Category Archives: Jack Kirby

BFI LFF 2012: You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet! / Argo

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There are difficult films to review, and there are easy ones, and I worry the easy ones yield the least interesting post-screening thoughts. Allow me to test that hypothesis by comparing two movies from the festival, one of which was as hard to love as a Basilisk, and the other as easy to get along with as a particularly affectionate and adorable kitten. At the core of each is the power of performance to transmute the world, but while one is about the artifice of the mainstream and the compelling power of cinematic glamour, the other is about the ways in which a life in the arts is as much a journey for the performer as it is for the artist.

Shades of Caruso has to make a confession: the films of Alain Resnais are an unknown quantity to me. A shameful admission, yes, but the holes in my filmwatching are always terribly embarrassing. Full confession; it was only last year that I finally saw a film by Ingmar Bergman: The Virgin Spring. I think you’ll agree that this was a good starting point. As the film’s breathtaking, cathartic final moments occurred, I was wracked with sobs. Such artistry! Such incredible storytelling prowess! This was art, made by an artist, as powerful as everyone had said. I chastise myself for not enriching my life with the works of Bergman before then. What myopia on my part.

As for Resnais, I can’t imagine a worse starting point than this. The movie begins with a veritable who’s who of French cinema and theatre receiving a phone call proclaiming that the (fictional) playwright Antoine d’Anthac has died, and his last wish was that these actors, his friends in life, would come to his home in the mountains to enact one last request for him. This scenario is similar to that of Jean Anouilh’s play Cher Antoine ou l’amour raté, in which the family and friends of playwright Antoine de Saint-Flour are trapped in a castle in the Bavarian Alps after arriving for the reading of his will. It’s no coincidence that many of the actors summoned here have appeared in Resnais’ films before, including his wife Sabine Azéma.

This phonecall sequence, and the subsequent arrival of the actors at the house, is extremely repetitive, and what little I know about Resnais’ previous films is that repetition is something he has used in a narrative sense, fracturing time and rebuilding it into a non-linear narrative. Here it seems more to denote an acting exercise; the obvious fakeness of the back projection through the main door and the feeble puff of air blowing leaves in with them, contrasted with the theatrical expressions from the actors as they enter, selling us on the illusion of the set and the effect. After the third or fourth entrance, the artificiality of the situation becomes laughable.

The performers, joyful in their reunion and sad over the death of d’Anthac, gather in a screening room in comfortable sofas, ashtrays at the ready, to watch a film recorded by their friend, in which he reveals that La Compagnie de la Colombe has asked if it can put on a performance of his play Eurydice. d’Anthac wants the actors, who have all appeared in versions of this play before, to judge whether this new version is worthwhile. They settle down to watch a film of the performance, which is directed not by Resnais but by French filmmaker and actor Bruno Podalydès, brother of Denis Podalydès, who plays d’Anthac. Plays within plays, familial relations between filmmakers and actors, theatre and film and real life converging nicely.

The play we see resembles Anouilh’s Eurydice. I say resembles; a quick look at the Wikipedia page shows many details are different in the version shown here but I have no idea how much of the dialogue remains thanks to my ignorance of French theatre and literature. The actors are young, the performance set in an abandoned warehouse with a few items of furniture denoting a railway cafe and hotel room, with the only embellishment being an enormous pendulum that swings through the middle of the scene. I have a feeling that this symbolises something, but for the life of me I just cannot figure out what it could be. Something to do with politics?

Meanwhile the actors in d’Anthac’s house, including two generations of actors playing Orphee and Eurydice (Azéma and Pierre Arditi as the older versions, Anne Consigny and Lambert Wilson as the middle-aged version) watch this new version of the play, transfixed, until they spontaneously begin to recite the dialogue as it happens onscreen. The rest of the actors, who played the other characters there, join in, while Mathieu Amalric, who is the only one to play the mysterious M. Henri, sits in the background, with his nefarious nature passing over between himself and the character he plays. Or perhaps not. It’s impossible to look at him in repose and not think he’s being nefarious. For all I know this is my misunderstanding.

As the film progresses the actors begin to wander around the house, the background changing to become the sets of the play. Or at least, poorly done CGI versions of these imaginary rooms, now cavernous and ill-choreographed in relation to the actors. The technical errors here would at any other time be inconsequential, but as the movie is about the illusions created by theatre, as transposed to the medium of cinema, and then again into the world of virtual cinema using green screen technology, it’s hard to say whether this is an intentional choice or a result of cheap FX. It’s probably the latter, but even so, without meaning to, the aesthetics of this choice affect one level of the movie’s meaning. The vaulting fake rooms, unstable and flat, symbolising the unreliability of memory, perhaps?

Because surely the main point being made here is the ways in which a memory can be provoked, and how the process of interpreting a story either through adaptation or theatrical performance will pin something to a time in our lives. The actors here, as they are meant to have performed d’Anthac’s Eurydice, have experienced these moments dozens, hundreds of times, and they have been changed by the process as surely as the characters have by the narrative. At least that’s what Resnais seems to be saying, that the memories of a life lived can be revived by going through it once more, and by using actors and techniques and tropes and composers from his other movies (the score is by Shades of Caruso bête noire Mark Snow, of X-Files fame), this too becomes a Proustian trigger for his fans.

The play itself deals with the foolishness of Orphee, twisted by jealousy, as possibly false reports of Eurydice’s sexual history conspire to taint his love for her. She dies in a contrived accident, and he makes a deal with M. Henri to bring her back from the dead. The only catch is that he cannot look at her until sunrise, or she will return to death (a la the myth of Orpheus), but his cruel, selfish fury over her past and possible manipulation of him means he must look her in the eye to find out whether she loved him or not, causing her death. Later he is given the chance to meet her in death. Is this Resnais’ message that trying to pin down emotion or memory is bound to corrupt or kill it? Or did he just like the play?

