Category Archives: Michelle Yeoh

Listmania ‘10! The Best Movies Of The Year

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A last mad dash to the end of the year, watching as many movies as I can, and I still don’t catch everything I wanted to see. It’s always the way, and I don’t see any other way to beat it other than to become independently wealthy and watch everything the day it is released. As a result, consider this list incomplete for 2010. How can it be complete if I haven’t see True Grit, which promises to be great, or The Fighter, which promises to be gritty and/or great, or Burlesque, which promises to be not as great and therefore potentially eligible for the worst movies list that will follow this?

Another caveat for new readers of the blog, some of whom I have met this year via Twitter, and include some people whose views on cinema I have come to respect and trust. If you don’t know me well either in the real world or via the internet, you might not yet realise just how heavily my tastes skew towards populist cinema. It has been my preference for many years now, and even in this fallow year for big-budget, wide-appeal movies, I’ve still managed to find a lot that to enjoy. The list will also feature a lot of American movies, which is more to do with the amount of US product released. That’s not to say I haven’t seen some fine movies from around the world. It’s just that they didn’t move me enough for inclusion here.

As you can see, I’m riven with worry that my tastes will be considered gauche, but I really shouldn’t. After all, taste is dependent on your criteria for the success of an artistic endeavour, and with films this is merely that a film do what it sets out to do, doesn’t take the audience for a fool, and shows some evidence that the filmmakers have an ability to make their movies work on both the micro and macro-scale: are they aware of how each scene — either well-crafted or fudged — fits in with the whole? Get something basic like that right and I’m going to be a lot nicer to your movie. The bad movies list is littered with movies that could have been fixed in the editing room: it’s a simple thing to get at least slightly right but too many filmmakers don’t even know how to do it properly. As for my taste, I’ve come to expect that my unending and vocal support for despised “failures” like Hudson Hawk (never forget!!!) and Speed Racer has burned my cred already.

Right. Caveats over. Let’s list this mammajamma.

25. [Rec]2

Would it have been possible for Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza to top their original zombie horror classic? For those of us who are still waking in the middle of the night with the memory of those terrifying final moments, it seems impossible. [Rec]2 might not feature anything that horrific, but its writer/directors are smart enough to take a step sideways, jumping off from the end of the original in an Aliens-esque way while skipping back into the timeline and geography of the first film, cleverly sketching new details in the margins. Even better, they flesh out the mythology, revealing that their horror franchise has more in common with The Exorcist than Dawn of the Dead, though this franchise features a badass action Priest, which is none-more-cool. Other than that it’s more of the same, but this is no dismissal. Some of the setpieces here are as breathtakingly staged as in the original: one early scene in a ventilation shaft is a nerve-wracking highlight. Best of all, it’s proves the [Rec]-niverse has legs. The next two movies cannot come soon enough.

24. Reign of Assassins

Chao-Bin Su’s eccentric wuxia romp is apparently co-directed by John Woo, though there is no hint of the master’s unironic hero-worship here. There is only the giddy sense that you’re not going to guess what’s coming next: a rarity these days. At first it seems like Chao-Bin is making a historical martial arts version of Johnny Handsome or The Long Kiss Goodnight, with Michelle Yeoh as the deadly assassin on the run from her past with a new face, but we’re instead treated to a dazzling final act filled with delirious plot twists and hysterical action. Very little else this year has the impact of the reveal of The Wheel King’s demented motivation for chasing the movie’s bizarre MacGuffin (half of a corpse), nor the sight of flaming sword fights, sex assassins and zipping death-needles in the final fights. It is also essential viewing for fans of the amazing Yeoh, who once more excels as the woman who cannot escape those she has wronged. Vibrant, colourful, and unapologetically sentimental and sincere, it’s an irresistible experience.

23. Megamind

It’s been another good year for Dreamworks Animation. How To Train Your Dragon was a delightful, highly detailed and exciting adventure, fully deserving of its success. Shades of Caruso recommends it, but can’t help preferring Megamind. The clever script by Alan J. Schoolcraft and Brent Simons plays with expectation, adding enough variations to a straight-forward premise to surprise audiences: something that eluded the makers of the similar but inferior Despicable Me. Tom McGrath’s direction shines too, getting the most from his starry cast, while raising the stakes impressively in the final act. It’s also a 3D triumph: Metro City (Metrocity?) truly boggles the eyes, those concrete canyons fading off into the distance while the superpowered protagonists battle it out on the vast stage. This might not reach the heights of Kung Fu Panda, or Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, but it’s still an entertaining and surprisingly affecting romp.

22. A Serbian Film

Satire might be the rapier that elegantly stabs at society’s hypocrisies, but apparently blunt-force-trauma porn/horror depictions of unimaginable cruelty can serve as commentary as well. Srđan Spasojević’s unforgettable nightmare vision contains zero cynicism: accusations that A Serbian Film is merely provocative exploitation are entirely false. It’s a bone-rattling scream of horror from the gut, a gauntlet thrown in the face of the Serbian government for turning the populace into puppets without agency, controlled from birth to death by forces beyond their control — here depicted as the almost unwatchable degradation of a family for the sake of meaningless, depraved entertainment. Even the strongest stomach will be turned by the toxic images pouring from the screen, but it’s the honesty and fury of Spasojević’s message that will linger longest, and make this a cause celebre for years to come.

21. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

The US action movie roster was deeply disappointing this year. With the exception of a handful of films, most of this year was taken up with unconvincing nostalgia (The A-Team, The Expendables), fun but slight comic adaptations (Red, The Losers), or genre crossovers (sci-fi – Repo Men: horror – Daybreakers: romance – Killers). Meanwhile, Reign of Assassins and Tsui Hark’s berserk Detective Dee mystery set the screen alight with crazed invention, whirling movement, and abstract plotting worth a dozen feeble CGI-heavy shoot-outs. Hark’s fictionalised retelling of the tale of 7th-Century courtier Di Renjie is a fantastical concoction, with Dee reimagined as a philosophical man of action, a Zen version of Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes, except that movie didn’t feature Ninja puppeteers, deranged reindeer attacks, spontaneous human combustion and face-altering acupuncture. You never quite know what madness will be thrown at you. While the garbling of the real and controversial historical legacy of Empress Wu is troubling, as a slice of entertainment this ranks with Zu Warriors and The Butterfly Murders as one of Hark’s brightest fantasies.

