People Tell Me I Look Like Han Solo.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Valentine's Day picks
Who doesn’t love Valentine’s Day? Most right-thinking people, as far as I can tell. It’s a weird, made-up quasi-holiday (I still have to go to work? What kind of ‘holiday’ is that?) that makes single people feel like crap and puts insanely unrealistic expectations on those of us who are in relationships. Unless you’re celebrating V-Day at that nebulous early point in a relationship where everything is still new and exciting and fresh and awesome, the only really winners on Valentine’s Day are greeting card companies, florists and candy manufacturers.
So Valentine’s Day sort of sucks. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it more enjoyable with a great movie. And contrary to popular opinion, I do, in fact, have a heart, and below I’ve picked six movies to help you make it through Valentine’s Day. Whether you’re kicking back with your beloved for a romantic evening in front of the DVD player (hey, not judging), or you’re looking for a movie to curl up with as you stew in your own bitterness and isolation, I’ve got something for everyone.
FOR COUPLES
True Romance
One of my favorite movies ever made, and, like screenwriter Quentin Tarantino, I don’t really get it when people think of this movie’s title as ironic. Sure, it’s packed with extreme violence and language so foul it would make a sailor blush, but the core of the movie is still the love between the geeky Clarence (Christian Slater) and his former call girl wife Alabama (Patricia Arquette), and as offbeat as it seem on the surface, what with the gangsters and pimps sleazy Hollywood producers who surround them, it’s their relationship that drives the movie and keeps me coming back. I’ve seen this movie so many times I can’t even begin to calculate it, but I still get goosebumps every damn time I watch the scene where Alabama confesses her feelings to Clarence. And ever since I first saw this movie I’ve been holding out the dim hope of one day meeting the woman of my dreams at a triple-bill screening of classic kung fu movies. (Still no luck.)
Away We Go
This is a rare film in that it’s a movie about two people in love (Mya Rudolph and The Office’s John Krasinski, playing a couple expecting their first child) that isn’t abo
ut (a) them falling in love or (b) fighting against the forces of fate to get/stay together and (c) features actual grown-ups as the main characters. So already you know you’re dealing with a pretty weird little movie. Away We Go is a perfect movie for couples specifically because it’s never clichéd (romantic movies being No. 2 perhaps only to martial arts movies as a genre that relies so heavily on paint-by-numbers plots), and because it shows a fairly healthy relationship between two intelligent adults who love each other. While neither character is perfect, they also don’t seem like two-dimensional sitcom creations (the movie isn’t about them making goo-goo eyes at each other, it’s about them trying to build a life together), and the entire film just feels organic and real in a way that other romantic movies almost never do.
House of Flying Daggers
When I agreed to compile this list, a fellow editor half-jokingly dared me to include a kung fu movie. Never one to back down to a kung fu movie-related challenge, I have dutifully included Zhang Yimou’s gorgeous 2004 film about tragic star-crossed lovers: she’s a beautiful young revolutionary, he’s a dashing government agent sent undercover to gain her trust and stop her rebellion. House of Flying Daggers may feature some really impressive action sequences, but Yimou’s film really a romantic tragedy of almost Shakespearean proportions with a few fight scenes thrown in. Throw in an achingly beautiful cast (Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau) and you’ve got a date-night movie that will appeal to both guy’s-guys and girly-girls alike.
The Fountain
I’ll get this out of the way right off the bat: this movie made me cry a little
bit. I feel like I’m one of the only people in the world who really enjoyed Darren Aronofsky’s ambitious science-fiction romance about a brilliant scientist (Hugh Jackman) whose pursuit of a cancer cure to save his dying wife (Rachel Weisz) stretches across centuries, flashing from a Spanish conquistador on a quest to save his beloved queen to the present-day scientist couple to a distant future where a bald Jackman floats through space with a giant tree. It’s pretty heady stuff, obviously, and it’s definitely not to everyone’s taste, but The Fountain is the rare movie love story that actually broke my heart.
FOR SINGLES
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
At the risk of showing myself to be an even bigger geek than I usually do in this space, I’ve actually watched all three extended versions of The Lord of the Rings as a giant marathon (which runs about 12 hours in total) on more than one occasion (it requires a level of planning and determination one doesn’t typically associate with an activity that basically amounts to spending 12 hours sitting on the couch) and I can tell you that spending 12 hours in Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth is about as good a way as any I can think of to avoid Valentine’s Day. Throw on Disc 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring any time between 10am and 11am on Valentine’s Day (it’s on a Sunday this year), and I guarantee that by the time Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin leave the Shire, you won’t care what day it is.
Punisher: War Zone
Maybe 12 hours in Middle Earth isn’t a feasible solution to Valentine’s Day for you.
In that case, may I recommend this criminally under-appreciated 2007 adaptation of Marvel’s cult vigilante. The Punisher, in case you don’t know, is basically a post-Death Wish take on Batman; after his family is murdered by the mob, Frank Castle takes to wearing a skull on his chest and killing criminals with guns, knives and just about anything else he can get his hands on. Punisher: War Zone is one of the most wonderfully, graphically violent and fun movies I’ve seen in recent memory (and it’s directed by a woman!), and I can’t think of a better way to rebel against Valentine’s Day than with a movie that features a guy with a skull on his chest punching through dudes’ heads, shotgunning people at close range and blowing up parkour practitioners with rockets. Hate Valentine’s Day? Celebrate it with the Punisher.
So Valentine’s Day sort of sucks. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it more enjoyable with a great movie. And contrary to popular opinion, I do, in fact, have a heart, and below I’ve picked six movies to help you make it through Valentine’s Day. Whether you’re kicking back with your beloved for a romantic evening in front of the DVD player (hey, not judging), or you’re looking for a movie to curl up with as you stew in your own bitterness and isolation, I’ve got something for everyone.
FOR COUPLES
True Romance
One of my favorite movies ever made, and, like screenwriter Quentin Tarantino, I don’t really get it when people think of this movie’s title as ironic. Sure, it’s packed with extreme violence and language so foul it would make a sailor blush, but the core of the movie is still the love between the geeky Clarence (Christian Slater) and his former call girl wife Alabama (Patricia Arquette), and as offbeat as it seem on the surface, what with the gangsters and pimps sleazy Hollywood producers who surround them, it’s their relationship that drives the movie and keeps me coming back. I’ve seen this movie so many times I can’t even begin to calculate it, but I still get goosebumps every damn time I watch the scene where Alabama confesses her feelings to Clarence. And ever since I first saw this movie I’ve been holding out the dim hope of one day meeting the woman of my dreams at a triple-bill screening of classic kung fu movies. (Still no luck.)
