Listmania ’12! The Best Movies Of The Year

Posted on January 1, 2013 by admiralneck

Here I am, living in the past as usual. It’s 2013 in London, but I’m still writing about 2012, a year that was in general better than the last (which was pretty crummy) but not particularly amazing. No lottery wins, no late-blooming development of psychic powers; just The Grind. Sadly that malaise spread to my enjoyment of films. No fear; this isn’t another end-of-year “crisis in cinema” posts, filled with dire warnings about piracy or 48fps (which I’m still undecided on) or how the kids these days don’t enjoy proper entertainment like The Dambusters or any of that shit. All that happened is that I built up a bunch of movies in my head and they didn’t live up to those expectations. No biggie, and it’s all on me, but by the end of the year this disaffection was becoming a real pain in the arse. Do I ever dare look forward to a film again? I’m gonna find that hard to do.

I’m not gonna fart around like I normally do; it’s late and I just put Anchorman on so I’m only half-paying attention to this semtance. Here’s where I traditionally complain about cinema release dates and how punitive they are if you live outside the US, so here goes: five months for Cloud Atlas? Four for Wreck-It Ralph? Dozens of other movies have been delayed this year, and to be honest I feel stupid writing up this list before seeing Zero Dark Thirty or Lincoln or especially Django Unchained. How can I think of this as definitive when films by my favourite filmmakers remain out of my reach? Will this list be invalid by the end of January?

And yes, I know, the ways in which studios are attempting to capitalise on increased revenues from overseas mean films are now starting to come out in Europe before the US, but this year the biggest examples of that were The Avengers and Skyfall, both of which were out over here a couple of weeks before the US. I hear some say there’s an equivalence here but two weeks is frustrating while a four month delay is absolute bullshit. I thought I was the only person who ever moaned about these things but even Cory Doctorow got in on the action (thanks to @catvincent for the heads-up on that piece). Everything in that makes so much sense to me but still we put up with the old ways.

Okay, moaning over. Here’s the (sadly incomplete) list. No disrespect to any of these films. Naturally, if I didn’t like them I wouldn’t have included them.

25. Your Sister’s Sister

This year Sundance came to London, complete with overpriced tickets, interesting documentaries, and a handful of fiction movies that sounded less so. As ever Shades of Caruso finds itself struggling to love the output of the US independent scene when compared to the bigger studio releases, especially when the new voices showcased at Sundance often seem to provide films as formulaic as their derided big-budget brethren. Lynn Shelton’s chamber-piece Your Sister’s Sister, in which a grieving man becomes dragged into the dramas connecting two sisters, was not on the Sundance list; more’s the pity. At times this looks and feels like every other movie of its kind, right down to casting the seemingly ubiquitous Mark Duplass as the feckless interloper, but Shelton’s a better filmmaker than most, and here does wonders with limited means, supplying all the quiet character work of the best of this genre, but with a populist’s touch for the dramatic. Seemingly sedate for the most part, Shelton saves the fireworks for a startling end-of-second-act blowout, aided by magnificent work from Emily Blunt and Rosemary DeWitt. Only an underwhelming third act prevents this from getting higher in the list, yet after the dramatic lull we at least reach a sweetly satisfying denouement, a gentle sigh of resignation and love you don’t see often enough. It left me with a glow that lasted for days.

24. Killer Joe

The one thing you can count on with a late-career William Friedkin film is that it’ll be muscular, and will likely feature at least one scene that makes your hair stand on end. Killer Joe goes one better than that; it features a final act so full on that when it was over I literally didn’t know what to think or do. To be fair the whole movie, adapted by Tracy Letts from his first play, is pitched at such a weird level of energy that the viewer should know all bets are off. As a filmed play the performances from almost everyone are heightened and emphatic in a similar way to David Cronenberg’s stagy Cosmopolis, but while that was bloodless, Killer Joe is almost dementedly provocative. Performances like this can carry a movie away into quirky irrelevance but thankfully there is a rock to hold it down; Matthew McConaughey continues his campaign to become the most interesting actor in Hollywood with a riveting portrayal of a malevolent scumbag with a baffling sense of dark morality. His final acts turn this from a neo-noir into a macabre spoof of family life, or a satirical depiction of the terrible things we would do to our loved ones to survive in a brutal world. I’m not sure I can even call this worthy of inclusion here, except that it got my pulse pounding like nothing else this year.

23. Moonrise Kingdom

Fantastic Mr. Fox might have been Wes Anderson’s children’s film, but it’s arguable that his follow-up is likely as much in tune with the viewpoint of a child as his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s tale. Like some kind of gaudy yellow reworking of the stories of Arthur Ransome and Enid Blyton, Anderson throws his two very young lovers into an adventure across a humdrum island devoid of any magic or mystery until their imaginations and new-found optimism transform the claustrophobic environs into a wonderland. It’s the clash between their defiant enthusiasm for life and the beaten-down and jaded adults that provides this film’s highlights, with Bruce Willis and Ed Norton on especially good form as two men trying to make the most of a pretty crappy hand, before finding a spark of life in their attempts to help the lovestruck couple. And yet this is the least sentimental of Anderson’s movies, while also serving as his least cynical; a miraculous juggling of tone and intent from a director whose eyebrow often seems perpetually arched. It’s also another piece of evidence for SoC’s argument that Anderson is the finest and most intuitively brilliant comedic director of the current generation. Yes yes, I know, no one agrees, whatevs. But seriously, for your consideration, the trampoline shot. Come on!

22. Premium Rush

How frustrating it must be to be seen as merely “competent” by a critical monolith that doesn’t have time or patience to appreciate the craft of a filmmaker who instinctively knows their shit. David Koepp has been writing deceptively elegant populist screenplays for years, in addition to honing his directorial skills with a number of interesting films that almost hit the spot. Premium Rush is his first directorial effort that absolutely nails it, with a confident visual style, an intoxicating sense of momentum reminiscent of Speed, and the ability to pull sprightly and appealing performances from a well-chosen cast. There’s little else to it than the thrill of a chase, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s cocky bike messenger pursued by a magnificently, hypnotically unhinged Michael Shannon, but Koepp manages the action brilliantly and has fun filling in the margins of the tale, capturing the edginess of a dangerous but vibrant New York while portraying the community of the couriers as a sub-culture with its own rules and priorities. Mid-movie pacing problems can be forgiven when everything else in this exuberantly kinetic thriller is handled so deftly. And Shannon’s work cannot be praised enough. This should have attracted a bigger audience just for him alone.

21. Killing Them Softly

Everything’s going to hell in a handbasket; that much we know for sure (even though it possibly isn’t). Andrew Dominik is more sure than most. His follow-up to the magisterial The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is not about to hold back in its portrayal of America as a morally bankrupt, soul-deadened wasteland populated by venal opportunists, depressed to the point of inactivity, educationally backward and entitled, and he certainly isn’t about to miss an opportunity to drive the point home by including footage of the 2008 election campaign. It’s the kind of point-hammering that would normally drive SoC away, but perhaps I was particularly receptive to those sentiments on the day of viewing, or perhaps I was swayed by the bravura setpieces – such as the brutal, degrading beating and murder of one character, no spoilers – or the slow descent into numbness of James Gandolfini’s morbidly depressed hitman, or Brad Pitt’s increasing frustration with a culture that doesn’t value talent and instead seeks a quick buck. The sentiment expressed in this excoriating blast of fury at a broken society might be delivered with the smugness of a disgusted outsider, but to see Pitt’s electrifying delivery of his key speech is to feel like you just got told, son. It’s the kind of electrifying scene that becomes legendary.

20. Berberian Sound Studio

As with a number of films on this list, there’s a good chance this would rank higher after a few extra viewings, certainly to see if there is some sense to be made of the exasperating third act. If you can even call it that; writer-director Peter Strickland’s fealty to the weird atmosphere conjured up earlier appears to have taken over his mind as completely as the terrifying events in the in-movie movie The Equestrian Vortex do to poor sound engineer Gilderoy, leading to a dereliction of duty right before the end. But what menace, what madness, what delirious berserk horror he provides before that. Cleverly keeping The Equestrian Vortex offscreen, we’re forced to see this film through the eyes and ears of Toby Jones’ horrified technician, a man out of his element and soon unable to cope with the unfamiliar and hostile world he has been thrust into; the typical quiet middle-Englander who thinks of Europe as being the home of insidious decadence. Strickland ratchets up the tension with all sorts of visual and aural trickery, creating a disturbing world with a few sets and well-utillised darkness; this is one of the most technically accomplished films from a British director in a long time. Kudos to all involved, but special praise for Jones, who gives one of the performances of the year, all repressed rage and confusion, sympathetic and infuriating in equal measure.

