Favorite films of 2010

There's a lag time between the calendar year and the movie year. Films that were officially released before the end of December often don't find their way into mainstream (i.e. Fresno) movie theaters until January. This means I can't put together my list of my favorite movies of the year until around now. Anyway, here were my favorite movies of 2010. And the worst movies of 2010? Well there weren't many BAD movies that I saw, but definitely some that were disappointing and could have been avoided.

Favorite films of 2010

1) The Social Network. See my previous review for details. Epic. Must see.

2) Somewhere. This is Sophia Coppola's latest movie, a limited release but a real gem. Stephen Dorf plays Johnny Marco, a movie star drifting through Hollywood (and life) alone in a black Ferrari, and later reacquainting with his lovely daughter, played by Elle Fanning. I loved the pace and tone of this movie. Very patient, warm and touching but not sticky sweet. Also a cool Phoenix and Strokes soundtrack.

3) Winter's Bone. Again, see previous review. This movie felt very original, with an unfamiliar setting and relatively unknown cast. Creepy as hell.

4) True Grit. Coen brothers (probably my favorite filmmakers) come through with another winner. What I've always liked about the Coen brothers' movies was their defiance of convention. The unpredictable twists, surprises, outlandish characters and dialogue have made their movies stand out among the rest. True Grit is probably their most straightforward/crowd-pleasing movie, with the biggest surprise being the amount of humor for a revenge western.

5) 127 Hours. As a Danny Boyle fan (28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, Shallow Grave are my favorites) and an outdoor enthusiast, this movie was pretty well suited for my tastes. James Franco was awesome, plus the Clemence Poesy cameo and Sigur Ros song at the end were nice bonuses.

Stinker films of 2010.

1) Biutiful. A film set in Barcelona, starring Javier Bardem and directed by Iñaritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams). Recipe for a great movie right? Wrong. This was the most depressing movie I've seen since Requiem for a Dream. Absolutely no redeeming qualities. Seriously, who wants to watch hematuria, asphyxiated immigrants washing up on a beach, exhumed corpses, and most disturbing of all, boob butts?

2) Inception. See previous rant for further ravings. This movie was visually spectacular but stupidly complicated. If you want to see an excellent mind-bending movie, I highly recommend Charlie Kaufmann's Synecdoche New York. FYI Christopher Nolan's third and final batman movie The Dark Knight Rises is reportedly starring Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and Tom Hardy as Bane, to be released July 2012!

3) Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Sorry but this movie was not funny, and for all it's flashy effects and sound, pretty boring after a few minutes, not unlike the 8 bit graphic video games the film so lavishly glorifies.

4) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part I. As far as I'm concerned, the only Harry Potter movie that came close to being as good as one of the books was Alfonso Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban. Granted this latest installment had the impossible task of adapting the best book of the series. Still, somehow the movie just doesn't quite capture the sense of terror I felt while reading the book. When I read the scene of Harry's escape from Privet Drive (photo below), I was really horrified, but in the movie, it was just another chase. Also, the scene where Hermione is tortured? To me that was probably the most atrocious part of the series, but in the movie almost unnoticeable. The best part of this movie was Hermione's animated narration of the story of the deathly hallows. And the worst part? Definitely the dancing scenes. Potter has no moves!!

"The Social Network": a movie about a website for friends, created by a nerd who has none

Let me begin by saying David Fincher's The Social Network, is thus far my favorite film of 2010, granted I've only seen five flicks this year. Now it may come as a surprise that the story of Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook should be told by the director of such gruesomely violent films as Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac. But as it turns out, the film is no less vicious.

See back in 2004, Harvard computer nerd Mark Zuckerberg, with some help from his "friends", launched a fun little website called The Facebook (you might have heard of it), which allowed people to make online profiles and keep tabs on others. To everyone's surprise, it eventually exploded into a multibillion dollar enterprise and cultural phenomenon that continues to transform the modern landscape of social interaction. The Social Network shows how all this came to pass. The suspense of the film comes from watching the creators battling to ride the technological tidal wave to fame and fortune, resulting in lawsuits, arrests, and friendships rent asunder.