Away We Go
This is a rare film in that it’s a movie about two people in love (Mya Rudolph and The Office’s John Krasinski, playing a couple expecting their first child) that isn’t abo
ut (a) them falling in love or (b) fighting against the forces of fate to get/stay together and (c) features actual grown-ups as the main characters. So already you know you’re dealing with a pretty weird little movie. Away We Go is a perfect movie for couples specifically because it’s never clichéd (romantic movies being No. 2 perhaps only to martial arts movies as a genre that relies so heavily on paint-by-numbers plots), and because it shows a fairly healthy relationship between two intelligent adults who love each other. While neither character is perfect, they also don’t seem like two-dimensional sitcom creations (the movie isn’t about them making goo-goo eyes at each other, it’s about them trying to build a life together), and the entire film just feels organic and real in a way that other romantic movies almost never do.House of Flying Daggers
When I agreed to compile this list, a fellow editor half-jokingly dared me to include a kung fu movie. Never one to back down to a kung fu movie-related challenge, I have dutifully included Zhang Yimou’s gorgeous 2004 film about tragic star-crossed lovers: she’s a beautiful young revolutionary, he’s a dashing government agent sent undercover to gain her trust and stop her rebellion. House of Flying Daggers may feature some really impressive action sequences, but Yimou’s film really a romantic tragedy of almost Shakespearean proportions with a few fight scenes thrown in. Throw in an achingly beautiful cast (Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau) and you’ve got a date-night movie that will appeal to both guy’s-guys and girly-girls alike.
The Fountain
I’ll get this out of the way right off the bat: this movie made me cry a little
bit. I feel like I’m one of the only people in the world who really enjoyed Darren Aronofsky’s ambitious science-fiction romance about a brilliant scientist (Hugh Jackman) whose pursuit of a cancer cure to save his dying wife (Rachel Weisz) stretches across centuries, flashing from a Spanish conquistador on a quest to save his beloved queen to the present-day scientist couple to a distant future where a bald Jackman floats through space with a giant tree. It’s pretty heady stuff, obviously, and it’s definitely not to everyone’s taste, but The Fountain is the rare movie love story that actually broke my heart.FOR SINGLES
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
At the risk of showing myself to be an even bigger geek than I usually do in this space, I’ve actually watched all three extended versions of The Lord of the Rings as a giant marathon (which runs about 12 hours in total) on more than one occasion (it requires a level of planning and determination one doesn’t typically associate with an activity that basically amounts to spending 12 hours sitting on the couch) and I can tell you that spending 12 hours in Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth is about as good a way as any I can think of to avoid Valentine’s Day. Throw on Disc 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring any time between 10am and 11am on Valentine’s Day (it’s on a Sunday this year), and I guarantee that by the time Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin leave the Shire, you won’t care what day it is.
Punisher: War Zone
Maybe 12 hours in Middle Earth isn’t a feasible solution to Valentine’s Day for you.
In that case, may I recommend this criminally under-appreciated 2007 adaptation of Marvel’s cult vigilante. The Punisher, in case you don’t know, is basically a post-Death Wish take on Batman; after his family is murdered by the mob, Frank Castle takes to wearing a skull on his chest and killing criminals with guns, knives and just about anything else he can get his hands on. Punisher: War Zone is one of the most wonderfully, graphically violent and fun movies I’ve seen in recent memory (and it’s directed by a woman!), and I can’t think of a better way to rebel against Valentine’s Day than with a movie that features a guy with a skull on his chest punching through dudes’ heads, shotgunning people at close range and blowing up parkour practitioners with rockets. Hate Valentine’s Day? Celebrate it with the Punisher. Labels: Lists
¶ 7:45 AM 0 Comments
Friday, January 8, 2010
My Top 10 of 2009
A quick note before I begin. I decided against doing a “worst” list this year, as, quite frankly, I didn’t see enough truly awful movies to put one together (I’m pretty good at avoiding movies I’m pretty sure I’ll hate). Sure, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was pretty terrible, but at this point ripping that film is like shooting fish in a barrel. I’m going for positivity in 2010. We’ll see how that works out.
Anyway, on with the list. Here are the 10 best movies I saw in 2009.
10. Away We Go
A good friend of mine told me his reaction to this movie was something to the effect of “Oh wow, I didn’t realize they still made comedies for actual adults anymore,” and that’s about the best way I can put it. Director Sam Mendes, screenwriters Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida and stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph all deserve incredible praise for this incredibly warm – and incredibly funny – comedy about a couple expecting their first child. I totally expected to hate this movie going in, and I’m still blown away by how much I enjoyed it. Just great stuff.
9. Up
I actually sought this movie out on Blu-ray specifically for this list; it’s been on just about every other “Best of 2009” list I’ve seen, and, to me, and no Pixar movie since The Incredibles has looked this interesting. Within 10 minutes of pressing play, I knew I wasn’t going to have to sit through a movie meant for kids with maybe a couple of references aimed at the over-15 set; Up is a simply a great movie, filled with warmth, great characters, genuinely exciting adventure and brilliant storytelling. Usually when I keep hearing a movie is great I become skeptical, and I was a little skeptical about this one, but Up really is an excellent little movie, even for a hard-hearted curmudgeon like me.
8. The Informant!
I love me some Steven Soderbergh, I’ve made no secret of that, and this movie manages
to be funny as hell (like Brad Pitt, I happen to think Matt Damon is an incredibly talented comic actor trapped in a movie star’s body) as well as dramatic and oddly affecting. There’s a moment late in the film where Damon’s character, a too-enthusiastic whistleblower at a massive food conglomerate, goes from absurdly funny to just sort of weird and sad, and almost nothing about Damon’s performance actually changes. Soderbergh also fills the “straight” roles with comedians (including Joel McHale, star of the very good new sitcom, Community), but it’s Scott Bakula as the Damon’s FBI handler who steals the movie. And Marvin Hamlisch’s incredible score perfectly highlights the offbeat humor without overwhelming it. Even though The Informant! (man, even the title makes me laugh, but I have a soft spot for grammar-based humor) is set in the early 1990s, its themes of personal and corporate greed and malfeasance couldn’t be more relevant to our times.
