Category Archives: Amigo

Listmania ’11! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Four

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Finishing this in February feels so wrong it’s almost right. By now I’ve actually seen movies released in 2012 and I’m still posting about last year (the movies from this year being The Muppets, which the UK got obscenely late, and Chronicle, which is fantastic stuff and well worth a watch). The Oscar nominations have also been announced, with the deeply-average The Descendants and the deeply-awful War Horse getting a few nods while Fassbender, Swinton and Brooks are snubbed. Disgusting. If ever proof was needed that the Academy doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have a whine about that before the award ceremony, so without any further ado, let’s end Listmania! with a bang. The only other posts that have taken me this long were my Lost finale posts, which took three months to write. This only took a month and a half, so I’m getting better at this. If you’re a fan of pointless miscellania, you’ve come to the right place.

Best Movies I Saw In 2010 That Were Released More Generally In 2011: Black Swan, 13 Assassins, Archipelago, Amigo, Meek’s Cutoff, Submarine

Best Scene: Rango walks through the desert during a crisis of confidence (Rango)

Honorable Mentions:

Tom Cruise climbs up the side of the Burj Khalifa (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol)

Matthew Broderick attempts to teach a class of precocious kids about King Lear and it doesn’t go well (Margaret)

Michael Shannon and his family attend a meal with their fellow townsfolk and it doesn’t go well (Take Shelter)

Jung tries to tell his new buddy Freud about synchronicity and it doesn’t go well (A Dangerous Method)

Kristin Wiig gets drunk on a plane and it doesn’t go well (Bridesmaids)

Best Action Scene: Tintin and Captain Haddock chase a hawk through the streets of Bagghar (The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn)

Honorable Mentions:

The final physics-mangling car chase in Rio De Janeiro, including some serious hardcore badassery from The Rock and Vin Diesel (Fast Five)

The longest and most explosives-packed train in the history of the world crashes for a long time (Super 8)

The Revolutionary Army of Apedom makes a break for freedom through San Francisco (Rise of the Planet of the Apes)

Alex Pettyfer, Teresa Palmer and a big alien dog wreck a high school using telekinesis and big lasers (I Am Number Four)

Guy Ritchie goes crazy with ramping and cameras attached to people running and all sorts of tricks in a forest (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows)

Best Hero: Caesar – Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Honorable Mentions:

Captain America – Captain America: The First Avenger

Thor – Thor

Moses – Attack The Block

The Driver – Drive

Rango – Rango

Best Villain: Loki – Thor

Honorable Mentions:

Bernie Rose - Drive

Society’s indifferent or vexed reaction to those unfortunate enough to be afflicted with mental illness – Melancholia

The oppressive horror of modern life – Take Shelter

Rattlesnake Jake – Rango

Chris Cleek – The Woman

Best Couple: David Norris and Elise Sellas (Matt Damon and Emily Blunt) – The Adjustment Bureau

Worst Couple: Emma and Adam (Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher) – No Strings Attached

Most Doomed Couple(s) of the Year: Justine and Michael and Claire and John (Kirsten Dunst, Alexander Sarsgaard, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Keifer Sutherland) - Melancholia

“I Hope These Guys Make It” Couple Of The Year: Russell and Glen (Tom Cullen and Chris New) – Weekend

“Please Bite Them And Get It Over With, Evil Colin Farrell” Couple of the Year: Charley Brewster and Amy Peterson (Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots) – Fright Night

“Okay, I Really Don’t Think He Should Be Attracting These Improbably Hot High School Hotties In These Movies, What With Looking Like A Surly Child Half The Time” Couple of the Year: Porter and Norah (Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence) – The Beaver

Greatest Disparity In Energy Levels Between Partners of the Year: Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris (Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively) – Green Lantern

Most Improbable Couple of the Year: Ernesto Botta and Laura Aliprandi (Toni Servillo and Sarah Felberbaum) – The Jewel

“Only In The Movies” Adorable and Romantic Couple of the Year: George Valentin and Peppy Miller (Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo) - The Artist

“Only In The Movies” Twee Asshole Couple of the Year: Enoch and Annabel (Henry Hopper and Mia Wasikowska) – Restless

“Rather Raunchy For A PG-13 Movie, Eh What?” Couple of the Year: Ren McCormack and Ariel Moore (Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough) – Footloose

Most Adorable Fuckbuddies of the Year: Dylan Harper and Jamie Rellis (Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis) – Friends With Benefits

Most Inappropriate Couple of the Year: Robert Ledgard and Vera Cruz (Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya) – The Skin I Live In

Worst Love Triangle of the Year: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black (Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner) – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One for the third year running

Best Love Triangle of the Year: Brian O’Conner, Dominic Toretto and Luke Hobbs (Paul Walker, Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson) – Fast Five

Most Satisfying Finale: The Artist

Honorable Mentions:

Attack The Block

Melancholia

Real Steel

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Arriety

Best Finale in a Bad Movie: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

Least Satisfying Finale: Green Lantern

Dishonorable Mentions:

The Adjustment Bureau

I Don’t Know How She Does It

Blitz

In Time

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Worst Finale in a Good Movie: Source Code

Badass of the Year: Lisbeth Salander – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Best Double Act: Tucker and Dale (Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine) - Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Worst Hero: D’Artagnan – The Three Musketeers

Dishonorable Mentions:

Hal Jordan - Green Lantern

Mater – Cars 2

Theseus – Immortals

Joey the Super-Special Horsey – War Horse

Dagny Taggart – Atlas Shrugged: Part I

Worst Villain: Karl Hendricks – Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Dishonorable Mentions:

The concept of generosity – Atlas Shrugged Part I

Hector Hammond – Green Lantern

The Red Skull – Captain America: The First Avenger

That sinful sexuality in any form it’s SO SINFUL – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One

Blackbeard – Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Most Likeable Cast: Thor

Least Likeable Cast: Blubberella

Most Annoying Character of the Year: Sid – The Descendants

Dishonorable Mentions:

Moberg - The Rum Diary

Kate Reddy – I Don’t Know How She Does It

Dexter – One Day

Sean Cassidy (aka Banshee) – X-Men: First Class

Homer Yannos – Tomorrow, When The War Began

Best Live Action Animal: Uggie The Dog – The Artist

Best Animated Animal: Snowy – The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn

Best Trailer: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Honorable Mention: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Best Poster: The Tree of Life

Worst Poster: Hall Pass

Limited Edition Poster I Wish Had Been Used: This superb retro Captain America: The First Avenger poster by Paolo Rivera

Most Profound Poster: Shame

No photo of it will do it justice, but the poster for Shame that we saw outside the London Film Festival screening had a reflective surface, but with the word “Shame” printed at the bottom. Because the movie speaks for all of us who have shame, do you see? Something to think about.

Most Misleading and Tonally Inaccurate Poster: We Need To Talk About Kevin

Nicest Photography In A Headshot Poster: Martha Marcy May Marlene

Most Defiantly Wrongly-Angled-By-90° Poster of the Year: Super 8

Most Fucked-Up / Desperately Controversial Poster of All Time: The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

Most Out-Of-Control Trend In Posters: Character variants (::deep breath:: The Adjustment Bureau; Arthur Christmas; Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked; Bridesmaids; Cars 2; Conan the Barbarian; Contagion; Cowboys and Aliens; Crazy, Stupid, Love; Drive; Footloose; Friends With Benefits, Fright Night, Gnomeo and Juliet; The Green Hornet; Green Lantern; Hall Pass, The Hangover Part Two; Happy Feet Two; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two: Hop; Horrible Bosses; Hugo; Immortals; In Time; Johnny English Reborn; Killer Elite; Kill The Irishman; Mars Needs Moms; Margin Call; Martha Marcy May Marlene; Melancholia [!!!!!]; Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol; The Muppets; Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides; Priest; Puss in Boots; Real Steel; Red State; Rio; Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; The Smurfs; Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; Spy Kids 4: All The Time In The World; Straw Dogs; Sucker Punch; Super; 30 Minutes or Less; Thor; The Three Musketeers; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Tower Heist; Transformers: Dark of the Moon; A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas; Warrior; Water For Elephants; Winnie The Pooh; X-Men: First Class; Your Highness; The Zookeeper)

How many of these posters ever make it into cinemas? How many of them convince people to go and see these movies? Do casual cinemagoers see any of these and think, “Well, I wasn’t going to see Green Lantern but now that I know Tomar-Re is in it I’m IN”? Will people really be excited at the array of not-really-that-well-known actresses in the cast of Bridesmaids before they see how funny they all are (scroll down for the full selection)? Do we really need 31 posters for The Three Musketeers? Do we need more than one poster for Melancholia? It’s not harming anyone, obviously, but it still seems like a waste of resources. If anyone can explain why we need so many variants, please let me know.

