Best of 2015: Cinema

With each passing year, my annual lists (which seem to mark the only time I have in a given year for writing “for fun” about film) become increasingly, unintentionally esoteric, purposefully defiant of any form of order, woefully incomplete, and predictably homoerotic. As each year comes to an end, I lament the films upon films I haven’t seen and frantically try to fit as many of those into my December schedule as possible. This year, I realized that my list was going to comprise of a bunch of films most people hadn’t heard of, no matter how many Oscar screeners I try to hustle through, and I accepted that. When I was in my early 20s, I would have marveled at a list of films only the most elite of cinephiles had even heard of, but these days, I just feel like an asshole.

These 10 films impressed me more than all the others. I’m slightly embarrassed that there isn’t a single film by a female filmmaker on the list, but I suppose I’d be more ashamed if I included one just for the sake of inclusion. Feel free to share your thoughts or possible suggestions (my to-see list is already epic). I’ve included distribution information for all of the films I could find it for (in the U.S., U.K., and France). And without further adieu, my 10 favorite films of 2015, listed alphabetically:

• All Yours (Je suis à toi). David Lambert. Belgium/Canada.
• Carol. Todd Haynes. USA/UK.
• The Club (El club). Pablo Larraín. Chile.
• Everlasting Love (Amor eterno). Marçal Forés. Spain.
• Full Contact. David Verbeek. Netherlands/Croatia.
• The Here After (Efterskalv). Magnus von Horn. Sweden/Poland/France.
• Neon Bull (Boi Neon). Gabriel Mascaro. Brazil/Uruguay/Netherlands.
• Nova Dubai (New Dubai). Gustavo Vinagre. Brazil.
• Tales of the Grim Sleeper. Nick Broomfield. UK/USA.
• Te prometo anarquía (I Promise You Anarchy). Julio Hernández Cordón. Mexico/Germany.

I also wrote about 10 additional films that left an impression on me, as well as the two films I hated the most in 2015: Jurassic World and The Overnight. Look for my 2015 television and music wrap-ups later this week.

Oh, and the most overrated film of 2015? Mad Max: Fury Road, which might have made my honorable mentions list had the world not praised it to high heaven and set my viewing up for disappointment. Alas.

Best of 2015: Carol (Todd Haynes)

Carol. Todd Haynes. USA/UK.

Only the upcoming award season will be able to tell us whether the buzz patrol (or the hype train, as my friend Brian put it) had done a disservice to Todd Haynes’ latest triumph or not. After all, Carol, an adaptation of Patricia Highman’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, has been gaining traction since last May, when it was poised to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, only to lose out to Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan and be awarded a shared consolation prize for Best Actress (curiously awarded to Rooney Mara instead of Cate Blanchett and split between Mara and Emmanuelle Bercot for Mon roi). And yet with all the hype and all the praise surrounding Carol, I still found myself unspoiled and even a bit surprised by the film, an elegant and enthralling experience (two adjectives I never thought I’d see myself using to describe a Hollywood lesbian melodrama in 2015).

Like fine wine and Anne Bancroft, Blanchett appears to get better with age, and as the title character, she’s impeccable. Smoking cigarettes, wrapping Christmas gifts, and removing one’s gloves has never been quite this alluring. Dividing his career into two clear arenas (“women’s films” and “rock n roll pictures”), Carol sits beautifully alongside Haynes’ other “women’s films” (easily the preferable of the two sides): Safe, Far from Heaven, and Mildred Pierce. I’ll be curious to see how he does combining both elements like he did with the brilliant Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story in his next feature, a Peggy Lee biopic with Reese Witherspoon. For Carol, I just hope that you too are unphased by that precarious hype train and that I haven’t added fuel to that fire. Carol is now playing theatrically in the U.S. and the U.K. from The Weinstein Company and StudioCanal respectively. UGC Distribution will open the film next week in France.

With: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy, John Magaro, Cory Michael Smith, Carrie Brownstein

Millennium Mambo, Part 2-ish

Two more big lists have been published asserting the finest films of the decade. The haughtier of the two came from The Toronto International Film Festival Cinematheque, which surveyed a group of "film curators, historians, and festival programmers" and named, in a surprise move, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century the best film of the 2000s. I'm in agreement with almost their entire list, aside from Claire Denis' Beau travail (not because I don't absolutely adore the film, but because by my own regulations, it counts as a 1999 film) [Abbas Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us falls into the same place for me], Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (which is fine, but doesn't need to be that high) and Elephant, which should not be listed above Gerry (or Paranoid Park, which isn't on the list). I also don't have much affinity for I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, I'm Not There., Alexandra or Saraband (from what I remember of it), but that's part of the joy in lists like these, no? The list is as follows, with plenty of ties, the US distributor if applicable is listed after the title for assistance:

01. Syndromes and a Century, 2006, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Austria, Strand Releasing

02. Platform, 2000, d. Jia Zhang-ke, China/Hong Kong/Japan/France, New Yorker Films

03. Still Life, 2006, d. Jia Zhang-ke, China/Hong Kong, New Yorker Films

04. Beau travail, 1999/2000, d. Claire Denis, France, New Yorker Films

05. In the Mood for Love, 2000, d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/China/France, USA Films/Criterion

06. Tropical Malady, 2004, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Germany/Italy, Strand Releasing

07. (tie) The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu [Moartea domnului Lăzărescu], 2005, d. Cristi Puiu, Romania, Tartan Films
07. (tie) Werckmeister Harmonies [Werckmeister harmóniák], 2000, d. Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, Hungary/Italy/Germany/France, Facets

