The idea that a cultural movement begins or ends with the flip of a calendar is, of course, fallacious. ”60s Music” is an identifier of a specific strain of popular music that really refers to the time period, between 1965 (mid-career Beatles) and 1976 (The Sex Pistols). What we think of as the Golden Era of 70s movies began, arguably, with The Graduate in 1967 (or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the year before) and ended with Raging Bull in 1980.

For now anyway, the 2000s can be called The Netflix Decade, a time when, in theory, more movies were more accessible to more people than ever before. That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone took advantage of this opportunity. Still, the idea that a movie, even one from say, Romania about abortion, can have a second life on video is encouraging. If you’re a stickler for lists, consider this the 90 (or so) best movies of the last ten years. What this era in film will ultimately be called is anyone’s guess, but, many films in this list, particularly those made in the US, reflect life in the Age of Terror, where the country was led by a man whose ambition far exceeded his abilities.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days – Over the last ten years there has been a rush, in relative terms anyway, of films from countries that were formerly behind the Iron Curtain. The best of these was a heartbreakingly frank film about the moral and practical dilemmas of abortion while Eastern Europe crumbled in the late 1980s. A movie of unflinching honesty. (2007)

8 Mile – Don’t laugh. Yes, Eminem played himself, but great movies put the viewer in a time and place and Curtis Hanson’s impeccable direction gives life to the hopelessness of Eminem’s Detroit ring of despair. The performances of Kim Basinger and Mekhi Phifer are first-rate.  The movie looks even more authentic now that Eminem has faded from the limelight. (2002)

21 Grams – The title refers to the amount of weight we lose after we die. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s follow-up to Amores Perros brought together a math professor (Sean Penn), a grieving housewife (Naomi Watts) and a re-born convict (Benicio Del Toro). The story isn’t arranged chronologically and the morality of what’s taking place is apparent before the full impact of the plot.

The 25^th Hour – Spike Lee’s least bombastic work. Three men (Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper) one of whom is preparing for a prison stint, re-assess their lives in New York City while terrorist occupied planes still echo in the background. The request made late in the film by Norton will make you gasp, but then nod in agreement with his logic. (2002)

About Schmidt – When Jack Nicholson’s wife dies he decides to rent an RV and drive around trying to avoid the realization that he’s a selfish creep. Alexander Payne’s portrait of aging shines even brighter when compared to the emptiness of another Nicholson film about old age released several years later—The Bucket List. Hope Davis is brilliant as Nicholson’s estranged daughter. (2002)

Almost Famous – The best fictional account of the rock and roll life this side of Spinal Tap. Billy Crudup hits every note as an ambivalent guitar hero. Philip Seymour Hoffman is hysterical as rock critic Lester Bangs. Cameron Crowe’s movie also launched the career of Kate Hudson, who plays a groupie. Don’t hold that against it. The “Tiny Dancer” sequence on the tour bus is sure to put a lump in your throat. (2000)

Amelie  – Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s fable starring Audrey Tautou is certain to become a beloved classic if it hasn’t achieved that status already. Jeunet and Tautou occupy a world that looks much like our own yet is eminently more just, hopeful and full of love. Engaging from any number of perspectives. (2001)

Amores Perros – The three-pronged story about how lives have been irreversibly altered by a car accident can only be described as awe-inspiring. It introduced the world to the massive talents of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Gael Garcia Bernal and the progenitors of Latin American Cinema. Much as Amores Perros is a child of Pulp Fiction, it is also the father to the acclaimed City of God. (2001)

Away From Her – This tiny movie about a woman (Julie Christie) coming to grips with Alzheimer’s raises challenging questions about the true nature of love, honesty and companionship. That Sarah Polley was only 27 when she directed this counts as a miracle. (2007)

Babel – Whereas Amores Perros’ and 21 Grams’ centerpiece were a singular event, Innaritu’s Babel centers on a singular feeling brought on by a digital, wireless age. It’s one of mutedness. We can speak to more people in more places than ever before, yet we still have no clue what to say. The characters’ eyes tell us everything we need to know about their hollowed-out existences. In Babel, continents are little more than land masses that separate people trying to cope with this new world. Brad Pitt has never been better. (2006)

The Beat That My Heart Skipped – Romain Duris dreams of becoming a concert pianist conflict with his father’s desire that he follow his footsteps into a life of low-level street thuggery. Director Jacques Audiard brings together the disparate physical and emotional universes that Duris occupies. Paris, probably the most-filmed movie locale in the world after New York, is presented in a new, fresh way. (2005)

Before Sunset – Nine years after Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy fell in love on a single night in Vienna they meet again. Except now they’re in Paris. But time has passed and things have changed. Or have they? A great idea executed to perfection by director Richard Linklater and the two leads. (2004)

Black Hawk Down – Mark Bowden’s searing chronicle of the US Army’s disaster in Somalia. Ridley Scott and a strong ensemble cast capture the frantic efforts of well-intentioned men in one impossible situation after another. (2001)

Bigger Faster Stronger* – A straightforward documentary about steroids and American culture by a first time director and former devotee of the weightlifting/bodybuilding scene. (2008)

Bloody Sunday – Made prior to United 93 and The Bourne movies, Paul Greengrass’ re-creation of the events of January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland seethes with anger. (2002)

Borat – Far and away the best comedy in recent years. Although it dutifully serves its  function as a biting social satire, it’s the bar which other comedies strive for: “Yeah, (title) was pretty funny. But it’s no Borat.” (2006)

Bowling for Columbine – With the school shootings still fresh in the public mind Michael Moore’s film about America’s obsession with guns is a tour de force of filmmaking. It’s become the template for countless other issue-driven documentaries, but the original is still the best. Who could forget Moore emerging from a bank, gun in hand as gratitude for opening a new bank account? (2002)

Capote – I tend to resist portrayals of historical figures little more than overwrought imitations, but there are some performances that just throw you back in your seat. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s depiction of the caustic, gifted, tortured Truman Capote is such a performance. (2005)

The Dark Knight – One of the major secular features of Bush Era was rampant self-involvement. Facebook has turned the personal into the global scale. In a landscape where fame goes to those who are willing only to be more extreme than their predecessor, Heath Ledger, as the sadistic Joker tapped perfectly into this pathos while living up to unprecedented pre-release hype. Everything, onscreen and off, about The Dark Knight reflected the culture of entitlement. Mostly though, The Dark Knight delivered on all its promise.  The movie has flaws; Christian Bale’s smoky (or is it gravelly?) voice is an unneeded prop and the stunt make-up of Aaron Eckhart’s character is unnecessary. That said, it performs the near impossible—a summer blockbuster whose story and message stays with you for days, if not weeks. (2008)

Darwin’s Nightmare – A documentary about the perch in Lake Victoria that shows the social and political effects of an ecological nightmare. While An Inconvenient Truth was the environmental movie that bagged the awards and attention, Hubert Sauper’s movie chilled and moved. (2005)

Eastern Promises –  David Cronenberg re-emerged with A History of Violence, but its follow-up was far more entertaining. Naomi Watts’ London midwife stumbles across the Russian mob, as personified by Viggo Mortensen, cultures clash, mayhem ensues–including a grisly fight in a steam bath. (2007)

Edge of Heaven – The best movies of the decade made outside the US addressed the blurring of boundaries among class, race, ethnicity or sexuality. Fatih Akin’s film about a German Turk who moves to Istanbul in order to find his half-sister makes you wonder if maybe boundaries aren’t such a bad thing. (2008)

Elephant – Gus Van Sant’s take on school violence is haunting. The impending carnage looms over the characters to such a degree that, as an audience member, you want to shake them by the shoulders and tell them to run before the bullets start flying. (2003)

