March. It's a Wrap

Thank God March is over! It's basically Sad Bridge Month between Oscar Insanity and "okay so what's this year going to be like?" Then our Beloved Dame Elizabeth Taylor died and so the month was a bit of a bummer. But, I must add, for our time spent getting to know you with Reader o' the Day! In case you've been a fair weather reader -- it's a pleasant 78° in here year round. There's no need to migrate -- here's what'cha missed on TFE.

It was unusually animated. Pun intended.

A History of Women in Film -From "American's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford to Best Director winner Kathryn Bigelow.
101 Dalmatians 50½ thoughs on its 50th anniversary. Woof woof.
Salo and Dogtooth Robert bridged the distance between two shock classics.
Hit Me With Your Best Shot We all shouted "STELLLLLAAAA" with Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. (As part of a weeklong Tennessee Williams Retrospective)
Akira Redux On the impending whitewashing of this classic Japanese movie.

Toy Story Nathaniel's fav moments from Pixar's promising debut. They lived up to the promise, huh?
Princess Anne an overheard conversation about Anne Hathaway
Manuel Muñoz an interview with a great new novelist on Hitchcock's Psycho
Crimes of the Heart Kurtis looked at "the other Steel Magnolias"
Aronofsky Breaks Up With Wolverine an exposé of the real reasons he split.

Most Popular: Best Actress Finale, Peter Pan, and When Did Stars Start Posing Like Each Other?
Most Discussed: Best Actress Finale, Cast This: Les Miz and  Cast This: Game Change

Coming in April: We're getting really wet and sudsy for the return of "April Showers" since we kept hearing from readers about it (honestly didn't realize it was that popular). We're going a little mad with Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994). And the guesswork for next year's Oscars begins. Plus we're going to both Nashville (the Film Festival) and the circus -- or to circus movies that is with Water for Elephants on the way.

Film Bitch Awards Continue

Our annual awards jamboree went into an unexpected coma due to Oscar exhaustion but the film bitch awards are back as we try and really not just sorta wrap up the 2010 film year. So here are BEST POSTER, SEXPOT and DIVA OF THE YEAR featuring achievements from Cher, Joan Rivers, I Am Love, Fish Tank, Burlesque, Love and Other Drugs and yes even Alice in Wonderland (among other films).

 

So that's six pages down. One more to go. Woohoooooo almost finis! (Just in time for the NEW Oscar predictions for 2011 which always kick off in some form on April 1st ). We'll fill in the BEST SCENES next (final page) but I'm still debating various efforts, like this number below for Best Musical Number in a Non Musical Film.

Since not many of you saw Hrithik Roshan in Kites here's the film's best scene. Someone told me it was edited out for the US version of the movie (they released three versions I believe) which is in-san-it-y since there's plenty of unnecessary filler elsewhere in the movie (seriously you could lose like 10 minutes simply by shaving of 10 seconds from every scene involving long soulful gazes between Hrithik and Barbara Mori there are so many of them) and this is Hrithik's only musical number. And don't people buy tickets for his movies because of the dance numbers?

I could watch him dance for hours. So it's kind of annoying that the editing is so hyperactive. I mean his body is all the hyperactivity one needs, always locking, shaking, popping, flipping, swaying, slinking, swerving, slurving (I made that last word up) and busting out all over.  Hrithik just missed the sexpot list. The sexiest people are, generally speaking, the ones who just exude carnality (Mila Kunis in Black Swan and Tom Hardy in Inception, hell-O) without every noticeably forcing the point. But since Hrithik is basically a superhero made flesh, one forgives most of the oversized everything so... almost! Here's hoping he gets another chance headlining an international effort like Kites, just a better one next time.

So, what'cha think of them divas? And I'll gladly take recommendations for the final categories: Action Sequence, Musical Moments, Kiss & Sex Scenes, Opening & Closing Scenes, Credits and just Best Moments in general.

February Wraps. What's Coming in March?

February may be the shortest month of the year but due to Oscar night, it's the longest for us. If you don't visit the site regularly in the Off-Oscar season I urge you to reconsider. We have a lot of fun with a much rangier selection of movies from March thru November. I can't be the only one who is worn out by the Big Ten. Nevertheless, I don't mean to gripe about the Oscars. That's a knee jerk response born from fatigue. In a month or two (or maybe even a week's time) we'll miss his shiny golden ass. Oh, you know we will!

Some highlights of posting this month in case you missed them.