Coming to this with so few facts at my disposal makes interpretation goddamned hard, so all I can go on is my visceral reaction to it, and that is that despite the flicking between different performers at each point in the play, it’s a retelling of that play with very little variation. Perhaps the choice of Wilson and Consigny for this scene, or Azéma and Arditi for this one, or the actors from La Compagnie de la Colombe, will have some significance in terms of what the play is trying to say at that moment, but without a greater awareness of the symbolism or history of Eurydice, the effect is dramatic stasis. If Resnais is merely saying that revisiting fond memories is nice, he achieves that quickly. Little else happens until the finale, all of it accompanied by Snow’s amorphous, buzzing music.

And that’s probably the bit that annoyed me the most. As the play finishes, and the actors warmly discuss the experience in memory-jogging they have just had, in walks d’Anthac, who was not dead at all. Cue a weedy synth fanfare from Snow and no emotion from the audience, who couldn’t give a damn about a fake playwright and his dumb joke, which was to see whether his friends and colleagues really loved him. If this wasn’t an obnoxious twist enough, we cut with almost comical haste to the next scene in which d’Anthac commits suicide in a similar forest locale to the one in which Orphee is expected to kill himself; d’Anthac looks his friends in their eyes, finds they loved him all along, and kills himself anyway.

So this is just a shaggy dog story? A joke about the impossibility of fulling appreciating what you have in the world while you live in it? A movie about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, but with love instead of particles? Hopefully this won’t be Resnais’ final movie (he’s 90 this year), and though I’m willing to take him at his word when he says this was not meant to be a testament to his career, you have to wonder whether this was a game for him. In that sense I salute his cheek, while at the same time feeling pretty cheated that I sat there through two hours of ugly CGI and miserable Mark Snow music while Resnais frolicked, filmicly, in order to make a brazen tribute to himself. The reaction from the audience I saw it with was muted; I was livid and couldn’t wait to get out of the room.

In my review of Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux I commented that it’s time the curent wave of hyper-critical filmwatchers made more of an effort to meet artists halfway, to give them the benefit of the doubt. A choice that might seem like an error can be assessed as an intentional choice on their part that we just don’t understand immediately, and dismissing something without consideration is damaging our dialogue with artists. It’s the same request I’d make of anyone who feels justified in dismissing, say, Lena Dunham’s Girls because the characters are unlikeable (they’re meant to be), or Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia because Kirsten Dunst’s character’s behaviour is random (it’s not; she’s depressed and her friends refuse to accept this obvious explanation).

These are just two common criticisms I’ve heard numerous times over the past year, both of which have annoyed me to distraction. And yet here I am about to dismiss You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet because the choices made by Resnais were either inexplicable to me or seemed to very quickly achieve what they set out to do before being laboriously repeated throughout the movie’s length. How quickly I abandon my principles because engaging with this work of art is too much hassle. My initial reaction to the movie was curiosity followed by concern and eventually boredom, leaving an after-taste of betrayal and a hangover comprised of self-recrimination and disappointment.

The problem is, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet seems like an insular work, something that could only be parsed by Resnais experts or, as with Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, something that is essentially only comprehensible to the filmmaker. With the latter, it’s not as big a deal because of the unique atmospherics surrounding the mysterious events therein, but Resnais’ movie feels even more indulgent for being so one-note. I wasn’t even a fan of Boonmee (as I pointed out at the bottom of this post, fully owning my philistinism and displaying exactly the impatience that I have railed against), but that was more interesting than this, an experiment that feels insubstantial.

To make matters worse, this inert exercise was screened while London cinemas were showing Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, a complex and ambitious art movie that shows exactly how this kind of thing should be done. Where You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet doodles in the margins of someone else’s work, Carax’s magnificent, uncategorisable work springs from his mind (a la Boonmee) and then expands to encompass cinema, culture, religion, the world. It contains everything within itself, so much so that watching it felt like a two-hour trailer for humanity. Where Nothin’ is static and frustrating, Motors is puckish, joyous, inclusive. Walking out of Resnais’ movie felt like I had escaped; Holy Motors felt like it was itself an escape from the troubles of the world. It is glorious.

And yet Resnais’ film has inspired me to complain for over 2000 words, whereas I struggle to find things to say about Argo, which is relatively simple but more interesting, more prosaically filmed but more thrilling, less ambitious but far more successful. Regular readers may already know that I’m totally in the bag for Maestro Affleck, and have been a fan ever since he sent himself up in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. His two previous directorial efforts are strong thrillers (can people kindly strip off the patronising addendum “for a Ben Affleck film”?) and he’s been turning out impressive performances for years. Hollywoodland, Changing Lanes, Extract; get thee hence if you disagree. Argo is his finest moment yet, but there’s little I can add to Todd Van Der Werff’s Twitter review:

I’m tempted to just stop writing here, because that perfectly captures how I felt about Argo, but just for the sake of putting some effort into celebrating this vigorously entertaining thriller, here are some more words (90% of which will be adjectives). Argo details an elaborate rescue attempt made during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979; an event I dimly remember, from a decade which otherwise would just matter to me as the decade in which Star Wars was released, six years after I was born (that’s the correct order of importance, in my mind). While Iranian protesters stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and captured 52 Americans, six others escaped and hid in the Canadian Embassy, their presence unknown, at least for a little while.

The precise details of what happened next were classified until recently; the original story stated that their escape was solely the work of Canada, which did not endear that country to the radical forces in Iran. The full story, here embellished and turned into a glossy thriller, is that CIA operative Tony Mendez concocted a plan to fake a sci-fi movie called Argo, convince Iranian officials that he was coming to the country to scout for locations, then rescue the six escaped Embassy workers by claiming they were the crew of the film. With Iranian gunmen closing in on them, Mendez had to work fast to get them out. At least, that’s what the film depicts, with all of the close calls and last-minute escapes you could hope for.