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room – The best of its type. A traditional talking-heads documentary that harnesses the national outrage of the Enron collapse and the subsequent dominoes that fell. Names are named and we’re given plenty of reason to hold those mentioned in absolute contempt. (2005)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – I resisted this as too gimmicky at first and I don’t buy Jim Carrey doing anything serious, but on a second viewing it struck me as a thoughtful consideration of how memory relates to romantic longing, especially considering it’s a major studio release. The rare instance of  when a blend of a potentially toxic mix of artists–Carrey, Kate Winslet, Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman results in a coherent final product.  (2004)

The Fall – A suicidal stunt man, an eight year old Eastern European immigrant girl who speaks accented English, Charles Darwin, Alexander the Great and many, many others people populate Tarsem Singh’s follow up to The Cell. Reportedly made without CGI, it’s unlike any film ever made. (2008)

Finding Nemo – A father clown fish loses track of his son clown fish. In desperate need of help in finding him, he is assisted by a pang fish with short-term memory. That the movie somehow takes a parent’s worst nightmare and turns it into something cute is a testament to its many charms. Edged Ratatouille and Up for a spot behind WALL-E on this list. (2003)

Garden State – While it’s easy to dismiss the movie as a tool for Zach Braff’s navel-gazing, Garden State appealed to people of a certain age, pre mid-life, who wondered, “What’s it all for?” It owes massive debts to The Graduate and the work of Wes Anderson but it’s a movie of and about its time. (2004)

George Washington – David Gordon Green’s somber sketch on poor black children in North Carolina plays like a Miles Davis number. The movie is all mood, but by the end, you feel like you know the kids in this movie intimately. (2000)

Gone Baby Gone – This may be a blasphemy in some quarters, but Ben Affleck’s directorial debut does Clint Eastwood better than Eastwood himself. It confronts many of the same issues as Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River the difference is the performance of Amy Ryan, as the world’s worst mother. (2007)

Good Night and Good Luck – George Clooney’s paean to an era gone by was meant to be a body blow to the modern media, where rumor and innuendo flourish. More than David Straitharn’s uncanny impersonation of Edward R Murrow, most the high points are the elegant singing of Dianne Reeves that served as a bridge scenes of increasing tension. (2005)

Goodbye Solo – Souleymane Sy Savane is  Solo, a Senegalese cab-driver in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (the Tar Heel State is a new hot spot for American Indie Cinema). He picks up a weary, southern man who asks that a few days from now Solo take him to Blowing Rock National Park, no questions asked. Ramin Bahrani’s movie is so loaded with symbolism it’s easy to overlook what an assured, confident piece of filmmaking it is. If there’s any justice, Savane will pick up an Oscar nomination this year. (2009)

Happy-Go-Lucky – How far does attitude go in life? At first glance Sally Hawkins’ Poppy is gratingly optimistic, but as Mike Leigh’s small masterpiece unfolds we see that Poppy is far more sophisticated than we’ve given her credit for. Furthermore, I can think of no film of this or an era that so lovingly presents a friendship between two women—Hawkins and Alexis Zegerman. They’re co-workers and have each other’s backs in ways that the girls from Sex and the City would never understand. (2008)

The House of Flying Daggers  – Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon set a standard that Zhang Yimou’s exhilarating epic set in the Tang Dynasty surpassed. That’s Ninth Century kids. Two police officers, with differing motives, force a gorgeous dancer to go undercover and infiltrate The House of Flying Daggers, a group of militants who steal from the rich and give to the poor. There’s a sequence where…ok forget that, watch it and you’ll instantly recognize why this movie is on a “Best of” list. (2004)

In America – After WALL-E this was the movie that stole my heart. Jim Sheridan directed a script he wrote with his daughters about a family a lot like their own. It’s the magical story of a family overcoming the loss of the youngest child through great sacrifice and a move to Hell’s Kitchen. Sarah and Emma Bolger, who play the precocious daughters, will steal your heart too. (2003)

In the Bedroom  – Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek have a son (Nick Stahl) who gets involved with an older woman (Marisa Tomei) estranged from her husband. When Stahl gets killed by the husband in a jealous fit Wilkinson must face his own thoughts of revenge in this wrenching drama directed by Todd Field. (2001)

In the Mood for Love – It’s 1962 Hong Kong and Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung are neighbors who suspect their spouses of infidelity. Wong Kar-Wai’s film is in the grand tradition of a love story set against a society in upheaval, but simmers with a lust and eroticism all its own. Runner-up to Y Tu Mama Tambien for sexiest film of the decade. (2001)

In the Valley of Elah  – When Tommy Lee Jones’ son goes missing shortly after returning from a tour in Iraq, he sets out to find him. In the course of his quest he’s aided by Charlize Theron and the movie becomes a layered treatise about the war in Iraq, the military and family. In his best roles, Jones face says far more than any word could and that’s certainly the case in this movie, which takes its title from the site of David’s biblical battle with Goliath. (2007)

Into the Wild  – After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Chris McCandless, the child of well-to-do parents, gave away all his possessions and hitchhiked across America en route To Alaska. A wonderful companion to Jon Krakauer’s elegiac account of McCandless, Sean Penn’s movie brings together sweeping natural panoramas, marvelous supporting characters (Hal Holbrook especially) and a pitch-perfect score from Eddie Vedder. (2007)

Junebug – So many films about the clash between urban and rural ways of life resort to easy stereotypes, but Phil Morrison’s movie strikes just the right tone. Now living in Chicago, a son brings his art gallery-owning wife (the stunning Embeth Davidtz) to meet his parents in rural North Carolina. He re-acquaints himself with his brother whose wife (played by Amy Adams in the breakthrough performance of the decade) is pregnant. New conflicts arise as old wounds are re-opened. Celia Weston is delightful as the family matriarch. (2005)

Katyn – The legendary director Andrzej Wajda may have made his best film in his 80’s. It’s the heretofore untold story of the slaughter of thousands of Polish soldiers at the beginning of World War II by the Russian Red Army. Wajda focusses on how the Russians lies about the massacre left a permanent stain on the Polish psyche. The final twenty minutes of Katyn put your heart in your throat. (2008)

Kontroll  – Nimrod Antal’s film about life in the Budapest subway system defies easy description. Every scene and piece of dialogue seems loaded with literal and metaphorical interpretations. And the metaphor can apply just as easily to the main characters as to life in Hungary after the fall of the Soviet Empire. (2005)

 Lilya 4-ever – Abandoned by her mother, 16 year-old Lilya must fend for herself in bleak, gray Estonia. She meets a young man different from the abusive thugs in her neighborhood. He is kind to her and promises to pull her out of her dire circumstances. Hopeful and desperate, she trusts him. Thinking they will run off to a slice of heaven, Lilya is instead lowered into a kind of Hell that can only be borne from the minds of the truly evil. Lukas Moodyson’s film muscles its way into the pit of your stomach and stays there for days.

Little Children  – The decade’s best movie about suburban dystopia and arguably Kate Winslet’s best performance. She plays an educated mother whose marriage is passionless. She begins an affair with Patrick Wilson –The Prom King, as he’s dubbed by the neighborhood mothers—whose marriage is  deteriorating while he attempts to pas the bar exam. Most memorable, however, is Jackie Earle Haley, a sex offender trying to start a new life while under the watchful eye of self-appointed moralist. (2006)

The Lives of Others – An engrossing film about the horrors of life on the front lines of the Cold War. Ulrich Muhe is a member of the Stasi in 1984 who listens in on the conversations of a playwright and his lover. His own life being one of boredom he becomes increasingly engrossed in those of his subject. Florian Heckel von Donnersmarck crafted a film of personal destruction while addressing contemporary issues of privacy in a time of unparalleled freedom. (2006)

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – It will be hard to explain to future generations the impact that this series of films had on a populace put on perpetual edge in the age of terrorism. Thousands of people lined up to watch the entire trilogy, nine hours in total. It did not take much imagination to see the similarities between Peter Jackson’s sprawling epics and the state of world affairs. The stories of honor, mysticism, fellowship and duty in the face of an indefatigable enemy bent on an engineering an apocalypse resonated with millions of people who had never even heard of JRR Tolkien. (2001-2003)

