Mr. Nobody

Jan Van Dormeal, 2009 (9.5*) 
Belgium-Canada-France-Germany 

It's hard to describe this film without making it sound perhaps incohesive and out of control, but quite the contrary, this is a long, complex work of art that is very well constructed, and one which will warrant and reward the true cinema fan on repeat viewings.

What director Jaco Van Dormeal has done here is not new, he shows us alternate realities in one life, similar to the visual style used for the same by Tom Tykwer in Run, Lola, Run - and triggered by one incident involving a train, like Gwyneth Paltrow's character in Sliding Doors. As a child, Nobody is known as Nemo, and at age 9, he must choose which parent to live with when they seperate. The decisive scene takes place at a train platform, and little Nemo must either stay with dad or get on the train with mom. This being a film, he does both, and we see both lives.

This is really a science fiction story, which is about a Mr. Nobody, who is called that because they don't know his name, and he can't remember it, but it's Nemo, which we find out in flashbacks. Nemo is now the last living mortal at age 118, in a world where apparently everyone else no longer ages and dies (at least not naturally, I'm sure you can still blow people up or shoot them down, because, as they say here, "some people just need killin").

The film begins with a professional type suit, who is interviewing Mr. Nobody (for broadcast live to the masses), about his life and how he feels being the last mortal. When Nemo remembers his life, it's not always the same exact story he remembers, and this is the point of the film. It's not "a story" that matters, but that you travel the journey of life not knowing the final destination. This film has as many visual ideas as 10 average films, in fact, Van Dormeal spent nine years on this one project from writing to completion, and it shows.

There are so many mind-boggling images in this, that its best not to describe the film at all, but to urge everyone to watch it, then watch it again. There is one problem: it's not available at Netflix, you'll have to either borrow or buy it on dvd. You also want only the director's cut (it's 157 minutes, the original is 141, so it's hefty in either format), that's the version I saw and it has one added scene I thought particularly important: Nemo is going through a car wash inside his car, and we see closeups of all the action on the windshield, which is uncannily like nebula activity in space: the macrocosm becomes the microcosm. If you don't understand that, then you may not like this film, and you probably didn't enjoy The Tree of Life either, another visual masterpiece.

Jared Leto stars in this, that's him in makeup as the 118 year old man (Mr. Nobody) as well. He had just made Aronofsky's incredible Requiem For a Dream (2000), so apparently he only stars in a director's "magnum opus", or greatest of his work. He should be a better known actor, he's quite accomplished in every film I've seen. Canadian director-actress Sara Polley (Dawn of the Dead, Go, The Sweet Hereafter) plays one of his wives, Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds, Troy) another, and Viet actress Linh Dan Pham (Indochine) the third. All are perfect for what the film required - of the three, Polley is the most accomplished actor having won 31 awards so far, and she shows it here.

This may bore or confuse the more literary cinemaniacs, those who want a beginning, middle, and end of one story. To me, that's like criticizing the impressionists because the realists painted the same scenes more realistically. Do you want life to imitate art, or can art just be the creative expression of an artist's inner philosophy? This film toys with the idea of "string theory", which always baffled me, but the idea is that there may be several universes or realities occuring at the same time, it depends on your choices in life. That's such a scary thought to some, that one reviewer said he couldn't leave his house for three days after seeing this film!

This film is going into my top 100, easily (out of about 10,000 seen, the top tenth of one percent), and also on my short list of must-see science fiction-fantasy films, which is less than 50 at this point. To which I would only say, as Rossanno Brazzi told Katharine Hepburn in Summertime, "You are hungry, senora - eat the ravioli!" EAT THIS MOVIE! Then again, and again..

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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

John Madden, 2011  (8.1*)

From the director of Shakespeare in Love (1998) comes a more serious film, as a disparate group of seven Brits go to India to live in the hotel of the title, not knowing it's not really open yet, due to the ineptitude of undercapitalized owner Dev Patel, who inherited it when his father died.. 

This is a comedy with some tender moments, and a little drama, but without sentimentality, and with Oscar winners Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy and the impeccable Tom Wilkinson in the cast, who is terrific here, it has a high degree of craftmanship..

IF anything, Dench has gotten even better with age.. I 1st saw her topless in Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in 68 and I've been a big fan ever since (she was a babe!) - her acting is even better now, as tv's BEHAVING BADLY added to the argument that some of her best work may even be for the little screen.. (I think of all the living actresses, I could spend my life with her 1st! sorry, Salma, Scarlett, and Sofia!)

As for Tom Wilkinson, I've never seen even an avg performance from him, you very soon forget he's acting in any role he tackles - he's superb here, steals the acting kudos.. Nighy is good again as usual, Maggie Smith doesn't have much to do, and Dev Patel is easily the most overrated actor in the cast, the other Indian actors are all better in fact (he's an over-actor)

The rest of the hotel's name was "For the Elderly and Beautiful", and the story is from the novel THESE FOOLISH THINGS by Deborah Moggach. Like most, the literature is, no doubt, deeper and richer than the film, which is fine, just not overpowering.

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Rango

Gore Verbinski, 2011 (8.8*)
Academy Award, Best Animated Film

I loved this trippy, clever, irreverent film! You know you’re into something heady when a family's pet chameleon character, hilariously voiced by Johnny Depp, falls off the family car on a highway,  and  gets blown by traffic smack into the windshield of the convertible driven by Hunter Thompson with Dr. Gonzo in the back, and Hunter and the lizard are wearing the same shirt ! That’s an indicator right there that this film may be a little induced by altered states.

Director Gore Verbinski directed the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and once again he seems to have fun directing this wacky stuff.