20. Green Zone

This mixture of Bourne-style intensity and United-93-style reportage failed to find an audience, and frustrating populist compromises within Brian Helgeland’s otherwise ambitious screenplay threaten to scupper the movie at every turn, but it remains a unique venture: an attempt to depict the fraudulent practices of a corrupt government in a politically unstable warzone by hiding the bitter pill inside an action movie. It very nearly succeeds, certainly enough to stir the blood and anger the mind. It’s commendable just for its seriousness of purpose, and the unobtrusive way Greengrass paints infuriating details from Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s non-fiction book into the sides of the frame, but for action fans there is also the rush of Greengrass’ perfectly staged and edited set-pieces, especially the exhausting final chase through Baghdad, a scene made poignant with the knowledge that the disastrous occupation of Iraq was not going to have a happy end. Sad that the filmmakers felt obliged to tag on such a silly coda, but still…

19. Winter’s Bone

Debra Granik’s adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel crosses so many types of genre it’s hard to know where to start. It has the episodic structure of a fairy-tale, the indomitable hero and quest-arc of a detective story, the inhospitable landscape of a survival narrative, and the terrifying antagonists of a Hills-Have-Eyes-style horror movie. Granik’s control of atmosphere is such that the frozen world seems to bleed out of the screen, chilling the blood even before we get to the events depicted. Ree’s search for her no-good father takes her into the dangerous underbelly of her community, with only her menacing uncle to help her. Watching this young woman forced to endanger herself for the sake of her family is agonising, partially through some of the best storytelling of the year, but mostly through career-best performances from John Hawkes and Dale Dickey, and the memorable arrival of Jennifer Lawrence in the mainstream cultural consciousness.

18. Whip It

All hail Drew Barrymore! 2010 saw the release of Going The Distance, which was so far and away the best, most entertaining and most convincing romcom of the year that every other dashed-off failure should hang its head in shame. It also saw the UK release of her directorial debut, the utterly charming coming-of-age roller derby movie Whip It. Barrymore draws out Ellen Page’s most likeable performance yet as a young woman whose tiny rebellion against the small-town mentality of her home and family leads her to an equally tiny — yet momentous — sports career. Our hero’s direction is frenetic and fractured but invigorating, as quick and sharp as the best two-and-a-half-minute punk tune. This celebration of sisterhood is one of the most purely joyous movies about youth made in recent times. Hopefully its fanbase will grow, and its message of unsentimental female solidarity, and celebration of outsider culture, will be passed on and enjoyed for years to come.

17. Iron Man 2

It’s too long. There’s too much talking. There’s not enough action. Whine, whine, whine. Jon Favreau took the things most people seemed to love about the first Iron Man movie – Tony Stark being a smartass in formless scenes that lean heavily on the wisecracks – and multiplied them, turning the increasingly tired template of the summer blockbuster on its head. The box office was great, but no one seemed to be happy with what they got. Pish posh. The talkiness and loose nature of the Iron Man franchise has proved to be its greatest strength. This plays more as a semi-improvised comedy than a set-piece-heavy explosiongasm, a good-time free-for-all that still finds time to test Tony Stark’s character and build the Marvel Universe inbetween the rambling asides and coolly tossed-off non-sequiturs. It’s the most unconventional superhero movie yet: irksome if you’re not onboard but pure joy for the rest of us.

16. Salt

Some movies are just too crazy not to love a little. Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay – in which agent Evelyn Salt may or may not be a sleeper agent intent on destroying Russia, America, the Middle East or the whole world, depending on where you are in the movie – playfully messes with expectations, leaving the audience in a pleasurable state of confusion and doubt as to the motives of any of the main characters. Philip Noyce cranks up the action to levels far beyond those displayed in his Tom Clancy adaptations, throwing out several memorable set-pieces and brilliantly orchestrating the cast into giving broad performances pitched at the appropriate level of heightened emotional truth: some kind of miracle considering the preposterousness of the numerous plot-twists, of which the less said the better. It’s undeniably daft, but by God, it’s exciting.

15. Submarine

Those of us who have watched the career of the amazing Richard Ayoade can rejoice: his feature debut is a triumph of endearing observational comedy, empathic storytelling, and film-nerd fastidiousness. The coming-of-age story of Oliver Holt doesn’t shy away from depicting its hero as an emotionally-stunted klutz, but the masterstroke is making all of his misjudgements seem perfectly logical, magically regressing the audience’s point-of-view back to its own adolescence, when we didn’t realise we hadn’t quite figured out how the world worked. Ayoade extracts impressive performances from his cast, especially newcomers Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige as the nervous, spiky young couple whose adventures in romance go so believably awry. Nevertheless, the director’s greatest achievement is the magical atmosphere he generates: nostalgic yet modern, bittersweet and utterly charming, even during its darkest moments.

14. Four Lions

Amazing how Chris Morris’ comedy about suicide bombers didn’t generate the torrent of controversy many of us expected: a testament to the movie’s unexpected warmth. Though the four terrorist-wannabes are obviously murderous scum, they’re also human, and the most daring thing about this magnificent farce is to give at least one character — Omar, brilliantly played by Riz Ahmed — a redemptive arc as he attempts to save dopey Waj (a hilarious turn from Kayvan Novak) from eternal damnation. This is also the movie’s greatest strength, depicting fundamentalists as people in all their fumbling, irrational glory. Playing them as nothing more than idiots would have no charge at all. It becomes more than just a film of its time, becomes a film about all of humanity. We’re all fools, all a mixture of good and bad. It’s just unfortunate that a very small minority of us are more likely to blow up others on a mission to pay tribute to an imaginary sky-god or to strike at a society that is not really that much of an enemy.

13. Dogtooth

Arguably the most upsetting horror can come from the exaggeration of normal behaviour, as displayed in Yorgos Lanthimos’ dark extrapolation of how they fuck you up, your mom and dad. A depraved couple conspire to keep their children captive within the grounds of their home, feeding them false information about the world from birth. Treated like dogs, the children — now post-adolescent adults — have a completely alien idea of what the world is: planes are toys, cats are deadly monsters, and venturing outside the compound before they lose their ‘dogtooth’ will end in disaster. Nevertheless, with adulthood comes an increased urge to escape, even without knowing what that entails. Lanthimos’ matter-of-fact direction is the perfect counterpoint to the disturbing subject matter, impassively charting the slowly-unravelling experiment. Who needs human centipedes when you have parents like this? It’s an unsettling tale – The Truman Show without the hope and uplift.