Memento  – How Christopher Nolan began the decade. The taut Guy Pearce is covered from head to toe with tattoos. He’s also written himself hundreds of notes. The ink on both the paper and his skin is critical because he has no short term memory. In normal circumstances this would be quite the conundrum, but it’s worse because Pearce’s wife has been murdered and he’s trying to figure if he did it or if someone else did. Memento was that rare, visceral movie that left the audience in their seats after the house lights came up, catching their collective breaths. (2001)

Michael Clayton  – Where Good Night and Good Luck was a clarion call to a lazy media elite, George Clooney got back in front of the camera in this tightly written drama about corporate malfeasance. He’s a fixer who keeps small problems from becoming big ones. He must prevent an old friend gone crazy (a manic Tom Wilkinson) from jeopardizing a billion-dollar project while keeping the company lawyer (a scathing Tilda Swinton) at bay. Tony Gilroy’s movie recalls 70s classics like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor. (2007)

Minority Report - The back end (after Artificial Intelligence: AI) of a Steven Spielberg double-dip on the dire possibilities of the near future, blisters with energy. Tom Cruise plays a pre-crime officer—criminals are arrested before they commit their crimes—who finds himself caught up in agency politics that have far-reaching implications. Watch it again just to see how prescient it is, based on a Philip K. Dick novel. (2002)

Monster’s Ball  – An extremely graphic sex scene featuring Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton (ick) generated buzz, but Marc Forster’s depiction of troubled lives in the south is harrowing. Heath Ledger, Sean Combs and Peter Boyle are excellent in support of Berry’s raw performance. (2001)

The Motorcycle Diaries – Before he became a face on a t-shirt, Ernesto Guevera was called “Fuser” by his friends. As a student, he and a buddy traveled through South America on a beat up Norton 500. Gael Garcia Bernal is Che in Walter Salles’ exquisite travelogue about idealism colliding with reality. The Machu Picchu sequence is breathtaking. (2004)

Moulin Rouge! – Unapologetically over the top, Baz Luhrman’s was the best musical of the past ten years. A courtesan (Nicole Kidman) falls in love with a would-be poet (Ewan McGregor) much to the chagrin of a duke. This triangle is resolved in a splash of song, color and double-entendres. Jim Broadbent won an Oscar the following year in Iris, but he deserved it for his role as the ringmaster here. (2001)

The New World – Terrence Malick’s lyrical, contemplative rendering of the affair between John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahantas sweeps you up and carries you off to a place that only he seems to be able to construct. When the duties of colonization become too much, the stability of their relationship is threatened. (2005)

The Notebook – The moment you say, “Oh, come on! That would never happen!” you’ve missed the point. Every character in the movie is of a type and that very broadness is what makes the film such a timeless love story. (2004)

No Country for Old Men – Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh immediately joined the pantheon of cinematic psychos but Tommy Lee Jones is outstanding as sheriff trying to make sense of killer whose weapon of choice is a cattle prong. Josh Brolin is up to Jones’ lofty standards as Chigurh’s main target. Kelly MacDonald turns a potentially forgettable role as Brolin’s wife into the moral center of the film. While the movie may have caught fans of the Coen Brothers off-guard, it fits nicely in the canon of the makers of Miller’s Crossing, Fargo and Blood Simple. (2007)

Once  – Set in modern day Dublin, Glen Hansard is a Hoover repair man and Marketa Irglova is an immigrant caring for her mother and daughter. They are both amateur musicians and gradually they write songs together that reflect their growing feelings for each other. A small treasure. (2007)

Pan’s Labyrinth – In order to escape her sadistic stepfather in Franco’s Spain, a ten year-old girl imagines a secret world where she must perform three tasks to prove that she is, in fact, a princess. Fashioned by Guillermo Del Toro, who spent the decade creating worlds that exist just beyond the reach of our own. (2006)

Requiem for a Dream — Four disparate characters succumb to drug abuse. Most frightening in Darren Aronofsky’s film is the descent into madness of a woman collecting social security played by Ellen Burstyn. Far from a lecture, the movie shows in explicit detail how different people become addicted for different reasons.  (2000)

Sideways - In celebration of his philandering pal’s upcoming nuptials, Paul Giamatti takes him on a tour of California wine country. Like any good road movie, Alexander Payne’s film contrives one scenario after another in order to reveal something about the characters. What made Sideways different was the intensity of Giamatti’s portrayal of a man consumed by his own self-loathing. (2004)

The Station Agent – A thoughtful independent film from Thomas McCarthy about a dwarf (Peter Dinklage) who inherits an abandoned train station after his best friend dies. He’s subsequently harangued into friendship by a chatty hot dog vendor (Bobby Cannavale). The unlikely friends then encounter a woman (Patricia Clarkson) who is in mourning. Well-deserving of the many awards it picked up on the festival circuit. (2003)

Taxi to the Dark Side – Of the many righteously indignant documentaries criticizing the Bush Administration Alex Gibney’s was the best. It’s the story of an innocent Afghan cab driver who was tortured and killed while in US custody. He’s not a casualty of the madness of war, but rather, the victim of carefully vetted policy.  (2007)

There Will Be Blood  – P. T. Anderson’s sprawling epic of greed, oil and religion has a problematic ending but who could forget the opening scene, where Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, without saying a word, grunts his way into our psyche. He plunges one hole after another into the ground through the force of his personality, creating to a fortune but and future that will, most certainly, be bloody. An instant American classic. (2007)

Traffic  – The War on Drugs from the peripatetic camera of Steven Soderbergh. In his most complete film, he inspects many, if not all, aspects of the struggle and concludes that the effort has been a colossal failure. Sturdy performances by Benicio Del Toro, Dennis Quaid, Don Cheadle and Michael Douglas anchor a somewhat chaotic enterprise. (2000)

Waking Life – Richard Linklater’s mind-massaging meditation on truth, reality, dreams and just about everything else washes over you like a hot shower. The fact that it merges animates live action characters pushes it to the stuff of legend. An exponentially better “alternative reality” film than Mulholland Drive. (2001)

WALL-E – The other major secular strain brought on by the reign of error that was the Bush presidency was conspicuous consumption. Remember that he suggested we go shopping in the weeks after planes were crashed into the financial and political capitols of the country. And we did. Boy did we spend. The magicians at Pixar presented the down side of this approach to calming our collective nerves, while telling a tender love story. If you didn’t go “awwwww” at least once while watching WALL-E may God have mercy on your soul. (2008)

Waltz With Bashir  – Perhaps the first and last of its kind. An animated documentary about an Israeli soldier’s memories of a battle that occurred some twenty years earlier. Ari Folman’s autobiographical story of The Lebanese War had the unique distinction of reminding you of several other films while still being thoroughly original. (2008)

Y Tu Mama Tambien – The sexiest movie of the decade. Maribel Verdu joins Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna on a road trip from Mexico City to a mysterious beach with no strings attached. Much steaminess follows. (2002)

You Can Count on Me  – Before starring in Kenneth Lonergan’s movie Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo had minor roles in minor movies. They play a brother and sister who are connected by a tragic event from their past. Each day is a struggle as they to overcome their flaws and make something out of their shiftless lives. Linney was nominated for an Oscar as a single mother trying to build a life out of perpetual setbacks. The soundtrack features several songs from Steve Earle, who knows a thing or two about turmoil. (2000)

Zodiac  – David Fincher’s story of the serial killer that spooked the Bay Area in the 1970s. Jake Gyllenhaal is a newspaper cartoonist who starts out trying to decode the murderer’s cryptic messages and ends up more obsessed with finding the killer than the police officer (Mark Ruffalo) assigned to the case. Fincher gets the grisliness out of the way early and delivers an unsparing crime procedural; the inclusion of Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man on the soundtrack is inspired. (2007)

They barely missed the cut: High Fidelity, Oldboy, Adaptation and Up

Best Releases Three or Four Decades Late

Army of Shadows – Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic of The French Resistance, released in Europe in the late 1960s made going underground heroic and cool. It ushered in a much-deserved reassessment of Melville’s place in The French New Wave. (2006)