Post-movie discussions about the plausibility of Argo, or its solidity as a movie, may have led to me dropping a few points off its SoC Quality Total Score Number Quotient, but while sitting in a packed room, Affleck’s taut direction and the uniformly superb cast meant any concerns about Hollywood artifice or audience manipulation were easily ignored. Yes, Argo is a confection; alarmingly so considering the seriousness of the situation even now, as tensions between the US and Iran continue to this day. And yet it’s all done with such slick, confident authority, and such deftly handled sensitivity to the aggravated situation both then and now, that Affleck holds the audience in the palm of his hand. The resolution of the escape earned a surprise round of applause from the audience, and I’ve heard others say it happened at their screenings too.

The pleasures of this lightweight entertainment are legion, but special credit is due to the cast. Affleck gathered possibly the most impressive set of performers of 2012, including numerous SoC favourites such as Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston, Titus Welliver, Željko Ivanek, Kyle Chandler and Keith Szarabajka. Even actors I’m agnostic about, like Chris Messina and Scoot McNairy (whose weaselly voice in Killing Them Softly violated my soul) do well here, with solid material and the presence of such an instinctively talented director. It’s a great ensemble picture, though this diverse cast makes Affleck’s decision to step in as lead and play the Latino Mendez more questionable than it already was, but as an example of his increased confidence as an actor, it’s good enough.

As for its “weightlessness”, I should stress that this is not a comment on the subject matter, or the heart of the story itself. After the bravura opening sequence — a clever recap of America’s appalling involvement in Iran’s history told via storyboards, followed by a nerve-wracking setpiece in which the Embassy is stormed by a gun-toting mob while the Embassy staff race to destroy sensitive documents — the bizarre story of the fake Argo pre-production kicks in. Comedy after drama, beautifully weighted and correctly dropped as soon as Mendez reaches Iran. Yes, it’s a crowdpleaser, but as I said in my long, fawning review of The Avengers, that isn’t easy to do, and filmmakers who get it as right as Affleck or Whedon should get way more credit.

That said, Affleck’s lucky that he’s working with such an amazing historical event. My reaction was similar to that when watching Ron Howard’s Apollo 13; how the hell can something this incredible have happened in my lifetime? Argo skips quickly through the politics, enough to give factual weight and perspective to the events, before bringing in Planet of the Apes make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman on top form) and even all-time comics legend Jack “King” Kirby (Michael Parks, sadly only around for one scene). If all of this seems too much to take, the credits feature images of the real participants in this drama, and even a quick comment from President Jimmy Carter, who signed off on the operation, grounding the incredible tale in real detail.

Perhaps I’m more forgiving of Argo‘s lightness because this comes from the George Clooney/Grant Heslov stable that gave us such almost-interesting films as Leatherheads, The Ides of March, The Men Who Stare At Goats and Good Night, and Good Luck; films that usually feel about three drafts away from greatness, that stumble before the final act, that sometimes seem like they’re missing another few pages of script. This series of films from Clooney and Heslov are exactly the kinds of films I want to love but just can’t. Argo is the first thing from their production company that sticks the landing. Any concerns about its ephemerality or factual inaccuracy are easily dismissed because at least this ends, and ends well. I’ll take “rousing bullshit finale” over “will this do?” any day of the week.

But even if you take the final, exciting act of this thrilling movie as a journey too far into the realms of Hollywood contrivance, and not as a witty joke about the compulsive need to over-dramatise a story already fascinating, it’s worth remembering that the people involved really would had to perform as if their lives depended on it. As the Wired article that inspired Chris Terrio’s script says, the six escapees had to take on new roles and make them work, or they would have died. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet‘s achievement is that it highlights how acting shapes the lives of the actors. Argo shows us that in a world in which truth can be your worst enemy, performance, imagination and that act of subterfuge that is taking on a new persona can be the thing that keeps you alive. Perhaps Argo‘s not as trivial as it seems.

A Hyperbolic Review Of The Avengers, For The Benefit of My Nerd Brethren

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(FYI, this review is pretty much specific-spoiler-free, with no real plot details that aren’t given away by the trailers. As for character interactions or descriptions of their general awesomeness as written by Joss Whedon, there’s a bit of that, plus hints about dramatic moments. For those who don’t want to risk it, this capsule review should be enough of a recommendation: there’s a lot of funny stuff as the heroes meet and bicker, and then there’s a huge set-piece finale as intense, as prolonged, and as exciting as the end of Takashi Miike’s action masterpiece 13 Assassins, but with superheroes fighting aliens and laying waste to most of New York in doing so. If that doesn’t make you want to see it, I’m never going to be able to convince you.)

To those who have yet to see The Avengers (or to give it its British title, Marvel’s Avenging Heroes of Great Power Who Don’t Wear Bowler Hats But Do Like Leather Catsuits A Bit), the tidal wave of unrestrained praise from early screenings may seem like overkill, the perspective-free hysterical screaming of a gaggle of kidults whose arrested development has prevented them from putting away childish things. There’s been talk of this being the best superhero movie yet made, a flawless jewel, which has given cynics a brand new opportunity to roll their eyes derisively. Let me puncture the babble of praise quickly and then move on from there; this is by no means perfect. It is flawed. It may not be the best superhero movie yet made; that accolade still may rest with The Dark Knight or Richard Donner’s Superman.

To those who, like me, grew up reading Marvel comics, and thrilled at the complexity of the Marvel Universe with its crossovers, relatively consistent continuity, mixture of light and dark dramatic tones, and its thematic clash between gloomy real-world drama and stirring fantastical heroism, those people who have read that same geyser of enthusiasm, that torrent of ZOMG blasting out of the Internet to such an extent that it seems the only possible response to the movie must be to feel inevitably disappointed when you finally see this, I tell you now, you will NOT be disappointed.

