Listmania ’11! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part One

Posted on January 19, 2012 by admiralneck

Here’s my hasty explanation for this gargantuan post: I had originally meant to write quick capsule reviews of a few films that stood out this year, but the words, the words they kept coming, you see, and I couldn’t stop them, no matter how hard I tried. This is why I should blog more often. It’s a boil I should lance, a radiator I should bleed, but instead I just save it all up for the end of the year like an idiot who doesn’t understand his audience. I’m so sorry for using up all of the words. I had to, though, because these two movies prompted a lot of pondering, for good reasons and really really really bad ones. As a result, this part of Listmania, which has been a two-parter in years past, will now be a three-parter. Blame Rod Lurie.

Best Remake: Footloose

It was sad to see Craig Brewer’s Twitter timeline in the weeks before his remake of Footloose was released. For the majority of that period, he just retweeted people aiming baffling levels of rage at him for daring to remake what must, if they were to be believed, have been a modern classic of American cinema on a par with The Godfather and The Last Picture Show. “Another remake?” they asked en masse. “Hollywood has run out of ideas. Fuck this movie.” And yet Mr. Brewer continued to RT these negative opinions, interspersing them with the one or two tweets of praise from folks who saw preview screenings and enjoyed his work.

At this point I still hadn’t seen all of Footloose, but I knew that Chris Penn danced in it, Kevin Bacon looked like a 40-year old high school student, and the final scene in which the teenagers of Bomont danced at their prom was bafflingly directed by Herbert Ross so that you could barely see what was going on. I probably wouldn’t have ever watched it if it wasn’t for a strange confluence of events; namely the presence of Craig Brewer as director and co-writer (SoC is a fan of Mr. Brewer’s previous movies and TV work), and Daisyhellcakes’ enthusiasm for dancing.

The return of So You Think You Can Dance (US, not the miserable UK version) is a cause for celebration in one half of this household, but I’ve started to be pulled into watching it due to the obvious expertise of the contestants and the fair-minded assessments of the judging panel; a rarity in most reality TV, which has less interest in actual talent and a greater focus on spectacle and entertainment. Also a key factor were numerous rewatches of Step Up 3; 25th on last year’s Listmania: Worst Films list and yet I’ve seen it more times than about 90% of the Best Films entries.

So I watched the original Footloose as preparation, and was mostly unimpressed. The cast were game, with special mention to Penn, Dianne Wiest and the simply amazing John Lithgow, but it was flabbily-paced, and the relationship between Lithgow’s preacher and his daughter (Lori Singer) was overblown, not helped by the gulf in acting ability between the two of them. If it wasn’t for the wonderfully empathic work of Lithgow — who often seems to have wandered in from a different, better movie — I don’t think it would have any spark at all, and would only be remembered for the kitsch elements.

Thankfully Brewer gets that. Ross’ movie could have done with some subtlety, as shown by this far superior remake, which manages to amp up the energy of the original while dialling back the melodrama. A lot of its success is down to Brewer’s feel for Southern life, as shown in Hustle and Flow and Black Snake Moan. A New Yorker like Ross would never really be able to understand that kind of life in the bone-deep way that Brewer does, though he makes a good fist of it. Footloose ’11 feels more honest and raw even while it has a glossier sheen, thanks to the vibrant photography of Amelia Vincent.

Brewer’s movie is also raunchier, but then what do you expect from the man who filmed this brazenly filthy musical moment? The preacher character in both versions wants drinking and dancing and general carousing banned in Bomont in order to prevent another tragedy like the car crash that killed his son, but the dancing ban also “prevents” the sexualisation of teenagers so feared by parents. However, in Ross’ version the dancing is so tame and sexless that it makes the argument completely one-sided. When you see nerds frugging ineptly (though admittedly realistically) the message from Rev. Shaw Moore seems out-of-place. When you see Kenny Wormald bumping up against Julianne Hough in the remake, you know Moore is onto something, and that makes the fight to rescind the dancing ban more interesting, and the eventual victory fully earned.

It’s not Brewer trying to amp up the sexuality of the original in order to appeal to a modern palate, though. He gets what made the original work, and keeps those shining moments while fixing the stuff that misfired. In Footloose ’84 Ren (Bacon) relocates with his mother to Bomont to live with his aunt and uncle, who don’t really understand him or treat him well. Brewer changes this subtly; Ren is orphaned after his single mother dies, and finds a happier home with aunt and uncle (a Deadwood reunion for Kim Dickens and Ray McKinnon). Lessening the familial drama here paradoxically makes the rest of the drama work better. The effect of Ren’s rebellion on his now-sympathetic relatives — who find themselves treated as complicit in his campaign — heightens the stakes.

It also serves to create a connection between Ren and Rev. Moore, who have both suffered bereavement. One of the best things about Ross’ movie — and Lithgow’s performance — is that the conflict between the two main characters is so low-key, and the same thing happens here, but this little enhancement by Brewer really makes that muted antagonism, which morphs into respect, so much more affecting. It also makes up for the less compelling performance from Dennis Quaid. No knock on the guy; he’s very good here, and it’s great to see him cast in a real movie instead of guff like Legion and G.I. Joe, but he’s following in some pretty big footsteps.

One dramatic change in the remake paid unexpected dividends that I didn’t fully realise when I first saw it. Footloose ’84 features a scene in which Moore finds out the principal of the local school is burning books that he feels have a corruptive influence. This comes just as his daughter Ariel’s rejection of him reaches its sad zenith. Realising his attempts to protect the children of Bomont have gone too far, Moore’s enthusiasm for his ban is dented, and though Ren’s campaign to change the law’s of Bomont fails, the reverend “blesses” the prom and its dancing.

In the remake the book-burning is removed, and it’s more clearly shown that Moore’s endorsement of the prom is a sign of his recovery from his grief — a moment that is enhanced by Brewer’s choice to show the crash that inspires the ban. Moore’s sadness is a big element of the original, but the catharsis of his final speech doesn’t hit as hard when diluted by the bookburning. Though an atheist such as myself might appreciate a popular movie depicting a rejection of fundamentalism by a moderate preacher, this change is definitely for the best, narratively speaking. Moore grows past his loss, and his acceptance of Ariel is more meaningful.

I could go on listing all of the things Brewer does right. It’s easier just to say this; remakes don’t have to be cynical cash-ins. With the right filmmaker onboard, you can turn something familiar and underpowered into something fresh, something relevant, something that purrs like an engine. By tinkering with the plot, giving the story more focus, adding elements such as the different racial make-up of the new town — thus adding a new source of tension without distorting or overwhelming the plot — and polishing everything else until it really shines, you have a remake that renders the original surplus to requirements.

The leads are terrific, the dancing is thrilling, the music is eclectic but apt, and the cast is filled with dependable character actors and soon-to-be-stars — here I’m thinking of Miles Teller, who takes over from Chris Penn and delivers one of the year’s most entertaining performances. Footloose ’11 seemed to be ignored by most filmgoers, which is a crying shame. Even if you think a remake is an insult to the original, it’s worth giving this hugely entertaining crowdpleaser a try. It’s the definitive Footloose. Sorry, Kevin Bacon.

Worst Remake: Straw Dogs

Sam Peckinpah’s controversial thriller exploring the curse of masculine urges and the darkest consequences of territoriality might be the most profound and disturbing film of his short career. A very recent rewatch confirmed my feelings from my first experience of it, that it gets at the worst things about being a man in a patriarchal society; the relentless one-upmanship, the victimisation and dismissal of women and distrust of femininity in general, the malevolent urge to escalate conflict.

Straw Dogs is one of the very few movies that honestly portrays the cruel consequences of machismo, that distortion of masculine energy that ruins everything, turning normal people into psychopaths. Peckinpah was obviously troubled by his own impulses, if the excellent biography by ST:DS9 / Battlestar Galactica writer David Weddle is anything to go by. Straw Dogs was his best attempt at working through his heart of darkness, and spoke to me more about the effect of Alpha males on their fellow men more than any other work, except maybe Fight Club or A History of Violence.

I feared Rod Lurie’s remake would break completely that, but he keeps more of Peckinpah’s clever original than I thought he would. Co-protagonist David still exercises with an “effeminate” skipping rope, his relationship with wife Amy is still fractious (though less so, and with less childish acting-out by Amy), and the politics of small-town life is still dramatised well. However its the incomplete aping of Peckinpah’s original that sinks the remake as much as the differences, betraying that personal vision and eventually turning it into what the original version was described as by many critics; a celebration of violence as a way to resolve conflict.

Lurie’s version keeps the idea of the wimpy intellectual coming into conflict with the macho Alpha males of a new town, but transposes this to the US, meaning this David (played by SoC favourite James Marsden, and hereby referred to as MarsDavid) is still aware of the customs of the Southern town his wife comes from. The original David (played by Dustin Hoffman; let’s call him DustDavid) is a total stranger in a strange land, which contributes to his unease. MarsDavid doesn’t feel the same disconnect; the strife between a city boy and a country dweller in the modern US doesn’t have the same oomph as DustDavid being in a land as alien to an American as Cornwall in the 70s.

MarsDavid and his wife Amy (Kate Bosworth; BosAmy) are depicted as being in love, with tensions between them growing as the movie progresses. DustDavid and Amy (Susan George; GeorgeAmy) are almost immediately at odds with each other, passive-aggressively sniping at each other in scenes that are sometimes taken word for word from Peckinpah’s movie but with the tetchy subtext removed. That snippiness in Peckinpah’s original is necessary to power GeorgeAmy’s attraction to her former lover Charlie. She’s still drawn to the man even though she loves DustDavid, and her feelings only strengthen as her relationship with DustDavid deteriorates.

This leads to the controversial rape scene, where she is seen to be torn between understandable horror and unexpected acceptance of the act. Charlie is, of course, 100% in the wrong, and it’s obvious that GeorgeAmy is upset by the event, but she is conflicted due to her feelings about the man. It’s a difficult scene to watch, and even more difficult (if not impossible) to defend, but at least in this dreadful moment there is something going on in her head. I’m not sure it counts as agency, but she’s more than a victim, is a complicated human being, until Charlie’s friend Norman appears and takes the scene into even darker territory, which also serves to alter the relationship between the two guilty men.

