky "story" thing should also be given some thought. Oldboy combined gorgeous visuals with a existence-shakingly powerful narrative; Mr. Vengeance, though lesser, also managed to be successful on both fronts. This one, even taken on its own merits, is not as satisfying. Its fragmented structure is interesting, but it gets too tangled up in itself. I'm not an imperceptive guy, and there were places here where I felt like Park was specifically trying to beat around the bush instead of just TELLING me what happened. Also, I can't quite put my finger on it, but the group vengeance scene, in addition to being far too long and drawn-out and inappropriately played for comic effect, has something very off-putting about it. Sure, the whole trilogy is dark and mean-spirited and violent, but there was something about this that just did NOT feel right, and that certainly taints the film. So, yeah. It's flawed. Like crazy. Nonetheless, it IS entertaining and it IS pretty. I'd never go so far as to call it a bad film, but it just can't hold a candle to what came before.

Oldboy (Chan-Wook Park, 2005) 92
I was wondering what my next five-star rating would be. According to Flixster, the last time I bestowed that rating upon a film was in my review of The Dark Knight back in July. As I see more and more films, the truly exceptional ones seem fewer and farther between. Here's the good news: the spell is over. Holy shit, is this a great movie. I can't even begin to say. Not only is the cinematography absolutely gorgeous, but the story itself is harrowing in a way that left me speechless. There's one moment in particular near the end where it all finally clicks together and you say to yourself, "Oh, fuck no." The ensuing gut-punch is unreal. Yes, it's a relentlessly bleak film (no wonder it hasn't really caught on stateside), but it's the kind I can wholeheartedly get behind. Haunting, unique, and overflowing with pathos, this may be the finest Asian film of the 00's.

Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1999) 75
I massively underrated this the first time I saw it (my 2.5 star rating in Flixster probably would've equated to a 53 or some such). While I still can't quite see this as the modern classic it's touted as, it's certainly one of the most stylish and well-directed movies I have seen. Tykwer seems adamant about throwing in every cinematic technique known to man somewhere. Consequently, it's a veritable kaleidoscope of color, editing, and music; while it's frequently exhilarating, it's also exhausting. By the end, you're impressed, but you're also glad it's over. 80 minutes might seem excessively brief until you actually sit through this thing. Head still reeling, it's hard not to be impressed, but I still sort of wish Tykwer had done something else with it. What, I'm not sure, because it certainly feels as if he's done everything with it, but clearly there's still something missing. Ah well. At least I liked it a lot more this time, right?

SLC Punk (James Merendino, 1998) 66
For its appealingly brief 96 minutes, SLC Punk walks a dangerous two-edged sword. It comes equipped with a well thought-out message, but lacks an effective means by which to deliver it. As a result, it opts for the bludgeoning technique, which -- needless to say -- can get a bit tiresome. After a while, you get it and wish the film would move on. It doesn't. Which isn't to say this is bad. On the contrary, it's actually quite entertaining. First of all, it has something to say, which puts it ahead of a good many films already, but it's also much funnier than I expected it to be. Which is to say, I wasn't expecting it to be played for laughs at all, but it is, and those laughs are genuine. For some reason, the scene of Steve-O's old friend attempting to apply for a job in a chothing store stands out. Who knows why? But, yeah, it's a good film. It's youthful, energetic, somewhat anarchic, and -- with these in mind -- fun. I just wish I could add "subtle" to that list of adjectives, but you can't have everything.