Killer of Sheep – the life of a Los Angeles slaughterhouse worker in black and white with one of the best scores in film history. Charles Burnett’s film sat in a vault at UCLA for 30 years until it was released on video by Milestone/New Yorker Video. (2007)

Underrated, Forgotten or Worth a Second Look

24-Hour Party People – Steve Coogan nails it as the riotously self-possessed Tony Wilson, the television host who sired the Manchester music scene in the late 1970s. Michael Winterbottom adeptly recalls a flowering cultural moment that was both depressing and inspirational. (2002)

The Bridge – Eric Steel’s documentary about why the Golden Gate Bridge has become Ground Zero for suicides. More than that though, it’s about those left behind and trying to make sense of the profoundly tragic. (2006)

The Cell – The acting isn’t much (Jennifer Lopez playing a psychologist and Vince Vaughn playing it straight) and the plot machinations are absurd but Tarsem Singh’s movie about the subconscious of a serial killer is loaded with visual explosions from start to finish. (2000)

The Claim – When you sell off your wife and baby daughter for a gold mine it’s just a matter of time before it comes back to bite you, even in the pre-Information Age. There’s no escaping karma on that one. Michael Winterbottom’s version of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge is unforgettable. The icy turn-of-the-century Canadian landscape is the ideal backdrop for this morality tale. (2000)

The Dish – What role did Australia play in the first moon landing? Well, the country put up a satellite interface in a remote desert. Sam Neill plays one of the technicians who helps the locals prepare for and cope with their day in the, uhh, sun. Patrick Warburton is winning as the American liaison. (2001)

Everything is Illuminated – The movie based on what might be the best novel of the decade barely registered at the box office. Eugene Hutz steals the movie as Elijah Wood’s linguistically-challenged guide and Liev Schreiber’s debut behind the camera is extremely faithful to Jonathan Safran Foer’s source material. (2005)

Heaven – It came and went in the blink of an eye, but Cate Blanchett is a bald vigilante aided and abetted by police-officer Giovanni Ribisi. Impossible to categorize as an action pic for the art house crowd (or is it vice versa?), Tom Tykwer’s movie merits another consideration. (2002)

Idiocracy – Mike Judge’s futuristic comedy about what happens to a society that spends decades rewarding impulse and hubris over intellect and honesty. Sound familiar? (2005)

The Illusionist – In pre-World War I Vienna Edward Norton plays a magician who astonishes and taunts royalty (Rufus Sewell) and law enforcement (Paul Giamatti). It was overshadowed by The Prestige which was released the same year, but it is better shot, better acted and without the cop-out ending of Christopher Nolan’s film. (2006)

Innocence – After his wife dies a man looks up his lost love from over forty years ago. She has married and is living a comfortable life. Now in their 70s, they try to pick up where they left off. Paul Cox’s film of hope, death, loss, regret and risk tugs at your heart and never lets go. (2001)

Last Orders – A London butcher (Michael Caine) instructed his best friends (Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings and Bob Hoskins) to throw his ashes into the water at Margate beach. His son (Ray Winstone) joins them as they make the journey, recollecting about what was and what might have been. The type of small, touching film that big stars don’t seem to make anymore. (2001)

LIE – Paul Dano, in a pre-There Will Be Blood role plays a teenager who sits on a bridge above the Long Island Expressway. He has nothing, so when a dubious character, the slimy Brian Cox, offers him some semblance of normalcy, he takes it. (2001)

Made – Jon Favreau’s comedy is a follow up to Swingers which again features him and Vince Vaughan. This time they’re playing wanna-be mafiosos hired by Peter Falk to cut a deal with Sean Combs. The repoire of the castcast is terrific and the movie is even funnier with the audio commentary on (by Favreau and Vaughn). (2001)

Our Daily Bread – A dialogue-free documentary about the mechanized, industrialized nature of food production. Make sure you eat before viewing. (2006)

The Proposition – Set in late 19^th century Australia, the underappreciated Ray Winstone is magnetic as a frontier lawman determined to bring peace to his town. A group of four brothers has terrorized the locals and Winstone urges two of them to turn in the oldest, who is the ringleader. This sounds like a traditional Western but Nick Cave’s bloody and depraved script is accompanied by a setting that invites comparisons to Antonioni. (2006)

Reign Over Me – Almost all of Adam Sandler’s comedic characters are emotionally-stunted man-boys. His character in Mike Binder’s film is also a shell of a man, mumbling his way around New York City on a scooter, donning headphones to keep the outside world away. Don Cheadle is his usual superb self playing a dentist, trying to find out what’s gone wrong with Sandler, his old college roommate. In the course of reaching out to Sandler, Cheadle must face problems in his own life. (2007)

Sweet Land – In 1920s Minnesota a beautiful German woman arrives to marry a Norwegian farmer. He speaks little English and she speaks none. This is the least of their troubles as her ethnicity, in light of World War I, gives the rest of the community pause. Ali Selim’s feature debut is quiet, elegant and assured. (2006)

The Widow of St. Pierre – Patrice Leconte’s tale of redemption set in the (then) French colony of Newfoundland in the 1850s. Emir Kusterica plays a drunk sentenced to death for a murder. But time passes before the guillotine can arrive from France. Slowly, the community, represented by Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil, comes to see the murderer in a different light. (2001)

The Yards – James Gray’s story of corruption in the Queens rail yards was unjustly ignored by audiences on its release. Perhaps it was because the star, Mark Wahlberg, was an unproven quantity as a dramatic actor (Ok, some might say he still is), but he more than holds his own among James Caan, Ellen Burstyn, Faye Dunaway, Charlize Theron and Joaquin Phoenix. (2000)

A Double Feature About Women Living on the Margins

Frozen River and Wendy and Lucy -  Melisso Leo and Michelle Williams try to save their son and dog, respectively, while staring some hard truths in the face. (Both released in 2008)

Actors of the Decade—Gael Garcia Bernal and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Actresses of the Decade – Cate Blanchett, Laura Linney and Kate Winslet

Directors of the Decade – Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Christopher Nolan

Overrated

Brokeback Mountain – A movie more concerned with its message than advancing the story in a cinematic way. The script is clunky (saved by Heath Ledger’s performance) and for a movie intended to bust stereotypes, it’s comprised of supporting characters who are exactly that.

Knocked Up – Where The 40-Year-Old Virgin was a sweet, bromance about the complexities of dating, this was self-indulgent. A stoner who lives with other porn-living potheads hooks up with a successful television producer? That’s a shaky premise to begin with and impossible to ignore whenever the two leads start talking about child rearing. Why weren’t women insulted by this movie?

Lost in Translation – Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are displaced Americans in Tokyo. It’s a Jim Jarmusch movie done by Sofia Coppola. One Jarmusch is plenty thank you very much.

Mulholland Drive – What’s this movie about? No, really somebody tell me.

Movie that’s aged the worst – Crash. Only five years old and the tale of race and circumstance in Los Angeles already feels quaint.

And what of Wes Anderson? – His four films (three live-action and one animated) are entertaining, but they’re all riffs on a similar theme—highly stylized portraits of fractured families done to great soundtracks. They all made my best of the year list when released, but Anderson, so far anyway, has been content to have his characters talk about their struggles rather than show them.

Television (Still a vast wasteland)

The conversation begins and ends with The Wire. If you haven’t seen it you have deprived yourself of storytelling on par with Charles Dickens, but more visual. There’s no point in spilling more cyber-ink on it as countless others have extolled its virtues. So watch it. Now. You’re welcome.

The two best documentaries of the past ten years originally aired on television. Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home revealed every available side of Bob Dylan including a few that Mr. Zimmerman would rather have kept under wraps. Scorsese seemed to talk to everyone who ever had anything to do with Dylan.