12. Meek’s Cutoff

Who would have thought that the writer and director of something as soporific as Old Joy could create something as charged with suspense as this? That’s unusual enough, but Kelly Reichardt’s masterstroke is doing that without changing her signature style in any way. Her retelling of the true story of Meek Cutoff — in which a group of settlers of the “Wild West” are pushed off course by a potentially unreliable frontiersman guide — is deceptively simple. Under the surface are tensions that inevitably spill out as water dwindles and Meek’s instructions become less certain. The introduction of a new element — a Native American who wanders too close to the group — sets the movie spinning off in a different, and even more fascinating, direction. Reichardt’s superb handling of the group dynamic and the allegorical dimensions of this survival tale is aided by notable work from sound designer Leslie Shatz, weaving a hypnotic soundtrack using nothing more than the wind, the sound of shuffling feet, and the creak of a wheel. It’s an exhausting journey, but a riveting one.

11. Agora

Alejandro Amenábar’s ambitious, big-budget biopic of philosopher Hypatia – The Passion of the Christ for atheists – struggled to find distributors around the world, was dumped into cinemas with barely any publicity, and was criticised by Catholic groups in Spain for defaming Christianity: the polar opposite of Mel Gibson’s berserk Passion Play. Who knows why audiences didn’t connect with this tragic epic: it has the requisite visual wow-factor, moves at a clip, and is easily accessible. Perhaps no one wants to be reminded of the ancient — and modern — punishment and subjugation of women by vicious misogynists whose pitiful moral shortcomings and weak-minded thuggery lead to acts of barbarous evil. Rachel Weisz’s towering performance breaks the heart, bringing to life a great thinker whose fate is decided for her by infantile monsters: a loss to the world more profound than the library she tries to save. It should be required viewing for anyone who supports reason over superstition.

10. Easy A

Much like Drew Barrymore’s Whip It, Will Gluck’s teen comedy was greeted with a shrug. It’s a crying shame: movies this clever and witty don’t come along every day. Taking Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter as an inspiration, rather than a template, Easy A treats serious subjects — sexual awakening, female empowerment, the negative effect of socially accepted and enforced codes of morality, etc. — with a lightness of touch that seems ever more rare in these fractious times, remaining good-natured and silly while driving home a welcome message: mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine. However, the sparkling wit and referential games would mean nothing without a solid central performance, and Emma Stone delivers a star-making turn. Her charm and comedic skill are the elements that push this movie from good to great, and ensure that time will be generous to this underrated gem. It’s the best movie of its kind since Clueless: the proselytising campaign to see it get its due starts here.

9. Greenberg

Noah Baumbach’s character study of an odious, self-involved shit-head who uses everyone around him and sabotages himself tests that well-known writer’s maxim — that protagonists don’t need to be likeable for you to root for their success — to the point of destruction and beyond. Ben Stiller delivers one of the finest performances of the year as the title character, cast adrift in a city he hates, surrounded by people he cannot emotionally connect with, and consistently making the wrong choices. It’s a testament to Stiller and screenwriters Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh that you find yourself rooting for this douchenozzle, hoping that he will somehow figure out that he is the problem, and make some effort to rectify this. The movie succeeds admirably, regularly positioning him on a precipice of universally recognisable social failure, his empathic blindness exaggerated to unbearable levels — if this creep can find a sort of redemption, there’s hope for all of us. Kudos too for bringing the amazing Greta Gerwig to wider attention: her work as Florence Marr is one of the highlights of the movie year.

8. The Social Network

Aaron Sorkin’s voice is so distinct that no matter who adapts his work, it’s first and foremost an Aaron Sorkin project. Until now. David Fincher’s free-wheeling and zippy movie is as fast-moving as the world of social media which will probably see Facebook superseded by other sites by the time this film hits satellite (this sentence sponsored by Diaspora). His control of the material, his authorial confidence, almost completely overwhelms the various tics and habits of Sorkin – no mean feat. Which is not to denigrate Sorkin. The Social Network represents his best work since the early years of The West Wing, cleverly and bravely tinkering with fact in order to turn the prosaic origins of Facebook into a Greek tragedy as “Mark Zuckerberg” is undone by his ambition and ironically trapped in the unsatisfying world he created. It’s delirious entertainment, delivered at hyper-speed by two masters of their trade, and well played by a young and obnoxiously talented cast, with special praise due to Andrew Garfield, as good here as he is in Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go.

7. Please Give

It’s been said before, and Shades of Caruso can merely echo it: why are people squandering their time waiting for Woody Allen to find something new to say when there is a perceptive, funny, imaginative filmmaker already working in the same area, and who isn’t merely content to ape better directors while putting nubile young women into leading roles as muses to various lecherous proxys? Please Give is a vastly entertaining and thought-provoking comedy-drama, playfully addressing themes of white liberal guilt, social discomfort, distorted body-image, and the generation gap, all while delivering endearing and subtle character comedy and well-earned last-act epiphanies that are recognisably small but no less profound for that. Nicole Holofcener has been making lovable and well-crafted social commentary for years without preaching, without resting on her laurels, and without pandering to the audience. Why she isn’t more widely celebrated by critics is beyond us.

6. Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass the movie is much like Kick-Ass the character, stupidly starting fights with powerful opponents just because it feels like it. Matthew Vaughan and Jane Goldman could have toned down Millar & Romita Jr.’s super-homage for family viewing, but instead they stuck to their guns and delivered a provocative blast of bratty energy right at the tutting moral campaigners. The only downside to the tide of handbag-clutching vitriol aimed at it (because really, who gives a fuck what these idiots think?) is that it obscured the message of the movie: if someone needs help, you have a duty to provide it, whether you like it or not. Hit-Girl may kill dozens of people and say the naughty words, but it’s not about that. It’s about a new generation kicking against the pricks. As London’s streets rage and the Establishment stamps on The Kids with all its might, Kick-Ass needs immediate reappraisal. It feels more like a manifesto than an action movie, but never forget: it’s a really goddamn good action movie.