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008) 90
Damn, this was good. I mean, no, really: damn, this was good. It's such a rare experience to walk out of a so-called "feel-good movie" feeling good not only because the story itself was legitimately uplifting, but also because everything just WORKED. Calling this a game-show version of City of God may sound inadvertently deprecatory, it's actually a very apt comparison; the good news is, while not nearly as dark or violent, Slumdog Millionaire is very nearly as good as Meirelles' 2002 masterpiece. Stylishly directed by Danny Boyle (of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later fame) in a way that's flashy but adds to the goings-on, this is a simple story amazingly well-told with great performances and visuals to accompany it. The main character is so damn likable that you're really on the edge of your seat the whole time just hoping he'll pull through. In a year distressingly absent of great movies, here's one that's crept in just under the finish line. I can't even begin to tell you how welcome it is.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Chan-Wook Park, 2003) 64
Let's put it this way: I am so, so, so glad I saw this before Oldboy. If I'd seen it after, it -- as good as it is -- would've been a disappointment. And it's a very good revenge film. It's stylish and entertaining and held my interest throughout (though I do agree, Adam, that the "let's spell it out for you!" ending can be done without; I got it well before the voiceover came on), but it's also the sort of film one leaves expecting a bit more from. Luckily for us, more is coming. In my case, I only had to wait 30 minutes for it.

Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008) 71
Charlie Kaufman is no lightweight. He's written no less than three of our finest contemporary movies (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine, for those keeping score). This film, his directorial debut, is the result of all that success. As such, it's very much what you might expect. Being torn between deciding whether something is brilliant or utter pretentious wankery is not a common condition in film today, but Synecdoche, New York delivers on that promise. It's two hours of a maverick screenwriter trying, much like his main character, to create the ultimate "deep, meaningful story about life." Does Kaufman succeed? No, but neither does his character. That's the point. The movie is highly imperfect, but in that respect it's totally perfect, because life itself is similarly flawed. So do you see the issues I'm having trying to review this stupid thing? Every potential mistake it makes can be totally rectified by playing the "oh but it's life" card. So that just leaves me with my opinion. What did I think of it? Well, I think Roger Ebert is right: it's the sort of film you should never see unless you've seen it already. It's difficult, complex, unwieldy, bizarre, highly surreal, multi-layered, and -- I suspect -- quite meaningful. Hell, it's a Kaufman film. It hit me on an intriguing emotional level the first time; who's to say how it'd affect me a second? That is to say, I liked it. About as much, perhaps, as I like life itself. On some days, it's great. On other days, it sucks. On most days, it's simply a very curious thing.

Wow. I've been watching some surprisingly good stuff over the last week and a half. I'm impressed. It's hardly ever this good. Damn.

Later.

The Halftime Report: 2008

2008-06-30T22:26:00.002-07:00

We are seriously halfway through 2008. That's terrifying. Wow.

Anyway, this one's pretty self-explanatory. I'm a compulsive list maker, and I like to make 'em twice a year. The ones in December are cumulative, smoothed-out, serious, and composed. My Halftime Report lists are, I'd say, more rough approximations than anything else. Between now and December, many of the items on these lists will disappear, reappear, rearrange themselves, and bounce all over the place. Nonetheless, I'd say these are a pretty good representation of my favorite stuff so far this year.

The 5 Best Movies So Far:
5. Get Smart
I've tried to be objective about it, but I honestly do not see the critics' gripe with this movie. For my money, Get Smart is exactly what the words "big-budget action comedy" should refer to. I mean, it's funny, right? And it's got explosions and lots of exhilarating action scenes, right? And it has Steve Carell, who -- of all the actors in Hollywood today -- has got to be the perfect choice to play Maxwell Smart. Right? Check, check, check. Also: Bill Murray inside a tree. So, uh, what exactly is there to dislike about this, again?

4. In Bruges
A boundlessly clever gangster film well written, acted, and executed enough to make me forgive what could have been a deal-breaking tonal inconsistency. Its problem is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. It's a gangster film, for sure, but it can't decide between comedy and drama. Certainly, there's nothing stopping it from being both (why hello, Pulp Fiction), but first-time writer-director Martin McDonagh isn't Quentin Tarantino, and he has a bit of trouble juggling the two. Nonetheless, it's an endlessly entertaining flick. Colin Farrell is probably the best I've ever seen him, while the inventive script is actually audacious enough to spell out the ending for us way in advance, then sit back and watch us hit ourselves for not catching onto the clues. So, problems aside, I enjoyed it quite a bit. A film doesn't have to be perfect to be surprising and satisfying, and In Bruges is an appealing example of a film that's both.