Best Publicity Campaign: Paranormal Activity 3

Usually SoC likes to praise a publicity campaign that successfully promotes a tough sell, but this year I have to give huge props to the makers of Paranormal Activity 3 for doing something that should’ve been done a long time ago. However, to do that I have to spoil, so please consider all of the text between these two scary-as-fuck trailers a huge spoiler for PA3‘s best trick.

I won’t lie. That first trailer for this franchise scared the absolute shit out of me when I first saw it, and it deserves some credit for making even this cynic forget about the overwhelming familiarity of the Paranormal Activity template and vow to see the third one as soon as it came out. In that sense, job done. However, what’s really great is that that scene doesn’t happen in the movie, and neither do almost all of the biggest shock moments in the trailer below.

Seeing that at home and getting annoyed at all of the spoilers is one thing; I switched it off halfway through as I was horrified at the amount of spoilage. But if you’re in a cinema and can’t escape, you’re going to absorb all of that information, and more than likely you’re still going to see it (because these movies make money hand-over-fist without even breaking a sweat). And yet all of that stuff you’re expecting won’t happen. Instead you’ll get a bunch of other scary stuff. And even better? You still got scared by those trailers, as if you’re watching a very very short horror movie for free. I’ve waited for a long time to see this done so well. The movie was okay too. That’s a bingo, I reckon.

Worst Publicity Campaign: X-Men: First Class / Green Lantern

Nerds are hard to please; I know because I am one. Thor and Captain America did a mostly good job of introducing two less well-known characters, with the non-mainstream Thor making $450m worldwide and the super-patriotic Cap overcoming some of the anti-American prejudice that could’ve prevented it making any money at all ($370m’s okay. Green Lantern wishes it made that much). If they’re an example of how to do it right, the other two big superhero releases of the year show how to do it wrong, thus squandering all of the nerd energy they needed to stay alive.

Each campaign commits a different crime that has the same result; underwhelming box office. X-Men: First Class‘ promotional crime was to destroy a lot of good will towards a franchise that desperately needed it, even more than the previous X-Men movie did. Wolverine should have killed X-Men dead but Fox wasn’t going to let the franchise go to waste when it could release yet another movie and maybe resurrect it for another few sequels. A lot of good decisions were made regarding casting and crew choices, but all of that was hobbled by some terrible promotional errors.

One was to have the only convention appearance take place at the inaugural London Comic-Con, with an appearance by co-writers Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz. Other than that, the production and release schedule meant they unfortunately missed out on those opportunities, and had to rely on trailers and posters. While all of the trailers are good enough, if a little calm, the first leaked picture of the cast was a disaster. Even worse were the posters: the ones above were two separate teasers, with little heads gestating inside shadowmen; the one below is an advert for X-Men-themed bobbleheads. I can’t understand why someone would sign off on it.

Only one of the posters was any good, but if you look at the bottom of the page you’ll see even more awful examples, including some shocking Japanese ones. XM:FC was considered enough of a success to warrant a sequel (it made less than Cap and cost a bit more, but it’s not a dramatic difference), but that success was only because of the (bafflingly) good reviews and the fact that it had the weekend to itself. Though it’s not a representative sample, there were a number of X-Men fans of my acquaintance who were burned out on the franchise after Wolverine and even the raves for this couldn’t persuade them. Who knows what that opening weekend would have looked like if Fox had done a better job of getting my nerd brethren off their sofas?

Warner Bros., on the other hand, couldn’t do anything to get anyone into the cinema to see Green Lantern. I only went because I try to see as many films as possible, and we’re talking about my favourite superhero of all time here. To be fair to the folks responsible for promoting GL, they were dealing with a (relatively) obscure character with a mythology that’s hard to explain in posters and short trailers, plus it was saddled with a cast and team of writers that didn’t excite the fans either, so they were trying to ice-skate uphill from the start. The posters were okay, I guess. They were nice and colourful enough, though that fucking stupid mask really doesn’t help.

The mainstream audience doesn’t love Ryan Reynolds or Blake Lively enough to take a risk on a movie that looks like the adventures of a rubber-bodied space man versus a creature made of sentient dreadlocks, but readers of the comic weren’t likely to show up either. Most of the initial reports on the movie made it seem like the filmmakers were trying to be loyal to the comics while getting the tone entirely wrong. There was also barely any sight of Oa or the Corps early on (most likely because the FX weren’t finished), so the fans felt even more nonplussed. When footage was released at Wondercon the fans justifiably went nuts. Sadly, that was almost all of Oa / Corps footage that appeared in the finished movie. WB shot their wad in desperation. The movie opened to at best, indifference; at worst, derision. Was that the fault of the promotional campaign? Well, it certainly didn’t help.

Best Hair: The assorted period-appropriate ‘dos in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Worst Hair: Daniel Craig – The latter half of Dream House

Most Appropriate Hair For A Cancer Patient: Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s unnerving shaved head – 50/50

Least Appropriate Hair For A Cancer Patient: Mia Wazikowska’s tasteful pixie-cut – Restless

Best Facial Hair: Dominic Purcell - Killer Elite

Worst Facial Hair: Clive Owen - Killer Elite

Scariest Hair/Make-Up Combo: Tom Hanks - Larry Crowne

Best Wig (Actor): Nicolas Cage – Season of the Witch (possibly borrowed from the set of last year’s winner The Sorceror’s Apprentice)

Best Wig (Actress): Emily Browning – Sucker Punch

Worst Wig (Actor): Logan Lerman - The Three Musketeers (actually they were glued-in extensions but you get my point)

Worst Wig (Actress): Cate Blanchett – Hanna

Wig I’m On The Fence About: Justin Theroux – Your Highness

Best Hats: The Adjustment Bureau

Honorable Mention: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Best Dressed Chap in Sweden: Daniel Craig – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Worst Casting: Sensible Reese Witherspoon as a PG-13-raunchy and unpredictable acrobat in Water For Elephants

Most Scatological Movie of the Year: Spy Kids 4D: All The Time In The World

I’m kinda glad I didn’t see this at the cinema with the Smell-O-Vision scratch card; if the middle section of this movie is anything to go by, I’d just be sniffing a piece of cardboard soaked in Essence of Fart. But I’ll be honest; the cavalcade of poop, barf and fart jokes made me laugh more often than most adult comedies released this year. Shame about that incoherent final act, though.

Most Weather: Wuthering Heights

Best Recasting: The mostly awake and reasonably charming Rosie Huntington-Whiteley replacing orange-hued erotic rabbitbot Megan Fox on Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Messiest Eater: Mickey Rourke - Immortals

Most Expressive Fist: Ryan Gosling - Drive

Biggest Build-Up For Least Payoff: The appearance of Kominsky – New Year’s Eve

Midway through Garry Marshall’s fractured compendium of schmaltz, Hilary Swank decides she needs to hire the legendary Kominsky to fix the broken new year ball in Times Square, and this causes a ripple of excitement to run through the extras clumsily assembled around the set. Kominsky, they whisper with amazement, she’s getting Kominsky. There is much fuss, palaver and hullabuloo about the imminent arrival of Kominsky. It’s infectious. This is, after all, a movie that features a dazzling array of cinema legends like Lea Michele and Josh Duhamel, while filling the smaller roles with yer DeNiros and Pfeiffers. So what legend will they get to play Kominsky? Pacino? Cruise? Hanks? No, silly! It’s Hector Elizondo! For fans of Garry Marshall I’m sure this was a big deal. For the rest of us? Even those of us who have nothing against Hector Elizondo? Not so much.

Most Admirable Commitment To Onscreen Skeeviness: Ben Foster (duplicitous assassin in The Mechanic, wheelchair-bound substance-abusing snitch in Rampart, convicted sex offender and possible murderer in 360)

Most Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Michael Fassbender – Shame (And also X-Men: First Class, A Dangerous Method and Jane Eyre)

Honorable Mention: Hayley Atwell – Captain America: The First Avenger

Least Convincing Lust Object of the Year: January Jones – X-Men: First Class

Dishonorable Mention: Ryan Reynolds - The Change-Up

Most Obscenely, Depressingly Beautiful Cast: Immortals

Ugliest Contact Lenses: The Rum Diary

Honorary Manuela Velasco Award for Services to Scream-Queen Culture: Florencia Colucci - The Silent House

Most Depressing Mise-en-Scène: Tyrannosaur

Honorable Mention: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Use Of Split Screen: The Green Hornet

Worst Use Of Split Screen: 360

Most Depressing Depiction of a Sexually Aggressive Woman: Jennifer Aniston – Horrible Bosses

Dishonorable Mention: Marisa Tomei – Crazy, Stupid, Love

Cheapest But Most Effective Device In A Horror Film: The swiveling camera in Paranormal Activity 3

It’s just a camera on the bottom half of an oscillating fan, but that simple trick, with the camera panning back and forth very slowly, amps up the tension more than any expensive CGI trick. Kudos to Henry Joost, Ariel Shulman and Christopher Landon for coming up with it.