After falling off the car, he meets various desert dwelling critters that give him advice, with Alfred Molina as an armadillo telling him he needs to find the town of Dirt, out there somewhere. When he does, it’s inhabited by an odd assortment of western dressing animals. He meets a snotty girl, tho tells him, after mutual insults, "strangers don’t last long here", but when he discovers the town needs a sheriff and a hero, he volunteers, being lost and having little choice. He picks up his name in a bar, but I won’t spoil how he gets it, it’s mostly visual.


Much of this film is like that, references to classic westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, High Noon, even the later Quick and the Dead. There are also scenes paying homage to Chinatown and Apocalypse Now, and likely others that escaped me.

Ned Beatty gives his best John Huston (a la Chinatown) voice, as the mayor, who may or may not be involved in a plot involving the town’s water supply. British actor Bill Nighy is a dead ringer for the voice of Jack Palance as the villain Rattlesnake Jake. The plot is eerily similar to that of Chinatown, a parched town needs water, it never rains, and for some reason the town’s supply faucet has gone dry, spewing out mud and no liquid, so everyone is about to die of thirst like the crops already have.

Depp is perfect for this, delivering lines like "and stay out of my peripheral vision", and  "we should follow the pipe to it’s hydraulic origin, capture the criminals and solve this aquatic conundrum".

If you like classic westerns, as well as Depp’s irreverent, inebriated style, this will be right up your alley. Perhaps more enjoyable for adults than kids, it’s still a G-rated comedy that the entire family can watch together with many guffaws – though I’m sure the kids will often ask “what did he say?”, just like the background characters do.

There’s an uncanny scene by Tim Oliphant as the voice of Clint Eastwood, delivering the film’s best line.
Depp: “The Spirit of the West. Hey, is this heaven?”
Spirit of the West (as Eastwood): “if it was, we’d be sharing Pop-tarts with Kim Novak.”

I’m sure all the kids are asking, who’s Kim Novak? Well, she and Clint Eastwood are 60’s stars that both live in Carmel, California now – that should clear that up somewhat, and of course, Pop-tarts imply breakfast, which insinuates.. er, the hokey-pokey – that’s what it’s all about!

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Bolt

Byron Howard, Chris Williams, 2008 (7.8*)
Another enjoyable Pixar-Disney animated film, with some incredibly realistic graphics, at least the landscape portions (the humans look a little stiff and plastic). Bolt is a small Swiss shepherd who is rescued from an animal shelter in the beginning, when he is being appropriately cute with a rubber carrot toy. His person, as he calls her, is a little girl named Penny.

The story inexplicably then skips forward five years, at a point when Bolt and Penny are the stars of a kids tv show, in which Bolt rescues Penny from various perilous situation, most involving a green-eyed man (voiced by veteran actor Malcolm MacDowell).

The only problem with Bolt is that in order to make the show work, he has been fooled into thinking that Penny is really in danger, he has no idea that it's all a TV show, and everything is make believe. Mistaking Penny to be really in danger while he's trapped in his studio trailer, he manages to escape and immediately gets packed up and shipped away.

He runs into an alley cat named Mittens (Susie Essman, perhaps the weakest cast member - I'd have rather heard a pro comedienne like Joan Cusask in this role), and a hilarious hamster in a running ball, named Rhino.

Perhaps the lead roles could have been better cast. John Travolta is just ok as Bolt, he was actually funnier in real action comedies like Get Shorty. Miley Cyrus was just ok as Penny, no doubt selected for her young fan base.

Filmed just after The Incredibles, this has a lot of similar action, but the screenplay isn't quite as good, but it was certainly more entertaining to me than Up, which was Pixar's worst film to date to me, losing their best character in the first 10 minutes, and sticking us with two unlikeable characters for the rest of the film.

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Drive

Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011 (9.0*)

Ryan Gosling plays a man we see in the beginning of the film driving a getaway car for men pulling a heist. The audience is immediately sucked into this film by having it start in the middle of some tense crime action. We later find out that Gosling also works in a garage, and performs driving stunts part-time for films.

Early in the film we learn a little of his personal side as he helps a young mother, Carey Mulligan, who also lives in his apartment building, when she needs a ride after he car breaks down. (Mulligan's character has little acting to do in this compared to her brilliant role in An Education.) We slowly see Gosling as more than a heartless criminal, and realize his character may be more dimensional than most in crime films.

Interspersed with scenes involving Gosling’s character, we also learn a little about some small time organized criminals, a business owner played by Ron Perlman, and Gosling’s garage manager, played by Bryan Cranston (without the same passion and strength as his role on Breaking Bad). Cranston gets a shady mogul, superbly played by Albert Brooks in a rare dramatic part, to invest in a race car to be driven by Gosling. Brooks has won eight awards for supporting actor for his performance, but was skipped over for an Oscar® nomination.

The audience is slowly drawn into Gosling’s world, as he is drawn into that of Mulligan’s, whose husband is said to simply be away – we later find he was in prison after he is released. On top of that, he became connected with some rather despicable men while incarcerated, and to whom he is now in debt.

For me, this film has enough similarities to George Stevens’ western classic Shane to be inspired by it. It has an heroic outsider, Gosling, coming to the aid of a family facing criminals they can’t control, largely due to his attraction to the wife and her young son. His past is murky, like Shane’s, he may be a criminal himself, but not by choice, and at all times he tries to do the right thing, like a samurai warrior. He’s a warrior, but with a code of ethics and personal honor.

The pace is well maintained by Danish director Nicolas Refn. It never seems forced, slow, or too action-packed, there’s just enough of each element to make it a well-crafted film. In fact, I’m a bit surprised (and peeved) that it wasn’t nominated for best picture since they came up with nine, it could have just as easily been ten. I’m willing to bet without having seen but a couple so far that it was better than at least five of those nine. This is going to be considered a quiet, understated classic over time.