08. Éloge de l'amour [In Praise of Love], 2001, d. Jean-Luc Godard, France/Switzerland, New Yorker Films

09. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile], 2007, d. Cristian Mungiu, Romania, IFC Films

10. Silent Light [Stellet licht], 2007, d. Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany, Palisades Tartan

11. Russian Ark, 2002, d. Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/Germany, Wellspring

12. The New World, 2005, d. Terrence Malick, USA/UK, New Line

13. Blissfully Yours, 2002, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France, Strand Releasing

14. Le fils [The Son], 2002, d. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France, New Yorker Films

15. Colossal Youth [Juventude Em Marcha], 2006, d. Pedro Costa, Portugal/France/Switzerland, Criterion (unreleased as of yet)

16. (tie) Les glaneurs et la glaneuse [The Gleaners & I], 2000, d. Agnès Varda, France, Zeitgeist
16. (tie) In Vanda's Room [No Quarto da Vanda], 2000, d. Pedro Costa, Portugal/Germany/Switzerland/Italy, Criterion (unreleased as of yet)
16. (tie) Songs from the Second Floor [Sånger från andra våningen], 2000, d. Roy Andersson, Sweden/Norway/Denmark, New Yorker Films

17. (tie) Caché, 2005, d. Michael Haneke, France/Austria/Germany/Italy, Sony Pictures Classics
17. (tie) A History of Violence, 2005, d. David Cronenberg, USA/Germany, New Line
17. (tie) Mulholland Drive, 2001, d. David Lynch, France/USA, Universal Studios
17. (tie) Three Times, 2005, d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan/France, IFC Films

18. Rois et reine [Kings and Queen], 2004, d. Arnaud Desplechin, France, Wellspring

19. Elephant, 2003, d. Gus Van Sant, USA, HBO Films

20. Talk to Her [Hable con ella], 2002, d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, Sony Pictures Classics

21. (tie) The Wind Will Carry Us, 1999/2000, d. Abbas Kiarostami, Iran/France, New Yorker Films
21. (tie) Yi yi: A One and Two, 2000, d. Edward Yang, Taiwan/Japan, Fox Lorber/Criterion

22. Pan's Labyrinth [El laberinto del Fauno], 2006, d. Guillermo del Toro, Mexico/Spain/USA, Picturehouse/New Line

23. (tie) L'enfant, 2005, d. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France, Sony Pictures Classics
23. (tie) The Heart of the World, 2000, d. Guy Maddin, Canada, Zeitgeist
23. (tie) I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, 2006, d. Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan/Malaysia/China/France/Austria, Strand Releasing
23. (tie) Star Spangled to Death, 2004, d. Ken Jacobs, USA, Big Commotion Pictures

24. The World, 2004, d. Jia Zhang-ke, China/Japan/France, Zeitgeist

25. (tie) Café Lumière, 2003, d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan/Taiwan, Wellspring
25. (tie) The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], 2008, d. Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Italy/Spain, Strand Releasing
25. (tie) L'intrus [The Intruder], 2004, d. Claire Denis, France, Wellspring
25. (tie) Millennium Mambo, 2001, d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan/France, Palm Pictures
25. (tie) My Winnipeg, 2007, d. Guy Maddin, Canada, IFC Films
25. (tie) Saraband, 2003, d. Ingmar Bergman, Sweden/Italy/Germany/Finland/Denmark/Austria, Sony Pictures Classics
25. (tie) Spirited Away, 2001, d. Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, Studio Ghibli/Disney
25. (tie) I'm Not There., 2007, d. Todd Haynes, USA/Germany, The Weinstein Company

26. Gerry, 2002, d. Gus Van Sant, USA, Miramax

27. (tie) Distant [Uzak], 2002, d. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, New Yorker Films
27. (tie) Dogville, 2003, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/UK/France/Germany/Norway/Finland/Netherlands, Lionsgate
27. (tie) The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001, d. Wes Anderson, USA, Touchstone/Criterion

28. (tie) Alexandra, 2007, d. Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/France, Cinema Guild
28. (tie) demonlover, 2002, d. Olivier Assayas, France, Palm Pictures

29. (tie) Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, 2001, d. Zacharias Kunuk, Canada, Lot 47 Films
29. (tie) Goodbye, Dragon Inn, 2003, d. Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, Wellspring

30. (tie) Longing [Sehnsucht], 2006, d. Valeska Grisebach, Germany, N/A
30. (tie) Secret Sunshine, 2007, d. Lee Chang-dong, South Korea, N/A
30. (tie) Vai e Vem [Come and Go], 2003, d. João César Monteiro, Portugal/France, N/A
30. (tie) Far from Heaven, 2002, d. Todd Haynes, USA/France, Focus Features

