2011 In Review

I don't really have a top ten list of films for 2011 because I don't feel like I saw a complete sample of things that came out - I missed A LOT of movies that I wanted to see.  But several things did come out that, if I had a top ten list, would most likely have made the cut:

X-Men: First Class and Captain America, both two of the finest super hero movies the genre has turned out since, well, ever.

Drive, which won't get nearly as much awards press as I want it to.

Hugo, which I liked a whole lot more than I expected to, due to an unfortunately misleading trailer.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a movie which manages to be more exciting than both the original source material and the first adaptation.

Margin Call, which I tried to write about but had difficulties I can't really articulate; it's a wonderfully sharp piece of writing and acting that I maybe didn't really understand completely?  There's a lot of financial business that I didn't get, but it's a testament to the power of the actors that it didn't matter.  Check it out if you get the chance - I don't understand how it didn't get a wider release, with the surplus of powerhouse names in it (Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Spacey, Bradley Cooper, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany).

Maybe Moneyball?  I didn't write about this one, either, because I have a problematic relationship with it.  I want to recognize the wonderful writing and excellent performances (especially by Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman), but...it didn't resonate with me the same way it seems to have with the rest of the world.  I just didn't feel like there was enough of a story to fill the whole time slot - all the bits about Pitt's family life felt like padding to me, and didn't really add anything in terms of emotional development.  I wish it had been a really tightly-focused 60 minute film, concentrating on the baseball aspects of Pitt's character's life rather than a weakly-written relationship with a daughter I didn't care about.  The fascinating moments of this movie are the negotiations and the game itself, not the private lives of the characters.

If I get the chance to see more 2011 films before the end of January, I'll do a list for you guys.  Otherwise, what's above is pretty much my greatest hits of things I actually saw.

My biggest hope for 2012 in terms of film is simple: MORE.  ANIMATED.  MOVIES.  Is it just me, or was 2011 COMPLETELY LACKING in good animation?  I'm not sure I realized it until I watched the Golden Globes on Sunday, but to follow 2010, a year which gave us Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon, and Tangled with a spat of sequels and poorly reviewed items that disappeared almost as soon as they hit theaters seems...sad.  I hope Pixar delivers with BRAVE, is all I'm saying.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

At this point you've probably at least heard about David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, if not seen or read it for yourself.  I don't honestly have anything new to say about the film itself in a reviewer's capacity - it's really good, and has been adequately covered by the professionals.  But I do want to weigh in on the film's cornerstone, Rooney Mara's portrayal of the enigmatic Lisbeth Salander.

In an article titled "Girls on Film: Softening and Sexualizing Lisbeth Salander," the author, Monika Batyzel, claims that Fincher has essentially removed the teeth from Salander; that because of American film tropes, she is a softer, less effective character than in either Larsson's original text or than Noomi Rapace's portrayal in the Swedish adaptation.  I disagree - I think that Mara's Salander is more true to the text than Rapace's, and I found it to be a much more interesting and powerful performance.  I also disagreed when everyone was claiming that the poster with Mara naked on it devalued Salander; read my opinion on that (which informs this one) here.


(Mild spoilers follow.)


Batyzel observes that "Fincher removes the suffocating, repetitive sense that Lisbeth is prey. Bjurman starts off warm and seemingly logical. In comparison, Lisbeth appears like a rude, antisocial child spurning honest help. Mara’s version snarls before he gives her reason to."  Here Batyzel and I disagree because we read the first scene between Salander and Bjurman very differently.  Maybe it was because I knew what was coming, but I found Yorick van Wageningen quietly menacing; his soft, slow way of speaking is patronizing and controlling.  And Salander is a character who has learned from an early age that the unfamiliar is nearly always dangerous, and unfamiliar men especially so.  It is appropriate that she reacts this way from the start because Bjurman is an unknown.  She has no reason to be nice to him.  (She reacts similarly when Blomkvist pays his first visit to her, hiding a tazer in the waistband of her pants.)  The "suffocating, repetitive sense that Lisbeth is prey" is saturated in every aspect of Mara's being: unlike Rapace, she shrinks and skulks around, makes hardly any eye contact, and only accedes to being touched when she initiates it (at which point she becomes ferociously dominant, keeping control over the situation).