19. Sightseers

It’s hard to think of another movie in recent years that oozes Britishness as much as this one. As with Berberian Sound Studio, Ben Wheatley has made a character study of what makes the classic British underdog tick, but whereas Peter Strickland’s film isolated its protagonist in Italy and made him weak, Sightseers gives us a murderous, gradually empowered couple to rival Malick’s Kit and Holly, or Tarantino/Stone’s Mickey and Mallory. Two old-at-heart lovers find themselves on the road, travelling north through England, killing those who break their unwritten but familiar codes, becoming emboldened by their love for each other and their transgressions. At first this seems like a simple translation of American homicidal road movies into a British vernacular but by its magnificently unhinged finale it feels like its own thing; a snapshot of everything that is ugly about our nation’s soul, with resentment aimed at those around us and at ourselves, all taking place against some of the country’s most beautiful landscapes. It’s also hilarious, and as quotable as that similarly bleak national self-portrait Withnail and I. With luck this clever and strangely lovable two-hander, deftly written by its stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, will find as large an audience.

18. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Peter Jackson’s urge to turn every project into some kind of epic has worked against him before, which is why even the idea that he was going to transform JRR Tolkien’s relatively slender children’s tale into a trilogy created such a backlash. Seeing the first installment places that decision into context; this is no longer a six movie adaptation of four books, more a world-building exercise for the confident New Zealander as he expands upon Tolkien’s tales. There’s a persuasive argument that that’s hubris but these projects are beginning to feel like a compilation of decades of visual and emotional reactions to Tolkien’s complex world, a smorgasbord of interpretations from readers and designers that brings something new to life; a fusion of literary work and fan appropriation that lives and breathes in a way even Tolkien never imagined, reminiscent of the mix of Burroughs and Cronenberg that gave us the movie Naked Lunch. The alterations to the original text are once more shrewd and exciting, his casting insights have again paid off, and even though even this fan can see that some trimming might have helped, what we’ve been given is yet another thrilling demonstration that Jackson is the pre-eminent fantasy filmmaker on the planet, and a persuasive argument that he should fight for the rights to The Silmarillion and keep making these films for the rest of his life. I’m sure he’d hate that, but some of us would be well chuffed.

17. Rust and Bone

You can’t go from making the greatest prison drama of recent times to a love story without bringing some of that grit with you, and Jacques Audiard’s adaptation of Craig Davidson’s short story is simultaneously tender and abrasive, like its beaten-down lovers. Bare-knuckle boxer Ali and gravely-injured Stéphanie seem like they’ve never even understood love before; their slow awakening to its possibilities, in a world of distrust and casual cruelty, would seem trite were it not for Audiard’s sure hand and the remarkable work from Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard. Their commitment to rehabilitate the critically derided love story genre and their low-key performances yield surprising dividends. Rust and Bone achieves moments of astonishing beauty amidst the grime of lives poorly lived; shadows like bruises pushed back by rays of blinding light provided by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine. There’s even beauty in the brutality that galvanises and saves our protagonists; our rubbernecking fascination in the awful things people do to survive cheekily justified by Audiard’s eye for the transcendental, and the luminous Cotillard’s triumphant, well-earned return to life. This can be dismissed as mere melodrama, but those crimson brush-strokes, and the conviction of all involved, turn it into something more than mere potboiler, a romance for the austerity age.

16. Compliance

It’s hard to shock an audience these days, but Craig Zobel has managed it with this simple but horrifying account of the Mount Washington prank call crime of 2004. The writer-director handles the slowly escalating tension with commendable confidence, his bravest choice being to pace this movie so deliberately, taking the time to let the horror of the events (the TRUE events, don’t forget) sink in and percolate in the nerves of the audience. Watching this with a crowd of people was the most startling cinematic experience of the year, with numerous walkouts and furious tirades aimed at the screen from viewers who couldn’t handle the slow degradation of the protagonists. Very little in recent years plays on our expectations as well as this, but while some critics have attacked it for being a purposeless exercise in baiting the crowd, this remarkable thriller’s only real fault is to have come out now and not during the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, when Zobel’s points about the ease with which people can be manipulated into doing terrible things might have seemed more timely. As it is, this is a memorable achievement, an experiment in which the events on screen are symbolically acted out by those who watch it; the ultimate in meta-narrative trickery, with our horrified reactions becoming part of the story. Seeing it at home defeats this film’s bold purpose. If you can see it in a roomful of disgusted co-voyeurs, you’ll understand its impact.

15. Painless

Juan Carlos Medina’s directorial debut, the tale of a village torn apart by the birth of several “painless” children, and a family hiding a dark secret, does many things brilliantly; it captures the agony of a country tainted by its terrible past, exorcises that pain by channeling it through metaphor, and offers hope that forgetting these terrors can lead to a new future for a generation now free of the experience of the Civil War. Just for achieving those things it would be remarkable, but for making something with such serious intent in a genre that has, for a few years, seemed to be coasting on found-footage exorcism movies and endless repetitive zombie rampages, Medina’s ambition shines even brighter. That’s before we get into his mastery of atmosphere, his skillful manipulation of the audience –especially during the almost unwatchably tense middle-section — and the bold creation of Berkano, a character surely ready to join the pantheon of horror greats. The bravura, operatic finale is a flourish well-earned; this is the best horror movie of the new decade – emotional, intellectual, and unflinching, made with an elegant touch that is easily a rival to new horror masters Del Toro and Bayona.

14. Jack Reacher

This kind of hoary thriller, based on the questionable novels that target armchair libertarian gun nuts who distrust all forms of authority except that which is dispensed by uncomplicated common-sense killing machines, is exactly the sort of thing that makes Shades of Caruso want to vomit up both lungs, and Chris McQuarrie’s adaptation of Lee Childs’ One Shot is no exception. Our hero is a macho force-of-nature full of old-fashioned values, with a dash of slut-shaming and a damsel-rescuing fetish thrown in for good measure. Everyone wants to fuck him or be him; Jack Reacher is a MAN’S MAN. This is the bad bit of the movie. The good bits? Almost everything else, from the shrewd casting (Rosamund Pike aside), to the attention to detail, to the exquisitely choreographed setpieces. The action is believably messy, the central mystery is intricate but comprehensible, and the inevitable pro-capital punishment argument is arguably tempered by the final scene. The retrograde politics repulse, but the old-school sharpness and focus of the filmmaking is undeniably thrilling to behold. To go back in time to a world of starkly shot and constructed thrillers of this calibre entails taking the rough of the past with the smooth, but considering how rarely we get smooth these days, McQuarrie deserves credit for at least taking the time to transform macho lead into cinema gold.

13. Argo

For those of us who have eagerly followed Ben Affleck’s career since he began to show promise, for those of us who pooh-poohed all of the mean gossip about how he and Matt Damon’s Oscar-winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting was really the work of William Goldman, for those of us who loved him in Changing Lanes and Hollywoodland and even Daredevil (God help us), oh my, this has been a long time coming. After Gone Baby Gone and The Town were described as being “surprisingly well-made considering it’s by Affleck”, the great man returned with his strongest and most confident movie yet and finally, FINALLY, everyone started giving him a break. To be honest this incredible tale of the rescue of six Iranian Embassy staff would be hard to screw up, considering the astonishing details about the fake sci-fi movie Argo and the crazy plot to fool the hardline regime of Iran, but Affleck goes above and beyond, offering up a riveting piece of big-screen entertainment, maintaining suspense from the first scene right through to the end while modulating the tone with a light touch. Add to that a cast packed full of beloved character actors — with special attention to lovable Bryan Cranston — and you’ve got the cheekiest film of the year; part heavily-detailed period piece with modern relevance, part adventure, with a touch of Wag The Dog thrown in.