It’s currently ranked #237 on the IMDB top 250, and has won 38 awards out of 94 nominations. Only a handful of other films has won this many awards for 2011: The Artist, The Tree of Life, The Descendents, The Help.

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Five Minutes of Heaven

Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2009 (8.4*)
Sundance Awards for directing and screenplay.

Based on a true story of the troubles in Northern Ireland. A Protestant worker is ordered to leave a shipyard in Lurgan by Catholics. In retaliation, a teenage gang of four, members of the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) orders a Catholic to leave, a man named Griffin. The youths decide to kill him, even though he’s scheduled to leave the yard anyway in just a week.

When they show up at Griffin’s house, unknown to them, the senior Griffin has left the house, but his eldest son is watching tv in the living room, while his younger brother is kicking a soccer ball on the sidewalk out front. The masked hitman, Alistair Little, approaches, looks at the kid on the street staring at him, an image which will haunt him later, and still shoots his brother through the front window and kills him. Nine year old Joe Griffin not only witnesses the attack from just a few feet away, powerless to do anything, but his own mother blames him for not stopping the killing. Both his parents die soon afterwards, neither recovering from the loss of their oldest son.

Thirty-three years later, after serving a 12-year prison term, Little and Griffin are approached by a documentary television show, who sets up a meeting between the two men. Veteran star Liam Neeson plays Little as an adult, who is now a successful politician in Belfast. Griffin is an embittered man still living in the same town of Lurgan, though now he’s married and has two beautiful girls. Due to losing his entire family over the killing, Griffin has never forgiven Little, and wants, as he puts it, just "five minutes of heaven", when he can confront Little face-to-face and kill him.

James Nesbitt (Bloody Sunday) steals this film as Joe Griffin. Even though he’s now married with two children, years of torment and anguish are etched on his face in nearly every scene. He makes the audience feel his pain on a visceral level, without ever giving a false note – one feels that Nesbitt himself has gone through something similar in his own life. He steals the acting kudos from Oscar®-winner Liam Neeson in this small film produced by the BBC for television. In all honesty, he has the far meatier role, as a contrite Alistair Little seems almost resigned to giving Griffin the chance he needs for vengance. It’s a crime that Nesbitt wasn’t nominated for both a BAFTA and an Oscar® for best actor, it’s one of the best performances of the last decade.

Nesbitt with one of his 7 acting awards –

he won 3 for Cold Feet (1997),

and two for Bloody Sunday (2002)

This film deserves a far better rating than the 6.7 given at IMDB (by only 6,000 viewers). More people should watch this film, and all the other good films on 'the trouble' in Northern Ireland. There are excellent films on this subject, notably Bloody Sunday (2002), the Cannes Palm d’Or winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), and for PBS, both Naming the Names (which remembers the victims of Bloody Sunday) and Frontline: Behind the Mask: The IRA and Sinn Fein. Probably the first great film on this subject is John Ford’s classic, The Informer (1935), for which Victor McLaglen was awarded the Oscar for best actor.

Not being from Great Britain, those of us in the U.S., and probably the rest of the world, need to see the films on this subject so we can better understand the history of violence and repression there.

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Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen, 2011 (9.0*)
Woody is back! This is a light romantic fantasy in the same vein as The Purple Rose of Cairo and Alice, which mixes reality with a fantasy world that obviously comes from the mind of the protagonist.

Owen Wilson is a young American, on a trip to Paris with his domineering fiance, Rachel MacAdams, whose right-wing parents are wealthy capitalists there for a business deal (naturally - why else would capitalists go anywhere but for some tax deductible reason, because the wealthy don't have to pay taxes since they can deduct everything from travel to meals by claiming they are 'for business purposes' - then the rest of us have to make up this shortfall).

Wilson is a screenwriter attempting to write a serious novel, while everyone urges him to do what he's successful at already. He seeks solitude at night by wandering around Paris alone. After midnight, magic happens, and he runs into people he assumes are in costume, but finds out that he's been transported in time to Paris of the 20's, first being found in the streets by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who introduce him to Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). He later meets Picasso, and his beautiful model, played by Marion Cotillard, a muse for all the famous artists of her era. Naturally, the two strike up a platonic romance.

Wilson's fantasy world is centered around creative artists who spent time in Paris: Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Luis Bunuel, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Salvador Dali ("I paint you, with your lips melting into the sand - and of course, a rhinoceros!" - hilariously played by Adrien Brody), Paul Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec are just a few of the famous artists who come alive for Owen Wilson on his post-midnight walks around Paris.

This film is superficially a light romantic comedy, but beneath all that is the underlying and beautiful idea that art not only is immortal, but will influence and inspire future generations of creative people. It also contains the protagonists desire to live in another era (don't we all?) he imagines is greater than his own (for Wilson, Paris in the 20's).

As an artist (painting and writing) this film reinforced my lifelong belief in the power of creativity. Most of the awards are for Allen's screenplay, which should be a favorite for an Oscar®. I would elevate this work above Woody's other output of the last 15 or so years.

Note: in the rating, PG-14, in the beginning, it is mentioned that "features smoking" - holy smoke, are we now warning people when there are cigarettes in films? what's next, "characters eating pork", or "loud noises emitted by fireworks", or "capitalist merchants overcharging for coffee"?

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Death at a Funeral

Frank Oz, 2007 (8.3*)
It’s not every day that you laugh all through a film about a funeral. Writer Dean Craig has managed to do just that in this black comedy. It’s also not in any other cinema funerals that you see hallucinagenic drugs ingested (accidentally), a naked man threatening to jump off a roof, and a blackmailing dwarf giving everyone a thrill with an unexpected appearance.

