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.

The Movie Overdose attempts to contain the apocalypse with a review of Roland Emmerich’s 2012. We chat about how we would change Eddie Murphy for the better, what kind of sequel we want for Star Trek and whether we are glad to see Sean Connery coming back, if only in voice form. Tom slightly dampens the praise given to An Education and Sam revels in the madness of Running Scared and the flawed ambition of Dogma. The conclusion involves a discussion of actors that, no matter what, we always look forward to seeing on screen.

Download The Movie Overdose Episode 42

Email us, follow us on Twitter and subscribe through iTunes on the links on the left side of the page.

Duplicity (2009)
★★★ / ★★★★

Writer-director Tony Gilroy’s spy film “Duplicity” greatly benefits from the two very charismatic leads, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. The two met four years ago when both were on a mission in Dubai. Unknowing Owen, an MI6 agent at the time, hits on Roberts whose mission was to steal some documents for the CIA. After a one-night stand, Roberts leaves and the film shows the two of them meeting again in New York four years later in very amusing circumstances. This is not the kind of spy movie where objects blow up and people end up dying. The target audience of this picture are those who are into astute and often confusing storytelling that eventually makes more and more sense toward the end. I mentioned that this was confusing but I meant it in a very good way. It managed to keep me guessing from beginning to end because it kept pulling the rug from under my feet. I was invested in the two lead characters because I constantly had to reevaluate who was trying to trick who and up to what point they start to trust each other (or if it’s ever possible). After all, the two are in a relationship and trust is a requisite in order for such a thing to be successful. I liked the suppporting characters, mainly Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti as two rival major pharmaceutical executives. Their intense performances were so ridiculous to the point where I ended up chuckling or laughing out loud whenever they were on screen. While the picture did have its slow moments, such scenes were a nice break from the constant one-upmanship between the timeless Roberts and suave Owen. There were times where I almost preferred watching them banter in the bedroom instead of being on the outside playing professionals. As for its ending, I thought it was wonderful; there was something very comical about the whole thing for two reasons: I didn’t see it coming and it was very ironic. Overall, the film had a nice flow to it because it had a nice balance of light thrills and genuine dramatic weight. I very much enjoyed Owen and Roberts in “Closer” as well as in this film. Hopefully, in the near future, they’ll team up again to spice up the screen.

Skojarfilmer är aldrig fel.
Speciellt inte om de presenteras på ett fantasifullt sätt, gärna med otaliga turer fram och tillbaka. Om de sedan också är snyggt gjorda och lämnar oss som åskådare kvar med en liten fundering på vad som just inträffat, så är ju det ännu bättre.

Ray och Claire är ett snygg, smart par som beslutat sig för att tjäna storkovan tillsammans. Som fd agenter för MI6 respektive CIA kan de alla knep som krävs. Inklusive att fundera ut smarta planer, vara snyggt klädda och se världsvana ut.

Det stora problemet dock, visar det sig, blir att kunna lita på varandra i en allt snabbare snurrande karusell av finter, lögner och snygga undanmanövrar.Målet för deras business är företagsvärlden i New York där det finns gott om affärshemligheter att lägga vantarna på. Speciellt om man riktar in sig på två konkurrerande företag i samma bransch.

Clive Owen och Julia Roberts är en riktig hit som det ständigt beräknande paret i den här rätt smarta äventyret av regissören Tony Gilroy.
Många lackar ur på Owen men jag tillhör dem som gillar snubben, och hävdar att han med lite tur hade kunnat bli den som tog över Bond-manteln om nu Daniel Craig inte hade nappat.
Owens insats i Children of men får väl räknas som den bästa hittills. Här får han chansen att glassa runt i snygga kostymer och se lite hemlig ut.
Julia Roberts är…Julia Roberts, och ibland räcker det ganska långt. Som i den här filmen tex. Även om hon aldrig tillhört mina favoritskådespelare, så har hon en viss charm och är klippt och skuren för roller liknande den här där hon får blanda humor med lite smartness.

Runt de båda intrigmakarna kretsar en gedigen samling birollsinsatser med den alltid sevärde Paul Giamatti i spetsen, och hela historien hinner ta ett antal olika vändningar innan eftertexterna kan börja rulla. Spänningsmoment saknas inte och regissör Gilroy verkar ha hittat en ganska perfekt avvägning mellan humor och thrillerkänslan.
Snyggt foto och bra tempo i filmen gör att man följer Ray och Claire med ett litet leende i mungipan.  Historien är möjligen osannolik och lite för tillrättalagd, men trots detta hinner ett par små överraskningar kastas in på vägen.

Ytligt måhända, men förbaskat underhållande.

Earlier this year I confronted my parents about why they never (and I do mean never) see movies in theaters.  “There’s nothing to see.  They don’t make movies for us.”  It’s a paradox.  No shit they don’t make movies for you, you don’t see them in theaters.  If only my parents had been aware of Duplicity, maybe they’d have more hope.  From the Tony Gilroy, director of the slick Michael Clayton, it’s a brainy, adult spy-comedy starring two genuine movie stars who chew up their scenes left and right.  It’s wonderful, and of course, it totally BOMBED.  Blame my parents.

Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are Ray and Claire, former spies who have each been enlisted to opposing consumer product conglomerates: Equikrom and Burkett & Randle.  Under Equikrom, Ray attempts to infiltrate the tight security of Burkett & Randle (handled by Claire), in hopes of nabbing a newly devloped product that may end up changing the world (=$$$$).  It’s a twisty, Ocean’s 11-style caper that complicates when Ray and Claire’s romantic past is slowly revealed.

Duplicity is old-fashioned in all the right ways.  Roberts and Owen are a charismatic couple, whether they’re bickering in New York, romancing in Rome, or negotiating in Berlin, the performances herald back to that snappy Bogart delivery of yesteryears.  Gilroy is first a writer (thank him for the Bourne films) and he pulls out all the stops with this one.  He walks the thin line between wit and cheese, but 90% of the time it clicks.  At times the plot’s a bit convuluted, too many jumps in time, but with two strong leads it never really matters.  Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson round out the cast as the two rival CEOs who will stop at nothing to bury the other, adding another cup of charisma to the overflowing pot.

I won’t spoil any details, just go rent this movie.  I’m talking to you Mom and Dad.  8/10

Duplicity è un film del 2009 scritto e diretto da Tony Gilroy e interpretato da Clive Owen e Julia Roberts.

Il film è stato distribuito nelle sale italiane il 10 aprile 2009.

Leggi altre notizie su: | Thriller | Tony Gilroy | Clive Owen | Julia Roberts

Le jeudi, c’est ravioli… ou plutôt, c’est le jour des nouveautés à La Médiathèque. Je vous avouerai que je fais entre autre ce métier uniquement pour cet instant magique, celui où les valises arrivent, telles des centaines de petits cadeaux que l’on se plaît à découvrir chaque semaine !

Et donc, que vous mettre sous la dent pour ce début d’octobre ?

Je ne serai trop vous conseiller “Frost / Nixon” de Ron Howard, une reconstitution très fidèle de l’interview donnée en 1977 par le présentateur vedette David Frost face à l’ancien président des Etats-Unis, Richard Nixon. Le film dévoile les coulisses de ce face à face, de la préparation à l’aboutissement, tout en abordant le scandale du Watergate, l’affaire qui obligea Richard Nixon à démissionner. On est très vite pris par la tension qui se dégage lors de ces entretiens. En bonus, ne ratez pas les extraits de la vraie interview de 1977, qui confirme un peu plus l’excellente prestation des deux acteurs.

Par le plus grand des hasards, un second film de Ron Howard arrive dans les bacs. Il s’agit de “Anges et démons“, sorte de préquel au film “Da Vinci Code“ puisqu’il s’agit aussi d’une enquête menée par Robert Langdon, personnage créé par Dan Brown dans son roman Anges et Démons et repris dans Da Vinci Code.

Tony Gilroy, le réalisateur de l’excellent “Michael Clayton” nous replonge dans le milieu de l’espionnage industriel avec “Duplicity“, sous un ton néanmoins plus léger et surtout teinté de romance. Il définit son film comme “Un thriller d’arnaque romantique où les deux héros mentent comme ils respirent, même lorsqu’ils sont enlacés”. Le duo est interprêté par Julia Roberts et Clive Owen.

Si vous aimez les grandes fresques historiques, le film “Les 3 Royaumes” devrait vous plaire puisqu’il s’agit d’une reconstitution de la bataille de la Falaise Rouge (en +208), célèbre bataille de l’époque des Trois Royaumes de la Chine. Un film mis en scène par John Woo et qui aura coûté la bagatelle de 31 millions d’euros.

Dans un tout autre style, “La Fille du RER” dernier film de André Téchiné, se base sur un fait divers qui a déclenché un certain émoi dans le monde politique français. En effet, une jeune fille affirmait avoir subit une agression à caractère antisémite dans le RER, ce qui avait entraîné un véritable déchaînement médiatique. Trois jours plus tard, on apprenait que cette agression n’était qu’un mensonge. Téchiné adapte ici la pièce de théâtre de Jean-Marie Besset intitulée “RER”.

Une seule comédie pour terminer, “Le Séminaire“, de Charles Némès, qui est la suite de “Espace détente“. Ces deux films sont tirés de la série télévisée française “Caméra café“, créée entre autre par le comédien Bruno Solo et dans laquelle le personnage central n’est autre qu’une machine à café.

Qu’on se le dise.

Brigitte Segers

]]> http://filmwipe365.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/the-best-of-the-west-2009/ Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:17:12 +0000 stuart78969 http://filmwipe365.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/the-best-of-the-west-2009/

Before you fear any more FilmWipe fans our lists will come to an abrupt end tomorrow night when we will hit the world of film review full force with a weird of Aki Kurasmaki classic.  But before we do I have noticed that this Blog has tended to focus on the best of European and Art house film.  ”There is nothing wrong with that” I hear you cry.  And while I may agree with you there are 270 million obese burger eating junkies who have got the most powerful national cinema in the world.  So we will honour them and there meagre achievements.  I actually love Hollywood films so hopefully tonight will be a quick guide to everything that has been good in the world of the blockbuster this year.