Worst Product Placement: New Year’s Eve, because nothing says New Year’s celebrations like those joy-embodying products from Toshiba, Phillips and Nivea.

Worst Manners: Jason Statham – Blitz

Weirdest Impersonation of What Sounds A Bit Like Ray Winstone: Mel Gibson – The Beaver

Weirdest Impersonation Of What Sounds Like Jennifer Jason Leigh In The Hudsucker Proxy: Andrea Riseborough – W.E.

Most Logistically Impressive Movie: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Honorable Mention: Battle: Los Angeles

Most Unusual Fighting Implement Wielded by Zoe Saldana In An Otherwise Forgettable Luc Besson/Robert Mark Kamen C-Movie Actioner: A toothbrush (Columbiana)

Best Location Shooting: The Descendants (Hawaii)

Honorable Mentions:

Blitz (London)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Chicago and many other parts of America)

A Dangerous Method (Germany, Austria)

Wuthering Heights (Yorkshire)

Thor (Asgard)

Worst Cinematic Trend of 2011: Underwhelming third acts – Insidious, Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, The Ides of March, Hugo, The Silent House, The Eagle, Dendera, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, Warrior, Paul, Cowboys and Aliens, The Adjustment Bureau, The Skin I Live In, Source Code, The Descendants, War Horse, Super 8, Drive, In Time, Trespass

Anne Billson wrote this great article on the problem of the bungled third act, and though I enjoyed a couple of her examples, there are a few there that cannot be argued with. Too many movies this year fell apart in the last 20-30 minutes, sometimes so badly that the rest of the movie was irreparably damaged. I’m not sure what the reason for this is, other than that too often films aren’t rewritten often enough before reaching the set, but whatever it is, three-quarters of each of the films above were reasonably-good-to-great, and that’s a very frustrating fraction.

Most Publicity Pictures of a Director: Paddy Considine – Tyrannosaur

Last year (scroll down to the bottom) I noticed the IMDb page for Biutiful‘s images featured a lot of shots of Iñárritu (aka The Director Formerly Known As Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu), most of them featuring him pointing and looking very thoughtful on set. It struck me that he was going for the title of Most Pictures Of A Director Pointing And Looking Very Thoughtful on IMDb, a title currently held by Michael Bay. And yet this year there’s a new potential winner in the shape of Paddy Considine, with four pictures on IMDb, more than co-star Eddie Marsan (he gets one), and as many as Olivia Colman. Bear in mind, Considine’s not even in the movie.

Even more shocking, Bay only has three on-set photos from Transformers: Dark of the Moon on IMDb this year, the other 600 pictures being 67% shots of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley getting out of cars, and 33% images of smoking rubble. Considine even manages two more shots of himself than Bay got on his debut movie Bad Boys, though none of the shots of Considine are as moving as this ferociously erotic pic of Bay’s torso. So this race to the bottom of the ego continues, but with a new contender around, THIS SHIT OFFICIALLY JUST GOT REALER.

And with that, I’m finally done. Thanks to all who have contacted me about this epic series of posts, and to everyone who has made their way through this mass of opinion and bad jokes, I doff my cap, and say, until next time. ::theme tune plays me out:: ::collapses::

Listmania ‘10! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Two

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One last post, and then I’m done for a bit, though I may return to film blogging when the Oscars happen. As usual, I had finished writing most of this series of year-end posts just before seeing the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, which would have easily found a place on many of the Best Of lists here: certainly it would be on the 25 Best films list, as would ace cinematographer Roger “King” Deakins and lead actor Jeff Bridges. I expect to be seeing The Fighter and The King’s Speech soon too. I have high hopes for one of them: anyone who knows me will know which one that is. As ever it difficult to do these posts in timely fashion, and I envy critics (especially US ones) who get to sample so many movies with plenty of time to compile lists. Sad, really. I’d love a job as a critic not because I love films so much, but because I want more time to make a bunch of pointless lists. I may need to reassess my life-goals here.

So anyway, this is a bunch of extremely miscellaneous gubbins. Have at it.

Best Movie From 2009 That We Saw In 2010: The Princess and the Frog

2009 was the best year for feature length animation that I can recall, thanks to the efforts of Pixar, Studio Ghibli, the Cloudy chaps, and Henry Selick. Just as Christmas rolled around lucky Americans got one last treat: a cel-animated Disney musical good enough to stand next to their 90′s run of classics. Ron Clements and John Musker got back the mojo they had started to slowly lose after Aladdin with a joyous and spry reworking of the Grimm Brothers fairy tale and subsequent novel by E.D. Baker, smartly adding iconography and mythology from African-American history. This decision seemed to rejuvenate the creative powers of all involved: it’s funny, moving, energetic, has a cast of utterly charming characters — plus Keith “Superawesome” David’s Dr. Facilier, the best Disney villain since Little Mermaid‘s Ursula – and features songs and music from Randy Newman that eclipse anything else he’s done in years. A triumph, in short, and one that already needs to be reappraised after it came and went from public view with such little fanfare.

Honorable Mentions:

Bright Star – Another great movie from Jane Campion: no real surprise there. What was unexpected was how much this tale moved a schmuck like me, who thinks that films about writers are usually only interesting if they feature Mugwumps. Credit is due to Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish for bringing the fragile love affair of John Keats and Fannie Brawne to such vivid life, and even more credit is due to Paul Schneider, who is truly excellent as the repellent Charles Brown, lingering in the shadows and spitting poison at the lovers.

Sherlock Holmes – Haters can suck it. Guy Ritchie’s surprisingly entertaining romp caught two-thirds of Shades of Caruso completely out by not being awful. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s loyal to the books, very funny, properly exciting and imaginatively filmed. It’s also the most successful film Joel Silver has produced in years: as a fan of his output from the 80s and 90s, it’s good to see him hit big every once in a while, especially as he seems increasingly keen to promote smaller genre movies like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and Splice and he isn’t making much money from them.

Worst Movie From 2009 That We Saw In 2010: Whatever Works

Whenever I impotently but passionately rail against the staggering of global release dates for films, I should always be grateful for one thing: the fact that Woody Allen’s movies seem to arrive here very late or not at all, even though Britain is supposed to be one of the countries that are most fond of the increasingly irrelevant old grouch. Whatever Works limped over to the UK about a year after it was released in the States, and really, thanks so much to UK distributors Warner Bros. for getting a last few spins out of those worn-out prints. This is not quite as bad as Cassandra’s Dream, but it’s considerably worse than Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was already not that great. Basically it’s just an excuse for the once-great director to hire nubile Evan Rachel Wood to bounce around in front of his latest ancient proxy in a tight-shirt-and-hotpants combo and acting like one a’ dem Suthners frawm thuh Red Stayts what is men-ta-lee challunjjed. It’s nothing more than a snide wank fantasy. I fucking HATED IT. I note that Peter Bradshaw is YET AGAIN tying himself in knots to justify the formerly brilliant director’s descent into awfulness. Not mediocrity: I’m talking total and utter artistic decrepitude. Give it up, man!

Dishonorable Mentions:

An Education – Carey Mulligan is transcendentally wonderful in this uninspiring coming-of-age tale, perhaps so much so that some critics failed to see what a lemon they had on their hands. A lot of great work was done to give this adaptation of Lynn Barber’s memoirs an authentic period feel, but the tone is all over the place. Alfred Molina seems lost in his scenes, broadly playing a character that could have done with being quieter, though thankfully he is skilled enough to add some nice notes. Worst of all of Nick Hornby’s clunking screenplay, banging the movie’s points as hard as possible in case the audience was asleep. Dispiriting stuff.

Nine – How do you make a clumsy and unappealing musical worse? Get Rob Marshall to make a hash of filming it! As if Maury Yeston’s lyrics weren’t already excruciating to listen to (Possibly my least favourite lyric ever: “My husband makes movies / To make them, he makes himself obsessed. / He goes for weeks on end without a bit of rest. / No other way can he achieve his level best.”), now they’re linked to dance routines whose listless choreography is only matched by Marshall’s inability to put the camera in the right place, or cut to the most dynamic moments. If you thought Chicago was badly filmed, stay the hell away from this. Only the godlike Marion Cotillard and Fergie’s voicebox come out of this with any credit. A pox on it. Watch 8 ½ and then go watch the nearest Sondheim revival.