In the remake, we see BosAmy rejecting Charlie from the very beginning. She doesn’t warm to him at all, which means the fracturing of her relationship with MarsDavid serves no real purpose. When the rape happens it looks as if there will be no ambiguity there, that she is utterly opposed to the violent act, but then Charlie — here depicted as a shirtless buff hottie, bringing new variables about objectification into the equation — asks if she wants him to stop and she hesitates.

With no real set-up or build to that moment, the effect is to be far more offensive than Peckinpah’s original, if that’s possible. Without the obvious chemistry between the two, and no previous shading to the character, BosAmy’s moment of doubt legitimises the “women secretly want to be raped” argument. I just can’t imagine what Lurie thought he was doing. Did he think this choice made the scene less problematic? He then holds back from depicting the second rape in as graphic a way as Peckinpah did, compounding the problem by leaving us a mental image of the earlier, less violent act. It’s a monstrous miscalculation.

The end of the movie shows where Lurie was probably heading. In Peckinpah’s original, GeorgeAmy is traumatised by this act but never tells DustDavid about it. This means the final siege takes on a different meaning. Charlie, Norman, and the rest of the vile gang accidentally shoot the magistrate of the town before attempting to kill our protagonists to get at simpleton Henry, and DustDavid — who has fled America to avoid having to take a moral stand over the Vietnam war — becomes a killing machine to defend his house.

He’s not defending his wife’s honour, and it has been argued that his motivation in protecting Henry is to provoke his tormentors, allowing him to finally strike back. All he wants to do is kill, and there’s no glory in this, no higher purpose. Peckinpah, through his surrogate David, is expressing his fear of losing control, of becoming a murderous agent. It’s a critique of that male impulse for destruction and dominance; Hoffman plays David as a man who has turned a terrible corner, deriving a ghoulish glee from his actions. This is not a celebration of violence, and those who think it is have missed the point.

Lurie instead escalates the threat to MarsDavid and his home in a much shorter time, removing any hope of debate or escape. The gang become dangerous very quickly, with James Woods’ Coach Hadden intentionally killing the Sheriff in front of MarsDavid. This triggers a descent into violent retribution that’s sudden and borne as much out of necessity as male impulse. It might have worked if Lurie had been as interested as Peckinpah in exploring the subject, but the almost comical framing of MarsDavid — small in the frame with his face surrounded by either male torsos, arms, and groins with phallic beer bottles pointing out — is all we get.

Peckinpah’s film was soaked in machismo and commentary on male insecurities. Almost every shot and line strengthens the feeling that DustDavid feels emasculated by the power of the Alpha males, but Lurie has less time for this, and the finale is thus blunted. Even worse, BosAmy is an active participant in the finale, which turns a treatise on male violence into a mere revenge story. Don’t get me wrong, the sight of Kate Bosworth blasting her assailant with a shotgun has some power, some kind of basic balancing of the narrative scale, but for the first time ever in the history of storytelling, giving the female protagonist more to do makes a story less interesting and more conventional than a story in which the female character is sidelined.

The complexity of GeorgeAmy in the original remains until the end, when she calls out to Charlie and not Dust David for help, and later hesitates before saving DustDavid from a final attack. This can be read a number of different ways. BosAmy is just out to kill her attacker; she (and her husband, who then finds out about the rape) has nothing on her mind except revenge. It pains me to say it as I’m thoroughly sick and tired of seeing female characters shortchanged by not being given enough to do; this is a timely point considering the release of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which regrettably depicts the abhorrent rape of Lisbeth Salander, a character otherwise wonderfully pro-active and dynamic) and Steven Moffat’s recent controversial imagining of the character of Irene Adler in Sherlock.

Peckinpah’s critical examination of the crimes of men is something that has very rarely been done with such anger, and to do that he had to give his female characters less to do or to treat them in a dismissive way that gave him room to make his argument that masculinity is a destructive force. It’s regrettable, but in its most vital moments, Straw Dogs ’71 feels like the raging Tasmanian-Devil-whirl of a man flagellating himself, and a consequence of that raging introspection is that women are sidelined or presented as a baffling threat to his masculinity. We may not like it, and for good reason, but Peckinpah is at least honest enough to present that for us to accept or reject as we see fit. Michael Bay — whose female characters are mere lust objects — would never look into himself long enough to realise that he’s part of the problem.

Lurie’s remake goes in a more conventional direction than Peckinpah’s, diluting that story into little more than another I Spit On Your Grave. I’m glad BosAmy gets to exorcise herself of the trauma she endured, but her cathartic destruction of her assailant is nothing we haven’t seen before, and represents another example of that miserable trope Rape And Revenge, where a woman becomes an agent only once she has been horribly violated. This is something that Drew McWeeny was railing against recently, and prompted a discussion about the overuse of this most awful of plots. It’s as if no one can imagine a woman being prompted to take drastic action unless she’s sexually assaulted first; anything less than that and she’s just being “ambitious” and we don’t like that, eh? ::Insert angry emoticon here::

Lurie has removed enough character detail from Peckinpah’s version to make a hollow facsimile, a rote action movie that sees violence as the answer to our problems, not the cause of our psychic pain. I could accept this as the consequence of hesitancy on his part, but I suspect he doesn’t understand the original, and has no interest in giving the story any dimension other than to provide rousing violent moments for us and the characters and then to cheekily pretend that this has damaged their souls in some way.

There are numerous details in the original that enrich or strengthen Peckinpah’s personal vision; his distrust of women is revealed in the fact that GeorgeAmy buys a man-trap for their home (geddit?), whereas in Lurie’s film the trap — now referred to throughout as a bear-trap — is just sitting around to be used as a mere weapon, stripped of its allegorical weight. He might have removed a clumsy and unpleasant metaphor, but he also loses the point of including the trap in the first place. He’s using the iconography of the first without wanting to bring in any themes that would complicate his vision.

And what about MarsDavid’s vocation? DustDavid is a mathematician, someone who lives in the mind and is thus perceived as feminine by the Alpha males, which obviously bothers him to the point that he happily abandons his anger at them when they suggest they go hunting, as it allows him to feel like part of the pack. MarsDavid is a screenwriter from LA who is writing a movie about the WWII battle in Stalingrad, and who is so repulsed by the pack that he resists the call to hunt until he thinks it will allow him to find out if they killed BosAmy’s cat.

Peckinpah’s David is a man of the mind who cannot resist the pull of macho pursuits; a perfect depiction of the war that raged within the filmmaker. Did Lurie make David a screenwriter as an autobiographical touch? If so then the co-opting of Peckinpah’s (and co-writer David Zelag Goodman’s) dialogue, plotting and imagery is especially cheeky. This is not a personal movie for Lurie. He’s living someone else’s life. Of course it might be that Lurie thought that this was a clever way to set up conflict between MarsDavid and the pack, by modernising the intellectual /macho man divide (because apparently there are no mathematicians any more, only Hollywood writers), which is the generous interpretation.

The less generous interpretation is that he thinks he’s making a movie that satirises the violence in modern movies, like he’s suddenly Michael Haneke. If so, the alterations to Peckinpah’s original are doubly stupid, considering the catharsis of the finale. It’s especially galling as he could have made a timely movie about the Red State / Blue State divide in America, which is alluded to in the movie without ever going too far. All he had to do was make David a screenwriter (or playwright, as Daisyhellcakes cleverly pointed out; that’s perceived as being even less masculine a profession than screenwriter) from New York making a movie about the American Civil War.

Instantly the movie is transformed, but Lurie is obviously not interested in making something that works on a number of levels, as Peckinpah did with a movie that used the Vietnam war and the US protests as basis for so much of his movie’s drama. And this is the most damning thing I can say about this misguided remake; this year Kevin Smith managed to make a movie about the Red State / Blue State divide, but Rod Lurie didn’t. Outdone by Kevin Smith. That’s gotta hurt.

Yet more to come. Not about remakes, though. You can relax.

Listmania ‘10! Crew Contributions Of The Year

Posted on January 3, 2011 by admiralneck

It’s weird how Black Swan and Inception completely took over 2010, to the extent that I’ve barely thought about any other movies. In the Best Movies list I finished last week, I intended to make a comment about how the enjoyment-gap between them was almost non-existent: my memory of both of them is that they were like really very loud out-of-body experiences, but with trains, lesbian sex, nail-clipping, Winona Ryder clutching a glass of some expensive drink and looking very angry, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s tight buns (a pair of buttocks I didn’t actually notice, what with him running across the ceiling in his most memorable scene, but I have since found out from some of his lady-fans that his bum was very nice). I liked everything in the Best Movies list (obvs), but the leap from number three to number two was pretty large.

As you can see from these categories, Black Swan and Inception keep cropping up. It’s hard to exaggerate how impressive they both were on a technical level. The pleasure I derived from seeing two films as well crafted as this make me wonder if I’m really just a sucker for pretty things onscreen: certainly a conversation I had about Tron: Legacy just a couple of hours ago — which saw me make an unconvincing case for it by just pointing out how much my eyes and ears enjoyed it — makes me think I’m shallow.

But balls to it. Black Swan and Inception moved my heart as well as my two primary face-sensors. They’re near-perfect film experiences that left me breathless with joy in their final moments, and deserve all the praise I can throw at them. In the meantime, see below for some compliments for other films as well. They are not intended to be scraps from the table: all the work mentioned below is exemplary.