12. The Bourne Legacy

Skyfall, and the two films before it, impressed Bond fans by taking the popular hero back to his beginnings and recasting his historical failings as consequences of his adventures, with a good man broken down and rebuilt in new form. The first three Bourne movies followed a similar path, with a lost man finding himself, ending with a journey back to the room in which he was “born”, followed by a metaphorical rebirth. The fourth Bourne movie reverses this trend, with a new character given a new lease of life by evil men, made to do evil things, but terrified of returning to his original self. As with the previous films the enemy here is the banal self-preservation instinct of venal bureaucrats, but for once they have done one good thing; delivering a man from oblivion, giving him the tools to make a future for himself; yet another example of how the Bourne movies defy expectation and complicate what could have been simple. That is pleasure enough, but Tony Gilroy also provides a masterclass in writing suspense, withholding information skilfully to build tension in the early scenes, keeping characters in the dark about others’ motivation (another convention of the series), before laying all the cards on the table with a breathtaking finale on the roads and rooftops of Manila. Dismissed as a misstep by critics during the summer, this espionage classic is due a revisit. Hopefully we’ll have time to realise that Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross is a worthy replacement for the franchise’s titular hero.

11. John Carter

Could it be SoC’s reflexive love of the underdog that saw this blog go out of its way to defend Andrew Stanton’s obscenely expensive love letter to pulp sci-fi? Was it sympathy that triggered a million tweets of desperate pleading for audiences to give this instantly dated old-school adventure a chance? Or was it a sense of injustice that something crafted with such affection for the source material and – at times – such storytelling skill could be dismissed with such ease by reviewers who likely got the scent of an easy kill in their nostrils? Perhaps it was just relief that, in a year where big-screen entertainments, for the most part, delivered so little, there was someone out there who was willing to put their reputation on the line to tell a tale that they loved and to do it with brio and enthusiasm and crowd-pleasing confidence. John Carter might have ended up the punchline of a million shitty jokes, but for a growing legion of fans this was the real deal; space opera with scale and imagination and spirit, light and uncynical and emotionally honest. It’s everything critics have been complaining has been missing from cinema, done with an open heart and the buccaneering spirit of the Golden Era of film; a Burt Lancaster carouser in a digital shell. This should have been loved from the moment it came out, but no matter. That love will come in time.

10. Dans La Maison

Storytellers prone to agonising over the conventions and expectations they need to consider as they practice their craft will likely find Francois Ozon’s dizzying adaptation of Juan Mayorga’s play The Boy In The Last Row a difficult film to watch, but they should swallow their pride and do it anyway. Much of this tale of a soured marriage, and how it is enlivened by tales spun by a mysteriously-motivated schoolboy, focuses on satirising the class prejudices of its smug middle-class characters, and treating the film as such is rewarding in itself, thanks to Ozon’s deft touch and witty approach. Nevertheless this is also about how we view life through the prism of expectation, either through the rigid rules of storytelling taught by Fabrice Luchini’s amusingly humourless protagonist, or the eagerness to treat the outside world as a display to sate our voyeurism; the world as stage, filled with people who forget that they are players as well as participants. If Haneke had directed this it would have been a gloomy parable; maybe better, maybe worse. Gratitude is due, then, to Ozon for whipping up something lightly entertaining yet multi-layered, critical but hopeful, cautionary but compassionate. It will reward repeat viewings for years to come.

9. Seven Psychopaths

You could see this as the typical balls-out, unrestrained debut of a director with more ideas on his mind than he knows what to do with, and in a way you’d be right. Martin McDonagh wrote this before In Bruges, before a number of his plays, and the feeling that he was running riot in his study, cramming jokes and setpieces and thoughts about writing into a screenplay that barely has time for it all. But if this doesn’t have the focus of The Pillowman or In Bruges, it does have the charm of an eager puppy. The way McDonagh picks at the mindset of the writer, the laziness of the mainstream story factory, and the process of transforming reality and previously-absorbed stories into a new form is endearingly frank; anyone who has ever written for a living would probably recognise the desperation and egotism of Colin Farrell’s brilliantly played anti-hero. Even more pleasing is the cast, all of whom are on top form, especially Shades of Caruso favourite Sam Rockwell at his very best, and Christopher Walken, here giving his strongest and most moving performance since Catch Me If You Can. McDonagh’s games with genre and narrative are a pleasing puzzle for the mind, but his craft as a director is improving; no one else could pull off the film’s surprisingly powerful final scenes while still keeping the tone this light.

8. The Dark Knight Rises

Christopher Nolan’s ambitions from one movie to the next have increased so much that surely the only thing he could do to top the scale of The Dark Knight trilogy is to cram the rise and fall of the Roman Empire into one four-hour epic. What makes The Dark Knight Rises a success, however, is not the eye-popping shots of a city at war with itself, or the image of the Bat soaring above the streets through concrete canyons, engines and rockets booming. The masterstroke is grounding the trilogy, turning what could have merely been a story about heroes and villains into the tale of a boy getting over his grief, locating the source of his unhappiness and overcoming it through sheer force of will. This simple arc would be satisfying enough, but it also serves as a warning to the audience about the consequences of giving in to despair. Bane represents a lie that the society we have built for ourselves is only a prison, a lie easily believed when the institutions we have built become corrupted by human venality. The Dark Knight trilogy has shown the people of Gotham inspired by a symbol to say that they can do better, if they say no loud enough while never losing their humanity to despair. If superheroes are meant to show the nobility of the hero, and the possibilities created by courage, then The Dark Knight Rises is possibly the ultimate example of this message.

7. Cabin in the Woods

Whoever thought Scream had the last word in deconstructing the horror genre ::says nothing but points at own chest with a look of regret:: was wrong. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon managed to do it with even more wit and energy than we had hoped. But their greatest achievement was to take a clever idea and run with it, to run so damn far that you never think they’ll stop. For a writer to see an explosion of ideas this extreme, and yet so grounded in honouring a single core concept – that this film will link the repetitive and necessary conventions of a subset of genre to every other subset you could imagine, creating an ur-myth of horror that accepts that genre is about honouring conventions because of our psychological make-up as well as in a completely fantastical made-up sense that explains the plot of this specific story – is to fall in love with the telling of stories all over again. They put SO MUCH STUFF in this movie, you guys, and it ALL WORKS COHERENTLY. Watching this is like being a part of the greatest and most satisfying brainstorming session ever, with the bonus that the finished product is not only clever but effective as a horror movie and also still hysterically funny. It’s the complete package; a story about story that’s also just a really good story. In a year in which meta-fiction proliferated, this was the most deliriously enjoyable example.

6. Cloud Atlas

As a fan of David Mitchell’s ambitious multi-layered novel this adaptation by Tom Tykwer and Wachowskis Lana and Andy had a lot to live up to, and for the most part it succeeds. Certainly this is a masterclass in editing, penny-pinching and thematic ambition, going all out to honour the book’s ideas about pan-temporal connection by using the same actors in each of the film’s six timeframes. Perhaps on first viewing this can be seen as a mistake; picking out familiar faces obscured by layers of make-up can be distracting. But then this is a movie not afraid to risk failure, and so we swing back and forth from one tone to the other, from farce to high drama, and all the while with the same disarming, open-eyed sincerity. Anyone with even a grain of cynicism will take nothing from this film, citing its simple message of love and hope as the kind of thing a fool cherishes. But a simple idea, told with this level of narrative complexity, deserves all the praise it can get. Ignore the idea of souls passing through the ages; this is a story that heralds the accretion of ideas across the ages through the narratives of our lives, passed on to those around us, and with those ideas the possibility that courage is transferable, and goodness cumulative. To do this Tykwer and the Wachowskis had to create a story like a web, one whose connections will only become completely apparent with further viewing; a perfect film for our connected and complicated age.