Even if this isn’t the greatest superhero movie, it’s the ultimate cinematic expression of the genre so far, one not tempered by caveats about how it’s really a crime thriller a la Heat, except with a mad rich bloke in a Kevlar onesie. This is a hit of pure 100% unexpurgated genre. It features movie stars in daft suits having rucks with bad guys and flying through the air and calling each other names that just shouldn’t work, played with total conviction, and even Joss Whedon’s trademark witty dialogue doesn’t dilute the heroics on display. He believes, and if you believe too, then you’re going to fall deeply in love.

On the other hand, if you dislike the superhero genre for whatever reason — it’s childish, it’s not serious, it’s a fantasy for people who don’t fit in or don’t obsess over the culturally accepted forms of nerdery such as sports or politics or fashion or any other thing where being interested in it means you accumulate a large amount of data about trivial things that are only of interest to other people who share your fascination — then please, don’t see The Avengers. In fact, just for this month, do me a favour. Don’t talk to me about it at all.

Whedon has done a great job of making a funny, exciting, eye-popping spectacle that thunders along at a well-paced clip, featuring the mother of all blow-outs. For most people, this is an enormously entertaining ride. However, if you have even a shred of cynicism about the genre, its trappings and the passion of its fans, then be warned that I’m operating a zero-tolerance policy on this. Last night a random Tweeter responded to my ecstatic post-screening tweets with, “you should get out more”, which led to me writing my first intentionally mean response-tweet; a terrible act in contravention of the Brony Code, which actually kept me up all night feeling rotten about it. Nevertheless, I’m just not interested in hearing about how stupid I am for liking this movie, or for being excited about it, or for anything in general. Why should I quell that enthusiasm? To fit in with the majority of people? But I don’t really like the majority of people. Who does? Nobody, that’s who.

So what does Whedon do wrong? Let’s get that out of the way first. Some of my fears about his direction stand; he’s not as strong with visuals as he would like to be, and anyone who has listened to one of his commentaries will know that he sweats about this more than most directors. He’ll comment exhaustively about long takes and long tracking shots and will talk about technical stuff to such an extent that you wonder if he thinks he has something to prove. He really doesn’t, and his work would benefit from him relaxing about it. There’s not much showing off in Avengers, and there are so many action scenes in it it’s hard to tell what he handled and what was dealt with by the second-unit, but if you’ve learned to look for his authorial stamps, they stand out like a sore thumb (see also Joe Wright and Tom Hooper, whose tics are far far worse and do even more damage to their movies).

The sheer amount of stuff in Avengers can also be problematic. For the most part, Whedon juggles the large cast of characters brilliantly, and gives everyone a chance to shine, even SHIELD agents like Hill and Coulson (especially Coulson). Nevertheless, that massive finale features some unavoidable ellipses, shrinking a larger battle down into a 20-25 minute set-piece that can be accomodated by the budget (which is huge, but when you see the scale of what Whedon and Marvel have attempted here, you’ll still wonder how they did it all). The result is that flow is too often sacrificed in order to keep every ball in the air, with Cap checking in on Black Widow, hurrying off to hit some aliens in the face, then reappearing next to a slightly more tired Black Widow to check in again.

These little updates almost smack of parody, and even I, a fan of the genre, had a feeling of discombobulation at some moments with Cap, in his new and not-really-that-great costume, turning to Thor and saying, “Thor, what do you think of such-and-such?” It’s all played without a cynical nod, and even as a believer it’s hard to swallow that. Or maybe I was reflexively thinking, “Oh God, the haters are gonna have a field day with this scene.” Thankfully, those little breath-intakes of panic, triggered by fear that the movie is teetering on the brink of disaster, are very quickly over, usually because Whedon cleverly punctures the moment with a well-timed joke. His use of humour to leaven the proceedings is timed so perfectly I forgave all of his other trespasses.

And that’s the most important thing I want to convey. Yes, the scale of the proceedings, and the speed with which it was made, and the daunting number of elements to do justice to, and the pressure from the fanbase and Disney and the paying public; all of these things must have been a nightmare to deal with. And yet Whedon has succeeded, beyond the wildest dreams of any of his fans. The audience I saw the movie with last night roared with laughter at the big jokes, cheered at the hero moments, applauded at the end. There were members of the Nerd Community there, four young women in Captain America t-shirts who hollered and yelped with pleasure. Normally this would bug me but I envied them their unabashed, infectious glee. As the movie ended I joined in with their ecstatic applause, helpless to resist.

The list of things Whedon does right is much longer than the wrong-list. His jokes work like gangbusters, his direction of action is mostly clear and precise, and he gets superb performances from his cast. The look of the movie is perfunctory but the sets are pleasingly grandiose, especially the vast control room of the SHIELD helicarrier, which gets a hefty workout. Also pleasing is how Whedon portrays different scales within the movie, from the intimate confessional moments between characters, to the epic finale, and beyond even that into the Cosmic, with imagery here evoking the work of both Jack Kirby and Jim Starlin. The whole Marvel Universe is here; only the grouchiest nitpicky fans will fail to be awed by Whedon’s respect for the source material.

He even gets to improve on the character work from other Marvel movies, adding new tones or enhancing familiar ones that didn’t get a proper workout in the others. His Thor is markedly sadder than the blustery fool who dominates his first outing, and his Cap is a bit jollier. He even gets to enhance one of the things the first Captain America movie hinted at but failed to convey with enough oomph; here we truly see Cap inspiring those around him, which is played both as punchline and stirring example of pure heroism (regular readers will know that unironic heroism is my catnip).