5. Toy Story 3

Finally we reach the end of Pixar’s trilogy of torment. Toy Story 3 is a gruelling and emotionally devastating trip into the dark heart of society, laying bare the compromises made by all of us as we become adults. A world where wrenching sacrifice is inevitable is here depicted, with grim irony, as a candy-coloured landscape of potential joy crushed under the jackboot of miserable conformity, with emotional attachment to anyone or anything being a surefire way to see your dreams destroyed, your friendships demolished, your life ruined. It’s a relentless assault on the soul of the viewer, a sadistic and twisted reminder that life is dust and all we can do is cherish the odd moment of connection and bliss before being cast into the abyss, unwanted and alone. Oh the tears that were shed as Lee Unkrich’s nightmarish masterpiece hurtled towards its miserable end! Oceans of sadness! Waterworlds of lachrymosity! Damn you Pixar! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

4. The Kids Are All Right

Lisa Cholodenko’s immensely satisfying family drama is a quiet triumph, compassionately extolling the virtues and compromises necessary to live a liberal life while frankly addressing the unavoidable urges and paranoias of us all. It’s gratifying to see a movie leap over the usual tangle of political argument to simply present a loving family in all of its flawed beauty. Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore excel as the trio of parents whose seemingly happy exteriors hide paranoia, jealousy and sadness; feelings that are brought to the surface by the actions of their teenage children. Does it sound like faint praise to say that the reason this movie appears so high on the list is just that it gets everything right? The movie’s ace in the hole is the script by Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, which is a work of subtle genius. Without pandering to the audience we’re invited into the lives of some of the most exquisitely detailed characters of the year, whose actions are believable, recognisable, and revelatory. It’s a genuine crowd-pleaser in the best sense of the word.

3. 13 Assassins

It could have been a wild and tacky action extravaganza, something entertaining but disposable, a repository of empty iconography that trades in nostalgia for the long-gone heights of the action genre: i.e., it could have been The Expendables. Thankfully Takashi Miike’s startling action classic — featuring 13 outcast heroes facing off against an army protecting the insane brother of the Shogun — is anything but. At times it feels like an elegaic send-off for a period in Japanese history, as our hero Shinzaemon Shimada faces disgrace and death in order to do the right thing: literally destroying a way of life in order to save the country. As the final half of the movie kicks in, it feels more like Miike is saying goodbye to the Samurai sub-genre. The careful pace is jettisoned for 45 minutes of beautifully paced and choreographed carnage, and two final showdowns of incredible emotional power. Nothing can prepare you for the intensity of this brutal war-in-miniature, with courage giving way to insanity as the battle progresses. It will be a long time before anyone can top the director’s astonishing achievement.

2. Inception

It may not feature Batman, but Inception still swept in like the Caped Crusader to save us from a summer of lacklustre movies. Nevertheless, even in a strong year this imagination-shattering masterpiece would stand out. Christopher Nolan’s bold and befuddling puzzle mimicked the beats of a traditional action movie to tell one story that appealed on a lizard-brain level, ending in an hour-long setpiece of dazzling complexity and ambition. Nevertheless, the genius of Inception lies in its labyrinthine structure. Numerous stories/interpretations could be implied from the layers of Freudian and Jungian imagery piled on top of the heist-movie genre trappings. Much like Lost, there was more than one narrative here, and viewers could choose whichever they thought was most applicable. Such confidence in the audience’s ability to unpick a knot like this is rare enough, but to present it at the height of the summer season – a period traditionally dismissed as an intellectual dead zone by sneering cultural commentators – amounts to a statement of intent: this filmmaker is trying to single-handedly restore cinema’s confidence in itself, and justify its existence as the audience finds satisfaction elsewhere. To do that he had to construct a maze: one that takes two hours to grow in our minds, but will take years to solve.

1. Black Swan

Forget 3D. Forget the inevitable future technology of thought-transference, even. What Aronofsky has achieved using little more than empathic and artistic skill is to plant our consciousness into the mind of a deeply troubled woman: we see and hear everything she does, and slowly our grasp on reality falls apart at the same time as hers. The willing members of the audience — who allow Aronofsky’s hypnotic magic work on them — will find themselves trapped in their seats, bombarded with unreliable imagery and noise, forced to question everything they see and driven to a state of delirious euphoria. The intensity of the director’s vision has proved too much for some viewers, and caused some cineastes to cry “foul” as they denounce the movie for being “overwrought”. As if this is a bad thing. This tribute to the power of art to transform both creator and audience is exactly as heightened as it needs to be. Watching it is to experience the feeling of creating a new idea or to master an artform, with all of the emotional turmoil that that entails. Technically it is impressive: Matthew Libatique’s raw photography, Clint Mansell’s overwhelming score and the ingenious sound design by Craig Henighan create a claustrophobic atmosphere of inescapable hysteria, but it’s the emotional charge supplied by Natalie Portman’s performance that pushes this movie to the top of the list. Her total commitment to the project is the key to its success: Black Swan would be movie of the year just for her heart-wrenching turn.

Honorary Mentions:

Archipelago: Joanna Hogg’s beautifully observed and played drama about a middle class family riven with discord is heavily loaded with almost unbearable British reserve. It’s as uncommunicative as its protagonists, but says much more about class issues and familial strife than any histrionics ever could.

The Town: A muscular action flick directed with consummate skill by the great Ben Affleck, stepping in front of his own camera to give a career-best performance alongside a similarly great cast of Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner, Pete Postlethwaite, Chris Cooper and Jon Hamm.

Summer Wars: Mamoru Hosoda’s sci-fi movie about a family battling against a rampant AI is primarily about how the history of a warrior clan can be revisited in modern trappings, but it also struck me as a love letter to the Internet and its greatest asset: the people who populate it and defend it from marauding forces. It’s also a feast for the eyes.

Unstoppable: The traditional visual blow-out of Tony Scott remains a constant eye-sore throughout this pared-down action thriller, but this is still his best-paced film in an age, and his best overall movie since Crimson Tide. There may not be much to it, but what more do you need? It’s an runaway train! And Denzel has to stop it! Magic.

Amigo: What could have been a dry piece of historical fiction is instead both a vibrant celebration of humanity’s empathy and harsh depiction of its worst and most paranoid instincts, as the occupation of a baryo in the Philippines during the Philippine-American War flirts with success before disaster. A great cast; a great — and compassionate — movie.

Best Documentary: Tabloid

Errol Morris succeeds again with the wonderfully tawdry story of Joyce McKinney and The Case of the Manacled Mormon, which was a huge deal in tabloid newspaper culture last century. Timely points are made about how journalism can ruin lives, and how opportunistic individuals can make a living from turning their troubles into a kind of performance for the masses, but most of all it’s just a massively entertaining tale, filled with oddballs, twists and humour.

Best Fiction / Non-Fiction Hybrid: Self Made

Gillian Wearing’s feature debut is like nothing else out there, a pleasantly discombobulating method-acting experiment using non-actors. She plays with what fiction is expected to do, and how our response to it is tied up in our knowledge of the individuals involved in the making of it, while at the same time using her acting exercises as a tool to unwrap the thought-processes of her volunteers. It could have been a navel-gazing exercise, but Wearing is too smart and empathic for that. What she has woven is far deeper than some dry documentary, and more emotionally involving. It’s cathartic for those involved, and maybe for the viewer too.