Best Director: Darren Aronofsky – Black Swan

Honorable Mentions:

Christopher Nolan – Inception

David Fincher – The Social Network

Lisa Cholodenko – The Kids Are All Right

Lee Unkrich – Toy Story 3

Takashi Miike – 13 Assassins

Best Screenplay: Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg – The Kids Are All Right

Honorable Mentions:

Christopher Nolan – Inception

Nicole Holofcener – Please Give

Aaron Sorkin – The Social Network

Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh – Greenberg

Michael Arndt – Toy Story 3

“Where Have You Been?” Director of the Year: Joe Dante – The Hole

Best Visual Effects: Digital Domain / Prana Studios Inc. / Ollin Studio / Mr. X Inc. / Prime Focus Vancouver – Tron: Legacy

Honorable Mentions:

Double Negative / Asylum Visual Effects / Method / Rising Sun Pictures / Ghost VFX - The Sorceror’s Apprentice

SPI / CafeFX / Matte World Digital / In-Three Inc. - Alice in Wonderland

Hydraulx – Skyline

C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures / Buf / Image Metrics - Splice

Double Negative – Inception

Best Cinematography - Shelly Johnson - The Wolfman

Honorable Mentions:

Matthew Libatique – Black Swan

Robert Richardson – Shutter Island

Wally Pfister – Inception

Christopher Doyle – Ondine

Martin Ruhe – The American

Best Editing: Lee Smith – Inception

Best Sound Design – Craig Henigan – Black Swan

Honorable Mentions:

Ren Klyce - The Social Network

Leslie Shatz – Meek’s Cutoff

Eugene Gearty and Philip Stockton - Shutter Island

Richard King – Inception

Akritchalerm Kalayanamittr and Koichi Shimizu – Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Soundtrack (of the century, let’s face it) – Hans Zimmer – Inception

Honorable Mentions:

Clint Mansell – Black Swan

Daft Punk – Tron: Legacy

Alexandre Desplat – The Ghost Writer

Anton Sanko – Rabbit Hole

Kjartan Sveinsson – Ondine

Best Individual Song: Derezzed by Daft Punk - Tron: Legacy

Best Production Design: Kevin Ishioka – Tron: Legacy

(Image taken from Steve Jung’s lovely website.)

Honorable Mentions:

Dante Ferretti – Shutter Island

Thérèse DePrez – Black Swan

Albrecht Konrad - The Ghost Writer

Guy Hendrix Dyas – Inception

Robert Stromberg – Alice in Wonderland

Best Costume Design: Penny Rose - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Honorable Mentions:

Lindy Hemming - Clash of the Titans

Michael Wilkinson / Quantum Creation FX - Tron: Legacy

Bruce Yu – Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Janty Yates – Robin Hood

Michael Kaplan – The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Worst Director: Paul W.S. Anderson - Resident Evil: Afterlife

Dishonorable Mentions:

Kevin Smith – Cop Out

Alexandre Aja – Piranha 3D

Tim Burton – Alice in Wonderland

Tom Vaughan – Extraordinary Measures

Chris Columbus – Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Worst Screenplay: Linda Woolverton - Alice in Wonderland

Dishonorable Mentions:

Paul W.S. Anderson - Resident Evil: Afterlife

Robert Nelson Jacobs – Extraordinary Measures

Rob and Mark Cullen – Cop Out

M. Night Shyamalan – The Last Airbender

Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg – Piranha 3D

Worst Cinematography – Andrew Dunn – Extraordinary Measures

Dishonorable Mentions:

Michael Watson – Skyline

Robert Richardson – Eat, Pray, Love

David Klein – Cop Out

Oliver Bokelberg – The Bounty Hunter

Michel Abramowicz - From Paris With Love

Worst Editing: Kevin Smith – Cop Out

One more to go: miscellaneous gubbins of the year, where I pick the best hair, creepiest poster, and most debonair badass, among other things.

Listmania ‘10! The Worst Movies Of The Year

Posted on December 30, 2010 by admiralneck

With the miserable regularity of the Grinch’s alarm clock, my deafening hoots of praise give way to similarly loud hoots of derision, aimed at the lowest of the low. This inevitable post also sees the return of my usual hand-wringing, as I try to mitigate the fact that I’m bitching about a bunch of movies like some know-it-all while talented (and, I have to say, not so talented) people actually CREATE something, just to see it pilloried by some schmuck blogger. How rude of me! How arrogant! And yet here we are. Because I really felt the urge to bitch about a bunch of crappy Jennifer Aniston movies. Again.

Film critic Anne Billson was talking yesterday about the polarisation of popular opinion into either rabid fandom or frothing hate, with comment sections on many pages turning into a bear-fight between these diametrically opposed viewpoints. I have to admit this gave me pause: here I am writing about 30 movies I loved and 30 movies I thought were just appalling. If the impression I give is of someone who can only see things in black or white, bear in mind the 50-odd movies that didn’t get on either of these lists. Take The Book of Eli, for example. It doesn’t get on either list as I thought it was merely all right. If I were to list all of the movies I saw this year in order of preference, it would be squarely in the middle. It didn’t get higher because of that bone-headed twist at the end. It didn’t get any lower because I really liked a lot of the cast and the Hughes Brothers made it look nice. (Actually, it’s either that or Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which was neither here nor there, really.)

As for these movies, it’s not black and white here either. My number one movie featured some of the most incredible production design of the year, and the generally rather amazing effects had a lovely texture to them. My number 25 movie made me laugh at it in derision, but when the dancing started I shut the hell up with a quickness, as pointed out by Daisyhellcakes. Same as with my previous list. Black Swan‘s success was not due to the screenplay, which I thought was certainly good enough, but included some clunky lines pushing the subtext into the open where it quickly withered and died. This meant little, though. It was only the odd moment, and it was easy to forget as Aronofsky weaved his amazing spell with the writers’ clever manipulation of ambiguity.

So here is my anger. I tried to at least give a rounded reason for my dislike: there are any number of shittily constructed films made each year, but there usually needs to be something more than just cynically dashed-off pandering at play. Okay! I’ll stop trying to cover my arse now.

25. Step Up 3D

It seems like an act of wanton cruelty to include something as childishly good-natured as this in the list, but note has to be made of the ineptitude of the filmmaking. Newly enrolled in university to study electrical engineering, Step Up 2‘s Moose is torn between his parent’s desire for him to forget about all of this silly dancing, and his irresistible urge to pop and lock and jive and krump or whatever its called. If he doesn’t give in to his urges, square-jawed Luke’s dance-utopia The House of Pirates (which is almost identical to Hansel’s loft in Zoolander) will be taken over by evil trust-fund asshole Julian. Oh noes! Moose’s dilemma is presented several times in identical ways (Do I attend this exam? Or the World Jam contest scheduled at the most conveniently inconvenient time possible?), to no suspense whatsoever. This is only the smallest of Step Up 3‘s flaws (the fact that 65% of the movie is made up of elaborate handshakes is another). Still, at least the dancing is AMAZEBALLS, though even then the choreographers are restricted by the need to advance the dancers into the 3D cameras as often as possible just to show iof the revolutionary technology ZOMG. I still recommend it for its good-timey atmosphere, thrilling soundtrack and mad skillz. (Seriously.)

24. Remember Me

It might think of itself as a spiritual successor to Erich Segal’s Love Story, but it feels more like an opportunistic remake of Untamed Heart, but without Christian Slater and Marisa Tomei’s spark and charisma. The story of a depressed and unpredictable young rich boy and the poor daughter of a bereaved cop sporadically hints at something more interesting: Allen Coulter wisely keeps things dour and unironic, restricting his palette to somber greys and making sure only one deeply obnoxious character ever really acts like he has a pulse. Unfortunately the casting of teen heartthrob (and co-producer) R-Pattz opposite Emilie De Ravin (sans Aaron the BAY-BAY!!!) scuppers the love story: Pattinson’s chemistry with his female lead is only slightly more convincing than with his Twilight co-star Kristin Stewart, which isn’t saying much. None of this matters, though. The offensively stupid ending wrecks everything, coming from nowhere in a futile effort to create something profound from the inconsequential goings-on, but as That Plot Twist could have been replaced by any other tragic event without changing a thing about the movie, its inclusion smacks of tasteless emotional manipulation.

23. Micmacs

The latest from Jean-Pierre Jeunet stands as the prettiest movie that made my hackles rise this year. This curious mash-up of simplistic anti-Bad-Things proselytising and cutesy slapstick has many things to commend it, not least the stunning photography, the delightful production design, the elaborate Rube-Goldberg setpieces. Even the weird tonal mismatch that sees a bunch of DELIGHTFUL eccentrics conspiring against two beastly arms dealers is interesting, though it veers close to the edge of trivialising a serious subject. Nevertheless, personal bias intrudes. As with Wes Anderson — a filmmaker with his share of detractors — Jeunet’s style can overwhelm all other praise if you’re not onboard with his sub-Chaplin shtick. It’s a delight to look at, but if you’re in any way immune to the trick of having a bunch of simpering ninnies endlessly grinning at the camera while accordion music coats the whimsical proceedings with an unnecessary extra layer of treacle, this is not the movie for you. The jokes are almost all unforgivably bad, too. Consider this not necessarily “terrible”: more “unbearable if you have a low tolerance for twee things”.

22. Biutiful

Why is this movie — a critically acclaimed project from an award-winning director, dealing with weighty themes like poverty and death and redemption and sorrow, filmed with great skill by a talented photographer and featuring some of the best sound work of the year — at number 22 on this list? Solely because of Javier Bardem’s towering performance as Uxbal, a man tortured to almost comical lengths by the unseen hands of misery-pornographer Alejandro González Iñárritu. If it wasn’t for Bardem, this movie would be in the top five. Smearing nasty-smelling mud on your face might be advertised as being good for your skin, but it’s still stinky, nasty mud that takes ages to wash off. Biutiful is the same thing: a worthy (God I hate worthy movies) attempt to give audiences a first-person view of what poverty is. Except it isn’t really. It’s just a weirdly sadistic attempt to degrade a character just for the sake of it. The texture of the movie, the technical achievement, and Bardem’s stunning emotive work are all commendable, but this is nothing more than fibre for your brain’s bowels, with no intellectual-nutritional value added.

21. Devil

Some of us have taken to laughing at poor M. Night Shyamalan, mostly because no one likes a cocky jerk who loves to position himself as the greatest storyteller on the planet (even going so far as to cast himself as such in a particularly misguided movie), but it has to be said, even when the tales he tells are nowhere near as clever as he thinks they are, his attention to pace and composition — not to mention his use of silence — make his films worth catching. Devil shows this disparity between bone-headedness and base-line competence brilliantly. Conceived as the first Night Chronicle, Devil sees one of M. Night’s sub-Twilight-Zone scribblings fleshed out to almost feature length, taking a passable twist and surrounding it with histrionic performances and PG-13-friendly hints at nastiness. It could have been a lot of fun, as proved by its spiritual ancestor Phone Booth, especially as some smart people worked on it. Unfortunately this falls far, far short of its potential.