So to tally... directors with more than one showing: Apichatpong Weerasethakul (3), Hou Hsiao-hsien (3), Jia Zhang-ke (3), Gus Van Sant (2), Todd Haynes (2), Tsai Ming-liang (2), Aleksandr Sokurov (2), Claire Denis (2), Guy Maddin (2), the Dardenne brothers (2), Pedro Costa (2). Only 5 of the 54 are unavailable on DVD in the US, though both Pedro Costa films are planned (or at least strongly rumored) to be coming from Criterion. However, in looking at the list, there is a wave of sadness, seeing studios that are no more like New Yorker Films, Wellspring/Fox Lorber, USA Films, Lot 47 Films and Picturehouse, as well as ones that have fallen from grace but still existing in a smaller form like Palm Pictures and (meh) Miramax and New Line. Of course, a number of fabulous distribution studios have opened throughout the past ten years, from Cinema Guild, IFC Films, Benten Films and Oscilloscope as well as Palisades Tartan's restarting of the Tartan library, which brought Silent Light to screens this year. The biggest showing though for the studios still thriving would have to be Strand Releasing, who released 5 of the films above, including the "newest" of the lot, Lucrecia Martel's brilliant The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza]. I wonder if it's an oversight that no 2009 film made the list or if the TIFF crowd was being overzealous with getting that list out. Also, notice only 2 documentaries and 1 short made the list, something I'm sure a handful of other lists will make up for.

Anyway, onto List #2 for Time Out New York, which polled a number of Big Apple-ish film critics, including Andrew Grant, Karina Longworth, Aaron Hillis and Kevin B. Lee (their individual top 10s can be found via this link). The list rounded to 50, but I'll only post the top 30 here, so you can check out the write-ups and #31-50 on their site.

01. Mulholland Drive, 2001, d. David Lynch, USA/France, Universal Studios
02. There Will Be Blood, 2007, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, Paramount Vantage/Miramax
03. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004, d. Michel Gondry, USA, Focus Features
04. The New World, 2005, d. Terrence Malick, USA/UK, New Line
05. In the Mood for Love, 2000, d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/China/France, USA Films/Criterion
06. Yi yi: A One and Two, 2000, d. Edward Yang, Taiwan/Japan, Fox Lorber/Criterion
07. Dogville, 2003, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/UK/France/Germany/Norway/Finland/Netherlands, Lionsgate
08. Zodiac, 2007, d. David Fincher, USA, Paramount
09. A Christmas Tale [Un conte de Noël], 2008, d. Arnaud Desplechin, France, IFC Films/Criterion
10. Friday Night [Vendredi soir], 2002, d. Claire Denis, France, Wellspring
11. Spirited Away, 2001, d. Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, Studio Ghibli/Disney
12. American Psycho, 2000, d. Mary Harron, USA/Canada, Lionsgate
13. Inland Empire, 2006, d. David Lynch, USA/Poland/France, Absurda
14. Trouble Every Day, 2002, d. Claire Denis, France/Germany/Japan, Lot 47 Films
15. Domestic Violence, 2001, d. Frederick Wiseman, USA, Zippora Films
16. Punch-Drunk Love, 2002, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, Columbia Pictures
17. Gosford Park, 2001, d. Robert Altman, UK/USA/Italy, Universal Studios
18. Femme Fatale, 2002, d. Brian De Palma, France/USA, Warner Bros.
19. I'm Not There., 2007, d. Todd Haynes, USA/Germany, The Weinstein Company
20. The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein, 2001, d. John Gianvito, USA, Extreme Low Frequency Productions
21. Brokeback Mountain, 2005, d. Ang Lee, USA/Canada, Focus Features
22. Synecdoche, New York, 2008, d. Charlie Kaufman, USA, Sony Pictures Classics
23. The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu [Moartea domnului Lăzărescu], 2005, d. Cristi Puiu, Romania, Tartan Films
24. I Heart Huckabees, 2004, d. David O. Russell, USA/Germany, Fox Searchlight
25. Inglourious Basterds, 2009, d. Quentin Tarantino, USA/Germany, The Weinstein Company/Universal Studios
26. Kings and Queen [Rois et reine], 2004, d. Arnaud Desplechin, France, Wellspring
27. Oldboy, 2003, d. Park Chan-wook, South Korea, Tartan Films
28. Before Sunset, 2004, d. Richard Linklater, USA, Warner Independent
29. Songs from the Second Floor [Sånger från andra våningen], 2000, d. Roy Andersson, Sweden/Norway/Denmark, New Yorker Films
30. Children of Men, 2006, d. Alfonso Cuarón, UK/USA/Japan, Universal Studios

While Time Out's list is certainly more US-centric than TIFF's, I can't find much bad to say about a list that includes Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale in the top 20 (and even included one film I'd never heard of: The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein... another highlight of checking out lists as these, if only that particular DVD wasn't already out-of-print). I don't know how I feel about Inglourious Basterds as the highest ranked 2009 film (and, in fact, the only one). The remainder of the list contains some real surprising and/or underrated treasures like Ramin Bahrani's Man Push Cart, Michael Mann's Miami Vice and Lukas Moodysson's Lilya 4-ever [Lilja 4-ever], as well as some contemptible ones like The 40-Year-Old Virgin (and, yeah, Donnie Darko). The only film that absolutely does not belong on the big 30 is I Heart Huckabees, while a few dangle on that line (American Psycho, Brokeback Mountain), keeping my personal preference against a couple out of the mix. So here's to the close of the '00s! More list, I'm sure, are on hitting the "printer" right now. I can't wait to hear what Cahiers du cinéma rounds up.