The other great doc was Spike Lee’s agonizing, thorough, poetic story of the debacle and failure of our government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. It’s not hyperbolic to call When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts an act of public service.

OK…if I must choose…a baker’s dozen…(I actually already tipped my hand above by adding a clip after the summary)

WALL-E, Amelie, The Dark Knight, Memento, Amores Perros, In America, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Moulin Rouge! There Will Be Blood, The Lives of Others, Waking Life, You Can Count on Me and Lilya 4-ever.

Soffocare è un film del 2008 diretto da Clark Gregg. Il film è interpretato da Sam Rockwell e Anjelica Huston. La produzione ha avuto luogo nel New Jersey nel 2007.

Leggi altre notizie su: | Clark Gregg | Sam Rockwell | Anjelica Huston | Kelly Macdonald

 I should bring more interest in HBO movies for a change. I always try to watch the TV shows aired by HBO, and I quite love some of them (mostly Entourage), but I never occupied myself with their movies. The Girl in the Cafe is one of them, and – after I watched it, because I was bored - I quite liked it. The first time I heard about this movie was when a German network aired a remake of it in television, and got mostly average reviews. Since then I wanted to watch the HBO original, because the story is interesting and I love those kind of movies with two characters in the center, who are in a moment of midlife crisis of some sort, and when they meet and starting to love each other (but never end as a couple, because their lifes are still too different from each other) they talk about stuff, but not their own lives. And at the end there is emotional drama and no happy end for all involved in the situation.
Bill Nighy (nominated for the Golden Globe for his role) plays Lawrence, an aging, lonely civil servant, who is on the edge of his biggest step in his career. The G8 summit in Reykjavik is coming closer, where the politicians of the world discuss about the most important topics and problems the world has. During a coffee break he meets Gina (Kelly Macdonald, she won an Emmy for her role and was nominated for the Golden Globe), an enigmatic young woman, in a cafe. Both start talking, both start lunching in restaurants and both start having certain feelings about each other. When Lawrence invites Gina to Reykjavik at short notice, she goes with him and the trouble (and love story) begins. Because Gina starts to have some interest in the topics the politicians discuss during the summit, and she has to state her point of view, even though nobody will be happy to hear her opinion.

The story is basically simple. Two characters fall for each other; mostly they are shy, mostly they don’t really know what to talk about, because they are living in the moment of their cold, formell life. With the G8 summit background The Girl in the Cafe is almost a twin movie for Lost in Translation. We have the couple in the foreign country, who doesn’t know anything about it; the couple with problems in their own lives; the couple who seems to fit together perfectly, but fate doesn’t want to bring a new life to them.
The movie is sliced in two different parts. First the introduction of the two main characters, Lawrence and Gina. We learn a lot of things about him, but actually nothing about her. Lawrence stays the shy and nervous aging man, who doesn’t know what to say or to do (especially during the scene, when he is asking Gina out for dinner, after he met her for the first time), who clearly thinks before he is saying something. But when he is with Gina, he obviously doesn’t know anything. He was lonely before, didn’t have a real life but his job. Then he meets the mysterious Gina, who suddenly lights up his fire. He wants to live again, and he secretly hopes he can live it with Gina, but for the whole time of the movie he wants to let her think that he is not thinking about this. Gina remains mysterious for one reason: She doesn’t tell anything about her. We don’t know, who she is working for; we don’t know if she has (had) a family; we don’t know why she even evolved interest in this old man. And when we learn something about her past, she still remains mysterious.
Which takes us to the biggest problem of the story: The second part of the movie contains the G8 summit and for Gina the chance to speak out, to change the world for the better. But why she is speaking out against all odds is clearly unknown (even the bit of information we learn at the end doesn’t really help to clear that up). She knows that her opinion is unwanted, but she has to tell in front of everybody during a dinner that “it’s not right”. It is nice to see a woman standing up for something and telling her opinion, but the reasons for that are just missing and makes Gina as a character not really believable.

 The actors are fabulous. Bill Nighy acts superb, even though he could have hidden his middle finger a bit (if you look for it, you will see a few scenes with his middle finger stretching out in various moments of discussions – it was kind of unintentionally funny). He is a believable character, though his background doesn’t really make it more simple to understand his life and his loneliness. But maybe it is because of this why he is so nervous all the time. Kelly Macdonald is lovely eye candy and I loved her accent in here. But her clearly missing background doesn’t make her an unreliable character, she merely stays mysterious and far from everything happy.
The pictures are mostly cold, which I couldn’t understand why. Iceland is a cold country, and the topics are more serious than cheerful, but I felt like in a rainy and dark Jerry Bruckheimer TV production for a few moments. At least it fits perfectly together with the two characters (which makes the movie even more cold, though it is a – kind of – love story).
Which brings us to the message of the movie: Poverty in Africa is always a difficult topic, especially for a movie – the writers could never handle it properly. Either they only scratch on the surface of the topic, or they go way too deep into this and ignore the actual story of the movie. If yo want to address poverty in Africa, make a documentary. But nevertheless the producers managed a good balance between love story in the first half and politics in the second half, though the real message lost its way at the end of the movie.

All in all: Great movie; for a cold and cloudy, rainy day in autumn perfectly suited. When you liked Lost in Translation, you will definitely like this one. When you are alone in your life, you can identify with the characters without problems. And if you like a love story, which goes deeper than just the trouble of meeting for the first time and loving each other directly after that, than this could be the right movie for you.

I thought I’d do a three-in-one movie review post since I’ve watched all three of these movies recently.

Management (2008)

Management is a movie that I’ll dub a dramatic comedy staring Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn.
Something about this movie makes you feel generous and warm. It’s a very slow-paced film, with many awkward moments where you just want to yell out and tell them to spit it out already. You end up growing very fond of Steve Zhan’s character Mike, a very lonely and slightly mentally challenged mama’s boy who works as night manager for the family-owned highway motel. Jennifer Aniston plays a self-conscious woman in her thirties that doesn’t know what she wants out of life. Since the movie is very slow, the relationship that builds between Mike and Sue becomes believable. Woody Harrelson plays a small role in this movie that’s nothing of what you’re used to from him. He’s very amusing to say the least. Without saying too much of how this story plays out, I will say that the ending was somewhat unbelievable to me, but made me happy.

Easy Virtue (2008)

Easy Virtue is a comedic period film that I believe to be set just after the first world war. The film stars Jessica Biel, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Collin Firth. The movie is about a British family whose son just returns from a trip but comes home with an American wife. Not just any American wife, but a young widow/race-car driver that wants nothing to do with traditional female roles and responsibilities. The mother, Mrs. Whittaker, immediately takes dislike to the young girl who’s tarnished her son and her estate. The film becomes a war between these two women in a household of two impressionable young girls, a silent war-veteran, and a mother’s only boy. The acting is at times mediocre, and I really could not stand Ben Barnes as Larita’s husband for he was too young and not very good-looking in my opinion. The movie was fun to watch, and the fashion was of course up my alley. I’d recommend this movie as a chick flick that’s out of the ordinary. It has been a while since there’s been a comedy that’s set in this era. The ending did not surprise me, but I still enjoyed the ride.

The Merry Gentleman (2008)

The Merry Gentleman is a drama staring Michael Keaton and Kelly Macdonald. Michael Keaton directs the film and plays Frank Logan, a lonely hitman with a quiet awkward personality who contemplates suicide on a near-daily basis. Kelly Macdonald plays Kate, a young Scottish woman who left her abusive husband to start a new life in Chicago. Set at Christmas time, the two meet in unlikely circumstances and form a bond. Together, although without much speech they comfort each other, and continue to meet. There’s some good suspense that builds in the movie with a third-party cop that’s very attracted to Kate, while he investigates the homicides that keep turning up. The acting in this movie is superior that many movies I’ve seen recently. The characters were unique and well-developed. This triangle between the cop, the hitman and the young religious girl fills you with suspense until the end. The movie’s only downfall is that you’re still left with suspense at the end, but I’d still recommend watching it.