These are just a few of the bizarre images and ideas that should at least have everyone chuckling. The film starts a bit slow, as at first you just have people on their way to the funeral of a well-to-do British family patriarch, father of a pair of brothers, played by Matthew Macfadyen, who lives at the house of his parents, and Rupert Graves, a famous novelist who lives in New York, flying in after years away from home. You see the normal rushing of people late, the grumbling by the elderly uncle in a wheelchair, “you’re late!” (wonderfully played by veteran actor Peter Vaughn, who was the head man in  Terry Gilliam's Brazil – “Ere I am JH”) and other family members in slight turmoil. However, this funeral has no one weeping or appearing that distressed, so in that regard it’s a realistic one.

However, once the funeral service begins at the house, one event after another delays the proceedings to the delight of the audience. One of my favorite side stories is the boyfriend of a relative who is accidently given some LSD instead of valium, as a pill bottle for the latter was used by a hippie brother for transporting the acid without notice. Alan Tudyk is perhaps a little over the top, but I have seen people on psychedelics act just this way at pop festivals; many inevitably end up naked, as does his character Simon.

Tiny actor Peter Dinklage (best known for The Station Agent) plays the dwarf who sets the brothers and the funeral on its ears with some startling photos, adding his own bizarre flavor to the unexpected plot turns. Jane Asher, former gf of Paul McCartney, plays the grieving widow, who is the only one shedding any tears for the deceased.

Remade by Neil LaBute as a black version (of course with Martin Lawrence, who gets to star in every film that Eddie Murphy is not in - and also Chris Rock), a unappealing version that got a 5.4 rating at IMDB vs. 7.3 for the original, and a 51 from Metacritics vs. 67 for the original. Not big numbers for the original either, but I think it’s a little better than that – it’s certainly an original comedy, and the best comedy about the way we treat death since The Loved One (1965), Tony Richardson’s b&w comedy of the Evelyn Waugh novel.

This won two audience awards, at the Locarno Int’l Film Festival and the U.S. Comedy Arts festival.

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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy

Noomi Rapace, her biopic, and as Lisbeth

Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Denmark - Sweden - Germany - Norway
Niels Arden Oplev, 2009 (7.8*)
I’m reviewing these together because after you’ve either read the novels or seen the trilogy, you realize it’s just one long story about the heroine, not three distinctly different stories.

Actress Noomi Rapace made a star of herself and created an indelible screen image in punk hacker Lisbeth Salander, the subject of this crime trilogy from the famous novels by Stieg Larsson. I haven’t read the novels, but like most transcriptions to screen, you lose a lot because you’re getting a lot of other artists to interpret a solo work from the mind of one person, and the medium is also being transformed from one of linguistics and the mind’s imagination to a series of images filtered through the minds of others – the screenwriters, the cinematographers, the editors, and the director. All form a collaberative committee on a film, overseen by the director’s vision, which often changes during the process.

Some may find these films a bit too explicit, they show a woman who’s the victim of abuse, and it’s not for the squeamish. Some found this exploitive, others found it a frank depiction of the misygony in society, and how women in general are the victims of sex crimes perpetrated by sadistic men – unfortunately there’s never a shortage of these at any time in history. For me, I found the films to be more about a woman empowering herself by using her brains and street smarts to stand her own ground. In many regards, I found these films similar to the theme of the powerful French film Chaos (2001), from director Coline Serreau, which I’ve called “the ultimate women’s power film”, and one which had me standing and applauding at the end.

The series begins with a man convinced a relative was murdered and he employs a disgraced journalist, expertly played by Michael Nyqvist, and a criminal computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, to help him unravel the mystery of some grisly murders in the distant past.

The first film won 13 awards (and Rapace won three for actress), including a BAFTA for films not in English (the equivalent of foreign language film at the Oscars). Rated 7.7 at IMDB, and 76 from Metacritics – that’s probably about right, though the cinematography and music are first rate, and actually make each film better. Some think it’s a bit long at 155 minutes, and there’s a longer 180 minute version from Sweden.

The Girl Who Played With Fire
Daniel Aldredsen, 2009 (7.2*)
The second in the series begins to unravel the mystery of Lisbeth Salander’s life. Her father may have been a Soviet agent, that’s part of the mystery. Journalist Blomkvyst of Millenium magazine (Nyqvist), who exposes the corrupton of the establishment, is investigating sex trafficking in Sweden, and the two themselves become the targets of the powerful in return

This film has more action, and is also compelling but is really setting you up for the concluding film, which provides closure to the entire series.

This film is not as compelling as the other two, and was only rated 6.9 at IMDB (fan votes), and 66 at Metacritics. This film and the third didn’t win any awards, and only garnered five nominations between them.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Daniel Alfredson, 2009 (8.0*)
[Rated 7.0 at IMBD and 60 at Metacritics]

This film was the most riveting of the three for me, perhaps because it was the least violent. Without giving anything away, it becomes a battle of wits between two viewpoints – to put it in normal cinema jargon, the good guys and the bad guys, but using their minds rather than weapons or martial arts.

However, depending on how you feel about certain issues, these sides may appear the opposite to other people. It’s almost like politics - if we agree with a rebel, they’re freedom fighters; if we disagree, they’re terrorists. That's why we have a legal system, at least for civilians.

We see the entire mystery unfold as the journalist uncovers the clues himself. Another long film at 147 minutes, it still didn’t seem overlong; it’s a complex psychological story that demands thorough examination and revelation. The third film brought closure to the story, and in an intelligent, credible manner. Those who stick with the entire trilogy should feel justified in the end.

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Before Sunset

Richard Linklater, 2004 (8.2*)
This film was a small, pleasant surprise for me. This one follows Linklater’s Before Sunrise, made nine years earlier with the same actors. In that film, an American traveler, Ethan Hawke, meets a young Frenchwoman from Paris, Julie Delpy, and for at least one night, sparks fly. Yet somehow the film failed to involve me, it just didn’t seem to cut much beneath the surface to let me feel much for the characters, and it was just a two character film.