The Biopic and the Assembly Line

What We Do Is Secret – dir. Rodger Grossman – 2007 – USA

Riddle me this. Biopics are lame. Biopics about people of questionable artistry are even lamer. Sure, first time writer/director Rodger Grossman does little to justify a film about The Germs’ frontman Darby Crash, played here by Shane West of A Walk to Remember and television’s ER and Once and Again (punk, indeed), but all cinematic inabilities aside, what’s truly bothering me is the functionality of a biopic. For what purpose does a biopic about an influential (or in the case of this film, a not-so-influential) person living or dead do for the person in question? For some filmmakers, the biopic serves as an elegy. Anton Corbijn’s Control beautifully depicts the rise and fall of a respected artist, Ian Curtis, someone Corbijn knew quite well. Control is aesthetically appealing, dramatically gentle and absolutely hypnotic when depicting Joy Division performing, which is really crucial in the conviction of necessity. Certainly Ian Curtis’ life mirrors that of many tortured musicians who’ve served as the subject of a biopic, but unlike Johnny Cash, Tina Turner or Ray Charles, Curtis dies within the film’s scope.

The rigid formula of the biopic, which separates itself only when a director chooses the linear or non-linear path, ultimately reduces the individuals someone deemed special enough to make a movie about to little nothings, or people who unremarkably defeated their demons. With the tendency for melodrama and the well-equipped, ever-suffering spouse at hand (mind you, it’s almost always a woman, except in the case of The Hours, but that film exists more in a fictional realm), the formula turns these people’s hard lives into, as I said above, unremarkable triumphs (as a side note, I’m using my triptych of non-linear musician biopics, What’s Love Got to Do with It, Ray and Walk the Line, as my prime examples, though you could probably throw La vie en rose in there too). Thankfully, there exists the small area of the “biopic” which finds little interest in a person’s life as a whole as much as their life in moments. Capote, The Queen and Erin Brockovich could qualify, even if all three at times feel like Oscar performance baiting.

For music films (or any film that deals with an artist), the application of formula commonly becomes at odds with itself. Often the subject of the biopic has defied conventions in some way to have left their mark on the industry. For The Germs, their only real claim to fame was that they might have recorded the very first punk record in Los Angeles. Grossman, who used former Germs guitarist Pat Smear as a consultant, never hides the fact that most of the members weren’t musically inclined but at least attempted to show some appreciation for the balls-to-the-wall live antics of the band. It was a failed attempt at both appreciation and visceral raucousness, but if we’re to overlook these slights, it seems to be the intention to show that Darby Crash had a voice and presence that were defiant and abrasive. In molding Crash’s story into familiar territory, does this not overshadow the intentions and spirit of the singer?

What We Do Is Secret employs many overly accustomed characteristics of the music biopic, not the least of which being Grossman’s use of talking heads to both fill in the blanks and express the appreciation he was unable to elicit from his subject (the fiction music film Brothers of the Head finds its only struggle in getting away from the mockumentary). So why is it that this film (which also uses no flashy camera tricks) would suit a man someone believed to have been progressive, historically relevant and defiant of the establishment? I think one must ask themselves, “would Darby Crash even like this film?” The question shouldn’t be posed as if he were alive today, because age can tend to soften one’s explicit demeanor, but it should be posed as if it were shown to him during the height of his career, before committing suicide.

I suppose what is bothering me most lies in this question of suitability. Certainly wondering whether or not the subject of the biopic would like their film wouldn’t work for everyone. God knows if anyone made a biopic about Courtney Love, she probably wouldn’t be too happy if some riskier choices were made. However, why do filmmakers feel the need to put their subjects through the assembly line? Wouldn’t it be more potent if the film actually mirrored the subject’s spirit, instead of reducing them to formulaic traps? Todd Haynes understood this completely with I’m Not There and Velvet Goldmine, even though the latter happened to be thinly-veiled fiction. All this aside, I still anxiously await Gus Van Sant’s Milk, as his abandonment of the Hollywood system and return to his roots has made for some spectacular films in the past few years. Though a tale of Harvey Milk would require a different handling, as his contributions weren’t of an artistic form, it’s long overdue for a respectable filmmaker to shake the sad state of the biopic. And, no, Ron Howard doesn’t count. And, no, don’t get me started on Oliver Stone.

List #4: Questionable Praise

What’s perhaps more indicative of a person’s best of or worst of any given year is where they feel the general public has been mistaken. Certainly, frat boys and soccer moms galore will scoff at my pick of 300 for the worst film of the year (if you need proof, I believe Maxim magazine named it the best film of the year… that says it all). There are a number of critical bandwagons that always end up puzzling me, even if it doesn’t outright offend my sensibilities. Sean Penn’s Into the Wild was easily the most over-bloated junk of the year (hence it’s placement on my worst of the year list), but it was hardly the sole offender of a clusterfuck of a year where the only real agreement seems to have been that Cannes had a pretty phenomenal crop of films this year (No Country for Old Men, Zodiac, 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Persepolis, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to name a few). Here’s nine films (consider Into the Wild your tenth) that perplexed this reviewer as to their wild critical praise.