I happen to think that Fincher and Mara's Salander is a closer match to the original literary character than Rapace's portrayal.  In the books, she is described as childlike rather than boyish, genderless more than anything else.  Her hardness comes from that deceptive delicacy - Rapace is literally all ropy muscle and menacing stares, but I find Mara's fragility and her frustrating refusal to meet the eye of the camera more emblematic of Salander.

Lisbeth Salander is already a sexualized character.  Larsson is never shy about showing that - she has a lot of sex with various partners, and treats it in a very matter-of-fact manner; she's just as brusque about it in the book as she is in Fincher's film when she comes in Blomkvist's room and strips off her pants.  Perhaps the biggest indication that she is not as alienated from her body as Batyzel wants to think comes in the second book, when she decides she likes the fake boobs she's been wearing so much that she gets implants.  Her relationship to her body may be occasionally problematic, but she's certainly not afraid of it, and is aware of her appearance and appeal to others.

The last thing in Batyzel's article I want to address is this: "In a pivotal moment in the book, Lisbeth says: “I’m going to take him” and runs off as Blomkvist tries “to shout to her to wait.” In Fincher’s film, she asks him for permission, and only acts with his blessing. Perhaps we can accept the changes in how Mara presents Salander. But it’s unacceptable to take a woman made into a phenomenon because of her solitary strength and particular moral compass and drive, and turn her into a romantic girl saved and guided by a man."  Mara delivers this line (a simple "May I?" with a jab of her chin towards Stellan Skarsgard's retreating figure) in such a wry fashion that it's almost comical; she's deferring to the fact that technically Blomkvist hired her and thus defines the parameters of what her job entails, but there's no submission in her tone.  And let's not forget that this comes immediately after she herself saves Blomkvist with an incredibly satisfying golf club to Skargard's jaw.  She's no waif that needs saving; if anything, she's checking that Blomkvist is going to be alright left by himself after she goes after the villain.

A Reaffirmation on why I love movies

I love movies.

I love them because they're transportive, because they're sentimental, because they're exciting.  I love them because they tell you so much about the people who make them.  I love them because I can watch the same one, over and over, and continue to get something back from it.  I love how they move me.  I love everything about them.

And apparently so does Martin Scorsese.

Hugo is a giant love letter to cinema.  Affection saturates every frame.  Set against the lush backdrop of Paris in winter, there is not a moment of this film that fails to remind you how powerful movies are and how deeply they resonate with people.  It starts as a mystery: Hugo, an achingly young boy who lives orphaned in the walls of a train station taking care of the clocks, is trying to fix a small automaton, a project originally started by his father.  Fixing the automaton is how Hugo stays connected to his father; he is convinced that, once functional, the writing machine will reveal a hidden message from the deceased Monsieur Cabret.

To fix the machine Hugo steals bits of clockwork from George (Ben Kingsley), who owns a toy shop in the train station; his god-daughter is Isabelle, enchanted with the idea of the great adventure and loquacious from devouring every book she can get her hands on.  She meets Hugo when he's caught by George and has his notebook (full of mechanical sketches done by his father) taken from him by the older man.  Working together, Hugo and Isabelle begin to discover that the automaton is more than it seems and may help George re-discover his purpose in life.  (I won't tell you who George is, if you're trying to preserve the surprise, although IMDB has his full name listed.  If you're interested in the real person Kingsley is portraying, click here.)