In this sequel, set nine years later, Hawke is now a published novelist at a book signing at a small Parisian bookstore. After answering a few questions about writing, he spots Delpy off to the side waving at him. You can tell by his face he's both excited and surprised; he wanders over, they very much want to catch up, but Hawke has a flight at the airport and must leave by 7:15 that evening, hence the title. They have to say what they will, and reveal their emotions or hide them, all before sunset. What follows is loose and free examination of what’s been going on in each of their lives and minds since that previous chance meeting. This time, the characters have more passion, more depth, and more chemistry onscreen.

I thought this film was engaging and credible, these are the kinds of relationships in our lives that eventually disturb many of us. The quick ones with lots of chemistry between a couple are who otherwise destined for different geographical locations, at least temporarily. Often they may intend to reuinite but more often do not, and this film makes an honest and easy-going attempt to give us all the same idea – what if we could reunite with a former lover from our past, when our passion was only extinguished by distance and time.

The script, with believable dialogue, was co-written by Linklater and his two stars, which makes me wonder if much of it was improvised; it has that feel. Delpy herself also sings one of her own songs onscreen while playing acoustic guitar, and a couple more on the soundtrack, and they’re not bad – kind of simple and folky like another Marianne Faithful. It seems apparent from the lyrics that she either wrote the song for this film, or as a postscript for the first film. She also gives the better performance here, her character was the more involving with more emotions to show. In fact, this is my favorite performance by Delpy to date.

Linklater often employs a moving camera backing up while the two actors walk forward, following them through the city streets, or even into a river boat. Paris is a beautiful set for a film, and here almost serves as a supporting cast member. This keeps the film from being as static as two people just sitting and talking in a café, which they do briefly, more like My Dinner With Andre, which was boring compared to this film. This story makes us wonder exactly what happened to these characters in the nine year interim, and what will happen in the next two, after this reunion. One of the better screen romances on film, certainly one of the most credible.

This is Linklater’s highest ranked film, currently at #418 on our 2011 update of the Top Ranked 1000 Films on the Net, all polls. His others ranked are Dazed and Confused #530, Waking Life #687, then Before Sunrise #752.

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Adam's Apples

Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005, Denmark (9.1*)

This black comedy has one of the most insane casts since One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). A paroled felon, Nazi skinhead Ulrich Thomsen, who’s perfectly cast here (he just looks like an angry criminal), shows up at a clergyman’s church that serves as a halfway house for some released felons that really should be behind bars. Here they supposedly do community service, but they never seem to do any.

The new arrival soon meets a semi-terrorist Pakistani who holds up all Statoil gas stations because of some capitalist crime by the company against his father; apparently they stole their land to get their oil for nothing, which has happened since oil was discovered. This guy not only has weapons but knows how to use them, as some local crows find out the hard way.

The preacher himself (another fine acting job by Mads Mikkelsen who was the bad guy in the Casino Royale remake, but who has done many excellent Danish films) is a utopian anti-realist who admittedly sees the silver lining to nearly everything. After being beaten senseless for this optimism by the Nazi, he shows up at the skinhead’s door and calmly says “we’ll continue this discussion in the kitchen”. The kitchen is run by an over-sized and over-sexed man who seems to be stuck in his teenage years; he’s the most innocent of the entire group, yet his dirty mind goes into overdrive when a woman shows up.

The apples in the title pertain to the Nazi’s name, Adam, and an apple tree in the yard. Adam decides he’s like to bake an apple pie when the apples are ready. In the meantime, since this film is about whether it’s god or the devil that gives one misfortunes, the poor apple tree goes through hell on earth, nothing goes right for it, yet it’s fruit is the metaphor for the entire film.

Much of this questions the nature of the metaphysical, but in a humorous way. For awhile, you’re so taken aback by some events that you’re saying “what the heck is this?”, then after it’s all over you say “ok – I get it now”. There's a hilarious interchange about a portrait of Adolph Hitler that I won't spoil here, but this humor knows no bounds.

It has a magical quality that few films manage to pull off, without really being a fantasy so much like Field of Dreams or It’s a Wonderful Life or Heaven Can Wait. It’s magic is in it’s eccentric characters, none of whom are similar yet all of whom share the world of the preacher, and they all live apart from urban or even modern problems. Their problems are even larger really, as some unseen force seems to be attacking them whenever possible, especially the preacher – his personal history brings to mind the story of Job, just less extreme.

This won the best feature film award in Denmark, beating out one of my favorites, Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding. I’m not sure if I’d go that far, Bier’s film is one of the best acted in history (and also features Mads Mikkelson); all four major actors in that won best acting awards somewhere in the world, six total (the two women won two each). This was a great year for Danish films, to say the least.

This won 18 awards out of 30 nominations, including several audience awards (Sao Paolo, Warsaw, Wisconsin). Ironically, at IMDB, the fans rate this 7.8 (almost in the top 250), while the critics at Metacritic (36 in all), rank it just 51 out of 100. So average filmgoers like this bizarre film more critics, you’ll think it would be just the opposite once you see it.

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Inside Man

Spike Lee, 2006 (8.6*)
One of the best films for Spike Lee in years is also one of the best heist films ever made. Just when you think a tired genre has used up all it’s variations comes along a new one for a new generation.

Clive Owen shines here as a mastermind who has plotted the perfect crime. Christopher Plummer owns a major bank more noted for it’s top security vault boxes, where anyone with loot or other valuables to hide can sleep securely at night knowing their goods are safe. He himself has something to hide in his own bank, so he calls in Jodie Foster as a mysterious power broker to help him keep his own secrets. A safe vault, that is, until a screenplay by Russell Gewirtz comes along, or we’d have no film.