7. Fantastic Mr. Fox
I’m a pretty big fan of Wes Anderson (a filmmaker as beloved in some quarters as he is loathed in others) though I felt his last live-action film, 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited, was his weakest effort yet. He won me back with his stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s book, fusing the author’s story with his own decidedly quirky sensibilities. I went in expecting a charming enough little oddity in Anderson’s filmography (he basically directed the film via e-mails to the animators in Britain, but never visited the “set” himself), but ended up laughing harder than I did at most comedies I saw this year, and both the story and performances from the all-star cast (including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman) were delightful. A really pleasant surprise, and a rare family film that actually appeals to the entire family.
6. Where the Wild Things Are
Acclaimed novelist Dave Eggers made his debut as a screenwriter in 2009 with two films, Where the Wild Things Are and Away We Go, and both were among the best movies I saw all year. In both cases – well, definitely more with this adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book – the director deserves tons of credit too. Spike Jonze makes pretty great movies that are nothing what I expect going in, and Where the Wild Things Are was no different. A kid’s movie that isn’t really for kids but is rather more about being a kid (a concept that you sort of have to have progressed beyond childhood to fully appreciate), no other movie this got to me the way this one did. A beautiful, heartbreaking film by one of the most talented filmmakers working today.
5. Black Dynamite
Screw The Hangover; this was easily the funniest movie I saw all year. This low-budget indie comedy from directo
r Scott Sanders and co-writer/star Michael Jai White (you probably remember him as the angry, hulking crime boss the Joker knocks off early The Dark Knight, right before holding “tryouts”), this movie came out of nowhere and blew me away. A hilarious and affectionate spoof of ‘70s blaxploitation films, Black Dynamite follows a guy called Black Dynamite (even his family calls him that), a former CIA operative called out of retirement when his kid brother is killed by drug dealers, but uncovers a plot involving heroin, malt liquor and kung fu that reaches into the highest levels of government. No other movie in 2009 made me laugh this hard. I can’t wait for the DVD release on Feb. 2 so I can revisit Black Dynamite over and over again. An instant cult classic.
4. Watchmen
As much as this choice is based largely in my personal affection for this property (regular readers know I’ve been a fan of the book since I was in high school), I really do believe this is a movie people will still be watching and talking about a decade from now, and it’s as important, if not more so, to the development of the superhero genre of movies as The Dark Knight. It’s almost as dense and layered as the book it’s based on, which, if you’ve ever read Watchmen, you know is a helluva staItement. Zack Snyder’s film is certainly not without its flaws – Matthew Goode, Malin Ackerman and Carla Gugino run the gamut from “pretty bad” to “laughably awful,” and Goode, in particular, is cast in a role that really needs to be done perfectly – but this remains one of the most incredible experiences I had in a movie theater all year, and I’ve watched the Blu-ray more times since picking it up than I have just about anything else on this list (save No. 1). Personally, this is a movie I’ll be living with and revisiting for years to come.
3. Inglourious Basterds
I’ve already written two reviews for Quentin Tarantino’s nutty World War II masterpiece, so I’ll keep it short. The best movie yet from one of the most important filmmakers to emerge in the last 25 years is pretty much a lock on any list. Movies don’t get much better.
2. The Hurt Locker
I’ve gone on and on in this space before about how much I dig Kathryn Bigelow’s movie
s, particularly Near Dark and Point Break, so I was stoked about this movie the second I learned of its existence. The fact that several months after its release, this Iraq bomb squad thriller is maintaining this kind of buzz going into awards season (the film and Bigelow are picking up critics’ awards left right and center) makes me think that, despite my usual cynicism, there may actually be some justice in the world. It’s not too often that an action-thriller is anchored by such incredible performances (and I should know, I watch a lot of action movies), but Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie combine with Bigelow’s brilliant direction and Mark Boal’s sharp, economical script to make something truly special. Not to be missed.
1. District 9
When I’m excited about a movie, I get very excited, and occasionally (okay, usually) my expectatio
ns get ratcheted up to unreasonable levels. From the first teaser, I was absolutely dying to see this movie, and as the months went by and the release date neared, I started to worry that maybe I’d done it again. But when the closing credits rolled on the opening-day screening I attended, I knew my mind had been truly blown. The story, the craftsmanship on display, the effects (which put Avatar to shame, frankly), everything about this movie works perfectly. For me, nothing else in 2009 came close to director Neill Blomkamp’s debut, about the tensions in Johannesburg 20-some years after a spaceship full of dying aliens settled over the city, and with the exception of Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, Sharlto Copley’s incredible work as the unlikely hero Wikus Van De Merwe was the breakout performance of the year. I’ve watched District 9 several times since picking up the DVD (and Blu-ray! I am such a nerd), and I don’t think I’ll be stopping any time soon. Just an amazing piece of cinema.
Anyway, on with the list. Here are the 10 best movies I saw in 2009.
10. Away We Go
A good friend of mine told me his reaction to this movie was something to the effect of “Oh wow, I didn’t realize they still made comedies for actual adults anymore,” and that’s about the best way I can put it. Director Sam Mendes, screenwriters Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida and stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph all deserve incredible praise for this incredibly warm – and incredibly funny – comedy about a couple expecting their first child. I totally expected to hate this movie going in, and I’m still blown away by how much I enjoyed it. Just great stuff.
9. Up
I actually sought this movie out on Blu-ray specifically for this list; it’s been on just about every other “Best of 2009” list I’ve seen, and, to me, and no Pixar movie since The Incredibles has looked this interesting. Within 10 minutes of pressing play, I knew I wasn’t going to have to sit through a movie meant for kids with maybe a couple of references aimed at the over-15 set; Up is a simply a great movie, filled with warmth, great characters, genuinely exciting adventure and brilliant storytelling. Usually when I keep hearing a movie is great I become skeptical, and I was a little skeptical about this one, but Up really is an excellent little movie, even for a hard-hearted curmudgeon like me.