The movie is surprisingly good for a number of reasons, probably the most important of which is the script. Virtually every scene in this movie is constructed with a conflict, the result of which drives the setup for the next scene. There is no lag in this movie, every conversation, every action has a purpose. Also the dialogue is fast and sharp, with some good lines like "You better lawyer up, asshole" or "Dating you is like dating a stairmaster" or "My Prada is at the cleaners, along with my hoodie and my 'fuck you' flip-flops."

There are also many interesting characters and themes in this movie. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a genius computer geek with Asperger syndome-like social skills. That such an awkward person could create a website designed to allow friends to socialize online seems bewildering, but in fact makes perfect sense when you compare computer message posting to actual face-to-face conversation. His counterpart, Sean Parker, is a flamboyant technological visionary played by Justin Timberlake. Parker captures the spirit of Silicon Valley, California creation and he invigorates the narrative upon his entry halfway into the film. Parker is a foil to the Winklevoss twins, two wealthy Harvard students with the weakest of ties to Facebook's creation who strive bitterly to mooch off the website's success.

There is plenty more to write about, suffice it to say that The Social Network is a timely, thought-provoking film actually worth the now ridiculous price of theatre admission. It's one of those movies that you leave discussing with friends, maybe on Facebook. Whoa.

"Inception" is a hot mess.

In the fall of 2000, my friends and I drove to an indie theatre in Pasadena for the opening of a film that sounded cool but was under the radar. Something about a guy trying to find a killer and the story going backwards. The movie of course was Memento and after we saw it, our minds were so blown we had a hard time finding our way back to campus. This low budget movie directed by Christopher Nolan had a genius script that was perfectly translated to the screen, and was one of the best movies of the decade. Nolan went on to direct Insomnia, The Prestige and Batman Begins, all pretty good. And then he made The Dark Knight which, a lot of guys will tell you, is one of the best movies ever.

And so it was with eager anticipation that I awaited Nolan's newest movie, Inception. But oh, the disappointment. Well, not a total failure. Let me explain.

Leonardo diCaprio plays Cobb, an "extractor" who can enter your dreams and steal ideas from your subconsciousness. He is hired by a powerful executive to create an idea in a competitor's subconsciousness for the purposes of sabotage. All of this is haphazardly explained in the film's opening. For the next hour or so there is a lot of talk and planning for this reverse heist, and it kind of drags. We meet Cobb's team, which includes Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, all very skilled in their bizarre tasks. Their competence is key, because it turns out that stealing ideas is way easier than creating them, something we all learned early on in grade school.

I'll spare you all the details, believe me there are a ton. In fact you could almost hear the gears wrenching inside the minds of the Fresno audience, trying to follow along. I chuckled when the lady next to me asked, profoundly, "Wait, what is real?" In fact, the plot is relatively straightforward, but the movie gets very bogged down in Cobb's psyche, flashing between his past reality, the dreams he shared with his wife, his present reality and his present dreams.

The visual effects during the dream scenes are where the film triumphs. Escher staircases, zero gravity fights, Paris collapsing in on itself, indoor waterfalls, all incredible. The sets and costumes are very well crafted. Plus this movie is set in at least six different countries and four continents. The premise and ideas themselves are all interesting too.

But overall this movie is very chaotic, and it's almost too much work to enjoy thoroughly. Memento and The Dark Knight were so good I bought the DVDs and can watch them over and over. Will I throw down more cash to watch Inception again? Dream on!

"Winter's Bone": feel good movie of the year!

Working in the newborn suite and neonatal intensive care unit in a downtown Fresno hospital, I often encounter mothers on methamphetamines. They're easy to identify; the drug causes rotten teeth and premature aging. These moms usually had little to no prenatal care, and when the babies are born, they can be very agitated from the drug exposure. I get social work and child protective services involved, if they aren't already, because the mothers' lives are often such train wrecks that they can't care for their children. It's easy to feel saddened, even disgusted, by the whole situation.