A gang enters the bank, takes hostages, waits for the police, then calmly and confidently ask for demands they know won’t be met. After awhile negotiator Denzel Washington, in one of his best roles, begins to get suspicious after awhile that this is not a real robbery, and that something else is going on.

There truly is something else going on, but to say any more would venture into spoiler territory. Suffice to say that Lee has breathed new life into an old genre begun by the French film from director Jules Dassin, Rififi (1955, bw), and that is the re-enactment on film of a well-plotted heist – which usually goes wrong, though not always. A realistic homage to this was the U.S. film Thief, with James Caan, directed by Michael Mann. This stereotypical plot has been well satirized often, most effectively in the Italian film Big Deal on Madonna St (1959, bw) from director Mario Monicelli, which had me in stitches (look for a line in it, “getting something to eat”, and you’ll know what I mean). Also it was parodied by the Jules Dassin comedy Topkapi, in which a partially smart, partially bungling gang steals a valuable dagger from that museum in Istanbul, a parody of his own classic serious film.

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Mao's Last Dancer

Bruce Beresford, 2009 (8.6*)
Based on the autobiography of Li Cunxin, a dancer who was plucked from his mountain village in China at age 11 by members of the cultural revolution, and trained in classical ballet from that point on. Criticized for being weak, he added extra weights to his legs and spent many hours developing strength to go with his natural agility and long-limbed grace. He is played here by actor Chi Cao.

In 1979, he is sent to the Houston Ballet in a cultural exchange with the U.S. He often struggles with his conscience, on doing what he feels is right, or acting like a good diplomat for the Communist ideal in China. Eventually he falls in love with a dancer in Texas, and this then becomes his biggest personal challenge.

This could have been a movie of the week but for the touch of veteran director Beresford, director of best picture winner Driving Miss Daisy (1989), and the military trial film Breaker Morant (1980). The dance sequences are wonderfully shot, some of the best in cinema. For me, these carry the film, though for others it may drag it down. I think for a dancer, his story can well be told through his dancing, and for me it seems natural here, not strained like in many musicals.

I was genuinely moved by this film in several places. I've read online posts by other Chinese immigrants who say it's a very accurate portrayal of someone from that part of China, Qingdao I believe. For lovers of dance films, this one's almost up there with The Red Shoes.

Winner of 6 awards and 14 nominations

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In a Better World

Susanne Bier, Denmark, 2010 (8.6*)
Best Foreign Language Film (AA, GG)

Bier finally got a well-deserved Oscar® for foreign language film for this one about a doctor who shares his time between a refugee hospital in Africa and his family life in Denmark. Bier excels at paring away the surface of complex psychogical relationshiops between family members. Her earlier films After the Wedding,  (2006), which also had a Danish man volunteering to help the needy (in that case orphans in Mumbai, India), and Brothers (2004, about a husband that goes missing in the Afghanistan war and whose brother begins to take his place at home) were excellent works of art about intra-family relationships and self-discovery. I thought both deserved this long overdue award for her.

In this story, the horrors of Africa are at least partially offset by finding romance back in Denmark, when Anton, played by Mikael Persbrandt, newly separated, becomes interested in the divorced mother of one of his son’s schoolmates. The two boys become good friends first, when Anton’s son, new at school, comes to the aid of a boy targeted by bullies.

The film starts slowly but subtly escalates into some unforseeen territory, especially the story involving the boys. A little schoolyard bullying is just a prelude to more dramatic events. The adults in Bier’s films often have their lives shaped and affected by their children, and their own plans and designs become secondary to the immediate reality of being involved in the lives of others through being a parent. In most of her stories, the well-being of the group as a whole outweighs the desires of the individuals.

These are intelligent adult dramas in which there are no pat answers or typically ‘Hollywood’ solutions, which often means that two people agree they are in love then all the other problems magically disappear, film over. Bier is arguably the best woman director in the world right now (ok, I’ll say top three with India’s Deepa Mehta and Mira Nair), and her films never provide easy outs to complex stories, but rather require huge emotional commitment on the part of her characters to face life’s challenges head on.

In a Better World won 5 awards out of 13 nominations, not as many as her earlier films. For those who haven’t seen her work, I’d start with Brothers (13 awards), and the original not the U.S. remake, and then After the Wedding (9 awards), which I think is a masterpiece.

Susanne Bier

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Farewell

Christian Carion, France, 2009 (8.5*)

This intriguing spy film is more like a John le Carre novel (Smiley's People; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Spy Who Came in From the Cold), meaning realistic (and relatively slow moving), than a modern action-packed pseudo spy story (a la James Bond). The film actually recounts the true story of a Russian agent in the waning days of the Soviet Union who was dubbed Farewell in the west, a man inside Soviet intelligence who smuggled out important information. This is the thinly disguised fictional filming of the story of the Russian KGB colonel Vladimir Vetrov, who apparently was a lot stranger and impulsive than this film portrays.

His contact was a minor diplomatic liaison at the French embassy, Pierre Froment (Guillame Canet), involuntarily swept into the espionage game without any training, and who also lacked the common sense that most in that profession need to survive. Willem Dafoe has a minor role as a U.S. intelligence officer who fills in Froment on all the info the former is missing due to his low rank. (..and just see if you can spot David Soul in this film!)

In order to prove his veracity, the Russian, Gregoriev, played by Serbian director Emir Kusturica, leaks information to the west that proves that Soviet agents have penetrated the U.S. defense system – they know the locations of major radar installations, the nuclear codes, and even the delivery times of vendors to the White House. His intelligence treasure is the identities of these agents within the U.S., which the Russians call the X Line.