I’m Not There – dir. Todd Haynes – USA

I’ve been a long-time fan of Haynes ever since I got my hands on an edited VHS copy of his Poison. Haynes never really seemed to adhere to what most people would expect of him; after all, what would you have really expected him to follow Poison with anyways? There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll never top the brilliance of Safe, but even with his haughty ambition in I’m Not There, I think I wanted something more than I got. Haynes has always been a visual director, though I wouldn’t say his films are necessarily from the same spectrum. Yet… I’m Not There feels like his best attempt to throw everything and the fucking kitchen sink into something that’s, well, a mess (purposeful or not, it’s still annoyingly untidy). You have Nicolas Roeg’s Performance, 8½, Don’t Look Back (naturally), and even Haynes’ own Velvet Goldmine. And what do you do with all that? I’m afraid I’m going to have to toss it back. I don’t usually like to spit upon others’ interpretations of films (unless, of course, you thought Into the Wild was painted with the stroke of God), but I think most of the praise for I’m Not There comes from looking really hard and trying to find something that’s really not there (no pun intended). Certainly, though, if you rummaged through someone’s messy house you’d likely find a stray twenty-dollar bill or maybe a great vinyl somewhere within the wreckage. I just don’t see why you’d want to find out.

The Savages – dir. Tamara Jenkins – USA

I always find the need to defend myself when I refer to something as “boring.” My definition of “boring” probably doesn’t mirror the general consensus; to go back to Haynes, I don’t think Safe is boring in the least (though I’m sure many would beg to differ). The Savages bored me to sobbing tears. It was the sort of boredom that would make most equate to watching paint dry. I’m serious. Laura Linney’s character, when discussing her as-of-yet-unwritten play, constantly begrudges her brother (Philip Seymour Hoffman), making sure he doesn’t think it’s terribly bourgeouis, and I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t Jenkins voice coming out on the screen, shaken and uncertain as to whether anyone could muster up an ounce of caring for what might as well have been a pipe slowly rusting. Yeah, sure, the film was smart, unsentimental (thank God), and well-acted, but none of that added up to something I’d want to sit through again.

Margot at the Wedding – dir. Noah Baumbach – USA

What bothers me most about Margot at the Wedding was what preceded Baumbach on his way to another bitter tale of intellectual malaise. The Squid and the Whale was just wonderful. Absolutely fantastic, and yet it was one of those movies a friend of mine described as a film everyone raved about for the two weeks it was in theatres only to forget about it shortly afterward. And, yeah, that’s probably true. So with Margot, Baumbach needed something that would stick, not something that felt like a day-old coffee pot version of something he’d already made. I’ll watch Jennifer Jason Leigh in fucking anything, so when even her presence fails to hit me in the right spots, my alarm signal goes off. Margot is stale, familiar, and, worst of all, wholly forgettable. Like she does in To Die For and The Others, Nicole Kidman always makes for a great cunt, all tightly-wound with Botox, tin-lipped and viper-tongued. Most of Margot’s detractors complained that no one in the film was likeable, but it was precisely the opposite case for me. No one in Margot at the Wedding was nearly as dislikable as I would deem necessary to hold interest further than the first explosion of words between its snake-y characters.

I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone – dir. Tsai Ming-liang – Taiwan/Malaysia/China/France

I’ve never known anyone to casually like the work of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang (or his compatriot Hou Hsiao-hsien, for that matter), as their films seem geared toward the most avid of international film aficionados. There’s nothing in the realms of accessible to their agonizing long-shots of, usually, nothing, and that was just splendid… for a time. With I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai has continued this streak, painfully. What seemed like radiance and freshness in What Time Is It There? or Vive l’amour has grown tiresome. He doesn’t really break any new ground with his latest, and for once, I’ll stand by you, the MTV generation, and concur, “this shit is fucking tedious.”

Superbad – dir. Greg Motolla – USA

I’m one of those jerks that usually make for a bad person to ask about films. I’d decided, before seeing either, that I would hate Knocked Up and love Superbad for purely superficial reasons. Firstly, I laughed a grand total of once during Judd Apatow’s sketch comedy-cum-romantic yarn The 40-Year Old Virgin (and I saw that grueling two hour “unrated” version). I also don’t follow the notion that his beloved, cancelled TV series Freaks and Geeks was anything special. With Superbad, the crudeness seemed without Apatow’s signature schmaltz, without that thin message of acceptance that makes me run for the eject button on my DVD player. And it had that Michael Cera in it expanding his life past the criminally-axed Arrested Development where he proved to have the best comic timing of the whole bunch. Unfortunately, my expectations got the better of me, and I ended up sheepishly enjoying Knocked Up and just-about loathing Superbad. I don’t do zany, and I don’t do antics. And for every minute of awkward teenage dialogue about cocks and Orson Welles, there was another nine of zany antics. Superbad is a comedy of errors, and to throw a zing at ya, I made an “error” watching this crap. Yeah, see, that joke was about as funny as most of what I witnessed in Superbad.

This Is England – dir. Shane Meadows – UK

If I had one word of advice for filmmakers working today, I’d say, “lay off the cheap sentimental bullshit.” And I’d say it just like that. This Is England (what a stupid title) is director Meadows’ recounting of his youth during the early stages of the Thatcher regime, and, yet, hindsight for him is less 20/20, more a lousy sermon. I always want to go back to a quote from Bernardo Bertolucci where he criticized the youth of today for not rebelling against the forces that be like his generation did in the 60s (his own auto-fellatio can be seen in The Dreamers). Let’s face it, budding filmmakers, cinema hasn’t changed anything in this world in a long time. And it ain’t going to anytime soon. Therefore, you don’t need to be vomiting up lessons and messages to your potential audience (unless that lesson happens to be that lessons don’t do a damn thing… subversive, eh?). This Is England isn’t a complete waste and probably isn’t even one of the great offenders of 2007, but for garnering an impeccable 86/100 rating on Metacritic (a slightly better version of Rotten Tomatoes), I could have used my history lesson away from the pulpit.