Whedon also cleverly links Black Widow and Hawkeye on an emotional level, allowing the two unpowered characters to back each other up. Hawkeye’s out of the movie for a while, sadly, but he more than makes up for it by the end, with Jeremy Renner effortlessly playing cooler-than-thou and more than justifying his presence on the team. Black Widow has fewer cool moments, but she’s arguably more interesting. There’s a sly build-up of backstory for her as the movie progresses, and by the end she’s the most emotionally open member of the team while still remaining an enigma; some nifty work from a better-than-expected ScarJo. It’s doubtful we’ll get a Hawkeye movie — Renner has enough franchises on his plate as it is — but a Black Widow movie, or a SHIELD movie starring her, is an enticing proposition now.

Even better, he corrals Robert Downey Jr.’s exhibitionism brilliantly; though Stark dominates many scenes with his traditional obnoxious bluster, he plays very well with others, butting heads with Cap and bonding with Bruce Banner. His arc is a little too familiar, maybe, running through the surrender to the idea of sacrifice from the first Iron Man movie and the rejection of solitude from the second, but a big dramatic event in the middle of the movie gives both of those emotional beats enough energy to make them count again. It’s something most filmmakers would shy away from, but it’s arguably Whedon’s masterstroke, heightening the stakes and changing the tone of the movie.

Actually no. The masterstroke is casting Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner and allowing him to play the Hulk in mo-cap form. I’m not a fan of the Hulk particularly, but this version is good enough to make me rethink my lack of engagement. It’s obvious I’m not alone on this. A large number of The Avengers‘ best moments come courtesy of the green giant, earning rapturous responses from the audience. Ruffalo is perfect as the hesitant scientist, rarely making eye contact with anyone, ashamed of his curse, quietly sarcastic about others but terrified of hurting anyone. It’s a sympathetic performance, beautifully shaded. Ed Norton will likely watch this and weep.

It also helps that a lot of the work in making Loki function as a villain was done so well in Thor. Whedon honours Branagh’s movie — and Tom Hiddleston’s fantastic embodiment of the God of Mischief — by making Loki both monumental asshole and vulnerable fool trying to find a place to call home. Some have questioned his motivations for attempting to subjugate humanity, or for bringing the alien force to Earth (no spoilers on the name of the alien race), but it makes sense from where he was at the end of Thor; a silly impetuous boy, hurt by those he was once close to and too bitter to understand that he is loved. Some of the most powerful moments in Avengers are between Thor and Loki, with our Asgardian hero desperate to appeal to the brother hidden behind the villain.

And yet to many viewers, myself included, it’s hard to slice the movie apart to pick out what works and what doesn’t work due to emotional overload, which is why the start of this review is so focused on separating out really passionate die-hard fans from critics, both armchair and professional, though obviously the vast majority of viewers will fall in between these diametrically opposed viewpoints. Come at this movie from the perspective of someone who doesn’t respond to the tropes of the superhero genre, or the Cinema of Spectacle, and more than likely this will leave you cold. And though I’m wary of sneering, personal dismissal I have absolutely no problem with reasoned criticism or subjective disinterest. We all have our own individual criteria for success, and that’s why it’s impossible to please all of the people all of the time. I’m hip to that, daddy-o.

But for some of us, The Avengers isn’t just a movie. It’s a dream come true, a childhood fantasy a long time coming true, and I find it impossible to apologise for that without betraying something fundamental about who I am and how I interact with the rest of the world. For a significant portion of the audience, this is the culmination of an idea growing in our minds since we first read a copy of Marvel Team-Up and got excited because Spider-Man was hanging out with Black Panther, or The Thing was suddenly stuck on a spaceship, out of his depth, chasing Moondragon with the help of Starhawk (Marvel Two-In-One Volume 1 Issue 62, fact fans!). It was too much to hope that this could ever really happen but it has, and it’s even better than we could ever have imagined.

Say it’s clumsy and maybe ugly at times, or trivial and nothing more than pyrotechnic bombast. None of that matters. Whedon’s done an amazing job of making a movie accessible to all; a real crowdpleaser with big drama, action, and more jokes than most comedies. But more amazingly he’s added notes to this symphony of visual and aural overkill that only a few of us will pick out, because we’ve been humming this tune in our heads for a long time. This movie spoke to me, and will speak to others, who have thrilled to the tales told by Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern, Mark Waid, Walt Simonson and so many others. It might even win over some of the haters, and help explain what it is about this genre that means so much to so many.

It celebrates heroism, and courage, and the marvels of world-building unbound by fear of censure from those who feel safer hiding behind a carapace of disdain. It evokes the same inspiring messages about doing the right thing, about believing in better, that comics conveyed when we were young. There were moments in this that made me hyperventilate with excitement, and by the end, as I slumped exhausted in my seat, reeling from the final mid-credit shot and all of the incredible possibilities it opens up for future Marvel movies, I realised what Whedon’s ultimate achievement was; he made me feel like a child again, lost in a Proustian revery of imagination and hope. That means more to me than 2606 words could ever hope to convey.

The Top One Hundred and Six Movies of the Oughts (5-1)

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The last installment of this epic list-making enterprise comes a day after the Times ran their own 100 movies of the decade list, and as expected, within moments of looking at it I regretted missing out two fantastic films: Battle Royale and School of Rock. Actually, the first movie is one I’ve only seen once, and though I remember loving it it’s been so long I’d like another chance to reappraise it at some point.

This is something that has come up frequently in our house, which contains two hardcore fans of Suzanne Collins’ fantastic Hunger Games series. Though Battle Royale — itself based on a novel by Koushun Takami — has high dementedness value, it’s arguable that Collins’ YA novel features a similarly hardline ethos. When I read it I was surprised by Collins’ willingness to take her characters to some extremely dark places. That said, Battle Royale does have one thing over Hunger Games: Chiaki Kurigama as the deadly Takako Chigusa, in a performance so eerily amoral that Tarantino hired her to play GoGo Yubari in Kill Bill Part 1. She is terrifying.