3. Control
Yeah, it's definitely as dreary as you would expect it to be. It's also extremely selective, audience-wise: a biopic about Ian Curtis, epileptic lead singer of legendary post-punk band Joy Division who committed suicide in 1980, isn't exactly at the top of most people's viewing lists. And while it's certainly a film that can be appreciated by those not of Joy Division fandom, it really helps if you are. Speaking as someone who lists them as one of his all-time favorite bands, I found this to be a moving and engaging film. Yes, it's dreary, but it's grandly and artistically dreary. Its black and white cinematography adds to the atmosphere immensely (to an extent that the film would not have worked half as well in color), the acting -- especially by Sam Riley in the lead -- is phenomenal, and of course the soundtrack is unparalleled. Maybe it is somewhat of a buzzkill, but it's my kind of buzzkill: the kind potent and powerful enough to haunt you and stay with you long after the images have faded away.

2. WALL-E
With the likes of Finding Nemo and Ratatouille, Pixar has spent the last few years setting the bar almost inhumanly high for themselves. It's a testament to their paramount abilities that this doesn't seem to phase them. They just continue to make the absolute finest in animated cinema. Wall-E is everything you'd expect and even a few things you wouldn't, all of them adding up to just about as delightful and pleasant a moviegoing experience as one could want. (Also, "Presto," which preceds the movie, is probably the best short these guys have yet come up with. That's pretty significant, too.)

1. Funny Games
On this one, I proudly stand alone. Or at least mostly alone. I won't argue that this is an ugly, nihilistic movie. That's undeniable. The way that nihilism is internalized, however, hinges on the individual's outlook. Depending on who you are, you'll either see it as a shallow, exploitative academic treatise that commits the very crimes it preaches against, or -- like me -- you'll see it as a cold, refreshing slap to the face of a society that seems fascinated with violence and torture porn. No matter what your outlook, there's little question it's just about the most polarizing and debatable film of the year (I feel I could write entire essays defending it, personally). In my mind, that quality -- together with its unforgettable, relentless gut-punch -- only enhances its brilliance.

The 5 Best Albums So Far:
5. Shearwater, Rook
Where did this come from? I like Okkervil River, but I had no idea ex-guitarist Jonathan Meiburg -- or anyone from the band, to be honest -- was capable of making something this beautiful. And not in any understated way: this fairly short 37 minutes seems epic compared to most albums its length, making for a sweeping listen that fully satisfies on the first listen and then just keeps delivering unexpected little gifts for each additional spin.
(Stream: "Rooks")

4. The Gutter Twins, Saturnalia
In which Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan -- two middle-aged holdovers from the grunge era -- unexpectedly make the best alt-rock album of the year. It's a thing of fierce, dark, brooding apocalyptic glory. The world may be coming to an end, but at least it's meeting its maker in the most dramatic, alluring, and frankly beautiful way.
(Stream: "God's Children")

3. Foals, Antidotes
Bloc Party and Battles. Remember those guys? Well, Foals' impressive debut is probably the closest amalgamation of those two you're ever likely to get (provided that's what you really wanted from life; I didn't, really, but life has its little surprises). Though occasionally atmospheric and melancholy, it's really just a fun album. The songwriting is strong, the boys' super-rhythmic playing occasionally borders on the pleasantly hypnotic, and the production is just about right for this kind of deal. Sure, it does get a bit samey-sounding, but if you enjoy the style as much as I do, that should hardly be a problem. Just avoid that godawful album cover. Yyyyuck.
(Stream: "Olympic Airways")

2. Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer
Speaking of bad album covers, I bet you were wondering when Wolf Parade's sophomore album would show up. I was much too hasty when I dismissed this one as a disappointment. I can never tell when an album is going to click for me. Usually, as in this case, if it hasn't happened by the third or fourth listen, it's not going to. At Mount Zoomer hit me HARD on listen five. Sure, it's miles away from their wonderful (and much poppier) debut Apologies to the Queen Mary, but a darker and more aggressive brilliance is still brilliance, regardless. I imagine most will find this much more easily digestible than I did; I just had to outrun the shadow of their previous album. Now that I'm in the clear ... damn, is this a good album.
(Stream: "Kissing the Beehive". DO IT.)