Gone Baby Gone – dir. Ben Affleck – USA

I guess what confuses me most is whether critics actually liked this one or were just surprised that Ben Affleck happens to be a better director than he is an actor, because Gone Baby Gone isn’t phenomenal by any stretch. One of its main detractors, as I discussed in my review for it, was that Affleck chose to cast two primary cast members from the television show The Wire (Amy Ryan and Michael K. Williams), which may very well be the finest thing to grace television screens… ever. Affleck didn’t need the comparisons; in fact, I can hardly muster up any interest in any films crime-related any more after my eyes have officially been opened by the uncompromising brilliance of The Wire. Gone Baby Gone suffers from the Pumpkin syndrome: a film that ends with a bang, almost forgiving the missteps taken throughout the rest of its running time. Almost.

The Simpsons Movie – dir. David Silverman – USA

I haven’t watched anything from the latest seasons of The Simpsons, but general consensus is that, without most of their original writers, the show blows. Like Seinfeld though, when The Simpsons officially signs off the air, it will always be remembered for its high points instead of its low ones. Therefore, it won’t be remembered for The Simpsons Movie, an eighty-seven-minute expansion of what would have been a mediocre episode (despite the return of many of the series’ creators) in the first place. About a third of The Simpsons Movie is hysterical, but you’d really have to rack my brain to recall any of those moments (and I just saw it two weeks ago). Instead we’re left with a missed opportunity, the first (and supposedly last) foray of America’s favorite animated family onto the big screen.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – dir. Sidney Lumet – USA

In my review of Sidney Lumet’s latest, I said something along the lines of “if Lumet chose to retire now, he’d retire on the high note he’d failed to achieve in the past twenty years of his career.” What I said was true; Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is probably better than all of the films he’s made since the 90s put together. However, you have to consider that adding Critical Care, Gloria and Find Me Guilty together would result in something slightly better than the last Jennifer Lopez movie. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is one of those films that’s just “fine.” It’s well-acted by PSH, Marisa Tomei, and even Ethan Hawke (I think Albert Finney is kinda hammy here), and I love the kaleidoscopic structure of Lumet’s modern tragedy. And, yet, I still can’t muster up any real excitement for the film. Maybe it’s my loss here, but its universal praise strikes me the same way Gone Baby Gone’s does. Here’s a film no one expected to be good, it ended up being pretty decent, and the praise flew in. See Match Point for another example of a once-great filmmaker who’d been stuck making mediocre films for years, only to come back with something comparatively better with accolades to follow.

John Waters liked Away from Her??!!

More interesting than whatever overweight, middle-aged man who makes a living writing film criticism has to say about the merits of the films of a given year, I'm always interested in seeing what people who actually make films would list (I always wonder if Faye Dunaway attends films that she hasn't starred in... probably not). John Waters is always a reliable source for this, making a top ten for Artforum each year and being the only one I noticed to have included Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny on his list a few years ago (God bless John). This year is no different and his list is as follows:

1. Grindhouse - dir. Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright
2. Before I Forget [Avant que j'oublie] - dir. Jacques Nolot [Note: Strand will have this out 2008]
3. Away from Her - dir. Sarah Polley
4. Zoo - dir. Robinson Devor [You knew John would love a documentary about horse-fucking]
5. Lust, Caution - dir. Ang Lee
6. Brand Upon the Brain! - dir. Guy Maddin
7. An American Crime - dir. Tommy O'Haver
8. I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With - dir. Jeff Garlin
9. Flanders - dir. Bruno Dumont
10. I'm Not There - dir. Todd Haynes

Of course some of the choices are kind of obvious, as Jeff Garlin was the director of his documentary This Filthy World, but I must applaud John for being the only critic I've noticed so far to have the balls to put Grindhouse on top of his list... and does anyone else wish they had a camera on Waters while he was getting misty-eyed for Julie Christie in Away from Her? I sure do. I'm also surprised that Lust, Caution made his list and Black Book didn't. IndieWire provided, a few years back, a rundown of famous people giving their lists of the year, including John Cameron Mitchell, Paul Schneider, and Peter Dinklage. Unfortunately, I haven't noticed them doing it lately, so... this will have to do. Plus, I know you were way more curious to see what John Waters liked this year than, say, Stephen King.

Y'know, I like "indie" movies...

Oh, yeah, the Independent Spirit Awards. Isn't that just a big party with John Waters or Sarah Silverman as host? I hear the stars can booze it up there, so it always makes watching a helluva lot more interesting than the sterile Academy Awards, but I always wonder what constitutes a film to be nominated and not nominated? This year, Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park is up for a handful of prizes, but IFC won't be releasing it until next year. And, is A Mighty Heart really an independent film? Whatever. Also, spare your comments about the photos I chose of Adrienne Shelly and Zoe Cassavetes, nominated for their screenplays, and pictured with cameras. Also, looking at the list of cinematographers, I begin to wonder, "has there been a striking, important American director of photography in the past 20 years?" The nominees are as follows:

Best Feature

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [Le scaphandre et le papillon] - dir. Julian Schnabel - France/USA
I'm Not There - dir. Todd Hayes - USA
Juno - dir. Jason Reitman - USA
A Mighty Heart - dir. Michael Winterbottom
Paranoid Park - dir. Gus Vant Sant - USA/France