Still to come: worst movies of the year, and my pick of the best performances, best crew contributions, and best miscellaneous gubbins.

The Top One Hundred and Six Movies of the Oughts (10-6)

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Nearing the end of this list, I still find myself remembering movies that should have been included here. A recent Twitter chat about John Woo’s Red Cliff made me re-examine my decision to leave the first half of the two-part series out of the list. I loved it dearly last year, and it made me insanely excited for the second movie this year, but I couldn’t in good conscience include it. Part of that is because of my “nothing from 2009″ rule. As half of the complete tale came out now, it can be excluded, though that’s a bit mean. The main reason is that while the first part promised much, the second didn’t deliver.

Don’t get me wrong, it still features high drama, enormous battles, cool character moments, and intimate emotional interludes, but there is a terribly annoying sub-plot featuring Sun Shangxiang, and the final act runs out of energy before the final inconclusive moments. It’s a great deal of fun, and taken together with the first is still a remarkable achievement, but there is nothing to rival the Battle of Eight Trigrams from the first half. It’s possible I will enjoy it more on second viewing, but that’s not happening any time soon. This list is taking up a lot of my time right now and after that I’ve got a full couple of weeks. Something to do with this big Hexmass thing everyone is celebrating.

Getting down to the last ten movies, it gets harder and harder to rank them. I spent about an hour on Friday just moving numbers 8, 9 and 10 back and forth, agonising over the choice as if it were a grievous error to get this wrong. By now, the difference in affection for these movies is almost insignificant: I very nearly think of all of these movies as the best of the decade, and each viewing of them would push them towards the top of the list without causing much grief. It will probably always be in flux, but these ten will almost certainly remain in some capacity, with only maybe Ratatouille usurping any of them.

10. Children of Men

Alfonso Cuaron’s thrilling adaptation of P.D. James’ novel came from nowhere and took me completely by surprise. With no advance word and only a hastily released trailer, I ended up seeing this cold and couldn’t believe my eyes. Commenting on topical concerns with an accuracy that must have been the result of some kind of supernatural prescience during its filming, this retelling of the myth of Christ’s birth says more about modern British life than any number of hand-wringing state-of-the-nation mini-series on UK TV, and certainly with more confidence than anything from the terminally ill British film industry. More than that it’s a bravura piece of cinema, with Cuaron trotting out numerous technically accomplished setpieces as if it ain’t no thing. It rewrites the rules of the action genre, strengthens the argument that SF is the genre best capable of commenting on contemporary issues, and restores your faith in humanity’s capacity for goodness.

Best Moment: Our hero (Theo, played by Clive Owen) and his pregnant companion Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) are trapped in the decrepit Bexhill-on-Sea concentration camp when a riot breaks out. As the British army moves in to quash the rebellion, the camera follows Theo through the carnage in a single shot. Cineastes everywhere had seizures of pleasure at the technical brilliance on display, but only the ones who don’t understand how sight works, of course. [/bitter]

9. Fight Club

Apparently this was the movie that was going to be responsible for the downfall of society. Upon release David Fincher’s adaptation of Chuck Pahlaniuk’s uproarious novel was famously treated like radioactive material by Alexander Walker, but embraced by almost everyone else as a breath of fresh air. On the surface it can be taken as a celebration of empty-headed machismo and fashionable nihilism, but the surprisingly wacky tone and endearing slapstick performances by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton expose it for what it really is: a satire on anarchic impulses and male narcissism, and an exploration of how paranoia can lead disaffected men into doing terrible deeds. Until Chris Morris’ Four Lions comes out, this is the funniest movie about terrorism made. Nevertheless, I’ll be honest. The thing I love most about it is the visual imagination, with Fincher gaily tearing apart the rulebook and treating his audience to an audio-visual collage of joyful unpredictability.

Best Moment: After the reveal of Tyler Durden’s true identity, our narrator gets to indulge in a panicky race against time to thwart his evil plan. For something as potentially dark as this, it’s amazing to think that Fincher manages to create such a fun movie, and the final twenty minutes of the movie are arguably the most entertaining. Edward Norton has never been as likeable as he is here, brandishing a gun while in boxer shorts and yelling about “lead salad!”

8. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

When Ang Lee’s martial arts romance was released in the UK, there were complaints that it was nothing special. Just another wuxia movie, except this time it’s directed by a “respectable” filmmaker, which means critics suddenly suddenly take note of the genre. To martial arts fans in the West, Hong Kong productions were often rough and ready, and arguably part of their appeal was reconciling our cultural expectations with what — to us — seems like bizarre sidetracking (anyone who has seen a Chinese wuxia horror movie like Encounters of the Spooky Kind or Mr. Vampire will know what I’m talking about). Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was, to some, a betrayal of that clumsy aesthetic, but that argument is borne of madness. This emotionally rich tale of duty and love would have been an exceptional historical romance already, thanks to Lee’s elegant visuals and his command of his superb cast. The breathtaking martial arts action was the cherry on top, and to see these beautifully choreographed fight scenes filmed with such care and reverence should have delighted fans of the genre. In his review, Peter Bradshaw said, “Frankly, this is what Phantom Menace was supposed to feel like.” This sums up my post-screening euphoria perfectly. If only all five books in Wang Dulu’s Crane-Iron series had been filmed like this, I would have been first in line for each.

Best Moment: When I first saw this movie, the earliest fight scene between Zhang Ziyi’s Jen and Michelle Yeoh’s Yu Shu-lien brought gales of laughter from a cynical London audience, enraging me so much I very nearly stood up to berate the hooting idiots around me. It’s a testament to the scene’s power that a moment later I was drawn back to the battle raging onscreen. Woo-ping Yuen excelled himself with what could be the most exhilarating and thrilling fight scene of the decade.