1. Cut/Copy, In Ghost Colours
Simply put, Cut/Copy's second album is an 80s synth-pop pastiche that somehow manages to be better by leaps and bounds than just about anything it borrows from. Their secret is that they don't just try to emulate these ye-olde acts, but come armed with songs are both reverent and phenomenally well-written. Discounting the numerous instrumental links (which, for once, actually help hold the album together instead of merely filling empty space), there isn't a single bad song here. More to the point, there's not a single one I don't like a lot. No other album released this year can boast such an impressive array, nor can the vast majority of albums released in the past few years. If this isn't still sitting at the top of this list in another six months, I'll be very surprised. Pleasantly surprised, mind you, but surprised nonetheless.
(Stream: "Feel the Love")

The 10 11 Best Songs So Far:
11. Death Cab for Cutie, "Bixby Canyon Bridge"
I can just imagine the unfortunate kid who has never heard Death Cab and downloads this song: "Dude, have you heard that band Death Cab for Cutie? They freakin' ROCK. Nasty buzzing guitars, pounding drums, distorted vocals, waves of hypnotic white noise -- I NEED MORE OF THIS!!" He'll be in for about as much of a surprise as the rest of us were when we heard this refreshing song, which may have more urgency packed into its five minutes than their entire Plans album put together.

10. Fleet Foxes, "He Doesn't Know Why"
Maybe he doesn't, but I do: check out that vocal melody during the first half. Man.

9. The Dodos, "Red and Purple"
Anyone still looking for the ultimate indie summer track needs look no further: "Red and Purple" is so bouncy, so sunny, so upbeat that it's virtually impossible to deny it. It still amazes me that they managed to make such a thing using just an acoustic guitar and percussion.

8. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida"
It's just a damn fine pop song. That's all there is to it.

7. British Sea Power, "Lights Out for Darker Skies"
This is definitely a candidate for Indie Anthem of '08: exactly the type of huge, booming two-part track it seems like these guys have wanted to create their whole career. In addition to being phenomenal, it's also one of the few saving graces of their comparatively disappointing third album.

6. Cut/Copy, "Lights and Music"
The thing that seems to separate Cut/Copy from the bazillions of other 80s revival bands is that they actually sound like various bands from the 80s. It depends on the song. Here, they're tackling Violator-era Depeche Mode (yes, 1990, I know) and, if I may be so bold, actually creating a song that is even better than most -- if not all -- of that seminal album.

5. MGMT, "Time to Pretend"
A coworker and I were having a discussion a few months back about what the anthem for the current generation would be. Gen X had "Smells Like Teen Spirit." What do we have? I can now give a genuinely good answer: we have "Time to Pretend," which, all the way from its wistful (and cynical, yeesh) rockstar-dream lyrics to its do-it-yourself indie-electronic atmosphere, seems to perfectly encapsulate what the current wave of teens and twentysomethings seem to stand for.

4. Hercules and Love Affair, "Blind"
You say the words "gay disco" like that's a bad thing!

3. Wolf Parade, "California Dreamer"
I've gotten so used to putting Spencer Krug on my best-of lists (2008 is the fourth year in a row) that I've almost forgotten what it feels like to leave him off. This is yet another home run for him (and no doubt not the last), an "L.A. Woman"-esque proggish epic that just gets more complex and more alluring every time I listen to it.

2. Frightened Rabbit, "The Modern Leper"
Bitter, self-deprecating indie rock must really be my thing (see: last year's "Kid Gloves"), but damned if this isn't the most powerful and emotionally affecting thing I've heard all year. Maximum volume required.

1. Chris Walla, "St. Modesto"
Maybe it's just a primacy thing, I don't know. But over the past five months, Walla's gorgeous ballad about star-crossed meth-makers has wormed so far into the Music = Love center of my brain that I cannot deny it the top spot. I know that even admitting I like Walla, his solo album, or anything on it means I immediately surrender my indie-cred badge, but I don't care. My ability to play this on repeat is infinitely more appealing.

The end! Woo!