There’s a good chance watching that again might convince me it should have reached the top 100, but I already know for sure I screwed up with School of Rock. It’s one of my all-time favourite movies, and one I had only just recently had a chat about with friends of Daisyhellcakes, so there really is no excuse for missing it off. I’m a fan of Jack Black and tend to ignore criticisms of him, especially when he has recently excelled as my beloved Po in Kung Fu Panda: a role that he was born to play. I even liked him in the not-great-but-not-terrible-either Year One, and thought pairing him with Michael Cera was an inspired choice that needed to have been made on a better movie. So yeah, considering School of Rock is the perfect vehicle for him, mixing his endearing/obnoxious immaturity and his sincerity better than almost anything he has been involved with.

I’ve heard some people criticise Richard Linklater for selling out and making a mainstream movie, but the level of commitment from everyone involved — and Linklater’s surprising facility with the most likeable cast of teenagers ever assembled for a movie — marks this as a triumph for dedicated filmmaking no matter what studio it was made for. I’m so pissed that I missed this off: it would definitely have been in the top 30, maybe even top 20. This omission tells me it’s been too long since I’ve seen it.

And what do you know, Jack Black appears in one of the top five movies as a very angry biker, and Richard Linklater directed another of them. It’s as if it was meant to be. Remember, this list has been built with one important caveat: I’m not including movies from this year as I’ve not yet had time to get acquainted with them. As a result I’m going from 1999 – 2008. This might seem silly considering everyone else is doing it from 2000 – 2009, but I feel safer sticking with movies I know well instead of including stuff from this year that I’ll just go off in time, and if I started it in 2000 I’d only be considering 9 years of films. Also this timeframe matches my arrival in The Big Smoke, and so has subjective value. The reason why this special list-ruining rule is important now will become clear very soon…

5. Anchorman

What had seemed, before release, to be little more than a one-joke movie about 70s fashion and workplace sexual prejudice was something much, much more than that: a Dada-esque parody of a vast number of cinema and TV cliches, racing past the dreary pastiche of the 70s that it could have been, and coming to rest in a parallel universe where all bets were off. Ferrell and director/co-writer Adam McKay slaved over the script and rehearsed with their incredible cast for months before shooting began to come up with as many alternate lines as possible, and even had two B-plots, allowing them to construct a “sequel” — Wake Up, Ron Burgundy — from the leftover scraps. Freed of storytelling logic, and willing to play with audience expectations, the viewer has no idea what will come next. A crazed Yazz Flute solo? A huge fight between rival news teams? A dog talking to a bear? No matter what they threw at you, it made a kind of twisted sense in this baffling world. At the risk of sounding like boring nerds, it’s a rare day when we don’t quote Anchorman in some capacity, which is either testament to our lameness, or the almost infinite genius of this film. It deserves a place in the Comedy Hall of Fame alongside Blazing Saddles, Duck Soup, Sleeper, This Is Spinal Tap, and Airplane!

Best Moment: There are countless wonderful scenes and lines in this, but this moment from a deleted scene shows how even the alternate versions of the finalised movie featured incredible moments. Not only is Ferrell’s hysteria inspired, check out how Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) races into the studio. Perhaps that’s what I like about this: every time there is an opportunity for a stupid joke, Ferrell and co. take it.

4. Before Sunset

Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise was the perfect romantic movie for those who shared the ages of the onscreen couple of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Their impulsive and idealistic romance would most appeal to those who had not yet reached a point in life where hopping off a train in Vienna to spend time with a complete stranger would seem like a terribly risky idea. Going back to that movie as I grew older, its appeal remained, but more and more it seemed like a fantasy. The sequel came at exactly the right moment, just as I had suddenly decided to take an impulsive step of my own, and so my first experience of seeing it was already ripe with subjective emotion. Even to those who were not embarking on their own journey of romantic discovery when first seeing this, surely its intelligence and careful expansion of the themes of the first movie would impress them. Bravely showing how Jesse and Céline have changed and matured in the nine years since their first meeting, Linklater uses its real-time format to cram in as much discussion about the nature of love, regret, and the effect of time on memory as he possibly can, with his two leads improving on their already impressive work from the first movie. Without a doubt, it’s the most profound and most life-affirming romantic movie ever made.

Best Moment: For much of its length it feels like a realistic riposte and negation of the flighty romanticism of the original, pitching it perfectly at an audience that had been optimistic when seeing the first film, but were maybe feeling less romantic when seeing the second. Linklater’s masterstroke comes in the final moments, where he shows those who might have “grown up” that maybe that impulsiveness was still something to aspire to. Objectively, an amazing note to end on. Subjectively, it was an unnervingly accurate depiction of what I was going through there and then. I will be eternally grateful to all who worked on it.

3. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

If ever a movie was crying out to be made into a franchise, it’s this one. Peter Weir’s phenomenally entertaining adaptation of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series is pure joy from beginning to end. Russell Crowe was criticised by fans of the series as being wrong for the role, but he is utterly believable as a man who is a fool on land but a genius at sea. Paul Bettany as the stiff Maturin is less of a stretch, but his work is just as endearing, and the relationship between them both is perfectly played. With Aubrey as Kirk and Maturin as an amalgam of Spock and Bones, it’s almost like watching an episode of Star Trek, though easily the best one ever made. With a humbling attention to detail only matched by Peter Jackson, a mastery of mood and pace borne of years of making underrated classics, and the understanding of cinema’s power that would drive even the most cynical audience to the edge of its seat, director Weir has created a modern marvel with seeming effortlessness. A repeated refrain — from myself, Daisyhellcakes, film critic Anne Billson, and several other people who I have seen this movie with and watched their indifference transformed into awestruck adoration — is that it could have continued for another two hours and it wouldn’t have been a chore. On the contrary. I, and many others, would love to see this series go on for as many movies as can be made from O’Brian’s books, and have leaped on every scrap of sequel news as if it were a liferaft. If I ever win a EuroMillions rollover, bankrolling a new movie will be my first — and biggest — splurge.