7. Being John Malkovich

A movie about people taking over a celebrity’s body, written by a former sitcom writer, and directed by a guy famous for making videos about talking dogs? I was certainly looking forward to seeing it, but I expected little more than a fun diversion with a John Malkovich cameo. The movie I saw was possibly the biggest surprise I’ve ever had in a cinema, one that detonated a bomb inside my head. What we were given was a complex, coherent fantasy unlike anything ever made before, something with a faultless internal logic that seemed to have been beamed in from another universe. Instead of a meta-textual pop cultural frippery we got a treatise on identity, love, obsession, celebrity culture, jealousy, and control, all while Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze told a hilarious and creepy story about a group of immortals using a metaphysical bridge to colonise new bodies. Describing the crazy ideas makes it sound like a game, but it was more than just intellectual trickery for the sake of itself. There was real reflection on what humans are, telling self-lacerating truths about how awful we could be, which built to a tragic finale. Even better than the rush of ideas driven to logical but unfamiliar conclusions, or its emotional fearlessness, was the sense that the rules had been changed. Any kind of story was now fair game, if it could be done as well as this.

Best Moment: Just the short description of the central idea — a portal allows you to control John Malkovich’s mind — could fuel a movie, but Kaufman is willing to explore every possible storytelling avenue of that idea, sending the plot in directions no one could have predicted. Part way through the movie, he gives us an utterly logical variation on the portal trick, but one that surprises right until it happens. Of course Kaufman had to send Malkovich into his own mind, but you only realise he had to do that after he has done it. It’s simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, and totally unforgettable.

6. Lord of the Rings

A cheat to combine the three movies as one, but a cheat that makes a kind of sense. Peter Jackson filmed all three films back to back, and stuck together they work as a complete movie, especially in their extended forms. Considering them in this way also mitigates objections about the length of Return of the King‘s final act — with its endless goodbyes — and the compromises in structure necessary to make The Two Towers feel like a complete film. Not that those problems were ever in danger of overshadowing the successes of this project, which stands as possibly the most ambitious and thrilling movie trilogy ever made. Jackson and his co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens did such great work adapting Tolkein’s dry prose into a living, breathing vision that it’s tempting to say the books never achieved all they could until these New Zealanders came along.

It is to Jackson’s credit that he did the one thing necessary to make it all work: he had to take it seriously. Without a shred of cynicism, he portrayed numerous wrenching emotional moments with total conviction and treated his characters like the Middle-Earth heroes we always dreamed they would be. For that alone the trilogy would signify a welcome sea-change after years of half-hearted and jokey action men diluted the idea of noble heroism, but Jackson’s masterstroke was simple: he merely brought his usual intelligence and meticulous nature to the table instead of just doing the bare minimum to get the film made. He gave 100%, and 100% Jackson commitment is the nearest thing we have to a guarantee of total satisfaction. If you don’t buy into it, fair enough. If you do, the trilogy stands like the Eighth Wonder of the World. Can its spectacle ever be topped?

Best Moment: Jackson is the master of the big setpiece, usually by breaking these huge scenes down into smaller, still satisfying setpieces that add up to a greater whole. The Mines of Moria sequence features the superb cave troll fight followed by the race down crumbling stairs and then Gandalf’s showdown with the Balrog. The Siege at Helm’s Deep includes shenanigans with Aragorn and Gimli, the arrival of the elves, and Legolas going batshit. Best of all, the enormous Siege of Minas Tirith is followed immediately with the Battle for Pelennor Fields and then the Ride of the Rohirrim. When I saw this for the first time at Leicester Square Odeon, you could hear the sound of 1500 people sobbing over the thunder of hooves and clashing metal. It was a perfect moment.

A few minutes later, after Legolas did this, our cheering and applause almost brought down the roof:

And we’re almost there. If you have any complaints about my decision to take the Lord of the Rings trilogy as one movie, please address them to my ASS. (I’m kidding. The comment box beneath is just fine. Feel free to argue your cases: I welcome the debate.)

Dystopian Sci Fi Movie Face/Off! (Babylon A.D.)

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As mentioned yesterday, exposure to the brain-lacerating horrors of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road has left me in a bit of an emotional state. His command of image and mood is been used to conjure up something even more terrifying than Anton Chigurh and Judge Holden combined and multiplied; a vision of a world turned to ash by nuclear war, with no sunlight and no plant life, the survivors pretty much waiting to die or banding together to eat their fellow man. McCarthy is ruthless and relentless, and by the time I was done with it, even the small glimmers of hope found within (and the beautifully rendered relationship between the protagonist and his son) are not enough to dispell the cloud of doom hanging over my head. Stupid genius writer.

In an attempt to cheer myself up I have watched comedies and quality contemporary drama, but neither did the trick. So, in an attempt to vaccinate myself (after the fact, but still), I decided to watch some dystopic sci fi set in post-apocalyptic future worlds, except this time I figured I should go for something less brutal, more fluffy. There are grades of awfulness within the genre, with The Road being at the top of the awfulness chart, and everything else seeming jolly in comparison. Several contenders came to mind, including Richard Stanley’s Hardware, the 2000AD comic strip “adaptation” (i.e. the rip-off that caused a lawsuit) that came out in the 80s. It was shown on Zone Horror a week ago (not long after they screened Stanley’s second film, Dust Devil), and I watched it to see if it was as bad as I remembered. Amazingly, it was even worse, being little more than a clumsy barrage of noise and image and embarrassing dialogue and silly acting. Just appalling, and quite hideous. It’s so bad that I’m beginning to suspect that his version of The Island Of Doctor Moreau might have been just as bad as John Frankenheimer’s version, and it might not even have been as entertaining. That would equal total fail.


So which films to watch? Thankfully Neil Marshall’s Doomsday just hit DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK, and Mathieu Kassovitz’ Babylon A.D. came out last Friday, so it seemed logical to try those out for size. I will say that, in their own way, they made me feel better about the forthcoming end of the world, but were they any good on their own terms?

Actually, Babylon A.D.‘s only real gift to my tortured psyche was to show a plausible future world that wasn’t a landscape of mere ash and death, but was a well-designed cyberpunk-style amalgam taken from various different sources, most notably Alfonso Cuaron’s magnificent Children Of Men. Of course, as we’re talking about cyberpunk here, there is also the unavoidable influence of William Gibson, godfather of the sub-genre, whose Neuromancer remains unfilmed while his ideas pop up in other movies all the time. And yes, I’m still bitter that Chris Cunningham never got to make his version of that book.

Babylon A.D. is based on a French cyberpunk novel called Babylon Babies, by Maurice G Dantec, whose hyper-aggressive website has to be seen to be believed. I’m sure I read somewhere that he is a contemporary of noted humorist Michel “Monsieur Happy” Houellebecq, which makes me want to read his books even more now (thanks to the lovely chaps at Aphrohead Books, my copy of Babylon Babies is on the way). From what I gather from this MIT Press synopsis, Dantec’s book sounds pretty dissimilar to the movie I saw on Monday.