Blogcast: March-June Highlights

2008-06-04T19:56:00.002-07:00

This blog, which has gone untouched for a solid year now, was originally conceived as an alternate chunk of cyberspace with which I could ramble about music and movies and media stuff without really having to filter myself. I've been considering a revamp for the past couple months, toying with the idea of bringing it back up to speed and possibly incorporating blatherings about life and all of those mundane things, but in the end I decided to keep it much the way it is. I will be updating it much more regularly, but I have decided -- for others' sake as well as my own -- to keep it mostly (if not entirely) media-related. I'm sort of a geek when it comes to music, movies, and literature, so I doubt I'll run out of things to talk about in any case.

This is not a hipster blog. I'm not a hipster. I'm not cool enough (or, more importantly, I am not of a mistaken belief that I'm cool enough). I'm not all about chasing leaks all over the internet, being the first person to hear or see anything, or thinking myself oh-so-awesome for drooling over stuff only three people have ever heard of. I'm just a guy who is interested in obsessively and covetously consuming stuff, old and new, that I am passionate about. This makes me a geek. This is a geek blog. Adjust all expectations accordingly.

Anyway, the resurrection of this blog begins tonight. In keeping with personal tradition, I've decided to begin this resurrection with something I used to do many moons ago but fell out of the habit of doing: a Blogcast.

Basically, the way this Blogcast thing works is analogous to being handed free samples at the grocery store. The songs, complete and usually ripped straight to .mp3 format from my own private CD collection, are designed to give a taste of some of the best stuff I've been listening to. It's both a way for me to show off the best of something I'm really passionate about, and for the rest of you to get some free stuff that you might like. It's win/win all the way. (Acquiring the files is simple. I've uploaded them all to SendSpace, where they will stay for two weeks. Simply follow the links provided and nab 'em from the SendSpace server.)

The Theme: No Blogcast is complete without a theme. This one, as referenced in the title, is a showcase for standout songs that have been released within the last few months. These aren't necessarily the absolute best songs to have come out, but they're all very good ones that I felt like sharing. As always, I've provided some brief commentary to go along with 'em.

Anyone who samples these and is really intrigued by the sound of one or more of them, just get in touch with me and we'll see what we can do about hooking you up with some more. I have the technology.

Onward!

The Blogcast:
Cut/Copy, "So Haunted" (4:27)
Genres: Dance/electronica, indie-rock
If you are among the underprivileged who have not heard or heard of Cut/Copy and their miraculous new album In Ghost Colours, click that link right now. Download the song. Do not come back and read the rest of this 'til it's done. It is, in the most basic terms, 50 minutes of near-perfect electronic dance-pop. Not only is it my #1 album of 2008, but it also fits snugly up there with the finer albums of the entire decade. "So Haunted" may or may not be the best of the best (I have about five songs vying for that title), but it does do in four and a half minutes what some bands have never been able to: make a perfect marriage between pulsing noise-rock and light-as-a-feather electronic dance. What starts as a noisy, distortion-heavy pounder ends as one of the prettiest synth-pop songs you're likely to hear during this or any other year. It's really quite something.

The Dodos, "Red and Purple" (4:40)
Genres: Indie-rock, experimental
The Dodos have done it. I don't know how, but they've somehow managed to make an entire album of interesting and original music using little more than acoustic guitars and drums. Though there are many highlights, my personal favorite track is the jovial "Red and Purple," which bounces along on unconventional rhythms and unabashed catchiness for four and a half minutes before finding just about the perfect note to end on. Despite being released in March, it's a summer song if I've ever heard one: sunny, energetic, and utterly satisfying.

Frightened Rabbit, "The Modern Leper" (3:48)
Genres: Indie-rock, emo that doesn't suck
It's like I said when I put the song on my MySpace profile: if this doesn't end up being in my ten favorite songs of 2008, there are some fucking amazing songs left for me to hear. This song (and this band) literally blew at me out of nowhere, blindsiding me with unexpected brilliance. The intensity of this song is a force to be reckoned with. It begins as a fairly subdued acoustic piece and ends with violent crashing and passionate howling less than four minutes later (so, yeah, maximum volume required). Together with its breathtaking lyrics (which are all too relatable) and soaring chorus, "The Modern Leper" is at once a statement that demands attention, and a powerful, powerful piece of music.