Enjoy,

~Darleya~

Clark Gregg es reconocido por su participación en el reparto cómico de The New Adventures of Old Christine, una genial comedia (sitcom) cuya líder es nada más ni nada menos que Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Esta peli está basada en la novela del mismo nombre de Chuck Palahniuk, un reconocido autor del cual soy medio fanático pues tengo casi todas sus obras. Sin embargo Choke no la leí aún.

Es una lástima porque hubiera podido tener muchos más argumentos sobre la peli.

Por ahora, un reparto encabezado por Sam Rockwell y Anjelica Huston (a quienes adoro como artistas) y complementado con Kelly Macdonald quien se está armando una posición fuerte en Hollywood, Brad William Henke reconocido por sus papeles en TV, el pequeño Victor interpretado por Jonah Bobo a quien recordamos por su papel en Zathura y hasta el mismo Gregg en su papel enamorado de una bellísima Bijou Phillips.

En fin, la peli es apenas para dominguiar. Un par de escenas divertidas con desnudos bastante bien logrados para mi gusto, una historia llena de picardía y el desarrollo del personaje perfectamente bien logrado tanto por Rockwell como por Huston. De resto, nada más.

Qué lástima que no haya un desarrollo mejor logrado en la trama, tal vez Gregg deba practicar mucho más, tal vez también es un gran fanático Palahniuk y se dejó llevar pr su entusiasmo, tal vez la novela no sea tan buena, tal vez simplemente tal vez, sea mejor actor cómico que director de pelis.

Tal vez estoy siendo muy duro pero esta es otra peli que no pasa ni raspando.

Michael Keaton’s haunting, intelligent directorial debut comes to DVD November 10.

One of our favorite films of the past year, The Merry Gentleman is a fascinatingly opaque bit of filmmaking that lingers with you long after its credits fade. You will sometimes wish it moved faster and that it would open itself more, and reveal something besides only the tantalizing amount of information that its very shrewd and deliberate script wants to divulge. The ending will haunt you, not in a satisfying sense but rather in a way that compels you to make sense of its painstakingly-wrought ambiguity. And you might actually love the film for all of those reasons.

Directed by Michael Keaton – an intelligent leading man long overdue for a major comeback - from a script by relative unknown Ron Lazzeretti (The Opera Lover), the film often manages literary feats of structure and innovation while remaining grounded in a concrete sense of place and tone, with a premise that’s familiar but no less well-executed. Keaton also stars as Frank Logan, a solitary and antisocial tailor who also (though we’re never told why) moonlights as a contract hit man. Yet he is not the real star of the film. That place is occupied – gracefully, charmingly - by Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald (No Country For Old Men) as Kate Frazier, a woman escaping her abusive policeman husband by escaping to a nondescript (though vaguely Chicago) major city.

Their solitary existences bring them together, of all times, at Christmas. Following a hit on someone in Kate’s office building, Frank attempts to throw himself off a neighboring rooftop, after glimpsing her in a wonderfully constructed moment of grace. But she sees him instead and screams, averting his suicide. Later, the two formally meet as Frank shows her a small kindness, and their friendship slowly begins to percolate. Kate is the type of person you suspect would rather not risk inconveniencing anyone with her company. She’s strong but vulnerable to even the basic ruthlessness that most people take for granted; her attempts at isolation only bring other lonely souls into her path, including an emotionally needy co-worker (Darlene Hunt) and Dave Murcheson, the police detective (Tom Bastounes) investigating the shooting.

But she’s drawn to Frank, probably as much because he asks nothing of her and doesn’t seem ready to offer anything for which he might expect gratitude down the line. “I think we’re good for one another,” Kate tells him. When minutes later she explains, “You’re possibly the sweetest man I’ve ever met” you get a sense of how bad her life must have been to that point. The script moves ahead in time, cleverly, and there’s a sense as spring rolls around that the two are making progress helping one another emerge from their respective shells. Then of course their respective pasts close in on them. Kate’s husband (Bobby Cannavale) tracks her down, spouting born-again Christian rhetoric that, not surprisingly, makes the skittish Kate even more terrified. Meanwhile Murcheson and his partner dog the shooting investigation as well as the apparent suicide of one of Frank’s associates. Frank is unafraid, permanently removing Kate’s husband from her life and continuing his tailoring business.

The pivotal scenes arrive as Murcheson visits Frank’s store. The two men size each other up, instant dislike getting submerged by going-through-the-motions polite conversation. “I tend to see the suit, not the person inside it,” Frank tells the detective, a pretty unsubtle way of explaining that life is often meaningless to him. Murchison ambles off, ready to confront Kate – the object of his affection as well as a potential witness and accomplice alike – of his concerns. His clumsy, well-intentioned effort pushes Kate and Frank into a confrontation that’s minimal on dialogue but no less emotionally resonant. Kate is ready for them to admit the truth about each other but Frank’s not there yet, setting up an ending that leaves more questions than it’s prepared to answer.

Even when playing the comic buffoon (Beetlejuice, Mr. Mom), Keaton the actor has always prioritized reserve, holding something back from the audience that gave his characters nuance and depth. In directing a film his greatest flaw may be following that impulse with too much trust. The film is slow-paced, and there are times when the script begs for elaboration – even a hint or line of dialogue would suffice. And as good as Lazzeretti’s script is at building suspense and giving its characters lines worth saying out loud, it also often explains something (such as in Kate’s dialogue mentioned above) that’s obvious to anyone paying attention. As the film dares its audience to think, the occasional lapse in artistry feels too much like “gimme” questions. The narrative skips ahead at least once, leaving details in its timeline unresolved.

But these complaints are petty grievances. Keaton knows how to direct himself and (with one exception) his actors, mining fascinating complexities out of virtually every role. MacDonald gives Kate layers of anxiety and innocence, letting her be paranoid in one scene and carefree the next. Bastounes is exceptional as the self-sabotaging Murheson, a man at once reaching out for someone’s warmth but retreating into his police authority whenever challenged. He’s the third part of Frank and Kate’s lonely constellation, dimmer by comparison but no less sincere despite his lack of self-awareness. Only Cannavale fails to impress, bringing too much ham to his rambling fire-and-brimstone monologue. We understand that his character is a petty and vile man because Kate has already sold us on the idea. Cannavale’s overacting only sets her own efforts back.

And the ending: vague, inconclusive, maddeningly open to interpretation. There are dozens of pat endings possible, and if you’ve been watching movies for any length of time you can imagine probably half that many without really trying. If the last five minutes are flawed, they’re still not enough to undermine the beauty and intelligence of the 105 minutes preceding them. The Merry Gentleman is in that sense daring right until its wide-open end.

-Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

(Note: Parts of this review originally appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)

I’ve been sick with the flu since Wednesday night, when I felt a bug slam into my chest like something out of “Alien.” For the last four days, I’ve risen out of my bed mainly to hand out Halloween candy — with sanitized hands at a protected distance — and to continue to photograph the ratty degeneration of my appearance as I pad around the house in ancient pajamas.

Being ill allows you to obsess on small outrages, because you don’t have the energy or money to remedy the big ones (a crumbling roof or current medical insurance deductible). About all you’re really capable of doing is lying flat on your back while watching a movie and becoming increasingly and irrationally irritated over the fact that an actress is playing exactly the same character in your newest Netflix flick rental as she did in the completely different film in which you last saw her (Kelly MacDonald in “The Merry Gentleman” and “The Girl in the Cafe”).

I’m too tired to write her agent, but Kelly really needs to start challenging herself more in her roles; even the hats in both movies are the same. And Bill Nighy and Michael Keaton are playing almost identical repressed, older male love interests opposite her in the two films.

Today, after I stopped fuming over the characters in two movies that almost no on has seen, I staggered downstairs to ponder the state of my record albums, about which I keep saying I am going to copy and transfer over to CDs or my iPod. I had to pack a couple of hundred of these suckers up up when I was painting several rooms of my house this summer. As I boxed and cataloged them, I realized that there were several albums missing.