5. The Grey

Marketed as part of Liam Neeson’s late-career action renaissance, audiences must have been mystified at Joe Carnahan’s survival tale, in which the actual act of enduring horrors is secondary to exploring the idea of whether it’s even worth fighting against impossible odds. There’s no wolf-punching here, merely the struggle to squeeze the last few drops out of a life before death wins; a message far less palatable than the bluntly Manichaean battles Neeson usually fights. This high-mindedness has drawn its own criticisms; how dare this pulpy B-movie try to address the most important issues facing every human? But the disparity between the macho natures of the characters and the vulnerable, terrified survivors they become is arguably the ideal way to show how imminent death can humble all of us, leading to a final act of devastating power. Mamet may have given us a similarly symbolic tale of man vs. nature in his survival epic The Edge but even that most perceptive of masculine dramatists doesn’t approach what is accomplished here. Neeson has been great value in recent years but this remarkable, grueling movie represents his finest hour. We expected an ironic diversion, but Joe Carnahan and his star managed to achieve a kind of brutal, startling profundity. It’s a game-changer for both of them; let’s hope it leads to more ambitious work in the future.

4. Wolf Children

Pixar’s Brave was an interesting attempt to dramatise the love between a mother and her child within a magical framework, at times achieving breathtaking beauty and insight, but notably complicating an otherwise simple tale with anthropomorphic transmogrifications and such like. Your opinion of the movie may vary depending on how you take such things. Mamoru Hosoda’s Wolf Children does similar things to Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews’ Highland tale, showing the bond between a mother and her children, whose animal nature makes bringing them up even more challenging than usual. It also strikes right at the heart with a directness to equal the opening scene of Up, except stretched out to two hours. The result is exhausting; an assault on the senses and the emotions that left SoC weeping as if bereaved. With admirable honesty Hosoda — aided by a glorious score by Takagi Masakatsu — presents young motherhood as a struggle that can only end in loss, bringing pain leavened by the love and joy of family and community, while also taking time out to honour the fantastical nature of his protagonists without ever losing sight of the story’s emotional core. The delicate skill with which Hosoda dramatises young Hana’s trials is beyond doubt; whether we will ever recover from this lachrymose onslaught, this instantly cherishable masterpiece, remains to be seen.

3. The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson’s spiky movie expands on There Will Be Blood‘s loose narrative structure, presenting a tale of healing in which no one is healed, a tale of education in which no one learns anything, a tale of love in which no one finds love; a choice that has inevitably frustrated many. Freddie Quell and Lancaster Dodd’s peculiar rapport is less a meeting of minds, more the desperate embrace of two men lost in a storm, turning this into a tale of disappointment, both men holding onto a doomed relationship for selfish reasons, almost to the point of destroying each other. To tell that story, Anderson has created a drama that deflates as their friendship dissolves, a platonic love story where happy endings come from the characters realising they’re wasting each others’ time. How fitting that their only talents are for obfuscation and intoxication, in a movie that hides its purpose – the empty life of the charlatan – within scenes as brilliantly baffling as Dodd’s seemingly endless and ineffective deconstruction of his charge, or in a mise-en-scene so perfectly rendered by David Crank, Jack Fisk and Amy Wells, so luminously lit by Mihai Malaimare Jr., so energised by Phoenix and Hoffman at their very best. If There Will Be Blood is the tale of a man who loses his soul and doesn’t care, The Master is a story about two men who have lost sight of their souls but are too stupid and proud to realise it. Such desperation is rarely dramatised, and never before has it been done with such mesmerising and unpredictable immediacy.

2. Holy Motors

Is it possible to like a movie without having a concrete idea of what its intent actually is? Leos Carax’s critically adored festival crowdpleaser is a million mysteries at once, an anti-narrative sunburst of imagery, a handful of short stories that play with audience expectation in the most playful of ways. And that’s the key to appreciating Holy Motors, at least for this viewer. Carax sets his muse, the magical Denis Lavant, loose on Paris in a series of vignettes that set out to play to our expectations before dancing away in bizarre directions, all of which make a perfect dream-like sense, like an image caught at the edge of our vision. So is it a paean to the imminent death of cinema? Does it embrace the digital future? There’s enough in the movie to argue for either case, but also enough for interpretations that Carax is as interested in the stories we all live as in the ones we see on the screen. Lavant’s protagonist is a performer dancing to the tune of an unseen, possibly celestial organ grinder, but is he also just a human, transforming through a number of personas each day as we all do? Is Carax paying homage to the medium of cinema, or is he drawing attention to the audience, and how we live our lives in the light of stories remembered, where we find ourselves lost when real life takes unpredictable turns untold by our cinematic gods? Holy Motors will inevitably flourish upon further viewing, to be plundered for new ideas and interpretations, but this isn’t a barrier to immediate enjoyment. Carax’s joyous melange of image and sound, idea and mood, is welcoming, filled with a warmth and wit rare in art cinema, offering dreams within dreams within glorious dreams.

1. The Avengers

Shades of Caruso knows what it likes, and it rarely feels the urge to apologise for those likes. Yet this may be the most defensive entry in this list, simply because with all the will in the world I cannot argue that Joss Whedon’s superhero epic is a better film than Holy Motors, or The Master. It has a clumsy first hour or so. The plotline in which the team rebels against the machinations of SHIELD is underpowered. Whedon’s eye as a director is not the most reliable. The shady guys on the other end of Nick Fury’s phone feel like artificial obstacles and particularly stupid human beings. And so on, and so on. But my god, look at what it gets right. Look at the ambition of the Marvel Studios project, making these huge, gallumphing movies line up so that we could get this unifying vision at the end of it. Look at the wit on display, the dedication to bringing an entire universe of possibility to life, the effort to understand these icons as distinct and exciting viable characters. I mean, it’s like we got a movie with seven Indiana Jones’ in the lead, they’re that well drawn and likeable, and yet we take this incredible achievement for granted. Okay, I’m getting overexcited here but honestly, to most people this might be little more than a big summer event movie, one with a few nice jokes and some cool action. But to a few of us, this is the electrifying depiction of a childhood fantasy. It’s here! It’s really here! They did it!

It’s impossible to overstate how happy this movie made me. Last year I chose Jeff Nichols’ remarkable but troubling Take Shelter as my movie of the year because it perfectly captured my state of mind; desperately fearful of what is to come. This is the flipside. In times of strife we look back to the things that made us feel safe when we were children, and part of the success of The Avengers is down to its ability to make the audience feel young again, to give us unambiguous goodness and heroism versus unformed but undeniably nefarious threats and, most importantly, not to apologise for it. This is possibly the least complicated movie on this list, but for that reason I love it all the more. It’s “merely” well-wrought escapism, but the very best example of this since Back to the Future, maybe even earlier; a huge, unifying blast of populist joy that turns packed cinemas into some kind of communal dream palace cum stadium. Film lovers worry about the future of the medium, but should resist their negativity, even if it means accepting “hokum” as the solution. Whedon and Marvel Studios brought fun back to cinema this year in the most overwhelming, exhilarating manner imaginable. Nothing in 2012 has made me as euphoric as this delirious display of optimism and spectacle, nothing else left me reeling in this way. So screw the apologies, cancel the equivocation. The year belongs to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and so does my heart.

Honorable Mentions:

Chronicle: The only film this year to make the increasingly miserable found-footage genre seem like a viable option. Josh Trank and Max Landis’ superhero movie is actually more a supervillain saga, with Dane DeHaan’s unhappy and sympathetic lost soul becoming a force of darkness upon discovering great power. His increasing instability leads to an ending that evokes memories of Akira. Thrilling, imaginative, emotionally resonant; this is a superb debut, and an instant classic of the genre.

The Pirates: In An Adventure With Scientists!: Finally, Aardman Animations lives up to its potential as an animation powerhouse with this inventive and joke-packed crowdpleaser. For too long they’ve coasted on affection for their endearing shorts, but screenwriter Gideon Defoe, adapting from his popular children’s novel, has brought a necessary sly and snarky wit to a studio whose output can sometimes seem a little too polite. Aardman are looking for backers to fund a sequel; if I had the money I’d fund it myself.

Magic Mike: Congratulations to Steven Soderbergh for making a movie that is defiantly harder to love than the garish good-time movie promised by the ads and yet still made money and generated good word of mouth. That’s how smart and absorbing this story of thwarted entrepreneurial spirit and economic difficulty is; come for the gyrating and greased-up abs, stay for the low-key character drama. And some more abs, cuz seriously, there’s a lot of them, mostly flexing on Channing Tatum’s belly.