I will start off with the taking of The Taking of Pelham 123. I am a massive Tony Scott fan.  anyone who has seen the Spy Game and Enemy of the State will know what a brilliant director he can be.  However i approached this film with some trepidation as a film about a train hijacking with John Travolta as a tattooed bad guy (frankly he looks like he has escaped from a leper colony).  Anyway the film is surprisingly entertaining.  Despite holes in the plot the size of the grand canyon.  However lets not focus on the negatives.  The film is brilliantly directed, performed wonderfully and speeds a long as fast as suicide bomber hijacking a train.

In my opinion the best hollywood film release of the year is Tom Tykwer’s the The International. The film is possibly the best blockbuster of the year.  Clive Owen is brilliant and gives a performance that surely will put any of this years Oscar candidates to shame.  Tom Tykwer is in the envious position of having directed a film that is beautiful to look at engrossing throughout.  By the end you feel like the mantle of intelligent action thriller has been stolen from the Bourne series and given to this stylish transnational thriller.

The other action thriller that stole the year was inevitably Star Trek.  JJ Abrams.  The film was simply brilliant.  Finally a Star Trek film that is enjoyable even if you hate sci-fi.  For all his critics i thought that Chris Pine put in the best performance by a young person this year.  His teen choice award nomination actually almost made the award credible, instead of the acne fest it currently is.  and he even gave Shatner a run for his money.   The story was a little far fetched even for Star Trek and the bad guy was played by one of the worst actors currently  floating around on the Hollywood circuit (Eric “I can’t act” Bana).  However this film was excellent.  The acting was generally very good.  The upgrades to the typical star trek sets were fantastic.  The story was enjoyable and more importantly it was gripping throughout.  Genuinely one of the top films of the year.

I Love You Man.  No I don’t!! But this is the best Hollywood comedy of the year.  Jason Segel is brilliant as the youthful Sydney File.  The bromance that is exhibited in the film is and makes you wish you had friends like this.  The only low point is Rashida Jones as the girlfriend of the girls guy played by Paul Rudd.  At no point can you understand why on earth he would ever be with her.  However, you laugh from start to finish.  Anyone who thinks that The Hangover was the funniest film of the year first of all needs to seriously question their life and possibly think about jumping into the Thames with a lead weight tight to their feet and secondly watch this film.

Duplicity.  I feel like i have committed a crime suggesting this.  But i genuinely enjoyed this film.  Clive Owen was spellbinding yet again.  Julia Roberts was hopeless.  The film as a whole doesn’t make a great deal of sense.  However, Tony Gilroy the director made a beautiful film that was visually stunning and entertaining throughout.  Roberts aside the film is brilliantly acted with the excellent Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson weighing in with strong performances.  This is a film of contrast but is certainly well worth watching.

I really should have known better.

The On Demand thumbnail sketch for “Duplicity” read, “This smartly-paced thriller, written and directed by Tony Gilroy, stars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen as longtime lovers and corporate spies who team up to stage an elaborate con to rip off their rival companies.”  With a promo like that, how good could it be?  But Susie wanted to watch a movie, and I was happy to watch something besides HGTV, and as Pope reminds us, “hope springs eternal in the human breast.”

Briefly, “Duplicity” is about two spies, Ray Koval (Owen) and Claire Stenwick (Roberts).  In the opening scene, which takes place five years ago in Dubai, they meet at an Independence Day celebration, and we are treated to the first of many verbal fencing matches.  They spend the night together (how did that happen?) after which Claire drugs Ray and steals secret documents, an act of duplicity that sows seeds of mistrust and suspicion that permeate the whole movie.

Eventually, Ray and Claire leave their government posts to enter the high-stakes world of corporate espionage.  They conspire to defraud their respective employers and sell corporate secrets to the highest bidder.  Along the way, there’s more verbal fencing and – it must be admitted - one truly suspenseful scene in which Claire must find a copier and transmit a document before she and the document are both discovered missing.

Sadly, this is the best scene in the movie.

“Duplicity” typifies everything I dislike about mainstream Hollywood movies today.  Like so many films that come out of Hollywood, ”Duplicity” began not as an artist’s dream, but as a moneymaking scheme.  The stars were cast not according to their talent or suitability for their roles, but according to their star power.  This is not meant as a criticism of Julia Roberts; I thought she was excellent in her early movies.  But an actor of her stature needs to choose her roles carefully, if for no other reason than not to overwhelm the role – and perhaps the movie - with her mere presence.

The primary fault in “Duplicity” lies not with the acting or direction, but with the writing.  It is long on plot twists, and short on characterization.  We cannot identify with the protagonists, because as they are written, we have nothing in common with them.  Saddest of all, we are never able to enjoy the love affair between Ray and Claire because we can never escape the suspicion that one is playing the other for his or her own selfish ends.