8. The Informant!
I love me some Steven Soderbergh, I’ve made no secret of that, and this movie manages
to be funny as hell (like Brad Pitt, I happen to think Matt Damon is an incredibly talented comic actor trapped in a movie star’s body) as well as dramatic and oddly affecting. There’s a moment late in the film where Damon’s character, a too-enthusiastic whistleblower at a massive food conglomerate, goes from absurdly funny to just sort of weird and sad, and almost nothing about Damon’s performance actually changes. Soderbergh also fills the “straight” roles with comedians (including Joel McHale, star of the very good new sitcom, Community), but it’s Scott Bakula as the Damon’s FBI handler who steals the movie. And Marvin Hamlisch’s incredible score perfectly highlights the offbeat humor without overwhelming it. Even though The Informant! (man, even the title makes me laugh, but I have a soft spot for grammar-based humor) is set in the early 1990s, its themes of personal and corporate greed and malfeasance couldn’t be more relevant to our times.7. Fantastic Mr. Fox
I’m a pretty big fan of Wes Anderson (a filmmaker as beloved in some quarters as he is loathed in others) though I felt his last live-action film, 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited, was his weakest effort yet. He won me back with his stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s book, fusing the author’s story with his own decidedly quirky sensibilities. I went in expecting a charming enough little oddity in Anderson’s filmography (he basically directed the film via e-mails to the animators in Britain, but never visited the “set” himself), but ended up laughing harder than I did at most comedies I saw this year, and both the story and performances from the all-star cast (including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman) were delightful. A really pleasant surprise, and a rare family film that actually appeals to the entire family.
6. Where the Wild Things Are
Acclaimed novelist Dave Eggers made his debut as a screenwriter in 2009 with two films, Where the Wild Things Are and Away We Go, and both were among the best movies I saw all year. In both cases – well, definitely more with this adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book – the director deserves tons of credit too. Spike Jonze makes pretty great movies that are nothing what I expect going in, and Where the Wild Things Are was no different. A kid’s movie that isn’t really for kids but is rather more about being a kid (a concept that you sort of have to have progressed beyond childhood to fully appreciate), no other movie this got to me the way this one did. A beautiful, heartbreaking film by one of the most talented filmmakers working today.
5. Black Dynamite
Screw The Hangover; this was easily the funniest movie I saw all year. This low-budget indie comedy from directo
r Scott Sanders and co-writer/star Michael Jai White (you probably remember him as the angry, hulking crime boss the Joker knocks off early The Dark Knight, right before holding “tryouts”), this movie came out of nowhere and blew me away. A hilarious and affectionate spoof of ‘70s blaxploitation films, Black Dynamite follows a guy called Black Dynamite (even his family calls him that), a former CIA operative called out of retirement when his kid brother is killed by drug dealers, but uncovers a plot involving heroin, malt liquor and kung fu that reaches into the highest levels of government. No other movie in 2009 made me laugh this hard. I can’t wait for the DVD release on Feb. 2 so I can revisit Black Dynamite over and over again. An instant cult classic.4. Watchmen
As much as this choice is based largely in my personal affection for this property (regular readers know I’ve been a fan of the book since I was in high school), I really do believe this is a movie people will still be watching and talking about a decade from now, and it’s as important, if not more so, to the development of the superhero genre of movies as The Dark Knight. It’s almost as dense and layered as the book it’s based on, which, if you’ve ever read Watchmen, you know is a helluva staItement. Zack Snyder’s film is certainly not without its flaws – Matthew Goode, Malin Ackerman and Carla Gugino run the gamut from “pretty bad” to “laughably awful,” and Goode, in particular, is cast in a role that really needs to be done perfectly – but this remains one of the most incredible experiences I had in a movie theater all year, and I’ve watched the Blu-ray more times since picking it up than I have just about anything else on this list (save No. 1). Personally, this is a movie I’ll be living with and revisiting for years to come.
3. Inglourious Basterds
I’ve already written two reviews for Quentin Tarantino’s nutty World War II masterpiece, so I’ll keep it short. The best movie yet from one of the most important filmmakers to emerge in the last 25 years is pretty much a lock on any list. Movies don’t get much better.
2. The Hurt Locker
I’ve gone on and on in this space before about how much I dig Kathryn Bigelow’s movie
s, particularly Near Dark and Point Break, so I was stoked about this movie the second I learned of its existence. The fact that several months after its release, this Iraq bomb squad thriller is maintaining this kind of buzz going into awards season (the film and Bigelow are picking up critics’ awards left right and center) makes me think that, despite my usual cynicism, there may actually be some justice in the world. It’s not too often that an action-thriller is anchored by such incredible performances (and I should know, I watch a lot of action movies), but Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie combine with Bigelow’s brilliant direction and Mark Boal’s sharp, economical script to make something truly special. Not to be missed.1. District 9
When I’m excited about a movie, I get very excited, and occasionally (okay, usually) my expectatio
ns get ratcheted up to unreasonable levels. From the first teaser, I was absolutely dying to see this movie, and as the months went by and the release date neared, I started to worry that maybe I’d done it again. But when the closing credits rolled on the opening-day screening I attended, I knew my mind had been truly blown. The story, the craftsmanship on display, the effects (which put Avatar to shame, frankly), everything about this movie works perfectly. For me, nothing else in 2009 came close to director Neill Blomkamp’s debut, about the tensions in Johannesburg 20-some years after a spaceship full of dying aliens settled over the city, and with the exception of Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, Sharlto Copley’s incredible work as the unlikely hero Wikus Van De Merwe was the breakout performance of the year. I’ve watched District 9 several times since picking up the DVD (and Blu-ray! I am such a nerd), and I don’t think I’ll be stopping any time soon. Just an amazing piece of cinema. Labels: Lists
¶ 9:20 AM 1 Comments
Friday, November 13, 2009
My 10 Favorite Movies: Part 2
Welcome to the second of my two-part rundown of my favorite movies of all time. I rambled on enough in the preamble to Part 1, so let’s just get to it.
Bottle Rocket
My favorite movie by Wes Anderson (one of my favorite directors) is also his first
. I saw Bottle Rocket in theatres in 1996 (I was in high school and talked a couple of friends into seeing it with me based on a small TV item on it I’d seen that made me laugh), and I laughed as hard as I ever had at a movie. Anderson’s later films would solidify his reputation for quirky movies with quirky characters, and while the same can definitely be said for Bottle Rocket, it’s not as stylistically out-there as his better-known movies like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. It’s also more obviously a comedy – it’s basically a riff on the post-Tarantino crime movies that were then flooding the movie landscape, following a trio of privileged kids-turned-wannabe criminals more interested in the lifestyle than with committing actual crimes – than his later movies, though Bottle Rocket has tons of heart, especially in the relationship between old friends Anthony (Luke Wilson) and Dignan (Owen Wilson). This is a movie I watch when I’m feeling down, and it never fails to pick me up, and the final shot of Dignan waving to Anthony and Bob (Robert Musgrave) makes me smile just thinking about it.