21 Jump Street: Regular readers will know that we’re the world’s biggest fans of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which dissects movie cliches with the precision of a coroner. This adaptation of the ludicrous 80s TV series looked and sounded like a misfire for Cloudy‘s directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, but even if it’s not as good as their animated masterwork, it’s still sharp, silly, and perfectly judged, with a stand-out performance from the increasingly lovable Tatum.

The Man With The Iron Fists: If there’s a place in the world of cinema for movies made with precision, sobriety and emotional complexity, there should also be a place for balls-out enthusiasm and goofiness. The haphazard style of The Man With The Iron Fists betrays RZA’s desperate attempts to cram in as many homages to his beloved martial arts genre as possible, but goddamn it, at one point Lucy Liu kicks a guy’s head off, and later RZA punches someone’s eye out. Sometimes this is exactly what you need in your life.

And sometimes what you need in life are SHIT MOVIES and that’s what’s coming up next: my worst movies of the year list.

New Poll: What Was Your Favourite Movie Of 2012?

Posted on December 27, 2012 by admiralneck

Good afternoon – or morning — you slubberdegullions and ne’er-do-wells. It’s that time of the year again – a time of lists and polls and agonising over the ordering of films that really you’re not that crazy about if you’re going to be honest, but for the sake of neatness and getting the list up to a big enough number you have to figure out if you preferred Resident Evil: Retribution to This Means War (I can imagine a lot of film bloggers have been fretting over that one for the past few months). Shades of Caruso’s traditional Listmania! blow-out is still under construction, but until that moment, I can at least gather together the findings of the poll to find my readership’s favourite film of 2011, and I have to say, considering all the talk about the girthy Fassmember or the return of Lynne Ramsay, the result is not what I expected…

Tinker, Typist, Souljah, Spelunker (10 votes = 16.95%)
Drive, He Didn’t Say (8 votes = 13.56%)
Rise and Rise Again, Until Apes Become BrainApes (7 votes = 11.86%)
Cheer Up, Kirsten Dunst, It Might Never Happen (5 votes = 8.47%)
It’s a Tree, Yeah, And It’s, Like, A Metaphor For Life, Man (5 votes = 8.47%)
We Need To Talk About Thor’s Lickable Deltoids (4 votes 6.78%)
Jean Dujardin Is: L’Artiste Adorable! (4 votes = 6.78%)
Harry Potter and the Dirty Pillows, Part 12 (3 votes = 5.08%)
Mission Unpossible: Goat Prototype (2 votes = 3.39%)
Cheer Up, Michael Fassbender’s Penis, It Might Never Happen (2 votes = 3.39%)
We Need To Talk About Captain America’s Ripped Abs (2 votes = 3.39%)
Pirates Of The Caribbean: A Lovely Nap (2 votes = 3.39%)
Cheer Up, Michael Shannon, It Might Never Happen (1 vote = 1.69%)
Lynne Ramsay’s One Colour: Red (1 votes = 1.69%)
Twilight: The One With The Werepaedo (1 votes = 1.69%)
We Need To Talk About Green Lantern’s Shitty CGI Onesie (1 vote = 1.69%)
We Need To Forget About Charles Xavier’s Thinkyfingers Gesture (1 vote = 1.69%)
Tarsem’s Immortale, Pour Homme (0 votes)
Zack Snyder’s What’s Wrong With Being Sexy? (0 votes)
Therapeutic: Freud Vs Jung (0 votes)
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Lizard Thingy (0 votes)
Hey Kids! It’s Uncle Marty’s “Fun With Film Preservation!” (0 votes)
Transformybots: Bang of the Boom (0 votes)
The Adventures of Tintin: The Whiny of the Butthurt (0 votes)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wins! It even beat Drive, which I suspect was the pick of many of my American readers, while the Le Carre adaptation appealed more to the Brits. I’d be able to study this theory with more data if I was willing to pay for Polldaddy Pro, but fuck that, it’s more than I can afford even to pay for the blog URL and we’re talking pennies there. Or maybe it’s just a Cumberbatch thing. I know what you guys are like. The other big surprises in that poll are the surprisingly strong showing for Rise of the Planet of the Apes — a summer crowdpleaser that hold up to repeated viewings — and the single vote for Green Lantern, which I’m convinced is some son-of-a-bitch trolling me, because that film stank even worse than I wrote a year ago and knowing someone chose that is like a badly rendered CGI dagger to my heart.

And now to the new poll, which should be up in the left-hand column of this new blog template (yes, I decided grey on grey, font size 0.5 was a bit hard on the eyes). Once more I shall keep this open all year to give people a chance to catch up to everything from 2012 as 2013 progresses. The choices are:

Michael Haneke’s Stop The Pigeon!
Marvel Presents Marvel’s The Assemblers In: Marvel’s Assemblers Avengle
Twilight: Paralysing Vapours Part The Seventeenth
Hanks on Hanks on Hanks (on Hanks on Hanks on Hanks)
A Film About Tiger Pie? I Don’t Get It
The Adventures of Teddy Fuxpin
DC Presents DC’s The Bat Man In: Fun With DIY Orthopedics
2 Expendable, 2 Tedious
It’s Like Disco Beetlejuice But With Vampires, You See? Will This Do?
The Limo, The Actor, His Penis, and Eva Mendes In A Niqaab
Little Jackie Reacher’s Big Manly Adventure
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper (If You Are Liam Neeson) (See Also: Wolves)
The Spy Who Loved Those Space-Agey Brain Pills They Have Now
Sony Pictures Re-Presents: Marvel’s The Unappealing Spider-Grouch
Channing Tatum In: School of Cock
The Hoooooooooooooooobbiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
Farty Phoenix And The Philosophy Of Bollocks
The Bond Introspection
Alien Vs. Fanboys: Mortem Ad Lindelof
Spike Lee Presents: Spike Lee’s Old Beef Against Quentin Tarantino – A Spike Lee Joint
Yay / Boo For CIA Torture (Delete According To Political Affiliation)
Katniss Luvs Gale Or GTFO
Les (Photographie) Misérable (Et Importun)

So there you have it. If your favourite film isn’t up there, I’m sorry, but I have too much pride to add Snow White and the Huntsman to this list no matter how much money it made through some kind of dark sorcery. In the event of a missing film, please choose one anyway; your votes are appreciated even if it’s not your first pick and the thought of selecting something else makes you kinda furious at me. As for my choice of these films? We’re getting closer to Listmania! 2012, where I shall reveal my choice; a pick that is so predictable that anyone who has spent more than two minutes talking to me this year will already know what it is. Keep checking back this week, as well as for my galaxy-distorting Spotify Playlist Of Annual Brilliance (feat. Grimes and that Dan Deacon fellow).

BFI LFF 2012: Dans La Maison / Seven Psychopaths

Posted on October 26, 2012 by admiralneck

Regular readers will be fully aware/entirely sick of my repeated references to #TheProject, my in-progress stupidly ambitious tale of events, happenings and things (all plot deets embargoed for now) which has taken a backseat while I attempt to earn a crust writing this blog (if WordPress ever sends me my royalties, that is). Cryptic comments about #TheProject have taken the place of actually doing anything to complete #TheProject; troubling, but it at least makes me feel like it’s going to get completed, despite the massive plot cavity I’m currently trying to fill with word-caulk. One consequence of this mental struggle means I’m more aware of narrative theories presented by writers I follow, some of which make sense (though I’d prefer a dose of NZT, thanks).

However, I’m starting to get alarmed at the focus on “The Rules”, which at their best can be interesting ideas about how to enhance your stories, but at worst can be absurdly prescriptive constraints that can, if misunderstood, make every story basically a different flavoured version of all other stories. This focus on how stories fail when they wander outside the lines of what constitutes a “univerally-agreed” successful plot has led to some surprising critical reactions to stories that I thought were doing some fun, bold things. Even if only in terms of novelty or ambition, I think that’s worthwhile, but more importantly we all benefit when those rules are stretched, or shattered intentionally to generate emotion, make a point, or experiment with new techniques.