This is an intriguing and riveting story, in spite of some caricatures within the players, such as Fred Ward’s portrayal of Ronald Reagan, who has a few intelligence meetings in this story. Some who know the real story of Vetrov say it’s truly stranger than this fiction – perhaps the filmmakers toned it down to make it more realistic. At any rate, it belongs on the short list of realistic espionage films worth recommending.

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The Adjustment Bureau

George Nolfi, 2011 (8.0*)

This is another thoughtful and eccentric science fiction excursion from the sometimes brilliant, sometimes dark mind of author Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner, Minority Report), this based on his story “The Adjustment Team”. Director George Nolfi is a screenwriter turned director, who co-wrote the films Bourne Ultimatum (conclusion of Bourne Trilogy (2007)), The Sentinel, and Ocean’s Twelve.

This story deals with fate vs. human endeavor and choice. Matt Damon plays a man whose seemingly unimportant everyday routine is being manipulated by a clandestine team of men, who appear to be some type of secret agents who answer to an unknown master. They watch a futuristic time line of his life in a special book, and if it starts to deviate then they intervene.

This puts into reality the metaphor of fate, which is generally considered a pre-determined sequence of life events over which we have no control, in this case actual people employed to ensure that fate. Damon’s character has a chance meeting with dancer Emily Blunt, and the two have a mutual attraction, which is counter to the plan the agents are using as a guide, and is a potential romance that would cause great deviations from the plan.

The master of this plan is only referred to as The Chairman, and perhaps the story’s major failing is to give no real explanation of the importance of all this. Obvious comparisons will be made to Inception, since each is about altering reality, but this action occurs in the waking state of corporal reality and is not in any fantasy or imaginitive realm.

A common theme of Dick’s novels are reality vs. fantasy, with characters often struggling to distinguish the difference in the two – characters who are usually unbalanced either through insanity or mind-altering drugs. In this story, neither is the case, as a common man is attempting to overcome real people who are controlling his life events, but for an unknown reason.

There is nothing special about the acting here, in spite of a good cast, which features John Slattery of Mad Men who works for the adjustment team. The story could have packed more punch, but is a pleasant excursion for a science fiction film, one that doesn’t have wild west style shootouts. or space wars, or lovably fuzzy aliens, or human-devouring monsters. In that regard, it belongs in a sub-genre with Inception, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gattica, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it’s just not at the same artistic level as these others.

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The Illusionist (2010)

aka L'illusioniste
Sylvain Chomet, 2010, UK-France (8.0*)
#873 on our 2011 update of Top Ranked 1000 Films (all polls)
This is not to be confused with the real action film about a magician played by Edward Norton - this Illusionist is another hand-animated feature from Chomet, creator of the wonderful Triplets of Belleville, which emulated 50's Disney animated features in Chomet's own wonderfully warped style. In a documentary on the dvd, Chomet talks about the influence of those films on his early development as an animation artist, so he still renders these without computer animation, so these are made up of about 129,000 individual drawings for a 90 minute film, or 1440 per minute (24 p/sec x 60 sec), and of course, usually only the characters themselves move over a fixed background, which allow for much more detail in the animated 'set' since it won't be moving.

This film is actually a touching and poignant story from an unfilmed screenplay of French filmmaker and mime comic Jacques Tati. Like Triplets of Belleville and a Tati film, it has almost no dialog. Chomet has created a lead character that resembles Tati, so he's obviously animated this film to look like a film of Tati's. In this, Tati's character is a run-of-the-mill magician who plays near empty vaudeville venues.

Performing in Edinburgh, Scotland, he meets a young woman who is entralled by his tricks, and the two become close platonic friends; they explore the city together, and she eventually moves in with him.

Without giving anything away, I'll say that this is an adult story, with very little that would appeal to children, so right away that limits the market severely for animated features. This one doesn't even have the hilarity of Triplets of Belleville, which, though admittedly adult, still had Bruno the dog and a bicycle racer and other characters all ages could appreciate.

This is a valid effort by Chomet to give homage to Tati, and especially to his unfilmed story. I was quite touched by this story, and found it to be almost as unexpected and unpredictable as Triplets (but not quite, it's missing the same sparkle). For fans of Tati and Chomet, all will enjoy this, but it won't be one for the masses, only for the more discerning cinephiles.

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Unstoppable

Tony Scott, 2010 (8.2*)
This is another non-stop action film with very little else to offer, but it does what it intends very well, with expert editing and Oscar®-nominated sound. Based on a true story, a half mile long train in northern Pennsylvania carrying 8 cars of a deadly flammable glue chemical becomes a runaway thanks to some boneheaded railyard employees who violate two or three major safety rules within a couple of minutes. It manages to escape the railyard unmanned with the throttle open, and is suddenly an unscheduled train on the main track barreling towards Scranton and a dangerously slow elevated curve.

Denzel Washington is a veteran train engineer and Chris Pine is a conductor in training who have just brought a load from a zinc plant onto the same main line. After narrowly avoiding the runaway head on, they decide to help rein in the runaway train. Probably the only lulls in the steamrolling narrative are when they try to allow these two to get to know each other with banal chatter about each others personal lives while they're chasing down the train from behind.

The story's realism is heightened by the constant jumping back and forth, via phones and radios, with railyard operation head Connie, played by Rosario Dawson (Sin City, Clerks II), and the corporate VP of operations, Mr. Galvin, perfectly played by Kevin Dunn. Connie is trying to weigh all options, while Galvin and the other corporate suits are always weighing their potential actions vs. the overall cost to the corporation in millions and the potential ramifications on the stock's price and market cap.