Invictus - Forgive me for taking the review I wrote on Flixster several months ago and just dumping it here, but it says what I need to say about Clint Eastwood’s horrid sport-uplift-a-thon better than anything I could no crank out, many months later:

For an hour Morgan Freeman’s performance as Nelson Mandela is entertaining enough to hold the audience’s attention even with the overwhelming treacle-thick sentiment pouring out of the screen and into your face. After that, nothing can save it. Endless – ENDLESS – scenes of incoherently edited rugby matches drag the movie to a halt, as the slow-motion sports scenes get slower and slower and slower. By the end you can’t remember who is playing any more. Which end of the pitch are they supposed to run to? Who is passing the ball? Why is he passing it now? Who’s that guy?

It eventually becomes an avant-garde exercise in deconstructing linear experience by bringing it to the temporal equivalent of absolute zero. Someone slowly points left. Another man falls over. Who are all these people watching? Morgan looks a bit excited. Another man points. A ball arcs slowly into another man’s chest. Matt Damon is tired now. Or in pain.

By now the movie has been on for fourteen years. The ball bounces across the floor. Morgan looks scared. The sound of cheering is like the screaming of God. Matt Damon leaps into the air: it takes so long he might be flying. Another shot of the crowd: CGI never looked so real-ish. Is that a goal? It can’t be. The South Africans shout “NO!” Oh, actually, they shout “YES!” The sound design is such that I cannot tell any more. Did they win? The uplifting music suggests they did: I check Wikipedia just to be sure.

In all, it is a staggering triumph.

South Africa’s victory, I meant. The movie’s shit.

The one comment I got on this was someone pointing out that the South African rugby team for that year was actually really terrible. If the worst team won, this conclusively proves my point about all sport being a total waste of time.

Best Movies I Saw in 2009 That Were Released In 2010 And Got On A Few Best Ofs And Thus Make My Exclusion Of Them Look Like I Didn’t Like Them Which Just Isn’t True, And Just To Prove It You Can Follow The Hyperlinks To My Reviews Of Them: Enter The Void / A Prophet / Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans / White Material

Ranking Decision Made In Last Year’s Best Movies List That I’ve Come To Regret: Placing Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet at number five in the list behind Avatar at number four has dogged me ever since I did it. That’s not to say I now dislike James Cameron’s slightly successful space opera: after seeing it a few times since I stand behind my glowing review 100%. Nevertheless, I suspect seeing it in IMAX just a couple of weeks before finishing my list may have pushed it a little higher than it deserves. I’m retroactively knocking it down to number five, and putting Audiard’s peerless prison classic up to four, because this shit is important to me. I wonder which of this year’s choices I’ll regret next year…

Best Hero: Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) - 13 Assassins

Honorable Mentions:

Quorra (Olivia Wilde) - Tron: Legacy

Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) – Easy A

Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) – Winter’s Bone

Robin Hood (Russell Crowe) – Robin Hood

Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson) – Kick-Ass

Best Villain: Lotso (Ned Beatty) - Toy Story 3

Honorable Mentions:

Lord Narigatsu (Gorô Inagaki) – 13 Assassins

Fergus ‘Fergie’ Colm (The late, great Pete Postlethwaite) - The Town

Mal / The overwhelming guilt felt by Cobb that has forced an intervention by his therapist [Delete according to your theory of Inception's meaning] (Marion Cotillard) – Inception

Cheng (Zhenwei Wang) - The Karate Kid

Godfrey (Mark Strong) - Robin Hood

Worst Hero: Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) – Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Dishonorable Mentions:

Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler) - The Bounty Hunter

Bazil (Dany Boon) – Micmacs

Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) – The Expendables

Soren (Jim Sturgess) – Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

Aang The Avatar (Noah Ringer) – The Last Airbender

Worst Villain: Arnold Wesker (Shawn Roberts) – Resident Evil: Afterlife

Dishonorable Mentions:

Other people’s feelings and needs / the concept of working for a living / the world just being SO MEAN and not, like, totally spiritual and stuff – Eat, Pray, Love

William (Aaron Johnson) – Chatroom

Ilosovic Stayne, the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) - Alice in Wonderland

God (Played by nothing) – Legion

Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard) - Knight and Day

Best Hero… OR IS SHE??!?!!?: Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) – Salt

Worst Hero… OR IS HE?!?!??!: Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) – Knight and Day

Worst Nazi Owl: Metalbeak (Joel Edgerton) – Legends of the Guardian: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

Most Passive Character: Bella Swan - Twilight: Eclipse (second year running, and still spending most of the movie being protected by the big strong men in her life UGGGHHH.)

Douchiest Crimefighter of the Year: FBI S.A. Adam Frawley – The Town

Most Annoying Character(s) of the Year:  Those goddamn squeaky minions in Despicable Me

Dishonorable Mentions:

Rashid (Amit Shah) – The Infidel

Rhiannon “Rhi” Abernathy (Aly Michalka) - Easy A

Captain H.M. Murdoch (Sharlto Copley) - The A-Team

Lou Dorchen (Rob Corrdry) – Hot Tub Time Machine

Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) - Cop Out

Unluckiest Character of the Year: Rafael Dacanay (Joel Torre) – Amigo

I won’t go into the details of what happens to the hapless town leader in John Sayles’ excellent historical drama, but let’s just say, if you think you’re having a bad day, this character’s troubles might make you feel better about your life. Poor guy.

Most Entertaining Scumbag: Stans (Walton Goggins) - Predators

Honorable Mention: Jason Patric (Max) - The Losers

Least Entertaining Psychic: Uxbal (Javier Bardem) - Biutiful

Badass of the Year: Hitgirl (Chloe Moretz) – Kick-Ass

Most Surprising Badass of the Year: “The Tough Guy” (Adrien Brody) – Predators

Most Debonair Badass of the Year: Eames (Tom Hardy) – Inception

Best Couple of the Year: Erin (Drew Barrymore) and Garrett (Justin Long) – Going The Distance

Best Parents of the Year: Dill (Stanley Tucci) and Rosemary Penderghast (Patricia Clarkson) – Easy A

“I Hope Those Crazy Kids Make It” Couple of the Year: Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) and Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige) – Submarine

“Dear God, Just Split Up Already” Couple of the Year: Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) and Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday) - Youth In Revolt

“I Realise Now That I’ve Never Really Cared Whether Or Not You Make It Work” Couple of the Year: Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) and Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) – Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Most Tedious Couple of the Year: Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) and Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) – Monsters

Most Improbable Couple of the Year: Mahmoud (Omid Djalili) and Saamiya Nasir (Archie Panjabi) – The Infidel

Least Credible, Charming, Sexy, Appealing or Tolerable Couple of the Year: Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler) and Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston) – The Bounty Hunter

Best Scene: The hour-long setpiece finale of Inception, from the “beginning” of the dream to the end.

Honorable Mentions:

Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo temporarily bond over Joni Mitchell in The Kids Are All Right.

MacGruber creates a fiendish trap using water, string, a cup and a corpse.

The heartbreaking sack of the Alexandrian Serapeum in Agora.

Jonah Hill strokes the furry wall while Diddy goes berserk in Get Him To The Greek.

The first sighting of “Space Dad” in Megamind.

Best Action Scene: 13 Assassins vs over 200 warriors in a town filled with traps. For 45 minutes. 45 unbelievably exciting minutes.

Honorable Mentions:

The Wheel King’s assassins’ attempt to kill Drizzle is deflected by her protector (spoiler obscured there) in Reign of Assassins.

Matt Damon, Jason Isaacs and Khalid Abdalla race across war-torn Baghdad at the end of Green Zone.

Iron Man and War Machine in a Genndy-Tartakovsky-choreographed blitz of orchestrated chaos against evil drones at the end of Iron Man 2.

Angelina Jolie and her stuntperson chase the President down a lift shaft in Salt.

Jason Statham destroys a pier with machine guns and a flare gun in The Expendables.

Cruellest Moment In Cinema History: The toys chase Lotso through a trash incinerator in Toy Story 3

Most Excruciating Moment in Cinema 2010: Futterwacken – Alice in Wonderland

Most Exciting Scene Involving Rampaging Bulls: 13 Assassins

Least Exciting Scene Involving Rampaging Bulls: Knight and Day

Most Satisfying Finale: Black Swan

Honorable Mentions:

Inception

Kick-Ass

Toy Story 3

The Karate Kid

The Ghost Writer

Least Satisfying Ending: The Infidel

Dishonorable Mentions:

Remember Me

Twilight: Eclipse

Jonah Hex

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Knight and Day

Best Twist of the Year: There’s a corker about halfway through The Disappearance of Alice Creed. I shall say no more about that, or all of the other almost-as-good twists. Good work, J Blakeson.

Worst Twist of the Year: The end of The Book of Eli is not only nonsensical, but I’m really not sure it adds anything to the movie, either narratively or thematically. I’d go back and rewatch to see how well it’s set up, but I really can’t be that bothered.