Since this movie’s release, both of the Wilson brothers have become big movie stars, but I’ll always reserve a place in my heart for them, no matter how many crappy movies they make, because of Bottle Rocket.
Seven Samurai
There isn’t a whole lot in movies I like more than samurai. I’ve always found them fascinating, and I’ve read more th
an a few books on Japanese history, and that fascination can be traced back to the films of Akira Kurosawa. I actually saw Yojimbo first, and it knocked me on my ass, but when I got around to seeing his 1954 masterpiece, it was a revelation. I’d always enjoyed action movies about an ragtag group of guys who have to defend something (a building, a town, a planet) against a much larger force, and Seven Samurai is the template, in one form or another, for all of those movies (most obviously The Magnificent Seven, itself a really cool movie). About midway through my first viewing of this movie, I understood why it’s considered one of the greatest films ever made. The performances are incredible – especially the legendary Toshiro Mifune, whose character is almost the exact opposite of his iconic turn in Yojimbo – the characters are great, the story is totally gripping (the last hour-plus of the movie, basically, is an extended siege sequence)…there’s almost no aspect of this film that susbsequent action/adventure movies didn’t draw from. I’m an action movie guy, and to watch Seven Samurai is to witness the creation of the action movie as we know it.
Yojimbo
This is the Akira Kurosawa movie I actually came to first – I’m embarrassed to a
dmit, after watching Walter Hill’s so-so prohibition-era 1996 remake with Bruce Willis, Last Man Standing – and it remains one of the formative movie-watching experiences of my life. I’d rented it after seeing Last Man Standing (which I’d quite enjoyed, but seeing the real deal has since ruined it for me), and I watched it, rewound the tape, and immediately pressed “Play” again. I’ve never been much of a fan of westerns (though I can appreciate a good one when I see one), but this was a western with, to me, an even cooler lead than Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in Toshiro Mifune’s chin-scratching swordsman, and the story, in which he plays two warring groups of bandits off one another as a hired bodyguard, managed to be gripping and absurdly hilarious at the same time. (Kurosawa and Mifune emphasized the comedy even more in the 1962 sequel, Sanjuro). Yojimbo is one of those movies that I’d been waiting my whole life to see, I just didn’t know it at the time.
Point Break
I’ve m
entioned more than once how much I love director Kathryn Bigelow, and this is my favorite of her movies. I realize Point Break has become something of a camp classic, but my appreciation of this movie, about an FBI agent who goes undercover to crack a ring of surfing bank robbers, has nothing to do with camp or irony. I do think it’s hilarious – Gary Busey and John C. McGinley provide two of the funniest supporting performances in any action movie I’ve seen – and some of the plot twists are hokey (it’s an action movie from 1991 after all), but the surfing and skydiving sequences are gorgeously shot, Patrick Swayze is a fantastically charismatic villain, and it’s got one of the best car chases I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen Point Break so many times I know the script almost by heart, and it never gets old to me.
The Last Boy Scout
Yes, another early-‘90s actioner; I will never deny that I embrace my roots. Tony Scott’s The Last Boy Scout is one of the first movies I watched incessantly, and I still do to this day. The primary reason for this is the sublime script by Shane Black, who’s riffing on classic detective stories (Black, who penned the original Lethal Weapon before eventually almost destroying his career
with the screenplay for The Last Action Hero, would later go even further down this route into full-on homage in his directorial debut/comeback, 2005’s brilliant Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang – read more about it here). Black’s scripts share a lot of common threads – a pair of bickering guys reluctantly thrown together to solve a case that they eventually realize is a much larger conspiracy, oddly articulate henchmen, a truckload of wonderfully quotable lines – but this one’s my favorite.
The story follows a burned out private eye (Bruce Willis) who teams with a washed-up former quarterback (Damon Wayans, with a stripper girlfriend played by a then-unknown Halle Berry) to unravel a conspiracy surrounding legalized gambling and pro football. That’s all beside the point though, as the exchanges between Willis and Wayans are what make this movie, and the way Black plays with the conventions of action movies, without going overboard with meta-humor like The Last Action Hero did. (“You’re the bad guy, right?” Willis asks Taylor Negron’s deliciously evil Mr. Milo shortly after they first meet. “I am the bad guy,” Milo responds enthusiastically.) More than any other movie on this list, The Last Boy Scout is far and away the movie I quote the most; there isn’t another movie I can think of that I’ve seen that has so many amazing and hilarious exchanges, my favorite being the brief scene in which Willis and Wayans discuss the latter’s leather pants. I’ve watched it probably 100 times, and it’s never not made me laugh like an idiot. Of all the movies I’ve listed here, The Last Boy Scout is probably the one that’s the least defensible from an objective standpoint, but it’s also the one that I probably get the most pure enjoyment out of watching. I don’t watch The Last Boy Scout to appreciate the craftsmanship or the technical achievement on display, I watch it because it’s 105 minutes of violent, foul-mouthed fun.
Bottle Rocket
My favorite movie by Wes Anderson (one of my favorite directors) is also his first
. I saw Bottle Rocket in theatres in 1996 (I was in high school and talked a couple of friends into seeing it with me based on a small TV item on it I’d seen that made me laugh), and I laughed as hard as I ever had at a movie. Anderson’s later films would solidify his reputation for quirky movies with quirky characters, and while the same can definitely be said for Bottle Rocket, it’s not as stylistically out-there as his better-known movies like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. It’s also more obviously a comedy – it’s basically a riff on the post-Tarantino crime movies that were then flooding the movie landscape, following a trio of privileged kids-turned-wannabe criminals more interested in the lifestyle than with committing actual crimes – than his later movies, though Bottle Rocket has tons of heart, especially in the relationship between old friends Anthony (Luke Wilson) and Dignan (Owen Wilson). This is a movie I watch when I’m feeling down, and it never fails to pick me up, and the final shot of Dignan waving to Anthony and Bob (Robert Musgrave) makes me smile just thinking about it. Since this movie’s release, both of the Wilson brothers have become big movie stars, but I’ll always reserve a place in my heart for them, no matter how many crappy movies they make, because of Bottle Rocket.