I recommend this movie only for those Julia Roberts fans who are bound and determined to see every one of her movies.  The rest of us would do better to pop some popcorn, sit back, and watch an old favorite.

Derrick Robinson

Un film del 2009, regia di Tony Gilroy, con Julia Roberts / Clive Owen / Paul Giamatti / Tom Wilkinson. Prodotto da Universal Pictures (125min)

Thriller

Due spie industriali si innamorano l’uno dell’altra, ma devono tenere la loro storia segreta. I due stanno infatti architettando una clamorosa operazione ai danni delle società per cui lavorano con lo scopo di arricchirsi, ma la loro posizione nelle rispettive aziende rischia di compromettersi quando tra di loro cala l’ombra della sfiducia.

In a recent review of Quentin Tarantino’s different-film-from-how-it-was-marketed opus, Inglourious Basterds, film critic and friend of SCFOM Jonathan Kiefer writes, “When last we met in this space to discuss Quentin Tarantino, I claimed he was ruining American movies. Now I must acknowledge his progress. Now he’s on to European movies.”

I’ll take it a step further and suggest that he’s ruining movies. Period. His latest piece of fluff (dressed up as Important Movie), the aforementioned Inglourious Basterds, is sadly a box office champ, proving New York Times critic A.O. Scott’s theory that Americans have all the film sense of children (he also posits that we’re being treated as children, which, depending on your point of view, is accurate, cynical, or what we deserve).

How did this hack (and by “this hack,” I mean Tarantino) get to be the original Miss Jesus of cinema? Hard to say. He made one excellent film, which combined all the great elements of a classic genre picture and threw them into a contemporary stew of pop culture references, violence and kitsch. Its non-linear structure was just enough to distract viewers (including me) from the fact that the story wasn’t all that original (a bunch of guys knock over a store, it goes bad, they turn on each other, the end — see Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing for a similar set-up), and that it doesn’t add up to much. But so what? It’s a terrific flick. Its hyperkinetic energy alone is enough to make one look past its flaws. Plus, it has revelatory performances from Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Michael Madsen, and may be the last movie Chris Penn made before he got behemoth big.

Reservoir Dogs also introduced us to that Tarantino hallmark: his dialogue. And yes, it’s his dialogue. No character speaks in a voice that’s any different from Tarantino’s own, but no one knew that at the time. And it’s even kind of fun: ruminations on Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and whatever-the-hell-else in the opening diner scene are pithy and cute in their four-letter way. And mercifully short.

So everyone lined up to blow Quentin and he rewarded us with Pulp Fiction, a great-on-first-viewing picture. (Others rewarded us with the wretched True Romance and the so-so Natural Born Killers.) Then you watch Pulp Fiction again and you realize it’s just what it says it is: pulp. It has no value. The dialogue goes stale after a second viewing because it’s all so indistinguishable, the characters are trite and Tarantino’s biggest directorial achievement is to make John Travolta look as if he can’t dance. That, and he brought Travolta back (a dubious blessing) and gave us the ham-fisted Samuel L. Jackson that has become the standard Samuel L. Jackson. Yes: Snakes on a Plane is a direct descendant of Pulp Fiction.

Pulp Fiction’s not as bad as I make it out to be because Tarantino’s follow-up Jackie Brown is worse, unwatchable in all its talky nonsense. How can anyone make Elmore Leonard boring? Tarantino managed. Any clever ADR specialist could replace half the yapping in Jackie Brown with the words “yap yap yap” repeated over and over, and viewers would miss none of the plot. What a stupefyingly boring film, with dialogue that’s not only boring, but meaningless. And how many times do we have to watch someone open a goddamn car trunk from the inside?

Tarantino’s leap to douche-auteur got a tweak after Jackie Brown. As he says in a recent Village Voice interview:

I learned something after I did Jackie Brown—and don’t get me wrong, I love Jackie Brown. But when it was all over—even when I was making it—the fact that it was just a little bit once removed made me a little bit disconnected from it. That’s why I haven’t done another adaptation since then. I want to naturally fall into the next thing that’s going to turn me on.

You read that correctly: I love my own work too much to let another person’s decent source material cloud my vision. Ugh. That’s why we got Kill Bill, a movie so talk-heavy that it had to be split into two films. Sure, the first volume has lots of cool chop-socky violence and blah-be-de-blah snorkle bit (because that’s how much the story and talk matter), but it also has the “I’m telling you this important because if I didn’t you’d know it was horseshit” horseshit that’s become what passes for character development in a Tarantino film.

For example, The Bride (Uma Thurman) is some unknown entity to the audience, so much so that her character’s given name is bleeped out when other characters mention it in the film. That’s what the great screenwriter Tony Gilroy would call hype: calling attention to something that means nothing to throw off the audience from realizing that it means nothing. And really, who gives a shit what The Bride’s real name is? It’s not like the cops are eavesdropping and with that important piece of information they can go arrest Beatrix Kiddo (if only we knew her given name!). Christ. At least the movie has that great song by Tomoyasu Hotei.