Satisfying, Unhistrionic and Beautifully Performed Ending That Made Me Sob And Sob And Sob: Rabbit Hole

Most Batshit Crazy Ending of the Year: The Killer Inside Me / Skyline

Directorial Debut of the Year: Richard Ayoade – Submarine

Honorary Mention: J Blakeson – The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Most Egregious Waste of a Musical Resource: Mastodon – Jonah Hex

Most Appropriate Use of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s Album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today As A Soundtrack Choice: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, as Oliver Stone added a couple of tracks from their previous collaboration — My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts — to the first and far, far inferior Wall Street movie. It’s, like, a homage or something.

Best Trailer: Clash of the Titans

Best Poster: Black Swan

Worst Poster: Death at a Funeral (Bad though the Photoshop is, it’s the exclamation point at the end of the tagline that sealed it.)

Creepiest Poster: Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Most Misleading Poster: The Last Exorcism (Nothing like this happens in the movie.)

Least Informative Poster: Knight and Day

Best Promotional Campaign: Inception

Remember the first trailer for Inception, the one that came out in 2009? What the hell is this?, we all thought as we rewatched it for the twenty-hundredth time. It makes no sense but is so pretty and sounds so nice, what with that cool booming thing going on. I can’t recall the last time I got so excited for a movie on such little information. Keeping the plot a secret for so long was a brilliant move. With no recognisable characters or source material to look at, there was no way anyone could have known what Christopher Nolan had in store for audiences. The next trailer almost drove me out of my mind. The sight of Paris folding over was like a mindbomb going off. Had Nolan made something completely unprecedented in popular cinema? You know a promotional campaign has hit paydirt when something as innocuous as the booming noises in Zack Hemsey‘s Mind Heist end up being mimicked and mocked over and over again.

That noise seemed to soundtrack the entire year, but credit where credit is due, it’s also down to possibly the best poster campaign I’ve ever seen for a major movie. Despite no one knowing what the movie was going to be before release, the campaign rested on cryptic but epic-scale posters featuring flooded or folding cities and characters listed as The Shade and The Extractor. It was utterly baffling and incredibly exciting. A week before the movie was released, almost to the hour, a flood of reviews washed across the internet as Warner Bros. embargo ended. The sense that a genuine event was about to occur was palpable. Seeing it a week later at the IMAX near Waterloo was one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve ever had in a cinema, and much of it was due to the audience. Primed for the cerebral narrative to come, we raced through Nolan’s maze and came to that divisive and bold final shot, and greeted it with shouts of “NO!” and “What the fuck!” And then the applause. The campaign worked. Dismiss it as hype, but there’s almost an art to hype if it’s done right and used to promote something of actual merit. I doff my cap to everyone involved.

Worst Promotional Campaign: The Bounty Hunter

One of the most dispiriting sights of the year was watching the cynical promotional campaign for this lifeless romactioncom spill out across the pop-culture spectrum. Seemingly aware that there was nothing interesting to say about the punch-card-generated tale of a bounty hunter on the hunt for his ex-wife (LOL), the publicists were forced to play the weakest hand in their deck: the are-they-aren’t-they “romance” between stars Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. Not only was it lazy, but the actors obviously wanted nothing to do with it. Their fidgety non-commitals and attempts to brush aside questions from chat-show hosts and E! reporters were not just an attempt to create ambiguity: they looked genuinely embarrassed. The weak box office shows that no one else was interested either. Luckily once the movie was gone everyone could just forget about it, as if it was a drunken fumble between cousins that no one wants to talk about ever again.

Bravest Promotional Campaign of the Century: MacGruber

This notoriously unsuccessful but hysterical comedy — arguably the funniest of the year — featured one of the boldest performances of all time. Will Forte is utterly shameless as the hapless, cowardly mercenary, but the depths to which he was willing to plunge in order to generate a laugh happened offscreen, with this series of NSFW images. Maybe this was the reason the film sadly only made about $14, a half-full Starbucks loyalty card, and a poorly coloured-in photocopy of a $20 bill.

Best Hair: Pretty much everyone in Inception

Worst Hair: Scoot McNairy – Monsters

Best Wig (Male): Nicolas Cage – The Sorceror’s Apprentice

Best Wig (Female): Mary Elizabeth Winstead – Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Most Eclectic Collection of Wigs: Thekla Reuten – The American

Honorary Manuela Velasco Award for Services to Scream-Queen Culture: Rooney Mara – A Nightmare on Elm Street

Most Comfortable Actor of the Year: Denzel Washington, who gets to sit down for most of Unstoppable

Most Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Danny Fucking Trejo – Machete

Honorary Mention: Mila Kunis – Black Swan

Least Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Bradley Cooper – The A-Team

Dishonorable Mention: Megan Fox – Jonah Hex

Best Use of a Gun To Intensify Usual Levels of Hottness to Almost Unbearable Levels: Helen Mirren – Red

Best Value For Money of the Year: Alfred Molina

As you would hope, Molina takes a couple of underwritten roles in two Bruckheimer misfires and makes the most of them. In both movies he gives the liveliest performances of the entire cast, saving both movies from being consigned to the bottom half of my 2010-movie-quality-spectrum. Long may he get cast to add some spice to underwhelming action comedies. Or, you know, get the lead in a really good movie. That would be nice, HOLLYWOOD!

Lamest Contribution to a Major Battle: The end of Sir Ridley of Scott’s Robin Hood: The Puffy Years features a big pitched battle on a beach between the English and French. Midway through Maid Marian rocks up with her Feral Boys in an attempt to help repel the French using ponies and sticks. There’s about 12 of them, they do nothing, and then Marian ends up getting smacked around by Sir Godfrey until Robin saves her. Not sure what the point of this was other than to have Robin do something heroic for his suddenly useless lady. Not cool, Sir Ridley.

Best Movie Featuring Liam Cunningham as a Fearless Badass From Ancient Times: Centurion

Worst Movie Featuring Liam Cunningham as a Fearless Badass From Ancient Times: Clash of the Titans

Best Robot: Madd Chadd in Step Up 3D

Most Listless Movie: Somewhere

A half-asleep arse-poot of a movie that says nothing about life other than it’s easy to get a bit bored when you have a lot of money. Makes Sofia Coppola’s previous movie – Marie Antoinette — look like Trainspotting. Consider this half-hearted critique my homage to Coppola’s work ethic.

Most Unsuspendable Mountain of Disbelief: Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

I tried so hard — SO HARD — to buy into this movie’s central conceit, but I could not get past the fact that it was a movie about warrior owls, no matter how beautiful it looked (and trust me on this, it’s one of the most beautiful computer-animated movies yet made: almost every shot is breathtaking). The killing blow was the shot of an owl blacksmith hammering away at a hot piece of metal, sparks flying everywhere. It’s an owl blacksmith. An owl, working as a blacksmith, with its tiny little talons gripping a huge hammer and smacking at a hot piece of metal it had just pulled from a furnace made by other owls in a tree village designed by owl architects and built by owl builders carrying little hods in their tiny owl hands. Maybe in the book this could work. Onscreen? Not so much.

Most References To Other Movies: Repo Men

Controversy surrounded this reasonably entertaining sci-fi movie after it became apparent that it bore some similarity to Repo! The Genetic Opera, though according to this HuffPo article this has been amicably resolved by all involved. Certainly the increased possibility of artificial organs being developed and then sold on by private insurance companies in the US is bound to get many writers’ minds working: I wonder how many thousands of potential novels and screenplays withered on the vine as Repo! and The Repossession Mambo (the novel on which Repo Men was based) were released. Nevertheless, the makers of Repo Men certainly owe huge debts to Martin Scorsese and Nick Pileggi for the framing device and freeze-frames they incorporated from Goodfellas, Chan-wook Park for the Oldboy-esque action scene that occurs close to the end of the movie, and Terry Gilliam for… well, let’s just say the ending seems rather familiar. As I say, I kinda liked it: the gore was plentiful and amusing, and the leads (Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and Liev Schreiber) were very entertaining. It did feel like it ran down some well-trod paths, though.

Most Amusing Number of Publicity Photos of a Director Pointing And Thinking And Holding A Camera: Alejandro González Iñárritu

While looking for publicity shots of the dirge-like Biutiful, I noticed that director Iñárritu (as he now prefers to be called — thanks to ace Tweeter and film blogger @iambags for spotting that) crops up in a surprising number of pictures looking all handsome and directory. Almost as many as lead actor Javier Bardem in fact. Not as many as Michael Bay, but then Bay has made more movies, so you’d expect that. I’m going to keep an eye on this race to become IMDb’s most photographed and photogenic director.