Seven Samurai
There isn’t a whole lot in movies I like more than samurai. I’ve always found them fascinating, and I’ve read more th
an a few books on Japanese history, and that fascination can be traced back to the films of Akira Kurosawa. I actually saw Yojimbo first, and it knocked me on my ass, but when I got around to seeing his 1954 masterpiece, it was a revelation. I’d always enjoyed action movies about an ragtag group of guys who have to defend something (a building, a town, a planet) against a much larger force, and Seven Samurai is the template, in one form or another, for all of those movies (most obviously The Magnificent Seven, itself a really cool movie). About midway through my first viewing of this movie, I understood why it’s considered one of the greatest films ever made. The performances are incredible – especially the legendary Toshiro Mifune, whose character is almost the exact opposite of his iconic turn in Yojimbo – the characters are great, the story is totally gripping (the last hour-plus of the movie, basically, is an extended siege sequence)…there’s almost no aspect of this film that susbsequent action/adventure movies didn’t draw from. I’m an action movie guy, and to watch Seven Samurai is to witness the creation of the action movie as we know it.Yojimbo
This is the Akira Kurosawa movie I actually came to first – I’m embarrassed to a
dmit, after watching Walter Hill’s so-so prohibition-era 1996 remake with Bruce Willis, Last Man Standing – and it remains one of the formative movie-watching experiences of my life. I’d rented it after seeing Last Man Standing (which I’d quite enjoyed, but seeing the real deal has since ruined it for me), and I watched it, rewound the tape, and immediately pressed “Play” again. I’ve never been much of a fan of westerns (though I can appreciate a good one when I see one), but this was a western with, to me, an even cooler lead than Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in Toshiro Mifune’s chin-scratching swordsman, and the story, in which he plays two warring groups of bandits off one another as a hired bodyguard, managed to be gripping and absurdly hilarious at the same time. (Kurosawa and Mifune emphasized the comedy even more in the 1962 sequel, Sanjuro). Yojimbo is one of those movies that I’d been waiting my whole life to see, I just didn’t know it at the time.Point Break
I’ve m
entioned more than once how much I love director Kathryn Bigelow, and this is my favorite of her movies. I realize Point Break has become something of a camp classic, but my appreciation of this movie, about an FBI agent who goes undercover to crack a ring of surfing bank robbers, has nothing to do with camp or irony. I do think it’s hilarious – Gary Busey and John C. McGinley provide two of the funniest supporting performances in any action movie I’ve seen – and some of the plot twists are hokey (it’s an action movie from 1991 after all), but the surfing and skydiving sequences are gorgeously shot, Patrick Swayze is a fantastically charismatic villain, and it’s got one of the best car chases I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen Point Break so many times I know the script almost by heart, and it never gets old to me.The Last Boy Scout
Yes, another early-‘90s actioner; I will never deny that I embrace my roots. Tony Scott’s The Last Boy Scout is one of the first movies I watched incessantly, and I still do to this day. The primary reason for this is the sublime script by Shane Black, who’s riffing on classic detective stories (Black, who penned the original Lethal Weapon before eventually almost destroying his career
with the screenplay for The Last Action Hero, would later go even further down this route into full-on homage in his directorial debut/comeback, 2005’s brilliant Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang – read more about it here). Black’s scripts share a lot of common threads – a pair of bickering guys reluctantly thrown together to solve a case that they eventually realize is a much larger conspiracy, oddly articulate henchmen, a truckload of wonderfully quotable lines – but this one’s my favorite.The story follows a burned out private eye (Bruce Willis) who teams with a washed-up former quarterback (Damon Wayans, with a stripper girlfriend played by a then-unknown Halle Berry) to unravel a conspiracy surrounding legalized gambling and pro football. That’s all beside the point though, as the exchanges between Willis and Wayans are what make this movie, and the way Black plays with the conventions of action movies, without going overboard with meta-humor like The Last Action Hero did. (“You’re the bad guy, right?” Willis asks Taylor Negron’s deliciously evil Mr. Milo shortly after they first meet. “I am the bad guy,” Milo responds enthusiastically.) More than any other movie on this list, The Last Boy Scout is far and away the movie I quote the most; there isn’t another movie I can think of that I’ve seen that has so many amazing and hilarious exchanges, my favorite being the brief scene in which Willis and Wayans discuss the latter’s leather pants. I’ve watched it probably 100 times, and it’s never not made me laugh like an idiot. Of all the movies I’ve listed here, The Last Boy Scout is probably the one that’s the least defensible from an objective standpoint, but it’s also the one that I probably get the most pure enjoyment out of watching. I don’t watch The Last Boy Scout to appreciate the craftsmanship or the technical achievement on display, I watch it because it’s 105 minutes of violent, foul-mouthed fun.
Labels: Lists, self-indulgence, Shane Black
¶ 9:03 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, November 12, 2009
My 10 Favorite Movies: Part 1
I recently turned 31, and like most people, a birthday gave me cause to reflect a bit. I’ve been watching movies for a long time, and they’ve been a big part of my life for just about all of it. And as someone who loves movies to the point where I’ve finagled a gig writing about them, I’m often asked what my favorite movies are. Naturally, this is not an easy question to answer, as I’ve always found that no self-respecting movie buff can honestly offer a simple reply. So between the fact that I don’t have much to write about for the next couple of days and that I’ve been constantly referring to my favorite movies in passing on this blog since it started, I figured now’s as good a time as any to get into my favorites. So for the next two days, I’ll run down my 10 favorite movies, in no particular order.
Keep in mind, this is a list of my favorite movies. That’s not the same as “the best” movies; I’m not trying to argue that Kill Bill is a better film than The Godfather or Citizen Kane, just that I have a special place in my heart for that movie that I don’t have for those classic films. (Both of which are brilliant and deserve their places in history, for the record.) These are just the movies that remind me why I love movies in the first place. I can watch them over and over again, any time, sometimes finding new stuff to love each time, sometimes just curling up with them like an old sweater.
Some of you will also probably notice that these are relatively recent movies. It’s not that I don’t appreciate older classics, but I didn’t grow up watching them and therefore they’re not as crucial to my development as a movie geek. So yeah, most of these films were released within my lifetime. Regardless of their genre or their place in the annals of cinema history, these are the movies that always do it for me no matter how many times I watch them (and most of them I’ve been watching regularly for years, even decades).