Set in the hidden “flesh and chip” breeding grounds of the first cyborg communities and peopled by Serbian Mafiosi, Babylon Babies has as its hero a hard-boiled leatherneck veteran of Sarajevo named Thoorop who is hired by a mysterious source to escort a young woman named Marie Zorn from Russia to Canada. A garden variety job, he figures. But when Thoorop is offered an even higher fee by another organization, he realizes Marie is no ordinary girl. A schizophrenic and the possible carrier of a new artificial virus, Marie is carrying a mutant embryo created by an American cult that dreams of producing a genetically modified messiah, a dream that spells out the end of human life as we know it.

Inspired by Philip K. Dick, William S. Burroughs, Gilles Deleuze, and other extrapolationists [OMG my new favourite word! - Neck] of the future, Babylon Babies unfolds at breakneck speed as Thoorop risks his life to save Marie, whose brain—linking to the neuromatrix—loses all limits and becomes the universe itself. Exploring the symbiosis between organic matter and computer power to spin new forms of consciousness, Maurice Dantec rides Nietzsche’s prophecy: “Man is something to be overcome.”

It sounds like a Gallic version of Gibson’s Count Zero, but with a focus on Catholicism instead of voodoo. While the movie is set in the Russia of the future, and presented as a broken society filled with barely functioning ghettos, black marketeering, and militaristic mercenaries, it ends up in New York, which, according to this excellent review, is not how the book ends. It features hints of a virus bomb, ineptly expositioned by Vin Diesel during one of the many slow dialogue scenes (a shame as this hastily explained plot point is the engine that powers much of the later half of the movie), and the young girl ferried by his character Toorop is indeed a genetically engineered faux-Messiah created to give credence to a new religion formed by Evil Charlotte Rampling (the one idea in the movie that I liked), but there is nothing about a Neuromatrix, nothing about Jeremy Narby’s theory of conscious communication with DNA itself (which is a damn shame), and barely anything about trans-human or post-human theory. Instead we get The Transporter, transposed to the grimy future, and without even a greased-up Jason Statham to entertain us.


Of course, as I’ve discussed before, Mathieu Kassovitz has publicly disowned the movie and called Fox a bunch of assholes, for which I will always kinda love him. The movie I saw on Monday is apparently nothing like the vision he had originally, and so maybe in the version there would have been a Neuromatrix, and a woman who is one with the universe, and ayahuasca visions, and a proper ending. Instead, the film is a framework of setpieces and locations, with talented performers moving from place to place and having conversations that mean nothing. Emotionally the film is dead in the water, and with budget cuts and other tamperings evident throughout, the action set-pieces slam and crash and oof but mean nothing. It’s your actual “sound and fury signifying nothing”, except in a credibly realised, if unimaginative, dystopian future.


The world Kassovitz has created is fun for the most part. The Russian scenes (filmed in the wintery cities of the Czech Republic) look convincingly desolate, with the locals dressed in either warm winter coats or Euro-trash tracksuits and bling, which was another touch I loved. The few shots we see of the country from the air show few lights, the odd enormous crater, cities broken and jerry-rigged. It’s all great, and the industrial settings in “Vladivostok” are convincingly depressing, as are the scenes of cramped markets, crowds of refugees, and the odd bit of chaotic and ill-explained ultra-violence.


Nevertheless this cheered me up way more than McCarthy’s bleak vision, because at least in that world there is still a semblance of society, with a barter system and entertainment and a version of community spirit that is brutal (i.e. Diesel punches the odd person while growling), but still better than the terror of The Road. I would hate to live in Babylon A.D.‘s world, but it’s better than McCarthy’s alternative.


In contrast to the grungy desolation of Eastern Europe, when our band of heroes arrives in New York, we see it looks like it’s doing just fine in the future, which struck me as strange. I’m sure any economist would predict America would not be thriving in a future that sees Europe fall so far towards the brink of anarchy, but I guess New York would certainly thrive (certainly in the centre of the city) while the rest of the country suffers. We don’t get a chance to see what the rest of the US looks like at this point. It does seem to have a very strict passport policy (it involves implants in the neck), and outside Manhattan the roads are messy enough to allow for some ineptly edited car chases, so maybe it’s falling apart there too. Still, at least New York has the obligatory futuristic talking adverts covering the sides of skyscrapers, though sadly it merely makes it look like Jean-Michel Jarre’s concert in Houston taken to the Nth degree.


The onscreen world is pretty much all I liked about the movie. I’ve defended Diesel in the past, but he’s on the verge of parody in this movie, posing as a tough guy in an unconvincing manner and merely hinting at an inner life of regret and courage. Again, perhaps a longer version of this will make a difference, and it is possible his performance was gutted by the editing as Kassovitz has hinted, so forgive me for being rude when in fact he might have been better in the original cut, but in the version I saw, he did not convince. He spends most of the movie with Mélanie Thierry (playing the Virgin Mary-esque Aurora) and Michelle Yeoh, whose role as a kung-fu nun should have been the best thing about the movie, but sadly wasn’t.

The trio of characters certainly evoked memories of Children Of Men, which is a comparison Babylon A.D. just doesn’t need, especially as, in the original novel, Toorop is joined by an Israeli army vet called Rebecca and Irish assassin named Dowie, and not a kung fu nun who spends most of the movie denying her kung fu nunniness, much to my disappointment. Why Kassovitz and co-writer Eric Besnard thought that echoing Cuaron’s superior movie by paring the group down to three (and eventually two) was a good idea escapes me. Okay, so changing up Pam Ferris for Michelle Yeoh appeals to me as a dedicated Yeoh fan, but Ferris was great, as were Clive Owen and Clare-Hope Ashitey. Plus, Kassovitz is utterly unable to replicate Cuaron’s imaginative action scenes and visual trickery, falling back on little more than the CGI effect of making cameras go through closed windows over and over again. He did this numerous times in Gothika as well. Can someone stop him from overusing this trick, please?


Mélanie Thierry is fine; she has to play vulnerable and messianic, and does those two things reasonably well (i.e. she shrieks and looks calm at different points of the movie), with the bonus challenge of feigning sexual interest in Diesel despite that being out of character, but Yeoh is utterly wasted. Her natural gravitas, maturity, and grace are barely in evidence here, replaced instead with almost mute fear and sporadic outbreaks of poorly shot kickassery that happen without explanation of how a nun from a Mongolian monastery is able to beat the crap out of anyone standing in her way. This is one of the cardinal sins of the movie, as Yeoh’s presence was one of the deciding factors when debating whether to see this or not. She is the hardcore goddess of kung fu cinema, and keeps getting stuck in choad like this. Adding a bunch of free runners jumping around a cramped warehouse does not mitigate the side-lining of the formidable Yeoh.