Most Frustrating Directorial Decision of the Year: The Last Exorcism

This Eli-Roth produced horror “documentary” featured a terrific breakout performance from Patrick Fabian — a familiar face who has had recurring roles on Veronica Mars and Big Love but has never headed up a film before — but sadly director Daniel Stamm let him down after an hour of commanding the screen. Whether through poor editing or a lack of money or some other unforeseen and unavoidable problem, the final half an hour, with all of its craziness and weird reveals, happen in a blur of badly-chosen camera angles and looping. The biggest emotional moments come at the end, and hopefully would have shown Fabian at his best, but the camera barely focuses on his face in the last act, with his moment of revelation seemingly shot from under his armpit and his final lines almost inaudible due to some muddy sound design. It’s a shame, as up to that point he had made a huge impression. Let’s hope the success of this low-budget movie convinces someone else to give Fabian another chance at the prize.

Worst Loss Of Superproducer Mojo: Jerry Bruckheimer

Two expensive potential tentpoles (Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Prince of Persia, obvs) crawled towards the edge of profitability thanks to worldwide box office, but it’s fair to say Bruckheimer won’t be trying to keep these frankly half-hearted franchises going. What’s worse is he only seems to have Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides lined up for next year, and though the Captain Jack Sparrow fan in me is excited (perhaps not as excited as the Elliott & Rossio fan in me, but still), it’s directed by Rob Marshall. I honestly don’t know what Jer (as he likes me to call him) was thinking. Let’s hope the main man gets his mojo back soon. Or hires Elliott and Rossio to write all of his movies, what with them being totes awesome and all that.

And with that little expression of hope, that we can see a franchise come back on track just through the power of the writer, I’ll leave it there. Thanks to everyone who has responded to these posts: your contributions and comments have been greatly appreciated. Let’s hope we have a thrilling 2011 in movies.

BFI LFF 2010: Amigo / Meek’s Cutoff

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I’m a terrible cinemagoer. No, I’m not one of those inconsiderate creeps who takes calls during the movie, or eats the largest bag of popcorn in the slowest manner possible while obliviously stirring the corn, and I don’t talk at the screen, and I don’t fart except for that one time, and I only ever really make exclamations of joy when I’m utterly transported out of myself by what’s onscreen, though if the movie’s really bad and I’m miles away from anyone else I just can’t help myself from saying “For fuck’s sake!” such as whenever that hack Paul W.S. Anderson plagiarises another movie or exerts zero effort once again. All of this means that I think that gives me the right to hate on other filmgoers, and sadly London Film Festival attendees — while almost completely silent during the movies (except for the lady who cackled and noisily announced her joyous emotions to her friends through the performance of It’s Kind of a Funny Story) — have yet to figure out fundamentals as start-times and seat allocations. Seriously, almost every screening was marred by people arriving 15 minutes late and disrupting whole rows of people who understand the concepts of time and space.

So it was that I got to a screening of John Sayles’ Amigo just as an LFF curator introduced Time Out critic Geoff Andrews, who she said would be hosting a Q&A after the movie, and then struggled to find my seat as the lights went down because some group of random idiots had decided they didn’t like where they were supposed to sit and thus colonised my seat instead. Cue twenty minutes of thinking the seat I ended up in would be allocated to one of the many, many, many late arrivals. The movie unfolded as I scoured the late arrivals, heralded by the thumping door and then “muted” conversations as they walked up and down the screen’s central aisle. “Is it C? Or D? D15? I can’t see that. Get your phone out. Where are the ushers?” Information onscreen eluded me as my normal settling-in routine failed to kick in. Was this guy going to disrupt me? Was this woman? Holy shit, there’s a 10 foot tall person who walked in TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES INTO THE MOVIE! He’s in the aisle! He keeps hovering around by my row! Sit down, dude! Sit down!!!

So yeah, I almost lost my shit at John Sayles for ruining my experience of his own movie. The gargantuan (in size and legend) filmmaker had arrived late (and, from what it seemed to me, kind of unexpectedly, as he had not been namechecked by the curator at the beginning), and was trying to figure out where he could sit. And I nearly went ballistic on my hero and told him to plant his goddamn ass so I could concentrate on getting to grips with the large cast and unfamiliar political/historical situation. That would have been a unique experience. Thank God I stopped myself from completing this dick move: a useful lesson in enhancing my calm in public.

Unfortunately my experience was still tainted by the late arrivals. Amigo is set during a conflict that Sayles admitted in his subsequent fascinating Q&A was a part of American history that is relatively unknown, and the opening of the film contains a sizable but deftly handled download of infomation. Research for a novel – A Moment in the Sun, set during the Phillippine-American War of 1899-1902 – led to him developing the additional story of the American occupation of a single baryo: San Isidro, which in the movie stands in for all the barrios that were colonised by US soldiers and fought over by Filipino revolutionaries. The village has already been touched by the war when the movie opens: Rafael Dacanay, the head of the baryo, has imprisoned a couple of soldiers and a Spanish Friar (Padre Hidalgo, played with slimy arrogance by Yul Vàzquez) on the orders of his revolutionary brother. Dacanay is more interested in just keeping the village and the harvest running: when his son expresses an interest in joining the revolutionaries that are camped out in the forest surrounding the village, Dacanay forbids him, knowing that nothing good can come of it.

However, Dacanay and San Isidro are unable to avoid fate: it’s not long before American forces enter the village, freeing the soldiers and Padre Hidalgo. Unable to understand the Filipinos, they rely on the Padre to translate: bad news for Dacanay, who has made a powerful and sneaky enemy. Hidalgo poisons the occupying American force against Dacanay (who, through a complication of translation, is known to the Americans as Amigo), who spends much of the movie being treated like dirt by everyone. His role as the leader of the village is undermined by the forces piled on top of him, torn between his responsibility to his family and fellow villagers, the revolutionaries in the forest who want to exploit his closeness to the Americans, and the US soldiers (led by the sympathetic but oblivious Lt. Compton: another terrific performance from Shades of Caruso favourite Garret Dillahunt).

Dacanay is possibly the unluckiest character of the year. He gets beaten up, insulted, tortured, manipulated, and betrayed. Joel Torre does a great job with the character, perfectly depicting his internal conflict and anguish as the quiet life of the village is disrupted by forces beyond his control. Also notable are Vàzquez, excelling as the loathsome Friar, and Dillahunt, who brings great humanity to Compton. The large cast also features DJ Qualls (cast well against type), Chris Cooper as the unfeeling Col. Hardacre, and Dane DeHaan (currently making waves as adopted teenager Jesse in yet another superlative season of In Treatment) as the lovestruck Gill, whose affection for a villager is one of the first signs that the occupation (or “hamletting”, as it was called in Vietnam, where the same tactics were used) could end well.

That’s the key to Amigo, and the thing that makes it such a warm and entertaining movie – a tonal miracle considering the subject matter. Language barriers, selfishness, vindictiveness and distrust constantly threaten the uneasy truce between the villagers and the soldiers, but common humanity and decency still shines through from time to time. If it wasn’t for Padre Hidalgo, Col. Hardacre and the revolutionaries, the baryo would settle into a peaceful routine. It would remain an occupation, but the simple truth is once these people spend enough time together, there is a chance that a respectful detente will form between villagers and soldiers – who are often just farm boys who understand the harvest and the actions necessary to keep the village running.

Soppy liberal wishful-thinking? Perhaps, and it’s certainly the kind of worthy message movie that usually annoys, but Sayles is a better filmmaker than, say, Paul Haggis, what with his aversion to subtext or subtlety. The message of Amigo – that humans flourish when politics or religion or grudges don’t get in the way – is conveyed through well-sketched characters, suspenseful plotting, and a real feeling for the things that drive us. It works as much as a movie as it does a treatise on the foolishness of men at war, and Sayles is persuasive enough – and brave enough in showing the inevitable darkening of that dream – for his message to come across with the same compassion he always shows, though never at the cost of that “page-turning” skill he has demonstrated numerous times in the past.

One problem with the movie (and it’s no fault of Sayles’) is that it concerns a part of history that is rarely spoken of, meaning this viewer had trouble placing it in any kind of context. It’s the same discombobulation felt when watching something like Malick’s Thin Red Line or The Pacific: it’s hardly ever spoken of and so you can’t help but wonder how much of what you’re seeing is artistic licence and how much is researched and depicted with as much accuracy as possible. Hopefully any DVD or Blu-Ray of Amigo comes with some historical documentaries, as Sayles’ Q&A revealed that pretty much everything you saw on screen was the product of an incredible amount of research, answering every question I had. For instance, San Isidro stood in for hundreds of baryos that saw the head of the village caught between his loyalty to his revolutionary countrymen and his obligation to do what the occupiers asked in order to keep his charges safe. Also, some distracting topical phrases employed by Hardacre about “hearts and minds” grated – the parallels between this war and the situation in Iraq are clear enough without extra hints — but according to Sayles this was genuinely part of the reasoning behind the hamletting technique seen here, decades before the practice was seen in Vietnam. He didn’t mention whether the water torture inflicted upon Dacanay was also used at the time, but I suspect it was.