Only one of the vanished really bothered me, because I can probably live the rest of my life without listening to the third album of “The Association” or the waste of vinyl released by one-hit wonder, Johnny Nash (“I Can See Clearly Now”).

But what is gnawing away at me is the loss of “Hot Rats,” by Frank Zappa, a post-Mothers of Invention work that was the only record I ever purchased solely for the album’s cover design. I am infinitely more galled about Frank’s disappearance than I am about Kelly MacDonald’s acting career choices, because the album was in flawless condition. This is due to the fact that I only once tried to listen to Zappa’s weird instrumental foray into jazz, and just planned to eventually frame the endearing psychedelic pink 60s-era photograph of him crawling out of a crypt.

Now I suppose I’ll have to go crawling myself, only this time over eBay, to look for an equally pristine version of the album that has inexplicably vanished. That is, unless I forget all about it in an hour or so, and begin obsessing on some other aggravating bit of minutiae that briefly grabs my attention in between swigs of cough syrup.

“Well, all the time you spend trying to get back what’s been took from you, more is going out the door. After awhile you just have to try to get a tourniquet on it.” ~~Ellis

There’s this thing that Joel and Ethan Coen, directors of “No Country for Old Men,” understand that so few filmmakers do: It’s the quiet films that pack the biggest punch. Not that “No Country” is a quiet film, exactly. There’s action aplenty, including several tense shootouts and a few point-blank assassinations; blood spillage is at a premium. But it’s the bone-dry dialogue, the sideways glances, the eerie periods of silence that make “No Country” so unsettling, so revealing. For these characters, silence means much more than words ever could and it’s thrilling and brilliant to watch.

And so ”No Country for Old Men” begins quietly, with personable but jaded West Texas Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (a first-rate Tommy Lee Jones) explaining how the things he’s seen have changed him, put his “soul at hazard.” Bell is a wise man who has seen everything but used his laconic wit to keep the danger from warping his soul. But he soon meets a bizarre crew of characters who aren’t quite so wise. Enter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a struggling cowboy who, while hunting one afternoon, stumbles onto a drug deal gone awry. Nearly everyone is dead (even the dog) except for a dying man demanding water, and there’s an abandoned truck loaded down with Mexican brown. Moss finds a briefcase full of money under a shade tree and takes off. But his conscience wakes him up later that night, and he returns to the shootout scene with a jug of water.

This, of course, is a colossal mistake, and one that turns “No Country for Old Men” into an unflinching, unforgiving game of hide, seek, kill. Now Moss has placed himself squarely in the sights of Anton Chigurh (a chillingly blank Javier Bardem), a psychopathic killer who wants the drug money back at any cost. This foolish decision sets in motion a chain of events – “you can’t stop what’s coming,” Bell’s father Ellis (Barry Corbin) observes – that winds its way to a finale an end that offers up not the tiniest bit of closure.

“No Country for Old Men,” adapted by the Coen brothers from an even more bleak Cormac McCarthy novel, is relentless in its pacing. The film never, ever lets up. Every moment is packed with tension, and audience anxiety only grows as it becomes clear that no character, not even Sheriff Bell, can see what’s coming his way. Relentless, too, is the bracing black humor that pervades the Coen brothers’ deadpan script. There’s a scene where a leery Moss, who’s hiding out at a fleabag motel, agrees to have a beer with a woman he meets poolside. She assures him: “The only thing beer leads to is more beer.” What happens next is textbook Coen. Better still is the conversation between Chigurh and a cashier, which draws shudders when it becomes obvious the men are talking about more than a coin toss. Coen regular Roger Deakins amps up this tension with his expansive camera work; he creates a vivid landscape that moves and breathes.

Yet the dialogue would fall flat without the right performances, and every one of them is faultless. Jones hits a career-best as Bell, turning what could have been an “aw shucks” Barney Fife into a sad and vulnerable character. Brolin finds the right mix of bravadoand fear in Moss. Kelly Macdonald makes the most of her role as Moss’s dim-witted but loving wife. As for Bardem, well, he’s so good at being scary scarier than “bubonic plague,” as one character observes, that it’s possible to forget his most unfortunate bob haircut. With a compressed-air cattle stun gun in hand, he just might be the nastiest, scariest villain ever to swagger onscreen. He’s a sneaky one.

Such is the way of ”No Country for Old Men.” By Coen design the film sneaks up on you, burrows its way, chigger-like, under your skin like a chigger and stays there. You don’t feel the sting until it’s too late to pull back.

Title: No Country for Old Men
Year: 2007
Directors: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
Writers: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald
Music: Carter Burwell
Distinctions: Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (non-original) and Best Supporting Actor (Bardem); currently #113 on IMDb’s Top 250
Length: 122 minutes
Synopsis: a man comes across two million dollars in the desert, and is hunted down by a mysterious crazy person
How I saw it: in the theater, 2007; on video (rented from Netflix), yesterday
Subjective Rating: 8/10
Objective Rating: 8/10 (points off for pacing and music)

An interesting and suspenseful pseudo-Western. Great characters. It feels a lot longer than two hours – I don’t know why, there’s certainly not anything that I think should be cut – it’s just the sort of thing that’s meant to be slow. Music probably could have helped; there’s very little score, and the few places it is used I didn’t even notice it.

Javier Bardem, reprising his role as the mysterious and deadly Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men," surprises Kelly MacDonald while she questions her fate in the draw of the cards.

JEFF BRIDGES, a k a the Dude from "The Big Lebowski," loses his way (again) as he tries to grasp the unfolding

Waiting for a sign, HOLLY HUNTER studies the landscape as she did in "Raising Arizona." The police might be on their way, or it might be her husband with their stolen baby. Either way, she's ready.

There's always a heavy, and JON POLITO, who plays some version of a tough guy in many Coen brothers films, is puzzled by the terrorizing nihilism of AIMEE MANN and DAVID THEWLIS in "The Big Lebowski." Like many of California's cultists, their philosophy has gone from dogma to vengeance.

Even bimbos need a place to hide, and TARA REID, better known as Bunny Lebowski, seeks refuge in TIM BLAKE NELSON'S roadside motel. True to her luck, she has picked an inopportune moment to check in.

The West is the land of outcasts, iconoclasts and lost souls, and JOHN TURTURRO as Barton Fink, the man-of-the-people playwright turned blocked screenwriter, is constantly looking for inspiration. Until meeting SAM ELLIOTT, swigging a white Russian as the Dude did in "The Big Lebowski," Fink had never considered writing a cowboy movie. He wonders: Is there any way to mix social realism with the West?

JULIANNE MOORE, the artistic Maude Lebowski, is restless. Like many a rebel, she finds the East Coast stultifying and is heading on the Greyhound west. In California, she hopes, they will comprehend her particular greatness. There, she will be championed!

Sadly, sometimes things just don't work out. STEVE BUSCEMI, who has died over and over in Coen brothers films, meets that bad end once again. Even in the West, dreams do not always come true. If you lie and cheat and steal, you may end up in the trunk of a car. Or you might get lucky. That's the chance you're looking for; it's a risk worth taking.

Nota: Ensaio que saiu no New York Times há uns dois anos atrás. O que me fez lembrar disso foi o título dessa notícia: The Dude Meets The Duke in Coens’ ‘True Grit’. Finalmente alguém dará um tapa-olho ao Sr Bridges, só para ficar ainda mais evidente o quão foda ele é.

HBO have ordered 11 episodes of Boardwalk Empire, the Martin Scorsese-directed drama that promises “a look at the history of Atlantic City’s boardwalk from its origins as a quiet seaside resort to the casino empire it is today.” The series is based on  the book “Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City” by Nelson Johnson and will feature Steve Buscemi, Kelly Macdonald and Dabney Coleman.

It’s probably no coincidence that the teleplay for the pilot was written by Terence Winter, former writer-producer for The Sopranos. If he can bring the same tense mob shenanigans from that show, and couple it with Scorsese’s eye for the historic, this should definitely be one to look out for.