I'm not the first person to use the phrase "love letter to film" in description of Hugo, and I use it now because it's the only phrase I can think of that encompasses the beauty and poetry of this film.  Scorsese gives us a symphony of light and clockwork, punctuated by gusts of steam from passing trains and the snowy streets of Paris.  Visually this movie is stunning: the train station is all warm, golden light, framed by the faces of clocks and ornate iron grates.  Paris is blue and white winter, with the lights of the city (and especially the Eiffel Tower) picked out like stars in the sweeping shots of the city.

Asa Butterfield as our titular hero has huge blue eyes that break your heart in nearly every shot.  He and Chloe Moretz (as Isabelle) are the focus of the film, and they do an excellent job of the heavy lifting.  I'm always ready to simply accept the job that child actors do in films, and when a young person comes along who can actually carry his scenes next to a veteran like Kingsley I'm properly impressed; both Butterfield and Moretz pull their roles off beautifully.  Moretz should start winning awards any day now, if she continues doing this well.

It was interesting to me that Scorsese chose to do a movie that's essentially an ode to silent film and the history of film in 3D; I understand now, I think.  We get scenes from some of the earliest films made, and to think about how far the film industry has progressed since those first efforts is really breathtaking.  About 98% of the time I think 3D is poorly done and completely unnecessary; here, it's beautiful and thought-provoking.  The early filmmakers were inventing the wheel that Hollywood keeps trying to re-imagine, and every once in a while a film comes along that shows you not only a new way to build that whee, but a whole new purpose for it you could never have imagined.  Hugo is this kind of movie.

Go see it.  You won't be disappointed, I promise.

Horror Movies I Secretly Kind Of Like

In the spirit of the impending holiday, I thought I might do another top ten list.  Everyone likes lists, right?

Despite my almost pathological aversion to horror movies, I have managed to see a handful in my movie-loving life.  I present to you: The Top Ten Horror Movies I Could Bring Myself To Watch, And Also Kind Of Really Liked (But Don't Tell Anyone).  These are in alphabetical order, rather than ranked in any sort of fashion.

American Psycho

I've heard mixed reviews about the book, but this film is phenomenal.  Christian Bale is just so GOOD in this role: you feel like you're being personally invited by Patrick Bateman to watch his mental unraveling, and as the things he does escalate up the horror scale Bale manages to preserve that smooth, shiny edge which makes the whole film surreal in addition to terrifying.  Bateman's shark-toothed grin will haunt you while you ponder the movie's messages of social emptiness (preferably while listening to Huey Lewis and the News).

Cthulhu (2007)

NIGHTMARES, you guys. Legitimate nightmares, made all the more insidious by the fact that while I was watching this one I wasn't all that scared.  In this little indie jewel, a history professor returns to his birthplace in a little seaside town in Oregon for a funeral, and discovers that his family (and the whole town) is deeply involved in an Elder Gods cult.  The movie is filmed in a very amateur, hand-held camera style, but it adds to the creepy atmosphere.  Dan Gildark, the director, is sparing with his jumpy moments and horror images, which makes them all the more effective - the film's stark style will give you chills during the last beach scene.

The Dark Crystal

More frightening than Labyrinth and Willow rolled into one, if you ask me (that scene were the witch turns everyone into pigs?  Scared the HELL out of me as a child).  The lack of human faces makes the dark fantasy setting even more eerie, playing up the alien nature of the gelflings and skeksis and of the environment itself.  The scene where Kira, one of our gelfling heroes, is being drained of life by the vicious, vulture-like skeksis, has pretty much haunted me since I first saw this as a child.

In The Mouth Of Madness

If Stephen King had written Cthulhu, the result would have been In The Mouth Of Madness.  The story of Sutter Cane, a horror writer who molds reality with his macabre stories, is like a batshit Neil Gaiman; one fabulous sequence has him banging on a typewriter in a church while a thick wooden door pulsates malevolently behind him.  A wonderfully nihilistic horror film that blithely plays with your sense of reality, and laughs the whole time: some of the things in this film are so completely absurd that, like Sam Neill's John Trent, you can't help but laugh helplessly.