This is what has been on my mind for months now, making me more attuned to navel-gazing conversations about creators and their approach to art. The conversation between Arthur Krystal of the New Yorker and novelist Lev Grossman has been particularly fascinating in terms of what fiction is capable of. Krystal’s first paywalled article is here, Grossman’s response is here, and the latest installment is here. Thanks to friend-of-the-blog and excellent genre writer Sam Binnie for pointing me at that most recent, rage-inducing article (buy her book!). Yesterday saw The Wachowskis promoting Cloud Atlas, which they co-directed with Tom Tykwer. Their response to a question about why they resist interviews about their work really chimed with me:

Andy Wachowski: It’s four years on Cloud Atlas, and so I sort of resent the fact that now I have to sit down and explain it to people. It’s like the whole dialogue has been lost about… When I was a kid, we would go to movies as a family, and then we’d sit down and talk about them. I feel like this is the instantaneous-gratification generation, where they can just look it up and say, “Oh, well, this is what it means.” Our movies require a little bit of effort.

Lana Wachowski: And you feel it in a lot of critics’ approach today toward cinema. As soon as they encounter a piece of art they don’t fully understand the first time going through it, they think it’s the fault of the movie or the work of art. They think, [dramatic voice] “It’s a mess.”

Andy: [Dramatic voice] “This doesn’t make sense.”

Lana: “This doesn’t make any sense.” And they reject it, just out of an almost knee-jerk response to some ambiguity or some gulf between what they expect they should be able to understand, and what they understand.

As someone who has passionately, lengthily, exhaustively argued many times with many people over the quality of the Matrix trilogy and Speed Racer (or lack thereof; I’m no opinion-Nazi), I know what they mean. Just this week I tried to grapple with Post Tenebras Lux, though of course I was lucky to be writing blogposts for WordPress instead of being forced to write to a website or newspaper/magazine deadline (seriously, WordPress are going to be sending me a cheque soon, right?). Some critics argued it was a waste of time. With the space afforded to me, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t an incomprehensible jumble of images, and tentatively gave it a sort of thumbs up. Yay me, I guess.

Which brings me to two movies shown at the London Film Festival which deal with the process of telling a story, and how expectations of what stories should do to be a success conflicts with ambition and intention. François Ozon’s Dans La Maison, adapted from Juan Mayorga’s play The Boy in the Last Row, concerns a jaded teacher, M. Germain (an fabulously grouchy performance from Fabrice Luchini), who discovers a talented pupil in his literature class. Claude (Ernst Umhauer) engages with a standard “What did you do last weekend?” essay question to a degree no one else in the class does, by relating a tale of how he has insinuated his way into a family that he has been interested in for at least a year.

Germain and his wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) are electrified by Claude’s peculiar and unpredictable tale, and the teacher urges his pupil to continue under the pretence of improving his writing, but also because of the voyeuristic thrill of this stealthy invasion. Claude’s tale is at first laden with class-based envy, leading to a caricatured portrayal, but under Germain’s guidance he begins to approach the “Rapha” family with greater compassion, leading to a richer download of information for his delighted audience-of-two, but also affecting his growth as a person. As the film progresses, though his spirit returns, Germain becomes compromised in his urge to receive more of these exciting updates, and Claude’s friendship with the family becomes precarious.

Ozon masterfully plays with the levels of fiction and “reality” here, creating a symbiosis between the art of storytelling and the act of living, from Germain and Jeanne’s feeble justifications for their almost prurient fascination with Claude and his adolescent crush on Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner), to Claude’s clever manipulation of his teacher and ever-shifting accounts of what goes on in the Rapha household. The audience is given an unreliable view of his actions, shown through the eyes of a boy not only fantasising about his importance within the family, but also his self-worth, his rationalisation for his actions, and his relationship with Germain, who he regards with a fascinating mixture of respect and disdain.

Everyone’s intentions and desires are obscured, but Germain’s questionably-motivated tutoring has other consequences. Germain becomes so intoxicated with the chance to live vicariously through his student that he too becomes entwined with Claude and the Raphas, both in reality and fiction. Once he becomes part of the story, no amount of writerly knowledge can protect him from the ramifications; either a consequence of his hubris or his prosaic talents as a writer. On first viewing I found the finale a little unsatisfying but the more I think about it I see Ozon, as well as offering a kind of open ending for Germain and Claude, has also contrasted the neatness of narrative and the mess of life. Not an original idea, but one entertainingly depicted.

It also calls into question the efficacy of Germain’s advice, which while solid enough also “tames” Claude. There’s a chance that the story he would have told would be sour, bizarre, even dangerous; his motives are unclear at first, which leads to some suspense early on, and accounts for part of Germain and Jeanne’s curiosity. The teacher’s interference channels Claude’s intentions, and creates a tension between the irrepressible spirit of the untamed teenager possibly giving in to his impulses (for better or worse), and Germain’s instinct to create a more conventional tale of a young boy falling in love with an older woman. Of course, while Germain focuses on this story, he ignores an unpredictable threat from another “character” who won’t play by the expected rules.

Story rules as the taming of ideas, real life as the chaos that surrounds it. At the same time Jeanne tries to keep her art gallery afloat as the philistine twins who fund it consider closing it. Jeanne’s ideas for generating publicity include lazily transgressive fusions of sexual imagery and fascist iconography, and bland computer-generated artworks or interactive installations, while at the same time finding pompous comfort in the thought that the family whose experiences they have been vampirically living off are the kind of ignoramuses who have Klee prints on their walls but don’t understand them. The only person who seems to genuinely want to learn about himself through art is Claude, and Germain’s prodding threatens to blunt this innocent eagerness.

At least, this is how I saw it. It would have been nice to have spent more time dissecting it, but after the screening off I raced to meet a friend prior to another screening, and if anything can wipe a mind’s blackboard it’s a trip on the Victoria line. There is so much to ponder in this complex story about story that it’s easy to forget that it’s also deliciously funny and lightly played. This isn’t a stuffy exercise in navel-gazing; though it tackles ideas about authorial intent, the impossibility of creating something without imposing yourself onto it, and the negative effect of pandering to an audience, it’s a delight from start to finish, even if I thought the final act went on too long. See? Even I can’t help interfering. WordPress should be proud to have me on the payroll.

If Ozon is curious about the interplay between artist, art, and audience, and unconsciously references genteel tales of middle-class ennui and yearning such as Six Degrees of Separation and Manhattan Murder Mystery, Martin McDonagh’s approach to exploring the constraints imposed on story by genre is feistier, and Seven Psychopaths is a much more flamboyant trip through layers of narrative, cliche, and viewer expectation. His follow-up to In Bruges shares some DNA with his play The Pillowman, as he uses the tale of a blocked screenwriter and his feckless dog-napping best friend to lampoon the well-worn tropes used in traditionally “male” genres — basically the kinds of tales that feature gangsters, buddy relationships, gun fights, and psychopaths.

Colin Farrell plays Marty Faranan, a screenwriter attempting to write a tale about seven psychopaths which will somehow convey a message of love and hope not traditionally found in stories about psychopaths — a commendable intention, to transcend the rules of the genre as I would hope all writers would aspire to do, at least to some degree. Hopelessly blocked on how to do this — and now writer’s block! McDonagh was speaking right to me — Marty takes on board plot and character suggestions from his friend Billy (possibly Sam Rockwell’s most entertaining performance yet), but withholds credit from him, selfishly pretending that he is the sole author of a story that is actually being influenced by real world events he doesn’t fully understand.

A series of bad choices by Billy leads to the two men and companion Hans (Christopher Walken’s best work since Catch Me If You Can) eluding a vengeful mobster (Woody Harrelson), before trying to save their lives and finish the screenplay that echoes their predicament. Their solutions conform to and transcend the conventions of the action genre, with Marty’s noble ideas hijacked by Billy’s cliched suggestions as well as the deadly impositions of the “real” world, which has its own demented film-based rules. By placing this in a familiarly illogical setting, where for example “psychopaths” have the convenient symptoms found in lazily researched narratives, this love letter to genre ends up with a lot of critical footnotes, and questions whether writing rules can be broken without breaking the story, and whether we should just embrace them for what they are.