20. Clash of the Titans

It’s tempting to say that one day someone will make a good movie out of the entertaining core idea that mortals would rebel against the Gods, but for all we know, Louis Leterrier did make a good movie before it was edited down into this incoherent and contradictory mess. This Chud report on the original script lays bare the form the original version would have taken, and it seems like it could have been better. It would at least make sense, correct the madness that is the “romantic” sub-plot between Perseus and Io, and give Danny Huston some proper screentime as Poseidon: a fairly important change, seeing as how he gets namechecked in the pre-credit narration but only appears in the movie for three seconds. Sidelining the Gods in favour of choppily-edited quest gubbins with a cadre of unappealing and underwritten humans is a movie-killing disaster, and only a couple of bravura effects sequences lift this Olympian failure out of the mire of its own making.

19. The Last Airbender

This soporific adaptation of the beloved US anime-homage makes last year’s execrable Dragonball Evolution look like Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain. For all his faults, Shyamalan is an expert at telling stories at a crawl: it’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to discount him as a filmmaker even as he makes one bad movie after another. However, handing him an entire TV season’s worth of story to boil down to a single movie was a dreadful mistake that cannot be fixed. It feels like days pass while badly sketched and poorly performed characters impart stilted exposition in an attempt to fill up the plot chasms that litter the narrative, though that is preferable to the numerous endless scenes in which a bunch of kids practise tai chi in front of a green screen. The leaden pace continues through the sporadic action, presented mostly in long slow-motion takes that lack the energy necessary to differentiate them from the rest of the movie. When it finally ends, the viewer can only thank the Gods that the studio would never have released anything that ran longer than this.

18. Jonah Hex

Josh Brolin is slowly becoming Old Dependable. He was the best thing about Oliver Stone’s woeful W and significantly better Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and single-handedly keeps DC’s cobbled-together Western fantasy from being worse than Wild Wild West, though it’s a close call. He also seems to be the only person with a handle on what the character is meant to be, as writers Neveldine/Taylor and director Jimmy Hayward seem to think he has magical powers. Putting nerd-preciousness about this odd choice aside, blame should be pointed at whoever got cold feet midway through the making of this obviously unmarketable curio and went into a major panic in the editing room, because what ended up onscreen should never have been released. A hollow frame of a potentially more enjoyable movie, Jonah Hex becomes less and less bearable as it trudges toward an incoherent finale that screams reshoot.

17. Sex and the City 2

Michael Patrick King’s hedonistic fantasy is as unhinged as any David Lynch nightmare, portraying a baffling world of noise and colour filled with ghastly caricatures. Argument has raged about whether the movie is as insensitive as it initially seems, treating religion and gender issues as unwelcome distractions from the all-important act of converting the entire world into an vast mall for the benefit of the improbably wealthy. Criticism of the characters — now unrecognisable when compared to the versions in the TV series — has also raised hackles: to pass judgement on these almost comically self-absorbed monsters is to somehow pass judgement on all women everywhere, though it’s worth pointing out that this group of anti-empathic wire-frame maquettes masquerading as humans don’t even seem to be enjoying their profligate lifestyle any more than we are when watching, so emulation might not be such a good idea. So how about this, SotC2 defenders. Can I just hate the movie for being poorly told, ineptly shot, incomprehensibly edited, unfunny, dull, and a waste of Chris Noth? Please? Can I?

16. Twilight: Eclipse

The startlingly poor quality of the Twilight franchise has been almost forgivable thus far due to the unreliable nature of the directors: Catherine Hardwicke and Chris Weitz are hardly visionary filmmakers, and can only be blamed so much for failing to create life from such barren narrative ground. This time there was no excuse. David Slade’s previous movies – Hard Candy and 40 Days of Night – showed promise, but somehow he turned in the most tedious Twilight movie so far: some achievement. Then again, what could he do? Original author Stephenie Meyer and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg seem to think it’s perfectly acceptable to break every rule of storytelling by barely even progressing the narrative forward. At the start of this interminable torture device the main characters are dealing with Edward’s proposal of marriage to Bella, and in the final scene they have returned to that starting point with almost nothing changed. A few minutes of vampire-on-vampire fight action and lots of chest-baring from poor Taylor Lautner do not count as a story. A truly unforgivable waste of time.

15. The Expendables

Sylvester Stallone’s horrid action epic could well be the misfire of the year, seemingly going out of its way to alienate the exact audience it seemed to be pandering to. How can you attract an action-movie cast of such perfection and then give them nothing interesting to do? How can you take the idea of a band of badass mammajammas going on a berserk killing spree to save a single damsel in distress from an entire army of ne’er-do-wells — headed up by ERIC ROBERTS for God’s sake – and make it so bland? How do you cast Shades of Caruso favourite Terry “President Dwayne Camacho” Crews and render him practically mute? The politics are marginally less unpleasant than Stallone’s last Rambo movie, and the action antics are arguably crazier, but even though this is meant to be more of a romp than Rambo – with its insane melange of rapings, baby-killings and pedophilia punished by lots and lots and lots of righteous American gunfire – it still manages to be far less fun. Of all the disappointments we had this year, this might be the most profound (which is more than can be said for the film. EY-YOOOO!).

14. Essential Killing

Hey, if you can’t stand to hear Vincent Gallo talk in his weird nasal voice about how much he hates black people or about how much his semen is worth because he’s a superior being, this is the movie for you! Reduced by filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski into a mute figure struggling to get from one point to an indeterminate other over hills and trees and snow and more hills, Gallo manages to be the only interesting thing going on, his face a tornado of bewildered terror hidden behind an impressive Rasputin beard. Nothing else is happening here. Using a Taleban “soldier” as a protagonist might seem shocking, but as seen in the wake of Chris Morris’ excellent and empathic Four Lions, Skolimowski’s movie seems more like an act of defiant but empty provocation, the adolescent behaviour of someone who would probably think scrawling “BOOB SEX” on a church wall is the height of inflammatory protest. Uninteresting even as a survival tale, the meaning of the movie seems to be that there is no meaning, but this is a message that has been delivered many times before in far more affecting and profound ways.

13. The Bounty Hunter

One of the many dreadful things about this mechanical romactioncom is that someone, somewhere, watched Midnight Run and thought, “You know what would make this movie better? If Jack Walsh and Jonathan Mardukas were actually IN LOVE!” Though that’s better than the other inspiration: the thought that everyone will love to see a burly, malformed man dragging his recalcitrant shrew wife around like the pissy cavegirl she really is. Respect is due director Andy Tennant for making this wholly unappealing set-up much less disturbing than it could have been. Nevertheless, the entire misguided project deserves censure for playing to the demographic that thinks women need to be tamed by their hubby, and no amount of strong-headed behaviour from Jennifer Aniston is going to soften that message, especially when she pitches that behaviour as “bossy” instead — modulation of tone is not her strong suit, though admittedly she’s a hell of a lot more watchable than Gerard Butler. Compared to this farrago, even Killers – directed by no less than Shades of Caruso bête noire Robert Luketic — seems like a diverting romp. Still, at least Jason Sudeikis is funny here.

12. Piranha 3D

When making an exploitation flick it can be hard to make gratuitous sex and violence entertaining without crossing over into sleaziness, but it’s not impossible. Joe Dante’s original Piranha movie did a great job of staying classy even while catering to the baser instincts of the audience. Alexandre Aja’s miserable B-movie homage has neither class nor smarts, but it does have boobs and blood. Hilariously its main villain is a Joe-Francis-esque scumbag (a well-cast but inept Jerry O’Connell) who is punished for exploiting women by having his cock bitten off by a prehistoric carnivore. What dire fate awaits the filmmakers for also punishing almost every scantily clad woman in the film with grisly and explicitly gory death while the male characters are mostly killed off screen? The unapologetic fratboy misogyny is breathtaking, and calling it “ironic” when there is no evidence of that beggars belief. Shades of Caruso can enjoy a schlocky horror comedy as much as the next blog, but it actually has to contain a scintilla of entertainment value. This doesn’t. The critical free-pass it got for its humour (?!?!?!) is 2010′s most inexplicable event.

11. Valentine’s Day

According to Box Office Mojo, Garry Marshall’s criss-crossing rom-”com” made over $213m dollars worldwide. If you average out ticket prices at $10 each, that means approximately 21 million people developed diabetes in February this year. The DVDs for this (don’t bother with Blu-Ray, it won’t tax your TV) should come with a syringe and insulin, just in case. Coming off like Paul Haggis’ Crash as directed by Tommy Wiseau, this multi-strand ode to love seems to have been sponsored by the Valentine’s Day Corporation, considering how often the name of the day is invoked (it averages once every two minutes). It’s deliberately heightened and old-fashioned: heightened in that no one acts like a human being and old-fashioned because there is nothing here you haven’t seen before, except maybe Eric Dane’s sub-plot. It’s also unfeasibly twee, almost odiously so. The only fun to be had is to embrace the bewildering inclusion of Anne Hathaway’s character earning extra bucks as a phone-sex operative. Was this a homage to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s plot in Short Cuts? Would this mean her boyfriend Topher Grace would kill someone? Can I get away with referring to this movie as Shit Cuts?

10. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Last year I asked if anyone could stop Chris Columbus making movies. I ask it again in 2010, but with greater urgency. The success of the Harry Potter book and film franchise makes it inevitable that others would seek to profit by something similar, but who would have guessed that Rick Riordan’s book series would be turned into a movie with Philosopher’s Stone director Columbus at the helm? Saying he phoned this one in is the understatement of the decade, but let’s give him his due: it would take someone with actual talent to breathe life into a screenplay this lazily derivative. The cynicism of the enterprise is matched only by its gallumphing appropriation of another country’s mythology, cynically stealing the Gods and monsters of Ancient Greece and “sassily” translating them into forms deemed appropriate for modern American audiences: Medusa comes out especially poorly, thanks to another excruciating performance from Uma Thurman. Still, at least it has Pierce Brosnan’s hysterical turn as a seemingly inebriated centaur to recommend it, for all the wrong reasons.