Jennifer's Body

At this point, you might have guessed that I appreciate my horror balanced with a nice dose of sarcasm or tongue-in-cheek, and this particular film has a heaping share of both. Megan Fox is COMPLETELY believable as a man-eating demon (gee, I wonder why...?), but she also clearly is not taking the movie too seriously, and neither is anyone else.  They're having fun with it, which is good, because shit is ridiculous and the movie totally owns it; the indie punk Satanic band members are just icing on the demonic cake.  It's kind of like Buffy, if the script had been more self-conscious and less tasteful.

Let Me In

What I didn't know about this before I saw it is that it's actually a love story.  The relationship between Abby the vampire and Owen the outcast kid is sweet and awkward, even after you see Abby flip out like a ninja to snack on some hobo.  Low lighting and fantastic sound editing are used to great effect, and Chloe Moretz-as-monster brings some much needed excitement to a movie that could have ended up over-wrought and moodily dull.  The tender moments and the scary bits add to the tension, and the ending is both touching and depressingly inevitable.

The Ruins

The Ruins should have been a dumb creature feature, but it actually has a lot going for it that makes it quite effective.  A group of co-eds goes hiking in Mexico and ends up on a Mayan pyramid covered in a parasitic, man-eating plant; native people surround them to keep them on the pyramid or kill them so as not to spread the growth of the plant.  The plant itself is a surprisingly fantastic villain; it creeps under the skin like an alien parasite, mimics human voices to separate the co-eds, and eats away at them, driving them insane. It almost feels like a medical horror, featuring sequences where the plant gets under the skin like some kind of bug, threads its way into injuries, and one particularly imaginative amputation scene that ends with cauterization by frying pan (these kids are nothing if not resourceful).  Not for the faint of heart.

Saw

They go way downhill after number two, but before they descend into tasteless torture porn the Saw franchise was more about psychological horror than spilling blood.  Asking that all important question, "how far would you go to save your own life?" Saw the first is all yellow lighting, fast-paced editing, and clever film shots that don't quite show you all the gore it hints at.  Where the subsequent films lose their restraint in favor of cheap shock value, this first film reaches in and grabs your brain right in its survival center. Plus, that ENDING.  Whatever criticisms you have about the sequels, you have to acknowledge that, at least for the first outing, someone on the scriptwriting staff was really being clever.

Silence of the Lambs

Will we ever have another villain as charismatic as Hannibal Lecter?  I rather hope not.  Anthony Hopkins is a complete scene stealer in this classy slasher flick, dominating the background with his panoramas of intestines while Buffalo Bill skins his victims in the main plotline.  A film that's become iconic for a reason; the scene where Jodie Foster bumbles around in pitch black while being stalked by the night vision goggles-wearing Bill still gives me chills.

A Tale of Two Sisters

Unlike the other films on this list, I never re-watched this Korean horror film and have no desire to - but that doesn't mean that, while I was watching it, I didn't appreciate its construction and effect.  Equal parts mental exercise and ghost story, the family elements and the relationship between the young sisters are surprising spots of warmth in an otherwise chilling movie.  It's also a kind of fairytale, a play on the Cinderella story, and rather beautiful - the camera work finds beauty in an imposing wardrobe as well as a shot of a dead bird.  Even when it's being poetic, though, the tension still pulls you thin, and waiting to find out what's inside that wardrobe made my knuckles go white.

The Avengers

I wanted to write about my reaction to The Avengers trailer about a week ago, but I had trouble because there aren't all that many interesting ways for me to say I AM EXCITE, MAY SHOULD GET HERE FASTER.  So, there you go: it's a fabulous trailer, and I have high expectations for the films.