In a way, the editing and venue shifts done in almost real time reminded me of Paul Greengrass's excellent narrative of 9/11, United 93, which concentrated on the jet brought down by passengers in western Pennsylvania, but which also jumped around from air traffic controllers to NORAD to the hijackers to give the viewers a great sense of all the activity involved in a major crisis of this nature, as various officials in different locations all respond to the public threat. (NORAD was trying to get permission from the President on 9/11 to SHOOT DOWN all other airliners suspected of being hijacked, but couldn't reach him as he was in the air and incommunicado for over half an hour)

Nominated for Best Action Film by the Broadcast Film Critics, which is where it belonged, it lost to Inception, which is a better film, albeit not a realistic one like this is. This story was documented live on tv from several helicopters so it was filmed pretty accurately. Don't expect a lot but action entertainment and you won't be disappointed.

Tony Scott (photo left), brother of director Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down, Blade Runner), is known this type of film, his others being Top Gun, True Romance, Man on Fire, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, and the remake of Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.

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The Railway Children

Lionel Jefferies, 1970 (9.0*)
Catherine Morshead, 2000 (miniseries) (9.2*)

Edith Nesbit's wonderful 1906 novel about one English family's children thankfully has two wonderful film adaptations to recommend. They are both faithful to the novel and provide lovable cinematic tributes to her popular work, which is touching and humane without pretension or sentimentality. [see note below about Nesbit herself]

The original is the 1970 film from character actor turned director Lionel Jefferies. A happy family in Victorian London has everything change one night when some strange men come to their home, argue with the father, then leave with him. As a result these new financial hardships, the mother takes the kids and relocates in the countryside, where she barely earns enough for food by writing stories for magazines.

There's not a lot of activity in their new neighborhood, so they take daily walks down the railroad tracks, waving to the train's passengers from a nearby hillside. This somehow seems like a appropriate method of maintaining contact with the outside world, now relegated to nothing but newspaper stories.Some of the passengers always wave back, and include one important railroad man. This unique method of friendly conversation stirs his interest in the children, and the relationship proves mutually beneficial.

Jenny Agutter is wonderful as the oldest child, Bobbie, a young teen, almost a surrogate parent to the other two, Sally and Gary being pre-teens; all are surprisingly independent and risilient. Dinah Sheridan plays the mother, not onscreen nearly as much as the children.

The trains and station are as alive here as human characters, and provide a valuable literary metaphor. In fact, everyone in town gets to know the children through the railroad itself, which is a lifeline to their village. For me, this novel and film said a lot about the passage of time sadly removing our relationships to trains and a gentler, more leisurely time, one without the modern rush of autos and planes, which has removed the social interaction of the bygone era of steam, when most travel was on trains and ships.

The second version is a tv miniseries from 2000, directed by Catherine Morshead. In this version, Richard Attenborough plays the railroad man, Mr. Perk, and Jenny Agutter (Bobbie in the original), plays the childrens' mother, while Jemima Rooper has her original role. I think I may prefer the length of this longer version more, but both are excellent adaptations and make wonderful G-rated family films.


Note: Edith Nesbit's was a British socialist who wanted conditions improved for the impoverished workers of her country, and wrote over 60 books, mostly for or about children (over 40), the ultimate victims of poverty, as due to malnourishment many don't reach adulthood. She and her husband co-founded the socialst organization The Fabian Society, the precursor to the modern Labour Party.

Nesbit wrote about children without writing down to them. They are treated as intelligent, caring, and almost adult in maturity when having to deal with harsh life circumstances. This is likely why her writings are still popular today. In fact, she's considered the first author for children in dealing with the real world and it's problems rather than a fantasy world.

her page at Wikipedia

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Three Times

Hsaio-hsien Hou, Taiwan, 2005 (8.3*)
This is a film in three parts, really more like three short films. The only thing they have in common is actress Shu Qi, who stars in each story, along with Chang Chen who plays her romantic interest in each.

The first story is "Time for Love". Shu Qi plays a hostess in a poolroom, and after she leaves a young man who left to serve in the army returns and searches for her. This is a gentle story about love awakening, with tender scenes of shyness and unfamiliarity that should be in everyone's memory.

The second story is "Time for Freedom", and it's the part that stands out as not fitting the film. It's the story of a courtesan in a brothel around 1910, and it really looks like a lost section of Hou 1998 film Flowers of Shanghai, about courtesans in a Shanghai brothel in 1880, a film Shu Qi was not in; maybe Hou wishes she had been. The disconcerting part of this is that when the characters speak, there's no sound, only piano music, then we get silent era placards with their dialogue well after it's spoken. There was no reason to inflict viewers with this, as concurrent subtitles would have sufficed.

The last story is "Time for Youth". Shu Qi plays a young woman with epilepsy, who lives with her lesbian lover, but becomes interested in a male photographer, who usually photographs female models. This has some exhilirating motorcycle footage, a la Wong Kar-Wai in Fallen Angels. Once again, a Hou film has a cinematic tribute to Wong, who has mentioned Kar-Wai in interviews; I think he sees himself as the Taiwan equivalent of what Kar-Wai is for Hong Kong cinema.

I suppose it's inevitable that comparisons be made with Max Ophuls' La Plaisir, three De Maupassant short stories about French romance. In fact, when Ophuls made his, these 3 part films were in vogue in Europe and the U.S. Perhaps Wong Kar-Wai has started this modern revival, with his Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, which were intended to be one long film with three parts but was cut into two films due to length, and which inspired Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (in his words), also in three parts.

Two parts of this film warrant a rating of 9, unfortunately the center portion gets about a 6 due to the unnecessary silent film pastiche. However, that section does have a beautiful color palette (see photo below)
Winner of 4 awards, out of 14 nominations

All these films of Hou's have won either best director or best film somewhere: Flowers of Shanghai; Good Men, Good Women; A Summer at Grandpa's; Tong Nien Wang Shi; In the Hands of a Puppet Master; Millennium Mambo; Three Times; Cafe Lumiere

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