The second Kill Bill film is even worse because it’s nothing but talk interspersed with some goofy violence that’s so absurd it doesn’t even thrill on a visceral level. (And Daryl Hannah as a bad-ass? Really?) Do we really care what these people have to say? Or care that Kiddo’s sense of honor has been violated by Bill? And who the hell thought David Carradine was worthy of all this screen time, anyway?

Oh, yes. The Tarantino dialogue. Honestly. It’s wretched. It means nothing. It’s an excuse for Tarantino to listen to his favorite subject — Tarantino — talk. Nearly endlessly. Kill Bill Vol. 2 is 136 minutes long and probably has 115 minutes of yapping, colorless, boring, self-important claptrap masquerading as Something Important. It’s not important. It’s hype. It doesn’t develop character. It doesn’t move the plot forward. It’s expository (which is doubly shitty of QT, because there’s really no story to Kill Bill other than “Woman shot and left for dead goes on a revenge-killing spree against the five people who wronged her,” which could be done in one shitty 90-minute film instead of two shitty 120-minute films). It’s dull. All the characters sound the same. Kind of like the characters in an Aaron Sorkin script sound the same. (There. I said it.) Add Diablo fucking Cody in there, too.

(I realize there are people out there who like that stuff. Stylized dialogue. Colorless characterization. Rote and one-note notions of honor. They should get out more.)

That brings us to Death Proof, the Tarantino half of Grindhouse, the we-have-some-clout-so-let’s-make-the-audience-suffer-but-it’s-all-in-good-fun crapterpiece Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino sort of made together in homage to the double features they grew up on. Guys, there’s a reason those double features don’t exist anymore: The movies sucked. For every Monte Hellman or Herschell Gordon Lewis there are 14 Sean S. Cunninghams.

Death Proof is so awful it’s hard to believe a studio would release it. (The Weinsteins released it, so maybe I shouldn’t call Grindhouse a studio picture. But hey: It’s Tarantino, right?) The movie is technically well made (and therefore subverts its own rules of being a grindhouse pic, but whatevs), but it’s a — shocker — big bore. First, we have to listen to Sydney Tamiia Poitier yap and yap and yap sanctimoniously about a bunch of nothing including Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich and oh, who gives a shit, get to the fucking story. By the way, after listening to her talk and call her friends, more or less, assholes for nearly 30 minutes, her demise isn’t nearly gory enough.

But there’s no story. And yes, that’s kind of the point of Grindhouse. Except that true grindhouse flicks had stories, as dumb as they could be, and some of them were actually fun. (The inconsistent Rodriguez’s Planet Terror is fun, mostly because he’s a hack — a talented hack — doing hack work and having fun with it. Quentin: Don’t take yourself so fucking seriously.)

There’s a second scene with a bunch of girls talking about nothing, this time in a diner, just like the guys did in Reservoir Dogs (way to reference yourself, dick). After what seems like forever, they kill Kurt Russell (the only good performance in the Tarantino half of Grindhouse). The whole film is stunningly misogynistic, but its defenders think it glorifies women. I have to ask: What pro-chick film makes so many of them such horrible people, only to dispatch them so violently? And what pro-chick film makes the good girls a bunch of vengeance seeking gorehounds? Yeah, yeah, it’s Grindhouse. I missed the point. Fuck me. Even the level-headed and respectable A.O. Scott was sucked in by Death Proof:

I’m hesitant to risk giving away too much, but I will say that Kurt Russell is awfully good, and that I could listen to Sydney Tamiia Poitier and Tracie Thoms, two of the movie’s motor-mouthed heroines, talk through the whole three hours of “Grindhouse,” read the phone book or recite “The Faerie Queene” on tape in my Volvo in the middle of a traffic jam.

I’d rather put out a lit cigarette in my ass than listen to Tracie Thoms do the tough-black-chick routine that she’s reduced to in Death Proof. Honkey, please. Even the car chase is drab. Peter Yates, William Friedkin, George Miller — they all did it better. Much better. Even shithead Michael Bay has done it the fuck better.

That brings me to Inglourious Look-I-Spelled-it-Wrong-on-Purpose!-Basterds, the film that started this whole essay/rant. Having seen it twice (and once for free, thankfully) to make sure I wasn’t crazy for disliking it as much as I did, I admit there are some good things about it. First, Christoph Waltz as the SS Colonel Hans Landa is so good that you forget you’re listening to Tarantino’s tin-ear dialogue and that the Landa character is a caricature, and you feel a little guilty for liking a Nazi so much.