The Gutter Twins, "God's Children" (4:57)
Genre: Alternative rock
It's no coincidence that a lot of the songs on the Gutter Twins' debut (well, it's the first album Dulli and Lanegan have made together) reference God and the Rapture, because they've made what sounds like it could be a soundtrack to Judgment Day. It's all dark, heavy, midtempo mood music, but with just the right amount of melody and pathos to make it into something truly grand. Lanegan and Dulli were both at their most successful during the early 90s as the frontmen for Screaming Trees and Afghan Whigs, respectively, and their style as the Gutter Twins is ripe with early 90s alt-rock influence. It's hypnotic and mesmerizing, but it also kicks serious ass. If Judgment Day does sound like this, I'll be the one standing off to the side, mouth gaping, trying impossibly to take in all the apocalyptic beauty.

M83, "Couleurs" (8:34)
Genres: Electronica, synth-pop
Summer. Nighttime. City. Tall buildings. Bright lights in the darkness. Driving. Windows down. Hair blown. A light smell of rain. These are just a few things that occur to me while listening to M83's synth-drenched "Couleurs," an awesome slice of atmospheric electronica from French artist M83. The track just feels inherently urban and nocturnal, like a night owl doing the drugs and hitting the clubs before burning out at sunrise. It's a standout on an album of mostly lighter, poppier 80s-style fare (all of which is very good, however); it's also one of 2008's great electronic cuts.

Neon Neon, "I Told Her on Alderaan" (3:43)
Genres: Synth-pop, 80s New-Wave revival
It's to Gruff Rhys' credit that "I Told Her on Alderaan," right down to its Star Wars reference, could easily be mistaken for a long-lost early 80s gem. All the pieces seem to fall into place: the guitar-synth interplay, the drum machines, the production, and especially the attitude. It does that guilty-pleasure genre proud, too. It's one of the catchiest pieces of pure pop the indie world has seen this year, addictively replayable and good enough to make you wish that even more people would cruise their De Loreans back to the 80s and try resurrecting, as the band itself refers to it, this stainless style.

Wolf Parade, "California Dreamer" (6:03)
Genres: Indie-rock, experimental
Far and away the standout track from Wolf Parade's (somewhat disappointing) sophomore album At Mount Zoomer. "California Dreamer" -- an exhilarating track that owes more than its title to The Doors' classic "L.A. Woman" -- finds Spencer Krug still in Sunset Rubdown mode, with results more atmospheric and experimental than the majority of his other Wolf Parade contributions (I'd say this is more "Dinner Bells" or "Fancy Claps" than anything else). His lyrics are as evocative as ever, the melody is haunting and irresistible, and the whole thing goes a long way to reaffirming why Krug is one of the finest songwriters working today.

The end. Until next time, which will be much, much sooner than last time. Guaranteed. Even if I'm the only person who ends up giving a shit about this blog, I will keep it up because it satisfies me.

See what I mean? Geek.

Off the cliffs and way, way down.

2007-05-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

Guillemots, From the Cliffs (2006) [5.3]
Much like the Fiery Furnaces' early 2005 release, Guillemots' From the Cliffs is an EP in theory far more than it is in practice. Clocking in at a little over 40 minutes, it stands as being several minutes longer than a handful of recent full-lengths. While this move is very economical in that it provides listeners with more music for less moolah, hindsight proves it would have been the best thing for the band to just create an actual 20-or-so minute EP and save their listeners the chore of having to sit through the remainder of the present material. The problem is obvious: although we have an LP masquerading as an EP, we only have enough inspiration to fill the shoes of the shorter medium. And the way the band chooses to reveal this to us is to place all of the really good stuff right at the beginning, then immediately plunge us into a giant pool of soporific boredom.