9. Chatroom

When Aaron “All Bloggers Are Idiots” Sorkin has made a more nuanced and sympathetic exploration of the Internet’s impact on today’s youth than you have, alarm bells should be ringing. Watching Hideo Nakata and Enda Walsh’s intellectually vacant psycho-drama is one of the more depressing experiences of the movie-going year, and not just because Nakata doesn’t get to use his incredible ability to create an atmosphere of choking dread. Chatroom‘s biggest crime is to dramatise — without any perceivable irony or counter-commentary — the kind of alarmist drivel spouted by the Luddite know-nothings infesting the pages of the Daily Mail. The Internet and the online society of chatroom denizens is depicted as a garish tumult of porn, inconsequentiality and lurking evil, with kids at the mercy of deranged predators who attempt to drive them to suicide. The Mail’s panic is ripe for adaptation, discussion and/or satire, but Chatroom merely re-enforces the fear. As Shades of Caruso was borne of a fortuitous online meeting, we’re bound to be less forgiving, especially when this movie is so poorly conceived, staged and acted.

8. Extraordinary Measures

CBS Films launched with this heavily-promoted true-story drama about a father’s fight for his children against the heartless medical establishment, and followed it up with insemination comedy The Back-Up Plan, which could count as the least auspicious launch of a production company since Hollywood Pictures released a roster of non-hits like Taking Care of Business and V.I. Warshawski. Produced by Harrison Ford in a rare burst of energy, this muddled TV movie-writ-not-much-larger — a Lorenzo’s Fail for our time — focuses on the father’s drearily-sketched battle against bureaucracy (yay!) and the scientific method (ya… whuh?) while sidelining the scientist who did all the actual research, a man who is dismissed as an “eccentric” but “lovable” curmudgeon, with his weirdness depicted as a bit of tetchiness (“I ALREADY WORK AROUND THE CLOCK!!!”) and a tendency to listen to The Band a little too loudly. Someone lock this maverick up before he hurts someone! Only a movie as anodyne as this could consider this the behaviour of an outsider. Ford escapes censure on old-school charisma alone: Brendan Fraser is not so lucky.

7. Knight and Day

When people accuse Hollywood of only making bland films with the edges shaved off, they forget that sometimes something perverse ends up on screen. How else to describe a movie where a woman ends up stalked, persecuted, Roofied, and abducted by what appears to be an elderly psychopath with a bad dye-job who at one point shoots her boyfriend. Perhaps the bad thing about this potentially subversive masterpiece is that it is actually meant to be a light-hearted spy romp with a bit of action for the boys, a bit of romance for the girls, and a bit of Rohypnol-assisted kidnap action for the serial killers. Therefore, the effect is a troubling disconnect between the tone and the onscreen events, such that you wonder who the hell thought it was a good idea to make it. James Mangold is usually fairly reliable, but nothing here works. No joke lands, no spark flies between its robotic leads, and no tension is generated. Even worse, the poorly utilised action scenes and shitty FX sequences are edited into an image-scramble that only tie your optic nerves into a knot. It stands as a catastrophic failure on every possible level.

6. It’s Kind of a Funny Story

Since writing this review of It’s Kind of a Funny Story — the tale of a young boy with suicidal tendencies who ends up in a mental institution alongside adults with mental health problems – I’ve been told by people who experienced similar problems during adolescence that Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden did a good job of capturing what it feels like to suffer depression as a teen. I bow to their better knowledge of this, and accept that the filmmakers have done their research. Sadly that doesn’t mean that their pandering filmmaking is any more tolerable, or their cutesy take on the mental illness of the older characters — who are depicted mostly as preternaturally wise due to their innocent wide-eyed view of life — is excusable. So many poor decisions have been made here that it is hard to catalogue them all, though the waste of a great cast is possibly the worst crime, with the exception of the magnificent Zach Galafianakis. Despite his considerable efforts, this is One Flew Over The Neutered Cuckoo’s Nest, hermetically sealed in pink-tinged plastic to make sure nothing even vaguely troubling leaks out.

5. The Switch

Some movies fail when they don’t achieve what they set out to do, others when they were misconceived in the first place. The Switch should now be considered the archetypal example of the second kind of bad movie. Taking a short story by Jeffrey Eugenides as its starting point, this non-comedy non-drama sits flatly on the screen, with formerly likeable performers moving from one position to another, honking noises at each other that pass as communication. If that description lacks detail, it’s because the movie lacks definition too. The synopsis states that Jason Bateman’s emotional cripple substitutes Handsome-But-Horrid Patrick Wilson’s semen for his own, which is then used by Jennifer Aniston to create a mini-Bateman who is just as unpleasant as his father. Hijinks resolutely refuse to ensue. The entire enterprise misses so many of its expected marks that it becomes a completely mystifying experience. It’s so anti-funny — while bearing all of the markings and pace of a comedy — that it almost becomes a curio worthy of recommendation. If you’re watching movies on a regular basis, The Switch should be essential viewing, much like it’s essential to see the world’s biggest ball of twine when travelling through Missouri. However this doesn’t make it any less terrible and depressing.

4. Cop Out

Kevin Smith has a skill worth celebrating: he can throw together rambling jumbles of perfunctory plot and scatalogical dialogue in such an endearing way that – with his best movies — the shaky direction cannot prevent audience goodwill from forming. So why oh why oh why would he volunteer to direct a script by someone else that’s of such amateurish quality? It’s like condensing a negative into a supernegative against all the laws of mathematics. Smith might argue — vehemently, and with ever-growing fury, if you follow him on Twitter — that the movie is a homage to the buddy cop movies of the 80s and 90s, but putting a faux-Faltermeyer soundtrack over the leaden action and ill-timed comedy is not enough. The majority of the movie is tough to watch, with Bruce Willis’ nap being continually interrupted by Tracy Morgan’s incessant shrieking, but things get worse with a mechanical and unconvincing shift into dramatic territory in the final act. The killing blow is Smith’s decision to edit the movie: it’s such a shoddy job that the studio should have wrested it from Smith’s hands and finished it themselves. Let’s hope Smith’s next movie – Red State — is better than this. Or at least competently made.

3. Eat, Pray, Love

Perhaps not the best movie to appear during these times of cutbacks and sacrifice. There’s an argument that movies like this are a nice way to escape reality, but perhaps only if there is an element of genuine humility present, some sense that the subject of the movie is aware of their good fortune. Instead, Ryan “Glee” Murphy’s vacuous travelogue presents the trivial concerns of a privileged narcissist as worthy of pity and emulation, even going so far as to remove mention of Elizabeth Gilbert’s fortuitous book deal – which funded her trips around the world – and act as if she was broke the whole time, thus turning her adventure into some kind of indulgent fairytale populated by caricatured foreigners and airbrushed poverty. With this and Sex and the City 2 it’s possible there is a terrible disconnect forming as Hollywood realises it is wrong to assume that the only way to relate to women is to celebrate conspicuous consumption, and so tries to dress up the lifestyle-porn with spiritual and political frills, but at its heart, it remains cynical, patronising, and empty. It makes Somewhere – Sofia Coppola’s similarly troublesome snapshot of the woes of the rich and lazy — look like 8 ½. Avoid as if t’were plague-ridden.

2. Resident Evil: Afterlife

The AV Club ends every year with a Least Essential Album list, where the writers pick over the kind of records you might find it hard to imagine could possibly exist. This year Paul W.S. Anderson – now officially the British incarnation of Dr. Uwe Boll – made the least essential film. Did we really need another 90 minutes of Milla “Frown” Jovovich firing two guns in slow motion at poorly made-up zombies? What story was told here? The opening fifteen minutes retcon the third movie out of existence (especially egregious as Russell Mulcahy’s attempt at breathing life into the franchise was the only halfway decent Resident Evil movie to date), and then we plod through a siege plot we’ve seen countless times before, without bringing anything fresh to the scenario. Anderson is quite simply the worst storyteller on the planet, someone who has no idea of how the mechanics of a plot are meant to work, or how to play with narrative expectations to create new forms or even entertainment on the most basic level. He can only steal from better movies, and then corrupt those ideas by using them without understanding why they worked in the first place. He seems pleased with this low-effort plagiarism, but that’s no reason to let him off the hook.

1. Alice in Wonderland

Was Hook not a lesson to us all not to tamper with works of wonder? Tim Burton’s mystifyingly successful re-imagining of Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories does many things wrong even just on a surface level: that tedious Danny Elfman score; the weird obsession with violence against eyes; the torpor that infects everyone as they stand stiffly in front of green screens; the lazy cribbing from the Lord of the Rings films; introducing the amazing Mia Wazikowska to a wider audience with such an unchallenging role, etc. Most egregious, though, is the decision to treat the original stories as prequel to a standard Chosen-One-against-the-Evil-Empire fantasy plot that ran out of juice years ago. All Burton can bring to this overused plot is the heinous reappropriation of Carroll’s characters, hacking at their personalities so that they fit into slots in the mechanical narrative machine, with the Mad Hatter as Morpheus, the Caterpillar as the Oracle, and the Jabberwocky as Agent Smith. Alice in Wonderland (and no, NOT Underland) would be on this list already for the lack of effort expended, but this feeble, energy-sapping exercise in monetising the magical earns my eternal hate for corrupting books of true poetry and mind-expanding eccentricity, debasing Carroll’s delightful imaginative flourishes by transforming them into base elements in a rote plot. It’s a cause for concern that this flaccid monstrosity will fool new readers into mistaking Carroll’s fantasy for a mere forerunner to this “spectacular” “epic”, but hopefully new readers will still derive pleasure and insight into Carroll’s wondrous imagination, and forget that Tim Burton and Disney ever embarked on this unforgivable act of mindless cultural vandalism.

Dishonorable Mentions:

Boogie Woogie: A movie about art that is thoroughly artless. Duncan Ward and Danny Moynihan’s art-world satire is hideously ugly and only sporadically amusing, with the acting split between very entertaining and thoroughly dreadful. Farce should be lively, but the only thing with any energy here is the devilish laugh of the ever-wonderful Danny Huston. Sadly it merely echoes off the barren walls of the cavernous warehouse sets.

The Infidel: Ostensibly an irreverent take on Middle-Eastern identity politics played out in culturally diverse London, David Baddiel’s script and Josh Appapignesi’s 80′s-esque direction instead smacks of toothless sitcom laziness, relying on the usual jokes about Jewish culture and the inevitable frisson of the sight of an Iranian in a yarmulke. Not as daring as it thinks it is. Or as funny. Omid Djalili gives it his all, though.