Notably the movie barely features is women, with the two lead actresses in the credits — Abbie Cornish and Olga Kurylenko — barely getting anything to do, and the one well-drawn female character being Hans’ wife Myra (Linda Bright Clay — a scenestealer in her short time onscreen). Without seeking to derail this post, it’s worth addressing this absence, which became quite a talking point after the movie ended, primarily because of a line in the movie about the fact that male-oriented action movies regularly dismiss, ignore or under-represent its female characters; a self-aware line in a movie that, to that point, had sidelined its two female leads into near-invisibility, and gives a better idea of McDonagh’s satirical intention.

McDonagh and producer Graham Broadbent appeared after the movie with LFF director Clare Stewart for a Q&A during which he responded to a question about the treatment of the female characters. At first he seemed (this is my impression; I could be wrong) that he’s been asked this question before, and no one had given him enough credit for creating Myra (who is indeed a terrific character). He revealed that there were more scenes with Cornish, but they were dropped for various reasons in post-production (Kurylenko may also have had more to do; the image below is not in the film). He then vowed that his next project would feature many “strong female characters”, a comment that got a laugh, mostly because it was delivered with a weariness that made it clear he’s said it before.

Despite the arguably dismissive reply (as I say, this is my impression of his tone but others found his response unsatisfactory) I think the deliberate choice to make Abbie Cornish’s girlfriend character a cypher who is treated like absolute shit by Rockwell’s insecure best friend archetype was the right thing to do, simply because it is done with such unapologetic vigour. Marty and Billy come off as assholes for treating her poorly; they’re the symbolic buddies you find in any number of lazily-scripted action movies, and they’re called on their crap by Hans, the most sympathetic and noble character in the film, the only male adult in a film full of pathetic children. The line gets a laugh, but it also sends the audience back to earlier scenes for reappraisal.

Answering another question, McDonagh referred to his interest in Sam Peckinpah’s movies; a telling comparison considering how the notoriously macho director used his movies to work through his issues with aggressive masculinity and his own relationships with women. I talked about Peckinpah’s struggle with his masculine nature in this end-of-year review of the Straw Dogs remake (scroll down). Straw Dogs was an expression of his ambivalence toward the stress between his public image and his inner nature, with the character Amy reduced to pawn status in the middle of a battle between Alpha and Beta males, though Amy is arguably more complex than most female characters in movies, as shown by the “stronger” less-interesting Amy in Rod Lurie’s remake.

To display the misogynist tendencies of the genre, and formulaic Hollywood product in general, McDonagh excludes the women closest to Marty and Billy to the most extreme degree, and only gives agency to Hans’ wife Myra, both of whom don’t correspond to the traditional action movie protagonist template (e.g. they’re old, they’re an interracial couple). The homoerotic overtones of the buddy sub-genre are mixed with the casual disposability of story-complicating women in action movies, a trope McDonagh makes fun of while using it to great effect. Much as I don’t want to admit it, the most upsetting scene in the film, in terms of shifting the audience’s allegiance behind one of the protagonists involves exactly the trope being mocked (and references Scott and Tarantino’s similarly violent tale True Romance), which makes the audience question their acceptance of this convention.

McDonagh may note the efficacy of these dramatic choices, but through Hans’ line he also expresses a hope that female roles in this genre will be improved in order to give a voice to the voiceless, an admission that the emotional impact of using female characters as a narrative tool comes with a cost that is only recently being debated. Look at the recent uproar over the new Tomb Raider game, in which Lara Croft is given an origin story that includes the threat of sexual assault. The discussion of the treatment of women in narratives is rightly addressing these issues, and statements about “strong female characters” mean nothing if all that means is better-defined biceps and abs on women who are still victimised, sidelined, or used as motivational tools in a male-led narrative.

I suspect your mileage may vary on whether McDonagh is lazily casting aside criticisms of poorly-written women in macho cinema with one well-timed laugh line, or whether he is forcefully iterating his objection to it by reducing Cornish and Kurylenko’s roles to almost nothing in favour of scenes in which his male characters, who mistreat or ignore them, are portrayed as pitiful child-men scrabbling to survive in a world more dangerous than they realised. I’m willing to give McDonagh the benefit of the doubt because he brought it up, but I understand and support concerns about disappointing representations of women in the media, and hope that future works by him do branch out past his interest in what it is to be a man as he sort of promised, to focus on what it is to be human.

As for McDonagh’s games with storytelling, he does an excellent job of playing with our expectations of what these movies require to be considered satisfying by less questioning audiences, most notably in a superb sequence in which Billy, finally given free reign to participate in Marty’s writing process, gives his version of how the ending (of the screenplay but also their predicament) should unfold, which conforms to every boneheaded cliche about action movies you can imagine, including absurd levels of cartoonish violence. The way the movie ends, playing against and with these cliches, is one of its most enjoyable aspects, topped with a graceful final note that I can’t spoil, other than to say this writer gaped in awestruck appreciation of McDonagh’s talent.

I spent the movie’s running time in a state of bliss, thrilled by its depiction of the struggle between the writer and his material, his ambition and the constraints of genre, not to mention how our stories are affected by all the stories in our past and what we think are the essential components of them. Genre conventions are only recognisable once we’ve experienced numerous tales with a certain structure and consistent components. The good thing about such exposure is you absorb these important elements and can deploy them without thinking about them too deeply. The bad thing is you take the elements for granted or see them as unchangeable, leading to stagnation. A million identikit stories, all making the same mistakes as those that came before.

Seven Psychopaths is a response to the stifling expectations of genre storytelling, addressing the genre limitations while providing a film as entertaining and wittily written as the best movies of this kind, in much the same way Shane Black did in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. McDonagh highlights our lazy acceptance of these elements and then offers them up to us again to show how silly they seem in a new context; the “Rules” suffering a judo assault from a master storyteller, using their power against them, showing their flexibility when tested by an ambitious artist. The result is invigorating, and, to those of us with a vested interest in working in genre writing, inspiring. Man, I gotta get back to #TheProject. That’s it, WordPress, I’m handing in my notice.

The International And A Man Of Mystery

Posted on March 11, 2009 by admiralneck

There are some movies that I’m sure are made specifically with me in mind. Last year Speed Racer, Redbelt, and John Woo’s magnificent Red Cliff made me incredibly happy, much as I had expected. They would have had to be total failures for me not to appreciate them on some level. This year the same applies to Ninja Assassin, Inglourious Basterds, and Transformerbots 2: Revenge of the Subset of Transformerbots Known As The Fallen Transformerbots. In different ways they all feature something that appeals to some part of my brain, be it fighting robots, Rain kicking people in the skullparts, or Nazi scalp-hunting.

Another genre I eat up with a big-ass spoon is the dour corporate thriller, which seems to be undergoing a revival thanks to the success of Michael Clayton. Tony Gilroy appears to be thriving with these movies. His next, Duplicity, looks like a frothier entry than most, a Thomas Crown Affair-style romp with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts flirting through Europe while conning evil corporate scum played by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson. Other than the presence of the bafflingly successful Roberts, that’s another movie you would have to restrain me to stop me from seeing. As I said in my Push review, I adore con movies, though it’s hard to be caught out by one as you go in expecting a big shock twist in the final scene. That’s deadly, as I spend the whole movie trying to figure out what that final con will be. One day I’ll learn how to switch that impulse off.

Another genre piece I felt compelled to see (even though it nearly killed me to see four movies in one week) was Tom Tykwer’s The International, a much-sterner, Pakula-esque kind of corporate thriller than Gilroy’s forthcoming movie. Just to really sell me on it, the cast was headed by Clive Owen (this time in vengeful, non-flirty mode), Naomi Watts at her most pale, and Armin Mueller Stahl, again staking a claim to the roles that would previously have been automatically handed to Max Von Sydow. The two leads are guaranteed to raise my interests, Owen since his superb performance in Children of Men, and Watts ever since playing Jet Girl in the otherwise unforgivable Tank Girl. Yes yes, I know…

WARNING!!! INTERNATIONAL SPOILERS AHEAD!