Scorsese is apparently lined up to direct a first season episode, so we can probably expect a decent level of critical attention to this show too. Production is due to begin this year in time for a 2010 launch.

Della and Cal look grim as they see their paper's latest circulation figures

The film State of Play (out next month on DVD) wrecked one of the greatest television shows of the Noughties, not just by casting Russell Crowe instead of the lovely John Simm, but by inserting a portentous rumination on the nature of journalism.

Setting up a seemingly logical dichotomy between old and new media, it dramatised the tense (at first) relationship between the patient but macho, crime-scene hanger-on newspaper hack Cal (he doesn’t just check facts, he cares about them) and perky froth-and-gossip merchant Della (Rachel McAdams in place of Kelly Macdonald), who blogs her views without recourse to anything as traditional as pyramid-style story structure or dirty old newsprint.

But isn’t this the wrong way around? In the days of 24-hour online, television and radio news coverage, the power behind “single point in time” headlines in datelined hard copy has dissipated. The impact of a newspaper scoop dissipates pretty quickly: the story is dissected on late-night television newspaper review slots, followed by breakfast radio, long before anyone can get down to their local newsagent. And then there’s the fact, however little journalistic egos may like it, that the average listener either doesn’t actually know or doesn’t care where the original story came from. (The recent MP expenses campaign by The Daily Telegraph, which saved a lot of its exclusive detail for its print edition, is the exception that proves the rule… it may even turn out to be one of the last hurrahs for must-buy broadsheets.) Not only can the 24-hour news operations devour a newspaper’s content, but they can develop (or dismiss) the story within minutes, leaving the printed source of the story stale by comparison.

Rumours that the Guardian Media Group wants to turn The Observer into a magazine make perfect sense in this context (and not just because the best thing The Observer has done in recent years is launch its monthly roster of well-resourced sport, food, music and woman magazines). The joy of the printed product lies in exploring what newspapers’ online editions cannot effectively deliver: lengthy and/or illustrated articles for the leisurely reader, large-format graphics, creative use of photography, and all of it subordinate to the overall page design. It doesn’t have to be a front-to-back viewspaper: solid, fair reportage (let’s not pretend to believe in complete objectivity) can be framed in many ways. Great features have as much timeliness, relevance and ”got there first” competition among their writers as an above-the-fold page lead.

Many newspapers still save their “best” stories for the print edition, where they lie in the shadow of mastheads hailing from a different age. But traditional “hot off the press” stories are often packaged in macho headlines that can inflate the importance of a story or take a single news “line” woefully out of context: leave that for the HTML boxes, where stories can be instanteously updated, mistakes corrected, reader responses published and archives full of context conveniently listed in the sidebar.

This isn’t the current state of play in Ireland, which has never had a vibrant magazine tradition and where many journalists fear going “soft” even more than a Russell Crowe romcom on repeat play. But evidence from other parts of the world suggests that the industry is moving this way. Newspapers may be losing circulation for all kinds of reasons: free online substitutes, consumer resistance to top-down information, a saturated market, general indifference. But they also have a conceptual chasm at their heart that most people who depend on newspapers for employment like to ignore; a few more glossy, kaleidoscopic, A4-sized, advertiser-friendly magazines could, at the very least, paper over the cracks.

Chuck Palahniuk, keda eelkõige tunneme Fight Clubi kirjutajana ning filmi järgi, mis viis David Fincheri peale Sevenit oma tippu tol ajal, on nüüd leidnud uue lavastaja, kes lõpuks tema tööd puudutab. Clark Gregg ei pruugi olla parim valik, aga ta on piisav, et saaksime näha raamatupõhist autoriloomingut, mis muidu unustusehõlma vajub. Filmi üldtoon peaks olema koomiline ja kuigi ta seda ka on, murrab draama sealt siiski läbi. Silma hakkab (paraku), et Fight Clubist tuntud “grupid” on ka siin sisse toodud. Peategelase teema on juhusliku seksi vajadus ja selleks on tal oma grupp, kus käies saab veel juhuslikku seksi lisaks. Kahjuks psühhoteraapia mõttes see abiks küll pole. Lisaks on tal ka sõber samas grupis, ilmselge wanker, kuniks leiab strippari. Tore. Kuigi võiks mõelda, et selle ja (vajadusel) dementse ema kaudu saame ka veenva ekraani loo, ei anna kahjuks miski selliseks lootuseks alust. Lõpuks on tegemist vaid romantilise komöödiaga, kus kõigil läheb aegajalt midagi segi, aga sellegipoolest toimuvad sobivad fantastilised kohtumised ning paranemised. Missiis, et kõik see on võlts (võinoh, lame). Nagu igas romantilises komöödias. Mulle meeldis. Isegi lõpp.

IMDB

It’s hard to select a movie by the ads any more.  Wasn’t there a time when a large ad with rave quotations from movie reviewers meant that a film was actually GOOD, or have my tastes just changed?    No longer do Dearly Beloved and I see a full-page ad with all these Must See. . . Unforgettable. . . Brilliant. . . comments and head for the nearest theatre.  We used to consider ourselves movie lovers, but either we’ve raised our standards or movie makers have lowered theirs.

There are many actors I enjoy in a good film but very, very few I want to see in a bad one.   When actors head out for the talk shows to do their Pimp My Movie bit, I’m skeptical.

We’ve found that most of our favorite movies these days are independent films.  Often they’re foreign-made, complete with subtitles,  but that doesn’t bother us if it’s a good one.  They are engrossing in any language.

I love oddball comedies, but rarely find a big studio comedy that is funny. They usually have the same tired innuendoes and coarse humor. Maybe there will be a line or two that’s amusing, but when we add our ticket price plus popcorn and shared Diet Coke and divide it by the number of laughs, we come up with Lee entertainment enjoyment/fee (LEEF) rating…well, you get the idea.  It may have had a cute moment or two, but a $5 chuckle?  Usually not.

When I was younger, I loved sad movies but I no longer like to pay someone to make me cry.  DB likes the big epic dramas more than I do, but I’ll go with him and usually like it once I’m there.  He’s a sweetheart about letting me choose, so he sees some he wouldn’t have selected on his own.  Good dramas are hard to find.

I grew up buying my popcorn and saving it until the main feature began.  If DB still has popcorn past the movie credits, it’s only because we arrived late.  Sharing popcorn with him puts more pressure on the movie.  I mean, if I still had popcorn in a bad movie, I could amuse myself by picking out the fat kernels or something.

Recently we saw The Brothers Bloom, which I chose on the basis of reviews I’d read.  DB didn’t like it. . . I did, but using my movie cost vs. enjoyment ratio formula, I’m not sure I made a good choice.   I DID, however, redeem myself with the one we saw earlier this week:  The Merry Gentleman.

Remember Michael Keaton as Mr. Mom?  He’s definitely not Mr. Mom in this one, but DB and I are still talking about exactly who he IS.  My husband sees nuances, larger meanings,  hidden meanings, metaphors, and other layers I never even think about in movies.   I spend the first ten minutes wondering if I fed the dog, diagnosing whether or not the sound is too loud,  mentally guessing where it was filmed.

We both came out of this one with questions, not because we thought we missed something, but because that’s the kind of movie it was.  We’ve agreed that we’d like to see it again,  not because we expect to find answers but because we know that we’ll notice things we overlooked the first time.

Kelly Macdonald is wonderful in this and Michael Keaton’s direction and acting are dark and pitch-perfect.

I saw a woman enter alone, after we did, and when we left, she was standing by the outer door as if hesitant to leave.  I had the feeling she was hoping to talk to someone and sure enough, when we approached she said, “Was that what they call  film noir“?” The three of us walked out together, discussing the movie.

Film noir?  That and more.  The LEEF standard gives it a very high rating–worth it even if you factor in a box of Reese’s Pieces to munch on after the popcorn is gone.