Ignoring the pointless first track (which clocks in at a monstrous 39 seconds and goes nowhere, making it by default one of the album's best tracks because it wastes no time going nowhere), the disc kicks off with what I honestly consider to be one of the finest songs yet produced by any band this decade, the devastatingly well-written "Trains to Brazil." A brilliant pop song that is both lyrically poetic and musically appealing, it details the reactions of one man as he learns his friend has died in the London subway bombings. Even though I placed it at #4 on my Best Songs of 2006 list, it still felt like I was criminally underrating it. Following this song on a tracklist is an unenviable task for any other track, but the boys do a surprisingly good job tackling the challenge. "Made-Up Lovesong #43" is perhaps one of the most idiosyncratic love songs in recent memory, but its charm rests entirely within that quality. The only problem I have with the song is that it's a full minute longer than it should have been; a truncation at the 2:45 mark would have been far more effective than the draggy, slowed-down conclusion they actually put on it. Nonetheless, this is nitpicking.

What isn't nitpicking is that the rest of the album is populated with a bunch of really, really, really long songs (we're talking multiple 7-9 minute tracks, here) that are sloooooow and almost entirely unsatisfying, not to mention unmemorable. By the time the last song is over, you have slipped so far into a disinterested stupor that it's nearly impossible to believe this disc, this wretchedly boring disc, actually houses two A-grade songs. But at that point it won't really matter. Your only concern will be to see that it gets taken out of the CD player and to assure that it will not return there for a long, long time.

Standout(s): "Trains to Brazil," "Made-Up Lovesong #43"

Godspeed for this Black Emperor.

2007-05-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada EP (1999) [9.7]
Shakespeare once wrote that brevity is the soul of wit. Nowhere is this statement better applied than in reference to Godspeed You! Black Emperor's 1999 EP, which at a mere 28 minutes is likely the best intrumental rock album ever recorded. From the slow-burning, sweeping crescendo of "Moya" to the more ambitious and overtly political "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III," the band never makes a misstep and never overstays its welcome. Godspeed, especially when their individual compositions reach the 20+ minute mark, often suffer from being overly repetitive and long in the tooth, but these two tracks melt together into a seamlessly cohesive mini-symphony of ideal length. With seemingly no effort at all, this well-populated Canadian outfit has created something that is emotionally powerful, epic in scope, and damn near perfect.

Standout(s): To be swallowed whole.

Ambience from the Field.

2007-05-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

The Field, From Here We Go Sublime (2007) [7.4]
I am not going to knock the goodness of this record; I think the high quality of the music is, for the most part, undeniable. Certainly when taken in context with the ambient techno genre, From Here We Go Sublime stands head and shoulders over the majority of other releases. Objectively, I can easily see why this has remained the most acclaimed album of the year so far. It's the subjective aspect that trips me up; namely, as much as I adore electronic music, I just don't think I'm cut out for this whole ambient techno thing. I can appreciate it, sure, and it might even be something I would consciously want to listen to from time to time, but I doubt it's something I could ever go completely ga-ga about in the same way I would approach, say, an Underworld or Kraftwerk album.

That having been said, From Here We Go Sublime can be maddening as hell if you don't approach it the right way. If you sit with the headphones on and attentively try to capture each nuance of these 66 minutes, your brain will probably warp itself into some boredom-induced stupor. Ambient techno is one of the most reactionary genres imaginable: one of its most basic tenets is that development and change are entirely unnecessary. If you have a 7-minute track you can rest assured that what you hear in the first sixty seconds is more or less what you'll be hearing for the next six minutes. Paying scrupulous attention to this level of uniformity for well over an hour cannot be good for anyone's health, especially if the only goal in mind is to simply enjoy an album. The best way to tackle something like this, then, is to do the opposite: not completely ignore it, of course, but use it as tranquil, air-filling background music. While doing something else, the mind will no doubt drift onto the music for a couple minutes, be sufficiently wooed, and then drift off again, creating exactly the type of mindset necessary for listening to this. Little by little it will crawl under your skin and work its subtle magic, creating a trance that -- while not exactly sublime -- is undeniably alluring.

Standout(s): "Over the Ice," "A Paw in My Face," "The Deal."