I hadn’t even noticed the movie at first, so hectic are things at the moment, until I read the usual slew of reviews on its day of release. The plot grabbed my attention instantly, even if it is doing little more than taking the standard corporate conspiracy thriller template and adding topical(ish) elements to the open slots. Owen is a former Scotland Yard police officer now working for Interpol, investigating the shady actions of a bank (the International of the title) with the help of the CIA (and pale Naomi). While everyone around Owen thinks this is a standard investigation that will proceed along traditional lines, our hero is convinced that the bank is responsible for numerous obstructive acts, from bribery to murder. No one believes him, and throughout the movie his options shrink to none, until he is forced to go off the grid to find justice.

It’s shocking how little The International deviates from convention. Europe is traversed many times over, bugs are found in phones, pencil-pushing superiors shut down investigations with the phrase “You’ve no idea what a shitstorm you’ve created!”, hyper-capitalist bad guys are as nonchalant as you can be without starting every sentence with “Meh”, and assassins know where video cameras are located in airports and tilt their heads accordingly.

That adherence to convention is almost laughable at times. In one scene our heroes have gone to Milan to meet Umberto Calvini (played by Luca Giorgio Barbareschi, with the finest head of hair cinema has seen in years), a politician who is willing to give them the lowdown on what The International is trying to achieve with their plan to facilitate the sale of a few measly missiles. It’s a fantastic stream of exposition, linking international banking to arms deals and profiting from war and the crippling debt it generates, turning the people of the world into indentured slaves.

Thrilling stuff, and based not only on the BCCI scandal of recent times (rather cheekily, The International is officially called the International Bank of Business and Credit), but also the kind of revelations you could find in John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman, as well as being a not-too subtle dig at the International Monetary Fund’s method of generating indebtedness in the countries it “helps”. It’s the kind of revelation you don’t expect to see in a mainstream movie, unless it really is a sign that people are waking up to the unsavoury practices of our financial institutions, and seeing that Capitalism is a system that can easily be abused to wreck billions of lives when ethics are compromised and regulation is removed.

Sadly, that scene ends with Calvini hilariously announcing that he doesn’t have time to give Owen and Watts any more info at that moment, even though it surely couldn’t take long. The dialogue goes exactly like this:

You’ll have to excuse me, I’m afraid. I couldn’t possibly give you that easily explainable piece of information you desperately need, because of Reason X. I have to go outside to give a speech to my supporters on a stage in the middle of a plaza surrounded by buildings that provide a perfect vantage point for numerous snipers, and as you can imagine, this being Italy, the movie birthplace of corruption, the head of the Carabinieri has almost certainly been bribed into helping cover it up. Kindly wait for a few minutes, and when my brains exit stage left, please rush through a panicky crowd in a futile attempt to get to me. You could also solve the crime that the few honest policemen cannot figure out while you are here. Use those techniques from CSI and a modicum of common sense to do so. That will prove entertaining to the audience, and will please me while I watch from the afterlife.

Okay, he doesn’t say all of that, but he might as well have done.

The International sure does love the idea of political assassinations. The film begins with Owen’s partner getting killed in much the same way Georgi Markov was killed in 1978, and ends with a Mafia hit that brings up memories of the murder of Roberto Calvi. Inbetween those scenes, so many people get shot by unseen assailants that by the midpoint of the movie you expect every character filmed in medium frame to suddenly erupt in squibby death. A lot of the time that is indeed what happens.

So why, if the movie is so predictable, did I think it was the best film I saw last week, far superior to Franklyn, Push, and Zack Snyder’s lamentable waste of time and money, Watchmen? Mostly because I lap this stuff up with a spoon. The lone avenger, abandoned by everyone, facing down the might of the corporate-military-industrial complex in a heroic last stand, assailed by the seemingly unvanquishable monolith of The System, and dwarfed by their sterile, inhuman steel architecture; that’s the stuff. The Parallax View, Michael Clayton, All The President’s Men; even the fantasy sub-genres like The Matrix or the first X-Files movie; I can’t get enough.

Just to make me even happier, Clive Owen does a fantastic job as the rumpled loner, out of his depth but driven to break the law to find the truth. He even gets to wear his trademark long coat, that has served him so well in Children of Men and Shoot ‘Em Up, making him look like a rumpled, handsome Jacques Tati driven to the edge by the vicissitudes of modern life. With every new performance I like him more and more.

Watts has much less to do, but I’d happily watch her play a switchboard operator for two hours. The supporting cast are great too. Patrick Baladi (forever to be known as David Brent’s super-competent boss in The Office) is amusingly slick and obstructive as the IBBC lawyer who gets in Owen’s way. Ulrich Thomsen is suitably impassive and creepy as the IBBC head who calmly leads his bank down a immoral path. Bryan F. O’Byrne radiates unnerving professionalism as the assassin that Owen chases for much of the movie.

Best of all, Mueller-Stahl does superb, haunting work as the former Stasi officer who has sold his soul to Capitalism, still performing terrible acts but now so dead to the ramifications of his actions that he no longer cares who he works for or what political beliefs they hold. An interrogation scene between him and Owen that comes late in the film is chilling, even though, yet again, Eric Warren Singer’s script serves up a beige platter of “truth this” and “justice that”. The committed performances transcend the humdrum dialogue.

The only real variable when deciding whether or not to watch this was Tom Tykwer. I’ve only seen Lola Rennt, which was a lot of fun and doubled as a great introduction to the sorely underemployed Franka Potenta. Other than that, I’ve missed out on Heaven, his adaptation of Kieslowski’s last script, and even though I have recorded Perfume seemingly dozens of times via Sky+, it always gets deleted before I get to see it as we need room for Daily Show, Colbert Report, or Grand Designs. Some day, you weird-looking film based on a beloved German novel. Some day.

I’ve always had the impression that Tykwer was like the German Danny Boyle, randomly throwing wacky visuals at the screen with little care for whether the scene needed them or not, or what the overall tone of the movie should be. It’s not really fair of me to assume that on such little evidence, but this reputation has existed whether or not I’ve seen them. Considering the material he is working with here, would he wreck the movie with endless, pointless flashiness?

The answer is hell no. Tykwer turns in a classy, restrained, but exciting thriller, swallowing any showy impulses to deliver a taut conspiracy piece. Even better, he delivers a couple of superb set-pieces. The first, the murder of Owen’s partner, builds brilliantly from innocuous calm to panic and death, and all it features is a heart attack and Clive Owen crossing a road. Tykwer takes what should be a simple scene and imbues it with horrible menace. Not bad for one minute of film. De Palma would have been proud.

The second is the lauded shootout in the Guggenheim Museum, with Owen attempting to apprehend the assassin who has been busy killing the majority of the supporting cast to that point. What starts as a simple tail ends up being a bloody and brutal massacre, leaving the gallery shattered and bullet-ridden. In a way it’s probably a terrible scene, being far more violent and extreme compared to the mild thrills to that point, but a setpiece as thrillingly staged as this deserves praise, especially when it is shot and edited with such clarity and attention to detail. Even more impressive, the scene is filmed on a set built to the exact specifications of the original building. It boggles my mind. Some of the effects are rough and ready, but no matter. It raised the blood pressure brilliantly, and certainly throws Owen’s life into such turmoil that he can no longer afford to play by the rules, thus setting up the finale.

For all of the predictability of the conspiracy plot, as well as some glaring illogicalities (the final confrontation ends with an unbelievable leap of logic, and I don’t mean Owen’s sudden ability to travel internationally despite the warrant for his arrest), it was a satisfying experience. Would it get on my end of year list? Not a chance, unless we’re in for a terrible year. However, I’m thrilled that Tykwer, a director I had ignored in the past, has been able to serve the story so well, intelligently staging the action and the suspense, creating a coherent visual template (all cold steel, granite and glass, until the finale in an alien locale where all bets are off), and not distracting the audience with extraneous narrative and/or visual trickery.

That ability to adapt his style to the material has given me new respect for his talents, even if The International is merely on the right side of average. There is a possibility that his next project will be an adaptation of David Mitchell’s stunning novel Cloud Atlas, produced and co-developed by the Wachowskis. Of all the dream projects seemingly made with me in mind, that has now become the ultimate.

Shades of Caruso

Circuit interruptus.

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