Blade Runner
If I had to pick one film here as No. 1, it would be this one. I realized a few years ag
o that Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic has been creeping up my ever-shifting mental top 10/20/50/100 list consistently for some time. I didn’t really like Blade Runner very much at all the first time I watched it; I was too young to appreciate it and I was disappointed there wasn’t more “action.” But I got into it a few years later and have been watching it regularly ever since. I realized it was probably my favorite movie, period, when I noticed that, unlike all the other movies mentioned here (and in history), I fall in love with Blade Runner more each time I watch it. There isn’t anything about this movie that I don’t love, from the story to the production and set design to the music to the acting and the characters (Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty is easily one of my favorite movie villains of all time) to its central theme of what makes us human to just the overall feel, Blade Runner is, for me, just about as good as movies get.
Kill Bill
For a while after this movie came out, it was the one I mentioned when asked for my favorite, but I always sort of cringed when I answered, as I felt like there were some important caveats that w
ere difficult to explain. (I always think it’s sort of lame when people cite such a recent movie their favorite; films have to marinate in the psyche, I think, before they can honestly be called a person’s favorite.) But seeing Volume 1 for the first time in the theater remains one of the most mind-blowing movie experiences I’ve had. My love for Kill Bill (specifically Volume 1; it’s the one with all the martial arts, after all) is intensely personal; I wouldn’t even argue this is Quentin Tarantino’s best movie, but I grew up a geek for much of the same stuff he did, so his mash-up of samurai movies and kung fu movies and spy movies and westerns, as well as a lot of weird European movies I’ve never seen (with Sonny F***ing Chiba and an anime sequence tossed in for good measure) felt like someone made a movie just for me. I love martial arts movies, and the House of Blue Leaves fight scene in Volume 1 remains the most incredible on-screen fight I’ve seen. Things slow down a little for me in Volume 2, as there’s less fighting and more talking (though I love David Carradine’s performance, and it’s all in the second one), but Tarantino’s take on hardcore action flicks still turns my crank like few other movies ever have.
True Romance
I’ve never really considered myself that much of a Quentin Tarantino fan, but h
e’s connected to two movies on this list, so I guess I should reconsider that stance. He only wrote True Romance (it was directed by Tony Scott, who has another movie on this list), but I’ve been a freak for this movie since I first saw it as a teenager. I’ve seen this thing dozens of times, but I still get goosebumps during the scene near the beginning where Patricia Arquette’s Alabama confesses to Christian Slater’s Clarence that (1) she’s actually a call girl hired by his boss to show him a good time on his birthday and (2) she’s in love with him. Throw in flat-out brilliant supporting performances from Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, a pre-Sopranos James Gandolfini and Gary Oldman (reigning King of Movie Villains), and what is still my favorite Brad Pitt performance ever, and I almost stopped writing this to watch it again.
Boogie Nights
I guess this is the only movie on this list that isn’t really a genre movie in the traditional sense, but Paul T
homas Anderson’s epic about the golden age of the porn industry is one of the few three-hour-long movies that I can watch over and over and over again. This movie manages to be sad, hilarious, uplifting and terrifying at various points (occasionally all at once), and no matter how many times I watch it, I’m still amazed how well Anderson (and his fantastic cast) pulls it all off. Boogie Nights came out during a crucial stage in my development as a film lover; within about a year or two, this, Three Kings, Fight Club and Rushmore all came out, all of them blowing my mind, and it felt like a mini-renaissance was taking place in American film (and the directors behind all of those movies are still filmmakers whose careers I follow closely up to this day), but Boogie Nights was so audacious and unlike anything I’d seen up until then (I’ve subsequently seen a lot of the movies Anderson was drawing from, but it doesn’t change how much I love this film) that it's permanently etched into my mind. Anderson has yet to make a movie I haven't liked (I even dig Magnolia), but this is still the movie I think of when I think of him and his work.
Out of Sight/The Limey
At my old job, working at a music magazine, my editor would ask us all every holiday season to compile a list of our favorite albums and singles of the year, and every year I’d tr
y to cheat by putting the last one on my list as a tie. I never managed to slip this past him – he always made me discard one – but this is my list, and nobody edits this blog but me, so eat it Steve, this one really is a tie.
Actually, the real reason I included these two films together – made by my favorite director, Steven Soderbergh, within a year of one another – is that they’re so similar in many ways that I can’t help but associate them. Out of Sight was the movie the movie where I fell in love with Soderbergh’s movies. I love how it veers from being as funny as any comedy one moment to being tense and scary (like any good crime movie) at its climax. (I gather this is actually common to many Elmore Leonard’s novels, and it seems to be a balance that few filmmakers who’ve tried to adapt his stuff can pull off.) It’s also the first movie in which George Clooney truly was a movie star (and the last time I took Jennifer Lopez seriously as an actress), and it’s filled with crackerjack supporting actors like Don Cheadle, Ving Rhames and Steve Zahn. And the bit between Clooney and Cheadle in the prison library may hold the record (in my head at least) for the most great lines in a single scene.
The Limey sees Soderbergh taking many of the vaguely arty editing tricks he played in the m
ore commercial, studio-produced Out of Sight (like cutting to shots of characters just staring at each other while dialogue plays out, as if they’re communicating with their minds) even further with this low-budget riff on revenge movies. Terence Stamp is simply amazing as Wilson, a British ex-con trying to get to the bottom of his daughter’s mysterious death in L.A., and Peter Fonda is equally brilliant as a slimy record producer who played a role in her demise. (Fonda also manages to be a great movie villain without ever really doing anything particularly villainous on screen; he just feels evil.) The Limey manages to be artful and sort of experimental while still working as a satisfying genre movie; the scene where Stamp walks back into a building after being roughed up by thugs to kill a whole bunch of people (none of which we actually see) remains one of the most supremely badass sequences I've ever seen in a movie.
Tomorrow: The final five movies in my Top 10 (which the more astute among you have realized is actually a Top 11), including a few movies made before I was born...!
Keep in mind, this is a list of my favorite movies. That’s not the same as “the best” movies; I’m not trying to argue that Kill Bill is a better film than The Godfather or Citizen Kane, just that I have a special place in my heart for that movie that I don’t have for those classic films. (Both of which are brilliant and deserve their places in history, for the record.) These are just the movies that remind me why I love movies in the first place. I can watch them over and over again, any time, sometimes finding new stuff to love each time, sometimes just curling up with them like an old sweater.