Second, there is no second. Sure, there’s a perverse thrill in watching Eli Roth beat a Nazi officer to death with a baseball bat. And yes, Mélanie Laurent and Diane Kruger are mesmerizing. And much of the dialogue is in French and German, so it’s hard to be distracted by how Tarantino-esque it is (though, as a French speaker, I can tell you the idiosyncrasies of Tarantino’s gobbledegook mercifully don’t really translate). But then there’s Brad Pitt, who’s distractingly bad. Bad accent, bad mugging, and he does that stupid squint he always falls back on, and lolls his tongue about as he’s done in nearly every picture since Thelma & Louise. Is that the point, to make Pitt so terrible? Probably not, since most of the actors are quite good. There’s also his unexplained character motivation (in fairness, does one really need a reason to kill Nazis in WWII?), which Tarantino addresses in that same Village Voice interview:

[I] had a whole history with Pitt’s character, Aldo. Aldo has been fighting racism in the South; he was fighting the Klan before he ever got into World War II. And the fact that Aldo is part Indian is a very important aspect of my whole conception, even of turning the Jews into American Indians fighting the unfightable, losing cause. So that lead guy is legitimately an Indian. Also, the dichotomy of this Southern hillbilly and his verbiage bouncing off them is interesting.

Hey! That’s some great character motivation for Aldo’s actions! Too bad it’s not in the film. It’s hype. And fuck you, hype.

And none of this griping even takes into consideration Colonel Landa’s unmotivated character change at the film’s end, or his reasons for leaving Mélanie Laurent’s character alive while killing the rest of her family. (Actually, her escape lazily sets up the film’s entire plot, because without her, there’s no movie theater in which to kill Hitler at the end of the movie.) And I won’t even get into the whole sequence in which Pitt and a German soldier discuss what constitutes a Mexican stand-off, except to say, “Hey, I know! This time, let’s have a Mexican stand-off in which everyone talks about what makes up a Mexican stand-off! I am so pushing the envelope!” And the other distracting casting: Mike Myers as a Colonel Blimp-like British officer. Barf.

No, the gripe ends here, with Hitler’s untimely death at the hands of Tarantino’s basterds. Yes, they kill Hitler. Which would have been great if he’d died, along with Goebbels, in 1944. But Hitler and Goebbels didn’t die then. And the manner in which they’re killed is childish. It’s the pipe dream of a 10-year-old who wants to rewrite history. It’s so ball-breakingly petulant, stupid and contrived and — let’s see, stupid — that it cheapens an already cheap genre exercise: Spaghetti Western masquerading as WWII flick.

The film’s opening grosses will do nothing to slow down Tarantino’s march to film history. (Neither will the fact that it’s called Inglourious Basterds but isn’t about the basterds, who are barely on screen.) Tarantino will never be the craftsman that Scorsese is — or Bergman was, or Spielberg is, or even, say, Michael Haneke is. And sadly, he doesn’t want to be. He wants the fame and accolades and all that other bullshit (read the Village Voice interview if you don’t believe me) and he has no interest in doing anything that means anything.

Maybe that’s not the point of cinema. Maybe it truly is to escape, and nothing more. Hopefully Tarantino’s audience will realize they’re being played for suckers, wise up and demand he do better, or better yet, desert him.

That likely won’t happen. As long as there’s a fan-boy culture, critics willing to blow him and actors who think he’s just, like, the greatest, we’re stuck with him as he is. He can set up a shot and place a camera well and (mostly) let an actor act well, but the work is just empty. It’s ruining movies.

Outwit.  Outspy.  Outsmart.  Outplay.  Then get out.  It’s the tagline of the movie… and pretty much the plot too.  Duplicity comes to DVD today.  What should you know about this spy-versus-spy story before going to the video store?  Bob shares his thoughts and opinions on today’s Plugged In DVD Review.  You can read about it by clicking here.

On a whim me and a friend decided to watch “The Bourne Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum” films. Here’s the rundown:

“The Bourne Identity” – Matt Damon stars as the main character, Jason Bourne, a spy found lying facedown in the ocean with two bullets in his back. When he awakes he has amnesia and must piece together who he is and/or was. His one clue to the past is a deposit box which has multiple passports, money, and a gun. This tips off the CIA who are looking for Bourne namely Conklin (Chris Cooper) who sent Bourne on a secret assassination mission that has blown-up in the CIA’s face and brought questioning by another person in-the-know, Ward Abbott (Brian Cox). Bourne enlists the help of Maria (Franka Potente) whom he pays $20,000 to take him to Paris where he hopes to find out more about Project Treadstone.

In Retrospect: I remember watching this movie and loving it, hyping myself up for the sequel. Looking back, it’s still a good movie but I don’t love it as much. At the time it came out (2002) it preceded the final Austin Powers movies as well as the last Pierce Brosnan “James Bond” movie, and this was a welcome change. Both franchises had run their course and Jason Bourne was a spy who didn’t really on gadgets or one-liners; the man could disarm and disable you in three seconds using only his thumb. It was new, fresh, innovative, and action-oriented WITH a story. Doug Liman directed the first film entry in the series and I’ll give him credit for what he did, but it does seem to pale against its sequels (and imitators).