Best Moment: Too many to mention, with multiple high notes including Crowe’s bluff performance, Bettany’s lovable snootiness, exquisitely rendered battle scenes, and an amusing side-trip to the Galapagos for Stephen Maturin, here portrayed as a proto-Darwin. It’s impossible to find clips that haven’t been tampered with, so let this review from Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper stand in their place. Basically, what they said, and then some. It’s a magnificent adventure.

2. The Incredibles

The only bad thing I can say about Brad Bird’s superhero movie is that it renders moot any attempt to make a Fantastic Four movie, which of course didn’t stop 20th Century Fox from trying and failing to do just that. Twice. In the space of a single movie Bird showed us how flexible Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original creations were by adapting the “Superfamily” metaphor into the tale of an actual family of Supers, forced (like the JSA) to hide their powers from an increasingly hostile public. From there Bird is free to satirise our litigious culture, paralysed by bureaucracy, all while providing entertainment on a level even the best of Pixar had yet to achieve. Though criticism has been levelled at him for making a movie that seemed to celebrate Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy — with the exceptional people of the world forced to curb their efforts to change the world by those who are less exceptional — as with Ratatouille Bird is merely interested in seeing people using their knowledge and skills to help others instead of taking shortcuts and chasing fame and fortune (Syndrome and Linguini both over-reach, misunderstanding the importance of experience and intelligence, though at least Linguini learns his lesson and finds a way to excel in the final act).

What could be more inspirational than saying you should be true to yourself and then use your talents to make the world a better place? And what could be more thrilling than Bird’s staging of some of the greatest superhero moments ever committed to film? With the help of Michael Giacchino’s rousing, playful score, and some of the best voicework of recent times (No surprise that Craig T. Nelson’s best performance is found here, but could this be Holly Hunter’s finest moment too?), Bird delivers a series of bravura setpieces, respectfully paying homage to early James Bond movies and classic 50s and 60s superhero tales while still keeping things fresh. As I’ve said before, this was the decade in which the superhero genre came into its own, but it was The Incredibles that represented the ultimate expression of the things that make superheroes appealing: it’s inspiring, it’s fun, and it’s spectacular. Pixar will struggle to top this beautiful moment. If I was compiling a list of movies released between 2000 and 2009, it would be number one with a bullet.

Best Moment: An early trailer for The Incredibles made it seem like a mere superhero spoof. Though those movies can be fun (Kinka Usher and Neil Cuthbert’s entertaining adaptation of Bob Burden’s Mystery Men was another movie that could have found a place on this list), I had hoped for more from Pixar. As it progressed a seriousness of purpose became apparent beneath the brightly-coloured surface, but when Helen Parr and her children Dash and Violet are fired upon by Syndrome it becomes clear that the stakes here are deadly serious. At that moment, The Incredibles went from being a good movie to a truly great one, something that touched on every emotion in the spectrum. I was utterly smitten, and have been ever since.

1. The Matrix

For those who know me, this is no surprise (and before anyone accuses me, my fudging of the parameters of this list was not an intentional move to allow me to wax rhapsodic about it). However, to anyone who has come through this list expecting a more respected movie, this might come as a disappointment. Though it was admired on release, familiarity and two unloved sequels have made it easy to forget how groundbreaking this was. SF fans who were once thrilled to see a cerebral and exciting science fiction film have long since decided that this is as embarrassing and soft-SF as other unloved and bone-headed mainstream efforts. It’s not hard-SF, I have heard. It’s just a pastiche of Philip K. Dick’s ideas, a brainless and shallow action flick that pisses faux-profundities down its leg like a village idiot dressed like a goth. Admitting to loving this movie has proved as fraught as saying I loved Titanic. Which I didn’t. But I’ve heard enough anti-Matrix complaints to last a lifetime, and that’s before we get to the knee-jerk criticisms about how Keanu can’t act. Yes yes, that’s very perceptive of you all.

None of this matters to me. Seeing The Matrix for the first time was an epiphany. The Wachowskis collected ideas about the nature of reality, society-as-form-of-oppression, anarchic resistance to control structures, and the power of self-belief, and then mixed them up with cutting-edge visual effects, explosions, and martial arts action. It was as if they had made the movie I had been waiting my whole life to see, and since then nothing has matched that feeling of awestruck recognition, something akin to a waking dream. It was as if a movie had ravished my brain and injected my heart with adrenaline. I walked on air for months after.

Ten years later, it might be time to give The Matrix another chance. The Wachowskis might be amateur philosophers giving Cliff’s Notes abbreviations of challenging philosophical ideas, but as a primer for further exploration, it can’t be beat. It’s no coincidence that after seeing this I read Baudrillard and Debord and Chomsky, my interest in political and moral philosophy finally overtaking my previous fascination with epistomology. This may not have turned me into Christopher Hitchens (thank God), but it made me — and many others — take note of the injustices intrinsic to the structure of our society, and how it has become increasingly difficult to escape that Black Iron Prison. It deepened my appreciation of PKD as well, and the rest of the decade saw me expanding my reading habits. In that way it is laid the groundwork for Lost, probably the most thematically complex pop culture artifact ever. Another reason to love it.