Some of you will also probably notice that these are relatively recent movies. It’s not that I don’t appreciate older classics, but I didn’t grow up watching them and therefore they’re not as crucial to my development as a movie geek. So yeah, most of these films were released within my lifetime. Regardless of their genre or their place in the annals of cinema history, these are the movies that always do it for me no matter how many times I watch them (and most of them I’ve been watching regularly for years, even decades).
So without further ado, for those who care, my 10 favorite movies of all time.
Blade Runner
If I had to pick one film here as No. 1, it would be this one. I realized a few years ag
o that Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic has been creeping up my ever-shifting mental top 10/20/50/100 list consistently for some time. I didn’t really like Blade Runner very much at all the first time I watched it; I was too young to appreciate it and I was disappointed there wasn’t more “action.” But I got into it a few years later and have been watching it regularly ever since. I realized it was probably my favorite movie, period, when I noticed that, unlike all the other movies mentioned here (and in history), I fall in love with Blade Runner more each time I watch it. There isn’t anything about this movie that I don’t love, from the story to the production and set design to the music to the acting and the characters (Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty is easily one of my favorite movie villains of all time) to its central theme of what makes us human to just the overall feel, Blade Runner is, for me, just about as good as movies get.Kill Bill
For a while after this movie came out, it was the one I mentioned when asked for my favorite, but I always sort of cringed when I answered, as I felt like there were some important caveats that w
ere difficult to explain. (I always think it’s sort of lame when people cite such a recent movie their favorite; films have to marinate in the psyche, I think, before they can honestly be called a person’s favorite.) But seeing Volume 1 for the first time in the theater remains one of the most mind-blowing movie experiences I’ve had. My love for Kill Bill (specifically Volume 1; it’s the one with all the martial arts, after all) is intensely personal; I wouldn’t even argue this is Quentin Tarantino’s best movie, but I grew up a geek for much of the same stuff he did, so his mash-up of samurai movies and kung fu movies and spy movies and westerns, as well as a lot of weird European movies I’ve never seen (with Sonny F***ing Chiba and an anime sequence tossed in for good measure) felt like someone made a movie just for me. I love martial arts movies, and the House of Blue Leaves fight scene in Volume 1 remains the most incredible on-screen fight I’ve seen. Things slow down a little for me in Volume 2, as there’s less fighting and more talking (though I love David Carradine’s performance, and it’s all in the second one), but Tarantino’s take on hardcore action flicks still turns my crank like few other movies ever have.True Romance
I’ve never really considered myself that much of a Quentin Tarantino fan, but h
e’s connected to two movies on this list, so I guess I should reconsider that stance. He only wrote True Romance (it was directed by Tony Scott, who has another movie on this list), but I’ve been a freak for this movie since I first saw it as a teenager. I’ve seen this thing dozens of times, but I still get goosebumps during the scene near the beginning where Patricia Arquette’s Alabama confesses to Christian Slater’s Clarence that (1) she’s actually a call girl hired by his boss to show him a good time on his birthday and (2) she’s in love with him. Throw in flat-out brilliant supporting performances from Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, a pre-Sopranos James Gandolfini and Gary Oldman (reigning King of Movie Villains), and what is still my favorite Brad Pitt performance ever, and I almost stopped writing this to watch it again.Boogie Nights
I guess this is the only movie on this list that isn’t really a genre movie in the traditional sense, but Paul T
homas Anderson’s epic about the golden age of the porn industry is one of the few three-hour-long movies that I can watch over and over and over again. This movie manages to be sad, hilarious, uplifting and terrifying at various points (occasionally all at once), and no matter how many times I watch it, I’m still amazed how well Anderson (and his fantastic cast) pulls it all off. Boogie Nights came out during a crucial stage in my development as a film lover; within about a year or two, this, Three Kings, Fight Club and Rushmore all came out, all of them blowing my mind, and it felt like a mini-renaissance was taking place in American film (and the directors behind all of those movies are still filmmakers whose careers I follow closely up to this day), but Boogie Nights was so audacious and unlike anything I’d seen up until then (I’ve subsequently seen a lot of the movies Anderson was drawing from, but it doesn’t change how much I love this film) that it's permanently etched into my mind. Anderson has yet to make a movie I haven't liked (I even dig Magnolia), but this is still the movie I think of when I think of him and his work.Out of Sight/The Limey
At my old job, working at a music magazine, my editor would ask us all every holiday season to compile a list of our favorite albums and singles of the year, and every year I’d tr
y to cheat by putting the last one on my list as a tie. I never managed to slip this past him – he always made me discard one – but this is my list, and nobody edits this blog but me, so eat it Steve, this one really is a tie.Actually, the real reason I included these two films together – made by my favorite director, Steven Soderbergh, within a year of one another – is that they’re so similar in many ways that I can’t help but associate them. Out of Sight was the movie the movie where I fell in love with Soderbergh’s movies. I love how it veers from being as funny as any comedy one moment to being tense and scary (like any good crime movie) at its climax. (I gather this is actually common to many Elmore Leonard’s novels, and it seems to be a balance that few filmmakers who’ve tried to adapt his stuff can pull off.) It’s also the first movie in which George Clooney truly was a movie star (and the last time I took Jennifer Lopez seriously as an actress), and it’s filled with crackerjack supporting actors like Don Cheadle, Ving Rhames and Steve Zahn. And the bit between Clooney and Cheadle in the prison library may hold the record (in my head at least) for the most great lines in a single scene.
The Limey sees Soderbergh taking many of the vaguely arty editing tricks he played in the m
ore commercial, studio-produced Out of Sight (like cutting to shots of characters just staring at each other while dialogue plays out, as if they’re communicating with their minds) even further with this low-budget riff on revenge movies. Terence Stamp is simply amazing as Wilson, a British ex-con trying to get to the bottom of his daughter’s mysterious death in L.A., and Peter Fonda is equally brilliant as a slimy record producer who played a role in her demise. (Fonda also manages to be a great movie villain without ever really doing anything particularly villainous on screen; he just feels evil.) The Limey manages to be artful and sort of experimental while still working as a satisfying genre movie; the scene where Stamp walks back into a building after being roughed up by thugs to kill a whole bunch of people (none of which we actually see) remains one of the most supremely badass sequences I've ever seen in a movie.Tomorrow: The final five movies in my Top 10 (which the more astute among you have realized is actually a Top 11), including a few movies made before I was born...!
Labels: Lists, self-indulgence
¶ 10:36 AM 0 Comments