Winter's Bone is a film set in the Missouri Ozarks, where meth has ravaged the hillbilly community, and it too is sad and disgusting. Here's the plot: 17 year old Rhee must track down her father (or what's left of him) in order to keep her family from being evicted from their cabin, which was used to post her dad's bail. The man cooked meth in makeshift labs, was arrested, made bail and then vanished, leaving his family to survive on their own.

The movie pretty much follows Rhee on her quest to find her dad, pestering meth heads who do not want to be bothered, but also happen to be Rhee's own relatives. There's suspense that builds as she attempts to uncover the truth behind her dad's disappearance, and it ultimately leads to a pretty gruesome finale.

But what's scariest about this movie is the grim reality the characters occupy, and unfortunately the movie doesn't really address how this all came to pass. I mean, what the hell happened here? How is it that the Ozarks became a drug wasteland that left its children scrounging for squirrels? My guess is through a combination of poverty/lack of resources, isolation and an interest in chemistry. These details were probably better explained in the book (the movie is based on a novel by the same name, written by Daniel Woodrell.) As usual, a movie adaptation fails to tell the whole story, so to speak.

I don't mean to discount the film entirely, as there are several strong points. The performances are pretty impressive, especially considering the only recognizable star is John Hawkes (from the show Eastbound and Down and the indie hit Me and You and Everyone We Know), who plays Rhee's uncle Teardrop and looks like a mangy chihuahua on blow. The cinematography is very very bleak, and leaves you feeling quite unsettled. And then there is Rhee herself, who is just an awesome young hero. She takes on the role of guardian to her younger sibs, and has the bravery to stand up to gun-totting, drug addled rednecks who would've chased me off their property in a heartbeat. The movie reassures us that even after adults have laid waste to society, children have the power to survive and make things right. Now doesn't that make you feel good?

"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" will beat the living crap out of you.

After being held in abeyance for a few months, my movie blog is back with a review of this exciting new movie! Man som hatar kvinnor (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is a Swedish film released last year that is based on the best-selling novel of the same name; it is now in limited release in the U.S. and worth seeing if playing in your neighborhood.

A good rule of thumb about foreign films: they generally have to be pretty good in order to be playing in theaters here in the U.S. As for the Swedes, they first caught my attention with the slick teenage vampire film Lat den ratte komma in (Let The Right One In) which made the Twilight movies look like Care Bears: Naptime. Note that I never actually saw the Twilight movies, but I bet they never featured severed limbs in a swimming pool or a lady getting mauled by housecats!

And so it seems the Swedes have a penchant for the dark and ultraviolent. In this film, we follow the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, as he investigates the unsolved disappearance of a young girl 40 years ago. Enter Lisbeth Salander, the world's only Swedish skinny goth bisexual psychopath computer genius, who in turn is investigating Blomkvist, and becomes intertwined in the mystery. The closer they come to solving the puzzle, the more dangerous the search becomes, with the "why don't you let sleeping dogs lie?" and the "better turn back now before it's too late..."

Overall the movie is pretty thrilling and Salander is totally captivating, with her tattoos, piercings, spikes and briefly bare breasts :) Seriously though, her character is interesting in that she is both fierce and vulnerable, corrupted and innocent, clever and foolish, never one-dimensional. So be sure to check it out before Hollywood does a shitty remake of it and erases it from memory, just like The Departed did to Infernal Affairs or the new Death at a Funeral is doing to the original Death at a Funeral grumble grumble grumble....

DVD shoutout: If you're looking for a good laugh, I highly recommend In the Loop, a British political comedy in they style of Doctor Strangelove.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/intheloop/

Best 5/Worst 5 movies of 2009.

Ok, 2010 is here and I've finally recovered from New Year's Eve. So let's recap on the best and worst movies of 2009. Keep in mind it's not like I saw every single movie, so there may be others that should be on the list. And just one quick question: where were all the documentaries?

1) The Hurt Locker: Hands down the best. Deserves to win best picture, best director and maybe best actor. See my previous review for details.