• James and Anne vs. The World it's weird to look at this now that we've seen them do their thang. Or now that we've seen Anne try to do her thing while James stood there.
• The Oscar Short Films Michael wrote up all 15 shorts. These posts had staying power as more of you checked out the nominees. I think the added exposure of these categories over the past few years (thanks to YouTube and iTunes) is one of the best Oscar developments.
• X-Men First Class the mutant team's superhold on my childhood
• Interviews! We gabbed with nominated craftsmen from The King's Speech and True Grit as well as the Oscar winning editors of The Social Network.
• Bright Star. Love's Cool Breeze Kurtis on a swoony underappreciated gift from 2009
• 30 Seconds to Summer it was fun to step away from the prestige films and move over to the boom boom whiz bang of coming blockbusters. They're just around the corner.
• My First (Three) Deans JA finally drank the James Dean Kool-aid. 
• And finally a round of applause for TFE's contributors. The Podcast has been an incepted dream BRAAAAHHHHHHHM with Nick, Katey and Joe. Our Oscar Podcast wrap up comes this Sunday. And I always enjoy Robert's Distant Relatives , Andreas new Mix Tape and Alexa's Curios because it's the only times I get to be surprised by what shows up on the site. Well done.

COMING IN MARCH...

We'll wrap up Oscar (Podcast!) and the Film Bitch Awards this week.

Then... A NEW FILM YEAR. I've designated March as Reader Appreciation Month. There will also be a Tennessee Williams Centennial "Stellllllaaaaaaaaaaaa", dispatches from New Directors/New Films,  the return of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, and more. Please stick around. There's more to life than Oscar.

P.S. I'm suddenly violently ill. At least the flu politely waited for Oscar night to pass. Thank you, flu!

Best of 2010: Nathaniel's Top Ten List

Previously on "Best of the Year"
Honorable Mentions: Scott Pilgrim, Another Year, Winter's Bone, etcetera
Runners Up: A Prophet, Toy Story 3, Rabbit Hole

TOP TEN LIST

10 How to Train Your Dragon (see previous article)
09 The Ghost Writer (see previous article)
08 Fish Tank (see previous article)

Animal Kingdom dir. David Michôd.
[SPC, August 15th]
It begins with a banal static shot of a mother & son watching a game show, all zoned out like couch potatoes. A few seconds later paramedics arrive. Surprise, you've been staring at a dead woman! This is but the first of many chilling upheavals (and, uh, dead bodies). Her orphaned son "J" is soon picked up by his estranged Grandma (Jacki Weaver in an Oscar worthy performances) and dropped right into her lion's den; his uncles are all crooks. Animal Kingdom circles around introducing this testosterone-heavy crime family and then it makes like a boa constrictor. It may be the family that's getting squeezed but you have to remind yourself to breathe. It's the year's best crime drama and a major arrival for first timer writer/director David Michôd.

The Fighter dir. David O. Russell
[Paramount, Dec 17th]
Springing as it does from the extremely tired sports bio, this movie is a real miracle. It's tough to single out a favorite moment or element because it's "squirrely" humanity keeps popping into frame even within standard tropes and traditional scenes. Christian Bale and Melissa Leo and Christian Bale are a perfect exhaustive mother and son but Mark Wahlberg and Amy Adams quieter work as Mickey and Charlene resonates, too. David O. Russell is the movie's MVP. He's not brawling or slugging it out as many directors do. Like Mickey he's picking his punches... "Head. Body. Head. Body". He's an even craftier boxer. You never know where the next punch is landing "Head. Body. Funnybone. Heart".

The rest is in alpha order. 

"No rankings?" you scream in disbelief and protest? See, it's like this. It's late at night and I'm way tired and I kept changing the order and I finally gave up. But I gotta announce my personal Best Picture nominees.  You don't wanna know medals already, do you? (Don't answer that.) We've just begun our annual awardage.

Black Swan dir. Darren Aronofsky
[Fox Searchlight, Dec 5th]
"It's so pink. Pretttttty" Nina (Natalie Portman) says peering down at a grapefruit. What is it with Aronofsky and grapefruit? (See also: Requiem for a Dream). Nina is in some ways a silly girl, terrified of her own shadow, grossed out by sex, at odds with her body, still living in her mother's apartment.  Black Swan is silly and girlie itself, in love with its most histrionic moments, its mad crushes, and always eager to peer over but then retreat from the precipice [Spoiler] until the actual adult moment arrives when Nina dances the Black Swan. So what to make of artistic triumph being a literal fall if not, perhaps, a literal death? [/Spoiler] It's odd that Aronofsky's fifth feature feels so juvenile after his most adult (The Wrestler) but he's clearly having a ball. Nina's not the only one seeing reflections. This is Aronofsky's own funhouse hall of mirrors.