“The Bourne Supremacy” – Classified Russian documents are stolen when a CIA operation is botched and Jason Bourne is framed. On the other side of the globe Bourne is living in India with Maria when he’s spotted and during the ensuing chase, Maria is killed. Bourne returns stateside to find out why he’s being hunted down. Memories of a secret mission that wasn’t part of Treadstone return in bits and pieces and he soon goes to Moscow, returning to the scene of the crime and confronting the hitman initially sent to kill him as well as apologizing to the daughter of the couple whom he assassinated. This time around he’s being tracked down by Pamela Landy (Joan Allen).

In Retrospect: I liked this movie as much as “Bourne Identity” when it came out, citing the fact that the extra car chase was “the cherry on top of an already good movie.” Re-watching it, I liked it even more than the first. Sure, the camerawork during the fight scenes can get a little crazy or choppy, but overall it kept a cohesive story amid all the chaos.

“The Bourne Ultimatum” – A journalist for the UK paper The Guardian (Paddy Considine) has found out about Jason Bourne and is trying to expose him, along with information on a Top Secret project called Black Briar. Bourne has to get to the bottom of things and runs into Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) who happens to be working for the guy trying to sell the CIA secrets. Meanwhile, back at the ranch (CIA), Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) is honing in on the journalist when Bourne comes into the picture. Landy is sent in to help him with Bourne and, just in case, to be a scapegoat. Bourne must clear his name while trying to find out more information on Black Briar.

In Retrospect: I had such high hopes for this movie before I saw it in theatres. After watching it I wasn’t so much nauseous (major shaky-cam) as much as let down. It felt like an amalgamation of the other two Bourne films.

And I was partially right.

I’m reminded of a quote John Carpenter said about sequels which went something to the effect of people want the same movie over again. Sitting back and watching the other two Greengrass, as well as scriptwriters Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi, seemed to look at “The Bourne Identity” and say, “We can just use THIS script again!” Replace Chris Cooper with David Stathairn, Brian Cox with Albert Finney, Clive Owen with Joey Ansah, and even Franka Potente with Julia Stiles, and you have “The Bourne Identity Deux.”

And to make matters worse is the 1:20 (hrs:mins) point, where we find out that everything we’ve been watching takes place before the end of “Supremacy.” So, while Bourne was busy discovering why he was framed and avenging the death of his wife, he ALSO had time to find out about the other Black Ops Program, Black Briar. Did any of these guys think about this while it was happening, or just hope to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes? Fool me once, shame on me; I didn’t get fooled the second time.

THE WINNER: “The Bourne Supremacy.” A good blend of action-adventure with a plot and storyline.

 “The Bourne Identity” still holds, but not as well as “Supremacy.” “The Bourne Ultimatum?” More horrible than when I first watched it.

Christmas Tree Huggers
Set in 1969, two hippies get stuck in a small Bible Belt town during the holidays, and end up teaching the whole community how to chill out.
Writer: Greg Bombard

Elevator Wars
Rival building engineers battle for the chance to design the elevators in a new shopping mall.
Based on a Plainview Daily Chronicle article.

The Table Setters
Taut psychological thriller set in the world of New England maids. Plot being kept under wraps.
Writer: Tony Gilroy

2007: Michael Clayton di Tony Gilroy

“Un film in cui valgono più le atmosfere e i singoli fatti che l’intreccio, e che non si preoccupa di rendere immediato ed esplicito l’incontrarsi e l’attraversarsi dei fili narrativi. In platea c’è chi si disorienta, perso in particolari di cui non intravede il legame. Ma questo apparente disordine della storia finisce per esprimerne un altro, esistenziale e morale”. Così scriveva il 14 Ottobre 2007 Roberto Escobar nel suo articolo su Il Sole – 24 Ore cogliendo esattamente l’essenza del film.

Un raro esempio di cinema hollywoodiano in cui importanti sono le parole, i pensieri, le psicologie, le inquietudini dei personaggi piuttosto che il ritmo forsennato e l’azione. Coraggiosa la scelta di bandire tutti gli orpelli tanto graditi a molta produzione americana: musica assordante e invadente, superflui effetti speciali, andamento frenetico, inquadrature e montaggio da videoclip.

Una trama che all’inizio sembra complicatissima ma che poi si rivela quasi banale, vista tante volte sullo schermo, ma che Tony Gilroy (famoso sceneggiatore, incredibilmente alla sua prima regia) affronta e svolge in maniera del tutto originale.

Un procedere lento che offre l’occasione al regista di trasformare un semplice thriller in una profonda e seria analisi del cinismo di parte della società americana (ma non solo) e dà allo spettatore l’opportunità di riflettere su quanto sta vedendo. Uno stile secco e asciutto che rifiuta inutili digressioni, una suspense che cresce progressivamente e culmina nelle scene finali attanagliando con intelligenza il pubblico.

Un film che ci regala tre formidabili interpretazioni da parte di George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson.

Clooney affronta in modo mirabile il ruolo più difficile della sua carriera e dimostra eccezionali doti espressive: l’ultima inquadratura (su cui scorrono i titoli di coda, assolutamente da non perdere) andrebbe studiata nelle Accademie, una lezione di recitazione da applaudire incondizionatamente.  