2) Sin Nombre: An intense movie about a dirt poor family of Honduran immigrants riding the roofs of trains to reach the U.S. As if that weren't dangerous enough, they're being pursued by the Mala Salvatrucha, the most vicious and feared gang in Latin America. Beautiful, frightening, and tragic.

3) (500) Days of Summer: A movie that captures the beauty of downtown LA, and fairly accurately shows what it feels like to go after a girl that just isn't that into you. Good laughs and good tunes.

4 & 5 (tie). Star Trek and The Hangover: Great popcorn flicks. Turn off your brain and have a good time. Star Trek had awesome visual effects and sound without being excessive, and did justice to the original series. The Hangover was just plain hilarious and kept you guessing just what would happen next. Interestingly, this movie shows Las Vegas almost entirely during the daytime, with all the city's gaudiness in plain sight.

And now the worst 5. These movies were not just bad, but disappointing, as they had potential.

1) Terminator Salvation: Stupid. A series that started strong has fallen apart.

2) 9: Nice animation but a story that goes nowhere.

3) Avatar: By the end of this movie I was ready to stop watching movies altogether. Like the newest King Kong, it was way too much. Holly had to go to the restroom halfway through and almost fainted from overstimulation. Glad we didn't see it in IMAX, might have went into status epilepticus.

4) Away We Go: Hipster couple travels around looking for a place to settle down. Not funny. Not romantic. Not interesting.

5) Watchmen: Again, too much. Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach were cool characters but overall this movie was just another noisy turd.

"A Serious Man" begs the question "why?"

Joel and Ethan Coen, "the Coen brothers", are probably my favorite filmmakers. Raising Arizona, Fargo, Miller's Crossing, The Big Lebowski, No Country For Old Men. These movies are masterpieces in my mind. Sure, the brothers have made some stinkers here and there (most of them starring George Clooney, whom I have long loathed for reasons I won't get into at this moment). But for the most part, these guys are immensely talented, succeeding tremendously in virtually every arena, from comedy to drama to suspense. Though what exactly are the elements that bind their films? That is, what are the trademarks of the Coen brothers? Hard to pinpoint, not only because of their variety, but the originality of the movies themselves transcend categories. Overall, they are unconventional, and indeed often ridiculous. The dialogue is sharp, witty and grandiose (The Big Lebowski is probably the most quotable movie ever, way more than Casablanca). Finally there is an insidious sense of irreverence and nihilism that may manifest as abrupt, grotesque violence (e.g. the woodchipper scene in Fargo, virtually every scene with Javier Bardiem in No Country for Old Men), or sudden, seemingly anticlimactic endings (Barton Fink) or animalistic howling in despair (Rasing Arizona, Fargo, Miller's Crossing) or, as their latest film, A Serious Man, demonstrates, continuous onslaught of punishment upon the innocent.

A Serious Man essentially is the story of Job set in a Midwestern Jewish community during the late 1960s. Larry Gopnik, played by Michael Stuhlbarg (yeah the entire cast is pretty much unrecognizable) is Job in this case. He is a happy physics professor with a wife, kids, house, the whole bit, and then suddenly for no apparent reason his life falls apart. Gopnik, the scientist in search for answers, tries to understand why he is suffering such misfortunes despite leading a virtuous life. Finally after much persuasion and desperation, he turns to the temple, where the rabbis are as useless as tits on a bull.

Gopnik's pitfalls and search for meaning are more comedic than tragic when presented through the eyes of the Coen brothers. His suffering reminded me of the hilarious lemonade vendor's "slow burn" from Marx Brothers' Duck Soup [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZOlrZNIod0 ] only about 90 minutes longer and in color. The laughs aren't big or even all that frequent though, and overall I'd say there's nothing supremely impressive about this movie as compared to their previous work. Perhaps the one striking thing about this movie is that it seems to paradoxically put forth the message that there is no message... shit happens and then you die. So let's all get drunk and play ping-pong!

P.S. I tried on three separate occasions to see this movie but was denied, once because it was sold out, and twice because the internet said it was playing at the theatre when it actually was not! When I went to buy tickets the first time and the vendor told me it was sold out, I was like "Are you serious....man?"