Best Director

Todd Haynes - I'm Not There
Tamara Jenkins - The Savages
Jason Reitman - Juno
Julian Schnabel - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Gus Van Sant - Paranoid Park

Best First Feature

2 Days in Paris [Deux jours à Paris] - dir. Julie Delpy - France/Germany
Great World of Sound - dir. Craig Zobel - USA
The Lookout - dir. Scott Frank - USA
Rocket Science - dir. Jeffrey Blitz - USA
Vanaja - dir. Rajnesh Domalpalli - India/USA

John Cassavetes Award [for features made under $500,000]

August Evening - dir. Chris Eska - USA
Owl and the Sparrow - dir. Stephane Gauger - Vietnam/USA
The Pool - dir. Chris Smith - USA
Quiet City - dir. Aaron Katz - USA
Shotgun Stories - dir. Jeff Nichols - USA

Best Screenplay

Ronald Harwood - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Tamara Jenkins - The Savages
Fred Parnes, Andrew Wagner - Staring Out in the Evening
Adrienne Shelly - Waitress
Mike White - Year of the Dog

Best First Screenplay

Jeffrey Blitz - Rocket Science
Zoe Cassavetes - Broken English
Diablo Cody - Juno
Kelly Masterson - Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
John Orloff - A Mighty Heart

Best Actress

Angelina Jolie - A Mighty Heart
Sienna Miller - Interview
Ellen Page - Juno
Parker Posey - Broken English
Tang Wei - Lust, Caution

Best Actor

Pedro Castaneda - August Evening
Don Cheadle - Talk to Me
Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Savages
Frank Langella - Staring Out in the Evening
Tony Leung - Lust, Caution

Best Supporting Actress

Cate Blanchett - I'm Not There
Anna Kenrick - Rocket Science
Jennifer Jason Leigh - Margot at the Wedding
Tamara Podemski - Four Sheets to the Wind
Marisa Tomei - Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Best Supporting Actor

Chiwetel Ejiofor - Talk to Me
Marcus Carl Franklin - I'm Not There
Kene Holliday - Great World of Sound
Irrfan Khan - The Namesake
Steve Zahn - Rescue Dawn

Best Cinematography

Mott Hupfel - The Savages
Janusz Kaminski - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Milton Kam - Vanaja
Mihai Malaimare, Jr. - Youth Without Youth
Rodrigo Prieto - Lust, Caution

Best Documentary

Crazy Love - dir. Dan Klores - USA
Lake of Fire - dir. Tony Kaye - USA
Manufactured Lanscapes - dir. Jennifer Baichwal - Canada
The Monastery - fir. Pernille Rose Grønkjær - Denmark
The Prisoner; or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair - dir. Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker - Germany/USA

Best Foreign Film

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile] - dir. Cristian Mungiu - Romania
The Band's Visit [Bikur Ha-Tizmoret] - dir. Eran Kolirin - Israel
Lady Chatterley - dir. Pascale Ferran - France
Once - dir. John Carney - Ireland
Perespolis - dir. Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi - France

Eat Me Out; or How Did New Queer Cinema Die?

[Written as part of the Queer Film Blog-a-thon hosted by Queering the Apparatus]

When did the worldview of the cinematic homosexual get its blue skies? There will always be films that mark the beginning of an era. Birth of a Nation, Breathless, Star Wars, The Maltese Falcon, sex lies and videotape - these films will forever be known as the stepping stones of their respective genre or movement in film. Most would attribute Todd Haynes’ Poison, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1991, as being the birth of the New Queer Cinema era. Though the movement likely died at the end of the 90s, it took a while for the signs to appear. Yeah, there was desexualized Will & Grace and hyper-sexualized Queer as Folk on television by 2000, but the first signs of NQC’s death came to me in the form of a little movie called Eating Out.

What exactly happened between Gregg Araki’s Nowhere and Q. Allan Brocka’s Eating Out? For starters, Araki “switched teams” near the end of the 90s, dating actress Kathleen Robertson (Lucifer from Nowhere), casting her as the lead in his nominally heterosexual Splendor, and giving his fans the first real happy ending of his career (some might argue the case for Three Bewildered People in the Night, but show me five people who’ve actually seen that film). Gus Van Sant directed the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting and followed it with a shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Todd Haynes also got the attention of the Academy with his ode to Douglas Sirk, Far from Heaven. And Swoon director Tom Kalin didn’t make another feature until this year with Savage Grace, fifteen years later. The forefathers of NQC changed their stripes, packed their bags, and headed elsewhere. Enter Eating Out. Where was the gay youth of American to turn to without James Duval sulking and contemplating the meaning of love and existence? He wasn’t there anymore. Times had changed, schools started gay-straight alliances, and gayness, in whatever form, was a major part of the average American’s television sets. Perhaps it wasn’t the director’s intention, but Eating Out rose to the occasion, filling the long-empty shoes of River Phoenix or Duval or, even, Bruce LaBruce, and with Eating Out, what we got was the beginning of the sunny era of queer cinema populated by exercises in bad taste disguised as romances where chiseled bodies took the place of shaggy hair, tattoos, and your favorite Siouxsie and the Banshees T-shirt.