It’s no exaggeration to say it changed cinema. Many of the visual conventions that the Wachowskis borrowed from anime have since been “borrowed” from them and overused to the point of cliche, but we should only blame the brothers for being smart enough to recognise the appeal of these images. It was probably the first time famous actors were expected to undergo intensive martial arts training in order to perform many of the stunts themselves. Its visual effects were not just technically impressive but also looked unlike anything else, and represented a break from the traditional SF conventions of space battles and giant monsters. And it also featured some of my favourite characters ever: treacherous Cypher, lovestruck Trinity, naive Neo, deadly Mr. Smith, and — best of all — Morpheus, the man who sets it all in motion, played by the coolest cat in cinema, Mr. Laurence Fishburne. As with many other movies on this list it technically doesn’t belong in this decade, but to me this decade started the moment I saw this, and everything since has been a post-script. Even the sequels cannot ruin it.

Best Moment: I’m sure this cod-Buddhist speechifying will make a lot of people cringe, but when I first saw this, and Morpheus says the big line, it took all of my energy to not leap to my feet and scream “YES!” at the top of my lungs.

And that’s that. A big big thank you to all of those who have checked out these posts and sent me kind comments on Facebook and Twitter. Hopefully, though a lot of my choices were pretty obvious, there have been a couple of mentions here or there that have inspired you to go back and check out a movie you’ve forgotten or avoided, and I certainly hope that you enjoy whichever film it is you end up watching. There are more lists to come at the end of the year as I go over the movies I’ve seen in 2009. Fingers crossed those don’t get out of hand, though I already suspect they will.

So Mad, These Men!

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Mad Men has been screening on BBCs 4 and 2 for a couple of weeks now, and other than the odd rare comment about it being slightly obvious, the responses have been overwhelmingly positive. Most critics are besotted with the show, while some (Kathryn Flett in particular) are pledging their ovaries. We maintain a more objective view of it. Having watched three episodes during the original American run we were not hooked quickly enough, and it fell by the wayside, despite the critical reaction there being as rapturous as it is over here. Some of our complaints were niggling. On a surface level Canyon finds John Hamm somewhat oily (I’m agnostic), while I find Christina Hendricks’s transformation from her previous attractive self in Firefly into a pinched and terrifying fascimile of such in this to be somewhat disconcerting (see below; something about her has changed, and it’s not the hair or the startling boobies).


However, both of us agree that the dialogue is not as great as has been asserted by the critical monolith, ranging as it does from the good to the cringe-inducingly anvilicious. Quick example: when Don’s wife Betty starts to get numb shakyhands that prevent her from putting her own make up, the wife of Don’s boss, Mona, helps her out, and mid-lipstick application says, “Look at those lips! I bet it’s not hard for you to hold onto a man like that,” to which Betty replies, “It’s hard to hold onto anything right now with the children and running the house.” Plus, you know, the fact that she has terrible terrible shakyhands. They make it hard for her to “hold” things. In case you hadn’t noticed.

Having come across many complaints that Lost is badly written over the last few days (including being told to my face by someone just a few hours ago that they no longer trust my judgement any more because I love that lovely lovely show), I’m especially annoyed to find this show getting universal praise when scenes as bad as that are getting a free pass. That said, many people whose opinion we respect says that it’s worth sticking with, so we definitely will, but we’re hoping that once the show stops being so pleased with itself for being so “clever” (which it’s not, really), it will settle down to some quality character drama that doesn’t revolve around repeated points about how people sure were repressed in the early 60s, by golly!


I have been enjoying two aspects of it, though. One is the casting of some actors who look so “60s” that it’s scary. In the above picture, Salvatore Romano, played by Bryan Batt (he’s the guy in the middle), looks like the quintessential 50s man, with a face that Jack “King” Kirby could have drawn. I also appreciated the casting of Robert Morse as snooty executive Bertram Cooper, which is surely a nod to his roles in A Guide for the Married Man and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, both of which are hyper-chirpy predecessors of this show.

The other thing I’ve enjoyed is filling in the gaps in Don’s personality. This week we had some horribly written scenes where Don’s wife made a point of commenting on Don’s attempts to avoid discussing his inner thoughts, preferring to hide behind his glossy façade (much like everyone and everything else in the show), and after he falls asleep lies next to him and wistfully says, “Who’s in there?”


That she didn’t follow that line with, “I just feel like I don’t really know the real Don Draper, or even if there is a real Don Draper, behind this wall you have created, like we have all erected walls, because the world of the early 60s is a false world, one where only those mad mad alpha white males hold all the cards. Now, where’s my lighter?”, is a small triumph. I also would have liked her to have knocked on Don’s head, which would ideally let out a loud clang. This is how I entertain myself throughout the show.


Still, even while driving his car one handed and being well louche, it’s true that Don seems to have a mysterious inner monologue going on all the time, though I do wish he was allowed to express this via actual acting instead of by obvious dialogue. He has hinted that he’s more than capable of doing just that, and hopefully he will get a chance to impress me soon. However, it struck me today that such a monumentally relaxed mask as his can only hide the most crazed inner self, and I realised that I reckon it looks like this.


Yes, that is Kenshiro Kasumi, from Fist of the North Star, in full fury mode preparing to use the North Star Hundred Crack Fist to punch some evildoer until his head explodes, which is about as furious as I imagine the real Don Draper is, a reality obscured by much whiskey-drinking and beatnik-shagging. I like that this episode ended with The Great Divide by Masticator’s favourite band The Cardigans, a song that begins “There’s a monster growing inside our heads.” If that song actually began, “There’s a Hokuto Shinken expert who lives in a horrible post-apocalyptic dystopia growing inside our heads,” I reckon it would have been closer to the truth.

Before I even realised about Don’s inner-Kenshiro, I had taken to narrating his monologue while watching the show, and my shouty interjections tend to go something like this.




Hopefully once the mid-60s arrive he can get some free love and Mary Jane and chill out before he goes on a punching rampage up and down Madison Avenue.