Pubblicato su FilmAgenda

Regia: Tony Gilroy

Sceneggiatura: Tony Gilroy

Cast: George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack, Jennifer Ehle, Michael O’Keefe, Ken Howard, Denis O’Hare, Robert Prescott, Austin Williams, Sean Cullen, Merritt Wever, David Lansbury, Bill Raymond, David Zayas, Skipp Sudduth, Pamela Gray, Amy Hargreaves, Terry Serpico, Christopher Mann

Fotografia: Robert Elswit

Montaggio: John Gilroy

Musiche: James Newton Howard

Produzione: Section Eight, Castle Rock Entertainment, Samuels Media, Mirage Enterprises

Distribuzione: Medusa Film

Paese: USA 2007

Genere: Drammatico, Thriller

Durata: 119 Min

Uscita Italia: 5 Ottobre 2007

Uscita USA: 24 Settembre 2007

Sito Ufficiale

Trama:

Michael Clayton ‘aggiusta’ situazioni compromettenti per i clienti più facoltosi dello studio legale presso cui lavora. Finché un giorno viene messo di fronte a una scelta morale ineludibile.

Note:

Su IMDb premi e riconoscimenti.

Julia Roberts and Clive Owen star in the movie “Duplicity”, written and directed by Tony Gilroy. Owen plays and ex-MI6 agent and Roberts plays an ex-CIA agent, their backgrounds make them like each other (because they can understand each other) but it also makes them suspicious of each other. Because they want to get in a real relationship, they decide that the best solution is to do a con job and steal a fortune of the corporate companies they work for as spies. It’s a question of who is playing who. So they play their game, or are they the ones who are being played? 

My favorite quotes in the movie are:

•  
  • (…) She: “You clearly have me confused with someone else.”
  • He: “I don’t know, I mean I’m not great on names, I should be. I try. Faces I’m definitely better. I’m like a B, B-. But where I really excel is, people I have slept with, that’s been a traditional area of strenght for me.” (…)

•  
  • (…) She: “Are these hers?”
  • He: “What is that?”
  • She: “It’s a thang. It was in your closet.”
  • He: “That’s not possible.”
  • She: “Well, … whose are they?”
  • He: “Nobodies, ’cause it’s impossible.”
  • She: “Impossible what? That someone would leave them? Or that you’d forget? Or that I’d find them?”
  • He: “Impossible because I’ve been faithful. Which closet?”
  • She: “Which closet!?”
  • He: “This is insane!”
  • She: “You’re denying this!?”
  • He: “Absolutely! The only woman who has been in this place since I moved in, is the landlady and she could wear that thing as a wristband.”
  • She: “So… than were do they come from?”
  • He: “Look… I swear to you, I swear I swear (…)”
  • She: “In that case, I’ll put them back on.” (…)

Here you can watch the official trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkx2vYNE9V0 (BlackTreeMedia).

Como fiquei um bocado de tempo sem escrever nada que não fosse projeto de monografia ou Guia de Estudos, não farei aquela resenha suculenta dos meus tempos de ventura. Mas não posso deixar de comentar sobre dois filmes interessantes que vi esses dias.

Primeiro, “Duplicidade”, em cartaz nos cinemas.  Fui ver por conta do nome do Tony Gilroy nos créditos, afinal, ele fez um trabalho muito bom em ‘Conduta de Risco’, e fiquei curioso pra ver como ele se sairia num trabalho bem mais comercial. E não fiquei decepcionado, pelo contrário. Salvo por um escorregão na última cena, o filme é elegante do começo ao fim, como uma boa obra de espionagem deve ser.  O elenco está bem, incluindo nisto a Julia Roberts, por quem eu não nutro muita simpatia, e a opção de incluir flashbacks periódicos, situando o espectador na história é muito eficiente. Destaque para a ótima cena de créditos iniciais e para os quadros muito bem pensados – em muitos momentos dá vontade de fotografar a tela e pendurar o resultado na parede. É uma pena que na última cena o filme caia na tentação de mastigar tudo com uma longa cena montada de forma expositiva.

O segundo é “Expresso Transiberiano”. Por algum motivo que só a lógica torpe das distribuidoras de filmes entendem, não passou nos cinemas (pelo menos aqui em BH), o que é bem triste, posto que um thriller acima da média merecia seu lugar (especialmente levando em conta que o filme do Wolverine ocupou umas quatro salas em cada cinema). Enfim, lamúrios à parte, recomendo para todos que gostam de um bom suspense. A sensação de claustrofobia/brancofobia (sic) é bem trabalhada, gerando uns momentos bem tensos. Assim como no filme já comentado, escorrega um pocuo no final, quando substitui a tensão psicológica por, digamos, atos mais físicos. Mas ainda assim dá de dez em qualquer ‘torture porn’ por aí.

Nota: “Duplicidade” é o segundo filme com o Paul Giamatti que o final contém uma cena ‘explicando pra quem não entendeu’. Será uma exigência contratual?

Nota 2: Prestem atenção em Woody Harrelson em “Expresso…”. Talvez a melhor atuação dele.