Amigo left me pretty stoked. It’s a fine movie, possibly Sayles’ best since Limbo, and not at all heavy-going. It runs like a dream, uses its large cast well, and does a good job of condensing a great deal of material into an entertaining story. If this means Sayles has ground the edges down a bit too much, it’s a price worth paying for two hours of fascinating storytelling, and certainly when he is exploring a historical incident that is not well known. Even better, upon leaving the screening, I saw the great man hanging around outside, and felt compelled to monster the poor guy. If that’s at all possible: he’s approximately a million feet tall. When I shook his hand I felt like an 6-year old meeting a kindly uncle. I thanked him for Amigo, and informed him that his damnable classic Limbo had haunted me ever since I saw it years ago.

Limbo spoilers! Beware!

He seemed amused by this, but I guess he regularly gets hassled about it. The end of Amigo is likely to generate the same reaction: he was asked during the Q&A if he had ever considered a different ending, and he revealed his endings come first & he works backward from there (which makes me feel better as I do the same thing). When I mentioned the end of Limbo he said that he had asked the cast what they thought had happened after the screen fades out, and found that the male actors thought the characters lived, and the female ones thought they died. Or the other way around: I can’t remember as while he was telling the anecdote my brain was screaming “John Sayles is talking to me!!!” Anyway, he pointed out that there was a gender split with his main actors, and that he felt the end was a Rorschach test. To this day I’ve never been able to settle on my own opinion: I enjoy the Schrodinger-esque quality of it.

End spoilers!

Language barriers and distrust between races are also evident in Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist Western Meek’s Cutoff, which sees a group of settlers crossing inhospitable landscapes in a desperate search for water after getting lost. A grizzled old frontiersman, Meek (an unrecognisable Bruce Greenwood), leads the group astray in a foolish bid to explore uncharted land, a decision that jeopardises them all. The majority of the movie depicts their quiet, resigned struggle to get over the next hill, then the next, then the next, the landscape sprawling out before them with almost no variation. Tensions that have sprung up among the settlers threaten to tear the group apart, and every choice made is tainted by fear and resentment, with their initial suspicion of Meek eventually transferred to the native American who crosses their path. The conflict then becomes one between compassion and pragmatism: will the group be doomed by the native American or the shady explorer in their midst, and should they react with violence to save themselves?

As with Essential Killing there isn’t really much to the plot, but unlike Skolimovsky’s movie – which is an empty exercise in provocation – Meek’s Cutoff manages to be tense and involving, with Reichardt displaying a mastery of mood that her other movies only hinted at. She conveys the slowly building fear of the settlers brilliantly: I could feel my neck crane in a futile attempt to see over the next ridge, to see if there was water there. A scene involving the lowering of their wagons down an incline is one of the most suspenseful scenes of the year: something you don’t expect to see in such a meditative movie. The stakes increase in severity almost without you realising it: Reichardt’s ability to twist the screws is notably subtle and effective.

Mostly that’s because she takes the time to show just how precarious their situation is. Their wagons are the only things they have, and if they lose them, or their livestock, they’re doomed: a fact that is taught to us through skillful inference. A lot of the work is done through the amazing sound design by Leslie Shatz: he soundtracks the movie with little more than the creak and squeak of the wagon wheels. That persistent sound becomes the sound of hope: if they stop moving they’ll die. Such care over every detail of the journey makes Meek’s Cutoff a riveting experience, one that threads thematic possibilities through its sparse narrative while always coming back to its core point: nature is an enemy that progress cannot ever conquer. An old idea, but when depicted with this clarity and persistence, it’s hard to carp. You find yourself hypnotised by the sight of these people silently moving ever onwards, finding yourself empathically connected to them, the sound of the wheels grating and pushing you into a state of frustrated panic.

There are two choices made by Reichardt that seem odd. One is Meek himself, played as the grumpiest old prospector imaginable by Greenwood. It’s a very entertaining and ego-free performance, but sadly when he showed up I turned to Daisyhellcakes and mentioned Gus Chiggins, which pretty much ruined our enjoyment of his turn. Even without that, the broadness of his work here is at odds with the naturalistic style employed by everyone else. Perhaps he is merely meant to be the sort of charismatic frontiersman who can convince a group of settlers to go against their better judgement and leave the well-worn path. (In case you were wondering, there were no other problems with the performances, with all acquiting themselves very well and the seemingly unstoppable Michelle Williams excelling once again.)

The other choice that stirred me out of my happy revery was the ending: not because it’s bad, but because it so closely resembles the end of another man vs. nature film made in recent years. I won’t spoil, but after seeing the film it might be worth looking at this page, which reveals what actually happened to the real settlers who travelled with Stephen Meek and veered off the Oregon Trail in 1845. It’s a valid choice by Reichardt, but it almost undermines the momentum of the rest of the film. Not a killing blow by any stretch: it’s still one of the best movies of the year, and a terrific companion-piece to Debra Granik’s atmospheric Winter’s Bone. Nevertheless, it didn’t quite close the deal. (For a better review of Meek’s Cutoff, I recommend this from Slash Film).

BFI LFF 2010: Blue Valentine / Biutiful / Essential Killing

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It’s been a tough year at Shades of Caruso HQ. Not wishing to get into personal details, but if 2010 was a boat, it would be the Titanic after crashing into the Lucitania and the Poseidon on the slopes of Mount St. Helen. There’s been some highs among the lows, but we’ve had our fill of crappy luck. Obviously we’re not alone: the dire economy and the miserable cultural and ideological battles being waged in the West have tried the patience of at least a few dozen people, I’m sure. A bad time to release non-cathartic downer films, then. As this year has proved even crowd-pleasers have struggled: good luck to anyone who has made anything that challenges the Mass-Pacification Template that mainstream cinema often uses.

It would be nice to think that some emotional weakness on my part is the cause of my antipathy towards the three most downbeat films seen at the Festival, but honestly they’re just not that great. The reflexive addition of miserable finales as some kind of response to the often pandering feel-good endings of much cinematic output is the sort of thing that makes independent film such an unappealing prospect. If the downer ending is earned, I’m all for it, but too often it is appended through some misguided appeal to profundity, a futile attempt at cocking a snook at the “corporate product” that is just being used as a sugar-coated opiate to dull the senses of the masses, man.

The trilogy of cinematic downers I endured tried with all their might to harsh my mellow, though one of them managed to accept that maybe there is some beauty in the world, only to make a point that this will inevitably be destroyed by the unremitting bleakness of the human condition. Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine depicts the beginning and end of the relationship between Dean (an amazing performance from Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (arguably an even more amazing performance from Michelle Williams), skipping back and forth in time between the two states, adding poignancy to the drawn-out final day, and tragedy to the slow genesis of their love. For every happy ukelele song and dance moment there is a dead dog: for every declaration of undying devotion there is a brutal beating. It’s an up-and-downer!

There’s not much more to it than that, other than some unappealing Indie™ photography: 90% of the film seems to be little more than shots of people’s ears, as the camera seemingly sits on the shoulders of characters as they stare off into the distance or stumble over their semi-improvised dialogue. Cianfrance throws in a couple of final act revelations that cast the rest of the movie in a new light, but his decision to cross-cut between the hope of the past and the misery of the present means there is little else to be surprised at: we see how it started, but we also know it will end in acrimony and anguish. It’s an unavoidable side-effect of this otherwise quite interesting narrative choice, one that takes the equally-interesting time-skipping structure of Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer to its logical conclusion. It also serves as a warning to all star-crossed lovers to just not bother staying together as there is nothing but soul-crushing misery on the horizon: at least that’s what I took away from it.

Which, apparently, is my bad and nothing to do with Cianfrance. In the Q&A that followed the screening the director and co-writer revealed that his decision to order the movie in this way allowed the viewer to experience both the joy and the pain of a relationship from birth to death. If he meant for us to enjoy the moments of innocent euphoria in the courtship, he failed miserably by starting the film off with scenes of negativity and tension. When the admittedly charming courtship scenes are juxtaposed against the horrid bleakness of the break-up scenes, the overwhelming feeling is one of imminent doom.

This isn’t helped by the choice to supply no real information about the events that doomed this love in the years between their happy marriage and unpleasant split, other than to provide ambiguous hints. Admittedly, Cianfrance deserves praise for his bravery in leaving some moments unresolved. While the large black plothole in the middle of the movie might skew the tone of the movie too far into a nihilistic extreme (for this viewer, at least), the messier moments are ambiguous enough to generate much post-screening discussion. Nevertheless, it reinforces the apparently unintentional message that shit will go haywire and you’re going to end up semi-bald and/or crying in a kitchen somewhere down the line no matter what you do. Yeah, that’s right, not even a ukelele can save you. (I really hate that whimsified instrument.)