Blue Valentine dir. Derek Cianfrance
[Weinstein Co., Dec 29th]
Hundreds of stories announce their resolution straightaway and use the 'How did we get here?' hook as they circle back to kick off the story. Blue Valentine doesn't do this exactly, but you can soon compare and contrast the start and finish line. The film shows us the courtship and the breakup of Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) simultaneously on linear tracks. Cindy and Dean are out of sync even in their happiest moments but the actors are brilliantly in sync. The genius of the telling is not, I think, in how it starts or how it ends but in all the tiny details that point you towards that vacuum in the middle. Notice the gap. As for the film's own middle? Perfection. Shortly after we've seen that Cindy don't wanna dance with Dean no more ("You and Me") she happily dances for him ("You Always Hurt The Ones You Love"). The songs are in the wrong order.

The Kids Are All Right dir. Lisa Cholodenko
[Focus, July 30th]
This dramedy is so effervescent that its easy to miss the depth and the detail as you're laughing. Though it's light on its feet, Kids is grounded in multi-dimensional characters, smart specific dialogue and structural beauty, too. It takes place in that wonderfully vital summer between adolescence and adulthood and so does the movie, toggling between the two as Joni and Laser (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) cope with growing up and their moms (Julianne Moore and Annette Bening) cope with marital trouble and Paul, the new man in all their lives (an exceptional Mark Ruffalo). Paul himself is caught between adolescence and adulthood albeit in a different way. The family expands and constricts and expands and constricts as all families do, experimenting with their own dynamics as life rolls on. Paul may be an interloper but then, so are we. We're just happy to have shared our summer with them.

I Am Love dir. Luca Guadagnino
[Magnolia, June 18th]
In I Am Love, a ravishingly operatic melodrama, Tilda Swinton, that prized jewel of the movies plays Emma, the prized jewel of a wealthy Italian family. The storytelling is in the images and oh, what images. (I Am Cinema would be an appropriate alternate title.) In fact, the film might reveal itself more readily without the subtitles. The secret key to its divisive ending (if you ask me, she's not being punished as some angry readings go) is to notice that it's not just her husband who wants her locked up. Even her beloved servant cocoons her with curtains, shutting out the world. Her son, too. She's never to be lost or shared or stolen or even changed. Whenever Emma escapes, there's sudden rushes of feeling, sunlight, flavor, curiousity, beauty.

The Social Network dir. David Fincher
[Columbia, October 1st]
Not many movies feel like new classics while you're watching them. And as early as the first scene, too. Most need time to settle. Not so with The Social Network which just speeds through, all synapses firing with rich performances (Jesse's best) inspired direction (Fincher's best) and handsome production values (many people's best?), until... "wait, it's over?" When that ending comes (spoilers: Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook, got sued, is a gajillionaire) you want to click "refresh" yourself. Project that bad boy again! Here's why I know it's a new classic: second viewing, ending comes "wait, it's over? Refresh!"; third viewing, ending comes "wait, it's over? Refresh!"; Fourth viewing, ending comes "wait, it's over? Refresh!"

Best of 2010: Prophets, Toys, Fish Tanks and Rabbit Holes

Previously: Honorable Mentions
(Short on time so the second half has to wait. Apologies.)

Part 1
The Film Experience loves nothing more than being transported by the movies. The year's top dozen (a baker's dozen) took us deep inside French prisons, soared over Viking villages, danced into British projects and stumbled into Australian crime dens. This year's best films wandered 'round places both far flung (wealthy Italian estates) and right next door (New York City's Lincoln Center wherein a certain ballerina frets and pirouettes and transforms).

Wherever the year's best took us, we wanted to go. In fact, we're ready to go again. Just let us grab that unpublished manuscript and a treasured childhood toy for the journey. And, oops... just -- updating facebook status. Okay, now we're ready. Let's go!

[mild very vague spoilers on The Ghost Writer and Fish Tank]

RUNNERS UP

Un prophète dir. Jacques Audiard
[Sony Pictures Classics, Feb 26th]
Last year's shouldawontheforeignoscar contender treads excessively familiar ground patiently, biding its time. Malik (breakthrough sensation Tahar Rahim) may be a criminal savant but Jacques Audiard is the alpha dog in this dank dangerous racially charged prison (and outside of it as well). The French auteur's always expressive cinematic voice makes full use of both image and sound. They flicker and pulse as if in whispered conversation, haunting each other with their most awful details. Malik's horrifying character arc from remorseful killer to skilled death-dealer is so gradual that you're as surprised as he when you fully grasp the new criminal ecosystem when exiting this prison.