Eating Out’s only relationship to anything worthy in queer cinema history comes through filtration. Eating Out is more closely the spawn of American Pie than My Own Private Idaho, and through American Pie, the connection to John Waters is made. Even with Waters, the linkage is distant. With Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, Waters provided skewed, ironic visions of a happy ending, whether it be Divine being honored as the filthiest person alive or her crowning achievement in the electric chair. What becomes of Eating Out is a sex farce of gross-out proportions, teamed with naked hunks and a pink ribbon of a happy ending. Instead of the boy of our hero’s dreams turning into a giant bug , the flaming homo gets that dreamboat, ripped from the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch summer catalog.

Though I’m pretty sure it didn’t gross over $200,000 at the US box office, Eating Out triumphed in the DVD sales, particularly from TLA Video, spawning a sequel (with the fitting and poetic subtitle Sloppy Seconds), and signaling the death of an era of film. In the film’s defense, it probably never set out to change anything, other than a bunch of aging West Hollywood fags’ underwear, and it hardly stands as the worst of the lot that followed. For the bottom of the barrel, why don’t you try Todd Stephens’ Another Gay Movie, which takes the thematic relationship between Eating Out and American Pie to the highest level? [I would recommend you check out my friend Bradford Nordeen’s condemnation of the film to get a better idea] And yet, Eating Out proved that there was a market for its brand of shallowness in gays who could tell you the first, last, and middle name of all the hosts of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy but couldn’t name a single film directed by Derek Jarman.

As Bradford said everything I could have wanted to about Another Gay Movie, I’ll spit my venom toward Everett Lewis instead. Lewis threw himself onto the NQC scene in 1996 with Skin & Bone, a seedy depiction of how the mean streets of LA claimed the hearts of three street hustlers. The film was dark and distressing, though notably overshadowed by Bruce LaBruce’s finer, and more controversial, Hustler White. Six years later, Lewis made his next film, Luster, and oh, how the world had changed. Luster was a film that could have been made by your pretentious class artfag, who’d watched The Doom Generation way too many times without ever absorbing anything beyond the surface, and without the finances to supply a Cocteau Twins or Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. In fact, the characters in Luster exist as some of the more reprehensible Araki figures as depicted by someone who merely stole the preliminary character sketches. In quick summation, Araki treated his characters with both boundless admiration and a harshly critical eye, condemning them for the same reasons he loved them. His depiction of the shallowness of youthful desires and loneliness was so accurate that most of his detractors ignorantly place the word “vapid” to describe the films themselves. In Luster, a slutty blue-haired record store clerk just can’t find the right man in Los Angeles, climaxing in a final scene where he strips himself naked in order to “give himself” fully to the elusive, desired object of affection. Earnestness met its new best friend in that scene, with Lewis clumsily turning his happy ending into more jerk-off material than emotional substance.

His clumsiness and ineptness as filmmaker came full circle, however, with 2005’s FAQs. In FAQs, a clean-cut, good-looking twentysomething escapes an attempted rape on a porno set and falls into the arms of a black drag queen, who’s there to save the day. As he did with Araki in Luster, Lewis takes his surface-level understanding of queer cinema history and butchers it, placing the implied notions of other, better films into the uncomfortable foreground of nauseous preachiness. In films like Michael Stock’s woefully underseen Prince in Hell, New Queer Cinema introduced the reinvention of the family structure, grouping together the abandoned lost souls in a radical “fuck you” to the Republican ideal of family life. With FAQs, this becomes the focus of the film, with lessons of superficial tolerance on the side. I can hardly bring myself to criticize the sub-Pia Zadora style of acting in FAQs as there’s so much else wrong within, but the piss-poor acting from just about everyone in the cast truly illuminates the cardboard nature of FAQs. I’ve been more profoundly moved by bumper stickers. Did I forget to mention that one of the lessons the sage drag queen passes on to her “children” is to love their bodies and spend at least half an hour naked per day? Lewis never shyed away from an excuse for male frontal nudity, particularly from “actors” with less than 5% body fat. Is he trying to tell us that loving our bodies is a lot easier to do when we look like models? Unintentionally, that’s what he got across.

Alternatives still exist. With The Raspberry Reich, a hilarious political porno, Bruce LaBruce never threw away his integrity, even as his fetishist eye became more and more prominent in later films like Skin Gang. Araki met my forgiveness for Splendor with Mysterious Skin, and with the financial gain and freedom he received from Good Will Hunting, Van Sant blossomed as an artist. With such hatred directed at the films of Q. Allan Brocka (his Eating Out follow-up Boy Culture was just as horrendously ill-approached and saturated with a manufactured happiness) and Everett Lewis, you might suspect me an insufferable cynic, yet it’s not just filmmakers of highly questionable talent that have painted their characters’ skies the deepest of blue. Mysterious Skin, The Raspberry Reich, and Van Sant’s “Le Marais” segment of Paris je t’aime all place their subjects outside of the darkness. And still, the placement of these characters out of the darkness the filmmakers had so beautifully depicted in their earlier films still so vastly contrasts the reprehensible films of which I’ve already spoken. Unlike the tidiness and finite nature of Eating Out and others, the ends of Mysterious Skin, The Raspberry Reich, and “Le Marais” glimmer with hope in opposition to dubious glee. Each elevate themselves from the story-centered nature and show their hope with its murkiness still lingering and its closure open-ended. Perhaps the sun is indeed coming out for the once-angst-ridden gay youth of cinema… let’s just hope it’s captured by someone who knows how to make a film.