I think it's both interesting and worth mentioning that Marvel has basically taken a backwards approach to The Avengers franchise; usually, you get the ensemble film and THEN the spin-offs.  Do to necessity, perhaps, Marvel gave us the spin-offs first, and now has the herculean task of bringing together half a dozen disparate, egotistical, arrogant and powerful characters.  Some things we should note that Marvel did particularly well in preparing for this task, which are also all reasons why The Avengers has more potential to be wonderful than to fall on its face:

- Giving the characters worth caring about their own films.  Let's be honest: Black Widow, Hawkeye, Agent Coulson and Nick Fury are pretty awesome characters, but none of them are strong enough to carry their own films.  And Marvel wisely didn't try; instead, they built them up through other, more interesting movies.  The Thor movie is sort of the exception, and I think it suffered because Thor himself isn't a very interesting character, but the argument can be made that that film was more about Loki than Thor anyway. 

- Hiring fabulous writers that (most importantly) have experience with ensemble casts.  Joss Whedon writes really good dialogue, and he has shown in multiple venues that he writes distinctive voices for multiple characters really well.  Zak Penn, the other credited script writer, worked on one of the best comic book movies of the last ten years (X2), and fabricated two sequels that, compared to their originals, were veritable works of genius (Norton's Hulk and Elektra, the latter of which I will defend until I die because I actually thought it was fun).  He also wrote X-Men: The Last Stand, and regardless of what you thought of that particular film (I liked it), the dialogue was as solid as its predecessors.  These guys know what they're doing.

- The casting is perfection.  I've already written about how impressed I am with Chris Evans' Captain America (read my review here), and at this point it pretty much goes without saying that Robert Downey Jr. = Tony Stark (similarly to how Patrick Stewart = Professor X).  Chris Hemsworth as Thor was one of the only interesting things about that movie, and Mark Ruffalo certainly can't do worse at being Bruce Banner than anyone already has.  And if I need to mention Sam Jackson's Nick Fury here, you really haven't been paying attention.

- Not introducing a new villain.  I've just convinced myself that the purpose of Thor was actually to introduce Loki, rather than Thor himself, and all of his daddy issues, which means that The Avengers won't have to dedicate valuable time to introducing a brand new villain.  What I hope this means is that we'll get to spend more time seeing how all these egos learn to play nice together, which is honestly more interesting to me than villain backstory.  Which leads me to my last point:

- We're essentially done with backstory.  All of the establishing is done.  We know everything about these people that we need to, so we can get right into the meat of the story.  It really, really bugs me when filmmakers waste time, or spin out a movie longer than it should be; hopefully, with The Avengers we'll get no wasted space.

Drive, or Ryan Gosling's Official Oscar Bid

I knew precisely three things about Drive before I walked into the theater:

1. Ryan Gosling plays a stunt driver, who
2. Moonlights as a criminal getaway driver, and
3. May or may not curb stomp someone.

Turns out that this was exactly the way to experience this slow-like-honey action film.
I don't actually want to say a whole lot about this movie, because I loved it and I want you to experience it the way that I did.  So, first off, I'm going to say officially: I loved Drive and you should PROBABLY go see it immediately.

Drive is a strange, strange little action movie that does not behave at all like an action movie should.  Oh, in some respects it's all there: car chases, fight scenes, high stakes, a variety of guns and shivs.  But the tension is constant; there are no adrenaline spikes because you're nervous all the time.   Nicolas Winding Refn pulls his shots out like taffy, stretching every moment until you're ready to jump out of your skin.  Everything pulls in Drive, from the repetitive refrains in the soundtrack numbers to the long stretches of artificial light.  Flickering lights in the elevator, streetlight passing over Gosling's face, the yellowed glow of shoddy apartment light; Gosling and Carey Mulligan (playing, quite effectively, Gosling's rundown neighbor with a young son and a husband in prison) are frequently bathed in artificial light.  Instead of looking cliche, it ends up feeling very dreamlike and warm.