Toy Story 3 dir. Lee Unkrich
[Disney/Pixar, June 18th]

This latest and hopefully last Toy Story adventure expertly capitalizes on nostalgia for itself. (Please don't make another one Pixar as you'll taint the beautiful full circle affect of this one.) Scene for scene TS3 is maybe both the best comedy and the best tearjerker of the year.  The only reason it's not in the top ten -- shush, I realize it's supposed to be -- is that its deep comforts and emotional potency are inarguably the product of 15 years of other movies and cozy familiarity with the characters. Its considerable charm and four hankie finale is not exactly derived from this movie itself. In other words, it's got an enormous advantage over practically everything else that came out in 2010. It's like when everyone declared the end of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith so epic and moving and pretended that the movie didn't suck while it borrowed its emotional affect from the Force being with us for 30 years. The difference here (he quickly adds) is that Toy Story 3 is a marvelous movie in its own right: inventive, hilarious, beautifully staged.

Rabbit Hole dir. John Cameron Mitchell
[Lions Gate, Dec 17th]
This is a refreshingly unhistrionic portrait of grief and those are rare beasts. Its unassuming strengths, and maybe that hushed release in the noisiest of movie seasons, might be the thing(s) preventing it from breaking out. Which, come to think of it, is reflective of Becca herself (a great Nicole Kidman) as she's always getting in her own way. David Lindsay-Abaire's expert screenplay gets so many things about grief right. It understands that those most in need of comfort often push it away, it gets the way righteous anger leaks out as freeform hostility, and it sees that strangers can offer clarity and windows to healing that loved ones, with their messy intimacies, cannot. This might not sound like fun but it's sometimes bracingly funny. Rabbit Hole begins with a shot of Becca opening a bag of soil while she tensely gardens. Mitchell's sensitive direction and the fine cast do the work, but they trust you to notice their eventual flowering.

Top Ten List 

How To Train Your Dragon dir. Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders
[Dreamworks, March 26th]
Here's to happy miracles. When was the last time you saw a movie boy rewarded for using his smarts and intuition and accepting his peaceful nature? When was the last time the hero of an epic was a pacifist rather than a warrior? I won't hold my breath waiting for the answer. (Gandhi?) How to Train Your Dragon figures out how to have it both ways of course (this is mainstream cinema) and like Tangled, it trips on nervous bids at popularity: why do the kids speak with modern American snark while all the adults have Scottish accents? I haven't a clue! But its flight sequences are as magical as Avatar's and Toothless, the dread Night Fury is a brilliantly executed character. This is a personal choice but this movie arrived in my life right when I needed it. Our top tens ought to be a personal, else why make them? Dragon might be the best hug-your-pet movie since Babe (1995); it's not perfect but that'll do.

The Ghost Writer dir. Roman Polanski
[Summit, March 19th]
We never learn the name of the ghost (Ewan McGregor) hired to shadow and write about a politician under investigation (Pierce Brosnan) and why should we? The movie also plays it coy. Polanski's amazing sleight of hand alternately flashes us a political satire, a nihilistic comedy, a murder thriller and maybe even a drama about having a really shitty job for which no rewards or public acknowledgement will ever come. The Ghost Writer has memorably sinister interiors filled with sharp angles and splashes of blood red color. The exteriors are no safer as the endless stormy weather, slick streets and bodies washed ashore portend. Can a whole film be a red herring? It all builds towards the year's most brilliant ending, a vanishing act, a negation.


Fish Tank dir. Andrea Arnold
[IFC Films, January 15th]
Arnold's sophomore feature follows an angry British girl Mia (Katie Jarvis) around in her grim daily life as she hates on her family, picks fights with the neighbors, crushes on her mom's new man (Michael Fassbender, predictably excellent), and dreams of becoming a professional hiphop dancer. There are plentiful movies about downtrodden inarticulate characters each year but few this acutely observed. Even when Fish Tank risks going off the rails by willfully slamming into metaphor (the horse) or veering towards the edge of genre territory (an abduction) it works a peculiar beguiling magic. Just when you think the movie can't possibly resolve the gangly awkward impulses of its teen protagonist towards any satisfying conclusion, it stages a farewell dance that's both perfectly surreal and absurdly mundane. Wow.

..CONTINUE TO THE COMPLETE TOP TEN