Gentleman Broncos: Released in the US last year, this latest curio from Jared and Jerusha Hess features their signature blend of idiot-mocking and more idiot-mocking, this time with a touch of sci-fi fan-mocking. Treading similarly mean-spirited ground as their breakout hit Napoleon Dynamite, Broncos at least has a funny turn from Jermaine Clement, and some defiantly crazed work from SoC heartthrob Hott Sam Rockwell.

Killers: A Robert Luketic movie that didn’t make my bottom 25? Can it be? Well, yes, but with caveats. Perhaps this would have been a contender were it not for Knight and Day resetting the bar so low, but even so, this has more life than anything else by SoC’s least favourite director. Which doesn’t mean it’s not terrible. The Demon Heigl is her usual unlikeable self, but somehow Tom Selleck sucked too! Bah!

The Wolfman: After years of wrangles with directors and script rewrites, Joe Johnston finally brought Universal’s lycanthrope to the big screen with some truly beautiful photography, production design and effects, but absolutely zero emotional charge. Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins sleepwalk through the disappointing carnage while superstar Emily Blunt does all the heavy work. As usual.

Soon to come: performances and crew contributions of the year, and my desperate attempt not to give almost every bit of praise to just one movie.

The Top One Hundred and Six Movies of the Oughts (106-91)

Posted on December 9, 2009 by admiralneck

Longtime readers will know that I’m a fiend for lists the way Sonny Crockett is a fiend for mojitos. Don’t believe me? Check out this blurry video:

My Best of 2009 movie list has been percolating for a while now, with only a few contenders for best or worst film to come before I shut things down at the end of December (oh yes, I won’t stop watching until I’m sure I have it right). Meanwhile, even though I’m uncomfortable with the idea of this decade being 1999-2009, I’ve been pondering my own best of the decade list. This should be something to be excited about, and yet until last week I just couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for it. When I search my soul I come to the uncomfortable but inescapable conclusion that it’s because any list I would come up with would both be horribly incomplete and would betray my populist taste. What makes me more uncomfortable than that is realising that such an admission makes me uncomfortable at all.

Any list I could make for this decade is already off to a bad start when I admit that I’ve yet to see many of the best reviewed and most beloved movies of recent times. The gaps in my viewing history include Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return, and anything by Wong Kar Wai, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, or the Dardennes. I’ve also only seen a couple of (terrific) movies by Claire Denis and a single, memorable one by Michael Haneke. Some film buff I am. This short list is merely the tip of the iceberg. According to this list, I might as well not consider myself a film lover at all, as I’m not looking for movie excellence in the right places (though the entire list is invalidated by the praise for Woody Allen’s technically disastrous and intellectually vapid Cassandra’s Dream: surely one of the ten worst films of the decade).

All of that shame over my taste is wrapped up in feelings of mortification over class and intellectualism and authenticity and so many other things. I know that none of it is important but the expression of some kind of discernment in my opinion helps to legitimise my amateur film criticism, something I take very seriously even when I talk about things that readers might consider beneath contempt (my defence of Michael Bay, for instance, or my enthusiasm for The Dark Knight). Therefore it scares me to openly admit that I’m a sucker for a well-choreographed action scene with some pretty explosions included. No one wants to admit to enjoying those movies without losing their credibility, so why should I be the one to stick my neck out?

Maybe it’s time to get over those silly fears and say it loud: I’m a fan of populist cinema. Yes, I can appreciate works of cinematic art on many levels, though perhaps I might have greater difficulty expressing that appreciation or placing those works in context with works by other artists. However, when I talk about how much I love Joel Silver movies of the 80s and 90s, or Bruckheimer’s output in the late 90s to the current day, I’m on firmer ground. Perhaps this is why Shades of Caruso concentrates on those movies: it’s safer to talk about the joy I get from seeing a movie by the Wachowski Siblings than it is to attempt to unpick the works of Abbas Kiarostami. Any list I would make for the past decade would skew heavily towards populist movies, partially because most of the movies I’ve seen were major releases by Western writers and directors, but also because these are the movies that speak directly to me.

It was upon staring at that shame, and the shame I feel for having that shame, that I said bollocks to it and compiled this list. I hereby reject that shame, expel it from my soul, and embrace the movies that filled my soul with joy or heart-ache. The construction of this list is helped by the clear cut-off point in my past: 1999 was the year I moved out of my hometown for the second time and headed to London, where I found enough time and opportunity to attend more movies. As a result my enthusiasm increased, until I had no choice but to start a blog to use as a pressure valve for this energy. I’ve seen hundreds of movies in that time, and so I expect this list to be incomplete and filled with egregious misses, plus some movies have been missed off (Pan’s Labyrinth) or put low on the list (No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood) because I’ve only seen them once. I’ll need to revisit them with a clear head, free of hype, to do them justice.

One more caveat: I’ve not included films from this year. I know, this seems to make the whole process pointless, but I like to have at least a little gap between seeing a movie and putting it in a list this big. The End-Of-Year lists are made with the proviso that I understand how my opinion will change over time, and watching films right up until Dec 31st means I will be cramming in movies even though my opinion of them has yet to settle. Who knows whether time will be kind to these movies or not. I’ve certainly been surprised with how some movies I initially loved have dropped out of my favour, and others that I enjoyed well enough on first viewing are not breaking into the top fifty. For the record, at least three from my forthcoming 2009 list would definitely qualify for inclusion here, but I don’t want to add them now as the year has yet to finish, and I’m hoping two or three more will qualify. Perhaps when I’ve finished compiling my 2009 lists, I will write an addendum explaining where they would go in this list.

And so, here is the first part of my list of the best 106 movies of the period 1999-2008. Why 106? Because I just couldn’t leave the last six movies off without writing a little bit about them, as I enjoyed them greatly and felt they would never in a million years get any list love otherwise. As this post has already run on, I’ll only list the first 16 here, and the next 90 films will be revealed as the week progresses. Yes yes, there are simpler ways of doing this, but anyone who knows me will understand that when there is an easy way and a hard way to do anything, I will ignore both and then do something completely self-indulgent that makes a mockery of my original goal. Just play along. I’ve kept my explanations for why I love these movies as short as I can. I hope I’ve lauded a secret favourite of yours, dear reader, one that has been snubbed by every critic in the land.

Honorary Bad Movie Inclusion — The Room

It is quite simply the worst movie ever made, but its rewatch value, its quotability, and the fearless depiction of the dreadful inner life of its emotionally immature writer and director make it almost infinitely fascinating. Its inclusion here is no reflection of its quality, but of the hold it has over anyone who watches it. It’s a true curio.

106. Avalon

After leaving a screening of Avalon, my viewing companion commented that there is good boring and bad boring, and this was a perfect example of the former. Starkly beautiful and glacially paced, Mamoru Oshii’s ode to the power of gaming predicts a future where our desire to transcend our mundane world will drive us to abandon it.

105. Kung Fu Hustle

What made me love Stephen Chow’s madcap martial arts comedy wasn’t the expertly choreographed actions scenes, great though they were. Neither was it the broad humour, though I enjoyed that too. The best thing about it was how the wacky tone morphed into effective dramatic energy. At first you laugh at the caricatures, but by the final act you fear for their safety.

104. The Mothman Prophecies

Poorly marketed as a bog-standard X-Files-esque alien abduction flick, this dread-soaked thriller is more interested in dramatising our insignificance in the face of supernatural forces that move us around like game pieces. Strong performances and meticulous direction from Mark Pellington help to ground the potentially silly project.

103. Moulin Rouge

At his worst, Baz Luhrmann is a vulgar artiste who has zero impulse control, but when his approach works, it can wrench your heart open. This fearlessly sincere musical is the most successful example of the Luhrman effect. Though many have resisted its garish onslaught, my cynicism melted twenty minutes in and stayed that way.

102. The Rundown (aka Welcome To The Jungle)

What should have been the gateway drug to the paradise that is Loving The Rock instead faltered at the box office, but who cares? For its sheer exuberance and demented asides — not to mention a totally hatstand performance by Christopher Walken — this Midnight Sprint shall be remembered and adored.

101. Solaris

Though Steven Soderbergh’s adaptation of Stanislav Lem’s SF classic fails to capture the essence of that novel (as does the previous version by Andrei Tarkovsky), the result explores equally interesting philosophical questions. Clooney excels as a bereaved astronaut forced to confront living memories of his dead wife, a celestial manifestation distorted by his yearning and twisted perceptions of reality.

100. Mushishi

Katsuhiro Otomo’s live-action adaptation of Yuki Urushibara’s manga is a curious beast. Though overlong, the tale of Mushi master Ginko’s journey through a polluted and hostile pastoral land is a feast for the eyes. The gloomy atmospherics and cascade of ideas more than make up for any flaws.

99. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Kevin Smith’s low-budget comedies often fail to fly thanks to their self-imposed parochial restrictions. His ambitious and controversial religious satire Dogma was an improvement upon those early movies but this self-lacerating road-movie was the one that really worked, and well enough to finally make me appreciate his scatological shtick.

98. I Heart Huckabees

It achieved an awful notoriety as the movie where director David O. Russell lost his mind on set and bollocked Lily Tomlin, but I Heart Huckabees was also a disorienting blend of philosophy and Dada-esque nonsense, often incomprehensible but almost always entertaining. However, unlike many chaotic cult movies (ahem, Richard Kelly), this actually made sense if you unfocused your brain while watching.

97. Shanghai Knights

Shanghai Noon was fun, and the pairing of Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson was more successful than the tiresome team-up of Chan and Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour movies. The London-set sequel was a massive improvement, mostly because helmer David Dobkin was the only US director who seemed willing to spend time with Chan to create fights almost as complex and funny as his classic Hong Kong work.

96. Michael Clayton

Clooney again in full force, this time as a corporate fixer who gets messed around once too often. What could have been a rote corporate thriller instead becomes a fascinating character study, one where terrible decisions are made in good faith, and good decisions happen for the wrong reasons. It also propelled Tilda Swinton into stardom: for this I am eternally grateful.

95. Mulholland Drive

Is it poor form to admit that upon first viewing I didn’t understand anything about David Lynch’s tinsel-town nightmare? All that I knew was that the final scene was almost unwatchably terrifying. Days later, the mood of dread still lingered. That residual horror — and Naomi Watts’ excellent star-making performance — is enough to justify inclusion on this list.

94. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Easy to forget how big an impact this movie had on first release. Even though the final installment of the trilogy ripped all of the fun from the franchise, the first is still a near-perfect swashbuckler. The first appearance of Captain Jack Sparrow is a contender for Best Entrance of the Decade.

93. The Prestige

Initially the blatantly obvious “twist” at the end of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation soured an experience that had been extremely pleasurable. Upon repeated viewings, it becomes apparent that the Transported Man trick is not the point of the movie. Instead, Nolan is more interested in painting a picture of a man driven to unthinkable acts because of his thirst for revenge. Compared to dreadful fallout of that psychological damage, magic is nothing.

92. The Chronicles of Riddick

Many choose to focus on the flaws and hubris of David Twohy’s Space-Conan-meets-Lord-of-the-Rings hybrid, but that occasionally inspired vision – and that amazing twist ending — are enough to justify the entire ambitious, galaxy-hopping project. Another film where the cult grows every year, with the prospect of a continuation of the saga now tantalisingly close.

91. eXistenZ

Arriving between the reality-warping brain food of Alex Proyas’ Dark City and The Wachowski’s Matrix, Cronenberg’s only self-scripted film of the decade was greeted with an initial burst of excitement and then seemed to be forgotten. A shame. It’s his most playful movie since Naked Lunch, skipping gleefully between levels of reality and throwing in traditionally unpleasant body horror with abandon.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Keep checking back to see more updates as the week progresses.

Why It Can Be Okay To Be A Hater

Posted on December 2, 2008 by admiralneck

Since writing about Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, it has been released in America to a tidal wave of positive notices, with even less dissent than there was in the UK. While I would like to think some of that might be attributable to Anglophilia from some critics who consider the UK to be automatically culturally superior (a fallacious assumption if ever there was one), people I know and whose opinion I respect have chimed in with fulsome and uncompromised praise as well. Once more I feel like the curmudgeon who hates fun, even though I still maintain the movie is a wretched, hollow mess hiding behind a smug veneer of respectability.

However, this suspicion that I am out-of-step with the happier end of the cultural spectrum haunts me even more now that I’ve seen Mamma Mia!, the most successful Hollywood musical of all time. The DVD release has been the cause of much celebration by the UK press, who giddily recount tales of singalong screenings packed full of delirious fans who adore it, flaws and all. Though some outright hate it, I’ve heard many people say they thought it was dreadful, but couldn’t hate it because it is so genial and determinedly jolly that picking on it seemed unfair.

I had a similar response at first, but it slowly turned sour, which convinced me to blog about it. That post is coming up, but while writing it I kept changing tack, eventually realising that my thoughts about it were rooted in my unspoken beliefs about criticism. This realisation came as I saw with some sadness that, as both Mamma Mia! and Happy-Go-Lucky have accidentally or intentionally generated a impregnable forcefield against criticism by dint of being celebrations of joyousness, writing negatively about them is tantamount to hating life, or proof, as Melanie Reid puts it in this column, that I “have missed the joke”. Maybe she’s right, as the only jokes I could see on display in Mamma Mia! involved bawdy comments about promiscuity and male genitalia, and they didn’t make me laugh. I must hate life!

This gets to the core of any film criticism (or, in my case, amateurish blogging about superhero flicks), that for any movie or book or album or comic or game, there is liable to be someone out there who thinks it’s a joy-inducing slice of heaven, so what purpose does a dissenting voice matter? There are even those of us who think Speed Racer is a misunderstood classic, but as only twelve people seemed to like it, it’s not quite the same thing. Mamma Mia! is the fastest selling DVD of all time, a record that is unlikely to be broken when The Dark Knight comes out, even though that movie made $440m more in theatres. Mamma Mia! isn’t just loved by a few. Its fanbase seems to be monolithic. It makes millions of people deliriously happy. What’s the point of bringing up the faults of this movie when millions of people either ignore those faults or think they they are actually the things that make it more real or honest?

This is the “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it,” defence, employed by fans to bitch out anyone who dares to point out the flaws in the object of their affection. Talkbacks across the internet are littered with this mewling protest, not in the hope of saving someone from wasting their time on something they don’t like or “get”, but because they want the negative assessment eradicated. It’s childish and conceited and hilariously thought to be the final word in these arguments, even though I’ll watch whatever I fucking like and won’t be told what to do by some weasel in a Save The Cheerleader t-shirt.

(To whoever created that image, thank you from the bottom of my heart.)

To clarify, I feel I have an insight into their mindset. Shamefully, I will admit to thinking Heather Havrilesky should just switch Lost off as it’s obviously not the show she expects, and her constant frustration with it for not being a jolly romp every week is depressing to read, but that’s in my crankiest moments. Obviously she should do what she wants to, or has to, what with her being a TV critic and all. That attempt at rationality on my part doesn’t make reading her drubbings any less frustrating or upsetting, though. Why is my emotional response so visceral? Am I personally offended by it? Is it an unthinking and oblivious diss of my own opinion? Am I objectively wrong somehow, and Havrilesky has some insight into the show that I, a mere blogger and fanboy, am missing? Am I empathising so much with the creators of the show that I feel bad for them being insulted like this?

It’s all very silly and solipsistic, and I try to subdue those feelings. While pretty much everything that happens on the internet is ephemeral and meaningless, I heartily believe raging ineffectually against a consensus opinion is necessary and almost worthwhile, and not just in an arrogant “Every Opinion Counts” way. It’s the way of things that people are more likely to want to debate something that they enjoy above something they dislike, as most people will gladly not waste time on something they derive no pleasure from. As a result, fanbases grow and solidify, and any outsiders looking for information about a work of pop culture and/or art will come upon an uncritical consensus view that something has value. Sometimes it will, above and beyond the appeal it has to a fanbase, and sometimes it won’t. However, as time passes these pop culture artifacts become considered classics, and their influence can be felt on other works that come later.

That’s all well and good if they’re original and personal and thought-provoking etc., but if they’re poor but popular, it can be a problem. While I’m uninterested in anything that rips off Buffy or Angel, I’ll happily give hours of my life to experiencing the work of people inspired by the Mutant Enemy team to stretch themselves to those heights of writing. It’s likely to happen, as many writers on that show were insanely talented (Whedon, Espenson and Goddard particularly spring to mind), and to aspire to their level of excellence is commendable. The goalposts should be there, but if, over time, flat and lifeless writing is considered the height of achievement thanks to relentless praise from uncritical fans, those goalposts move, and we’re stuck with Torchwood as the standard bearer. Yes, I’m aware that I’m describing a worst case scenario that is almost totally beyond belief, but the nightmares of a world in which that poo-wad of a show is revered have been keeping me up at night. I appreciate that there is a large element of over-reaction there. After all, no one would ever try to fuse the macho nonsense of Torchwood with the concept of Buffy.

Oh bollocks.

And no, I’m not one of these fusty old moaners who thinks that standards are in the toilet and TV and cinema are cultural toilets with nothing of merit on offer. If anything, things are better than ever, primarily because even those stereotypical suit-wearing, cigar-chomping movie moguls are realising that smarter movies can find an audience and even a profit (though I hate to admit it, you can credit the Weinsteins’ ability to make Miramax such a success for that sea-change). What worries me is that, while blogging and talkbacks allow anyone’s opinion to be voiced, a dissenting voice will be shouted down by the fans, who have more of a stake in supporting the object of their affection than the “hater” has in hating on it (the exception to this rule is Heroes, which seems to have a large audience, most of whom are having fun piling on).

Of course, that is not to say I’m patting trolls on the back for standing up to the consensus with random reflexive insults that are posted merely to be contrary or obnoxious. There is a middle-ground, and debate can be conducted on the internet with civility and courtesy. I’ve managed it in the bearpit that is the AICN talkback, and if it can be done there, it can be done anywhere. It’s easy. Just follow the simple rule, “Don’t be an asshole”, and, weirdly, people respond positively. It’s shocking but true. I’m also aware that yes, there are often sites that go beyond the pale in chasing after an object of hate (I just stumbled across this baffling site obsessing about Kevin Smith), and while I return to the same few things I think represent the ass-end of pop culture, I do try to praise the stuff that makes it all worthwhile.

Before I forget, when I mentioned to Canyon that I was going to write this post, she made a good point, that often pop culture artifacts that receive a uniform critical drubbing or blanket praise do so because those with an opposite opinion feel cowed by the wave of consensus, and it’s only after a dissenting voice speaks up that some people feel bold enough to voice their doubts. I’m not sure how often this happens, but Canyon mentioned the Titanic backlash, and The Dark Knight certainly went from high praise to fevered criticism pretty quickly. One anti-Torchwood post I wrote received comments about how relieved people were that the show wasn’t just accepted as a quality production by everyone, as several media outlets were acting as if it was must-see TV, when in fact it was an ongoing car crash. It can be a real Mugatu/Crazy Pills experience when you’re a lone rebel (oh God, get me!), so if even my carping, which is read by something like twelve people on a regular basis, is aimed at something everyone likes and gives others the courage to say how they feel, then I feel much better about being a mean-spirited jerk making fun of Eve Myles’ berserk facial expressions.

Okay, that’s enough navel-gazing and justificating and preening and stating of the obvious. Consider this my huge caveat whenever I get all mean and start to complain about something that has a loyal fanbase. Though it might not seem like it, I’m criticising something beloved out of a sense of duty to mankind, and I also temper that with love. There should be garlands strewn at my feet or something.

ETA: Oddly enough, Noel Murray’s penultimate Popless post at the AV Club has seen him pondering what is the point of criticism, and this paragraph chimed:

Throughout the year, I’ve been wondering: What is the responsibility of a critic? Is it to respond openly and enthusiastically to whatever an artist is trying to do? Or is it to nitpick it in the name of maintaining some authority? For most of my career, I’ve leaned toward the former, but I’m starting to see the value in the latter. Everything looks flawed to me these days—even the music, movies, TV shows and books that I love. When I review Mad Men or Lost for The TV Club, I often take pains to note the flaws even as I’m raving about what those shows do right, but whenever I do that, I wonder if I’m unnecessarily bumming out fans who came to The TV Club merely to celebrate the good. If I’d reviewed The Shield finale—one of the best TV endings of all time—would I have been persnickety enough to point out that some of the dialogue was strained and the ending rushed? If so, would that have served a purpose? I’m honestly not sure.