It’s not all bad. Both of the leads are phenomenal: it’s worth watching just to see them taking on temporally-separated emotional states that are so starkly contrasted it’s as if they’re playing two characters each. The soundtrack by Grizzly Bear is also commendable, though much of it sounds like remixes of cuts from Veckatimest (no bad thing, really). To be honest, talk of these positive aspects will do less to generate interest in the movie than the controversial sex scene in the middle of the movie. It’s the most curious and unresolved moment in the film, and shot in such a way that it’s difficult to attribute blame for what occurs later to either one of the protagonists. An interesting choice, though sadly one that will damage its box office chances. The MPAA’s ruling that the purposely confusing scene merits an NC-17 rating appeared to have angered producer Harvey Weinstein so much he crossed the Atlantic to rail against the rating prior to our screening. What a showman: I wonder how much coverage was generated in the trade press by his surprise appearance.

Consider Blue Valentine hesitantly recommended. It’s much harder to pass that judgement on to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, a starkly shot but mostly worthless wallow in exquisitely-shot tragedy and misery that makes his previous films look like remakes of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Javier “Sex-Bomb” Bardem plays Uxbal, a low-level criminal using illegal immigrants to sell stolen goods on the streets and populate a grimy sweatshop making crappy clothes. He’s also the father of two children, struggling to raise them without his manic-depressive wife Marambra (Maricel Álvarez), who is having an affair with his sleazy nightclub-owning brother. On top of that he has terminal cancer, and only has a few weeks to live. Oh, and he’s psychic, and sees dead people: a characteristic that would be the focus of most other movies but only warrants a couple of mentions here.

That’s not to say I think it’s an unimportant trait. It’s the one thing that keeps Biutiful alive in my mind, as it turns what is otherwise a purposeless vacation in poverty-wracked “Real Life” into some kind of allegorical, fantastical mystery. Inarritu doesn’t blink from presenting Uxbal’s life as a purgatorial horror, as Bardem wanders through relentless, exhausting tragedy like a haunted St. Bernard. It’s a fantastic performance, the one solid element in an otherwise ridiculous movie that amounts to little more than Inarritu’s guilt-soaked The Passion of The Criminal. Like some kind of weird sadist, the director makes Uxbal jump through ever-more awful hoops: losing friends, causing terrible accidents, pissing blood.

The bookending scenes suggest Inarritu was intent on injecting some form of religious context, with Biutiful‘s world potentially being a vision of Purgatory, endured by Uxbal before he finally moves on to Heaven. This is the only way I can see the paranormal sub-plot working, because otherwise all the psychic visions do it undermine Uxbal’s selfless concerns about his kids. He tries his best to provide a life for them after he passes on, but instead of this being the one bright, human action, borne of compassion and love, it is transformed by this Sixth-Sense-esque oddness so that it merely seems like he’s attempting to ensure he doesn’t get trapped on that Purgatorial plane after death, as it is well established here that, yes, people who die are unable to move on because of that hoary old “unfinished business” trope.

I’ve seen festival reviews from critics who were transported by Inarritu’s vision, drawn in by the shameless melodrama and relentless poverty-porn on display, but it left me utterly cold. It’s not even confined to Uxbal’s plot, with all the Christ-like sacrifice and angst. In a nod to his previous collaborations with writer Guillermo Arriaga, Inarritu shows us how Uxbal’s actions affect Ekweme (Cheikh Ndiaye), an industrious “employee” who ends up in jail and thus leaves his wife to cope with their child alone, and Hai (Taisheng Cheng), the Chinese owner of the sweatshop struggling with his homosexuality. There is nothing really to say about these underdeveloped characters: they’re just there to suffer. It’s, you know, deep and stuff.

Why should we have to suffer, though? Inarritu seemed like a fresh voice once upon a time, someone willing to buck the trend for sappy escapism and provide ample portions of wholesome artistic grittiness. After four movies filled to the brim with this flagellatory emotional modishness, it’s become increasingly clear that the man has nothing to say other than “life sure is tough for the people at the bottom of the pile”. Biutiful might be a return to the streets that he depicted in Amores Perros, after two movies connecting the strife of the poor with the affluent of the “first world” (sorry for using that phrase), but it’s not as if he has anything new to say. At least he’s dispensed with the unnecessary cross-cutting narrative tricks that Arriaga brought to the plate. Sadly now we see there’s little else there.

Oh, and it’s called Biutiful because one of Uxbal’s children mis-spells Beautiful in a picture. Maybe this should be seen as a nod to The Pursuit of Happyness, replacing the “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” ethos of Gabriele Muccino’s film with the worthy and unappealing message that all there is in life is surviving through an interminable and soul-sucking grind, sacrificing everything for those who love you before you get to move on to a place where you can resolve the things that made you unhappy in life: the worst kind of joy-negating spiritual bullshit. With apologies to Craig Brewer and his movie Hustle and Flow, Inarritu’s movie should have been called It’s Hard Out Here For A Terminally-Ill Slave-Owning Psychic. Happyness might not have been a good movie, and might be riven with untrustworthy Hollywood artifice, but at least it ends on a note of concrete positivity, instead of the false spiritual silliness seen here.

Although, saying that, that artfully presented nonsense is preferable to Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing, a truly pointless exercise that runs short but bores long. Cinematic firebrand and 24/7 performance artist Vincent Gallo (because I refuse to believe his off-screen antics are anything but a fitfully amusing pose) plays a fugitive member of the Taliban, on the run for his life after escaping from a US holding facility. And that’s it. Gallo has no dialogue other than grunts of effort and guttural exclamations of horror or pain, his face permanently fixed in a rictus of terror, his actions mostly comprising scrambling up snow-laden hills and hiding behind trees.

You might think I’m exaggerating, but no. (Warning: Spoilers abound!) At the start of the movie we get a nifty little suspense sequence that ends with him blowing some US military personnel to smithereens, before he’s captured and tortured by waterboarding (making this one of four films I’ve seen in the past couple of months with topical references to this barbaric practice: the others were Amigo, Salt and The Expendables). He then escapes through pure dumb luck, drives for a bit, runs up some hills, gets saved from recapture by a dog, runs up some more hills, eats some berries and hallucinates some more dogs (wtf?), accosts a woman with a baby and forces himself upon her lactating breasts, gets badly hurt when a tree falls on him, kills a guy with a chainsaw (less interesting than it sounds), hides in a deaf woman’s house for a night, rides off on her horse, vomits blood onto its neck, then dies. The end.

And for what? Does Skolimowski think he’s educating his audience on what it must be like to be a member of the Taliban? Is he attempting to shock us by putting an unsympathetic character into situations that might make movie-goers root for him (because who doesn’t love a story about an outlaw on the run)? Is it meant to be a long and boring joke about religion being a false path? That last point might be the most probable: the protagonist occasionally dreams of being given instructions by a voice that is probably meant to be Allah, but these instructions lead him nowhere. Okay, let’s be generous: Skolimowski just schooled us about the futility of relying on God to save you, a theory undermined by the incidents in which our anti-hero is saved by dumb luck. And then un-undermined by the times he rescues himself. Hold on, what?

After an hour and a half of shots of Gallo having difficulty getting up some slopes (what a perverse directorial decision to hide that fascinating and terrifying face from our sight for long sections of the movie), I was murderously angry at having my time wasted in such a careless manner. Everyone has different criteria for what constitutes a successful artistic endeavour, but it failed all of my subjective rules for competence. It has no allegorical dimension, no coherent metaphorical throughline, no momentum, no narrative point, no political message, no aesthetic merit (either in terms of beauty or aggressive grungy anti-beauty. It’s just there onscreen, being uninspiring), no energy, no wit or dread or suspense or cathartic aggression or whimsy or charm.

The only thing it can call its own is a kind of childish transgressive energy, but really, if you’re the kind of person who thinks that making a movie from the point of view of the enemy is an affront to your sensibilties, then you’re a very dull person and your sensibilities need to grow up a bit. Not even the sight of Gallo gorging himself on the breast milk of a woman who conveniently faints in order to make the scene a bit easier to stage is particularly shocking. It just looks like an outtake from Freddy Got Fingered. Maybe the point is that there is no point: there is only survival, and random happenstance, and religious and political differences don’t matter. If that really is all there is to this tedious exercise in cinematic masturbation, then someone needs to get Skolimowski onto Twitter, because he might find that 140 characters may be more than enough for him to get his “message” across.