The rest of the main cast are almost as wasted. Mark Strong appears wearing yet another unappealing wig, playing a smuggler who may or may not be trustworthy (hint: he’s not, obviously). He gets little to do other than be friendly and then deceitful, and missed a trick by not cackling maniacally when his easily predicted betrayal happens about ten minutes after he is introduced. Lambert Wilson pops up as a geneticist who is also the father of Aurora. Entertainingly, he is covered with plastic wires to denote his part-cyborg nature, and is appropriately benevolent and tragic.


It’s a bit of a nothing role, and his hasty departure from the movie leaves about a million questions unanswered. Compared to his memorably oily and hammy performance as The Merovingian in the Matrix sequels, this is forgettable stuff. Gerard Depardieu is also featured as Russian bigwig Gorsky, almost unrecognisable under a bad wig and a prosthetic face. He resembles Al Pacino in Dick Tracy, to be honest.


Why they did this is beyond me, and his low-wattage performance also disappoints. This is the guy who played the definitive Cyrano de Bergerac? Who acted De Niro off the screen in Bertollucci’s 1900? Still, at least he’s not playing Obelix again, even though anyone could have played this part. Hell, I could have done it. Slap a fake nose on me and I’ll tyalk with Rhoshyan accent forrr pennies if necessary. Film producers, contact me via email if you need cheap acting in a hurry.


Worst of all, Charlotte Rampling’s appearance as the High Priestess of the Noelite cult is utterly mystifying. She’s only on screen for a little while, but she makes a hell of an impression. At first her cold and steely demeanour are de riguer for this kind of impassive and sinister religious nutjob, but as the film enters the incomprehensible final act, she starts twitching her head like a robot, delivering her lines with a mixture of artificial flatness and bad-guy posturing. It makes very little sense. Though it’s not up there with Fiona Shaw’s unmissably berserk appearance in Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia it’s still the kind of eccentric acting that makes you wish there was more of it. Certainly a longer cut might give us more fun, though it could also explain what the hell is going on with her, and in a perverse way I don’t want to know. It stands alone as a kind of curio; further exposition will merely remove the fascinating mystery.

Still, for the most part I was pleasantly bored, less than excited by the slow-moving plot and appallingly badly edited action scenes, but held in my chair by what I will have to refer to from now on as the Genre Baseline, which is the automatic amount of forgiveness and pleasure I will have for any film or book that is of a genre that I love (I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way). I’ve said it before, but just once more for the record, I love sci fi so much that even crappy sci fi holds a grip on me, as long as it has the odd good idea or gimmick. I’d much rather see the good stuff, obviously, but I’ll be more forgiving of the not-so-good (example; Equilibrium is derivative tosh, but it’s derivative tosh featuring GUNKATA and Christian Bale breaking bones and so therefore is automatically awesome).


For most of its running time, Babylon A.D. is kinda dull, with the odd interesting setpiece to distinguish it. I especially liked a mad scramble across an icy expanse to get onto a submarine, though sadly not long after that we’re given a shoddy action scene with Diesel’s stuntman flipping his snowmobile through the air and shooting down missile-laden drones. Where did they get the snowmobiles? Why are these dangerous drones vulnerable to pistol-fire? Bleh.


It continues in this manner until about fifteen minutes before the end of the film, with Aurora saving our hero by shooting him (?!?!?), doing something mystical with a big exploding missile (apparently the immaculately-conceived twins she is carrying are able to manipulate reality), and then disappearing. Lambert Wilson rebuilds Diesel using some plastic, and then hacks his memory to find out where Aurora is hiding. Diesel goes to find her with a couple of Wilson’s men, while Wilson gets shot by the High Priestess, who then disappears from the movie and is never mentioned again.


Diesel finds Aurora, battles with some of the Noelite redshirts in a boring and badly edited car chase that involves Diesel using grenades and his brand-new enhanced arm to generate some extra ‘splodey, and then several months later hangs out with Aurora as she is about to give birth. Look after the twins, she says, and so we fade to several years later. The twins (one black, one white, both girls) are sitting in a pretty garden as a white-clad and benevolently smiling Diesel walks up to them, tells them a storm is coming, and then takes them into the nearby house. The End.

I’m not kidding, that is how it ends. Now, I don’t mind obscure finales, and have passionately defended many films with impenetrable final acts, but that is ridiculous. There is no line of dialogue anywhere else in the movie that sets up this finale. There is no way of interpreting it because there is no possible logical interpretation. It just ends, with characters dropping out for no reason (did Aurora die? Did she turn into a ball of light and vanish? Did the High Priestess just give up?), and no hint of what it is that the “storm” represents. Once more I assume Kassovitz and Besnard knew what they were doing originally, and had their cut changed by Fox suits, and apparently the French release has a different ending with no car chase and more chat between Diesel and Aurora, but who the hell thought this was an acceptable way to end a movie? Did some bean-counter at Fox get assigned to the film and think, “Fuck it, it’s sci fi, we can just make the ending completely impenetrable and they’ll make up excuses for it, cuz sci fi fans are stupid”? Did they get Richard Kelly to re-edit the ending? It certainly seems that way. Intentionally creating an ambiguous and incoherent ending in the mistaken belief that not making sense is the same as generating profundity and post-movie debate is his bag, after all (if you don’t believe me, bite the bullet and watch the criminally terrible Southland Tales).


The ASBO-YOBS that filled the cinema when I saw it took great pleasure in hooting at the screen (prior to stabbing it with their knives), and I felt like joining in. I’m sure the source material has a peculiar ending, but it must have made sense to someone. This, on the other hand, is a debacle. I don’t blame Kassovitz and Diesel for disowning it; I would have done the same thing. No matter how generous you feel, or how much you wanted it to succeed (and I certainly did), this is a failure. Once international box office is taken into account, perhaps the movie will make a tiny profit (it’s not like Fox can be expected to add much to the surprisingly small $70m budget in terms of advertising, as the film got almost no promotion). If so, Fox will inevitably milk the teat with a director’s cut, if Kassovitz is willing. If so, I look forward to it, and I can’t wait to read Dantec’s novel. That doesn’t mean I think the world desperately needed to be told this story, but I’m willing to wait to see if there is a version of it that justifies this movie’s existence, because this version sure as hell isn’t it.