It's the Ryan Gosling show from start to finish, commanded not only by the force of Gosling's performance but also in the very composition of the film.  Gosling mirrors Refn's pacing, reveling in the pauses and joyfully taunting you with every bated breath you're forced to take until he finally, FINALLY delivers his lines.  It's in those pauses that Gosling's performance really shines; Gosling does most eloquent acting in the pauses before he speaks, and in the way he clenches the steering wheel, and in the way that he drives.  It reminded me of Heath Ledger's performance in Brokeback Mountain, in that Gosling delivers a full body performance without actually needing to say anything at all.

Drive keeps you simmering without ever quite bringing on the boil; it has moments with more actions than others, sure, but the filming style and lighting and music act together to give even the most violent sequences an ethereal, almost sleepy quality.  It's a demanding movie that requires a lot from its audience, but if you can have some patience and revel in the silences with Gosling and Refn, the payoff is totally worth it. 

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: NSFW

I'm deeply excited about David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

On the one hand, I get that Hollywood is kind of jumping the shark by remaking foreign films less than a decade after the original film comes out.  Especially considering the international film market in America.  But I look at it this way: sometimes a story is just TOO GOOD to be left alone.  Which is probably the case with TGWTDT - the books are so popular, and the story is so good, that the American film industry couldn't leave that golden egg untouched, even if the Swedish films are barely out of the projection rooms.

I get that a lot of people are upset, considering the acclaim that Noomi Rapace has gotten from her portrayal of the problematic anti-heroine, Lisbeth Salander.  I get that many people see this film as unnecessary.  Y'all know that personally, I did not enjoy the Swedish film and I did not enjoy Rapace in the role - my entry discussing that little skeleton in my cinema-loving closet can be read here.  Like I said at the beginning of this post, I'm deeply excited about Fincher's version and I'm deeply excited about Rooney Mara as Salander.  Which brings me to what I want to talk to you about today: that controversial movie poster.  (This is also why this particular entry is NSFW - nipples are about to be unleashed.)

(Side note: all of Mara's piercings are authentic.  She got them done as part of the job.  I kinda hope she keeps them, not because I find them particularly attractive but because I'm pretty tickled by the idea of that kind of method acting.  Plus fake piercings typically don't look as good as the real thing.)

Can you hear the movie audiences of America complaining about this image?  However I feel about it, it's not hard to understand - we are not used to bare breasts hanging out in our advertising.  Or in public at all, really.  Fincher is obviously making a statement with this poster about how prepared he is to "bare it all," so to speak, and I support that - not to mention that the image itself is starkly beautiful.  But I get the objections people have to it.

Well, almost all the objections.  Here's a quote from an Entertainment Weekly forum about this image:

"Lisbeth Salander is fighting back from being a victim. To have her posed in such a vulnerable state (and yes, when you’re nude, you’re vulnerable, whether you’re “strong” or not) really negates the power that the Lisbeth character has earned. She is supposed to be the protector, not Blomquist. I doubt that Stieg Larsson would have approved this campaign."

There's a lot of this going around.  That the problem with the image is that it cuts down how strong Salander is, how it misogynistically shows Craig as Blomkvist protecting her, restraining her, and how it negates a powerful female protagonist.

The problem with this view is that it's wrong.  If you haven't read the book and plan to, no worries, I'm not going to let fly any spoilers.  But suffice to say (and you've probably gotten a hint of this just in all the talking about this movie that's going on) Salander ISN'T strong, and that's the point.  The entire third book is about all the people she's managed to get in her corner banding together to save her.  I'm not saying she's a damsel in distress, but Salander is a broken, prickly character whose story arc is about learning how to share her problems with people she learns to trust, and how ultimately her problems are SO big she can't save herself on her own.  Blomkvist is protecting her in the poster in the same way he does through every single book.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Salander.  She's incredibly resilient, resourceful, and intelligent, but she only ever projects the appearance of strength to other people.  Inside, she's crumbling, and it's up to Blomkvist (and eventually others) to catch her pieces and put her back together.  This is what her story is about.