Of course, I think he has a duty to pick faults with the finale of The Shield which, while dwarfing everything else on TV all year, had its problems, though minor. His concern that the fans would be upset is off the mark. Fans with thin skins should know better than to expect blanket praise from a site written by such thoughtful people, and everyone else would appreciate the back-and-forth in the comments section. Also, if people are to trust your opinion, you have an obligation to be honest with yourself, especially if you’re contributing to a larger dialogue. The man needs to be fearless, as do we all. Be sure to read the articles he links to in the first paragraph. The Pop Matters post is especially bracing, especially this:

Most reviewers are similarly in it for the self-definition, seeking to prove to themselves that their tastes are unique or trying to secure tangible proof of their influence on the world. The parasitic positive review is as much a will to power as the nihilistic negative one.

It‘s funny makes me feel kinda queasy because it’s true.

For Your Reconsideration: Jersey Girl

Posted on October 9, 2008 by masticateur

Want to know a good way to ensure you’re ridiculed as a clueless cultural pariah in internet circles? I’ve got one: suggest that Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl is not a black, gaping quality-void with a side order of suck. This happens partly because, on many blogs and forums, there are no grey areas when it comes to pop culture. A movie is either OMG amazing or man did it suck balls. It’s a triumph or an abortion. In light of this Jersey Girl has come to be seen as a disaster, a critically savaged bomb that all but destroyed Smith’s chance of mainstream success and drove him back to the “Askewniverse” milieu and characters he had supposedly left behind, in the form of Clerks II.

And yet Jersey Girl wasn’t a huge flop. While no-one would call it a hit, the movie recouped its $35m production budget in box office gross, and went into profit with DVD sales. The reviews weren’t terrible either: the influential Roger Ebert liked it; it has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 40% and a Metacritic score of 43, suggesting that a good number of critics thought it fair or better. I’m on board with that, and I maintain that it’s a more worthwhile work than Clerks II, Smith’s supposed return to better form (Rotten Tomatoes 63%, Metacritic 65). I contend, in fact, that each film has gained a reputation it doesn’t really deserve.

The received wisdom – much promulgated by Smith – is that Jersey Girl underperformed partly because the public was sick of the high-profile relationship between its stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Possibly true, but you would think a public that avoids a movie because of the overexposure of its cast (big-draw movie stars generally being reclusive, publicity-shy types) would leap at the chance to see Lopez’s character die in pain in the first reel. Smith’s theory that the previous Affleck-Lopez film Gigli was so awful it put audiences off Jersey Girl can be given short shrift, not least because so few people actually saw Gigli. (As an excuse it is reminiscent of Spinal Tap’s claim that their support act was so bad, “the crowd was still booing him when we came on stage”.) But there’s no doubt the movie suffered terrible word of mouth. This was presumably in large part due to the central character, who has several glaring flaws.

He’s played by Ben Affleck. Affleck has been charming and/or memorable in a number of movies – Dazed And Confused, Hollywoodland, Good Will Hunting, even the little-loved Phantoms – but rarely, if ever, as a romantic lead. There’s something desperately uncomfortable about watching him emote, and emote he does throughout Jersey Girl (bereavement! Unemployment! Fatherhood! Embarrassment! Redemption!). Each time a human feeling strains to etch itself across his considerable forehead, you want to reach out a restraining hand to stop him hurting himself.
He’s named Ollie Trinke. There’s a gag in the film about how Ollie lumbered his daughter with the name Gertie, which only serves to underline the fact that Smith named him Ollie Trinke. Every time someone says “Ollie Trinke”, you’re jolted out of the movie and into a world where the writer could have given his lead character literally any name at all, but chose Ollie Trinke.
He’s an arsehole. He’s an arsehole on a personal level, as we see from his ingratitude when his father steps into the breach and raises his daughter (something Ollie is too self-absorbed to contemplate doing himself), and from his egocentric assumption that his daughter will naturally want the life he plans to give her. He’s an arsehole on a professional level too: a publicist, a paid bullshitter, who treats subordinates and rivals badly, and whose one moment of honesty in the workplace loses him his inconsequential job. Rather than realising from this how worthless the industry is, he pines for his lost vocation for years to the detriment of all personal satisfaction.
It takes a combination of two hackneyed movie contrivances to show him the error of his ways: one a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a free-spirited, sexually liberated cutie with nothing better to do than fix this hapless sad-sack’s life; and the other a Magical Negro, who just happens to be both the indirect cause of his employment problems and the Biggest Goddamn Movie Star In The Whole World. Somehow these fantastic creatures get through to him while his own daughter can’t.

So he’s a dense, self-centred arsehole with a stupid name, played by a resolutely unsympathetic actor. That’s a lot of baggage for one character. But it’s not an inherent problem, because this is a movie about a dense, self-centred arsehole with a stupid name. The problem is that it’s aimed at a mainstream audience, who would reasonably expect a comedy about a nice, regular guy with a small flaw to be overcome in time for Christmas and the closing credits. A zany unreadiness to commit to a relationship, perhaps, or an adorable childishness that makes him scared to have kids of his own. The cutesy romcom images in the marketing material back up this impression, so it’s no wonder people came away confused and wondering why they spent so much of the movie disliking the character with whom they assumed they should empathise.

In general Jersey Girl is not a film that goes out of its way to be liked. Aside from the unpleasant lead character, it’s full of discomfort and close-to-the-bone domestic conflict, not to mention Lopez’s messy death. Few people watch a comedy to be reminded of their own human frailties. But its readiness to confront harsh realities such as mortality, selfishness, grief and abandonment are marks in its favour. This isn’t a fluffy crowd-pleaser, it’s a reflection on sacrifice, maturity, responsibility and finding your way in the world, and Smith deserves kudos for largely resisting well-worn romantic-comedy banalities. I guess people may want films consisting purely of schmaltzy, platitudinal frothiness or solely of scatalogical hijinks. Me, I’ll take uncomfortable, abrasive Jersey Girl any day over the dozen or more toxic comedies shat out by patronising studios each year.

There are other things to like about the movie. For one, an adorably non-adorable performance from Raquel Castro, whose gauche line readings and lack of neatly-groomed rehearsing-since-the-womb perfection make her infinitely cuter than most nominally winsome but actually creepily robotic child actors. George Carlin as Trinke Sr is sly, irascible and a choleric joy, avoiding the obvious softy-grandpa tropes as a grumpily realistic audience surrogate puncturing his son’s vanity and hubris. Smith has been as sentimental as any American director in his career, but he doesn’t romanticise the New Jersey suburbs here: Carlin doesn’t have some amusingly quirky small-town job but is a street-cleaner; Smith even manages to make Liv Tyler – who had just spent three years onscreen playing an ethereal elven princess – look like a reasonably normal woman.

And there’s jokes. I laughed out loud several times. Smith might not have married a mainstream romcom feel to his usual lowbrow sex-and-weed-jokes sensibility with total success, but his sense of humour’s still there. On my recent viewing of Clerks II, I laughed exactly once – at a throwaway Jay line – and spent the rest of the time wondering what this fundamentally conventional film had to do with Clerks, other than making me think Wow, these characters sure got more boring as they grew older.

Clerks II tries far too hard to be funny and daring – stupid high-school nicknames, slapstick, pop-culture riffs, donkey sex shows – and ends up just seeming awkward, like a youngish uncle attempting to impress bored adolescents. This is reinforced by the teenage character Elias (Trevor Fehrman), ostensibly a guileless whipping boy for Randall’s (Jeff Anderson) caustic wit, but surely a late insertion into the script when someone realised, whoops, our characters are all in their thirties and we need kids to go see this! Smith has undoubtedly improved as a filmmaker since the jejune flatness and stagey dialogue of Clerks, but here this translates into not one but two unforgivably boring montages: one in which Becky (Rosario Dawson) bouncingly teaches Dante (Brian O’Halloran) to dance and is suddenly backed up by a chorus featuring the entire population of New Jersey, and one in which Dante Drives Around Moodily And Thinks About His Life Choices. Montage sequences have their place but these are self-indulgent, tone-destroying annoyances.

Still, they’re not Clerks II’s worst indulgence, which is that from start to finish it’s basically an apology for Jersey Girl. Smith’s half-arsed excuses for the earlier film’s underperformance are understandable, but making a whole $5m movie pleading for forgiveness is a disproportionate response. At the start of Clerks II, Dante has been sucked in by the temptations of a normal adult life – marriage, house, working for his wife’s father, effectively Going Mainstream. Although the girl he is marrying clearly adores him and puts up with plenty of nonsense from him, Dante constantly questions his motives. Is he just doing this because it’s what society demands, because it’s what’s expected of him? After a day spent examining his options (and discussing them with Becky, who incidentally turns out to be a combination of Magical Ethnicity – see the aforementioned dance lesson – and Manic Pixieosity), Dante realises: he should just stay right here in Jersey and do the same thing he’s always done! He was a fool to think he should take the opportunity to grow and travel and try new things and explore the myriad possibilities open to a man! The parallels are glaring, and they do Smith no favours.

Jersey Girl doesn’t need or deserve this fulsome, self-vindicating coda – which ultimately fails, since it’s a less satisfying film than the one it’s apologising for. Apparently even Smith has realised that Clerks II’s message is bollocks, as the upcoming Zack And Miri Make A Porno sees him turn his back on his own personal QuickStop again to try something different. He’s even working with renowned improvisers, which he has confessed to loathing in the past. The film, which has garnered some good early notices, looks dirty (in all the good senses), honest and scabrous, and Smith has already butted heads with the MPAA over the marketing. Basically, and thankfully, it looks like he’s rediscovered some conviction, so I’m crossing my fingers he doesn’t lose it again and come up with Clerks III: Jersey Forever next.

Shades of Caruso

Circuit interruptus.

Category Archives: Kevin Smith

Listmania ’11! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part One

Listmania ‘10! Crew Contributions Of The Year

Listmania ‘10! The Worst Movies Of The Year

The Top One Hundred and Six Movies of the Oughts (106-91)

Why It Can Be Okay To Be A Hater

For Your Reconsideration: Jersey Girl

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